fiery furnace, my good fellow, and you haven’t the loins to run out again.  There’s a thousand francs; just let me take it in hand and manage the affair.’  Very good!  The banker then convokes the traders:  ’My friends, let us go to work:  write a prospectus!  Down with humbug!’ On that they get out the hunting-horns and shout and clamor,—­’One hundred thousand francs for five sous! or five sous for a hundred thousand francs! gold mines! coal mines!’ In short, all the clap-trap of commerce.  We buy up men of arts and sciences; the show begins, the public enters; it gets its money’s worth, and we get the profits.  The pig is penned up with his potatoes, and the rest of us wallow in banknotes.  There it all is, my good sir.  Come, go into the business with us.  What would you like to be,—­pig, buzzard, clown, or millionaire?  Reflect upon it; I have now laid before you the whole theory of the modern loan-system.  Come and see me often; you’ll always find me a jovial, jolly fellow.  French joviality—­gaiety and gravity, all in one—­never injures business; quite the contrary.  Men who quaff the sparkling cup are born to understand each other.  Come, another glass of champagne! it is good, I tell you!  It was sent to me from Epernay itself, by a man for whom I once sold quantities at a good price—­I used to be in wines.  He shows his gratitude, and remembers me in my prosperity; very rare, that.”

Birotteau, overcome by the frivolity and heedlessness of a man to whom the world attributed extreme depth and capacity, dared not question him any further.  In the midst of his own haziness of mind produced by the champagne, he did, however, recollect a name spoken by du Tillet; and he asked Claparon who Gobseck the banker was, and where he lived.

“Have you got as far as that?” said Claparon.  “Gobseck is a banker, just as the headsman is a doctor.  The first word is ‘fifty per cent’; he belongs to the race of Harpagon; he’ll take canary birds at all seasons, fur tippets in summer, nankeens in winter.  What securities are you going to offer him?  If you want him to take your paper without security you will have to deposit your wife, your daughter, your umbrella, everything down to your hat-box, your socks (don’t you go in for ribbed socks?), your shovel and tongs, and the very wood you’ve got in the cellar!  Gobseck!  Gobseck! in the name of virtuous folly, who told you to go to that commercial guillotine?”

“Monsieur du Tillet.”

“Ah! the scoundrel, I recognize him!  We used to be friends.  If we have quarrelled so that we don’t speak to each other, you may depend upon it my aversion to him is well-founded; he let me read down to the bottom of his infamous soul, and he made me uncomfortable at that beautiful ball you gave us.  I can’t stand his impudent airs—­all because he has got a notary’s wife!  I could have countesses if I wanted them; I sha’n’t respect him any the more for that.  Ah! my respect is a princess who’ll never give birth to such