ear?" said Lucien, apparently much concerned for
his counselor.

"Some inquisitive souls are on my track--I must assume the manners of a
genuine priest; it is most annoying. The Devil will cease to protect me
if he sees me with a breviary under my arm."

At this moment the Baron de Nucingen, who was leaning on his cashier's
arm, reached the door of his mansion.

"I am ver' much afrait," said he, as he went in, "dat I hafe done a bat
day's vork. Vell, we must make it up some oder vays."

"De misfortune is dat you shall hafe been caught, mein Herr Baron," said
the worthy German, whose whole care was for appearances.

"Ja, my miss'ess en titre should be in a position vody of me," said this
Louis XIV. of the counting-house.

Feeling sure that sooner or later Esther would be his, the Baron was now
himself again, a masterly financier. He resumed the management of his
affairs, and with such effect that his cashier, finding him in his
office room at six o'clock next morning, verifying his securities,
rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

"Ah, ha! mein Herr Baron, you shall hafe saved money last night!" said
he, with a half-cunning, half-loutish German grin.

Though men who are as rich as the Baron de Nucingen have more
opportunities than others for losing money, they also have more chances
of making it, even when they indulge their follies. Though the financial
policy of the house of Nucingen has been explained elsewhere, it may be
as well to point out that such immense fortunes are not made, are not
built up, are not increased, and are not retained in the midst of the
commercial, political, and industrial revolutions of the present day but
at the cost of immense losses, or, if you choose to view it so, of heavy
taxes on private fortunes. Very little newly-created wealth is thrown
into the common treasury of the world. Every fresh accumulation
represents some new inequality in the general distribution of wealth.
What the State exacts it makes some return for; but what a house like
that of Nucingen takes, it keeps.

Such covert robbery escapes the law for the reason which would have made
a Jacques Collin of Frederick the Great, if, instead of dealing with
provinces by means of battles, he had dealt in smuggled goods or
transferable securities. The high politics of money-making consist in
forcing the States of Europe to issue loans at twenty or at ten per
cent, in making that twenty or ten per cent by the use of publ