and humbugs as well, they are the worst rogues of all. Your husband is
taking advantage of you. As soon as pressure is brought to bear on him
he shams dead; he means to be more the master under your name than in
his own. He will take advantage of the position to secure himself
against the risks of business. He is as sharp as he is treacherous; he
is a bad lot! No, no; I am not going to leave my girls behind me
without a penny when I go to Pere-Lachaise. I know something about
business still. He has sunk his money in speculation, he says; very
well then, there is something to show for it--bills, receipts, papers
of some sort. Let him produce them, and come to an arrangement with
you. We will choose the most promising of his speculations, take them
over at our own risk, and have the securities transferred into your
name; they shall represent the separate estate of Delphine Goriot,
wife of the Baron de Nucingen. Does that fellow really take us for
idiots? Does he imagine that I could stand the idea of your being
without fortune, without bread, for forty-eight hours? I would not
stand it a day--no, not a night, not a couple of hours! If there had
been any foundation for the idea, I should never get over it. What! I
have worked hard for forty years, carried sacks on my back, and
sweated and pinched and saved all my life for you, my darlings, for
you who made the toil and every burden borne for you seem light; and
now, my fortune, my whole life, is to vanish in smoke! I should die
raving mad if I believed a word of it. By all that's holiest in heaven
and earth, we will have this cleared up at once; go through the books,
have the whole business looked thoroughly into! I will not sleep, nor
rest, nor eat until I have satisfied myself that all your fortune is
in existence. Your money is settled upon you, God be thanked! and,
luckily, your attorney, Maitre Derville, is an honest man. Good Lord!
you shall have your snug little million, your fifty thousand francs a
year, as long as you live, or I will raise a racket in Paris, I will