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, sts 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 rwhence 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.
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