WHAT LOVE COSTS AN OLD MAN

For a whole week Nucingen went almost every day to the shop in the Rue Nueve–Saint-Marc to bargain for the woman he was in love with. Here, sometimes under the name of Saint–Esteve, sometimes under that of her tool, Madame Nourrisson, Asie sat enthroned among beautiful clothes in that hideous condition when they have ceased to be dresses and are not yet rags.

The setting was in harmony with the appearance assumed by the woman, for these shops are among the most hideous characteristics of Paris. You find there the garments tossed aside by the skinny hand of Death; you hear, as it were, the gasping of consumption under a shawl, or you detect the agonies of beggery under a gown spangled with gold. The horrible struggle between luxury and starvation is written on filmy laces; you may picture the countenance of a queen under a plumed turban placed in an attitude that recalls and almost reproduces the absent features. It is all hideous amid prettiness! Juvenal’s lash, in the hands of the appraiser, scatters the shabby muffs, the ragged furs of courtesans at bay.

There is a dunghill of flowers, among which here and there we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching—first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she used to sell the covering—the gown without the woman, or the woman without the gown!

Here Asie was in her element, like the warder among convicts, like a vulture red-beaked amid corpses; more terrible than the savage horrors that made the passer-by shudder in astonishment sometimes, at seeing one of their youngest and sweetest reminiscences hung up in a dirty shop window, behind which a Saint–Esteve sits and grins.

From vexation to vexation, a thousand francs at a time, the banker had gone so far as to offer sixty thousand francs to Madame de Saint–Esteve, who still refused to help him, with a grimace that would have outdone any monkey. After a disturbed night, after confessing to himself that Esther completely upset his ideas, after realizing some unexpected turns of fortune on the Bourse, he came to her one day, intending to give the hundred thousand francs on which Asie insisted, but he was determined to have plenty of information for the money.

“Well, have you made up your mind, old higgler?” said Asie, clapping him on the shoulder.

The most dishonoring familiarity is the first tax these women levy on the frantic passions or griefs that are confided to them; they never rise to the level of their clients; they make them seem squat beside them on their mudheap. Asie, it will be seen, obeyed her master admirably.

“Need must!” said Nucingen.

“And you have the best of the bargain,” said Asie. “Women have been sold much dearer than this one to you—relatively speaking. There are women and women! De Marsay paid sixty thousand francs for Coralie, who is dead now. The woman you want cost a hundred thousand francs when new; but to you, you old goat, it is a matter of agreement.”

“But vere is she?”

“Ah! you shall see. I am like you—a gift for a gift! Oh, my good man, your adored one has been extravagant. These girls know no moderation. Your princess is at this moment what we call a fly by night——”

“A fly——?”

“Come, come, don’t play the simpleton.—Louchard is at her heels, and I—I—have lent her fifty thousand francs——”

“Twenty-fife say!” cried the banker.

“Well, of course, twenty-five for fifty, that is only natural,” replied Asie. “To do the woman justice, she is honesty itself. She had nothing left but herself, and says she to me: ‘My good Madame Saint–Esteve, the bailiffs are after me; no one can help me but you. Give me twenty thousand francs. I will pledge my heart to you.’ Oh, she has a sweet heart; no one but me knows where it lies. Any folly on my part, and I should lose my twenty thousand francs.

“Formerly she lived in the Rue Taitbout. Before leaving—(her furniture was seized for costs—those rascally bailiffs—You know them, you who are one of the great men on the Bourse)—well, before leaving, she is no fool, she let her rooms for two months to an Englishwoman, a splendid creature who had a little thingummy—Rubempre —for a lover, and he was so jealous that he only let her go out at night. But as the furniture is to be seized, the Englishwoman has cut her stick, all the more because she cost too much for a little whipper-snapper like Lucien.”

“You cry up de goots,” said Nucingen.

“Naturally,” said Asie. “I lend to the beauties; and it pays, for you get two commissions for one job.”

Asie was amusing herself by caricaturing the manners of a class of women who are even greedier but more wheedling and mealy-mouthed than the Malay woman, and who put a gloss of the best motives on the trade they ply. Asie affected to have lost all her illusions, five lovers, and some children, and to have submitted to be robbed by everybody in spite of her experience. From time to time she exhibited some pawn-tickets, to prove how much bad luck there was in her line of business. She represented herself as pinched and in debt, and to crown all, she was so undisguisedly hideous that the Baron at last believed her to be all she said she was.

“Vell den, I shall pay the hundert tousant, and vere shall I see her?” said he, with the air of a man who has made up his mind to any sacrifice.

“My fat friend, you shall come this evening—in your carriage, of course—opposite the Gymnase. It is on the way,” said Asie. “Stop at the corner of the Rue Saint–Barbe. I will be on the lookout, and we will go and find my mortgaged beauty, with the black hair.—Oh, she has splendid hair, has my mortgage. If she pulls out her comb, Esther is covered as if it were a pall. But though you are knowing in arithmetic, you strike me as a muff in other matters; and I advise you to hide the girl safely, for if she is found she will be clapped into Sainte–Pelagie the very next day.—And they are looking for her.”

“Shall it not be possible to get holt of de bills?” said the incorrigible bill-broker.

“The bailiffs have got them—but it is impossible. The girl has had a passion, and has spent some money left in her hands, which she is now called upon to pay. By the poker!—a queer thing is a heart of two and-twenty.”

“Ver’ goot, ver’ goot, I shall arrange all dat,” said Nucingen, assuming a cunning look. “It is qvite settled dat I shall protect her.”

“Well, old noodle, it is your business to make her fall in love with you, and you certainly have ample means to buy sham love as good as the real article. I will place your princess in your keeping; she is bound to stick to you, and after that I don’t care.—But she is accustomed to luxury and the greatest consideration. I tell you, my boy, she is quite the lady.—If not, should I have given her twenty thousand francs?”

“Ver’ goot, it is a pargain. Till dis efening.”

The Baron repeated the bridal toilet he had already once achieved; but this time, being certain of success, he took a double dose of pillules.

At nine o’clock he found the dreadful woman at the appointed spot, and took her into his carriage.

“Vere to?” said the Baron.

“Where?” echoed Asie. “Rue de la Perle in the Marais—an address for the nonce; for your pearl is in the mud, but you will wash her clean.”

Having reached the spot, the false Madame de Saint–Esteve said to Nucingen with a hideous smile:

“We must go a short way on foot; I am not such a fool as to have given you the right address.”

“You tink of eferytink!” said the baron.

“It is my business,” said she.

Asie led Nucingen to the Rue Barbette, where, in furnished lodgings kept by an upholsterer, he was led up to the fourth floor.

On finding Esther in a squalid room, dressed as a work-woman, and employed on some embroidery, the millionaire turned pale. At the end of a quarter of an hour, while Asie affected to talk in whispers to Esther, the young old man could hardly speak.

“Montemisselle,” said he at length to the unhappy girl, “vill you be so goot as to let me be your protector?”

“Why, I cannot help myself, monsieur,” replied Esther, letting fall two large tears.

“Do not veep. I shall make you de happiest of vomen. Only permit that I shall lof you—you shall see.”

“Well, well, child, the gentleman is reasonable,” said Asie. “He knows that he is more than sixty, and he will be very kind to you. You see, my beauty, I have found you quite a father—I had to say so,” Asie whispered to the banker, who was not best pleased. “You cannot catch swallows by firing a pistol at them.—Come here,” she went on, leading Nucingen into the adjoining room. “You remember our bargain, my angel?”

Nucingen took out his pocketbook and counted out the hundred thousand francs, which Carlos, hidden in a cupboard, was impatiently waiting for, and which the cook handed over to him.

“Here are the hundred thousand francs our man stakes on Asie. Now we must make him lay on Europe,” said Carlos to his confidante when they were on the landing.

And he vanished after giving his instruction to the Malay who went back into the room. She found Esther weeping bitterly. The poor girl, like a criminal condemned to death, had woven a romance of hope, and the fatal hour had tolled.

“My dear children,” said Asie, “where do you mean to go?—For the Baron de Nucingen——”

Esther looked at the great banker with a start of surprise that was admirably acted.

“Ja, mein kind, I am dat Baron von Nucingen.”

“The Baron de Nucingen must not, cannot remain in such a room as this,” Asie went on. “Listen to me; your former maid Eugenie.”

“Eugenie, from the Rue Taitbout?” cried the Baron.

“Just so; the woman placed in possession of the furniture,” replied Asie, “and who let the apartment to that handsome Englishwoman——”

“Hah! I onderstant!” said the Baron.

“Madame’s former waiting-maid,” Asie went on, respectfully alluding to Esther, “will receive you very comfortably this evening; and the commercial police will never think of looking for her in her old rooms which she left three months ago——”

“Feerst rate, feerst rate!” cried the Baron. “An’ besides, I know dese commercial police, an’ I know vat sorts shall make dem disappear.”

“You will find Eugenie a sharp customer,” said Asie. “I found her for madame.”

“Hah! I know her!” cried the millionaire, laughing. “She haf fleeced me out of dirty tousant franc.”

Esther shuddered with horror in a way that would have led a man of any feeling to trust her with his fortune.

“Oh, dat vas mein own fault,” the Baron said. “I vas seeking for you.”

And he related the incident that had arisen out of the letting of Esther’s rooms to the Englishwoman.

“There, now, you see, madame, Eugenie never told you all that, the sly thing!” said Asie.—“Still, madame is used to the hussy,” she added to the Baron. “Keep her on, all the same.”

She drew Nucingen aside and said:

“If you give Eugenie five hundred francs a month, which will fill up her stocking finely, you can know everything that madame does: make her the lady’s-maid. Eugenie will be all the more devoted to you since she has already done you.—Nothing attaches a woman to a man more than the fact that she has once fleeced him. But keep a tight rein on Eugenie; she will do any earthly thing for money; she is a dreadful creature!”

“An’ vat of you?”

“I,” said Asie, “I make both ends meet.”

Nucingen, the astute financier, had a bandage over his eyes; he allowed himself to be led like a child. The sight of that spotless and adorable Esther wiping her eyes and pricking in the stitches of her embroidery as demurely as an innocent girl, revived in the amorous old man the sensations he had experienced in the Forest of Vincennes; he would have given her the key of his safe. He felt so young, his heart was so overflowing with adoration; he only waited till Asie should be gone to throw himself at the feet of this Raphael’s Madonna.

This sudden blossoming of youth in the heart of a stockbroker, of an old man, is one of the social phenomena which must be left to physiology to account for. Crushed under the burden of business, stifled under endless calculations and the incessant anxieties of million-hunting, young emotions revive with their sublime illusions, sprout and flower like a forgotten cause or a forgotten seed, whose effects, whose gorgeous bloom, are the sport of chance, brought out by a late and sudden gleam of sunshine.

The Baron, a clerk by the time he was twelve years old in the ancient house of Aldrigger at Strasbourg, had never set foot in the world of sentiment. So there he stood in front of his idol, hearing in his brain a thousand modes of speech, while none came to his lips, till at length he acted on the brutal promptings of desire that betrayed a man of sixty-six.

“Vill you come to Rue Taitbout?” said he.

“Wherever you please, monsieur,” said Esther, rising.

“Verever I please!” he echoed in rapture. “You are ein anchel from de sky, and I lofe you more as if I was a little man, vile I hafe gray hairs——”

“You had better say white, for they are too fine a black to be only gray,” said Asie.

“Get out, foul dealer in human flesh! You hafe got your moneys; do not slobber no more on dis flower of lofe!” cried the banker, indemnifying himself by this violent abuse for all the insolence he had submitted to.

“You old rip! I will pay you out for that speech!” said Asie, threatening the banker with a gesture worthy of the Halle, at which the Baron merely shrugged his shoulders. “Between the lip of the pot and that of the guzzler there is often a viper, and you will find me there!” she went on, furious at Nucingen’s contempt.

Millionaires, whose money is guarded by the Bank of France, whose mansions are guarded by a squad of footmen, whose person in the streets is safe behind the rampart of a coach with swift English horses, fear no ill; so the Baron looked calmly at Asie, as a man who had just given her a hundred thousand francs.

This dignity had its effect. Asie beat a retreat, growling down the stairs in highly revolutionary language; she spoke of the guillotine!

“What have you said to her?” asked the Madonna a la broderie, “for she is a good soul.”

“She hafe solt you, she hafe robbed you——”

“When we are beggared,” said she, in a tone to rend the heart of a diplomate, “who has ever any money or consideration for us?”

“Poor leetle ting!” said Nucingen. “Do not stop here ein moment longer.”

The Baron offered her his arm; he led her away just as she was, and put her into his carriage with more respect perhaps than he would have shown to the handsome Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.

“You shall hafe a fine carriage, de prettiest carriage in Paris,” said Nucingen, as they drove along. “Everyting dat luxury shall sopply shall be for you. Not any qveen shall be more rich dan vat you shall be. You shall be respected like ein Cherman Braut. I shall hafe you to be free.—Do not veep! Listen to me—I lofe you really, truly, mit de purest lofe. Efery tear of yours breaks my heart.”

“Can one truly love a woman one has bought?” said the poor girl in the sweetest tones.

“Choseph vas solt by his broders for dat he was so comely. Dat is so in de Biple. An’ in de Eastern lants men buy deir wifes.”

On arriving at the Rue Taitbout, Esther could not return to the scene of her happiness without some pain. She remained sitting on a couch, motionless, drying away her tears one by one, and never hearing a word of the crazy speeches poured out by the banker. He fell at her feet, and she let him kneel without saying a word to him, allowing him to take her hands as he would, and never thinking of the sex of the creature who was rubbing her feet to warm them; for Nucingen found that they were cold.

This scene of scalding tears shed on the Baron’s head, and of ice-cold feet that he tried to warm, lasted from midnight till two in the morning.

“Eugenie,” cried the Baron at last to Europe, “persvade your mis’ess that she shall go to bet.”

“No!” cried Esther, starting to her feet like a scared horse. “Never in this house!”

“Look her, monsieur, I know madame; she is as gentle and kind as a lamb,” said Europe to the Baron. “Only you must not rub her the wrong way, you must get at her sideways—she had been so miserable here. —You see how worn the furniture is.—Let her go her own way.

“Furnish some pretty little house for her, very nicely. Perhaps when she sees everything new about her she will feel a stranger there, and think you better looking than you are, and be angelically sweet.—Oh! madame has not her match, and you may boast of having done a very good stroke of business: a good heart, genteel manners, a fine instep—and a skin, a complexion! Ah!——

“And witty enough to make a condemned wretch laugh. And madame can feel an attachment.—And then how she can dress!—Well, if it is costly, still, as they say, you get your money’s worth.—Here all the gowns were seized, everything she has is three months old.—But madame is so kind, you see, that I love her, and she is my mistress!—But in all justice—such a woman as she is, in the midst of furniture that has been seized!—And for whom? For a young scamp who has ruined her. Poor little thing, she is not at all herself.”

“Esther, Esther; go to bet, my anchel! If it is me vat frighten you, I shall stay here on dis sofa——” cried the Baron, fired by the purest devotion, as he saw that Esther was still weeping.

“Well, then,” said Esther, taking the “lynx’s” hand, and kissing it with an impulse of gratitude which brought something very like a tear to his eye, “I shall be grateful to you——”

And she fled into her room and locked the door.

“Dere is someting fery strange in all dat,” thought Nucingen, excited by his pillules. “Vat shall dey say at home?”

He got up and looked out of the window. “My carriage still is dere. It shall soon be daylight.” He walked up and down the room.

“Vat Montame de Nucingen should laugh at me ven she should know how I hafe spent dis night!”

He applied his ear to the bedroom door, thinking himself rather too much of a simpleton.

“Esther!”

No reply.

“Mein Gott! and she is still veeping!” said he to himself, as he stretched himself on the sofa.

About ten minutes after sunrise, the Baron de Nucingen, who was sleeping the uneasy slumbers that are snatched by compulsion in an awkward position on a couch, was aroused with a start by Europe from one of those dreams that visit us in such moments, and of which the swift complications are a phenomenon inexplicable by medical physiology.

“Oh, God help us, madame!” she shrieked. “Madame!—the soldiers —gendarmes—bailiffs! They have come to take us.”

At the moment when Esther opened her door and appeared, hurriedly, wrapped in her dressing-gown, her bare feet in slippers, her hair in disorder, lovely enough to bring the angel Raphael to perdition, the drawing-room door vomited into the room a gutter of human mire that came on, on ten feet, towards the beautiful girl, who stood like an angel in some Flemish church picture. One man came foremost. Contenson, the horrible Contenson, laid his hand on Esther’s dewy shoulder.

“You are Mademoiselle van——” he began. Europe, by a back-handed slap on Contenson’s cheek, sent him sprawling to measure his length on the carpet, and with all the more effect because at the same time she caught his leg with the sharp kick known to those who practise the art as a coup de savate.

“Hands off!” cried she. “No one shall touch my mistress.”

“She has broken my leg!” yelled Contenson, picking himself up; “I will have damages!”

From the group of bumbailiffs, looking like what they were, all standing with their horrible hats on their yet more horrible heads, with mahogany-colored faces and bleared eyes, damaged noses, and hideous mouths, Louchard now stepped forth, more decently dressed than his men, but keeping his hat on, his expression at once smooth-faced and smiling.

“Mademoiselle, I arrest you!” said he to Esther. “As for you, my girl,” he added to Europe, “any resistance will be punished, and perfectly useless.”

The noise of muskets, let down with a thud of their stocks on the floor of the dining-room, showing that the invaders had soldiers to bake them, gave emphasis to this speech.

“And what am I arrested for?” said Esther.

“What about our little debts?” said Louchard.

“To be sure,” cried Esther; “give me leave to dress.”

“But, unfortunately, mademoiselle, I am obliged to make sure that you have no way of getting out of your room,” said Louchard.

All this passed so quickly that the Baron had not yet had time to intervene.

“Well, and am I still a foul dealer in human flesh, Baron de Nucingen?” cried the hideous Asie, forcing her way past the sheriff’s officers to the couch, where she pretended to have just discovered the banker.

“Contemptible wretch!” exclaimed Nucingen, drawing himself up in financial majesty.

He placed himself between Esther and Louchard, who took off his hat as Contenson cried out, “Monsieur le Baron de Nucingen.”

At a signal from Louchard the bailiffs vanished from the room, respectfully taking their hats off. Contenson alone was left.

“Do you propose to pay, Monsieur le Baron?” asked he, hat in hand.

“I shall pay,” said the banker; “but I must know vat dis is all about.”

“Three hundred and twelve thousand francs and some centimes, costs paid; but the charges for the arrest not included.”

“Three hundred thousand francs,” cried the Baron; “dat is a fery ‘xpensive vaking for a man vat has passed the night on a sofa,” he added in Europe’s ear.

“Is that man really the Baron de Nucingen?” asked Europe to Louchard, giving weight to the doubt by a gesture which Mademoiselle Dupont, the low comedy servant of the Francais, might have envied.

“Yes, mademoiselle,” said Louchard.

“Yes,” replied Contenson.

“I shall be answerable,” said the Baron, piqued in his honor by Europe’s doubt. “You shall ‘llow me to say ein vort to her.”

Esther and her elderly lover retired to the bedroom, Louchard finding it necessary to apply his ear to the keyhole.

“I lofe you more as my life, Esther; but vy gife to your creditors moneys vich shall be so much better in your pocket? Go into prison. I shall undertake to buy up dose hundert tousant crowns for ein hundert tousant francs, an’ so you shall hafe two hundert tousant francs for you——”

“That scheme is perfectly useless,” cried Louchard through the door. “The creditor is not in love with mademoiselle—not he! You understand? And he means to have more than all, now he knows that you are in love with her.”

“You dam’ sneak!” cried Nucingen, opening the door, and dragging Louchard into the bedroom; “you know not dat vat you talk about. I shall gife you, you’self, tventy per cent if you make the job.”

“Impossible, M. le Baron.”

“What, monsieur, you could have the heart to let my mistress go to prison?” said Europe, intervening. “But take my wages, my savings; take them, madame; I have forty thousand francs——”

“Ah, my good girl, I did not really know you!” cried Esther, clasping Europe in her arms.

Europe proceeded to melt into tears.

“I shall pay,” said the Baron piteously, as he drew out a pocket-book, from which he took one of the little printed forms which the Bank of France issues to bankers, on which they have only to write a sum in figures and in words to make them available as cheques to bearer.

“It is not worth the trouble, Monsieur le Baron,” said Louchard; “I have instructions not to accept payment in anything but coin of the realm—gold or silver. As it is you, I will take banknotes.”

“Der Teufel!” cried the Baron. “Well, show me your papers.”

Contenson handed him three packets covered with blue paper, which the Baron took, looking at the man, and adding in an undertone:

“It should hafe been a better day’s vork for you ven you had gife me notice.”

“Why, how should I know you were here, Monsieur le Baron?” replied the spy, heedless whether Louchard heard him. “You lost my services by withdrawing your confidence. You are done,” added this philosopher, shrugging his shoulders.

“Qvite true,” said the baron. “Ah, my chilt,” he exclaimed, seeing the bills of exchange, and turning to Esther, “you are de fictim of a torough scoundrel, ein highway tief!”

“Alas, yes,” said poor Esther; “but he loved me truly.”

“Ven I should hafe known—I should hafe made you to protest——”

“You are off your head, Monsieur le Baron,” said Louchard; “there is a third endorsement.”

“Yes, dere is a tird endorsement—Cerizet! A man of de opposition.”

“Will you write an order on your cashier, Monsieur le Baron?” said Louchard. “I will send Contenson to him and dismiss my men. It is getting late, and everybody will know that——”

“Go den, Contenson,” said Nucingen. “My cashier lives at de corner of Rue des Mathurins and Rue de l’Arcate. Here is ein vort for dat he shall go to du Tillet or to de Kellers, in case ve shall not hafe a hundert tousant franc—for our cash shall be at de Bank.—Get dress’, my anchel,” he said to Esther. “You are at liberty.—An’ old vomans,” he went on, looking at Asie, “are more dangerous as young vomans.”

“I will go and give the creditor a good laugh,” said Asie, “and he will give me something for a treat today.—We bear no malice, Monsieur le Baron,” added Saint–Esteve with a horrible courtesy.

Louchard took the bills out of the Baron’s hands, and remained alone with him in the drawing-room, whither, half an hour later, the cashier came, followed by Contenson. Esther then reappeared in a bewitching, though improvised, costume. When the money had been counted by Louchard, the Baron wished to examine the bills; but Esther snatched them with a cat-like grab, and carried them away to her desk.

“What will you give the rabble?” said Contenson to Nucingen.

“You hafe not shown much consideration,” said the Baron.

“And what about my leg?” cried Contenson.

“Louchard, you shall gife ein hundert francs to Contenson out of the change of the tousand-franc note.”

“De lady is a beauty,” said the cashier to the Baron, as they left the Rue Taitbout, “but she is costing you ver’ dear, Monsieur le Baron.”

“Keep my segret,” said the Baron, who had said the same to Contenson and Louchard.

Louchard went away with Contenson; but on the boulevard Asie, who was looking out for him, stopped Louchard.

“The bailiff and the creditor are there in a cab,” said she. “They are thirsty, and there is money going.”

While Louchard counted out the cash, Contenson studied the customers. He recognized Carlos by his eyes, and traced the form of his forehead under the wig. The wig he shrewdly regarded as suspicious; he took the number of the cab while seeming quite indifferent to what was going on; Asie and Europe puzzled him beyond measure. He thought that the Baron was the victim of excessively clever sharpers, all the more so because Louchard, when securing his services, had been singularly close. And besides, the twist of Europe’s foot had not struck his shin only.

“A trick like that is learned at Saint–Lazare,” he had reflected as he got up.

Carlos dismissed the bailiff, paying him liberally, and as he did so, said to the driver of the cab, “To the Perron, Palais Royal.”

“The rascal!” thought Contenson as he heard the order. “There is something up!” Carlos drove to the Palais Royal at a pace which precluded all fear of pursuit. He made his way in his own fashion through the arcades, took another cab on the Place du Chateau d’Eau, and bid the man go “to the Passage de l’Opera, the end of the Rue Pinon.”

A quarter of a hour later he was in the Rue Taitbout. On seeing him, Esther said:

“Here are the fatal papers.”

Carlos took the bills, examined them, and then burned them in the kitchen fire.

“We have done the trick,” he said, showing her three hundred and ten thousand francs in a roll, which he took out of the pocket of his coat. “This, and the hundred thousand francs squeezed out by Asie, set us free to act.”

“Oh God, oh God!” cried poor Esther.

“But, you idiot,” said the ferocious swindler, “you have only to be ostensibly Nucingen’s mistress, and you can always see Lucien; he is Nucingen’s friend; I do not forbid your being madly in love with him.”

Esther saw a glimmer of light in her darkened life; she breathed once more.

“Europe, my girl,” said Carlos, leading the creature into a corner of the boudoir where no one could overhear a word, “Europe, I am pleased with you.”

Europe held up her head, and looked at this man with an expression which so completely changed her faded features, that Asie, witnessing the interview, as she watched her from the door, wondered whether the interest by which Carlos held Europe might not perhaps be even stronger than that by which she herself was bound to him.

“That is not all, my child. Four hundred thousand francs are a mere nothing to me. Paccard will give you an account for some plate, amounting to thirty thousand francs, on which money has been paid on account; but our goldsmith, Biddin, has paid money for us. Our furniture, seized by him, will no doubt be advertised tomorrow. Go and see Biddin; he lives in the Rue de l’Arbre Sec; he will give you Mont-dePiete tickets for ten thousand francs. You understand, Esther ordered the plate; she had not paid for it, and she put it up the spout. She will be in danger of a little summons for swindling. So we must pay the goldsmith the thirty thousand francs, and pay up ten thousand francs to the Mont-dePiete to get the plate back. Forty-three thousand francs in all, including the costs. The silver is very much alloyed; the Baron will give her a new service, and we shall bone a few thousand francs out of that. You owe—what? two years’ account with the dressmaker?”

“Put it at six thousand francs,” replied Europe.

“Well, if Madame Auguste wants to be paid and keep our custom, tell her to make out a bill for thirty thousand francs over four years. Make a similar arrangement with the milliner. The jeweler, Samuel Frisch the Jew, in the Rue Saint–Avoie, will lend you some pawn-tickets; we must owe him twenty-five thousand francs, and we must want six thousand for jewels pledged at the Mont-dePiete. We will return the trinkets to the jeweler, half the stones will be imitation, but the Baron will not examine them. In short, you will make him fork out another hundred and fifty thousand francs to add to our nest-eggs within a week.”

“Madame might give me a little help,” said Europe. “Tell her so, for she sits there mumchance, and obliges me to find more inventions than three authors for one piece.”

“If Esther turns prudish, just let me know,” said Carlos. “Nucingen must give her a carriage and horses; she will have to choose and buy everything herself. Go to the horse-dealer and the coachmaker who are employed by the job-master where Paccard finds work. We shall get handsome horses, very dear, which will go lame within a month, and we shall have to change them.”

“We might get six thousand francs out of a perfumer’s bill,” said Europe.

“Oh!” said he, shaking his head, “we must go gently. Nucingen has only got his arm into the press; we must have his head. Besides all this, I must get five hundred thousand francs.”

“You can get them,” replied Europe. “Madame will soften towards the fat fool for about six hundred thousand, and insist on four hundred thousand more to love him truly!”

“Listen to me, my child,” said Carlos. “The day when I get the last hundred thousand francs, there shall be twenty thousand for you.”

“What good will they do me?” said Europe, letting her arms drop like a woman to whom life seems impossible.

“You could go back to Valenciennes, buy a good business, and set up as an honest woman if you chose; there are many tastes in human nature. Paccard thinks of settling sometimes; he has no encumbrances on his hands, and not much on his conscience; you might suit each other,” replied Carlos.

“Go back to Valenciennes! What are you thinking of, monsieur?” cried Europe in alarm.

Europe, who was born at Valenciennes, the child of very poor parents, had been sent at seven years of age to a spinning factory, where the demands of modern industry had impaired her physical strength, just as vice had untimely depraved her. Corrupted at the age of twelve, and a mother at thirteen, she found herself bound to the most degraded of human creatures. On the occasion of a murder case, she had been as a witness before the Court. Haunted at sixteen by a remnant of rectitude, and the terror inspired by the law, her evidence led to the prisoner being sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.

The convict, one of those men who have been in the hands of justice more than once, and whose temper is apt at terrible revenge, had said to the girl in open court:

“In ten years, as sure as you live, Prudence” (Europe’s name was Prudence Servien), “I will return to be the death of you, if I am scragged for it.”

The President of the Court tried to reassure the girl by promising her the protection and the care of the law; but the poor child was so terror-stricken that she fell ill, and was in hospital nearly a year. Justice is an abstract being, represented by a collection of individuals who are incessantly changing, whose good intentions and memories are, like themselves, liable to many vicissitudes. Courts and tribunals can do nothing to hinder crimes; their business is to deal with them when done. From this point of view, a preventive police would be a boon to a country; but the mere word Police is in these days a bugbear to legislators, who no longer can distinguish between the three words—Government, Administration, and Law-making. The legislator tends to centralize everything in the State, as if the State could act.

The convict would be sure always to remember his victim, and to avenge himself when Justice had ceased to think of either of them.

Prudence, who instinctively appreciated the danger—in a general sense, so to speak—left Valenciennes and came to Paris at the age of seventeen to hide there. She tried four trades, of which the most successful was that of a “super” at a minor theatre. She was picked up by Paccard, and to him she told her woes. Paccard, Jacques Collin’s disciple and right-hand man, spoke of this girl to his master, and when the master needed a slave he said to Prudence:

“If you will serve me as the devil must be served, I will rid you of Durut.”

Durut was the convict; the Damocles’ sword hung over Prudence Servien’s head.

But for these details, many critics would have thought Europe’s attachment somewhat grotesque. And no one could have understood the startling announcement that Carlos had ready.

“Yes, my girl, you can go back to Valenciennes. Here, read this.”

And he held out to her yesterday’s paper, pointing to this paragraph:

“TOULON—Yesterday, Jean Francois Durut was executed here. Early in the morning the garrison,” etc.

Prudence dropped the paper; her legs gave way under the weight of her body; she lived again; for, to use her own words, she never liked the taste of her food since the day when Durut had threatened her.

“You see, I have kept my word. It has taken four years to bring Durut to the scaffold by leading him into a snare.—Well, finish my job here, and you will find yourself at the head of a little country business in your native town, with twenty thousand francs of your own as Paccard’s wife, and I will allow him to be virtuous as a form of pension.”

Europe picked up the paper and read with greedy eyes all the details, of which for twenty years the papers have never been tired, as to the death of convicted criminals: the impressive scene, the chaplain—who has always converted the victim—the hardened criminal preaching to his fellow convicts, the battery of guns, the convicts on their knees; and then the twaddle and reflections which never lead to any change in the management of the prisons where eighteen hundred crimes are herded.

“We must place Asie on the staff once more,” said Carlos.

Asie came forward, not understanding Europe’s pantomime.

“In bringing her back here as cook, you must begin by giving the Baron such a dinner as he never ate in his life,” he went on. “Tell him that Asie has lost all her money at play, and has taken service once more. We shall not need an outdoor servant. Paccard shall be coachman. Coachmen do not leave their box, where they are safe out of the way; and he will run less risk from spies. Madame must turn him out in a powdered wig and a braided felt cocked hat; that will alter his appearance. Besides, I will make him us.”

“Are we going to have men-servants in the house?” asked Asie with a leer.

“All honest folks,” said Carlos.

“All soft-heads,” retorted the mulatto.

“If the Baron takes a house, Paccard has a friend who will suit as the lodge porter,” said Carlos. “Then we shall only need a footman and a kitchen-maid, and you can surely keep an eye on two strangers——”

As Carlos was leaving, Paccard made his appearance.

“Wait a little while, there are people in the street,” said the man.

This simple statement was alarming. Carlos went up to Europe’s room, and stayed there till Paccard came to fetch him, having called a hackney cab that came into the courtyard. Carlos pulled down the blinds, and was driven off at a pace that defied pursuit.

Having reached the Faubourg Saint–Antoine, he got out at a short distance from a hackney coach stand, to which he went on foot, and thence returned to the Quai Malaquais, escaping all inquiry.

“Here, child,” said he to Lucien, showing him four hundred banknotes for a thousand francs, “here is something on account for the purchase of the estates of Rubempre. We will risk a hundred thousand. Omnibuses have just been started; the Parisians will take to the novelty; in three months we shall have trebled our capital. I know the concern; they will pay splendid dividends taken out of the capital, to put a head on the shares—an old idea of Nucingen’s revived. If we acquire the Rubempre land, we shall not have to pay on the nail.

“You must go and see des Lupeaulx, and beg him to give you a personal recommendation to a lawyer named Desroches, a cunning dog, whom you must call on at his office. Get him to go to Rubempre and see how the land lies; promise him a premium of twenty thousand francs if he manages to secure you thirty thousand francs a year by investing eight hundred thousand francs in land round the ruins of the old house.”

“How you go on—on! on!”

“I am always going on. This is no time for joking.—You must then invest a hundred thousand crowns in Treasury bonds, so as to lose no interest; you may safely leave it to Desroches, he is as honest as he is knowing.—That being done, get off to Angouleme, and persuade your sister and your brother-inlaw to pledge themselves to a little fib in the way of business. Your relations are to have given you six hundred thousand francs to promote your marriage with Clotilde de Grandlieu; there is no disgrace in that.”

“We are saved!” cried Lucien, dazzled.

“You are, yes!” replied Carlos. “But even you are not safe till you walk out of Saint–Thomas d’Aquin with Clotilde as your wife.”

“And what have you to fear?” said Lucien, apparently much concerned for his counselor.

“Some inquisitive souls are on my track—I must assume the manners of a genuine priest; it is most annoying. The Devil will cease to protect me if he sees me with a breviary under my arm.”

At this moment the Baron de Nucingen, who was leaning on his cashier’s arm, reached the door of his mansion.

“I am ver’ much afrait,” said he, as he went in, “dat I hafe done a bat day’s vork. Vell, we must make it up some oder vays.”

“De misfortune is dat you shall hafe been caught, mein Herr Baron,” said the worthy German, whose whole care was for appearances.

“Ja, my miss’ess en titre should be in a position vody of me,” said this Louis XIV. of the counting-house.

Feeling sure that sooner or later Esther would be his, the Baron was now himself again, a masterly financier. He resumed the management of his affairs, and with such effect that his cashier, finding him in his office room at six o’clock next morning, verifying his securities, rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

“Ah, ha! mein Herr Baron, you shall hafe saved money last night!” said he, with a half-cunning, half-loutish German grin.

Though men who are as rich as the Baron de Nucingen have more opportunities than others for losing money, they also have more chances of making it, even when they indulge their follies. Though the financial policy of the house of Nucingen has been explained elsewhere, it may be as well to point out that such immense fortunes are not made, are not built up, are not increased, and are not retained in the midst of the commercial, political, and industrial revolutions of the present day but at the cost of immense losses, or, if you choose to view it so, of heavy taxes on private fortunes. Very little newly-created wealth is thrown into the common treasury of the world. Every fresh accumulation represents some new inequality in the general distribution of wealth. What the State exacts it makes some return for; but what a house like that of Nucingen takes, it keeps.

Such covert robbery escapes the law for the reason which would have made a Jacques Collin of Frederick the Great, if, instead of dealing with provinces by means of battles, he had dealt in smuggled goods or transferable securities. The high politics of money-making consist in forcing the States of Europe to issue loans at twenty or at ten per cent, in making that twenty or ten per cent by the use of public funds, in squeezing industry on a vast scale by buying up raw material, in throwing a rope to the first founder of a business just to keep him above water till his drowned-out enterprise is safely landed—in short, in all the great battles for money-getting.

The banker, no doubt, like the conqueror, runs risks; but there are so few men in a position to wage this warfare, that the sheep have no business to meddle. Such grand struggles are between the shepherds. Thus, as the defaulters are guilty of having wanted to win too much, very little sympathy is felt as a rule for the misfortunes brought about by the coalition of the Nucingens. If a speculator blows his brains out, if a stockbroker bolts, if a lawyer makes off with the fortune of a hundred families—which is far worse than killing a man —if a banker is insolvent, all these catastrophes are forgotten in Paris in few months, and buried under the oceanic surges of the great city.

The colossal fortunes of Jacques Coeur, of the Medici, of the Angos of Dieppe, of the Auffredis of la Rochelle, of the Fuggers, of the Tiepolos, of the Corners, were honestly made long ago by the advantages they had over the ignorance of the people as to the sources of precious products; but nowadays geographical information has reached the masses, and competition has so effectually limited the profits, that every rapidly made fortune is the result of chance, or of a discovery, or of some legalized robbery. The lower grades of mercantile enterprise have retorted on the perfidious dealings of higher commerce, especially during the last ten years, by base adulteration of the raw material. Wherever chemistry is practised, wine is no longer procurable; the vine industry is consequently waning. Manufactured salt is sold to avoid the excise. The tribunals are appalled by this universal dishonesty. In short, French trade is regarded with suspicion by the whole world, and England too is fast being demoralized.

With us the mischief has its origin in the political situation. The Charter proclaimed the reign of Money, and success has become the supreme consideration of an atheistic age. And, indeed, the corruption of the higher ranks is infinitely more hideous, in spite of the dazzling display and specious arguments of wealth, than that ignoble and more personal corruption of the inferior classes, of which certain details lend a comic element—terrible, if you will—to this drama. The Government, always alarmed by a new idea, has banished these materials of modern comedy from the stage. The citizen class, less liberal than Louis XIV., dreads the advent of its _Mariage de Figaro_, forbids the appearance of a political _Tartuffe_, and certainly would not allow _Turcaret_ to be represented, for Turcaret is king. Consequently, comedy has to be narrated, and a book is now the weapon —less swift, but no more sure—that writers wield.

In the course of this morning, amid the coming and going of callers, orders to be given, and brief interviews, making Nucingen’s private office a sort of financial lobby, one of his stockbrokers announced to him the disappearance of a member of the Company, one of the richest and cleverest too—Jacques Falleix, brother of Martin Falleix, and the successor of Jules Desmarets. Jacques Falleix was stockbroker in ordinary to the house of Nucingen. In concert with du Tillet and the Kellers, the Baron had plotted the ruin of this man in cold blood, as if it had been the killing of a Passover lamb.

“He could not hafe helt on,” replied the Baron quietly.

Jacques Falleix had done them immense service in stock-jobbing. During a crisis a few months since he had saved the situation by acting boldly. But to look for gratitude from a money-dealer is as vain as to try to touch the heart of the wolves of the Ukraine in winter.

“Poor fellow!” said the stockbroker. “He so little anticipated such a catastrophe, that he had furnished a little house for his mistress in the Rue Saint–Georges; he has spent one hundred and fifty thousand francs in decorations and furniture. He was so devoted to Madame du Val–Noble! The poor woman must give it all up. And nothing is paid for.”

“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.—What a piece of folly! Plate, furniture, wine, carriage-horses, everything will be valued in a lump, and what will the creditors get out of it?”

“Come again tomorrow,” said Nucingen. “I shall hafe seen all dat; and if it is not a declared bankruptcy, if tings can be arranged and compromised, I shall tell you to offer some reasonaple price for dat furniture, if I shall buy de lease——”

“That can be managed,” said his friend. “If you go there this morning, you will find one of Falleix’s partners there with the tradespeople, who want to establish a first claim; but la Val–Noble has their accounts made out to Falleix.”

The Baron sent off one of his clerks forthwith to his lawyer. Jacques Falleix had spoken to him about this house, which was worth sixty thousand francs at most, and he wished to be put in possession of it at once, so as to avail himself of the privileges of the householder.

The cashier, honest man, came to inquire whether his master had lost anything by Falleix’s bankruptcy.

“On de contrar’ mein goot Volfgang, I stant to vin ein hundert tousant francs.”

“How vas dat?”

“Vell, I shall hafe de little house vat dat poor Teufel Falleix should furnish for his mis’ess this year. I shall hafe all dat for fifty tousant franc to de creditors; and my notary, Maitre Cardot, shall hafe my orders to buy de house, for de lan’lord vant de money—I knew dat, but I hat lost mein head. Ver’ soon my difine Esther shall life in a little palace. . . . I hafe been dere mit Falleix—it is close to here.—It shall fit me like a glofe.”

Falleix’s failure required the Baron’s presence at the Bourse; but he could not bear to leave his house in the Rue Saint–Lazare without going to the Rue Taitbout; he was already miserable at having been away from Esther for so many hours. He would have liked to keep her at his elbow. The profits he hoped to make out of his stockbrokers’ plunder made the former loss of four hundred thousand francs quite easy to endure.

Delighted to announce to his “anchel” that she was to move from the Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint–Georges, where she was to have “ein little palace” where her memories would no longer rise up in antagonism to their happiness, the pavement felt elastic under his feet; he walked like a young man in a young man’s dream. As he turned the corner of the Rue des Trois Freres, in the middle of his dream, and of the road, the Baron beheld Europe coming towards him, looking very much upset.

“Vere shall you go?” he asked.

“Well, monsieur, I was on my way to you. You were quite right yesterday. I see now that poor madame had better have gone to prison for a few days. But how should women understand money matters? When madame’s creditors heard that she had come home, they all came down upon us like birds of prey.—Last evening, at seven o’clock, monsieur, men came and stuck terrible posters up to announce a sale of furniture on Saturday—but that is nothing.—Madame, who is all heart, once upon a time to oblige that wretch of a man you know——”

“Vat wretch?”

“Well, the man she was in love with, d’Estourny—well, he was charming! He was only a gambler——”

“He gambled with beveled cards!”

“Well—and what do you do at the Bourse?” said Europe. “But let me go on. One day, to hinder Georges, as he said, from blowing out his brains, she pawned all her plate and her jewels, which had never been paid for. Now on hearing that she had given something to one of her creditors, they came in a body and made a scene. They threaten her with the police-court—your angel at that bar! Is it not enough to make a wig stand on end? She is bathed in tears; she talks of throwing herself into the river—and she will do it.”

“If I shall go to see her, dat is goot-bye to de Bourse; an’ it is impossible but I shall go, for I shall make some money for her—you shall compose her. I shall pay her debts; I shall go to see her at four o’clock. But tell me, Eugenie, dat she shall lofe me a little——”

“A little?—A great deal!—I tell you what, monsieur, nothing but generosity can win a woman’s heart. You would, no doubt, have saved a hundred thousand francs or so by letting her go to prison. Well, you would never have won her heart. As she said to me—‘Eugenie, he has been noble, grand—he has a great soul.’”

“She hafe said dat, Eugenie?” cried the Baron.

“Yes, monsieur, to me, myself.”

“Here—take dis ten louis.”

“Thank you.—But she is crying at this moment; she has been crying ever since yesterday as much as a weeping Magdalen could have cried in six months. The woman you love is in despair, and for debts that are not even hers! Oh! men—they devour women as women devour old fogies —there!”

“Dey all is de same!—She hafe pledge’ herself.—Vy, no one shall ever pledge herself.—Tell her dat she shall sign noting more.—I shall pay; but if she shall sign something more—I——”

“What will you do?” said Europe with an air.

“Mein Gott! I hafe no power over her.—I shall take de management of her little affairs——Dere, dere, go to comfort her, and you shall say that in ein mont she shall live in a little palace.”

“You have invested heavily, Monsieur le Baron, and for large interest, in a woman’s heart. I tell you—you look to me younger. I am but a waiting-maid, but I have often seen such a change. It is happiness —happiness gives a certain glow. . . . If you have spent a little money, do not let that worry you; you will see what a good return it will bring. And I said to madame, I told her she would be the lowest of the low, a perfect hussy, if she did not love you, for you have picked her out of hell.—When once she has nothing on her mind, you will see. Between you and me, I may tell you, that night when she cried so much—What is to be said, we value the esteem of the man who maintains us—and she did not dare tell you everything. She wanted to fly.”

“To fly!” cried the Baron, in dismay at the notion. “But the Bourse, the Bourse!—Go ‘vay, I shall not come in.—But tell her that I shall see her at her window—dat shall gife me courage!”

Esther smiled at Monsieur de Nucingen as he passed the house, and he went ponderously on his way, saying:

“She is ein anchel!”

This was how Europe had succeeded in achieving the impossible. At about half-past two Esther had finished dressing, as she was wont to dress when she expected Lucien; she was looking charming. Seeing this, Prudence, looking out of the window, said, “There is monsieur!”

The poor creature flew to the window, thinking she would see Lucien; she saw Nucingen.

“Oh! how cruelly you hurt me!” she said.

“There is no other way of getting you to seem to be gracious to a poor old man, who, after all, is going to pay your debts,” said Europe. “For they are all to be paid.”

“What debts?” said the girl, who only cared to preserve her love, which dreadful hands were scattering to the winds.

“Those which Monsieur Carlos made in your name.”

“Why, here are nearly four hundred and fifty thousand francs,” cried Esther.

“And you owe a hundred and fifty thousand more. But the Baron took it all very well.—He is going to remove you from hence, and place you in a little palace.—On my honor, you are not so badly off. In your place, as you have got on the right side of this man, as soon as Carlos is satisfied, I should make him give me a house and a settled income. You are certainly the handsomest woman I ever saw, madame, and the most attractive, but we so soon grow ugly! I was fresh and good-looking, and look at me! I am twenty-three, about the same age as madame, and I look ten years older. An illness is enough.—Well, but when you have a house in Paris and investments, you need never be afraid of ending in the streets.”

Esther had ceased to listen to Europe–Eugenie-Prudence Servien. The will of a man gifted with the genius of corruption had thrown Esther back into the mud with as much force as he had used to drag her out of it.

Those who know love in its infinitude know that those who do not accept its virtues do not experience its pleasures. Since the scene in the den in the Rue de Langlade, Esther had utterly forgotten her former existence. She had since lived very virtuously, cloistered by her passion. Hence, to avoid any obstacle, the skilful fiend had been clever enough to lay such a train that the poor girl, prompted by her devotion, had merely to utter her consent to swindling actions already done, or on the point of accomplishment. This subtlety, revealing the mastery of the tempter, also characterized the methods by which he had subjugated Lucien. He created a terrible situation, dug a mine, filled it with powder, and at the critical moment said to his accomplice, “You have only to nod, and the whole will explode!”

Esther of old, knowing only the morality peculiar to courtesans, thought all these attentions so natural, that she measured her rivals only by what they could get men to spend on them. Ruined fortunes are the conduct-stripes of these creatures. Carlos, in counting on Esther’s memory, had not calculated wrongly.

These tricks of warfare, these stratagems employed a thousand times, not only by these women, but by spendthrifts too, did not disturb Esther’s mind. She felt nothing but her personal degradation; she loved Lucien, she was to be the Baron de Nucingen’s mistress “by appointment”; this was all she thought of. The supposed Spaniard might absorb the earnest-money, Lucien might build up his fortune with the stones of her tomb, a single night of pleasure might cost the old banker so many thousand-franc notes more or less, Europe might extract a few hundred thousand francs by more or less ingenious trickery, —none of these things troubled the enamored girl; this alone was the canker that ate into her heart. For five years she had looked upon herself as being as white as an angel. She loved, she was happy, she had never committed the smallest infidelity. This beautiful pure love was now to be defiled.

There was, in her mind, no conscious contrasting of her happy isolated past and her foul future life. It was neither interest nor sentiment that moved her, only an indefinable and all powerful feeling that she had been white and was now black, pure and was now impure, noble and was now ignoble. Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her unendurable. And when the Baron’s passion had threatened her, she had really thought of throwing herself out of the window. In short, she loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who say they love, who often think they love best, dance, waltz, and flirt with other men, dress for the world, and look for a harvest of concupiscent glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved miracles of true love. She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses love and courtesans—women who, having rolled in mire and impurity, thirst for something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and who practice exclusiveness—the only word for an idea so little known in real life.

Vanished nations, Greece, Rome, and the East, have at all times kept women shut up; the woman who loves should shut herself up. So it may easily be imagined that on quitting the palace of her fancy, where this poem had been enacted, to go to this old man’s “little palace,” Esther felt heartsick. Urged by an iron hand, she had found herself waist-deep in disgrace before she had time to reflect; but for the past two days she had been reflecting, and felt a mortal chill about her heart.

At the words, “End in the street,” she started to her feet and said:

“In the street!—No, in the Seine rather.”

“In the Seine? And what about Monsieur Lucien?” said Europe.

This single word brought Esther to her seat again; she remained in her armchair, her eyes fixed on a rosette in the carpet, the fire in her brain drying up her tears.

At four o’clock Nucingen found his angel lost in that sea of meditations and resolutions whereon a woman’s spirit floats, and whence she emerges with utterances that are incomprehensible to those who have not sailed it in her convoy.

“Clear your brow, meine Schone,” said the Baron, sitting down by her. “You shall hafe no more debts—I shall arrange mit Eugenie, an’ in ein mont you shall go ‘vay from dese rooms and go to dat little palace. —Vas a pretty hant.—Gife it me dat I shall kiss it.” Esther gave him her hand as a dog gives a paw. “Ach, ja! You shall gife de hant, but not de heart, and it is dat heart I lofe!”

The words were spoken with such sincerity of accent, that poor Esther looked at the old man with a compassion in her eyes that almost maddened him. Lovers, like martyrs, feel a brotherhood in their sufferings! Nothing in the world gives such a sense of kindred as community of sorrow.

“Poor man!” said she, “he really loves.”

As he heard the words, misunderstanding their meaning, the Baron turned pale, the blood tingled in his veins, he breathed the airs of heaven. At his age a millionaire, for such a sensation, will pay as much gold as a woman can ask.

“I lofe you like vat I lofe my daughter,” said he. “An’ I feel dere” —and he laid her hand over his heart—“dat I shall not bear to see you anyting but happy.”

“If you would only be a father to me, I would love you very much; I would never leave you; and you would see that I am not a bad woman, not grasping or greedy, as I must seem to you now——”

“You hafe done some little follies,” said the Baron, “like all dose pretty vomen—dat is all. Say no more about dat. It is our pusiness to make money for you. Be happy! I shall be your fater for some days yet, for I know I must make you accustom’ to my old carcase.”

“Really!” she exclaimed, springing on to Nucingen’s knees, and clinging to him with her arm round his neck.

“Really!” repeated he, trying to force a smile.

She kissed his forehead; she believed in an impossible combination —she might remain untouched and see Lucien.

She was so coaxing to the banker that she was La Torpille once more. She fairly bewitched the old man, who promised to be a father to her for forty days. Those forty days were to be employed in acquiring and arranging the house in the Rue Saint–Georges.

When he was in the street again, as he went home, the Baron said to himself, “I am an old flat.”

But though in Esther’s presence he was a mere child, away from her he resumed his lynx’s skin; just as the gambler (in _le Joueur_) becomes affectionate to Angelique when he has not a liard.

“A half a million francs I hafe paid, and I hafe not yet seen vat her leg is like.—Dat is too silly! but, happily, nobody shall hafe known it!” said he to himself three weeks after.

And he made great resolutions to come to the point with the woman who had cost him so dear; then, in Esther’s presence once more, he spent all the time he could spare her in making up for the roughness of his first words.

“After all,” said he, at the end of a month, “I cannot be de fater eternal!”

Towards the end of the month of December 1829, just before installing Esther in the house in the Rue Saint–Georges, the Baron begged du Tillet to take Florine there, that she might see whether everything was suitable to Nucingen’s fortune, and if the description of “a little palace” were duly realized by the artists commissioned to make the cage worthy of the bird.

Every device known to luxury before the Revolution of 1830 made this residence a masterpiece of taste. Grindot the architect considered it his greatest achievement as a decorator. The staircase, which had been reconstructed of marble, the judicious use of stucco ornament, textiles, and gilding, the smallest details as much as the general effect, outdid everything of the kind left in Paris from the time of Louis XV.

“This is my dream!—This and virtue!” said Florine with a smile. “And for whom are you spending all this money?”

“For a voman vat is going up there,” replied the Baron.

“A way of playing Jupiter?” replied the actress. “And when is she on show?”

“On the day of the house-warming,” cried du Tillet.

“Not before dat,” said the Baron.

“My word, how we must lace and brush and fig ourselves out,” Florine went on. “What a dance the women will lead their dressmakers and hairdressers for that evening’s fun!—And when is it to be?”

“Dat is not for me to say.”

“What a woman she must be!” cried Florine. “How much I should like to see her!”

“An’ so should I,” answered the Baron artlessly.

“What! is everything new together—the house, the furniture, and the woman?”

“Even the banker,” said du Tillet, “for my old friend seems to me quite young again.”

“Well, he must go back to his twentieth year,” said Florine; “at any rate, for once.”

In the early days of 1830 everybody in Paris was talking of Nucingen’s passion and the outrageous splendor of his house. The poor Baron, pointed at, laughed at, and fuming with rage, as may easily be imagined, took it into his head that on the occasion of giving the house-warming he would at the same time get rid of his paternal disguise, and get the price of so much generosity. Always circumvented by “La Torpille,” he determined to treat of their union by correspondence, so as to win from her an autograph promise. Bankers have no faith in anything less than a promissory note.

So one morning early in the year he rose early, locked himself into his room, and composed the following letter in very good French; for though he spoke the language very badly, he could write it very well:—

“DEAR ESTHER, the flower of my thoughts and the only joy of my life, when I told you that I loved you as I love my daughter, I deceived you, I deceived myself. I only wished to express the holiness of my sentiments, which are unlike those felt by other men, in the first place, because I am an old man, and also because I have never loved till now. I love you so much, that if you cost me my fortune I should not love you the less.

“Be just! Most men would not, like me, have seen the angel in you; I have never even glanced at your past. I love you both as I love my daughter, Augusta, and as I might love my wife, if my wife could have loved me. Since the only excuse for an old man’s love is that he should be happy, ask yourself if I am not playing a too ridiculous part. I have taken you to be the consolation and joy of my declining days. You know that till I die you will be as happy as a woman can be; and you know, too, that after my death you will be rich enough to be the envy of many women. In every stroke of business I have effected since I have had the happiness of your acquaintance, your share is set apart, and you have a standing account with Nucingen’s bank. In a few days you will move into a house, which sooner or later, will be your own if you like it. Now, plainly, will you still receive me then as a father, or will you make me happy?

“Forgive me for writing so frankly, but when I am with you I lose all courage; I feel too keenly that you are indeed my mistress. I have no wish to hurt you; I only want to tell you how much I suffer, and how hard it is to wait at my age, when every day takes with it some hopes and some pleasures. Besides, the delicacy of my conduct is a guarantee of the sincerity of my intentions. Have I ever behaved as your creditor? You are like a citadel, and I am not a young man. In answer to my appeals, you say your life is at stake, and when I hear you, you make me believe it; but here I sink into dark melancholy and doubts dishonorable to us both. You seemed to me as sweet and innocent as you are lovely; but you insist on destroying my convictions. Ask yourself!—You tell me you bear a passion in your heart, an indomitable passion, but you refuse to tell me the name of the man you love.—Is this natural?

“You have turned a fairly strong man into an incredibly weak one. You see what I have come to; I am induced to ask you at the end of five months what future hope there is for my passion. Again, I must know what part I am to play at the opening of your house. Money is nothing to me when it is spent for you; I will not be so absurd as to make a merit to you of this contempt; but though my love knows no limits, my fortune is limited, and I care for it only for your sake. Well, if by giving you everything I possess I might, as a poor man, win your affection, I would rather be poor and loved than rich and scorned by you.

“You have altered me so completely, my dear Esther, that no one knows me; I paid ten thousand francs for a picture by Joseph Bridau because you told me that he was clever and unappreciated. I give every beggar I meet five francs in your name. Well, and what does the poor man ask, who regards himself as your debtor when you do him the honor of accepting anything he can give you? He asks only for a hope—and what a hope, good God! Is it not rather the certainty of never having anything from you but what my passion may seize? The fire in my heart will abet your cruel deceptions. You find me ready to submit to every condition you can impose on my happiness, on my few pleasures; but promise me at least that on the day when you take possession of your house you will accept the heart and service of him who, for the rest of his days, must sign himself your slave,

“FREDERIC DE NUCINGEN.”

“Faugh! how he bores me—this money bag!” cried Esther, a courtesan once more. She took a small sheet of notepaper and wrote all over it, as close as it could go, Scribe’s famous phrase, which has become a proverb, “Prenez mon ours.”

A quarter of an hour later, Esther, overcome by remorse, wrote the following letter:—

“MONSIEUR LE BARON,—

“Pay no heed to the note you have just received from me; I had relapsed into the folly of my youth. Forgive, monsieur, a poor girl who ought to be your slave. I never more keenly felt the degradation of my position than on the day when I was handed over to you. You have paid; I owe myself to you. There is nothing more sacred than a debt of dishonor. I have no right to compound it by throwing myself into the Seine.

“A debt can always be discharged in that dreadful coin which is good only to the debtor; you will find me yours to command. I will pay off in one night all the sums for which that fatal hour has been mortgaged; and I am sure that such an hour with me is worth millions—all the more because it will be the only one, the last. I shall then have paid the debt, and may get away from life. A good woman has a chance of restoration after a fall; but we, the like of us, fall too low.

“My determination is so fixed that I beg you will keep this letter in evidence of the cause of death of her who remains, for one day, your servant,

“ESTHER.”

Having sent this letter, Esther felt a pang of regret. Ten minutes after she wrote a third note, as follows:—

“Forgive me, dear Baron—it is I once more. I did not mean either to make game of you or to wound you; I only want you to reflect on this simple argument: If we were to continue in the position towards each other of father and daughter, your pleasure would be small, but it would be enduring. If you insist on the terms of the bargain, you will live to mourn for me.

“I will trouble you no more: the day when you shall choose pleasure rather than happiness will have no morrow for me.—Your daughter,

“ESTHER.”

On receiving the first letter, the Baron fell into a cold fury such as a millionaire may die of; he looked at himself in the glass and rang the bell.

“An hot bat for mein feet,” said he to his new valet.

While he was sitting with his feet in the bath, the second letter came; he read it, and fainted away. He was carried to bed.

When the banker recovered consciousness, Madame de Nucingen was sitting at the foot of the bed.

“The hussy is right!” said she. “Why do you try to buy love? Is it to be bought in the market!—Let me see your letter to her.”

The Baron gave her sundry rough drafts he had made; Madame de Nucingen read them, and smiled. Then came Esther’s third letter.

“She is a wonderful girl!” cried the Baroness, when she had read it.

“Vat shall I do, montame?” asked the Baron of his wife.

“Wait.”

“Wait? But nature is pitiless!” he cried.

“Look here, my dear, you have been admirably kind to me,” said Delphine; “I will give you some good advice.”

“You are a ver’ goot voman,” said he. “Ven you hafe any debts I shall pay.”

“Your state on receiving these letters touches a woman far more than the spending of millions, or than all the letters you could write, however fine they may be. Try to let her know it, indirectly; perhaps she will be yours! And—have no scruples, she will not die of that,” added she, looking keenly at her husband.

But Madame de Nucingen knew nothing whatever of the nature of such women.

“Vat a clefer voman is Montame de Nucingen!” said the Baron to himself when his wife had left him.

Still, the more the Baron admired the subtlety of his wife’s counsel, the less he could see how he might act upon it; and he not only felt that he was stupid, but he told himself so.

The stupidity of wealthy men, though it is almost proverbial, is only comparative. The faculties of the mind, like the dexterity of the limbs, need exercise. The dancer’s strength is in his feet; the blacksmith’s in his arms; the market porter is trained to carry loads; the singer works his larynx; and the pianist hardens his wrist. A banker is practised in business matters; he studies and plans them, and pulls the wires of various interests, just as a playwright trains his intelligence in combining situations, studying his actors, giving life to his dramatic figures.

We should no more look for powers of conversation in the Baron de Nucingen than for the imagery of a poet in the brain of a mathematician. How many poets occur in an age, who are either good prose writers, or as witty in the intercourse of daily life as Madame Cornuel? Buffon was dull company; Newton was never in love; Lord Byron loved nobody but himself; Rousseau was gloomy and half crazy; La Fontaine absent-minded. Human energy, equally distributed, produces dolts, mediocrity in all; unequally bestowed it gives rise to those incongruities to whom the name of Genius is given, and which, if we only could see them, would look like deformities. The same law governs the body; perfect beauty is generally allied with coldness or silliness. Though Pascal was both a great mathematician and a great writer, though Beaumarchais was a good man of business, and Zamet a profound courtier, these rare exceptions prove the general principle of the specialization of brain faculties.

Within the sphere of speculative calculations the banker put forth as much intelligence and skill, finesse and mental power, as a practised diplomatist expends on national affairs. If he were equally remarkable outside his office, the banker would be a great man. Nucingen made one with the Prince de Ligne, with Mazarin or with Diderot, is a human formula that is almost inconceivable, but which has nevertheless been known as Pericles, Aristotle, Voltaire, and Napoleon. The splendor of the Imperial crown must not blind us to the merits of the individual; the Emperor was charming, well informed, and witty.

Monsieur de Nucingen, a banker and nothing more, having no inventiveness outside his business, like most bankers, had no faith in anything but sound security. In matters of art he had the good sense to go, cash in hand, to experts in every branch, and had recourse to the best architect, the best surgeon, the greatest connoisseur in pictures or statues, the cleverest lawyer, when he wished to build a house, to attend to his health, to purchase a work of art or an estate. But as there are no recognized experts in intrigue, no connoisseurs in love affairs, a banker finds himself in difficulties when he is in love, and much puzzled as to the management of a woman. So Nucingen could think of no better method than that he had hitherto pursued—to give a sum of money to some Frontin, male or female, to act and think for him.

Madame de Saint–Esteve alone could carry out the plan imagined by the Baroness. Nucingen bitterly regretted having quarreled with the odious old clothes-seller. However, feeling confident of the attractions of his cash-box and the soothing documents signed Garat, he rang for his man and told him in inquire for the repulsive widow in the Rue Saint–Marc, and desire her to come to see him.

In Paris extremes are made to meet by passion. Vice is constantly binding the rich to the poor, the great to the mean. The Empress consults Mademoiselle Lenormand; the fine gentleman in every age can always find a Ramponneau.

The man returned within two hours.

“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “Madame de Saint–Esteve is ruined.”

“Ah! so much de better!” cried the Baron in glee. “I shall hafe her safe den.”

“The good woman is given to gambling, it would seem,” the valet went on. “And, moreover, she is under the thumb of a third-rate actor in a suburban theatre, whom, for decency’s sake, she calls her godson. She is a first-rate cook, it would seem, and wants a place.”

“Dose teufel of geniuses of de common people hafe alvays ten vays of making money, and ein dozen vays of spending it,” said the Baron to himself, quite unconscious that Panurge had thought the same thing.

He sent his servant off in quest of Madame de Saint–Esteve, who did not come till the next day. Being questioned by Asie, the servant revealed to this female spy the terrible effects of the notes written to Monsieur le Baron by his mistress.

“Monsieur must be desperately in love with the woman,” said he in conclusion, “for he was very near dying. For my part, I advised him never to go back to her, for he will be wheedled over at once. A woman who has already cost Monsieur le Baron five hundred thousand francs, they say, without counting what he has spent on the house in the Rue Saint–Georges! But the woman cares for money, and for money only.—As madame came out of monsieur’s room, she said with a laugh: ‘If this goes on, that slut will make a widow of me!’”

“The devil!” cried Asie; “it will never do to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

“Monsieur le Baron has no hope now but in you,” said the valet.

“Ay! The fact is, I do know how to make a woman go.”

“Well, walk in,” said the man, bowing to such occult powers.

“Well,” said the false Saint–Esteve, going into the sufferer’s room with an abject air, “Monsieur le Baron has met with some difficulties? What can you expect! Everybody is open to attack on his weak side. Dear me, I have had my troubles too. Within two months the wheel of Fortune has turned upside down for me. Here I am looking out for a place!—We have neither of us been very wise. If Monsieur le Baron would take me as cook to Madame Esther, I would be the most devoted of slaves. I should be useful to you, monsieur, to keep an eye on Eugenie and madame.”

“Dere is no hope of dat,” said the Baron. “I cannot succeet in being de master, I am let such a tance as——”

“As a top,” Asie put in. “Well, you have made others dance, daddy, and the little slut has got you, and is making a fool of you.—Heaven is just!”

“Just?” said the Baron. “I hafe not sent for you to preach to me——”

“Pooh, my boy! A little moralizing breaks no bones. It is the salt of life to the like of us, as vice is to your bigots.—Come, have you been generous? You have paid her debts?”

“Ja,” said the Baron lamentably.

“That is well; and you have taken her things out of pawn, and that is better. But you must see that it is not enough. All this gives her no occupation, and these creatures love to cut a dash——”

“I shall hafe a surprise for her, Rue Saint–Georches—she knows dat,” said the Baron. “But I shall not be made a fool of.”

“Very well then, let her go.”

“I am only afrait dat she shall let me go!” cried the Baron.

“And we want our money’s worth, my boy,” replied Asie. “Listen to me. We have fleeced the public of some millions, my little friend? Twenty-five millions I am told you possess.”

The Baron could not suppress a smile.

“Well, you must let one go.”

“I shall let one go, but as soon as I shall let one go, I shall hafe to give still another.”

“Yes, I understand, replied Asie. “You will not say B for fear of having to go on to Z. Still, Esther is a good girl——”

“A ver’ honest girl,” cried the banker. “An’ she is ready to submit; but only as in payment of a debt.”

“In short, she does not want to be your mistress; she feels an aversion.—Well, and I understand it; the child has always done just what she pleased. When a girl has never known any but charming young men, she cannot take to an old one. You are not handsome; you are as big as Louis XVIII., and rather dull company, as all men are who try to cajole fortune instead of devoting themselves to women.—Well, if you don’t think six hundred thousand francs too much,” said Asie, “I pledge myself to make her whatever you can wish.”

“Six huntert tousant franc!” cried the Baron, with a start. “Esther is to cost me a million to begin with!”

“Happiness is surely worth sixteen hundred thousand francs, you old sinner. You must know, men in these days have certainly spent more than one or two millions on a mistress. I even know women who have cost men their lives, for whom heads have rolled into the basket.—You know the doctor who poisoned his friend? He wanted the money to gratify a woman.”

“Ja, I know all dat. But if I am in lofe, I am not ein idiot, at least vile I am here; but if I shall see her, I shall gife her my pocket-book——”

“Well, listen Monsieur le Baron,” said Asie, assuming the attitude of a Semiramis. “You have been squeezed dry enough already. Now, as sure as my name is Saint–Esteve—in the way of business, of course—I will stand by you.”

“Goot, I shall repay you.”

“I believe you, my boy, for I have shown you that I know how to be revenged. Besides, I tell you this, daddy, I know how to snuff out your Madame Esther as you would snuff a candle. And I know my lady! When the little huzzy has once made you happy, she will be even more necessary to you than she is at this moment. You paid me well; you have allowed yourself to be fooled, but, after all, you have forked out.—I have fulfilled my part of the agreement, haven’t I? Well, look here, I will make a bargain with you.”

“Let me hear.”

“You shall get me the place as cook to Madame, engage me for ten years, and pay the last five in advance—what is that? Just a little earnest-money. When once I am about madame, I can bring her to these terms. Of course, you must first order her a lovely dress from Madame Auguste, who knows her style and taste; and order the new carriage to be at the door at four o’clock. After the Bourse closes, go to her rooms and take her for a little drive in the Bois de Boulogne. Well, by that act the woman proclaims herself your mistress; she has advertised herself to the eyes and knowledge of all Paris: A hundred thousand francs.—You must dine with her—I know how to cook such a dinner!—You must take her to the play, to the Varietes, to a stage-box, and then all Paris will say, ‘There is that old rascal Nucingen with his mistress.’ It is very flattering to know that such things are said.—Well, all this, for I am not grasping, is included for the first hundred thousand francs.—In a week, by such conduct, you will have made some way——”

“But I shall hafe paid ein hundert tousant franc.”

“In the course of the second week,” Asie went on, as though she had not heard this lamentable ejaculation, “madame, tempted by these preliminaries, will have made up her mind to leave her little apartment and move to the house you are giving her. Your Esther will have seen the world again, have found her old friends; she will wish to shine and do the honors of her palace—it is in the nature of things: Another hundred thousand francs!—By Heaven! you are at home there, Esther compromised—she must be yours. The rest is a mere trifle, in which you must play the principal part, old elephant. (How wide the monster opens his eyes!) Well, I will undertake that too: Four hundred thousand—and that, my fine fellow, you need not pay till the day after. What do you think of that for honesty? I have more confidence in you than you have in me. If I persuade madame to show herself as your mistress, to compromise herself, to take every gift you offer her,—perhaps this very day, you will believe that I am capable of inducing her to throw open the pass of the Great Saint Bernard. And it is a hard job, I can tell you; it will take as much pulling to get your artillery through as it took the first Consul to get over the Alps.”

“But vy?”

“Her heart is full of love, old shaver, rasibus, as you say who know Latin,” replied Asie. “She thinks herself the Queen of Sheba, because she has washed herself in sacrifices made for her lover—an idea that that sort of woman gets into her head! Well, well, old fellow, we must be just.—It is fine! That baggage would die of grief at being your mistress—I really should not wonder. But what I trust to, and I tell you to give you courage, is that there is good in the girl at bottom.”

“You hafe a genius for corruption,” said the Baron, who had listened to Asie in admiring silence, “just as I hafe de knack of de banking.”

“Then it is settled, my pigeon?” said Asie.

“Done for fifty tousant franc insteat of ein hundert tousant!—An’ I shall give you fife hundert tousant de day after my triumph.”

“Very good, I will set to work,” said Asie. “And you may come, monsieur,” she added respectfully. “You will find madame as soft already as a cat’s back, and perhaps inclined to make herself pleasant.”

“Go, go, my goot voman,” said the banker, rubbing his hands.

And after seeing the horrible mulatto out of the house, he said to himself:

“How vise it is to hafe much money.”

He sprang out of bed, went down to his office, and resumed the conduct of his immense business with a light heart.

Nothing could be more fatal to Esther than the steps taken by Nucingen. The hapless girl, in defending her fidelity, was defending her life. This very natural instinct was what Carlos called prudery. Now Asie, not without taking such precautions as usual in such cases, went off to report to Carlos the conference she had held with the Baron, and all the profit she had made by it. The man’s rage, like himself, was terrible; he came forthwith to Esther, in a carriage with the blinds drawn, driving into the courtyard. Still almost white with fury, the double-dyed forger went straight into the poor girl’s room; she looked at him—she was standing up—and she dropped on to a chair as though her legs had snapped.

“What is the matter, monsieur?” said she, quaking in every limb.

“Leave us, Europe,” said he to the maid.

Esther looked at the woman as a child might look at its mother, from whom some assassin had snatched it to murder it.

“Do you know where you will send Lucien?” Carlos went on when he was alone with Esther.

“Where?” asked she in a low voice, venturing to glance at her executioner.

“Where I come from, my beauty.” Esther, as she looked at the man, saw red. “To the hulks,” he added in an undertone.

Esther shut her eyes and stretched herself out, her arms dropped, and she turned white. The man rang, and Prudence appeared.

“Bring her round,” he said coldly; “I have not done.”

He walked up and down the drawing-room while waiting. Prudence–Europe was obliged to come and beg monsieur to lift Esther on to the bed; he carried her with the ease that betrayed athletic strength.

They had to procure all the chemist’s strongest stimulants to restore Esther to a sense of her woes. An hour later the poor girl was able to listen to this living nightmare, seated at the foot of her bed, his eyes fixed and glowing like two spots of molten lead.

“My little sweetheart,” said he, “Lucien now stands between a splendid life, honored, happy, and respected, and the hole full of water, mud, and gravel into which he was going to plunge when I met him. The house of Grandlieu requires of the dear boy an estate worth a million francs before securing for him the title of Marquis, and handing over to him that may-pole named Clotilde, by whose help he will rise to power. Thanks to you, and me, Lucien has just purchased his maternal manor, the old Chateau de Rubempre, which, indeed, did not cost much—thirty thousand francs; but his lawyer, by clever negotiations, has succeeded in adding to it estates worth a million, on which three hundred thousand francs are paid. The chateau, the expenses, and percentages to the men who were put forward as a blind to conceal the transaction from the country people, have swallowed up the remainder.

“We have, to be sure, a hundred thousand francs invested in a business here, which a few months hence will be worth two to three hundred thousand francs; but there will still be four hundred thousand francs to be paid.

“In three days Lucien will be home from Angouleme, where he has been, because he must not be suspected of having found a fortune in remaking your bed——”

“Oh no!” cried she, looking up with a noble impulse.

“I ask you, then, is this a moment to scare off the Baron?” he went on calmly. “And you very nearly killed him the day before yesterday; he fainted like a woman on reading your second letter. You have a fine style—I congratulate you! If the Baron had died, where should we be now?—When Lucien walks out of Saint–Thomas d’Aquin son-inlaw to the Duc de Grandlieu, if you want to try a dip in the Seine——Well, my beauty, I offer you my hand for a dive together. It is one way of ending matters.

“But consider a moment. Would it not be better to live and say to yourself again and again ‘This fine fortune, this happy family’—for he will have children—children!—Have you ever thought of the joy of running your fingers through the hair of his children?”

Esther closed her eyes with a little shiver.

“Well, as you gaze on that structure of happiness, you may say to yourself, ‘This is my doing!’”

There was a pause, and the two looked at each other.

“This is what I have tried to make out of such despair as saw no issue but the river,” said Carlos. “Am I selfish? That is the way to love! Men show such devotion to none but kings! But I have anointed Lucien king. If I were riveted for the rest of my days to my old chain, I fancy I could stay there resigned so long as I could say, ‘He is gay, he is at Court.’ My soul and mind would triumph, while my carcase was given over to the jailers! You are a mere female; you love like a female! But in a courtesan, as in all degraded creatures, love should be a means to motherhood, in spite of Nature, which has stricken you with barrenness!

“If ever, under the skin of the Abbe Carlos Herrera, any one were to detect the convict I have been, do you know what I would do to avoid compromising Lucien?”

Esther awaited the reply with some anxiety.

“Well,” he said after a brief pause, “I would die as the Negroes do —without a word. And you, with all your airs will put folks on my traces. What did I require of you?—To be La Torpille again for six months—for six weeks; and to do it to clutch a million.

“Lucien will never forget you. Men do not forget the being of whom they are reminded day after day by the joy of awaking rich every morning. Lucien is a better fellow than you are. He began by loving Coralie. She died—good; but he had not enough money to bury her; he did not do as you did just now, he did not faint, though he is a poet; he wrote six rollicking songs, and earned three hundred francs, with which he paid for Coralie’s funeral. I have those songs; I know them by heart. Well, then do you too compose your songs: be cheerful, be wild, be irresistible and—insatiable! You hear me?—Do not let me have to speak again.

“Kiss papa. Good-bye.”

When, half an hour after, Europe went into her mistress’ room, she found her kneeling in front of a crucifix, in the attitude which the most religious of painters has given to Moses before the burning bush on Horeb, to depict his deep and complete adoration of Jehovah. After saying her prayers, Esther had renounced her better life, the honor she had created for herself, her glory, her virtue, and her love.

She rose.

“Oh, madame, you will never look like that again!” cried Prudence Servien, struck by her mistress’ sublime beauty.

She hastily turned the long mirror so that the poor girl should see herself. Her eyes still had a light as of the soul flying heavenward. The Jewess’ complexion was brilliant. Sparkling with tears unshed in the fervor of prayer, her eyelashes were like leaves after a summer shower, for the last time they shone with the sunshine of pure love. Her lips seemed to preserve an expression as of her last appeal to the angels, whose palm of martyrdom she had no doubt borrowed while placing in their hands her past unspotted life. And she had the majesty which Mary Stuart must have shown at the moment when she bid adieu to her crown, to earth, and to love.

“I wish Lucien could have seen me thus!” she said with a smothered sigh. “Now,” she added, in a strident tone, “now for a fling!”

Europe stood dumb at hearing the words, as though she had heard an angel blaspheme.

“Well, why need you stare at me to see if I have cloves in my mouth instead of teeth? I am nothing henceforth but a vile, foul creature, a thief—and I expect milord. So get me a hot bath, and put my dress out. It is twelve o’clock; the Baron will look in, no doubt, when the Bourse closes; I shall tell him I was waiting for him, and Asie is to prepare us dinner, first-chop, mind you; I mean to turn the man’s brain.—Come, hurry, hurry, my girl; we are going to have some fun —that is to say, we must go to work.”

She sat down at the table and wrote the following note:—

“MY FRIEND,—If the cook you have sent me had not already been in my service, I might have thought that your purpose was to let me know how often you had fainted yesterday on receiving my three notes. (What can I say? I was very nervous that day; I was thinking over the memories of my miserable existence.) But I know how sincere Asie is. Still, I cannot repent of having caused you so much pain, since it has availed to prove to me how much you love me. This is how we are made, we luckless and despised creatures; true affection touches us far more deeply than finding ourselves the objects of lavish liberality. For my part, I have always rather dreaded being a peg on which you would hang your vanities. It annoyed me to be nothing else to you. Yes, in spite of all your protestations, I fancied you regarded me merely as a woman paid for.

“Well, you will now find me a good girl, but on condition of your always obeying me a little.

“If this letter can in any way take the place of the doctor’s prescription, prove it by coming to see me after the Bourse closes. You will find me in full fig, dressed in your gifts, for I am for life your pleasure-machine,

“ESTHER.”

At the Bourse the Baron de Nucingen was so gay, so cheerful, seemed so easy-going, and allowed himself so many jests, that du Tillet and the Kellers, who were on ‘change, could not help asking him the reason of his high spirits.

“I am belofed. Ve shall soon gife dat house-varming,” he told du Tillet.

“And how much does it cost you?” asked Francois Keller rudely—it was said that he had spent twenty-five thousand francs a year on Madame Colleville.

“Dat voman is an anchel! She never has ask’ me for one sou.”

“They never do,” replied du Tillet. “And it is to avoid asking that they have always aunts or mothers.”

Between the Bourse and the Rue Taitbout seven times did the Baron say to his servant:

“You go so slow—vip de horse!”

He ran lightly upstairs, and for the first time he saw his mistress in all the beauty of such women, who have no other occupation than the care of their person and their dress. Just out of her bath the flower was quite fresh, and perfumed so as to inspire desire in Robert d’Arbrissel.

Esther was in a charming toilette. A dress of black corded silk trimmed with rose-colored gimp opened over a petticoat of gray satin, the costume subsequently worn by Amigo, the handsome singer, in _I Puritani_. A Honiton lace kerchief fell or floated over her shoulders. The sleeves of her gown were strapped round with cording to divide the puffs, which for some little time fashion has substituted for the large sleeves which had grown too monstrous. Esther had fastened a Mechlin lace cap on her magnificent hair with a pin, _a la folle_, as it is called, ready to fall, but not really falling, giving her an appearance of being tumbled and in disorder, though the white parting showed plainly on her little head between the waves of her hair.

“Is it not a shame to see madame so lovely in a shabby drawing-room like this?” said Europe to the Baron, as she admitted him.

“Vel, den, come to the Rue Saint–Georches,” said the Baron, coming to a full stop like a dog marking a partridge. “The veather is splendit, ve shall drife to the Champs Elysees, and Montame Saint–Estefe and Eugenie shall carry dere all your clo’es an’ your linen, an’ ve shall dine in de Rue Saint–Georches.”

“I will do whatever you please,” said Esther, “if only you will be so kind as to call my cook Asie, and Eugenie Europe. I have given those names to all the women who have served me ever since the first two. I do not love change——”

“Asie, Europe! echoed the Baron, laughing. “How ver’ droll you are. —You hafe infentions.—I should hafe eaten many dinners before I should hafe call’ a cook Asie.”

“It is our business to be droll,” said Esther. “Come, now, may not a poor girl be fed by Asia and dressed by Europe when you live on the whole world? It is a myth, I say; some women would devour the earth, I only ask for half.—You see?”

“Vat a voman is Montame Saint–Estefe!” said the Baron to himself as he admired Esther’s changed demeanor.

“Europe, my girl, I want my bonnet,” said Esther. “I must have a black silk bonnet lined with pink and trimmed with lace.”

“Madame Thomas has not sent it home.—Come, Monsieur le Baron; quick, off you go! Begin your functions as a man-of-all-work—that is to say, of all pleasure! Happiness is burdensome. You have your carriage here, go to Madame Thomas,” said Europe to the Baron. “Make your servant ask for the bonnet for Madame van Bogseck.—And, above all,” she added in his ear, “bring her the most beautiful bouquet to be had in Paris. It is winter, so try to get tropical flowers.”

The Baron went downstairs and told his servants to go to “Montame Thomas.”

The coachman drove to a famous pastrycook’s.

“She is a milliner, you damn’ idiot, and not a cake-shop!” cried the Baron, who rushed off to Madame Prevot’s in the Palais–Royal, where he had a bouquet made up for the price of ten louis, while his man went to the great modiste.

A superficial observer, walking about Paris, wonders who the fools can be that buy the fabulous flowers that grace the illustrious bouquetiere’s shop window, and the choice products displayed by Chevet of European fame—the only purveyor who can vie with the _Rocher de Cancale_ in a real and delicious _Revue des deux Mondes_.

Well, every day in Paris a hundred or more passions a la Nucingen come into being, and find expression in offering such rarities as queens dare not purchase, presented, kneeling, to baggages who, to use Asie’s word, like to cut a dash. But for these little details, a decent citizen would be puzzled to conceive how a fortune melts in the hands of these women, whose social function, in Fourier’s scheme, is perhaps to rectify the disasters caused by avarice and cupidity. Such squandering is, no doubt, to the social body what a prick of the lancet is to a plethoric subject. In two months Nucingen had shed broadcast on trade more than two hundred thousand francs.

By the time the old lover returned, darkness was falling; the bouquet was no longer of any use. The hour for driving in the Champs–Elysees in winter is between two and four. However, the carriage was of use to convey Esther from the Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint–Georges, where she took possession of the “little palace.” Never before had Esther been the object of such worship or such lavishness, and it amazed her; but, like all royal ingrates, she took care to express no surprise.

When you go into St. Peter’s at Rome, to enable you to appreciate the extent and height of this queen of cathedrals, you are shown the little finger of a statue which looks of a natural size, and which measures I know not how much. Descriptions have been so severely criticised, necessary as they are to a history of manners, that I must here follow the example of the Roman Cicerone. As they entered the dining-room, the Baron could not resist asking Esther to feel the stuff of which the window curtains were made, draped with magnificent fulness, lined with white watered silk, and bordered with a gimp fit to trim a Portuguese princess’ bodice. The material was silk brought from Canton, on which Chinese patience had painted Oriental birds with a perfection only to be seen in mediaeval illuminations, or in the Missal of Charles V., the pride of the Imperial library at Vienna.

“It hafe cost two tousand franc’ an ell for a milord who brought it from Intia——”

“It is very nice, charming,” said Esther. “How I shall enjoy drinking champagne here; the froth will not get dirty here on a bare floor.”

“Oh! madame!” cried Europe, “only look at the carpet!”

“Dis carpet hafe been made for de Duc de Torlonia, a frient of mine, who fount it too dear, so I took it for you who are my qveen,” said Nucingen.

By chance this carpet, by one of our cleverest designers, matched with the whimsicalities of the Chinese curtains. The walls, painted by Schinner and Leon de Lora, represented voluptuous scenes, in carved ebony frames, purchased for their weight in gold from Dusommerard, and forming panels with a narrow line of gold that coyly caught the light.

From this you may judge of the rest.

“You did well to bring me here,” said Esther. “It will take me a week to get used to my home and not to look like a parvenu in it——”

“_My_ home! Den you shall accept it?” cried the Baron in glee.

“Why, of course, and a thousand times of course, stupid animal,” said she, smiling.

“Animal vas enough——”

“Stupid is a term of endearment,” said she, looking at him.

The poor man took Esther’s hand and pressed it to his heart. He was animal enough to feel, but too stupid to find words.

“Feel how it beats—for ein little tender vort——”

And he conducted his goddess to her room.

“Oh, madame, I cannot stay here!” cried Eugenie. “It makes me long to go to bed.”

“Well,” said Esther, “I mean to please the magician who has worked all these wonders.—Listen, my fat elephant, after dinner we will go to the play together. I am starving to see a play.”

It was just five years since Esther had been to a theatre. All Paris was rushing at that time to the Porte–Saint-Martin, to see one of those pieces to which the power of the actors lends a terrible expression of reality, _Richard Darlington_. Like all ingenuous natures, Esther loved to feel the thrills of fear as much as to yield to tears of pathos.

“Let us go to see Frederick Lemaitre,” said she; “he is an actor I adore.”

“It is a horrible piece,” said Nucingen foreseeing the moment when he must show himself in public.

He sent his servant to secure one of the two stage-boxes on the grand tier.—And this is another strange feature of Paris. Whenever success, on feet of clay, fills a house, there is always a stage-box to be had ten minutes before the curtain rises. The managers keep it for themselves, unless it happens to be taken for a passion a la Nucingen. This box, like Chevet’s dainties, is a tax levied on the whims of the Parisian Olympus.

It would be superfluous to describe the plate and china. Nucingen had provided three services of plate—common, medium, and best; and the best—plates, dishes, and all, was of chased silver gilt. The banker, to avoid overloading the table with gold and silver, had completed the array of each service with porcelain of exquisite fragility in the style of Dresden china, which had cost more than the plate. As to the linen—Saxony, England, Flanders, and France vied in the perfection of flowered damask.

At dinner it was the Baron’s turn to be amazed on tasting Asie’s cookery.

“I understant,” said he, “vy you call her Asie; dis is Asiatic cooking.”

“I begin to think he loves me,” said Esther to Europe; “he has said something almost like a _bon mot_.”

“I said many vorts,” said he.

“Well! he is more like Turcaret than I had heard he was!” cried the girl, laughing at this reply, worthy of the many artless speeches for which the banker was famous.

The dishes were so highly spiced as to give the Baron an indigestion, on purpose that he might go home early; so this was all he got in the way of pleasure out of his first evening with Esther. At the theatre he was obliged to drink an immense number of glasses of eau sucree, leaving Esther alone between the acts.

By a coincidence so probable that it can scarcely be called chance, Tullia, Mariette, and Madame du Val–Noble were at the play that evening. _Richard Darlington_ enjoyed a wild success—and a deserved success—such as is seen only in Paris. The men who saw this play all came to the conclusion that a lawful wife might be thrown out of window, and the wives loved to see themselves unjustly persecuted.

The women said to each other: “This is too much! we are driven to it —but it often happens!”

Now a woman as beautiful as Esther, and dressed as Esther was, could not show off with impunity in a stage-box at the Porte–Saint-Martin. And so, during the second act, there was quite a commotion in the box where the two dancers were sitting, caused by the undoubted identity of the unknown fair one with La Torpille.

“Heyday! where has she dropped from?” said Mariette to Madame du Val–Noble. “I thought she was drowned.”

“But is it she? She looks to me thirty-seven times younger and handsomer than she was six years ago.”

“Perhaps she has preserved herself in ice like Madame d’Espard and Madame Zayonchek,” said the Comte de Brambourg, who had brought the three women to the play, to a pit-tier box. “Isn’t she the ‘rat’ you meant to send me to hocus my uncle?” said he, addressing Tullia.

“The very same,” said the singer. “Du Bruel, go down to the stalls and see if it is she.”

“What brass she has got!” exclaimed Madame du Val–Noble, using an expressive but vulgar phrase.

“Oh!” said the Comte de Brambourg, “she very well may. She is with my friend the Baron de Nucingen—I will go——”

“Is that the immaculate Joan of Arc who has taken Nucingen by storm, and who has been talked of till we are all sick of her, these three months past?” asked Mariette.

“Good-evening, my dear Baron,” said Philippe Bridau, as he went into Nucingen’s box. “So here you are, married to Mademoiselle Esther. —Mademoiselle, I am an old officer whom you once on a time were to have got out of a scrape—at Issoudun—Philippe Bridau——”

“I know nothing of it,” said Esther, looking round the house through her opera-glasses.

“Dis lady,” said the Baron, “is no longer known as ‘Esther’ so short! She is called Montame de Champy—ein little estate vat I have bought for her——”

“Though you do things in such style,” said the Comte, “these ladies are saying that Madame de Champy gives herself too great airs.—If you do not choose to remember me, will you condescend to recognize Mariette, Tullia, Madame du Val–Noble?” the parvenu went on—a man for whom the Duc de Maufrigneuse had won the Dauphin’s favor.

“If these ladies are kind to me, I am willing to make myself pleasant to them,” replied Madame de Champy drily.

“Kind! Why, they are excellent; they have named you Joan of Arc,” replied Philippe.

“Vell den, if dese ladies vill keep you company,” said Nucingen, “I shall go ‘vay, for I hafe eaten too much. Your carriage shall come for you and your people.—Dat teufel Asie!”

“The first time, and you leave me alone!” said Esther. “Come, come, you must have courage enough to die on deck. I must have my man with me as I go out. If I were insulted, am I to cry out for nothing?”

The old millionaire’s selfishness had to give way to his duties as a lover. The Baron suffered but stayed.

Esther had her own reasons for detaining “her man.” If she admitted her acquaintance, she would be less closely questioned in his presence than if she were alone. Philippe Bridau hurried back to the box where the dancers were sitting, and informed them of the state of affairs.

“Oh! so it is she who has fallen heir to my house in the Rue Saint–Georges,” observed Madame du Val–Noble with some bitterness; for she, as she phrased it, was on the loose.

“Most likely,” said the Colonel. “Du Tillet told me that the Baron had spent three times as much there as your poor Falleix.”

“Let us go round to her box,” said Tullia.

“Not if I know it,” said Mariette; “she is much too handsome, I will call on her at home.”

“I think myself good-looking enough to risk it,” remarked Tullia.

So the much-daring leading dancer went round between the acts and renewed acquaintance with Esther, who would talk only on general subjects.

“And where have you come back from, my dear child?” asked Tullia, who could not restrain her curiosity.

“Oh, I was for five years in a castle in the Alps with an Englishman, as jealous as a tiger, a nabob; I called him a nabot, a dwarf, for he was not so big as le bailli de Ferrette.

“And then I came across a banker—from a savage to salvation, as Florine might say. And now here I am in Paris again; I long so for amusement that I mean to have a rare time. I shall keep open house. I have five years of solitary confinement to make good, and I am beginning to do it. Five years of an Englishman is rather too much; six weeks are the allowance according to the advertisements.”

“Was it the Baron who gave you that lace?”

“No, it is a relic of the nabob.—What ill-luck I have, my dear! He was as yellow as a friend’s smile at a success; I thought he would be dead in ten months. Pooh! he was a strong as a mountain. Always distrust men who say they have a liver complaint. I will never listen to a man who talks of his liver.—I have had too much of livers—who cannot die. My nabob robbed me; he died without making a will, and the family turned me out of doors like a leper.—So, then, I said to my fat friend here, ‘Pay for two!’—You may as well call me Joan of Arc; I have ruined England, and perhaps I shall die at the stake——”

“Of love?” said Tullia.

“And burnt alive,” answered Esther, and the question made her thoughtful.

The Baron laughed at all this vulgar nonsense, but he did not always follow it readily, so that his laughter sounded like the forgotten crackers that go off after fireworks.

We all live in a sphere of some kind, and the inhabitants of every sphere are endowed with an equal share of curiosity.

Next evening at the opera, Esther’s reappearance was the great news behind the scenes. Between two and four in the afternoon all Paris in the Champs–Elysees had recognized La Torpille, and knew at last who was the object of the Baron de Nucingen’s passion.

“Do you know,” Blondet remarked to de Marsay in the greenroom at the opera-house, “that La Torpille vanished the very day after the evening when we saw her here and recognized her in little Rubempre’s mistress.”

In Paris, as in the provinces, everything is known. The police of the Rue de Jerusalem are not so efficient as the world itself, for every one is a spy on every one else, though unconsciously. Carlos had fully understood the danger of Lucien’s position during and after the episode of the Rue Taitbout.

No position can be more dreadful than that in which Madame du Val–Noble now found herself; and the phrase to be on the loose, or, as the French say, left on foot, expresses it perfectly. The recklessness and extravagance of these women precludes all care for the future. In that strange world, far more witty and amusing than might be supposed, only such women as are not gifted with that perfect beauty which time can hardly impair, and which is quite unmistakable—only such women, in short, as can be loved merely as a fancy, ever think of old age and save a fortune. The handsomer they are, the more improvident they are.

“Are you afraid of growing ugly that you are saving money?” was a speech of Florine’s to Mariette, which may give a clue to one cause of this thriftlessness.

Thus, if a speculator kills himself, or a spendthrift comes to the end of his resources, these women fall with hideous promptitude from audacious wealth to the utmost misery. They throw themselves into the clutches of the old-clothes buyer, and sell exquisite jewels for a mere song; they run into debt, expressly to keep up a spurious luxury, in the hope of recovering what they have lost—a cash-box to draw upon. These ups and downs of their career account for the costliness of such connections, generally brought about as Asie had hooked (another word of her vocabulary) Nucingen for Esther.

And so those who know their Paris are quite aware of the state of affairs when, in the Champs–Elysees—that bustling and mongrel bazaar —they meet some woman in a hired fly whom six months or a year before they had seen in a magnificent and dazzling carriage, turned out in the most luxurious style.

“If you fall on Sainte–Pelagie, you must contrive to rebound on the Bois de Boulogne,” said Florine, laughing with Blondet over the little Vicomte de Portenduere.

Some clever women never run the risk of this contrast. They bury themselves in horrible furnished lodgings, where they expiate their extravagance by such privations as are endured by travelers lost in a Sahara; but they never take the smallest fancy for economy. They venture forth to masked balls; they take journeys into the provinces; they turn out well dressed on the boulevards when the weather is fine. And then they find in each other the devoted kindness which is known only among proscribed races. It costs a woman in luck no effort to bestow some help, for she says to herself, “I may be in the same plight by Sunday!”

However, the most efficient protector still is the purchaser of dress. When this greedy money-lender finds herself the creditor, she stirs and works on the hearts of all the old men she knows in favor of the mortgaged creature in thin boots and a fine bonnet.

In this way Madame du Val–Noble, unable to foresee the downfall of one of the richest and cleverest of stockbrokers, was left quite unprepared. She had spent Falleix’s money on her whims, and trusted to him for all necessaries and to provide for the future.

“How could I have expected such a thing in a man who seemed such a good fellow?”

In almost every class of society the good fellow is an open-handed man, who will lend a few crowns now and again without expecting them back, who always behaves in accordance with a certain code of delicate feeling above mere vulgar, obligatory, and commonplace morality. Certain men, regarded as virtuous and honest, have, like Nucingen, ruined their benefactors; and certain others, who have been through a criminal court, have an ingenious kind of honesty towards women. Perfect virtue, the dream of Moliere, an Alceste, is exceedingly rare; still, it is to be found everywhere, even in Paris. The “good fellow” is the product of a certain facility of nature which proves nothing. A man is a good fellow, as a cat is silky, as a slipper is made to slip on to the foot. And so, in the meaning given to the word by a kept woman, Falleix ought to have warned his mistress of his approaching bankruptcy and have given her enough to live upon.

D’Estourny, the dashing swindler, was a good fellow; he cheated at cards, but he had set aside thirty thousand francs for his mistress. And at carnival suppers women would retort on his accusers: “No matter. You may say what you like, Georges was a good fellow; he had charming manners, he deserved a better fate.”

These girls laugh laws to scorn, and adore a certain kind of generosity; they sell themselves, as Esther had done, for a secret ideal, which is their religion.

After saving a few jewels from the wreck with great difficulty, Madame du Val–Noble was crushed under the burden of the horrible report: “She ruined Falleix.” She was almost thirty; and though she was in the prime of her beauty, still she might be called an old woman, and all the more so because in such a crisis all a woman’s rivals are against her. Mariette, Florine, Tullia would ask their friend to dinner, and gave her some help; but as they did not know the extent of her debts, they did not dare to sound the depths of that gulf. An interval of six years formed rather too long a gap in the ebb and flow of the Paris tide, between La Torpille and Madame du Val–Noble, for the woman “on foot” to speak to the woman in her carriage; but La Val–Noble knew that Esther was too generous not to remember sometimes that she had, as she said, fallen heir to her possessions, and not to seek her out by some meeting which might seem accidental though arranged. To bring about such an accident, Madame du Val–Noble, dressed in the most lady-like way, walked out every day in the Champs–Elysees on the arm of Theodore Gaillard, who afterwards married her, and who, in these straits, behaved very well to his former mistress, giving her boxes at the play, and inviting her to every spree. She flattered herself that Esther, driving out one fine day, would meet her face to face.

Esther’s coachman was Paccard—for her household had been made up in five days by Asie, Europe, and Paccard under Carlos’ instructions, and in such a way that the house in the Rue Saint–Georges was an impregnable fortress.

Peyrade, on his part, prompted by deep hatred, by the thirst for vengeance, and, above all, by his wish to see his darling Lydie married, made the Champs–Elysees the end of his walks as soon as he heard from Contenson that Monsieur de Nucingen’s mistress might be seen there. Peyrade could dress so exactly like an Englishman, and spoke French so perfectly with the mincing accent that the English give the language; he knew England itself so well, and was so familiar with all the customs of the country, having been sent to England by the police authorities three times between 1779 and 1786, that he could play his part in London and at ambassadors’ residences without awaking suspicion. Peyrade, who had some resemblance to Musson the famous juggler, could disguise himself so effectually that once Contenson did not recognize him.

Followed by Contenson dressed as a mulatto, Peyrade examined Esther and her servants with an eye which, seeming heedless, took everything in. Hence it quite naturally happened that in the side alley where the carriage-company walk in fine dry weather, he was on the spot one day when Esther met Madame du Val–Noble. Peyrade, his mulatto in livery at his heels, was airing himself quite naturally, like a nabob who is thinking of no one but himself, in a line with the two women, so as to catch a few words of their conversation.

“Well, my dear child,” said Esther to Madame du Val–Noble, “come and see me. Nucingen owes it to himself not to leave his stockbroker’s mistress without a sou——”

“All the more so because it is said that he ruined Falleix,” remarked Theodore Gaillard, “and that we have every right to squeeze him.”

“He dines with me tomorrow,” said Esther; “come and meet him.” Then she added in an undertone:

“I can do what I like with him, and as yet he has not that!” and she put the nail of a gloved finger under the prettiest of her teeth with the click that is familiarly known to express with peculiar energy: “Just nothing.”

“You have him safe——”

“My dear, as yet he has only paid my debts.”

“How mean!” cried Suzanne du Val–Noble.

“Oh!” said Esther, “I had debts enough to frighten a minister of finance. Now, I mean to have thirty thousand a year before the first stroke of midnight. Oh! he is excellent, I have nothing to complain of. He does it well.—In a week we give a house-warming; you must come.—That morning he is to make me a present of the lease of the house in the Rue Saint–Georges. In decency, it is impossible to live in such a house on less than thirty thousand francs a year—of my own, so as to have them safe in case of accident. I have known poverty, and I want no more of it. There are certain acquaintances one has had enough of at once.”

“And you, who used to say, ‘My face is my fortune!’—How you have changed!” exclaimed Suzanne.

“It is the air of Switzerland; you grow thrifty there.—Look here; go there yourself, my dear! Catch a Swiss, and you may perhaps catch a husband, for they have not yet learned what such women as we are can be. And, at any rate, you may come back with a passion for investments in the funds—a most respectable and elegant passion!—Good-bye.”

Esther got into her carriage again, a handsome carriage drawn by the finest pair of dappled gray horses at that time to be seen in Paris.

“The woman who is getting into the carriage is handsome,” said Peyrade to Contenson, “but I like the one who is walking best; follow her, and find out who she is.”

“That is what that Englishman has just remarked in English,” said Theodore Gaillard, repeating Peyrade’s remark to Madame du Val–Noble.

Before making this speech in English, Peyrade had uttered a word or two in that language, which had made Theodore look up in a way that convinced him that the journalist understood English.

Madame du Val–Noble very slowly made her way home to very decent furnished rooms in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, glancing round now and then to see if the mulatto were following her.

This establishment was kept by a certain Madame Gerard, whom Suzanne had obliged in the days of her splendor, and who showed her gratitude by giving her a suitable home. This good soul, an honest and virtuous citizen, even pious, looked on the courtesan as a woman of a superior order; she had always seen her in the midst of luxury, and thought of her as a fallen queen; she trusted her daughters with her; and—which is a fact more natural than might be supposed—the courtesan was as scrupulously careful in taking them to the play as their mother could have been, and the two Gerard girls loved her. The worthy, kind lodging-house keeper was like those sublime priests who see in these outlawed women only a creature to be saved and loved.

Madame du Val–Noble respected this worth; and often, as she chatted with the good woman, she envied her while bewailing her own ill-fortune.

“Your are still handsome; you may make a good end yet,” Madame Gerard would say.

But, indeed, Madame du Val–Noble was only relatively impoverished. This woman’s wardrobe, so extravagant and elegant, was still sufficiently well furnished to allow of her appearing on occasion—as on that evening at the Porte–Saint-Martin to see _Richard Darlington_ —in much splendor. And Madame Gerard would most good-naturedly pay for the cabs needed by the lady “on foot” to go out to dine, or to the play, and to come home again.

“Well, dear Madame Gerard,” said she to this worthy mother, “my luck is about to change, I believe.”

“Well, well, madame, so much the better. But be prudent; do not run into debt any more. I have such difficulty in getting rid of the people who are hunting for you.”

“Oh, never worry yourself about those hounds! They have all made no end of money out of me.—Here are some tickets for the Varietes for your girls—a good box on the second tier. If any one should ask for me this evening before I come in, show them up all the same. Adele, my old maid, will be here; I will send her round.”

Madame du Val–Noble, having neither mother nor aunt, was obliged to have recourse to her maid—equally on foot—to play the part of a Saint–Esteve with the unknown follower whose conquest was to enable her to rise again in the world. She went to dine with Theodore Gaillard, who, as it happened, had a spree on that day, that is to say, a dinner given by Nathan in payment of a bet he had lost, one of those orgies when a man says to his guests, “You can bring a woman.”

It was not without strong reasons that Peyrade had made up his mind to rush in person on to the field of this intrigue. At the same time, his curiosity, like Corentin’s, was so keenly excited, that, even in the absence of reasons, he would have tried to play a part in the drama.

At this moment Charles X.‘s policy had completed its last evolution. After confiding the helm of State to Ministers of his own choosing, the King was preparing to conquer Algiers, and to utilize the glory that should accrue as a passport to what has been called his _Coup d’Etat_. There were no more conspiracies at home; Charles X. believed he had no domestic enemies. But in politics, as at sea, a calm may be deceptive.

Thus Corentin had lapsed into total idleness. In such a case a true sportsman, to keep his hand in, for lack of larks kills sparrows. Domitian, we know, for lack of Christians, killed flies. Contenson, having witnessed Esther’s arrest, had, with the keen instinct of a spy, fully understood the upshot of the business. The rascal, as we have seen, did not attempt to conceal his opinion of the Baron de Nucingen.

“Who is benefiting by making the banker pay so dear for his passion?” was the first question the allies asked each other. Recognizing Asie as a leader in the piece, Contenson hoped to find out the author through her; but she slipped through his fingers again and again, hiding like an eel in the mud of Paris; and when he found her again as the cook in Esther’s establishment, it seemed to him inexplicable that the half-caste woman should have had a finger in the pie. Thus, for the first time, these two artistic spies had come on a text that they could not decipher, while suspecting a dark plot to the story.

After three bold attempts on the house in the Rue Taitbout, Contenson still met with absolute dumbness. So long as Esther dwelt there the lodge porter seemed to live in mortal terror. Asie had, perhaps, promised poisoned meat-balls to all the family in the event of any indiscretion.

On the day after Esther’s removal, Contenson found this man rather more amenable; he regretted the lady, he said, who had fed him with the broken dishes from her table. Contenson, disguised as a broker, tried to bargain for the rooms, and listened to the porter’s lamentations while he fooled him, casting a doubt on all the man said by a questioning “Really?”

“Yes, monsieur, the lady lived here for five years without ever going out, and more by token, her lover, desperately jealous though she was beyond reproach, took the greatest precautions when he came in or went out. And a very handsome young man he was too!”

Lucien was at this time still staying with his sister, Madame Sechard; but as soon as he returned, Contenson sent the porter to the Quai Malaquais to ask Monsieur de Rubempre whether he were willing to part with the furniture left in the rooms lately occupied by Madame van Bogseck. The porter then recognized Lucien as the young widow’s mysterious lover, and this was all that Contenson wanted. The deep but suppressed astonishment may be imagined with which Lucien and Carlos received the porter, whom they affected to regard as a madman; they tried to upset his convictions.

Within twenty-four hours Carlos had organized a force which detected Contenson red-handed in the act of espionage. Contenson, disguised as a market-porter, had twice already brought home the provisions purchased in the morning by Asie, and had twice got into the little mansion in the Rue Saint–Georges. Corentin, on his part, was making a stir; but he was stopped short by recognizing the certain identity of Carlos Herrera; for he learned at once that this Abbe, the secret envoy of Ferdinand VII., had come to Paris towards the end of 1823. Still, Corentin thought it worth while to study the reasons which had led the Spaniard to take an interest in Lucien de Rubempre. It was soon clear to him, beyond doubt, that Esther had for five years been Lucien’s mistress; so the substitution of the Englishwoman had been effected for the advantage of that young dandy.

Now Lucien had no means; he was rejected as a suitor for Mademoiselle de Grandlieu; and he had just bought up the lands of Rubempre at the cost of a million francs.

Corentin very skilfully made the head of the General Police take the first steps; and the Prefet de Police a propos to Peyrade, informed his chief that the appellants in that affair had been in fact the Comte de Serizy and Lucien de Rubempre.

“We have it!” cried Peyrade and Corentin.

The two friends had laid plans in a moment.

“This hussy,” said Corentin, “has had intimacies; she must have some women friends. Among them we shall certainly find one or another who is down on her luck; one of us must play the part of a rich foreigner and take her up. We will throw them together. They always want something of each other in the game of lovers, and we shall then be in the citadel.”

Peyrade naturally proposed to assume his disguise as an Englishman. The wild life he should lead during the time that he would take to disentangle the plot of which he had been the victim, smiled on his fancy; while Corentin, grown old in his functions, and weakly too, did not care for it. Disguised as a mulatto, Contenson at once evaded Carlos’ force. Just three days before Peyrade’s meeting with Madame du Val–Noble in the Champs–Elysees, this last of the agents employed by MM. de Sartine and Lenoir had arrived, provided with a passport, at the Hotel Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, having come from the Colonies via le Havre, in a traveling chaise, as mud-splashed as though it had really come from le Havre, instead of no further than by the road from Saint–Denis to Paris.

Carlos Herrera, on his part, had his passport _vise_ at the Spanish Embassy, and arranged everything at the Quai Malaquais to start for Madrid. And this is why. Within a few days Esther was to become the owner of the house in the Rue Saint–Georges and of shares yielding thirty thousand francs a year; Europe and Asie were quite cunning enough to persuade her to sell these shares and privately transmit the money to Lucien. Thus Lucien, proclaiming himself rich through his sister’s liberality, would pay the remainder of the price of the Rubempre estates. Of this transaction no one could complain. Esther alone could betray herself; but she would die rather than blink an eyelash.

Clotilde had appeared with a little pink kerchief round her crane’s neck, so she had won her game at the Hotel de Grandlieu. The shares in the Omnibus Company were already worth thrice their initial value. Carlos, by disappearing for a few days, would put malice off the scent. Human prudence had foreseen everything; no error was possible. The false Spaniard was to start on the morrow of the day when Peyrade met Madame du Val–Noble. But that very night, at two in the morning, Asie came in a cab to the Quai Malaquais, and found the stoker of the machine smoking in his room, and reconsidering all the points of the situation here stated in a few words, like an author going over a page in his book to discover any faults to be corrected. Such a man would not allow himself a second time such an oversight as that of the porter in the Rue Taitbout.

“Paccard,” whispered Asie in her master’s ear, “recognized Contenson yesterday, at half-past two, in the Champs–Elysees, disguised as a mulatto servant to an Englishman, who for the last three days has been seen walking in the Champs–Elysees, watching Esther. Paccard knew the hound by his eyes, as I did when he dressed up as a market-porter. Paccard drove the girl home, taking a round so as not to lose sight of the wretch. Contenson is at the Hotel Mirabeau; but he exchanged so many signs of intelligence with the Englishman, that Paccard says the other cannot possibly be an Englishman.”

“We have a gadfly behind us,” said Carlos. “I will not leave till the day after tomorrow. That Contenson is certainly the man who sent the porter after us from the Rue Taitbout; we must ascertain whether this sham Englishman is our foe.”

At noon Mr. Samuel Johnson’s black servant was solemnly waiting on his master, who always breakfasted too heartily, with a purpose. Peyrade wished to pass for a tippling Englishman; he never went out till he was half-seas over. He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and padded to make his legs look stouter; his trousers were lined with the thickest fustian; his waistcoat was buttoned up to his cheeks; a red scratch wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three inches to his height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the Cafe David could not have recognized him. From his squarecut coat of black cloth with full skirts he might have been taken for an English millionaire.

Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob’s confidential servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and uncommunicative, and indulged in fierce exclamations and uncouth gestures.

Peyrade was finishing his second bottle when one of the hotel waiters unceremoniously showed in a man in whom Peyrade and Contenson both at once discerned a gendarme in mufti.

“Monsieur Peyrade,” said the gendarme to the nabob, speaking in his ear, “my instructions are to take you to the Prefecture.”

Peyrade, without saying a word, rose and took down his hat.

“You will find a hackney coach at the door,” said the man as they went downstairs. “The Prefet thought of arresting you, but he decided on sending for you to ask some explanation of your conduct through the peace-officer whom you will find in the coach.”

“Shall I ride with you?” asked the gendarme of the peace-officer when Peyrade had got in.

“No,” replied the other; “tell the coachman quietly to drive to the Prefecture.”

Peyrade and Carlos were now face to face in the coach. Carlos had a stiletto under his hand. The coach-driver was a man he could trust, quite capable of allowing Carlos to get out without seeing him, or being surprised, on arriving at his journey’s end, to find a dead body in his cab. No inquiries are ever made about a spy. The law almost always leaves such murders unpunished, it is so difficult to know the rights of the case.

Peyrade looked with his keenest eye at the magistrate sent to examine him by the Prefet of Police. Carlos struck him as satisfactory: a bald head, deeply wrinkled at the back, and powdered hair; a pair of very light gold spectacles, with double-green glasses over weak eyes, with red rims, evidently needing care. These eyes seemed the trace of some squalid malady. A cotton shirt with a flat-pleated frill, a shabby black satin waistcoat, the trousers of a man of law, black spun silk stockings, and shoes tied with ribbon; a long black overcoat, cheap gloves, black, and worn for ten days, and a gold watch-chain—in every point the lower grade of magistrate known by a perversion of terms as a peace-officer.

“My dear Monsieur Peyrade, I regret to find such a man as you the object of surveillance, and that you should act so as to justify it. Your disguise is not to the Prefet’s taste. If you fancy that you can thus escape our vigilance, you are mistaken. You traveled from England by way of Beaumont-sur-Oise, no doubt.”

“Beaumont-sur-Oise?” repeated Peyrade.

“Or by Saint–Denis?” said the sham lawyer.

Peyrade lost his presence of mind. The question must be answered. Now any reply might be dangerous. In the affirmative it was farcical; in the negative, if this man knew the truth, it would be Peyrade’s ruin.

“He is a sharp fellow,” thought he.

He tried to look at the man and smile, and he gave him a smile for an answer; the smile passed muster without protest.

“For what purpose have you disguised yourself, taken rooms at the Mirabeau, and dressed Contenson as a black servant?” asked the peace-officer.

“Monsieur le Prefet may do what he chooses with me, but I owe no account of my actions to any one but my chief,” said Peyrade with dignity.

“If you mean me to infer that you are acting by the orders of the General Police,” said the other coldly, “we will change our route, and drive to the Rue de Grenelle instead of the Rue de Jerusalem. I have clear instructions with regard to you. But be careful! You are not in any deep disgrace, and you may spoil your own game in a moment. As for me—I owe you no grudge.—Come; tell me the truth.”

“Well, then, this is the truth,” said Peyrade, with a glance at his Cerberus’ red eyes.

The sham lawyer’s face remained expressionless, impassible; he was doing his business, all truths were the same to him, he looked as though he suspected the Prefet of some caprice. Prefets have their little tantrums.

“I have fallen desperately in love with a woman—the mistress of that stockbroker who is gone abroad for his own pleasure and the displeasure of his creditors—Falleix.”

“Madame du Val–Noble?”

“Yes,” replied Peyrade. “To keep her for a month, which will not cost me more than a thousand crowns, I have got myself up as a nabob and taken Contenson as my servant. This is so absolutely true, monsieur, that if you like to leave me in the coach, where I will wait for you, on my honor as an old Commissioner–General of Police, you can go to the hotel and question Contenson. Not only will Contenson confirm what I have the honor of stating, but you may see Madame du Val–Noble’s waiting-maid, who is to come this morning to signify her mistress’ acceptance of my offers, or the conditions she makes.

“An old monkey knows what grimaces mean: I have offered her a thousand francs a month and a carriage—that comes to fifteen hundred; five hundred francs’ worth of presents, and as much again in some outings, dinners and play-going; you see, I am not deceiving you by a centime when I say a thousand crowns.—A man of my age may well spend a thousand crowns on his last fancy.”

“Bless me, Papa Peyrade! and you still care enough for women to——? But you are deceiving me. I am sixty myself, and I can do without ’em. —However, if the case is as you state it, I quite understand that you should have found it necessary to get yourself up as a foreigner to indulge your fancy.”

“You can understand that Peyrade, or old Canquoelle of the Rue des Moineaux——”

“Ay, neither of them would have suited Madame du Val–Noble,” Carlos put in, delighted to have picked up Canquoelle’s address. “Before the Revolution,” he went on, “I had for my mistress a woman who had previously been kept by the gentleman-inwaiting, as they then called the executioner. One evening at the play she pricked herself with a pin, and cried out—a customary ejaculation in those days—‘Ah! Bourreau!’ on which her neighbor asked her if this were a reminiscence?—Well, my dear Peyrade, she cast off her man for that speech.

“I suppose you have no wish to expose yourself to such a slap in the face.—Madame du Val–Noble is a woman for gentlemen. I saw her once at the opera, and thought her very handsome.

“Tell the driver to go back to the Rue de la Paix, my dear Peyrade. I will go upstairs with you to your rooms and see for myself. A verbal report will no doubt be enough for Monsieur le Prefet.”

Carlos took a snuff-box from his side-pocket—a black snuff-box lined with silver-gilt—and offered it to Peyrade with an impulse of delightful good-fellowship. Peyrade said to himself:

“And these are their agents! Good Heavens! what would Monsieur Lenoir say if he could come back to life, or Monsieur de Sartines?”

“That is part of the truth, no doubt, but it is not all,” said the sham lawyer, sniffing up his pinch of snuff. “You have had a finger in the Baron de Nucingen’s love affairs, and you wish, no doubt, to entangle him in some slip-knot. You missed fire with the pistol, and you are aiming at him with a field-piece. Madame du Val–Noble is a friend of Madame de Champy’s——”

“Devil take it. I must take care not to founder,” said Peyrade to himself. “He is a better man than I thought him. He is playing me; he talks of letting me go, and he goes on making me blab.”

“Well?” asked Carlos with a magisterial air.

“Monsieur, it is true that I have been so foolish as to seek a woman in Monsieur de Nucingen’s behoof, because he was half mad with love. That is the cause of my being out of favor, for it would seem that quite unconsciously I touched some important interests.”

The officer of the law remained immovable.

“But after fifty-two years’ experience,” Peyrade went on, “I know the police well enough to have held my hand after the blowing up I had from Monsieur le Prefet, who, no doubt, was right——”

“Then you would give up this fancy if Monsieur le Prefet required it of you? That, I think, would be the best proof you could give of the sincerity of what you say.”

“He is going it! he is going it!” thought Peyrade. “Ah! by all that’s holy, the police today is a match for that of Monsieur Lenoir.”

“Give it up?” said he aloud. “I will wait till I have Monsieur le Prefet’s orders.—But here we are at the hotel, if you wish to come up.”

“Where do you find the money?” said Carlos point-blank, with a sagacious glance.

“Monsieur, I have a friend——”

“Get along,” said Carlos; “go and tell that story to an examining magistrate!”

This audacious stroke on Carlos’ part was the outcome of one of those calculations, so simple that none but a man of his temper would have thought it out.

At a very early hour he had sent Lucien to Madame de Serizy’s. Lucien had begged the Count’s private secretary—as from the Count—to go and obtain from the Prefet of Police full particulars concerning the agent employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The secretary came back provided with a note concerning Peyrade, a copy of the summary noted on the back of his record:—

“In the police force since 1778, having come to Paris from Avignon two years previously.

“Without money or character; possessed of certain State secrets.

“Lives in the Rue des Moineaux under the name of Canquoelle, the name of a little estate where his family resides in the department of Vaucluse; very respectable people.

“Was lately inquired for by a grand-nephew named Theodore de la Peyrade. (See the report of an agent, No. 37 of the Documents.)”

“He must be the man to whom Contenson is playing the mulatto servant!” cried Carlos, when Lucien returned with other information besides this note.

Within three hours this man, with the energy of a Commander-inChief, had found, by Paccard’s help, an innocent accomplice capable of playing the part of a gendarme in disguise, and had got himself up as a peace-officer. Three times in the coach he had thought of killing Peyrade, but he had made it a rule never to commit a murder with his own hand; he promised himself that he would get rid of Peyrade all in good time by pointing him out as a millionaire to some released convicts about the town.

Peyrade and his Mentor, as they went in, heard Contenson’s voice arguing with Madame du Val–Noble’s maid. Peyrade signed to Carlos to remain in the outer room, with a look meant to convey: “Thus you can assure yourself of my sincerity.”

“Madame agrees to everything,” said Adele. “Madame is at this moment calling on a friend, Madame de Champy, who has some rooms in the Rue Taitbout on her hands for a year, full of furniture, which she will let her have, no doubt. Madame can receive Mr. Johnson more suitably there, for the furniture is still very decent, and monsieur might buy it for madame by coming to an agreement with Madame de Champy.”

“Very good, my girl. If this is not a job of fleecing, it is a bit of the wool,” said the mulatto to the astonished woman. “However, we will go shares——”

“That is your darkey all over!” cried Mademoiselle Adele. “If your nabob is a nabob, he can very well afford to give madame the furniture. The lease ends in April 1830; your nabob may renew it if he likes.”

“I am quite willing,” said Peyrade, speaking French with a strong English accent, as he came in and tapped the woman on the shoulder.

He cast a knowing look back at Carlos, who replied by an assenting nod, understanding that the nabob was to keep up his part.

But the scene suddenly changed its aspect at the entrance of a person over whom neither Carlos nor Peyrade had the least power. Corentin suddenly came in. He had found the door open, and looked in as he went by to see how his old friend played his part as nabob.

“The Prefet is still bullying me!” said Peyrade in a whisper to Corentin. “He has found me out as a nabob.”

“We will spill the Prefet,” Corentin muttered in reply.

Then after a cool bow he stood darkly scrutinizing the magistrate.

“Stay here till I return,” said Carlos; “I will go to the Prefecture. If you do not see me again, you may go your own way.”

Having said this in an undertone to Peyrade, so as not to humiliate him in the presence of the waiting-maid, Carlos went away, not caring to remain under the eye of the newcomer, in whom he detected one of those fair-haired, blue-eyed men, coldly terrifying.

“That is the peace-officer sent after me by the Prefet,” said Peyrade.

“That?” said Corentin. “You have walked into a trap. That man has three packs of cards in his shoes; you can see that by the place of his foot in the shoe; besides, a peace-officer need wear no disguise.”

Corentin hurried downstairs to verify his suspicions: Carlos was getting into the fly.

“Hallo! Monsieur l’Abbe!” cried Corentin.

Carlos looked around, saw Corentin, and got in quickly. Still, Corentin had time to say:

“That was all I wanted to know.—Quai Malaquais,” he shouted to the driver with diabolical mockery in his tone and expression.

“I am done!” said Jacques Collin to himself. “They have got me. I must get ahead of them by sheer pace, and, above all, find out what they want of us.”

Corentin had seen the Abbe Carlos Herrera five or six times, and the man’s eyes were unforgettable. Corentin had suspected him at once from the cut of his shoulders, then by his puffy face, and the trick of three inches of added height gained by a heel inside the shoe.

“Ah! old fellow, they have drawn you,” said Corentin, finding no one in the room but Peyrade and Contenson.

“Who?” cried Peyrade, with metallic hardness; “I will spend my last days in putting him on a gridiron and turning him on it.”

“It is the Abbe Carlos Herrera, the Corentin of Spain, as I suppose. This explains everything. The Spaniard is a demon of the first water, who has tried to make a fortune for that little young man by coining money out of a pretty baggage’s bolster.—It is your lookout if you think you can measure your skill with a man who seems to me the very devil to deal with.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Contenson, “he fingered the three hundred thousand francs the day when Esther was arrested; he was in the cab. I remember those eyes, that brow, and those marks of the smallpox.”

“Oh! what a fortune my Lydie might have had!” cried Peyrade.

“You may still play the nabob,” said Corentin. “To keep an eye on Esther you must keep up her intimacy with Val–Noble. She was really Lucien’s mistress.”

“They have got more than five hundred thousand francs out of Nucingen already,” said Contenson.

“And they want as much again,” Corentin went on. “The Rubempre estate is to cost a million.—Daddy,” added he, slapping Peyrade on the shoulder, “you may get more than a hundred thousand francs to settle on Lydie.”

“Don’t tell me that, Corentin. If your scheme should fail, I cannot tell what I might not do——”

“You will have it by tomorrow perhaps! The Abbe, my dear fellow, is most astute; we shall have to kiss his spurs; he is a very superior devil. But I have him sure enough. He is not a fool, and he will knock under. Try to be a gaby as well as a nabob, and fear nothing.”

In the evening of this day, when the opposing forces had met face to face on level ground, Lucien spent the evening at the Hotel Grandlieu. The party was a large one. In the face of all the assembly, the Duchess kept Lucien at her side for some time, and was most kind to him.

“You are going away for a little while?” said she.

“Yes, Madame la Duchesse. My sister, in her anxiety to promote my marriage, has made great sacrifices, and I have been enabled to repurchase the lands of the Rubempres, to reconstitute the whole estate. But I have found in my Paris lawyer a very clever man, who has managed to save me from the extortionate terms that the holders would have asked if they had known the name of the purchaser.”

“Is there a chateau?” asked Clotilde, with too broad a smile.

“There is something which might be called a chateau; but the wiser plan would be to use the building materials in the construction of a modern residence.”

Clotilde’s eyes blazed with happiness above her smile of satisfaction.

“You must play a rubber with my father this evening,” said she. “In a fortnight I hope you will be asked to dinner.”

“Well, my dear sir,” said the Duc de Grandlieu, “I am told that you have bought the estate of Rubempre. I congratulate you. It is an answer to those who say you are in debt. We bigwigs, like France or England, are allowed to have a public debt; but men of no fortune, beginners, you see, may not assume that privilege——”

“Indeed, Monsieur le Duc, I still owe five hundred thousand francs on my land.”

“Well, well, you must marry a wife who can bring you the money; but you will have some difficulty in finding a match with such a fortune in our Faubourg, where daughters do not get large dowries.”

“Their name is enough,” said Lucien.

“We are only three wisk players—Maufrigneuse, d’Espard, and I—will you make a fourth?” said the Duke, pointing to the card-table.

Clotilde came to the table to watch her father’s game.

“She expects me to believe that she means it for me,” said the Duke, patting his daughter’s hands, and looking round at Lucien, who remained quite grave.

Lucien, Monsieur d’Espard’s partner, lost twenty louis.

“My dear mother,” said Clotilde to the Duchess, “he was so judicious as to lose.”

At eleven o’clock, after a few affectionate words with Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, Lucien went home and to bed, thinking of the complete triumph he was to enjoy a month hence; for he had not a doubt of being accepted as Clotilde’s lover, and married before Lent in 1830.

On the morrow, when Lucien was smoking his cigarettes after breakfast, sitting with Carlos, who had become much depressed, M. de Saint–Esteve was announced—what a touch of irony—who begged to see either the Abbe Carlos Herrera or Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre.

“Was he told downstairs that I had left Paris?” cried the Abbe.

“Yes, sir,” replied the groom.

“Well, then, you must see the man,” said he to Lucien. “But do not say a single compromising word, do not let a sign of surprise escape you. It is the enemy.”

“You will overhear me,” said Lucien.

Carlos hid in the adjoining room, and through the crack of the door he saw Corentin, whom he recognized only by his voice, such powers of transformation did the great man possess. This time Corentin looked like an old paymaster-general.

“I have not had the honor of being known to you, monsieur,” Corentin began, “but——”

“Excuse my interrupting you, monsieur, but——”

“But the matter in point is your marriage to Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu—which will never take place,” Corentin added eagerly.

Lucien sat down and made no reply.

“You are in the power of a man who is able and willing and ready to prove to the Duc de Grandlieu that the lands of Rubempre are to be paid for with the money that a fool has given to your mistress, Mademoiselle Esther,” Corentin went on. “It will be quite easy to find the minutes of the legal opinions in virtue of which Mademoiselle Esther was summoned; there are ways too of making d’Estourny speak. The very clever manoeuvres employed against the Baron de Nucingen will be brought to light.

“As yet all can be arranged. Pay down a hundred thousand francs, and you will have peace.—All this is no concern of mine. I am only the agent of those who levy this blackmail; nothing more.”

Corentin might have talked for an hour; Lucien smoked his cigarette with an air of perfect indifference.

“Monsieur,” replied he, “I do not want to know who you are, for men who undertake such jobs as these have no name—at any rate, in my vocabulary. I have allowed you to talk at your leisure; I am at home. —You seem to me not bereft of common sense; listen to my dilemma.”

There was a pause, during which Lucien met Corentin’s cat-like eye fixed on him with a perfectly icy stare.

“Either you are building on facts that are absolutely false, and I need pay no heed to them,” said Lucien; “or you are in the right; and in that case, by giving you a hundred thousand francs, I put you in a position to ask me for as many hundred thousand francs as your employer can find Saint–Esteves to ask for.

“However, to put an end, once and for all, to your kind intervention, I would have you know that I, Lucien de Rubempre, fear no one. I have no part in the jobbery of which you speak. If the Grandlieus make difficulties, there are other young ladies of very good family ready to be married. After all, it is no loss to me if I remain single, especially if, as you imagine, I deal in blank bills to such advantage.”

“If Monsieur l’Abbe Carlos Herrera——”

“Monsieur,” Lucien put in, “the Abbe Herrera is at this moment on the way to Spain. He has nothing to do with my marriage, my interests are no concern of his. That remarkable statesman was good enough to assist me at one time with his advice, but he has reports to present to his Majesty the King of Spain; if you have anything to say to him, I recommend you to set out for Madrid.”

“Monsieur,” said Corentin plainly, “you will never be Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu’s husband.”

“So much the worse for her!” replied Lucien, impatiently pushing Corentin towards the door.

“You have fully considered the matter?” asked Corentin coldly.

“Monsieur, I do not recognize that you have any right either to meddle in my affairs, or to make me waste a cigarette,” said Lucien, throwing away his cigarette that had gone out.

“Good-day, monsieur,” said Corentin. “We shall not meet again.—But there will certainly be a moment in your life when you would give half your fortune to have called me back from these stairs.”

In answer to this threat, Carlos made as though he were cutting off a head.

“Now to business!” cried he, looking at Lucien, who was as white as ashes after this dreadful interview.

If among the small number of my readers who take an interest in the moral and philosophical side of this book there should be only one capable of believing that the Baron de Nucingen was happy, that one would prove how difficult it is to explain the heart of a courtesan by any kind of physiological formula. Esther was resolved to make the poor millionaire pay dearly for what he called his day of triumph. And at the beginning of February 1830 the house-warming party had not yet been given in the “little palace.”

“Well,” said Esther in confidence to her friends, who repeated it to the Baron, “I shall open house at the Carnival, and I mean to make my man as happy as a cock in plaster.”

The phrase became proverbial among women of her kidney.

The Baron gave vent to much lamentation; like married men, he made himself very ridiculous, he began to complain to his intimate friends, and his dissatisfaction was generally known.

Esther, meanwhile, took quite a serious view of her position as the Pompadour of this prince of speculators. She had given two or three small evening parties, solely to get Lucien into the house. Lousteau, Rastignac, du Tillet, Bixiou, Nathan, the Comte de Brambourg—all the cream of the dissipated crew—frequented her drawing-room. And, as leading ladies in the piece she was playing, Esther accepted Tullia, Florentine, Fanny Beaupre, and Florine—two dancers and two actresses —besides Madame du Val–Noble. Nothing can be more dreary than a courtesan’s home without the spice of rivalry, the display of dress, and some variety of type.

In six weeks Esther had become the wittiest, the most amusing, the loveliest, and the most elegant of those female pariahs who form the class of kept women. Placed on the pedestal that became her, she enjoyed all the delights of vanity which fascinate women in general, but still as one who is raised above her caste by a secret thought. She cherished in her heart an image of herself which she gloried in, while it made her blush; the hour when she must abdicate was ever present to her consciousness; thus she lived a double life, really scorning herself. Her sarcastic remarks were tinged by the temper which was roused in her by the intense contempt felt by the Angel of Love, hidden in the courtesan, for the disgraceful and odious part played by the body in the presence, as it were, of the soul. At once actor and spectator, victim and judge, she was a living realization of the beautiful Arabian Tales, in which a noble creature lies hidden under a degrading form, and of which the type is the story of Nebuchadnezzar in the book of books—the Bible. Having granted herself a lease of life till the day after her infidelity, the victim might surely play awhile with the executioner.

Moreover, the enlightenment that had come to Esther as to the secretly disgraceful means by which the Baron had made his colossal fortune relieved her of every scruple. She could play the part of Ate, the goddess of vengeance, as Carlos said. And so she was by turns enchanting and odious to the banker, who lived only for her. When the Baron had been worked up to such a pitch of suffering that he wanted only to be quit of Esther, she brought him round by a scene of tender affection.

Herrera, making a great show of starting for Spain, had gone as far as Tours. He had sent the chaise on as far as Bordeaux, with a servant inside, engaged to play the part of master, and to wait for him at Bordeaux. Then, returning by diligence, dressed as a commercial traveler, he had secretly taken up his abode under Esther’s roof, and thence, aided by Asie and Europe, carefully directed all his machinations, keeping an eye on every one, and especially on Peyrade.

About a fortnight before the day chosen for her great entertainment, which was to be given in the evening after the first opera ball, the courtesan, whose witticisms were beginning to make her feared, happened to be at the Italian opera, at the back of a box which the Baron—forced to give a box—had secured in the lowest tier, in order to conceal his mistress, and not to flaunt her in public within a few feet of Madame de Nucingen. Esther had taken her seat, so as to “rake” that of Madame de Serizy, whom Lucien almost invariably accompanied. The poor girl made her whole happiness centre in watching Lucien on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays by Madame de Serizy’s side.

At about half-past nine in the evening Esther could see Lucien enter the Countess’ box, with a care-laden brow, pale, and with almost drawn features. These symptoms of mental anguish were legible only to Esther. The knowledge of a man’s countenance is, to the woman who loves him, like that of the sea to a sailor.

“Good God! what can be the matter? What has happened? Does he want to speak with that angel of hell, who is to him a guardian angel, and who lives in an attic between those of Europe and Asie?”

Tormented by such reflections, Esther scarcely listened to the music. Still less, it may be believed, did she listen to the Baron, who held one of his “Anchel’s” hands in both his, talking to her in his horrible Polish–Jewish accent, a jargon which must be as unpleasant to read as it is to hear spoken.

“Esther,” said he, releasing her hand, and pushing it away with a slight touch of temper, “you do not listen to me.”

“I tell you what, Baron, you blunder in love as you gibber in French.”

“_Der teufel_!”

“I am not in my boudoir here, I am at the opera. If you were not a barrel made by Huret or Fichet, metamorphosed into a man by some trick of nature, you would not make so much noise in a box with a woman who is fond of music. I don’t listen to you? I should think not! There you sit rustling my dress like a cockchafer in a paper-bag, and making me laugh with contempt. You say to me, ‘You are so pretty, I should like to eat you!’ Old simpleton! Supposing I were to say to you, ‘You are less intolerable this evening than you were yesterday—we will go home?’—Well, from the way you puff and sigh—for I feel you if I don’t listen to you—I perceive that you have eaten an enormous dinner, and your digestion is at work. Let me instruct you—for I cost you enough to give some advice for your money now and then—let me tell you, my dear fellow, that a man whose digestion is so troublesome as yours is, is not justified in telling his mistress that she is pretty at unseemly hours. An old soldier died of that very folly ‘in the arms of Religion,’ as Blondet has it.

“It is now ten o’clock. You finished dinner at du Tillet’s at nine o’clock, with your pigeon the Comte de Brambourg; you have millions and truffles to digest. Come tomorrow night at ten.”

“Vat you are cruel!” cried the Baron, recognizing the profound truth of this medical argument.

“Cruel!” echoed Esther, still looking at Lucien. “Have you not consulted Bianchon, Desplein, old Haudry?—Since you have had a glimpse of future happiness, do you know what you seem like to me?”

“No—vat?”

“A fat old fellow wrapped in flannel, who walks every hour from his armchair to the window to see if the thermometer has risen to the degree marked ‘_Silkworms_,’ the temperature prescribed by his physician.”

“You are really an ungrateful slut!” cried the Baron, in despair at hearing a tune, which, however, amorous old men not unfrequently hear at the opera.

“Ungrateful!” retorted Esther. “What have you given me till now? A great deal of annoyance. Come, papa! Can I be proud of you? You! you are proud of me; I wear your livery and badge with an air. You paid my debts? So you did. But you have grabbed so many millions—come, you need not sulk; you admitted that to me—that you need not think twice of that. And this is your chief title to fame. A baggage and a thief —a well-assorted couple!

“You have built a splendid cage for a parrot that amuses you. Go and ask a Brazilian cockatoo what gratitude it owes to the man who placed it in a gilded cage.—Don’t look at me like that; you are just like a Buddist Bonze.

“Well, you show your red-and-white cockatoo to all Paris. You say, ‘Does anybody else in Paris own such a parrot? And how well it talks, how cleverly it picks its words!’ If du Tillet comes in, it says at once, ‘How’do, little swindler!’—Why, you are as happy as a Dutchman who has grown an unique tulip, as an old nabob pensioned off in Asia by England, when a commercial traveler sells him the first Swiss snuff-box that opens in three places.

“You want to win my heart? Well, now, I will tell you how to do it.”

“Speak, speak, dere is noting I shall not do for you. I lofe to be fooled by you.”

“Be young, be handsome, be like Lucien de Rubempre over there by your wife, and you shall have gratis what you can never buy with all your millions!”

“I shall go ‘vay, for really you are too bat dis evening!” said the banker, with a lengthened face.

“Very well, good-night then,” said Esther. “Tell Georches to make your pillows very high and place your fee low, for you look apoplectic this evening.—You cannot say, my dear, that I take no interest in your health.”

The Baron was standing up, and held the door-knob in his hand.

“Here, Nucingen,” said Esther, with an imperious gesture.

The Baron bent over her with dog-like devotion.

“Do you want to see me very sweet, and giving you sugar-and-water, and petting you in my house, this very evening, old monster?”

“You shall break my heart!”

“Break your heart—you mean bore you,” she went on. “Well, bring me Lucien that I may invite him to our Belshazzar’s feast, and you may be sure he will not fail to come. If you succeed in that little transaction, I will tell you that I love you, my fat Frederic, in such plain terms that you cannot but believe me.”

“You are an enchantress,” said the Baron, kissing Esther’s glove. “I should be villing to listen to abuse for ein hour if alvays der vas a kiss at de ent of it.”

“But if I am not obeyed, I——” and she threatened the Baron with her finger as we threaten children.

The Baron raised his head like a bird caught in a springe and imploring the trapper’s pity.

“Dear Heaven! What ails Lucien?” said she to herself when she was alone, making no attempt to check her falling tears; “I never saw him so sad.”

This is what had happened to Lucien that very evening.

At nine o’clock he had gone out, as he did every evening, in his brougham to go to the Hotel de Grandlieu. Using his saddle-horse and cab in the morning only, like all young men, he had hired a brougham for winter evenings, and had chosen a first-class carriage and splendid horses from one of the best job-masters. For the last month all had gone well with him; he had dined with the Grandlieus three times; the Duke was delightful to him; his shares in the Omnibus Company, sold for three hundred thousand francs, had paid off a third more of the price of the land; Clotilde de Grandlieu, who dressed beautifully now, reddened inch thick when he went into the room, and loudly proclaimed her attachment to him. Some personages of high estate discussed their marriage as a probable event. The Duc de Chaulieu, formerly Ambassador to Spain, and now for a short while Minister for Foreign Affairs, had promised the Duchesse de Grandlieu that he would ask for the title of Marquis for Lucien.

So that evening, after dining with Madame de Serizy, Lucien had driven to the Faubourg Saint–Germain to pay his daily visit.

He arrives, the coachman calls for the gate to be opened, he drives into the courtyard and stops at the steps. Lucien, on getting out, remarks four other carriages in waiting. On seeing Monsieur de Rubempre, one of the footmen placed to open and shut the hall-door comes forward and out on to the steps, in front of the door, like a soldier on guard.

“His Grace is not at home,” says he.

“Madame la Duchesse is receiving company,” observes Lucien to the servant.

“Madame la Duchesse is gone out,” replies the man solemnly.

“Mademoiselle Clotilde——”

“I do not think that Mademoiselle Clotilde will see you, monsieur, in the absence of Madame la Duchesse.”

“But there are people here,” replies Lucien in dismay.

“I do not know, sir,” says the man, trying to seem stupid and to be respectful.

There is nothing more fatal than etiquette to those who regard it as the most formidable arm of social law. Lucien easily interpreted the meaning of this scene, so disastrous to him. The Duke and Duchess would not admit him. He felt the spinal marrow freezing in the core of his vertebral column, and a sickly cold sweat bedewed his brow. The conversation had taken place in the presence of his own body-servant, who held the door of the brougham, doubting whether to shut it. Lucien signed to him that he was going away again; but as he stepped into the carriage, he heard the noise of people coming downstairs, and the servant called out first, “Madame la Duchesse de Chaulieu’s people,” then “Madame la Vicomtesse de Grandlieu’s carriage!”

Lucien merely said, “To the Italian opera”; but in spite of his haste, the luckless dandy could not escape the Duc de Chaulieu and his son, the Duc de Rhetore, to whom he was obliged to bow, for they did not speak a word to him. A great catastrophe at Court, the fall of a formidable favorite, has ere now been pronounced on the threshold of a royal study, in one word from an usher with a face like a plaster cast.

“How am I to let my adviser know of this disaster—this instant——?” thought Lucien as he drove to the opera-house. “What is going on?”

He racked his brain with conjectures.

This was what had taken place. That morning, at eleven o’clock, the Duc de Grandlieu, as he went into the little room where the family all breakfasted together, said to Clotilde after kissing her, “Until further orders, my child, think no more of the Sieur de Rubempre.”

Then he had taken the Duchesse by the hand, and led her into a window recess to say a few words in an undertone, which made poor Clotilde turn pale; for she watched her mother as she listened to the Duke, and saw her expression of extreme surprise.

“Jean,” said the Duke to one of his servants, “take this note to Monsieur le Duc de Chaulieu, and beg him to answer by you, Yes or No. —I am asking him to dine here today,” he added to his wife.

Breakfast had been a most melancholy meal. The Duchess was meditative, the Duke seemed to be vexed with himself, and Clotilde could with difficulty restrain her tears.

“My child, your father is right; you must obey him,” the mother had said to the daughter with much emotion. “I do not say as he does, ‘Think no more of Lucien.’ No—for I understand your suffering” —Clotilde kissed her mother’s hand—“but I do say, my darling, Wait, take no step, suffer in silence since you love him, and put your trust in your parents’ care.—Great ladies, my child, are great just because they can do their duty on every occasion, and do it nobly.”

“But what is it about?” asked Clotilde as white as a lily.

“Matters too serious to be discussed with you, my dearest,” the Duchess replied. “For if they are untrue, your mind would be unnecessarily sullied; and if they are true, you must never know them.”

At six o’clock the Duc de Chaulieu had come to join the Duc de Grandlieu, who awaited him in his study.

“Tell me, Henri”—for the Dukes were on the most familiar terms, and addressed each other by their Christian names. This is one of the shades invented to mark a degree of intimacy, to repel the audacity of French familiarity, and humiliate conceit—“tell me, Henri, I am in such a desperate difficulty that I can only ask advice of an old friend who understands business, and you have practice and experience. My daughter Clotilde, as you know, is in love with that little Rubempre, whom I have been almost compelled to accept as her promised husband. I have always been averse to the marriage; however, Madame de Grandlieu could not bear to thwart Clotilde’s passion. When the young fellow had repurchased the family estate and paid three-quarters of the price, I could make no further objections.

“But last evening I received an anonymous letter—you know how much that is worth—in which I am informed that the young fellow’s fortune is derived from some disreputable source, and that he is telling lies when he says that his sister is giving him the necessary funds for his purchase. For my daughter’s happiness, and for the sake of our family, I am adjured to make inquiries, and the means of doing so are suggested to me. Here, read it.”

“I am entirely of your opinion as to the value of anonymous letters, my dear Ferdinand,” said the Duc de Chaulieu after reading the letter. “Still, though we may contemn them, we must make use of them. We must treat such letters as we would treat a spy. Keep the young man out of the house, and let us make inquiries——

“I know how to do it. Your lawyer is Derville, a man in whom we have perfect confidence; he knows the secrets of many families, and can certainly be trusted with this. He is an honest man, a man of weight, and a man of honor; he is cunning and wily; but his wiliness is only in the way of business, and you need only employ him to obtain evidence you can depend upon.

“We have in the Foreign Office an agent of the superior police who is unique in his power of discovering State secrets; we often send him on such missions. Inform Derville that he will have a lieutenant in the case. Our spy is a gentleman who will appear wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and looking like a diplomate. This rascal will do the hunting; Derville will only look on. Your lawyer will then tell you if the mountain brings forth a mouse, or if you must throw over this little Rubempre. Within a week you will know what you are doing.”

“The young man is not yet so far a Marquis as to take offence at my being ‘Not at home’ for a week,” said the Duc de Grandlieu.

“Above all, if you end by giving him your daughter,” replied the Minister. “If the anonymous letter tells the truth, what of that? You can send Clotilde to travel with my daughter-inlaw Madeleine, who wants to go to Italy.”

“You relieve me immensely. I don’t know whether I ought to thank you.”

“Wait till the end.”

“By the way,” exclaimed the Duc de Grandlieu, “what is your man’s name? I must mention it to Derville. Send him to me tomorrow by five o’clock; I will have Derville here and put them in communication.”

“His real name,” said M. de Chaulieu, “is, I think, Corentin—a name you must never have heard, for my gentleman will come ticketed with his official name. He calls himself Monsieur de Saint–Something—Saint Yves—Saint–Valere?—Something of the kind.—You may trust him; Louis XVIII. had perfect confidence in him.”

After this confabulation the steward had orders to shut the door on Monsieur de Rubempre—which was done.

Lucien paced the waiting-room at the opera-house like a man who was drunk. He fancied himself the talk of all Paris. He had in the Duc de Rhetore one of those unrelenting enemies on whom a man must smile, as he can never be revenged, since their attacks are in conformity with the rules of society. The Duc de Rhetore knew the scene that had just taken place on the outside steps of the Grandlieus’ house. Lucien, feeling the necessity of at once reporting the catastrophe to his high privy councillor, nevertheless was afraid of compromising himself by going to Esther’s house, where he might find company. He actually forgot that Esther was here, so confused were his thoughts, and in the midst of so much perplexity he was obliged to make small talk with Rastignac, who, knowing nothing of the news, congratulated him on his approaching marriage.

At this moment Nucingen appeared smiling, and said to Lucien:

“Vill you do me de pleasure to come to see Montame de Champy, vat vill infite you herself to von house-varming party——”

“With pleasure, Baron,” replied Lucien, to whom the Baron appeared as a rescuing angel.

“Leave us,” said Esther to Monsieur de Nucingen, when she saw him come in with Lucien. “Go and see Madame du Val–Noble, whom I discover in a box on the third tier with her nabob.—A great many nabobs grow in the Indies,” she added, with a knowing glance at Lucien.

“And that one,” said Lucien, smiling, “is uncommonly like yours.”

“And them,” said Esther, answering Lucien with another look of intelligence, while still speaking to the Baron, “bring her here with her nabob; he is very anxious to make your acquaintance. They say he is very rich. The poor woman has already poured out I know not how many elegies; she complains that her nabob is no good; and if you relieve him of his ballast, perhaps he will sail closer to the wind.”

“You tink ve are all tieves!” said the Baron as he went away.

“What ails you, my Lucien?” asked Esther in her friend’s ear, just touching it with her lips as soon as the box door was shut.

“I am lost! I have just been turned from the door of the Hotel de Grandlieu under pretence that no one was admitted. The Duke and Duchess were at home, and five pairs of horses were champing in the courtyard.”

“What! will the marriage not take place?” exclaimed Esther, much agitated, for she saw a glimpse of Paradise.

“I do not yet know what is being plotted against me——”

“My Lucien,” said she in a deliciously coaxing voice, “why be worried about it? You can make a better match by and by—I will get you the price of two estates——”

“Give us supper to-night that I may be able to speak in secret to Carlos, and, above all, invite the sham Englishman and Val–Noble. That nabob is my ruin; he is our enemy; we will get hold of him, and we——”

But Lucien broke off with a gesture of despair.

“Well, what is it?” asked the poor girl.

“Oh! Madame de Serizy sees me!” cried Lucien, “and to crown our woes, the Duc de Rhetore, who witnessed my dismissal, is with her.”

In fact, at that very minute, the Duc de Rhetore was amusing himself with Madame de Serizy’s discomfiture.

“Do you allow Lucien to be seen in Mademoiselle Esther’s box?” said the young Duke, pointing to the box and to Lucien; “you, who take an interest in him, should really tell him such things are not allowed. He may sup at her house, he may even—But, in fact, I am no longer surprised at the Grandlieus’ coolness towards the young man. I have just seen their door shut in his face—on the front steps——”

“Women of that sort are very dangerous,” said Madame de Serizy, turning her opera-glass on Esther’s box.

“Yes,” said the Duke, “as much by what they can do as by what they wish——”

“They will ruin him!” cried Madame de Serizy, “for I am told they cost as much whether they are paid or no.”

“Not to him!” said the young Duke, affecting surprise. “They are far from costing him anything; they give him money at need, and all run after him.”

The Countess’ lips showed a little nervous twitching which could not be included in any category of smiles.

“Well, then,” said Esther, “come to supper at midnight. Bring Blondet and Rastignac; let us have two amusing persons at any rate; and we won’t be more than nine.”

“You must find some excuse for sending the Baron to fetch Eugenie under pretence of warning Asie, and tell her what has befallen me, so that Carlos may know before he has the nabob under his claws.”

“That shall be done,” said Esther.

And thus Peyrade was probably about to find himself unwittingly under the same roof with his adversary. The tiger was coming into the lion’s den, and a lion surrounded by his guards.

When Lucien went back to Madame de Serizy’s box, instead of turning to him, smiling and arranging her skirts for him to sit by her, she affected to pay him not the slightest attention, but looked about the house through her glass. Lucien could see, however, by the shaking of her hand that the Countess was suffering from one of those terrible emotions by which illicit joys are paid for. He went to the front of the box all the same, and sat down by her at the opposite corner, leaving a little vacant space between himself and the Countess. He leaned on the ledge of the box with his elbow, resting his chin on his gloved hand; then he half turned away, waiting for a word. By the middle of the act the Countess had still neither spoken to him nor looked at him.

“I do not know,” said she at last, “why you are here; your place is in Mademoiselle Esther’s box——”

“I will go there,” said Lucien, leaving the box without looking at the Countess.

“My dear,” said Madame du Val–Noble, going into Esther’s box with Peyrade, whom the Baron de Nucingen did not recognize, “I am delighted to introduce Mr. Samuel Johnson. He is a great admirer of M. de Nucingen’s talents.”

“Indeed, monsieur,” said Esther, smiling at Peyrade.

“Oh yes, bocou,” said Peyrade.

“Why, Baron, here is a way of speaking French which is as much like yours as the low Breton dialect is like that of Burgundy. It will be most amusing to hear you discuss money matters.—Do you know, Monsieur Nabob, what I shall require of you if you are to make acquaintance with my Baron?” said Esther with a smile.

“Oh!—Thank you so much, you will introduce me to Sir Baronet?” said Peyrade with an extravagant English accent.

“Yes,” said she, “you must give me the pleasure of your company at supper. There is no pitch stronger than champagne for sticking men together. It seals every kind of business, above all such as you put your foot in.—Come this evening; you will find some jolly fellows. —As for you, my little Frederic,” she added in the Baron’s ear, “you have your carriage here—just drive to the Rue Saint–Georges and bring Europe to me here; I have a few words to say to her about the supper. I have caught Lucien; he will bring two men who will be fun.—We will draw the Englishman,” she whispered to Madame du Val–Noble.

Peyrade and the Baron left the women together.

“Oh, my dear, if you ever succeed in drawing that great brute, you will be clever indeed,” said Suzanne.

“If it proves impossible, you must lend him to me for a week,” replied Esther, laughing.

“You would but keep him half a day,” replied Madame du Val–Noble. “The bread I eat is too hard; it breaks my teeth. Never again, to my dying day, will I try to make an Englishman happy. They are all cold and selfish—pigs on their hind legs.”

“What, no consideration?” said Esther with a smile.

“On the contrary, my dear, the monster has never shown the least familiarity.”

“Under no circumstances whatever?” asked Esther.

“The wretch always addresses me as Madame, and preserves the most perfect coolness imaginable at moments when every man is more or less amenable. To him love-making!—on my word, it is nothing more nor less than shaving himself. He wipes the razor, puts it back in its case, and looks in the glass as if he were saying, ‘I have not cut myself!’

“Then he treats me with such respect as is enough to send a woman mad. That odious Milord Potboiler amuses himself by making poor Theodore hide in my dressing-room and stand there half the day. In short, he tries to annoy me in every way. And as stingy!—As miserly as Gobseck and Gigonnet rolled into one. He takes me out to dinner, but he does not pay the cab that brings me home if I happen not to have ordered my carriage to fetch me.”

“Well,” said Esther, “but what does he pay you for your services?”

“Oh, my dear, positively nothing. Five hundred francs a month and not a penny more, and the hire of a carriage. But what is it? A machine such as they hire out for a third-rate wedding to carry an epicier to the Mairie, to Church, and to the Cadran bleu.—Oh, he nettles me with his respect.

“If I try hysterics and feel ill, he is never vexed; he only says: ‘I wish my lady to have her own way, for there is nothing more detestable —no gentleman—than to say to a nice woman, “You are a cotton bale, a bundle of merchandise.”—Ha, hah! Are you a member of the Temperance Society and anti-slavery?’ And my horror sits pale, and cold, and hard while he gives me to understand that he has as much respect for me as he might have for a Negro, and that it has nothing to do with his feelings, but with his opinions as an abolitionist.”

“A man cannot be a worse wretch,” said Esther. “But I will smash up that outlandish Chinee.”

“Smash him up?” replied Madame du Val–Noble. “Not if he does not love me. You, yourself, would you like to ask him for two sous? He would listen to you solemnly, and tell you, with British precision that would make a slap in the face seem genial, that he pays dear enough for the trifle that love can be to his poor life;” and, as before, Madame du Val–Noble mimicked Peyrade’s bad French.

“To think that in our line of life we are thrown in the way of such men!” exclaimed Esther.

“Oh, my dear, you have been uncommonly lucky. Take good care of your Nucingen.”

“But your nabob must have got some idea in his head.”

“That is what Adele says.”

“Look here, my dear; that man, you may depend, has laid a bet that he will make a woman hate him and pack him off in a certain time.”

“Or else he wants to do business with Nucingen, and took me up knowing that you and I were friends; that is what Adele thinks,” answered Madame du Val–Noble. “That is why I introduced him to you this evening. Oh, if only I could be sure what he is at, what tricks I could play with you and Nucingen!”

“And you don’t get angry?” asked Esther; “you don’t speak your mind now and then?”

“Try it—you are sharp and smooth.—Well, in spite of your sweetness, he would kill you with his icy smiles. ‘I am anti-slavery,’ he would say, ‘and you are free.’—If you said the funniest things, he would only look at you and say, ‘Very good!’ and you would see that he regards you merely as a part of the show.”

“And if you turned furious?”

“The same thing; it would still be a show. You might cut him open under the left breast without hurting him in the least; his internals are of tinned-iron, I am sure. I told him so. He replied, ‘I am quite satisfied with that physical constitution.’

“And always polite. My dear, he wears gloves on his soul . . .

“I shall endure this martyrdom for a few days longer to satisfy my curiosity. But for that, I should have made Philippe slap my lord’s cheek—and he has not his match as a swordsman. There is nothing else left for it——”

“I was just going to say so,” cried Esther. “But you must ascertain first that Philippe is a boxer; for these old English fellows, my dear, have a depth of malignity——”

“This one has no match on earth. No. if you could but see him asking my commands, to know at what hour he may come—to take me by surprise, of course—and pouring out respectful speeches like a so-called gentleman, you would say, ‘Why, he adores her!’ and there is not a woman in the world who would not say the same.”

“And they envy us, my dear!” exclaimed Esther.

“Ah, well!” sighed Madame du Val–Noble; “in the course of our lives we learn more or less how little men value us. But, my dear, I have never been so cruelly, so deeply, so utterly scorned by brutality as I am by this great skinful of port wine.

“When he is tipsy he goes away—‘not to be unpleasant,’ as he tells Adele, and not to be ‘under two powers at once,’ wine and woman. He takes advantage of my carriage; he uses it more than I do.—Oh! if only we could see him under the table to-night! But he can drink ten bottles and only be fuddled; when his eyes are full, he still sees clearly.”

“Like people whose windows are dirty outside,” said Esther, “but who can see from inside what is going on in the street.—I know that property in man. Du Tillet has it in the highest degree.”

“Try to get du Tillet, and if he and Nucingen between them could only catch him in some of their plots, I should at least be revenged. They would bring him to beggary!

“Oh! my dear, to have fallen into the hands of a hypocritical Protestant after that poor Falleix, who was so amusing, so good-natured, so full of chaff! How we used to laugh! They say all stockbrokers are stupid. Well, he, for one, never lacked wit but once——”

“When he left you without a sou? That is what made you acquainted with the unpleasant side of pleasure.”

Europe, brought in by Monsieur de Nucingen, put her viperine head in at the door, and after listening to a few words whispered in her ear by her mistress, she vanished.

At half-past eleven that evening, five carriages were stationed in the Rue Saint–Georges before the famous courtesan’s door. There was Lucien’s, who had brought Rastignac, Bixiou, and Blondet; du Tillet’s, the Baron de Nucingen’s, the Nabob’s, and Florine’s—she was invited by du Tillet. The closed and doubly-shuttered windows were screened by the splendid Chinese silk curtains. Supper was to be served at one; wax-lights were blazing, the dining-room and little drawing-room displayed all their magnificence. The party looked forward to such an orgy as only three such women and such men as these could survive. They began by playing cards, as they had to wait about two hours.

“Do you play, milord?” asked du Tillet to Peyrade.

“I have played with O’Connell, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Lord Brougham, Lord——”

“Say at once no end of lords,” said Bixiou.

“Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Hertford, Lord——”

Bixiou was looking at Peyrade’s shoes, and stooped down.

“What are you looking for?” asked Blondet.

“For the spring one must touch to stop this machine,” said Florine.

“Do you play for twenty francs a point?”

“I will play for as much as you like to lose.”

“He does it well!” said Esther to Lucien. “They all take him for an Englishman.”

Du Tillet, Nucingen, Peyrade, and Rastignac sat down to a whist-table; Florine, Madame du Val–Noble, Esther, Blondet, and Bixiou sat round the fire chatting. Lucien spent the time in looking through a book of fine engravings.

“Supper is ready,” Paccard presently announced, in magnificent livery.

Peyrade was placed at Florine’s left hand, and on the other side of him Bixiou, whom Esther had enjoined to make the Englishman drink freely, and challenge him to beat him. Bixiou had the power of drinking an indefinite quantity.

Never in his life had Peyrade seen such splendor, or tasted of such cookery, or seen such fine women.

“I am getting my money’s worth this evening for the thousand crowns la Val–Noble has cost me till now,” thought he; “and besides, I have just won a thousand francs.”

“This is an example for men to follow!” said Suzanne, who was sitting by Lucien, with a wave of her hand at the splendors of the dining-room.

Esther had placed Lucien next herself, and was holding his foot between her own under the table.

“Do you hear?” said Madame du Val–Noble, addressing Peyrade, who affected blindness. “This is how you ought to furnish a house! When a man brings millions home from India, and wants to do business with the Nucingens, he should place himself on the same level.”

“I belong to a Temperance Society!”

“Then you will drink like a fish!” said Bixiou, “for the Indies are uncommon hot, uncle!”

It was Bixiou’s jest during supper to treat Peyrade as an uncle of his, returned from India.

“Montame du Fal–Noble tolt me you shall have some iteas,” said Nucingen, scrutinizing Peyrade.

“Ah, this is what I wanted to hear,” said du Tillet to Rastignac; “the two talking gibberish together.”

“You will see, they will understand each other at last,” said Bixiou, guessing what du Tillet had said to Rastignac.

“Sir Baronet, I have imagined a speculation—oh! a very comfortable job—bocou profitable and rich in profits——”

“Now you will see,” said Blondet to du Tillet, “he will not talk one minute without dragging in the Parliament and the English Government.”

“It is in China, in the opium trade——”

“Ja, I know,” said Nucingen at once, as a man who is well acquainted with commercial geography. “But de English Gover’ment hafe taken up de opium trate as a means dat shall open up China, and she shall not allow dat ve——”

“Nucingen has cut him out with the Government,” remarked du Tillet to Blondet.

“Ah! you have been in the opium trade!” cried Madame du Val–Noble. “Now I understand why you are so narcotic; some has stuck in your soul.”

“Dere! you see!” cried the Baron to the self-styled opium merchant, and pointing to Madame du Val–Noble. “You are like me. Never shall a millionaire be able to make a voman lofe him.”

“I have loved much and often, milady,” replied Peyrade.

“As a result of temperance,” said Bixiou, who had just seen Peyrade finish his third bottle of claret, and now had a bottle of port wine uncorked.

“Oh!” cried Peyrade, “it is very fine, the Portugal of England.”

Blondet, du Tillet, and Bixiou smiled at each other. Peyrade had the power of travestying everything, even his wit. There are very few Englishmen who will not maintain that gold and silver are better in England than elsewhere. The fowls and eggs exported from Normandy to the London market enable the English to maintain that the poultry and eggs in London are superior (very fine) to those of Paris, which come from the same district.

Esther and Lucien were dumfounded by this perfection of costume, language, and audacity.

They all ate and drank so well and so heartily, while talking and laughing, that it went on till four in the morning. Bixiou flattered himself that he had achieved one of the victories so pleasantly related by Brillat–Savarin. But at the moment when he was saying to himself, as he offered his “uncle” some more wine, “I have vanquished England!” Peyrade replied in good French to this malicious scoffer, “Toujours, mon garcon” (Go it, my boy), which no one heard but Bixiou.

“Hallo, good men all, he is as English as I am!—My uncle is a Gascon! I could have no other!”

Bixiou and Peyrade were alone, so no one heard this announcement. Peyrade rolled off his chair on to the floor. Paccard forthwith picked him up and carried him to an attic, where he fell sound asleep.

At six o’clock next evening, the Nabob was roused by the application of a wet cloth, with which his face was being washed, and awoke to find himself on a camp-bed, face to face with Asie, wearing a mask and a black domino.

“Well, Papa Peyrade, you and I have to settle accounts,” said she.

“Where am I?” asked he, looking about him.

“Listen to me,” said Asie, “and that will sober you.—Though you do not love Madame du Val–Noble, you love your daughter, I suppose?”

“My daughter?” Peyrade echoed with a roar.

“Yes, Mademoiselle Lydie.”

“What then?”

“What then? She is no longer in the Rue des Moineaux; she has been carried off.”

Peyrade breathed a sigh like that of a soldier dying of a mortal wound on the battlefield.

“While you were pretending to be an Englishman, some one else was pretending to be Peyrade. Your little Lydie thought she was with her father, and she is now in a safe place.—Oh! you will never find her! unless you undo the mischief you have done.”

“What mischief?”

“Yesterday Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had the door shut in his face at the Duc de Grandlieu’s. This is due to your intrigues, and to the man you let loose on us. Do not speak, listen!” Asie went on, seeing Peyrade open his mouth. “You will have your daughter again, pure and spotless,” she added, emphasizing her statement by the accent on every word, “only on the day after that on which Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre walks out of Saint–Thomas d’Aquin as the husband of Mademoiselle Clotilde. If, within ten days Lucien de Rubempre is not admitted, as he has been, to the Grandlieus’ house, you, to begin with, will die a violent death, and nothing can save you from the fate that threatens you.—Then, when you feel yourself dying, you will have time before breathing your last to reflect, ‘My daughter is a prostitute for the rest of her life!’

“Though you have been such a fool as give us this hold for our clutches, you still have sense enough to meditate on this ultimatum from our government. Do not bark, say nothing to any one; go to Contenson’s, and change your dress, and then go home. Katt will tell you that at a word from you your little Lydie went downstairs, and has not been seen since. If you make any fuss, if you take any steps, your daughter will begin where I tell you she will end—she is promised to de Marsay.

“With old Canquoelle I need not mince matters, I should think, or wear gloves, heh?——Go on downstairs, and take care not to meddle in our concerns any more.”

Asie left Peyrade in a pitiable state; every word had been a blow with a club. The spy had tears in his eyes, and tears hanging from his cheeks at the end of a wet furrow.

“They are waiting dinner for Mr. Johnson,” said Europe, putting her head in a moment after.

Peyrade made no reply; he went down, walked till he reached a cab-stand, and hurried off to undress at Contenson’s, not saying a word to him; he resumed the costume of Pere Canquoelle, and got home by eight o’clock. He mounted the stairs with a beating heart. When the Flemish woman heard her master, she asked him:

“Well, and where is mademoiselle?” with such simplicity, that the old spy was obliged to lean against the wall. The blow was more than he could bear. He went into his daughter’s rooms, and ended by fainting with grief when he found them empty, and heard Katt’s story, which was that of an abduction as skilfully planned as if he had arranged it himself.

“Well, well,” thought he, “I must knock under. I will be revenged later; now I must go to Corentin.—This is the first time we have met our foes. Corentin will leave that handsome boy free to marry an Empress if he wishes!—Yes, I understand that my little girl should have fallen in love with him at first sight.—Oh! that Spanish priest is a knowing one. Courage, friend Peyrade! disgorge your prey!”

The poor father never dreamed of the fearful blow that awaited him.

On reaching Corentin’s house, Bruno, the confidential servant, who knew Peyrade, said:

“Monsieur is gone away.”

“For a long time?”

“For ten days.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.

“Good God, I am losing my wits! I ask him where—as if we ever told them——” thought he.

A few hours before the moment when Peyrade was to be roused in his garret in the Rue Saint–Georges, Corentin, coming in from his country place at Passy, had made his way to the Duc de Grandlieu’s, in the costume of a retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired office-clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint–Denis, he was led to the Duke’s private room, where he found Derville reading a letter, which he himself had dictated to one of his agents, the “number” whose business it was to write documents. The Duke took Corentin aside to tell him all he already knew. Monsieur de Saint–Denis listened coldly and respectfully, amusing himself by studying this grand gentleman, by penetrating the tufa beneath the velvet cover, by scrutinizing this being, now and always absorbed in whist and in regard for the House of Grandlieu.

“If you will take my advice, monsieur,” said Corentin to Derville, after being duly introduced to the lawyer, “we shall set out this very afternoon for Angouleme by the Bordeaux coach, which goes quite as fast as the mail; and we shall not need to stay there six hours to obtain the information Monsieur le Duc requires. It will be enough—if I have understood your Grace—to ascertain whether Monsieur de Rubempre’s sister and brother-inlaw are in a position to give him twelve hundred thousand francs?” and he turned to the Duke.

“You have understood me perfectly,” said the Duke.

“We can be back again in four days,” Corentin went on, addressing Derville, “and neither of us will have neglected his business long enough for it to suffer.”

“That was the only difficulty I was about to mention to his Grace,” said Derville. “It is now four o’clock. I am going home to say a word to my head-clerk, and pack my traveling-bag, and after dinner, at eight o’clock, I will be——But shall we get places?” he said to Monsieur de Saint–Denis, interrupting himself.

“I will answer for that,” said Corentin. “Be in the yard of the Chief Office of the Messageries at eight o’clock. If there are no places, they shall make some, for that is the way to serve Monseigneur le Duc de Grandlieu.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Duke most graciously, “I postpone my thanks——”

Corentin and the lawyer, taking this as a dismissal, bowed, and withdrew.

At the hour when Peyrade was questioning Corentin’s servant, Monsieur de Saint–Denis and Derville, seated in the Bordeaux coach, were studying each other in silence as they drove out of Paris.

Next morning, between Orleans and Tours, Derville, being bored, began to converse, and Corentin condescended to amuse him, but keeping his distance; he left him to believe that he was in the diplomatic service, and was hoping to become Consul–General by the good offices of the Duc de Grandlieu. Two days after leaving Paris, Corentin and Derville got out at Mansle, to the great surprise of the lawyer, who thought he was going to Angouleme.

“In this little town,” said Corentin, “we can get the most positive information as regards Madame Sechard.”

“Do you know her then?” asked Derville, astonished to find Corentin so well informed.

“I made the conductor talk, finding he was a native of Angouleme. He tells me that Madame Sechard lives at Marsac, and Marsac is but a league away from Mansle. I thought we should be at greater advantage here than at Angouleme for verifying the facts.”

“And besides,” thought Derville, “as Monsieur le Duc said, I act merely as the witness to the inquiries made by this confidential agent——”

The inn at Mansle, _la Belle Etoile_, had for its landlord one of those fat and burly men whom we fear we may find no more on our return; but who still, ten years after, are seen standing at their door with as much superfluous flesh as ever, in the same linen cap, the same apron, with the same knife, the same oiled hair, the same triple chin,—all stereotyped by novel-writers from the immortal Cervantes to the immortal Walter Scott. Are they not all boastful of their cookery? have they not all “whatever you please to order”? and do not all end by giving you the same hectic chicken, and vegetables cooked with rank butter? They all boast of their fine wines, and all make you drink the wine of the country.

But Corentin, from his earliest youth, had known the art of getting out of an innkeeper things more essential to himself than doubtful dishes and apocryphal wines. So he gave himself out as a man easy to please, and willing to leave himself in the hands of the best cook in Mansle, as he told the fat man.

“There is no difficulty about being the best—I am the only one,” said the host.

“Serve us in the side room,” said Corentin, winking at Derville. “And do not be afraid of setting the chimney on fire; we want to thaw out the frost in our fingers.”

“It was not warm in the coach,” said Derville.

“Is it far to Marsac?” asked Corentin of the innkeeper’s wife, who came down from the upper regions on hearing that the diligence had dropped two travelers to sleep there.

“Are you going to Marsac, monsieur?” replied the woman.

“I don’t know,” he said sharply. “Is it far from hence to Marsac?” he repeated, after giving the woman time to notice his red ribbon.

“In a chaise, a matter of half an hour,” said the innkeeper’s wife.

“Do you think that Monsieur and Madame Sechard are likely to be there in winter?”

“To be sure; they live there all the year round.”

“It is now five o’clock. We shall still find them up at nine.”

“Oh yes, till ten. They have company every evening—the cure, Monsieur Marron the doctor——”

“Good folks then?” said Derville.

“Oh, the best of good souls,” replied the woman, “straight-forward, honest—and not ambitious neither. Monsieur Sechard, though he is very well off—they say he might have made millions if he had not allowed himself to be robbed of an invention in the paper-making of which the brothers Cointet are getting the benefit——”

“Ah, to be sure, the Brothers Cointet!” said Corentin.

“Hold your tongue,” said the innkeeper. “What can it matter to these gentlemen whether Monsieur Sechard has a right or no to a patent for his inventions in paper-making?—If you mean to spend the night here —at the _Belle Etoile_——” he went on, addressing the travelers, “here is the book, and please to put your names down. We have an officer in this town who has nothing to do, and spends all his time in nagging at us——”

“The devil!” said Corentin, while Derville entered their names and his profession as attorney to the lower Court in the department of the Seine, “I fancied the Sechards were very rich.”

“Some people say they are millionaires,” replied the innkeeper. “But as to hindering tongues from wagging, you might as well try to stop the river from flowing. Old Sechard left two hundred thousand francs’ worth of landed property, it is said; and that is not amiss for a man who began as a workman. Well, and he may have had as much again in savings, for he made ten or twelve thousand francs out of his land at last. So, supposing he were fool enough not to invest his money for ten years, that would be all told. But even if he lent it at high interest, as he is suspected of doing there would be three hundred thousand francs perhaps, and that is all. Five hundred thousand francs is a long way short of a million. I should be quite content with the difference, and no more of the _Belle Etoile_ for me!”

“Really!” said Corentin. “Then Monsieur David Sechard and his wife have not a fortune of two or three millions?”

“Why,” exclaimed the innkeeper’s wife, “that is what the Cointets are supposed to have, who robbed him of his invention, and he does not get more than twenty thousand francs out of them. Where do you suppose such honest folks would find millions? They were very much pinched while the father was alive. But for Kolb, their manager, and Madame Kolb, who is as much attached to them as her husband, they could scarcely have lived. Why, how much had they with La Verberie!—A thousand francs a year perhaps.”

Corentin drew Derville aside and said:

“In vino veritas! Truth lives under a cork. For my part, I regard an inn as the real registry office of the countryside; the notary is not better informed than the innkeeper as to all that goes on in a small neighborhood.—You see! we are supposed to know all about the Cointets and Kolb and the rest.

“Your innkeeper is the living record of every incident; he does the work of the police without suspecting it. A government should maintain two hundred spies at most, for in a country like France there are ten millions of simple-minded informers.—However, we need not trust to this report; though even in this little town something would be known about the twelve hundred thousand francs sunk in paying for the Rubempre estate. We will not stop here long——”

“I hope not!” Derville put in.

“And this is why,” added Corentin; “I have hit on the most natural way of extracting the truth from the mouth of the Sechard couple. I rely upon you to support, by your authority as a lawyer, the little trick I shall employ to enable you to hear a clear and complete account of their affairs.—After dinner we shall set out to call on Monsieur Sechard,” said Corentin to the innkeeper’s wife. “Have beds ready for us, we want separate rooms. There can be no difficulty ‘under the stars.’”

“Oh, monsieur,” said the woman, “we invented the sign.”

“The pun is to be found in every department,” said Corentin; “it is no monopoly of yours.”

“Dinner is served, gentlemen,” said the innkeeper.

“But where the devil can that young fellow have found the money? Is the anonymous writer accurate? Can it be the earnings of some handsome baggage?” said Derville, as they sat down to dinner.

“Ah, that will be the subject of another inquiry,” said Corentin. “Lucien de Rubempre, as the Duc de Chaulieu tells me, lives with a converted Jewess, who passes for a Dutch woman, and is called Esther van Bogseck.”

“What a strange coincidence!” said the lawyer. “I am hunting for the heiress of a Dutchman named Gobseck—it is the same name with a transposition of consonants.”

“Well,” said Corentin, “you shall have information as to her parentage on my return to Paris.”

An hour later, the two agents for the Grandlieu family set out for La Verberie, where Monsieur and Madame Sechard were living.

Never had Lucien felt any emotion so deep as that which overcame him at La Verberie when comparing his own fate with that of his brother-inlaw. The two Parisians were about to witness the same scene that had so much struck Lucien a few days since. Everything spoke of peace and abundance.

At the hour when the two strangers were arriving, a party of four persons were being entertained in the drawing-room of La Verberie: the cure of Marsac, a young priest of five-and-twenty, who, at Madame Sechard’s request, had become tutor to her little boy Lucien; the country doctor, Monsieur Marron; the Maire of the commune; and an old colonel, who grew roses on a plot of land opposite to La Verberie on the other side of the road. Every evening during the winter these persons came to play an artless game of boston for centime points, to borrow the papers, or return those they had finished.

When Monsieur and Madame Sechard had bought La Verberie, a fine house built of stone, and roofed with slate, the pleasure-grounds consisted of a garden of two acres. In the course of time, by devoting her savings to the purpose, handsome Madame Sechard had extended her garden as far as a brook, by cutting down the vines on some ground she purchased, and replacing them with grass plots and clumps of shrubbery. At the present time the house, surrounded by a park of about twenty acres, and enclosed by walls, was considered the most imposing place in the neighborhood.

Old Sechard’s former residence, with the outhouses attached, was now used as the dwelling-house for the manager of about twenty acres of vineyard left by him, of five farmsteads, bringing in about six thousand francs a year, and ten acres of meadow land lying on the further side of the stream, exactly opposite the little park; indeed, Madame Sechard hoped to include them in it the next year. La Verberie was already spoken of in the neighborhood as a chateau, and Eve Sechard was known as the Lady of Marsac. Lucien, while flattering her vanity, had only followed the example of the peasants and vine-dressers. Courtois, the owner of the mill, very picturesquely situated a few hundred yards from the meadows of La Verberie, was in treaty, it was said, with Madame Sechard for the sale of his property; and this acquisition would give the finishing touch to the estate and the rank of a “place” in the department.

Madame Sechard, who did a great deal of good, with as much judgment as generosity, was equally esteemed and loved. Her beauty, now really splendid, was at the height of its bloom. She was about six-and-twenty, but had preserved all the freshness of youth from living in the tranquillity and abundance of a country life. Still much in love with her husband, she respected him as a clever man, who was modest enough to renounce the display of fame; in short, to complete her portrait, it is enough to say that in her whole existence she had never felt a throb of her heart that was not inspired by her husband or her children.

The tax paid to grief by this happy household was, as may be supposed, the deep anxiety caused by Lucien’s career, in which Eve Sechard suspected mysteries, which she dreaded all the more because, during his last visit, Lucien roughly cut short all his sister’s questions by saying that an ambitious man owed no account of his proceedings to any one but himself.

In six years Lucien had seen his sister but three times, and had not written her more than six letters. His first visit to La Verberie had been on the occasion of his mother’s death; and his last had been paid with a view to asking the favor of the lie which was so necessary to his advancement. This gave rise to a very serious scene between Monsieur and Madame Sechard and their brother, and left their happy and respected life troubled by the most terrible suspicions.

The interior of the house, as much altered as the surroundings, was comfortable without luxury, as will be understood by a glance round the room where the little party were now assembled. A pretty Aubusson carpet, hangings of gray cotton twill bound with green silk brocade, the woodwork painted to imitate Spa wood, carved mahogany furniture covered with gray woolen stuff and green gimp, with flower-stands, gay with flowers in spite of the time of year, presented a very pleasing and homelike aspect. The window curtains, of green brocade, the chimney ornaments, and the mirror frames were untainted by the bad taste that spoils everything in the provinces; and the smallest details, all elegant and appropriate, gave the mind and eye a sense of repose and of poetry which a clever and loving woman can and ought to infuse into her home.

Madame Sechard, still in mourning for her father, sat by the fire working at some large piece of tapestry with the help of Madame Kolb, the housekeeper, to whom she intrusted all the minor cares of the household.

“A chaise has stopped at the door!” said Courtois, hearing the sound of wheels outside; “and to judge by the clatter of metal, it belongs to these parts——”

“Postel and his wife have come to see us, no doubt,” said the doctor.

“No,” said Courtois, “the chaise has come from Mansle.”

“Montame,” said Kolb, the burly Alsatian we have made acquaintance with in a former volume (_Illusions perdues_), “here is a lawyer from Paris who wants to speak with monsieur.”

“A lawyer!” cried Sechard; “the very word gives me the colic!”

“Thank you!” said the Maire of Marsac, named Cachan, who for twenty years had been an attorney at Angouleme, and who had once been required to prosecute Sechard.

“My poor David will never improve; he will always be absent-minded!” said Eve, smiling.

“A lawyer from Paris,” said Courtois. “Have you any business in Paris?”

“No,” said Eve.

“But you have a brother there,” observed Courtois.

“Take care lest he should have anything to say about old Sechard’s estate,” said Cachan. “_He_ had his finger in some very queer concerns, worthy man!”

Corentin and Derville, on entering the room, after bowing to the company, and giving their names, begged to have a private interview with Monsieur and Madame Sechard.

“By all means,” said Sechard. “But is it a matter of business?”

“Solely a matter regarding your father’s property,” said Corentin.

“Then I beg you will allow monsieur—the Maire, a lawyer formerly at Angouleme—to be present also.”

“Are you Monsieur Derville?” said Cachan, addressing Corentin.

“No, monsieur, this is Monsieur Derville,” replied Corentin, introducing the lawyer, who bowed.

“But,” said Sechard, “we are, so to speak, a family party; we have no secrets from our neighbors; there is no need to retire to my study, where there is no fire—our life is in the sight of all men——”

“But your father’s,” said Corentin, “was involved in certain mysteries which perhaps you would rather not make public.”

“Is it anything we need blush for?” said Eve, in alarm.

“Oh, no! a sin of his youth,” said Corentin, coldly setting one of his mouse-traps. “Monsieur, your father left an elder son——”

“Oh, the old rascal!” cried Courtois. “He was never very fond of you, Monsieur Sechard, and he kept that secret from you, the deep old dog! —Now I understand what he meant when he used to say to me, ‘You shall see what you shall see when I am under the turf.’”

“Do not be dismayed, monsieur,” said Corentin to Sechard, while he watched Eve out of the corner of his eye.

“A brother!” exclaimed the doctor. “Then your inheritance is divided into two!”

Derville was affecting to examine the fine engravings, proofs before letters, which hung on the drawing-room walls.

“Do not be dismayed, madame,” Corentin went on, seeing amazement written on Madame Sechard’s handsome features, “it is only a natural son. The rights of a natural son are not the same as those of a legitimate child. This man is in the depths of poverty, and he has a right to a certain sum calculated on the amount of the estate. The millions left by your father——”

At the word millions there was a perfectly unanimous cry from all the persons present. And now Derville ceased to study the prints.

“Old Sechard?—Millions?” said Courtois. “Who on earth told you that? Some peasant——”

“Monsieur,” said Cachan, “you are not attached to the Treasury? You may be told all the facts——”

“Be quite easy,” said Corentin, “I give you my word of honor I am not employed by the Treasury.”

Cachan, who had just signed to everybody to say nothing, gave expression to his satisfaction.

“Monsieur,” Corentin went on, “if the whole estate were but a million, a natural child’s share would still be something considerable. But we have not come to threaten a lawsuit; on the contrary, our purpose is to propose that you should hand over one hundred thousand francs, and we will depart——”

“One hundred thousand francs!” cried Cachan, interrupting him. “But, monsieur, old Sechard left twenty acres of vineyard, five small farms, ten acres of meadowland here, and not a sou besides——”

“Nothing on earth,” cried David Sechard, “would induce me to tell a lie, and less to a question of money than on any other.—Monsieur,” he said, turning to Corentin and Derville, “my father left us, besides the land——”

Courtois and Cachan signaled in vain to Sechard; he went on:

“Three hundred thousand francs, which raises the whole estate to about five hundred thousand francs.”

“Monsieur Cachan,” asked Eve Sechard, “what proportion does the law allot to a natural child?”

“Madame,” said Corentin, “we are not Turks; we only require you to swear before these gentlemen that you did not inherit more than five hundred thousand francs from your father-inlaw, and we can come to an understanding.”

“First give me your word of honor that you really are a lawyer,” said Cachan to Derville.

“Here is my passport,” replied Derville, handing him a paper folded in four; “and monsieur is not, as you might suppose, an inspector from the Treasury, so be easy,” he added. “We had an important reason for wanting to know the truth as to the Sechard estate, and we now know it.”

Derville took Madame Sechard’s hand and led her very courteously to the further end of the room.

“Madame,” said he, in a low voice, “if it were not that the honor and future prospects of the house of Grandlieu are implicated in this affair, I would never have lent myself to the stratagem devised by this gentleman of the red ribbon. But you must forgive him; it was necessary to detect the falsehood by means of which your brother has stolen a march on the beliefs of that ancient family. Beware now of allowing it to be supposed that you have given your brother twelve hundred thousand francs to repurchase the Rubempre estates——”

“Twelve hundred thousand francs!” cried Madame Sechard, turning pale. “Where did he get them, wretched boy?”

“Ah! that is the question,” replied Derville. “I fear that the source of his wealth is far from pure.”

The tears rose to Eve’s eyes, as her neighbors could see.

“We have, perhaps, done you a great service by saving you from abetting a falsehood of which the results may be positively dangerous,” the lawyer went on.

Derville left Madame Sechard sitting pale and dejected with tears on her cheeks, and bowed to the company.

“To Mansle!” said Corentin to the little boy who drove the chaise.

There was but one vacant place in the diligence from Bordeaux to Paris; Derville begged Corentin to allow him to take it, urging a press of business; but in his soul he was distrustful of his traveling companion, whose diplomatic dexterity and coolness struck him as being the result of practice. Corentin remained three days longer at Mansle, unable to get away; he was obliged to secure a place in the Paris coach by writing to Bordeaux, and did not get back till nine days after leaving home.

Peyrade, meanwhile, had called every morning, either at Passy or in Paris, to inquire whether Corentin had returned. On the eighth day he left at each house a note, written in their peculiar cipher, to explain to his friend what death hung over him, and to tell him of Lydie’s abduction and the horrible end to which his enemies had devoted them. Peyrade, bereft of Corentin, but seconded by Contenson, still kept up his disguise as a nabob. Even though his invisible foes had discovered him, he very wisely reflected that he might glean some light on the matter by remaining on the field of the contest.

Contenson had brought all his experience into play in his search for Lydie, and hoped to discover in what house she was hidden; but as the days went by, the impossibility, absolutely demonstrated, of tracing the slightest clue, added, hour by hour, to Peyrade’s despair. The old spy had a sort of guard about him of twelve or fifteen of the most experienced detectives. They watched the neighborhood of the Rue des Moineaux and the Rue Taitbout—where he lived, as a nabob, with Madame du Val–Noble. During the last three days of the term granted by Asie to reinstate Lucien on his old footing in the Hotel de Grandlieu, Contenson never left the veteran of the old general police office. And the poetic terror shed throughout the forests of America by the arts of inimical and warring tribes, of which Cooper made such good use in his novels, was here associated with the petty details of Paris life. The foot-passengers, the shops, the hackney cabs, a figure standing at a window,—everything had to the human ciphers to whom old Peyrade had intrusted his safety the thrilling interest which attaches in Cooper’s romances to a beaver-village, a rock, a bison-robe, a floating canoe, a weed straggling over the water.

“If the Spaniard has gone away, you have nothing to fear,” said Contenson to Peyrade, remarking on the perfect peace they lived in.

“But if he is not gone?” observed Peyrade.

“He took one of my men at the back of the chaise; but at Blois, my man having to get down, could not catch the chaise up again.”

Five days after Derville’s return, Lucien one morning had a call from Rastignac.

“I am in despair, my dear boy,” said his visitor, “at finding myself compelled to deliver a message which is intrusted to me because we are known to be intimate. Your marriage is broken off beyond all hope of reconciliation. Never set foot again in the Hotel de Grandlieu. To marry Clotilde you must wait till her father dies, and he is too selfish to die yet awhile. Old whist-players sit at table—the card-table—very late.

“Clotilde is setting out for Italy with Madeleine de Lenoncourt–Chaulieu. The poor girl is so madly in love with you, my dear fellow, that they have to keep an eye on her; she was bent on coming to see you, and had plotted an escape. That may comfort you in misfortune!”

Lucien made no reply; he sat gazing at Rastignac.

“And is it a misfortune, after all?” his friend went on. “You will easily find a girl as well born and better looking than Clotilde! Madame de Serizy will find you a wife out of spite; she cannot endure the Grandlieus, who never would have anything to say to her. She has a niece, little Clemence du Rouvre——”

“My dear boy,” said Lucien at length, “since that supper I am not on terms with Madame de Serizy—she saw me in Esther’s box and made a scene—and I left her to herself.”

“A woman of forty does not long keep up a quarrel with so handsome a man as you are,” said Rastignac. “I know something of these sunsets. —It lasts ten minutes in the sky, and ten years in a woman’s heart.”

“I have waited a week to hear from her.”

“Go and call.”

“Yes, I must now.”

“Are you coming at any rate to the Val–Noble’s? Her nabob is returning the supper given by Nucingen.”

“I am asked, and I shall go,” said Lucien gravely.

The day after this confirmation of his disaster, which Carlos heard of at once from Asie, Lucien went to the Rue Taitbout with Rastignac and Nucingen.

At midnight nearly all the personages of this drama were assembled in the dining-room that had formerly been Esther’s—a drama of which the interest lay hidden under the very bed of these tumultuous lives, and was known only to Esther, to Lucien, to Peyrade, to Contenson, the mulatto, and to Paccard, who attended his mistress. Asie, without its being known to Contenson and Peyrade, had been asked by Madame du Val–Noble to come and help her cook.

As they sat down to table, Peyrade, who had given Madame du Val–Noble five hundred francs that the thing might be well done, found under his napkin a scrap of paper on which these words were written in pencil, “The ten days are up at the moment when you sit down to supper.”

Peyrade handed the paper to Contenson, who was standing behind him, saying in English:

“Did you put my name here?”

Contenson read by the light of the wax-candles this “Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,” and slipped the scrap into his pocket; but he knew how difficult it is to verify a handwriting in pencil, and, above all, a sentence written in Roman capitals, that is to say, with mathematical lines, since capital letters are wholly made up of straight lines and curves, in which it is impossible to detect any trick of the hand, as in what is called running-hand.

The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit. Peyrade was visibly absent-minded. Of the men about town who give life to a supper, only Rastignac and Lucien were present. Lucien was gloomy and absorbed in thought; Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper, ate and drank with the hope of recovering them later. The three women, stricken by this chill, looked at each other. Dulness deprived the dishes of all relish. Suppers, like plays and books, have their good and bad luck.

At the end of the meal ices were served, of the kind called plombieres. As everybody knows, this kind of dessert has delicate preserved fruits laid on the top of the ice, which is served in a little glass, not heaped above the rim. These ices had been ordered by Madame du Val–Noble of Tortoni, whose shop is at the corner of the Rue Taitbout and the Boulevard.

The cook called Contenson out of the room to pay the bill.

Contenson, who thought this demand on the part of the shop-boy rather strange, went downstairs and startled him by saying:

“Then you have not come from Tortoni’s?” and then went straight upstairs again.

Paccard had meanwhile handed the ices to the company in his absence. The mulatto had hardly reached the door when one of the police constables who had kept watch in the Rue des Moineaux called up the stairs:

“Number twenty-seven.”

“What’s up?” replied Contenson, flying down again.

“Tell Papa that his daughter has come home; but, good God! in what a state. Tell him to come at once; she is dying.”

At the moment when Contenson re-entered the dining-room, old Peyrade, who had drunk a great deal, was swallowing the cherry off his ice. They were drinking to the health of Madame du Val–Noble; the nabob filled his glass with Constantia and emptied it.

In spite of his distress at the news he had to give Peyrade, Contenson was struck by the eager attention with which Paccard was looking at the nabob. His eyes sparkled like two fixed flames. Although it seemed important, still this could not delay the mulatto, who leaned over his master, just as Peyrade set his glass down.

“Lydie is at home,” said Contenson, “in a very bad state.”

Peyrade rattled out the most French of all French oaths with such a strong Southern accent that all the guests looked up in amazement. Peyrade, discovering his blunder, acknowledged his disguise by saying to Contenson in good French:

“Find me a coach—I’m off.”

Every one rose.

“Why, who are you?” said Lucien.

“Ja—who?” said the Baron.

“Bixiou told me you shammed Englishman better than he could, and I would not believe him,” said Rastignac.

“Some bankrupt caught in disguise,” said du Tillet loudly. “I suspected as much!”

“A strange place is Paris!” said Madame du Val–Noble. “After being bankrupt in his own part of town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a dandy in the Champs–Elysees with impunity!—Oh! I am unlucky! bankrupts are my bane.”

“Every flower has its peculiar blight!” said Esther quietly. “Mine is like Cleopatra’s—an asp.”

“Who am I?” echoed Peyrade from the door. “You will know ere long; for if I die, I will rise from my grave to clutch your feet every night!”

He looked at Esther and Lucien as he spoke, then he took advantage of the general dismay to vanish with the utmost rapidity, meaning to run home without waiting for the coach. In the street the spy was gripped by the arm as he crossed the threshold of the outer gate. It was Asie, wrapped in a black hood such as ladies then wore on leaving a ball.

“Send for the Sacraments, Papa Peyrade,” said she, in the voice that had already prophesied ill.

A coach was waiting. Asie jumped in, and the carriage vanished as though the wind had swept it away. There were five carriages waiting; Peyrade’s men could find out nothing.

On reaching his house in the Rue des Vignes, one of the quietest and prettiest nooks of the little town of Passy, Corentin, who was known there as a retired merchant passionately devoted to gardening, found his friend Peyrade’s note in cipher. Instead of resting, he got into the hackney coach that had brought him thither, and was driven to the Rue des Moineaux, where he found only Katt. From her he heard of Lydie’s disappearance, and remained astounded at Peyrade’s and his own want of foresight.

“But they do not know me yet,” said he to himself. “This crew is capable of anything; I must find out if they are killing Peyrade; for if so, I must not be seen any more——”

The viler a man’s life is, the more he clings to it; it becomes at every moment a protest and a revenge.

Corentin went back to the cab, and drove to his rooms to assume the disguise of a feeble old man, in a scanty greenish overcoat and a tow wig. Then he returned on foot, prompted by his friendship for Peyrade. He intended to give instructions to his most devoted and cleverest underlings.

As he went along the Rue Saint–Honore to reach the Rue Saint–Roch from the Place Vendome, he came up behind a girl in slippers, and dressed as a woman dresses for the night. She had on a white bed-jacket and a nightcap, and from time to time gave vent to a sob and an involuntary groan. Corentin out-paced her, and turning round, recognized Lydie.

“I am a friend of your father’s, of Monsieur Canquoelle’s,” said he in his natural voice.

“Ah! then here is some one I can trust!” said she.

“Do not seem to have recognized me,” Corentin went on, “for we are pursued by relentless foes, and are obliged to disguise ourselves. But tell me what has befallen you?”

“Oh, monsieur,” said the poor child, “the facts but not the story can be told—I am ruined, lost, and I do not know how——”

“Where have you come from?”

“I don’t know, monsieur. I fled with such precipitancy, I have come through so many streets, round so many turnings, fancying I was being followed. And when I met any one that seemed decent, I asked my way to get back to the Boulevards, so as to find the Rue de la Paix. And at last, after walking——What o’clock is it, monsieur?”

“Half-past eleven,” said Corentin.

“I escaped at nightfall,” said Lydie. “I have been walking for five hours.”

“Well, come along; you can rest now; you will find your good Katt.”

“Oh, monsieur, there is no rest for me! I only want to rest in the grave, and I will go and wait for death in a convent if I am worthy to be admitted——”

“Poor little girl!—But you struggled?”

“Oh yes! Oh! if you could only imagine the abject creatures they placed me with——!”

“They sent you to sleep, no doubt?”

“Ah! that is it” cried poor Lydie. “A little more strength and I should be at home. I feel that I am dropping, and my brain is not quite clear.—Just now I fancied I was in a garden——”

Corentin took Lydie in his arms, and she lost consciousness; he carried her upstairs.

“Katt!” he called.

Katt came out with exclamations of joy.

“Don’t be in too great a hurry to be glad!” said Corentin gravely; “the girl is very ill.”

When Lydie was laid on her bed and recognized her own room by the light of two candles that Katt lighted, she became delirious. She sang scraps of pretty airs, broken by vociferations of horrible sentences she had heard. Her pretty face was mottled with purple patches. She mixed up the reminiscences of her pure childhood with those of these ten days of infamy. Katt sat weeping; Corentin paced the room, stopping now and again to gaze at Lydie.

“She is paying her father’s debt,” said he. “Is there a Providence above? Oh, I was wise not to have a family. On my word of honor, a child is indeed a hostage given to misfortune, as some philosopher has said.”

“Oh!” cried the poor child, sitting up in bed and throwing back her fine long hair, “instead of lying here, Katt, I ought to be stretched in the sand at the bottom of the Seine!”

“Katt, instead of crying and looking at your child, which will never cure her, you ought to go for a doctor; the medical officer in the first instance, and then Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon ——We must save this innocent creature.”

And Corentin wrote down the addresses of these two famous physicians.

At this moment, up the stairs came some one to whom they were familiar, and the door was opened. Peyrade, in a violent sweat, his face purple, his eyes almost blood-stained, and gasping like a dolphin, rushed from the outer door to Lydie’s room, exclaiming:

“Where is my child?”

He saw a melancholy sign from Corentin, and his eyes followed his friend’s hand. Lydie’s condition can only be compared to that of a flower tenderly cherished by a gardener, now fallen from its stem, and crushed by the iron-clamped shoes of some peasant. Ascribe this simile to a father’s heart, and you will understand the blow that fell on Peyrade; the tears started to his eyes.

“You are crying!—It is my father!” said the girl.

She could still recognize her father; she got out of bed and fell on her knees at the old man’s side as he sank into a chair.

“Forgive me, papa,” said she in a tone that pierced Peyrade’s heart, and at the same moment he was conscious of what felt like a tremendous blow on his head.

“I am dying!—the villains!” were his last words.

Corentin tried to help his friend, and received his latest breath.

“Dead! Poisoned!” said he to himself. “Ah! here is the doctor!” he exclaimed, hearing the sound of wheels.

Contenson, who came with his mulatto disguise removed, stood like a bronze statue as he heard Lydie say:

“Then you do not forgive me, father?—But it was not my fault!”

She did not understand that her father was dead.

“Oh, how he stares at me!” cried the poor crazy girl.

“We must close his eyes,” said Contenson, lifting Peyrade on to the bed.

“We are doing a stupid thing,” said Corentin. “Let us carry him into his own room. His daughter is half demented, and she will go quite mad when she sees that he is dead; she will fancy that she has killed him.”

Lydie, seeing them carry away her father, looked quite stupefied.

“There lies my only friend!” said Corentin, seeming much moved when Peyrade was laid out on the bed in his own room. “In all his life he never had but one impulse of cupidity, and that was for his daughter! —Let him be an example to you, Contenson. Every line of life has its code of honor. Peyrade did wrong when he mixed himself up with private concerns; we have no business to meddle with any but public cases.

“But come what may, I swear,” said he with a voice, an emphasis, a look that struck horror into Contenson, “to avenge my poor Peyrade! I will discover the men who are guilty of his death and of his daughter’s ruin. And as sure as I am myself, as I have yet a few days to live, which I will risk to accomplish that vengeance, every man of them shall die at four o’clock, in good health, by a clean shave on the Place de Greve.”

“And I will help you,” said Contenson with feeling.

Nothing, in fact, is more heart-stirring than the spectacle of passion in a cold, self-contained, and methodical man, in whom, for twenty years, no one has ever detected the smallest impulse of sentiment. It is like a molten bar of iron which melts everything it touches. And Contenson was moved to his depths.

“Poor old Canquoelle!” said he, looking at Corentin. “He has treated me many a time.—And, I tell you, only your bad sort know how to do such things—but often has he given me ten francs to go and gamble with . . .”

After this funeral oration, Peyrade’s two avengers went back to Lydie’s room, hearing Katt and the medical officer from the Mairie on the stairs.

“Go and fetch the Chief of Police,” said Corentin. “The public prosecutor will not find grounds for a prosecution in the case; still, we will report it to the Prefecture; it may, perhaps, be of some use.

“Monsieur,” he went on to the medical officer, “in this room you will see a dead man. I do not believe that he died from natural causes; you will be good enough to make a post-mortem in the presence of the Chief of the Police, who will come at my request. Try to discover some traces of poison. You will, in a few minutes, have the opinion of Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon, for whom I have sent to examine the daughter of my best friend; she is in a worse plight than he, though he is dead.”

“I have no need of those gentlemen’s assistance in the exercise of my duty,” said the medical officer.

“Well, well,” thought Corentin. “Let us have no clashing, monsieur,” he said. “In a few words I give you my opinion—Those who have just murdered the father have also ruined the daughter.”

By daylight Lydie had yielded to fatigue; when the great surgeon and the young physician arrived she was asleep.

The doctor, whose duty it was to sign the death certificate, had now opened Peyrade’s body, and was seeking the cause of death.

“While waiting for your patient to awake,” said Corentin to the two famous doctors, “would you join one of your professional brethren in an examination which cannot fail to interest you, and your opinion will be valuable in case of an inquiry.”

“Your relations died of apoplexy,” said the official. “There are all the symptoms of violent congestion of the brain.”

“Examine him, gentlemen, and see if there is no poison capable of producing similar symptoms.”

“The stomach is, in fact, full of food substances; but short of chemical analysis, I find no evidence of poison.

“If the characters of cerebral congestion are well ascertained, we have here, considering the patient’s age, a sufficient cause of death,” observed Desplein, looking at the enormous mass of material.

“Did he sup here?” asked Bianchon.

“No,” said Corentin; “he came here in great haste from the Boulevard, and found his daughter ruined——”

“That was the poison if he loved his daughter,” said Bianchon.

“What known poison could produce a similar effect?” asked Corentin, clinging to his idea.

“There is but one,” said Desplein, after a careful examination. “It is a poison found in the Malayan Archipelago, and derived from trees, as yet but little known, of the strychnos family; it is used to poison that dangerous weapon, the Malay kris.—At least, so it is reported.”

The Police Commissioner presently arrived; Corentin told him his suspicions, and begged him to draw up a report, telling him where and with whom Peyrade had supped, and the causes of the state in which he found Lydie.

Corentin then went to Lydie’s rooms; Desplein and Bianchon had been examining the poor child. He met them at the door.

“Well, gentlemen?” asked Corentin.

“Place the girl under medical care; unless she recovers her wits when her child is born—if indeed she should have a child—she will end her days melancholy-mad. There is no hope of a cure but in the maternal instinct, if it can be aroused.”

Corentin paid each of the physicians forty francs in gold, and then turned to the Police Commissioner, who had pulled him by the sleeve.

“The medical officer insists on it that death was natural,” said this functionary, “and I can hardly report the case, especially as the dead man was old Canquoelle; he had his finger in too many pies, and we should not be sure whom we might run foul of. Men like that die to order very often——”

“And my name is Corentin,” said Corentin in the man’s ear.

The Commissioner started with surprise.

“So just make a note of all this,” Corentin went on; “it will be very useful by and by; send it up only as confidential information. The crime cannot be proved, and I know that any inquiry would be checked at the very outset.—But I will catch the criminals some day yet. I will watch them and take them red-handed.”

The police official bowed to Corentin and left.

“Monsieur,” said Katt. “Mademoiselle does nothing but dance and sing. What can I do?”

“Has any change occurred then?”

“She has understood that her father is just dead.”

“Put her into a hackney coach, and simply take her to Charenton; I will write a note to the Commissioner–General of Police to secure her being suitably provided for.—The daughter in Charenton, the father in a pauper’s grave!” said Corentin—“Contenson, go and fetch the parish hearse. And now, Don Carlos Herrera, you and I will fight it out!”

“Carlos?” said Contenson, “he is in Spain.”

“He is in Paris,” said Corentin positively. “There is a touch of Spanish genius of the Philip II. type in all this; but I have pitfalls for everybody, even for kings.”

Five days after the nabob’s disappearance, Madame du Val–Noble was sitting by Esther’s bedside weeping, for she felt herself on one of the slopes down to poverty.

“If I only had at least a hundred louis a year! With that sum, my dear, a woman can retire to some little town and find a husband——”

“I can get you as much as that,” said Esther.

“How?” cried Madame du Val–Noble.

“Oh, in a very simple way. Listen. You must plan to kill yourself; play your part well. Send for Asie and offer her ten thousand francs for two black beads of very thin glass containing a poison which kills you in a second. Bring them to me, and I will give you fifty thousand francs for them.”

“Why do you not ask her for them yourself?” said her friend.

“Asie would not sell them to me.”

“They are not for yourself?” asked Madame du Val–Noble.

“Perhaps.”

“You! who live in the midst of pleasure and luxury, in a house of your own? And on the eve of an entertainment which will be the talk of Paris for ten years—which is to cost Nucingen twenty thousand francs! There are to be strawberries in mid-February, they say, asparagus, grapes, melons!—and a thousand crowns’ worth of flowers in the rooms.”

“What are you talking about? There are a thousand crowns’ worth of roses on the stairs alone.”

“And your gown is said to have cost ten thousand francs?”

“Yes, it is of Brussels point, and Delphine, his wife, is furious. But I had a fancy to be disguised as a bride.”

“Where are the ten thousand francs?” asked Madame du Val–Noble.

“It is all the ready money I have,” said Esther, smiling. “Open my table drawer; it is under the curl-papers.”

“People who talk of dying never kill themselves,” said Madame du Val–Noble. “If it were to commit——”

“A crime? For shame!” said Esther, finishing her friend’s thought, as she hesitated. “Be quite easy, I have no intention of killing anybody. I had a friend—a very happy woman; she is dead, I must follow her —that is all.”

“How foolish!”

“How can I help it? I promised her I would.”

“I should let that bill go dishonored,” said her friend, smiling.

“Do as I tell you, and go at once. I hear a carriage coming. It is Nucingen, a man who will go mad with joy! Yes, he loves me!—Why do we not love those who love us, for indeed they do all they can to please us?”

“Ah, that is the question!” said Madame du Val–Noble. “It is the old story of the herring, which is the most puzzling fish that swims.”

“Why?”

“Well, no one could ever find out.”

“Get along, my dear!—I must ask for your fifty thousand francs.”

“Good-bye then.”

For three days past, Esther’s ways with the Baron de Nucingen had completely changed. The monkey had become a cat, the cat had become a woman. Esther poured out treasures of affection on the old man; she was quite charming. Her way of addressing him, with a total absence of mischief or bitterness, and all sorts of tender insinuation, had carried conviction to the banker’s slow wit; she called him Fritz, and he believed that she loved him.

“My poor Fritz, I have tried you sorely,” said she. “I have teased you shamefully. Your patience has been sublime. You loved me, I see, and I will reward you. I like you now, I do not know how it is, but I should prefer you to a young man. It is the result of experience perhaps.—In the long run we discover at last that pleasure is the coin of the soul; and it is not more flattering to be loved for the sake of pleasure than it is to be loved for the sake of money.

“Besides, young men are too selfish; they think more of themselves than of us; while you, now, think only of me. I am all your life to you. And I will take nothing more from you. I want to prove to you how disinterested I am.”

“Vy, I hafe gifen you notink,” cried the Baron, enchanted. “I propose to gife you tomorrow tirty tousant francs a year in a Government bond. Dat is mein vedding gift.”

Esther kissed the Baron so sweetly that he turned pale without any pills.

“Oh!” cried she, “do not suppose that I am sweet to you only for your thirty thousand francs! It is because—now—I love you, my good, fat Frederic.”

“Ach, mein Gott! Vy hafe you kept me vaiting? I might hafe been so happy all dese tree monts.”

“In three or in five per cents, my pet?” said Esther, passing her fingers through Nucingen’s hair, and arranging it in a fashion of her own.

“In trees—I hat a quantity.”

So next morning the Baron brought the certificate of shares; he came to breakfast with his dear little girl, and to take her orders for the following evening, the famous Saturday, the great day!

“Here, my little vife, my only vife,” said the banker gleefully, his face radiant with happiness. “Here is enough money to pay for your keep for de rest of your days.”

Esther took the paper without the slightest excitement, folded it up, and put it in her dressing-table drawer.

“So now you are quite happy, you monster of iniquity!” said she, giving Nucingen a little slap on the cheek, “now that I have at last accepted a present from you. I can no longer tell you home-truths, for I share the fruit of what you call your labors. This is not a gift, my poor old boy, it is restitution.—Come, do not put on your Bourse face. You know that I love you.”

“My lofely Esther, mein anchel of lofe,” said the banker, “do not speak to me like dat. I tell you, I should not care ven all de vorld took me for a tief, if you should tink me ein honest man.—I lofe you every day more and more.”

“That is my intention,” said Esther. “And I will never again say anything to distress you, my pet elephant, for you are grown as artless as a baby. Bless me, you old rascal, you have never known any innocence; the allowance bestowed on you when you came into the world was bound to come to the top some day; but it was buried so deep that it is only now reappearing at the age of sixty-six. Fished up by love’s barbed hook.—This phenomenon is seen in old men.

“And this is why I have learned to love you, you are young—so young! No one but I would ever have known this, Frederic—I alone. For you were a banker at fifteen; even at college you must have lent your school-fellows one marble on condition of their returning two.”

Seeing him laugh, she sprang on to his knee.

“Well, you must do as you please! Bless me! plunder the men—go ahead, and I will help. Men are not worth loving; Napoleon killed them off like flies. Whether they pay taxes to you or to the Government, what difference does it make to them? You don’t make love over the budget, and on my honor!—go ahead, I have thought it over, and you are right. Shear the sheep! you will find it in the gospel according to Beranger.

“Now, kiss your Esther.—I say, you will give that poor Val–Noble all the furniture in the Rue Taitbout? And tomorrow I wish you would give her fifty thousand francs—it would look handsome, my duck. You see, you killed Falleix; people are beginning to cry out upon you, and this liberality will look Babylonian—all the women will talk about it! Oh! there will be no one in Paris so grand, so noble as you; and as the world is constituted, Falleix will be forgotten. So, after all, it will be money deposited at interest.”

“You are right, mein anchel; you know the vorld,” he replied. “You shall be mein adfiser.”

“Well, you see,” said Esther, “how I study my man’s interest, his position and honor.—Go at once and bring those fifty thousand francs.”

She wanted to get rid of Monsieur de Nucingen so as to get a stockbroker to sell the bond that very afternoon.

“But vy dis minute?” asked he.

“Bless me, my sweetheart, you must give it to her in a little satin box wrapped round a fan. You must say, ‘Here, madame, is a fan which I hope may be to your taste.’—You are supposed to be a Turcaret, and you will become a Beaujon.”

“Charming, charming!” cried the Baron. “I shall be so clever henceforth.—Yes, I shall repeat your vorts.”

Just as Esther had sat down, tired with the effort of playing her part, Europe came in.

“Madame,” said she, “here is a messenger sent from the Quai Malaquais by Celestin, M. Lucien’s servant——”

“Bring him in-no, I will go into the ante-room.”

“He has a letter for you, madame, from Celestin.”

Esther rushed into the ante-room, looked at the messenger, and saw that he looked like the genuine thing.

“Tell _him_ to come down,” said Esther, in a feeble voice and dropping into a chair after reading the letter. “Lucien means to kill himself,” she added in a whisper to Europe. “No, take the letter up to him.”

Carlos Herrera, still in his disguise as a bagman, came downstairs at once, and keenly scrutinized the messenger on seeing a stranger in the ante-room.

“You said there was no one here,” said he in a whisper to Europe.

And with an excess of prudence, after looking at the messenger, he went straight into the drawing-room. _Trompe-la-Mort_ did not know that for some time past the famous constable of the detective force who had arrested him at the Maison Vauquer had a rival, who, it was supposed, would replace him. This rival was the messenger.

“They are right,” said the sham messenger to Contenson, who was waiting for him in the street. “The man you describe is in the house; but he is not a Spaniard, and I will burn my hand off if there is not a bird for our net under that priest’s gown.”

“He is no more a priest than he is a Spaniard,” said Contenson.

“I am sure of that,” said the detective.

“Oh, if only we were right!” said Contenson.

Lucien had been away for two days, and advantage had been taken of his absence to lay this snare, but he returned this evening, and the courtesan’s anxieties were allayed. Next morning, at the hour when Esther, having taken a bath, was getting into bed again, Madame du Val–Noble arrived.

“I have the two pills!” said her friend.

“Let me see,” said Esther, raising herself with her pretty elbow buried in a pillow trimmed with lace.

Madame du Val–Noble held out to her what looked like two black currants.

The Baron had given Esther a pair of greyhounds of famous pedigree, which will be always known by the name of the great contemporary poet who made them fashionable; and Esther, proud of owning them, had called them by the names of their parents, Romeo and Juliet. No need here to describe the whiteness and grace of these beasts, trained for the drawing-room, with manners suggestive of English propriety. Esther called Romeo; Romeo ran up on legs so supple and thin, so strong and sinewy, that they seemed like steel springs, and looked up at his mistress. Esther, to attract his attention, pretended to throw one of the pills.

“He is doomed by his nature to die thus,” said she, as she threw the pill, which Romeo crushed between his teeth.

The dog made no sound, he rolled over, and was stark dead. It was all over while Esther spoke these words of epitaph.

“Good God!” shrieked Madame du Val–Noble.

“You have a cab waiting. Carry away the departed Romeo,” said Esther. “His death would make a commotion here. I have given him to you, and you have lost him—advertise for him. Make haste; you will have your fifty thousand francs this evening.”

She spoke so calmly, so entirely with the cold indifference of a courtesan, that Madame du Val–Noble exclaimed:

“You are the Queen of us all!”

“Come early, and look very well——”

At five o’clock Esther dressed herself as a bride. She put on her lace dress over white satin, she had a white sash, white satin shoes, and a scarf of English point lace over her beautiful shoulders. In her hair she placed white camellia flowers, the simple ornament of an innocent girl. On her bosom lay a pearl necklace worth thirty thousand francs, a gift from Nucingen.

Though she was dressed by six, she refused to see anybody, even the banker. Europe knew that Lucien was to be admitted to her room. Lucien came at about seven, and Europe managed to get him up to her mistress without anybody knowing of his arrival.

Lucien, as he looked at her, said to himself, “Why not go and live with her at Rubempre, far from the world, and never see Paris again? I have an earnest of five years of her life, and the dear creature is one of those who never belie themselves! Where can I find such another perfect masterpiece?”

“My dear, you whom I have made my God,” said Esther, kneeling down on a cushion in front of Lucien, “give me your blessing.”

Lucien tried to raise her and kiss her, saying, “What is this jest, my dear love?” And he would have put his arm round her, but she freed herself with a gesture as much of respect as of horror.

“I am no longer worthy of you, Lucien,” said she, letting the tears rise to her eyes. “I implore you, give me your blessing, and swear to me that you will found two beds at the Hotel–Dieu—for, as to prayers in church, God will never forgive me unless I pray myself.

“I have loved you too well, my dear. Tell me that I made you happy, and that you will sometimes think of me.—Tell me that!”

Lucien saw that Esther was solemnly in earnest, and he sat thinking.

“You mean to kill yourself,” said he at last, in a tone of voice that revealed deep reflection.

“No,” said she. “But today, my dear, the woman dies, the pure, chaste, and loving woman who once was yours.—And I am very much afraid that I shall die of grief.”

“Poor child,” said Lucien, “wait! I have worked hard these two days. I have succeeded in seeing Clotilde——”

“Always Clotilde!” cried Esther, in a tone of concentrated rage.

“Yes,” said he, “we have written to each other.—On Tuesday morning she is to set out for Italy, but I shall meet her on the road for an interview at Fontainebleau.”

“Bless me! what is it that you men want for wives? Wooden laths?” cried poor Esther. “If I had seven or eight millions, would you not marry me—come now?”

“Child! I was going to say that if all is over for me, I will have no wife but you.”

Esther bent her head to hide her sudden pallor and the tears she wiped away.

“You love me?” said she, looking at Lucien with the deepest melancholy. “Well, that is my sufficient blessing.—Do not compromise yourself. Go away by the side door, and come in to the drawing-room through the ante-room. Kiss me on the forehead.”

She threw her arms round Lucien, clasped him to her heart with frenzy, and said again:

“Go, only go—or I must live.”

When the doomed woman appeared in the drawing-room, there was a cry of admiration. Esther’s eyes expressed infinitude in which the soul sank as it looked into them. Her blue-black and beautiful hair set off the camellias. In short, this exquisite creature achieved all the effects she had intended. She had no rival. She looked like the supreme expression of that unbridled luxury which surrounded her in every form. Then she was brilliantly witty. She ruled the orgy with the cold, calm power that Habeneck displays when conducting at the Conservatoire, at those concerts where the first musicians in Europe rise to the sublime in interpreting Mozart and Beethoven.

But she observed with terror that Nucingen ate little, drank nothing, and was quite the master of the house.

By midnight everybody was crazy. The glasses were broken that they might never be used again; two of the Chinese curtains were torn; Bixiou was drunk, for the second time in his life. No one could keep his feet, the women were asleep on the sofas, and the guests were incapable of carrying out the practical joke they had planned of escorting Esther and Nucingen to the bedroom, standing in two lines with candles in their hands, and singing _Buona sera_ from the _Barber of Seville_.

Nucingen simply gave Esther his hand. Bixiou, who saw them, though tipsy, was still able to say, like Rivarol, on the occasion of the Duc de Richelieu’s last marriage, “The police must be warned; there is mischief brewing here.”

The jester thought he was jesting; he was a prophet.

Monsieur de Nucingen did not go home till Monday at about noon. But at one o’clock his broker informed him that Mademoiselle Esther van Bogseck had sold the bond bearing thirty thousand francs interest on Friday last, and had just received the money.

“But, Monsieur le Baron, Derville’s head-clerk called on me just as I was settling this transfer; and after seeing Mademoiselle Esther’s real names, he told me she had come into a fortune of seven millions.”

“Pooh!”

“Yes, she is the only heir to the old bill-discounter Gobseck. —Derville will verify the facts. If your mistress’ mother was the handsome Dutch woman, _la Belle Hollandaise_, as they called her, she comes in for——”

“I know dat she is,” cried the banker. “She tolt me all her life. I shall write ein vort to Derville.”

The Baron at down at his desk, wrote a line to Derville, and sent it by one of his servants. Then, after going to the Bourse, he went back to Esther’s house at about three o’clock.

“Madame forbade our waking her on any pretence whatever. She is in bed —asleep——”

“Ach der Teufel!” said the Baron. “But, Europe, she shall not be angry to be tolt that she is fery, fery rich. She shall inherit seven millions. Old Gobseck is deat, and your mis’ess is his sole heir, for her moter vas Gobseck’s own niece; and besides, he shall hafe left a vill. I could never hafe tought that a millionaire like dat man should hafe left Esther in misery!”

“Ah, ha! Then your reign is over, old pantaloon!” said Europe, looking at the Baron with an effrontery worthy of one of Moliere’s waiting-maids. “Shooh! you old Alsatian crow! She loves you as we love the plague! Heavens above us! Millions!—Why, she may marry her lover; won’t she be glad!”

And Prudence Servien left the Baron simply thunder-stricken, to be the first to announce to her mistress this great stroke of luck. The old man, intoxicated with superhuman enjoyment, and believing himself happy, had just received a cold shower-bath on his passion at the moment when it had risen to the intensest white heat.

“She vas deceiving me!” cried he, with tears in his eyes. “Yes, she vas cheating me. Oh, Esther, my life! Vas a fool hafe I been! Can such flowers ever bloom for de old men! I can buy all vat I vill except only yout!—Ach Gott, ach Gott! Vat shall I do! Vat shall become of me!—She is right, dat cruel Europe. Esther, if she is rich, shall not be for me. Shall I go hank myself? Vat is life midout de divine flame of joy dat I have known? Mein Gott, mein Gott!”

The old man snatched off the false hair he had combed in with his gray hairs these three months past.

A piercing shriek from Europe made Nucingen quail to his very bowels. The poor banker rose and walked upstairs on legs that were drunk with the bowl of disenchantment he had just swallowed to the dregs, for nothing is more intoxicating than the wine of disaster.

At the door of her room he could see Esther stiff on her bed, blue with poison—dead!

He went up to the bed and dropped on his knees.

“You are right! She tolt me so!—She is dead—of me——”

Paccard, Asie, every one hurried in. It was a spectacle, a shock, but not despair. Every one had their doubts. The Baron was a banker again. A suspicion crossed his mind, and he was so imprudent as to ask what had become of the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, the price of the bond. Paccard, Asie, and Europe looked at each other so strangely that Monsieur de Nucingen left the house at once, believing that robbery and murder had been committed. Europe, detecting a packet of soft consistency, betraying the contents to be banknotes, under her mistress’ pillow, proceeded at once to “lay her out,” as she said.

“Go and tell monsieur, Asie!—Oh, to die before she knew that she had seven millions! Gobseck was poor madame’s uncle!” said she.

Europe’s stratagem was understood by Paccard. As soon as Asie’s back was turned, Europe opened the packet, on which the hapless courtesan had written: “To be delivered to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre.”

Seven hundred and fifty thousand-franc notes shone in the eyes of Prudence Servien, who exclaimed:

“Won’t we be happy and honest for the rest of our lives!”

Paccard made no objection. His instincts as a thief were stronger than his attachment to _Trompe-la-Mort_.

“Durut is dead,” he said at length; “my shoulder is still a proof before letters. Let us be off together; divide the money, so as not to have all our eggs in one basket, and then get married.”

“But where can we hide?” said Prudence.

“In Paris,” replied Paccard.

Prudence and Paccard went off at once, with the promptitude of two honest folks transformed into robbers.

“My child,” said Carlos to Asie, as soon as she had said three words, “find some letter of Esther’s while I write a formal will, and then take the copy and the letter to Girard; but he must be quick. The will must be under Esther’s pillow before the lawyers affix the seals here.”

And he wrote out the following will:—

“Never having loved any one on earth but Monsieur Lucien Chardon de Rubempre, and being resolved to end my life rather than relapse into vice and the life of infamy from which he rescued me, I give and bequeath to the said Lucien Chardon de Rubempre all I may possess at the time of my decease, on condition of his founding a mass in perpetuity in the parish church of Saint–Roch for the repose of her who gave him her all, to her last thought.

“ESTHER GOBSECK.”

“That is quite in her style,” thought _Trompe-la-Mort_.

By seven in the evening this document, written and sealed, was placed by Asie under Esther’s bolster.

“Jacques,” said she, flying upstairs again, “just as I came out of the room justice marched in——”

“The justice of the peace you mean?”

“No, my son. The justice of the peace was there, but he had gendarmes with him. The public prosecutor and the examining judge are there too, and the doors are guarded.”

“This death has made a stir very quickly,” remarked Jacques Collin.

“Ay, and Paccard and Europe have vanished; I am afraid they may have scared away the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs,” said Asie.

“The low villains!” said Collin. “They have done for us by their swindling game.”

Human justice, and Paris justice, that is to say, the most suspicious, keenest, cleverest, and omniscient type of justice—too clever, indeed, for it insists on interpreting the law at every turn—was at last on the point of laying its hand on the agents of this horrible intrigue.

The Baron of Nucingen, on recognizing the evidence of poison, and failing to find his seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, imagined that one of two persons whom he greatly disliked—either Paccard or Europe—was guilty of the crime. In his first impulse of rage he flew to the prefecture of police. This was a stroke of a bell that called up all Corentin’s men. The officials of the prefecture, the legal profession, the chief of the police, the justice of the peace, the examining judge,—all were astir. By nine in the evening three medical men were called in to perform an autopsy on poor Esther, and inquiries were set on foot.

_Trompe-la-Mort_, warned by Asie, exclaimed:

“No one knows that I am here; I may take an airing.” He pulled himself up by the skylight of his garret, and with marvelous agility was standing in an instant on the roof, whence he surveyed the surroundings with the coolness of a tiler.

“Good!” said he, discerning a garden five houses off in the Rue de Provence, “that will just do for me.”

“You are paid out, _Trompe-la-Mort_,” said Contenson, suddenly emerging from behind a stack of chimneys. “You may explain to Monsieur Camusot what mass you were performing on the roof, Monsieur l’Abbe, and, above all, why you were escaping——”

“I have enemies in Spain,” said Carlos Herrera.

“We can go there by way of your attic,” said Contenson.

The sham Spaniard pretended to yield; but, having set his back and feet across the opening of the skylight, he gripped Contenson and flung him off with such violence that the spy fell in the gutter of the Rue Saint–Georges.

Contenson was dead on his field of honor; Jacques Collin quietly dropped into the room again and went to bed.

“Give me something that will make me very sick without killing me,” said he to Asie; “for I must be at death’s door, to avoid answering inquisitive persons. I have just got rid of a man in the most natural way, who might have unmasked me.”

At seven o’clock on the previous evening Lucien had set out in his own chaise to post to Fontainebleau with a passport he had procured in the morning; he slept in the nearest inn on the Nemours side. At six in the morning he went alone, and on foot, through the forest as far as Bouron.

“This,” said he to himself, as he sat down on one of the rocks that command the fine landscape of Bouron, “is the fatal spot where Napoleon dreamed of making a final tremendous effort on the eve of his abdication.”

At daybreak he heard the approach of post-horses and saw a britska drive past, in which sat the servants of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt–Chaulieu and Clotilde de Grandlieu’s maid.

“Here they are!” thought Lucien. “Now, to play the farce well, and I shall be saved!—the Duc de Grandlieu’s son-inlaw in spite of him!”

It was an hour later when he heard the peculiar sound made by a superior traveling carriage, as the berline came near in which two ladies were sitting. They had given orders that the drag should be put on for the hill down to Bouron, and the man-servant behind the carriage had it stopped.

At this instant Lucien came forward.

“Clotilde!” said he, tapping on the window.

“No,” said the young Duchess to her friend, “he shall not get into the carriage, and we will not be alone with him, my dear. Speak to him for the last time—to that I consent; but on the road, where we will walk on, and where Baptiste can escort us.—The morning is fine, we are well wrapped up, and have no fear of the cold. The carriage can follow.”

The two women got out.

“Baptiste,” said the Duchess, “the post-boy can follow slowly; we want to walk a little way. You must keep near us.”

Madeleine de Mortsauf took Clotilde by the arm and allowed Lucien to talk. They thus walked on as far as the village of Grez. It was now eight o’clock, and there Clotilde dismissed Lucien.

“Well, my friend,” said she, closing this long interview with much dignity, “I never shall marry any one but you. I would rather believe in you than in other men, in my father and mother—no woman ever gave greater proof of attachment surely?—Now, try to counteract the fatal prejudices which militate against you.”

Just then the tramp of galloping horses was heard, and, to the great amazement of the ladies, a force of gendarmes surrounded the little party.

“What do you want?” said Lucien, with the arrogance of a dandy.

“Are you Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre?” asked the public prosecutor of Fontainebleau.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“You will spend to-night in La Force,” said he. “I have a warrant for the detention of your person.”

“Who are these ladies?” asked the sergeant.

“To be sure.—Excuse me, ladies—your passports? For Monsieur Lucien, as I am instructed, had acquaintances among the fair sex, who for him would——”

“Do you take the Duchesse de Lenoncourt–Chaulieu for a prostitute?” said Madeleine, with a magnificent flash at the public prosecutor.

“You are handsome enough to excuse the error,” the magistrate very cleverly retorted.

“Baptiste, produce the passports,” said the young Duchess with a smile.

“And with what crime is Monsieur de Rubempre charged?” asked Clotilde, whom the Duchess wished to see safe in the carriage.

“Of being accessory to a robbery and murder,” replied the sergeant of gendarmes.

Baptiste lifted Mademoiselle de Grandlieu into the chaise in a dead faint.

By midnight Lucien was entering La Force, a prison situated between the Rue Payenne and the Rue des Ballets, where he was placed in solitary confinement.

The Abbe Carlos Herrera was also there, having been arrested that evening.