“I should be glad of it.”
“But I can see nothing in this that can touch our concerns,” said Mme. de Grandlieu, as she rang the bell.
“Sardanapalus!” cried Derville, flinging out his favorite invocation. “Mademoiselle Camille will be wide awake in a moment if I say that her happiness depended not so long ago upon Daddy Gobseck; but as the old gentleman died at the age of ninety, M. de Restaud will soon be in possession of a handsome fortune. This requires some explanation. As for poor Fanny Malvaut, you know her; she is my wife.”
“Poor fellow, he would admit that, with his usual frankness, with a score of people to hear him!” said the Vicomtesse.
“I would proclaim it to the universe,” said the attorney.
“Go on, drink your glass, my poor Derville. You will never be anything but the happiest and the best of men.”
“I left you in the Rue du Helder,” remarked the uncle, raising his face after a gentle doze. “You had gone to see a Countess; what have you done with her?”
“A few days after my conversation with the old Dutchman,” Derville continued, “I sent in my thesis, and became first a licentiate in law, and afterwards an advocate. The old miser’s opinion of me went up considerably. He consulted me (gratuitously) on all the ticklish bits of business which he undertook when he had made quite sure how he stood, business which would have seemed unsafe to any ordinary practitioner. This man, over whom no one appeared to have the slightest influence, listened to my advice with something like respect. It is true that he always found that it turned out very well.
“At length I became head-clerk in the office where I had worked for three years and then I left the Rue des Grès for rooms in my employer’s house. I had my board and lodging and a hundred and fifty francs per month. It was a great day for me!
“When I went to bid the usurer goodbye, he showed no sign of feeling, he was neither cordial nor sorry to lose me, he did not ask me to come to see him, and only gave me one of those glances which seemed in some sort to reveal a power of second-sight.
“By the end of a week my old neighbor came to see me with a tolerably thorny bit of business, an expropriation, and he continued to ask for my advice with as much freedom as if he paid for it.
“My principal was a man of pleasure and expensive tastes; before the second year (1818–1819) was out he had got himself into difficulties, and was obliged to sell his practice. A professional connection in those days did not fetch the present exorbitant prices, and my principal asked a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Now an active man, of competent knowledge and intelligence, might hope to pay off the capital in ten years, paying interest and living respectably in the meantime—if he could command confidence. But I as the seventh child of a small tradesman at Noyon, I had not a sou to my name, nor personal knowledge of any capitalist but Daddy Gobseck. An ambitious idea, and an indefinable glimmer of hope, put heart into me. To Gobseck I betook myself, and slowly one evening I made my way to the Rue des Grès. My heart thumped heavily as I knocked at his door in the gloomy house. I recollected all the things that he used to tell me, at a time when I myself was very far from suspecting the violence of the anguish awaiting those who crossed his threshold. Now it was I who was about to beg and pray like so many others.
“ ‘Well, no, not that,’ I said to myself; ‘an honest man must keep his self-respect wherever he goes. Success is not worth cringing for; let us show him a front as decided as his own.’
“Daddy Gobseck had taken my room since I left the house, so as to have no neighbor; he had made a little grated window too in his door since then, and did not open until he had taken a look at me and saw who I was.
“ ‘Well,’ said he, in his thin, flute notes, ‘so your principal is selling his practice?’
“ ‘How did you know that?’ said I; ‘he has not spoken of it as yet except to me.’
“The old man’s lips were drawn in puckers, like a curtain, to either corner of his mouth, as a soundless smile bore a hard glance company.
“ ‘Nothing else would have brought you here,’ he said drily, after a pause, which I spent in confusion.
“ ‘Listen to me, M. Gobseck,’ I began, with such serenity as I could assume before the old man, who gazed at me with steady eyes. There was a clear light burning in them that disconcerted me.
“He made a gesture as if to bid me ‘Go on.’ ‘I know that it is not easy to work on your feelings, so I will not waste my eloquence on the attempt to put my position before you—I am a penniless clerk, with no one to look to but you, and no heart in the world but yours can form a clear idea of my probable future. Let us leave hearts out of the question. Business is business, and business is not carried on with sentimentality like romances. Now to the facts. My principal’s practice is worth in his hands about twenty thousand francs per annum; in my hands, I think it would bring in forty thousand. He is willing to sell it for a hundred and fifty thousand francs. And here,’ I said, striking my forehead, ‘I feel that if you would lend me the purchase-money, I could clear it off in ten years’ time.’
“ ‘Come, that is plain speaking,’ said Daddy Gobseck, and he held out his hand and grasped mine. ‘Nobody since I have been in business has stated the motives of his visit more clearly.
