Gobseck
by
Honore de Balzac
Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
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 Humoriists
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
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