to
discern the progress of a passion which age had converted into a sort of
craze. He wanted to be alone in the house, and had taken the rooms one
by one as they fell vacant. In his own room he had changed nothing;
the furniture which I knew so well sixteen years ago looked the same as
ever; it might have been kept under a glass case. Gobseck's faithful old
portress, with her husband, a pensioner, who sat in the entry while
she was upstairs, was still his housekeeper and charwoman, and now in
addition his sick-nurse. In spite of his feebleness, Gobseck saw his
clients himself as heretofore, and received sums of money; his affairs
had been so simplified, that he only needed to send his pensioner out
now and again on an errand, and could carry on business in his bed.

"After the treaty, by which France recognized the Haytian Republic,
Gobseck was one of the members of the commission appointed to liquidate
claims and assess repayments due by Hayti; his special knowledge of old
fortunes in San Domingo, and the planters and their heirs and assigns
to whom the indemnities were due, had led to his nomination. Gobseck's
peculiar genius had then devised an agency for discounting the planters'
claims on the government. The business was carried on under the names
of Werbrust and Gigonnet, with whom he shared the spoil without
disbursements, for his knowledge was accepted instead of capital. The
agency was a sort of distillery, in which money was extracted from
doubtful claims, and the claims of those who knew no better, or had no
confidence in the government. As a liquidator, Gobseck could make terms
with the large landed proprietors; and these, either to gain a higher
percentage of their claims, or to ensure prompt settlements, would send
him presents in proportion to their means. In this way presents came to
be a kind of percentage upon sums too large to pass through his control,
while the agency bought up cheaply the small and dubious claims, or the
claims of those persons who preferred a little ready money to a deferred
and somewhat hazy repayment by the Republic. Gobseck was the insatiable
boa constrictor of the great business. Every morning he received his
tribute, eyeing it like a Nabob's prime minister, as he considers
whether he will sign a pardon. Gobseck would take anything, from the
present of game sent him by some poor devil or the pound's weight of wax
candles from devout folk, to the rich man's plate and the speculat