“I found the old bill-discounter had been kept to his bed for a long time by the complaint of which he was to die. He put me off, saying that he would give the matter his attention when he could get up again and see after his business; his idea being no doubt that he would not give up any of his possessions so long as the breath was in him; no other reason could be found for his shuffling answer. He seemed to me to be much worse than he at all suspected. I stayed with him long enough to discern the progress of a passion which age had converted into a sort of craze. He wanted to be alone in the house, and had taken the rooms one by one as they fell vacant. In his own room he had changed nothing; the furniture which I knew so well sixteen years ago looked the same as ever; it might have been kept under a glass case. Gobseck’s faithful old portress, with her husband, a pensioner, who sat in the entry while she was upstairs, was still his housekeeper and charwoman, and now in addition his sick-nurse. In spite of his feebleness, Gobseck saw his clients himself as heretofore, and received sums of money; his affairs had been so simplified, that he only needed to send his pensioner out now and again on an errand, and could carry on business in his bed.
“After the treaty, by which France recognized the Haitian Republic, Gobseck was one of the members of the commission appointed to liquidate claims and assess repayments due by Haiti; his special knowledge of old fortunes in San Domingo, and the planters and their heirs and assigns to whom the indemnities were due, had led to his nomination. Gobseck’s peculiar genius had then devised an agency for discounting the planters’ claims on the government. The business was carried on under the names of Werbrust and Gigonnet, with whom he shared the spoil without disbursements, for his knowledge was accepted instead of capital. The agency was a sort of distillery, in which money was extracted from doubtful claims, and the claims of those who knew no better, or had no confidence in the government. As a liquidator, Gobseck could make terms with the large landed proprietors; and these, either to gain a higher percentage of their claims, or to ensure prompt settlements, would send him presents in proportion to their means. In this way presents came to be a kind of percentage upon sums too large to pass through his control, while the agency bought up cheaply the small and dubious claims, or the claims of those persons who preferred a little ready money to a deferred and somewhat hazy repayment by the Republic. Gobseck was the insatiable boa constrictor of the great business. Every morning he received his tribute, eyeing it like a Nabob’s prime minister, as he considers whether he will sign a pardon. Gobseck would take anything, from the present of game sent him by some poor devil or the pound’s weight of wax candles from devout folk, to the rich man’s plate and the speculator’s gold snuffbox. Nobody knew what became of the presents sent to the old moneylender. Everything went in, but nothing came out.
“ ‘On the word of an honest woman,’ said the portress, an old acquaintance of mine, ‘I believe he swallows it all and is none the fatter for it; he is as thin and dried up as the cuckoo in the clock.’
“At length, last Monday, Gobseck sent his pensioner for me. The man came up to my private office.
“ ‘Be quick and come, M. Derville,’ said he, ‘the governor is just going to hand in his checks; he has grown as yellow as a lemon; he is fidgeting to speak with you; death has fair hold of him; the rattle is working in his throat.’
“When I entered Gobseck’s room, I found the dying man kneeling before the grate. If there was no fire on the hearth, there was at any rate a monstrous heap of ashes. He had dragged himself out of bed, but his strength had failed him, and he could neither go back nor find the voice to complain.
“ ‘You felt cold, old friend,’ I said, as I helped him back to his bed; ‘how can you do without a fire?’
“ ‘I am not cold at all,’ he said. ‘No fire here! no fire! I am going, I know not where, lad,’ he went on, glancing at me with blank, lightless eyes, ‘but I am going away from this.—I have carpology,’ said he (the use of the technical term showing how clear and accurate his mental processes were even now). ‘I thought the room was full of live gold, and I got up to catch some of it.—To whom will all mine go, I wonder? Not to the crown; I have left a will, look for it, Grotius. La belle Hollandaise had a daughter; I once saw the girl somewhere or other, in the Rue Vivienne, one evening. They call her “La Torpille,” I believe; she is as pretty as pretty can be; look her up, Grotius. You are my executor; take what you like; help yourself. There are Strasburg pies, there, and bags of coffee, and sugar, and gold spoons. Give the Odiot service to your wife. But who is to have the diamonds? Are you going to take them, lad? There is snuff too—sell it at Hamburg, tobaccos are worth half as much again at Hamburg. All sorts of things I have in fact, and now I must go and leave them all.—Come, Papa Gobseck, no weakness, be yourself!’
“He raised himself in bed, the
