eside whom other promoters of companies are but pigmies);
there was Bouret and Beaujon--none of them left any representative.
Finance, like Time, devours its own children. If the banker is to
perpetuate himself, he must found a noble house, a dynasty; like the
Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent money to Charles V. and were created
Princes of Babenhausen, a family that exists at this day--in the
_Almanach de Gotha_. The instinct of self-preservation, working it may
be unconsciously, leads the banker to seek a title. Jacques Coeur was
the founder of the great noble house of Noirmoutier, extinct in the
reign of Louis XIII. What power that man had! He was ruined for making
a legitimate king; and he died, prince of an island in the Archipelago,
where he built a magnificent cathedral."

"Oh! you are giving us an historical lecture, we are wandering away from
the present, the crown has no right of conferring nobility, and barons
and counts are made with closed doors; more is the pity!" said Finot.

"You regret the times of the _savonnette a vilain_, when you could buy
an office that ennobled?" asked Bixiou. "You are right. _Je reviens a
nos moutons_.--Do you know Beaudenord? No? no? no? Ah, well! See how
all things pass away! Poor fellow, ten years ago he was the flower of
dandyism; and now, so thoroughly absorbed that you no more know him than
Finot just now knew the origin of the expression '_coup de Jarnac_'--I
repeat that simply for the sake of illustration, and not to tease you,
Finot. Well, it is a fact, he belonged to the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

"Beaudenord is the first pigeon that I will bring on the scene. And, in
the first place, his name was Godefroid de Beaudenord; neither Finot,
nor Blondet, nor Couture, nor I am likely to undervalue such an
advantage as that! After a ball, when a score of pretty women stand
behooded waiting for their carriages, with their husbands and adorers at
their sides, Beaudenord could hear his people called without a pang of
mortification. In the second place, he rejoiced in the full complement
of limbs; he was whole and sound, had no mote in his eyes, no false
hair, no artificial calves; he was neither knock-kneed nor bandy-legged,
his dorsal column was straight, his waist slender, his hands white and
shapely. His hair was black; he was of a complexion neither too pink,
like a grocer's assistant, nor yet too brown, like a Calabrese. Finally,
and this is an essential point, Beaudenord was not