In Paris extremes are made to meet by passion. Vice is constantly binding the rich to the poor, the great to the mean. The Empress consults Mademoiselle Lenormand; the fine gentleman in every age can always find a Ramponneau.
The man returned within two hours.
“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “Madame de Saint-Esteve is ruined.”
“Ah! so much de better!” cried the Baron in glee. “I shall hafe her safe den.”
“The good woman is given to gambling, it would seem,” the valet went on. “And, moreover, she is under the thumb of a third-rate actor in a suburban theatre, whom, for decency’s sake, she calls her godson. She is a first-rate cook, it would seem, and wants a place.”
“Dose teufel of geniuses of de common people hafe alvays ten vays of making money, and ein dozen vays of spending it,” said the Baron to himself, quite unconscious that Panurge had thought the same thing.
He sent his servant off in quest of Madame de Saint-Esteve, who did not come till the next day. Being questioned by Asie, the servant revealed to this female spy the terrible effects of the notes written to Monsieur le Baron by his mistress.
“Monsieur must be desperately in love with the woman,” said he in conclusion, “for he was very near dying. For my part, I advised him never to go back to her, for he will be wheedled over at once. A woman who has already cost Monsieur le Baron five hundred thousand francs, they say, without counting what he has spent on the house in the Rue Saint-Georges! But the woman cares for money, and for money only. — As madame came out of monsieur’s room, she said with a laugh: ‘If this goes on, that slut will make a widow of me!’”
“The devil!” cried Asie; “it will never do to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
“Monsieur le Baron has no hope now but in you,” said the valet.
“Ay! The fact is, I do know how to make a woman go.”
“Well, walk in,” said the man, bowing to such occult powers.
“Well,” said the false Saint-Esteve, going into the sufferer’s room with an abject air, “Monsieur le Baron has met with some difficulties? What can you expect! Everybody is open to attack on his weak side. Dear me, I have had my troubles too. Within two months the wheel of Fortune has turned upside down for me. Here I am looking out for a place! — We have neither of us been very wise. If Monsieur le Baron would take me as cook to Madame Esther, I would be the most devoted of slaves. I should be useful to you, monsieur, to keep an eye on Eugenie and madame.”
“Dere is no hope of dat,” said the Baron. “I cannot succeet in being de master, I am let such a tance as — — ”
“As a top,” Asie put in. “Well, you have made others dance, daddy, and the little slut has got you, and is making a fool of you. — Heaven is just!”
“Just?” said the Baron. “I hafe not sent for you to preach to me — — ”
“Pooh, my boy! A little moralizing breaks no bones. It is the salt of life to the like of us, as vice is to your bigots. — Come, have you been generous? You have paid her debts?”
“Ja,” said the Baron lamentably.
“That is well; and you have taken her things out of pawn, and that is better. But you must see that it is not enough. All this gives her no occupation, and these creatures love to cut a dash — — ”
“I shall hafe a surprise for her, Rue Saint-Georches — she knows dat,” said the Baron. “But I shall not be made a fool of.”
“Very well then, let her go.”
“I am only afrait dat she shall let me go!” cried the Baron.
“And we want our money’s worth, my boy,” replied Asie. “Listen to me. We have fleeced the public of some millions, my little friend? Twenty-five millions I am told you possess.”
The Baron could not suppress a smile.
“Well, you must let one go.”
“I shall let one go, but as soon as I shall let one go, I shall hafe to give still another.”
“Yes, I understand,” replied Asie. “You will not say B for fear of having to go on to Z. Still, Esther is a good girl — — ”
“A ver’ honest girl,” cried the banker. “An’ she is ready to submit; but only as in payment of a debt.”
“In short, she does not want to be your mistress; she feels an aversion. — Well, and I understand it; the child has always done just what she pleased. When a girl has never known any but charming young men, she cannot take to an old one. You are not handsome; you are as big as Louis XVIII., and rather dull company, as all men are who try to cajole fortune instead of devoting themselves to women. — Well, if you don’t think six hundred thousand francs too much,” said Asie, “I pledge myself to make her whatever you can wish.”
“Six huntert tousant franc!” cried the Baron, with a start. “Esther is to cost me a million to begin with!”
“Happiness is surely worth sixteen hundred thousand francs, you old sinner. You must know, men in these days have certainly spent more than one or two millions on a mistress. I even know women who have cost men their lives, for whom heads have rolled into the basket. — You know the doctor who poisoned his friend? He wanted the money to gratify a woman.”
“Ja, I know all dat. But if I am in lofe, I am not ein idiot, at least vile I am here; but if I shall see her, I shall gife her my pocket-book — — ”
“Well, listen Monsieur le Baron,” said Asie, assuming the attitude of a Semiramis. “You have been squeezed dry enough already. Now, as sure as my name is Saint-Esteve — in the way of business, of course — I will stand by you.”
“Goot, I shall repay you.”
“I believe you, my boy, for I have shown you that I know how to be revenged. Besides, I tell you this, daddy, I know how to snuff out your Madame Esther as you would snuff a candle. And I know my lady! When the little huzzy has once made you happy, she will be even more necessary to you than she is at this moment. You paid me well; you have allowed yourself to be fooled, but, after all, you have forked out. — I have fulfilled my part of the agreement, haven’t I? Well, look here, I will make a bargain with you.”
“Let me hear.”
“You shall get me the place as cook to Madame, engage me for ten years, and pay the last five in advance — what is that? Just a little earnest-money. When once I am about madame, I can bring her to these terms. Of course, you must first order her a lovely dress from Madame Auguste, who knows her style and taste; and order the new carriage to be at the door at four o’clock. After the Bourse closes, go to her rooms and take her for a little drive in the Bois de Boulogne. Well, by that act the woman proclaims herself your mistress; she has advertised herself to the eyes and knowledge of all Paris: A hundred thousand francs. — You must dine with her — I know how to cook such a dinner! — You must take her to the play, to the Varietes, to a stage-box, and then all Paris will say, ‘There is that old rascal Nucingen with his mistress.’ It is very flattering to know that such things are said. — Well, all this, for I am not grasping, is included for the first hundred thousand francs. — In a week, by such conduct, you will have made some way — — ”
“But I shall hafe paid ein hundert tousant franc.”
“In the course of the second week,” Asie went on, as though she had not heard this lamentable ejaculation, “madame, tempted by these preliminaries, will have made up her mind to leave her little apartment and move to the house you are giving her. Your Esther will have seen the world again, have found her old friends; she will wish to shine and do the honors of her palace — it is in the nature of things: Another hundred thousand francs! — By Heaven! you are at home there, Esther compromised — she must be yours. The rest is a mere trifle, in which you must play the principal part, old elephant. (How wide the monster opens his eyes!) Well, I will undertake that too: Four hundred thousand — and that, my fine fellow, you need not pay till the day after. What do you think of that for honesty? I have more confidence in you than you have in me. If I persuade madame to show herself as your mistress, to compromise herself, to
take every gift you offer her, — perhaps this very day, you will believe that I am capable of inducing her to throw open the pass of the Great Saint Bernard. And it is a hard job, I can tell you; it will take as much pulling to get your artillery through as it took the first Consul to get over the Alps.”
“But vy?”
“Her heart is full of love, old shaver, rasibus, as you say who know Latin,” replied Asie. “She thinks herself the Queen of Sheba, because she has washed herself in sacrifices made for her lover — an idea that that sort of woman gets into her head! Well, well, old fellow, we must be just. — It is fine! That baggage would die of grief at being your mistress — I really should not wonder. But what I trust to, and I tell you to give you courage, is that there is good in the girl at bottom.”
“You hafe a genius for corruption,” said the Baron, who had listened to Asie in admiring silence, “just as I hafe de knack of de banking.”
“Then it is settled, my pigeon?” said Asie.
“Done for fifty tousant franc insteat of ein hundert tousant! — An’ I shall give you fife hundert tousant de day after my triumph.”
“Very good, I will set to work,” said Asie. “And you may come, monsieur,” she added respectfully. “You will find madame as soft already as a cat’s back, and perhaps inclined to make herself pleasant.”
“Go, go, my goot voman,” said the banker, rubbing his hands.
And after seeing the horrible mulatto out of the house, he said to himself:
“How vise it is to hafe much money.”
He sprang out of bed, went down to his office, and resumed the conduct of his immense business with a light heart.
Nothing could be more fatal to Esther than the steps taken by Nucingen. The hapless girl, in defending her fidelity, was defending her life. This very natural instinct was what Carlos called prudery. Now Asie, not without taking such precautions as usual in such cases, went off to report to Carlos the conference she had held with the Baron, and all the profit she had made by it. The man’s rage, like himself, was terrible; he came forthwith to Esther, in a carriage with the blinds drawn, driving into the courtyard. Still almost white with fury, the double-dyed forger went straight into the poor girl’s room; she looked at him — she was standing up — and she dropped on to a chair as though her legs had snapped.
“What is the matter, monsieur?” said she, quaking in every limb.
“Leave us, Europe,” said he to the maid.
Esther looked at the woman as a child might look at its mother, from whom some assassin had snatched it to murder it.
“Do you know where you will send Lucien?” Carlos went on when he was alone with Esther.
“Where?” asked she in a low voice, venturing to glance at her executioner.
“Where I come from, my beauty.” Esther, as she looked at the man, saw red. “To the hulks,” he added in an undertone.
Esther shut her eyes and stretched herself out, her arms dropped, and she turned white. The man rang, and Prudence appeared.
“Bring her round,” he said coldly; “I have not done.”
He walked up and down the drawing-room while waiting. Prudence-Europe was obliged to come and beg monsieur to lift Esther on to the bed; he carried her with the ease that betrayed athletic strength.
They had to procure all the chemist’s strongest stimulants to restore Esther to a sense of her woes. An hour later the poor girl was able to listen to this living nightmare, seated at the foot of her bed, his eyes fixed and glowing like two spots of molten lead.
“My little sweetheart,” said he, “Lucien now stands between a splendid life, honored, happy, and respected, and the hole full of water, mud, and gravel into which he was going to plunge when I met him. The house of Grandlieu requires of the dear boy an estate worth a million francs before securing for him the title of Marquis, and handing over to him that may-pole named Clotilde, by whose help he will rise to power. Thanks to you, and me, Lucien has just purchased his maternal manor, the old Chateau de Rubempre, which, indeed, did not cost much — thirty thousand francs; but his lawyer, by clever negotiations, has succeeded in adding to it estates worth a million, on which three hundred thousand francs are paid. The chateau, the expenses, and percentages to the men who were put forward as a blind to conceal the transaction from the country people, have swallowed up the remainder.
“We have, to be sure, a hundred thousand francs invested in a business here, which a few months hence will be worth two to three hundred thousand francs; but there will still be four hundred thousand francs to be paid.
“In three days Lucien will be home from Angouleme, where he has been, because he must not be suspected of having found a fortune in remaking your bed — — ”
“Oh no!” cried she, looking up with a noble impulse.
“I ask you, then, is this a moment to scare off the Baron?” he went on calmly. “And you very nearly killed him the day before yesterday; he fainted like a woman on reading your second letter. You have a fine style — I congratulate you! If the Baron had died, where should we be now? — When Lucien walks out of Saint-Thomas d’Aquin son-in-law to the Duc de Grandlieu, if you want to try a dip in the Seine — — Well, my beauty, I offer you my hand for a dive together. It is one way of ending matters.
“But consider a moment. Would it not be better to live and say to yourself again and again ‘This fine fortune, this happy family’ — for he will have children — children! — Have you ever thought of the joy of running your fingers through the hair of his children?”
Esther closed her eyes with a little shiver.
“Well, as you gaze on that structure of happiness, you may say to yourself, ‘This is my doing!’”
There was a pause, and the two looked at each other.
“This is what I have tried to make out of such despair as saw no issue but the river,” said Carlos. “Am I selfish? That is the way to love! Men show such devotion to none but kings! But I have anointed Lucien king. If I were riveted for the rest of my days to my old chain, I fancy I could stay there resigned so long as I could say, ‘He is gay, he is at Court.’ My soul and mind would triumph, while my carcase was given over to the jailers! You are a mere female; you love like a female! But in a courtesan, as in all degraded creatures, love should be a means to motherhood, in spite of Nature, which has stricken you with barrenness!
“If ever, under the skin of the Abbe Carlos Herrera, any one were to detect the convict I have been, do you know what I would do to avoid compromising Lucien?”
Esther awaited the reply with some anxiety.
“Well,” he said after a brief pause, “I would die as the Negroes do — without a word. And you, with all your airs will put folks on my traces. What did I require of you? — To be La Torpille again for six months — for six weeks; and to do it to clutch a million.
“Lucien will never forget you. Men do not forget the being of whom they are reminded day after day by the joy of awaking rich every morning. Lucien is a better fellow than you are. He began by loving Coralie. She died — good; but he had not enough money to bury her; he did not do as you did just now, he did not faint, though he is a poet; he wrote six rollicking songs, and earned three hundred francs, with which he paid for Coralie’s funeral. I have those songs; I know them by heart. Well, then do you too compose your songs: be cheerful, be wild, be irresistible and — insatiable! You hear me? — Do not let me have to speak again.
“Kiss papa. Good-bye.”
When, half an hour after, Europe went into her mistress’ room, she found her kneeling in front of a crucifix, in the attitude which the most religious of painters has given to Moses before the burning bush on Horeb, to depict his deep and complete adoration of Jehovah. After saying her prayers, Esther had renounced her better life, the honor she had created for herself, her glory, her virtue, and her love.
She rose.
“Oh, madame, you will never look like that again!” cried Prudence Servien, struck by her mistress’ sublime
beauty.
She hastily turned the long mirror so that the poor girl should see herself. Her eyes still had a light as of the soul flying heavenward. The Jewess’ complexion was brilliant. Sparkling with tears unshed in the fervor of prayer, her eyelashes were like leaves after a summer shower, for the last time they shone with the sunshine of pure love. Her lips seemed to preserve an expression as of her last appeal to the angels, whose palm of martyrdom she had no doubt borrowed while placing in their hands her past unspotted life. And she had the majesty which Mary Stuart must have shown at the moment when she bid adieu to her crown, to earth, and to love.
“I wish Lucien could have seen me thus!” she said with a smothered sigh. “Now,” she added, in a strident tone, “now for a fling!”
Europe stood dumb at hearing the words, as though she had heard an angel blaspheme.
“Well, why need you stare at me to see if I have cloves in my mouth instead of teeth? I am nothing henceforth but a vile, foul creature, a thief — and I expect milord. So get me a hot bath, and put my dress out. It is twelve o’clock; the Baron will look in, no doubt, when the Bourse closes; I shall tell him I was waiting for him, and Asie is to prepare us dinner, first-chop, mind you; I mean to turn the man’s brain. — Come, hurry, hurry, my girl; we are going to have some fun — that is to say, we must go to work.”
She sat down at the table and wrote the following note: —
“MY FRIEND, — If the cook you have sent me had not already been in
my service, I might have thought that your purpose was to let me
know how often you had fainted yesterday on receiving my three
notes. (What can I say? I was very nervous that day; I was
thinking over the memories of my miserable existence.) But I know
how sincere Asie is. Still, I cannot repent of having caused you
so much pain, since it has availed to prove to me how much you
love me. This is how we are made, we luckless and despised
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 626
