“‘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 shal
l 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 exp
ressionless, 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.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 203