DEDICATION

                          To His Highness
                 Prince Alfonso Serafino di Porcia.

  Allow me to place your name at the beginning of an essentially
  Parisian work, thought out in your house during these latter days.
  Is it not natural that I should offer you the flowers of rhetoric
  that blossomed in your garden, watered with the regrets I suffered
  from home-sickness, which you soothed, as I wandered under the
  boschetti whose elms reminded me of the Champs-Elysees? Thus,
  perchance, may I expiate the crime of having dreamed of Paris
  under the shadow of the Duomo, of having longed for our muddy
  streets on the clean and elegant flagstones of Porta-Renza. When I
  have some book to publish which may be dedicated to a Milanese
  lady, I shall have the happiness of finding names already dear to
  your old Italian romancers among those of women whom we love, and
  to whose memory I would beg you to recall your sincerely
  affectionate

                                                          DE BALZAC.
    July 1838.

In 1824, at the last opera ball of the season, several masks were struck by the beauty of a youth who was wandering about the passages and greenroom with the air of a man in search of a woman kept at home by unexpected circumstances. The secret of this behavior, now dilatory and again hurried, is known only to old women and to certain experienced loungers. In this immense assembly the crowd does not trouble itself much to watch the crowd; each one’s interest is impassioned, and even idlers are preoccupied.

The young dandy was so much absorbed in his anxious quest that he did not observe his own success; he did not hear, he did not see the ironical exclamations of admiration, the genuine appreciation, the biting gibes, the soft invitations of some of the masks. Though he was so handsome as to rank among those exceptional persons who come to an opera ball in search of an adventure, and who expect it as confidently as men looked for a lucky coup at roulette in Frascati’s day, he seemed quite philosophically sure of his evening; he must be the hero of one of those mysteries with three actors which constitute an opera ball, and are known only to those who play a part in them; for, to young wives who come merely to say, “I have seen it,” to country people, to inexperienced youths, and to foreigners, the opera house must on those nights be the palace of fatigue and dulness. To these, that black swarm, slow and serried—coming, going, winding, turning, returning, mounting, descending, comparable only to ants on a pile of wood—is no more intelligible than the Bourse to a Breton peasant who has never heard of the Grand livre.

With a few rare exceptions, men wear no masks in Paris; a man in a domino is thought ridiculous. In this the spirit of the nation betrays itself. Men who want to hide their good fortune can enjoy the opera ball without going there; and masks who are absolutely compelled to go in come out again at once. One of the most amusing scenes is the crush at the doors produced as soon as the dancing begins, by the rush of persons getting away and struggling with those who are pushing in. So the men who wear masks are either jealous husbands who come to watch their wives, or husbands on the loose who do not wish to be watched by them—two situations equally ridiculous.

Now, our young man was followed, though he knew it not, by a man in a mask, dogging his steps, short and stout, with a rolling gait, like a barrel. To every one familiar with the opera this disguise betrayed a stock-broker, a banker, a lawyer, some citizen soul suspicious of infidelity. For in fact, in really high society, no one courts such humiliating proofs. Several masks had laughed as they pointed this preposterous figure out to each other; some had spoken to him, a few young men had made game of him, but his stolid manner showed entire contempt for these aimless shafts; he went on whither the young man led him, as a hunted wild boar goes on and pays no heed to the bullets whistling about his ears, or the dogs barking at his heels.

Though at first sight pleasure and anxiety wear the same livery—the noble black robe of Venice—and though all is confusion at an opera ball, the various circles composing Parisian society meet there, recognize, and watch each other. There are certain ideas so clear to the initiated that this scrawled medley of interests is as legible to them as any amusing novel. So, to these old hands, this man could not be here by appointment; he would infallibly have worn some token, red, white, or green, such as notifies a happy meeting previously agreed on. Was it a case of revenge?

Seeing the domino following so closely in the wake of a man apparently happy in an assignation, some of the gazers looked again at the handsome face, on which anticipation had set its divine halo. The youth was interesting; the longer he wandered, the more curiosity he excited. Everything about him proclaimed the habits of refined life. In obedience to a fatal law of the time we live in, there is not much difference, physical or moral, between the most elegant and best bred son of a duke and peer and this attractive youth, whom poverty had not long since held in its iron grip in the heart of Paris. Beauty and youth might cover him in deep gulfs, as in many a young man who longs to play a part in Paris without having the capital to support his pretensions, and who, day after day, risks all to win all, by sacrificing to the god who has most votaries in this royal city, namely, Chance. At the same time, his dress and manners were above reproach; he trod the classic floor of the opera house as one accustomed there. Who can have failed to observe that there, as in every zone in Paris, there is a manner of being which shows who you are, what you are doing, whence you come, and what you want?

“What a handsome young fellow; and here we may turn round to look at him,” said a mask, in whom accustomed eyes recognized a lady of position.

“Do you not remember him?” replied the man on whose arm she was leaning. “Madame du Chatelet introduced him to you——”

“What, is that the apothecary’s son she fancied herself in love with, who became a journalist, Mademoiselle Coralie’s lover?”

“I fancied he had fallen too low ever to pull himself up again, and I cannot understand how he can show himself again in the world of Paris,” said the Comte Sixte du Chatelet.

“He has the air of a prince,” the mask went on, “and it is not the actress he lived with who could give it to him. My cousin, who understood him, could not lick him into shape. I should like to know the mistress of this Sargine; tell me something about him that will enable me to mystify him.”

This couple, whispering as they watched the young man, became the object of study to the square-shouldered domino.

“Dear Monsieur Chardon,” said the Prefet of the Charente, taking the dandy’s hand, “allow me to introduce you to some one who wishes to renew acquaintance with you——”

“Dear Comte Chatelet,” replied the young man, “that lady taught me how ridiculous was the name by which you address me. A patent from the king has restored to me that of my mother’s family—the Rubempres. Although the fact has been announced in the papers, it relates to so unimportant a person that I need not blush to recall it to my friends, my enemies, and those who are neither——You may class yourself where you will, but I am sure you will not disapprove of a step to which I was advised by your wife when she was still only Madame de Bargeton.”

This neat retort, which made the Marquise smile, gave the Prefet of la Charente a nervous chill. “You may tell her,” Lucien went on, “that I now bear gules, a bull raging argent on a meadow vert.”

“Raging argent,” echoed Chatelet.

“Madame la Marquise will explain to you, if you do not know, why that old coat is a little better than the chamberlain’s key and Imperial gold bees which you bear on yours, to the great despair of Madame Chatelet, nee Negrepelisse d’Espard,” said Lucien quickly.

“Since you recognize me, I cannot puzzle you; and I could never tell you how much you puzzle me,” said the Marquise d’Espard, amazed at the coolness and impertinence to which the man had risen whom she had formerly despised.

“Then allow me, madame, to preserve my only chance of occupying your thoughts by remaining in that mysterious twilight,” said he, with the smile of a man who does not wish to risk assured happiness.

“I congratulate you on your changed fortunes,” said the Comte du Chatelet to Lucien.

“I take it as you offer it,” replied Lucien, bowing with much grace to the Marquise.

“What a coxcomb!” said the Count in an undertone to Madame d’Espard. “He has succeeded in winning an ancestry.”

“With these young men such coxcombry, when it is addressed to us, almost always implies some success in high places,” said the lady; “for with you older men it means ill-fortune. And I should very much like to know which of my grand lady friends has taken this fine bird under her patronage; then I might find the means of amusing myself this evening. My ticket, anonymously sent, is no doubt a bit of mischief planned by a rival and having something to do with this young man. His impertinence is to order; keep an eye on him. I will take the Duc de Navarrein’s arm. You will be able to find me again.”

Just as Madame d’Espard was about to address her cousin, the mysterious mask came between her and the Duke to whisper in her ear:

“Lucien loves you; he wrote the note. Your Prefet is his greatest foe; how can he speak in his presence?”

The stranger moved off, leaving Madame d’Espard a prey to a double surprise. The Marquise knew no one in the world who was capable of playing the part assumed by this mask; she suspected a snare, and went to sit down out of sight. The Comte Sixte du Chatelet—whom Lucien had abridged of his ambitious du with an emphasis that betrayed long meditated revenge—followed the handsome dandy, and presently met a young man to whom he thought he could speak without reserve.

“Well, Rastignac, have you seen Lucien? He has come out in a new skin.”

“If I were half as good looking as he is, I should be twice as rich,” replied the fine gentleman, in a light but meaning tone, expressive of keen raillery.

“No!” said the fat mask in his ear, repaying a thousand ironies in one by the accent he lent the monosyllable.

Rastignac, who was not the man to swallow an affront, stood as if struck by lightning, and allowed himself to be led into a recess by a grasp of iron which he could not shake off.

“You young cockerel, hatched in Mother Vauquer’s coop—you, whose heart failed you to clutch old Taillefer’s millions when the hardest part of the business was done—let me tell you, for your personal safety, that if you do not treat Lucien like the brother you love, you are in our power, while we are not in yours. Silence and submission! or I shall join your game and upset the skittles. Lucien de Rubempre is under the protection of the strongest power of the day—the Church. Choose between life and death—Answer.”

Rastignac felt giddy, like a man who has slept in a forest and wakes to see by his side a famishing lioness. He was frightened, and there was no one to see him; the boldest men yield to fear under such circumstances.

“No one but HE can know—or would dare——” he murmured to himself.

The mask clutched his hand tighter to prevent his finishing his sentence.

“Act as if I were he,” he said.

Rastignac then acted like a millionaire on the highroad with a brigand’s pistol at his head; he surrendered.

“My dear Count,” said he to du Chatelet, to whom he presently returned, “if you care for your position in life, treat Lucien de Rubempre as a man whom you will one day see holding a place far above where you stand.”

The mask made a imperceptible gesture of approbation, and went off in search of Lucien.

“My dear fellow, you have changed your opinion of him very suddenly,” replied the Prefet with justifiable surprise.

“As suddenly as men change who belong to the centre and vote with the right,” replied Rastignac to the Prefet-Depute, whose vote had for a few days failed to support the Ministry.

“Are there such things as opinions nowadays? There are only interests,” observed des Lupeaulx, who had heard them. “What is the case in point?”

“The case of the Sieur de Rubempre, whom Rastignac is setting up as a person of consequence,” said du Chatelet to the Secretary-General.

“My dear Count,” replied des Lupeaulx very seriously, “Monsieur de Rubempre is a young man of the highest merit, and has such good interest at his back that I should be delighted to renew my acquaintance with him.”

“There he is, rushing into the wasps’ nest of the rakes of the day,” said Rastignac.

The three speakers looked towards a corner where a group of recognized wits had gathered, men of more or less celebrity, and several men of fashion. These gentlemen made common stock of their jests, their remarks, and their scandal, trying to amuse themselves till something should amuse them. Among this strangely mingled party were some men with whom Lucien had had transactions, combining ostensibly kind offices with covert false dealing.

“Hallo! Lucien, my boy, why here we are patched up again—new stuffing and a new cover. Where have we come from? Have we mounted the high horse once more with little offerings from Florine’s boudoir? Bravo, old chap!” and Blondet released Finot to put his arm affectionately around Lucien and press him to his heart.

Andoche Finot was the proprietor of a review on which Lucien had worked for almost nothing, and to which Blondet gave the benefit of his collaboration, of the wisdom of his suggestions and the depth of his views. Finot and Blondet embodied Bertrand and Raton, with this difference—that la Fontaine’s cat at last showed that he knew himself to be duped, while Blondet, though he knew that he was being fleeced, still did all he could for Finot. This brilliant condottiere of the pen was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot hid a brutal strength of will under a heavy exterior, under polish of wit, as a laborer rubs his bread with garlic. He knew how to garner what he gleaned, ideas and crown-pieces alike, in the fields of the dissolute life led by men engaged in letters or in politics.

Blondet, for his sins, had placed his powers at the service of Finot’s vices and idleness. Always at war with necessity, he was one of the race of poverty-stricken and superior men who can do everything for the fortune of others and nothing for their own, Aladdins who let other men borrow their lamp. These excellent advisers have a clear and penetrating judgment so long as it is not distracted by personal interest. In them it is the head and not the arm that acts. Hence the looseness of their morality, and hence the reproach heaped upon them by inferior minds. Blondet would share his purse with a comrade he had affronted the day before; he would dine, drink, and sleep with one whom he would demolish on the morrow. His amusing paradoxes excused everything. Accepting the whole world as a jest, he did not want to be taken seriously; young, beloved, almost famous and contented, he did not devote himself, like Finot, to acquiring the fortune an old man needs.

The most difficult form of courage, perhaps, is that which Lucien needed at this moment to get rid of Blondet as he had just got rid of Madame d’Espard and Chatelet. In him, unfortunately, the joys of vanity hindered the exercise of pride—the basis, beyond doubt, of many great things. His vanity had triumphed in the previous encounter; he had shown himself as a rich man, happy and scornful, to two persons who had scorned him when he was poor and wretched. But how could a poet, like an old diplomate, run the gauntlet with two self-styled friends, who had welcomed him in misery, under whose roof he had slept in the worst of his troubles? Finot, Blondet, and he had groveled together; they had wallowed in such orgies as consume something more than money. Like soldiers who find no market for their courage, Lucien had just done what many men do in Paris: he had still further compromised his character by shaking Finot’s hand, and not rejecting Blondet’s affection.

Every man who has dabbled, or still dabbles, in journalism is under the painful necessity of bowing to men he despises, of smiling at his dearest foe, of compounding the foulest meanness, of soiling his fingers to pay his aggressors in their own coin. He becomes used to seeing evil done, and passing it over; he begins by condoning it, and ends by committing it. In the long run the soul, constantly strained by shameful and perpetual compromise, sinks lower, the spring of noble thoughts grows rusty, the hinges of familiarity wear easy, and turn of their own accord. Alceste becomes Philinte, natures lose their firmness, talents are perverted, faith in great deeds evaporates. The man who yearned to be proud of his work wastes himself in rubbishy articles which his conscience regards, sooner or later, as so many evil actions. He started, like Lousteau or Vernou, to be a great writer; he finds himself a feeble scrivener. Hence it is impossible to honor too highly men whose character stands as high as their talent—men like d’Arthez, who know how to walk surefooted across the reefs of literary life.

Lucien could make no reply to Blondet’s flattery; his wit had an irresistible charm for him, and he maintained the hold of the corrupter over his pupil; besides, he held a position in the world through his connection with the Comtesse de Montcornet.

“Has an uncle left you a fortune?” said Finot, laughing at him.

“Like you, I have marked some fools for cutting down,” replied Lucien in the same tone.

“Then Monsieur has a review—a newspaper of his own?” Andoche Finot retorted, with the impertinent presumption of a chief to a subordinate.

“I have something better,” replied Lucien, whose vanity, nettled by the assumed superiority of his editor, restored him to the sense of his new position.

“What is that, my dear boy?”

“I have a party.”

“There is a Lucien party?” said Vernou, smiling

“Finot, the boy has left you in the lurch; I told you he would. Lucien is a clever fellow, and you never were respectful to him. You used him as a hack. Repent, blockhead!” said Blondet.

Blondet, as sharp as a needle, could detect more than one secret in Lucien’s air and manner; while stroking him down, he contrived to tighten the curb. He meant to know the reasons of Lucien’s return to Paris, his projects, and his means of living.

“On your knees to a superiority you can never attain to, albeit you are Finot!” he went on. “Admit this gentleman forthwith to be one of the great men to whom the future belongs; he is one of us! So witty and so handsome, can he fail to succeed by your quibuscumque viis? Here he stands, in his good Milan armor, his strong sword half unsheathed, and his pennon flying!—Bless me, Lucien, where did you steal that smart waistcoat? Love alone can find such stuff as that. Have you an address? At this moment I am anxious to know where my friends are domiciled; I don’t know where to sleep. Finot has turned me out of doors for the night, under the vulgar pretext of ‘a lady in the case.’”

“My boy,” said Lucien, “I put into practice a motto by which you may secure a quiet life: Fuge, late, tace. I am off.”

“But I am not off till you pay me a sacred debt—that little supper, you know, heh?” said Blondet, who was rather too much given to good cheer, and got himself treated when he was out of funds.

“What supper?” asked Lucien with a little stamp of impatience.

“You don’t remember? In that I recognize my prosperous friend; he has lost his memory.”

“He knows what he owes us; I will go bail for his good heart,” said Finot, taking up Blondet’s joke.

“Rastignac,” said Blondet, taking the young dandy by the arm as he came up the room to the column where the so-called friends were standing. “There is a supper in the wind; you will join us—unless,” he added gravely, turning to Lucien, “Monsieur persists in ignoring a debt of honor. He can.”

“Monsieur de Rubempre is incapable of such a thing; I will answer for him,” said Rastignac, who never dreamed of a practical joke.

“And there is Bixiou, he will come too,” cried Blondet; “there is no fun without him. Without him champagne cloys my tongue, and I find everything insipid, even the pepper of satire.”

“My friends,” said Bixiou, “I see you have gathered round the wonder of the day. Our dear Lucien has revived the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Just as the gods used to turn into strange vegetables and other things to seduce the ladies, he has turned the Chardon (the Thistle) into a gentleman to bewitch—whom? Charles X.!—My dear boy,” he went on, holding Lucien by his coat button, “a journalist who apes the fine gentleman deserves rough music. In their place,” said the merciless jester, as he pointed to Finot and Vernou, “I should take you up in my society paper; you would bring in a hundred francs for ten columns of fun.”

“Bixiou,” said Blondet, “an Amphitryon is sacred for twenty-four hours before a feast and twelve hours after. Our illustrious friend is giving us a supper.”

“What then!” cried Bixiou; “what is more imperative than the duty of saving a great name from oblivion, of endowing the indigent aristocracy with a man of talent? Lucien, you enjoy the esteem of the press of which you were a distinguished ornament, and we will give you our support.—Finot, a paragraph in the ‘latest items’!—Blondet, a little butter on the fourth page of your paper!—We must advertise the appearance of one of the finest books of the age, l’Archer de Charles IX.! We will appeal to Dauriat to bring out as soon as possible les Marguerites, those divine sonnets by the French Petrarch! We must carry our friend through on the shield of stamped paper by which reputations are made and unmade.”

“If you want a supper,” said Lucien to Blondet, hoping to rid himself of this mob, which threatened to increase, “it seems to me that you need not work up hyperbole and parable to attack an old friend as if he were a booby. To-morrow night at Lointier’s——” he cried, seeing a woman come by, whom he rushed to meet.

“Oh! oh! oh!” said Bixiou on three notes, with a mocking glance, and seeming to recognize the mask to whom Lucien addressed himself. “This needs confirmation.”

He followed the handsome pair, got past them, examined them keenly, and came back, to the great satisfaction of all the envious crowd, who were eager to learn the source of Lucien’s change of fortune.

“Friends,” said Bixiou, “you have long known the goddess of the Sire de Rubempre’s fortune: She is des Lupeaulx’s former ‘rat.’”

A form of dissipation, now forgotten, but still customary at the beginning of this century, was the keeping of “rats.” The “rat”—a slang word that has become old-fashioned—was a girl of ten or twelve in the chorus of some theatre, more particularly at the opera, who was trained by young roues to vice and infamy. A “rat” was a sort of demon page, a tomboy who was forgiven a trick if it were but funny. The “rat” might take what she pleased; she was to be watched like a dangerous animal, and she brought an element of liveliness into life, like Scapin, Sganarelle, and Frontin in old-fashioned comedy. But a “rat” was too expensive; it made no return in honor, profit, or pleasure; the fashion of rats so completely went out, that in these days few people knew anything of this detail of fashionable life before the Restoration till certain writers took up the “rat” as a new subject.

“What! after having seen Coralie killed under him, Lucien means to rob us of La Torpille?” (the torpedo fish) said Blondet.

As he heard the name the brawny mask gave a significant start, which, though repressed, was understood by Rastignac.

“It is out of the question,” replied Finot; “La Torpille has not a sou to give away; Nathan tells me she borrowed a thousand francs of Florine.”

“Come, gentlemen, gentlemen!” said Rastignac, anxious to defend Lucien against so odious an imputation.

“Well,” cried Vernou, “is Coralie’s kept man likely to be so very particular?”

“Oh!” replied Bixiou, “those thousand francs prove to me that our friend Lucien lives with La Torpille——”

“What an irreparable loss to literature, science, art, and politics!” exclaimed Blondet. “La Torpille is the only common prostitute in whom I ever found the stuff for a superior courtesan; she has not been spoiled by education—she can neither read nor write, she would have understood us. We might have given to our era one of those magnificent Aspasias without which there can be no golden age. See how admirably Madame du Barry was suited to the eighteenth century, Ninon de l’Enclos to the seventeenth, Marion Delorme to the sixteenth, Imperia to the fifteenth, Flora to Republican Rome, which she made her heir, and which paid off the public debt with her fortune! What would Horace be without Lydia, Tibullus without Delia, Catullus without Lesbia, Propertius without Cynthia, Demetrius without Lamia, who is his glory at this day?”

“Blondet talking of Demetrius in the opera house seems to me rather too strong of the Debats,” said Bixiou in his neighbor’s ears.

“And where would the empire of the Caesars have been but for these queens?” Blondet went on; “Lais and Rhodope are Greece and Egypt. They all indeed are the poetry of the ages in which they lived. This poetry, which Napoleon lacked—for the Widow of his Great Army is a barrack jest, was not wanting to the Revolution; it had Madame Tallien! In these days there is certainly a throne to let in France which is for her who can fill it. We among us could make a queen. I should have given La Torpille an aunt, for her mother is too decidedly dead on the field of dishonor; du Tillet would have given her a mansion, Lousteau a carriage, Rastignac her footmen, des Lupeaulx a cook, Finot her hats”—Finot could not suppress a shrug at standing the point-blank fire of this epigram—“Vernou would have composed her advertisements, and Bixiou her repartees! The aristocracy would have come to enjoy themselves with our Ninon, where we would have got artists together, under pain of death by newspaper articles. Ninon the second would have been magnificently impertinent, overwhelming in luxury. She would have set up opinions. Some prohibited dramatic masterpiece should have been read in her drawing-room; it should have been written on purpose if necessary. She would not have been liberal; a courtesan is essentially monarchical. Oh, what a loss! She ought to have embraced her whole century, and she makes love with a little young man! Lucien will make a sort of hunting-dog of her.”

“None of the female powers of whom you speak ever trudged the streets,” said Finot, “and that pretty little ‘rat’ has rolled in the mire.”

“Like a lily-seed in the soil,” replied Vernou, “and she has improved in it and flowered. Hence her superiority. Must we not have known everything to be able to create the laughter and joy which are part of everything?”

“He is right,” said Lousteau, who had hitherto listened without speaking; “La Torpille can laugh and make others laugh. That gift of all great writers and great actors is proper to those who have investigated every social deep. At eighteen that girl had already known the greatest wealth, the most squalid misery—men of every degree. She bears about her a sort of magic wand by which she lets loose the brutal appetites so vehemently suppressed in men who still have a heart while occupied with politics or science, literature or art. There is not in Paris another woman who can say to the beast as she does: ‘Come out!’ And the beast leaves his lair and wallows in excesses. She feeds you up to the chin, she helps you to drink and smoke. In short, this woman is the salt of which Rabelais writes, which, thrown on matter, animates it and elevates it to the marvelous realms of art; her robe displays unimagined splendor, her fingers drop gems as her lips shed smiles; she gives the spirit of the occasion to every little thing; her chatter twinkles with bright sayings, she has the secret of the quaintest onomatopoeia, full of color, and giving color; she——”

“You are wasting five francs’ worth of copy,” said Bixiou, interrupting Lousteau. “La Torpille is something far better than all that; you have all been in love with her more or less, not one of you can say that she ever was his mistress. She can always command you; you will never command her. You may force your way in and ask her to do you a service——”

“Oh, she is more generous than a brigand chief who knows his business, and more devoted than the best of school-fellows,” said Blondet. “You may trust her with your purse or your secrets. But what made me choose her as queen is her Bourbon-like indifference for a fallen favorite.”

“She, like her mother, is much too dear,” said des Lupeaulx. “The handsome Dutch woman would have swallowed up the income of the Archbishop of Toledo; she ate two notaries out of house and home——”

“And kept Maxime de Trailles when he was a court page,” said Bixiou.

“La Torpille is too dear, as Raphael was, or Careme, or Taglioni, or Lawrence, or Boule, or any artist of genius is too dear,” said Blondet.

“Esther never looked so thoroughly a lady,” said Rastignac, pointing to the masked figure to whom Lucien had given his arm. “I will bet on its being Madame de Serizy.”

“Not a doubt of it,” cried du Chatelet, “and Monsieur du Rubempre’s fortune is accounted for.”

“Ah, the Church knows how to choose its Levites; what a sweet ambassador’s secretary he will make!” remarked des Lupeaulx.

“All the more so,” Rastignac went on, “because Lucien is a really clever fellow. These gentlemen have had proof of it more than once,” and he turned to Blondet, Finot, and Lousteau.

“Yes, the boy is cut out of the right stuff to get on,” said Lousteau, who was dying of jealousy. “And particularly because he has what we call independent ideas...”

“It is you who trained him,” said Vernou.

“Well,” replied Bixiou, looking at des Lupeaulx, “I trust to the memory of Monsieur the Secretary-General and Master of Appeals—that mask is La Torpille, and I will stand a supper on it.”

“I will hold the stakes,” said du Chatelet, curious to know the truth.

“Come, des Lupeaulx,” said Finot, “try to identify your rat’s ears.”

“There is no need for committing the crime of treason against a mask,” replied Bixiou. “La Torpille and Lucien must pass us as they go up the room again, and I pledge myself to prove that it is she.”

“So our friend Lucien has come above water once more,” said Nathan, joining the group. “I thought he had gone back to Angoumois for the rest of his days. Has he discovered some secret to ruin the English?”

“He has done what you will not do in a hurry,” retorted Rastignac; “he has paid up.”

The burly mask nodded in confirmation.

“A man who has sown his wild oats at his age puts himself out of court. He has no pluck; he puts money in the funds,” replied Nathan.

“Oh, that youngster will always be a fine gentleman, and will always have such lofty notions as will place him far above many men who think themselves his betters,” replied Rastignac.

At this moment journalists, dandies, and idlers were all examining the charming subject of their bet as horse-dealers examine a horse for sale. These connoisseurs, grown old in familiarity with every form of Parisian depravity, all men of superior talent each his own way, equally corrupt, equally corrupting, all given over to unbridled ambition, accustomed to assume and to guess everything, had their eyes centered on a masked woman, a woman whom no one else could identify. They, and certain habitual frequenters of the opera balls, could alone recognize under the long shroud of the black domino, the hood and falling ruff which make the wearer unrecognizable, the rounded form, the individuality of figure and gait, the sway of the waist, the carriage of the head—the most intangible trifles to ordinary eyes, but to them the easiest to discern.

In spite of this shapeless wrapper they could watch the most appealing of dramas, that of a woman inspired by a genuine passion. Were she La Torpille, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, or Madame de Serizy, on the lowest or highest rung of the social ladder, this woman was an exquisite creature, a flash from happy dreams. These old young men, like these young old men, felt so keen an emotion, that they envied Lucien the splendid privilege of working such a metamorphosis of a woman into a goddess. The mask was there as though she had been alone with Lucien; for that woman the thousand other persons did not exist, nor the evil and dust-laden atmosphere; no, she moved under the celestial vault of love, as Raphael’s Madonnas under their slender oval glory. She did not feel herself elbowed; the fire of her glance shot from the holes in her mask and sank into Lucien’s eyes; the thrill of her frame seemed to answer to every movement of her companion. Whence comes this flame that radiates from a woman in love and distinguishes her above all others? Whence that sylph-like lightness which seems to negative the laws of gravitation? Is the soul become ambient? Has happiness a physical effluence?

The ingenuousness of a girl, the graces of a child were discernible under the domino. Though they walked apart, these two beings suggested the figures of Flora and Zephyr as we see them grouped by the cleverest sculptors; but they were beyond sculpture, the greatest of the arts; Lucien and his pretty domino were more like the angels busied with flowers or birds, which Gian Bellini has placed beneath the effigies of the Virgin Mother. Lucien and this girl belonged to the realm of fancy, which is as far above art as cause is above effect.

When the domino, forgetful of everything, was within a yard of the group, Bixiou exclaimed:

“Esther!”

The unhappy girl turned her head quickly at hearing herself called, recognized the mischievous speaker, and bowed her head like a dying creature that has drawn its last breath.

A sharp laugh followed, and the group of men melted among the crowd like a knot of frightened field-rats whisking into their holes by the roadside. Rastignac alone went no further than was necessary, just to avoid making any show of shunning Lucien’s flashing eye. He could thus note two phases of distress equally deep though unconfessed; first, the hapless Torpille, stricken as by a lightning stroke, and then the inscrutable mask, the only one of the group who had remained. Esther murmured a word in Lucien’s ear just as her knees gave way, and Lucien, supporting her, led her away.

Rastignac watched the pretty pair, lost in meditation.

“How did she get her name of La Torpille?” asked a gloomy voice that struck to his vitals, for it was no longer disguised.

“He again—he has made his escape!” muttered Rastignac to himself.

“Be silent or I murder you,” replied the mask, changing his voice. “I am satisfied with you, you have kept your word, and there is more than one arm ready to serve you. Henceforth be as silent as the grave; but, before that, answer my question.”

“Well, the girl is such a witch that she could have magnetized the Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man more difficult to influence—you yourself,” replied Rastignac, and he turned to go.

“One moment,” said the mask; “I will prove to you that you have never seen me anywhere.”

The speaker took his mask off; for a moment Rastignac hesitated, recognizing nothing of the hideous being he had known formerly at Madame Vauquer’s.

“The devil has enabled you to change in every particular, excepting your eyes, which it is impossible to forget,” said he.

The iron hand gripped his arm to enjoin eternal secrecy.

At three in the morning des Lupeaulx and Finot found the elegant Rastignac on the same spot, leaning against the column where the terrible mask had left him. Rastignac had confessed to himself; he had been at once priest and pentient, culprit and judge. He allowed himself to be led away to breakfast, and reached home perfectly tipsy, but taciturn.

The Rue de Langlade and the adjacent streets are a blot on the Palais Royal and the Rue de Rivoli. This portion of one of the handsomest quarters of Paris will long retain the stain of foulness left by the hillocks formed of the middens of old Paris, on which mills formerly stood. These narrow streets, dark and muddy, where such industries are carried on as care little for appearances wear at night an aspect of mystery full of contrasts. On coming from the well-lighted regions of the Rue Saint-Honore, the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, and the Rue de Richelieu, where the crowd is constantly pushing, where glitter the masterpieces of industry, fashion, and art, every man to whom Paris by night is unknown would feel a sense of dread and melancholy, on finding himself in the labyrinth of little streets which lie round that blaze of light reflected even from the sky. Dense blackness is here, instead of floods of gaslight; a dim oil-lamp here and there sheds its doubtful and smoky gleam, and many blind alleys are not lighted at all. Foot passengers are few, and walk fast. The shops are shut, the few that are open are of a squalid kind; a dirty, unlighted wineshop, or a seller of underclothing and eau-de-Cologne. An unwholesome chill lays a clammy cloak over your shoulders. Few carriages drive past. There are sinister places here, especially the Rue de Langlade, the entrance to the Passage Saint-Guillaume, and the turnings of some streets.

The municipal council has not yet been to purge this vast lazar-place, for prostitution long since made it its headquarters. It is, perhaps, a good thing for Paris that these alleys should be allowed to preserve their filthy aspect. Passing through them by day, it is impossible to imagine what they become by night; they are pervaded by strange creatures of no known world; white, half-naked forms cling to the walls—the darkness is alive. Between the passenger and the wall a dress steals by—a dress that moves and speaks. Half-open doors suddenly shout with laughter. Words fall on the ear such as Rabelais speaks of as frozen and melting. Snatches of songs come up from the pavement. The noise is not vague; it means something. When it is hoarse it is a voice; but if it suggests a song, there is nothing human about it, it is more like a croak. Often you hear a sharp whistle, and then the tap of boot-heels has a peculiarly aggressive and mocking ring. This medley of things makes you giddy. Atmospheric conditions are reversed there—it is warm in winter and cool in summer.

Still, whatever the weather, this strange world always wears the same aspect; it is the fantastic world of Hoffmann of Berlin. The most mathematical of clerks never thinks of it as real, after returning through the straits that lead into decent streets, where there are passengers, shops, and taverns. Modern administration, or modern policy, more scornful or more shamefaced than the queens and kings of past ages, no longer dare look boldly in the face of this plague of our capitals. Measures, of course, must change with the times, and such as bear on individuals and on their liberty are a ticklish matter; still, we ought, perhaps, to show some breadth and boldness as to merely material measures—air, light, and construction. The moralist, the artist, and the sage administrator alike must regret the old wooden galleries of the Palais Royal, where the lambs were to be seen who will always be found where there are loungers; and is it not best that the loungers should go where they are to be found? What is the consequence? The gayest parts of the Boulevards, that delightfulest of promenades, are impossible in the evening for a family party. The police has failed to take advantage of the outlet afforded by some small streets to purge the main street.

The girl whom we have seen crushed by a word at the opera ball had been for the last month or two living in the Rue de Langlade, in a very poor-looking house. This structure, stuck on to the wall of an enormously large one, badly stuccoed, of no depth, and immensely high, has all its windows on the street, and bears some resemblance to a parrot’s perch. On each floor are two rooms, let as separate flats. There is a narrow staircase clinging to the wall, queerly lighted by windows which mark its ascent on the outer wall, each landing being indicated by a stink, one of the most odious peculiarities of Paris. The shop and entresol at that time were tenanted by a tinman; the landlord occupied the first floor; the four upper stories were rented by very decent working girls, who were treated by the portress and the proprietor with some consideration and an obligingness called forth by the difficulty of letting a house so oddly constructed and situated. The occupants of the quarter are accounted for by the existence there of many houses of the same character, for which trade has no use, and which can only be rented by the poorer kinds of industry, of a precarious or ignominious nature.

At three in the afternoon the portress, who had seen Mademoiselle Esther brought home half dead by a young man at two in the morning, had just held council with the young woman of the floor above, who, before setting out in a cab to join some party of pleasure, had expressed her uneasiness about Esther; she had not heard her move. Esther was, no doubt, still asleep, but this slumber seemed suspicious. The portress, alone in her cell, was regretting that she could not go to see what was happening on the fourth floor, where Mademoiselle Esther lodged.

Just as she had made up her mind to leave the tinman’s son in charge of her room, a sort of den in a recess on the entresol floor, a cab stopped at the door. A man stepped out, wrapped from head to foot in a cloak evidently intended to conceal his dress or his rank in life, and asked for Mademoiselle Esther. The portress at one felt relieved; this accounted for Esther’s silence and quietude. As the stranger mounted the stairs above the portress’ room, she noticed silver buckles in his shoes, and fancied she caught sight of the black fringe of a priest’s sash; she went downstairs and catechised the driver, who answered without speech, and again the woman understood.

The priest knocked, received no answer, heard a slight gasp, and forced the door open with a thrust of his shoulder; charity, no doubt lent him strength, but in any one else it would have been ascribed to practice. He rushed to the inner room, and there found poor Esther in front of an image of the Virgin in painted plaster, kneeling, or rather doubled up, on the floor, her hands folded. The girl was dying. A brazier of burnt charcoal told the tale of that dreadful morning. The domino cloak and hood were lying on the ground. The bed was undisturbed. The unhappy creature, stricken to the heart by a mortal thrust, had, no doubt, made all her arrangements on her return from the opera. A candle-wick, collapsed in the pool of grease that filled the candle-sconce, showed how completely her last meditations had absorbed her. A handkerchief soaked with tears proved the sincerity of the Magdalen’s despair, while her classic attitude was that of the irreligious courtesan. This abject repentance made the priest smile.

Esther, unskilled in dying, had left the door open, not thinking that the air of two rooms would need a larger amount of charcoal to make it suffocating; she was only stunned by the fumes; the fresh air from the staircase gradually restored her to a consciousness of her woes.

The priest remained standing, lost in gloomy meditation, without being touched by the girl’s divine beauty, watching her first movements as if she had been some animal. His eyes went from the crouching figure to the surrounding objects with evident indifference. He looked at the furniture in the room; the paved floor, red, polished, and cold, was poorly covered with a shabby carpet worn to the string. A little bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was hung with yellow cotton printed with red stars, one armchair and two small chairs, also of painted wood, and covered with the same cotton print of which the window-curtains were also made; a gray wall-paper sprigged with flowers blackened and greasy with age; a fireplace full of kitchen utensils of the vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a stone shelf, on which lay some jewelry false and real, a pair of scissors, a dirty pincushion, and some white scented gloves; an exquisite hat perched on the water-jug, a Ternaux shawl stopping a hole in the window, a handsome gown hanging from a nail; a little hard sofa, with no cushions; broken clogs and dainty slippers, boots that a queen might have coveted; cheap china plates, cracked or chipped, with fragments of a past meal, and nickel forks—the plate of the Paris poor; a basket full of potatoes and dirty linen, with a smart gauze cap on the top; a rickety wardrobe, with a glass door, open and empty, and on the shelves sundry pawn-tickets,—this was the medley of things, dismal or pleasing, abject and handsome, that fell on his eye.

These relics of splendor among the potsherds, these household belongings—so appropriate to the bohemian existence of the girl who knelt stricken in her unbuttoned garments, like a horse dying in harness under the broken shafts entangled in the reins—did the whole strange scene suggest any thoughts to the priest? Did he say to himself that this erring creature must at least be disinterested to live in such poverty when her lover was young and rich? Did he ascribe the disorder of the room to the disorder of her life? Did he feel pity or terror? Was his charity moved?

To see him, his arms folded, his brow dark, his lips set, his eye harsh, any one must have supposed him absorbed in morose feelings of hatred, considerations that jostled each other, sinister schemes. He was certainly insensible to the soft roundness of a bosom almost crushed under the weight of the bowed shoulders, and to the beautiful modeling of the crouching Venus that was visible under the black petticoat, so closely was the dying girl curled up. The drooping head which, seen from behind, showed the white, slender, flexible neck and the fine shoulders of a well-developed figure, did not appeal to him. He did not raise Esther, he did not seem to hear the agonizing gasps which showed that she was returning to life; a fearful sob and a terrifying glance from the girl were needed before he condescended to lift her, and he carried her to the bed with an ease that revealed enormous strength.

“Lucien!” she murmured.

“Love is there, the woman is not far behind,” said the priest with some bitterness.

The victim of Parisian depravity then observed the dress worn by her deliverer, and said, with a smile like a child’s when it takes possession of something longed for:

“Then I shall not die without being reconciled to Heaven?”

“You may yet expiate your sins,” said the priest, moistening her forehead with water, and making her smell at a cruet of vinegar he found in a corner.

“I feel that life, instead of departing, is rushing in on me,” said she, after accepting the Father’s care and expressing her gratitude by simple gestures. This engaging pantomime, such as the Graces might have used to charm, perfectly justified the nickname given to this strange girl.

“Do you feel better?” said the priest, giving her a glass of sugar and water to drink.

This man seemed accustomed to such queer establishments; he knew all about it. He was quite at home there. This privilege of being everywhere at home is the prerogative of kings, courtesans, and thieves.

“When you feel quite well,” this strange priest went on after a pause, “you must tell me the reasons which prompted you to commit this last crime, this attempted suicide.”

“My story is very simple, Father,” replied she. “Three months ago I was living the evil life to which I was born. I was the lowest and vilest of creatures; now I am only the most unhappy. Excuse me from telling you the history of my poor mother, who was murdered——”

“By a Captain, in a house of ill-fame,” said the priest, interrupting the penitent. “I know your origin, and I know that if a being of your sex can ever be excused for leading a life of shame, it is you, who have always lacked good examples.”

“Alas! I was never baptized, and have no religious teaching.”

“All may yet be remedied then,” replied the priest, “provided that your faith, your repentance, are sincere and without ulterior motive.”

“Lucien and God fill my heart,” said she with ingenuous pathos.

“You might have said God and Lucien,” answered the priest, smiling. “You remind me of the purpose of my visit. Omit nothing that concerns that young man.”

“You have come from him?” she asked, with a tender look that would have touched any other priest! “Oh, he thought I should do it!”

“No,” replied the priest; “it is not your death, but your life that we are interested in. Come, explain your position toward each other.”

“In one word,” said she.

The poor child quaked at the priest’s stern tone, but as a woman quakes who has long ceased to be surprised at brutality.

“Lucien is Lucien,” said she, “the handsomest young man, the kindest soul alive; if you know him, my love must seem to you quite natural. I met him by chance, three months ago, at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre, where I went one day when I had leave, for we had a day a week at Madame Meynardie’s, where I then was. Next day, you understand, I went out without leave. Love had come into my heart, and had so completely changed me, that on my return from the theatre I did not know myself: I had a horror of myself. Lucien would never have known. Instead of telling him what I was, I gave him my address at these rooms, where a friend of mine was then living, who was so kind as to give them up to me. I swear on my sacred word——”

“You must not swear.”

“Is it swearing to give your sacred word?—Well, from that day I have worked in this room like a lost creature at shirt-making at twenty-eight sous apiece, so as to live by honest labor. For a month I have had nothing to eat but potatoes, that I might keep myself a good girl and worthy of Lucien, who loves me and respects me as a pattern of virtue. I have made my declaration before the police to recover my rights, and submitted to two years’ surveillance. They are ready enough to enter your name on the lists of disgrace, but make every difficulty about scratching it out again. All I asked of Heaven was to enable me to keep my resolution.

“I shall be nineteen in the month of April; at my age there is still a chance. It seems to me that I was never born till three months ago.—I prayed to God every morning that Lucien might never know what my former life had been. I bought that Virgin you see there, and I prayed to her in my own way, for I do not know any prayers; I cannot read nor write, and I have never been into a church; I have never seen anything of God excepting in processions, out of curiosity.”

“And what do you say to the Virgin?”

“I talk to her as I talk to Lucien, with all my soul, till I make him cry.”

“Oh, so he cries?”

“With joy,” said she eagerly, “poor dear boy! We understand each other so well that we have but one soul! He is so nice, so fond, so sweet in heart and mind and manners! He says he is a poet; I say he is god.—Forgive me! You priests, you see, don’t know what love is. But, in fact, only girls like me know enough of men to appreciate such as Lucien. A Lucien, you see, is as rare as a woman without sin. When you come across him you can love no one else; so there! But such a being must have his fellow; so I want to be worthy to be loved by my Lucien. That is where my trouble began. Last evening, at the opera, I was recognized by some young men who have no more feeling than a tiger has pity—for that matter, I could come round the tiger! The veil of innocence I had tried to wear was worn off; their laughter pierced my brain and my heart. Do not think you have saved me; I shall die of grief.”

“Your veil of innocence?” said the priest. “Then you have treated Lucien with the sternest severity?”

“Oh, Father, how can you, who know him, ask me such a question!” she replied with a smile. “Who can resist a god?”

“Do not be blasphemous,” said the priest mildly. “No one can be like God. Exaggeration is out of place with true love; you had not a pure and genuine love for your idol. If you had undergone the conversion you boast of having felt, you would have acquired the virtues which are a part of womanhood; you would have known the charm of chastity, the refinements of modesty, the two virtues that are the glory of a maiden.—You do not love.”

Esther’s gesture of horror was seen by the priest, but it had no effect on the impassibility of her confessor.

“Yes; for you love him for yourself and not for himself, for the temporal enjoyments that delight you, and not for love itself. If he has thus taken possession of you, you cannot have felt that sacred thrill that is inspired by a being on whom God has set the seal of the most adorable perfections. Has it never occurred to you that you would degrade him by your past impurity, that you would corrupt a child by the overpowering seductions which earned you your nickname glorious in infamy? You have been illogical with yourself, and your passion of a day——”

“Of a day?” she repeated, raising her eyes.

“By what other name can you call a love that is not eternal, that does not unite us in the future life of the Christian, to the being we love?”

“Ah, I will be a Catholic!” she cried in a hollow, vehement tone, that would have earned her the mercy of the Lord.

“Can a girl who has received neither the baptism of the Church nor that of knowledge; who can neither read, nor write, nor pray; who cannot take a step without the stones in the street rising up to accuse her; noteworthy only for the fugitive gift of beauty which sickness may destroy to-morrow; can such a vile, degraded creature, fully aware too of her degradation—for if you had been ignorant of it and less devoted, you would have been more excusable—can the intended victim to suicide and hell hope to be the wife of Lucien de Rubempre?”

Every word was a poniard thrust piercing the depths of her heart. At every word the louder sobs and abundant tears of the desperate girl showed the power with which light had flashed upon an intelligence as pure as that of a savage, upon a soul at length aroused, upon a nature over which depravity had laid a sheet of foul ice now thawed in the sunshine of faith.

“Why did I not die!” was the only thought that found utterance in the midst of a torrent of ideas that racked and ravaged her brain.

“My daughter,” said the terrible judge, “there is a love which is unconfessed before men, but of which the secret is received by the angels with smiles of gladness.”

“What is that?”

“Love without hope, when it inspires our life, when it fills us with the spirit of sacrifice, when it ennobles every act by the thought of reaching some ideal perfection. Yes, the angels approve of such love; it leads to the knowledge of God. To aim at perfection in order to be worthy of the one you love, to make for him a thousand secret sacrifices, adoring him from afar, giving your blood drop by drop, abnegating your self-love, never feeling any pride or anger as regards him, even concealing from him all knowledge of the dreadful jealousy he fires in your heart, giving him all he wishes were it to your own loss, loving what he loves, always turning your face to him to follow him without his knowing it—such love as that religion would have forgiven; it is no offence to laws human or divine, and would have led you into another road than that of your foul voluptuousness.”

As she heard this horrible verdict, uttered in a word—and such a word! and spoken in such a tone!—Esther’s spirit rose up in fairly legitimate distrust. This word was like a thunder-clap giving warning of a storm about to break. She looked at the priest, and felt the grip on her vitals which wrings the bravest when face to face with sudden and imminent danger. No eye could have read what was passing in this man’s mind; but the boldest would have found more to quail at than to hope for in the expression of his eyes, once bright and yellow like those of a tiger, but now shrouded, from austerities and privations, with a haze like that which overhangs the horizon in the dog-days, when, though the earth is hot and luminous, the mist makes it indistinct and dim—almost invisible.

The gravity of a Spaniard, the deep furrows which the myriad scars of virulent smallpox made hideously like broken ruts, were ploughed into his face, which was sallow and tanned by the sun. The hardness of this countenance was all the more conspicuous, being framed in the meagre dry wig of a priest who takes no care of his person, a black wig looking rusty in the light. His athletic frame, his hands like an old soldier’s, his broad, strong shoulders were those of the Caryatides which the architects of the Middle Ages introduced into some Italian palaces, remotely imitated in those of the front of the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre. The least clear-sighted observer might have seen that fiery passions or some unwonted accident must have thrown this man into the bosom of the Church; certainly none but the most tremendous shocks of lightning could have changed him, if indeed such a nature were susceptible of change.

Women who have lived the life that Esther had so violently repudiated come to feel absolute indifference as to the critics of our day, who may be compared with them in some respects, and who feel at last perfect disregard of the formulas of art; they have read so many books, they see so many pass away, they are so much accustomed to written pages, they have gone through so many plots, they have seen so many dramas, they have written so many articles without saying what they meant, and have so often been treasonable to the cause of Art in favor of their personal likings and aversions, that they acquire a feeling of disgust of everything, and yet continue to pass judgment. It needs a miracle to make such a writer produce sound work, just as it needs another miracle to give birth to pure and noble love in the heart of a courtesan.

The tone and manner of this priest, who seemed to have escaped from a picture by Zurbaran, struck this poor girl as so hostile, little as externals affected her, that she perceived herself to be less the object of his solitude than the instrument he needed for some scheme. Being unable to distinguish between the insinuating tongue of personal interest and the unction of true charity, for we must be acutely awake to recognize false coin when it is offered by a friend, she felt herself, as it were, in the talons of some fierce and monstrous bird of prey who, after hovering over her for long, had pounced down on her; and in her terror she cried in a voice of alarm:

“I thought it was a priest’s duty to console us, and you are killing me!”

At this innocent outcry the priest started and paused; he meditated a moment before replying. During that instant the two persons so strangely brought together studied each other cautiously. The priest understood the girl, though the girl could not understand the priest.

He, no doubt, put aside some plan which had threatened the unhappy Esther, and came back to his first ideas.

“We are physicians of the soul,” said he, in a mild voice, “and we know what remedies suit their maladies.”

“Much must be forgiven to the wretched,” said Esther.

She fancied she had been wrong; she slipped off the bed, threw herself at the man’s feet, kissed his gown with deep humility, and looked up at him with eyes full of tears.

“I thought I had done so much!” she said.

“Listen, my child. Your terrible reputation has cast Lucien’s family into grief. They are afraid, and not without reason, that you may lead him into dissipation, into endless folly——”

“That is true; it was I who got him to the ball to mystify him.”

“You are handsome enough to make him wish to triumph in you in the eyes of the world, to show you with pride, and make you an object for display. And if he wasted money only!—but he will waste his time, his powers; he will lose his inclination for the fine future his friends can secure to him. Instead of being some day an ambassador, rich, admired and triumphant, he, like so many debauchees who choke their talents in the mud of Paris, will have been the lover of a degraded woman.

“As for you, after rising for a time to the level of a sphere of elegance, you will presently sink back to your former life, for you have not in you the strength bestowed by a good education to enable you to resist vice and think of the future. You would no more be able to break with the women of your own class than you have broken with the men who shamed you at the opera this morning. Lucien’s true friends, alarmed by his passion for you, have dogged his steps and know all. Filled with horror, they have sent me to you to sound your views and decide your fate; but though they are powerful enough to clear a stumbling-stone out of the young man’s way, they are merciful. Understand this, child: a girl whom Lucien loves has claims on their regard, as a true Christian worships the slough on which, by chance, the divine light falls. I came to be the instrument of a beneficent purpose;—still, if I had found you utterly reprobate, armed with effrontery and astuteness, corrupt to the marrow, deaf to the voice of repentance, I should have abandoned you to their wrath.

“The release, civil and political, which it is so hard to win, which the police is so right to withhold for a time in the interests of society, and which I heard you long for with all the ardor of true repentance—is here,” said the priest, taking an official-looking paper out of his belt. “You were seen yesterday, this letter of release is dated to-day. You see how powerful the people are who take an interest in Lucien.”

At the sight of this document Esther was so ingenuously overcome by the convulsive agitation produced by unlooked-for joy, that a fixed smile parted her lips, like that of a crazy creature. The priest paused, looking at the girl to see whether, when once she had lost the horrible strength which corrupt natures find in corruption itself, and was thrown back on her frail and delicate primitive nature, she could endure so much excitement. If she had been a deceitful courtesan, Esther would have acted a part; but now that she was innocent and herself once more, she might perhaps die, as a blind man cured may lose his sight again if he is exposed to too bright a light. At this moment this man looked into the very depths of human nature, but his calmness was terrible in its rigidity; a cold alp, snow-bound and near to heaven, impenetrable and frowning, with flanks of granite, and yet beneficent.

Such women are essentially impressionable beings, passing without reason from the most idiotic distrust to absolute confidence. In this respect they are lower than animals. Extreme in everything—in their joy and despair, in their religion and irreligion—they would almost all go mad if they were not decimated by the mortality peculiar to their class, and if happy chances did not lift one now and then from the slough in which they dwell. To understand the very depths of the wretchedness of this horrible existence, one must know how far in madness a creature can go without remaining there, by studying La Torpille’s violent ecstasy at the priest’s feet. The poor girl gazed at the paper of release with an expression which Dante has overlooked, and which surpassed the inventiveness of his Inferno. But a reaction came with tears. Esther rose, threw her arms round the priest’s neck, laid her head on his breast, which she wetted with her weeping, kissing the coarse stuff that covered that heart of steel as if she fain would touch it. She seized hold of him; she covered his hands with kisses; she poured out in a sacred effusion of gratitude her most coaxing caresses, lavished fond names on him, saying again and again in the midst of her honeyed words, “Let me have it!” in a thousand different tones of voice; she wrapped him in tenderness, covered him with her looks with a swiftness that found him defenceless; at last she charmed away his wrath.

The priest perceived how well the girl had deserved her nickname; he understood how difficult it was to resist this bewitching creature; he suddenly comprehended Lucien’s love, and just what must have fascinated the poet. Such a passion hides among a thousand temptations a dart-like hook which is most apt to catch the lofty soul of an artist. These passions, inexplicable to the vulgar, are perfectly accounted for by the thirst for ideal beauty, which is characteristic of a creative mind. For are we not, in some degree, akin to the angels, whose task it is to bring the guilty to a better mind? are we not creative when we purify such a creature? How delightful it is to harmonize moral with physical beauty! What joy and pride if we succeed! How noble a task is that which has no instrument but love!

Such alliances, made famous by the example of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, Cethegus, and Pompey, and yet so monstrous in the eyes of the vulgar, are based on the same feeling that prompted Louis XIV. to build Versailles, or that makes men rush into any ruinous enterprise—into converting the miasma of a marsh into a mass of fragrance surrounded by living waters; placing a lake at the top of a hill, as the Prince de Conti did at Nointel; or producing Swiss scenery at Cassan, like Bergeret, the farmer-general. In short, it is the application of art in the realm of morals.

The priest, ashamed of having yielded to this weakness, hastily pushed Esther away, and she sat down quite abashed, for he said:

“You are still the courtesan.” And he calmly replaced the paper in his sash.

Esther, like a child who has a single wish in its head, kept her eyes fixed on the spot where the document lay hidden.

“My child,” the priest went on after a pause, “your mother was a Jewess, and you have not been baptized; but, on the other hand, you have never been taken to the synagogue. You are in the limbo where little children are——”

“Little children!” she echoed, in a tenderly pathetic tone.

“As you are on the books of the police, a cipher outside the pale of social beings,” the priest went on, unmoved. “If love, seen as it swept past, led you to believe three months since that you were then born, you must feel that since that day you have been really an infant. You must, therefore, be led as if you were a child; you must be completely changed, and I will undertake to make you unrecognizable. To begin with, you must forget Lucien.”

The words crushed the poor girl’s heart; she raised her eyes to the priest and shook her head; she could not speak, finding the executioner in the deliverer again.

“At any rate, you must give up seeing him,” he went on. “I will take you to a religious house where young girls of the best families are educated; there you will become a Catholic, you will be trained in the practice of Christian exercises, you will be taught religion. You may come out an accomplished young lady, chaste, pure, well brought up, if——” The man lifted up a finger and paused.

“If,” he went on, “you feel brave enough to leave the ‘Torpille’ behind you here.”

“Ah!” cried the poor thing, to whom each word had been like a note of some melody to which the gates of Paradise were slowly opening. “Ah! if it were possible to shed all my blood here and have it renewed!”

“Listen to me.”

She was silent.

“Your future fate depends on your power of forgetting. Think of the extent to which you pledge yourself. A word, a gesture, which betrays La Torpille will kill Lucien’s wife. A word murmured in a dream, an involuntary thought, an immodest glance, a gesture of impatience, a reminiscence of dissipation, an omission, a shake of the head that might reveal what you know, or what is known about you for your woes——”

“Yes, yes, Father,” said the girl, with the exaltation of a saint. “To walk in shoes of red-hot iron and smile, to live in a pair of stays set with nails and maintain the grace of a dancer, to eat bread salted with ashes, to drink wormwood,—all will be sweet and easy!”

She fell again on her knees, she kissed the priest’s shoes, she melted into tears that wetted them, she clasped his knees, and clung to them, murmuring foolish words as she wept for joy. Her long and beautiful light hair waved to the ground, a sort of carpet under the feet of the celestial messenger, whom she saw as gloomy and hard as ever when she lifted herself up and looked at him.

“What have I done to offend you?” cried she, quite frightened. “I have heard of a woman, such as I am, who washed the feet of Jesus with perfumes. Alas! virtue has made me so poor that I have nothing but tears to offer you.”

“Have you not understood?” he answered, in a cruel voice. “I tell you, you must be able to come out of the house to which I shall take you so completely changed, physically and morally, that no man or woman you have ever known will be able to call you ‘Esther’ and make you look round. Yesterday your love could not give you strength enough so completely to bury the prostitute that she could never reappear; and again to-day she revives in adoration which is due to none but God.”

“Was it not He who sent you to me?” said she.

“If during the course of your education you should even see Lucien, all would be lost,” he went on; “remember that.”

“Who will comfort him?” said she.

“What was it that you comforted him for?” asked the priest, in a tone in which, for the first time during this scene, there was a nervous quaver.

“I do not know; he was often sad when he came.”

“Sad!” said the priest. “Did he tell you why?”

“Never,” answered she.

“He was sad at loving such a girl as you!” exclaimed he.

“Alas! and well he might be,” said she, with deep humility. “I am the most despicable creature of my sex, and I could find favor in his eyes only by the greatness of my love.”

“That love must give you the courage to obey me blindly. If I were to take you straight from hence to the house where you are to be educated, everybody here would tell Lucien that you had gone away to-day, Sunday, with a priest; he might follow in your tracks. In the course of a week, the portress, not seeing me again, might suppose me to be what I am not. So, one evening—this day week—at seven o’clock, go out quietly and get into a cab that will be waiting for you at the bottom of the Rue des Frondeurs. During this week avoid Lucien, find excuses, have him sent from the door, and if he should come in, go up to some friend’s room. I shall know if you have seen him, and in that event all will be at an end. I shall not even come back. These eight days you will need to make up some suitable clothing and to hide your look of a prostitute,” said he, laying a purse on the chimney-shelf. “There is something in your manner, in your clothes—something indefinable which is well known to Parisians, and proclaims you what you are. Have you never met in the streets or on the Boulevards a modest and virtuous girl walking with her mother?”

“Oh yes, to my sorrow! The sight of a mother and daughter is one of our most cruel punishments; it arouses the remorse that lurks in the innermost folds of our hearts, and that is consuming us.—I know too well all I lack.”

“Well, then, you know how you should look next Sunday,” said the priest, rising.

“Oh!” said she, “teach me one real prayer before you go, that I may pray to God.”

It was a touching thing to see the priest making this girl repeat Ave Maria and Paternoster in French.

“That is very fine!” said Esther, when she had repeated these two grand and universal utterances of the Catholic faith without making a mistake.

“What is your name?” she asked the priest when he took leave of her.

“Carlos Herrera; I am a Spaniard banished from my country.”

Esther took his hand and kissed it. She was no longer the courtesan; she was an angel rising after a fall.

In a religious institution, famous for the aristocratic and pious teaching imparted there, one Monday morning in the beginning of March 1824 the pupils found their pretty flock increased by a newcomer, whose beauty triumphed without dispute not only over that of her companions, but over the special details of beauty which were found severally in perfection in each one of them. In France it is extremely rare, not to say impossible, to meet with the thirty points of perfection, described in Persian verse, and engraved, it is said, in the Seraglio, which are needed to make a woman absolutely beautiful. Though in France the whole is seldom seen, we find exquisite parts. As to that imposing union which sculpture tries to produce, and has produced in a few rare examples like the Diana and the Callipyge, it is the privileged possession of Greece and Asia Minor.

Esther came from that cradle of the human race; her mother was a Jewess. The Jews, though so often deteriorated by their contact with other nations, have, among their many races, families in which this sublime type of Asiatic beauty has been preserved. When they are not repulsively hideous, they present the splendid characteristics of Armenian beauty. Esther would have carried off the prize at the Seraglio; she had the thirty points harmoniously combined. Far from having damaged the finish of her modeling and the freshness of her flesh, her strange life had given her the mysterious charm of womanhood; it is no longer the close, waxy texture of green fruit and not yet the warm glow of maturity; there is still the scent of the flower. A few days longer spent in dissolute living, and she would have been too fat. This abundant health, this perfection of the animal in a being in whom voluptuousness took the place of thought, must be a remarkable fact in the eyes of physiologists. A circumstance so rare, that it may be called impossible in very young girls, was that her hands, incomparably fine in shape, were as soft, transparent, and white as those of a woman after the birth of her second child. She had exactly the hair and the foot for which the Duchesse de Berri was so famous, hair so thick that no hairdresser could gather it into his hand, and so long that it fell to the ground in rings; for Esther was of that medium height which makes a woman a sort of toy, to be taken up and set down, taken up again and carried without fatigue. Her skin, as fine as rice-paper, of a warm amber hue showing the purple veins, was satiny without dryness, soft without being clammy.

Esther, excessively strong though apparently fragile, arrested attention by one feature that is conspicuous in the faces in which Raphael has shown his most artistic feeling, for Raphael is the painter who has most studied and best rendered Jewish beauty. This remarkable effect was produced by the depth of the eye-socket, under which the eye moved free from its setting; the arch of the brow was so accurate as to resemble the groining of a vault. When youth lends this beautiful hollow its pure and diaphanous coloring, and edges it with closely-set eyebrows, when the light stealing into the circular cavity beneath lingers there with a rosy hue, there are tender treasures in it to delight a lover, beauties to drive a painter to despair. Those luminous curves, where the shadows have a golden tone, that tissue as firm as a sinew and as mobile as the most delicate membrane, is a crowning achievement of nature. The eye at rest within is like a miraculous egg in a nest of silken wings. But as time goes on this marvel acquires a dreadful melancholy, when passions have laid dark smears on those fine forms, when grief had furrowed that network of delicate veins. Esther’s nationality proclaimed itself in this Oriental modeling of her eyes with their Turkish lids; their color was a slate-gray which by night took on the blue sheen of a raven’s wing. It was only the extreme tenderness of her expression that could moderate their fire.

Only those races that are native to deserts have in the eye the power of fascinating everybody, for any woman can fascinate some one person. Their eyes preserve, no doubt, something of the infinitude they have gazed on. Has nature, in her foresight, armed their retina with some reflecting background to enable them to endure the mirage of the sand, the torrents of sunshine, and the burning cobalt of the sky? or, do human beings, like other creatures, derive something from the surroundings among which they grow up, and preserve for ages the qualities they have imbibed from them? The great solution of this problem of race lies perhaps in the question itself. Instincts are living facts, and their cause dwells in past necessity. Variety in animals is the result of the exercise of these instincts.

To convince ourselves of this long-sought-for truth, it is enough to extend to the herd of mankind the observation recently made on flocks of Spanish and English sheep which, in low meadows where pasture is abundant, feed side by side in close array, but on mountains, where grass is scarce, scatter apart. Take these two kinds of sheep, transfer them to Switzerland or France; the mountain breeds will feed apart even in a lowland meadow of thick grass, the lowland sheep will keep together even on an alp. Hardly will a succession of generations eliminate acquired and transmitted instincts. After a century the highland spirit reappears in a refractory lamb, just as, after eighteen centuries of exile, the spirit of the East shone in Esther’s eyes and features.

Her look had no terrible fascination; it shed a mild warmth, it was pathetic without being startling, and the sternest wills were melted in its flame. Esther had conquered hatred, she had astonished the depraved souls of Paris; in short, that look and the softness of her skin had earned her the terrible nickname which had just led her to the verge of the grave. Everything about her was in harmony with these characteristics of the Peri of the burning sands. Her forehead was firmly and proudly molded. Her nose, like that of the Arab race, was delicate and narrow, with oval nostrils well set and open at the base. Her mouth, fresh and red, was a rose unblemished by a flaw, dissipation had left no trace there. Her chin, rounded as though some amorous sculptor had polished its fulness, was as white as milk. One thing only that she had not been able to remedy betrayed the courtesan fallen very low: her broken nails, which needed time to recover their shape, so much had they been spoiled by the vulgarest household tasks.

The young boarders began by being jealous of these marvels of beauty, but they ended by admiring them. Before the first week was at an end they were all attached to the artless Jewess, for they were interested in the unknown misfortunes of a girl of eighteen who could neither read nor write, to whom all knowledge and instruction were new, and who was to earn for the Archbishop the triumph of having converted a Jewess to Catholicism and giving the convent a festival in her baptism. They forgave her beauty, finding themselves her superiors in education.

Esther very soon caught the manners, the accent, the carriage and attitudes of these highly-bred girls; in short, her first nature reasserted itself. The change was so complete that on his first visit Herrera was astonished as it would seem—and the Mother Superior congratulated him on his ward. Never in their existence as teachers had these sisters met with a more charming nature, more Christian meekness, true modesty, nor a greater eagerness to learn. When a girl has suffered such misery as had overwhelmed this poor child, and looks forward to such a reward as the Spaniard held out to Esther, it is hard if she does not realize the miracles of the early Church which the Jesuits revived in Paraguay.

“She is edifying,” said the Superior, kissing her on the brow.

And this essentially Catholic word tells all.

In recreation hours Esther would question her companions, but discreetly, as to the simplest matters in fashionable life, which to her were like the first strange ideas of life to a child. When she heard that she was to be dressed in white on the day of her baptism and first Communion, that she should wear a white satin fillet, white bows, white shoes, white gloves, and white rosettes in her hair, she melted into tears, to the amazement of her companions. It was the reverse of the scene of Jephtha on the mountain. The courtesan was afraid of being understood; she ascribed this dreadful dejection to the joy with which she looked forward to the function. As there is certainly as wide a gulf between the habits she had given up and the habits she was acquiring as there is between the savage state and civilization, she had the grace and simplicity and depth which distinguished the wonderful heroine of the American Puritans. She had too, without knowing it, a love that was eating out her heart—a strange love, a desire more violent in her who knew everything than it can be in a maiden who knows nothing, though the two forms of desire have the same cause, and the same end in view.

During the first few months the novelty of a secluded life, the surprises of learning, the handiworks she was taught, the practices of religion, the fervency of a holy resolve, the gentle affections she called forth, and the exercise of the faculties of her awakened intelligence, all helped to repress her memory, even the effort she made to acquire a new one, for she had as much to unlearn as to learn. There is more than one form of memory: the body and mind have each their own; home-sickness, for instance, is a malady of the physical memory. Thus, during the third month, the vehemence of this virgin soul, soaring to Paradise on outspread wings, was not indeed quelled, but fettered by a dull rebellion, of which Esther herself did not know the cause. Like the Scottish sheep, she wanted to pasture in solitude, she could not conquer the instincts begotten of debauchery.

Was it that the foul ways of the Paris she had abjured were calling her back to them? Did the chains of the hideous habits she had renounced cling to her by forgotten rivets, and was she feeling them, as old soldiers suffer still, the surgeons tell us, in the limbs they have lost? Had vice and excess so soaked into her marrow that holy waters had not yet exorcised the devil lurking there? Was the sight of him for whom her angelic efforts were made, necessary to the poor soul, whom God would surely forgive for mingling human and sacred love? One had led to the other. Was there some transposition of the vital force in her involving her in inevitable suffering? Everything is doubtful and obscure in a case which science scorns to study, regarding the subject as too immoral and too compromising, as if the physician and the writer, the priest and the political student, were not above all suspicion. However, a doctor who was stopped by death had the courage to begin an investigation which he left unfinished.

Perhaps the dark depression to which Esther fell a victim, and which cast a gloom over her happy life, was due to all these causes; and perhaps, unable as she was to suspect them herself, she suffered as sick creatures suffer who know nothing of medicine or surgery.

The fact is strange. Wholesome and abundant food in the place of bad and inflammatory nourishment did not sustain Esther. A pure and regular life, divided between recreation and studies intentionally abridged, taking the place of a disorderly existence of which the pleasures and the pains were equally horrible, exhausted the convent-boarder. The coolest rest, the calmest nights, taking the place of crushing fatigue and the most torturing agitation, gave her low fever, in which the common symptoms were imperceptible to the nursing Sister’s eye or finger. In fact, virtue and happiness following on evil and misfortune, security in the stead of anxiety, were as fatal to Esther as her past wretchedness would have been to her young companions. Planted in corruption, she had grown up in it. That infernal home still had a hold on her, in spite of the commands of a despotic will. What she loathed was life to her, what she loved was killing her.

Her faith was so ardent that her piety was a delight to those about her. She loved to pray. She had opened her spirit to the lights of true religion, and received it without an effort or a doubt. The priest who was her director was delighted with her. Still, at every turn her body resisted the spirit.

To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon’s, who fed them with scraps from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished. The animals might be sacrificed, but man could never infect them with the leprosy of flattery. A courtier remarked at Versailles on this mute resistance. “They are like me,” said the uncrowned queen; “they pine for their obscure mud.”

This speech epitomizes Esther’s story.

At times the poor girl was driven to run about the splendid convent gardens; she hurried from tree to tree, she rushed into the darkest nooks—seeking? What? She did not know, but she fell a prey to the demon; she carried on a flirtation with the trees, she appealed to them in unspoken words. Sometimes, in the evening, she stole along under the walls, like a snake, without any shawl over her bare shoulders. Often in chapel, during the service, she remained with her eyes fixed on the Crucifix, melted to tears; the others admired her; but she was crying with rage. Instead of the sacred images she hoped to see, those glaring nights when she had led some orgy as Habeneck leads a Beethoven symphony at the Conservatoire—nights of laughter and lasciviousness, with vehement gestures, inextinguishable laughter, rose before her, frenzied, furious, and brutal. She was as mild to look upon as a virgin that clings to earth only by her woman’s shape; within raged an imperial Messalina.

She alone knew the secret of this struggle between the devil and the angel. When the Superior reproved her for having done her hair more fashionably than the rule of the House allowed, she altered it with prompt and beautiful submission; she would have cut her hair off if the Mother had required it of her. This moral home-sickness was truly pathetic in a girl who would rather have perished than have returned to the depths of impurity. She grew pale and altered and thin. The Superior gave her shorter lessons, and called the interesting creature to her room to question her. But Esther was happy; she enjoyed the society of her companions; she felt no pain in any vital part; still, it was vitality itself that was attacked. She regretted nothing; she wanted nothing. The Superior, puzzled by her boarder’s answers, did not know what to think when she saw her pining under consuming debility.

The doctor was called in when the girl’s condition seemed serious; but this doctor knew nothing of Esther’s previous life, and could not guess it; he found every organ sound, the pain could not be localized. The invalid’s replies were such as to upset every hypothesis. There remained one way of clearing up the learned man’s doubts, which now lighted on a frightful suggestion; but Esther obstinately refused to submit to a medical examination.

In this difficulty the Superior appealed to the Abbe Herrera. The Spaniard came, saw that Esther’s condition was desperate, and took the physician aside for a moment. After this confidential interview, the man of science told the man of faith that the only cure lay in a journey to Italy. The Abbe would not hear of such a journey before Esther’s baptism and first Communion.

“How long will it be till then?” asked the doctor.

“A month,” replied the Superior.

“She will be dead,” said the doctor.

“Yes, but in a state of grace and salvation,” said the Abbe.

In Spain the religious question is supreme, above all political, civil, or vital considerations; so the physician did not answer the Spaniard. He turned to the Mother Superior, but the terrible Abbe took him by the arm and stopped him.

“Not a word, monsieur!” said he.

The doctor, though a religious man and a Monarchist, looked at Esther with an expression of tender pity. The girl was as lovely as a lily drooping on its stem.

“God help her, then!” he exclaimed as he went away.

On the very day of this consultation, Esther was taken by her protector to the Rocher de Cancale, a famous restaurant, for his wish to save her had suggested strange expedients to the priest. He tried the effect of two excesses—an excellent dinner, which might remind the poor child of past orgies; and the opera, which would give her mind some images of worldliness. His despotic authority was needed to tempt the young saint to such profanation. Herrera disguised himself so effectually as a military man, that Esther hardly recognized him; he took care to make his companion wear a veil, and put her in a box where she was hidden from all eyes.

This palliative, which had no risks for innocence so sincerely regained, soon lost its effect. The convent-boarder viewed her protector’s dinners with disgust, had a religious aversion for the theatre, and relapsed into melancholy.

“She is dying of love for Lucien,” said Herrera to himself; he had wanted to sound the depths of this soul, and know how much could be exacted from it.

So the moment came when the poor child was no longer upheld by moral force, and the body was about to break down. The priest calculated the time with the hideous practical sagacity formerly shown by executioners in the art of torture. He found his protegee in the garden, sitting on a bench under a trellis on which the April sun fell gently; she seemed to be cold and trying to warm herself; her companions looked with interest at her pallor as of a folded plant, her eyes like those of a dying gazelle, her drooping attitude. Esther rose and went to meet the Spaniard with a lassitude that showed how little life there was in her, and, it may be added, how little care to live. This hapless outcast, this wild and wounded swallow, moved Carlos Herrera to compassion for the second time. The gloomy minister, whom God should have employed only to carry out His revenges, received the sick girl with a smile, which expressed, indeed, as much bitterness as sweetness, as much vengeance as charity. Esther, practised in meditation, and used to revulsions of feeling since she had led this almost monastic life, felt on her part, for the second time, distrust of her protector; but, as on the former occasion, his speech reassured her.

“Well, my dear child,” said he, “and why have you never spoken to me of Lucien?”

“I promised you,” she said, shuddering convulsively from head to foot; “I swore to you that I would never breathe his name.”

“And yet you have not ceased to think of him.”

“That, monsieur, is the only fault I have committed. I think of him always; and just as you came, I was saying his name to myself.”

“Absence is killing you?”

Esther’s only answer was to hang her head as the sick do who already scent the breath of the grave.

“If you could see him——?” said he.

“It would be life!” she cried.

“And do you think of him only spiritually?”

“Ah, monsieur, love cannot be dissected!”

“Child of an accursed race! I have done everything to save you; I send you back to your fate.—You shall see him again.”

“Why insult my happiness? Can I not love Lucien and be virtuous? Am I not ready to die here for virtue, as I should be ready to die for him? Am I not dying for these two fanaticisms—for virtue, which was to make me worthy of him, and for him who flung me into the embrace of virtue? Yes, and ready to die without seeing him or to live by seeing him. God is my Judge.”

The color had mounted to her face, her whiteness had recovered its amber warmth. Esther looked beautiful again.

“The day after that on which you are washed in the waters of baptism you shall see Lucien once more; and if you think you can live in virtue by living for him, you shall part no more.”

The priest was obliged to lift up Esther, whose knees failed her; the poor child dropped as if the ground had slipped from under her feet. The Abbe seated her on a bench; and when she could speak again she asked him:

“Why not to-day?”

“Do you want to rob Monseigneur of the triumph of your baptism and conversion? You are too close to Lucien not to be far from God.”

“Yes, I was not thinking——”

“You will never be of any religion,” said the priest, with a touch of the deepest irony.

“God is good,” said she; “He can read my heart.”

Conquered by the exquisite artlessness and gestures, Herrera kissed her on the forehead for the first time.

“Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the Father.—A few days more must pass, and then you will both be free.”

“Both!” she echoed in an ecstasy of joy.

This scene, observed from a distance, struck pupils and superiors alike; they fancied they had looked on at a miracle as they compared Esther with herself. She was completely changed; she was alive. She reappeared her natural self, all love, sweet, coquettish, playful, and gay; in short, it was a resurrection.

Herrera lived in the Rue Cassette, near Saint-Sulpice, the church to which he was attached. This building, hard and stern in style, suited this Spaniard, whose discipline was that of the Dominicans. A lost son of Ferdinand VII.‘s astute policy, he devoted himself to the cause of the constitution, knowing that this devotion could never be rewarded till the restoration of the Rey netto. Carlos Herrera had thrown himself body and soul into the Camarilla at the moment when the Cortes seemed likely to stand and hold their own. To the world this conduct seemed to proclaim a superior soul. The Duc d’Angouleme’s expedition had been carried out, King Ferdinand was on the throne, and Carlos Herrera did not go to claim the reward of his services at Madrid. Fortified against curiosity by his diplomatic taciturnity, he assigned as his reason for remaining in Paris his strong affection for Lucien de Rubempre, to which the young man already owed the King’s patent relating to his change of name.

Herrera lived very obscurely, as priests employed on secret missions traditionally live. He fulfilled his religious duties at Saint-Sulpice, never went out but on business, and then after dark, and in a hackney cab. His day was filled up with a siesta in the Spanish fashion, which arranges for sleep between the two chief meals, and so occupies the hours when Paris is in a busy turmoil. The Spanish cigar also played its part, and consumed time as well as tobacco. Laziness is a mask as gravity is, and that again is laziness.

Herrera lived on the second floor in one wing of the house, and Lucien occupied the other wing. The two apartments were separated and joined by a large reception room of antique magnificence, suitable equally to the grave priest and to the young poet. The courtyard was gloomy; large, thick trees shaded the garden. Silence and reserve are always found in the dwellings chosen by priests. Herrera’s lodging may be described in one word—a cell. Lucien’s, splendid with luxury, and furnished with every refinement of comfort, combined everything that the elegant life of a dandy demands—a poet, a writer, ambitious and dissipated, at once vain and vainglorious, utterly heedless, and yet wishing for order, one of those incomplete geniuses who have some power to wish, to conceive—which is perhaps the same thing—but no power at all to execute.

These two, Lucien and Herrera, formed a body politic. This, no doubt, was the secret of their union. Old men in whom the activities of life have been uprooted and transplanted to the sphere of interest, often feel the need of a pleasing instrument, a young and impassioned actor, to carry out their schemes. Richelieu, too late, found a handsome pale face with a young moustache to cast in the way of women whom he wanted to amuse. Misunderstood by giddy-pated younger men, he was compelled to banish his master’s mother and terrify the Queen, after having tried to make each fall in love with him, though he was not cut out to be loved by queens.

Do what we will, always, in the course of an ambitious life, we find a woman in the way just when we least expect such an obstacle. However great a political man may be, he always needs a woman to set against a woman, just as the Dutch use a diamond to cut a diamond. Rome at the height of its power yielded to this necessity. And observe how immeasurably more imposing was the life of Mazarin, the Italian cardinal, than that of Richelieu, the French cardinal. Richelieu met with opposition from the great nobles, and he applied the axe; he died in the flower of his success, worn out by this duel, for which he had only a Capuchin monk as his second. Mazarin was repulsed by the citizen class and the nobility, armed allies who sometimes victoriously put royalty to flight; but Anne of Austria’s devoted servant took off no heads, he succeeded in vanquishing the whole of France, and trained Louis XIV., who completed Richelieu’s work by strangling the nobility with gilded cords in the grand Seraglio of Versailles. Madame de Pompadour dead, Choiseul fell!

Had Herrera soaked his mind in these high doctrines? Had he judged himself at an earlier age than Richelieu? Had he chosen Lucien to be his Cinq-Mars, but a faithful Cinq-Mars? No one could answer these questions or measure this Spaniard’s ambition, as no one could foresee what his end might be. These questions, asked by those who were able to see anything of this coalition, which was long kept a secret, might have unveiled a horrible mystery which Lucien himself had known but a few days. Carlos was ambitious for two; that was what his conduct made plain to those persons who knew him, and who all imagined that Lucien was the priest’s illegitimate son.

Fifteen months after Lucien’s reappearance at the opera ball, which led him too soon into a world where the priest had not wished to see him till he should have fully armed him against it, he had three fine horses in his stable, a coupe for evening use, a cab and a tilbury to drive by day. He dined out every day. Herrera’s foresight was justified; his pupil was carried away by dissipation; he thought it necessary to effect some diversion in the frenzied passion for Esther that the young man still cherished in his heart. After spending something like forty thousand francs, every folly had brought Lucien back with increased eagerness to La Torpille; he searched for her persistently; and as he could not find her, she became to him what game is to the sportsman.

Could Herrera understand the nature of a poet’s love?

When once this feeling has mounted to the brain of one of these great little men, after firing his heart and absorbing his senses, the poet becomes as far superior to humanity through love as he already is through the power of his imagination. A freak of intellectual heredity has given him the faculty of expressing nature by imagery, to which he gives the stamp both of sentiment and of thought, and he lends his love the wings of his spirit; he feels, and he paints, he acts and meditates, he multiplies his sensations by thought, present felicity becomes threefold through aspiration for the future and memory of the past; and with it he mingles the exquisite delights of the soul, which makes him the prince of artists. Then the poet’s passion becomes a fine poem in which human proportion is often set at nought. Does not the poet then place his mistress far higher than women crave to sit? Like the sublime Knight of la Mancha, he transfigures a peasant girl to be a princess. He uses for his own behoof the wand with which he touches everything, turning it into a wonder, and thus enhances the pleasure of loving by the glorious glamour of the ideal.

Such a love is the very essence of passion. It is extreme in all things, in its hopes, in its despair, in its rage, in its melancholy, in its joy; it flies, it leaps, it crawls; it is not like any of the emotions known to ordinary men; it is to everyday love what the perennial Alpine torrent is to the lowland brook.

These splendid geniuses are so rarely understood that they spend themselves in hopes deceived; they are exhausted by the search for their ideal mistress, and almost always die like gorgeous insects splendidly adorned for their love-festival by the most poetical of nature’s inventions, and crushed under the foot of a passer-by. But there is another danger! When they meet with the form that answers to their soul, and which not unfrequently is that of a baker’s wife, they do as Raphael did, as the beautiful insect does, they die in the Fornarina’s arms.

Lucien was at this pass. His poetical temperament, excessive in all things, in good as in evil, had discerned the angel in this girl, who was tainted by corruption rather than corrupt; he always saw her white, winged, pure, and mysterious, as she had made herself for him, understanding that he would have her so.

Towards the end of the month of May 1825 Lucien had lost all his good spirits; he never went out, dined with Herrera, sat pensive, worked, read volumes of diplomatic treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a divan, and smoked three or four hookahs a day. His groom had more to do in cleaning and perfuming the tubes of this noble pipe than in currying and brushing down the horses’ coats, and dressing them with cockades for driving in the Bois. As soon as the Spaniard saw Lucien pale, and detected a malady in the frenzy of suppressed passion, he determined to read to the bottom of this man’s heart on which he founded his life.

One fine evening, when Lucien, lounging in an armchair, was mechanically contemplating the hues of the setting sun through the trees in the garden, blowing up the mist of scented smoke in slow, regular clouds, as pensive smokers are wont, he was roused from his reverie by hearing a deep sigh. He turned and saw the Abbe standing by him with folded arms.

“You were there!” said the poet.

“For some time,” said the priest, “my thoughts have been following the wide sweep of yours.” Lucien understood his meaning.

“I have never affected to have an iron nature such as yours is. To me life is by turns paradise and hell; when by chance it is neither, it bores me; and I am bored——”

“How can you be bored when you have such splendid prospects before you?”

“If I have no faith in those prospects, or if they are too much shrouded?”

“Do not talk nonsense,” said the priest. “It would be far more worthy of you and of me that you should open your heart to me. There is now that between us which ought never to have come between us—a secret. This secret has subsisted for sixteen months. You are in love.”

“And what then?”

“A foul hussy called La Torpille——”

“Well?”

“My boy, I told you you might have a mistress, but a woman of rank, pretty, young, influential, a Countess at least. I had chosen Madame d’Espard for you, to make her the instrument of your fortune without scruple; for she would never have perverted your heart, she would have left you free.—To love a prostitute of the lowest class when you have not, like kings, the power to give her high rank, is a monstrous blunder.”

“And am I the first man who had renounced ambition to follow the lead of a boundless passion?”

“Good!” said the priest, stooping to pick up the mouthpiece of the hookah which Lucien had dropped on the floor. “I understand the retort. Cannot love and ambition be reconciled? Child, you have a mother in old Herrera—a mother who is wholly devoted to you——”

“I know it, old friend,” said Lucien, taking his hand and shaking it.

“You wished for the toys of wealth; you have them. You want to shine; I am guiding you into the paths of power, I kiss very dirty hands to secure your advancement, and you will get on. A little while yet and you will lack nothing of what can charm man or woman. Though effeminate in your caprices, your intellect is manly. I have dreamed all things of you; I forgive you all. You have only to speak to have your ephemeral passions gratified. I have aggrandized your life by introducing into it that which makes it delightful to most people—the stamp of political influence and dominion. You will be as great as you now are small; but you must not break the machine by which we coin money. I grant you all you will excepting such blunders as will destroy your future prospects. When I can open the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain to you, I forbid your wallowing in the gutter. Lucien, I mean to be an iron stanchion in your interest; I will endure everything from you, for you. Thus I have transformed your lack of tact in the game of life into the shrewd stroke of a skilful player——”

Lucien looked up with a start of furious impetuosity.

“I carried off La Torpille!”

“You?” cried Lucien.

In a fit of animal rage the poet jumped up, flung the jeweled mouthpiece in the priest’s face, and pushed him with such violence as to throw down that strong man.

“I,” said the Spaniard, getting up and preserving his terrible gravity.

His black wig had fallen off. A bald skull, as shining as a death’s head, showed the man’s real countenance. It was appalling. Lucien sat on his divan, his hands hanging limp, overpowered, and gazing at the Abbe with stupefaction.

“I carried her off,” the priest repeated.

“What did you do with her? You took her away the day after the opera ball.”

“Yes, the day after I had seen a woman who belonged to you insulted by wretches whom I would not have condescended to kick downstairs.”

“Wretches!” interrupted Lucien, “say rather monsters, compared with whom those who are guillotined are angels. Do you know what the unhappy Torpille had done for three of them? One of them was her lover for two months. She was poor, and picked up a living in the gutter; he had not a sou; like me, when you rescued me, he was very near the river; this fellow would get up at night and go to the cupboard where the girl kept the remains of her dinner and eat it. At last she discovered the trick; she understood the shameful thing, and took care to leave a great deal; then she was happy. She never told any one but me, that night, coming home from the opera.

“The second had stolen some money; but before the theft was found out, she lent him the sum, which he was enabled to replace, and which he always forgot to repay to the poor child.

“As to the third, she made his fortune by playing out a farce worthy of Figaro’s genius. She passed as his wife and became the mistress of a man in power, who believed her to be the most innocent of good citizens. To one she gave life, to another honor, to the third fortune—what does it all count for to-day? And this is how they reward her!”

“Would you like to see them dead?” said Herrera, in whose eyes there were tears.

“Come, that is just like you! I know you by that——”

“Nay, hear all, raving poet,” said the priest. “La Torpille is no more.”

Lucien flew at Herrera to seize him by the throat, with such violence that any other man must have fallen backwards; but the Spaniard’s arm held off his assailant.

“Come, listen,” said he coldly. “I have made another woman of her, chaste, pure, well bred, religious, a perfect lady. She is being educated. She can, if she may, under the influence of your love, become a Ninon, a Marion Delorme, a du Barry, as the journalist at the opera ball remarked. You may proclaim her your mistress, or you may retire behind a curtain of your own creating, which will be wiser. By either method you will gain profit and pride, pleasure and advancement; but if you are as great a politician as you are a poet, Esther will be no more to you than any other woman of the town; for, later, perhaps she may help us out of difficulties; she is worth her weight in gold. Drink, but do not get tipsy.

“If I had not held the reins of your passion, where would you be now? Rolling with La Torpille in the slough of misery from which I dragged you. Here, read this,” said Herrera, as simply as Talma in Manlius, which he had never seen.

A sheet of paper was laid on the poet’s knees, and startled him from the ecstasy and surprise with which he had listened to this astounding speech; he took it, and read the first letter written by Mademoiselle Esther:—

  To Monsieur l’Abbe Carlos Herrera.

  “MY DEAR PROTECTOR,—Will you not suppose that gratitude is
  stronger in me than love, when you see that the first use I make
  of the power of expressing my thoughts is to thank you, instead of
  devoting it to pouring forth a passion that Lucien has perhaps
  forgotten. But to you, divine man, I can say what I should not
  dare to tell him, who, to my joy, still clings to earth.

  “Yesterday’s ceremony has filled me with treasures of grace, and I
  place my fate in your hands. Even if I must die far away from my
  beloved, I shall die purified like the Magdalen, and my soul will
  become to him the rival of his guardian angel. Can I ever forget
  yesterday’s festival? How could I wish to abdicate the glorious
  throne to which I was raised? Yesterday I washed away every stain
  in the waters of baptism, and received the Sacred Body of my
  Redeemer; I am become one of His tabernacles. At that moment I
  heard the songs of angels, I was more than a woman, born to a life
  of light amid the acclamations of the whole earth, admired by the
  world in a cloud of incense and prayers that were intoxicating,
  adorned like a virgin for the Heavenly Spouse.

  “Thus finding myself worthy of Lucien, which I had never hoped to
  be, I abjured impure love and vowed to walk only in the paths of
  virtue. If my flesh is weaker than my spirit, let it perish. Be
  the arbiter of my destiny; and if I die, tell Lucien that I died
  to him when I was born to God.”
 

Lucien looked up at the Abbe with eyes full of tears.

“You know the rooms fat Caroline Bellefeuille had, in the Rue Taitbout,” the Spaniard said. “The poor creature, cast off by her magistrate, was in the greatest poverty; she was about to be sold up. I bought the place all standing, and she turned out with her clothes. Esther, the angel who aspired to heaven, has alighted there, and is waiting for you.”

At this moment Lucien heard his horses pawing the ground in the courtyard; he was incapable of expressing his admiration for a devotion which he alone could appreciate; he threw himself into the arms of the man he had insulted, made amends for all by a look and the speechless effusion of his feelings. Then he flew downstairs, confided Esther’s address to his tiger’s ear, and the horses went off as if their master’s passion had lived in their legs.

The next day a man, who by his dress might have been mistaken by the passers-by for a gendarme in disguise, was passing the Rue Taitbout, opposite a house, as if he were waiting for some one to come out; he walked with an agitated air. You will often see in Paris such vehement promenaders, real gendarmes watching a recalcitrant National Guardsman, bailiffs taking steps to effect an arrest, creditors planning a trick on the debtor who has shut himself in, lovers, or jealous and suspicious husbands, or friends doing sentry for a friend; but rarely do you meet a face portending such coarse and fierce thoughts as animated that of the gloomy and powerful man who paced to and fro under Mademoiselle Esther’s windows with the brooding haste of a bear in its cage.

At noon a window was opened, and a maid-servant’s hand was put out to push back the padded shutters. A few minutes later, Esther, in her dressing-gown, came to breathe the air, leaning on Lucien; any one who saw them might have taken them for the originals of some pretty English vignette. Esther was the first to recognize the basilisk eyes of the Spanish priest; and the poor creature, stricken as if she had been shot, gave a cry of horror.

“There is that terrible priest,” said she, pointing him out to Lucien.

“He!” said Lucien, smiling, “he is no more a priest than you are.”

“What then?” she said in alarm.

“Why, an old villain who believes in nothing but the devil,” said Lucien.

This light thrown on the sham priest’s secrets, if revealed to any one less devoted than Esther, might have ruined Lucien for ever.

As they went along the corridor from their bedroom to the dining-room, where their breakfast was served, the lovers met Carlos Herrera.

“What have you come here for?” said Lucien roughly.

“To bless you,” replied the audacious scoundrel, stopping the pair and detaining them in the little drawing-room of the apartment. “Listen to me, my pretty dears. Amuse yourselves, be happy—well and good! Happiness at any price is my motto.—But you,” he went on to Esther, “you whom I dragged from the mud, and have soaped down body and soul, you surely do not dream that you can stand in Lucien’s way?—As for you, my boy,” he went on after a pause, looking at Lucien, “you are no longer poet enough to allow yourself another Coralie. This is sober prose. What can be done with Esther’s lover? Nothing. Can Esther become Madame de Rubempre? No.

“Well, my child,” said he, laying his hand on Esther’s, and making her shiver as if some serpent had wound itself round her, “the world must never know of your existence. Above all, the world must never know that a certain Mademoiselle Esther loves Lucien, and that Lucien is in love with her.—These rooms are your prison, my pigeon. If you wish to go out—and your health will require it—you must take exercise at night, at hours when you cannot be seen; for your youth and beauty, and the style you have acquired at the Convent, would at once be observed in Paris. The day when any one in the world, whoever it be,” he added in an awful voice, seconded by an awful look, “learns that Lucien is your lover, or that you are his mistress, that day will be your last but one on earth. I have procured that boy a patent permitting him to bear the name and arms of his maternal ancestors. Still, this is not all; we have not yet recovered the title of Marquis; and to get it, he must marry a girl of good family, in whose favor the King will grant this distinction. Such an alliance will get Lucien on in the world and at Court. This boy, of whom I have made a man, will be first Secretary to an Embassy; later, he shall be Minister at some German Court, and God, or I—better still—helping him, he will take his seat some day on the bench reserved for peers——”

“Or on the bench reserved for——” Lucien began, interrupting the man.

“Hold your tongue!” cried Carlos, laying his broad hand on Lucien’s mouth. “Would you tell such a secret to a woman?” he muttered in his ear.

“Esther! A woman!” cried the poet of Les Marguerites.

“Still inditing sonnets!” said the Spaniard. “Nonsense! Sooner or later all these angels relapse into being women, and every woman at moments is a mixture of a monkey and a child, two creatures who can kill us for fun.—Esther, my jewel,” said he to the terrified girl, “I have secured as your waiting-maid a creature who is as much mine as if she were my daughter. For your cook, you shall have a mulatto woman, which gives style to a house. With Europe and Asie you can live here for a thousand-franc note a month like a queen—a stage queen. Europe has been a dressmaker, a milliner, and a stage super; Asie has cooked for an epicure Milord. These two women will serve you like two fairies.”

Seeing Lucien go completely to the wall before this man, who was guilty at least of sacrilege and forgery, this woman, sanctified by her love, felt an awful fear in the depths of her heart. She made no reply, but dragged Lucien into her room, and asked him:

“Is he the devil?”

“He is far worse to me!” he vehemently replied. “But if you love me, try to imitate that man’s devotion to me, and obey him on pain of death!——”

“Of death!” she exclaimed, more frightened than ever.

“Of death,” repeated Lucien. “Alas! my darling, no death could be compared with that which would befall me if——”

Esther turned pale at his words, and felt herself fainting.

“Well, well,” cried the sacrilegious forger, “have you not yet spelt out your daisy-petals?”

Esther and Lucien came out, and the poor girl, not daring to look at the mysterious man, said:

“You shall be obeyed as God is obeyed, monsieur.”

“Good,” said he. “You may be very happy for a time, and you will need only nightgowns and wrappers—that will be very economical.”

The two lovers went on towards the dining-room, but Lucien’s patron signed to the pretty pair to stop. And they stopped.

“I have just been talking of your servants, my child,” said he to Esther. “I must introduce them to you.”

The Spaniard rang twice. The women he had called Europe and Asie came in, and it was at once easy to see the reason of these names.

Asie, who looked as if she might have been born in the Island of Java, showed a face to scare the eye, as flat as a board, with the copper complexion peculiar to Malays, with a nose that looked as if it had been driven inwards by some violent pressure. The strange conformation of the maxillary bones gave the lower part of this face a resemblance to that of the larger species of apes. The brow, though sloping, was not deficient in intelligence produced by habits of cunning. Two fierce little eyes had the calm fixity of a tiger’s, but they never looked you straight in the face. Asie seemed afraid lest she might terrify people. Her lips, a dull blue, were parted over prominent teeth of dazzling whiteness, but grown across. The leading expression of this animal countenance was one of meanness. Her black hair, straight and greasy-looking like her skin, lay in two shining bands, forming an edge to a very handsome silk handkerchief. Her ears were remarkably pretty, and graced with two large dark pearls. Small, short, and squat, Asie bore a likeness to the grotesque figures the Chinese love to paint on screens, or, more exactly, to the Hindoo idols which seem to be imitated from some non-existent type, found, nevertheless, now and again by travelers. Esther shuddered as she looked at this monstrosity, dressed out in a white apron over a stuff gown.

“Asie,” said the Spaniard, to whom the woman looked up with a gesture that can only be compared to that of a dog to its master, “this is your mistress.”

And he pointed to Esther in her wrapper.

Asie looked at the young fairy with an almost distressful expression; but at the same moment a flash, half hidden between her thick, short eyelashes, shot like an incendiary spark at Lucien, who, in a magnificent dressing-gown thrown open over a fine Holland linen shirt and red trousers, with a fez on his head, beneath which his fair hair fell in thick curls, presented a godlike appearance.

Italian genius could invent the tale of Othello; English genius could put it on the stage; but Nature alone reserves the power of throwing into a single glance an expression of jealousy grander and more complete than England and Italy together could imagine. This look, seen by Esther, made her clutch the Spaniard by the arm, setting her nails in it as a cat sets its claws to save itself from falling into a gulf of which it cannot see the bottom.

The Spaniard spoke a few words, in some unfamiliar tongue, to the Asiatic monster, who crept on her knees to Esther’s feet and kissed them.

“She is not merely a good cook,” said Herrera to Esther; “she is a past-master, and might make Careme mad with jealousy. Asie can do everything by way of cooking. She will turn you out a simple dish of beans that will make you wonder whether the angels have not come down to add some herb from heaven. She will go to market herself every morning, and fight like the devil she is to get things at the lowest prices; she will tire out curiosity by silence.

“You are to be supposed to have been in India, and Asie will help you to give effect to this fiction, for she is one of those Parisians who are born to be of any nationality they please. But I do not advise that you should give yourself out to be a foreigner.—Europe, what do you say?”

Europe was a perfect contrast to Asie, for she was the smartest waiting-maid that Monrose could have hoped to see as her rival on the stage. Slight, with a scatter-brain manner, a face like a weasel, and a sharp nose, Europe’s features offered to the observer a countenance worn by the corruption of Paris life, the unhealthy complexion of a girl fed on raw apples, lymphatic but sinewy, soft but tenacious. One little foot was set forward, her hands were in her apron-pockets, and she fidgeted incessantly without moving, from sheer excess of liveliness. Grisette and stage super, in spite of her youth she must have tried many trades. As full of evil as a dozen Madelonnettes put together, she might have robbed her parents, and sat on the bench of a police-court.

Asie was terrifying, but you knew her thoroughly from the first; she descended in a straight line from Locusta; while Europe filled you with uneasiness, which could not fail to increase the more you had to do with her; her corruption seemed boundless. You felt that she could set the devils by the ears.

“Madame might say she had come from Valenciennes,” said Europe in a precise little voice. “I was born there—Perhaps monsieur,” she added to Lucien in a pedantic tone, “will be good enough to say what name he proposes to give to madame?”

“Madame van Bogseck,” the Spaniard put in, reversing Esther’s name. “Madame is a Jewess, a native of Holland, the widow of a merchant, and suffering from a liver-complaint contracted in Java. No great fortune—not to excite curiosity.”

“Enough to live on—six thousand francs a year; and we shall complain of her stinginess?” said Europe.

“That is the thing,” said the Spaniard, with a bow. “You limbs of Satan!” he went on, catching Asie and Europe exchanging a glance that displeased him, “remember what I have told you. You are serving a queen; you owe her as much respect as to a queen; you are to cherish her as you would cherish a revenge, and be as devoted to her as to me. Neither the door-porter, nor the neighbors, nor the other inhabitants of the house—in short, not a soul on earth is to know what goes on here. It is your business to balk curiosity if any should be roused.—And madame,” he went on laying his broad hairy hand on Esther’s arm, “madame must not commit the smallest imprudence; you must prevent it in case of need, but always with perfect respect.

“You, Europe, are to go out for madame in anything that concerns her dress, and you must do her sewing from motives of economy. Finally, nobody, not even the most insignificant creature, is ever to set foot in this apartment. You two, between you, must do all there is to be done.

“And you, my beauty,” he went on, speaking to Esther, “when you want to go out in your carriage by night, you can tell Europe; she will know where to find your men, for you will have a servant in livery, of my choosing, like those two slaves.”

Esther and Lucien had not a word ready. They listened to the Spaniard, and looked at the two precious specimens to whom he gave his orders. What was the secret hold to which he owed the submission and servitude that were written on these two faces—one mischievously recalcitrant, the other so malignantly cruel?

He read the thoughts of Lucien and Esther, who seemed paralyzed, as Paul and Virginia might have been at the sight of two dreadful snakes, and he said in a good-natured undertone:

“You can trust them as you can me; keep no secrets from them; that will flatter them.—Go to your work, my little Asie,” he added to the cook.—“And you, my girl, lay another place,” he said to Europe; “the children cannot do less than ask papa to breakfast.”

When the two women had shut the door, and the Spaniard could hear Europe moving to and fro, he turned to Lucien and Esther, and opening a wide palm, he said:

“I hold them in the hollow of my hand.”

The words and gesture made his hearers shudder.

“Where did you pick them up?” cried Lucien.

“What the devil! I did not look for them at the foot of the throne!” replied the man. “Europe has risen from the mire, and is afraid of sinking into it again. Threaten them with Monsieur Abbe when they do not please you, and you will see them quake like mice when the cat is mentioned. I am used to taming wild beasts,” he added with a smile.

“You strike me as being a demon,” said Esther, clinging closer to Lucien.

“My child, I tried to win you to heaven; but a repentant Magdalen is always a practical joke on the Church. If ever there were one, she would relapse into the courtesan in Paradise. You have gained this much: you are forgotten, and have acquired the manners of a lady, for you learned in the convent what you never could have learned in the ranks of infamy in which you were living.—You owe me nothing,” said he, observing a beautiful look of gratitude on Esther’s face. “I did it all for him,” and he pointed to Lucien. “You are, you will always be, you will die a prostitute; for in spite of the delightful theories of cattle-breeders, you can never, here below, become anything but what you are. The man who feels bumps is right. You have the bump of love.”

The Spaniard, it will be seen, was a fatalist, like Napoleon, Mahomet, and many other great politicians. It is a strange thing that most men of action have a tendency to fatalism, just as most great thinkers have a tendency to believe in Providence.

“What I am, I do not know,” said Esther with angelic sweetness; “but I love Lucien, and shall die worshiping him.”

“Come to breakfast,” said the Spaniard sharply. “And pray to God that Lucien may not marry too soon, for then you would never see him again.”

“His marriage would be my death,” said she.

She allowed the sham priest to lead the way, that she might stand on tiptoe and whisper to Lucien without being seen.

“Is it your wish,” said she, “that I should remain in the power of this man who sets two hyenas to guard me?”

Lucien bowed his head.

The poor child swallowed down her grief and affected gladness, but she felt cruelly oppressed. It needed more than a year of constant and devoted care before she was accustomed to these two dreadful creatures whom Carlos Herrera called the two watch-dogs.

Lucien’s conduct since his return to Paris had borne the stamp of such profound policy that it excited—and could not fail to excite—the jealousy of all his former friends, on whom he took no vengeance but by making them furious at his success, at his exquisite “get up,” and his way of keeping every one at a distance. The poet, once so communicative, so genial, had turned cold and reserved. De Marsay, the model adopted by all the youth of Paris, did not make a greater display of reticence in speech and deed than did Lucien. As to brains, the journalist had ere now proved his mettle. De Marsay, against whom many people chose to pit Lucien, giving a preference to the poet, was small-minded enough to resent this.

Lucien, now in high favor with men who secretly pulled the wires of power, was so completely indifferent to literary fame, that he did not care about the success of his romance, republished under its real title, L’Archer de Charles IX., or the excitement caused by his volume of sonnets called Les Marguerites, of which Dauriat sold out the edition in a week.

“It is posthumous fame,” said he, with a laugh, to Mademoiselle des Touches, who congratulated him.

The terrible Spaniard held his creature with an iron hand, keeping him in the road towards the goal where the trumpets and gifts of victory await patient politicians. Lucien had taken Beaudenord’s bachelor quarters on the Quai Malaquais, to be near the Rue Taitbout, and his adviser was lodging under the same roof on the fourth floor. Lucien kept only one horse to ride and drive, a man-servant, and a groom. When he was not dining out, he dined with Esther.

Carlos Herrera kept such a keen eye on the service in the house on the Quai Malaquais, that Lucien did not spend ten thousand francs a year, all told. Ten thousand more were enough for Esther, thanks to the unfailing and inexplicable devotion of Asie and Europe. Lucien took the utmost precautions in going in and out at the Rue Taitbout. He never came but in a cab, with the blinds down, and always drove into the courtyard. Thus his passion for Esther and the very existence of the establishment in the Rue Taitbout, being unknown to the world, did him no harm in his connections or undertakings. No rash word ever escaped him on this delicate subject. His mistakes of this sort with regard to Coralie, at the time of his first stay in Paris, had given him experience.

In the first place, his life was marked by the correct regularity under which many mysteries can be hidden; he remained in society every night till one in the morning; he was always at home from ten till one in the afternoon; then he drove in the Bois de Boulogne and paid calls till five. He was rarely seen to be on foot, and thus avoided old acquaintances. When some journalist or one of his former associates waved him a greeting, he responded with a bow, polite enough to avert annoyance, but significant of such deep contempt as killed all French geniality. He thus had very soon got rid of persons whom he would rather never have known.

An old-established aversion kept him from going to see Madame d’Espard, who often wished to get him to her house; but when he met her at those of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, of Mademoiselle des Touches, of the Comtesse de Montcornet or elsewhere, he was always exquisitely polite to her. This hatred, fully reciprocated by Madame d’Espard, compelled Lucien to act with prudence; but it will be seen how he had added fuel to it by allowing himself a stroke of revenge, which gained him indeed a severe lecture from Carlos.

“You are not yet strong enough to be revenged on any one, whoever it may be,” said the Spaniard. “When we are walking under a burning sun we do not stop to gather even the finest flowers.”

Lucien was so genuinely superior, and had so fine a future before him, that the young men who chose to be offended or puzzled by his return to Paris and his unaccountable good fortune were enchanted whenever they could do him an ill turn. He knew that he had many enemies, and was well aware of those hostile feelings among his friends. The Abbe, indeed, took admirable care of his adopted son, putting him on his guard against the treachery of the world and the fatal imprudence of youth. Lucien was expected to tell, and did in fact tell the Abbe each evening, every trivial incident of the day. Thanks to his Mentor’s advice, he put the keenest curiosity—the curiosity of the world—off the scent. Entrenched in the gravity of an Englishman, and fortified by the redoubts cast up by diplomatic circumspection, he never gave any one the right or the opportunity of seeing a corner even of his concerns. His handsome young face had, by practice, become as expressionless in society as that of a princess at a ceremonial.

Towards the middle of 1829 his marriage began to be talked of to the eldest daughter of the Duchesse de Grandlieu, who at that time had no less than four daughters to provide for. No one doubted that in honor of such an alliance the King would revive for Lucien the title of Marquis. This distinction would establish Lucien’s fortune as a diplomate, and he would probably be accredited as Minister to some German Court. For the last three years Lucien’s life had been regular and above reproach; indeed, de Marsay had made this remarkable speech about him:

“That young fellow must have a very strong hand behind him.”

Thus Lucien was almost a person of importance. His passion for Esther had, in fact, helped him greatly to play his part of a serious man. A habit of this kind guards an ambitious man from many follies; having no connection with any woman of fashion, he cannot be caught by the reactions of mere physical nature on his moral sense.

As to happiness, Lucien’s was the realization of a poet’s dreams—a penniless poet’s, hungering in a garret. Esther, the ideal courtesan in love, while she reminded Lucien of Coralie, the actress with whom he had lived for a year, completely eclipsed her. Every loving and devoted woman invents seclusion, incognito, the life of a pearl in the depths of the sea; but to most of them this is no more than one of the delightful whims which supply a subject for conversation; a proof of love which they dream of giving, but do not give; whereas Esther, to whom her first enchantment was ever new, who lived perpetually in the glow of Lucien’s first incendiary glance, never, in four yours, had an impulse of curiosity. She gave her whole mind to the task of adhering to the terms of the programme prescribed by the sinister Spaniard. Nay, more! In the midst of intoxicating happiness she never took unfair advantage of the unlimited power that the constantly revived desire of a lover gives to the woman he loves to ask Lucien a single question regarding Herrera, of whom indeed she lived in constant awe; she dared not even think of him. The elaborate benefactions of that extraordinary man, to whom Esther undoubtedly owed her feminine accomplishment and her well-bred manner, struck the poor girl as advances on account of hell.

“I shall have to pay for all this some day,” she would tell herself with dismay.

Every fine night she went out in a hired carriage. She was driven with a rapidity no doubt insisted on by the Abbe, in one or another of the beautiful woods round Paris, Boulogne, Vincennes, Romainville, or Ville-d’Avray, often with Lucien, sometimes alone with Europe. There she could walk about without fear; for when Lucien was not with her, she was attended by a servant dressed like the smartest of outriders, armed with a real knife, whose face and brawny build alike proclaimed him a ruthless athlete. This protector was also provided, in the fashion of English footmen, with a stick, but such as single-stick players use, with which they can keep off more than one assailant. In obedience to an order of the Abbe’s, Esther had never spoken a word to this escort. When madame wished to go home, Europe gave a call; the man in waiting whistled to the driver, who was always within hearing.

When Lucien was walking with Esther, Europe and this man remained about a hundred paces behind, like two of the infernal minions that figure in the Thousand and One Nights, which enchanters place at the service of their devotees.

The men, and yet more the women of Paris, know nothing of the charm of a walk in the woods on a fine night. The stillness, the moonlight effects, the solitude, have the soothing effect of a bath. Esther usually went out at ten, walked about from midnight till one o’clock, and came in at half-past two. It was never daylight in her rooms till eleven. She then bathed and went through an elaborate toilet which is unknown to most women, for it takes up too much time, and is rarely carried out by any but courtesans, women of the town, or fine ladies who have the day before them. She was only just ready when Lucien came, and appeared before him as a newly opened flower. Her only care was that her poet should be happy; she was his toy, his chattel; she gave him entire liberty. She never cast a glance beyond the circle where she shone. On this the Abbe had insisted, for it was part of his profound policy that Lucien should have gallant adventures.

Happiness has no history, and the story-tellers of all lands have understood this so well that the words, “They are happy,” are the end of every love tale. Hence only the ways and means can be recorded of this really romantic happiness in the heart of Paris. It was happiness in its loveliest form, a poem, a symphony, of four years’ duration. Every woman will exclaim, “That was much!” Neither Esther nor Lucien had ever said, “This is too much!” And the formula, “They were happy,” was more emphatically true, than even in a fairy tale, for “they had no children.”

So Lucien could coquet with the world, give way to his poet’s caprices, and, it may be plainly admitted, to the necessities of his position. All this time he was slowly making his way, and was able to render secret service to certain political personages by helping them in their work. In such matters he was eminently discreet. He cultivated Madame de Serizy’s circle, being, it was rumored, on the very best terms with that lady. Madame de Serizy had carried him off from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who, it was said, had “thrown him over,” one of the phrases by which women avenge themselves on happiness they envy. Lucien was in the lap, so to speak, of the High Almoner’s set, and intimate with women who were the Archbishop’s personal friends. He was modest and reserved; he waited patiently. So de Marsay’s speech—de Marsay was now married, and made his wife live as retired a life as Esther—was significant in more ways that one.

But the submarine perils of such a course as Lucien’s will be sufficiently obvious in the course of this chronicle.

Matters were in this position when, one fine night in August, the Baron de Nucingen was driving back to Paris from the country residence of a foreign banker, settled in France, with whom he had been dining. The estate lay at eight leagues from Paris in the district of la Brie. Now, the Baron’s coachman having undertaken to drive his master there and back with his own horses, at nightfall ventured to moderate the pace.

As they entered the forest of Vincennes the position of beast, man, and master was as follows:—The coachman, liberally soaked in the kitchen of the aristocrat of the Bourse, was perfectly tipsy, and slept soundly, while still holding the reins to deceive other wayfarers. The footman, seated behind, was snoring like a wooden top from Germany—the land of little carved figures, of large wine-vats, and of humming-tops. The Baron had tried to think; but after passing the bridge at Gournay, the soft somnolence of digestion had sealed his eyes. The horses understood the coachman’s plight from the slackness of the reins; they heard the footman’s basso continuo from his perch behind; they saw that they were masters of the situation, and took advantage of their few minutes’ freedom to make their own pace. Like intelligent slaves, they gave highway robbers the chance of plundering one of the richest capitalists in France, the most deeply cunning of the race which, in France, have been energetically styled lynxes—loups-cerviers. Finally, being independent of control, and tempted by the curiosity which every one must have remarked in domestic animals, they stopped where four roads met, face to face with some other horses, whom they, no doubt, asked in horses’ language: “Who may you be? What are you doing? Are you comfortable?”

When the chaise stopped, the Baron awoke from his nap. At first he fancied that he was still in his friend’s park; then he was startled by a celestial vision, which found him unarmed with his usual weapon—self-interest. The moonlight was brilliant; he could have read by it—even an evening paper. In the silence of the forest, under this pure light, the Baron saw a woman, alone, who, as she got into a hired chaise, looked at the strange spectacle of this sleep-stricken carriage. At the sight of this angel the Baron felt as though a light had flashed into glory within him. The young lady, seeing herself admired, pulled down her veil with terrified haste. The man-servant gave a signal which the driver perfectly understood, for the vehicle went off like an arrow.

The old banker was fearfully agitated; the blood left his feet cold and carried fire to his brain, his head sent the flame back to his heart; he was chocking. The unhappy man foresaw a fit of indigestion, but in spite of that supreme terror he stood up.

“Follow qvick, fery qvick.—Tam you, you are ashleep!” he cried. “A hundert franc if you catch up dat chaise.”

At the words “A hundred francs,” the coachman woke up. The servant behind heard them, no doubt, in his dreams. The baron reiterated his orders, the coachman urged the horses to a gallop, and at the Barriere du Trone had succeeded in overtaking a carriage resembling that in which Nucingen had seen the divine fair one, but which contained a swaggering head-clerk from some first-class shop and a lady of the Rue Vivienne.

This blunder filled the Baron with consternation.

“If only I had prought Chorge inshtead of you, shtupid fool, he should have fount dat voman,” said he to the servant, while the excise officers were searching the carriage.

“Indeed, Monsieur le Baron, the devil was behind the chaise, I believe, disguised as an armed escort, and he sent this chaise instead of hers.”

“Dere is no such ting as de Teufel,” said the Baron.

The Baron de Nucingen owned to sixty; he no longer cared for women, and for his wife least of all. He boasted that he had never known such love as makes a fool of a man. He declared that he was happy to have done with women; the most angelic of them, he frankly said, was not worth what she cost, even if you got her for nothing. He was supposed to be so entirely blase, that he no longer paid two thousand francs a month for the pleasure of being deceived. His eyes looked coldly down from his opera box on the corps de ballet; never a glance was shot at the capitalist by any one of that formidable swarm of old young girls, and young old women, the cream of Paris pleasure.

Natural love, artificial and love-of-show love, love based on self-esteem and vanity, love as a display of taste, decent, conjugal love, eccentric love—the Baron had paid for them all, had known them all excepting real spontaneous love. This passion had now pounced down on him like an eagle on its prey, as it did on Gentz, the confidential friend of His Highness the Prince of Metternich. All the world knows what follies the old diplomate committed for Fanny Elssler, whose rehearsals took up a great deal more of his time than the concerns of Europe.

The woman who had just overthrown that iron-bound money-box, called Nucingen, had appeared to him as one of those who are unique in their generation. It is not certain that Titian’s mistress, or Leonardo da Vinci’s Monna Lisa, or Raphael’s Fornarina were as beautiful as this exquisite Esther, in whom not the most practised eye of the most experienced Parisian could have detected the faintest trace of the ordinary courtesan. The Baron was especially startled by the noble and stately air, the air of a well-born woman, which Esther, beloved, and lapped in luxury, elegance, and devotedness, had in the highest degree. Happy love is the divine unction of women; it makes them all as lofty as empresses.

For eight nights in succession the Baron went to the forest of Vincennes, then to the Bois de Boulogne, to the woods of Ville-d’Avray, to Meudon, in short, everywhere in the neighborhood of Paris, but failed to meet Esther. That beautiful Jewish face, which he called “a face out of te Biple,” was always before his eyes. By the end of a fortnight he had lost his appetite.

Delphine de Nucingen, and her daughter Augusta, whom the Baroness was now taking out, did not at first perceive the change that had come over the Baron. The mother and daughter only saw him at breakfast in the morning and at dinner in the evening, when they all dined at home, and this was only on the evenings when Delphine received company. But by the end of two months, tortured by a fever of impatience, and in a state like that produced by acute home-sickness, the Baron, amazed to find his millions impotent, grew so thin, and seemed so seriously ill, that Delphine had secret hopes of finding herself a widow. She pitied her husband, somewhat hypocritically, and kept her daughter in seclusion. She bored her husband with questions; he answered as Englishmen answer when suffering from spleen, hardly a word.

Delphine de Nucingen gave a grand dinner every Sunday. She had chosen that day for her receptions, after observing that no people of fashion went to the play, and that the day was pretty generally an open one. The emancipation of the shopkeeping and middle classes makes Sunday almost as tiresome in Paris as it is deadly in London. So the Baroness invited the famous Desplein to dinner, to consult him in spite of the sick man, for Nucingen persisted in asserting that he was perfectly well.

Keller, Rastignac, de Marsay, du Tillet, all their friends had made the Baroness understand that a man like Nucingen could not be allowed to die without any notice being taken of it; his enormous business transactions demanded some care; it was absolutely necessary to know where he stood. These gentlemen also were asked to dinner, and the Comte de Gondreville, Francois Keller’s father-in-law, the Chevalier d’Espard, des Lupeaulx, Doctor Bianchon—Desplein’s best beloved pupil—Beaudenord and his wife, the Comte and Comtesse de Montcornet, Blondet, Mademoiselle des Touches and Conti, and finally, Lucien de Rubempre, for whom Rastignac had for the last five years manifested the warmest regard—by order, as the advertisements have it.

“We shall not find it easy to get rid of that young fellow,” said Blondet to Rastignac, when he saw Lucien come in handsomer than ever, and uncommonly well dressed.

“It is wiser to make friends with him, for he is formidable,” said Rastignac.

“He?” said de Marsay. “No one is formidable to my knowledge but men whose position is assured, and his is unattacked rather than attackable! Look here, what does he live on? Where does his money come from? He has, I am certain, sixty thousand francs in debts.”

“He has found a friend in a very rich Spanish priest who has taken a fancy to him,” replied Rastignac.

“He is going to be married to the eldest Mademoiselle de Grandlieu,” said Mademoiselle des Touches.

“Yes,” said the Chevalier d’Espard, “but they require him to buy an estate worth thirty thousand francs a year as security for the fortune he is to settle on the young lady, and for that he needs a million francs, which are not to be found in any Spaniard’s shoes.”

“That is dear, for Clotilde is very ugly,” said the Baroness.

Madame de Nucingen affected to call Mademoiselle de Grandlieu by her Christian name, as though she, nee Goriot, frequented that society.

“No,” replied du Tillet, “the daughter of a duchess is never ugly to the like of us, especially when she brings with her the title of Marquis and a diplomatic appointment. But the great obstacle to the marriage is Madame de Serizy’s insane passion for Lucien. She must give him a great deal of money.”

“Then I am not surprised at seeing Lucien so serious; for Madame de Serizy will certainly not give him a million francs to help him to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. He probably sees no way out of the scrape,” said de Marsay.

“But Mademoiselle de Grandlieu worships him,” said the Comtesse de Montcornet; “and with the young person’s assistance, he may perhaps make better terms.”

“And what will he do with his sister and brother-in-law at Angouleme?” asked the Chevalier d’Espard.

“Well, his sister is rich,” replied Rastignac, “and he now speaks of her as Madame Sechard de Marsac.”

“Whatever difficulties there may be, he is a very good-looking fellow,” said Bianchon, rising to greet Lucien.

“How ‘do, my dear fellow?” said Rastignac, shaking hands warmly with Lucien.

De Marsay bowed coldly after Lucien had first bowed to him.

Before dinner Desplein and Bianchon, who studied the Baron while amusing him, convinced themselves that this malady was entirely nervous; but neither could guess the cause, so impossible did it seem that the great politician of the money market could be in love. When Bianchon, seeing nothing but love to account for the banker’s condition, hinted as much to Delphine de Nucingen, she smiled as a woman who has long known all her husband’s weaknesses. After dinner, however, when they all adjourned to the garden, the more intimate of the party gathered round the banker, eager to clear up this extraordinary case when they heard Bianchon pronounce that Nucingen must be in love.

“Do you know, Baron,” said de Marsay, “that you have grown very thin? You are suspected of violating the laws of financial Nature.”

“Ach, nefer!” said the Baron.

“Yes, yes,” replied de Marsay. “They dare to say that you are in love.”

“Dat is true,” replied Nucingen piteously; “I am in lof for somebody I do not know.”

“You, in love, you? You are a coxcomb!” said the Chevalier d’Espard.

“In lof, at my aje! I know dat is too ridiculous. But vat can I help it! Dat is so.”

“A woman of the world?” asked Lucien.

“Nay,” said de Marsay. “The Baron would not grow so thin but for a hopeless love, and he has money enough to buy all the women who will or can sell themselves!”

“I do not know who she it,” said the Baron. “And as Motame de Nucingen is inside de trawing-room, I may say so, dat till now I have nefer known what it is to lof. Lof! I tink it is to grow tin.”

“And where did you meet this innocent daisy?” asked Rastignac.

“In a carriage, at mitnight, in de forest of Fincennes.”

“Describe her,” said de Marsay.

“A vhite gaze hat, a rose gown, a vhite scharf, a vhite feil—a face just out of de Biple. Eyes like Feuer, an Eastern color——”

“You were dreaming,” said Lucien, with a smile.

“Dat is true; I vas shleeping like a pig—a pig mit his shkin full,” he added, “for I vas on my vay home from tinner at mine friend’s——”

“Was she alone?” said du Tillet, interrupting him.

“Ja,” said the Baron dolefully; “but she had ein heiduque behind dat carriage and a maid-shervant——”

“Lucien looks as if he knew her,” exclaimed Rastignac, seeing Esther’s lover smile.

“Who doesn’t know the woman who would go out at midnight to meet Nucingen?” said Lucien, turning on his heel.

“Well, she is not a woman who is seen in society, or the Baron would have recognized the man,” said the Chevalier d’Espard.

“I have nefer seen him,” replied the Baron. “And for forty days now I have had her seeked for by de Police, and dey do not find her.”

“It is better that she should cost you a few hundred francs than cost you your life,” said Desplein; “and, at your age, a passion without hope is dangerous, you might die of it.”

“Ja, ja,” replied the Baron, addressing Desplein. “And vat I eat does me no goot, de air I breade feels to choke me. I go to de forest of Fincennes to see de place vat I see her—and dat is all my life. I could not tink of de last loan—I trust to my partners vat haf pity on me. I could pay one million franc to see dat voman—and I should gain by dat, for I do nothing on de Bourse.—Ask du Tillet.”

“Very true,” replied du Tillet; “he hates business; he is quite unlike himself; it is a sign of death.”

“A sign of lof,” replied Nucingen; “and for me, dat is all de same ting.”

The simple candor of the old man, no longer the stock-jobber, who, for the first time in his life, saw that something was more sacred and more precious than gold, really moved these world-hardened men; some exchanged smiles; other looked at Nucingen with an expression that plainly said, “Such a man to have come to this!”—And then they all returned to the drawing-room, talking over the event.

For it was indeed an event calculated to produce the greatest sensation. Madame de Nucingen went into fits of laughter when Lucien betrayed her husband’s secret; but the Baron, when he heard his wife’s sarcasms, took her by the arm and led her into the recess of a window.

“Motame,” said he in an undertone, “have I ever laughed at all at your passions, that you should laugh at mine? A goot frau should help her husband out of his difficulty vidout making game of him like vat you do.”

From the description given by the old banker, Lucien had recognized his Esther. Much annoyed that his smile should have been observed, he took advantage of a moment when coffee was served, and the conversation became general, to vanish from the scene.

“What has become of Monsieur de Rubempre?” said the Baroness.

“He is faithful to his motto: Quid me continebit?” said Rastignac.

“Which means, ‘Who can detain me?’ or ‘I am unconquerable,’ as you choose,” added de Marsay.

“Just as Monsieur le Baron was speaking of his unknown lady, Lucien smiled in a way that makes me fancy he may know her,” said Horace Bianchon, not thinking how dangerous such a natural remark might be.

“Goot!” said the banker to himself.

Like all incurables, the Baron clutched at everything that seemed at all hopeful; he promised himself that he would have Lucien watched by some one besides Louchard and his men—Louchard, the sharpest commercial detective in Paris—to whom he had applied about a fortnight since.

Before going home to Esther, Lucien was due at the Hotel Grandlieu, to spend the two hours which made Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique de Grandlieu the happiest girl in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But the prudence characteristic of this ambitious youth warned him to inform Carlos Herrera forthwith of the effect resulting from the smile wrung from him by the Baron’s description of Esther. The banker’s passion for Esther, and the idea that had occurred to him of setting the police to seek the unknown beauty, were indeed events of sufficient importance to be at once communicated to the man who had sought, under a priest’s robe, the shelter which criminals of old could find in a church. And Lucien’s road from the Rue Saint-Lazare, where Nucingen at that time lived, to the Rue Saint-Dominique, where was the Hotel Grandlieu, led him past his lodgings on the Quai Malaquais.

Lucien found his formidable friend smoking his breviary—that is to say, coloring a short pipe before retiring to bed. The man, strange rather than foreign, had given up Spanish cigarettes, finding them too mild.

“Matters look serious,” said the Spaniard, when Lucien had told him all. “The Baron, who employs Louchard to hunt up the girl, will certainly be sharp enough to set a spy at your heels, and everything will come out. To-night and to-morrow morning will not give me more than enough time to pack the cards for the game I must play against the Baron; first and foremost, I must prove to him that the police cannot help him. When our lynx has given up all hope of finding his ewe-lamb, I will undertake to sell her for all she is worth to him——”

“Sell Esther!” cried Lucien, whose first impulse was always the right one.

“Do you forget where we stand?” cried Carlos Herrera.

“No money left,” the Spaniard went on, “and sixty thousand francs of debts to be paid! If you want to marry Clotilde de Grandlieu, you must invest a million of francs in land as security for that ugly creature’s settlement. Well, then, Esther is the quarry I mean to set before that lynx to help us to ease him of that million. That is my concern.”

“Esther will never——”

“That is my concern.”

“She will die of it.”

“That is the undertaker’s concern. Besides, what then?” cried the savage, checking Lucien’s lamentations merely by his attitude. “How many generals died in the prime of life for the Emperor Napoleon?” he asked, after a short silence. “There are always plenty of women. In 1821 Coralie was unique in your eyes; and yet you found Esther. After her will come—do you know who?—the unknown fair. And she of all women is the fairest, and you will find her in the capital where the Duc de Grandlieu’s son-in-law will be Minister and representative of the King of France.—And do you tell me now, great Baby, that Esther will die of it? Again, can Mademoiselle de Grandlieu’s husband keep Esther?

“You have only to leave everything to me; you need not take the trouble to think at all; that is my concern. Only you must do without Esther for a week or two; but go to the Rue Taitbout, all the same.—Come, be off to bill and coo on your plank of salvation, and play your part well; slip the flaming note you wrote this morning into Clotilde’s hand, and bring me back a warm response. She will recompense herself for many woes in writing. I take to that girl.

“You will find Esther a little depressed, but tell her to obey. We must display our livery of virtue, our doublet of honesty, the screen behind which all great men hide their infamy.—I must show off my handsomer self—you must never be suspected. Chance has served us better than my brain, which has been beating about in a void for these two months past.”

All the while he was jerking out these dreadful sentences, one by one, like pistol shots, Carlos Herrera was dressing himself to go out.

“You are evidently delighted,” cried Lucien. “You never liked poor Esther, and you look forward with joy to the moment when you will be rid of her.”

“You have never tired of loving her, have you? Well, I have never tired of detesting her. But have I not always behaved as though I were sincerely attached to the hussy—I, who, through Asie, hold her life in my hands? A few bad mushrooms in a stew—and there an end. But Mademoiselle Esther still lives!—and is happy!—And do you know why? Because you love her. Do not be a fool. For four years we have been waiting for a chance to turn up, for us or against us; well, it will take something more than mere cleverness to wash the cabbage luck has flung at us now. There are good and bad together in this turn of the wheel—as there are in everything. Do you know what I was thinking of when you came in?”

“No.”

“Of making myself heir here, as I did at Barcelona, to an old bigot, by Asie’s help.”

“A crime?”

“I saw no other way of securing your fortune. The creditors are making a stir. If once the bailiffs were at your heels, and you were turned out of the Hotel Grandlieu, where would you be? There would be the devil to pay then.”

And Carlos Herrera, by a pantomimic gesture, showed the suicide of a man throwing himself into the water; then he fixed on Lucien one of those steady, piercing looks by which the will of a strong man is injected, so to speak, into a weak one. This fascinating glare, which relaxed all Lucien’s fibres of resistance, revealed the existence not merely of secrets of life and death between him and his adviser, but also of feelings as far above ordinary feeling as the man himself was above his vile position.

Carlos Herrera, a man at once ignoble and magnanimous, obscure and famous, compelled to live out of the world from which the law had banned him, exhausted by vice and by frenzied and terrible struggles, though endowed with powers of mind that ate into his soul, consumed especially by a fever of vitality, now lived again in the elegant person of Lucien de Rubempre, whose soul had become his own. He was represented in social life by the poet, to whom he lent his tenacity and iron will. To him Lucien was more than a son, more than a woman beloved, more than a family, more than his life; he was his revenge; and as souls cling more closely to a feeling than to existence, he had bound the young man to him by insoluble ties.

After rescuing Lucien’s life at the moment when the poet in desperation was on the verge of suicide, he had proposed to him one of those infernal bargains which are heard of only in romances, but of which the hideous possibility has often been proved in courts of justice by celebrated criminal dramas. While lavishing on Lucien all the delights of Paris life, and proving to him that he yet had a great future before him, he had made him his chattel.

But, indeed, no sacrifice was too great for this strange man when it was to gratify his second self. With all his strength, he was so weak to this creature of his making that he had even told him all his secrets. Perhaps this abstract complicity was a bond the more between them.

Since the day when La Torpille had been snatched away, Lucien had known on what a vile foundation his good fortune rested. That priest’s robe covered Jacques Collin, a man famous on the hulks, who ten years since had lived under the homely name of Vautrin in the Maison Vauquer, where Rastignac and Bianchon were at that time boarders.

Jacques Collin, known as Trompe-la-Mort, had escaped from Rochefort almost as soon as he was recaptured, profiting by the example of the famous Comte de Sainte-Helene, while modifying all that was ill planned in Coignard’s daring scheme. To take the place of an honest man and carry on the convict’s career is a proposition of which the two terms are too contradictory for a disastrous outcome not to be inevitable, especially in Paris; for, by establishing himself in a family, a convict multiplies tenfold the perils of such a substitution. And to be safe from all investigation, must not a man assume a position far above the ordinary interests of life. A man of the world is subject to risks such as rarely trouble those who have no contact with the world; hence the priest’s gown is the safest disguise when it can be authenticated by an exemplary life in solitude and inactivity.

“So a priest I will be,” said the legally dead man, who was quite determined to resuscitate as a figure in the world, and to satisfy passions as strange as himself.

The civil war caused by the Constitution of 1812 in Spain, whither this energetic man had betaken himself, enabled him to murder secretly the real Carlos Herrera from an ambush. This ecclesiastic, the bastard son of a grandee, long since deserted by his father, and not knowing to what woman he owed his birth, was intrusted by King Ferdinand VII., to whom a bishop had recommended him, with a political mission to France. The bishop, the only man who took any interest in Carlos Herrera, died while this foundling son of the Church was on his journey from Cadiz to Madrid, and from Madrid to France. Delighted to have met with this longed-for opportunity, and under the most desirable conditions, Jacques Collin scored his back to efface the fatal letters, and altered his complexion by the use of chemicals. Thus metamorphosing himself face to face with the corpse, he contrived to achieve some likeness to his Sosia. And to complete a change almost as marvelous as that related in the Arabian tale, where a dervish has acquired the power, old as he is, of entering into a young body, by a magic spell, the convict, who spoke Spanish, learned as much Latin as an Andalusian priest need know.

As banker to three hulks, Collin was rich in the cash intrusted to his known, and indeed enforced, honesty. Among such company a mistake is paid for by a dagger thrust. To this capital he now added the money given by the bishop to Don Carlos Herrera. Then, before leaving Spain, he was able to possess himself of the treasure of an old bigot at Barcelona, to whom he gave absolution, promising that he would make restitution of the money constituting her fortune, which his penitent had stolen by means of murder.

Jacques Collin, now a priest, and charged with a secret mission which would secure him the most brilliant introductions in Paris, determined to do nothing that might compromise the character he had assumed, and had given himself up to the chances of his new life, when he met Lucien on the road between Angouleme and Paris. In this youth the sham priest saw a wonderful instrument for power; he saved him from suicide saying:

“Give yourself over to me as to a man of God, as men give themselves over to the devil, and you will have every chance of a new career. You will live as in a dream, and the worst awakening that can come to you will be death, which you now wish to meet.”

The alliance between these two beings, who were to become one, as it were, was based on this substantial reasoning, and Carlos Herrera cemented it by an ingeniously plotted complicity. He had the very genius of corruption, and undermined Lucien’s honesty by plunging him into cruel necessity, and extricating him by obtaining his tacit consent to bad or disgraceful actions, which nevertheless left him pure, loyal, and noble in the eyes of the world. Lucien was the social magnificence under whose shadow the forger meant to live.

“I am the author, you are the play; if you fail, it is I who shall be hissed,” said he on the day when he confessed his sacrilegious disguise.

Carlos prudently confessed only a little at a time, measuring the horrors of his revelations by Lucien’s progress and needs. Thus Trompe-la-Mort did not let out his last secret till the habit of Parisian pleasures and success, and gratified vanity, had enslaved the weak-minded poet body and soul. Where Rastignac, when tempted by this demon, had stood firm, Lucien, better managed, and more ingeniously compromised, succumbed, conquered especially by his satisfaction in having attained an eminent position. Incarnate evil, whose poetical embodiment is called the Devil, displayed every delightful seduction before this youth, who was half a woman, and at first gave much and asked for little. The great argument used by Carlos was the eternal secret promised by Tartufe to Elmire.

The repeated proofs of absolute devotion, such as that of Said to Mahomet, put the finishing touch to the horrible achievement of Lucien’s subjugation by a Jacques Collin.

At this moment not only had Esther and Lucien devoured all the funds intrusted to the honesty of the banker of the hulks, who, for their sakes, had rendered himself liable to a dreadful calling to account, but the dandy, the forger, and the courtesan were also in debt. Thus, as the very moment of Lucien’s expected success, the smallest pebble under the foot of either of these three persons might involve the ruin of the fantastic structure of fortune so audaciously built up.

At the opera ball Rastignac had recognized the man he had known as Vautrin at Madame Vauquer’s; but he knew that if he did not hold his tongue, he was a dead man. So Madame de Nucingen’s lover and Lucien had exchanged glances in which fear lurked, on both sides, under an expression of amity. In the moment of danger, Rastignac, it is clear, would have been delighted to provide the vehicle that should convey Jacques Collin to the scaffold. From all this it may be understood that Carlos heard of the Baron’s passion with a glow of sombre satisfaction, while he perceived in a single flash all the advantage a man of his temper might derive by means of a hapless Esther.

“Go on,” said he to Lucien. “The Devil is mindful of his chaplain.”

“You are smoking on a powder barrel.”

“Incedo per ignes,” replied Carlos with a smile. “That is my trade.”

The House of Grandlieu divided into two branches about the middle of the last century: first, the ducal line destined to lapse, since the present duke has only daughters; and then the Vicomtes de Grandlieu, who will now inherit the title and armorial bearings of the elder branch. The ducal house bears gules, three broad axes or in fess, with the famous motto: Caveo non timeo, which epitomizes the history of the family.

The coat of the Vicomtes de Grandlieu is the same quartered with that of Navarreins: gules, a fess crenelated or, surmounted by a knight’s helmet, with the motto: Grands faits, grand lieu. The present Viscountess, widowed in 1813, has a son and a daughter. Though she returned from the Emigration almost ruined, she recovered a considerable fortune by the zealous aid of Derville the lawyer.

The Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu, on coming home in 1804, were the object of the Emperor’s advances; indeed, Napoleon, seeing them come to his court, restored to them all of the Grandlieu estates that had been confiscated to the nation, to the amount of about forty thousand francs a year. Of all the great nobles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who allowed themselves to be won over by Napoleon, this Duke and Duchess—she was an Ajuda of the senior branch, and connected with the Braganzas—were the only family who afterwards never disowned him and his liberality. When the Faubourg Saint-Germain remembered this as a crime against the Grandlieus, Louis XVIII. respected them for it; but perhaps his only object was to annoy Monsieur.

A marriage was considered likely between the young Vicomte de Grandlieu and Marie-Athenais, the Duke’s youngest daughter, now nine years old. Sabine, the youngest but one, married the Baron du Guenic after the revolution of July 1830; Josephine, the third, became Madame d’Ajuda-Pinto after the death of the Marquis’ first wife, Mademoiselle de Rochefide, or Rochegude. The eldest had taken the veil in 1822. The second, Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique, at this time seven-and-twenty years of age, was deeply in love with Lucien de Rubempre. It need not be asked whether the Duc de Grandlieu’s mansion, one of the finest in the Rue Saint-Dominique, did not exert a thousand spells over Lucien’s imagination. Every time the heavy gate turned on its hinges to admit his cab, he experienced the gratified vanity to which Mirabeau confessed.

“Though my father was a mere druggist at l’Houmeau, I may enter here!” This was his thought.

And, indeed, he would have committed far worse crimes than allying himself with a forger to preserve his right to mount the steps of that entrance, to hear himself announced, “Monsieur de Rubempre” at the door of the fine Louis XIV. drawing-room, decorated in the time of the grand monarque on the pattern of those at Versailles, where that choicest circle met, that cream of Paris society, called then le petit chateau.

The noble Portuguese lady, one of those who never care to go out of their own home, was usually the centre of her neighbors’ attentions—the Chaulieus, the Navarreins, the Lenoncourts. The pretty Baronne de Macumer—nee de Chaulieu—the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Madame d’Espard, Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches—a connection of the Grandlieus, who are a Breton family—were frequent visitors on their way to a ball or on their return from the opera. The Vicomte de Grandlieu, the Duc de Rhetore, the Marquis de Chaulieu—afterwards Duc de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu—his wife, Madeleine de Mortsauf, the Duc de Lenoncourt’s grand-daughter, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, the Prince de Blamont-Chauvry, the Marquis de Beauseant, the Vidame de Pamiers, the Vandenesses, the old Prince de Cadignan, and his son the Duc de Maufrigneuse, were constantly to be seen in this stately drawing-room, where they breathed the atmosphere of a Court, where manners, tone, and wit were in harmony with the dignity of the Master and Mistress whose aristocratic mien and magnificence had obliterated the memory of their servility to Napoleon.

The old Duchesse d’Uxelles, mother of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, was the oracle of this circle, to which Madame de Serizy had never gained admittance, though nee de Ronquerolles.

Lucien was brought thither by Madame de Maufrigneuse, who had won over her mother to speak in his favor, for she had doted on him for two years; and the engaging young poet had kept his footing there, thanks to the influence of the high Almoner of France, and the support of the Archbishop of Paris. Still, he had not been admitted till he had obtained the patent restoring to him the name and arms of the Rubempre family. The Duc de Rhetore, the Chevalier d’Espard, and some others, jealous of Lucien, periodically stirred up the Duc de Grandlieu’s prejudices against him by retailing anecdotes of the young man’s previous career; but the Duchess, a devout Catholic surrounded by the great prelates of the Church, and her daughter Clotilde would not give him up.

Lucien accounted for these hostilities by his connection with Madame de Bargeton, Madame d’Espard’s cousin, and now Comtesse du Chatelet. Then, feeling the importance of allying himself to so powerful a family, and urged by his privy adviser to win Clotilde, Lucien found the courage of the parvenu; he came to the house five days in the week, he swallowed all the affronts of the envious, he endured impertinent looks, and answered irony with wit. His persistency, the charm of his manners, and his amiability, at last neutralized opposition and reduced obstacles. He was still in the highest favor with Madame de Maufrigneuse, whose ardent letters, written under the influence of her passion, were preserved by Carlos Herrera; he was idolized by Madame de Serizy, and stood well in Mademoiselle des Touches’ good graces; and well content with being received in these houses, Lucien was instructed by the Abbe to be as reserved as possible in all other quarters.

“You cannot devote yourself to several houses at once,” said his Mentor. “The man who goes everywhere finds no one to take a lively interest in him. Great folks only patronize those who emulate their furniture, whom they see every day, and who have the art of becoming as necessary to them as the seat they sit on.”

Thus Lucien, accustomed to regard the Grandlieus’ drawing-room as his arena, reserved his wit, his jests, his news, and his courtier’s graces for the hours he spent there every evening. Insinuating, tactful, and warned by Clotilde of the shoals he should avoid, he flattered Monsieur de Grandlieu’s little weaknesses. Clotilde, having begun by envying Madame de Maufrigneuse her happiness, ended by falling desperately in love with Lucien.

Perceiving all the advantages of such a connection, Lucien played his lover’s part as well as it could have been acted by Armand, the latest jeune premier at the Comedie Francaise.

He wrote to Clotilde, letters which were certainly masterpieces of literary workmanship; and Clotilde replied, vying with him in genius in the expression of perfervid love on paper, for she had no other outlet. Lucien went to church at Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin every Sunday, giving himself out as a devout Catholic, and he poured forth monarchical and pious harangues which were a marvel to all. He also wrote some exceedingly remarkable articles in papers devoted to the “Congregation,” refusing to be paid for them, and signing them only with an “L.” He produced political pamphlets when required by King Charles X. or the High Almoner, and for these he would take no payment.

“The King,” he would say, “has done so much for me, that I owe him my blood.”

For some days past there had been an idea of attaching Lucien to the prime minister’s cabinet as his private secretary; but Madame d’Espard brought so many persons into the field in opposition to Lucien, that Charles X.‘s Maitre Jacques hesitated to clinch the matter. Nor was Lucien’s position by any means clear; not only did the question, “What does he live on?” on everybody’s lips as the young man rose in life, require an answer, but even benevolent curiosity—as much as malevolent curiosity—went on from one inquiry to another, and found more than one joint in the ambitious youth’s harness.

Clotilde de Grandlieu unconsciously served as a spy for her father and mother. A few days since she had led Lucien into a recess and told him of the difficulties raised by her family.

“Invest a million francs in land, and my hand is yours: that is my mother’s ultimatum,” Clotilde had explained.

“And presently they will ask you where you got the money,” said Carlos, when Lucien reported this last word in the bargain.

“My brother-in-law will have made his fortune,” remarked Lucien; “we can make him the responsible backer.”

“Then only the million is needed,” said Carlos. “I will think it over.”

To be exact as to Lucien’s position in the Hotel Grandlieu, he had never dined there. Neither Clotilde, nor the Duchesse d’Uxelles, nor Madame de Maufrigneuse, who was always extremely kind to Lucien, could ever obtain this favor from the Duke, so persistently suspicious was the old nobleman of the man that he designated as “le Sire de Rubempre.” This shade of distinction, understood by every one who visited at the house, constantly wounded Lucien’s self-respect, for he felt that he was no more than tolerated. But the world is justified in being suspicious; it is so often taken in!

To cut a figure in Paris with no known source of wealth and no recognized employment is a position which can by no artifice be long maintained. So Lucien, as he crept up in the world, gave more and more weight to the question, “What does he live on?” He had been obliged indeed to confess to Madame de Serizy, to whom he owed the patronage of Monsieur Granville, the Public Prosecutor, and of the Comte Octave de Bauvan, a Minister of State, and President of one of the Supreme Courts: “I am dreadfully in debt.”

As he entered the courtyard of the mansion where he found an excuse for all his vanities, he was saying to himself as he reflected on Trompe-la-Mort’s scheming:

“I can hear the ground cracking under my feet!”

He loved Esther, and he wanted to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu! A strange dilemma! One must be sold to buy the other.

Only one person could effect this bargain without damage to Lucien’s honor, and that was the supposed Spaniard. Were they not bound to be equally secret, each for the other? Such a compact, in which each is in turn master and slave, is not to be found twice in any one life.

Lucien drove away the clouds that darkened his brow, and walked into the Grandlieu drawing-room gay and beaming. At this moment the windows were open, the fragrance from the garden scented the room, the flower-basket in the centre displayed its pyramid of flowers. The Duchess, seated on a sofa in the corner, was talking to the Duchesse de Chaulieu. Several women together formed a group remarkable for their various attitudes, stamped with the different expression which each strove to give to an affected sorrow. In the fashionable world nobody takes any interest in grief or suffering; everything is talk. The men were walking up and down the room or in the garden. Clotilde and Josephine were busy at the tea-table. The Vidame de Pamiers, the Duc de Grandlieu, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse were playing Wisk, as they called it, in a corner of the room.

When Lucien was announced he walked across the room to make his bow to the Duchess, asking the cause of the grief he could read in her face.

“Madame de Chaulieu has just had dreadful news; her son-in-law, the Baron de Macumer, ex-duke of Soria, is just dead. The young Duc de Soria and his wife, who had gone to Chantepleurs to nurse their brother, have written this sad intelligence. Louise is heart-broken.”

“A women is not loved twice in her life as Louise was loved by her husband,” said Madeleine de Mortsauf.

“She will be a rich widow,” observed the old Duchesse d’Uxelles, looking at Lucien, whose face showed no change of expression.

“Poor Louise!” said Madame d’Espard. “I understand her and pity her.”

The Marquise d’Espard put on the pensive look of a woman full of soul and feeling. Sabine de Grandlieu, who was but ten years old, raised knowing eyes to her mother’s face, but the satirical glance was repressed by a glance from the Duchess. This is bringing children up properly.

“If my daughter lives through the shock,” said Madame de Chaulieu, with a very maternal manner, “I shall be anxious about her future life. Louise is so very romantic.”

“It is so difficult nowadays,” said a venerable Cardinal, “to reconcile feeling with the proprieties.”

Lucien, who had not a word to say, went to the tea-table to do what was polite to the demoiselles de Grandlieu. When the poet had gone a few yards away, the Marquise d’Espard leaned over to whisper in the Duchess’ ear:

“And do you really think that that young fellow is so much in love with your Clotilde?”

The perfidy of this question cannot be fully understood but with the help of a sketch of Clotilde. That young lady was, at this moment, standing up. Her attitude allowed the Marquise d’Espard’s mocking eye to take in Clotilde’s lean, narrow figure, exactly like an asparagus stalk; the poor girl’s bust was so flat that it did not allow of the artifice known to dressmakers as fichus menteurs, or padded habitshirts. And Clotilde, who knew that her name was a sufficient advantage in life, far from trying to conceal this defect, heroically made a display of it. By wearing plain, tight dresses she achieved the effect of that stiff prim shape which medieval sculptors succeeded in giving to the statuettes whose profiles are conspicuous against the background of the niches in which they stand in cathedrals.

Clotilde was more than five feet four in height; if we may be allowed to use a familiar phrase, which has the merit at any rate of being perfectly intelligible—she was all legs. These defective proportions gave her figure an almost deformed appearance. With a dark complexion, harsh black hair, very thick eyebrows, fiery eyes, set in sockets that were already deeply discolored, a side face shaped like the moon in its first quarter, and a prominent brow, she was the caricature of her mother, one of the handsomest women in Portugal. Nature amuses herself with such tricks. Often we see in one family a sister of wonderful beauty, whose features in her brother are absolutely hideous, though the two are amazingly alike. Clotilde’s lips, excessively thin and sunken, wore a permanent expression of disdain. And yet her mouth, better than any other feature of her face, revealed every secret impulse of her heart, for affection lent it a sweet expression, which was all the more remarkable because her cheeks were too sallow for blushes, and her hard, black eyes never told anything. Notwithstanding these defects, notwithstanding her board-like carriage, she had by birth and education a grand air, a proud demeanor, in short, everything that has been well named le je ne sais quoi, due partly, perhaps, to her uncompromising simplicity of dress, which stamped her as a woman of noble blood. She dressed her hair to advantage, and it might be accounted to her for a beauty, for it grew vigorously, thick and long.

She had cultivated her voice, and it could cast a spell; she sang exquisitely. Clotilde was just the woman of whom one says, “She has fine eyes,” or, “She has a delightful temper.” If any one addressed her in the English fashion as “Your Grace,” she would say, “You mean ‘Your leanness.’”

“Why should not my poor Clotilde have a lover?” replied the Duchess to the Marquise. “Do you know what she said to me yesterday? ‘If I am loved for ambition’s sake, I undertake to make him love me for my own sake.’—She is clever and ambitious, and there are men who like those two qualities. As for him—my dear, he is as handsome as a vision; and if he can but repurchase the Rubempre estates, out of regard for us the King will reinstate him in the title of Marquis.—After all, his mother was the last of the Rubempres.”

“Poor fellow! where is he to find a million francs?” said the Marquise.

“That is no concern of ours,” replied the Duchess. “He is certainly incapable of stealing the money.—Besides, we would never give Clotilde to an intriguing or dishonest man even if he were handsome, young, and a poet, like Monsieur de Rubempre.”

“You are late this evening,” said Clotilde, smiling at Lucien with infinite graciousness.

“Yes, I have been dining out.”

“You have been quite gay these last few days,” said she, concealing her jealousy and anxiety behind a smile.

“Quite gay?” replied Lucien. “No—only by the merest chance I have been dining every day this week with bankers; to-day with the Nucingens, yesterday with du Tillet, the day before with the Kellers——”

Whence, it may be seen, that Lucien had succeeded in assuming the tone of light impertinence of great people.

“You have many enemies,” said Clotilde, offering him—how graciously!—a cup of tea. “Some one told my father that you have debts to the amount of sixty thousand francs, and that before long Sainte-Pelagie will be your summer quarters.—If you could know what all these calumnies are to me!—It all recoils on me.—I say nothing of my own suffering—my father has a way of looking that crucifies me—but of what you must be suffering if any least part of it should be the truth.”

“Do not let such nonsense worry you; love me as I love you, and give me time—a few months——” said Lucien, replacing his empty cup on the silver tray.

“Do not let my father see you; he would say something disagreeable; and as you could not submit to that, we should be done for.—That odious Marquise d’Espard told him that your mother had been a monthly nurse and that your sister did ironing——”

“We were in the most abject poverty,” replied Lucien, the tears rising to his eyes. “That is not calumny, but it is most ill-natured gossip. My sister now is a more than millionaire, and my mother has been dead two years.—This information has been kept in stock to use just when I should be on the verge of success here——”

“But what have you done to Madame d’Espard?”

“I was so rash, at Madame de Serizy’s, as to tell the story, with some added pleasantries, in the presence of MM. de Bauvan and de Granville, of her attempt to get a commission of lunacy appointed to sit on her husband, the Marquis d’Espard. Bianchon had told it to me. Monsieur de Granville’s opinion, supported by those of Bauvan and Serizy, influenced the decision of the Keeper of the Seals. They all were afraid of the Gazette des Tribunaux, and dreaded the scandal, and the Marquise got her knuckles rapped in the summing up for the judgment finally recorded in that miserable business.

“Though M. de Serizy by his tattle has made the Marquise my mortal foe, I gained his good offices, and those of the Public Prosecutor, and Comte Octave de Bauvan; for Madame de Serizy told them the danger in which I stood in consequence of their allowing the source of their information to be guessed at. The Marquis d’Espard was so clumsy as to call upon me, regarding me as the first cause of his winning the day in that atrocious suit.”

“I will rescue you from Madame d’Espard,” said Clotilde.

“How?” cried Lucien.

“My mother will ask the young d’Espards here; they are charming boys, and growing up now. The father and sons will sing your praises, and then we are sure never to see their mother again.”

“Oh, Clotilde, you are an angel! If I did not love you for yourself, I should love you for being so clever.”

“It is not cleverness,” said she, all her love beaming on her lips. “Goodnight. Do not come again for some few days. When you see me in church, at Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, with a pink scarf, my father will be in a better temper.—You will find an answer stuck to the back of the chair you are sitting in; it will comfort you perhaps for not seeing me. Put the note you have brought under my handkerchief——”

This young person was evidently more than seven-and-twenty.

Lucien took a cab in the Rue de la Planche, got out of it on the Boulevards, took another by the Madeleine, and desired the driver to have the gates opened and drive in at the house in the Rue Taitbout.

On going in at eleven o’clock, he found Esther in tears, but dressed as she was wont to dress to do him honor. She awaited her Lucien reclining on a sofa covered with white satin brocaded with yellow flowers, dressed in a bewitching wrapper of India muslin with cherry-colored bows; without her stays, her hair simply twisted into a knot, her feet in little velvet slippers lined with cherry-colored satin; all the candles were burning, the hookah was prepared. But she had not smoked her own, which stood beside her unlighted, emblematical of her loneliness. On hearing the doors open she sprang up like a gazelle, and threw her arms round Lucien, wrapping him like a web caught by the wind and flung about a tree.

“Parted.—Is it true?”

“Oh, just for a few days,” replied Lucien.

Esther released him, and fell back on her divan like a dead thing.

In these circumstances, most women babble like parrots. Oh! how they love! At the end of five years they feel as if their first happiness were a thing of yesterday, they cannot give you up, they are magnificent in their indignation, despair, love, grief, dread, dejection, presentiments. In short, they are as sublime as a scene from Shakespeare. But make no mistake! These women do not love. When they are really all that they profess, when they love truly, they do as Esther did, as children do, as true love does; Esther did not say a word, she lay with her face buried in the pillows, shedding bitter tears.

Lucien, on his part, tried to lift her up, and spoke to her.

“But, my child, we are not to part. What, after four years of happiness, is this the way you take a short absence.—What on earth do I do to all these girls?” he added to himself, remembering that Coralie had loved him thus.

“Ah, monsieur, you are so handsome,” said Europe.

The senses have their own ideal. When added to this fascinating beauty we find the sweetness of nature, the poetry, that characterized Lucien, it is easy to conceive of the mad passion roused in such women, keenly alive as they are to external gifts, and artless in their admiration. Esther was sobbing quietly, and lay in an attitude expressive of the deepest distress.

“But, little goose,” said Lucien, “did you not understand that my life is at stake?”

At these words, which he chose on purpose, Esther started up like a wild animal, her hair fell, tumbling about her excited face like wreaths of foliage. She looked steadily at Lucien.

“Your life?” she cried, throwing up her arms, and letting them drop with a gesture known only to a courtesan in peril. “To be sure; that friend’s note speaks of serious risk.”

She took a shabby scrap of paper out of her sash; then seeing Europe, she said, “Leave us, my girl.”

When Europe had shut the door she went on—“Here, this is what he writes,” and she handed to Lucien a note she had just received from Carlos, which Lucien read aloud:—

  “You must leave to-morrow at five in the morning; you will be
  taken to a keeper’s lodge in the heart of the Forest of
  Saint-Germain, where you will have a room on the first floor. Do
  not quit that room till I give you leave; you will want for nothing.
  The keeper and his wife are to be trusted. Do not write to Lucien.
  Do not go to the window during daylight; but you may walk by night
  with the keeper if you wish for exercise. Keep the carriage blinds
  down on the way. Lucien’s life is at stake.

  “Lucien will go to-night to bid you good-bye; burn this in his
  presence.”
 

Lucien burned the note at once in the flame of a candle.

“Listen, my own Lucien,” said Esther, after hearing him read this letter as a criminal hears the sentence of death; “I will not tell you that I love you; it would be idiotic. For nearly five years it has been as natural to me to love you as to breathe and live. From the first day when my happiness began under the protection of that inscrutable being, who placed me here as you place some little curious beast in a cage, I have known that you must marry. Marriage is a necessary factor in your career, and God preserve me from hindering the development of your fortunes.

“That marriage will be my death. But I will not worry you; I will not do as the common girls do who kill themselves by means of a brazier of charcoal; I had enough of that once; twice raises your gorge, as Mariette says. No, I will go a long way off, out of France. Asie knows the secrets of her country; she will help me to die quietly. A prick—whiff, it is all over!

“I ask but one thing, my dearest, and that is that you will not deceive me. I have had my share of living. Since the day I first saw you, in 1824, till this day, I have known more happiness than can be put into the lives of ten fortunate wives. So take me for what I am—a woman as strong as I am weak. Say ‘I am going to be married.’ I will ask no more of you than a fond farewell, and you shall never hear of me again.”

There was a moment’s silence after this explanation as sincere as her action and tone were guileless.

“Is it that you are going to be married?” she repeated, looking into Lucien’s blue eyes with one of her fascinating glances, as brilliant as a steel blade.

“We have been toiling at my marriage for eighteen months past, and it is not yet settled,” replied Lucien. “I do not know when it can be settled; but it is not in question now, child!—It is the Abbe, I, you.—We are in real peril. Nucingen saw you——”

“Yes, in the wood at Vincennes,” said she. “Did he recognize me?”

“No,” said Lucien. “But he has fallen so desperately in love with you, that he would sacrifice his coffers. After dinner, when he was describing how he had met you, I was so foolish as to smile involuntarily, and most imprudently, for I live in a world like a savage surrounded by the traps of a hostile tribe. Carlos, who spares me the pains of thinking, regards the position as dangerous, and he has undertaken to pay Nucingen out if the Baron takes it into his head to spy on us; and he is quite capable of it; he spoke to me of the incapacity of the police. You have lighted a flame in an old chimney choked with soot.”

“And what does your Spaniard propose to do?” asked Esther very softly.

“I do not know in the least,” said Lucien; “he told me I might sleep soundly and leave it to him;”—but he dared not look at Esther.

“If that is the case, I will obey him with the dog-like submission I profess,” said Esther, putting her hand through Lucien’s arm and leading him into her bedroom, saying, “At any rate, I hope you dined well, my Lulu, at that detestable Baron’s?”

“Asie’s cooking prevents my ever thinking a dinner good, however famous the chef may be, where I happen to dine. However, Careme did the dinner to-night, as he does every Sunday.”

Lucien involuntarily compared Esther with Clotilde. The mistress was so beautiful, so unfailingly charming, that she had as yet kept at arm’s length the monster who devours the most perennial loves—Satiety.

“What a pity,” thought he, “to find one’s wife in two volumes. In one—poetry, delight, love, devotion, beauty, sweetness——”

Esther was fussing about, as women do, before going to bed; she came and went and fluttered round, singing all the time; you might have thought her a humming-bird.

“In the other—a noble name, family, honors, rank, knowledge of the world!—And no earthly means of combining them!” cried Lucien to himself.

Next morning, at seven, when the poet awoke in the pretty pink-and-white room, he found himself alone. He rang, and Europe hurried in.

“What are monsieur’s orders?”

“Esther?”

“Madame went off this morning at a quarter to five. By Monsieur l’Abbe’s order, I admitted a new face—carriage paid.”

“A woman?”

“No, sir, an English woman—one of those people who do their day’s work by night, and we are ordered to treat her as if she were madame. What can you have to say to such hack!—Poor Madame, how she cried when she got into the carriage. ‘Well, it has to be done!’ cried she. ‘I left that poor dear boy asleep,’ said she, wiping away her tears; ‘Europe, if he had looked at me or spoken my name, I should have stayed—I could but have died with him.’—I tell you, sir, I am so fond of madame, that I did not show her the person who has taken her place; some waiting maids would have broken her heart by doing so.”

“And is the stranger there?”

“Well, sir, she came in the chaise that took away madame, and I hid her in my room in obedience to my instructions——”

“Is she nice-looking?”

“So far as such a second-hand article can be. But she will find her part easy enough if you play yours, sir,” said Europe, going to fetch the false Esther.

The night before, ere going to bed, the all-powerful banker had given his orders to his valet, who, at seven in the morning, brought in to him the notorious Louchard, the most famous of the commercial police, whom he left in a little sitting-room; there the Baron joined him, in a dressing gown and slippers.

“You haf mate a fool of me!” he said, in reply to this official’s greeting.

“I could not help myself, Monsieur le Baron. I do not want to lose my place, and I had the honor of explaining to you that I could not meddle in a matter that had nothing to do with my functions. What did I promise you? To put you into communication with one of our agents, who, as it seemed to me, would be best able to serve you. But you know, Monsieur le Baron, the sharp lines that divide men of different trades: if you build a house, you do not set a carpenter to do smith’s work. Well, there are two branches of the police—the political police and the judicial police. The political police never interfere with the other branch, and vice versa. If you apply to the chief of the political police, he must get permission from the Minister to take up our business, and you would not dare to explain it to the head of the police throughout the kingdom. A police-agent who should act on his own account would lose his place.

“Well, the ordinary police are quite as cautious as the political police. So no one, whether in the Home Office or at the Prefecture of Police, ever moves excepting in the interests of the State or for the ends of Justice.

“If there is a plot or a crime to be followed up, then, indeed, the heads of the corps are at your service; but you must understand, Monsieur le Baron, that they have other fish to fry than looking after the fifty thousand love affairs in Paris. As to me and my men, our only business is to arrest debtors; and as soon as anything else is to be done, we run enormous risks if we interfere with the peace and quiet of any man or woman. I sent you one of my men, but I told you I could not answer for him; you instructed him to find a particular woman in Paris; Contenson bled you of a thousand-franc note, and did not even move. You might as well look for a needle in the river as for a woman in Paris, who is supposed to haunt Vincennes, and of whom the description answers to every pretty woman in the capital.”

“And could not Contenson haf tolt me de truf, instead of making me pleed out one tousand franc?”

“Listen to me, Monsieur le Baron,” said Louchard. “Will you give me a thousand crowns? I will give you—sell you—a piece of advice?”

“Is it vort one tousand crowns—your atvice?” asked Nucingen.

“I am not to be caught, Monsieur le Baron,” answered Louchard. “You are in love, you want to discover the object of your passion; you are getting as yellow as a lettuce without water. Two physicians came to see you yesterday, your man tells me, who think your life is in danger; now, I alone can put you in the hands of a clever fellow.—But the deuce is in it! If your life is not worth a thousand crowns——”

“Tell me de name of dat clefer fellow, and depent on my generosity——”

Louchard took up his hat, bowed, and left the room.

“Wat ein teufel!” cried Nucingen. “Come back—look here——”

“Take notice,” said Louchard, before taking the money, “I am only selling a piece of information, pure and simple. I can give you the name and address of the only man who is able to be of use to you—but he is a master——”

“Get out mit you,” cried Nucingen. “Dere is not no name dat is vort one tousant crown but dat von Varschild—and dat only ven it is sign at the bottom of a bank-bill.—I shall gif you one tousant franc.”

Louchard, a little weasel, who had never been able to purchase an office as lawyer, notary, clerk, or attorney, leered at the Baron in a significant fashion.

“To you—a thousand crowns, or let it alone. You will get them back in a few seconds on the Bourse,” said he.

“I will gif you one tousant franc,” repeated the Baron.

“You would cheapen a gold mine!” said Louchard, bowing and leaving.

“I shall get dat address for five hundert franc!” cried the Baron, who desired his servant to send his secretary to him.

Turcaret is no more. In these days the smallest banker, like the greatest, exercises his acumen in the smallest transactions; he bargains over art, beneficence, and love; he would bargain with the Pope for a dispensation. Thus, as he listened to Louchard, Nucingen had hastily concluded that Contenson, Louchard’s right-hand man, must certainly know the address of that master spy. Contenson would tell him for five hundred francs what Louchard wanted to see a thousand crowns for. The rapid calculation plainly proves that if the man’s heart was in possession of love, his head was still that of the lynx stock-jobber.

“Go your own self, mensieur,” said the Baron to his secretary, “to Contenson, dat spy of Louchart’s de bailiff man—but go in one capriolette, very qvick, and pring him here qvick to me. I shall vait.—Go out trough de garten.—Here is dat key, for no man shall see dat man in here. You shall take him into dat little garten-house. Try to do dat little business very clefer.”

Visitors called to see Nucingen on business; but he waited for Contenson, he was dreaming of Esther, telling himself that before long he would see again the woman who had aroused in him such unhoped-for emotions, and he sent everybody away with vague replies and double-edged promises. Contenson was to him the most important person in Paris, and he looked out into the garden every minute. Finally, after giving orders that no one else was to be admitted, he had his breakfast served in the summer-house at one corner of the garden. In the banker’s office the conduct and hesitancy of the most knowing, the most clearsighted, the shrewdest of Paris financiers seemed inexplicable.

“What ails the chief?” said a stockbroker to one of the head-clerks.

“No one knows; they are anxious about his health, it would seem. Yesterday, Madame la Baronne got Desplein and Bianchon to meet.”

One day, when Sir Isaac Newton was engaged in physicking one of his dogs, named “Beauty” (who, as is well known, destroyed a vast amount of work, and whom he reproved only in these words, “Ah! Beauty, you little know the mischief you have done!”), some strangers called to see him; but they at once retired, respecting the great man’s occupation. In every more or less lofty life, there is a little dog “Beauty.” When the Marechal de Richelieu came to pay his respects to Louis XV. after taking Mahon, one of the greatest feats of arms of the eighteenth century, the King said to him, “Have you heard the great news? Poor Lansmatt is dead.”—Lansmatt was a gatekeeper in the secret of the King’s intrigues.

The bankers of Paris never knew how much they owed to Contenson. That spy was the cause of Nucingen’s allowing an immense loan to be issued in which his share was allotted to him, and which he gave over to them. The stock-jobber could aim at a fortune any day with the artillery of speculation, but the man was a slave to the hope of happiness.

The great banker drank some tea, and was nibbling at a slice of bread and butter, as a man does whose teeth have for long been sharpened by appetite, when he heard a carriage stop at the little garden gate. In a few minutes his secretary brought in Contenson, whom he had run to earth in a cafe not far from Sainte-Pelagie, where the man was breakfasting on the strength of a bribe given to him by an imprisoned debtor for certain allowances that must be paid for.

Contenson, you must know, was a whole poem—a Paris poem. Merely to see him would have been enough to tell you that Beaumarchais’ Figaro, Moliere’s Mascarille, Marivaux’s Frontin, and Dancourt’s Lafleur—those great representatives of audacious swindling, of cunning driven to bay, of stratagem rising again from the ends of its broken wires—were all quite second-rate by comparison with this giant of cleverness and meanness. When in Paris you find a real type, he is no longer a man, he is a spectacle; no longer a factor in life, but a whole life, many lives.

Bake a plaster cast four times in a furnace, and you get a sort of bastard imitation of Florentine bronze. Well, the thunderbolts of numberless disasters, the pressure of terrible necessities, had bronzed Contenson’s head, as though sweating in an oven had three times over stained his skin. Closely-set wrinkles that could no longer be relaxed made eternal furrows, whiter in their cracks. The yellow face was all wrinkles. The bald skull, resembling Voltaire’s, was as parched as a death’s-head, and but for a few hairs at the back it would have seemed doubtful whether it was that of a living man. Under a rigid brow, a pair of Chinese eyes, like those of an image under a glass shade in a tea-shop—artificial eyes, which sham life but never vary—moved but expressed nothing. The nose, as flat as that of a skull, sniffed at fate; and the mouth, as thin-lipped as a miser’s, was always open, but as expressionless as the grin of a letterbox.

Contenson, as apathetic as a savage, with sunburned hands, affected that Diogenes-like indifference which can never bend to any formality of respect.

And what a commentary on his life was written on his dress for any one who can decipher a dress! Above all, what trousers! made, by long wear, as black and shiny as the camlet of which lawyers’ gowns are made! A waistcoat, bought in an old clothes shop in the Temple, with a deep embroidered collar! A rusty black coat!—and everything well brushed, clean after a fashion, and graced by a watch and an imitation gold chain. Contenson allowed a triangle of shirt to show, with pleats in which glittered a sham diamond pin; his black velvet stock set stiff like a gorget, over which lay rolls of flesh as red as that of a Caribbee. His silk hat was as glossy as satin, but the lining would have yielded grease enough for two street lamps if some grocer had bought it to boil down.

But to enumerate these accessories is nothing; if only I could give an idea of the air of immense importance that Contenson contrived to impart to them! There was something indescribably knowing in the collar of his coat, and the fresh blacking on a pair of boots with gaping soles, to which no language can do justice. However, to give some notion of this medley of effect, it may be added that any man of intelligence would have felt, only on seeing Contenson, that if instead of being a spy he had been a thief, all these odds and ends, instead of raising a smile, would have made one shudder with horror. Judging only from his dress, the observer would have said to himself, “That is a scoundrel; he gambles, he drinks, he is full of vices; but he does not get drunk, he does not cheat, he is neither a thief nor a murderer.” And Contenson remained inscrutable till the word spy suggested itself.

This man had followed as many unrecognized trades as there are recognized ones. The sly smile on his lips, the twinkle of his green eyes, the queer twitch of his snub nose, showed that he was not deficient in humor. He had a face of sheet-tin, and his soul must probably be like his face. Every movement of his countenance was a grimace wrung from him by politeness rather than by any expression of an inmost impulse. He would have been alarming if he had not seemed so droll.

Contenson, one of the most curious products of the scum that rises to the top of the seething Paris caldron, where everything ferments, prided himself on being, above all things, a philosopher. He would say, without any bitter feeling:

“I have great talents, but of what use are they? I might as well have been an idiot.”

And he blamed himself instead of accusing mankind. Find, if you can, many spies who have not had more venom about them than Contenson had.

“Circumstances are against me,” he would say to his chiefs. “We might be fine crystal; we are but grains of sand, that is all.”

His indifference to dress had some sense. He cared no more about his everyday clothes than an actor does; he excelled in disguising himself, in “make-up”; he could have given Frederic Lemaitre a lesson, for he could be a dandy when necessary. Formerly, in his younger days, he must have mingled in the out-at-elbows society of people living on a humble scale. He expressed excessive disgust for the criminal police corps; for, under the Empire, he had belonged to Fouche’s police, and looked upon him as a great man. Since the suppression of this Government department, he had devoted his energies to the tracking of commercial defaulters; but his well-known talents and acumen made him a valuable auxiliary, and the unrecognized chiefs of the political police had kept his name on their lists. Contenson, like his fellows, was only a super in the dramas of which the leading parts were played by his chief when a political investigation was in the wind.

“Go ‘vay,” said Nucingen, dismissing his secretary with a wave of the hand.

“Why should this man live in a mansion and I in a lodging?” wondered Contenson to himself. “He has dodged his creditors three times; he has robbed them; I never stole a farthing; I am a cleverer fellow than he is——”

“Contenson, mein freund,” said the Baron, “you haf vat you call pleed me of one tousand-franc note.”

“My girl owed God and the devil——”

“Vat, you haf a girl, a mistress!” cried Nucingen, looking at Contenson with admiration not unmixed with envy.

“I am but sixty-six,” replied Contenson, as a man whom vice has kept young as a bad example.

“And vat do she do?”

“She helps me,” said Contenson. “When a man is a thief, and an honest woman loves him, either she becomes a thief or he becomes an honest man. I have always been a spy.”

“And you vant money—alvays?” asked Nucingen.

“Always,” said Contenson, with a smile. “It is part of my business to want money, as it is yours to make it; we shall easily come to an understanding. You find me a little, and I will undertake to spend it. You shall be the well, and I the bucket.”

“Vould you like to haf one note for fife hundert franc?”

“What a question! But what a fool I am!—You do not offer it out of a disinterested desire to repair the slights of Fortune?”

“Not at all. I gif it besides the one tousand-franc note vat you pleed me off. Dat makes fifteen hundert franc vat I gif you.”

“Very good, you give me the thousand francs I have had and you will add five hundred francs.”

“Yust so,” said Nucingen, nodding.

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

“Dat I gif,” added the Baron.

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

“I haf been told dat dere vas in Paris one man vat could find the voman vat I lof, and dat you know his address.... A real master to spy.”

“Very true.”

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

“Where are they?” said Contenson.

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

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

“Noting for noting! Le us see de man, and you get de money; you might sell to me many address at dat price.”

Contenson began to laugh.

“To be sure, you have a right to think that of me,” said he, with an air of blaming himself. “The more rascally our business is, the more honesty is necessary. But look here, Monsieur le Baron, make it six hundred, and I will give you a bit of advice.”

“Gif it, and trust to my generosity.”

“I will risk it,” Contenson said, “but it is playing high. In such matters, you see, we have to work underground. You say, ‘Quick march!’—You are rich; you think that money can do everything. Well, money is something, no doubt. Still, money can only buy men, as the two or three best heads in our force so often say. And there are many things you would never think of which money cannot buy.—You cannot buy good luck. So good police work is not done in this style. Will you show yourself in a carriage with me? We should be seen. Chance is just as often for us as against us.”

“Really-truly?” said the Baron.

“Why, of course, sir. A horseshoe picked up in the street led the chief of the police to the discovery of the infernal machine. Well, if we were to go to-night in a hackney coach to Monsieur de Saint-Germain, he would not like to see you walk in any more than you would like to be seen going there.”

“Dat is true,” said the Baron.

“Ah, he is the greatest of the great! such another as the famous Corentin, Fouche’s right arm, who was, some say, his natural son, born while he was still a priest; but that is nonsense. Fouche knew how to be a priest as he knew how to be a Minister. Well, you will not get this man to do anything for you, you see, for less than ten thousand-franc notes—think of that.—But he will do the job, and do it well. Neither seen nor heard, as they say. I ought to give Monsieur de Saint-Germanin notice, and he will fix a time for your meeting in some place where no one can see or hear, for it is a dangerous game to play policeman for private interests. Still, what is to be said? He is a good fellow, the king of good fellows, and a man who has undergone much persecution, and for having saving his country too!—like me, like all who helped to save it.”

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

“And Monsieur le Baron will allow me to drink his health?” said Contenson, with a manner at once cringing and threatening.

“Shean,” cried the Baron to the gardener, “go and tell Chorge to sent me one twenty francs, and pring dem to me——”

“Still, Monsieur le Baron, if you have no more information than you have just given me, I doubt whether the great man can be of any use to you.”

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

“I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron,” said Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. “I shall have the honor of calling again to tell Georges where you are to go this evening, for we never write anything in such cases when they are well managed.”

“It is funny how sharp dese rascals are!” said the Baron to himself; “it is de same mit de police as it is in buss’niss.”

When he left the Baron, Contenson went quietly from the Rue Saint-Lazare to the Rue Saint-Honore, as far as the Cafe David. He looked in through the windows, and saw an old man who was known there by the name of le Pere Canquoelle.

The Cafe David, at the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Saint-Honore, enjoyed a certain celebrity during the first thirty years of the century, though its fame was limited to the quarter known as that of the Bourdonnais. Here certain old retired merchants, and large shopkeepers still in trade, were wont to meet—the Camusots, the Lebas, the Pilleraults, the Popinots, and a few house-owners like little old Molineux. Now and again old Guillaume might be seen there, coming from the Rue du Colombier. Politics were discussed in a quiet way, but cautiously, for the opinions of the Cafe David were liberal. The gossip of the neighborhood was repeated, men so urgently feel the need of laughing at each other!

This cafe, like all cafes for that matter, had its eccentric character in the person of the said Pere Canquoelle, who had been regular in his attendance there since 1811, and who seemed to be so completely in harmony with the good folks who assembled there, that they all talked politics in his presence without reserve. Sometimes this old fellow, whose guilelessness was the subject of much laughter to the customers, would disappear for a month or two; but his absence never surprised anybody, and was always attributed to his infirmities or his great age, for he looked more than sixty in 1811.

“What has become of old Canquoelle?” one or another would ask of the manageress at the desk.

“I quite expect that one fine day we shall read in the advertisement-sheet that he is dead,” she would reply.

Old Canquoelle bore a perpetual certificate of his native province in his accent. He spoke of une estatue (a statue), le peuble (the people), and said ture for turc. His name was that of a tiny estate called les Canquoelles, a word meaning cockchafer in some districts, situated in the department of Vaucluse, whence he had come. At last every one had fallen into the habit of calling him Canquoelle, instead of des Canquoelles, and the old man took no offence, for in his opinion the nobility had perished in 1793; and besides, the land of les Canquoelles did not belong to him; he was a younger son’s younger son.

Nowadays old Canquoelle’s costume would look strange, but between 1811 and 1820 it astonished no one. The old man wore shoes with cut-steel buckles, silk stockings with stripes round the leg, alternately blue and white, corded silk knee-breeches with oval buckles cut to match those on his shoes. A white embroidered waistcoat, an old coat of olive-brown with metal buttons, and a shirt with a flat-pleated frill completed his costume. In the middle of the shirt-frill twinkled a small gold locket, in which might be seen, under glass, a little temple worked in hair, one of those pathetic trifles which give men confidence, just as a scarecrow frightens sparrows. Most men, like other animals, are frightened or reassured by trifles. Old Canquoelle’s breeches were kept in place by a buckle which, in the fashion of the last century, tightened them across the stomach; from the belt hung on each side a short steel chain, composed of several finer chains, and ending in a bunch of seals. His white neckcloth was fastened behind by a small gold buckle. Finally, on his snowy and powdered hair, he still, in 1816, wore the municipal cocked hat which Monsieur Try, the President of the Law Courts, also used to wear. But Pere Canquoelle had recently substituted for this hat, so dear to old men, the undignified top-hat, which no one dares to rebel against. The good man thought he owed so much as this to the spirit of the age. A small pigtail tied with a ribbon had traced a semicircle on the back of his coat, the greasy mark being hidden by powder.

If you looked no further than the most conspicuous feature of his face, a nose covered with excrescences red and swollen enough to figure in a dish of truffles, you might have inferred that the worthy man had an easy temper, foolish and easy-going, that of a perfect gaby; and you would have been deceived, like all at the Cafe David, where no one had ever remarked the studious brow, the sardonic mouth, and the cold eyes of this old man, petted by his vices, and as calm as Vitellius, whose imperial and portly stomach reappeared in him palingenetically, so to speak.

In 1816 a young commercial traveler named Gaudissart, who frequented the Cafe David, sat drinking from eleven o’clock till midnight with a half-pay officer. He was so rash as to discuss a conspiracy against the Bourbons, a rather serious plot then on the point of execution. There was no one to be seen in the cafe but Pere Canquoelle, who seemed to be asleep, two waiters who were dozing, and the accountant at the desk. Within four-and-twenty hours Gaudissart was arrested, the plot was discovered. Two men perished on the scaffold. Neither Gaudissart nor any one else ever suspected that worthy old Canquoelle of having peached. The waiters were dismissed; for a year they were all on their guard and afraid of the police—as Pere Canquoelle was too; indeed, he talked of retiring from the Cafe David, such horror had he of the police.

Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy, and did not look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers; but when he had gulped down the brandy, he took out the Baron’s gold piece, and called the waiter by rapping three short raps on the table. The lady at the desk and the waiter examined the coin with a minute care that was not flattering to Contenson; but their suspicions were justified by the astonishment produced on all the regular customers by Contenson’s appearance.

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

This was the idea that rose to some clear and shrewd minds as they looked at Contenson over their spectacles, while affecting to read the news. Contenson, who saw everything and never was surprised at anything, scornfully wiped his lips with a bandana, in which there were but three darns, took his change, slipped all the coppers into his side pocket, of which the lining, once white, was now as black as the cloth of the trousers, and did not leave one for the waiter.

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

“Pshaw!” said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for he alone had expressed no astonishment, “it is Contenson, Louchard’s right-hand man, the police agent we employ in business. The rascals want to nab some one who is hanging about perhaps.”

It would seem necessary to explain here the terrible and profoundly cunning man who was hidden under the guise of Pere Canquoelle, as Vautrin was hidden under that of the Abbe Carlos.

Born at Canquoelles, the only possession of his family, which was highly respectable, this Southerner’s name was Peyrade. He belonged, in fact, to the younger branch of the Peyrade family, an old but impoverished house of Franche Comte, still owning the little estate of la Peyrade. The seventh child of his father, he had come on foot to Paris in 1772 at the age of seventeen, with two crowns of six francs in his pocket, prompted by the vices of an ardent spirit and the coarse desire to “get on,” which brings so many men to Paris from the south as soon as they understand that their father’s property can never supply them with means to gratify their passions. It is enough to say of Peyrade’s youth that in 1782 he was in the confidence of chiefs of the police and the hero of the department, highly esteemed by MM. Lenoir and d’Albert, the last Lieutenant-Generals of Police.

The Revolution had no police; it needed none. Espionage, though common enough, was called public spirit.

The Directorate, a rather more regular government than that of the Committee of Public Safety, was obliged to reorganize the Police, and the first Consul completed the work by instituting a Prefect of Police and a department of police supervision.

Peyrade, a man knowing the traditions, collected the force with the assistance of a man named Corentin, a far cleverer man than Peyrade, though younger; but he was a genius only in the subterranean ways of police inquiries. In 1808 the great services Peyrade was able to achieve were rewarded by an appointment to the eminent position of Chief Commissioner of Police at Antwerp. In Napoleon’s mind this sort of Police Governorship was equivalent to a Minister’s post, with the duty of superintending Holland. At the end of the campaign of 1809, Peyrade was removed from Antwerp by an order in Council from the Emperor, carried in a chaise to Paris between two gendarmes, and imprisoned in la Force. Two months later he was let out on bail furnished by his friend Corentin, after having been subjected to three examinations, each lasting six hours, in the office of the head of the Police.

Did Peyrade owe his overthrow to the miraculous energy he displayed in aiding Fouche in the defence of the French coast when threatened by what was known at the time as the Walcheren expedition, when the Duke of Otranto manifested such abilities as alarmed the Emperor? Fouche thought it probable even then; and now, when everybody knows what went on in the Cabinet Council called together by Cambaceres, it is absolutely certain. The Ministers, thunderstruck by the news of England’s attempt, a retaliation on Napoleon for the Boulogne expedition, and taken by surprise when the Master was entrenched in the island of Lobau, where all Europe believed him to be lost, had not an idea which way to turn. The general opinion was in favor of sending post haste to the Emperor; Fouche alone was bold enough to sketch a plan of campaign, which, in fact, he carried into execution.

“Do as you please,” said Cambaceres; “but I, who prefer to keep my head on my shoulders, shall send a report to the Emperor.”

It is well known that the Emperor on his return found an absurd pretext, at a full meeting of the Council of State, for discarding his Minister and punishing him for having saved France without the Sovereign’s help. From that time forth, Napoleon had doubled the hostility of Prince de Talleyrand and the Duke of Otranto, the only two great politicians formed by the Revolution, who might perhaps have been able to save Napoleon in 1813.

To get rid of Peyrade, he was simply accused of connivance in favoring smuggling and sharing certain profits with the great merchants. Such an indignity was hard on a man who had earned the Marshal’s baton of the Police Department by the great services he had done. This man, who had grown old in active business, knew all the secrets of every Government since 1775, when he had entered the service. The Emperor, who believed himself powerful enough to create men for his own uses, paid no heed to the representations subsequently laid before him in favor of a man who was reckoned as one of the most trustworthy, most capable, and most acute of the unknown genii whose task it is to watch over the safety of a State. He thought he could put Contenson in Peyrade’s place; but Contenson was at that time employed by Corentin for his own benefit.

Peyrade felt the blow all the more keenly because, being greedy and a libertine, he had found himself, with regard to women, in the position of a pastry-cook who loves sweetmeats. His habits of vice had become to him a second nature; he could not live without a good dinner, without gambling, in short, without the life of an unpretentious fine gentleman, in which men of powerful faculties so generally indulge when they have allowed excessive dissipation to become a necessity. Hitherto, he had lived in style without ever being expected to entertain; and living well, for no one ever looked for a return from him, or from his friend Corentin. He was cynically witty, and he liked his profession; he was a philosopher. And besides, a spy, whatever grade he may hold in the machinery of the police, can no more return to a profession regarded as honorable or liberal, than a prisoner from the hulks can. Once branded, once matriculated, spies and convicts, like deacons, have assumed an indelible character. There are beings on whom social conditions impose an inevitable fate.

Peyrade, for his further woe, was very fond of a pretty little girl whom he knew to be his own child by a celebrated actress to whom he had done a signal service, and who, for three months, had been grateful to him. Peyrade, who had sent for his child from Antwerp, now found himself without employment in Paris and with no means beyond a pension of twelve hundred francs a year allowed him by the Police Department as Lenoir’s old disciple. He took lodgings in the Rue des Moineaux on the fourth floor, five little rooms, at a rent of two hundred and fifty francs.

If any man should be aware of the uses and sweets of friendship, is it not the moral leper known to the world as a spy, to the mob as a mouchard, to the department as an “agent”? Peyrade and Corentin were such friends as Orestes and Pylades. Peyrade had trained Corentin as Vien trained David; but the pupil soon surpassed his master. They had carried out more than one undertaking together. Peyrade, happy at having discerned Corentin’s superior abilities, had started him in his career by preparing a success for him. He obliged his disciple to make use of a mistress who had scorned him as a bait to catch a man (see The Chouans). And Corentin at that time was hardly five-and-twenty.

Corentin, who had been retained as one of the generals of whom the Minister of Police is the High Constable, still held under the Duc de Rovigo the high position he had filled under the Duke of Otranto. Now at that time the general police and the criminal police were managed on similar principles. When any important business was on hand, an account was opened, as it were, for the three, four, five, really capable agents. The Minister, on being warned of some plot, by whatever means, would say to one of his colonels of the police force:

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

Corentin or Contenson would go into the matter and reply:

“Twenty, thirty, or forty thousand francs.”

Then, as soon as the order was given to go ahead, all the means and the men were left to the judgment of Corentin or the agent selected. And the criminal police used to act in the same way to discover crimes with the famous Vidocq.

Both branches of the police chose their men chiefly from among the ranks of well-known agents, who have matriculated in the business, and are, as it were, as soldiers of the secret army, so indispensable to a government, in spite of the public orations of philanthropists or narrow-minded moralists. But the absolute confidence placed in two men of the temper of Peyrade and Corentin conveyed to them the right of employing perfect strangers, under the risk, moreover, of being responsible to the Minister in all serious cases. Peyrade’s experience and acumen were too valuable to Corentin, who, after the storm of 1820 had blown over, employed his old friend, constantly consulted him, and contributed largely to his maintenance. Corentin managed to put about a thousand francs a month into Peyrade’s hands.

Peyrade, on his part, did Corentin good service. In 1816 Corentin, on the strength of the discovery of the conspiracy in which the Bonapartist Gaudissart was implicated, tried to get Peyrade reinstated in his place in the police office; but some unknown influence was working against Peyrade. This was the reason why.

In their anxiety to make themselves necessary, Peyrade, Corentin, and Contenson, at the Duke of Otranto’s instigation, had organized for the benefit of Louis XVIII. a sort of opposition police in which very capable agents were employed. Louis XVIII. died possessed of secrets which will remain secrets from the best informed historians. The struggle between the general police of the kingdom, and the King’s opposition police, led to many horrible disasters, of which a certain number of executions sealed the secrets. This is neither the place nor the occasion for entering into details on this subject, for these “Scenes of Paris Life” are not “Scenes of Political Life.” Enough has been said to show what were the means of living of the man who at the Cafe David was known as good old Canquoelle, and by what threads he was tied to the terrible and mysterious powers of the police.

Between 1817 and 1822, Corentin, Contenson, Peyrade, and their myrmidons, were often required to keep watch over the Minister of Police himself. This perhaps explains why the Minister declined to employ Peyrade and Contenson, on whom Corentin contrived to cast the Minister’s suspicions, in order to be able to make use of his friend when his reinstatement was evidently out of the question. The Ministry put their faith in Corentin; they enjoined him to keep an eye on Peyrade, which amused Louis XVIII. Corentin and Peyrade were then masters of the position. Contenson, long attached to Peyrade, was still at his service. He had joined the force of the commercial police (the Gardes du Commerce) by his friend’s orders. And, in fact, as a result of the sort of zeal that is inspired by a profession we love, these two chiefs liked to place their best men in those posts where information was most likely to flow in.

And, indeed, Contenson’s vices and dissipated habits, which had dragged him lower than his two friends, consumed so much money, that he needed a great deal of business.

Contenson, without committing any indiscretion, had told Louchard that he knew the only man who was capable of doing what the Baron de Nucingen required. Peyrade was, in fact, the only police-agent who could act on behalf of a private individual with impunity. At the death of Louis XVIII., Peyrade had not only ceased to be of consequence, but had lost the profits of his position as spy-in-ordinary to His Majesty. Believing himself to be indispensable, he had lived fast. Women, high feeding, and the club, the Cercle des Etrangers, had prevented this man from saving, and, like all men cut out for debauchery, he enjoyed an iron constitution. But between 1826 and 1829, when he was nearly seventy-four years of age, he had stuck half-way, to use his own expression. Year by year he saw his comforts dwindling. He followed the police department to its grave, and saw with regret that Charles X.‘s government was departing from its good old traditions. Every session saw the estimates pared down which were necessary to keep up the police, out of hatred for that method of government and a firm determination to reform that institution.

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

In 1822 this couple foresaw 1830. They knew how bitterly Louis XVIII. hated his successor, which accounts for his recklessness with regard to the younger branch, and without which his reign would be an unanswerable riddle.

As Peyrade grew older, his love for his natural daughter had increased. For her sake he had adopted his citizen guise, for he intended that his Lydie should marry respectably. So for the last three years he had been especially anxious to find a corner, either at the Prefecture of Police, or in the general Police Office—some ostensible and recognized post. He had ended by inventing a place, of which the necessity, as he told Corentin, would sooner or later be felt. He was anxious to create an inquiry office at the Prefecture of Police, to be intermediate between the Paris police in the strictest sense, the criminal police, and the superior general police, so as to enable the supreme board to profit by the various scattered forces. No one but Peyrade, at his age, and after fifty-five years of confidential work, could be the connecting link between the three branches of the police, or the keeper of the records to whom political and judicial authority alike could apply for the elucidation of certain cases. By this means Peyrade hoped, with Corentin’s assistance, to find a husband and scrape together a portion for his little Lydie. Corentin had already mentioned the matter to the Director-General of the police forces of the realm, without naming Peyrade; and the Director-General, a man from the south, thought it necessary that the suggestion should come from the chief of the city police.

At the moment when Contenson struck three raps on the table with the gold piece, a signal conveying, “I want to speak to you,” the senior was reflecting on this problem: “By whom, and under what pressure can the Prefet of Police be made to move?”—And he looked like a noodle studying his Courrier Francais.

“Poor Fouche!” thought he to himself, as he made his way along the Rue Saint-Honore, “that great man is dead! our go-betweens with Louis XVIII. are out of favor. And besides, as Corentin said only yesterday, nobody believes in the activity or the intelligence of a man of seventy. Oh, why did I get into a habit of dining at Very’s, of drinking choice wines, of singing La Mere Godichon, of gambling when I am in funds? To get a place and keep it, as Corentin says, it is not enough to be clever, you must have the gift of management. Poor dear M. Lenoir was right when he wrote to me in the matter of the Queen’s necklace, ‘You will never do any good,’ when he heard that I did not stay under that slut Oliva’s bed.”

If the venerable Pere Canquoelle—he was called so in the house—lived on in the Rue des Moineaux, on a fourth floor, you may depend on it he had found some peculiarity in the arrangement of the premises which favored the practice of his terrible profession.

The house, standing at the corner of the Rue Saint-Roch, had no neighbors on one side; and as the staircase up the middle divided it into two, there were on each floor two perfectly isolated rooms. Those two rooms looked out on the Rue Saint-Roch. There were garret rooms above the fourth floor, one of them a kitchen, and the other a bedroom for Pere Canquoelle’s only servant, a Fleming named Katt, formerly Lydie’s wet-nurse. Old Canquoelle had taken one of the outside rooms for his bedroom, and the other for his study. The study ended at the party-wall, a very thick one. The window opening on the Rue des Moineaux looked on a blank wall at the opposite corner. As this study was divided from the stairs by the whole width of Peyrade’s bedroom, the friends feared no eye, no ear, as they talked business in this study made on purpose for his detestable trade.

Peyrade, as a further precaution, had furnished Katt’s room with a thick straw bed, a felt carpet, and a very heavy rug, under the pretext of making his child’s nurse comfortable. He had also stopped up the chimney, warming his room by a stove, with a pipe through the wall to the Rue Saint-Roch. Finally, he laid several rugs on his floor to prevent the slightest sound being heard by the neighbors beneath. An expert himself in the tricks of spies, he sounded the outer wall, the ceiling, and the floor once a week, examining them as if he were in search of noxious insects. It was the security of this room from all witnesses or listeners that had made Corentin select it as his council-chamber when he did not hold a meeting in his own room.

Where Corentin lived was known to no one but the Chief of the Superior Police and to Peyrade; he received there such personages as the Ministry or the King selected to conduct very serious cases; but no agent or subordinate ever went there, and he plotted everything connected with their business at Peyrade’s. In this unpretentious room schemes were matured, and resolutions passed, which would have furnished strange records and curious dramas if only walls could talk. Between 1816 and 1826 the highest interests were discussed there. There first germinated the events which grew to weigh on France. There Peyrade and Corentin, with all the foresight, and more than all the information of Bellart, the Attorney-General, had said even in 1819: “If Louis XVIII. does not consent to strike such or such a blow, to make away with such or such a prince, is it because he hates his brother? He must wish to leave him heir to a revolution.”

Peyrade’s door was graced with a slate, on which very strange marks might sometimes be seen, figures scrawled in chalk. This sort of devil’s algebra bore the clearest meaning to the initiated.

Lydie’s rooms, opposite to Peyrade’s shabby lodging, consisted of an ante-room, a little drawing-room, a bedroom, and a small dressing-room. The door, like that of Peyrade’s room, was constructed of a plate of sheet-iron three lines thick, sandwiched between two strong oak planks, fitted with locks and elaborate hinges, making it as impossible to force it as if it were a prison door. Thus, though the house had a public passage through it, with a shop below and no doorkeeper, Lydie lived there without a fear. The dining-room, the little drawing-room, and her bedroom—every window-balcony a hanging garden—were luxurious in their Dutch cleanliness.

The Flemish nurse had never left Lydie, whom she called her daughter. The two went to church with a regularity that gave the royalist grocer, who lived below, in the corner shop, an excellent opinion of the worthy Canquoelle. The grocer’s family, kitchen, and counter-jumpers occupied the first floor and the entresol; the landlord inhabited the second floor; and the third had been let for twenty years past to a lapidary. Each resident had a key of the street door. The grocer’s wife was all the more willing to receive letters and parcels addressed to these three quiet households, because the grocer’s shop had a letter-box.

Without these details, strangers, or even those who know Paris well, could not have understood the privacy and quietude, the isolation and safety which made this house exceptional in Paris. After midnight, Pere Canquoelle could hatch plots, receive spies or ministers, wives or hussies, without any one on earth knowing anything about it.

Peyrade, of whom the Flemish woman would say to the grocer’s cook, “He would not hurt a fly!” was regarded as the best of men. He grudged his daughter nothing. Lydie, who had been taught music by Schmucke, was herself a musician capable of composing; she could wash in a sepia drawing, and paint in gouache and water-color. Every Sunday Peyrade dined at home with her. On that day this worthy was wholly paternal.

Lydie, religious but not a bigot, took the Sacrament at Easter, and confessed every month. Still, she allowed herself from time to time to be treated to the play. She walked in the Tuileries when it was fine. These were all her pleasures, for she led a sedentary life. Lydie, who worshiped her father, knew absolutely nothing of his sinister gifts and dark employments. Not a wish had ever disturbed this pure child’s pure life. Slight and handsome like her mother, gifted with an exquisite voice, and a delicate face framed in fine fair hair, she looked like one of those angels, mystical rather than real, which some of the early painters grouped in the background of the Holy Family. The glance of her blue eyes seemed to bring a beam from the sky on those she favored with a look. Her dress, quite simple, with no exaggeration of fashion, had a delightful middle-class modesty. Picture to yourself an old Satan as the father of an angel, and purified in her divine presence, and you will have an idea of Peyrade and his daughter. If anybody had soiled this jewel, her father would have invented, to swallow him alive, one of those dreadful plots in which, under the Restoration, the unhappy wretches were trapped who were designate to die on the scaffold. A thousand crowns were ample maintenance for Lydie and Katt, whom she called nurse.

As Peyrade turned into the Rue des Moineaux, he saw Contenson; he outstripped him, went upstairs before him, heard the man’s steps on the stairs, and admitted him before the woman had put her nose out of the kitchen door. A bell rung by the opening of a glass door, on the third story where the lapidary lived warned the residents on that and the fourth floors when a visitor was coming to them. It need hardly be said that, after midnight, Peyrade muffled this bell.

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

Philosopher was the nickname bestowed on Contenson by Peyrade, and well merited by the Epictetus among police agents. The name of Contenson, alas! hid one of the most ancient names of feudal Normandy.

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

“What is it? Political?”

“No, a piece of idiocy. Baron de Nucingen, you know, the old certified swindler, is neighing after a woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes, and she has got to be found, or he will die of love.—They had a consultation of doctors yesterday, by what his man tells me.—I have already eased him of a thousand francs under pretence of seeking the fair one.”

And Contenson related Nucingen’s meeting with Esther, adding that the Baron had now some further information.

“All right,” said Peyrade, “we will find his Dulcinea; tell the Baron to come to-night in a carriage to the Champs-Elysees—the corner of the Avenue de Gabriel and the Allee de Marigny.”

Peyrade saw Contenson out, and knocked at his daughter’s rooms, as he always knocked to be let in. He was full of glee; chance had just offered the means, at last, of getting the place he longed for.

He flung himself into a deep armchair, after kissing Lydie on the forehead, and said:

“Play me something.”

Lydie played him a composition for the piano by Beethoven.

“That is very well played, my pet,” said he, taking Lydie on his knees. “Do you know that we are one-and-twenty years old? We must get married soon, for our old daddy is more than seventy——”

“I am quite happy here,” said she.

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

“Why, whom should I love?”

“I am dining at home, my darling; go and tell Katt. I am thinking of settling, of getting an appointment, and finding a husband worthy of you; some good young man, very clever, whom you may some day be proud of——”

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

“You have seen one then?”

“Yes, in the Tuileries,” replied Lydie. “He walked past me; he was giving his arm to the Comtesse de Serizy.”

“And his name is?”

“Lucien de Rubempre.—I was sitting with Katt under a lime-tree, thinking of nothing. There were two ladies sitting by me, and one said to the other, ‘There are Madame de Serizy and that handsome Lucien de Rubempre.’—I looked at the couple that the two ladies were watching. ‘Oh, my dear!’ said the other, ‘some women are very lucky! That woman is allowed to do everything she pleases just because she was a de Ronquerolles, and her husband is in power.’—‘But, my dear,’ said the other lady, ‘Lucien costs her very dear.’—What did she mean, papa?”

“Just nonsense, such as people of fashion will talk,” replied Peyrade, with an air of perfect candor. “Perhaps they were alluding to political matters.”

“Well, in short, you asked me a question, so I answer you. If you want me to marry, find me a husband just like that young man.”

“Silly child!” replied her father. “The fact that a man is handsome is not always a sign of goodness. Young men gifted with an attractive appearance meet with no obstacles at the beginning of life, so they make no use of any talent; they are corrupted by the advances made to them by society, and they have to pay interest later for their attractiveness!—What I should like for you is what the middle classes, the rich, and the fools leave unholpen and unprotected——”

“What, father?”

“An unrecognized man of talent. But, there, child; I have it in my power to hunt through every garret in Paris, and carry out your programme by offering for your affection a man as handsome as the young scamp you speak of; but a man of promise, with a future before him destined to glory and fortune.—By the way, I was forgetting. I must have a whole flock of nephews, and among them there must be one worthy of you!—I will write, or get some one to write to Provence.”

A strange coincidence! At this moment a young man, half-dead of hunger and fatigue, who had come on foot from the department of Vaucluse—a nephew of Pere Canquoelle’s in search of his uncle, was entering Paris through the Barriere de l’Italie. In the day-dreams of the family, ignorant of this uncle’s fate, Peyrade had supplied the text for many hopes; he was supposed to have returned from India with millions! Stimulated by these fireside romances, this grand-nephew, named Theodore, had started on a voyage round the world in quest of this eccentric uncle.

After enjoying for some hours the joys of paternity, Peyrade, his hair washed and dyed—for his powder was a disguise—dressed in a stout, coarse, blue frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, and a black cloak, shod in strong, thick-soled boots, furnished himself with a private card and walked slowly along the Avenue Gabriel, where Contenson, dressed as an old costermonger woman, met him in front of the gardens of the Elysee-Bourbon.

“Monsieur de Saint-Germain,” said Contenson, giving his old chief the name he was officially known by, “you have put me in the way of making five hundred pieces (francs); but what I came here for was to tell you that that damned Baron, before he gave me the shiners, had been to ask questions at the house (the Prefecture of Police).”

“I shall want you, no doubt,” replied Peyrade. “Look up numbers 7, 10, and 21; we can employ those men without any one finding it out, either at the Police Ministry or at the Prefecture.”

Contenson went back to a post near the carriage in which Monsieur de Nucingen was waiting for Peyrade.

“I am Monsieur de Saint-Germain,” said Peyrade to the Baron, raising himself to look over the carriage door.

“Ver’ goot; get in mit me,” replied the Baron, ordering the coachman to go on slowly to the Arc de l’Etoile.

“You have been to the Prefecture of Police, Monsieur le Baron? That was not fair. Might I ask what you said to M. le Prefet, and what he said in reply?” asked Peyrade.

“Before I should gif fife hundert francs to a filain like Contenson, I vant to know if he had earned dem. I simply said to the Prefet of Police dat I vant to employ ein agent named Peyrate to go abroat in a delicate matter, an’ should I trust him—unlimited!—The Prefet telt me you vas a very clefer man an’ ver’ honest man. An’ dat vas everything.”

“And now that you have learned my true name, Monsieur le Baron, will you tell me what it is you want?”

When the Baron had given a long and copious explanation, in his hideous Polish-Jew dialect, of his meeting with Esther and the cry of the man behind the carriage, and his vain efforts, he ended by relating what had occurred at his house the night before, Lucien’s involuntary smile, and the opinion expressed by Bianchon and some other young dandies that there must be some acquaintance between him and the unknown fair.

“Listen to me, Monsieur le Baron; you must, in the first instance, place ten thousand francs in my hands, on account for expenses; for, to you, this is a matter of life or death; and as your life is a business-manufactory, nothing must be left undone to find this woman for you. Oh, you are caught!——”

“Ja, I am caught!”

“If more money is wanted, Baron, I will let you know; put your trust in me,” said Peyrade. “I am not a spy, as you perhaps imagine. In 1807 I was Commissioner-General of Police at Antwerp; and now that Louis XVIII. is dead, I may tell you in confidence that for seven years I was the chief of his counter-police. So there is no beating me down. You must understand, Monsieur le Baron, that it is impossible to make any estimate of the cost of each man’s conscience before going into the details of such an affair. Be quite easy; I shall succeed. Do not fancy that you can satisfy me with a sum of money; I want something for my reward——”

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

“It is less than nothing to you.”

“Den I am your man.”

“You know the Kellers?”

“Oh! ver’ well.”

“Francois Keller is the Comte de Gondreville’s son-in-law, and the Comte de Gondreville and his son-in-law dined with you yesterday.”

“Who der teufel tolt you dat?” cried the Baron. “Dat vill be Georche; he is always a gossip.” Peyrade smiled, and the banker at once formed strange suspicions of his man-servant.

“The Comte de Gondreville is quite in a position to obtain me a place I covet at the Prefecture of Police; within forty-eight hours the prefet will have notice that such a place is to be created,” said Peyrade in continuation. “Ask for it for me; get the Comte de Gondreville to interest himself in the matter with some degree of warmth—and you will thus repay me for the service I am about to do you. I ask your word only; for, if you fail me, sooner or later you will curse the day you were born—you have Peyrade’s word for that.”

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

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

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

“Frankly—that is all I ask,” said Peyrade, “and frankness is the only thing at all new that you and I can offer to each other.”

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

“At the corner of the Pont Louis XVI.”

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

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

“What a queer business!” thought Peyrade, going back on foot to the Palais-Royal, where he intended trying to multiply his ten thousand francs by three, to make a little fortune for Lydie. “Here I am required to look into the private concerns of a very young man who has bewitched my little girl by a glance. He is, I suppose, one of those men who have an eye for a woman,” said he to himself, using an expression of a language of his own, in which his observations, or Corentin’s, were summed up in words that were anything rather than classical, but, for that very reason, energetic and picturesque.

The Baron de Nucingen, when he went in, was an altered man; he astonished his household and his wife by showing them a face full of life and color, so cheerful did he feel.

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

They were all at tea, in Delphine de Nucingen’s boudoir, having come in from the opera.

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

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

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

“Do men ever love their wives so?” cried Madame de Nucingen, feeling, or affecting to feel, a little jealous.

“When you have got her, you must ask us to sup with her,” said du Tillet to the Baron, “for I am very curious to study the creature who has made you so young as you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Now is your time to make him pay your fresh debts,” said Rastignac in the Baroness’ ear.

At this very moment Carlos was leaving the Rue Taitbout full of hope; he had been there to give some last advice to Europe, who was to play the principal part in the farce devised to take in the Baron de Nucingen. He was accompanied as far as the Boulevard by Lucien, who was not at all easy at finding this demon so perfectly disguised that even he had only recognized him by his voice.

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

“My boy, there is no such thing to be found in Paris. Such a complexion is not made in France.”

“I assure you, I am still quite amazed. Venus Callipyge has not such a figure. A man would lose his soul for her. But where did she spring from?”

“She was the handsomest girl in London. Drunk with gin, she killed her lover in a fit of jealousy. The lover was a wretch of whom the London police are well quit, and this woman was packed off to Paris for a time to let the matter blow over. The hussy was well brought up—the daughter of a clergyman. She speaks French as if it were her mother tongue. She does not know, and never will know, why she is here. She was told that if you took a fancy to her she might fleece you of millions, but that you were as jealous as a tiger, and she was told how Esther lived.”

“But supposing Nucingen should prefer her to Esther?”

“Ah, it is out at last!” cried Carlos. “You dread now lest what dismayed you yesterday should not take place after all! Be quite easy. That fair and fair-haired girl has blue eyes; she is the antipodes of the beautiful Jewess, and only such eyes as Esther’s could ever stir a man so rotten as Nucingen. What the devil! you could not hide an ugly woman. When this puppet has played her part, I will send her off in safe custody to Rome or to Madrid, where she will be the rage.”

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

“Go, my boy, amuse yourself. You will be a day older to-morrow. For my part, I must wait for some one whom I have instructed to learn what is going on at the Baron de Nucingen’s.”

“Who?”

“His valet’s mistress; for, after all, we must keep ourselves informed at every moment of what is going on in the enemy’s camp.”

At midnight, Paccard, Esther’s tall chasseur, met Carlos on the Pont des Arts, the most favorable spot in all Paris for saying a few words which no one must overhear. All the time they talked the servant kept an eye on one side, while his master looked out on the other.

“The Baron went to the Prefecture of Police this morning between four and five,” said the man, “and he boasted this evening that he should find the woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes—he had been promised it——”

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

“They have already employed Louchard the bailiff.”

“That would be child’s play,” replied Carlos. “We need fear nothing but the guardians of public safety, the criminal police; and so long as that is not set in motion, we can go on!”

“That is not all.”

“What else?”

“Our chums of the hulks.—I saw Lapouraille yesterday——He has choked off a married couple, and has bagged ten thousand five-franc pieces—in gold.”

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

“What is the order of the day?” said Paccard, with the respectful demeanor a marshal must have assumed when taking his orders from Louis XVIII.

“You must get out every evening at ten o’clock,” replied Herrera. “Make your way pretty briskly to the Bois de Vincennes, the Bois de Meudon, and de Ville-d’Avray. If any one should follow you, let them do it; be free of speech, chatty, open to a bribe. Talk about Rubempre’s jealousy and his mad passion for madame, saying that he would not on any account have it known that he had a mistress of that kind.”

“Enough.—Must I have any weapons?”

“Never!” exclaimed Carlos vehemently. “A weapon? Of what use would that be? To get us into a scrape. Do not under any circumstances use your hunting-knife. When you know that you can break the strongest man’s legs by the trick I showed you—when you can hold your own against three armed warders, feeling quite sure that you can account for two of them before they have got out flint and steel, what is there to be afraid of? Have not you your cane?”

“To be sure,” said the man.

Paccard, nicknamed The Old Guard, Old Wide-Awake, or The Right Man—a man with legs of iron, arms of steel, Italian whiskers, hair like an artist’s, a beard like a sapper’s, and a face as colorless and immovable as Contenson’s, kept his spirit to himself, and rejoiced in a sort of drum-major appearance which disarmed suspicion. A fugitive from Poissy or Melun has no such serious self-consciousness and belief in his own merit. As Giafar to the Haroun el Rasheed of the hulks, he served him with the friendly admiration which Peyrade felt for Corentin.

This huge fellow, with a small body in proportion to his legs, flat-chested, and lean of limb, stalked solemnly about on his two long pins. Whenever his right leg moved, his right eye took in everything around him with the placid swiftness peculiar to thieves and spies. The left eye followed the right eye’s example. Wiry, nimble, ready for anything at any time, but for a weakness of Dutch courage Paccard would have been perfect, Jacques Collin used to say, so completely was he endowed with the talents indispensable to a man at war with society; but the master had succeeded in persuading his slave to drink only in the evening. On going home at night, Paccard tippled the liquid gold poured into small glasses out of a pot-bellied stone jar from Danzig.

“We will make them open their eyes,” said Paccard, putting on his grand hat and feathers after bowing to Carlos, whom he called his Confessor.

These were the events which had led three men, so clever, each in his way, as Jacques Collin, Peyrade, and Corentin, to a hand-to-hand fight on the same ground, each exerting his talents in a struggle for his own passions or interests. It was one of those obscure but terrible conflicts on which are expended in marches and countermarches, in strategy, skill, hatred, and vexation, the powers that might make a fine fortune. Men and means were kept absolutely secret by Peyarde, seconded in this business by his friend Corentin—a business they thought but a trifle. And so, as to them, history is silent, as it is on the true causes of many revolutions.

But this was the result.

Five days after Monsieur de Nucingen’s interview with Peyrade in the Champs Elysees, a man of about fifty called in the morning, stepping out of a handsome cab, and flinging the reins to his servant. He had the dead-white complexion which a life in the “world” gives to diplomates, was dressed in blue cloth, and had a general air of fashion—almost that of a Minister of State.

He inquired of the servant who sat on a bench on the steps whether the Baron de Nucingen were at home; and the man respectfully threw open the splendid plate-glass doors.

“Your name, sir?” said the footman.

“Tell the Baron that I have come from the Avenue Gabriel,” said Corentin. “If anybody is with him, be sure not to say so too loud, or you will find yourself out of place!”

A minute later the man came back and led Corentin by the back passages to the Baron’s private room.

Corentin and the banker exchanged impenetrable glances, and both bowed politely.

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

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

“Monsieur de Rubempre’s mistress lives in the Rue Taitbout, in the apartment formerly occupied by Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, M. de Granville’s ex-mistress—the Attorney-General——”

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

“I can quite understand your being crazy about that splendid creature; it was a pleasure to me to look at her,” replied Corentin. “Lucien is so jealous of the girl that he never allows her to be seen; and she loves him devotedly; for in four years, since she succeeded la Bellefeuille in those rooms, inheriting her furniture and her profession, neither the neighbors, nor the porter, nor the other tenants in the house have ever set eyes on her. My lady never stirs out but at night. When she sets out, the blinds of the carriage are pulled down, and she is closely veiled.

“Lucien has other reasons besides jealousy for concealing this woman. He is to be married to Clotilde de Grandlieu, and he is at this moment Madame de Serizy’s favorite fancy. He naturally wishes to keep a hold on his fashionable mistress and on his promised bride. So, you are master of the position, for Lucien will sacrifice his pleasure to his interests and his vanity. You are rich; this is probably your last chance of happiness; be liberal. You can gain your end through her waiting-maid. Give the slut ten thousand francs; she will hide you in her mistress’ bedroom. It must be quite worth that to you.”

No figure of speech could describe the short, precise tone of finality in which Corentin spoke; the Baron could not fail to observe it, and his face expressed his astonishment—an expression he had long expunged from his impenetrable features.

“I have also to ask you for five thousand francs for my friend Peyrade, who has dropped five of your thousand-franc notes—a tiresome accident,” Corentin went on, in a lordly tone of command. “Peyrade knows his Paris too well to spend money in advertising, and he trusts entirely to you. But this is not the most important point,” added Corentin, checking himself in such a way as to make the request for money seem quite a trifle. “If you do not want to end your days miserably, get the place for Peyrade that he asked you to procure for him—and it is a thing you can easily do. The Chief of the General Police must have had notice of the matter yesterday. All that is needed is to get Gondreville to speak to the Prefet of Police.—Very well, just say to Malin, Comte de Gondreville, that it is to oblige one of the men who relieved him of MM. de Simeuse, and he will work it——”

“Here den, mensieur,” said the Baron, taking out five thousand-franc notes and handing them to Corentin.

“The waiting-maid is great friends with a tall chasseur named Paccard, living in the Rue de Provence, over a carriage-builder’s; he goes out as heyduque to persons who give themselves princely airs. You can get at Madame van Bogseck’s woman through Paccard, a brawny Piemontese, who has a liking for vermouth.”

This information, gracefully thrown in as a postscript, was evidently the return for the five thousand francs. The Baron was trying to guess Corentin’s place in life, for he quite understood that the man was rather a master of spies than a spy himself; but Corentin remained to him as mysterious as an inscription is to an archaeologist when three-quarters of the letters are missing.

“Vat is dat maid called?” he asked.

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

The Baron, in a transport of joy, left his business for the day, shut up his office, and went up to his rooms in the happy frame of mind of a young man of twenty looking forward to his first meeting with his first mistress.

The Baron took all the thousand-franc notes out of his private cash-box—a sum sufficient to make the whole village happy, fifty-five thousand francs—and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. But a millionaire’s lavishness can only be compared with his eagerness for gain. As soon as a whim or a passion is to be gratified, money is dross to a Croesus; in fact, he finds it harder to have whims than gold. A keen pleasure is the rarest thing in these satiated lives, full of the excitement that comes of great strokes of speculation, in which these dried-up hearts have burned themselves out.

For instance, one of the richest capitalists in Paris one day met an extremely pretty little working-girl. Her mother was with her, but the girl had taken the arm of a young fellow in very doubtful finery, with a very smart swagger. The millionaire fell in love with the girl at first sight; he followed her home, he went in; he heard all her story, a record of alternations of dancing at Mabille and days of starvation, of play-going and hard work; he took an interest in it, and left five thousand-franc notes under a five-franc piece—an act of generosity abused. Next day a famous upholsterer, Braschon, came to take the damsel’s orders, furnished rooms that she had chosen, and laid out twenty thousand francs. She gave herself up to the wildest hopes, dressed her mother to match, and flattered herself she would find a place for her ex-lover in an insurance office. She waited—a day, two days—then a week, two weeks. She thought herself bound to be faithful; she got into debt. The capitalist, called away to Holland, had forgotten the girl; he never went once to the Paradise where he had placed her, and from which she fell as low as it is possible to fall even in Paris.

Nucingen did not gamble, Nucingen did not patronize the Arts, Nucingen had no hobby; thus he flung himself into his passion for Esther with a headlong blindness, on which Carlos Herrera had confidently counted.

After his breakfast, the Baron sent for Georges, his body-servant, and desired him to go to the Rue Taitbout and ask Mademoiselle Eugenie, Madame van Bogseck’s maid, to come to his office on a matter of importance.

“You shall look out for her,” he added, “an’ make her valk up to my room, and tell her I shall make her fortune.”

Georges had the greatest difficulty in persuading Europe-Eugenie to come.

“Madame never lets me go out,” said she; “I might lose my place,” and so forth; and Georges sang her praises loudly to the Baron, who gave him ten louis.

“If madame goes out without her this evening,” said Georges to his master, whose eyes glowed like carbuncles, “she will be here by ten o’clock.”

“Goot. You shall come to dress me at nine o’clock—and do my hair. I shall look so goot as possible. I belief I shall really see dat mistress—or money is not money any more.”

The Baron spent an hour, from noon till one, in dyeing his hair and whiskers. At nine in the evening, having taken a bath before dinner, he made a toilet worthy of a bridegroom and scented himself—a perfect Adonis. Madame de Nucingen, informed of this metamorphosis, gave herself the treat of inspecting her husband.

“Good heavens!” cried she, “what a ridiculous figure! Do, at least, put on a black satin stock instead of that white neckcloth which makes your whiskers look so black; besides, it is so ‘Empire,’ quite the old fogy. You look like some super-annuated parliamentary counsel. And take off these diamond buttons; they are worth a hundred thousand francs apiece—that slut will ask you for them, and you will not be able to refuse her; and if a baggage is to have them, I may as well wear them as earrings.”

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

“Ridikilous, ridikilous! I hafe never telt you dat you shall be ridikilous when you dressed yourself so smart to see your little Mensieur de Rastignac!”

“I should hope that you never saw me make myself ridiculous. Am I the woman to make such blunders in the first syllable of my dress? Come, turn about. Button your coat up to the neck, all but the two top buttons, as the Duc de Maufrigneuse does. In short, try to look young.”

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

“Adie, motame,” said the banker, and he escorted his wife as far as her own rooms, to make sure that she should not overhear their conference.

On his return, he took Europe by the hand and led her into his room with a sort of ironical respect.

“Vell, my chilt, you are a happy creature, for you are de maid of dat most beautiful voman in de vorlt. And your fortune shall be made if you vill talk to her for me and in mine interests.”

“I would not do such a thing for ten thousand francs!” exclaimed Europe. “I would have you to know, Monsieur le Baron, that I am an honest girl.”

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

“And that is not everything,” Europe went on. “If you should not take madame’s fancy—and that is on the cards—she would be angry, and I am done for!—and my place is worth a thousand francs a year.”

“De capital to make ein tousant franc is twenty tousand franc; and if I shall gif you dat, you shall not lose noting.”

“Well, to be sure, if that is the tone you take about it, my worthy old fellow,” said Europe, “that is quite another story.—Where is the money?”

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

He noted the flash struck by each in turn from Europe’s eyes, betraying the greed he had counted on.

“That pays for my place, but how about my principles, my conscience?” said Europe, cocking her crafty little nose and giving the Baron a serio-comic leer.

“Your conscience shall not be pait for so much as your place; but I shall say fife tousand franc more,” said he adding five thousand-franc notes.

“No, no. Twenty thousand for my conscience, and five thousand for my place if I lose it——”

“Yust vat you please,” said he, adding the five notes. “But to earn dem you shall hite me in your lady’s room by night ven she shall be ‘lone.”

“If you swear never to tell who let you in, I agree. But I warn you of one thing.—Madame is as strong as a Turk, she is madly in love with Monsieur de Rubempre, and if you paid a million francs in banknotes she would never be unfaithful to him. It is very silly, but that is her way when she is in love; she is worse than an honest woman, I tell you! When she goes out for a drive in the woods at night, monsieur very seldom stays at home. She is gone out this evening, so I can hide you in my room. If madame comes in alone, I will fetch you; you can wait in the drawing-room. I will not lock the door into her room, and then—well, the rest is your concern—so be ready.”

“I shall pay you the twenty-fife tousand francs in dat drawing-room.—You gife—I gife!”

“Indeed!” said Europe, “you are so confiding as all that? On my word!”

“Oh, you will hafe your chance to fleece me yet. We shall be friends.”

“Well, then, be in the Rue Taitbout at midnight; but bring thirty thousand francs about you. A waiting-woman’s honesty, like a hackney cab, is much dearer after midnight.”

“It shall be more prudent if I gif you a cheque on my bank——”

“No, no” said Europe. “Notes, or the bargain is off.”

So at one in the morning the Baron de Nucingen, hidden in the garret where Europe slept, was suffering all the anxieties of a man who hopes to triumph. His blood seemed to him to be tingling in his toe-nails, and his head ready to burst like an overheated steam engine.

“I had more dan one hundert tousand crowns’ vort of enjoyment—in my mind,” he said to du Tillet when telling him the story.

He listened to every little noise in the street, and at two in the morning he heard his mistress’ carriage far away on the boulevard. His heart beat vehemently under his silk waistcoat as the gate turned on its hinges. He was about to behold the heavenly, the glowing face of his Esther!—the clatter of the carriage-step and the slam of the door struck upon his heart. He was more agitated in expectation of this supreme moment than he would have been if his fortune had been at stake.

“Ah, ha!” cried he, “dis is vat I call to lif—it is too much to lif; I shall be incapable of everything.”

“Madame is alone; come down,” said Europe, looking in. “Above all, make no noise, great elephant.”

“Great Elephant!” he repeated, laughing, and walking as if he trod on red-hot iron.

Europe led the way, carrying a candle.

“Here—count dem!” said the Baron when he reached the drawing-room, holding out the notes to Europe.

Europe took the thirty notes very gravely and left the room, locking the banker in.

Nucingen went straight to the bedroom, where he found the handsome Englishwoman.

“Is that you, Lucien?” said she.

“Nein, my peauty,” said Nucingen, but he said no more.

He stood speechless on seeing a woman the very antipodes to Esther; fair hair where he had seen black, slenderness where he had admired a powerful frame! A soft English evening where he had looked for the bright sun of Arabia.

“Heyday! were have you come from?—who are you?—what do you want?” cried the Englishwoman, pulling the bell, which made no sound.

“The bells dey are in cotton-vool, but hafe not any fear—I shall go ‘vay,” said he. “Dat is dirty tousant franc I hafe tron in de vater. Are you dat mistress of Mensieur Lucien de Rubempre?”

“Rather, my son,” said the lady, who spoke French well, “But vat vas you?” she went on, mimicking Nucingen’s accent.

“Ein man vat is ver’ much took in,” replied he lamentably.

“Is a man took in ven he finds a pretty voman?” asked she, with a laugh.

“Permit me to sent you to-morrow some chewels as a soufenir of de Baron von Nucingen.”

“Don’t know him!” said she, laughing like a crazy creature. “But the chewels will be welcome, my fat burglar friend.”

“You shall know him. Goot night, motame. You are a tidbit for ein king; but I am only a poor banker more dan sixty year olt, and you hafe made me feel vat power the voman I lofe hafe ofer me since your difine beauty hafe not make me forget her.”

“Vell, dat is ver’ pretty vat you say,” replied the Englishwoman.

“It is not so pretty vat she is dat I say it to.”

“You spoke of thirty thousand francs—to whom did you give them?”

“To dat hussy, your maid——”

The Englishwoman called Europe, who was not far off.

“Oh!” shrieked Europe, “a man in madame’s room, and he is not monsieur—how shocking!”

“Did he give you thirty thousand francs to let him in?”

“No, madame, for we are not worth it, the pair of us.”

And Europe set to screaming “Thief” so determinedly, that the banker made for the door in a fright, and Europe, tripping him up, rolled him down the stairs.

“Old wretch!” cried she, “you would tell tales to my mistress! Thief! thief! stop thief!”

The enamored Baron, in despair, succeeded in getting unhurt to his carriage, which he had left on the boulevard; but he was now at his wits’ end as to whom to apply to.

“And pray, madame, did you think to get my earnings out of me?” said Europe, coming back like a fury to the lady’s room.

“I know nothing of French customs,” said the Englishwoman.

“But one word from me to-morrow to monsieur, and you, madame, would find yourself in the streets,” retorted Europe insolently.

“Dat dam’ maid!” said the Baron to Georges, who naturally asked his master if all had gone well, “hafe do me out of dirty tousant franc—but it vas my own fault, my own great fault——”

“And so monsieur’s dress was all wasted. The deuce is in it, I should advise you, Monsieur le Baron, not to have taken your tonic for nothing——”

“Georches, I shall be dying of despair. I hafe cold—I hafe ice on mein heart—no more of Esther, my good friend.”

Georges was always the Baron’s friend when matters were serious.

Two days after this scene, which Europe related far more amusingly than it can be written, because she told it with much mimicry, Carlos and Lucien were breakfasting tete-a-tete.

“My dear boy, neither the police nor anybody else must be allowed to poke a nose into our concerns,” said Herrera in a low voice, as he lighted his cigar from Lucien’s. “It would not agree with us. I have hit on a plan, daring but effectual, to keep our Baron and his agents quiet. You must go to see Madame de Serizy, and make yourself very agreeable to her. Tell her, in the course of conversation, that to oblige Rastignac, who has long been sick of Madame de Nucingen, you have consented to play fence for him to conceal a mistress. Monsieur de Nucingen, desperately in love with this woman Rastignac keeps hidden—that will make her laugh—has taken it into his head to set the police to keep an eye on you—on you, who are innocent of all his tricks, and whose interest with the Grandlieus may be seriously compromised. Then you must beg the Countess to secure her husband’s support, for he is a Minister of State, to carry you to the Prefecture of Police.

“When you have got there, face to face with the Prefet, make your complaint, but as a man of political consequence, who will sooner or later be one of the motor powers of the huge machine of government. You will speak of the police as a statesman should, admiring everything, the Prefet included. The very best machines make oil-stains or splutter. Do not be angry till the right moment. You have no sort of grudge against Monsieur le Prefet, but persuade him to keep a sharp lookout on his people, and pity him for having to blow them up. The quieter and more gentlemanly you are, the more terrible will the Prefet be to his men. Then we shall be left in peace, and we may send for Esther back, for she must be belling like the does in the forest.”

The Prefet at that time was a retired magistrate. Retired magistrates make far too young Prefets. Partisans of the right, riding the high horse on points of law, they are not light-handed in arbitary action such as critical circumstances often require; cases in which the Prefet should be as prompt as a fireman called to a conflagration. So, face to face with the Vice-President of the Council of State, the Prefet confessed to more faults than the police really has, deplored its abuses, and presently was able to recollect the visit paid to him by the Baron de Nucingen and his inquiries as to Peyrade. The Prefet, while promising to check the rash zeal of his agents, thanked Lucien for having come straight to him, promised secrecy, and affected to understand the intrigue.

A few fine speeches about personal liberty and the sacredness of home life were bandied between the Prefet and the Minister; Monsieur de Serizy observing in conclusion that though the high interests of the kingdom sometimes necessitated illegal action in secret, crime began when these State measures were applied to private cases.

Next day, just as Peyrade was going to his beloved Cafe David, where he enjoyed watching the bourgeois eat, as an artist watches flowers open, a gendarme in private clothes spoke to him in the street.

“I was going to fetch you,” said he in his ear. “I have orders to take you to the Prefecture.”

Peyrade called a hackney cab, and got in without saying a single word, followed by the gendarme.

The Prefet treated Peyrade as though he were the lowest warder on the hulks, walking to and fro in a side path of the garden of the Prefecture, which at that time was on the Quai des Orfevres.

“It is not without good reason, monsieur, that since 1830 you have been kept out of office. Do not you know to what risk you expose us, not to mention yourself?”

The lecture ended in a thunderstroke. The Prefet sternly informed poor Peyrade that not only would his yearly allowance be cut off, but that he himself would be narrowly watched. The old man took the shock with an air of perfect calm. Nothing can be more rigidly expressionless than a man struck by lightning. Peyrade had lost all his stake in the game. He had counted on getting an appointment, and he found himself bereft of everything but the alms bestowed by his friend Corentin.

“I have been the Prefet of Police myself; I think you perfectly right,” said the old man quietly to the functionary who stood before him in his judicial majesty, and who answered with a significant shrug.

“But allow me, without any attempt to justify myself, to point out that you do not know me at all,” Peyrade went on, with a keen glance at the Prefet. “Your language is either too severe to a man who has been the head of the police in Holland, or not severe enough for a mere spy. But, Monsieur le Prefet,” Peyrade added after a pause, while the other kept silence, “bear in mind what I now have the honor to telling you: I have no intention of interfering with your police nor of attempting to justify myself, but you will presently discover that there is some one in this business who is being deceived; at this moment it is your humble servant; by and by you will say, ‘It was I.’”

And he bowed to the chief, who sat passive to conceal his amazement.

Peyrade returned home, his legs and arms feeling broken, and full of cold fury with the Baron. Nobody but that burly banker could have betrayed a secret contained in the minds of Contenson, Peyrade, and Corentin. The old man accused the banker of wishing to avoid paying now that he had gained his end. A single interview had been enough to enable him to read the astuteness of this most astute of bankers.

“He tries to compound with every one, even with us; but I will be revenged,” thought the old fellow. “I have never asked a favor of Corentin; I will ask him now to help me to be revenged on that imbecile money-box. Curse the Baron!—Well, you will know the stuff I am made of one fine morning when you find your daughter disgraced!—But does he love his daughter, I wonder?”

By the evening of the day when this catastrophe had upset the old man’s hopes he had aged by ten years. As he talked to his friend Corentin, he mingled his lamentations with tears wrung from him by the thought of the melancholy prospects he must bequeath to his daughter, his idol, his treasure, his peace-offering to God.

“We will follow the matter up,” said Corentin. “First of all, we must be sure that it was the Baron who peached. Were we wise in enlisting Gondreville’s support? That old rascal owes us too much not to be anxious to swamp us; indeed, I am keeping an eye on his son-in-law Keller, a simpleton in politics, and quite capable of meddling in some conspiracy to overthrow the elder Branch to the advantage of the younger.—I shall know to-morrow what is going on at Nucingen’s, whether he has seen his beloved, and to whom we owe this sharp pull up.—Do not be out of heart. In the first place, the Prefet will not hold his appointment much longer; the times are big with revolution, and revolutions make good fishing for us.”

A peculiar whistle was just then heard in the street.

“That is Contenson,” said Peyrade, who put a light in the window, “and he has something to say that concerns me.”

A minute later the faithful Contenson appeared in the presence of the two gnomes of the police, whom he revered as though they were two genii.

“What is up?” asked Corentin.

“A new thing! I was coming out of 113, where I lost everything, when whom do I spy under the gallery? Georges! The man has been dismissed by the Baron, who suspects him of treachery.”

“That is the effect of a smile I gave him,” said Peyrade.

“Bah! when I think of all the mischief I have known caused by smiles!” said Corentin.

“To say nothing of that caused by a whip-lash,” said Peyrade, referring to the Simeuse case. (In Une Tenebreuse affaire.) “But come, Contenson, what is going on?”

“This is what is going on,” said Contenson. “I made Georges blab by getting him to treat me to an endless series of liqueurs of every color—I left him tipsy; I must be as full as a still myself!—Our Baron has been to the Rue Taitbout, crammed with Pastilles du Serail. There he found the fair one you know of; but—a good joke! The English beauty is not his fair unknown!—And he has spent thirty thousand francs to bribe the lady’s-maid, a piece of folly!

“That creature thinks itself a great man because it does mean things with great capital. Reverse the proposition, and you have the problem of which a man of genius is the solution.—The Baron came home in a pitiable condition. Next day Georges, to get his finger in the pie, said to his master:

“‘Why, Monsieur le Baron, do you employ such blackguards? If you would only trust to me, I would find the unknown lady, for your description of her is enough. I shall turn Paris upside down.’—‘Go ahead,’ says the Baron; ‘I shall reward you handsomely!’—Georges told me the whole story with the most absurd details. But—man is born to be rained upon!

“Next day the Baron received an anonymous letter something to this effect: ‘Monsieur de Nucingen is dying of love for an unknown lady; he has already spent a great deal utterly in vain; if he will repair at midnight to the end of the Neuilly Bridge, and get into the carriage behind which the chasseur he saw at Vincennes will be standing, allowing himself to be blindfolded, he will see the woman he loves. As his wealth may lead him to suspect the intentions of persons who proceed in such a fashion, he may bring, as an escort, his faithful Georges. And there will be nobody in the carriage.’—Off the Baron goes, taking Georges with him, but telling him nothing. They both submit to have their eyes bound up and their heads wrapped in veils; the Baron recognizes the man-servant.

“Two hours later, the carriage, going at the pace of Louis XVIII.—God rest his soul! He knew what was meant by the police, he did!—pulled up in the middle of a wood. The Baron had the handkerchief off, and saw, in a carriage standing still, his adored fair—when, whiff! she vanished. And the carriage, at the same lively pace, brought him back to the Neuilly Bridge, where he found his own.

“Some one had slipped into Georges’ hand a note to this effect: ‘How many banknotes will the Baron part with to be put into communication with his unknown fair? Georges handed this to his master; and the Baron, never doubting that Georges was in collusion with me or with you, Monsieur Peyrade, to drive a hard bargain, turned him out of the house. What a fool that banker is! He ought not to have sent away Georges before he had known the unknown!”

“Then Georges saw the woman?” said Corentin.

“Yes,” replied Contenson.

“Well,” cried Peyrade, “and what is she like?”

“Oh,” said Contenson, “he said but one word—‘A sun of loveliness.’”

“We are being tricked by some rascals who beat us at the game,” said Peyrade. “Those villains mean to sell their woman very dear to the Baron.”

“Ja, mein Herr,” said Contenson. “And so, when I heard you got slapped in the face at the Prefecture, I made Georges blab.”

“I should like very much to know who it is that has stolen a march on me,” said Peyrade. “We would measure our spurs!”

“We must play eavesdropper,” said Contenson.

“He is right,” said Peyrade. “We must get into chinks to listen, and wait——”

“We will study that side of the subject,” cried Corentin. “For the present, I am out of work. You, Peyrade, be a very good boy. We must always obey Monsieur le Prefet!”

“Monsieur de Nucingen wants bleeding,” said Contenson; “he has too many banknotes in his veins.”

“But it was Lydie’s marriage-portion I looked for there!” said Peyrade, in a whisper to Corentin.

“Now, come along, Contenson, let us be off, and leave our daddy to by-bye, by-bye!”

“Monsieur,” said Contenson to Corentin on the doorstep, “what a queer piece of brokerage our good friend was planning! Heh!—What, marry a daughter with the price of——Ah, ha! It would make a pretty little play, and very moral too, entitled ‘A Girl’s Dower.’”

“You are highly organized animals, indeed,” replied Corentin. “What ears you have! Certainly Social Nature arms all her species with the qualities needed for the duties she expects of them! Society is second nature.”

“That is a highly philosophical view to take,” cried Contenson. “A professor would work it up into a system.”

“Let us find out all we can,” replied Corentin with a smile, as he made his way down the street with the spy, “as to what goes on at Monsieur de Nucingen’s with regard to this girl—the main facts; never mind the details——”

“Just watch to see if his chimneys are smoking!” said Contenson.

“Such a man as the Baron de Nucingen cannot be happy incognito,” replied Corentin. “And besides, we for whom men are but cards, ought never to be tricked by them.”

“By gad! it would be the condemned jail-bird amusing himself by cutting the executioner’s throat.”

“You always have something droll to say,” replied Corentin, with a dim smile, that faintly wrinkled his set white face.

This business was exceedingly important in itself, apart from its consequences. If it were not the Baron who had betrayed Peyrade, who could have had any interest in seeing the Prefet of Police? From Corentin’s point of view it seemed suspicious. Were there any traitors among his men? And as he went to bed, he wondered what Peyrade, too, was considering.

“Who can have gone to complain to the Prefet? Whom does the woman belong to?”

And thus, without knowing each other, Jacques Collin, Peyrade, and Corentin were converging to a common point; while the unhappy Esther, Nucingen, and Lucien were inevitably entangled in the struggle which had already begun, and of which the point of pride, peculiar to police agents, was making a war to the death.

Thanks to Europe’s cleverness, the more pressing half of the sixty thousand francs of debt owed by Esther and Lucien was paid off. The creditors did not even lose confidence. Lucien and his evil genius could breathe for a moment. Like some pool, they could start again along the edge of the precipice where the strong man was guiding the weak man to the gibbet or to fortune.

“We are staking now,” said Carlos to his puppet, “to win or lose all. But, happily, the cards are beveled, and the punters young.”

For some time Lucien, by his terrible Mentor’s orders, had been very attentive to Madame de Serizy. It was, in fact, indispensable that Lucien should not be suspected of having kept a woman for his mistress. And in the pleasure of being loved, and the excitement of fashionable life, he found a spurious power of forgetting. He obeyed Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu by never seeing her excepting in the Bois or the Champs-Elysees.

On the day after Esther was shut up in the park-keeper’s house, the being who was to her so enigmatic and terrible, who weighed upon her soul, came to desire her to sign three pieces of stamped paper, made terrible by these fateful words: on the first, accepted payable for sixty thousand francs; on the second, accepted payable for a hundred and twenty thousand francs; on the third, accepted payable for a hundred and twenty thousand francs—three hundred thousand francs in all. By writing Bon pour, you simply promise to pay. The word accepted constitutes a bill of exchange, and makes you liable to imprisonment. The word entails, on the person who is so imprudent as to sign, the risk of five years’ imprisonment—a punishment which the police magistrate hardly ever inflicts, and which is reserved at the assizes for confirmed rogues. The law of imprisonment for debt is a relic of the days of barbarism, which combines with its stupidity the rare merit of being useless, inasmuch as it never catches swindlers.

“The point,” said the Spaniard to Esther, “is to get Lucien out of his difficulties. We have debts to the tune of sixty thousand francs, and with these three hundred thousand francs we may perhaps pull through.”

Having antedated the bills by six months, Carlos had had them drawn on Esther by a man whom the county court had “misunderstood,” and whose adventures, in spite of the excitement they had caused, were soon forgotten, hidden, lost, in the uproar of the great symphony of July 1830.

This young fellow, a most audacious adventurer, the son of a lawyer’s clerk of Boulogne, near Paris, was named Georges Marie Destourny. His father, obliged by adverse circumstances to sell his connection, died in 1824, leaving his son without the means of living, after giving him a brilliant education, the folly of the lower middle class. At twenty-three the clever young law-student had denied his paternity by printing on his cards

              Georges d’Estourny.

This card gave him an odor of aristocracy; and now, as a man of fashion, he was so impudent as to set up a tilbury and a groom and haunt the clubs. One line will account for this: he gambled on the Bourse with the money intrusted to him by the kept women of his acquaintance. Finally he fell into the hands of the police, and was charged with playing at cards with too much luck.

He had accomplices, youths whom he had corrupted, his compulsory satellites, accessory to his fashion and his credit. Compelled to fly, he forgot to pay his differences on the Bourse. All Paris—the Paris of the Stock Exchange and Clubs—was still shaken by this double stroke of swindling.

In the days of his splendor Georges d’Estourny, a handsome youth, and above all, a jolly fellow, as generous as a brigand chief, had for a few months “protected” La Torpille. The false Abbe based his calculations on Esther’s former intimacy with this famous scoundrel, an incident peculiar to women of her class.

Georges d’Estourny, whose ambition grew bolder with success, had taken under his patronage a man who had come from the depths of the country to carry on a business in Paris, and whom the Liberal party were anxious to indemnify for certain sentences endured with much courage in the struggle of the press with Charles X.‘s government, the persecution being relaxed, however, during the Martignac administration. The Sieur Cerizet had then been pardoned, and he was henceforth known as the Brave Cerizet.

Cerizet then, being patronized for form’s sake by the bigwigs of the Left, founded a house which combined the business of a general agency with that of a bank and a commission agency. It was one of those concerns which, in business, remind one of the servants who advertise in the papers as being able and willing to do everything. Cerizet was very glad to ally himself with Georges d’Estourny, who gave him hints.

Esther, in virtue of the anecdote about Nonon, might be regarded as the faithful guardian of part of Georges d’Estourny’s fortune. An endorsement in the name of Georges d’Estourny made Carlos Herrera master of the money he had created. This forgery was perfectly safe so long as Mademoiselle Esther, or some one for her, could, or was bound to pay.

After making inquiries as to the house of Cerizet, Carlos perceived that he had to do with one of those humble men who are bent on making a fortune, but—lawfully. Cerizet, with whom d’Estourny had really deposited his moneys, had in hand a considerable sum with which he was speculating for a rise on the Bourse, a state of affairs which allowed him to style himself a banker. Such things are done in Paris; a man may be despised,—but money, never.

Carlos went off to Cerizet intending to work him after his manner; for, as it happened, he was master of all this worthy’s secrets—a meet partner for d’Estourny.

Cerizet the Brave lived in an entresol in the Rue du Gros-Chenet, and Carlos, who had himself mysteriously announced as coming from Georges d’Estourny, found the self-styled banker quite pale at the name. The Abbe saw in this humble private room a little man with thin, light hair; and recognized him at once, from Lucien’s description, as the Judas who had ruined David Sechard.

“Can we talk here without risk of being overheard?” said the Spaniard, now metamorphosed into a red-haired Englishman with blue spectacles, as clean and prim as a Puritan going to meeting.

“Why, monsieur?” said Cerizet. “Who are you?”

“Mr. William Barker, a creditor of M. d’Estourny’s; and I can prove to you the necessity for keeping your doors closed if you wish it. We know, monsieur, all about your connections with the Petit-Clauds, the Cointets, and the Sechards of Angouleme——”

On hearing these words, Cerizet rushed to the door and shut it, flew to another leading into a bedroom and bolted it; then he said to the stranger:

“Speak lower, monsieur,” and he studied the sham Englishman as he asked him, “What do you want with me?”

“Dear me,” said William Barker, “every one for himself in this world. You had the money of that rascal d’Estourny.—Be quite easy, I have not come to ask for it; but that scoundrel, who deserves hanging, between you and me, gave me these bills, saying that there might be some chance of recovering the money; and as I do not choose to prosecute in my own name, he told me you would not refuse to back them.”

Cerizet looked at the bills.

“But he is no longer at Frankfort,” said he.

“I know it,” replied Barker, “but he may still have been there at the date of those bills——”

“I will not take the responsibility,” said Cerizet.

“I do not ask such a sacrifice of you,” replied Barker; “you may be instructed to receive them. Endorse them, and I will undertake to recover the money.”

“I am surprised that d’Estourny should show so little confidence in me,” said Cerizet.

“In his position,” replied Barker, “you can hardly blame him for having put his eggs in different baskets.”

“Can you believe——” the little broker began, as he handed back to the Englishman the bills of exchange formally accepted.

“I believe that you will take good care of his money,” said Barker. “I am sure of it! It is already on the green table of the Bourse.”

“My fortune depends——”

“On your appearing to lose it,” said Barker.

“Sir!” cried Cerizet.

“Look here, my dear Monsieur Cerizet,” said Barker, coolly interrupting him, “you will do me a service by facilitating this payment. Be so good as to write me a letter in which you tell me that you are sending me these bills receipted on d’Estourny’s account, and that the collecting officer is to regard the holder of the letter as the possessor of the three bills.”

“Will you give me your name?”

“No names,” replied the English capitalist. “Put ‘The bearer of this letter and these bills.’—You will be handsomely repaid for obliging me.”

“How?” said Cerizet.

“In one word—You mean to stay in France, do not you?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Well, Georges d’Estourny will never re-enter the country.”

“Pray why?”

“There are five persons at least to my knowledge who would murder him, and he knows it.”

“Then no wonder he is asking me for money enough to start him trading to the Indies?” cried Cerizet. “And unfortunately he has compelled me to risk everything in State speculation. We already owe heavy differences to the house of du Tillet. I live from hand to mouth.”

“Withdraw your stakes.”

“Oh! if only I had known this sooner!” exclaimed Cerizet. “I have missed my chance!”

“One last word,” said Barker. “Keep your own counsel, you are capable of that; but you must be faithful too, which is perhaps less certain. We shall meet again, and I will help you to make a fortune.”

Having tossed this sordid soul a crumb of hope that would secure silence for some time to come, Carlos, still disguised as Barker, betook himself to a bailiff whom he could depend on, and instructed him to get the bills brought home to Esther.

“They will be paid all right,” said he to the officer. “It is an affair of honor; only we want to do the thing regularly.”

Barker got a solicitor to represent Esther in court, so that judgment might be given in presence of both parties. The collecting officer, who was begged to act with civility, took with him all the warrants for procedure, and came in person to seize the furniture in the Rue Taitbout, where he was received by Europe. Her personal liability once proved, Esther was ostensibly liable, beyond dispute, for three hundred and more thousand francs of debts.

In all this Carlos displayed no great powers of invention. The farce of false debts is often played in Paris. There are many sub-Gobsecks and sub-Gigonnets who, for a percentage, will lend themselves to this subterfuge, and regard the infamous trick as a jest. In France everything—even a crime—is done with a laugh. By this means refractory parents are made to pay, or rich mistresses who might drive a hard bargain, but who, face to face with flagrant necessity, or some impending dishonor, pay up, if with a bad grace. Maxime de Trailles had often used such means, borrowed from the comedies of the old stage. Carlos Herrera, who wanted to save the honor of his gown, as well as Lucien’s, had worked the spell by a forgery not dangerous for him, but now so frequently practised that Justice is beginning to object. There is, it is said, a Bourse for falsified bills near the Palais Royal, where you may get a forged signature for three francs.

Before entering on the question of the hundred thousand crowns that were to keep the door of the bedroom, Carlos determined first to extract a hundred thousand more from M. de Nucingen.

And this was the way: By his orders Asie got herself up for the Baron’s benefit as an old woman fully informed as to the unknown beauty’s affairs.

Hitherto, novelists of manners have placed on the stage a great many usurers; but the female money-lender has been overlooked, the Madame la Ressource of the present day—a very singular figure, euphemistically spoken of as a “ward-robe purchaser”; a part that the ferocious Asie could play, for she had two old-clothes shops managed by women she could trust—one in the Temple, and the other in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Marc.

“You must get into the skin of Madame de Saint-Esteve,” said he.

Herrera wished to see Asie dressed.

The go-between arrived in a dress of flowered damask, made of the curtains of some dismantled boudoir, and one of those shawls of Indian design—out of date, worn, and valueless, which end their career on the backs of these women. She had a collar of magnificent lace, though torn, and a terrible bonnet; but her shoes were of fine kid, in which the flesh of her fat feet made a roll of black-lace stocking.

“And my waist buckle!” she exclaimed, displaying a piece of suspicious-looking finery, prominent on her cook’s stomach, “There’s style for you! and my front!—Oh, Ma’me Nourrisson has turned me out quite spiff!”

“Be as sweet as honey at first,” said Carlos; “be almost timid, as suspicious as a cat; and, above all, make the Baron ashamed of having employed the police, without betraying that you quake before the constable. Finally, make your customer understand in more or less plain terms that you defy all the police in the world to discover his jewel. Take care to destroy your traces.

“When the Baron gives you a right to tap him on the stomach, and call him a pot-bellied old rip, you may be as insolent as you please, and make him trot like a footman.”

Nucingen—threatened by Asie with never seeing her again if he attempted the smallest espionage—met the woman on his way to the Bourse, in secret, in a wretched entresol in the Rue Nueve-Saint-Marc. How often, and with what rapture, have amorous millionaires trodden these squalid paths! the pavements of Paris know. Madame de Saint-Esteve, by tossing the Baron from hope to despair by turns, brought him to the point when he insisted on being informed of all that related to the unknown beauty at ANY COST. Meanwhile, the law was put in force, and with such effect that the bailiffs, finding no resistance from Esther, put in an execution on her effects without losing a day.

Lucien, guided by his adviser, paid the recluse at Saint-Germain five or six visits. The merciless author of all these machinations thought this necessary to save Esther from pining to death, for her beauty was now their capital. When the time came for them to quit the park-keeper’s lodge, he took Lucien and the poor girl to a place on the road whence they could see Paris, where no one could overhear them. They all three sat down in the rising sun, on the trunk of a felled poplar, looking over one of the finest prospects in the world, embracing the course of the Seine, with Montmartre, Paris, and Saint-Denis.

“My children,” said Carlos, “your dream is over.—You, little one, will never see Lucien again; or if you should, you must have known him only for a few days, five years ago.”

“Death has come upon me then,” said she, without shedding a tear.

“Well, you have been ill these five years,” said Herrera. “Imagine yourself to be consumptive, and die without boring us with your lamentations. But you will see, you can still live, and very comfortably too.—Leave us, Lucien—go and gather sonnets!” said he, pointing to a field a little way off.

Lucien cast a look of humble entreaty at Esther, one of the looks peculiar to such men—weak and greedy, with tender hearts and cowardly spirits. Esther answered with a bow of her head, which said: “I will hear the executioner, that I may know how to lay my head under the axe, and I shall have courage enough to die decently.”

The gesture was so gracious, but so full of dreadful meaning, that the poet wept; Esther flew to him, clasped him in her arms, drank away the tears, and said, “Be quite easy!” one of those speeches that are spoken with the manner, the look, the tones of delirium.

Carlos then explained to her quite clearly, without attenuation, often with horrible plainness of speech, the critical position in which Lucien found himself, his connection with the Hotel Grandlieu, his splendid prospects if he should succeed; and finally, how necessary it was that Esther should sacrifice herself to secure him this triumphant future.

“What must I do?” cried she, with the eagerness of a fanatic.

“Obey me blindly,” said Carlos. “And what have you to complain of? It rests with you to achieve a happy lot. You may be what Tullia is, what your old friends Florine, Mariette, and la Val-Noble are—the mistress of a rich man whom you need not love. When once our business is settled, your lover is rich enough to make you happy.”

“Happy!” said she, raising her eyes to heaven.

“You have lived in Paradise for four years,” said he. “Can you not live on such memories?”

“I will obey you,” said she, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “For the rest, do not worry yourself. You have said it; my love is a mortal disease.”

“That is not enough,” said Carlos; “you must preserve your looks. At a little past two-and-twenty you are in the prime of your beauty, thanks to your past happiness. And, above all, be the ‘Torpille’ again. Be roguish, extravagant, cunning, merciless to the millionaire I put in your power. Listen to me! That man is a robber on a grand scale; he has been ruthless to many persons; he has grown fat on the fortunes of the widow and the orphan; you will avenge them!

“Asie is coming to fetch you in a hackney coach, and you will be in Paris this evening. If you allow any one to suspect your connection with Lucien, you may as well blow his brains out at once. You will be asked where you have been for so long. You must say that you have been traveling with a desperately jealous Englishman.—You used to have wit enough to humbug people. Find such wit again now.”

Have you ever seen a gorgeous kite, the giant butterfly of childhood, twinkling with gilding, and soaring to the sky? The children forget the string that holds it, some passer-by cuts it, the gaudy toy turns head over heels, as the boys say, and falls with terrific rapidity. Such was Esther as she listened to Carlos.

                      WHAT LOVE COSTS AN OLD MAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Need must!” said Nucingen.

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

“But vere is she?”

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

“A fly——?”

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

“Twenty-fife say!” cried the banker.

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

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

“You cry up de goots,” said Nucingen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Vere to?” said the Baron.

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

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

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

“You tink of eferytink!” said the baron.

“It is my business,” said she.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hah! I onderstant!” said the Baron.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She drew Nucingen aside and said:

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

“An’ vat of you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she fled into her room and locked the door.

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

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

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

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

“Esther!”

No reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What about our little debts?” said Louchard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, mademoiselle,” said Louchard.

“Yes,” replied Contenson.

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

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

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

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

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

“Impossible, M. le Baron.”

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

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

Europe proceeded to melt into tears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I will go and give the creditor a good laugh,” said Asie, “and he will give me something for a treat 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.”

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

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

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

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

                                                         “ESTHER.”
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You go so slow—vip de horse!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The coachman drove to a famous pastrycook’s.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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