dinner came in from a cookshop; and our old porter's wife went up at
the prescribed hour to set his room in order. Finally, a whimsical

chance, in which Sterne would have seen predestination, had named the
man Gobseck. When I did business for him later, I came to know that he

was about seventy-six years old at the time when we became acquainted.
He was born about 1740, in some outlying suburb of Antwerp, of a Dutch

father and a Jewish mother, and his name was Jean-Esther Van Gobseck.
You remember how all Paris took an interest in that murder case, a

woman named La belle Hollandaise? I happened to mention it to my old
neighbor, and he answered without the slightest symptom of interest or

surprise, 'She is my grandniece.'
"That was the only remark drawn from him by the death of his sole

surviving next of kin, his sister's granddaughter. From reports of the
case I found that La belle Hollandaise was in fact named Sara Van

Gobseck. When I asked by what curious chance his grandniece came to
bear his surname, he smiled:

" 'The women never marry in our family.'
"Singular creature, he had never cared to find out a single relative

among four generations counted on the female side. The thought of his
heirs was abhorrent to him; and the idea that his wealth could pass

into other hands after his death simply inconceivable.
"He was a child, ten years old, when his mother shipped him off as a

cabin boy on a voyage to the Dutch Straits Settlements, and there he
knocked about for twenty years. The inscrutable lines on that sallow

forehead kept the secret of horrible adventures, sudden panic,
unhoped-for luck, romantic cross events, joys that knew no limit,

hunger endured and love trampled under foot, fortunes risked, lost,
and recovered, life endangered time and time again, and saved, it may

be, by one of the rapid, ruthless decisions absolved by necessity. He
had known Admiral Simeuse, M. de Lally, M. de Kergarouet, M.

d'Estaing, le Bailli de Suffren, M. de Portenduere, Lord Cornwallis,
Lord Hastings, Tippoo Sahib's father, Tippoo Sahib himself. The bully

who served Mahadaji Sindhia, King of Delhi, and did so much to found
the power of the Mahrattas, had had dealings with Gobseck. Long

residence at St. Thomas brought him in contact with Victor Hughes and
other notorious pirates. In his quest of fortune he had left no stone

unturned; witness an attempt to discover the treasure of that tribe of
savages so famous in Buenos Ayres and its neighborhood. He had a

personal knowledge of the events of the American War of Independence.
But if he spoke of the Indies or of America, as he did very rarely

with me, and never with anyone else, he seemed to regard it as an
indiscretion and to repent of it afterwards. If humanity and

sociability are in some sort a religion, Gobseck might be ranked as an
infidel; but though I set myself to study him, I must confess, to my

shame, that his real nature was impenetrable up to the very last. I
even felt doubts at times as to his sex. If all usurers are like this

one, I maintain that they belong to the neuter gender.
"Did he adhere to his mother's religion? Did he look on Gentiles as

his legitimate prey? Had he turned Roman Catholic, Lutheran,
Mahometan, Brahmin, or what not? I never knew anything whatsoever

about his religious opinions, and so far as I could see, he was
indifferent rather than incredulous.

"One evening I went in to see this man who had turned himself to gold;
the usurer, whom his victims (his clients, as he styled them) were

wont to call Daddy Gobseck, perhaps ironically, perhaps by way of
antiphrasis. He was sitting in his armchair, motionless as a statue,

staring fixedly at the mantel-shelf, where he seemed to read the
figures of his statements. A lamp, with a pedestal that had once been

green, was burning in the room; but so far from taking color from its
smoky light, his face seemed to stand out positively paler against the

background. He pointed to a chair set for me, but not a word did he
say.

" 'What thoughts can this being have in his mind?' said I to myself.
'Does he know that a God exists; does he know there are such things as

feeling, woman, happiness?' I pitied him as I might have pitied a
diseased creature. But, at the same time, I knew quite well that while

he had millions of francs at his command, he possessed the world no
less in idea--that world which he had explored, ransacked, weighed,

appraised, and exploited.
" 'Good day, Daddy Gobseck,' I began.

"He turned his face towards me with a slight contraction of his bushy,
black eyebrows; this characteristic shade of expression in him meant

as much as the most jubilant smile on a Southern face.
" 'You look just as gloomy as you did that day when the news came of

the failure of that bookseller whose sharpness you admired so much,
though you were one of his victims.'

" 'One of his victims?' he repeated, with a look of astonishment.
" 'Yes. Did you not refuse to accept composition at the meeting of

creditors until he undertookprivately to pay you your debt in full;
and did he not give you bills accepted by the insolvent firm; and

then, when he set up in business again, did he not pay you the
dividend upon those bills of yours, signed as they were by the

bankrupt firm?'
" 'He was a sharp one, but I had it out of him.'

" 'Then have you some bills to protest? To-day is the 30th, I
believe.'

"It was the first time I had spoken to him of money. He looked
ironically up at me; then in those bland accents, not unlike the husky

tones which the tyro draws from a flute, he answered, 'I am amusing
myself.'

" 'So you amuse yourself now and again?'
" 'Do you imagine that the only poets in the world are those who print

their verses?' he asked, with a pitying look and shrug of the
shoulders.

" 'Poetry in that head!' thought I, for as yet I knew nothing of his
life.

" 'What life could be as glorious as mine?' he continued, and his eyes
lighted up. 'You are young, your mental visions are colored by

youthful blood, you see women's faces in the fire, while I see nothing
but coals in mine. You have all sorts of beliefs, while I have no

beliefs at all. Keep your illusions--if you can. Now I will show you
life with the discount taken off. Go wherever you like, or stay at

home by the fireside with your wife, there always comes a time when
you settle down in a certain groove, the groove is your preference;

and then happiness consists in the exercise of your faculties by
applying them to realities. Anything more in the way of precept is

false. My principles have been various, among various men; I had to
change them with every change of latitude. Things that we admire in

Europe are punishable in Asia, and a vice in Paris becomes a necessity
when you have passed the Azores. There are no such things as hard-and-

fast rules; there are only conventions adapted to the climate. Fling a
man headlong into one social melting pot after another, and

convictions and forms and moral systems become so many meaningless
words to him. The one thing that always remains, the one sure instinct

that nature has implanted in us, is the instinct of self-interest. If
you had lived as long as I have, you would know that there is but one

concrete reality invariable enough to be worth caring about, and that
is--GOLD. Gold represents every form of human power. I have traveled.

I found out that there were either hills or plains everywhere: the
plains are monotonous, the hills a weariness; consequently, place may

be left out of the question. As to manners; man is man all the world
over. The same battle between the poor and the rich is going on

everywhere; it is inevitable everywhere; consequently, it is better to
exploit than to be exploited. Everywhere you find the man of thews and

sinews who toils, and the lymphatic man who torments himself; and
pleasures are everywhere the same, for when all sensations are

exhausted, all that survives is Vanity--Vanity is the abiding
substance of us, the _I_ in us. Vanity is only to be satisfied by gold

in floods. Our dreams need time and physical means and painstaking
thought before they can be realized. Well, gold contains all things in

embryo; gold realizes all things for us.
" 'None but fools and invalids can find pleasure in shuffling cards

all evening long to find out whether they shall win a few pence at the
end. None but driveling idiots could spend time in inquiring into all

that is happening around them, whether Madame Such-an-One slept single
on her couch or in company, whether she has more blood than lymph,