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.
Pages:
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224