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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gobseck, 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: Gobseck
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: July, 1997  [Etext #1389]
+Posting Date: February 24, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOBSECK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, and Bonnie Sala
+
+
+
+
+
+GOBSECK
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated By Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+                            DEDICATION
+
+                  To M. le Baron Barchou de Penhoen.
+
+  Among all the pupils of the Oratorian school at Vendome, we are, I
+  think, the only two who have afterwards met in mid-career of a
+  life of letters--we who once were cultivating Philosophy when by
+  rights we should have been minding our De viris. When we met, you
+  were engaged upon your noble works on German philosophy, and I
+  upon this study. So neither of us has missed his vocation; and
+  you, when you see your name here, will feel, no doubt, as much
+  pleasure as he who inscribes his work to you.--Your old
+  schoolfellow,
+
+       1840                                              De Balzac.
+
+
+
+
+
+GOBSECK
+
+
+It was one o'clock in the morning, during the winter of 1829-30, but in
+the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu's salon two persons stayed on who did not
+belong to her family circle. A young and good-looking man heard the
+clock strike, and took his leave. When the courtyard echoed with the
+sound of a departing carriage, the Vicomtesse looked up, saw that no one
+was present save her brother and a friend of the family finishing their
+game of piquet, and went across to her daughter. The girl, standing by
+the chimney-piece, apparently examining a transparent fire-screen,
+was listening to the sounds from the courtyard in a way that justified
+certain maternal fears.
+
+"Camille," said the Vicomtesse, "if you continue to behave to young
+Comte de Restaud as you have done this evening, you will oblige me to
+see no more of him here. Listen, child, and if you have any confidence
+in my love, let me guide you in life. At seventeen one cannot judge of
+past or future, nor of certain social considerations. I have only one
+thing to say to you. M. de Restaud has a mother, a mother who would
+waste millions of francs; a woman of no birth, a Mlle. Goriot; people
+talked a good deal about her at one time. She behaved so badly to her
+own father, that she certainly does not deserve to have so good a son.
+The young Count adores her, and maintains her in her position with
+dutifulness worthy of all praise, and he is extremely good to his
+brother and sister.--But however admirable _his_ behavior may be," the
+Vicomtesse added with a shrewd expression, "so long as his mother lives,
+any family would take alarm at the idea of intrusting a daughter's
+fortune and future to young Restaud."
+
+"I overheard a word now and again in your talk with Mlle. de Grandlieu,"
+cried the friend of the family, "and it made me anxious to put in a word
+of my own.--I have won, M. le Comte," he added, turning to his opponent.
+"I shall throw you over and go to your niece's assistance."
+
+"See what it is to have an attorney's ears!" exclaimed the Vicomtesse.
+"My dear Derville, how could you know what I was saying to Camille in a
+whisper?"
+
+"I knew it from your looks," answered Derville, seating himself in a low
+chair by the fire.
+
+Camille's uncle went to her side, and Mme. de Grandlieu took up her
+position on a hearth stool between her daughter and Derville.
+
+"The time has come for telling a story, which should modify your
+judgment as to Ernest de Restaud's prospects."
+
+"A story?" cried Camille. "Do begin at once, monsieur."
+
+The glance that Derville gave the Vicomtesse told her that this tale was
+meant for her. The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, be it said, was one of the
+greatest ladies in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, by reason of her fortune
+and her ancient name; and though it may seem improbable that a Paris
+attorney should speak so familiarly to her, or be so much at home in her
+house, the fact is nevertheless easily explained.
+
+When Mme. de Grandlieu returned to France with the Royal family, she
+came to Paris, and at first lived entirely on the pension allowed her
+out of the Civil List by Louis XVIII.--an intolerable position. The
+Hotel de Grandlieu had been sold by the Republic. It came to Derville's
+knowledge that there were flaws in the title, and he thought that it
+ought to return to the Vicomtesse. He instituted proceedings for nullity
+of contract, and gained the day. Encouraged by this success, he used
+legal quibbles to such purpose that he compelled some institution or
+other to disgorge the Forest of Liceney. Then he won certain lawsuits
+against the Canal d'Orleans, and recovered a tolerably large amount
+of property, with which the Emperor had endowed various public
+institutions. So it fell out that, thanks to the young attorney's
+skilful management, Mme. de Grandlieu's income reached the sum of some
+sixty thousand francs, to say nothing of the vast sums returned to her
+by the law of indemnity. And Derville, a man of high character, well
+informed, modest, and pleasant in company, became the house-friend of
+the family.
+
+By his conduct of Mme. de Grandlieu's affairs he had fairly earned the
+esteem of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and numbered the best families
+among his clients; but he did not take advantage of his popularity, as
+an ambitious man might have done. The Vicomtesse would have had him sell
+his practice and enter the magistracy, in which career advancement would
+have been swift and certain with such influence at his disposal; but he
+persistently refused all offers. He only went into society to keep up
+his connections, but he occasionally spent an evening at the Hotel de
+Grandlieu. It was a very lucky thing for him that his talents had been
+brought into the light by his devotion to Mme. de Grandlieu, for his
+practice otherwise might have gone to pieces. Derville had not an
+attorney's soul. Since Ernest de Restaud had appeared at the Hotel de
+Grandlieu, and he had noticed that Camille felt attracted to the young
+man, Derville had been as assiduous in his visits as any dandy of the
+Chausee-d'Antin newly admitted to the noble Faubourg. At a ball only
+a few days before, when he happened to stand near Camille, and said,
+indicating the Count:
+
+"It is a pity that yonder youngster has not two or three million francs,
+is it not?"
+
+"Is it a pity? I do not think so," the girl answered. "M. de Restaud
+has plenty of ability; he is well educated, and the Minister, his
+chief, thinks well of him. He will be a remarkable man, I have no doubt.
+'Yonder youngster' will have as much money as he wishes when he comes
+into power."
+
+"Yes, but suppose that he were rich already?"
+
+"Rich already?" repeated Camille, flushing red. "Why all the girls
+in the room would be quarreling for him," she said, glancing at the
+quadrilles.
+
+"And then," retorted the attorney, "Mlle. de Grandlieu might not be the
+one towards whom his eyes are always turned? That is what that red color
+means! You like him, do you not? Come, speak out."
+
+Camille suddenly rose to go.
+
+"She loves him," Derville thought.
+
+Since that evening, Camille had been unwontedly attentive to the
+attorney, who approved of her liking for Ernest de Restaud. Hitherto,
+although she knew well that her family lay under great obligations to
+Derville, she had felt respect rather than real friendship for him,
+their relation was more a matter of politeness than of warmth of
+feeling; and by her manner, and by the tones of her voice, she had
+always made him sensible of the distance which socially lay between
+them. Gratitude is a charge upon the inheritance which the second
+generation is apt to repudiate.
+
+
+
+"This adventure," Derville began after a pause, "brings the one romantic
+event in my life to my mind. You are laughing already," he went on;
+"it seems so ridiculous, doesn't it, that an attorney should speak of
+a romance in his life? But once I was five-and-twenty, like everybody
+else, and even then I had seen some queer things. I ought to begin at
+the beginning by telling you about some one whom it is impossible that
+you should have known. The man in question was a usurer.
+
+"Can you grasp a clear notion of that sallow, wan face of his? I wish
+the _Academie_ would give me leave to dub such faces the _lunar_
+type. It was like silver-gilt, with the gilt rubbed off. His hair was
+iron-gray, sleek, and carefully combed; his features might have been
+cast in bronze; Talleyrand himself was not more impassive than this
+money-lender. A pair of little eyes, yellow as a ferret's, and with
+scarce an eyelash to them, peered out from under the sheltering peak of
+a shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He had the thin lips that
+you see in Rembrandt's or Metsu's portraits of alchemists and shrunken
+old men, and a nose so sharp at the tip that it put you in mind of a
+gimlet. His voice was so low; he always spoke suavely; he never flew
+into a passion. His age was a problem; it was hard to say whether he had
+grown old before his time, or whether by economy of youth he had saved
+enough to last him his life.
+
+"His room, and everything in it, from the green baize of the bureau
+to the strip of carpet by the bed, was as clean and threadbare as the
+chilly sanctuary of some elderly spinster who spends her days in rubbing
+her furniture. In winter time, the live brands of the fire smouldered
+all day in a bank of ashes; there was never any flame in his grate. He
+went through his day, from his uprising to his evening coughing-fit,
+with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was a clockwork man,
+wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a wood-louse on an excursion across
+your sheet of paper, and the creature shams death; and in something the
+same way my acquaintance would stop short in the middle of a sentence,
+while a cart went by, to save the strain to his voice. Following the
+example of Fontenelle, he was thrifty of pulse-strokes, and concentrated
+all human sensibility in the innermost sanctuary of Self.
+
+"His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass. His victims
+sometimes flew into a rage and made a great deal of noise, followed by a
+great silence; so is it in a kitchen after a fowl's neck has been wrung.
+
+"Toward evening this bill of exchange incarnate would assume ordinary
+human shape, and his metals were metamorphosed into a human heart. When
+he was satisfied with his day's business, he would rub his hands; his
+inward glee would escape like smoke through every rift and wrinkle of
+his face;--in no other way is it possible to give an idea of the mute
+play of muscle which expressed sensations similar to the soundless
+laughter of _Leather Stocking_. Indeed, even in transports of joy,
+his conversation was confined to monosyllables; he wore the same
+non-committal countenance.
+
+"This was the neighbor Chance found for me in the house in the Rue
+de Gres, where I used to live when as yet I was only a second clerk
+finishing my third year's studies. The house is damp and dark, and
+boasts no courtyard. All the windows look on the street; the whole
+dwelling, in claustral fashion, is divided into rooms or cells of equal
+size, all opening upon a long corridor dimly lit with borrowed lights.
+The place must have been part of an old convent once. So gloomy was it,
+that the gaiety of eldest sons forsook them on the stairs before they
+reached my neighbor's door. He and his house were much alike; even so
+does the oyster resemble his native rock.
+
+"I was the one creature with whom he had any communication, socially
+speaking; he would come in to ask for a light, to borrow a book or a
+newspaper, and of an evening he would allow me to go into his cell,
+and when he was in the humor we would chat together. These marks of
+confidence were the results of four years of neighborhood and my own
+sober conduct. From sheer lack of pence, I was bound to live pretty much
+as he did. Had he any relations or friends? Was he rich or poor? Nobody
+could give an answer to these questions. I myself never saw money in his
+room. Doubtless his capital was safely stowed in the strong rooms of the
+Bank. He used to collect his bills himself as they fell due, running
+all over Paris on a pair of shanks as skinny as a stag's. On occasion he
+would be a martyr to prudence. One day, when he happened to have gold in
+his pockets, a double napoleon worked its way, somehow or other, out of
+his fob and fell, and another lodger following him up the stairs picked
+up the coin and returned it to its owner.
+
+"'That isn't mine!' said he, with a start of surprise. 'Mine indeed! If
+I were rich, should I live as I do!'
+
+"He made his cup of coffee himself every morning on the cast-iron
+chafing dish which stood all day in the black angle of the grate; his
+dinner came in from a cookshop; and our old porter's wife went up at the
+prescribed hour to set his room in order. Finally, a whimsical chance,
+in which Sterne would have seen predestination, had named the man
+Gobseck. When I did business for him later, I came to know that he was
+about seventy-six years old at the time when we became acquainted. He
+was born about 1740, in some outlying suburb of Antwerp, of a Dutch
+father and a Jewish mother, and his name was Jean-Esther Van Gobseck.
+You remember how all Paris took an interest in that murder case, a
+woman named _La belle Hollandaise_? I happened to mention it to my old
+neighbor, and he answered without the slightest symptom of interest or
+surprise, 'She is my grandniece.'
+
+"That was the only remark drawn from him by the death of his sole
+surviving next of kin, his sister's granddaughter. From reports of the
+case I found that _La belle Hollandaise_ was in fact named Sara Van
+Gobseck. When I asked by what curious chance his grandniece came to bear
+his surname, he smiled:
+
+"'The women never marry in our family.'
+
+"Singular creature, he had never cared to find out a single relative
+among four generations counted on the female side. The thought of his
+heirs was abhorrent to him; and the idea that his wealth could pass into
+other hands after his death simply inconceivable.
+
+"He was a child, ten years old, when his mother shipped him off as a
+cabin boy on a voyage to the Dutch Straits Settlements, and there he
+knocked about for twenty years. The inscrutable lines on that sallow
+forehead kept the secret of horrible adventures, sudden panic,
+unhoped-for luck, romantic cross events, joys that knew no limit,
+hunger endured and love trampled under foot, fortunes risked, lost, and
+recovered, life endangered time and time again, and saved, it may be, by
+one of the rapid, ruthless decisions absolved by necessity. He had known
+Admiral Simeuse, M. de Lally, M. de Kergarouet, M. d'Estaing, _le Bailli
+de Suffren_, M. de Portenduere, Lord Cornwallis, Lord Hastings, Tippoo
+Sahib's father, Tippoo Sahib himself. The bully who served Mahadaji
+Sindhia, King of Delhi, and did so much to found the power of the
+Mahrattas, had had dealings with Gobseck. Long residence at St. Thomas
+brought him in contact with Victor Hughes and other notorious pirates.
+In his quest of fortune he had left no stone unturned; witness an
+attempt to discover the treasure of that tribe of savages so famous in
+Buenos Ayres and its neighborhood. He had a personal knowledge of the
+events of the American War of Independence. But if he spoke of the
+Indies or of America, as he did very rarely with me, and never with
+anyone else, he seemed to regard it as an indiscretion and to repent of
+it afterwards. If humanity and sociability are in some sort a religion,
+Gobseck might be ranked as an infidel; but though I set myself to study
+him, I must confess, to my shame, that his real nature was impenetrable
+up to the very last. I even felt doubts at times as to his sex. If all
+usurers are like this one, I maintain that they belong to the neuter
+gender.
+
+"Did he adhere to his mother's religion? Did he look on Gentiles as
+his legitimate prey? Had he turned Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Mahometan,
+Brahmin, or what not? I never knew anything whatsoever about his
+religious opinions, and so far as I could see, he was indifferent rather
+than incredulous.
+
+"One evening I went in to see this man who had turned himself to gold;
+the usurer, whom his victims (his clients, as he styled them) were
+wont to call Daddy Gobseck, perhaps ironically, perhaps by way of
+antiphrasis. He was sitting in his armchair, motionless as a statue,
+staring fixedly at the mantel-shelf, where he seemed to read the figures
+of his statements. A lamp, with a pedestal that had once been green, was
+burning in the room; but so far from taking color from its smoky light,
+his face seemed to stand out positively paler against the background. He
+pointed to a chair set for me, but not a word did he say.
+
+"'What thoughts can this being have in his mind?' said I to myself.
+'Does he know that a God exists; does he know there are such things
+as feeling, woman, happiness?' I pitied him as I might have pitied a
+diseased creature. But, at the same time, I knew quite well that while
+he had millions of francs at his command, he possessed the world no
+less in idea--that world which he had explored, ransacked, weighed,
+appraised, and exploited.
+
+"'Good day, Daddy Gobseck,' I began.
+
+"He turned his face towards me with a slight contraction of his bushy,
+black eyebrows; this characteristic shade of expression in him meant as
+much as the most jubilant smile on a Southern face.
+
+"'You look just as gloomy as you did that day when the news came of the
+failure of that bookseller whose sharpness you admired so much, though
+you were one of his victims.'
+
+"'One of his victims?' he repeated, with a look of astonishment.
+
+"'Yes. Did you not refuse to accept composition at the meeting of
+creditors until he undertook privately to pay you your debt in full; and
+did he not give you bills accepted by the insolvent firm; and then, when
+he set up in business again, did he not pay you the dividend upon those
+bills of yours, signed as they were by the bankrupt firm?'
+
+"'He was a sharp one, but I had it out of him.'
+
+"'Then have you some bills to protest? To-day is the 30th, I believe.'
+
+"It was the first time I had spoken to him of money. He looked
+ironically up at me; then in those bland accents, not unlike the husky
+tones which the tyro draws from a flute, he answered, 'I am amusing
+myself.'
+
+"'So you amuse yourself now and again?'
+
+"'Do you imagine that the only poets in the world are those who print
+their verses?' he asked, with a pitying look and shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"'Poetry in that head!' thought I, for as yet I knew nothing of his
+life.
+
+"'What life could be as glorious as mine?' he continued, and his eyes
+lighted up. 'You are young, your mental visions are colored by youthful
+blood, you see women's faces in the fire, while I see nothing but coals
+in mine. You have all sorts of beliefs, while I have no beliefs at
+all. Keep your illusions--if you can. Now I will show you life with
+the discount taken off. Go wherever you like, or stay at home by the
+fireside with your wife, there always comes a time when you settle down
+in a certain groove, the groove is your preference; and then happiness
+consists in the exercise of your faculties by applying them to
+realities. Anything more in the way of precept is false. My principles
+have been various, among various men; I had to change them with every
+change of latitude. Things that we admire in Europe are punishable in
+Asia, and a vice in Paris becomes a necessity when you have passed the
+Azores. There are no such things as hard-and-fast rules; there are only
+conventions adapted to the climate. Fling a man headlong into one social
+melting pot after another, and convictions and forms and moral systems
+become so many meaningless words to him. The one thing that always
+remains, the one sure instinct that nature has implanted in us, is the
+instinct of self-interest. If you had lived as long as I have, you would
+know that there is but one concrete reality invariable enough to be
+worth caring about, and that is--GOLD. Gold represents every form of
+human power. I have traveled. I found out that there were either hills
+or plains everywhere: the plains are monotonous, the hills a weariness;
+consequently, place may be left out of the question. As to manners; man
+is man all the world over. The same battle between the poor and the rich
+is going on everywhere; it is inevitable everywhere; consequently, it is
+better to exploit than to be exploited. Everywhere you find the man of
+thews and sinews who toils, and the lymphatic man who torments himself;
+and pleasures are everywhere the same, for when all sensations are
+exhausted, all that survives is Vanity--Vanity is the abiding substance
+of us, the _I_ in us. Vanity is only to be satisfied by gold in floods.
+Our dreams need time and physical means and painstaking thought before
+they can be realized. Well, gold contains all things in embryo; gold
+realizes all things for us.
+
+"'None but fools and invalids can find pleasure in shuffling cards all
+evening long to find out whether they shall win a few pence at the end.
+None but driveling idiots could spend time in inquiring into all that
+is happening around them, whether Madame Such-an-One slept single on
+her couch or in company, whether she has more blood than lymph, more
+temperament than virtue. None but the dupes, who fondly imagine that
+they are useful to their like, can interest themselves in laying down
+rules for political guidance amid events which neither they nor any one
+else foresees, nor ever will foresee. None but simpletons can delight
+in talking about stage players and repeating their sayings; making the
+daily promenade of a caged animal over a rather larger area; dressing
+for others, eating for others, priding themselves on a horse or a
+carriage such as no neighbor can have until three days later. What is
+all this but Parisian life summed up in a few phrases? Let us find a
+higher outlook on life than theirs. Happiness consists either in strong
+emotions which drain our vitality, or in methodical occupation which
+makes existence like a bit of English machinery, working with the
+regularity of clockwork. A higher happiness than either consists in a
+curiosity, styled noble, a wish to learn Nature's secrets, or to attempt
+by artificial means to imitate Nature to some extent. What is this in
+two words but Science and Art, or passion or calm?--Ah! well, every
+human passion wrought up to its highest pitch in the struggle for
+existence comes to parade itself before me--as I live in calm. As for
+your scientific curiosity, a kind of wrestling bout in which man is
+never uppermost, I replace it by an insight into all the springs of
+action in man and woman. To sum up, the world is mine without effort of
+mine, and the world has not the slightest hold on me. Listen to this,'
+he went on, 'I will tell you the history of my morning, and you will
+divine my pleasures.'
+
+"He got up, pushed the bolt of the door, drew a tapestry curtain across
+it with a sharp grating sound of the rings on the rod, then he sat down
+again.
+
+"'This morning,' he said, 'I had only two amounts to collect; the rest
+of the bills that were due I gave away instead of cash to my customers
+yesterday. So much saved, you see, for when I discount a bill I always
+deduct two francs for a hired brougham--expenses of collection. A pretty
+thing it would be, would it not, if my clients were to set _me_ trudging
+all over Paris for half-a-dozen francs of discount, when no man is my
+master, and I only pay seven francs in the shape of taxes?
+
+"'The first bill for a thousand francs was presented by a young fellow,
+a smart buck with a spangled waistcoat, and an eyeglass, and a tilbury
+and an English horse, and all the rest of it. The bill bore the
+signature of one of the prettiest women in Paris, married to a Count, a
+great landowner. Now, how came that Countess to put her name to a
+bill of exchange, legally not worth the paper it was written upon, but
+practically very good business; for these women, poor things, are afraid
+of the scandal that a protested bill makes in a family, and would give
+themselves away in payment sooner than fail? I wanted to find out what
+that bill of exchange really represented. Was it stupidity, imprudence,
+love or charity?
+
+"'The second bill, bearing the signature "Fanny Malvaut," came to me
+from a linen-draper on the highway to bankruptcy. Now, no creature who
+has any credit with a bank comes to _me_. The first step to my door
+means that a man is desperately hard up; that the news of his failure
+will soon come out: and, most of all, it means that he has been
+everywhere else first. The stag is always at bay when I see him, and a
+pack of creditors are hard upon his track. The Countess lived in the Rue
+du Helder, and my Fanny in the Rue Montmartre. How many conjectures I
+made as I set out this morning! If these two women were not able to pay,
+they would show me more respect than they would show their own fathers.
+What tricks and grimaces would not the Countess try for a thousand
+francs! She would be so nice to me, she would talk to me in that
+ingratiating tone peculiar to endorsers of bills, she would pour out
+a torrent of coaxing words, perhaps she would beg and pray, and I...'
+(here the old man turned his pale eyes upon me)--'and I not to be moved,
+inexorable!' he continued. 'I am there as the avenger, the apparition of
+Remorse. So much for hypotheses. I reached the house.
+
+"'"Madame la Comtesse is asleep," says the maid.
+
+"'"When can I see her?"
+
+"'"At twelve o'clock."
+
+"'"Is Madame la Comtesse ill?"
+
+"'"No, sir, but she only came home at three o'clock this morning from a
+ball."
+
+"'"My name is Gobseck, tell her that I shall call again at twelve
+o'clock," and I went out, leaving traces of my muddy boots on the carpet
+which covered the paved staircase. I like to leave mud on a rich man's
+carpet; it is not petty spite; I like to make them feel a touch of the
+claws of Necessity. In the Rue Montmartre I thrust open the old gateway
+of a poor-looking house, and looked into a dark courtyard where the
+sunlight never shines. The porter's lodge was grimy, the window looked
+like the sleeve of some shabby wadded gown--greasy, dirty, and full of
+holes.
+
+"'"Mlle. Fanny Malvaut?"
+
+"'"She has gone out; but if you have come about a bill, the money is
+waiting for you."
+
+"'"I will look in again," said I.
+
+"'As soon as I knew that the porter had the money for me, I wanted to
+know what the girl was like; I pictured her as pretty. The rest of the
+morning I spent in looking at the prints in the shop windows along the
+boulevard; then, just as it struck twelve, I went through the Countess'
+ante-chamber.
+
+"'"Madame has just this minute rung for me," said the maid; "I don't
+think she can see you yet."
+
+"'"I will wait," said I, and sat down in an easy-chair.
+
+"'Venetian shutters were opened, and presently the maid came hurrying
+back.
+
+"'"Come in, sir."
+
+"'From the sweet tone of the girl's voice, I knew that the mistress
+could not be ready to pay. What a handsome woman it was that I saw in
+another moment! She had flung an Indian shawl hastily over her bare
+shoulders, covering herself with it completely, while it revealed the
+bare outlines of the form beneath. She wore a loose gown trimmed with
+snowy ruffles, which told plainly that her laundress' bills amounted
+to something like two thousand francs in the course of a year. Her
+dark curls escaped from beneath a bright Indian handkerchief, knotted
+carelessly about her head after the fashion of Creole women. The bed lay
+in disorder that told of broken slumber. A painter would have paid money
+to stay a while to see the scene that I saw. Under the luxurious hanging
+draperies, the pillow, crushed into the depths of an eider-down quilt,
+its lace border standing out in contrast against the background of blue
+silk, bore a vague impress that kindled the imagination. A pair of
+satin slippers gleamed from the great bear-skin rug spread by the carved
+mahogany lions at the bed-foot, where she had flung them off in her
+weariness after the ball. A crumpled gown hung over a chair, the sleeves
+touching the floor; stockings which a breath would have blown away were
+twisted about the leg of an easy-chair; while ribbon garters straggled
+over a settee. A fan of price, half unfolded, glittered on the
+chimney-piece. Drawers stood open; flowers, diamonds, gloves, a bouquet,
+a girdle, were littered about. The room was full of vague sweet perfume.
+And--beneath all the luxury and disorder, beauty and incongruity, I saw
+Misery crouching in wait for her or for her adorer, Misery rearing its
+head, for the Countess had begun to feel the edge of those fangs.
+Her tired face was an epitome of the room strewn with relics of past
+festival. The scattered gewgaws, pitiable this morning, when gathered
+together and coherent, had turned heads the night before.
+
+"'What efforts to drink of the Tantalus cup of bliss I could read
+in these traces of love stricken by the thunderbolt remorse--in this
+visible presentment of a life of luxury, extravagance, and riot. There
+were faint red marks on her young face, signs of the fineness of the
+skin; but her features were coarsened, as it were, and the circles about
+her eyes were unwontedly dark. Nature nevertheless was so vigorous in
+her, that these traces of past folly did not spoil her beauty. Her eyes
+glittered. She looked like some _Herodias_ of da Vinci's (I have dealt
+in pictures), so magnificently full of life and energy was she; there
+was nothing starved nor stinted in feature or outline; she awakened
+desire; it seemed to me that there was some passion in her yet stronger
+than love. I was taken with her. It was a long while since my heart
+had throbbed; so I was paid then and there--for I would give a thousand
+francs for a sensation that should bring me back memories of youth.
+
+"'"Monsieur," she said, finding a chair for me, "will you be so good as
+to wait?"
+
+"'"Until this time to-morrow, madame," I said, folding up the bill
+again. "I cannot legally protest this bill any sooner." And within
+myself I said--"Pay the price of your luxury, pay for your name, pay for
+your ease, pay for the monopoly which you enjoy! The rich have invented
+judges and courts of law to secure their goods, and the guillotine--that
+candle in which so many lie in silk, under silken coverlets, there is
+remorse, and grinding of teeth beneath a smile, and those fantastical
+lions' jaws are gaping to set their fangs in your heart."
+
+"'"Protest the bill! Can you mean it?" she cried, with her eyes upon me;
+"could you have so little consideration for me?"
+
+"'"If the King himself owed money to me, madame, and did not pay it, I
+should summons him even sooner than any other debtor."
+
+"'While we were speaking, somebody tapped gently at the door.
+
+"'"I cannot see any one," she cried imperiously.
+
+"'"But, Anastasie, I particularly wish to speak to you."
+
+"'"Not just now, dear," she answered in a milder tone, but with no sign
+of relenting.
+
+"'"What nonsense! You are talking to some one," said the voice, and in
+came a man who could only be the Count.
+
+"'The Countess gave me a glance. I saw how it was. She was thoroughly
+in my power. There was a time, when I was young, and might perhaps have
+been stupid enough not to protest the bill. At Pondicherry, in 1763, I
+let a woman off, and nicely she paid me out afterwards. I deserved it;
+what call was there for me to trust her?
+
+"'"What does this gentleman want?" asked the Count.
+
+"'I could see that the Countess was trembling from head to foot; the
+white satin skin of her throat was rough, "turned to goose flesh," to
+use the familiar expression. As for me, I laughed in myself without
+moving a muscle.
+
+"'"This gentleman is one of my tradesmen," she said.
+
+"'The Count turned his back on me; I drew the bill half out of my
+pocket. After that inexorable movement, she came over to me and put a
+diamond into my hands. "Take it," she said, "and be gone."
+
+"'We exchanged values, and I made my bow and went. The diamond was quite
+worth twelve hundred francs to me. Out in the courtyard I saw a swarm of
+flunkeys, brushing out their liveries, waxing their boots, and cleaning
+sumptuous equipages.
+
+"'"This is what brings these people to me!" said I to myself. "It is
+to keep up this kind of thing that they steal millions with all due
+formalities, and betray their country. The great lord, and the little
+man who apes the great lord, bathes in mud once for all to save himself
+a splash or two when he goes afoot through the streets."
+
+"'Just then the great gates were opened to admit a cabriolet. It was the
+same young fellow who had brought the bill to me.
+
+"'"Sir," I said, as he alighted, "here are two hundred francs, which I
+beg you to return to Mme. la Comtesse, and have the goodness to tell her
+that I hold the pledge which she deposited with me this morning at her
+disposition for a week."
+
+"'He took the two hundred francs, and an ironical smile stole over his
+face; it was as if he had said, "Aha! so she has paid it, has she? ...
+Faith, so much the better!" I read the Countess' future in his face.
+That good-looking, fair-haired young gentleman is a heartless gambler;
+he will ruin himself, ruin her, ruin her husband, ruin the children, eat
+up their portions, and work more havoc in Parisian salons than a whole
+battery of howitzers in a regiment.
+
+"'I went back to see Mlle. Fanny in the Rue Montmartre, climbed a very
+steep, narrow staircase, and reached a two-roomed dwelling on the fifth
+floor. Everything was as neat as a new ducat. I did not see a speck of
+dust on the furniture in the first room, where Mlle. Fanny was sitting.
+Mlle. Fanny herself was a young Parisian girl, quietly dressed, with a
+delicate fresh face, and a winning look. The arrangement of her neatly
+brushed chestnut hair in a double curve on her forehead lent a refined
+expression to blue eyes, clear as crystal. The broad daylight streaming
+in through the short curtains against the window pane fell with softened
+light on her girlish face. A pile of shaped pieces of linen told me that
+she was a sempstress. She looked like a spirit of solitude. When I held
+out the bill, I remarked that she had not been at home when I called in
+the morning.
+
+"'"But the money was left with the porter's wife," said she.
+
+"'I pretended not to understand.
+
+"'"You go out early, mademoiselle, it seems."
+
+"'"I very seldom leave my room; but when you work all night, you are
+obliged to take a bath sometimes."
+
+"'I looked at her. A glance told me all about her life. Here was a girl
+condemned by misfortune to toil, a girl who came of honest farmer folk,
+for she had still a freckle or two that told of country birth. There
+was an indefinable atmosphere of goodness about her; I felt as if I were
+breathing sincerity and frank innocence. It was refreshing to my lungs.
+Poor innocent child, she had faith in something; there was a crucifix
+and a sprig or two of green box above her poor little painted wooden
+bedstead; I felt touched, or somewhat inclined that way. I felt ready
+to offer to charge no more than twelve per cent, and so give something
+towards establishing her in a good way of business.
+
+"'"But maybe she has a little youngster of a cousin," I said to myself,
+"who would raise money on her signature and sponge on the poor girl."
+
+"'So I went away, keeping my generous impulses well under control; for
+I have frequently had occasion to observe that when benevolence does no
+harm to him who gives it, it is the ruin of him who takes. When you came
+in I was thinking that Fanny Malvaut would make a nice little wife; I
+was thinking of the contrast between her pure, lonely life and the life
+of the Countess--she has sunk as low as a bill of exchange already, she
+will sink to the lowest depths of degradation before she has done!'--I
+scrutinized him during the deep silence that followed, but in a moment
+he spoke again. 'Well,' he said, 'do you think that it is nothing to
+have this power of insight into the deepest recesses of the human heart,
+to embrace so many lives, to see the naked truth underlying it all?
+There are no two dramas alike: there are hideous sores, deadly chagrins,
+love scenes, misery that soon will lie under the ripples of the Seine,
+young men's joys that lead to the scaffold, the laughter of despair,
+and sumptuous banquets. Yesterday it was a tragedy. A worthy soul of
+a father drowned himself because he could not support his family.
+To-morrow is a comedy; some youngster will try to rehearse the scene
+of M. Dimanche, brought up to date. You have heard the people extol the
+eloquence of our latter day preachers; now and again I have wasted my
+time by going to hear them; they produced a change in my opinions, but
+in my conduct (as somebody said, I can't recollect his name), in my
+conduct--never!--Well, well; these good priests and your Mirabeaus and
+Vergniauds and the rest of them, are mere stammering beginners compared
+with these orators of mine.
+
+"'Often it is some girl in love, some gray-headed merchant on the verge
+of bankruptcy, some mother with a son's wrong-doing to conceal, some
+starving artist, some great man whose influence is on the wane, and, for
+lack of money, is like to lose the fruit of all his labors--the power
+of their pleading has made me shudder. Sublime actors such as these play
+for me, for an audience of one, and they cannot deceive me. I can look
+into their inmost thoughts, and read them as God reads them. Nothing is
+hidden from me. Nothing is refused to the holder of the purse-strings to
+loose and to bind. I am rich enough to buy the consciences of those
+who control the action of ministers, from their office boys to their
+mistresses. Is not that power?--I can possess the fairest women, receive
+their softest caresses; is not that Pleasure? And is not your whole
+social economy summed up in terms of Power and Pleasure?
+
+"'There are ten of us in Paris, silent, unknown kings, the arbiters of
+your destinies. What is life but a machine set in motion by money? Know
+this for certain--methods are always confounded with results; you
+will never succeed in separating the soul from the senses, spirit from
+matter. Gold is the spiritual basis of existing society.--The ten of us
+are bound by the ties of common interest; we meet on certain days of the
+week at the Cafe Themis near the Pont Neuf, and there, in conclave, we
+reveal the mysteries of finance. No fortune can deceive us; we are in
+possession of family secrets in all directions. We keep a kind of Black
+Book, in which we note the most important bills issued, drafts on public
+credit, or on banks, or given and taken in the course of business. We
+are the Casuists of the Paris Bourse, a kind of Inquisition weighing and
+analyzing the most insignificant actions of every man of any fortune,
+and our forecasts are infallible. One of us looks out over the judicial
+world, one over the financial, another surveys the administrative, and
+yet another the business world. I myself keep an eye on eldest
+sons, artists, people in the great world, and gamblers--on the most
+sensational side of Paris. Every one who comes to us lets us into his
+neighbor's secrets. Thwarted passion and mortified vanity are great
+babblers. Vice and disappointment and vindictiveness are the best of
+all detectives. My colleagues, like myself, have enjoyed all things, are
+sated with all things, and have reached the point when power and money
+are loved for their own sake.
+
+"'Here,' he said, indicating his bare, chilly room, 'here the most
+high-mettled gallant, who chafes at a word and draws swords for a
+syllable elsewhere will entreat with clasped hands. There is no city
+merchant so proud, no woman so vain of her beauty, no soldier of so bold
+a spirit, but that they entreat me here, one and all, with tears of rage
+or anguish in their eyes. Here they kneel--the famous artist, and the
+man of letters, whose name will go down to posterity. Here, in short'
+(he lifted his hand to his forehead), 'all the inheritances and all the
+concerns of all Paris are weighed in the balance. Are you still of the
+opinion that there are no delights behind the blank mask which so often
+has amazed you by its impassiveness?' he asked, stretching out that
+livid face which reeked of money.
+
+"I went back to my room, feeling stupefied. The little, wizened old man
+had grown great. He had been metamorphosed under my eyes into a strange
+visionary symbol; he had come to be the power of gold personified. I
+shrank, shuddering, from life and my kind.
+
+"'Is it really so?' I thought; 'must everything be resolved into gold?'
+
+"I remember that it was long before I slept that night. I saw heaps
+of gold all about me. My thoughts were full of the lovely Countess; I
+confess, to my shame, that the vision completely eclipsed another quiet,
+innocent figure, the figure of the woman who had entered upon a life of
+toil and obscurity; but on the morrow, through the clouds of slumber,
+Fanny's sweet face rose before me in all its beauty, and I thought of
+nothing else."
+
+
+
+"Will you take a glass of _eau sucree_?" asked the Vicomtesse,
+interrupting Derville.
+
+"I should be glad of it."
+
+"But I can see nothing in this that can touch our concerns," said Mme.
+de Grandlieu, as she rang the bell.
+
+"Sardanapalus!" cried Derville, flinging out his favorite invocation.
+"Mademoiselle Camille will be wide awake in a moment if I say that her
+happiness depended not so long ago upon Daddy Gobseck; but as the old
+gentleman died at the age of ninety, M. de Restaud will soon be in
+possession of a handsome fortune. This requires some explanation. As for
+poor Fanny Malvaut, you know her; she is my wife."
+
+"Poor fellow, he would admit that, with his usual frankness, with a
+score of people to hear him!" said the Vicomtesse.
+
+"I would proclaim it to the universe," said the attorney.
+
+"Go on, drink your glass, my poor Derville. You will never be anything
+but the happiest and the best of men."
+
+"I left you in the Rue du Helder," remarked the uncle, raising his face
+after a gentle doze. "You had gone to see a Countess; what have you done
+with her?"
+
+
+
+"A few days after my conversation with the old Dutchman," Derville
+continued, "I sent in my thesis, and became first a licentiate in
+law, and afterwards an advocate. The old miser's opinion of me went up
+considerably. He consulted me (gratuitously) on all the ticklish bits
+of business which he undertook when he had made quite sure how he stood,
+business which would have seemed unsafe to any ordinary practitioner.
+This man, over whom no one appeared to have the slightest influence,
+listened to my advice with something like respect. It is true that he
+always found that it turned out very well.
+
+"At length I became head-clerk in the office where I had worked for
+three years and then I left the Rue des Gres for rooms in my employer's
+house. I had my board and lodging and a hundred and fifty francs per
+month. It was a great day for me!
+
+"When I went to bid the usurer good-bye, he showed no sign of feeling,
+he was neither cordial nor sorry to lose me, he did not ask me to come
+to see him, and only gave me one of those glances which seemed in some
+sort to reveal a power of second-sight.
+
+"By the end of a week my old neighbor came to see me with a tolerably
+thorny bit of business, an expropriation, and he continued to ask for my
+advice with as much freedom as if he paid for it.
+
+"My principal was a man of pleasure and expensive tastes; before the
+second year (1818-1819) was out he had got himself into difficulties,
+and was obliged to sell his practice. A professional connection in those
+days did not fetch the present exorbitant prices, and my principal asked
+a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Now an active man, of competent
+knowledge and intelligence, might hope to pay off the capital in ten
+years, paying interest and living respectably in the meantime--if
+he could command confidence. But I as the seventh child of a small
+tradesman at Noyon, I had not a sou to my name, nor personal knowledge
+of any capitalist but Daddy Gobseck. An ambitious idea, and an
+indefinable glimmer of hope, put heart into me. To Gobseck I betook
+myself, and slowly one evening I made my way to the Rue des Gres. My
+heart thumped heavily as I knocked at his door in the gloomy house. I
+recollected all the things that he used to tell me, at a time when I
+myself was very far from suspecting the violence of the anguish awaiting
+those who crossed his threshold. Now it was I who was about to beg and
+pray like so many others.
+
+"'Well, no, not _that_,' I said to myself; 'an honest man must keep his
+self-respect wherever he goes. Success is not worth cringing for; let us
+show him a front as decided as his own.'
+
+"Daddy Gobseck had taken my room since I left the house, so as to have
+no neighbor; he had made a little grated window too in his door since
+then, and did not open until he had taken a look at me and saw who I
+was.
+
+"'Well,' said he, in his thin, flute notes, 'so your principal is
+selling his practice?'
+
+"'How did you know that?' said I; 'he has not spoken of it as yet except
+to me.'
+
+"The old man's lips were drawn in puckers, like a curtain, to either
+corner of his mouth, as a soundless smile bore a hard glance company.
+
+"'Nothing else would have brought you here,' he said drily, after a
+pause, which I spent in confusion.
+
+"'Listen to me, M. Gobseck,' I began, with such serenity as I could
+assume before the old man, who gazed at me with steady eyes. There was a
+clear light burning in them that disconcerted me.
+
+"He made a gesture as if to bid me 'Go on.' 'I know that it is not
+easy to work on your feelings, so I will not waste my eloquence on the
+attempt to put my position before you--I am a penniless clerk, with no
+one to look to but you, and no heart in the world but yours can form
+a clear idea of my probable future. Let us leave hearts out of the
+question. Business is business, and business is not carried on with
+sentimentality like romances. Now to the facts. My principal's practice
+is worth in his hands about twenty thousand francs per annum; in my
+hands, I think it would bring in forty thousand. He is willing to
+sell it for a hundred and fifty thousand francs. And _here_,' I
+said, striking my forehead, 'I feel that if you would lend me the
+purchase-money, I could clear it off in ten years' time.'
+
+"'Come, that is plain speaking,' said Daddy Gobseck, and he held out his
+hand and grasped mine. 'Nobody since I have been in business has stated
+the motives of his visit more clearly. Guarantees?' asked he, scanning
+me from head to foot. 'None to give,' he added after a pause, 'How old
+are you?'
+
+"'Twenty-five in ten days' time,' said I, 'or I could not open the
+matter.'
+
+"'Precisely.'
+
+"'Well?'
+
+"'It is possible.'
+
+"'My word, we must be quick about it, or I shall have some one buying
+over my head.'
+
+"'Bring your certificate of birth round to-morrow morning, and we will
+talk. I will think it over.'
+
+"'Next morning, at eight o'clock, I stood in the old man's room. He took
+the document, put on his spectacles, coughed, spat, wrapped himself
+up in his black greatcoat, and read the whole certificate through from
+beginning to end. Then he turned it over and over, looked at me, coughed
+again, fidgeted about in his chair, and said, 'We will try to arrange
+this bit of business.'
+
+"I trembled.
+
+"'I make fifty per cent on my capital,' he continued, 'sometimes I make
+a hundred, two hundred, five hundred per cent.'
+
+"I turned pale at the words.
+
+"'But as we are acquaintances, I shall be satisfied to take twelve and
+a half per cent per--(he hesitated)--'well, yes, from you I would be
+content to take thirteen per cent per annum. Will that suit you?'
+
+"'Yes,' I answered.
+
+"'But if it is too much, stick up for yourself, Grotius!' (a name he
+jokingly gave me). 'When I ask you for thirteen per cent, it is all in
+the way of business; look into it, see if you can pay it; I don't like a
+man to agree too easily. Is it too much?'
+
+"'No,' said I, 'I will make up for it by working a little harder.'
+
+"'Gad! your clients will pay for it!' said he, looking at me wickedly
+out of the corner of his eyes.
+
+"'No, by all the devils in hell!' cried I, 'it shall be I who will pay.
+I would sooner cut my hand off than flay people.'
+
+"'Good-night,' said Daddy Gobseck.
+
+"'Why, fees are all according to scale,' I added.
+
+"'Not for compromises and settlements out of Court, and cases where
+litigants come to terms,' said he. 'You can send in a bill for thousands
+of francs, six thousand even at a swoop (it depends on the importance of
+the case), for conferences with So-and-so, and expenses, and drafts, and
+memorials, and your jargon. A man must learn to look out for business of
+this kind. I will recommend you as a most competent, clever attorney. I
+will send you such a lot of work of this sort that your colleagues will
+be fit to burst with envy. Werbrust, Palma, and Gigonnet, my cronies,
+shall hand over their expropriations to you; they have plenty of them,
+the Lord knows! So you will have two practices--the one you are buying,
+and the other I will build up for you. You ought almost to pay me
+fifteen per cent on my loan.'
+
+"'So be it, but no more,' said I, with the firmness which means that a
+man is determined not to concede another point.
+
+"Daddy Gobseck's face relaxed; he looked pleased with me.
+
+"'I shall pay the money over to your principal myself,' said he, 'so as
+to establish a lien on the purchase and caution-money.'
+
+"'Oh, anything you like in the way of guarantees.'
+
+"'And besides that, you will give me bills for the amount made payable
+to a third party (name left blank), fifteen bills of ten thousand francs
+each.'
+
+"'Well, so long as it is acknowledged in writing that this is a
+double----'
+
+"'No!' Gobseck broke in upon me. 'No! Why should I trust you any more
+than you trust me?'
+
+"I kept silence.
+
+"'And furthermore,' he continued, with a sort of good humor, 'you will
+give me your advice without charging fees as long as I live, will you
+not?'
+
+"'So be it; so long as there is no outlay.'
+
+"'Precisely,' said he. "Ah, by the by, you will allow me to go to see
+you?' (Plainly the old man found it not so easy to assume the air of
+good-humor.)
+
+"'I shall always be glad.'
+
+"'Ah! yes, but it would be very difficult to arrange of a morning. You
+will have your affairs to attend to, and I have mine.'
+
+"'Then come in the evening.'
+
+"'Oh, no!' he answered briskly, 'you ought to go into society and see
+your clients, and I myself have my friends at my cafe.'
+
+"'His friends!' thought I to myself.--'Very well,' said I, 'why not come
+at dinner-time?'
+
+"'That is the time,' said Gobseck, 'after 'Change, at five o'clock.
+Good, you will see me Wednesdays and Saturdays. We will talk over
+business like a pair of friends. Aha! I am gay sometimes. Just give me
+the wing of a partridge and a glass of champagne, and we will have our
+chat together. I know a great many things that can be told now at
+this distance of time; I will teach you to know men, and what is
+more--women!'
+
+"'Oh! a partridge and a glass of champagne if you like.'
+
+"'Don't do anything foolish, or I shall lose my faith in you. And don't
+set up housekeeping in a grand way. Just one old general servant. I will
+come and see that you keep your health. I have capital invested in your
+head, he! he! so I am bound to look after you. There, come round in the
+evening and bring your principal with you!'
+
+"'Would you mind telling me, if there is no harm in asking, what was the
+good of my birth certificate in this business?' I asked, when the little
+old man and I stood on the doorstep.
+
+"Jean-Esther Van Gobseck shrugged his shoulders, smiled maliciously, and
+said, 'What blockheads youngsters are! Learn, master attorney (for learn
+you must if you don't mean to be taken in), that integrity and brains
+in a man under thirty are commodities which can be mortgaged. After that
+age there is no counting on a man.'
+
+"And with that he shut the door.
+
+
+"Three months later I was an attorney. Before very long, madame, it was
+my good fortune to undertake the suit for the recovery of your estates.
+I won the day, and my name became known. In spite of the exorbitant rate
+of interest, I paid off Gobseck in less than five years. I married Fanny
+Malvaut, whom I loved with all my heart. There was a parallel between
+her life and mine, between our hard work and our luck, which increased
+the strength of feeling on either side. One of her uncles, a well-to-do
+farmer, died and left her seventy thousand francs, which helped to clear
+off the loan. From that day my life has been nothing but happiness and
+prosperity. Nothing is more utterly uninteresting than a happy man,
+so let us say no more on that head, and return to the rest of the
+characters.
+
+"About a year after the purchase of the practice, I was dragged into a
+bachelor breakfast-party given by one of our number who had lost a
+bet to a young man greatly in vogue in the fashionable world. M. de
+Trailles, the flower of the dandyism of that day, enjoyed a prodigious
+reputation."
+
+"But he is still enjoying it," put in the Comte de Born. "No one wears
+his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tandem with a better grace.
+It is Maxime's gift; he can gamble, eat, and drink more gracefully than
+any man in the world. He is a judge of horses, hats, and pictures. All
+the women lose their heads over him. He always spends something like a
+hundred thousand francs a year, and no creature can discover that he has
+an acre of land or a single dividend warrant. The typical knight errant
+of our salons, our boudoirs, our boulevards, an amphibian half-way
+between a man and a woman--Maxime de Trailles is a singular being, fit
+for anything, and good for nothing, quite as capable of perpetrating a
+benefit as of planning a crime; sometimes base, sometimes noble, more
+often bespattered with mire than besprinkled with blood, knowing more of
+anxiety than of remorse, more concerned with his digestion than with any
+mental process, shamming passion, feeling nothing. Maxime de Trailles is
+a brilliant link between the hulks and the best society; he belongs to
+the eminently intelligent class from which a Mirabeau, or a Pitt, or a
+Richelieu springs at times, though it is more wont to produce Counts of
+Horn, Fouquier-Tinvilles, and Coignards."
+
+"Well," pursued Derville, when he had heard the Vicomtesse's brother to
+the end, "I had heard a good deal about this individual from poor old
+Goriot, a client of mine; and I had already been at some pains to avoid
+the dangerous honor of his acquaintance, for I came across him sometimes
+in society. Still, my chum was so pressing about this breakfast-party of
+his that I could not well get out of it, unless I wished to earn a name
+for squeamishness. Madame, you could hardly imagine what a bachelor's
+breakfast-party is like. It means superb display and a studied
+refinement seldom seen; the luxury of a miser when vanity leads him to
+be sumptuous for a day.
+
+"You are surprised as you enter the room at the neatness of the table,
+dazzling by reason of its silver and crystal and linen damask. Life is
+here in full bloom; the young fellows are graceful to behold; they smile
+and talk in low, demure voices like so many brides; everything about
+them looks girlish. Two hours later you might take the room for a
+battlefield after the fight. Broken glasses, serviettes crumpled and
+torn to rags lie strewn about among the nauseous-looking remnants of
+food on the dishes. There is an uproar that stuns you, jesting toasts, a
+fire of witticisms and bad jokes; faces are empurpled, eyes inflamed
+and expressionless, unintentional confidences tell you the whole truth.
+Bottles are smashed, and songs trolled out in the height of a diabolical
+racket; men call each other out, hang on each other's necks, or fall
+to fisticuffs; the room is full of a horrid, close scent made up of a
+hundred odors, and noise enough for a hundred voices. No one has any
+notion of what he is eating or drinking or saying. Some are depressed,
+others babble, one will turn monomaniac, repeating the same word over
+and over again like a bell set jangling; another tries to keep the
+tumult within bounds; the steadiest will propose an orgy. If any one in
+possession of his faculties should come in, he would think that he had
+interrupted a Bacchanalian rite.
+
+"It was in the thick of such a chaos that M. de Trailles tried to
+insinuate himself into my good graces. My head was fairly clear, I was
+upon my guard. As for him, though he pretended to be decently drunk,
+he was perfectly cool, and knew very well what he was about. How it was
+done I do not know, but the upshot of it was that when we left Grignon's
+rooms about nine o'clock in the evening, M. de Trailles had thoroughly
+bewitched me. I had given him my promise that I would introduce him the
+next day to our Papa Gobseck. The words 'honor,' 'virtue,' 'countess,'
+'honest woman,' and 'ill-luck' were mingled in his discourse with
+magical potency, thanks to that golden tongue of his.
+
+"When I awoke next morning, and tried to recollect what I had done the
+day before, it was with great difficulty that I could make a connected
+tale from my impressions. At last, it seemed to me that the daughter of
+one of my clients was in danger of losing her reputation, together
+with her husband's love and esteem, if she could not get fifty thousand
+francs together in the course of the morning. There had been gaming
+debts, and carriage-builders' accounts, money lost to Heaven knows whom.
+My magician of a boon companion had impressed it upon me that she was
+rich enough to make good these reverses by a few years of economy. But
+only now did I begin to guess the reasons of his urgency. I confess, to
+my shame, that I had not the shadow of a doubt but that it was a matter
+of importance that Daddy Gobseck should make it up with this dandy. I
+was dressing when the young gentleman appeared.
+
+"'M. le Comte,' said I, after the usual greetings, 'I fail to see why
+you should need me to effect an introduction to Van Gobseck, the most
+civil and smooth-spoken of capitalists. Money will be forthcoming if he
+has any, or rather, if you can give him adequate security.'
+
+"'Monsieur,' said he, 'it does not enter into my thoughts to force you
+to do me a service, even though you have passed your word.'
+
+"'Sardanapalus!' said I to myself, 'am I going to let that fellow
+imagine that I will not keep my word with him?'
+
+"'I had the honor of telling you yesterday,' said he, 'that I had fallen
+out with Daddy Gobseck most inopportunely; and as there is scarcely
+another man in Paris who can come down on the nail with a hundred
+thousand francs, at the end of the month, I begged of you to make my
+peace with him. But let us say no more about it----'
+
+"M. de Trailles looked at me with civil insult in his expression, and
+made as if he would take his leave.
+
+"'I am ready to go with you,' said I.
+
+"When we reached the Rue de Gres, my dandy looked about him with a
+circumspection and uneasiness that set me wondering. His face grew
+livid, flushed, and yellow, turn and turn about, and by the time that
+Gobseck's door came in sight the perspiration stood in drops on his
+forehead. We were just getting out of the cabriolet, when a hackney cab
+turned into the street. My companion's hawk eye detected a woman in the
+depths of the vehicle. His face lighted up with a gleam of almost savage
+joy; he called to a little boy who was passing, and gave him his horse
+to hold. Then we went up to the old bill discounter.
+
+"'M. Gobseck,' said I, 'I have brought one of my most intimate friends
+to see you (whom I trust as I would trust the Devil,' I added for the
+old man's private ear). 'To oblige me you will do your best for him (at
+the ordinary rate), and pull him out of his difficulty (if it suits your
+convenience).'
+
+"M. de Trailles made his bow to Gobseck, took a seat, and listened to us
+with a courtier-like attitude; its charming humility would have touched
+your heart to see, but my Gobseck sits in his chair by the fireside
+without moving a muscle, or changing a feature. He looked very like the
+statue of Voltaire under the peristyle of the Theatre-Francais, as you
+see it of an evening; he had partly risen as if to bow, and the skull
+cap that covered the top of his head, and the narrow strip of sallow
+forehead exhibited, completed his likeness to the man of marble.
+
+"'I have no money to spare except for my own clients,' said he.
+
+"'So you are cross because I may have tried in other quarters to ruin
+myself?' laughed the Count.
+
+"'Ruin yourself!' repeated Gobseck ironically.
+
+"'Were you about to remark that it is impossible to ruin a man who has
+nothing?' inquired the dandy. 'Why, I defy you to find a better _stock_
+in Paris!' he cried, swinging round on his heels.
+
+"This half-earnest buffoonery produced not the slightest effect upon
+Gobseck.
+
+"'Am I not on intimate terms with the Ronquerolles, the Marsays, the
+Franchessinis, the two Vandenesses, the Ajuda-Pintos,--all the most
+fashionable young men in Paris, in short? A prince and an ambassador
+(you know them both) are my partners at play. I draw my revenues from
+London and Carlsbad and Baden and Bath. Is not this the most brilliant
+of all industries!'
+
+"'True.'
+
+"'You make a sponge of me, begad! you do. You encourage me to go and
+swell myself out in society, so that you can squeeze me when I am hard
+up; but you yourselves are sponges, just as I am, and death will give
+you a squeeze some day.'
+
+"'That is possible.'
+
+"'If there were no spendthrifts, what would become of you? The pair of
+us are like soul and body.'
+
+"'Precisely so.'
+
+"'Come, now, give us your hand, Grandaddy Gobseck, and be magnanimous if
+this is "true" and "possible" and "precisely so."'
+
+"'You come to me,' the usurer answered coldly, 'because Girard, Palma,
+Werbrust, and Gigonnet are full up of your paper; they are offering it
+at a loss of fifty per cent; and as it is likely they only gave you half
+the figure on the face of the bills, they are not worth five-and-twenty
+per cent of their supposed value. I am your most obedient! Can I in
+common decency lend a stiver to a man who owes thirty thousand francs,
+and has not one farthing?' Gobseck continued. 'The day before yesterday
+you lost ten thousand francs at a ball at the Baron de Nucingen's.'
+
+"'Sir,' said the Count, with rare impudence, 'my affairs are no concern
+of yours,' and he looked the old man up and down. 'A man has no debts
+till payment is due.'
+
+"'True.'
+
+"'My bills will be duly met.'
+
+"'That is possible.'
+
+"'And at this moment the question between you and me is simply whether
+the security I am going to offer is sufficient for the sum I have come
+to borrow.'
+
+"'Precisely.'
+
+"A cab stopped at the door, and the sound of wheels filled the room.
+
+"'I will bring something directly which perhaps will satisfy you,' cried
+the young man, and he left the room.
+
+"'Oh! my son,' exclaimed Gobseck, rising to his feet, and stretching
+out his arms to me, 'if he has good security, you have saved my life. It
+would be the death of me. Werbrust and Gigonnet imagined that they were
+going to play off a trick on me; and now, thanks to you, I shall have a
+good laugh at their expense to-night.'
+
+"There was something frightful about the old man's ecstasy. It was the
+one occasion when he opened his heart to me; and that flash of joy,
+swift though it was, will never be effaced from my memory.
+
+"'Favor me so far as to stay here,' he added. 'I am armed, and a sure
+shot. I have gone tiger-hunting, and fought on the deck when there
+was nothing for it but to win or die; but I don't care to trust yonder
+elegant scoundrel.'
+
+"He sat down again in his armchair before his bureau, and his face grew
+pale and impassive as before.
+
+"'Ah!' he continued, turning to me, 'you will see that lovely creature
+I once told you about; I can hear a fine lady's step in the corridor; it
+is she, no doubt;' and, as a matter of fact, the young man came in with
+a woman on his arm. I recognized the Countess, whose levee Gobseck had
+described for me, one of old Goriot's two daughters.
+
+"The Countess did not see me at first; I stayed where I was in the
+window bay, with my face against the pane; but I saw her give Maxime a
+suspicious glance as she came into the money-lender's damp, dark room.
+So beautiful she was, that in spite of her faults I felt sorry for her.
+There was a terrible storm of anguish in her heart; her haughty, proud
+features were drawn and distorted with pain which she strove in vain
+to disguise. The young man had come to be her evil genius. I admired
+Gobseck, whose perspicacity had foreseen their future four years ago at
+the first bill which she endorsed.
+
+"'Probably,' said I to myself, 'this monster with the angel face
+controls every possible spring of action in her: rules her through
+vanity, jealousy, pleasure, and the current of life in the world.'"
+
+The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu broke in on the story.
+
+"Why, the woman's very virtues have been turned against her," she
+exclaimed. "He has made her shed tears of devotion, and then abused her
+kindness and made her pay very dearly for unhallowed bliss."
+
+Derville did not understand the signs which Mme. de Grandlieu made to
+him.
+
+"I confess," he said, "that I had no inclination to shed tears over the
+lot of this unhappy creature, so brilliant in society, so repulsive to
+eyes that could read her heart; I shuddered rather at the sight of her
+murderer, a young angel with such a clear brow, such red lips and white
+teeth, such a winning smile. There they stood before their judge, he
+scrutinizing them much as some fifteenth-century Dominican inquisitor
+might have peered into the dungeons of the Holy Office while the torture
+was administered to two Moors.
+
+"The Countess spoke tremulously. 'Sir,' she said, 'is there any way
+of obtaining the value of these diamonds, and of keeping the right of
+repurchase?' She held out a jewel-case.
+
+"'Yes, madame,' I put in, and came forwards.
+
+"She looked at me, and a shudder ran through her as she recognized me,
+and gave me the glance which means, 'Say nothing of this,' all the world
+over.
+
+"'This,' said I, 'constitutes a sale with faculty of redemption, as it
+is called, a formal agreement to transfer and deliver over a piece of
+property, either real estate or personalty, for a given time, on the
+expiry of which the previous owner recovers his title to the property in
+question, upon payment of a stipulated sum.'
+
+"She breathed more freely. The Count looked black; he had grave doubts
+whether Gobseck would lend very much on the diamonds after such a fall
+in their value. Gobseck, impassive as ever, had taken up his magnifying
+glass, and was quietly scrutinizing the jewels. If I were to live for
+a hundred years, I should never forget the sight of his face at that
+moment. There was a flush in his pale cheeks; his eyes seemed to have
+caught the sparkle of the stones, for there was an unnatural glitter in
+them. He rose and went to the light, holding the diamonds close to his
+toothless mouth, as if he meant to devour them; mumbling vague words
+over them, holding up bracelets, sprays, necklaces, and tiaras one after
+another, to judge their water, whiteness, and cutting; taking them out
+of the jewel-case and putting them in again, letting the play of the
+light bring out all their fires. He was more like a child than an old
+man; or, rather, childhood and dotage seemed to meet in him.
+
+"'Fine stones! The set would have fetched three hundred thousand
+francs before the Revolution. What water! Genuine Asiatic diamonds from
+Golconda or Visapur. Do you know what they are worth? No, no; no one in
+Paris but Gobseck can appreciate them. In the time of the Empire such a
+set would have cost another two hundred thousand francs!'
+
+"He gave a disgusted shrug, and added:
+
+"'But now diamonds are going down in value every day. The Brazilians
+have swamped the market with them since the Peace; but the Indian stones
+are a better color. Others wear them now besides court ladies. Does
+madame go to court?'
+
+"While he flung out these terrible words, he examined one stone after
+another with delight which no words can describe.
+
+"'Flawless!' he said. 'Here is a speck!... here is a flaw!... A fine
+stone that!'
+
+"His haggard face was so lighted up by the sparkling jewels, that it put
+me in mind of a dingy old mirror, such as you see in country inns. The
+glass receives every luminous image without reflecting the light, and
+a traveler bold enough to look for his face in it beholds a man in an
+apoplectic fit.
+
+"'Well?' asked the Count, clapping Gobseck on the shoulder.
+
+"The old boy trembled. He put down his playthings on his bureau, took
+his seat, and was a money-lender once more--hard, cold, and polished as
+a marble column.
+
+"'How much do you want?'
+
+"'One hundred thousand francs for three years,' said the Count.
+
+"'That is possible,' said Gobseck, and then from a mahogany box
+(Gobseck's jewel-case) he drew out a faultlessly adjusted pair of
+scales!
+
+"He weighed the diamonds, calculating the value of stones and setting
+at sight (Heaven knows how!), delight and severity struggling in the
+expression of his face the meanwhile. The Countess had plunged in a kind
+of stupor; to me, watching her, it seemed that she was fathoming the
+depths of the abyss into which she had fallen. There was remorse still
+left in that woman's soul. Perhaps a hand held out in human charity
+might save her. I would try.
+
+"'Are the diamonds your personal property, madame?' I asked in a clear
+voice.
+
+"'Yes, monsieur,' she said, looking at me with proud eyes.
+
+"'Make out the deed of purchase with power of redemption, chatterbox,'
+said Gobseck to me, resigning his chair at the bureau in my favor.
+
+"'Madame is without doubt a married woman?' I tried again.
+
+"She nodded abruptly.
+
+"'Then I will not draw up the deed,' said I.
+
+"'And why not?' asked Gobseck.
+
+"'Why not?' echoed I, as I drew the old man into the bay window so as
+to speak aside with him. 'Why not? This woman is under her husband's
+control; the agreement would be void in law; you could not possibly
+assert your ignorance of a fact recorded on the very face of the
+document itself. You would be compelled at once to produce the diamonds
+deposited with you, according to the weight, value, and cutting therein
+described.'
+
+"Gobseck cut me short with a nod, and turned towards the guilty couple.
+
+"'He is right!' he said. 'That puts the whole thing in a different
+light. Eighty thousand francs down, and you leave the diamonds with
+me,' he added, in the husky, flute-like voice. 'In the way of property,
+possession is as good as a title.'
+
+"'But----' objected the young man.
+
+"'You can take it or leave it,' continued Gobseck, returning the
+jewel-case to the lady as he spoke.
+
+"'I have too many risks to run.'
+
+"'It would be better to throw yourself at your husband's feet,' I bent
+to whisper in her ear.
+
+"The usurer doubtless knew what I was saying from the movement of
+my lips. He gave me a cool glance. The Count's face grew livid. The
+Countess was visibly wavering. Maxime stepped up to her, and, low as he
+spoke, I could catch the words:
+
+"'Adieu, dear Anastasie, may you be happy! As for me, by to-morrow my
+troubles will be over.'
+
+"'Sir!' cried the lady, turning to Gobseck. 'I accept your offer.'
+
+"'Come, now,' returned Gobseck. 'You have been a long time in coming to
+it, my fair lady.'
+
+"He wrote out a cheque for fifty thousand francs on the Bank of France,
+and handed it to the Countess.
+
+"'Now,' continued he with a smile, such a smile as you will see in
+portraits of M. Voltaire, 'now I will give you the rest of the amount in
+bills, thirty thousand francs' worth of paper as good as bullion. This
+gentleman here has just said, "My bills will be met when they are due,"'
+added he, producing certain drafts bearing the Count's signature, all
+protested the day before at the request of some of the confraternity,
+who had probably made them over to him (Gobseck) at a considerably
+reduced figure.
+
+"The young man growled out something, in which the words 'Old
+scoundrel!' were audible. Daddy Gobseck did not move an eyebrow. He drew
+a pair of pistols out of a pigeon-hole, remarking coolly:
+
+"'As the insulted man, I fire first.'
+
+"'Maxime, you owe this gentleman an explanation,' cried the trembling
+Countess in a low voice.
+
+"'I had no intention of giving offence,' stammered Maxime.
+
+"'I am quite sure of that,' Gobseck answered calmly; 'you had no
+intention of meeting your bills, that was all.'
+
+"The Countess rose, bowed, and vanished, with a great dread gnawing her,
+I doubt not. M. de Trailles was bound to follow, but before he went he
+managed to say:
+
+"'If either of you gentlemen should forget himself, I will have his
+blood, or he will have mine.'
+
+"'Amen!' called Daddy Gobseck as he put his pistols back in their place;
+'but a man must have blood in his veins though before he can risk it, my
+son, and you have nothing but mud in yours.'
+
+"When the door was closed, and the two vehicles had gone, Gobseck rose
+to his feet and began to prance about.
+
+"'I have the diamonds! I have the diamonds!' he cried again and again,
+'the beautiful diamonds! such diamonds! and tolerably cheaply. Aha! aha!
+Werbrust and Gigonnet, you thought you had old Papa Gobseck! _Ego
+sum papa_! I am master of the lot of you! Paid! paid, principal and
+interest! How silly they will look to-night when I shall come out with
+this story between two games of dominoes!'
+
+"The dark glee, the savage ferocity aroused by the possession of a few
+water-white pebbles, set me shuddering. I was dumb with amazement.
+
+"'Aha! There you are, my boy!' said he. 'We will dine together. We will
+have some fun at your place, for I haven't a home of my own, and these
+restaurants, with their broths, and sauces, and wines, would poison the
+Devil himself.'
+
+"Something in my face suddenly brought back the usual cold, impassive
+expression to his.
+
+"'You don't understand it,' he said, and sitting down by the hearth,
+he put a tin saucepan full of milk on the brazier.--'Will you breakfast
+with me?' continued he. 'Perhaps there will be enough here for two.'
+
+"'Thanks,' said I, 'I do not breakfast till noon.'
+
+"I had scarcely spoken before hurried footsteps sounded from the
+passage. The stranger stopped at Gobseck's door and rapped; there was
+that in the knock which suggested a man transported with rage. Gobseck
+reconnoitred him through the grating; then he opened the door, and in
+came a man of thirty-five or so, judged harmless apparently in spite of
+his anger. The newcomer, who was quite plainly dressed, bore a strong
+resemblance to the late Duc de Richelieu. You must often have met him,
+he was the Countess' husband, a man with the aristocratic figure (permit
+the expression to pass) peculiar to statesmen of your faubourg.
+
+"'Sir,' said this person, addressing himself to Gobseck, who had quite
+recovered his tranquillity, 'did my wife go out of this house just now?'
+
+"'That is possible.'
+
+"'Well, sir? do you not take my meaning?'
+
+"'I have not the honor of the acquaintance of my lady your wife,'
+returned Gobseck. 'I have had a good many visitors this morning, women
+and men, and mannish young ladies, and young gentlemen who look like
+young ladies. I should find it very hard to say----'
+
+"'A truce to jesting, sir! I mean the woman who has this moment gone out
+from you.'
+
+"'How can I know whether she is your wife or not? I never had the
+pleasure of seeing you before.'
+
+"'You are mistaken, M. Gobseck,' said the Count, with profound irony in
+his voice. 'We have met before, one morning in my wife's bedroom. You
+had come to demand payment for a bill--no bill of hers.'
+
+"'It was no business of mine to inquire what value she had received for
+it,' said Gobseck, with a malignant look at the Count. 'I had come by
+the bill in the way of business. At the same time, monsieur,' continued
+Gobseck, quietly pouring coffee into his bowl of milk, without a trace
+of excitement or hurry in his voice, 'you will permit me to observe that
+your right to enter my house and expostulate with me is far from proven
+to my mind. I came of age in the sixty-first year of the preceding
+century.'
+
+"'Sir,' said the Count, 'you have just bought family diamonds, which do
+not belong to my wife, for a mere trifle.'
+
+"'Without feeling it incumbent upon me to tell you my private affairs, I
+will tell you this much M. le Comte--if Mme. la Comtesse has taken your
+diamonds, you should have sent a circular around to all the jewelers,
+giving them notice not to buy them; she might have sold them
+separately.'
+
+"'You know my wife, sir!' roared the Count.
+
+"'True.'
+
+"'She is in her husband's power.'
+
+"'That is possible.'
+
+"'She had no right to dispose of those diamonds----'
+
+"'Precisely.'
+
+"'Very well, sir?'
+
+"'Very well, sir. I knew your wife, and she is in her husband's power;
+I am quite willing, she is in the power of a good many people;
+but--I--do--_not_--know--your diamonds. If Mme. la Comtesse can put her
+name to a bill, she can go into business, of course, and buy and sell
+diamonds on her own account. The thing is plain on the face of it!'
+
+"'Good-day, sir!' cried the Count, now white with rage. 'There are
+courts of justice.'
+
+"'Quite so.'
+
+"'This gentleman here,' he added, indicating me, 'was a witness of the
+sale.'
+
+"'That is possible.'
+
+"The Count turned to go. Feeling the gravity of the affair, I suddenly
+put in between the two belligerents.
+
+"'M. le Comte,' said I, 'you are right, and M. Gobseck is by no means in
+the wrong. You could not prosecute the purchaser without bringing your
+wife into court, and the whole of the odium would not fall on her. I am
+an attorney, and I owe it to myself, and still more to my professional
+position, to declare that the diamonds of which you speak were purchased
+by M. Gobseck in my presence; but, in my opinion, it would be unwise
+to dispute the legality of the sale, especially as the goods are not
+readily recognizable. In equity our contention would lie, in law it
+would collapse. M. Gobseck is too honest a man to deny that the sale was
+a profitable transaction, more especially as my conscience, no less than
+my duty, compels me to make the admission. But once bring the case into
+a court of law, M. le Comte, the issue would be doubtful. My advice to
+you is to come to terms with M. Gobseck, who can plead that he bought
+the diamonds in all good faith; you would be bound in any case to return
+the purchase money. Consent to an arrangement, with power to redeem
+at the end of seven or eight months, or a year even, or any convenient
+lapse of time, for the repayment of the sum borrowed by Mme. la
+Comtesse, unless you would prefer to repurchase them outright and give
+security for repayment.'
+
+"Gobseck dipped his bread into the bowl of coffee, and ate with perfect
+indifference; but at the words 'come to terms,' he looked at me as
+who should say, 'A fine fellow that! he has learned something from
+my lessons!' And I, for my part, riposted with a glance, which he
+understood uncommonly well. The business was dubious and shady; there
+was pressing need of coming to terms. Gobseck could not deny all
+knowledge of it, for I should appear as a witness. The Count thanked me
+with a smile of good-will.
+
+"In the debate which followed, Gobseck showed greed enough and skill
+enough to baffle a whole congress of diplomatists; but in the end I
+drew up an instrument, in which the Count acknowledged the receipt of
+eighty-five thousand francs, interest included, in consideration of
+which Gobseck undertook to return the diamonds to the Count.
+
+"'What waste!' exclaimed he as he put his signature to the agreement.
+'How is it possible to bridge such a gulf?'
+
+"'Have you many children, sir?' Gobseck asked gravely.
+
+"The Count winced at the question; it was as if the old money-lender,
+like an experienced physician, had put his finger at once on the sore
+spot. The Comtesse's husband did not reply.
+
+"'Well,' said Gobseck, taking the pained silence for answer, 'I know
+your story by heart. The woman is a fiend, but perhaps you love her
+still; I can well believe it; she made an impression on me. Perhaps,
+too, you would rather save your fortune, and keep it for one or two of
+your children? Well, fling yourself into the whirlpool of society, lose
+that fortune at play, come to Gobseck pretty often. The world will say
+that I am a Jew, a Tartar, a usurer, a pirate, will say that I have
+ruined you! I snap my fingers at them! If anybody insults me, I lay my
+man out; nobody is a surer shot nor handles a rapier better than your
+servant. And every one knows it. Then, have a friend--if you can find
+one--and make over your property to him by a fictitious sale. You call
+that a _fidei commissum_, don't you?' he asked, turning to me.
+
+"The Count seemed to be entirely absorbed in his own thoughts.
+
+"'You shall have your money to-morrow,' he said, 'have the diamonds in
+readiness,' and he went.
+
+"'There goes one who looks to me to be as stupid as an honest man,'
+Gobseck said coolly when the Count had gone.
+
+"'Say rather stupid as a man of passionate nature.'
+
+"'The Count owes you your fee for drawing up the agreement!' Gobseck
+called after me as I took my leave."
+
+
+"One morning, a few days after the scene which initiated me into the
+terrible depths beneath the surface of the life of a woman of fashion,
+the Count came into my private office.
+
+"'I have come to consult you on a matter of grave moment,' he said, 'and
+I begin by telling you that I have perfect confidence in you, as I
+hope to prove to you. Your behavior to Mme. de Grandlieu is above all
+praise,' the Count went on. (You see, madame, that you have paid me a
+thousand times over for a very simple matter.)
+
+"I bowed respectfully, and replied that I had done nothing but the duty
+of an honest man.
+
+"'Well,' the Count went on, 'I have made a great many inquiries about
+the singular personage to whom you owe your position. And from all that
+I can learn, Gobseck is a philosopher of the Cynic school. What do you
+think of his probity?'
+
+"'M. le Comte,' said I, 'Gobseck is my benefactor--at fifteen per cent,'
+I added, laughing. 'But his avarice does not authorize me to paint him
+to the life for a stranger's benefit.'
+
+"'Speak out, sir. Your frankness cannot injure Gobseck or yourself. I do
+not expect to find an angel in a pawnbroker.'
+
+"'Daddy Gobseck,' I began, 'is intimately convinced of the truth of the
+principle which he takes for a rule of life. In his opinion, money is a
+commodity which you may sell cheap or dear, according to circumstances,
+with a clear conscience. A capitalist, by charging a high rate of
+interest, becomes in his eyes a secured partner by anticipation. Apart
+from the peculiar philosophical views of human nature and financial
+principles, which enable him to behave like a usurer, I am fully
+persuaded that, out of his business, he is the most loyal and upright
+soul in Paris. There are two men in him; he is petty and great--a miser
+and a philosopher. If I were to die and leave a family behind me, he
+would be the guardian whom I should appoint. This was how I came to see
+Gobseck in this light, monsieur. I know nothing of his past life. He
+may have been a pirate, may, for anything I know, have been all over the
+world, trafficking in diamonds, or men, or women, or State secrets; but
+this I affirm of him--never has human soul been more thoroughly
+tempered and tried. When I paid off my loan, I asked him, with a little
+circumlocution of course, how it was that he had made me pay such an
+exorbitant rate of interest; and why, seeing that I was a friend, and
+he meant to do me a kindness, he should not have yielded to the wish and
+made it complete.--"My son," he said, "I released you from all need to
+feel any gratitude by giving you ground for the belief that you owed
+me nothing."--So we are the best friends in the world. That answer,
+monsieur, gives you the man better than any amount of description.'
+
+"'I have made up my mind once and for all,' said the Count. 'Draw up the
+necessary papers; I am going to transfer my property to Gobseck. I have
+no one but you to trust to in the draft of the counter-deed, which will
+declare that this transfer is a simulated sale, and that Gobseck as
+trustee will administer my estate (as he knows how to administer), and
+undertakes to make over my fortune to my eldest son when he comes of
+age. Now, sir, this I must tell you: I should be afraid to have that
+precious document in my own keeping. My boy is so fond of his mother,
+that I cannot trust him with it. So dare I beg of you to keep it for me?
+In case of death, Gobseck would make you legatee of my property. Every
+contingency is provided for.'
+
+"The Count paused for a moment. He seemed greatly agitated.
+
+"'A thousand pardons,' he said at length; 'I am in great pain, and have
+very grave misgivings as to my health. Recent troubles have disturbed me
+very painfully, and forced me to take this great step.'
+
+"'Allow me first to thank you, monsieur,' said I, 'for the trust you
+place me in. But I am bound to deserve it by pointing out to you that
+you are disinheriting your--other children. They bear your name. Merely
+as the children of a once-loved wife, now fallen from her position, they
+have a claim to an assured existence. I tell you plainly that I cannot
+accept the trust with which you propose to honor me unless their future
+is secured.'
+
+"The Count trembled violently at the words, and tears came into his eyes
+as he grasped my hand, saying, 'I did not know my man thoroughly.
+You have made me both glad and sorry. We will make provision for the
+children in the counter-deed.'
+
+"I went with him to the door; it seemed to me that there was a glow of
+satisfaction in his face at the thought of this act of justice.
+
+"Now, Camille, this is how a young wife takes the first step to the
+brink of a precipice. A quadrille, a ballad, a picnic party is
+sometimes cause sufficient of frightful evils. You are hurried on by
+the presumptuous voice of vanity and pride, on the faith of a smile,
+or through giddiness and folly! Shame and misery and remorse are three
+Furies awaiting every woman the moment she oversteps the limits----"
+
+"Poor Camille can hardly keep awake," the Vicomtesse hastily broke
+in.--"Go to bed, child; you have no need of appalling pictures to keep
+you pure in heart and conduct."
+
+Camille de Grandlieu took the hint and went.
+
+"You were going rather too far, dear M. Derville," said the Vicomtesse,
+"an attorney is not a mother of daughters nor yet a preacher."
+
+"But any newspaper is a thousand times----"
+
+"Poor Derville!" exclaimed the Vicomtesse, "what has come over you?
+Do you really imagine that I allow a daughter of mine to read the
+newspapers?--Go on," she added after a pause.
+
+"Three months after everything was signed and sealed between the Count
+and Gobseck----"
+
+"You can call him the Comte de Restaud, now that Camille is not here,"
+said the Vicomtesse.
+
+"So be it! Well, time went by, and I saw nothing of the counter-deed,
+which by rights should have been in my hands. An attorney in Paris lives
+in such a whirl of business that with certain exceptions which we make
+for ourselves, we have not the time to give each individual client the
+amount of interest which he himself takes in his affairs. Still, one day
+when Gobseck came to dine with me, I asked him as we left the table if
+he knew how it was that I had heard no more of M. de Restaud.
+
+"'There are excellent reasons for that,' he said; 'the noble Count is at
+death's door. He is one of the soft stamp that cannot learn how to put
+an end to chagrin, and allow it to wear them out instead. Life is a
+craft, a profession; every man must take the trouble to learn
+that business. When he has learned what life is by dint of painful
+experiences, the fibre of him is toughened, and acquires a certain
+elasticity, so that he has his sensibilities under his own control; he
+disciplines himself till his nerves are like steel springs, which
+always bend, but never break; given a sound digestion, and a man in
+such training ought to live as long as the cedars of Lebanon, and famous
+trees they are.'
+
+"'Then is the Count actually dying?' I asked.
+
+"'That is possible,' said Gobseck; 'the winding up of his estate will be
+a juicy bit of business for you.'
+
+"I looked at my man, and said, by way of sounding him:
+
+"'Just explain to me how it is that we, the Count and I, are the only
+men in whom you take an interest?'
+
+"'Because you are the only two who have trusted me without finessing,'
+he said.
+
+"Although this answer warranted my belief that Gobseck would act fairly
+even if the counter-deed were lost, I resolved to go to see the Count. I
+pleaded a business engagement, and we separated.
+
+"I went straight to the Rue du Helder, and was shown into a room where
+the Countess sat playing with her children. When she heard my name, she
+sprang up and came to meet me, then she sat down and pointed without a
+word to a chair by the fire. Her face wore the inscrutable mask beneath
+which women of the world conceal their most vehement emotions. Trouble
+had withered that face already. Nothing of its beauty now remained, save
+the marvelous outlines in which its principal charm had lain.
+
+"'It is essential, madame, that I should speak to M. le Comte----"
+
+"'If so, you would be more favored than I am,' she said, interrupting
+me. 'M. de Restaud will see no one. He will hardly allow his doctor to
+come, and will not be nursed even by me. When people are ill, they have
+such strange fancies! They are like children, they do not know what they
+want.'
+
+"'Perhaps, like children, they know very well what they want.'
+
+"The Countess reddened. I almost repented a thrust worthy of Gobseck.
+So, by way of changing the conversation, I added, 'But M. de Restaud
+cannot possibly lie there alone all day, madame.'
+
+"'His oldest boy is with him,' she said.
+
+"It was useless to gaze at the Countess; she did not blush this time,
+and it looked to me as if she were resolved more firmly than ever that I
+should not penetrate into her secrets.
+
+"'You must understand, madame, that my proceeding is no way indiscreet.
+It is strongly to his interest--' I bit my lips, feeling that I had gone
+the wrong way to work. The Countess immediately took advantage of my
+slip.
+
+"'My interests are in no way separate from my husband's, sir,' said she.
+'There is nothing to prevent your addressing yourself to me----'
+
+"'The business which brings me here concerns no one but M. le Comte,' I
+said firmly.
+
+"'I will let him know of your wish to see him.'
+
+"The civil tone and expression assumed for the occasion did not impose
+upon me; I divined that she would never allow me to see her husband. I
+chatted on about indifferent matters for a little while, so as to study
+her; but, like all women who have once begun to plot for themselves, she
+could dissimulate with the rare perfection which, in your sex, means the
+last degree of perfidy. If I may dare to say it, I looked for anything
+from her, even a crime. She produced this feeling in me, because it was
+so evident from her manner and in all that she did or said, down to
+the very inflections of her voice, that she had an eye to the future. I
+went.
+
+"Now, I will pass on to the final scenes of this adventure, throwing in
+a few circumstances brought to light by time, and some details guessed
+by Gobseck's perspicacity or by my own.
+
+"When the Comte de Restaud apparently plunged into the vortex of
+dissipation, something passed between the husband and wife, something
+which remains an impenetrable secret, but the wife sank even lower in
+the husband's eyes. As soon as he became so ill that he was obliged to
+take to his bed, he manifested his aversion for the Countess and the two
+youngest children. He forbade them to enter his room, and any attempt
+to disobey his wishes brought on such dangerous attacks that the doctor
+implored the Countess to submit to her husband's wish.
+
+"Mme. de Restaud had seen the family estates and property, nay, the very
+mansion in which she lived, pass into the hands of Gobseck, who appeared
+to play the fantastic ogre so far as their wealth was concerned.
+She partially understood what her husband was doing, no doubt. M. de
+Trailles was traveling in England (his creditors had been a little too
+pressing of late), and no one else was in a position to enlighten the
+lady, and explain that her husband was taking precautions against her
+at Gobseck's suggestion. It is said that she held out for a long while
+before she gave the signature required by French law for the sale of
+the property; nevertheless the Count gained his point. The Countess was
+convinced that her husband was realizing his fortune, and that somewhere
+or other there would be a little bunch of notes representing the amount;
+they had been deposited with a notary, or perhaps at the bank, or in
+some safe hiding-place. Following out her train of thought, it was
+evident that M. de Restaud must of necessity have some kind of document
+in his possession by which any remaining property could be recovered and
+handed over to his son.
+
+"So she made up her mind to keep the strictest possible watch over the
+sick-room. She ruled despotically in the house, and everything in it
+was submitted to this feminine espionage. All day she sat in the salon
+adjoining her husband's room, so that she could hear every syllable that
+he uttered, every least movement that he made. She had a bed put there
+for her of a night, but she did not sleep very much. The doctor was
+entirely in her interests. Such wifely devotion seemed praiseworthy
+enough. With the natural subtlety of perfidy, she took care to disguise
+M. de Restaud's repugnance for her, and feigned distress so perfectly
+that she gained a sort of celebrity. Strait-laced women were even found
+to say that she had expiated her sins. Always before her eyes she
+beheld a vision of the destitution to follow on the Count's death if her
+presence of mind should fail her; and in these ways the wife, repulsed
+from the bed of pain on which her husband lay and groaned, had drawn
+a charmed circle round about it. So near, yet kept at a distance;
+all-powerful, but in disgrace, the apparently devoted wife was lying
+in wait for death and opportunity; crouching like the ant-lion at the
+bottom of his spiral pit, ever on the watch for the prey that cannot
+escape, listening to the fall of every grain of sand.
+
+"The strictest censor could not but recognize that the Countess pushed
+maternal sentiment to the last degree. Her father's death had been a
+lesson to her, people said. She worshiped her children. They were so
+young that she could hide the disorders of her life from their eyes,
+and could win their love; she had given them the best and most brilliant
+education. I confess that I cannot help admiring her and feeling sorry
+for her. Gobseck used to joke me about it. Just about that time she had
+discovered Maxime's baseness, and was expiating the sins of the past in
+tears of blood. I was sure of it. Hateful as were the measures which
+she took for regaining control of her husband's money, were they not
+the result of a mother's love, and a desire to repair the wrongs she
+had done her children? And again, it may be, like many a woman who has
+experienced the storm of lawless love, she felt a longing to lead a
+virtuous life again. Perhaps she only learned the worth of that life
+when she came to reap the woeful harvest sown by her errors.
+
+"Every time that little Ernest came out of his father's room, she put
+him through a searching examination as to all that his father had done
+or said. The boy willingly complied with his mother's wishes, and told
+her even more than she asked in her anxious affection, as he thought.
+
+"My visit was a ray of light for the Countess. She was determined to
+see in me the instrument of the Count's vengeance, and resolved that
+I should not be allowed to go near the dying man. I augured ill of all
+this, and earnestly wished for an interview, for I was not easy in my
+mind about the fate of the counter-deed. If it should fall into the
+Countess' hands, she might turn it to her own account, and that would
+be the beginning of a series of interminable lawsuits between her and
+Gobseck. I knew the usurer well enough to feel convinced that he would
+never give up the property to her; there was room for plenty of legal
+quibbling over a series of transfers, and I alone knew all the ins and
+outs of the matter. I was minded to prevent such a tissue of misfortune,
+so I went to the Countess a second time.
+
+"I have noticed, madame," said Derville, turning to the Vicomtesse, and
+speaking in a confidential tone, "certain moral phenomena to which we
+do not pay enough attention. I am naturally an observer of human nature,
+and instinctively I bring a spirit of analysis to the business that I
+transact in the interest of others, when human passions are called into
+lively play. Now, I have often noticed, and always with new wonder, that
+two antagonists almost always divine each other's inmost thoughts and
+ideas. Two enemies sometimes possess a power of clear insight into
+mental processes, and read each other's minds as two lovers read in
+either soul. So when we came together, the Countess and I, I understood
+at once the reason of her antipathy for me, disguised though it was by
+the most gracious forms of politeness and civility. I had been forced to
+be her confidant, and a woman cannot but hate the man before whom she
+is compelled to blush. And she on her side knew that if I was the man in
+whom her husband placed confidence, that husband had not as yet given up
+his fortune.
+
+"I will spare you the conversation, but it abides in my memory as one of
+the most dangerous encounters in my career. Nature had bestowed on her
+all the qualities which, combined, are irresistibly fascinating; she
+could be pliant and proud by turns, and confiding and coaxing in
+her manner; she even went so far as to try to subjugate me. It was a
+failure. As I took my leave of her, I caught a gleam of hate and rage
+in her eyes that made me shudder. We parted enemies. She would fain have
+crushed me out of existence; and for my own part, I felt pity for her,
+and for some natures pity is the deadliest of insults. This feeling
+pervaded the last representations I put before her; and when I left her,
+I left, I think, dread in the depths of her soul, by declaring that,
+turn which way she would, ruin lay inevitably before her.
+
+"'If I were to see M. le Comte, your children's property at any rate
+would----'
+
+"'I should be at your mercy,' she said, breaking in upon me, disgust in
+her gesture.
+
+"Now that we had spoken frankly, I made up my mind to save the family
+from impending destitution. I resolved to strain the law at need to gain
+my ends, and this was what I did. I sued the Comte de Restaud for a sum
+of money, ostensibly due to Gobseck, and gained judgment. The Countess,
+of course, did not allow him to know of this, but I had gained on my
+point, I had a right to affix seals to everything on the death of the
+Count. I bribed one of the servants in the house--the man undertook to
+let me know at any hour of the day or night if his master should be
+at the point of death, so that I could intervene at once, scare
+the Countess with a threat of affixing seals, and so secure the
+counter-deed.
+
+"I learned later on that the woman was studying the Code, with her
+husband's dying moans in her ears. If we could picture the thoughts of
+those who stand about a deathbed, what fearful sights should we not see?
+Money is always the motive-spring of the schemes elaborated, of all the
+plans that are made and the plots that are woven about it! Let us leave
+these details, nauseating in the nature of them; but perhaps they may
+have given you some insight into all that this husband and wife endured;
+perhaps too they may unveil much that is passing in secret in other
+houses.
+
+"For two months the Comte de Restaud lay on his bed, alone, and resigned
+to his fate. Mortal disease was slowly sapping the strength of mind and
+body. Unaccountable and grotesque sick fancies preyed upon him; he would
+not suffer them to set his room in order, no one could nurse him, he
+would not even allow them to make his bed. All his surroundings bore the
+marks of this last degree of apathy, the furniture was out of place, the
+daintiest trifles were covered with dust and cobwebs. In health he had
+been a man of refined and expensive tastes, now he positively delighted
+in the comfortless look of the room. A host of objects required in
+illness--rows of medicine bottles, empty and full, most of them dirty,
+crumpled linen, and broken plates, littered the writing-table, chairs,
+and chimney-piece. An open warming-pan lay on the floor before the
+grate; a bath, still full of mineral water had not been taken away. The
+sense of coming dissolution pervaded all the details of an unsightly
+chaos. Signs of death appeared in things inanimate before the Destroyer
+came to the body on the bed. The Comte de Restaud could not bear the
+daylight, the Venetian shutters were closed, darkness deepened the gloom
+in the dismal chamber. The sick man himself had wasted greatly. All the
+life in him seemed to have taken refuge in the still brilliant eyes. The
+livid whiteness of his face was something horrible to see, enhanced as
+it was by the long dank locks of hair that straggled along his cheeks,
+for he would never suffer them to cut it. He looked like some religious
+fanatic in the desert. Mental suffering was extinguishing all human
+instincts in this man of scarce fifty years of age, whom all Paris had
+known as so brilliant and so successful.
+
+"One morning at the beginning of December 1824, he looked up at Ernest,
+who sat at the foot of his bed gazing at his father with wistful eyes.
+
+"'Are you in pain?' the little Vicomte asked.
+
+"'No,' said the Count, with a ghastly smile, 'it all lies _here and
+about my heart_!'
+
+"He pointed to his forehead, and then laid his wasted fingers on his
+hollow chest. Ernest began to cry at the sight.
+
+"'How is it that M. Derville does not come to me?' the Count asked his
+servant (he thought that Maurice was really attached to him, but the man
+was entirely in the Countess' interest)--'What! Maurice!' and the dying
+man suddenly sat upright in his bed, and seemed to recover all his
+presence of mind, 'I have sent for my attorney seven or eight times
+during the last fortnight, and he does not come!' he cried. 'Do you
+imagine that I am to be trifled with? Go for him, at once, this very
+instant, and bring him back with you. If you do not carry out my orders,
+I shall get up and go myself.'
+
+"'Madame,' said the man as he came into the salon, 'you heard M. le
+Comte; what ought I to do?'
+
+"'Pretend to go to the attorney, and when you come back tell your
+master that his man of business is forty leagues away from Paris on
+an important lawsuit. Say that he is expected back at the end of the
+week.--Sick people never know how ill they are,' thought the Countess;
+'he will wait till the man comes home.'
+
+"The doctor had said on the previous evening that the Count could
+scarcely live through the day. When the servant came back two hours
+later to give that hopeless answer, the dying man seemed to be greatly
+agitated.
+
+"'Oh God!' he cried again and again, 'I put my trust in none but Thee.'
+
+"For a long while he lay and gazed at his son, and spoke in a feeble
+voice at last.
+
+"'Ernest, my boy, you are very young; but you have a good heart; you can
+understand, no doubt, that a promise given to a dying man is sacred;
+a promise to a father... Do you feel that you can be trusted with a
+secret, and keep it so well and so closely that even your mother herself
+shall not know that you have a secret to keep? There is no one else in
+this house whom I can trust to-day. You will not betray my trust, will
+you?'
+
+"'No, father.'
+
+"'Very well, then, Ernest, in a minute or two I will give you a sealed
+packet that belongs to M. Derville; you must take such care of it that
+no one can know that you have it; then you must slip out of the house
+and put the letter into the post-box at the corner.'
+
+"'Yes, father.'
+
+"'Can I depend upon you?'
+
+"'Yes, father.'
+
+"'Come and kiss me. You have made death less bitter to me, dear boy.
+In six or seven years' time you will understand the importance of
+this secret, and you will be well rewarded then for your quickness and
+obedience, you will know then how much I love you. Leave me alone for a
+minute, and let no one--no matter whom--come in meanwhile.'
+
+"Ernest went out and saw his mother standing in the next room.
+
+"'Ernest,' said she, 'come here.'
+
+"She sat down, drew her son to her knees, and clasped him in her arms,
+and held him tightly to her heart.
+
+"'Ernest, your father said something to you just now.'
+
+"'Yes, mamma.'
+
+"'What did he say?'
+
+"'I cannot repeat it, mamma.'
+
+"'Oh, my dear child!' cried the Countess, kissing him in rapture. 'You
+have kept your secret; how glad that makes me! Never tell a lie; never
+fail to keep your word--those are two principles which should never be
+forgotten.'
+
+"'Oh! mamma, how beautiful you are! _You_ have never told a lie, I am
+quite sure.'
+
+"'Once or twice, Ernest dear, I have lied. Yes, and I have not kept my
+word under circumstances which speak louder than all precepts. Listen,
+my Ernest, you are big enough and intelligent enough to see that your
+father drives me away, and will not allow me to nurse him, and this is
+not natural, for you know how much I love him.'
+
+"'Yes, mamma.'
+
+"The Countess began to cry. 'Poor child!' she said, 'this misfortune
+is the result of treacherous insinuations. Wicked people have tried to
+separate me from your father to satisfy their greed. They mean to take
+all our money from us and to keep it for themselves. If your father were
+well, the division between us would soon be over; he would listen to
+me; he is loving and kind; he would see his mistake. But now his mind is
+affected, and his prejudices against me have become a fixed idea, a
+sort of mania with him. It is one result of his illness. Your father's
+fondness for you is another proof that his mind is deranged. Until
+he fell ill you never noticed that he loved you more than Pauline and
+Georges. It is all caprice with him now. In his affection for you he
+might take it into his head to tell you to do things for him. If you do
+not want to ruin us all, my darling, and to see your mother begging her
+bread like a pauper woman, you must tell her everything----'
+
+"'Ah!' cried the Count. He had opened the door and stood there, a
+sudden, half-naked apparition, almost as thin and fleshless as a
+skeleton.
+
+"His smothered cry produced a terrible effect upon the Countess; she
+sat motionless, as if a sudden stupor had seized her. Her husband was as
+white and wasted as if he had risen out of his grave.
+
+"'You have filled my life to the full with trouble, and now you are
+trying to vex my deathbed, to warp my boy's mind, and make a depraved
+man of him!' he cried, hoarsely.
+
+"The Countess flung herself at his feet. His face, working with the last
+emotions of life, was almost hideous to see.
+
+"'Mercy! mercy!' she cried aloud, shedding a torrent of tears.
+
+"'Have you shown me any pity?' he asked. 'I allowed you to squander your
+own money, and now do you mean to squander my fortune, too, and ruin my
+son?'
+
+"'Ah! well, yes, have no pity for me, be merciless to me!' she cried.
+'But the children? Condemn your widow to live in a convent; I will obey
+you; I will do anything, anything that you bid me, to expiate the wrong
+I have done you, if that so the children may be happy! The children! Oh,
+the children!'
+
+"'I have only one child,' said the Count, stretching out a wasted arm,
+in his despair, towards his son.
+
+"'Pardon a penitent woman, a penitent woman!...' wailed the Countess,
+her arms about her husband's damp feet. She could not speak for sobbing;
+vague, incoherent sounds broke from her parched throat.
+
+"'You dare to talk of penitence after all that you said to Ernest!'
+exclaimed the dying man, shaking off the Countess, who lay groveling
+over his feet.--'You turn me to ice!' he added, and there was something
+appalling in the indifference with which he uttered the words. 'You
+have been a bad daughter; you have been a bad wife; you will be a bad
+mother.'
+
+"The wretched woman fainted away. The dying man reached his bed and lay
+down again, and a few hours later sank into unconsciousness. The priests
+came and administered the sacraments.
+
+"At midnight he died; the scene that morning had exhausted his remaining
+strength, and on the stroke of midnight I arrived with Daddy Gobseck.
+The house was in confusion, and under cover of it we walked up into the
+little salon adjoining the death-chamber. The three children were there
+in tears, with two priests, who had come to watch with the dead. Ernest
+came over to me, and said that his mother desired to be alone in the
+Count's room.
+
+"'Do not go in,' he said; and I admired the child for his tone and
+gesture; 'she is praying there.'
+
+"Gobseck began to laugh that soundless laugh of his, but I felt too much
+touched by the feeling in Ernest's little face to join in the miser's
+sardonic amusement. When Ernest saw that we moved towards the door,
+he planted himself in front of it, crying out, 'Mamma, here are some
+gentlemen in black who want to see you!'
+
+"Gobseck lifted Ernest out of the way as if the child had been a
+feather, and opened the door.
+
+"What a scene it was that met our eyes! The room was in frightful
+disorder; clothes and papers and rags lay tossed about in a confusion
+horrible to see in the presence of Death; and there, in the midst, stood
+the Countess in disheveled despair, unable to utter a word, her eyes
+glittering. The Count had scarcely breathed his last before his wife
+came in and forced open the drawers and the desk; the carpet was strewn
+with litter, some of the furniture and boxes were broken, the signs of
+violence could be seen everywhere. But if her search had at first proved
+fruitless, there was that in her excitement and attitude which led me to
+believe that she had found the mysterious documents at last. I glanced
+at the bed, and professional instinct told me all that had happened. The
+mattress had been flung contemptuously down by the bedside, and across
+it, face downwards, lay the body of the Count, like one of the paper
+envelopes that strewed the carpet--he too was nothing now but an
+envelope. There was something grotesquely horrible in the attitude of
+the stiffening rigid limbs.
+
+"The dying man must have hidden the counter-deed under his pillow to
+keep it safe so long as life should last; and his wife must have guessed
+his thought; indeed, it might be read plainly in his last dying gesture,
+in the convulsive clutch of his claw-like hands. The pillow had been
+flung to the floor at the foot of the bed; I could see the print of
+her heel upon it. At her feet lay a paper with the Count's arms on the
+seals; I snatched it up, and saw that it was addressed to me. I looked
+steadily at the Countess with the pitiless clear-sightedness of an
+examining magistrate confronting a guilty creature. The contents were
+blazing in the grate; she had flung them on the fire at the sound of our
+approach, imagining, from a first hasty glance at the provisions which
+I had suggested for her children, that she was destroying a will which
+disinherited them. A tormented conscience and involuntary horror of the
+deed which she had done had taken away all power of reflection. She had
+been caught in the act, and possibly the scaffold was rising before her
+eyes, and she already felt the felon's branding iron.
+
+"There she stood gasping for breath, waiting for us to speak, staring at
+us with haggard eyes.
+
+"I went across to the grate and pulled out an unburned fragment. 'Ah,
+madame!' I exclaimed, 'you have ruined your children! Those papers were
+their titles to their property.'
+
+"Her mouth twitched, she looked as if she were threatened by a paralytic
+seizure.
+
+"'Eh! eh!' cried Gobseck; the harsh, shrill tone grated upon our ears
+like the sound of a brass candlestick scratching a marble surface.
+
+"There was a pause, then the old man turned to me and said quietly:
+
+"'Do you intend Mme. la Comtesse to suppose that I am not the rightful
+owner of the property sold to me by her late husband? This house belongs
+to me now.'
+
+"A sudden blow on the head from a bludgeon would have given me less pain
+and astonishment. The Countess saw the look of hesitation in my face.
+
+"'Monsieur,' she cried, 'Monsieur!' She could find no other words.
+
+"'You are a trustee, are you not?' I asked.
+
+"'That is possible.'
+
+"'Then do you mean to take advantage of this crime of hers?'
+
+"'Precisely.'
+
+"I went at that, leaving the Countess sitting by her husband's bedside,
+shedding hot tears. Gobseck followed me. Outside in the street I
+separated from him, but he came after me, flung me one of those
+searching glances with which he probed men's minds, and said in the
+husky flute-tones, pitched in a shriller key:
+
+"'Do you take it upon yourself to judge me?'"
+
+
+"From that time forward we saw little of each other. Gobseck let the
+Count's mansion on lease; he spent the summers on the country estates.
+He was a lord of the manor in earnest, putting up farm buildings,
+repairing mills and roadways, and planting timber. I came across him one
+day in a walk in the Jardin des Tuileries.
+
+"'The Countess is behaving like a heroine,' said I; 'she gives herself
+up entirely to the children's education; she is giving them a perfect
+bringing up. The oldest boy is a charming young fellow----'
+
+"'That is possible.'
+
+"'But ought you not to help Ernest?' I suggested.
+
+"'Help him!' cried Gobseck. 'Not I. Adversity is the greatest of all
+teachers; adversity teaches us to know the value of money and the worth
+of men and women. Let him set sail on the seas of Paris; when he is a
+qualified pilot, we will give him a ship to steer.'
+
+"I left him without seeking to explain the meaning of his words.
+
+"M. de Restaud's mother has prejudiced him against me, and he is very
+far from taking me as his legal adviser; still, I went to see Gobseck
+last week to tell him about Ernest's love for Mlle. Camille, and pressed
+him to carry out his contract, since that young Restaud is just of age.
+
+"I found the old bill-discounter had been kept to his bed for a long
+time by the complaint of which he was to die. He put me off, saying that
+he would give the matter his attention when he could get up again and
+see after his business; his idea being no doubt that he would not give
+up any of his possessions so long as the breath was in him; no other
+reason could be found for his shuffling answer. He seemed to me to be
+much worse than he at all suspected. I stayed with him long enough to
+discern the progress of a passion which age had converted into a sort of
+craze. He wanted to be alone in the house, and had taken the rooms one
+by one as they fell vacant. In his own room he had changed nothing;
+the furniture which I knew so well sixteen years ago looked the same as
+ever; it might have been kept under a glass case. Gobseck's faithful old
+portress, with her husband, a pensioner, who sat in the entry while
+she was upstairs, was still his housekeeper and charwoman, and now in
+addition his sick-nurse. In spite of his feebleness, Gobseck saw his
+clients himself as heretofore, and received sums of money; his affairs
+had been so simplified, that he only needed to send his pensioner out
+now and again on an errand, and could carry on business in his bed.
+
+"After the treaty, by which France recognized the Haytian Republic,
+Gobseck was one of the members of the commission appointed to liquidate
+claims and assess repayments due by Hayti; his special knowledge of old
+fortunes in San Domingo, and the planters and their heirs and assigns
+to whom the indemnities were due, had led to his nomination. Gobseck's
+peculiar genius had then devised an agency for discounting the planters'
+claims on the government. The business was carried on under the names
+of Werbrust and Gigonnet, with whom he shared the spoil without
+disbursements, for his knowledge was accepted instead of capital. The
+agency was a sort of distillery, in which money was extracted from
+doubtful claims, and the claims of those who knew no better, or had no
+confidence in the government. As a liquidator, Gobseck could make terms
+with the large landed proprietors; and these, either to gain a higher
+percentage of their claims, or to ensure prompt settlements, would send
+him presents in proportion to their means. In this way presents came to
+be a kind of percentage upon sums too large to pass through his control,
+while the agency bought up cheaply the small and dubious claims, or the
+claims of those persons who preferred a little ready money to a deferred
+and somewhat hazy repayment by the Republic. Gobseck was the insatiable
+boa constrictor of the great business. Every morning he received his
+tribute, eyeing it like a Nabob's prime minister, as he considers
+whether he will sign a pardon. Gobseck would take anything, from the
+present of game sent him by some poor devil or the pound's weight of wax
+candles from devout folk, to the rich man's plate and the speculator's
+gold snuff-box. Nobody knew what became of the presents sent to the old
+money-lender. Everything went in, but nothing came out.
+
+"'On the word of an honest woman,' said the portress, an old
+acquaintance of mine, 'I believe he swallows it all and is none the
+fatter for it; he is as thin and dried up as the cuckoo in the clock.'
+
+"At length, last Monday, Gobseck sent his pensioner for me. The man came
+up to my private office.
+
+"'Be quick and come, M. Derville,' said he, 'the governor is just
+going to hand in his checks; he has grown as yellow as a lemon; he is
+fidgeting to speak with you; death has fair hold of him; the rattle is
+working in his throat.'
+
+"When I entered Gobseck's room, I found the dying man kneeling before
+the grate. If there was no fire on the hearth, there was at any rate
+a monstrous heap of ashes. He had dragged himself out of bed, but his
+strength had failed him, and he could neither go back nor find the voice
+to complain.
+
+"'You felt cold, old friend,' I said, as I helped him back to his bed;
+'how can you do without a fire?'
+
+"'I am not cold at all,' he said. 'No fire here! no fire! I am going, I
+know not where, lad,' he went on, glancing at me with blank, lightless
+eyes, 'but I am going away from this.--I have _carpology_,' said he
+(the use of the technical term showing how clear and accurate his mental
+processes were even now). 'I thought the room was full of live gold, and
+I got up to catch some of it.--To whom will all mine go, I wonder?
+Not to the crown; I have left a will, look for it, Grotius. _La belle
+Hollandaise_ had a daughter; I once saw the girl somewhere or other, in
+the Rue Vivienne, one evening. They call her "_La Torpille_," I believe;
+she is as pretty as pretty can be; look her up, Grotius. You are my
+executor; take what you like; help yourself. There are Strasburg pies,
+there, and bags of coffee, and sugar, and gold spoons. Give the Odiot
+service to your wife. But who is to have the diamonds? Are you going
+to take them, lad? There is snuff too--sell it at Hamburg, tobaccos are
+worth half as much again at Hamburg. All sorts of things I have in fact,
+and now I must go and leave them all.--Come, Papa Gobseck, no weakness,
+be yourself!'
+
+"He raised himself in bed, the lines of his face standing out as
+sharply against the pillow as if the profile had been cast in bronze; he
+stretched out a lean arm and bony hand along the coverlet and clutched
+it, as if so he would fain keep his hold on life, then he gazed hard at
+the grate, cold as his own metallic eyes, and died in full consciousness
+of death. To us--the portress, the old pensioner, and myself--he looked
+like one of the old Romans standing behind the Consuls in Lethiere's
+picture of the _Death of the Sons of Brutus_.
+
+"'He was a good-plucked one, the old Lascar!' said the pensioner in his
+soldierly fashion.
+
+"But as for me, the dying man's fantastical enumeration of his riches
+still sounding in my ears, and my eyes, following the direction of his,
+rested on that heap of ashes. It struck me that it was very large. I
+took the tongs, and as soon as I stirred the cinders, I felt the metal
+underneath, a mass of gold and silver coins, receipts taken during his
+illness, doubtless, after he grew too feeble to lock the money up, and
+could trust no one to take it to the bank for him.
+
+"'Run for the justice of the peace,' said I, turning to the old
+pensioner, 'so that everything can be sealed here at once.'
+
+"Gobseck's last words and the old portress' remarks had struck me.
+I took the keys of the rooms on the first and second floor to make a
+visitation. The first door that I opened revealed the meaning of the
+phrases which I took for mad ravings; and I saw the length to which
+covetousness goes when it survives only as an illogical instinct, the
+last stage of greed of which you find so many examples among misers in
+country towns.
+
+"In the room next to the one in which Gobseck had died, a quantity of
+eatables of all kinds were stored--putrid pies, mouldy fish, nay, even
+shell-fish, the stench almost choked me. Maggots and insects swarmed.
+These comparatively recent presents were put down, pell-mell, among
+chests of tea, bags of coffee, and packing-cases of every shape. A
+silver soup tureen on the chimney-piece was full of advices of the
+arrival of goods consigned to his order at Havre, bales of cotton,
+hogsheads of sugar, barrels of rum, coffees, indigo, tobaccos, a perfect
+bazaar of colonial produce. The room itself was crammed with furniture,
+and silver-plate, and lamps, and vases, and pictures; there were books,
+and curiosities, and fine engravings lying rolled up, unframed. Perhaps
+these were not all presents, and some part of this vast quantity of
+stuff had been deposited with him in the shape of pledges, and had been
+left on his hands in default of payment. I noticed jewel-cases, with
+ciphers and armorial bearings stamped upon them, and sets of fine
+table-linen, and weapons of price; but none of the things were docketed.
+I opened a book which seemed to be misplaced, and found a thousand-franc
+note in it. I promised myself that I would go through everything
+thoroughly; I would try the ceilings, and floors, and walls, and
+cornices to discover all the gold, hoarded with such passionate greed
+by a Dutch miser worthy of a Rembrandt's brush. In all the course of
+my professional career I have never seen such impressive signs of the
+eccentricity of avarice.
+
+"I went back to his room, and found an explanation of this chaos
+and accumulation of riches in a pile of letters lying under the
+paper-weights on his desk--Gobseck's correspondence with the various
+dealers to whom doubtless he usually sold his presents. These persons
+had, perhaps, fallen victims to Gobseck's cleverness, or Gobseck may
+have wanted fancy prices for his goods; at any rate, every bargain hung
+in suspense. He had not disposed of the eatables to Chevet, because
+Chevet would only take them of him at a loss of thirty per cent. Gobseck
+haggled for a few francs between the prices, and while they wrangled the
+goods became unsalable. Again, Gobseck had refused free delivery of
+his silver-plate, and declined to guarantee the weights of his coffees.
+There had been a dispute over each article, the first indication in
+Gobseck of the childishness and incomprehensible obstinacy of age, a
+condition of mind reached at last by all men in whom a strong passion
+survives the intellect.
+
+"I said to myself, as he had said, 'To whom will all these riches go?'
+... And then I think of the grotesque information he gave me as to the
+present address of his heiress, I foresee that it will be my duty
+to search all the houses of ill-fame in Paris to pour out an immense
+fortune on some worthless jade. But, in the first place, know this--that
+in a few days time Ernest de Restaud will come into a fortune to which
+his title is unquestionable, a fortune which will put him in a position
+to marry Mlle. Camille, even after adequate provision has been made for
+his mother the Comtesse de Restaud and his sister and brother."
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Bidault (known as Gigonnet)
+       The Government Clerks
+       The Vendetta
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Derville
+       A Start in Life
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Father Goriot
+       Colonel Chabert
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+     Derville, Madame
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Gobseck, Jean-Esther Van
+       Father Goriot
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Government Clerks
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Gobseck, Sarah Van
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Maranas
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Gobseck, Esther Van
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+     Grandlieu, Vicomtesse de
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Colonel Chabert
+
+     Grandlieu, Vicomte Juste de
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+     Grandlieu, Vicomtesse Juste de
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Maurice (de Restaud's valet)
+       Father Goriot
+
+     Palma (banker)
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Ball at Sceaux
+
+     Restaud, Comte de
+       Father Goriot
+
+     Restaud, Comtesse Anastasie de
+       Father Goriot
+
+     Restaud, Ernest de
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Restaud, Madame Ernest de
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Restaud, Felix-Georges de
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Trailles, Comte Maxime de
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Father Goriot
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Man of Business
+       The Member for Arcis
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Member for Arcis
+       Beatrix
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gobseck, by Honore de Balzac
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