Gobseck ................................................................................................................................................................1

It was one o'clock in the morning, during the winter of 182930, but in the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu's salon

two persons stayed on who did not belong to her family circle. A young and goodlooking 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 chimneypiece, apparently

examining a transparent firescreen, was listening to the sounds from the courtyard in a way that justified

"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

"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

"See what it is to have an attorney's ears!" exclaimed the Vicomtesse. "My dear Derville, how could you

"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

"The time has come for telling a story, which should modify your judgment as to Ernest de Restaud's

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 SaintGermain, 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,

By his conduct of Mme. de Grandlieu's affairs he had fairly earned the esteem of the Faubourg

SaintGermain, 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 Chauseed'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

"Rich already?" repeated Camille, flushing red. "Why all the girls in the room would be quarreling for him,"

"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."

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

"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 fiveandtwenty, 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

"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 silvergilt, 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

"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 coughingfit, with the regularity

of a pendulum, and in some sort was a clockwork man, wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a woodlouse

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

"His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hourglass. 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

"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

"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

" '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 castiron 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 seventysix 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 JeanEsther 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

"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:

"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

"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, unhopedfor 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

"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 mantelshelf, 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 ideathat world which he had explored, ransacked, weighed, appraised, and

"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

" '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

"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.'

" 'Do you imagine that the only poets in the world are those who print their verses?' he asked, with a pitying

" '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 illusionsif 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 hardand 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 selfinterest. 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 isGOLD. 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 VanityVanity 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 SuchanOne 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 meas 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

"He got up, pushed the bolt of the door, drew a tapestry curtain across it with a sharp grating sound of the

" '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 broughamexpenses of collection. A pretty thing it would be, would it not, if

my clients were to set ME trudging all over Paris for halfadozen francs of discount, when no man is my

" '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

" 'The second bill, bearing the signature "Fanny Malvaut," came to me from a linendraper 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

" ' "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 poorlooking 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

" ' "She has gone out; but if you have come about a bill, the money is waiting for you."

" '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' antechamber.

" ' "Madame has just this minute rung for me," said the maid; "I don't think she can see you yet."

" '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 bearskin rug spread by the carved mahogany

lions at the bedfoot, 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 easychair; while ribbon garters straggled over a settee. A fan of price, half unfolded,

glittered on the chimneypiece. Drawers stood open; flowers, diamonds, gloves, a bouquet, a girdle, were

littered about. The room was full of vague sweet perfume. Andbeneath 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,

" 'What efforts to drink of the Tantalus cup of bliss I could read in these traces of love stricken by the

thunderbolt remorsein 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 tomorrow, 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 guillotinethat 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

" ' "Protest the bill! Can you mean it?" she cried, with her eyes upon me; "could you have so little

" ' "If the King himself owed money to me, madame, and did not pay it, I should summons him even sooner

" ' "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

" '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

" '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

" '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

" ' "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

" ' "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

" '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

goodlooking, fairhaired 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

" 'I went back to see Mlle. Fanny in the Rue Montmartre, climbed a very steep, narrow staircase, and reached

a tworoomed 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.

" ' "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

" ' "But maybe she has a little youngster of a cousin," I said to myself, "who would raise money on her

" '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 Countessshe 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. Tomorrow 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 conductnever!Well,

well; these good priests and your Mirabeaus and Vergniauds and the rest of them, are mere stammering

" 'Often it is some girl in love, some grayheaded merchant on the verge of bankruptcy, some mother with a

son's wrongdoing 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 pursestrings 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

" '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 certainmethods 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 gamblerson 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

" 'Here,' he said, indicating his bare, chilly room, 'here the most highmettled 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 kneelthe 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

"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

"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.

"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

"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

"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

"At length I became headclerk 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

"When I went to bid the usurer goodbye, 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

"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 (18181819) 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 meantimeif 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

" 'Well, no, not THAT,' I said to myself; 'an honest man must keep his selfrespect 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

" '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

" '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 youI 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

" '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?'

" 'My word, we must be quick about it, or I shall have some one buying over my head.'

" 'Bring your certificate of birth round tomorrow 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,

" 'I make fifty per cent on my capital,' he continued, 'sometimes I make a hundred, two hundred, five hundred

" '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?'

" '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

" '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

" '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 Soandso, 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 practicesthe one you are buying, and the other I will build up for you.

" 'So be it, but no more,' said I, with the firmness which means that a man is determined not to concede

" 'I shall pay the money over to your principal myself,' said he, 'so as to establish a lien on the purchase and

" 'And besides that, you will give me bills for the amount made payable to a third party (name left blank),

" 'No!' Gobseck broke in upon me. 'No! Why should I trust you any more than you trust me?'

" 'And furthermore,' he continued, with a sort of good humor, 'you will give me your advice without charging

" 'Precisely,' said he. "Ah, by the by, you will allow me to go to see you?' (Plainly the old man found it not so

" 'Ah! yes, but it would be very difficult to arrange of a morning. You will have your affairs to attend to, and

" 'Oh, no!' he answered briskly, 'you ought to go into society and see your clients, and I myself have my

" 'His friends!' thought I to myself.'Very well,' said I, 'why not come at dinnertime?'

" '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!'

" '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

" 'Would you mind telling me, if there is no harm in asking, what was the good of my birth certificate in this

"JeanEsther 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

"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 welltodo 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

"About a year after the purchase of the practice, I was dragged into a bachelor breakfastparty 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,

"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 halfway between a man and a womanMaxime 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

"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 breakfastparty 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 breakfastparty is like. It means superb

display and a studied refinement seldom seen; the luxury of a miser when vanity leads him to be sumptuous

"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 nauseouslooking 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

"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 'illluck' were mingled in his discourse with

"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 carriagebuilders' 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

" '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 smoothspoken of capitalists. Money will be forthcoming if

" 'Monsieur,' said he, 'it does not enter into my thoughts to force you to do me a service, even though you

" 'Sardanapalus!' said I to myself, 'am I going to let that fellow imagine that I will not keep my word with

" '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

"M. de Trailles looked at me with civil insult in his expression, and made as if he would take his leave.

"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 courtierlike 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

" 'So you are cross because I may have tried in other quarters to ruin myself?' laughed the Count.

" '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.

" 'Am I not on intimate terms with the Ronquerolles, the Marsays, the Franchessinis, the two Vandenesses,

the AjudaPintos,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

" '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

" 'If there were no spendthrifts, what would become of you? The pair of us are like soul and body.'

" 'Come, now, give us your hand, Grandaddy Gobseck, and be magnanimous if this is "true" and "possible"

" '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 fiveandtwenty 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

" 'Sir,' said the Count, with rare impudence, 'my affairs are no concern of yours,' and he looked the old man

" 'And at this moment the question between you and me is simply whether the security I am going to offer is

" '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

"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 tigerhunting, 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

"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

"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 moneylender'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

" '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.' "

"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."

"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 fifteenthcentury 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,

"She looked at me, and a shudder ran through her as she recognized me, and gave me the glance which

" '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 jewelcase 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

" '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

" '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

"While he flung out these terrible words, he examined one stone after another with delight which no words

" '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.

"The old boy trembled. He put down his playthings on his bureau, took his seat, and was a moneylender

" 'That is possible,' said Gobseck, and then from a mahogany box (Gobseck's jewelcase) he drew out a

"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

" 'Make out the deed of purchase with power of redemption, chatterbox,' said Gobseck to me, resigning his

" '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

" '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, flutelike voice. 'In the way of property, possession is

" 'You can take it or leave it,' continued Gobseck, returning the jewelcase to the lady as he spoke.

" '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,

" 'Adieu, dear Anastasie, may you be happy! As for me, by tomorrow my troubles will be over.'

" '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

"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 pigeonhole, remarking coolly:

" 'Maxime, you owe this gentleman an explanation,' cried the trembling Countess in a low voice.

" '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

" '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

" '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

"The dark glee, the savage ferocity aroused by the possession of a few waterwhite pebbles, set me

" '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

"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.'

"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 thirtyfive 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

" '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

" '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 billno 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

" 'Sir,' said the Count, 'you have just bought family diamonds, which do not belong to my wife, for a mere

" 'Without feeling it incumbent upon me to tell you my private affairs, I will tell you this much M. le

Comteif 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.'

" '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; butIdoNOTknowyour 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

" 'Goodday, sir!' cried the Count, now white with rage. 'There are courts of justice.'

"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

"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

"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

eightyfive thousand francs, interest included, in consideration of which Gobseck undertook to return the

" 'What waste!' exclaimed he as he put his signature to the agreement. 'How is it possible to bridge such a

"The Count winced at the question; it was as if the old moneylender, like an experienced physician, had put

" '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 friendif you can find oneand make over your property to him by a fictitious sale.

" 'You shall have your money tomorrow,' 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

" '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

" '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

"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

" 'M. le Comte,' said I, 'Gobseck is my benefactorat fifteen per cent,' I added, laughing. 'But his avarice

" 'Speak out, sir. Your frankness cannot injure Gobseck or yourself. I do not expect to find an angel in a

" '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 greata 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 himnever 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 counterdeed, 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.'

" '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 yourother children. They bear your name. Merely as the

children of a onceloved 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

"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

"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

"Poor Camille can hardly keep awake," the Vicomtesse hastily broke in. "Go to bed, child; you have no

"You were going rather too far, dear M. Derville," said the Vicomtesse, "an attorney is not a mother of

"Poor Derville!" exclaimed the Vicomtesse, "what has come over you? Do you really imagine that I allow a

"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 counterdeed, 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

" '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

" 'That is possible,' said Gobseck; 'the winding up of his estate will be a juicy bit of business for you.'

" '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 counterdeed 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

" '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

"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.'

"It was useless to gaze at the Countess; she did not blush this time, and it looked to me as if she were resolved

" '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

" 'My interests are in no way separate from my husband's, sir,' said she. 'There is nothing to prevent your

" 'The business which brings me here concerns no one but M. le Comte,' I said firmly.

"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

"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

"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 hidingplace. Following out her train of

thought, it was evident that M. de Restaud must of necessity have some kind of document in his possession

"So she made up her mind to keep the strictest possible watch over the sickroom. 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; allpowerful, but in disgrace, the

apparently devoted wife was lying in wait for death and opportunity; crouching like the antlion at the

bottom of his spiral pit, ever on the watch for the prey that cannot escape, listening to the fall of every grain

"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

"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

"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 counterdeed. 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

"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

"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

" '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 housethe 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

"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 motivespring 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

"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 illnessrows of medicine bottles, empty and full, most of them dirty, crumpled linen, and broken plates,

littered the writingtable, chairs, and chimneypiece. An open warmingpan 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

"One morning at the beginning of December 1824, he looked up at Ernest, who sat at the foot of his bed

" '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

" '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

" '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.

"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 today. You will not betray my trust, will you?'

" '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

" '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 oneno

"She sat down, drew her son to her knees, and clasped him in her arms, and held him tightly to her heart.

" '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 wordthose are two principles which should never be

" '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

"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, halfnaked apparition, almost as

"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

"The Countess flung herself at his feet. His face, working with the last emotions of life, was almost hideous

" 'Have you shown me any pity?' he asked. 'I allowed you to squander your own money, and now do you

" '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

"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 deathchamber. 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

" '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 carpethe too was

nothing now but an envelope. There was something grotesquely horrible in the attitude of the stiffening rigid

"The dying man must have hidden the counterdeed 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 clawlike 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 clearsightedness

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

"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

"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

" 'Do you intend Mme. la Comtesse to suppose that I am not the rightful owner of the property sold to me by

"A sudden blow on the head from a bludgeon would have given me less pain and astonishment. The Countess

"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 flutetones, pitched in a shriller key:

"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'

" '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

"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

"I found the old billdiscounter 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 sicknurse. 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

snuffbox. Nobody knew what became of the presents sent to the old moneylender. Everything went in, but

" '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

"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

" '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

"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 usthe portress, the old pensioner, and myselfhe 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 goodplucked 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

" 'Run for the justice of the peace,' said I, turning to the old pensioner, 'so that everything can be sealed here

"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

storedputrid pies, mouldy fish, nay, even shellfish, the stench almost choked me. Maggots and insects

swarmed. These comparatively recent presents were put down, pellmell, among chests of tea, bags of

coffee, and packingcases of every shape. A silver soup tureen on the chimneypiece 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 silverplate, 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 jewelcases, with ciphers and armorial bearings stamped upon them, and sets of fine tablelinen, and

weapons of price; but none of the things were docketed. I opened a book which seemed to be misplaced, and

found a thousandfranc 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

"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 deskGobseck'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 silverplate, 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

"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 illfame 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."

Bidault (known as Gigonnet) The Government Clerks The Vendetta Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen A

Derville A Start in Life The Gondreville Mystery Father Goriot Colonel Chabert Scenes from a Courtesan's

Gobseck, JeanEsther Van Father Goriot Cesar Birotteau The Government Clerks The Unconscious

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

Palma (banker) The Firm of Nucingen Cesar Birotteau Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The

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