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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Melmoth Reconciled, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Melmoth Reconciled
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: April, 1998  [Etext #1277]
+Posting Date: February 22, 2010
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MELMOTH RECONCILED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, Bonnie Sala
+
+
+
+
+
+MELMOTH RECONCILED
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+  To Monsieur le General Baron de Pommereul, a token of the friendship
+  between our fathers, which survives in their sons.
+
+                                                        DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+MELMOTH RECONCILED
+
+
+There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social
+Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener’s craft in the
+Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybrid
+which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is
+known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious
+doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to
+flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an
+uninteresting family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always be
+a problem for the physiologist. Has any one as yet been able to state
+correctly the terms of the proportion sum wherein the cashier figures as
+the unknown _x_? Where will you find the man who shall live with wealth,
+like a cat with a caged mouse? This man, for further qualification,
+shall be capable of sitting boxed in behind an iron grating for seven
+or eight hours a day during seven-eighths of the year, perched upon a
+cane-seated chair in a space as narrow as a lieutenant’s cabin on board
+a man-of-war. Such a man must be able to defy anchylosis of the knee
+and thigh joints; he must have a soul above meanness, in order to live
+meanly; must lose all relish for money by dint of handling it. Demand
+this peculiar specimen of any creed, educational system, school, or
+institution you please, and select Paris, that city of fiery ordeals
+and branch establishment of hell, as the soil in which to plant the said
+cashier. So be it. Creeds, schools, institutions and moral systems, all
+human rules and regulations, great and small, will, one after another,
+present much the same face that an intimate friend turns upon you when
+you ask him to lend you a thousand francs. With a dolorous dropping of
+the jaw, they indicate the guillotine, much as your friend aforesaid
+will furnish you with the address of the money-lender, pointing you to
+one of the hundred gates by which a man comes to the last refuge of the
+destitute.
+
+Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man’s mind; she indulges
+herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a
+cashier.
+
+Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of
+bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a thousand
+crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque, hold these
+rare products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem that they
+confine them in cages in their counting-houses, much as governments
+procure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at their own charges.
+
+If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid
+temperament; if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete cashier,
+he loves his wife, and that wife grows tired of her lot, has ambitions,
+or merely some vanity in her composition, the cashier is undone.
+Search the chronicles of the counting-house. You will not find a single
+instance of a cashier attaining _a position_, as it is called. They are
+sent to the hulks; they go to foreign parts; they vegetate on a second
+floor in the Rue Saint-Louis among the market gardens of the Marais.
+Some day, when the cashiers of Paris come to a sense of their real
+value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money. Still, certain
+it is that there are people who are fit for nothing but to be cashiers,
+just as the bent of a certain order of mind inevitably makes for
+rascality. But, oh marvel of our civilization! Society rewards virtue
+with an income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a second
+floor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs, an
+elderly wife and her offspring.
+
+So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a little boldness,
+a faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne
+outflanked Montecuculi, and Society will sanction the theft of millions,
+shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him
+with consideration.
+
+Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this profoundly illogical
+reasoner--Society. Government levies a conscription on the young
+intelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen,
+a conscription of precocious brain-work before it is sent up to be
+submitted to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds
+in much the same way. To this process the Government brings professional
+appraisers of talent, men who can assay brains as experts assay gold
+at the Mint. Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope, are sent up
+annually by the most progressive portion of the population; and of these
+the Government takes one-third, puts them in sacks called the Ecoles,
+and shakes them up together for three years. Though every one of these
+young plants represents vast productive power, they are made, as one
+may say, into cashiers. They receive appointments; the rank and file
+of engineers is made up of them; they are employed as captains of
+artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire.
+Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened
+on mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained the age of
+fifty years, they have their reward, and receive as the price of their
+services the third-floor lodging, the wife and family, and all the
+comforts that sweeten life for mediocrity. If from among this race of
+dupes there should escape some five or six men of genius who climb the
+highest heights, is it not miraculous?
+
+This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probity
+on the one hand and Government and Society on the other, in an age that
+considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory explanation
+a recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; but preceded by this
+summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive some thoughtful
+attention from minds capable of recognizing the real plague-spots of
+our civilization, a civilization which since 1815 as been moved by the
+spirit of gain rather than by principles of honor.
+
+
+
+About five o’clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of
+the largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light
+of a lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use
+and wont of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner of
+the low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very
+end of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors
+along this corridor, each with its label, gave the place the look of a
+bath-house. At four o’clock the stolid porter had proclaimed, according
+to his orders, “The bank is closed.” And by this time the departments
+were deserted, wives of the partners in the firm were expecting their
+lovers; the two bankers dining with their mistresses. Everything was in
+order.
+
+The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet-iron was just
+behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless he was
+balancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered
+iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the modern inventor)
+that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the
+pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock was a warden
+who kept its own secret and could not be bribed; the mysterious word was
+an ingenious realization of the “Open sesame!” in the _Arabian Nights_.
+But even this was as nothing. A man might discover the password; but
+unless he knew the lock’s final secret, the _ultima ratio_ of this
+gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, it discharged a blunderbuss
+at his head.
+
+The door of the room, the walls of the room, the shutters of the windows
+in the room, the whole place, in fact, was lined with sheet-iron a third
+of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden paneling. The
+shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If ever man could feel
+confident that he was absolutely alone, and that there was no remote
+possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that man was the cashier of
+the house of Nucingen and Company, in the Rue Saint-Lazare.
+
+Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave. The fire
+had died out in the stove, but the room was full of that tepid warmth
+which produces the dull heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of a
+morning after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no small part
+in the reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.
+
+A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong
+men is evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their wills
+enfeebled. Government offices are part of a great scheme for the
+manufacture of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a Feudal
+System on a pecuniary basis--and money is the foundation of the Social
+Contract. (See _Les Employes_.) The mephitic vapors in the atmosphere
+of a crowded room contribute in no small degree to bring about a gradual
+deterioration of intelligences, the brain that gives off the largest
+quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others, in the long run.
+
+The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or thereabouts. As he sat at the
+table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his bald head and
+glistening fringe of iron-gray hair that surrounded it--this baldness
+and the round outlines of his face made his head look very like a ball.
+His complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had gathered about his
+eyes, but he had the smooth, plump hands of a stout man. His blue cloth
+coat, a little rubbed and worn, and the creases and shininess of his
+trousers, traces of hard wear that the clothes-brush fails to remove,
+would impress a superficial observer with the idea that here was a
+thrifty and upright human being, sufficient of the philosopher or of the
+aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But, unluckily, it is easy to find
+penny-wise people who will prove weak, wasteful, or incompetent in the
+capital things of life.
+
+The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole,
+for he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the Emperor. M. de
+Nucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a banker, had had
+reason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier,
+who then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had befallen the
+major, and the banker out of regard for him paid him five hundred francs
+a month. The soldier had become a cashier in the year 1813, after his
+recovery from a wound received at Studzianka during the Retreat from
+Moscow, followed by six months of enforced idleness at Strasbourg,
+whither several officers had been transported by order of the Emperor,
+that they might receive skilled attention. This particular officer,
+Castanier by name, retired with the honorary grade of colonel, and a
+pension of two thousand four hundred francs.
+
+In ten years’ time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier,
+and Castanier inspired the banker with such trust in him, that he was
+associated in the transactions that went on in the private office behind
+his little counting-house. The baron himself had access to it by means
+of a secret staircase. There, matters of business were decided. It was
+the bolting-room where proposals were sifted; the privy council chamber
+where the reports of the money market were analyzed; circular notes
+issued thence; and finally, the private ledger and the journal which
+summarized the work of all the departments were kept there.
+
+Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened on to a
+staircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on the
+first floor of their hotel. This done, he had sat down at his desk
+again, and for a moment he gazed at a little collection of letters of
+credit drawn on the firm of Watschildine of London. Then he had taken
+up the pen and imitated the banker’s signature on each. _Nucingen_ he
+wrote, and eyed the forged signatures critically to see which seemed the
+most perfect copy.
+
+Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. “You are not
+alone!” a boding voice seemed to cry in his heart; and indeed the forger
+saw a man standing at the little grated window of the counting-house, a
+man whose breathing was so noiseless that he did not seem to breathe at
+all. Castanier looked, and saw that the door at the end of the passage
+was wide open; the stranger must have entered by that way.
+
+For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of dread
+that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man before him;
+and for that matter, the appearance of the apparition was sufficiently
+alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysterious circumstances of so
+sudden an entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh coloring of the long
+oval face, indicated quite as plainly as the cut of his clothes that the
+man was an Englishman, reeking of his native isles. You had only to look
+at the collar of his overcoat, at the voluminous cravat which smothered
+the crushed frills of a shirt front so white that it brought out the
+changeless leaden hue of an impassive face, and the thin red line of the
+lips that seemed made to suck the blood of corpses; and you can guess
+at once at the black gaiters buttoned up to the knee, and the
+half-puritanical costume of a wealthy Englishman dressed for a walking
+excursion. The intolerable glitter of the stranger’s eyes produced a
+vivid and unpleasant impression, which was only deepened by the rigid
+outlines of his features. The dried-up, emaciated creature seemed to
+carry within him some gnawing thought that consumed him and could not be
+appeased.
+
+He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless
+eat continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or
+features. A tun of Tokay _vin de succession_ would not have caused any
+faltering in that piercing glance that read men’s inmost thoughts, nor
+dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go
+to the bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquil
+majesty of a tiger about him.
+
+“I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir,” he said. Castanier
+felt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent
+shock similar to that given by a discharge of electricity.
+
+“The safe is closed,” said Castanier.
+
+“It is open,” said the Englishman, looking round the counting-house.
+“To-morrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The amount is for five hundred
+thousand francs. You have the money there, and I must have it.”
+
+“But how did you come in, sir?”
+
+The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened Castanier. No words could
+have replied more fully nor more peremptorily than that scornful and
+imperial curl of the stranger’s lips. Castanier turned away, took up
+fifty packets each containing ten thousand francs in bank-notes, and
+held them out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a bill
+accepted by the Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ran
+through him as he saw a red gleam in the stranger’s eyes when they fell
+on the forged signature on the letter of credit.
+
+“It... it wants your signature...” stammered Castanier, handing back the
+bill.
+
+“Hand me your pen,” answered the Englishman.
+
+Castanier handed him the pen with which he had just committed forgery.
+The stranger wrote _John Melmoth_, then he returned the slip of paper
+and the pen to the cashier. Castanier looked at the handwriting,
+noticing that it sloped from right to left in the Eastern fashion, and
+Melmoth disappeared so noiselessly that when Castanier looked up again
+an exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was no longer
+there, partly because he felt a strange painful sensation such as our
+imagination might take for an effect of poison.
+
+The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat through
+him that an emetic produces. But it seemed impossible to Castanier
+that the Englishman should have guessed his crime. His inward qualms he
+attributed to the palpitation of the heart that, according to received
+ideas, was sure to follow at once on such a “turn” as the stranger had
+given him.
+
+“The devil take it; I am very stupid. Providence is watching over me;
+for if that brute had come round to see my gentleman to-morrow, my goose
+would have been cooked!” said Castanier, and he burned the unsuccessful
+attempts at forgery in the stove.
+
+He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, and
+helped himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and English
+bank-notes from the safe, which he locked. Then he put everything in
+order, lit a candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella,
+and went out sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the
+strong room with Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her husband the
+Baron.
+
+“You are in luck, M. Castanier,” said the banker’s wife as he entered
+the room; “we have a holiday on Monday; you can go into the country, or
+to Soizy.”
+
+“Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that the bill
+of exchange on Watschildine, which was behind time, has just been
+presented? The five hundred thousand francs have been paid; so I shall
+not come back till noon on Tuesday.”
+
+“Good-bye, monsieur; I hope you will have a pleasant time.”
+
+“The same to you, madame,” replied the old dragoon as he went out. He
+glanced as he spoke at a young man well known in fashionable society at
+that time, a M. de Rastignac, who was regarded as Madame de Nucingen’s
+lover.
+
+“Madame,” remarked this latter, “the old boy looks to me as if he meant
+to play you some ill turn.”
+
+“Pshaw! impossible; he is too stupid.”
+
+
+
+“Piquoizeau,” said the cashier, walking into the porter’s room, “what
+made you let anybody come up after four o’clock?”
+
+“I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since four
+o’clock,” said the man, “and nobody has gone into the bank. Nobody has
+come out either except the gentlemen----”
+
+“Are you quite sure?”
+
+“Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four o’clock M.
+Werbrust’s friend came, a young fellow from Messrs. du Tillet & Co., in
+the Rue Joubert.”
+
+“All right,” said Castanier, and he hurried away.
+
+The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back the
+pen returned in greater intensity. “_Mille diables_!” thought he, as he
+threaded his way along the Boulevard de Gand, “haven’t I taken proper
+precautions? Let me think! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a day
+of uncertainty before they begin to look for me; altogether, three days
+and four nights’ respite. I have a couple of passports and two different
+disguises; is not that enough to throw the cleverest detective off the
+scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a million francs in London before
+the slightest suspicion has been aroused. My debts I am leaving behind
+for the benefit of my creditors, who will put a ‘P’ * on the bills, and
+I shall live comfortably in Italy for the rest of my days as the Conte
+Ferraro. [*Protested.] I was alone with him when he died, poor fellow,
+in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall slip into his skin.... _Mille
+diables_! the woman who is to follow after me might give them a clue!
+Think of an old campaigner like me infatuated enough to tie myself to a
+petticoat tail!... Why take her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could
+make up my mind to it; but--I know myself--I should be ass enough to
+go back to her. Still, nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave
+her?”
+
+“You will not take her!” cried a voice that filled Castanier with
+sickening dread. He turned sharply, and saw the Englishman.
+
+“The devil is in it!” cried the cashier aloud.
+
+Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if Castanier’s first
+impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his own thoughts,
+he was so much torn up by opposing feelings that the immediate result
+was a temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk he fell once more
+into that fever of irresolution which besets those who are so carried
+away by passion that they are ready to commit a crime, but have not
+sufficient strength of character to keep it to themselves without
+suffering terribly in the process. So, although Castanier had made up
+his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was already half executed,
+he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him, as for many men of mixed
+character in whom weakness and strength are equally blended, the least
+trifling consideration determines whether they shall continue to lead
+blameless lives or become actively criminal. In the vast masses of
+men enrolled in Napoleon’s armies there are many who, like Castanier,
+possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the battlefield, yet
+lacked the moral courage which makes a man as great in crime as he could
+have been in virtue.
+
+The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on
+his arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of
+Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. The
+London house had already been advised of the draft about to be made upon
+them, he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent (chosen
+at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave Portsmouth
+with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to Italy, and
+the passage-money had been paid in the name of the Conte Ferraro. The
+smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He had arranged
+matters so as to divert the search that would be made for him into
+Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the English
+vessel. Then, by the time that Nucingen might flatter himself that he
+was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as the Conte
+Ferraro, hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined to disfigure his
+face in order to disguise himself the more completely, and by means of
+an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. Yet, in spite of all these
+precautions, which surely seemed as if they must secure him complete
+immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was afraid. The even and
+peaceful life that he had led for so long had modified the morality of
+the camp. His life was stainless as yet; he could not sully it without a
+pang. So for the last time he abandoned himself to all the influences of
+the better self that strenuously resisted.
+
+“Pshaw!” he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
+Montmartre, “I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out to
+Versailles. A post-chaise will be ready for me at my old quartermaster’s
+place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men were standing ready
+to shoot him down. The chances are all in my favor, so far as I see; so
+I shall take my little Naqui with me, and I will go.”
+
+“You will not go!” exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of
+his voice drove all the cashier’s blood back to his heart.
+
+Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was
+whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe
+some hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind
+to cut off the man’s retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the
+Boulevard Montmartre.
+
+“Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!” said
+he to himself. “If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should think
+that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and
+the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick
+of time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this is folly...”
+
+Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening his pace
+as he neared the Rue Richer. There on the second floor of a block of
+buildings which looked out upon some gardens lived the unconscious cause
+of Castanier’s crime--a young woman known in the quarter as Mme. de la
+Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier’s past life
+must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a complete
+presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.
+
+Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not even
+Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls, who
+are driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear of
+starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, many
+regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the laws
+of their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in
+Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had
+met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough and homely to make his
+way in society, and he was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and
+of the kind of conquests made there by gold. For some time past he had
+desired to bring a certain regularity into an irregular life. He was
+struck by the beauty of the poor child who had drifted by chance into
+his arms, and his determination to rescue her from the life of the
+streets was half benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts of
+the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions mingle elements of evil
+with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture
+of motives underlying a man’s intentions should be leniently judged.
+Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own
+interests were concerned. So he concluded to be a philanthropist on
+either count, and at first made her his mistress.
+
+“Hey! hey!” he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion. “I am an
+old wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man,
+before you set up housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl’s character for a
+bit, and see if she is a steady sort.”
+
+This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
+approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
+recognize. During the first year she took the _nom de guerre_ of
+Aquilina, one of the characters in _Venice Preserved_ which she had
+chanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face
+and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain of
+which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was as
+well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he
+manifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So she
+took the name of Mme. de la Garde, in order to approach, as closely as
+Parisian usages permit, the conditions of a real marriage. As a matter
+of fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to be
+looked upon as respectable middle-class women, who lead humdrum lives of
+faithfulness to their husbands; women who would make excellent mothers,
+keepers of household accounts, and menders of household linen. This
+longing springs from a sentiment so laudable, that society should take
+it into consideration. But society, incorrigible as ever, will assuredly
+persist in regarding the married woman as a corvette duly authorized by
+her flag and papers to go on her own course, while the woman who is a
+wife in all but name is a pirate and an outlaw for lack of a document.
+A day came when Mme. de la Garde would fain have signed herself “Mme.
+Castanier.” The cashier was put out by this.
+
+“So you do not love me well enough to marry me?” she said.
+
+Castanier did not answer; he was absorbed by his thoughts. The poor girl
+resigned herself to her fate. The ex-dragoon was in despair. Naqui’s
+heart softened towards him at the sight of his trouble; she tried to
+soothe him, but what could she do when she did not know what ailed him?
+When Naqui made up her mind to know the secret, although she never asked
+him a question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the existence of a
+Mme. Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times accursed, was living
+in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there; he wrote to her
+twice a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that no one
+suspected that he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it
+is familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a like
+predicament, it is perhaps worth while to give the story.
+
+Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word which
+in the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is a
+sort of serf, a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple
+creature, and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the
+wiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands.
+It was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose when the
+Imperial armies were not on active service abroad, that Castanier was so
+unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he danced at
+a _ridotto_, the provincial name for the entertainments often given
+by the military to the townsfolk, or vice versa, in garrison towns. A
+scheme for inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony was immediately
+set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers secure accomplices in
+a human heart by touching all its motive springs, while they convert all
+their friends into fellow-conspirators. Like all people possessed by
+one idea, these ladies press everything into the service of their great
+project, slowly elaborating their toils, much as the ant-lion excavates
+its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at the bottom for its victim.
+Suppose that no one strays, after all, into that carefully constructed
+labyrinth? Suppose that the ant-lion dies of hunger and thirst in her
+pit? Such things may be, but if any heedless creature once enters in, it
+never comes out. All the wires which could be pulled to induce action
+on the captain’s part were tried; appeals were made to the secret
+interested motives that always come into play in such cases; they worked
+on Castanier’s hopes and on the weaknesses and vanity of human nature.
+Unluckily, he had praised the daughter to her mother when he brought her
+back after a waltz, a little chat followed, and then an invitation in
+the most natural way in the world. Once introduced into the house,
+the dragoon was dazzled by the hospitality of a family who appeared
+to conceal their real wealth beneath a show of careful economy. He was
+skilfully flattered on all sides, and every one extolled for his benefit
+the various treasures there displayed. A neatly timed dinner, served on
+plate lent by an uncle, the attention shown to him by the only daughter
+of the house, the gossip of the town, a well-to-do sub-lieutenant who
+seemed likely to cut the ground from under his feet--all the innumerable
+snares, in short, of the provincial ant-lion were set for him, and to
+such good purpose, that Castanier said five years later, “To this day I
+do not know how it came about!”
+
+The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who after
+two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the
+most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair
+complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color
+in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with
+blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew
+crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove
+Castanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself wings. At length the
+dragoon, no longer recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left her to
+live on a little property at Strasbourg, until the time when it should
+please God to remove her to adorn Paradise. She was one of those
+virtuous women who, for want of other occupation, would weary the life
+out of an angel with complainings, who pray till (if their prayers are
+heard in heaven) they must exhaust the patience of the Almighty, and say
+everything that is bad of their husbands in dovelike murmurs over a game
+of boston with their neighbors. When Aquilina learned all these troubles
+she clung still more affectionately to Castanier, and made him so happy,
+varying with woman’s ingenuity the pleasures with which she filled his
+life, that all unwittingly she was the cause of the cashier’s downfall.
+
+Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths of
+love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold
+nor for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the
+present and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive
+ornaments and dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of
+her class, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There was
+absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantage
+but to look the fairer, and moreover, no woman could live without
+luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature (and military
+men are mostly of this stamp) meets with such a woman, he feels a sort
+of exasperation at finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feels
+that he could stop a mail coach to obtain money for her if he has not
+sufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime if so he may be great
+and noble in the eyes of some woman or of his special public; such
+is the nature of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler who would be
+dishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum he borrowed from
+a waiter in a gaming-house; but will shrink from no crime, will leave
+his wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder, if so he
+may come to the gaming-table with a full purse, and his honor remain
+untarnished among the frequenters of that fatal abode. So it was with
+Castanier.
+
+He had begun by installing Aquiline is a modest fourth-floor dwelling,
+the furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl’s
+beauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and
+unlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her; and longed
+to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina’s toilette was so comically out of
+keeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearly
+incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost all Castanier’s
+savings, for he furnished his domestic paradise with all the prodigality
+that is lavished on a kept mistress. A pretty woman must have everything
+pretty about her; the unity of charm in the woman and her surroundings
+singles her out from among her sex. This sentiment of homogeneity
+indeed, though it has frequently escaped the attention of observers,
+is instinctive in human nature; and the same prompting leads elderly
+spinsters to surround themselves with dreary relics of the past. But
+the lovely Piedmontese must have the newest and latest fashions, and
+all that was daintiest and prettiest in stuffs for hangings, in silks
+or jewelry, in fine china and other brittle and fragile wares. She
+asked for nothing; but when she was called upon to make a choice, when
+Castanier asked her, “Which do you like?” she would answer, “Why, this
+is the nicest!” Love never counts the cost, and Castanier therefore
+always took the “nicest.”
+
+When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it but
+everything in the household must be in conformity, from the linen,
+plate, and crystal through a thousand and one items of expenditure down
+to the pots and pans in the kitchen. Castanier had meant to “do things
+simply,” as the saying goes, but he gradually found himself more and
+more in debt. One expense entailed another. The clock called for
+candle sconces. Fires must be lighted in the ornamental grates, but the
+curtains and hangings were too fresh and delicate to be soiled by smuts,
+so they must be replaced by patent and elaborate fireplaces, warranted
+to give out no smoke, recent inventions of the people who are so clever
+at drawing up a prospectus. Then Aquilina found it so nice to run about
+barefooted on the carpet in her room, that Castanier must have soft
+carpets laid everywhere for the pleasure of playing with Naqui. A
+bathroom, too, was built for her, everything to the end that she might
+be more comfortable.
+
+Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have a mysterious knack
+of enlarging a hole in a man’s purse. They cannot give the price of
+anything upon inquiry; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide
+delay, orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate
+of cost. The same people never send in the bills at once, but ply the
+purchaser with furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty,
+so charming; and every one is satisfied.
+
+A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are metamorphosed, and
+reappear in the shape of alarming totals on invoices that fill the soul
+with their horrid clamor; they are in urgent want of the money; they
+are, as you may say on the brink of bankruptcy, their tears flow, it
+is heartrending to hear them! And then----the gulf yawns, and gives up
+serried columns of figures marching four deep, when as a matter of fact
+they should have issued innocently three by three.
+
+Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had spent, he had arranged
+for Aquilina to have a carriage from a livery stable when she went out,
+instead of a cab. Castanier was a gourmand; he engaged an excellent
+cook; and Aquilina, to please him, had herself made the purchases of
+early fruit and vegetables, rare delicacies, and exquisite wines. But,
+as Aquilina had nothing of her own, these gifts of hers, so precious by
+reason of the thought and tact and graciousness that prompted them, were
+no less a drain upon Castanier’s purse; he did not like his Naqui to
+be without money, and Naqui could not keep money in her pocket. So the
+table was a heavy item of expenditure for a man with Castanier’s income.
+The ex-dragoon was compelled to resort to various shifts for obtaining
+money, for he could not bring himself to renounce this delightful life.
+He loved the woman too well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He
+was one of those men who, through self-love or through weakness of
+character, can refuse nothing to a woman; false shame overpowers them,
+and they rather face ruin than make the admissions: “I cannot----” “My
+means will not permit----” “I cannot afford----”
+
+When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge from the abyss
+of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilina and live
+upon bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or to change
+his habits of life, that daily he put off his plans of reform until the
+morrow. The debts were pressing, and he began by borrowing money. His
+position and previous character inspired confidence, and of this he took
+advantage to devise a system of borrowing money as he required it. Then,
+as the total amount of debt rapidly increased, he had recourse to those
+commercial inventions known as accommodation bills. This form of bill
+does not represent goods or other value received, and the first endorser
+pays the amount named for the obliging person who accepts it. This
+species of fraud is tolerated because it is impossible to detect it,
+and, moreover, it is an imaginary fraud which only becomes real if
+payment is ultimately refused.
+
+When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer, whether
+because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased, or
+because Castanier was unable to pay the large amount of interest on
+the aforesaid sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On
+making this discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy rather
+than an ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. He
+determined, after the fashion of the celebrated cashier of the Royal
+Treasury, to abuse the trust deservedly won, and to increase the number
+of his creditors by making a final loan of the sum sufficient to keep
+him in comfort in a foreign country for the rest of his days. All this,
+as has been seen, he had prepared to do.
+
+Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this life; she enjoyed her
+existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where the
+money came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered rolls
+untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the culture and
+growth of wheat; but as the labor and miscalculations of agriculture
+lie on the other side of the baker’s oven, so beneath the unappreciated
+luxury of many a Parisian household lie intolerable anxieties and
+exorbitant toil.
+
+While Castanier was enduring the torture of the strain, and his thoughts
+were full of the deed that should change his whole life, Aquilina was
+lying luxuriously back in a great armchair by the fireside, beguiling
+the time by chatting with her waiting-maid. As frequently happens in
+such cases the maid had become the mistress’ confidant, Jenny having
+first assured herself that her mistress’ ascendency over Castanier was
+complete.
+
+“What are we to do this evening? Leon seems determined to come,” Mme.
+de la Garde was saying, as she read a passionate epistle indited upon a
+faint gray notepaper.
+
+“Here is the master!” said Jenny.
+
+Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted, crumpled up the
+letter, took it with the tongs, and held it in the flames.
+
+“So that is what you do with your love-letters, is it?” asked Castanier.
+
+“Oh goodness, yes,” said Aquilina; “is it not the best way of keeping
+them safe? Besides, fire should go to fire, as water makes for the
+river.”
+
+“You are talking as if it were a real love-letter, Naqui----”
+
+“Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them?” she said, holding up
+her forehead for a kiss. There was a carelessness in her manner that
+would have told any man less blind than Castanier that it was only a
+piece of conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier, but
+use and wont had brought Castanier to the point where clear-sightedness
+is no longer possible for love.
+
+“I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening,” he said; “let us have
+dinner early, and then we need not dine in a hurry.”
+
+“Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not know what is the
+matter with me this evening; I would rather stay here by the fire.”
+
+“Come, all the same though, Naqui; I shall not be here to bore you much
+longer. Yes, Quiqui, I am going to start to-night, and it will be some
+time before I come back again. I am leaving everything in your charge.
+Will you keep your heart for me too?”
+
+“Neither my heart nor anything else,” she said; “but when you come back
+again, Naqui will still be Naqui for you.”
+
+“Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Eh! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me such sweet little
+notes?” she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap of paper with a
+mocking smile.
+
+“Is there any truth in it?” asked Castanier. “Have you really a lover?”
+
+“Really!” cried Aquilina; “and have you never given it a serious
+thought, dear? To begin with, you are fifty years old. Then you have
+just the sort of face to put on a fruit stall; if the woman tried to see
+you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blow like a
+seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like a diamond
+on a woman’s forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the
+dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If you
+have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to add imbecility
+to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I am will be content
+with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth and good looks and
+pleasure by way of a variety----”
+
+“Aquilina! you are laughing, of course?”
+
+“Oh, very well; and are you not laughing too? Do you take me for a fool,
+telling me that you are going away? ‘I am going to start to-night!’” she
+said, mimicking his tones. “Stuff and nonsense! Would you talk like that
+if you were really going from your Naqui? You would cry, like the booby
+that you are!”
+
+“After all, if I go, will you follow?” he asked.
+
+“Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke or not.”
+
+“Yes, seriously, I am going.”
+
+“Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey to you, my boy!
+I will wait till you come back. I would sooner take leave of life than
+take leave of my dear, cozy Paris----”
+
+“Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, and lead a pleasant life
+there--a delicious, luxurious life, with this stout old fogy of yours,
+who puffs and blows like a seal?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Ungrateful girl!”
+
+“Ungrateful?” she cried, rising to her feet. “I might leave this house
+this moment and take nothing out of it but myself. I shall have given
+you all the treasures a young girl can give, and something that not
+every drop in your veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by any
+means whatever, by selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I could
+recover my past self, body and soul (for I have, perhaps, redeemed
+my soul), and be pure as a lily for my lover, I would not hesitate a
+moment! What sort of devotion has rewarded mine? You have housed and fed
+me, just as you give a dog food and a kennel because he is a protection
+to the house, and he may take kicks when we are out of humor, and lick
+our hands as soon as we are pleased to call him. And which of us two
+will have been the more generous?”
+
+“Oh! dear child, do you not see that I am joking?” returned Castanier.
+“I am going on a short journey; I shall not be away for very long. But
+come with me to the Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, after I
+have had time to say good-bye to you.”
+
+“Poor pet! so you are really going, are you?” she said. She put her arms
+round his neck, and drew down his head against her bodice.
+
+“You are smothering me!” cried Castanier, with his face buried in
+Aquilina’s breast. That damsel turned to say in Jenny’s ear, “Go to
+Leon, and tell him not to come till one o’clock. If you do not find
+him, and he comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your
+room.--Well,” she went on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweak
+to the tip of his nose, “never mind, handsomest of seals that you are. I
+will go to the theatre with you this evening? But all in good time; let
+us have dinner! There is a nice little dinner for you--just what you
+like.”
+
+“It is very hard to part from such a woman as you!” exclaimed Castanier.
+
+“Very well then, why do you go?” asked she.
+
+“Ah! why? why? If I were to begin to begin to explain the reasons why,
+I must tell you things that would prove to you that I love you almost to
+madness. Ah! if you have sacrificed your honor for me, I have sold mine
+for you; we are quits. Is that love?”
+
+“What is all this about?” said she. “Come, now, promise me that if I had
+a lover you would still love me as a father; that would be love! Come,
+now, promise it at once, and give us your fist upon it.”
+
+“I should kill you,” and Castanier smiled as he spoke.
+
+They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the Gymnase. When
+the first part of the performance was over, it occurred to Castanier to
+show himself to some of his acquaintances in the house, so as to turn
+away any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de la Garde in the
+corner box where she was seated, according to her modest wont, and went
+to walk up and down in the lobby. He had not gone many paces before he
+saw the Englishman, and with a sudden return of the sickening sensation
+of heat that once before had vibrated through him, and of the terror
+that he had felt already, he stood face to face with Melmoth.
+
+“Forger!”
+
+At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who were moving about
+them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity in their
+eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he raised his
+hand to strike him--and felt his arm paralyzed by some invisible power
+that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot. He allowed the
+stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked together to the
+green-room like two friends.
+
+“Who is strong enough to resist me?” said the Englishman, addressing
+him. “Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, that
+it is in my power to do everything? I read men’s thoughts, I see the
+future, and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also.
+Time and space and distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at
+my beck and call. I have the power of continual enjoyment and of giving
+joy. I can see through walls, discover hidden treasures, and fill my
+hands with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect makes no
+mistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap up their
+gold and precious stones, and surround myself with fair women and ever
+new faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I could gamble on the
+Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible; but a man
+who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth need not
+trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand that grasps
+you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of iron! try to
+soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You would hear
+my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the Seine; you might
+hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me there? My voice could
+be heard through the sound of thunder, my eyes shine as brightly as the
+sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer!”
+
+Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest nor
+contradiction within himself. He walked side by side with the
+Englishman, and had no power to leave him.
+
+“You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have found at last the
+mate whom I have sought. Have you a mind to learn your destiny? Aha!
+you came here to see a play, and you shall see a play--nay, two. Come.
+Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am I not
+your last hope of escape?”
+
+Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box; and in
+accordance with the order he had just received, he hastened to introduce
+Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in the least
+surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front, and
+Castanier was once more beside his mistress; the man’s slightest wish
+must be obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that time,
+small theatres gave only three pieces. One of the actors had made the
+Gymnase the fashion, and that evening Perlet (the actor in question)
+was to play in a vaudeville called _Le Comedien d’Etampes_, in which he
+filled four different parts.
+
+When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over the
+crowded house. Castanier’s cry of terror died away, for the walls of his
+throat seemed glued together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, and the
+cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman’s desire.
+
+He saw the strong-room at the bank; he saw the Baron de Nucingen in
+conference with a police-officer from the Prefecture, who was informing
+him of Castanier’s conduct, explaining that the cashier had absconded
+with money taken from the safe, giving the history of the forged
+signature. The information was put in writing; the document signed and
+duly despatched to the Public Prosecutor.
+
+“Are we in time, do you think?” asked Nucingen.
+
+“Yes,” said the agent of police; “he is at the Gymnase, and has no
+suspicion of anything.”
+
+Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would leave the
+theatre, but Melmoth’s hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged to
+sit and watch; the hideous power of the man produced an effect like that
+of nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself was the
+nightmare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like a poisoned
+atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore the Englishman’s
+mercy, he met those blazing eyes that discharged electric currents,
+which pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of steel.
+
+“What have I done to you?” he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and
+he breathed hard like a stag at the water’s edge. “What do you want of
+me?”
+
+“Look!” cried Melmoth.
+
+Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed. The play
+seemed to be over, and Castanier beheld himself stepping from the
+carriage with Aquilina; but as he entered the courtyard of the house on
+the Rue Richer, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw his
+own house. Jenny was chatting by the fire in her mistress’ room with a
+subaltern officer of a line regiment then stationed at Paris.
+
+“He is going, is he?” said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to
+a family in easy circumstances; “I can be happy at my ease! I love
+Aquilina too well to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself, am
+going to marry Mme. de la Garde!” cried the sergeant.
+
+“Old toad!” Castanier murmured piteously.
+
+“Here come the master and mistress; hide yourself! Stay, get in here
+Monsieur Leon,” said Jenny. “The master won’t stay here for very long.”
+
+Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among Aquilina’s gowns
+in her dressing-room. Almost immediately he himself appeared upon the
+scene, and took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in “asides”
+ to Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his
+ears. She wept with one side of her face, and laughed with the other.
+The audience called for an encore.
+
+“Accursed creature!” cried Castanier from his box.
+
+Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes.
+
+“Goodness!” she cried, “how funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman!... Why
+don’t you laugh? Every one else in the house is laughing. Laugh, dear!”
+ she said to Castanier.
+
+Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The
+Englishman’s laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was as
+if a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.
+
+“Laughing! are they laughing!” stammered Castanier.
+
+He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
+ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house
+with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying
+from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with
+the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He
+recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l’Orangerie and the
+Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old quartermaster. It was two
+o’clock in the morning, the most perfect stillness prevailed, no one was
+there to watch his movements. The post-horses were put into the carriage
+(it came from a house in the Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman
+lived, and had been ordered in the foreigner’s name to avoid raising
+suspicion). Castanier saw that he had his bills and his passports,
+stepped into the carriage, and set out. But at the barrier he saw two
+gendarmes lying in wait for the carriage. A cry of horror burst from him
+but Melmoth gave him a glance, and again the sound died in his throat.
+
+“Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!” said the Englishman.
+
+In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at the
+Conciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled _The Cashier_,
+he saw himself, in three months’ time, condemned to twenty years of
+penal servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the
+Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a
+red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty convicts
+in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn to have the
+irons riveted on his limbs.
+
+“Dear me! I cannot laugh any more!...” said Aquilina. “You are very
+solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone.”
+
+“A word with you, Castanier,” said Melmoth when the piece was at an end,
+and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde’s cloak.
+
+The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
+
+“Very well, what is it?”
+
+“No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going next
+to Versailles, there to be arrested.”
+
+“How so?”
+
+“Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp,” returned
+the Englishman.
+
+Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him
+out from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell.
+
+“Suppose that the Devil were to make a bid for your soul, would you not
+give it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single word,
+and those five hundred thousand francs shall be back in the Baron de
+Nucingen’s safe; then you can tear up the letter of credit, and all
+traces of your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would have gold
+in torrents. You hardly believe in anything perhaps? Well, if all this
+comes to pass, you will believe at least in the Devil.”
+
+“If it were only possible!” said Castanier joyfully.
+
+“The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible,”
+ answered the Englishman.
+
+Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in the
+Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling,
+the streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness
+overhead; but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was filled
+with sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The trees were
+covered with leaves; a double stream of joyous holiday makers strolled
+beneath them. Sellers of liquorice water shouted their cool drinks.
+Splendid carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry of terror broke
+from the cashier, and at that cry rain and darkness once more settled
+down upon the Boulevard.
+
+Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. “Do be quick, dear!”
+ she cried; “either come in or stay out. Really you are as dull as
+ditch-water this evening----”
+
+“What must I do?” Castanier asked of Melmoth.
+
+“Would you like to take my place?” inquired the Englishman.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few moments.”
+
+“By the by, Castanier, you are rather off your balance,” Aquilina
+remarked. “There is some mischief brewing: you were quite melancholy and
+thoughtful all through the play. Do you want anything that I can give
+you, dear? Tell me.”
+
+“I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me.”
+
+“You need not wait till then,” she said, throwing her arms round his
+neck. “There!” she said, as she embraced him, passionately to all
+appearance, and plied him with the coaxing caresses that are part of the
+business of such a life as hers, like stage action for an actress.
+
+“Where is the music?” asked Castanier.
+
+“What next? Only think of your hearing music now!”
+
+“Heavenly music!” he went on. “The sounds seem to come from above.”
+
+“What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italiens because
+you could not abide music, and are you turning music-mad at this time
+of day? Mad--that you are! The music is inside your own noddle, old
+addle-pate!” she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rocked
+it to and fro on her shoulder. “Tell me now, old man; isn’t it the
+creaking of the wheels that sings in your ears?”
+
+“Just listen, Naqui! If the angels make music for God Almighty, it must
+be such music as this that I am drinking in at every pore, rather
+than hearing. I do no know how to tell you about it; it is as sweet as
+honey-water!”
+
+“Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all the
+pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad, upon my word!” she
+said to herself, as she saw Castanier’s attitude; he looked like an
+opium-eater in a blissful trance.
+
+They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the thought of all that
+he had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or not; he
+was like a drunken man, and utterly unable to think connectedly. He
+came to himself in Aquilina’s room, whither he had been supported by
+the united efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he had
+fainted as he stepped from the carriage.
+
+“_He_ will be here directly! Oh, my friends, my friends,” he cried, and
+he flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside the
+fire.
+
+Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. She
+announced that “a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with
+the master,” when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence followed.
+He looked at the porter--the porter went; he looked at Jenny--and Jenny
+went likewise.
+
+“Madame,” said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, “with your permission, we
+will conclude a piece of urgent business.”
+
+He took Castanier’s hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went into
+the drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth’s eyes
+lit up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had left
+Aquilina like one spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take any
+thought for her lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in
+Jenny’s room, whereas their early return had taken the waiting-woman by
+surprise, and she had hidden the officer in the dressing-room. It had
+all happened exactly as in the drama that Melmoth had displayed for his
+victim. Presently the house-door was slammed violently, and Castanier
+reappeared.
+
+“What ails you?” cried the horror-struck Aquilina.
+
+There was a change in the cashier’s appearance. A strange pallor
+overspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarly
+sinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare of
+his eyes was intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch. The
+man who had looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenly grown
+tyrannical and proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier had grown
+thinner; there was a terrible majesty in his brow; it was as if a dragon
+breathed forth a malignant influence that weighed upon the others like a
+close, heavy atmosphere. For a moment Aquilina knew not what to do.
+
+“What has passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those
+few minutes?” she asked at length.
+
+“I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer the same. He has
+taken my _self_, and given me his soul in exchange.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“You would not understand it at all.... Ah! he was right,” Castanier
+went on, “the fiend was right! I see everything and know all
+things.--You have been deceiving me!”
+
+Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a candle and
+went into the dressing-room. The unhappy girl followed him with dazed
+bewilderment, and great was her astonishment when Castanier drew the
+dresses that hung there aside and disclosed the sergeant.
+
+“Come out, my boy,” said the cashier; and, taking Leon by a button of
+his overcoat, he drew the officer into his room.
+
+The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her
+easy-chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the fire, and left
+Aquilina’s lover in a standing position.
+
+“You have been in the army,” said Leon; “I am ready to give you
+satisfaction.”
+
+“You are a fool,” said Castanier drily. “I have no occasion to fight.
+I could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell you
+what it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line round
+your neck--the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end in the
+Place de Greve. You are the headsman’s property! there is no escape for
+you. You belong to a vendita, of the Carbonari. You are plotting against
+the Government.”
+
+“You did not tell me that,” cried the Piedmontese, turning to Leon.
+
+“So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put down
+your Society?” the cashier continued. “The Procureur-General has a list
+of your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up the
+indictment at this moment.”
+
+“Then was it you who betrayed him?” cried Aquilina, and with a hoarse
+sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet;
+she seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces.
+
+“You know me too well to believe it,” Castanier retorted. Aquilina was
+benumbed by his coolness.
+
+“Then how do you know it?” she murmured.
+
+“I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I know
+it--now I see and know all things, and can do all things.”
+
+The sergeant was overcome with amazement.
+
+“Very well then, save him, save him, dear!” cried the girl, flinging
+herself at Castanier’s feet. “If nothing is impossible to you, save him!
+I will love you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and not your
+mistress. I will obey your wildest whims; you shall do as you will
+with me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love; you shall have a
+daughter’s devotion as well as... Rodolphe! why will you not understand!
+After all, however violent my passions may be, I shall be yours for
+ever! What should I say to persuade you? I will invent pleasures... I...
+Great heavens! one moment! whatever you shall ask of me--to fling myself
+from the window for instance--you will need to say but one word, ‘Leon!’
+and I will plunge down into hell. I would bear any torture, any pain of
+body or soul, anything you might inflict upon me!”
+
+Castanier heard her with indifference. For an answer, he indicated Leon
+to her with a fiendish laugh.
+
+“The guillotine is waiting for him,” he repeated.
+
+“No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!” she cried.
+“Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger upon him! Why will you not
+save him?” she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair unbound.
+“Can you save him?”
+
+“I can do everything.”
+
+“Why do you not save him?”
+
+“Why?” shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.--“Eh! it
+is my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!”
+
+“Die?” said Aquilina; “must he die, my lover? Is it possible?”
+
+She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the
+chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who now began to laugh.
+
+“You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now----”
+
+Aquilina’s arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string.
+
+“Out with you, my good friend,” said the cashier, turning to the
+sergeant, “and go about your business.”
+
+He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier’s superior power, and
+could not choose but to obey.
+
+“This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if I
+chose, and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises,
+but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy.”
+
+“I shall follow him!” said Aquilina.
+
+“Then follow him,” returned Castanier.--“Here, Jenny----”
+
+Jenny appeared.
+
+“Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.--Here Naqui,” said Castanier,
+drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket; “you shall not go away
+like a pauper from a man who loves you still.”
+
+He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes,
+flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a
+frenzy of despair.
+
+“We will leave this house on foot,” she cried, “without a farthing of
+your money.--Jenny, stay where you are.”
+
+“Good-evening!” answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes again.
+“I have come back from my journey.--Jenny,” he added, looking at the
+bewildered waiting-maid, “you seem to me to be a good sort of girl. You
+have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have a master.”
+
+Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
+house of one of her friends. But all Leon’s movements were suspiciously
+watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends were
+arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that day.
+
+
+
+Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
+transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the
+young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
+tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
+lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina’s sake. His inmost nature
+had suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
+developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
+things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above the
+world.
+
+Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
+Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidelities;
+and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in
+the sunlight.
+
+Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress’ position and fortune,
+and did the cashier’s will in all things; but Castanier, who could read
+the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying
+this purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her, however,
+like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and
+flings away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time, when she
+was fully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house,
+Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her mind as she
+drank her coffee.
+
+“Do you know what you are thinking, child?” he said, smiling. “I will
+tell you: ‘So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so much,
+and the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! All on easy
+terms that Madame refused, I do no know why. My word! if I might
+drive about in a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box at the
+theatre, and put something by! with me he should lead a life of pleasure
+fit to kill him if he were not as strong as a Turk! I never saw such
+a man!’--Was not that just what you were thinking,” he went on, and
+something in his voice made Jenny turn pale. “Well, yes, child; you
+could not stand it, and I am sending you away for your own good; you
+would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part good friends,” and he
+coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of money.
+
+The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he would make of
+the terrible power brought at the price of his eternal happiness, was
+the full and complete indulgence of all his tastes.
+
+He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his accounts with
+M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then
+determined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman Empire.
+He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old went to
+that last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his
+revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, not on
+the narrow walls of the banqueting-chamber, but over the vast spaces
+of heaven that the rainbow spans. His feast was not, indeed, an orgy
+confined within the limits of a banquet, for he squandered all the
+powers of soul and body in exhausting all the pleasures of earth. The
+table was in some sort earth itself, the earth that trembled beneath
+his feet. His was the last festival of the reckless spendthrift who has
+thrown all prudence to the winds. The devil had given him the key of the
+storehouse of human pleasures; he had filled and refilled his hands, and
+he was fast nearing the bottom. In a moment he had felt all that that
+enormous power could accomplish; in a moment he had exercised it, proved
+it, wearied of it. What had hitherto been the sum of human desires
+became as nothing. So often it happens that with possession the vast
+poetry of desire must end, and the thing possessed is seldom the thing
+that we dreamed of.
+
+Beneath Melmoth’s omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so
+many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to his
+successor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.
+
+To come to a clear understanding of Castanier’s strange position, it
+must be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and
+feeling had been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other;
+and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those who have never
+broken the prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His relation
+to the world without had been entirely changed with the expansion of his
+faculties.
+
+Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the
+fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African
+desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that
+could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance
+the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it were all
+flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a despot;
+a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its fruits. The
+transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain, and diversify
+human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had so completely glutted
+his appetites that pleasure must overpass the limits of pleasure to
+tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and suddenly grown fastidious
+beyond all measure, so that ordinary pleasures became distasteful.
+Conscious that at will he was the master of all the women that he could
+desire, knowing that his power was irresistible, he did not care to
+exercise it; they were pliant to his unexpressed wishes, to his most
+extravagant caprices, until he felt a horrible thirst for love, and
+would have love beyond their power to give.
+
+The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing
+and consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was a
+horrible position.
+
+The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul and
+his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being; but
+in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of the
+sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity of
+longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on outspread
+wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to other
+spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopeless
+knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and thirsted
+after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for which he could
+not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth’s, burned with desire; he
+panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.
+
+The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its
+working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the profound
+scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx who knows
+everything and says nothing, and sees all things with an unmoved
+countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his knowledge
+to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world, with one
+effort he could make the circle of the globe, and riches and power were
+meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy of omnipotence, a
+melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise of infinite power
+in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier had not, like his
+Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and malice; he felt that he
+was a devil, but a devil whose time was not yet come, while Satan is a
+devil through all eternity, and being damned beyond redemption, delights
+to stir up the world, like a dung heap, with his triple fork and to
+thwart therein the designs of God. But Castanier, for his misfortune,
+had one hope left.
+
+If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird
+springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,
+he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond it.
+That vision of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see humanity and
+its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools who long for the
+power of the Devil gauge its desirability from a human standpoint; they
+do not see that with the Devil’s power they will likewise assume his
+thoughts, and that they will be doomed to remain as men among creatures
+who will no longer understand them. The Nero unknown to history who
+dreams of setting Paris on fire for his private entertainment, like
+an exhibition of a burning house on the boards of a theatre, does not
+suspect that if he had the power, Paris would become for him as little
+interesting as an ant-heap by the roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The
+circle of the sciences was for Castanier something like a logogriph
+for a man who does not know the key to it. Kings and Governments were
+despicable in his eyes. His great debauch had been in some sort a
+deplorable farewell to his life as a man. The earth had grown too
+narrow for him, for the infernal gifts laid bare for him the secrets of
+creation--he saw the cause and foresaw its end. He was shut out from
+all that men call “heaven” in all languages under the sun; he could no
+longer think of heaven.
+
+Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor’s face and the
+drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the
+baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth’s eyes; he, too, knew the thirst
+that burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual struggle
+between two natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an angel,
+and he knew himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet and
+gentle creature that a wizard’s malice has imprisoned in a mis-shapen
+form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another’s will must set it free
+from its detested envelope.
+
+As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of really
+great nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a woman’s heart, so
+Castanier awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul,
+an idea which was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very fact that
+he had bartered away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in thought
+upon the future of those who pray and believe. On the morrow of his
+debauch, when he entered into the sober possession of his power, this
+idea made him feel himself a prisoner; he knew the burden of the woe
+that poets, and prophets, and great oracles of faith have set forth for
+us in such mighty words; he felt the point of the Flaming Sword plunged
+into his side, and hurried in search of Melmoth. What had become of his
+predecessor?
+
+The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue Ferou, near
+Saint-Sulpice--a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode. The Rue Ferou
+itself is one of the most dismal streets in Paris; it has a north aspect
+like all the streets that lie at right angles to the left bank of the
+Seine, and the houses are in keeping with the site. As Castanier stood
+on the threshold he found that the door itself, like the vaulted roof,
+was hung with black; rows of lighted tapers shone brilliantly as though
+some king were lying in state; and a priest stood on either side of a
+catafalque that had been raised there.
+
+“There is no need to ask why you have come, sir,” the old hall porter
+said to Castanier; “you are so like our poor dear master that is gone.
+But if you are his brother, you have come too late to bid him good-bye.
+The good gentleman died the night before last.”
+
+“How did he die?” Castanier asked of one of the priests.
+
+“Set your mind at rest,” said the old priest; he partly raised as he
+spoke the black pall that covered the catafalque.
+
+Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith has made
+sublime; the soul seemed to shine forth from every line of it, bringing
+light and warmth for other men, kindled by the unfailing charity within.
+This was Sir John Melmoth’s confessor.
+
+“Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that must rejoice
+the angels. Do you know what joy there is in heaven over a sinner
+that repents? His tears of penitence, excited by grace, flowed without
+ceasing; death alone checked them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in him. His
+burning words, full of lively faith, were worthy of the Prophet-King.
+If, in the course of my life, I have never heard a more dreadful
+confession than from the lips of this Irish gentleman, I have likewise
+never heard such fervent and passionate prayers. However great the
+measures of his sins may have been, his repentance has filled the abyss
+to overflowing. The hand of God was visibly stretched out above him, for
+he was completely changed, there was such heavenly beauty in his face.
+The hard eyes were softened by tears; the resonant voice that struck
+terror into those who heard it took the tender and compassionate tones
+of those who themselves have passed through deep humiliation. He so
+edified those who heard his words, that some who had felt drawn to see
+the spectacle of a Christian’s death fell on their knees as he spoke of
+heavenly things, and of the infinite glory of God, and gave thanks and
+praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly wealth to his family, no
+family can possess a greater blessing than this that he surely gained
+for them, a soul among the blessed, who will watch over you all and
+direct you in the path to heaven.”
+
+These words made such a vivid impression upon Castanier that he
+instantly hurried from the house to the Church of Saint-Sulpice,
+obeying what might be called a decree of fate. Melmoth’s repentance had
+stupefied him.
+
+
+At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a preacher, famed for
+his eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which
+he demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a
+generation proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by another
+voice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been put off to
+a later hour on account of Melmoth’s funeral, so Castanier arrived just
+as the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a future existence
+of happiness with all the charm of eloquence and force of expression
+which have made him famous. The seeds of divine doctrine fell into
+a soil prepared for them in the old dragoon, into whom the Devil had
+glided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well attested by experience,
+is it not the spiritual phenomenon commonly called “the faith of the
+peasant”? The strength of belief varies inversely with the amount of
+use that a man has made of his reasoning faculties. Simple people and
+soldiers belong to the unreasoning class. Those who have marched through
+life beneath the banner of instinct are far more ready to receive the
+light than minds and hearts overwearied with the world’s sophistries.
+
+Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a lad
+of sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly forty
+years old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and day
+after day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first, and
+of himself afterwards. While he served his military apprenticeship,
+therefore, he had but little leisure in which to reflect on the destiny
+of man, and when he became an officer he had his men to think of. He had
+been swept from battlefield to battlefield, but he had never thought of
+what comes after death. A soldier’s life does not demand much thinking.
+Those who cannot understand the lofty political ends involved and the
+interests of nation and nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as
+well as plans of campaign, and combine the science of the tactician with
+that of the administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance;
+the most boorish peasant in the most backward district in France is
+scarcely in a worse case. Such men as these bear the brunt of war, yield
+passive obedience to the brain that directs them, and strike down
+the men opposed to them as the woodcutter fells timber in the forest.
+Violent physical exertion is succeeded by times of inertia, when they
+repair the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep,
+that they may the better deal hard blows; the powers of the mind are
+not greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the
+character is as simple as heretofore.
+
+When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to
+ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank
+seem to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity,
+for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger generation,
+those who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are as simple as
+children, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst, and the captain of
+a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a merchant’s day-book. Old
+soldiers of this stamp, therefore being innocent of any attempt to
+use their reasoning faculties, act upon their strongest impulses.
+Castanier’s crime was one of those matters that raise so many questions,
+that, in order to debate about it, a moralist might call for its
+“discussion by clauses,” to make use of a parliamentary expression.
+
+Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible power of
+feminine witchery had driven him to commit it; no man can say of
+himself, “I will never do that,” when a siren joins in the combat and
+throws her spells over him.
+
+So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the truths
+of religion which the French Revolution and a soldier’s career had
+forced Castanier to neglect. The solemn words, “You will be happy or
+miserable for all eternity!” made but the more terrible impression upon
+him, because he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren tree;
+because his desires could effect all things, so that it was enough that
+any spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and he forthwith
+thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to compare such great
+things with social follies, Castanier’s position was not unlike that of
+a banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions cannot obtain for
+him an entrance into the society of the noblesse, must set his heart
+upon entering that circle, and all the social privileges that he has
+already acquired are as nothing in his eyes from the moment when he
+discovers that a single one is lacking.
+
+Here is a man more powerful than all the kings on earth put together; a
+man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God Himself; leaning against
+one of the pillars in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by the
+feelings and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed in the thought of
+a Future, the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth.
+
+“He was very happy, was Melmoth!” cried Castanier. “He died in the
+certain knowledge that he would go to heaven.”
+
+In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the
+cashier’s ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was
+nothing but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred tradition
+embodied in all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk he retained
+a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite. The power of
+hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven as he had
+never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon exhausted.
+The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the enjoyments of earth
+on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there is no limit. He
+believed in God, and the spell that gave him the treasures of the world
+was as nothing to him now; the treasures themselves seemed to him as
+contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of diamonds; they were but gewgaws
+compared with the eternal glories of the other life. A curse lay, he
+thought, on all things that came to him from this source. He sounded
+dark depths of painful thought as he listened to the service performed
+for Melmoth. The _Dies irae_ filled him with awe; he felt all the
+grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling before the Throne of
+God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring flame, passed through him as fire
+consumes straw.
+
+The tears were falling from his eyes when--“Are you a relation of the
+dead?” the beadle asked him.
+
+“I am his heir,” Castanier answered.
+
+“Give something for the expenses of the services!” cried the man.
+
+“No,” said the cashier. (The Devil’s money should not go to the Church.)
+
+“For the poor!”
+
+“No.”
+
+“For repairing the Church!”
+
+“No.”
+
+“The Lady Chapel!”
+
+“No.”
+
+“For the schools!”
+
+“No.”
+
+Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that the
+irritated functionaries gave him.
+
+Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice.
+“What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every
+country?” he asked himself. “The feeling shared so widely throughout all
+time must surely be based upon something.”
+
+“Something! Do you call God _something_?” cried his conscience. “God!
+God! God!...”
+
+The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner voice, til it overwhelmed
+him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet distant sounds
+of music that he had caught faintly before. They were singing in the
+church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway. But as he
+listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides; he
+looked round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians. The
+melody brought visions of a distant heaven and far-off gleams of hope;
+but it also quickened the remorse that had set the lost soul in a
+ferment. He went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk who
+are crushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing everything
+with unseeing eyes, loitering like an idler, stopping without cause,
+muttering to himself, careless of the traffic, making no effort to avoid
+a blow from a plank of timber.
+
+Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the influence of the divine
+grace that soothes while it bruises the heart so terribly. His face came
+to wear a look of Melmoth, something great, with a trace of madness in
+the greatness--a look of dull and hopeless distress, mingled with the
+excited eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a gnawing sense of
+loathing for all that the world can give. The humblest of prayers lurked
+in the eyes that saw with such dreadful clearness. His power was the
+measure of his anguish. His body was bowed down by the fearful storm
+that shook his soul, as the tall pines bend before the blast. Like his
+predecessor, he could not refuse to bear the burden of life; he
+was afraid to die while he bore the yoke of hell. The torment grew
+intolerable.
+
+At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that Melmoth (now among
+the blessed) had made the proposal of an exchange, and how that he had
+accepted it; others, doubtless, would follow his example; for in an age
+proclaimed, by the inheritors of the eloquence of the Fathers of the
+Church, to be fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy to find
+a man who would accept the conditions of the contract in order to prove
+its advantages.
+
+“There is one place where you can learn what kings will fetch in the
+market; where nations are weighed in the balance and systems appraised;
+where the value of a government is stated in terms of the five-franc
+piece; where ideas and beliefs have their price, and everything is
+discounted; where God Himself, in a manner, borrows on the security of
+His revenue of souls, for the Pope has a running account there. Is it
+not there that I should go to traffic in souls?”
+
+Castanier went quite joyously on ‘Change, thinking that it would be as
+easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary person
+would have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience that
+a desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying under
+sentence of death would listen to the madman who should tell him that
+by pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole; for
+suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as the
+swimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch that snaps in
+his hand.
+
+Towards four o’clock that afternoon Castanier appeared among the little
+knots of men who were transacting private business after ‘Change. He was
+personally known to some of the brokers; and while affecting to be in
+search of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up the current gossip and
+rumors of failure.
+
+“Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon & Co., my boy. The bank
+collector went round to return their acceptances to them this morning,”
+ said a fat banker in his outspoken way. “If you have any of their paper,
+look out.”
+
+Claparon was in the building, in deep consultation with a man well known
+for the ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castanier went forthwith in
+search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a reputation for taking
+heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The money-lender walked
+away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the speculator’s despair.
+
+“Well, Claparon, the Bank wants a hundred thousand francs of you, and it
+is four o’clock; the thing is known, and it is too late to arrange your
+little failure comfortably,” said Castanier.
+
+“Sir!”
+
+“Speak lower,” the cashier went on. “How if I were to propose a piece of
+business that would bring you in as much money as you require?”
+
+“It would not discharge my liabilities; every business that I ever heard
+of wants a little time to simmer in.”
+
+“I know of something that will set you straight in a moment,” answered
+Castanier; “but first you would have to----”
+
+“Do what?”
+
+“Sell your share of paradise. It is a matter of business like anything
+else, isn’t it? We all hold shares in the great Speculation of
+Eternity.”
+
+“I tell you this,” said Claparon angrily, “that I am just the man to
+lend you a slap in the face. When a man is in trouble, it is no time to
+pay silly jokes on him.”
+
+“I am talking seriously,” said Castanier, and he drew a bundle of notes
+from his pocket.
+
+“In the first place,” said Claparon, “I am not going to sell my soul
+to the Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thousand francs before I
+strike----”
+
+“Who talks of stinting you?” asked Castanier, cutting him short. “You
+shall have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank of
+France.”
+
+He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon.
+
+“Done,” he cried; “but how is the bargain to be make?”
+
+“Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there,” said Castanier,
+pointing to a corner of the court.
+
+Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with their faces turned
+to the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this by-play,
+though their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange gestures of
+the two contracting parties. When Castanier returned, there was a sudden
+outburst of amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly where the least event
+immediately attracts attention, all faces were turned to the two men who
+had caused the sensation, and a shiver passed through all beholders at
+the change that had taken place in them.
+
+The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange are soon
+known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players round
+a card-table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play and
+the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the Stock
+Exchange is simply a vast card-table. Every one, therefore, had noticed
+Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irishman before him) had
+been muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of light, his color high.
+The dignity and power in his face had struck awe into them all; they
+wondered how old Castanier had come by it; and now they beheld Castanier
+divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and feeble. He had
+drawn Claparon out of the crowd with the energy of a sick man in a
+fever fit; he had looked like an opium-eater during the brief period of
+excitement that the drug can give; now, on his return, he seemed to be
+in the condition of utter exhaustion in which the patient dies after
+the fever departs, or to be suffering from the horrible prostration
+that follows on excessive indulgence in the delights of narcotics. The
+infernal power that had upheld him through his debauches had left him,
+and the body was left unaided and alone to endure the agony of remorse
+and the heavy burden of sincere repentance. Claparon’s troubles every
+one could guess; but Claparon reappeared, on the other hand, with
+sparkling eyes, holding his head high with the pride of Lucifer. The
+crisis had passed from the one man to the other.
+
+“Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man,” said Claparon to
+Castanier.
+
+“For pity’s sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate
+of Saint-Sulpice!” answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the
+curbstone.
+
+The words “a priest” reached the ears of several people, and produced
+uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith with these
+gentlemen means a belief that a scrap of paper called a mortgage
+represents an estate, and the List of Fundholders is their Bible.
+
+“Shall I have time to repent?” said Castanier to himself, in a piteous
+voice, that impressed Claparon.
+
+A cab carried away the dying man; the speculator went to the bank at
+once to meet his bills; and the momentary sensation produced upon the
+throng of business men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanished
+like the furrow cut by a ship’s keel in the sea. News of the greatest
+importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and
+when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his two
+luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of
+a pun, the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market Reports
+would ignore his existence.
+
+When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was
+no mistake about his power. He went on ‘Change again, and offered his
+bargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil’s bond,
+“together with the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining
+thereunto,”--to use the expression of the notary who succeeded Claparon,
+changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs. The notary
+in his turn parted with the agreement with the Devil for five hundred
+thousand francs to a building contractor in difficulties, who likewise
+was rid of it to an iron merchant in consideration of a hundred thousand
+crowns. In fact, by five o’clock people had ceased to believe in the
+strange contract, and purchasers were lacking for want of confidence.
+
+At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house-painter, who was
+lounging by the door of the building in the Rue Feydeau, where at that
+time stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house-painter, simple
+fellow, could not think what was the matter with him. He “felt all
+anyhow”; so he told his wife when he went home.
+
+The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a place of
+pilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress bestow their ardent
+affection upon the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidly
+respectable domicile therein dwelt one of those exquisite creatures
+whom it has pleased heaven to endow with the rarest and most surpassing
+beauty. As it is impossible that they should all be duchesses or queens
+(since there are many more pretty women in the world than titles and
+thrones for them to adorn), they are content to make a stockbroker or a
+banker happy at a fixed price. To this good-natured beauty, Euphrasia
+by name, an unbounded ambition had led a notary’s clerk to aspire. In
+short, the second clerk in the office of Maitre Crottat, notary, had
+fallen in love with her, as youth at two-and-twenty can fall in love.
+The scrivener would have murdered the Pope and run amuck through the
+whole sacred college to procure the miserable sum of a hundred louis to
+pay for a shawl which had turned Euphrasia’s head, at which price her
+waiting-woman had promised that Euphrasia should be his. The infatuated
+youth walked to and fro under Madame Euphrasia’s windows, like the
+polar bears in their cage at the Jardin des Plantes, with his right hand
+thrust beneath his waistcoat in the region of the heart, which he was
+fit to tear from his bosom, but as yet he had only wrenched at the
+elastic of his braces.
+
+“What can one do to raise ten thousand francs?” he asked himself. “Shall
+I make off with the money that I must pay on the registration of that
+conveyance? Good heavens! my loan would not ruin the purchaser, a man
+with seven millions! And then next day I would fling myself at his feet
+and say, ‘I have taken ten thousand francs belonging to you, sir; I am
+twenty-two years of age, and I am in love with Euphrasia--that is my
+story. My father is rich, he will pay you back; do not ruin me! Have
+not you yourself been twenty-two years old and madly in love?’ But these
+beggarly landowners have no souls! He would be quite likely to give me
+up to the public prosecutor, instead of taking pity upon me. Good God!
+if it were only possible to sell your soul to the Devil! But there is
+neither a God nor a Devil; it is all nonsense out of nursery tales and
+old wives’ talk. What shall I do?”
+
+“If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir,” said the
+house-painter, who had overheard something that the clerk let fall, “you
+can have the ten thousand francs.”
+
+“And Euphrasia!” cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain with the devil
+that inhabited the house-painter.
+
+The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the shawl, and
+mounted Madame Euphrasia’s staircase; and as (literally) the devil was
+in him, he did not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought
+of hell and of his privileges in twelve days of love and riot and
+forgetfulness, for which he had bartered away all his hopes of a
+paradise to come.
+
+And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired by
+the Irishman, the offspring of Maturin’s brain, was lost to mankind;
+and the various Orientalists, Mystics, and Archaeologists who take an
+interest in these matters were unable to hand down to posterity the
+proper method of invoking the Devil, for the following sufficient
+reasons:
+
+On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the wretched
+clerk lay on a pallet bed in a garret in his master’s house in the Rue
+Saint-Honore. Shame, the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself,
+had taken possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he would nurse
+himself; misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill of
+a practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to the
+effects of an overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a mole’s
+back. A devil had left unmistakable traces of its passage there; could
+it have been Ashtaroth?
+
+
+
+“The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried away to the
+planet Mercury,” said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came
+to investigate the matter at first hand.
+
+“I am quite prepared to believe it,” answered the Teuton.
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” returned the other. “The opinion you advance coincides with
+the very words of Jacob Boehme. In the forty-eighth proposition of _The
+Threefold Life of Man_ he says that ‘if God hath brought all things
+to pass with a LET THERE BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix which
+comprehends and apprehends the nature which is formed by the spirit born
+of Mercury and of God.’”
+
+“What do you say, sir?”
+
+The German delivered his quotation afresh.
+
+“We do not know it,” said the clerks.
+
+“_Fiat_?...” said a clerk. “_Fiat lux_!”
+
+“You can verify the citation for yourselves,” said the German. “You will
+find the passage in the _Treatise of the Threefold Life of Man_, page
+75; the edition was published by M. Migneret in 1809. It was translated
+into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration for the famous
+shoemaker.”
+
+“Oh! he was a shoemaker, was he?” said the head clerk.
+
+“In Prussia,” said the German.
+
+“Did he work for the King of Prussia?” inquired a Boeotian of a second
+clerk.
+
+“He must have vamped up his prose,” said a third.
+
+“That man is colossal!” cried the fourth, pointing to the Teuton.
+
+That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not know
+the amount of devilry to be found in a notary’s clerk. He went away
+without the least idea that they were making game of him, and fully
+under the impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as a
+colossal genius.
+
+“Education is making strides in France,” said he to himself.
+
+PARIS, May 6, 1835.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Aquilina
+       The Magic Skin
+
+     Claparon, Charles
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Euphrasia
+       The Magic Skin
+
+     Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
+       Father Goriot
+       The Thirteen
+       Eugenie Grandet
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Another Study of Woman
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Tillet, Ferdinand du
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       The Middle Classes
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Pierrette
+       A Distinguished Provencial at Paris
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Melmoth Reconciled, by Honore de Balzac
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Melmoth Reconciled, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Melmoth Reconciled, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Melmoth Reconciled
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: February 22, 2010 [EBook #1277]
+Last Updated: November 22, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MELMOTH RECONCILED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, Bonnie Sala, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      MELMOTH RECONCILED
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Ellen Marriage
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      To Monsieur le General Baron de Pommereul, a token of the friendship<br />
+      between our fathers, which survives in their sons.<br /><br /> DE BALZAC.<br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> MELMOTH RECONCILED </a><br /><br /> <a
+      href="#link2H_4_0002"> ADDENDUM </a><br /><br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      MELMOTH RECONCILED
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social Kingdom
+      by a process analogous to that of the gardener&rsquo;s craft in the Vegetable
+      Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house&mdash;a species of hybrid which can
+      be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is known as the
+      Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious doctrine,
+      trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to flourish on a
+      third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an uninteresting
+      family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always be a problem for the
+      physiologist. Has any one as yet been able to state correctly the terms of
+      the proportion sum wherein the cashier figures as the unknown <i>x</i>?
+      Where will you find the man who shall live with wealth, like a cat with a
+      caged mouse? This man, for further qualification, shall be capable of
+      sitting boxed in behind an iron grating for seven or eight hours a day
+      during seven-eighths of the year, perched upon a cane-seated chair in a
+      space as narrow as a lieutenant&rsquo;s cabin on board a man-of-war. Such a man
+      must be able to defy anchylosis of the knee and thigh joints; he must have
+      a soul above meanness, in order to live meanly; must lose all relish for
+      money by dint of handling it. Demand this peculiar specimen of any creed,
+      educational system, school, or institution you please, and select Paris,
+      that city of fiery ordeals and branch establishment of hell, as the soil
+      in which to plant the said cashier. So be it. Creeds, schools,
+      institutions and moral systems, all human rules and regulations, great and
+      small, will, one after another, present much the same face that an
+      intimate friend turns upon you when you ask him to lend you a thousand
+      francs. With a dolorous dropping of the jaw, they indicate the guillotine,
+      much as your friend aforesaid will furnish you with the address of the
+      money-lender, pointing you to one of the hundred gates by which a man
+      comes to the last refuge of the destitute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man&rsquo;s mind; she indulges
+      herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a
+      cashier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of
+      bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a thousand
+      crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque, hold these rare
+      products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem that they confine
+      them in cages in their counting-houses, much as governments procure and
+      maintain specimens of strange beasts at their own charges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid temperament;
+      if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete cashier, he loves his
+      wife, and that wife grows tired of her lot, has ambitions, or merely some
+      vanity in her composition, the cashier is undone. Search the chronicles of
+      the counting-house. You will not find a single instance of a cashier
+      attaining <i>a position</i>, as it is called. They are sent to the hulks;
+      they go to foreign parts; they vegetate on a second floor in the Rue
+      Saint-Louis among the market gardens of the Marais. Some day, when the
+      cashiers of Paris come to a sense of their real value, a cashier will be
+      hardly obtainable for money. Still, certain it is that there are people
+      who are fit for nothing but to be cashiers, just as the bent of a certain
+      order of mind inevitably makes for rascality. But, oh marvel of our
+      civilization! Society rewards virtue with an income of a hundred louis in
+      old age, a dwelling on a second floor, bread sufficient, occasional new
+      bandana handkerchiefs, an elderly wife and her offspring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a little boldness, a
+      faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne outflanked
+      Montecuculi, and Society will sanction the theft of millions, shower
+      ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him with
+      consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this profoundly illogical
+      reasoner&mdash;Society. Government levies a conscription on the young
+      intelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen, a
+      conscription of precocious brain-work before it is sent up to be submitted
+      to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds in much the
+      same way. To this process the Government brings professional appraisers of
+      talent, men who can assay brains as experts assay gold at the Mint. Five
+      hundred such heads, set afire with hope, are sent up annually by the most
+      progressive portion of the population; and of these the Government takes
+      one-third, puts them in sacks called the Ecoles, and shakes them up
+      together for three years. Though every one of these young plants
+      represents vast productive power, they are made, as one may say, into
+      cashiers. They receive appointments; the rank and file of engineers is
+      made up of them; they are employed as captains of artillery; there is no
+      (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men,
+      the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed
+      with knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their
+      reward, and receive as the price of their services the third-floor
+      lodging, the wife and family, and all the comforts that sweeten life for
+      mediocrity. If from among this race of dupes there should escape some five
+      or six men of genius who climb the highest heights, is it not miraculous?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probity on
+      the one hand and Government and Society on the other, in an age that
+      considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory explanation a
+      recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; but preceded by this
+      summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive some thoughtful
+      attention from minds capable of recognizing the real plague-spots of our
+      civilization, a civilization which since 1815 as been moved by the spirit
+      of gain rather than by principles of honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About five o&rsquo;clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of the
+      largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light of a
+      lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use and wont
+      of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner of the
+      low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very end of a
+      passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors along this
+      corridor, each with its label, gave the place the look of a bath-house. At
+      four o&rsquo;clock the stolid porter had proclaimed, according to his orders,
+      &ldquo;The bank is closed.&rdquo; And by this time the departments were deserted,
+      wives of the partners in the firm were expecting their lovers; the two
+      bankers dining with their mistresses. Everything was in order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet-iron was just
+      behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless he was
+      balancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered
+      iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the modern inventor)
+      that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the
+      pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock was a warden who
+      kept its own secret and could not be bribed; the mysterious word was an
+      ingenious realization of the &ldquo;Open sesame!&rdquo; in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>.
+      But even this was as nothing. A man might discover the password; but
+      unless he knew the lock&rsquo;s final secret, the <i>ultima ratio</i> of this
+      gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, it discharged a blunderbuss at
+      his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of the room, the walls of the room, the shutters of the windows
+      in the room, the whole place, in fact, was lined with sheet-iron a third
+      of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden paneling. The
+      shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If ever man could feel
+      confident that he was absolutely alone, and that there was no remote
+      possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that man was the cashier of
+      the house of Nucingen and Company, in the Rue Saint-Lazare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave. The fire had
+      died out in the stove, but the room was full of that tepid warmth which
+      produces the dull heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of a morning
+      after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no small part in the
+      reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong men is
+      evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their wills enfeebled.
+      Government offices are part of a great scheme for the manufacture of the
+      mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a Feudal System on a pecuniary
+      basis&mdash;and money is the foundation of the Social Contract. (See <i>Les
+      Employes</i>.) The mephitic vapors in the atmosphere of a crowded room
+      contribute in no small degree to bring about a gradual deterioration of
+      intelligences, the brain that gives off the largest quantity of nitrogen
+      asphyxiates the others, in the long run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or thereabouts. As he sat at the
+      table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his bald head and
+      glistening fringe of iron-gray hair that surrounded it&mdash;this baldness
+      and the round outlines of his face made his head look very like a ball.
+      His complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had gathered about his eyes,
+      but he had the smooth, plump hands of a stout man. His blue cloth coat, a
+      little rubbed and worn, and the creases and shininess of his trousers,
+      traces of hard wear that the clothes-brush fails to remove, would impress
+      a superficial observer with the idea that here was a thrifty and upright
+      human being, sufficient of the philosopher or of the aristocrat to wear
+      shabby clothes. But, unluckily, it is easy to find penny-wise people who
+      will prove weak, wasteful, or incompetent in the capital things of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole, for
+      he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the Emperor. M. de
+      Nucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a banker, had had
+      reason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier, who
+      then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had befallen the major,
+      and the banker out of regard for him paid him five hundred francs a month.
+      The soldier had become a cashier in the year 1813, after his recovery from
+      a wound received at Studzianka during the Retreat from Moscow, followed by
+      six months of enforced idleness at Strasbourg, whither several officers
+      had been transported by order of the Emperor, that they might receive
+      skilled attention. This particular officer, Castanier by name, retired
+      with the honorary grade of colonel, and a pension of two thousand four
+      hundred francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In ten years&rsquo; time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier, and
+      Castanier inspired the banker with such trust in him, that he was
+      associated in the transactions that went on in the private office behind
+      his little counting-house. The baron himself had access to it by means of
+      a secret staircase. There, matters of business were decided. It was the
+      bolting-room where proposals were sifted; the privy council chamber where
+      the reports of the money market were analyzed; circular notes issued
+      thence; and finally, the private ledger and the journal which summarized
+      the work of all the departments were kept there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened on to a staircase
+      that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on the first floor of
+      their hotel. This done, he had sat down at his desk again, and for a
+      moment he gazed at a little collection of letters of credit drawn on the
+      firm of Watschildine of London. Then he had taken up the pen and imitated
+      the banker&rsquo;s signature on each. <i>Nucingen</i> he wrote, and eyed the
+      forged signatures critically to see which seemed the most perfect copy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. &ldquo;You are not alone!&rdquo;
+       a boding voice seemed to cry in his heart; and indeed the forger saw a man
+      standing at the little grated window of the counting-house, a man whose
+      breathing was so noiseless that he did not seem to breathe at all.
+      Castanier looked, and saw that the door at the end of the passage was wide
+      open; the stranger must have entered by that way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of dread
+      that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man before him; and
+      for that matter, the appearance of the apparition was sufficiently
+      alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysterious circumstances of so
+      sudden an entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh coloring of the long oval
+      face, indicated quite as plainly as the cut of his clothes that the man
+      was an Englishman, reeking of his native isles. You had only to look at
+      the collar of his overcoat, at the voluminous cravat which smothered the
+      crushed frills of a shirt front so white that it brought out the
+      changeless leaden hue of an impassive face, and the thin red line of the
+      lips that seemed made to suck the blood of corpses; and you can guess at
+      once at the black gaiters buttoned up to the knee, and the
+      half-puritanical costume of a wealthy Englishman dressed for a walking
+      excursion. The intolerable glitter of the stranger&rsquo;s eyes produced a vivid
+      and unpleasant impression, which was only deepened by the rigid outlines
+      of his features. The dried-up, emaciated creature seemed to carry within
+      him some gnawing thought that consumed him and could not be appeased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless eat
+      continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or features.
+      A tun of Tokay <i>vin de succession</i> would not have caused any
+      faltering in that piercing glance that read men&rsquo;s inmost thoughts, nor
+      dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go to the
+      bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquil majesty of
+      a tiger about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir,&rdquo; he said. Castanier felt
+      the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent shock
+      similar to that given by a discharge of electricity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The safe is closed,&rdquo; said Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is open,&rdquo; said the Englishman, looking round the counting-house.
+      &ldquo;To-morrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The amount is for five hundred
+      thousand francs. You have the money there, and I must have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how did you come in, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened Castanier. No words could
+      have replied more fully nor more peremptorily than that scornful and
+      imperial curl of the stranger&rsquo;s lips. Castanier turned away, took up fifty
+      packets each containing ten thousand francs in bank-notes, and held them
+      out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a bill accepted by the
+      Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ran through him as he saw a
+      red gleam in the stranger&rsquo;s eyes when they fell on the forged signature on
+      the letter of credit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It... it wants your signature...&rdquo; stammered Castanier, handing back the
+      bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hand me your pen,&rdquo; answered the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier handed him the pen with which he had just committed forgery. The
+      stranger wrote <i>John Melmoth</i>, then he returned the slip of paper and
+      the pen to the cashier. Castanier looked at the handwriting, noticing that
+      it sloped from right to left in the Eastern fashion, and Melmoth
+      disappeared so noiselessly that when Castanier looked up again an
+      exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was no longer there,
+      partly because he felt a strange painful sensation such as our imagination
+      might take for an effect of poison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat through him
+      that an emetic produces. But it seemed impossible to Castanier that the
+      Englishman should have guessed his crime. His inward qualms he attributed
+      to the palpitation of the heart that, according to received ideas, was
+      sure to follow at once on such a &ldquo;turn&rdquo; as the stranger had given him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil take it; I am very stupid. Providence is watching over me; for
+      if that brute had come round to see my gentleman to-morrow, my goose would
+      have been cooked!&rdquo; said Castanier, and he burned the unsuccessful attempts
+      at forgery in the stove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, and helped
+      himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and English bank-notes
+      from the safe, which he locked. Then he put everything in order, lit a
+      candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella, and went out
+      sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the strong room with
+      Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her husband the Baron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are in luck, M. Castanier,&rdquo; said the banker&rsquo;s wife as he entered the
+      room; &ldquo;we have a holiday on Monday; you can go into the country, or to
+      Soizy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that the bill of
+      exchange on Watschildine, which was behind time, has just been presented?
+      The five hundred thousand francs have been paid; so I shall not come back
+      till noon on Tuesday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, monsieur; I hope you will have a pleasant time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The same to you, madame,&rdquo; replied the old dragoon as he went out. He
+      glanced as he spoke at a young man well known in fashionable society at
+      that time, a M. de Rastignac, who was regarded as Madame de Nucingen&rsquo;s
+      lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; remarked this latter, &ldquo;the old boy looks to me as if he meant to
+      play you some ill turn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! impossible; he is too stupid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Piquoizeau,&rdquo; said the cashier, walking into the porter&rsquo;s room, &ldquo;what made
+      you let anybody come up after four o&rsquo;clock?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since four o&rsquo;clock,&rdquo;
+       said the man, &ldquo;and nobody has gone into the bank. Nobody has come out
+      either except the gentlemen&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you quite sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four o&rsquo;clock M. Werbrust&rsquo;s
+      friend came, a young fellow from Messrs. du Tillet &amp; Co., in the Rue
+      Joubert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Castanier, and he hurried away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back the pen
+      returned in greater intensity. &ldquo;<i>Mille diables</i>!&rdquo; thought he, as he
+      threaded his way along the Boulevard de Gand, &ldquo;haven&rsquo;t I taken proper
+      precautions? Let me think! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a day
+      of uncertainty before they begin to look for me; altogether, three days
+      and four nights&rsquo; respite. I have a couple of passports and two different
+      disguises; is not that enough to throw the cleverest detective off the
+      scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a million francs in London before
+      the slightest suspicion has been aroused. My debts I am leaving behind for
+      the benefit of my creditors, who will put a &lsquo;P&rsquo; * on the bills, and I shall
+      live comfortably in Italy for the rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro.
+      [*Protested.] I was alone with him when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh
+      of Zembin, and I shall slip into his skin.... <i>Mille diables</i>! the
+      woman who is to follow after me might give them a clue! Think of an old
+      campaigner like me infatuated enough to tie myself to a petticoat tail!...
+      Why take her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could make up my mind to it;
+      but&mdash;I know myself&mdash;I should be ass enough to go back to her.
+      Still, nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not take her!&rdquo; cried a voice that filled Castanier with
+      sickening dread. He turned sharply, and saw the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil is in it!&rdquo; cried the cashier aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if Castanier&rsquo;s first
+      impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his own thoughts,
+      he was so much torn up by opposing feelings that the immediate result was
+      a temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk he fell once more into
+      that fever of irresolution which besets those who are so carried away by
+      passion that they are ready to commit a crime, but have not sufficient
+      strength of character to keep it to themselves without suffering terribly
+      in the process. So, although Castanier had made up his mind to reap the
+      fruits of a crime which was already half executed, he hesitated to carry
+      out his designs. For him, as for many men of mixed character in whom
+      weakness and strength are equally blended, the least trifling
+      consideration determines whether they shall continue to lead blameless
+      lives or become actively criminal. In the vast masses of men enrolled in
+      Napoleon&rsquo;s armies there are many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely
+      physical courage demanded on the battlefield, yet lacked the moral courage
+      which makes a man as great in crime as he could have been in virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on his
+      arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of
+      Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. The
+      London house had already been advised of the draft about to be made upon
+      them, he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent (chosen
+      at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave Portsmouth
+      with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to Italy, and the
+      passage-money had been paid in the name of the Conte Ferraro. The smallest
+      details of the scheme had been thought out. He had arranged matters so as
+      to divert the search that would be made for him into Belgium and
+      Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the English vessel. Then, by
+      the time that Nucingen might flatter himself that he was on the track of
+      his late cashier, the said cashier, as the Conte Ferraro, hoped to be safe
+      in Naples. He had determined to disfigure his face in order to disguise
+      himself the more completely, and by means of an acid to imitate the scars
+      of smallpox. Yet, in spite of all these precautions, which surely seemed
+      as if they must secure him complete immunity, his conscience tormented
+      him; he was afraid. The even and peaceful life that he had led for so long
+      had modified the morality of the camp. His life was stainless as yet; he
+      could not sully it without a pang. So for the last time he abandoned
+      himself to all the influences of the better self that strenuously
+      resisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
+      Montmartre, &ldquo;I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out to
+      Versailles. A post-chaise will be ready for me at my old quartermaster&rsquo;s
+      place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men were standing ready to
+      shoot him down. The chances are all in my favor, so far as I see; so I
+      shall take my little Naqui with me, and I will go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not go!&rdquo; exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of his
+      voice drove all the cashier&rsquo;s blood back to his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was whirled
+      away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe some hundred
+      paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind to cut off the
+      man&rsquo;s retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the Boulevard Montmartre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!&rdquo; said he
+      to himself. &ldquo;If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should think that
+      He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and the
+      police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick of
+      time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this is folly...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening his pace
+      as he neared the Rue Richer. There on the second floor of a block of
+      buildings which looked out upon some gardens lived the unconscious cause
+      of Castanier&rsquo;s crime&mdash;a young woman known in the quarter as Mme. de
+      la Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier&rsquo;s past life
+      must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a complete
+      presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not even
+      Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls, who are
+      driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear of
+      starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, many
+      regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the laws of
+      their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in Paris,
+      the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had met with
+      Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough and homely to make his way in
+      society, and he was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and of the
+      kind of conquests made there by gold. For some time past he had desired to
+      bring a certain regularity into an irregular life. He was struck by the
+      beauty of the poor child who had drifted by chance into his arms, and his
+      determination to rescue her from the life of the streets was half
+      benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts of the best of men are
+      apt to be. Social conditions mingle elements of evil with the promptings
+      of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying a
+      man&rsquo;s intentions should be leniently judged. Castanier had just cleverness
+      enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were concerned. So he
+      concluded to be a philanthropist on either count, and at first made her
+      his mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey! hey!&rdquo; he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion. &ldquo;I am an old
+      wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man, before
+      you set up housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl&rsquo;s character for a bit, and
+      see if she is a steady sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
+      approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
+      recognize. During the first year she took the <i>nom de guerre</i> of
+      Aquilina, one of the characters in <i>Venice Preserved</i> which she had
+      chanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face and
+      general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain of which
+      she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was as well
+      regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he manifested
+      a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So she took the name
+      of Mme. de la Garde, in order to approach, as closely as Parisian usages
+      permit, the conditions of a real marriage. As a matter of fact, many of
+      these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to be looked upon as
+      respectable middle-class women, who lead humdrum lives of faithfulness to
+      their husbands; women who would make excellent mothers, keepers of
+      household accounts, and menders of household linen. This longing springs
+      from a sentiment so laudable, that society should take it into
+      consideration. But society, incorrigible as ever, will assuredly persist
+      in regarding the married woman as a corvette duly authorized by her flag
+      and papers to go on her own course, while the woman who is a wife in all
+      but name is a pirate and an outlaw for lack of a document. A day came when
+      Mme. de la Garde would fain have signed herself &ldquo;Mme. Castanier.&rdquo; The
+      cashier was put out by this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you do not love me well enough to marry me?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier did not answer; he was absorbed by his thoughts. The poor girl
+      resigned herself to her fate. The ex-dragoon was in despair. Naqui&rsquo;s heart
+      softened towards him at the sight of his trouble; she tried to soothe him,
+      but what could she do when she did not know what ailed him? When Naqui
+      made up her mind to know the secret, although she never asked him a
+      question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the existence of a Mme.
+      Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times accursed, was living in a
+      humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there; he wrote to her twice
+      a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that no one
+      suspected that he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it is
+      familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a like predicament,
+      it is perhaps worth while to give the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word which in
+      the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is a sort of
+      serf, a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple creature,
+      and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the wiles of mothers
+      with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands. It was at Nancy,
+      during one of those brief intervals of repose when the Imperial armies
+      were not on active service abroad, that Castanier was so unlucky as to pay
+      some attention to a young lady with whom he danced at a <i>ridotto</i>,
+      the provincial name for the entertainments often given by the military to
+      the townsfolk, or vice versa, in garrison towns. A scheme for inveigling
+      the gallant captain into matrimony was immediately set on foot, one of
+      those schemes by which mothers secure accomplices in a human heart by
+      touching all its motive springs, while they convert all their friends into
+      fellow-conspirators. Like all people possessed by one idea, these ladies
+      press everything into the service of their great project, slowly
+      elaborating their toils, much as the ant-lion excavates its funnel in the
+      sand and lies in wait at the bottom for its victim. Suppose that no one
+      strays, after all, into that carefully constructed labyrinth? Suppose that
+      the ant-lion dies of hunger and thirst in her pit? Such things may be, but
+      if any heedless creature once enters in, it never comes out. All the wires
+      which could be pulled to induce action on the captain&rsquo;s part were tried;
+      appeals were made to the secret interested motives that always come into
+      play in such cases; they worked on Castanier&rsquo;s hopes and on the weaknesses
+      and vanity of human nature. Unluckily, he had praised the daughter to her
+      mother when he brought her back after a waltz, a little chat followed, and
+      then an invitation in the most natural way in the world. Once introduced
+      into the house, the dragoon was dazzled by the hospitality of a family who
+      appeared to conceal their real wealth beneath a show of careful economy.
+      He was skilfully flattered on all sides, and every one extolled for his
+      benefit the various treasures there displayed. A neatly timed dinner,
+      served on plate lent by an uncle, the attention shown to him by the only
+      daughter of the house, the gossip of the town, a well-to-do sub-lieutenant
+      who seemed likely to cut the ground from under his feet&mdash;all the
+      innumerable snares, in short, of the provincial ant-lion were set for him,
+      and to such good purpose, that Castanier said five years later, &ldquo;To this
+      day I do not know how it came about!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who after two
+      years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish
+      woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion
+      (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face,
+      which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and
+      pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel
+      became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove Castanier frantic.
+      Then the fortune took to itself wings. At length the dragoon, no longer
+      recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left her to live on a little
+      property at Strasbourg, until the time when it should please God to remove
+      her to adorn Paradise. She was one of those virtuous women who, for want
+      of other occupation, would weary the life out of an angel with
+      complainings, who pray till (if their prayers are heard in heaven) they
+      must exhaust the patience of the Almighty, and say everything that is bad
+      of their husbands in dovelike murmurs over a game of boston with their
+      neighbors. When Aquilina learned all these troubles she clung still more
+      affectionately to Castanier, and made him so happy, varying with woman&rsquo;s
+      ingenuity the pleasures with which she filled his life, that all
+      unwittingly she was the cause of the cashier&rsquo;s downfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths of
+      love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold nor
+      for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the present
+      and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive ornaments and
+      dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of her class, as one
+      harmony the more in the picture of life. There was absolutely no vanity in
+      her desire not to appear at a better advantage but to look the fairer, and
+      moreover, no woman could live without luxuries more cheerfully. When a man
+      of generous nature (and military men are mostly of this stamp) meets with
+      such a woman, he feels a sort of exasperation at finding himself her
+      debtor in generosity. He feels that he could stop a mail coach to obtain
+      money for her if he has not sufficient for her whims. He will commit a
+      crime if so he may be great and noble in the eyes of some woman or of his
+      special public; such is the nature of the man. Such a lover is like a
+      gambler who would be dishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the
+      sum he borrowed from a waiter in a gaming-house; but will shrink from no
+      crime, will leave his wife and children without a penny, and rob and
+      murder, if so he may come to the gaming-table with a full purse, and his
+      honor remain untarnished among the frequenters of that fatal abode. So it
+      was with Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had begun by installing Aquiline is a modest fourth-floor dwelling, the
+      furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl&rsquo;s beauty
+      and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and unlooked-for
+      happiness with her, he began to dote upon her; and longed to adorn his
+      idol. Then Aquilina&rsquo;s toilette was so comically out of keeping with her
+      poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearly incumbent on him to
+      move. The change swallowed up almost all Castanier&rsquo;s savings, for he
+      furnished his domestic paradise with all the prodigality that is lavished
+      on a kept mistress. A pretty woman must have everything pretty about her;
+      the unity of charm in the woman and her surroundings singles her out from
+      among her sex. This sentiment of homogeneity indeed, though it has
+      frequently escaped the attention of observers, is instinctive in human
+      nature; and the same prompting leads elderly spinsters to surround
+      themselves with dreary relics of the past. But the lovely Piedmontese must
+      have the newest and latest fashions, and all that was daintiest and
+      prettiest in stuffs for hangings, in silks or jewelry, in fine china and
+      other brittle and fragile wares. She asked for nothing; but when she was
+      called upon to make a choice, when Castanier asked her, &ldquo;Which do you
+      like?&rdquo; she would answer, &ldquo;Why, this is the nicest!&rdquo; Love never counts the
+      cost, and Castanier therefore always took the &ldquo;nicest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it but
+      everything in the household must be in conformity, from the linen, plate,
+      and crystal through a thousand and one items of expenditure down to the
+      pots and pans in the kitchen. Castanier had meant to &ldquo;do things simply,&rdquo;
+       as the saying goes, but he gradually found himself more and more in debt.
+      One expense entailed another. The clock called for candle sconces. Fires
+      must be lighted in the ornamental grates, but the curtains and hangings
+      were too fresh and delicate to be soiled by smuts, so they must be
+      replaced by patent and elaborate fireplaces, warranted to give out no
+      smoke, recent inventions of the people who are so clever at drawing up a
+      prospectus. Then Aquilina found it so nice to run about barefooted on the
+      carpet in her room, that Castanier must have soft carpets laid everywhere
+      for the pleasure of playing with Naqui. A bathroom, too, was built for
+      her, everything to the end that she might be more comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have a mysterious knack
+      of enlarging a hole in a man&rsquo;s purse. They cannot give the price of
+      anything upon inquiry; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide delay,
+      orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate of cost.
+      The same people never send in the bills at once, but ply the purchaser
+      with furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty, so charming;
+      and every one is satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are metamorphosed, and
+      reappear in the shape of alarming totals on invoices that fill the soul
+      with their horrid clamor; they are in urgent want of the money; they are,
+      as you may say on the brink of bankruptcy, their tears flow, it is
+      heartrending to hear them! And then&mdash;&mdash;the gulf yawns, and gives
+      up serried columns of figures marching four deep, when as a matter of fact
+      they should have issued innocently three by three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had spent, he had arranged
+      for Aquilina to have a carriage from a livery stable when she went out,
+      instead of a cab. Castanier was a gourmand; he engaged an excellent cook;
+      and Aquilina, to please him, had herself made the purchases of early fruit
+      and vegetables, rare delicacies, and exquisite wines. But, as Aquilina had
+      nothing of her own, these gifts of hers, so precious by reason of the
+      thought and tact and graciousness that prompted them, were no less a drain
+      upon Castanier&rsquo;s purse; he did not like his Naqui to be without money, and
+      Naqui could not keep money in her pocket. So the table was a heavy item of
+      expenditure for a man with Castanier&rsquo;s income. The ex-dragoon was
+      compelled to resort to various shifts for obtaining money, for he could
+      not bring himself to renounce this delightful life. He loved the woman too
+      well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of those men who,
+      through self-love or through weakness of character, can refuse nothing to
+      a woman; false shame overpowers them, and they rather face ruin than make
+      the admissions: &ldquo;I cannot&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; &ldquo;My means will not permit&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;I cannot afford&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge from the abyss
+      of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilina and live
+      upon bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or to change his
+      habits of life, that daily he put off his plans of reform until the
+      morrow. The debts were pressing, and he began by borrowing money. His
+      position and previous character inspired confidence, and of this he took
+      advantage to devise a system of borrowing money as he required it. Then,
+      as the total amount of debt rapidly increased, he had recourse to those
+      commercial inventions known as accommodation bills. This form of bill does
+      not represent goods or other value received, and the first endorser pays
+      the amount named for the obliging person who accepts it. This species of
+      fraud is tolerated because it is impossible to detect it, and, moreover,
+      it is an imaginary fraud which only becomes real if payment is ultimately
+      refused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer, whether
+      because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased, or because
+      Castanier was unable to pay the large amount of interest on the aforesaid
+      sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On making this
+      discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy rather than an ordinary
+      failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. He determined, after the
+      fashion of the celebrated cashier of the Royal Treasury, to abuse the
+      trust deservedly won, and to increase the number of his creditors by
+      making a final loan of the sum sufficient to keep him in comfort in a
+      foreign country for the rest of his days. All this, as has been seen, he
+      had prepared to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this life; she enjoyed her
+      existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where the money
+      came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered rolls
+      untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the culture and
+      growth of wheat; but as the labor and miscalculations of agriculture lie
+      on the other side of the baker&rsquo;s oven, so beneath the unappreciated luxury
+      of many a Parisian household lie intolerable anxieties and exorbitant
+      toil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Castanier was enduring the torture of the strain, and his thoughts
+      were full of the deed that should change his whole life, Aquilina was
+      lying luxuriously back in a great armchair by the fireside, beguiling the
+      time by chatting with her waiting-maid. As frequently happens in such
+      cases the maid had become the mistress&rsquo; confidant, Jenny having first
+      assured herself that her mistress&rsquo; ascendency over Castanier was complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are we to do this evening? Leon seems determined to come,&rdquo; Mme. de
+      la Garde was saying, as she read a passionate epistle indited upon a faint
+      gray notepaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is the master!&rdquo; said Jenny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted, crumpled up the letter,
+      took it with the tongs, and held it in the flames.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that is what you do with your love-letters, is it?&rdquo; asked Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh goodness, yes,&rdquo; said Aquilina; &ldquo;is it not the best way of keeping them
+      safe? Besides, fire should go to fire, as water makes for the river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are talking as if it were a real love-letter, Naqui&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them?&rdquo; she said, holding up her
+      forehead for a kiss. There was a carelessness in her manner that would
+      have told any man less blind than Castanier that it was only a piece of
+      conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier, but use and
+      wont had brought Castanier to the point where clear-sightedness is no
+      longer possible for love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;let us have
+      dinner early, and then we need not dine in a hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not know what is the matter
+      with me this evening; I would rather stay here by the fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, all the same though, Naqui; I shall not be here to bore you much
+      longer. Yes, Quiqui, I am going to start to-night, and it will be some
+      time before I come back again. I am leaving everything in your charge.
+      Will you keep your heart for me too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither my heart nor anything else,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but when you come back
+      again, Naqui will still be Naqui for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me such sweet little
+      notes?&rdquo; she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap of paper with a mocking
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there any truth in it?&rdquo; asked Castanier. &ldquo;Have you really a lover?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really!&rdquo; cried Aquilina; &ldquo;and have you never given it a serious thought,
+      dear? To begin with, you are fifty years old. Then you have just the sort
+      of face to put on a fruit stall; if the woman tried to see you for a
+      pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blow like a seal when
+      you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like a diamond on a woman&rsquo;s
+      forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the dragoons; you are a
+      very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If you have any mind to keep my
+      respect, I recommend you not to add imbecility to these qualities by
+      imagining that such a girl as I am will be content with your asthmatic
+      love, and not look for youth and good looks and pleasure by way of a
+      variety&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aquilina! you are laughing, of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, very well; and are you not laughing too? Do you take me for a fool,
+      telling me that you are going away? &lsquo;I am going to start to-night!&rsquo;&rdquo; she
+      said, mimicking his tones. &ldquo;Stuff and nonsense! Would you talk like that
+      if you were really going from your Naqui? You would cry, like the booby
+      that you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, if I go, will you follow?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, seriously, I am going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey to you, my boy! I
+      will wait till you come back. I would sooner take leave of life than take
+      leave of my dear, cozy Paris&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, and lead a pleasant life there&mdash;a
+      delicious, luxurious life, with this stout old fogy of yours, who puffs
+      and blows like a seal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ungrateful girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ungrateful?&rdquo; she cried, rising to her feet. &ldquo;I might leave this house
+      this moment and take nothing out of it but myself. I shall have given you
+      all the treasures a young girl can give, and something that not every drop
+      in your veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by any means whatever,
+      by selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I could recover my past
+      self, body and soul (for I have, perhaps, redeemed my soul), and be pure
+      as a lily for my lover, I would not hesitate a moment! What sort of
+      devotion has rewarded mine? You have housed and fed me, just as you give a
+      dog food and a kennel because he is a protection to the house, and he may
+      take kicks when we are out of humor, and lick our hands as soon as we are
+      pleased to call him. And which of us two will have been the more
+      generous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! dear child, do you not see that I am joking?&rdquo; returned Castanier. &ldquo;I
+      am going on a short journey; I shall not be away for very long. But come
+      with me to the Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, after I have
+      had time to say good-bye to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor pet! so you are really going, are you?&rdquo; she said. She put her arms
+      round his neck, and drew down his head against her bodice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are smothering me!&rdquo; cried Castanier, with his face buried in
+      Aquilina&rsquo;s breast. That damsel turned to say in Jenny&rsquo;s ear, &ldquo;Go to Leon,
+      and tell him not to come till one o&rsquo;clock. If you do not find him, and he
+      comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your room.&mdash;Well,&rdquo;
+       she went on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweak to the tip of his
+      nose, &ldquo;never mind, handsomest of seals that you are. I will go to the
+      theatre with you this evening? But all in good time; let us have dinner!
+      There is a nice little dinner for you&mdash;just what you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very hard to part from such a woman as you!&rdquo; exclaimed Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, why do you go?&rdquo; asked she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! why? why? If I were to begin to begin to explain the reasons why, I
+      must tell you things that would prove to you that I love you almost to
+      madness. Ah! if you have sacrificed your honor for me, I have sold mine
+      for you; we are quits. Is that love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is all this about?&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Come, now, promise me that if I had a
+      lover you would still love me as a father; that would be love! Come, now,
+      promise it at once, and give us your fist upon it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should kill you,&rdquo; and Castanier smiled as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the Gymnase. When
+      the first part of the performance was over, it occurred to Castanier to
+      show himself to some of his acquaintances in the house, so as to turn away
+      any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de la Garde in the corner box
+      where she was seated, according to her modest wont, and went to walk up
+      and down in the lobby. He had not gone many paces before he saw the
+      Englishman, and with a sudden return of the sickening sensation of heat
+      that once before had vibrated through him, and of the terror that he had
+      felt already, he stood face to face with Melmoth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forger!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who were moving about
+      them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity in their
+      eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he raised his hand
+      to strike him&mdash;and felt his arm paralyzed by some invisible power
+      that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot. He allowed the
+      stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked together to the
+      green-room like two friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is strong enough to resist me?&rdquo; said the Englishman, addressing him.
+      &ldquo;Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, that it is in
+      my power to do everything? I read men&rsquo;s thoughts, I see the future, and I
+      know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also. Time and space and
+      distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at my beck and call. I have
+      the power of continual enjoyment and of giving joy. I can see through
+      walls, discover hidden treasures, and fill my hands with them. Palaces
+      arise at my nod, and my architect makes no mistakes. I can make all lands
+      break forth into blossom, heap up their gold and precious stones, and
+      surround myself with fair women and ever new faces; everything is yielded
+      up to my will. I could gamble on the Stock Exchange, and my speculations
+      would be infallible; but a man who can find the hoards that misers have
+      hidden in the earth need not trouble himself about stocks. Feel the
+      strength of the hand that grasps you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to
+      bend the arm of iron! try to soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if
+      you dare! You would hear my voice in the depths of the caves that lie
+      under the Seine; you might hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me
+      there? My voice could be heard through the sound of thunder, my eyes shine
+      as brightly as the sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest nor contradiction
+      within himself. He walked side by side with the Englishman, and had no
+      power to leave him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have found at last the
+      mate whom I have sought. Have you a mind to learn your destiny? Aha! you
+      came here to see a play, and you shall see a play&mdash;nay, two. Come.
+      Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am I not your
+      last hope of escape?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box; and in
+      accordance with the order he had just received, he hastened to introduce
+      Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in the least
+      surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front, and Castanier
+      was once more beside his mistress; the man&rsquo;s slightest wish must be
+      obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that time, small
+      theatres gave only three pieces. One of the actors had made the Gymnase
+      the fashion, and that evening Perlet (the actor in question) was to play
+      in a vaudeville called <i>Le Comedien d&rsquo;Etampes</i>, in which he filled
+      four different parts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over the
+      crowded house. Castanier&rsquo;s cry of terror died away, for the walls of his
+      throat seemed glued together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, and the
+      cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman&rsquo;s desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the strong-room at the bank; he saw the Baron de Nucingen in
+      conference with a police-officer from the Prefecture, who was informing
+      him of Castanier&rsquo;s conduct, explaining that the cashier had absconded with
+      money taken from the safe, giving the history of the forged signature. The
+      information was put in writing; the document signed and duly despatched to
+      the Public Prosecutor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are we in time, do you think?&rdquo; asked Nucingen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the agent of police; &ldquo;he is at the Gymnase, and has no
+      suspicion of anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would leave the
+      theatre, but Melmoth&rsquo;s hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged to sit
+      and watch; the hideous power of the man produced an effect like that of
+      nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself was the
+      nightmare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like a poisoned
+      atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore the Englishman&rsquo;s
+      mercy, he met those blazing eyes that discharged electric currents, which
+      pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have I done to you?&rdquo; he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and he
+      breathed hard like a stag at the water&rsquo;s edge. &ldquo;What do you want of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; cried Melmoth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed. The play seemed
+      to be over, and Castanier beheld himself stepping from the carriage with
+      Aquilina; but as he entered the courtyard of the house on the Rue Richer,
+      the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw his own house. Jenny was
+      chatting by the fire in her mistress&rsquo; room with a subaltern officer of a
+      line regiment then stationed at Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is going, is he?&rdquo; said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to a family
+      in easy circumstances; &ldquo;I can be happy at my ease! I love Aquilina too
+      well to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself, am going to marry
+      Mme. de la Garde!&rdquo; cried the sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old toad!&rdquo; Castanier murmured piteously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here come the master and mistress; hide yourself! Stay, get in here
+      Monsieur Leon,&rdquo; said Jenny. &ldquo;The master won&rsquo;t stay here for very long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among Aquilina&rsquo;s gowns in her
+      dressing-room. Almost immediately he himself appeared upon the scene, and
+      took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in &ldquo;asides&rdquo; to Jenny,
+      while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his ears. She wept
+      with one side of her face, and laughed with the other. The audience called
+      for an encore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accursed creature!&rdquo; cried Castanier from his box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;how funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman!... Why
+      don&rsquo;t you laugh? Every one else in the house is laughing. Laugh, dear!&rdquo;
+       she said to Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The
+      Englishman&rsquo;s laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was as if
+      a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Laughing! are they laughing!&rdquo; stammered Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
+      ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house
+      with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying
+      from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with the
+      man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He
+      recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l&rsquo;Orangerie and the
+      Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old quartermaster. It was two
+      o&rsquo;clock in the morning, the most perfect stillness prevailed, no one was
+      there to watch his movements. The post-horses were put into the carriage
+      (it came from a house in the Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman lived,
+      and had been ordered in the foreigner&rsquo;s name to avoid raising suspicion).
+      Castanier saw that he had his bills and his passports, stepped into the
+      carriage, and set out. But at the barrier he saw two gendarmes lying in
+      wait for the carriage. A cry of horror burst from him but Melmoth gave him
+      a glance, and again the sound died in his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!&rdquo; said the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at the
+      Conciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled <i>The Cashier</i>,
+      he saw himself, in three months&rsquo; time, condemned to twenty years of penal
+      servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the Place du
+      Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a red-hot iron.
+      Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty convicts in the prison
+      yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn to have the irons riveted on
+      his limbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me! I cannot laugh any more!...&rdquo; said Aquilina. &ldquo;You are very
+      solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A word with you, Castanier,&rdquo; said Melmoth when the piece was at an end,
+      and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde&rsquo;s cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going next
+      to Versailles, there to be arrested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp,&rdquo; returned the
+      Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him out
+      from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose that the Devil were to make a bid for your soul, would you not
+      give it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single word, and
+      those five hundred thousand francs shall be back in the Baron de
+      Nucingen&rsquo;s safe; then you can tear up the letter of credit, and all traces
+      of your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would have gold in
+      torrents. You hardly believe in anything perhaps? Well, if all this comes
+      to pass, you will believe at least in the Devil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it were only possible!&rdquo; said Castanier joyfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible,&rdquo;
+       answered the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in the
+      Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling, the
+      streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness overhead;
+      but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was filled with
+      sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The trees were covered
+      with leaves; a double stream of joyous holiday makers strolled beneath
+      them. Sellers of liquorice water shouted their cool drinks. Splendid
+      carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry of terror broke from the
+      cashier, and at that cry rain and darkness once more settled down upon the
+      Boulevard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. &ldquo;Do be quick, dear!&rdquo; she
+      cried; &ldquo;either come in or stay out. Really you are as dull as ditch-water
+      this evening&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What must I do?&rdquo; Castanier asked of Melmoth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to take my place?&rdquo; inquired the Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few moments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the by, Castanier, you are rather off your balance,&rdquo; Aquilina
+      remarked. &ldquo;There is some mischief brewing: you were quite melancholy and
+      thoughtful all through the play. Do you want anything that I can give you,
+      dear? Tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not wait till then,&rdquo; she said, throwing her arms round his neck.
+      &ldquo;There!&rdquo; she said, as she embraced him, passionately to all appearance,
+      and plied him with the coaxing caresses that are part of the business of
+      such a life as hers, like stage action for an actress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is the music?&rdquo; asked Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What next? Only think of your hearing music now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavenly music!&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;The sounds seem to come from above.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italiens because
+      you could not abide music, and are you turning music-mad at this time of
+      day? Mad&mdash;that you are! The music is inside your own noddle, old
+      addle-pate!&rdquo; she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rocked it
+      to and fro on her shoulder. &ldquo;Tell me now, old man; isn&rsquo;t it the creaking
+      of the wheels that sings in your ears?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just listen, Naqui! If the angels make music for God Almighty, it must be
+      such music as this that I am drinking in at every pore, rather than
+      hearing. I do no know how to tell you about it; it is as sweet as
+      honey-water!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all the
+      pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad, upon my word!&rdquo; she said to
+      herself, as she saw Castanier&rsquo;s attitude; he looked like an opium-eater in
+      a blissful trance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the thought of all that he
+      had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or not; he was
+      like a drunken man, and utterly unable to think connectedly. He came to
+      himself in Aquilina&rsquo;s room, whither he had been supported by the united
+      efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he had fainted as he
+      stepped from the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>He</i> will be here directly! Oh, my friends, my friends,&rdquo; he cried,
+      and he flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside
+      the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. She
+      announced that &ldquo;a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with the
+      master,&rdquo; when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence followed. He
+      looked at the porter&mdash;the porter went; he looked at Jenny&mdash;and
+      Jenny went likewise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, &ldquo;with your permission, we
+      will conclude a piece of urgent business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took Castanier&rsquo;s hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went into
+      the drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth&rsquo;s eyes lit
+      up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had left Aquilina
+      like one spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take any thought for her
+      lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in Jenny&rsquo;s room, whereas
+      their early return had taken the waiting-woman by surprise, and she had
+      hidden the officer in the dressing-room. It had all happened exactly as in
+      the drama that Melmoth had displayed for his victim. Presently the
+      house-door was slammed violently, and Castanier reappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What ails you?&rdquo; cried the horror-struck Aquilina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a change in the cashier&rsquo;s appearance. A strange pallor
+      overspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarly sinister
+      and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare of his eyes was
+      intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch. The man who had
+      looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenly grown tyrannical and
+      proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier had grown thinner; there was a
+      terrible majesty in his brow; it was as if a dragon breathed forth a
+      malignant influence that weighed upon the others like a close, heavy
+      atmosphere. For a moment Aquilina knew not what to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those few
+      minutes?&rdquo; she asked at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer the same. He has
+      taken my <i>self</i>, and given me his soul in exchange.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would not understand it at all.... Ah! he was right,&rdquo; Castanier went
+      on, &ldquo;the fiend was right! I see everything and know all things.&mdash;You
+      have been deceiving me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a candle and went into
+      the dressing-room. The unhappy girl followed him with dazed bewilderment,
+      and great was her astonishment when Castanier drew the dresses that hung
+      there aside and disclosed the sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out, my boy,&rdquo; said the cashier; and, taking Leon by a button of his
+      overcoat, he drew the officer into his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her
+      easy-chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the fire, and left
+      Aquilina&rsquo;s lover in a standing position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been in the army,&rdquo; said Leon; &ldquo;I am ready to give you
+      satisfaction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a fool,&rdquo; said Castanier drily. &ldquo;I have no occasion to fight. I
+      could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell you what
+      it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line round your
+      neck&mdash;the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end in the
+      Place de Greve. You are the headsman&rsquo;s property! there is no escape for
+      you. You belong to a vendita, of the Carbonari. You are plotting against
+      the Government.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not tell me that,&rdquo; cried the Piedmontese, turning to Leon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put down
+      your Society?&rdquo; the cashier continued. &ldquo;The Procureur-General has a list of
+      your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up the
+      indictment at this moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then was it you who betrayed him?&rdquo; cried Aquilina, and with a hoarse
+      sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet; she
+      seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know me too well to believe it,&rdquo; Castanier retorted. Aquilina was
+      benumbed by his coolness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how do you know it?&rdquo; she murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I know it&mdash;now
+      I see and know all things, and can do all things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sergeant was overcome with amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, save him, save him, dear!&rdquo; cried the girl, flinging
+      herself at Castanier&rsquo;s feet. &ldquo;If nothing is impossible to you, save him! I
+      will love you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and not your
+      mistress. I will obey your wildest whims; you shall do as you will with
+      me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love; you shall have a daughter&rsquo;s
+      devotion as well as... Rodolphe! why will you not understand! After all,
+      however violent my passions may be, I shall be yours for ever! What should
+      I say to persuade you? I will invent pleasures... I... Great heavens! one
+      moment! whatever you shall ask of me&mdash;to fling myself from the window
+      for instance&mdash;you will need to say but one word, &lsquo;Leon!&rsquo; and I will
+      plunge down into hell. I would bear any torture, any pain of body or soul,
+      anything you might inflict upon me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier heard her with indifference. For an answer, he indicated Leon to
+      her with a fiendish laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The guillotine is waiting for him,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger upon him! Why will you not
+      save him?&rdquo; she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair unbound.
+      &ldquo;Can you save him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can do everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you not save him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.&mdash;&ldquo;Eh!
+      it is my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Die?&rdquo; said Aquilina; &ldquo;must he die, my lover? Is it possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the
+      chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who now began to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aquilina&rsquo;s arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out with you, my good friend,&rdquo; said the cashier, turning to the sergeant,
+      &ldquo;and go about your business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier&rsquo;s superior power, and could
+      not choose but to obey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if I chose,
+      and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises, but I
+      would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall follow him!&rdquo; said Aquilina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then follow him,&rdquo; returned Castanier.&mdash;&ldquo;Here, Jenny&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenny appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.&mdash;Here Naqui,&rdquo; said
+      Castanier, drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket; &ldquo;you shall not
+      go away like a pauper from a man who loves you still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes, flung
+      them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a frenzy of
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will leave this house on foot,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;without a farthing of your
+      money.&mdash;Jenny, stay where you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening!&rdquo; answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes again.
+      &ldquo;I have come back from my journey.&mdash;Jenny,&rdquo; he added, looking at the
+      bewildered waiting-maid, &ldquo;you seem to me to be a good sort of girl. You
+      have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have a master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
+      house of one of her friends. But all Leon&rsquo;s movements were suspiciously
+      watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends were
+      arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
+      transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed&mdash;the boy, the
+      young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
+      tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
+      lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina&rsquo;s sake. His inmost nature had
+      suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
+      developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
+      things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
+      Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidelities;
+      and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in the
+      sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress&rsquo; position and fortune, and
+      did the cashier&rsquo;s will in all things; but Castanier, who could read the
+      inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying this
+      purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her, however, like a
+      mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and flings
+      away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time, when she was fully
+      convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house, Castanier
+      uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her mind as she drank her
+      coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what you are thinking, child?&rdquo; he said, smiling. &ldquo;I will tell
+      you: &lsquo;So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so much, and
+      the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! All on easy terms
+      that Madame refused, I do no know why. My word! if I might drive about in
+      a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box at the theatre, and put
+      something by! with me he should lead a life of pleasure fit to kill him if
+      he were not as strong as a Turk! I never saw such a man!&rsquo;&mdash;Was not
+      that just what you were thinking,&rdquo; he went on, and something in his voice
+      made Jenny turn pale. &ldquo;Well, yes, child; you could not stand it, and I am
+      sending you away for your own good; you would perish in the attempt. Come,
+      let us part good friends,&rdquo; and he coolly dismissed her with a very small
+      sum of money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he would make of
+      the terrible power brought at the price of his eternal happiness, was the
+      full and complete indulgence of all his tastes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his accounts with M. de
+      Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then determined on
+      a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. He plunged into
+      dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old went to that last feast in
+      Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his revels a gleaming
+      hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, not on the narrow walls of
+      the banqueting-chamber, but over the vast spaces of heaven that the
+      rainbow spans. His feast was not, indeed, an orgy confined within the
+      limits of a banquet, for he squandered all the powers of soul and body in
+      exhausting all the pleasures of earth. The table was in some sort earth
+      itself, the earth that trembled beneath his feet. His was the last
+      festival of the reckless spendthrift who has thrown all prudence to the
+      winds. The devil had given him the key of the storehouse of human
+      pleasures; he had filled and refilled his hands, and he was fast nearing
+      the bottom. In a moment he had felt all that that enormous power could
+      accomplish; in a moment he had exercised it, proved it, wearied of it.
+      What had hitherto been the sum of human desires became as nothing. So
+      often it happens that with possession the vast poetry of desire must end,
+      and the thing possessed is seldom the thing that we dreamed of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath Melmoth&rsquo;s omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so many a
+      passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to his
+      successor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To come to a clear understanding of Castanier&rsquo;s strange position, it must
+      be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and feeling had
+      been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other; and of these
+      things it is hard to give any idea to those who have never broken the
+      prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His relation to the world
+      without had been entirely changed with the expansion of his faculties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the
+      fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African
+      desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that
+      could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance the
+      nature of any material object, just as he caught as it were all flavors at
+      once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a despot; a blow of the
+      axe felled the tree that he might eat its fruits. The transitions, the
+      alternations that measure joy and pain, and diversify human happiness, no
+      longer existed for him. He had so completely glutted his appetites that
+      pleasure must overpass the limits of pleasure to tickle a palate cloyed
+      with satiety, and suddenly grown fastidious beyond all measure, so that
+      ordinary pleasures became distasteful. Conscious that at will he was the
+      master of all the women that he could desire, knowing that his power was
+      irresistible, he did not care to exercise it; they were pliant to his
+      unexpressed wishes, to his most extravagant caprices, until he felt a
+      horrible thirst for love, and would have love beyond their power to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing and
+      consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed&mdash;it was a
+      horrible position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul and
+      his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being; but in
+      him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of the
+      sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity of
+      longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on outspread
+      wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to other spheres
+      that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopeless knowledge.
+      His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and thirsted after things
+      that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for which he could not choose but
+      crave. His lips, like Melmoth&rsquo;s, burned with desire; he panted for the
+      unknown, for he knew all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its
+      working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the profound
+      scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx who knows
+      everything and says nothing, and sees all things with an unmoved
+      countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his knowledge
+      to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world, with one
+      effort he could make the circle of the globe, and riches and power were
+      meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy of omnipotence, a
+      melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise of infinite power
+      in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier had not, like his
+      Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and malice; he felt that he
+      was a devil, but a devil whose time was not yet come, while Satan is a
+      devil through all eternity, and being damned beyond redemption, delights
+      to stir up the world, like a dung heap, with his triple fork and to thwart
+      therein the designs of God. But Castanier, for his misfortune, had one
+      hope left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird springs
+      restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird, he has
+      crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond it. That
+      vision of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see humanity and its
+      affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools who long for the power
+      of the Devil gauge its desirability from a human standpoint; they do not
+      see that with the Devil&rsquo;s power they will likewise assume his thoughts,
+      and that they will be doomed to remain as men among creatures who will no
+      longer understand them. The Nero unknown to history who dreams of setting
+      Paris on fire for his private entertainment, like an exhibition of a
+      burning house on the boards of a theatre, does not suspect that if he had
+      the power, Paris would become for him as little interesting as an ant-heap
+      by the roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was
+      for Castanier something like a logogriph for a man who does not know the
+      key to it. Kings and Governments were despicable in his eyes. His great
+      debauch had been in some sort a deplorable farewell to his life as a man.
+      The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal gifts laid bare
+      for him the secrets of creation&mdash;he saw the cause and foresaw its
+      end. He was shut out from all that men call &ldquo;heaven&rdquo; in all languages
+      under the sun; he could no longer think of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor&rsquo;s face and the
+      drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the
+      baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth&rsquo;s eyes; he, too, knew the thirst that
+      burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual struggle between two
+      natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an angel, and he knew
+      himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet and gentle creature
+      that a wizard&rsquo;s malice has imprisoned in a mis-shapen form, entrapping it
+      by a pact, so that another&rsquo;s will must set it free from its detested
+      envelope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of really great
+      nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a woman&rsquo;s heart, so Castanier
+      awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul, an idea which
+      was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very fact that he had bartered
+      away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in thought upon the future of
+      those who pray and believe. On the morrow of his debauch, when he entered
+      into the sober possession of his power, this idea made him feel himself a
+      prisoner; he knew the burden of the woe that poets, and prophets, and
+      great oracles of faith have set forth for us in such mighty words; he felt
+      the point of the Flaming Sword plunged into his side, and hurried in
+      search of Melmoth. What had become of his predecessor?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue Ferou, near
+      Saint-Sulpice&mdash;a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode. The Rue Ferou
+      itself is one of the most dismal streets in Paris; it has a north aspect
+      like all the streets that lie at right angles to the left bank of the
+      Seine, and the houses are in keeping with the site. As Castanier stood on
+      the threshold he found that the door itself, like the vaulted roof, was
+      hung with black; rows of lighted tapers shone brilliantly as though some
+      king were lying in state; and a priest stood on either side of a
+      catafalque that had been raised there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no need to ask why you have come, sir,&rdquo; the old hall porter said
+      to Castanier; &ldquo;you are so like our poor dear master that is gone. But if
+      you are his brother, you have come too late to bid him good-bye. The good
+      gentleman died the night before last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did he die?&rdquo; Castanier asked of one of the priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Set your mind at rest,&rdquo; said the old priest; he partly raised as he spoke
+      the black pall that covered the catafalque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith has made
+      sublime; the soul seemed to shine forth from every line of it, bringing
+      light and warmth for other men, kindled by the unfailing charity within.
+      This was Sir John Melmoth&rsquo;s confessor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that must rejoice the
+      angels. Do you know what joy there is in heaven over a sinner that
+      repents? His tears of penitence, excited by grace, flowed without ceasing;
+      death alone checked them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in him. His burning words,
+      full of lively faith, were worthy of the Prophet-King. If, in the course
+      of my life, I have never heard a more dreadful confession than from the
+      lips of this Irish gentleman, I have likewise never heard such fervent and
+      passionate prayers. However great the measures of his sins may have been,
+      his repentance has filled the abyss to overflowing. The hand of God was
+      visibly stretched out above him, for he was completely changed, there was
+      such heavenly beauty in his face. The hard eyes were softened by tears;
+      the resonant voice that struck terror into those who heard it took the
+      tender and compassionate tones of those who themselves have passed through
+      deep humiliation. He so edified those who heard his words, that some who
+      had felt drawn to see the spectacle of a Christian&rsquo;s death fell on their
+      knees as he spoke of heavenly things, and of the infinite glory of God,
+      and gave thanks and praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly wealth to
+      his family, no family can possess a greater blessing than this that he
+      surely gained for them, a soul among the blessed, who will watch over you
+      all and direct you in the path to heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words made such a vivid impression upon Castanier that he instantly
+      hurried from the house to the Church of Saint-Sulpice, obeying what might
+      be called a decree of fate. Melmoth&rsquo;s repentance had stupefied him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a preacher, famed for his
+      eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which he
+      demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a
+      generation proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by another
+      voice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been put off to a
+      later hour on account of Melmoth&rsquo;s funeral, so Castanier arrived just as
+      the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a future existence of
+      happiness with all the charm of eloquence and force of expression which
+      have made him famous. The seeds of divine doctrine fell into a soil
+      prepared for them in the old dragoon, into whom the Devil had glided.
+      Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well attested by experience, is it not
+      the spiritual phenomenon commonly called &ldquo;the faith of the peasant&rdquo;? The
+      strength of belief varies inversely with the amount of use that a man has
+      made of his reasoning faculties. Simple people and soldiers belong to the
+      unreasoning class. Those who have marched through life beneath the banner
+      of instinct are far more ready to receive the light than minds and hearts
+      overwearied with the world&rsquo;s sophistries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a lad of
+      sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly forty years
+      old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and day after day,
+      and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first, and of himself
+      afterwards. While he served his military apprenticeship, therefore, he had
+      but little leisure in which to reflect on the destiny of man, and when he
+      became an officer he had his men to think of. He had been swept from
+      battlefield to battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after
+      death. A soldier&rsquo;s life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot
+      understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of nation
+      and nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as well as plans of
+      campaign, and combine the science of the tactician with that of the
+      administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance; the most boorish
+      peasant in the most backward district in France is scarcely in a worse
+      case. Such men as these bear the brunt of war, yield passive obedience to
+      the brain that directs them, and strike down the men opposed to them as
+      the woodcutter fells timber in the forest. Violent physical exertion is
+      succeeded by times of inertia, when they repair the waste. They fight and
+      drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep, that they may the better deal hard
+      blows; the powers of the mind are not greatly exercised in this turbulent
+      round of existence, and the character is as simple as heretofore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to
+      ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank seem
+      to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity, for
+      grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger generation, those
+      who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are as simple as children,
+      and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst, and the captain of a
+      thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a merchant&rsquo;s day-book. Old
+      soldiers of this stamp, therefore being innocent of any attempt to use
+      their reasoning faculties, act upon their strongest impulses. Castanier&rsquo;s
+      crime was one of those matters that raise so many questions, that, in
+      order to debate about it, a moralist might call for its &ldquo;discussion by
+      clauses,&rdquo; to make use of a parliamentary expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible power of
+      feminine witchery had driven him to commit it; no man can say of himself,
+      &ldquo;I will never do that,&rdquo; when a siren joins in the combat and throws her
+      spells over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the truths of
+      religion which the French Revolution and a soldier&rsquo;s career had forced
+      Castanier to neglect. The solemn words, &ldquo;You will be happy or miserable
+      for all eternity!&rdquo; made but the more terrible impression upon him, because
+      he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren tree; because his
+      desires could effect all things, so that it was enough that any spot in
+      earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and he forthwith thought of
+      nothing else. If it were allowable to compare such great things with
+      social follies, Castanier&rsquo;s position was not unlike that of a banker who,
+      finding that his all-powerful millions cannot obtain for him an entrance
+      into the society of the noblesse, must set his heart upon entering that
+      circle, and all the social privileges that he has already acquired are as
+      nothing in his eyes from the moment when he discovers that a single one is
+      lacking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is a man more powerful than all the kings on earth put together; a
+      man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God Himself; leaning against one
+      of the pillars in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by the
+      feelings and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed in the thought of a
+      Future, the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was very happy, was Melmoth!&rdquo; cried Castanier. &ldquo;He died in the certain
+      knowledge that he would go to heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the cashier&rsquo;s
+      ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was nothing but a man;
+      an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred tradition embodied in all
+      cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk he retained a germ of greatness,
+      he had been steeped in the Infinite. The power of hell had revealed the
+      divine power. He thirsted for heaven as he had never thirsted after the
+      pleasures of earth, that are so soon exhausted. The enjoyments which the
+      fiend promises are but the enjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to
+      the joys of heaven there is no limit. He believed in God, and the spell
+      that gave him the treasures of the world was as nothing to him now; the
+      treasures themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an
+      admirer of diamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal
+      glories of the other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that
+      came to him from this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as
+      he listened to the service performed for Melmoth. The <i>Dies irae</i>
+      filled him with awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant
+      soul trembling before the Throne of God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring
+      flame, passed through him as fire consumes straw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears were falling from his eyes when&mdash;&ldquo;Are you a relation of the
+      dead?&rdquo; the beadle asked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am his heir,&rdquo; Castanier answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give something for the expenses of the services!&rdquo; cried the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the cashier. (The Devil&rsquo;s money should not go to the Church.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the poor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For repairing the Church!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Lady Chapel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the schools!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that the
+      irritated functionaries gave him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice. &ldquo;What
+      made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every country?&rdquo; he
+      asked himself. &ldquo;The feeling shared so widely throughout all time must
+      surely be based upon something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something! Do you call God <i>something</i>?&rdquo; cried his conscience. &ldquo;God!
+      God! God!...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner voice, til it overwhelmed
+      him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet distant sounds
+      of music that he had caught faintly before. They were singing in the
+      church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway. But as he
+      listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides; he
+      looked round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians. The
+      melody brought visions of a distant heaven and far-off gleams of hope; but
+      it also quickened the remorse that had set the lost soul in a ferment. He
+      went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk who are crushed beneath
+      the burden of their sorrow, seeing everything with unseeing eyes,
+      loitering like an idler, stopping without cause, muttering to himself,
+      careless of the traffic, making no effort to avoid a blow from a plank of
+      timber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the influence of the divine
+      grace that soothes while it bruises the heart so terribly. His face came
+      to wear a look of Melmoth, something great, with a trace of madness in the
+      greatness&mdash;a look of dull and hopeless distress, mingled with the
+      excited eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a gnawing sense of
+      loathing for all that the world can give. The humblest of prayers lurked
+      in the eyes that saw with such dreadful clearness. His power was the
+      measure of his anguish. His body was bowed down by the fearful storm that
+      shook his soul, as the tall pines bend before the blast. Like his
+      predecessor, he could not refuse to bear the burden of life; he was afraid
+      to die while he bore the yoke of hell. The torment grew intolerable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that Melmoth (now among the
+      blessed) had made the proposal of an exchange, and how that he had
+      accepted it; others, doubtless, would follow his example; for in an age
+      proclaimed, by the inheritors of the eloquence of the Fathers of the
+      Church, to be fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy to find a
+      man who would accept the conditions of the contract in order to prove its
+      advantages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is one place where you can learn what kings will fetch in the
+      market; where nations are weighed in the balance and systems appraised;
+      where the value of a government is stated in terms of the five-franc
+      piece; where ideas and beliefs have their price, and everything is
+      discounted; where God Himself, in a manner, borrows on the security of His
+      revenue of souls, for the Pope has a running account there. Is it not
+      there that I should go to traffic in souls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Castanier went quite joyously on &lsquo;Change, thinking that it would be as
+      easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary person
+      would have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience that a
+      desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying under sentence
+      of death would listen to the madman who should tell him that by
+      pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole; for
+      suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as the
+      swimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch that snaps in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards four o&rsquo;clock that afternoon Castanier appeared among the little
+      knots of men who were transacting private business after &lsquo;Change. He was
+      personally known to some of the brokers; and while affecting to be in
+      search of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up the current gossip and
+      rumors of failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon &amp; Co., my boy. The bank
+      collector went round to return their acceptances to them this morning,&rdquo;
+       said a fat banker in his outspoken way. &ldquo;If you have any of their paper,
+      look out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claparon was in the building, in deep consultation with a man well known
+      for the ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castanier went forthwith in
+      search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a reputation for taking
+      heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The money-lender walked away
+      as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the speculator&rsquo;s despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Claparon, the Bank wants a hundred thousand francs of you, and it
+      is four o&rsquo;clock; the thing is known, and it is too late to arrange your
+      little failure comfortably,&rdquo; said Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak lower,&rdquo; the cashier went on. &ldquo;How if I were to propose a piece of
+      business that would bring you in as much money as you require?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would not discharge my liabilities; every business that I ever heard
+      of wants a little time to simmer in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know of something that will set you straight in a moment,&rdquo; answered
+      Castanier; &ldquo;but first you would have to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sell your share of paradise. It is a matter of business like anything
+      else, isn&rsquo;t it? We all hold shares in the great Speculation of Eternity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you this,&rdquo; said Claparon angrily, &ldquo;that I am just the man to lend
+      you a slap in the face. When a man is in trouble, it is no time to pay
+      silly jokes on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am talking seriously,&rdquo; said Castanier, and he drew a bundle of notes
+      from his pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place,&rdquo; said Claparon, &ldquo;I am not going to sell my soul to
+      the Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thousand francs before I
+      strike&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who talks of stinting you?&rdquo; asked Castanier, cutting him short. &ldquo;You
+      shall have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank of
+      France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;but how is the bargain to be make?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there,&rdquo; said Castanier,
+      pointing to a corner of the court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with their faces turned to
+      the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this by-play, though
+      their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange gestures of the two
+      contracting parties. When Castanier returned, there was a sudden outburst
+      of amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly where the least event
+      immediately attracts attention, all faces were turned to the two men who
+      had caused the sensation, and a shiver passed through all beholders at the
+      change that had taken place in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange are soon
+      known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players round a
+      card-table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play and the
+      condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the Stock
+      Exchange is simply a vast card-table. Every one, therefore, had noticed
+      Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irishman before him) had been
+      muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of light, his color high. The
+      dignity and power in his face had struck awe into them all; they wondered
+      how old Castanier had come by it; and now they beheld Castanier divested
+      of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and feeble. He had drawn Claparon
+      out of the crowd with the energy of a sick man in a fever fit; he had
+      looked like an opium-eater during the brief period of excitement that the
+      drug can give; now, on his return, he seemed to be in the condition of
+      utter exhaustion in which the patient dies after the fever departs, or to
+      be suffering from the horrible prostration that follows on excessive
+      indulgence in the delights of narcotics. The infernal power that had
+      upheld him through his debauches had left him, and the body was left
+      unaided and alone to endure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of
+      sincere repentance. Claparon&rsquo;s troubles every one could guess; but
+      Claparon reappeared, on the other hand, with sparkling eyes, holding his
+      head high with the pride of Lucifer. The crisis had passed from the one
+      man to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man,&rdquo; said Claparon to
+      Castanier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For pity&rsquo;s sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate of
+      Saint-Sulpice!&rdquo; answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the curbstone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words &ldquo;a priest&rdquo; reached the ears of several people, and produced
+      uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith with these gentlemen
+      means a belief that a scrap of paper called a mortgage represents an
+      estate, and the List of Fundholders is their Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I have time to repent?&rdquo; said Castanier to himself, in a piteous
+      voice, that impressed Claparon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cab carried away the dying man; the speculator went to the bank at once
+      to meet his bills; and the momentary sensation produced upon the throng of
+      business men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanished like the
+      furrow cut by a ship&rsquo;s keel in the sea. News of the greatest importance
+      kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and when
+      commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his two
+      luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of a pun,
+      the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market Reports would
+      ignore his existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was no
+      mistake about his power. He went on &lsquo;Change again, and offered his bargain
+      to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil&rsquo;s bond, &ldquo;together
+      with the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining thereunto,&rdquo;&mdash;to
+      use the expression of the notary who succeeded Claparon, changed hands for
+      the sum of seven hundred thousand francs. The notary in his turn parted
+      with the agreement with the Devil for five hundred thousand francs to a
+      building contractor in difficulties, who likewise was rid of it to an iron
+      merchant in consideration of a hundred thousand crowns. In fact, by five
+      o&rsquo;clock people had ceased to believe in the strange contract, and
+      purchasers were lacking for want of confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house-painter, who was
+      lounging by the door of the building in the Rue Feydeau, where at that
+      time stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house-painter, simple
+      fellow, could not think what was the matter with him. He &ldquo;felt all
+      anyhow&rdquo;; so he told his wife when he went home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a place of pilgrimage
+      for youths who for lack of a mistress bestow their ardent affection upon
+      the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidly respectable domicile
+      therein dwelt one of those exquisite creatures whom it has pleased heaven
+      to endow with the rarest and most surpassing beauty. As it is impossible
+      that they should all be duchesses or queens (since there are many more
+      pretty women in the world than titles and thrones for them to adorn), they
+      are content to make a stockbroker or a banker happy at a fixed price. To
+      this good-natured beauty, Euphrasia by name, an unbounded ambition had led
+      a notary&rsquo;s clerk to aspire. In short, the second clerk in the office of
+      Maitre Crottat, notary, had fallen in love with her, as youth at
+      two-and-twenty can fall in love. The scrivener would have murdered the
+      Pope and run amuck through the whole sacred college to procure the
+      miserable sum of a hundred louis to pay for a shawl which had turned
+      Euphrasia&rsquo;s head, at which price her waiting-woman had promised that
+      Euphrasia should be his. The infatuated youth walked to and fro under
+      Madame Euphrasia&rsquo;s windows, like the polar bears in their cage at the
+      Jardin des Plantes, with his right hand thrust beneath his waistcoat in
+      the region of the heart, which he was fit to tear from his bosom, but as
+      yet he had only wrenched at the elastic of his braces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can one do to raise ten thousand francs?&rdquo; he asked himself. &ldquo;Shall I
+      make off with the money that I must pay on the registration of that
+      conveyance? Good heavens! my loan would not ruin the purchaser, a man with
+      seven millions! And then next day I would fling myself at his feet and
+      say, &lsquo;I have taken ten thousand francs belonging to you, sir; I am
+      twenty-two years of age, and I am in love with Euphrasia&mdash;that is my
+      story. My father is rich, he will pay you back; do not ruin me! Have not
+      you yourself been twenty-two years old and madly in love?&rsquo; But these
+      beggarly landowners have no souls! He would be quite likely to give me up
+      to the public prosecutor, instead of taking pity upon me. Good God! if it
+      were only possible to sell your soul to the Devil! But there is neither a
+      God nor a Devil; it is all nonsense out of nursery tales and old wives&rsquo; 
+      talk. What shall I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir,&rdquo; said the
+      house-painter, who had overheard something that the clerk let fall, &ldquo;you
+      can have the ten thousand francs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Euphrasia!&rdquo; cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain with the devil
+      that inhabited the house-painter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the shawl, and mounted
+      Madame Euphrasia&rsquo;s staircase; and as (literally) the devil was in him, he
+      did not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought of hell and of his
+      privileges in twelve days of love and riot and forgetfulness, for which he
+      had bartered away all his hopes of a paradise to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired by
+      the Irishman, the offspring of Maturin&rsquo;s brain, was lost to mankind; and
+      the various Orientalists, Mystics, and Archaeologists who take an interest
+      in these matters were unable to hand down to posterity the proper method
+      of invoking the Devil, for the following sufficient reasons:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the wretched clerk lay
+      on a pallet bed in a garret in his master&rsquo;s house in the Rue Saint-Honore.
+      Shame, the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself, had taken
+      possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he would nurse himself;
+      misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill of a practitioner
+      well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to the effects of an
+      overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a mole&rsquo;s back. A devil had
+      left unmistakable traces of its passage there; could it have been
+      Ashtaroth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried away to the planet
+      Mercury,&rdquo; said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came to
+      investigate the matter at first hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am quite prepared to believe it,&rdquo; answered the Teuton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; returned the other. &ldquo;The opinion you advance coincides with
+      the very words of Jacob Boehme. In the forty-eighth proposition of <i>The
+      Threefold Life of Man</i> he says that &lsquo;if God hath brought all things to
+      pass with a LET THERE BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix which comprehends
+      and apprehends the nature which is formed by the spirit born of Mercury
+      and of God.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you say, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The German delivered his quotation afresh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We do not know it,&rdquo; said the clerks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Fiat</i>?...&rdquo; said a clerk. &ldquo;<i>Fiat lux</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can verify the citation for yourselves,&rdquo; said the German. &ldquo;You will
+      find the passage in the <i>Treatise of the Threefold Life of Man</i>, page
+      75; the edition was published by M. Migneret in 1809. It was translated
+      into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration for the famous
+      shoemaker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! he was a shoemaker, was he?&rdquo; said the head clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Prussia,&rdquo; said the German.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he work for the King of Prussia?&rdquo; inquired a Boeotian of a second
+      clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must have vamped up his prose,&rdquo; said a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man is colossal!&rdquo; cried the fourth, pointing to the Teuton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not know the
+      amount of devilry to be found in a notary&rsquo;s clerk. He went away without
+      the least idea that they were making game of him, and fully under the
+      impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as a colossal genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Education is making strides in France,&rdquo; said he to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PARIS, May 6, 1835.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Aquilina
+       The Magic Skin
+
+     Claparon, Charles
+       A Bachelor&rsquo;s Establishment
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Euphrasia
+       The Magic Skin
+
+     Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
+       Father Goriot
+       The Thirteen
+       Eugenie Grandet
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       Scenes from a Courtesan&rsquo;s Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Another Study of Woman
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Tillet, Ferdinand du
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       The Middle Classes
+       A Bachelor&rsquo;s Establishment
+       Pierrette
+       A Distinguished Provencial at Paris
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/1277.txt b/old/1277.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Melmoth Reconciled, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Melmoth Reconciled
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: April, 1998  [Etext #1277]
+Posting Date: February 22, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MELMOTH RECONCILED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, Bonnie Sala
+
+
+
+
+
+MELMOTH RECONCILED
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+  To Monsieur le General Baron de Pommereul, a token of the friendship
+  between our fathers, which survives in their sons.
+
+                                                        DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+MELMOTH RECONCILED
+
+
+There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social
+Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in the
+Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybrid
+which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is
+known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious
+doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to
+flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an
+uninteresting family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always be
+a problem for the physiologist. Has any one as yet been able to state
+correctly the terms of the proportion sum wherein the cashier figures as
+the unknown _x_? Where will you find the man who shall live with wealth,
+like a cat with a caged mouse? This man, for further qualification,
+shall be capable of sitting boxed in behind an iron grating for seven
+or eight hours a day during seven-eighths of the year, perched upon a
+cane-seated chair in a space as narrow as a lieutenant's cabin on board
+a man-of-war. Such a man must be able to defy anchylosis of the knee
+and thigh joints; he must have a soul above meanness, in order to live
+meanly; must lose all relish for money by dint of handling it. Demand
+this peculiar specimen of any creed, educational system, school, or
+institution you please, and select Paris, that city of fiery ordeals
+and branch establishment of hell, as the soil in which to plant the said
+cashier. So be it. Creeds, schools, institutions and moral systems, all
+human rules and regulations, great and small, will, one after another,
+present much the same face that an intimate friend turns upon you when
+you ask him to lend you a thousand francs. With a dolorous dropping of
+the jaw, they indicate the guillotine, much as your friend aforesaid
+will furnish you with the address of the money-lender, pointing you to
+one of the hundred gates by which a man comes to the last refuge of the
+destitute.
+
+Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man's mind; she indulges
+herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a
+cashier.
+
+Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of
+bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a thousand
+crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque, hold these
+rare products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem that they
+confine them in cages in their counting-houses, much as governments
+procure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at their own charges.
+
+If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid
+temperament; if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete cashier,
+he loves his wife, and that wife grows tired of her lot, has ambitions,
+or merely some vanity in her composition, the cashier is undone.
+Search the chronicles of the counting-house. You will not find a single
+instance of a cashier attaining _a position_, as it is called. They are
+sent to the hulks; they go to foreign parts; they vegetate on a second
+floor in the Rue Saint-Louis among the market gardens of the Marais.
+Some day, when the cashiers of Paris come to a sense of their real
+value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money. Still, certain
+it is that there are people who are fit for nothing but to be cashiers,
+just as the bent of a certain order of mind inevitably makes for
+rascality. But, oh marvel of our civilization! Society rewards virtue
+with an income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a second
+floor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs, an
+elderly wife and her offspring.
+
+So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a little boldness,
+a faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne
+outflanked Montecuculi, and Society will sanction the theft of millions,
+shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him
+with consideration.
+
+Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this profoundly illogical
+reasoner--Society. Government levies a conscription on the young
+intelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen,
+a conscription of precocious brain-work before it is sent up to be
+submitted to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds
+in much the same way. To this process the Government brings professional
+appraisers of talent, men who can assay brains as experts assay gold
+at the Mint. Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope, are sent up
+annually by the most progressive portion of the population; and of these
+the Government takes one-third, puts them in sacks called the Ecoles,
+and shakes them up together for three years. Though every one of these
+young plants represents vast productive power, they are made, as one
+may say, into cashiers. They receive appointments; the rank and file
+of engineers is made up of them; they are employed as captains of
+artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire.
+Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened
+on mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained the age of
+fifty years, they have their reward, and receive as the price of their
+services the third-floor lodging, the wife and family, and all the
+comforts that sweeten life for mediocrity. If from among this race of
+dupes there should escape some five or six men of genius who climb the
+highest heights, is it not miraculous?
+
+This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probity
+on the one hand and Government and Society on the other, in an age that
+considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory explanation
+a recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; but preceded by this
+summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive some thoughtful
+attention from minds capable of recognizing the real plague-spots of
+our civilization, a civilization which since 1815 as been moved by the
+spirit of gain rather than by principles of honor.
+
+
+
+About five o'clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of
+the largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light
+of a lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use
+and wont of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner of
+the low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very
+end of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors
+along this corridor, each with its label, gave the place the look of a
+bath-house. At four o'clock the stolid porter had proclaimed, according
+to his orders, "The bank is closed." And by this time the departments
+were deserted, wives of the partners in the firm were expecting their
+lovers; the two bankers dining with their mistresses. Everything was in
+order.
+
+The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet-iron was just
+behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless he was
+balancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered
+iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the modern inventor)
+that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the
+pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock was a warden
+who kept its own secret and could not be bribed; the mysterious word was
+an ingenious realization of the "Open sesame!" in the _Arabian Nights_.
+But even this was as nothing. A man might discover the password; but
+unless he knew the lock's final secret, the _ultima ratio_ of this
+gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, it discharged a blunderbuss
+at his head.
+
+The door of the room, the walls of the room, the shutters of the windows
+in the room, the whole place, in fact, was lined with sheet-iron a third
+of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden paneling. The
+shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If ever man could feel
+confident that he was absolutely alone, and that there was no remote
+possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that man was the cashier of
+the house of Nucingen and Company, in the Rue Saint-Lazare.
+
+Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave. The fire
+had died out in the stove, but the room was full of that tepid warmth
+which produces the dull heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of a
+morning after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no small part
+in the reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.
+
+A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong
+men is evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their wills
+enfeebled. Government offices are part of a great scheme for the
+manufacture of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a Feudal
+System on a pecuniary basis--and money is the foundation of the Social
+Contract. (See _Les Employes_.) The mephitic vapors in the atmosphere
+of a crowded room contribute in no small degree to bring about a gradual
+deterioration of intelligences, the brain that gives off the largest
+quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others, in the long run.
+
+The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or thereabouts. As he sat at the
+table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his bald head and
+glistening fringe of iron-gray hair that surrounded it--this baldness
+and the round outlines of his face made his head look very like a ball.
+His complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had gathered about his
+eyes, but he had the smooth, plump hands of a stout man. His blue cloth
+coat, a little rubbed and worn, and the creases and shininess of his
+trousers, traces of hard wear that the clothes-brush fails to remove,
+would impress a superficial observer with the idea that here was a
+thrifty and upright human being, sufficient of the philosopher or of the
+aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But, unluckily, it is easy to find
+penny-wise people who will prove weak, wasteful, or incompetent in the
+capital things of life.
+
+The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole,
+for he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the Emperor. M. de
+Nucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a banker, had had
+reason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier,
+who then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had befallen the
+major, and the banker out of regard for him paid him five hundred francs
+a month. The soldier had become a cashier in the year 1813, after his
+recovery from a wound received at Studzianka during the Retreat from
+Moscow, followed by six months of enforced idleness at Strasbourg,
+whither several officers had been transported by order of the Emperor,
+that they might receive skilled attention. This particular officer,
+Castanier by name, retired with the honorary grade of colonel, and a
+pension of two thousand four hundred francs.
+
+In ten years' time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier,
+and Castanier inspired the banker with such trust in him, that he was
+associated in the transactions that went on in the private office behind
+his little counting-house. The baron himself had access to it by means
+of a secret staircase. There, matters of business were decided. It was
+the bolting-room where proposals were sifted; the privy council chamber
+where the reports of the money market were analyzed; circular notes
+issued thence; and finally, the private ledger and the journal which
+summarized the work of all the departments were kept there.
+
+Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened on to a
+staircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on the
+first floor of their hotel. This done, he had sat down at his desk
+again, and for a moment he gazed at a little collection of letters of
+credit drawn on the firm of Watschildine of London. Then he had taken
+up the pen and imitated the banker's signature on each. _Nucingen_ he
+wrote, and eyed the forged signatures critically to see which seemed the
+most perfect copy.
+
+Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. "You are not
+alone!" a boding voice seemed to cry in his heart; and indeed the forger
+saw a man standing at the little grated window of the counting-house, a
+man whose breathing was so noiseless that he did not seem to breathe at
+all. Castanier looked, and saw that the door at the end of the passage
+was wide open; the stranger must have entered by that way.
+
+For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of dread
+that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man before him;
+and for that matter, the appearance of the apparition was sufficiently
+alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysterious circumstances of so
+sudden an entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh coloring of the long
+oval face, indicated quite as plainly as the cut of his clothes that the
+man was an Englishman, reeking of his native isles. You had only to look
+at the collar of his overcoat, at the voluminous cravat which smothered
+the crushed frills of a shirt front so white that it brought out the
+changeless leaden hue of an impassive face, and the thin red line of the
+lips that seemed made to suck the blood of corpses; and you can guess
+at once at the black gaiters buttoned up to the knee, and the
+half-puritanical costume of a wealthy Englishman dressed for a walking
+excursion. The intolerable glitter of the stranger's eyes produced a
+vivid and unpleasant impression, which was only deepened by the rigid
+outlines of his features. The dried-up, emaciated creature seemed to
+carry within him some gnawing thought that consumed him and could not be
+appeased.
+
+He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless
+eat continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or
+features. A tun of Tokay _vin de succession_ would not have caused any
+faltering in that piercing glance that read men's inmost thoughts, nor
+dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go
+to the bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquil
+majesty of a tiger about him.
+
+"I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said. Castanier
+felt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent
+shock similar to that given by a discharge of electricity.
+
+"The safe is closed," said Castanier.
+
+"It is open," said the Englishman, looking round the counting-house.
+"To-morrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The amount is for five hundred
+thousand francs. You have the money there, and I must have it."
+
+"But how did you come in, sir?"
+
+The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened Castanier. No words could
+have replied more fully nor more peremptorily than that scornful and
+imperial curl of the stranger's lips. Castanier turned away, took up
+fifty packets each containing ten thousand francs in bank-notes, and
+held them out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a bill
+accepted by the Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ran
+through him as he saw a red gleam in the stranger's eyes when they fell
+on the forged signature on the letter of credit.
+
+"It... it wants your signature..." stammered Castanier, handing back the
+bill.
+
+"Hand me your pen," answered the Englishman.
+
+Castanier handed him the pen with which he had just committed forgery.
+The stranger wrote _John Melmoth_, then he returned the slip of paper
+and the pen to the cashier. Castanier looked at the handwriting,
+noticing that it sloped from right to left in the Eastern fashion, and
+Melmoth disappeared so noiselessly that when Castanier looked up again
+an exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was no longer
+there, partly because he felt a strange painful sensation such as our
+imagination might take for an effect of poison.
+
+The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat through
+him that an emetic produces. But it seemed impossible to Castanier
+that the Englishman should have guessed his crime. His inward qualms he
+attributed to the palpitation of the heart that, according to received
+ideas, was sure to follow at once on such a "turn" as the stranger had
+given him.
+
+"The devil take it; I am very stupid. Providence is watching over me;
+for if that brute had come round to see my gentleman to-morrow, my goose
+would have been cooked!" said Castanier, and he burned the unsuccessful
+attempts at forgery in the stove.
+
+He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, and
+helped himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and English
+bank-notes from the safe, which he locked. Then he put everything in
+order, lit a candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella,
+and went out sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the
+strong room with Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her husband the
+Baron.
+
+"You are in luck, M. Castanier," said the banker's wife as he entered
+the room; "we have a holiday on Monday; you can go into the country, or
+to Soizy."
+
+"Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that the bill
+of exchange on Watschildine, which was behind time, has just been
+presented? The five hundred thousand francs have been paid; so I shall
+not come back till noon on Tuesday."
+
+"Good-bye, monsieur; I hope you will have a pleasant time."
+
+"The same to you, madame," replied the old dragoon as he went out. He
+glanced as he spoke at a young man well known in fashionable society at
+that time, a M. de Rastignac, who was regarded as Madame de Nucingen's
+lover.
+
+"Madame," remarked this latter, "the old boy looks to me as if he meant
+to play you some ill turn."
+
+"Pshaw! impossible; he is too stupid."
+
+
+
+"Piquoizeau," said the cashier, walking into the porter's room, "what
+made you let anybody come up after four o'clock?"
+
+"I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since four
+o'clock," said the man, "and nobody has gone into the bank. Nobody has
+come out either except the gentlemen----"
+
+"Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four o'clock M.
+Werbrust's friend came, a young fellow from Messrs. du Tillet & Co., in
+the Rue Joubert."
+
+"All right," said Castanier, and he hurried away.
+
+The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back the
+pen returned in greater intensity. "_Mille diables_!" thought he, as he
+threaded his way along the Boulevard de Gand, "haven't I taken proper
+precautions? Let me think! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a day
+of uncertainty before they begin to look for me; altogether, three days
+and four nights' respite. I have a couple of passports and two different
+disguises; is not that enough to throw the cleverest detective off the
+scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a million francs in London before
+the slightest suspicion has been aroused. My debts I am leaving behind
+for the benefit of my creditors, who will put a 'P'* on the bills, and
+I shall live comfortably in Italy for the rest of my days as the Conte
+Ferraro. [*Protested.] I was alone with him when he died, poor fellow,
+in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall slip into his skin.... _Mille
+diables_! the woman who is to follow after me might give them a clue!
+Think of an old campaigner like me infatuated enough to tie myself to a
+petticoat tail!... Why take her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could
+make up my mind to it; but--I know myself--I should be ass enough to
+go back to her. Still, nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave
+her?"
+
+"You will not take her!" cried a voice that filled Castanier with
+sickening dread. He turned sharply, and saw the Englishman.
+
+"The devil is in it!" cried the cashier aloud.
+
+Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if Castanier's first
+impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his own thoughts,
+he was so much torn up by opposing feelings that the immediate result
+was a temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk he fell once more
+into that fever of irresolution which besets those who are so carried
+away by passion that they are ready to commit a crime, but have not
+sufficient strength of character to keep it to themselves without
+suffering terribly in the process. So, although Castanier had made up
+his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was already half executed,
+he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him, as for many men of mixed
+character in whom weakness and strength are equally blended, the least
+trifling consideration determines whether they shall continue to lead
+blameless lives or become actively criminal. In the vast masses of
+men enrolled in Napoleon's armies there are many who, like Castanier,
+possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the battlefield, yet
+lacked the moral courage which makes a man as great in crime as he could
+have been in virtue.
+
+The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on
+his arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of
+Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. The
+London house had already been advised of the draft about to be made upon
+them, he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent (chosen
+at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave Portsmouth
+with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to Italy, and
+the passage-money had been paid in the name of the Conte Ferraro. The
+smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He had arranged
+matters so as to divert the search that would be made for him into
+Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the English
+vessel. Then, by the time that Nucingen might flatter himself that he
+was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as the Conte
+Ferraro, hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined to disfigure his
+face in order to disguise himself the more completely, and by means of
+an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. Yet, in spite of all these
+precautions, which surely seemed as if they must secure him complete
+immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was afraid. The even and
+peaceful life that he had led for so long had modified the morality of
+the camp. His life was stainless as yet; he could not sully it without a
+pang. So for the last time he abandoned himself to all the influences of
+the better self that strenuously resisted.
+
+"Pshaw!" he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
+Montmartre, "I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out to
+Versailles. A post-chaise will be ready for me at my old quartermaster's
+place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men were standing ready
+to shoot him down. The chances are all in my favor, so far as I see; so
+I shall take my little Naqui with me, and I will go."
+
+"You will not go!" exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of
+his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart.
+
+Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was
+whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe
+some hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind
+to cut off the man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the
+Boulevard Montmartre.
+
+"Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!" said
+he to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should think
+that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and
+the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick
+of time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this is folly..."
+
+Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening his pace
+as he neared the Rue Richer. There on the second floor of a block of
+buildings which looked out upon some gardens lived the unconscious cause
+of Castanier's crime--a young woman known in the quarter as Mme. de la
+Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's past life
+must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a complete
+presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.
+
+Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not even
+Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls, who
+are driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear of
+starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, many
+regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the laws
+of their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution in
+Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had
+met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough and homely to make his
+way in society, and he was tired of tramping the boulevard at night and
+of the kind of conquests made there by gold. For some time past he had
+desired to bring a certain regularity into an irregular life. He was
+struck by the beauty of the poor child who had drifted by chance into
+his arms, and his determination to rescue her from the life of the
+streets was half benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts of
+the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions mingle elements of evil
+with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture
+of motives underlying a man's intentions should be leniently judged.
+Castanier had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own
+interests were concerned. So he concluded to be a philanthropist on
+either count, and at first made her his mistress.
+
+"Hey! hey!" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion. "I am an
+old wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man,
+before you set up housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl's character for a
+bit, and see if she is a steady sort."
+
+This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
+approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
+recognize. During the first year she took the _nom de guerre_ of
+Aquilina, one of the characters in _Venice Preserved_ which she had
+chanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face
+and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain of
+which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was as
+well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he
+manifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So she
+took the name of Mme. de la Garde, in order to approach, as closely as
+Parisian usages permit, the conditions of a real marriage. As a matter
+of fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to be
+looked upon as respectable middle-class women, who lead humdrum lives of
+faithfulness to their husbands; women who would make excellent mothers,
+keepers of household accounts, and menders of household linen. This
+longing springs from a sentiment so laudable, that society should take
+it into consideration. But society, incorrigible as ever, will assuredly
+persist in regarding the married woman as a corvette duly authorized by
+her flag and papers to go on her own course, while the woman who is a
+wife in all but name is a pirate and an outlaw for lack of a document.
+A day came when Mme. de la Garde would fain have signed herself "Mme.
+Castanier." The cashier was put out by this.
+
+"So you do not love me well enough to marry me?" she said.
+
+Castanier did not answer; he was absorbed by his thoughts. The poor girl
+resigned herself to her fate. The ex-dragoon was in despair. Naqui's
+heart softened towards him at the sight of his trouble; she tried to
+soothe him, but what could she do when she did not know what ailed him?
+When Naqui made up her mind to know the secret, although she never asked
+him a question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the existence of a
+Mme. Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times accursed, was living
+in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there; he wrote to her
+twice a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well, that no one
+suspected that he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it
+is familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a like
+predicament, it is perhaps worth while to give the story.
+
+Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word which
+in the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is a
+sort of serf, a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple
+creature, and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the
+wiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands.
+It was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose when the
+Imperial armies were not on active service abroad, that Castanier was so
+unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he danced at
+a _ridotto_, the provincial name for the entertainments often given
+by the military to the townsfolk, or vice versa, in garrison towns. A
+scheme for inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony was immediately
+set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers secure accomplices in
+a human heart by touching all its motive springs, while they convert all
+their friends into fellow-conspirators. Like all people possessed by
+one idea, these ladies press everything into the service of their great
+project, slowly elaborating their toils, much as the ant-lion excavates
+its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at the bottom for its victim.
+Suppose that no one strays, after all, into that carefully constructed
+labyrinth? Suppose that the ant-lion dies of hunger and thirst in her
+pit? Such things may be, but if any heedless creature once enters in, it
+never comes out. All the wires which could be pulled to induce action
+on the captain's part were tried; appeals were made to the secret
+interested motives that always come into play in such cases; they worked
+on Castanier's hopes and on the weaknesses and vanity of human nature.
+Unluckily, he had praised the daughter to her mother when he brought her
+back after a waltz, a little chat followed, and then an invitation in
+the most natural way in the world. Once introduced into the house,
+the dragoon was dazzled by the hospitality of a family who appeared
+to conceal their real wealth beneath a show of careful economy. He was
+skilfully flattered on all sides, and every one extolled for his benefit
+the various treasures there displayed. A neatly timed dinner, served on
+plate lent by an uncle, the attention shown to him by the only daughter
+of the house, the gossip of the town, a well-to-do sub-lieutenant who
+seemed likely to cut the ground from under his feet--all the innumerable
+snares, in short, of the provincial ant-lion were set for him, and to
+such good purpose, that Castanier said five years later, "To this day I
+do not know how it came about!"
+
+The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who after
+two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the
+most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair
+complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color
+in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with
+blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew
+crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove
+Castanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself wings. At length the
+dragoon, no longer recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left her to
+live on a little property at Strasbourg, until the time when it should
+please God to remove her to adorn Paradise. She was one of those
+virtuous women who, for want of other occupation, would weary the life
+out of an angel with complainings, who pray till (if their prayers are
+heard in heaven) they must exhaust the patience of the Almighty, and say
+everything that is bad of their husbands in dovelike murmurs over a game
+of boston with their neighbors. When Aquilina learned all these troubles
+she clung still more affectionately to Castanier, and made him so happy,
+varying with woman's ingenuity the pleasures with which she filled his
+life, that all unwittingly she was the cause of the cashier's downfall.
+
+Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths of
+love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold
+nor for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the
+present and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive
+ornaments and dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of
+her class, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There was
+absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantage
+but to look the fairer, and moreover, no woman could live without
+luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature (and military
+men are mostly of this stamp) meets with such a woman, he feels a sort
+of exasperation at finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feels
+that he could stop a mail coach to obtain money for her if he has not
+sufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime if so he may be great
+and noble in the eyes of some woman or of his special public; such
+is the nature of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler who would be
+dishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum he borrowed from
+a waiter in a gaming-house; but will shrink from no crime, will leave
+his wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder, if so he
+may come to the gaming-table with a full purse, and his honor remain
+untarnished among the frequenters of that fatal abode. So it was with
+Castanier.
+
+He had begun by installing Aquiline is a modest fourth-floor dwelling,
+the furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl's
+beauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and
+unlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her; and longed
+to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilette was so comically out of
+keeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearly
+incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost all Castanier's
+savings, for he furnished his domestic paradise with all the prodigality
+that is lavished on a kept mistress. A pretty woman must have everything
+pretty about her; the unity of charm in the woman and her surroundings
+singles her out from among her sex. This sentiment of homogeneity
+indeed, though it has frequently escaped the attention of observers,
+is instinctive in human nature; and the same prompting leads elderly
+spinsters to surround themselves with dreary relics of the past. But
+the lovely Piedmontese must have the newest and latest fashions, and
+all that was daintiest and prettiest in stuffs for hangings, in silks
+or jewelry, in fine china and other brittle and fragile wares. She
+asked for nothing; but when she was called upon to make a choice, when
+Castanier asked her, "Which do you like?" she would answer, "Why, this
+is the nicest!" Love never counts the cost, and Castanier therefore
+always took the "nicest."
+
+When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it but
+everything in the household must be in conformity, from the linen,
+plate, and crystal through a thousand and one items of expenditure down
+to the pots and pans in the kitchen. Castanier had meant to "do things
+simply," as the saying goes, but he gradually found himself more and
+more in debt. One expense entailed another. The clock called for
+candle sconces. Fires must be lighted in the ornamental grates, but the
+curtains and hangings were too fresh and delicate to be soiled by smuts,
+so they must be replaced by patent and elaborate fireplaces, warranted
+to give out no smoke, recent inventions of the people who are so clever
+at drawing up a prospectus. Then Aquilina found it so nice to run about
+barefooted on the carpet in her room, that Castanier must have soft
+carpets laid everywhere for the pleasure of playing with Naqui. A
+bathroom, too, was built for her, everything to the end that she might
+be more comfortable.
+
+Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have a mysterious knack
+of enlarging a hole in a man's purse. They cannot give the price of
+anything upon inquiry; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide
+delay, orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate
+of cost. The same people never send in the bills at once, but ply the
+purchaser with furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty,
+so charming; and every one is satisfied.
+
+A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are metamorphosed, and
+reappear in the shape of alarming totals on invoices that fill the soul
+with their horrid clamor; they are in urgent want of the money; they
+are, as you may say on the brink of bankruptcy, their tears flow, it
+is heartrending to hear them! And then----the gulf yawns, and gives up
+serried columns of figures marching four deep, when as a matter of fact
+they should have issued innocently three by three.
+
+Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had spent, he had arranged
+for Aquilina to have a carriage from a livery stable when she went out,
+instead of a cab. Castanier was a gourmand; he engaged an excellent
+cook; and Aquilina, to please him, had herself made the purchases of
+early fruit and vegetables, rare delicacies, and exquisite wines. But,
+as Aquilina had nothing of her own, these gifts of hers, so precious by
+reason of the thought and tact and graciousness that prompted them, were
+no less a drain upon Castanier's purse; he did not like his Naqui to
+be without money, and Naqui could not keep money in her pocket. So the
+table was a heavy item of expenditure for a man with Castanier's income.
+The ex-dragoon was compelled to resort to various shifts for obtaining
+money, for he could not bring himself to renounce this delightful life.
+He loved the woman too well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He
+was one of those men who, through self-love or through weakness of
+character, can refuse nothing to a woman; false shame overpowers them,
+and they rather face ruin than make the admissions: "I cannot----" "My
+means will not permit----" "I cannot afford----"
+
+When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge from the abyss
+of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilina and live
+upon bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or to change
+his habits of life, that daily he put off his plans of reform until the
+morrow. The debts were pressing, and he began by borrowing money. His
+position and previous character inspired confidence, and of this he took
+advantage to devise a system of borrowing money as he required it. Then,
+as the total amount of debt rapidly increased, he had recourse to those
+commercial inventions known as accommodation bills. This form of bill
+does not represent goods or other value received, and the first endorser
+pays the amount named for the obliging person who accepts it. This
+species of fraud is tolerated because it is impossible to detect it,
+and, moreover, it is an imaginary fraud which only becomes real if
+payment is ultimately refused.
+
+When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer, whether
+because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased, or
+because Castanier was unable to pay the large amount of interest on
+the aforesaid sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On
+making this discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy rather
+than an ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. He
+determined, after the fashion of the celebrated cashier of the Royal
+Treasury, to abuse the trust deservedly won, and to increase the number
+of his creditors by making a final loan of the sum sufficient to keep
+him in comfort in a foreign country for the rest of his days. All this,
+as has been seen, he had prepared to do.
+
+Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this life; she enjoyed her
+existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where the
+money came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered rolls
+untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the culture and
+growth of wheat; but as the labor and miscalculations of agriculture
+lie on the other side of the baker's oven, so beneath the unappreciated
+luxury of many a Parisian household lie intolerable anxieties and
+exorbitant toil.
+
+While Castanier was enduring the torture of the strain, and his thoughts
+were full of the deed that should change his whole life, Aquilina was
+lying luxuriously back in a great armchair by the fireside, beguiling
+the time by chatting with her waiting-maid. As frequently happens in
+such cases the maid had become the mistress' confidant, Jenny having
+first assured herself that her mistress' ascendency over Castanier was
+complete.
+
+"What are we to do this evening? Leon seems determined to come," Mme.
+de la Garde was saying, as she read a passionate epistle indited upon a
+faint gray notepaper.
+
+"Here is the master!" said Jenny.
+
+Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted, crumpled up the
+letter, took it with the tongs, and held it in the flames.
+
+"So that is what you do with your love-letters, is it?" asked Castanier.
+
+"Oh goodness, yes," said Aquilina; "is it not the best way of keeping
+them safe? Besides, fire should go to fire, as water makes for the
+river."
+
+"You are talking as if it were a real love-letter, Naqui----"
+
+"Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them?" she said, holding up
+her forehead for a kiss. There was a carelessness in her manner that
+would have told any man less blind than Castanier that it was only a
+piece of conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier, but
+use and wont had brought Castanier to the point where clear-sightedness
+is no longer possible for love.
+
+"I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening," he said; "let us have
+dinner early, and then we need not dine in a hurry."
+
+"Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not know what is the
+matter with me this evening; I would rather stay here by the fire."
+
+"Come, all the same though, Naqui; I shall not be here to bore you much
+longer. Yes, Quiqui, I am going to start to-night, and it will be some
+time before I come back again. I am leaving everything in your charge.
+Will you keep your heart for me too?"
+
+"Neither my heart nor anything else," she said; "but when you come back
+again, Naqui will still be Naqui for you."
+
+"Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Eh! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me such sweet little
+notes?" she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap of paper with a
+mocking smile.
+
+"Is there any truth in it?" asked Castanier. "Have you really a lover?"
+
+"Really!" cried Aquilina; "and have you never given it a serious
+thought, dear? To begin with, you are fifty years old. Then you have
+just the sort of face to put on a fruit stall; if the woman tried to see
+you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blow like a
+seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like a diamond
+on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the
+dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If you
+have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to add imbecility
+to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I am will be content
+with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth and good looks and
+pleasure by way of a variety----"
+
+"Aquilina! you are laughing, of course?"
+
+"Oh, very well; and are you not laughing too? Do you take me for a fool,
+telling me that you are going away? 'I am going to start to-night!'" she
+said, mimicking his tones. "Stuff and nonsense! Would you talk like that
+if you were really going from your Naqui? You would cry, like the booby
+that you are!"
+
+"After all, if I go, will you follow?" he asked.
+
+"Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke or not."
+
+"Yes, seriously, I am going."
+
+"Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey to you, my boy!
+I will wait till you come back. I would sooner take leave of life than
+take leave of my dear, cozy Paris----"
+
+"Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, and lead a pleasant life
+there--a delicious, luxurious life, with this stout old fogy of yours,
+who puffs and blows like a seal?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ungrateful girl!"
+
+"Ungrateful?" she cried, rising to her feet. "I might leave this house
+this moment and take nothing out of it but myself. I shall have given
+you all the treasures a young girl can give, and something that not
+every drop in your veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by any
+means whatever, by selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I could
+recover my past self, body and soul (for I have, perhaps, redeemed
+my soul), and be pure as a lily for my lover, I would not hesitate a
+moment! What sort of devotion has rewarded mine? You have housed and fed
+me, just as you give a dog food and a kennel because he is a protection
+to the house, and he may take kicks when we are out of humor, and lick
+our hands as soon as we are pleased to call him. And which of us two
+will have been the more generous?"
+
+"Oh! dear child, do you not see that I am joking?" returned Castanier.
+"I am going on a short journey; I shall not be away for very long. But
+come with me to the Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, after I
+have had time to say good-bye to you."
+
+"Poor pet! so you are really going, are you?" she said. She put her arms
+round his neck, and drew down his head against her bodice.
+
+"You are smothering me!" cried Castanier, with his face buried in
+Aquilina's breast. That damsel turned to say in Jenny's ear, "Go to
+Leon, and tell him not to come till one o'clock. If you do not find
+him, and he comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your
+room.--Well," she went on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweak
+to the tip of his nose, "never mind, handsomest of seals that you are. I
+will go to the theatre with you this evening? But all in good time; let
+us have dinner! There is a nice little dinner for you--just what you
+like."
+
+"It is very hard to part from such a woman as you!" exclaimed Castanier.
+
+"Very well then, why do you go?" asked she.
+
+"Ah! why? why? If I were to begin to begin to explain the reasons why,
+I must tell you things that would prove to you that I love you almost to
+madness. Ah! if you have sacrificed your honor for me, I have sold mine
+for you; we are quits. Is that love?"
+
+"What is all this about?" said she. "Come, now, promise me that if I had
+a lover you would still love me as a father; that would be love! Come,
+now, promise it at once, and give us your fist upon it."
+
+"I should kill you," and Castanier smiled as he spoke.
+
+They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the Gymnase. When
+the first part of the performance was over, it occurred to Castanier to
+show himself to some of his acquaintances in the house, so as to turn
+away any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de la Garde in the
+corner box where she was seated, according to her modest wont, and went
+to walk up and down in the lobby. He had not gone many paces before he
+saw the Englishman, and with a sudden return of the sickening sensation
+of heat that once before had vibrated through him, and of the terror
+that he had felt already, he stood face to face with Melmoth.
+
+"Forger!"
+
+At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who were moving about
+them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity in their
+eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he raised his
+hand to strike him--and felt his arm paralyzed by some invisible power
+that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot. He allowed the
+stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked together to the
+green-room like two friends.
+
+"Who is strong enough to resist me?" said the Englishman, addressing
+him. "Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, that
+it is in my power to do everything? I read men's thoughts, I see the
+future, and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also.
+Time and space and distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at
+my beck and call. I have the power of continual enjoyment and of giving
+joy. I can see through walls, discover hidden treasures, and fill my
+hands with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect makes no
+mistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap up their
+gold and precious stones, and surround myself with fair women and ever
+new faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I could gamble on the
+Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible; but a man
+who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth need not
+trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand that grasps
+you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of iron! try to
+soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You would hear
+my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the Seine; you might
+hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me there? My voice could
+be heard through the sound of thunder, my eyes shine as brightly as the
+sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer!"
+
+Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest nor
+contradiction within himself. He walked side by side with the
+Englishman, and had no power to leave him.
+
+"You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have found at last the
+mate whom I have sought. Have you a mind to learn your destiny? Aha!
+you came here to see a play, and you shall see a play--nay, two. Come.
+Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am I not
+your last hope of escape?"
+
+Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box; and in
+accordance with the order he had just received, he hastened to introduce
+Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in the least
+surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front, and
+Castanier was once more beside his mistress; the man's slightest wish
+must be obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that time,
+small theatres gave only three pieces. One of the actors had made the
+Gymnase the fashion, and that evening Perlet (the actor in question)
+was to play in a vaudeville called _Le Comedien d'Etampes_, in which he
+filled four different parts.
+
+When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over the
+crowded house. Castanier's cry of terror died away, for the walls of his
+throat seemed glued together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, and the
+cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman's desire.
+
+He saw the strong-room at the bank; he saw the Baron de Nucingen in
+conference with a police-officer from the Prefecture, who was informing
+him of Castanier's conduct, explaining that the cashier had absconded
+with money taken from the safe, giving the history of the forged
+signature. The information was put in writing; the document signed and
+duly despatched to the Public Prosecutor.
+
+"Are we in time, do you think?" asked Nucingen.
+
+"Yes," said the agent of police; "he is at the Gymnase, and has no
+suspicion of anything."
+
+Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would leave the
+theatre, but Melmoth's hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged to
+sit and watch; the hideous power of the man produced an effect like that
+of nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself was the
+nightmare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like a poisoned
+atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore the Englishman's
+mercy, he met those blazing eyes that discharged electric currents,
+which pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of steel.
+
+"What have I done to you?" he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and
+he breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge. "What do you want of
+me?"
+
+"Look!" cried Melmoth.
+
+Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed. The play
+seemed to be over, and Castanier beheld himself stepping from the
+carriage with Aquilina; but as he entered the courtyard of the house on
+the Rue Richer, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw his
+own house. Jenny was chatting by the fire in her mistress' room with a
+subaltern officer of a line regiment then stationed at Paris.
+
+"He is going, is he?" said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to
+a family in easy circumstances; "I can be happy at my ease! I love
+Aquilina too well to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself, am
+going to marry Mme. de la Garde!" cried the sergeant.
+
+"Old toad!" Castanier murmured piteously.
+
+"Here come the master and mistress; hide yourself! Stay, get in here
+Monsieur Leon," said Jenny. "The master won't stay here for very long."
+
+Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among Aquilina's gowns
+in her dressing-room. Almost immediately he himself appeared upon the
+scene, and took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in "asides"
+to Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his
+ears. She wept with one side of her face, and laughed with the other.
+The audience called for an encore.
+
+"Accursed creature!" cried Castanier from his box.
+
+Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes.
+
+"Goodness!" she cried, "how funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman!... Why
+don't you laugh? Every one else in the house is laughing. Laugh, dear!"
+she said to Castanier.
+
+Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The
+Englishman's laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was as
+if a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.
+
+"Laughing! are they laughing!" stammered Castanier.
+
+He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
+ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house
+with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying
+from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with
+the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He
+recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l'Orangerie and the
+Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old quartermaster. It was two
+o'clock in the morning, the most perfect stillness prevailed, no one was
+there to watch his movements. The post-horses were put into the carriage
+(it came from a house in the Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman
+lived, and had been ordered in the foreigner's name to avoid raising
+suspicion). Castanier saw that he had his bills and his passports,
+stepped into the carriage, and set out. But at the barrier he saw two
+gendarmes lying in wait for the carriage. A cry of horror burst from him
+but Melmoth gave him a glance, and again the sound died in his throat.
+
+"Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!" said the Englishman.
+
+In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at the
+Conciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled _The Cashier_,
+he saw himself, in three months' time, condemned to twenty years of
+penal servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the
+Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a
+red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty convicts
+in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn to have the
+irons riveted on his limbs.
+
+"Dear me! I cannot laugh any more!..." said Aquilina. "You are very
+solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone."
+
+"A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the piece was at an end,
+and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde's cloak.
+
+The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
+
+"Very well, what is it?"
+
+"No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going next
+to Versailles, there to be arrested."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp," returned
+the Englishman.
+
+Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him
+out from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell.
+
+"Suppose that the Devil were to make a bid for your soul, would you not
+give it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single word,
+and those five hundred thousand francs shall be back in the Baron de
+Nucingen's safe; then you can tear up the letter of credit, and all
+traces of your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would have gold
+in torrents. You hardly believe in anything perhaps? Well, if all this
+comes to pass, you will believe at least in the Devil."
+
+"If it were only possible!" said Castanier joyfully.
+
+"The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible,"
+answered the Englishman.
+
+Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in the
+Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling,
+the streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness
+overhead; but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was filled
+with sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The trees were
+covered with leaves; a double stream of joyous holiday makers strolled
+beneath them. Sellers of liquorice water shouted their cool drinks.
+Splendid carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry of terror broke
+from the cashier, and at that cry rain and darkness once more settled
+down upon the Boulevard.
+
+Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. "Do be quick, dear!"
+she cried; "either come in or stay out. Really you are as dull as
+ditch-water this evening----"
+
+"What must I do?" Castanier asked of Melmoth.
+
+"Would you like to take my place?" inquired the Englishman.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few moments."
+
+"By the by, Castanier, you are rather off your balance," Aquilina
+remarked. "There is some mischief brewing: you were quite melancholy and
+thoughtful all through the play. Do you want anything that I can give
+you, dear? Tell me."
+
+"I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me."
+
+"You need not wait till then," she said, throwing her arms round his
+neck. "There!" she said, as she embraced him, passionately to all
+appearance, and plied him with the coaxing caresses that are part of the
+business of such a life as hers, like stage action for an actress.
+
+"Where is the music?" asked Castanier.
+
+"What next? Only think of your hearing music now!"
+
+"Heavenly music!" he went on. "The sounds seem to come from above."
+
+"What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italiens because
+you could not abide music, and are you turning music-mad at this time
+of day? Mad--that you are! The music is inside your own noddle, old
+addle-pate!" she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rocked
+it to and fro on her shoulder. "Tell me now, old man; isn't it the
+creaking of the wheels that sings in your ears?"
+
+"Just listen, Naqui! If the angels make music for God Almighty, it must
+be such music as this that I am drinking in at every pore, rather
+than hearing. I do no know how to tell you about it; it is as sweet as
+honey-water!"
+
+"Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all the
+pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad, upon my word!" she
+said to herself, as she saw Castanier's attitude; he looked like an
+opium-eater in a blissful trance.
+
+They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the thought of all that
+he had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or not; he
+was like a drunken man, and utterly unable to think connectedly. He
+came to himself in Aquilina's room, whither he had been supported by
+the united efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he had
+fainted as he stepped from the carriage.
+
+"_He_ will be here directly! Oh, my friends, my friends," he cried, and
+he flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside the
+fire.
+
+Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. She
+announced that "a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with
+the master," when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence followed.
+He looked at the porter--the porter went; he looked at Jenny--and Jenny
+went likewise.
+
+"Madame," said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, "with your permission, we
+will conclude a piece of urgent business."
+
+He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went into
+the drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth's eyes
+lit up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had left
+Aquilina like one spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take any
+thought for her lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in
+Jenny's room, whereas their early return had taken the waiting-woman by
+surprise, and she had hidden the officer in the dressing-room. It had
+all happened exactly as in the drama that Melmoth had displayed for his
+victim. Presently the house-door was slammed violently, and Castanier
+reappeared.
+
+"What ails you?" cried the horror-struck Aquilina.
+
+There was a change in the cashier's appearance. A strange pallor
+overspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarly
+sinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare of
+his eyes was intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch. The
+man who had looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenly grown
+tyrannical and proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier had grown
+thinner; there was a terrible majesty in his brow; it was as if a dragon
+breathed forth a malignant influence that weighed upon the others like a
+close, heavy atmosphere. For a moment Aquilina knew not what to do.
+
+"What has passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those
+few minutes?" she asked at length.
+
+"I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer the same. He has
+taken my _self_, and given me his soul in exchange."
+
+"What?"
+
+"You would not understand it at all.... Ah! he was right," Castanier
+went on, "the fiend was right! I see everything and know all
+things.--You have been deceiving me!"
+
+Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a candle and
+went into the dressing-room. The unhappy girl followed him with dazed
+bewilderment, and great was her astonishment when Castanier drew the
+dresses that hung there aside and disclosed the sergeant.
+
+"Come out, my boy," said the cashier; and, taking Leon by a button of
+his overcoat, he drew the officer into his room.
+
+The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her
+easy-chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the fire, and left
+Aquilina's lover in a standing position.
+
+"You have been in the army," said Leon; "I am ready to give you
+satisfaction."
+
+"You are a fool," said Castanier drily. "I have no occasion to fight.
+I could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell you
+what it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line round
+your neck--the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end in the
+Place de Greve. You are the headsman's property! there is no escape for
+you. You belong to a vendita, of the Carbonari. You are plotting against
+the Government."
+
+"You did not tell me that," cried the Piedmontese, turning to Leon.
+
+"So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put down
+your Society?" the cashier continued. "The Procureur-General has a list
+of your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up the
+indictment at this moment."
+
+"Then was it you who betrayed him?" cried Aquilina, and with a hoarse
+sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet;
+she seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces.
+
+"You know me too well to believe it," Castanier retorted. Aquilina was
+benumbed by his coolness.
+
+"Then how do you know it?" she murmured.
+
+"I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I know
+it--now I see and know all things, and can do all things."
+
+The sergeant was overcome with amazement.
+
+"Very well then, save him, save him, dear!" cried the girl, flinging
+herself at Castanier's feet. "If nothing is impossible to you, save him!
+I will love you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and not your
+mistress. I will obey your wildest whims; you shall do as you will
+with me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love; you shall have a
+daughter's devotion as well as... Rodolphe! why will you not understand!
+After all, however violent my passions may be, I shall be yours for
+ever! What should I say to persuade you? I will invent pleasures... I...
+Great heavens! one moment! whatever you shall ask of me--to fling myself
+from the window for instance--you will need to say but one word, 'Leon!'
+and I will plunge down into hell. I would bear any torture, any pain of
+body or soul, anything you might inflict upon me!"
+
+Castanier heard her with indifference. For an answer, he indicated Leon
+to her with a fiendish laugh.
+
+"The guillotine is waiting for him," he repeated.
+
+"No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!" she cried.
+"Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger upon him! Why will you not
+save him?" she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair unbound.
+"Can you save him?"
+
+"I can do everything."
+
+"Why do you not save him?"
+
+"Why?" shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.--"Eh! it
+is my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!"
+
+"Die?" said Aquilina; "must he die, my lover? Is it possible?"
+
+She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the
+chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who now began to laugh.
+
+"You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now----"
+
+Aquilina's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string.
+
+"Out with you, my good friend," said the cashier, turning to the
+sergeant, "and go about your business."
+
+He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier's superior power, and
+could not choose but to obey.
+
+"This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if I
+chose, and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises,
+but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy."
+
+"I shall follow him!" said Aquilina.
+
+"Then follow him," returned Castanier.--"Here, Jenny----"
+
+Jenny appeared.
+
+"Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.--Here Naqui," said Castanier,
+drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket; "you shall not go away
+like a pauper from a man who loves you still."
+
+He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes,
+flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a
+frenzy of despair.
+
+"We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a farthing of
+your money.--Jenny, stay where you are."
+
+"Good-evening!" answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes again.
+"I have come back from my journey.--Jenny," he added, looking at the
+bewildered waiting-maid, "you seem to me to be a good sort of girl. You
+have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have a master."
+
+Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
+house of one of her friends. But all Leon's movements were suspiciously
+watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends were
+arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that day.
+
+
+
+Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
+transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the
+young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
+tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
+lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature
+had suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
+developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
+things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above the
+world.
+
+Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
+Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidelities;
+and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in
+the sunlight.
+
+Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress' position and fortune,
+and did the cashier's will in all things; but Castanier, who could read
+the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying
+this purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her, however,
+like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and
+flings away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time, when she
+was fully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house,
+Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her mind as she
+drank her coffee.
+
+"Do you know what you are thinking, child?" he said, smiling. "I will
+tell you: 'So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so much,
+and the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! All on easy
+terms that Madame refused, I do no know why. My word! if I might
+drive about in a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box at the
+theatre, and put something by! with me he should lead a life of pleasure
+fit to kill him if he were not as strong as a Turk! I never saw such
+a man!'--Was not that just what you were thinking," he went on, and
+something in his voice made Jenny turn pale. "Well, yes, child; you
+could not stand it, and I am sending you away for your own good; you
+would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part good friends," and he
+coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of money.
+
+The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he would make of
+the terrible power brought at the price of his eternal happiness, was
+the full and complete indulgence of all his tastes.
+
+He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his accounts with
+M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then
+determined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman Empire.
+He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old went to
+that last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his
+revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, not on
+the narrow walls of the banqueting-chamber, but over the vast spaces
+of heaven that the rainbow spans. His feast was not, indeed, an orgy
+confined within the limits of a banquet, for he squandered all the
+powers of soul and body in exhausting all the pleasures of earth. The
+table was in some sort earth itself, the earth that trembled beneath
+his feet. His was the last festival of the reckless spendthrift who has
+thrown all prudence to the winds. The devil had given him the key of the
+storehouse of human pleasures; he had filled and refilled his hands, and
+he was fast nearing the bottom. In a moment he had felt all that that
+enormous power could accomplish; in a moment he had exercised it, proved
+it, wearied of it. What had hitherto been the sum of human desires
+became as nothing. So often it happens that with possession the vast
+poetry of desire must end, and the thing possessed is seldom the thing
+that we dreamed of.
+
+Beneath Melmoth's omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so
+many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to his
+successor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.
+
+To come to a clear understanding of Castanier's strange position, it
+must be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and
+feeling had been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other;
+and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those who have never
+broken the prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His relation
+to the world without had been entirely changed with the expansion of his
+faculties.
+
+Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the
+fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African
+desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that
+could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance
+the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it were all
+flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a despot;
+a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its fruits. The
+transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain, and diversify
+human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had so completely glutted
+his appetites that pleasure must overpass the limits of pleasure to
+tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and suddenly grown fastidious
+beyond all measure, so that ordinary pleasures became distasteful.
+Conscious that at will he was the master of all the women that he could
+desire, knowing that his power was irresistible, he did not care to
+exercise it; they were pliant to his unexpressed wishes, to his most
+extravagant caprices, until he felt a horrible thirst for love, and
+would have love beyond their power to give.
+
+The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing
+and consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was a
+horrible position.
+
+The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul and
+his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being; but
+in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of the
+sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity of
+longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on outspread
+wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to other
+spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopeless
+knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and thirsted
+after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for which he could
+not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned with desire; he
+panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.
+
+The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its
+working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the profound
+scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx who knows
+everything and says nothing, and sees all things with an unmoved
+countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his knowledge
+to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world, with one
+effort he could make the circle of the globe, and riches and power were
+meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy of omnipotence, a
+melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise of infinite power
+in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier had not, like his
+Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and malice; he felt that he
+was a devil, but a devil whose time was not yet come, while Satan is a
+devil through all eternity, and being damned beyond redemption, delights
+to stir up the world, like a dung heap, with his triple fork and to
+thwart therein the designs of God. But Castanier, for his misfortune,
+had one hope left.
+
+If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird
+springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,
+he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond it.
+That vision of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see humanity and
+its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools who long for the
+power of the Devil gauge its desirability from a human standpoint; they
+do not see that with the Devil's power they will likewise assume his
+thoughts, and that they will be doomed to remain as men among creatures
+who will no longer understand them. The Nero unknown to history who
+dreams of setting Paris on fire for his private entertainment, like
+an exhibition of a burning house on the boards of a theatre, does not
+suspect that if he had the power, Paris would become for him as little
+interesting as an ant-heap by the roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The
+circle of the sciences was for Castanier something like a logogriph
+for a man who does not know the key to it. Kings and Governments were
+despicable in his eyes. His great debauch had been in some sort a
+deplorable farewell to his life as a man. The earth had grown too
+narrow for him, for the infernal gifts laid bare for him the secrets of
+creation--he saw the cause and foresaw its end. He was shut out from
+all that men call "heaven" in all languages under the sun; he could no
+longer think of heaven.
+
+Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the
+drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the
+baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth's eyes; he, too, knew the thirst
+that burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual struggle
+between two natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an angel,
+and he knew himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet and
+gentle creature that a wizard's malice has imprisoned in a mis-shapen
+form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's will must set it free
+from its detested envelope.
+
+As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of really
+great nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a woman's heart, so
+Castanier awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul,
+an idea which was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very fact that
+he had bartered away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in thought
+upon the future of those who pray and believe. On the morrow of his
+debauch, when he entered into the sober possession of his power, this
+idea made him feel himself a prisoner; he knew the burden of the woe
+that poets, and prophets, and great oracles of faith have set forth for
+us in such mighty words; he felt the point of the Flaming Sword plunged
+into his side, and hurried in search of Melmoth. What had become of his
+predecessor?
+
+The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue Ferou, near
+Saint-Sulpice--a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode. The Rue Ferou
+itself is one of the most dismal streets in Paris; it has a north aspect
+like all the streets that lie at right angles to the left bank of the
+Seine, and the houses are in keeping with the site. As Castanier stood
+on the threshold he found that the door itself, like the vaulted roof,
+was hung with black; rows of lighted tapers shone brilliantly as though
+some king were lying in state; and a priest stood on either side of a
+catafalque that had been raised there.
+
+"There is no need to ask why you have come, sir," the old hall porter
+said to Castanier; "you are so like our poor dear master that is gone.
+But if you are his brother, you have come too late to bid him good-bye.
+The good gentleman died the night before last."
+
+"How did he die?" Castanier asked of one of the priests.
+
+"Set your mind at rest," said the old priest; he partly raised as he
+spoke the black pall that covered the catafalque.
+
+Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith has made
+sublime; the soul seemed to shine forth from every line of it, bringing
+light and warmth for other men, kindled by the unfailing charity within.
+This was Sir John Melmoth's confessor.
+
+"Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that must rejoice
+the angels. Do you know what joy there is in heaven over a sinner
+that repents? His tears of penitence, excited by grace, flowed without
+ceasing; death alone checked them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in him. His
+burning words, full of lively faith, were worthy of the Prophet-King.
+If, in the course of my life, I have never heard a more dreadful
+confession than from the lips of this Irish gentleman, I have likewise
+never heard such fervent and passionate prayers. However great the
+measures of his sins may have been, his repentance has filled the abyss
+to overflowing. The hand of God was visibly stretched out above him, for
+he was completely changed, there was such heavenly beauty in his face.
+The hard eyes were softened by tears; the resonant voice that struck
+terror into those who heard it took the tender and compassionate tones
+of those who themselves have passed through deep humiliation. He so
+edified those who heard his words, that some who had felt drawn to see
+the spectacle of a Christian's death fell on their knees as he spoke of
+heavenly things, and of the infinite glory of God, and gave thanks and
+praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly wealth to his family, no
+family can possess a greater blessing than this that he surely gained
+for them, a soul among the blessed, who will watch over you all and
+direct you in the path to heaven."
+
+These words made such a vivid impression upon Castanier that he
+instantly hurried from the house to the Church of Saint-Sulpice,
+obeying what might be called a decree of fate. Melmoth's repentance had
+stupefied him.
+
+
+At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a preacher, famed for
+his eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which
+he demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a
+generation proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by another
+voice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been put off to
+a later hour on account of Melmoth's funeral, so Castanier arrived just
+as the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a future existence
+of happiness with all the charm of eloquence and force of expression
+which have made him famous. The seeds of divine doctrine fell into
+a soil prepared for them in the old dragoon, into whom the Devil had
+glided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well attested by experience,
+is it not the spiritual phenomenon commonly called "the faith of the
+peasant"? The strength of belief varies inversely with the amount of
+use that a man has made of his reasoning faculties. Simple people and
+soldiers belong to the unreasoning class. Those who have marched through
+life beneath the banner of instinct are far more ready to receive the
+light than minds and hearts overwearied with the world's sophistries.
+
+Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a lad
+of sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly forty
+years old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and day
+after day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first, and
+of himself afterwards. While he served his military apprenticeship,
+therefore, he had but little leisure in which to reflect on the destiny
+of man, and when he became an officer he had his men to think of. He had
+been swept from battlefield to battlefield, but he had never thought of
+what comes after death. A soldier's life does not demand much thinking.
+Those who cannot understand the lofty political ends involved and the
+interests of nation and nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as
+well as plans of campaign, and combine the science of the tactician with
+that of the administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance;
+the most boorish peasant in the most backward district in France is
+scarcely in a worse case. Such men as these bear the brunt of war, yield
+passive obedience to the brain that directs them, and strike down
+the men opposed to them as the woodcutter fells timber in the forest.
+Violent physical exertion is succeeded by times of inertia, when they
+repair the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep,
+that they may the better deal hard blows; the powers of the mind are
+not greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the
+character is as simple as heretofore.
+
+When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to
+ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank
+seem to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity,
+for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger generation,
+those who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are as simple as
+children, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst, and the captain of
+a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a merchant's day-book. Old
+soldiers of this stamp, therefore being innocent of any attempt to
+use their reasoning faculties, act upon their strongest impulses.
+Castanier's crime was one of those matters that raise so many questions,
+that, in order to debate about it, a moralist might call for its
+"discussion by clauses," to make use of a parliamentary expression.
+
+Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible power of
+feminine witchery had driven him to commit it; no man can say of
+himself, "I will never do that," when a siren joins in the combat and
+throws her spells over him.
+
+So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the truths
+of religion which the French Revolution and a soldier's career had
+forced Castanier to neglect. The solemn words, "You will be happy or
+miserable for all eternity!" made but the more terrible impression upon
+him, because he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren tree;
+because his desires could effect all things, so that it was enough that
+any spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and he forthwith
+thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to compare such great
+things with social follies, Castanier's position was not unlike that of
+a banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions cannot obtain for
+him an entrance into the society of the noblesse, must set his heart
+upon entering that circle, and all the social privileges that he has
+already acquired are as nothing in his eyes from the moment when he
+discovers that a single one is lacking.
+
+Here is a man more powerful than all the kings on earth put together; a
+man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God Himself; leaning against
+one of the pillars in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by the
+feelings and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed in the thought of
+a Future, the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth.
+
+"He was very happy, was Melmoth!" cried Castanier. "He died in the
+certain knowledge that he would go to heaven."
+
+In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the
+cashier's ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was
+nothing but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred tradition
+embodied in all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk he retained
+a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite. The power of
+hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven as he had
+never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon exhausted.
+The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the enjoyments of earth
+on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there is no limit. He
+believed in God, and the spell that gave him the treasures of the world
+was as nothing to him now; the treasures themselves seemed to him as
+contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of diamonds; they were but gewgaws
+compared with the eternal glories of the other life. A curse lay, he
+thought, on all things that came to him from this source. He sounded
+dark depths of painful thought as he listened to the service performed
+for Melmoth. The _Dies irae_ filled him with awe; he felt all the
+grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling before the Throne of
+God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring flame, passed through him as fire
+consumes straw.
+
+The tears were falling from his eyes when--"Are you a relation of the
+dead?" the beadle asked him.
+
+"I am his heir," Castanier answered.
+
+"Give something for the expenses of the services!" cried the man.
+
+"No," said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not go to the Church.)
+
+"For the poor!"
+
+"No."
+
+"For repairing the Church!"
+
+"No."
+
+"The Lady Chapel!"
+
+"No."
+
+"For the schools!"
+
+"No."
+
+Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that the
+irritated functionaries gave him.
+
+Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice.
+"What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every
+country?" he asked himself. "The feeling shared so widely throughout all
+time must surely be based upon something."
+
+"Something! Do you call God _something_?" cried his conscience. "God!
+God! God!..."
+
+The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner voice, til it overwhelmed
+him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet distant sounds
+of music that he had caught faintly before. They were singing in the
+church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway. But as he
+listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides; he
+looked round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians. The
+melody brought visions of a distant heaven and far-off gleams of hope;
+but it also quickened the remorse that had set the lost soul in a
+ferment. He went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk who
+are crushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing everything
+with unseeing eyes, loitering like an idler, stopping without cause,
+muttering to himself, careless of the traffic, making no effort to avoid
+a blow from a plank of timber.
+
+Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the influence of the divine
+grace that soothes while it bruises the heart so terribly. His face came
+to wear a look of Melmoth, something great, with a trace of madness in
+the greatness--a look of dull and hopeless distress, mingled with the
+excited eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a gnawing sense of
+loathing for all that the world can give. The humblest of prayers lurked
+in the eyes that saw with such dreadful clearness. His power was the
+measure of his anguish. His body was bowed down by the fearful storm
+that shook his soul, as the tall pines bend before the blast. Like his
+predecessor, he could not refuse to bear the burden of life; he
+was afraid to die while he bore the yoke of hell. The torment grew
+intolerable.
+
+At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that Melmoth (now among
+the blessed) had made the proposal of an exchange, and how that he had
+accepted it; others, doubtless, would follow his example; for in an age
+proclaimed, by the inheritors of the eloquence of the Fathers of the
+Church, to be fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy to find
+a man who would accept the conditions of the contract in order to prove
+its advantages.
+
+"There is one place where you can learn what kings will fetch in the
+market; where nations are weighed in the balance and systems appraised;
+where the value of a government is stated in terms of the five-franc
+piece; where ideas and beliefs have their price, and everything is
+discounted; where God Himself, in a manner, borrows on the security of
+His revenue of souls, for the Pope has a running account there. Is it
+not there that I should go to traffic in souls?"
+
+Castanier went quite joyously on 'Change, thinking that it would be as
+easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary person
+would have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience that
+a desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying under
+sentence of death would listen to the madman who should tell him that
+by pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole; for
+suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as the
+swimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch that snaps in
+his hand.
+
+Towards four o'clock that afternoon Castanier appeared among the little
+knots of men who were transacting private business after 'Change. He was
+personally known to some of the brokers; and while affecting to be in
+search of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up the current gossip and
+rumors of failure.
+
+"Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon & Co., my boy. The bank
+collector went round to return their acceptances to them this morning,"
+said a fat banker in his outspoken way. "If you have any of their paper,
+look out."
+
+Claparon was in the building, in deep consultation with a man well known
+for the ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castanier went forthwith in
+search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a reputation for taking
+heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The money-lender walked
+away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the speculator's despair.
+
+"Well, Claparon, the Bank wants a hundred thousand francs of you, and it
+is four o'clock; the thing is known, and it is too late to arrange your
+little failure comfortably," said Castanier.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Speak lower," the cashier went on. "How if I were to propose a piece of
+business that would bring you in as much money as you require?"
+
+"It would not discharge my liabilities; every business that I ever heard
+of wants a little time to simmer in."
+
+"I know of something that will set you straight in a moment," answered
+Castanier; "but first you would have to----"
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Sell your share of paradise. It is a matter of business like anything
+else, isn't it? We all hold shares in the great Speculation of
+Eternity."
+
+"I tell you this," said Claparon angrily, "that I am just the man to
+lend you a slap in the face. When a man is in trouble, it is no time to
+pay silly jokes on him."
+
+"I am talking seriously," said Castanier, and he drew a bundle of notes
+from his pocket.
+
+"In the first place," said Claparon, "I am not going to sell my soul
+to the Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thousand francs before I
+strike----"
+
+"Who talks of stinting you?" asked Castanier, cutting him short. "You
+shall have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank of
+France."
+
+He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon.
+
+"Done," he cried; "but how is the bargain to be make?"
+
+"Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there," said Castanier,
+pointing to a corner of the court.
+
+Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with their faces turned
+to the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this by-play,
+though their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange gestures of
+the two contracting parties. When Castanier returned, there was a sudden
+outburst of amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly where the least event
+immediately attracts attention, all faces were turned to the two men who
+had caused the sensation, and a shiver passed through all beholders at
+the change that had taken place in them.
+
+The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange are soon
+known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players round
+a card-table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play and
+the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the Stock
+Exchange is simply a vast card-table. Every one, therefore, had noticed
+Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irishman before him) had
+been muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of light, his color high.
+The dignity and power in his face had struck awe into them all; they
+wondered how old Castanier had come by it; and now they beheld Castanier
+divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and feeble. He had
+drawn Claparon out of the crowd with the energy of a sick man in a
+fever fit; he had looked like an opium-eater during the brief period of
+excitement that the drug can give; now, on his return, he seemed to be
+in the condition of utter exhaustion in which the patient dies after
+the fever departs, or to be suffering from the horrible prostration
+that follows on excessive indulgence in the delights of narcotics. The
+infernal power that had upheld him through his debauches had left him,
+and the body was left unaided and alone to endure the agony of remorse
+and the heavy burden of sincere repentance. Claparon's troubles every
+one could guess; but Claparon reappeared, on the other hand, with
+sparkling eyes, holding his head high with the pride of Lucifer. The
+crisis had passed from the one man to the other.
+
+"Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man," said Claparon to
+Castanier.
+
+"For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate
+of Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the
+curbstone.
+
+The words "a priest" reached the ears of several people, and produced
+uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith with these
+gentlemen means a belief that a scrap of paper called a mortgage
+represents an estate, and the List of Fundholders is their Bible.
+
+"Shall I have time to repent?" said Castanier to himself, in a piteous
+voice, that impressed Claparon.
+
+A cab carried away the dying man; the speculator went to the bank at
+once to meet his bills; and the momentary sensation produced upon the
+throng of business men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanished
+like the furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest
+importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and
+when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his two
+luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of
+a pun, the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market Reports
+would ignore his existence.
+
+When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was
+no mistake about his power. He went on 'Change again, and offered his
+bargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond,
+"together with the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining
+thereunto,"--to use the expression of the notary who succeeded Claparon,
+changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs. The notary
+in his turn parted with the agreement with the Devil for five hundred
+thousand francs to a building contractor in difficulties, who likewise
+was rid of it to an iron merchant in consideration of a hundred thousand
+crowns. In fact, by five o'clock people had ceased to believe in the
+strange contract, and purchasers were lacking for want of confidence.
+
+At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house-painter, who was
+lounging by the door of the building in the Rue Feydeau, where at that
+time stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house-painter, simple
+fellow, could not think what was the matter with him. He "felt all
+anyhow"; so he told his wife when he went home.
+
+The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a place of
+pilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress bestow their ardent
+affection upon the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidly
+respectable domicile therein dwelt one of those exquisite creatures
+whom it has pleased heaven to endow with the rarest and most surpassing
+beauty. As it is impossible that they should all be duchesses or queens
+(since there are many more pretty women in the world than titles and
+thrones for them to adorn), they are content to make a stockbroker or a
+banker happy at a fixed price. To this good-natured beauty, Euphrasia
+by name, an unbounded ambition had led a notary's clerk to aspire. In
+short, the second clerk in the office of Maitre Crottat, notary, had
+fallen in love with her, as youth at two-and-twenty can fall in love.
+The scrivener would have murdered the Pope and run amuck through the
+whole sacred college to procure the miserable sum of a hundred louis to
+pay for a shawl which had turned Euphrasia's head, at which price her
+waiting-woman had promised that Euphrasia should be his. The infatuated
+youth walked to and fro under Madame Euphrasia's windows, like the
+polar bears in their cage at the Jardin des Plantes, with his right hand
+thrust beneath his waistcoat in the region of the heart, which he was
+fit to tear from his bosom, but as yet he had only wrenched at the
+elastic of his braces.
+
+"What can one do to raise ten thousand francs?" he asked himself. "Shall
+I make off with the money that I must pay on the registration of that
+conveyance? Good heavens! my loan would not ruin the purchaser, a man
+with seven millions! And then next day I would fling myself at his feet
+and say, 'I have taken ten thousand francs belonging to you, sir; I am
+twenty-two years of age, and I am in love with Euphrasia--that is my
+story. My father is rich, he will pay you back; do not ruin me! Have
+not you yourself been twenty-two years old and madly in love?' But these
+beggarly landowners have no souls! He would be quite likely to give me
+up to the public prosecutor, instead of taking pity upon me. Good God!
+if it were only possible to sell your soul to the Devil! But there is
+neither a God nor a Devil; it is all nonsense out of nursery tales and
+old wives' talk. What shall I do?"
+
+"If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir," said the
+house-painter, who had overheard something that the clerk let fall, "you
+can have the ten thousand francs."
+
+"And Euphrasia!" cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain with the devil
+that inhabited the house-painter.
+
+The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the shawl, and
+mounted Madame Euphrasia's staircase; and as (literally) the devil was
+in him, he did not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought
+of hell and of his privileges in twelve days of love and riot and
+forgetfulness, for which he had bartered away all his hopes of a
+paradise to come.
+
+And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired by
+the Irishman, the offspring of Maturin's brain, was lost to mankind;
+and the various Orientalists, Mystics, and Archaeologists who take an
+interest in these matters were unable to hand down to posterity the
+proper method of invoking the Devil, for the following sufficient
+reasons:
+
+On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the wretched
+clerk lay on a pallet bed in a garret in his master's house in the Rue
+Saint-Honore. Shame, the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself,
+had taken possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he would nurse
+himself; misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill of
+a practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to the
+effects of an overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a mole's
+back. A devil had left unmistakable traces of its passage there; could
+it have been Ashtaroth?
+
+
+
+"The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried away to the
+planet Mercury," said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came
+to investigate the matter at first hand.
+
+"I am quite prepared to believe it," answered the Teuton.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Yes, sir," returned the other. "The opinion you advance coincides with
+the very words of Jacob Boehme. In the forty-eighth proposition of _The
+Threefold Life of Man_ he says that 'if God hath brought all things
+to pass with a LET THERE BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix which
+comprehends and apprehends the nature which is formed by the spirit born
+of Mercury and of God.'"
+
+"What do you say, sir?"
+
+The German delivered his quotation afresh.
+
+"We do not know it," said the clerks.
+
+"_Fiat_?..." said a clerk. "_Fiat lux_!"
+
+"You can verify the citation for yourselves," said the German. "You will
+find the passage in the _Treatise of the Threefold Life of Man_, page
+75; the edition was published by M. Migneret in 1809. It was translated
+into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration for the famous
+shoemaker."
+
+"Oh! he was a shoemaker, was he?" said the head clerk.
+
+"In Prussia," said the German.
+
+"Did he work for the King of Prussia?" inquired a Boeotian of a second
+clerk.
+
+"He must have vamped up his prose," said a third.
+
+"That man is colossal!" cried the fourth, pointing to the Teuton.
+
+That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not know
+the amount of devilry to be found in a notary's clerk. He went away
+without the least idea that they were making game of him, and fully
+under the impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as a
+colossal genius.
+
+"Education is making strides in France," said he to himself.
+
+PARIS, May 6, 1835.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Aquilina
+       The Magic Skin
+
+     Claparon, Charles
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Euphrasia
+       The Magic Skin
+
+     Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
+       Father Goriot
+       The Thirteen
+       Eugenie Grandet
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Another Study of Woman
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Tillet, Ferdinand du
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       The Middle Classes
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Pierrette
+       A Distinguished Provencial at Paris
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Melmoth Reconciled, by Honore de Balzac
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac
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+Melmoth Reconciled
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+by Honore de Balzac
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+Translated by Ellen Marriage
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+
+MELMOTH RECONCILED
+
+BY
+
+HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+Translator
+Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+  To Monsieur le General Baron de Pommereul, a token of the friendship
+  between our fathers, which survives in their sons.
+
+DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social
+Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in the
+Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybrid
+which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is
+known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious
+doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to
+flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an
+uninteresting family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always be a
+problem for the physiologist. Has any one as yet been able to state
+correctly the terms of the proportion sum wherein the cashier figures
+as the unknown X? Where will you find the man who shall live with
+wealth, like a cat with a caged mouse? This man, for further
+qualification, shall be capable of sitting boxed in behind an iron
+grating for seven or eight hours a day during seven-eighths of the
+year, perched upon a cane-seated chair in a space as narrow as a
+lieutenant's cabin on board a man-of-war. Such a man must be able to
+defy anchylosis of the knee and thigh joints; he must have a soul
+above meanness, in order to live meanly; must lose all relish for
+money by dint of handling it. Demand this peculiar specimen of any
+creed, educational system, school, or institution you please, and
+select Paris, that city of fiery ordeals and branch establishment of
+hell, as the soil in which to plant the said cashier. So be it.
+Creeds, schools, institutions and moral systems, all human rules and
+regulations, great and small, will, one after another, present much
+the same face that an intimate friend turns upon you when you ask him
+to lend you a thousand francs. With a dolorous dropping of the jaw,
+they indicate the guillotine, much as your friend aforesaid will
+furnish you with the address of the money-lender, pointing you to one
+of the hundred gates by which a man comes to the last refuge of the
+destitute.
+
+Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man's mind; she indulges
+herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a
+cashier.
+
+Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of
+bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a
+thousand crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque,
+hold these rare products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem
+that they confine them in cages in their counting-houses, much as
+governments procure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at their
+own charges.
+
+If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid
+temperament; if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete
+cashier, he loves his wife, and that wife grows tired of her lot, has
+ambitions, or merely some vanity in her composition, the cashier is
+undone. Search the chronicles of the counting-house. You will not find
+a single instance of a cashier attaining A POSITION, as it is called.
+They are sent to the hulks; they go to foreign parts; they vegetate on
+a second floor in the Rue Saint-Louis among the market gardens of the
+Marais. Some day, when the cashiers of Paris come to a sense of their
+real value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money. Still,
+certain it is that there are people who are fit for nothing but to be
+cashiers, just as the bent of a certain order of mind inevitably makes
+for rascality. But, oh marvel of our civilization! Society rewards
+virtue with an income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a
+second floor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs,
+an elderly wife and her offspring.
+
+So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a little boldness, a
+faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne
+outflanked Montecuculi, and Society will sanction the theft of
+millions, shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and
+smother him with consideration.
+
+Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this profoundly
+illogical reasoner--Society. Government levies a conscription on the
+young intelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen,
+a conscription of precocious brain-work before it is sent up to be
+submitted to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds
+in much the same way. To this process the Government brings
+professional appraisers of talent, men who can assay brains as experts
+assay gold at the Mint. Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope,
+are sent up annually by the most progressive portion of the
+population; and of these the Government takes one-third, puts them in
+sacks called the Ecoles, and shakes them up together for three years.
+Though every one of these young plants represents vast productive
+power, they are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive
+appointments; the rank and file of engineers is made up of them; they
+are employed as captains of artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade
+to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the
+youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with
+knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their
+reward, and receive as the price of their services the third-floor
+lodging, the wife and family, and all the comforts that sweeten life
+for mediocrity. If from among this race of dupes there should escape
+some five or six men of genius who climb the highest heights, is it
+not miraculous?
+
+This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probity
+on the one hand and Government and Society on the other, in an age
+that considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory
+explanation a recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; but
+preceded by this summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive
+some thoughtful attention from minds capable of recognizing the real
+plague-spots of our civilization, a civilization which since 1815 as
+been moved by the spirit of gain rather than by principles of honor.
+
+
+
+About five o'clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of
+the largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light
+of a lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use
+and wont of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner of
+the low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very
+end of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors
+along this corridor, each with its label, gave the place the look of a
+bath-house. At four o'clock the stolid porter had proclaimed,
+according to his orders, "The bank is closed." And by this time the
+departments were deserted, wives of the partners in the firm were
+expecting their lovers; the two bankers dining with their mistresses.
+Everything was in order.
+
+The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet-iron was
+just behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless
+he was balancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of
+hammered iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the
+modern inventor) that burglars could not carry it away. The door only
+opened at the pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock
+was a warden who kept its own secret and could not be bribed; the
+mysterious word was an ingenious realization of the "Open sesame!" in
+the Arabian Nights. But even this was as nothing. A man might discover
+the password; but unless he knew the lock's final secret, the ultima
+ratio of this gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, it
+discharged a blunderbuss at his head.
+
+The door of the room, the walls of the room, the shutters of the
+windows in the room, the whole place, in fact, was lined with sheet-
+iron a third of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden
+paneling. The shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If
+ever man could feel confident that he was absolutely alone, and that
+there was no remote possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that
+man was the cashier of the house of Nucingen and Company, in the Rue
+Saint-Lazare.
+
+Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave. The fire
+had died out in the stove, but the room was full of that tepid warmth
+which produces the dull heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of a
+morning after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no small
+part in the reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.
+
+A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong men
+is evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their wills
+enfeebled. Government offices are part of a great scheme for the
+manufacture of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a
+Feudal System on a pecuniary basis--and money is the foundation of the
+Social Contract. (See Les Employes.) The mephitic vapors in the
+atmosphere of a crowded room contribute in no small degree to bring
+about a gradual deterioration of intelligences, the brain that gives
+off the largest quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others, in the
+long run.
+
+The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or thereabouts. As he sat at
+the table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his bald
+head and glistening fringe of iron-gray hair that surrounded it--this
+baldness and the round outlines of his face made his head look very
+like a ball. His complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had gathered
+about his eyes, but he had the smooth, plump hands of a stout man. His
+blue cloth coat, a little rubbed and worn, and the creases and
+shininess of his trousers, traces of hard wear that the clothes-brush
+fails to remove, would impress a superficial observer with the idea
+that here was a thrifty and upright human being, sufficient of the
+philosopher or of the aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But,
+unluckily, it is easy to find penny-wise people who will prove weak,
+wasteful, or incompetent in the capital things of life.
+
+The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-
+hole, for he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the Emperor.
+M. de Nucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a banker,
+had had reason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his
+cashier, who then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had
+befallen the major, and the banker out of regard for him paid him five
+hundred francs a month. The soldier had become a cashier in the year
+1813, after his recovery from a wound received at Studzianka during
+the Retreat from Moscow, followed by six months of enforced idleness
+at Strasbourg, whither several officers had been transported by order
+of the Emperor, that they might receive skilled attention. This
+particular officer, Castanier by name, retired with the honorary grade
+of colonel, and a pension of two thousand four hundred francs.
+
+In ten years' time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier, and
+Castanier inspired the banker with such trust in him, that he was
+associated in the transactions that went on in the private office
+behind his little counting-house. The baron himself had access to it
+by means of a secret staircase. There, matters of business were
+decided. It was the bolting-room where proposals were sifted; the
+privy council chamber where the reports of the money market were
+analyzed; circular notes issued thence; and finally, the private
+ledger and the journal which summarized the work of all the
+departments were kept there.
+
+Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened on to a
+staircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on the
+first floor of their hotel. This done, he had sat down at his desk
+again, and for a moment he gazed at a little collection of letters of
+credit drawn on the firm of Watschildine of London. Then he had taken
+up the pen and imitated the banker's signature on each. NUCINGEN he
+wrote, and eyed the forged signatures critically to see which seemed
+the most perfect copy.
+
+Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. "You are not
+alone!" a boding voice seemed to cry in his heart; and indeed the
+forger saw a man standing at the little grated window of the
+counting-house, a man whose breathing was so noiseless that he did not
+seem to breathe at all. Castanier looked, and saw that the door at the
+end of the passage was wide open; the stranger must have entered by
+that way.
+
+For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of
+dread that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man before
+him; and for that matter, the appearance of the apparition was
+sufficiently alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysterious
+circumstances of so sudden an entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh
+coloring of the long oval face, indicated quite as plainly as the cut
+of his clothes that the man was an Englishman, reeking of his native
+isles. You had only to look at the collar of his overcoat, at the
+voluminous cravat which smothered the crushed frills of a shirt front
+so white that it brought out the changeless leaden hue of an impassive
+face, and the thin red line of the lips that seemed made to suck the
+blood of corpses; and you can guess at once at the black gaiters
+buttoned up to the knee, and the half-puritanical costume of a wealthy
+Englishman dressed for a walking excursion. The intolerable glitter of
+the stranger's eyes produced a vivid and unpleasant impression, which
+was only deepened by the rigid outlines of his features. The dried-up,
+emaciated creature seemed to carry within him some gnawing thought
+that consumed him and could not be appeased.
+
+He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless eat
+continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or
+features. A tun of Tokay vin de succession would not have caused any
+faltering in that piercing glance that read men's inmost thoughts, nor
+dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go to
+the bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquil
+majesty of a tiger about him.
+
+"I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said. Castanier
+felt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent
+shock similar to that given by a discharge of electricity.
+
+"The safe is closed," said Castanier.
+
+"It is open," said the Englishman, looking round the counting-house.
+"To-morrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The amount is for five
+hundred thousand francs. You have the money there, and I must have
+it."
+
+"But how did you come in, sir?"
+
+The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened Castanier. No words could
+have replied more fully nor more peremptorily than that scornful and
+imperial curl of the stranger's lips. Castanier turned away, took up
+fifty packets each containing ten thousand francs in bank-notes, and
+held them out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a bill
+accepted by the Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ran
+through him as he saw a red gleam in the stranger's eyes when they
+fell on the forged signature on the letter of credit.
+
+"It . . . it wants your signature . . ." stammered Castanier, handing
+back the bill.
+
+"Hand me your pen," answered the Englishman.
+
+Castanier handed him the pen with which he had just committed forgery.
+The stranger wrote JOHN MELMOTH, then he returned the slip of paper
+and the pen to the cashier. Castanier looked at the handwriting,
+noticing that it sloped from right to left in the Eastern fashion, and
+Melmoth disappeared so noiselessly that when Castanier looked up again
+an exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was no longer
+there, partly because he felt a strange painful sensation such as our
+imagination might take for an effect of poison.
+
+The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat through
+him that an emetic produces. But it seemed impossible to Castanier
+that the Englishman should have guessed his crime. His inward qualms
+he attributed to the palpitation of the heart that, according to
+received ideas, was sure to follow at once on such a "turn" as the
+stranger had given him.
+
+"The devil take it; I am very stupid. Providence is watching over me;
+for if that brute had come round to see my gentleman to-morrow, my
+goose would have been cooked!" said Castanier, and he burned the
+unsuccessful attempts at forgery in the stove.
+
+He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, and
+helped himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and English
+bank-notes from the safe, which he locked. Then he put everything in
+order, lit a candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella,
+and went out sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the
+strong room with Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her husband the
+Baron.
+
+"You are in luck, M. Castanier," said the banker's wife as he entered
+the room; "we have a holiday on Monday; you can go into the country,
+or to Soizy."
+
+"Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that the bill of
+exchange on Watschildine, which was behind time, has just been
+presented? The five hundred thousand francs have been paid; so I shall
+not come back till noon on Tuesday."
+
+"Good-bye, monsieur; I hope you will have a pleasant time."
+
+"The same to you, madame," replied the old dragoon as he went out. He
+glanced as he spoke at a young man well known in fashionable society
+at that time, a M. de Rastignac, who was regarded as Madame de
+Nucingen's lover.
+
+"Madame," remarked this latter, "the old boy looks to me as if he
+meant to play you some ill turn."
+
+"Pshaw! impossible; he is too stupid."
+
+
+
+"Piquoizeau," said the cashier, walking into the porter's room, "what
+made you let anybody come up after four o'clock?"
+
+"I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since four
+o'clock," said the man, "and nobody has gone into the bank. Nobody has
+come out either except the gentlemen----"
+
+"Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four o'clock M.
+Werbrust's friend came, a young fellow from Messrs. du Tillet & Co.,
+in the Rue Joubert."
+
+"All right," said Castanier, and he hurried away.
+
+The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back the
+pen returned in greater intensity. "Mille diables!" thought he, as he
+threaded his way along the Boulevard de Gand, "haven't I taken proper
+precautions? Let me think! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a
+day of uncertainty before they begin to look for me; altogether, three
+days and four nights' respite. I have a couple of passports and two
+different disguises; is not that enough to throw the cleverest
+detective off the scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a million
+francs in London before the slightest suspicion has been aroused. My
+debts I am leaving behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will
+put a 'P'* on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for the
+rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro. [*Protested.] I was alone with
+him when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall
+slip into his skin. . . . Mille diables! the woman who is to follow
+after me might give them a clue! Think of an old campaigner like me
+infatuated enough to tie myself to a petticoat tail! . . . Why take
+her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could make up my mind to it;
+but--I know myself--I should be ass enough to go back to her. Still,
+nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave her?"
+
+"You will not take her!" cried a voice that filled Castanier with
+sickening dread. He turned sharply, and saw the Englishman.
+
+"The devil is in it!" cried the cashier aloud.
+
+Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if Castanier's first
+impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his own
+thoughts, he was so much torn up by opposing feelings that the
+immediate result was a temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk
+he fell once more into that fever of irresolution which besets those
+who are so carried away by passion that they are ready to commit a
+crime, but have not sufficient strength of character to keep it to
+themselves without suffering terribly in the process. So, although
+Castanier had made up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was
+already half executed, he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him,
+as for many men of mixed character in whom weakness and strength are
+equally blended, the least trifling consideration determines whether
+they shall continue to lead blameless lives or become actively
+criminal. In the vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies
+there are many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely physical
+courage demanded on the battlefield, yet lacked the moral courage
+which makes a man as great in crime as he could have been in virtue.
+
+The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on his
+arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of
+Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. The
+London house had already been advised of the draft about to be made
+upon them, he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent
+(chosen at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave
+Portsmouth with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to
+Italy, and the passage-money had been paid in the name of the Conte
+Ferraro. The smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He
+had arranged matters so as to divert the search that would be made for
+him into Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the
+English vessel. Then, by the time that Nucingen might flatter himself
+that he was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as the
+Conte Ferraro, hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined to
+disfigure his face in order to disguise himself the more completely,
+and by means of an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. Yet, in
+spite of all these precautions, which surely seemed as if they must
+secure him complete immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was
+afraid. The even and peaceful life that he had led for so long had
+modified the morality of the camp. His life was stainless as yet; he
+could not sully it without a pang. So for the last time he abandoned
+himself to all the influences of the better self that strenuously
+resisted.
+
+"Pshaw!" he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
+Montmartre, "I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out
+to Versailles. A post-chaise will be ready for me at my old
+quartermaster's place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men
+were standing ready to shoot him down. The chances are all in my
+favor, so far as I see; so I shall take my little Naqui with me, and I
+will go."
+
+"You will not go!" exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of
+his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart.
+
+Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was
+whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe
+some hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind
+to cut off the man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the
+Boulevard Montmartre.
+
+"Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!" said
+he to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should
+think that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the
+devil and the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me
+in the nick of time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this is
+folly . . ."
+
+Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening his
+pace as he neared the Rue Richer. There on the second floor of a block
+of buildings which looked out upon some gardens lived the unconscious
+cause of Castanier's crime--a young woman known in the quarter as Mme.
+de la Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's past
+life must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a
+complete presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.
+
+Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not even
+Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls, who
+are driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear
+of starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe,
+many regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the
+laws of their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of
+prostitution in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure
+as the Madonna, had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough
+and homely to make his way in society, and he was tired of tramping
+the boulevard at night and of the kind of conquests made there by
+gold. For some time past he had desired to bring a certain regularity
+into an irregular life. He was struck by the beauty of the poor child
+who had drifted by chance into his arms, and his determination to
+rescue her from the life of the streets was half benevolent, half
+selfish, as some of the thoughts of the best of men are apt to be.
+Social conditions mingle elements of evil with the promptings of
+natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying a
+man's intentions should be leniently judged. Castanier had just
+cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were
+concerned. So he concluded to be a philanthropist on either count, and
+at first made her his mistress.
+
+"Hey! hey!" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion. "I am an old
+wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man,
+before you set up housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl's character for a
+bit, and see if she is a steady sort."
+
+This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
+approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
+recognize. During the first year she took the nom de guerre of
+Aquilina, one of the characters in Venice Preserved which she had
+chanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face
+and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain
+of which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was as
+well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he
+manifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So she
+took the name of Mme. de la Garde, in order to approach, as closely as
+Parisian usages permit, the conditions of a real marriage. As a matter
+of fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to be
+looked upon as respectable middle-class women, who lead humdrum lives
+of faithfulness to their husbands; women who would make excellent
+mothers, keepers of household accounts, and menders of household
+linen. This longing springs from a sentiment so laudable, that society
+should take it into consideration. But society, incorrigible as ever,
+will assuredly persist in regarding the married woman as a corvette
+duly authorized by her flag and papers to go on her own course, while
+the woman who is a wife in all but name is a pirate and an outlaw for
+lack of a document. A day came when Mme. de la Garde would fain have
+signed herself "Mme. Castanier." The cashier was put out by this.
+
+"So you do not love me well enough to marry me?" she said.
+
+Castanier did not answer; he was absorbed by his thoughts. The poor
+girl resigned herself to her fate. The ex-dragoon was in despair.
+Naqui's heart softened towards him at the sight of his trouble; she
+tried to soothe him, but what could she do when she did not know what
+ailed him? When Naqui made up her mind to know the secret, although
+she never asked him a question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the
+existence of a Mme. Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times
+accursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property
+there; he wrote to her twice a year, and kept the secret of her
+existence so well, that no one suspected that he was married. The
+reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men who
+may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worth while to
+give the story.
+
+Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word which
+in the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is a
+sort of serf, a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple
+creature, and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the
+wiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands.
+It was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose when
+the Imperial armies were not on active service abroad, that Castanier
+was so unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he
+danced at a ridotto, the provincial name for the entertainments often
+given by the military to the townsfolk, or vice versa, in garrison
+towns. A scheme for inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony was
+immediately set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers secure
+accomplices in a human heart by touching all its motive springs, while
+they convert all their friends into fellow-conspirators. Like all
+people possessed by one idea, these ladies press everything into the
+service of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, much
+as the ant-lion excavates its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at
+the bottom for its victim. Suppose that no one strays, after all, into
+that carefully constructed labyrinth? Suppose that the ant-lion dies
+of hunger and thirst in her pit? Such things may be, but if any
+heedless creature once enters in, it never comes out. All the wires
+which could be pulled to induce action on the captain's part were
+tried; appeals were made to the secret interested motives that always
+come into play in such cases; they worked on Castanier's hopes and on
+the weaknesses and vanity of human nature. Unluckily, he had praised
+the daughter to her mother when he brought her back after a waltz, a
+little chat followed, and then an invitation in the most natural way
+in the world. Once introduced into the house, the dragoon was dazzled
+by the hospitality of a family who appeared to conceal their real
+wealth beneath a show of careful economy. He was skilfully flattered
+on all sides, and every one extolled for his benefit the various
+treasures there displayed. A neatly timed dinner, served on plate lent
+by an uncle, the attention shown to him by the only daughter of the
+house, the gossip of the town, a well-to-do sub-lieutenant who seemed
+likely to cut the ground from under his feet--all the innumerable
+snares, in short, of the provincial ant-lion were set for him, and to
+such good purpose, that Castanier said five years later, "To this day
+I do not know how it came about!"
+
+The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who after
+two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most
+peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair
+complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color
+in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread
+with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight,
+grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who
+drove Castanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself wings. At
+length the dragoon, no longer recognizing the woman whom he had
+wedded, left her to live on a little property at Strasbourg, until the
+time when it should please God to remove her to adorn Paradise. She
+was one of those virtuous women who, for want of other occupation,
+would weary the life out of an angel with complainings, who pray till
+(if their prayers are heard in heaven) they must exhaust the patience
+of the Almighty, and say everything that is bad of their husbands in
+dovelike murmurs over a game of boston with their neighbors. When
+Aquilina learned all these troubles she clung still more
+affectionately to Castanier, and made him so happy, varying with
+woman's ingenuity the pleasures with which she filled his life, that
+all unwittingly she was the cause of the cashier's downfall.
+
+Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths of
+love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold
+nor for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the
+present and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive
+ornaments and dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of her
+class, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There was
+absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantage
+but to look the fairer, and moreover, no woman could live without
+luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature (and military
+men are mostly of this stamp) meets with such a woman, he feels a sort
+of exasperation at finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feels
+that he could stop a mail coach to obtain money for her if he has not
+sufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime if so he may be great
+and noble in the eyes of some woman or of his special public; such is
+the nature of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler who would be
+dishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum he borrowed
+from a waiter in a gaming-house; but will shrink from no crime, will
+leave his wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder, if so
+he may come to the gaming-table with a full purse, and his honor
+remain untarnished among the frequenters of that fatal abode. So it
+was with Castanier.
+
+He had begun by installing Aquiline is a modest fourth-floor dwelling,
+the furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl's
+beauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and
+unlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her; and longed
+to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilette was so comically out of
+keeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearly
+incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost all
+Castanier's savings, for he furnished his domestic paradise with all
+the prodigality that is lavished on a kept mistress. A pretty woman
+must have everything pretty about her; the unity of charm in the woman
+and her surroundings singles her out from among her sex. This
+sentiment of homogeneity indeed, though it has frequently escaped the
+attention of observers, is instinctive in human nature; and the same
+prompting leads elderly spinsters to surround themselves with dreary
+relics of the past. But the lovely Piedmontese must have the newest
+and latest fashions, and all that was daintiest and prettiest in
+stuffs for hangings, in silks or jewelry, in fine china and other
+brittle and fragile wares. She asked for nothing; but when she was
+called upon to make a choice, when Castanier asked her, "Which do you
+like?" she would answer, "Why, this is the nicest!" Love never counts
+the cost, and Castanier therefore always took the "nicest."
+
+When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it but
+everything in the household must be in conformity, from the linen,
+plate, and crystal through a thousand and one items of expenditure
+down to the pots and pans in the kitchen. Castanier had meant to "do
+things simply," as the saying goes, but he gradually found himself
+more and more in debt. One expense entailed another. The clock called
+for candle sconces. Fires must be lighted in the ornamental grates,
+but the curtains and hangings were too fresh and delicate to be soiled
+by smuts, so they must be replaced by patent and elaborate fireplaces,
+warranted to give out no smoke, recent inventions of the people who
+are so clever at drawing up a prospectus. Then Aquilina found it so
+nice to run about barefooted on the carpet in her room, that Castanier
+must have soft carpets laid everywhere for the pleasure of playing
+with Naqui. A bathroom, too, was built for her, everything to the end
+that she might be more comfortable.
+
+Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have a mysterious
+knack of enlarging a hole in a man's purse. They cannot give the price
+of anything upon inquiry; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide
+delay, orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate
+of cost. The same people never send in the bills at once, but ply the
+purchaser with furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty,
+so charming; and every one is satisfied.
+
+A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are metamorphosed,
+and reappear in the shape of alarming totals on invoices that fill the
+soul with their horrid clamor; they are in urgent want of the money;
+they are, as you may say on the brink of bankruptcy, their tears flow,
+it is heartrending to hear them! And then----the gulf yawns, and gives
+up serried columns of figures marching four deep, when as a matter of
+fact they should have issued innocently three by three.
+
+Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had spent, he had
+arranged for Aquilina to have a carriage from a livery stable when she
+went out, instead of a cab. Castanier was a gourmand; he engaged an
+excellent cook; and Aquilina, to please him, had herself made the
+purchases of early fruit and vegetables, rare delicacies, and
+exquisite wines. But, as Aquilina had nothing of her own, these gifts
+of hers, so precious by reason of the thought and tact and
+graciousness that prompted them, were no less a drain upon Castanier's
+purse; he did not like his Naqui to be without money, and Naqui could
+not keep money in her pocket. So the table was a heavy item of
+expenditure for a man with Castanier's income. The ex-dragoon was
+compelled to resort to various shifts for obtaining money, for he
+could not bring himself to renounce this delightful life. He loved the
+woman too well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of
+those men who, through self-love or through weakness of character, can
+refuse nothing to a woman; false shame overpowers them, and they
+rather face ruin than make the admissions: "I cannot----" "My means
+will not permit----" "I cannot afford----"
+
+When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge from the
+abyss of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilina
+and live upon bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or
+to change his habits of life, that daily he put off his plans of
+reform until the morrow. The debts were pressing, and he began by
+borrowing money. His position and previous character inspired
+confidence, and of this he took advantage to devise a system of
+borrowing money as he required it. Then, as the total amount of debt
+rapidly increased, he had recourse to those commercial inventions
+known as accommodation bills. This form of bill does not represent
+goods or other value received, and the first endorser pays the amount
+named for the obliging person who accepts it. This species of fraud is
+tolerated because it is impossible to detect it, and, moreover, it is
+an imaginary fraud which only becomes real if payment is ultimately
+refused.
+
+When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer,
+whether because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased,
+or because Castanier was unable to pay the large amount of interest on
+the aforesaid sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On
+making this discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy rather
+than an ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. He
+determined, after the fashion of the celebrated cashier of the Royal
+Treasury, to abuse the trust deservedly won, and to increase the
+number of his creditors by making a final loan of the sum sufficient
+to keep him in comfort in a foreign country for the rest of his days.
+All this, as has been seen, he had prepared to do.
+
+Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this life; she enjoyed
+her existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where the
+money came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered
+rolls untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the culture
+and growth of wheat; but as the labor and miscalculations of
+agriculture lie on the other side of the baker's oven, so beneath the
+unappreciated luxury of many a Parisian household lie intolerable
+anxieties and exorbitant toil.
+
+While Castanier was enduring the torture of the strain, and his
+thoughts were full of the deed that should change his whole life,
+Aquilina was lying luxuriously back in a great armchair by the
+fireside, beguiling the time by chatting with her waiting-maid. As
+frequently happens in such cases the maid had become the mistress'
+confidant, Jenny having first assured herself that her mistress'
+ascendency over Castanier was complete.
+
+"What are we to do this evening? Leon seems determined to come," Mme.
+de la Garde was saying, as she read a passionate epistle indited upon
+a faint gray notepaper.
+
+"Here is the master!" said Jenny.
+
+Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted, crumpled up the
+letter, took it with the tongs, and held it in the flames.
+
+"So that is what you do with your love-letters, is it?" asked
+Castanier.
+
+"Oh goodness, yes," said Aquilina; "is it not the best way of keeping
+them safe? Besides, fire should go to fire, as water makes for the
+river."
+
+"You are talking as if it were a real love-letter, Naqui----"
+
+"Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them?" she said, holding up
+her forehead for a kiss. There was a carelessness in her manner that
+would have told any man less blind than Castanier that it was only a
+piece of conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier,
+but use and wont had brought Castanier to the point where clear-
+sightedness is no longer possible for love.
+
+"I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening," he said; "let us
+have dinner early, and then we need not dine in a hurry."
+
+"Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not know what is the
+matter with me this evening; I would rather stay here by the fire."
+
+"Come, all the same though, Naqui; I shall not be here to bore you
+much longer. Yes, Quiqui, I am going to start to-night, and it will be
+some time before I come back again. I am leaving everything in your
+charge. Will you keep your heart for me too?"
+
+"Neither my heart nor anything else," she said; "but when you come
+back again, Naqui will still be Naqui for you."
+
+"Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Eh! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me such sweet little
+notes?" she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap of paper with a
+mocking smile.
+
+"Is there any truth in it?" asked Castanier. "Have you really a
+lover?"
+
+"Really!" cried Aquilina; "and have you never given it a serious
+thought, dear? To begin with, you are fifty years old. Then you have
+just the sort of face to put on a fruit stall; if the woman tried to
+see you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blow
+like a seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like a
+diamond on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in
+the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If
+you have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to add
+imbecility to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I am
+will be content with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth and
+good looks and pleasure by way of a variety----"
+
+"Aquilina! you are laughing, of course?"
+
+"Oh, very well; and are you not laughing too? Do you take me for a
+fool, telling me that you are going away? 'I am going to start
+to-night!' " she said, mimicking his tones. "Stuff and nonsense! Would
+you talk like that if you were really going from your Naqui? You would
+cry, like the booby that you are!"
+
+"After all, if I go, will you follow?" he asked.
+
+"Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke or not."
+
+"Yes, seriously, I am going."
+
+"Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey to you, my
+boy! I will wait till you come back. I would sooner take leave of life
+than take leave of my dear, cozy Paris----"
+
+"Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, and lead a pleasant life
+there--a delicious, luxurious life, with this stout old fogy of yours,
+who puffs and blows like a seal?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ungrateful girl!"
+
+"Ungrateful?" she cried, rising to her feet. "I might leave this house
+this moment and take nothing out of it but myself. I shall have given
+you all the treasures a young girl can give, and something that not
+every drop in your veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by any
+means whatever, by selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I could
+recover my past self, body and soul (for I have, perhaps, redeemed my
+soul), and be pure as a lily for my lover, I would not hesitate a
+moment! What sort of devotion has rewarded mine? You have housed and
+fed me, just as you give a dog food and a kennel because he is a
+protection to the house, and he may take kicks when we are out of
+humor, and lick our hands as soon as we are pleased to call him. And
+which of us two will have been the more generous?"
+
+"Oh! dear child, do you not see that I am joking?" returned Castanier.
+"I am going on a short journey; I shall not be away for very long. But
+come with me to the Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, after
+I have had time to say good-bye to you."
+
+"Poor pet! so you are really going, are you?" she said. She put her
+arms round his neck, and drew down his head against her bodice.
+
+"You are smothering me!" cried Castanier, with his face buried in
+Aquilina's breast. That damsel turned to say in Jenny's ear, "Go to
+Leon, and tell him not to come till one o'clock. If you do not find
+him, and he comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your
+room.--Well," she went on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweak
+to the tip of his nose, "never mind, handsomest of seals that you are.
+I will go to the theatre with you this evening? But all in good time;
+let us have dinner! There is a nice little dinner for you--just what
+you like."
+
+"It is very hard to part from such a woman as you!" exclaimed
+Castanier.
+
+"Very well then, why do you go?" asked she.
+
+"Ah! why? why? If I were to begin to begin to explain the reasons why,
+I must tell you things that would prove to you that I love you almost
+to madness. Ah! if you have sacrificed your honor for me, I have sold
+mine for you; we are quits. Is that love?"
+
+"What is all this about?" said she. "Come, now, promise me that if I
+had a lover you would still love me as a father; that would be love!
+Come, now, promise it at once, and give us your fist upon it."
+
+"I should kill you," and Castanier smiled as he spoke.
+
+They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the Gymnase.
+When the first part of the performance was over, it occurred to
+Castanier to show himself to some of his acquaintances in the house,
+so as to turn away any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de la
+Garde in the corner box where she was seated, according to her modest
+wont, and went to walk up and down in the lobby. He had not gone many
+paces before he saw the Englishman, and with a sudden return of the
+sickening sensation of heat that once before had vibrated through him,
+and of the terror that he had felt already, he stood face to face with
+Melmoth.
+
+"Forger!"
+
+At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who were moving
+about them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity in
+their eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he
+raised his hand to strike him--and felt his arm paralyzed by some
+invisible power that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot.
+He allowed the stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked
+together to the green-room like two friends.
+
+"Who is strong enough to resist me?" said the Englishman, addressing
+him. "Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, that
+it is in my power to do everything? I read men's thoughts, I see the
+future, and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also.
+Time and space and distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at
+my beck and call. I have the power of continual enjoyment and of
+giving joy. I can see through walls, discover hidden treasures, and
+fill my hands with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect
+makes no mistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap
+up their gold and precious stones, and surround myself with fair women
+and ever new faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I could
+gamble on the Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible;
+but a man who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth
+need not trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand
+that grasps you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of
+iron! try to soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You
+would hear my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the
+Seine; you might hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me
+there? My voice could be heard through the sound of thunder, my eyes
+shine as brightly as the sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer!"
+
+Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest nor
+contradiction within himself. He walked side by side with the
+Englishman, and had no power to leave him.
+
+"You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have found at last
+the mate whom I have sought. Have you a mind to learn your destiny?
+Aha! you came here to see a play, and you shall see a play--nay, two.
+Come. Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am I
+not your last hope of escape?"
+
+Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box; and in
+accordance with the order he had just received, he hastened to
+introduce Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in
+the least surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front,
+and Castanier was once more beside his mistress; the man's slightest
+wish must be obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that
+time, small theatres gave only three pieces. One of the actors had
+made the Gymnase the fashion, and that evening Perlet (the actor in
+question) was to play in a vaudeville called Le Comedien d'Etampes, in
+which he filled four different parts.
+
+When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over the
+crowded house. Castanier's cry of terror died away, for the walls of
+his throat seemed glued together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, and
+the cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman's
+desire.
+
+He saw the strong-room at the bank; he saw the Baron de Nucingen in
+conference with a police-officer from the Prefecture, who was
+informing him of Castanier's conduct, explaining that the cashier had
+absconded with money taken from the safe, giving the history of the
+forged signature. The information was put in writing; the document
+signed and duly despatched to the Public Prosecutor.
+
+"Are we in time, do you think?" asked Nucingen.
+
+"Yes," said the agent of police; "he is at the Gymnase, and has no
+suspicion of anything."
+
+Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would leave the
+theatre, but Melmoth's hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged to
+sit and watch; the hideous power of the man produced an effect like
+that of nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself
+was the nightmare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like a
+poisoned atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore the
+Englishman's mercy, he met those blazing eyes that discharged electric
+currents, which pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of
+steel.
+
+"What have I done to you?" he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and
+he breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge. "What do you want of
+me?"
+
+"Look!" cried Melmoth.
+
+Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed. The play
+seemed to be over, and Castanier beheld himself stepping from the
+carriage with Aquilina; but as he entered the courtyard of the house
+on the Rue Richer, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw
+his own house. Jenny was chatting by the fire in her mistress' room
+with a subaltern officer of a line regiment then stationed at Paris.
+
+"He is going, is he?" said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to a
+family in easy circumstances; "I can be happy at my ease! I love
+Aquilina too well to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself,
+am going to marry Mme. de la Garde!" cried the sergeant.
+
+"Old toad!" Castanier murmured piteously.
+
+"Here come the master and mistress; hide yourself! Stay, get in here
+Monsieur Leon," said Jenny. "The master won't stay here for very
+long."
+
+Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among Aquilina's gowns in
+her dressing-room. Almost immediately he himself appeared upon the
+scene, and took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in "asides"
+to Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his
+ears. She wept with one side of her face, and laughed with the other.
+The audience called for an encore.
+
+"Accursed creature!" cried Castanier from his box.
+
+Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes.
+
+"Goodness!" she cried, "how funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman! . . .
+Why don't you laugh? Every one else in the house is laughing. Laugh,
+dear!" she said to Castanier.
+
+Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The
+Englishman's laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was
+as if a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.
+
+"Laughing! are they laughing!" stammered Castanier.
+
+He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
+ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the
+house with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself
+hurrying from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard,
+bargaining with the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the
+scene changed. He recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de
+l'Orangerie and the Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old
+quartermaster. It was two o'clock in the morning, the most perfect
+stillness prevailed, no one was there to watch his movements. The
+post-horses were put into the carriage (it came from a house in the
+Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman lived, and had been ordered in
+the foreigner's name to avoid raising suspicion). Castanier saw that
+he had his bills and his passports, stepped into the carriage, and set
+out. But at the barrier he saw two gendarmes lying in wait for the
+carriage. A cry of horror burst from him but Melmoth gave him a
+glance, and again the sound died in his throat.
+
+"Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!" said the Englishman.
+
+In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at the
+Conciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled The Cashier,
+he saw himself, in three months' time, condemned to twenty years of
+penal servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the
+Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a
+red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty
+convicts in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn
+to have the irons riveted on his limbs.
+
+"Dear me! I cannot laugh any more! . . ." said Aquilina. "You are very
+solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone."
+
+"A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the piece was at an
+end, and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde's cloak.
+
+The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
+
+"Very well, what is it?"
+
+"No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going
+next to Versailles, there to be arrested."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp," returned
+the Englishman.
+
+Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him
+out from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell.
+
+"Suppose that the Devil were to make a bid for your soul, would you
+not give it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single
+word, and those five hundred thousand francs shall be back in the
+Baron de Nucingen's safe; then you can tear up the letter of credit,
+and all traces of your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would
+have gold in torrents. You hardly believe in anything perhaps? Well,
+if all this comes to pass, you will believe at least in the Devil."
+
+"If it were only possible!" said Castanier joyfully.
+
+"The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible,"
+answered the Englishman.
+
+Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in the
+Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling,
+the streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness
+overhead; but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was
+filled with sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The
+trees were covered with leaves; a double stream of joyous holiday
+makers strolled beneath them. Sellers of liquorice water shouted their
+cool drinks. Splendid carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry
+of terror broke from the cashier, and at that cry rain and darkness
+once more settled down upon the Boulevard.
+
+Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. "Do be quick, dear!"
+she cried; "either come in or stay out. Really you are as dull as
+ditch-water this evening----"
+
+"What must I do?" Castanier asked of Melmoth.
+
+"Would you like to take my place?" inquired the Englishman.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few moments."
+
+"By the by, Castanier, you are rather off your balance," Aquilina
+remarked. "There is some mischief brewing: you were quite melancholy
+and thoughtful all through the play. Do you want anything that I can
+give you, dear? Tell me."
+
+"I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me."
+
+"You need not wait till then," she said, throwing her arms round his
+neck. "There!" she said, as she embraced him, passionately to all
+appearance, and plied him with the coaxing caresses that are part of
+the business of such a life as hers, like stage action for an actress.
+
+"Where is the music?" asked Castanier.
+
+"What next? Only think of your hearing music now!"
+
+"Heavenly music!" he went on. "The sounds seem to come from above."
+
+"What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italiens
+because you could not abide music, and are you turning music-mad at
+this time of day? Mad--that you are! The music is inside your own
+noddle, old addle-pate!" she went on, as she took his head in her
+hands and rocked it to and fro on her shoulder. "Tell me now, old man;
+isn't it the creaking of the wheels that sings in your ears?"
+
+"Just listen, Naqui! If the angels make music for God Almighty, it
+must be such music as this that I am drinking in at every pore, rather
+than hearing. I do no know how to tell you about it; it is as sweet as
+honey-water!"
+
+"Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all the
+pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad, upon my word!" she said
+to herself, as she saw Castanier's attitude; he looked like an
+opium-eater in a blissful trance.
+
+They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the thought of all that
+he had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or not; he
+was like a drunken man, and utterly unable to think connectedly. He
+came to himself in Aquilina's room, whither he had been supported by
+the united efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he had
+fainted as he stepped from the carriage.
+
+"HE will be here directly! Oh, my friends, my friends," he cried, and
+he flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside
+the fire.
+
+Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. She
+announced that "a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with
+the master," when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence
+followed. He looked at the porter--the porter went; he looked at
+Jenny--and Jenny went likewise.
+
+"Madame," said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, "with your permission, we
+will conclude a piece of urgent business."
+
+He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went
+into the drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth's
+eyes lit up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had
+left Aquilina like one spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take
+any thought for her lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in
+Jenny's room, whereas their early return had taken the waiting-woman
+by surprise, and she had hidden the officer in the dressing-room. It
+had all happened exactly as in the drama that Melmoth had displayed
+for his victim. Presently the house-door was slammed violently, and
+Castanier reappeared.
+
+"What ails you?" cried the horror-struck Aquilina.
+
+There was a change in the cashier's appearance. A strange pallor
+overspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarly
+sinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare of
+his eyes was intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch.
+The man who had looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenly
+grown tyrannical and proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier had
+grown thinner; there was a terrible majesty in his brow; it was as if
+a dragon breathed forth a malignant influence that weighed upon the
+others like a close, heavy atmosphere. For a moment Aquilina knew not
+what to do.
+
+"What has passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those
+few minutes?" she asked at length.
+
+"I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer the same. He
+has taken my SELF, and given me his soul in exchange."
+
+"What?"
+
+"You would not understand it at all. . . . Ah! he was right,"
+Castanier went on, "the fiend was right! I see everything and know all
+things.--You have been deceiving me!"
+
+Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a candle and went
+into the dressing-room. The unhappy girl followed him with dazed
+bewilderment, and great was her astonishment when Castanier drew the
+dresses that hung there aside and disclosed the sergeant.
+
+"Come out, my boy," said the cashier; and, taking Leon by a button of
+his overcoat, he drew the officer into his room.
+
+The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her
+easy-chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the fire, and left
+Aquilina's lover in a standing position.
+
+"You have been in the army," said Leon; "I am ready to give you
+satisfaction."
+
+"You are a fool," said Castanier drily. "I have no occasion to fight.
+I could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell you
+what it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line
+round your neck--the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end
+in the Place de Greve. You are the headsman's property! there is no
+escape for you. You belong to a vendita, of the Carbonari. You are
+plotting against the Government."
+
+"You did not tell me that," cried the Piedmontese, turning to Leon.
+
+"So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put down
+your Society?" the cashier continued. "The Procureur-General has a
+list of your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up
+the indictment at this moment."
+
+"Then was it you who betrayed him?" cried Aquilina, and with a hoarse
+sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet;
+she seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces.
+
+"You know me too well to believe it," Castanier retorted. Aquilina was
+benumbed by his coolness.
+
+"Then how do you know it?" she murmured.
+
+"I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I know it--
+now I see and know all things, and can do all things."
+
+The sergeant was overcome with amazement.
+
+"Very well then, save him, save him, dear!" cried the girl, flinging
+herself at Castanier's feet. "If nothing is impossible to you, save
+him! I will love you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and not
+your mistress. I will obey your wildest whims; you shall do as you
+will with me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love; you shall have
+a daughter's devotion as well as . . . Rodolphe! why will you not
+understand! After all, however violent my passions may be, I shall be
+yours for ever! What should I say to persuade you? I will invent
+pleasures . . . I . . . Great heavens! one moment! whatever you shall
+ask of me--to fling myself from the window for instance--you will need
+to say but one word, 'Leon!' and I will plunge down into hell. I would
+bear any torture, any pain of body or soul, anything you might inflict
+upon me!"
+
+Castanier heard her with indifference. For an answer, he indicated
+Leon to her with a fiendish laugh.
+
+"The guillotine is waiting for him," he repeated.
+
+"No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!" she
+cried. "Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger upon him! Why will
+you not save him?" she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair
+unbound. "Can you save him?"
+
+"I can do everything."
+
+"Why do you not save him?"
+
+"Why?" shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.--"Eh!
+it is my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!"
+
+"Die?" said Aquilina; "must he die, my lover? Is it possible?"
+
+She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the
+chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who now began to laugh.
+
+"You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now----"
+
+Aquilina's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string.
+
+"Out with you, my good friend," said the cashier, turning to the
+sergeant, "and go about your business."
+
+He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier's superior power, and
+could not choose but to obey.
+
+"This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if I
+chose, and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises,
+but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy."
+
+"I shall follow him!" said Aquilina.
+
+"Then follow him," returned Castanier.--"Here, Jenny----"
+
+Jenny appeared.
+
+"Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.--Here Naqui," said Castanier,
+drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket; "you shall not go away
+like a pauper from a man who loves you still."
+
+He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes,
+flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a
+frenzy of despair.
+
+"We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a farthing of
+your money.--Jenny, stay where you are."
+
+"Good-evening!" answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes
+again. "I have come back from my journey.--Jenny," he added, looking
+at the bewildered waiting-maid, "you seem to me to be a good sort of
+girl. You have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have
+a master."
+
+Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
+house of one of her friends. But all Leon's movements were
+suspiciously watched by the police, and after a time he and three of
+his friends were arrested. The whole story may be found in the
+newspapers of that day.
+
+
+
+Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
+transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the
+young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
+tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
+lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature
+had suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
+developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
+things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above
+the world.
+
+Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
+Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her
+infidelities; and now all that blind passion had passed away as a
+cloud vanishes in the sunlight.
+
+Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress' position and fortune,
+and did the cashier's will in all things; but Castanier, who could
+read the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive
+underlying this purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her,
+however, like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the
+cherry and flings away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time,
+when she was fully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of
+the house, Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her
+mind as she drank her coffee.
+
+"Do you know what you are thinking, child?" he said, smiling. "I will
+tell you: 'So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so
+much, and the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! All
+on easy terms that Madame refused, I do no know why. My word! if I
+might drive about in a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box
+at the theatre, and put something by! with me he should lead a life of
+pleasure fit to kill him if he were not as strong as a Turk! I never
+saw such a man!'--Was not that just what you were thinking," he went
+on, and something in his voice made Jenny turn pale. "Well, yes,
+child; you could not stand it, and I am sending you away for your own
+good; you would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part good
+friends," and he coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of money.
+
+The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he would make
+of the terrible power brought at the price of his eternal happiness,
+was the full and complete indulgence of all his tastes.
+
+He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his accounts with
+M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then
+determined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman
+Empire. He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old
+went to that last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly
+through his revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of
+flame, not on the narrow walls of the banqueting-chamber, but over the
+vast spaces of heaven that the rainbow spans. His feast was not,
+indeed, an orgy confined within the limits of a banquet, for he
+squandered all the powers of soul and body in exhausting all the
+pleasures of earth. The table was in some sort earth itself, the earth
+that trembled beneath his feet. His was the last festival of the
+reckless spendthrift who has thrown all prudence to the winds. The
+devil had given him the key of the storehouse of human pleasures; he
+had filled and refilled his hands, and he was fast nearing the bottom.
+In a moment he had felt all that that enormous power could accomplish;
+in a moment he had exercised it, proved it, wearied of it. What had
+hitherto been the sum of human desires became as nothing. So often it
+happens that with possession the vast poetry of desire must end, and
+the thing possessed is seldom the thing that we dreamed of.
+
+Beneath Melmoth's omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so
+many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to
+his successor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.
+
+To come to a clear understanding of Castanier's strange position, it
+must be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and
+feeling had been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other;
+and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those who have
+never broken the prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His
+relation to the world without had been entirely changed with the
+expansion of his faculties.
+
+Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the
+fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above
+African desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same
+insight that could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend
+at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it
+were all flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a
+despot; a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its
+fruits. The transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain,
+and diversify human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had so
+completely glutted his appetites that pleasure must overpass the
+limits of pleasure to tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and
+suddenly grown fastidious beyond all measure, so that ordinary
+pleasures became distasteful. Conscious that at will he was the master
+of all the women that he could desire, knowing that his power was
+irresistible, he did not care to exercise it; they were pliant to his
+unexpressed wishes, to his most extravagant caprices, until he felt a
+horrible thirst for love, and would have love beyond their power to
+give.
+
+The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing and
+consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was a
+horrible position.
+
+The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul
+and his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being;
+but in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of
+the sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity
+of longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on
+outspread wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to
+other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and
+hopeless knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and
+thirsted after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for
+which he could not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned
+with desire; he panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.
+
+The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its
+working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the
+profound scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx
+who knows everything and says nothing, and sees all things with an
+unmoved countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his
+knowledge to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world,
+with one effort he could make the circle of the globe, and riches and
+power were meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy of
+omnipotence, a melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise
+of infinite power in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier
+had not, like his Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and
+malice; he felt that he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not
+yet come, while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and being
+damned beyond redemption, delights to stir up the world, like a dung
+heap, with his triple fork and to thwart therein the designs of God.
+But Castanier, for his misfortune, had one hope left.
+
+If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird
+springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,
+he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond
+it. That vision of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see
+humanity and its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools
+who long for the power of the Devil gauge its desirability from a
+human standpoint; they do not see that with the Devil's power they
+will likewise assume his thoughts, and that they will be doomed to
+remain as men among creatures who will no longer understand them. The
+Nero unknown to history who dreams of setting Paris on fire for his
+private entertainment, like an exhibition of a burning house on the
+boards of a theatre, does not suspect that if he had the power, Paris
+would become for him as little interesting as an ant-heap by the
+roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for
+Castanier something like a logogriph for a man who does not know the
+key to it. Kings and Governments were despicable in his eyes. His
+great debauch had been in some sort a deplorable farewell to his life
+as a man. The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal
+gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation--he saw the cause and
+foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" in
+all languages under the sun; he could no longer think of heaven.
+
+Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the
+drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the
+baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth's eyes; he, too, knew the thirst
+that burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual struggle
+between two natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an
+angel, and he knew himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet
+and gentle creature that a wizard's malice has imprisoned in a
+mis-shapen form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's will must
+set it free from its detested envelope.
+
+As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of really
+great nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a woman's heart, so
+Castanier awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul,
+an idea which was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very fact
+that he had bartered away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in
+thought upon the future of those who pray and believe. On the morrow
+of his debauch, when he entered into the sober possession of his
+power, this idea made him feel himself a prisoner; he knew the burden
+of the woe that poets, and prophets, and great oracles of faith have
+set forth for us in such mighty words; he felt the point of the
+Flaming Sword plunged into his side, and hurried in search of Melmoth.
+What had become of his predecessor?
+
+The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue Ferou, near Saint-
+Sulpice--a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode. The Rue Ferou itself is
+one of the most dismal streets in Paris; it has a north aspect like
+all the streets that lie at right angles to the left bank of the
+Seine, and the houses are in keeping with the site. As Castanier stood
+on the threshold he found that the door itself, like the vaulted roof,
+was hung with black; rows of lighted tapers shone brilliantly as
+though some king were lying in state; and a priest stood on either
+side of a catafalque that had been raised there.
+
+"There is no need to ask why you have come, sir," the old hall porter
+said to Castanier; "you are so like our poor dear master that is gone.
+But if you are his brother, you have come too late to bid him
+good-bye. The good gentleman died the night before last."
+
+"How did he die?" Castanier asked of one of the priests.
+
+"Set your mind at rest," said the old priest; he partly raised as he
+spoke the black pall that covered the catafalque.
+
+Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith has made
+sublime; the soul seemed to shine forth from every line of it,
+bringing light and warmth for other men, kindled by the unfailing
+charity within. This was Sir John Melmoth's confessor.
+
+"Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that must rejoice the
+angels. Do you know what joy there is in heaven over a sinner that
+repents? His tears of penitence, excited by grace, flowed without
+ceasing; death alone checked them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in him. His
+burning words, full of lively faith, were worthy of the Prophet-King.
+If, in the course of my life, I have never heard a more dreadful
+confession than from the lips of this Irish gentleman, I have likewise
+never heard such fervent and passionate prayers. However great the
+measures of his sins may have been, his repentance has filled the
+abyss to overflowing. The hand of God was visibly stretched out above
+him, for he was completely changed, there was such heavenly beauty in
+his face. The hard eyes were softened by tears; the resonant voice
+that struck terror into those who heard it took the tender and
+compassionate tones of those who themselves have passed through deep
+humiliation. He so edified those who heard his words, that some who
+had felt drawn to see the spectacle of a Christian's death fell on
+their knees as he spoke of heavenly things, and of the infinite glory
+of God, and gave thanks and praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly
+wealth to his family, no family can possess a greater blessing than
+this that he surely gained for them, a soul among the blessed, who
+will watch over you all and direct you in the path to heaven."
+
+These words made such a vivid impression upon Castanier that he
+instantly hurried from the house to the Church of Saint-Sulpice,
+obeying what might be called a decree of fate. Melmoth's repentance
+had stupefied him.
+
+
+At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a preacher, famed for
+his eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which he
+demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a
+generation proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by
+another voice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been
+put off to a later hour on account of Melmoth's funeral, so Castanier
+arrived just as the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a
+future existence of happiness with all the charm of eloquence and
+force of expression which have made him famous. The seeds of divine
+doctrine fell into a soil prepared for them in the old dragoon, into
+whom the Devil had glided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well
+attested by experience, is it not the spiritual phenomenon commonly
+called "the faith of the peasant"? The strength of belief varies
+inversely with the amount of use that a man has made of his reasoning
+faculties. Simple people and soldiers belong to the unreasoning class.
+Those who have marched through life beneath the banner of instinct are
+far more ready to receive the light than minds and hearts overwearied
+with the world's sophistries.
+
+Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a
+lad of sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly
+forty years old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and
+day after day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first,
+and of himself afterwards. While he served his military
+apprenticeship, therefore, he had but little leisure in which to
+reflect on the destiny of man, and when he became an officer he had
+his men to think of. He had been swept from battlefield to
+battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after death. A
+soldier's life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot
+understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of
+nation and nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as well as plans
+of campaign, and combine the science of the tactician with that of the
+administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance; the most
+boorish peasant in the most backward district in France is scarcely in
+a worse case. Such men as these bear the brunt of war, yield passive
+obedience to the brain that directs them, and strike down the men
+opposed to them as the woodcutter fells timber in the forest. Violent
+physical exertion is succeeded by times of inertia, when they repair
+the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep, that
+they may the better deal hard blows; the powers of the mind are not
+greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the
+character is as simple as heretofore.
+
+When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to
+ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank
+seem to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity,
+for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger
+generation, those who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are
+as simple as children, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst,
+and the captain of a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a
+merchant's day-book. Old soldiers of this stamp, therefore being
+innocent of any attempt to use their reasoning faculties, act upon
+their strongest impulses. Castanier's crime was one of those matters
+that raise so many questions, that, in order to debate about it, a
+moralist might call for its "discussion by clauses," to make use of a
+parliamentary expression.
+
+Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible power of
+feminine witchery had driven him to commit it; no man can say of
+himself, "I will never do that," when a siren joins in the combat and
+throws her spells over him.
+
+So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the
+truths of religion which the French Revolution and a soldier's career
+had forced Castanier to neglect. The solemn words, "You will be happy
+or miserable for all eternity!" made but the more terrible impression
+upon him, because he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren
+tree; because his desires could effect all things, so that it was
+enough that any spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and
+he forthwith thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to compare
+such great things with social follies, Castanier's position was not
+unlike that of a banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions
+cannot obtain for him an entrance into the society of the noblesse,
+must set his heart upon entering that circle, and all the social
+privileges that he has already acquired are as nothing in his eyes
+from the moment when he discovers that a single one is lacking.
+
+Here is a man more powerful than all the kings on earth put together;
+a man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God Himself; leaning against
+one of the pillars in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by
+the feelings and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed in the
+thought of a Future, the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth.
+
+"He was very happy, was Melmoth!" cried Castanier. "He died in the
+certain knowledge that he would go to heaven."
+
+In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the
+cashier's ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was
+nothing but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred
+tradition embodied in all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk he
+retained a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite. The
+power of hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven as
+he had never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon
+exhausted. The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the
+enjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there
+is no limit. He believed in God, and the spell that gave him the
+treasures of the world was as nothing to him now; the treasures
+themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of
+diamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal glories of
+the other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came to
+him from this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he
+listened to the service performed for Melmoth. The Dies irae filled
+him with awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul
+trembling before the Throne of God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring
+flame, passed through him as fire consumes straw.
+
+The tears were falling from his eyes when--"Are you a relation of the
+dead?" the beadle asked him.
+
+"I am his heir," Castanier answered.
+
+"Give something for the expenses of the services!" cried the man.
+
+"No," said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not go to the
+Church.)
+
+"For the poor!"
+
+"No."
+
+"For repairing the Church!"
+
+"No."
+
+"The Lady Chapel!"
+
+"No."
+
+"For the schools!"
+
+"No."
+
+Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that
+the irritated functionaries gave him.
+
+Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice.
+"What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every
+country?" he asked himself. "The feeling shared so widely throughout
+all time must surely be based upon something."
+
+"Something! Do you call God SOMETHING?" cried his conscience. "God!
+God! God! . . ."
+
+The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner voice, til it
+overwhelmed him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet
+distant sounds of music that he had caught faintly before. They were
+singing in the church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great
+doorway. But as he listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him
+from all sides; he looked round the square, but there was no sign of
+any musicians. The melody brought visions of a distant heaven and
+far-off gleams of hope; but it also quickened the remorse that had set
+the lost soul in a ferment. He went on his way through Paris, walking
+as men walk who are crushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing
+everything with unseeing eyes, loitering like an idler, stopping
+without cause, muttering to himself, careless of the traffic, making
+no effort to avoid a blow from a plank of timber.
+
+Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the influence of the divine
+grace that soothes while it bruises the heart so terribly. His face
+came to wear a look of Melmoth, something great, with a trace of
+madness in the greatness--a look of dull and hopeless distress,
+mingled with the excited eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a
+gnawing sense of loathing for all that the world can give. The
+humblest of prayers lurked in the eyes that saw with such dreadful
+clearness. His power was the measure of his anguish. His body was
+bowed down by the fearful storm that shook his soul, as the tall pines
+bend before the blast. Like his predecessor, he could not refuse to
+bear the burden of life; he was afraid to die while he bore the yoke
+of hell. The torment grew intolerable.
+
+At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that Melmoth (now among
+the blessed) had made the proposal of an exchange, and how that he had
+accepted it; others, doubtless, would follow his example; for in an
+age proclaimed, by the inheritors of the eloquence of the Fathers of
+the Church, to be fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy
+to find a man who would accept the conditions of the contract in order
+to prove its advantages.
+
+"There is one place where you can learn what kings will fetch in the
+market; where nations are weighed in the balance and systems
+appraised; where the value of a government is stated in terms of the
+five-franc piece; where ideas and beliefs have their price, and
+everything is discounted; where God Himself, in a manner, borrows on
+the security of His revenue of souls, for the Pope has a running
+account there. Is it not there that I should go to traffic in souls?"
+
+Castanier went quite joyously on 'Change, thinking that it would be as
+easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary
+person would have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience
+that a desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying
+under sentence of death would listen to the madman who should tell him
+that by pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the
+keyhole; for suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it
+fails, as the swimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch
+that snaps in his hand.
+
+Towards four o'clock that afternoon Castanier appeared among the
+little knots of men who were transacting private business after
+'Change. He was personally known to some of the brokers; and while
+affecting to be in search of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up
+the current gossip and rumors of failure.
+
+"Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon & Co., my boy. The bank
+collector went round to return their acceptances to them this
+morning," said a fat banker in his outspoken way. "If you have any of
+their paper, look out."
+
+Claparon was in the building, in deep consultation with a man well
+known for the ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castanier went
+forthwith in search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a
+reputation for taking heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The
+money-lender walked away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the
+speculator's despair.
+
+"Well, Claparon, the Bank wants a hundred thousand francs of you, and
+it is four o'clock; the thing is known, and it is too late to arrange
+your little failure comfortably," said Castanier.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Speak lower," the cashier went on. "How if I were to propose a piece
+of business that would bring you in as much money as you require?"
+
+"It would not discharge my liabilities; every business that I ever
+heard of wants a little time to simmer in."
+
+"I know of something that will set you straight in a moment," answered
+Castanier; "but first you would have to----"
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Sell your share of paradise. It is a matter of business like anything
+else, isn't it? We all hold shares in the great Speculation of
+Eternity."
+
+"I tell you this," said Claparon angrily, "that I am just the man to
+lend you a slap in the face. When a man is in trouble, it is no time
+to pay silly jokes on him."
+
+"I am talking seriously," said Castanier, and he drew a bundle of
+notes from his pocket.
+
+"In the first place," said Claparon, "I am not going to sell my soul
+to the Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thousand francs before
+I strike----"
+
+"Who talks of stinting you?" asked Castanier, cutting him short. "You
+shall have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank of
+France."
+
+He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon.
+
+"Done," he cried; "but how is the bargain to be make?"
+
+"Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there," said Castanier,
+pointing to a corner of the court.
+
+Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with their faces
+turned to the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this
+by-play, though their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange
+gestures of the two contracting parties. When Castanier returned,
+there was a sudden outburst of amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly
+where the least event immediately attracts attention, all faces were
+turned to the two men who had caused the sensation, and a shiver
+passed through all beholders at the change that had taken place in
+them.
+
+The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange are
+soon known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players
+round a card-table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play
+and the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the
+Stock Exchange is simply a vast card-table. Every one, therefore, had
+noticed Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irishman before
+him) had been muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of light, his
+color high. The dignity and power in his face had struck awe into them
+all; they wondered how old Castanier had come by it; and now they
+beheld Castanier divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and
+feeble. He had drawn Claparon out of the crowd with the energy of a
+sick man in a fever fit; he had looked like an opium-eater during the
+brief period of excitement that the drug can give; now, on his return,
+he seemed to be in the condition of utter exhaustion in which the
+patient dies after the fever departs, or to be suffering from the
+horrible prostration that follows on excessive indulgence in the
+delights of narcotics. The infernal power that had upheld him through
+his debauches had left him, and the body was left unaided and alone to
+endure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of sincere
+repentance. Claparon's troubles every one could guess; but Claparon
+reappeared, on the other hand, with sparkling eyes, holding his head
+high with the pride of Lucifer. The crisis had passed from the one man
+to the other.
+
+"Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man," said Claparon to
+Castanier.
+
+"For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate
+of Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the
+curbstone.
+
+The words "a priest" reached the ears of several people, and produced
+uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith with these
+gentlemen means a belief that a scrap of paper called a mortgage
+represents an estate, and the List of Fundholders is their Bible.
+
+"Shall I have time to repent?" said Castanier to himself, in a piteous
+voice, that impressed Claparon.
+
+A cab carried away the dying man; the speculator went to the bank at
+once to meet his bills; and the momentary sensation produced upon the
+throng of business men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanished
+like the furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest
+importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert;
+and when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with
+his two luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the
+honors of a pun, the gentlemen whose business it is to write the
+Market Reports would ignore his existence.
+
+When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was
+no mistake about his power. He went on 'Change again, and offered his
+bargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond,
+"together with the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining
+thereunto,"--to use the expression of the notary who succeeded
+Claparon, changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs.
+The notary in his turn parted with the agreement with the Devil for
+five hundred thousand francs to a building contractor in difficulties,
+who likewise was rid of it to an iron merchant in consideration of a
+hundred thousand crowns. In fact, by five o'clock people had ceased to
+believe in the strange contract, and purchasers were lacking for want
+of confidence.
+
+At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house-painter, who was
+lounging by the door of the building in the Rue Feydeau, where at that
+time stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house-painter, simple
+fellow, could not think what was the matter with him. He "felt all
+anyhow"; so he told his wife when he went home.
+
+The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a place of
+pilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress bestow their ardent
+affection upon the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidly
+respectable domicile therein dwelt one of those exquisite creatures
+whom it has pleased heaven to endow with the rarest and most
+surpassing beauty. As it is impossible that they should all be
+duchesses or queens (since there are many more pretty women in the
+world than titles and thrones for them to adorn), they are content to
+make a stockbroker or a banker happy at a fixed price. To this
+good-natured beauty, Euphrasia by name, an unbounded ambition had led
+a notary's clerk to aspire. In short, the second clerk in the office
+of Maitre Crottat, notary, had fallen in love with her, as youth at
+two-and-twenty can fall in love. The scrivener would have murdered the
+Pope and run amuck through the whole sacred college to procure the
+miserable sum of a hundred louis to pay for a shawl which had turned
+Euphrasia's head, at which price her waiting-woman had promised that
+Euphrasia should be his. The infatuated youth walked to and fro under
+Madame Euphrasia's windows, like the polar bears in their cage at the
+Jardin des Plantes, with his right hand thrust beneath his waistcoat
+in the region of the heart, which he was fit to tear from his bosom,
+but as yet he had only wrenched at the elastic of his braces.
+
+"What can one do to raise ten thousand francs?" he asked himself.
+"Shall I make off with the money that I must pay on the registration
+of that conveyance? Good heavens! my loan would not ruin the
+purchaser, a man with seven millions! And then next day I would fling
+myself at his feet and say, 'I have taken ten thousand francs
+belonging to you, sir; I am twenty-two years of age, and I am in love
+with Euphrasia--that is my story. My father is rich, he will pay you
+back; do not ruin me! Have not you yourself been twenty-two years old
+and madly in love?' But these beggarly landowners have no souls! He
+would be quite likely to give me up to the public prosecutor, instead
+of taking pity upon me. Good God! if it were only possible to sell
+your soul to the Devil! But there is neither a God nor a Devil; it is
+all nonsense out of nursery tales and old wives' talk. What shall I
+do?"
+
+"If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir," said the
+house-painter, who had overheard something that the clerk let fall,
+"you can have the ten thousand francs."
+
+"And Euphrasia!" cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain with the
+devil that inhabited the house-painter.
+
+The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the shawl, and
+mounted Madame Euphrasia's staircase; and as (literally) the devil was
+in him, he did not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought of
+hell and of his privileges in twelve days of love and riot and
+forgetfulness, for which he had bartered away all his hopes of a
+paradise to come.
+
+And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired
+by the Irishman, the offspring of Maturin's brain, was lost to
+mankind; and the various Orientalists, Mystics, and Archaeologists who
+take an interest in these matters were unable to hand down to
+posterity the proper method of invoking the Devil, for the following
+sufficient reasons:
+
+On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the wretched clerk
+lay on a pallet bed in a garret in his master's house in the Rue
+Saint-Honore. Shame, the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself,
+had taken possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he would
+nurse himself; misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill
+of a practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to
+the effects of an overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a
+mole's back. A devil had left unmistakable traces of its passage
+there; could it have been Ashtaroth?
+
+
+
+"The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried away to the
+planet Mercury," said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came
+to investigate the matter at first hand.
+
+"I am quite prepared to believe it," answered the Teuton.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Yes, sir," returned the other. "The opinion you advance coincides
+with the very words of Jacob Boehme. In the forty-eighth proposition
+of the Threefold Life of Man he says that 'if God hath brought all
+things to pass with a LET THERE BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix
+which comprehends and apprehends the nature which is formed by the
+spirit born of Mercury and of God.' "
+
+"What do you say, sir?"
+
+The German delivered his quotation afresh.
+
+"We do not know it," said the clerks.
+
+"Fiat? . . ." said a clerk. "Fiat lux!"
+
+"You can verify the citation for yourselves," said the German. "You
+will find the passage in the Treatise of the Threefold Life of Man,
+page 75; the edition was published by M. Migneret in 1809. It was
+translated into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration for
+the famous shoemaker."
+
+"Oh! he was a shoemaker, was he?" said the head clerk.
+
+"In Prussia," said the German.
+
+"Did he work for the King of Prussia?" inquired a Boeotian of a second
+clerk.
+
+"He must have vamped up his prose," said a third.
+
+"That man is colossal!" cried the fourth, pointing to the Teuton.
+
+That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not know
+the amount of devilry to be found in a notary's clerk. He went away
+without the least idea that they were making game of him, and fully
+under the impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as a
+colossal genius.
+
+"Education is making strides in France," said he to himself.
+
+
+
+PARIS, May 6, 1835.
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Aquilina
+  The Magic Skin
+
+Claparon, Charles
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Euphrasia
+  The Magic Skin
+
+Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
+  Father Goriot
+  The Thirteen
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Another Study of Woman
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Tillet, Ferdinand du
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  The Middle Classes
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Pierrette
+  A Distinguished Provencial at Paris
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Melmoth Reconciled
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Melmoth Reconciled, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Melmoth Reconciled
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2005 [EBook #1277]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MELMOTH RECONCILED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and Bonnie Sala
+
+
+
+
+
+                         MELMOTH RECONCILED
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+                           Translated by
+                           Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+  To Monsieur le General Baron de Pommereul, a token of the friendship
+  between our fathers, which survives in their sons.
+
+                                                        DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social
+Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in the
+Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybrid
+which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is
+known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious
+doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to
+flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an
+uninteresting family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always be a
+problem for the physiologist. Has any one as yet been able to state
+correctly the terms of the proportion sum wherein the cashier figures
+as the unknown _x_? Where will you find the man who shall live with
+wealth, like a cat with a caged mouse? This man, for further
+qualification, shall be capable of sitting boxed in behind an iron
+grating for seven or eight hours a day during seven-eighths of the
+year, perched upon a cane-seated chair in a space as narrow as a
+lieutenant's cabin on board a man-of-war. Such a man must be able to
+defy anchylosis of the knee and thigh joints; he must have a soul
+above meanness, in order to live meanly; must lose all relish for
+money by dint of handling it. Demand this peculiar specimen of any
+creed, educational system, school, or institution you please, and
+select Paris, that city of fiery ordeals and branch establishment of
+hell, as the soil in which to plant the said cashier. So be it.
+Creeds, schools, institutions and moral systems, all human rules and
+regulations, great and small, will, one after another, present much
+the same face that an intimate friend turns upon you when you ask him
+to lend you a thousand francs. With a dolorous dropping of the jaw,
+they indicate the guillotine, much as your friend aforesaid will
+furnish you with the address of the money-lender, pointing you to one
+of the hundred gates by which a man comes to the last refuge of the
+destitute.
+
+Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man's mind; she indulges
+herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a
+cashier.
+
+Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of
+bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a
+thousand crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque,
+hold these rare products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem
+that they confine them in cages in their counting-houses, much as
+governments procure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at their
+own charges.
+
+If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid
+temperament; if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete
+cashier, he loves his wife, and that wife grows tired of her lot, has
+ambitions, or merely some vanity in her composition, the cashier is
+undone. Search the chronicles of the counting-house. You will not find
+a single instance of a cashier attaining _a position_, as it is called.
+They are sent to the hulks; they go to foreign parts; they vegetate on
+a second floor in the Rue Saint-Louis among the market gardens of the
+Marais. Some day, when the cashiers of Paris come to a sense of their
+real value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money. Still,
+certain it is that there are people who are fit for nothing but to be
+cashiers, just as the bent of a certain order of mind inevitably makes
+for rascality. But, oh marvel of our civilization! Society rewards
+virtue with an income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a
+second floor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs,
+an elderly wife and her offspring.
+
+So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a little boldness, a
+faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne
+outflanked Montecuculi, and Society will sanction the theft of
+millions, shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and
+smother him with consideration.
+
+Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this profoundly
+illogical reasoner--Society. Government levies a conscription on the
+young intelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen,
+a conscription of precocious brain-work before it is sent up to be
+submitted to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds
+in much the same way. To this process the Government brings
+professional appraisers of talent, men who can assay brains as experts
+assay gold at the Mint. Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope,
+are sent up annually by the most progressive portion of the
+population; and of these the Government takes one-third, puts them in
+sacks called the Ecoles, and shakes them up together for three years.
+Though every one of these young plants represents vast productive
+power, they are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive
+appointments; the rank and file of engineers is made up of them; they
+are employed as captains of artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade
+to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the
+youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with
+knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their
+reward, and receive as the price of their services the third-floor
+lodging, the wife and family, and all the comforts that sweeten life
+for mediocrity. If from among this race of dupes there should escape
+some five or six men of genius who climb the highest heights, is it
+not miraculous?
+
+This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probity
+on the one hand and Government and Society on the other, in an age
+that considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory
+explanation a recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; but
+preceded by this summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive
+some thoughtful attention from minds capable of recognizing the real
+plague-spots of our civilization, a civilization which since 1815 as
+been moved by the spirit of gain rather than by principles of honor.
+
+
+
+About five o'clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of
+the largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light
+of a lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use
+and wont of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner of
+the low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very
+end of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors
+along this corridor, each with its label, gave the place the look of a
+bath-house. At four o'clock the stolid porter had proclaimed,
+according to his orders, "The bank is closed." And by this time the
+departments were deserted, wives of the partners in the firm were
+expecting their lovers; the two bankers dining with their mistresses.
+Everything was in order.
+
+The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet-iron was
+just behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless
+he was balancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of
+hammered iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the
+modern inventor) that burglars could not carry it away. The door only
+opened at the pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock
+was a warden who kept its own secret and could not be bribed; the
+mysterious word was an ingenious realization of the "Open sesame!" in
+the _Arabian Nights_. But even this was as nothing. A man might discover
+the password; but unless he knew the lock's final secret, the _ultima
+ratio_ of this gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, it
+discharged a blunderbuss at his head.
+
+The door of the room, the walls of the room, the shutters of the
+windows in the room, the whole place, in fact, was lined with
+sheet-iron a third of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin
+wooden paneling. The shutters had been closed, the door had been shut.
+If ever man could feel confident that he was absolutely alone, and
+that there was no remote possibility of being watched by prying eyes,
+that man was the cashier of the house of Nucingen and Company, in the
+Rue Saint-Lazare.
+
+Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave. The fire
+had died out in the stove, but the room was full of that tepid warmth
+which produces the dull heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of a
+morning after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no small
+part in the reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.
+
+A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong men
+is evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their wills
+enfeebled. Government offices are part of a great scheme for the
+manufacture of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a
+Feudal System on a pecuniary basis--and money is the foundation of the
+Social Contract. (See _Les Employes_.) The mephitic vapors in the
+atmosphere of a crowded room contribute in no small degree to bring
+about a gradual deterioration of intelligences, the brain that gives
+off the largest quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others, in the
+long run.
+
+The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or thereabouts. As he sat at
+the table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his bald
+head and glistening fringe of iron-gray hair that surrounded it--this
+baldness and the round outlines of his face made his head look very
+like a ball. His complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had gathered
+about his eyes, but he had the smooth, plump hands of a stout man. His
+blue cloth coat, a little rubbed and worn, and the creases and
+shininess of his trousers, traces of hard wear that the clothes-brush
+fails to remove, would impress a superficial observer with the idea
+that here was a thrifty and upright human being, sufficient of the
+philosopher or of the aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But,
+unluckily, it is easy to find penny-wise people who will prove weak,
+wasteful, or incompetent in the capital things of life.
+
+The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his
+button-hole, for he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the
+Emperor. M. de Nucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a
+banker, had had reason in those days to know the honorable disposition
+of his cashier, who then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune
+had befallen the major, and the banker out of regard for him paid him
+five hundred francs a month. The soldier had become a cashier in the
+year 1813, after his recovery from a wound received at Studzianka
+during the Retreat from Moscow, followed by six months of enforced
+idleness at Strasbourg, whither several officers had been transported
+by order of the Emperor, that they might receive skilled attention.
+This particular officer, Castanier by name, retired with the honorary
+grade of colonel, and a pension of two thousand four hundred francs.
+
+In ten years' time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier, and
+Castanier inspired the banker with such trust in him, that he was
+associated in the transactions that went on in the private office
+behind his little counting-house. The baron himself had access to it
+by means of a secret staircase. There, matters of business were
+decided. It was the bolting-room where proposals were sifted; the
+privy council chamber where the reports of the money market were
+analyzed; circular notes issued thence; and finally, the private
+ledger and the journal which summarized the work of all the
+departments were kept there.
+
+Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened on to a
+staircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on the
+first floor of their hotel. This done, he had sat down at his desk
+again, and for a moment he gazed at a little collection of letters of
+credit drawn on the firm of Watschildine of London. Then he had taken
+up the pen and imitated the banker's signature on each. _Nucingen_ he
+wrote, and eyed the forged signatures critically to see which seemed
+the most perfect copy.
+
+Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. "You are not
+alone!" a boding voice seemed to cry in his heart; and indeed the
+forger saw a man standing at the little grated window of the
+counting-house, a man whose breathing was so noiseless that he did not
+seem to breathe at all. Castanier looked, and saw that the door at the
+end of the passage was wide open; the stranger must have entered by
+that way.
+
+For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of
+dread that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man before
+him; and for that matter, the appearance of the apparition was
+sufficiently alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysterious
+circumstances of so sudden an entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh
+coloring of the long oval face, indicated quite as plainly as the cut
+of his clothes that the man was an Englishman, reeking of his native
+isles. You had only to look at the collar of his overcoat, at the
+voluminous cravat which smothered the crushed frills of a shirt front
+so white that it brought out the changeless leaden hue of an impassive
+face, and the thin red line of the lips that seemed made to suck the
+blood of corpses; and you can guess at once at the black gaiters
+buttoned up to the knee, and the half-puritanical costume of a wealthy
+Englishman dressed for a walking excursion. The intolerable glitter of
+the stranger's eyes produced a vivid and unpleasant impression, which
+was only deepened by the rigid outlines of his features. The dried-up,
+emaciated creature seemed to carry within him some gnawing thought
+that consumed him and could not be appeased.
+
+He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless eat
+continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or
+features. A tun of Tokay _vin de succession_ would not have caused any
+faltering in that piercing glance that read men's inmost thoughts, nor
+dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go to
+the bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquil
+majesty of a tiger about him.
+
+"I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said. Castanier
+felt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent
+shock similar to that given by a discharge of electricity.
+
+"The safe is closed," said Castanier.
+
+"It is open," said the Englishman, looking round the counting-house.
+"To-morrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The amount is for five
+hundred thousand francs. You have the money there, and I must have
+it."
+
+"But how did you come in, sir?"
+
+The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened Castanier. No words could
+have replied more fully nor more peremptorily than that scornful and
+imperial curl of the stranger's lips. Castanier turned away, took up
+fifty packets each containing ten thousand francs in bank-notes, and
+held them out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a bill
+accepted by the Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ran
+through him as he saw a red gleam in the stranger's eyes when they
+fell on the forged signature on the letter of credit.
+
+"It . . . it wants your signature . . ." stammered Castanier, handing
+back the bill.
+
+"Hand me your pen," answered the Englishman.
+
+Castanier handed him the pen with which he had just committed forgery.
+The stranger wrote _John Melmoth_, then he returned the slip of paper
+and the pen to the cashier. Castanier looked at the handwriting,
+noticing that it sloped from right to left in the Eastern fashion, and
+Melmoth disappeared so noiselessly that when Castanier looked up again
+an exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was no longer
+there, partly because he felt a strange painful sensation such as our
+imagination might take for an effect of poison.
+
+The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat through
+him that an emetic produces. But it seemed impossible to Castanier
+that the Englishman should have guessed his crime. His inward qualms
+he attributed to the palpitation of the heart that, according to
+received ideas, was sure to follow at once on such a "turn" as the
+stranger had given him.
+
+"The devil take it; I am very stupid. Providence is watching over me;
+for if that brute had come round to see my gentleman to-morrow, my
+goose would have been cooked!" said Castanier, and he burned the
+unsuccessful attempts at forgery in the stove.
+
+He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, and
+helped himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and English
+bank-notes from the safe, which he locked. Then he put everything in
+order, lit a candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella,
+and went out sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the
+strong room with Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her husband the
+Baron.
+
+"You are in luck, M. Castanier," said the banker's wife as he entered
+the room; "we have a holiday on Monday; you can go into the country,
+or to Soizy."
+
+"Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that the bill of
+exchange on Watschildine, which was behind time, has just been
+presented? The five hundred thousand francs have been paid; so I shall
+not come back till noon on Tuesday."
+
+"Good-bye, monsieur; I hope you will have a pleasant time."
+
+"The same to you, madame," replied the old dragoon as he went out. He
+glanced as he spoke at a young man well known in fashionable society
+at that time, a M. de Rastignac, who was regarded as Madame de
+Nucingen's lover.
+
+"Madame," remarked this latter, "the old boy looks to me as if he
+meant to play you some ill turn."
+
+"Pshaw! impossible; he is too stupid."
+
+
+
+"Piquoizeau," said the cashier, walking into the porter's room, "what
+made you let anybody come up after four o'clock?"
+
+"I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since four
+o'clock," said the man, "and nobody has gone into the bank. Nobody has
+come out either except the gentlemen----"
+
+"Are you quite sure?"
+
+"Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four o'clock M.
+Werbrust's friend came, a young fellow from Messrs. du Tillet & Co.,
+in the Rue Joubert."
+
+"All right," said Castanier, and he hurried away.
+
+The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back the
+pen returned in greater intensity. "_Mille diables_!" thought he, as he
+threaded his way along the Boulevard de Gand, "haven't I taken proper
+precautions? Let me think! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a
+day of uncertainty before they begin to look for me; altogether, three
+days and four nights' respite. I have a couple of passports and two
+different disguises; is not that enough to throw the cleverest
+detective off the scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a million
+francs in London before the slightest suspicion has been aroused. My
+debts I am leaving behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will
+put a 'P'* on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for the
+rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro. [*Protested.] I was alone with
+him when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall
+slip into his skin. . . . _Mille diables_! the woman who is to follow
+after me might give them a clue! Think of an old campaigner like me
+infatuated enough to tie myself to a petticoat tail! . . . Why take
+her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could make up my mind to it;
+but--I know myself--I should be ass enough to go back to her. Still,
+nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave her?"
+
+"You will not take her!" cried a voice that filled Castanier with
+sickening dread. He turned sharply, and saw the Englishman.
+
+"The devil is in it!" cried the cashier aloud.
+
+Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if Castanier's first
+impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his own
+thoughts, he was so much torn up by opposing feelings that the
+immediate result was a temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk
+he fell once more into that fever of irresolution which besets those
+who are so carried away by passion that they are ready to commit a
+crime, but have not sufficient strength of character to keep it to
+themselves without suffering terribly in the process. So, although
+Castanier had made up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was
+already half executed, he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him,
+as for many men of mixed character in whom weakness and strength are
+equally blended, the least trifling consideration determines whether
+they shall continue to lead blameless lives or become actively
+criminal. In the vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies
+there are many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely physical
+courage demanded on the battlefield, yet lacked the moral courage
+which makes a man as great in crime as he could have been in virtue.
+
+The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on his
+arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of
+Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. The
+London house had already been advised of the draft about to be made
+upon them, he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent
+(chosen at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave
+Portsmouth with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to
+Italy, and the passage-money had been paid in the name of the Conte
+Ferraro. The smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He
+had arranged matters so as to divert the search that would be made for
+him into Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the
+English vessel. Then, by the time that Nucingen might flatter himself
+that he was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as the
+Conte Ferraro, hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined to
+disfigure his face in order to disguise himself the more completely,
+and by means of an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. Yet, in
+spite of all these precautions, which surely seemed as if they must
+secure him complete immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was
+afraid. The even and peaceful life that he had led for so long had
+modified the morality of the camp. His life was stainless as yet; he
+could not sully it without a pang. So for the last time he abandoned
+himself to all the influences of the better self that strenuously
+resisted.
+
+"Pshaw!" he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
+Montmartre, "I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out
+to Versailles. A post-chaise will be ready for me at my old
+quartermaster's place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men
+were standing ready to shoot him down. The chances are all in my
+favor, so far as I see; so I shall take my little Naqui with me, and I
+will go."
+
+"You will not go!" exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of
+his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart.
+
+Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was
+whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe
+some hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind
+to cut off the man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the
+Boulevard Montmartre.
+
+"Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!" said
+he to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should
+think that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the
+devil and the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me
+in the nick of time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this is
+folly . . ."
+
+Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening his
+pace as he neared the Rue Richer. There on the second floor of a block
+of buildings which looked out upon some gardens lived the unconscious
+cause of Castanier's crime--a young woman known in the quarter as Mme.
+de la Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's past
+life must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a
+complete presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.
+
+Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not even
+Castanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls, who
+are driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear
+of starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe,
+many regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the
+laws of their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of
+prostitution in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure
+as the Madonna, had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough
+and homely to make his way in society, and he was tired of tramping
+the boulevard at night and of the kind of conquests made there by
+gold. For some time past he had desired to bring a certain regularity
+into an irregular life. He was struck by the beauty of the poor child
+who had drifted by chance into his arms, and his determination to
+rescue her from the life of the streets was half benevolent, half
+selfish, as some of the thoughts of the best of men are apt to be.
+Social conditions mingle elements of evil with the promptings of
+natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying a
+man's intentions should be leniently judged. Castanier had just
+cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were
+concerned. So he concluded to be a philanthropist on either count, and
+at first made her his mistress.
+
+"Hey! hey!" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion. "I am an old
+wolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man,
+before you set up housekeeping, reconnoitre the girl's character for a
+bit, and see if she is a steady sort."
+
+This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly
+approaching respectability among those which the world declines to
+recognize. During the first year she took the _nom de guerre_ of
+Aquilina, one of the characters in _Venice Preserved_ which she had
+chanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face
+and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain
+of which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was as
+well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he
+manifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So she
+took the name of Mme. de la Garde, in order to approach, as closely as
+Parisian usages permit, the conditions of a real marriage. As a matter
+of fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to be
+looked upon as respectable middle-class women, who lead humdrum lives
+of faithfulness to their husbands; women who would make excellent
+mothers, keepers of household accounts, and menders of household
+linen. This longing springs from a sentiment so laudable, that society
+should take it into consideration. But society, incorrigible as ever,
+will assuredly persist in regarding the married woman as a corvette
+duly authorized by her flag and papers to go on her own course, while
+the woman who is a wife in all but name is a pirate and an outlaw for
+lack of a document. A day came when Mme. de la Garde would fain have
+signed herself "Mme. Castanier." The cashier was put out by this.
+
+"So you do not love me well enough to marry me?" she said.
+
+Castanier did not answer; he was absorbed by his thoughts. The poor
+girl resigned herself to her fate. The ex-dragoon was in despair.
+Naqui's heart softened towards him at the sight of his trouble; she
+tried to soothe him, but what could she do when she did not know what
+ailed him? When Naqui made up her mind to know the secret, although
+she never asked him a question, the cashier dolefully confessed to the
+existence of a Mme. Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times
+accursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property
+there; he wrote to her twice a year, and kept the secret of her
+existence so well, that no one suspected that he was married. The
+reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men who
+may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worth while to
+give the story.
+
+Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word which
+in the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is a
+sort of serf, a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simple
+creature, and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the
+wiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands.
+It was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose when
+the Imperial armies were not on active service abroad, that Castanier
+was so unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he
+danced at a _ridotto_, the provincial name for the entertainments often
+given by the military to the townsfolk, or vice versa, in garrison
+towns. A scheme for inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony was
+immediately set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers secure
+accomplices in a human heart by touching all its motive springs, while
+they convert all their friends into fellow-conspirators. Like all
+people possessed by one idea, these ladies press everything into the
+service of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, much
+as the ant-lion excavates its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at
+the bottom for its victim. Suppose that no one strays, after all, into
+that carefully constructed labyrinth? Suppose that the ant-lion dies
+of hunger and thirst in her pit? Such things may be, but if any
+heedless creature once enters in, it never comes out. All the wires
+which could be pulled to induce action on the captain's part were
+tried; appeals were made to the secret interested motives that always
+come into play in such cases; they worked on Castanier's hopes and on
+the weaknesses and vanity of human nature. Unluckily, he had praised
+the daughter to her mother when he brought her back after a waltz, a
+little chat followed, and then an invitation in the most natural way
+in the world. Once introduced into the house, the dragoon was dazzled
+by the hospitality of a family who appeared to conceal their real
+wealth beneath a show of careful economy. He was skilfully flattered
+on all sides, and every one extolled for his benefit the various
+treasures there displayed. A neatly timed dinner, served on plate lent
+by an uncle, the attention shown to him by the only daughter of the
+house, the gossip of the town, a well-to-do sub-lieutenant who seemed
+likely to cut the ground from under his feet--all the innumerable
+snares, in short, of the provincial ant-lion were set for him, and to
+such good purpose, that Castanier said five years later, "To this day
+I do not know how it came about!"
+
+The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who after
+two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most
+peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair
+complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color
+in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread
+with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight,
+grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who
+drove Castanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself wings. At
+length the dragoon, no longer recognizing the woman whom he had
+wedded, left her to live on a little property at Strasbourg, until the
+time when it should please God to remove her to adorn Paradise. She
+was one of those virtuous women who, for want of other occupation,
+would weary the life out of an angel with complainings, who pray till
+(if their prayers are heard in heaven) they must exhaust the patience
+of the Almighty, and say everything that is bad of their husbands in
+dovelike murmurs over a game of boston with their neighbors. When
+Aquilina learned all these troubles she clung still more
+affectionately to Castanier, and made him so happy, varying with
+woman's ingenuity the pleasures with which she filled his life, that
+all unwittingly she was the cause of the cashier's downfall.
+
+Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths of
+love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold
+nor for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the
+present and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive
+ornaments and dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of her
+class, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There was
+absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantage
+but to look the fairer, and moreover, no woman could live without
+luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature (and military
+men are mostly of this stamp) meets with such a woman, he feels a sort
+of exasperation at finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feels
+that he could stop a mail coach to obtain money for her if he has not
+sufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime if so he may be great
+and noble in the eyes of some woman or of his special public; such is
+the nature of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler who would be
+dishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum he borrowed
+from a waiter in a gaming-house; but will shrink from no crime, will
+leave his wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder, if so
+he may come to the gaming-table with a full purse, and his honor
+remain untarnished among the frequenters of that fatal abode. So it
+was with Castanier.
+
+He had begun by installing Aquiline is a modest fourth-floor dwelling,
+the furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl's
+beauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and
+unlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her; and longed
+to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilette was so comically out of
+keeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearly
+incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost all
+Castanier's savings, for he furnished his domestic paradise with all
+the prodigality that is lavished on a kept mistress. A pretty woman
+must have everything pretty about her; the unity of charm in the woman
+and her surroundings singles her out from among her sex. This
+sentiment of homogeneity indeed, though it has frequently escaped the
+attention of observers, is instinctive in human nature; and the same
+prompting leads elderly spinsters to surround themselves with dreary
+relics of the past. But the lovely Piedmontese must have the newest
+and latest fashions, and all that was daintiest and prettiest in
+stuffs for hangings, in silks or jewelry, in fine china and other
+brittle and fragile wares. She asked for nothing; but when she was
+called upon to make a choice, when Castanier asked her, "Which do you
+like?" she would answer, "Why, this is the nicest!" Love never counts
+the cost, and Castanier therefore always took the "nicest."
+
+When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it but
+everything in the household must be in conformity, from the linen,
+plate, and crystal through a thousand and one items of expenditure
+down to the pots and pans in the kitchen. Castanier had meant to "do
+things simply," as the saying goes, but he gradually found himself
+more and more in debt. One expense entailed another. The clock called
+for candle sconces. Fires must be lighted in the ornamental grates,
+but the curtains and hangings were too fresh and delicate to be soiled
+by smuts, so they must be replaced by patent and elaborate fireplaces,
+warranted to give out no smoke, recent inventions of the people who
+are so clever at drawing up a prospectus. Then Aquilina found it so
+nice to run about barefooted on the carpet in her room, that Castanier
+must have soft carpets laid everywhere for the pleasure of playing
+with Naqui. A bathroom, too, was built for her, everything to the end
+that she might be more comfortable.
+
+Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have a mysterious
+knack of enlarging a hole in a man's purse. They cannot give the price
+of anything upon inquiry; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide
+delay, orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate
+of cost. The same people never send in the bills at once, but ply the
+purchaser with furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty,
+so charming; and every one is satisfied.
+
+A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are metamorphosed,
+and reappear in the shape of alarming totals on invoices that fill the
+soul with their horrid clamor; they are in urgent want of the money;
+they are, as you may say on the brink of bankruptcy, their tears flow,
+it is heartrending to hear them! And then----the gulf yawns, and gives
+up serried columns of figures marching four deep, when as a matter of
+fact they should have issued innocently three by three.
+
+Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had spent, he had
+arranged for Aquilina to have a carriage from a livery stable when she
+went out, instead of a cab. Castanier was a gourmand; he engaged an
+excellent cook; and Aquilina, to please him, had herself made the
+purchases of early fruit and vegetables, rare delicacies, and
+exquisite wines. But, as Aquilina had nothing of her own, these gifts
+of hers, so precious by reason of the thought and tact and
+graciousness that prompted them, were no less a drain upon Castanier's
+purse; he did not like his Naqui to be without money, and Naqui could
+not keep money in her pocket. So the table was a heavy item of
+expenditure for a man with Castanier's income. The ex-dragoon was
+compelled to resort to various shifts for obtaining money, for he
+could not bring himself to renounce this delightful life. He loved the
+woman too well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of
+those men who, through self-love or through weakness of character, can
+refuse nothing to a woman; false shame overpowers them, and they
+rather face ruin than make the admissions: "I cannot----" "My means
+will not permit----" "I cannot afford----"
+
+When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge from the
+abyss of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilina
+and live upon bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or
+to change his habits of life, that daily he put off his plans of
+reform until the morrow. The debts were pressing, and he began by
+borrowing money. His position and previous character inspired
+confidence, and of this he took advantage to devise a system of
+borrowing money as he required it. Then, as the total amount of debt
+rapidly increased, he had recourse to those commercial inventions
+known as accommodation bills. This form of bill does not represent
+goods or other value received, and the first endorser pays the amount
+named for the obliging person who accepts it. This species of fraud is
+tolerated because it is impossible to detect it, and, moreover, it is
+an imaginary fraud which only becomes real if payment is ultimately
+refused.
+
+When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer,
+whether because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased,
+or because Castanier was unable to pay the large amount of interest on
+the aforesaid sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On
+making this discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy rather
+than an ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. He
+determined, after the fashion of the celebrated cashier of the Royal
+Treasury, to abuse the trust deservedly won, and to increase the
+number of his creditors by making a final loan of the sum sufficient
+to keep him in comfort in a foreign country for the rest of his days.
+All this, as has been seen, he had prepared to do.
+
+Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this life; she enjoyed
+her existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where the
+money came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered
+rolls untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the culture
+and growth of wheat; but as the labor and miscalculations of
+agriculture lie on the other side of the baker's oven, so beneath the
+unappreciated luxury of many a Parisian household lie intolerable
+anxieties and exorbitant toil.
+
+While Castanier was enduring the torture of the strain, and his
+thoughts were full of the deed that should change his whole life,
+Aquilina was lying luxuriously back in a great armchair by the
+fireside, beguiling the time by chatting with her waiting-maid. As
+frequently happens in such cases the maid had become the mistress'
+confidant, Jenny having first assured herself that her mistress'
+ascendency over Castanier was complete.
+
+"What are we to do this evening? Leon seems determined to come," Mme.
+de la Garde was saying, as she read a passionate epistle indited upon
+a faint gray notepaper.
+
+"Here is the master!" said Jenny.
+
+Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted, crumpled up the
+letter, took it with the tongs, and held it in the flames.
+
+"So that is what you do with your love-letters, is it?" asked
+Castanier.
+
+"Oh goodness, yes," said Aquilina; "is it not the best way of keeping
+them safe? Besides, fire should go to fire, as water makes for the
+river."
+
+"You are talking as if it were a real love-letter, Naqui----"
+
+"Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them?" she said, holding up
+her forehead for a kiss. There was a carelessness in her manner that
+would have told any man less blind than Castanier that it was only a
+piece of conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier,
+but use and wont had brought Castanier to the point where
+clear-sightedness is no longer possible for love.
+
+"I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening," he said; "let us
+have dinner early, and then we need not dine in a hurry."
+
+"Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not know what is the
+matter with me this evening; I would rather stay here by the fire."
+
+"Come, all the same though, Naqui; I shall not be here to bore you
+much longer. Yes, Quiqui, I am going to start to-night, and it will be
+some time before I come back again. I am leaving everything in your
+charge. Will you keep your heart for me too?"
+
+"Neither my heart nor anything else," she said; "but when you come
+back again, Naqui will still be Naqui for you."
+
+"Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Eh! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me such sweet little
+notes?" she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap of paper with a
+mocking smile.
+
+"Is there any truth in it?" asked Castanier. "Have you really a
+lover?"
+
+"Really!" cried Aquilina; "and have you never given it a serious
+thought, dear? To begin with, you are fifty years old. Then you have
+just the sort of face to put on a fruit stall; if the woman tried to
+see you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blow
+like a seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like a
+diamond on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in
+the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If
+you have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to add
+imbecility to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I am
+will be content with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth and
+good looks and pleasure by way of a variety----"
+
+"Aquilina! you are laughing, of course?"
+
+"Oh, very well; and are you not laughing too? Do you take me for a
+fool, telling me that you are going away? 'I am going to start
+to-night!'" she said, mimicking his tones. "Stuff and nonsense! Would
+you talk like that if you were really going from your Naqui? You would
+cry, like the booby that you are!"
+
+"After all, if I go, will you follow?" he asked.
+
+"Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke or not."
+
+"Yes, seriously, I am going."
+
+"Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey to you, my
+boy! I will wait till you come back. I would sooner take leave of life
+than take leave of my dear, cozy Paris----"
+
+"Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, and lead a pleasant life
+there--a delicious, luxurious life, with this stout old fogy of yours,
+who puffs and blows like a seal?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ungrateful girl!"
+
+"Ungrateful?" she cried, rising to her feet. "I might leave this house
+this moment and take nothing out of it but myself. I shall have given
+you all the treasures a young girl can give, and something that not
+every drop in your veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by any
+means whatever, by selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I could
+recover my past self, body and soul (for I have, perhaps, redeemed my
+soul), and be pure as a lily for my lover, I would not hesitate a
+moment! What sort of devotion has rewarded mine? You have housed and
+fed me, just as you give a dog food and a kennel because he is a
+protection to the house, and he may take kicks when we are out of
+humor, and lick our hands as soon as we are pleased to call him. And
+which of us two will have been the more generous?"
+
+"Oh! dear child, do you not see that I am joking?" returned Castanier.
+"I am going on a short journey; I shall not be away for very long. But
+come with me to the Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, after
+I have had time to say good-bye to you."
+
+"Poor pet! so you are really going, are you?" she said. She put her
+arms round his neck, and drew down his head against her bodice.
+
+"You are smothering me!" cried Castanier, with his face buried in
+Aquilina's breast. That damsel turned to say in Jenny's ear, "Go to
+Leon, and tell him not to come till one o'clock. If you do not find
+him, and he comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your
+room.--Well," she went on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweak
+to the tip of his nose, "never mind, handsomest of seals that you are.
+I will go to the theatre with you this evening? But all in good time;
+let us have dinner! There is a nice little dinner for you--just what
+you like."
+
+"It is very hard to part from such a woman as you!" exclaimed
+Castanier.
+
+"Very well then, why do you go?" asked she.
+
+"Ah! why? why? If I were to begin to begin to explain the reasons why,
+I must tell you things that would prove to you that I love you almost
+to madness. Ah! if you have sacrificed your honor for me, I have sold
+mine for you; we are quits. Is that love?"
+
+"What is all this about?" said she. "Come, now, promise me that if I
+had a lover you would still love me as a father; that would be love!
+Come, now, promise it at once, and give us your fist upon it."
+
+"I should kill you," and Castanier smiled as he spoke.
+
+They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the Gymnase.
+When the first part of the performance was over, it occurred to
+Castanier to show himself to some of his acquaintances in the house,
+so as to turn away any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de la
+Garde in the corner box where she was seated, according to her modest
+wont, and went to walk up and down in the lobby. He had not gone many
+paces before he saw the Englishman, and with a sudden return of the
+sickening sensation of heat that once before had vibrated through him,
+and of the terror that he had felt already, he stood face to face with
+Melmoth.
+
+"Forger!"
+
+At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who were moving
+about them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity in
+their eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he
+raised his hand to strike him--and felt his arm paralyzed by some
+invisible power that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot.
+He allowed the stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked
+together to the green-room like two friends.
+
+"Who is strong enough to resist me?" said the Englishman, addressing
+him. "Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, that
+it is in my power to do everything? I read men's thoughts, I see the
+future, and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also.
+Time and space and distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at
+my beck and call. I have the power of continual enjoyment and of
+giving joy. I can see through walls, discover hidden treasures, and
+fill my hands with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect
+makes no mistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap
+up their gold and precious stones, and surround myself with fair women
+and ever new faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I could
+gamble on the Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible;
+but a man who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth
+need not trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand
+that grasps you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of
+iron! try to soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You
+would hear my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the
+Seine; you might hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me
+there? My voice could be heard through the sound of thunder, my eyes
+shine as brightly as the sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer!"
+
+Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest nor
+contradiction within himself. He walked side by side with the
+Englishman, and had no power to leave him.
+
+"You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have found at last
+the mate whom I have sought. Have you a mind to learn your destiny?
+Aha! you came here to see a play, and you shall see a play--nay, two.
+Come. Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am I
+not your last hope of escape?"
+
+Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box; and in
+accordance with the order he had just received, he hastened to
+introduce Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in
+the least surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front,
+and Castanier was once more beside his mistress; the man's slightest
+wish must be obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that
+time, small theatres gave only three pieces. One of the actors had
+made the Gymnase the fashion, and that evening Perlet (the actor in
+question) was to play in a vaudeville called _Le Comedien d'Etampes_,
+in which he filled four different parts.
+
+When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over the
+crowded house. Castanier's cry of terror died away, for the walls of
+his throat seemed glued together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, and
+the cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman's
+desire.
+
+He saw the strong-room at the bank; he saw the Baron de Nucingen in
+conference with a police-officer from the Prefecture, who was
+informing him of Castanier's conduct, explaining that the cashier had
+absconded with money taken from the safe, giving the history of the
+forged signature. The information was put in writing; the document
+signed and duly despatched to the Public Prosecutor.
+
+"Are we in time, do you think?" asked Nucingen.
+
+"Yes," said the agent of police; "he is at the Gymnase, and has no
+suspicion of anything."
+
+Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would leave the
+theatre, but Melmoth's hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged to
+sit and watch; the hideous power of the man produced an effect like
+that of nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself
+was the nightmare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like a
+poisoned atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore the
+Englishman's mercy, he met those blazing eyes that discharged electric
+currents, which pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of
+steel.
+
+"What have I done to you?" he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and
+he breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge. "What do you want of
+me?"
+
+"Look!" cried Melmoth.
+
+Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed. The play
+seemed to be over, and Castanier beheld himself stepping from the
+carriage with Aquilina; but as he entered the courtyard of the house
+on the Rue Richer, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw
+his own house. Jenny was chatting by the fire in her mistress' room
+with a subaltern officer of a line regiment then stationed at Paris.
+
+"He is going, is he?" said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to a
+family in easy circumstances; "I can be happy at my ease! I love
+Aquilina too well to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself,
+am going to marry Mme. de la Garde!" cried the sergeant.
+
+"Old toad!" Castanier murmured piteously.
+
+"Here come the master and mistress; hide yourself! Stay, get in here
+Monsieur Leon," said Jenny. "The master won't stay here for very
+long."
+
+Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among Aquilina's gowns in
+her dressing-room. Almost immediately he himself appeared upon the
+scene, and took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in "asides"
+to Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his
+ears. She wept with one side of her face, and laughed with the other.
+The audience called for an encore.
+
+"Accursed creature!" cried Castanier from his box.
+
+Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes.
+
+"Goodness!" she cried, "how funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman! . . .
+Why don't you laugh? Every one else in the house is laughing. Laugh,
+dear!" she said to Castanier.
+
+Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The
+Englishman's laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was
+as if a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.
+
+"Laughing! are they laughing!" stammered Castanier.
+
+He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
+ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the
+house with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself
+hurrying from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard,
+bargaining with the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the
+scene changed. He recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de
+l'Orangerie and the Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old
+quartermaster. It was two o'clock in the morning, the most perfect
+stillness prevailed, no one was there to watch his movements. The
+post-horses were put into the carriage (it came from a house in the
+Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman lived, and had been ordered in
+the foreigner's name to avoid raising suspicion). Castanier saw that
+he had his bills and his passports, stepped into the carriage, and set
+out. But at the barrier he saw two gendarmes lying in wait for the
+carriage. A cry of horror burst from him but Melmoth gave him a
+glance, and again the sound died in his throat.
+
+"Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!" said the Englishman.
+
+In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at the
+Conciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled _The Cashier_,
+he saw himself, in three months' time, condemned to twenty years of
+penal servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the
+Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a
+red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty
+convicts in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn
+to have the irons riveted on his limbs.
+
+"Dear me! I cannot laugh any more! . . ." said Aquilina. "You are very
+solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone."
+
+"A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the piece was at an
+end, and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde's cloak.
+
+The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
+
+"Very well, what is it?"
+
+"No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going
+next to Versailles, there to be arrested."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp," returned
+the Englishman.
+
+Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him
+out from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell.
+
+"Suppose that the Devil were to make a bid for your soul, would you
+not give it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single
+word, and those five hundred thousand francs shall be back in the
+Baron de Nucingen's safe; then you can tear up the letter of credit,
+and all traces of your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would
+have gold in torrents. You hardly believe in anything perhaps? Well,
+if all this comes to pass, you will believe at least in the Devil."
+
+"If it were only possible!" said Castanier joyfully.
+
+"The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible,"
+answered the Englishman.
+
+Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in the
+Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling,
+the streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness
+overhead; but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was
+filled with sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The
+trees were covered with leaves; a double stream of joyous holiday
+makers strolled beneath them. Sellers of liquorice water shouted their
+cool drinks. Splendid carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry
+of terror broke from the cashier, and at that cry rain and darkness
+once more settled down upon the Boulevard.
+
+Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. "Do be quick, dear!"
+she cried; "either come in or stay out. Really you are as dull as
+ditch-water this evening----"
+
+"What must I do?" Castanier asked of Melmoth.
+
+"Would you like to take my place?" inquired the Englishman.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few moments."
+
+"By the by, Castanier, you are rather off your balance," Aquilina
+remarked. "There is some mischief brewing: you were quite melancholy
+and thoughtful all through the play. Do you want anything that I can
+give you, dear? Tell me."
+
+"I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me."
+
+"You need not wait till then," she said, throwing her arms round his
+neck. "There!" she said, as she embraced him, passionately to all
+appearance, and plied him with the coaxing caresses that are part of
+the business of such a life as hers, like stage action for an actress.
+
+"Where is the music?" asked Castanier.
+
+"What next? Only think of your hearing music now!"
+
+"Heavenly music!" he went on. "The sounds seem to come from above."
+
+"What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italiens
+because you could not abide music, and are you turning music-mad at
+this time of day? Mad--that you are! The music is inside your own
+noddle, old addle-pate!" she went on, as she took his head in her
+hands and rocked it to and fro on her shoulder. "Tell me now, old man;
+isn't it the creaking of the wheels that sings in your ears?"
+
+"Just listen, Naqui! If the angels make music for God Almighty, it
+must be such music as this that I am drinking in at every pore, rather
+than hearing. I do no know how to tell you about it; it is as sweet as
+honey-water!"
+
+"Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all the
+pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad, upon my word!" she said
+to herself, as she saw Castanier's attitude; he looked like an
+opium-eater in a blissful trance.
+
+They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the thought of all that
+he had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or not; he
+was like a drunken man, and utterly unable to think connectedly. He
+came to himself in Aquilina's room, whither he had been supported by
+the united efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he had
+fainted as he stepped from the carriage.
+
+"_He_ will be here directly! Oh, my friends, my friends," he cried, and
+he flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside
+the fire.
+
+Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. She
+announced that "a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with
+the master," when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence
+followed. He looked at the porter--the porter went; he looked at
+Jenny--and Jenny went likewise.
+
+"Madame," said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, "with your permission, we
+will conclude a piece of urgent business."
+
+He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went
+into the drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth's
+eyes lit up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had
+left Aquilina like one spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take
+any thought for her lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in
+Jenny's room, whereas their early return had taken the waiting-woman
+by surprise, and she had hidden the officer in the dressing-room. It
+had all happened exactly as in the drama that Melmoth had displayed
+for his victim. Presently the house-door was slammed violently, and
+Castanier reappeared.
+
+"What ails you?" cried the horror-struck Aquilina.
+
+There was a change in the cashier's appearance. A strange pallor
+overspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarly
+sinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare of
+his eyes was intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch.
+The man who had looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenly
+grown tyrannical and proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier had
+grown thinner; there was a terrible majesty in his brow; it was as if
+a dragon breathed forth a malignant influence that weighed upon the
+others like a close, heavy atmosphere. For a moment Aquilina knew not
+what to do.
+
+"What has passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those
+few minutes?" she asked at length.
+
+"I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer the same. He
+has taken my _self_, and given me his soul in exchange."
+
+"What?"
+
+"You would not understand it at all. . . . Ah! he was right,"
+Castanier went on, "the fiend was right! I see everything and know all
+things.--You have been deceiving me!"
+
+Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a candle and went
+into the dressing-room. The unhappy girl followed him with dazed
+bewilderment, and great was her astonishment when Castanier drew the
+dresses that hung there aside and disclosed the sergeant.
+
+"Come out, my boy," said the cashier; and, taking Leon by a button of
+his overcoat, he drew the officer into his room.
+
+The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her
+easy-chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the fire, and left
+Aquilina's lover in a standing position.
+
+"You have been in the army," said Leon; "I am ready to give you
+satisfaction."
+
+"You are a fool," said Castanier drily. "I have no occasion to fight.
+I could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell you
+what it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line
+round your neck--the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end
+in the Place de Greve. You are the headsman's property! there is no
+escape for you. You belong to a vendita, of the Carbonari. You are
+plotting against the Government."
+
+"You did not tell me that," cried the Piedmontese, turning to Leon.
+
+"So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put down
+your Society?" the cashier continued. "The Procureur-General has a
+list of your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up
+the indictment at this moment."
+
+"Then was it you who betrayed him?" cried Aquilina, and with a hoarse
+sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet;
+she seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces.
+
+"You know me too well to believe it," Castanier retorted. Aquilina was
+benumbed by his coolness.
+
+"Then how do you know it?" she murmured.
+
+"I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I know it
+--now I see and know all things, and can do all things."
+
+The sergeant was overcome with amazement.
+
+"Very well then, save him, save him, dear!" cried the girl, flinging
+herself at Castanier's feet. "If nothing is impossible to you, save
+him! I will love you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and not
+your mistress. I will obey your wildest whims; you shall do as you
+will with me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love; you shall have
+a daughter's devotion as well as . . . Rodolphe! why will you not
+understand! After all, however violent my passions may be, I shall be
+yours for ever! What should I say to persuade you? I will invent
+pleasures . . . I . . . Great heavens! one moment! whatever you shall
+ask of me--to fling myself from the window for instance--you will need
+to say but one word, 'Leon!' and I will plunge down into hell. I would
+bear any torture, any pain of body or soul, anything you might inflict
+upon me!"
+
+Castanier heard her with indifference. For an answer, he indicated
+Leon to her with a fiendish laugh.
+
+"The guillotine is waiting for him," he repeated.
+
+"No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!" she
+cried. "Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger upon him! Why will
+you not save him?" she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair
+unbound. "Can you save him?"
+
+"I can do everything."
+
+"Why do you not save him?"
+
+"Why?" shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.--"Eh!
+it is my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!"
+
+"Die?" said Aquilina; "must he die, my lover? Is it possible?"
+
+She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the
+chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who now began to laugh.
+
+"You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now----"
+
+Aquilina's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string.
+
+"Out with you, my good friend," said the cashier, turning to the
+sergeant, "and go about your business."
+
+He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier's superior power, and
+could not choose but to obey.
+
+"This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if I
+chose, and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises,
+but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy."
+
+"I shall follow him!" said Aquilina.
+
+"Then follow him," returned Castanier.--"Here, Jenny----"
+
+Jenny appeared.
+
+"Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.--Here Naqui," said Castanier,
+drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket; "you shall not go away
+like a pauper from a man who loves you still."
+
+He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes,
+flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a
+frenzy of despair.
+
+"We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a farthing of
+your money.--Jenny, stay where you are."
+
+"Good-evening!" answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes
+again. "I have come back from my journey.--Jenny," he added, looking
+at the bewildered waiting-maid, "you seem to me to be a good sort of
+girl. You have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have
+a master."
+
+Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
+house of one of her friends. But all Leon's movements were
+suspiciously watched by the police, and after a time he and three of
+his friends were arrested. The whole story may be found in the
+newspapers of that day.
+
+
+
+Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
+transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the
+young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
+tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
+lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature
+had suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
+developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
+things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above
+the world.
+
+Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
+Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her
+infidelities; and now all that blind passion had passed away as a
+cloud vanishes in the sunlight.
+
+Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress' position and fortune,
+and did the cashier's will in all things; but Castanier, who could
+read the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive
+underlying this purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her,
+however, like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the
+cherry and flings away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time,
+when she was fully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of
+the house, Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her
+mind as she drank her coffee.
+
+"Do you know what you are thinking, child?" he said, smiling. "I will
+tell you: 'So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so
+much, and the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! All
+on easy terms that Madame refused, I do no know why. My word! if I
+might drive about in a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box
+at the theatre, and put something by! with me he should lead a life of
+pleasure fit to kill him if he were not as strong as a Turk! I never
+saw such a man!'--Was not that just what you were thinking," he went
+on, and something in his voice made Jenny turn pale. "Well, yes,
+child; you could not stand it, and I am sending you away for your own
+good; you would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part good
+friends," and he coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of money.
+
+The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he would make
+of the terrible power brought at the price of his eternal happiness,
+was the full and complete indulgence of all his tastes.
+
+He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his accounts with
+M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then
+determined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman
+Empire. He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old
+went to that last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly
+through his revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of
+flame, not on the narrow walls of the banqueting-chamber, but over the
+vast spaces of heaven that the rainbow spans. His feast was not,
+indeed, an orgy confined within the limits of a banquet, for he
+squandered all the powers of soul and body in exhausting all the
+pleasures of earth. The table was in some sort earth itself, the earth
+that trembled beneath his feet. His was the last festival of the
+reckless spendthrift who has thrown all prudence to the winds. The
+devil had given him the key of the storehouse of human pleasures; he
+had filled and refilled his hands, and he was fast nearing the bottom.
+In a moment he had felt all that that enormous power could accomplish;
+in a moment he had exercised it, proved it, wearied of it. What had
+hitherto been the sum of human desires became as nothing. So often it
+happens that with possession the vast poetry of desire must end, and
+the thing possessed is seldom the thing that we dreamed of.
+
+Beneath Melmoth's omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so
+many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to
+his successor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.
+
+To come to a clear understanding of Castanier's strange position, it
+must be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and
+feeling had been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other;
+and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those who have
+never broken the prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His
+relation to the world without had been entirely changed with the
+expansion of his faculties.
+
+Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the
+fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above
+African desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same
+insight that could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend
+at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it
+were all flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a
+despot; a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its
+fruits. The transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain,
+and diversify human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had so
+completely glutted his appetites that pleasure must overpass the
+limits of pleasure to tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and
+suddenly grown fastidious beyond all measure, so that ordinary
+pleasures became distasteful. Conscious that at will he was the master
+of all the women that he could desire, knowing that his power was
+irresistible, he did not care to exercise it; they were pliant to his
+unexpressed wishes, to his most extravagant caprices, until he felt a
+horrible thirst for love, and would have love beyond their power to
+give.
+
+The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing and
+consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was a
+horrible position.
+
+The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul
+and his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being;
+but in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of
+the sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity
+of longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on
+outspread wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to
+other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and
+hopeless knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and
+thirsted after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for
+which he could not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned
+with desire; he panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.
+
+The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its
+working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the
+profound scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx
+who knows everything and says nothing, and sees all things with an
+unmoved countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his
+knowledge to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world,
+with one effort he could make the circle of the globe, and riches and
+power were meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy of
+omnipotence, a melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise
+of infinite power in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier
+had not, like his Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and
+malice; he felt that he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not
+yet come, while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and being
+damned beyond redemption, delights to stir up the world, like a dung
+heap, with his triple fork and to thwart therein the designs of God.
+But Castanier, for his misfortune, had one hope left.
+
+If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird
+springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,
+he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond
+it. That vision of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see
+humanity and its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools
+who long for the power of the Devil gauge its desirability from a
+human standpoint; they do not see that with the Devil's power they
+will likewise assume his thoughts, and that they will be doomed to
+remain as men among creatures who will no longer understand them. The
+Nero unknown to history who dreams of setting Paris on fire for his
+private entertainment, like an exhibition of a burning house on the
+boards of a theatre, does not suspect that if he had the power, Paris
+would become for him as little interesting as an ant-heap by the
+roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for
+Castanier something like a logogriph for a man who does not know the
+key to it. Kings and Governments were despicable in his eyes. His
+great debauch had been in some sort a deplorable farewell to his life
+as a man. The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal
+gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation--he saw the cause and
+foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" in
+all languages under the sun; he could no longer think of heaven.
+
+Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the
+drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the
+baffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth's eyes; he, too, knew the thirst
+that burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual struggle
+between two natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an
+angel, and he knew himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet
+and gentle creature that a wizard's malice has imprisoned in a
+mis-shapen form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's will must
+set it free from its detested envelope.
+
+As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of really
+great nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a woman's heart, so
+Castanier awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul,
+an idea which was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very fact
+that he had bartered away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in
+thought upon the future of those who pray and believe. On the morrow
+of his debauch, when he entered into the sober possession of his
+power, this idea made him feel himself a prisoner; he knew the burden
+of the woe that poets, and prophets, and great oracles of faith have
+set forth for us in such mighty words; he felt the point of the
+Flaming Sword plunged into his side, and hurried in search of Melmoth.
+What had become of his predecessor?
+
+The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue Ferou, near
+Saint-Sulpice--a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode. The Rue Ferou
+itself is one of the most dismal streets in Paris; it has a north
+aspect like all the streets that lie at right angles to the left bank
+of the Seine, and the houses are in keeping with the site. As Castanier
+stood on the threshold he found that the door itself, like the vaulted
+roof, was hung with black; rows of lighted tapers shone brilliantly as
+though some king were lying in state; and a priest stood on either
+side of a catafalque that had been raised there.
+
+"There is no need to ask why you have come, sir," the old hall porter
+said to Castanier; "you are so like our poor dear master that is gone.
+But if you are his brother, you have come too late to bid him
+good-bye. The good gentleman died the night before last."
+
+"How did he die?" Castanier asked of one of the priests.
+
+"Set your mind at rest," said the old priest; he partly raised as he
+spoke the black pall that covered the catafalque.
+
+Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith has made
+sublime; the soul seemed to shine forth from every line of it,
+bringing light and warmth for other men, kindled by the unfailing
+charity within. This was Sir John Melmoth's confessor.
+
+"Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that must rejoice the
+angels. Do you know what joy there is in heaven over a sinner that
+repents? His tears of penitence, excited by grace, flowed without
+ceasing; death alone checked them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in him. His
+burning words, full of lively faith, were worthy of the Prophet-King.
+If, in the course of my life, I have never heard a more dreadful
+confession than from the lips of this Irish gentleman, I have likewise
+never heard such fervent and passionate prayers. However great the
+measures of his sins may have been, his repentance has filled the
+abyss to overflowing. The hand of God was visibly stretched out above
+him, for he was completely changed, there was such heavenly beauty in
+his face. The hard eyes were softened by tears; the resonant voice
+that struck terror into those who heard it took the tender and
+compassionate tones of those who themselves have passed through deep
+humiliation. He so edified those who heard his words, that some who
+had felt drawn to see the spectacle of a Christian's death fell on
+their knees as he spoke of heavenly things, and of the infinite glory
+of God, and gave thanks and praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly
+wealth to his family, no family can possess a greater blessing than
+this that he surely gained for them, a soul among the blessed, who
+will watch over you all and direct you in the path to heaven."
+
+These words made such a vivid impression upon Castanier that he
+instantly hurried from the house to the Church of Saint-Sulpice,
+obeying what might be called a decree of fate. Melmoth's repentance
+had stupefied him.
+
+
+At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a preacher, famed for
+his eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which he
+demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a
+generation proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by
+another voice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been
+put off to a later hour on account of Melmoth's funeral, so Castanier
+arrived just as the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a
+future existence of happiness with all the charm of eloquence and
+force of expression which have made him famous. The seeds of divine
+doctrine fell into a soil prepared for them in the old dragoon, into
+whom the Devil had glided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well
+attested by experience, is it not the spiritual phenomenon commonly
+called "the faith of the peasant"? The strength of belief varies
+inversely with the amount of use that a man has made of his reasoning
+faculties. Simple people and soldiers belong to the unreasoning class.
+Those who have marched through life beneath the banner of instinct are
+far more ready to receive the light than minds and hearts overwearied
+with the world's sophistries.
+
+Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a
+lad of sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly
+forty years old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and
+day after day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first,
+and of himself afterwards. While he served his military
+apprenticeship, therefore, he had but little leisure in which to
+reflect on the destiny of man, and when he became an officer he had
+his men to think of. He had been swept from battlefield to
+battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after death. A
+soldier's life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot
+understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of
+nation and nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as well as plans
+of campaign, and combine the science of the tactician with that of the
+administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance; the most
+boorish peasant in the most backward district in France is scarcely in
+a worse case. Such men as these bear the brunt of war, yield passive
+obedience to the brain that directs them, and strike down the men
+opposed to them as the woodcutter fells timber in the forest. Violent
+physical exertion is succeeded by times of inertia, when they repair
+the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep, that
+they may the better deal hard blows; the powers of the mind are not
+greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the
+character is as simple as heretofore.
+
+When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to
+ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank
+seem to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity,
+for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger
+generation, those who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are
+as simple as children, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst,
+and the captain of a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a
+merchant's day-book. Old soldiers of this stamp, therefore being
+innocent of any attempt to use their reasoning faculties, act upon
+their strongest impulses. Castanier's crime was one of those matters
+that raise so many questions, that, in order to debate about it, a
+moralist might call for its "discussion by clauses," to make use of a
+parliamentary expression.
+
+Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible power of
+feminine witchery had driven him to commit it; no man can say of
+himself, "I will never do that," when a siren joins in the combat and
+throws her spells over him.
+
+So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the
+truths of religion which the French Revolution and a soldier's career
+had forced Castanier to neglect. The solemn words, "You will be happy
+or miserable for all eternity!" made but the more terrible impression
+upon him, because he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren
+tree; because his desires could effect all things, so that it was
+enough that any spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and
+he forthwith thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to compare
+such great things with social follies, Castanier's position was not
+unlike that of a banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions
+cannot obtain for him an entrance into the society of the noblesse,
+must set his heart upon entering that circle, and all the social
+privileges that he has already acquired are as nothing in his eyes
+from the moment when he discovers that a single one is lacking.
+
+Here is a man more powerful than all the kings on earth put together;
+a man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God Himself; leaning against
+one of the pillars in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by
+the feelings and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed in the
+thought of a Future, the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth.
+
+"He was very happy, was Melmoth!" cried Castanier. "He died in the
+certain knowledge that he would go to heaven."
+
+In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the
+cashier's ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was
+nothing but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred
+tradition embodied in all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk he
+retained a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite. The
+power of hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven as
+he had never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon
+exhausted. The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the
+enjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there
+is no limit. He believed in God, and the spell that gave him the
+treasures of the world was as nothing to him now; the treasures
+themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of
+diamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal glories of
+the other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came to
+him from this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he
+listened to the service performed for Melmoth. The _Dies irae_ filled
+him with awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul
+trembling before the Throne of God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouring
+flame, passed through him as fire consumes straw.
+
+The tears were falling from his eyes when--"Are you a relation of the
+dead?" the beadle asked him.
+
+"I am his heir," Castanier answered.
+
+"Give something for the expenses of the services!" cried the man.
+
+"No," said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not go to the
+Church.)
+
+"For the poor!"
+
+"No."
+
+"For repairing the Church!"
+
+"No."
+
+"The Lady Chapel!"
+
+"No."
+
+"For the schools!"
+
+"No."
+
+Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that
+the irritated functionaries gave him.
+
+Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice.
+"What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every
+country?" he asked himself. "The feeling shared so widely throughout
+all time must surely be based upon something."
+
+"Something! Do you call God _something_?" cried his conscience. "God!
+God! God! . . ."
+
+The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner voice, til it
+overwhelmed him; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet
+distant sounds of music that he had caught faintly before. They were
+singing in the church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great
+doorway. But as he listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him
+from all sides; he looked round the square, but there was no sign of
+any musicians. The melody brought visions of a distant heaven and
+far-off gleams of hope; but it also quickened the remorse that had set
+the lost soul in a ferment. He went on his way through Paris, walking
+as men walk who are crushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing
+everything with unseeing eyes, loitering like an idler, stopping
+without cause, muttering to himself, careless of the traffic, making
+no effort to avoid a blow from a plank of timber.
+
+Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the influence of the divine
+grace that soothes while it bruises the heart so terribly. His face
+came to wear a look of Melmoth, something great, with a trace of
+madness in the greatness--a look of dull and hopeless distress,
+mingled with the excited eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a
+gnawing sense of loathing for all that the world can give. The
+humblest of prayers lurked in the eyes that saw with such dreadful
+clearness. His power was the measure of his anguish. His body was
+bowed down by the fearful storm that shook his soul, as the tall pines
+bend before the blast. Like his predecessor, he could not refuse to
+bear the burden of life; he was afraid to die while he bore the yoke
+of hell. The torment grew intolerable.
+
+At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that Melmoth (now among
+the blessed) had made the proposal of an exchange, and how that he had
+accepted it; others, doubtless, would follow his example; for in an
+age proclaimed, by the inheritors of the eloquence of the Fathers of
+the Church, to be fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy
+to find a man who would accept the conditions of the contract in order
+to prove its advantages.
+
+"There is one place where you can learn what kings will fetch in the
+market; where nations are weighed in the balance and systems
+appraised; where the value of a government is stated in terms of the
+five-franc piece; where ideas and beliefs have their price, and
+everything is discounted; where God Himself, in a manner, borrows on
+the security of His revenue of souls, for the Pope has a running
+account there. Is it not there that I should go to traffic in souls?"
+
+Castanier went quite joyously on 'Change, thinking that it would be as
+easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary
+person would have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience
+that a desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying
+under sentence of death would listen to the madman who should tell him
+that by pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the
+keyhole; for suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it
+fails, as the swimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch
+that snaps in his hand.
+
+Towards four o'clock that afternoon Castanier appeared among the
+little knots of men who were transacting private business after
+'Change. He was personally known to some of the brokers; and while
+affecting to be in search of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up
+the current gossip and rumors of failure.
+
+"Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon & Co., my boy. The bank
+collector went round to return their acceptances to them this
+morning," said a fat banker in his outspoken way. "If you have any of
+their paper, look out."
+
+Claparon was in the building, in deep consultation with a man well
+known for the ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castanier went
+forthwith in search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had a
+reputation for taking heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. The
+money-lender walked away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed the
+speculator's despair.
+
+"Well, Claparon, the Bank wants a hundred thousand francs of you, and
+it is four o'clock; the thing is known, and it is too late to arrange
+your little failure comfortably," said Castanier.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Speak lower," the cashier went on. "How if I were to propose a piece
+of business that would bring you in as much money as you require?"
+
+"It would not discharge my liabilities; every business that I ever
+heard of wants a little time to simmer in."
+
+"I know of something that will set you straight in a moment," answered
+Castanier; "but first you would have to----"
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Sell your share of paradise. It is a matter of business like anything
+else, isn't it? We all hold shares in the great Speculation of
+Eternity."
+
+"I tell you this," said Claparon angrily, "that I am just the man to
+lend you a slap in the face. When a man is in trouble, it is no time
+to pay silly jokes on him."
+
+"I am talking seriously," said Castanier, and he drew a bundle of
+notes from his pocket.
+
+"In the first place," said Claparon, "I am not going to sell my soul
+to the Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thousand francs before
+I strike----"
+
+"Who talks of stinting you?" asked Castanier, cutting him short. "You
+shall have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank of
+France."
+
+He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon.
+
+"Done," he cried; "but how is the bargain to be make?"
+
+"Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there," said Castanier,
+pointing to a corner of the court.
+
+Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with their faces
+turned to the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this
+by-play, though their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange
+gestures of the two contracting parties. When Castanier returned,
+there was a sudden outburst of amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly
+where the least event immediately attracts attention, all faces were
+turned to the two men who had caused the sensation, and a shiver
+passed through all beholders at the change that had taken place in
+them.
+
+The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange are
+soon known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players
+round a card-table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play
+and the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the
+Stock Exchange is simply a vast card-table. Every one, therefore, had
+noticed Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irishman before
+him) had been muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of light, his
+color high. The dignity and power in his face had struck awe into them
+all; they wondered how old Castanier had come by it; and now they
+beheld Castanier divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and
+feeble. He had drawn Claparon out of the crowd with the energy of a
+sick man in a fever fit; he had looked like an opium-eater during the
+brief period of excitement that the drug can give; now, on his return,
+he seemed to be in the condition of utter exhaustion in which the
+patient dies after the fever departs, or to be suffering from the
+horrible prostration that follows on excessive indulgence in the
+delights of narcotics. The infernal power that had upheld him through
+his debauches had left him, and the body was left unaided and alone to
+endure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of sincere
+repentance. Claparon's troubles every one could guess; but Claparon
+reappeared, on the other hand, with sparkling eyes, holding his head
+high with the pride of Lucifer. The crisis had passed from the one man
+to the other.
+
+"Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man," said Claparon to
+Castanier.
+
+"For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate
+of Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the
+curbstone.
+
+The words "a priest" reached the ears of several people, and produced
+uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith with these
+gentlemen means a belief that a scrap of paper called a mortgage
+represents an estate, and the List of Fundholders is their Bible.
+
+"Shall I have time to repent?" said Castanier to himself, in a piteous
+voice, that impressed Claparon.
+
+A cab carried away the dying man; the speculator went to the bank at
+once to meet his bills; and the momentary sensation produced upon the
+throng of business men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanished
+like the furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest
+importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert;
+and when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with
+his two luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the
+honors of a pun, the gentlemen whose business it is to write the
+Market Reports would ignore his existence.
+
+When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was
+no mistake about his power. He went on 'Change again, and offered his
+bargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond,
+"together with the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining
+thereunto,"--to use the expression of the notary who succeeded
+Claparon, changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs.
+The notary in his turn parted with the agreement with the Devil for
+five hundred thousand francs to a building contractor in difficulties,
+who likewise was rid of it to an iron merchant in consideration of a
+hundred thousand crowns. In fact, by five o'clock people had ceased to
+believe in the strange contract, and purchasers were lacking for want
+of confidence.
+
+At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house-painter, who was
+lounging by the door of the building in the Rue Feydeau, where at that
+time stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house-painter, simple
+fellow, could not think what was the matter with him. He "felt all
+anyhow"; so he told his wife when he went home.
+
+The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a place of
+pilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress bestow their ardent
+affection upon the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidly
+respectable domicile therein dwelt one of those exquisite creatures
+whom it has pleased heaven to endow with the rarest and most
+surpassing beauty. As it is impossible that they should all be
+duchesses or queens (since there are many more pretty women in the
+world than titles and thrones for them to adorn), they are content to
+make a stockbroker or a banker happy at a fixed price. To this
+good-natured beauty, Euphrasia by name, an unbounded ambition had led
+a notary's clerk to aspire. In short, the second clerk in the office
+of Maitre Crottat, notary, had fallen in love with her, as youth at
+two-and-twenty can fall in love. The scrivener would have murdered the
+Pope and run amuck through the whole sacred college to procure the
+miserable sum of a hundred louis to pay for a shawl which had turned
+Euphrasia's head, at which price her waiting-woman had promised that
+Euphrasia should be his. The infatuated youth walked to and fro under
+Madame Euphrasia's windows, like the polar bears in their cage at the
+Jardin des Plantes, with his right hand thrust beneath his waistcoat
+in the region of the heart, which he was fit to tear from his bosom,
+but as yet he had only wrenched at the elastic of his braces.
+
+"What can one do to raise ten thousand francs?" he asked himself.
+"Shall I make off with the money that I must pay on the registration
+of that conveyance? Good heavens! my loan would not ruin the
+purchaser, a man with seven millions! And then next day I would fling
+myself at his feet and say, 'I have taken ten thousand francs
+belonging to you, sir; I am twenty-two years of age, and I am in love
+with Euphrasia--that is my story. My father is rich, he will pay you
+back; do not ruin me! Have not you yourself been twenty-two years old
+and madly in love?' But these beggarly landowners have no souls! He
+would be quite likely to give me up to the public prosecutor, instead
+of taking pity upon me. Good God! if it were only possible to sell
+your soul to the Devil! But there is neither a God nor a Devil; it is
+all nonsense out of nursery tales and old wives' talk. What shall I
+do?"
+
+"If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir," said the
+house-painter, who had overheard something that the clerk let fall,
+"you can have the ten thousand francs."
+
+"And Euphrasia!" cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain with the
+devil that inhabited the house-painter.
+
+The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the shawl, and
+mounted Madame Euphrasia's staircase; and as (literally) the devil was
+in him, he did not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought of
+hell and of his privileges in twelve days of love and riot and
+forgetfulness, for which he had bartered away all his hopes of a
+paradise to come.
+
+And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired
+by the Irishman, the offspring of Maturin's brain, was lost to
+mankind; and the various Orientalists, Mystics, and Archaeologists who
+take an interest in these matters were unable to hand down to
+posterity the proper method of invoking the Devil, for the following
+sufficient reasons:
+
+On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the wretched clerk
+lay on a pallet bed in a garret in his master's house in the Rue
+Saint-Honore. Shame, the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself,
+had taken possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he would
+nurse himself; misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill
+of a practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to
+the effects of an overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a
+mole's back. A devil had left unmistakable traces of its passage
+there; could it have been Ashtaroth?
+
+
+
+"The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried away to the
+planet Mercury," said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came
+to investigate the matter at first hand.
+
+"I am quite prepared to believe it," answered the Teuton.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Yes, sir," returned the other. "The opinion you advance coincides
+with the very words of Jacob Boehme. In the forty-eighth proposition
+of _The Threefold Life of Man_ he says that 'if God hath brought all
+things to pass with a LET THERE BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix
+which comprehends and apprehends the nature which is formed by the
+spirit born of Mercury and of God.'"
+
+"What do you say, sir?"
+
+The German delivered his quotation afresh.
+
+"We do not know it," said the clerks.
+
+"_Fiat_? . . ." said a clerk. "_Fiat lux_!"
+
+"You can verify the citation for yourselves," said the German. "You
+will find the passage in the _Treatise of the Threefold Life of Man_,
+page 75; the edition was published by M. Migneret in 1809. It was
+translated into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration for
+the famous shoemaker."
+
+"Oh! he was a shoemaker, was he?" said the head clerk.
+
+"In Prussia," said the German.
+
+"Did he work for the King of Prussia?" inquired a Boeotian of a second
+clerk.
+
+"He must have vamped up his prose," said a third.
+
+"That man is colossal!" cried the fourth, pointing to the Teuton.
+
+That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not know
+the amount of devilry to be found in a notary's clerk. He went away
+without the least idea that they were making game of him, and fully
+under the impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as a
+colossal genius.
+
+"Education is making strides in France," said he to himself.
+
+
+
+PARIS, May 6, 1835.
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Aquilina
+  The Magic Skin
+
+Claparon, Charles
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Euphrasia
+  The Magic Skin
+
+Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
+  Father Goriot
+  The Thirteen
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Another Study of Woman
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Tillet, Ferdinand du
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  The Middle Classes
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Pierrette
+  A Distinguished Provencial at Paris
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Melmoth Reconciled, by Honore de Balzac
+
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