e into an affair in a foreign country.
It chanced that an auditor of the Council of State, overtaken by the
return of the Bourbons and anxious to stand well at court, had gone to
Germany and bought up all the debts contracted by the princes during the
emigration. He now offered the profits of the affair, which to him was
merely political, to any one who would reimburse him. Gobseck would pay
no money down, unless in proportion to the redemption of the debts, and
insisted on a careful examination of the affair. Usurers never trust any
one; they demand vouchers. With them the bird in the hand is everything;
icy when they have no need of a man, they are wheedling and inclined to
be gracious when they can make him useful.

Du Tillet knew the enormous underground part played in the world by
such men as Werbrust and Gigonnet, commercial money-lenders in the
Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin; by Palma, banker in the Faubourg
Poissonniere,--all of whom were closely connected with Gobseck. He
accordingly offered a cash security, and obtained an interest in the
affair, on condition that these gentlemen would use in their commercial
loans certain moneys he should place in their hands. By this means he
strengthened himself with a solid support on all sides.

Du Tillet accompanied Monsieur Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx to Germany
during the Hundred Days, and came back at the second Restoration, having
done more to increase his means of making a fortune than augmented
the fortune itself. He was now in the secret councils of the sharpest
speculators in Paris; he had secured the friendship of the man with whom
he had examined into the affair of the debts, and that clever juggler
had laid bare to him the secrets of legal and political science. Du
Tillet possessed one of those minds which understand at half a word, and
he completed his education during his travels in Germany. On his return
he found Madame Roguin faithful to him. As to the notary, he longed
for Ferdinand with as much impatience as his wife did, for la belle
Hollandaise had once more ruined him. Du Tillet questioned the woman,
but could find no outlay equal to the sum dissipated. It was then
that he discovered the secret which Sarah had carefully concealed from
him,--her mad passion for Maxime de Trailles, whose earliest steps in a
career of vice showed him for what he was, one of those good-for-nothing
members of the body politic who seem the necessary evil of all good
go