* * *
“Monsieur,” the countess asked Gobseck, “is there a way to obtain the price of these diamonds but keep the right to buy them back?” Her voice trembled as she held out a jewel box to him.
“Yes, madame, there is,” I interjected, stepping forward and revealing myself. She glanced over, recognized me, shuddered, and threw me that look which in every land means “Not a word!”
I went on: “There is a procedure we call a ‘sale with right of redemption,’ which consists in ceding and transferring a property, real or personal, for a fixed period of time, at the expiration of which one may retrieve the object in question against payment of a prearranged sum.”
She breathed more easily. Count Maxime frowned; he suspected quite rightly that the usurer would now offer a smaller amount for the diamonds, since their value would fluctuate. Gobseck, still seated unmoving at his desk, had fitted a loupe against his eye and was silently looking through the jewel case. If I live a hundred years, I will never forget the sight of his face: His pale cheeks colored; his eyes, which seemed to collect the stones’ sparkle, shone with a supernatural blaze. He rose, moved to the window, and held the diamonds close to his toothless mouth as if he would devour them. He mumbled vague words, lifting bracelets, brooches, pendants, necklaces, tiaras one by one, holding them to the light to judge their clarity, their whiteness, their cut; he pulled them out of the jewel box and put them back, picked them up again, jostled them to bring out their every glint, more a child than an old man, or rather child and old man both at once.
“Beautiful diamonds! These would have brought three hundred thousand francs before the Revolution. What brilliance! They’re true Asia diamonds, from Golconda or Visapur! Do you know what these are worth? No, no, Gobseck is the only person in Paris who can appreciate them. Under the Empire it would have cost more than two hundred thousand to put together such a set.” He shook his head in disgust and added, “But diamonds are dropping in value every day now. Brazil has been pouring them out since the end of the war, the market is glutted with stones that aren’t so white as the ones from India. And nowadays women are wearing them everywhere, not only at court. Does madame go to court?” Muttering these awful remarks he went on examining the stones, one after the other, with unspeakable pleasure. “Not a flaw!” he exclaimed. “There’s one here . . . Here’s something, a streak . . . Fine diamond, this one.”
His colorless face was so brilliantly illuminated by the blazing jewels that I thought of those murky old mirrors you see in country inns, which absorb the surrounding light and send nothing back, so that a traveler who looks for his image in the glass sees a fellow in an apoplectic spasm.
“Well now!” said the young count, slapping Gobseck on the shoulder. The aged child gave a start. He let go the trinkets, set them on his desk, sat down, and became the moneylender once again—hard, cold, polished as a marble column.
“How much do you need?”
“One hundred thousand francs, for three years,” said the count.
“Possible!” said Gobseck, and from a mahogany box—his own sort of jewel case!—he drew scales of irreproachable accuracy. He weighed the stones and—heaven knows how—his practiced eye calculated the weight of the settings as well. Throughout the operation the old miser’s face struggled between excitement and sternness. The countess was sunk in a stupor; watching her, I felt she was looking at the depths of the chasm she was falling into. There was still some remorse in the woman’s soul; perhaps it would take only a small effort, a charitable hand offered, to save her. I decided to try.
“Do these diamonds belong to you personally, madame?” I asked in a clear voice.
“Yes, monsieur,” she replied, with a haughty look.
“Draw up the purchase and redemption contract, chatterbox!” Gobseck snarled, standing and pointing me to his seat at the desk.
“Madame is probably a married woman?” I asked her further.
She nodded curtly.
“I will not draw up the contract,” I declared.
“And why not?” asked Gobseck.
“Why not?” I said, drawing the old man into the window niche to speak privately. “This woman is under her husband’s authority; the contract would be null and void; you couldn’t claim ignorance of a fact that is stated in the document itself. You would be required to produce the diamonds deposited with you, whose weight, value, and cut would be described right there.”
Gobseck interrupted me with a nod and turned to the two culprits. “He is right,” he said. “This is a different situation entirely. Eighty thousand francs cash, and you leave the diamonds with me!” he added in a hollow, fluting voice. “In matters of personal property, possession equals title.”
“But—” objected the young man.
“Take it or leave it,” Gobseck said, handing the jewel case back to the countess. “There are too many risks in it for me.”
“You would do best to throw yourself on your husband’s mercy,” I murmured into her ear, leaning toward her. The usurer doubtless understood my words from the movement of my lips, and he threw me a cold look. The young man’s face turned livid. The countess’s hesitation was palpable. The young count went to her, and though he spoke very low, I heard: “Farewell, dear Anastasie, I wish you happiness! As for me, tomorrow my cares will be over.”
“Monsieur,” cried the countess, “I accept your offer.”
“Well now,” replied the old man, “you are very difficult to bring around, my lovely lady.”
He wrote a check for fifty thousand francs drawn on the Bank of France and handed it to the countess. “Now,” he said with a smile that rather resembled Voltaire’s, “the balance of thirty thousand francs I will give you in my own bills of exchange . . . and no one would ever contest their validity. They are as good as gold bullion. Monsieur de Trailles said earlier, ‘My bills will be paid when they are due.’” Gobseck brought out a bundle of notes signed by the young count, all of them contested the day before at the request of a fellow lender who had probably then sold them cheap to Gobseck. The young man gave a roar that contained the phrase “Old scoundrel!”
Papa Gobseck didn’t turn a hair; from a box he lifted out a pair of pistols and said coldly, “As the insulted party, I shall fire first.”
“Maxime, you owe the gentleman an apology,” the trembling countess exclaimed softly.
“I had no intention of offending you,” the young man stammered.
“I am sure of that,” Gobseck replied tranquilly. “Your only intention was to not pay your bills of exchange.”
The countess rose, bowed, and left in what must have been a state of deep dread.
Monsieur de Trailles was obliged to follow her, but before going out he turned to us. “If the slightest indiscretion should escape your lips, gentlemen,” he said, “I will have your blood or you will have mine.”
“Amen,” Gobseck exclaimed, as he put away his pistols. “But to gamble his blood, a man must have some in his veins, little one, and you have nothing but muck in yours.”
When the door had closed and the two carriages were gone, Gobseck rose and began to dance about, chanting, “I’ve got the diamonds! I’ve got the diamonds! The beautiful diamonds, such diamonds! And cheap! Ah, ah, Werbrust and Gigonnet! You thought you could trick old Papa Gobseck! Ego sum papa! I am the master of you all! Fully paid for, the interest too! Won’t they feel like fools tonight when I tell them this story, between a couple of games of dominoes!”
That dark exuberance, that ferocity of a savage, over the possession of a few shiny pebbles made me shudder. I was silent, stunned.
“Ah, you’re still here, my boy!” he said. “Let’s go eat together, we’ll have a good time at your place—I don’t keep house here, and all those restaurant folk, with their purées and their sauces and their wines, they’d poison the devil himself!”
The look on my face abruptly returned him to his cold impassivity. “You don’t understand all this,” he said, t
aking his seat again by the fire and setting a tin saucepan of milk on the grate. “Would you like to have breakfast with me?” he went on. “There may be enough here for two.”
“Thank you,” I replied, “I don’t breakfast until noon.”
Just then rapid footsteps sounded in the corridor. The unknown arrival stopped at Gobseck’s door and rapped several times in what seemed a fury. The moneylender went to look through the grille, then opened the door to a man of about thirty-five who must have looked harmless to him, despite the man’s anger. The newcomer was dressed simply; he resembled the late Duc de Richelieu. It was the count (whom you have probably met, madame? If you’ll permit the liberty—he had the aristocratic look of the statesmen from your neighborhood).
“Monsieur,” the man said to Gobseck, who had resumed his calm stolid demeanor again, “my wife just left here?”
“Possibly.”
“What, monsieur—do you not understand me?”
“I have not had the honor of meeting madame, your wife,” replied the usurer. “I’ve received a good many visitors this morning: women, men, young ladies who looked like young men and young men who looked like young ladies. It would be rather difficult for me to—”
“Enough foolishness, sir! I am talking about the woman who left your office a moment ago.”
“How should I know whether she is your wife?” asked the usurer. “I have never had occasion to see you before.”
“You are mistaken, Monsieur Gobseck,” said the count with heavy irony. “We met in my wife’s room, one morning. You came to collect a note she had underwritten, a note she did not owe.”
“It was not my business to discover how she came to underwrite the note,” replied Gobseck, shooting a mischievous look at the count. “I had taken it over from a colleague. And by the way, monsieur,” said the moneyman, his voice neither agitated nor hurried as he added coffee to his mug of milk, “allow me to remark that it is not clear by what right you come and lecture me here in my office: I have been an adult since the sixty-first year of the past century.”
“Monsieur, you have just bought for a pittance family diamonds that did not belong to my wife.”
“Without feeling any obligation to discuss my business with you, count, I will say that if madame took your diamonds, you should have circulated a notice warning jewelers not to buy them. She might have sold them separately.”
“Monsieur!” cried the count. “You knew my wife.”
“True.”
“She is under her husband’s authority.”
“Possibly.”
“She had no right to dispose of those diamonds.”
“Correct.”
“Well then, monsieur?”
“Well then, monsieur: I do know your wife; she is under her husband’s authority, fine (she seems to be under the authority of several people). But I . . . do . . . not . . . know . . . your diamonds. If madame the countess can sign bills of exchange, then presumably she can carry on business herself, can buy diamonds, can acquire them to sell—that is clear!”
“Good day, sir!” cried the count, white with fury. “There are courts of law.”
“Correct.”
“This gentleman,” the count added, pointing to me, “was witness to the sale.”
“Possibly.”
The count turned to leave. Suddenly, feeling the situation was grave, I intervened between the two belligerent parties.
“Count,” I said, “you are right, and Monsieur Gobseck is not at all in the wrong. You could not sue the purchaser without implicating your wife, and the ugly aspects of the affair would not fall upon her alone. I am an attorney, yet I owe it to my own self, still more than to my professional position, to declare that the diamonds you speak of were bought by Monsieur Gobseck in my presence. But I believe that you would be wrong to contest the legality of the sale of items that are, besides, not easily identified. In equity, you would win; in law, you would lose. Monsieur Gobseck is too honest a man to deny that the sale was profitable to him, especially since both my conscience and my duty would require me to say it was. But were you to bring suit, count, the outcome would be uncertain. So I would advise you to come to terms with Monsieur Gobseck, who can claim he acted in good faith, but to whom you would in any case still have to return the purchase money. Agree to a redeemable sale, for a period of seven or eight months, or even a year—time enough to allow you to repay the sum madame borrowed—unless you prefer to buy the jewels back today, providing security for the payment.”
The moneylender sat dipping his bread into his coffee bowl and chewing it with what seemed utter indifference, but at my phrase “come to terms” he looked over at me as if to say, “Smart fellow—he’s learned a thing or two from my lessons!”
I retorted with a hard look that he understood perfectly: The whole business was deeply dubious, ignoble; it was becoming urgent to negotiate a way out. Gobseck couldn’t have recourse to denials; I would have told the truth. The count thanked me with a gracious smile. After a discussion in which Gobseck displayed enough skill and avidity to stymie the diplomatic cunning of a whole parliament, I prepared a document by which the count acknowledged receiving from the usurer a sum of eighty-five thousand francs, interest included, and Gobseck pledged to return the diamonds to him upon the repayment of the full amount.
“Such waste,” exclaimed the husband as he signed. “What could possibly bridge such a chasm?”
“Sir,” Gobseck asked gravely, “have you any children?”
The question made the count flinch, as if an expert physician had suddenly put a finger on the very center of a pain. The husband didn’t reply.
“Well,” continued Gobseck, understanding the man’s sorrowful silence, “I know your story by heart. This woman is a demon whom you may still love; I can certainly believe it, I was very much taken with her myself. But you may want to salvage your wealth, keep it for one or two of your children. Well, then, do this: Throw yourself into the social whirl, gamble away your wealth, and come around often to see Gobseck the moneylender. People will call me a Jew, an Arab, a usurer, a pirate, saying that I ruined you—I don’t care! If someone insults me, I lay him low! No one handles a pistol or a sword as well as yours truly here, and people know it! Then find a friend with whom you can arrange a counterfeit sale of all your holdings.” He turned to me and asked, “Isn’t that what they call a fideicommissum—a trust?”
The count seemed entirely absorbed in his thoughts. He said, “You will have your money tomorrow, sir—have the diamonds ready for me,” and he left.
“That fellow seems as stupid as an honest man,” said Gobseck coldly, when the count had gone.
“Say, rather, as stupid as a man of passion.”
“The count owes you a fee for drawing up the document,” Gobseck cried, seeing me leave.
A few days after that episode, which initiated me into the dreadful mysteries of the life of a woman of fashion, the count stepped into my law office.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I have come to consult you on some very serious matters; I have the utmost confidence in you, and I hope to give you proof of that. Your conduct with Madame de Grandlieu is beyond all praise.”
* * *
“So you see, madame,” Derville turned from his story now to the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, “that you have paid me a thousand times over for what was a very simple service.” He then resumed . . .
* * *
I bowed respectfully to the count and replied that I had only done the duty of a decent man.
“Well, monsieur,” the count said, “I have gathered a good deal of information on the remarkable person to whom you owe your situation. From what I know of him, I recognize Gobseck as a philosopher of the Cynic school. Would you consider him an honest man?”
“Count,” I replied, “Gobseck is my benefactor—at fifteen percent,” I laughed, “but his avarice doesn’t authorize me to paint his portrait for a stranger’s sake.”
“Do spea
k, monsieur! Your candor cannot harm either Gobseck or yourself. I don’t expect to find an angel in a moneylender.”
“Papa Gobseck,” I began, “is deeply convinced of one governing principle: He believes money is a commodity that a person may in good conscience sell high or low, according to the situation. In his eyes, by charging a high rate for the use of his money, a capitalist becomes a kind of advance partner in a profit-making business or venture. Apart from his financial principles and his philosophical notions on human nature, which allow him to act as an apparent usurer, I am convinced that outside his business activities he is the most scrupulous, most upright person in Paris. Two different men exist at once in him: He is a miser and a philosopher, petty and great. If I were to die leaving children behind, I would name him their guardian. This is my sense of Gobseck from my experience with him. About his past life I know nothing. He may have been a pirate, he may have circled the world trafficking in diamonds or men, in women or state secrets, but I swear no human soul has been through more nor been more thoroughly tested. The day I brought him the money to pay off my debt, I asked him, speaking carefully, what had brought him to charge me such enormous interest, why—since he did want to do me a favor as a friend—he had not allowed himself to do a complete one. His answer: ‘Son, I spared you a sense of obligation, by giving you the right to feel you owed me nothing, and so we came out the best of friends.’ That reply, count, will give you a better picture of the man than any possible words could.”
“I have made up my mind, irrevocably,” said the count. “Prepare the necessary documents to transfer ownership of my estate to Gobseck. I will trust you alone, monsieur, to devise the counter deed, in which Gobseck will declare that this is a simulated sale, and that he pledges to return my fortune, which is to be administered by him as he does so well, to my eldest son when the boy comes of age.