of Nucingen, with cargoes of metals of the value
of seven millions. Palma, Werbrust and Du
Tillet comprehended that the operation was com-
pleted, but they were the only ones who compre-
hended it These scholars studied the theatrical
arrangement of this financial puff, recognized that
it had been prepared eleven months previously,
and proclaimed Nucingen the greatest European
financier. Rastignac comprehended nothing of it,
but he had gained thereby four hundred thousand
francs which Nucingen had allowed him to shear
from the Parisian lambs, and with which he had
provided dots for his two sisters. D'Aiglemont,
notified by his cousin Beaudenord, had come to
entreat Rastignac to accept ten per cent of his mil-
lion if he would obtain for him the employment of
the million in shares of a canal which was yet to be
made, for Nucingen had so well involved the gov-
ernment in this affair that the concessionaires of
the canal were interested in not having it com-
pleted. Charles Grandet had implored Delphine's
lover to permit him to exchange his money for
shares. In short, Rastignac had played, during
ten days, the rdle of Law, supplicated by the pret-
tiest duchesses to give them shares, and to-day
the scamp may have forty thousand francs of
income, the origin of which might be traced to
the shares in the mines of the silver-bearing lead
ore."
102 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN
"If everybody made money, who then lost?" said
Finot
"Conclusion," resumed Bixiou. "Allured by
the pseudo-dividend which they had received some
months after the exchange of their money for shares,
the Marquis d'Aiglemont and Beaudenord kept
theirs 1 give you these to represent all the others
They had three per cent more than their capitals ;
they chanted the praises of Nucingen, and defended
him at the very moment when he was suspected of
suspending payment Godefroid married his dear
Isaure, and received a hundred thousand francs in
shares in the mines. On the occasion of this mar-
riage, the Nucingens gave a ball, the magnificence of
which surpassed anything that can be conceived of
it Delphine offered to the young wife a charming
set of rubies. Isaure danced, no longer as a young
girl, but as a happy wife. The litttle baroness was
more than ever shepherdess of the Alps. Malvina,
the woman of Ave^-wus vu dans Barcelone? heard, in
the midst of the ball, Du Tillet dryly counselling her
to become Madame Desroches. Desroches, excited
by the Nucingens, by Rastignac, undertook to treat
of pecuniary affairs; but, at the first words concern-
ing mining stocks given in dowry, he broke off and
returned to the Matifats. In the Rue du Cherche-
Midi the lawyer found the damned canal shares
with which Gigonnet had stuffed Matifat, instead of
giving him money. So you see Desroches finding
Nucingen's rake upon the two dots on which he
had fixed his attention ! The catastrophes were not
THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 10$
delayed. The Claparon Company was engaged in
too many affairs, there was a choking up; it ceased
to pay interest and to declare dividends, although
its operations were excellent This misfortune
happened in combination with the events of 1827.
In 1829, Claparon was too well known to be the
man of straw of these two colossi, and he fell from
his pedestal to the earth. From twelve hundred
and fifty francs, the shares fell to four hundred
francs, although their intrinsic value was six hun-
dred. Nucingen, who knew their real value, bought
them in. The little Baroness d'Aldrigger had sold
her shares in the mines which brought in nothing,
and Godefroid sold his wife's for the same reason.
Like the baroness, Beaudenord had exchanged his
mining stock for shares of the Claparon Company.
Their debts forced them to sell on a declining mar-
ket Of that which represented to them seven
hundred thousand francs, they had two hundred and
thirty thousand francs. They took their losses, and
the remnant was prudently placed in the three per
cents at seventy-five. Godefroid, that happy youth,
without care, who had only to enjoy life, saw him-
self charged with a little wife stupid as a goose,
incapable of supporting misfortune, for, at the end
of six months, he perceived a transformation in the
object so lightly loved ; and, moreover, he was sad-
dled with a mother-in-law without means who
dreamed of toilets. The two families were living
together in order to exist Godefroid was obliged
to call upon all his former influential connections,
104 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN
now chilled, to secure a situation of a thousand ecus
at the Ministry of Finance. His friends? at the
watering places. His relatives? astonished, prom-
ising: 'What, my dear fellow, but count upon me!
Poor boy !' Clean forgotten a quarter of an hour after-
wards, Beaudenord was indebted for his situation
to the influence of Nucingen and of Vandenesse.
These persons, so estimable and so unfortunate,
live to-day in the Rue du Mont-Thabor, on the
third floor above the entresol. The pearl of the
daughter of the Adolphuses, Malvina, has noth-
ing; she gives piano-lessons in order not to be
a charge on her brother-in-law. Dark, tall, thin,
dry, she resembles a mummy escaped from the
museum of Passalacqua running about on foot
through Paris. In 1830, Beaudenord lost his situa-
tion, and his wife presented him with a fourth
child. Eight masters and two servants Wirth and
his wife ! money : eight thousand francs of income.
The mines pay to-day such considerable dividends,
that the thousand francs' share is worth a thousand
francs of income. Rastignac and Madame de Nucin-
gen have purchased the stocks sold by Godefroid and
by the baroness. Nucingen was made peer of France
by the Revolution of July, and Grand Officer of the
Legion of Honor. Although he has not liquidated
since 1830, he has, it is said, sixteen to eighteen
millions. Foreseeing the Ordinance of July, he
sold all his funds and replaced them courageously
when the three per cents were at forty-five ; he caused
it to be believed at the Chateau that this was
THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 105
through loyalty, and he has in this period gobbled
up, in concert with Du Tillet, three millions from
that great rogue of a Philippe Bridau! Recently,
passing through the Rue de Rivoli on his way to the
Bois de Boulogne, our baron perceived under the
arcades the Baroness d'Aldrigger. The little old
woman had a green capote lined with pink, a flow-
ered dress, a mantilla; in short, she was still, and
more than ever, shepherdess of the Alps, for she no
more comprehended the causes of her misfortune
than the causes of her opulence. She was leaning
on the poor Malvina, that model of heroic devotion,
who had the air of being the old mother, while the
baroness had that of being the young daughter ; and
Wirth followed them with an umbrella. 'Dere are
zome beebles,' said the baron to Monsieur Cointet,
a minister, with whom he was walking, 'whose
vortunes it was imbossible for me to make. De
vlurry of high brincibles is over, dake dis boor
Peautenord pack.' Beaudenord returned to the
finances through the care of Nucingen, whom the
d'Aldriggers praise as a hero of friendship, for he
always invites the little shepherdess of the Alps
and her daughters to his balls. It is impossible to
anyone, no matter whom, in the world to demon-
strate how this man has, three times and without
breaking the law, wished to rob the public enriched
by him, despite him. Nobody had any reproaches
for him. Whoever would say that this great
banking is often throat-cutting would utter the
basest calumny. If stocks rise and fall, if values
106 THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN
augment and decrease, this flux and reflux is pro-
duced by some movement mutual, atmospheric,
brought about by the influence of the moon, and the
great Arago is culpable in not giving any scientific
theory for this important phenomenon. The only
result of all this is a pecuniary verity which I have
never seen written anywhere "
"Which one?"
"The debtor is stronger than the creditor."
"Oh!" said Blondet, "for myself, I see in what
we have said the paraphrase of a saying of Mon-
tesquieu, in which he has concentrated all the
sprit des lois."
"What?" said Finot
"Laws are spiders' webs through which the big
flies pass and in which the little ones are caught"
"What do you want to arrive at?" said Finot to
Blondet
"An absolute government, the only one in which
enterprises of the wits against the law can be
repressed! Yes, the arbitrary power rescues the
people in coming to the aid of justice, for the right
of pardon has no reverse, the king, who may par-
don the fraudulent bankrupt, restores nothing to the
plundered victim. Legality kills modern society. "
"Make the electors comprehend that!" said
Bixiou.
"There is some one who has taken charge of it"
"Who?"
"Time. As the bishop of Leon said: 'If liberty
is ancient, royalty is eternal;' every nation of
THE HOUSE OF NUCINGEN 107
sound mind will return to it under one form or
another."
"Look out, there is someone on the other side,"
said Finot, hearing us go out
"There is always some one on the other side,"
replied Bixiou, who was probably by this time well
wine-seasoned.
Paris, November, 1837.
THE SECRETS OF
LA PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN
TO THEOPH1LE GAUT1ER
LA PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN
After the disasters of the Revolution of July,
which destroyed more than one of the aristocratic
fortunes sustained by the Court, Madame la Prin-
cesse de Cadignan had the cleverness to lay to the
account of the current political events the complete
ruin due to her extravagances. The prince had left
France with the royal family, leaving the princess
in Paris, inviolable through his absence, for the
debts, for the satisfaction of which the sale of the
salable property could not suffice, weighed on him
only. The revenues of the entail had been seized.
In short, the affairs of this great family were in as
evil a state as those of the elder branch of the Bour-
bons. This woman, so well known under her first
name of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, then de-
cided wisely to live in profound retirement, she
wished to be forgotten. Paris was carried away by
a current of events so bewildering that very shortly
the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, buried in the Prin-
cesse de Cadignan a change of name unknown to
the greater number of the new actors in society
brought on the stage by the Revolution of July
became like a stranger.
8 ("3)
114 THE SECRETS OF
In France, the title of duke precedes all others,
even that of prince, although in heraldic thesis, free
from sophism, titles signify absolutely nothing and
there should be perfect equality among gentlemen.
This admirable equality was formerly carefully
maintained by the Royal House of France; and, in
our day, it still is, at least nominally, by the care
which the kings take to give the simple title of
count to their children. It was in virtue of this
system that Francis I. eclipsed the splendoi of the
titles which the pompous Charles V. gave himself
by signing a reply to him: "Francois, Seigneur de
Vanves." Louis XI. did better still, by marrying his
daughter to an untitled gentleman, Pierre de Beaujeu.
The feudal system was so well broken up by Louis
XIV. that the title of duke became in his reign the
highest honor of the aristocracy, and the one the
most envied. Nevertheless, there are two or three
families in France of which the princedom, formerly
richly possessed, is put before that of the duchy.
The House of Cadignari, which possesses the title
of Due de Maufrigneuse for its eldest son, while all
the others are entitled simply Chevaliers de Cadig-
nan, is one of these exceptional families. As was
formerly the case with two princes of the House of
Rohan, the princes de Cadignan were entitled to a
throne amongst them; they were entitled to have
pages and gentlemen in their service. This expla-
nation is necessary, as much to avoid the foolish
criticisms of those who know nothing as to declare
the important things of a world which, it is said, is
LA PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN 11$
departing, and which so many people promote with-
out comprehending it The Cadignans bore d'or
with five fusils sable coupled and placed fesse, with
the word "MEMINI" for device, and the closed
crown, without supporters or mantling. To-day,
the great number of foreigners who throng to Paris,
and an almost general ignorance of the science of
heraldry, tend to bring the title of prince into
fashion. There are no real princes excepting those
who have landed possessions and who are entitled
"Highness." The disdain of the French nobility
for the title of prince and the reasons which induced
Louis XIV. to give supremacy to the title of duke,
have operated to prevent in France claims to
the title of Highness for the few princes who exist
in this nation, those of Napoleon excepted. This
is the reason why the Princes de Cadignan found
themselves in an inferior position, nominally speak-
ing, to the other Continental princes.
The princess was protected by that society called
"of the Faubourg Saint-Germain" through a respect-
ful discretion due to hei name, which is one of those
always honored; to her misfortunes, which were not
discussed, and to her beauty, the only thing which
she had preserved of her lost opulence. The
world, of which she was the ornament, was thank-
ful to her for having taken, as it were, the veil in
cloistering herself in her own house. This good
taste was for her, more than for any other woman,
an immense sacrifice. The great events are always
so keenly felt in France, that the princess regained
Il6 THE SECRETS OF
by her retirement all that she might have lost in
public opinion in the middle of her splendors. She
saw only one of her ancient friends, the Marquise
d'Espard; she went neither to the grand social
reunions nor to the festivities. The princess and
the marchioness visited each other in the early
morning, and, as it were, secretly. When the prin-
cess came to dine with her friend, the marchioness
closed her doors. Madame d'Espard was admirably
considerate for the princess; she changed her box at
the Italiens, and left the front row for a box on
the ground floor, so that Madame de Cadignan could
go to the theatre without being seen, and depart
incognito. Very few women would have been
capable of a delicacy which deprived them of the
pleasure of dragging in their suite a fallen former
rival, of proclaiming themselves her benefactress.
The princess, being thus able to dispense with the
ruinous extravagance of toilets, went privately in
the carriage of the marchioness, which she would
not have accepted publicly. No one has ever
known the reasons which induced Madame d'Espard
to act thus with the Princesse de Cadignan; but
her conduct was sublime, and permitted for a long
time a multitude of little things which, seen singly,
seem to be but sillinesses, but which, taken alto-
gether, attain the gigantic. In 1832, the snows of
three years had drifted over the adventures of the
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had so nearly
covered them that serious efforts of the memory
were required to recall the grave circumstances of
LA PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN 117
her previous life. Of this queen, adored by so many
courtiers, and whose light adventures might have
furnished material for several romances, there still
remained a delightfully handsome woman, thirty-
six years of age, but authorized to claim no more
than thirty, although she was the mother of the Due
Georges de Maufrigneuse, a young man of nine-
teen, handsome as Antinous, poor as Job, who was
entitled to the utmost success and whom his mother
wished, before all, to make a rich marriage. Perhaps
in this project might be found a secret of the inti-
macy which she preserved with the marchioness,
whose salon enjoyed the reputation of being the
first in Paris, and in which she might some day
choose, among the heiresses, a wife for Georges.
The princess foresaw five years yet to pass between
the present moment and the epoch of her son's mar-
riage; solitary and deserted years, for, in order to
secure a good marriage, it would be necessary that
her conduct should be marked with prudence.
The princess lived in the Rue de Miromesnil in a
little hdtel, on the ground floor, at a moderate rent
She had brought thither a part of the remnants of
her magnificence. Her elegance of the grande dame
might still be felt there. She was still surrounded
there by those things which announce a superior
existence. On her chimney-piece might be seen a
magnificent miniature, the portrait of Charles X.,
by Madame de Mirbel, under which were engraved
these words: "Presented by the king;" and, as a
companion, the portrait of MADAME, which was so
Il8 THE SECRETS OF
peculiarly excellent in her case. On a table was a
resplendent album of the utmost costliness, which
not one of the bourgeois who enthrone themselves in
our industrial society, so shifting and uncertain,
would dare to display. This audacity portrayed the
woman admirably. The album contained a number
of portraits among which might be recognized some
thirty intimate friends whom the world had called
her lovers. This number was a calumny; but, if
we were to say ten, perhaps that might be some-
what near it, as said the Marquise d'Espard, with
good honest scandal. The portraits of Maxime de
Trailles, of De Marsay, of Rastignac, of the Marquis
d'Esgrignon, of General de Montr iveau, of the two
Marquises, deRonquerollesandd'Ajuda-Pinto, of the
Prince Galathionne, of the young Dues de Grandlieu,
de Rhetore, of the handsome Lucien de Rubempre,
of the young Vicomte de Serizy, had, moreover,
been rendered with the greatest and most flattering
skill by the most celebrated artists. As the prin-
cess no longer received more than two or three per-
sons of this collection, she alluded to this book
pleasantly as "the collection of her errors." Mis-
fortune had made of this woman a good mother.
During the fifteen years of the Restoration she had
amused herself too constantly to think of her son ;
but, when taking refuge in obscurity, this illus-
trious egotist reflected that the maternal sentiment
pushed to its extreme development might become
for her past life an absolution, confirmed by all right-
thinking people, who pardon everything to an
LA PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN 1 19
excellent mother. She loved her son all the more
that she no longer had any other thing to love.
Georges de Maufrigneuse is, moreover, one of those
children who might flatter all a mother's vanities;
and thus the princess made for him all kinds of sacri-
fices : she maintained for Georges a stable and a car-
riage-house, over which he lived in a little entresol
on the street, consisting of three apartments, beauti-
fully furnished ; she had imposed upon herself some
privations that he might have a saddle-horse, a horse
for his cabriolet, and a small servant She herself
kept no longer anything but her femme de chambre,
and, for cook, one of her former kitchen-maids. The
duke's tiger had at this period a somewhat exacting
service. Toby, the former tiger of the late Beau-
denord for such was the pleasant jest of the gay
world on this ruined dandy this young tiger, who
at twenty-five was everywhere thought to be only
fourteen years old, was expected to take care of the
horses, clean the cabriolet or the tilbury, follow his
master, keep the apartments in order and be present
in the antechamber of the princess to announce her
guest if, by chance, she was receiving the visit of
some personage. When we reflect on that which
was, under the Restoration, the beautiful Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse, one of the queens of Paris, a
splendid queen, whose luxurious existence would
have been worthy of one of the richest women of
the world of London, there was something inde-
scribably touching to see her in a little shell of the
Rue de Miromesnil, a few steps only from her
120 THE SECRETS OF
immense h&tel, which no fortune was able to main-
tain and which the hammer of the speculators has
now demolished. The woman who could scarcely
be served comfortably by thirty servants, who pos-
sessed the finest reception apartments in Paris, the
most charming little apartments, who gave in them
such admirable ftes, now lived in a suite of five
rooms, an antechamber, a dining-room, a salon,
a bed-chamber, and a dressing-room, with two
women for her only servants.
"Ah! she is admirable for her son," said that fine
gossip, the Marquise d'Espard, "and admirable
without affectation; she is happy. One would
never have thought this woman, so light, capable
of resolutions followed so persistently; and our
good Archbishop has encouraged her, has shown
the greatest consideration for her, and has per-
suaded the old Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne to pay
her a visit"
Let us admit it, moreover, it is necessary to have
been a queen to know how to abdicate and to
descend nobly from an elevated position which,
however, is never entirely lost Those only who are
conscious in themselves of being nothing manifest
their regrets in thus fall ing, or murmur continually,
and go back in imagination to a past which will
never return, feeling sure, as they do, that they can
never attain it a second time. Compelled to abandon
the rare flowers in the midst of which she had been
accustomed to live, and which so well set off her per-
son, for it was impossible not to compare her to a
LA PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN 121
flower, the princess had skilfully chosen her ground-
floor apartment, she there had the enjoyment of a
pretty little garden full of shrubs and bushes, and
of which the turf, always green, enlivened her
peaceful retreat She might have had at this period
about twelve thousand francs of income. This modest
revenue was composed of an annual stipend donated
by the old Duchesse de Navarreins, paternal aunt
of the young duke, which would be continued to the
day of his marriage, and of another stipend sent by
the Duchesse d'Uxelles, from her estate, where she
was economizing as the old duchesses know how to
economize, for, compared with them, Harpagon was
only a scholar. The prince lived abroad, constantly
at the orders of his exiled masters, sharing their
evil fortune and serving them with a disinterested
devotion, the most intelligent perhaps of all those
who surrounded them. The position of the Prince
de Cadignan still protected his wife at Paris. It
was in the apartments of the princess that the mar-
shal to whom we owe the conquest of Africa had,
at the period of the attempt of MADAME in La Ven-
dee, conferences with the principal chiefs of the
Legitimistes, so complete was the obscurity of the
princess, so little did her poverty excite the sus-
picion of the actual government! In seeing the
approach of the terrible failure of love, that age
of forty years, beyond which there is so little for a
woman, the princess had thrown herself into the
kingdom of philosophy. She read, she who had, for
sixteen years, manifested the greatest horror for
122 THE SECRETS OF
serious things. Literature and politics are to-day
that which formerly devotion was for women, the
last refuge of their pretensions. In the elegant cir-
cles of society, it was said that Diane would wish
to write a book. Since the period when, from a
charming, from a beautiful woman, the princess had
passed into a clever woman, before she should pass
away altogether, she had made of a reception under
her roof a supreme honor which distinguished pro-
digiously the favored person. Under cover of these
occupations she could deceive one of her first lovers,
De Marsay, the most influential personage in bour-
geois politics, put into power July, 1830; she
received him sometimes in the evenings, while the
marshal and several Legitimistes were discussing,
with lowered voices, in her bed-chamber, the con-
quest of the kingdom, which could not be brought
about without the aid of ideas, the only element of
success which the conspirators forgot It was a
charming vengeance of a pretty woman, thus to
trick a Prime Minister by making him serve as a
screen for a conspiracy against his own government
This adventure, worthy of the best days of the
Fronde, furnished a text for the most ingenious letter
in the world, in which the princess rendered an
account of the negotiations to MADAME. The Due
de Maufrigneuse went to La Vendee and was able to
return secretly, without being compromised, but not
without having shared the perils of MADAME, who,
unfortunately, sent him back when everything