again next day, and vainly asked herself why it had been given."

Couture broke in. "In all these tops that you have set spinning, I see
nothing at all like the beginnings of Rastignac's fortune," said he.
"You apparently take us for Matifats multiplied by half-a-dozen
bottles of champagne."

"We are just coming to it," returned Bixiou. "You have followed the
course of all the rivulets which make up that forty thousand livres a
year which so many people envy. By this time Rastignac held the
threads of all these lives in his hand."

"Desroches, the Matifats, Beaudenord, the d'Aldriggers, d'Aiglemont?"

"Yes, and a hundred others," assented Bixiou.

"Oh, come now, how?" cried Finot. "I know a few things, but I cannot
see a glimpse of an answer to this riddle."

"Blondet has roughly given you the account of Nucingen's first two
suspensions of payment; now for the third, with full details.--After
the peace of 1815, Nucingen grasped an idea which some of us only
fully understood later, to wit, that capital is a power only when you
are very much richer than other people. In his own mind, he was
jealous of the Rothschilds. He had five millions of francs, he wanted
ten. He knew a way to make thirty millions with ten, while with five
he could only make fifteen. So he made up his mind to operate a third
suspension of payment. About that time, the great man hit on the idea
of indemnifying his creditors with paper of purely fictitious value
and keeping their coin. On the market, a great idea of this sort is