Without being a man of mind, or a man of talent, Gaubertin had the appearance of being both.  He owed the accuracy of his perception and his consummate art to an extreme keenness after gain.  He desired wealth, not for his wife, not for his children, not for himself, not for his family, not for the reputation that money gives; after the gratification of his revenge (the hope of which kept him alive) he loved the touch of money, like Nucingen, who, it was said, kept fingering the gold in his pockets.  The rush of business was Gaubertin’s wine; and though he had his belly full of it, he had all the eagerness of one who was empty.  As with valets of the drama, intrigues, tricks to play, mischief to organize, deceptions, commercial over-reachings, accounts to render and receive, disputes, and quarrels of self-interest, exhilarated him, kept his blood in circulation, and his bile flowing.  He went and came on foot, on horseback, in a carriage, by water; he was at all auctions and timber sales in Paris, thinking of everything, keeping hundreds of wires in his hands and never getting them tangled.

Quick, decided in his movements as in his ideas, short and squat in figure, with a thin nose, a fiery eye, an ear on the “qui vive,” there was something of the hunting-dog about him.  His brown face, very round and sunburned, from which the tanned ears stood out predominantly, —­for he always wore a cap,—­was in keeping with that character.  His nose turned up; his tightly-closed lips could never have opened to say a kindly thing.  His bushy whiskers formed a pair of black and shiny tufts beneath the highly-colored cheek-bones, and were lost in his cravat.  Hair that was pepper-and-salt in color and frizzled naturally in stages like those of a judge’s wig, seeming scorched by the fury of the fire which heated his brown skull and gleamed in his gray eyes surrounded by circular wrinkles (no doubt from a habit of always blinking when he looked across the country in full sunlight), completed the characteristics of his physiognomy.  His lean and vigorous hands were hairy, knobbed, and claw-like, like those of men who do their share of labor.  His personality was agreeable to those with whom he had to do, for he wrapped it in a misleading gayety; he knew how to talk a great deal without saying a word of what he meant to keep unsaid.  He wrote little, so as to deny anything that escaped him which might prove unfavorable in its after effects upon his interests.  His books and papers were kept by a cashier,—­an honest man, whom men of Gaubertin’s stamp always seek to get hold of, and whom they make, in their own selfish interests, their first dupe.

When Rigou’s little green chaise appeared, towards twelve o’clock, in the broad avenue which skirts the river, Gaubertin, in cap, boots, and jacket, was returning from the wharves.  He hastened his steps, —­feeling very sure that Rigou’s object in coming over could only be “the great affair.”