and my steel encountered nothing beyond.
"Judge of my surprise when I applied my eye to
this hole ! I was in the roof of a cave in which a
feeble light permitted me to perceive a mountain of
gold. The Doge and one of the Ten were in this
cavern; I heard their voices; their conversation in-
formed me that this was the secret treasure of the
Republic, the gifts of the Doges and a portion of
booty called the denier of Venice, and taken from
the product of expeditions.
"I was saved!
"When the jailer came, I proposed to him to aid
me in my flight and to go with me, carrying off all
that we could take. There was no question of hesi-
tation ; he accepted. A vessel was about to sail for
the Levant, all precautions were taken. Bianca
favored the plan which I dictated to my confederate.
In order not to excite suspicion, Bianca was to rejoin
us at Smyrna. In one night the hole was enlarged
and we descended into the secret treasury of Venice.
FACING CANE 279
What a night! I saw four casks full of gold. In the
preceding room, the silver was also piled up in two
heaps which left a path in the middle to traverse the
chamber, where the coins in sloping piles rose to
the height of five feet against the walls. I thought
that the jailer would go crazy : he sang, he leaped
about, he laughed, he gamboled in the gold; I
threatened to strangle him if he wasted time or if
he made a noise. In his joy, he did not see at first
a table on which were the diamonds. I threw my-
self upon it cleverly enough to fill my sailor's jacket
and the pockets of my pantaloons. My God ! I did
not take a third of them. Under this table were the
ingots of gold. I persuaded my companion to fill
with gold as many sacks as we could carry, telling
him that this was the only means of avoiding detec-
tion in foreign countries.
" 'Pearls, jewels and diamonds would cause us to
be recognized,' I said to him.
"With all our greediness we could only take two
thousand pounds of gold, which necessitated six
journeys through the prison to the gondola. The
sentinel at the water-gate had been bribed by a sack
of ten pounds of gold. As to the two gondoliers,
they believed themselves serving the Republic. At
day-break we departed. When we were in the open
sea, and when I thought of this night; when I
recalled to myself all the sensations which I had
experienced, when I saw again this immense treas-
ure, where, according to my valuation, I had left
thirty millions in silver and twenty millions in gold,
280 FACING CANE
several millions in pearls, diamonds and rubies, I
felt in myself something like a sensation of mad-
ness. I had the fever of gold.
"We disembarked at Smyrna, and we took ship
again immediately for France. As we went on board
the French vessel, God did me the favor to relieve
me of my confederate. At that moment I did not
think of all the consequences of this chance evil, at
which I so rejoiced. We were so completely un-
nerved that we remained stupefied, saying nothing
to each other, while waiting till we should be in
safety to enjoy ourselves at our ease. It is not sur-
prising that this scamp lost his head. You will see
how God punished me !
"I did not feel easy until I had sold two-thirds
of my diamonds in London and in Amsterdam, and
converted my gold-dust into commercial obligations.
During five years I hid myself in Madrid; then, in
1770, I came to Paris under a Spanish name and led
a most brilliant life. Bianca was dead. In the
midst of my pleasures, while I was enjoying a for-
tune of six millions, I was struck with blindness. I
do not doubt that this infirmity was the result of my
sojourn in the cell, of my working in the stone, if,
however, my faculty of seeing gold had not carried
with it an abuse of the visual power which predes-
tined me to lose my sight
"At this time, I was in love with a woman to
whom I thought to unite my fate. I had revealed to
her the secret of my name : she belonged to a power-
ful family. I had great hopes in the favor which
FACING CANE
Louis XV. accorded me ; I had put all my confidence
in this woman, who was the friend of Madame du
Barry; she advised me to consult a famous oculist
in London ; but after some months spent in that
city, I was abandoned there by this woman in Hyde
Park. She had stripped me of all my fortune without
leaving me any resource; for, obliged to conceal my
name, which would have delivered me to the ven-
geance of Venice, I could not invoke the assistance
of any one ; I feared Venice. My infirmity was made
the most of by the spies with whom this woman had
surrounded me. I spare you the recital of adven-
tures worthy of Gil Bias. Your Revolution arrived.
I was obliged to become an inmate of the Quinze-
Vingts, to which this creature caused me to be ad-
mitted after having kept me for two years at the
BicStre as a lunatic. I have never been able to kill
her. I could not see, and I was too poor to buy an
arm. If, before losing Benedetto Carpi, my jailer,
I had consulted him on the situation of my cell, I
would have been able to find again the treasury and
would have returned to Venice when the Repub-
lic was abolished by Napoleon
"Nevertheless, notwithstanding my blindness, let
us go to Venice ! I will find again the door of the
prison ; I will see the gold through the walls, I will
smell it under the waters in which it is buried; for
the events which have overthrown the power of
Venice are such that the secret of this treasure must
have died with Vendramino, the brother of Bianca,
a Doge, who, I hoped, would have made my peace
282 FACING CANE
with the Ten. I sent letters to the First Consul, I
proposed a treaty to the Emperor of Austria; every-
where have I been refused as a madman ! Come, let
us set out for Venice; we will depart beggars, we
will come back millionaires; we will re-purchase
my property and you shall be my heir, you shall be
Prince de Varese!"
Stupefied by this confidence, which in my imagi-
nations took the proportions of a poem, at the aspect
of this whitened head, and before the black water
of the moat of the Bastille, a water as still as that
of the canals of Venice, I did not reply. Facino
Cane thought, doubtless, that I judged him like all
the others, with a scornful pity ; he made a gesture
which expressed all the philosophy of despair.
This recital had carried him back, perhaps, to his
happy days at Venice: he seized his clarionet and
began to play in a melancholy manner a Venetian
ballad, a barcarolle for which he found his early
skill, his talent of the amorous patrician. It was
something 1 ike the Super flumina Babylonis. My eyes
filled with tears. If some belated passers-by hap-
pened to pass along the Boulevard Bourdon, doubt-
less they lingered to hear this last prayer of the
banished, the last regret of a lost name, in which
was mingled the memory of Bianca. But the gold
soon regained the ascendancy, and the fatal passion
extinguished the light of youth.
"This treasure," he said to me, "I see it every-
where, awakened as in a dream ; I walk there, the
diamonds glitter before me; I am not so blind as you
FACING CANE 283
think; the gold and the diamonds light up my night,
the night of the last Facino Cane, for my title passes
to the Memmi. My God ! the punishment of the
murderer commenced early ! Ave Maria "
He recited some prayers which I did not hear.
"We will go to Venice!" I said to him when he
rose.
"I have then found a man!" he cried, his face
lighting up.
I conducted him home, giving him my arm ; he
grasped my hand at the door of the Quinze-Vingts,
at the moment when some of the guests at the
wedding were returning and making a noise suffi-
cient to waken the dead.
"Shall we set out to-morrow?" said the old man.
"As soon as we have a little money."
"But we can go on foot, I will ask alms. I am
robust, and one is young when one sees gold before
him."
Facino Cane died during the winter, after having
languished for two months. The poor man had a
catarrh.
Paris, March, 1836.
A MAN OF BUSINESS
TO MONSIEUR LE BARON JAMES DE ROTHSCHILD,
CONSUL-GENERAL OF AUSTRIA AT PARIS, BANKER
(287)
A MAN OF BUSINESS
Lorette is a decent word invented to express the
state of a young girl or the young girl of a state
difficult to indicate, and which, in its modesty, the
French Academy has neglected to define, in consid-
eration of the age of its forty members. When a
new name is applicable to a social case which can-
not be otherwise expressed without periphrase, the
fortune of that word is made. Thus la lorette has
passed into all classes of society, even into those in
which a lorette herself will never pass. The word
was only made in 1840, doubtless owing to the
accumulation of these nests of swallows around the
church dedicated to Notre-Dame de Lorette. This
is only written for the etymologists. These gentle-
men would not be so much embarrassed if the
writers of the Middle Ages had taken the pains to
describe manners and customs, as we do in these
times of analysis and of description. Mademoiselle
Turquet, or Malaga, for she is much better known
under her nom de guerre see The Pretended Mistress
is one of the first parishioners of this charming
church. This joyful and spirituelle young woman,
possessing as her fortune only her beauty, furnished,
19 (289)
290 A MAN OF BUSINESS
at the moment of which this history relates, the
happiness of a notary who had in his notaress a
wife a trifle too devout, a trifle too stiff, a trifle too
dry to find happiness at home. Now, on an evening
of the Carnival, Maitre Cardot had regaled, at
Mademoiselle Turquet's, Desroches the advocate,
Bixiou the caricaturist, Lousteau the feuilletonist,
and Nathan, whose illustrious names in LA COMEDIE
HUMAINE render superfluous any kind of portrait
The young La Palferine, notwithstanding his title
of comte de vieille roche, rock, alas! without any
vein of metal in it, had honored with his presence
the illegitimate domicile of the notary. If one does
not dine in the house of a lorette in order to eat
there the patriarchal beef, the meagre chicken of
the conjugal table and the family salad, neither is
one expected to hold there the hypocritical discourses
which take place in a salon furnished by virtuous
female bourgeoises. Ah! when will good manners
be attractive? when will the women of the fashion-
able world show a little less of their shoulders and a
little more of good humor or of wit? Marguerite
Turquet, the Aspasia of the Cirque-Olympique, is
one of those fresh and lively natures to whom every-
thing is forgiven because of their candor in the fault
and their spirit in the repentance, to whom you say,
as did Cardot, clever enough, although a notary, to
say to her : "Cheat me cleverly !" Do not believe,
however, in any enormity. Desroches and Cardot
were two too good fellows and too old in the trade not
to be on a level with Bixiou, Lousteau, Nathan and
A MAN OF BUSINESS 29!
the young count And these gentlemen, having
often had recourse to the two officers of the law,
knew them too intimately to, in lorette phrase/'make
them pose." The conversation, perfumed by the
fragrance of seven cigars, fantastic at first as a goat
at liberty, concentrated finally on that strategy which
creates at Paris the incessant battle waged between
the creditors and the debtors. Now, if you will
give yourself the trouble to remember the life and
the antecedents of the guests, you will recognize
that it would have been difficult to have found in
Paris persons better instructed in this matter,
some emeritus, the others artists, they resembled
magistrates joking with the accused. A series of de-
signs sketched by Bixiou on Clichy had been the
cause of the direction which the discourse had taken.
It was midnight These personages, variously
grouped in the salon around the table and before the
fire, were discoursing in turns that not only are
comprehensible and possible only in Paris, but
which, still more, are only made and can only be
understood in the zone described by the Faubourg
Montmartre and by the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin,
between the heights of the Rue de Navarin and the
line of the boulevards.
In ten minutes, the profound reflections, the great
and the little moral, all the quibbles, were exhausted
on this subject, already exhausted about 1500 by
Rabelais. It was not of small merit to renounce
this display of fireworks terminated by this last
squib contributed by Malaga:
292 A MAN OF BUSINESS
"All this turns to the profit of the bootmaker,"
said she. "I have left a milliner who failed me in
two hats. She came raging twenty-seven times to
demand of me twenty francs. She did not know
that we never have twenty francs. One has a
thousand francs, one sends to one's notary for five
hundred francs ; but twenty francs, I have never had
them. My cook or my femme de chambre have
perhaps twenty francs between them. For myself,
I have only credit, and I should lose that in borrow-
ing twenty francs. If I should ask for twenty francs,
nothing would any longer distinguish me from my
confreres who promenade along the boulevard."
"Has the milliner been paid?" said La Palferine.
"Ah, there! are you getting stupid, you there?"
she said to La Palferine, winking at him; "she
came this morning for the twenty-seventh time;
that is why I tell you about it"
"What did you do?" said Desroches.
"I took pity on her, and I ordered of her the
little hat which 1 have ended by inventing in order
to get away from commonplace style. If Made-
moiselle Amanda succeeds, she will ask nothing more
of me; her fortune is made."
"That which I have seen of the finest in this
species of contest," said Maitre Desroches, "paints,
it seems to me, Paris, for those who practice it,
much better than all the pictures which they are
forever painting of a fantastic Paris. You think
yourselves pretty strong, you others," he said,
looking at Nathan and Lousteau, Bixiou and La
A MAN OF BUSINESS 293
Palrerine; "but the king in this respect is a certain
count who, at the present time, is occupying himself
with coming to an end, and who, in his time, has
passed for the most skilful, the most adroit, the most
foxy, the most instructed, the most daring, the most
subtle, the firmest, the most foreseeing of all the
corsairs in yellow gloves, in cabriolets, with beauti-
ful manners, who have navigated, navigate and will
navigate on the stormy sea of Paris. Without faith
or law, his private politics have been directed by the
principles which direct those of the English cabinet
Up to the time of his marriage, his life was a con-
tinual warfare like that of Lousteau," he said
"I have been and I am still his advocate."
"And the first letter of his name is Maxime de
Trailles," said La Palferine.
"He has, moreover, always paid, has never
wronged anyone," resumed Desroches; "but, as
our friend Bixiou had just remarked, to pay in
March that which you do not wish to pay till Octo-
ber is an attack on personal liberty. By virtue of
an article of his particular code, Maxime considered
as a swindling the means which one of his creditors
employed to be paid immediately. For a long time
the bill of exchange had been comprehended by him
in all its consequences, immediate and mediate. A
young man spoke of the bill of exchange in my
place before him as: 'The Asses' Bridge!' 'No,'
said he, 'it is The Bridge of Sighs; one never
returns. ' Thus his science in matters of commercial
jurisprudence was so complete that a procurator
294 A MAN OF BUSINESS
could have taught him nothing. You know that at
that time he possessed nothing; his carriage, his
horses were hired; he lived with his valet de
chambre, for whom, it is said, he will always be a
great man, even after the marriage which he will
make ! A member of three clubs, he dined at one of
them when he had no invitation out Generally,
he used his domicile so little "
"He said to me, to me," cried La Palferine, inter-
rupting Desroches: " 'my only fatuity is to pretend
that 1 live in the Rue Pigalle.' "
"There is one of the two combatants," resumed
Desroches; "now, then, here is the other. You
have heard more or less spoken of a certain Clap-
aron."
"He wears his hair in this way," cried Bixiou,
making his hair stand on end.
And, gifted with the same talent that Chopin, the
pianist, possessed in so high a degree, that of coun-
terfeiting people, he represented the personage on
the instant with a frightful truthfulness.
"He rolls his head this way in speaking; he
has been a traveling salesman, he has tried all
trades"
"Well, he was born for traveling, for he is, at
this moment while I am talking to you, on his way
to America," said Desroches. "There is no other
chance for him but that, for he will probably be
condemned by contumacy for fraudulent bankruptcy
at the coming Session."
"A man overboard," cried Malaga.
A MAN OF BUSINESS 29$
"This Claparon," resumed Desroches, "was dur-
ing six or seven years the screen, the man of straw,
the scapegoat, of two of our friends, Du Tillet and
Nucingen; but, in 1829, his part was so well known
that"
"Our friends dropped him," said Bixiou.
"In short, they abandoned him to his destiny;
and," resumed Desroches, "he rolled in the mud.
In 1833, he associated himself to carry on business
with a man named Cerizet "
"What! he who in the matter of stock companies
got up one with such a pretty combination that the
sixth chamber knocked him over with two years in
prison?" asked the lorette.
"The same," replied Desroches. "Under the
Restoration, the trade of this Cerizet consisted, from
1823 to 1827, in signing intrepidly articles pursued
inveterately by the public minister, and in going to
prison. A man rendered himself illustrious cheaply
at that time. The Liberal Party called its depart-
ment champion THE COURAGEOUS CERIZET. This
zeal was recompensed about 1828 by the gen-
eral interest. The general interest is a species of
civic crown awarded by the newspapers. Cerizet
wished to discount the general interest; he came to
Paris, where, under the patronage of the bankers of
the Left, he made his debut by a business agency,
combined with banking operations, with funds
loaned by a man who had banished himself, a
player too skilful, whose funds, in July, 1830, had
foundered in company with the Ship of State "
296 A MAN OF BUSINESS
"Eh! it is that which we have surnamed the
Method of the cards ! " cried Bixiou.
"Do not speak evil of that poor fellow," cried
Malaga. "D'Estourny was a good boy!"
"You can understand the r6Ie which a ruined
man might be expected to play in 1830 who was
known, politically speaking, as the courageous Cer-
izet! He was sent into a very pretty sub-prefec-
ture," resumed Desroches. "Unfortunately for
Cerizet, authority has not as much ingenuity as
have the parties, who, during the fight, make pro-
jectiles of everything. Cerizet was obliged to send
in his resignation after three months of service.
Had he not taken it into his head to wish to be pop-
ular ! As he had not yet done anything to lose his title
of nobility the courageous Cerizet! the govern-
ment proposed to him, as an indemnity, to become
director of an opposition journal which should be
ministerial in petto. Thus it was the government
who perverted this fine character. Cerizet, finding
himself a little too much in his directorship like a
bird on a rotten bough, launched himself into that
pretty stock-company where he unluckily, as you
have just said, caught two years in prison, but in
which the sharpest of them entrapped the public."
"We know the sharpest of them," said Bixiou;
"do not slander that poor fellow, he is trapped!
Couture let his cash be caught there ; who would
ever have thought it!"
"Cerizet is, moreover, an ignoble man, and one
whom the evils of vulgar debauch have disfigured,"
A MAN OF BUSINESS 297
resumed Desroches. "Let us return to the promised
duel! Then, never did two traders of the worst
species, of the worst manners, more ignoble in
aspect, associate themselves together to carry on a
dirtier business. For funds to provide for the run-
ning expenses, they counted on that species of slang
which is given by the knowledge of Paris, the
hardihood which is given by poverty, the trickery
which is given by the habits of business, the
science which is given by the knowledge of Paris-
ian fortunes, of their origin, of their relations, the
acquaintances and intrinsic values of each one.
This association of two carotteurs, excuse the word,
the only one which can, in the slang of the Bourse,
describe them to you, was of short duration. Like
two famished dogs, they fought over each bit of car-
rion. The first speculations of the house of Cerizet
and Claparon were, however, sufficiently well con-
trived. These two rogues associated themselves
with the Barbets, the Chaboisseaus, the Samanons
and other usurers from whom they bought doubt-
ful claims. The Claparon agency was then situ-
ated in a little entresol of the Rue Chabannais,
composed of five rooms, and the rent of which did
not amount to more than seven hundred francs.
Each partner slept in a little chamber which,
through prudence, was kept so carefully closed that
my master clerk was never able to penetrate them.
The offices consisted of an antechamber, a salon,
and a cabinet of which the furniture would not have
brought three hundred francs at the auctioneers'.
298 A MAN OF BUSINESS
You know Paris well enough to be able to see the
arrangement of the two offices: haircloth chairs,
a table with a green cloth, a mean clock between
two candlesticks under glass which bored to look
at, before a little mirror with a gilded frame,
on a chimney-piece the fire-brands in which
were, according to my master clerk, two years old!
As to the cabinet, you can guess it : many paste-
board boxes and little business! a common portfolio
for each partner; then in the middle the cylin-
drical desk empty as the cash-box! two working
chairs on each side of a chimney-piece with a coal
fire. On the floor was laid a carpet, second-hand,
like the credits. In short, it was that stuff
mahogany which is sold in our offices during
fifty years from predecessor to successor. You are
now acquainted with each of the two adversaries.
Well, in the first three months of their association,
which was liquidated by blows of the fist at the end
of seven months, Cerizet and Claparon bought two
thousand francs' worth of paper signed Maxime
since Maxime there is and stuffed the two portfoN
iosfull judgment, appeal, decree, execution, report,
in short, a credit of three thousand two hundred
francs and some centimes which they had for five
hundred francs by a conveyance under private sig-
nature, with special power of attorney to act in
order to avoid the costs. At that time, Maxime,
already ripe, had one of those caprices peculiar to
men of fifty "
"Antonia!" cried La Palferine, "that Antonia
A MAN OF BUSINESS 299
whose fortune had been made by a letter in which I
reclaimed a tooth brush from her !"
"Her real name is Chocardelle," said Malaga,
whom this pretentious name vexed.
"That's the one," resumed Desroches.
"Maxime had committed this fault only this once
in all his life; but, what would you have, vice is
not perfect!" said Bixiou.
"Maxime was still ignorant of the life which one
leads with a little girl of eighteen who wishes to
throw herself, head first, out of her honest garret to
fall into a sumptuous equipage," resumed Desroches,
"and statesmen should know everything. At this
epoch, De Marsay had just employed his friend, our
friend, in the high comedy of politics. A man of
great conquests, Maxime had known only titled
women ; and, at fifty, he certainly had the right to
bite into a little fruit said to be wild, like a hunter
who stops in a peasant's field under an apple tree.
The count found for Mademoiselle Chocardelle a lit-
tle literary establishment sufficiently elegant, a great
opportunity, as always "
"Bah! she did not stay there six months," said
Nathan; "she was too handsome to keep a literary
establishment."
"Are you the father of her child? " said the
lorette to Nathan.
"One morning," resumed Desroches, "Cerizet,
who, since the purchase of Maxime's notes, had
arrived by degrees at the style of the first clerk of
a bailiff, was introduced, after seven unavailing
300 A MAN OF BUSINESS
attempts, into the count's apartments. Suzon, the
old valet de chambre, though expert, had come to