"'I have _always_ had six thousand francs for our dress allowance,' she
said to Malvina. 'Why, how did your father find money? We shall have
nothing now with twenty-four thousand francs; it is destitution! Oh!
if my father could see me so come down in the world, it would kill him
if he were not dead already! Poor Wilhelmine!' and she began to cry.

"Malvina, puzzled to know how to comfort her mother, represented to
her that she was still young and pretty, that rose-color still became
her, that she could continue to go to the Opera and the Bouffons,
where Mme. de Nucingen had a box. And so with visions of gaieties,
dances, music, pretty dresses, and social success, the Baroness was
lulled to sleep and pleasant dreams in the blue, silk-curtained bed in
the charming room next to the chamber in which Jean Baptiste, Baron
d'Aldrigger, had breathed his last but two nights ago.

"Here in a few words is the Baron's history. During his lifetime that
worthy Alsacien accumulated about three millions of francs. In 1800,
at the age of thirty-six, in the apogee of a fortune made during the
Revolution, he made a marriage partly of ambition, partly of
inclination, with the heiress of the family of Adolphus of Manheim.
Wilhelmine, being the idol of her whole family, naturally inherited
their wealth after some ten years. Next, d'Aldrigger's fortune being
doubled, he was transformed into a Baron by His Majesty, Emperor and
King, and forthwith became a fanatical admirer of the great man to
whom he owed his title. Wherefore, between 1814 and 1815 he ruined
himself by a too serious belief in the sun of Austerlitz. Honest
Alsacien as he was, he did not suspend payment, nor did he give his
creditors shares in doubtful concerns by way of settlement. He paid
everything over the counter, and retired from business, thoroughly
deserving Nucingen's comment on his behavior--'Honest but stoobid.'