The Firm of Nucingen. Honore de Balzac
de Nucingen; I can tell you that he regretted it; I have seen him deploring his position with tears in his eyes. Yes, he shed tears, he did indeed – after supper. Well, now to our way of thinking – ”
“I say, you are laughing at us,” said Finot.
“Not the least in the world. We were talking of Rastignac. From your point of view his affliction would be a sign of his corruption; for by that time he was not nearly so much in love with Delphine. What would you have? he felt the prick in his heart, poor fellow. But he was a man of noble descent and profound depravity, whereas we are virtuous artists. So Rastignac meant to enrich Delphine; he was a poor man, she a rich woman. Would you believe it? – he succeeded. Rastignac, who might have fought at need, like Jarnac, went over to the opinion of Henri II. on the strength of his great maxim, ‘There is no such thing as absolute right; there are only circumstances.’ This brings us to the history of his fortune.”
“You might just as well make a start with your story instead of drawing us on to traduce ourselves,” said Blondet with urbane good humor.
“Aha! my boy,” returned Bixiou, administering a little tap to the back of Blondet’s head, “you are making up for lost time over the champagne!”
“Oh! by the sacred name of shareholder, get on with your story!” cried Couture.
“I was within an ace of it,” retorted Bixiou, “but you with your profanity have brought me to the climax.”
“Then, are there shareholders in the tale?” inquired Finot.
“Yes; rich as rich can be – like yours.”
“It seems to me,” Finot began stiffly, “that some consideration is owing to a good fellow to whom you look for a bill for five hundred francs upon occasion – ”
“Waiter!” called Bixiou.
“What do you want with the waiter?” asked Blondet.
“I want five hundred francs to repay Finot, so that I can tear up my I. O. U. and set my tongue free.”
“Get on with your story,” said Finot, making believe to laugh.
“I take you all to witness that I am not the property of this insolent fellow, who fancies that my silence is worth no more than five hundred francs. You will never be a minister if you cannot gauge people’s consciences. There, my good Finot,” he added soothingly, “I will get on with my story without personalities, and we shall be quits.”
“Now,” said Couture with a smile, “he will begin to prove for our benefit that Nucingen made Rastignac’s fortune.”
“You are not so far out as you think,” returned Bixiou. “You do not know what Nucingen is, financially speaking.”
“Do you know so much as a word as to his beginnings?” asked Blondet.
“I have only known him in his own house,” said Bixiou, “but we may have seen each other in the street in the old days.”
“The prosperity of the firm of Nucingen is one of the most extraordinary things seen in our days,” began Blondet. “In 1804 Nucingen’s name was scarcely known. At that time bankers would have shuddered at the idea of three hundred thousand francs’ worth of his acceptances in the market. The great capitalist felt his inferiority. How was he to get known? He suspended payment. Good! Every market rang with a name hitherto only known in Strasbourg and the Quartier Poissonniere. He issued deposit certificates to his creditors, and resumed payment; forthwith people grew accustomed to his paper all over France. Then an unheard-of-thing happened – his paper revived, was in demand, and rose in value. Nucingen’s paper was much inquired for. The year 1815 arrives, my banker calls in his capital, buys up Government stock before the battle of Waterloo, suspends payment again in the thick of the crisis, and meets his engagements with shares in the Wortschin mines, which he himself issued at twenty per cent more than he gave for them! Yes, gentlemen! – He took a hundred and fifty thousand bottles of champagne of Grandet to cover himself (forseeing the failure of the virtuous parent of the present Comte d’Aubrion), and as much Bordeaux wine of Duberghe at the same time. Those three hundred thousand bottles which he took over (and took at thirty sous apiece, my dear boy) he supplied at the price of six francs per bottle to the Allies in the Palais Royal during the foreign occupation, between 1817 and 1819. Nucingen’s name and his paper acquired a European celebrity. The illustrious Baron, so far from being engulfed like others, rose the higher for calamities. Twice his arrangements had paid holders of his paper uncommonly well; he try to swindle them? Impossible. He is supposed to be as honest a man as you will find. When he suspends payment a third time, his paper will circulate in Asia, Mexico, and Australia, among the aborigines. No one but Ouvrard saw through this Alsacien banker, the son of some Jew or other converted by ambition; Ouvrard said, ‘When Nucingen lets gold go, you may be sure that it is to catch diamonds.’”
“His crony, du Tillet, is just such another,” said Finot. “And, mind you, that of birth du Tillet has just precisely as much as is necessary to exist; the chap had not a farthing in 1814, and you see what he is now; and he has done something that none of us has managed to do (I am not speaking of you, Couture), he has had friends instead of enemies. In fact, he has kept his past life so quiet, that unless you rake the sewers you are not likely to find out that he was an assistant in a perfumer’s shop in the Rue Saint Honore, no further back than 1814.”
“Tut, tut, tut!” said Bixiou, “do not think of comparing Nucingen with a little dabbler like du Tillet, a jackal that gets on in life through his sense of smell. He scents a carcass by instinct, and comes in time to get the best bone. Besides, just look at the two men. The one has a sharp-pointed face like a cat, he is thin and lanky; the other is cubical, fat, heavy as a sack, imperturbable as a diplomatist. Nucingen has a thick, heavy hand, and lynx eyes that never light up; his depths are not in front, but behind; he is inscrutable, you never see what he is making for. Whereas du Tillet’s cunning, as Napoleon said to somebody (I have forgotten the name), is like cotton spun too fine, it breaks.”
“I do not myself see that Nucingen has any advantage over du Tillet,” said Blondet, “unless it is that he has the sense to see that a capitalist ought not to rise higher than a baron’s rank, while du Tillet has a mind to be an Italian count.”
“Blondet – one word, my boy,” put in Couture. “In the first place, Nucingen dared to say that honesty is simply a question of appearances; and secondly, to know him well you must be in business yourself. With him banking is but a single department, and a very small one; he holds Government contracts for wines, wools, indigoes – anything, in short, on which any profit can be made. He has an all-round genius. The elephant of finance would contract to deliver votes on a division, or the Greeks to the Turks. For him business means the sum-total of varieties; as Cousin would say, the unity of specialties. Looked at in this way, banking becomes a kind of statecraft in itself, requiring a powerful head; and a man thoroughly tempered is drawn on to set himself above the laws of a morality that cramps him.”
“Right, my son,” said Blondet; “but we, and we alone, can comprehend that this means bringing war into the financial world. A banker is a conquering general making sacrifices on a tremendous scale to gain ends that no one perceives; his soldiers are private people’s interests. He has stratagems to plan out, partisans to bring into the field, ambushes to set, towns to take. Most men of this stamp are so close upon the borders of politics, that in the end they are drawn into public life, and thereby lose their fortunes. The firm of Necker, for instance, was ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard was all but ruined. Some great capitalist in every age makes a colossal fortune, and leaves behind him neither fortune nor a family; there was the firm of Paris Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull down Law; there was Law himself (beside whom other promoters of companies are but pigmies); there was Bouret and Beaujon – none of them left any representative. Finance, like Time, devours its own children. If the banker is to perpetuate himself, he must found a noble house, a dynasty; like the Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent money to Charles V. and were created Princes of Babenhausen, a family that exists at this day – in the Almanach de Gotha. The instinct of self-preservation, working it may be unconsciously, leads the banker to seek a title. Jacques