ends, let us go to work: write a prospectus! Down
with humbug!' On that they get out the hunting-horns and shout and
clamor,--'One hundred thousand francs for five sous! or five sous for
a hundred thousand francs! gold mines! coal mines!' In short, all the
clap-trap of commerce. We buy up men of arts and sciences; the show
begins, the public enters; it gets its money's worth, and we get the
profits. The pig is penned up with his potatoes, and the rest of us
wallow in banknotes. There it all is, my good sir. Come, go into the
business with us. What would you like to be,--pig, buzzard, clown,
or millionaire? Reflect upon it; I have now laid before you the whole
theory of the modern loan-system. Come and see me often; you'll always
find me a jovial, jolly fellow. French joviality--gaiety and gravity,
all in one--never injures business; quite the contrary. Men who quaff
the sparkling cup are born to understand each other. Come, another glass
of champagne! it is good, I tell you! It was sent to me from Epernay
itself, by a man for whom I once sold quantities at a good price--I
used to be in wines. He shows his gratitude, and remembers me in my
prosperity; very rare, that."

Birotteau, overcome by the frivolity and heedlessness of a man to whom
the world attributed extreme depth and capacity, dared not question him
any further. In the midst of his own haziness of mind produced by the
champagne, he did, however, recollect a name spoken by du Tillet; and he
asked Claparon who Gobseck the banker was, and where he lived.

"Have you got as far as that?" said Claparon. "Gobseck is a banker,
just as the headsman is a doctor. The first word is 'fifty per cent'; he
belongs to the race of Harpagon; he'll take canary birds at all seasons,
fur tippets in summer, nankeens in winter. What securities are you going
to offer him? If you want him to take your paper without security you
will have to deposit your wife, your daughter, your umbrella, everything
down to your hat-box, your socks (don't you go in for ribbed socks?),
your shovel and tongs, and the very wood you've got in the cellar!
Gobseck! Gobseck! in the name of virtuous folly, who told you to go to
that commercial guillotine?"

"Monsieur du Tillet."

"Ah! the scoundrel, I recognize him! We used to be friends. If we have
quarrelled so that we don't speak to each other, you may depend upon it
my aversion to him is well-founded; he let me read down to the bottom of
his infamous s