intrepidly wore the tricolor braces
embroidered with Imperial eagles, and lived entirely in Bonapartist
circles. His capital he handed over to Nucingen, who gave him eight per
cent upon it, and took over the loans to the Imperial Government at
a mere sixty per cent of reduction; wherefore d'Aldrigger squeezed
Nucingen's hand and said, 'I knew dot in you I should find de heart of
ein Elzacien.'

"(Nucingen was paid in full through our friend des Lupeaulx.) Well
fleeced as d'Aldrigger had been, he still possessed an income
of forty-four thousand francs; but his mortification was further
complicated by the spleen which lies in wait for the business man
so soon as he retires from business. He set himself, noble heart, to
sacrifice himself to his wife, now that her fortune was lost, that
fortune of which she had allowed herself to be despoiled so easily,
after the manner of a girl entirely ignorant of money matters. Mme.
d'Aldrigger accordingly missed not a single pleasure to which she had
been accustomed; any void caused by the loss of Strasbourg acquaintances
were speedily filled, and more than filled, with Paris gaieties.

"Even then as now the Nucingens lived at the higher end of financial
society, and the Baron de Nucingen made it a point of honor to treat the
honest banker well. His disinterested virtue looked well in the Nucingen
salon.

"Every winter dipped into d'Aldrigger's principal, but he did not
venture to remonstrate with his pearl of a Wilhelmine. His was the
most ingenious unintelligent tenderness in the world. A good man, but
a stupid one! 'What will become of them when I am gone?' he said, as he
lay dying; and when he was left alone for a moment with Wirth, his
old man-servant, he struggled for breath to bid him take care of his
mistress and her two daughters, as if the one reasonable being in the
house was this Alsacien Caleb Balderstone.

"Three years afterwards, in 1826, Isaure was twenty years old, and
Malvina still unmarried. Malvina had gone into society, and in course of
time discovered for herself how superficial their friendships were, how
accurately every one was weighed and appraised. Like most girls that
have been 'well brought up,' as we say, Malvina had no idea of the
mechanism of life, of the importance of money, of the difficulty of
obtaining it, of the prices of things. And so, for six years, every
lesson that she had learned had been a painful one for her.

"D'Aldrigger's four hund