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"Goot, goot!" thought Nucingen, "dis is de very chance to make up for vat I hafe lost dis night! He hafe paid for noting?" he asked his informant. "Why," said the stockbroker, "where would you find a tradesman so ill informed as to refuse credit to Jacques Falleix? There is a splendid cellar of wine, it would seem. By the way, the house is for sale; he meant to buy it. The lease is in his name.
A very few words will serve to explain this sudden arrival of Gigonnet and Gobseck on the field of battle, for des Lupeaulx found them both waiting. At eight o'clock that evening, Martin Falleix, returning on the wings of the wind, thanks to three francs to the postboys and a courier in advance, had brought back with him the deeds of the property signed the night before.
During the preceding week Elisabeth had finally succeeded in persuading Falleix to give up wearing a pair of enormous flat earrings resembling hoops. "You go too far, Madame Baudoyer," he said, seeing her satisfaction at the final sacrifice; "you order me about too much.
He sold his practice to a brother of Martin Falleix, and left Paris while the authorities were still discussing whether it was lawful for a citizen to dispose of the body of his wife.
Then came a splendid dinner, lasting at least five hours, to which were invited the Abbe Gaudron, Falleix, Rabourdin, Monsieur Godard, under-head-clerk to Monsieur Baudoyer, Monsieur Bataille, captain of the company of the National Guard to which Saillard and his son-in-law belonged. Monsieur Cardot, who was invariably asked, did as Rabourdin did, namely, accepted one invitation out of six.
While old Saillard was driving across Paris his son-in-law, Isidore Baudoyer, and his daughter, Elisabeth, Baudoyer's wife, were playing a virtuous game of boston with their confessor, the Abbe Gaudron, in company with a few neighbors and a certain Martin Falleix, a brass-founder in the fauborg Saint-Antoine, to whom Saillard had loaned the necessary money to establish a business.
Elisabeth might have told us, I think, why Falleix went off in such a hurry. But let's invent my little speech. This is what I thought of: 'Madame, if you would say a word to his Excellency " "'If you would deign," said Gaudron; "add the word 'deign, it is more respectful.
"Falleix knows the country, for he was born there; and he is going to buy up land all round the secretary's miserable hovel, with the two hundred and fifty thousand francs I speak of, good land, well worth the price.
On the evening of which we write, Monsieur Saillard, returning from the ministry, found a game of boston in full blast; Elisabeth was advising Falleix how to play; Madame Saillard was knitting in the chimney-corner and overlooking the cards of the vicar; Monsieur Baudoyer, motionless as a mile-stone, was employing his mental capacity in calculating how the cards were placed, and sat opposite to Mitral, who had come up from Ile-d'Adam for the Christmas holidays.
In spite of his Roman virtue he must have been touched, for his red nose lost somewhat of its color. "Well, suppose it is misfortune, won't you help Saillard's daughter? a girl who has knitted your stockings for the last thirty years!" cried Mitral. "If there's good security I don't say I won't," replied Gigonnet. "Falleix is in with them.
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