“But how did he make his money?” asked Couture. “In 1819 both he and the illustrious Bianchon lived in a shabby boarding-house in the Latin Quarter; his people ate roast cockchafers and their own wine so as to send him a hundred francs every month. His father’s property was not worth a thousand crowns; he had two sisters and a brother on his hands, and now----” “Now he has an income of forty thousand livres,” continued Finot; “his sisters had a handsome fortune apiece and married into noble families; he leaves his mother a life interest in the property----” “Even in 1827 I have known him without a penny,” said Blondet. “Oh! in 1827,” said Bixiou. “Well,” resumed Finot, “yet to-day, as we see, he is in a fair way to be a Minister, a peer of France--anything that he likes. He broke decently with Delphine three years ago; he will not marry except on good grounds; and he may marry a girl of noble family. The chap had the sense to take up with a wealthy woman.” “My friends, give him the benefit of extenuating circumstances,” urged Blondet. “When he escaped the clutches of want, he dropped into the claws of a very clever man.” “You know what Nucingen is,” said Bixiou. “In the early days, Delphine and Rastignac thought him ‘good-natured’; he seemed to regard a wife as a plaything, an ornament in his house. And that very fact showed me that the man was square at the base as well as in height,” added Bixiou. “Nucingen makes no bones about admitting that his wife is his fortune; she is an indispensable chattel, but a wife takes a second place in the high-pressure life of a political leader and great capitalist. He once said in my hearing that Bonaparte had blundered like a bourgeois in his early relations with Josephine; and that after he had had the spirit to use her as a stepping-stone, he had made himself ridiculous by trying to make a companion of her.” “Any man of unusual powers is bound to take Oriental views of women,” said Blondet.