“I seem to hear that old Robert Macaire of a Nucingen himself,” said Finot.

“‘A charming girl,’ said Ferdinand du Tillet in a cool, unenthusiastic tone,” Bixiou continued.

“Just du Tillet himself summed up in a word!” cried Couture.

“‘Those that do not know her may think her plain,’ pursued du Tillet, ‘but she has character, I admit.’

“’Und ein herz, dot is the pest of die pizness, mein der poy; she vould make you an indelligent und defoted vife.  In our beastly pizness, nopody cares to know who lifs or dies; it is a crate plessing gif a mann kann put drust in his vife’s heart.  Mein Telvine prouht me more as a million, as you know, but I should gladly gif her for Malfina dot haf not so pig a dot.’

“‘But how much has she?’

“‘I do not know precisely; boot she haf somdings.’

“‘Yes, she has a mother with a great liking for rose-color.’ said du Tillet; and with that epigram he cut Nucingen’s diplomatic efforts short.

“After dinner the Baron de Nucingen informed Wilhelmine Adolphus that she had barely four hundred thousand francs deposited with him.  The daughter of Adolphus of Manheim, thus reduced to an income of twenty-four thousand livres, lost herself in arithmetical exercises that muddled her wits.

“‘I have always had six thousand francs for our dress allowance,’ she said to Malvina.  ’Why, how did your father find money?  We shall have nothing now with twenty-four thousand francs; it is destitution!  Oh! if my father could see me so come down in the world, it would kill him if he were not dead already!  Poor Wilhelmine!’ and she began to cry.

“Malvina, puzzled to know how to comfort her mother, represented to her that she was still young and pretty, that rose-color still became her, that she could continue to go to the Opera and the Bouffons, where Mme. de Nucingen had a box.  And so with visions of gaieties, dances, music, pretty dresses, and social success, the Baroness was lulled to sleep and pleasant dreams in the blue, silk-curtained bed in the charming room next to the chamber in which Jean Baptiste, Baron d’Aldrigger, had breathed his last but two nights ago.

“Here in a few words is the Baron’s history.  During his lifetime that worthy Alsacien accumulated about three millions of francs.  In 1800, at the age of thirty-six, in the apogee of a fortune made during the Revolution, he made a marriage partly of ambition, partly of inclination, with the heiress of the family of Adolphus of Manheim.  Wilhelmine, being the idol of her whole family, naturally inherited their wealth after some ten years.  Next, d’Aldrigger’s fortune being doubled, he was transformed into a Baron by His Majesty, Emperor and King, and forthwith became a fanatical admirer of the great man to whom he owed his title.  Wherefore, between 1814 and 1815 he ruined himself by a too serious belief in the sun of Austerlitz.  Honest Alsacien as he was, he did not suspend payment, nor did he give his creditors shares in doubtful concerns by way of settlement.  He paid everything over the counter, and retired from business, thoroughly deserving Nucingen’s comment on his behavior—­’Honest but stoobid.’