“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 wou
ld 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.”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 615
