Latest / Maggie, A Girl of the Streets / Firm of Nucingen-Honoré de Balzac

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Firm of Nucingen-Honoré de Balzac · Maggie, A Girl of the Streets

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  Speaker 1: Section one of the Firm of Nuzigen by Honore de Bolzac,
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  Speaker 1: translated by James Wering. This is a LibriVox recording or
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
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  Speaker 1: or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
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  Speaker 1: James Carson, Section one to Madame Zulma Carot, to whom, Madame,
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  Speaker 1: but to you, should I inscribe this work to you,
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  Speaker 1: whose lofty and candid intellect is a treasury to your friends,
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  Speaker 1: to you that are to me not only a whole public,
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  Speaker 1: but the most indulgent of sisters as well. Will you
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  Speaker 1: deign to accept a token of the friendship of which
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  Speaker 1: I am proud, You and some few souls as noble
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  Speaker 1: will grasp the whole of the thought underlying the Firm
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  Speaker 1: of Nuzigen appended to Cesar Birotteaux. Is there not a
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  Speaker 1: whole social lesson in the contrast between the two stories
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  Speaker 1: De Bolzac the Firm of Nusigen, You know how slight
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  Speaker 1: the partitions are between the private rooms of fashionable restaurants
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  Speaker 1: in Paris. Veri's largest room, for instance, is cut into
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  Speaker 1: by a removable screen. This scene is not laid at veries,
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  Speaker 1: but in snug quarters, which, for reasons of my own
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  Speaker 1: I forbear to specify, we were too. So I will say,
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  Speaker 1: like anri Monnier's prudome, I should not like to compromise her.
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  Speaker 1: We had remarked the want of solidity in the wall structure.
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  Speaker 1: So we talked with lord voices as we sat to
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  Speaker 1: other in the little private room, lingering over the nainty
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  Speaker 1: ditches of a dinner exquisite in more senses than one.
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  Speaker 1: We had come as far as the roast, however, and
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  Speaker 1: still we had no neighbors. No sound came from the
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  Speaker 1: next room, save the crackling of the fire. But when
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  Speaker 1: the clock struck eight, we heard voices and noisy footsteps.
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  Speaker 1: The waiters brought candles. Evidently there was a party assembled
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  Speaker 1: in the next room. And at the first words I
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  Speaker 1: knew at once with whom we had to do. Four
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  Speaker 1: bold comorants, as ever, sprang from the foam on the
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  Speaker 1: crests of the ever rising waves of this present generation.
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  Speaker 1: Four pleasant young fellows whose existence was problematical, since they
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  Speaker 1: were not known to possess either stock or landed estates.
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  Speaker 1: Yet they lived and lived well. These ingenious Condottieri of
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  Speaker 1: a modern industrialism that has come to be the most
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  Speaker 1: ruthless of all Warfaars leave anxieties to their creditors and
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  Speaker 1: keeps the pleasures for themselves. They are careful for nothing
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  Speaker 1: save dress. Still with the courage of the jambars order
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  Speaker 1: they will spoke cigars on a barrel of powder, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: by way of keeping up their character, with a quizing
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  Speaker 1: humor that outdoes the minor newspapers, sparing no one, not
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  Speaker 1: even themselves. Clear sighted, weary, keen after business, grasping yet
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  Speaker 1: open handed, envious yet self complacent, profound politicians by fits
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  Speaker 1: and starts, analyzing everything, guessing everything. Not one of these
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  Speaker 1: in question as yet had contrived to make his way
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  Speaker 1: in the world which they choose for their scene of operations.
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  Speaker 1: Only one of the foreign deeed had succeeded in coming
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  Speaker 1: as far as the foot of the ladder. To have
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  Speaker 1: money is nothing. The self made man only finds out
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  Speaker 1: all that he lacks after six months of flatteries and
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  Speaker 1: douche Finnott. The self made man in question stiff, taciturn,
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  Speaker 1: cold and dull witted, possessed the sort of spirit which
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  Speaker 1: will not shrink from groveling before any creature that may
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  Speaker 1: be of use to him, and the cunning to be
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  Speaker 1: insolent when he needs a man no longer Like one
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  Speaker 1: of the grotesque figures in the ballet in Gustave, he
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  Speaker 1: has a marquis behind a boar in front. And this
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  Speaker 1: high priest of commerce had a following. A mere blondei
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  Speaker 1: journalist with abundance of intellectual power, reckless, brilliant, and indolent,
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  Speaker 1: could do anything that he chose. Yet he submitted to
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  Speaker 1: be exploited with his eyes open, treacherous or kind upon impulse,
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  Speaker 1: a man to love but not to respect, quick witted
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  Speaker 1: as a subrette, unable to refuse his pen to any
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  Speaker 1: one that asked, or his heart to the first that
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  Speaker 1: would borrow it. Emil was the most fascinating of these
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  Speaker 1: light of loves, of whom a fantastic modern wit declared
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  Speaker 1: that he liked them better in satin slippers than in boots.
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  Speaker 1: The third of the party, Couture by name, lived by speculation,
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  Speaker 1: grafting one affair upon another to make the gains pay
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  Speaker 1: for the losses. He was always between wind and water,
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  Speaker 1: keeping himself afloat by his bold, sudden strokes, and the
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  Speaker 1: nervous energy of his play. Hither and thither he would
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  Speaker 1: swim over the vast sea of interests in Paris, in
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  Speaker 1: quest of some little isle that should be so far
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  Speaker 1: a debatable life, and that he might abide upon it.
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  Speaker 1: Clearly Gutuur was not in his proper place. As for
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  Speaker 1: the fourth and most malicious personage, his name will be enough.
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  Speaker 1: It was Bixiou, not alas the Bixiou of eighteen twenty five,
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  Speaker 1: but the Bixiou of eighteen thirty six, A misanthropic buffoon
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  Speaker 1: acknowledged supreme by reason of his energetic and caustic wit,
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  Speaker 1: A very fiend lit loose now that he saw how
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  Speaker 1: he had squandered his intellect in pure waste, A Bixiou
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  Speaker 1: vex'd by the thought that he had not come by
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  Speaker 1: his share of the wreckage in the last Revolution, A
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  Speaker 1: Bixiou with a kick for every one, like Pierot at
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  Speaker 1: Funamboul's Bixiou had the whole history of his own times
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  Speaker 1: at his finger ends, more particular its scandalous chronicle, embellished
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  Speaker 1: by added wageries of his own. He sprang like a
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  Speaker 1: clown upon everybody's back, only to do his utmost, to
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  Speaker 1: leave the executioner's brand upon every pair of shoulders. The
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  Speaker 1: first cravings of gluttony satisfied, our neighbors reached the stage
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  Speaker 1: at which we also had arrived to wit the dessert,
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  Speaker 1: and as we made no sign, they believed that they
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  Speaker 1: were alone. Thanks to the champagne. The talk grew confidential
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  Speaker 1: as they dallied with the dessert amid the cigar smoke.
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  Speaker 1: Yet through it all you felt the influence of the
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  Speaker 1: icy espirie that leaves the most spontaneous feeling frost bound
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  Speaker 1: and stiff, that checks the most generous inspirations, and gives
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  Speaker 1: a sharp ring to the laughter. Their table talk was
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  Speaker 1: full of bitter irony, which turns a jest into a sneer.
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  Speaker 1: It told of the exhaustion of souls given over to themselves,
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  Speaker 1: of lives with no end in view, but the satisfaction
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  Speaker 1: of self, of egoism induced by these times of peace
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  Speaker 1: in which we live. I can think of nothing like it,
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  Speaker 1: save a pamphlet against mankind at large, which de Deroux
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  Speaker 1: was afraid to publish, a book that bears man's breast,
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  Speaker 1: simply to expose the plague sores upon it we listened
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  Speaker 1: to just such a pamphlet, as Rameau's nephew spoken aloud
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  Speaker 1: in all good faith in the course of after dinner talk,
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  Speaker 1: in which nothing not even the point which the speaker
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  Speaker 1: wished to carry, was sacred from epigram, nothing taken for granted,
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  Speaker 1: nothing built up except on ruins, nothing reverenced. Save the
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  Speaker 1: skeptics adopted article of belief, the omnipotence, omniscience and universal
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  Speaker 1: applicability of money. After some target practice at the outer
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  Speaker 1: circle of their acquaintances, they turned their ill natured shafts
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  Speaker 1: on their intimate friends. With a sign, I explained my
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  Speaker 1: wish to stay and listen as soon as bixiou took
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  Speaker 1: up his parable as will shortly be seen. And so
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  Speaker 1: we listened to one of those terrific improvisations which won
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  Speaker 1: that artist such an aim among a certain set of
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  Speaker 1: seared and jaded spirits, and often interrupted and resumed. Though
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  Speaker 1: it was, memory serves me as a reporter of it.
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  Speaker 1: The opinions expressed and the form of expression lie alike
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  Speaker 1: outside the conditions of literature. It was, more properly speaking,
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  Speaker 1: a medley of sinister revelation that paint our age to
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  Speaker 1: which indeed, no other kind of story should be told.
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  Speaker 1: And besides, I throw all the responsibility upon the principal
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  Speaker 1: speaker the pantomime and the gestures that accompanied Bixiou's changes
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  Speaker 1: of voice as he acted the parts of the various
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  Speaker 1: persons must have been perfect, judging by the applause and
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  Speaker 1: admiring comments that broke from his audience of three. Then
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  Speaker 1: did Rastignac refuse, asked Blondey, apparently addressing Fiinaux point blank.
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  Speaker 1: But did you threaten him with the newspapers? Asked Bixiou.
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  Speaker 1: He began to laugh, returned, I Finou. Rastignac is the
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  Speaker 1: late lamented de Marseilles direct heir. He will make his
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  Speaker 1: way politically as well as socially, commented Blonday. But how
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  Speaker 1: did he make his money? Asked Coutour. In eighteen nineteen,
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  Speaker 1: both he and the illustrious biencont lived in a shabby
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  Speaker 1: boarding house in the Latin Quarter. His people ate roast cock,
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  Speaker 1: chaffeys and their own wine so as to send him
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  Speaker 1: a hundred francs every month. His father's property was not
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  Speaker 1: worth a thousand crowns. He had two sisters and a
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  Speaker 1: brother on his hands, and now now he has an
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  Speaker 1: income of forty thousand livre, continued Fino. His sisters had
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  Speaker 1: a handsome fortune apiece and married into noble families. He
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  Speaker 1: leaves his mother a life interest in the property. Even
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty seven, I have known him without a penny,
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  Speaker 1: said blondei Oh. In eighteen twenty seven, said Vixiou, Well
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  Speaker 1: were resumed Fiino Yet to day, as we see, he
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  Speaker 1: is in a fair way be a minister, a peer
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  Speaker 1: of France, anything that he likes. He broke decently with
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  Speaker 1: Delphine three years ago. He will not marry except on
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  Speaker 1: good grounds, and he may marry a girl of noble family.
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  Speaker 1: The chap had the sense to take up with a
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  Speaker 1: wealthy woman. My friends give him the benefit of extenuating circumstances,
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  Speaker 1: urged Blondeis. When he escaped the clutches of want, he
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  Speaker 1: dropped into the claws of a very clever man. You
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  Speaker 1: know what nuzinjen is, said Bixiou. In the early days,
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  Speaker 1: Delphine and Rastignac thought him good natured. He seemed to
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  Speaker 1: regard a wife as a plaything, an ornament in his house,
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  Speaker 1: And that very fact showed me that the man was
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  Speaker 1: square at the base. As well as in height ated
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  Speaker 1: bixiou Nuzijen makes no bones about admitting that his wife
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  Speaker 1: is his fortune. She is an indispensable chattel. But a
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  Speaker 1: wife takes a second place in the high pressure life
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  Speaker 1: of a political leader and great capitalist. He once said
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  Speaker 1: in my hearing that Buonaparte had blundered like a bourgeois
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  Speaker 1: in his early relations with Josephine, and that after he
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  Speaker 1: had had the spirit to use her as a stepping stone,
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  Speaker 1: he had made himself ridiculous by trying to make a
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  Speaker 1: companion of her. Any man of unusual powers is bound
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  Speaker 1: to take oriental views of women, said Blondais. The baron
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  Speaker 1: blended the opinions of east and west in a charming
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  Speaker 1: Parisian creed. He abhorred de Marseilles. To Marseilles was unmanageable,
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  Speaker 1: but with Restignac he was much pleased. He exploited him,
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  Speaker 1: though Rastingjac was not aware of it. All the burdens
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  Speaker 1: of married life were put on him. Rastignac bore the
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  Speaker 1: brunt of Delphine's whims. He escorted her to the Bois
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  Speaker 1: de Boulogne. He went with her to the play and
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  Speaker 1: the little Politician and great man of to day spent
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  Speaker 1: a good deal of his life at that time in
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  Speaker 1: writing dainty notes. Eugene was scolded for little nothings. From
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  Speaker 1: the first. He was in good spirits when Delphine was
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  Speaker 1: cheerful and drooped when she felt low. He bore the
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  Speaker 1: weight of her confidences and her ailments. He gave up
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  Speaker 1: his time, the hours of his precious youth, to fill
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  Speaker 1: the empty void of that fair Parisian's idleness. Delphine and
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  Speaker 1: he held high councils on the toilettes which went best together.
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  Speaker 1: He stood the fire of bad temper and broadsides of
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  Speaker 1: pouting fits, while she, by way of trimming the balance,
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  Speaker 1: was very nice to the baron. As for the baron,
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  Speaker 1: he laughed in his sleeve. But whenever he saw that
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  Speaker 1: Rastignac was bending under the strain of the burden, he
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  Speaker 1: made as if he suspected something, and reunited the lovers
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  Speaker 1: by a common dread. I can imagine that a wealthy
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  Speaker 1: wife would have put Rastignac in the way of a
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  Speaker 1: living and an honorable living. But where did he pick
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  Speaker 1: up his fortune? Asked Cutuu. A fortune so considerable as
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  Speaker 1: his at the present day, must come from somewhere, and
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  Speaker 1: nobody ever accused him of inventing a good stroke of business.
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  Speaker 1: Somebody left it to him, said Fina, who asked Blondei.
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  Speaker 1: Some fool that he came across suggested Cutuu. He did
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  Speaker 1: not steal the whole of it. My little dear, said
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  Speaker 1: Bixiou that not your terrors rise to fever heat. Our
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  Speaker 1: age is lenient with those who cheat. Now I will
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  Speaker 1: tell you about the beginnings of his fortune in the
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  Speaker 1: first place, honor to talent. Our friend is not a chap,
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  Speaker 1: as Finot describes him, but a gentleman in the English sense,
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  Speaker 1: who knows the cards and knows the game, whom moreover,
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  Speaker 1: the gallery respects. Rastignac has quite as much intelligence as
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  Speaker 1: is needed at a given moment, as if a soldier
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  Speaker 1: should make his courage payable at ninety days sight with
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  Speaker 1: three witnesses and guarantees. He may seem captious, wrong headed,
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  Speaker 1: inconsequent vacillating, and without any fixed opinions. But let something
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  Speaker 1: serious turn up, some combination to scheme out. He will
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  Speaker 1: not scatter himself like Blondey there, who chooses these occasions
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  Speaker 1: to look at things from his neighbor's point of view.
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  Speaker 1: Rastignac concentrates himself, himself together, looks for the point to
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  Speaker 1: carry by storm, and goes full tilt for it. He
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  Speaker 1: charges like a morah, breaks squares pounds away at shareholders,
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  Speaker 1: promoters and the whole shop, and returns when the breach
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  Speaker 1: is made to his lazy, careless life. Once more. He
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  Speaker 1: becomes the man of the South, the man of pleasure,
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  Speaker 1: the trifling, idle Rastignac. He has earned the right of
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  Speaker 1: lying in bed till noon because the crisis never finds
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  Speaker 1: him asleep. So far, so good. But just get to
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  Speaker 1: his fortune, said Fino. Bix you the lash that off
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  Speaker 1: at a stroke, replied Blonde, rasting Jac's fortune was delphind
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  Speaker 1: Denizigen a remarkable woman. She combines boldness with foresight. Did
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  Speaker 1: she ever lend you money? Inquired to mix you? Everybody
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  Speaker 1: burst out laughing. You are mistaken in her, said Couture,
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  Speaker 1: speaking to blondeis her cleverness simply consists in making more
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  Speaker 1: or less piquant remarks, in loving Rastignac with tedious fidelity
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  Speaker 1: and obeying him blindly. She is a regular Italian money aparte.
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  Speaker 1: Androche Finnault put in sourly, Oh come come, said Vixiu coaxingly.
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  Speaker 1: After what we have just been saying, will you venture
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  Speaker 1: to blame poor Rastignac for living at the expense of
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  Speaker 1: the firm of Nuzigen, for being installed in furnished rooms
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  Speaker 1: precisely as Latopia was once installed by our friend de Lupould,
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  Speaker 1: you would sink to the vulgarity of the Rue Saint Denis.
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  Speaker 1: First of all, in the abstract, as Roye Colas says,
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  Speaker 1: the question may abide the critique of pure reason. As
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  Speaker 1: for the impure reason there he goes, said Finno, turning
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  Speaker 1: to Blonde. But there is a reason in what he says,
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  Speaker 1: exclaimed BLONDEI. The problem is a very old one. It
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  Speaker 1: was the grand secret of the famous duel between La
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  Speaker 1: Chatai ne'erai and Jarnac. It was cast up to Jarnac
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  Speaker 1: that he was on good terms with his mother in law, who,
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  Speaker 1: loving him only too well, equipped him sumptuously. When a
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: thing is too true, it ought not to be said
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: out of devotion to Henry the second, who permitted himself
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: this slander. La Chatai generai took it upon himself, and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: there followed the duel, which enriched the French language with
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the expression coup de janac ah does it go so
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  Speaker 1: far back? Then? It is noble, said Fino, as a
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  Speaker 1: propriet letter of newspapers and reviews of old standing. You
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  Speaker 1: are not bound to know that, said Blonday. There are
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  Speaker 1: women Bixy you gravely resumed, and for that matter, men too,
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  Speaker 1: who can cut their lives in two and give away
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  Speaker 1: but one half. Remark how I word my phrase for
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  Speaker 1: you in humanitarian language. For these all material interests lie
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  Speaker 1: without the range of sentiment. They give their time, their life,
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  Speaker 1: their honor to a woman and hold that between themselves.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: It is not the thing to meddle with bits of
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: tissue paper bearing the legend forgery is punishable with death.
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  Speaker 1: And equally they will take nothing from a woman. Yes,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the whole thing is debased if fusion of interests follows
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: on fusion of souls. This is a doctrine much preached
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: and very seldom practiced. Oh what rubbish, cried blondais the
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: morecal de Richelieu understood something of gallantry, and he settled
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: an allowance of a thousand Louis d'Or on Madame de
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: le Popellnier. After that affair of the hiding place behind
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the hearth. Agnes Sorel, in all simplicity, took her fortune
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  Speaker 1: to Charles the seventh, and the king accepted it. Jacques
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Coeur kept the crown for France. He was allowed to
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: do it, and woman like Franz, was ungrateful. Gentlemen, said Bixiou.
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  Speaker 1: A love that does not imply an indissoluble friendship, to
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: my thinking, is momentary libertinage. What sort of entire surrender
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: is it that keeps something back Between these two diametrically
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: opposed doctrines, the one as profoundly immoral as the other.
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  Speaker 1: There is no possible compromise. It seems to me that
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: any shrinking from a complete union is surely due to
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a belief that the union cannot last, and if so,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: farewell to illusion. The passion that does not believe that
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  Speaker 1: it will last forever is a hideous thing. Here is pure,
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  Speaker 1: unadulterated fenelon for you. At the same time, those who
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  Speaker 1: know the world, the observer, the man of the world,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: the wearers of irreproachable gloves and ties, the men who
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: do not blush to marry a woman for her money,
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  Speaker 1: proclaim the necessity of a complete separation of sentiment and interest.
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  Speaker 1: The other sort are lunatics that love and imagine that
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  Speaker 1: they and the woman they love are the only two
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  Speaker 1: things in the world. For them, millions are dirt. The
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: glove or the camellia flower that she wore is worth
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: me millions if the squandered, filthy lucre is never to
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  Speaker 1: be found again. In their possession you find the remains
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: of floral relics hoarded in dainty cedar wood boxes. They
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: cannot distinguish themselves one from the other. For them there
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: is no eye left thou, that is their word made flesh.
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  Speaker 1: What can you do? Can you stop the course of
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  Speaker 1: this hidden disease of the heart. There are fools that
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: love without calculation, and wise men that calculate while they love.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: To my thinking, Bixiou is sublime, cried BLONDEI what does
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: FINNO say to it? Anywhere else, said Finnaux, drawing himself
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: up in his cravat. Anywhere else, I should say with
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the gentleman. But here I think with the scoundrely scapegoats,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: with whom you have the honor to associate, said to Bixiou,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: upon my word, yes, and you asked Bixiou, turning to Gutuu,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: stuff and nonsense, cried Gutuu. The woman that will not
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: make a stepping stone of her body that the man
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: she singles out may reach his goal is a woman
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: that has no heart except for her own purposes. And you,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: blondeis I do not preach, I practice very good, rejoined Bixiou,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in his most tyronical tones, Rastignac was not of your
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: way of thinking. To take without repaying is detestable and
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: even rather bad form. But to take that you may
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: render a hundred fold like the Lord, is a chivalrous deed.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: This was Rastignac's view. He felt profoundly humiliated by his
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: community of interests with delphind and news in gen. I
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: can tell you that he regretted it. I have seen
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: him deploring his position with tears in his eyes. Yes,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: he shed tears, he did, indeed after supper. Well, now
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: to our way of thinking, I say you are laughing
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: at us, said Finno. Not the least in the world
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: we are talking of Rastignac. From your point of view,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: his affliction would be a sign of his corruption, for
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: by that time he was not nearly so much in
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: love with Delphine what would you have he felt the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: prick in his heart, poor fellow. But he was a
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: man of noble descent and profound depravity, whereas we are
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: virtuous artists. So Rastingnac meant to enrich Delphine. He was
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: a poor man, she was a rich woman. Would you
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: believe it? He succeeded Rastingnac, who might have fought at
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: need like Jarnac, went over to the opinion of Henry
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the second on the strength of his great maxim There
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: is no such thing as absolute right. There are only circumstances.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: This brings us to the history of his fortune. You
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: might just as well make a start with your story
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: instead of drawing us on to produce yourself, said blonde
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: with urbane good humor. Aha, my boy returned to Bixiou,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: administering a little tap to the back of Blondai's head.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: You are making up for lost time over the Champagne. Oh,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: by the sacred name of shareholder, get on with your story,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: cried Coutou. I was within an ace of it, retorted
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to Bixiou. But you, with your profanity, have brought me
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: to the climax. Then are there shareholders in the tale? Inquired,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: p you know, yes, rich as rich can be like yours.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: It seems to me. Fo began stiffly that some consideration
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: is owing to a good fellow to whom you look
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: for a bill for five hundred francs. Upon occasion waiter
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: called Bixiou, what do you want with the waiter asked BLONDEI,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I want five hundred francs to repay FI know, so
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: that I can tear up my I O you and
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: set my tongue free. Get on with your story, said
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: if you know, making believe to laugh, I take you
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: all to witness that I have not the property of
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: this insolent fellow who fancies that my silence is worth
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: no more than five hundred francs. You will never be
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: a minister if you cannot gage people's consciences. There my
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: good fe know, he added soothingly. I will get on
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: with my story without personalities, and we shall be quits now,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: said Gutu with a smile. He will begin to prove
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: for our benefit that Nuzengen made the Rastignac's fortune. You
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: are not so far out as you think, returned Bixiou.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: You do not know what news in gen is financially speaking,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: do you know so much as a word as to
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: his beginning, asked Blondey. I have only known him in
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: his own house, said de Bixiou, but we may have
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: seen each other in the street in the old days.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: The prosperity of the firm of Nuzyngen is one of
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the most extraordinary things seen in our days, began Blondei
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: in eighteen o four. Nuzengen's name was scarcely known. At
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: that time. Bankers would have shuddered at the idea of
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: three hundred thousand francs worth of his acceptances in the market.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: The Greek capitalist felt his inferiority. How was he to
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: get known? He suspended payment good every market rang with
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: a name hitherto only known in Strasbourg and the courtier Poissonniere.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: He issued deposits to frigates to his creditors and resumed
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: payment forthwith. People grew accustomed to his paper all over France.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Then an unheard of thing happened. His paper revived, was
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: in demand and rose in value. News Gens paper was
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: much inquired for the year eighteen fifteen. Arrives my backer
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: calls in his capital, buys up government stock before the
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Battle of Waterloo, suspends payment again in the thick of
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the crisis, and meets his engagements with shares in the
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: worst chance minds, which he himself issued at twenty percent
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: more than he gave for them. Yes, gentlemen, he took
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand bottles of Champagne of Grande
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: to cover himself for seeing the failure of the virtuous
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: parent of the present Compe de Brion, and as watch
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Bordeaux wine of du Berg. At the same time, those
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: three hundred thousand bottles which he took over and took
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: at thirty sous apiece, my dear boy, he supplied at
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the price of six francs per bottle to the allies
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: in the Palais Royale. During the foreign occupation between eighteen
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: seventeen and eighteen nineteen, Nuzyngen's name and his paper acquired
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: a European celebrity. The illustrious baron, so far from being
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: engulfed like others, rose the higher four calamities. Twice his
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: arrangements had paid holders of his paper uncommonly well. He
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: tried to swindle them impossible. He is supposed to be
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: as honest a man, as you will find when he
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: suspends payment a third time, his paper will circulate in Asia,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Mexico and Australia. Among the Borigines. No one but Ouvrard
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: saw through this Alsatian banker, the son of some Jew
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: or other, converted by ambition. Ouvrard said, when Nizigen lets
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: gold go, you may be sure that it is to
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: catch diamonds. His crony, D. Toulays is just such another
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: said Fino, And mind you that of birth. D. Toulas
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: has just precisely as much as is necessary to exist.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: The chap had not a farthing in eighteen fourteen. And
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: you see what he is now. And he has done
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: something that none of us has managed to do. I
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: am not speaking of you, Coutu. He has had friends
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: instead of enemies. In fact, he has kept his past
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: life so quiet that unless you rake the sewers, you
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: are not likely to find out that he was an
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: assistant in a perfumer's shop in the Rue Saint Honore
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: no further back than eighteen fourteen. Tut Tut Tut said, Beaks,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: you do not think of comparing Nuzijen with a little
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: dabbler like du tilley a jackal that gets on in
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: life through his sense of smell. He scents a carcass
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: by instinct and comes in time to get the best bone. Besides,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: just look at the two men. The one has a sharp,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: pointed face like a cat. He is thin and lanky.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: The other is cubical, fat, heavy as a sack, imperturbable
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: as a diplomatist. Nuzigen has a thick, heavy hand and
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: lynx eyes that never light up. His depths are not
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: in front but behind. He is inscrutable. You never see
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: what he is making for. Whereas du Tilley's a cunning
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: as Napoleon said to somebody, I have forgotten the name
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: is like cotton spun too fine, it breaks. I do
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: not myself see that Nuzigen has any advantage over Dutulay,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: said Blondey, unless it is that he has the sense
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: to see that a capitalist ought not to rise higher
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: than a baron's rank, while Duetillays has a mind to
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: be an Italian count. BLONDEI one word, my boy put
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: in couture. In the first place, Nuzengen dared to say
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: that honesty is simply a question of appearances, and secondly,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: to know him well you must be in business yourself
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: with him. Banking is but a single department, and a
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: very small one. He holds government contracts for wines, wolves, indigoes,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: anything in short on which any profit can be made.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: He has an all round genius. The elephant of finance
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: would contract to deliver votes on a division, or the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Greeks to the Turks. For him, business means the sum
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: total of varieties, as cousin would say, the unity of specialties.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Lookd that in this way banking becomes a kind of
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: state craft in itself, requiring a powerful head, and a
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: man thoroughly tempered is drawn on to set himself above
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the laws of a morality that cramps him. Right, my
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: son said Blonde, But we, and we alone, can comprehend
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: that this means bringing war into the financial world. A
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: banker is a conquering general, making sacrifices on a tremendous
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: scale to gain ends that no one perceives. His soldiers
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: are private people's interests. He has stratagems to plan out
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: partisans to bring into the field, ambushes to sect towns
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: to take Most men of this stamp are so close
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: upon the borders of politics that in the end they
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: are drawn into public life and thereby lose their fortunes.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: The firm of Necker, for instance, was ruined in this way.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: The famous Samuel Bernard was all but ruined. Some great
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: capitalist in every age makes a colossal fortune and leaves
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: behind him neither fortune nor a family. There was the
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: firm of Paris Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: down Law. There was Law himself, beside whom other promoters
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: of companies are but pigmies. There was Bouret and Beaujon.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: None of them left any representative finance, like time devours
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: its own children. If the banker is to perpetuate himself,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: he must found a noble house, a dynasty, like the
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: fugures of Antwerp that lent money to Charles the Fifth
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: and work created princes of Babenhausen, a family that exists
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: at this day in the Almanach de Gotha. The instinct
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: of self preservation, working, it may be, unconsciously, leads the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: banker to seek a title. Jacques Coeur was the founder
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: of a great noble house of Noirmoutier, extinct in the
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: reign of Louis the thirteenth. What power that man had
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: he was ruined for making a legitimate king, and he
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: died prince of an island in the archipelago, where he
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: built a magnificent cathedral. Oh, you are giving us a
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: historical lecture. We are wandering away from the present. The
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: crown has no right of conferring nobility, and barons and
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: counts are made with closed doors. What is the pity,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: said Fino, You regret the times of the savonett a
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: villain when you could buy an office that enobled, asked Mixy,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: you you are right, ja Rivienna. No smouton you know
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Beau de' noor. No, no, no. Oh, well, see how
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: all things pass away, poor fellow. Ten years ago he
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: was the flower of Dandieism, and now so thoroughly absorbed
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: that you no more know him than Finot just now
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: knew the origin of the expression coup de gennac. I
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: repeat that simply for the sake of illustration, and not
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: to tease you. Finnaut, Well, it is a fact he
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: belonged to the Faubourg. Saint Germain Beaudenord is the first
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: pigeon that I will bring on the scene. And in
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the first place his name was God foi de Beaudenord.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Neither fino nor blondeais, nor couture, nor I am likely
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: to undervalue such an advantage as that after a ball,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: when a score of pretty women stand behooded waiting for
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: their carriages, with their husbands and adorers at their sides,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Beaudenord could hear his people called without a pang of mortification.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: In the second place, he rejoiced in the full complement
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: of limbs. He was whole and sound, had no moat
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: in his eyes, no false hair, no artificial calves. He
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: was neither knock kneed nor bandy legged. His dorsal column
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: was straight, his waist slender, his hands white and shapely.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: His hair was black. He was of a complexion, neither
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: too pink like a grocer's assistant, nor yet too brown
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: like a calabrese. Finally, and this is an essential point,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Beaudenord was not too handsome, like some of our friends
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: that look rather too much of professional beauties to be
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: anything else. But no more of that. We have said it.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: It is shocking well. He was a crack shot and
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: sat a horse to admiration. He had fought a duel
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: for a trifle, and had not killed his man. If
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: you wish to know in what pure, complete and unadulterated
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: happiness consists in this nineteenth century in Paris, the happiness,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: that is to say, of a young man of twenty six,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: do you realize that you must enter into the infinitely
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: small details of existence. Beau Denord's boot maker had precisely
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: hit off his style of foot. He was well shod,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: his tailor loved to clothe him. Gaude Fois neither rolled
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: his oars nor lapsed into Normanisms or gascon. He spoke
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: pure and correct French, and tied his cravat correctly, like Finaux.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: He had neither father nor mother. Such luck had he,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: and his guardian was the Marquis Daglement, his cousin by marriage.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: He could go among city people as he chose, and
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: and the Faubourg Saint Germain could make no objection. For fortunately,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: a young bachelor is allowed to make his own pleasure
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: his sole rule of life. He is at liberty to
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: betake himself wherever amusement is to be found, and to
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: shun the gloomy places, where cares flourish and multiply. Finally,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: he has been vaccinated. You know, what I mean, Blonde,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: And yet, in spite of all these virtues, continued to
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: bex you, he might very well have been the very
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: unhappy young man. Ey Ey. That word happiness unhappily seems
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: to us to mean something absolute, a delusion which sets
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: so many wise acres. Inquiring what happiness is, a very
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: clever woman said that happiness was where you chose to
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: put it. She formulated a dismal truth, said Blonde, and
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: a moral added Fino, double distilled, said Blondey. Happiness, like
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: good like evil, is relative. Wherefore La Fontaine used to
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: hope that in the course of time the damned would
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: feel as much at home in hell as a fish
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: in water. La Fontaine's sayings are known in filistia put
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: in Bixiou happiness at six and twenty in Paris is
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: not the happiness of six and twenty at say Blois, continued,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: blondeis taking no notice of the interruption, and those that
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: proceed from this text to rail on the instability of
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: opinion or either knaves or fools for their pains. Modern medicine,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: which past it is its fairest title, to glory from
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: hypothetical to a positive science through the influence of the
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: great analytical school of Paris has proved beyond a doubt
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: that a man is periodically renewed throughout new haft, new blade,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: like Jeanneaux's knife. And yet you think that he is
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: still the same man broke in Bixio. So there are
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: several lozenges in the harlequin's coat that we can call happiness.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: And well, there was neither hole nor stain in this
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: god FOA's costume. A young man of six and twenty
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: who would be happy in love, who would be loved,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: that is to say, not for his blossoming youth, nor
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: for his wit, nor for his figure, but spontaneously, and
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: not even merely in return for his own love. A
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: young man, I say, who has found love in the abstract,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: to quote Roye Collard, might yet very possibly find never
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: a farthing in the purse which she loving and beloved
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: embroider for him. He might owe rent to his landlord.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: He might be unable to pay the boot maker before
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: mention'd his very tailor, like France herself, might at last
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: show signs of disaffection. In short, he might have love
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: and yet be poor, and poverty spoils a young man's
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: happiness unless he holds our transcendental views of the fusion
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: of interests. I know nothing more wearing than happiness within
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: combined with adversity without. It is as if you had
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: one leg freezing in the draft from the door, and
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: the other half roasted by the brazier, as I have
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: at this moment, I hope to be understood. Comes there
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: an echo from my waistcoat pocket blondeis between ourselves. Let
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: the heart alone, it spoils the intellect. Let us presume
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: gou deu Foi de Beaudenord was respected by his tradespeople,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: for they were paid with tolerable regularity. The witty woman
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: before quoted I cannot give her name, for she is
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: still living thanks to her want of heart. Who is
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: this the Marquess Despard? She said that a young man
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: ought to live on an lthros all. There should be
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: no sign of domesticity about the place, no cook, no kitchen,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: an old man servant to wait upon him, and no
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: pretense of permanence. In her opinion, and the other sort
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: of establishment is bad form. Good Foi de Beaudenord, faithful
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: to this program, lodged in an altras all on the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Quai Malakwise he had, however, been obliged to have this
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: much in common with married couples. He had put a
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: bedstead in his room, though for that matter it was
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: so narrow that he seldom slept in it. An englishwoman
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: might have visited his rooms and found nothing improper there,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: For you have yet to learn the great law of
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the improper that rules Britain. But for the sake of
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: the bond between us, that bill for a thousand francs,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: I will just give you some idea of it. I
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: have been in England myself. I will give him wit
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: enough for a couple of thousand, he added, in an
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: aside to blondeis in England, Finot, you grow extremely intimate
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: with a woman in the course of an evening at
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: able or wherever it is. Next day you meet her
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: in the street, and look as though you knew her again.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Improper At dinner you discover a delightful man beneath your
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: left hand neighbor's dress coat, a clever man, no high mightiness,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: no constraint, nothing of an Englishman about him, in accordance
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: with the tradition of French breeding. So urbane, so gracious,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: as they are. You address your neighbor improper at a ball,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: You walk up to a pretty woman to ask her
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: a dance. Improper, You wax enthusiastic, You argue, laugh, and
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: give yourself out. You fling yourself heart and soul into
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the conversation. You give expression to your real feelings. You
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: play when you are at the card table, chat while
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: you chat, eat while you eat. Improper, improper, improper. Stendall,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: one of the cleverest and profoundest minds of the age,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: hit off the improper excellently well when he said that
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: such and such a British peer did not dare to
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: cross his legs when he sat alone before his own hearth,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: for fear of being improper and English gentlewoman, were she
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: one of the rabid saints, that most straightest sect of Protestants,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: that would leave their whole family to starve if the
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: said family did anything improper? May play the deuce's own
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: delight in her own bedroom, and need not be improper,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: but she would look on herself as lost if she
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: received a visit from a man of her acquaintance in
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the aforesaid room. Thanks to propriety, London and its inhabitants
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: will be found petrified some of these days. And to
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: think that there are asses here in France that want
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to import the solemn tomfoolery that the English keep up
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: among themselves. With that admirable self possession which you know
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: added blondeis. It is enough to make any man shudder
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: if he has seen the English at home and recollects
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: the charming, gracious French manners. Sir Walter Scott was of
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: fray to paint women as they are for fear of
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: being improper, and at the close of his life repented
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: of the creation of the great character of Effie in
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: the heart of Midlothian. Do you wish not to be
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: improper in England? Acted bix you, addressing Finot, Well, go
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: to the tuileries and look at a figure there, something
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: like a fireman carved in marble the mysticals the statuary
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: calls it. Try to walk like the Commandant's statue, and
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: you will never be improper. It was through strict observance,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the great law of the improper, that God FOA's happiness
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: became complete. There is the story Beaudenord had a tiger,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: not a groom, As they write that know nothing of society.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: The tiger, a diminutive Irish page called Paddy Toby Joby,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: which you please, was three feet in height by twenty
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: inches in breadth, A weasel faced infant with nerves of steel,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: tempered in fire water, and agile as swirrel. He drove
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: a land down with a skill never yet at fault
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: in London or Paris. He had a lizard's eye as
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: sharp as my own, and he could mount a horse
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: like the elder Franconi, with the rosy cheeks and yellow
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: hair of one of Reuben's madonnas. He was double faced
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: as a prince, and as knowing as an old attorney.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: In short, at the age of ten, he was nothing
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: more or less than a blossom of depravity, gambling and swearing,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: partial to jam and punch, pert as a friton, impudent
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: and light fingered as any Paris street Arab. He had
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: been a source of honor and profit to a well
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: known English lord, for whom he had already won seven
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand francs on the race course. The aforesaid nobleman
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: set no small store ontob His tiger was a curiosity,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: the very smallest tiger in town. Perch'd aloft on the
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: back of a thoroughbred. Toby looked like a hawk. Yet
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the Great Man dismiss'd him not for greediness, nor for dishonesty,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: no murder, no rudeness to my lady, nor for cutting
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: holes in my lady's own woman's pockets, nor because he
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: had been got at by some of his master's rivals
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: on the turf, norfore playing games of a sunday, nor
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: for bad behavior of any sort or description. Toby might
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: have done all these things. He might even have spoken
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: to my Lord before my Lord spoke to him, and
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: his noble man master might perhaps have pardoned that breach
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: of the law domestic. My Lord would have put up
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: with a good deal from Toby. He was very fond
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: of him. Toby could drive a tandem dog court riding
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: on the wheeler postilion fashion. His legs did not reach
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the shafts. He looked, in fact, very much like one
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: of the cherub heads circling about the Eternal Father in
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: old Italian pictures. But an English journalist wrote a delicious
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: description of the little Angel, in the course of which
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: he said that Paddy was quite too pretty for a tiger.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: In fact, he offered to bet that Paddy was a
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: tame tigress. The description on the heads of it was
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: calculated to poisoned mines and end in something improper, And
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the superlative of improper is the way to the gallows.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: The Lord's circumspection was highly approv'd by my lady. But
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: poor Toby, now that his precise position in insula zoology
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: had been called in question, found himself hopelessly out of place.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: At that time, goudu Fois had blossomed out at the
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: French embassy in London, where he learned the adventures of
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Toby Joby Paddy. Good Foi found the infant weeping over
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: a pot of jamb. He had already lost the guineas
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: with which my Lord gilded his misfortune. Good Fois took
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: possession of him, and so it fell out that on
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: his return among us, he brought back with him the
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: sweetest thing in tigers from England. He was known by
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: his tiger as gutour Is, known by his waistcoats, and
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: found no difficulty in entering the fraternity of the Club
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Eclept to day the Grament he had renounced a diplomatic career.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: He ceased accordingly to alarm the susceptibilities of the ambitious,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: And as he had no very dangerous amount of intellect,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: he was well looked upon everywhere. Some of us would
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: feel mortified if we saw only smiling faces wherever we went.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: We enjoy the sour contortions of envy. Good FOI did
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: not like to be disliked. Everyone has his taste now
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: for the solid, practical aspects of life. The distinguishing feature
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: of his chambers, where I have licked my lips over
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: breakfast more than once, was a mysterious dressing closet, nicely
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: decorated and comfortably appointed, with a great in it and
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: a bath tub. It gave upon a narrow staircase. The
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: folding doors were noiseless, the locks well oiled, the hinges discreet,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: the window panes of frosted glass, the curtain impervious to light.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: While the bedroom was as it ought to have been,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: in a fine disorder which would suit the most exacting
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: painter in water colors. While everything therein was redolent of
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: the bohemian life of a young man of fashion, the
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: dressing closet was like a shrine, white, spotless, neat and warm.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: There were no drafts from door or window. The carpet
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: had been made soft for bare feet, hastily put to
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: the floor in a sudden panic of alarm, which stamps
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: him as your thoroughbred dandy that knows life. For here
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: in a few moments he may show himself either a
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: noodle or a master in those little details in which
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: a man's character is revealed. The marquis previously quoted, no,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: it was the Marquis de Rochefide came out of that
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: dressing closet in a furious rage and never went back again.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: She discovered nothing improper in it. Gaude Fois used to
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: keep a little cupboard full of waistcoats, suggested Fino, come now,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: just like you, great tocorette that you are. I shall
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: never form that fellow. Why no full of cakes and fruit,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: and dainty little flasks of malaga and lunnel an encass
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: de neuis in Louis Catour's style, anything that can tickle
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: the delicate and well bred appetite of sixteen quarterings. A
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: knowing old man, servant, very strong in matters, veterinary, waited
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: on the horses and groomed god Foi he had been
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: with the late Monsieur de Beaux denored Godefoy's father and
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: bore Godfois an inveterate affection, a kind of heart complaint
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: which has all most disappeared among domestic servants since savings
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: banks were established. All material well being is based on arithmetic.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: U to whom Paris is known, down to its very excressions,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: will see that Beau de'nord must have acquired about seventeen
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: thousand livre per annum, for he paid some seventeen francs
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: of taxes and spent a thousand crowns on his own whims. Well,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: dear boys. When Godfois came of age, the Marquis d'anglement
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: submitted to him such an account of his trust, as
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: none of us would be likely to give a nephew.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Godfough's name was inscribed as the owner of eighteen thousand
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: livre of rents, a remnant of his father's wealth spared
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: by the harrow of the great reduction under the Republic
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: and the hail storms of imperial arrears. Daglement that upright
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: guardian also put his ward in possession of some thirty
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: thousand francs of savings, invested with the firm of nuz
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: and Jen, saying withal the charm of a grand seigneur
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: and the indulgence of a soldier of the Empire, that
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: he had contrived to put it aside for his ward's
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: young man's follies. If you will take my advice, Gurdevois
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: added he, instead of squandering the money like a fool,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: as so many young men do, let it go in
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: follies that will be useful to you afterwards. Take an
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: attache's post at Turin, and then go to Naples, and
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: from Naples to London, and you will be amused and
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: learn something for your money afterwards. If you think of
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: a career, the time and the money will not have
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: been thrown away. The late lamented Daglement had more sense
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: than people credited with, which is more than can be
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: said of some of us. A young fellow that starts
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: with an assured income of eighteen thousand livre at one
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: and twenty is lost, said Coutou, unless he is miserly
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: or very much above the ordinary level, added blondei Well.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: Gaud devoirs sojourned in the four capitals of Italy, continue
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: to Bixiou. He lived in England and Germany. He spent
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: some little time at Saint Petersburg. He ran over Holland,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: but he parted company with the afore said thirty thousand francs.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: By living as if he had thirty thousand a year.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Everywhere he found the same supreme de voulais, the same aspects,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: and French wines. He heard French spoken wherever he went.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: In short, he never got away from Paris. He ought,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: of course, to have tried to brave his disposition, to
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: fence himself in triple brass, to get rid of his illusions,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: to learn to hear anything said without a blush, and
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: to master the Inmoat's Secrets of the Powers Pooh with
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: a good deal of trouble. He equipped himself with four languages.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: That is to say, he laid in a stock of
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: four words for one idea. Then he came back, and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: certain tedious dowagers styled conquests abroad were left disconsolate. Good
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Fough came back shy, scarcely formed a good fellow with
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: a confiding disposition, incapable of saying ill of any one
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: who honored him, with an admittance to his house, to staunch,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: to be a diplomatist. Altogether, he was what we call
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: a thoroughly good fellow. To cut it short, a brat
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: with eighteen thousand liber per annum to drop over the
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: first investment that turns up, said Coutur. That confounded Cutur
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: has such a habit of anticipating dividends that he is
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: anticipating the end of my tale. Where was i? Oh?
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: Baudenord came back. When he took up his abode at
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: the Quai Malaquais. It came to pass that a thousand
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: francs over and above his needs was altogether insufficient to
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: keep up his share of a box at the Italians
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: and the Opera properly. When he lost twenty five or
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: thirty louis at play at one swoop, naturally he paid
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: when he won. He spent the money, So should we
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: if we were fools enough to be drawn into a bet. Beaudenord,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: feeling pinched with his eighteen thousand francs, saw the necessity
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: of creating what we to day call a balance in hand.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: It was a great notion of his not to get
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: too deep. He took counts of his some time guardian.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: The funds are now at par My dear boy, quoth
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: digloment sell out. I have sold mine and my wife's
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: newsyngen has all my capital and is giving me six
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: percent to Likewise, you will have one percent the more
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: upon your capital, and with that you will be quite comfortable.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: In three days time. Our godfar was comfortable. His increase
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: of income exactly supplied his superfluities. His material happiness was complete.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: Suppose that it were possible to read the minds of
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: all the young men in Paris at one glance, as
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: it appears will be done at the day of judgment,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: with all the millions upon millions that have groveled in
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: all spheres and worn all uniforms or the uniform of nature,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: and to ask them whether happiness at six and twenty
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: is or is not made up of the following items,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: to wit, to own a saddle horse and a tilbury
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: or a cab with a fresh rosy faced, to be
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: joby paddy no bigger than your fist, and to hire
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: an unimpeachable brone for twelve francs an evening, to appear
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: elegantly arrayed agreeably to the laws that regulate a man's clothes.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: At eight o'clock at noon, four o'clock in the afternoon
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: and in the evening. To be well received at every embassy,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: and to cull the short lived flowers of superficial cosmopolitan friendships.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: To be not insufferably handsome, to carry your head, your coat,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: and your name well, to inhabit a charming little alterless
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: all after the pattern of the rooms just described at
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: the Quai Malakwise, to be able to ask a part
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: of your friends to die at the Roche de Concale
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: without a previous consultation with your trousers pocket, never to
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: be pulled up in any rational project by the words
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: and the money. And finally, to be able to renew
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: at pleasure the pink rosettes that adorn the ears of
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: three thoroughbreds, and the lining of your hat. End of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: section one. Section three of the Firm of a New
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Zygen by Honora Bullzac, translated by James Warring. This LibriVox
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Section three. What is
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: this all about, vix, you cried, coutur, nothing more bono fied.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: Not a week passes, but pies are offered to the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: public for a louis. But who compels the public to
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: take them. Are they not perfectly free to make inquiries?
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: You would rather have it made compulsory to take up shares,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: would you, asked Blonde? No, said Fidoux. Where would the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: talent come in for a good for Finau? Who put
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: him up to it? Asked Gutua. The fact was continued
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: to bix you that Nuzungen had twice had the luck
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: to present the public, quite unintentionally, with a pie that
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: turned out to be worth more than the money he
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: received for it. That unlucky good luck gave him qualms
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: of conscience. A course of such luck is fatal to
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: a man in the long run. This time he meant
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: to make no mistake of this sort. He waited ten
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: years for an opportunity of issuing negotiable securities that would seem,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: on the face of it to be worth something. While
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: as a matter fact, but if you look at banking
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: in that light, broke in couture, no sort of business
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: would be possible. More than one bona fide banker, backed
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: up by a bona fide government, has induced the hardest
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: headed man on exchange to take up stock which is
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: bound to fall within a given time. You have seen
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: better than that. Have you not seen stock created with
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: the concurrence of a government to pay the interest upon
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: older stock, so as to keep things going and tied
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: over the difficulty. These operations were more or less like
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: nuz Engen's settlements. The thing may look queer on a
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: small scale, said Blondet, but on a large we call
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: it finance. There are high handed proceedings criminal between man
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: and man that amount to nothing when spread out over
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: any number of men, such as a drop of prussic
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: acid becomes harmless in a pail of water. You take
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: a man's life, you are guillotined. But if for any
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: political conviction whatsoever, you take five hundred lives, political crimes
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: are respected, you take five thousand francs out of my desk.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: To the hulks you go. But with a sop cleverly
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: pushed into the jaws of a thousand speculators, you can
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: cram the stock of any bankrupt republic or monarchy down
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: their throats. Even if the loans has been floated, as
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: Gutua says, to pay the interest on that very same
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: national debt. Nobody can complain. These are the real principles
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: of the present Golden Age. When the stage machinery is
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: so huge, continue to mix you a good many puppets
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: are required. In the first place, nu Zagen had purposely,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: and with his eyes open, invested his five millions in
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: American and investment. Foreseeing that the prophets would not come
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: in until it was too late, the firm of news
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: and Gen deliberately emptied its coffers any liquidation ought to
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: be brought about naturally in deposits belonging to private individuals
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: and other investments. The firm possessed about six millions of
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: capital altogether. Among those private individuals was the Baroness Dalrigue
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: with her three hundred thousand Francs, Beaudenord with four hundred thousand,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Daglement with a million, Marti Fought with three hundred thousand,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Charles Grande, who married Mademoiselle de Brian with a half million,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: and so forth and so forth. Now, if news in
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: Gen had himself brought out a joint stock company with
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: the shares of which he proposed to indemnify his creditors
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: after more or less ingenious maneuvering, he might perhaps have
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: been suspected he set about it more cunningly than that.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: He made some one else put up the machinery that
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: was to play the part of the Mississippi scheme. In
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: Law's system, Nuzigen can make the longest headed man work
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: out schemes for him without confiding a word to them.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: It is his peculiar talent. Nuzigen just let fall a
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: hint to do delay of the pyramidal triumphant notion of
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: bringing out a joint stock enterprise with capital sufficient to
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: pay very high dividends for a time, tried for the
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: first time in days when noodles with capital were plentiful.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: The plan was pretty sure to end in a run
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: upon the shares and consequently in a profit for the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: banker that issued them. You must remember that this happened
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty six. Dutillay struck through he was by
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: an idea both pregnant and genius. Naturally bethought himself that
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: if the enterprise failed, the blame must fall upon somebody,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: for which reason it occurred to him to put forward
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: a figurehead director in charge of his commercial machinery. At
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: this day you know the secret of the firm of
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: Claparon and Company, founded by Dutulay, one of the finest inventions, Yes,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: said Blondet, the responsible editor in business matters the instigator
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: and scapegoat. But we know better than that. Nowadays we
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: put apply at the offices of the company such and
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: such a number, such and such a street, where the
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: public find a staff of clerks in green caps, about
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: as pleasing to behold as broker's men. Nuzygen pursued, Bixiou
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: had supported the firm of Charles Claparon and Company with
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: all his credit. There were markets in which you might
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: safely put a million francs worth of Claperon's paper. So,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: due delays, proposed to bring his firm of Claperon to
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: the four So said, so done. In eighteen twenty five,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: the shareholder was still an unsophisticated begging. There was no
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: such thing as cash lying at call. Managing directors did
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: not pledge themselves not to put their own shares upon
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: the market. They kept no deposit with the Bank of France.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: They guaranteed nothing. They did not even condescend to explain
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: to shareholders the exact limits of their liability when they
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: informed them that the directors, in their goodness, refrained from
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: asking any more than a thousand or five hundred or
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: even two hundred and fifty francs. It was not given
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: out that the experiment in Eyre Publico was not meant
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: to last for more than seven, five or even three years,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: so that the shareholders would not have long to wait
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: for the catastrophe. It was in the childhood of the art.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: Promoters did not even publish the gigantic prospectuses with which
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: they stimulate the imagination, and at the same time make
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: demands for money of all and sundry that only comes
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: when nobody wishes to part with money, said Cutuur. In short,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: there was no competition in investments, continued bickx Yu. Paper
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: mache manufacturers, cotton printers, zinc rollers, theaters and newspapers as
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: yet did not hurl themselves like hunting dogs upon their quarry.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: The expiring shareholder nice things and shares, as Cutuur says,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: put this artlessly before the public. Backed up by the
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: opinions of experts, the princes of science were negotiated shamefacedly
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: in the silence and shadow of the worse link eyed
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: speculators used to execute, financially speaking, the air calumny out
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: of the barber of Seville. They went about piano piano,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: making known the merits of the concern through the medium
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: of stock exchange gossip. They could only exploit the victim
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: in his own house, on the bourse or in company.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: So they reached him by means of the skillfully created rumor,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: which grew till it reached a tutee of a quotation
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: in four figures. And as we can say anything among ourselves,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: said Cutur, I will go back to the last subject.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Vousette or fevre, Monsieur Jose cried, finaut finaul will always
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: be classic constitutional ad Pedantic, commented blondeis Yes, rejoined Cutur,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: on whose account Sir Rise had just been condemned on
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: a criminal charge. I maintained that the new way is
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: infinitely less fraudulent, less ruinous, more straightforward than the old.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: Publicity means time for reflection and inquiry. If here and
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: there a shareholder is taken in, he has himself to blame.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Nobody sells him a pig in a poke. The manufacturing industry,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: ah exclaimed bix U here comes industry is a gainer
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: by it, continued Couture, Taking no notice of the interruption.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Every government that meddles with commerce and cannot leave it
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: free sets about an expensive piece of folly. State interference
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: ends in a maximum or a molopoly. To my thinking,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: few things can be more in conformity with the principles
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: of free trade than joint stock companies. State interference means
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: that you try to regulate the relations of principle and interest,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: which is absurd in business, generally speaking, the profits are
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: in proportion to the risk. What does it matter to
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: the state how money is set circulating, provide that it
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: is always in circulation. What does it matter who is
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: rich or who is poor, provided that there is a
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: constant quantity of rich people to be taxed. Joint stock companies,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: limited liability companies, every sort of enterprise that pays a
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: dividend has been carried on for twenty years in England,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: commercially the first country in the world. Nothing passes unchallenged. There.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: The Houses of Parliament hatch some twelve hundred laws every session.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Yet no member of Parliament has ever yet raised an
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: objection to the system. A cure for plethora of the
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: strong box purely vegetable remedy put in mix you alaise caroutes.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: That is gambling speculation. Look here cried couture, firing up
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: at this you have ten thousand francs. You invest it
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: in ten shares of a thousand francs each in ten
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: different enterprises. You are swindled nine times out of the ten.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, you are not. The public
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: is a match for anybody. But say that you are
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: swindled and only one affair turns out well by accident. Oh,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: granted it was not done on purpose. There chafe away
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: verty well. The punter that has the sense to divide
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: up his stakes in this way hits on a splendid investment,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: like those who took shares in the war. Chinned minds, gentlemen,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: let us admit among ourselves that those who call out
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: are hypocrites, desperately vexed because they have no good ideas
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: of their own, and neither power to advertise nor skills
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: to exploit a business. You will not have long to
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: wait for proof. In a very short time you will
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: see the aristocracy, the court, and public men descend into
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: speculation in se reed columns. You will see that their
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: claws are longer, their morality more crooked than ours, while
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: they have not our good points. What a head man
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: must have if he has to found business in time
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: when the shareholder is as covetous and keen as the inventor.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: What a great magnetizer must he be that can create
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: a claparon and hit upon expedients never tried before? Do
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: you know the moral of it all? Our age is
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: no better than we are. We live in an era
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: of greed. No one troubles himself about the intrinsic value
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: of the thing if he can only make a profit
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: on it by selling it to somebody else, so he
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: passes it on to his neighbor. The shareholder that thinks
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: he sees a chance of making money is just as
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: covetous as the founder that offers him the opportunity of
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: making it. Is it he fine, our Cutuur, isn't he fine?
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: Exclaimed Bixiou, turning to BLONDEI, he will ask us next
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: to erect statues to him as a benefactor of the species.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: It would lead people to conclude that the fool's money
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: is the wise man's patrimony by divine right, said BLONDEI. Gentlemen,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: cried Cutuur. Let us have our laugh out here to
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: make up for all the times when we must listen
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: gravely to solemn nonsense, justifying laws passed on the spur
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: of the moment. He is right, said to BLONDEI what
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: times we live in, gentlemen. When the fire of intelligence
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: appears among us, it is promptly quenched by haphazard legislation.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: Almost all our law givers came up from little parishes
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: where they studied human nature through the medium of the newspapers.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: Forthwith they shut down the safety valve, and when the
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: machinery blows up, there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: We do nothing nowadays but pass penal laws and levy taxes.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: Will you have the sum of it all? There is
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: no religion left in the state. O brabo, blondeis cried vixieux.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: Thou hast set thy finger on the weak spot. Meddlesome
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: taxation has lost us more victories here in France than
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: the vexatious chances of war. I once spent seven years
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: in the hulks of a government department, chained with bourgeois
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: to my bench. There was a clerk in the office,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: a man with a head on his shoulders. He had
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: set his mind upon making a sweeping reform of the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: whole fiscal system. Ah, well, we took the conceit out
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: of him nicely. France might have been too prosperous, you know,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: she might have amused herself by conquering Europe again. We
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: acted in the interests of the peace of nations. I
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: slew Rabaudin with a caricature footnote see Lay's employees, the
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: government clerks also known as bureaucracy, and a footnote by religion.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: I do not mean can't I use the word in
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: its wide political sense. Rejoined BLONDEI explain your meaning, said Finaud.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: Here it is returned, BLONDEI. There has been a good
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: deal said about affairs at Lyons, about the republic canondated
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: in the streets. Well, there was not a word of
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: truth in it all. The Republic took up the riots
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: just as an insurgent snatches up a rifle. The truth
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: is queer and profound. I can tell you the leon's
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: trade is a soldiers trade. They will not weave a
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: yacht of silk unless they have the order and are
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: sure of payment. If orders fall off, the workmen may starve.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: They can men scarcely earn a living. Convicts are better
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: off after the revolution of July. The distress reached such
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: a pitch that the Lyon weavers, the Canutes as they
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: called them, hoisted the flag bread or death, a proclamation
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: of a kind which compels the attention of a government.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: It was really brought about by the cost of living
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: at Lyon. Leon must build theaters and become metropolis forsooth,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: and the Octois duties, accordingly, were insanely high. The Republicans
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: got wind of this bread riot. They organized the Canutes
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: into two camps and fought among themselves. Leon had her
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: three days, but order was restored, and the silk weavers
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: went back to their dens. Hitherto the canute had been honest.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: The silk for his work was weighed out to him
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: in hanks, and he brought back the same weight of
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: woven tissue. Now he made up his mind that the
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: silk merchants were oppressing him. He put honesty out at
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: the door and rubbed oil on his fingers. He still
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: brought back weight for weight, but he sold the silk
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: represented by the oil. And the French silk trade has
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: suffered from a plague of greased silks, which might have
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: ruined Leon, and a whole branch of French commerce. The
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: masters and the government, instead of removing the causes of
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: the evil, simply drove it in with a violent external application.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: They ought to have sent a clever man to lyon
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: or of those men that are said to have no
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: principle and abbe terray, But they looked at the affair
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: from a military point of view. The result of the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: troubles is a gross enopole at forty sous per yard.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: The silk is sold at this day, I dare say,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: and the masters no doubt have hit upon some new
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: check upon the men. This method of manufacturing without looking
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: ahead ought never to have existed in the country where
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest citizens that France has ever known
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: ruined himself to keep six thousand weavers in work without orders.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: Richard Lenois fed them, and the government was thick headed
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: enough to allow him to suffer from the fall of
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: the prices of textile fabrics brought about by the Revolution
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: of eighteen fourteen. Richard Lenoir is the one case of
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: a merchant that deserves a statue, and yet the subscription
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: set on foot for him has no subscribers. While the
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: fund for general foys children reached a million francs Lyon
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: has drawn her own conclusions. She knows France, she knows
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: that there is no religion left. The stilly of Richard
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Lenoits is one of those blunders which Whuche condemned as
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: worse than a crime. Suppose that there is a tinge
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: of Charlatanism in the way in which concerns are put
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: before the public began couture, returning to the charge that
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: word charlatanism has come to be a damaging expression, a
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: middle term, as it were, between right and wrong. For
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: where I ask does charlatanism begin? Where does it end?
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: What is charlatanism? Do me the favor of telling me
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: what it is not? Now, for a little plain speaking
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: the rarest social ingredient. A business which should consist in
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: going out at night to look for goods to sell
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: in the day would obviously be impossible. You find the
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: instinct of forestalling the market in the very match seller
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: How to forestall the market? That is the one idea
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: of the so called honest tradesmen of the Rue. Sad
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: danis as of the most brazen fronted speculator. If stocks
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: are heavy, cell you must If sales are slow, you
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: must tickle your customer. Hence the signs of the Middle Ages,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: hence the modern prospectus. I do not see a hair's
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: breadth of difference between attracting custom and forcing your goods
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: upon the customer. It may happen, It is sure to happen.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: It often happens that a shop keeper gets hold of
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: damaged goods, for the seller always cheats the buyer. Go
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: and ask the most upright folk in Paris, the best
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: known men in business, that is, and they will all
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: triumphantly tell you of dodges by which they passed off
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: stock which they knew to be bad upon the public.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: The well known firm of Minard began by sales of
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: this kind in the Rue Saint Denis. They sell nothing
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: but greased silk. It is all that they can do.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: The most honest merchants tell you, in the most candid way,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: that you must get out of a bad bargain as
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: best as you can, a motto for the most unscrupulous rascality.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: Blondet has given you an account of the Lyon affair,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: its causes and effects. And I proceed, in my turn,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: to illustrate my theory with an anecdote. There was once
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: a woolen weaver, an ambitious man burdened with a large
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: family of children by a wife too much beloved, He
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: put too much faith in the republic, laid in a
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: stock of scarlet wool, and manufactured those red knitted caps
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: that you may have noticed on the heads of all
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: the street urchins in Paris. How this came about, I
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: am just going to tell you. The republic was eaten
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: after the Saint Marie affair. The caps were quite unsaleable. Now,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: when a weaver finds that besides a wife and children,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: he has some ten thousand red woolen caps in the house,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: and that no hatter will take a single one of them,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: notions begin to pass through his head as fast as
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: if he were a banker racking his brains to get
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: rid of ten million francs worth of shares in some
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: dubious investment. As for this law of the fubourg, this
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: nuzygen of caps, do you know what he did? He
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: went to find a pothouse dandy, one of those comic
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: men that drive police sergeants to despair at open air
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: dancing saloons at the barriers. Then he engaged to play
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: the part of an American captain staying at Marie's and
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: buying for export trade. He was to go to some
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: large hat her who still had a cap in his
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: shop window, and inquire for ten thousand red woolen caps.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: The hatter, scenting business in the wind, hurried round to
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: the woolen weaver and rushed upon the stock. After that,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: no more of the American captain, you understand, and great
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: plenty of caps. If you interfere with the freedom of trade,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: because free trade has its drawbacks, you might as well
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: tie the hands of justice because a crime sometimes goes unpunished.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: Or blame the bad organization of society, because civilization produces
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: some evils. From the caps and the rue Saint Denis
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: to joint stock companies and the bank, draw your own conclusions.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: A crown for couture, said BLONDEI twisting a serviette into
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: a wreath for his head. I go further than that, gentleman.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: If there is a defect in the working hypothesis, what
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: is the cause? The law, the whole system of legislation.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: The blame rests with the legislature. The great men of
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: their districts are sent up to us by the provinces
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: crammed with parochial notions of right and wrong, and ideas
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: that are indispensable if you want to keep clear of
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: collisions with justice, are stupid when they prevent a man
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: from rising to the height at which a maker of
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: laws ought to abide. Legislation may prohibit such and such
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: developments of human passions, gambling lotteries, than aignons of the pavement,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: anything you please, but you cannot extirpate the passions themselves
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: by any amount of legislation. Abolish them, and you would
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: abolish the society which develops them, even if it does
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: not produce them. The gambling passion lurks, for instance, at
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: the bottom of every heart, be it a girls heart,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: of provincials, of diplomatists. Everybody longs to have money without
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: working for it. You may hedge the desire about with restrictions,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: but the gambling mania immediately breaks out in another form.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: You stupidly suppress lotteries. But the cook made pilfers none
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: the less and puts her ill gotten gains in the
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: savings bank. She gambles with two hundred and fifty franc
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: stakes instead of forty sous joint stock companies and speculation
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: take the place of the lottery. The gambling goes on
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: without the green cloth. The croupier's rake is invisible, the
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: cheating planned beforehand. The gambling houses are closed. The lottery
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: has come to an end, and now cry idiots morals
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: have greatly improved in France, as if forsooth they had
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: suppressed the punters. The gambling still goes on, only the
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: ate makes nothing from it now, and for a tax
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: paid with pleasure, it has substituted a burdensome duty. Nor
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: is the number of suicides reduced, for the gambler never dies,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: though his victim does. I am not speaking now of
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: foreign capital lost to France continued couture, nor of the
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: Frankfort lotteries. The Convention passed a decree of death against
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: those who hawked foreign lottery tickets and procura syndics used
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: to traffick in them. So much for the sense of
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: our legislature and his driveling philanthropy. The encouragement given to
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: savings banks is a piece of crass political folly. Suppose
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: that things take it outful turn and people lose confidence.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: The government will find that they have instituted the cue
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: for money, like the cues outside the baker's shops. So
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: many savings banks, so many riots. Three street boys hoist
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: a flag in some corner or other, and you have
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: a revolution ready made. But this danger, however great it
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: may be, seems to me less to be dreaded than
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: the widespread demoralization. Savings banks are a means of inoculating
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: the people, the classes least restrained by education or by reason,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: from schemes that are tacitly criminal, with the vice's bred
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: of self interest. See what comes of philanthropy. A great
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: politician ought to be without a conscience in abstract questions,
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: or he is a bad steersman for a nation. An
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: honest politician is a steam engine with feelings, a pilot
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: that would make love at the helm and let the
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: ship go down. A prime minister who helps himself to
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: millions but makes France prosperous and great is preferable. Is
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: he not to a public servant to ruin his country,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: even though he is buried at the public expense? Would
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: you hesitate between a Richaudieu, a Mazarin, or a Potampkin,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: each with his own hundreds of millions of francs and
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: a conscientious Robert Lindey who could make nothing out of
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: assignats and national property, or one of the virtuous imbeciles
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: who ruined Louis the sixteenth. Go on, mix you. I
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: will not go to the details of the speculation, which
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: we owe to Newsyngens, a financial genius. It would be
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: the most inexpedient, because the concern is still in existence
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: and shares are quoted on the moors. The scheme was
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: so convincing, there was such life in an enterprise sanctioned
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: by royal letters patent that though the shares issued at
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: a thousand francs fell to three hundred, they rose to
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: seven and will reach each par Yet, after weathering the
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: stormy years twenty seven, thirty and thirty two, the financial
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: crisis of eighteen twenty seven sent them down. After the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: Revolution of July they fell flat. But there really is
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: something in the affair. Nuzengen simply could not invent a
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: bad speculation. In short, as several banks of the highest
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: standing have been mixed up in the affair, it would
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: be unparliamentary to go further into detail. The nominal capital
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: amounted to ten millions, the real capital to seven three
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: millions were allotted to the founders and bankers that brought
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: it out. Everything was done with a view to sending
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: up the shares two hundred francs during the first six
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: months by the payment of a sham dividend twenty percent
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: on ten millions due DeLay's interest in the concern amounted
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: to five hundred thousand francs in the stock exchange slang
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: of the day. This share of the spoils was a
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: sop of the pan. Newsagen, with his millions made by
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: the aid of a lithographer's stone and a hand full
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: of pink paper, proposed to himself to operate certain nice
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: little shares carefully hoarded in his private office till the
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: time came for putting them on the market. The shareholder's
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: money floated the concern and paid for splendid business premises.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: So they began operations, and Nuzagen held in reserve founders
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: shares in heaven knows what coal and argentepherous lead mines,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: also in a couple of canals. The shares had been
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: given to him for bringing out the concerns. All four
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: were in working order, well got up and popular, for
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: they paid good dividends Nuzigen might, of course count on
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: getting the differences if the shares went up, but this
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: formed no part the baron's schemes. He left the shares
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: at sea level on the market to tempt the fishes.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: So he had masked his securities as Napoleon massed his troops,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: all with a view to suspending payment in the thick
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: of the approaching crisis of eighteen twenty six twenty seven,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: which revolutionized European markets. If Nuzingen had had his Prince
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: of Wagram, he might have said, like Napoleon from the
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: heights of Santon, make a careful survey of the situation,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: on such and such a day, at such an hour.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: Funds will be poured in at such a spot. But
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: in whom could he confide? Du Toulas had no suspicion
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: of his own complicity in Nuzengen's plot, and the bold
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: baron had learned from his previous experiments in suspensions of
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: payment that he must have some man whom he could
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: trust to act at need as a lever upon the creditor.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: Nuzigen had never a nephew. He dared not take a confidante.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: Yet he must have a devoted and intelligent claperon, a
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: born diplomatist with a good manner, a man worthy of
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: him and fit to take office under government. Such connections
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: are not made in a day, nor yet in a year.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: By this time Rastignac had been so thoroughly entangled by
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: Nizingen that, being like the Prince de la Pay equally
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: beloved by the King and Queen of Spain, he fancied
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: that he Rastignac had secured a very valuable dupe in Nuzigen.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: For a long while he had laughed at a man
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: whose capacities he was unable to estimate. He ended in
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: a sober, serious and devout admiration of Nuzigen, owning that
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: Nuzigen really had the power which he thought he himself
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: alone possessed. From Rastignac's introduction to society in Paris, he
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: had been led to condemn it utterly. From the year
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: eighteen twenty, he thought, like the baron, that honesty was
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: a question of appearances. He looked upon the world as
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: a mixture of corruption and rascality of every sort. If
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: he admitted exceptions, he condemned the mass. He put no
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: belief in any virtue men did right or wrong, as
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: circumstances decided, his worldly wisdom was the work of a moment.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: He learned his lesson at the summit of Pere la
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: Chase one day, when he buried a poor good man.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: There it was his Delphine's father, who died, deserted by
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: his daughters and their husbands, a dupe of our society
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: and of the truest affection. Rastignac then and there resolved
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: to exploit this world, to wear a full dress of virtue, honesty,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: and fine manners. He was empanoplied in selfishness. When the
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: young chion of nobility discovered that Nuzigen wore the same armor,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: he respected him much as some knight mounted upon a
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: barb and raid in damas end Steel would have respected
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: an adversary equally well horsed and equipped at a tournament
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages. But for the time he had
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: grown effeminate amid the lights of Cappawa. The friendship of
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: such a woman as the Baron de Nutigen is of
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: a kind that sets a man abjuring egoism in all
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: its forms. Delphine had been deceived once ready in her
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: first venture of the affections she came across a piece
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: of Birmingham manufacture in the shape of the late lamented
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: de Marseilles, and therefore she could not but feel a
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: limitless affection for a young provincial's articles of faith. Her
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: tenderness reacted upon the Rastigjak. So by the time that
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: Nuzijen had put his wife's friend into the harness in
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: which the exploiter always gets the exploited, he had reached
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: the precise juncture. When he the baron meditated a third
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: suspension of payment to Rastignac. He confided his position. He
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: pointed out to Rastignac a means of making reparation. As
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: a consequence of his intimacy, he was expected to play
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: the part of confederate. The baron judged it unsafe to
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: communicate the whole of his plan to his conjugal glabor.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: Rastiac quite believed in impending disaster, and the baron allowed
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: him to believe further that he Rastingjac saved the shop.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: But when there are so many threads in his skein,
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: there are apt to be knots. Rastignac trembled for Delphine's money.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: He stipulated that Delphine must be independent and her estate
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: separated from her husband's, swearing to himself that he would
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: repay her by troubling her fortune. As however, Rastingjac said
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: nothing of himself, Nuzigen begged him to take, in the
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: event of success, twenty five shares of a thousand francs
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: in the argent feris led mines, and Eugene took them,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: not to offend him. Nuzigen had put Rastignac up to
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: this the day before that evening in the rue j Berts,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: when our friend counseled Malvina to marry. A cold shiver
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: ran through Rastignac at the sight of so many happy
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: folk in Paris going to and fro unconscious of the
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: impending loss. Even so a young commander might shiver at
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: the first sight of an army drawn up before a battle.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: He saw the Dagliments and the Dalrigaze, and the Baudeneorde,
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: poor little Isore and god Foir playing at love. What
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: were they but Assis and Galatea under the rock which
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: a hulking Polyphemus was about to send down upon them.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: That monkey of a Bixiou has something almost like talent,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: said de Blonday. Oh so I am not maundering now,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: asked Bixiou, enjoying his success as he looked round at
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: his surprised auditors for two months past, he continued, God
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: Foi had given himself up to all the little pleasures
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: of preparation for the marriage. At such times, men are
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: like birds building nests in spring. They come and go,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: pick up their bits of straw, and fly off with
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: them in their beaks to line the nest, that is,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: to hold a brood of young birds. By and by,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: Isau's bridegroom had taken a house in the Rue de
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: la plancheis at a thousand crowns, a comfortable little house
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: neither too large nor too small, which suited them. Every
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: morning he went round to take a look at the
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: workmen and to superintend the painters. He had introduced comfort
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: the only good thing in England. Heating apparatus to maintain
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: an evel and temperature all over the house, fresh soft colors,
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: carefully chosen furniture neither too showy nor too much in fashion,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: spring blinds fitted to every window inside and out, silver plate,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: and new carriages. He had seen to the stables, coach
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: house and harness room where Toby Joby, Paddy floundered and
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: fidgeted about like a marmot let loose, apparently rejoiced to
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: know that there would be women about the place and
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: a lady. This fervent passion of a man that sets
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: up housekeeping, choosing clocks, going to visit his betrothed, with
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: his pockets full of patterns of stuffs, consulting her as
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: to the bedroom furniture, going coming, and trotting about for
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: love's sake, All this, I say, is a spectacle in
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: the highest degree, calculated to rejoice the hearts of honest people,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: especially tradespeople, and as nothing pleases folk better than the
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: marriage of a good looking young fellow of seven and
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: twenty and a charming girl of nineteen that dances admirably well.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Gourd FOI, in his perplexity over the Gorbella, asked Madame
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: de Nuzigen and the Rastignac to breakfast with him and
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: advise him on this all important point. He hit likewise
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: on the happy idea of asking his cousin Dagliment and
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: his wife to meet them as well as Madame de Serresie.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: Women of the world are ready enough to join for
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: once in an improvised breakfast party at a bachelor's rooms.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: It is their way of playing truant. Put in blondeis
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: of course. They went over the new house resumed to bixiou.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: Married women relish these little expeditions as Ogre's relish warm flesh.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: They feel young again with the young bliss unspoiled as
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: young by fruition. Breakfast was served in Godefoy's sitting room,
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: decked out like a troop horse for a farewell to
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: bachelor life. There were dainty little dishes, such as women
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: love to devour, nibble at, and sip of a morning
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: when they are usually alarmingly hungry and horribly afraid to
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: confess to it. It would seem that a woman compromises
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: herself by admitting that she is hungry. Why have you
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: come alone, inquired Gaudefoy, when Rastignac appeared. Madame deritegen is
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: out of spirits. I will tell you all about it,
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: answered Rastignac, with the air of a man whose temper
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: has been tried. A quarrel hazarded Godfoy. No. At four
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: o'clock the women took flight for the Bois de Malogne.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: Rastignac stayed in the room and looked out the window,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: fixing his melancholy gaze upon Toby Joby Paddy, who stood
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: his arms crossed in Napoleonic fashion, audaciously posted in front
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: of Baudenord's cab horse. The child could only control the
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: animal with his shrill little voice, but the horse was
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: afraid of Joby. Toby well began, GODFOI, what is the
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: matter with you, my dear fellow. You look gloomy and anxious.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: Your gaiety is forced. You are tormented by incomplete happiness.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: It is wretched, and that is a fact when one
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: cannot marry the woman one loves. At the mayor's office
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: and the church. Have you courage to hear what I
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: have to say? I wonder whether you will see how
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: much a man must be attached to a friend if
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: he can be guilty of such a breach of confidence
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: as this for his sake, something in Rastignac's voice stung
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: like a lash of a whip. What asked God? Foit
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: de Baudenord, turning pale, I was unhappy over your joy.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: I had not the heart to keep such a secret
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: to myself when I saw all these preparations your happiness
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: in bloom. Just saying it out in three words, swear
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: to me on your honor, that you will be as
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: silent as the grave. As the grave repeated baudenord that
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: if one of your relatives were concerned in this secret,
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: he should not know it. No very well, Nuzigen started
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: to night for Brussels. He must file his schedule if
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: he cannot arrange a settlement. This very morning, Delphine petitioned
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: for the separation of her estate. You may still save
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: your fortune, how faltered Godfoi, the blood turned to ice
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: in his veins. Simply write to the Baron de Nuzigen
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: addedating your letter a fortnight, and instruct him to invest
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: all your capital in shares. Rastignac suggested Clara Pont and Company,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: and continued, you have a fortnight a month, possibly three months,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: in which to realize and make something. The shares are
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: still going up. But Daglement, who was here at breakfast
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: with us, has a million in Nuzigen's bank. Look here,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: I do not know whether there will be enough of
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: these shares to cover it. And besides, I am not
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: his friend. I cannot betray Nuzijen's confidence. You must not
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: speak to Daglement. If you say a word you must
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: answer to me for the consequences. Good Fois stood stock
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: still for ten minutes. Do you accept, yes or no?
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: Said the inexorable Rastignac. God Fois took up the pen
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: and wrote at Rastignac's dictation and signed his name, my
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: poor cousin. He cried each for himself, said Rastignac. And
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: there is one more settled, he added to himself, as
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: he left Baudenord, while Ustignac was maneuvering thus in Paris,
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: imagine the state of things on the Bourse. A friend
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: of mine, a provincial, a stupid creature, once asked me,
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: as we came past the Bourse between four and five
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon, what all that crowd of chatterers was doing,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: what they could possibly find to say to each other?
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: And why they were wandering to and fro when business
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: in public securities was over for the day. My friend said,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: I they have made their meal, and thou they art
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: digesting it. While they digest it, they gossip about their neighbors,
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: or there would be no commercial activity in Paris. Concerns
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: are floated here such and such a man Palma, for instance,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: Who is something the same here as Cinnaard at the
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: academye Royale dessance. Palmas says, let the speculation be made,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: and the speculation is made. What a man that Hebrew
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: is put in blows day. He has not had a
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: university education, but a universal education, and universal does not
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: in his case mean superficial. Whatever he knows, he knows
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: to the bottom. He has a genius, an intuitive faculty
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: for business. He is the oracle of all the Lynxes
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: that rule the Paris market. They will not touch an
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: investment unless Palma has looked into it. He looks solemn,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: He listens, ponders and reflects. His interlocutour thinks that after
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: this consideration he has come round his man, till Palmer says,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: this will not do for me. The most extraordinary thing
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: about Palma, to my mind, is the fact that he
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: and where Brust were partners for ten years and there
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: was never the shadow of a disagreement between them. This
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: is the way with a very strong or the very weak,
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: and he too, between the extremes fall out and lose
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: no tees time in making enemies of each other, said
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: Coutuur Newzygen. You see had neatly and skillfully put a
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: little bombshell under the colonnades of the Bourse, and towards
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: four o'clock in the afternoon it exploded. Here is something serious.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: Have you heard the news, asked du Deulay, drawing Verbrust
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: into a corner. Here is Nuzigen gone off to Brussels
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: and his wife petitioning for a separation of her estate.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: Are you and he in it together for a liquidation?
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: Asked Verbruce, smiling No foolery, Verbrost said, dutulays, you know
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: the holders of his paper. Now look here, there is
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: business in it. Shares in this due concern of ours
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: have gone up twenty percent already they will go up
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: to five and twenty by the end of the quarter.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: You know why they are going to pay a splendid dividend.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: Sly dog, said Verbrust. Get along with you. You are
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: a devil with long and sharp claws, and you have
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: them deep in the butter. Just let me speak, or
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: we shall not have time to operate. I hit on
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: the idea. As soon as I heard the news. I
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: positively saw Madame Denisijen crying. She is afraid for her fortune,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: poor little thing, said the old Alsatian jew with an
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: ironical expression. Well, he added, as du de Lay was silent. Well,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: at my place, I have a thousand shares of a
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: thousand francs in our concern. Newzygen handed them over to
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: me to put on the market. Do you understand? Good? Now,
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: let us buy up a million of news Egen's paper
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: at a discount of ten or twenty percent, and we
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: shall make a handsome percentage out of it. We shall
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: be debtors and creditors. Both confusion will be worked, but
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: we must set about it carefully, or the holders may
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: imagine that we are operating in Nuzingen's interest. Then weere
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: brost understood. He squeezed Dutlais's hand with an expression such
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: as a woman's face wears when she is playing her
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: neighbor a trick. Martin Foulet came up. Well, have you
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: heard the news, he asked, Nuzigen has stopped payment. Pooh,
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: said verbrus Pray, don't noise it about. Give those who
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: hold his paper a chance. What is the cause of
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: the smash? To Guno put in Claparon, You know nothing
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: about it, said du Tillay. There isn't any smash. Payment
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: will be made in full Nuzigen will start again. I
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: shall find him all the money he wants. I know
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: the causes of the suspension. He has put all his
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: capital into Mexican securities, and they are sending him metal
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: in return. Old Spanish cannon cast in such an insane
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: fashion that they melted down gold and bell, battle and
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: church plait for it, and all the wreck of the
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: Spanish dominion in the Indies. The specie is slow in coming,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: and the dear Baron is hard up. That is all.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: It is a fact, said Verbrust. I am taking his
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: paper myself at twenty percent discount. The news spread swift
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: as fire in a straw wreck. The most contradictory reports
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: got about, But such confidence was felt in the firm
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: after the two previous suspensions, that every one stuck to
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: Nuzingen's paper. Palma must lend us a hand, said Verbrust.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: Now Palma was the keller's oracle, and the kellers were
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: brim full of Nuzyngen's paper. A hint from Palma would
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: be enough. Verbrust arranged with Palmer, and he rang the
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: alarm bell. There was a panic next day on the Bourse,
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: the killers, acting on Palmer's advice let go Nuzyngen's papered
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: at ten percent of loss. They set the example on exchange,
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: for they were supposed to know very well what they
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: were about. Tolifey followed up with three hundred thousand francs
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: at a discount of twenty percent, and Martin Foulet with
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: two hundred thousand at fifteen. Gigaineaut saw what was going on.
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: He helped to spread the panic, with a view to
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: buying up Newzygen's paper himself and making a commission of
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: two or three percent out of verbrust. In a corner
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: of the horse he came upon poor Mattiphat, who had
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: three hundred thousand francs in Nuzigen's bank. Mattiphat, ghastly and haggard,
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: beheld the terrible Gigonnay, the bill discounter of his old
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: quarter coming up to worry him. He shuddered in spite
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: of himself. Things are looking bad. There is a crisis
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: at hand. Nuzgen is compounding with his creditors. But this
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: does not interest you, daddy Mattifat, you are out of business.
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: Oh well, you are mistaken, Gigounay. I am in for
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: three hundred thousand francs. I meant to speculate in Spanish bonds.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: Then you have saved your money. Spanish bonds would have
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: swept everything away, whereas I am prepared to offer you
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: something like fifty percent for your account with Nuzigen. You
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: are very keen about it. It seems to me, said Mattifat.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: I never knew a backer yet that paid less than
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: fifty percent. Ah, if it were only a matter of
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: ten percent of loss, added the retired man of drugs.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: Well will you take fifteen, Askedagunay. You are very keen
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: about it, it seems to me, said Matifat. Good night,
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: will you take twelve? Done? Said Gegunay. Before night, two
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: millions had been brought up in the names of the
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: three chants United Confederates and posted, by due delay in
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: the debit side of News and Jen's account. Next day
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: they drew their premium. The dainty little old Baroness Dlrigue
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: was at breakfast with her due daughters and Gaude Fois
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: when Rastignac came in with a diplomatic air to steer
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: the conversation on the financial crisis. The Baron de Nujigen
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: felt a lively regard for the Delrigue family. He was prepared,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: if things went amiss, to cover the Baroness's account with
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: his best securities, to wit some shares in the argentiferous
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: lead mines. But the application must come from the lady.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: Poor Nuzigen, said the Baroness. What can have become of him?
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: He is in Belgium. His wife is petitioning for a
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: separation of her property. But he had gone to see
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: if he can arrange with some bankers to see him through.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: Dear me, that reminds me of my poor husband. Dear
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: Monsieur de Rastignac, how you must feel this, so attached
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: as you are to the house. If all the indifferent
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: are covered, his personal friends will be rewarded. Later on
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: he will pull through. He is a clever man, an
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: honest man, above all things, said the Baroness. A month later,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: Nuzygen met all his liabilities with no formalities beyond the
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: letters by which creditors signified the investments which they preferred
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: to take in exchange for their capital, and with no
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: action on the part of other banks beyond registering the
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: transfer of Nuzigen's paper for the investments in favor. While
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: due to lay verbrust Claparon Gigounay and others that thought
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: themselves clever were fetching in Nuzigen's paper from abroad with
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: a premium of one percent, for it was still worth
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: their while to exchange it for securities in a rising market.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: There was all the more talk on the Bourse because
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: there was nothing now to fear. They babbled over Duzigen.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: He was discussed and judged. They even slandered him, his
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: luxurious life, his enterprises. When a man has so much
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: on his hands, he overreaches himself, and so forth and
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: so forth. The talk was at its height when several
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: people were greatly astonished to receive letters from Geneva, Basil, Milan, Naples, Genoa,
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: Marseilles and London, in which their ca respondents, previously advised
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: of the failure, informed them that somebody was offering one
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: percent for Nuzengen's paper. There is something up, said the
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: lynxes of the Bourse. The court meanwhile had granted the
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: application for Madame de Nucigen's separation as to her estate,
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: and the question became still more complicated. The newspapers announced
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: the return of Monsieur le Baron de Nuzigen, from a
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: journey to Belgium. He had been arranging, it was said,
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: with a well known Belgian firm, to resume the working
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: of some coal pits in the Bois de Beauzout. The
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: baron himself appeared on the Bourse, and never even took
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: the trouble to contradict the slanders circulating against him. He
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: scorned to reply through the press. He simply bought a
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: splendid estate just outside Paris for two millions of francs.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: Six weeks afterwards, the Bordeaux shipping intelligence announced that two
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: vessels with cargoes of bullion to the amount of seven millions,
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: consigned to the firm of Nuzigen, was lying in the river.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: Then it was plain to Palmer, brust and due delay,
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: that the trick had been played. Nobody else was any
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: the wiser. The three scholars studied the means by which
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: the great bubble had been created, saw that it had
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: been preparing for eleven months, and pronounced Nujigen the greatest
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: financier in Europe. Rastignac understood nothing of all this, but
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: he had the four hundred thousand francs which Nuzigen had
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: allowed him to shear from the Parisian sheep, and he
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: portioned his sisters dagliment At a hint from his cousin.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: Baudenord besought Stingak to accept ten percent upon his million
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: if he would undertake to convert it into shares in
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: a canal which is still to make for Nutijen worked
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: things for the government to such purpose that the concessionaires
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: find it in their interest not to finish their scheme.
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: Charles Grande implored Delphine's lover to use his interest to
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: secure shares for him in exchange for his cash. And
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: although Rastingac played the part of law for ten days,
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: he had the prettiest duchesses in France praying to him
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: to allot shares to them. And to day the young
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: man very likely has an income of forty thousand livre,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: derived in the first instance from the argentepherus lead mines.
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: If every one was better off, who can have lost?
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: Asked Finaux. Here the conclusion rejoined Bixiou, the Marquis Daglement,
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: and beaudenord I put them forward as two examples out
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: of many kept their allotted chairs, enticed by the so
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: called dividend that fell due a few months afterwards they
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: had another three percent on their capital. They sang Luzgen's
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: praises and took his part at a time when everybody
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: suspected that he was going bankrupt. Goodfar married his beloved
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: Esesau and took shares in the mines to the value
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: of a hundred thousand francs. The Nuziagens gave them all
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: even more splendid than people expected of them. On the
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: occasion of the wedding, Delphine's present to the bride was
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: a charming set of rubies. Yesaw danced, a happy wife,
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: a girl no longer. The little baroness was more than
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: ever a shepherdess of the Alps. The ball was at
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: its height when Malvina, the andulous of Mouseai's poem, heard
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: du DeLay's voice drily advising her to take de Rochet's
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: De Roches warmed to the right degree by Rastignac and
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: Nuzigen tried to come to an understanding financially, but at
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: the first hint of shares in the mines for the
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: bride's portion, he broke off and went back to the
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: matifats in the Rue de Cherchet medi only to find
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: the accursed canal shares which Gigonnet had foisted on Mottifat
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: in lieu of cash. They had not long to wait
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: for the crash. The firm of Claparon did business on
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: too large a scale. The capital was locked up. The
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: concerns ceased to serve its purposes or to pay dividends,
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: though the speculations were sound. These misfortunes coincided with the
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: events of eighteen twenty seven. In eighteen twenty nine, it
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: was to well known that Claperon was a man of straw,
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: set up by the two giants. He fell from his pedestal.
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: Shares that had fetched twelve hundred and fifty francs fell
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: to four hundred, though intrinsically they were worth six nutygen,
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: knowing their value, brought them up at four. Meanwhile, the
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: little Baroness Dalrigue had sold out of the mines that
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: paid no dividends, and Gaudefois had reinvested the money belonging
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: to his wife and her mother in Claperon's concern deaths
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: compelled them to realize when the shares were at their lowest,
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: so that of seven hundred thousand francs only two hundred
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: thousand remained, They made a clearance, and all that was
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: left was prudently invested in three percents. At seventy five,
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: Gaude Fois, the sometime gay and careless bachelor, who had
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: lived without taking thought all his life long, found himself
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: saddled with a little goose of a wife, totally unfitted
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: to bear adversity. Indeed, before six months were over he
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: had witnessed the asserine transformation of his beloved, to say
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: nothing of a mother in law whose mind ran on
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: pretty dresses while she had not bread to eat. The
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: two families must live together to live at all. It
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: was only by stirring up all his considerably chilled interest
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: that Gaudfoy got a post in the audit department. Quite lately,
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: our Baron was walking along the Rue de Rivoli on
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: his way to the Bois, when he met the Baroness
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: Dalrigae under the colonnade. The little old lady wore a
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: tiny green bonnet with a rose colored lining, a flowered gown,
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: and a mantilla. Altogether, she was more than ever the
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: shepherdess of the Alps. She could no more be made
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: to understand the causes of her poverty. Then the sources
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: of her wealth as she went along, leaning upon poor Malvina,
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: that model of heroic devotion. She seemed to be. The
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: young girl, and Malvina the old mother. Worth followed them
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: carrying an umbrella. Dere are peoples whose fortune I found
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: it impossible to make, said the baron, addressing his companion,
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: Monsieur Cortey, a cabinet minister. Now that the Baroxum of
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: principles hath based off just reinstate that poor Baudenoude so
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: Boudenorud went back to his desk thanks to Nuzigen's good offices,
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: and the tal Regueze extolled Nuzigen as a hero of friendship,
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: for he always sends the little shepherdess of the Alps
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: and her daughter's invitations to his balls. No creature whatsoever
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: can be made to understand that the Baron Yonder three
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: times did his best to plunder the public without breaking
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: the letter of the law, and enriched people in spite
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: of himself. No one has a word to say against him.
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: If anybody should suggest that a big capitalist often is
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: another word for a cut throat, it would be a
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: most egregious calumny. If stocks rise and fall if property
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: improves and depreciates. The fluctuations of the market are caused
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: by a common movement, a something in the air, a
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: tide in the affairs of men, subject like other tides
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: to lunar influences. The great Orago is much to blame
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: for giving us no scientific theory to account for this
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: important phenomenon. The only outcome of all this is an
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: axiom which I have never seen anywhere in print, and
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: that is, the debtor is more than a match for
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: the creditor, oh said BLONDEI for my own part, all
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: that we have been saying seems to me to be
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: a paraphrase of the epigram in which Montesquieu summed up
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: lispirate deslois. What said Fino, laws are like spiders webs.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: The big flies get through while the little ones are caught.
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: Then what are you for, asked Fino. For absolute government,
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: the only kind of government under which enterprises against the
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: spirit of the law can be put down. Yes, arbitrary
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: rule is the salvation of a country when it comes
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: to the support of justice, For the right of mercy
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: is strictly one sided. The king can pardon a fraudulent,
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: bankrupt he cannot do anything for the victims. The letter
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: of the law is fatal to modern society. Just get
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: that into the elector's heads, said Bixiou. Some one has
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: undertaken to do it. Who time, as the Bishop of
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: Leon said, Liberty is ancient, but kingship is eternal, and
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: a nation in its right mind returns to monarchical government
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: in one form or another. I say there was somebody
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: next door, said Finot, hearing us rise to go. There
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: always is somebody next door, retorted bix Hugh, But he
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: must have been drunk. Paris, November eighteen thirty seven, end
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: of section three, recording by James Carson and of Firm
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: of Nijigen by honoray Bulzak, translated by James Whering,