The Firm of Nucingen | Page 6

He
has earned the right of lying in bed till noon because a crisis never finds
him asleep."
"So far so good, but just get to his fortune," said Finot.
"Bixiou will lash that off at a stroke," replied Blondet. "Rastignac's
fortune was Delphine de Nucingen, a remarkable woman; she combines
boldness with foresight."
"Did she ever lend you money?" inquired Bixiou. Everybody burst out
laughing.
"You are mistaken in her," said Couture, speaking to Blondet; "her
cleverness simply consists in making more or less piquant remarks, in
loving Rastignac with tedious fidelity, and obeying him blindly. She is
a regular Italian."
"Money apart," Andoche Finot put in sourly.
"Oh, come, come," said Bixiou coaxingly; "after what we have just
been saying, will you venture to blame poor Rastignac for living at the
expense of the firm of Nucingen, for being installed in furnished rooms
precisely as La Torpille was once installed by our friend des Lupeaulx?
You would sink to the vulgarity of the Rue Saint-Denis! First of all, 'in
the abstract,' as Royer-Collard says, the question may abide the Kritik
of Pure Reason; as for the impure reason----"
"There he goes!" said Finot, turning to Blondet.
"But there is reason in what he says," exclaimed Blondet. "The problem
is a very old one; it was the grand secret of the famous duel between La
Chataigneraie and Jarnac. It was cast up to Jarnac that he was on good
terms with his mother-in-law, who, loving him only too well, equipped
him sumptuously. When a thing is so true, it ought not to be said. Out
of devotion to Henry II., who permitted himself this slander, La

Chataigneraie took it upon himself, and there followed the duel which
enriched the French language with the expression coup de Jarnac."
"Oh! does it go so far back? Then it is noble?" said Finot.
"As a proprietor of newspapers and reviews of old standing, you are not
bound to know that," said Blondet.
"There are women," Bixiou gravely resumed, "and for that matter, men
too, who can cut their lives in two and give away but one-half. (Remark
how I word my phrase for you in humanitarian language.) For these, all
material interests lie without the range of sentiment. They give their
time, their life, their honor to a woman, and hold that between
themselves it is not the thing to meddle with bits of tissue paper bearing
the legend, 'Forgery is punishable with death.' And equally they will
take nothing from a woman. Yes, the whole thing is debased if fusion
of interests follows on fusion of souls. This is a doctrine much
preached, and very seldom practised."
"Oh, what rubbish!" cried Blondet. "The Marechal de Richelieu
understood something of gallantry, and he settled an allowance of a
thousand louis d'or on Mme. de la Popeliniere after that affair of the
hiding-place behind the hearth. Agnes Sorel, in all simplicity, took her
fortune to Charles VII., and the King accepted it. Jacques Coeur kept
the crown for France; he was allowed to do it, and woman-like, France
was ungrateful."
"Gentlemen," said Bixiou, "a love that does not imply an indissoluble
friendship, to my thinking, is momentary libertinage. What sort of
entire surrender is it that keeps something back? Between these two
diametrically opposed doctrines, the one as profoundly immoral as the
other, there is no possible compromise. It seems to me that any
shrinking from a complete union is surely due to a belief that the union
cannot last, and if so, farewell to illusion. The passion that does not
believe that it will last for ever is a hideous thing. (Here is pure
unadulterated Fenelon for you!) At the same time, those who know the
world, the observer, the man of the world, the wearers of irreproachable
gloves and ties, the men who do not blush to marry a woman for her
money, proclaim the necessity of a complete separation of sentiment
and interest. The other sort are lunatics that love and imagine that they
and the woman they love are the only two beings in the world; for them
millions are dirt; the glove or the camellia flower that She wore is

worth millions. If the squandered filthy lucre is never to be found again
in their possession, you find the remains of floral relics hoarded in
dainty cedar-wood boxes. They cannot distinguish themselves one from
the other; for them there is no 'I' left. THOU--that is their Word made
flesh. What can you do? Can you stop the course of this 'hidden disease
of the heart'? There are fools that love without calculation and wise
men that calculate while they love."
"To my thinking Bixiou is sublime," cried Blondet. "What does Finot
say to it?"
"Anywhere else," said Finot, drawing himself