Honoré de Balzac
translation: Ellen Marriage

GOBSECK
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One evening I went in to see this man who had turned himself to gold; the usurer, whom his victims (his clients, as he styled them) were wont to call Daddy Gobseck, perhaps ironically, perhaps by way of antiphrasis. He was sitting in his armchair, motionless as a statue, staring fixedly at the mantel-shelf, where he seemed to read the figures of his statements. A lamp, with a pedestal that had once been green, was burning in the room; but so far from taking color from its smoky light, his face seemed to stand out positively paler against the background. He pointed to a chair set for me, but not a word did he say.

‘What thoughts can this being have in his mind?’ said I to myself. ‘Does he know that a God exists; does he know there are such things as feeling, woman, happiness?’ I pitied him as I might have pitied a diseased creature. But, at the same time, I knew quite well that while he had millions of francs at his command, he possessed the world no less in idea—that world which he had explored, ransacked, weighed, appraised, and exploited.

‘Good day, Daddy Gobseck,’ I began.

He turned his face towards me with a slight contraction of his bushy, black eyebrows; this characteristic shade of expression in him meant as much as the most jubilant smile on a Southern face.

‘You look just as gloomy as you did that day when the news came of the failure of that bookseller whose sharpness you admired so much, though you were one of his victims.’

‘One of his victims?’ he repeated, with a look of astonishment.

‘Yes. Did you not refuse to accept composition at the meeting of creditors until he undertook privately to pay you your debt in full; and did he not give you bills accepted by the insolvent firm; and then, when he set up in business again, did he not pay you the dividend upon those bills of yours, signed as they were by the bankrupt firm?’

‘He was a sharp one, but I had it out of him.’

‘Then have you some bills to protest? To-day is the 30th, I believe.’

It was the first time I had spoken to him of money. He looked ironically up at me; then in those bland accents, not unlike the husky tones which the tyro draws from a flute, he answered, ‘I am amusing myself.’

‘So you amuse yourself now and again?’

‘Do you imagine that the only poets in the world are those who print their verses?’ he asked, with a pitying look and shrug of the shoulders.

‘Poetry in that head!’ thought I, for as yet I knew nothing of his life.

‘What life could be as glorious as mine?’ he continued, and his eyes lighted up. ‘You are young, your mental visions are colored by youthful blood, you see women’s faces in the fire, while I see nothing but coals in mine. You have all sorts of beliefs, while I have no beliefs at all. Keep your illusions—if you can. Now I will show you life with the discount taken off. Go wherever you like, or stay at home by the fireside with your wife, there always (...)

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