knavish tricks which we are always finding out and condemning."

"Don't trust people unless they live in hovels like Claparon," said
Gigonnet.

"Hey! mein freint," said the fat Nucingen to du Tillet, "you haf joust
missed blaying me a bretty drick in zenting Pirodot to me. I don't
know," he added, addressing Gobenheim the manufacturer, "vy he tid not
ask me for fifdy tousand francs. I should haf gif dem to him."

"Oh, no, Monsieur le baron," said Joseph Lebas, "you knew very well that
the Bank had refused his paper; you made them reject it in the committee
on discounts. The affair of this unfortunate man, for whom I still feel
the highest esteem, presents certain peculiar circumstances."

Pillerault pressed the hand of Joseph Lebas.

"Yes," said Mongenod, "it seems impossible to believe what has happened,
unless we believe that concealed behind Gigonnet there are certain
bankers who want to strangle the speculation in the lands about the
Madeleine."

"What has happened is what happens always to those who go out of their
proper business," said Claparon, hastily interrupting Mongenod. "If he
had set up his own Cephalic Oil instead of running up the price of all
the land in Paris by pouncing upon it, he might have lost his hundred
thousand francs with Roguin, but he wouldn't have failed. He will go on
now under the name of Popinot."

"Keep a watch on Popinot," said Gigonnet.

Roguin, in the parlance of such worthy merchants, was now the
"unfortunate Roguin." Cesar had become "that wretched Birotteau."
The one seemed to them excused by his great passion; the other they
considered all the more guilty for his harmless pretensions.

Gigonnet, after leaving the Bourse, went round by the Rue
Perrin-Gasselin on his way home, in search of Madame Madou, the vendor
of dried fruits.

"Well, old woman," he said, with his coarse good-humor, "how goes the
business?"

"So-so," said Madame Madou, respectfully, offering her only armchair to
the usurer, with a show of attention she had never bestowed on her "dear
defunct."

Mother Madou, who would have floored a recalcitrant or too-familiar
wagoner and gone fearlessly to the assault of the Tuileries on the 10th
of October, who jeered her best customers and was capable of speaking up
to the king in the name of her associate market-women,--Angelique Madou
received Gigonnet with abject respect. Without strength in his presence,
she shuddered under his rasping glance. The lower c