“Very good,” said Birotteau.  “So much the worse for the other guest,” he thought, meaning to make Claparon drunk, and to find out who were his real associates in an affair which began to look suspicious to him.

“All right!  Victoire!” called the banker.

This call brought a regular Leonarde, tricked out like a fish-woman.

“Tell the clerks that I can’t see any one,—­not even Nucingen, Keller, Gigonnet, and all the rest of them.”

“No one has come but Monsieur Lempereur.”

“He can receive the great people,” said Claparon; “the small fry are not to get beyond the first room.  They are to say I’m cogitating a great enterprise—­in champagne.”

To make an old commercial traveller drunk is an impossibility.  Cesar mistook the elation of the man’s vulgarity when he attempted to sound his mind.

“That infamous Roguin is still connected with you,” he began; “don’t you think you ought to write and tell him to assist an old friend whom he has compromised,—­a man with whom he dined every Sunday, and whom he has known for twenty years?”

“Roguin?  A fool! his share is ours now.  Don’t be worried, old fellow, all will go well.  Pay up to the 15th, and after that we will see—­I say, we will see.  Another glass of wine?  The capital doesn’t concern me one atom; pay or don’t pay, I sha’n’t make faces at you.  I’m only in the business for a commission on the sales, and for a share when the lands are converted into money; and it’s for that I manage the owners.  Don’t you understand?  You have got solid men behind you, so I’m not afraid, my good sir.  Nowadays, business is all parcelled out in portions.  A single enterprise requires a combination of capacities.  Go in with us; don’t potter with pomatum and perfumes,—­rubbish! rubbish!  Shave the public; speculate!”

“Speculation!” said Cesar, “is that commerce?”

“It is abstract commerce,” said Claparon,—­“commerce which won’t be developed for ten years to come, according to Nucingen, the Napoleon of finance; commerce by which a man can grasp the totality of fractions, and skim the profits before there are any.  Gigantic idea! one way of pouring hope into pint cups,—­in short, a new necromancy!  So far, we have only got ten or a dozen hard heads initiated into the cabalistic secrets of these magnificent combinations.”

Cesar opened his eyes and ears, endeavoring to understand this composite phraseology.

“Listen,” said Claparon, after a pause.  “Such master-strokes need men.  There’s the man of genius who hasn’t a sou—­like all men of genius.  Those fellows spend their thoughts and spend their money just as it comes.  Imagine a pig rooting round a truffle-patch; he is followed by a jolly fellow, a moneyed man, who listens for the grunt as piggy finds the succulent.  Now, when the man of genius has found a good thing, the moneyed man taps him on the shoulder and says, ’What have you got there?  You are rushing into the