A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Gladly, Baron,’ replied Lucien to whom the financier’s appearance seemed providential.

  ‘Leave us,’ said Esther to Monsieur de Nucingen when she saw him enter with Lucien, ‘go and talk to Madame du Val-Noble whom I see in a box on the third tier with her Nabob… Nabobs grow thick in the Indies,’ she added with an understanding look at Lucien.

  ‘And that one,’ said Lucien with a smile, ‘is terribly like yours.’

  ‘And,’ said Esther answering Lucien with another sign of intelligence while continuing to speak to the baron, ‘bring her and her Nabob here, he is very anxious to meet you, he is said to be extraordinarily rich. The poor woman has already sung me so many sad songs about him, she can’t manage with the Nabob; and if you lightened him of ballast, he might be a bit more nimble.’

  ‘You dake uz vor tieves,’ said the baron.

  ‘What’s the matter with my Lucien?…’ she whispered to her darling brushing his ear with her lips as soon as the door of the box was shut.

  ‘I’m lost! I’ve just been refused entry to the Grandlieu house, on the pretext that nobody was at home, both the duke and duchess were in, and five equipages were snorting in the yard…’

  ‘You mean the marriage is off!’ said Esther in a voice stifled with feeling, for this was a glimpse of paradise to her.

  ‘I don’t know yet what they’re plotting against me…’

  ‘Lucien dear,’ she replied in an adorably wheedling voice, ‘why upset yourself? you’ll make a finer marriage presently… I’ll earn you two estates…’

  ‘Give a supper party, this evening, so that I can speak to Carlos secretly, and make sure you invite the sham Englishman and Val-Noble. That Nabob is the cause of my ruin, he’s our enemy, we shall have got him, and we…’ But Lucien stopped short with a despairing gesture.

  ‘Why, what is it?’ asked the poor whore who felt as though she were on fire.

  ‘Damnation, Madame de Sérisy has seen me!’ cried Lucien, ‘and to make it worse, the Duc de Rhétoré, who witnessed my discomfiture, is with her.’

  Indeed, at that very moment, the Duc de Rhétoré was playing upon Countess Sérisy’s grief.

  ‘You allow Lucien to show himself in the box of Mademoiselle Esther,’ said the young duke indicating both the box and Lucien. ‘You who take an interest in him, you should tell him that that isn’t done. One may sup at her house, one may even… but, truly, I don’t wonder now that the Grandlieus have turned against this boy, I’ve just seen him turned away at the door, on the steps…’

  ‘Those creatures are very dangerous,’ said Madame de Sérisy who turned her opera glasses on Esther’s box.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said the duke, ‘as much for what they can do as for what they want…’

  ‘They’ll ruin him!’ said Madame de Sérisy, ‘for according to what I’m told, they’re as expensive when you don’t pay them as when you do.’

  ‘Not for him!…’ replied the young duke with an air of surprise. ‘Far from costing him money, they give it to him whenever he needs it, they all run after him.’

  There was a nervous movement about the countess’s mouth which could hardly be regarded as one of her smiles.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Esther, ‘come to supper at midnight. Bring Blondet and Rastignac. Let’s have at least two amusing people, and let’s not be more than nine.’

  ‘We must find some way of getting the baron to look for Europe, on the pretext that Asia must be warned, and you can tell her what happened to me, so that Carlos will know about it before he has the Nabob in his power.’

  ‘It shall be done,’ said Esther.

  Thus Peyrade, without knowing it, must find himself beneath the same roof as his adversary. The tiger was going into the lion’s den and the lion would be prepared for him.

  When Lucien went back to Madame de Sérisy’s box, she, instead of turning her head towards him, smiling and arranging her gown to make room for him beside her, affected to pay no attention to the person who had entered, she continued her inspection of the audience; but Lucien perceived by the trembling of the binoculars that the countess was a prey to one of those powerful agitations by which we expiate inadmissible moments of happiness. He nevertheless came forward to the front of the box, beside her, and planted himself in the opposite corner, leaving a narrow space empty between the countess and himself; he leaned against the front of the box, placed his right elbow on the ledge, and his chin in his gloved hand; there he sat posed in three-quarters profile, waiting for her to speak. Half way through the act, the countess had still said nothing to him, and hadn’t even looked at him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last, ‘why you’re here; your place is in Mademoiselle Esther’s box…’

  ‘That’s where I’m going,’ said Lucien and went out without looking at the countess.

  ‘Ah, my dear,’ said Madame du Val-Noble entering Esther’s box with Peyrade whom Baron Nucingen didn’t recognize, ‘I am happy to introduce to you Mr Samuel Johnson; he is a great admirer of Monsieur de Nucingen’s abilities.’

  ‘Really, sir,’ said Esther smiling at Peyrade.

  ‘Aoh, yes, very much,’ said Peyrade.

  ‘Well, baron, there’s a French rather like your own, much as Breton is like Burgundian. It will amuse me very much to hear you discussing finance… Do you know what I demand of you, Monsieur Nabob, in return for introducing you to my baron?’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Aoh, thenks, I shell be delighted, I’m sure, to make the baronet’s acquaintance.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she went on, ‘you’ll have to give me the pleasure of supping with us… There’s nothing like champagne for binding men together, it’s a wax that caulks every seam, especially when you’re sinking. Come this evening, we shall have good company! As to you, Fritz darling,’ she whispered to the baron, ‘your carriage is here, run to the rue Saint-Georges and bring Europe here, I’ve a word or two to say to her about the supper… I’ve asked Lucien, he’ll bring two amusing people with him… We’ll bring your Englishman to the point,’ she whispered into Madame du Val-Noble’s ear.

  Peyrade and the baron left the two women alone.

  Pleasure has its inconvenient side

  ‘OH, my dear, if you can ever bring that big scoundrel to the point, you’ll be very clever,’ said Madame du Val-Noble.

  ‘If there was no other way, you could always lend him to me for a week,’ replied Esther with a laugh.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t keep him for half a day,’ rejoined Madame du Val-Noble, ‘my daily bread is too hard, I break my teeth on it. Never, so long as I live, will I try to make any Englishman happy… They are all cold egoists, pigs dressed up…’

  ‘What, no consideration?’ said Esther smilingly.

  ‘On the contrary, my dear, the monster isn’t familiar enough.’

  ‘Not in any situation?’ said Esther.

  ‘The wretch calls me Madame all the time, and retains the most abominable calm just when all other men are rather nice. Making love is for him, really, my dear, just like trimming his beard. He wipes his razor, puts it back in its case, looks at himself in the glass, and seems to be saying: “Well, I didn’t cut myself.” Then he treats me with the kind of respect to drive any woman out of her mind. It amuses this frightful Lord Stockpot to hide poor Theodore and leave him standing about in my dressing room half the day. In fact he deliberately thwarts me in every way. And he’s mean, as mean as Gobseck and Gigonnet put together. He takes me out to dinner, he doesn’t pay for the cab I come in, if by chance I’ve forgotten to order the carriage.’

  ‘And in return for all this, what do you get?’

  ‘Nothing, my dear, absolutely nothing. Five hundred francs a month, not a penny more, and he pays for the hire of the carriage. As to that, what sort of thing do you think it is?… one like those they hire out to grocers on their wedding day to go to the Town Hall, the Church and the Blue Dial… He maddens me with his respect. If I’m at all nervy and ill-dispos
ed, he doesn’t get annoyed, he says: “I aonly wish my lady too doo as she chooooses, for I’m sure nothing is more detestable, no gentleman would thinka vitfra moment, than to say to a nice filly she was just a bale of cotton to be paid for!… Haw, haw, the buyer is a member of the Society for Temperance and No Slavery!” And the scoundrel remains pale, dry, cold, giving me to understand that he respects me as he would a negro, and that this doesn’t come from the heart, but because of his abolitionist opinions.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anything more frightful,’ said Esther, ‘but I’d ruin him, a Chinaman like that!’

  ‘Ruin him?’ said Madame du Val-Noble, ‘he’d have to love me first!… But even you wouldn’t dare ask him for two farthings. He would listen to you solemnly, and then he would say, in that British manner which makes you feel you’d rather have your face slapped, that he pays you quite enough for the trifling thing love is in his poor life.’

  ‘To think that, in our condition, we can meet men like that!’ cried Esther.

  ‘Ah, my dear, you’re lucky!… watch that Nucingen of yours.’

  ‘He knows what he’s doing, your Nabob?’

  ‘Adèle thinks so,’ replied Madame du Val-Noble.

  ‘You know, that man, my dear, might have taken it into his head to make a woman hate him, and so make sure of being sent packing after a certain time,’ said Esther.

  ‘Or else he has business he wants to do with Nucingen, and took me on because he knew there was a connection, that’s what Adèle thinks,’ replied Madame du Val-Noble. ‘That’s why I’m introducing him to you this evening. Oh! if I really knew what his plans were, what a pretty understanding I could come to with you and Nucingen!’

  ‘Don’t you lose your temper,’ said Esther, ‘and tell him a few home truths from time to time?’

  ‘You’d try, I know, and you’re clever,… but, well, however nice you were to him, he’d kill you with his frozen smiles. He’d say to you: “You knaow, I em anti-slavery, and you are free…” You’d tell him the most amusing things, he’d look at you and say: “Very good!” and you’d see that, in his eyes, you were nothing but a punch-and-judy show.’

  ‘And when you’re angry?’

  ‘Just the same! It’s a spectacle to him. You can operate on his left side, under the breast, and it won’t produce the slightest effect; his insides must be made of tin. I told him. He replied: “It suits me very well to have a constitution such as you describe…” And always polite. His very soul wears gloves, my dear… I shall continue to endure this martyrdom for a few days more just to satisfy my curiosity. Otherwise, I should have got milord called out by Philippe, who is without equal as a swordsman, it’ll come to that yet…’

  ‘I was going to suggest that!’ cried Esther; ‘but you’d best find out first if he can box, for these old Englishmen, my dear, they can always turn nasty.’

  ‘There can’t be others like him!… No, if you saw him coming to me for orders, at quite unimaginable hours, clearly in the hope of surprising me, and if you saw his curious ways of expressing respect, in the manner, you understand, of a gentleman, you would say: “There is a woman truly loved,” and any other woman would say the same…’

  ‘And yet they envy us, darling,’ said Esther.

  ‘Yes, indeed!…’ cried Madame du Val-Noble. ‘Look, we’ve all more or less, at some time or other, discovered how little they really care about us; but, my dear, I’ve never been so cruelly, so profoundly, so utterly humiliated by anyone’s brutality, as I am by the respect of this big wineskin full of port. When he’s drunk, he goes away, so as not to upset the little lady, he says to Adèle, and not to be under two influences at the same time: wine and woman. He makes more use of my carriage than I do… Oh! if we could only get him under the table this evening,… but he drinks ten bottles, and he’s only just tipsy: his eyes are blurred, but he sees everything.’

  ‘It’s like those people whose windows are dirty outside,’ said Esther, ‘and who from inside can see everything that happens in the street… I know men like that: du Tillet is a fine example of them.’

  ‘Try to have du Tillet, and Nucingen with the two of them, if they could only catch him up in one of their schemes, I should at least have my revenge!… they’d reduce him to beggary! Ah! my dear, to fall into the hands of a hypocrite and a Protestant, after my poor Falleix, who was so amusing and good-natured, such a wag!… How we used to laugh!… They say all stockbrokers are stupid… Well, his wit failed him only once…’

  ‘When he left you without a penny, it let you know pleasure has its inconvenient side.’

  Europe, brought by Monsieur de Nucingen, pushed her viper’s head in at the door; after listening to the few words her mistress whispered into her ear, she vanished.

  The snakes entwine

  A T half past eleven that evening, five carriages stopped in the rue Saint Georges, before the door of the famous courtesan: they belonged to Lucien who came with Rastignac, Blondet and Bixiou, to du Tillet, to Baron Nucingen, to the Nabob and to Florine recruited by du Tillet. The fact that the windows were still boarded up was disguised by the folds of the magnificent curtains of China silk. Supper was to be served at one o’clock, tapers burned, the small drawing-room and the dining-room displayed all their sumptuousness. One of those nights of debauch seemed promised to which only three women and those men would offer resistance. First there was gambling, for two hours had to be passed.

  ‘Do you play, my lord?…’ said du Tillet to Peyrade.

  ‘I have played with O‘Connell, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Lord Brougham, Lord…’

  ‘Why not just say countless lords?’ Bixiou asked him.

  ‘…Lord FitzWilliam, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Hertford, Lord…’

  Bixiou studied Peyrade’s pumps and bent down.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Blondet asked him.

  ‘Why, the button you have to press to stop the machine,’ said Florine.

  ‘What stakes?’ said Lucien, ‘twenty francs a trick?’

  ‘I shall play for whatever you wish to lose…’

  ‘Isn’t he good?…’ said Esther to Lucien, ‘they all take him for an Englishman!…’

  Du Tillet, Nucingen, Peyrade and Rastignac got out a card table and settled down to their whist. Florine, Madame du Val-Noble, Esther, Blondet and Bixiou stayed talking near the fire. Lucien passed the time turning the pages of a magnificent book with engravings.

  ‘Madame is served,’ said Paccard in a splendid livery.

  Peyrade was placed on Florine’s left and flanked by Bixiou whom Esther had engaged to make the Nabob drink beyond measure by challenging him. Bixiou had the gift of being able to drink indefinitely. Never, in all his life, had Peyrade seen so much splendour, nor tasted such cooking, nor seen such pretty women.

  ‘This evening alone pays back the thousand crowns the Val-Noble has already cost me,’ he thought, ‘and besides I’ve just won a thousand francs from them.’

  ‘Here’s an example for you,’ called out Madame du Val-Noble who was sitting next to Lucien and who with a gesture called attention to all the splendour of the dining-room.

  Esther had put Lucien next to herself and held his foot between hers under the table.

  ‘Do you hear?’ said Val-Noble looking at Peyrade who pretended not to see, ‘this is how you should arrange a house for me! When you return from the Indies with millions and want to do business with the Nucingens, you have to put yourself on their level.’

  ‘I belong to the temp’rance s’iety.’

  ‘Then you’d better drink nicely,’ said Bixiou, ‘for it’s hot in India, isn’t it, uncle?…’

  All through supper, Bixiou amusingly kept up the pretence that Peyrade was an uncle of his returned from India.

  ‘Matame di Fal-Noble tells me you hef a nomber off iteas…’ asked Nucingen examining Peyrade.

  ‘This is what I wanted to hear,’ said du Tillet to Rastignac, ‘the two kinds of gibberish together.’

  �
��You’ll see they’ll end up by understanding each other,’ said Bixiou who guessed what du Tillet had just said to Rastignac.

  ‘Aoh, yes, I’d thought of just the ticket, a comfortable little speculation likely to appeal to a baronet of your kind,… very profitable, rich pickings…’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Blondet to du Tillet, ‘that in half a minute he’ll be bringing in Parliament and the British government.’

  ‘In China, as a metter of fect,… opium, y‘know…’

  ‘I know,’ Nucingen at once said as a man who owned his commercial Globe, ‘put ze Enklish Kofernment hess its plens for obening up China mit opium, und vould nod allow uz…’

  ‘Nucingen got in first about the government,’ said du Tillet to Blondet.

  ‘Ah, you’ve trafficked in opium, have you?’ cried Madame du Val-Noble, ‘I can see now why you stupefy me so, you’ve got it on the heart…’

  ‘Ah, you zee!’ ejaculated the baron to the supposed opium dealer pointing out Madame du Val-Noble, ‘you are like minezelf: nefer can millionaires mek zemselves luft py vomen.’

  ‘Meself, I’m rather a one for love, my lady,’ Peyrade replied.

  ‘Always for the sake of temperance,’ said Bixiou who’d just got Peyrade through his third bottle of claret, and was now broaching the port with him.

  ‘Aoh,’ cried Peyrade, ‘this is real English port!’

  Blondet, du Tillet and Bixiou exchanged smiles. Peyrade had it in him to parody everything, even wit. There are few Englishmen who will not maintain that gold and silver are better in England than anywhere else. Chickens and eggs sent from Normandy and put on the market in London authorize the English to insist that the eggs and chickens of London are superior to those of Paris which come from the same rural area. Esther and Lucien were in a state of amazement in the face of such perfection in the matter of dress, speech and mental character. The drinking and eating, the talk and laughter, went on till four o’ clock in the morning. Bixiou considered himself to have brought off one of those victories so amusingly recounted by Brillat-Savarin. But, just as he was saying at the same time as he filled his uncle’s glass: ‘I’ve conquered England!…’ Peyrade answered the ferocious joker with a: ‘Fill up, my boy, fill up!’ which only Bixiou heard.