“But that still leaves only five hundred francs,” said Contenson

imperturbably.

“Dat I gif,” added the Baron.

“That I take. Very good; and what, Monsieur le Baron, do you want for

it?”

“I haf been told dat dere vas in Paris one man vat could find the voman

vat I lof, and dat you know his address.... A real master to spy.”

“Very true.”

“Vell den, gif me dat address, and I gif you fife hundert franc.”

“Where are they?” said Contenson.

“Here dey are,” said the Baron, drawing a note out of his pocket.

“All right, hand them over,” said Contenson, holding out his hand.

“Noting for noting! Le us see de man, and you get de money; you might

sell to me many address at dat price.”

Contenson began to laugh.

“To be sure, you have a right to think that of me,” said he, with an air

of blaming himself. “The more rascally our business is, the more honesty

is necessary. But look here, Monsieur le Baron, make it six hundred, and

I will give you a bit of advice.”

“Gif it, and trust to my generosity.”

“I will risk it,” Contenson said, “but it is playing high. In such

matters, you see, we have to work underground. You say, ‘Quick

march!’--You are rich; you think that money can do everything. Well,

money is something, no doubt. Still, money can only buy men, as the two

or three best heads in our force so often say. And there are many things

you would never think of which money cannot buy.--You cannot buy good

luck. So good police work is not done in this style. Will you show

yourself in a carriage with me? We should be seen. Chance is just as

often for us as against us.”

“Really-truly?” said the Baron.

“Why, of course, sir. A horseshoe picked up in the street led the chief

of the police to the discovery of the infernal machine. Well, if we were

to go to-night in a hackney coach to Monsieur de Saint-Germain, he would

not like to see you walk in any more than you would like to be seen

going there.”

“Dat is true,” said the Baron.

“Ah, he is the greatest of the great! such another as the famous

Corentin, Fouche’s right arm, who was, some say, his natural son, born

while he was still a priest; but that is nonsense. Fouche knew how to

be a priest as he knew how to be a Minister. Well, you will not get this

man to do anything for you, you see, for less than ten thousand-franc

notes--think of that.--But he will do the job, and do it well. Neither

seen nor heard, as they say. I ought to give Monsieur de Saint-Germanin

notice, and he will fix a time for your meeting in some place where no

one can see or hear, for it is a dangerous game to play policeman for

private interests. Still, what is to be said? He is a good fellow, the

king of good fellows, and a man who has undergone much persecution, and

for having saving his country too!--like me, like all who helped to save

it.”

“Vell den, write and name de happy day,” said the Baron, smiling at his

humble jest.

“And Monsieur le Baron will allow me to drink his health?” said

Contenson, with a manner at once cringing and threatening.

“Shean,” cried the Baron to the gardener, “go and tell Chorge to sent me

one twenty francs, and pring dem to me----”

“Still, Monsieur le Baron, if you have no more information than you have

just given me, I doubt whether the great man can be of any use to you.”

“I know off oders!” replied the Baron with a cunning look.

“I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron,” said

Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. “I shall have the honor of

calling again to tell Georges where you are to go this evening, for we

never write anything in such cases when they are well managed.”

“It is funny how sharp dese rascals are!” said the Baron to himself; “it

is de same mit de police as it is in buss’niss.”

When he left the Baron, Contenson went quietly from the Rue Saint-Lazare

to the Rue Saint-Honore, as far as the Cafe David. He looked in through

the windows, and saw an old man who was known there by the name of le

Pere Canquoelle.

The Cafe David, at the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue

Saint-Honore, enjoyed a certain celebrity during the first thirty years

of the century, though its fame was limited to the quarter known as

that of the Bourdonnais. Here certain old retired merchants, and large

shopkeepers still in trade, were wont to meet--the Camusots, the Lebas,

the Pilleraults, the Popinots, and a few house-owners like little old

Molineux. Now and again old Guillaume might be seen there, coming

from the Rue du Colombier. Politics were discussed in a quiet way, but

cautiously, for the opinions of the Cafe David were liberal. The gossip

of the neighborhood was repeated, men so urgently feel the need of

laughing at each other!

This cafe, like all cafes for that matter, had its eccentric character

in the person of the said Pere Canquoelle, who had been regular in

his attendance there since 1811, and who seemed to be so completely in

harmony with the good folks who assembled there, that they all talked

politics in his presence without reserve. Sometimes this old fellow,

whose guilelessness was the subject of much laughter to the customers,

would disappear for a month or two; but his absence never surprised

anybody, and was always attributed to his infirmities or his great age,

for he looked more than sixty in 1811.

“What has become of old Canquoelle?” one or another would ask of the

manageress at the desk.

“I quite expect that one fine day we shall read in the

advertisement-sheet that he is dead,” she would reply.

Old Canquoelle bore a perpetual certificate of his native province

in his accent. He spoke of _une estatue_ (a statue), _le peuble_ (the

people), and said _ture_ for _turc_. His name was that of a tiny estate

called les Canquoelles, a word meaning cockchafer in some districts,

situated in the department of Vaucluse, whence he had come. At last

every one had fallen into the habit of calling him Canquoelle, instead

of des Canquoelles, and the old man took no offence, for in his

opinion the nobility had perished in 1793; and besides, the land of les

Canquoelles did not belong to him; he was a younger son’s younger son.

Nowadays old Canquoelle’s costume would look strange, but between 1811

and 1820 it astonished no one. The old man wore shoes with cut-steel

buckles, silk stockings with stripes round the leg, alternately blue and

white, corded silk knee-breeches with oval buckles cut to match those

on his shoes. A white embroidered waistcoat, an old coat of olive-brown

with metal buttons, and a shirt with a flat-pleated frill completed his

costume. In the middle of the shirt-frill twinkled a small gold locket,

in which might be seen, under glass, a little temple worked in hair, one

of those pathetic trifles which give men confidence, just as a scarecrow

frightens sparrows. Most men, like other animals, are frightened or

reassured by trifles. Old Canquoelle’s breeches were kept in place by a

buckle which, in the fashion of the last century, tightened them across

the stomach; from the belt hung on each side a short steel chain,

composed of several finer chains, and ending in a bunch of seals. His

white neckcloth was fastened behind by a small gold buckle. Finally,

on his snowy and powdered hair, he still, in 1816, wore the municipal

cocked hat which Monsieur Try, the President of the Law Courts, also

used to wear. But Pere Canquoelle had recently substituted for this hat,

so dear to old men, the undignified top-hat, which no one dares to rebel

against. The good man thought he owed so much as this to the spirit of

the age. A small pigtail tied with a ribbon had traced a semicircle on

the back of his coat, the greasy mark being hidden by powder.

If you looked no further than the most conspicuous feature of his face,

a nose covered with excrescences red and swollen enough to figure in

a dish of truffles, you might have inferred that the worthy man had an

easy temper, foolish and easy-going, that of a perfect gaby; and you

would have been deceived, like all at the Cafe David, where no one had

ever remarked the studious brow, the sardonic mouth, and the cold eyes

of this old man, petted by his vices, and as calm as Vitellius, whose

imperial and portly stomach reappeared in him palingenetically, so to

speak.

In 1816 a young commercial traveler named Gaudissart, who frequented

the Cafe David, sat drinking from eleven o’clock till midnight with a

half-pay officer. He was so rash as to discuss a conspiracy against the

Bourbons, a rather serious plot then on the point of execution. There

was no one to be seen in the cafe but Pere Canquoelle, who seemed to

be asleep, two waiters who were dozing, and the accountant at the desk.

Within four-and-twenty hours Gaudissart was arrested, the plot was

discovered. Two men perished on the scaffold. Neither Gaudissart nor any

one else ever suspected that worthy old Canquoelle of having peached.

The waiters were dismissed; for a year they were all on their guard and

afraid of the police--as Pere Canquoelle was too; indeed, he talked of

retiring from the Cafe David, such horror had he of the police.

Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy, and did not

look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers; but when he had gulped

down the brandy, he took out the Baron’s gold piece, and called the

waiter by rapping three short raps on the table. The lady at the

desk and the waiter examined the coin with a minute care that was not

flattering to Contenson; but their suspicions were justified by the

astonishment produced on all the regular customers by Contenson’s

appearance.

“Was that gold got by theft or by murder?”

This was the idea that rose to some clear and shrewd minds as they

looked at Contenson over their spectacles, while affecting to read the

news. Contenson, who saw everything and never was surprised at anything,

scornfully wiped his lips with a bandana, in which there were but three

darns, took his change, slipped all the coppers into his side pocket,

of which the lining, once white, was now as black as the cloth of the

trousers, and did not leave one for the waiter.

“What a gallows-bird!” said Pere Canquoelle to his neighbor Monsieur

Pillerault.

“Pshaw!” said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for he alone had

expressed no astonishment, “it is Contenson, Louchard’s right-hand man,

the police agent we employ in business. The rascals want to nab some one

who is hanging about perhaps.”

It would seem necessary to explain here the terrible and profoundly

cunning man who was hidden under the guise of Pere Canquoelle, as

Vautrin was hidden under that of the Abbe Carlos.

Born at Canquoelles, the only possession of his family, which was highly

respectable, this Southerner’s name was Peyrade. He belonged, in fact,

to the younger branch of the Peyrade family, an old but impoverished

house of Franche Comte, still owning the little estate of la Peyrade.

The seventh child of his father, he had come on foot to Paris in 1772

at the age of seventeen, with two crowns of six francs in his pocket,

prompted by the vices of an ardent spirit and the coarse desire to “get

on,” which brings so many men to Paris from the south as soon as they

understand that their father’s property can never supply them with means

to gratify their passions. It is enough to say of Peyrade’s youth that

in 1782 he was in the confidence of chiefs of the police and the hero

of the department, highly esteemed by MM. Lenoir and d’Albert, the last

Lieutenant-Generals of Police.

The Revolution had no police; it needed none. Espionage, though common

enough, was called public spirit.

The Directorate, a rather more regular government than that of the

Committee of Public Safety, was obliged to reorganize the Police, and

the first Consul completed the work by instituting a Prefect of Police

and a department of police supervision.

Peyrade, a man knowing the traditions, collected the force with the

assistance of a man named Corentin, a far cleverer man than Peyrade,

though younger; but he was a genius only in the subterranean ways of

police inquiries. In 1808 the great services Peyrade was able to

achieve were rewarded by an appointment to the eminent position of

Chief Commissioner of Police at Antwerp. In Napoleon’s mind this sort of

Police Governorship was equivalent to a Minister’s post, with the duty

of superintending Holland. At the end of the campaign of 1809, Peyrade

was removed from Antwerp by an order in Council from the Emperor,

carried in a chaise to Paris between two gendarmes, and imprisoned in la

Force. Two months later he was let out on bail furnished by his friend

Corentin, after having been subjected to three examinations, each

lasting six hours, in the office of the head of the Police.

Did Peyrade owe his overthrow to the miraculous energy he displayed in

aiding Fouche in the defence of the French coast when threatened by

what was known at the time as the Walcheren expedition, when the Duke of

Otranto manifested such abilities as alarmed the Emperor? Fouche thought

it probable even then; and now, when everybody knows what went on in the

Cabinet Council called together by Cambaceres, it is absolutely certain.

The Ministers, thunderstruck by the news of England’s attempt, a

retaliation on Napoleon for the Boulogne expedition, and taken by

surprise when the Master was entrenched in the island of Lobau, where

all Europe believed him to be lost, had not an idea which way to turn.

The general opinion was in favor of sending post haste to the Emperor;

Fouche alone was bold enough to sketch a plan of campaign, which, in

fact, he carried into execution.

“Do as you please,” said Cambaceres; “but I, who prefer to keep my head

on my shoulders, shall send a report to the Emperor.”

It is well known that the Emperor on his return found an absurd pretext,

at a full meeting of the Council of State, for discarding his Minister

and punishing him for having saved France without the Sovereign’s help.

From that time forth, Napoleon had doubled the hostility of Prince

de Talleyrand and the Duke of Otranto, the only two great politicians

formed by the Revolution, who might perhaps have been able to save

Napoleon in 1813.

To get rid of Peyrade, he was simply accused of connivance in favoring

smuggling and sharing certain profits with the great merchants. Such an

indignity was hard on a man who had earned the Marshal’s baton of the

Police Department by the great services he had done. This man, who had

grown old in active business, knew all the secrets of every Government

since 1775, when he had entered the service. The Emperor, who believed

himself powerful enough to create men for his own uses, paid no heed to

the representations subsequently laid before him in favor of a man who

was reckoned as one of the most trustworthy, most capable, and most

acute of the unknown genii whose task it is to watch over the safety

of a State. He thought he could put Contenson in Peyrade’s place; but

Contenson was at that time employed by Corentin for his own benefit.

Peyrade felt the blow all the more keenly because, being greedy and a

libertine, he had found himself, with regard to women, in the position

of a pastry-cook who loves sweetmeats. His habits of vice had become to

him a second nature; he could not live without a good dinner, without

gambling, in short, without the life of an unpretentious fine gentleman,

in which men of powerful faculties so generally indulge when they have

allowed excessive dissipation to become a necessity. Hitherto, he had

lived in style without ever being expected to entertain; and living

well, for no one ever looked for a return from him, or from his friend

Corentin. He was cynically witty, and he liked his profession; he was

a philosopher. And besides, a spy, whatever grade he may hold in the

machinery of the police, can no more return to a profession regarded as

honorable or liberal, than a prisoner from the hulks can. Once branded,

once matriculated, spies and convicts, like deacons, have assumed an

indelible character. There are beings on whom social conditions impose

an inevitable fate.

Peyrade, for his further woe, was very fond of a pretty little girl whom

he knew to be his own child by a celebrated actress to whom he had done

a signal service, and who, for three months, had been grateful to him.

Peyrade, who had sent for his child from Antwerp, now found himself

without employment in Paris and with no means beyond a pension of twelve

hundred francs a year allowed him by the Police Department as Lenoir’s

old disciple. He took lodgings in the Rue des Moineaux on the fourth

floor, five little rooms, at a rent of two hundred and fifty francs.

If any man should be aware of the uses and sweets of friendship, is

it not the moral leper known to the world as a spy, to the mob as a

_mouchard_, to the department as an “agent”? Peyrade and Corentin were

such friends as Orestes and Pylades. Peyrade had trained Corentin as

Vien trained David; but the pupil soon surpassed his master. They had

carried out more than one undertaking together. Peyrade, happy at having

discerned Corentin’s superior abilities, had started him in his career

by preparing a success for him. He obliged his disciple to make use of

a mistress who had scorned him as a bait to catch a man (see _The

Chouans_). And Corentin at that time was hardly five-and-twenty.

Corentin, who had been retained as one of the generals of whom the

Minister of Police is the High Constable, still held under the Duc de

Rovigo the high position he had filled under the Duke of Otranto. Now

at that time the general police and the criminal police were managed on

similar principles. When any important business was on hand, an account

was opened, as it were, for the three, four, five, really capable

agents. The Minister, on being warned of some plot, by whatever means,

would say to one of his colonels of the police force:

“How much will you want to achieve this or that result?”

Corentin or Contenson would go into the matter and reply:

“Twenty, thirty, or forty thousand francs.”

Then, as soon as the order was given to go ahead, all the means and the

men were left to the judgment of Corentin or the agent selected. And the

criminal police used to act in the same way to discover crimes with the

famous Vidocq.

Both branches of the police chose their men chiefly from among the ranks

of well-known agents, who have matriculated in the business, and are,

as it were, as soldiers of the secret army, so indispensable to a

government, in spite of the public orations of philanthropists or

narrow-minded moralists. But the absolute confidence placed in two men

of the temper of Peyrade and Corentin conveyed to them the right

of employing perfect strangers, under the risk, moreover, of being

responsible to the Minister in all serious cases. Peyrade’s experience

and acumen were too valuable to Corentin, who, after the storm of 1820

had blown over, employed his old friend, constantly consulted him, and

contributed largely to his maintenance. Corentin managed to put about a

thousand francs a month into Peyrade’s hands.

Peyrade, on his part, did Corentin good service. In 1816 Corentin, on

the strength of the discovery of the conspiracy in which the Bonapartist

Gaudissart was implicated, tried to get Peyrade reinstated in his place

in the police office; but some unknown influence was working against

Peyrade. This was the reason why.

In their anxiety to make themselves necessary, Peyrade, Corentin, and

Contenson, at the Duke of Otranto’s instigation, had organized for

the benefit of Louis XVIII. a sort of opposition police in which very

capable agents were employed. Louis XVIII. died possessed of secrets

which will remain secrets from the best informed historians. The

struggle between the general police of the kingdom, and the King’s

opposition police, led to many horrible disasters, of which a certain

number of executions sealed the secrets. This is neither the place

nor the occasion for entering into details on this subject, for these

“Scenes of Paris Life” are not “Scenes of Political Life.” Enough has

been said to show what were the means of living of the man who at the

Cafe David was known as good old Canquoelle, and by what threads he was

tied to the terrible and mysterious powers of the police.

Between 1817 and 1822, Corentin, Contenson, Peyrade, and their

myrmidons, were often required to keep watch over the Minister of Police

himself. This perhaps explains why the Minister declined to employ

Peyrade and Contenson, on whom Corentin contrived to cast the Minister’s

suspicions, in order to be able to make use of his friend when his

reinstatement was evidently out of the question. The Ministry put their

faith in Corentin; they enjoined him to keep an eye on Peyrade, which

amused Louis XVIII. Corentin and Peyrade were then masters of the

position. Contenson, long attached to Peyrade, was still at his

service. He had joined the force of the commercial police (the Gardes du

Commerce) by his friend’s orders. And, in fact, as a result of the sort

of zeal that is inspired by a profession we love, these two chiefs liked

to place their best men in those posts where information was most likely

to flow in.

And, indeed, Contenson’s vices and dissipated habits, which had dragged

him lower than his two friends, consumed so much money, that he needed a

great deal of business.

Contenson, without committing any indiscretion, had told Louchard that

he knew the only man who was capable of doing what the Baron de Nucingen

required. Peyrade was, in fact, the only police-agent who could act

on behalf of a private individual with impunity. At the death of Louis

XVIII., Peyrade had not only ceased to be of consequence, but had lost

the profits of his position as spy-in-ordinary to His Majesty. Believing

himself to be indispensable, he had lived fast. Women, high feeding,

and the club, the _Cercle des Etrangers_, had prevented this man from

saving, and, like all men cut out for debauchery, he enjoyed an iron

constitution. But between 1826 and 1829, when he was nearly seventy-four

years of age, he had stuck half-way, to use his own expression. Year by

year he saw his comforts dwindling. He followed the police department

to its grave, and saw with regret that Charles X.’s government was

departing from its good old traditions. Every session saw the estimates

pared down which were necessary to keep up the police, out of hatred

for that method of government and a firm determination to reform that

institution.

“It is as if they thought they could cook in white gloves,” said Peyrade

to Corentin.

In 1822 this couple foresaw 1830. They knew how bitterly Louis XVIII.

hated his successor, which accounts for his recklessness with regard to

the younger branch, and without which his reign would be an unanswerable

riddle.

As Peyrade grew older, his love for his natural daughter had increased.

For her sake he had adopted his citizen guise, for he intended that his

Lydie should marry respectably. So for the last three years he had been

especially anxious to find a corner, either at the Prefecture of Police,

or in the general Police Office--some ostensible and recognized post.

He had ended by inventing a place, of which the necessity, as he told

Corentin, would sooner or later be felt. He was anxious to create an

inquiry office at the Prefecture of Police, to be intermediate between

the Paris police in the strictest sense, the criminal police, and the

superior general police, so as to enable the supreme board to profit by

the various scattered forces. No one but Peyrade, at his age, and after

fifty-five years of confidential work, could be the connecting link

between the three branches of the police, or the keeper of the records

to whom political and judicial authority alike could apply for the

elucidation of certain cases. By this means Peyrade hoped, with

Corentin’s assistance, to find a husband and scrape together a portion

for his little Lydie. Corentin had already mentioned the matter to

the Director-General of the police forces of the realm, without naming

Peyrade; and the Director-General, a man from the south, thought it

necessary that the suggestion should come from the chief of the city

police.

At the moment when Contenson struck three raps on the table with the

gold piece, a signal conveying, “I want to speak to you,” the senior was

reflecting on this problem: “By whom, and under what pressure can the

Prefet of Police be made to move?”--And he looked like a noodle studying

his _Courrier Francais_.

“Poor Fouche!” thought he to himself, as he made his way along the Rue

Saint-Honore, “that great man is dead! our go-betweens with Louis XVIII.

are out of favor. And besides, as Corentin said only yesterday, nobody

believes in the activity or the intelligence of a man of seventy. Oh,

why did I get into a habit of dining at Very’s, of drinking choice

wines, of singing _La Mere Godichon_, of gambling when I am in funds?

To get a place and keep it, as Corentin says, it is not enough to be

clever, you must have the gift of management. Poor dear M. Lenoir was

right when he wrote to me in the matter of the Queen’s necklace, ‘You

will never do any good,’ when he heard that I did not stay under that

slut Oliva’s bed.”

If the venerable Pere Canquoelle--he was called so in the house--lived

on in the Rue des Moineaux, on a fourth floor, you may depend on it

he had found some peculiarity in the arrangement of the premises which

favored the practice of his terrible profession.

The house, standing at the corner of the Rue Saint-Roch, had no

neighbors on one side; and as the staircase up the middle divided it

into two, there were on each floor two perfectly isolated rooms. Those

two rooms looked out on the Rue Saint-Roch. There were garret rooms

above the fourth floor, one of them a kitchen, and the other a bedroom

for Pere Canquoelle’s only servant, a Fleming named Katt, formerly

Lydie’s wet-nurse. Old Canquoelle had taken one of the outside rooms

for his bedroom, and the other for his study. The study ended at the

party-wall, a very thick one. The window opening on the Rue des Moineaux

looked on a blank wall at the opposite corner. As this study was divided

from the stairs by the whole width of Peyrade’s bedroom, the friends

feared no eye, no ear, as they talked business in this study made on

purpose for his detestable trade.

Peyrade, as a further precaution, had furnished Katt’s room with a thick

straw bed, a felt carpet, and a very heavy rug, under the pretext

of making his child’s nurse comfortable. He had also stopped up the

chimney, warming his room by a stove, with a pipe through the wall

to the Rue Saint-Roch. Finally, he laid several rugs on his floor to

prevent the slightest sound being heard by the neighbors beneath. An

expert himself in the tricks of spies, he sounded the outer wall, the

ceiling, and the floor once a week, examining them as if he were in

search of noxious insects. It was the security of this room from

all witnesses or listeners that had made Corentin select it as his

council-chamber when he did not hold a meeting in his own room.

Where Corentin lived was known to no one but the Chief of the Superior

Police and to Peyrade; he received there such personages as the Ministry

or the King selected to conduct very serious cases; but no agent or

subordinate ever went there, and he plotted everything connected with

their business at Peyrade’s. In this unpretentious room schemes were

matured, and resolutions passed, which would have furnished strange

records and curious dramas if only walls could talk. Between 1816 and

1826 the highest interests were discussed there. There first germinated

the events which grew to weigh on France. There Peyrade and Corentin,

with all the foresight, and more than all the information of Bellart,

the Attorney-General, had said even in 1819: “If Louis XVIII. does not

consent to strike such or such a blow, to make away with such or such

a prince, is it because he hates his brother? He must wish to leave him

heir to a revolution.”

Peyrade’s door was graced with a slate, on which very strange marks

might sometimes be seen, figures scrawled in chalk. This sort of devil’s

algebra bore the clearest meaning to the initiated.

Lydie’s rooms, opposite to Peyrade’s shabby lodging, consisted of an

ante-room, a little drawing-room, a bedroom, and a small dressing-room.

The door, like that of Peyrade’s room, was constructed of a plate of

sheet-iron three lines thick, sandwiched between two strong oak planks,

fitted with locks and elaborate hinges, making it as impossible to force

it as if it were a prison door. Thus, though the house had a public

passage through it, with a shop below and no doorkeeper, Lydie lived

there without a fear. The dining-room, the little drawing-room, and her

bedroom--every window-balcony a hanging garden--were luxurious in their

Dutch cleanliness.

The Flemish nurse had never left Lydie, whom she called her daughter.

The two went to church with a regularity that gave the royalist grocer,

who lived below, in the corner shop, an excellent opinion of the worthy

Canquoelle. The grocer’s family, kitchen, and counter-jumpers occupied

the first floor and the entresol; the landlord inhabited the second

floor; and the third had been let for twenty years past to a lapidary.

Each resident had a key of the street door. The grocer’s wife was all

the more willing to receive letters and parcels addressed to these three

quiet households, because the grocer’s shop had a letter-box.

Without these details, strangers, or even those who know Paris well,

could not have understood the privacy and quietude, the isolation and

safety which made this house exceptional in Paris. After midnight,

Pere Canquoelle could hatch plots, receive spies or ministers, wives or

hussies, without any one on earth knowing anything about it.

Peyrade, of whom the Flemish woman would say to the grocer’s cook, “He

would not hurt a fly!” was regarded as the best of men. He grudged his

daughter nothing. Lydie, who had been taught music by Schmucke, was

herself a musician capable of composing; she could wash in a sepia

drawing, and paint in gouache and water-color. Every Sunday Peyrade

dined at home with her. On that day this worthy was wholly paternal.

Lydie, religious but not a bigot, took the Sacrament at Easter, and

confessed every month. Still, she allowed herself from time to time to

be treated to the play. She walked in the Tuileries when it was fine.

These were all her pleasures, for she led a sedentary life. Lydie, who

worshiped her father, knew absolutely nothing of his sinister gifts and

dark employments. Not a wish had ever disturbed this pure child’s pure

life. Slight and handsome like her mother, gifted with an exquisite

voice, and a delicate face framed in fine fair hair, she looked like

one of those angels, mystical rather than real, which some of the early

painters grouped in the background of the Holy Family. The glance of her

blue eyes seemed to bring a beam from the sky on those she favored with

a look. Her dress, quite simple, with no exaggeration of fashion, had a

delightful middle-class modesty. Picture to yourself an old Satan as the

father of an angel, and purified in her divine presence, and you will

have an idea of Peyrade and his daughter. If anybody had soiled this

jewel, her father would have invented, to swallow him alive, one of

those dreadful plots in which, under the Restoration, the unhappy

wretches were trapped who were designate to die on the scaffold. A

thousand crowns were ample maintenance for Lydie and Katt, whom she

called nurse.

As Peyrade turned into the Rue des Moineaux, he saw Contenson; he

outstripped him, went upstairs before him, heard the man’s steps on the

stairs, and admitted him before the woman had put her nose out of the

kitchen door. A bell rung by the opening of a glass door, on the third

story where the lapidary lived warned the residents on that and the

fourth floors when a visitor was coming to them. It need hardly be said

that, after midnight, Peyrade muffled this bell.

“What is up in such a hurry, Philosopher?”

Philosopher was the nickname bestowed on Contenson by Peyrade, and well

merited by the Epictetus among police agents. The name of Contenson,

alas! hid one of the most ancient names of feudal Normandy.

“Well, there is something like ten thousand francs to be netted.”

“What is it? Political?”

“No, a piece of idiocy. Baron de Nucingen, you know, the old certified

swindler, is neighing after a woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes,

and she has got to be found, or he will die of love.--They had a

consultation of doctors yesterday, by what his man tells me.--I have

already eased him of a thousand francs under pretence of seeking the

fair one.”

And Contenson related Nucingen’s meeting with Esther, adding that the

Baron had now some further information.

“All right,” said Peyrade, “we will find his Dulcinea; tell the Baron

to come to-night in a carriage to the Champs-Elysees--the corner of the

Avenue de Gabriel and the Allee de Marigny.”

Peyrade saw Contenson out, and knocked at his daughter’s rooms, as

he always knocked to be let in. He was full of glee; chance had just

offered the means, at last, of getting the place he longed for.

He flung himself into a deep armchair, after kissing Lydie on the

forehead, and said:

“Play me something.”

Lydie played him a composition for the piano by Beethoven.

“That is very well played, my pet,” said he, taking Lydie on his knees.

“Do you know that we are one-and-twenty years old? We must get married

soon, for our old daddy is more than seventy----”

“I am quite happy here,” said she.

“You love no one but your ugly old father?” asked Peyrade.

“Why, whom should I love?”

“I am dining at home, my darling; go and tell Katt. I am thinking of

settling, of getting an appointment, and finding a husband worthy of

you; some good young man, very clever, whom you may some day be proud

of----”

“I have never seen but one yet that I should have liked for a

husband----”

“You have seen one then?”

“Yes, in the Tuileries,” replied Lydie. “He walked past me; he was

giving his arm to the Comtesse de Serizy.”

“And his name is?”

“Lucien de Rubempre.--I was sitting with Katt under a lime-tree,

thinking of nothing. There were two ladies sitting by me, and one said

to the other, ‘There are Madame de Serizy and that handsome Lucien de

Rubempre.’--I looked at the couple that the two ladies were watching.

‘Oh, my dear!’ said the other, ‘some women are very lucky! That woman

is allowed to do everything she pleases just because she was a de

Ronquerolles, and her husband is in power.’--‘But, my dear,’ said the

other lady, ‘Lucien costs her very dear.’--What did she mean, papa?”

“Just nonsense, such as people of fashion will talk,” replied Peyrade,

with an air of perfect candor. “Perhaps they were alluding to political

matters.”

“Well, in short, you asked me a question, so I answer you. If you want

me to marry, find me a husband just like that young man.”

“Silly child!” replied her father. “The fact that a man is handsome

is not always a sign of goodness. Young men gifted with an attractive

appearance meet with no obstacles at the beginning of life, so they make

no use of any talent; they are corrupted by the advances made to them

by society, and they have to pay interest later for their

attractiveness!--What I should like for you is what the middle classes,

the rich, and the fools leave unholpen and unprotected----”

“What, father?”

“An unrecognized man of talent. But, there, child; I have it in my power

to hunt through every garret in Paris, and carry out your programme by

offering for your affection a man as handsome as the young scamp you

speak of; but a man of promise, with a future before him destined to

glory and fortune.--By the way, I was forgetting. I must have a whole

flock of nephews, and among them there must be one worthy of you!--I

will write, or get some one to write to Provence.”

A strange coincidence! At this moment a young man, half-dead of hunger

and fatigue, who had come on foot from the department of Vaucluse--a

nephew of Pere Canquoelle’s in search of his uncle, was entering Paris

through the Barriere de l’Italie. In the day-dreams of the family,

ignorant of this uncle’s fate, Peyrade had supplied the text for many

hopes; he was supposed to have returned from India with millions!

Stimulated by these fireside romances, this grand-nephew, named

Theodore, had started on a voyage round the world in quest of this

eccentric uncle.

After enjoying for some hours the joys of paternity, Peyrade, his hair

washed and dyed--for his powder was a disguise--dressed in a stout,

coarse, blue frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, and a black cloak, shod

in strong, thick-soled boots, furnished himself with a private card and

walked slowly along the Avenue Gabriel, where Contenson, dressed as

an old costermonger woman, met him in front of the gardens of the

Elysee-Bourbon.

“Monsieur de Saint-Germain,” said Contenson, giving his old chief the

name he was officially known by, “you have put me in the way of making

five hundred pieces (francs); but what I came here for was to tell you

that that damned Baron, before he gave me the shiners, had been to ask

questions at the house (the Prefecture of Police).”

“I shall want you, no doubt,” replied Peyrade. “Look up numbers 7, 10,

and 21; we can employ those men without any one finding it out, either

at the Police Ministry or at the Prefecture.”

Contenson went back to a post near the carriage in which Monsieur de

Nucingen was waiting for Peyrade.

“I am Monsieur de Saint-Germain,” said Peyrade to the Baron, raising

himself to look over the carriage door.

“Ver’ goot; get in mit me,” replied the Baron, ordering the coachman to

go on slowly to the Arc de l’Etoile.

“You have been to the Prefecture of Police, Monsieur le Baron? That was

not fair. Might I ask what you said to M. le Prefet, and what he said in

reply?” asked Peyrade.

“Before I should gif fife hundert francs to a filain like Contenson, I

vant to know if he had earned dem. I simply said to the Prefet of Police

dat I vant to employ ein agent named Peyrate to go abroat in a delicate

matter, an’ should I trust him--unlimited!--The Prefet telt me you vas a

very clefer man an’ ver’ honest man. An’ dat vas everything.”

“And now that you have learned my true name, Monsieur le Baron, will you

tell me what it is you want?”

When the Baron had given a long and copious explanation, in his hideous

Polish-Jew dialect, of his meeting with Esther and the cry of the man

behind the carriage, and his vain efforts, he ended by relating what had

occurred at his house the night before, Lucien’s involuntary smile,

and the opinion expressed by Bianchon and some other young dandies that

there must be some acquaintance between him and the unknown fair.

“Listen to me, Monsieur le Baron; you must, in the first instance, place

ten thousand francs in my hands, on account for expenses; for, to

you, this is a matter of life or death; and as your life is a

business-manufactory, nothing must be left undone to find this woman for

you. Oh, you are caught!----”

“Ja, I am caught!”

“If more money is wanted, Baron, I will let you know; put your trust in

me,” said Peyrade. “I am not a spy, as you perhaps imagine. In 1807 I

was Commissioner-General of Police at Antwerp; and now that Louis XVIII.

is dead, I may tell you in confidence that for seven years I was the

chief of his counter-police. So there is no beating me down. You

must understand, Monsieur le Baron, that it is impossible to make any

estimate of the cost of each man’s conscience before going into the

details of such an affair. Be quite easy; I shall succeed. Do not fancy

that you can satisfy me with a sum of money; I want something for my

reward----”

“So long as dat is not a kingtom!” said the Baron.

“It is less than nothing to you.”

“Den I am your man.”

“You know the Kellers?”

“Oh! ver’ well.”

“Francois Keller is the Comte de Gondreville’s son-in-law, and the Comte

de Gondreville and his son-in-law dined with you yesterday.”

“Who der teufel tolt you dat?” cried the Baron. “Dat vill be Georche;

he is always a gossip.” Peyrade smiled, and the banker at once formed

strange suspicions of his man-servant.

“The Comte de Gondreville is quite in a position to obtain me a place I

covet at the Prefecture of Police; within forty-eight hours the prefet

will have notice that such a place is to be created,” said Peyrade

in continuation. “Ask for it for me; get the Comte de Gondreville to

interest himself in the matter with some degree of warmth--and you will

thus repay me for the service I am about to do you. I ask your word

only; for, if you fail me, sooner or later you will curse the day you

were born--you have Peyrade’s word for that.”

“I gif you mein vort of honor to do vat is possible.”

“If I do no more for you than is possible, it will not be enough.”

“Vell, vell, I vill act qvite frankly.”

“Frankly--that is all I ask,” said Peyrade, “and frankness is the only

thing at all new that you and I can offer to each other.”

“Frankly,” echoed the Baron. “Vere shall I put you down.”

“At the corner of the Pont Louis XVI.”

“To the Pont de la Chambre,” said the Baron to the footman at the

carriage door.

“Then I am to get dat unknown person,” said the Baron to himself as he

drove home.

“What a queer business!” thought Peyrade, going back on foot to the

Palais-Royal, where he intended trying to multiply his ten thousand

francs by three, to make a little fortune for Lydie. “Here I am required

to look into the private concerns of a very young man who has bewitched

my little girl by a glance. He is, I suppose, one of those men who

have an eye for a woman,” said he to himself, using an expression of

a language of his own, in which his observations, or Corentin’s, were

summed up in words that were anything rather than classical, but, for

that very reason, energetic and picturesque.

The Baron de Nucingen, when he went in, was an altered man; he

astonished his household and his wife by showing them a face full of

life and color, so cheerful did he feel.

“Our shareholders had better look out for themselves,” said du Tillet to

Rastignac.

They were all at tea, in Delphine de Nucingen’s boudoir, having come in

from the opera.

“Ja,” said the Baron, smiling; “I feel ver’ much dat I shall do some

business.”

“Then you have seen the fair being?” asked Madame de Nucingen.

“No,” said he; “I have only hoped to see her.”

“Do men ever love their wives so?” cried Madame de Nucingen, feeling, or

affecting to feel, a little jealous.

“When you have got her, you must ask us to sup with her,” said du Tillet

to the Baron, “for I am very curious to study the creature who has made

you so young as you are.”

“She is a _cheff-d’oeufre_ of creation!” replied the old banker.

“He will be swindled like a boy,” said Rastignac in Delphine’s ear.

“Pooh! he makes quite enough money to----”

“To give a little back, I suppose,” said du Tillet, interrupting the

Baroness.

Nucingen was walking up and down the room as if his legs had the

fidgets.

“Now is your time to make him pay your fresh debts,” said Rastignac in

the Baroness’ ear.

At this very moment Carlos was leaving the Rue Taitbout full of hope; he

had been there to give some last advice to Europe, who was to play the

principal part in the farce devised to take in the Baron de Nucingen.

He was accompanied as far as the Boulevard by Lucien, who was not at all

easy at finding this demon so perfectly disguised that even he had only

recognized him by his voice.

“Where the devil did you find a handsomer woman than Esther?” he asked

his evil genius.

“My boy, there is no such thing to be found in Paris. Such a complexion

is not made in France.”

“I assure you, I am still quite amazed. Venus Callipyge has not such

a figure. A man would lose his soul for her. But where did she spring

from?”

“She was the handsomest girl in London. Drunk with gin, she killed her

lover in a fit of jealousy. The lover was a wretch of whom the London

police are well quit, and this woman was packed off to Paris for a time

to let the matter blow over. The hussy was well brought up--the daughter

of a clergyman. She speaks French as if it were her mother tongue. She

does not know, and never will know, why she is here. She was told that

if you took a fancy to her she might fleece you of millions, but that

you were as jealous as a tiger, and she was told how Esther lived.”

“But supposing Nucingen should prefer her to Esther?”

“Ah, it is out at last!” cried Carlos. “You dread now lest what dismayed

you yesterday should not take place after all! Be quite easy. That

fair and fair-haired girl has blue eyes; she is the antipodes of the

beautiful Jewess, and only such eyes as Esther’s could ever stir a man

so rotten as Nucingen. What the devil! you could not hide an ugly

woman. When this puppet has played her part, I will send her off in safe

custody to Rome or to Madrid, where she will be the rage.”

“If we have her only for a short time,” said Lucien, “I will go back to

her----”

“Go, my boy, amuse yourself. You will be a day older to-morrow. For my

part, I must wait for some one whom I have instructed to learn what is

going on at the Baron de Nucingen’s.”

“Who?”

“His valet’s mistress; for, after all, we must keep ourselves informed

at every moment of what is going on in the enemy’s camp.”

At midnight, Paccard, Esther’s tall chasseur, met Carlos on the Pont des

Arts, the most favorable spot in all Paris for saying a few words which

no one must overhear. All the time they talked the servant kept an eye

on one side, while his master looked out on the other.

“The Baron went to the Prefecture of Police this morning between four

and five,” said the man, “and he boasted this evening that he should

find the woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes--he had been promised

it----”

“We are watched!” said Carlos. “By whom?”

“They have already employed Louchard the bailiff.”

“That would be child’s play,” replied Carlos. “We need fear nothing but

the guardians of public safety, the criminal police; and so long as that

is not set in motion, we can go on!”

“That is not all.”

“What else?”

“Our chums of the hulks.--I saw Lapouraille yesterday----He has choked

off a married couple, and has bagged ten thousand five-franc pieces--in

gold.”

“He will be nabbed,” said Jacques Collin. “That is the Rue Boucher

crime.”

“What is the order of the day?” said Paccard, with the respectful

demeanor a marshal must have assumed when taking his orders from Louis

XVIII.

“You must get out every evening at ten o’clock,” replied Herrera. “Make

your way pretty briskly to the Bois de Vincennes, the Bois de Meudon,

and de Ville-d’Avray. If any one should follow you, let them do it; be

free of speech, chatty, open to a bribe. Talk about Rubempre’s jealousy

and his mad passion for madame, saying that he would not on any account

have it known that he had a mistress of that kind.”

“Enough.--Must I have any weapons?”

“Never!” exclaimed Carlos vehemently. “A weapon? Of what use would that

be? To get us into a scrape. Do not under any circumstances use your

hunting-knife. When you know that you can break the strongest man’s

legs by the trick I showed you--when you can hold your own against three

armed warders, feeling quite sure that you can account for two of them

before they have got out flint and steel, what is there to be afraid of?

Have not you your cane?”

“To be sure,” said the man.

Paccard, nicknamed The Old Guard, Old Wide-Awake, or The Right Man--a

man with legs of iron, arms of steel, Italian whiskers, hair like an

artist’s, a beard like a sapper’s, and a face as colorless and immovable

as Contenson’s, kept his spirit to himself, and rejoiced in a sort of

drum-major appearance which disarmed suspicion. A fugitive from Poissy

or Melun has no such serious self-consciousness and belief in his own

merit. As Giafar to the Haroun el Rasheed of the hulks, he served him

with the friendly admiration which Peyrade felt for Corentin.

This huge fellow, with a small body in proportion to his legs,

flat-chested, and lean of limb, stalked solemnly about on his two long

pins. Whenever his right leg moved, his right eye took in everything

around him with the placid swiftness peculiar to thieves and spies.

The left eye followed the right eye’s example. Wiry, nimble, ready for

anything at any time, but for a weakness of Dutch courage Paccard would

have been perfect, Jacques Collin used to say, so completely was he

endowed with the talents indispensable to a man at war with society; but

the master had succeeded in persuading his slave to drink only in the

evening. On going home at night, Paccard tippled the liquid gold poured

into small glasses out of a pot-bellied stone jar from Danzig.

“We will make them open their eyes,” said Paccard, putting on his grand

hat and feathers after bowing to Carlos, whom he called his Confessor.

These were the events which had led three men, so clever, each in his

way, as Jacques Collin, Peyrade, and Corentin, to a hand-to-hand fight

on the same ground, each exerting his talents in a struggle for his

own passions or interests. It was one of those obscure but terrible

conflicts on which are expended in marches and countermarches, in

strategy, skill, hatred, and vexation, the powers that might make a fine

fortune. Men and means were kept absolutely secret by Peyarde, seconded

in this business by his friend Corentin--a business they thought but

a trifle. And so, as to them, history is silent, as it is on the true

causes of many revolutions.

But this was the result.

Five days after Monsieur de Nucingen’s interview with Peyrade in the

Champs Elysees, a man of about fifty called in the morning, stepping

out of a handsome cab, and flinging the reins to his servant. He had the

dead-white complexion which a life in the “world” gives to diplomates,

was dressed in blue cloth, and had a general air of fashion--almost that

of a Minister of State.

He inquired of the servant who sat on a bench on the steps whether the

Baron de Nucingen were at home; and the man respectfully threw open the

splendid plate-glass doors.

“Your name, sir?” said the footman.

“Tell the Baron that I have come from the Avenue Gabriel,” said

Corentin. “If anybody is with him, be sure not to say so too loud, or

you will find yourself out of place!”

A minute later the man came back and led Corentin by the back passages

to the Baron’s private room.

Corentin and the banker exchanged impenetrable glances, and both bowed

politely.

“Monsieur le Baron,” said Corentin, “I come in the name of Peyrade----”

“Ver’ gott!” said the Baron, fastening the bolts of both doors.

“Monsieur de Rubempre’s mistress lives in the Rue Taitbout, in the

apartment formerly occupied by Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, M. de

Granville’s ex-mistress--the Attorney-General----”

“Vat, so near to me?” exclaimed the Baron. “Dat is ver’ strange.”

“I can quite understand your being crazy about that splendid creature;

it was a pleasure to me to look at her,” replied Corentin. “Lucien is so

jealous of the girl that he never allows her to be seen; and she loves

him devotedly; for in four years, since she succeeded la Bellefeuille

in those rooms, inheriting her furniture and her profession, neither the

neighbors, nor the porter, nor the other tenants in the house have ever

set eyes on her. My lady never stirs out but at night. When she sets

out, the blinds of the carriage are pulled down, and she is closely

veiled.

“Lucien has other reasons besides jealousy for concealing this woman.

He is to be married to Clotilde de Grandlieu, and he is at this moment

Madame de Serizy’s favorite fancy. He naturally wishes to keep a hold on

his fashionable mistress and on his promised bride. So, you are master

of the position, for Lucien will sacrifice his pleasure to his interests

and his vanity. You are rich; this is probably your last chance of

happiness; be liberal. You can gain your end through her waiting-maid.

Give the slut ten thousand francs; she will hide you in her mistress’

bedroom. It must be quite worth that to you.”

No figure of speech could describe the short, precise tone of finality

in which Corentin spoke; the Baron could not fail to observe it, and his

face expressed his astonishment--an expression he had long expunged from

his impenetrable features.

“I have also to ask you for five thousand francs for my friend Peyrade,

who has dropped five of your thousand-franc notes--a tiresome accident,”

Corentin went on, in a lordly tone of command. “Peyrade knows his Paris

too well to spend money in advertising, and he trusts entirely to you.

But this is not the most important point,” added Corentin, checking

himself in such a way as to make the request for money seem quite a

trifle. “If you do not want to end your days miserably, get the place

for Peyrade that he asked you to procure for him--and it is a thing you

can easily do. The Chief of the General Police must have had notice of

the matter yesterday. All that is needed is to get Gondreville to

speak to the Prefet of Police.--Very well, just say to Malin, Comte de

Gondreville, that it is to oblige one of the men who relieved him of MM.

de Simeuse, and he will work it----”

“Here den, mensieur,” said the Baron, taking out five thousand-franc

notes and handing them to Corentin.

“The waiting-maid is great friends with a tall chasseur named Paccard,

living in the Rue de Provence, over a carriage-builder’s; he goes out

as heyduque to persons who give themselves princely airs. You can get at

Madame van Bogseck’s woman through Paccard, a brawny Piemontese, who has

a liking for vermouth.”

This information, gracefully thrown in as a postscript, was evidently

the return for the five thousand francs. The Baron was trying to guess

Corentin’s place in life, for he quite understood that the man was

rather a master of spies than a spy himself; but Corentin remained

to him as mysterious as an inscription is to an archaeologist when

three-quarters of the letters are missing.

“Vat is dat maid called?” he asked.

“Eugenie,” replied Corentin, who bowed and withdrew.

The Baron, in a transport of joy, left his business for the day, shut

up his office, and went up to his rooms in the happy frame of mind of a

young man of twenty looking forward to his first meeting with his first

mistress.

The Baron took all the thousand-franc notes out of his private

cash-box--a sum sufficient to make the whole village happy, fifty-five

thousand francs--and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. But a

millionaire’s lavishness can only be compared with his eagerness for

gain. As soon as a whim or a passion is to be gratified, money is dross

to a Croesus; in fact, he finds it harder to have whims than gold. A

keen pleasure is the rarest thing in these satiated lives, full of the

excitement that comes of great strokes of speculation, in which these

dried-up hearts have burned themselves out.

For instance, one of the richest capitalists in Paris one day met an

extremely pretty little working-girl. Her mother was with her, but the

girl had taken the arm of a young fellow in very doubtful finery, with a

very smart swagger. The millionaire fell in love with the girl at first

sight; he followed her home, he went in; he heard all her story, a

record of alternations of dancing at Mabille and days of starvation,

of play-going and hard work; he took an interest in it, and left five

thousand-franc notes under a five-franc piece--an act of generosity

abused. Next day a famous upholsterer, Braschon, came to take the

damsel’s orders, furnished rooms that she had chosen, and laid out

twenty thousand francs. She gave herself up to the wildest hopes,

dressed her mother to match, and flattered herself she would find a

place for her ex-lover in an insurance office. She waited--a day, two

days--then a week, two weeks. She thought herself bound to be faithful;

she got into debt. The capitalist, called away to Holland, had forgotten

the girl; he never went once to the Paradise where he had placed her,

and from which she fell as low as it is possible to fall even in Paris.

Nucingen did not gamble, Nucingen did not patronize the Arts, Nucingen

had no hobby; thus he flung himself into his passion for Esther with a

headlong blindness, on which Carlos Herrera had confidently counted.

After his breakfast, the Baron sent for Georges, his body-servant, and

desired him to go to the Rue Taitbout and ask Mademoiselle Eugenie,

Madame van Bogseck’s maid, to come to his office on a matter of

importance.

“You shall look out for her,” he added, “an’ make her valk up to my

room, and tell her I shall make her fortune.”

Georges had the greatest difficulty in persuading Europe-Eugenie to

come.

“Madame never lets me go out,” said she; “I might lose my place,” and

so forth; and Georges sang her praises loudly to the Baron, who gave him

ten louis.

“If madame goes out without her this evening,” said Georges to his

master, whose eyes glowed like carbuncles, “she will be here by ten

o’clock.”

“Goot. You shall come to dress me at nine o’clock--and do my hair.

I shall look so goot as possible. I belief I shall really see dat

mistress--or money is not money any more.”

The Baron spent an hour, from noon till one, in dyeing his hair and

whiskers. At nine in the evening, having taken a bath before dinner,

he made a toilet worthy of a bridegroom and scented himself--a perfect

Adonis. Madame de Nucingen, informed of this metamorphosis, gave herself

the treat of inspecting her husband.

“Good heavens!” cried she, “what a ridiculous figure! Do, at least, put

on a black satin stock instead of that white neckcloth which makes your

whiskers look so black; besides, it is so ‘Empire,’ quite the old fogy.

You look like some super-annuated parliamentary counsel. And take

off these diamond buttons; they are worth a hundred thousand francs

apiece--that slut will ask you for them, and you will not be able to

refuse her; and if a baggage is to have them, I may as well wear them as

earrings.”

The unhappy banker, struck by the wisdom of his wife’s reflections,

obeyed reluctantly.

“Ridikilous, ridikilous! I hafe never telt you dat you shall be

ridikilous when you dressed yourself so smart to see your little

Mensieur de Rastignac!”

“I should hope that you never saw me make myself ridiculous. Am I the

woman to make such blunders in the first syllable of my dress? Come,

turn about. Button your coat up to the neck, all but the two top

buttons, as the Duc de Maufrigneuse does. In short, try to look young.”

“Monsieur,” said Georges, “here is Mademoiselle Eugenie.”

“Adie, motame,” said the banker, and he escorted his wife as far as her

own rooms, to make sure that she should not overhear their conference.

On his return, he took Europe by the hand and led her into his room with

a sort of ironical respect.

“Vell, my chilt, you are a happy creature, for you are de maid of dat

most beautiful voman in de vorlt. And your fortune shall be made if you

vill talk to her for me and in mine interests.”

“I would not do such a thing for ten thousand francs!” exclaimed Europe.

“I would have you to know, Monsieur le Baron, that I am an honest girl.”

“Oh yes. I expect to pay dear for your honesty. In business dat is vat

ve call curiosity.”

“And that is not everything,” Europe went on. “If you should not take

madame’s fancy--and that is on the cards--she would be angry, and I am

done for!--and my place is worth a thousand francs a year.”

“De capital to make ein tousant franc is twenty tousand franc; and if I

shall gif you dat, you shall not lose noting.”

“Well, to be sure, if that is the tone you take about it, my worthy

old fellow,” said Europe, “that is quite another story.--Where is the

money?”

“Here,” replied the Baron, holding up the banknotes, one at a time.

He noted the flash struck by each in turn from Europe’s eyes, betraying

the greed he had counted on.

“That pays for my place, but how about my principles, my conscience?”

said Europe, cocking her crafty little nose and giving the Baron a

serio-comic leer.

“Your conscience shall not be pait for so much as your place; but I

shall say fife tousand franc more,” said he adding five thousand-franc

notes.

“No, no. Twenty thousand for my conscience, and five thousand for my

place if I lose it----”

“Yust vat you please,” said he, adding the five notes. “But to earn dem

you shall hite me in your lady’s room by night ven she shall be ‘lone.”

“If you swear never to tell who let you in, I agree. But I warn you of

one thing.--Madame is as strong as a Turk, she is madly in love with

Monsieur de Rubempre, and if you paid a million francs in banknotes she

would never be unfaithful to him. It is very silly, but that is her way

when she is in love; she is worse than an honest woman, I tell you! When

she goes out for a drive in the woods at night, monsieur very seldom

stays at home. She is gone out this evening, so I can hide you in my

room. If madame comes in alone, I will fetch you; you can wait in the

drawing-room. I will not lock the door into her room, and then--well,

the rest is your concern--so be ready.”

“I shall pay you the twenty-fife tousand francs in dat

drawing-room.--You gife--I gife!”

“Indeed!” said Europe, “you are so confiding as all that? On my word!”

“Oh, you will hafe your chance to fleece me yet. We shall be friends.”

“Well, then, be in the Rue Taitbout at midnight; but bring thirty

thousand francs about you. A waiting-woman’s honesty, like a hackney

cab, is much dearer after midnight.”

“It shall be more prudent if I gif you a cheque on my bank----”

“No, no” said Europe. “Notes, or the bargain is off.”

So at one in the morning the Baron de Nucingen, hidden in the garret

where Europe slept, was suffering all the anxieties of a man who hopes

to triumph. His blood seemed to him to be tingling in his toe-nails, and

his head ready to burst like an overheated steam engine.

“I had more dan one hundert tousand crowns’ vort of enjoyment--in my

mind,” he said to du Tillet when telling him the story.

He listened to every little noise in the street, and at two in the

morning he heard his mistress’ carriage far away on the boulevard. His

heart beat vehemently under his silk waistcoat as the gate turned on

its hinges. He was about to behold the heavenly, the glowing face of

his Esther!--the clatter of the carriage-step and the slam of the door

struck upon his heart. He was more agitated in expectation of this

supreme moment than he would have been if his fortune had been at stake.

“Ah, ha!” cried he, “dis is vat I call to lif--it is too much to lif; I

shall be incapable of everything.”

“Madame is alone; come down,” said Europe, looking in. “Above all, make

no noise, great elephant.”

“Great Elephant!” he repeated, laughing, and walking as if he trod on

red-hot iron.

Europe led the way, carrying a candle.

“Here--count dem!” said the Baron when he reached the drawing-room,

holding out the notes to Europe.

Europe took the thirty notes very gravely and left the room, locking the

banker in.

Nucingen went straight to the bedroom, where he found the handsome

Englishwoman.

“Is that you, Lucien?” said she.

“Nein, my peauty,” said Nucingen, but he said no more.

He stood speechless on seeing a woman the very antipodes to Esther;

fair hair where he had seen black, slenderness where he had admired

a powerful frame! A soft English evening where he had looked for the

bright sun of Arabia.

“Heyday! were have you come from?--who are you?--what do you want?”

cried the Englishwoman, pulling the bell, which made no sound.

“The bells dey are in cotton-vool, but hafe not any fear--I shall go

‘vay,” said he. “Dat is dirty tousant franc I hafe tron in de vater. Are

you dat mistress of Mensieur Lucien de Rubempre?”

“Rather, my son,” said the lady, who spoke French well, “But vat vas

you?” she went on, mimicking Nucingen’s accent.

“Ein man vat is ver’ much took in,” replied he lamentably.

“Is a man took in ven he finds a pretty voman?” asked she, with a laugh.

“Permit me to sent you to-morrow some chewels as a soufenir of de Baron

von Nucingen.”

“Don’t know him!” said she, laughing like a crazy creature. “But the

chewels will be welcome, my fat burglar friend.”

“You shall know him. Goot night, motame. You are a tidbit for ein king;

but I am only a poor banker more dan sixty year olt, and you hafe made

me feel vat power the voman I lofe hafe ofer me since your difine beauty

hafe not make me forget her.”

“Vell, dat is ver’ pretty vat you say,” replied the Englishwoman.

“It is not so pretty vat she is dat I say it to.”

“You spoke of thirty thousand francs--to whom did you give them?”

“To dat hussy, your maid----”

The Englishwoman called Europe, who was not far off.

“Oh!” shrieked Europe, “a man in madame’s room, and he is not

monsieur--how shocking!”

“Did he give you thirty thousand francs to let him in?”

“No, madame, for we are not worth it, the pair of us.”

And Europe set to screaming “Thief” so determinedly, that the banker

made for the door in a fright, and Europe, tripping him up, rolled him

down the stairs.

“Old wretch!” cried she, “you would tell tales to my mistress! Thief!

thief! stop thief!”

The enamored Baron, in despair, succeeded in getting unhurt to his

carriage, which he had left on the boulevard; but he was now at his

wits’ end as to whom to apply to.

“And pray, madame, did you think to get my earnings out of me?” said

Europe, coming back like a fury to the lady’s room.

“I know nothing of French customs,” said the Englishwoman.

“But one word from me to-morrow to monsieur, and you, madame, would find

yourself in the streets,” retorted Europe insolently.

“Dat dam’ maid!” said the Baron to Georges, who naturally asked his

master if all had gone well, “hafe do me out of dirty tousant franc--but

it vas my own fault, my own great fault----”

“And so monsieur’s dress was all wasted. The deuce is in it, I should

advise you, Monsieur le Baron, not to have taken your tonic for

nothing----”

“Georches, I shall be dying of despair. I hafe cold--I hafe ice on mein

heart--no more of Esther, my good friend.”

Georges was always the Baron’s friend when matters were serious.

Two days after this scene, which Europe related far more amusingly than

it can be written, because she told it with much mimicry, Carlos and

Lucien were breakfasting tete-a-tete.

“My dear boy, neither the police nor anybody else must be allowed to

poke a nose into our concerns,” said Herrera in a low voice, as he

lighted his cigar from Lucien’s. “It would not agree with us. I have hit

on a plan, daring but effectual, to keep our Baron and his agents quiet.

You must go to see Madame de Serizy, and make yourself very agreeable to

her. Tell her, in the course of conversation, that to oblige Rastignac,

who has long been sick of Madame de Nucingen, you have consented to play

fence for him to conceal a mistress. Monsieur de Nucingen, desperately

in love with this woman Rastignac keeps hidden--that will make her

laugh--has taken it into his head to set the police to keep an eye on

you--on you, who are innocent of all his tricks, and whose interest

with the Grandlieus may be seriously compromised. Then you must beg the

Countess to secure her husband’s support, for he is a Minister of State,

to carry you to the Prefecture of Police.

“When you have got there, face to face with the Prefet, make your

complaint, but as a man of political consequence, who will sooner or

later be one of the motor powers of the huge machine of government. You

will speak of the police as a statesman should, admiring everything, the

Prefet included. The very best machines make oil-stains or splutter. Do

not be angry till the right moment. You have no sort of grudge against

Monsieur le Prefet, but persuade him to keep a sharp lookout on his

people, and pity him for having to blow them up. The quieter and more

gentlemanly you are, the more terrible will the Prefet be to his men.

Then we shall be left in peace, and we may send for Esther back, for she

must be belling like the does in the forest.”

The Prefet at that time was a retired magistrate. Retired magistrates

make far too young Prefets. Partisans of the right, riding the high

horse on points of law, they are not light-handed in arbitary action

such as critical circumstances often require; cases in which the Prefet

should be as prompt as a fireman called to a conflagration. So, face

to face with the Vice-President of the Council of State, the Prefet

confessed to more faults than the police really has, deplored its

abuses, and presently was able to recollect the visit paid to him by

the Baron de Nucingen and his inquiries as to Peyrade. The Prefet,

while promising to check the rash zeal of his agents, thanked Lucien

for having come straight to him, promised secrecy, and affected to

understand the intrigue.

A few fine speeches about personal liberty and the sacredness of home

life were bandied between the Prefet and the Minister; Monsieur de

Serizy observing in conclusion that though the high interests of the

kingdom sometimes necessitated illegal action in secret, crime began

when these State measures were applied to private cases.

Next day, just as Peyrade was going to his beloved Cafe David, where he

enjoyed watching the bourgeois eat, as an artist watches flowers open, a

gendarme in private clothes spoke to him in the street.

“I was going to fetch you,” said he in his ear. “I have orders to take

you to the Prefecture.”

Peyrade called a hackney cab, and got in without saying a single word,

followed by the gendarme.

The Prefet treated Peyrade as though he were the lowest warder on

the hulks, walking to and fro in a side path of the garden of the

Prefecture, which at that time was on the Quai des Orfevres.

“It is not without good reason, monsieur, that since 1830 you have been

kept out of office. Do not you know to what risk you expose us, not to

mention yourself?”

The lecture ended in a thunderstroke. The Prefet sternly informed poor

Peyrade that not only would his yearly allowance be cut off, but that

he himself would be narrowly watched. The old man took the shock with an

air of perfect calm. Nothing can be more rigidly expressionless than a

man struck by lightning. Peyrade had lost all his stake in the game. He

had counted on getting an appointment, and he found himself bereft of

everything but the alms bestowed by his friend Corentin.

“I have been the Prefet of Police myself; I think you perfectly right,”

said the old man quietly to the functionary who stood before him in his

judicial majesty, and who answered with a significant shrug.

“But allow me, without any attempt to justify myself, to point out that

you do not know me at all,” Peyrade went on, with a keen glance at the

Prefet. “Your language is either too severe to a man who has been the

head of the police in Holland, or not severe enough for a mere spy. But,

Monsieur le Prefet,” Peyrade added after a pause, while the other kept

silence, “bear in mind what I now have the honor to telling you: I

have no intention of interfering with your police nor of attempting to

justify myself, but you will presently discover that there is some one

in this business who is being deceived; at this moment it is your humble

servant; by and by you will say, ‘It was I.’”

And he bowed to the chief, who sat passive to conceal his amazement.

Peyrade returned home, his legs and arms feeling broken, and full

of cold fury with the Baron. Nobody but that burly banker could have

betrayed a secret contained in the minds of Contenson, Peyrade, and

Corentin. The old man accused the banker of wishing to avoid paying now

that he had gained his end. A single interview had been enough to enable

him to read the astuteness of this most astute of bankers.

“He tries to compound with every one, even with us; but I will be

revenged,” thought the old fellow. “I have never asked a favor of

Corentin; I will ask him now to help me to be revenged on that imbecile

money-box. Curse the Baron!--Well, you will know the stuff I am made

of one fine morning when you find your daughter disgraced!--But does he

love his daughter, I wonder?”

By the evening of the day when this catastrophe had upset the old man’s

hopes he had aged by ten years. As he talked to his friend Corentin, he

mingled his lamentations with tears wrung from him by the thought of

the melancholy prospects he must bequeath to his daughter, his idol, his

treasure, his peace-offering to God.

“We will follow the matter up,” said Corentin. “First of all, we must

be sure that it was the Baron who peached. Were we wise in enlisting

Gondreville’s support? That old rascal owes us too much not to be

anxious to swamp us; indeed, I am keeping an eye on his son-in-law

Keller, a simpleton in politics, and quite capable of meddling in

some conspiracy to overthrow the elder Branch to the advantage of the

younger.--I shall know to-morrow what is going on at Nucingen’s, whether

he has seen his beloved, and to whom we owe this sharp pull up.--Do

not be out of heart. In the first place, the Prefet will not hold

his appointment much longer; the times are big with revolution, and

revolutions make good fishing for us.”

A peculiar whistle was just then heard in the street.

“That is Contenson,” said Peyrade, who put a light in the window, “and

he has something to say that concerns me.”

A minute later the faithful Contenson appeared in the presence of the

two gnomes of the police, whom he revered as though they were two genii.

“What is up?” asked Corentin.

“A new thing! I was coming out of 113, where I lost everything, when

whom do I spy under the gallery? Georges! The man has been dismissed by

the Baron, who suspects him of treachery.”

“That is the effect of a smile I gave him,” said Peyrade.

“Bah! when I think of all the mischief I have known caused by smiles!”

said Corentin.

“To say nothing of that caused by a whip-lash,” said Peyrade, referring

to the Simeuse case. (In _Une Tenebreuse affaire_.) “But come,

Contenson, what is going on?”

“This is what is going on,” said Contenson. “I made Georges blab by

getting him to treat me to an endless series of liqueurs of every

color--I left him tipsy; I must be as full as a still myself!--Our Baron

has been to the Rue Taitbout, crammed with Pastilles du Serail. There he

found the fair one you know of; but--a good joke! The English beauty is

not his fair unknown!--And he has spent thirty thousand francs to bribe

the lady’s-maid, a piece of folly!

“That creature thinks itself a great man because it does mean things

with great capital. Reverse the proposition, and you have the problem

of which a man of genius is the solution.--The Baron came home in a

pitiable condition. Next day Georges, to get his finger in the pie, said

to his master:

“‘Why, Monsieur le Baron, do you employ such blackguards? If you would

only trust to me, I would find the unknown lady, for your description

of her is enough. I shall turn Paris upside down.’--‘Go ahead,’ says the

Baron; ‘I shall reward you handsomely!’--Georges told me the whole story

with the most absurd details. But--man is born to be rained upon!

“Next day the Baron received an anonymous letter something to this

effect: ‘Monsieur de Nucingen is dying of love for an unknown lady; he

has already spent a great deal utterly in vain; if he will repair at

midnight to the end of the Neuilly Bridge, and get into the carriage

behind which the chasseur he saw at Vincennes will be standing, allowing

himself to be blindfolded, he will see the woman he loves. As his wealth

may lead him to suspect the intentions of persons who proceed in such

a fashion, he may bring, as an escort, his faithful Georges. And there

will be nobody in the carriage.’--Off the Baron goes, taking Georges

with him, but telling him nothing. They both submit to have their eyes

bound up and their heads wrapped in veils; the Baron recognizes the

man-servant.

“Two hours later, the carriage, going at the pace of Louis XVIII.--God

rest his soul! He knew what was meant by the police, he did!--pulled up

in the middle of a wood. The Baron had the handkerchief off, and saw, in

a carriage standing still, his adored fair--when, whiff! she vanished.

And the carriage, at the same lively pace, brought him back to the

Neuilly Bridge, where he found his own.

“Some one had slipped into Georges’ hand a note to this effect: ‘How

many banknotes will the Baron part with to be put into communication

with his unknown fair? Georges handed this to his master; and the

Baron, never doubting that Georges was in collusion with me or with you,

Monsieur Peyrade, to drive a hard bargain, turned him out of the house.

What a fool that banker is! He ought not to have sent away Georges

before he had known the unknown!”

“Then Georges saw the woman?” said Corentin.

“Yes,” replied Contenson.

“Well,” cried Peyrade, “and what is she like?”

“Oh,” said Contenson, “he said but one word--‘A sun of loveliness.’”

“We are being tricked by some rascals who beat us at the game,” said

Peyrade. “Those villains mean to sell their woman very dear to the

Baron.”

“Ja, mein Herr,” said Contenson. “And so, when I heard you got slapped

in the face at the Prefecture, I made Georges blab.”

“I should like very much to know who it is that has stolen a march on

me,” said Peyrade. “We would measure our spurs!”

“We must play eavesdropper,” said Contenson.

“He is right,” said Peyrade. “We must get into chinks to listen, and

wait----”

“We will study that side of the subject,” cried Corentin. “For the

present, I am out of work. You, Peyrade, be a very good boy. We must

always obey Monsieur le Prefet!”

“Monsieur de Nucingen wants bleeding,” said Contenson; “he has too many

banknotes in his veins.”

“But it was Lydie’s marriage-portion I looked for there!” said Peyrade,

in a whisper to Corentin.

“Now, come along, Contenson, let us be off, and leave our daddy to

by-bye, by-bye!”

“Monsieur,” said Contenson to Corentin on the doorstep, “what a queer

piece of brokerage our good friend was planning! Heh!--What, marry a

daughter with the price of----Ah, ha! It would make a pretty little

play, and very moral too, entitled ‘A Girl’s Dower.’”

“You are highly organized animals, indeed,” replied Corentin. “What

ears you have! Certainly Social Nature arms all her species with the

qualities needed for the duties she expects of them! Society is second

nature.”

“That is a highly philosophical view to take,” cried Contenson. “A

professor would work it up into a system.”

“Let us find out all we can,” replied Corentin with a smile, as he made

his way down the street with the spy, “as to what goes on at Monsieur

de Nucingen’s with regard to this girl--the main facts; never mind the

details----”

“Just watch to see if his chimneys are smoking!” said Contenson.

“Such a man as the Baron de Nucingen cannot be happy incognito,” replied

Corentin. “And besides, we for whom men are but cards, ought never to be

tricked by them.”

“By gad! it would be the condemned jail-bird amusing himself by cutting

the executioner’s throat.”

“You always have something droll to say,” replied Corentin, with a dim

smile, that faintly wrinkled his set white face.

This business was exceedingly important in itself, apart from its

consequences. If it were not the Baron who had betrayed Peyrade,

who could have had any interest in seeing the Prefet of Police? From

Corentin’s point of view it seemed suspicious. Were there any traitors

among his men? And as he went to bed, he wondered what Peyrade, too, was

considering.

“Who can have gone to complain to the Prefet? Whom does the woman belong

to?”

And thus, without knowing each other, Jacques Collin, Peyrade, and

Corentin were converging to a common point; while the unhappy Esther,

Nucingen, and Lucien were inevitably entangled in the struggle which

had already begun, and of which the point of pride, peculiar to police

agents, was making a war to the death.

Thanks to Europe’s cleverness, the more pressing half of the sixty

thousand francs of debt owed by Esther and Lucien was paid off. The

creditors did not even lose confidence. Lucien and his evil genius could

breathe for a moment. Like some pool, they could start again along the

edge of the precipice where the strong man was guiding the weak man to

the gibbet or to fortune.

“We are staking now,” said Carlos to his puppet, “to win or lose all.

But, happily, the cards are beveled, and the punters young.”

For some time Lucien, by his terrible Mentor’s orders, had been very

attentive to Madame de Serizy. It was, in fact, indispensable that

Lucien should not be suspected of having kept a woman for his mistress.

And in the pleasure of being loved, and the excitement of fashionable

life, he found a spurious power of forgetting. He obeyed Mademoiselle

Clotilde de Grandlieu by never seeing her excepting in the Bois or the

Champs-Elysees.

On the day after Esther was shut up in the park-keeper’s house, the

being who was to her so enigmatic and terrible, who weighed upon her

soul, came to desire her to sign three pieces of stamped paper, made

terrible by these fateful words: on the first, accepted payable for

sixty thousand francs; on the second, accepted payable for a hundred and

twenty thousand francs; on the third, accepted payable for a hundred and

twenty thousand francs--three hundred thousand francs in all. By writing

_Bon pour_, you simply promise to pay. The word _accepted_ constitutes

a bill of exchange, and makes you liable to imprisonment. The word

entails, on the person who is so imprudent as to sign, the risk of five

years’ imprisonment--a punishment which the police magistrate hardly

ever inflicts, and which is reserved at the assizes for confirmed

rogues. The law of imprisonment for debt is a relic of the days of

barbarism, which combines with its stupidity the rare merit of being

useless, inasmuch as it never catches swindlers.

“The point,” said the Spaniard to Esther, “is to get Lucien out of his

difficulties. We have debts to the tune of sixty thousand francs, and

with these three hundred thousand francs we may perhaps pull through.”

Having antedated the bills by six months, Carlos had had them drawn on

Esther by a man whom the county court had “misunderstood,” and whose

adventures, in spite of the excitement they had caused, were soon

forgotten, hidden, lost, in the uproar of the great symphony of July

1830.

This young fellow, a most audacious adventurer, the son of a lawyer’s

clerk of Boulogne, near Paris, was named Georges Marie Destourny. His

father, obliged by adverse circumstances to sell his connection, died

in 1824, leaving his son without the means of living, after giving him

a brilliant education, the folly of the lower middle class. At

twenty-three the clever young law-student had denied his paternity by

printing on his cards

Georges d’Estourny.

This card gave him an odor of aristocracy; and now, as a man of fashion,

he was so impudent as to set up a tilbury and a groom and haunt the

clubs. One line will account for this: he gambled on the Bourse with the

money intrusted to him by the kept women of his acquaintance. Finally he

fell into the hands of the police, and was charged with playing at cards

with too much luck.

He had accomplices, youths whom he had corrupted, his compulsory

satellites, accessory to his fashion and his credit. Compelled to fly,

he forgot to pay his differences on the Bourse. All Paris--the Paris of

the Stock Exchange and Clubs--was still shaken by this double stroke of

swindling.

In the days of his splendor Georges d’Estourny, a handsome youth, and

above all, a jolly fellow, as generous as a brigand chief, had for a few

months “protected” La Torpille. The false Abbe based his calculations

on Esther’s former intimacy with this famous scoundrel, an incident

peculiar to women of her class.

Georges d’Estourny, whose ambition grew bolder with success, had taken

under his patronage a man who had come from the depths of the country to

carry on a business in Paris, and whom the Liberal party were anxious

to indemnify for certain sentences endured with much courage in the

struggle of the press with Charles X.’s government, the persecution

being relaxed, however, during the Martignac administration. The Sieur

Cerizet had then been pardoned, and he was henceforth known as the Brave

Cerizet.

Cerizet then, being patronized for form’s sake by the bigwigs of the

Left, founded a house which combined the business of a general agency

with that of a bank and a commission agency. It was one of those

concerns which, in business, remind one of the servants who advertise in

the papers as being able and willing to do everything. Cerizet was very

glad to ally himself with Georges d’Estourny, who gave him hints.

Esther, in virtue of the anecdote about Nonon, might be regarded as

the faithful guardian of part of Georges d’Estourny’s fortune. An

endorsement in the name of Georges d’Estourny made Carlos Herrera master

of the money he had created. This forgery was perfectly safe so long as

Mademoiselle Esther, or some one for her, could, or was bound to pay.

After making inquiries as to the house of Cerizet, Carlos perceived

that he had to do with one of those humble men who are bent on making

a fortune, but--lawfully. Cerizet, with whom d’Estourny had really

deposited his moneys, had in hand a considerable sum with which he was

speculating for a rise on the Bourse, a state of affairs which allowed

him to style himself a banker. Such things are done in Paris; a man may

be despised,--but money, never.

Carlos went off to Cerizet intending to work him after his manner;

for, as it happened, he was master of all this worthy’s secrets--a meet

partner for d’Estourny.

Cerizet the Brave lived in an entresol in the Rue du Gros-Chenet, and

Carlos, who had himself mysteriously announced as coming from Georges

d’Estourny, found the self-styled banker quite pale at the name. The

Abbe saw in this humble private room a little man with thin, light hair;

and recognized him at once, from Lucien’s description, as the Judas who

had ruined David Sechard.

“Can we talk here without risk of being overheard?” said the Spaniard,

now metamorphosed into a red-haired Englishman with blue spectacles, as

clean and prim as a Puritan going to meeting.

“Why, monsieur?” said Cerizet. “Who are you?”

“Mr. William Barker, a creditor of M. d’Estourny’s; and I can prove to

you the necessity for keeping your doors closed if you wish it. We

know, monsieur, all about your connections with the Petit-Clauds, the

Cointets, and the Sechards of Angouleme----”

On hearing these words, Cerizet rushed to the door and shut it, flew

to another leading into a bedroom and bolted it; then he said to the

stranger:

“Speak lower, monsieur,” and he studied the sham Englishman as he asked

him, “What do you want with me?”

“Dear me,” said William Barker, “every one for himself in this world.

You had the money of that rascal d’Estourny.--Be quite easy, I have not

come to ask for it; but that scoundrel, who deserves hanging, between

you and me, gave me these bills, saying that there might be some chance

of recovering the money; and as I do not choose to prosecute in my own

name, he told me you would not refuse to back them.”

Cerizet looked at the bills.

“But he is no longer at Frankfort,” said he.

“I know it,” replied Barker, “but he may still have been there at the

date of those bills----”

“I will not take the responsibility,” said Cerizet.

“I do not ask such a sacrifice of you,” replied Barker; “you may be

instructed to receive them. Endorse them, and I will undertake to

recover the money.”

“I am surprised that d’Estourny should show so little confidence in me,”

said Cerizet.

“In his position,” replied Barker, “you can hardly blame him for having

put his eggs in different baskets.”

“Can you believe----” the little broker began, as he handed back to the

Englishman the bills of exchange formally accepted.

“I believe that you will take good care of his money,” said Barker. “I

am sure of it! It is already on the green table of the Bourse.”

“My fortune depends----”

“On your appearing to lose it,” said Barker.

“Sir!” cried Cerizet.

“Look here, my dear Monsieur Cerizet,” said Barker, coolly interrupting

him, “you will do me a service by facilitating this payment. Be so good

as to write me a letter in which you tell me that you are sending me

these bills receipted on d’Estourny’s account, and that the collecting

officer is to regard the holder of the letter as the possessor of the

three bills.”

“Will you give me your name?”

“No names,” replied the English capitalist. “Put ‘The bearer of this

letter and these bills.’--You will be handsomely repaid for obliging

me.”

“How?” said Cerizet.

“In one word--You mean to stay in France, do not you?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Well, Georges d’Estourny will never re-enter the country.”

“Pray why?”

“There are five persons at least to my knowledge who would murder him,

and he knows it.”

“Then no wonder he is asking me for money enough to start him trading

to the Indies?” cried Cerizet. “And unfortunately he has compelled me to

risk everything in State speculation. We already owe heavy differences

to the house of du Tillet. I live from hand to mouth.”

“Withdraw your stakes.”

“Oh! if only I had known this sooner!” exclaimed Cerizet. “I have missed

my chance!”

“One last word,” said Barker. “Keep your own counsel, you are capable

of that; but you must be faithful too, which is perhaps less certain. We

shall meet again, and I will help you to make a fortune.”

Having tossed this sordid soul a crumb of hope that would secure silence

for some time to come, Carlos, still disguised as Barker, betook himself

to a bailiff whom he could depend on, and instructed him to get the

bills brought home to Esther.

“They will be paid all right,” said he to the officer. “It is an affair

of honor; only we want to do the thing regularly.”

Barker got a solicitor to represent Esther in court, so that judgment

might be given in presence of both parties. The collecting officer,

who was begged to act with civility, took with him all the warrants

for procedure, and came in person to seize the furniture in the Rue

Taitbout, where he was received by Europe. Her personal liability once

proved, Esther was ostensibly liable, beyond dispute, for three hundred

and more thousand francs of debts.

In all this Carlos displayed no great powers of invention. The farce of

false debts is often played in Paris. There are many sub-Gobsecks

and sub-Gigonnets who, for a percentage, will lend themselves to

this subterfuge, and regard the infamous trick as a jest. In France

everything--even a crime--is done with a laugh. By this means refractory

parents are made to pay, or rich mistresses who might drive a hard

bargain, but who, face to face with flagrant necessity, or some

impending dishonor, pay up, if with a bad grace. Maxime de Trailles

had often used such means, borrowed from the comedies of the old stage.

Carlos Herrera, who wanted to save the honor of his gown, as well as

Lucien’s, had worked the spell by a forgery not dangerous for him, but

now so frequently practised that Justice is beginning to object. There

is, it is said, a Bourse for falsified bills near the Palais Royal,

where you may get a forged signature for three francs.

Before entering on the question of the hundred thousand crowns that were

to keep the door of the bedroom, Carlos determined first to extract a

hundred thousand more from M. de Nucingen.

And this was the way: By his orders Asie got herself up for the Baron’s

benefit as an old woman fully informed as to the unknown beauty’s

affairs.

Hitherto, novelists of manners have placed on the stage a great many

usurers; but the female money-lender has been overlooked, the Madame la

Ressource of the present day--a very singular figure, euphemistically

spoken of as a “ward-robe purchaser”; a part that the ferocious Asie

could play, for she had two old-clothes shops managed by women she could

trust--one in the Temple, and the other in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Marc.

“You must get into the skin of Madame de Saint-Esteve,” said he.

Herrera wished to see Asie dressed.

The go-between arrived in a dress of flowered damask, made of the

curtains of some dismantled boudoir, and one of those shawls of Indian

design--out of date, worn, and valueless, which end their career on the

backs of these women. She had a collar of magnificent lace, though torn,

and a terrible bonnet; but her shoes were of fine kid, in which the

flesh of her fat feet made a roll of black-lace stocking.

“And my waist buckle!” she exclaimed, displaying a piece of

suspicious-looking finery, prominent on her cook’s stomach, “There’s

style for you! and my front!--Oh, Ma’me Nourrisson has turned me out

quite spiff!”

“Be as sweet as honey at first,” said Carlos; “be almost timid, as

suspicious as a cat; and, above all, make the Baron ashamed of having

employed the police, without betraying that you quake before the

constable. Finally, make your customer understand in more or less plain

terms that you defy all the police in the world to discover his jewel.

Take care to destroy your traces.

“When the Baron gives you a right to tap him on the stomach, and call

him a pot-bellied old rip, you may be as insolent as you please, and

make him trot like a footman.”

Nucingen--threatened by Asie with never seeing her again if he attempted

the smallest espionage--met the woman on his way to the Bourse, in

secret, in a wretched entresol in the Rue Nueve-Saint-Marc. How often,

and with what rapture, have amorous millionaires trodden these squalid

paths! the pavements of Paris know. Madame de Saint-Esteve, by tossing

the Baron from hope to despair by turns, brought him to the point when

he insisted on being informed of all that related to the unknown beauty

at ANY COST. Meanwhile, the law was put in force, and with such

effect that the bailiffs, finding no resistance from Esther, put in an

execution on her effects without losing a day.

Lucien, guided by his adviser, paid the recluse at Saint-Germain five or

six visits. The merciless author of all these machinations thought this

necessary to save Esther from pining to death, for her beauty was now

their capital. When the time came for them to quit the park-keeper’s

lodge, he took Lucien and the poor girl to a place on the road whence

they could see Paris, where no one could overhear them. They all three

sat down in the rising sun, on the trunk of a felled poplar, looking

over one of the finest prospects in the world, embracing the course of

the Seine, with Montmartre, Paris, and Saint-Denis.

“My children,” said Carlos, “your dream is over.--You, little one, will

never see Lucien again; or if you should, you must have known him only

for a few days, five years ago.”

“Death has come upon me then,” said she, without shedding a tear.

“Well, you have been ill these five years,” said Herrera. “Imagine

yourself to be consumptive, and die without boring us with your

lamentations. But you will see, you can still live, and very comfortably

too.--Leave us, Lucien--go and gather sonnets!” said he, pointing to a

field a little way off.

Lucien cast a look of humble entreaty at Esther, one of the looks

peculiar to such men--weak and greedy, with tender hearts and cowardly

spirits. Esther answered with a bow of her head, which said: “I will

hear the executioner, that I may know how to lay my head under the axe,

and I shall have courage enough to die decently.”

The gesture was so gracious, but so full of dreadful meaning, that the

poet wept; Esther flew to him, clasped him in her arms, drank away the

tears, and said, “Be quite easy!” one of those speeches that are spoken

with the manner, the look, the tones of delirium.

Carlos then explained to her quite clearly, without attenuation, often

with horrible plainness of speech, the critical position in which Lucien

found himself, his connection with the Hotel Grandlieu, his splendid

prospects if he should succeed; and finally, how necessary it was that

Esther should sacrifice herself to secure him this triumphant future.

“What must I do?” cried she, with the eagerness of a fanatic.

“Obey me blindly,” said Carlos. “And what have you to complain of? It

rests with you to achieve a happy lot. You may be what Tullia is, what

your old friends Florine, Mariette, and la Val-Noble are--the mistress

of a rich man whom you need not love. When once our business is settled,

your lover is rich enough to make you happy.”

“Happy!” said she, raising her eyes to heaven.

“You have lived in Paradise for four years,” said he. “Can you not live

on such memories?”

“I will obey you,” said she, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.

“For the rest, do not worry yourself. You have said it; my love is a

mortal disease.”

“That is not enough,” said Carlos; “you must preserve your looks. At a

little past two-and-twenty you are in the prime of your beauty, thanks

to your past happiness. And, above all, be the ‘Torpille’ again. Be

roguish, extravagant, cunning, merciless to the millionaire I put in

your power. Listen to me! That man is a robber on a grand scale; he has

been ruthless to many persons; he has grown fat on the fortunes of the

widow and the orphan; you will avenge them!

“Asie is coming to fetch you in a hackney coach, and you will be in

Paris this evening. If you allow any one to suspect your connection with

Lucien, you may as well blow his brains out at once. You will be

asked where you have been for so long. You must say that you have been

traveling with a desperately jealous Englishman.--You used to have wit

enough to humbug people. Find such wit again now.”

Have you ever seen a gorgeous kite, the giant butterfly of childhood,

twinkling with gilding, and soaring to the sky? The children forget the

string that holds it, some passer-by cuts it, the gaudy toy turns head

over heels, as the boys say, and falls with terrific rapidity. Such was

Esther as she listened to Carlos.