The Nucingens gave a ball even more splendid than people expected of them on the occasion of the wedding; Delphine’s present to the bride was a charming set of rubies.  Isaure danced, a happy wife, a girl no longer.  The little Baroness was more than ever a Shepherdess of the Alps.  The ball was at its height when Malvina, the Andalouse of Musset’s poem, heard du Tillet’s voice drily advising her to take Desroches.  Desroches, warmed to the right degree by Rastignac and Nucingen, tried to come to an understanding financially; but at the first hint of shares in the mines for the bride’s portion, he broke off and went back to the Matifat’s in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, only to find the accursed canal shares which Gigonnet had foisted on Matifat in lieu of cash.

“They had not long to wait for the crash.  The firm of Claparon did business on too large a scale, the capital was locked up, the concern ceased to serve its purposes, or to pay dividends, though the speculations were sound.  These misfortunes coincided with the events of 1827.  In 1829 it was too well known that Claparon was a man of straw set up by the two giants; he fell from his pedestal.  Shares that had fetched twelve hundred and fifty francs fell to four hundred, though intrinsically they were worth six.  Nucingen, knowing their value, bought them up at four.

“Meanwhile the little Baroness d’Aldrigger had sold out of the mines that paid no dividends, and Godefroid had reinvested the money belonging to his wife and her mother in Claparon’s concern.  Debts compelled them to realize when the shares were at their lowest, so that of seven hundred thousand francs only two hundred thousand remained.  They made a clearance, and all that was left was prudently invested in the three per cents at seventy-five.  Godefroid, the sometime gay and careless bachelor who had lived without taking thought all his life long, found himself saddled with a little goose of a wife totally unfitted to bear adversity (indeed, before six months were over, he had witnessed the anserine transformation of his beloved) to say nothing of a mother-in-law whose mind ran on pretty dresses while she had not bread to eat.  The two families must live together to live at all.  It was only by stirring up all his considerably chilled interest that Godefroid got a post in the audit department.  His friends?—­They were out of town.  His relatives?—­All astonishment and promises.  ’What! my dear boy!  Oh! count upon me!  Poor fellow!’ and Beaudenord was clean forgotten fifteen minutes afterwards.  He owed his place to Nucingen and de Vandenesse.

“And to-day these so estimable and unfortunate people are living on a third floor (not counting the entresol) in the Rue du Mont Thabor.  Malvina, the Adolphus’ pearl of a granddaughter, has not a farthing.  She gives music-lessons, not to be a burden upon her brother-in-law.  You may see a tall, dark, thin, withered woman, like a mummy escaped from Passalacqua’s about afoot through the streets of Paris.  In 1830 Beaudenord lost his situation just as his wife presented him with a fourth child.  A family of eight and two servants (Wirth and his wife) and an income of eight thousand livres.  And at this moment the mines are paying so well, that an original share of a thousand francs brings in a dividend of cent per cent.