The Firm of Nucingen | Page 8

at twenty per cent
more than he gave for them! Yes, gentlemen!--He took a hundred and
fifty thousand bottles of champagne of Grandet to cover himself
(forseeing the failure of the virtuous parent of the present Comte
d'Aubrion), and as much Bordeaux wine of Duberghe at the same time.
Those three hundred thousand bottles which he took over (and took at
thirty sous apiece, my dear boy) he supplied at the price of six francs
per bottle to the Allies in the Palais Royal during the foreign
occupation, between 1817 and 1819. Nucingen's name and his paper
acquired a European celebrity. The illustrious Baron, so far from being
engulfed like others, rose the higher for calamities. Twice his
arrangements had paid holders of his paper uncommonly well; HE try
to swindle them? Impossible. He is supposed to be as honest a man as
you will find. When he suspends payment a third time, his paper will
circulate in Asia, Mexico, and Australia, among the aborigines. No one
but Ouvrard saw through this Alsacien banker, the son of some Jew or
other converted by ambition; Ouvrard said, 'When Nucingen lets gold
go, you may be sure that it is to catch diamonds.' "
"His crony, du Tillet, is just such another," said Finot. "And, mind you,
that of birth du Tillet has just precisely as much as is necessary to exist;
the chap had not a farthing in 1814, and you see what he is now; and he
has done something that none of us has managed to do (I am not
speaking of you, Couture), he has had friends instead of enemies. In
fact, he has kept his past life so quiet, that unless you rake the sewers
you are not likely to find out that he was an assistant in a perfumer's
shop in the Rue Saint Honore, no further back than 1814."

"Tut, tut, tut!" said Bixiou, "do not think of comparing Nucingen with a
little dabbler like du Tillet, a jackal that gets on in life through his sense
of smell. He scents a carcass by instinct, and comes in time to get the
best bone. Besides, just look at the two men. The one has a
sharp-pointed face like a cat, he is thin and lanky; the other is cubical,
fat, heavy as a sack, imperturbable as a diplomatist. Nucingen has a
thick, heavy hand, and lynx eyes that never light up; his depths are not
in front, but behind; he is inscrutable, you never see what he is making
for. Whereas du Tillet's cunning, as Napoleon said to somebody (I have
forgotten the name), is like cotton spun too fine, it breaks."
"I do not myself see that Nucingen has any advantage over du Tillet,"
said Blondet, "unless it is that he has the sense to see that a capitalist
ought not to rise higher than a baron's rank, while du Tillet has a mind
to be an Italian count."
"Blondet--one word, my boy," put in Couture. "In the first place,
Nucingen dared to say that honesty is simply a question of appearances;
and secondly, to know him well you must be in business yourself. With
him banking is but a single department, and a very small one; he holds
Government contracts for wines, wools, indigoes-- anything, in short,
on which any profit can be made. He has an all- round genius. The
elephant of finance would contract to deliver votes on a division, or the
Greeks to the Turks. For him business means the sum-total of varieties;
as Cousin would say, the unity of specialties. Looked at in this way,
banking becomes a kind of statecraft in itself, requiring a powerful
head; and a man thoroughly tempered is drawn on to set himself above
the laws of a morality that cramps him."
"Right, my son," said Blondet; "but we, and we alone, can comprehend
that this means bringing war into the financial world. A banker is a
conquering general making sacrifices on a tremendous scale to gain
ends that no one perceives; his soldiers are private people's interests.
He has stratagems to plan out, partisans to bring into the field,
ambushes to set, towns to take. Most men of this stamp are so close
upon the borders of politics, that in the end they are drawn into public
life, and thereby lose their fortunes. The firm of Necker, for instance,
was ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard was all but ruined.
Some great capitalist in every age makes a colossal fortune, and leaves
behind him neither fortune nor a family; there was the firm of Paris

Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull down Law; there was Law
himself (beside whom other promoters of companies are but pigmies);
there was Bouret and Beaujon--none of