of intelligences, the brain that gives off the largest
quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others, in the long run.

The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or thereabouts. As he sat at the
table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his bald head and
glistening fringe of iron-gray hair that surrounded it--this baldness
and the round outlines of his face made his head look very like a ball.
His complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had gathered about his
eyes, but he had the smooth, plump hands of a stout man. His blue cloth
coat, a little rubbed and worn, and the creases and shininess of his
trousers, traces of hard wear that the clothes-brush fails to remove,
would impress a superficial observer with the idea that here was a
thrifty and upright human being, sufficient of the philosopher or of the
aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But, unluckily, it is easy to find
penny-wise people who will prove weak, wasteful, or incompetent in the
capital things of life.

The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole,
for he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the Emperor. M. de
Nucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a banker, had had
reason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier,
who then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had befallen the
major, and the banker out of regard for him paid him five hundred francs
a month. The soldier had become a cashier in the year 1813, after his
recovery from a wound received at Studzianka during the Retreat from
Moscow, followed by six months of enforced idleness at Strasbourg,
whither several officers had been transported by order of the Emperor,
that they might receive skilled attention. This particular officer,
Castanier by name, retired with the honorary grade of colonel, and a
pension of two thousand four hundred francs.

In ten years' time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier,
and Castanier inspired the banker with such trust in him, that he was
associated in the transactions that went on in the private office behind
his little counting-house. The baron himself had access to it by means
of a secret staircase. There, matters of business were decided. It was
the bolting-room where proposals were sifted; the privy council chamber
where the reports of the money market were analyzed; circular notes
issued thence; and finally, the private ledger and the journal which
summarized the work