The Firm of Nucingen

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by James Waring

TO MADAME ZULMA CARRAUD
To whom, madame, but to you should I inscribe this work; to you

whose lofty and candid intellect is a treasury to your friends;
to you that are to me not only a whole public, but the most

indulgent of sisters as well? Will you deign to accept a token of
the friendship of which I am proud? You, and some few souls as

noble, will grasp the whole of the thought underlying The Firm of
Nucingen, appended to Cesar Birotteau. Is there not a whole social

lesson in the contrast between the two stories?
DE BALZAC.

You know how slight the partitions are between the private rooms of
fashionable restaurants in Paris; Very's largest room, for instance,

is cut in two by a removable screen. This Scene is NOT laid at Very's,
but in snug quarters, which for reasons of my own I forbear to

specify. We were two, so I will say, like Henri Monnier's Prudhomme,
"I should not like to compromise HER!"

We had remarked the want of solidity in the wall-structure, so we
talked with lowered voices as we sat together in the little private

room, lingering over the dainty dishes of a dinner exquisite in more
senses than one. We had come as far as the roast, however, and still

we had no neighbors; no sound came from the next room save the
crackling of the fire. But when the clock struck eight, we heard

voices and noisy footsteps; the waiters brought candles. Evidently
there was a party assembled in the next room, and at the first words I

knew at once with whom we had to do--four bold cormorants as ever
sprang from the foam on the crests of the ever-rising waves of this

present generation--four pleasant young fellows whose existence was
problematical, since they were not known to possess either stock or

landed estates, yet they lived, and lived well. These ingenious
condottieri of a modern industrialism, that has come to be the most

ruthless of all warfares, leave anxieties to their creditors, and keep
the pleasures for themselves. They are careful for nothing, save

dress. Still with the courage of the Jean Bart order, that will smoke
cigars on a barrel of powder (perhaps by way of keeping up their

character), with a quizzing humor that outdoes the minor newspapers,
sparing no one, not even themselves; clear-sighted, wary, keen after

business, grasping yet open handed, envious yet self-complacent,
profound politicians by fits and starts, analyzing everything,

guessing everything--not one of these in question as yet had contrived
to make his way in the world which they chose for their scene of

operations. Only one of the four, indeed, had succeeded in coming as
far as the foot of the ladder.

To have money is nothing; the self-made man only finds out all that he
lacks after six months of flatteries. Andoche Finot, the self-made man

in question, stiff, taciturn, cold, and dull-witted, possessed the
sort of spirit which will not shrink from groveling before any

creature that may be of use to him, and the cunning to be insolent
when he needs a man no longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in

the ballet in Gustave, he was a marquis behind, a boor in front. And
this high-priest of commerce had a following.

Emile Blondet, Journalist, with abundance of intellectual power,
reckless, brilliant, and indolent, could do anything that he chose,

yet he submitted to be exploited with his eyes open. Treacherous or
kind upon impulse, a man to love, but not to respect; quick-witted as

a soubrette, unable to refuse his pen to any one that asked, or his
heart to the first that would borrow it, Emile was the most

fascinating of those light-of-loves of whom a fantastic modern wit
declared that "he liked them better in satin slippers than in boots."

The third in the party, Couture by name, lived by speculation,
grafting one affair upon another to make the gains pay for the losses.

He was always between wind and water, keeping himself afloat by his
bold, sudden strokes and the nervousenergy of his play. Hither and

thither he would swim over the vast sea of interests in Paris, in
quest of some little isle that should be so far a debatable land that

he might abide upon it. Clearly Couture was not in his proper place.
As for the fourth and most maliciouspersonage, his name will be

enough--it was Bixiou! Not (alas!) the Bixiou of 1825, but the Bixiou
of 1836, a misanthropic buffoon, acknowledged supreme, by reason of

his energetic and caustic wit; a very fiend let loose now that he saw
how he had squandered his intellect in pure waste; a Bixiou vexed by

the thought that he had not come by his share of the wreckage in the
last Revolution; a Bixiou with a kick for every one, like Pierrot at

the Funambules. Bixiou had the whole history of his own times at his
finger-ends, more particularly its scandalous chronicle, embellished

by added waggeries of his own. He sprang like a clown upon everybody's
back, only to do his utmost to leave the executioner's brand upon

every pair of shoulders.
The first cravings of gluttony satisfied, our neighbors reached the

stage at which we also had arrived, to wit, the dessert; and, as we
made no sign, they believed that they were alone. Thanks to the

champagne, the talk grew confidential as they dallied with the dessert
amid the cigar smoke. Yet through it all you felt the influence of the

icy esprit that leaves the most spontaneous feeling frost-bound and
stiff, that checks the most generous inspirations, and gives a sharp

ring to the laughter. Their table-talk was full of bitter irony which
turns a jest into a sneer; it told of the exhaustion of souls given

over to themselves; of lives with no end in view but the satisfaction
of self--of egoism induced by these times of peace in which we live. I

can think of nothing like it save a pamphlet against mankind at large
which Diderot was afraid to publish, a book that bares man's breast

simply to expose the plague-sores upon it. We listened to just such a
pamphlet as Rameau's Nephew, spoken aloud in all good faith, in the

course of after-dinner talk in which nothing, not even the point which
the speaker wished to carry, was sacred from epigram; nothing taken

for granted, nothing built up except on ruins, nothing reverenced save
the sceptic's adopted article of belief--the omnipotence, omniscience,

and universal applicability of money.
After some target practice at the outer circle of their acquaintances,

they turned their ill-natured shafts at their intimate friends. With a
sign I explained my wish to stay and listen as soon as Bixiou took up

his parable, as will shortly be seen. And so we listened to one of
those terrific improvisations which won that artist such a name among

a certain set of seared and jaded spirits; and often interrupted and
resumed though it was, memory serves me as a reporter of it. The

opinions expressed and the form of expression lie alike outside the
conditions of literature. It was, more properlyspeaking, a medley of

sinister revelations that paint our age, to which indeed no other kind
of story should be told; and, besides, I throw all the responsibility

upon the principalspeaker. The pantomime and the gestures that
accompanied Bixiou's changes of voice, as he acted the parts of the

various persons, must have been perfect, judging by the applause and
admiring comments that broke from his audience of three.

"Then did Rastignac refuse?" asked Blondet, apparently addressing
Finot.

"Point-blank."
"But did you threaten him with the newspapers?" asked Bixiou.

"He began to laugh," returned Finot.
"Rastignac is the late lamented de Marsay's direct heir; he will make

his way politically as well as socially," commented Blondet.
"But how did he make his money?" asked Couture. "In 1819 both he and

the illustrious Bianchon lived in a shabby boarding-house in the Latin
Quarter; his people ate roast cockchafers and their own wine so as to

send him a hundred francs every month. His father's property was not
worth a thousand crowns; he had two sisters and a brother on his

hands, and now----"
"Now he has an income of forty thousand livres," continued Finot; "his

sisters had a handsome fortune apiece and married into noble families;
he leaves his mother a life interest in the property----"