During the preceding night Madame du Tillet had gone over in her mind
her sister’s revelations. Sure, now, of Nathan’s safety, she was
no longer influenced by the thought of an imminent danger in that
direction. But she remembered the vehement energy with which the
countess had declared that she would fly with Nathan if that would save
him. She saw that the man might determine her sister in some paroxysm
of gratitude and love to take a step which was nothing short of madness.
There were recent examples in the highest society of just such flights
which paid for doubtful pleasures by lasting remorse and the disrepute
of a false position. Du Tillet’s speech brought her fears to a point;
she dreaded lest all should be discovered; she knew her sister’s
signature was in Nucingen’s hands, and she resolved to entreat Marie to
save herself by confessing all to Felix.
She drove to her sister’s house, but Marie was not at home. Felix was
there. A voice within her cried aloud to Eugenie to save her sister; the
morrow might be too late. She took a vast responsibility upon herself,
but she resolved to tell all to the count. Surely he would be indulgent
when he knew that his honor was still safe. The countess was deluded
rather than sinful. Eugenie feared to be treacherous and base in
revealing secrets that society (agreeing on this point) holds to be
inviolable; but--she saw her sister’s future, she trembled lest
she should some day be deserted, ruined by Nathan, poor, suffering,
disgraced, wretched, and she hesitated no longer; she sent in her name
and asked to see the count.
Felix, astonished at the visit, had a long conversation with his
sister-in-law, in which he seemed so calm, so completely master of
himself, that she feared he might have taken some terrible resolution.
“Do not be uneasy,” he said, seeing her anxiety. “I will act in a manner
which shall make your sister bless you. However much you may dislike
to keep the fact that you have spoken to me from her knowledge, I must
entreat you to do so. I need a few days to search into mysteries which
you don’t perceive; and, above all, I must act cautiously. Perhaps I can
learn all in a day. I, alone, my dear sister, am the guilty person.
All lovers play their game, and it is not every woman who is able,
unassisted, to see life as it is.”
Madame du Tillet returned home comforted. Felix de Vandenesse drew forty
thousand francs from the Bank of France, and went direct to Madame de
Nucingen He found her at home, thanked her for the confidence she had
placed in his wife, and returned the money, explaining that the countess
had obtained this mysterious loan for her charities, which were so
profuse that he was trying to put a limit to them.
“Give me no explanations, monsieur, since Madame de Vandenesse has told
you all,” said the Baronne de Nucingen.
“She knows the truth,” thought Vandenesse.
Madame de Nucingen returned to him Marie’s letter of guarantee, and sent
to the bank for the four notes. Vandenesse, during the short time that
these arrangements kept him waiting, watched the baroness with the
eye of a statesman, and he thought the moment propitious for further
negotiation.
“We live in an age, madame, when nothing is sure,” he said. “Even
thrones rise and fall in France with fearful rapidity. Fifteen years
have wreaked their will on a great empire, a monarchy, and a revolution.
No one can now dare to count upon the future. You know my attachment to
the cause of legitimacy. Suppose some catastrophe; would you not be glad
to have a friend in the conquering party?”
“Undoubtedly,” she said, smiling.
“Very good; then, will you have in me, secretly, an obliged friend who
could be of use to Monsieur de Nucingen in such a case, by supporting
his claim to the peerage he is seeking?”
“What do you want of me?” she asked.
“Very little,” he replied. “All that you know about Nathan’s affairs.”
The baroness repeated to him her conversation with Rastignac, and said,
as she gave him the four notes, which the cashier had meantime brought
to her:
“Don’t forget your promise.”
So little did Vandenesse forget this illusive promise that he used it
again on Baron Eugene de Rastignac to obtain from him certain other
information. Leaving Rastignac’s apartments, he dictated to a street
amanuensis the following note to Florine.
“If Mademoiselle Florine wishes to know of a part she may play she
is requested to come to the masked opera at the Opera next Sunday
night, accompanied by Monsieur Nathan.”
To this ball he determined to take his wife and let her own eyes
enlighten her as to the relations between Nathan and Florine. He knew
the jealous pride of the countess; he wanted to make her renounce her
love of her own will, without causing her to blush before him, and then
to return to her her own letters, sold by Florine, from whom he expected
to be able to buy them. This judicious plan, rapidly conceived and
partly executed, might fail through some trick of chance which meddles
with all things here below.
After dinner that evening, Felix brought the conversation round to the
masked balls of the Opera, remarking that Marie had never been to one,
and proposing that she should accompany him the following evening.
“I’ll find you some one to ‘intriguer,’” he said.
“Ah! I wish you would,” she replied.
“To do the thing well, a woman ought to fasten upon some good prey, a
celebrity, a man of enough wit to give and take. There’s Nathan; will
you have him? I know, through a friend of Florine, certain secrets of
his which would drive him crazy.”
“Florine?” said the countess. “Do you mean the actress?”
Marie had already heard that name from the lips of the watchman Quillet;
it now shot like a flash of lightning through her soul.
“Yes, his mistress,” replied the count. “What is there so surprising in
that?”
“I thought Monsieur Nathan too busy to have a mistress. Do authors have
time to make love?”
“I don’t say they love, my dear, but they are forced to _lodge_
somewhere, like other men, and when they haven’t a home of their own
they _lodge_ with their mistresses; which may seem to you rather loose,
but it is far more agreeable than lodging in a prison.”
Fire was less red than Marie’s cheeks.
“Will you have him for a victim? I can help you to terrify him,”
continued the count, not looking at his wife’s face. “I’ll put you in
the way of proving to him that he is being tricked like a child by your
brother-in-law du Tillet. That wretch is trying to put Nathan in prison
so as to make him ineligible to stand against him in the electoral
college. I know, through a friend of Florine, the exact sum derived
from the sale of her furniture, which she gave to Nathan to found his
newspaper; I know, too, what she sent him out of her summer’s harvest
in the departments and in Belgium,--money which has really gone to the
profit of du Tillet, Nucingen, and Massol. All three of them, unknown to
Nathan, have privately sold the paper to the new ministry, so sure are
they of ejecting him.”
“Monsieur Nathan is incapable of accepting money from an actress.”
“You don’t know that class of people, my dear,” said the count. “He
would not deny the fact if you asked him.”
“I will certainly go to the ball,” said the countess.
“You will be very much amused,” replied Vandenesse. “With such weapons
in hand you can cut Nathan’s complacency to the quick, and you will
also do him a great service. You will put him in a fury; he’ll try to
be calm, though inwardly fuming; but, all the same, you will enlighten
a man of talent as to the peril in which he really stands; and you will
also have the satisfaction of laming the horses of the ‘juste-milieu’ in
their stalls--But you are not listening to me, my dear.”
“On the contrary, I am listening intently,” she said. “I will tell you
later why I feel desirous to know the truth of all this.”
“You shall know it,” said Vandenesse. “If you stay masked I will take
you to supper with Nathan and Florine; it would be rather amusing for
a woman of your rank to fool an actress after bewildering the wits of a
clever man about these important facts; you can harness them both to the
same hoax. I’ll make some inquiries about Nathan’s infidelities, and if
I discover any of his recent adventures you shall enjoy the sight of a
courtesan’s fury; it is magnificent. Florine will boil and foam like an
Alpine torrent; she adores Nathan; he is everything to her; she clings
to him like flesh to the bones or a lioness to her cubs. I remember
seeing, in my youth, a celebrated actress (who wrote like a scullion)
when she came to a friend of mine to demand her letters. I have never
seen such a sight again, such calm fury, such insolent majesty, such
savage self-control--Are you ill, Marie?”
“No; they have made too much fire.” The countess turned away and threw
herself on a sofa. Suddenly, with an unforeseen movement, impelled by
the horrible anguish of her jealousy, she rose on her trembling legs,
crossed her arms, and came slowly to her husband.
“What do you know?” she asked. “You are not a man to torture me; you
would crush me without making me suffer if I were guilty.”
“What do you expect me to know, Marie?”
“Well! about Nathan.”
“You think you love him,” he replied; “but you love a phantom made of
words.”
“Then you know--”
“All,” he said.
The word fell on Marie’s head like the blow of a club.
“If you wish it, I will know nothing,” he continued. “You are standing
on the brink of a precipice, my child, and I must draw you from it. I
have already done something. See!”
He drew from his pocket her letter of guarantee and the four notes
endorsed by Schmucke, and let the countess recognize them; then he threw
them into the fire.
“What would have happened to you, my poor Marie, three months hence?” he
said. “The sheriffs would have taken you to a public court-room. Don’t
bow your head, don’t feel humiliated; you have been the dupe of noble
feelings; you have coquetted with poesy, not with a man. All women--all,
do you hear me, Marie?--would have been seduced in your position. How
absurd we should be, we men, we who have committed a thousand follies
through a score of years, if we were not willing to grant you one
imprudence in a lifetime! God keep me from triumphing over you or from
offering you a pity you repelled so vehemently the other day. Perhaps
that unfortunate man was sincere when he wrote to you, sincere in
attempting to kill himself, sincere in returning that same night to
Florine. Men are worth less than women. It is not for my own sake that
I speak at this moment, but for yours. I am indulgent, but the world is
not; it shuns a woman who makes a scandal. Is that just? I know not; but
this I know, the world is cruel. Society refuses to calm the woes itself
has caused; it gives its honors to those who best deceive it; it has no
recompense for rash devotion. I see and know all that. I can’t reform
society, but this I can do, I can protect you, Marie, against yourself.
This matter concerns a man who has brought you trouble only, and not
one of those high and sacred loves which do, at times, command our
abnegation, and even bear their own excuse. Perhaps I have been wrong in
not varying your happiness, in not providing you with gayer pleasures,
travel, amusements, distractions for the mind. Besides, I can explain
to myself the impulse that has driven you to a celebrated man, by the
jealous envy you have roused in certain women. Lady Dudley, Madame
d’Espard, and my sister-in-law Emilie count for something in all this.
Those women, against whom I ought to have put you more thoroughly on
your guard, have cultivated your curiosity more to trouble me and cause
me unhappiness, than to fling you into a whirlpool which, as I believe,
you would never have entered.”
As she listened to these words, so full of kindness, the countess was
torn by many conflicting feelings; but the storm within her breast was
ruled by one of them,--a keen admiration for her husband. Proud and
noble souls are prompt to recognize the delicacy with which they
are treated. Tact is to sentiments what grace is to the body. Marie
appreciated the grandeur of the man who bowed before a woman in fault,
that he might not see her blush. She ran from the room like one beside
herself, but instantly returned, fearing lest her hasty action might
cause him uneasiness.
“Wait,” she said, and disappeared again.
Felix had ably prepared her excuse, and he was instantly rewarded for
his generosity. His wife returned with Nathan’s letters in her hand, and
gave them to him.
“Judge me,” she said, kneeling down beside him.
“Are we able to judge where we love?” he answered, throwing the letters
into the fire; for he felt that later his wife might not forgive him for
having read them. Marie, with her head upon his knee, burst into tears.
“My child,” he said, raising her head, “where are your letters?”
At this question the poor woman no longer felt the intolerable burning
of her cheeks; she turned cold.
“That you may not suspect me of calumniating a man whom you think worthy
of you, I will make Florine herself return you those letters.”
“Oh! Surely he would give them back to me himself.”
“Suppose that he refused to do so?”
The countess dropped her head.
“The world disgusts me,” she said. “I don’t want to enter it again. I
want to live alone with you, if you forgive me.”
“But you might get bored again. Besides, what would the world say if you
left it so abruptly? In the spring we will travel; we will go to Italy,
and all over Europe; you shall see life. But to-morrow night we must go
to the Opera-ball; there is no other way to get those letters without
compromising you; besides, by giving them up, Florine will prove to you
her power.”
“And must I see that?” said the countess, frightened.
“To-morrow night.”
The next evening, about midnight, Nathan was walking about the foyer
of the Opera with a mask on his arm, to whom he was attending in a
sufficiently conjugal manner. Presently two masked women came up to him.
“You poor fool! Marie is here and is watching you,” said one of them,
who was Vandenesse, disguised as a woman.
“If you choose to listen to me I will tell you secrets that Nathan
is hiding from you,” said the other woman, who was the countess, to
Florine.
Nathan had abruptly dropped Florine’s arm to follow the count, who
adroitly slipped into the crowd and was out of sight in a moment.
Florine followed the countess, who sat down on a seat close at hand,
to which the count, doubling on Nathan, returned almost immediately to
guard his wife.
“Explain yourself, my dear,” said Florine, “and don’t think I shall
stand this long. No one can tear Raoul from me, I’ll tell you that; I
hold him by habit, and that’s even stronger than love.”
“In the first place, are you Florine?” said the count, speaking in his
natural voice.
“A pretty question! if you don’t know that, my joking friend, why should
I believe you?”
“Go and ask Nathan, who has left you to look for his other mistress,
where he passed the night, three days ago. He tried to kill himself
without a word to you, my dear,--and all for want of money. That shows
how much you know about the affairs of a man whom you say you love, and
who leaves you without a penny, and kills himself,--or, rather, doesn’t
kill himself, for he misses it. Suicides that don’t kill are about as
absurd as a duel without a scratch.”
“That’s a lie,” said Florine. “He dined with me that very day. The poor
fellow had the sheriff after him; he was hiding, as well he might.”
“Go and ask at the hotel du Mail, rue du Mail, if he was not taken there
that morning, half dead of the fumes of charcoal, by a handsome young
woman with whom he has been in love over a year. Her letters are at
this moment under your very nose in your own house. If you want to teach
Nathan a good lesson, let us all three go there; and I’ll show you,
papers in hand, how you can save him from the sheriff and Clichy if you
choose to be the good girl that you are.”
“Try that on others than Florine, my little man. I am certain that
Nathan has never been in love with any one but me.”
“On the contrary, he has been in love with a woman in society for over a
year--”
“A woman in society, he!” cried Florine. “I don’t trouble myself about
such nonsense as that.”
“Well, do you want me to make him come and tell you that he will not
take you home from here to-night.”
“If you can make him tell me that,” said Florine, “I’ll take _you_ home,
and we’ll look for those letters, which I shall believe in when I see
them, and not till then. He must have written them while I slept.”
“Stay here,” said Felix, “and watch.”
So saying, he took the arm of his wife and moved to a little distance.
Presently, Nathan, who had been hunting up and down the foyer like a
dog looking for its master, returned to the spot where the mask had
addressed him. Seeing on his face an expression he could not conceal,
Florine placed herself like a post in front of him, and said,
imperiously:--
“I don’t wish you to leave me again; I have my reasons for this.”
The countess then, at the instigation of her husband, went up to Raoul
and said in his ear,--
“Marie. Who is this woman? Leave her at once, and meet me at the foot of
the grand staircase.”
In this difficult extremity Raoul dropped Florine’s arm, and though she
caught his own and held it forcibly, she was obliged, after a moment, to
let him go. Nathan disappeared into the crowd.
“What did I tell you?” said Felix in Florine’s astonished ears, offering
her his arm.
“Come,” she said; “whoever you are, come. Have you a carriage here?”
For all answer, Vandenesse hurried Florine away, followed by his wife.
A few moments later the three masks, driven rapidly by the Vandenesse
coachman, reached Florine’s house. As soon as she had entered her own
apartments the actress unmasked. Madame de Vandenesse could not restrain
a quiver of surprise at Florine’s beauty as she stood there choking with
anger, and superb in her wrath and jealousy.
“There is, somewhere in these rooms,” said Vandenesse, “a portfolio, the
key of which you have never had; the letters are probably in it.”
“Well, well, for once in my life I am bewildered; you know something
that I have been uneasy about for some days,” cried Florine, rushing
into the study in search of the portfolio.
Vandenesse saw that his wife was turning pale beneath her mask.
Florine’s apartment revealed more about the intimacy of the actress and
Nathan than any ideal mistress would wish to know. The eye of a woman
can take in the truth of such things in a second, and the countess saw
vestiges of Nathan which proved to her the certainty of what Vandenesse
had said. Florine returned with the portfolio.
“How am I to open it?” she said.
The actress rang the bell and sent into the kitchen for the cook’s
knife. When it came she brandished it in the air, crying out in ironical
tones:--
“With this they cut the necks of ‘poulets.’”
The words, which made the countess shiver, explained to her, even better
than her husband had done the night before, the depths of the abyss into
which she had so nearly fallen.
“What a fool I am!” said Florine; “his razor will do better.”
She fetched one of Nathan’s razors from his dressing-table, and slit the
leather cover of the portfolio, through which Marie’s letters dropped.
Florine snatched one up hap-hazard, and looked it over.
“Yes, she must be a well-bred woman. It looks to me as if there were no
mistakes in spelling here.”
The count gathered up the letters hastily and gave them to his wife, who
took them to a table as if to see that they were all there.
“Now,” said Vandenesse to Florine, “will you let me have those letters
for these?” showing her five bank-bills of ten thousand francs each.
“They’ll replace the sums you have paid for him.”
“Ah!” cried Florine, “didn’t I kill myself body and soul in the
provinces to get him money,--I, who’d have cut my hand off to serve
him? But that’s men! damn your soul for them and they’ll march over you
rough-shod! He shall pay me for this!”
Madame de Vandenesse was disappearing with the letters.
“Hi! stop, stop, my fine mask!” cried Florine; “leave me one to confound
him with.”
“Not possible,” said Vandenesse.
“Why not?”
“That mask is your ex-rival; but you needn’t fear her now.”
“Well, she might have had the grace to say thank you,” cried Florine.
“But you have the fifty thousand francs instead,” said Vandenesse,
bowing to her.
It is extremely rare for young men, when driven to suicide, to attempt
it a second time if the first fails. When it doesn’t cure life, it cures
all desire for voluntary death. Raoul felt no disposition to try it
again when he found himself in a more painful position than that from
which he had just been rescued. He tried to see the countess and explain
to her the nature of his love, which now shone more vividly in his soul
than ever. But the first time they met in society, Madame de Vandenesse
gave him that fixed and contemptuous look which at once and forever puts
an impassable gulf between a man and a woman. In spite of his natural
assurance, Nathan never dared, during the rest of the winter, either to
speak to the countess or even approach her.
But he opened his heart to Blondet; to him he talked of his Laura and
his Beatrice, apropos of Madame de Vandenesse. He even made a paraphrase
of the following beautiful passage from the pen of Theophile Gautier,
one of the most remarkable poets of our day:--
“‘Ideala, flower of heaven’s own blue, with heart of gold, whose fibrous
roots, softer, a thousandfold, than fairy tresses, strike to our souls
and drink their purest essence; flower most sweet and bitter! thou canst
not be torn away without the heart’s blood flowing, without thy bruised
stems sweating with scarlet tears. Ah! cursed flower, why didst thou
grow within my soul?’”
“My dear fellow,” said Blondet, “you are raving. I’ll grant it was a
pretty flower, but it wasn’t a bit ideal, and instead of singing like a
blind man before an empty niche, you had much better wash your hands and
make submission to the powers. You are too much of an artist ever to
be a good politician; you have been fooled by men of not one-half your
value. Think about being fooled again--but elsewhere.”
“Marie cannot prevent my loving her,” said Nathan; “she shall be my
Beatrice.”
“Beatrice, my good Raoul, was a little girl twelve years of age when
Dante last saw her; otherwise, she would not have been Beatrice. To make
a divinity, it won’t do to see her one day wrapped in a mantle, and the
next with a low dress, and the third on the boulevard, cheapening toys
for her last baby. When a man has Florine, who is in turn duchess,
bourgeoise, Negress, marquise, colonel, Swiss peasant, virgin of the sun
in Peru (only way she can play the part), I don’t see why he should go
rambling after fashionable women.”
Du Tillet, to use a Bourse term, _executed_ Nathan, who, for lack
of money, gave up his place on the newspaper; and the celebrated man
received but five votes in the electoral college where the banker was
elected.
When, after a long and happy journey in Italy, the Comtesse de
Vandenesse returned to Paris late in the following winter, all her
husband’s predictions about Nathan were justified. He had taken
Blondet’s advice and negotiated with the government, which employed his
pen. His personal affairs were in such disorder that one day, on the
Champs-Elysees, Marie saw her former adorer on foot, in shabby clothes,
giving his arm to Florine. When a man becomes indifferent to the heart
of a woman who has once loved him, he often seems to her very ugly, even
horrible, especially when he resembles Nathan. Madame de Vandenesse had
a sense of personal humiliation in the thought that she had once
cared for him. If she had not already been cured of all extra-conjugal
passion, the contrast then presented by the count to this man, grown
less and less worthy of public favor, would have sufficed her.
To-day the ambitious Nathan, rich in ink and poor in will, has ended by
capitulating entirely, and has settled down into a sinecure, like
any other commonplace man. After lending his pen to all disorganizing
efforts, he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of a
ministerial organ. The cross of the Legion of honor, formerly the
fruitful text of his satire, adorns his button-hole. “Peace at any
price,” ridicule of which was the stock-in-trade of his revolutionary
editorship, is now the topic of his laudatory articles. Heredity,
attacked by him in Saint-Simonian phrases, he now defends with solid
arguments. This illogical conduct has its origin and its explanation
in the change of front performed by many men besides Raoul during our
recent political evolutions.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Bidault (known as Gigonnet)
The Government Clerks
Gobseck
The Vendetta
Cesar Birotteau
The Firm of Nucingen
Blondet, Emile
Jealousies of a Country Town
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Modeste Mignon
Another Study of Woman
The Secrets of a Princess
The Firm of Nucingen
The Peasantry
Blondet, Virginie
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Secrets of a Princess
The Peasantry
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Another Study of Woman
The Member for Arcis
Bruel, Jean Francois du
A Bachelor’s Establishment
The Government Clerks
A Start in Life
A Prince of Bohemia
The Middle Classes
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Camps, Madame Octave de
Madame Firmiani
The Government Clerks
A Woman of Thirty
The Member for Arcis
Dudley, Lord
The Lily of the Valley
The Thirteen
A Man of Business
Another Study of Woman
Dudley, Lady Arabella
The Lily of the Valley
The Ball at Sceaux
The Magic Skin
The Secrets of a Princess
Letters of Two Brides
Espard, Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, Marquise d’
The Commission in Lunacy
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Letters of Two Brides
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
The Secrets of a Princess
Beatrix
Galathionne, Prince and Princess (both not in each story)
The Secrets of a Princess
The Middle Classes
Father Goriot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Beatrix
Grandlieu, Duchesse Ferdinand de
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Beatrix
Grandlieu, Vicomtesse Juste de
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Gobseck
Granville, Vicomte de
The Gondreville Mystery
A Second Home
Farewell (Adieu)
Cesar Birotteau
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Cousin Pons
Granville, Comtesse Angelique de
A Second Home
The Thirteen
Granville, Vicomte de
A Second Home
The Country Parson
La Roche-Hugon, Martial de
Domestic Peace
The Peasantry
The Member for Arcis
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
Listomere, Marquise de
The Lily of the Valley
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Daughter of Eve
Lousteau, Etienne
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Beatrix
The Muse of the Department
Cousin Betty
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
The Middle Classes
The Unconscious Humorists
Manerville, Comtesse Paul de
A Marriage Settlement
The Lily of the Valley
Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Father Goriot
Jealousies of a Country Town
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modeste Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
Massol
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Magic Skin
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists
Nathan, Raoul
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Secrets of a Princess
Letters of Two Brides
The Seamy Side of History
The Muse of the Department
A Prince of Bohemia
A Man of Business
The Unconscious Humorists
Nathan, Madame Raoul (Florine)
The Muse of the Department
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Government Clerks
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Ursule Mirouet
Eugenie Grandet
The Imaginary Mistress
A Prince of Bohemia
The Unconscious Humorists
Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
Father Goriot
The Thirteen
Eugenie Grandet
Cesar Birotteau
Melmoth Reconciled
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Commission in Lunacy
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Modeste Mignon
The Firm of Nucingen
Another Study of Woman
The Member for Arcis
Rastignac, Eugene de
Father Goriot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Ball at Sceaux
The Commission in Lunacy
A Study of Woman
Another Study of Woman
The Magic Skin
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
The Firm of Nucingen
Cousin Betty
The Member for Arcis
The Unconscious Humorists
Rastignac, Monseigneur Gabriel de
Father Goriot
The Country Parson
Rochefide, Marquise de
Beatrix
The Secrets of a Princess
Sarrasine
A Prince of Bohemia
Roguin, Madame
Cesar Birotteau
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Pierrette
A Second Home
Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de
A Woman of Thirty
The Member for Arcis
Schmucke, Wilhelm
Ursule Mirouet
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Cousin Pons
Souchet, Francois
The Purse
The Imaginary Mistress
Therese
Father Goriot
Tillet, Ferdinand du
Cesar Birotteau
The Firm of Nucingen
The Middle Classes
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Pierrette
Melmoth Reconciled
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Secrets of a Princess
The Member for Arcis
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists
Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des
Beatrix
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Another Study of Woman
Honorine
Beatrix
The Muse of the Department
Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
A Woman of Thirty
A Start in Life
Vandenesse, Marquise Charles de
Cesar Birotteau
The Ball at Sceaux
Ursule Mirouet
A Daughter of Eve
Vandenesse, Comte Felix de
The Lily of the Valley
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Cesar Birotteau
Letters of Two Brides
A Start in Life
The Marriage Settlement
The Secrets of a Princess
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
Vandenesse, Comtesse Felix de
A Second Home
The Muse of the Department
Vernou, Felicien
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Cousin Betty
Vignon, Claude
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Honorine
Beatrix
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists