“Tut, tut, tut!” said Bixiou, “do not think of comparing Nucingen with a little dabbler like du Tillet, a jackal that gets on in life through his sense of smell.  He scents a carcass by instinct, and comes in time to get the best bone.  Besides, just look at the two men.  The one has a sharp-pointed face like a cat, he is thin and lanky; the other is cubical, fat, heavy as a sack, imperturbable as a diplomatist.  Nucingen has a thick, heavy hand, and lynx eyes that never light up; his depths are not in front, but behind; he is inscrutable, you never see what he is making for.  Whereas du Tillet’s cunning, as Napoleon said to somebody (I have forgotten the name), is like cotton spun too fine, it breaks.”

“I do not myself see that Nucingen has any advantage over du Tillet,” said Blondet, “unless it is that he has the sense to see that a capitalist ought not to rise higher than a baron’s rank, while du Tillet has a mind to be an Italian count.”

“Blondet—­one word, my boy,” put in Couture.  “In the first place, Nucingen dared to say that honesty is simply a question of appearances; and secondly, to know him well you must be in business yourself.  With him banking is but a single department, and a very small one; he holds Government contracts for wines, wools, indigoes —­anything, in short, on which any profit can be made.  He has an all-round genius.  The elephant of finance would contract to deliver votes on a division, or the Greeks to the Turks.  For him business means the sum-total of varieties; as Cousin would say, the unity of specialties.  Looked at in this way, banking becomes a kind of statecraft in itself, requiring a powerful head; and a man thoroughly tempered is drawn on to set himself above the laws of a morality that cramps him.”

“Right, my son,” said Blondet; “but we, and we alone, can comprehend that this means bringing war into the financial world.  A banker is a conquering general making sacrifices on a tremendous scale to gain ends that no one perceives; his soldiers are private people’s interests.  He has stratagems to plan out, partisans to bring into the field, ambushes to set, towns to take.  Most men of this stamp are so close upon the borders of politics, that in the end they are drawn into public life, and thereby lose their fortunes.  The firm of Necker, for instance, was ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard was all but ruined.  Some great capitalist in every age makes a colossal fortune, and leaves behind him neither fortune nor a family; there was the firm of Paris Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull down Law; there was Law himself (beside whom other promoters of companies are but pigmies); there was Bouret and Beaujon—­none of them left any representative.  Finance, like Time, devours its own children.  If the banker is to perpetuate himself, he must found a noble house, a dynasty; like the Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent money to Charles V. and were created Princes of Babenhausen, a family