Gobseck

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GOBSECK

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC


Translated By
Ellen Marriage



DEDICATION

To M. le Baron Barchou de Penhoen.

Among all the pupils of the Oratorian school at Vendome, we are, I
think, the only two who have afterwards met in mid-career of a
life of letters--we who once were cultivating Philosophy when by
rights we should have been minding our De viris. When we met, you
were engaged upon your noble works on German philosophy, and I
upon this study. So neither of us has missed his vocation; and
you, when you see your name here, will feel, no doubt, as much
pleasure as he who inscribes his work to you.--Your old
schoolfellow,

1840 De Balzac.



GOBSECK

It was one o'clock in the morning, during the winter of 1829-30, but
in the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu's salon two persons stayed on who did
not belong to her family circle. A young and good-looking 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 chimney-piece, apparently examining a
transparent fire-screen, was listening to the sounds from the
courtyard in a way that justified certain maternal fears.

"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
daughter's fortune and future to young Restaud."

"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 opponent. "I shall throw you over and go to your niece's
assistance."

"See what it is to have an attorney's ears!" exclaimed the Vicomtesse.
"My dear Derville, how could you know what I was saying to Camille in
a whisper?"

"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 daughter and Derville.

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

"A story?" cried Camille. "Do begin at once, monsieur."

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 Saint-Germain, 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, became the
house-friend of the family.

By his conduct of Mme. de Grandlieu's affairs he had fairly earned the
esteem of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, 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 Chausee-d'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 youngster' will have as much money as he wishes when he
comes into power."

"Yes, but suppose that he were rich already?"

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

"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."

Camille suddenly rose to go.

"She loves him," Derville thought.

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
generation is apt to repudiate.



"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 five-and-twenty, 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 known. The man in question was a
usurer.

"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 silver-gilt, 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 whether by economy of youth he had
saved enough to last him his life.

"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
coughing-fit, with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was
a clockwork man, wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a wood-louse 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 sensibility in the innermost
sanctuary of Self.

"His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass. 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 monosyllables; he wore the same
non-committal countenance.

"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 his native rock.

"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
following him up the stairs picked up the coin and returned it to its
owner.

"'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 cast-iron
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 seventy-six 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 Jean-Esther 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 interest or
surprise, 'She is my grandniece.'

"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:

"'The women never marry in our family.'

"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 hands after his death simply inconceivable.

"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,
unhoped-for 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 maintain that they belong to the neuter gender.

"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 mantel-shelf, 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 idea--that world which he had explored, ransacked, weighed,
appraised, and exploited.

"'Good day, Daddy Gobseck,' I began.

"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 sharpness you admired so much,
though you were one of his victims.'

"'One of his victims?' he repeated, with a look of astonishment.

"'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
bankrupt firm?'

"'He was a sharp one, but I had it out of him.'

"'Then have you some bills to protest? To-day is the 30th, I
believe.'

"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.'

"'So you amuse yourself now and again?'

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

"'Poetry in that head!' thought I, for as yet I knew nothing of his
life.

"'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 illusions--if 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
hard-and-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 self-interest. 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
is--GOLD. 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 Vanity--Vanity 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 Such-an-One 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 me--as 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 my pleasures.'

"He got up, pushed the bolt of the door, drew a tapestry curtain
across it with a sharp grating sound of the rings on the rod, then he
sat down again.

"'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 brougham--expenses of
collection. A pretty thing it would be, would it not, if my clients
were to set _me_ trudging all over Paris for half-a-dozen francs of
discount, when no man is my master, and I only pay seven francs in the
shape of taxes?

"'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 really represented. Was
it stupidity, imprudence, love or charity?

"'The second bill, bearing the signature "Fanny Malvaut," came to me
from a linen-draper 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 house.