duced to an income of
twenty-four thousand livres, lost herself in arithmetical exercises that
muddled her wits.

"'I have _always_ had six thousand francs for our dress allowance,' she
said to Malvina. 'Why, how did your father find money? We shall have
nothing now with twenty-four thousand francs; it is destitution! Oh! if
my father could see me so come down in the world, it would kill him if
he were not dead already! Poor Wilhelmine!' and she began to cry.

"Malvina, puzzled to know how to comfort her mother, represented to her
that she was still young and pretty, that rose-color still became her,
that she could continue to go to the Opera and the Bouffons, where Mme.
de Nucingen had a box. And so with visions of gaieties, dances, music,
pretty dresses, and social success, the Baroness was lulled to sleep
and pleasant dreams in the blue, silk-curtained bed in the charming
room next to the chamber in which Jean Baptiste, Baron d'Aldrigger, had
breathed his last but two nights ago.

"Here in a few words is the Baron's history. During his lifetime that
worthy Alsacien accumulated about three millions of francs. In 1800,
at the age of thirty-six, in the apogee of a fortune made during
the Revolution, he made a marriage partly of ambition, partly of
inclination, with the heiress of the family of Adolphus of Manheim.
Wilhelmine, being the idol of her whole family, naturally inherited
their wealth after some ten years. Next, d'Aldrigger's fortune being
doubled, he was transformed into a Baron by His Majesty, Emperor and
King, and forthwith became a fanatical admirer of the great man to whom
he owed his title. Wherefore, between 1814 and 1815 he ruined himself
by a too serious belief in the sun of Austerlitz. Honest Alsacien as he
was, he did not suspend payment, nor did he give his creditors shares
in doubtful concerns by way of settlement. He paid everything over the
counter, and retired from business, thoroughly deserving Nucingen's
comment on his behavior--'Honest but stoobid.'

"All claims satisfied, there remained to him five hundred thousand
francs and certain receipts for sums advanced to that Imperial
Government, which had ceased to exist. 'See vat komms of too much pelief
in Nappolion,' said he, when he had realized all his capital.

"When you have been one of the leading men in a place, how are you to
remain in it when your estate has dwindled? D'Aldrigger, like all ruined
provincials, removed to Paris, there