"At length I became head-clerk in the office where I had worked for
three years and then I left the Rue des Gres for rooms in my
employer's house. I had my board and lodging and a hundred and fifty
francs per month. It was a great day for me!

"When I went to bid the usurer good-bye, he showed no sign of feeling,
he was neither cordial nor sorry to lose me, he did not ask me to come
to see him, and only gave me one of those glances which seemed in some
sort to reveal a power of second-sight.

"By the end of a week my old neighbor came to see me with a tolerably
thorny bit of business, an expropriation, and he continued to ask for
my advice with as much freedom as if he paid for it.

"My principal was a man of pleasure and expensive tastes; before the
second year (1818-1819) was out he had got himself into difficulties,
and was obliged to sell his practice. A professional connection in
those days did not fetch the present exorbitant prices, and my
principal asked a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Now an active
man, of competent knowledge and intelligence, might hope to pay off
the capital in ten years, paying interest and living respectably in
the meantime--if he could command confidence. But I as the seventh
child of a small tradesman at Noyon, I had not a sou to my name, nor
personal knowledge of any capitalist but Daddy Gobseck. An ambitious
idea, and an indefinable glimmer of hope, put heart into me. To
Gobseck I betook myself, and slowly one evening I made my way to the
Rue des Gres. My heart thumped heavily as I knocked at his door in the
gloomy house. I recollected all the things that he used to tell me, at
a time when I myself was very far from suspecting the violence of the