Where, then had the Baron found the thirty thousand francs he had just produced?  This was the history.

A few days previously Hulot had insured his life for the sum of a hundred and fifty thousand francs, for three years, in two separate companies.  Armed with the policies, of which he paid the premium, he had spoken as follows to the Baron de Nucingen, a peer of the Chamber, in whose carriage he found himself after a sitting, driving home, in fact, to dine with him:—­

“Baron, I want seventy thousand francs, and I apply to you.  You must find some one to lend his name, to whom I will make over the right to draw my pay for three years; it amounts to twenty-five thousand francs a year—­that is, seventy-five thousand francs.—­You will say, ’But you may die’”—­the banker signified his assent—­“Here, then, is a policy of insurance for a hundred and fifty thousand francs, which I will deposit with you till you have drawn up the eighty thousand francs,” said Hulot, producing the document form his pocket.

“But if you should lose your place?” said the millionaire Baron, laughing.

The other Baron—­not a millionaire—­looked grave.

“Be quite easy; I only raised the question to show you that I was not devoid of merit in handing you the sum.  Are you so short of cash? for the Bank will take your signature.”

“My daughter is to be married,” said Baron Hulot, “and I have no fortune—­like every one else who remains in office in these thankless times, when five hundred ordinary men seated on benches will never reward the men who devote themselves to the service as handsomely as the Emperor did.”

“Well, well; but you had Josepha on your hands!” replied Nucingen, “and that accounts for everything.  Between ourselves, the Duc d’Herouville has done you a very good turn by removing that leech from sucking your purse dry.  ’I have known what that is, and can pity your case,’” he quoted.  “Take a friend’s advice:  Shut up shop, or you will be done for.”

This dirty business was carried out in the name of one Vauvinet, a small money-lender; one of those jobbers who stand forward to screen great banking houses, like the little fish that is said to attend the shark.  This stock-jobber’s apprentice was so anxious to gain the patronage of Monsieur le Baron Hulot, that he promised the great man to negotiate bills of exchange for thirty thousand francs at eighty days, and pledged himself to renew them four times, and never pass them out of his hands.

Fischer’s successor was to pay forty thousand francs for the house and the business, with the promise that he should supply forage to a department close to Paris.