For a whole week Nucingen went almost every day to the shop in the Rue
Nueve-Saint-Marc to bargain for the woman he was in love with. Here,
sometimes under the name of Saint-Esteve, sometimes under that of her
tool, Madame Nourrisson, Asie sat enthroned among beautiful clothes in
that hideous condition when they have ceased to be dresses and are not
yet rags.
The setting was in harmony with the appearance assumed by the woman,
for these shops are among the most hideous characteristics of Paris. You
find there the garments tossed aside by the skinny hand of Death; you
hear, as it were, the gasping of consumption under a shawl, or you
detect the agonies of beggery under a gown spangled with gold. The
horrible struggle between luxury and starvation is written on filmy
laces; you may picture the countenance of a queen under a plumed turban
placed in an attitude that recalls and almost reproduces the absent
features. It is all hideous amid prettiness! Juvenal’s lash, in the
hands of the appraiser, scatters the shabby muffs, the ragged furs of
courtesans at bay.
There is a dunghill of flowers, among which here and there we find a
bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old
hag is always to be seen crouching--first cousin to Usury, the skinflint
bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so
well is she used to sell the covering--the gown without the woman, or
the woman without the gown!
Here Asie was in her element, like the warder among convicts, like a
vulture red-beaked amid corpses; more terrible than the savage horrors
that made the passer-by shudder in astonishment sometimes, at seeing
one of their youngest and sweetest reminiscences hung up in a dirty shop
window, behind which a Saint-Esteve sits and grins.
From vexation to vexation, a thousand francs at a time, the banker had
gone so far as to offer sixty thousand francs to Madame de Saint-Esteve,
who still refused to help him, with a grimace that would have outdone
any monkey. After a disturbed night, after confessing to himself that
Esther completely upset his ideas, after realizing some unexpected turns
of fortune on the Bourse, he came to her one day, intending to give the
hundred thousand francs on which Asie insisted, but he was determined to
have plenty of information for the money.
“Well, have you made up your mind, old higgler?” said Asie, clapping him
on the shoulder.
The most dishonoring familiarity is the first tax these women levy on
the frantic passions or griefs that are confided to them; they never
rise to the level of their clients; they make them seem squat beside
them on their mudheap. Asie, it will be seen, obeyed her master
admirably.
“Need must!” said Nucingen.
“And you have the best of the bargain,” said Asie. “Women have been sold
much dearer than this one to you--relatively speaking. There are women
and women! De Marsay paid sixty thousand francs for Coralie, who is dead
now. The woman you want cost a hundred thousand francs when new; but to
you, you old goat, it is a matter of agreement.”
“But vere is she?”
“Ah! you shall see. I am like you--a gift for a gift! Oh, my good man,
your adored one has been extravagant. These girls know no moderation.
Your princess is at this moment what we call a fly by night----”
“A fly----?”
“Come, come, don’t play the simpleton.--Louchard is at her heels, and
I--I--have lent her fifty thousand francs----”
“Twenty-fife say!” cried the banker.
“Well, of course, twenty-five for fifty, that is only natural,” replied
Asie. “To do the woman justice, she is honesty itself. She had nothing
left but herself, and says she to me: ‘My good Madame Saint-Esteve,
the bailiffs are after me; no one can help me but you. Give me twenty
thousand francs. I will pledge my heart to you.’ Oh, she has a sweet
heart; no one but me knows where it lies. Any folly on my part, and I
should lose my twenty thousand francs.
“Formerly she lived in the Rue Taitbout. Before leaving--(her furniture
was seized for costs--those rascally bailiffs--You know them, you who
are one of the great men on the Bourse)--well, before leaving, she is
no fool, she let her rooms for two months to an Englishwoman, a splendid
creature who had a little thingummy--Rubempre--for a lover, and he was
so jealous that he only let her go out at night. But as the furniture is
to be seized, the Englishwoman has cut her stick, all the more because
she cost too much for a little whipper-snapper like Lucien.”
“You cry up de goots,” said Nucingen.
“Naturally,” said Asie. “I lend to the beauties; and it pays, for you
get two commissions for one job.”
Asie was amusing herself by caricaturing the manners of a class of women
who are even greedier but more wheedling and mealy-mouthed than the
Malay woman, and who put a gloss of the best motives on the trade they
ply. Asie affected to have lost all her illusions, five lovers, and some
children, and to have submitted to be robbed by everybody in spite of
her experience. From time to time she exhibited some pawn-tickets,
to prove how much bad luck there was in her line of business. She
represented herself as pinched and in debt, and to crown all, she was so
undisguisedly hideous that the Baron at last believed her to be all she
said she was.
“Vell den, I shall pay the hundert tousant, and vere shall I see
her?” said he, with the air of a man who has made up his mind to any
sacrifice.
“My fat friend, you shall come this evening--in your carriage, of
course--opposite the Gymnase. It is on the way,” said Asie. “Stop at the
corner of the Rue Saint-Barbe. I will be on the lookout, and we will go
and find my mortgaged beauty, with the black hair.--Oh, she has splendid
hair, has my mortgage. If she pulls out her comb, Esther is covered as
if it were a pall. But though you are knowing in arithmetic, you strike
me as a muff in other matters; and I advise you to hide the girl safely,
for if she is found she will be clapped into Sainte-Pelagie the very
next day.--And they are looking for her.”
“Shall it not be possible to get holt of de bills?” said the
incorrigible bill-broker.
“The bailiffs have got them--but it is impossible. The girl has had a
passion, and has spent some money left in her hands, which she is now
called upon to pay. By the poker!--a queer thing is a heart of two
and-twenty.”
“Ver’ goot, ver’ goot, I shall arrange all dat,” said Nucingen, assuming
a cunning look. “It is qvite settled dat I shall protect her.”
“Well, old noodle, it is your business to make her fall in love with
you, and you certainly have ample means to buy sham love as good as the
real article. I will place your princess in your keeping; she is bound
to stick to you, and after that I don’t care.--But she is accustomed to
luxury and the greatest consideration. I tell you, my boy, she is quite
the lady.--If not, should I have given her twenty thousand francs?”
“Ver’ goot, it is a pargain. Till dis efening.”
The Baron repeated the bridal toilet he had already once achieved; but
this time, being certain of success, he took a double dose of pillules.
At nine o’clock he found the dreadful woman at the appointed spot, and
took her into his carriage.
“Vere to?” said the Baron.
“Where?” echoed Asie. “Rue de la Perle in the Marais--an address for the
nonce; for your pearl is in the mud, but you will wash her clean.”
Having reached the spot, the false Madame de Saint-Esteve said to
Nucingen with a hideous smile:
“We must go a short way on foot; I am not such a fool as to have given
you the right address.”
“You tink of eferytink!” said the baron.
“It is my business,” said she.
Asie led Nucingen to the Rue Barbette, where, in furnished lodgings kept
by an upholsterer, he was led up to the fourth floor.
On finding Esther in a squalid room, dressed as a work-woman, and
employed on some embroidery, the millionaire turned pale. At the end of
a quarter of an hour, while Asie affected to talk in whispers to Esther,
the young old man could hardly speak.
“Montemisselle,” said he at length to the unhappy girl, “vill you be so
goot as to let me be your protector?”
“Why, I cannot help myself, monsieur,” replied Esther, letting fall two
large tears.
“Do not veep. I shall make you de happiest of vomen. Only permit that I
shall lof you--you shall see.”
“Well, well, child, the gentleman is reasonable,” said Asie. “He knows
that he is more than sixty, and he will be very kind to you. You see,
my beauty, I have found you quite a father--I had to say so,” Asie
whispered to the banker, who was not best pleased. “You cannot catch
swallows by firing a pistol at them.--Come here,” she went on, leading
Nucingen into the adjoining room. “You remember our bargain, my angel?”
Nucingen took out his pocketbook and counted out the hundred thousand
francs, which Carlos, hidden in a cupboard, was impatiently waiting for,
and which the cook handed over to him.
“Here are the hundred thousand francs our man stakes on Asie. Now we
must make him lay on Europe,” said Carlos to his confidante when they
were on the landing.
And he vanished after giving his instruction to the Malay who went back
into the room. She found Esther weeping bitterly. The poor girl, like a
criminal condemned to death, had woven a romance of hope, and the fatal
hour had tolled.
“My dear children,” said Asie, “where do you mean to go?--For the Baron
de Nucingen----”
Esther looked at the great banker with a start of surprise that was
admirably acted.
“Ja, mein kind, I am dat Baron von Nucingen.”
“The Baron de Nucingen must not, cannot remain in such a room as this,”
Asie went on. “Listen to me; your former maid Eugenie.”
“Eugenie, from the Rue Taitbout?” cried the Baron.
“Just so; the woman placed in possession of the furniture,” replied
Asie, “and who let the apartment to that handsome Englishwoman----”
“Hah! I onderstant!” said the Baron.
“Madame’s former waiting-maid,” Asie went on, respectfully alluding
to Esther, “will receive you very comfortably this evening; and the
commercial police will never think of looking for her in her old rooms
which she left three months ago----”
“Feerst rate, feerst rate!” cried the Baron. “An’ besides, I know dese
commercial police, an’ I know vat sorts shall make dem disappear.”
“You will find Eugenie a sharp customer,” said Asie. “I found her for
madame.”
“Hah! I know her!” cried the millionaire, laughing. “She haf fleeced me
out of dirty tousant franc.”
Esther shuddered with horror in a way that would have led a man of any
feeling to trust her with his fortune.
“Oh, dat vas mein own fault,” the Baron said. “I vas seeking for you.”
And he related the incident that had arisen out of the letting of
Esther’s rooms to the Englishwoman.
“There, now, you see, madame, Eugenie never told you all that, the sly
thing!” said Asie.--“Still, madame is used to the hussy,” she added to
the Baron. “Keep her on, all the same.”
She drew Nucingen aside and said:
“If you give Eugenie five hundred francs a month, which will fill up her
stocking finely, you can know everything that madame does: make her the
lady’s-maid. Eugenie will be all the more devoted to you since she has
already done you.--Nothing attaches a woman to a man more than the fact
that she has once fleeced him. But keep a tight rein on Eugenie; she
will do any earthly thing for money; she is a dreadful creature!”
“An’ vat of you?”
“I,” said Asie, “I make both ends meet.”
Nucingen, the astute financier, had a bandage over his eyes; he allowed
himself to be led like a child. The sight of that spotless and adorable
Esther wiping her eyes and pricking in the stitches of her embroidery
as demurely as an innocent girl, revived in the amorous old man the
sensations he had experienced in the Forest of Vincennes; he would
have given her the key of his safe. He felt so young, his heart was so
overflowing with adoration; he only waited till Asie should be gone to
throw himself at the feet of this Raphael’s Madonna.
This sudden blossoming of youth in the heart of a stockbroker, of an old
man, is one of the social phenomena which must be left to physiology to
account for. Crushed under the burden of business, stifled under endless
calculations and the incessant anxieties of million-hunting, young
emotions revive with their sublime illusions, sprout and flower like
a forgotten cause or a forgotten seed, whose effects, whose gorgeous
bloom, are the sport of chance, brought out by a late and sudden gleam
of sunshine.
The Baron, a clerk by the time he was twelve years old in the ancient
house of Aldrigger at Strasbourg, had never set foot in the world of
sentiment. So there he stood in front of his idol, hearing in his brain
a thousand modes of speech, while none came to his lips, till at length
he acted on the brutal promptings of desire that betrayed a man of
sixty-six.
“Vill you come to Rue Taitbout?” said he.
“Wherever you please, monsieur,” said Esther, rising.
“Verever I please!” he echoed in rapture. “You are ein anchel from de
sky, and I lofe you more as if I was a little man, vile I hafe gray
hairs----”
“You had better say white, for they are too fine a black to be only
gray,” said Asie.
“Get out, foul dealer in human flesh! You hafe got your moneys; do not
slobber no more on dis flower of lofe!” cried the banker, indemnifying
himself by this violent abuse for all the insolence he had submitted to.
“You old rip! I will pay you out for that speech!” said Asie,
threatening the banker with a gesture worthy of the Halle, at which the
Baron merely shrugged his shoulders. “Between the lip of the pot and
that of the guzzler there is often a viper, and you will find me there!”
she went on, furious at Nucingen’s contempt.
Millionaires, whose money is guarded by the Bank of France, whose
mansions are guarded by a squad of footmen, whose person in the streets
is safe behind the rampart of a coach with swift English horses, fear no
ill; so the Baron looked calmly at Asie, as a man who had just given her
a hundred thousand francs.
This dignity had its effect. Asie beat a retreat, growling down the
stairs in highly revolutionary language; she spoke of the guillotine!
“What have you said to her?” asked the Madonna a la broderie, “for she
is a good soul.”
“She hafe solt you, she hafe robbed you----”
“When we are beggared,” said she, in a tone to rend the heart of a
diplomate, “who has ever any money or consideration for us?”
“Poor leetle ting!” said Nucingen. “Do not stop here ein moment longer.”
The Baron offered her his arm; he led her away just as she was, and put
her into his carriage with more respect perhaps than he would have shown
to the handsome Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.
“You shall hafe a fine carriage, de prettiest carriage in Paris,” said
Nucingen, as they drove along. “Everyting dat luxury shall sopply shall
be for you. Not any qveen shall be more rich dan vat you shall be.
You shall be respected like ein Cherman Braut. I shall hafe you to
be free.--Do not veep! Listen to me--I lofe you really, truly, mit de
purest lofe. Efery tear of yours breaks my heart.”
“Can one truly love a woman one has bought?” said the poor girl in the
sweetest tones.
“Choseph vas solt by his broders for dat he was so comely. Dat is so in
de Biple. An’ in de Eastern lants men buy deir wifes.”
On arriving at the Rue Taitbout, Esther could not return to the scene
of her happiness without some pain. She remained sitting on a couch,
motionless, drying away her tears one by one, and never hearing a word
of the crazy speeches poured out by the banker. He fell at her feet, and
she let him kneel without saying a word to him, allowing him to take her
hands as he would, and never thinking of the sex of the creature who was
rubbing her feet to warm them; for Nucingen found that they were cold.
This scene of scalding tears shed on the Baron’s head, and of ice-cold
feet that he tried to warm, lasted from midnight till two in the
morning.
“Eugenie,” cried the Baron at last to Europe, “persvade your mis’ess
that she shall go to bet.”
“No!” cried Esther, starting to her feet like a scared horse. “Never in
this house!”
“Look her, monsieur, I know madame; she is as gentle and kind as a
lamb,” said Europe to the Baron. “Only you must not rub her the wrong
way, you must get at her sideways--she had been so miserable here.--You
see how worn the furniture is.--Let her go her own way.
“Furnish some pretty little house for her, very nicely. Perhaps when she
sees everything new about her she will feel a stranger there, and think
you better looking than you are, and be angelically sweet.--Oh! madame
has not her match, and you may boast of having done a very good stroke
of business: a good heart, genteel manners, a fine instep--and a skin, a
complexion! Ah!----
“And witty enough to make a condemned wretch laugh. And madame can feel
an attachment.--And then how she can dress!--Well, if it is costly,
still, as they say, you get your money’s worth.--Here all the gowns were
seized, everything she has is three months old.--But madame is so
kind, you see, that I love her, and she is my mistress!--But in all
justice--such a woman as she is, in the midst of furniture that has been
seized!--And for whom? For a young scamp who has ruined her. Poor little
thing, she is not at all herself.”
“Esther, Esther; go to bet, my anchel! If it is me vat frighten you, I
shall stay here on dis sofa----” cried the Baron, fired by the purest
devotion, as he saw that Esther was still weeping.
“Well, then,” said Esther, taking the “lynx’s” hand, and kissing it with
an impulse of gratitude which brought something very like a tear to his
eye, “I shall be grateful to you----”
And she fled into her room and locked the door.
“Dere is someting fery strange in all dat,” thought Nucingen, excited by
his pillules. “Vat shall dey say at home?”
He got up and looked out of the window. “My carriage still is dere. It
shall soon be daylight.” He walked up and down the room.
“Vat Montame de Nucingen should laugh at me ven she should know how I
hafe spent dis night!”
He applied his ear to the bedroom door, thinking himself rather too much
of a simpleton.
“Esther!”
No reply.
“Mein Gott! and she is still veeping!” said he to himself, as he
stretched himself on the sofa.
About ten minutes after sunrise, the Baron de Nucingen, who was sleeping
the uneasy slumbers that are snatched by compulsion in an awkward
position on a couch, was aroused with a start by Europe from one of
those dreams that visit us in such moments, and of which the swift
complications are a phenomenon inexplicable by medical physiology.
“Oh, God help us, madame!” she shrieked. “Madame!--the
soldiers--gendarmes--bailiffs! They have come to take us.”
At the moment when Esther opened her door and appeared, hurriedly,
wrapped in her dressing-gown, her bare feet in slippers, her hair in
disorder, lovely enough to bring the angel Raphael to perdition, the
drawing-room door vomited into the room a gutter of human mire that came
on, on ten feet, towards the beautiful girl, who stood like an angel
in some Flemish church picture. One man came foremost. Contenson, the
horrible Contenson, laid his hand on Esther’s dewy shoulder.
“You are Mademoiselle van----” he began. Europe, by a back-handed slap
on Contenson’s cheek, sent him sprawling to measure his length on the
carpet, and with all the more effect because at the same time she caught
his leg with the sharp kick known to those who practise the art as a
coup de savate.
“Hands off!” cried she. “No one shall touch my mistress.”
“She has broken my leg!” yelled Contenson, picking himself up; “I will
have damages!”
From the group of bumbailiffs, looking like what they were, all
standing with their horrible hats on their yet more horrible heads,
with mahogany-colored faces and bleared eyes, damaged noses, and hideous
mouths, Louchard now stepped forth, more decently dressed than his men,
but keeping his hat on, his expression at once smooth-faced and smiling.
“Mademoiselle, I arrest you!” said he to Esther. “As for you, my girl,”
he added to Europe, “any resistance will be punished, and perfectly
useless.”
The noise of muskets, let down with a thud of their stocks on the floor
of the dining-room, showing that the invaders had soldiers to bake them,
gave emphasis to this speech.
“And what am I arrested for?” said Esther.
“What about our little debts?” said Louchard.
“To be sure,” cried Esther; “give me leave to dress.”
“But, unfortunately, mademoiselle, I am obliged to make sure that you
have no way of getting out of your room,” said Louchard.
All this passed so quickly that the Baron had not yet had time to
intervene.
“Well, and am I still a foul dealer in human flesh, Baron de Nucingen?”
cried the hideous Asie, forcing her way past the sheriff’s officers to
the couch, where she pretended to have just discovered the banker.
“Contemptible wretch!” exclaimed Nucingen, drawing himself up in
financial majesty.
He placed himself between Esther and Louchard, who took off his hat as
Contenson cried out, “Monsieur le Baron de Nucingen.”
At a signal from Louchard the bailiffs vanished from the room,
respectfully taking their hats off. Contenson alone was left.
“Do you propose to pay, Monsieur le Baron?” asked he, hat in hand.
“I shall pay,” said the banker; “but I must know vat dis is all about.”
“Three hundred and twelve thousand francs and some centimes, costs paid;
but the charges for the arrest not included.”
“Three hundred thousand francs,” cried the Baron; “dat is a fery
‘xpensive vaking for a man vat has passed the night on a sofa,” he added
in Europe’s ear.
“Is that man really the Baron de Nucingen?” asked Europe to Louchard,
giving weight to the doubt by a gesture which Mademoiselle Dupont, the
low comedy servant of the Francais, might have envied.
“Yes, mademoiselle,” said Louchard.
“Yes,” replied Contenson.
“I shall be answerable,” said the Baron, piqued in his honor by Europe’s
doubt. “You shall ‘llow me to say ein vort to her.”
Esther and her elderly lover retired to the bedroom, Louchard finding it
necessary to apply his ear to the keyhole.
“I lofe you more as my life, Esther; but vy gife to your creditors
moneys vich shall be so much better in your pocket? Go into prison. I
shall undertake to buy up dose hundert tousant crowns for ein hundert
tousant francs, an’ so you shall hafe two hundert tousant francs for
you----”
“That scheme is perfectly useless,” cried Louchard through the door.
“The creditor is not in love with mademoiselle--not he! You understand?
And he means to have more than all, now he knows that you are in love
with her.”
“You dam’ sneak!” cried Nucingen, opening the door, and dragging
Louchard into the bedroom; “you know not dat vat you talk about. I shall
gife you, you’self, tventy per cent if you make the job.”
“Impossible, M. le Baron.”
“What, monsieur, you could have the heart to let my mistress go to
prison?” said Europe, intervening. “But take my wages, my savings; take
them, madame; I have forty thousand francs----”
“Ah, my good girl, I did not really know you!” cried Esther, clasping
Europe in her arms.
Europe proceeded to melt into tears.
“I shall pay,” said the Baron piteously, as he drew out a pocket-book,
from which he took one of the little printed forms which the Bank of
France issues to bankers, on which they have only to write a sum in
figures and in words to make them available as cheques to bearer.
“It is not worth the trouble, Monsieur le Baron,” said Louchard; “I
have instructions not to accept payment in anything but coin of the
realm--gold or silver. As it is you, I will take banknotes.”
“Der Teufel!” cried the Baron. “Well, show me your papers.”
Contenson handed him three packets covered with blue paper, which the
Baron took, looking at the man, and adding in an undertone:
“It should hafe been a better day’s vork for you ven you had gife me
notice.”
“Why, how should I know you were here, Monsieur le Baron?” replied
the spy, heedless whether Louchard heard him. “You lost my services
by withdrawing your confidence. You are done,” added this philosopher,
shrugging his shoulders.
“Qvite true,” said the baron. “Ah, my chilt,” he exclaimed, seeing
the bills of exchange, and turning to Esther, “you are de fictim of a
torough scoundrel, ein highway tief!”
“Alas, yes,” said poor Esther; “but he loved me truly.”
“Ven I should hafe known--I should hafe made you to protest----”
“You are off your head, Monsieur le Baron,” said Louchard; “there is a
third endorsement.”
“Yes, dere is a tird endorsement--Cerizet! A man of de opposition.”
“Will you write an order on your cashier, Monsieur le Baron?” said
Louchard. “I will send Contenson to him and dismiss my men. It is
getting late, and everybody will know that----”
“Go den, Contenson,” said Nucingen. “My cashier lives at de corner of
Rue des Mathurins and Rue de l’Arcate. Here is ein vort for dat he shall
go to du Tillet or to de Kellers, in case ve shall not hafe a hundert
tousant franc--for our cash shall be at de Bank.--Get dress’, my
anchel,” he said to Esther. “You are at liberty.--An’ old vomans,” he
went on, looking at Asie, “are more dangerous as young vomans.”
“I will go and give the creditor a good laugh,” said Asie, “and he will
give me something for a treat to-day.--We bear no malice, Monsieur le
Baron,” added Saint-Esteve with a horrible courtesy.
Louchard took the bills out of the Baron’s hands, and remained alone
with him in the drawing-room, whither, half an hour later, the cashier
came, followed by Contenson. Esther then reappeared in a bewitching,
though improvised, costume. When the money had been counted by Louchard,
the Baron wished to examine the bills; but Esther snatched them with a
cat-like grab, and carried them away to her desk.
“What will you give the rabble?” said Contenson to Nucingen.
“You hafe not shown much consideration,” said the Baron.
“And what about my leg?” cried Contenson.
“Louchard, you shall gife ein hundert francs to Contenson out of the
change of the tousand-franc note.”
“De lady is a beauty,” said the cashier to the Baron, as they left the
Rue Taitbout, “but she is costing you ver’ dear, Monsieur le Baron.”
“Keep my segret,” said the Baron, who had said the same to Contenson and
Louchard.
Louchard went away with Contenson; but on the boulevard Asie, who was
looking out for him, stopped Louchard.
“The bailiff and the creditor are there in a cab,” said she. “They are
thirsty, and there is money going.”
While Louchard counted out the cash, Contenson studied the customers. He
recognized Carlos by his eyes, and traced the form of his forehead under
the wig. The wig he shrewdly regarded as suspicious; he took the number
of the cab while seeming quite indifferent to what was going on; Asie
and Europe puzzled him beyond measure. He thought that the Baron was the
victim of excessively clever sharpers, all the more so because Louchard,
when securing his services, had been singularly close. And besides, the
twist of Europe’s foot had not struck his shin only.
“A trick like that is learned at Saint-Lazare,” he had reflected as he
got up.
Carlos dismissed the bailiff, paying him liberally, and as he did so,
said to the driver of the cab, “To the Perron, Palais Royal.”
“The rascal!” thought Contenson as he heard the order. “There is
something up!” Carlos drove to the Palais Royal at a pace which
precluded all fear of pursuit. He made his way in his own fashion
through the arcades, took another cab on the Place du Chateau d’Eau, and
bid the man go “to the Passage de l’Opera, the end of the Rue Pinon.”
A quarter of a hour later he was in the Rue Taitbout. On seeing him,
Esther said:
“Here are the fatal papers.”
Carlos took the bills, examined them, and then burned them in the
kitchen fire.
“We have done the trick,” he said, showing her three hundred and ten
thousand francs in a roll, which he took out of the pocket of his coat.
“This, and the hundred thousand francs squeezed out by Asie, set us free
to act.”
“Oh God, oh God!” cried poor Esther.
“But, you idiot,” said the ferocious swindler, “you have only to be
ostensibly Nucingen’s mistress, and you can always see Lucien; he is
Nucingen’s friend; I do not forbid your being madly in love with him.”
Esther saw a glimmer of light in her darkened life; she breathed once
more.
“Europe, my girl,” said Carlos, leading the creature into a corner of
the boudoir where no one could overhear a word, “Europe, I am pleased
with you.”
Europe held up her head, and looked at this man with an expression which
so completely changed her faded features, that Asie, witnessing the
interview, as she watched her from the door, wondered whether the
interest by which Carlos held Europe might not perhaps be even stronger
than that by which she herself was bound to him.
“That is not all, my child. Four hundred thousand francs are a mere
nothing to me. Paccard will give you an account for some plate,
amounting to thirty thousand francs, on which money has been paid
on account; but our goldsmith, Biddin, has paid money for us. Our
furniture, seized by him, will no doubt be advertised to-morrow. Go
and see Biddin; he lives in the Rue de l’Arbre Sec; he will give you
Mont-de-Piete tickets for ten thousand francs. You understand, Esther
ordered the plate; she had not paid for it, and she put it up the spout.
She will be in danger of a little summons for swindling. So we must pay
the goldsmith the thirty thousand francs, and pay up ten thousand francs
to the Mont-de-Piete to get the plate back. Forty-three thousand francs
in all, including the costs. The silver is very much alloyed; the Baron
will give her a new service, and we shall bone a few thousand francs out
of that. You owe--what? two years’ account with the dressmaker?”
“Put it at six thousand francs,” replied Europe.
“Well, if Madame Auguste wants to be paid and keep our custom, tell her
to make out a bill for thirty thousand francs over four years. Make a
similar arrangement with the milliner. The jeweler, Samuel Frisch the
Jew, in the Rue Saint-Avoie, will lend you some pawn-tickets; we must
owe him twenty-five thousand francs, and we must want six thousand for
jewels pledged at the Mont-de-Piete. We will return the trinkets to
the jeweler, half the stones will be imitation, but the Baron will not
examine them. In short, you will make him fork out another hundred and
fifty thousand francs to add to our nest-eggs within a week.”
“Madame might give me a little help,” said Europe. “Tell her so, for she
sits there mumchance, and obliges me to find more inventions than three
authors for one piece.”
“If Esther turns prudish, just let me know,” said Carlos. “Nucingen
must give her a carriage and horses; she will have to choose and buy
everything herself. Go to the horse-dealer and the coachmaker who
are employed by the job-master where Paccard finds work. We shall get
handsome horses, very dear, which will go lame within a month, and we
shall have to change them.”
“We might get six thousand francs out of a perfumer’s bill,” said
Europe.
“Oh!” said he, shaking his head, “we must go gently. Nucingen has only
got his arm into the press; we must have his head. Besides all this, I
must get five hundred thousand francs.”
“You can get them,” replied Europe. “Madame will soften towards the fat
fool for about six hundred thousand, and insist on four hundred thousand
more to love him truly!”
“Listen to me, my child,” said Carlos. “The day when I get the last
hundred thousand francs, there shall be twenty thousand for you.”
“What good will they do me?” said Europe, letting her arms drop like a
woman to whom life seems impossible.
“You could go back to Valenciennes, buy a good business, and set up as
an honest woman if you chose; there are many tastes in human nature.
Paccard thinks of settling sometimes; he has no encumbrances on his
hands, and not much on his conscience; you might suit each other,”
replied Carlos.
“Go back to Valenciennes! What are you thinking of, monsieur?” cried
Europe in alarm.
Europe, who was born at Valenciennes, the child of very poor parents,
had been sent at seven years of age to a spinning factory, where the
demands of modern industry had impaired her physical strength, just as
vice had untimely depraved her. Corrupted at the age of twelve, and
a mother at thirteen, she found herself bound to the most degraded of
human creatures. On the occasion of a murder case, she had been as a
witness before the Court. Haunted at sixteen by a remnant of rectitude,
and the terror inspired by the law, her evidence led to the prisoner
being sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.
The convict, one of those men who have been in the hands of justice more
than once, and whose temper is apt at terrible revenge, had said to the
girl in open court:
“In ten years, as sure as you live, Prudence” (Europe’s name was
Prudence Servien), “I will return to be the death of you, if I am
scragged for it.”
The President of the Court tried to reassure the girl by promising
her the protection and the care of the law; but the poor child was so
terror-stricken that she fell ill, and was in hospital nearly a year.
Justice is an abstract being, represented by a collection of individuals
who are incessantly changing, whose good intentions and memories are,
like themselves, liable to many vicissitudes. Courts and tribunals can
do nothing to hinder crimes; their business is to deal with them when
done. From this point of view, a preventive police would be a boon to
a country; but the mere word Police is in these days a bugbear
to legislators, who no longer can distinguish between the three
words--Government, Administration, and Law-making. The legislator tends
to centralize everything in the State, as if the State could act.
The convict would be sure always to remember his victim, and to avenge
himself when Justice had ceased to think of either of them.
Prudence, who instinctively appreciated the danger--in a general sense,
so to speak--left Valenciennes and came to Paris at the age of seventeen
to hide there. She tried four trades, of which the most successful was
that of a “super” at a minor theatre. She was picked up by Paccard,
and to him she told her woes. Paccard, Jacques Collin’s disciple and
right-hand man, spoke of this girl to his master, and when the master
needed a slave he said to Prudence:
“If you will serve me as the devil must be served, I will rid you of
Durut.”
Durut was the convict; the Damocles’ sword hung over Prudence Servien’s
head.
But for these details, many critics would have thought Europe’s
attachment somewhat grotesque. And no one could have understood the
startling announcement that Carlos had ready.
“Yes, my girl, you can go back to Valenciennes. Here, read this.”
And he held out to her yesterday’s paper, pointing to this paragraph:
“TOULON--Yesterday, Jean Francois Durut was executed here. Early
in the morning the garrison,” etc.
Prudence dropped the paper; her legs gave way under the weight of her
body; she lived again; for, to use her own words, she never liked the
taste of her food since the day when Durut had threatened her.
“You see, I have kept my word. It has taken four years to bring Durut to
the scaffold by leading him into a snare.--Well, finish my job here, and
you will find yourself at the head of a little country business in your
native town, with twenty thousand francs of your own as Paccard’s wife,
and I will allow him to be virtuous as a form of pension.”
Europe picked up the paper and read with greedy eyes all the details, of
which for twenty years the papers have never been tired, as to the death
of convicted criminals: the impressive scene, the chaplain--who has
always converted the victim--the hardened criminal preaching to his
fellow convicts, the battery of guns, the convicts on their knees; and
then the twaddle and reflections which never lead to any change in the
management of the prisons where eighteen hundred crimes are herded.
“We must place Asie on the staff once more,” said Carlos.
Asie came forward, not understanding Europe’s pantomime.
“In bringing her back here as cook, you must begin by giving the Baron
such a dinner as he never ate in his life,” he went on. “Tell him that
Asie has lost all her money at play, and has taken service once more. We
shall not need an outdoor servant. Paccard shall be coachman. Coachmen
do not leave their box, where they are safe out of the way; and he will
run less risk from spies. Madame must turn him out in a powdered wig and
a braided felt cocked hat; that will alter his appearance. Besides, I
will make him us.”
“Are we going to have men-servants in the house?” asked Asie with a
leer.
“All honest folks,” said Carlos.
“All soft-heads,” retorted the mulatto.
“If the Baron takes a house, Paccard has a friend who will suit as the
lodge porter,” said Carlos. “Then we shall only need a footman and a
kitchen-maid, and you can surely keep an eye on two strangers----”
As Carlos was leaving, Paccard made his appearance.
“Wait a little while, there are people in the street,” said the man.
This simple statement was alarming. Carlos went up to Europe’s room, and
stayed there till Paccard came to fetch him, having called a hackney
cab that came into the courtyard. Carlos pulled down the blinds, and was
driven off at a pace that defied pursuit.
Having reached the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, he got out at a short
distance from a hackney coach stand, to which he went on foot, and
thence returned to the Quai Malaquais, escaping all inquiry.
“Here, child,” said he to Lucien, showing him four hundred banknotes for
a thousand francs, “here is something on account for the purchase of
the estates of Rubempre. We will risk a hundred thousand. Omnibuses
have just been started; the Parisians will take to the novelty; in three
months we shall have trebled our capital. I know the concern; they will
pay splendid dividends taken out of the capital, to put a head on the
shares--an old idea of Nucingen’s revived. If we acquire the Rubempre
land, we shall not have to pay on the nail.
“You must go and see des Lupeaulx, and beg him to give you a personal
recommendation to a lawyer named Desroches, a cunning dog, whom you must
call on at his office. Get him to go to Rubempre and see how the land
lies; promise him a premium of twenty thousand francs if he manages
to secure you thirty thousand francs a year by investing eight hundred
thousand francs in land round the ruins of the old house.”
“How you go on--on! on!”
“I am always going on. This is no time for joking.--You must then invest
a hundred thousand crowns in Treasury bonds, so as to lose no interest;
you may safely leave it to Desroches, he is as honest as he is
knowing.--That being done, get off to Angouleme, and persuade your
sister and your brother-in-law to pledge themselves to a little fib in
the way of business. Your relations are to have given you six hundred
thousand francs to promote your marriage with Clotilde de Grandlieu;
there is no disgrace in that.”
“We are saved!” cried Lucien, dazzled.
“You are, yes!” replied Carlos. “But even you are not safe till you walk
out of Saint-Thomas d’Aquin with Clotilde as your wife.”
“And what have you to fear?” said Lucien, apparently much concerned for
his counselor.
“Some inquisitive souls are on my track--I must assume the manners of a
genuine priest; it is most annoying. The Devil will cease to protect me
if he sees me with a breviary under my arm.”
At this moment the Baron de Nucingen, who was leaning on his cashier’s
arm, reached the door of his mansion.
“I am ver’ much afrait,” said he, as he went in, “dat I hafe done a bat
day’s vork. Vell, we must make it up some oder vays.”
“De misfortune is dat you shall hafe been caught, mein Herr Baron,” said
the worthy German, whose whole care was for appearances.
“Ja, my miss’ess en titre should be in a position vody of me,” said this
Louis XIV. of the counting-house.
Feeling sure that sooner or later Esther would be his, the Baron was now
himself again, a masterly financier. He resumed the management of his
affairs, and with such effect that his cashier, finding him in his
office room at six o’clock next morning, verifying his securities,
rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
“Ah, ha! mein Herr Baron, you shall hafe saved money last night!” said
he, with a half-cunning, half-loutish German grin.
Though men who are as rich as the Baron de Nucingen have more
opportunities than others for losing money, they also have more chances
of making it, even when they indulge their follies. Though the financial
policy of the house of Nucingen has been explained elsewhere, it may be
as well to point out that such immense fortunes are not made, are not
built up, are not increased, and are not retained in the midst of the
commercial, political, and industrial revolutions of the present day but
at the cost of immense losses, or, if you choose to view it so, of heavy
taxes on private fortunes. Very little newly-created wealth is thrown
into the common treasury of the world. Every fresh accumulation
represents some new inequality in the general distribution of wealth.
What the State exacts it makes some return for; but what a house like
that of Nucingen takes, it keeps.
Such covert robbery escapes the law for the reason which would have made
a Jacques Collin of Frederick the Great, if, instead of dealing with
provinces by means of battles, he had dealt in smuggled goods or
transferable securities. The high politics of money-making consist in
forcing the States of Europe to issue loans at twenty or at ten per
cent, in making that twenty or ten per cent by the use of public funds,
in squeezing industry on a vast scale by buying up raw material, in
throwing a rope to the first founder of a business just to keep him
above water till his drowned-out enterprise is safely landed--in short,
in all the great battles for money-getting.
The banker, no doubt, like the conqueror, runs risks; but there are
so few men in a position to wage this warfare, that the sheep have no
business to meddle. Such grand struggles are between the shepherds.
Thus, as the defaulters are guilty of having wanted to win too much,
very little sympathy is felt as a rule for the misfortunes brought about
by the coalition of the Nucingens. If a speculator blows his brains
out, if a stockbroker bolts, if a lawyer makes off with the fortune of a
hundred families--which is far worse than killing a man--if a banker is
insolvent, all these catastrophes are forgotten in Paris in few months,
and buried under the oceanic surges of the great city.
The colossal fortunes of Jacques Coeur, of the Medici, of the Angos
of Dieppe, of the Auffredis of la Rochelle, of the Fuggers, of the
Tiepolos, of the Corners, were honestly made long ago by the advantages
they had over the ignorance of the people as to the sources of precious
products; but nowadays geographical information has reached the masses,
and competition has so effectually limited the profits, that every
rapidly made fortune is the result of chance, or of a discovery, or of
some legalized robbery. The lower grades of mercantile enterprise have
retorted on the perfidious dealings of higher commerce, especially
during the last ten years, by base adulteration of the raw material.
Wherever chemistry is practised, wine is no longer procurable; the vine
industry is consequently waning. Manufactured salt is sold to avoid
the excise. The tribunals are appalled by this universal dishonesty. In
short, French trade is regarded with suspicion by the whole world, and
England too is fast being demoralized.
With us the mischief has its origin in the political situation. The
Charter proclaimed the reign of Money, and success has become the
supreme consideration of an atheistic age. And, indeed, the corruption
of the higher ranks is infinitely more hideous, in spite of the dazzling
display and specious arguments of wealth, than that ignoble and more
personal corruption of the inferior classes, of which certain details
lend a comic element--terrible, if you will--to this drama. The
Government, always alarmed by a new idea, has banished these materials
of modern comedy from the stage. The citizen class, less liberal than
Louis XIV., dreads the advent of its _Mariage de Figaro_, forbids the
appearance of a political _Tartuffe_, and certainly would not allow
_Turcaret_ to be represented, for Turcaret is king. Consequently, comedy
has to be narrated, and a book is now the weapon--less swift, but no
more sure--that writers wield.
In the course of this morning, amid the coming and going of callers,
orders to be given, and brief interviews, making Nucingen’s private
office a sort of financial lobby, one of his stockbrokers announced to
him the disappearance of a member of the Company, one of the richest
and cleverest too--Jacques Falleix, brother of Martin Falleix, and
the successor of Jules Desmarets. Jacques Falleix was stockbroker in
ordinary to the house of Nucingen. In concert with du Tillet and the
Kellers, the Baron had plotted the ruin of this man in cold blood, as if
it had been the killing of a Passover lamb.
“He could not hafe helt on,” replied the Baron quietly.
Jacques Falleix had done them immense service in stock-jobbing. During
a crisis a few months since he had saved the situation by acting boldly.
But to look for gratitude from a money-dealer is as vain as to try to
touch the heart of the wolves of the Ukraine in winter.
“Poor fellow!” said the stockbroker. “He so little anticipated such a
catastrophe, that he had furnished a little house for his mistress
in the Rue Saint-Georges; he has spent one hundred and fifty thousand
francs in decorations and furniture. He was so devoted to Madame du
Val-Noble! The poor woman must give it all up. And nothing is paid for.”
“Goot, goot!” thought Nucingen, “dis is de very chance to make up for
vat I hafe lost dis night!--He hafe paid for noting?” he asked his
informant.
“Why,” said the stockbroker, “where would you find a tradesman so ill
informed as to refuse credit to Jacques Falleix? There is a splendid
cellar of wine, it would seem. By the way, the house is for sale; he
meant to buy it. The lease is in his name.--What a piece of folly!
Plate, furniture, wine, carriage-horses, everything will be valued in a
lump, and what will the creditors get out of it?”
“Come again to-morrow,” said Nucingen. “I shall hafe seen all dat;
and if it is not a declared bankruptcy, if tings can be arranged and
compromised, I shall tell you to offer some reasonaple price for dat
furniture, if I shall buy de lease----”
“That can be managed,” said his friend. “If you go there this morning,
you will find one of Falleix’s partners there with the tradespeople,
who want to establish a first claim; but la Val-Noble has their accounts
made out to Falleix.”
The Baron sent off one of his clerks forthwith to his lawyer. Jacques
Falleix had spoken to him about this house, which was worth sixty
thousand francs at most, and he wished to be put in possession of it at
once, so as to avail himself of the privileges of the householder.
The cashier, honest man, came to inquire whether his master had lost
anything by Falleix’s bankruptcy.
“On de contrar’ mein goot Volfgang, I stant to vin ein hundert tousant
francs.”
“How vas dat?”
“Vell, I shall hafe de little house vat dat poor Teufel Falleix should
furnish for his mis’ess this year. I shall hafe all dat for fifty
tousant franc to de creditors; and my notary, Maitre Cardot, shall hafe
my orders to buy de house, for de lan’lord vant de money--I knew dat,
but I hat lost mein head. Ver’ soon my difine Esther shall life in a
little palace.... I hafe been dere mit Falleix--it is close to here.--It
shall fit me like a glofe.”
Falleix’s failure required the Baron’s presence at the Bourse; but he
could not bear to leave his house in the Rue Saint-Lazare without going
to the Rue Taitbout; he was already miserable at having been away from
Esther for so many hours. He would have liked to keep her at his elbow.
The profits he hoped to make out of his stockbrokers’ plunder made the
former loss of four hundred thousand francs quite easy to endure.
Delighted to announce to his “anchel” that she was to move from the Rue
Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where she was to have “ein little
palace” where her memories would no longer rise up in antagonism to
their happiness, the pavement felt elastic under his feet; he walked
like a young man in a young man’s dream. As he turned the corner of the
Rue des Trois Freres, in the middle of his dream, and of the road, the
Baron beheld Europe coming towards him, looking very much upset.
“Vere shall you go?” he asked.
“Well, monsieur, I was on my way to you. You were quite right yesterday.
I see now that poor madame had better have gone to prison for a few
days. But how should women understand money matters? When madame’s
creditors heard that she had come home, they all came down upon us like
birds of prey.--Last evening, at seven o’clock, monsieur, men came
and stuck terrible posters up to announce a sale of furniture on
Saturday--but that is nothing.--Madame, who is all heart, once upon a
time to oblige that wretch of a man you know----”
“Vat wretch?”
“Well, the man she was in love with, d’Estourny--well, he was charming!
He was only a gambler----”
“He gambled with beveled cards!”
“Well--and what do you do at the Bourse?” said Europe. “But let me go
on. One day, to hinder Georges, as he said, from blowing out his brains,
she pawned all her plate and her jewels, which had never been paid for.
Now on hearing that she had given something to one of her creditors,
they came in a body and made a scene. They threaten her with the
police-court--your angel at that bar! Is it not enough to make a wig
stand on end? She is bathed in tears; she talks of throwing herself into
the river--and she will do it.”
“If I shall go to see her, dat is goot-bye to de Bourse; an’ it is
impossible but I shall go, for I shall make some money for her--you
shall compose her. I shall pay her debts; I shall go to see her at four
o’clock. But tell me, Eugenie, dat she shall lofe me a little----”
“A little?--A great deal!--I tell you what, monsieur, nothing but
generosity can win a woman’s heart. You would, no doubt, have saved a
hundred thousand francs or so by letting her go to prison. Well, you
would never have won her heart. As she said to me--‘Eugenie, he has been
noble, grand--he has a great soul.’”
“She hafe said dat, Eugenie?” cried the Baron.
“Yes, monsieur, to me, myself.”
“Here--take dis ten louis.”
“Thank you.--But she is crying at this moment; she has been crying ever
since yesterday as much as a weeping Magdalen could have cried in six
months. The woman you love is in despair, and for debts that are
not even hers! Oh! men--they devour women as women devour old
fogies--there!”
“Dey all is de same!--She hafe pledge’ herself.--Vy, no one shall ever
pledge herself.--Tell her dat she shall sign noting more.--I shall pay;
but if she shall sign something more--I----”
“What will you do?” said Europe with an air.
“Mein Gott! I hafe no power over her.--I shall take de management of her
little affairs----Dere, dere, go to comfort her, and you shall say that
in ein mont she shall live in a little palace.”
“You have invested heavily, Monsieur le Baron, and for large interest,
in a woman’s heart. I tell you--you look to me younger. I am but
a waiting-maid, but I have often seen such a change. It is
happiness--happiness gives a certain glow.... If you have spent a little
money, do not let that worry you; you will see what a good return it
will bring. And I said to madame, I told her she would be the lowest of
the low, a perfect hussy, if she did not love you, for you have picked
her out of hell.--When once she has nothing on her mind, you will
see. Between you and me, I may tell you, that night when she cried so
much--What is to be said, we value the esteem of the man who maintains
us--and she did not dare tell you everything. She wanted to fly.”
“To fly!” cried the Baron, in dismay at the notion. “But the Bourse, the
Bourse!--Go ‘vay, I shall not come in.--But tell her that I shall see
her at her window--dat shall gife me courage!”
Esther smiled at Monsieur de Nucingen as he passed the house, and he
went ponderously on his way, saying:
“She is ein anchel!”
This was how Europe had succeeded in achieving the impossible. At about
half-past two Esther had finished dressing, as she was wont to dress
when she expected Lucien; she was looking charming. Seeing this,
Prudence, looking out of the window, said, “There is monsieur!”
The poor creature flew to the window, thinking she would see Lucien; she
saw Nucingen.
“Oh! how cruelly you hurt me!” she said.
“There is no other way of getting you to seem to be gracious to a poor
old man, who, after all, is going to pay your debts,” said Europe. “For
they are all to be paid.”
“What debts?” said the girl, who only cared to preserve her love, which
dreadful hands were scattering to the winds.
“Those which Monsieur Carlos made in your name.”
“Why, here are nearly four hundred and fifty thousand francs,” cried
Esther.
“And you owe a hundred and fifty thousand more. But the Baron took it
all very well.--He is going to remove you from hence, and place you in a
little palace.--On my honor, you are not so badly off. In your place,
as you have got on the right side of this man, as soon as Carlos is
satisfied, I should make him give me a house and a settled income. You
are certainly the handsomest woman I ever saw, madame, and the most
attractive, but we so soon grow ugly! I was fresh and good-looking, and
look at me! I am twenty-three, about the same age as madame, and I look
ten years older. An illness is enough.--Well, but when you have a house
in Paris and investments, you need never be afraid of ending in the
streets.”
Esther had ceased to listen to Europe-Eugenie-Prudence Servien. The will
of a man gifted with the genius of corruption had thrown Esther back
into the mud with as much force as he had used to drag her out of it.
Those who know love in its infinitude know that those who do not accept
its virtues do not experience its pleasures. Since the scene in the
den in the Rue de Langlade, Esther had utterly forgotten her former
existence. She had since lived very virtuously, cloistered by her
passion. Hence, to avoid any obstacle, the skilful fiend had been clever
enough to lay such a train that the poor girl, prompted by her devotion,
had merely to utter her consent to swindling actions already done, or on
the point of accomplishment. This subtlety, revealing the mastery of
the tempter, also characterized the methods by which he had subjugated
Lucien. He created a terrible situation, dug a mine, filled it with
powder, and at the critical moment said to his accomplice, “You have
only to nod, and the whole will explode!”
Esther of old, knowing only the morality peculiar to courtesans, thought
all these attentions so natural, that she measured her rivals only
by what they could get men to spend on them. Ruined fortunes are the
conduct-stripes of these creatures. Carlos, in counting on Esther’s
memory, had not calculated wrongly.
These tricks of warfare, these stratagems employed a thousand times, not
only by these women, but by spendthrifts too, did not disturb Esther’s
mind. She felt nothing but her personal degradation; she loved Lucien,
she was to be the Baron de Nucingen’s mistress “by appointment”;
this was all she thought of. The supposed Spaniard might absorb the
earnest-money, Lucien might build up his fortune with the stones of
her tomb, a single night of pleasure might cost the old banker so many
thousand-franc notes more or less, Europe might extract a few hundred
thousand francs by more or less ingenious trickery,--none of these
things troubled the enamored girl; this alone was the canker that ate
into her heart. For five years she had looked upon herself as being as
white as an angel. She loved, she was happy, she had never committed the
smallest infidelity. This beautiful pure love was now to be defiled.
There was, in her mind, no conscious contrasting of her happy isolated
past and her foul future life. It was neither interest nor sentiment
that moved her, only an indefinable and all powerful feeling that she
had been white and was now black, pure and was now impure, noble and
was now ignoble. Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her
unendurable. And when the Baron’s passion had threatened her, she had
really thought of throwing herself out of the window. In short, she
loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who say
they love, who often think they love best, dance, waltz, and flirt with
other men, dress for the world, and look for a harvest of concupiscent
glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved miracles of
true love. She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses love and
courtesans--women who, having rolled in mire and impurity, thirst for
something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and who practice
exclusiveness--the only word for an idea so little known in real life.
Vanished nations, Greece, Rome, and the East, have at all times kept
women shut up; the woman who loves should shut herself up. So it may
easily be imagined that on quitting the palace of her fancy, where this
poem had been enacted, to go to this old man’s “little palace,” Esther
felt heartsick. Urged by an iron hand, she had found herself waist-deep
in disgrace before she had time to reflect; but for the past two days
she had been reflecting, and felt a mortal chill about her heart.
At the words, “End in the street,” she started to her feet and said:
“In the street!--No, in the Seine rather.”
“In the Seine? And what about Monsieur Lucien?” said Europe.
This single word brought Esther to her seat again; she remained in her
armchair, her eyes fixed on a rosette in the carpet, the fire in her
brain drying up her tears.
At four o’clock Nucingen found his angel lost in that sea of meditations
and resolutions whereon a woman’s spirit floats, and whence she emerges
with utterances that are incomprehensible to those who have not sailed
it in her convoy.
“Clear your brow, meine Schone,” said the Baron, sitting down by her.
“You shall hafe no more debts--I shall arrange mit Eugenie, an’ in ein
mont you shall go ‘vay from dese rooms and go to dat little palace.--Vas
a pretty hant.--Gife it me dat I shall kiss it.” Esther gave him her
hand as a dog gives a paw. “Ach, ja! You shall gife de hant, but not de
heart, and it is dat heart I lofe!”
The words were spoken with such sincerity of accent, that poor Esther
looked at the old man with a compassion in her eyes that almost maddened
him. Lovers, like martyrs, feel a brotherhood in their sufferings!
Nothing in the world gives such a sense of kindred as community of
sorrow.
“Poor man!” said she, “he really loves.”
As he heard the words, misunderstanding their meaning, the Baron turned
pale, the blood tingled in his veins, he breathed the airs of heaven. At
his age a millionaire, for such a sensation, will pay as much gold as a
woman can ask.
“I lofe you like vat I lofe my daughter,” said he. “An’ I feel
dere”--and he laid her hand over his heart--“dat I shall not bear to see
you anyting but happy.”
“If you would only be a father to me, I would love you very much; I
would never leave you; and you would see that I am not a bad woman, not
grasping or greedy, as I must seem to you now----”
“You hafe done some little follies,” said the Baron, “like all dose
pretty vomen--dat is all. Say no more about dat. It is our pusiness to
make money for you. Be happy! I shall be your fater for some days yet,
for I know I must make you accustom’ to my old carcase.”
“Really!” she exclaimed, springing on to Nucingen’s knees, and clinging
to him with her arm round his neck.
“Really!” repeated he, trying to force a smile.
She kissed his forehead; she believed in an impossible combination--she
might remain untouched and see Lucien.
She was so coaxing to the banker that she was La Torpille once more.
She fairly bewitched the old man, who promised to be a father to her
for forty days. Those forty days were to be employed in acquiring and
arranging the house in the Rue Saint-Georges.
When he was in the street again, as he went home, the Baron said to
himself, “I am an old flat.”
But though in Esther’s presence he was a mere child, away from her he
resumed his lynx’s skin; just as the gambler (in _le Joueur_) becomes
affectionate to Angelique when he has not a liard.
“A half a million francs I hafe paid, and I hafe not yet seen vat her
leg is like.--Dat is too silly! but, happily, nobody shall hafe known
it!” said he to himself three weeks after.
And he made great resolutions to come to the point with the woman who
had cost him so dear; then, in Esther’s presence once more, he spent all
the time he could spare her in making up for the roughness of his first
words.
“After all,” said he, at the end of a month, “I cannot be de fater
eternal!”
Towards the end of the month of December 1829, just before installing
Esther in the house in the Rue Saint-Georges, the Baron begged du
Tillet to take Florine there, that she might see whether everything
was suitable to Nucingen’s fortune, and if the description of “a little
palace” were duly realized by the artists commissioned to make the cage
worthy of the bird.
Every device known to luxury before the Revolution of 1830 made this
residence a masterpiece of taste. Grindot the architect considered it
his greatest achievement as a decorator. The staircase, which had been
reconstructed of marble, the judicious use of stucco ornament, textiles,
and gilding, the smallest details as much as the general effect, outdid
everything of the kind left in Paris from the time of Louis XV.
“This is my dream!--This and virtue!” said Florine with a smile. “And
for whom are you spending all this money?”
“For a voman vat is going up there,” replied the Baron.
“A way of playing Jupiter?” replied the actress. “And when is she on
show?”
“On the day of the house-warming,” cried du Tillet.
“Not before dat,” said the Baron.
“My word, how we must lace and brush and fig ourselves out,” Florine
went on. “What a dance the women will lead their dressmakers and
hairdressers for that evening’s fun!--And when is it to be?”
“Dat is not for me to say.”
“What a woman she must be!” cried Florine. “How much I should like to
see her!”
“An’ so should I,” answered the Baron artlessly.
“What! is everything new together--the house, the furniture, and the
woman?”
“Even the banker,” said du Tillet, “for my old friend seems to me quite
young again.”
“Well, he must go back to his twentieth year,” said Florine; “at any
rate, for once.”
In the early days of 1830 everybody in Paris was talking of Nucingen’s
passion and the outrageous splendor of his house. The poor Baron,
pointed at, laughed at, and fuming with rage, as may easily be imagined,
took it into his head that on the occasion of giving the house-warming
he would at the same time get rid of his paternal disguise, and get the
price of so much generosity. Always circumvented by “La Torpille,” he
determined to treat of their union by correspondence, so as to win from
her an autograph promise. Bankers have no faith in anything less than a
promissory note.
So one morning early in the year he rose early, locked himself into his
room, and composed the following letter in very good French; for though
he spoke the language very badly, he could write it very well:--
“DEAR ESTHER, the flower of my thoughts and the only joy of my
life, when I told you that I loved you as I love my daughter, I
deceived you, I deceived myself. I only wished to express the
holiness of my sentiments, which are unlike those felt by other
men, in the first place, because I am an old man, and also because
I have never loved till now. I love you so much, that if you cost
me my fortune I should not love you the less.
“Be just! Most men would not, like me, have seen the angel in you;
I have never even glanced at your past. I love you both as I love
my daughter, Augusta, and as I might love my wife, if my wife
could have loved me. Since the only excuse for an old man’s love
is that he should be happy, ask yourself if I am not playing a too
ridiculous part. I have taken you to be the consolation and joy of
my declining days. You know that till I die you will be as happy
as a woman can be; and you know, too, that after my death you will
be rich enough to be the envy of many women. In every stroke of
business I have effected since I have had the happiness of your
acquaintance, your share is set apart, and you have a standing
account with Nucingen’s bank. In a few days you will move into a
house, which sooner or later, will be your own if you like it.
Now, plainly, will you still receive me then as a father, or will
you make me happy?
“Forgive me for writing so frankly, but when I am with you I lose
all courage; I feel too keenly that you are indeed my mistress. I
have no wish to hurt you; I only want to tell you how much I
suffer, and how hard it is to wait at my age, when every day takes
with it some hopes and some pleasures. Besides, the delicacy of my
conduct is a guarantee of the sincerity of my intentions. Have I
ever behaved as your creditor? You are like a citadel, and I am
not a young man. In answer to my appeals, you say your life is at
stake, and when I hear you, you make me believe it; but here I
sink into dark melancholy and doubts dishonorable to us both. You
seemed to me as sweet and innocent as you are lovely; but you
insist on destroying my convictions. Ask yourself!--You tell me
you bear a passion in your heart, an indomitable passion, but you
refuse to tell me the name of the man you love.--Is this natural?
“You have turned a fairly strong man into an incredibly weak one.
You see what I have come to; I am induced to ask you at the end of
five months what future hope there is for my passion. Again, I
must know what part I am to play at the opening of your house.
Money is nothing to me when it is spent for you; I will not be so
absurd as to make a merit to you of this contempt; but though my
love knows no limits, my fortune is limited, and I care for it
only for your sake. Well, if by giving you everything I possess I
might, as a poor man, win your affection, I would rather be poor
and loved than rich and scorned by you.
“You have altered me so completely, my dear Esther, that no one
knows me; I paid ten thousand francs for a picture by Joseph
Bridau because you told me that he was clever and unappreciated. I
give every beggar I meet five francs in your name. Well, and what
does the poor man ask, who regards himself as your debtor when you
do him the honor of accepting anything he can give you? He asks
only for a hope--and what a hope, good God! Is it not rather the
certainty of never having anything from you but what my passion
may seize? The fire in my heart will abet your cruel deceptions.
You find me ready to submit to every condition you can impose on
my happiness, on my few pleasures; but promise me at least that on
the day when you take possession of your house you will accept the
heart and service of him who, for the rest of his days, must sign
himself your slave,
“FREDERIC DE NUCINGEN.”
“Faugh! how he bores me--this money bag!” cried Esther, a courtesan
once more. She took a small sheet of notepaper and wrote all over it,
as close as it could go, Scribe’s famous phrase, which has become a
proverb, “Prenez mon ours.”
A quarter of an hour later, Esther, overcome by remorse, wrote the
following letter:--
“MONSIEUR LE BARON,--
“Pay no heed to the note you have just received from me; I had
relapsed into the folly of my youth. Forgive, monsieur, a poor
girl who ought to be your slave. I never more keenly felt the
degradation of my position than on the day when I was handed over
to you. You have paid; I owe myself to you. There is nothing more
sacred than a debt of dishonor. I have no right to compound it by
throwing myself into the Seine.
“A debt can always be discharged in that dreadful coin which is
good only to the debtor; you will find me yours to command. I will
pay off in one night all the sums for which that fatal hour has
been mortgaged; and I am sure that such an hour with me is worth
millions--all the more because it will be the only one, the last.
I shall then have paid the debt, and may get away from life. A
good woman has a chance of restoration after a fall; but we, the
like of us, fall too low.
“My determination is so fixed that I beg you will keep this letter
in evidence of the cause of death of her who remains, for one day,
your servant,
“ESTHER.”
Having sent this letter, Esther felt a pang of regret. Ten minutes after
she wrote a third note, as follows:--
“Forgive me, dear Baron--it is I once more. I did not mean either
to make game of you or to wound you; I only want you to reflect on
this simple argument: If we were to continue in the position
towards each other of father and daughter, your pleasure would be
small, but it would be enduring. If you insist on the terms of the
bargain, you will live to mourn for me.
“I will trouble you no more: the day when you shall choose
pleasure rather than happiness will have no morrow for me.--Your
daughter,
“ESTHER.”
On receiving the first letter, the Baron fell into a cold fury such as
a millionaire may die of; he looked at himself in the glass and rang the
bell.
“An hot bat for mein feet,” said he to his new valet.
While he was sitting with his feet in the bath, the second letter came;
he read it, and fainted away. He was carried to bed.
When the banker recovered consciousness, Madame de Nucingen was sitting
at the foot of the bed.
“The hussy is right!” said she. “Why do you try to buy love? Is it to be
bought in the market!--Let me see your letter to her.”
The Baron gave her sundry rough drafts he had made; Madame de Nucingen
read them, and smiled. Then came Esther’s third letter.
“She is a wonderful girl!” cried the Baroness, when she had read it.
“Vat shall I do, montame?” asked the Baron of his wife.
“Wait.”
“Wait? But nature is pitiless!” he cried.
“Look here, my dear, you have been admirably kind to me,” said Delphine;
“I will give you some good advice.”
“You are a ver’ goot voman,” said he. “Ven you hafe any debts I shall
pay.”
“Your state on receiving these letters touches a woman far more than the
spending of millions, or than all the letters you could write, however
fine they may be. Try to let her know it, indirectly; perhaps she will
be yours! And--have no scruples, she will not die of that,” added she,
looking keenly at her husband.
But Madame de Nucingen knew nothing whatever of the nature of such
women.
“Vat a clefer voman is Montame de Nucingen!” said the Baron to himself
when his wife had left him.
Still, the more the Baron admired the subtlety of his wife’s counsel,
the less he could see how he might act upon it; and he not only felt
that he was stupid, but he told himself so.
The stupidity of wealthy men, though it is almost proverbial, is only
comparative. The faculties of the mind, like the dexterity of the limbs,
need exercise. The dancer’s strength is in his feet; the blacksmith’s in
his arms; the market porter is trained to carry loads; the singer works
his larynx; and the pianist hardens his wrist. A banker is practised
in business matters; he studies and plans them, and pulls the wires
of various interests, just as a playwright trains his intelligence in
combining situations, studying his actors, giving life to his dramatic
figures.
We should no more look for powers of conversation in the Baron de
Nucingen than for the imagery of a poet in the brain of a mathematician.
How many poets occur in an age, who are either good prose writers, or
as witty in the intercourse of daily life as Madame Cornuel? Buffon
was dull company; Newton was never in love; Lord Byron loved nobody but
himself; Rousseau was gloomy and half crazy; La Fontaine absent-minded.
Human energy, equally distributed, produces dolts, mediocrity in all;
unequally bestowed it gives rise to those incongruities to whom the name
of Genius is given, and which, if we only could see them, would look
like deformities. The same law governs the body; perfect beauty is
generally allied with coldness or silliness. Though Pascal was both a
great mathematician and a great writer, though Beaumarchais was a good
man of business, and Zamet a profound courtier, these rare exceptions
prove the general principle of the specialization of brain faculties.
Within the sphere of speculative calculations the banker put forth as
much intelligence and skill, finesse and mental power, as a practised
diplomatist expends on national affairs. If he were equally remarkable
outside his office, the banker would be a great man. Nucingen made
one with the Prince de Ligne, with Mazarin or with Diderot, is a human
formula that is almost inconceivable, but which has nevertheless been
known as Pericles, Aristotle, Voltaire, and Napoleon. The splendor of
the Imperial crown must not blind us to the merits of the individual;
the Emperor was charming, well informed, and witty.
Monsieur de Nucingen, a banker and nothing more, having no inventiveness
outside his business, like most bankers, had no faith in anything but
sound security. In matters of art he had the good sense to go, cash
in hand, to experts in every branch, and had recourse to the best
architect, the best surgeon, the greatest connoisseur in pictures or
statues, the cleverest lawyer, when he wished to build a house, to
attend to his health, to purchase a work of art or an estate. But as
there are no recognized experts in intrigue, no connoisseurs in love
affairs, a banker finds himself in difficulties when he is in love, and
much puzzled as to the management of a woman. So Nucingen could think
of no better method than that he had hitherto pursued--to give a sum of
money to some Frontin, male or female, to act and think for him.
Madame de Saint-Esteve alone could carry out the plan imagined by the
Baroness. Nucingen bitterly regretted having quarreled with the odious
old clothes-seller. However, feeling confident of the attractions of his
cash-box and the soothing documents signed Garat, he rang for his man
and told him in inquire for the repulsive widow in the Rue Saint-Marc,
and desire her to come to see him.
In Paris extremes are made to meet by passion. Vice is constantly
binding the rich to the poor, the great to the mean. The Empress
consults Mademoiselle Lenormand; the fine gentleman in every age can
always find a Ramponneau.
The man returned within two hours.
“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “Madame de Saint-Esteve is ruined.”
“Ah! so much de better!” cried the Baron in glee. “I shall hafe her safe
den.”
“The good woman is given to gambling, it would seem,” the valet went
on. “And, moreover, she is under the thumb of a third-rate actor in a
suburban theatre, whom, for decency’s sake, she calls her godson. She is
a first-rate cook, it would seem, and wants a place.”
“Dose teufel of geniuses of de common people hafe alvays ten vays of
making money, and ein dozen vays of spending it,” said the Baron to
himself, quite unconscious that Panurge had thought the same thing.
He sent his servant off in quest of Madame de Saint-Esteve, who did not
come till the next day. Being questioned by Asie, the servant revealed
to this female spy the terrible effects of the notes written to Monsieur
le Baron by his mistress.
“Monsieur must be desperately in love with the woman,” said he in
conclusion, “for he was very near dying. For my part, I advised him
never to go back to her, for he will be wheedled over at once. A woman
who has already cost Monsieur le Baron five hundred thousand francs,
they say, without counting what he has spent on the house in the Rue
Saint-Georges! But the woman cares for money, and for money only.--As
madame came out of monsieur’s room, she said with a laugh: ‘If this goes
on, that slut will make a widow of me!’”
“The devil!” cried Asie; “it will never do to kill the goose that lays
the golden eggs.”
“Monsieur le Baron has no hope now but in you,” said the valet.
“Ay! The fact is, I do know how to make a woman go.”
“Well, walk in,” said the man, bowing to such occult powers.
“Well,” said the false Saint-Esteve, going into the sufferer’s room with
an abject air, “Monsieur le Baron has met with some difficulties? What
can you expect! Everybody is open to attack on his weak side. Dear me,
I have had my troubles too. Within two months the wheel of Fortune has
turned upside down for me. Here I am looking out for a place!--We have
neither of us been very wise. If Monsieur le Baron would take me as cook
to Madame Esther, I would be the most devoted of slaves. I should be
useful to you, monsieur, to keep an eye on Eugenie and madame.”
“Dere is no hope of dat,” said the Baron. “I cannot succeet in being de
master, I am let such a tance as----”
“As a top,” Asie put in. “Well, you have made others dance, daddy, and
the little slut has got you, and is making a fool of you.--Heaven is
just!”
“Just?” said the Baron. “I hafe not sent for you to preach to me----”
“Pooh, my boy! A little moralizing breaks no bones. It is the salt of
life to the like of us, as vice is to your bigots.--Come, have you been
generous? You have paid her debts?”
“Ja,” said the Baron lamentably.
“That is well; and you have taken her things out of pawn, and that is
better. But you must see that it is not enough. All this gives her no
occupation, and these creatures love to cut a dash----”
“I shall hafe a surprise for her, Rue Saint-Georches--she knows dat,”
said the Baron. “But I shall not be made a fool of.”
“Very well then, let her go.”
“I am only afrait dat she shall let me go!” cried the Baron.
“And we want our money’s worth, my boy,” replied Asie. “Listen to me. We
have fleeced the public of some millions, my little friend? Twenty-five
millions I am told you possess.”
The Baron could not suppress a smile.
“Well, you must let one go.”
“I shall let one go, but as soon as I shall let one go, I shall hafe to
give still another.”
“Yes, I understand,” replied Asie. “You will not say B for fear of having
to go on to Z. Still, Esther is a good girl----”
“A ver’ honest girl,” cried the banker. “An’ she is ready to submit; but
only as in payment of a debt.”
“In short, she does not want to be your mistress; she feels an
aversion.--Well, and I understand it; the child has always done just
what she pleased. When a girl has never known any but charming young
men, she cannot take to an old one. You are not handsome; you are as
big as Louis XVIII., and rather dull company, as all men are who try to
cajole fortune instead of devoting themselves to women.--Well, if you
don’t think six hundred thousand francs too much,” said Asie, “I pledge
myself to make her whatever you can wish.”
“Six huntert tousant franc!” cried the Baron, with a start. “Esther is
to cost me a million to begin with!”
“Happiness is surely worth sixteen hundred thousand francs, you old
sinner. You must know, men in these days have certainly spent more than
one or two millions on a mistress. I even know women who have cost men
their lives, for whom heads have rolled into the basket.--You know the
doctor who poisoned his friend? He wanted the money to gratify a woman.”
“Ja, I know all dat. But if I am in lofe, I am not ein idiot, at
least vile I am here; but if I shall see her, I shall gife her my
pocket-book----”
“Well, listen Monsieur le Baron,” said Asie, assuming the attitude of a
Semiramis. “You have been squeezed dry enough already. Now, as sure as
my name is Saint-Esteve--in the way of business, of course--I will stand
by you.”
“Goot, I shall repay you.”
“I believe you, my boy, for I have shown you that I know how to be
revenged. Besides, I tell you this, daddy, I know how to snuff out your
Madame Esther as you would snuff a candle. And I know my lady! When the
little huzzy has once made you happy, she will be even more necessary
to you than she is at this moment. You paid me well; you have allowed
yourself to be fooled, but, after all, you have forked out.--I have
fulfilled my part of the agreement, haven’t I? Well, look here, I will
make a bargain with you.”
“Let me hear.”
“You shall get me the place as cook to Madame, engage me for ten
years, and pay the last five in advance--what is that? Just a little
earnest-money. When once I am about madame, I can bring her to these
terms. Of course, you must first order her a lovely dress from Madame
Auguste, who knows her style and taste; and order the new carriage to
be at the door at four o’clock. After the Bourse closes, go to her rooms
and take her for a little drive in the Bois de Boulogne. Well, by
that act the woman proclaims herself your mistress; she has advertised
herself to the eyes and knowledge of all Paris: A hundred thousand
francs.--You must dine with her--I know how to cook such a dinner!--You
must take her to the play, to the Varietes, to a stage-box, and then all
Paris will say, ‘There is that old rascal Nucingen with his mistress.’
It is very flattering to know that such things are said.--Well, all
this, for I am not grasping, is included for the first hundred thousand
francs.--In a week, by such conduct, you will have made some way----”
“But I shall hafe paid ein hundert tousant franc.”
“In the course of the second week,” Asie went on, as though she had
not heard this lamentable ejaculation, “madame, tempted by these
preliminaries, will have made up her mind to leave her little apartment
and move to the house you are giving her. Your Esther will have seen the
world again, have found her old friends; she will wish to shine and do
the honors of her palace--it is in the nature of things: Another
hundred thousand francs!--By Heaven! you are at home there, Esther
compromised--she must be yours. The rest is a mere trifle, in which you
must play the principal part, old elephant. (How wide the monster opens
his eyes!) Well, I will undertake that too: Four hundred thousand--and
that, my fine fellow, you need not pay till the day after. What do you
think of that for honesty? I have more confidence in you than you
have in me. If I persuade madame to show herself as your mistress, to
compromise herself, to take every gift you offer her,--perhaps this very
day, you will believe that I am capable of inducing her to throw open
the pass of the Great Saint Bernard. And it is a hard job, I can tell
you; it will take as much pulling to get your artillery through as it
took the first Consul to get over the Alps.”
“But vy?”
“Her heart is full of love, old shaver, rasibus, as you say who know
Latin,” replied Asie. “She thinks herself the Queen of Sheba, because
she has washed herself in sacrifices made for her lover--an idea that
that sort of woman gets into her head! Well, well, old fellow, we must
be just.--It is fine! That baggage would die of grief at being your
mistress--I really should not wonder. But what I trust to, and I tell
you to give you courage, is that there is good in the girl at bottom.”
“You hafe a genius for corruption,” said the Baron, who had listened to
Asie in admiring silence, “just as I hafe de knack of de banking.”
“Then it is settled, my pigeon?” said Asie.
“Done for fifty tousant franc insteat of ein hundert tousant!--An’ I
shall give you fife hundert tousant de day after my triumph.”
“Very good, I will set to work,” said Asie. “And you may come,
monsieur,” she added respectfully. “You will find madame as soft already
as a cat’s back, and perhaps inclined to make herself pleasant.”
“Go, go, my goot voman,” said the banker, rubbing his hands.
And after seeing the horrible mulatto out of the house, he said to
himself:
“How vise it is to hafe much money.”
He sprang out of bed, went down to his office, and resumed the conduct
of his immense business with a light heart.
Nothing could be more fatal to Esther than the steps taken by Nucingen.
The hapless girl, in defending her fidelity, was defending her life.
This very natural instinct was what Carlos called prudery. Now Asie,
not without taking such precautions as usual in such cases, went off to
report to Carlos the conference she had held with the Baron, and all the
profit she had made by it. The man’s rage, like himself, was terrible;
he came forthwith to Esther, in a carriage with the blinds drawn,
driving into the courtyard. Still almost white with fury, the
double-dyed forger went straight into the poor girl’s room; she looked
at him--she was standing up--and she dropped on to a chair as though her
legs had snapped.
“What is the matter, monsieur?” said she, quaking in every limb.
“Leave us, Europe,” said he to the maid.
Esther looked at the woman as a child might look at its mother, from
whom some assassin had snatched it to murder it.
“Do you know where you will send Lucien?” Carlos went on when he was
alone with Esther.
“Where?” asked she in a low voice, venturing to glance at her
executioner.
“Where I come from, my beauty.” Esther, as she looked at the man, saw
red. “To the hulks,” he added in an undertone.
Esther shut her eyes and stretched herself out, her arms dropped, and
she turned white. The man rang, and Prudence appeared.
“Bring her round,” he said coldly; “I have not done.”
He walked up and down the drawing-room while waiting. Prudence-Europe
was obliged to come and beg monsieur to lift Esther on to the bed; he
carried her with the ease that betrayed athletic strength.
They had to procure all the chemist’s strongest stimulants to restore
Esther to a sense of her woes. An hour later the poor girl was able to
listen to this living nightmare, seated at the foot of her bed, his eyes
fixed and glowing like two spots of molten lead.
“My little sweetheart,” said he, “Lucien now stands between a splendid
life, honored, happy, and respected, and the hole full of water, mud,
and gravel into which he was going to plunge when I met him. The house
of Grandlieu requires of the dear boy an estate worth a million francs
before securing for him the title of Marquis, and handing over to him
that may-pole named Clotilde, by whose help he will rise to power.
Thanks to you, and me, Lucien has just purchased his maternal manor,
the old Chateau de Rubempre, which, indeed, did not cost much--thirty
thousand francs; but his lawyer, by clever negotiations, has succeeded
in adding to it estates worth a million, on which three hundred thousand
francs are paid. The chateau, the expenses, and percentages to the men
who were put forward as a blind to conceal the transaction from the
country people, have swallowed up the remainder.
“We have, to be sure, a hundred thousand francs invested in a business
here, which a few months hence will be worth two to three hundred
thousand francs; but there will still be four hundred thousand francs to
be paid.
“In three days Lucien will be home from Angouleme, where he has been,
because he must not be suspected of having found a fortune in remaking
your bed----”
“Oh no!” cried she, looking up with a noble impulse.
“I ask you, then, is this a moment to scare off the Baron?” he went on
calmly. “And you very nearly killed him the day before yesterday; he
fainted like a woman on reading your second letter. You have a fine
style--I congratulate you! If the Baron had died, where should we be
now?--When Lucien walks out of Saint-Thomas d’Aquin son-in-law to the
Duc de Grandlieu, if you want to try a dip in the Seine----Well, my
beauty, I offer you my hand for a dive together. It is one way of ending
matters.
“But consider a moment. Would it not be better to live and say to
yourself again and again ‘This fine fortune, this happy family’--for
he will have children--children!--Have you ever thought of the joy of
running your fingers through the hair of his children?”
Esther closed her eyes with a little shiver.
“Well, as you gaze on that structure of happiness, you may say to
yourself, ‘This is my doing!’”
There was a pause, and the two looked at each other.
“This is what I have tried to make out of such despair as saw no issue
but the river,” said Carlos. “Am I selfish? That is the way to love! Men
show such devotion to none but kings! But I have anointed Lucien king.
If I were riveted for the rest of my days to my old chain, I fancy I
could stay there resigned so long as I could say, ‘He is gay, he is at
Court.’ My soul and mind would triumph, while my carcase was given over
to the jailers! You are a mere female; you love like a female! But in
a courtesan, as in all degraded creatures, love should be a means to
motherhood, in spite of Nature, which has stricken you with barrenness!
“If ever, under the skin of the Abbe Carlos Herrera, any one were to
detect the convict I have been, do you know what I would do to avoid
compromising Lucien?”
Esther awaited the reply with some anxiety.
“Well,” he said after a brief pause, “I would die as the Negroes
do--without a word. And you, with all your airs will put folks on my
traces. What did I require of you?--To be La Torpille again for six
months--for six weeks; and to do it to clutch a million.
“Lucien will never forget you. Men do not forget the being of whom they
are reminded day after day by the joy of awaking rich every morning.
Lucien is a better fellow than you are. He began by loving Coralie. She
died--good; but he had not enough money to bury her; he did not do as
you did just now, he did not faint, though he is a poet; he wrote six
rollicking songs, and earned three hundred francs, with which he paid
for Coralie’s funeral. I have those songs; I know them by heart.
Well, then do you too compose your songs: be cheerful, be wild, be
irresistible and--insatiable! You hear me?--Do not let me have to speak
again.
“Kiss papa. Good-bye.”
When, half an hour after, Europe went into her mistress’ room, she found
her kneeling in front of a crucifix, in the attitude which the most
religious of painters has given to Moses before the burning bush on
Horeb, to depict his deep and complete adoration of Jehovah. After
saying her prayers, Esther had renounced her better life, the honor she
had created for herself, her glory, her virtue, and her love.
She rose.
“Oh, madame, you will never look like that again!” cried Prudence
Servien, struck by her mistress’ sublime beauty.
She hastily turned the long mirror so that the poor girl should see
herself. Her eyes still had a light as of the soul flying heavenward.
The Jewess’ complexion was brilliant. Sparkling with tears unshed in the
fervor of prayer, her eyelashes were like leaves after a summer shower,
for the last time they shone with the sunshine of pure love. Her lips
seemed to preserve an expression as of her last appeal to the angels,
whose palm of martyrdom she had no doubt borrowed while placing in their
hands her past unspotted life. And she had the majesty which Mary Stuart
must have shown at the moment when she bid adieu to her crown, to earth,
and to love.
“I wish Lucien could have seen me thus!” she said with a smothered sigh.
“Now,” she added, in a strident tone, “now for a fling!”
Europe stood dumb at hearing the words, as though she had heard an angel
blaspheme.
“Well, why need you stare at me to see if I have cloves in my mouth
instead of teeth? I am nothing henceforth but a vile, foul creature, a
thief--and I expect milord. So get me a hot bath, and put my dress out.
It is twelve o’clock; the Baron will look in, no doubt, when the Bourse
closes; I shall tell him I was waiting for him, and Asie is to prepare
us dinner, first-chop, mind you; I mean to turn the man’s brain.--Come,
hurry, hurry, my girl; we are going to have some fun--that is to say, we
must go to work.”