Parisians in the Country. Honore de Balzac
is pitiable! But that’s the way of the world, and I don’t pretend to reform it. Your objection, Monsieur, is really sheer nonsense.”
“Why?” asked the lunatic.
“Why? – this is why: because, if you live and possess the qualities which are estimated in your policy against the chances of death, – now, attend to this – ”
“I am attending.”
“Well, then, you have succeeded in life; and you have succeeded because of the said insurance. You doubled your chances of success by getting rid of the anxieties you were dragging about with you in the shape of wife and children who might otherwise be left destitute at your death. If you attain this certainty, you have touched the value of your intellectual capital, on which the cost of insurance is but a trifle, – a mere trifle, a bagatelle.”
“That’s a fine idea!”
“Ah! is it not, Monsieur?” cried Gaudissart. “I call this enterprise the exchequer of beneficence; a mutual insurance against poverty; or, if you like it better, the discounting, the cashing, of talent. For talent, Monsieur, is a bill of exchange which Nature gives to the man of genius, and which often has a long time to run before it falls due.”
“That is usury!” cried Margaritis.
“The devil! he’s keen, the old fellow! I’ve made a mistake,” thought Gaudissart, “I must catch him with other chaff. I’ll try humbug No. 1. Not at all,” he said aloud, “for you who – ”
“Will you take a glass of wine?” asked Margaritis.
“With pleasure,” replied Gaudissart.
“Wife, give us a bottle of the wine that is in the puncheons. You are here at the very head of Vouvray,” he continued, with a gesture of the hand, “the vineyard of Margaritis.”
The maid-servant brought glasses and a bottle of wine of the vintage of 1819. The good-man filled a glass with circumspection and offered it to Gaudissart, who drank it up.
“Ah, you are joking, Monsieur!” exclaimed the commercial traveller. “Surely this is Madeira, true Madeira?”
“So you think,” said the fool. “The trouble with our Vouvray wine is that it is neither a common wine, nor a wine that can be drunk with the entremets. It is too generous, too strong. It is often sold in Paris adulterated with brandy and called Madeira. The wine-merchants buy it up, when our vintage has not been good enough for the Dutch and Belgian markets, to mix it with wines grown in the neighborhood of Paris, and call it Bordeaux. But what you are drinking just now, my good Monsieur, is a wine for kings, the pure Head of Vouvray, – that’s it’s name. I have two puncheons, only two puncheons of it left. People who like fine wines, high-class wines, who furnish their table with qualities that can’t be bought in the regular trade, – and there are many persons in Paris who have that vanity, – well, such people send direct to us for this wine. Do you know any one who – ?”
“Let us go on with what we were saying,” interposed Gaudissart.
“We are going on,” said the fool. “My wine is capital; you are capital, capitalist, intellectual capital, capital wine, – all the same etymology, don’t you see? hein? Capital, ‘caput,’ head, Head of Vouvray, that’s my wine, – it’s all one thing.”
“So that you have realized your intellectual capital through your wines? Ah, I see!” said Gaudissart.
“I have realized,” said the lunatic. “Would you like to buy my puncheons? you shall have them on good terms.”
“No, I was merely speaking,” said the illustrious Gaudissart, “of the results of insurance and the employment of intellectual capital. I will resume my argument.”
The lunatic calmed down, and fell once more into position.
“I remarked, Monsieur, that if you die the capital will be paid to your family without discussion.”
“Without discussion?”
“Yes, unless there were suicide.”
“That’s quibbling.”
“No, Monsieur; you are aware that suicide is one of those acts which are easy to prove – ”
“In France,” said the fool; “but – ”
“But in other countries?” said Gaudissart. “Well, Monsieur, to cut short discussion on this point, I will say, once for all, that death in foreign countries or on the field of battle is outside of our – ”
“Then what are you insuring? Nothing at all!” cried Margaritis. “My bank, my Territorial Bank, rested upon – ”
“Nothing at all?” exclaimed Gaudissart, interrupting the good-man. “Nothing at all? What do you call sickness, and afflictions, and poverty, and passions? Don’t go off on exceptional points.”
“No, no! no points,” said the lunatic.
“Now, what’s the result of all this?” cried Gaudissart. “To you, a banker, I can sum up the profits in a few words. Listen. A man lives; he has a future; he appears well; he lives, let us say, by his art; he wants money; he tries to get it, – he fails. Civilization withholds cash from this man whose thought could master civilization, and ought to master it, and will master it some day with a brush, a chisel, with words, ideas, theories, systems. Civilization is atrocious! It denies bread to the men who give it luxury. It starves them on sneers and curses, the beggarly rascal! My words may be strong, but I shall not retract them. Well, this great but neglected man comes to us; we recognize his greatness; we salute him with respect; we listen to him. He says to us: ‘Gentlemen, my life and talents are worth so much; on my productions I will pay you such or such percentage.’ Very good; what do we do? Instantly, without reserve or hesitation, we admit him to the great festivals of civilization as an honored guest – ”
“You need wine for that,” interposed the madman.
“ – as an honored guest. He signs the insurance policy; he takes our bits of paper, – scraps, rags, miserable rags! – which, nevertheless, have more power in the world than his unaided genius. Then, if he wants money, every one will lend it to him on those rags. At the Bourse, among bankers, wherever he goes, even at the usurers, he will find money because he can give security. Well, Monsieur, is not that a great gulf to bridge over in our social system? But that is only one aspect of our work. We insure debtors by another scheme of policies and premiums. We offer annuities at rates graduated according to ages, on a sliding-scale infinitely more advantageous than what are called tontines, which are based on tables of mortality that are notoriously false. Our company deals with large masses of men; consequently the annuitants are secure from those distressing fears which sadden old age, – too sad already! – fears which pursue those who receive annuities from private sources. You see, Monsieur, that we have estimated life under all its aspects.”
“Sucked it at both ends,” said the lunatic. “Take another glass of wine. You’ve earned it. You must line your inside with velvet if you are going to pump at it like that every day. Monsieur, the wine of Vouvray, if well kept, is downright velvet.”
“Now, what do you think of it all?” said Gaudissart, emptying his glass.
“It is very fine, very new, very useful; but I like the discounts I get at my Territorial Bank, Rue des Fosses-Montmartre.”
“You are quite right, Monsieur,” answered Gaudissart; “but that sort of thing is taken and retaken, made and remade, every day. You have also hypothecating banks which lend upon landed property and redeem it on a large scale. But that is a narrow idea compared to our system of consolidating hopes, – consolidating hopes! coagulating, so to speak, the aspirations born in every soul, and insuring the realization of our dreams. It needed our epoch, Monsieur, the epoch of transition – transition and progress – ”
“Yes, progress,” muttered the lunatic, with his glass at his lips. “I like progress. That is what I’ve told them many times – ”
“The ‘Times’!” cried Gaudissart,