THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by James Waring
TO MADAME ZULMA CARRAUD
To whom, madame, but to you should I inscribe this work; to you
whose lofty and candid intellect is a treasury to your friends;
to you that are to me not only a whole public, but the most
indulgent of sisters as well? Will you deign to accept a token of
the friendship of which I am proud? You, and some few souls as
noble, will grasp the whole of the thought underlying _The Firm of
Nucingen_, appended to _Cesar Birotteau_. Is there not a whole social
lesson in the contrast between the two stories?
DE BALZAC.
THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN
You know how slight the partitions are between the private rooms of
fashionable restaurants in Paris; Very’s largest room, for instance, is
cut in two by a removable screen. This Scene is _not_ laid at Very’s,
but in snug quarters, which for reasons of my own I forbear to specify.
We were two, so I will say, like Henri Monnier’s Prudhomme, “I should
not like to compromise _her_!”
We had remarked the want of solidity in the wall-structure, so we talked
with lowered voices as we sat together in the little private room,
lingering over the dainty dishes of a dinner exquisite in more senses
than one. We had come as far as the roast, however, and still we had no
neighbors; no sound came from the next room save the crackling of
the fire. But when the clock struck eight, we heard voices and noisy
footsteps; the waiters brought candles. Evidently there was a party
assembled in the next room, and at the first words I knew at once with
whom we had to do--four bold cormorants as ever sprang from the foam
on the crests of the ever-rising waves of this present generation--four
pleasant young fellows whose existence was problematical, since they
were not known to possess either stock or landed estates, yet they
lived, and lived well. These ingenious _condottieri_ of a modern
industrialism, that has come to be the most ruthless of all warfares,
leave anxieties to their creditors, and keep the pleasures for
themselves. They are careful for nothing, save dress. Still with the
courage of the Jean Bart order, that will smoke cigars on a barrel of
powder (perhaps by way of keeping up their character), with a quizzing
humor that outdoes the minor newspapers, sparing no one, not even
themselves; clear-sighted, wary, keen after business, grasping yet open
handed, envious yet self-complacent, profound politicians by fits and
starts, analyzing everything, guessing everything--not one of these in
question as yet had contrived to make his way in the world which they
chose for their scene of operations. Only one of the four, indeed, had
succeeded in coming as far as the foot of the ladder.
To have money is nothing; the self-made man only finds out all that he
lacks after six months of flatteries. Andoche Finot, the self-made man
in question, stiff, taciturn, cold, and dull-witted, possessed the sort
of spirit which will not shrink from groveling before any creature that
may be of use to him, and the cunning to be insolent when he needs a man
no longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in the ballet in _Gustave_,
he was a marquis behind, a boor in front. And this high-priest of
commerce had a following.
Emile Blondet, Journalist, with abundance of intellectual power,
reckless, brilliant, and indolent, could do anything that he chose, yet
he submitted to be exploited with his eyes open. Treacherous or kind
upon impulse, a man to love, but not to respect; quick-witted as a
_soubrette_, unable to refuse his pen to any one that asked, or his
heart to the first that would borrow it, Emile was the most fascinating
of those light-of-loves of whom a fantastic modern wit declared that “he
liked them better in satin slippers than in boots.”
The third in the party, Couture by name, lived by speculation, grafting
one affair upon another to make the gains pay for the losses. He was
always between wind and water, keeping himself afloat by his bold,
sudden strokes and the nervous energy of his play. Hither and thither
he would swim over the vast sea of interests in Paris, in quest of some
little isle that should be so far a debatable land that he might abide
upon it. Clearly Couture was not in his proper place.
As for the fourth and most malicious personage, his name will be
enough--it was Bixiou! Not (alas!) the Bixiou of 1825, but the Bixiou
of 1836, a misanthropic buffoon, acknowledged supreme, by reason of his
energetic and caustic wit; a very fiend let loose now that he saw how
he had squandered his intellect in pure waste; a Bixiou vexed by the
thought that he had not come by his share of the wreckage in the last
Revolution; a Bixiou with a kick for every one, like Pierrot at the
Funambules. Bixiou had the whole history of his own times at his
finger-ends, more particularly its scandalous chronicle, embellished
by added waggeries of his own. He sprang like a clown upon everybody’s
back, only to do his utmost to leave the executioner’s brand upon every
pair of shoulders.
The first cravings of gluttony satisfied, our neighbors reached the
stage at which we also had arrived, to wit, the dessert; and, as we made
no sign, they believed that they were alone. Thanks to the champagne,
the talk grew confidential as they dallied with the dessert amid the
cigar smoke. Yet through it all you felt the influence of the icy
_esprit_ that leaves the most spontaneous feeling frost-bound and stiff,
that checks the most generous inspirations, and gives a sharp ring to
the laughter. Their table-talk was full of bitter irony which turns
a jest into a sneer; it told of the exhaustion of souls given over
to themselves; of lives with no end in view but the satisfaction of
self--of egoism induced by these times of peace in which we live. I can
think of nothing like it save a pamphlet against mankind at large which
Diderot was afraid to publish, a book that bares man’s breast simply to
expose the plague-sores upon it. We listened to just such a pamphlet
as _Rameau’s Nephew_, spoken aloud in all good faith, in the course of
after-dinner talk in which nothing, not even the point which the speaker
wished to carry, was sacred from epigram; nothing taken for granted,
nothing built up except on ruins, nothing reverenced save the sceptic’s
adopted article of belief--the omnipotence, omniscience, and universal
applicability of money.
After some target practice at the outer circle of their acquaintances,
they turned their ill-natured shafts at their intimate friends. With a
sign I explained my wish to stay and listen as soon as Bixiou took up
his parable, as will shortly be seen. And so we listened to one of
those terrific improvisations which won that artist such a name among
a certain set of seared and jaded spirits; and often interrupted
and resumed though it was, memory serves me as a reporter of it. The
opinions expressed and the form of expression lie alike outside the
conditions of literature. It was, more properly speaking, a medley of
sinister revelations that paint our age, to which indeed no other kind
of story should be told; and, besides, I throw all the responsibility
upon the principal speaker. The pantomime and the gestures that
accompanied Bixiou’s changes of voice, as he acted the parts of the
various persons, must have been perfect, judging by the applause and
admiring comments that broke from his audience of three.
“Then did Rastignac refuse?” asked Blondet, apparently addressing Finot.
“Point-blank.”
“But did you threaten him with the newspapers?” asked Bixiou.
“He began to laugh,” returned Finot.
“Rastignac is the late lamented de Marsay’s direct heir; he will make
his way politically as well as socially,” commented Blondet.
“But how did he make his money?” asked Couture. “In 1819 both he and
the illustrious Bianchon lived in a shabby boarding-house in the Latin
Quarter; his people ate roast cockchafers and their own wine so as to
send him a hundred francs every month. His father’s property was not
worth a thousand crowns; he had two sisters and a brother on his hands,
and now----”
“Now he has an income of forty thousand livres,” continued Finot; “his
sisters had a handsome fortune apiece and married into noble families;
he leaves his mother a life interest in the property----”
“Even in 1827 I have known him without a penny,” said Blondet.
“Oh! in 1827,” said Bixiou.
“Well,” resumed Finot, “yet to-day, as we see, he is in a fair way to be
a Minister, a peer of France--anything that he likes. He broke decently
with Delphine three years ago; he will not marry except on good grounds;
and he may marry a girl of noble family. The chap had the sense to take
up with a wealthy woman.”
“My friends, give him the benefit of extenuating circumstances,” urged
Blondet. “When he escaped the clutches of want, he dropped into the
claws of a very clever man.”
“You know what Nucingen is,” said Bixiou. “In the early days, Delphine
and Rastignac thought him ‘good-natured’; he seemed to regard a wife as
a plaything, an ornament in his house. And that very fact showed me
that the man was square at the base as well as in height,” added Bixiou.
“Nucingen makes no bones about admitting that his wife is his fortune;
she is an indispensable chattel, but a wife takes a second place in the
high-pressure life of a political leader and great capitalist. He once
said in my hearing that Bonaparte had blundered like a bourgeois in his
early relations with Josephine; and that after he had had the spirit to
use her as a stepping-stone, he had made himself ridiculous by trying to
make a companion of her.”
“Any man of unusual powers is bound to take Oriental views of women,”
said Blondet.
“The Baron blended the opinions of East and West in a charming Parisian
creed. He abhorred de Marsay; de Marsay was unmanageable, but with
Rastignac he was much pleased; he exploited him, though Rastignac
was not aware of it. All the burdens of married life were put on him.
Rastignac bore the brunt of Delphine’s whims; he escorted her to
the Bois de Boulogne; he went with her to the play; and the little
politician and great man of to-day spent a good deal of his life at that
time in writing dainty notes. Eugene was scolded for little nothings
from the first; he was in good spirits when Delphine was cheerful, and
drooped when she felt low; he bore the weight of her confidences and her
ailments; he gave up his time, the hours of his precious youth, to fill
the empty void of that fair Parisian’s idleness. Delphine and he held
high councils on the toilettes which went best together; he stood the
fire of bad temper and broadsides of pouting fits, while she, by way of
trimming the balance, was very nice to the Baron. As for the Baron, he
laughed in his sleeve; but whenever he saw that Rastignac was bending
under the strain of the burden, he made ‘as if he suspected something,’
and reunited the lovers by a common dread.”
“I can imagine that a wealthy wife would have put Rastignac in the
way of a living, and an honorable living, but where did he pick up
his fortune?” asked Couture. “A fortune so considerable as his at the
present day must come from somewhere; and nobody ever accused him of
inventing a good stroke of business.”
“Somebody left it to him,” said Finot.
“Who?” asked Blondet.
“Some fool that he came across,” suggested Couture.
“He did not steal the whole of it, my little dears,” said Bixiou.
“Let not your terrors rise to fever-heat,
Our age is lenient with those who cheat.
Now, I will tell you about the beginnings of his fortune. In the first
place, honor to talent! Our friend is not a ‘chap,’ as Finot describes
him, but a gentleman in the English sense, who knows the cards and knows
the game; whom, moreover, the gallery respects. Rastignac has quite as
much intelligence as is needed at a given moment, as if a soldier should
make his courage payable at ninety days’ sight, with three witnesses
and guarantees. He may seem captious, wrong-headed, inconsequent,
vacillating, and without any fixed opinions; but let something serious
turn up, some combination to scheme out, he will not scatter himself
like Blondet here, who chooses these occasions to look at things from
his neighbor’s point of view. Rastignac concentrates himself, pulls
himself together, looks for the point to carry by storm, and goes full
tilt for it. He charges like a Murat, breaks squares, pounds away at
shareholders, promoters, and the whole shop, and returns, when the
breach is made, to his lazy, careless life. Once more he becomes the man
of the South, the man of pleasure, the trifling, idle Rastignac. He has
earned the right of lying in bed till noon because a crisis never finds
him asleep.”
“So far so good, but just get to his fortune,” said Finot.
“Bixiou will lash that off at a stroke,” replied Blondet. “Rastignac’s
fortune was Delphine de Nucingen, a remarkable woman; she combines
boldness with foresight.”
“Did she ever lend you money?” inquired Bixiou. Everybody burst out
laughing.
“You are mistaken in her,” said Couture, speaking to Blondet; “her
cleverness simply consists in making more or less piquant remarks, in
loving Rastignac with tedious fidelity, and obeying him blindly. She is
a regular Italian.”
“Money apart,” Andoche Finot put in sourly.
“Oh, come, come,” said Bixiou coaxingly; “after what we have just been
saying, will you venture to blame poor Rastignac for living at the
expense of the firm of Nucingen, for being installed in furnished rooms
precisely as La Torpille was once installed by our friend des Lupeaulx?
You would sink to the vulgarity of the Rue Saint-Denis! First of all,
‘in the abstract,’ as Royer-Collard says, the question may abide the
_Kritik of Pure Reason_; as for the impure reason----”
“There he goes!” said Finot, turning to Blondet.
“But there is reason in what he says,” exclaimed Blondet. “The problem
is a very old one; it was the grand secret of the famous duel between La
Chataigneraie and Jarnac. It was cast up to Jarnac that he was on good
terms with his mother-in-law, who, loving him only too well, equipped
him sumptuously. When a thing is so true, it ought not to be said.
Out of devotion to Henry II., who permitted himself this slander, La
Chataigneraie took it upon himself, and there followed the duel which
enriched the French language with the expression _coup de Jarnac_.”
“Oh! does it go so far back? Then it is noble?” said Finot.
“As a proprietor of newspapers and reviews of old standing, you are not
bound to know that,” said Blondet.
“There are women,” Bixiou gravely resumed, “and for that matter, men
too, who can cut their lives in two and give away but one-half. (Remark
how I word my phrase for you in humanitarian language.) For these, all
material interests lie without the range of sentiment. They give
their time, their life, their honor to a woman, and hold that between
themselves it is not the thing to meddle with bits of tissue paper
bearing the legend, ‘_Forgery is punishable with death_.’ And equally
they will take nothing from a woman. Yes, the whole thing is debased if
fusion of interests follows on fusion of souls. This is a doctrine much
preached, and very seldom practised.”
“Oh, what rubbish!” cried Blondet. “The Marechal de Richelieu understood
something of gallantry, and he settled an allowance of a thousand louis
d’or on Mme. de la Popeliniere after that affair of the hiding-place
behind the hearth. Agnes Sorel, in all simplicity, took her fortune to
Charles VII., and the King accepted it. Jacques Coeur kept the crown for
France; he was allowed to do it, and woman-like, France was ungrateful.”
“Gentlemen,” said Bixiou, “a love that does not imply an indissoluble
friendship, to my thinking, is momentary libertinage. What sort of
entire surrender is it that keeps something back? Between these two
diametrically opposed doctrines, the one as profoundly immoral as
the other, there is no possible compromise. It seems to me that any
shrinking from a complete union is surely due to a belief that the union
cannot last, and if so, farewell to illusion. The passion that does not
believe that it will last for ever is a hideous thing. (Here is pure
unadulterated Fenelon for you!) At the same time, those who know the
world, the observer, the man of the world, the wearers of irreproachable
gloves and ties, the men who do not blush to marry a woman for her
money, proclaim the necessity of a complete separation of sentiment and
interest. The other sort are lunatics that love and imagine that they
and the woman they love are the only two beings in the world; for them
millions are dirt; the glove or the camellia flower that She wore is
worth millions. If the squandered filthy lucre is never to be found
again in their possession, you find the remains of floral relics hoarded
in dainty cedar-wood boxes. They cannot distinguish themselves one from
the other; for them there is no ‘I’ left. _Thou_--that is their Word
made flesh. What can you do? Can you stop the course of this ‘hidden
disease of the heart’? There are fools that love without calculation and
wise men that calculate while they love.”
“To my thinking Bixiou is sublime,” cried Blondet. “What does Finot say
to it?”
“Anywhere else,” said Finot, drawing himself up in his cravat, “anywhere
else, I should say, with the ‘gentlemen’; but here, I think----”
“With the scoundrelly scapegraces with whom you have the honor to
associate?” said Bixiou.
“Upon my word, yes.”
“And you?” asked Bixiou, turning to Couture.
“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Couture. “The woman that will not make a
stepping-stone of her body, that the man she singles out may reach his
goal, is a woman that has no heart except for her own purposes.”
“And you, Blondet?”
“I do not preach, I practise.”
“Very good,” rejoined Bixiou in his most ironical tones. “Rastignac was
not of your way of thinking. To take without repaying is detestable, and
even rather bad form; but to take that you may render a hundred-fold,
like the Lord, is a chivalrous deed. This was Rastignac’s view. He felt
profoundly humiliated by his community of interests with Delphine de
Nucingen; I can tell you that he regretted it; I have seen him deploring
his position with tears in his eyes. Yes, he shed tears, he did
indeed--after supper. Well, now to _our_ way of thinking----”
“I say, you are laughing at us,” said Finot.
“Not the least in the world. We were talking of Rastignac. From your
point of view his affliction would be a sign of his corruption; for by
that time he was not nearly so much in love with Delphine. What would
you have? he felt the prick in his heart, poor fellow. But he was a
man of noble descent and profound depravity, whereas we are virtuous
artists. So Rastignac meant to enrich Delphine; he was a poor man, she
a rich woman. Would you believe it?--he succeeded. Rastignac, who might
have fought at need, like Jarnac, went over to the opinion of Henri II.
on the strength of his great maxim, ‘There is no such thing as absolute
right; there are only circumstances.’ This brings us to the history of
his fortune.”
“You might just as well make a start with your story instead of drawing
us on to traduce ourselves,” said Blondet with urbane good humor.
“Aha! my boy,” returned Bixiou, administering a little tap to the back
of Blondet’s head, “you are making up for lost time over the champagne!”
“Oh! by the sacred name of shareholder, get on with your story!” cried
Couture.
“I was within an ace of it,” retorted Bixiou, “but you with your
profanity have brought me to the climax.”
“Then, are there shareholders in the tale?” inquired Finot.
“Yes; rich as rich can be--like yours.”
“It seems to me,” Finot began stiffly, “that some consideration is owing
to a good fellow to whom you look for a bill for five hundred francs
upon occasion----”
“Waiter!” called Bixiou.
“What do you want with the waiter?” asked Blondet.
“I want five hundred francs to repay Finot, so that I can tear up my I.
O. U. and set my tongue free.”
“Get on with your story,” said Finot, making believe to laugh.
“I take you all to witness that I am not the property of this insolent
fellow, who fancies that my silence is worth no more than five hundred
francs. You will never be a minister if you cannot gauge people’s
consciences. There, my good Finot,” he added soothingly, “I will get on
with my story without personalities, and we shall be quits.”
“Now,” said Couture with a smile, “he will begin to prove for our
benefit that Nucingen made Rastignac’s fortune.”
“You are not so far out as you think,” returned Bixiou. “You do not know
what Nucingen is, financially speaking.”
“Do you know so much as a word as to his beginnings?” asked Blondet.
“I have only known him in his own house,” said Bixiou, “but we may have
seen each other in the street in the old days.”
“The prosperity of the firm of Nucingen is one of the most extraordinary
things seen in our days,” began Blondet. “In 1804 Nucingen’s name was
scarcely known. At that time bankers would have shuddered at the idea of
three hundred thousand francs’ worth of his acceptances in the market.
The great capitalist felt his inferiority. How was he to get known? He
suspended payment. Good! Every market rang with a name hitherto only
known in Strasbourg and the Quartier Poissonniere. He issued deposit
certificates to his creditors, and resumed payment; forthwith people
grew accustomed to his paper all over France. Then an unheard-of-thing
happened--his paper revived, was in demand, and rose in value.
Nucingen’s paper was much inquired for. The year 1815 arrives, my banker
calls in his capital, buys up Government stock before the battle of
Waterloo, suspends payment again in the thick of the crisis, and meets
his engagements with shares in the Wortschin mines, which he
himself issued at twenty per cent more than he gave for them! Yes,
gentlemen!--He took a hundred and fifty thousand bottles of champagne of
Grandet to cover himself (forseeing the failure of the virtuous parent
of the present Comte d’Aubrion), and as much Bordeaux wine of Duberghe
at the same time. Those three hundred thousand bottles which he took
over (and took at thirty sous apiece, my dear boy) he supplied at the
price of six francs per bottle to the Allies in the Palais Royal during
the foreign occupation, between 1817 and 1819. Nucingen’s name and his
paper acquired a European celebrity. The illustrious Baron, so far from
being engulfed like others, rose the higher for calamities. Twice his
arrangements had paid holders of his paper uncommonly well; _he_ try to
swindle them? Impossible. He is supposed to be as honest a man as
you will find. When he suspends payment a third time, his paper will
circulate in Asia, Mexico, and Australia, among the aborigines. No one
but Ouvrard saw through this Alsacien banker, the son of some Jew or
other converted by ambition; Ouvrard said, ‘When Nucingen lets gold go,
you may be sure that it is to catch diamonds.’”
“His crony, du Tillet, is just such another,” said Finot. “And, mind
you, that of birth du Tillet has just precisely as much as is necessary
to exist; the chap had not a farthing in 1814, and you see what he is
now; and he has done something that none of us has managed to do (I am
not speaking of you, Couture), he has had friends instead of enemies.
In fact, he has kept his past life so quiet, that unless you rake the
sewers you are not likely to find out that he was an assistant in a
perfumer’s shop in the Rue Saint Honore, no further back than 1814.”
“Tut, tut, tut!” said Bixiou, “do not think of comparing Nucingen with a
little dabbler like du Tillet, a jackal that gets on in life through his
sense of smell. He scents a carcass by instinct, and comes in time to
get the best bone. Besides, just look at the two men. The one has
a sharp-pointed face like a cat, he is thin and lanky; the other is
cubical, fat, heavy as a sack, imperturbable as a diplomatist. Nucingen
has a thick, heavy hand, and lynx eyes that never light up; his depths
are not in front, but behind; he is inscrutable, you never see what he
is making for. Whereas du Tillet’s cunning, as Napoleon said to somebody
(I have forgotten the name), is like cotton spun too fine, it breaks.”
“I do not myself see that Nucingen has any advantage over du Tillet,”
said Blondet, “unless it is that he has the sense to see that a
capitalist ought not to rise higher than a baron’s rank, while du Tillet
has a mind to be an Italian count.”
“Blondet--one word, my boy,” put in Couture. “In the first place,
Nucingen dared to say that honesty is simply a question of appearances;
and secondly, to know him well you must be in business yourself. With
him banking is but a single department, and a very small one; he holds
Government contracts for wines, wools, indigoes--anything, in short, on
which any profit can be made. He has an all-round genius. The elephant
of finance would contract to deliver votes on a division, or the Greeks
to the Turks. For him business means the sum-total of varieties; as
Cousin would say, the unity of specialties. Looked at in this way,
banking becomes a kind of statecraft in itself, requiring a powerful
head; and a man thoroughly tempered is drawn on to set himself above the
laws of a morality that cramps him.”
“Right, my son,” said Blondet; “but we, and we alone, can comprehend
that this means bringing war into the financial world. A banker is a
conquering general making sacrifices on a tremendous scale to gain ends
that no one perceives; his soldiers are private people’s interests. He
has stratagems to plan out, partisans to bring into the field, ambushes
to set, towns to take. Most men of this stamp are so close upon the
borders of politics, that in the end they are drawn into public life,
and thereby lose their fortunes. The firm of Necker, for instance, was
ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard was all but ruined. Some
great capitalist in every age makes a colossal fortune, and leaves
behind him neither fortune nor a family; there was the firm of Paris
Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull down Law; there was Law
himself (beside whom other promoters of companies are but pigmies);
there was Bouret and Beaujon--none of them left any representative.
Finance, like Time, devours its own children. If the banker is to
perpetuate himself, he must found a noble house, a dynasty; like the
Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent money to Charles V. and were created
Princes of Babenhausen, a family that exists at this day--in the
_Almanach de Gotha_. The instinct of self-preservation, working it may
be unconsciously, leads the banker to seek a title. Jacques Coeur was
the founder of the great noble house of Noirmoutier, extinct in the
reign of Louis XIII. What power that man had! He was ruined for making
a legitimate king; and he died, prince of an island in the Archipelago,
where he built a magnificent cathedral.”
“Oh! you are giving us an historical lecture, we are wandering away from
the present, the crown has no right of conferring nobility, and barons
and counts are made with closed doors; more is the pity!” said Finot.
“You regret the times of the _savonnette a vilain_, when you could buy
an office that ennobled?” asked Bixiou. “You are right. _Je reviens a
nos moutons_.--Do you know Beaudenord? No? no? no? Ah, well! See how
all things pass away! Poor fellow, ten years ago he was the flower of
dandyism; and now, so thoroughly absorbed that you no more know him than
Finot just now knew the origin of the expression ‘_coup de Jarnac_’--I
repeat that simply for the sake of illustration, and not to tease you,
Finot. Well, it is a fact, he belonged to the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
“Beaudenord is the first pigeon that I will bring on the scene. And, in
the first place, his name was Godefroid de Beaudenord; neither Finot,
nor Blondet, nor Couture, nor I am likely to undervalue such an
advantage as that! After a ball, when a score of pretty women stand
behooded waiting for their carriages, with their husbands and adorers at
their sides, Beaudenord could hear his people called without a pang of
mortification. In the second place, he rejoiced in the full complement
of limbs; he was whole and sound, had no mote in his eyes, no false
hair, no artificial calves; he was neither knock-kneed nor bandy-legged,
his dorsal column was straight, his waist slender, his hands white and
shapely. His hair was black; he was of a complexion neither too pink,
like a grocer’s assistant, nor yet too brown, like a Calabrese. Finally,
and this is an essential point, Beaudenord was not too handsome, like
some of our friends that look rather too much of professional beauties
to be anything else; but no more of that; we have said it, it is
shocking! Well, he was a crack shot, and sat a horse to admiration; he
had fought a duel for a trifle, and had not killed his man.
“If you wish to know in what pure, complete, and unadulterated happiness
consists in this Nineteenth Century in Paris--the happiness, that is to
say, of a young man of twenty-six--do you realize that you must enter
into the infinitely small details of existence? Beaudenord’s bootmaker
had precisely hit off his style of foot; he was well shod; his tailor
loved to clothe him. Godefroid neither rolled his r’s, nor lapsed into
Normanisms nor Gascon; he spoke pure and correct French, and tied his
cravat correctly (like Finot). He had neither father nor mother--such
luck had he!--and his guardian was the Marquis d’Aiglemont, his cousin
by marriage. He could go among city people as he chose, and the Faubourg
Saint-Germain could make no objection; for, fortunately, a young
bachelor is allowed to make his own pleasure his sole rule of life, he
is at liberty to betake himself wherever amusement is to be found, and
to shun the gloomy places where cares flourish and multiply. Finally, he
had been vaccinated (you know what I mean, Blondet).
“And yet, in spite of all these virtues,” continued Bixiou, “he
might very well have been a very unhappy young man. Eh! eh! that word
happiness, unhappily, seems to us to mean something absolute, a delusion
which sets so many wiseacres inquiring what happiness is. A very clever
woman said that ‘Happiness was where you chose to put it.’”
“She formulated a dismal truth,” said Blondet.
“And a moral,” added Finot.
“Double distilled,” said Blondet. “Happiness, like Good, like Evil, is
relative. Wherefore La Fontaine used to hope that in the course of time
the damned would feel as much at home in hell as a fish in water.”
“La Fontaine’s sayings are known in Philistia!” put in Bixiou.
“Happiness at six-and-twenty in Paris is not the happiness of
six-and-twenty at--say Blois,” continued Blondet, taking no notice of
the interruption. “And those that proceed from this text to rail at
the instability of opinion are either knaves or fools for their pains.
Modern medicine, which passed (it is its fairest title to glory) from a
hypothetical to a positive science, through the influence of the great
analytical school of Paris, has proved beyond a doubt that a man is
periodically renewed throughout----”
“New haft, new blade, like Jeannot’s knife, and yet you think that he is
still the same man,” broke in Bixiou. “So there are several lozenges
in the harlequin’s coat that we call happiness; and--well, there was
neither hole nor stain in this Godefroid’s costume. A young man of
six-and-twenty, who would be happy in love, who would be loved, that
is to say, not for his blossoming youth, nor for his wit, nor for his
figure, but spontaneously, and not even merely in return for his own
love; a young man, I say, who has found love in the abstract, to quote
Royer-Collard, might yet very possibly find never a farthing in the
purse which She, loving and beloved, embroidered for him; he might owe
rent to his landlord; he might be unable to pay the bootmaker before
mentioned; his very tailor, like France herself, might at last show
signs of disaffection. In short, he might have love and yet be poor.
And poverty spoils a young man’s happiness, unless he holds our
transcendental views of the fusion of interests. I know nothing more
wearing than happiness within combined with adversity without. It is as
if you had one leg freezing in the draught from the door, and the
other half-roasted by a brazier--as I have at this moment. I hope to
be understood. Comes there an echo from thy waistcoat-pocket, Blondet?
Between ourselves, let the heart alone, it spoils the intellect.
“Let us resume. Godefroid de Beaudenord was respected by his
tradespeople, for they were paid with tolerable regularity. The witty
woman before quoted--I cannot give her name, for she is still living,
thanks to her want of heart----”
“Who is this?”
“The Marquise d’Espard. She said that a young man ought to live on an
entresol; there should be no sign of domesticity about the place; no
cook, no kitchen, an old manservant to wait upon him, and no pretence of
permanence. In her opinion, any other sort of establishment is bad
form. Godefroid de Beaudenord, faithful to this programme, lodged on an
entresol on the Quai Malaquais; he had, however, been obliged to have
this much in common with married couples, he had put a bedstead in his
room, though for that matter it was so narrow that he seldom slept
in it. An Englishwoman might have visited his rooms and found nothing
‘improper’ there. Finot, you have yet to learn the great law of the
‘Improper’ that rules Britain. But, for the sake of the bond between
us--that bill for a thousand francs--I will just give you some idea of
it. I have been in England myself.--I will give him wit enough for a
couple of thousand,” he added in an aside to Blondet.
“In England, Finot, you grow extremely intimate with a woman in the
course of an evening, at a ball or wherever it is; next day you meet
her in the street and look as though you knew her again--‘improper.’--At
dinner you discover a delightful man beneath your left-hand neighbor’s
dresscoat; a clever man; no high mightiness, no constraint, nothing
of an Englishman about him. In accordance with the tradition of
French breeding, so urbane, so gracious as they are, you address your
neighbor--‘improper.’--At a ball you walk up to a pretty woman to ask
her to dance--‘improper.’ You wax enthusiastic, you argue, laugh,
and give yourself out, you fling yourself heart and soul into the
conversation, you give expression to your real feelings, you play
when you are at the card-table, chat while you chat, eat while you
eat--‘improper! improper! improper!’ Stendhal, one of the cleverest and
profoundest minds of the age, hit off the ‘improper’ excellently well
when he said that such-and-such a British peer did not dare to cross his
legs when he sat alone before his own hearth for fear of being improper.
An English gentlewoman, were she one of the rabid ‘Saints’--that most
straitest sect of Protestants that would leave their whole family to
starve if the said family did anything ‘improper’--may play the deuce’s
own delight in her own bedroom, and need not be ‘improper,’ but she
would look on herself as lost if she received a visit from a man of her
acquaintance in the aforesaid room. Thanks to propriety, London and its
inhabitants will be found petrified some of these days.”
“And to think that there are asses here in France that want to import
the solemn tomfoolery that the English keep up among themselves with
that admirable self-possession which you know!” added Blondet. “It is
enough to make any man shudder if he has seen the English at home, and
recollects the charming, gracious French manners. Sir Walter Scott was
afraid to paint women as they are for fear of being ‘improper’; and at
the close of his life repented of the creation of the great character of
Effie in _The Heart of Midlothian_.”
“Do you wish not to be ‘improper’ in England?” asked Bixiou, addressing
Finot.
“Well?”
“Go to the Tuileries and look at a figure there, something like a
fireman carved in marble [‘Themistocles,’ the statuary calls it), try to
walk like the Commandant’s statue, and you will never be ‘improper.’ It
was through strict observance of the great law of the _im_proper that
Godefroid’s happiness became complete. There is the story:
“Beaudenord had a tiger, not a ‘groom,’ as they write that know nothing
of society. The tiger, a diminutive Irish page called Paddy, Toby,
Joby (which you please), was three feet in height by twenty inches
in breadth, a weasel-faced infant, with nerves of steel tempered in
fire-water, and agile as a squirrel. He drove a landau with a skill
never yet at fault in London or Paris. He had a lizard’s eye, as sharp
as my own, and he could mount a horse like the elder Franconi. With
the rosy cheeks and yellow hair of one of Rubens’ Madonnas he was
double-faced as a prince, and as knowing as an old attorney; in short,
at the age of ten he was nothing more nor less than a blossom of
depravity, gambling and swearing, partial to jam and punch, pert as a
_feuilleton_, impudent and light-fingered as any Paris street-arab. He
had been a source of honor and profit to a well-known English lord,
for whom he had already won seven hundred thousand francs on the
race-course. The aforesaid nobleman set no small store on Toby. His
tiger was a curiosity, the very smallest tiger in town. Perched aloft on
the back of a thoroughbred, Joby looked like a hawk. Yet--the great man
dismissed him. Not for greediness, not for dishonesty, nor murder, nor
rudeness to my lady, nor for cutting holes in my lady’s own woman’s
pockets, nor because he had been ‘got at’ by some of his master’s rivals
on the turf, nor for playing games of a Sunday, nor for bad behavior of
any sort or description. Toby might have done all these things, he might
even have spoken to milord before milord spoke to him, and his noble
master might, perhaps, have pardoned that breach of the law domestic.
Milord would have put up with a good deal from Toby; he was very fond
of him. Toby could drive a tandem dog-cart, riding on the wheeler,
postilion fashion; his legs did not reach the shafts, he looked in fact
very much like one of the cherub heads circling about the Eternal Father
in old Italian pictures. But an English journalist wrote a delicious
description of the little angel, in the course of which he said that
Paddy was quite too pretty for a tiger; in fact, he offered to bet
that Paddy was a tame tigress. The description, on the heads of it,
was calculated to poison minds and end in something ‘improper.’ And
the superlative of ‘improper’ is the way to the gallows. Milord’s
circumspection was highly approved by my lady.
“But poor Toby, now that his precise position in insular zoology had
been called in question, found himself hopelessly out of place. At that
time Godefroid had blossomed out at the French Embassy in London, where
he learned the adventures of Toby, Joby, Paddy. Godefroid found the
infant weeping over a pot of jam (he had already lost the guineas with
which milord gilded his misfortune). Godefroid took possession of him;
and so it fell out that on his return among us he brought back with him
the sweetest thing in tigers from England. He was known by his tiger--as
Couture is known by his waistcoats--and found no difficulty in entering
the fraternity of the club yclept to-day the Grammont. He had
renounced the diplomatic career; he ceased accordingly to alarm the
susceptibilites of the ambitious; and as he had no very dangerous amount
of intellect, he was well looked upon everywhere.
“Some of us would feel mortified if we saw only smiling faces wherever
we went; we enjoy the sour contortions of envy. Godefroid did not like
to be disliked. Every one has his taste. Now for the solid, practical
aspects of life!
“The distinguishing feature of his chambers, where I have licked my lips
over breakfast more than once, was a mysterious dressing-closet, nicely
decorated, and comfortably appointed, with a grate in it and a bath-tub.
It gave upon a narrow staircase, the folding doors were noiseless,
the locks well oiled, the hinges discreet, the window panes of frosted
glass, the curtain impervious to light. While the bedroom was, as
it ought to have been, in a fine disorder which would suit the most
exacting painter in water-colors; while everything therein was redolent
of the Bohemian life of a young man of fashion, the dressing-closet was
like a shrine--white, spotless, neat, and warm. There were no draughts
from door or window, the carpet had been made soft for bare feet hastily
put to the floor in a sudden panic of alarm--which stamps him as your
thoroughbred dandy that knows life; for here, in a few moments, he may
show himself either a noodle or a master in those little details in
which a man’s character is revealed. The Marquise previously quoted--no,
it was the Marquise de Rochefide--came out of that dressing-closet in
a furious rage, and never went back again. She discovered nothing
‘improper’ in it. Godefroid used to keep a little cupboard full of----”
“Waistcoats?” suggested Finot.
“Come, now, just like you, great Turcaret that you are. (I shall never
form that fellow.) Why, no. Full of cakes, and fruit, and dainty little
flasks of Malaga and Lunel; an en cas de nuit in Louis Quatorze’s style;
anything that can tickle the delicate and well-bred appetite of
sixteen quarterings. A knowing old man-servant, very strong in matters
veterinary, waited on the horses and groomed Godefroid. He had been with
the late M. de Beaudenord, Godefroid’s father, and bore Godefroid
an inveterate affection, a kind of heart complaint which has
almost disappeared among domestic servants since savings banks were
established.
“All material well-being is based upon arithmetic. You to whom Paris is
known down to its very excrescences, will see that Beaudenord must have
acquired about seventeen thousand livres per annum; for he paid some
seventeen francs of taxes and spent a thousand crowns on his own whims.
Well, dear boys, when Godefroid came of age, the Marquis d’Aiglemont
submitted to him such an account of his trust as none of us would be
likely to give a nephew; Godefroid’s name was inscribed as the owner of
eighteen thousand livres of _rentes_, a remnant of his father’s wealth
spared by the harrow of the great reduction under the Republic and the
hailstorms of Imperial arrears. D’Aiglemont, that upright guardian, also
put his ward in possession of some thirty thousand francs of savings
invested with the firm of Nucingen; saying with all the charm of a
_grand seigneur_ and the indulgence of a soldier of the Empire, that he
had contrived to put it aside for his ward’s young man’s follies. ‘If
you will take my advice, Godefroid,’ added he, ‘instead of squandering
the money like a fool, as so many young men do, let it go in follies
that will be useful to you afterwards. Take an attache’s post at Turin,
and then go to Naples, and from Naples to London, and you will be
amused and learn something for your money. Afterwards, if you think of a
career, the time and the money will not have been thrown away.’ The late
lamented d’Aiglemont had more sense than people credited him with, which
is more than can be said of some of us.”
“A young fellow that starts with an assured income of eighteen thousand
livres at one-and-twenty is lost,” said Couture.
“Unless he is miserly, or very much above the ordinary level,” added
Blondet.
“Well, Godefroid sojourned in the four capitals of Italy,” continued
Bixiou. “He lived in England and Germany, he spent some little time
at St. Petersburg, he ran over Holland but he parted company with the
aforesaid thirty thousand francs by living as if he had thirty thousand
a year. Everywhere he found the same _supreme de volaille_, the same
aspics, and French wines; he heard French spoken wherever he went--in
short, he never got away from Paris. He ought, of course, to have tried
to deprave his disposition, to fence himself in triple brass, to get rid
of his illusions, to learn to hear anything said without a blush, and
to master the inmost secrets of the Powers.--Pooh! with a good deal of
trouble he equipped himself with four languages--that is to say, he laid
in a stock of four words for one idea. Then he came back, and certain
tedious dowagers, styled ‘conquests’ abroad, were left disconsolate.
Godefroid came back, shy, scarcely formed, a good fellow with a
confiding disposition, incapable of saying ill of any one who honored
him with an admittance to his house, too staunch to be a diplomatist,
altogether he was what we call a thoroughly good fellow.”
“To cut it short, a brat with eighteen thousand livres per annum to drop
over the first investment that turns up,” said Couture.
“That confounded Couture has such a habit of anticipating dividends,
that he is anticipating the end of my tale. Where was I? Oh! Beaudenord
came back. When he took up his abode on the Quai Malaquais, it came
to pass that a thousand francs over and above his needs was altogether
insufficient to keep up his share of a box at the Italiens and the Opera
properly. When he lost twenty-five or thirty louis at play at one swoop,
naturally he paid; when he won, he spent the money; so should we if we
were fools enough to be drawn into a bet. Beaudenord, feeling pinched
with his eighteen thousand francs, saw the necessity of creating what we
to-day call a balance in hand. It was a great notion of his ‘not to get
too deep.’ He took counsel of his sometime guardian. ‘The funds are now
at par, my dear boy,’ quoth d’Aiglemont; ‘sell out. I have sold mine and
my wife’s. Nucingen has all my capital, and is giving me six per cent;
do likewise, you will have one per cent the more upon your capital, and
with that you will be quite comfortable.’
“In three days’ time our Godefroid was comfortable. His increase of
income exactly supplied his superfluities; his material happiness was
complete.
“Suppose that it were possible to read the minds of all the young men in
Paris at one glance (as, it appears, will be done at the Day of Judgment
with all the millions upon millions that have groveled in all spheres,
and worn all uniforms or the uniform of nature), and to ask them whether
happiness at six-and-twenty is or is not made up of the following
items--to wit, to own a saddle-horse and a tilbury, or a cab, with a
fresh, rosy-faced Toby Joby Paddy no bigger than your fist, and to
hire an unimpeachable brougham for twelve francs an evening; to appear
elegantly arrayed, agreeably to the laws that regulate a man’s clothes,
at eight o’clock, at noon, four o’clock in the afternoon, and in
the evening; to be well received at every embassy, and to cull the
short-lived flowers of superficial, cosmopolitan friendships; to be
not insufferably handsome, to carry your head, your coat, and your name
well; to inhabit a charming little entresol after the pattern of the
rooms just described on the Quai Malaquais; to be able to ask a party
of friends to dine at the _Rocher de Cancale_ without a previous
consultation with your trousers’ pocket; never to be pulled up in any
rational project by the words, ‘And the money?’ and finally, to be able
to renew at pleasure the pink rosettes that adorn the ears of three
thoroughbreds and the lining of your hat?
“To such inquiry any ordinary young man (and we ourselves that are not
ordinary men) would reply that the happiness is incomplete; that it is
like the Madeleine without the altar; that a man must love and be loved,
or love without return, or be loved without loving, or love at cross
purposes. Now for happiness as a mental condition.
“In January 1823, after Godefroid de Beaudenord had set foot in the
various social circles which it pleased him to enter, and knew his
way about in them, and felt himself secure amid these joys, he saw
the necessity of a sunshade--the advantage of having a great lady to
complain of, instead of chewing the stems of roses bought for fivepence
apiece of Mme. Prevost, after the manner of the callow youngsters that
chirp and cackle in the lobbies of the Opera, like chickens in a
coop. In short, he resolved to centre his ideas, his sentiments, his
affections upon a woman, _one woman_?--LA PHAMME! Ah!....