“‘Here,’ he said, indicating his bare, chilly room, ‘here the most high-mettled gallant, who chafes at a word and draws swords for a syllable elsewhere will entreat with clasped hands. There is no city merchant so proud, no woman so vain of her beauty, no soldier of so bold a spirit, but that they entreat me here, one and all, with tears of rage or anguish in their eyes. Here they kneel--the famous artist, and the man of letters, whose name will go down to posterity. Here, in short’ (he lifted his hand to his forehead), ‘all the inheritances and all the concerns of all Paris are weighed in the balance. Are you still of the opinion that there are no delights behind the blank mask which so often has amazed you by its impassiveness?’ he asked, stretching out that livid face which reeked of money. “I went back to my room, feeling stupefied. The little, wizened old man had grown great. He had been metamorphosed under my eyes into a strange visionary symbol; he had come to be the power of gold personified. I shrank, shuddering, from life and my kind. “‘Is it really so?’ I thought; ‘must everything be resolved into gold?’ “I remember that it was long before I slept that night. I saw heaps of gold all about me. My thoughts were full of the lovely Countess; I confess, to my shame, that the vision completely eclipsed another quiet, innocent figure, the figure of the woman who had entered upon a life of toil and obscurity; but on the morrow, through the clouds of slumber, Fanny’s sweet face rose before me in all its beauty, and I thought of nothing else.” “Will you take a glass of _eau sucree_?” asked the Vicomtesse, interrupting Derville. “I should be glad of it.” “But I can see nothing in this that can touch our concerns,” said Mme. de Grandlieu, as she rang the bell. “Sardanapalus!” cried Derville, flinging out his favorite invocation. “Mademoiselle Camille will be wide awake in a moment if I say that her happiness depended not so long ago upon Daddy Gobseck; but as the old gentleman died at the age of ninety, M. de Restaud will soon be in possession of a handsome fortune. This requires some explanation. As for poor Fanny Malvaut, you know her; she is my wife.” “Poor fellow, he would admit that, with his usual frankness, with a score of people to hear him!” said the Vicomtesse. “I would proclaim it to the universe,” said the attorney. “Go on, drink your glass, my poor Derville. You will never be anything but the happiest and the best of men.” “I left you in the Rue du Helder,” remarked the uncle, raising his face after a gentle doze. “You had gone to see a Countess; what have you done with her?”