Note on Money

Financial references abound in Old Man Goriot (see Introduction pp. xviii–xxiii on Balzac’s innovative ‘socio-economic view of human relations’). Many of them are fairly complex and specific explanations, or interpretations, have been attempted in the notes. A number of general points are dealt with below.

Throughout the novel, characters refer to different currency systems, which it might be useful to clarify here.

The official currency in France at the time was the decimal (Germinal) franc, introduced by the Republican government in 1795 but not minted (due to a shortage of bullion) until 1803. The franc was divided into decimes and centimes and issued in 1-franc, 5-franc (écu) and 20-franc (napoléon) pieces.

This system replaced the Ancien Régime livre tournois (3 deniers to the liard, 12 deniers to the sou, 20 sous to the livre, 6 livres to the écu, 24 livres to the louis d’or). However, the livre tournois, exchangeable at a rate of 81 livres to 80 francs, remained in circulation until 1834.

During the Bourbon Restoration, the 20-franc piece, or napoléon, was renamed the louis.

Banknotes were issued by the Bank of France from 1800, in denominations of 500 and 1,000 francs. These replaced the unpopular revolutionary assignats, whose swift devaluation led to a long-term distrust of paper money and preference for stable coinage in France.

To give an idea of the relative worth of money in the novel: Vautrin tips the postman 20 sous (1 franc); Rastignac pays Madame Vauquer 45 francs a month for food and lodging (540 francs per year) and receives an allowance of twelve hundred a year from his cash-strapped family; Goriot’s daughters have (or are supposed to have) annual incomes of 36,000 or 50,000 francs (Goriot cites both figures); Madame Vauquer has 40,000 francs in savings; Monsieur d’Ajuda-Pinto has a carriage and pair worth ‘at least thirty thousand francs’. See also Vautrin’s rundown, for Rastignac’s benefit, of the cost of living as a man of fashion in Paris (pp. 137–8).