lent thing.' And Rastignac proceeded to develop to
her his theory upon marriage, which, according to
him, is a commercial society instituted to support
life. 'I do not ask your secret,' said he, in conclu-
sion, to Malvina, 'I know it. Men talk about every-
thing among themselves, just as you do when you
go out after dinner. Well, then, this is my last
word: Get married. If you do not get married,
remember that I begged you here, this evening, to
get married!' Rastignac spoke with a certain
accent which commanded, not attention, but reflec-
tion. His insistence was of a nature to surprise.
Malvina was so much struck with it in her keenest
intelligence, which Rastignac wished to reach, that
she was still thinking of it the next day, and un-
availingly sought to discover the reason for this
advice."

"I do not see in all these peg-tops which you set
off, anything which resembles the origin of Ras-
tignac's fortune, and you take us for the Matifats
multiplied by six bottles of champagne!" cried
Couture.

"We are there," replied Bixiou. "You have



70 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN

followed the course of all the little streams which
have made the forty thousand francs of income
which so many people envy ! Rastignac then held
in his hands the thread of all these existences."

"Desroches, the Matifats, Beaudenord, the
d'Aldriggers, d'Aiglemont?"

"And of a hundred others! " said Bixiou.

"Well, now, how?" cried Finot "I know a good
many things, and I do not see the answer to this
enigma."

"Blondet has described to you briefly the first
two liquidations of Nucingen, here is the third in
detail," resumed Bixiou. "At the Peace of 1815,
Nucingen had comprehended that which we only
understand to-day, that money is a power only
when it is in disproportionate quantities. He was
secretly jealous of the brothers Rothschild. He
possessed five millions, he wished to have ten!
With ten millions he would know how to gain
thirty, and with five he would only have fifteen.
He had therefore resolved to bring about a third
liquidation ! This great man consequenty planned to
pay his creditors with fictitious values while keep-
ing their money. On the exchanges, an operation
of this kind does not present itself in quite such a
mathematical expression. A liquidation of this kind
consists in giving a little pate for a golden louis to
big children, who, like the little children formerly,
preferred the p^te to the coin, without knowing that
for the coin they could have two hundred pates."

"What is it you are saying to us, Bixiou?" cried



THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 71

Couture, "but nothing is more fair, there is not a
week goes by nowadays without some one pre-
senting pates to the public and demanding a louis
for each. But is the public forced to give its
money? has it not the right to inform itself?"

"You would like it better if compelled to buy its
shares of stock," said Blondet

"No," said Finot, "or where would be our
smartness?"

"That is very good for Finot," said Bixiou.

"Who gave him that idea?" asked Couture.

"In short," resumed Bixiou, "Nucingen had had
on two occasions the happinesses of giving, without
intending it, a pate which came to possess more
value than he had received. This unlucky good
fortune had caused him remorse. Happiness such
as this, ends by killing a man. He waited during
ten years for an occasion in which he would not
deceive himself, in which to create values that
should have the appearance of being worth some-
thing and which "

"But," said Couture, "with this explanation of
banking, no commerce is possible. More than one
honest banker has persuaded, under the approval of
a loyal government, the most able treasurers to
accept funds which in the course of time have
become depreciated. You have seen better than
that! Have there not been issued, always with the
advice, with the support of governments, securities
with which to pay the interest of certain funds, in
order to maintain their circulation and to enable



72 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN

them to be disposed of? These operations have
more or less analogy with liquidation in the manner
of Nucingen."

"In small affairs," said Blondet, "the transac-
tion might appear singular ; but on a great scale it
is high financiering. There are certain arbitrary
acts which 'are criminal between individuals, but
which amount to nothing when they are expanded
through any multitude whatever, like a drop of
Prussic acid which becomes harmless in a tub of
water. You kill a man and you are guillotined.
But, with any governmental conviction whatever,
you kill five hundred men, the political crime is
respected. You take five thousand francs from my
writing-desk, you go to the galleys. But, with the
pimento of a profit to make, skilfully put in the
mouths of a thousand purse-holders, you force them
to take the stocks of I-know-not-what republic or
monarchy in default, issued, as Couture says, to
pay the interest of these same stocks, no one can
complain. These are the true principles of the age
of gold in which we live!"

"The setting in operation of so vast a ma-
chine," resumed Bixiou, "required a great many
punchinellos. In the first place, the house of Nucin-
gen had knowingly, and with design, employed its
five millions in an American enterprise, the profits of
which had been calculated in such a manner as to
come in too late. They had been put out of the
way with premeditation. Every liquidation should
be justified. The bank possessed in individual funds



THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 73

and in values issued about six millions. Among the
individual funds were the three hundred thousand
francs of the Baroness d'Aldrigger, the four hundred
thousand of Beaudenord, a million belonging to
d'Aiglemont, three hundred thousand francs to
Matifat, a half million to Charles Grandet, the hus-
band of Mademoiselle d'Aubrion, etc. If he had
created himself some industrial enterprise with the
shares of which he proprosed to satisfy his creditors
by means of manoeuvres more or less skilful,
Nucingen might have been suspected, but he went
about it with much more adroitness : he caused it to
be created by another! that machine destined to
play the part which the Mississippi did in the sys-
tem of Law. The peculiar quality of Nucingen
is to make the most able negotiators serve his
projects without communiating his own to them.
Nucingen accordingly let slip before Du Tillet a
suggestion of this pyramidal and victorious scheme
of getting up an enterprise by subscription with a
capital sufficiently large to pay very heavy interest
to the shareholders at first If tried for the first
time, at a period when there was an abundance of
credulous capital, this combination should bring
about a rise in the shares, and consequently a bene-
fit for the banker who issued them. Remember
that this was in 1826. Although struck with this
idea, fruitful as ingenious, Du Tillet naturally
reflected that, if the enterprise did not succeed, there
would be some blame laid somewhere. Therefore,
he would suggest putting forward some visible



74 THE HOUSE OF NUC1NGEN

director for this commercial machine. You know
to-day the secret of the house of Claparon, founded
by Du Tillet, one of his finest inventions! "

"Yes," said Blondet, "the responsible financial
editor, the agent that prepares the way, the scape-
goat ; but, to-day, we are more clever, we put out :
'Address the Management of the thing, such a street,
such a number,' where the public will find employes
in green caps, pretty as bailiff's men."

"Nucingen had supported the house of Charles
Claparon with all his credit," resumed Bixiou. "A
million of the paper of Claparon could be issued
without any fear on some exchanges. Du Tillet
proposed, therefore, to bring the house of Claparon
forward. Adopted. In 1825, the shareholder was
not spoiled in industrial enterprises. The funds
destined to provide for running expenses were un-
known ! The directors did not undertake to ever
issue their interest-bearing shares; they deposited
nothing in the Bank of France, they guaranteed
nothing. The shareholder could not expect to have
the workings of the company explained to him when
informed that he was fortunate in not having more
than a thousand, or more than five hundred, or even
two hundred and fifty francs demanded of him ! It
was not published that the experience in cere publico
would only endure for seven years, five years or
even three years, and that therefore the denouement
would not have to be long waited for. It was the
infancy of the art! There had not even been called
in the publicity of those gigantic announcements by



THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 75

which imaginations are now stimulated, by demand-
ing money from everyone "

"This happens when no one wishes to subscribe,"
said Couture.

"In short, the competition in this sort of enter-
prises did not exist," resumed Bixiou. "The
manufacturers of papier-mache, of printed calicoes,
the rollers of zinc, the theatres, the newspapers,
did not throw themselves in like dogs of the chase
at 'the death' of the expiring shareholder. The
fine affairs by subscription, as Couture says, so
ingenuously published, supported by the reports of
experts the princes of science! were then trans-
acted shamefacedly in the silence and in the obscur-
ity of the Bourse. The monetary lynxes executed,
financially speaking, the air of the Calumny of
the Barber of Sevilk. They went piano, piano,
proceeding by light cancans, on the good qualities
of the enterprise, spoken from ear to ear. They did
not exploit the patient, the shareholder, only at his
house, at the Bourse, or in society, by that rumor
skilfully created, and which increased to the tutti of
a number of four figures "

"But, since we are among ourselves and can say
anything, I return to our subject," said Couture.

"You are a goldsmith, Monsieur Josse!" said
Finot

"Finot will remain classical, constitutional, and
bewigged," said Blondet

"Yes, I am a goldsmith," resumed Couture, "see-
ing that Cerizet has been condemned by the police



76 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN

tribunals. I maintain that the new method is
infinitely less treacherous, more honest, less assas-
sinating, than the old one. The publicity allows
of reflection and examination. If any stock-
holder is gullible, he comes to it deliberately; he
has not been made to purchase 'a pig in a poke.'
Industry "

"Ah! now we are coming to industry!" cried
Bixiou.

"Industry would profit by it," said Couture,
without paying any attention to the interruption.
"Every government that interferes with commerce
and does not leave it unrestricted, undertakes a
costly folly; it brings about either the maximum or
the monopoly. To my thinking, nothing is more
conformable to the principles of the liberty of com-
merce than the societies of shareholders! To
meddle with them, is to answer for both capital
and profits, which is stupid. In every transaction,
the profits are in proportion to the risks! What
matters it to the state the manner in which is
brought about the free circulation of money, pro-
vided that it be kept in perpetual activity? What
matter who is rich, who is poor, if there is always
the same quantity of taxable wealth ? Moreover, for
the last twenty years the societies of shareholders,
stock-companies, premiums under all possible
forms, have been in use in the most commer-
cial country in the world, in England, where every-
thing is disputed, where Parliament hatches out a
thousand or twelve hundred laws each session, and



THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 77

where a member of either House has never risen to
speak against the method "

"Curative for full coffers, and a vegetarian one!"
said Bixiou; "carrots!" *

"Come now!" said Couture, excitedly. "You
have ten thousand francs, you take ten shares of a
thousand each in ten different enterprises. You are
robbed nine times this is not so! the public is
wiser than any one person ! but I make the suppo-
sition one enterprise alone succeeds by chance !
agreed ! it has not been made expressly ! oh, go
ahead! talk nonsense! Well, the punter who is
wise enough thus to divide up his forces will find a
superb investment, as did those who took the shares
of the mines of Wortschin. Messieurs, let us admit
among ourselves that the people who cry out are the
hypocrites in despair at having neither the concep-
tion of an enterprise, nor the power to proclaim it,
nor the skill to exploit it The proof will not long
be waited for. In a little while you will see the
aristocracy, the people of the Court, the ministeri-
alists, descending in solid columns into business
speculations, and reaching out hands more grasping
and finding more tortuous ideas than ours, without
having our superiority. What a head it requires
to set on foot a good enterprise at an epoch in
which the avidity of the shareholder is equal to that
of the inventor ! What a great magnetizer must be
the man who creates a Claparon, who finds new
expedients ! Do you know the moral of all this ?

* Garotte, a trick for obtaining money by skill or deception.



78 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN

Our time is no better than we are! We live in an
epoch of avidity in which no one concerns himself
about the value of a thing, provided he can make
something on it and pass it on to his neighbor ; and
it is passed on to the neighbor because the avidity
of the shareholder, who hopes for a profit, is equal
to that of the founder who proposed one to him !"

"Isn't he fine, Couture, isn't he fine!" said
Bixiou to Blondet; "he is going to ask that statues
be erected to him, as to a benefactor of humanity."

"It will be necessary to bring him to conclude
that the money of fools is, by right divine, the
patrimony of clever men," said Blondet

"Messieurs," resumed Couture, "let us laugh
here in return for the seriousness which we preserve
elsewhere, when we hear uttered the respectable
stupidities which consecrate the laws made without
forethought"

"He is right What a time, Messieurs," said
Blondet, "is that in which as soon as the fire of
intelligence appears it is quickly extinguished by
the application of a circumstantial law! The legis-
lators, nearly all of them come from little arron-
dissements where they have made their social
studies in the newspapers, put the fire in the engine.
When the engine blows up, then there are tears and
grindings of teeth! A time in which the only laws
made are fiscal and penal ! The true word of all that
happens, do you wish to know it! 'There is no
longer any religion in the state! ' '

"Ah!" said Bixiou, "bravo, Blondet! you have



THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 79

put your finger on the tender spot of France, the
code of fiscal laws, which has taken more conquests
from our country than all the vexations of war. In
the ministry where I served seven years at the
galleys, yoked with the bourgeois, there was an
employe, a man of talent, who had resolved to change
the entire financial system ah ! well, we very soon
dismissed him. France had been too happy, she
would have amused herself by reconquering Europe,
and we acted in the interest of the repose of nations.
I killed Rabourdin by a caricature!" See The
Civil Service.

"When I said religion, I did not mean to say a
stupid Capuchin's sermon ; I understand the word
in a grand political sense," resumed Blondet

"Explain yourself," said Finot

"In this way," continued Blondet. "There has
been much talk of the affairs at Lyons, of the
Republic cannonaded in the streets; no one has told
the truth. The Republic took possession of the riot
just as an insurgent grasps a gun. The real truth,
I will give it to you, both absurd and profound.
The commerce of Lyons is a commerce without any
soul, which does not manufacture a yard of silk
unless it is ordered and unless the payment is sure.
When the orders cease, the workman dies of hunger;
he earns with difficulty enough to live on when he
works. The galley slaves are happier than he.
After the Revolution of July, the misery reached
such a point that the CANUTS* hoisted the flag,

* Ganut, operative In the silk factories of Lyons.



80 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN

'Bread or death!' one of those proclamations which
the government should study ; it was produced by the
dearness of living at Lyons. Lyons wished to build
theatres and to become a capital, hence came sense-
less octroi duties. The Republicans scented this
revolt in the cause of bread, and they organized the
Canuts, who fought in two parties. Lyons has had
its three days, but everything has returned to order
and the Canut into his hole. The Canut, honest up
to this period, returning in the woven stuff the silk
which was weighed out to him in hanks, has turned
his honesty out of the door, believing that the mer-
chant had victimized him, and has put oil on his
fingers, he has returned weight for weight, but he
had sold oil represented as silk, and the trade in
French silks has been infested with 'loaded silks,'
which may bring about the destruction of Lyons
and that of a branch of the commerce of France.
The manufacturers and the government, instead of
suppressing the cause of the evil, have, like certain
physicians, driven in the disease by a violent
topical remedy. There should have been sent to
Lyons a skilful man, one of those who are called
immoral, an Abbe Terray, but the situation was
looked at only from the military point of view!
The troubles, therefore, have produced gros-grain at
forty sous the aune. This gros-grain, it can be
said, is sold to-day, and the manufacturers have
doubtless invented 1 know not what system of veri-
fication. This method of manufacture without fore-
thought is naturally established in a country in



THE HOUSE OF NUC1NGEN 8 1

which RICHARD LENOIR, one of the greatest citizens
which France ever had, had ruined himself by giving
employment to six thousand workmen without
any orders, by supporting them, and had found
ministers stupid enough to let him succumb to the
revolution which 1814 brought about in the price of
stuffs. This is the only case in which a merchant
has merited a statue. Well, this man is to-day the
object of the subscription to which there are no sub-
scribers, whilst a million has been raised for the
children of General Foy. Lyons is consistent; it
knows France ; it is without any religious sentiment
The story of Richard Lenoir is one of those faults
which Fouche found to be worse than a crime."

"If in the manner in which affairs present them-
selves," resumed Couture, going back to the point
where he was before the interruption, "there is a
tinge of charlatanism, a word which has become dis-
honoring and set astride the partition-wall between
the just and the unjust, I demand where com-
mences, or where finishes, charlatanism, what is
charlatanism ? Have the kindness to tell me who is
not a charlatan ? Come, now, let us have a little
good faith, the rarest social ingredient! That com-
merce which should consist in going to seek at
night that which could be sold in the day would
be nonsense. A seller of matches has the instinct
of monopoly. To monopolize merchandise is the
idea of the shop-keeper of the Rue Saint-Denis,
called the most virtuous, as of the speculator called
the most shameless. When the stores are full, there

6



82 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN

is a necessity to sell. To sell, it is necessary to
excite the customer, hence the sign of the
Middle Ages and the advertisement of to-day!
Between calling in the customers and forcing them
to enter, to purchase, I do not see the difference of
a hair ! It may happen, it should happen, it often
does happen, that merchants get caught with dam-
aged merchandise, for the seller is incessantly
cheating the buyer. Well, consult the most honest
people in Paris, the distinguished merchants, in
short, they will all relate to you triumphantly the
trick which they have invented to get rid of their
merchandise when it has been sold to them in a
damaged condition. The famous House of Minard
commenced by sales of this description. The Rue
Saint-Denis will only sell you a dress of loaded
silk; it has no other. The most virtuous merchant
will repeat to you with the most candid air this
phrase of the most brazen dishonesty: 'You get
out of a bad bargain the best way you can.' Blon-
det has shown you the affair of Lyons in its causes
and in its consequences; for my part, I will get to
the application of my theory by an anecdote. A
workman in wool, ambitious and overloaded with
children by a wife too much loved, believes in the
Republic. My fine fellow bought a lot of red wool
and made these caps in knitted wool which you may
have seen on the heads of all the gamins of Paris,
and you will know why. The Republic was over-
come. After the affair of Saint- Merri, the caps were
unsalable. When a workman finds himself in his



THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 83

household with a wife, children and ten thousand
red woolen caps which no hatter on any shore
wants, there come into his head as many ideas as
would present themselves to a banker loaded with
ten millions of shares to place in an enterprise which
he mistrusts. Do you know what he did, this work-
man, this Law of the Faubourgs, this Nucingen
of caps ? He hunted up a dandy of the taverns,
one of those fellows who are the despair of the
police sergeants in the Bals Champe'tres of the bar-
riers, and requested him to play the part of an
American captain trading in colonial goods, stop-
ping at the Hotel Meurice, to go and inquire for ten
thousand red woolen caps at the establishment of a
rich hatter who had still one of them in his stock.
The hatter foresaw a large transaction in America,
he hastened to the workman and eagerly took pos-
session of all the caps, cash down. You understand,
no more American captain, but a great many caps.
To attack commercial liberty because of these in-
conveniences, would be to attack justice under
the pretext that there are delinquencies which it
does not punish, or to accuse society of being badly
organized because of the misfortunes to which it
gives rise ! From caps and the Rue Saint-Denis to
shares of stock and the Bank of France, draw your
own conclusions!"

"Couture, a crown!" said Blondet, placing on his
head his twisted napkin. "I go farther, Messieurs.
If there be a vice in the actual theory, whose is the
fault? that of the law! the law considered in its



84 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN

entire system, legislation ! of those great men of the
arrondissements whom the provinces send puffed up
with moral ideas, ideas indispensable in the conduct
of life, at least to combat by the side of justice, but
stupid as soon as they prevent a man from lifting
himself to the height at which the legislator should
maintain himself. Though the laws may forbid to the
passions such or such a development gambling, the
lottery, the Ninons of the barriers, whatever you
like, they will never extirpate the passions. To
kill the passions, that would be to kill society,
which, if it does not engender them, at least devel-
ops them. Thus, if you fetter with restrictions
the desire to gamble which lurks at the bottom of
every heart, that of the young girl, that of the man
of the provinces, as in that of a diplomat, for all
the world sighs for a fortune gratis, gambling will
then display itself in other spheres. You suppress
the lottery stupidly ; the cooks will not the less steal
from their masters, they will carry their thefts to
the savings-bank, and the stake is for them two
hundred and fifty francs instead of being forty sous,
for the shares in industrial enterprises, the stock-
companies, become the lottery, the play without the
green carpet, but with an invisible rake and with
a calculated success for the bank. The gambling
places are closed, the lottery no longer exists, behold
France much more moral, exclaim the imbeciles,
as if they had suppressed the punters! Gambling
still goes on, only the benefit no longer accrues to
the state, which replaces a tax paid with pleasure



THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 85

by a vexatious tax, without diminishing the num-
ber of suicides, for the gambler does not die, but
only his victim ! I do not say anything about funds
invested abroad, lost to France, nor of the lotteries
of Frankfort, against the hawking about of which
the Convention proclaimed the death penalty, and
to which the procureurs-syndics themselves were
addicted! Here you may see the sense of the silly
philanthropy of our legislator. The encouragement
given to the savings-bank is a gross political stu-