The Human Comedy (38 page)

“Without feeling any obligation to discuss my business with you, count, I will say that if madame took your diamonds, you should have circulated a notice warning jewelers not to buy them. She might have sold them separately.”

“Monsieur!” cried the count. “You knew my wife.”

“True.”

“She is under her husband’s authority.”

“Possibly.”

“She had no right to dispose of those diamonds.”

“Correct.”

“Well then, monsieur?”

“Well then, monsieur: I do know your wife; she is under her husband’s authority, fine (she seems to be under the authority of several people). But I . . . do . . . not . . . know . . . your diamonds. If madame the countess can sign bills of exchange, then presumably she can carry on business herself, can buy diamonds, can acquire them to sell—that is clear!”

“Good day, sir!” cried the count, white with fury. “There are courts of law.”

“Correct.”

“This gentleman,” the count added, pointing to me, “was witness to the sale.”

“Possibly.”

The count turned to leave. Suddenly, feeling the situation was grave, I intervened between the two belligerent parties.

“Count,” I said, “you are right, and Monsieur Gobseck is not at all in the wrong. You could not sue the purchaser without implicating your wife, and the ugly aspects of the affair would not fall upon her alone. I am an attorney, yet I owe it to my own self, still more than to my professional position, to declare that the diamonds you speak of were bought by Monsieur Gobseck in my presence. But I believe that you would be wrong to contest the legality of the sale of items that are, besides, not easily identified. In equity, you would win; in law, you would lose. Monsieur Gobseck is too honest a man to deny that the sale was profitable to him, especially since both my conscience and my duty would require me to say it was. But were you to bring suit, count, the outcome would be uncertain. So I would advise you to come to terms with Monsieur Gobseck, who can claim he acted in good faith, but to whom you would in any case still have to return the purchase money. Agree to a redeemable sale, for a period of seven or eight months, or even a year—time enough to allow you to repay the sum madame borrowed—unless you prefer to buy the jewels back today, providing security for the payment.”

The moneylender sat dipping his bread into his coffee bowl and chewing it with what seemed utter indifference, but at my phrase “come to terms” he looked over at me as if to say, “Smart fellow—he’s learned a thing or two from my lessons!”

I retorted with a hard look that he understood perfectly: The whole business was deeply dubious, ignoble; it was becoming urgent to negotiate a way out. Gobseck couldn’t have recourse to denials; I would have told the truth. The count thanked me with a gracious smile. After a discussion in which Gobseck displayed enough skill and avidity to stymie the diplomatic cunning of a whole parliament, I prepared a document by which the count acknowledged receiving from the usurer a sum of eighty-five thousand francs, interest included, and Gobseck pledged to return the diamonds to him upon the repayment of the full amount.

“Such waste,” exclaimed the husband as he signed. “What could possibly bridge such a chasm?”

“Sir,” Gobseck asked gravely, “have you any children?”

The question made the count flinch, as if an expert physician had suddenly put a finger on the very center of a pain. The husband didn’t reply.

“Well,” continued Gobseck, understanding the man’s sorrowful silence, “I know your story by heart. This woman is a demon whom you may still love; I can certainly believe it, I was very much taken with her myself. But you may want to salvage your wealth, keep it for one or two of your children. Well, then, do this: Throw yourself into the social whirl, gamble away your wealth, and come around often to see Gobseck the moneylender. People will call me a Jew, an Arab, a usurer, a pirate, saying that I ruined you—I don’t care! If someone insults me, I lay him low! No one handles a pistol or a sword as well as yours truly here, and people know it! Then find a friend with whom you can arrange a counterfeit sale of all your holdings.” He turned to me and asked, “Isn’t that what they call a
fideicommissum—
a trust?”

The count seemed entirely absorbed in his thoughts. He said, “You will have your money tomorrow, sir—have the diamonds ready for me,” and he left.

“That fellow seems as stupid as an honest man,” said Gobseck coldly, when the count had gone.

“Say, rather, as stupid as a man of passion.”

“The count owes you a fee for drawing up the document,” Gobseck cried, seeing me leave.

A few days after that episode, which initiated me into the dreadful mysteries of the life of a woman of fashion, the count stepped into my law office.

“Monsieur,” he said, “I have come to consult you on some very serious matters; I have the utmost confidence in you, and I hope to give you proof of that. Your conduct with Madame de Grandlieu is beyond all praise.”

* * *

“So you see, madame,” Derville turned from his story now to the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, “that you have paid me a thousand times over for what was a very simple service.” He then resumed . . .

* * *

I bowed respectfully to the count and replied that I had only done the duty of a decent man.

“Well, monsieur,” the count said, “I have gathered a good deal of information on the remarkable person to whom you owe your situation. From what I know of him, I recognize Gobseck as a philosopher of the Cynic school. Would you consider him an honest man?”

“Count,” I replied, “Gobseck is my benefactor—at fifteen percent,” I laughed, “but his avarice doesn’t authorize me to paint his portrait for a stranger’s sake.”

“Do speak, monsieur! Your candor cannot harm either Gobseck or yourself. I don’t expect to find an angel in a moneylender.”

“Papa Gobseck,” I began, “is deeply convinced of one governing principle: He believes money is a commodity that a person may in good conscience sell high or low, according to the situation. In his eyes, by charging a high rate for the use of his money, a capitalist becomes a kind of advance partner in a profit-making business or venture. Apart from his financial principles and his philosophical notions on human nature, which allow him to act as an apparent usurer, I am convinced that outside his business activities he is the most scrupulous, most upright person in Paris. Two different men exist at once in him: He is a miser and a philosopher, petty and great. If I were to die leaving children behind, I would name him their guardian. This is my sense of Gobseck from my experience with him. About his past life I know nothing. He may have been a pirate, he may have circled the world trafficking in diamonds or men, in women or state secrets, but I swear no human soul has been through more nor been more thoroughly tested. The day I brought him the money to pay off my debt, I asked him, speaking carefully, what had brought him to charge me such enormous interest, why—since he did want to do me a favor as a friend—he had not allowed himself to do a complete one. His answer: ‘Son, I spared you a sense of obligation, by giving you the right to feel you owed me nothing, and so we came out the best of friends.’ That reply, count, will give you a better picture of the man than any possible words could.”

“I have made up my mind, irrevocably,” said the count. “Prepare the necessary documents to transfer ownership of my estate to Gobseck. I will trust you alone, monsieur, to devise the counter deed, in which Gobseck will declare that this is a simulated sale, and that he pledges to return my fortune, which is to be administered by him as he does so well, to my eldest son when the boy comes of age.

“Now, Monsieur Derville,” he continued, “I must tell you this as well: I am afraid to keep this crucial document in my house. My son’s attachment to his mother makes me uneasy about entrusting him with it. Dare I ask you to hold it for me? In case of death, Gobseck would make you the legatee to the property he holds for me. This should take care of all contingencies.”

The count fell silent for a moment; he seemed very agitated. “I beg your pardon, monsieur,” he said after a pause. “I am in great physical pain, and I am seriously concerned for my health. Recent troubles have disturbed my life in very cruel ways and have forced me to take this important measure.”

“Monsieur,” I told him, “first, let me thank you for your trust in me. But I must justify it by pointing out that by these measures you are completely disinheriting your . . . other children. They do bear your name. If only because they are the children of a woman you once loved, even if less so now, they have the right to a certain quality of life. I will not accept the task by which you hope to honor me unless their future is assured.”

These words caused a violent reaction from the count. Tears filled his eyes, and he gripped my hand, saying, “I did not yet know you well enough. You have just caused me both joy and pain. We will provide for those children by stipulations in the counter deed.”

I saw him out of my office, and it seemed to me his features shone with a sense of satisfaction from that act of justice.

* * *

“So you see, Camille,” Derville turned to the girl, “how easily young women enter the abyss. It can take as little as a quadrille, a song at the piano, a ride in the countryside, to trigger some dreadful mistake. A person might succumb to the appealing voice of vanity or pride, to faith in a smile, or just to folly or thoughtlessness! Then shame, remorse, destitution—those are three Furies into whose hands women inevitably fall when they cross the boundaries.”

“My poor Camille is longing to fall asleep,” the viscountess interrupted the attorney. “Go, darling, go to bed. Your heart has no need for such terrors to keep pure and virtuous.”

Camille de Grandlieu understood her mother and left the room.

“You went a bit too far there, dear Monsieur Derville,” said the viscountess. “Attorneys are not mothers or preachers.”

“But the newspapers are a thousand times more—”

“Poor Derville!” the viscountess interrupted him. “I swear, I hardly recognize you! Do you actually think that my daughter reads the newspapers? . . . Go ahead now,” she said after a pause.

“Three months after the count’s sale to Gobseck was officially registered—”

“You can call him the Comte de Restaud, now that my daughter has left the room,” said the viscountess.

“So I shall!” the attorney continued.

* * *

Some time went by after my encounter with Comte de Restaud, and I had still not received the counter deed that I was to hold safe for him. In Paris, an attorney gets swept up in a current that distracts him from paying as much attention to his clients’ affairs as the clients themselves do, apart from some few exceptions. One day, though, the moneylender was dining with me, and as we rose from the table I asked if he knew why I had heard nothing more from the Comte de Restaud.

“There are excellent reasons for that,” he replied. “The gentleman is close to dying. He is one of those good souls who don’t know how to kill their pain and are always getting killed by it. Living is a job, a task a person has to take the trouble to learn how to do. When a man has known life, has gone through its troubles, his fiber becomes stronger, and it takes on a flexibility that gives him mastery over his feelings; it turns his nerves into steel springs that can bend without breaking. If his stomach can take it, a man with that kind of preparation should live as long as the cedars of Lebanon, those famous trees.”

“The count is really dying?” I said.

“Possibly,” said Gobseck. “You’ll have a juicy piece of business settling the estate.”

I looked at the man and, to probe him a little, said, “Explain to me, please, why we, the count and I, are the only people you take any interest in?”

“Because you are the only ones who trusted me without quibbling,” he answered.

Although his response did allow me to believe that Gobseck would not misuse his position if the counter deed should be lost, still I resolved to go and see the count. I pled some pressing errand, and we parted. I hurried directly to rue du Helder and was shown into a sitting room where the countess was playing with her children. Hearing me announced, she rose brusquely and came to meet me, and without a word she sat down and motioned me to an empty chair by the fire. Her face assumed that impenetrable mask beneath which society women so skillfully hide their strongest feelings. Troubles had already withered that face; all that remained to indicate its former grace was the marvelous structure that had made it so remarkable.

“It is essential, madame, that I speak with the count—”

“If you did, you would be more privileged than I,” she replied, interrupting me. “Monsieur de Restaud will see no one. He barely allows his doctor in, and he refuses any care, even from me. Sick people have such strange fantasies! They are like children, they don’t know what they want.”

“Perhaps, like children, they know very well what they want.”

The countess flushed. I almost repented my Gobseck-like retort. “But,” I went on, to change the tone, “it can’t be, madame, that Monsieur de Restaud is constantly alone.”

“He has his eldest son with him,” she said.

However intently I stared at the countess, she did not redden again, and I sensed she was even more firmly determined not to let me into her secrets.

“You should understand, madame, that my visit is not frivolous; some important interests of his—” I bit my lip, feeling that I had made a bad start. And the countess instantly took advantage of my clumsiness.

“My interests are not at all separate from my husband’s, monsieur,” she said. “There is no reason not to speak to me directly.”

“The business that brings me here concerns only the count,” I replied firmly.

“I will see that he is told of your visit.”

Her polite tone and manner did not fool me; I understood that she would never allow me to approach her husband. I chatted for another moment about unimportant matters, thinking to observe her further, but like every woman with a plan in mind, she dissembled with that rare perfection which, in persons of your sex, madame, constitute the highest degree of perfidy. Dare I say it—I feared she might go to any lengths, even commit a crime. My apprehension arose from seeing—in her gestures, her glances, her manner, and even the intonations of her voice—that her sights were firmly set on the future. I left her.