vernment, and whose love of gambling renders them insatiable. On
making this discovery, du Tillet at once saw the reason of Gobseck's
insensibility to the claims of his niece.

Under these circumstances du Tillet the banker (for Ferdinand was now
a banker) advised Roguin to lay up something against a rainy day, by
persuading his clients to invest in some enterprise which might enable
him to put by for himself large sums of money, in case he were forced to
go into bankruptcy through the affairs of the bank. After many ups and
downs, which were profitable to none but Madame Roguin and du Tillet,
Roguin heard the fatal hour of his insolvency and final ruin strike. His
misery was then worked upon by his faithful friend. Ferdinand invented
the speculation in lands about the Madeleine. The hundred thousand
francs belonging to Cesar Birotteau, which were in the hands of the
notary, were made over to du Tillet; for the latter, whose object was
to ruin the perfumer, had made Roguin understand that he would run less
risk if he got his nearest friends into the net. "A friend," he said,
"is more considerate, even if angry."

Few people realize to-day how little value the lands about the Madeleine
had at the period of which we write; but at that time they were likely
to be sold even below their then value, because of the difficulty of
finding purchasers willing to wait for the profits of the enterprise.
Now, du Tillet's aim was to seize the profits speedily without the
losses of a protracted speculation. In other words, his plan was to
strangle the speculation and get hold of it as a dead thing, which he
might galvanize back to life when it suited him. In such a scheme the
Gobsecks, Palmas, and Werbrusts would have been ready to lend a hand,
but du Tillet was not yet sufficiently intimate with them to ask their
aid; besides, he wanted to hide his own hand in conducting the affair,
that he might get the profits of his theft without the shame of it.
He felt the necessity of having under his thumb one of those living
lay-figures called in commercial language a "man of straw." His former
tool at the Bourse struck him as a suitable person for the post; he
accordingly trenched upon Divine right, and created a man. Out of a
former commercial traveller, who was without means or capacity of any
kind, except that of talking indefinitely on all subjects and saying
nothing, who was without a farthing or a chance to make one,--able,
nevertheles