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The Firm of Nucingen-Part8_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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mother marries her daughter well, she says that she has made an

excellent bargain.' Here Rastignac unfolded his theory of marriage,



which to his way of thinking is a business arrangement, with a view to

making life tolerable; and ended up with, 'I do not ask to know your



secret, Malvina; I know it already. Men talk things over among

themselves, just as you women talk after you leave the dinner-table.



This is all I have to say: Marry. If you do not, remember that I

begged you to marry, here, in this room, this evening!'



"There was a certain ring in Rastignac's voice which compelled, not

attention, but reflection. There was something startling in his



insistence; something that went, as Rastignac meant that it should, to

the quick of Malvina's intelligence. She thought over the counsel



again next day, and vainly asked herself why it had been given."

Couture broke in. "In all these tops that you have set spinning, I see



nothing at all like the beginnings of Rastignac's fortune," said he.

"You apparently take us for Matifats multiplied by half-a-dozen



bottles of champagne."

"We are just coming to it," returned Bixiou. "You have followed the



course of all the rivulets which make up that forty thousand livres a

year which so many people envy. By this time Rastignac held the



threads of all these lives in his hand."

"Desroches, the Matifats, Beaudenord, the d'Aldriggers, d'Aiglemont?"



"Yes, and a hundred others," assented Bixiou.

"Oh, come now, how?" cried Finot. "I know a few things, but I cannot



see a glimpse of an answer to this riddle."

"Blondet has roughly given you the account of Nucingen's first two



suspensions of payment; now for the third, with full details.--After

the peace of 1815, Nucingen grasped an idea which some of us only



fully understood later, to wit, that capital is a power only when you

are very much richer than other people. In his own mind, he was



jealous of the Rothschilds. He had five millions of francs, he wanted

ten. He knew a way to make thirty millions with ten, while with five



he could only make fifteen. So he made up his mind to operate a third

suspension of payment. About that time, the great man hit on the idea



of indemnifying his creditors with paper of purely fictitious value

and keeping their coin. On the market, a great idea of this sort is



not expressed in precisely this cut-and-dried way. Such an arrangement

consists in giving a lot of grown-up children a small pie in exchange



for a gold piece; and, like children of a smaller growth, they prefer

the pie to the gold piece, not suspecting that they might have a



couple of hundred pies for it."

"What is this all about, Bixiou?" cried Couture. "Nothing more bona



fide. Not a week passes but pies are offered to the public for a

louis. But who compels the public to take them? Are they not perfectly



free to make inquiries?"

"You would rather have it made compulsory to take up shares, would



you?" asked Blondet.

"No," said Finot. "Where would the talent come in?"



"Very good for Finot."

"Who put him up to it?" asked Couture.



"The fact was," continued Bixiou, "that Nucingen had twice had the

luck to present the public (quite unintentionally) with a pie that



turned out to be worth more than the money he received for it. That

unlucky good luck gave him qualms of conscience. A course of such luck



is fatal to a man in the long run. This time he meant to make no

mistake of this sort; he waited ten years for an opportunity of



issuing negotiable securities which should seem on the face of it to

be worth something, while as a matter of fact----"



"But if you look at banking in that light," broke in Couture, "no sort

of business would be possible. More than one bona fide banker, backed



up by a bona fide government, has induced the hardest-headed men on

'Change to take up stock which is bound to fall within a given time.



You have seen better than that. Have you not seen stock created with

the concurrence of a government to pay the interest upon older stock,



so as to keep things going and tide over the difficulty? These

operations were more or less like Nucingen's settlements."



"The thing may look queer on a small scale," said Blondet, "but on a

large we call it finance. There are high-handed proceedings criminal



between man and man that amount to nothing when spread out over any

number of men, much as a drop of prussic acid becomes harmless in a



pail of water. You take a man's life, you are guillotined. But if, for

any political convictionwhatsoever, you take five hundred lives,



political crimes are respected. You take five thousand francs out of

my desk; to the hulks you go. But with a sop cleverly pushed into the



jaws of a thousand speculators, you can cram the stock of any bankrupt




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