A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘All the more as they say he ruined him,’ said Théodore Gaillard, ‘so that a hint of blackmail…’

  ‘He’s dining with me tomorrow, come then, my dear,’ said Esther. Then she whispered in her friend’s ear: ‘I do what I like with him, he hasn’t had it yet!’ She put the nail of one gloved finger under her prettiest tooth, in the well-known gesture which vividly signifies: nothing at all!

  ‘You’ve got him where you want him…’

  ‘Darling, so far he’s only paid my debts…’

  ‘What a little pickpocket she is!’ cried Suzanne du Val-Noble.

  ‘And when I say debts,’ Esther continued, ‘I mean the sort that would rock a minister of finance. Now I want an income of thirty thousand francs before the first stroke of midnight!… Oh, he’s a pet, I’m not complaining… He’s in a good mood. In a week’s time, we shall have the house-warming, you’ll be asked… Next day, I get the deeds of the house in the rue Saint Georges. You can’t decently live in a house like that without thirty thousand francs annual income of your own, that you can lay your hands on when you want it. I’ve known what it is to be hard up, and I don’t want any more of it. There are some acquaintances you’ve soon had enough of.’

  ‘You who used to say: “Fortune, that’s me!” how you’ve changed!’ exclaimed Suzanne.

  ‘It’s the air of Switzerland, you grow thrifty there… Why don’t you try it, child! find yourself a Swiss, and perhaps you’ve got a husband! for they haven’t learnt about women like us yet… In any case, you’ll come back in love with what can be written in ledgers, a refined and lasting love! Good-bye.’

  Esther climbed back into her fine carriage harnessed to the most magnificent dappled greys then to be seen in Paris.

  ‘The woman getting into her carriage,’ Peyrade thereupon said to Contenson, ‘is attractive, but I prefer the one who is walking, follow her and find out who she is.’

  ‘This is what that Englishman was saying in English,’ said Théodore Gaillard repeating Peyrade’s words to Madame du Val-Noble.

  Before venturing to speak English, Peyrade had tried out a word or two in the language which caused a movement of Théodore Gaillard’s face telling him that the journalist knew English. From this point, Madame du Val-Noble proceeded very slowly to where she lived, in the rue Louis-le-Grand, in respectable furnished rooms, glancing round to see whether the mulatto was following. The house belonged to a Madame Gérard to whom Madame du Val-Noble had been obliging in her days of splendour and who now showed her gratitude by accommodating her handsomely. This kindly soul, a respectable woman full of virtues, regarded the harlot as a superior being; she saw her still surrounded with luxury, a banished queen; she confided her daughters to her; and, more naturally than may be thought, the courtesan was as careful about taking them to the theatre as if she had been their mother; the two Gérard girls doted on her. This excellent, worthy landlady was like those sublime priests who see in outcast women a creature to be saved, to be loved. Madame du Val-Noble respected this honest worth, often she envied it as she talked in the evening, lamenting her misfortunes. ‘You are beautiful, you can still settle down comfortably,’ said Madame Gérard. In any case, Madame du Val-Noble had gone downhill only relatively. The wardrobe of this spendthrift, elegant woman was still sufficiently well furnished to allow her, on occasion, as on the Richard d’ Arlington evening at the Porte Saint Martin, to appear dazzling. Madame Gérard still graciously paid for the carriages this woman on foot needed for dining out or going to the theatre and returning.

  ‘Well, my dear Madame Gérard,’ she said to the honest mother of a family, ‘my luck is changing, I fancy…’

  ‘Why, Madame, so much the better; but be careful, think of the future… Don’t run up any more debts. I spend so much time getting rid of people who want to see you!…’

  ‘Don’t waste sympathy on dogs like those, who’ve all had enormous sums out of me. Look, here are tickets for the Variétés for your daughters, a nice box halfway back. If anybody asks for me this evening and I’m not back, let them go up all the same. They’ll find my old maid, Adèle, there; I’ll send her to you.’

  As she had neither aunt nor mother, Madame du Val-Noble had to have recourse to her maid (also on foot!) to play the part of a Saint-Estéve with the unknown whose conquest was to allow her to reassume her rank. She went out to dinner with Théodore Gaillard, who, that evening, had a party, that is to say a dinner arranged by Nathan, who was paying off a lost wager, one of those evenings of debauchery whose guests are told: ‘There’ll be women.’

  Peyrade as a nabob

  PEYRADE had not decided without powerful reasons to venture his person upon the field of this intrigue. Like Corentin’s, however, his curiosity had been so vividly aroused that, even without reason, he might willingly have been drawn into the drama. At that moment, the policy of Charles X had performed its final evolution. After confiding the helm to ministers of his own choice, the King was preparing the conquest of Algiers, intending that the glory of this achievement should serve as justification for what has been called his last throw. Internally, conspiracies were no longer afoot, Charles X believed himself without adversary. In politics as at sea, there are deceptive lulls. Corentin felt himself utterly becalmed. In such a situation, your real hunter, just to keep his hand in, for lack of thrushes, kills blackbirds. Domi-tian, for lack of Christians, killed flies. Witnessing Esther’s arrest, Contenson, with a spy’s trained sense, justly appraised the matter. As we have seen, the rogue had not taken the trouble to conceal his opinion from Baron Nucingen. ‘For whose benefit is the banker being made to pay for his passion?’ was the first question the two friends put to each other. Recognizing in Asia a character from the play, Contenson had hoped, through her, to discover the author; but she slipped through his hands like an eel and hid herself for some time in the Parisian ooze, and, when he found her again installed as Esther’s cook, the mulattress’s part struck him as inexplicable. For the first time, the two artists in espionage were faced with an undecipherable text, though the story it concealed was certainly shady. In the course of three successive bold attacks on the house in the rue Taitbout, Contenson met with nothing but stubborn silence. While Esther was still there, the porter seemed a prey to terror. Perhaps Asia had threatened the whole family with poison balls in case of indiscretion. The day after Esther left her apartment, Contenson found the porter a little more reasonable, he was sorry to see the last of the little lady who, he said, had kept him going with the remains of her table. Disguised as a commercial broker, he discussed the price of the apartment, and he listened to the porter’s complaints with an air of mockery, casting doubt on everything he said with a: ‘Really? You don’t say?’ ‘Yes, sir, that little lady lived five years here without ever going out, just as her lover, who was jealous, though he had no need to be, took all sorts of precautions about getting here, going in, leaving. A very good-looking young man, as a matter of fact.’ Lucien was still at Marsac, staying with his sister, Madame Séchard; but, as soon as he got back, Contenson sent the porter to the Quai Malaquais, to inquire of Monsieur de Rubempré whether he would agree to sell the furniture in the apartment left by Madame van Bogseck. The porter then identified Lucien with the mysterious lover of the young widow, and that was all Contenson wanted to know. As may be imagined, Lucien and Carlos were taken by surprise, though they did not show it; they gave the impression of thinking the porter mad, and did what they could to persuade him that it was so.

  Within twenty-four hours, a watch was being kept on Contenson in his turn, and his activities were reported to Carlos. They left no room for doubt. Disguised as a delivery man from the Central Market, Contenson had already twice brought provisions bought that morning by Asia, and so twice he had set foot inside the house in the rue Saint Georges. Corentin, for his part, was not inactive; but the real existence of a Carlos Herrera pulled him up short, for it at once became clear that such a priest, secret envoy of Ferdinand VII, had com
e to Paris in late 1823. Corentin must therefore know what reasons led this Spaniard to take Lucien de Rubempré under his wing. That Esther had been Lucien’s mistress for five years soon became evident. So the Englishwoman’s substitution for Esther must have been performed in the interests of this dandy. Lucien had no visible means of existence, he was prevented from taking Mademoiselle de Grandlieu to wife, yet he had just paid a million for the Rubempré estate. Corentin got the Director General of the Police of the Kingdom to make judicious inquiries of the Prefect and thus learned that, in the case of Peyrade, the complaints had been made by no others than Count Sérisy and Lucien de Rubempré.

  ‘Now we have it!’ Peyrade and Corentin exclaimed.

  It took the two friends no more than a moment to sketch out their plan.

  ‘The wench must still have women friends,’ said Corentin. ‘Among them, there must be somebody down on her luck; one of us must play the part of a rich foreigner who’ll set her up; we’ll see they confide in each other. These women always need somebody to rattle on about their lovers to, that who will lead us to the heart of the matter.’ Peyrade quite naturally thought at once of adopting his Englishman’s part. The life of debauchery he would have to lead, during the time needed to unearth the plot whose victim he had been, appealed to him, whereas Corentin, aged by his work and rather sickly, did not much care for such things. As a mulatto, Contenson easily shook off the watch put on him by Carlos. Three days before Peyrade’s encounter with Madame du Val-Noble in the Champs Élysées, the last of Messieurs de Sartine and Lenoir’s agents, provided with a passport in perfect order, had disembarked in the rue de la Paix, at the Hotel Mirabeau, arriving from the colonies by way of Le Havre in a small barouche as mud-spattered as if it had indeed come from Le Havre, although it had only come to Paris from St Denis.

  Carlos Herrera, for his part, went to the Spanish embassy for a visa, and at the Quai Malaquais made all preparations for a trip to Madrid. This is why. Within a matter of days Esther would be the owner of a private house in the rue Saint Georges, and she would also have scrip for thirty thousand francs’ annual income; Europe and Asia were sufficiently cunning to get her to sell this and secretly convey the proceeds to Lucien. Lucien, supposed to be rich through his sister’s liberality, would thus be able to make up the price of the Rubempré estate. Nobody could object to this procedure, unless Esther were indiscreet; but she would die sooner than be seen raising an eyebrow. Clotilde had tied a little pink kerchief about her stork’s neck, so the argument had been won at the Grandlieu house. The Omnibus transactions already paid threefold. If he disappeared for a few days, Carlos would shake off suspicion. Everything humanly possible had been taken into account, there would be no mistakes. The false Spaniard meant to leave the day after Peyrade had encountered Madame du Val-Noble in the Champs Élysées. However, that very night, at two o’clock in the morning, Asia appeared at the Quai Malaquais in a cab, and discovered the author of the plan thus briefly summarized going over it in detail in his mind as other authors may critically examine the pages they have written searching for faults to correct. Such a man was not to be caught twice forgetting a point like that of the porter at the rue Taitbout.

  ‘This afternoon,’ whispered Asia to her master, ‘at half past two, Paccard recognized, in the Champs Élysées, Contenson disguised as a mulatto acting as the servant of an Englishman who, for three days, has been walking in the Champs Élysées on the look-out for Esther. Paccard recognized our watchdog, as I did when he was a Market porter, by his eyes. Paccard brought the child back in such a way as to keep his eyes on the rascal. He is at the Hotel Mirabeau; but he and the Englishman exchanged such signs of intelligence, that the Englishman, as Paccard sees it, cannot possibly be an Englishman.’

  ‘There’s a horse-fly buzzing around,’ said Carlos. ‘I shan’t go until the day after tomorrow. It was Contenson who sent the porter round here from the rue Taitbout; we must find out whether the sham Englishman is a friend of ours.’

  At noon, Mr Samuel Johnson’s mulatto servant was solemnly serving his master, who always lunched too well, deliberately. Peyrade meant to pass for an Englishman of the heavy-drinking type; he always went out tipsy. He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, padded to make his legs fatter; his breeches were lined with thick fustian; his waistcoat buttoned up to the chin; his blue stock encircled his neck almost up to his cheeks; he wore a small red wig which covered half his forehead; he’d made himself about three inches taller; the oldest customer at the Café David wouldn’t have recognized him. From his square-bottomed, black, full-cut, clean English coat, a passer-by would have taken him for an English millionaire. Contenson displayed the cool insolence of a nabob’s confidential manservant, silent, haughty, scornful, uncommunicative, now and then permitting himself awkward gestures and ferocious growls. Peyrade was finishing his second bottle when one of the hotel servants unceremoniously introduced into the apartment a man whom both Peyrade and Contenson recognized as a member of the armed constabulary in plain clothes.

  ‘Monsieur Peyrade,’ said the constable addressing himself to the nabob and speaking into his ear, ‘my orders are to take you to the Prefecture.’ Peyrade got up without saying anything and looked for his hat. ‘You will find a cab at the door,’ the constable said to him on the stairs. ‘The Prefect wanted to have you arrested, but he has made do with sending a police officer to demand an explanation of your conduct. You will find him in the carriage.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay with you?’ the gendarme asked the justice of the peace when Peyrade had got in.

  ‘No,’ replied the officer. ‘Just tell the cabby quietly to drive to the Prefecture.’

  Peyrade and Carlos found themselves together in the same cab. Carlos had a dagger handy. The driver was in his trust, quite prepared to let Carlos out without seeming to notice and without showing surprise if, on reaching his destination, he found a body in the vehicle. No fuss is made about spies. The law almost invariably allows such murders to go unpunished, so difficult is it to see to the bottom of them.

  Duel in a cab

  PEYRADE cast a spy’s glance at the magistrate whom the Prefect of Police had sent him. Carlos’s appearance seemed much as it should be: a sparsely covered cranium, deeply wrinkled at the back; powdered hair; then, over soft, red-rimmed eyes which needed attention, a pair of very light gold spectacles, very much those of an office-worker, with double green-tinted lenses. Those eyes bore testimony to a lifetime of ignoble diseases. A cotton cambric shirt with frills ironed flat, a waistcoat of worn black satin, lawyer’s breeches, stockings of black floss-silk and shoes tied with ribbons, a long black frock-coat, black gloves at forty sous, ten days unwashed, gold watch-chain. He was, to perfection, that type of inferior magistrate paradoxically called a justice or officer of the peace.

  ‘My dear Monsieur Peyrade, I am sorry that a man like you should be under supervision, and that you should make a point of deserving it. Your disguise is not at all to the Prefect’s taste. If you think that is the way to escape from vigilance, you are mistaken. No doubt you began your journey from England at Beaumont-sur-Oise?…’

  ‘At Beaumont-sur-Oise,’ replied Peyrade.

  ‘Or at Saint Denis?’ the sham magistrate persisted.

  Peyrade was troubled. This further question called for a reply. Whatever answer he made could be dangerous. If he replied in the affirmative, that would seem like sarcasm; if the man knew the truth, a denial would be worse. ‘He is crafty,’ thought Peyrade. He forced himself to smile at the justice, offering his smile by way of a reply. The smile was accepted without comment.

  ‘For what purpose have you disguised yourself, taken rooms at the Hôtel Mirabeau, and got Contenson up as a mulatto?’ asked the officier de paix.

  ‘The Prefect will do what he pleases with me, I account for my actions only to my superiors,’ said Peyrade with dignity.

  ‘If you want to give me to understand that you’re acting on behalf of the General Police of
the Kingdom,’ the false agent said abruptly, ‘we’ll change direction and go to the rue de Grenelle instead of the rue de Jérusalem. My orders with regard to yourself are perfectly clear. But take care. The matter is not so far considered as one of exceptional gravity, and you could easily make matters worse for yourself. For myself, I wish you no harm… But come along, now!… Tell me the truth…’

  ‘The truth? well, you shall have it,’ said Peyrade with a sharp glance at his Cerberus’s red eyes.

  The pretended magistrate’s face remained expressionless, impassive, he was doing his job, all truth was the same to him, he might have thought it all a mere whim on the part of the Prefect. Prefects do have their vagaries.

  ‘I have fallen madly in love with a woman, the mistress of that stockbroker who is travelling for his own pleasure and the displeasure of his creditors, Falleix.’

  ‘Madame du Val-Noble,’ said the justice.

  ‘Yes,’ Peyrade went on. ‘To set her up for a month, which won’t cost me much more than a thousand crowns, I’ve turned myself out as a nabob and taken Contenson as a manservant. That, sir, is so straightforwardly the case that, if you cared to leave me in this cab, where I’ll wait for you, on the word of a former Chief Superintendent of police, and to go into the hotel, you can question Contenson. Not only will Contenson confirm what I’ve just had the honour of telling you, but you will be present when Madame du Val-Noble’s maid calls, as she undertook to do this morning, with her mistress’s consent to my proposal, or new conditions of her own. An old monkey knows what faces to pull: I’ve offered a thousand francs a month, a carriage; that makes fifteen hundred; five hundred francs’ worth of presents, as much again on parties, dinners, theatres; you see I’m not a penny out when I say a thousand crowns. A man of my age can afford to spend a thousand crowns on his last fling.’