ket rang with a name hitherto only
known in Strasbourg and the Quartier Poissonniere. He issued deposit
certificates to his creditors, and resumed payment; forthwith people
grew accustomed to his paper all over France. Then an unheard-of-thing
happened--his paper revived, was in demand, and rose in value.
Nucingen's paper was much inquired for. The year 1815 arrives, my banker
calls in his capital, buys up Government stock before the battle of
Waterloo, suspends payment again in the thick of the crisis, and meets
his engagements with shares in the Wortschin mines, which he
himself issued at twenty per cent more than he gave for them! Yes,
gentlemen!--He took a hundred and fifty thousand bottles of champagne of
Grandet to cover himself (forseeing the failure of the virtuous parent
of the present Comte d'Aubrion), and as much Bordeaux wine of Duberghe
at the same time. Those three hundred thousand bottles which he took
over (and took at thirty sous apiece, my dear boy) he supplied at the
price of six francs per bottle to the Allies in the Palais Royal during
the foreign occupation, between 1817 and 1819. Nucingen's name and his
paper acquired a European celebrity. The illustrious Baron, so far from
being engulfed like others, rose the higher for calamities. Twice his
arrangements had paid holders of his paper uncommonly well; _he_ try to
swindle them? Impossible. He is supposed to be as honest a man as
you will find. When he suspends payment a third time, his paper will
circulate in Asia, Mexico, and Australia, among the aborigines. No one
but Ouvrard saw through this Alsacien banker, the son of some Jew or
other converted by ambition; Ouvrard said, 'When Nucingen lets gold go,
you may be sure that it is to catch diamonds.'"

"His crony, du Tillet, is just such another," said Finot. "And, mind
you, that of birth du Tillet has just precisely as much as is necessary
to exist; the chap had not a farthing in 1814, and you see what he is
now; and he has done something that none of us has managed to do (I am
not speaking of you, Couture), he has had friends instead of enemies.
In fact, he has kept his past life so quiet, that unless you rake the
sewers you are not likely to find out that he was an assistant in a
perfumer's shop in the Rue Saint Honore, no further back than 1814."

"Tut, tut, tut!" said Bixiou, "do not think of comparing Nucingen with a
little dabbler like du Tillet, a jackal that gets on in life through his
se