dreaded than the widespread demoralization. Savings banks are a means of
inoculating the people, the classes least restrained by education or by
reason from schemes that are tacitly criminal, with the vices bred of
self-interest. See what comes of philanthropy!
“A great politician ought to be without a conscience in abstract
questions, or he is a bad steersman for a nation. An honest politician
is a steam-engine with feelings, a pilot that would make love at the
helm and let the ship go down. A prime minister who helps himself to
millions but makes France prosperous and great is preferable, is he not,
to a public servant who ruins his country, even though he is buried at
the public expense? Would you hesitate between a Richelieu, a Mazarin,
or a Potemkin, each with his hundreds of millions of francs, and a
conscientious Robert Lindet that could make nothing out of assignats
and national property, or one of the virtuous imbeciles who ruined Louis
XVI.? Go on, Bixiou.”
“I will not go into the details of the speculation which we owe to
Nucingen’s financial genius. It would be the more inexpedient because
the concern is still in existence and shares are quoted on the Bourse.
The scheme was so convincing, there was such life in an enterprise
sanctioned by royal letters patent, that though the shares issued at a
thousand francs fell to three hundred, they rose to seven and will
reach par yet, after weathering the stormy years ‘27, ‘30, and ‘32. The
financial crisis of 1827 sent them down; after the Revolution of July
they fell flat; but there really is something in the affair, Nucingen
simply could not invent a bad speculation. In short, as several banks
of the highest standing have been mixed up in the affair, it would be
unparliamentary to go further into detail. The nominal capital amounted
to ten millions; the real capital to seven. Three millions were allotted
to the founders and bankers that brought it out. Everything was done
with a view to sending up the shares two hundred francs during the first
six months by the payment of a sham dividend. Twenty per cent, on ten
millions! Du Tillet’s interest in the concern amounted to five hundred
thousand francs. In the stock-exchange slang of the day, this share of
the spoils was a ‘sop in the pan.’ Nucingen, with his millions made by
the aid of a lithographer’s stone and a handful of pink paper, proposed
to himself to operate certain nice little shares carefully hoarded in
his private office till the time came for putting them on the market.
The shareholders’ money floated the concern, and paid for splendid
business premises, so they began operations. And Nucingen held in
reserve founders’ shares in Heaven knows what coal and argentiferous
lead-mines, also in a couple of canals; the shares had been given to him
for bringing out the concerns. All four were in working order, well got
up and popular, for they paid good dividends.
“Nucingen might, of course, count on getting the differences if the
shares went up, but this formed no part of the Baron’s schemes; he left
the shares at sea-level on the market to tempt the fishes.
“So he had massed his securities as Napoleon massed his troops, all with
a view to suspending payment in the thick of the approaching crisis of
1826-27 which revolutionized European markets. If Nucingen had had his
Prince of Wagram, he might have said, like Napoleon from the heights of
Santon, ‘Make a careful survey of the situation; on such and such a day,
at such an hour funds will be poured in at such a spot.’ But in whom
could he confide? Du Tillet had no suspicion of his own complicity
in Nucingen’s plot; and the bold Baron had learned from his previous
experiments in suspensions of payment that he must have some man whom
he could trust to act at need as a lever upon the creditor. Nucingen
had never a nephew, he dared not take a confidant; yet he must have a
devoted and intelligent Claparon, a born diplomatist with a good manner,
a man worthy of him, and fit to take office under government. Such
connections are not made in a day nor yet in a year. By this time
Rastignac had been so thoroughly entangled by Nucingen, that being, like
the Prince de la Paix, equally beloved by the King and Queen of Spain,
he fancied that he (Rastignac) had secured a very valuable dupe in
_Nucingen_! For a long while he had laughed at a man whose capacities
he was unable to estimate; he ended in a sober, serious, and devout
admiration of Nucingen, owning that Nucingen really had the power which
he thought he himself alone possessed.
“From Rastignac’s introduction to society in Paris, he had been led to
contemn it utterly. From the year 1820 he thought, like the Baron, that
honesty was a question of appearances; he looked upon the world as
a mixture of corruption and rascality of every sort. If he admitted
exceptions, he condemned the mass; he put no belief in any virtue--men
did right or wrong, as circumstances decided. His worldly wisdom was the
work of a moment; he learned his lesson at the summit of Pere Lachaise
one day when he buried a poor, good man there; it was his Delphine’s
father, who died deserted by his daughters and their husbands, a dupe
of our society and of the truest affection. Rastignac then and there
resolved to exploit this world, to wear full dress of virtue, honesty,
and fine manners. He was empanoplied in selfishness. When the young
scion of nobility discovered that Nucingen wore the same armor, he
respected him much as some knight mounted upon a barb and arrayed in
damascened steel would have respected an adversary equally well horsed
and equipped at a tournament in the Middle Ages. But for the time he had
grown effeminate amid the delights of Capua. The friendship of such a
woman as the Baronne de Nucingen is of a kind that sets a man abjuring
egoism in all its forms.
“Delphine had been deceived once already; in her first venture of the
affections she came across a piece of Birmingham manufacture, in the
shape of the late lamented de Marsay; and therefore she could not but
feel a limitless affection for a young provincial’s articles of faith.
Her tenderness reacted upon Rastignac. So by the time that Nucingen had
put his wife’s friend into the harness in which the exploiter always
gets the exploited, he had reached the precise juncture when he (the
Baron) meditated a third suspension of payment. To Rastignac he
confided his position; he pointed out to Rastignac a means of making
‘reparation.’ As a consequence of his intimacy, he was expected to play
the part of confederate. The Baron judged it unsafe to communicate the
whole of his plot to his conjugal collaborator. Rastignac quite believed
in impending disaster; and the Baron allowed him to believe further that
he (Rastignac) saved the shop.
“But when there are so many threads in a skein, there are apt to be
knots. Rastignac trembled for Delphine’s money. He stipulated that
Delphine must be independent and her estate separated from her
husband’s, swearing to himself that he would repay her by trebling her
fortune. As, however, Rastignac said nothing of himself, Nucingen begged
him to take, in the event of success, twenty-five shares of a thousand
francs in the argentiferous lead-mines, and Eugene took them--not to
offend him! Nucingen had put Rastignac up to this the day before that
evening in the Rue Joubert when our friend counseled Malvina to marry. A
cold shiver ran through Rastignac at the sight of so many happy folk
in Paris going to and fro unconscious of the impending loss; even so
a young commander might shiver at the first sight of an army drawn
up before a battle. He saw the d’Aiglemonts, the d’Aldriggers, and
Beaudenord. Poor little Isaure and Godefroid playing at love, what were
they but Acis and Galatea under the rock which a hulking Polyphemus was
about to send down upon them?”
“That monkey of a Bixiou has something almost like talent,” said
Blondet.
“Oh! so I am not maundering now?” asked Bixiou, enjoying his success as
he looked round at his surprised auditors.--“For two months past,” he
continued, “Godefroid had given himself up to all the little pleasures
of preparation for the marriage. At such times men are like birds
building nests in spring; they come and go, pick up their bits of straw,
and fly off with them in their beaks to line the nest that is to hold a
brood of young birds by and by. Isaure’s bridegroom had taken a house in
the Rue de la Plancher at a thousand crowns, a comfortable little house
neither too large nor too small, which suited them. Every morning
he went round to take a look at the workmen and to superintend
the painters. He had introduced ‘comfort’ (the only good thing in
England)--heating apparatus to maintain an even temperature all over the
house; fresh, soft colors, carefully chosen furniture, neither too showy
nor too much in fashion; spring-blinds fitted to every window inside
and out; silver plate and new carriages. He had seen to the stables,
coach-house, and harness-room, where Toby Joby Paddy floundered and
fidgeted about like a marmot let loose, apparently rejoiced to know that
there would be women about the place and a ‘lady’! This fervent passion
of a man that sets up housekeeping, choosing clocks, going to visit his
betrothed with his pockets full of patterns of stuffs, consulting her as
to the bedroom furniture, going, coming, and trotting about, for love’s
sake,--all this, I say, is a spectacle in the highest degree calculated
to rejoice the hearts of honest people, especially tradespeople. And as
nothing pleases folk better than the marriage of a good-looking young
fellow of seven-and-twenty and a charming girl of nineteen that dances
admirably well, Godefroid in his perplexity over the corbeille asked
Mme. de Nucingen and Rastignac to breakfast with him and advise him on
this all-important point. He hit likewise on the happy idea of asking
his cousin d’Aiglemont and his wife to meet them, as well as Mme. de
Serizy. Women of the world are ready enough to join for once in an
improvised breakfast-party at a bachelor’s rooms.”
“It is their way of playing truant,” put in Blondet.
“Of course they went over the new house,” resumed Bixiou. “Married women
relish these little expeditions as ogres relish warm flesh; they
feel young again with the young bliss, unspoiled as yet by fruition.
Breakfast was served in Godefroid’s sitting-room, decked out like a
troop horse for a farewell to bachelor life. There were dainty little
dishes such as women love to devour, nibble at, and sip of a morning,
when they are usually alarmingly hungry and horribly afraid to confess
to it. It would seem that a woman compromises herself by admitting
that she is hungry.--‘Why have you come alone?’ inquired Godefroid when
Rastignac appeared.--‘Mme. de Nucingen is out of spirits; I will tell
you all about it,’ answered Rastignac, with the air of a man whose
temper has been tried.--‘A quarrel?’ hazarded Godefroid.--‘No.’--At four
o’clock the women took flight for the Bois de Boulogne; Rastignac stayed
in the room and looked out of the window, fixing his melancholy gaze
upon Toby Joby Paddy, who stood, his arms crossed in Napoleonic fashion,
audaciously posted in front of Beaudenord’s cab horse. The child could
only control the animal with his shrill little voice, but the horse was
afraid of Joby Toby.
“‘Well,’ began Godefroid, ‘what is the matter with you, my dear fellow?
You look gloomy and anxious; your gaiety is forced. You are tormented
by incomplete happiness. It is wretched, and that is a fact, when one
cannot marry the woman one loves at the mayor’s office and the church.’
“‘Have you courage to hear what I have to say? I wonder whether you will
see how much a man must be attached to a friend if he can be guilty of
such a breach of confidence as this for his sake.’
“Something in Rastignac’s voice stung like a lash of a whip.
“‘_What_?’ asked Godefroid de Beaudenord, turning pale.
“‘I was unhappy over your joy; I had not the heart to keep such a secret
to myself when I saw all these preparations, your happiness in bloom.’
“‘Just say it out in three words!’
“‘Swear to me on your honor that you will be as silent as the grave----’
“‘As the grave,’ repeated Beaudenord.
“‘That if one of your relatives were concerned in this secret, he should
not know it.’
“‘No.’
“‘Very well. Nucingen started to-night for Brussels. He must file his
schedule if he cannot arrange a settlement. This very morning Delphine
petitioned for the separation of her estate. You may still save your
fortune.’
“‘How?’ faltered Godefroid; the blood turned to ice in his veins.
“‘Simply write to the Baron de Nucingen, antedating your letter
a fortnight, and instruct him to invest all your capital in
shares.’--Rastignac suggested Claparon and Company, and continued--‘You
have a fortnight, a month, possibly three months, in which to realize
and make something; the shares are still going up----’
“‘But d’Aiglemont, who was here at breakfast with us, has a million in
Nucingen’s bank.’
“‘Look here; I do not know whether there will be enough of these
shares to cover it; and besides, I am not his friend, I cannot betray
Nucingen’s confidence. You must not speak to d’Aiglemont. If you say a
word, you must answer to me for the consequences.’
“Godefroid stood stock still for ten minutes.
“‘Do you accept? Yes or no!’ said the inexorable Rastignac.
“Godefroid took up the pen, wrote at Rastignac’s dictation, and signed
his name.
“‘My poor cousin!’ he cried.
“‘Each for himself,’ said Rastignac. ‘And there is one more settled!’ he
added to himself as he left Beaudenord.
“While Rastignac was manoeuvring thus in Paris, imagine the state of
things on the Bourse. A friend of mine, a provincial, a stupid creature,
once asked me as we came past the Bourse between four and five in the
afternoon what all that crowd of chatterers was doing, what they could
possibly find to say to each other, and why they were wandering to
and fro when business in public securities was over for the day. ‘My
friend,’ said I, ‘they have made their meal, and now they are digesting
it; while they digest it, they gossip about their neighbors, or there
would be no commercial security in Paris. Concerns are floated here,
such and such a man--Palma, for instance, who is something the same
here as Sinard at the Academie Royale des Sciences--Palma says, “let the
speculation be made!” and the speculation is made.’”
“What a man that Hebrew is,” put in Blondet; “he has not had a
university education, but a universal education. And universal does not
in his case mean superficial; whatever he knows, he knows to the bottom.
He has a genius, an intuitive faculty for business. He is the oracle
of all the lynxes that rule the Paris market; they will not touch an
investment until Palma has looked into it. He looks solemn, he
listens, ponders, and reflects; his interlocutor thinks that after this
consideration he has come round his man, till Palma says, ‘This will not
do for me.’--The most extraordinary thing about Palma, to my mind, is
the fact that he and Werbrust were partners for ten years, and there was
never the shadow of a disagreement between them.”
“That is the way with the very strong or the very weak; any two between
the extremes fall out and lose no time in making enemies of each other,”
said Couture.
“Nucingen, you see, had neatly and skilfully put a little bombshell
under the colonnades of the Bourse, and towards four o’clock in the
afternoon it exploded.--‘Here is something serious; have you heard
the news?’ asked du Tillet, drawing Werbrust into a corner. ‘Here is
Nucingen gone off to Brussels, and his wife petitioning for a separation
of her estate.’
“‘Are you and he in it together for a liquidation?’ asked Werbrust,
smiling.
“‘No foolery, Werbrust,’ said du Tillet. ‘You know the holders of his
paper. Now, look here. There is business in it. Shares in this new
concern of ours have gone up twenty per cent already; they will go up to
five-and-twenty by the end of the quarter; you know why. They are going
to pay a splendid dividend.’
“‘Sly dog,’ said Werbrust. ‘Get along with you; you are a devil with
long and sharp claws, and you have them deep in the butter.’
“‘Just let me speak, or we shall not have time to operate. I hit on
the idea as soon as I heard the news. I positively saw Mme. de Nucingen
crying; she is afraid for her fortune.’
“‘Poor little thing!’ said the old Alsacien Jew, with an ironical
expression. ‘Well?’ he added, as du Tillet was silent.
“‘Well. At my place I have a thousand shares of a thousand francs in our
concern; Nucingen handed them over to me to put on the market, do you
understand? Good. Now let us buy up a million of Nucingen’s paper at
a discount of ten or twenty per cent, and we shall make a handsome
percentage out of it. We shall be debtors and creditors both; confusion
will be worked! But we must set about it carefully, or the holders may
imagine that we are operating in Nucingen’s interests.’
“Then Werbrust understood. He squeezed du Tillet’s hand with an
expression such as a woman’s face wears when she is playing her neighbor
a trick.
“Martin Falleix came up.--‘Well, have you heard the news?’ he asked.
‘Nucingen has stopped payment.’
“‘Pooh,’ said Werbrust, ‘pray don’t noise it about; give those that hold
his paper a chance.’
“‘What is the cause of the smash; do you know?’ put in Claparon.
“‘You know nothing about it,’ said du Tillet. ‘There isn’t any smash.
Payment will be made in full. Nucingen will start again; I shall find
him all the money he wants. I know the causes of the suspension. He has
put all his capital into Mexican securities, and they are sending him
metal in return; old Spanish cannon cast in such an insane fashion that
they melted down gold and bell-metal and church plate for it, and all
the wreck of the Spanish dominion in the Indies. The specie is slow in
coming, and the dear Baron is hard up. That is all.’
“‘It is a fact,’ said Werbrust; ‘I am taking his paper myself at twenty
per cent discount.’
“The news spread swift as fire in a straw rick. The most contradictory
reports got about. But such confidence was felt in the firm after the
two previous suspensions, that every one stuck to Nucingen’s paper.
‘Palma must lend us a hand,’ said Werbrust.
“Now Palma was the Keller’s oracle, and the Kellers were brimful of
Nucingen’s paper. A hint from Palma would be enough. Werbrust arranged
with Palma, and he rang the alarm bell. There was a panic next day on
the Bourse. The Kellers, acting on Palma’s advice, let go Nucingen’s
paper at ten per cent of loss; they set the example on ‘Change, for they
were supposed to know very well what they were about. Taillefer followed
up with three hundred thousand francs at a discount of twenty per cent,
and Martin Falleix with two hundred thousand at fifteen. Gigonnet saw
what was going on. He helped to spread the panic, with a view to buying
up Nucingen’s paper himself and making a commission of two or three per
cent out of Werbrust.
“In a corner of the Bourse he came upon poor Matifat, who had three
hundred thousand francs in Nucingen’s bank. Matifat, ghastly and
haggard, beheld the terrible Gigonnet, the bill-discounter of his old
quarter, coming up to worry him. He shuddered in spite of himself.
“‘Things are looking bad. There is a crisis on hand. Nucingen is
compounding with his creditors. But this does not interest you, Daddy
Matifat; you are out of business.’
“‘Oh, well, you are mistaken, Gigonnet; I am in for three hundred
thousand francs. I meant to speculate in Spanish bonds.’
“‘Then you have saved your money. Spanish bonds would have swept
everything away; whereas I am prepared to offer you something like fifty
per cent for your account with Nucingen.’
“‘You are very keen about it, it seems to me,’ said Matifat. ‘I never
knew a banker yet that paid less than fifty per cent. Ah, if it were
only a matter of ten per cent of loss--’ added the retired man of drugs.
“‘Well, will you take fifteen?’ asked Gigonnet.
“‘You are very keen about it, it seems to me,’ said Matifat.
“‘Good-night.’
“‘Will you take twelve?’
“‘Done,’ said Gigonnet.
“Before night two millions had been bought up in the names of the three
chance-united confederates, and posted by du Tillet to the debit side of
Nucingen’s account. Next day they drew their premium.
“The dainty little old Baroness d’Aldrigger was at breakfast with her
two daughters and Godefroid, when Rastignac came in with a diplomatic
air to steer the conversation on the financial crisis. The Baron
de Nucingen felt a lively regard for the d’Aldrigger family; he was
prepared, if things went amiss, to cover the Baroness’ account with his
best securities, to wit, some shares in the argentiferous lead-mines,
but the application must come from the lady.
“‘Poor Nucingen!’ said the Baroness. ‘What can have become of him?’
“‘He is in Belgium. His wife is petitioning for a separation of her
property; but he had gone to see if he can arrange with some bankers to
see him through.’
“‘Dear me! That reminds me of my poor husband! Dear M. de Rastignac, how
you must feel this, so attached as you are to the house!’
“‘If all the indifferent are covered, his personal friends will be
rewarded later on. He will pull through; he is a clever man.’
“‘An honest man, above all things,’ said the Baroness.
“A month later, Nucingen met all his liabilities, with no formalities
beyond the letters by which creditors signified the investments which
they preferred to take in exchange for their capital; and with no action
on the part of other banks beyond registering the transfer of Nucingen’s
paper for the investments in favor.
“While du Tillet, Werbrust, Claparon, Gigonnet, and others that thought
themselves clever were fetching in Nucingen’s paper from abroad with a
premium of one per cent--for it was still worth their while to exchange
it for securities in a rising market--there was all the more talk on
the Bourse, because there was nothing now to fear. They babbled over
Nucingen; he was discussed and judged; they even slandered him. His
luxurious life, his enterprises! When a man has so much on his hands, he
overreaches himself, and so forth, and so forth.
“The talk was at its height, when several people were greatly astonished
to receive letters from Geneva, Basel, Milan, Naples, Genoa, Marseilles,
and London, in which their correspondents, previously advised of the
failure, informed them that somebody was offering one per cent for
Nucingen’s paper! ‘There is something up,’ said the lynxes of the
Bourse.
“The Court meanwhile had granted the application for Mme. de Nucingen’s
separation as to her estate, and the question became still more
complicated. The newspapers announced the return of M. le Baron de
Nucingen from a journey to Belgium; he had been arranging, it was said,
with a well-known Belgian firm to resume the working of some coal-pits
in the Bois de Bossut. The Baron himself appeared on the Bourse, and
never even took the trouble to contradict the slanders circulating
against him. He scorned to reply through the press; he simply bought a
splendid estate just outside Paris for two millions of francs. Six
weeks afterwards, the Bordeaux shipping intelligence announced that
two vessels with cargoes of bullion to the amount of seven millions,
consigned to the firm of Nucingen, were lying in the river.
“Then it was plain to Palma, Werbrust, and du Tillet that the trick had
been played. Nobody else was any the wiser. The three scholars studied
the means by which the great bubble had been created, saw that it had
been preparing for eleven months, and pronounced Nucingen the greatest
financier in Europe.