# Baron de Nucingen — Father Goriot character guide

> Baron de Nucingen in Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** M. de Nucingen, Nucingen, Baron de Nucingen

**First appearance:** 0001-father-goriot

## Snapshot

An Alsatian banker whose fortune is legendary and whose stinginess is whispered about in every salon his wife Delphine illuminates.

## Who they are

Nucingen moves through Parisian finance with the weight of a man whose money can buy almost anything except the refinement his wife craves. He keeps Delphine on a tight allowance while she spends her evenings dazzling the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and the friction between his hoarded gold and her social ambition shapes the world Eugène de Rastignac longs to enter. His presence in the novel marks the cold arithmetic of wealth that underwrites the glitter of aristocratic Paris.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/baron_de_nucingen
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters