The Firm of Nucingen

“From Rastignac’s introduction to society in Paris, he had been led to contemn it utterly. From the year 1820 he thought, like the Baron, that honesty was a question of appearances; he looked upon the world as a mixture of corruption and rascality of every sort. If he admitted exceptions, he condemned the mass; he put no belief in any virtue – men did right or wrong, as circumstances decided. His worldly wisdom was the work of a moment; he learned his lesson at the summit of Pere Lachaise one day when he buried a poor, good man there; it was his Delphine’s father, who died deserted by his daughters and their husbands, a dupe of our society and of the truest affection. Rastignac then and there resolved to exploit this world, to wear full dress of virtue, honesty, and fine manners. He was empanoplied in selfishness. When the young scion of nobility discovered that Nucingen wore the same armor, he respected him much as some knight mounted upon a barb and arrayed in damascened steel would have respected an adversary equally well horsed and equipped at a tournament in the Middle Ages. But for the time he had grown effeminate amid the delights of Capua. The friendship of such a woman as the Baronne de Nucingen is of a kind that sets a man abjuring egoism in all its forms.

“Delphine had been deceived once already; in her first venture of the affections she came across a piece of Birmingham manufacture, in the shape of the late lamented de Marsay; and therefore she could not but feel a limitless affection for a young provincial’s articles of faith. Her tenderness reacted upon Rastignac. So by the time that Nucingen had put his wife’s friend into the harness in which the exploiter always gets the exploited, he had reached the precise juncture when he (the Baron) meditated a third suspension of payment. To Rastignac he confided his position; he pointed out to Rastignac a means of making ‘reparation.’ As a consequence of his intimacy, he was expected to play the part of confederate. The Baron judged it unsafe to communicate the whole of his plot to his conjugal collaborator. Rastignac quite believed in impending disaster; and the Baron allowed him to believe further that he (Rastignac) saved the shop.

“But when there are so many threads in a skein, there are apt to be knots. Rastignac trembled for Delphine’s money. He stipulated that Delphine must be independent and her estate separated from her husband’s, swearing to himself that he would repay her by trebling her fortune. As, however, Rastignac said nothing of himself, Nucingen begged him to take, in the event of success, twenty-five shares of a thousand francs in the argentiferous lead-mines, and Eugene took them – not to offend him! Nucingen had put Rastignac up to this the day before that evening in the Rue Joubert when our friend counseled Malvina to marry. A cold shiver ran through Rastignac at the sight of so many happy folk in Paris going to and fro unconscious of the impending loss; even so a young commander might shiver at the first sight of an army drawn up before a battle. He saw the d’Aiglemonts, the d’Aldriggers, and Beaudenord. Poor little Isaure and Godefroid playing at love, what were they but Acis and Galatea under the rock which a hulking Polyphemus was about to send down upon them?”

“That monkey of a Bixiou has something almost like talent,” said Blondet.

“Oh! so I am not maundering now?” asked Bixiou, enjoying his success as he looked round at his surprised auditors. – “For two months past,” he continued, “Godefroid had given himself up to all the little pleasures of preparation for the marriage. At such times men are like birds building nests in spring; they come and go, pick up their bits of straw, and fly off with them in their beaks to line the nest that is to hold a brood of young birds by and by. Isaure’s bridegroom had taken a house in the Rue de la Plancher at a thousand crowns, a comfortable little house neither too large nor too small, which suited them. Every morning he went round to take a look at the workmen and to superintend the painters. He had introduced ‘comfort’ (the only good thing in England) – heating apparatus to maintain an even temperature all over the house; fresh, soft colors, carefully chosen furniture, neither too showy nor too much in fashion; spring-blinds fitted to every window inside and out; silver plate and new carriages. He had seen to the stables, coach-house, and harness-room, where Toby Joby Paddy floundered and fidgeted about like a marmot let loose, apparently rejoiced to know that there would be women about the place and a ‘lady’! This fervent passion of a man that sets up housekeeping, choosing clocks, going to visit his betrothed with his pockets full of patterns of stuffs, consulting her as to the bedroom furniture, going, coming, and trotting about, for love’s sake, – all this, I say, is a spectacle in the highest degree calculated to rejoice the hearts of honest people, especially tradespeople. And as nothing pleases folk better than the marriage of a good-looking young fellow of seven-and-twenty and a charming girl of nineteen that dances admirably well, Godefroid in his perplexity over the corbeille asked Mme. de Nucingen and Rastignac to breakfast with him and advise him on this all-important point. He hit likewise on the happy idea of asking his cousin d’Aiglemont and his wife to meet them, as well as Mme. de Serizy. Women of the world are ready enough to join for once in an improvised breakfast-party at a bachelor’s rooms.”

“It is their way of playing truant,” put in Blondet.

“Of course they went over the new house,” resumed Bixiou. “Married women relish these little expeditions as ogres relish warm flesh; they feel young again with the young bliss, unspoiled as yet by fruition. Breakfast was served in Godefroid’s sitting-room, decked out like a troop horse for a farewell to bachelor life. There were dainty little dishes such as women love to devour, nibble at, and sip of a morning, when they are usually alarmingly hungry and horribly afraid to confess to it. It would seem that a woman compromises herself by admitting that she is hungry. – ‘Why have you come alone?’ inquired Godefroid when Rastignac appeared. – ‘Mme. de Nucingen is out of spirits; I will tell you all about it,’ answered Rastignac, with the air of a man whose temper has been tried. – ‘A quarrel?’ hazarded Godefroid. – ‘No.’ – At four o’clock the women took flight for the Bois de Boulogne; Rastignac stayed in the room and looked out of the window, fixing his melancholy gaze upon Toby Joby Paddy, who stood, his arms crossed in Napoleonic fashion, audaciously posted in front of Beaudenord’s cab horse. The child could only control the animal with his shrill little voice, but the horse was afraid of Joby Toby.

“‘Well,’ began Godefroid, ‘what is the matter with you, my dear fellow? You look gloomy and anxious; your gaiety is forced. You are tormented by incomplete happiness. It is wretched, and that is a fact, when one cannot marry the woman one loves at the mayor’s office and the church.’

“‘Have you courage to hear what I have to say? I wonder whether you will see how much a man must be attached to a friend if he can be guilty of such a breach of confidence as this for his sake.’

“Something in Rastignac’s voice stung like a lash of a whip.

“‘What?’ asked Godefroid de Beaudenord, turning pale.

“‘I was unhappy over your joy; I had not the heart to keep such a secret to myself when I saw all these preparations, your happiness in bloom.’

“‘Just say it out in three words!’

“‘Swear to me on your honor that you will be as silent as the grave – ’

“‘As the grave,’ repeated Beaudenord.

“‘That if one of your relatives were concerned in this secret, he should not know it.’

“‘No.’

“‘Very well. Nucingen started to-night for Brussels. He must file his schedule if he cannot arrange a settlement. This very morning Delphine petitioned for the separation of her estate. You may still save your fortune.’

“‘How?’ faltered Godefroid; the blood turned to ice in his veins.

“‘Simply write to the Baron de Nucingen, antedating your letter a fortnight, and instruct him to invest all your capital in shares.’ – Rastignac suggested Claparon and Company, and continued – ‘You have a fortnight, a month, possibly three months, in which to realize and make something; the shares are still going up – ’

“‘But d’Aiglemont, who was here at breakfast with us, has a million in Nucingen’s bank.’

“‘Look here; I do not know whether there will be enough of these shares to cover it; and besides, I am not his friend, I cannot betray Nucingen’s confidence. You must not speak to d’Aiglemont. If you say a word, you must answer to me for the consequences.’

“Godefroid stood stock still for ten minutes.

“‘Do you accept? Yes or no!’ said the inexorable Rastignac.

“Godefroid took up the pen, wrote at Rastignac’s dictation, and signed his name.

“‘My poor cousin!’ he cried.

“‘Each for himself,’ said Rastignac. ‘And there is one more settled!’ he added to himself as he left Beaudenord.

“While Rastignac was manoeuvring thus in Paris, imagine the state of things on the Bourse. A friend of mine, a provincial, a stupid creature, once asked me as we came past the Bourse between four and five in the afternoon what all that crowd of chatterers was doing, what they could possibly find to say to each other, and why they were wandering to and fro when business in public securities was over for the day. ‘My friend,’ said I, ‘they have made their meal, and now they are digesting it; while they digest it, they gossip about their neighbors, or there would be no commercial security in Paris. Concerns are floated here, such and such a man – Palma, for instance, who is something the same here as Sinard at the Academie Royale des Sciences – Palma says, “let the speculation be made!” and the speculation is made.’”

“What a man that Hebrew is,” put in Blondet; “he has not had a university education, but a universal education. And universal does not in his case mean superficial; whatever he knows, he knows to the bottom. He has a genius, an intuitive faculty for business. He is the oracle of all the lynxes that rule the Paris market; they will not touch an investment until Palma has looked into it. He looks solemn, he listens, ponders, and reflects; his interlocutor thinks that after this consideration he has come round his man, till Palma says, ‘This will not do for me.’ – The most extraordinary thing about Palma, to my mind, is the fact that he and Werbrust were partners for ten years, and there was never the shadow of a disagreement between them.”

“That is the way with the very strong or the very weak; any two between the extremes fall out and lose no time in making enemies of each other,” said Couture.

“Nucingen, you see, had neatly and skilfully put a little bombshell under the colonnades of the Bourse, and towards four o’clock in the afternoon it exploded. – ‘Here is something serious; have you heard the news?’ asked du Tillet, drawing Werbrust into a corner. ‘Here is Nucingen gone off to Brussels, and his wife petitioning for a separation of her estate.’

“‘Are you and he in it together for a liquidation?’ asked Werbrust, smiling.

“‘No foolery, Werbrust,’ said du Tillet. ‘You know the holders of his paper. Now, look here. There is business in it. Shares in this new concern of ours have gone up twenty per cent already; they will go up to five-and-twenty by the end of the quarter; you know why. They are going to pay a splendid dividend.’

“‘Sly dog,’ said Werbrust. ‘Get along with you; you are a devil with long and sharp claws, and you have them deep in the butter.’

“‘Just let me speak, or we shall not have time to operate. I hit on the idea as soon as I heard the news. I positively saw Mme. de Nucingen crying; she is afraid for her fortune.’

“‘Poor little thing!’ said the old Alsacien Jew, with an ironical expression. ‘Well?’ he added, as du Tillet was silent.

“‘Well. At my place I have a thousand shares of a thousand francs in our concern; Nucingen handed them over to me to put on the market, do you understand? Good. Now let us buy up a million of Nucingen’s paper at a discount of ten or twenty per cent, and we shall make a handsome percentage out of it. We shall be debtors and creditors both; confusion will be worked! But we must set about it carefully, or the holders may imagine that we are operating in Nucingen’s interests.’

“Then Werbrust understood. He squeezed du Tillet’s hand with an expression such as a woman’s face wears when she is playing her neighbor a trick.

“Martin Falleix came up. – ‘Well, have you heard the news?’ he asked. ‘Nucingen has stopped payment.’

“‘Pooh,’ said Werbrust, ‘pray don’t noise it about; give those that hold his paper a chance.’

“‘What is the cause of the smash; do you know?’ put in Claparon.

“‘You know nothing about it,’ said du Tillet. ‘There isn’t any smash. Payment will be made in full. Nucingen will start again; I shall find him all the money he wants. I know the causes of the suspension. He has put all his capital into Mexican securities, and they are sending him metal in return; old Spanish cannon cast in such an insane fashion that they melted down gold and bell-metal and church plate for it, and all the wreck of the Spanish dominion in the Indies. The specie is slow in coming, and the dear Baron is hard up. That is all.’

“‘It is a fact,’ said Werbrust; ‘I am taking his paper myself at twenty per cent discount.’

“The news spread swift as fire in a straw rick. The most contradictory reports got about. But such confidence was felt in the firm after the two previous suspensions, that every one stuck to Nucingen’s paper. ‘Palma must lend us a hand,’ said Werbrust.

“Now Palma was the Keller’s oracle, and the Kellers were brimful of Nucingen’s paper. A hint from Palma would be enough. Werbrust arranged with Palma, and he rang the alarm bell. There was a panic next day on the Bourse. The Kellers, acting on Palma’s advice, let go Nucingen’s paper at ten per cent of loss; they set the example on ‘Change, for they were supposed to know very well what they were about. Taillefer followed up with three hundred thousand francs at a discount of twenty per cent, and Martin Falleix with two hundred thousand at fifteen. Gigonnet saw what was going on. He helped to spread the panic, with a view to buying up Nucingen’s paper himself and making a commission of two or three per cent out of Werbrust.

“In a corner of the Bourse he came upon poor Matifat, who had three hundred thousand francs in Nucingen’s bank. Matifat, ghastly and haggard, beheld the terrible Gigonnet, the bill-discounter of his old quarter, coming up to worry him. He shuddered in spite of himself.

“‘Things are looking bad. There is a crisis on hand. Nucingen is compounding with his creditors. But this does not interest you, Daddy Matifat; you are out of business.’

“‘Oh, well, you are mistaken, Gigonnet; I am in for three hundred thousand francs. I meant to speculate in Spanish bonds.’

“‘Then you have saved your money. Spanish bonds would have swept everything away; whereas I am prepared to offer you something like fifty per cent for your account with Nucingen.’

“‘You are very keen about it, it seems to me,’ said Matifat. ‘I never knew a banker yet that paid less than fifty per cent. Ah, if it were only a matter of ten per cent of loss – ’ added the retired man of drugs.

“‘Well, will you take fifteen?’ asked Gigonnet.

“‘You are very keen about it, it seems to me,’ said Matifat.

“‘Good-night.’

“‘Will you take twelve?’

“‘Done,’ said Gigonnet.

“Before night two millions had been bought up in the names of the three chance-united confederates, and posted by du Tillet to the debit side of Nucingen’s account. Next day they drew their premium.

“The dainty little old Baroness d’Aldrigger was at breakfast with her two daughters and Godefroid, when Rastignac came in with a diplomatic air to steer the conversation on the financial crisis. The Baron de Nucingen felt a lively regard for the d’Aldrigger family; he was prepared, if things went amiss, to cover the Baroness’ account with his best securities, to wit, some shares in the argentiferous lead-mines, but the application must come from the lady.

“‘Poor Nucingen!’ said the Baroness. ‘What can have become of him?’

“‘He is in Belgium. His wife is petitioning for a separation of her property; but he had gone to see if he can arrange with some bankers to see him through.’

“‘Dear me! That reminds me of my poor husband! Dear M. de Rastignac, how you must feel this, so attached as you are to the house!’

“‘If all the indifferent are covered, his personal friends will be rewarded later on. He will pull through; he is a clever man.’

“‘An honest man, above all things,’ said the Baroness.

“A month later, Nucingen met all his liabilities, with no formalities beyond the letters by which creditors signified the investments which they preferred to take in exchange for their capital; and with no action on the part of other banks beyond registering the transfer of Nucingen’s paper for the investments in favor.

“While du Tillet, Werbrust, Claparon, Gigonnet, and others that thought themselves clever were fetching in Nucingen’s paper from abroad with a premium of one per cent – for it was still worth their while to exchange it for securities in a rising market – there was all the more talk on the Bourse, because there was nothing now to fear. They babbled over Nucingen; he was discussed and judged; they even slandered him. His luxurious life, his enterprises! When a man has so much on his hands, he overreaches himself, and so forth, and so forth.

“The talk was at its height, when several people were greatly astonished to receive letters from Geneva, Basel, Milan, Naples, Genoa, Marseilles, and London, in which their correspondents, previously advised of the failure, informed them that somebody was offering one per cent for Nucingen’s paper! ‘There is something up,’ said the lynxes of the Bourse.

“The Court meanwhile had granted the application for Mme. de Nucingen’s separation as to her estate, and the question became still more complicated. The newspapers announced the return of M. le Baron de Nucingen from a journey to Belgium; he had been arranging, it was said, with a well-known Belgian firm to resume the working of some coal-pits in the Bois de Bossut. The Baron himself appeared on the Bourse, and never even took the trouble to contradict the slanders circulating against him. He scorned to reply through the press; he simply bought a splendid estate just outside Paris for two millions of francs. Six weeks afterwards, the Bordeaux shipping intelligence announced that two vessels with cargoes of bullion to the amount of seven millions, consigned to the firm of Nucingen, were lying in the river.

“Then it was plain to Palma, Werbrust, and du Tillet that the trick had been played. Nobody else was any the wiser. The three scholars studied the means by which the great bubble had been created, saw that it had been preparing for eleven months, and pronounced Nucingen the greatest financier in Europe.

“Rastignac understood nothing of all this, but he had the four hundred thousand francs which Nucingen had allowed him to shear from the Parisian sheep, and he portioned his sisters. D’Aiglemont, at a hint from his cousin Beaudenord, besought Rastignac to accept ten per cent upon his million if he would undertake to convert it into shares in a canal which is still to make, for Nucingen worked things with the Government to such purpose that the concessionaires find it to their interest not to finish their scheme. Charles Grandet implored Delphine’s lover to use his interest to secure shares for him in exchange for his cash. And altogether Rastignac played the part of Law for ten days; he had the prettiest duchesses in France praying to him to allot shares to them, and to-day the young man very likely has an income of forty thousand livres, derived in the first instance from the argentiferous lead-mines.”

“If every one was better off, who can have lost?” asked Finot.

“Hear the conclusion,” rejoined Bixiou. “The Marquis d’Aiglemont and Beaudenord (I put them forward as two examples out of many) kept their allotted shares, enticed by the so-called dividend that fell due a few months afterwards. They had another three per cent on their capital, they sang Nucingen’s praises, and took his part at a time when everybody suspected that he was going bankrupt. Godefroid married his beloved Isaure and took shares in the mines to the value of a hundred thousand francs. The Nucingens gave a ball even more splendid than people expected of them on the occasion of the wedding; Delphine’s present to the bride was a charming set of rubies. Isaure danced, a happy wife, a girl no longer. The little Baroness was more than ever a Shepherdess of the Alps. The ball was at its height when Malvina, the Andalouse of Musset’s poem, heard du Tillet’s voice drily advising her to take Desroches. Desroches, warmed to the right degree by Rastignac and Nucingen, tried to come to an understanding financially; but at the first hint of shares in the mines for the bride’s portion, he broke off and went back to the Matifat’s in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, only to find the accursed canal shares which Gigonnet had foisted on Matifat in lieu of cash.

“They had not long to wait for the crash. The firm of Claparon did business on too large a scale, the capital was locked up, the concern ceased to serve its purposes, or to pay dividends, though the speculations were sound. These misfortunes coincided with the events of 1827. In 1829 it was too well known that Claparon was a man of straw set up by the two giants; he fell from his pedestal. Shares that had fetched twelve hundred and fifty francs fell to four hundred, though intrinsically they were worth six. Nucingen, knowing their value, bought them up at four.

“Meanwhile the little Baroness d’Aldrigger had sold out of the mines that paid no dividends, and Godefroid had reinvested the money belonging to his wife and her mother in Claparon’s concern. Debts compelled them to realize when the shares were at their lowest, so that of seven hundred thousand francs only two hundred thousand remained. They made a clearance, and all that was left was prudently invested in the three per cents at seventy-five. Godefroid, the sometime gay and careless bachelor who had lived without taking thought all his life long, found himself saddled with a little goose of a wife totally unfitted to bear adversity (indeed, before six months were over, he had witnessed the anserine transformation of his beloved) to say nothing of a mother-in-law whose mind ran on pretty dresses while she had not bread to eat. The two families must live together to live at all. It was only by stirring up all his considerably chilled interest that Godefroid got a post in the audit department. His friends? – They were out of town. His relatives? – All astonishment and promises. ‘What! my dear boy! Oh! count upon me! Poor fellow!’ and Beaudenord was clean forgotten fifteen minutes afterwards. He owed his place to Nucingen and de Vandenesse.

“And to-day these so estimable and unfortunate people are living on a third floor (not counting the entresol) in the Rue du Mont Thabor. Malvina, the Adolphus’ pearl of a granddaughter, has not a farthing. She gives music-lessons, not to be a burden upon her brother-in-law. You may see a tall, dark, thin, withered woman, like a mummy escaped from Passalacqua’s about afoot through the streets of Paris. In 1830 Beaudenord lost his situation just as his wife presented him with a fourth child. A family of eight and two servants (Wirth and his wife) and an income of eight thousand livres. And at this moment the mines are paying so well, that an original share of a thousand francs brings in a dividend of cent per cent.

“Rastignac and Mme. de Nucingen bought the shares sold by the Baroness and Godefroid. The Revolution made a peer of France of Nucingen and a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. He has not stopped payment since 1830, but still I hear that he has something like seventeen millions. He put faith in the Ordinances of July, sold out of all his investments, and boldly put his money into the funds when the three per cents stood at forty-five. He persuaded the Tuileries that this was done out of devotion, and about the same time he and du Tillet between them swallowed down three millions belonging to that great scamp Philippe Bridau.