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+Project Gutenberg's Scenes From a Courtesan's Life, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Scenes From a Courtesan's Life
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: August 26, 2005 [EBook #1660]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; Bonnie Sala and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+                   SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+                           Translated by
+                           James Waring
+
+
+
+
+                          PREPARER'S NOTE
+
+  Note: The story of Lucien de Rubempre begins in the Lost Illusions
+  trilogy which consists of Two Poets, A Distinguished Provincial at
+  Paris, and Eve and David. The action in Scenes From A Courtesan's
+  Life commences directly after the end of Eve and David.
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                          To His Highness
+                 Prince Alfonso Serafino di Porcia.
+
+  Allow me to place your name at the beginning of an essentially
+  Parisian work, thought out in your house during these latter days.
+  Is it not natural that I should offer you the flowers of rhetoric
+  that blossomed in your garden, watered with the regrets I suffered
+  from home-sickness, which you soothed, as I wandered under the
+  boschetti whose elms reminded me of the Champs-Elysees? Thus,
+  perchance, may I expiate the crime of having dreamed of Paris
+  under the shadow of the Duomo, of having longed for our muddy
+  streets on the clean and elegant flagstones of Porta-Renza. When I
+  have some book to publish which may be dedicated to a Milanese
+  lady, I shall have the happiness of finding names already dear to
+  your old Italian romancers among those of women whom we love, and
+  to whose memory I would beg you to recall your sincerely
+  affectionate
+
+
+                                                          DE BALZAC.
+    July 1838.
+
+
+
+
+                     SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE
+
+
+
+                              ESTHER HAPPY;
+                      OR, HOW A COURTESAN CAN LOVE
+
+In 1824, at the last opera ball of the season, several masks were
+struck by the beauty of a youth who was wandering about the passages
+and greenroom with the air of a man in search of a woman kept at home
+by unexpected circumstances. The secret of this behavior, now dilatory
+and again hurried, is known only to old women and to certain
+experienced loungers. In this immense assembly the crowd does not
+trouble itself much to watch the crowd; each one's interest is
+impassioned, and even idlers are preoccupied.
+
+The young dandy was so much absorbed in his anxious quest that he did
+not observe his own success; he did not hear, he did not see the
+ironical exclamations of admiration, the genuine appreciation, the
+biting gibes, the soft invitations of some of the masks. Though he was
+so handsome as to rank among those exceptional persons who come to an
+opera ball in search of an adventure, and who expect it as confidently
+as men looked for a lucky coup at roulette in Frascati's day, he
+seemed quite philosophically sure of his evening; he must be the hero
+of one of those mysteries with three actors which constitute an opera
+ball, and are known only to those who play a part in them; for, to
+young wives who come merely to say, "I have seen it," to country
+people, to inexperienced youths, and to foreigners, the opera house
+must on those nights be the palace of fatigue and dulness. To these,
+that black swarm, slow and serried--coming, going, winding, turning,
+returning, mounting, descending, comparable only to ants on a pile of
+wood--is no more intelligible than the Bourse to a Breton peasant who
+has never heard of the Grand livre.
+
+With a few rare exceptions, men wear no masks in Paris; a man in a
+domino is thought ridiculous. In this the spirit of the nation betrays
+itself. Men who want to hide their good fortune can enjoy the opera
+ball without going there; and masks who are absolutely compelled to go
+in come out again at once. One of the most amusing scenes is the crush
+at the doors produced as soon as the dancing begins, by the rush of
+persons getting away and struggling with those who are pushing in. So
+the men who wear masks are either jealous husbands who come to watch
+their wives, or husbands on the loose who do not wish to be watched by
+them--two situations equally ridiculous.
+
+Now, our young man was followed, though he knew it not, by a man in a
+mask, dogging his steps, short and stout, with a rolling gait, like a
+barrel. To every one familiar with the opera this disguise betrayed a
+stock-broker, a banker, a lawyer, some citizen soul suspicious of
+infidelity. For in fact, in really high society, no one courts such
+humiliating proofs. Several masks had laughed as they pointed this
+preposterous figure out to each other; some had spoken to him, a few
+young men had made game of him, but his stolid manner showed entire
+contempt for these aimless shafts; he went on whither the young man
+led him, as a hunted wild boar goes on and pays no heed to the bullets
+whistling about his ears, or the dogs barking at his heels.
+
+Though at first sight pleasure and anxiety wear the same livery--the
+noble black robe of Venice--and though all is confusion at an opera
+ball, the various circles composing Parisian society meet there,
+recognize, and watch each other. There are certain ideas so clear to
+the initiated that this scrawled medley of interests is as legible to
+them as any amusing novel. So, to these old hands, this man could not
+be here by appointment; he would infallibly have worn some token, red,
+white, or green, such as notifies a happy meeting previously agreed
+on. Was it a case of revenge?
+
+Seeing the domino following so closely in the wake of a man apparently
+happy in an assignation, some of the gazers looked again at the
+handsome face, on which anticipation had set its divine halo. The
+youth was interesting; the longer he wandered, the more curiosity he
+excited. Everything about him proclaimed the habits of refined life.
+In obedience to a fatal law of the time we live in, there is not much
+difference, physical or moral, between the most elegant and best bred
+son of a duke and peer and this attractive youth, whom poverty had not
+long since held in its iron grip in the heart of Paris. Beauty and
+youth might cover him in deep gulfs, as in many a young man who longs
+to play a part in Paris without having the capital to support his
+pretensions, and who, day after day, risks all to win all, by
+sacrificing to the god who has most votaries in this royal city,
+namely, Chance. At the same time, his dress and manners were above
+reproach; he trod the classic floor of the opera house as one
+accustomed there. Who can have failed to observe that there, as in
+every zone in Paris, there is a manner of being which shows who you
+are, what you are doing, whence you come, and what you want?
+
+"What a handsome young fellow; and here we may turn round to look at
+him," said a mask, in whom accustomed eyes recognized a lady of
+position.
+
+"Do you not remember him?" replied the man on whose arm she was
+leaning. "Madame du Chatelet introduced him to you----"
+
+"What, is that the apothecary's son she fancied herself in love with,
+who became a journalist, Mademoiselle Coralie's lover?"
+
+"I fancied he had fallen too low ever to pull himself up again, and I
+cannot understand how he can show himself again in the world of
+Paris," said the Comte Sixte du Chatelet.
+
+"He has the air of a prince," the mask went on, "and it is not the
+actress he lived with who could give it to him. My cousin, who
+understood him, could not lick him into shape. I should like to know
+the mistress of this Sargine; tell me something about him that will
+enable me to mystify him."
+
+This couple, whispering as they watched the young man, became the
+object of study to the square-shouldered domino.
+
+"Dear Monsieur Chardon," said the Prefet of the Charente, taking the
+dandy's hand, "allow me to introduce you to some one who wishes to
+renew acquaintance with you----"
+
+"Dear Comte Chatelet," replied the young man, "that lady taught me how
+ridiculous was the name by which you address me. A patent from the
+king has restored to me that of my mother's family--the Rubempres.
+Although the fact has been announced in the papers, it relates to so
+unimportant a person that I need not blush to recall it to my friends,
+my enemies, and those who are neither----You may class yourself where
+you will, but I am sure you will not disapprove of a step to which I
+was advised by your wife when she was still only Madame de Bargeton."
+
+This neat retort, which made the Marquise smile, gave the Prefet of la
+Charente a nervous chill. "You may tell her," Lucien went on, "that I
+now bear gules, a bull raging argent on a meadow vert."
+
+"Raging argent," echoed Chatelet.
+
+"Madame la Marquise will explain to you, if you do not know, why that
+old coat is a little better than the chamberlain's key and Imperial
+gold bees which you bear on yours, to the great despair of Madame
+Chatelet, nee Negrepelisse d'Espard," said Lucien quickly.
+
+"Since you recognize me, I cannot puzzle you; and I could never tell
+you how much you puzzle me," said the Marquise d'Espard, amazed at the
+coolness and impertinence to which the man had risen whom she had
+formerly despised.
+
+"Then allow me, madame, to preserve my only chance of occupying your
+thoughts by remaining in that mysterious twilight," said he, with the
+smile of a man who does not wish to risk assured happiness.
+
+"I congratulate you on your changed fortunes," said the Comte du
+Chatelet to Lucien.
+
+"I take it as you offer it," replied Lucien, bowing with much grace to
+the Marquise.
+
+"What a coxcomb!" said the Count in an undertone to Madame d'Espard.
+"He has succeeded in winning an ancestry."
+
+"With these young men such coxcombry, when it is addressed to us,
+almost always implies some success in high places," said the lady;
+"for with you older men it means ill-fortune. And I should very much
+like to know which of my grand lady friends has taken this fine bird
+under her patronage; then I might find the means of amusing myself
+this evening. My ticket, anonymously sent, is no doubt a bit of
+mischief planned by a rival and having something to do with this young
+man. His impertinence is to order; keep an eye on him. I will take the
+Duc de Navarrein's arm. You will be able to find me again."
+
+Just as Madame d'Espard was about to address her cousin, the
+mysterious mask came between her and the Duke to whisper in her ear:
+
+"Lucien loves you; he wrote the note. Your Prefet is his greatest foe;
+how can he speak in his presence?"
+
+The stranger moved off, leaving Madame d'Espard a prey to a double
+surprise. The Marquise knew no one in the world who was capable of
+playing the part assumed by this mask; she suspected a snare, and went
+to sit down out of sight. The Comte Sixte du Chatelet--whom Lucien had
+abridged of his ambitious _du_ with an emphasis that betrayed long
+meditated revenge--followed the handsome dandy, and presently met a
+young man to whom he thought he could speak without reserve.
+
+"Well, Rastignac, have you seen Lucien? He has come out in a new
+skin."
+
+"If I were half as good looking as he is, I should be twice as rich,"
+replied the fine gentleman, in a light but meaning tone, expressive of
+keen raillery.
+
+"No!" said the fat mask in his ear, repaying a thousand ironies in one
+by the accent he lent the monosyllable.
+
+Rastignac, who was not the man to swallow an affront, stood as if
+struck by lightning, and allowed himself to be led into a recess by a
+grasp of iron which he could not shake off.
+
+"You young cockerel, hatched in Mother Vauquer's coop--you, whose
+heart failed you to clutch old Taillefer's millions when the hardest
+part of the business was done--let me tell you, for your personal
+safety, that if you do not treat Lucien like the brother you love, you
+are in our power, while we are not in yours. Silence and submission!
+or I shall join your game and upset the skittles. Lucien de Rubempre
+is under the protection of the strongest power of the day--the Church.
+Choose between life and death--Answer."
+
+Rastignac felt giddy, like a man who has slept in a forest and wakes
+to see by his side a famishing lioness. He was frightened, and there
+was no one to see him; the boldest men yield to fear under such
+circumstances.
+
+"No one but HE can know--or would dare----" he murmured to himself.
+
+The mask clutched his hand tighter to prevent his finishing his
+sentence.
+
+"Act as if I were _he_," he said.
+
+Rastignac then acted like a millionaire on the highroad with a
+brigand's pistol at his head; he surrendered.
+
+"My dear Count," said he to du Chatelet, to whom he presently
+returned, "if you care for your position in life, treat Lucien de
+Rubempre as a man whom you will one day see holding a place far above
+where you stand."
+
+The mask made a imperceptible gesture of approbation, and went off in
+search of Lucien.
+
+"My dear fellow, you have changed your opinion of him very suddenly,"
+replied the Prefet with justifiable surprise.
+
+"As suddenly as men change who belong to the centre and vote with the
+right," replied Rastignac to the Prefet-Depute, whose vote had for a
+few days failed to support the Ministry.
+
+"Are there such things as opinions nowadays? There are only
+interests," observed des Lupeaulx, who had heard them. "What is the
+case in point?"
+
+"The case of the Sieur de Rubempre, whom Rastignac is setting up as a
+person of consequence," said du Chatelet to the Secretary-General.
+
+"My dear Count," replied des Lupeaulx very seriously, "Monsieur de
+Rubempre is a young man of the highest merit, and has such good
+interest at his back that I should be delighted to renew my
+acquaintance with him."
+
+"There he is, rushing into the wasps' nest of the rakes of the day,"
+said Rastignac.
+
+
+
+The three speakers looked towards a corner where a group of recognized
+wits had gathered, men of more or less celebrity, and several men of
+fashion. These gentlemen made common stock of their jests, their
+remarks, and their scandal, trying to amuse themselves till something
+should amuse them. Among this strangely mingled party were some men
+with whom Lucien had had transactions, combining ostensibly kind
+offices with covert false dealing.
+
+"Hallo! Lucien, my boy, why here we are patched up again--new stuffing
+and a new cover. Where have we come from? Have we mounted the high
+horse once more with little offerings from Florine's boudoir? Bravo,
+old chap!" and Blondet released Finot to put his arm affectionately
+around Lucien and press him to his heart.
+
+Andoche Finot was the proprietor of a review on which Lucien had
+worked for almost nothing, and to which Blondet gave the benefit of
+his collaboration, of the wisdom of his suggestions and the depth of
+his views. Finot and Blondet embodied Bertrand and Raton, with this
+difference--that la Fontaine's cat at last showed that he knew himself
+to be duped, while Blondet, though he knew that he was being fleeced,
+still did all he could for Finot. This brilliant condottiere of the
+pen was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot hid a brutal strength
+of will under a heavy exterior, under polish of wit, as a laborer rubs
+his bread with garlic. He knew how to garner what he gleaned, ideas
+and crown-pieces alike, in the fields of the dissolute life led by men
+engaged in letters or in politics.
+
+Blondet, for his sins, had placed his powers at the service of Finot's
+vices and idleness. Always at war with necessity, he was one of the
+race of poverty-stricken and superior men who can do everything for
+the fortune of others and nothing for their own, Aladdins who let
+other men borrow their lamp. These excellent advisers have a clear and
+penetrating judgment so long as it is not distracted by personal
+interest. In them it is the head and not the arm that acts. Hence the
+looseness of their morality, and hence the reproach heaped upon them
+by inferior minds. Blondet would share his purse with a comrade he had
+affronted the day before; he would dine, drink, and sleep with one
+whom he would demolish on the morrow. His amusing paradoxes excused
+everything. Accepting the whole world as a jest, he did not want to be
+taken seriously; young, beloved, almost famous and contented, he did
+not devote himself, like Finot, to acquiring the fortune an old man
+needs.
+
+The most difficult form of courage, perhaps, is that which Lucien
+needed at this moment to get rid of Blondet as he had just got rid of
+Madame d'Espard and Chatelet. In him, unfortunately, the joys of
+vanity hindered the exercise of pride--the basis, beyond doubt, of
+many great things. His vanity had triumphed in the previous encounter;
+he had shown himself as a rich man, happy and scornful, to two persons
+who had scorned him when he was poor and wretched. But how could a
+poet, like an old diplomate, run the gauntlet with two self-styled
+friends, who had welcomed him in misery, under whose roof he had slept
+in the worst of his troubles? Finot, Blondet, and he had groveled
+together; they had wallowed in such orgies as consume something more
+than money. Like soldiers who find no market for their courage, Lucien
+had just done what many men do in Paris: he had still further
+compromised his character by shaking Finot's hand, and not rejecting
+Blondet's affection.
+
+Every man who has dabbled, or still dabbles, in journalism is under
+the painful necessity of bowing to men he despises, of smiling at his
+dearest foe, of compounding the foulest meanness, of soiling his
+fingers to pay his aggressors in their own coin. He becomes used to
+seeing evil done, and passing it over; he begins by condoning it, and
+ends by committing it. In the long run the soul, constantly strained
+by shameful and perpetual compromise, sinks lower, the spring of noble
+thoughts grows rusty, the hinges of familiarity wear easy, and turn of
+their own accord. Alceste becomes Philinte, natures lose their
+firmness, talents are perverted, faith in great deeds evaporates. The
+man who yearned to be proud of his work wastes himself in rubbishy
+articles which his conscience regards, sooner or later, as so many
+evil actions. He started, like Lousteau or Vernou, to be a great
+writer; he finds himself a feeble scrivener. Hence it is impossible to
+honor too highly men whose character stands as high as their talent
+--men like d'Arthez, who know how to walk surefooted across the reefs
+of literary life.
+
+Lucien could make no reply to Blondet's flattery; his wit had an
+irresistible charm for him, and he maintained the hold of the
+corrupter over his pupil; besides, he held a position in the world
+through his connection with the Comtesse de Montcornet.
+
+"Has an uncle left you a fortune?" said Finot, laughing at him.
+
+"Like you, I have marked some fools for cutting down," replied Lucien
+in the same tone.
+
+"Then Monsieur has a review--a newspaper of his own?" Andoche Finot
+retorted, with the impertinent presumption of a chief to a
+subordinate.
+
+"I have something better," replied Lucien, whose vanity, nettled by
+the assumed superiority of his editor, restored him to the sense of
+his new position.
+
+"What is that, my dear boy?"
+
+"I have a party."
+
+"There is a Lucien party?" said Vernou, smiling
+
+"Finot, the boy has left you in the lurch; I told you he would. Lucien
+is a clever fellow, and you never were respectful to him. You used him
+as a hack. Repent, blockhead!" said Blondet.
+
+Blondet, as sharp as a needle, could detect more than one secret in
+Lucien's air and manner; while stroking him down, he contrived to
+tighten the curb. He meant to know the reasons of Lucien's return to
+Paris, his projects, and his means of living.
+
+"On your knees to a superiority you can never attain to, albeit you
+are Finot!" he went on. "Admit this gentleman forthwith to be one of
+the great men to whom the future belongs; he is one of us! So witty
+and so handsome, can he fail to succeed by your quibuscumque viis?
+Here he stands, in his good Milan armor, his strong sword half
+unsheathed, and his pennon flying!--Bless me, Lucien, where did you
+steal that smart waistcoat? Love alone can find such stuff as that.
+Have you an address? At this moment I am anxious to know where my
+friends are domiciled; I don't know where to sleep. Finot has turned
+me out of doors for the night, under the vulgar pretext of 'a lady in
+the case.'"
+
+"My boy," said Lucien, "I put into practice a motto by which you may
+secure a quiet life: Fuge, late, tace. I am off."
+
+"But I am not off till you pay me a sacred debt--that little supper,
+you know, heh?" said Blondet, who was rather too much given to good
+cheer, and got himself treated when he was out of funds.
+
+"What supper?" asked Lucien with a little stamp of impatience.
+
+"You don't remember? In that I recognize my prosperous friend; he has
+lost his memory."
+
+"He knows what he owes us; I will go bail for his good heart," said
+Finot, taking up Blondet's joke.
+
+"Rastignac," said Blondet, taking the young dandy by the arm as he
+came up the room to the column where the so-called friends were
+standing. "There is a supper in the wind; you will join us--unless,"
+he added gravely, turning to Lucien, "Monsieur persists in ignoring a
+debt of honor. He can."
+
+"Monsieur de Rubempre is incapable of such a thing; I will answer for
+him," said Rastignac, who never dreamed of a practical joke.
+
+"And there is Bixiou, he will come too," cried Blondet; "there is no
+fun without him. Without him champagne cloys my tongue, and I find
+everything insipid, even the pepper of satire."
+
+"My friends," said Bixiou, "I see you have gathered round the wonder
+of the day. Our dear Lucien has revived the Metamorphoses of Ovid.
+Just as the gods used to turn into strange vegetables and other things
+to seduce the ladies, he has turned the Chardon (the Thistle) into a
+gentleman to bewitch--whom? Charles X.!--My dear boy," he went on,
+holding Lucien by his coat button, "a journalist who apes the fine
+gentleman deserves rough music. In their place," said the merciless
+jester, as he pointed to Finot and Vernou, "I should take you up in my
+society paper; you would bring in a hundred francs for ten columns of
+fun."
+
+"Bixiou," said Blondet, "an Amphitryon is sacred for twenty-four hours
+before a feast and twelve hours after. Our illustrious friend is
+giving us a supper."
+
+"What then!" cried Bixiou; "what is more imperative than the duty of
+saving a great name from oblivion, of endowing the indigent
+aristocracy with a man of talent? Lucien, you enjoy the esteem of the
+press of which you were a distinguished ornament, and we will give you
+our support.--Finot, a paragraph in the 'latest items'!--Blondet, a
+little butter on the fourth page of your paper!--We must advertise the
+appearance of one of the finest books of the age, _l'Archer de Charles
+IX._! We will appeal to Dauriat to bring out as soon as possible _les
+Marguerites_, those divine sonnets by the French Petrarch! We must
+carry our friend through on the shield of stamped paper by which
+reputations are made and unmade."
+
+"If you want a supper," said Lucien to Blondet, hoping to rid himself
+of this mob, which threatened to increase, "it seems to me that you
+need not work up hyperbole and parable to attack an old friend as if
+he were a booby. To-morrow night at Lointier's----" he cried, seeing a
+woman come by, whom he rushed to meet.
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!" said Bixiou on three notes, with a mocking glance, and
+seeming to recognize the mask to whom Lucien addressed himself. "This
+needs confirmation."
+
+He followed the handsome pair, got past them, examined them keenly,
+and came back, to the great satisfaction of all the envious crowd, who
+were eager to learn the source of Lucien's change of fortune.
+
+"Friends," said Bixiou, "you have long known the goddess of the Sire
+de Rubempre's fortune: She is des Lupeaulx's former 'rat.'"
+
+A form of dissipation, now forgotten, but still customary at the
+beginning of this century, was the keeping of "rats." The "rat"--a
+slang word that has become old-fashioned--was a girl of ten or twelve
+in the chorus of some theatre, more particularly at the opera, who was
+trained by young roues to vice and infamy. A "rat" was a sort of demon
+page, a tomboy who was forgiven a trick if it were but funny. The
+"rat" might take what she pleased; she was to be watched like a
+dangerous animal, and she brought an element of liveliness into life,
+like Scapin, Sganarelle, and Frontin in old-fashioned comedy. But a
+"rat" was too expensive; it made no return in honor, profit, or
+pleasure; the fashion of rats so completely went out, that in these
+days few people knew anything of this detail of fashionable life
+before the Restoration till certain writers took up the "rat" as a new
+subject.
+
+"What! after having seen Coralie killed under him, Lucien means to rob
+us of La Torpille?" (the torpedo fish) said Blondet.
+
+As he heard the name the brawny mask gave a significant start, which,
+though repressed, was understood by Rastignac.
+
+"It is out of the question," replied Finot; "La Torpille has not a sou
+to give away; Nathan tells me she borrowed a thousand francs of
+Florine."
+
+"Come, gentlemen, gentlemen!" said Rastignac, anxious to defend Lucien
+against so odious an imputation.
+
+"Well," cried Vernou, "is Coralie's kept man likely to be so very
+particular?"
+
+"Oh!" replied Bixiou, "those thousand francs prove to me that our
+friend Lucien lives with La Torpille----"
+
+"What an irreparable loss to literature, science, art, and politics!"
+exclaimed Blondet. "La Torpille is the only common prostitute in whom
+I ever found the stuff for a superior courtesan; she has not been
+spoiled by education--she can neither read nor write, she would have
+understood us. We might have given to our era one of those magnificent
+Aspasias without which there can be no golden age. See how admirably
+Madame du Barry was suited to the eighteenth century, Ninon de
+l'Enclos to the seventeenth, Marion Delorme to the sixteenth, Imperia
+to the fifteenth, Flora to Republican Rome, which she made her heir,
+and which paid off the public debt with her fortune! What would Horace
+be without Lydia, Tibullus without Delia, Catullus without Lesbia,
+Propertius without Cynthia, Demetrius without Lamia, who is his glory
+at this day?"
+
+"Blondet talking of Demetrius in the opera house seems to me rather
+too strong of the _Debats_," said Bixiou in his neighbor's ears.
+
+"And where would the empire of the Caesars have been but for these
+queens?" Blondet went on; "Lais and Rhodope are Greece and Egypt. They
+all indeed are the poetry of the ages in which they lived. This
+poetry, which Napoleon lacked--for the Widow of his Great Army is a
+barrack jest, was not wanting to the Revolution; it had Madame
+Tallien! In these days there is certainly a throne to let in France
+which is for her who can fill it. We among us could make a queen. I
+should have given La Torpille an aunt, for her mother is too decidedly
+dead on the field of dishonor; du Tillet would have given her a
+mansion, Lousteau a carriage, Rastignac her footmen, des Lupeaulx a
+cook, Finot her hats"--Finot could not suppress a shrug at standing
+the point-blank fire of this epigram--"Vernou would have composed her
+advertisements, and Bixiou her repartees! The aristocracy would have
+come to enjoy themselves with our Ninon, where we would have got
+artists together, under pain of death by newspaper articles. Ninon the
+second would have been magnificently impertinent, overwhelming in
+luxury. She would have set up opinions. Some prohibited dramatic
+masterpiece should have been read in her drawing-room; it should have
+been written on purpose if necessary. She would not have been liberal;
+a courtesan is essentially monarchical. Oh, what a loss! She ought to
+have embraced her whole century, and she makes love with a little
+young man! Lucien will make a sort of hunting-dog of her."
+
+"None of the female powers of whom you speak ever trudged the
+streets," said Finot, "and that pretty little 'rat' has rolled in the
+mire."
+
+"Like a lily-seed in the soil," replied Vernou, "and she has improved
+in it and flowered. Hence her superiority. Must we not have known
+everything to be able to create the laughter and joy which are part of
+everything?"
+
+"He is right," said Lousteau, who had hitherto listened without
+speaking; "La Torpille can laugh and make others laugh. That gift of
+all great writers and great actors is proper to those who have
+investigated every social deep. At eighteen that girl had already
+known the greatest wealth, the most squalid misery--men of every
+degree. She bears about her a sort of magic wand by which she lets
+loose the brutal appetites so vehemently suppressed in men who still
+have a heart while occupied with politics or science, literature or
+art. There is not in Paris another woman who can say to the beast as
+she does: 'Come out!' And the beast leaves his lair and wallows in
+excesses. She feeds you up to the chin, she helps you to drink and
+smoke. In short, this woman is the salt of which Rabelais writes,
+which, thrown on matter, animates it and elevates it to the marvelous
+realms of art; her robe displays unimagined splendor, her fingers drop
+gems as her lips shed smiles; she gives the spirit of the occasion to
+every little thing; her chatter twinkles with bright sayings, she has
+the secret of the quaintest onomatopoeia, full of color, and giving
+color; she----"
+
+"You are wasting five francs' worth of copy," said Bixiou,
+interrupting Lousteau. "La Torpille is something far better than all
+that; you have all been in love with her more or less, not one of you
+can say that she ever was his mistress. She can always command you;
+you will never command her. You may force your way in and ask her to
+do you a service----"
+
+"Oh, she is more generous than a brigand chief who knows his business,
+and more devoted than the best of school-fellows," said Blondet. "You
+may trust her with your purse or your secrets. But what made me choose
+her as queen is her Bourbon-like indifference for a fallen favorite."
+
+"She, like her mother, is much too dear," said des Lupeaulx. "The
+handsome Dutch woman would have swallowed up the income of the
+Archbishop of Toledo; she ate two notaries out of house and home----"
+
+"And kept Maxime de Trailles when he was a court page," said Bixiou.
+
+"La Torpille is too dear, as Raphael was, or Careme, or Taglioni, or
+Lawrence, or Boule, or any artist of genius is too dear," said
+Blondet.
+
+"Esther never looked so thoroughly a lady," said Rastignac, pointing
+to the masked figure to whom Lucien had given his arm. "I will bet on
+its being Madame de Serizy."
+
+"Not a doubt of it," cried du Chatelet, "and Monsieur du Rubempre's
+fortune is accounted for."
+
+"Ah, the Church knows how to choose its Levites; what a sweet
+ambassador's secretary he will make!" remarked des Lupeaulx.
+
+"All the more so," Rastignac went on, "because Lucien is a really
+clever fellow. These gentlemen have had proof of it more than once,"
+and he turned to Blondet, Finot, and Lousteau.
+
+"Yes, the boy is cut out of the right stuff to get on," said Lousteau,
+who was dying of jealousy. "And particularly because he has what we
+call independent ideas . . ."
+
+"It is you who trained him," said Vernou.
+
+"Well," replied Bixiou, looking at des Lupeaulx, "I trust to the
+memory of Monsieur the Secretary-General and Master of Appeals--that
+mask is La Torpille, and I will stand a supper on it."
+
+"I will hold the stakes," said du Chatelet, curious to know the truth.
+
+"Come, des Lupeaulx," said Finot, "try to identify your rat's ears."
+
+"There is no need for committing the crime of treason against a mask,"
+replied Bixiou. "La Torpille and Lucien must pass us as they go up the
+room again, and I pledge myself to prove that it is she."
+
+"So our friend Lucien has come above water once more," said Nathan,
+joining the group. "I thought he had gone back to Angoumois for the
+rest of his days. Has he discovered some secret to ruin the English?"
+
+"He has done what you will not do in a hurry," retorted Rastignac; "he
+has paid up."
+
+The burly mask nodded in confirmation.
+
+"A man who has sown his wild oats at his age puts himself out of
+court. He has no pluck; he puts money in the funds," replied Nathan.
+
+"Oh, that youngster will always be a fine gentleman, and will always
+have such lofty notions as will place him far above many men who think
+themselves his betters," replied Rastignac.
+
+At this moment journalists, dandies, and idlers were all examining the
+charming subject of their bet as horse-dealers examine a horse for
+sale. These connoisseurs, grown old in familiarity with every form of
+Parisian depravity, all men of superior talent each his own way,
+equally corrupt, equally corrupting, all given over to unbridled
+ambition, accustomed to assume and to guess everything, had their eyes
+centered on a masked woman, a woman whom no one else could identify.
+They, and certain habitual frequenters of the opera balls, could alone
+recognize under the long shroud of the black domino, the hood and
+falling ruff which make the wearer unrecognizable, the rounded form,
+the individuality of figure and gait, the sway of the waist, the
+carriage of the head--the most intangible trifles to ordinary eyes,
+but to them the easiest to discern.
+
+In spite of this shapeless wrapper they could watch the most appealing
+of dramas, that of a woman inspired by a genuine passion. Were she La
+Torpille, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, or Madame de Serizy, on the
+lowest or highest rung of the social ladder, this woman was an
+exquisite creature, a flash from happy dreams. These old young men,
+like these young old men, felt so keen an emotion, that they envied
+Lucien the splendid privilege of working such a metamorphosis of a
+woman into a goddess. The mask was there as though she had been alone
+with Lucien; for that woman the thousand other persons did not exist,
+nor the evil and dust-laden atmosphere; no, she moved under the
+celestial vault of love, as Raphael's Madonnas under their slender
+oval glory. She did not feel herself elbowed; the fire of her glance
+shot from the holes in her mask and sank into Lucien's eyes; the
+thrill of her frame seemed to answer to every movement of her
+companion. Whence comes this flame that radiates from a woman in love
+and distinguishes her above all others? Whence that sylph-like
+lightness which seems to negative the laws of gravitation? Is the soul
+become ambient? Has happiness a physical effluence?
+
+The ingenuousness of a girl, the graces of a child were discernible
+under the domino. Though they walked apart, these two beings suggested
+the figures of Flora and Zephyr as we see them grouped by the
+cleverest sculptors; but they were beyond sculpture, the greatest of
+the arts; Lucien and his pretty domino were more like the angels
+busied with flowers or birds, which Gian Bellini has placed beneath
+the effigies of the Virgin Mother. Lucien and this girl belonged to
+the realm of fancy, which is as far above art as cause is above
+effect.
+
+When the domino, forgetful of everything, was within a yard of the
+group, Bixiou exclaimed:
+
+"Esther!"
+
+The unhappy girl turned her head quickly at hearing herself called,
+recognized the mischievous speaker, and bowed her head like a dying
+creature that has drawn its last breath.
+
+A sharp laugh followed, and the group of men melted among the
+crowd like a knot of frightened field-rats whisking into their
+holes by the roadside. Rastignac alone went no further than was
+necessary, just to avoid making any show of shunning Lucien's
+flashing eye. He could thus note two phases of distress equally
+deep though unconfessed; first, the hapless Torpille, stricken as
+by a lightning stroke, and then the inscrutable mask, the only
+one of the group who had remained. Esther murmured a word in
+Lucien's ear just as her knees gave way, and Lucien, supporting
+her, led her away.
+
+Rastignac watched the pretty pair, lost in meditation.
+
+"How did she get her name of La Torpille?" asked a gloomy voice that
+struck to his vitals, for it was no longer disguised.
+
+"_He_ again--he has made his escape!" muttered Rastignac to himself.
+
+"Be silent or I murder you," replied the mask, changing his voice. "I
+am satisfied with you, you have kept your word, and there is more than
+one arm ready to serve you. Henceforth be as silent as the grave; but,
+before that, answer my question."
+
+"Well, the girl is such a witch that she could have magnetized the
+Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man more difficult to
+influence--you yourself," replied Rastignac, and he turned to go.
+
+"One moment," said the mask; "I will prove to you that you have never
+seen me anywhere."
+
+The speaker took his mask off; for a moment Rastignac hesitated,
+recognizing nothing of the hideous being he had known formerly at
+Madame Vauquer's.
+
+"The devil has enabled you to change in every particular, excepting
+your eyes, which it is impossible to forget," said he.
+
+The iron hand gripped his arm to enjoin eternal secrecy.
+
+At three in the morning des Lupeaulx and Finot found the elegant
+Rastignac on the same spot, leaning against the column where the
+terrible mask had left him. Rastignac had confessed to himself; he had
+been at once priest and pentient, culprit and judge. He allowed
+himself to be led away to breakfast, and reached home perfectly tipsy,
+but taciturn.
+
+
+
+The Rue de Langlade and the adjacent streets are a blot on the Palais
+Royal and the Rue de Rivoli. This portion of one of the handsomest
+quarters of Paris will long retain the stain of foulness left by the
+hillocks formed of the middens of old Paris, on which mills formerly
+stood. These narrow streets, dark and muddy, where such industries are
+carried on as care little for appearances wear at night an aspect of
+mystery full of contrasts. On coming from the well-lighted regions of
+the Rue Saint-Honore, the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, and the Rue de
+Richelieu, where the crowd is constantly pushing, where glitter the
+masterpieces of industry, fashion, and art, every man to whom Paris by
+night is unknown would feel a sense of dread and melancholy, on
+finding himself in the labyrinth of little streets which lie round
+that blaze of light reflected even from the sky. Dense blackness is
+here, instead of floods of gaslight; a dim oil-lamp here and there
+sheds its doubtful and smoky gleam, and many blind alleys are not
+lighted at all. Foot passengers are few, and walk fast. The shops are
+shut, the few that are open are of a squalid kind; a dirty, unlighted
+wineshop, or a seller of underclothing and eau-de-Cologne. An
+unwholesome chill lays a clammy cloak over your shoulders. Few
+carriages drive past. There are sinister places here, especially the
+Rue de Langlade, the entrance to the Passage Saint-Guillaume, and the
+turnings of some streets.
+
+The municipal council has not yet been to purge this vast lazar-place,
+for prostitution long since made it its headquarters. It is, perhaps,
+a good thing for Paris that these alleys should be allowed to preserve
+their filthy aspect. Passing through them by day, it is impossible to
+imagine what they become by night; they are pervaded by strange
+creatures of no known world; white, half-naked forms cling to the
+walls--the darkness is alive. Between the passenger and the wall a
+dress steals by--a dress that moves and speaks. Half-open doors
+suddenly shout with laughter. Words fall on the ear such as Rabelais
+speaks of as frozen and melting. Snatches of songs come up from the
+pavement. The noise is not vague; it means something. When it is
+hoarse it is a voice; but if it suggests a song, there is nothing
+human about it, it is more like a croak. Often you hear a sharp
+whistle, and then the tap of boot-heels has a peculiarly aggressive
+and mocking ring. This medley of things makes you giddy. Atmospheric
+conditions are reversed there--it is warm in winter and cool in
+summer.
+
+Still, whatever the weather, this strange world always wears the same
+aspect; it is the fantastic world of Hoffmann of Berlin. The most
+mathematical of clerks never thinks of it as real, after returning
+through the straits that lead into decent streets, where there are
+passengers, shops, and taverns. Modern administration, or modern
+policy, more scornful or more shamefaced than the queens and kings of
+past ages, no longer dare look boldly in the face of this plague of
+our capitals. Measures, of course, must change with the times, and
+such as bear on individuals and on their liberty are a ticklish
+matter; still, we ought, perhaps, to show some breadth and boldness as
+to merely material measures--air, light, and construction. The
+moralist, the artist, and the sage administrator alike must regret the
+old wooden galleries of the Palais Royal, where the lambs were to be
+seen who will always be found where there are loungers; and is it not
+best that the loungers should go where they are to be found? What is
+the consequence? The gayest parts of the Boulevards, that
+delightfulest of promenades, are impossible in the evening for a
+family party. The police has failed to take advantage of the outlet
+afforded by some small streets to purge the main street.
+
+The girl whom we have seen crushed by a word at the opera ball had
+been for the last month or two living in the Rue de Langlade, in a
+very poor-looking house. This structure, stuck on to the wall of an
+enormously large one, badly stuccoed, of no depth, and immensely high,
+has all its windows on the street, and bears some resemblance to a
+parrot's perch. On each floor are two rooms, let as separate flats.
+There is a narrow staircase clinging to the wall, queerly lighted by
+windows which mark its ascent on the outer wall, each landing being
+indicated by a stink, one of the most odious peculiarities of Paris.
+The shop and entresol at that time were tenanted by a tinman; the
+landlord occupied the first floor; the four upper stories were rented
+by very decent working girls, who were treated by the portress and the
+proprietor with some consideration and an obligingness called forth by
+the difficulty of letting a house so oddly constructed and situated.
+The occupants of the quarter are accounted for by the existence there
+of many houses of the same character, for which trade has no use, and
+which can only be rented by the poorer kinds of industry, of a
+precarious or ignominious nature.
+
+At three in the afternoon the portress, who had seen Mademoiselle
+Esther brought home half dead by a young man at two in the morning,
+had just held council with the young woman of the floor above, who,
+before setting out in a cab to join some party of pleasure, had
+expressed her uneasiness about Esther; she had not heard her move.
+Esther was, no doubt, still asleep, but this slumber seemed
+suspicious. The portress, alone in her cell, was regretting that she
+could not go to see what was happening on the fourth floor, where
+Mademoiselle Esther lodged.
+
+Just as she had made up her mind to leave the tinman's son in charge
+of her room, a sort of den in a recess on the entresol floor, a cab
+stopped at the door. A man stepped out, wrapped from head to foot in a
+cloak evidently intended to conceal his dress or his rank in life, and
+asked for Mademoiselle Esther. The portress at one felt relieved; this
+accounted for Esther's silence and quietude. As the stranger mounted
+the stairs above the portress' room, she noticed silver buckles in his
+shoes, and fancied she caught sight of the black fringe of a priest's
+sash; she went downstairs and catechised the driver, who answered
+without speech, and again the woman understood.
+
+The priest knocked, received no answer, heard a slight gasp, and
+forced the door open with a thrust of his shoulder; charity, no doubt
+lent him strength, but in any one else it would have been ascribed to
+practice. He rushed to the inner room, and there found poor Esther in
+front of an image of the Virgin in painted plaster, kneeling, or
+rather doubled up, on the floor, her hands folded. The girl was dying.
+A brazier of burnt charcoal told the tale of that dreadful morning.
+The domino cloak and hood were lying on the ground. The bed was
+undisturbed. The unhappy creature, stricken to the heart by a mortal
+thrust, had, no doubt, made all her arrangements on her return from
+the opera. A candle-wick, collapsed in the pool of grease that filled
+the candle-sconce, showed how completely her last meditations had
+absorbed her. A handkerchief soaked with tears proved the sincerity of
+the Magdalen's despair, while her classic attitude was that of the
+irreligious courtesan. This abject repentance made the priest smile.
+
+Esther, unskilled in dying, had left the door open, not thinking that
+the air of two rooms would need a larger amount of charcoal to make it
+suffocating; she was only stunned by the fumes; the fresh air from the
+staircase gradually restored her to a consciousness of her woes.
+
+The priest remained standing, lost in gloomy meditation, without being
+touched by the girl's divine beauty, watching her first movements as
+if she had been some animal. His eyes went from the crouching figure
+to the surrounding objects with evident indifference. He looked at the
+furniture in the room; the paved floor, red, polished, and cold, was
+poorly covered with a shabby carpet worn to the string. A little
+bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was hung with
+yellow cotton printed with red stars, one armchair and two small
+chairs, also of painted wood, and covered with the same cotton print
+of which the window-curtains were also made; a gray wall-paper
+sprigged with flowers blackened and greasy with age; a fireplace full
+of kitchen utensils of the vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a
+stone shelf, on which lay some jewelry false and real, a pair of
+scissors, a dirty pincushion, and some white scented gloves; an
+exquisite hat perched on the water-jug, a Ternaux shawl stopping a
+hole in the window, a handsome gown hanging from a nail; a little hard
+sofa, with no cushions; broken clogs and dainty slippers, boots that a
+queen might have coveted; cheap china plates, cracked or chipped, with
+fragments of a past meal, and nickel forks--the plate of the Paris
+poor; a basket full of potatoes and dirty linen, with a smart gauze
+cap on the top; a rickety wardrobe, with a glass door, open and empty,
+and on the shelves sundry pawn-tickets,--this was the medley of
+things, dismal or pleasing, abject and handsome, that fell on his eye.
+
+These relics of splendor among the potsherds, these household
+belongings--so appropriate to the bohemian existence of the girl who
+knelt stricken in her unbuttoned garments, like a horse dying in
+harness under the broken shafts entangled in the reins--did the whole
+strange scene suggest any thoughts to the priest? Did he say to
+himself that this erring creature must at least be disinterested to
+live in such poverty when her lover was young and rich? Did he ascribe
+the disorder of the room to the disorder of her life? Did he feel pity
+or terror? Was his charity moved?
+
+To see him, his arms folded, his brow dark, his lips set, his eye
+harsh, any one must have supposed him absorbed in morose feelings of
+hatred, considerations that jostled each other, sinister schemes. He
+was certainly insensible to the soft roundness of a bosom almost
+crushed under the weight of the bowed shoulders, and to the beautiful
+modeling of the crouching Venus that was visible under the black
+petticoat, so closely was the dying girl curled up. The drooping head
+which, seen from behind, showed the white, slender, flexible neck and
+the fine shoulders of a well-developed figure, did not appeal to him.
+He did not raise Esther, he did not seem to hear the agonizing gasps
+which showed that she was returning to life; a fearful sob and a
+terrifying glance from the girl were needed before he condescended to
+lift her, and he carried her to the bed with an ease that revealed
+enormous strength.
+
+"Lucien!" she murmured.
+
+"Love is there, the woman is not far behind," said the priest with
+some bitterness.
+
+The victim of Parisian depravity then observed the dress worn by her
+deliverer, and said, with a smile like a child's when it takes
+possession of something longed for:
+
+"Then I shall not die without being reconciled to Heaven?"
+
+"You may yet expiate your sins," said the priest, moistening her
+forehead with water, and making her smell at a cruet of vinegar he
+found in a corner.
+
+"I feel that life, instead of departing, is rushing in on me," said
+she, after accepting the Father's care and expressing her gratitude by
+simple gestures. This engaging pantomime, such as the Graces might
+have used to charm, perfectly justified the nickname given to this
+strange girl.
+
+"Do you feel better?" said the priest, giving her a glass of sugar and
+water to drink.
+
+This man seemed accustomed to such queer establishments; he knew all
+about it. He was quite at home there. This privilege of being
+everywhere at home is the prerogative of kings, courtesans, and
+thieves.
+
+"When you feel quite well," this strange priest went on after a pause,
+"you must tell me the reasons which prompted you to commit this last
+crime, this attempted suicide."
+
+"My story is very simple, Father," replied she. "Three months ago I
+was living the evil life to which I was born. I was the lowest and
+vilest of creatures; now I am only the most unhappy. Excuse me from
+telling you the history of my poor mother, who was murdered----"
+
+"By a Captain, in a house of ill-fame," said the priest, interrupting
+the penitent. "I know your origin, and I know that if a being of your
+sex can ever be excused for leading a life of shame, it is you, who
+have always lacked good examples."
+
+"Alas! I was never baptized, and have no religious teaching."
+
+"All may yet be remedied then," replied the priest, "provided that
+your faith, your repentance, are sincere and without ulterior motive."
+
+"Lucien and God fill my heart," said she with ingenuous pathos.
+
+"You might have said God and Lucien," answered the priest, smiling.
+"You remind me of the purpose of my visit. Omit nothing that concerns
+that young man."
+
+"You have come from him?" she asked, with a tender look that would
+have touched any other priest! "Oh, he thought I should do it!"
+
+"No," replied the priest; "it is not your death, but your life that we
+are interested in. Come, explain your position toward each other."
+
+"In one word," said she.
+
+The poor child quaked at the priest's stern tone, but as a woman
+quakes who has long ceased to be surprised at brutality.
+
+"Lucien is Lucien," said she, "the handsomest young man, the kindest
+soul alive; if you know him, my love must seem to you quite natural. I
+met him by chance, three months ago, at the Porte-Saint-Martin
+theatre, where I went one day when I had leave, for we had a day a
+week at Madame Meynardie's, where I then was. Next day, you
+understand, I went out without leave. Love had come into my heart, and
+had so completely changed me, that on my return from the theatre I did
+not know myself: I had a horror of myself. Lucien would never have
+known. Instead of telling him what I was, I gave him my address at
+these rooms, where a friend of mine was then living, who was so kind
+as to give them up to me. I swear on my sacred word----"
+
+"You must not swear."
+
+"Is it swearing to give your sacred word?--Well, from that day I have
+worked in this room like a lost creature at shirt-making at twenty-
+eight sous apiece, so as to live by honest labor. For a month I have
+had nothing to eat but potatoes, that I might keep myself a good girl
+and worthy of Lucien, who loves me and respects me as a pattern of
+virtue. I have made my declaration before the police to recover my
+rights, and submitted to two years' surveillance. They are ready
+enough to enter your name on the lists of disgrace, but make every
+difficulty about scratching it out again. All I asked of Heaven was to
+enable me to keep my resolution.
+
+"I shall be nineteen in the month of April; at my age there is still a
+chance. It seems to me that I was never born till three months ago.--I
+prayed to God every morning that Lucien might never know what my
+former life had been. I bought that Virgin you see there, and I prayed
+to her in my own way, for I do not know any prayers; I cannot read nor
+write, and I have never been into a church; I have never seen anything
+of God excepting in processions, out of curiosity."
+
+"And what do you say to the Virgin?"
+
+"I talk to her as I talk to Lucien, with all my soul, till I make him
+cry."
+
+"Oh, so he cries?"
+
+"With joy," said she eagerly, "poor dear boy! We understand each other
+so well that we have but one soul! He is so nice, so fond, so sweet in
+heart and mind and manners! He says he is a poet; I say he is god.--
+Forgive me! You priests, you see, don't know what love is. But, in
+fact, only girls like me know enough of men to appreciate such as
+Lucien. A Lucien, you see, is as rare as a woman without sin. When you
+come across him you can love no one else; so there! But such a being
+must have his fellow; so I want to be worthy to be loved by my Lucien.
+That is where my trouble began. Last evening, at the opera, I was
+recognized by some young men who have no more feeling than a tiger has
+pity--for that matter, I could come round the tiger! The veil of
+innocence I had tried to wear was worn off; their laughter pierced my
+brain and my heart. Do not think you have saved me; I shall die of
+grief."
+
+"Your veil of innocence?" said the priest. "Then you have treated
+Lucien with the sternest severity?"
+
+"Oh, Father, how can you, who know him, ask me such a question!" she
+replied with a smile. "Who can resist a god?"
+
+"Do not be blasphemous," said the priest mildly. "No one can be like
+God. Exaggeration is out of place with true love; you had not a pure
+and genuine love for your idol. If you had undergone the conversion
+you boast of having felt, you would have acquired the virtues which
+are a part of womanhood; you would have known the charm of chastity,
+the refinements of modesty, the two virtues that are the glory of a
+maiden.--You do not love."
+
+Esther's gesture of horror was seen by the priest, but it had no
+effect on the impassibility of her confessor.
+
+"Yes; for you love him for yourself and not for himself, for the
+temporal enjoyments that delight you, and not for love itself. If he
+has thus taken possession of you, you cannot have felt that sacred
+thrill that is inspired by a being on whom God has set the seal of the
+most adorable perfections. Has it never occurred to you that you would
+degrade him by your past impurity, that you would corrupt a child by
+the overpowering seductions which earned you your nickname glorious in
+infamy? You have been illogical with yourself, and your passion of a
+day----"
+
+"Of a day?" she repeated, raising her eyes.
+
+"By what other name can you call a love that is not eternal, that does
+not unite us in the future life of the Christian, to the being we
+love?"
+
+"Ah, I will be a Catholic!" she cried in a hollow, vehement tone, that
+would have earned her the mercy of the Lord.
+
+"Can a girl who has received neither the baptism of the Church nor
+that of knowledge; who can neither read, nor write, nor pray; who
+cannot take a step without the stones in the street rising up to
+accuse her; noteworthy only for the fugitive gift of beauty which
+sickness may destroy to-morrow; can such a vile, degraded creature,
+fully aware too of her degradation--for if you had been ignorant of it
+and less devoted, you would have been more excusable--can the intended
+victim to suicide and hell hope to be the wife of Lucien de Rubempre?"
+
+Every word was a poniard thrust piercing the depths of her heart. At
+every word the louder sobs and abundant tears of the desperate girl
+showed the power with which light had flashed upon an intelligence as
+pure as that of a savage, upon a soul at length aroused, upon a nature
+over which depravity had laid a sheet of foul ice now thawed in the
+sunshine of faith.
+
+"Why did I not die!" was the only thought that found utterance in the
+midst of a torrent of ideas that racked and ravaged her brain.
+
+"My daughter," said the terrible judge, "there is a love which is
+unconfessed before men, but of which the secret is received by the
+angels with smiles of gladness."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Love without hope, when it inspires our life, when it fills us with
+the spirit of sacrifice, when it ennobles every act by the thought of
+reaching some ideal perfection. Yes, the angels approve of such love;
+it leads to the knowledge of God. To aim at perfection in order to be
+worthy of the one you love, to make for him a thousand secret
+sacrifices, adoring him from afar, giving your blood drop by drop,
+abnegating your self-love, never feeling any pride or anger as regards
+him, even concealing from him all knowledge of the dreadful jealousy
+he fires in your heart, giving him all he wishes were it to your own
+loss, loving what he loves, always turning your face to him to follow
+him without his knowing it--such love as that religion would have
+forgiven; it is no offence to laws human or divine, and would have led
+you into another road than that of your foul voluptuousness."
+
+As she heard this horrible verdict, uttered in a word--and such a
+word! and spoken in such a tone!--Esther's spirit rose up in fairly
+legitimate distrust. This word was like a thunder-clap giving warning
+of a storm about to break. She looked at the priest, and felt the grip
+on her vitals which wrings the bravest when face to face with sudden
+and imminent danger. No eye could have read what was passing in this
+man's mind; but the boldest would have found more to quail at than to
+hope for in the expression of his eyes, once bright and yellow like
+those of a tiger, but now shrouded, from austerities and privations,
+with a haze like that which overhangs the horizon in the dog-days,
+when, though the earth is hot and luminous, the mist makes it
+indistinct and dim--almost invisible.
+
+The gravity of a Spaniard, the deep furrows which the myriad scars of
+virulent smallpox made hideously like broken ruts, were ploughed into
+his face, which was sallow and tanned by the sun. The hardness of this
+countenance was all the more conspicuous, being framed in the meagre
+dry wig of a priest who takes no care of his person, a black wig
+looking rusty in the light. His athletic frame, his hands like an old
+soldier's, his broad, strong shoulders were those of the Caryatides
+which the architects of the Middle Ages introduced into some Italian
+palaces, remotely imitated in those of the front of the
+Porte-Saint-Martin theatre. The least clear-sighted observer might
+have seen that fiery passions or some unwonted accident must have
+thrown this man into the bosom of the Church; certainly none but the
+most tremendous shocks of lightning could have changed him, if indeed
+such a nature were susceptible of change.
+
+Women who have lived the life that Esther had so violently repudiated
+come to feel absolute indifference as to the critics of our day, who
+may be compared with them in some respects, and who feel at last
+perfect disregard of the formulas of art; they have read so many
+books, they see so many pass away, they are so much accustomed to
+written pages, they have gone through so many plots, they have seen so
+many dramas, they have written so many articles without saying what
+they meant, and have so often been treasonable to the cause of Art in
+favor of their personal likings and aversions, that they acquire a
+feeling of disgust of everything, and yet continue to pass judgment.
+It needs a miracle to make such a writer produce sound work, just as
+it needs another miracle to give birth to pure and noble love in the
+heart of a courtesan.
+
+The tone and manner of this priest, who seemed to have escaped from a
+picture by Zurbaran, struck this poor girl as so hostile, little as
+externals affected her, that she perceived herself to be less the
+object of his solitude than the instrument he needed for some scheme.
+Being unable to distinguish between the insinuating tongue of personal
+interest and the unction of true charity, for we must be acutely awake
+to recognize false coin when it is offered by a friend, she felt
+herself, as it were, in the talons of some fierce and monstrous bird
+of prey who, after hovering over her for long, had pounced down on
+her; and in her terror she cried in a voice of alarm:
+
+"I thought it was a priest's duty to console us, and you are killing
+me!"
+
+At this innocent outcry the priest started and paused; he meditated a
+moment before replying. During that instant the two persons so
+strangely brought together studied each other cautiously. The priest
+understood the girl, though the girl could not understand the priest.
+
+He, no doubt, put aside some plan which had threatened the unhappy
+Esther, and came back to his first ideas.
+
+"We are physicians of the soul," said he, in a mild voice, "and we
+know what remedies suit their maladies."
+
+"Much must be forgiven to the wretched," said Esther.
+
+She fancied she had been wrong; she slipped off the bed, threw herself
+at the man's feet, kissed his gown with deep humility, and looked up
+at him with eyes full of tears.
+
+"I thought I had done so much!" she said.
+
+"Listen, my child. Your terrible reputation has cast Lucien's family
+into grief. They are afraid, and not without reason, that you may lead
+him into dissipation, into endless folly----"
+
+"That is true; it was I who got him to the ball to mystify him."
+
+"You are handsome enough to make him wish to triumph in you in the
+eyes of the world, to show you with pride, and make you an object for
+display. And if he wasted money only!--but he will waste his time, his
+powers; he will lose his inclination for the fine future his friends
+can secure to him. Instead of being some day an ambassador, rich,
+admired and triumphant, he, like so many debauchees who choke their
+talents in the mud of Paris, will have been the lover of a degraded
+woman.
+
+"As for you, after rising for a time to the level of a sphere of
+elegance, you will presently sink back to your former life, for you
+have not in you the strength bestowed by a good education to enable
+you to resist vice and think of the future. You would no more be able
+to break with the women of your own class than you have broken with
+the men who shamed you at the opera this morning. Lucien's true
+friends, alarmed by his passion for you, have dogged his steps and
+know all. Filled with horror, they have sent me to you to sound your
+views and decide your fate; but though they are powerful enough to
+clear a stumbling-stone out of the young man's way, they are merciful.
+Understand this, child: a girl whom Lucien loves has claims on their
+regard, as a true Christian worships the slough on which, by chance,
+the divine light falls. I came to be the instrument of a beneficent
+purpose;--still, if I had found you utterly reprobate, armed with
+effrontery and astuteness, corrupt to the marrow, deaf to the voice of
+repentance, I should have abandoned you to their wrath.
+
+"The release, civil and political, which it is so hard to win, which
+the police is so right to withhold for a time in the interests of
+society, and which I heard you long for with all the ardor of true
+repentance--is here," said the priest, taking an official-looking
+paper out of his belt. "You were seen yesterday, this letter of
+release is dated to-day. You see how powerful the people are who take
+an interest in Lucien."
+
+At the sight of this document Esther was so ingenuously overcome by
+the convulsive agitation produced by unlooked-for joy, that a fixed
+smile parted her lips, like that of a crazy creature. The priest
+paused, looking at the girl to see whether, when once she had lost the
+horrible strength which corrupt natures find in corruption itself, and
+was thrown back on her frail and delicate primitive nature, she could
+endure so much excitement. If she had been a deceitful courtesan,
+Esther would have acted a part; but now that she was innocent and
+herself once more, she might perhaps die, as a blind man cured may
+lose his sight again if he is exposed to too bright a light. At this
+moment this man looked into the very depths of human nature, but his
+calmness was terrible in its rigidity; a cold alp, snow-bound and near
+to heaven, impenetrable and frowning, with flanks of granite, and yet
+beneficent.
+
+Such women are essentially impressionable beings, passing without
+reason from the most idiotic distrust to absolute confidence. In this
+respect they are lower than animals. Extreme in everything--in their
+joy and despair, in their religion and irreligion--they would almost
+all go mad if they were not decimated by the mortality peculiar to
+their class, and if happy chances did not lift one now and then from
+the slough in which they dwell. To understand the very depths of the
+wretchedness of this horrible existence, one must know how far in
+madness a creature can go without remaining there, by studying La
+Torpille's violent ecstasy at the priest's feet. The poor girl gazed
+at the paper of release with an expression which Dante has overlooked,
+and which surpassed the inventiveness of his Inferno. But a reaction
+came with tears. Esther rose, threw her arms round the priest's neck,
+laid her head on his breast, which she wetted with her weeping,
+kissing the coarse stuff that covered that heart of steel as if she
+fain would touch it. She seized hold of him; she covered his hands
+with kisses; she poured out in a sacred effusion of gratitude her most
+coaxing caresses, lavished fond names on him, saying again and again
+in the midst of her honeyed words, "Let me have it!" in a thousand
+different tones of voice; she wrapped him in tenderness, covered him
+with her looks with a swiftness that found him defenceless; at last
+she charmed away his wrath.
+
+The priest perceived how well the girl had deserved her nickname; he
+understood how difficult it was to resist this bewitching creature; he
+suddenly comprehended Lucien's love, and just what must have
+fascinated the poet. Such a passion hides among a thousand temptations
+a dart-like hook which is most apt to catch the lofty soul of an
+artist. These passions, inexplicable to the vulgar, are perfectly
+accounted for by the thirst for ideal beauty, which is characteristic
+of a creative mind. For are we not, in some degree, akin to the
+angels, whose task it is to bring the guilty to a better mind? are we
+not creative when we purify such a creature? How delightful it is to
+harmonize moral with physical beauty! What joy and pride if we
+succeed! How noble a task is that which has no instrument but love!
+
+Such alliances, made famous by the example of Aristotle, Socrates,
+Plato, Alcibiades, Cethegus, and Pompey, and yet so monstrous in the
+eyes of the vulgar, are based on the same feeling that prompted Louis
+XIV. to build Versailles, or that makes men rush into any ruinous
+enterprise--into converting the miasma of a marsh into a mass of
+fragrance surrounded by living waters; placing a lake at the top of a
+hill, as the Prince de Conti did at Nointel; or producing Swiss
+scenery at Cassan, like Bergeret, the farmer-general. In short, it is
+the application of art in the realm of morals.
+
+The priest, ashamed of having yielded to this weakness, hastily pushed
+Esther away, and she sat down quite abashed, for he said:
+
+"You are still the courtesan." And he calmly replaced the paper in his
+sash.
+
+Esther, like a child who has a single wish in its head, kept her eyes
+fixed on the spot where the document lay hidden.
+
+"My child," the priest went on after a pause, "your mother was a
+Jewess, and you have not been baptized; but, on the other hand, you
+have never been taken to the synagogue. You are in the limbo where
+little children are----"
+
+"Little children!" she echoed, in a tenderly pathetic tone.
+
+"As you are on the books of the police, a cipher outside the pale of
+social beings," the priest went on, unmoved. "If love, seen as it
+swept past, led you to believe three months since that you were then
+born, you must feel that since that day you have been really an
+infant. You must, therefore, be led as if you were a child; you must
+be completely changed, and I will undertake to make you
+unrecognizable. To begin with, you must forget Lucien."
+
+The words crushed the poor girl's heart; she raised her eyes to the
+priest and shook her head; she could not speak, finding the
+executioner in the deliverer again.
+
+"At any rate, you must give up seeing him," he went on. "I will take
+you to a religious house where young girls of the best families are
+educated; there you will become a Catholic, you will be trained in the
+practice of Christian exercises, you will be taught religion. You may
+come out an accomplished young lady, chaste, pure, well brought up,
+if----" The man lifted up a finger and paused.
+
+"If," he went on, "you feel brave enough to leave the 'Torpille'
+behind you here."
+
+"Ah!" cried the poor thing, to whom each word had been like a note of
+some melody to which the gates of Paradise were slowly opening. "Ah!
+if it were possible to shed all my blood here and have it renewed!"
+
+"Listen to me."
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Your future fate depends on your power of forgetting. Think of the
+extent to which you pledge yourself. A word, a gesture, which betrays
+La Torpille will kill Lucien's wife. A word murmured in a dream, an
+involuntary thought, an immodest glance, a gesture of impatience, a
+reminiscence of dissipation, an omission, a shake of the head that
+might reveal what you know, or what is known about you for your
+woes----"
+
+"Yes, yes, Father," said the girl, with the exaltation of a saint. "To
+walk in shoes of red-hot iron and smile, to live in a pair of stays
+set with nails and maintain the grace of a dancer, to eat bread salted
+with ashes, to drink wormwood,--all will be sweet and easy!"
+
+She fell again on her knees, she kissed the priest's shoes, she melted
+into tears that wetted them, she clasped his knees, and clung to them,
+murmuring foolish words as she wept for joy. Her long and beautiful
+light hair waved to the ground, a sort of carpet under the feet of the
+celestial messenger, whom she saw as gloomy and hard as ever when she
+lifted herself up and looked at him.
+
+"What have I done to offend you?" cried she, quite frightened. "I have
+heard of a woman, such as I am, who washed the feet of Jesus with
+perfumes. Alas! virtue has made me so poor that I have nothing but
+tears to offer you."
+
+"Have you not understood?" he answered, in a cruel voice. "I tell you,
+you must be able to come out of the house to which I shall take you so
+completely changed, physically and morally, that no man or woman you
+have ever known will be able to call you 'Esther' and make you look
+round. Yesterday your love could not give you strength enough so
+completely to bury the prostitute that she could never reappear; and
+again to-day she revives in adoration which is due to none but God."
+
+"Was it not He who sent you to me?" said she.
+
+"If during the course of your education you should even see Lucien,
+all would be lost," he went on; "remember that."
+
+"Who will comfort him?" said she.
+
+"What was it that you comforted him for?" asked the priest, in a tone
+in which, for the first time during this scene, there was a nervous
+quaver.
+
+"I do not know; he was often sad when he came."
+
+"Sad!" said the priest. "Did he tell you why?"
+
+"Never," answered she.
+
+"He was sad at loving such a girl as you!" exclaimed he.
+
+"Alas! and well he might be," said she, with deep humility. "I am the
+most despicable creature of my sex, and I could find favor in his eyes
+only by the greatness of my love."
+
+"That love must give you the courage to obey me blindly. If I were to
+take you straight from hence to the house where you are to be
+educated, everybody here would tell Lucien that you had gone away
+to-day, Sunday, with a priest; he might follow in your tracks. In the
+course of a week, the portress, not seeing me again, might suppose me
+to be what I am not. So, one evening--this day week--at seven o'clock,
+go out quietly and get into a cab that will be waiting for you at the
+bottom of the Rue des Frondeurs. During this week avoid Lucien, find
+excuses, have him sent from the door, and if he should come in, go up
+to some friend's room. I shall know if you have seen him, and in that
+event all will be at an end. I shall not even come back. These eight
+days you will need to make up some suitable clothing and to hide your
+look of a prostitute," said he, laying a purse on the chimney-shelf.
+"There is something in your manner, in your clothes--something
+indefinable which is well known to Parisians, and proclaims you what
+you are. Have you never met in the streets or on the Boulevards a
+modest and virtuous girl walking with her mother?"
+
+"Oh yes, to my sorrow! The sight of a mother and daughter is one of
+our most cruel punishments; it arouses the remorse that lurks in the
+innermost folds of our hearts, and that is consuming us.--I know too
+well all I lack."
+
+"Well, then, you know how you should look next Sunday," said the
+priest, rising.
+
+"Oh!" said she, "teach me one real prayer before you go, that I may
+pray to God."
+
+It was a touching thing to see the priest making this girl repeat Ave
+_Maria_ and _Paternoster_ in French.
+
+"That is very fine!" said Esther, when she had repeated these two
+grand and universal utterances of the Catholic faith without making a
+mistake.
+
+"What is your name?" she asked the priest when he took leave of her.
+
+"Carlos Herrera; I am a Spaniard banished from my country."
+
+Esther took his hand and kissed it. She was no longer the courtesan;
+she was an angel rising after a fall.
+
+
+
+In a religious institution, famous for the aristocratic and pious
+teaching imparted there, one Monday morning in the beginning of March
+1824 the pupils found their pretty flock increased by a newcomer,
+whose beauty triumphed without dispute not only over that of her
+companions, but over the special details of beauty which were found
+severally in perfection in each one of them. In France it is extremely
+rare, not to say impossible, to meet with the thirty points of
+perfection, described in Persian verse, and engraved, it is said, in
+the Seraglio, which are needed to make a woman absolutely beautiful.
+Though in France the whole is seldom seen, we find exquisite parts. As
+to that imposing union which sculpture tries to produce, and has
+produced in a few rare examples like the Diana and the Callipyge, it
+is the privileged possession of Greece and Asia Minor.
+
+Esther came from that cradle of the human race; her mother was a
+Jewess. The Jews, though so often deteriorated by their contact with
+other nations, have, among their many races, families in which this
+sublime type of Asiatic beauty has been preserved. When they are not
+repulsively hideous, they present the splendid characteristics of
+Armenian beauty. Esther would have carried off the prize at the
+Seraglio; she had the thirty points harmoniously combined. Far from
+having damaged the finish of her modeling and the freshness of her
+flesh, her strange life had given her the mysterious charm of
+womanhood; it is no longer the close, waxy texture of green fruit and
+not yet the warm glow of maturity; there is still the scent of the
+flower. A few days longer spent in dissolute living, and she would
+have been too fat. This abundant health, this perfection of the animal
+in a being in whom voluptuousness took the place of thought, must be a
+remarkable fact in the eyes of physiologists. A circumstance so rare,
+that it may be called impossible in very young girls, was that her
+hands, incomparably fine in shape, were as soft, transparent, and
+white as those of a woman after the birth of her second child. She had
+exactly the hair and the foot for which the Duchesse de Berri was so
+famous, hair so thick that no hairdresser could gather it into his
+hand, and so long that it fell to the ground in rings; for Esther was
+of that medium height which makes a woman a sort of toy, to be taken
+up and set down, taken up again and carried without fatigue. Her skin,
+as fine as rice-paper, of a warm amber hue showing the purple veins,
+was satiny without dryness, soft without being clammy.
+
+Esther, excessively strong though apparently fragile, arrested
+attention by one feature that is conspicuous in the faces in which
+Raphael has shown his most artistic feeling, for Raphael is the
+painter who has most studied and best rendered Jewish beauty. This
+remarkable effect was produced by the depth of the eye-socket, under
+which the eye moved free from its setting; the arch of the brow was so
+accurate as to resemble the groining of a vault. When youth lends this
+beautiful hollow its pure and diaphanous coloring, and edges it with
+closely-set eyebrows, when the light stealing into the circular cavity
+beneath lingers there with a rosy hue, there are tender treasures in
+it to delight a lover, beauties to drive a painter to despair. Those
+luminous curves, where the shadows have a golden tone, that tissue as
+firm as a sinew and as mobile as the most delicate membrane, is a
+crowning achievement of nature. The eye at rest within is like a
+miraculous egg in a nest of silken wings. But as time goes on this
+marvel acquires a dreadful melancholy, when passions have laid dark
+smears on those fine forms, when grief had furrowed that network of
+delicate veins. Esther's nationality proclaimed itself in this
+Oriental modeling of her eyes with their Turkish lids; their color was
+a slate-gray which by night took on the blue sheen of a raven's wing.
+It was only the extreme tenderness of her expression that could
+moderate their fire.
+
+Only those races that are native to deserts have in the eye the power
+of fascinating everybody, for any woman can fascinate some one person.
+Their eyes preserve, no doubt, something of the infinitude they have
+gazed on. Has nature, in her foresight, armed their retina with some
+reflecting background to enable them to endure the mirage of the sand,
+the torrents of sunshine, and the burning cobalt of the sky? or, do
+human beings, like other creatures, derive something from the
+surroundings among which they grow up, and preserve for ages the
+qualities they have imbibed from them? The great solution of this
+problem of race lies perhaps in the question itself. Instincts are
+living facts, and their cause dwells in past necessity. Variety in
+animals is the result of the exercise of these instincts.
+
+To convince ourselves of this long-sought-for truth, it is enough to
+extend to the herd of mankind the observation recently made on flocks
+of Spanish and English sheep which, in low meadows where pasture is
+abundant, feed side by side in close array, but on mountains, where
+grass is scarce, scatter apart. Take these two kinds of sheep,
+transfer them to Switzerland or France; the mountain breeds will feed
+apart even in a lowland meadow of thick grass, the lowland sheep will
+keep together even on an alp. Hardly will a succession of generations
+eliminate acquired and transmitted instincts. After a century the
+highland spirit reappears in a refractory lamb, just as, after
+eighteen centuries of exile, the spirit of the East shone in Esther's
+eyes and features.
+
+Her look had no terrible fascination; it shed a mild warmth, it was
+pathetic without being startling, and the sternest wills were melted
+in its flame. Esther had conquered hatred, she had astonished the
+depraved souls of Paris; in short, that look and the softness of her
+skin had earned her the terrible nickname which had just led her to
+the verge of the grave. Everything about her was in harmony with these
+characteristics of the Peri of the burning sands. Her forehead was
+firmly and proudly molded. Her nose, like that of the Arab race, was
+delicate and narrow, with oval nostrils well set and open at the base.
+Her mouth, fresh and red, was a rose unblemished by a flaw,
+dissipation had left no trace there. Her chin, rounded as though some
+amorous sculptor had polished its fulness, was as white as milk. One
+thing only that she had not been able to remedy betrayed the courtesan
+fallen very low: her broken nails, which needed time to recover their
+shape, so much had they been spoiled by the vulgarest household tasks.
+
+The young boarders began by being jealous of these marvels of beauty,
+but they ended by admiring them. Before the first week was at an end
+they were all attached to the artless Jewess, for they were interested
+in the unknown misfortunes of a girl of eighteen who could neither
+read nor write, to whom all knowledge and instruction were new, and
+who was to earn for the Archbishop the triumph of having converted a
+Jewess to Catholicism and giving the convent a festival in her
+baptism. They forgave her beauty, finding themselves her superiors in
+education.
+
+Esther very soon caught the manners, the accent, the carriage and
+attitudes of these highly-bred girls; in short, her first nature
+reasserted itself. The change was so complete that on his first visit
+Herrera was astonished as it would seem--and the Mother Superior
+congratulated him on his ward. Never in their existence as teachers
+had these sisters met with a more charming nature, more Christian
+meekness, true modesty, nor a greater eagerness to learn. When a girl
+has suffered such misery as had overwhelmed this poor child, and looks
+forward to such a reward as the Spaniard held out to Esther, it is
+hard if she does not realize the miracles of the early Church which
+the Jesuits revived in Paraguay.
+
+"She is edifying," said the Superior, kissing her on the brow.
+
+And this essentially Catholic word tells all.
+
+In recreation hours Esther would question her companions, but
+discreetly, as to the simplest matters in fashionable life, which to
+her were like the first strange ideas of life to a child. When she
+heard that she was to be dressed in white on the day of her baptism
+and first Communion, that she should wear a white satin fillet, white
+bows, white shoes, white gloves, and white rosettes in her hair, she
+melted into tears, to the amazement of her companions. It was the
+reverse of the scene of Jephtha on the mountain. The courtesan was
+afraid of being understood; she ascribed this dreadful dejection to
+the joy with which she looked forward to the function. As there is
+certainly as wide a gulf between the habits she had given up and the
+habits she was acquiring as there is between the savage state and
+civilization, she had the grace and simplicity and depth which
+distinguished the wonderful heroine of the American Puritans. She had
+too, without knowing it, a love that was eating out her heart--a
+strange love, a desire more violent in her who knew everything than it
+can be in a maiden who knows nothing, though the two forms of desire
+have the same cause, and the same end in view.
+
+During the first few months the novelty of a secluded life, the
+surprises of learning, the handiworks she was taught, the practices of
+religion, the fervency of a holy resolve, the gentle affections she
+called forth, and the exercise of the faculties of her awakened
+intelligence, all helped to repress her memory, even the effort she
+made to acquire a new one, for she had as much to unlearn as to learn.
+There is more than one form of memory: the body and mind have each
+their own; home-sickness, for instance, is a malady of the physical
+memory. Thus, during the third month, the vehemence of this virgin
+soul, soaring to Paradise on outspread wings, was not indeed quelled,
+but fettered by a dull rebellion, of which Esther herself did not know
+the cause. Like the Scottish sheep, she wanted to pasture in solitude,
+she could not conquer the instincts begotten of debauchery.
+
+Was it that the foul ways of the Paris she had abjured were calling
+her back to them? Did the chains of the hideous habits she had
+renounced cling to her by forgotten rivets, and was she feeling them,
+as old soldiers suffer still, the surgeons tell us, in the limbs they
+have lost? Had vice and excess so soaked into her marrow that holy
+waters had not yet exorcised the devil lurking there? Was the sight of
+him for whom her angelic efforts were made, necessary to the poor
+soul, whom God would surely forgive for mingling human and sacred
+love? One had led to the other. Was there some transposition of the
+vital force in her involving her in inevitable suffering? Everything
+is doubtful and obscure in a case which science scorns to study,
+regarding the subject as too immoral and too compromising, as if the
+physician and the writer, the priest and the political student, were
+not above all suspicion. However, a doctor who was stopped by death
+had the courage to begin an investigation which he left unfinished.
+
+Perhaps the dark depression to which Esther fell a victim, and which
+cast a gloom over her happy life, was due to all these causes; and
+perhaps, unable as she was to suspect them herself, she suffered as
+sick creatures suffer who know nothing of medicine or surgery.
+
+The fact is strange. Wholesome and abundant food in the place of bad
+and inflammatory nourishment did not sustain Esther. A pure and
+regular life, divided between recreation and studies intentionally
+abridged, taking the place of a disorderly existence of which the
+pleasures and the pains were equally horrible, exhausted the
+convent-boarder. The coolest rest, the calmest nights, taking the
+place of crushing fatigue and the most torturing agitation, gave her
+low fever, in which the common symptoms were imperceptible to the
+nursing Sister's eye or finger. In fact, virtue and happiness
+following on evil and misfortune, security in the stead of anxiety,
+were as fatal to Esther as her past wretchedness would have been to
+her young companions. Planted in corruption, she had grown up in it.
+That infernal home still had a hold on her, in spite of the commands
+of a despotic will. What she loathed was life to her, what she loved
+was killing her.
+
+Her faith was so ardent that her piety was a delight to those about
+her. She loved to pray. She had opened her spirit to the lights of
+true religion, and received it without an effort or a doubt. The
+priest who was her director was delighted with her. Still, at every
+turn her body resisted the spirit.
+
+To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon's, who fed them with scraps
+from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and
+placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished.
+The animals might be sacrificed, but man could never infect them with
+the leprosy of flattery. A courtier remarked at Versailles on this
+mute resistance. "They are like me," said the uncrowned queen; "they
+pine for their obscure mud."
+
+This speech epitomizes Esther's story.
+
+At times the poor girl was driven to run about the splendid convent
+gardens; she hurried from tree to tree, she rushed into the darkest
+nooks--seeking? What? She did not know, but she fell a prey to the
+demon; she carried on a flirtation with the trees, she appealed to
+them in unspoken words. Sometimes, in the evening, she stole along
+under the walls, like a snake, without any shawl over her bare
+shoulders. Often in chapel, during the service, she remained with her
+eyes fixed on the Crucifix, melted to tears; the others admired her;
+but she was crying with rage. Instead of the sacred images she hoped
+to see, those glaring nights when she had led some orgy as Habeneck
+leads a Beethoven symphony at the Conservatoire--nights of laughter
+and lasciviousness, with vehement gestures, inextinguishable laughter,
+rose before her, frenzied, furious, and brutal. She was as mild to
+look upon as a virgin that clings to earth only by her woman's shape;
+within raged an imperial Messalina.
+
+She alone knew the secret of this struggle between the devil and the
+angel. When the Superior reproved her for having done her hair more
+fashionably than the rule of the House allowed, she altered it with
+prompt and beautiful submission; she would have cut her hair off if
+the Mother had required it of her. This moral home-sickness was truly
+pathetic in a girl who would rather have perished than have returned
+to the depths of impurity. She grew pale and altered and thin. The
+Superior gave her shorter lessons, and called the interesting creature
+to her room to question her. But Esther was happy; she enjoyed the
+society of her companions; she felt no pain in any vital part; still,
+it was vitality itself that was attacked. She regretted nothing; she
+wanted nothing. The Superior, puzzled by her boarder's answers, did
+not know what to think when she saw her pining under consuming
+debility.
+
+The doctor was called in when the girl's condition seemed serious; but
+this doctor knew nothing of Esther's previous life, and could not
+guess it; he found every organ sound, the pain could not be localized.
+The invalid's replies were such as to upset every hypothesis. There
+remained one way of clearing up the learned man's doubts, which now
+lighted on a frightful suggestion; but Esther obstinately refused to
+submit to a medical examination.
+
+In this difficulty the Superior appealed to the Abbe Herrera. The
+Spaniard came, saw that Esther's condition was desperate, and took the
+physician aside for a moment. After this confidential interview, the
+man of science told the man of faith that the only cure lay in a
+journey to Italy. The Abbe would not hear of such a journey before
+Esther's baptism and first Communion.
+
+"How long will it be till then?" asked the doctor.
+
+"A month," replied the Superior.
+
+"She will be dead," said the doctor.
+
+"Yes, but in a state of grace and salvation," said the Abbe.
+
+In Spain the religious question is supreme, above all political,
+civil, or vital considerations; so the physician did not answer the
+Spaniard. He turned to the Mother Superior, but the terrible Abbe took
+him by the arm and stopped him.
+
+"Not a word, monsieur!" said he.
+
+The doctor, though a religious man and a Monarchist, looked at Esther
+with an expression of tender pity. The girl was as lovely as a lily
+drooping on its stem.
+
+"God help her, then!" he exclaimed as he went away.
+
+On the very day of this consultation, Esther was taken by her
+protector to the _Rocher de Cancale_, a famous restaurant, for his wish
+to save her had suggested strange expedients to the priest. He tried
+the effect of two excesses--an excellent dinner, which might remind
+the poor child of past orgies; and the opera, which would give her
+mind some images of worldliness. His despotic authority was needed to
+tempt the young saint to such profanation. Herrera disguised himself
+so effectually as a military man, that Esther hardly recognized him;
+he took care to make his companion wear a veil, and put her in a box
+where she was hidden from all eyes.
+
+This palliative, which had no risks for innocence so sincerely
+regained, soon lost its effect. The convent-boarder viewed her
+protector's dinners with disgust, had a religious aversion for the
+theatre, and relapsed into melancholy.
+
+"She is dying of love for Lucien," said Herrera to himself; he had
+wanted to sound the depths of this soul, and know how much could be
+exacted from it.
+
+So the moment came when the poor child was no longer upheld by moral
+force, and the body was about to break down. The priest calculated the
+time with the hideous practical sagacity formerly shown by
+executioners in the art of torture. He found his protegee in the
+garden, sitting on a bench under a trellis on which the April sun fell
+gently; she seemed to be cold and trying to warm herself; her
+companions looked with interest at her pallor as of a folded plant,
+her eyes like those of a dying gazelle, her drooping attitude. Esther
+rose and went to meet the Spaniard with a lassitude that showed how
+little life there was in her, and, it may be added, how little care to
+live. This hapless outcast, this wild and wounded swallow, moved
+Carlos Herrera to compassion for the second time. The gloomy minister,
+whom God should have employed only to carry out His revenges, received
+the sick girl with a smile, which expressed, indeed, as much
+bitterness as sweetness, as much vengeance as charity. Esther,
+practised in meditation, and used to revulsions of feeling since she
+had led this almost monastic life, felt on her part, for the second
+time, distrust of her protector; but, as on the former occasion, his
+speech reassured her.
+
+"Well, my dear child," said he, "and why have you never spoken to me
+of Lucien?"
+
+"I promised you," she said, shuddering convulsively from head to foot;
+"I swore to you that I would never breathe his name."
+
+"And yet you have not ceased to think of him."
+
+"That, monsieur, is the only fault I have committed. I think of him
+always; and just as you came, I was saying his name to myself."
+
+"Absence is killing you?"
+
+Esther's only answer was to hang her head as the sick do who already
+scent the breath of the grave.
+
+"If you could see him----?" said he.
+
+"It would be life!" she cried.
+
+"And do you think of him only spiritually?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur, love cannot be dissected!"
+
+"Child of an accursed race! I have done everything to save you; I send
+you back to your fate.--You shall see him again."
+
+"Why insult my happiness? Can I not love Lucien and be virtuous? Am I
+not ready to die here for virtue, as I should be ready to die for him?
+Am I not dying for these two fanaticisms--for virtue, which was to
+make me worthy of him, and for him who flung me into the embrace of
+virtue? Yes, and ready to die without seeing him or to live by seeing
+him. God is my Judge."
+
+The color had mounted to her face, her whiteness had recovered its
+amber warmth. Esther looked beautiful again.
+
+"The day after that on which you are washed in the waters of baptism
+you shall see Lucien once more; and if you think you can live in
+virtue by living for him, you shall part no more."
+
+The priest was obliged to lift up Esther, whose knees failed her; the
+poor child dropped as if the ground had slipped from under her feet.
+The Abbe seated her on a bench; and when she could speak again she
+asked him:
+
+"Why not to-day?"
+
+"Do you want to rob Monseigneur of the triumph of your baptism and
+conversion? You are too close to Lucien not to be far from God."
+
+"Yes, I was not thinking----"
+
+"You will never be of any religion," said the priest, with a touch of
+the deepest irony.
+
+"God is good," said she; "He can read my heart."
+
+Conquered by the exquisite artlessness and gestures, Herrera kissed
+her on the forehead for the first time.
+
+"Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the
+Father.--A few days more must pass, and then you will both be free."
+
+"Both!" she echoed in an ecstasy of joy.
+
+This scene, observed from a distance, struck pupils and superiors
+alike; they fancied they had looked on at a miracle as they compared
+Esther with herself. She was completely changed; she was alive. She
+reappeared her natural self, all love, sweet, coquettish, playful, and
+gay; in short, it was a resurrection.
+
+
+
+Herrera lived in the Rue Cassette, near Saint-Sulpice, the church to
+which he was attached. This building, hard and stern in style, suited
+this Spaniard, whose discipline was that of the Dominicans. A lost son
+of Ferdinand VII.'s astute policy, he devoted himself to the cause of
+the constitution, knowing that this devotion could never be rewarded
+till the restoration of the _Rey netto_. Carlos Herrera had thrown
+himself body and soul into the _Camarilla_ at the moment when the Cortes
+seemed likely to stand and hold their own. To the world this conduct
+seemed to proclaim a superior soul. The Duc d'Angouleme's expedition
+had been carried out, King Ferdinand was on the throne, and Carlos
+Herrera did not go to claim the reward of his services at Madrid.
+Fortified against curiosity by his diplomatic taciturnity, he assigned
+as his reason for remaining in Paris his strong affection for Lucien
+de Rubempre, to which the young man already owed the King's patent
+relating to his change of name.
+
+Herrera lived very obscurely, as priests employed on secret
+missions traditionally live. He fulfilled his religious duties at
+Saint-Sulpice, never went out but on business, and then after dark, and
+in a hackney cab. His day was filled up with a siesta in the Spanish
+fashion, which arranges for sleep between the two chief meals, and so
+occupies the hours when Paris is in a busy turmoil. The Spanish cigar
+also played its part, and consumed time as well as tobacco. Laziness
+is a mask as gravity is, and that again is laziness.
+
+Herrera lived on the second floor in one wing of the house, and Lucien
+occupied the other wing. The two apartments were separated and joined
+by a large reception room of antique magnificence, suitable equally to
+the grave priest and to the young poet. The courtyard was gloomy;
+large, thick trees shaded the garden. Silence and reserve are always
+found in the dwellings chosen by priests. Herrera's lodging may be
+described in one word--a cell. Lucien's, splendid with luxury, and
+furnished with every refinement of comfort, combined everything that
+the elegant life of a dandy demands--a poet, a writer, ambitious and
+dissipated, at once vain and vainglorious, utterly heedless, and yet
+wishing for order, one of those incomplete geniuses who have some
+power to wish, to conceive--which is perhaps the same thing--but no
+power at all to execute.
+
+These two, Lucien and Herrera, formed a body politic. This, no doubt,
+was the secret of their union. Old men in whom the activities of life
+have been uprooted and transplanted to the sphere of interest, often
+feel the need of a pleasing instrument, a young and impassioned actor,
+to carry out their schemes. Richelieu, too late, found a handsome pale
+face with a young moustache to cast in the way of women whom he wanted
+to amuse. Misunderstood by giddy-pated younger men, he was compelled
+to banish his master's mother and terrify the Queen, after having
+tried to make each fall in love with him, though he was not cut out to
+be loved by queens.
+
+Do what we will, always, in the course of an ambitious life, we find a
+woman in the way just when we least expect such an obstacle. However
+great a political man may be, he always needs a woman to set against a
+woman, just as the Dutch use a diamond to cut a diamond. Rome at the
+height of its power yielded to this necessity. And observe how
+immeasurably more imposing was the life of Mazarin, the Italian
+cardinal, than that of Richelieu, the French cardinal. Richelieu met
+with opposition from the great nobles, and he applied the axe; he died
+in the flower of his success, worn out by this duel, for which he had
+only a Capuchin monk as his second. Mazarin was repulsed by the
+citizen class and the nobility, armed allies who sometimes
+victoriously put royalty to flight; but Anne of Austria's devoted
+servant took off no heads, he succeeded in vanquishing the whole of
+France, and trained Louis XIV., who completed Richelieu's work by
+strangling the nobility with gilded cords in the grand Seraglio of
+Versailles. Madame de Pompadour dead, Choiseul fell!
+
+Had Herrera soaked his mind in these high doctrines? Had he judged
+himself at an earlier age than Richelieu? Had he chosen Lucien to be
+his Cinq-Mars, but a faithful Cinq-Mars? No one could answer these
+questions or measure this Spaniard's ambition, as no one could foresee
+what his end might be. These questions, asked by those who were able
+to see anything of this coalition, which was long kept a secret, might
+have unveiled a horrible mystery which Lucien himself had known but a
+few days. Carlos was ambitious for two; that was what his conduct made
+plain to those persons who knew him, and who all imagined that Lucien
+was the priest's illegitimate son.
+
+Fifteen months after Lucien's reappearance at the opera ball, which
+led him too soon into a world where the priest had not wished to see
+him till he should have fully armed him against it, he had three fine
+horses in his stable, a coupe for evening use, a cab and a tilbury to
+drive by day. He dined out every day. Herrera's foresight was
+justified; his pupil was carried away by dissipation; he thought it
+necessary to effect some diversion in the frenzied passion for Esther
+that the young man still cherished in his heart. After spending
+something like forty thousand francs, every folly had brought Lucien
+back with increased eagerness to La Torpille; he searched for her
+persistently; and as he could not find her, she became to him what
+game is to the sportsman.
+
+Could Herrera understand the nature of a poet's love?
+
+When once this feeling has mounted to the brain of one of these great
+little men, after firing his heart and absorbing his senses, the poet
+becomes as far superior to humanity through love as he already is
+through the power of his imagination. A freak of intellectual heredity
+has given him the faculty of expressing nature by imagery, to which he
+gives the stamp both of sentiment and of thought, and he lends his
+love the wings of his spirit; he feels, and he paints, he acts and
+meditates, he multiplies his sensations by thought, present felicity
+becomes threefold through aspiration for the future and memory of the
+past; and with it he mingles the exquisite delights of the soul, which
+makes him the prince of artists. Then the poet's passion becomes a
+fine poem in which human proportion is often set at nought. Does not
+the poet then place his mistress far higher than women crave to sit?
+Like the sublime Knight of la Mancha, he transfigures a peasant girl
+to be a princess. He uses for his own behoof the wand with which he
+touches everything, turning it into a wonder, and thus enhances the
+pleasure of loving by the glorious glamour of the ideal.
+
+Such a love is the very essence of passion. It is extreme in all
+things, in its hopes, in its despair, in its rage, in its melancholy,
+in its joy; it flies, it leaps, it crawls; it is not like any of the
+emotions known to ordinary men; it is to everyday love what the
+perennial Alpine torrent is to the lowland brook.
+
+These splendid geniuses are so rarely understood that they spend
+themselves in hopes deceived; they are exhausted by the search for
+their ideal mistress, and almost always die like gorgeous insects
+splendidly adorned for their love-festival by the most poetical of
+nature's inventions, and crushed under the foot of a passer-by. But
+there is another danger! When they meet with the form that answers to
+their soul, and which not unfrequently is that of a baker's wife, they
+do as Raphael did, as the beautiful insect does, they die in the
+Fornarina's arms.
+
+Lucien was at this pass. His poetical temperament, excessive in all
+things, in good as in evil, had discerned the angel in this girl, who
+was tainted by corruption rather than corrupt; he always saw her
+white, winged, pure, and mysterious, as she had made herself for him,
+understanding that he would have her so.
+
+Towards the end of the month of May 1825 Lucien had lost all his good
+spirits; he never went out, dined with Herrera, sat pensive, worked,
+read volumes of diplomatic treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a
+divan, and smoked three or four hookahs a day. His groom had more to
+do in cleaning and perfuming the tubes of this noble pipe than in
+currying and brushing down the horses' coats, and dressing them with
+cockades for driving in the Bois. As soon as the Spaniard saw Lucien
+pale, and detected a malady in the frenzy of suppressed passion, he
+determined to read to the bottom of this man's heart on which he
+founded his life.
+
+One fine evening, when Lucien, lounging in an armchair, was
+mechanically contemplating the hues of the setting sun through the
+trees in the garden, blowing up the mist of scented smoke in slow,
+regular clouds, as pensive smokers are wont, he was roused from his
+reverie by hearing a deep sigh. He turned and saw the Abbe standing by
+him with folded arms.
+
+"You were there!" said the poet.
+
+"For some time," said the priest, "my thoughts have been following the
+wide sweep of yours." Lucien understood his meaning.
+
+"I have never affected to have an iron nature such as yours is. To me
+life is by turns paradise and hell; when by chance it is neither, it
+bores me; and I am bored----"
+
+"How can you be bored when you have such splendid prospects before
+you?"
+
+"If I have no faith in those prospects, or if they are too much
+shrouded?"
+
+"Do not talk nonsense," said the priest. "It would be far more worthy
+of you and of me that you should open your heart to me. There is now
+that between us which ought never to have come between us--a secret.
+This secret has subsisted for sixteen months. You are in love."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"A foul hussy called La Torpille----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"My boy, I told you you might have a mistress, but a woman of rank,
+pretty, young, influential, a Countess at least. I had chosen Madame
+d'Espard for you, to make her the instrument of your fortune without
+scruple; for she would never have perverted your heart, she would have
+left you free.--To love a prostitute of the lowest class when you have
+not, like kings, the power to give her high rank, is a monstrous
+blunder."
+
+"And am I the first man who had renounced ambition to follow the lead
+of a boundless passion?"
+
+"Good!" said the priest, stooping to pick up the mouthpiece of the
+hookah which Lucien had dropped on the floor. "I understand the
+retort. Cannot love and ambition be reconciled? Child, you have a
+mother in old Herrera--a mother who is wholly devoted to you----"
+
+"I know it, old friend," said Lucien, taking his hand and shaking it.
+
+"You wished for the toys of wealth; you have them. You want to shine;
+I am guiding you into the paths of power, I kiss very dirty hands to
+secure your advancement, and you will get on. A little while yet and
+you will lack nothing of what can charm man or woman. Though
+effeminate in your caprices, your intellect is manly. I have dreamed
+all things of you; I forgive you all. You have only to speak to have
+your ephemeral passions gratified. I have aggrandized your life by
+introducing into it that which makes it delightful to most people--the
+stamp of political influence and dominion. You will be as great as you
+now are small; but you must not break the machine by which we coin
+money. I grant you all you will excepting such blunders as will
+destroy your future prospects. When I can open the drawing-rooms of
+the Faubourg Saint-Germain to you, I forbid your wallowing in the
+gutter. Lucien, I mean to be an iron stanchion in your interest; I
+will endure everything from you, for you. Thus I have transformed your
+lack of tact in the game of life into the shrewd stroke of a skilful
+player----"
+
+Lucien looked up with a start of furious impetuosity.
+
+"I carried off La Torpille!"
+
+"You?" cried Lucien.
+
+In a fit of animal rage the poet jumped up, flung the jeweled
+mouthpiece in the priest's face, and pushed him with such violence as
+to throw down that strong man.
+
+"I," said the Spaniard, getting up and preserving his terrible
+gravity.
+
+His black wig had fallen off. A bald skull, as shining as a death's
+head, showed the man's real countenance. It was appalling. Lucien sat
+on his divan, his hands hanging limp, overpowered, and gazing at the
+Abbe with stupefaction.
+
+"I carried her off," the priest repeated.
+
+"What did you do with her? You took her away the day after the opera
+ball."
+
+"Yes, the day after I had seen a woman who belonged to you insulted by
+wretches whom I would not have condescended to kick downstairs."
+
+"Wretches!" interrupted Lucien, "say rather monsters, compared with
+whom those who are guillotined are angels. Do you know what the
+unhappy Torpille had done for three of them? One of them was her lover
+for two months. She was poor, and picked up a living in the gutter; he
+had not a sou; like me, when you rescued me, he was very near the
+river; this fellow would get up at night and go to the cupboard where
+the girl kept the remains of her dinner and eat it. At last she
+discovered the trick; she understood the shameful thing, and took care
+to leave a great deal; then she was happy. She never told any one but
+me, that night, coming home from the opera.
+
+"The second had stolen some money; but before the theft was found out,
+she lent him the sum, which he was enabled to replace, and which he
+always forgot to repay to the poor child.
+
+"As to the third, she made his fortune by playing out a farce worthy
+of Figaro's genius. She passed as his wife and became the mistress of
+a man in power, who believed her to be the most innocent of good
+citizens. To one she gave life, to another honor, to the third fortune
+--what does it all count for to-day? And this is how they reward her!"
+
+"Would you like to see them dead?" said Herrera, in whose eyes there
+were tears.
+
+"Come, that is just like you! I know you by that----"
+
+"Nay, hear all, raving poet," said the priest. "La Torpille is no
+more."
+
+Lucien flew at Herrera to seize him by the throat, with such violence
+that any other man must have fallen backwards; but the Spaniard's arm
+held off his assailant.
+
+"Come, listen," said he coldly. "I have made another woman of her,
+chaste, pure, well bred, religious, a perfect lady. She is being
+educated. She can, if she may, under the influence of your love,
+become a Ninon, a Marion Delorme, a du Barry, as the journalist at the
+opera ball remarked. You may proclaim her your mistress, or you may
+retire behind a curtain of your own creating, which will be wiser. By
+either method you will gain profit and pride, pleasure and
+advancement; but if you are as great a politician as you are a poet,
+Esther will be no more to you than any other woman of the town; for,
+later, perhaps she may help us out of difficulties; she is worth her
+weight in gold. Drink, but do not get tipsy.
+
+"If I had not held the reins of your passion, where would you be now?
+Rolling with La Torpille in the slough of misery from which I dragged
+you. Here, read this," said Herrera, as simply as Talma in _Manlius_,
+which he had never seen.
+
+A sheet of paper was laid on the poet's knees, and startled him from
+the ecstasy and surprise with which he had listened to this astounding
+speech; he took it, and read the first letter written by Mademoiselle
+Esther:--
+
+  To Monsieur l'Abbe Carlos Herrera.
+
+  "MY DEAR PROTECTOR,--Will you not suppose that gratitude is
+  stronger in me than love, when you see that the first use I make
+  of the power of expressing my thoughts is to thank you, instead of
+  devoting it to pouring forth a passion that Lucien has perhaps
+  forgotten. But to you, divine man, I can say what I should not
+  dare to tell him, who, to my joy, still clings to earth.
+
+  "Yesterday's ceremony has filled me with treasures of grace, and I
+  place my fate in your hands. Even if I must die far away from my
+  beloved, I shall die purified like the Magdalen, and my soul will
+  become to him the rival of his guardian angel. Can I ever forget
+  yesterday's festival? How could I wish to abdicate the glorious
+  throne to which I was raised? Yesterday I washed away every stain
+  in the waters of baptism, and received the Sacred Body of my
+  Redeemer; I am become one of His tabernacles. At that moment I
+  heard the songs of angels, I was more than a woman, born to a life
+  of light amid the acclamations of the whole earth, admired by the
+  world in a cloud of incense and prayers that were intoxicating,
+  adorned like a virgin for the Heavenly Spouse.
+
+  "Thus finding myself worthy of Lucien, which I had never hoped to
+  be, I abjured impure love and vowed to walk only in the paths of
+  virtue. If my flesh is weaker than my spirit, let it perish. Be
+  the arbiter of my destiny; and if I die, tell Lucien that I died
+  to him when I was born to God."
+
+Lucien looked up at the Abbe with eyes full of tears.
+
+"You know the rooms fat Caroline Bellefeuille had, in the Rue
+Taitbout," the Spaniard said. "The poor creature, cast off by her
+magistrate, was in the greatest poverty; she was about to be sold up.
+I bought the place all standing, and she turned out with her clothes.
+Esther, the angel who aspired to heaven, has alighted there, and is
+waiting for you."
+
+At this moment Lucien heard his horses pawing the ground in the
+courtyard; he was incapable of expressing his admiration for a
+devotion which he alone could appreciate; he threw himself into the
+arms of the man he had insulted, made amends for all by a look and the
+speechless effusion of his feelings. Then he flew downstairs, confided
+Esther's address to his tiger's ear, and the horses went off as if
+their master's passion had lived in their legs.
+
+
+
+The next day a man, who by his dress might have been mistaken by the
+passers-by for a gendarme in disguise, was passing the Rue Taitbout,
+opposite a house, as if he were waiting for some one to come out; he
+walked with an agitated air. You will often see in Paris such vehement
+promenaders, real gendarmes watching a recalcitrant National
+Guardsman, bailiffs taking steps to effect an arrest, creditors
+planning a trick on the debtor who has shut himself in, lovers, or
+jealous and suspicious husbands, or friends doing sentry for a friend;
+but rarely do you meet a face portending such coarse and fierce
+thoughts as animated that of the gloomy and powerful man who paced to
+and fro under Mademoiselle Esther's windows with the brooding haste of
+a bear in its cage.
+
+At noon a window was opened, and a maid-servant's hand was put out to
+push back the padded shutters. A few minutes later, Esther, in her
+dressing-gown, came to breathe the air, leaning on Lucien; any one who
+saw them might have taken them for the originals of some pretty
+English vignette. Esther was the first to recognize the basilisk eyes
+of the Spanish priest; and the poor creature, stricken as if she had
+been shot, gave a cry of horror.
+
+"There is that terrible priest," said she, pointing him out to Lucien.
+
+"He!" said Lucien, smiling, "he is no more a priest than you are."
+
+"What then?" she said in alarm.
+
+"Why, an old villain who believes in nothing but the devil," said
+Lucien.
+
+This light thrown on the sham priest's secrets, if revealed to any one
+less devoted than Esther, might have ruined Lucien for ever.
+
+As they went along the corridor from their bedroom to the dining-room,
+where their breakfast was served, the lovers met Carlos Herrera.
+
+"What have you come here for?" said Lucien roughly.
+
+"To bless you," replied the audacious scoundrel, stopping the pair and
+detaining them in the little drawing-room of the apartment. "Listen to
+me, my pretty dears. Amuse yourselves, be happy--well and good!
+Happiness at any price is my motto.--But you," he went on to Esther,
+"you whom I dragged from the mud, and have soaped down body and soul,
+you surely do not dream that you can stand in Lucien's way?--As for
+you, my boy," he went on after a pause, looking at Lucien, "you are no
+longer poet enough to allow yourself another Coralie. This is sober
+prose. What can be done with Esther's lover? Nothing. Can Esther
+become Madame de Rubempre? No.
+
+"Well, my child," said he, laying his hand on Esther's, and making her
+shiver as if some serpent had wound itself round her, "the world must
+never know of your existence. Above all, the world must never know
+that a certain Mademoiselle Esther loves Lucien, and that Lucien is in
+love with her.--These rooms are your prison, my pigeon. If you wish to
+go out--and your health will require it--you must take exercise at
+night, at hours when you cannot be seen; for your youth and beauty,
+and the style you have acquired at the Convent, would at once be
+observed in Paris. The day when any one in the world, whoever it be,"
+he added in an awful voice, seconded by an awful look, "learns that
+Lucien is your lover, or that you are his mistress, that day will be
+your last but one on earth. I have procured that boy a patent
+permitting him to bear the name and arms of his maternal ancestors.
+Still, this is not all; we have not yet recovered the title of
+Marquis; and to get it, he must marry a girl of good family, in whose
+favor the King will grant this distinction. Such an alliance will get
+Lucien on in the world and at Court. This boy, of whom I have made a
+man, will be first Secretary to an Embassy; later, he shall be
+Minister at some German Court, and God, or I--better still--helping
+him, he will take his seat some day on the bench reserved for
+peers----"
+
+"Or on the bench reserved for----" Lucien began, interrupting the man.
+
+"Hold your tongue!" cried Carlos, laying his broad hand on Lucien's
+mouth. "Would you tell such a secret to a woman?" he muttered in his
+ear.
+
+"Esther! A woman!" cried the poet of _Les Marguerites_.
+
+"Still inditing sonnets!" said the Spaniard. "Nonsense! Sooner or
+later all these angels relapse into being women, and every woman at
+moments is a mixture of a monkey and a child, two creatures who can
+kill us for fun.--Esther, my jewel," said he to the terrified girl, "I
+have secured as your waiting-maid a creature who is as much mine as if
+she were my daughter. For your cook, you shall have a mulatto woman,
+which gives style to a house. With Europe and Asie you can live here
+for a thousand-franc note a month like a queen--a stage queen. Europe
+has been a dressmaker, a milliner, and a stage super; Asie has cooked
+for an epicure Milord. These two women will serve you like two
+fairies."
+
+Seeing Lucien go completely to the wall before this man, who was
+guilty at least of sacrilege and forgery, this woman, sanctified by
+her love, felt an awful fear in the depths of her heart. She made no
+reply, but dragged Lucien into her room, and asked him:
+
+"Is he the devil?"
+
+"He is far worse to me!" he vehemently replied. "But if you love me,
+try to imitate that man's devotion to me, and obey him on pain of
+death!----"
+
+"Of death!" she exclaimed, more frightened than ever.
+
+"Of death," repeated Lucien. "Alas! my darling, no death could be
+compared with that which would befall me if----"
+
+Esther turned pale at his words, and felt herself fainting.
+
+"Well, well," cried the sacrilegious forger, "have you not yet spelt
+out your daisy-petals?"
+
+Esther and Lucien came out, and the poor girl, not daring to look at
+the mysterious man, said:
+
+"You shall be obeyed as God is obeyed, monsieur."
+
+"Good," said he. "You may be very happy for a time, and you will need
+only nightgowns and wrappers--that will be very economical."
+
+The two lovers went on towards the dining-room, but Lucien's patron
+signed to the pretty pair to stop. And they stopped.
+
+"I have just been talking of your servants, my child," said he to
+Esther. "I must introduce them to you."
+
+The Spaniard rang twice. The women he had called Europe and Asie came
+in, and it was at once easy to see the reason of these names.
+
+Asie, who looked as if she might have been born in the Island of Java,
+showed a face to scare the eye, as flat as a board, with the copper
+complexion peculiar to Malays, with a nose that looked as if it had
+been driven inwards by some violent pressure. The strange conformation
+of the maxillary bones gave the lower part of this face a resemblance
+to that of the larger species of apes. The brow, though sloping, was
+not deficient in intelligence produced by habits of cunning. Two
+fierce little eyes had the calm fixity of a tiger's, but they never
+looked you straight in the face. Asie seemed afraid lest she might
+terrify people. Her lips, a dull blue, were parted over prominent
+teeth of dazzling whiteness, but grown across. The leading expression
+of this animal countenance was one of meanness. Her black hair,
+straight and greasy-looking like her skin, lay in two shining bands,
+forming an edge to a very handsome silk handkerchief. Her ears were
+remarkably pretty, and graced with two large dark pearls. Small,
+short, and squat, Asie bore a likeness to the grotesque figures the
+Chinese love to paint on screens, or, more exactly, to the Hindoo
+idols which seem to be imitated from some non-existent type, found,
+nevertheless, now and again by travelers. Esther shuddered as she
+looked at this monstrosity, dressed out in a white apron over a stuff
+gown.
+
+"Asie," said the Spaniard, to whom the woman looked up with a gesture
+that can only be compared to that of a dog to its master, "this is
+your mistress."
+
+And he pointed to Esther in her wrapper.
+
+Asie looked at the young fairy with an almost distressful expression;
+but at the same moment a flash, half hidden between her thick, short
+eyelashes, shot like an incendiary spark at Lucien, who, in a
+magnificent dressing-gown thrown open over a fine Holland linen shirt
+and red trousers, with a fez on his head, beneath which his fair hair
+fell in thick curls, presented a godlike appearance.
+
+Italian genius could invent the tale of Othello; English genius could
+put it on the stage; but Nature alone reserves the power of throwing
+into a single glance an expression of jealousy grander and more
+complete than England and Italy together could imagine. This look,
+seen by Esther, made her clutch the Spaniard by the arm, setting her
+nails in it as a cat sets its claws to save itself from falling into a
+gulf of which it cannot see the bottom.
+
+The Spaniard spoke a few words, in some unfamiliar tongue, to the
+Asiatic monster, who crept on her knees to Esther's feet and kissed
+them.
+
+"She is not merely a good cook," said Herrera to Esther; "she is a
+past-master, and might make Careme mad with jealousy. Asie can do
+everything by way of cooking. She will turn you out a simple dish of
+beans that will make you wonder whether the angels have not come down
+to add some herb from heaven. She will go to market herself every
+morning, and fight like the devil she is to get things at the lowest
+prices; she will tire out curiosity by silence.
+
+"You are to be supposed to have been in India, and Asie will help you
+to give effect to this fiction, for she is one of those Parisians who
+are born to be of any nationality they please. But I do not advise
+that you should give yourself out to be a foreigner.--Europe, what do
+you say?"
+
+Europe was a perfect contrast to Asie, for she was the smartest
+waiting-maid that Monrose could have hoped to see as her rival on the
+stage. Slight, with a scatter-brain manner, a face like a weasel, and
+a sharp nose, Europe's features offered to the observer a countenance
+worn by the corruption of Paris life, the unhealthy complexion of a
+girl fed on raw apples, lymphatic but sinewy, soft but tenacious. One
+little foot was set forward, her hands were in her apron-pockets, and
+she fidgeted incessantly without moving, from sheer excess of
+liveliness. Grisette and stage super, in spite of her youth she must
+have tried many trades. As full of evil as a dozen Madelonnettes put
+together, she might have robbed her parents, and sat on the bench of a
+police-court.
+
+Asie was terrifying, but you knew her thoroughly from the first; she
+descended in a straight line from Locusta; while Europe filled you
+with uneasiness, which could not fail to increase the more you had to
+do with her; her corruption seemed boundless. You felt that she could
+set the devils by the ears.
+
+"Madame might say she had come from Valenciennes," said Europe in a
+precise little voice. "I was born there--Perhaps monsieur," she added
+to Lucien in a pedantic tone, "will be good enough to say what name he
+proposes to give to madame?"
+
+"Madame van Bogseck," the Spaniard put in, reversing Esther's name.
+"Madame is a Jewess, a native of Holland, the widow of a merchant, and
+suffering from a liver-complaint contracted in Java. No great fortune
+--not to excite curiosity."
+
+"Enough to live on--six thousand francs a year; and we shall complain
+of her stinginess?" said Europe.
+
+"That is the thing," said the Spaniard, with a bow. "You limbs of
+Satan!" he went on, catching Asie and Europe exchanging a glance that
+displeased him, "remember what I have told you. You are serving a
+queen; you owe her as much respect as to a queen; you are to cherish
+her as you would cherish a revenge, and be as devoted to her as to me.
+Neither the door-porter, nor the neighbors, nor the other inhabitants
+of the house--in short, not a soul on earth is to know what goes on
+here. It is your business to balk curiosity if any should be roused.
+--And madame," he went on laying his broad hairy hand on Esther's arm,
+"madame must not commit the smallest imprudence; you must prevent it
+in case of need, but always with perfect respect.
+
+"You, Europe, are to go out for madame in anything that concerns her
+dress, and you must do her sewing from motives of economy. Finally,
+nobody, not even the most insignificant creature, is ever to set foot
+in this apartment. You two, between you, must do all there is to be
+done.
+
+"And you, my beauty," he went on, speaking to Esther, "when you want
+to go out in your carriage by night, you can tell Europe; she will
+know where to find your men, for you will have a servant in livery, of
+my choosing, like those two slaves."
+
+Esther and Lucien had not a word ready. They listened to the Spaniard,
+and looked at the two precious specimens to whom he gave his orders.
+What was the secret hold to which he owed the submission and servitude
+that were written on these two faces--one mischievously recalcitrant,
+the other so malignantly cruel?
+
+He read the thoughts of Lucien and Esther, who seemed paralyzed, as
+Paul and Virginia might have been at the sight of two dreadful snakes,
+and he said in a good-natured undertone:
+
+"You can trust them as you can me; keep no secrets from them; that
+will flatter them.--Go to your work, my little Asie," he added to the
+cook.--"And you, my girl, lay another place," he said to Europe; "the
+children cannot do less than ask papa to breakfast."
+
+When the two women had shut the door, and the Spaniard could hear
+Europe moving to and fro, he turned to Lucien and Esther, and opening
+a wide palm, he said:
+
+"I hold them in the hollow of my hand."
+
+The words and gesture made his hearers shudder.
+
+"Where did you pick them up?" cried Lucien.
+
+"What the devil! I did not look for them at the foot of the throne!"
+replied the man. "Europe has risen from the mire, and is afraid of
+sinking into it again. Threaten them with Monsieur Abbe when they do
+not please you, and you will see them quake like mice when the cat is
+mentioned. I am used to taming wild beasts," he added with a smile.
+
+"You strike me as being a demon," said Esther, clinging closer to
+Lucien.
+
+"My child, I tried to win you to heaven; but a repentant Magdalen is
+always a practical joke on the Church. If ever there were one, she
+would relapse into the courtesan in Paradise. You have gained this
+much: you are forgotten, and have acquired the manners of a lady, for
+you learned in the convent what you never could have learned in the
+ranks of infamy in which you were living.--You owe me nothing," said
+he, observing a beautiful look of gratitude on Esther's face. "I did
+it all for him," and he pointed to Lucien. "You are, you will always
+be, you will die a prostitute; for in spite of the delightful theories
+of cattle-breeders, you can never, here below, become anything but
+what you are. The man who feels bumps is right. You have the bump of
+love."
+
+The Spaniard, it will be seen, was a fatalist, like Napoleon, Mahomet,
+and many other great politicians. It is a strange thing that most men
+of action have a tendency to fatalism, just as most great thinkers
+have a tendency to believe in Providence.
+
+"What I am, I do not know," said Esther with angelic sweetness; "but I
+love Lucien, and shall die worshiping him."
+
+"Come to breakfast," said the Spaniard sharply. "And pray to God that
+Lucien may not marry too soon, for then you would never see him
+again."
+
+"His marriage would be my death," said she.
+
+She allowed the sham priest to lead the way, that she might stand on
+tiptoe and whisper to Lucien without being seen.
+
+"Is it your wish," said she, "that I should remain in the power of
+this man who sets two hyenas to guard me?"
+
+Lucien bowed his head.
+
+The poor child swallowed down her grief and affected gladness, but she
+felt cruelly oppressed. It needed more than a year of constant and
+devoted care before she was accustomed to these two dreadful creatures
+whom Carlos Herrera called the two watch-dogs.
+
+
+
+Lucien's conduct since his return to Paris had borne the stamp of such
+profound policy that it excited--and could not fail to excite--the
+jealousy of all his former friends, on whom he took no vengeance but
+by making them furious at his success, at his exquisite "get up," and
+his way of keeping every one at a distance. The poet, once so
+communicative, so genial, had turned cold and reserved. De Marsay, the
+model adopted by all the youth of Paris, did not make a greater
+display of reticence in speech and deed than did Lucien. As to brains,
+the journalist had ere now proved his mettle. De Marsay, against whom
+many people chose to pit Lucien, giving a preference to the poet, was
+small-minded enough to resent this.
+
+Lucien, now in high favor with men who secretly pulled the wires of
+power, was so completely indifferent to literary fame, that he did not
+care about the success of his romance, republished under its real
+title, _L'Archer de Charles IX._, or the excitement caused by his volume
+of sonnets called _Les Marguerites_, of which Dauriat sold out the
+edition in a week.
+
+"It is posthumous fame," said he, with a laugh, to Mademoiselle des
+Touches, who congratulated him.
+
+The terrible Spaniard held his creature with an iron hand, keeping him
+in the road towards the goal where the trumpets and gifts of victory
+await patient politicians. Lucien had taken Beaudenord's bachelor
+quarters on the Quai Malaquais, to be near the Rue Taitbout, and his
+adviser was lodging under the same roof on the fourth floor. Lucien
+kept only one horse to ride and drive, a man-servant, and a groom.
+When he was not dining out, he dined with Esther.
+
+Carlos Herrera kept such a keen eye on the service in the house on the
+Quai Malaquais, that Lucien did not spend ten thousand francs a year,
+all told. Ten thousand more were enough for Esther, thanks to the
+unfailing and inexplicable devotion of Asie and Europe. Lucien took
+the utmost precautions in going in and out at the Rue Taitbout. He
+never came but in a cab, with the blinds down, and always drove into
+the courtyard. Thus his passion for Esther and the very existence of
+the establishment in the Rue Taitbout, being unknown to the world, did
+him no harm in his connections or undertakings. No rash word ever
+escaped him on this delicate subject. His mistakes of this sort with
+regard to Coralie, at the time of his first stay in Paris, had given
+him experience.
+
+In the first place, his life was marked by the correct regularity
+under which many mysteries can be hidden; he remained in society every
+night till one in the morning; he was always at home from ten till one
+in the afternoon; then he drove in the Bois de Boulogne and paid calls
+till five. He was rarely seen to be on foot, and thus avoided old
+acquaintances. When some journalist or one of his former associates
+waved him a greeting, he responded with a bow, polite enough to avert
+annoyance, but significant of such deep contempt as killed all French
+geniality. He thus had very soon got rid of persons whom he would
+rather never have known.
+
+An old-established aversion kept him from going to see Madame
+d'Espard, who often wished to get him to her house; but when he met
+her at those of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, of Mademoiselle des
+Touches, of the Comtesse de Montcornet or elsewhere, he was always
+exquisitely polite to her. This hatred, fully reciprocated by Madame
+d'Espard, compelled Lucien to act with prudence; but it will be seen
+how he had added fuel to it by allowing himself a stroke of revenge,
+which gained him indeed a severe lecture from Carlos.
+
+"You are not yet strong enough to be revenged on any one, whoever it
+may be," said the Spaniard. "When we are walking under a burning sun
+we do not stop to gather even the finest flowers."
+
+Lucien was so genuinely superior, and had so fine a future before him,
+that the young men who chose to be offended or puzzled by his return
+to Paris and his unaccountable good fortune were enchanted whenever
+they could do him an ill turn. He knew that he had many enemies, and
+was well aware of those hostile feelings among his friends. The Abbe,
+indeed, took admirable care of his adopted son, putting him on his
+guard against the treachery of the world and the fatal imprudence of
+youth. Lucien was expected to tell, and did in fact tell the Abbe each
+evening, every trivial incident of the day. Thanks to his Mentor's
+advice, he put the keenest curiosity--the curiosity of the world--off
+the scent. Entrenched in the gravity of an Englishman, and fortified
+by the redoubts cast up by diplomatic circumspection, he never gave
+any one the right or the opportunity of seeing a corner even of his
+concerns. His handsome young face had, by practice, become as
+expressionless in society as that of a princess at a ceremonial.
+
+Towards the middle of 1829 his marriage began to be talked of to the
+eldest daughter of the Duchesse de Grandlieu, who at that time had no
+less than four daughters to provide for. No one doubted that in honor
+of such an alliance the King would revive for Lucien the title of
+Marquis. This distinction would establish Lucien's fortune as a
+diplomate, and he would probably be accredited as Minister to some
+German Court. For the last three years Lucien's life had been regular
+and above reproach; indeed, de Marsay had made this remarkable speech
+about him:
+
+"That young fellow must have a very strong hand behind him."
+
+Thus Lucien was almost a person of importance. His passion for Esther
+had, in fact, helped him greatly to play his part of a serious man. A
+habit of this kind guards an ambitious man from many follies; having
+no connection with any woman of fashion, he cannot be caught by the
+reactions of mere physical nature on his moral sense.
+
+As to happiness, Lucien's was the realization of a poet's dreams--a
+penniless poet's, hungering in a garret. Esther, the ideal courtesan
+in love, while she reminded Lucien of Coralie, the actress with whom
+he had lived for a year, completely eclipsed her. Every loving and
+devoted woman invents seclusion, incognito, the life of a pearl in the
+depths of the sea; but to most of them this is no more than one of the
+delightful whims which supply a subject for conversation; a proof of
+love which they dream of giving, but do not give; whereas Esther, to
+whom her first enchantment was ever new, who lived perpetually in the
+glow of Lucien's first incendiary glance, never, in four yours, had an
+impulse of curiosity. She gave her whole mind to the task of adhering
+to the terms of the programme prescribed by the sinister Spaniard.
+Nay, more! In the midst of intoxicating happiness she never took
+unfair advantage of the unlimited power that the constantly revived
+desire of a lover gives to the woman he loves to ask Lucien a single
+question regarding Herrera, of whom indeed she lived in constant awe;
+she dared not even think of him. The elaborate benefactions of that
+extraordinary man, to whom Esther undoubtedly owed her feminine
+accomplishment and her well-bred manner, struck the poor girl as
+advances on account of hell.
+
+"I shall have to pay for all this some day," she would tell herself
+with dismay.
+
+Every fine night she went out in a hired carriage. She was driven with
+a rapidity no doubt insisted on by the Abbe, in one or another of the
+beautiful woods round Paris, Boulogne, Vincennes, Romainville, or
+Ville-d'Avray, often with Lucien, sometimes alone with Europe. There
+she could walk about without fear; for when Lucien was not with her,
+she was attended by a servant dressed like the smartest of outriders,
+armed with a real knife, whose face and brawny build alike proclaimed
+him a ruthless athlete. This protector was also provided, in the
+fashion of English footmen, with a stick, but such as single-stick
+players use, with which they can keep off more than one assailant. In
+obedience to an order of the Abbe's, Esther had never spoken a word to
+this escort. When madame wished to go home, Europe gave a call; the
+man in waiting whistled to the driver, who was always within hearing.
+
+When Lucien was walking with Esther, Europe and this man remained
+about a hundred paces behind, like two of the infernal minions that
+figure in the _Thousand and One Nights_, which enchanters place at the
+service of their devotees.
+
+The men, and yet more the women of Paris, know nothing of the charm of
+a walk in the woods on a fine night. The stillness, the moonlight
+effects, the solitude, have the soothing effect of a bath. Esther
+usually went out at ten, walked about from midnight till one o'clock,
+and came in at half-past two. It was never daylight in her rooms till
+eleven. She then bathed and went through an elaborate toilet which is
+unknown to most women, for it takes up too much time, and is rarely
+carried out by any but courtesans, women of the town, or fine ladies
+who have the day before them. She was only just ready when Lucien
+came, and appeared before him as a newly opened flower. Her only care
+was that her poet should be happy; she was his toy, his chattel; she
+gave him entire liberty. She never cast a glance beyond the circle
+where she shone. On this the Abbe had insisted, for it was part of his
+profound policy that Lucien should have gallant adventures.
+
+Happiness has no history, and the story-tellers of all lands have
+understood this so well that the words, "They are happy," are the end
+of every love tale. Hence only the ways and means can be recorded of
+this really romantic happiness in the heart of Paris. It was happiness
+in its loveliest form, a poem, a symphony, of four years' duration.
+Every woman will exclaim, "That was much!" Neither Esther nor Lucien
+had ever said, "This is too much!" And the formula, "They were happy,"
+was more emphatically true, than even in a fairy tale, for "they had
+_no_ children."
+
+So Lucien could coquet with the world, give way to his poet's
+caprices, and, it may be plainly admitted, to the necessities of his
+position. All this time he was slowly making his way, and was able to
+render secret service to certain political personages by helping them
+in their work. In such matters he was eminently discreet. He
+cultivated Madame de Serizy's circle, being, it was rumored, on the
+very best terms with that lady. Madame de Serizy had carried him off
+from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who, it was said, had "thrown him
+over," one of the phrases by which women avenge themselves on
+happiness they envy. Lucien was in the lap, so to speak, of the High
+Almoner's set, and intimate with women who were the Archbishop's
+personal friends. He was modest and reserved; he waited patiently. So
+de Marsay's speech--de Marsay was now married, and made his wife live
+as retired a life as Esther--was significant in more ways that one.
+
+But the submarine perils of such a course as Lucien's will be
+sufficiently obvious in the course of this chronicle.
+
+
+
+Matters were in this position when, one fine night in August, the
+Baron de Nucingen was driving back to Paris from the country residence
+of a foreign banker, settled in France, with whom he had been dining.
+The estate lay at eight leagues from Paris in the district of la Brie.
+Now, the Baron's coachman having undertaken to drive his master there
+and back with his own horses, at nightfall ventured to moderate the
+pace.
+
+As they entered the forest of Vincennes the position of beast, man,
+and master was as follows:--The coachman, liberally soaked in the
+kitchen of the aristocrat of the Bourse, was perfectly tipsy, and
+slept soundly, while still holding the reins to deceive other
+wayfarers. The footman, seated behind, was snoring like a wooden top
+from Germany--the land of little carved figures, of large wine-vats,
+and of humming-tops. The Baron had tried to think; but after passing
+the bridge at Gournay, the soft somnolence of digestion had sealed his
+eyes. The horses understood the coachman's plight from the slackness
+of the reins; they heard the footman's basso continuo from his perch
+behind; they saw that they were masters of the situation, and took
+advantage of their few minutes' freedom to make their own pace. Like
+intelligent slaves, they gave highway robbers the chance of plundering
+one of the richest capitalists in France, the most deeply cunning of
+the race which, in France, have been energetically styled lynxes
+--loups-cerviers. Finally, being independent of control, and tempted
+by the curiosity which every one must have remarked in domestic
+animals, they stopped where four roads met, face to face with some
+other horses, whom they, no doubt, asked in horses' language: "Who may
+you be? What are you doing? Are you comfortable?"
+
+When the chaise stopped, the Baron awoke from his nap. At first he
+fancied that he was still in his friend's park; then he was startled
+by a celestial vision, which found him unarmed with his usual weapon
+--self-interest. The moonlight was brilliant; he could have read by it
+--even an evening paper. In the silence of the forest, under this pure
+light, the Baron saw a woman, alone, who, as she got into a hired
+chaise, looked at the strange spectacle of this sleep-stricken
+carriage. At the sight of this angel the Baron felt as though a light
+had flashed into glory within him. The young lady, seeing herself
+admired, pulled down her veil with terrified haste. The man-servant
+gave a signal which the driver perfectly understood, for the vehicle
+went off like an arrow.
+
+The old banker was fearfully agitated; the blood left his feet cold
+and carried fire to his brain, his head sent the flame back to his
+heart; he was chocking. The unhappy man foresaw a fit of indigestion,
+but in spite of that supreme terror he stood up.
+
+"Follow qvick, fery qvick.--Tam you, you are ashleep!" he cried. "A
+hundert franc if you catch up dat chaise."
+
+At the words "A hundred francs," the coachman woke up. The servant
+behind heard them, no doubt, in his dreams. The baron reiterated his
+orders, the coachman urged the horses to a gallop, and at the Barriere
+du Trone had succeeded in overtaking a carriage resembling that in
+which Nucingen had seen the divine fair one, but which contained a
+swaggering head-clerk from some first-class shop and a lady of the Rue
+Vivienne.
+
+This blunder filled the Baron with consternation.
+
+"If only I had prought Chorge inshtead of you, shtupid fool, he should
+have fount dat voman," said he to the servant, while the excise
+officers were searching the carriage.
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur le Baron, the devil was behind the chaise, I
+believe, disguised as an armed escort, and he sent this chaise instead
+of hers."
+
+"Dere is no such ting as de Teufel," said the Baron.
+
+The Baron de Nucingen owned to sixty; he no longer cared for women,
+and for his wife least of all. He boasted that he had never known such
+love as makes a fool of a man. He declared that he was happy to have
+done with women; the most angelic of them, he frankly said, was not
+worth what she cost, even if you got her for nothing. He was supposed
+to be so entirely blase, that he no longer paid two thousand francs a
+month for the pleasure of being deceived. His eyes looked coldly down
+from his opera box on the corps de ballet; never a glance was shot at
+the capitalist by any one of that formidable swarm of old young girls,
+and young old women, the cream of Paris pleasure.
+
+Natural love, artificial and love-of-show love, love based on
+self-esteem and vanity, love as a display of taste, decent, conjugal
+love, eccentric love--the Baron had paid for them all, had known them
+all excepting real spontaneous love. This passion had now pounced down
+on him like an eagle on its prey, as it did on Gentz, the confidential
+friend of His Highness the Prince of Metternich. All the world knows
+what follies the old diplomate committed for Fanny Elssler, whose
+rehearsals took up a great deal more of his time than the concerns of
+Europe.
+
+The woman who had just overthrown that iron-bound money-box, called
+Nucingen, had appeared to him as one of those who are unique in their
+generation. It is not certain that Titian's mistress, or Leonardo da
+Vinci's Monna Lisa, or Raphael's Fornarina were as beautiful as this
+exquisite Esther, in whom not the most practised eye of the most
+experienced Parisian could have detected the faintest trace of the
+ordinary courtesan. The Baron was especially startled by the noble and
+stately air, the air of a well-born woman, which Esther, beloved, and
+lapped in luxury, elegance, and devotedness, had in the highest
+degree. Happy love is the divine unction of women; it makes them all
+as lofty as empresses.
+
+For eight nights in succession the Baron went to the forest of
+Vincennes, then to the Bois de Boulogne, to the woods of
+Ville-d'Avray, to Meudon, in short, everywhere in the neighborhood of
+Paris, but failed to meet Esther. That beautiful Jewish face, which
+he called "a face out of te Biple," was always before his eyes. By
+the end of a fortnight he had lost his appetite.
+
+Delphine de Nucingen, and her daughter Augusta, whom the Baroness was
+now taking out, did not at first perceive the change that had come
+over the Baron. The mother and daughter only saw him at breakfast in
+the morning and at dinner in the evening, when they all dined at home,
+and this was only on the evenings when Delphine received company. But
+by the end of two months, tortured by a fever of impatience, and in a
+state like that produced by acute home-sickness, the Baron, amazed to
+find his millions impotent, grew so thin, and seemed so seriously ill,
+that Delphine had secret hopes of finding herself a widow. She pitied
+her husband, somewhat hypocritically, and kept her daughter in
+seclusion. She bored her husband with questions; he answered as
+Englishmen answer when suffering from spleen, hardly a word.
+
+Delphine de Nucingen gave a grand dinner every Sunday. She had chosen
+that day for her receptions, after observing that no people of fashion
+went to the play, and that the day was pretty generally an open one.
+The emancipation of the shopkeeping and middle classes makes Sunday
+almost as tiresome in Paris as it is deadly in London. So the Baroness
+invited the famous Desplein to dinner, to consult him in spite of the
+sick man, for Nucingen persisted in asserting that he was perfectly
+well.
+
+Keller, Rastignac, de Marsay, du Tillet, all their friends had made
+the Baroness understand that a man like Nucingen could not be allowed
+to die without any notice being taken of it; his enormous business
+transactions demanded some care; it was absolutely necessary to know
+where he stood. These gentlemen also were asked to dinner, and the
+Comte de Gondreville, Francois Keller's father-in-law, the Chevalier
+d'Espard, des Lupeaulx, Doctor Bianchon--Desplein's best beloved pupil
+--Beaudenord and his wife, the Comte and Comtesse de Montcornet,
+Blondet, Mademoiselle des Touches and Conti, and finally, Lucien de
+Rubempre, for whom Rastignac had for the last five years manifested
+the warmest regard--by order, as the advertisements have it.
+
+"We shall not find it easy to get rid of that young fellow," said
+Blondet to Rastignac, when he saw Lucien come in handsomer than ever,
+and uncommonly well dressed.
+
+"It is wiser to make friends with him, for he is formidable," said
+Rastignac.
+
+"He?" said de Marsay. "No one is formidable to my knowledge but men
+whose position is assured, and his is unattacked rather than
+attackable! Look here, what does he live on? Where does his money come
+from? He has, I am certain, sixty thousand francs in debts."
+
+"He has found a friend in a very rich Spanish priest who has taken a
+fancy to him," replied Rastignac.
+
+"He is going to be married to the eldest Mademoiselle de Grandlieu,"
+said Mademoiselle des Touches.
+
+"Yes," said the Chevalier d'Espard, "but they require him to buy an
+estate worth thirty thousand francs a year as security for the fortune
+he is to settle on the young lady, and for that he needs a million
+francs, which are not to be found in any Spaniard's shoes."
+
+"That is dear, for Clotilde is very ugly," said the Baroness.
+
+Madame de Nucingen affected to call Mademoiselle de Grandlieu by her
+Christian name, as though she, nee Goriot, frequented that society.
+
+"No," replied du Tillet, "the daughter of a duchess is never ugly to
+the like of us, especially when she brings with her the title of
+Marquis and a diplomatic appointment. But the great obstacle to the
+marriage is Madame de Serizy's insane passion for Lucien. She must
+give him a great deal of money."
+
+"Then I am not surprised at seeing Lucien so serious; for Madame de
+Serizy will certainly not give him a million francs to help him to
+marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. He probably sees no way out of the
+scrape," said de Marsay.
+
+"But Mademoiselle de Grandlieu worships him," said the Comtesse de
+Montcornet; "and with the young person's assistance, he may perhaps
+make better terms."
+
+"And what will he do with his sister and brother-in-law at Angouleme?"
+asked the Chevalier d'Espard.
+
+"Well, his sister is rich," replied Rastignac, "and he now speaks of
+her as Madame Sechard de Marsac."
+
+"Whatever difficulties there may be, he is a very good-looking
+fellow," said Bianchon, rising to greet Lucien.
+
+"How 'do, my dear fellow?" said Rastignac, shaking hands warmly with
+Lucien.
+
+De Marsay bowed coldly after Lucien had first bowed to him.
+
+Before dinner Desplein and Bianchon, who studied the Baron while
+amusing him, convinced themselves that this malady was entirely
+nervous; but neither could guess the cause, so impossible did it seem
+that the great politician of the money market could be in love. When
+Bianchon, seeing nothing but love to account for the banker's
+condition, hinted as much to Delphine de Nucingen, she smiled as a
+woman who has long known all her husband's weaknesses. After dinner,
+however, when they all adjourned to the garden, the more intimate of
+the party gathered round the banker, eager to clear up this
+extraordinary case when they heard Bianchon pronounce that Nucingen
+must be in love.
+
+"Do you know, Baron," said de Marsay, "that you have grown very thin?
+You are suspected of violating the laws of financial Nature."
+
+"Ach, nefer!" said the Baron.
+
+"Yes, yes," replied de Marsay. "They dare to say that you are in
+love."
+
+"Dat is true," replied Nucingen piteously; "I am in lof for somebody I
+do not know."
+
+"You, in love, you? You are a coxcomb!" said the Chevalier d'Espard.
+
+"In lof, at my aje! I know dat is too ridiculous. But vat can I help
+it! Dat is so."
+
+"A woman of the world?" asked Lucien.
+
+"Nay," said de Marsay. "The Baron would not grow so thin but for a
+hopeless love, and he has money enough to buy all the women who will
+or can sell themselves!"
+
+"I do not know who she it," said the Baron. "And as Motame de Nucingen
+is inside de trawing-room, I may say so, dat till now I have nefer
+known what it is to lof. Lof! I tink it is to grow tin."
+
+"And where did you meet this innocent daisy?" asked Rastignac.
+
+"In a carriage, at mitnight, in de forest of Fincennes."
+
+"Describe her," said de Marsay.
+
+"A vhite gaze hat, a rose gown, a vhite scharf, a vhite feil--a face
+just out of de Biple. Eyes like Feuer, an Eastern color----"
+
+"You were dreaming," said Lucien, with a smile.
+
+"Dat is true; I vas shleeping like a pig--a pig mit his shkin full,"
+he added, "for I vas on my vay home from tinner at mine friend's----"
+
+"Was she alone?" said du Tillet, interrupting him.
+
+"Ja," said the Baron dolefully; "but she had ein heiduque behind dat
+carriage and a maid-shervant----"
+
+"Lucien looks as if he knew her," exclaimed Rastignac, seeing Esther's
+lover smile.
+
+"Who doesn't know the woman who would go out at midnight to meet
+Nucingen?" said Lucien, turning on his heel.
+
+"Well, she is not a woman who is seen in society, or the Baron would
+have recognized the man," said the Chevalier d'Espard.
+
+"I have nefer seen him," replied the Baron. "And for forty days now I
+have had her seeked for by de Police, and dey do not find her."
+
+"It is better that she should cost you a few hundred francs than cost
+you your life," said Desplein; "and, at your age, a passion without
+hope is dangerous, you might die of it."
+
+"Ja, ja," replied the Baron, addressing Desplein. "And vat I eat does
+me no goot, de air I breade feels to choke me. I go to de forest of
+Fincennes to see de place vat I see her--and dat is all my life. I
+could not tink of de last loan--I trust to my partners vat haf pity on
+me. I could pay one million franc to see dat voman--and I should gain
+by dat, for I do nothing on de Bourse.--Ask du Tillet."
+
+"Very true," replied du Tillet; "he hates business; he is quite unlike
+himself; it is a sign of death."
+
+"A sign of lof," replied Nucingen; "and for me, dat is all de same
+ting."
+
+The simple candor of the old man, no longer the stock-jobber, who, for
+the first time in his life, saw that something was more sacred and
+more precious than gold, really moved these world-hardened men; some
+exchanged smiles; other looked at Nucingen with an expression that
+plainly said, "Such a man to have come to this!"--And then they all
+returned to the drawing-room, talking over the event.
+
+For it was indeed an event calculated to produce the greatest
+sensation. Madame de Nucingen went into fits of laughter when Lucien
+betrayed her husband's secret; but the Baron, when he heard his wife's
+sarcasms, took her by the arm and led her into the recess of a window.
+
+"Motame," said he in an undertone, "have I ever laughed at all at your
+passions, that you should laugh at mine? A goot frau should help her
+husband out of his difficulty vidout making game of him like vat you
+do."
+
+From the description given by the old banker, Lucien had recognized
+his Esther. Much annoyed that his smile should have been observed, he
+took advantage of a moment when coffee was served, and the
+conversation became general, to vanish from the scene.
+
+"What has become of Monsieur de Rubempre?" said the Baroness.
+
+"He is faithful to his motto: Quid me continebit?" said Rastignac.
+
+"Which means, 'Who can detain me?' or 'I am unconquerable,' as you
+choose," added de Marsay.
+
+"Just as Monsieur le Baron was speaking of his unknown lady, Lucien
+smiled in a way that makes me fancy he may know her," said Horace
+Bianchon, not thinking how dangerous such a natural remark might be.
+
+"Goot!" said the banker to himself.
+
+Like all incurables, the Baron clutched at everything that seemed at
+all hopeful; he promised himself that he would have Lucien watched by
+some one besides Louchard and his men--Louchard, the sharpest
+commercial detective in Paris--to whom he had applied about a
+fortnight since.
+
+Before going home to Esther, Lucien was due at the Hotel Grandlieu,
+to spend the two hours which made Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique de
+Grandlieu the happiest girl in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But the
+prudence characteristic of this ambitious youth warned him to inform
+Carlos Herrera forthwith of the effect resulting from the smile wrung
+from him by the Baron's description of Esther. The banker's passion
+for Esther, and the idea that had occurred to him of setting the
+police to seek the unknown beauty, were indeed events of sufficient
+importance to be at once communicated to the man who had sought, under
+a priest's robe, the shelter which criminals of old could find in a
+church. And Lucien's road from the Rue Saint-Lazare, where Nucingen at
+that time lived, to the Rue Saint-Dominique, where was the Hotel
+Grandlieu, led him past his lodgings on the Quai Malaquais.
+
+Lucien found his formidable friend smoking his breviary--that is to
+say, coloring a short pipe before retiring to bed. The man, strange
+rather than foreign, had given up Spanish cigarettes, finding them too
+mild.
+
+"Matters look serious," said the Spaniard, when Lucien had told him
+all. "The Baron, who employs Louchard to hunt up the girl, will
+certainly be sharp enough to set a spy at your heels, and everything
+will come out. To-night and to-morrow morning will not give me more
+than enough time to pack the cards for the game I must play against
+the Baron; first and foremost, I must prove to him that the police
+cannot help him. When our lynx has given up all hope of finding his
+ewe-lamb, I will undertake to sell her for all she is worth to
+him----"
+
+"Sell Esther!" cried Lucien, whose first impulse was always the right
+one.
+
+"Do you forget where we stand?" cried Carlos Herrera.
+
+"No money left," the Spaniard went on, "and sixty thousand francs of
+debts to be paid! If you want to marry Clotilde de Grandlieu, you must
+invest a million of francs in land as security for that ugly
+creature's settlement. Well, then, Esther is the quarry I mean to set
+before that lynx to help us to ease him of that million. That is my
+concern."
+
+"Esther will never----"
+
+"That is my concern."
+
+"She will die of it."
+
+"That is the undertaker's concern. Besides, what then?" cried the
+savage, checking Lucien's lamentations merely by his attitude. "How
+many generals died in the prime of life for the Emperor Napoleon?" he
+asked, after a short silence. "There are always plenty of women. In
+1821 Coralie was unique in your eyes; and yet you found Esther. After
+her will come--do you know who?--the unknown fair. And she of all
+women is the fairest, and you will find her in the capital where the
+Duc de Grandlieu's son-in-law will be Minister and representative of
+the King of France.--And do you tell me now, great Baby, that Esther
+will die of it? Again, can Mademoiselle de Grandlieu's husband keep
+Esther?
+
+"You have only to leave everything to me; you need not take the
+trouble to think at all; that is my concern. Only you must do without
+Esther for a week or two; but go to the Rue Taitbout, all the same.
+--Come, be off to bill and coo on your plank of salvation, and play
+your part well; slip the flaming note you wrote this morning into
+Clotilde's hand, and bring me back a warm response. She will
+recompense herself for many woes in writing. I take to that girl.
+
+"You will find Esther a little depressed, but tell her to obey. We
+must display our livery of virtue, our doublet of honesty, the screen
+behind which all great men hide their infamy.--I must show off my
+handsomer self--you must never be suspected. Chance has served us
+better than my brain, which has been beating about in a void for these
+two months past."
+
+All the while he was jerking out these dreadful sentences, one by one,
+like pistol shots, Carlos Herrera was dressing himself to go out.
+
+"You are evidently delighted," cried Lucien. "You never liked poor
+Esther, and you look forward with joy to the moment when you will be
+rid of her."
+
+"You have never tired of loving her, have you? Well, I have never
+tired of detesting her. But have I not always behaved as though I were
+sincerely attached to the hussy--I, who, through Asie, hold her life
+in my hands? A few bad mushrooms in a stew--and there an end. But
+Mademoiselle Esther still lives!--and is happy!--And do you know why?
+Because you love her. Do not be a fool. For four years we have been
+waiting for a chance to turn up, for us or against us; well, it will
+take something more than mere cleverness to wash the cabbage luck has
+flung at us now. There are good and bad together in this turn of the
+wheel--as there are in everything. Do you know what I was thinking of
+when you came in?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Of making myself heir here, as I did at Barcelona, to an old bigot,
+by Asie's help."
+
+"A crime?"
+
+"I saw no other way of securing your fortune. The creditors are making
+a stir. If once the bailiffs were at your heels, and you were turned
+out of the Hotel Grandlieu, where would you be? There would be the
+devil to pay then."
+
+And Carlos Herrera, by a pantomimic gesture, showed the suicide of a
+man throwing himself into the water; then he fixed on Lucien one of
+those steady, piercing looks by which the will of a strong man is
+injected, so to speak, into a weak one. This fascinating glare, which
+relaxed all Lucien's fibres of resistance, revealed the existence not
+merely of secrets of life and death between him and his adviser, but
+also of feelings as far above ordinary feeling as the man himself was
+above his vile position.
+
+Carlos Herrera, a man at once ignoble and magnanimous, obscure and
+famous, compelled to live out of the world from which the law had
+banned him, exhausted by vice and by frenzied and terrible struggles,
+though endowed with powers of mind that ate into his soul, consumed
+especially by a fever of vitality, now lived again in the elegant
+person of Lucien de Rubempre, whose soul had become his own. He was
+represented in social life by the poet, to whom he lent his tenacity
+and iron will. To him Lucien was more than a son, more than a woman
+beloved, more than a family, more than his life; he was his revenge;
+and as souls cling more closely to a feeling than to existence, he had
+bound the young man to him by insoluble ties.
+
+After rescuing Lucien's life at the moment when the poet in
+desperation was on the verge of suicide, he had proposed to him one of
+those infernal bargains which are heard of only in romances, but of
+which the hideous possibility has often been proved in courts of
+justice by celebrated criminal dramas. While lavishing on Lucien all
+the delights of Paris life, and proving to him that he yet had a great
+future before him, he had made him his chattel.
+
+But, indeed, no sacrifice was too great for this strange man when it
+was to gratify his second self. With all his strength, he was so weak
+to this creature of his making that he had even told him all his
+secrets. Perhaps this abstract complicity was a bond the more between
+them.
+
+Since the day when La Torpille had been snatched away, Lucien had
+known on what a vile foundation his good fortune rested. That priest's
+robe covered Jacques Collin, a man famous on the hulks, who ten years
+since had lived under the homely name of Vautrin in the Maison
+Vauquer, where Rastignac and Bianchon were at that time boarders.
+
+Jacques Collin, known as _Trompe-la-Mort_, had escaped from Rochefort
+almost as soon as he was recaptured, profiting by the example of the
+famous Comte de Sainte-Helene, while modifying all that was ill
+planned in Coignard's daring scheme. To take the place of an honest
+man and carry on the convict's career is a proposition of which the
+two terms are too contradictory for a disastrous outcome not to be
+inevitable, especially in Paris; for, by establishing himself in a
+family, a convict multiplies tenfold the perils of such a
+substitution. And to be safe from all investigation, must not a man
+assume a position far above the ordinary interests of life. A man of
+the world is subject to risks such as rarely trouble those who have no
+contact with the world; hence the priest's gown is the safest disguise
+when it can be authenticated by an exemplary life in solitude and
+inactivity.
+
+"So a priest I will be," said the legally dead man, who was quite
+determined to resuscitate as a figure in the world, and to satisfy
+passions as strange as himself.
+
+The civil war caused by the Constitution of 1812 in Spain, whither
+this energetic man had betaken himself, enabled him to murder secretly
+the real Carlos Herrera from an ambush. This ecclesiastic, the bastard
+son of a grandee, long since deserted by his father, and not knowing
+to what woman he owed his birth, was intrusted by King Ferdinand VII.,
+to whom a bishop had recommended him, with a political mission to
+France. The bishop, the only man who took any interest in Carlos
+Herrera, died while this foundling son of the Church was on his
+journey from Cadiz to Madrid, and from Madrid to France. Delighted to
+have met with this longed-for opportunity, and under the most
+desirable conditions, Jacques Collin scored his back to efface the
+fatal letters, and altered his complexion by the use of chemicals.
+Thus metamorphosing himself face to face with the corpse, he contrived
+to achieve some likeness to his Sosia. And to complete a change almost
+as marvelous as that related in the Arabian tale, where a dervish has
+acquired the power, old as he is, of entering into a young body, by a
+magic spell, the convict, who spoke Spanish, learned as much Latin as
+an Andalusian priest need know.
+
+As banker to three hulks, Collin was rich in the cash intrusted to his
+known, and indeed enforced, honesty. Among such company a mistake is
+paid for by a dagger thrust. To this capital he now added the money
+given by the bishop to Don Carlos Herrera. Then, before leaving Spain,
+he was able to possess himself of the treasure of an old bigot at
+Barcelona, to whom he gave absolution, promising that he would make
+restitution of the money constituting her fortune, which his penitent
+had stolen by means of murder.
+
+Jacques Collin, now a priest, and charged with a secret mission which
+would secure him the most brilliant introductions in Paris, determined
+to do nothing that might compromise the character he had assumed, and
+had given himself up to the chances of his new life, when he met
+Lucien on the road between Angouleme and Paris. In this youth the sham
+priest saw a wonderful instrument for power; he saved him from suicide
+saying:
+
+"Give yourself over to me as to a man of God, as men give themselves
+over to the devil, and you will have every chance of a new career. You
+will live as in a dream, and the worst awakening that can come to you
+will be death, which you now wish to meet."
+
+The alliance between these two beings, who were to become one, as it
+were, was based on this substantial reasoning, and Carlos Herrera
+cemented it by an ingeniously plotted complicity. He had the very
+genius of corruption, and undermined Lucien's honesty by plunging him
+into cruel necessity, and extricating him by obtaining his tacit
+consent to bad or disgraceful actions, which nevertheless left him
+pure, loyal, and noble in the eyes of the world. Lucien was the social
+magnificence under whose shadow the forger meant to live.
+
+"I am the author, you are the play; if you fail, it is I who shall be
+hissed," said he on the day when he confessed his sacrilegious
+disguise.
+
+Carlos prudently confessed only a little at a time, measuring the
+horrors of his revelations by Lucien's progress and needs. Thus
+_Trompe-la-Mort_ did not let out his last secret till the habit of
+Parisian pleasures and success, and gratified vanity, had enslaved the
+weak-minded poet body and soul. Where Rastignac, when tempted by this
+demon, had stood firm, Lucien, better managed, and more ingeniously
+compromised, succumbed, conquered especially by his satisfaction in
+having attained an eminent position. Incarnate evil, whose poetical
+embodiment is called the Devil, displayed every delightful seduction
+before this youth, who was half a woman, and at first gave much and
+asked for little. The great argument used by Carlos was the eternal
+secret promised by Tartufe to Elmire.
+
+The repeated proofs of absolute devotion, such as that of Said to
+Mahomet, put the finishing touch to the horrible achievement of
+Lucien's subjugation by a Jacques Collin.
+
+At this moment not only had Esther and Lucien devoured all the funds
+intrusted to the honesty of the banker of the hulks, who, for their
+sakes, had rendered himself liable to a dreadful calling to account,
+but the dandy, the forger, and the courtesan were also in debt. Thus,
+as the very moment of Lucien's expected success, the smallest pebble
+under the foot of either of these three persons might involve the ruin
+of the fantastic structure of fortune so audaciously built up.
+
+At the opera ball Rastignac had recognized the man he had known as
+Vautrin at Madame Vauquer's; but he knew that if he did not hold his
+tongue, he was a dead man. So Madame de Nucingen's lover and Lucien
+had exchanged glances in which fear lurked, on both sides, under an
+expression of amity. In the moment of danger, Rastignac, it is clear,
+would have been delighted to provide the vehicle that should convey
+Jacques Collin to the scaffold. From all this it may be understood
+that Carlos heard of the Baron's passion with a glow of sombre
+satisfaction, while he perceived in a single flash all the advantage a
+man of his temper might derive by means of a hapless Esther.
+
+"Go on," said he to Lucien. "The Devil is mindful of his chaplain."
+
+"You are smoking on a powder barrel."
+
+"Incedo per ignes," replied Carlos with a smile. "That is my trade."
+
+
+
+The House of Grandlieu divided into two branches about the middle of
+the last century: first, the ducal line destined to lapse, since the
+present duke has only daughters; and then the Vicomtes de Grandlieu,
+who will now inherit the title and armorial bearings of the elder
+branch. The ducal house bears gules, three broad axes or in fess, with
+the famous motto: Caveo non timeo, which epitomizes the history of the
+family.
+
+The coat of the Vicomtes de Grandlieu is the same quartered with that
+of Navarreins: gules, a fess crenelated or, surmounted by a knight's
+helmet, with the motto: Grands faits, grand lieu. The present
+Viscountess, widowed in 1813, has a son and a daughter. Though she
+returned from the Emigration almost ruined, she recovered a
+considerable fortune by the zealous aid of Derville the lawyer.
+
+The Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu, on coming home in 1804, were the
+object of the Emperor's advances; indeed, Napoleon, seeing them come
+to his court, restored to them all of the Grandlieu estates that had
+been confiscated to the nation, to the amount of about forty thousand
+francs a year. Of all the great nobles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain
+who allowed themselves to be won over by Napoleon, this Duke and
+Duchess--she was an Ajuda of the senior branch, and connected with the
+Braganzas--were the only family who afterwards never disowned him and
+his liberality. When the Faubourg Saint-Germain remembered this as a
+crime against the Grandlieus, Louis XVIII. respected them for it; but
+perhaps his only object was to annoy _Monsieur_.
+
+A marriage was considered likely between the young Vicomte de
+Grandlieu and Marie-Athenais, the Duke's youngest daughter, now nine
+years old. Sabine, the youngest but one, married the Baron du Guenic
+after the revolution of July 1830; Josephine, the third, became Madame
+d'Ajuda-Pinto after the death of the Marquis' first wife, Mademoiselle
+de Rochefide, or Rochegude. The eldest had taken the veil in 1822.
+The second, Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique, at this time
+seven-and-twenty years of age, was deeply in love with Lucien de
+Rubempre. It need not be asked whether the Duc de Grandlieu's mansion,
+one of the finest in the Rue Saint-Dominique, did not exert a thousand
+spells over Lucien's imagination. Every time the heavy gate turned on
+its hinges to admit his cab, he experienced the gratified vanity to
+which Mirabeau confessed.
+
+"Though my father was a mere druggist at l'Houmeau, I may enter here!"
+This was his thought.
+
+And, indeed, he would have committed far worse crimes than allying
+himself with a forger to preserve his right to mount the steps of that
+entrance, to hear himself announced, "Monsieur de Rubempre" at the
+door of the fine Louis XIV. drawing-room, decorated in the time of the
+grand monarque on the pattern of those at Versailles, where that
+choicest circle met, that cream of Paris society, called then le petit
+chateau.
+
+The noble Portuguese lady, one of those who never care to go out of
+their own home, was usually the centre of her neighbors' attentions
+--the Chaulieus, the Navarreins, the Lenoncourts. The pretty Baronne
+de Macumer--nee de Chaulieu--the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Madame
+d'Espard, Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches--a connection
+of the Grandlieus, who are a Breton family--were frequent visitors on
+their way to a ball or on their return from the opera. The Vicomte de
+Grandlieu, the Duc de Rhetore, the Marquis de Chaulieu--afterwards Duc
+de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu--his wife, Madeleine de Mortsauf, the Duc de
+Lenoncourt's grand-daughter, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, the Prince de
+Blamont-Chauvry, the Marquis de Beauseant, the Vidame de Pamiers, the
+Vandenesses, the old Prince de Cadignan, and his son the Duc de
+Maufrigneuse, were constantly to be seen in this stately drawing-room,
+where they breathed the atmosphere of a Court, where manners, tone,
+and wit were in harmony with the dignity of the Master and Mistress
+whose aristocratic mien and magnificence had obliterated the memory of
+their servility to Napoleon.
+
+The old Duchesse d'Uxelles, mother of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
+was the oracle of this circle, to which Madame de Serizy had never
+gained admittance, though nee de Ronquerolles.
+
+Lucien was brought thither by Madame de Maufrigneuse, who had won over
+her mother to speak in his favor, for she had doted on him for two
+years; and the engaging young poet had kept his footing there, thanks
+to the influence of the high Almoner of France, and the support of the
+Archbishop of Paris. Still, he had not been admitted till he had
+obtained the patent restoring to him the name and arms of the Rubempre
+family. The Duc de Rhetore, the Chevalier d'Espard, and some others,
+jealous of Lucien, periodically stirred up the Duc de Grandlieu's
+prejudices against him by retailing anecdotes of the young man's
+previous career; but the Duchess, a devout Catholic surrounded by the
+great prelates of the Church, and her daughter Clotilde would not give
+him up.
+
+Lucien accounted for these hostilities by his connection with Madame
+de Bargeton, Madame d'Espard's cousin, and now Comtesse du Chatelet.
+Then, feeling the importance of allying himself to so powerful a
+family, and urged by his privy adviser to win Clotilde, Lucien found
+the courage of the parvenu; he came to the house five days in the
+week, he swallowed all the affronts of the envious, he endured
+impertinent looks, and answered irony with wit. His persistency, the
+charm of his manners, and his amiability, at last neutralized
+opposition and reduced obstacles. He was still in the highest favor
+with Madame de Maufrigneuse, whose ardent letters, written under the
+influence of her passion, were preserved by Carlos Herrera; he was
+idolized by Madame de Serizy, and stood well in Mademoiselle des
+Touches' good graces; and well content with being received in these
+houses, Lucien was instructed by the Abbe to be as reserved as
+possible in all other quarters.
+
+"You cannot devote yourself to several houses at once," said his
+Mentor. "The man who goes everywhere finds no one to take a lively
+interest in him. Great folks only patronize those who emulate their
+furniture, whom they see every day, and who have the art of becoming
+as necessary to them as the seat they sit on."
+
+Thus Lucien, accustomed to regard the Grandlieus' drawing-room as his
+arena, reserved his wit, his jests, his news, and his courtier's
+graces for the hours he spent there every evening. Insinuating,
+tactful, and warned by Clotilde of the shoals he should avoid, he
+flattered Monsieur de Grandlieu's little weaknesses. Clotilde, having
+begun by envying Madame de Maufrigneuse her happiness, ended by
+falling desperately in love with Lucien.
+
+Perceiving all the advantages of such a connection, Lucien played his
+lover's part as well as it could have been acted by Armand, the latest
+_jeune premier_ at the _Comedie Francaise_.
+
+He wrote to Clotilde, letters which were certainly masterpieces of
+literary workmanship; and Clotilde replied, vying with him in genius
+in the expression of perfervid love on paper, for she had no other
+outlet. Lucien went to church at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin every Sunday,
+giving himself out as a devout Catholic, and he poured forth
+monarchical and pious harangues which were a marvel to all. He also
+wrote some exceedingly remarkable articles in papers devoted to the
+"Congregation," refusing to be paid for them, and signing them only
+with an "L." He produced political pamphlets when required by King
+Charles X. or the High Almoner, and for these he would take no
+payment.
+
+"The King," he would say, "has done so much for me, that I owe him my
+blood."
+
+For some days past there had been an idea of attaching Lucien to the
+prime minister's cabinet as his private secretary; but Madame d'Espard
+brought so many persons into the field in opposition to Lucien, that
+Charles X.'s _Maitre Jacques_ hesitated to clinch the matter. Nor was
+Lucien's position by any means clear; not only did the question, "What
+does he live on?" on everybody's lips as the young man rose in life,
+require an answer, but even benevolent curiosity--as much as
+malevolent curiosity--went on from one inquiry to another, and found
+more than one joint in the ambitious youth's harness.
+
+Clotilde de Grandlieu unconsciously served as a spy for her father and
+mother. A few days since she had led Lucien into a recess and told him
+of the difficulties raised by her family.
+
+"Invest a million francs in land, and my hand is yours: that is my
+mother's ultimatum," Clotilde had explained.
+
+"And presently they will ask you where you got the money," said
+Carlos, when Lucien reported this last word in the bargain.
+
+"My brother-in-law will have made his fortune," remarked Lucien; "we
+can make him the responsible backer."
+
+"Then only the million is needed," said Carlos. "I will think it
+over."
+
+To be exact as to Lucien's position in the Hotel Grandlieu, he had
+never dined there. Neither Clotilde, nor the Duchesse d'Uxelles, nor
+Madame de Maufrigneuse, who was always extremely kind to Lucien, could
+ever obtain this favor from the Duke, so persistently suspicious was
+the old nobleman of the man that he designated as "le Sire de
+Rubempre." This shade of distinction, understood by every one who
+visited at the house, constantly wounded Lucien's self-respect, for he
+felt that he was no more than tolerated. But the world is justified in
+being suspicious; it is so often taken in!
+
+To cut a figure in Paris with no known source of wealth and no
+recognized employment is a position which can by no artifice be long
+maintained. So Lucien, as he crept up in the world, gave more and more
+weight to the question, "What does he live on?" He had been obliged
+indeed to confess to Madame de Serizy, to whom he owed the patronage
+of Monsieur Granville, the Public Prosecutor, and of the Comte Octave
+de Bauvan, a Minister of State, and President of one of the Supreme
+Courts: "I am dreadfully in debt."
+
+As he entered the courtyard of the mansion where he found an excuse
+for all his vanities, he was saying to himself as he reflected on
+_Trompe-la-Mort's_ scheming:
+
+"I can hear the ground cracking under my feet!"
+
+He loved Esther, and he wanted to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu! A
+strange dilemma! One must be sold to buy the other.
+
+Only one person could effect this bargain without damage to Lucien's
+honor, and that was the supposed Spaniard. Were they not bound to be
+equally secret, each for the other? Such a compact, in which each is
+in turn master and slave, is not to be found twice in any one life.
+
+Lucien drove away the clouds that darkened his brow, and walked into
+the Grandlieu drawing-room gay and beaming. At this moment the windows
+were open, the fragrance from the garden scented the room, the flower-
+basket in the centre displayed its pyramid of flowers. The Duchess,
+seated on a sofa in the corner, was talking to the Duchesse de
+Chaulieu. Several women together formed a group remarkable for their
+various attitudes, stamped with the different expression which each
+strove to give to an affected sorrow. In the fashionable world nobody
+takes any interest in grief or suffering; everything is talk. The men
+were walking up and down the room or in the garden. Clotilde and
+Josephine were busy at the tea-table. The Vidame de Pamiers, the Duc
+de Grandlieu, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse
+were playing Wisk, as they called it, in a corner of the room.
+
+When Lucien was announced he walked across the room to make his bow to
+the Duchess, asking the cause of the grief he could read in her face.
+
+"Madame de Chaulieu has just had dreadful news; her son-in-law, the
+Baron de Macumer, ex-duke of Soria, is just dead. The young Duc de
+Soria and his wife, who had gone to Chantepleurs to nurse their
+brother, have written this sad intelligence. Louise is heart-broken."
+
+"A women is not loved twice in her life as Louise was loved by her
+husband," said Madeleine de Mortsauf.
+
+"She will be a rich widow," observed the old Duchesse d'Uxelles,
+looking at Lucien, whose face showed no change of expression.
+
+"Poor Louise!" said Madame d'Espard. "I understand her and pity her."
+
+The Marquise d'Espard put on the pensive look of a woman full of soul
+and feeling. Sabine de Grandlieu, who was but ten years old, raised
+knowing eyes to her mother's face, but the satirical glance was
+repressed by a glance from the Duchess. This is bringing children up
+properly.
+
+"If my daughter lives through the shock," said Madame de Chaulieu,
+with a very maternal manner, "I shall be anxious about her future
+life. Louise is so very romantic."
+
+"It is so difficult nowadays," said a venerable Cardinal, "to
+reconcile feeling with the proprieties."
+
+Lucien, who had not a word to say, went to the tea-table to do what
+was polite to the demoiselles de Grandlieu. When the poet had gone a
+few yards away, the Marquise d'Espard leaned over to whisper in the
+Duchess' ear:
+
+"And do you really think that that young fellow is so much in love
+with your Clotilde?"
+
+The perfidy of this question cannot be fully understood but with the
+help of a sketch of Clotilde. That young lady was, at this moment,
+standing up. Her attitude allowed the Marquise d'Espard's mocking eye
+to take in Clotilde's lean, narrow figure, exactly like an asparagus
+stalk; the poor girl's bust was so flat that it did not allow of the
+artifice known to dressmakers as _fichus menteurs_, or padded
+habitshirts. And Clotilde, who knew that her name was a sufficient
+advantage in life, far from trying to conceal this defect, heroically
+made a display of it. By wearing plain, tight dresses she achieved the
+effect of that stiff prim shape which medieval sculptors succeeded in
+giving to the statuettes whose profiles are conspicuous against the
+background of the niches in which they stand in cathedrals.
+
+Clotilde was more than five feet four in height; if we may be allowed
+to use a familiar phrase, which has the merit at any rate of being
+perfectly intelligible--she was all legs. These defective proportions
+gave her figure an almost deformed appearance. With a dark complexion,
+harsh black hair, very thick eyebrows, fiery eyes, set in sockets that
+were already deeply discolored, a side face shaped like the moon in
+its first quarter, and a prominent brow, she was the caricature of her
+mother, one of the handsomest women in Portugal. Nature amuses herself
+with such tricks. Often we see in one family a sister of wonderful
+beauty, whose features in her brother are absolutely hideous, though
+the two are amazingly alike. Clotilde's lips, excessively thin and
+sunken, wore a permanent expression of disdain. And yet her mouth,
+better than any other feature of her face, revealed every secret
+impulse of her heart, for affection lent it a sweet expression, which
+was all the more remarkable because her cheeks were too sallow for
+blushes, and her hard, black eyes never told anything. Notwithstanding
+these defects, notwithstanding her board-like carriage, she had by
+birth and education a grand air, a proud demeanor, in short,
+everything that has been well named le je ne sais quoi, due partly,
+perhaps, to her uncompromising simplicity of dress, which stamped her
+as a woman of noble blood. She dressed her hair to advantage, and it
+might be accounted to her for a beauty, for it grew vigorously, thick
+and long.
+
+She had cultivated her voice, and it could cast a spell; she sang
+exquisitely. Clotilde was just the woman of whom one says, "She has
+fine eyes," or, "She has a delightful temper." If any one addressed
+her in the English fashion as "Your Grace," she would say, "You mean
+'Your leanness.'"
+
+"Why should not my poor Clotilde have a lover?" replied the Duchess to
+the Marquise. "Do you know what she said to me yesterday? 'If I am
+loved for ambition's sake, I undertake to make him love me for my own
+sake.'--She is clever and ambitious, and there are men who like those
+two qualities. As for him--my dear, he is as handsome as a vision; and
+if he can but repurchase the Rubempre estates, out of regard for us
+the King will reinstate him in the title of Marquis.--After all, his
+mother was the last of the Rubempres."
+
+"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 would 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."
+
+Visitors called to see Nucingen on business; but he waited for
+Contenson, he was dreaming of Esther, telling himself that before long
+he would see again the woman who had aroused in him such unhoped-for
+emotions, and he sent everybody away with vague replies and
+double-edged promises. Contenson was to him the most important person
+in Paris, and he looked out into the garden every minute. Finally,
+after giving orders that no one else was to be admitted, he had his
+breakfast served in the summer-house at one corner of the garden. In
+the banker's office the conduct and hesitancy of the most knowing, the
+most clearsighted, the shrewdest of Paris financiers seemed
+inexplicable.
+
+"What ails the chief?" said a stockbroker to one of the head-clerks.
+
+"No one knows; they are anxious about his health, it would seem.
+Yesterday, Madame la Baronne got Desplein and Bianchon to meet."
+
+One day, when Sir Isaac Newton was engaged in physicking one of his
+dogs, named "Beauty" (who, as is well known, destroyed a vast amount
+of work, and whom he reproved only in these words, "Ah! Beauty, you
+little know the mischief you have done!"), some strangers called to
+see him; but they at once retired, respecting the great man's
+occupation. In every more or less lofty life, there is a little dog
+"Beauty." When the Marechal de Richelieu came to pay his respects to
+Louis XV. after taking Mahon, one of the greatest feats of arms of the
+eighteenth century, the King said to him, "Have you heard the great
+news? Poor Lansmatt is dead."--Lansmatt was a gatekeeper in the secret
+of the King's intrigues.
+
+The bankers of Paris never knew how much they owed to Contenson. That
+spy was the cause of Nucingen's allowing an immense loan to be issued
+in which his share was allotted to him, and which he gave over to
+them. The stock-jobber could aim at a fortune any day with the
+artillery of speculation, but the man was a slave to the hope of
+happiness.
+
+The great banker drank some tea, and was nibbling at a slice of bread
+and butter, as a man does whose teeth have for long been sharpened by
+appetite, when he heard a carriage stop at the little garden gate. In
+a few minutes his secretary brought in Contenson, whom he had run to
+earth in a cafe not far from Sainte-Pelagie, where the man was
+breakfasting on the strength of a bribe given to him by an imprisoned
+debtor for certain allowances that must be paid for.
+
+Contenson, you must know, was a whole poem--a Paris poem. Merely to
+see him would have been enough to tell you that Beaumarchais' _Figaro_,
+Moliere's _Mascarille_, Marivaux's _Frontin_, and Dancourt's _Lafleur_
+--those great representatives of audacious swindling, of cunning
+driven to bay, of stratagem rising again from the ends of its broken
+wires--were all quite second-rate by comparison with this giant of
+cleverness and meanness. When in Paris you find a real type, he is no
+longer a man, he is a spectacle; no longer a factor in life, but a
+whole life, many lives.
+
+Bake a plaster cast four times in a furnace, and you get a sort of
+bastard imitation of Florentine bronze. Well, the thunderbolts of
+numberless disasters, the pressure of terrible necessities, had
+bronzed Contenson's head, as though sweating in an oven had three
+times over stained his skin. Closely-set wrinkles that could no longer
+be relaxed made eternal furrows, whiter in their cracks. The yellow
+face was all wrinkles. The bald skull, resembling Voltaire's, was as
+parched as a death's-head, and but for a few hairs at the back it
+would have seemed doubtful whether it was that of a living man. Under
+a rigid brow, a pair of Chinese eyes, like those of an image under a
+glass shade in a tea-shop--artificial eyes, which sham life but never
+vary--moved but expressed nothing. The nose, as flat as that of a
+skull, sniffed at fate; and the mouth, as thin-lipped as a miser's,
+was always open, but as expressionless as the grin of a letterbox.
+
+Contenson, as apathetic as a savage, with sunburned hands, affected
+that Diogenes-like indifference which can never bend to any formality
+of respect.
+
+And what a commentary on his life was written on his dress for any one
+who can decipher a dress! Above all, what trousers! made, by long
+wear, as black and shiny as the camlet of which lawyers' gowns are
+made! A waistcoat, bought in an old clothes shop in the Temple, with a
+deep embroidered collar! A rusty black coat!--and everything well
+brushed, clean after a fashion, and graced by a watch and an imitation
+gold chain. Contenson allowed a triangle of shirt to show, with pleats
+in which glittered a sham diamond pin; his black velvet stock set
+stiff like a gorget, over which lay rolls of flesh as red as that of a
+Caribbee. His silk hat was as glossy as satin, but the lining would
+have yielded grease enough for two street lamps if some grocer had
+bought it to boil down.
+
+But to enumerate these accessories is nothing; if only I could give an
+idea of the air of immense importance that Contenson contrived to
+impart to them! There was something indescribably knowing in the
+collar of his coat, and the fresh blacking on a pair of boots with
+gaping soles, to which no language can do justice. However, to give
+some notion of this medley of effect, it may be added that any man of
+intelligence would have felt, only on seeing Contenson, that if
+instead of being a spy he had been a thief, all these odds and ends,
+instead of raising a smile, would have made one shudder with horror.
+Judging only from his dress, the observer would have said to himself,
+"That is a scoundrel; he gambles, he drinks, he is full of vices; but
+he does not get drunk, he does not cheat, he is neither a thief nor a
+murderer." And Contenson remained inscrutable till the word spy
+suggested itself.
+
+This man had followed as many unrecognized trades as there are
+recognized ones. The sly smile on his lips, the twinkle of his green
+eyes, the queer twitch of his snub nose, showed that he was not
+deficient in humor. He had a face of sheet-tin, and his soul must
+probably be like his face. Every movement of his countenance was a
+grimace wrung from him by politeness rather than by any expression of
+an inmost impulse. He would have been alarming if he had not seemed so
+droll.
+
+Contenson, one of the most curious products of the scum that rises to
+the top of the seething Paris caldron, where everything ferments,
+prided himself on being, above all things, a philosopher. He would
+say, without any bitter feeling:
+
+"I have great talents, but of what use are they? I might as well have
+been an idiot."
+
+And he blamed himself instead of accusing mankind. Find, if you can,
+many spies who have not had more venom about them than Contenson had.
+
+"Circumstances are against me," he would say to his chiefs. "We might
+be fine crystal; we are but grains of sand, that is all."
+
+His indifference to dress had some sense. He cared no more about his
+everyday clothes than an actor does; he excelled in disguising
+himself, in "make-up"; he could have given Frederic Lemaitre a lesson,
+for he could be a dandy when necessary. Formerly, in his younger days,
+he must have mingled in the out-at-elbows society of people living on
+a humble scale. He expressed excessive disgust for the criminal police
+corps; for, under the Empire, he had belonged to Fouche's police, and
+looked upon him as a great man. Since the suppression of this
+Government department, he had devoted his energies to the tracking of
+commercial defaulters; but his well-known talents and acumen made him
+a valuable auxiliary, and the unrecognized chiefs of the political
+police had kept his name on their lists. Contenson, like his fellows,
+was only a super in the dramas of which the leading parts were played
+by his chief when a political investigation was in the wind.
+
+"Go 'vay," said Nucingen, dismissing his secretary with a wave of the
+hand.
+
+"Why should this man live in a mansion and I in a lodging?" wondered
+Contenson to himself. "He has dodged his creditors three times; he has
+robbed them; I never stole a farthing; I am a cleverer fellow than he
+is----"
+
+"Contenson, mein freund," said the Baron, "you haf vat you call pleed
+me of one tousand-franc note."
+
+"My girl owed God and the devil----"
+
+"Vat, you haf a girl, a mistress!" cried Nucingen, looking at
+Contenson with admiration not unmixed with envy.
+
+"I am but sixty-six," replied Contenson, as a man whom vice has kept
+young as a bad example.
+
+"And vat do she do?"
+
+"She helps me," said Contenson. "When a man is a thief, and an honest
+woman loves him, either she becomes a thief or he becomes an honest
+man. I have always been a spy."
+
+"And you vant money--alvays?" asked Nucingen.
+
+"Always," said Contenson, with a smile. "It is part of my business to
+want money, as it is yours to make it; we shall easily come to an
+understanding. You find me a little, and I will undertake to spend it.
+You shall be the well, and I the bucket."
+
+"Vould you like to haf one note for fife hundert franc?"
+
+"What a question! But what a fool I am!--You do not offer it out of a
+disinterested desire to repair the slights of Fortune?"
+
+"Not at all. I gif it besides the one tousand-franc note vat you pleed
+me off. Dat makes fifteen hundert franc vat I gif you."
+
+"Very good, you give me the thousand francs I have had and you will
+add five hundred francs."
+
+"Yust so," said Nucingen, nodding.
+
+"But that still leaves only five hundred francs," said Contenson
+imperturbably.
+
+"Dat I gif," added the Baron.
+
+"That I take. Very good; and what, Monsieur le Baron, do you want for
+it?"
+
+"I haf been told dat dere vas in Paris one man vat could find the
+voman vat I lof, and dat you know his address. . . . A real master to
+spy."
+
+"Very true."
+
+"Vell den, gif me dat address, and I gif you fife hundert franc."
+
+"Where are they?" said Contenson.
+
+"Here dey are," said the Baron, drawing a note out of his pocket.
+
+"All right, hand them over," said Contenson, holding out his hand.
+
+"Noting for noting! Le us see de man, and you get de money; you might
+sell to me many address at dat price."
+
+Contenson began to laugh.
+
+"To be sure, you have a right to think that of me," said he, with an
+air of blaming himself. "The more rascally our business is, the more
+honesty is necessary. But look here, Monsieur le Baron, make it six
+hundred, and I will give you a bit of advice."
+
+"Gif it, and trust to my generosity."
+
+"I will risk it," Contenson said, "but it is playing high. In such
+matters, you see, we have to work underground. You say, 'Quick
+march!'--You are rich; you think that money can do everything. Well,
+money is something, no doubt. Still, money can only buy men, as the
+two or three best heads in our force so often say. And there are many
+things you would never think of which money cannot buy.--You cannot
+buy good luck. So good police work is not done in this style. Will you
+show yourself in a carriage with me? We should be seen. Chance is just
+as often for us as against us."
+
+"Really-truly?" said the Baron.
+
+"Why, of course, sir. A horseshoe picked up in the street led the
+chief of the police to the discovery of the infernal machine. Well,
+if we were to go to-night in a hackney coach to Monsieur de
+Saint-Germain, he would not like to see you walk in any more than
+you would like to be seen going there."
+
+"Dat is true," said the Baron.
+
+"Ah, he is the greatest of the great! such another as the famous
+Corentin, Fouche's right arm, who was, some say, his natural son, born
+while he was still a priest; but that is nonsense. Fouche knew how to
+be a priest as he knew how to be a Minister. Well, you will not get
+this man to do anything for you, you see, for less than ten
+thousand-franc notes--think of that.--But he will do the job, and do it
+well. Neither seen nor heard, as they say. I ought to give Monsieur de
+Saint-Germanin notice, and he will fix a time for your meeting in some
+place where no one can see or hear, for it is a dangerous game to play
+policeman for private interests. Still, what is to be said? He is a
+good fellow, the king of good fellows, and a man who has undergone
+much persecution, and for having saving his country too!--like me,
+like all who helped to save it."
+
+"Vell den, write and name de happy day," said the Baron, smiling at
+his humble jest.
+
+"And Monsieur le Baron will allow me to drink his health?" said
+Contenson, with a manner at once cringing and threatening.
+
+"Shean," cried the Baron to the gardener, "go and tell Chorge to sent
+me one twenty francs, and pring dem to me----"
+
+"Still, Monsieur le Baron, if you have no more information than you
+have just given me, I doubt whether the great man can be of any use to
+you."
+
+"I know off oders!" replied the Baron with a cunning look.
+
+"I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron," said
+Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. "I shall have the honor of
+calling again to tell Georges where you are to go this evening, for we
+never write anything in such cases when they are well managed."
+
+"It is funny how sharp dese rascals are!" said the Baron to himself;
+"it is de same mit de police as it is in buss'niss."
+
+
+
+When he left the Baron, Contenson went quietly from the Rue
+Saint-Lazare to the Rue Saint-Honore, as far as the Cafe David. He
+looked in through the windows, and saw an old man who was known there
+by the name of le Pere Canquoelle.
+
+The Cafe David, at the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue
+Saint-Honore, enjoyed a certain celebrity during the first thirty
+years of the century, though its fame was limited to the quarter known
+as that of the Bourdonnais. Here certain old retired merchants, and
+large shopkeepers still in trade, were wont to meet--the Camusots, the
+Lebas, the Pilleraults, the Popinots, and a few house-owners like
+little old Molineux. Now and again old Guillaume might be seen there,
+coming from the Rue du Colombier. Politics were discussed in a quiet
+way, but cautiously, for the opinions of the Cafe David were liberal.
+The gossip of the neighborhood was repeated, men so urgently feel the
+need of laughing at each other!
+
+This cafe, like all cafes for that matter, had its eccentric character
+in the person of the said Pere Canquoelle, who had been regular in his
+attendance there since 1811, and who seemed to be so completely in
+harmony with the good folks who assembled there, that they all talked
+politics in his presence without reserve. Sometimes this old fellow,
+whose guilelessness was the subject of much laughter to the customers,
+would disappear for a month or two; but his absence never surprised
+anybody, and was always attributed to his infirmities or his great
+age, for he looked more than sixty in 1811.
+
+"What has become of old Canquoelle?" one or another would ask of the
+manageress at the desk.
+
+"I quite expect that one fine day we shall read in the
+advertisement-sheet that he is dead," she would reply.
+
+Old Canquoelle bore a perpetual certificate of his native province in
+his accent. He spoke of _une estatue_ (a statue), _le peuble_ (the
+people), and said _ture_ for _turc_. His name was that of a tiny estate
+called les Canquoelles, a word meaning cockchafer in some districts,
+situated in the department of Vaucluse, whence he had come. At last
+every one had fallen into the habit of calling him Canquoelle, instead
+of des Canquoelles, and the old man took no offence, for in his
+opinion the nobility had perished in 1793; and besides, the land of
+les Canquoelles did not belong to him; he was a younger son's younger
+son.
+
+Nowadays old Canquoelle's costume would look strange, but between 1811
+and 1820 it astonished no one. The old man wore shoes with cut-steel
+buckles, silk stockings with stripes round the leg, alternately blue
+and white, corded silk knee-breeches with oval buckles cut to match
+those on his shoes. A white embroidered waistcoat, an old coat of
+olive-brown with metal buttons, and a shirt with a flat-pleated frill
+completed his costume. In the middle of the shirt-frill twinkled a
+small gold locket, in which might be seen, under glass, a little
+temple worked in hair, one of those pathetic trifles which give men
+confidence, just as a scarecrow frightens sparrows. Most men, like
+other animals, are frightened or reassured by trifles. Old
+Canquoelle's breeches were kept in place by a buckle which, in the
+fashion of the last century, tightened them across the stomach; from
+the belt hung on each side a short steel chain, composed of several
+finer chains, and ending in a bunch of seals. His white neckcloth was
+fastened behind by a small gold buckle. Finally, on his snowy and
+powdered hair, he still, in 1816, wore the municipal cocked hat which
+Monsieur Try, the President of the Law Courts, also used to wear. But
+Pere Canquoelle had recently substituted for this hat, so dear to old
+men, the undignified top-hat, which no one dares to rebel against. The
+good man thought he owed so much as this to the spirit of the age. A
+small pigtail tied with a ribbon had traced a semicircle on the back
+of his coat, the greasy mark being hidden by powder.
+
+If you looked no further than the most conspicuous feature of his
+face, a nose covered with excrescences red and swollen enough to
+figure in a dish of truffles, you might have inferred that the worthy
+man had an easy temper, foolish and easy-going, that of a perfect
+gaby; and you would have been deceived, like all at the Cafe David,
+where no one had ever remarked the studious brow, the sardonic mouth,
+and the cold eyes of this old man, petted by his vices, and as calm as
+Vitellius, whose imperial and portly stomach reappeared in him
+palingenetically, so to speak.
+
+In 1816 a young commercial traveler named Gaudissart, who frequented
+the Cafe David, sat drinking from eleven o'clock till midnight with a
+half-pay officer. He was so rash as to discuss a conspiracy against
+the Bourbons, a rather serious plot then on the point of execution.
+There was no one to be seen in the cafe but Pere Canquoelle, who
+seemed to be asleep, two waiters who were dozing, and the accountant
+at the desk. Within four-and-twenty hours Gaudissart was arrested, the
+plot was discovered. Two men perished on the scaffold. Neither
+Gaudissart nor any one else ever suspected that worthy old Canquoelle
+of having peached. The waiters were dismissed; for a year they were
+all on their guard and afraid of the police--as Pere Canquoelle was
+too; indeed, he talked of retiring from the Cafe David, such horror
+had he of the police.
+
+Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy, and did not
+look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers; but when he had gulped
+down the brandy, he took out the Baron's gold piece, and called the
+waiter by rapping three short raps on the table. The lady at the desk
+and the waiter examined the coin with a minute care that was not
+flattering to Contenson; but their suspicions were justified by the
+astonishment produced on all the regular customers by Contenson's
+appearance.
+
+"Was that gold got by theft or by murder?"
+
+This was the idea that rose to some clear and shrewd minds as they
+looked at Contenson over their spectacles, while affecting to read the
+news. Contenson, who saw everything and never was surprised at
+anything, scornfully wiped his lips with a bandana, in which there
+were but three darns, took his change, slipped all the coppers into
+his side pocket, of which the lining, once white, was now as black as
+the cloth of the trousers, and did not leave one for the waiter.
+
+"What a gallows-bird!" said Pere Canquoelle to his neighbor Monsieur
+Pillerault.
+
+"Pshaw!" said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for he alone had
+expressed no astonishment, "it is Contenson, Louchard's right-hand
+man, the police agent we employ in business. The rascals want to nab
+some one who is hanging about perhaps."
+
+It would seem necessary to explain here the terrible and profoundly
+cunning man who was hidden under the guise of Pere Canquoelle, as
+Vautrin was hidden under that of the Abbe Carlos.
+
+Born at Canquoelles, the only possession of his family, which was
+highly respectable, this Southerner's name was Peyrade. He belonged,
+in fact, to the younger branch of the Peyrade family, an old but
+impoverished house of Franche Comte, still owning the little estate of
+la Peyrade. The seventh child of his father, he had come on foot to
+Paris in 1772 at the age of seventeen, with two crowns of six francs
+in his pocket, prompted by the vices of an ardent spirit and the
+coarse desire to "get on," which brings so many men to Paris from the
+south as soon as they understand that their father's property can
+never supply them with means to gratify their passions. It is enough
+to say of Peyrade's youth that in 1782 he was in the confidence of
+chiefs of the police and the hero of the department, highly esteemed
+by MM. Lenoir and d'Albert, the last Lieutenant-Generals of Police.
+
+The Revolution had no police; it needed none. Espionage, though common
+enough, was called public spirit.
+
+The Directorate, a rather more regular government than that of the
+Committee of Public Safety, was obliged to reorganize the Police, and
+the first Consul completed the work by instituting a Prefect of Police
+and a department of police supervision.
+
+Peyrade, a man knowing the traditions, collected the force with the
+assistance of a man named Corentin, a far cleverer man than Peyrade,
+though younger; but he was a genius only in the subterranean ways of
+police inquiries. In 1808 the great services Peyrade was able to
+achieve were rewarded by an appointment to the eminent position of
+Chief Commissioner of Police at Antwerp. In Napoleon's mind this sort
+of Police Governorship was equivalent to a Minister's post, with the
+duty of superintending Holland. At the end of the campaign of 1809,
+Peyrade was removed from Antwerp by an order in Council from the
+Emperor, carried in a chaise to Paris between two gendarmes, and
+imprisoned in la Force. Two months later he was let out on bail
+furnished by his friend Corentin, after having been subjected to three
+examinations, each lasting six hours, in the office of the head of the
+Police.
+
+Did Peyrade owe his overthrow to the miraculous energy he displayed in
+aiding Fouche in the defence of the French coast when threatened by
+what was known at the time as the Walcheren expedition, when the Duke
+of Otranto manifested such abilities as alarmed the Emperor? Fouche
+thought it probable even then; and now, when everybody knows what went
+on in the Cabinet Council called together by Cambaceres, it is
+absolutely certain. The Ministers, thunderstruck by the news of
+England's attempt, a retaliation on Napoleon for the Boulogne
+expedition, and taken by surprise when the Master was entrenched in
+the island of Lobau, where all Europe believed him to be lost, had not
+an idea which way to turn. The general opinion was in favor of sending
+post haste to the Emperor; Fouche alone was bold enough to sketch a
+plan of campaign, which, in fact, he carried into execution.
+
+"Do as you please," said Cambaceres; "but I, who prefer to keep my
+head on my shoulders, shall send a report to the Emperor."
+
+It is well known that the Emperor on his return found an absurd
+pretext, at a full meeting of the Council of State, for discarding his
+Minister and punishing him for having saved France without the
+Sovereign's help. From that time forth, Napoleon had doubled the
+hostility of Prince de Talleyrand and the Duke of Otranto, the only
+two great politicians formed by the Revolution, who might perhaps have
+been able to save Napoleon in 1813.
+
+To get rid of Peyrade, he was simply accused of connivance in favoring
+smuggling and sharing certain profits with the great merchants. Such
+an indignity was hard on a man who had earned the Marshal's baton of
+the Police Department by the great services he had done. This man, who
+had grown old in active business, knew all the secrets of every
+Government since 1775, when he had entered the service. The Emperor,
+who believed himself powerful enough to create men for his own uses,
+paid no heed to the representations subsequently laid before him in
+favor of a man who was reckoned as one of the most trustworthy, most
+capable, and most acute of the unknown genii whose task it is to watch
+over the safety of a State. He thought he could put Contenson in
+Peyrade's place; but Contenson was at that time employed by Corentin
+for his own benefit.
+
+Peyrade felt the blow all the more keenly because, being greedy and a
+libertine, he had found himself, with regard to women, in the position
+of a pastry-cook who loves sweetmeats. His habits of vice had become
+to him a second nature; he could not live without a good dinner,
+without gambling, in short, without the life of an unpretentious fine
+gentleman, in which men of powerful faculties so generally indulge
+when they have allowed excessive dissipation to become a necessity.
+Hitherto, he had lived in style without ever being expected to
+entertain; and living well, for no one ever looked for a return from
+him, or from his friend Corentin. He was cynically witty, and he liked
+his profession; he was a philosopher. And besides, a spy, whatever
+grade he may hold in the machinery of the police, can no more return
+to a profession regarded as honorable or liberal, than a prisoner from
+the hulks can. Once branded, once matriculated, spies and convicts,
+like deacons, have assumed an indelible character. There are beings on
+whom social conditions impose an inevitable fate.
+
+Peyrade, for his further woe, was very fond of a pretty little girl
+whom he knew to be his own child by a celebrated actress to whom he
+had done a signal service, and who, for three months, had been
+grateful to him. Peyrade, who had sent for his child from Antwerp, now
+found himself without employment in Paris and with no means beyond a
+pension of twelve hundred francs a year allowed him by the Police
+Department as Lenoir's old disciple. He took lodgings in the Rue des
+Moineaux on the fourth floor, five little rooms, at a rent of two
+hundred and fifty francs.
+
+If any man should be aware of the uses and sweets of friendship, is it
+not the moral leper known to the world as a spy, to the mob as a
+_mouchard_, to the department as an "agent"? Peyrade and Corentin were
+such friends as Orestes and Pylades. Peyrade had trained Corentin as
+Vien trained David; but the pupil soon surpassed his master. They had
+carried out more than one undertaking together. Peyrade, happy at
+having discerned Corentin's superior abilities, had started him in his
+career by preparing a success for him. He obliged his disciple to make
+use of a mistress who had scorned him as a bait to catch a man (see
+_The Chouans_). And Corentin at that time was hardly five-and-twenty.
+
+Corentin, who had been retained as one of the generals of whom the
+Minister of Police is the High Constable, still held under the Duc de
+Rovigo the high position he had filled under the Duke of Otranto. Now
+at that time the general police and the criminal police were managed
+on similar principles. When any important business was on hand, an
+account was opened, as it were, for the three, four, five, really
+capable agents. The Minister, on being warned of some plot, by
+whatever means, would say to one of his colonels of the police force:
+
+"How much will you want to achieve this or that result?"
+
+Corentin or Contenson would go into the matter and reply:
+
+"Twenty, thirty, or forty thousand francs."
+
+Then, as soon as the order was given to go ahead, all the means and
+the men were left to the judgment of Corentin or the agent selected.
+And the criminal police used to act in the same way to discover crimes
+with the famous Vidocq.
+
+Both branches of the police chose their men chiefly from among the
+ranks of well-known agents, who have matriculated in the business, and
+are, as it were, as soldiers of the secret army, so indispensable to a
+government, in spite of the public orations of philanthropists or
+narrow-minded moralists. But the absolute confidence placed in two men
+of the temper of Peyrade and Corentin conveyed to them the right of
+employing perfect strangers, under the risk, moreover, of being
+responsible to the Minister in all serious cases. Peyrade's experience
+and acumen were too valuable to Corentin, who, after the storm of 1820
+had blown over, employed his old friend, constantly consulted him, and
+contributed largely to his maintenance. Corentin managed to put about
+a thousand francs a month into Peyrade's hands.
+
+Peyrade, on his part, did Corentin good service. In 1816 Corentin, on
+the strength of the discovery of the conspiracy in which the
+Bonapartist Gaudissart was implicated, tried to get Peyrade reinstated
+in his place in the police office; but some unknown influence was
+working against Peyrade. This was the reason why.
+
+In their anxiety to make themselves necessary, Peyrade, Corentin, and
+Contenson, at the Duke of Otranto's instigation, had organized for the
+benefit of Louis XVIII. a sort of opposition police in which very
+capable agents were employed. Louis XVIII. died possessed of secrets
+which will remain secrets from the best informed historians. The
+struggle between the general police of the kingdom, and the King's
+opposition police, led to many horrible disasters, of which a certain
+number of executions sealed the secrets. This is neither the place nor
+the occasion for entering into details on this subject, for these
+"Scenes of Paris Life" are not "Scenes of Political Life." Enough has
+been said to show what were the means of living of the man who at the
+Cafe David was known as good old Canquoelle, and by what threads he
+was tied to the terrible and mysterious powers of the police.
+
+Between 1817 and 1822, Corentin, Contenson, Peyrade, and their
+myrmidons, were often required to keep watch over the Minister of
+Police himself. This perhaps explains why the Minister declined to
+employ Peyrade and Contenson, on whom Corentin contrived to cast the
+Minister's suspicions, in order to be able to make use of his friend
+when his reinstatement was evidently out of the question. The Ministry
+put their faith in Corentin; they enjoined him to keep an eye on
+Peyrade, which amused Louis XVIII. Corentin and Peyrade were then
+masters of the position. Contenson, long attached to Peyrade, was
+still at his service. He had joined the force of the commercial police
+(the Gardes du Commerce) by his friend's orders. And, in fact, as a
+result of the sort of zeal that is inspired by a profession we love,
+these two chiefs liked to place their best men in those posts where
+information was most likely to flow in.
+
+And, indeed, Contenson's vices and dissipated habits, which had
+dragged him lower than his two friends, consumed so much money, that
+he needed a great deal of business.
+
+Contenson, without committing any indiscretion, had told Louchard
+that he knew the only man who was capable of doing what the Baron
+de Nucingen required. Peyrade was, in fact, the only police-agent
+who could act on behalf of a private individual with impunity. At
+the death of Louis XVIII., Peyrade had not only ceased to be of
+consequence, but had lost the profits of his position as
+spy-in-ordinary to His Majesty. Believing himself to be indispensable,
+he had lived fast. Women, high feeding, and the club, the _Cercle
+des Etrangers_, had prevented this man from saving, and, like all
+men cut out for debauchery, he enjoyed an iron constitution. But
+between 1826 and 1829, when he was nearly seventy-four years of
+age, he had stuck half-way, to use his own expression. Year by
+year he saw his comforts dwindling. He followed the police
+department to its grave, and saw with regret that Charles X.'s
+government was departing from its good old traditions. Every
+session saw the estimates pared down which were necessary to keep
+up the police, out of hatred for that method of government and a
+firm determination to reform that institution.
+
+"It is as if they thought they could cook in white gloves," said
+Peyrade to Corentin.
+
+In 1822 this couple foresaw 1830. They knew how bitterly Louis XVIII.
+hated his successor, which accounts for his recklessness with regard
+to the younger branch, and without which his reign would be an
+unanswerable riddle.
+
+
+
+As Peyrade grew older, his love for his natural daughter had
+increased. For her sake he had adopted his citizen guise, for he
+intended that his Lydie should marry respectably. So for the last
+three years he had been especially anxious to find a corner, either at
+the Prefecture of Police, or in the general Police Office--some
+ostensible and recognized post. He had ended by inventing a place, of
+which the necessity, as he told Corentin, would sooner or later be
+felt. He was anxious to create an inquiry office at the Prefecture of
+Police, to be intermediate between the Paris police in the strictest
+sense, the criminal police, and the superior general police, so as to
+enable the supreme board to profit by the various scattered forces. No
+one but Peyrade, at his age, and after fifty-five years of
+confidential work, could be the connecting link between the three
+branches of the police, or the keeper of the records to whom political
+and judicial authority alike could apply for the elucidation of
+certain cases. By this means Peyrade hoped, with Corentin's
+assistance, to find a husband and scrape together a portion for his
+little Lydie. Corentin had already mentioned the matter to the
+Director-General of the police forces of the realm, without naming
+Peyrade; and the Director-General, a man from the south, thought it
+necessary that the suggestion should come from the chief of the city
+police.
+
+At the moment when Contenson struck three raps on the table with the
+gold piece, a signal conveying, "I want to speak to you," the senior
+was reflecting on this problem: "By whom, and under what pressure can
+the Prefet of Police be made to move?"--And he looked like a noodle
+studying his _Courrier Francais_.
+
+"Poor Fouche!" thought he to himself, as he made his way along the Rue
+Saint-Honore, "that great man is dead! our go-betweens with Louis
+XVIII. are out of favor. And besides, as Corentin said only yesterday,
+nobody believes in the activity or the intelligence of a man of
+seventy. Oh, why did I get into a habit of dining at Very's, of
+drinking choice wines, of singing _La Mere Godichon_, of gambling when I
+am in funds? To get a place and keep it, as Corentin says, it is not
+enough to be clever, you must have the gift of management. Poor dear
+M. Lenoir was right when he wrote to me in the matter of the Queen's
+necklace, 'You will never do any good,' when he heard that I did not
+stay under that slut Oliva's bed."
+
+If the venerable Pere Canquoelle--he was called so in the house--lived
+on in the Rue des Moineaux, on a fourth floor, you may depend on it he
+had found some peculiarity in the arrangement of the premises which
+favored the practice of his terrible profession.
+
+The house, standing at the corner of the Rue Saint-Roch, had no
+neighbors on one side; and as the staircase up the middle divided it
+into two, there were on each floor two perfectly isolated rooms. Those
+two rooms looked out on the Rue Saint-Roch. There were garret rooms
+above the fourth floor, one of them a kitchen, and the other a bedroom
+for Pere Canquoelle's only servant, a Fleming named Katt, formerly
+Lydie's wet-nurse. Old Canquoelle had taken one of the outside rooms
+for his bedroom, and the other for his study. The study ended at the
+party-wall, a very thick one. The window opening on the Rue des
+Moineaux looked on a blank wall at the opposite corner. As this study
+was divided from the stairs by the whole width of Peyrade's bedroom,
+the friends feared no eye, no ear, as they talked business in this
+study made on purpose for his detestable trade.
+
+Peyrade, as a further precaution, had furnished Katt's room with a
+thick straw bed, a felt carpet, and a very heavy rug, under the
+pretext of making his child's nurse comfortable. He had also stopped
+up the chimney, warming his room by a stove, with a pipe through the
+wall to the Rue Saint-Roch. Finally, he laid several rugs on his floor
+to prevent the slightest sound being heard by the neighbors beneath.
+An expert himself in the tricks of spies, he sounded the outer wall,
+the ceiling, and the floor once a week, examining them as if he were
+in search of noxious insects. It was the security of this room from
+all witnesses or listeners that had made Corentin select it as his
+council-chamber when he did not hold a meeting in his own room.
+
+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, novelists 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 road whence 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.
+
+On finding Esther in a squalid room, dressed as a work-woman, and
+employed on some embroidery, the millionaire turned pale. At the end
+of a quarter of an hour, while Asie affected to talk in whispers to
+Esther, the young old man could hardly speak.
+
+"Montemisselle," said he at length to the unhappy girl, "vill you be
+so goot as to let me be your protector?"
+
+"Why, I cannot help myself, monsieur," replied Esther, letting fall
+two large tears.
+
+"Do not veep. I shall make you de happiest of vomen. Only permit that
+I shall lof you--you shall see."
+
+"Well, well, child, the gentleman is reasonable," said Asie. "He knows
+that he is more than sixty, and he will be very kind to you. You see,
+my beauty, I have found you quite a father--I had to say so," Asie
+whispered to the banker, who was not best pleased. "You cannot catch
+swallows by firing a pistol at them.--Come here," she went on, leading
+Nucingen into the adjoining room. "You remember our bargain, my
+angel?"
+
+Nucingen took out his pocketbook and counted out the hundred thousand
+francs, which Carlos, hidden in a cupboard, was impatiently waiting
+for, and which the cook handed over to him.
+
+"Here are the hundred thousand francs our man stakes on Asie. Now we
+must make him lay on Europe," said Carlos to his confidante when they
+were on the landing.
+
+And he vanished after giving his instruction to the Malay who went
+back into the room. She found Esther weeping bitterly. The poor girl,
+like a criminal condemned to death, had woven a romance of hope, and
+the fatal hour had tolled.
+
+"My dear children," said Asie, "where do you mean to go?--For the
+Baron de Nucingen----"
+
+Esther looked at the great banker with a start of surprise that was
+admirably acted.
+
+"Ja, mein kind, I am dat Baron von Nucingen."
+
+"The Baron de Nucingen must not, cannot remain in such a room as
+this," Asie went on. "Listen to me; your former maid Eugenie."
+
+"Eugenie, from the Rue Taitbout?" cried the Baron.
+
+"Just so; the woman placed in possession of the furniture," replied
+Asie, "and who let the apartment to that handsome Englishwoman----"
+
+"Hah! I onderstant!" said the Baron.
+
+"Madame's former waiting-maid," Asie went on, respectfully alluding to
+Esther, "will receive you very comfortably this evening; and the
+commercial police will never think of looking for her in her old rooms
+which she left three months ago----"
+
+"Feerst rate, feerst rate!" cried the Baron. "An' besides, I know dese
+commercial police, an' I know vat sorts shall make dem disappear."
+
+"You will find Eugenie a sharp customer," said Asie. "I found her for
+madame."
+
+"Hah! I know her!" cried the millionaire, laughing. "She haf fleeced
+me out of dirty tousant franc."
+
+Esther shuddered with horror in a way that would have led a man of any
+feeling to trust her with his fortune.
+
+"Oh, dat vas mein own fault," the Baron said. "I vas seeking for you."
+
+And he related the incident that had arisen out of the letting of
+Esther's rooms to the Englishwoman.
+
+"There, now, you see, madame, Eugenie never told you all that, the sly
+thing!" said Asie.--"Still, madame is used to the hussy," she added to
+the Baron. "Keep her on, all the same."
+
+She drew Nucingen aside and said:
+
+"If you give Eugenie five hundred francs a month, which will fill up
+her stocking finely, you can know everything that madame does: make
+her the lady's-maid. Eugenie will be all the more devoted to you since
+she has already done you.--Nothing attaches a woman to a man more than
+the fact that she has once fleeced him. But keep a tight rein on
+Eugenie; she will do any earthly thing for money; she is a dreadful
+creature!"
+
+"An' vat of you?"
+
+"I," said Asie, "I make both ends meet."
+
+Nucingen, the astute financier, had a bandage over his eyes; he
+allowed himself to be led like a child. The sight of that spotless and
+adorable Esther wiping her eyes and pricking in the stitches of her
+embroidery as demurely as an innocent girl, revived in the amorous old
+man the sensations he had experienced in the Forest of Vincennes; he
+would have given her the key of his safe. He felt so young, his heart
+was so overflowing with adoration; he only waited till Asie should be
+gone to throw himself at the feet of this Raphael's Madonna.
+
+This sudden blossoming of youth in the heart of a stockbroker, of an
+old man, is one of the social phenomena which must be left to
+physiology to account for. Crushed under the burden of business,
+stifled under endless calculations and the incessant anxieties of
+million-hunting, young emotions revive with their sublime illusions,
+sprout and flower like a forgotten cause or a forgotten seed, whose
+effects, whose gorgeous bloom, are the sport of chance, brought out by
+a late and sudden gleam of sunshine.
+
+The Baron, a clerk by the time he was twelve years old in the ancient
+house of Aldrigger at Strasbourg, had never set foot in the world of
+sentiment. So there he stood in front of his idol, hearing in his
+brain a thousand modes of speech, while none came to his lips, till at
+length he acted on the brutal promptings of desire that betrayed a man
+of sixty-six.
+
+"Vill you come to Rue Taitbout?" said he.
+
+"Wherever you please, monsieur," said Esther, rising.
+
+"Verever I please!" he echoed in rapture. "You are ein anchel from de
+sky, and I lofe you more as if I was a little man, vile I hafe gray
+hairs----"
+
+"You had better say white, for they are too fine a black to be only
+gray," said Asie.
+
+"Get out, foul dealer in human flesh! You hafe got your moneys; do not
+slobber no more on dis flower of lofe!" cried the banker, indemnifying
+himself by this violent abuse for all the insolence he had submitted
+to.
+
+"You old rip! I will pay you out for that speech!" said Asie,
+threatening the banker with a gesture worthy of the Halle, at which
+the Baron merely shrugged his shoulders. "Between the lip of the pot
+and that of the guzzler there is often a viper, and you will find me
+there!" she went on, furious at Nucingen's contempt.
+
+Millionaires, whose money is guarded by the Bank of France, whose
+mansions are guarded by a squad of footmen, whose person in the
+streets is safe behind the rampart of a coach with swift English
+horses, fear no ill; so the Baron looked calmly at Asie, as a man who
+had just given her a hundred thousand francs.
+
+This dignity had its effect. Asie beat a retreat, growling down the
+stairs in highly revolutionary language; she spoke of the guillotine!
+
+"What have you said to her?" asked the Madonna a la broderie, "for she
+is a good soul."
+
+"She hafe solt you, she hafe robbed you----"
+
+"When we are beggared," said she, in a tone to rend the heart of a
+diplomate, "who has ever any money or consideration for us?"
+
+"Poor leetle ting!" said Nucingen. "Do not stop here ein moment
+longer."
+
+The Baron offered her his arm; he led her away just as she was, and
+put her into his carriage with more respect perhaps than he would have
+shown to the handsome Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.
+
+"You shall hafe a fine carriage, de prettiest carriage in Paris," said
+Nucingen, as they drove along. "Everyting dat luxury shall sopply
+shall be for you. Not any qveen shall be more rich dan vat you shall
+be. You shall be respected like ein Cherman Braut. I shall hafe you to
+be free.--Do not veep! Listen to me--I lofe you really, truly, mit de
+purest lofe. Efery tear of yours breaks my heart."
+
+"Can one truly love a woman one has bought?" said the poor girl in the
+sweetest tones.
+
+"Choseph vas solt by his broders for dat he was so comely. Dat is so
+in de Biple. An' in de Eastern lants men buy deir wifes."
+
+On arriving at the Rue Taitbout, Esther could not return to the scene
+of her happiness without some pain. She remained sitting on a couch,
+motionless, drying away her tears one by one, and never hearing a word
+of the crazy speeches poured out by the banker. He fell at her feet,
+and she let him kneel without saying a word to him, allowing him to
+take her hands as he would, and never thinking of the sex of the
+creature who was rubbing her feet to warm them; for Nucingen found
+that they were cold.
+
+This scene of scalding tears shed on the Baron's head, and of ice-cold
+feet that he tried to warm, lasted from midnight till two in the
+morning.
+
+"Eugenie," cried the Baron at last to Europe, "persvade your mis'ess
+that she shall go to bet."
+
+"No!" cried Esther, starting to her feet like a scared horse. "Never
+in this house!"
+
+"Look her, monsieur, I know madame; she is as gentle and kind as a
+lamb," said Europe to the Baron. "Only you must not rub her the wrong
+way, you must get at her sideways--she had been so miserable here.
+--You see how worn the furniture is.--Let her go her own way.
+
+"Furnish some pretty little house for her, very nicely. Perhaps when
+she sees everything new about her she will feel a stranger there, and
+think you better looking than you are, and be angelically sweet.--Oh!
+madame has not her match, and you may boast of having done a very good
+stroke of business: a good heart, genteel manners, a fine instep--and
+a skin, a complexion! Ah!----
+
+"And witty enough to make a condemned wretch laugh. And madame can
+feel an attachment.--And then how she can dress!--Well, if it is
+costly, still, as they say, you get your money's worth.--Here all the
+gowns were seized, everything she has is three months old.--But madame
+is so kind, you see, that I love her, and she is my mistress!--But in
+all justice--such a woman as she is, in the midst of furniture that
+has been seized!--And for whom? For a young scamp who has ruined her.
+Poor little thing, she is not at all herself."
+
+"Esther, Esther; go to bet, my anchel! If it is me vat frighten you, I
+shall stay here on dis sofa----" cried the Baron, fired by the purest
+devotion, as he saw that Esther was still weeping.
+
+"Well, then," said Esther, taking the "lynx's" hand, and kissing it
+with an impulse of gratitude which brought something very like a tear
+to his eye, "I shall be grateful to you----"
+
+And she fled into her room and locked the door.
+
+"Dere is someting fery strange in all dat," thought Nucingen, excited
+by his pillules. "Vat shall dey say at home?"
+
+He got up and looked out of the window. "My carriage still is dere. It
+shall soon be daylight." He walked up and down the room.
+
+"Vat Montame de Nucingen should laugh at me ven she should know how I
+hafe spent dis night!"
+
+He applied his ear to the bedroom door, thinking himself rather too
+much of a simpleton.
+
+"Esther!"
+
+No reply.
+
+"Mein Gott! and she is still veeping!" said he to himself, as he
+stretched himself on the sofa.
+
+About ten minutes after sunrise, the Baron de Nucingen, who was
+sleeping the uneasy slumbers that are snatched by compulsion in an
+awkward position on a couch, was aroused with a start by Europe from
+one of those dreams that visit us in such moments, and of which the
+swift complications are a phenomenon inexplicable by medical
+physiology.
+
+"Oh, God help us, madame!" she shrieked. "Madame!--the soldiers
+--gendarmes--bailiffs! They have come to take us."
+
+At the moment when Esther opened her door and appeared, hurriedly,
+wrapped in her dressing-gown, her bare feet in slippers, her hair in
+disorder, lovely enough to bring the angel Raphael to perdition, the
+drawing-room door vomited into the room a gutter of human mire that
+came on, on ten feet, towards the beautiful girl, who stood like an
+angel in some Flemish church picture. One man came foremost.
+Contenson, the horrible Contenson, laid his hand on Esther's dewy
+shoulder.
+
+"You are Mademoiselle van----" he began. Europe, by a back-handed slap
+on Contenson's cheek, sent him sprawling to measure his length on the
+carpet, and with all the more effect because at the same time she
+caught his leg with the sharp kick known to those who practise the art
+as a coup de savate.
+
+"Hands off!" cried she. "No one shall touch my mistress."
+
+"She has broken my leg!" yelled Contenson, picking himself up; "I will
+have damages!"
+
+From the group of bumbailiffs, looking like what they were, all
+standing with their horrible hats on their yet more horrible heads,
+with mahogany-colored faces and bleared eyes, damaged noses, and
+hideous mouths, Louchard now stepped forth, more decently dressed than
+his men, but keeping his hat on, his expression at once smooth-faced
+and smiling.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I arrest you!" said he to Esther. "As for you, my
+girl," he added to Europe, "any resistance will be punished, and
+perfectly useless."
+
+The noise of muskets, let down with a thud of their stocks on the
+floor of the dining-room, showing that the invaders had soldiers to
+bake them, gave emphasis to this speech.
+
+"And what am I arrested for?" said Esther.
+
+"What about our little debts?" said Louchard.
+
+"To be sure," cried Esther; "give me leave to dress."
+
+"But, unfortunately, mademoiselle, I am obliged to make sure that you
+have no way of getting out of your room," said Louchard.
+
+All this passed so quickly that the Baron had not yet had time to
+intervene.
+
+"Well, and am I still a foul dealer in human flesh, Baron de
+Nucingen?" cried the hideous Asie, forcing her way past the sheriff's
+officers to the couch, where she pretended to have just discovered the
+banker.
+
+"Contemptible wretch!" exclaimed Nucingen, drawing himself up in
+financial majesty.
+
+He placed himself between Esther and Louchard, who took off his hat as
+Contenson cried out, "Monsieur le Baron de Nucingen."
+
+At a signal from Louchard the bailiffs vanished from the room,
+respectfully taking their hats off. Contenson alone was left.
+
+"Do you propose to pay, Monsieur le Baron?" asked he, hat in hand.
+
+"I shall pay," said the banker; "but I must know vat dis is all
+about."
+
+"Three hundred and twelve thousand francs and some centimes, costs
+paid; but the charges for the arrest not included."
+
+"Three hundred thousand francs," cried the Baron; "dat is a fery
+'xpensive vaking for a man vat has passed the night on a sofa," he
+added in Europe's ear.
+
+"Is that man really the Baron de Nucingen?" asked Europe to Louchard,
+giving weight to the doubt by a gesture which Mademoiselle Dupont, the
+low comedy servant of the Francais, might have envied.
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle," said Louchard.
+
+"Yes," replied Contenson.
+
+"I shall be answerable," said the Baron, piqued in his honor by
+Europe's doubt. "You shall 'llow me to say ein vort to her."
+
+Esther and her elderly lover retired to the bedroom, Louchard finding
+it necessary to apply his ear to the keyhole.
+
+"I lofe you more as my life, Esther; but vy gife to your creditors
+moneys vich shall be so much better in your pocket? Go into prison. I
+shall undertake to buy up dose hundert tousant crowns for ein hundert
+tousant francs, an' so you shall hafe two hundert tousant francs for
+you----"
+
+"That scheme is perfectly useless," cried Louchard through the door.
+"The creditor is not in love with mademoiselle--not he! You
+understand? And he means to have more than all, now he knows that you
+are in love with her."
+
+"You dam' sneak!" cried Nucingen, opening the door, and dragging
+Louchard into the bedroom; "you know not dat vat you talk about. I
+shall gife you, you'self, tventy per cent if you make the job."
+
+"Impossible, M. le Baron."
+
+"What, monsieur, you could have the heart to let my mistress go to
+prison?" said Europe, intervening. "But take my wages, my savings;
+take them, madame; I have forty thousand francs----"
+
+"Ah, my good girl, I did not really know you!" cried Esther, clasping
+Europe in her arms.
+
+Europe proceeded to melt into tears.
+
+"I shall pay," said the Baron piteously, as he drew out a pocket-book,
+from which he took one of the little printed forms which the Bank of
+France issues to bankers, on which they have only to write a sum in
+figures and in words to make them available as cheques to bearer.
+
+"It is not worth the trouble, Monsieur le Baron," said Louchard; "I
+have instructions not to accept payment in anything but coin of the
+realm--gold or silver. As it is you, I will take banknotes."
+
+"Der Teufel!" cried the Baron. "Well, show me your papers."
+
+Contenson handed him three packets covered with blue paper, which the
+Baron took, looking at the man, and adding in an undertone:
+
+"It should hafe been a better day's vork for you ven you had gife me
+notice."
+
+"Why, how should I know you were here, Monsieur le Baron?" replied the
+spy, heedless whether Louchard heard him. "You lost my services by
+withdrawing your confidence. You are done," added this philosopher,
+shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"Qvite true," said the baron. "Ah, my chilt," he exclaimed, seeing the
+bills of exchange, and turning to Esther, "you are de fictim of a
+torough scoundrel, ein highway tief!"
+
+"Alas, yes," said poor Esther; "but he loved me truly."
+
+"Ven I should hafe known--I should hafe made you to protest----"
+
+"You are off your head, Monsieur le Baron," said Louchard; "there is a
+third endorsement."
+
+"Yes, dere is a tird endorsement--Cerizet! A man of de opposition."
+
+"Will you write an order on your cashier, Monsieur le Baron?" said
+Louchard. "I will send Contenson to him and dismiss my men. It is
+getting late, and everybody will know that----"
+
+"Go den, Contenson," said Nucingen. "My cashier lives at de corner of
+Rue des Mathurins and Rue de l'Arcate. Here is ein vort for dat he
+shall go to du Tillet or to de Kellers, in case ve shall not hafe a
+hundert tousant franc--for our cash shall be at de Bank.--Get dress',
+my anchel," he said to Esther. "You are at liberty.--An' old vomans,"
+he went on, looking at Asie, "are more dangerous as young vomans."
+
+"I will go and give the creditor a good laugh," said Asie, "and he
+will give me something for a treat to-day.--We bear no malice,
+Monsieur le Baron," added Saint-Esteve with a horrible courtesy.
+
+Louchard took the bills out of the Baron's hands, and remained alone
+with him in the drawing-room, whither, half an hour later, the cashier
+came, followed by Contenson. Esther then reappeared in a bewitching,
+though improvised, costume. When the money had been counted by
+Louchard, the Baron wished to examine the bills; but Esther snatched
+them with a cat-like grab, and carried them away to her desk.
+
+"What will you give the rabble?" said Contenson to Nucingen.
+
+"You hafe not shown much consideration," said the Baron.
+
+"And what about my leg?" cried Contenson.
+
+"Louchard, you shall gife ein hundert francs to Contenson out of the
+change of the tousand-franc note."
+
+"De lady is a beauty," said the cashier to the Baron, as they left the
+Rue Taitbout, "but she is costing you ver' dear, Monsieur le Baron."
+
+"Keep my segret," said the Baron, who had said the same to Contenson
+and Louchard.
+
+Louchard went away with Contenson; but on the boulevard Asie, who was
+looking out for him, stopped Louchard.
+
+"The bailiff and the creditor are there in a cab," said she. "They are
+thirsty, and there is money going."
+
+While Louchard counted out the cash, Contenson studied the customers.
+He recognized Carlos by his eyes, and traced the form of his forehead
+under the wig. The wig he shrewdly regarded as suspicious; he took the
+number of the cab while seeming quite indifferent to what was going
+on; Asie and Europe puzzled him beyond measure. He thought that the
+Baron was the victim of excessively clever sharpers, all the more so
+because Louchard, when securing his services, had been singularly
+close. And besides, the twist of Europe's foot had not struck his shin
+only.
+
+"A trick like that is learned at Saint-Lazare," he had reflected as he
+got up.
+
+Carlos dismissed the bailiff, paying him liberally, and as he did so,
+said to the driver of the cab, "To the Perron, Palais Royal."
+
+"The rascal!" thought Contenson as he heard the order. "There is
+something up!" Carlos drove to the Palais Royal at a pace which
+precluded all fear of pursuit. He made his way in his own fashion
+through the arcades, took another cab on the Place du Chateau d'Eau,
+and bid the man go "to the Passage de l'Opera, the end of the Rue
+Pinon."
+
+A quarter of a hour later he was in the Rue Taitbout. On seeing him,
+Esther said:
+
+"Here are the fatal papers."
+
+Carlos took the bills, examined them, and then burned them in the
+kitchen fire.
+
+"We have done the trick," he said, showing her three hundred and ten
+thousand francs in a roll, which he took out of the pocket of his
+coat. "This, and the hundred thousand francs squeezed out by Asie, set
+us free to act."
+
+"Oh God, oh God!" cried poor Esther.
+
+"But, you idiot," said the ferocious swindler, "you have only to be
+ostensibly Nucingen's mistress, and you can always see Lucien; he is
+Nucingen's friend; I do not forbid your being madly in love with him."
+
+Esther saw a glimmer of light in her darkened life; she breathed once
+more.
+
+"Europe, my girl," said Carlos, leading the creature into a corner of
+the boudoir where no one could overhear a word, "Europe, I am pleased
+with you."
+
+Europe held up her head, and looked at this man with an expression
+which so completely changed her faded features, that Asie, witnessing
+the interview, as she watched her from the door, wondered whether the
+interest by which Carlos held Europe might not perhaps be even
+stronger than that by which she herself was bound to him.
+
+"That is not all, my child. Four hundred thousand francs are a mere
+nothing to me. Paccard will give you an account for some plate,
+amounting to thirty thousand francs, on which money has been paid on
+account; but our goldsmith, Biddin, has paid money for us. Our
+furniture, seized by him, will no doubt be advertised to-morrow. Go
+and see Biddin; he lives in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec; he will give you
+Mont-de-Piete tickets for ten thousand francs. You understand, Esther
+ordered the plate; she had not paid for it, and she put it up the
+spout. She will be in danger of a little summons for swindling. So we
+must pay the goldsmith the thirty thousand francs, and pay up ten
+thousand francs to the Mont-de-Piete to get the plate back.
+Forty-three thousand francs in all, including the costs. The silver is
+very much alloyed; the Baron will give her a new service, and we shall
+bone a few thousand francs out of that. You owe--what? two years'
+account with the dressmaker?"
+
+"Put it at six thousand francs," replied Europe.
+
+"Well, if Madame Auguste wants to be paid and keep our custom, tell
+her to make out a bill for thirty thousand francs over four years.
+Make a similar arrangement with the milliner. The jeweler, Samuel
+Frisch the Jew, in the Rue Saint-Avoie, will lend you some
+pawn-tickets; we must owe him twenty-five thousand francs, and we
+must want six thousand for jewels pledged at the Mont-de-Piete. We
+will return the trinkets to the jeweler, half the stones will be
+imitation, but the Baron will not examine them. In short, you will
+make him fork out another hundred and fifty thousand francs to add
+to our nest-eggs within a week."
+
+"Madame might give me a little help," said Europe. "Tell her so, for
+she sits there mumchance, and obliges me to find more inventions than
+three authors for one piece."
+
+"If Esther turns prudish, just let me know," said Carlos. "Nucingen
+must give her a carriage and horses; she will have to choose and buy
+everything herself. Go to the horse-dealer and the coachmaker who are
+employed by the job-master where Paccard finds work. We shall get
+handsome horses, very dear, which will go lame within a month, and we
+shall have to change them."
+
+"We might get six thousand francs out of a perfumer's bill," said
+Europe.
+
+"Oh!" said he, shaking his head, "we must go gently. Nucingen has only
+got his arm into the press; we must have his head. Besides all this, I
+must get five hundred thousand francs."
+
+"You can get them," replied Europe. "Madame will soften towards the
+fat fool for about six hundred thousand, and insist on four hundred
+thousand more to love him truly!"
+
+"Listen to me, my child," said Carlos. "The day when I get the last
+hundred thousand francs, there shall be twenty thousand for you."
+
+"What good will they do me?" said Europe, letting her arms drop like a
+woman to whom life seems impossible.
+
+"You could go back to Valenciennes, buy a good business, and set up as
+an honest woman if you chose; there are many tastes in human nature.
+Paccard thinks of settling sometimes; he has no encumbrances on his
+hands, and not much on his conscience; you might suit each other,"
+replied Carlos.
+
+"Go back to Valenciennes! What are you thinking of, monsieur?" cried
+Europe in alarm.
+
+Europe, who was born at Valenciennes, the child of very poor parents,
+had been sent at seven years of age to a spinning factory, where the
+demands of modern industry had impaired her physical strength, just as
+vice had untimely depraved her. Corrupted at the age of twelve, and a
+mother at thirteen, she found herself bound to the most degraded of
+human creatures. On the occasion of a murder case, she had been as a
+witness before the Court. Haunted at sixteen by a remnant of
+rectitude, and the terror inspired by the law, her evidence led to the
+prisoner being sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.
+
+The convict, one of those men who have been in the hands of justice
+more than once, and whose temper is apt at terrible revenge, had said
+to the girl in open court:
+
+"In ten years, as sure as you live, Prudence" (Europe's name was
+Prudence Servien), "I will return to be the death of you, if I am
+scragged for it."
+
+The President of the Court tried to reassure the girl by promising her
+the protection and the care of the law; but the poor child was so
+terror-stricken that she fell ill, and was in hospital nearly a year.
+Justice is an abstract being, represented by a collection of
+individuals who are incessantly changing, whose good intentions and
+memories are, like themselves, liable to many vicissitudes. Courts and
+tribunals can do nothing to hinder crimes; their business is to deal
+with them when done. From this point of view, a preventive police
+would be a boon to a country; but the mere word Police is in these
+days a bugbear to legislators, who no longer can distinguish between
+the three words--Government, Administration, and Law-making. The
+legislator tends to centralize everything in the State, as if the
+State could act.
+
+The convict would be sure always to remember his victim, and to avenge
+himself when Justice had ceased to think of either of them.
+
+Prudence, who instinctively appreciated the danger--in a general
+sense, so to speak--left Valenciennes and came to Paris at the age of
+seventeen to hide there. She tried four trades, of which the most
+successful was that of a "super" at a minor theatre. She was picked up
+by Paccard, and to him she told her woes. Paccard, Jacques Collin's
+disciple and right-hand man, spoke of this girl to his master, and
+when the master needed a slave he said to Prudence:
+
+"If you will serve me as the devil must be served, I will rid you of
+Durut."
+
+Durut was the convict; the Damocles' sword hung over Prudence
+Servien's head.
+
+But for these details, many critics would have thought Europe's
+attachment somewhat grotesque. And no one could have understood the
+startling announcement that Carlos had ready.
+
+"Yes, my girl, you can go back to Valenciennes. Here, read this."
+
+And he held out to her yesterday's paper, pointing to this paragraph:
+
+  "TOULON--Yesterday, Jean Francois Durut was executed here. Early
+  in the morning the garrison," etc.
+
+Prudence dropped the paper; her legs gave way under the weight of her
+body; she lived again; for, to use her own words, she never liked the
+taste of her food since the day when Durut had threatened her.
+
+"You see, I have kept my word. It has taken four years to bring Durut
+to the scaffold by leading him into a snare.--Well, finish my job
+here, and you will find yourself at the head of a little country
+business in your native town, with twenty thousand francs of your own
+as Paccard's wife, and I will allow him to be virtuous as a form of
+pension."
+
+Europe picked up the paper and read with greedy eyes all the details,
+of which for twenty years the papers have never been tired, as to the
+death of convicted criminals: the impressive scene, the chaplain--who
+has always converted the victim--the hardened criminal preaching to
+his fellow convicts, the battery of guns, the convicts on their knees;
+and then the twaddle and reflections which never lead to any change in
+the management of the prisons where eighteen hundred crimes are
+herded.
+
+"We must place Asie on the staff once more," said Carlos.
+
+Asie came forward, not understanding Europe's pantomime.
+
+"In bringing her back here as cook, you must begin by giving the Baron
+such a dinner as he never ate in his life," he went on. "Tell him that
+Asie has lost all her money at play, and has taken service once more.
+We shall not need an outdoor servant. Paccard shall be coachman.
+Coachmen do not leave their box, where they are safe out of the way;
+and he will run less risk from spies. Madame must turn him out in a
+powdered wig and a braided felt cocked hat; that will alter his
+appearance. Besides, I will make him us."
+
+"Are we going to have men-servants in the house?" asked Asie with a
+leer.
+
+"All honest folks," said Carlos.
+
+"All soft-heads," retorted the mulatto.
+
+"If the Baron takes a house, Paccard has a friend who will suit as the
+lodge porter," said Carlos. "Then we shall only need a footman and a
+kitchen-maid, and you can surely keep an eye on two strangers----"
+
+As Carlos was leaving, Paccard made his appearance.
+
+"Wait a little while, there are people in the street," said the man.
+
+This simple statement was alarming. Carlos went up to Europe's room,
+and stayed there till Paccard came to fetch him, having called a
+hackney cab that came into the courtyard. Carlos pulled down the
+blinds, and was driven off at a pace that defied pursuit.
+
+Having reached the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, he got out at a short
+distance from a hackney coach stand, to which he went on foot, and
+thence returned to the Quai Malaquais, escaping all inquiry.
+
+"Here, child," said he to Lucien, showing him four hundred banknotes
+for a thousand francs, "here is something on account for the purchase
+of the estates of Rubempre. We will risk a hundred thousand. Omnibuses
+have just been started; the Parisians will take to the novelty; in
+three months we shall have trebled our capital. I know the concern;
+they will pay splendid dividends taken out of the capital, to put a
+head on the shares--an old idea of Nucingen's revived. If we acquire
+the Rubempre land, we shall not have to pay on the nail.
+
+"You must go and see des Lupeaulx, and beg him to give you a personal
+recommendation to a lawyer named Desroches, a cunning dog, whom you
+must call on at his office. Get him to go to Rubempre and see how the
+land lies; promise him a premium of twenty thousand francs if he
+manages to secure you thirty thousand francs a year by investing eight
+hundred thousand francs in land round the ruins of the old house."
+
+"How you go on--on! on!"
+
+"I am always going on. This is no time for joking.--You must then
+invest a hundred thousand crowns in Treasury bonds, so as to lose no
+interest; you may safely leave it to Desroches, he is as honest as he
+is knowing.--That being done, get off to Angouleme, and persuade your
+sister and your brother-in-law to pledge themselves to a little fib in
+the way of business. Your relations are to have given you six hundred
+thousand francs to promote your marriage with Clotilde de Grandlieu;
+there is no disgrace in that."
+
+"We are saved!" cried Lucien, dazzled.
+
+"You are, yes!" replied Carlos. "But even you are not safe till you
+walk out of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin with Clotilde as your wife."
+
+"And what have you to fear?" said Lucien, apparently much concerned
+for his counselor.
+
+"Some inquisitive souls are on my track--I must assume the manners of
+a genuine priest; it is most annoying. The Devil will cease to protect
+me if he sees me with a breviary under my arm."
+
+
+
+At this moment the Baron de Nucingen, who was leaning on his cashier's
+arm, reached the door of his mansion.
+
+"I am ver' much afrait," said he, as he went in, "dat I hafe done a
+bat day's vork. Vell, we must make it up some oder vays."
+
+"De misfortune is dat you shall hafe been caught, mein Herr Baron,"
+said the worthy German, whose whole care was for appearances.
+
+"Ja, my miss'ess en titre should be in a position vody of me," said
+this Louis XIV. of the counting-house.
+
+Feeling sure that sooner or later Esther would be his, the Baron was
+now himself again, a masterly financier. He resumed the management of
+his affairs, and with such effect that his cashier, finding him in his
+office room at six o'clock next morning, verifying his securities,
+rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
+
+"Ah, ha! mein Herr Baron, you shall hafe saved money last night!" said
+he, with a half-cunning, half-loutish German grin.
+
+Though men who are as rich as the Baron de Nucingen have more
+opportunities than others for losing money, they also have more
+chances of making it, even when they indulge their follies. Though the
+financial policy of the house of Nucingen has been explained
+elsewhere, it may be as well to point out that such immense fortunes
+are not made, are not built up, are not increased, and are not
+retained in the midst of the commercial, political, and industrial
+revolutions of the present day but at the cost of immense losses, or,
+if you choose to view it so, of heavy taxes on private fortunes. Very
+little newly-created wealth is thrown into the common treasury of the
+world. Every fresh accumulation represents some new inequality in the
+general distribution of wealth. What the State exacts it makes some
+return for; but what a house like that of Nucingen takes, it keeps.
+
+Such covert robbery escapes the law for the reason which would have
+made a Jacques Collin of Frederick the Great, if, instead of dealing
+with provinces by means of battles, he had dealt in smuggled goods or
+transferable securities. The high politics of money-making consist in
+forcing the States of Europe to issue loans at twenty or at ten per
+cent, in making that twenty or ten per cent by the use of public
+funds, in squeezing industry on a vast scale by buying up raw
+material, in throwing a rope to the first founder of a business just
+to keep him above water till his drowned-out enterprise is safely
+landed--in short, in all the great battles for money-getting.
+
+The banker, no doubt, like the conqueror, runs risks; but there are so
+few men in a position to wage this warfare, that the sheep have no
+business to meddle. Such grand struggles are between the shepherds.
+Thus, as the defaulters are guilty of having wanted to win too much,
+very little sympathy is felt as a rule for the misfortunes brought
+about by the coalition of the Nucingens. If a speculator blows his
+brains out, if a stockbroker bolts, if a lawyer makes off with the
+fortune of a hundred families--which is far worse than killing a man
+--if a banker is insolvent, all these catastrophes are forgotten in
+Paris in few months, and buried under the oceanic surges of the great
+city.
+
+The colossal fortunes of Jacques Coeur, of the Medici, of the Angos of
+Dieppe, of the Auffredis of la Rochelle, of the Fuggers, of the
+Tiepolos, of the Corners, were honestly made long ago by the
+advantages they had over the ignorance of the people as to the sources
+of precious products; but nowadays geographical information has
+reached the masses, and competition has so effectually limited the
+profits, that every rapidly made fortune is the result of chance, or
+of a discovery, or of some legalized robbery. The lower grades of
+mercantile enterprise have retorted on the perfidious dealings of
+higher commerce, especially during the last ten years, by base
+adulteration of the raw material. Wherever chemistry is practised,
+wine is no longer procurable; the vine industry is consequently
+waning. Manufactured salt is sold to avoid the excise. The tribunals
+are appalled by this universal dishonesty. In short, French trade is
+regarded with suspicion by the whole world, and England too is fast
+being demoralized.
+
+With us the mischief has its origin in the political situation. The
+Charter proclaimed the reign of Money, and success has become the
+supreme consideration of an atheistic age. And, indeed, the corruption
+of the higher ranks is infinitely more hideous, in spite of the
+dazzling display and specious arguments of wealth, than that ignoble
+and more personal corruption of the inferior classes, of which certain
+details lend a comic element--terrible, if you will--to this drama.
+The Government, always alarmed by a new idea, has banished these
+materials of modern comedy from the stage. The citizen class, less
+liberal than Louis XIV., dreads the advent of its _Mariage de Figaro_,
+forbids the appearance of a political _Tartuffe_, and certainly would
+not allow _Turcaret_ to be represented, for Turcaret is king.
+Consequently, comedy has to be narrated, and a book is now the weapon
+--less swift, but no more sure--that writers wield.
+
+In the course of this morning, amid the coming and going of callers,
+orders to be given, and brief interviews, making Nucingen's private
+office a sort of financial lobby, one of his stockbrokers announced to
+him the disappearance of a member of the Company, one of the richest
+and cleverest too--Jacques Falleix, brother of Martin Falleix, and the
+successor of Jules Desmarets. Jacques Falleix was stockbroker in
+ordinary to the house of Nucingen. In concert with du Tillet and the
+Kellers, the Baron had plotted the ruin of this man in cold blood, as
+if it had been the killing of a Passover lamb.
+
+"He could not hafe helt on," replied the Baron quietly.
+
+Jacques Falleix had done them immense service in stock-jobbing. During
+a crisis a few months since he had saved the situation by acting
+boldly. But to look for gratitude from a money-dealer is as vain as to
+try to touch the heart of the wolves of the Ukraine in winter.
+
+"Poor fellow!" said the stockbroker. "He so little anticipated such a
+catastrophe, that he had furnished a little house for his mistress in
+the Rue Saint-Georges; he has spent one hundred and fifty thousand
+francs in decorations and furniture. He was so devoted to Madame du
+Val-Noble! The poor woman must give it all up. And nothing is paid
+for."
+
+"Goot, goot!" thought Nucingen, "dis is de very chance to make up for
+vat I hafe lost dis night!--He hafe paid for noting?" he asked his
+informant.
+
+"Why," said the stockbroker, "where would you find a tradesman so ill
+informed as to refuse credit to Jacques Falleix? There is a splendid
+cellar of wine, it would seem. By the way, the house is for sale; he
+meant to buy it. The lease is in his name.--What a piece of folly!
+Plate, furniture, wine, carriage-horses, everything will be valued in
+a lump, and what will the creditors get out of it?"
+
+"Come again to-morrow," said Nucingen. "I shall hafe seen all dat; and
+if it is not a declared bankruptcy, if tings can be arranged and
+compromised, I shall tell you to offer some reasonaple price for dat
+furniture, if I shall buy de lease----"
+
+"That can be managed," said his friend. "If you go there this morning,
+you will find one of Falleix's partners there with the tradespeople,
+who want to establish a first claim; but la Val-Noble has their
+accounts made out to Falleix."
+
+The Baron sent off one of his clerks forthwith to his lawyer. Jacques
+Falleix had spoken to him about this house, which was worth sixty
+thousand francs at most, and he wished to be put in possession of it
+at once, so as to avail himself of the privileges of the householder.
+
+The cashier, honest man, came to inquire whether his master had lost
+anything by Falleix's bankruptcy.
+
+"On de contrar' mein goot Volfgang, I stant to vin ein hundert tousant
+francs."
+
+"How vas dat?"
+
+"Vell, I shall hafe de little house vat dat poor Teufel Falleix should
+furnish for his mis'ess this year. I shall hafe all dat for fifty
+tousant franc to de creditors; and my notary, Maitre Cardot, shall
+hafe my orders to buy de house, for de lan'lord vant de money--I knew
+dat, but I hat lost mein head. Ver' soon my difine Esther shall life
+in a little palace. . . . I hafe been dere mit Falleix--it is close to
+here.--It shall fit me like a glofe."
+
+Falleix's failure required the Baron's presence at the Bourse; but he
+could not bear to leave his house in the Rue Saint-Lazare without
+going to the Rue Taitbout; he was already miserable at having been
+away from Esther for so many hours. He would have liked to keep her at
+his elbow. The profits he hoped to make out of his stockbrokers'
+plunder made the former loss of four hundred thousand francs quite
+easy to endure.
+
+Delighted to announce to his "anchel" that she was to move from the
+Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where she was to have "ein
+little palace" where her memories would no longer rise up in
+antagonism to their happiness, the pavement felt elastic under his
+feet; he walked like a young man in a young man's dream. As he turned
+the corner of the Rue des Trois Freres, in the middle of his dream,
+and of the road, the Baron beheld Europe coming towards him, looking
+very much upset.
+
+"Vere shall you go?" he asked.
+
+"Well, monsieur, I was on my way to you. You were quite right
+yesterday. I see now that poor madame had better have gone to prison
+for a few days. But how should women understand money matters? When
+madame's creditors heard that she had come home, they all came down
+upon us like birds of prey.--Last evening, at seven o'clock, monsieur,
+men came and stuck terrible posters up to announce a sale of furniture
+on Saturday--but that is nothing.--Madame, who is all heart, once upon
+a time to oblige that wretch of a man you know----"
+
+"Vat wretch?"
+
+"Well, the man she was in love with, d'Estourny--well, he was
+charming! He was only a gambler----"
+
+"He gambled with beveled cards!"
+
+"Well--and what do you do at the Bourse?" said Europe. "But let me go
+on. One day, to hinder Georges, as he said, from blowing out his
+brains, she pawned all her plate and her jewels, which had never been
+paid for. Now on hearing that she had given something to one of her
+creditors, they came in a body and made a scene. They threaten her
+with the police-court--your angel at that bar! Is it not enough to
+make a wig stand on end? She is bathed in tears; she talks of throwing
+herself into the river--and she will do it."
+
+"If I shall go to see her, dat is goot-bye to de Bourse; an' it is
+impossible but I shall go, for I shall make some money for her--you
+shall compose her. I shall pay her debts; I shall go to see her at
+four o'clock. But tell me, Eugenie, dat she shall lofe me a
+little----"
+
+"A little?--A great deal!--I tell you what, monsieur, nothing but
+generosity can win a woman's heart. You would, no doubt, have saved a
+hundred thousand francs or so by letting her go to prison. Well, you
+would never have won her heart. As she said to me--'Eugenie, he has
+been noble, grand--he has a great soul.'"
+
+"She hafe said dat, Eugenie?" cried the Baron.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, to me, myself."
+
+"Here--take dis ten louis."
+
+"Thank you.--But she is crying at this moment; she has been crying
+ever since yesterday as much as a weeping Magdalen could have cried in
+six months. The woman you love is in despair, and for debts that are
+not even hers! Oh! men--they devour women as women devour old fogies
+--there!"
+
+"Dey all is de same!--She hafe pledge' herself.--Vy, no one shall ever
+pledge herself.--Tell her dat she shall sign noting more.--I shall
+pay; but if she shall sign something more--I----"
+
+"What will you do?" said Europe with an air.
+
+"Mein Gott! I hafe no power over her.--I shall take de management of
+her little affairs----Dere, dere, go to comfort her, and you shall say
+that in ein mont she shall live in a little palace."
+
+"You have invested heavily, Monsieur le Baron, and for large interest,
+in a woman's heart. I tell you--you look to me younger. I am but a
+waiting-maid, but I have often seen such a change. It is happiness
+--happiness gives a certain glow. . . . If you have spent a little
+money, do not let that worry you; you will see what a good return it
+will bring. And I said to madame, I told her she would be the lowest
+of the low, a perfect hussy, if she did not love you, for you have
+picked her out of hell.--When once she has nothing on her mind, you
+will see. Between you and me, I may tell you, that night when she
+cried so much--What is to be said, we value the esteem of the man who
+maintains us--and she did not dare tell you everything. She wanted to
+fly."
+
+"To fly!" cried the Baron, in dismay at the notion. "But the Bourse,
+the Bourse!--Go 'vay, I shall not come in.--But tell her that I shall
+see her at her window--dat shall gife me courage!"
+
+Esther smiled at Monsieur de Nucingen as he passed the house, and he
+went ponderously on his way, saying:
+
+"She is ein anchel!"
+
+This was how Europe had succeeded in achieving the impossible. At
+about half-past two Esther had finished dressing, as she was wont to
+dress when she expected Lucien; she was looking charming. Seeing this,
+Prudence, looking out of the window, said, "There is monsieur!"
+
+The poor creature flew to the window, thinking she would see Lucien;
+she saw Nucingen.
+
+"Oh! how cruelly you hurt me!" she said.
+
+"There is no other way of getting you to seem to be gracious to a poor
+old man, who, after all, is going to pay your debts," said Europe.
+"For they are all to be paid."
+
+"What debts?" said the girl, who only cared to preserve her love,
+which dreadful hands were scattering to the winds.
+
+"Those which Monsieur Carlos made in your name."
+
+"Why, here are nearly four hundred and fifty thousand francs," cried
+Esther.
+
+"And you owe a hundred and fifty thousand more. But the Baron took it
+all very well.--He is going to remove you from hence, and place you in
+a little palace.--On my honor, you are not so badly off. In your
+place, as you have got on the right side of this man, as soon as
+Carlos is satisfied, I should make him give me a house and a settled
+income. You are certainly the handsomest woman I ever saw, madame, and
+the most attractive, but we so soon grow ugly! I was fresh and
+good-looking, and look at me! I am twenty-three, about the same age as
+madame, and I look ten years older. An illness is enough.--Well, but
+when you have a house in Paris and investments, you need never be
+afraid of ending in the streets."
+
+Esther had ceased to listen to Europe-Eugenie-Prudence Servien. The
+will of a man gifted with the genius of corruption had thrown Esther
+back into the mud with as much force as he had used to drag her out of
+it.
+
+Those who know love in its infinitude know that those who do not
+accept its virtues do not experience its pleasures. Since the scene in
+the den in the Rue de Langlade, Esther had utterly forgotten her
+former existence. She had since lived very virtuously, cloistered by
+her passion. Hence, to avoid any obstacle, the skilful fiend had been
+clever enough to lay such a train that the poor girl, prompted by her
+devotion, had merely to utter her consent to swindling actions already
+done, or on the point of accomplishment. This subtlety, revealing the
+mastery of the tempter, also characterized the methods by which he had
+subjugated Lucien. He created a terrible situation, dug a mine, filled
+it with powder, and at the critical moment said to his accomplice,
+"You have only to nod, and the whole will explode!"
+
+Esther of old, knowing only the morality peculiar to courtesans,
+thought all these attentions so natural, that she measured her rivals
+only by what they could get men to spend on them. Ruined fortunes are
+the conduct-stripes of these creatures. Carlos, in counting on
+Esther's memory, had not calculated wrongly.
+
+These tricks of warfare, these stratagems employed a thousand times,
+not only by these women, but by spendthrifts too, did not disturb
+Esther's mind. She felt nothing but her personal degradation; she
+loved Lucien, she was to be the Baron de Nucingen's mistress "by
+appointment"; this was all she thought of. The supposed Spaniard might
+absorb the earnest-money, Lucien might build up his fortune with the
+stones of her tomb, a single night of pleasure might cost the old
+banker so many thousand-franc notes more or less, Europe might extract
+a few hundred thousand francs by more or less ingenious trickery,
+--none of these things troubled the enamored girl; this alone was the
+canker that ate into her heart. For five years she had looked upon
+herself as being as white as an angel. She loved, she was happy, she
+had never committed the smallest infidelity. This beautiful pure love
+was now to be defiled.
+
+There was, in her mind, no conscious contrasting of her happy isolated
+past and her foul future life. It was neither interest nor sentiment
+that moved her, only an indefinable and all powerful feeling that she
+had been white and was now black, pure and was now impure, noble and
+was now ignoble. Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her
+unendurable. And when the Baron's passion had threatened her, she had
+really thought of throwing herself out of the window. In short, she
+loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who
+say they love, who often think they love best, dance, waltz, and flirt
+with other men, dress for the world, and look for a harvest of
+concupiscent glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved
+miracles of true love. She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses
+love and courtesans--women who, having rolled in mire and impurity,
+thirst for something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and
+who practice exclusiveness--the only word for an idea so little known
+in real life.
+
+Vanished nations, Greece, Rome, and the East, have at all times kept
+women shut up; the woman who loves should shut herself up. So it may
+easily be imagined that on quitting the palace of her fancy, where
+this poem had been enacted, to go to this old man's "little palace,"
+Esther felt heartsick. Urged by an iron hand, she had found herself
+waist-deep in disgrace before she had time to reflect; but for the
+past two days she had been reflecting, and felt a mortal chill about
+her heart.
+
+At the words, "End in the street," she started to her feet and said:
+
+"In the street!--No, in the Seine rather."
+
+"In the Seine? And what about Monsieur Lucien?" said Europe.
+
+This single word brought Esther to her seat again; she remained in her
+armchair, her eyes fixed on a rosette in the carpet, the fire in her
+brain drying up her tears.
+
+At four o'clock Nucingen found his angel lost in that sea of
+meditations and resolutions whereon a woman's spirit floats, and
+whence she emerges with utterances that are incomprehensible to those
+who have not sailed it in her convoy.
+
+"Clear your brow, meine Schone," said the Baron, sitting down by her.
+"You shall hafe no more debts--I shall arrange mit Eugenie, an' in ein
+mont you shall go 'vay from dese rooms and go to dat little palace.
+--Vas a pretty hant.--Gife it me dat I shall kiss it." Esther gave him
+her hand as a dog gives a paw. "Ach, ja! You shall gife de hant, but
+not de heart, and it is dat heart I lofe!"
+
+The words were spoken with such sincerity of accent, that poor Esther
+looked at the old man with a compassion in her eyes that almost
+maddened him. Lovers, like martyrs, feel a brotherhood in their
+sufferings! Nothing in the world gives such a sense of kindred as
+community of sorrow.
+
+"Poor man!" said she, "he really loves."
+
+As he heard the words, misunderstanding their meaning, the Baron
+turned pale, the blood tingled in his veins, he breathed the airs of
+heaven. At his age a millionaire, for such a sensation, will pay as
+much gold as a woman can ask.
+
+"I lofe you like vat I lofe my daughter," said he. "An' I feel dere"
+--and he laid her hand over his heart--"dat I shall not bear to see
+you anyting but happy."
+
+"If you would only be a father to me, I would love you very much; I
+would never leave you; and you would see that I am not a bad woman,
+not grasping or greedy, as I must seem to you now----"
+
+"You hafe done some little follies," said the Baron, "like all dose
+pretty vomen--dat is all. Say no more about dat. It is our pusiness to
+make money for you. Be happy! I shall be your fater for some days yet,
+for I know I must make you accustom' to my old carcase."
+
+"Really!" she exclaimed, springing on to Nucingen's knees, and
+clinging to him with her arm round his neck.
+
+"Really!" repeated he, trying to force a smile.
+
+She kissed his forehead; she believed in an impossible combination
+--she might remain untouched and see Lucien.
+
+She was so coaxing to the banker that she was La Torpille once more.
+She fairly bewitched the old man, who promised to be a father to her
+for forty days. Those forty days were to be employed in acquiring and
+arranging the house in the Rue Saint-Georges.
+
+When he was in the street again, as he went home, the Baron said to
+himself, "I am an old flat."
+
+But though in Esther's presence he was a mere child, away from her he
+resumed his lynx's skin; just as the gambler (in _le Joueur_) becomes
+affectionate to Angelique when he has not a liard.
+
+"A half a million francs I hafe paid, and I hafe not yet seen vat her
+leg is like.--Dat is too silly! but, happily, nobody shall hafe known
+it!" said he to himself three weeks after.
+
+And he made great resolutions to come to the point with the woman who
+had cost him so dear; then, in Esther's presence once more, he spent
+all the time he could spare her in making up for the roughness of his
+first words.
+
+"After all," said he, at the end of a month, "I cannot be de fater
+eternal!"
+
+Towards the end of the month of December 1829, just before installing
+Esther in the house in the Rue Saint-Georges, the Baron begged du
+Tillet to take Florine there, that she might see whether everything
+was suitable to Nucingen's fortune, and if the description of "a
+little palace" were duly realized by the artists commissioned to make
+the cage worthy of the bird.
+
+Every device known to luxury before the Revolution of 1830 made this
+residence a masterpiece of taste. Grindot the architect considered it
+his greatest achievement as a decorator. The staircase, which had been
+reconstructed of marble, the judicious use of stucco ornament,
+textiles, and gilding, the smallest details as much as the general
+effect, outdid everything of the kind left in Paris from the time of
+Louis XV.
+
+"This is my dream!--This and virtue!" said Florine with a smile. "And
+for whom are you spending all this money?"
+
+"For a voman vat is going up there," replied the Baron.
+
+"A way of playing Jupiter?" replied the actress. "And when is she on
+show?"
+
+"On the day of the house-warming," cried du Tillet.
+
+"Not before dat," said the Baron.
+
+"My word, how we must lace and brush and fig ourselves out," Florine
+went on. "What a dance the women will lead their dressmakers and
+hairdressers for that evening's fun!--And when is it to be?"
+
+"Dat is not for me to say."
+
+"What a woman she must be!" cried Florine. "How much I should like to
+see her!"
+
+"An' so should I," answered the Baron artlessly.
+
+"What! is everything new together--the house, the furniture, and the
+woman?"
+
+"Even the banker," said du Tillet, "for my old friend seems to me
+quite young again."
+
+"Well, he must go back to his twentieth year," said Florine; "at any
+rate, for once."
+
+In the early days of 1830 everybody in Paris was talking of Nucingen's
+passion and the outrageous splendor of his house. The poor Baron,
+pointed at, laughed at, and fuming with rage, as may easily be
+imagined, took it into his head that on the occasion of giving the
+house-warming he would at the same time get rid of his paternal
+disguise, and get the price of so much generosity. Always circumvented
+by "La Torpille," he determined to treat of their union by
+correspondence, so as to win from her an autograph promise. Bankers
+have no faith in anything less than a promissory note.
+
+So one morning early in the year he rose early, locked himself into
+his room, and composed the following letter in very good French; for
+though he spoke the language very badly, he could write it very
+well:--
+
+  "DEAR ESTHER, the flower of my thoughts and the only joy of my
+  life, when I told you that I loved you as I love my daughter, I
+  deceived you, I deceived myself. I only wished to express the
+  holiness of my sentiments, which are unlike those felt by other
+  men, in the first place, because I am an old man, and also because
+  I have never loved till now. I love you so much, that if you cost
+  me my fortune I should not love you the less.
+
+  "Be just! Most men would not, like me, have seen the angel in you;
+  I have never even glanced at your past. I love you both as I love
+  my daughter, Augusta, and as I might love my wife, if my wife
+  could have loved me. Since the only excuse for an old man's love
+  is that he should be happy, ask yourself if I am not playing a too
+  ridiculous part. I have taken you to be the consolation and joy of
+  my declining days. You know that till I die you will be as happy
+  as a woman can be; and you know, too, that after my death you will
+  be rich enough to be the envy of many women. In every stroke of
+  business I have effected since I have had the happiness of your
+  acquaintance, your share is set apart, and you have a standing
+  account with Nucingen's bank. In a few days you will move into a
+  house, which sooner or later, will be your own if you like it.
+  Now, plainly, will you still receive me then as a father, or will
+  you make me happy?
+
+  "Forgive me for writing so frankly, but when I am with you I lose
+  all courage; I feel too keenly that you are indeed my mistress. I
+  have no wish to hurt you; I only want to tell you how much I
+  suffer, and how hard it is to wait at my age, when every day takes
+  with it some hopes and some pleasures. Besides, the delicacy of my
+  conduct is a guarantee of the sincerity of my intentions. Have I
+  ever behaved as your creditor? You are like a citadel, and I am
+  not a young man. In answer to my appeals, you say your life is at
+  stake, and when I hear you, you make me believe it; but here I
+  sink into dark melancholy and doubts dishonorable to us both. You
+  seemed to me as sweet and innocent as you are lovely; but you
+  insist on destroying my convictions. Ask yourself!--You tell me
+  you bear a passion in your heart, an indomitable passion, but you
+  refuse to tell me the name of the man you love.--Is this natural?
+
+  "You have turned a fairly strong man into an incredibly weak one.
+  You see what I have come to; I am induced to ask you at the end of
+  five months what future hope there is for my passion. Again, I
+  must know what part I am to play at the opening of your house.
+  Money is nothing to me when it is spent for you; I will not be so
+  absurd as to make a merit to you of this contempt; but though my
+  love knows no limits, my fortune is limited, and I care for it
+  only for your sake. Well, if by giving you everything I possess I
+  might, as a poor man, win your affection, I would rather be poor
+  and loved than rich and scorned by you.
+
+  "You have altered me so completely, my dear Esther, that no one
+  knows me; I paid ten thousand francs for a picture by Joseph
+  Bridau because you told me that he was clever and unappreciated. I
+  give every beggar I meet five francs in your name. Well, and what
+  does the poor man ask, who regards himself as your debtor when you
+  do him the honor of accepting anything he can give you? He asks
+  only for a hope--and what a hope, good God! Is it not rather the
+  certainty of never having anything from you but what my passion
+  may seize? The fire in my heart will abet your cruel deceptions.
+  You find me ready to submit to every condition you can impose on
+  my happiness, on my few pleasures; but promise me at least that on
+  the day when you take possession of your house you will accept the
+  heart and service of him who, for the rest of his days, must sign
+  himself your slave,
+
+                                             "FREDERIC DE NUCINGEN."
+
+
+"Faugh! how he bores me--this money bag!" cried Esther, a courtesan
+once more. She took a small sheet of notepaper and wrote all over it,
+as close as it could go, Scribe's famous phrase, which has become a
+proverb, "Prenez mon ours."
+
+A quarter of an hour later, Esther, overcome by remorse, wrote the
+following letter:--
+
+  "MONSIEUR LE BARON,--
+
+  "Pay no heed to the note you have just received from me; I had
+  relapsed into the folly of my youth. Forgive, monsieur, a poor
+  girl who ought to be your slave. I never more keenly felt the
+  degradation of my position than on the day when I was handed over
+  to you. You have paid; I owe myself to you. There is nothing more
+  sacred than a debt of dishonor. I have no right to compound it by
+  throwing myself into the Seine.
+
+  "A debt can always be discharged in that dreadful coin which is
+  good only to the debtor; you will find me yours to command. I will
+  pay off in one night all the sums for which that fatal hour has
+  been mortgaged; and I am sure that such an hour with me is worth
+  millions--all the more because it will be the only one, the last.
+  I shall then have paid the debt, and may get away from life. A
+  good woman has a chance of restoration after a fall; but we, the
+  like of us, fall too low.
+
+  "My determination is so fixed that I beg you will keep this letter
+  in evidence of the cause of death of her who remains, for one day,
+  your servant,
+
+                                                           "ESTHER."
+
+
+Having sent this letter, Esther felt a pang of regret. Ten minutes
+after she wrote a third note, as follows:--
+
+  "Forgive me, dear Baron--it is I once more. I did not mean either
+  to make game of you or to wound you; I only want you to reflect on
+  this simple argument: If we were to continue in the position
+  towards each other of father and daughter, your pleasure would be
+  small, but it would be enduring. If you insist on the terms of the
+  bargain, you will live to mourn for me.
+
+  "I will trouble you no more: the day when you shall choose
+  pleasure rather than happiness will have no morrow for me.--Your
+  daughter,
+
+                                                           "ESTHER."
+
+
+On receiving the first letter, the Baron fell into a cold fury such as
+a millionaire may die of; he looked at himself in the glass and rang
+the bell.
+
+"An hot bat for mein feet," said he to his new valet.
+
+While he was sitting with his feet in the bath, the second letter
+came; he read it, and fainted away. He was carried to bed.
+
+When the banker recovered consciousness, Madame de Nucingen was
+sitting at the foot of the bed.
+
+"The hussy is right!" said she. "Why do you try to buy love? Is it to
+be bought in the market!--Let me see your letter to her."
+
+The Baron gave her sundry rough drafts he had made; Madame de Nucingen
+read them, and smiled. Then came Esther's third letter.
+
+"She is a wonderful girl!" cried the Baroness, when she had read it.
+
+"Vat shall I do, montame?" asked the Baron of his wife.
+
+"Wait."
+
+"Wait? But nature is pitiless!" he cried.
+
+"Look here, my dear, you have been admirably kind to me," said
+Delphine; "I will give you some good advice."
+
+"You are a ver' goot voman," said he. "Ven you hafe any debts I shall
+pay."
+
+"Your state on receiving these letters touches a woman far more than
+the spending of millions, or than all the letters you could write,
+however fine they may be. Try to let her know it, indirectly; perhaps
+she will be yours! And--have no scruples, she will not die of that,"
+added she, looking keenly at her husband.
+
+But Madame de Nucingen knew nothing whatever of the nature of such
+women.
+
+"Vat a clefer voman is Montame de Nucingen!" said the Baron to himself
+when his wife had left him.
+
+Still, the more the Baron admired the subtlety of his wife's counsel,
+the less he could see how he might act upon it; and he not only felt
+that he was stupid, but he told himself so.
+
+The stupidity of wealthy men, though it is almost proverbial, is only
+comparative. The faculties of the mind, like the dexterity of the
+limbs, need exercise. The dancer's strength is in his feet; the
+blacksmith's in his arms; the market porter is trained to carry loads;
+the singer works his larynx; and the pianist hardens his wrist. A
+banker is practised in business matters; he studies and plans them,
+and pulls the wires of various interests, just as a playwright trains
+his intelligence in combining situations, studying his actors, giving
+life to his dramatic figures.
+
+We should no more look for powers of conversation in the Baron de
+Nucingen than for the imagery of a poet in the brain of a
+mathematician. How many poets occur in an age, who are either good
+prose writers, or as witty in the intercourse of daily life as Madame
+Cornuel? Buffon was dull company; Newton was never in love; Lord Byron
+loved nobody but himself; Rousseau was gloomy and half crazy; La
+Fontaine absent-minded. Human energy, equally distributed, produces
+dolts, mediocrity in all; unequally bestowed it gives rise to those
+incongruities to whom the name of Genius is given, and which, if we
+only could see them, would look like deformities. The same law governs
+the body; perfect beauty is generally allied with coldness or
+silliness. Though Pascal was both a great mathematician and a great
+writer, though Beaumarchais was a good man of business, and Zamet a
+profound courtier, these rare exceptions prove the general principle
+of the specialization of brain faculties.
+
+Within the sphere of speculative calculations the banker put forth as
+much intelligence and skill, finesse and mental power, as a practised
+diplomatist expends on national affairs. If he were equally remarkable
+outside his office, the banker would be a great man. Nucingen made one
+with the Prince de Ligne, with Mazarin or with Diderot, is a human
+formula that is almost inconceivable, but which has nevertheless been
+known as Pericles, Aristotle, Voltaire, and Napoleon. The splendor of
+the Imperial crown must not blind us to the merits of the individual;
+the Emperor was charming, well informed, and witty.
+
+Monsieur de Nucingen, a banker and nothing more, having no
+inventiveness outside his business, like most bankers, had no faith in
+anything but sound security. In matters of art he had the good sense
+to go, cash in hand, to experts in every branch, and had recourse to
+the best architect, the best surgeon, the greatest connoisseur in
+pictures or statues, the cleverest lawyer, when he wished to build a
+house, to attend to his health, to purchase a work of art or an
+estate. But as there are no recognized experts in intrigue, no
+connoisseurs in love affairs, a banker finds himself in difficulties
+when he is in love, and much puzzled as to the management of a woman.
+So Nucingen could think of no better method than that he had hitherto
+pursued--to give a sum of money to some Frontin, male or female, to
+act and think for him.
+
+Madame de Saint-Esteve alone could carry out the plan imagined by the
+Baroness. Nucingen bitterly regretted having quarreled with the odious
+old clothes-seller. However, feeling confident of the attractions of
+his cash-box and the soothing documents signed Garat, he rang for his
+man and told him in inquire for the repulsive widow in the Rue
+Saint-Marc, and desire her to come to see him.
+
+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
+  creatures; true affection touches us far more deeply than finding
+  ourselves the objects of lavish liberality. For my part, I have
+  always rather dreaded being a peg on which you would hang your
+  vanities. It annoyed me to be nothing else to you. Yes, in spite
+  of all your protestations, I fancied you regarded me merely as a
+  woman paid for.
+
+  "Well, you will now find me a good girl, but on condition of your
+  always obeying me a little.
+
+  "If this letter can in any way take the place of the doctor's
+  prescription, prove it by coming to see me after the Bourse
+  closes. You will find me in full fig, dressed in your gifts, for I
+  am for life your pleasure-machine,
+
+                                                         "ESTHER."
+
+
+At the Bourse the Baron de Nucingen was so gay, so cheerful, seemed so
+easy-going, and allowed himself so many jests, that du Tillet and the
+Kellers, who were on 'change, could not help asking him the reason of
+his high spirits.
+
+"I am belofed. Ve shall soon gife dat house-varming," he told du
+Tillet.
+
+"And how much does it cost you?" asked Francois Keller rudely--it was
+said that he had spent twenty-five thousand francs a year on Madame
+Colleville.
+
+"Dat voman is an anchel! She never has ask' me for one sou."
+
+"They never do," replied du Tillet. "And it is to avoid asking that
+they have always aunts or mothers."
+
+Between the Bourse and the Rue Taitbout seven times did the Baron say
+to his servant:
+
+"You go so slow--vip de horse!"
+
+He ran lightly upstairs, and for the first time he saw his mistress in
+all the beauty of such women, who have no other occupation than the
+care of their person and their dress. Just out of her bath the flower
+was quite fresh, and perfumed so as to inspire desire in Robert
+d'Arbrissel.
+
+Esther was in a charming toilette. A dress of black corded silk
+trimmed with rose-colored gimp opened over a petticoat of gray satin,
+the costume subsequently worn by Amigo, the handsome singer, in _I
+Puritani_. A Honiton lace kerchief fell or floated over her shoulders.
+The sleeves of her gown were strapped round with cording to divide the
+puffs, which for some little time fashion has substituted for the
+large sleeves which had grown too monstrous. Esther had fastened a
+Mechlin lace cap on her magnificent hair with a pin, _a la folle_, as it
+is called, ready to fall, but not really falling, giving her an
+appearance of being tumbled and in disorder, though the white parting
+showed plainly on her little head between the waves of her hair.
+
+"Is it not a shame to see madame so lovely in a shabby drawing-room
+like this?" said Europe to the Baron, as she admitted him.
+
+"Vel, den, come to the Rue Saint-Georches," said the Baron, coming to
+a full stop like a dog marking a partridge. "The veather is splendit,
+ve shall drife to the Champs Elysees, and Montame Saint-Estefe and
+Eugenie shall carry dere all your clo'es an' your linen, an' ve shall
+dine in de Rue Saint-Georches."
+
+"I will do whatever you please," said Esther, "if only you will be so
+kind as to call my cook Asie, and Eugenie Europe. I have given those
+names to all the women who have served me ever since the first two. I
+do not love change----"
+
+"Asie, Europe! echoed the Baron, laughing. "How ver' droll you are.
+--You hafe infentions.--I should hafe eaten many dinners before I
+should hafe call' a cook Asie."
+
+"It is our business to be droll," said Esther. "Come, now, may not a
+poor girl be fed by Asia and dressed by Europe when you live on the
+whole world? It is a myth, I say; some women would devour the earth, I
+only ask for half.--You see?"
+
+"Vat a voman is Montame Saint-Estefe!" said the Baron to himself as he
+admired Esther's changed demeanor.
+
+"Europe, my girl, I want my bonnet," said Esther. "I must have a black
+silk bonnet lined with pink and trimmed with lace."
+
+"Madame Thomas has not sent it home.--Come, Monsieur le Baron; quick,
+off you go! Begin your functions as a man-of-all-work--that is to say,
+of all pleasure! Happiness is burdensome. You have your carriage here,
+go to Madame Thomas," said Europe to the Baron. "Make your servant ask
+for the bonnet for Madame van Bogseck.--And, above all," she added in
+his ear, "bring her the most beautiful bouquet to be had in Paris. It
+is winter, so try to get tropical flowers."
+
+The Baron went downstairs and told his servants to go to "Montame
+Thomas."
+
+The coachman drove to a famous pastrycook's.
+
+"She is a milliner, you damn' idiot, and not a cake-shop!" cried the
+Baron, who rushed off to Madame Prevot's in the Palais-Royal, where he
+had a bouquet made up for the price of ten louis, while his man went
+to the great modiste.
+
+A superficial observer, walking about Paris, wonders who the fools can
+be that buy the fabulous flowers that grace the illustrious
+bouquetiere's shop window, and the choice products displayed by Chevet
+of European fame--the only purveyor who can vie with the _Rocher de
+Cancale_ in a real and delicious _Revue des deux Mondes_.
+
+Well, every day in Paris a hundred or more passions a la Nucingen come
+into being, and find expression in offering such rarities as queens
+dare not purchase, presented, kneeling, to baggages who, to use Asie's
+word, like to cut a dash. But for these little details, a decent
+citizen would be puzzled to conceive how a fortune melts in the hands
+of these women, whose social function, in Fourier's scheme, is perhaps
+to rectify the disasters caused by avarice and cupidity. Such
+squandering is, no doubt, to the social body what a prick of the
+lancet is to a plethoric subject. In two months Nucingen had shed
+broadcast on trade more than two hundred thousand francs.
+
+By the time the old lover returned, darkness was falling; the bouquet
+was no longer of any use. The hour for driving in the Champs-Elysees
+in winter is between two and four. However, the carriage was of use to
+convey Esther from the Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where
+she took possession of the "little palace." Never before had Esther
+been the object of such worship or such lavishness, and it amazed her;
+but, like all royal ingrates, she took care to express no surprise.
+
+When you go into St. Peter's at Rome, to enable you to appreciate the
+extent and height of this queen of cathedrals, you are shown the
+little finger of a statue which looks of a natural size, and which
+measures I know not how much. Descriptions have been so severely
+criticised, necessary as they are to a history of manners, that I must
+here follow the example of the Roman Cicerone. As they entered the
+dining-room, the Baron could not resist asking Esther to feel the
+stuff of which the window curtains were made, draped with magnificent
+fulness, lined with white watered silk, and bordered with a gimp fit
+to trim a Portuguese princess' bodice. The material was silk brought
+from Canton, on which Chinese patience had painted Oriental birds with
+a perfection only to be seen in mediaeval illuminations, or in the
+Missal of Charles V., the pride of the Imperial library at Vienna.
+
+"It hafe cost two tousand franc' an ell for a milord who brought it
+from Intia----"
+
+"It is very nice, charming," said Esther. "How I shall enjoy drinking
+champagne here; the froth will not get dirty here on a bare floor."
+
+"Oh! madame!" cried Europe, "only look at the carpet!"
+
+"Dis carpet hafe been made for de Duc de Torlonia, a frient of mine,
+who fount it too dear, so I took it for you who are my qveen," said
+Nucingen.
+
+By chance this carpet, by one of our cleverest designers, matched with
+the whimsicalities of the Chinese curtains. The walls, painted by
+Schinner and Leon de Lora, represented voluptuous scenes, in carved
+ebony frames, purchased for their weight in gold from Dusommerard, and
+forming panels with a narrow line of gold that coyly caught the light.
+
+From this you may judge of the rest.
+
+"You did well to bring me here," said Esther. "It will take me a week
+to get used to my home and not to look like a parvenu in it----"
+
+"_My_ home! Den you shall accept it?" cried the Baron in glee.
+
+"Why, of course, and a thousand times of course, stupid animal," said
+she, smiling.
+
+"Animal vas enough----"
+
+"Stupid is a term of endearment," said she, looking at him.
+
+The poor man took Esther's hand and pressed it to his heart. He was
+animal enough to feel, but too stupid to find words.
+
+"Feel how it beats--for ein little tender vort----"
+
+And he conducted his goddess to her room.
+
+"Oh, madame, I cannot stay here!" cried Eugenie. "It makes me long to
+go to bed."
+
+"Well," said Esther, "I mean to please the magician who has worked all
+these wonders.--Listen, my fat elephant, after dinner we will go to
+the play together. I am starving to see a play."
+
+It was just five years since Esther had been to a theatre. All Paris
+was rushing at that time to the Porte-Saint-Martin, to see one of
+those pieces to which the power of the actors lends a terrible
+expression of reality, _Richard Darlington_. Like all ingenuous natures,
+Esther loved to feel the thrills of fear as much as to yield to tears
+of pathos.
+
+"Let us go to see Frederick Lemaitre," said she; "he is an actor I
+adore."
+
+"It is a horrible piece," said Nucingen foreseeing the moment when he
+must show himself in public.
+
+He sent his servant to secure one of the two stage-boxes on the grand
+tier.--And this is another strange feature of Paris. Whenever success,
+on feet of clay, fills a house, there is always a stage-box to be had
+ten minutes before the curtain rises. The managers keep it for
+themselves, unless it happens to be taken for a passion a la Nucingen.
+This box, like Chevet's dainties, is a tax levied on the whims of the
+Parisian Olympus.
+
+It would be superfluous to describe the plate and china. Nucingen had
+provided three services of plate--common, medium, and best; and the
+best--plates, dishes, and all, was of chased silver gilt. The banker,
+to avoid overloading the table with gold and silver, had completed the
+array of each service with porcelain of exquisite fragility in the
+style of Dresden china, which had cost more than the plate. As to the
+linen--Saxony, England, Flanders, and France vied in the perfection of
+flowered damask.
+
+At dinner it was the Baron's turn to be amazed on tasting Asie's
+cookery.
+
+"I understant," said he, "vy you call her Asie; dis is Asiatic
+cooking."
+
+"I begin to think he loves me," said Esther to Europe; "he has said
+something almost like a _bon mot_."
+
+"I said many vorts," said he.
+
+"Well! he is more like Turcaret than I had heard he was!" cried the
+girl, laughing at this reply, worthy of the many artless speeches for
+which the banker was famous.
+
+The dishes were so highly spiced as to give the Baron an indigestion,
+on purpose that he might go home early; so this was all he got in the
+way of pleasure out of his first evening with Esther. At the theatre
+he was obliged to drink an immense number of glasses of eau sucree,
+leaving Esther alone between the acts.
+
+By a coincidence so probable that it can scarcely be called chance,
+Tullia, Mariette, and Madame du Val-Noble were at the play that
+evening. _Richard Darlington_ enjoyed a wild success--and a deserved
+success--such as is seen only in Paris. The men who saw this play all
+came to the conclusion that a lawful wife might be thrown out of
+window, and the wives loved to see themselves unjustly persecuted.
+
+The women said to each other: "This is too much! we are driven to it
+--but it often happens!"
+
+Now a woman as beautiful as Esther, and dressed as Esther was, could
+not show off with impunity in a stage-box at the Porte-Saint-Martin.
+And so, during the second act, there was quite a commotion in the box
+where the two dancers were sitting, caused by the undoubted identity
+of the unknown fair one with La Torpille.
+
+"Heyday! where has she dropped from?" said Mariette to Madame du
+Val-Noble. "I thought she was drowned."
+
+"But is it she? She looks to me thirty-seven times younger and
+handsomer than she was six years ago."
+
+"Perhaps she has preserved herself in ice like Madame d'Espard and
+Madame Zayonchek," said the Comte de Brambourg, who had brought the
+three women to the play, to a pit-tier box. "Isn't she the 'rat' you
+meant to send me to hocus my uncle?" said he, addressing Tullia.
+
+"The very same," said the singer. "Du Bruel, go down to the stalls and
+see if it is she."
+
+"What brass she has got!" exclaimed Madame du Val-Noble, using an
+expressive but vulgar phrase.
+
+"Oh!" said the Comte de Brambourg, "she very well may. She is with my
+friend the Baron de Nucingen--I will go----"
+
+"Is that the immaculate Joan of Arc who has taken Nucingen by storm,
+and who has been talked of till we are all sick of her, these three
+months past?" asked Mariette.
+
+"Good-evening, my dear Baron," said Philippe Bridau, as he went into
+Nucingen's box. "So here you are, married to Mademoiselle Esther.
+--Mademoiselle, I am an old officer whom you once on a time were to
+have got out of a scrape--at Issoudun--Philippe Bridau----"
+
+"I know nothing of it," said Esther, looking round the house through
+her opera-glasses.
+
+"Dis lady," said the Baron, "is no longer known as 'Esther' so short!
+She is called Montame de Champy--ein little estate vat I have bought
+for her----"
+
+"Though you do things in such style," said the Comte, "these ladies
+are saying that Madame de Champy gives herself too great airs.--If you
+do not choose to remember me, will you condescend to recognize
+Mariette, Tullia, Madame du Val-Noble?" the parvenu went on--a man for
+whom the Duc de Maufrigneuse had won the Dauphin's favor.
+
+"If these ladies are kind to me, I am willing to make myself pleasant
+to them," replied Madame de Champy drily.
+
+"Kind! Why, they are excellent; they have named you Joan of Arc,"
+replied Philippe.
+
+"Vell den, if dese ladies vill keep you company," said Nucingen, "I
+shall go 'vay, for I hafe eaten too much. Your carriage shall come for
+you and your people.--Dat teufel Asie!"
+
+"The first time, and you leave me alone!" said Esther. "Come, come,
+you must have courage enough to die on deck. I must have my man with
+me as I go out. If I were insulted, am I to cry out for nothing?"
+
+The old millionaire's selfishness had to give way to his duties as a
+lover. The Baron suffered but stayed.
+
+Esther had her own reasons for detaining "her man." If she admitted
+her acquaintance, she would be less closely questioned in his presence
+than if she were alone. Philippe Bridau hurried back to the box where
+the dancers were sitting, and informed them of the state of affairs.
+
+"Oh! so it is she who has fallen heir to my house in the Rue
+Saint-Georges," observed Madame du Val-Noble with some bitterness;
+for she, as she phrased it, was on the loose.
+
+"Most likely," said the Colonel. "Du Tillet told me that the Baron had
+spent three times as much there as your poor Falleix."
+
+"Let us go round to her box," said Tullia.
+
+"Not if I know it," said Mariette; "she is much too handsome, I will
+call on her at home."
+
+"I think myself good-looking enough to risk it," remarked Tullia.
+
+So the much-daring leading dancer went round between the acts and
+renewed acquaintance with Esther, who would talk only on general
+subjects.
+
+"And where have you come back from, my dear child?" asked Tullia, who
+could not restrain her curiosity.
+
+"Oh, I was for five years in a castle in the Alps with an Englishman,
+as jealous as a tiger, a nabob; I called him a nabot, a dwarf, for he
+was not so big as le bailli de Ferrette.
+
+"And then I came across a banker--from a savage to salvation, as
+Florine might say. And now here I am in Paris again; I long so for
+amusement that I mean to have a rare time. I shall keep open house. I
+have five years of solitary confinement to make good, and I am
+beginning to do it. Five years of an Englishman is rather too much;
+six weeks are the allowance according to the advertisements."
+
+"Was it the Baron who gave you that lace?"
+
+"No, it is a relic of the nabob.--What ill-luck I have, my dear! He
+was as yellow as a friend's smile at a success; I thought he would be
+dead in ten months. Pooh! he was a strong as a mountain. Always
+distrust men who say they have a liver complaint. I will never listen
+to a man who talks of his liver.--I have had too much of livers--who
+cannot die. My nabob robbed me; he died without making a will, and the
+family turned me out of doors like a leper.--So, then, I said to my
+fat friend here, 'Pay for two!'--You may as well call me Joan of Arc;
+I have ruined England, and perhaps I shall die at the stake----"
+
+"Of love?" said Tullia.
+
+"And burnt alive," answered Esther, and the question made her
+thoughtful.
+
+The Baron laughed at all this vulgar nonsense, but he did not always
+follow it readily, so that his laughter sounded like the forgotten
+crackers that go off after fireworks.
+
+
+
+We all live in a sphere of some kind, and the inhabitants of every
+sphere are endowed with an equal share of curiosity.
+
+Next evening at the opera, Esther's reappearance was the great news
+behind the scenes. Between two and four in the afternoon all Paris in
+the Champs-Elysees had recognized La Torpille, and knew at last who
+was the object of the Baron de Nucingen's passion.
+
+"Do you know," Blondet remarked to de Marsay in the greenroom at the
+opera-house, "that La Torpille vanished the very day after the evening
+when we saw her here and recognized her in little Rubempre's
+mistress."
+
+In Paris, as in the provinces, everything is known. The police of the
+Rue de Jerusalem are not so efficient as the world itself, for every
+one is a spy on every one else, though unconsciously. Carlos had fully
+understood the danger of Lucien's position during and after the
+episode of the Rue Taitbout.
+
+No position can be more dreadful than that in which Madame du
+Val-Noble now found herself; and the phrase to be on the loose, or, as
+the French say, left on foot, expresses it perfectly. The recklessness
+and extravagance of these women precludes all care for the future. In
+that strange world, far more witty and amusing than might be supposed,
+only such women as are not gifted with that perfect beauty which time
+can hardly impair, and which is quite unmistakable--only such women, in
+short, as can be loved merely as a fancy, ever think of old age and
+save a fortune. The handsomer they are, the more improvident they are.
+
+"Are you afraid of growing ugly that you are saving money?" was a
+speech of Florine's to Mariette, which may give a clue to one cause of
+this thriftlessness.
+
+Thus, if a speculator kills himself, or a spendthrift comes to the end
+of his resources, these women fall with hideous promptitude from
+audacious wealth to the utmost misery. They throw themselves into the
+clutches of the old-clothes buyer, and sell exquisite jewels for a
+mere song; they run into debt, expressly to keep up a spurious luxury,
+in the hope of recovering what they have lost--a cash-box to draw
+upon. These ups and downs of their career account for the costliness
+of such connections, generally brought about as Asie had hooked
+(another word of her vocabulary) Nucingen for Esther.
+
+And so those who know their Paris are quite aware of the state of
+affairs when, in the Champs-Elysees--that bustling and mongrel bazaar
+--they meet some woman in a hired fly whom six months or a year before
+they had seen in a magnificent and dazzling carriage, turned out in
+the most luxurious style.
+
+"If you fall on Sainte-Pelagie, you must contrive to rebound on the
+Bois de Boulogne," said Florine, laughing with Blondet over the little
+Vicomte de Portenduere.
+
+Some clever women never run the risk of this contrast. They bury
+themselves in horrible furnished lodgings, where they expiate their
+extravagance by such privations as are endured by travelers lost in a
+Sahara; but they never take the smallest fancy for economy. They
+venture forth to masked balls; they take journeys into the provinces;
+they turn out well dressed on the boulevards when the weather is fine.
+And then they find in each other the devoted kindness which is known
+only among proscribed races. It costs a woman in luck no effort to
+bestow some help, for she says to herself, "I may be in the same
+plight by Sunday!"
+
+However, the most efficient protector still is the purchaser of dress.
+When this greedy money-lender finds herself the creditor, she stirs
+and works on the hearts of all the old men she knows in favor of the
+mortgaged creature in thin boots and a fine bonnet.
+
+In this way Madame du Val-Noble, unable to foresee the downfall of
+one of the richest and cleverest of stockbrokers, was left quite
+unprepared. She had spent Falleix's money on her whims, and trusted
+to him for all necessaries and to provide for the future.
+
+"How could I have expected such a thing in a man who seemed such a
+good fellow?"
+
+In almost every class of society the good fellow is an open-handed
+man, who will lend a few crowns now and again without expecting them
+back, who always behaves in accordance with a certain code of delicate
+feeling above mere vulgar, obligatory, and commonplace morality.
+Certain men, regarded as virtuous and honest, have, like Nucingen,
+ruined their benefactors; and certain others, who have been through a
+criminal court, have an ingenious kind of honesty towards women.
+Perfect virtue, the dream of Moliere, an Alceste, is exceedingly rare;
+still, it is to be found everywhere, even in Paris. The "good fellow"
+is the product of a certain facility of nature which proves nothing. A
+man is a good fellow, as a cat is silky, as a slipper is made to slip
+on to the foot. And so, in the meaning given to the word by a kept
+woman, Falleix ought to have warned his mistress of his approaching
+bankruptcy and have given her enough to live upon.
+
+D'Estourny, the dashing swindler, was a good fellow; he cheated at
+cards, but he had set aside thirty thousand francs for his mistress.
+And at carnival suppers women would retort on his accusers: "No
+matter. You may say what you like, Georges was a good fellow; he had
+charming manners, he deserved a better fate."
+
+These girls laugh laws to scorn, and adore a certain kind of
+generosity; they sell themselves, as Esther had done, for a secret
+ideal, which is their religion.
+
+After saving a few jewels from the wreck with great difficulty, Madame
+du Val-Noble was crushed under the burden of the horrible report: "She
+ruined Falleix." She was almost thirty; and though she was in the
+prime of her beauty, still she might be called an old woman, and all
+the more so because in such a crisis all a woman's rivals are against
+her. Mariette, Florine, Tullia would ask their friend to dinner, and
+gave her some help; but as they did not know the extent of her debts,
+they did not dare to sound the depths of that gulf. An interval of six
+years formed rather too long a gap in the ebb and flow of the Paris
+tide, between La Torpille and Madame du Val-Noble, for the woman "on
+foot" to speak to the woman in her carriage; but La Val-Noble knew
+that Esther was too generous not to remember sometimes that she had,
+as she said, fallen heir to her possessions, and not to seek her out
+by some meeting which might seem accidental though arranged. To bring
+about such an accident, Madame du Val-Noble, dressed in the most
+lady-like way, walked out every day in the Champs-Elysees on the arm
+of Theodore Gaillard, who afterwards married her, and who, in these
+straits, behaved very well to his former mistress, giving her boxes at
+the play, and inviting her to every spree. She flattered herself that
+Esther, driving out one fine day, would meet her face to face.
+
+Esther's coachman was Paccard--for her household had been made up in
+five days by Asie, Europe, and Paccard under Carlos' instructions, and
+in such a way that the house in the Rue Saint-Georges was an
+impregnable fortress.
+
+Peyrade, on his part, prompted by deep hatred, by the thirst for
+vengeance, and, above all, by his wish to see his darling Lydie
+married, made the Champs-Elysees the end of his walks as soon as he
+heard from Contenson that Monsieur de Nucingen's mistress might be
+seen there. Peyrade could dress so exactly like an Englishman, and
+spoke French so perfectly with the mincing accent that the English
+give the language; he knew England itself so well, and was so familiar
+with all the customs of the country, having been sent to England by
+the police authorities three times between 1779 and 1786, that he
+could play his part in London and at ambassadors' residences without
+awaking suspicion. Peyrade, who had some resemblance to Musson the
+famous juggler, could disguise himself so effectually that once
+Contenson did not recognize him.
+
+Followed by Contenson dressed as a mulatto, Peyrade examined Esther
+and her servants with an eye which, seeming heedless, took everything
+in. Hence it quite naturally happened that in the side alley where the
+carriage-company walk in fine dry weather, he was on the spot one day
+when Esther met Madame du Val-Noble. Peyrade, his mulatto in livery at
+his heels, was airing himself quite naturally, like a nabob who is
+thinking of no one but himself, in a line with the two women, so as to
+catch a few words of their conversation.
+
+"Well, my dear child," said Esther to Madame du Val-Noble, "come and
+see me. Nucingen owes it to himself not to leave his stockbroker's
+mistress without a sou----"
+
+"All the more so because it is said that he ruined Falleix," remarked
+Theodore Gaillard, "and that we have every right to squeeze him."
+
+"He dines with me to-morrow," said Esther; "come and meet him." Then
+she added in an undertone:
+
+"I can do what I like with him, and as yet he has not that!" and she
+put the nail of a gloved finger under the prettiest of her teeth with
+the click that is familiarly known to express with peculiar energy:
+"Just nothing."
+
+"You have him safe----"
+
+"My dear, as yet he has only paid my debts."
+
+"How mean!" cried Suzanne du Val-Noble.
+
+"Oh!" said Esther, "I had debts enough to frighten a minister of
+finance. Now, I mean to have thirty thousand a year before the first
+stroke of midnight. Oh! he is excellent, I have nothing to complain
+of. He does it well.--In a week we give a house-warming; you must
+come.--That morning he is to make me a present of the lease of the
+house in the Rue Saint-Georges. In decency, it is impossible to live
+in such a house on less than thirty thousand francs a year--of my own,
+so as to have them safe in case of accident. I have known poverty, and
+I want no more of it. There are certain acquaintances one has had
+enough of at once."
+
+"And you, who used to say, 'My face is my fortune!'--How you have
+changed!" exclaimed Suzanne.
+
+"It is the air of Switzerland; you grow thrifty there.--Look here; go
+there yourself, my dear! Catch a Swiss, and you may perhaps catch a
+husband, for they have not yet learned what such women as we are can
+be. And, at any rate, you may come back with a passion for investments
+in the funds--a most respectable and elegant passion!--Good-bye."
+
+Esther got into her carriage again, a handsome carriage drawn by the
+finest pair of dappled gray horses at that time to be seen in Paris.
+
+"The woman who is getting into the carriage is handsome," said Peyrade
+to Contenson, "but I like the one who is walking best; follow her, and
+find out who she is."
+
+"That is what that Englishman has just remarked in English," said
+Theodore Gaillard, repeating Peyrade's remark to Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+Before making this speech in English, Peyrade had uttered a word or
+two in that language, which had made Theodore look up in a way that
+convinced him that the journalist understood English.
+
+Madame du Val-Noble very slowly made her way home to very decent
+furnished rooms in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, glancing round now and then
+to see if the mulatto were following her.
+
+This establishment was kept by a certain Madame Gerard, whom Suzanne
+had obliged in the days of her splendor, and who showed her gratitude
+by giving her a suitable home. This good soul, an honest and virtuous
+citizen, even pious, looked on the courtesan as a woman of a superior
+order; she had always seen her in the midst of luxury, and thought of
+her as a fallen queen; she trusted her daughters with her; and--which
+is a fact more natural than might be supposed--the courtesan was as
+scrupulously careful in taking them to the play as their mother could
+have been, and the two Gerard girls loved her. The worthy, kind
+lodging-house keeper was like those sublime priests who see in these
+outlawed women only a creature to be saved and loved.
+
+Madame du Val-Noble respected this worth; and often, as she chatted
+with the good woman, she envied her while bewailing her own
+ill-fortune.
+
+"Your are still handsome; you may make a good end yet," Madame Gerard
+would say.
+
+But, indeed, Madame du Val-Noble was only relatively impoverished.
+This woman's wardrobe, so extravagant and elegant, was still
+sufficiently well furnished to allow of her appearing on occasion--as
+on that evening at the Porte-Saint-Martin to see _Richard Darlington_
+--in much splendor. And Madame Gerard would most good-naturedly pay
+for the cabs needed by the lady "on foot" to go out to dine, or to
+the play, and to come home again.
+
+"Well, dear Madame Gerard," said she to this worthy mother, "my luck
+is about to change, I believe."
+
+"Well, well, madame, so much the better. But be prudent; do not run
+into debt any more. I have such difficulty in getting rid of the
+people who are hunting for you."
+
+"Oh, never worry yourself about those hounds! They have all made no
+end of money out of me.--Here are some tickets for the Varietes for
+your girls--a good box on the second tier. If any one should ask for
+me this evening before I come in, show them up all the same. Adele, my
+old maid, will be here; I will send her round."
+
+Madame du Val-Noble, having neither mother nor aunt, was obliged to
+have recourse to her maid--equally on foot--to play the part of a
+Saint-Esteve with the unknown follower whose conquest was to enable
+her to rise again in the world. She went to dine with Theodore
+Gaillard, who, as it happened, had a spree on that day, that is to
+say, a dinner given by Nathan in payment of a bet he had lost, one of
+those orgies when a man says to his guests, "You can bring a woman."
+
+It was not without strong reasons that Peyrade had made up his mind to
+rush in person on to the field of this intrigue. At the same time, his
+curiosity, like Corentin's, was so keenly excited, that, even in the
+absence of reasons, he would have tried to play a part in the drama.
+
+At this moment Charles X.'s policy had completed its last evolution.
+After confiding the helm of State to Ministers of his own choosing,
+the King was preparing to conquer Algiers, and to utilize the glory
+that should accrue as a passport to what has been called his _Coup
+d'Etat_. There were no more conspiracies at home; Charles X. believed
+he had no domestic enemies. But in politics, as at sea, a calm may be
+deceptive.
+
+Thus Corentin had lapsed into total idleness. In such a case a true
+sportsman, to keep his hand in, for lack of larks kills sparrows.
+Domitian, we know, for lack of Christians, killed flies. Contenson,
+having witnessed Esther's arrest, had, with the keen instinct of a
+spy, fully understood the upshot of the business. The rascal, as we
+have seen, did not attempt to conceal his opinion of the Baron de
+Nucingen.
+
+"Who is benefiting by making the banker pay so dear for his passion?"
+was the first question the allies asked each other. Recognizing Asie
+as a leader in the piece, Contenson hoped to find out the author
+through her; but she slipped through his fingers again and again,
+hiding like an eel in the mud of Paris; and when he found her again as
+the cook in Esther's establishment, it seemed to him inexplicable that
+the half-caste woman should have had a finger in the pie. Thus, for
+the first time, these two artistic spies had come on a text that they
+could not decipher, while suspecting a dark plot to the story.
+
+After three bold attempts on the house in the Rue Taitbout, Contenson
+still met with absolute dumbness. So long as Esther dwelt there the
+lodge porter seemed to live in mortal terror. Asie had, perhaps,
+promised poisoned meat-balls to all the family in the event of any
+indiscretion.
+
+On the day after Esther's removal, Contenson found this man rather
+more amenable; he regretted the lady, he said, who had fed him with
+the broken dishes from her table. Contenson, disguised as a broker,
+tried to bargain for the rooms, and listened to the porter's
+lamentations while he fooled him, casting a doubt on all the man said
+by a questioning "Really?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, the lady lived here for five years without ever going
+out, and more by token, her lover, desperately jealous though she was
+beyond reproach, took the greatest precautions when he came in or went
+out. And a very handsome young man he was too!"
+
+Lucien was at this time still staying with his sister, Madame Sechard;
+but as soon as he returned, Contenson sent the porter to the Quai
+Malaquais to ask Monsieur de Rubempre whether he were willing to part
+with the furniture left in the rooms lately occupied by Madame van
+Bogseck. The porter then recognized Lucien as the young widow's
+mysterious lover, and this was all that Contenson wanted. The deep but
+suppressed astonishment may be imagined with which Lucien and Carlos
+received the porter, whom they affected to regard as a madman; they
+tried to upset his convictions.
+
+Within twenty-four hours Carlos had organized a force which detected
+Contenson red-handed in the act of espionage. Contenson, disguised as
+a market-porter, had twice already brought home the provisions
+purchased in the morning by Asie, and had twice got into the little
+mansion in the Rue Saint-Georges. Corentin, on his part, was making a
+stir; but he was stopped short by recognizing the certain identity of
+Carlos Herrera; for he learned at once that this Abbe, the secret
+envoy of Ferdinand VII., had come to Paris towards the end of 1823.
+Still, Corentin thought it worth while to study the reasons which had
+led the Spaniard to take an interest in Lucien de Rubempre. It was
+soon clear to him, beyond doubt, that Esther had for five years been
+Lucien's mistress; so the substitution of the Englishwoman had been
+effected for the advantage of that young dandy.
+
+Now Lucien had no means; he was rejected as a suitor for Mademoiselle
+de Grandlieu; and he had just bought up the lands of Rubempre at the
+cost of a million francs.
+
+Corentin very skilfully made the head of the General Police take the
+first steps; and the Prefet de Police a propos to Peyrade, informed
+his chief that the appellants in that affair had been in fact the
+Comte de Serizy and Lucien de Rubempre.
+
+"We have it!" cried Peyrade and Corentin.
+
+The two friends had laid plans in a moment.
+
+"This hussy," said Corentin, "has had intimacies; she must have some
+women friends. Among them we shall certainly find one or another who
+is down on her luck; one of us must play the part of a rich foreigner
+and take her up. We will throw them together. They always want
+something of each other in the game of lovers, and we shall then be in
+the citadel."
+
+Peyrade naturally proposed to assume his disguise as an Englishman.
+The wild life he should lead during the time that he would take to
+disentangle the plot of which he had been the victim, smiled on his
+fancy; while Corentin, grown old in his functions, and weakly too, did
+not care for it. Disguised as a mulatto, Contenson at once evaded
+Carlos' force. Just three days before Peyrade's meeting with Madame du
+Val-Noble in the Champs-Elysees, this last of the agents employed by
+MM. de Sartine and Lenoir had arrived, provided with a passport, at
+the Hotel Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, having come from the Colonies via
+le Havre, in a traveling chaise, as mud-splashed as though it had
+really come from le Havre, instead of no further than by the road from
+Saint-Denis to Paris.
+
+Carlos Herrera, on his part, had his passport _vise_ at the Spanish
+Embassy, and arranged everything at the Quai Malaquais to start for
+Madrid. And this is why. Within a few days Esther was to become the
+owner of the house in the Rue Saint-Georges and of shares yielding
+thirty thousand francs a year; Europe and Asie were quite cunning
+enough to persuade her to sell these shares and privately transmit the
+money to Lucien. Thus Lucien, proclaiming himself rich through his
+sister's liberality, would pay the remainder of the price of the
+Rubempre estates. Of this transaction no one could complain. Esther
+alone could betray herself; but she would die rather than blink an
+eyelash.
+
+Clotilde had appeared with a little pink kerchief round her crane's
+neck, so she had won her game at the Hotel de Grandlieu. The shares in
+the Omnibus Company were already worth thrice their initial value.
+Carlos, by disappearing for a few days, would put malice off the
+scent. Human prudence had foreseen everything; no error was possible.
+The false Spaniard was to start on the morrow of the day when Peyrade
+met Madame du Val-Noble. But that very night, at two in the morning,
+Asie came in a cab to the Quai Malaquais, and found the stoker of the
+machine smoking in his room, and reconsidering all the points of the
+situation here stated in a few words, like an author going over a page
+in his book to discover any faults to be corrected. Such a man would
+not allow himself a second time such an oversight as that of the
+porter in the Rue Taitbout.
+
+"Paccard," whispered Asie in her master's ear, "recognized Contenson
+yesterday, at half-past two, in the Champs-Elysees, disguised as a
+mulatto servant to an Englishman, who for the last three days has been
+seen walking in the Champs-Elysees, watching Esther. Paccard knew the
+hound by his eyes, as I did when he dressed up as a market-porter.
+Paccard drove the girl home, taking a round so as not to lose sight of
+the wretch. Contenson is at the Hotel Mirabeau; but he exchanged so
+many signs of intelligence with the Englishman, that Paccard says the
+other cannot possibly be an Englishman."
+
+"We have a gadfly behind us," said Carlos. "I will not leave till the
+day after to-morrow. That Contenson is certainly the man who sent the
+porter after us from the Rue Taitbout; we must ascertain whether this
+sham Englishman is our foe."
+
+At noon Mr. Samuel Johnson's black servant was solemnly waiting on his
+master, who always breakfasted too heartily, with a purpose. Peyrade
+wished to pass for a tippling Englishman; he never went out till he
+was half-seas over. He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and
+padded to make his legs look stouter; his trousers were lined with the
+thickest fustian; his waistcoat was buttoned up to his cheeks; a red
+scratch wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three
+inches to his height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the Cafe
+David could not have recognized him. From his squarecut coat of black
+cloth with full skirts he might have been taken for an English
+millionaire.
+
+Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob's confidential
+servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and uncommunicative, and
+indulged in fierce exclamations and uncouth gestures.
+
+Peyrade was finishing his second bottle when one of the hotel waiters
+unceremoniously showed in a man in whom Peyrade and Contenson both at
+once discerned a gendarme in mufti.
+
+"Monsieur Peyrade," said the gendarme to the nabob, speaking in his
+ear, "my instructions are to take you to the Prefecture."
+
+Peyrade, without saying a word, rose and took down his hat.
+
+"You will find a hackney coach at the door," said the man as they went
+downstairs. "The Prefet thought of arresting you, but he decided on
+sending for you to ask some explanation of your conduct through the
+peace-officer whom you will find in the coach."
+
+"Shall I ride with you?" asked the gendarme of the peace-officer when
+Peyrade had got in.
+
+"No," replied the other; "tell the coachman quietly to drive to the
+Prefecture."
+
+Peyrade and Carlos were now face to face in the coach. Carlos had a
+stiletto under his hand. The coach-driver was a man he could trust,
+quite capable of allowing Carlos to get out without seeing him, or
+being surprised, on arriving at his journey's end, to find a dead body
+in his cab. No inquiries are ever made about a spy. The law almost
+always leaves such murders unpunished, it is so difficult to know the
+rights of the case.
+
+Peyrade looked with his keenest eye at the magistrate sent to examine
+him by the Prefet of Police. Carlos struck him as satisfactory: a bald
+head, deeply wrinkled at the back, and powdered hair; a pair of very
+light gold spectacles, with double-green glasses over weak eyes, with
+red rims, evidently needing care. These eyes seemed the trace of some
+squalid malady. A cotton shirt with a flat-pleated frill, a shabby
+black satin waistcoat, the trousers of a man of law, black spun silk
+stockings, and shoes tied with ribbon; a long black overcoat, cheap
+gloves, black, and worn for ten days, and a gold watch-chain--in every
+point the lower grade of magistrate known by a perversion of terms as
+a peace-officer.
+
+"My dear Monsieur Peyrade, I regret to find such a man as you the
+object of surveillance, and that you should act so as to justify it.
+Your disguise is not to the Prefet's taste. If you fancy that you can
+thus escape our vigilance, you are mistaken. You traveled from England
+by way of Beaumont-sur-Oise, no doubt."
+
+"Beaumont-sur-Oise?" repeated Peyrade.
+
+"Or by Saint-Denis?" said the sham lawyer.
+
+Peyrade lost his presence of mind. The question must be answered. Now
+any reply might be dangerous. In the affirmative it was farcical; in
+the negative, if this man knew the truth, it would be Peyrade's ruin.
+
+"He is a sharp fellow," thought he.
+
+He tried to look at the man and smile, and he gave him a smile for an
+answer; the smile passed muster without protest.
+
+"For what purpose have you disguised yourself, taken rooms at the
+Mirabeau, and dressed Contenson as a black servant?" asked the
+peace-officer.
+
+"Monsieur le Prefet may do what he chooses with me, but I owe no
+account of my actions to any one but my chief," said Peyrade with
+dignity.
+
+"If you mean me to infer that you are acting by the orders of the
+General Police," said the other coldly, "we will change our route, and
+drive to the Rue de Grenelle instead of the Rue de Jerusalem. I have
+clear instructions with regard to you. But be careful! You are not in
+any deep disgrace, and you may spoil your own game in a moment. As for
+me--I owe you no grudge.--Come; tell me the truth."
+
+"Well, then, this is the truth," said Peyrade, with a glance at his
+Cerberus' red eyes.
+
+The sham lawyer's face remained expressionless, impassible; he was
+doing his business, all truths were the same to him, he looked as
+though he suspected the Prefet of some caprice. Prefets have their
+little tantrums.
+
+"I have fallen desperately in love with a woman--the mistress of that
+stockbroker who is gone abroad for his own pleasure and the
+displeasure of his creditors--Falleix."
+
+"Madame du Val-Noble?"
+
+"Yes," replied Peyrade. "To keep her for a month, which will not cost
+me more than a thousand crowns, I have got myself up as a nabob and
+taken Contenson as my servant. This is so absolutely true, monsieur,
+that if you like to leave me in the coach, where I will wait for you,
+on my honor as an old Commissioner-General of Police, you can go to
+the hotel and question Contenson. Not only will Contenson confirm what
+I have the honor of stating, but you may see Madame du Val-Noble's
+waiting-maid, who is to come this morning to signify her mistress'
+acceptance of my offers, or the conditions she makes.
+
+"An old monkey knows what grimaces mean: I have offered her a thousand
+francs a month and a carriage--that comes to fifteen hundred; five
+hundred francs' worth of presents, and as much again in some outings,
+dinners and play-going; you see, I am not deceiving you by a centime
+when I say a thousand crowns.--A man of my age may well spend a
+thousand crowns on his last fancy."
+
+"Bless me, Papa Peyrade! and you still care enough for women to----?
+But you are deceiving me. I am sixty myself, and I can do without 'em.
+--However, if the case is as you state it, I quite understand that you
+should have found it necessary to get yourself up as a foreigner to
+indulge your fancy."
+
+"You can understand that Peyrade, or old Canquoelle of the Rue des
+Moineaux----"
+
+"Ay, neither of them would have suited Madame du Val-Noble," Carlos
+put in, delighted to have picked up Canquoelle's address. "Before the
+Revolution," he went on, "I had for my mistress a woman who had
+previously been kept by the gentleman-in-waiting, as they then called
+the executioner. One evening at the play she pricked herself with a
+pin, and cried out--a customary ejaculation in those days--'Ah!
+Bourreau!' on which her neighbor asked her if this were a
+reminiscence?--Well, my dear Peyrade, she cast off her man for that
+speech.
+
+"I suppose you have no wish to expose yourself to such a slap in the
+face.--Madame du Val-Noble is a woman for gentlemen. I saw her once at
+the opera, and thought her very handsome.
+
+"Tell the driver to go back to the Rue de la Paix, my dear Peyrade. I
+will go upstairs with you to your rooms and see for myself. A verbal
+report will no doubt be enough for Monsieur le Prefet."
+
+Carlos took a snuff-box from his side-pocket--a black snuff-box lined
+with silver-gilt--and offered it to Peyrade with an impulse of
+delightful good-fellowship. Peyrade said to himself:
+
+"And these are their agents! Good Heavens! what would Monsieur Lenoir
+say if he could come back to life, or Monsieur de Sartines?"
+
+"That is part of the truth, no doubt, but it is not all," said the
+sham lawyer, sniffing up his pinch of snuff. "You have had a finger in
+the Baron de Nucingen's love affairs, and you wish, no doubt, to
+entangle him in some slip-knot. You missed fire with the pistol, and
+you are aiming at him with a field-piece. Madame du Val-Noble is a
+friend of Madame de Champy's----"
+
+"Devil take it. I must take care not to founder," said Peyrade to
+himself. "He is a better man than I thought him. He is playing me; he
+talks of letting me go, and he goes on making me blab."
+
+"Well?" asked Carlos with a magisterial air.
+
+"Monsieur, it is true that I have been so foolish as to seek a woman
+in Monsieur de Nucingen's behoof, because he was half mad with love.
+That is the cause of my being out of favor, for it would seem that
+quite unconsciously I touched some important interests."
+
+The officer of the law remained immovable.
+
+"But after fifty-two years' experience," Peyrade went on, "I know the
+police well enough to have held my hand after the blowing up I had
+from Monsieur le Prefet, who, no doubt, was right----"
+
+"Then you would give up this fancy if Monsieur le Prefet required it
+of you? That, I think, would be the best proof you could give of the
+sincerity of what you say."
+
+"He is going it! he is going it!" thought Peyrade. "Ah! by all that's
+holy, the police to-day is a match for that of Monsieur Lenoir."
+
+"Give it up?" said he aloud. "I will wait till I have Monsieur le
+Prefet's orders.--But here we are at the hotel, if you wish to come
+up."
+
+"Where do you find the money?" said Carlos point-blank, with a
+sagacious glance.
+
+"Monsieur, I have a friend----"
+
+"Get along," said Carlos; "go and tell that story to an examining
+magistrate!"
+
+This audacious stroke on Carlos' part was the outcome of one of those
+calculations, so simple that none but a man of his temper would have
+thought it out.
+
+At a very early hour he had sent Lucien to Madame de Serizy's. Lucien
+had begged the Count's private secretary--as from the Count--to go and
+obtain from the Prefet of Police full particulars concerning the agent
+employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The secretary came back provided
+with a note concerning Peyrade, a copy of the summary noted on the
+back of his record:--
+
+  "In the police force since 1778, having come to Paris from Avignon
+  two years previously.
+
+  "Without money or character; possessed of certain State secrets.
+
+  "Lives in the Rue des Moineaux under the name of Canquoelle, the
+  name of a little estate where his family resides in the department
+  of Vaucluse; very respectable people.
+
+  "Was lately inquired for by a grand-nephew named Theodore de la
+  Peyrade. (See the report of an agent, No. 37 of the Documents.)"
+
+"He must be the man to whom Contenson is playing the mulatto servant!"
+cried Carlos, when Lucien returned with other information besides this
+note.
+
+Within three hours this man, with the energy of a Commander-in-Chief,
+had found, by Paccard's help, an innocent accomplice capable of
+playing the part of a gendarme in disguise, and had got himself up as
+a peace-officer. Three times in the coach he had thought of killing
+Peyrade, but he had made it a rule never to commit a murder with his
+own hand; he promised himself that he would get rid of Peyrade all in
+good time by pointing him out as a millionaire to some released
+convicts about the town.
+
+Peyrade and his Mentor, as they went in, heard Contenson's voice
+arguing with Madame du Val-Noble's maid. Peyrade signed to Carlos to
+remain in the outer room, with a look meant to convey: "Thus you can
+assure yourself of my sincerity."
+
+"Madame agrees to everything," said Adele. "Madame is at this moment
+calling on a friend, Madame de Champy, who has some rooms in the Rue
+Taitbout on her hands for a year, full of furniture, which she will
+let her have, no doubt. Madame can receive Mr. Johnson more suitably
+there, for the furniture is still very decent, and monsieur might buy
+it for madame by coming to an agreement with Madame de Champy."
+
+"Very good, my girl. If this is not a job of fleecing, it is a bit of
+the wool," said the mulatto to the astonished woman. "However, we will
+go shares----"
+
+"That is your darkey all over!" cried Mademoiselle Adele. "If your
+nabob is a nabob, he can very well afford to give madame the
+furniture. The lease ends in April 1830; your nabob may renew it if he
+likes."
+
+"I am quite willing," said Peyrade, speaking French with a strong
+English accent, as he came in and tapped the woman on the shoulder.
+
+He cast a knowing look back at Carlos, who replied by an assenting
+nod, understanding that the nabob was to keep up his part.
+
+But the scene suddenly changed its aspect at the entrance of a person
+over whom neither Carlos nor Peyrade had the least power. Corentin
+suddenly came in. He had found the door open, and looked in as he went
+by to see how his old friend played his part as nabob.
+
+"The Prefet is still bullying me!" said Peyrade in a whisper to
+Corentin. "He has found me out as a nabob."
+
+"We will spill the Prefet," Corentin muttered in reply.
+
+Then after a cool bow he stood darkly scrutinizing the magistrate.
+
+"Stay here till I return," said Carlos; "I will go to the Prefecture.
+If you do not see me again, you may go your own way."
+
+Having said this in an undertone to Peyrade, so as not to humiliate
+him in the presence of the waiting-maid, Carlos went away, not caring
+to remain under the eye of the newcomer, in whom he detected one of
+those fair-haired, blue-eyed men, coldly terrifying.
+
+"That is the peace-officer sent after me by the Prefet," said Peyrade.
+
+"That?" said Corentin. "You have walked into a trap. That man has
+three packs of cards in his shoes; you can see that by the place of
+his foot in the shoe; besides, a peace-officer need wear no disguise."
+
+Corentin hurried downstairs to verify his suspicions: Carlos was
+getting into the fly.
+
+"Hallo! Monsieur l'Abbe!" cried Corentin.
+
+Carlos looked around, saw Corentin, and got in quickly. Still,
+Corentin had time to say:
+
+"That was all I wanted to know.--Quai Malaquais," he shouted to the
+driver with diabolical mockery in his tone and expression.
+
+"I am done!" said Jacques Collin to himself. "They have got me. I must
+get ahead of them by sheer pace, and, above all, find out what they
+want of us."
+
+Corentin had seen the Abbe Carlos Herrera five or six times, and the
+man's eyes were unforgettable. Corentin had suspected him at once from
+the cut of his shoulders, then by his puffy face, and the trick of
+three inches of added height gained by a heel inside the shoe.
+
+"Ah! old fellow, they have drawn you," said Corentin, finding no one
+in the room but Peyrade and Contenson.
+
+"Who?" cried Peyrade, with metallic hardness; "I will spend my last
+days in putting him on a gridiron and turning him on it."
+
+"It is the Abbe Carlos Herrera, the Corentin of Spain, as I suppose.
+This explains everything. The Spaniard is a demon of the first water,
+who has tried to make a fortune for that little young man by coining
+money out of a pretty baggage's bolster.--It is your lookout if you
+think you can measure your skill with a man who seems to me the very
+devil to deal with."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Contenson, "he fingered the three hundred thousand
+francs the day when Esther was arrested; he was in the cab. I remember
+those eyes, that brow, and those marks of the smallpox."
+
+"Oh! what a fortune my Lydie might have had!" cried Peyrade.
+
+"You may still play the nabob," said Corentin. "To keep an eye on
+Esther you must keep up her intimacy with Val-Noble. She was really
+Lucien's mistress."
+
+"They have got more than five hundred thousand francs out of Nucingen
+already," said Contenson.
+
+"And they want as much again," Corentin went on. "The Rubempre estate
+is to cost a million.--Daddy," added he, slapping Peyrade on the
+shoulder, "you may get more than a hundred thousand francs to settle
+on Lydie."
+
+"Don't tell me that, Corentin. If your scheme should fail, I cannot
+tell what I might not do----"
+
+"You will have it by to-morrow perhaps! The Abbe, my dear fellow, is
+most astute; we shall have to kiss his spurs; he is a very superior
+devil. But I have him sure enough. He is not a fool, and he will knock
+under. Try to be a gaby as well as a nabob, and fear nothing."
+
+
+
+In the evening of this day, when the opposing forces had met face to
+face on level ground, Lucien spent the evening at the Hotel Grandlieu.
+The party was a large one. In the face of all the assembly, the
+Duchess kept Lucien at her side for some time, and was most kind to
+him.
+
+"You are going away for a little while?" said she.
+
+"Yes, Madame la Duchesse. My sister, in her anxiety to promote my
+marriage, has made great sacrifices, and I have been enabled to
+repurchase the lands of the Rubempres, to reconstitute the whole
+estate. But I have found in my Paris lawyer a very clever man, who has
+managed to save me from the extortionate terms that the holders would
+have asked if they had known the name of the purchaser."
+
+"Is there a chateau?" asked Clotilde, with too broad a smile.
+
+"There is something which might be called a chateau; but the wiser
+plan would be to use the building materials in the construction of a
+modern residence."
+
+Clotilde's eyes blazed with happiness above her smile of satisfaction.
+
+"You must play a rubber with my father this evening," said she. "In a
+fortnight I hope you will be asked to dinner."
+
+"Well, my dear sir," said the Duc de Grandlieu, "I am told that you
+have bought the estate of Rubempre. I congratulate you. It is an
+answer to those who say you are in debt. We bigwigs, like France or
+England, are allowed to have a public debt; but men of no fortune,
+beginners, you see, may not assume that privilege----"
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur le Duc, I still owe five hundred thousand francs on
+my land."
+
+"Well, well, you must marry a wife who can bring you the money; but
+you will have some difficulty in finding a match with such a fortune
+in our Faubourg, where daughters do not get large dowries."
+
+"Their name is enough," said Lucien.
+
+"We are only three wisk players--Maufrigneuse, d'Espard, and I--will
+you make a fourth?" said the Duke, pointing to the card-table.
+
+Clotilde came to the table to watch her father's game.
+
+"She expects me to believe that she means it for me," said the Duke,
+patting his daughter's hands, and looking round at Lucien, who
+remained quite grave.
+
+Lucien, Monsieur d'Espard's partner, lost twenty louis.
+
+"My dear mother," said Clotilde to the Duchess, "he was so judicious
+as to lose."
+
+At eleven o'clock, after a few affectionate words with Mademoiselle de
+Grandlieu, Lucien went home and to bed, thinking of the complete
+triumph he was to enjoy a month hence; for he had not a doubt of being
+accepted as Clotilde's lover, and married before Lent in 1830.
+
+On the morrow, when Lucien was smoking his cigarettes after breakfast,
+sitting with Carlos, who had become much depressed, M. de Saint-Esteve
+was announced--what a touch of irony--who begged to see either the
+Abbe Carlos Herrera or Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre.
+
+"Was he told downstairs that I had left Paris?" cried the Abbe.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the groom.
+
+"Well, then, you must see the man," said he to Lucien. "But do not say
+a single compromising word, do not let a sign of surprise escape you.
+It is the enemy."
+
+"You will overhear me," said Lucien.
+
+Carlos hid in the adjoining room, and through the crack of the door he
+saw Corentin, whom he recognized only by his voice, such powers of
+transformation did the great man possess. This time Corentin looked
+like an old paymaster-general.
+
+"I have not had the honor of being known to you, monsieur," Corentin
+began, "but----"
+
+"Excuse my interrupting you, monsieur, but----"
+
+"But the matter in point is your marriage to Mademoiselle Clotilde de
+Grandlieu--which will never take place," Corentin added eagerly.
+
+Lucien sat down and made no reply.
+
+"You are in the power of a man who is able and willing and ready to
+prove to the Duc de Grandlieu that the lands of Rubempre are to be
+paid for with the money that a fool has given to your mistress,
+Mademoiselle Esther," Corentin went on. "It will be quite easy to find
+the minutes of the legal opinions in virtue of which Mademoiselle
+Esther was summoned; there are ways too of making d'Estourny speak.
+The very clever manoeuvres employed against the Baron de Nucingen will
+be brought to light.
+
+"As yet all can be arranged. Pay down a hundred thousand francs, and
+you will have peace.--All this is no concern of mine. I am only the
+agent of those who levy this blackmail; nothing more."
+
+Corentin might have talked for an hour; Lucien smoked his cigarette
+with an air of perfect indifference.
+
+"Monsieur," replied he, "I do not want to know who you are, for men
+who undertake such jobs as these have no name--at any rate, in my
+vocabulary. I have allowed you to talk at your leisure; I am at home.
+--You seem to me not bereft of common sense; listen to my dilemma."
+
+There was a pause, during which Lucien met Corentin's cat-like eye
+fixed on him with a perfectly icy stare.
+
+"Either you are building on facts that are absolutely false, and I
+need pay no heed to them," said Lucien; "or you are in the right; and
+in that case, by giving you a hundred thousand francs, I put you in a
+position to ask me for as many hundred thousand francs as your
+employer can find Saint-Esteves to ask for.
+
+"However, to put an end, once and for all, to your kind intervention,
+I would have you know that I, Lucien de Rubempre, fear no one. I have
+no part in the jobbery of which you speak. If the Grandlieus make
+difficulties, there are other young ladies of very good family ready
+to be married. After all, it is no loss to me if I remain single,
+especially if, as you imagine, I deal in blank bills to such
+advantage."
+
+"If Monsieur l'Abbe Carlos Herrera----"
+
+"Monsieur," Lucien put in, "the Abbe Herrera is at this moment on the
+way to Spain. He has nothing to do with my marriage, my interests are
+no concern of his. That remarkable statesman was good enough to assist
+me at one time with his advice, but he has reports to present to his
+Majesty the King of Spain; if you have anything to say to him, I
+recommend you to set out for Madrid."
+
+"Monsieur," said Corentin plainly, "you will never be Mademoiselle
+Clotilde de Grandlieu's husband."
+
+"So much the worse for her!" replied Lucien, impatiently pushing
+Corentin towards the door.
+
+"You have fully considered the matter?" asked Corentin coldly.
+
+"Monsieur, I do not recognize that you have any right either to meddle
+in my affairs, or to make me waste a cigarette," said Lucien, throwing
+away his cigarette that had gone out.
+
+"Good-day, monsieur," said Corentin. "We shall not meet again.--But
+there will certainly be a moment in your life when you would give half
+your fortune to have called me back from these stairs."
+
+In answer to this threat, Carlos made as though he were cutting off a
+head.
+
+"Now to business!" cried he, looking at Lucien, who was as white as
+ashes after this dreadful interview.
+
+
+
+If among the small number of my readers who take an interest in the
+moral and philosophical side of this book there should be only one
+capable of believing that the Baron de Nucingen was happy, that one
+would prove how difficult it is to explain the heart of a courtesan by
+any kind of physiological formula. Esther was resolved to make the
+poor millionaire pay dearly for what he called his day of triumph. And
+at the beginning of February 1830 the house-warming party had not yet
+been given in the "little palace."
+
+"Well," said Esther in confidence to her friends, who repeated it to
+the Baron, "I shall open house at the Carnival, and I mean to make my
+man as happy as a cock in plaster."
+
+The phrase became proverbial among women of her kidney.
+
+The Baron gave vent to much lamentation; like married men, he made
+himself very ridiculous, he began to complain to his intimate friends,
+and his dissatisfaction was generally known.
+
+Esther, meanwhile, took quite a serious view of her position as the
+Pompadour of this prince of speculators. She had given two or three
+small evening parties, solely to get Lucien into the house. Lousteau,
+Rastignac, du Tillet, Bixiou, Nathan, the Comte de Brambourg--all the
+cream of the dissipated crew--frequented her drawing-room. And, as
+leading ladies in the piece she was playing, Esther accepted Tullia,
+Florentine, Fanny Beaupre, and Florine--two dancers and two actresses
+--besides Madame du Val-Noble. Nothing can be more dreary than a
+courtesan's home without the spice of rivalry, the display of dress,
+and some variety of type.
+
+In six weeks Esther had become the wittiest, the most amusing, the
+loveliest, and the most elegant of those female pariahs who form the
+class of kept women. Placed on the pedestal that became her, she
+enjoyed all the delights of vanity which fascinate women in general,
+but still as one who is raised above her caste by a secret thought.
+She cherished in her heart an image of herself which she gloried in,
+while it made her blush; the hour when she must abdicate was ever
+present to her consciousness; thus she lived a double life, really
+scorning herself. Her sarcastic remarks were tinged by the temper
+which was roused in her by the intense contempt felt by the Angel of
+Love, hidden in the courtesan, for the disgraceful and odious part
+played by the body in the presence, as it were, of the soul. At once
+actor and spectator, victim and judge, she was a living realization of
+the beautiful Arabian Tales, in which a noble creature lies hidden
+under a degrading form, and of which the type is the story of
+Nebuchadnezzar in the book of books--the Bible. Having granted herself
+a lease of life till the day after her infidelity, the victim might
+surely play awhile with the executioner.
+
+Moreover, the enlightenment that had come to Esther as to the secretly
+disgraceful means by which the Baron had made his colossal fortune
+relieved her of every scruple. She could play the part of Ate, the
+goddess of vengeance, as Carlos said. And so she was by turns
+enchanting and odious to the banker, who lived only for her. When the
+Baron had been worked up to such a pitch of suffering that he wanted
+only to be quit of Esther, she brought him round by a scene of tender
+affection.
+
+Herrera, making a great show of starting for Spain, had gone as far as
+Tours. He had sent the chaise on as far as Bordeaux, with a servant
+inside, engaged to play the part of master, and to wait for him at
+Bordeaux. Then, returning by diligence, dressed as a commercial
+traveler, he had secretly taken up his abode under Esther's roof, and
+thence, aided by Asie and Europe, carefully directed all his
+machinations, keeping an eye on every one, and especially on Peyrade.
+
+About a fortnight before the day chosen for her great entertainment,
+which was to be given in the evening after the first opera ball, the
+courtesan, whose witticisms were beginning to make her feared,
+happened to be at the Italian opera, at the back of a box which the
+Baron--forced to give a box--had secured in the lowest tier, in order
+to conceal his mistress, and not to flaunt her in public within a few
+feet of Madame de Nucingen. Esther had taken her seat, so as to "rake"
+that of Madame de Serizy, whom Lucien almost invariably accompanied.
+The poor girl made her whole happiness centre in watching Lucien on
+Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays by Madame de Serizy's side.
+
+At about half-past nine in the evening Esther could see Lucien enter
+the Countess' box, with a care-laden brow, pale, and with almost drawn
+features. These symptoms of mental anguish were legible only to
+Esther. The knowledge of a man's countenance is, to the woman who
+loves him, like that of the sea to a sailor.
+
+"Good God! what can be the matter? What has happened? Does he want to
+speak with that angel of hell, who is to him a guardian angel, and who
+lives in an attic between those of Europe and Asie?"
+
+Tormented by such reflections, Esther scarcely listened to the music.
+Still less, it may be believed, did she listen to the Baron, who held
+one of his "Anchel's" hands in both his, talking to her in his
+horrible Polish-Jewish accent, a jargon which must be as unpleasant to
+read as it is to hear spoken.
+
+"Esther," said he, releasing her hand, and pushing it away with a
+slight touch of temper, "you do not listen to me."
+
+"I tell you what, Baron, you blunder in love as you gibber in French."
+
+"_Der teufel_!"
+
+"I am not in my boudoir here, I am at the opera. If you were not a
+barrel made by Huret or Fichet, metamorphosed into a man by some trick
+of nature, you would not make so much noise in a box with a woman who
+is fond of music. I don't listen to you? I should think not! There you
+sit rustling my dress like a cockchafer in a paper-bag, and making me
+laugh with contempt. You say to me, 'You are so pretty, I should like
+to eat you!' Old simpleton! Supposing I were to say to you, 'You are
+less intolerable this evening than you were yesterday--we will go
+home?'--Well, from the way you puff and sigh--for I feel you if I
+don't listen to you--I perceive that you have eaten an enormous
+dinner, and your digestion is at work. Let me instruct you--for I cost
+you enough to give some advice for your money now and then--let me
+tell you, my dear fellow, that a man whose digestion is so troublesome
+as yours is, is not justified in telling his mistress that she is
+pretty at unseemly hours. An old soldier died of that very folly 'in
+the arms of Religion,' as Blondet has it.
+
+"It is now ten o'clock. You finished dinner at du Tillet's at nine
+o'clock, with your pigeon the Comte de Brambourg; you have millions
+and truffles to digest. Come to-morrow night at ten."
+
+"Vat you are cruel!" cried the Baron, recognizing the profound truth
+of this medical argument.
+
+"Cruel!" echoed Esther, still looking at Lucien. "Have you not
+consulted Bianchon, Desplein, old Haudry?--Since you have had a
+glimpse of future happiness, do you know what you seem like to me?"
+
+"No--vat?"
+
+"A fat old fellow wrapped in flannel, who walks every hour from his
+armchair to the window to see if the thermometer has risen to the
+degree marked '_Silkworms_,' the temperature prescribed by his
+physician."
+
+"You are really an ungrateful slut!" cried the Baron, in despair at
+hearing a tune, which, however, amorous old men not unfrequently hear
+at the opera.
+
+"Ungrateful!" retorted Esther. "What have you given me till now? A
+great deal of annoyance. Come, papa! Can I be proud of you? You! you
+are proud of me; I wear your livery and badge with an air. You paid my
+debts? So you did. But you have grabbed so many millions--come, you
+need not sulk; you admitted that to me--that you need not think twice
+of that. And this is your chief title to fame. A baggage and a thief
+--a well-assorted couple!
+
+"You have built a splendid cage for a parrot that amuses you. Go and
+ask a Brazilian cockatoo what gratitude it owes to the man who placed
+it in a gilded cage.--Don't look at me like that; you are just like a
+Buddist Bonze.
+
+"Well, you show your red-and-white cockatoo to all Paris. You say,
+'Does anybody else in Paris own such a parrot? And how well it talks,
+how cleverly it picks its words!' If du Tillet comes in, it says at
+once, 'How'do, little swindler!'--Why, you are as happy as a Dutchman
+who has grown an unique tulip, as an old nabob pensioned off in Asia
+by England, when a commercial traveler sells him the first Swiss
+snuff-box that opens in three places.
+
+"You want to win my heart? Well, now, I will tell you how to do it."
+
+"Speak, speak, dere is noting I shall not do for you. I lofe to be
+fooled by you."
+
+"Be young, be handsome, be like Lucien de Rubempre over there by your
+wife, and you shall have gratis what you can never buy with all your
+millions!"
+
+"I shall go 'vay, for really you are too bat dis evening!" said the
+banker, with a lengthened face.
+
+"Very well, good-night then," said Esther. "Tell Georches to make your
+pillows very high and place your fee low, for you look apoplectic this
+evening.--You cannot say, my dear, that I take no interest in your
+health."
+
+The Baron was standing up, and held the door-knob in his hand.
+
+"Here, Nucingen," said Esther, with an imperious gesture.
+
+The Baron bent over her with dog-like devotion.
+
+"Do you want to see me very sweet, and giving you sugar-and-water, and
+petting you in my house, this very evening, old monster?"
+
+"You shall break my heart!"
+
+"Break your heart--you mean bore you," she went on. "Well, bring me
+Lucien that I may invite him to our Belshazzar's feast, and you may be
+sure he will not fail to come. If you succeed in that little
+transaction, I will tell you that I love you, my fat Frederic, in such
+plain terms that you cannot but believe me."
+
+"You are an enchantress," said the Baron, kissing Esther's glove. "I
+should be villing to listen to abuse for ein hour if alvays der vas a
+kiss at de ent of it."
+
+"But if I am not obeyed, I----" and she threatened the Baron with her
+finger as we threaten children.
+
+The Baron raised his head like a bird caught in a springe and
+imploring the trapper's pity.
+
+"Dear Heaven! What ails Lucien?" said she to herself when she was
+alone, making no attempt to check her falling tears; "I never saw him
+so sad."
+
+
+
+This is what had happened to Lucien that very evening.
+
+At nine o'clock he had gone out, as he did every evening, in his
+brougham to go to the Hotel de Grandlieu. Using his saddle-horse and
+cab in the morning only, like all young men, he had hired a brougham
+for winter evenings, and had chosen a first-class carriage and
+splendid horses from one of the best job-masters. For the last month
+all had gone well with him; he had dined with the Grandlieus three
+times; the Duke was delightful to him; his shares in the Omnibus
+Company, sold for three hundred thousand francs, had paid off a third
+more of the price of the land; Clotilde de Grandlieu, who dressed
+beautifully now, reddened inch thick when he went into the room, and
+loudly proclaimed her attachment to him. Some personages of high
+estate discussed their marriage as a probable event. The Duc de
+Chaulieu, formerly Ambassador to Spain, and now for a short while
+Minister for Foreign Affairs, had promised the Duchesse de Grandlieu
+that he would ask for the title of Marquis for Lucien.
+
+So that evening, after dining with Madame de Serizy, Lucien had driven
+to the Faubourg Saint-Germain to pay his daily visit.
+
+He arrives, the coachman calls for the gate to be opened, he drives
+into the courtyard and stops at the steps. Lucien, on getting out,
+remarks four other carriages in waiting. On seeing Monsieur de
+Rubempre, one of the footmen placed to open and shut the hall-door
+comes forward and out on to the steps, in front of the door, like a
+soldier on guard.
+
+"His Grace is not at home," says he.
+
+"Madame la Duchesse is receiving company," observes Lucien to the
+servant.
+
+"Madame la Duchesse is gone out," replies the man solemnly.
+
+"Mademoiselle Clotilde----"
+
+"I do not think that Mademoiselle Clotilde will see you, monsieur, in
+the absence of Madame la Duchesse."
+
+"But there are people here," replies Lucien in dismay.
+
+"I do not know, sir," says the man, trying to seem stupid and to be
+respectful.
+
+There is nothing more fatal than etiquette to those who regard it as
+the most formidable arm of social law. Lucien easily interpreted the
+meaning of this scene, so disastrous to him. The Duke and Duchess
+would not admit him. He felt the spinal marrow freezing in the core of
+his vertebral column, and a sickly cold sweat bedewed his brow. The
+conversation had taken place in the presence of his own body-servant,
+who held the door of the brougham, doubting whether to shut it. Lucien
+signed to him that he was going away again; but as he stepped into the
+carriage, he heard the noise of people coming downstairs, and the
+servant called out first, "Madame la Duchesse de Chaulieu's people,"
+then "Madame la Vicomtesse de Grandlieu's carriage!"
+
+Lucien merely said, "To the Italian opera"; but in spite of his haste,
+the luckless dandy could not escape the Duc de Chaulieu and his son,
+the Duc de Rhetore, to whom he was obliged to bow, for they did not
+speak a word to him. A great catastrophe at Court, the fall of a
+formidable favorite, has ere now been pronounced on the threshold of a
+royal study, in one word from an usher with a face like a plaster
+cast.
+
+"How am I to let my adviser know of this disaster--this instant----?"
+thought Lucien as he drove to the opera-house. "What is going on?"
+
+He racked his brain with conjectures.
+
+This was what had taken place. That morning, at eleven o'clock, the
+Duc de Grandlieu, as he went into the little room where the family all
+breakfasted together, said to Clotilde after kissing her, "Until
+further orders, my child, think no more of the Sieur de Rubempre."
+
+Then he had taken the Duchesse by the hand, and led her into a window
+recess to say a few words in an undertone, which made poor Clotilde
+turn pale; for she watched her mother as she listened to the Duke, and
+saw her expression of extreme surprise.
+
+"Jean," said the Duke to one of his servants, "take this note to
+Monsieur le Duc de Chaulieu, and beg him to answer by you, Yes or No.
+--I am asking him to dine here to-day," he added to his wife.
+
+Breakfast had been a most melancholy meal. The Duchess was meditative,
+the Duke seemed to be vexed with himself, and Clotilde could with
+difficulty restrain her tears.
+
+"My child, your father is right; you must obey him," the mother had
+said to the daughter with much emotion. "I do not say as he does,
+'Think no more of Lucien.' No--for I understand your suffering"
+--Clotilde kissed her mother's hand--"but I do say, my darling, Wait,
+take no step, suffer in silence since you love him, and put your trust
+in your parents' care.--Great ladies, my child, are great just because
+they can do their duty on every occasion, and do it nobly."
+
+"But what is it about?" asked Clotilde as white as a lily.
+
+"Matters too serious to be discussed with you, my dearest," the
+Duchess replied. "For if they are untrue, your mind would be
+unnecessarily sullied; and if they are true, you must never know
+them."
+
+At six o'clock the Duc de Chaulieu had come to join the Duc de
+Grandlieu, who awaited him in his study.
+
+"Tell me, Henri"--for the Dukes were on the most familiar terms, and
+addressed each other by their Christian names. This is one of the
+shades invented to mark a degree of intimacy, to repel the audacity of
+French familiarity, and humiliate conceit--"tell me, Henri, I am in
+such a desperate difficulty that I can only ask advice of an old
+friend who understands business, and you have practice and experience.
+My daughter Clotilde, as you know, is in love with that little
+Rubempre, whom I have been almost compelled to accept as her promised
+husband. I have always been averse to the marriage; however, Madame de
+Grandlieu could not bear to thwart Clotilde's passion. When the young
+fellow had repurchased the family estate and paid three-quarters of
+the price, I could make no further objections.
+
+"But last evening I received an anonymous letter--you know how much
+that is worth--in which I am informed that the young fellow's fortune
+is derived from some disreputable source, and that he is telling lies
+when he says that his sister is giving him the necessary funds for his
+purchase. For my daughter's happiness, and for the sake of our family,
+I am adjured to make inquiries, and the means of doing so are
+suggested to me. Here, read it."
+
+"I am entirely of your opinion as to the value of anonymous letters,
+my dear Ferdinand," said the Duc de Chaulieu after reading the letter.
+"Still, though we may contemn them, we must make use of them. We must
+treat such letters as we would treat a spy. Keep the young man out of
+the house, and let us make inquiries----
+
+"I know how to do it. Your lawyer is Derville, a man in whom we have
+perfect confidence; he knows the secrets of many families, and can
+certainly be trusted with this. He is an honest man, a man of weight,
+and a man of honor; he is cunning and wily; but his wiliness is only
+in the way of business, and you need only employ him to obtain
+evidence you can depend upon.
+
+"We have in the Foreign Office an agent of the superior police who is
+unique in his power of discovering State secrets; we often send him on
+such missions. Inform Derville that he will have a lieutenant in the
+case. Our spy is a gentleman who will appear wearing the ribbon of the
+Legion of Honor, and looking like a diplomate. This rascal will do the
+hunting; Derville will only look on. Your lawyer will then tell you if
+the mountain brings forth a mouse, or if you must throw over this
+little Rubempre. Within a week you will know what you are doing."
+
+"The young man is not yet so far a Marquis as to take offence at my
+being 'Not at home' for a week," said the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"Above all, if you end by giving him your daughter," replied the
+Minister. "If the anonymous letter tells the truth, what of that? You
+can send Clotilde to travel with my daughter-in-law Madeleine, who
+wants to go to Italy."
+
+"You relieve me immensely. I don't know whether I ought to thank you."
+
+"Wait till the end."
+
+"By the way," exclaimed the Duc de Grandlieu, "what is your man's
+name? I must mention it to Derville. Send him to me to-morrow by five
+o'clock; I will have Derville here and put them in communication."
+
+"His real name," said M. de Chaulieu, "is, I think, Corentin--a name
+you must never have heard, for my gentleman will come ticketed with
+his official name. He calls himself Monsieur de Saint-Something--Saint
+Yves--Saint-Valere?--Something of the kind.--You may trust him; Louis
+XVIII. had perfect confidence in him."
+
+After this confabulation the steward had orders to shut the door on
+Monsieur de Rubempre--which was done.
+
+Lucien paced the waiting-room at the opera-house like a man who was
+drunk. He fancied himself the talk of all Paris. He had in the Duc de
+Rhetore one of those unrelenting enemies on whom a man must smile, as
+he can never be revenged, since their attacks are in conformity with
+the rules of society. The Duc de Rhetore knew the scene that had just
+taken place on the outside steps of the Grandlieus' house. Lucien,
+feeling the necessity of at once reporting the catastrophe to his high
+privy councillor, nevertheless was afraid of compromising himself by
+going to Esther's house, where he might find company. He actually
+forgot that Esther was here, so confused were his thoughts, and in the
+midst of so much perplexity he was obliged to make small talk with
+Rastignac, who, knowing nothing of the news, congratulated him on his
+approaching marriage.
+
+At this moment Nucingen appeared smiling, and said to Lucien:
+
+"Vill you do me de pleasure to come to see Montame de Champy, vat vill
+infite you herself to von house-varming party----"
+
+"With pleasure, Baron," replied Lucien, to whom the Baron appeared as
+a rescuing angel.
+
+"Leave us," said Esther to Monsieur de Nucingen, when she saw him come
+in with Lucien. "Go and see Madame du Val-Noble, whom I discover in a
+box on the third tier with her nabob.--A great many nabobs grow in the
+Indies," she added, with a knowing glance at Lucien.
+
+"And that one," said Lucien, smiling, "is uncommonly like yours."
+
+"And them," said Esther, answering Lucien with another look of
+intelligence, while still speaking to the Baron, "bring her here with
+her nabob; he is very anxious to make your acquaintance. They say he
+is very rich. The poor woman has already poured out I know not how
+many elegies; she complains that her nabob is no good; and if you
+relieve him of his ballast, perhaps he will sail closer to the wind."
+
+"You tink ve are all tieves!" said the Baron as he went away.
+
+"What ails you, my Lucien?" asked Esther in her friend's ear, just
+touching it with her lips as soon as the box door was shut.
+
+"I am lost! I have just been turned from the door of the Hotel de
+Grandlieu under pretence that no one was admitted. The Duke and
+Duchess were at home, and five pairs of horses were champing in the
+courtyard."
+
+"What! will the marriage not take place?" exclaimed Esther, much
+agitated, for she saw a glimpse of Paradise.
+
+"I do not yet know what is being plotted against me----"
+
+"My Lucien," said she in a deliciously coaxing voice, "why be worried
+about it? You can make a better match by and by--I will get you the
+price of two estates----"
+
+"Give us supper to-night that I may be able to speak in secret to
+Carlos, and, above all, invite the sham Englishman and Val-Noble. That
+nabob is my ruin; he is our enemy; we will get hold of him, and
+we----"
+
+But Lucien broke off with a gesture of despair.
+
+"Well, what is it?" asked the poor girl.
+
+"Oh! Madame de Serizy sees me!" cried Lucien, "and to crown our woes,
+the Duc de Rhetore, who witnessed my dismissal, is with her."
+
+In fact, at that very minute, the Duc de Rhetore was amusing himself
+with Madame de Serizy's discomfiture.
+
+"Do you allow Lucien to be seen in Mademoiselle Esther's box?" said
+the young Duke, pointing to the box and to Lucien; "you, who take an
+interest in him, should really tell him such things are not allowed.
+He may sup at her house, he may even--But, in fact, I am no longer
+surprised at the Grandlieus' coolness towards the young man. I have
+just seen their door shut in his face--on the front steps----"
+
+"Women of that sort are very dangerous," said Madame de Serizy,
+turning her opera-glass on Esther's box.
+
+"Yes," said the Duke, "as much by what they can do as by what they
+wish----"
+
+"They will ruin him!" cried Madame de Serizy, "for I am told they cost
+as much whether they are paid or no."
+
+"Not to him!" said the young Duke, affecting surprise. "They are far
+from costing him anything; they give him money at need, and all run
+after him."
+
+The Countess' lips showed a little nervous twitching which could not
+be included in any category of smiles.
+
+"Well, then," said Esther, "come to supper at midnight. Bring Blondet
+and Rastignac; let us have two amusing persons at any rate; and we
+won't be more than nine."
+
+"You must find some excuse for sending the Baron to fetch Eugenie
+under pretence of warning Asie, and tell her what has befallen me, so
+that Carlos may know before he has the nabob under his claws."
+
+"That shall be done," said Esther.
+
+And thus Peyrade was probably about to find himself unwittingly under
+the same roof with his adversary. The tiger was coming into the lion's
+den, and a lion surrounded by his guards.
+
+When Lucien went back to Madame de Serizy's box, instead of turning to
+him, smiling and arranging her skirts for him to sit by her, she
+affected to pay him not the slightest attention, but looked about the
+house through her glass. Lucien could see, however, by the shaking of
+her hand that the Countess was suffering from one of those terrible
+emotions by which illicit joys are paid for. He went to the front of
+the box all the same, and sat down by her at the opposite corner,
+leaving a little vacant space between himself and the Countess. He
+leaned on the ledge of the box with his elbow, resting his chin on his
+gloved hand; then he half turned away, waiting for a word. By the
+middle of the act the Countess had still neither spoken to him nor
+looked at him.
+
+"I do not know," said she at last, "why you are here; your place is in
+Mademoiselle Esther's box----"
+
+"I will go there," said Lucien, leaving the box without looking at the
+Countess.
+
+"My dear," said Madame du Val-Noble, going into Esther's box with
+Peyrade, whom the Baron de Nucingen did not recognize, "I am delighted
+to introduce Mr. Samuel Johnson. He is a great admirer of M. de
+Nucingen's talents."
+
+"Indeed, monsieur," said Esther, smiling at Peyrade.
+
+"Oh yes, bocou," said Peyrade.
+
+"Why, Baron, here is a way of speaking French which is as much like
+yours as the low Breton dialect is like that of Burgundy. It will be
+most amusing to hear you discuss money matters.--Do you know, Monsieur
+Nabob, what I shall require of you if you are to make acquaintance
+with my Baron?" said Esther with a smile.
+
+"Oh!--Thank you so much, you will introduce me to Sir Baronet?" said
+Peyrade with an extravagant English accent.
+
+"Yes," said she, "you must give me the pleasure of your company at
+supper. There is no pitch stronger than champagne for sticking men
+together. It seals every kind of business, above all such as you put
+your foot in.--Come this evening; you will find some jolly fellows.
+--As for you, my little Frederic," she added in the Baron's ear, "you
+have your carriage here--just drive to the Rue Saint-Georges and bring
+Europe to me here; I have a few words to say to her about the supper.
+I have caught Lucien; he will bring two men who will be fun.--We will
+draw the Englishman," she whispered to Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+Peyrade and the Baron left the women together.
+
+"Oh, my dear, if you ever succeed in drawing that great brute, you
+will be clever indeed," said Suzanne.
+
+"If it proves impossible, you must lend him to me for a week," replied
+Esther, laughing.
+
+"You would but keep him half a day," replied Madame du Val-Noble. "The
+bread I eat is too hard; it breaks my teeth. Never again, to my dying
+day, will I try to make an Englishman happy. They are all cold and
+selfish--pigs on their hind legs."
+
+"What, no consideration?" said Esther with a smile.
+
+"On the contrary, my dear, the monster has never shown the least
+familiarity."
+
+"Under no circumstances whatever?" asked Esther.
+
+"The wretch always addresses me as Madame, and preserves the most
+perfect coolness imaginable at moments when every man is more or less
+amenable. To him love-making!--on my word, it is nothing more nor less
+than shaving himself. He wipes the razor, puts it back in its case,
+and looks in the glass as if he were saying, 'I have not cut myself!'
+
+"Then he treats me with such respect as is enough to send a woman mad.
+That odious Milord Potboiler amuses himself by making poor Theodore
+hide in my dressing-room and stand there half the day. In short, he
+tries to annoy me in every way. And as stingy!--As miserly as Gobseck
+and Gigonnet rolled into one. He takes me out to dinner, but he does
+not pay the cab that brings me home if I happen not to have ordered my
+carriage to fetch me."
+
+"Well," said Esther, "but what does he pay you for your services?"
+
+"Oh, my dear, positively nothing. Five hundred francs a month and not
+a penny more, and the hire of a carriage. But what is it? A machine
+such as they hire out for a third-rate wedding to carry an epicier to
+the Mairie, to Church, and to the Cadran bleu.--Oh, he nettles me with
+his respect.
+
+"If I try hysterics and feel ill, he is never vexed; he only says: 'I
+wish my lady to have her own way, for there is nothing more detestable
+--no gentleman--than to say to a nice woman, "You are a cotton bale, a
+bundle of merchandise."--Ha, hah! Are you a member of the Temperance
+Society and anti-slavery?' And my horror sits pale, and cold, and hard
+while he gives me to understand that he has as much respect for me as
+he might have for a Negro, and that it has nothing to do with his
+feelings, but with his opinions as an abolitionist."
+
+"A man cannot be a worse wretch," said Esther. "But I will smash up
+that outlandish Chinee."
+
+"Smash him up?" replied Madame du Val-Noble. "Not if he does not love
+me. You, yourself, would you like to ask him for two sous? He would
+listen to you solemnly, and tell you, with British precision that
+would make a slap in the face seem genial, that he pays dear enough
+for the trifle that love can be to his poor life;" and, as before,
+Madame du Val-Noble mimicked Peyrade's bad French.
+
+"To think that in our line of life we are thrown in the way of such
+men!" exclaimed Esther.
+
+"Oh, my dear, you have been uncommonly lucky. Take good care of your
+Nucingen."
+
+"But your nabob must have got some idea in his head."
+
+"That is what Adele says."
+
+"Look here, my dear; that man, you may depend, has laid a bet that he
+will make a woman hate him and pack him off in a certain time."
+
+"Or else he wants to do business with Nucingen, and took me up knowing
+that you and I were friends; that is what Adele thinks," answered
+Madame du Val-Noble. "That is why I introduced him to you this
+evening. Oh, if only I could be sure what he is at, what tricks I
+could play with you and Nucingen!"
+
+"And you don't get angry?" asked Esther; "you don't speak your mind
+now and then?"
+
+"Try it--you are sharp and smooth.--Well, in spite of your sweetness,
+he would kill you with his icy smiles. 'I am anti-slavery,' he would
+say, 'and you are free.'--If you said the funniest things, he would
+only look at you and say, 'Very good!' and you would see that he
+regards you merely as a part of the show."
+
+"And if you turned furious?"
+
+"The same thing; it would still be a show. You might cut him open
+under the left breast without hurting him in the least; his internals
+are of tinned-iron, I am sure. I told him so. He replied, 'I am quite
+satisfied with that physical constitution.'
+
+"And always polite. My dear, he wears gloves on his soul . . .
+
+"I shall endure this martyrdom for a few days longer to satisfy my
+curiosity. But for that, I should have made Philippe slap my lord's
+cheek--and he has not his match as a swordsman. There is nothing else
+left for it----"
+
+"I was just going to say so," cried Esther. "But you must ascertain
+first that Philippe is a boxer; for these old English fellows, my
+dear, have a depth of malignity----"
+
+"This one has no match on earth. No. if you could but see him asking
+my commands, to know at what hour he may come--to take me by surprise,
+of course--and pouring out respectful speeches like a so-called
+gentleman, you would say, 'Why, he adores her!' and there is not a
+woman in the world who would not say the same."
+
+"And they envy us, my dear!" exclaimed Esther.
+
+"Ah, well!" sighed Madame du Val-Noble; "in the course of our lives we
+learn more or less how little men value us. But, my dear, I have never
+been so cruelly, so deeply, so utterly scorned by brutality as I am by
+this great skinful of port wine.
+
+"When he is tipsy he goes away--'not to be unpleasant,' as he tells
+Adele, and not to be 'under two powers at once,' wine and woman. He
+takes advantage of my carriage; he uses it more than I do.--Oh! if
+only we could see him under the table to-night! But he can drink ten
+bottles and only be fuddled; when his eyes are full, he still sees
+clearly."
+
+"Like people whose windows are dirty outside," said Esther, "but who
+can see from inside what is going on in the street.--I know that
+property in man. Du Tillet has it in the highest degree."
+
+"Try to get du Tillet, and if he and Nucingen between them could only
+catch him in some of their plots, I should at least be revenged. They
+would bring him to beggary!
+
+"Oh! my dear, to have fallen into the hands of a hypocritical
+Protestant after that poor Falleix, who was so amusing, so
+good-natured, so full of chaff! How we used to laugh! They say all
+stockbrokers are stupid. Well, he, for one, never lacked wit but
+once----"
+
+"When he left you without a sou? That is what made you acquainted with
+the unpleasant side of pleasure."
+
+Europe, brought in by Monsieur de Nucingen, put her viperine head in
+at the door, and after listening to a few words whispered in her ear
+by her mistress, she vanished.
+
+
+
+At half-past eleven that evening, five carriages were stationed in the
+Rue Saint-Georges before the famous courtesan's door. There was
+Lucien's, who had brought Rastignac, Bixiou, and Blondet; du Tillet's,
+the Baron de Nucingen's, the Nabob's, and Florine's--she was invited
+by du Tillet. The closed and doubly-shuttered windows were screened by
+the splendid Chinese silk curtains. Supper was to be served at one;
+wax-lights were blazing, the dining-room and little drawing-room
+displayed all their magnificence. The party looked forward to such an
+orgy as only three such women and such men as these could survive.
+They began by playing cards, as they had to wait about two hours.
+
+"Do you play, milord?" asked du Tillet to Peyrade.
+
+"I have played with O'Connell, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Lord Brougham,
+Lord----"
+
+"Say at once no end of lords," said Bixiou.
+
+"Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Hertford, Lord----"
+
+Bixiou was looking at Peyrade's shoes, and stooped down.
+
+"What are you looking for?" asked Blondet.
+
+"For the spring one must touch to stop this machine," said Florine.
+
+"Do you play for twenty francs a point?"
+
+"I will play for as much as you like to lose."
+
+"He does it well!" said Esther to Lucien. "They all take him for an
+Englishman."
+
+Du Tillet, Nucingen, Peyrade, and Rastignac sat down to a whist-table;
+Florine, Madame du Val-Noble, Esther, Blondet, and Bixiou sat round
+the fire chatting. Lucien spent the time in looking through a book of
+fine engravings.
+
+"Supper is ready," Paccard presently announced, in magnificent livery.
+
+Peyrade was placed at Florine's left hand, and on the other side of
+him Bixiou, whom Esther had enjoined to make the Englishman drink
+freely, and challenge him to beat him. Bixiou had the power of
+drinking an indefinite quantity.
+
+Never in his life had Peyrade seen such splendor, or tasted of such
+cookery, or seen such fine women.
+
+"I am getting my money's worth this evening for the thousand crowns la
+Val-Noble has cost me till now," thought he; "and besides, I have just
+won a thousand francs."
+
+"This is an example for men to follow!" said Suzanne, who was sitting
+by Lucien, with a wave of her hand at the splendors of the
+dining-room.
+
+Esther had placed Lucien next herself, and was holding his foot
+between her own under the table.
+
+"Do you hear?" said Madame du Val-Noble, addressing Peyrade, who
+affected blindness. "This is how you ought to furnish a house! When a
+man brings millions home from India, and wants to do business with the
+Nucingens, he should place himself on the same level."
+
+"I belong to a Temperance Society!"
+
+"Then you will drink like a fish!" said Bixiou, "for the Indies are
+uncommon hot, uncle!"
+
+It was Bixiou's jest during supper to treat Peyrade as an uncle of
+his, returned from India.
+
+"Montame du Fal-Noble tolt me you shall have some iteas," said
+Nucingen, scrutinizing Peyrade.
+
+"Ah, this is what I wanted to hear," said du Tillet to Rastignac;
+"the two talking gibberish together."
+
+"You will see, they will understand each other at last," said Bixiou,
+guessing what du Tillet had said to Rastignac.
+
+"Sir Baronet, I have imagined a speculation--oh! a very comfortable
+job--bocou profitable and rich in profits----"
+
+"Now you will see," said Blondet to du Tillet, "he will not talk one
+minute without dragging in the Parliament and the English Government."
+
+"It is in China, in the opium trade----"
+
+"Ja, I know," said Nucingen at once, as a man who is well acquainted
+with commercial geography. "But de English Gover'ment hafe taken up de
+opium trate as a means dat shall open up China, and she shall not
+allow dat ve----"
+
+"Nucingen has cut him out with the Government," remarked du Tillet to
+Blondet.
+
+"Ah! you have been in the opium trade!" cried Madame du Val-Noble.
+"Now I understand why you are so narcotic; some has stuck in your
+soul."
+
+"Dere! you see!" cried the Baron to the self-styled opium merchant,
+and pointing to Madame du Val-Noble. "You are like me. Never shall a
+millionaire be able to make a voman lofe him."
+
+"I have loved much and often, milady," replied Peyrade.
+
+"As a result of temperance," said Bixiou, who had just seen Peyrade
+finish his third bottle of claret, and now had a bottle of port wine
+uncorked.
+
+"Oh!" cried Peyrade, "it is very fine, the Portugal of England."
+
+Blondet, du Tillet, and Bixiou smiled at each other. Peyrade had the
+power of travestying everything, even his wit. There are very few
+Englishmen who will not maintain that gold and silver are better in
+England than elsewhere. The fowls and eggs exported from Normandy to
+the London market enable the English to maintain that the poultry and
+eggs in London are superior (very fine) to those of Paris, which come
+from the same district.
+
+Esther and Lucien were dumfounded by this perfection of costume,
+language, and audacity.
+
+They all ate and drank so well and so heartily, while talking and
+laughing, that it went on till four in the morning. Bixiou flattered
+himself that he had achieved one of the victories so pleasantly
+related by Brillat-Savarin. But at the moment when he was saying to
+himself, as he offered his "uncle" some more wine, "I have vanquished
+England!" Peyrade replied in good French to this malicious scoffer,
+"Toujours, mon garcon" (Go it, my boy), which no one heard but Bixiou.
+
+"Hallo, good men all, he is as English as I am!--My uncle is a Gascon!
+I could have no other!"
+
+Bixiou and Peyrade were alone, so no one heard this announcement.
+Peyrade rolled off his chair on to the floor. Paccard forthwith picked
+him up and carried him to an attic, where he fell sound asleep.
+
+At six o'clock next evening, the Nabob was roused by the application
+of a wet cloth, with which his face was being washed, and awoke to
+find himself on a camp-bed, face to face with Asie, wearing a mask and
+a black domino.
+
+"Well, Papa Peyrade, you and I have to settle accounts," said she.
+
+"Where am I?" asked he, looking about him.
+
+"Listen to me," said Asie, "and that will sober you.--Though you do
+not love Madame du Val-Noble, you love your daughter, I suppose?"
+
+"My daughter?" Peyrade echoed with a roar.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle Lydie."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"What then? She is no longer in the Rue des Moineaux; she has been
+carried off."
+
+Peyrade breathed a sigh like that of a soldier dying of a mortal wound
+on the battlefield.
+
+"While you were pretending to be an Englishman, some one else was
+pretending to be Peyrade. Your little Lydie thought she was with her
+father, and she is now in a safe place.--Oh! you will never find her!
+unless you undo the mischief you have done."
+
+"What mischief?"
+
+"Yesterday Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had the door shut in his face
+at the Duc de Grandlieu's. This is due to your intrigues, and to the
+man you let loose on us. Do not speak, listen!" Asie went on, seeing
+Peyrade open his mouth. "You will have your daughter again, pure and
+spotless," she added, emphasizing her statement by the accent on every
+word, "only on the day after that on which Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre
+walks out of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin as the husband of Mademoiselle
+Clotilde. If, within ten days Lucien de Rubempre is not admitted, as
+he has been, to the Grandlieus' house, you, to begin with, will die a
+violent death, and nothing can save you from the fate that threatens
+you.--Then, when you feel yourself dying, you will have time before
+breathing your last to reflect, 'My daughter is a prostitute for the
+rest of her life!'
+
+"Though you have been such a fool as give us this hold for our
+clutches, you still have sense enough to meditate on this ultimatum
+from our government. Do not bark, say nothing to any one; go to
+Contenson's, and change your dress, and then go home. Katt will tell
+you that at a word from you your little Lydie went downstairs, and has
+not been seen since. If you make any fuss, if you take any steps, your
+daughter will begin where I tell you she will end--she is promised to
+de Marsay.
+
+"With old Canquoelle I need not mince matters, I should think, or wear
+gloves, heh?----Go on downstairs, and take care not to meddle in our
+concerns any more."
+
+Asie left Peyrade in a pitiable state; every word had been a blow with
+a club. The spy had tears in his eyes, and tears hanging from his
+cheeks at the end of a wet furrow.
+
+"They are waiting dinner for Mr. Johnson," said Europe, putting her
+head in a moment after.
+
+Peyrade made no reply; he went down, walked till he reached a
+cab-stand, and hurried off to undress at Contenson's, not saying a word
+to him; he resumed the costume of Pere Canquoelle, and got home by eight
+o'clock. He mounted the stairs with a beating heart. When the Flemish
+woman heard her master, she asked him:
+
+"Well, and where is mademoiselle?" with such simplicity, that the old
+spy was obliged to lean against the wall. The blow was more than he
+could bear. He went into his daughter's rooms, and ended by fainting
+with grief when he found them empty, and heard Katt's story, which was
+that of an abduction as skilfully planned as if he had arranged it
+himself.
+
+"Well, well," thought he, "I must knock under. I will be revenged
+later; now I must go to Corentin.--This is the first time we have met
+our foes. Corentin will leave that handsome boy free to marry an
+Empress if he wishes!--Yes, I understand that my little girl should
+have fallen in love with him at first sight.--Oh! that Spanish priest
+is a knowing one. Courage, friend Peyrade! disgorge your prey!"
+
+The poor father never dreamed of the fearful blow that awaited him.
+
+On reaching Corentin's house, Bruno, the confidential servant, who
+knew Peyrade, said:
+
+"Monsieur is gone away."
+
+"For a long time?"
+
+"For ten days."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know.
+
+"Good God, I am losing my wits! I ask him where--as if we ever told
+them----" thought he.
+
+A few hours before the moment when Peyrade was to be roused in his
+garret in the Rue Saint-Georges, Corentin, coming in from his country
+place at Passy, had made his way to the Duc de Grandlieu's, in the
+costume of a retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the
+Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face
+with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes were
+hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired
+office-clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint-Denis, he was led
+to the Duke's private room, where he found Derville reading a letter,
+which he himself had dictated to one of his agents, the "number" whose
+business it was to write documents. The Duke took Corentin aside to
+tell him all he already knew. Monsieur de Saint-Denis listened coldly
+and respectfully, amusing himself by studying this grand gentleman, by
+penetrating the tufa beneath the velvet cover, by scrutinizing this
+being, now and always absorbed in whist and in regard for the House of
+Grandlieu.
+
+"If you will take my advice, monsieur," said Corentin to Derville,
+after being duly introduced to the lawyer, "we shall set out this very
+afternoon for Angouleme by the Bordeaux coach, which goes quite as
+fast as the mail; and we shall not need to stay there six hours to
+obtain the information Monsieur le Duc requires. It will be enough--if
+I have understood your Grace--to ascertain whether Monsieur de
+Rubempre's sister and brother-in-law are in a position to give him
+twelve hundred thousand francs?" and he turned to the Duke.
+
+"You have understood me perfectly," said the Duke.
+
+"We can be back again in four days," Corentin went on, addressing
+Derville, "and neither of us will have neglected his business long
+enough for it to suffer."
+
+"That was the only difficulty I was about to mention to his Grace,"
+said Derville. "It is now four o'clock. I am going home to say a word
+to my head-clerk, and pack my traveling-bag, and after dinner, at
+eight o'clock, I will be----But shall we get places?" he said to
+Monsieur de Saint-Denis, interrupting himself.
+
+"I will answer for that," said Corentin. "Be in the yard of the Chief
+Office of the Messageries at eight o'clock. If there are no places,
+they shall make some, for that is the way to serve Monseigneur le Duc
+de Grandlieu."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Duke most graciously, "I postpone my thanks----"
+
+Corentin and the lawyer, taking this as a dismissal, bowed, and
+withdrew.
+
+At the hour when Peyrade was questioning Corentin's servant, Monsieur
+de Saint-Denis and Derville, seated in the Bordeaux coach, were
+studying each other in silence as they drove out of Paris.
+
+Next morning, between Orleans and Tours, Derville, being bored, began
+to converse, and Corentin condescended to amuse him, but keeping his
+distance; he left him to believe that he was in the diplomatic
+service, and was hoping to become Consul-General by the good offices
+of the Duc de Grandlieu. Two days after leaving Paris, Corentin and
+Derville got out at Mansle, to the great surprise of the lawyer, who
+thought he was going to Angouleme.
+
+"In this little town," said Corentin, "we can get the most positive
+information as regards Madame Sechard."
+
+"Do you know her then?" asked Derville, astonished to find Corentin so
+well informed.
+
+"I made the conductor talk, finding he was a native of Angouleme. He
+tells me that Madame Sechard lives at Marsac, and Marsac is but a
+league away from Mansle. I thought we should be at greater advantage
+here than at Angouleme for verifying the facts."
+
+"And besides," thought Derville, "as Monsieur le Duc said, I act
+merely as the witness to the inquiries made by this confidential
+agent----"
+
+The inn at Mansle, _la Belle Etoile_, had for its landlord one of those
+fat and burly men whom we fear we may find no more on our return; but
+who still, ten years after, are seen standing at their door with as
+much superfluous flesh as ever, in the same linen cap, the same apron,
+with the same knife, the same oiled hair, the same triple chin,--all
+stereotyped by novel-writers from the immortal Cervantes to the
+immortal Walter Scott. Are they not all boastful of their cookery?
+have they not all "whatever you please to order"? and do not all end
+by giving you the same hectic chicken, and vegetables cooked with rank
+butter? They all boast of their fine wines, and all make you drink the
+wine of the country.
+
+But Corentin, from his earliest youth, had known the art of getting
+out of an innkeeper things more essential to himself than doubtful
+dishes and apocryphal wines. So he gave himself out as a man easy to
+please, and willing to leave himself in the hands of the best cook in
+Mansle, as he told the fat man.
+
+"There is no difficulty about being the best--I am the only one," said
+the host.
+
+"Serve us in the side room," said Corentin, winking at Derville. "And
+do not be afraid of setting the chimney on fire; we want to thaw out
+the frost in our fingers."
+
+"It was not warm in the coach," said Derville.
+
+"Is it far to Marsac?" asked Corentin of the innkeeper's wife, who
+came down from the upper regions on hearing that the diligence had
+dropped two travelers to sleep there.
+
+"Are you going to Marsac, monsieur?" replied the woman.
+
+"I don't know," he said sharply. "Is it far from hence to Marsac?" he
+repeated, after giving the woman time to notice his red ribbon.
+
+"In a chaise, a matter of half an hour," said the innkeeper's wife.
+
+"Do you think that Monsieur and Madame Sechard are likely to be there
+in winter?"
+
+"To be sure; they live there all the year round."
+
+"It is now five o'clock. We shall still find them up at nine."
+
+"Oh yes, till ten. They have company every evening--the cure, Monsieur
+Marron the doctor----"
+
+"Good folks then?" said Derville.
+
+"Oh, the best of good souls," replied the woman, "straight-forward,
+honest--and not ambitious neither. Monsieur Sechard, though he is very
+well off--they say he might have made millions if he had not allowed
+himself to be robbed of an invention in the paper-making of which the
+brothers Cointet are getting the benefit----"
+
+"Ah, to be sure, the Brothers Cointet!" said Corentin.
+
+"Hold your tongue," said the innkeeper. "What can it matter to these
+gentlemen whether Monsieur Sechard has a right or no to a patent for
+his inventions in paper-making?--If you mean to spend the night here
+--at the _Belle Etoile_----" he went on, addressing the travelers,
+"here is the book, and please to put your names down. We have an
+officer in this town who has nothing to do, and spends all his time
+in nagging at us----"
+
+"The devil!" said Corentin, while Derville entered their names and his
+profession as attorney to the lower Court in the department of the
+Seine, "I fancied the Sechards were very rich."
+
+"Some people say they are millionaires," replied the innkeeper. "But
+as to hindering tongues from wagging, you might as well try to stop
+the river from flowing. Old Sechard left two hundred thousand francs'
+worth of landed property, it is said; and that is not amiss for a man
+who began as a workman. Well, and he may have had as much again in
+savings, for he made ten or twelve thousand francs out of his land at
+last. So, supposing he were fool enough not to invest his money for
+ten years, that would be all told. But even if he lent it at high
+interest, as he is suspected of doing there would be three hundred
+thousand francs perhaps, and that is all. Five hundred thousand francs
+is a long way short of a million. I should be quite content with the
+difference, and no more of the _Belle Etoile_ for me!"
+
+"Really!" said Corentin. "Then Monsieur David Sechard and his wife
+have not a fortune of two or three millions?"
+
+"Why," exclaimed the innkeeper's wife, "that is what the Cointets are
+supposed to have, who robbed him of his invention, and he does not get
+more than twenty thousand francs out of them. Where do you suppose
+such honest folks would find millions? They were very much pinched
+while the father was alive. But for Kolb, their manager, and Madame
+Kolb, who is as much attached to them as her husband, they could
+scarcely have lived. Why, how much had they with La Verberie!--A
+thousand francs a year perhaps."
+
+Corentin drew Derville aside and said:
+
+"In vino veritas! Truth lives under a cork. For my part, I regard an
+inn as the real registry office of the countryside; the notary is not
+better informed than the innkeeper as to all that goes on in a small
+neighborhood.--You see! we are supposed to know all about the Cointets
+and Kolb and the rest.
+
+"Your innkeeper is the living record of every incident; he does the
+work of the police without suspecting it. A government should maintain
+two hundred spies at most, for in a country like France there are ten
+millions of simple-minded informers.--However, we need not trust to
+this report; though even in this little town something would be known
+about the twelve hundred thousand francs sunk in paying for the
+Rubempre estate. We will not stop here long----"
+
+"I hope not!" Derville put in.
+
+"And this is why," added Corentin; "I have hit on the most natural way
+of extracting the truth from the mouth of the Sechard couple. I rely
+upon you to support, by your authority as a lawyer, the little trick I
+shall employ to enable you to hear a clear and complete account of
+their affairs.--After dinner we shall set out to call on Monsieur
+Sechard," said Corentin to the innkeeper's wife. "Have beds ready for
+us, we want separate rooms. There can be no difficulty 'under the
+stars.'"
+
+"Oh, monsieur," said the woman, "we invented the sign."
+
+"The pun is to be found in every department," said Corentin; "it is no
+monopoly of yours."
+
+"Dinner is served, gentlemen," said the innkeeper.
+
+"But where the devil can that young fellow have found the money? Is
+the anonymous writer accurate? Can it be the earnings of some handsome
+baggage?" said Derville, as they sat down to dinner.
+
+"Ah, that will be the subject of another inquiry," said Corentin.
+"Lucien de Rubempre, as the Duc de Chaulieu tells me, lives with a
+converted Jewess, who passes for a Dutch woman, and is called Esther
+van Bogseck."
+
+"What a strange coincidence!" said the lawyer. "I am hunting for the
+heiress of a Dutchman named Gobseck--it is the same name with a
+transposition of consonants."
+
+"Well," said Corentin, "you shall have information as to her parentage
+on my return to Paris."
+
+
+
+An hour later, the two agents for the Grandlieu family set out for La
+Verberie, where Monsieur and Madame Sechard were living.
+
+Never had Lucien felt any emotion so deep as that which overcame him
+at La Verberie when comparing his own fate with that of his
+brother-in-law. The two Parisians were about to witness the same scene
+that had so much struck Lucien a few days since. Everything spoke of
+peace and abundance.
+
+At the hour when the two strangers were arriving, a party of four
+persons were being entertained in the drawing-room of La Verberie: the
+cure of Marsac, a young priest of five-and-twenty, who, at Madame
+Sechard's request, had become tutor to her little boy Lucien; the
+country doctor, Monsieur Marron; the Maire of the commune; and an old
+colonel, who grew roses on a plot of land opposite to La Verberie on
+the other side of the road. Every evening during the winter these
+persons came to play an artless game of boston for centime points, to
+borrow the papers, or return those they had finished.
+
+When Monsieur and Madame Sechard had bought La Verberie, a fine house
+built of stone, and roofed with slate, the pleasure-grounds consisted
+of a garden of two acres. In the course of time, by devoting her
+savings to the purpose, handsome Madame Sechard had extended her
+garden as far as a brook, by cutting down the vines on some ground she
+purchased, and replacing them with grass plots and clumps of
+shrubbery. At the present time the house, surrounded by a park of
+about twenty acres, and enclosed by walls, was considered the most
+imposing place in the neighborhood.
+
+Old Sechard's former residence, with the outhouses attached, was now
+used as the dwelling-house for the manager of about twenty acres of
+vineyard left by him, of five farmsteads, bringing in about six
+thousand francs a year, and ten acres of meadow land lying on the
+further side of the stream, exactly opposite the little park; indeed,
+Madame Sechard hoped to include them in it the next year. La Verberie
+was already spoken of in the neighborhood as a chateau, and Eve
+Sechard was known as the Lady of Marsac. Lucien, while flattering
+her vanity, had only followed the example of the peasants and
+vine-dressers. Courtois, the owner of the mill, very picturesquely
+situated a few hundred yards from the meadows of La Verberie, was in
+treaty, it was said, with Madame Sechard for the sale of his property;
+and this acquisition would give the finishing touch to the estate and
+the rank of a "place" in the department.
+
+Madame Sechard, who did a great deal of good, with as much judgment as
+generosity, was equally esteemed and loved. Her beauty, now really
+splendid, was at the height of its bloom. She was about
+six-and-twenty, but had preserved all the freshness of youth from
+living in the tranquillity and abundance of a country life. Still much
+in love with her husband, she respected him as a clever man, who was
+modest enough to renounce the display of fame; in short, to complete
+her portrait, it is enough to say that in her whole existence she had
+never felt a throb of her heart that was not inspired by her husband
+or her children.
+
+The tax paid to grief by this happy household was, as may be supposed,
+the deep anxiety caused by Lucien's career, in which Eve Sechard
+suspected mysteries, which she dreaded all the more because, during
+his last visit, Lucien roughly cut short all his sister's questions by
+saying that an ambitious man owed no account of his proceedings to any
+one but himself.
+
+In six years Lucien had seen his sister but three times, and had not
+written her more than six letters. His first visit to La Verberie had
+been on the occasion of his mother's death; and his last had been paid
+with a view to asking the favor of the lie which was so necessary to
+his advancement. This gave rise to a very serious scene between
+Monsieur and Madame Sechard and their brother, and left their happy
+and respected life troubled by the most terrible suspicions.
+
+The interior of the house, as much altered as the surroundings, was
+comfortable without luxury, as will be understood by a glance round
+the room where the little party were now assembled. A pretty Aubusson
+carpet, hangings of gray cotton twill bound with green silk brocade,
+the woodwork painted to imitate Spa wood, carved mahogany furniture
+covered with gray woolen stuff and green gimp, with flower-stands, gay
+with flowers in spite of the time of year, presented a very pleasing
+and homelike aspect. The window curtains, of green brocade, the
+chimney ornaments, and the mirror frames were untainted by the bad
+taste that spoils everything in the provinces; and the smallest
+details, all elegant and appropriate, gave the mind and eye a sense of
+repose and of poetry which a clever and loving woman can and ought to
+infuse into her home.
+
+Madame Sechard, still in mourning for her father, sat by the fire
+working at some large piece of tapestry with the help of Madame Kolb,
+the housekeeper, to whom she intrusted all the minor cares of the
+household.
+
+"A chaise has stopped at the door!" said Courtois, hearing the sound
+of wheels outside; "and to judge by the clatter of metal, it belongs
+to these parts----"
+
+"Postel and his wife have come to see us, no doubt," said the doctor.
+
+"No," said Courtois, "the chaise has come from Mansle."
+
+"Montame," said Kolb, the burly Alsatian we have made acquaintance
+with in a former volume (_Illusions perdues_), "here is a lawyer from
+Paris who wants to speak with monsieur."
+
+"A lawyer!" cried Sechard; "the very word gives me the colic!"
+
+"Thank you!" said the Maire of Marsac, named Cachan, who for twenty
+years had been an attorney at Angouleme, and who had once been
+required to prosecute Sechard.
+
+"My poor David will never improve; he will always be absent-minded!"
+said Eve, smiling.
+
+"A lawyer from Paris," said Courtois. "Have you any business in
+Paris?"
+
+"No," said Eve.
+
+"But you have a brother there," observed Courtois.
+
+"Take care lest he should have anything to say about old Sechard's
+estate," said Cachan. "_He_ had his finger in some very queer concerns,
+worthy man!"
+
+Corentin and Derville, on entering the room, after bowing to the
+company, and giving their names, begged to have a private interview
+with Monsieur and Madame Sechard.
+
+"By all means," said Sechard. "But is it a matter of business?"
+
+"Solely a matter regarding your father's property," said Corentin.
+
+"Then I beg you will allow monsieur--the Maire, a lawyer formerly at
+Angouleme--to be present also."
+
+"Are you Monsieur Derville?" said Cachan, addressing Corentin.
+
+"No, monsieur, this is Monsieur Derville," replied Corentin,
+introducing the lawyer, who bowed.
+
+"But," said Sechard, "we are, so to speak, a family party; we have no
+secrets from our neighbors; there is no need to retire to my study,
+where there is no fire--our life is in the sight of all men----"
+
+"But your father's," said Corentin, "was involved in certain mysteries
+which perhaps you would rather not make public."
+
+"Is it anything we need blush for?" said Eve, in alarm.
+
+"Oh, no! a sin of his youth," said Corentin, coldly setting one of his
+mouse-traps. "Monsieur, your father left an elder son----"
+
+"Oh, the old rascal!" cried Courtois. "He was never very fond of you,
+Monsieur Sechard, and he kept that secret from you, the deep old dog!
+--Now I understand what he meant when he used to say to me, 'You shall
+see what you shall see when I am under the turf.'"
+
+"Do not be dismayed, monsieur," said Corentin to Sechard, while he
+watched Eve out of the corner of his eye.
+
+"A brother!" exclaimed the doctor. "Then your inheritance is divided
+into two!"
+
+Derville was affecting to examine the fine engravings, proofs before
+letters, which hung on the drawing-room walls.
+
+"Do not be dismayed, madame," Corentin went on, seeing amazement
+written on Madame Sechard's handsome features, "it is only a natural
+son. The rights of a natural son are not the same as those of a
+legitimate child. This man is in the depths of poverty, and he has a
+right to a certain sum calculated on the amount of the estate. The
+millions left by your father----"
+
+At the word millions there was a perfectly unanimous cry from all the
+persons present. And now Derville ceased to study the prints.
+
+"Old Sechard?--Millions?" said Courtois. "Who on earth told you that?
+Some peasant----"
+
+"Monsieur," said Cachan, "you are not attached to the Treasury? You
+may be told all the facts----"
+
+"Be quite easy," said Corentin, "I give you my word of honor I am not
+employed by the Treasury."
+
+Cachan, who had just signed to everybody to say nothing, gave
+expression to his satisfaction.
+
+"Monsieur," Corentin went on, "if the whole estate were but a million,
+a natural child's share would still be something considerable. But we
+have not come to threaten a lawsuit; on the contrary, our purpose is
+to propose that you should hand over one hundred thousand francs, and
+we will depart----"
+
+"One hundred thousand francs!" cried Cachan, interrupting him. "But,
+monsieur, old Sechard left twenty acres of vineyard, five small farms,
+ten acres of meadowland here, and not a sou besides----"
+
+"Nothing on earth," cried David Sechard, "would induce me to tell a
+lie, and less to a question of money than on any other.--Monsieur,"
+he said, turning to Corentin and Derville, "my father left us, besides
+the land----"
+
+Courtois and Cachan signaled in vain to Sechard; he went on:
+
+"Three hundred thousand francs, which raises the whole estate to about
+five hundred thousand francs."
+
+"Monsieur Cachan," asked Eve Sechard, "what proportion does the law
+allot to a natural child?"
+
+"Madame," said Corentin, "we are not Turks; we only require you to
+swear before these gentlemen that you did not inherit more than five
+hundred thousand francs from your father-in-law, and we can come to an
+understanding."
+
+"First give me your word of honor that you really are a lawyer," said
+Cachan to Derville.
+
+"Here is my passport," replied Derville, handing him a paper folded in
+four; "and monsieur is not, as you might suppose, an inspector from
+the Treasury, so be easy," he added. "We had an important reason for
+wanting to know the truth as to the Sechard estate, and we now know
+it."
+
+Derville took Madame Sechard's hand and led her very courteously to
+the further end of the room.
+
+"Madame," said he, in a low voice, "if it were not that the honor and
+future prospects of the house of Grandlieu are implicated in this
+affair, I would never have lent myself to the stratagem devised by
+this gentleman of the red ribbon. But you must forgive him; it was
+necessary to detect the falsehood by means of which your brother has
+stolen a march on the beliefs of that ancient family. Beware now of
+allowing it to be supposed that you have given your brother twelve
+hundred thousand francs to repurchase the Rubempre estates----"
+
+"Twelve hundred thousand francs!" cried Madame Sechard, turning pale.
+"Where did he get them, wretched boy?"
+
+"Ah! that is the question," replied Derville. "I fear that the source
+of his wealth is far from pure."
+
+The tears rose to Eve's eyes, as her neighbors could see.
+
+"We have, perhaps, done you a great service by saving you from
+abetting a falsehood of which the results may be positively
+dangerous," the lawyer went on.
+
+Derville left Madame Sechard sitting pale and dejected with tears on
+her cheeks, and bowed to the company.
+
+"To Mansle!" said Corentin to the little boy who drove the chaise.
+
+There was but one vacant place in the diligence from Bordeaux to
+Paris; Derville begged Corentin to allow him to take it, urging a
+press of business; but in his soul he was distrustful of his traveling
+companion, whose diplomatic dexterity and coolness struck him as being
+the result of practice. Corentin remained three days longer at Mansle,
+unable to get away; he was obliged to secure a place in the Paris
+coach by writing to Bordeaux, and did not get back till nine days
+after leaving home.
+
+Peyrade, meanwhile, had called every morning, either at Passy or in
+Paris, to inquire whether Corentin had returned. On the eighth day he
+left at each house a note, written in their peculiar cipher, to
+explain to his friend what death hung over him, and to tell him of
+Lydie's abduction and the horrible end to which his enemies had
+devoted them. Peyrade, bereft of Corentin, but seconded by Contenson,
+still kept up his disguise as a nabob. Even though his invisible foes
+had discovered him, he very wisely reflected that he might glean some
+light on the matter by remaining on the field of the contest.
+
+Contenson had brought all his experience into play in his search for
+Lydie, and hoped to discover in what house she was hidden; but as the
+days went by, the impossibility, absolutely demonstrated, of tracing
+the slightest clue, added, hour by hour, to Peyrade's despair. The old
+spy had a sort of guard about him of twelve or fifteen of the most
+experienced detectives. They watched the neighborhood of the Rue des
+Moineaux and the Rue Taitbout--where he lived, as a nabob, with Madame
+du Val-Noble. During the last three days of the term granted by Asie
+to reinstate Lucien on his old footing in the Hotel de Grandlieu,
+Contenson never left the veteran of the old general police office. And
+the poetic terror shed throughout the forests of America by the arts
+of inimical and warring tribes, of which Cooper made such good use in
+his novels, was here associated with the petty details of Paris life.
+The foot-passengers, the shops, the hackney cabs, a figure standing at
+a window,--everything had to the human ciphers to whom old Peyrade had
+intrusted his safety the thrilling interest which attaches in Cooper's
+romances to a beaver-village, a rock, a bison-robe, a floating canoe,
+a weed straggling over the water.
+
+"If the Spaniard has gone away, you have nothing to fear," said
+Contenson to Peyrade, remarking on the perfect peace they lived in.
+
+"But if he is not gone?" observed Peyrade.
+
+"He took one of my men at the back of the chaise; but at Blois, my man
+having to get down, could not catch the chaise up again."
+
+
+
+Five days after Derville's return, Lucien one morning had a call from
+Rastignac.
+
+"I am in despair, my dear boy," said his visitor, "at finding myself
+compelled to deliver a message which is intrusted to me because we are
+known to be intimate. Your marriage is broken off beyond all hope of
+reconciliation. Never set foot again in the Hotel de Grandlieu. To
+marry Clotilde you must wait till her father dies, and he is too
+selfish to die yet awhile. Old whist-players sit at table--the
+card-table--very late.
+
+"Clotilde is setting out for Italy with Madeleine de
+Lenoncourt-Chaulieu. The poor girl is so madly in love with you, my
+dear fellow, that they have to keep an eye on her; she was bent on
+coming to see you, and had plotted an escape. That may comfort you
+in misfortune!"
+
+Lucien made no reply; he sat gazing at Rastignac.
+
+"And is it a misfortune, after all?" his friend went on. "You will
+easily find a girl as well born and better looking than Clotilde!
+Madame de Serizy will find you a wife out of spite; she cannot endure
+the Grandlieus, who never would have anything to say to her. She has a
+niece, little Clemence du Rouvre----"
+
+"My dear boy," said Lucien at length, "since that supper I am not on
+terms with Madame de Serizy--she saw me in Esther's box and made a
+scene--and I left her to herself."
+
+"A woman of forty does not long keep up a quarrel with so handsome a
+man as you are," said Rastignac. "I know something of these sunsets.
+--It lasts ten minutes in the sky, and ten years in a woman's heart."
+
+"I have waited a week to hear from her."
+
+"Go and call."
+
+"Yes, I must now."
+
+"Are you coming at any rate to the Val-Noble's? Her nabob is returning
+the supper given by Nucingen."
+
+"I am asked, and I shall go," said Lucien gravely.
+
+The day after this confirmation of his disaster, which Carlos heard of
+at once from Asie, Lucien went to the Rue Taitbout with Rastignac and
+Nucingen.
+
+At midnight nearly all the personages of this drama were assembled in
+the dining-room that had formerly been Esther's--a drama of which the
+interest lay hidden under the very bed of these tumultuous lives, and
+was known only to Esther, to Lucien, to Peyrade, to Contenson, the
+mulatto, and to Paccard, who attended his mistress. Asie, without its
+being known to Contenson and Peyrade, had been asked by Madame du
+Val-Noble to come and help her cook.
+
+As they sat down to table, Peyrade, who had given Madame du Val-Noble
+five hundred francs that the thing might be well done, found under his
+napkin a scrap of paper on which these words were written in pencil,
+"The ten days are up at the moment when you sit down to supper."
+
+Peyrade handed the paper to Contenson, who was standing behind him,
+saying in English:
+
+"Did you put my name here?"
+
+Contenson read by the light of the wax-candles this "Mene, Tekel,
+Upharsin," and slipped the scrap into his pocket; but he knew how
+difficult it is to verify a handwriting in pencil, and, above all, a
+sentence written in Roman capitals, that is to say, with mathematical
+lines, since capital letters are wholly made up of straight lines and
+curves, in which it is impossible to detect any trick of the hand, as
+in what is called running-hand.
+
+The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit. Peyrade was visibly
+absent-minded. Of the men about town who give life to a supper, only
+Rastignac and Lucien were present. Lucien was gloomy and absorbed in
+thought; Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper,
+ate and drank with the hope of recovering them later. The three women,
+stricken by this chill, looked at each other. Dulness deprived the
+dishes of all relish. Suppers, like plays and books, have their good
+and bad luck.
+
+At the end of the meal ices were served, of the kind called
+plombieres. As everybody knows, this kind of dessert has delicate
+preserved fruits laid on the top of the ice, which is served in a
+little glass, not heaped above the rim. These ices had been ordered by
+Madame du Val-Noble of Tortoni, whose shop is at the corner of the Rue
+Taitbout and the Boulevard.
+
+The cook called Contenson out of the room to pay the bill.
+
+Contenson, who thought this demand on the part of the shop-boy rather
+strange, went downstairs and startled him by saying:
+
+"Then you have not come from Tortoni's?" and then went straight
+upstairs again.
+
+Paccard had meanwhile handed the ices to the company in his absence.
+The mulatto had hardly reached the door when one of the police
+constables who had kept watch in the Rue des Moineaux called up the
+stairs:
+
+"Number twenty-seven."
+
+"What's up?" replied Contenson, flying down again.
+
+"Tell Papa that his daughter has come home; but, good God! in what a
+state. Tell him to come at once; she is dying."
+
+At the moment when Contenson re-entered the dining-room, old Peyrade,
+who had drunk a great deal, was swallowing the cherry off his ice.
+They were drinking to the health of Madame du Val-Noble; the nabob
+filled his glass with Constantia and emptied it.
+
+In spite of his distress at the news he had to give Peyrade, Contenson
+was struck by the eager attention with which Paccard was looking at
+the nabob. His eyes sparkled like two fixed flames. Although it seemed
+important, still this could not delay the mulatto, who leaned over his
+master, just as Peyrade set his glass down.
+
+"Lydie is at home," said Contenson, "in a very bad state."
+
+Peyrade rattled out the most French of all French oaths with such a
+strong Southern accent that all the guests looked up in amazement.
+Peyrade, discovering his blunder, acknowledged his disguise by saying
+to Contenson in good French:
+
+"Find me a coach--I'm off."
+
+Every one rose.
+
+"Why, who are you?" said Lucien.
+
+"Ja--who?" said the Baron.
+
+"Bixiou told me you shammed Englishman better than he could, and I
+would not believe him," said Rastignac.
+
+"Some bankrupt caught in disguise," said du Tillet loudly. "I
+suspected as much!"
+
+"A strange place is Paris!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "After being
+bankrupt in his own part of town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a
+dandy in the Champs-Elysees with impunity!--Oh! I am unlucky!
+bankrupts are my bane."
+
+"Every flower has its peculiar blight!" said Esther quietly. "Mine is
+like Cleopatra's--an asp."
+
+"Who am I?" echoed Peyrade from the door. "You will know ere long; for
+if I die, I will rise from my grave to clutch your feet every night!"
+
+He looked at Esther and Lucien as he spoke, then he took advantage of
+the general dismay to vanish with the utmost rapidity, meaning to run
+home without waiting for the coach. In the street the spy was gripped
+by the arm as he crossed the threshold of the outer gate. It was Asie,
+wrapped in a black hood such as ladies then wore on leaving a ball.
+
+"Send for the Sacraments, Papa Peyrade," said she, in the voice that
+had already prophesied ill.
+
+A coach was waiting. Asie jumped in, and the carriage vanished as
+though the wind had swept it away. There were five carriages waiting;
+Peyrade's men could find out nothing.
+
+
+
+On reaching his house in the Rue des Vignes, one of the quietest and
+prettiest nooks of the little town of Passy, Corentin, who was known
+there as a retired merchant passionately devoted to gardening, found
+his friend Peyrade's note in cipher. Instead of resting, he got into
+the hackney coach that had brought him thither, and was driven to the
+Rue des Moineaux, where he found only Katt. From her he heard of
+Lydie's disappearance, and remained astounded at Peyrade's and his own
+want of foresight.
+
+"But they do not know me yet," said he to himself. "This crew is
+capable of anything; I must find out if they are killing Peyrade; for
+if so, I must not be seen any more----"
+
+The viler a man's life is, the more he clings to it; it becomes at
+every moment a protest and a revenge.
+
+Corentin went back to the cab, and drove to his rooms to assume the
+disguise of a feeble old man, in a scanty greenish overcoat and a tow
+wig. Then he returned on foot, prompted by his friendship for Peyrade.
+He intended to give instructions to his most devoted and cleverest
+underlings.
+
+As he went along the Rue Saint-Honore to reach the Rue Saint-Roch from
+the Place Vendome, he came up behind a girl in slippers, and dressed
+as a woman dresses for the night. She had on a white bed-jacket and a
+nightcap, and from time to time gave vent to a sob and an involuntary
+groan. Corentin out-paced her, and turning round, recognized Lydie.
+
+"I am a friend of your father's, of Monsieur Canquoelle's," said he in
+his natural voice.
+
+"Ah! then here is some one I can trust!" said she.
+
+"Do not seem to have recognized me," Corentin went on, "for we are
+pursued by relentless foes, and are obliged to disguise ourselves. But
+tell me what has befallen you?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur," said the poor child, "the facts but not the story can
+be told--I am ruined, lost, and I do not know how----"
+
+"Where have you come from?"
+
+"I don't know, monsieur. I fled with such precipitancy, I have come
+through so many streets, round so many turnings, fancying I was being
+followed. And when I met any one that seemed decent, I asked my way to
+get back to the Boulevards, so as to find the Rue de la Paix. And at
+last, after walking----What o'clock is it, monsieur?"
+
+"Half-past eleven," said Corentin.
+
+"I escaped at nightfall," said Lydie. "I have been walking for five
+hours."
+
+"Well, come along; you can rest now; you will find your good Katt."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, there is no rest for me! I only want to rest in the
+grave, and I will go and wait for death in a convent if I am worthy to
+be admitted----"
+
+"Poor little girl!--But you struggled?"
+
+"Oh yes! Oh! if you could only imagine the abject creatures they
+placed me with----!"
+
+"They sent you to sleep, no doubt?"
+
+"Ah! that is it" cried poor Lydie. "A little more strength and I
+should be at home. I feel that I am dropping, and my brain is not
+quite clear.--Just now I fancied I was in a garden----"
+
+Corentin took Lydie in his arms, and she lost consciousness; he
+carried her upstairs.
+
+"Katt!" he called.
+
+Katt came out with exclamations of joy.
+
+"Don't be in too great a hurry to be glad!" said Corentin gravely;
+"the girl is very ill."
+
+When Lydie was laid on her bed and recognized her own room by the
+light of two candles that Katt lighted, she became delirious. She sang
+scraps of pretty airs, broken by vociferations of horrible sentences
+she had heard. Her pretty face was mottled with purple patches. She
+mixed up the reminiscences of her pure childhood with those of these
+ten days of infamy. Katt sat weeping; Corentin paced the room,
+stopping now and again to gaze at Lydie.
+
+"She is paying her father's debt," said he. "Is there a Providence
+above? Oh, I was wise not to have a family. On my word of honor, a
+child is indeed a hostage given to misfortune, as some philosopher has
+said."
+
+"Oh!" cried the poor child, sitting up in bed and throwing back her
+fine long hair, "instead of lying here, Katt, I ought to be stretched
+in the sand at the bottom of the Seine!"
+
+"Katt, instead of crying and looking at your child, which will never
+cure her, you ought to go for a doctor; the medical officer in the
+first instance, and then Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon
+----We must save this innocent creature."
+
+And Corentin wrote down the addresses of these two famous physicians.
+
+At this moment, up the stairs came some one to whom they were
+familiar, and the door was opened. Peyrade, in a violent sweat, his
+face purple, his eyes almost blood-stained, and gasping like a
+dolphin, rushed from the outer door to Lydie's room, exclaiming:
+
+"Where is my child?"
+
+He saw a melancholy sign from Corentin, and his eyes followed his
+friend's hand. Lydie's condition can only be compared to that of a
+flower tenderly cherished by a gardener, now fallen from its stem, and
+crushed by the iron-clamped shoes of some peasant. Ascribe this simile
+to a father's heart, and you will understand the blow that fell on
+Peyrade; the tears started to his eyes.
+
+"You are crying!--It is my father!" said the girl.
+
+She could still recognize her father; she got out of bed and fell on
+her knees at the old man's side as he sank into a chair.
+
+"Forgive me, papa," said she in a tone that pierced Peyrade's heart,
+and at the same moment he was conscious of what felt like a tremendous
+blow on his head.
+
+"I am dying!--the villains!" were his last words.
+
+Corentin tried to help his friend, and received his latest breath.
+
+"Dead! Poisoned!" said he to himself. "Ah! here is the doctor!" he
+exclaimed, hearing the sound of wheels.
+
+Contenson, who came with his mulatto disguise removed, stood like a
+bronze statue as he heard Lydie say:
+
+"Then you do not forgive me, father?--But it was not my fault!"
+
+She did not understand that her father was dead.
+
+"Oh, how he stares at me!" cried the poor crazy girl.
+
+"We must close his eyes," said Contenson, lifting Peyrade on to the
+bed.
+
+"We are doing a stupid thing," said Corentin. "Let us carry him into
+his own room. His daughter is half demented, and she will go quite mad
+when she sees that he is dead; she will fancy that she has killed
+him."
+
+Lydie, seeing them carry away her father, looked quite stupefied.
+
+"There lies my only friend!" said Corentin, seeming much moved when
+Peyrade was laid out on the bed in his own room. "In all his life he
+never had but one impulse of cupidity, and that was for his daughter!
+--Let him be an example to you, Contenson. Every line of life has its
+code of honor. Peyrade did wrong when he mixed himself up with private
+concerns; we have no business to meddle with any but public cases.
+
+"But come what may, I swear," said he with a voice, an emphasis, a
+look that struck horror into Contenson, "to avenge my poor Peyrade! I
+will discover the men who are guilty of his death and of his
+daughter's ruin. And as sure as I am myself, as I have yet a few days
+to live, which I will risk to accomplish that vengeance, every man of
+them shall die at four o'clock, in good health, by a clean shave on
+the Place de Greve."
+
+"And I will help you," said Contenson with feeling.
+
+Nothing, in fact, is more heart-stirring than the spectacle of passion
+in a cold, self-contained, and methodical man, in whom, for twenty
+years, no one has ever detected the smallest impulse of sentiment. It
+is like a molten bar of iron which melts everything it touches. And
+Contenson was moved to his depths.
+
+"Poor old Canquoelle!" said he, looking at Corentin. "He has treated
+me many a time.--And, I tell you, only your bad sort know how to do
+such things--but often has he given me ten francs to go and gamble
+with . . ."
+
+After this funeral oration, Peyrade's two avengers went back to
+Lydie's room, hearing Katt and the medical officer from the Mairie on
+the stairs.
+
+"Go and fetch the Chief of Police," said Corentin. "The public
+prosecutor will not find grounds for a prosecution in the case; still,
+we will report it to the Prefecture; it may, perhaps, be of some use.
+
+"Monsieur," he went on to the medical officer, "in this room you will
+see a dead man. I do not believe that he died from natural causes; you
+will be good enough to make a post-mortem in the presence of the Chief
+of the Police, who will come at my request. Try to discover some
+traces of poison. You will, in a few minutes, have the opinion of
+Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon, for whom I have sent to
+examine the daughter of my best friend; she is in a worse plight than
+he, though he is dead."
+
+"I have no need of those gentlemen's assistance in the exercise of my
+duty," said the medical officer.
+
+"Well, well," thought Corentin. "Let us have no clashing, monsieur,"
+he said. "In a few words I give you my opinion--Those who have just
+murdered the father have also ruined the daughter."
+
+By daylight Lydie had yielded to fatigue; when the great surgeon and
+the young physician arrived she was asleep.
+
+The doctor, whose duty it was to sign the death certificate, had now
+opened Peyrade's body, and was seeking the cause of death.
+
+"While waiting for your patient to awake," said Corentin to the two
+famous doctors, "would you join one of your professional brethren in
+an examination which cannot fail to interest you, and your opinion
+will be valuable in case of an inquiry."
+
+"Your relations died of apoplexy," said the official. "There are all
+the symptoms of violent congestion of the brain."
+
+"Examine him, gentlemen, and see if there is no poison capable of
+producing similar symptoms."
+
+"The stomach is, in fact, full of food substances; but short of
+chemical analysis, I find no evidence of poison.
+
+"If the characters of cerebral congestion are well ascertained, we
+have here, considering the patient's age, a sufficient cause of
+death," observed Desplein, looking at the enormous mass of material.
+
+"Did he sup here?" asked Bianchon.
+
+"No," said Corentin; "he came here in great haste from the Boulevard,
+and found his daughter ruined----"
+
+"That was the poison if he loved his daughter," said Bianchon.
+
+"What known poison could produce a similar effect?" asked Corentin,
+clinging to his idea.
+
+"There is but one," said Desplein, after a careful examination. "It is
+a poison found in the Malayan Archipelago, and derived from trees, as
+yet but little known, of the strychnos family; it is used to poison
+that dangerous weapon, the Malay kris.--At least, so it is reported."
+
+The Police Commissioner presently arrived; Corentin told him his
+suspicions, and begged him to draw up a report, telling him where and
+with whom Peyrade had supped, and the causes of the state in which he
+found Lydie.
+
+Corentin then went to Lydie's rooms; Desplein and Bianchon had been
+examining the poor child. He met them at the door.
+
+"Well, gentlemen?" asked Corentin.
+
+"Place the girl under medical care; unless she recovers her wits when
+her child is born--if indeed she should have a child--she will end her
+days melancholy-mad. There is no hope of a cure but in the maternal
+instinct, if it can be aroused."
+
+Corentin paid each of the physicians forty francs in gold, and then
+turned to the Police Commissioner, who had pulled him by the sleeve.
+
+"The medical officer insists on it that death was natural," said this
+functionary, "and I can hardly report the case, especially as the dead
+man was old Canquoelle; he had his finger in too many pies, and we
+should not be sure whom we might run foul of. Men like that die to
+order very often----"
+
+"And my name is Corentin," said Corentin in the man's ear.
+
+The Commissioner started with surprise.
+
+"So just make a note of all this," Corentin went on; "it will be very
+useful by and by; send it up only as confidential information. The
+crime cannot be proved, and I know that any inquiry would be checked
+at the very outset.--But I will catch the criminals some day yet. I
+will watch them and take them red-handed."
+
+The police official bowed to Corentin and left.
+
+"Monsieur," said Katt. "Mademoiselle does nothing but dance and sing.
+What can I do?"
+
+"Has any change occurred then?"
+
+"She has understood that her father is just dead."
+
+"Put her into a hackney coach, and simply take her to Charenton; I
+will write a note to the Commissioner-General of Police to secure her
+being suitably provided for.--The daughter in Charenton, the father in
+a pauper's grave!" said Corentin--"Contenson, go and fetch the parish
+hearse. And now, Don Carlos Herrera, you and I will fight it out!"
+
+"Carlos?" said Contenson, "he is in Spain."
+
+"He is in Paris," said Corentin positively. "There is a touch of
+Spanish genius of the Philip II. type in all this; but I have pitfalls
+for everybody, even for kings."
+
+
+
+Five days after the nabob's disappearance, Madame du Val-Noble was
+sitting by Esther's bedside weeping, for she felt herself on one of
+the slopes down to poverty.
+
+"If I only had at least a hundred louis a year! With that sum, my
+dear, a woman can retire to some little town and find a husband----"
+
+"I can get you as much as that," said Esther.
+
+"How?" cried Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+"Oh, in a very simple way. Listen. You must plan to kill yourself;
+play your part well. Send for Asie and offer her ten thousand francs
+for two black beads of very thin glass containing a poison which kills
+you in a second. Bring them to me, and I will give you fifty thousand
+francs for them."
+
+"Why do you not ask her for them yourself?" said her friend.
+
+"Asie would not sell them to me."
+
+"They are not for yourself?" asked Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"You! who live in the midst of pleasure and luxury, in a house of your
+own? And on the eve of an entertainment which will be the talk of
+Paris for ten years--which is to cost Nucingen twenty thousand francs!
+There are to be strawberries in mid-February, they say, asparagus,
+grapes, melons!--and a thousand crowns' worth of flowers in the
+rooms."
+
+"What are you talking about? There are a thousand crowns' worth of
+roses on the stairs alone."
+
+"And your gown is said to have cost ten thousand francs?"
+
+"Yes, it is of Brussels point, and Delphine, his wife, is furious. But
+I had a fancy to be disguised as a bride."
+
+"Where are the ten thousand francs?" asked Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+"It is all the ready money I have," said Esther, smiling. "Open my
+table drawer; it is under the curl-papers."
+
+"People who talk of dying never kill themselves," said Madame du
+Val-Noble. "If it were to commit----"
+
+"A crime? For shame!" said Esther, finishing her friend's thought, as
+she hesitated. "Be quite easy, I have no intention of killing anybody.
+I had a friend--a very happy woman; she is dead, I must follow her
+--that is all."
+
+"How foolish!"
+
+"How can I help it? I promised her I would."
+
+"I should let that bill go dishonored," said her friend, smiling.
+
+"Do as I tell you, and go at once. I hear a carriage coming. It is
+Nucingen, a man who will go mad with joy! Yes, he loves me!--Why do we
+not love those who love us, for indeed they do all they can to please
+us?"
+
+"Ah, that is the question!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "It is the old
+story of the herring, which is the most puzzling fish that swims."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, no one could ever find out."
+
+"Get along, my dear!--I must ask for your fifty thousand francs."
+
+"Good-bye then."
+
+For three days past, Esther's ways with the Baron de Nucingen had
+completely changed. The monkey had become a cat, the cat had become a
+woman. Esther poured out treasures of affection on the old man; she
+was quite charming. Her way of addressing him, with a total absence of
+mischief or bitterness, and all sorts of tender insinuation, had
+carried conviction to the banker's slow wit; she called him Fritz, and
+he believed that she loved him.
+
+"My poor Fritz, I have tried you sorely," said she. "I have teased you
+shamefully. Your patience has been sublime. You loved me, I see, and I
+will reward you. I like you now, I do not know how it is, but I should
+prefer you to a young man. It is the result of experience perhaps.--In
+the long run we discover at last that pleasure is the coin of the
+soul; and it is not more flattering to be loved for the sake of
+pleasure than it is to be loved for the sake of money.
+
+"Besides, young men are too selfish; they think more of themselves
+than of us; while you, now, think only of me. I am all your life to
+you. And I will take nothing more from you. I want to prove to you how
+disinterested I am."
+
+"Vy, I hafe gifen you notink," cried the Baron, enchanted. "I propose
+to gife you to-morrow tirty tousant francs a year in a Government
+bond. Dat is mein vedding gift."
+
+Esther kissed the Baron so sweetly that he turned pale without any
+pills.
+
+"Oh!" cried she, "do not suppose that I am sweet to you only for your
+thirty thousand francs! It is because--now--I love you, my good, fat
+Frederic."
+
+"Ach, mein Gott! Vy hafe you kept me vaiting? I might hafe been so
+happy all dese tree monts."
+
+"In three or in five per cents, my pet?" said Esther, passing her
+fingers through Nucingen's hair, and arranging it in a fashion of her
+own.
+
+"In trees--I hat a quantity."
+
+So next morning the Baron brought the certificate of shares; he came
+to breakfast with his dear little girl, and to take her orders for the
+following evening, the famous Saturday, the great day!
+
+"Here, my little vife, my only vife," said the banker gleefully, his
+face radiant with happiness. "Here is enough money to pay for your
+keep for de rest of your days."
+
+Esther took the paper without the slightest excitement, folded it up,
+and put it in her dressing-table drawer.
+
+"So now you are quite happy, you monster of iniquity!" said she,
+giving Nucingen a little slap on the cheek, "now that I have at last
+accepted a present from you. I can no longer tell you home-truths, for
+I share the fruit of what you call your labors. This is not a gift, my
+poor old boy, it is restitution.--Come, do not put on your Bourse
+face. You know that I love you."
+
+"My lofely Esther, mein anchel of lofe," said the banker, "do not
+speak to me like dat. I tell you, I should not care ven all de vorld
+took me for a tief, if you should tink me ein honest man.--I lofe you
+every day more and more."
+
+"That is my intention," said Esther. "And I will never again say
+anything to distress you, my pet elephant, for you are grown as
+artless as a baby. Bless me, you old rascal, you have never known any
+innocence; the allowance bestowed on you when you came into the world
+was bound to come to the top some day; but it was buried so deep that
+it is only now reappearing at the age of sixty-six. Fished up by
+love's barbed hook.--This phenomenon is seen in old men.
+
+"And this is why I have learned to love you, you are young--so young!
+No one but I would ever have known this, Frederic--I alone. For you
+were a banker at fifteen; even at college you must have lent your
+school-fellows one marble on condition of their returning two."
+
+Seeing him laugh, she sprang on to his knee.
+
+"Well, you must do as you please! Bless me! plunder the men--go ahead,
+and I will help. Men are not worth loving; Napoleon killed them off
+like flies. Whether they pay taxes to you or to the Government, what
+difference does it make to them? You don't make love over the budget,
+and on my honor!--go ahead, I have thought it over, and you are right.
+Shear the sheep! you will find it in the gospel according to Beranger.
+
+"Now, kiss your Esther.--I say, you will give that poor Val-Noble all
+the furniture in the Rue Taitbout? And to-morrow I wish you would give
+her fifty thousand francs--it would look handsome, my duck. You see,
+you killed Falleix; people are beginning to cry out upon you, and this
+liberality will look Babylonian--all the women will talk about it! Oh!
+there will be no one in Paris so grand, so noble as you; and as the
+world is constituted, Falleix will be forgotten. So, after all, it
+will be money deposited at interest."
+
+"You are right, mein anchel; you know the vorld," he replied. "You
+shall be mein adfiser."
+
+"Well, you see," said Esther, "how I study my man's interest, his
+position and honor.--Go at once and bring those fifty thousand
+francs."
+
+She wanted to get rid of Monsieur de Nucingen so as to get a
+stockbroker to sell the bond that very afternoon.
+
+"But vy dis minute?" asked he.
+
+"Bless me, my sweetheart, you must give it to her in a little satin
+box wrapped round a fan. You must say, 'Here, madame, is a fan which I
+hope may be to your taste.'--You are supposed to be a Turcaret, and
+you will become a Beaujon."
+
+"Charming, charming!" cried the Baron. "I shall be so clever
+henceforth.--Yes, I shall repeat your vorts."
+
+Just as Esther had sat down, tired with the effort of playing her
+part, Europe came in.
+
+"Madame," said she, "here is a messenger sent from the Quai Malaquais
+by Celestin, M. Lucien's servant----"
+
+"Bring him in--no, I will go into the ante-room."
+
+"He has a letter for you, madame, from Celestin."
+
+Esther rushed into the ante-room, looked at the messenger, and saw
+that he looked like the genuine thing.
+
+"Tell _him_ to come down," said Esther, in a feeble voice and dropping
+into a chair after reading the letter. "Lucien means to kill himself,"
+she added in a whisper to Europe. "No, take the letter up to him."
+
+Carlos Herrera, still in his disguise as a bagman, came downstairs at
+once, and keenly scrutinized the messenger on seeing a stranger in the
+ante-room.
+
+"You said there was no one here," said he in a whisper to Europe.
+
+And with an excess of prudence, after looking at the messenger, he
+went straight into the drawing-room. _Trompe-la-Mort_ did not know that
+for some time past the famous constable of the detective force who had
+arrested him at the Maison Vauquer had a rival, who, it was supposed,
+would replace him. This rival was the messenger.
+
+"They are right," said the sham messenger to Contenson, who was
+waiting for him in the street. "The man you describe is in the house;
+but he is not a Spaniard, and I will burn my hand off if there is not
+a bird for our net under that priest's gown."
+
+"He is no more a priest than he is a Spaniard," said Contenson.
+
+"I am sure of that," said the detective.
+
+"Oh, if only we were right!" said Contenson.
+
+Lucien had been away for two days, and advantage had been taken of his
+absence to lay this snare, but he returned this evening, and the
+courtesan's anxieties were allayed. Next morning, at the hour when
+Esther, having taken a bath, was getting into bed again, Madame du
+Val-Noble arrived.
+
+"I have the two pills!" said her friend.
+
+"Let me see," said Esther, raising herself with her pretty elbow
+buried in a pillow trimmed with lace.
+
+Madame du Val-Noble held out to her what looked like two black
+currants.
+
+The Baron had given Esther a pair of greyhounds of famous pedigree,
+which will be always known by the name of the great contemporary poet
+who made them fashionable; and Esther, proud of owning them, had
+called them by the names of their parents, Romeo and Juliet. No need
+here to describe the whiteness and grace of these beasts, trained for
+the drawing-room, with manners suggestive of English propriety. Esther
+called Romeo; Romeo ran up on legs so supple and thin, so strong and
+sinewy, that they seemed like steel springs, and looked up at his
+mistress. Esther, to attract his attention, pretended to throw one of
+the pills.
+
+"He is doomed by his nature to die thus," said she, as she threw the
+pill, which Romeo crushed between his teeth.
+
+The dog made no sound, he rolled over, and was stark dead. It was all
+over while Esther spoke these words of epitaph.
+
+"Good God!" shrieked Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+"You have a cab waiting. Carry away the departed Romeo," said Esther.
+"His death would make a commotion here. I have given him to you, and
+you have lost him--advertise for him. Make haste; you will have your
+fifty thousand francs this evening."
+
+She spoke so calmly, so entirely with the cold indifference of a
+courtesan, that Madame du Val-Noble exclaimed:
+
+"You are the Queen of us all!"
+
+"Come early, and look very well----"
+
+At five o'clock Esther dressed herself as a bride. She put on her lace
+dress over white satin, she had a white sash, white satin shoes, and a
+scarf of English point lace over her beautiful shoulders. In her hair
+she placed white camellia flowers, the simple ornament of an innocent
+girl. On her bosom lay a pearl necklace worth thirty thousand francs,
+a gift from Nucingen.
+
+Though she was dressed by six, she refused to see anybody, even the
+banker. Europe knew that Lucien was to be admitted to her room. Lucien
+came at about seven, and Europe managed to get him up to her mistress
+without anybody knowing of his arrival.
+
+Lucien, as he looked at her, said to himself, "Why not go and live
+with her at Rubempre, far from the world, and never see Paris again? I
+have an earnest of five years of her life, and the dear creature is
+one of those who never belie themselves! Where can I find such another
+perfect masterpiece?"
+
+"My dear, you whom I have made my God," said Esther, kneeling down on
+a cushion in front of Lucien, "give me your blessing."
+
+Lucien tried to raise her and kiss her, saying, "What is this jest, my
+dear love?" And he would have put his arm round her, but she freed
+herself with a gesture as much of respect as of horror.
+
+"I am no longer worthy of you, Lucien," said she, letting the tears
+rise to her eyes. "I implore you, give me your blessing, and swear to
+me that you will found two beds at the Hotel-Dieu--for, as to prayers
+in church, God will never forgive me unless I pray myself.
+
+"I have loved you too well, my dear. Tell me that I made you happy,
+and that you will sometimes think of me.--Tell me that!"
+
+Lucien saw that Esther was solemnly in earnest, and he sat thinking.
+
+"You mean to kill yourself," said he at last, in a tone of voice that
+revealed deep reflection.
+
+"No," said she. "But to-day, my dear, the woman dies, the pure,
+chaste, and loving woman who once was yours.--And I am very much
+afraid that I shall die of grief."
+
+"Poor child," said Lucien, "wait! I have worked hard these two days. I
+have succeeded in seeing Clotilde----"
+
+"Always Clotilde!" cried Esther, in a tone of concentrated rage.
+
+"Yes," said he, "we have written to each other.--On Tuesday morning
+she is to set out for Italy, but I shall meet her on the road for an
+interview at Fontainebleau."
+
+"Bless me! what is it that you men want for wives? Wooden laths?"
+cried poor Esther. "If I had seven or eight millions, would you not
+marry me--come now?"
+
+"Child! I was going to say that if all is over for me, I will have no
+wife but you."
+
+Esther bent her head to hide her sudden pallor and the tears she wiped
+away.
+
+"You love me?" said she, looking at Lucien with the deepest
+melancholy. "Well, that is my sufficient blessing.--Do not compromise
+yourself. Go away by the side door, and come in to the drawing-room
+through the ante-room. Kiss me on the forehead."
+
+She threw her arms round Lucien, clasped him to her heart with frenzy,
+and said again:
+
+"Go, only go--or I must live."
+
+When the doomed woman appeared in the drawing-room, there was a cry of
+admiration. Esther's eyes expressed infinitude in which the soul sank
+as it looked into them. Her blue-black and beautiful hair set off the
+camellias. In short, this exquisite creature achieved all the effects
+she had intended. She had no rival. She looked like the supreme
+expression of that unbridled luxury which surrounded her in every
+form. Then she was brilliantly witty. She ruled the orgy with the
+cold, calm power that Habeneck displays when conducting at the
+Conservatoire, at those concerts where the first musicians in Europe
+rise to the sublime in interpreting Mozart and Beethoven.
+
+But she observed with terror that Nucingen ate little, drank nothing,
+and was quite the master of the house.
+
+By midnight everybody was crazy. The glasses were broken that they
+might never be used again; two of the Chinese curtains were torn;
+Bixiou was drunk, for the second time in his life. No one could keep
+his feet, the women were asleep on the sofas, and the guests were
+incapable of carrying out the practical joke they had planned of
+escorting Esther and Nucingen to the bedroom, standing in two lines
+with candles in their hands, and singing _Buona sera_ from the _Barber
+of Seville_.
+
+Nucingen simply gave Esther his hand. Bixiou, who saw them, though
+tipsy, was still able to say, like Rivarol, on the occasion of the Duc
+de Richelieu's last marriage, "The police must be warned; there is
+mischief brewing here."
+
+The jester thought he was jesting; he was a prophet.
+
+
+
+Monsieur de Nucingen did not go home till Monday at about noon. But at
+one o'clock his broker informed him that Mademoiselle Esther van
+Bogseck had sold the bond bearing thirty thousand francs interest on
+Friday last, and had just received the money.
+
+"But, Monsieur le Baron, Derville's head-clerk called on me just as I
+was settling this transfer; and after seeing Mademoiselle Esther's
+real names, he told me she had come into a fortune of seven millions."
+
+"Pooh!"
+
+"Yes, she is the only heir to the old bill-discounter Gobseck.
+--Derville will verify the facts. If your mistress' mother was the
+handsome Dutch woman, _la Belle Hollandaise_, as they called her, she
+comes in for----"
+
+"I know dat she is," cried the banker. "She tolt me all her life. I
+shall write ein vort to Derville."
+
+The Baron at down at his desk, wrote a line to Derville, and sent it
+by one of his servants. Then, after going to the Bourse, he went back
+to Esther's house at about three o'clock.
+
+"Madame forbade our waking her on any pretence whatever. She is in bed
+--asleep----"
+
+"Ach der Teufel!" said the Baron. "But, Europe, she shall not be angry
+to be tolt that she is fery, fery rich. She shall inherit seven
+millions. Old Gobseck is deat, and your mis'ess is his sole heir, for
+her moter vas Gobseck's own niece; and besides, he shall hafe left a
+vill. I could never hafe tought that a millionaire like dat man should
+hafe left Esther in misery!"
+
+"Ah, ha! Then your reign is over, old pantaloon!" said Europe, looking
+at the Baron with an effrontery worthy of one of Moliere's
+waiting-maids. "Shooh! you old Alsatian crow! She loves you as we love
+the plague! Heavens above us! Millions!--Why, she may marry her lover;
+won't she be glad!"
+
+And Prudence Servien left the Baron simply thunder-stricken, to be the
+first to announce to her mistress this great stroke of luck. The old
+man, intoxicated with superhuman enjoyment, and believing himself
+happy, had just received a cold shower-bath on his passion at the
+moment when it had risen to the intensest white heat.
+
+"She vas deceiving me!" cried he, with tears in his eyes. "Yes, she
+vas cheating me. Oh, Esther, my life! Vas a fool hafe I been! Can
+such flowers ever bloom for de old men! I can buy all vat I vill
+except only yout!--Ach Gott, ach Gott! Vat shall I do! Vat shall
+become of me!--She is right, dat cruel Europe. Esther, if she is rich,
+shall not be for me. Shall I go hank myself? Vat is life midout de
+divine flame of joy dat I have known? Mein Gott, mein Gott!"
+
+The old man snatched off the false hair he had combed in with his gray
+hairs these three months past.
+
+A piercing shriek from Europe made Nucingen quail to his very bowels.
+The poor banker rose and walked upstairs on legs that were drunk with
+the bowl of disenchantment he had just swallowed to the dregs, for
+nothing is more intoxicating than the wine of disaster.
+
+At the door of her room he could see Esther stiff on her bed, blue
+with poison--dead!
+
+He went up to the bed and dropped on his knees.
+
+"You are right! She tolt me so!--She is dead--of me----"
+
+Paccard, Asie, every one hurried in. It was a spectacle, a shock, but
+not despair. Every one had their doubts. The Baron was a banker again.
+A suspicion crossed his mind, and he was so imprudent as to ask what
+had become of the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, the price
+of the bond. Paccard, Asie, and Europe looked at each other so
+strangely that Monsieur de Nucingen left the house at once, believing
+that robbery and murder had been committed. Europe, detecting a packet
+of soft consistency, betraying the contents to be banknotes, under her
+mistress' pillow, proceeded at once to "lay her out," as she said.
+
+"Go and tell monsieur, Asie!--Oh, to die before she knew that she had
+seven millions! Gobseck was poor madame's uncle!" said she.
+
+Europe's stratagem was understood by Paccard. As soon as Asie's back
+was turned, Europe opened the packet, on which the hapless courtesan
+had written: "To be delivered to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre."
+
+Seven hundred and fifty thousand-franc notes shone in the eyes of
+Prudence Servien, who exclaimed:
+
+"Won't we be happy and honest for the rest of our lives!"
+
+Paccard made no objection. His instincts as a thief were stronger than
+his attachment to _Trompe-la-Mort_.
+
+"Durut is dead," he said at length; "my shoulder is still a proof
+before letters. Let us be off together; divide the money, so as not to
+have all our eggs in one basket, and then get married."
+
+"But where can we hide?" said Prudence.
+
+"In Paris," replied Paccard.
+
+Prudence and Paccard went off at once, with the promptitude of two
+honest folks transformed into robbers.
+
+"My child," said Carlos to Asie, as soon as she had said three words,
+"find some letter of Esther's while I write a formal will, and then
+take the copy and the letter to Girard; but he must be quick. The will
+must be under Esther's pillow before the lawyers affix the seals
+here."
+
+And he wrote out the following will:--
+
+  "Never having loved any one on earth but Monsieur Lucien Chardon
+  de Rubempre, and being resolved to end my life rather than relapse
+  into vice and the life of infamy from which he rescued me, I give
+  and bequeath to the said Lucien Chardon de Rubempre all I may
+  possess at the time of my decease, on condition of his founding a
+  mass in perpetuity in the parish church of Saint-Roch for the
+  repose of her who gave him her all, to her last thought.
+
+                                                 "ESTHER GOBSECK."
+
+
+"That is quite in her style," thought _Trompe-la-Mort_.
+
+By seven in the evening this document, written and sealed, was placed
+by Asie under Esther's bolster.
+
+"Jacques," said she, flying upstairs again, "just as I came out of the
+room justice marched in----"
+
+"The justice of the peace you mean?"
+
+"No, my son. The justice of the peace was there, but he had gendarmes
+with him. The public prosecutor and the examining judge are there too,
+and the doors are guarded."
+
+"This death has made a stir very quickly," remarked Jacques Collin.
+
+"Ay, and Paccard and Europe have vanished; I am afraid they may have
+scared away the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Asie.
+
+"The low villains!" said Collin. "They have done for us by their
+swindling game."
+
+Human justice, and Paris justice, that is to say, the most suspicious,
+keenest, cleverest, and omniscient type of justice--too clever,
+indeed, for it insists on interpreting the law at every turn--was at
+last on the point of laying its hand on the agents of this horrible
+intrigue.
+
+The Baron of Nucingen, on recognizing the evidence of poison, and
+failing to find his seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, imagined
+that one of two persons whom he greatly disliked--either Paccard or
+Europe--was guilty of the crime. In his first impulse of rage he flew
+to the prefecture of police. This was a stroke of a bell that called
+up all Corentin's men. The officials of the prefecture, the legal
+profession, the chief of the police, the justice of the peace, the
+examining judge,--all were astir. By nine in the evening three medical
+men were called in to perform an autopsy on poor Esther, and inquiries
+were set on foot.
+
+_Trompe-la-Mort_, warned by Asie, exclaimed:
+
+"No one knows that I am here; I may take an airing." He pulled himself
+up by the skylight of his garret, and with marvelous agility was
+standing in an instant on the roof, whence he surveyed the
+surroundings with the coolness of a tiler.
+
+"Good!" said he, discerning a garden five houses off in the Rue de
+Provence, "that will just do for me."
+
+"You are paid out, _Trompe-la-Mort_," said Contenson, suddenly emerging
+from behind a stack of chimneys. "You may explain to Monsieur Camusot
+what mass you were performing on the roof, Monsieur l'Abbe, and, above
+all, why you were escaping----"
+
+"I have enemies in Spain," said Carlos Herrera.
+
+"We can go there by way of your attic," said Contenson.
+
+The sham Spaniard pretended to yield; but, having set his back and
+feet across the opening of the skylight, he gripped Contenson and
+flung him off with such violence that the spy fell in the gutter of
+the Rue Saint-Georges.
+
+Contenson was dead on his field of honor; Jacques Collin quietly
+dropped into the room again and went to bed.
+
+"Give me something that will make me very sick without killing me,"
+said he to Asie; "for I must be at death's door, to avoid answering
+inquisitive persons. I have just got rid of a man in the most natural
+way, who might have unmasked me."
+
+
+
+At seven o'clock on the previous evening Lucien had set out in his own
+chaise to post to Fontainebleau with a passport he had procured in the
+morning; he slept in the nearest inn on the Nemours side. At six in
+the morning he went alone, and on foot, through the forest as far as
+Bouron.
+
+"This," said he to himself, as he sat down on one of the rocks that
+command the fine landscape of Bouron, "is the fatal spot where
+Napoleon dreamed of making a final tremendous effort on the eve of his
+abdication."
+
+At daybreak he heard the approach of post-horses and saw a britska
+drive past, in which sat the servants of the Duchesse de
+Lenoncourt-Chaulieu and Clotilde de Grandlieu's maid.
+
+"Here they are!" thought Lucien. "Now, to play the farce well, and I
+shall be saved!--the Duc de Grandlieu's son-in-law in spite of him!"
+
+It was an hour later when he heard the peculiar sound made by a
+superior traveling carriage, as the berline came near in which two
+ladies were sitting. They had given orders that the drag should be put
+on for the hill down to Bouron, and the man-servant behind the
+carriage had it stopped.
+
+At this instant Lucien came forward.
+
+"Clotilde!" said he, tapping on the window.
+
+"No," said the young Duchess to her friend, "he shall not get into the
+carriage, and we will not be alone with him, my dear. Speak to him for
+the last time--to that I consent; but on the road, where we will walk
+on, and where Baptiste can escort us.--The morning is fine, we are
+well wrapped up, and have no fear of the cold. The carriage can
+follow."
+
+The two women got out.
+
+"Baptiste," said the Duchess, "the post-boy can follow slowly; we want
+to walk a little way. You must keep near us."
+
+Madeleine de Mortsauf took Clotilde by the arm and allowed Lucien to
+talk. They thus walked on as far as the village of Grez. It was now
+eight o'clock, and there Clotilde dismissed Lucien.
+
+"Well, my friend," said she, closing this long interview with much
+dignity, "I never shall marry any one but you. I would rather believe
+in you than in other men, in my father and mother--no woman ever gave
+greater proof of attachment surely?--Now, try to counteract the fatal
+prejudices which militate against you."
+
+Just then the tramp of galloping horses was heard, and, to the great
+amazement of the ladies, a force of gendarmes surrounded the little
+party.
+
+"What do you want?" said Lucien, with the arrogance of a dandy.
+
+"Are you Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre?" asked the public prosecutor of
+Fontainebleau.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"You will spend to-night in La Force," said he. "I have a warrant for
+the detention of your person."
+
+"Who are these ladies?" asked the sergeant.
+
+"To be sure.--Excuse me, ladies--your passports? For Monsieur Lucien,
+as I am instructed, had acquaintances among the fair sex, who for him
+would----"
+
+"Do you take the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu for a prostitute?"
+said Madeleine, with a magnificent flash at the public prosecutor.
+
+"You are handsome enough to excuse the error," the magistrate very
+cleverly retorted.
+
+"Baptiste, produce the passports," said the young Duchess with a
+smile.
+
+"And with what crime is Monsieur de Rubempre charged?" asked Clotilde,
+whom the Duchess wished to see safe in the carriage.
+
+"Of being accessory to a robbery and murder," replied the sergeant of
+gendarmes.
+
+Baptiste lifted Mademoiselle de Grandlieu into the chaise in a dead
+faint.
+
+
+
+By midnight Lucien was entering La Force, a prison situated between
+the Rue Payenne and the Rue des Ballets, where he was placed in
+solitary confinement.
+
+The Abbe Carlos Herrera was also there, having been arrested that
+evening.
+
+
+
+                         THE END OF EVIL WAYS
+
+At six o'clock next morning two vehicles with postilions, prison vans,
+called in the vigorous language of the populace, _paniers a salade_,
+came out of La Force to drive to the Conciergerie by the Palais de
+Justice.
+
+Few loafers in Paris can have failed to meet this prison cell on
+wheels; still, though most stories are written for Parisian readers,
+strangers will no doubt be satisfied to have a description of this
+formidable machine. Who knows? A police of Russia, Germany, or
+Austria, the legal body of countries to whom the "Salad-basket" is an
+unknown machine, may profit by it; and in several foreign countries
+there can be no doubt that an imitation of this vehicle would be a
+boon to prisoners.
+
+This ignominious conveyance, yellow-bodied, on high wheels, and lined
+with sheet-iron, is divided into two compartments. In front is a
+box-seat, with leather cushions and an apron. This is the free seat of
+the van, and accommodates a sheriff's officer and a gendarme. A strong
+iron trellis, reaching to the top, separates this sort of cab-front
+from the back division, in which there are two wooden seats placed
+sideways, as in an omnibus, on which the prisoners sit. They get in by
+a step behind and a door, with no window. The nickname of Salad-basket
+arose from the fact that the vehicle was originally made entirely of
+lattice, and the prisoners were shaken in it just as a salad is shaken
+to dry it.
+
+For further security, in case of accident, a mounted gendarme follows
+the machine, especially when it conveys criminals condemned to death
+to the place of execution. Thus escape is impossible. The vehicle,
+lined with sheet-iron, is impervious to any tool. The prisoners,
+carefully searched when they are arrested or locked up, can have
+nothing but watch-springs, perhaps, to file through bars, and useless
+on a smooth surface.
+
+So the _panier a salade_, improved by the genius of the Paris police,
+became the model for the prison omnibus (known in London as "Black
+Maria") in which convicts are transported to the hulks, instead of the
+horrible tumbril which formerly disgraced civilization, though Manon
+Lescaut had made it famous.
+
+The accused are, in the first instance, despatched in the prison van
+from the various prisons in Paris to the Palais de Justice, to be
+questioned by the examining judge. This, in prison slang, is called
+"going up for examination." Then the accused are again conveyed from
+prison to the Court to be sentenced when their case is only a
+misdemeanor; or if, in legal parlance, the case is one for the Upper
+Court, they are transferred from the house of detention to the
+Conciergerie, the "Newgate" of the Department of the Seine.
+
+Finally, the prison van carries the criminal condemned to death from
+Bicetre to the Barriere Saint-Jacques, where executions are carried
+out, and have been ever since the Revolution of July. Thanks to
+philanthropic interference, the poor wretches no longer have to face
+the horrors of the drive from the Conciergerie to the Place de Greve
+in a cart exactly like that used by wood merchants. This cart is no
+longer used but to bring the body back from the scaffold.
+
+Without this explanation the words of a famous convict to his
+accomplice, "It is now the horse's business!" as he got into the van,
+would be unintelligible. It is impossible to be carried to execution
+more comfortably than in Paris nowadays.
+
+At this moment the two vans, setting out at such an early hour, were
+employed on the unwonted service of conveying two accused prisoners
+from the jail of La Force to the Conciergerie, and each man had a
+"Salad-basket" to himself.
+
+Nine-tenths of my readers, ay, and nine-tenths of the remaining tenth,
+are certainly ignorant of the vast difference of meaning in the words
+incriminated, suspected, accused, and committed for trial--jail, house
+of detention, and penitentiary; and they may be surprised to learn
+here that it involves all our criminal procedure, of which a clear and
+brief outline will presently be sketched, as much for their
+information as for the elucidation of this history. However, when it
+is said that the first van contained Jacques Collin and the second
+Lucien, who in a few hours had fallen from the summit of social
+splendor to the depths of a prison cell, curiosity will for the moment
+be satisfied.
+
+The conduct of the two accomplices was characteristic; Lucien de
+Rubempre shrank back to avoid the gaze of the passers-by, who looked
+at the grated window of the gloomy and fateful vehicle on its road
+along the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Rue du Martroi to reach the quay
+and the Arch of Saint-Jean, the way, at that time, across the Place de
+l'Hotel de Ville. This archway now forms the entrance gate to the
+residence of the Prefet de la Seine in the huge municipal palace. The
+daring convict, on the contrary, stuck his face against the barred
+grating, between the officer and the gendarme, who, sure of their van,
+were chatting together.
+
+The great days of July 1830, and the tremendous storm that then burst,
+have so completely wiped out the memory of all previous events, and
+politics so entirely absorbed the French during the last six months of
+that year, that no one remembers--or a few scarcely remember--the
+various private, judicial, and financial catastrophes, strange as they
+were, which, forming the annual flood of Parisian curiosity, were not
+lacking during the first six months of the year. It is, therefore,
+needful to mention how Paris was, for the moment, excited by the news
+of the arrest of a Spanish priest, discovered in a courtesan's house,
+and that of the elegant Lucien de Rubempre, who had been engaged to
+Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu, taken on the highroad to Italy,
+close to the little village of Grez. Both were charged as being
+concerned in a murder, of which the profits were stated at seven
+millions of francs; and for some days the scandal of this trial
+preponderated over the absorbing importance of the last elections held
+under Charles X.
+
+In the first place, the charge had been based on an application by the
+Baron de Nucingen; then, Lucien's apprehension, just as he was about
+to be appointed private secretary to the Prime Minister, made a stir
+in the very highest circles of society. In every drawing-room in Paris
+more than one young man could recollect having envied Lucien when he
+was honored by the notice of the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse;
+and every woman knew that he was the favored attache of Madame de
+Serizy, the wife of one of the Government bigwigs. And finally, his
+handsome person gave him a singular notoriety in the various worlds
+that make up Paris--the world of fashion, the financial world, the
+world of courtesans, the young men's world, the literary world. So for
+two days past all Paris had been talking of these two arrests. The
+examining judge in whose hands the case was put regarded it as a
+chance for promotion; and, to proceed with the utmost rapidity, he had
+given orders that both the accused should be transferred from La Force
+to the Conciergerie as soon as Lucien de Rubempre could be brought
+from Fontainebleau.
+
+As the Abbe Carlos had spent but twelve hours in La Force, and Lucien
+only half a night, it is useless to describe that prison, which has
+since been entirely remodeled; and as to the details of their
+consignment, it would be only a repetition of the same story at the
+Conciergerie.
+
+
+
+But before setting forth the terrible drama of a criminal inquiry, it
+is indispensable, as I have said, that an account should be given of
+the ordinary proceedings in a case of this kind. To begin with, its
+various phases will be better understood at home and abroad, and,
+besides, those who are ignorant of the action of the criminal law, as
+conceived of by the lawgivers under Napoleon, will appreciate it
+better. This is all the more important as, at this moment, this great
+and noble institution is in danger of destruction by the system known
+as penitentiary.
+
+A crime is committed; if it is flagrant, the persons incriminated
+(inculpes) are taken to the nearest lock-up and placed in the cell
+known to the vulgar as the Violon--perhaps because they make a noise
+there, shrieking or crying. From thence the suspected persons
+(inculpes) are taken before the police commissioner or magistrate, who
+holds a preliminary inquiry, and can dismiss the case if there is any
+mistake; finally, they are conveyed to the Depot of the Prefecture,
+where the police detains them pending the convenience of the public
+prosecutor and the examining judge. They, being served with due
+notice, more or less quickly, according to the gravity of the case,
+come and examine the prisoners who are still provisionally detained.
+Having due regard to the presumptive evidence, the examining judge
+then issues a warrant for their imprisonment, and sends the suspected
+persons to be confined in a jail. There are three such jails (Maisons
+d'Arret) in Paris--Sainte-Pelagie, La Force, and les Madelonettes.
+
+Observe the word inculpe, incriminated, or suspected of crime. The
+French Code has created three essential degrees of criminality
+--inculpe, first degree of suspicion; prevenu, under examination;
+accuse, fully committed for trial. So long as the warrant for
+committal remains unsigned, the supposed criminal is regarded as
+merely under suspicion, inculpe of the crime or felony; when the
+warrant has been issued, he becomes "the accused" (prevenu), and is
+regarded as such so long as the inquiry is proceeding; when the
+inquiry is closed, and as soon as the Court has decided that the
+accused is to be committed for trial, he becomes "the prisoner at the
+bar" (accuse) as soon as the superior court, at the instance of the
+public prosecutor, has pronounced that the charge is so far proved as
+to be carried to the Assizes.
+
+Thus, persons suspected of crime go through three different stages,
+three siftings, before coming up for trial before the judges of the
+upper Court--the High Justice of the realm.
+
+At the first stage, innocent persons have abundant means of
+exculpating themselves--the public, the town watch, the police. At the
+second state they appear before a magistrate face to face with the
+witnesses, and are judged by a tribunal in Paris, or by the Collective
+Court of the departments. At the third stage they are brought before a
+bench of twelve councillors, and in case of any error or informality
+the prisoner committed for trial at the Assizes may appeal for
+protection to the Supreme court. The jury do not know what a slap in
+the face they give to popular authority, to administrative and
+judicial functionaries, when they acquit a prisoner. And so, in my
+opinion, it is hardly possible that an innocent man should ever find
+himself at the bar of an Assize Court in Paris--I say nothing of other
+seats of justice.
+
+The detenu is the convict. French criminal law recognizes imprisonment
+of three degrees, corresponding in legal distinction to these three
+degrees of suspicion, inquiry, and conviction. Mere imprisonment is a
+light penalty for misdemeanor, but detention is imprisonment with hard
+labor, a severe and sometimes degrading punishment. Hence, those
+persons who nowadays are in favor of the penitentiary system would
+upset an admirable scheme of criminal law in which the penalties are
+judiciously graduated, and they will end by punishing the lightest
+peccadilloes as severely as the greatest crimes.
+
+The reader may compare in the _Scenes of Political Life_ (for instance,
+in Une Tenebreuse affaire) the curious differences subsisting between
+the criminal law of Brumaire in the year IV., and that of the Code
+Napoleon which has taken its place.
+
+In most trials, as in this one, the suspected persons are at once
+examined (and from inculpes become prevenus); justice immediately
+issues a warrant for their arrest and imprisonment. In point of fact,
+in most of such cases the criminals have either fled, or have been
+instantly apprehended. Indeed, as we have seen the police, which is
+but an instrument, and the officers of justice had descended on
+Esther's house with the swiftness of a thunderbolt. Even if there had
+not been the reasons for revenge suggested to the superior police by
+Corentin, there was a robbery to be investigated of seven hundred and
+fifty thousand francs from the Baron de Nucingen.
+
+
+
+Just as the first prison van, conveying Jacques Collin, reached the
+archway of Saint-Jean--a narrow, dark passage, some block ahead
+compelled the postilion to stop under the vault. The prisoner's eyes
+shone like carbuncles through the grating, in spite of his aspect as
+of a dying man, which, the day before, had led the governor of La
+Force to believe that the doctor must be called in. These flaming
+eyes, free to rove at this moment, for neither the officer nor the
+gendarme looked round at their "customer," spoke so plain a language
+that a clever examining judge, M. Popinot, for instance, would have
+identified the man convicted for sacrilege.
+
+In fact, ever since the "salad-basket" had turned out of the gate of
+La Force, Jacques Collin had studied everything on his way.
+Notwithstanding the pace they had made, he took in the houses with an
+eager and comprehensive glance from the ground floor to the attics. He
+saw and noted every passer-by. God Himself is not more clear-seeing as
+to the means and ends of His creatures than this man in observing the
+slightest differences in the medley of things and people. Armed with
+hope, as the last of the Horatii was armed with his sword, he expected
+help. To anybody but this Machiavelli of the hulks, this hope would
+have seemed so absolutely impossible to realize that he would have
+gone on mechanically, as all guilty men do. Not one of them ever
+dreams of resistance when he finds himself in the position to which
+justice and the Paris police bring suspected persons, especially those
+who, like Collin and Lucien, are in solitary confinement.
+
+It is impossible to conceive of the sudden isolation in which a
+suspected criminal is placed. The gendarmes who apprehend him, the
+commissioner who questions him, those who take him to prison, the
+warders who lead him to his cell--which is actually called a cachot, a
+dungeon or hiding-place, those again who take him by the arms to put
+him into a prison-van--every being that comes near him from the moment
+of his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all he says, to
+be repeated to the police or to the judge. This total severance, so
+simply effected between the prisoner and the world, gives rise to a
+complete overthrow of his faculties and a terrible prostration of
+mind, especially when the man has not been familiarized by his
+antecedents with the processes of justice. The duel between the judge
+and the criminal is all the more appalling because justice has on its
+side the dumbness of blank walls and the incorruptible coldness of its
+agents.
+
+But Jacques Collin, or Carlos Herrera--it will be necessary to speak
+of him by one or the other of these names according to the
+circumstances of the case--had long been familiar with the methods of
+the police, of the jail, and of justice. This colossus of cunning and
+corruption had employed all his powers of mind, and all the resources
+of mimicry, to affect the surprise and anility of an innocent man,
+while giving the lawyers the spectacle of his sufferings. As has been
+told, Asie, that skilled Locusta, had given him a dose of poison so
+qualified as to produce the effects of a dreadful illness.
+
+Thus Monsieur Camusot, the police commissioner, and the public
+prosecutor had been baffled in their proceedings and inquiries by the
+effects apparently of an apoplectic attack.
+
+"He has taken poison!" cried Monsieur Camusot, horrified by the
+sufferings of the self-styled priest when he had been carried down
+from the attic writhing in convulsions.
+
+Four constables had with great difficulty brought the Abbe Carlos
+downstairs to Esther's room, where the lawyers and the gendarmes were
+assembled.
+
+"That was the best thing he could do if he should be guilty," replied
+the public prosecutor.
+
+"Do you believe that he is ill?" the police commissioner asked.
+
+The police is always incredulous.
+
+The three lawyers had spoken, as may be imagined, in a whisper; but
+Jacques Collin had guessed from their faces the subject under
+discussion, and had taken advantage of it to make the first brief
+examination which is gone through on arrest absolutely impossible and
+useless; he had stammered out sentences in which Spanish and French
+were so mingled as to make nonsense.
+
+At La Force this farce had been all the more successful in the first
+instance because the head of the "safety" force--an abbreviation of
+the title "Head of the brigade of the guardians of public safety"
+--Bibi-Lupin, who had long since taken Jacques Collin into custody at
+Madame Vauquer's boarding-house, had been sent on special business
+into the country, and his deputy was a man who hoped to succeed him,
+but to whom the convict was unknown.
+
+Bibi-Lupin, himself formerly a convict, and a comrade of Jacques
+Collin's on the hulks, was his personal enemy. This hostility had its
+rise in quarrels in which Jacques Collin had always got the upper
+hand, and in the supremacy over his fellow-prisoners which
+_Trompe-la-Mort_ had always assumed. And then, for ten years now,
+Jacques Collin had been the ruling providence of released convicts in
+Paris, their head, their adviser, and their banker, and consequently
+Bibi-Lupin's antagonist.
+
+Thus, though placed in solitary confinement, he trusted to the
+intelligent and unreserved devotion of Asie, his right hand, and
+perhaps, too, to Paccard, his left hand, who, as he flattered himself,
+might return to his allegiance when once that thrifty subaltern had
+safely bestowed the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs that he
+had stolen. This was the reason why his attention had been so
+superhumanly alert all along the road. And, strange to say! his hopes
+were about to be amply fulfilled.
+
+The two solid side-walls of the archway were covered, to a height of
+six feet, with a permanent dado of mud formed of the splashes from the
+gutter; for, in those days, the foot passenger had no protection from
+the constant traffic of vehicles and from what was called the kicking
+of the carts, but curbstones placed upright at intervals, and much
+ground away by the naves of the wheels. More than once a heavy truck
+had crushed a heedless foot-passenger under that arch-way. Such indeed
+Paris remained in many districts and till long after. This
+circumstance may give some idea of the narrowness of the Saint-Jean
+gate and the ease with which it could be blocked. If a cab should be
+coming through from the Place de Greve while a costermonger-woman was
+pushing her little truck of apples in from the Rue du Martroi, a third
+vehicle of any kind produced difficulties. The foot-passengers fled in
+alarm, seeking a corner-stone to protect them from the old-fashioned
+axles, which had attained such prominence that a law was passed at
+last to reduce their length.
+
+When the prison van came in, this passage was blocked by a market
+woman with a costermonger's vegetable cart--one of a type which is all
+the more strange because specimens still exist in Paris in spite of
+the increasing number of green-grocers' shops. She was so thoroughly a
+street hawker that a Sergeant de Ville, if that particular class of
+police had been then in existence, would have allowed her to ply her
+trade without inspecting her permit, in spite of a sinister
+countenance that reeked of crime. Her head, wrapped in a cheap and
+ragged checked cotton kerchief, was horrid with rebellious locks of
+hair, like the bristles of a wild boar. Her red and wrinkled neck was
+disgusting, and her little shawl failed entirely to conceal a chest
+tanned brown by the sun, dust, and mud. Her gown was patchwork; her
+shoes gaped as though they were grinning at a face as full of holes as
+the gown. And what an apron! a plaster would have been less filthy.
+This moving and fetid rag must have stunk in the nostrils of dainty
+folks ten yards away. Those hands had gleaned a hundred harvest
+fields. Either the woman had returned from a German witches' Sabbath,
+or she had come out of a mendicity asylum. But what eyes! what
+audacious intelligence, what repressed vitality when the magnetic
+flash of her look and of Jacques Collin's met to exchange a thought!
+
+"Get out of the way, you old vermin-trap!" cried the postilion in
+harsh tones.
+
+"Mind you don't crush me, you hangman's apprentice!" she retorted.
+"Your cartful is not worth as much as mine."
+
+And by trying to squeeze in between two corner-stones to make way, the
+hawker managed to block the passage long enough to achieve her
+purpose.
+
+"Oh! Asie!" said Jacques Collin to himself, at once recognizing his
+accomplice. "Then all is well."
+
+The post-boy was still exchanging amenities with Asie, and vehicles
+were collecting in the Rue du Martroi.
+
+"Look out, there--Pecaire fermati. Souni la--Vedrem," shrieked old
+Asie, with the Red-Indian intonations peculiar to these female
+costermongers, who disfigure their words in such a way that they are
+transformed into a sort onomatopoeia incomprehensible to any but
+Parisians.
+
+In the confusion in the alley, and among the outcries of all the
+waiting drivers, no one paid any heed to this wild yell, which might
+have been the woman's usual cry. But this gibberish, intelligible to
+Jacques Collin, sent to his ear in a mongrel language of their own--a
+mixture of bad Italian and Provencal--this important news:
+
+"Your poor boy is nabbed. I am here to keep an eye on you. We shall
+meet again."
+
+In the midst of his joy at having thus triumphed over the police, for
+he hoped to be able to keep up communications, Jacques Collin had a
+blow which might have killed any other man.
+
+"Lucien in custody!" said he to himself.
+
+He almost fainted. This news was to him more terrible than the
+rejection of his appeal could have been if he had been condemned to
+death.
+
+Now that both the prison vans are rolling along the Quai, the interest
+of this story requires that I should add a few words about the
+Conciergerie, while they are making their way thither. The
+Conciergerie, a historical name--a terrible name,--a still more
+terrible thing, is inseparable from the Revolutions of France, and
+especially those of Paris. It has known most of our great criminals.
+But if it is the most interesting of the buildings of Paris, it is
+also the least known--least known to persons of the upper classes;
+still, in spite of the interest of this historical digression, it
+should be as short as the journey of the prison vans.
+
+What Parisian, what foreigner, or what provincial can have failed to
+observe the gloomy and mysterious features of the Quai des Lunettes--a
+structure of black walls flanked by three round towers with conical
+roofs, two of them almost touching each other? This quay, beginning at
+the Pont du Change, ends at the Pont Neuf. A square tower--the Clock
+Tower, or Tour de l'Horloge, whence the signal was given for the
+massacre of Saint-Bartholomew--a tower almost as tall as that of
+Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, shows where the Palais de Justice
+stands, and forms the corner of the quay.
+
+These four towers and these walls are shrouded in the black winding
+sheet which, in Paris, falls on every facade to the north. About
+half-way along the quay at a gloomy archway we see the beginning of the
+private houses which were built in consequence of the construction of
+the Pont Neuf in the reign of Henry IV. The Place Royale was a replica
+of the Place Dauphine. The style of architecture is the same, of brick
+with binding courses of hewn stone. This archway and the Rue de Harlay
+are the limit line of the Palais de Justice on the west. Formerly the
+Prefecture de Police, once the residence of the Presidents of
+Parlement, was a dependency of the Palace. The Court of Exchequer and
+Court of Subsidies completed the Supreme Court of Justice, the
+Sovereign's Court. It will be seen that before the Revolution the
+Palace enjoyed that isolation which now again is aimed at.
+
+This block, this island of residences and official buildings, in their
+midst the Sainte-Chapelle--that priceless jewel of Saint-Louis'
+chaplet--is the sanctuary of Paris, its holy place, its sacred ark.
+
+For one thing, this island was at first the whole of the city, for the
+plot now forming the Place Dauphine was a meadow attached to the Royal
+demesne, where stood a stamping mill for coining money. Hence the name
+of Rue de la Monnaie--the street leading to the Pont Neuf. Hence, too,
+the name of one of the round towers--the middle one--called the Tour
+d'Argent, which would seem to show that money was originally coined
+there. The famous mill, to be seen marked in old maps of Paris, may
+very likely be more recent than the time when money was coined in the
+Palace itself, and was erected, no doubt, for the practice of improved
+methods in the art of coining.
+
+The first tower, hardly detached from the Tour d'Argent, is the Tour
+de Montgomery; the third, and smallest, but the best preserved of the
+three, for it still has its battlements, is the Tour Bonbec.
+
+The Sainte-Chapelle and its four towers--counting the clock tower as
+one--clearly define the precincts; or, as a surveyor would say, the
+perimeter of the Palace, as it was from the time of the Merovingians
+till the accession of the first race of Valois; but to us, as a result
+of certain alterations, this Palace is more especially representative
+of the period of Saint-Louis.
+
+Charles V. was the first to give the Palace up to the Parlement, then
+a new institution, and went to reside in the famous Hotel Saint-Pol,
+under the protection of the Bastille. The Palais des Tournelles was
+subsequently erected backing on to the Hotel Saint-Pol. Thus, under
+the later Valois, the kings came back from the Bastille to the Louvre,
+which had been their first stronghold.
+
+The original residence of the French kings, the Palace of Saint-Louis,
+which has preserved the designation of Le Palais, to indicate the
+Palace of palaces, is entirely buried under the Palais de Justice; it
+forms the cellars, for it was built, like the Cathedral, in the Seine,
+and with such care that the highest floods in the river scarcely cover
+the lowest steps. The Quai de l'Horloge covers, twenty feet below the
+surface, its foundations of a thousand years old. Carriages run on the
+level of the capitals of the solid columns under these towers, and
+formerly their appearance must have harmonized with the elegance of
+the Palace, and have had a picturesque effect over the water, since to
+this day those towers vie in height with the loftiest buildings in
+Paris.
+
+As we look down on this vast capital from the lantern of the Pantheon,
+the Palace with the Sainte-Chapelle is still the most monumental of
+many monumental buildings. The home of our kings, over which you tread
+as you pace the immense hall known as the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_, was a
+miracle of architecture; and it is so still to the intelligent eye of
+the poet who happens to study it when inspecting the Conciergerie.
+Alas! for the Conciergerie has invaded the home of kings. One's heart
+bleeds to see the way in which cells, cupboards, corridors, warders'
+rooms, and halls devoid of light or air, have been hewn out of that
+beautiful structure in which Byzantine, Gothic, and Romanesque--the
+three phases of ancient art--were harmonized in one building by the
+architecture of the twelfth century.
+
+This palace is a monumental history of France in the earliest times,
+just as Blois is that of a later period. As at Blois you may admire in
+a single courtyard the chateau of the Counts of Blois, that of Louis
+XII., that of Francis I., that of Gaston; so at the Conciergerie you
+will find within the same precincts the stamp of the early races, and,
+in the Sainte-Chapelle, the architecture of Saint-Louis.
+
+Municipal Council (to you I speak), if you bestow millions, get a poet
+or two to assist your architects if you wish to save the cradle of
+Paris, the cradle of kings, while endeavoring to endow Paris and the
+Supreme Court with a palace worthy of France. It is a matter for study
+for some years before beginning the work. Another new prison or two
+like that of La Roquette, and the palace of Saint-Louis will be safe.
+
+In these days many grievances afflict this vast mass of buildings,
+buried under the Palais de Justice and the quay, like some
+antediluvian creature in the soil of Montmartre; but the worst
+affliction is that it is the Conciergerie. This epigram is
+intelligible. In the early days of the monarchy, noble criminals--for
+the villeins (a word signifying the peasantry in French and English
+alike) and the citizens came under the jurisdiction of the
+municipality or of their liege lord--the lords of the greater or the
+lesser fiefs, were brought before the king and guarded in the
+Conciergerie. And as these noble criminals were few, the Conciergerie
+was large enough for the king's prisoners.
+
+It is difficult now to be quite certain of the exact site of the
+original Conciergerie. However, the kitchens built by Saint-Louis
+still exist, forming what is now called the mousetrap; and it is
+probable that the original Conciergerie was situated in the place
+where, till 1825, the Conciergerie prisons of the Parlement were still
+in use, under the archway to the right of the wide outside steps
+leading to the supreme Court. From thence, until 1825, condemned
+criminals were taken to execution. From that gate came forth all the
+great criminals, all the victims of political feeling--the Marechale
+d'Ancre and the Queen of France, Semblancay and Malesherbes, Damien
+and Danton, Desrues and Castaing. Fouquier-Tinville's private room,
+like that of the public prosecutor now, was so placed that he could
+see the procession of carts containing the persons whom the
+Revolutionary tribunal had sentenced to death. Thus this man, who had
+become a sword, could give a last glance at each batch.
+
+After 1825, when Monsieur de Peyronnet was Minister, a great change
+was made in the Palais. The old entrance to the Conciergerie, where
+the ceremonies of registering the criminal and of the last toilet were
+performed, was closed and removed to where it now is, between the Tour
+de l'Horloge and the Tour de Montgomery, in an inner court entered
+through an arched passage. To the left is the "mousetrap," to the
+right the prison gates. The "salad-baskets" can drive into this
+irregularly shaped courtyard, can stand there and turn with ease, and
+in case of a riot find some protection behind the strong grating of
+the gate under the arch; whereas they formerly had no room to move in
+the narrow space dividing the outside steps from the right wing of the
+palace.
+
+In our day the Conciergerie, hardly large enough for the prisoners
+committed for trial--room being needed for about three hundred, men
+and women--no longer receives either suspected or remanded criminals
+excepting in rare cases, as, for instance, in these of Jacques Collin
+and Lucien. All who are imprisoned there are committed for trial
+before the Bench. As an exception criminals of the higher ranks are
+allowed to sojourn there, since, being already disgraced by a sentence
+in open court, their punishment would be too severe if they served
+their term of imprisonment at Melun or at Poissy. Ouvrard preferred to
+be imprisoned at the Conciergerie rather than at Sainte-Pelagie. At
+this moment of writing Lehon the notary and the Prince de Bergues are
+serving their time there by an exercise of leniency which, though
+arbitrary, is humane.
+
+As a rule, suspected criminals, whether they are to be subjected to a
+preliminary examination--to "go up," in the slang of the Courts--or to
+appear before the magistrate of the lower Court, are transferred in
+prison vans direct to the "mousetraps."
+
+The "mousetraps," opposite the gate, consist of a certain number of
+old cells constructed in the old kitchens of Saint-Louis' building,
+whither prisoners not yet fully committed are brought to await the
+hour when the Court sits, or the arrival of the examining judge. The
+"mousetraps" end on the north at the quay, on the east at the
+headquarters of the Municipal Guard, on the west at the courtyard of
+the Conciergerie, and on the south they adjoin a large vaulted hall,
+formerly, no doubt, the banqueting-room, but at present disused.
+
+Above the "mousetraps" is an inner guardroom with a window commanding
+the court of the Conciergerie; this is used by the gendarmerie of the
+department, and the stairs lead up to it. When the hour of trial
+strikes the sheriffs call the roll of the prisoners, the gendarmes go
+down, one for each prisoner, and each gendarme takes a criminal by the
+arm; and thus, in couples, they mount the stairs, cross the guardroom,
+and are led along the passages to a room contiguous to the hall where
+sits the famous sixth chamber of the law (whose functions are those of
+an English county court). The same road is trodden by the prisoners
+committed for trial on their way to and from the Conciergerie and the
+Assize Court.
+
+In the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_, between the door into the first court of
+the inferior class and the steps leading to the sixth, the visitor
+must observe the first time he goes there a doorway without a door or
+any architectural adornment, a square hole of the meanest type.
+Through this the judges and barristers find their way into the
+passages, into the guardhouse, down into the prison cells, and to the
+entrance to the Conciergerie.
+
+The private chambers of all the examining judges are on different
+floors in this part of the building. They are reached by squalid
+staircases, a maze in which those to whom the place is unfamiliar
+inevitably lose themselves. The windows of some look out on the quay,
+others on the yard of the Conciergerie. In 1830 a few of these rooms
+commanded the Rue de la Barillerie.
+
+Thus, when a prison van turns to the left in this yard, it has brought
+prisoners to be examined to the "mousetrap"; when it turns to the
+right, it conveys prisoners committed for trial, to the Conciergerie.
+Now it was to the right that the vehicle turned which conveyed Jacques
+Collin to set him down at the prison gate. Nothing can be more
+sinister. Prisoners and visitors see two barred gates of wrought iron,
+with a space between them of about six feet. These are never both
+opened at once, and through them everything is so cautiously
+scrutinized that persons who have a visiting ticket pass the permit
+through the bars before the key grinds in the lock. The examining
+judges, or even the supreme judges, are not admitted without being
+identified. Imagine, then, the chances of communications or escape!
+--The governor of the Conciergerie would smile with an expression on
+his lips that would freeze the mere suggestion in the most daring of
+romancers who defy probability.
+
+In all the annals of the Conciergerie no escape has been known but
+that of Lavalette; but the certain fact of august connivance, now
+amply proven, if it does not detract from the wife's devotion,
+certainly diminished the risk of failure.
+
+The most ardent lover of the marvelous, judging on the spot of the
+nature of the difficulties, must admit that at all times the obstacles
+must have been, as they still are, insurmountable. No words can do
+justice to the strength of the walls and vaulting; they must be seen.
+
+Though the pavement of the yard is on a lower level than that of the
+quay, in crossing this Barbican you go down several steps to enter an
+immense vaulted hall, with solid walls graced with magnificent
+columns. This hall abuts on the Tour de Montgomery--which is now part
+of the governor's residence--and on the Tour d'Argent, serving as a
+dormitory for the warders, or porters, or turnkeys, as you may prefer
+to call them. The number of the officials is less than might be
+supposed; there are but twenty; their sleeping quarters, like their
+beds, are in no respect different from those of the _pistoles_ or
+private cells. The name _pistole_ originated, no doubt, in the fact that
+the prisoners formerly paid a pistole (about ten francs) a week for
+this accommodation, its bareness resembling that of the empty garrets
+in which great men in poverty begin their career in Paris.
+
+To the left, in the vast entrance hall, sits the Governor of the
+Conciergerie, in a sort of office constructed of glass panes, where he
+and his clerk keep the prison-registers. Here the prisoners for
+examination, or committed for trial, have their names entered with a
+full description, and are then searched. The question of their lodging
+is also settled, this depending on the prisoner's means.
+
+Opposite the entrance to this hall there is a glass door. This opens
+into a parlor where the prisoner's relations and his counsel may speak
+with him across a double grating of wood. The parlor window opens on
+to the prison yard, the inner court where prisoners committed for
+trial take air and exercise at certain fixed hours.
+
+This large hall, only lighted by the doubtful daylight that comes in
+through the gates--for the single window to the front court is
+screened by the glass office built out in front of it--has an
+atmosphere and a gloom that strike the eye in perfect harmony with the
+pictures that force themselves on the imagination. Its aspect is all
+the more sinister because, parallel with the Tours d'Argent and de
+Montgomery, you discover those mysterious vaulted and overwhelming
+crypts which lead to the cells occupied by the Queen and Madame
+Elizabeth, and to those known as the secret cells. This maze of
+masonry, after being of old the scene of royal festivities, is now the
+basement of the Palais de Justice.
+
+Between 1825 and 1832 the operation of the last toilet was performed
+in this enormous hall, between a large stove which heats it and the
+inner gate. It is impossible even now to tread without a shudder on
+the paved floor that has received the shock and the confidences of so
+many last glances.
+
+
+
+The apparently dying victim on this occasion could not get out of the
+horrible vehicle without the assistance of two gendarmes, who took him
+under the arms to support him, and led him half unconscious into the
+office. Thus dragged along, the dying man raised his eyes to heaven in
+such a way as to suggest a resemblance to the Saviour taken down from
+the Cross. And certainly in no picture does Jesus present a more
+cadaverous or tortured countenance than this of the sham Spaniard; he
+looked ready to breathe his last sigh. As soon as he was seated in the
+office, he repeated in a weak voice the speech he had made to
+everybody since he was arrested:
+
+"I appeal to His Excellency the Spanish Ambassador."
+
+"You can say that to the examining judge," replied the Governor.
+
+"Oh Lord!" said Jacques Collin, with a sigh. "But cannot I have a
+breviary! Shall I never be allowed to see a doctor? I have not two
+hours to live."
+
+As Carlos Herrera was to be placed in close confinement in the secret
+cells, it was needless to ask him whether he claimed the benefits of
+the pistole (as above described), that is to say, the right of having
+one of the rooms where the prisoner enjoys such comfort as the law
+permits. These rooms are on the other side of the prison-yard, of
+which mention will presently be made. The sheriff and the clerk calmly
+carried out the formalities of the consignment to prison.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin to the Governor in broken French, "I
+am, as you see, a dying man. Pray, if you can, tell that examining
+judge as soon as possible that I crave as a favor what a criminal must
+most dread, namely, to be brought before him as soon as he arrives;
+for my sufferings are really unbearable, and as soon as I see him the
+mistake will be cleared up----"
+
+As an universal rule every criminal talks of a mistake. Go to the
+hulks and question the convicts; they are almost all victims of a
+miscarriage of justice. So this speech raises a faint smile in all who
+come into contact with the suspected, accused, or condemned criminal.
+
+"I will mention your request to the examining judge," replied the
+Governor.
+
+"And I shall bless you, monsieur!" replied the false Abbe, raising his
+eyes to heaven.
+
+As soon as his name was entered on the calendar, Carlos Herrera,
+supported under each arm by a man of the municipal guard, and followed
+by a turnkey instructed by the Governor as to the number of the cell
+in which the prisoner was to be placed, was led through the
+subterranean maze of the Conciergerie into a perfectly wholesome room,
+whatever certain philanthropists may say to the contrary, but cut off
+from all possible communication with the outer world.
+
+As soon as he was removed, the warders, the Governor, and his clerk
+looked at each other as though asking each other's opinion, and
+suspicion was legible on every face; but at the appearance of the
+second man in custody the spectators relapsed into their usual
+doubting frame of mind, concealed under the air of indifference. Only
+in very extraordinary cases do the functionaries of the Conciergerie
+feel any curiosity; the prisoners are no more to them than a barber's
+customers are to him. Hence all the formalities which appall the
+imagination are carried out with less fuss than a money transaction at
+a banker's, and often with greater civility.
+
+Lucien's expression was that of a dejected criminal. He submitted to
+everything, and obeyed like a machine. All the way from Fontainebleau
+the poet had been facing his ruin, and telling himself that the hour
+of expiation had tolled. Pale and exhausted, knowing nothing of what
+had happened at Esther's house during his absence, he only knew that
+he was the intimate ally of an escaped convict, a situation which
+enabled him to guess at disaster worse than death. When his mind could
+command a thought, it was that of suicide. He must, at any cost,
+escape the ignominy that loomed before him like the phantasm of a
+dreadful dream.
+
+Jacques Collin, as the more dangerous of the two culprits, was placed
+in a cell of solid masonry, deriving its light from one of the narrow
+yards, of which there are several in the interior of the Palace, in
+the wing where the public prosecutor's chambers are. This little yard
+is the airing-ground for the female prisoners. Lucien was taken to the
+same part of the building, to a cell adjoining the rooms let to
+misdemeanants; for, by orders from the examining judge, the Governor
+treated him with some consideration.
+
+Persons who have never had anything to do with the action of the law
+usually have the darkest notions as to the meaning of solitary or
+secret confinement. Ideas as to the treatment of criminals have not
+yet become disentangled from the old pictures of torture chambers, of
+the unhealthiness of a prison, the chill of stone walls sweating
+tears, the coarseness of the jailers and of the food--inevitable
+accessories of the drama; but it is not unnecessary to explain here
+that these exaggerations exist only on the stage, and only make
+lawyers and judges smile, as well as those who visit prisons out of
+curiosity, or who come to study them.
+
+For a long time, no doubt, they were terrible. In the days of the old
+Parlement, of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., the accused were, no doubt,
+flung pell-mell into a low room underneath the old gateway. The
+prisons were among the crimes of 1789, and it is enough only to see
+the cells where the Queen and Madame Elizabeth were incarcerated to
+conceive a horror of old judicial proceedings.
+
+In our day, though philanthropy has brought incalculable mischief on
+society, it has produced some good for the individual. It is to
+Napoleon that we owe our Criminal Code; and this, even more than the
+Civil Code--which still urgently needs reform on some points--will
+remain one of the greatest monuments of his short reign. This new view
+of criminal law put an end to a perfect abyss of misery. Indeed, it
+may be said that, apart from the terrible moral torture which men of
+the better classes must suffer when they find themselves in the power
+of the law, the action of that power is simple and mild to a degree
+that would hardly be expected. Suspected or accused criminals are
+certainly not lodged as if they were at home; but every necessary is
+supplied to them in the prisons of Paris. Besides, the burden of
+feelings that weighs on them deprives the details of daily life of
+their customary value. It is never the body that suffers. The mind is
+in such a phase of violence that every form of discomfort or of brutal
+treatment, if such there were, would be easily endured in such a frame
+of mind. And it must be admitted that an innocent man is quickly
+released, especially in Paris.
+
+So Lucien, on entering his cell, saw an exact reproduction of the
+first room he had occupied in Paris at the Hotel Cluny. A bed to
+compare with those in the worst furnished apartments of the Quartier
+Latin, straw chairs with the bottoms out, a table and a few utensils,
+compose the furniture of such a room, in which two accused prisoners
+are not unfrequently placed together when they are quiet in their
+ways, and their misdeeds are not crimes of violence, but such as
+forgery or bankruptcy.
+
+This resemblance between his starting-point, in the days of his
+innocency, and his goal, the lowest depths of degradation and sham,
+was so direct an appeal to his last chord of poetic feeling, that the
+unhappy fellow melted into tears. For four hours he wept, as rigid in
+appearance as a figure of stone, but enduring the subversion of all
+his hopes, the crushing of all his social vanity, and the utter
+overthrow of his pride, smarting in each separate _I_ that exists in
+an ambitious man--a lover, a success, a dandy, a Parisian, a poet, a
+libertine, and a favorite. Everything in him was broken by this fall
+as of Icarus.
+
+Carlos Herrera, on the other hand, as soon as he was locked into his
+cell and found himself alone, began pacing it to and fro like the
+polar bear in his cage. He carefully examined the door and assured
+himself that, with the exception of the peephole, there was not a
+crack in it. He sounded all the walls, he looked up the funnel down
+which a dim light came, and he said to himself, "I am safe enough!"
+
+He sat down in a corner where the eye of a prying warder at the
+grating of the peephole could not see him. Then he took off his wig,
+and hastily ungummed a piece of paper that did duty as lining. The
+side of the paper next his head was so greasy that it looked like the
+very texture of the wig. If it had occurred to Bibi-Lupin to snatch
+off the wig to establish the identity of the Spaniard with Jacques
+Collin, he would never have thought twice about the paper, it looked
+so exactly like part of the wigmaker's work. The other side was still
+fairly white, and clean enough to have a few lines written on it. The
+delicate and tiresome task of unsticking it had been begun in La
+Force; two hours would not have been long enough; it had taken him
+half of the day before. The prisoner began by tearing this precious
+scrap of paper so as to have a strip four or five lines wide, which he
+divided into several bits; he then replaced his store of paper in the
+same strange hiding-place, after damping the gummed side so as to make
+it stick again. He felt in a lock of his hair for one of those pencil
+leads as thin as a stout pin, then recently invented by Susse, and
+which he had put in with some gum; he broke off a scrap long enough to
+write with and small enough to hide in his ear. Having made these
+preparations with the rapidity and certainty of hand peculiar to old
+convicts, who are as light-fingered as monkeys, Jacques Collin sat
+down on the edge of his bed to meditate on his instructions to Asie,
+in perfect confidence that he should come across her, so entirely did
+he rely on the woman's genius.
+
+"During the preliminary examination," he reflected, "I pretended to be
+a Spaniard and spoke broken French, appealed to my Ambassador, and
+alleged diplomatic privilege, not understanding anything I was asked,
+the whole performance varied by fainting, pauses, sighs--in short, all
+the vagaries of a dying man. I must stick to that. My papers are all
+regular. Asie and I can eat up Monsieur Camusot; he is no great
+shakes!
+
+"Now I must think of Lucien; he must be made to pull himself together.
+I must get at the boy at whatever cost, and show him some plan of
+conduct, otherwise he will give himself up, give me up, lose all! He
+must be taught his lesson before he is examined. And besides, I must
+find some witnesses to swear to my being a priest!"
+
+Such was the position, moral and physical, of these two prisoners,
+whose fate at the moment depended on Monsieur Camusot, examining judge
+to the Inferior Court of the Seine, and sovereign master, during the
+time granted to him by the Code, of the smallest details of their
+existence, since he alone could grant leave for them to be visited by
+the chaplains, the doctor, or any one else in the world.
+
+No human authority--neither the King, nor the Keeper of the Seals, nor
+the Prime Minister, can encroach on the power of an examining judge;
+nothing can stop him, no one can control him. He is a monarch, subject
+only to his conscience and the Law. At the present time, when
+philosophers, philanthropists, and politicians are constantly
+endeavoring to reduce every social power, the rights conferred on the
+examining judges have become the object of attacks that are all the
+more serious because they are almost justified by those rights, which,
+it must be owned, are enormous. And yet, as every man of sense will
+own, that power ought to remain unimpaired; in certain cases, its
+exercise can be mitigated by a strong infusion of caution; but society
+is already threatened by the ineptitude and weakness of the jury
+--which is, in fact, the really supreme bench, and which ought to be
+composed only of choice and elected men--and it would be in danger of
+ruin if this pillar were broken which now upholds our criminal
+procedure.
+
+Arrest on suspicion is one of the terrible but necessary powers of
+which the risk to society is counterbalanced by its immense
+importance. And besides, distrust of the magistracy in general is a
+beginning of social dissolution. Destroy that institution, and
+reconstruct it on another basis; insist--as was the case before the
+Revolution--that judges should show a large guarantee of fortune; but,
+at any cost, believe in it! Do not make it an image of society to be
+insulted!
+
+In these days a judge, paid as a functionary, and generally a poor
+man, has in the place of his dignity of old a haughtiness of demeanor
+that seems odious to the men raised to be his equals; for haughtiness
+is dignity without a solid basis. That is the vicious element in the
+present system. If France were divided into ten circuits, the
+magistracy might be reinstated by conferring its dignities on men of
+fortune; but with six-and-twenty circuits this is impossible.
+
+The only real improvement to be insisted on in the exercise of the
+power intrusted to the examining judge, is an alteration in the
+conditions of preliminary imprisonment. The mere fact of suspicion
+ought to make no difference in the habits of life of the suspected
+parties. Houses of detention for them ought to be constructed in
+Paris, furnished and arranged in such a way as greatly to modify the
+feeling of the public with regard to suspected persons. The law is
+good, and is necessary; its application is in fault, and public
+feeling judges the laws from the way in which they are carried out.
+And public opinion in France condemns persons under suspicion, while,
+by an inexplicable reaction, it justifies those committed for trial.
+This, perhaps, is a result of the essentially refractory nature of the
+French.
+
+This illogical temper of the Parisian people was one of the factors
+which contributed to the climax of this drama; nay, as may be seen, it
+was one of the most important.
+
+To enter into the secret of the terrible scenes which are acted out in
+the examining judge's chambers; to understand the respective positions
+of the two belligerent powers, the Law and the examinee, the object of
+whose contest is a certain secret kept by the prisoner from the
+inquisition of the magistrate--well named in prison slang, "the
+curious man"--it must always be remembered that persons imprisoned
+under suspicion know nothing of what is being said by the seven or
+eight publics that compose _the Public_, nothing of how much the police
+know, or the authorities, or the little that newspapers can publish as
+to the circumstances of the crime.
+
+Thus, to give a man in custody such information as Jacques Collin had
+just received from Asie as to Lucien's arrest, is throwing a rope to a
+drowning man. As will be seen, in consequence of this ignorance, a
+stratagem which, without this warning, must certainly have been
+equally fatal to the convict, was doomed to failure.
+
+
+
+Monsieur Camusot, the son-in-law of one of the clerks of the cabinet,
+too well known for any account of his position and connection to be
+necessary here, was at this moment almost as much perplexed as Carlos
+Herrera in view of the examination he was to conduct. He had formerly
+been President of a Court of the Paris circuit; he had been raised
+from that position and called to be a judge in Paris--one of the most
+coveted posts in the magistracy--by the influence of the celebrated
+Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, whose husband, attached to the Dauphin's
+person, and Colonel of a cavalry regiment of the Guards, was as much
+in favor with the King as she was with MADAME. In return for a very
+small service which he had done the Duchess--an important matter to
+her--on occasion of a charge of forgery brought against the young
+Comte d'Esgrignon by a banker of Alencon (see _La Cabinet des Antiques_;
+_Scenes de la vie de Province_), he was promoted from being a provincial
+judge to be president of his Court, and from being president to being
+an examining judge in Paris.
+
+For eighteen months now he had sat on the most important Bench in the
+kingdom; and had once, at the desire of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
+had an opportunity of forwarding the ends of a lady not less
+influential than the Duchess, namely, the Marquise d'Espard, but he
+had failed. (See the _Commission in Lunacy_.)
+
+Lucien, as was told at the beginning of the Scene, to be revenged on
+Madame d'Espard, who aimed at depriving her husband of his liberty of
+action, was able to put the true facts before the Public Prosecutor
+and the Comte de Serizy. These two important authorities being thus
+won over to the Marquis d'Espard's party, his wife had barely escaped
+the censure of the Bench by her husband's generous intervention.
+
+On hearing, yesterday, of Lucien's arrest, the Marquise d'Espard had
+sent her brother-in-law, the Chevalier d'Espard, to see Madame
+Camusot. Madame Camusot had set off forthwith to call on the notorious
+Marquise. Just before dinner, on her return home, she had called her
+husband aside in the bedroom.
+
+"If you can commit that little fop Lucien de Rubempre for trial, and
+secure his condemnation," said she in his ear, "you will be Councillor
+to the Supreme Court----"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Madame d'Espard longs to see that poor young man guillotined. I
+shivered as I heard what a pretty woman's hatred can be!"
+
+"Do not meddle in questions of the law," said Camusot.
+
+"I! meddle!" said she. "If a third person could have heard us, he
+could not have guessed what we were talking about. The Marquise and I
+were as exquisitely hypocritical to each other as you are to me at
+this moment. She began by thanking me for your good offices in her
+suit, saying that she was grateful in spite of its having failed. She
+spoke of the terrible functions devolved on you by the law, 'It is
+fearful to have to send a man to the scaffold--but as to that man, it
+would be no more than justice,' and so forth. Then she lamented that
+such a handsome young fellow, brought to Paris by her cousin, Madame
+du Chatelet, should have turned out so badly. 'That,' said she, 'is
+what bad women like Coralie and Esther bring young men to when they
+are corrupt enough to share their disgraceful profits!' Next came some
+fine speeches about charity and religion! Madame du Chatelet had said
+that Lucien deserved a thousand deaths for having half killed his
+mother and his sister.
+
+"Then she spoke of a vacancy in the Supreme Court--she knows the
+Keeper of the Seals. 'Your husband, madame, has a fine opportunity of
+distinguishing himself,' she said in conclusion--and that is all."
+
+"We distinguish ourselves every day when we do our duty," said
+Camusot.
+
+"You will go far if you are always the lawyer even to your wife,"
+cried Madame Camusot. "Well, I used to think you a goose. Now I admire
+you."
+
+The lawyer's lips wore one of those smiles which are as peculiar to
+them as dancers' smiles are to dancers.
+
+"Madame, can I come in?" said the maid.
+
+"What is it?" said her mistress.
+
+"Madame, the head lady's-maid came from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse
+while you were out, and she will be obliged if you would go at once to
+the Hotel de Cadignan."
+
+"Keep dinner back," said the lawyer's wife, remembering that the
+driver of the hackney coach that had brought her home was waiting to
+be paid.
+
+She put her bonnet on again, got into the coach, and in twenty minutes
+was at the Hotel de Cadignan. Madame Camusot was led up the private
+stairs, and sat alone for ten minutes in a boudoir adjoining the
+Duchess' bedroom. The Duchess presently appeared, splendidly dressed,
+for she was starting for Saint-Cloud in obedience to a Royal
+invitation.
+
+"Between you and me, my dear, a few words are enough."
+
+"Yes, Madame la Duchesse."
+
+"Lucien de Rubempre is in custody, your husband is conducting the
+inquiry; I will answer for the poor boy's innocence; see that he is
+released within twenty-four hours.--This is not all. Some one will ask
+to-morrow to see Lucien in private in his cell; your husband may be
+present if he chooses, so long as he is not discovered. The King looks
+for high courage in his magistrates in the difficult position in which
+he will presently find himself; I will bring your husband forward, and
+recommend him as a man devoted to the King even at the risk of his
+head. Our friend Camusot will be made first a councillor, and then the
+President of Court somewhere or other.--Good-bye.--I am under orders,
+you will excuse me, I know?
+
+"You will not only oblige the public prosecutor, who cannot give an
+opinion in this affair; you will save the life of a dying woman,
+Madame de Serizy. So you will not lack support.
+
+"In short, you see, I put my trust in you, I need not say--you
+know----"
+
+She laid a finger to her lips and disappeared.
+
+"And I had not a chance of telling her that Madame d'Espard wants to
+see Lucien on the scaffold!" thought the judge's wife as she returned
+to her hackney cab.
+
+She got home in such a state of anxiety that her husband, on seeing
+her, asked:
+
+"What is the matter, Amelie?"
+
+"We stand between two fires."
+
+She told her husband of her interview with the Duchess, speaking in
+his ear for fear the maid should be listening at the door.
+
+"Now, which of them has the most power?" she said in conclusion. "The
+Marquise was very near getting you into trouble in the silly business
+of the commission on her husband, and we owe everything to the
+Duchess.
+
+"One made vague promises, while the other tells you you shall first be
+Councillor and then President.--Heaven forbid I should advise you; I
+will never meddle in matters of business; still, I am bound to repeat
+exactly what is said at Court and what goes on----"
+
+"But, Amelie, you do not know what the Prefet of police sent me this
+morning, and by whom? By one of the most important agents of the
+superior police, the Bibi-Lupin of politics, who told me that the
+Government had a secret interest in this trial.--Now let us dine and
+go to the Varietes. We will talk all this over to-night in my private
+room, for I shall need your intelligence; that of a judge may not
+perhaps be enough----"
+
+Nine magistrates out of ten would deny the influence of the wife over
+her husband in such cases; but though this may be a remarkable
+exception in society, it may be insisted on as true, even if
+improbable. The magistrate is like the priest, especially in Paris,
+where the best of the profession are to be found; he rarely speaks of
+his business in the Courts, excepting of settled cases. Not only do
+magistrates' wives affect to know nothing; they have enough sense of
+propriety to understand that it would damage their husbands if, when
+they are told some secret, they allowed their knowledge to be
+suspected.
+
+Nevertheless, on some great occasions, when promotion depends on the
+decision taken, many a wife, like Amelie, has helped the lawyer in his
+study of a case. And, after all, these exceptions, which, of course,
+are easily denied, since they remain unknown, depend entirely on the
+way in which the struggle between two natures has worked out in
+home-life. Now, Madame Camusot controlled her husband completely.
+
+When all in the house were asleep, the lawyer and his wife sat down to
+the desk, where the magistrate had already laid out the documents in
+the case.
+
+"Here are the notes, forwarded to me, at my request, by the Prefet of
+police," said Camusot.
+
+
+                 "_The Abbe Carlos Herrera_.
+
+  "This individual is undoubtedly the man named Jacques Collin,
+  known as _Trompe-la-Mort_, who was last arrested in 1819, in the
+  dwelling-house of a certain Madame Vauquer, who kept a common
+  boarding-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, where he lived
+  in concealment under the alias of Vautrin."
+
+A marginal note in the Prefet's handwriting ran thus:
+
+  "Orders have been sent by telegraph to Bibi-Lupin, chief of the
+  Safety department, to return forthwith, to be confronted with the
+  prisoner, as he is personally acquainted with Jacques Collin, whom
+  he, in fact, arrested in 1819 with the connivance of a
+  Mademoiselle Michonneau.
+
+  "The boarders who then lived in the Maison Vauquer are still
+  living, and may be called to establish his identity.
+
+  "The self-styled Carlos Herrera is Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre's
+  intimate friend and adviser, and for three years past has
+  furnished him with considerable sums, evidently obtained by
+  dishonest means.
+
+  "This partnership, if the identity of the Spaniard with Jacques
+  Collin can be proved, must involve the condemnation of Lucien de
+  Rubempre.
+
+  "The sudden death of Peyrade, the police agent, is attributable to
+  poison administered at the instigation of Jacques Collin,
+  Rubempre, or their accomplices. The reason for this murder is the
+  fact that justice had for a long time been on the traces of these
+  clever criminals."
+
+And again, on the margin, the magistrate pointed to this note written
+by the Prefet himself:
+
+  "This is the fact to my personal knowledge; and I also know that
+  the Sieur Lucien de Rubempre has disgracefully tricked the Comte
+  de Serizy and the Public Prosecutor."
+
+
+
+"What do you say to this, Amelie?"
+
+"It is frightful!" repled his wife. "Go on."
+
+"The transformation of the convict Jacques Collin into a Spanish
+priest is the result of some crime more clever than that by which
+Coignard made himself Comte de Sainte-Helene."
+
+
+                    "_Lucien de Rubempre_.
+
+  "Lucien Chardon, son of an apothecary at Angouleme--his mother a
+  Demoiselle de Rubempre--bears the name of Rubempre in virtue of a
+  royal patent. This was granted by the request of Madame la
+  Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Monsieur le Comte de Serizy.
+
+  "This young man came to Paris in 182 . . . without any means of
+  subsistence, following Madame la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, then
+  Madame de Bargeton, a cousin of Madame d'Espard's.
+
+  "He was ungrateful to Madame de Bargeton, and cohabited with a
+  girl named Coralie, an actress at the Gymnase, now dead, who left
+  Monsieur Camusot, a silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, to
+  live with Rubempre.
+
+  "Ere long, having sunk into poverty through the insufficiency of
+  the money allowed him by this actress, he seriously compromised
+  his brother-in-law, a highly respected printer of Angouleme, by
+  giving forged bills, for which David Sechard was arrested, during
+  a short visit paid to Angouleme by Lucien. In consequence of this
+  affair Rubempre fled, but suddenly reappeared in Paris with the
+  Abbe Carlos Herrera.
+
+  "Though having no visible means of subsistence, the said Lucien de
+  Rubempre spent on an average three hundred thousand francs during
+  the three years of his second residence in Paris, and can only
+  have obtained the money from the self-styled Abbe Carlos Herrera
+  --but how did he come by it?
+
+  "He has recently laid out above a million francs in repurchasing
+  the Rubempre estates to fulfil the conditions on which he was to
+  be allowed to marry Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu. This
+  marriage has been broken off in consequence of inquiries made by
+  the Grandlieu family, the said Lucien having told them that he had
+  obtained the money from his brother-in-law and his sister; but the
+  information obtained, more especially by Monsieur Derville,
+  attorney-at-law, proves that not only were that worthy couple
+  ignorant of his having made this purchase, but that they believed
+  the said Lucien to be deeply in debt.
+
+  "Moreover, the property inherited by the Sechards consists of
+  houses; and the ready money, by their affidavit, amounted to about
+  two hundred thousand francs.
+
+  "Lucien was secretly cohabiting with Esther Gobseck; hence there
+  can be no doubt that all the lavish gifts of the Baron de
+  Nucingen, the girl's protector, were handed over to the said
+  Lucien.
+
+  "Lucien and his companion, the convict, have succeeded in keeping
+  their footing in the face of the world longer than Coignard did,
+  deriving their income from the prostitution of the said Esther,
+  formerly on the register of the town."
+
+
+
+Though these notes are to a great extent a repetition of the story
+already told, it was necessary to reproduce them to show the part
+played by the police in Paris. As has already been seen from the note
+on Peyrade, the police has summaries, almost invariably correct,
+concerning every family or individual whose life is under suspicion,
+or whose actions are of a doubtful character. It knows every
+circumstance of their delinquencies. This universal register and
+account of consciences is as accurately kept as the register of the
+Bank of France and its accounts of fortunes. Just as the Bank notes
+the slightest delay in payment, gauges every credit, takes stock of
+every capitalist, and watches their proceedings, so does the police
+weigh and measure the honesty of each citizen. With it, as in a Court
+of Law, innocence has nothing to fear; it has no hold on anything but
+crime.
+
+However high the rank of a family, it cannot evade this social
+providence.
+
+And its discretion is equal to the extent of its power. This vast mass
+of written evidence compiled by the police--reports, notes, and
+summaries--an ocean of information, sleeps undisturbed, as deep and
+calm as the sea. Some accident occurs, some crime or misdemeanor
+becomes aggressive,--then the law refers to the police, and
+immediately, if any documents bear on the suspected criminal, the
+judge is informed. These records, an analysis of his antecedents, are
+merely side-lights, and unknown beyond the walls of the Palais de
+Justice. No legal use can be made of them; Justice is informed by
+them, and takes advantage of them; but that is all. These documents
+form, as it were, the inner lining of the tissue of crimes, their
+first cause, which is hardly ever made public. No jury would accept
+it; and the whole country would rise up in wrath if excerpts from
+those documents came out in the trial at the Assizes. In fact, it is
+the truth which is doomed to remain in the well, as it is everywhere
+and at all times. There is not a magistrate who, after twelve years'
+experience in Paris, is not fully aware that the Assize Court and the
+police authorities keep the secret of half these squalid atrocities,
+or who does not admit that half the crimes that are committed are
+never punished by the law.
+
+If the public could know how reserved the _employes_ of the police are
+--who do not forget--they would reverence these honest men as much as
+they do Cheverus. The police is supposed to be astute, Machiavellian;
+it is, in fact most benign. But it hears every passion in its
+paroxysms, it listens to every kind of treachery, and keeps notes of
+all. The police is terrible on one side only. What it does for justice
+it does no less for political interests; but in these it is as
+ruthless and as one-sided as the fires of the Inquisition.
+
+"Put this aside," said the lawyer, replacing the notes in their cover;
+"this is a secret between the police and the law. The judge will
+estimate its value, but Monsieur and Madame Camusot must know nothing
+of it."
+
+"As if I needed telling that!" said his wife.
+
+"Lucien is guilty," he went on; "but of what?"
+
+"A man who is the favorite of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, of the
+Comtesse de Serizy, and loved by Clotilde de Grandlieu, is not
+guilty," said Amelie. "The other _must_ be answerable for everything."
+
+"But Lucien is his accomplice," cried Camusot.
+
+"Take my advice," said Amelie. "Restore this priest to the diplomatic
+career he so greatly adorns, exculpate this little wretch, and find
+some other criminal----"
+
+"How you run on!" said the magistrate with a smile. "Women go to the
+point, plunging through the law as birds fly through the air, and find
+nothing to stop them."
+
+"But," said Amelie, "whether he is a diplomate or a convict, the Abbe
+Carlos will find some one to get him out of the scrape."
+
+"I am only a considering cap; you are the brain," said Camusot.
+
+"Well, the sitting is closed; give your Melie a kiss; it is one
+o'clock."
+
+And Madame Camusot went to bed, leaving her husband to arrange his
+papers and his ideas in preparation for the task of examining the two
+prisoners next morning.
+
+
+
+And thus, while the prison vans were conveying Jacques Collin and
+Lucien to the Conciergerie, the examining judge, having breakfasted,
+was making his way across Paris on foot, after the unpretentious
+fashion of Parisian magistrates, to go to his chambers, where all the
+documents in the case were laid ready for him.
+
+This was the way of it: Every examining judge has a head-clerk, a sort
+of sworn legal secretary--a race that perpetuates itself without any
+premiums or encouragement, producing a number of excellent souls in
+whom secrecy is natural and incorruptible. From the origin of the
+Parlement to the present day, no case has ever been known at the
+Palais de Justice of any gossip or indiscretion on the part of a clerk
+bound to the Courts of Inquiry. Gentil sold the release given by
+Louise de Savoie to Semblancay; a War Office clerk sold the plan of
+the Russian campaign to Czernitchef; and these traitors were more or
+less rich. The prospect of a post in the Palais and professional
+conscientiousness are enough to make a judge's clerk a successful
+rival of the tomb--for the tomb has betrayed many secrets since
+chemistry has made such progress.
+
+This official is, in fact, the magistrate's pen. It will be understood
+by many readers that a man may gladly be the shaft of a machine, while
+they wonder why he is content to remain a bolt; still a bolt is
+content--perhaps the machinery terrifies him.
+
+Camusot's clerk, a young man of two-and-twenty, named Coquart, had
+come in the morning to fetch all the documents and the judge's notes,
+and laid everything ready in his chambers, while the lawyer himself
+was wandering along the quays, looking at the curiosities in the
+shops, and wondering within himself:--
+
+"How on earth am I to set to work with such a clever rascal as this
+Jacques Collin, supposing it is he? The head of the Safety will know
+him. I must look as if I knew what I was about, if only for the sake
+of the police! I see so many insuperable difficulties, that the best
+plan would be to enlighten the Marquise and the Duchess by showing
+them the notes of the police, and I should avenge my father, from whom
+Lucien stole Coralie.--If I can unveil these scoundrels, my skill will
+be loudly proclaimed, and Lucien will soon be thrown over by his
+friends.--Well, well, the examination will settle all that."
+
+He turned into a curiosity shop, tempted by a Boule clock.
+
+"Not to be false to my conscience, and yet to oblige two great ladies
+--that will be a triumph of skill," thought he. "What, do you collect
+coins too, monsieur?" said Camusot to the Public Prosecutor, whom he
+found in the shop.
+
+"It is a taste dear to all dispensers of justice," said the Comte de
+Granville, laughing. "They look at the reverse side of every medal."
+
+And after looking about the shop for some minutes, as if continuing
+his search, he accompanied Camusot on his way down the quay without
+it ever occurring to Camusot that anything but chance had brought them
+together.
+
+"You are examining Monsieur de Rubempre this morning," said the Public
+Prosecutor. "Poor fellow--I liked him."
+
+"There are several charges against him," said Camusot.
+
+"Yes, I saw the police papers; but some of the information came from
+an agent who is independent of the Prefet, the notorious Corentin, who
+had caused the death of more innocent men than you will ever send
+guilty men to the scaffold, and----But that rascal is out of your
+reach.--Without trying to influence the conscience of such a
+magistrate as you are, I may point out to you that if you could be
+perfectly sure that Lucien was ignorant of the contents of that
+woman's will, it would be self-evident that he had no interest in her
+death, for she gave him enormous sums of money."
+
+"We can prove his absence at the time when this Esther was poisoned,"
+said Camusot. "He was at Fontainebleau, on the watch for Mademoiselle
+de Grandlieu and the Duchesse de Lenoncourt."
+
+"And he still cherished such hopes of marrying Mademoiselle de
+Grandlieu," said the Public Prosecutor--"I have it from the Duchesse
+de Grandlieu herself--that it is inconceivable that such a clever
+young fellow should compromise his chances by a perfectly aimless
+crime."
+
+"Yes," said Camusot, "especially if Esther gave him all she got."
+
+"Derville and Nucingen both say that she died in ignorance of the
+inheritance she had long since come into," added Granville.
+
+"But then what do you suppose is the meaning of it all?" asked
+Camusot. "For there is something at the bottom of it."
+
+"A crime committed by some servant," said the Public Prosecutor.
+
+"Unfortunately," remarked Camusot, "it would be quite like Jacques
+Collin--for the Spanish priest is certainly none other than that
+escaped convict--to have taken possession of the seven hundred and
+fifty thousand francs derived from the sale of the certificate of
+shares given to Esther by Nucingen."
+
+"Weigh everything with care, my dear Camusot. Be prudent. The Abbe
+Carlos Herrera has diplomatic connections; still, an envoy who had
+committed a crime would not be sheltered by his position. Is he or is
+he not the Abbe Carlos Herrera? That is the important question."
+
+And Monsieur de Granville bowed, and turned away, as requiring no
+answer.
+
+"So he too wants to save Lucien!" thought Camusot, going on by the
+Quai des Lunettes, while the Public Prosecutor entered the Palais
+through the Cour de Harlay.
+
+On reaching the courtyard of the Conciergerie, Camusot went to the
+Governor's room and led him into the middle of the pavement, where no
+one could overhear them.
+
+"My dear sir, do me the favor of going to La Force, and inquiring of
+your colleague there whether he happens at this moment to have there
+any convicts who were on the hulks at Toulon between 1810 and 1815; or
+have you any imprisoned here? We will transfer those of La Force here
+for a few days, and you will let me know whether this so-called
+Spanish priest is known to them as Jacques Collin, otherwise
+_Trompe-la-Mort_."
+
+"Very good, Monsieur Camusot.--But Bibi-Lupin is come . . ."
+
+"What, already?" said the judge.
+
+"He was at Melun. He was told that _Trompe-la-Mort_ had to be
+identified, and he smiled with joy. He awaits your orders."
+
+"Send him to me."
+
+The Governor was then able to lay before Monsieur Camusot Jacques
+Collin's request, and he described the man's deplorable condition.
+
+"I intended to examine him first," replied the magistrate, "but not on
+account of his health. I received a note this morning from the
+Governor of La Force. Well, this rascal, who described himself to you
+as having been dying for twenty-four hours past, slept so soundly that
+they went into his cell there, with the doctor for whom the Governor
+had sent, without his hearing them; the doctor did not even feel his
+pulse, he left him to sleep--which proves that his conscience is as
+tough as his health. I shall accept this feigned illness only so far
+as it may enable me to study my man," added Monsieur Camusot, smiling.
+
+"We live to learn every day with these various grades of prisoners,"
+said the Governor of the prison.
+
+The Prefecture of police adjoins the Conciergerie, and the
+magistrates, like the Governor, knowing all the subterranean passages,
+can get to and fro with the greatest rapidity. This explains the
+miraculous ease with which information can be conveyed, during the
+sitting of the Courts, to the officials and the presidents of the
+Assize Courts. And by the time Monsieur Camusot had reached the top of
+the stairs leading to his chambers, Bibi-Lupin was there too, having
+come by the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_.
+
+"What zeal!" said Camusot, with a smile.
+
+"Ah, well, you see if it is _he_," replied the man, "you will see great
+fun in the prison-yard if by chance there are any old stagers here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"_Trompe-la-Mort_ sneaked their chips, and I know that they have vowed
+to be the death of him."
+
+_They_ were the convicts whose money, intrusted to _Trompe-la-Mort_, had
+all been made away with by him for Lucien, as has been told.
+
+"Could you lay your hand on the witnesses of his former arrest?"
+
+"Give me two summonses of witnesses and I will find you some to-day."
+
+"Coquart," said the lawyer, as he took off his gloves, and placed his
+hat and stick in a corner, "fill up two summonses by monsieur's
+directions."
+
+He looked at himself in the glass over the chimney shelf, where stood,
+in the place of a clock, a basin and jug. On one side was a bottle of
+water and a glass, on the other a lamp. He rang the bell; his usher
+came in a few minutes after.
+
+"Is anybody here for me yet?" he asked the man, whose business it was
+to receive the witnesses, to verify their summons, and to set them in
+the order of their arrival.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Take their names, and bring me the list."
+
+The examining judges, to save time, are often obliged to carry on
+several inquiries at once. Hence the long waiting inflicted on the
+witnesses, who have seats in the ushers' hall, where the judges' bells
+are constantly ringing.
+
+"And then," Camusot went on, "bring up the Abbe Carlos Herrera."
+
+"Ah, ha! I was told that he was a priest in Spanish. Pooh! It is a new
+edition of Collet, Monsieur Camusot," said the head of the Safety
+department.
+
+"There is nothing new!" replied Camusot.
+
+And he signed the two formidable documents which alarm everybody, even
+the most innocent witnesses, whom the law thus requires to appear,
+under severe penalties in case of failure.
+
+
+
+By this time Jacques Collin had, about half an hour since, finished
+his deep meditations, and was armed for the fray. Nothing is more
+perfectly characteristic of this type of the mob in rebellion against
+the law than the few words he had written on the greasy scraps of
+paper.
+
+The sense of the first--for it was written in the language, the very
+slang of slang, agreed upon by Asie and himself, a cipher of words
+--was as follows:--
+
+  "Go to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse or Madame de Serizy: one of
+  them must see Lucien before he is examined, and give him the
+  enclosed paper to read. Then find Europe and Paccard; those two
+  thieves must be at my orders, and ready to play any part I may
+  set them.
+
+  "Go to Rastignac; tell him, from the man he met at the opera-ball,
+  to come and swear that the Abbe Carlos Herrera has no resemblance
+  to Jacques Collin who was apprehended at Vauquer's. Do the same
+  with Dr. Bianchon, and get Lucien's two women to work to the same
+  end."
+
+On the enclosed fragment were these words in good French:
+
+  "Lucien, confess nothing about me. I am the Abbe Carlos Herrera.
+  Not only will this be your exculpation; but, if you do not lose
+  your head, you will have seven millions and your honor cleared."
+
+These two bits of paper, gummed on the side of the writing so as to
+look like one piece, were then rolled tightly, with a dexterity
+peculiar to men who have dreamed of getting free from the hulks. The
+whole thing assumed the shape and consistency of a ball of dirty
+rubbish, about as big as the sealing-wax heads which thrifty women
+stick on the head of a large needle when the eye is broken.
+
+"If I am examined first, we are saved; if it is the boy, all is lost,"
+said he to himself while he waited.
+
+His plight was so sore that the strong man's face was wet with white
+sweat. Indeed, this wonderful man saw as clearly in his sphere of
+crime as Moliere did in his sphere of dramatic poetry, or Cuvier in
+that of extinct organisms. Genius of whatever kind is intuition. Below
+this highest manifestation other remarkable achievements may be due to
+talent. This is what divides men of the first rank from those of the
+second.
+
+Crime has its men of genius. Jacques Collin, driven to bay, had hit on
+the same notion as Madame Camusot's ambition and Madame de Serizy's
+passion, suddenly revived by the shock of the dreadful disaster which
+was overwhelming Lucien. This was the supreme effort of human
+intellect directed against the steel armor of Justice.
+
+On hearing the rasping of the heavy locks and bolts of his door,
+Jacques Collin resumed his mask of a dying man; he was helped in this
+by the intoxicating joy that he felt at the sound of the warder's
+shoes in the passage. He had no idea how Asie would get near him; but
+he relied on meeting her on the way, especially after her promise
+given in the Saint-Jean gateway.
+
+After that fortunate achievement she had gone on to the Place de
+Greve.
+
+Till 1830 the name of La Greve (the Strand) had a meaning that is now
+lost. Every part of the river-shore from the Pont d'Arcole to the Pont
+Louis-Philippe was then as nature had made it, excepting the paved way
+which was at the top of the bank. When the river was in flood a boat
+could pass close under the houses and at the end of the streets
+running down to the river. On the quay the footpath was for the most
+part raised with a few steps; and when the river was up to the houses,
+vehicles had to pass along the horrible Rue de la Mortellerie, which
+has now been completely removed to make room for enlarging the Hotel
+de Ville.
+
+So the sham costermonger could easily and quickly run her truck down
+to the bottom of the quay, and hide it there till the real owner--who
+was, in fact, drinking the price of her wares, sold bodily to Asie, in
+one of the abominable taverns in the Rue de la Mortellerie--should
+return to claim it. At that time the Quai Pelletier was being
+extended, the entrance to the works was guarded by a crippled soldier,
+and the barrow would be quite safe in his keeping.
+
+Asie then jumped into a hackney cab on the Place de l'Hotel de Ville,
+and said to the driver, "To the Temple, and look sharp, I'll tip you
+well."
+
+A woman dressed like Asie could disappear, without any questions being
+asked, in the huge market-place, where all the rags in Paris are
+gathered together, where a thousand costermongers wander round, and
+two hundred old-clothes sellers are chaffering.
+
+The two prisoners had hardly been locked up when she was dressing
+herself in a low, damp entresol over one of those foul shops where
+remnants are sold, pieces stolen by tailors and dressmakers--an
+establishment kept by an old maid known as La Romette, from her
+Christian name Jeromette. La Romette was to the "purchasers of
+wardrobes" what these women are to the better class of so-called
+ladies in difficulties--Madame la Ressource, that is to say,
+money-lenders at a hundred per cent.
+
+"Now, child," said Asie, "I have got to be figged out. I must be a
+Baroness of the Faubourg Saint-Germain at the very least. And sharp's
+the word, for my feet are in hot oil. You know what gowns suit me.
+Hand up the rouge-pot, find me some first-class bits of lace, and the
+swaggerest jewelry you can pick out.--Send the girl to call a coach,
+and have it brought to the back door."
+
+"Yes, madame," the woman replied very humbly, and with the eagerness
+of a maid waiting on her mistress.
+
+If there had been any one to witness the scene, he would have
+understood that the woman known as Asie was at home here.
+
+"I have had some diamonds offered me," said la Romette as she dressed
+Asie's head.
+
+"Stolen?"
+
+"I should think so."
+
+"Well, then, however cheap they may be, we must do without 'em. We
+must fight shy of the beak for a long time to come."
+
+It will now be understood how Asie contrived to be in the _Salle des
+Pas-Perdus_ of the Palais de Justice with a summons in her hand, asking
+her way along the passages and stairs leading to the examining judge's
+chambers, and inquiring for Monsieur Camusot, about a quarter of an
+hour before that gentleman's arrival.
+
+Asie was not recognizable. After washing off her "make-up" as an old
+woman, like an actress, she applied rouge and pearl powder, and
+covered her head with a well-made fair wig. Dressed exactly as a lady
+of the Faubourg Saint-Germain might be if in search of a dog she had
+lost, she looked about forty, for she shrouded her features under a
+splendid black lace veil. A pair of stays, severely laced, disguised
+her cook's figure. With very good gloves and a rather large bustle,
+she exhaled the perfume of powder a la Marechale. Playing with a bag
+mounted in gold, she divided her attention between the walls of the
+building, where she found herself evidently for the first time, and
+the string by which she led a dainty little spaniel. Such a dowager
+could not fail to attract the notice of the black-robed natives of the
+_Salle des Pas-Perdus_.
+
+Besides the briefless lawyers who sweep this hall with their gowns,
+and speak of the leading advocates by their Christian names, as fine
+gentlemen address each other, to produce the impression that they are
+of the aristocracy of the law, patient youths are often to be seen,
+hangers-on of the attorneys, waiting, waiting, in hope of a case put
+down for the end of the day, which they may be so lucky as to be
+called to plead if the advocates retained for the earlier cases should
+not come out in time.
+
+A very curious study would be that of the differences between these
+various black gowns, pacing the immense hall in threes, or sometimes
+in fours, their persistent talk filling the place with a loud, echoing
+hum--a hall well named indeed, for this slow walk exhausts the lawyers
+as much as the waste of words. But such a study has its place in the
+volumes destined to reveal the life of Paris pleaders.
+
+Asie had counted on the presence of these youths; she laughed in her
+sleeve at some of the pleasantries she overheard, and finally
+succeeded in attracting the attention of Massol, a young lawyer whose
+time was more taken up by the _Police Gazette_ than by clients, and who
+came up with a laugh to place himself at the service of a woman so
+elegantly scented and so handsomely dressed.
+
+Asie put on a little, thin voice to explain to this obliging gentleman
+that she appeared in answer to a summons from a judge named Camusot.
+
+"Oh! in the Rubempre case?"
+
+So the affair had its name already.
+
+"Oh, it is not my affair. It is my maid's, a girl named Europe, who
+was with me twenty-four hours, and who fled when she saw my servant
+bring in a piece of stamped paper."
+
+Then, like any old woman who spends her life gossiping in the
+chimney-corner, prompted by Massol, she poured out the story of her
+woes with her first husband, one of the three Directors of the land
+revenue. She consulted the young lawyer as to whether she would do
+well to enter on a lawsuit with her son-in-law, the Comte de
+Gross-Narp, who made her daughter very miserable, and whether the
+law allowed her to dispose of her fortune.
+
+In spite of all his efforts, Massol could not be sure whether the
+summons were addressed to the mistress or the maid. At the first
+moment he had only glanced at this legal document of the most familiar
+aspect; for, to save time, it is printed, and the magistrates' clerks
+have only to fill in the blanks left for the names and addresses of
+the witnesses, the hour for which they are called, and so forth.
+
+Asie made him tell her all about the Palais, which she knew more
+intimately than the lawyer did. Finally, she inquired at what hour
+Monsieur Camusot would arrive.
+
+"Well, the examining judges generally are here by about ten o'clock."
+
+"It is now a quarter to ten," said she, looking at a pretty little
+watch, a perfect gem of goldsmith's work, which made Massol say to
+himself:
+
+"Where the devil will Fortune make herself at home next!"
+
+At this moment Asie had come to the dark hall looking out on the yard
+of the Conciergerie, where the ushers wait. On seeing the gate through
+the window, she exclaimed:
+
+"What are those high walls?"
+
+"That is the Conciergerie."
+
+"Oh! so that is the Conciergerie where our poor queen----Oh! I should
+so like to see her cell!"
+
+"Impossible, Madame la Baronne," replied the young lawyer, on whose
+arm the dowager was now leaning. "A permit is indispensable, and very
+difficult to procure."
+
+"I have been told," she went on, "that Louis XVIII. himself composed
+the inscription that is to be seen in Marie-Antoinette's cell."
+
+"Yes, Madame la Baronne."
+
+"How much I should like to know Latin that I might study the words of
+that inscription!" said she. "Do you think that Monsieur Camusot could
+give me a permit?"
+
+"That is not in his power; but he could take you there."
+
+"But his business----" objected she.
+
+"Oh!" said Massol, "prisoners under suspicion can wait."
+
+"To be sure," said she artlessly, "they are under suspicion.--But I
+know Monsieur de Granville, your public prosecutor----"
+
+This hint had a magical effect on the ushers and the young lawyer.
+
+"Ah, you know Monsieur de Granville?" said Massol, who was inclined to
+ask the client thus sent to him by chance her name and address.
+
+"I often see him at my friend Monsieur de Serizy's house. Madame de
+Serizy is a connection of mine through the Ronquerolles."
+
+"Well, if Madame wishes to go down to the Conciergerie," said an
+usher, "she----"
+
+"Yes," said Massol.
+
+So the Baroness and the lawyer were allowed to pass, and they
+presently found themselves in the little guard-room at the top of the
+stairs leading to the "mousetrap," a spot well known to Asie, forming,
+as has been said, a post of observation between those cells and the
+Court of the Sixth Chamber, through which everybody is obliged to
+pass.
+
+"Will you ask if Monsieur Camusot is come yet?" said she, seeing some
+gendarmes playing cards.
+
+"Yes, madame, he has just come up from the 'mousetrap.'"
+
+"The mousetrap!" said she. "What is that?--Oh! how stupid of me not to
+have gone straight to the Comte de Granville.--But I have not time
+now. Pray take me to speak to Monsieur Camusot before he is otherwise
+engaged."
+
+"Oh, you have plenty of time for seeing Monsieur Camusot," said
+Massol. "If you send him in your card, he will spare you the
+discomfort of waiting in the ante-room with the witnesses.--We can be
+civil here to ladies like you.--You have a card about you?"
+
+At this instant Asie and her lawyer were exactly in front of the
+window of the guardroom whence the gendarmes could observe the gate of
+the Conciergerie. The gendarmes, brought up to respect the defenders
+of the widow and the orphan, were aware too of the prerogative of the
+gown, and for a few minutes allowed the Baroness to remain there
+escorted by a pleader. Asie listened to the terrible tales which a
+young lawyer is ready to tell about that prison-gate. She would not
+believe that those who were condemned to death were prepared for the
+scaffold behind those bars; but the sergeant-at-arms assured her it
+was so.
+
+"How much I should like to see it done!" cried she.
+
+And there she remained, prattling to the lawyer and the sergeant, till
+she saw Jacques Collin come out supported by two gendarmes, and
+preceded by Monsieur Camusot's clerk.
+
+"Ah, there is a chaplain no doubt going to prepare a poor wretch----"
+
+"Not at all, Madame la Baronne," said the gendarme. "He is a prisoner
+coming to be examined."
+
+"What is he accused of?"
+
+"He is concerned in this poisoning case."
+
+"Oh! I should like to see him."
+
+"You cannot stay here," said the sergeant, "for he is under close
+arrest, and he must pass through here. You see, madame, that door
+leads to the stairs----"
+
+"Oh! thank you!" cried the Baroness, making for the door, to rush down
+the stairs, where she at once shrieked out, "Oh! where am I?"
+
+This cry reached the ear of Jacques Collin, who was thus prepared to
+see her. The sergeant flew after Madame la Baronne, seized her by the
+middle, and lifted her back like a feather into the midst of a group
+of five gendarmes, who started up as one man; for in that guardroom
+everything is regarded as suspicious. The proceeding was arbitrary,
+but the arbitrariness was necessary. The young lawyer himself had
+cried out twice, "Madame! madame!" in his horror, so much did he fear
+finding himself in the wrong.
+
+The Abbe Carlos Herrera, half fainting, sank on a chair in the
+guardroom.
+
+"Poor man!" said the Baroness. "Can he be a criminal?"
+
+The words, though spoken low to the young advocate, could be heard by
+all, for the silence of death reigned in that terrible guardroom.
+Certain privileged persons are sometimes allowed to see famous
+criminals on their way through this room or through the passages, so
+that the clerk and the gendarmes who had charge of the Abbe Carlos
+made no remark. Also, in consequence of the devoted zeal of the
+sergeant who had snatched up the Baroness to hinder any communication
+between the prisoner and the visitors, there was a considerable space
+between them.
+
+"Let us go on," said Jacques Collin, making an effort to rise.
+
+At the same moment the little ball rolled out of his sleeve, and the
+spot where it fell was noted by the Baroness, who could look about her
+freely from under her veil. The little pellet, being damp and sticky,
+did not roll; for such trivial details, apparently unimportant, had
+all been duly considered by Jacques Collin to insure success.
+
+When the prisoner had been led up the higher part of the steps, Asie
+very unaffectedly dropped her bag and picked it up again; but in
+stooping she seized the pellet which had escaped notice, its color
+being exactly like that of the dust and mud on the floor.
+
+"Oh dear!" cried she, "it goes to my heart.--He is dying----"
+
+"Or seems to be," replied the sergeant.
+
+"Monsieur," said Asie to the lawyer, "take me at once to Monsieur
+Camusot; I have come about this case; and he might be very glad to see
+me before examining that poor priest."
+
+The lawyer and the Baroness left the guardroom, with its greasy,
+fuliginous walls; but as soon as they reached the top of the stairs,
+Asie exclaimed:
+
+"Oh, and my dog! My poor little dog!" and she rushed off like a mad
+creature down the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_, asking every one where her dog
+was. She got to the corridor beyond (la Galerie Marchande, or
+Merchant's Hall, as it is called), and flew to the staircase, saying,
+"There he is!"
+
+These stairs lead to the Cour de Harlay, through which Asie, having
+played out the farce, passed out and took a hackney cab on the Quai
+des Orfevres, where there is a stand; thus she vanished with the
+summons requiring "Europe" to appear, her real name being unknown to
+the police and the lawyers.
+
+"Rue Neuve-Saint-Marc," cried she to the driver.
+
+
+
+Asie could depend on the absolute secrecy of an old-clothes purchaser,
+known as Madame Nourrisson, who also called herself Madame de
+Saint-Esteve; and who would lend Asie not merely her personality, but
+her shop at need, for it was there that Nucingen had bargained for the
+surrender of Esther. Asie was quite at home there, for she had a
+bedroom in Madame Nourrisson's establishment.
+
+She paid the driver, and went up to her room, nodding to Madame
+Nourrisson in a way to make her understand that she had not time to
+say two words to her.
+
+As soon as she was safe from observation, Asie unwrapped the papers
+with the care of a savant unrolling a palimpsest. After reading the
+instructions, she thought it wise to copy the lines intended for
+Lucien on a sheet of letter-paper; then she went down to Madame
+Nourrisson, to whom she talked while a little shop-girl went to fetch
+a cab from the Boulevard des Italiens. She thus extracted the
+addresses of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and of Madame de Serizy,
+which were known to Madame Nourrisson by her dealings with their
+maids.
+
+All this running about and elaborate business took up more than two
+hours. Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who lived at the top of the
+Faubourg Saint-Honore, kept Madame de Saint-Esteve waiting an hour,
+although the lady's-maid, after knocking at the boudoir door, had
+handed in to her mistress a card with Madame de Saint-Esteve's name,
+on which Asie had written, "Called about pressing business concerning
+Lucien."
+
+Her first glance at the Duchess' face showed her how till-timed her
+visit must be; she apologized for disturbing Madame la Duchesse when
+she was resting, on the plea of the danger in which Lucien stood.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the Duchess, without any pretence at politeness,
+as she looked at Asie from head to foot; for Asie, though she might be
+taken for a Baroness by Maitre Massol in the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_,
+when she stood on the carpet in the boudoir of the Hotel de Cadignan,
+looked like a splash of mud on a white satin gown.
+
+"I am a dealer in cast-off clothes, Madame la Duchesse; for in such
+matters every lady applies to women whose business rests on a basis of
+perfect secrecy. I have never betrayed anybody, though God knows how
+many great ladies have intrusted their diamonds to me by the month
+while wearing false jewels made to imitate them exactly."
+
+"You have some other name?" said the Duchess, smiling at a
+reminiscence recalled to her by this reply.
+
+"Yes, Madame la Duchesse, I am Madame de Saint-Esteve on great
+occasions, but in the trade I am Madame Nourrisson."
+
+"Well, well," said the Duchess in an altered tone.
+
+"I am able to be of great service," Asie went on, "for we hear the
+husbands' secrets as well as the wives'. I have done many little jobs
+for Monsieur de Marsay, whom Madame la Duchesse----"
+
+"That will do, that will do!" cried the Duchess. "What about Lucien?"
+
+"If you wish to save him, madame, you must have courage enough to lose
+no time in dressing. But, indeed, Madame la Duchesse, you could not
+look more charming than you do at this moment. You are sweet enough to
+charm anybody, take an old woman's word for it! In short, madame, do
+not wait for your carriage, but get into my hackney coach. Come to
+Madame de Serizy's if you hope to avert worse misfortunes than the
+death of that cherub----"
+
+"Go on, I will follow you," said the Duchess after a moment's
+hesitation. "Between us we may give Leontine some courage . . ."
+
+Notwithstanding the really demoniacal activity of this Dorine of the
+hulks, the clock was striking two when she and the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse went into the Comtesse de Serizy's house in the Rue de la
+Chaussee-d'Antin. Once there, thanks to the Duchess, not an instant
+was lost. The two women were at once shown up to the Countess, whom
+they found reclining on a couch in a miniature chalet, surrounded by a
+garden fragrant with the rarest flowers.
+
+"That is well," said Asie, looking about her. "No one can overhear
+us."
+
+"Oh! my dear, I am half dead! Tell me, Diane, what have you done?"
+cried the Duchess, starting up like a fawn, and, seizing the Duchess
+by the shoulders, she melted into tears.
+
+"Come, come, Leontine; there are occasions when women like us must not
+cry, but act," said the Duchess, forcing the Countess to sit down on
+the sofa by her side.
+
+Asie studied the Countess' face with the scrutiny peculiar to those
+old hands, which pierces to the soul of a woman as certainly as a
+surgeon's instrument probes a wound!--the sorrow that engraves
+ineradicable lines on the heart and on the features. She was dressed
+without the least touch of vanity. She was now forty-five, and her
+printed muslin wrapper, tumbled and untidy, showed her bosom without
+any art or even stays! Her eyes were set in dark circles, and her
+mottled cheeks showed the traces of bitter tears. She wore no sash
+round her waist; the embroidery on her petticoat and shift was all
+crumpled. Her hair, knotted up under a lace cap, had not been combed
+for four-and-twenty hours, and showed as a thin, short plait and
+ragged little curls. Leontine had forgotten to put on her false hair.
+
+"You are in love for the first time in your life?" said Asie
+sententiously.
+
+Leontine then saw the woman and started with horror.
+
+"Who is that, my dear Diane?" she asked of the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse.
+
+"Whom should I bring with me but a woman who is devoted to Lucien and
+willing to help us?"
+
+Asie had hit the truth. Madame de Serizy, who was regarded as one of
+the most fickle of fashionable women, had had an attachment of ten
+years' standing for the Marquis d'Aiglemont. Since the Marquis'
+departure for the colonies, she had gone wild about Lucien, and had
+won him from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, knowing nothing--like the
+Paris world generally--of Lucien's passion for Esther. In the world of
+fashion a recognized attachment does more to ruin a woman's reputation
+than ten unconfessed liaisons; how much more then two such
+attachments? However, as no one thought of Madame de Serizy as a
+responsible person, the historian cannot undertake to speak for her
+virtue thus doubly dog's-eared.
+
+She was fair, of medium height, and well preserved, as a fair woman
+can be who is well preserved at all; that is to say, she did not look
+more than thirty, being slender, but not lean, with a white skin and
+flaxen hair; she had hands, feet, and a shape of aristocratic
+elegance, and was as witty as all the Ronquerolles, spiteful,
+therefore, to women, and good-natured to men. Her large fortune, her
+husband's fine position, and that of her brother, the Marquis de
+Ronquerolles, had protected her from the mortifications with which any
+other woman would have been overwhelmed. She had this great merit
+--that she was honest in her depravity, and confessed her worship of
+the manners and customs of the Regency.
+
+Now, at forty-two this woman--who had hitherto regarded men as no more
+than pleasing playthings, to whom, indeed, she had, strange to say,
+granted much, regarding love as merely a matter of sacrifice to gain
+the upper hand,--this woman, on first seeing Lucien, had been seized
+with such a passion as the Baron de Nucingen's for Esther. She had
+loved, as Asie had just told her, for the first time in her life.
+
+This postponement of youth is more common with Parisian women than
+might be supposed, and causes the ruin of some virtuous souls just as
+they are reaching the haven of forty. The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was
+the only person in the secret of the vehement and absorbing passion,
+of which the joys, from the girlish suspicion of first love to the
+preposterous follies of fulfilment, had made Leontine half crazy and
+insatiable.
+
+True love, as we know, is merciless. The discovery of Esther's
+existence had been followed by one of those outbursts of rage which in
+a woman rise even to the pitch of murder; then came the phase of
+meanness, to which a sincere affection humbles itself so gladly.
+Indeed, for the last month the Countess would have given ten years of
+her life to have Lucien again for one week. At last she had even
+resigned herself to accept Esther as her rival, just when the news of
+her lover's arrest had come like the last trump on this paroxysm of
+devotion.
+
+The Countess had nearly died of it. Her husband had himself nursed her
+in bed, fearing the betrayal of delirium, and for twenty-four hours
+she had been living with a knife in her heart. She said to her husband
+in her fever:
+
+"Save Lucien, and I will live henceforth for you alone."
+
+"Indeed, as Madame la Duchesse tells you, it is of no use to make your
+eyes like boiled gooseberries," cried the dreadful Asie, shaking the
+Countess by the arm. "If you want to save him, there is not a minute
+to lose. He is innocent--I swear it by my mother's bones!"
+
+"Yes, yes, of course he is!" cried the Countess, looking quite kindly
+at the dreadful old woman.
+
+"But," Asie went on, "if Monsieur Camusot questions him the wrong way,
+he can make a guilty man of him with two sentences; so, if it is in
+your power to get the Conciergerie opened to you, and to say a few
+words to him, go at once, and give him this paper.--He will be
+released to-morrow; I will answer for it. Now, get him out of the
+scrape, for you got him into it."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you!--You fine ladies never have a son even when you own
+millions. When I allowed myself the luxury of keeping boys, they
+always had their pockets full of gold! Their amusements amused me. It
+is delightful to be mother and mistress in one. Now, you--you let the
+men you love die of hunger without asking any questions. Esther, now,
+made no speeches; she gave, at the cost of perdition, soul and body,
+the million your Lucien was required to show, and that is what has
+brought him to this pass----"
+
+"Poor girl! Did she do that! I love her!" said Leontine.
+
+"Yes--now!" said Asie, with freezing irony.
+
+"She was a real beauty; but now, my angel, you are better looking than
+she is.--And Lucien's marriage is so effectually broken off, that
+nothing can mend it," said the Duchess in a whisper to Leontine.
+
+The effect of this revelation and forecast was so great on the
+Countess that she was well again. She passed her hand over her brow;
+she was young once more.
+
+"Now, my lady, hot foot, and make haste!" said Asie, seeing the
+change, and guessing what had caused it.
+
+"But," said Madame de Maufrigneuse, "if the first thing is to prevent
+Lucien's being examined by Monsieur Camusot, we can do that by writing
+two words to the judge and sending your man with it to the Palais,
+Leontine."
+
+"Then come into my room," said Madame de Serizy.
+
+
+
+This is what was taking place at the Palais while Lucien's
+protectresses were obeying the orders issued by Jacques Collin. The
+gendarmes placed the moribund prisoner on a chair facing the window in
+Monsieur Camusot's room; he was sitting in his place in front of his
+table. Coquart, pen in hand, had a little table to himself a few yards
+off.
+
+The aspect of a magistrate's chambers is not a matter of indifference;
+and if this room had not been chosen intentionally, it must be owned
+that chance had favored justice. An examining judge, like a painter,
+requires the clear equable light of a north window, for the criminal's
+face is a picture which he must constantly study. Hence most
+magistrates place their table, as this of Camusot's was arranged, so
+as to sit with their back to the window and leave the face of the
+examinee in broad daylight. Not one of them all but, by the end of six
+months, has assumed an absent-minded and indifferent expression, if he
+does not wear spectacles, and maintains it throughout the examination.
+
+It was a sudden change of expression in the prisoner's face, detected
+by these means, and caused by a sudden point-blank question, that led
+to the discovery of the crime committed by Castaing at the very moment
+when, after a long consultation with the public prosecutor, the
+magistrate was about to let the criminal loose on society for lack of
+evidence. This detail will show the least intelligent person how
+living, interesting, curious, and dramatically terrible is the
+conflict of an examination--a conflict without witnesses, but always
+recorded. God knows what remains on the paper of the scenes at white
+heat in which a look, a tone, a quiver of the features, the faintest
+touch of color lent by some emotion, has been fraught with danger, as
+though the adversaries were savages watching each other to plant a
+fatal stroke. A report is no more than the ashes of the fire.
+
+"What is your real name?" Camusot asked Jacques Collin.
+
+"Don Carlos Herrera, canon of the Royal Chapter of Toledo, and secret
+envoy of His Majesty Ferdinand VII."
+
+It must here be observed that Jacques Collin spoke French like a
+Spanish trollop, blundering over it in such a way as to make his
+answers almost unintelligible, and to require them to be repeated. But
+Monsieur de Nucingen's German barbarisms have already weighted this
+Scene too much to allow of the introduction of other sentences no less
+difficult to read, and hindering the rapid progress of the tale.
+
+"Then you have papers to prove your right to the dignities of which
+you speak?" asked Camusot.
+
+"Yes, monsieur--my passport, a letter from his Catholic Majesty
+authorizing my mission.--In short, if you will but send at once to the
+Spanish Embassy two lines, which I will write in your presence, I
+shall be identified. Then, if you wish for further evidence, I will
+write to His Eminence the High Almoner of France, and he will
+immediately send his private secretary."
+
+"And do you still pretend that you are dying?" asked the magistrate.
+"If you have really gone through all the sufferings you have
+complained of since your arrest, you ought to be dead by this time,"
+said Camusot ironically.
+
+"You are simply trying the courage of an innocent man and the strength
+of his constitution," said the prisoner mildly.
+
+"Coquart, ring. Send for the prison doctor and an infirmary attendant.
+--We shall be obliged to remove your coat and proceed to verify the
+marks on your shoulder," Camusot went on.
+
+"I am in your hands, monsieur."
+
+The prisoner then inquired whether the magistrate would be kind enough
+to explain to him what he meant by "the marks," and why they should be
+sought on his shoulder. The judge was prepared for this question.
+
+"You are suspected of being Jacques Collin, an escaped convict, whose
+daring shrinks at nothing, not even at sacrilege!" said Camusot
+promptly, his eyes fixed on those of the prisoner.
+
+Jacques Collin gave no sign, and did not color; he remained quite
+calm, and assumed an air of guileless curiosity as he gazed at
+Camusot.
+
+"I, monsieur? A convict? May the Order I belong to and God above
+forgive you for such an error. Tell me what I can do to prevent your
+continuing to offer such an insult to the rights of free men, to the
+Church, and to the King my master."
+
+The judge made no reply to this, but explained to the Abbe that if he
+had been branded, a penalty at that time inflicted by law on all
+convicts sent to the hulks, the letters could be made to show by
+giving him a slap on the shoulder.
+
+"Oh, monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "it would indeed be unfortunate
+if my devotion to the Royal cause should prove fatal to me."
+
+"Explain yourself," said the judge, "that is what you are here for."
+
+"Well, monsieur, I must have a great many scars on my back, for I was
+shot in the back as a traitor to my country while I was faithful to my
+King, by constitutionalists who left me for dead."
+
+"You were shot, and you are alive!" said Camusot.
+
+"I had made friends with some of the soldiers, to whom certain pious
+persons had sent money, so they placed me so far off that only spent
+balls reached me, and the men aimed at my back. This is a fact that
+His Excellency the Ambassador can bear witness to----"
+
+"This devil of a man has an answer for everything! However, so much
+the better," thought Camusot, who assumed so much severity only to
+satisfy the demands of justice and of the police. "How is it that a
+man of your character," he went on, addressing the convict, "should
+have been found in the house of the Baron de Nucingen's mistress--and
+such a mistress, a girl who had been a common prostitute!"
+
+"This is why I was found in a courtesan's house, monsieur," replied
+Jacques Collin. "But before telling you the reasons for my being
+there, I ought to mention that at the moment when I was just going
+upstairs I was seized with the first attack of my illness, and I had
+no time to speak to the girl. I knew of Mademoiselle Esther's
+intention of killing herself; and as young Lucien de Rubempre's
+interests were involved, and I have a particular affection for him for
+sacredly secret reasons, I was going to try to persuade the poor
+creature to give up the idea, suggested to her by despair. I meant to
+tell her that Lucien must certainly fail in his last attempt to win
+Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu; and I hoped that by telling her
+she had inherited seven millions of francs, I might give her courage
+to live.
+
+"I am convinced, Monsieur le Juge, that I am a martyr to the secrets
+confided to me. By the suddenness of my illness I believe that I had
+been poisoned that very morning, but my strong constitution has saved
+me. I know that a certain agent of the political police is dogging me,
+and trying to entangle me in some discreditable business.
+
+"If, at my request, you had sent for a doctor on my arrival here, you
+would have had ample proof of what I am telling you as to the state of
+my health. Believe me, monsieur, some persons far above our heads have
+some strong interest in getting me mistaken for some villain, so as to
+have a right to get rid of me. It is not all profit to serve a king;
+they have their meannesses. The Church alone is faultless."
+
+It is impossible to do justice to the play of Jacques Collin's
+countenance as he carefully spun out his speech, sentence by sentence,
+for ten minutes; and it was all so plausible, especially the mention
+of Corentin, that the lawyer was shaken.
+
+"Will you confide to me the reasons of your affection for Monsieur
+Lucien de Rubempre?"
+
+"Can you not guess them? I am sixty years of age, monsieur--I implore
+you do not write it.--It is because--must I say it?"
+
+"It will be to your own advantage, and more particularly to Monsieur
+Lucien de Rubempre's, if you tell everything," replied the judge.
+
+"Because he is--Oh, God! he is my son," he gasped out with an effort.
+
+And he fainted away.
+
+"Do not write that down, Coquart," said Camusot in an undertone.
+
+Coquart rose to fetch a little phial of "Four thieves' Vinegar."
+
+"If he is Jacques Collin, he is a splendid actor!" thought Camusot.
+
+Coquart held the phial under the convict's nose, while the judge
+examined him with the keen eye of a lynx--and a magistrate.
+
+"Take his wig off," said Camusot, after waiting till the man recovered
+consciousness.
+
+Jacques Collin heard, and quaked with terror, for he knew how vile an
+expression his face would assume.
+
+"If you have not strength enough to take your wig off yourself
+----Yes, Coquart, remove it," said Camusot to his clerk.
+
+Jacques Collin bent his head to the clerk with admirable resignation;
+but then his head, bereft of that adornment, was hideous to behold in
+its natural aspect.
+
+The sight of it left Camusot in the greatest uncertainty. While
+waiting for the doctor and the man from the infirmary, he set to work
+to classify and examine the various papers and the objects seized in
+Lucien's rooms. After carrying out their functions in the Rue
+Saint-Georges at Mademoiselle Esther's house, the police had searched
+the rooms at the Quai Malaquais.
+
+"You have your hand on some letters from the Comtesse de Serizy," said
+Carlos Herrera. "But I cannot imagine why you should have almost all
+Lucien's papers," he added, with a smile of overwhelming irony at the
+judge.
+
+Camusot, as he saw the smile, understood the bearing of the word
+"almost."
+
+"Lucien de Rubempre is in custody under suspicion of being your
+accomplice," said he, watching to see the effect of this news on his
+examinee.
+
+"You have brought about a great misfortune, for he is as innocent as I
+am," replied the sham Spaniard, without betraying the smallest
+agitation.
+
+"We shall see. We have not as yet established your identity," Camusot
+observed, surprised at the prisoner's indifference. "If you are really
+Don Carlos Herrera, the position of Lucien Chardon will at once be
+completely altered."
+
+"To be sure, she became Madame Chardon--Mademoiselle de Rubempre!"
+murmured Carlos. "Ah! that was one of the greatest sins of my life."
+
+He raised his eyes to heaven, and by the movement of his lips seemed
+to be uttering a fervent prayer.
+
+"But if you are Jacques Collin, and if he was, and knew that he was,
+the companion of an escaped convict, a sacrilegious wretch, all the
+crimes of which he is suspected by the law are more than probably
+true."
+
+Carlos Herrera sat like bronze as he heard this speech, very cleverly
+delivered by the judge, and his only reply to the words "_knew that he
+was_" and "_escaped convict_" was to lift his hands to heaven with a
+gesture of noble and dignified sorrow.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," Camusot went on, with the greatest politeness, "if
+you are Don Carlos Herrera, you will forgive us for what we are
+obliged to do in the interests of justice and truth."
+
+Jacques Collin detected a snare in the lawyer's very voice as he spoke
+the words "Monsieur l'Abbe." The man's face never changed; Camusot had
+looked for a gleam of joy, which might have been the first indication
+of his being a convict, betraying the exquisite satisfaction of a
+criminal deceiving his judge; but this hero of the hulks was strong in
+Machiavellian dissimulation.
+
+"I am accustomed to diplomacy, and I belong to an Order of very
+austere discipline," replied Jacques Collin, with apostolic mildness.
+"I understand everything, and am inured to suffering. I should be free
+by this time if you had discovered in my room the hiding-place where I
+keep my papers--for I see you have none but unimportant documents."
+
+This was a finishing stroke to Camusot: Jacques Collin by his air of
+ease and simplicity had counteracted all the suspicions to which his
+appearance, unwigged, had given rise.
+
+"Where are these papers?"
+
+"I will tell you exactly if you will get a secretary from the Spanish
+Embassy to accompany your messenger. He will take them and be
+answerable to you for the documents, for it is to me a matter of
+confidential duty--diplomatic secrets which would compromise his late
+Majesty Louis XVIII--Indeed, monsieur, it would be better----However,
+you are a magistrate--and, after all, the Ambassador, to whom I refer
+the whole question, must decide."
+
+At this juncture the usher announced the arrival of the doctor and the
+infirmary attendant, who came in.
+
+"Good-morning, Monsieur Lebrun," said Camusot to the doctor. "I have
+sent for you to examine the state of health of this prisoner under
+suspicion. He says he had been poisoned and at the point of death
+since the day before yesterday; see if there is any risk in undressing
+him to look for the brand."
+
+Doctor Lebrun took Jacques Collin's hand, felt his pulse, asked to
+look at his tongue, and scrutinized him steadily. This inspection
+lasted about ten minutes.
+
+"The prisoner has been suffering severely," said the medical officer,
+"but at this moment he is amazingly strong----"
+
+"That spurious energy, monsieur, is due to nervous excitement caused
+by my strange position," said Jacques Collin, with the dignity of a
+bishop.
+
+"That is possible," said Monsieur Lebrun.
+
+At a sign from Camusot the prisoner was stripped of everything but his
+trousers, even of his shirt, and the spectators might admire the hairy
+torso of a Cyclops. It was that of the Farnese Hercules at Naples in
+its colossal exaggeration.
+
+"For what does nature intend a man of this build?" said Lebrun to the
+judge.
+
+The usher brought in the ebony staff, which from time immemorial has
+been the insignia of his office, and is called his rod; he struck it
+several times over the place where the executioner had branded the
+fatal letters. Seventeen spots appeared, irregularly distributed, but
+the most careful scrutiny could not recognize the shape of any
+letters. The usher indeed pointed out that the top bar of the letter T
+was shown by two spots, with an interval between of the length of that
+bar between the two points at each end of it, and there was another
+spot where the bottom of the T should be.
+
+"Still that is quite uncertain," said Camusot, seeing doubt in the
+expression of the prison doctor's countenance.
+
+Carlos begged them to make the same experiment on the other shoulder
+and the middle of his back. About fifteen more such scars appeared,
+which, at the Spaniard's request, the doctor made a note of; and he
+pronounced that the man's back had been so extensively seamed by
+wounds that the brand would not show even if it had been made by the
+executioner.
+
+An office-clerk now came in from the Prefecture, and handed a note to
+Monsieur Camusot, requesting an answer. After reading it the lawyer
+went to speak to Coquart, but in such a low voice that no one could
+catch a word. Only, by a glance from Camusot, Jacques Collin could
+guess that some information concerning him had been sent by the Prefet
+of Police.
+
+"That friend of Peyrade's is still at my heels," thought Jacques
+Collin. "If only I knew him, I would get rid of him as I did of
+Contenson. If only I could see Asie once more!"
+
+After signing a paper written by Coquart, the judge put it into an
+envelope and handed it to the clerk of the Delegate's office.
+
+This is an indispensable auxiliary to justice. It is under the
+direction of a police commissioner, and consists of peace-officers
+who, with the assistance of the police commissioners of each district,
+carry into effect orders for searching the houses or apprehending the
+persons of those who are suspected of complicity in crimes and
+felonies. These functionaries in authority save the examining
+magistrates a great deal of very precious time.
+
+At a sign from the judge the prisoner was dressed by Monsieur Lebrun
+and the attendant, who then withdrew with the usher. Camusot sat down
+at his table and played with his pen.
+
+"You have an aunt," he suddenly said to Jacques Collin.
+
+"An aunt?" echoed Don Carlos Herrera with amazement. "Why, monsieur, I
+have no relations. I am the unacknowledged son of the late Duke of
+Ossuna."
+
+But to himself he said, "They are burning"--an allusion to the game of
+hot cockles, which is indeed a childlike symbol of the dreadful
+struggle between justice and the criminal.
+
+"Pooh!" said Camusot. "You still have an aunt living, Mademoiselle
+Jacqueline Collin, whom you placed in Esther's service under the
+eccentric name of Asie."
+
+Jacques Collin shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that was in
+perfect harmony with the cool curiosity he gave throughout to the
+judge's words, while Camusot studied him with cunning attention.
+
+"Take care," said Camusot; "listen to me."
+
+"I am listening, sir."
+
+"You aunt is a wardrobe dealer at the Temple; her business is managed
+by a demoiselle Paccard, the sister of a convict--herself a very good
+girl, known as la Romette. Justice is on the traces of your aunt, and
+in a few hours we shall have decisive evidence. The woman is wholly
+devoted to you----"
+
+"Pray go on, Monsieur le Juge," said Collin coolly, in answer to a
+pause; "I am listening to you."
+
+"Your aunt, who is about five years older than you are, was formerly
+Marat's mistress--of odious memory. From that blood-stained source she
+derived the little fortune she possesses.
+
+"From information I have received she must be a very clever receiver
+of stolen goods, for no proofs have yet been found to commit her on.
+After Marat's death she seems, from the notes I have here, to have
+lived with a chemist who was condemned to death in the year XII. for
+issuing false coin. She was called as witness in the case. It was from
+this intimacy that she derived her knowledge of poisons.
+
+"In 1812 and in 1816 she spent two years in prison for placing girls
+under age upon the streets.
+
+"You were already convicted of forgery; you had left the banking house
+where your aunt had been able to place you as clerk, thanks to the
+education you had had, and the favor enjoyed by your aunt with certain
+persons for whose debaucheries she supplied victims.
+
+"All this, prisoner, is not much like the dignity of the Dukes
+d'Ossuna.
+
+"Do you persist in your denial?"
+
+Jacques Collin sat listening to Monsieur Camusot, and thinking of his
+happy childhood at the College of the Oratorians, where he had been
+brought up, a meditation which lent him a truly amazed look. And in
+spite of his skill as a practised examiner, Camusot could bring no
+sort of expression to those placid features.
+
+"If you have accurately recorded the account of myself I gave you at
+first," said Jacques Collin, "you can read it through again. I cannot
+alter the facts. I never went to the woman's house; how should I know
+who her cook was? The persons of whom you speak are utterly unknown to
+me."
+
+"Notwithstanding your denial, we shall proceed to confront you with
+persons who may succeed in diminishing your assurance"
+
+"A man who has been three times shot is used to anything," replied
+Jacques Collin meekly.
+
+Camusot proceeded to examine the seized papers while awaiting the
+return of the famous Bibi-Lupin, whose expedition was amazing; for at
+half-past eleven, the inquiry having begun at ten o'clock, the usher
+came in to inform the judge in an undertone of Bibi-Lupin's arrival.
+
+"Show him in," replied M. Camusot.
+
+Bibi-Lupin, who had been expected to exclaim, "It is he," as he came
+in, stood puzzled. He did not recognize his man in a face pitted with
+smallpox. This hesitancy startled the magistrate.
+
+"It is his build, his height," said the agent. "Oh! yes, it is you,
+Jacques Collin!" he went on, as he examined his eyes, forehead, and
+ears. "There are some things which no disguise can alter. . . .
+Certainly it is he, Monsieur Camusot. Jacques has the scar of a cut on
+his left arm. Take off his coat, and you will see . . ."
+
+Jacques Collin was again obliged to take off his coat; Bibi-Lupin
+turned up his sleeve and showed the scar he had spoken of.
+
+"It is the scar of a bullet," replied Don Carlos Herrera. "Here are
+several more."
+
+"Ah! It is certainly his voice," cried Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"Your certainty," said Camusot, "is merely an opinion; it is not
+proof."
+
+"I know that," said Bibi-Lupin with deference. "But I will bring
+witnesses. One of the boarders from the Maison Vauquer is here
+already," said he, with an eye on Collin.
+
+But the prisoner's set, calm face did not move a muscle.
+
+"Show the person in," said Camusot roughly, his dissatisfaction
+betraying itself in spite of his seeming indifference.
+
+This irritation was not lost on Jacques Collin, who had not counted on
+the judge's sympathy, and sat lost in apathy, produced by his deep
+meditations in the effort to guess what the cause could be.
+
+
+
+The usher now showed in Madame Poiret. At this unexpected appearance
+the prisoner had a slight shiver, but his trepidation was not remarked
+by Camusot, who seemed to have made up his mind.
+
+"What is your name?" asked he, proceeding to carry out the formalities
+introductory to all depositions and examinations.
+
+Madame Poiret, a little old woman as white and wrinkled as a
+sweetbread, dressed in a dark-blue silk gown, gave her name as
+Christine Michelle Michonneau, wife of one Poiret, and her age as
+fifty-one years, said that she was born in Paris, lived in the Rue des
+Poules at the corner of the Rue des Postes, and that her business was
+that of lodging-house keeper.
+
+"In 1818 and 1819," said the judge, "you lived, madame, in a
+boarding-house kept by a Madame Vauquer?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; it was there that I met Monsieur Poiret, a retired
+official, who became my husband, and whom I have nursed in his bed
+this twelvemonth past. Poor man! he is very bad; and I cannot be long
+away from him."
+
+"There was a certain Vautrin in the house at the time?" asked Camusot.
+
+"Oh, monsieur, that is quite a long story; he was a horrible man, from
+the galleys----"
+
+"You helped to get him arrested?"
+
+"That is not true sir."
+
+"You are in the presence of the Law; be careful," said Monsieur
+Camusot severely.
+
+Madame Poiret was silent.
+
+"Try to remember," Camusot went on. "Do you recollect the man? Would
+you know him again?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Is this the man?"
+
+Madame Poiret put on her "eye-preservers," and looked at the Abbe
+Carlos Herrera.
+
+"It is his build, his height; and yet--no--if--Monsieur le Juge," she
+said, "if I could see his chest I should recognize him at once."
+
+The magistrate and his clerk could not help laughing, notwithstanding
+the gravity of their office; Jacques Collin joined in their hilarity,
+but discreetly. The prisoner had not put on his coat after Bibi-Lupin
+had removed it, and at a sign from the judge he obligingly opened his
+shirt.
+
+"Yes, that is his fur trimming, sure enough!--But it has worn gray,
+Monsieur Vautrin," cried Madame Poiret.
+
+"What have you to say to that?" asked the judge of the prisoner.
+
+"That she is mad," replied Jacques Collin.
+
+"Bless me! If I had a doubt--for his face is altered--that voice would
+be enough. He is the man who threatened me. Ah! and those are his
+eyes!"
+
+"The police agent and this woman," said Camusot, speaking to Jacques
+Collin, "cannot possibly have conspired to say the same thing, for
+neither of them had seen you till now. How do you account for that?"
+
+"Justice has blundered more conspicuously even than it does now in
+accepting the evidence of a woman who recognizes a man by the hair on
+his chest and the suspicions of a police agent," replied Jacques
+Collin. "I am said to resemble a great criminal in voice, eyes, and
+build; that seems a little vague. As to the memory which would prove
+certain relations between Madame and my Sosie--which she does not
+blush to own--you yourself laughed at. Allow me, monsieur, in the
+interests of truth, which I am far more anxious to establish for my
+own sake than you can be for the sake of justice, to ask this lady
+--Madame Foiret----"
+
+"Poiret."
+
+"Poret--excuse me, I am a Spaniard--whether she remembers the other
+persons who lived in this--what did you call the house?"
+
+"A boarding-house," said Madame Poiret.
+
+"I do not know what that is."
+
+"A house where you can dine and breakfast by subscription."
+
+"You are right," said Camusot, with a favorable nod to Jacques Collin,
+whose apparent good faith in suggesting means to arrive at some
+conclusion struck him greatly. "Try to remember the boarders who were
+in the house when Jacques Collin was apprehended."
+
+"There were Monsieur de Rastignac, Doctor Bianchon, Pere Goriot,
+Mademoiselle Taillefer----"
+
+"That will do," said Camusot, steadily watching Jacques Collin, whose
+expression did not change. "Well, about this Pere Goriot?"
+
+"He is dead," said Madame Poiret.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "I have several times met Monsieur de
+Rastignac, a friend, I believe, of Madame de Nucingen's; and if it is
+the same, he certainly never supposed me to be the convict with whom
+these persons try to identify me."
+
+"Monsieur de Rastignac and Doctor Bianchon," said the magistrate,
+"both hold such a social position that their evidence, if it is in
+your favor, will be enough to procure your release.--Coquart, fill up
+a summons for each of them."
+
+The formalities attending Madame Poiret's examination were over in a
+few minutes; Coquart read aloud to her the notes he had made of the
+little scene, and she signed the paper; but the prisoner refused to
+sign, alleging his ignorance of the forms of French law.
+
+"That is enough for to-day," said Monsieur Camusot. "You must be
+wanting food. I will have you taken back to the Conciergerie."
+
+"Alas! I am suffering too much to be able to eat," said Jacques
+Collin.
+
+Camusot was anxious to time Jacques Collin's return to coincide with
+the prisoners' hour of exercise in the prison yard; but he needed a
+reply from the Governor of the Conciergerie to the order he had given
+him in the morning, and he rang for the usher. The usher appeared, and
+told him that the porter's wife, from the house on the Quai Malaquais,
+had an important document to communicate with reference to Monsieur
+Lucien de Rubempre. This was so serious a matter that it put Camusot's
+intentions out of his head.
+
+"Show her in," said he.
+
+"Beg your pardon; pray excuse me, gentlemen all," said the woman,
+courtesying to the judge and the Abbe Carlos by turns. "We were so
+worried by the Law--my husband and me--the twice when it has marched
+into our house, that we had forgotten a letter that was lying, for
+Monsieur Lucien, in our chest of drawers, which we paid ten sous for
+it, though it was posted in Paris, for it is very heavy, sir. Would
+you please to pay me back the postage? For God knows when we shall see
+our lodgers again!"
+
+"Was this letter handed to you by the postman?" asked Camusot, after
+carefully examining the envelope.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Coquart, write full notes of this deposition.--Go on, my good woman;
+tell us your name and your business." Camusot made the woman take the
+oath, and then he dictated the document.
+
+While these formalities were being carried out, he was scrutinizing
+the postmark, which showed the hours of posting and delivery, as well
+at the date of the day. And this letter, left for Lucien the day after
+Esther's death, had beyond a doubt been written and posted on the day
+of the catastrophe. Monsieur Camusot's amazement may therefore be
+imagined when he read this letter written and signed by her whom the
+law believed to have been the victim of a crime:--
+
+
+                    "_Esther to Lucien_.
+
+                                         "MONDAY, May 13th, 1830.
+
+        "My last day; ten in the morning.
+
+  "MY LUCIEN,--I have not an hour to live. At eleven o'clock I shall
+  be dead, and I shall die without a pang. I have paid fifty
+  thousand francs for a neat little black currant, containing a
+  poison that will kill me with the swiftness of lightning. And so,
+  my darling, you may tell yourself, 'My little Esther had no
+  suffering.'--and yet I shall suffer in writing these pages.
+
+  "The monster who has paid so dear for me, knowing that the day
+  when I should know myself to be his would have no morrow--Nucingen
+  has just left me, as drunk as a bear with his skin full of wind.
+  For the first and last time in my life I have had the opportunity
+  of comparing my old trade as a street hussy with the life of true
+  love, of placing the tenderness which unfolds in the infinite
+  above the horrors of a duty which longs to destroy itself and
+  leave no room even for a kiss. Only such loathing could make death
+  delightful.
+
+  "I have taken a bath; I should have liked to send for the father
+  confessor of the convent where I was baptized, to have confessed
+  and washed my soul. But I have had enough of prostitution; it
+  would be profaning a sacrament; and besides, I feel myself
+  cleansed in the waters of sincere repentance. God must do what He
+  will with me.
+
+  "But enough of all this maudlin; for you I want to be your Esther
+  to the last moment, not to bore you with my death, or the future,
+  or God, who is good, and who would not be good if He were to
+  torture me in the next world when I have endured so much misery in
+  this.
+
+  "I have before me your beautiful portrait, painted by Madame de
+  Mirbel. That sheet of ivory used to comfort me in your absence, I
+  look at it with rapture as I write you my last thoughts, and tell
+  you of the last throbbing of my heart. I shall enclose the
+  miniature in this letter, for I cannot bear that it should be
+  stolen or sold. The mere thought that what has been my great joy
+  may lie behind a shop window, mixed up with the ladies and
+  officers of the Empire, or a parcel of Chinese absurdities, is a
+  small death to me. Destroy that picture, my sweetheart, wipe it
+  out, never give it to any one--unless, indeed, the gift might win
+  back the heart of that walking, well-dressed maypole, that
+  Clotilde de Grandlieu, who will make you black and blue in her
+  sleep, her bones are so sharp.--Yes, to that I consent, and then I
+  shall still be of some use to you, as when I was alive. Oh! to
+  give you pleasure, or only to make you laugh, I would have stood
+  over a brazier with an apple in my mouth to cook it for you.--So
+  my death even will be of service to you.--I should have marred
+  your home.
+
+  "Oh! that Clotilde! I cannot understand her.--She might have been
+  your wife, have borne your name, have never left you day or night,
+  have belonged to you--and she could make difficulties! Only the
+  Faubourg Saint-Germain can do that! and yet she has not ten pounds
+  of flesh on her bones!
+
+  "Poor Lucien! Dear ambitious failure! I am thinking of your future
+  life. Well, well! you will more than once regret your poor
+  faithful dog, the good girl who would fly to serve you, who would
+  have been dragged into a police court to secure your happiness,
+  whose only occupation was to think of your pleasures and invent
+  new ones, who was so full of love for you--in her hair, her feet,
+  her ears--your ballerina, in short, whose every look was a
+  benediction; who for six years has thought of nothing but you, who
+  was so entirely your chattel that I have never been anything but
+  an effluence of your soul, as light is that of the sun. However,
+  for lack of money and of honor, I can never be your wife. I have
+  at any rate provided for your future by giving you all I have.
+
+  "Come as soon as you get this letter and take what you find under
+  my pillow, for I do not trust the people about me. Understand that
+  I mean to look beautiful when I am dead. I shall go to bed, and
+  lay myself flat in an attitude--why not? Then I shall break the
+  little pill against the roof of my mouth, and shall not be
+  disfigured by any convulsion or by a ridiculous position.
+
+  "Madame de Serizy has quarreled with you, I know, because of me;
+  but when she hears that I am dead, you see, dear pet, she will
+  forgive. Make it up with her, and she will find you a suitable
+  wife if the Grandlieus persist in their refusal.
+
+  "My dear, I do not want you to grieve too much when you hear of my
+  death. To begin with, I must tell you that the hour of eleven on
+  Monday morning, the thirteenth of May, is only the end of a long
+  illness, which began on the day when, on the Terrace of
+  Saint-Germain, you threw me back on my former line of life. The soul
+  may be sick, as the body is. But the soul cannot submit stupidly to
+  suffering like the body; the body does not uphold the soul as the
+  soul upholds the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the
+  reflection which leads to the needlewoman's resource--the bushel
+  of charcoal. You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday,
+  when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would marry
+  me. It would have been a great misfortune for us both; I should
+  have been still more dead, so to speak--for there are more and
+  less bitter deaths. The world would never have recognized us.
+
+  "For two months past I have been thinking of many things, I can
+  tell you. A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I went into
+  the convent; men think her handsome, they make her serve their
+  pleasure without thinking any consideration necessary; they pack
+  her off on foot after fetching her in a carriage; if they do not
+  spit in her face, it is only because her beauty preserves her from
+  such indignity; but, morally speaking they do worse. Well, and if
+  this despised creature were to inherit five or six millions of
+  francs, she would be courted by princes, bowed to with respect as
+  she went past in her carriage, and might choose among the oldest
+  names in France and Navarre. That world which would have cried
+  Raca to us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy,
+  always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her 'romances in
+  real life,' because she had two hundred thousand francs a year.
+  The world, which grovels before money or glory, will not bow down
+  before happiness or virtue--for I could have done good. Oh! how
+  many tears I would have dried--as many as I have shed--I believe!
+  Yes, I would have lived only for you and for charity.
+
+  "These are the thoughts that make death beautiful. So do not
+  lament, my dear. Say often to yourself, 'There were two good
+  creatures, two beautiful creatures, who both died for me
+  ungrudgingly, and who adored me.' Keep a memory in your heart of
+  Coralie and Esther, and go your way and prosper. Do you recollect
+  the day when you pointed out to me a shriveled old woman, in a
+  melon-green bonnet and a puce wrapper, all over black
+  grease-spots, the mistress of a poet before the Revolution, hardly
+  thawed by the sun though she was sitting against the wall of the
+  Tuileries and fussing over a pug--the vilest of pugs? She had had
+  footmen and carriages, you know, and a fine house! And I said to
+  you then, 'How much better to be dead at thirty!'--Well, you
+  thought I was melancholy, and you played all sorts of pranks to
+  amuse me, and between two kisses I said, 'Every day some pretty
+  woman leaves the play before it is over!'--And I do not want to
+  see the last piece; that is all.
+
+  "You must think me a great chatterbox; but this is my last
+  effusion. I write as if I were talking to you, and I like to talk
+  cheerfully. I have always had a horror of a dressmaker pitying
+  herself. You know I knew how to die decently once before, on my
+  return from that fatal opera-ball where the men said I had been a
+  prostitute.
+
+  "No, no, my dear love, never give this portrait to any one! If you
+  could know with what a gush of love I have sat losing myself in
+  your eyes, looking at them with rapture during a pause I allowed
+  myself, you would feel as you gathered up the affection with which
+  I have tried to overlay the ivory, that the soul of your little
+  pet is indeed there.
+
+  "A dead woman craving alms! That is a funny idea.--Come, I must
+  learn to lie quiet in my grave.
+
+  "You have no idea how heroic my death would seem to some fools if
+  they could know Nucingen last night offered me two millions of
+  francs if I would love him as I love you. He will be handsomely
+  robbed when he hears that I have kept my word and died of him. I
+  tried all I could still to breathe the air you breathe. I said to
+  the fat scoundrel, 'Do you want me to love you as you wish? To
+  promise even that I will never see Lucien again?'--'What must I
+  do?' he asked.--'Give me the two millions for him.'--You should
+  have seen his face! I could have laughed, if it had not been so
+  tragical for me.
+
+  "'Spare yourself the trouble of refusing,' said I; 'I see you
+  care more for your two millions than for me. A woman is always
+  glad to know at what she is valued!' and I turned my back on him.
+
+  "In a few hours the old rascal will know that I was not in jest.
+
+  "Who will part your hair as nicely as I do? Pooh!--I will think no
+  more of anything in life; I have but five minutes, I give them to
+  God. Do not be jealous of Him, dear heart; I shall speak to Him of
+  you, beseeching Him for your happiness as the price of my death,
+  and my punishment in the next world. I am vexed enough at having
+  to go to hell. I should have liked to see the angels, to know if
+  they are like you.
+
+  "Good-bye, my darling, good-bye! I give you all the blessing of my
+  woes. Even in the grave I am your Esther.
+
+  "It is striking eleven. I have said my last prayers. I am going to
+  bed to die. Once more, farewell! I wish that the warmth of my hand
+  could leave my soul there where I press a last kiss--and once more
+  I must call you my dearest love, though you are the cause of the
+  death of your Esther."
+
+A vague feeling of jealousy tightened on the magistrate's heart as he
+read this letter, the only letter from a suicide he had ever found
+written with such lightness, though it was a feverish lightness, and
+the last effort of a blind affection.
+
+"What is there in the man that he should be loved so well?" thought
+he, saying what every man says who has not the gift of attracting
+women.
+
+"If you can prove not merely that you are not Jacques Collin and an
+escaped convict, but that you are in fact Don Carlos Herrera, canon of
+Toledo, and secret envoy of this Majesty Ferdinand VII.," said he,
+addressing the prisoner "you will be released; for the impartiality
+demanded by my office requires me to tell you that I have this moment
+received a letter, written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, in which
+she declares her intention of killing herself, and expresses
+suspicions as to her servants, which would seem to point to them as
+the thieves who have made off with the seven hundred and fifty
+thousand francs."
+
+As he spoke Monsieur Camusot was comparing the writing of the letter
+with that of the will; and it seemed to him self-evident that the same
+person had written both.
+
+"Monsieur, you were in too great a hurry to believe in a murder; do
+not be too hasty in believing in a theft."
+
+"Heh!" said Camusot, scrutinizing the prisoner with a piercing eye.
+
+"Do not suppose that I am compromising myself by telling you that the
+sum may possibly be recovered," said Jacques Collin, making the judge
+understand that he saw his suspicions. "That poor girl was much loved
+by those about her; and if I were free, I would undertake to search
+for this money, which no doubt belongs to the being I love best in the
+world--to Lucien!--Will you allow me to read that letter; it will not
+take long? It is evidence of my dear boy's innocence--you cannot fear
+that I shall destroy it--nor that I shall talk about it; I am in
+solitary confinement."
+
+"In confinement! You will be so no longer," cried the magistrate. "It
+is I who must beg you to get well as soon as possible. Refer to your
+ambassador if you choose----"
+
+And he handed the letter to Jacques Collin. Camusot was glad to be out
+of a difficulty, to be able to satisfy the public prosecutor, Mesdames
+de Maufrigneuse and de Serizy. Nevertheless, he studied his prisoner's
+face with cold curiosity while Collin read Esther's letter; in spite
+of the apparent genuineness of the feelings it expressed, he said to
+himself:
+
+"But it is a face worthy of the hulks, all the same!"
+
+"That is the way to love!" said Jacques Collin, returning the letter.
+And he showed Camusot a face bathed in tears.
+
+"If only you knew him," he went on, "so youthful, so innocent a soul,
+so splendidly handsome, a child, a poet!--The impulse to sacrifice
+oneself to him is irresistible, to satisfy his lightest wish. That
+dear boy is so fascinating when he chooses----"
+
+"And so," said the magistrate, making a final effort to discover the
+truth, "you cannot possibly be Jacques Collin----"
+
+"No, monsieur," replied the convict.
+
+And Jacques Collin was more entirely Don Carlos Herrera than ever. In
+his anxiety to complete his work he went up to the judge, led him to
+the window, and gave himself the airs of a prince of the Church,
+assuming a confidential tone:
+
+"I am so fond of that boy, monsieur, that if it were needful, to spare
+that idol of my heart a mere discomfort even, that I should be the
+criminal you take me for, I would surrender," said he in an undertone.
+"I would follow the example of the poor girl who has killed herself
+for his benefit. And I beg you, monsieur, to grant me a favor--namely,
+to set Lucien at liberty forthwith."
+
+"My duty forbids it," said Camusot very good-naturedly; "but if a
+sinner may make a compromise with heaven, justice too has its softer
+side, and if you can give me sufficient reasons--speak; your words
+will not be taken down."
+
+"Well, then," Jacques Collin went on, taken in by Camusot's apparent
+goodwill, "I know what that poor boy is suffering at this moment; he
+is capable of trying to kill himself when he finds himself a
+prisoner----"
+
+"Oh! as to that!" said Camusot with a shrug.
+
+"You do not know whom you will oblige by obliging me," added Jacques
+Collin, trying to harp on another string. "You will be doing a service
+to others more powerful than any Comtesse de Serizy or Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse, who will never forgive you for having had their letters
+in your chambers----" and he pointed to two packets of perfumed
+papers. "My Order has a good memory."
+
+"Monsieur," said Camusot, "that is enough. You must find better
+reasons to give me. I am as much interested in the prisoner as in
+public vengeance."
+
+"Believe me, then, I know Lucien; he has a soul of a woman, of a poet,
+and a southerner, without persistency or will," said Jacques Collin,
+who fancied that he saw that he had won the judge over. "You are
+convinced of the young man's innocence, do not torture him, do not
+question him. Give him that letter, tell him that he is Esther's heir,
+and restore him to freedom. If you act otherwise, you will bring
+despair on yourself; whereas, if you simply release him, I will
+explain to you--keep me still in solitary confinement--to-morrow or
+this evening, everything that may strike you as mysterious in the
+case, and the reasons for the persecution of which I am the object.
+But it will be at the risk of my life, a price has been set on my head
+these six years past. . . . Lucien free, rich, and married to Clotilde
+de Grandlieu, and my task on earth will be done; I shall no longer try
+to save my skin.--My persecutor was a spy under your late King."
+
+"What, Corentin?"
+
+"Ah! Is his name Corentin? Thank you, monsieur. Well, will you promise
+to do as I ask you?"
+
+"A magistrate can make no promises.--Coquart, tell the usher and the
+gendarmes to take the prisoner back to the Conciergerie.--I will give
+orders that you are to have a private room," he added pleasantly, with
+a slight nod to the convict.
+
+Struck by Jacques Collin's request, and remembering how he had
+insisted that he wished to be examined first as a privilege to his
+state of health, Camusot's suspicions were aroused once more. Allowing
+his vague doubts to make themselves heard, he noticed that the
+self-styled dying man was walking off with the strength of a Hercules,
+having abandoned all the tricks he had aped so well on appearing
+before the magistrate.
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+Jacques Collin turned round.
+
+"Notwithstanding your refusal to sign the document, my clerk will read
+you the minutes of your examination."
+
+The prisoner was evidently in excellent health; the readiness with
+which he came back, and sat down by the clerk, was a fresh light to
+the magistrate's mind.
+
+"You have got well very suddenly!" said Camusot.
+
+"Caught!" thought Jacques Collin; and he replied:
+
+"Joy, monsieur, is the only panacea.--That letter, the proof of
+innocence of which I had no doubt--these are the grand remedy."
+
+The judge kept a meditative eye on the prisoner when the usher and the
+gendarmes again took him in charge. Then, with a start like a waking
+man, he tossed Esther's letter across to the table where his clerk
+sat, saying:
+
+"Coquart, copy that letter."
+
+If it is natural to man to be suspicious as to some favor required of
+him when it is antagonistic to his interests or his duty, and
+sometimes even when it is a matter of indifference, this feeling is
+law to an examining magistrate. The more this prisoner--whose identity
+was not yet ascertained--pointed to clouds on the horizon in the event
+of Lucien's being examined, the more necessary did the interrogatory
+seem to Camusot. Even if this formality had not been required by the
+Code and by common practice, it was indispensable as bearing on the
+identification of the Abbe Carlos. There is in every walk of life the
+business conscience. In default of curiosity Camusot would have
+examined Lucien as he had examined Jacques Collin, with all the
+cunning which the most honest magistrate allows himself to use in such
+cases. The services he might render and his own promotion were
+secondary in Camusot's mind to his anxiety to know or guess the truth,
+even if he should never tell it.
+
+He stood drumming on the window-pane while following the river-like
+current of his conjectures, for in these moods thought is like a
+stream flowing through many countries. Magistrates, in love with
+truth, are like jealous women; they give way to a thousand hypotheses,
+and probe them with the dagger-point of suspicion, as the sacrificing
+priest of old eviscerated his victims; thus they arrive, not perhaps
+at truth, but at probability, and at last see the truth beyond. A
+woman cross-questions the man she loves as the judge cross-questions a
+criminal. In such a frame of mind, a glance, a word, a tone of voice,
+the slightest hesitation is enough to certify the hidden fact--treason
+or crime.
+
+"The style in which he depicted his devotion to his son--if he is his
+son--is enough to make me think that he was in the girl's house to
+keep an eye on the plunder; and never suspecting that the dead woman's
+pillow covered a will, he no doubt annexed, for his son, the seven
+hundred and fifty thousand francs as a precaution. That is why he can
+promise to recover the money.
+
+"M. de Rubempre owes it to himself and to justice to account for his
+father's position in the world----
+
+"And he offers me the protection of his Order--His Order!--if I do not
+examine Lucien----"
+
+As has been seen, a magistrate conducts an examination exactly as he
+thinks proper. He is at liberty to display his acumen or be absolutely
+blunt. An examination may be everything or nothing. Therein lies the
+favor.
+
+Camusot rang. The usher had returned. He was sent to fetch Monsieur
+Lucien de Rubempre with an injunction to prohibit his speaking to
+anybody on his way up. It was by this time two in the afternoon.
+
+"There is some secret," said the judge to himself, "and that secret
+must be very important. My amphibious friend--since he is neither
+priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor Spaniard, though he wants to
+hinder his protege from letting out something dreadful--argues thus:
+'The poet is weak and effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in
+diplomacy, and you will easily wring our secret from him.'--Well, we
+will get everything out of this innocent."
+
+And he sat tapping the edge of his table with the ivory paper-knife,
+while Coquart copied Esther's letter.
+
+How whimsical is the action of our faculties! Camusot conceived of
+every crime as possible, and overlooked the only one that the prisoner
+had now committed--the forgery of the will for Lucien's advantage. Let
+those whose envy vents itself on magistrates think for a moment of
+their life spent in perpetual suspicion, of the torments these men
+must inflict on their minds, for civil cases are not less tortuous
+than criminal examinations, and it will occur to them perhaps that the
+priest and the lawyer wear an equally heavy coat of mail, equally
+furnished with spikes in the lining. However, every profession has its
+hair shirt and its Chinese puzzles.
+
+
+
+It was about two o'clock when Monsieur Camusot saw Lucien de Rubempre
+come in, pale, worn, his eyes red and swollen, in short, in a state of
+dejection which enabled the magistrate to compare nature with art, the
+really dying man with the stage performance. His walk from the
+Conciergerie to the judge's chambers, between two gendarmes, and
+preceded by the usher, had put the crowning touch to Lucien's despair.
+It is the poet's nature to prefer execution to condemnation.
+
+As he saw this being, so completely bereft of the moral courage which
+is the essence of a judge, and which the last prisoner had so strongly
+manifested, Monsieur Camusot disdained the easy victory; and this
+scorn enabled him to strike a decisive blow, since it left him, on the
+ground, that horrible clearness of mind which the marksman feels when
+he is firing at a puppet.
+
+"Collect yourself, Monsieur de Rubempre; you are in the presence of a
+magistrate who is eager to repair the mischief done involuntarily by
+the law when a man is taken into custody on suspicion that has no
+foundation. I believe you to be innocent, and you will soon be at
+liberty.--Here is the evidence of your innocence; it is a letter kept
+for you during your absence by your porter's wife; she has just
+brought it here. In the commotion caused by the visitation of justice
+and the news of your arrest at Fontainebleau, the woman forgot the
+letter which was written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck.--Read it!"
+
+Lucien took the letter, read it, and melted into tears. He sobbed, and
+could not say a single word. At the end of a quarter of an hour,
+during which Lucien with great difficulty recovered his self-command,
+the clerk laid before him the copy of the letter and begged him to
+sign a footnote certifying that the copy was faithful to the original,
+and might be used in its stead "on all occasions in the course of this
+preliminary inquiry," giving him the option of comparing the two; but
+Lucien, of course, took Coquart's word for its accuracy.
+
+"Monsieur," said the lawyer, with friendly good nature, "it is
+nevertheless impossible that I should release you without carrying out
+the legal formalities, and asking you some questions.--It is almost as
+a witness that I require you to answer. To such a man as you I think
+it is almost unnecessary to point out that the oath to tell the whole
+truth is not in this case a mere appeal to your conscience, but a
+necessity for your own sake, your position having been for a time
+somewhat ambiguous. The truth can do you no harm, be it what it may;
+falsehood will send you to trial, and compel me to send you back to
+the Conciergerie; whereas if you answer fully to my questions, you
+will sleep to-night in your own house, and be rehabilitated by this
+paragraph in the papers: 'Monsieur de Rubempre, who was arrested
+yesterday at Fontainebleau, was set at liberty after a very brief
+examination.'"
+
+This speech made a deep impression on Lucien; and the judge, seeing
+the temper of his prisoner, added:
+
+"I may repeat to you that you were suspected of being accessory to the
+murder by poison of this Demoiselle Esther. Her suicide is clearly
+proved, and there is an end of that; but a sum of seven hundred and
+fifty thousand francs has been stolen, which she had disposed of by
+will, and you are the legatee. This is a felony. The crime was
+perpetrated before the discovery of the will.
+
+"Now there is reason to suppose that a person who loves you as much as
+you loved Mademoiselle Esther committed the theft for your benefit.
+--Do not interrupt me," Camusot went on, seeing that Lucien was about to
+speak, and commanding silence by a gesture; "I am asking you nothing
+so far. I am anxious to make you understand how deeply your honor is
+concerned in this question. Give up the false and contemptible notion
+of the honor binding two accomplices, and tell the whole truth."
+
+The reader must already have observed the extreme disproportion of the
+weapons in this conflict between the prisoner under suspicion and the
+examining judge. Absolute denial when skilfully used has in its favor
+its positive simplicity, and sufficiently defends the criminal; but it
+is, in a way, a coat of mail which becomes crushing as soon as the
+stiletto of cross-examination finds a joint to it. As soon as mere
+denial is ineffectual in face of certain proven facts, the examinee is
+entirely at the judge's mercy.
+
+Now, supposing that a sort of half-criminal, like Lucien, might, if he
+were saved from the first shipwreck of his honesty, amend his ways,
+and become a useful member of society, he will be lost in the pitfalls
+of his examination.
+
+The judge has the driest possible record drawn up of the proceedings,
+a faithful analysis of the questions and answers; but no trace remains
+of his insidiously paternal addresses or his captious remonstrances,
+such as this speech. The judges of the superior courts see the
+results, but see nothing of the means. Hence, as some experienced
+persons have thought, it would be a good plan that, as in England, a
+jury should hear the examination. For a short while France enjoyed the
+benefit of this system. Under the Code of Brumaire of the year IV.,
+this body was known as the examining jury, as distinguished from the
+trying jury. As to the final trial, if we should restore the examining
+jury, it would have to be the function of the superior courts without
+the aid of a jury.
+
+"And now," said Camusot, after a pause, "what is your name?
+--Attention, Monsieur Coquart!" said he to the clerk.
+
+"Lucien Chardon de Rubempre."
+
+"And you were born----?"
+
+"At Angouleme." And Lucien named the day, month, and year.
+
+"You inherited no fortune?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"And yet, during your first residence in Paris, you spent a great
+deal, as compared with your small income?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; but at that time I had a most devoted friend in
+Mademoiselle Coralie, and I was so unhappy as to lose her. It was my
+grief at her death that made me return to my country home."
+
+"That is right, monsieur," said Camusot; "I commend your frankness; it
+will be thoroughly appreciated."
+
+Lucien, it will be seen, was prepared to make a clean breast of it.
+
+"On your return to Paris you lived even more expensively than before,"
+Camusot went on. "You lived like a man who might have about sixty
+thousand francs a year."
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Who supplied you with the money?"
+
+"My protector, the Abbe Carlos Herrera."
+
+"Where did you meet him?"
+
+"We met when traveling, just as I was about to be quit of life by
+committing suicide."
+
+"You never heard him spoken of by your family--by your mother?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Can you remember the year and the month when you first became
+connected with Mademoiselle Esther?"
+
+"Towards the end of 1823, at a small theatre on the Boulevard."
+
+"At first she was an expense to you?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Lately, in the hope of marrying Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, you
+purchased the ruins of the Chateau de Rubempre, you added land to the
+value of a million francs, and you told the family of Grandlieu that
+your sister and your brother-in-law had just come into a considerable
+fortune, and that their liberality had supplied you with the money.
+--Did you tell the Grandlieus this, monsieur?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"You do not know the reason why the marriage was broken off?"
+
+"Not in the least, monsieur."
+
+"Well, the Grandlieus sent one of the most respectable attorneys in
+Paris to see your brother-in-law and inquire into the facts. At
+Angouleme this lawyer, from the statements of your sister and
+brother-in-law, learned that they not only had hardly lent you any
+money, but also that their inheritance consisted of land, of some
+extent no doubt, but that the whole amount of invested capital was
+not more than about two hundred thousand francs.--Now you cannot
+wonder that such people as the Grandlieus should reject a fortune
+of which the source is more than doubtful. This, monsieur, is what a
+lie has led to----"
+
+Lucien was petrified by this revelation, and the little presence of
+mind he had preserved deserted him.
+
+"Remember," said Camusot, "that the police and the law know all they
+want to know.--And now," he went on, recollecting Jacques Collin's
+assumed paternity, "do you know who this pretended Carlos Herrera is?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; but I knew it too late."
+
+"Too late! How? Explain yourself."
+
+"He is not a priest, not a Spaniard, he is----"
+
+"An escaped convict?" said the judge eagerly.
+
+"Yes," replied Lucien, "when he told me the fatal secret, I was
+already under obligations to him; I had fancied I was befriended by a
+respectable priest."
+
+"Jacques Collin----" said Monsieur Camusot, beginning a sentence.
+
+"Yes," said Lucien, "his name is Jacques Collin."
+
+"Very good. Jacques Collin has just now been identified by another
+person, and though he denies it, he does so, I believe, in your
+interest. But I asked whether you knew who the man is in order to
+prove another of Jacques Collin's impostures."
+
+Lucien felt as though he had hot iron in his inside as he heard this
+alarming statement.
+
+"Do you not know," Camusot went on, "that in order to give color to
+the extraordinary affection he has for you, he declares that he is
+your father?"
+
+"He! My father?--Oh, monsieur, did he tell you that?"
+
+"Have you any suspicion of where the money came from that he used to
+give you? For, if I am to believe the evidence of the letter you have
+in your hand, that poor girl, Mademoiselle Esther, must have done you
+lately the same services as Coralie formerly rendered you. Still, for
+some years, as you have just admitted, you lived very handsomely
+without receiving anything from her."
+
+"It is I who should ask you, monsieur, whence convicts get their
+money! Jacques Collin my father!--Oh, my poor mother!" and Lucien
+burst into tears.
+
+"Coquart, read out to the prisoner that part of Carlos Herrera's
+examination in which he said that Lucien de Rubempre was his son."
+
+The poet listened in silence, and with a look that was terrible to
+behold.
+
+"I am done for!" he cried.
+
+"A man is not done for who is faithful to the path of honor and
+truth," said the judge.
+
+"But you will commit Jacques Collin for trial?" said Lucien.
+
+"Undoubtedly," said Camusot, who aimed at making Lucien talk. "Speak
+out."
+
+But in spite of all his persuasion and remonstrances, Lucien would say
+no more. Reflection had come too late, as it does to all men who are
+the slaves of impulse. There lies the difference between the poet and
+the man of action; one gives way to feeling to reproduce it in living
+images, his judgement comes in after; the other feels and judges both
+at once.
+
+Lucien remained pale and gloomy; he saw himself at the bottom of the
+precipice, down which the examining judge had rolled him by the
+apparent candor which had entrapped his poet's soul. He had betrayed,
+not his benefactor, but an accomplice who had defended their position
+with the courage of a lion, and a skill that showed no flaw. Where
+Jacques Collin had saved everything by his daring, Lucien, the man of
+brains, had lost all by his lack of intelligence and reflection. This
+infamous lie against which he revolted had screened a yet more
+infamous truth.
+
+Utterly confounded by the judge's skill, overpowered by his cruel
+dexterity, by the swiftness of the blows he had dealt him while making
+use of the errors of a life laid bare as probes to search his
+conscience, Lucien sat like an animal which the butcher's pole-axe had
+failed to kill. Free and innocent when he came before the judge, in a
+moment his own avowal had made him feel criminal.
+
+To crown all, as a final grave irony, Camusot, cold and calm, pointed
+out to Lucien that his self-betrayal was the result of a
+misapprehension. Camusot was thinking of Jacques Collin's announcing
+himself as Lucien's father; while Lucien, wholly absorbed by his fear
+of seeing his confederacy with an escaped convict made public, had
+imitated the famous inadvertency of the murderers of Ibycus.
+
+One of Royer-Collard's most famous achievements was proclaiming the
+constant triumph of natural feeling over engrafted sentiments, and
+defending the cause of anterior oaths by asserting that the law of
+hospitality, for instance, ought to be regarded as binding to the
+point of negativing the obligation of a judicial oath. He promulgated
+this theory, in the face of the world, from the French tribune; he
+boldly upheld conspirators, showing that it was human to be true to
+friendship rather than to the tyrannical laws brought out of the
+social arsenal to be adjusted to circumstances. And, indeed, natural
+rights have laws which have never been codified, but which are more
+effectual and better known than those laid down by society. Lucien had
+misapprehended, to his cost, the law of cohesion, which required him
+to be silent and leave Jacques Collin to protect himself; nay, more,
+he had accused him. In his own interests the man ought always to be,
+to him, Carlos Herrera.
+
+Monsieur Camusot was rejoicing in his triumph; he had secured two
+criminals. He had crushed with the hand of justice one of the
+favorites of fashion, and he had found the undiscoverable Jacques
+Collin. He would be regarded as one of the cleverest of examining
+judges. So he left his prisoner in peace; but he was studying this
+speechless consternation, and he saw drops of sweat collect on the
+miserable face, swell and fall, mingled with two streams of tears.
+
+"Why should you weep, Monsieur de Rubempre? You are, as I have told
+you, Mademoiselle Esther's legatee, she having no heirs nor near
+relations, and her property amounts to nearly eight millions of francs
+if the lost seven hundred and fifty thousand francs are recovered."
+
+This was the last blow to the poor wretch. "If you do not lose your
+head for ten minutes," Jacques Collin had said in his note, and Lucien
+by keeping cool would have gained all his desire. He might have paid
+his debt to Jacques Collin and have cut him adrift, have been rich,
+and have married Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. Nothing could more
+eloquently demonstrate the power with which the examining judge is
+armed, as a consequence of the isolation or separation of persons
+under suspicion, or the value of such a communication as Asie had
+conveyed to Jacques Collin.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" replied Lucien, with the satirical bitterness of a man
+who makes a pedestal of his utter overthrow, "how appropriate is the
+phrase in legal slang 'to UNDERGO examination.' For my part, if I had
+to choose between the physical torture of past ages and the moral
+torture of our day, I would not hesitate to prefer the sufferings
+inflicted of old by the executioner.--What more do you want of me?" he
+added haughtily.
+
+"In this place, monsieur," said the magistrate, answering the poet's
+pride with mocking arrogance, "I alone have a right to ask questions."
+
+"I had the right to refuse to answer them," muttered the hapless
+Lucien, whose wits had come back to him with perfect lucidity.
+
+"Coquart, read the minutes to the prisoner."
+
+"I am the prisoner once more," said Lucien to himself.
+
+While the clerk was reading, Lucien came to a determination which
+compelled him to smooth down Monsieur Camusot. When Coquart's drone
+ceased, the poet started like a man who has slept through a noise to
+which his ears are accustomed, and who is roused by its cessation.
+
+"You have to sign the report of your examination," said the judge.
+
+"And am I at liberty?" asked Lucien, ironical in his turn.
+
+"Not yet," said Camusot; "but to-morrow, after being confronted with
+Jacques Collin, you will no doubt be free. Justice must now ascertain
+whether or no you are accessory to the crimes this man may have
+committed since his escape so long ago as 1820. However, you are no
+longer in the secret cells. I will write to the Governor to give you a
+better room."
+
+"Shall I find writing materials?"
+
+"You can have anything supplied to you that you ask for; I will give
+orders to that effect by the usher who will take you back."
+
+Lucien mechanically signed the minutes and initialed the notes in
+obedience to Coquart's indications with the meekness of a resigned
+victim. A single fact will show what a state he was in better than the
+minutest description. The announcement that he would be confronted
+with Jacques Collin had at once dried the drops of sweat from his
+brow, and his dry eyes glittered with a terrible light. In short, he
+became, in an instant as brief as a lightning flash, what Jacques
+Collin was--a man of iron.
+
+In men whose nature is like Lucien's, a nature which Jacques Collin
+had so thoroughly fathomed, these sudden transitions from a state of
+absolute demoralization to one that is, so to speak, metallic,--so
+extreme is the tension of every vital force,--are the most startling
+phenomena of mental vitality. The will surges up like the lost waters
+of a spring; it diffuses itself throughout the machinery that lies
+ready for the action of the unknown matter that constitutes it; and
+then the corpse is a man again, and the man rushes on full of energy
+for a supreme struggle.
+
+Lucien laid Esther's letter next his heart, with the miniature she had
+returned to him. Then he haughtily bowed to Monsieur Camusot, and went
+off with a firm step down the corridors, between two gendarmes.
+
+"That is a deep scoundrel!" said the judge to his clerk, to avenge
+himself for the crushing scorn the poet had displayed. "He thought he
+might save himself by betraying his accomplice."
+
+"Of the two," said Coquart timidly, "the convict is the most
+thorough-paced."
+
+"You are free for the rest of the day, Coquart," said the lawyer. "We
+have done enough. Send away any case that is waiting, to be called
+to-morrow.--Ah! and you must go at once to the public prosecutor's
+chambers and ask if he is still there; if so, ask him if he can give
+me a few minutes. Yes; he will not be gone," he added, looking at a
+common clock in a wooden case painted green with gilt lines. "It is
+but a quarter-past three."
+
+
+
+These examinations, which are so quickly read, being written down at
+full length, questions and answers alike, take up an enormous amount
+of time. This is one of the reasons of the slowness of these
+preliminaries to a trial and of these imprisonments "on suspicion." To
+the poor this is ruin, to the rich it is disgrace; to them only
+immediate release can in any degree repair, so far as possible, the
+disaster of an arrest.
+
+This is why the two scenes here related had taken up the whole of the
+time spent by Asie in deciphering her master's orders, in getting a
+Duchess out of her boudoir, and putting some energy into Madame de
+Serizy.
+
+At this moment Camusot, who was anxious to get the full benefit of his
+cleverness, took the two documents, read them through, and promised
+himself that he would show them to the public prosecutor and take his
+opinion on them. During this meditation, his usher came back to tell
+him that Madame la Comtesse de Serizy's man-servant insisted on
+speaking with him. At a nod from Camusot, a servant out of livery came
+in, looked first at the usher, and then at the magistrate, and said,
+"I have the honor of speaking to Monsieur Camusot?"
+
+"Yes," replied the lawyer and his clerk.
+
+Camusot took a note which the servant offered him, and read as
+follows:--
+
+  "For the sake of many interests which will be obvious to you, my
+  dear Camusot, do not examine Monsieur de Rubempre. We have brought
+  ample proofs of his innocence that he may be released forthwith.
+
+                                           "D. DE MAUFRIGNEUSE.
+                                           "L. DE SERIZY.
+
+    "_P. S._--Burn this note."
+
+
+Camusot understood at once that he had blundered preposterously in
+laying snares for Lucien, and he began by obeying the two fine ladies
+--he lighted a taper, and burned the letter written by the Duchess.
+The man bowed respectfully.
+
+"Then Madame de Serizy is coming here?" asked Camusot.
+
+"The carriage is being brought round."
+
+At this moment Coquart came in to tell Monsieur Camusot that the
+public prosecutor expected him.
+
+Oppressed by the blunder he had committed, in view of his ambitions,
+though to the better ends of justice, the lawyer, in whom seven years'
+experience had perfected the sharpness that comes to a man who in his
+practice has had to measure his wits against the grisettes of Paris,
+was anxious to have some shield against the resentment of two women of
+fashion. The taper in which he had burned the note was still alight,
+and he used it to seal up the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse's notes to
+Lucien--about thirty in all--and Madame de Serizy's somewhat
+voluminous correspondence.
+
+Then he waited on the public prosecutor.
+
+The Palais de Justice is a perplexing maze of buildings piled one
+above another, some fine and dignified, others very mean, the whole
+disfigured by its lack of unity. The _Salle des Pas-Perdus_ is the
+largest known hall, but its nakedness is hideous, and distresses the
+eye. This vast Cathedral of the Law crushes the Supreme Court. The
+Galerie Marchande ends in two drain-like passages. From this corridor
+there is a double staircase, a little larger than that of the Criminal
+Courts, and under it a large double door. The stairs lead down to one
+of the Assize Courts, and the doors open into another. In some years
+the number of crimes committed in the circuit of the Seine is great
+enough to necessitate the sitting of two Benches.
+
+Close by are the public prosecutor's offices, the attorney's room and
+library, the chambers of the attorney-general, and those of the public
+prosecutor's deputies. All these purlieus, to use a generic term,
+communicate by narrow spiral stairs and the dark passages, which are a
+disgrace to the architecture not of Paris only, but of all France. The
+interior arrangement of the sovereign court of justice outdoes our
+prisons in all that is most hideous. The writer describing our manners
+and customs would shrink from the necessity of depicting the squalid
+corridor of about a metre in width, in which the witnesses wait in the
+Superior Criminal Court. As to the stove which warms the court itself,
+it would disgrace a cafe on the Boulevard Mont-Parnasse.
+
+The public prosecutor's private room forms part of an octagon wing
+flanking the Galerie Marchande, built out recently in regard to the
+age of the structure, over the prison yard, outside the women's
+quarters. All this part of the Palais is overshadowed by the lofty and
+noble edifice of the Sainte-Chapelle. And all is solemn and silent.
+
+Monsieur de Granville, a worthy successor of the great magistrates of
+the ancient Parlement, would not leave Paris without coming to some
+conclusion in the matter of Lucien. He expected to hear from Camusot,
+and the judge's message had plunged him into the involuntary suspense
+which waiting produces on even the strongest minds. He had been
+sitting in the window-bay of his private room; he rose, and walked up
+and down, for having lingered in the morning to intercept Camusot, he
+had found him dull of apprehension; he was vaguely uneasy and worried.
+
+And this was why.
+
+The dignity of his high functions forbade his attempting to fetter the
+perfect independence of the inferior judge, and yet this trial nearly
+touched the honor and good name of his best friend and warmest
+supporter, the Comte de Serizy, Minister of State, member of the Privy
+Council, Vice-President of the State Council, and prospective
+Chancellor of the Realm, in the event of the death of the noble old
+man who held that august office. It was Monsieur de Serizy's
+misfortune to adore his wife "through fire and water," and he always
+shielded her with his protection. Now the public prosecutor fully
+understood the terrible fuss that would be made in the world and at
+court if a crime should be proved against a man whose name had been so
+often and so malignantly linked with that of the Countess.
+
+"Ah!" he sighed, folding his arms, "formerly the supreme authority
+could take refuge in an appeal. Nowadays our mania for equality"--he
+dared not say _for Legality_, as a poetic orator in the Chamber
+courageously admitted a short while since--"is the death of us."
+
+This noble magistrate knew all the fascination and the miseries of an
+illicit attachment. Esther and Lucien, as we have seen, had taken the
+rooms where the Comte de Granville had lived secretly on connubial
+terms with Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, and whence she had fled one
+day, lured away by a villain. (See _A Double Marriage_.)
+
+At the very moment when the public prosecutor was saying to himself,
+"Camusot is sure to have done something silly," the examining
+magistrate knocked twice at the door of his room.
+
+"Well, my dear Camusot, how is that case going on that I spoke of this
+morning?"
+
+"Badly, Monsieur le Comte; read and judge for yourself."
+
+He held out the minutes of the two examinations to Monsieur de
+Granville, who took up his eyeglass and went to the window to read
+them. He had soon run through them.
+
+"You have done your duty," said the Count in an agitated voice. "It is
+all over. The law must take its course. You have shown so much skill,
+that you need never fear being deprived of your appointment as
+examining judge---"
+
+If Monsieur de Granville had said to Camusot, "You will remain an
+examining judge to your dying day," he could not have been more
+explicit than in making this polite speech. Camusot was cold in the
+very marrow.
+
+"Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, to whom I owe much, had desired
+me . . ."
+
+"Oh yes, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse is Madame de Serizy's friend,"
+said Granville, interrupting him. "To be sure.--You have allowed
+nothing to influence you, I perceive. And you did well, sir; you will
+be a great magistrate."
+
+At this instant the Comte Octave de Bauvan opened the door without
+knocking, and said to the Comte de Granville:
+
+"I have brought you a fair lady, my dear fellow, who did not know
+which way to turn; she was on the point of losing herself in our
+labyrinth----"
+
+And Comte Octave led in by the hand the Comtesse de Serizy, who had
+been wandering about the place for the last quarter of an hour.
+
+"What, you here, madame!" exclaimed the public prosecutor, pushing
+forward his own armchair, "and at this moment! This, madame, is
+Monsieur Camusot," he added, introducing the judge.--"Bauvan," said he
+to the distinguished ministerial orator of the Restoration, "wait for
+me in the president's chambers; he is still there, and I will join
+you."
+
+Comte Octave de Bauvan understood that not merely was he in the way,
+but that Monsieur de Granville wanted an excuse for leaving his room.
+
+Madame de Serizy had not made the mistake of coming to the Palais de
+Justice in her handsome carriage with a blue hammer-cloth and
+coats-of-arms, her coachman in gold lace, and two footmen in breeches
+and silk stockings. Just as they were starting Asie impressed on the
+two great ladies the need for taking the hackney coach in which she
+and the Duchess had arrived, and she had likewise insisted on Lucien's
+mistress adopting the costume which is to women what a gray cloak was
+of yore to men. The Countess wore a plain brown dress, an old black
+shawl, and a velvet bonnet from which the flowers had been removed,
+and the whole covered up under a thick lace veil.
+
+"You received our note?" said she to Camusot, whose dismay she mistook
+for respectful admiration.
+
+"Alas! but too late, Madame la Comtesse," replied the lawyer, whose
+tact and wit failed him excepting in his chambers and in presence of a
+prisoner.
+
+"Too late! How?"
+
+She looked at Monsieur de Granville, and saw consternation written in
+his face. "It cannot be, it must not be too late!" she added, in the
+tone of a despot.
+
+Women, pretty women, in the position of Madame de Serizy, are the
+spoiled children of French civilization. If the women of other
+countries knew what a woman of fashion is in Paris, a woman of wealth
+and rank, they would all want to come and enjoy that splendid royalty.
+The women who recognize no bonds but those of propriety, no law but
+the petty charter which has been more than once alluded to in this
+_Comedie Humaine_ as the ladies' Code, laugh at the statutes framed by
+men. They say everything, they do not shrink from any blunder or
+hesitate at any folly, for they all accept the fact that they are
+irresponsible beings, answerable for nothing on earth but their good
+repute and their children. They say the most preposterous things with
+a laugh, and are ready on every occasion to repeat the speech made in
+the early days of her married life by pretty Madame de Bauvan to her
+husband, whom she came to fetch away from the Palais: "Make haste and
+pass sentence, and come away."
+
+"Madame," said the public prosecutor, "Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre is
+not guilty either of robbery or of poisoning; but Monsieur Camusot has
+led him to confess a still greater crime."
+
+"What is that?" she asked.
+
+"He acknowledged," said Monsieur Camusot in her ear, "that he is the
+friend and pupil of an escaped convict. The Abbe Carlos Herrera, the
+Spaniard with whom he has been living for the last seven years, is the
+notorious Jacques Collin."
+
+Madame de Serizy felt as if it were a blow from an iron rod at each
+word spoken by the judge, but this name was the finishing stroke.
+
+"And the upshot of all this?" she said, in a voice that was no more
+than a breath.
+
+"Is," Monsieur de Granville went on, finishing the Countess' sentence
+in an undertone, "that the convict will be committed for trial, and
+that if Lucien is not committed with him as having profited as an
+accessory to the man's crimes, he must appear as a witness very
+seriously compromised."
+
+"Oh! never, never!" she cried aloud, with amazing firmness. "For my
+part, I should not hesitate between death and the disaster of seeing a
+man whom the world has known to be my dearest friend declared by the
+bench to be the accomplice of a convict.--The King has a great regard
+for my husband----"
+
+"Madame," said the public prosecutor, also aloud, and with a smile,
+"the King has not the smallest power over the humblest examining judge
+in his kingdom, nor over the proceedings in any court of justice. That
+is the grand feature of our new code of laws. I myself have just
+congratulated M. Camusot on his skill----"
+
+"On his clumsiness," said the Countess sharply, though Lucien's
+intimacy with a scoundrel really disturbed her far less than his
+attachment to Esther.
+
+"If you will read the minutes of the examination of the two prisoners
+by Monsieur Camusot, you will see that everything is in his hands----"
+
+After this speech, the only thing the public prosecutor could venture
+to say, and a flash of feminine--or, if you will, lawyer-like
+--cunning, he went to the door; then, turning round on the threshold,
+he added:
+
+"Excuse me, madame; I have two words to say to Bauvan." Which,
+translated by the worldly wise, conveyed to the Countess: "I do not
+want to witness the scene between you and Camusot."
+
+"What is this examination business?" said Leontine very blandly to
+Camusot, who stood downcast in the presence of the wife of one of the
+most important personages in the realm.
+
+"Madame," said Camusot, "a clerk writes down all the magistrate's
+questions and the prisoner's replies. This document is signed by the
+clerk, by the judge, and by the prisoner. This evidence is the raw
+material of the subsequent proceedings; on it the accused are
+committed for trial, and remanded to appear before the Criminal
+Court."
+
+"Well, then," said she, "if the evidence were suppressed----?"
+
+"Oh, madame, that is a crime which no magistrate could possibly commit
+--a crime against society."
+
+"It is a far worse crime against me to have ever allowed it to be
+recorded; still, at this moment it is the only evidence against
+Lucien. Come, read me the minutes of his examination that I may see if
+there is still a way of salvation for us all, monsieur. I do not speak
+for myself alone--I should quite calmly kill myself--but Monsieur de
+Serizy's happiness is also at stake."
+
+"Pray, madame, do not suppose that I have forgotten the respect due
+you," said Camusot. "If Monsieur Popinot, for instance, had undertaken
+this case, you would have had worse luck than you have found with me;
+for he would not have come to consult Monsieur de Granville; no one
+would have heard anything about it. I tell you, madame, everything has
+been seized in Monsieur Lucien's lodging, even your letters----"
+
+"What! my letters!"
+
+"Here they are, madame, in a sealed packet."
+
+The Countess in her agitation rang as if she had been at home, and the
+office-boy came in.
+
+"A light," said she.
+
+The boy lighted a taper and placed it on the chimney-piece, while the
+Countess looked through the letters, counted them, crushed them in her
+hand, and flung them on the hearth. In a few minutes she set the whole
+mass in a blaze, twisting up the last note to serve as a torch.
+
+Camusot stood, looking rather foolish as he watched the papers burn,
+holding the legal documents in his hand. The Countess, who seemed
+absorbed in the work of destroying the proofs of her passion, studied
+him out of the corner of her eye. She took her time, she calculated
+her distance; with the spring of a cat she seized the two documents
+and threw them on the flames. But Camusot saved them; the Countess
+rushed on him and snatched back the burning papers. A struggle ensued,
+Camusot calling out: "Madame, but madame! This is contempt--madame!"
+
+A man hurried into the room, and the Countess could not repress a
+scream as she beheld the Comte de Serizy, followed by Monsieur de
+Granville and the Comte de Bauvan. Leontine, however, determined to
+save Lucien at any cost, would not let go of the terrible stamped
+documents, which she clutched with the tenacity of a vise, though the
+flame had already burnt her delicate skin like a moxa.
+
+At last Camusot, whose fingers also were smarting from the fire,
+seemed to be ashamed of the position; he let the papers go; there was
+nothing left of them but the portions so tightly held by the
+antagonists that the flame could not touch them. The whole scene had
+taken less time than is needed to read this account of it.
+
+"What discussion can have arisen between you and Madame de Serizy?"
+the husband asked of Camusot.
+
+Before the lawyer could reply, the Countess held the fragments in the
+candle and threw them on the remains of her letters, which were not
+entirely consumed.
+
+"I shall be compelled," said Camusot, "to lay a complaint against
+Madame la Comtesse----"
+
+"Heh! What has she done?" asked the public prosecutor, looking
+alternately at the lady and the magistrate.
+
+"I have burned the record of the examinations," said the lady of
+fashion with a laugh, so pleased at her high-handed conduct that she
+did not yet feel the pain of the burns, "If that is a crime--well,
+monsieur must get his odious scrawl written out again."
+
+"Very true," said Camusot, trying to recover his dignity.
+
+"Well, well, 'All's well that ends well,'" said Monsieur de
+Granville. "But, my dear Countess, you must not often take such
+liberties with the Law; it might fail to discern who and what you
+are."
+
+"Monsieur Camusot valiantly resisted a woman whom none can resist; the
+Honor of the Robe is safe!" said the Comte de Bauvan, laughing.
+
+"Indeed! Monsieur Camusot was resisting?" said the public prosecutor,
+laughing too. "He is a brave man indeed; I should not dare resist the
+Countess."
+
+And thus for the moment this serious affair was no more than a pretty
+woman's jest, at which Camusot himself must laugh.
+
+But Monsieur de Granville saw one man who was not amused. Not a little
+alarmed by the Comte de Serizy's attitude and expression, his friend
+led him aside.
+
+"My dear fellow," said he in a whisper, "your distress persuades me
+for the first and only time in my life to compromise with my duty."
+
+The public prosecutor rang, and the office-boy appeared.
+
+"Desire Monsieur de Chargeboeuf to come here."
+
+Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, a sucking barrister, was his private
+secretary.
+
+"My good friend," said the Comte de Granville to Camusot, whom he took
+to the window, "go back to your chambers, get your clerk to
+reconstruct the report of the Abbe Carlos Herrera's depositions; as he
+had not signed the first copy, there will be no difficulty about that.
+To-morrow you must confront your Spanish diplomate with Rastignac and
+Bianchon, who will not recognize him as Jacques Collin. Then, being
+sure of his release, the man will sign the document.
+
+"As to Lucien de Rubempre, set him free this evening; he is not likely
+to talk about an examination of which the evidence is destroyed,
+especially after such a lecture as I shall give him.
+
+"Now you will see how little justice suffers by these proceedings. If
+the Spaniard really is the convict, we have fifty ways of recapturing
+him and committing him for trial--for we will have his conduct in
+Spain thoroughly investigated. Corentin, the police agent, will take
+care of him for us, and we ourselves will keep an eye on him. So treat
+him decently; do not send him down to the cells again.
+
+"Can we be the death of the Comte and Comtesse de Serizy, as well as
+of Lucien, for the theft of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs as
+yet unproven, and to Lucien's personal loss? Will it not be better for
+him to lose the money than to lose his character? Above all, if he is
+to drag with him in his fall a Minister of State, and his wife, and
+the Duchesse du Maufrigneuse.
+
+"This young man is a speckled orange; do not leave it to rot.
+
+"All this will take you about half an hour; go and get it done; we
+will wait for you. It is half-past three; you will find some judges
+about. Let me know if you can get a rule of insufficient evidence--or
+Lucien must wait till to-morrow morning."
+
+Camusot bowed to the company and went; but Madame de Serizy, who was
+suffering a good deal from her burns, did not return his bow.
+
+Monsieur de Serizy, who had suddenly rushed away while the public
+prosecutor and the magistrate were talking together, presently
+returned, having fetched a small jar of virgin wax. With this he
+dressed his wife's fingers, saying in an undertone:
+
+"Leontine, why did you come here without letting me know?"
+
+"My dear," replied she in a whisper, "forgive me. I seem mad, but
+indeed your interests were as much involved as mine."
+
+"Love this young fellow if fatality requires it, but do not display
+your passion to all the world," said the luckless husband.
+
+"Well, my dear Countess," said Monsieur de Granville, who had been
+engaged in conversation with Comte Octave, "I hope you may take
+Monsieur de Rubempre home to dine with you this evening."
+
+This half promise produced a reaction; Madame de Serizy melted into
+tears.
+
+"I thought I had no tears left," said she with a smile. "But could you
+not bring Monsieur de Rubempre to wait here?"
+
+"I will try if I can find the ushers to fetch him, so that he may not
+be seen under the escort of the gendarmes," said Monsieur de
+Granville.
+
+"You are as good as God!" cried she, with a gush of feeling that made
+her voice sound like heavenly music.
+
+"These are the women," said Comte Octave, "who are fascinating,
+irresistible!"
+
+And he became melancholy as he thought of his own wife. (See
+_Honorine_.)
+
+As he left the room, Monsieur de Granville was stopped by young
+Chargeboeuf, to whom he spoke to give him instructions as to what he
+was to say to Massol, one of the editors of the _Gazette des
+Tribunaux_.
+
+
+
+While beauties, ministers, and magistrates were conspiring to save
+Lucien, this was what he was doing at the Conciergerie. As he passed
+the gate the poet told the keeper that Monsieur Camusot had granted
+him leave to write, and he begged to have pens, ink, and paper. At a
+whispered word to the Governor from Camusot's usher a warder was
+instructed to take them to him at once. During the short time that it
+took for the warder to fetch these things and carry them up to Lucien,
+the hapless young man, to whom the idea of facing Jacques Collin had
+become intolerable, sank into one of those fatal moods in which the
+idea of suicide--to which he had yielded before now, but without
+succeeding in carrying it out--rises to the pitch of mania. According
+to certain mad-doctors, suicide is in some temperaments the closing
+phase of mental aberration; and since his arrest Lucien had been
+possessed by that single idea. Esther's letter, read and reread many
+times, increased the vehemence of his desire to die by reminding him
+of the catastrophe of Romeo dying to be with Juliet.
+
+This is what he wrote:--
+
+            "_This is my Last Will and Testament_.
+
+                       "AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830.
+
+  "I, the undersigned, give and bequeath to the children of my
+  sister, Madame Eve Chardon, wife of David Sechard, formerly a
+  printer at Angouleme, and of Monsieur David Sechard, all the
+  property, real and personal, of which I may be possessed at the
+  time of my decease, due deduction being made for the payments and
+  legacies, which I desire my executor to provide for.
+
+  "And I earnestly beg Monsieur de Serizy to undertake the charge of
+  being the executor of this my will.
+
+  "First, to Monsieur l'Abbe Carlos Herrera I direct the payment of
+  the sum of three hundred thousand francs. Secondly, to Monsieur le
+  Baron de Nucingen the sum of fourteen hundred thousand francs,
+  less seven hundred and fifty thousand if the sum stolen from
+  Mademoiselle Esther should be recovered.
+
+  "As universal legatee to Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, I give and
+  bequeath the sum of seven hundred and sixty thousand francs to the
+  Board of Asylums of Paris for the foundation of a refuge
+  especially dedicated to the use of public prostitutes who may wish
+  to forsake their life of vice and ruin.
+
+  "I also bequeath to the Asylums of Paris the sum of money
+  necessary for the purchase of a certificate for dividends to the
+  amount of thirty thousand francs per annum in five per cents, the
+  annual income to be devoted every six months to the release of
+  prisoners for debts not exceeding two thousand francs. The Board
+  of Asylums to select the most respectable of such persons
+  imprisoned for debt.
+
+  "I beg Monsieur de Serizy to devote the sum of forty thousand
+  francs to erecting a monument to Mademoiselle Esther in the
+  Eastern cemetery, and I desire to be buried by her side. The tomb
+  is to be like an antique tomb--square, our two effigies lying
+  thereon, in white marble, the heads on pillows, the hands folded
+  and raised to heaven. There is to be no inscription whatever.
+
+  "I beg Monsieur de Serizy to give to Monsieur de Rastignac a gold
+  toilet-set that is in my room as a remembrance.
+
+  "And as a remembrance, I beg my executor to accept my library of
+  books as a gift from me.
+
+                               "LUCIEN CHARDON DE RUBEMPRE."
+
+
+This Will was enclosed in a letter addressed to Monsieur le Comte de
+Granville, Public Prosecutor in the Supreme Court at Paris, as
+follows:
+
+  "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,--
+
+  "I place my Will in your hands. When you open this letter I shall
+  be no more. In my desire to be free, I made such cowardly replies
+  to Monsieur Camusot's insidious questions, that, in spite of my
+  innocence, I may find myself entangled in a disgraceful trial.
+  Even if I were acquitted, a blameless life would henceforth be
+  impossible to me in view of the opinions of the world.
+
+  "I beg you to transmit the enclosed letter to the Abbe Carlos
+  Herrera without opening it, and deliver to Monsieur Camusot the
+  formal retraction I also enclose.
+
+  "I suppose no one will dare to break the seal of a packet
+  addressed to you. In this belief I bid you adieu, offering you my
+  best respects for the last time, and begging you to believe that
+  in writing to you I am giving you a token of my gratitude for all
+  the kindness you have shown to your deceased humble servant,
+
+                                                   "LUCIEN DE R."
+
+
+  "_To the Abbe Carlos Herrera_.
+
+  "MY DEAR ABBE,--I have had only benefits from you, and I have
+  betrayed you. This involuntary ingratitude is killing me, and when
+  you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist. You are not
+  here now to save me.
+
+  "You had given me full liberty, if I should find it advantageous,
+  to destroy you by flinging you on the ground like a cigar-end; but
+  I have ruined you by a blunder. To escape from a difficulty,
+  deluded by a clever question from the examining judge, your son by
+  adoption and grace went over to the side of those who aim at
+  killing you at any cost, and insist on proving an identity, which
+  I know to be impossible, between you and a French villain. All is
+  said.
+
+  "Between a man of your calibre and me--me of whom you tried to
+  make a greater man than I am capable of being--no foolish
+  sentiment can come at the moment of final parting. You hoped to
+  make me powerful and famous, and you have thrown me into the gulf
+  of suicide, that is all. I have long heard the broad pinions of
+  that vertigo beating over my head.
+
+  "As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain and
+  the posterity of Abel. In the great human drama Cain is in
+  opposition. You are descended from Adam through that line, in
+  which the devil still fans the fire of which the first spark was
+  flung on Eve. Among the demons of that pedigree, from time to time
+  we see one of stupendous power, summing up every form of human
+  energy, and resembling the fevered beasts of the desert, whose
+  vitality demands the vast spaces they find there. Such men are as
+  dangerous as lions would be in the heart of Normandy; they must
+  have their prey, and they devour common men and crop the money of
+  fools. Their sport is so dangerous that at last they kill the
+  humble dog whom they have taken for a companion and made an idol
+  of.
+
+  "When it is God's will, these mysterious beings may be a Moses, an
+  Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but when He leaves a
+  generation of these stupendous tools to rust at the bottom of the
+  ocean, they are no more than a Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or
+  the Abbe Carlos Herrera. Gifted with immense power over tenderer
+  souls, they entrap them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine
+  --in its way. It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that
+  fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men
+  like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them. You
+  have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my share of
+  existence; so I may very well take my head out of the Gordian knot
+  of your policy and slip it into the running knot of my cravat.
+
+  "To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to the public
+  prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You will know how to
+  take advantage of this document.
+
+  "In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made,
+  Monsieur l'Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you
+  so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal
+  affection for me.
+
+  "And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
+  Corruption; farewell--to you who, if started on the right road,
+  might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You
+  have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on
+  the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the
+  enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the
+  waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy;
+  but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.
+
+  "Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as my
+  admiration.
+
+                                               "LUCIEN."
+
+
+                        "_Recantation_.
+
+  "I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I retract, without
+  reservation, all that I deposed at my examination to-day before
+  Monsieur Camusot.
+
+  "The Abbe Carlos Herrera always called himself my spiritual
+  father, and I was misled by the word father used in another sense
+  by the judge, no doubt under a misapprehension.
+
+  "I am aware that, for political ends, and to quash certain secrets
+  concerning the Cabinets of Spain and of the Tuileries, some
+  obscure diplomatic agents tried to show that the Abbe Carlos
+  Herrera was a forger named Jacques Collin; but the Abbe Carlos
+  Herrera never told me anything about the matter excepting that he
+  was doing his best to obtain evidence of the death or of the
+  continued existence of Jacques Collin.
+
+                                            "LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE.
+
+
+  "AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830."
+
+
+The fever for suicide had given Lucien immense clearness of mind, and
+the swiftness of hand familiar to authors in the fever of composition.
+The impetus was so strong within him that these four documents were
+all written within half an hour; he folded them in a wrapper, fastened
+with wafers, on which he impressed with the strength of delirium the
+coat-of-arms engraved on a seal-ring he wore, and he then laid the
+packet very conspicuously in the middle of the floor.
+
+Certainly it would have been impossible to conduct himself with
+greater dignity, in the false position to which all this infamy had
+led him; he was rescuing his memory from opprobrium, and repairing the
+injury done to his accomplice, so far as the wit of a man of the world
+could nullify the result of the poet's trustfulness.
+
+If Lucien had been taken back to one of the lower cells, he would have
+been wrecked on the impossibility of carrying out his intentions, for
+those boxes of masonry have no furniture but a sort of camp-bed and a
+pail for necessary uses. There is not a nail, not a chair, not even a
+stool. The camp-bed is so firmly fixed that it is impossible to move
+it without an amount of labor that the warder would not fail to
+detect, for the iron-barred peephole is always open. Indeed, if a
+prisoner under suspicion gives reason for uneasiness, he is watched by
+a gendarme or a constable.
+
+In the private rooms for which prisoners pay, and in that whither
+Lucien had been conveyed by the judge's courtesy to a young man
+belonging to the upper ranks of society, the movable bed, table, and
+chair might serve to carry out his purpose of suicide, though they
+hardly made it easy. Lucien wore a long blue silk necktie, and on his
+way back from examination he was already meditating on the means by
+which Pichegru, more or less voluntarily, ended his days. Still, to
+hang himself, a man must find a purchase, and have a sufficient space
+between it and the ground for his feet to find no support. Now the
+window of his room, looking out on the prison-yard, had no handle to
+the fastening; and the bars, being fixed outside, were divided from
+his reach by the thickness of the wall, and could not be used for a
+support.
+
+This, then, was the plan hit upon by Lucien to put himself out of the
+world. The boarding of the lower part of the opening, which prevented
+his seeing out into the yard, also hindered the warders outside from
+seeing what was done in the room; but while the lower portion of the
+window was replaced by two thick planks, the upper part of both halves
+still was filled with small panes, held in place by the cross pieces
+in which they were set. By standing on his table Lucien could reach
+the glazed part of the window, and take or break out two panes, so as
+to have a firm point of attachment in the angle of the lower bar.
+Round this he would tie his cravat, turn round once to tighten it
+round his neck after securing it firmly, and kick the table from under
+his feet.
+
+He drew the table up under the window without making any noise, took
+off his coat and waistcoat, and got on the table unhesitatingly to
+break a pane above and one below the iron cross-bar. Standing on the
+table, he could look out across the yard on a magical view, which he
+then beheld for the first time. The Governor of the prison, in
+deference to Monsieur Camusot's request that he should deal as
+leniently as possible with Lucien, had led him, as we have seen,
+through the dark passages of the Conciergerie, entered from the dark
+vault opposite the Tour d'Argent, thus avoiding the exhibition of a
+young man of fashion to the crowd of prisoners airing themselves in
+the yard. It will be for the reader to judge whether the aspect of the
+promenade was not such as to appeal deeply to a poet's soul.
+
+The yard of the Conciergerie ends at the quai between the Tour
+d'Argent and the Tour Bonbec; thus the distance between them exactly
+shows from the outside the width of the plot of ground. The corridor
+called the Galerie de Saint-Louis, which extends from the Galerie
+Marchande to the Courts of Appeals and the Tour Bonbec--in which, it
+is said, Saint-Louis' room still exists--may enable the curious to
+estimate the depths of the yard, as it is of the same length. Thus the
+dark cells and the private rooms are under the Galerie Marchande. And
+Queen Marie Antoinette, whose dungeon was under the present cells, was
+conducted to the presence of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which held
+its sittings in the place where the Court of Appeals now performs its
+solemn functions, up a horrible flight of steps, now never used, in
+the very thickness of the wall on which the Galerie Marchande is
+built.
+
+One side of the prison-yard--that on which the Hall of Saint-Louis
+forms the first floor--displays a long row of Gothic columns, between
+which the architects of I know not what period have built up two
+floors of cells to accommodate as many prisoners as possible, by
+choking the capitals, the arches, and the vaults of this magnificent
+cloister with plaster, barred loopholes, and partitions. Under the
+room known as the Cabinet de Saint-Louis, in the Tour Bonbec, there is
+a spiral stair leading to these dens. This degradation of one of the
+immemorial buildings of France is hideous to behold.
+
+From the height at which Lucien was standing he saw this cloister, and
+the details of the building that joins the two towers, in sharp
+perspective; before him were the pointed caps of the towers. He stood
+amazed; his suicide was postponed to his admiration. The phenomena of
+hallucination are in these days so fully recognized by the medical
+faculty that this mirage of the senses, this strange illusion of the
+mind is beyond dispute. A man under the stress of a feeling which by
+its intensity has become a monomania, often finds himself in the frame
+of mind to which opium, hasheesh, or the protoxyde of azote might have
+brought him. Spectres appear, phantoms and dreams take shape, things
+of the past live again as they once were. What was but an image of the
+brain becomes a moving or a living object. Science is now beginning to
+believe that under the action of a paroxysm of passion the blood
+rushes to the brain, and that such congestion has the terrible effects
+of a dream in a waking state, so averse are we to regard thought as a
+physical and generative force. (See _Louis Lambert_.)
+
+Lucien saw the building in all its pristine beauty; the columns were
+new, slender and bright; Saint-Louis' Palace rose before him as it had
+once appeared; he admired its Babylonian proportions and Oriental
+fancy. He took this exquisite vision as a poetic farewell from
+civilized creation. While making his arrangements to die, he wondered
+how this marvel of architecture could exist in Paris so utterly
+unknown. He was two Luciens--one Lucien the poet, wandering through
+the Middle Ages under the vaults and the turrets of Saint-Louis, the
+other Lucien ready for suicide.
+
+
+
+Just as Monsieur de Granville had ended giving his instructions to the
+young secretary, the Governor of the Conciergerie came in, and the
+expression of his face was such as to give the public prosecutor a
+presentiment of disaster.
+
+"Have you met Monsieur Camusot?" he asked.
+
+"No, monsieur," said the Governor; "his clerk Coquart instructed me to
+give the Abbe Carlos a private room and to liberate Monsieur de
+Rubempre--but it is too late."
+
+"Good God! what has happened?"
+
+"Here, monsieur, is a letter for you which will explain the
+catastrophe. The warder on duty in the prison-yard heard a noise of
+breaking glass in the upper room, and Monsieur Lucien's next neighbor
+shrieking wildly, for he heard the young man's dying struggles. The
+warder came to me pale from the sight that met his eyes. He found the
+prisoner hanged from the window bar by his necktie."
+
+Though the Governor spoke in a low voice, a fearful scream from Madame
+de Serizy showed that under stress of feeling our faculties are
+incalculably keen. The Countess heard, or guessed. Before Monsieur de
+Granville could turn round, or Monsieur de Bauvan or her husband could
+stop her, she fled like a flash out of the door, and reached the
+Galerie Marchande, where she ran on to the stairs leading out to the
+Rue de la Barillerie.
+
+A pleader was taking off his gown at the door of one of the shops
+which from time immemorial have choked up this arcade, where shoes are
+sold, and gowns and caps kept for hire.
+
+The Countess asked the way to the Conciergerie.
+
+"Go down the steps and turn to the left. The entrance is from the Quai
+de l'Horloge, the first archway."
+
+"That woman is crazy," said the shop-woman; "some one ought to follow
+her."
+
+But no one could have kept up with Leontine; she flew.
+
+A physician may explain how it is that these ladies of fashion, whose
+strength never finds employment, reveal such powers in the critical
+moments of life.
+
+The Countess rushed so swiftly through the archway to the wicket-gate
+that the gendarme on sentry did not see her pass. She flew at the
+barred gate like a feather driven by the wind, and shook the iron bars
+with such fury that she broke the one she grasped. The bent ends were
+thrust into her breast, making the blood flow, and she dropped on the
+ground, shrieking, "Open it, open it!" in a tone that struck terror
+into the warders.
+
+The gatekeepers hurried out.
+
+"Open the gate--the public prosecutor sent me--to save the dead
+man!----"
+
+While the Countess was going round by the Rue de la Barillerie and the
+Quai de l'Horloge, Monsieur de Granville and Monsieur de Serizy went
+down to the Conciergerie through the inner passages, suspecting
+Leontine's purpose; but notwithstanding their haste, they only arrived
+in time to see her fall fainting at the outer gate, where she was
+picked up by two gendarmes who had come down from the guardroom.
+
+On seeing the Governor of the prison, the gate was opened, and the
+Countess was carried into the office, but she stood up and fell on her
+knees, clasping her hands.
+
+"Only to see him--to see him! Oh! I will do no wrong! But if you do
+not want to see me die on the spot, let me look at Lucien dead or
+living.--Ah, my dear, are you here? Choose between my death and----"
+
+She sank in a heap.
+
+"You are kind," she said; "I will always love you----"
+
+"Carry her away," said Monsieur de Bauvan.
+
+"No, we will go to Lucien's cell," said Monsieur de Granville, reading
+a purpose in Monsieur de Serizy's wild looks.
+
+And he lifted up the Countess, and took her under one arm, while
+Monsieur de Bauvan supported her on the other side.
+
+"Monsieur," said the Comte de Serizy to the Governor, "silence as of
+the grave about all this."
+
+"Be easy," replied the Governor; "you have done the wisest thing.--If
+this lady----"
+
+"She is my wife."
+
+"Oh! I beg your pardon. Well, she will certainly faint away when she
+sees the poor man, and while she is unconscious she can be taken home
+in a carriage.
+
+"That is what I thought," replied the Count. "Pray send one of your
+men to tell my servants in the Cour de Harlay to come round to the
+gate. Mine is the only carriage there."
+
+"We can save him yet," said the Countess, walking on with a degree of
+strength and spirit that surprised her friends. "There are ways of
+restoring life----"
+
+And she dragged the gentlemen along, crying to the warder:
+
+"Come on, come faster--one second may cost three lives!"
+
+When the cell door was opened, and the Countess saw Lucien hanging as
+though his clothes had been hung on a peg, she made a spring towards
+him as if to embrace him and cling to him; but she fell on her face on
+the floor with smothered shrieks and a sort of rattle in her throat.
+
+Five minutes later she was being taken home stretched on the seat in
+the Count's carriage, her husband kneeling by her side. Monsieur de
+Bauvan went off to fetch a doctor to give her the care she needed.
+
+The Governor of the Conciergerie meanwhile was examining the outer
+gate, and saying to his clerk:
+
+"No expense was spared; the bars are of wrought iron, they were
+properly tested, and cost a large sum; and yet there was a flaw in
+that bar."
+
+Monsieur de Granville on returning to his room had other instructions
+to give to his private secretary. Massol, happily had not yet arrived.
+
+Soon after Monsieur de Granville had left, anxious to go to see
+Monsieur de Serizy, Massol came and found his ally Chargeboeuf in the
+public prosecutor's Court.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the young secretary, "if you will do me a great
+favor, you will put what I dictate to you in your _Gazette_ to-morrow
+under the heading of Law Reports; you can compose the heading. Write
+now."
+
+And he dictated as follows:--
+
+  "It has been ascertained that the Demoiselle Esther Gobseck killed
+  herself of her own free will.
+
+  "Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre satisfactorily proved an alibi, and
+  his innocence leaves his arrest to be regretted, all the more
+  because just as the examining judge had given the order for his
+  release the young gentleman died suddenly."
+
+"I need not point out to you," said the young lawyer to Massol, "how
+necessary it is to preserve absolute silence as to the little service
+requested of you."
+
+"Since it is you who do me the honor of so much confidence," replied
+Massol, "allow me to make one observation. This paragraph will give
+rise to odious comments on the course of justice----"
+
+"Justice is strong enough to bear them," said the young attache to the
+Courts, with the pride of a coming magistrate trained by Monsieur de
+Granville.
+
+"Allow me, my dear sir; with two sentences this difficulty may be
+avoided."
+
+And the journalist-lawyer wrote as follows:--
+
+  "The forms of the law have nothing to do with this sad event. The
+  post-mortem examination, which was at once made, proved that
+  sudden death was due to the rupture of an aneurism in its last
+  stage. If Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had been upset by his
+  arrest, death must have ensued sooner. But we are in a position to
+  state that, far from being distressed at being taken into custody,
+  the young man, whom all must lament, only laughed at it, and told
+  those who escorted him from Fontainebleau to Paris that as soon as
+  he was brought before a magistrate his innocence would be
+  acknowledged."
+
+"That saves it, I think?" said Massol.
+
+"You are perfectly right."
+
+"The public prosecutor will thank you for it to-morrow," said Massol
+slyly.
+
+Now to the great majority, as to the more choice reader, it will
+perhaps seem that this Study is not completed by the death of Esther
+and of Lucien; Jacques Collin and Asie, Europe and Paccard, in spite
+of their villainous lives, may have been interesting enough to make
+their fate a matter of curiosity.
+
+The last act of the drama will also complete the picture of life which
+this Study is intended to present, and give the issue of various
+interests which Lucien's career had strangely tangled by bringing some
+ignoble personages from the hulks into contact with those of the
+highest rank.
+
+Thus, as may be seen, the greatest events of life find their
+expression in the more or less veracious gossip of the Paris papers.
+And this is the case with many things of greater importance than are
+here recorded.
+
+
+
+                        VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR
+
+"What is it, Madeleine?" asked Madame Camusot, seeing her maid come
+into the room with the particular air that servants assume in critical
+moments.
+
+"Madame," said Madeleine, "monsieur has just come in from Court; but
+he looks so upset, and is in such a state, that I think perhaps it
+would be well for you to go to his room."
+
+"Did he say anything?" asked Madame Camusot.
+
+"No, madame; but we never have seen monsieur look like that; he looks
+as if he were going to be ill, his face is yellow--he seems all to
+pieces----"
+
+Madame Camusot waited for no more; she rushed out of her room and flew
+to her husband's study. She found the lawyer sitting in an armchair,
+pale and dazed, his legs stretched out, his head against the back of
+it, his hands hanging limp, exactly as if he were sinking into
+idiotcy.
+
+"What is the matter, my dear?" said the young woman in alarm.
+
+"Oh! my poor Amelie, the most dreadful thing has happened--I am still
+trembling. Imagine, the public prosecutor--no, Madame de Serizy--that
+is--I do not know where to begin."
+
+"Begin at the end," said Madame Camusot.
+
+"Well, just as Monsieur Popinot, in the council room of the first
+Court, had put the last signature to the ruling of 'insufficient
+cause' for the apprehension of Lucien de Rubempre on the ground of my
+report, setting him at liberty--in fact, the whole thing was done, the
+clerk was going off with the minute book, and I was quit of the whole
+business--the President of the Court came in and took up the papers.
+'You are releasing a dead man,' said he, with chilly irony; 'the young
+man is gone, as Monsieur de Bonald says, to appear before his natural
+Judge. He died of apoplexy----'
+
+"I breathed again, thinking it was sudden illness.
+
+"'As I understand you, Monsieur le President,' said Monsieur Popinot,
+'it is a case of apoplexy like Pichegru's.'
+
+"'Gentlemen,' said the President then, very gravely, 'you must please
+to understand that for the outside world Lucien de Rubempre died of an
+aneurism.'
+
+"We all looked at each other. 'Very great people are concerned in this
+deplorable business,' said the President. 'God grant for your sake,
+Monsieur Camusot, though you did no less than your duty, that Madame
+de Serizy may not go mad from the shock she has had. She was carried
+away almost dead. I have just met our public prosecutor in a painful
+state of despair.'--'You have made a mess of it, my dear Camusot,' he
+added in my ear.--I assure you, my dear, as I came away I could hardly
+stand. My legs shook so that I dared not venture into the street. I
+went back to my room to rest. Then Coquart, who was putting away the
+papers of this wretched case, told me that a very handsome woman had
+taken the Conciergerie by storm, wanting to save Lucien, whom she was
+quite crazy about, and that she fainted away on seeing him hanging by
+his necktie to the window-bar of his room. The idea that the way in
+which I questioned that unhappy young fellow--who, between ourselves,
+was guilty in many ways--can have led to his committing suicide has
+haunted me ever since I left the Palais, and I feel constantly on the
+point of fainting----"
+
+"What next? Are you going to think yourself a murderer because a
+suspected criminal hangs himself in prison just as you were about to
+release him?" cried Madame Camusot. "Why, an examining judge in such a
+case is like a general whose horse is killed under him!--That is all."
+
+"Such a comparison, my dear, is at best but a jest, and jesting is out
+of place now. In this case the dead man clutches the living. All our
+hopes are buried in Lucien's coffin."
+
+"Indeed?" said Madame Camusot, with deep irony.
+
+"Yes, my career is closed. I shall be no more than an examining judge
+all my life. Before this fatal termination Monsieur de Granville was
+annoyed at the turn the preliminaries had taken; his speech to our
+President makes me quite certain that so long as Monsieur de Granville
+is public prosecutor I shall get no promotion."
+
+Promotion! The terrible thought, which in these days makes a judge a
+mere functionary.
+
+Formerly a magistrate was made at once what he was to remain. The
+three or four presidents' caps satisfied the ambitions of lawyers in
+each Parlement. An appointment as councillor was enough for a de
+Brosses or a Mole, at Dijon as much as in Paris. This office, in
+itself a fortune, required a fortune brought to it to keep it up.
+
+In Paris, outside the Parlement, men of the long robe could hope only
+for three supreme appointments: those of Controller-General, Keeper of
+the Seals, or Chancellor. Below the Parlement, in the lower grades,
+the president of a lower Court thought himself quite of sufficient
+importance to be content to fill his chair to the end of his days.
+
+Compare the position of a councillor in the High Court of Justice in
+Paris, in 1829, who has nothing but his salary, with that of a
+councillor to the Parlement in 1729. How great is the difference! In
+these days, when money is the universal social guarantee, magistrates
+are not required to have--as they used to have--fine private fortunes:
+hence we see deputies and peers of France heaping office on office, at
+once magistrates and legislators, borrowing dignity from other
+positions than those which ought to give them all their importance.
+
+In short, a magistrate tries to distinguish himself for promotion as
+men do in the army, or in a Government office.
+
+This prevailing thought, even if it does not affect his independence,
+is so well known and so natural, and its effects are so evident, that
+the law inevitably loses some of its majesty in the eyes of the
+public. And, in fact, the salaries paid by the State makes priests and
+magistrates mere _employes_. Steps to be gained foster ambition,
+ambition engenders subservience to power, and modern equality places
+the judge and the person to be judged in the same category at the bar
+of society. And so the two pillars of social order, Religion and
+Justice, are lowered in this nineteenth century, which asserts itself
+as progressive in all things.
+
+"And why should you never be promoted?" said Amelie Camusot.
+
+She looked half-jestingly at her husband, feeling the necessity of
+reviving the energies of the man who embodied her ambitions, and on
+whom she could play as on an instrument.
+
+"Why despair?" she went on, with a shrug that sufficiently expressed
+her indifference as to the prisoner's end. "This suicide will delight
+Lucien's two enemies, Madame d'Espard and her cousin, the Comtesse du
+Chatelet. Madame d'Espard is on the best terms with the Keeper of the
+Seals; through her you can get an audience of His Excellency and tell
+him all the secrets of this business. Then, if the head of the law is
+on your side, what have you to fear from the president of your Court
+or the public prosecutor?"
+
+"But, Monsieur and Madame de Serizy?" cried the poor man. "Madame de
+Serizy is gone mad, I tell you, and her madness is my doing, they
+say."
+
+"Well, if she is out of her mind, O judge devoid of judgment," said
+Madame Camusot, laughing, "she can do you no harm.--Come, tell me all
+the incidents of the day."
+
+"Bless me!" said Camusot, "just as I had cross-questioned the unhappy
+youth, and he had deposed that the self-styled Spanish priest is
+really Jacques Collin, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de
+Serizy sent me a note by a servant begging me not to examine him. It
+was all over!----"
+
+"But you must have lost your head!" said Amelie. "What was to prevent
+you, being so sure as you are of your clerk's fidelity, from calling
+Lucien back, reassuring him cleverly, and revising the examination?"
+
+"Why, you are as bad as Madame de Serizy; you laugh justice to scorn,"
+said Camusot, who was incapable of flouting his profession. "Madame de
+Serizy seized the minutes and threw them into the fire."
+
+"That is the right sort of woman! Bravo!" cried Madame Camusot.
+
+"Madame de Serizy declared she would sooner see the Palais blown up
+than leave a young man who had enjoyed the favors of the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse and her own to stand at the bar of a Criminal court by
+the side of a convict!"
+
+"But, Camusot," said Amelie, unable to suppress a superior smile,
+"your position is splendid----"
+
+"Ah! yes, splendid!"
+
+"You did your duty."
+
+"But all wrong; and in spite of the jesuitical advice of Monsieur de
+Granville, who met me on the Quai Malaquais."
+
+"This morning!"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"At what hour?"
+
+"At nine o'clock."
+
+"Oh, Camusot!" cried Amelie, clasping and wringing her hands, "and I
+am always imploring you to be constantly on the alert.--Good heavens!
+it is not a man, but a barrow-load of stones that I have to drag on!
+--Why, Camusot, your public prosecutor was waiting for you.--He must
+have given you some warning."
+
+"Yes, indeed----"
+
+"And you failed to understand him! If you are so deaf, you will indeed
+be an examining judge all your life without any knowledge whatever of
+the question.--At any rate, have sense enough to listen to me," she
+went on, silencing her husband, who was about to speak. "You think the
+matter is done for?" she asked.
+
+Camusot looked at his wife as a country bumpkin looks at a conjurer.
+
+"If the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy are compromised,
+you will find them both ready to patronize you," said Amelie. "Madame
+de Serizy will get you admission to the Keeper of the Seals, and you
+will tell him the secret history of the affair; then he will amuse the
+King with the story, for sovereigns always wish to see the wrong side
+of the tapestry and to know the real meaning of the events the public
+stare at open-mouthed. Henceforth there will be no cause to fear
+either the public prosecutor or Monsieur de Serizy."
+
+"What a treasure such a wife is!" cried the lawyer, plucking up
+courage. "After all, I have unearthed Jacques Collin; I shall send him
+to his account at the Assize Court and unmask his crimes. Such a trial
+is a triumph in the career of an examining judge!"
+
+"Camusot," Amelie began, pleased to see her husband rally from the
+moral and physical prostration into which he had been thrown by
+Lucien's suicide, "the President told you that you had blundered to
+the wrong side. Now you are blundering as much to the other--you are
+losing your way again, my dear."
+
+The magistrate stood up, looking at his wife with a stupid stare.
+
+"The King and the Keeper of the Seals will be glad, no doubt, to know
+the truth of this business, and at the same time much annoyed at
+seeing the lawyers on the Liberal side dragging important persons to
+the bar of opinion and of the Assize Court by their special pleading
+--such people as the Maufrigneuses, the Serizys, and the Grandlieus,
+in short, all who are directly or indirectly mixed up with this case."
+
+"They are all in it; I have them all!" cried Camusot.
+
+And Camusot walked up and down the room like Sganarelle on the stage
+when he is trying to get out of a scrape.
+
+"Listen, Amelie," said he, standing in front of his wife. "An incident
+recurs to my mind, a trifle in itself, but, in my position, of vital
+importance.
+
+"Realize, my dear, that this Jacques Collin is a giant of cunning, of
+dissimulation, of deceit.--He is--what shall I say?--the Cromwell of
+the hulks!--I never met such a scoundrel; he almost took me in.--But
+in examining a criminal, a little end of thread leads you to find a
+ball, is a clue to the investigation of the darkest consciences and
+obscurest facts.--When Jacques Collin saw me turning over the letters
+seized in Lucien de Rubempre's lodgings, the villain glanced at them
+with the evident intention of seeing whether some particular packet
+were among them, and he allowed himself to give a visible expression
+of satisfaction. This look, as of a thief valuing his booty, this
+movement, as of a man in danger saying to himself, 'My weapons are
+safe,' betrayed a world of things.
+
+"Only you women, besides us and our examinees, can in a single flash
+epitomize a whole scene, revealing trickery as complicated as
+safety-locks. Volumes of suspicion may thus be communicated in a
+second. It is terrifying--life or death lies in a wink.
+
+"Said I to myself, 'The rascal has more letters in his hands than
+these!'--Then the other details of the case filled my mind; I
+overlooked the incident, for I thought I should have my men face to
+face, and clear up this point afterwards. But it may be considered as
+quite certain that Jacques Collin, after the fashion of such wretches,
+has hidden in some safe place the most compromising of the young
+fellow's letters, adored as he was by----"
+
+"And yet you are afraid, Camusot? Why, you will be President of the
+Supreme Court much sooner than I expected!" cried Madame Camusot, her
+face beaming. "Now, then, you must proceed so as to give satisfaction
+to everybody, for the matter is looking so serious that it might quite
+possibly be snatched from us.--Did they not take the proceedings out
+of Popinot's hands to place them in yours when Madame d'Espard tried
+to get a Commission in Lunacy to incapacitate her husband?" she added,
+in reply to her husband's gesture of astonishment. "Well, then, might
+not the public prosecutor, who takes such keen interest in the honor
+of Monsieur and Madame de Serizy, carry the case to the Upper Court
+and get a councillor in his interest to open a fresh inquiry?"
+
+"Bless me, my dear, where did you study criminal law?" cried Camusot.
+"You know everything; you can give me points."
+
+"Why, do you believe that, by to-morrow morning, Monsieur de Granville
+will not have taken fright at the possible line of defence that might
+be adopted by some liberal advocate whom Jacques Collin would manage
+to secure; for lawyers will be ready to pay him to place the case in
+their hands!--And those ladies know their danger quite as well as you
+do--not to say better; they will put themselves under the protection
+of the public prosecutor, who already sees their families unpleasantly
+close to the prisoner's bench, as a consequence of the coalition
+between this convict and Lucien de Rubempre, betrothed to Mademoiselle
+de Grandlieu--Lucien, Esther's lover, Madame de Maufrigneuse's former
+lover, Madame de Serizy's darling. So you must conduct the affair in
+such a way as to conciliate the favor of your public prosecutor, the
+gratitude of Monsieur de Serizy, and that of the Marquise d'Espard and
+the Comtesse du Chatelet, to reinforce Madame de Maufrigneuse's
+influence by that of the Grandlieus, and to gain the complimentary
+approval of your President.
+
+"I will undertake to deal with the ladies--d'Espard, de Maufrigneuse,
+and de Grandlieu.
+
+"You must go to-morrow morning to see the public prosecutor. Monsieur
+de Granville is a man who does not live with his wife; for ten years
+he had for his mistress a Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, who bore him
+illegitimate children--didn't she? Well, such a magistrate is no
+saint; he is a man like any other; he can be won over; he must give a
+hold somewhere; you must discover the weak spot and flatter him; ask
+his advice, point out the dangers of attending the case; in short, try
+to get him into the same boat, and you will be----"
+
+"I ought to kiss your footprints!" exclaimed Camusot, interrupting his
+wife, putting his arm round her, and pressing her to his heart.
+"Amelie, you have saved me!"
+
+"I brought you in tow from Alencon to Mantes, and from Mantes to the
+Metropolitan Court," replied Amelie. "Well, well, be quite easy!--I
+intend to be called Madame la Presidente within five years' time. But,
+my dear, pray always think over everything a long time before you come
+to any determination. A judge's business is not that of a fireman;
+your papers are never in a blaze, you have plenty of time to think; so
+in your place blunders are inexcusable."
+
+"The whole strength of my position lies in identifying the sham
+Spanish priest with Jacques Collin," the judge said, after a long
+pause. "When once that identity is established, even if the Bench
+should take the credit of the whole affair, that will still be an
+ascertained fact which no magistrate, judge, or councillor can get rid
+of. I shall do like the boys who tie a tin kettle to a cat's tail; the
+inquiry, whoever carries it on, will make Jacques Collin's tin kettle
+clank."
+
+"Bravo!" said Amelie.
+
+"And the public prosecutor would rather come to an understanding with
+me than with any one else, since I am the only man who can remove the
+Damocles' sword that hangs over the heart of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain.
+
+"Only you have no idea how hard it will be to achieve that magnificent
+result. Just now, when I was with Monsieur de Granville in his private
+office, we agreed, he and I, to take Jacques Collin at his own
+valuation--a canon of the Chapter of Toledo, Carlos Herrera. We
+consented to recognize his position as a diplomatic envoy, and allow
+him to be claimed by the Spanish Embassy. It was in consequence of
+this plan that I made out the papers by which Lucien de Rubempre was
+released, and revised the minutes of the examinations, washing the
+prisoners as white as snow.
+
+"To-morrow, Rastignac, Bianchon, and some others are to be confronted
+with the self-styled Canon of Toledo; they will not recognize him as
+Jacques Collin who was arrested in their presence ten years ago in a
+cheap boarding-house, where they knew him under the name of Vautrin."
+
+There was a short silence, while Madame Camusot sat thinking.
+
+"Are you sure your man is Jacques Collin?" she asked.
+
+"Positive," said the lawyer, "and so is the public prosecutor."
+
+"Well, then, try to make some exposure at the Palais de Justice
+without showing your claws too much under your furred cat's paws. If
+your man is still in the secret cells, go straight to the Governor of
+the Conciergerie and contrive to have the convict publicly identified.
+Instead of behaving like a child, act like the ministers of police
+under despotic governments, who invent conspiracies against the
+monarch to have the credit of discovering them and making themselves
+indispensable. Put three families in danger to have the glory of
+rescuing them."
+
+"That luckily reminds me!" cried Camusot. "My brain is so bewildered
+that I had quite forgotten an important point. The instructions to
+place Jacques Collin in a private room were taken by Coquart to
+Monsieur Gault, the Governor of the prison. Now, Bibi-Lupin, Jacques
+Collin's great enemy, has taken steps to have three criminals, who
+know the man, transferred from La Force to the Conciergerie; if he
+appears in the prison-yard to-morrow, a terrific scene is
+expected----"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Jacques Collin, my dear, was treasurer of the money owned by the
+prisoners in the hulks, amounting to considerable sums; now, he is
+supposed to have spent it all to maintain the deceased Lucien in
+luxury, and he will be called to account. There will be such a battle,
+Bibi-Lupin tells me, as will require the intervention of the warders,
+and the secret will be out. Jacques Collin's life is in danger.
+
+"Now, if I get to the Palais early enough I may record the evidence of
+identity."
+
+"Oh, if only his creditors should take him off your hands! You would
+be thought such a clever fellow!--Do not go to Monsieur de Granville's
+room; wait for him in his Court with that formidable great gun. It is
+a loaded cannon turned on the three most important families of the
+Court and Peerage. Be bold: propose to Monsieur de Granville that he
+should relieve you of Jacques Collin by transferring him to La Force,
+where the convicts know how to deal with those who betray them.
+
+"I will go to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who will take me to the
+Grandlieus. Possibly I may see Monsieur de Serizy. Trust me to sound
+the alarm everywhere. Above all, send me a word we will agree upon to
+let me know if the Spanish priest is officially recognized as Jacques
+Collin. Get your business at the Palais over by two o'clock, and I
+will have arranged for you to have an interview with the Keeper of the
+Seals; perhaps I may find him with the Marquise d'Espard."
+
+Camusot stood squarely with a look of admiration that made his knowing
+wife smile.
+
+"Now, come to dinner and be cheerful," said she in conclusion. "Why,
+you see! We have been only two years in Paris, and here you are on the
+highroad to be made Councillor before the end of the year. From that
+to the Presidency of a court, my dear, there is no gulf but what some
+political service may bridge."
+
+This conjugal sitting shows how greatly the deeds and the lightest
+words of Jacques Collin, the lowest personage in this drama, involved
+the honor of the families among whom he had planted his now dead
+protege.
+
+
+
+At the Conciergerie Lucien's death and Madame de Serizy's incursion
+had produced such a block in the wheels of the machinery that the
+Governor had forgotten to remove the sham priest from his
+dungeon-cell.
+
+Though more than one instance is on record of the death of a prisoner
+during his preliminary examination, it was a sufficiently rare event
+to disturb the warders, the clerk, and the Governor, and hinder their
+working with their usual serenity. At the same time, to them the
+important fact was not the handsome young fellow so suddenly become a
+corpse, but the breakage of the wrought-iron bar of the outer prison
+gate by the frail hands of a fine lady. And indeed, as soon as the
+public prosecutor and Comte Octave de Bauvan had gone off with
+Monsieur de Serizy and his unconscious wife, the Governor, clerk, and
+turnkeys gathered round the gate, after letting out Monsieur Lebrun,
+the prison doctor, who had been called in to certify to Lucien's
+death, in concert with the "death doctor" of the district in which the
+unfortunate youth had been lodging.
+
+In Paris, the "death doctor" is the medical officer whose duty it is
+in each district to register deaths and certify to their causes.
+
+With the rapid insight for which he was known, Monsieur de Granville
+had judged it necessary, for the honor of the families concerned, to
+have the certificate of Lucien's death deposited at the Mairie of the
+district in which the Quai Malaquais lies, as the deceased had resided
+there, and to have the body carried from his lodgings to the Church of
+Saint-Germain des Pres, where the service was to be held. Monsieur de
+Chargeboeuf, Monsieur de Granville's private secretary, had orders to
+this effect. The body was to be transferred from the prison during the
+night. The secretary was desired to go at once and settle matters at
+the Mairie with the parish authorities and with the official
+undertakers. Thus, to the world in general, Lucien would have died at
+liberty in his own lodgings, the funeral would start from thence, and
+his friends would be invited there for the ceremony.
+
+So, when Camusot, his mind at ease, was sitting down to dinner with
+his ambitious better-half, the Governor of the Conciergerie and
+Monsieur Lebrun, the prison doctor, were standing outside the gate
+bewailing the fragility of iron bars and the strength of ladies in
+love.
+
+"No one knows," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "what an amount of
+nervous force there is in a man wound up to the highest pitch of
+passion. Dynamics and mathematics have no formulas or symbols to
+express that power. Why, only yesterday, I witnessed an experiment
+which gave me a shudder, and which accounts for the terrible strength
+put forth just now by that little woman."
+
+"Tell me about it," said Monsieur Gault, "for I am so foolish as to
+take an interest in magnetism; I do not believe in it, but it
+mystifies me."
+
+"A physician who magnetizes--for there are men among us who believe in
+magnetism," Lebrun went on, "offered to experiment on me in proof of a
+phenomenon that he described and I doubted. Curious to see with my own
+eyes one of the strange states of nervous tension by which the
+existence of magnetism is demonstrated, I consented.
+
+"These are the facts.--I should very much like to know what our
+College of Medicine would say if each of its members in turn were
+subjected to this influence, which leaves no loophole for incredulity.
+
+"My old friend--this doctor," said Doctor Lebrun parenthetically, "is
+an old man persecuted for his opinions since Mesmer's time by all the
+faculty; he is seventy or seventy-two years of age, and his name is
+Bouvard. At the present day he is the patriarchal representative of
+the theory of animal magnetism. This good man regards me as a son; I
+owe my training to him.--Well, this worthy old Bouvard it was who
+proposed to prove to me that nerve-force put in motion by the
+magnetizer was, not indeed infinite, for man is under immutable laws,
+but a power acting like other powers of nature whose elemental essence
+escapes our observation.
+
+"'For instance,' said he, 'if you place your hand in that of a
+somnambulist who, when awake, can press it only up to a certain
+average of tightness, you will see that in the somnambulistic state
+--as it is stupidly termed--his fingers can clutch like a vise screwed
+up by a blacksmith.'--Well, monsieur, I placed my hand in that of a
+woman, not asleep, for Bouvard rejects the word, but isolated, and
+when the old man bid her squeeze my wrist as long and as tightly as
+she could, I begged him to stop when the blood was almost bursting
+from my finger tips. Look, you can see the marks of her clutch, which
+I shall not lose for these three months."
+
+"The deuce!" exclaimed Monsieur Gault, as he saw a band of bruised
+flesh, looking like the scar of a burn.
+
+"My dear Gault," the doctor went on, "if my wrist had been gripped in
+an iron manacle screwed tight by a locksmith, I should not have felt
+the bracelet of metal so hard as that woman's fingers; her hand was of
+unyielding steel, and I am convinced that she could have crushed my
+bones and broken my hand from the wrist. The pressure, beginning
+almost insensibly, increased without relaxing, fresh force being
+constantly added to the former grip; a tourniquet could not have been
+more effectual than that hand used as an instrument of torture.--To
+me, therefore, it seems proven that under the influence of passion,
+which is the will concentrated on one point and raised to an
+incalculable power of animal force, as the different varieties of
+electric force are also, man may direct his whole vitality, whether
+for attack or resistance, to one of his organs.--Now, this little
+lady, under the stress of her despair, had concentrated her vital
+force in her hands."
+
+"She must have a good deal too, to break a wrought-iron bar," said the
+chief warder, with a shake of the head.
+
+"There was a flaw in it," Monsieur Gault observed.
+
+"For my part," said the doctor, "I dare assign no limits to nervous
+force. And indeed it is by this that mothers, to save their children,
+can magnetize lions, climb, in a fire, along a parapet where a cat
+would not venture, and endure the torments that sometimes attend
+childbirth. In this lies the secret of the attempts made by convicts
+and prisoners to regain their liberty. The extent of our vital
+energies is as yet unknown; they are part of the energy of nature
+itself, and we draw them from unknown reservoirs."
+
+"Monsieur," said the warder in an undertone to the Governor, coming
+close to him as he was escorting Doctor Lebrun as far as the outer
+gates of the Conciergerie, "Number 2 in the secret cells says he is
+ill, and needs the doctor; he declares he is dying," added the
+turnkey.
+
+"Indeed," said the Governor.
+
+"His breath rattles in his throat," replied the man.
+
+"It is five o'clock," said the doctor; "I have had no dinner. But,
+after all, I am at hand. Come, let us see."
+
+"Number 2, as it happens, is the Spanish priest suspected of being
+Jacques Collin," said Monsieur Gault to the doctor, "and one of the
+persons suspected of the crime in which that poor young man was
+implicated."
+
+"I saw him this morning," replied the doctor. "Monsieur Camusot sent
+for me to give evidence as to the state of the rascal's health, and I
+may assure you that he is perfectly well, and could make a fortune by
+playing the part of Hercules in a troupe of athletes."
+
+"Perhaps he wants to kill himself too," said Monsieur Gault. "Let us
+both go down to the cells together, for I ought to go there if only to
+transfer him to an upper room. Monsieur Camusot has given orders to
+mitigate this anonymous gentleman's confinement."
+
+Jacques Collin, known as _Trompe-la-Mort_ in the world of the hulks, who
+must henceforth be called only by his real name, had gone through
+terrible distress of mind since, after hearing Camusot's order, he had
+been taken back to the underground cell--an anguish such as he had
+never before known in the course of a life diversified by many crimes,
+by three escapes, and two sentences at the Assizes. And is there not
+something monstrously fine in the dog-like attachment shown to the man
+he had made his friend by this wretch in whom were concentrated all
+the life, the powers, the spirit, and the passions of the hulks, who
+was, so to speak, their highest expression?
+
+Wicked, infamous, and in so many ways horrible, this absolute worship
+of his idol makes him so truly interesting that this Study, long as it
+is already, would seem incomplete and cut short if the close of this
+criminal career did not come as a sequel to Lucien de Rubempre's end.
+The little spaniel being dead, we want to know whether his terrible
+playfellow the lion will live on.
+
+In real life, in society, every event is so inevitably linked to other
+events, that one cannot occur without the rest. The water of the great
+river forms a sort of fluid floor; not a wave, however rebellious,
+however high it may toss itself, but its powerful crest must sink to
+the level of the mass of waters, stronger by the momentum of its
+course than the revolt of the surges it bears with it.
+
+And just as you watch the current flow, seeing in it a confused sheet
+of images, so perhaps you would like to measure the pressure exerted
+by social energy on the vortex called Vautrin; to see how far away the
+rebellious eddy will be carried ere it is lost, and what the end will
+be of this really diabolical man, human still by the power of loving
+--so hardly can that heavenly grace perish, even in the most cankered
+heart.
+
+This wretched convict, embodying the poem that has smiled on many a
+poet's fancy--on Moore, on Lord Byron, on Mathurin, on Canalis--the
+demon who has drawn an angel down to hell to refresh him with dews
+stolen from heaven,--this Jacques Collin will be seen, by the reader
+who has understood that iron soul, to have sacrificed his own life for
+seven years past. His vast powers, absorbed in Lucien, acted solely
+for Lucien; he lived for his progress, his loves, his ambitions. To
+him, Lucien was his own soul made visible.
+
+It was _Trompe-la-Mort_ who dined with the Grandlieus, stole into
+ladies' boudoirs, and loved Esther by proxy. In fact, in Lucien he saw
+Jacques Collin, young, handsome, noble, and rising to the dignity of
+an ambassador.
+
+_Trompe-la-Mort_ had realized the German superstition of a doppelganger
+by means of a spiritual paternity, a phenomenon which will be quite
+intelligible to those women who have ever truly loved, who have felt
+their soul merge in that of the man they adore, who have lived his
+life, whether noble or infamous, happy or unhappy, obscure or
+brilliant; who, in defiance of distance, have felt a pain in their leg
+if he were wounded in his; who if he fought a duel would have been
+aware of it; and who, to put the matter in a nutshell, did not need to
+be told he was unfaithful to know it.
+
+As he went back to his cell Jacques Collin said to himself, "The boy
+is being examined."
+
+And he shivered--he who thought no more of killing a man than a
+laborer does of drinking.
+
+"Has he been able to see his mistresses?" he wondered. "Has my aunt
+succeeded in catching those damned females? Have the Duchesses and
+Countesses bestirred themselves and prevented his being examined? Has
+Lucien had my instructions? And if ill-luck will have it that he is
+cross-questioned, how will he carry it off? Poor boy, and I have
+brought him to this! It is that rascal Paccard and that sneak Europe
+who have caused all this rumpus by collaring the seven hundred and
+fifty thousand francs for the certificate Nucingen gave Esther. That
+precious pair tripped us up at the last step; but I will make them pay
+dear for their pranks.
+
+"One day more and Lucien would have been a rich man; he might have
+married his Clotilde de Grandlieu.--Then the boy would have been all
+my own!--And to think that our fate depends on a look, on a blush of
+Lucien's under Camusot's eye, who sees everything, and has all a
+judge's wits about him! For when he showed me the letters we tipped
+each other a wink in which we took each other's measure, and he
+guessed that I can make Lucien's lady-loves fork out."
+
+This soliloquy lasted for three hours. His torments were so great that
+they were too much for that frame of iron and vitriol; Jacques Collin,
+whose brain felt on fire with insanity, suffered such fearful thirst
+that he unconsciously drank up all the water contained in one of the
+pails with which the cell was supplied, forming, with the bed, all its
+furniture.
+
+"If he loses his head, what will become of him?--for the poor child
+has not Theodore's tenacity," said he to himself, as he lay down on
+the camp-bed--like a bed in a guard-room.
+
+
+
+A word must here be said about this Theodore, remembered by Jacques
+Collin at such a critical moment. Theodore Calvi, a young Corsican,
+imprisoned for life at the age of eighteen for eleven murders, thanks
+to the influential interference paid for with vast sums, had been made
+the fellow convict of Jacques Collin, to whom he was chained, in 1819
+and 1820. Jacques Collin's last escape, one of his finest inventions
+--for he had got out disguised as a gendarme leading Theodore Calvi as
+he was, a convict called before the commissary of police--had been
+effected in the seaport of Rochefort, where the convicts die by
+dozens, and where, it was hoped, these two dangerous rascals would
+have ended their days. Though they escaped together, the difficulties
+of their flight had forced them to separate. Theodore was caught and
+restored to the hulks.
+
+Indeed, a life with Lucien, a youth innocent of all crime, who had
+only minor sins on his conscience, dawned on him as bright and
+glorious as a summer sun; while with Theodore, Jacques Collin could
+look forward to no end but the scaffold after a career of
+indispensable crimes.
+
+The thought of disaster as a result of Lucien's weakness--for his
+experience of an underground cell would certainly have turned his
+brain--took vast proportions in Jacques Collin's mind; and,
+contemplating the probabilities of such a misfortune, the unhappy man
+felt his eyes fill with tears, a phenomenon that had been utterly
+unknown to him since his earliest childhood.
+
+"I must be in a furious fever," said he to himself; "and perhaps if I
+send for the doctor and offer him a handsome sum, he will put me in
+communication with Lucien."
+
+At this moment the turnkey brought in his dinner.
+
+"It is quite useless my boy; I cannot eat. Tell the governor of this
+prison to send the doctor to see me. I am very bad, and I believe my
+last hour has come."
+
+Hearing the guttural rattle that accompanied these words, the warder
+bowed and went. Jacques Collin clung wildly to this hope; but when he
+saw the doctor and the governor come in together, he perceived that
+the attempt was abortive, and coolly awaited the upshot of the visit,
+holding out his wrist for the doctor to feel his pulse.
+
+"The Abbe is feverish," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "but it is
+the type of fever we always find in inculpated prisoners--and to me,"
+he added, in the governor's ear, "it is always a sign of some degree
+of guilt."
+
+Just then the governor, to whom the public prosecutor had intrusted
+Lucien's letter to be given to Jacques Collin, left the doctor and the
+prisoner together under the guard of the warder, and went to fetch the
+letter.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, seeing the warder outside the door,
+and not understanding why the governor had left them, "I should think
+nothing of thirty thousand francs if I might send five lines to Lucien
+de Rubempre."
+
+"I will not rob you of your money," said Doctor Lebrun; "no one in
+this world can ever communicate with him again----"
+
+"No one?" said the prisoner in amazement. "Why?"
+
+"He has hanged himself----"
+
+No tigress robbed of her whelps ever startled an Indian jungle with a
+yell so fearful as that of Jacques Collin, who rose to his feet as a
+tiger rears to spring, and fired a glance at the doctor as scorching
+as the flash of a falling thunderbolt. Then he fell back on the bed,
+exclaiming:
+
+"Oh, my son!"
+
+"Poor man!" said the doctor, moved by this terrific convulsion of
+nature.
+
+In fact, the first explosion gave way to such utter collapse, that the
+words, "Oh, my son," were but a murmur.
+
+"Is this one going to die in our hands too?" said the turnkey.
+
+"No; it is impossible!" Jacques Collin went on, raising himself and
+looking at the two witnesses of the scene with a dead, cold eye. "You
+are mistaken; it is not Lucien; you did not see. A man cannot hang
+himself in one of these cells. Look--how could I hang myself here? All
+Paris shall answer to me for that boy's life! God owes it to me."
+
+The warder and the doctor were amazed in their turn--they, whom
+nothing had astonished for many a long day.
+
+On seeing the governor, Jacques Collin, crushed by the very violence
+of this outburst of grief, seemed somewhat calmer.
+
+"Here is a letter which the public prosecutor placed in my hands for
+you, with permission to give it to you sealed," said Monsieur Gault.
+
+"From Lucien?" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Is not that young man----"
+
+"He is dead," said the governor. "Even if the doctor had been on the
+spot, he would, unfortunately, have been too late. The young man died
+--there--in one of the rooms----"
+
+"May I see him with my own eyes?" asked Jacques Collin timidly. "Will
+you allow a father to weep over the body of his son?"
+
+"You can, if you like, take his room, for I have orders to remove you
+from these cells; you are no longer in such close confinement,
+monsieur."
+
+The prisoner's eyes, from which all light and warmth had fled, turned
+slowly from the governor to the doctor; Jacques Collin was examining
+them, fearing some trap, and he was afraid to go out of the cell.
+
+"If you wish to see the body," said Lebrun, "you have no time to lose;
+it is to be carried away to-night."
+
+"If you have children, gentlemen," said Jacques Collin, "you will
+understand my state of mind; I hardly know what I am doing. This blow
+is worse to me than death; but you cannot know what I am saying. Even
+if you are fathers, it is only after a fashion--I am a mother too--I
+--I am going mad--I feel it!"
+
+By going through certain passages which open only to the governor, it
+is possible to get very quickly from the cells to the private rooms.
+The two sets of rooms are divided by an underground corridor formed of
+two massive walls supporting the vault over which Galerie Marchande,
+as it is called, is built. So Jacques Collin, escorted by the warder,
+who took his arm, preceded by the governor, and followed by the
+doctor, in a few minutes reached the cell where Lucien was lying
+stretched on the bed.
+
+On seeing the body, he threw himself upon it, seizing it in a
+desperate embrace with a passion and impulse that made these
+spectators shudder.
+
+"There," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "that is an instance of
+what I was telling you. You see that man clutching the body, and you
+do not know what a corpse is; it is stone----"
+
+"Leave me alone!" said Jacques Collin in a smothered voice; "I have
+not long to look at him. They will take him away to----"
+
+He paused at the word "bury him."
+
+"You will allow me to have some relic of my dear boy! Will you be so
+kind as to cut off a lock of his hair for me, monsieur," he said to
+the doctor, "for I cannot----"
+
+"He was certainly his son," said Lebrun.
+
+"Do you think so?" replied the governor in a meaning tone, which made
+the doctor thoughtful for a few minutes.
+
+The governor gave orders that the prisoner should be left in this
+cell, and that some locks of hair should be cut for the self-styled
+father before the body should be removed.
+
+At half-past five in the month of May it is easy to read a letter in
+the Conciergerie in spite of the iron bars and the close wire trellis
+that guard the windows. So Jacques Collin read the dreadful letter
+while he still held Lucien's hand.
+
+The man is not known who can hold a lump of ice for ten minutes
+tightly clutched in the hollow of his hand. The cold penetrates to the
+very life-springs with mortal rapidity. But the effect of that cruel
+chill, acting like a poison, is as nothing to that which strikes to
+the soul from the cold, rigid hand of the dead thus held. Thus Death
+speaks to Life; it tells many dark secrets which kill many feelings;
+for in matters of feeling is not change death?
+
+As we read through once more, with Jacques Collin, Lucien's last
+letter, it will strike us as being what it was to this man--a cup of
+poison:--
+
+                 "_To the Abbe Carlos Herrera_.
+
+  "MY DEAR ABBE,--I have had only benefits from you, and I have
+  betrayed you. This involuntary ingratitude is killing me, and when
+  you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist. You are not
+  here now to save me.
+
+  "You had given me full liberty, if I should find it advantageous,
+  to destroy you by flinging you on the ground like a cigar-end; but
+  I have ruined you by a blunder. To escape from a difficulty,
+  deluded by a clever question from the examining judge, your son by
+  adoption and grace went over to the side of those who aim at
+  killing you at any cost, and insist on proving an identity, which
+  I know to be impossible, between you and a French villain. All is
+  said.
+
+  "Between a man of your calibre and me--me of whom you tried to
+  make a greater man than I am capable of being--no foolish
+  sentiment can come at the moment of final parting. You hoped to
+  make me powerful and famous, and you have thrown me into the gulf
+  of suicide, that is all. I have long heard the broad pinions of
+  that vertigo beating over my head.
+
+  "As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain and
+  the posterity of Abel. In the great human drama Cain is in
+  opposition. You are descended from Adam through that line, in
+  which the devil still fans the fire of which the first spark was
+  flung on Eve. Among the demons of that pedigree, from time to time
+  we see one of stupendous power, summing up every form of human
+  energy, and resembling the fevered beasts of the desert, whose
+  vitality demands the vast spaces they find there. Such men are as
+  dangerous as lions would be in the heart of Normandy; they must
+  have their prey, and they devour common men and crop the money of
+  fools. Their sport is so dangerous that at last they kill the
+  humble dog whom they have taken for a companion and made an idol
+  of.
+
+  "When it is God's will, these mysterious beings may be a Moses, an
+  Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but when He leaves a
+  generation of these stupendous tools to rust at the bottom of the
+  ocean, they are no more than a Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or
+  the Abbe Carlos Herrera. Gifted with immense power over tenderer
+  souls, they entrap them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine
+  --in its way. It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that
+  fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men
+  like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them. You
+  have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my share of
+  existence; so I may very well take my head out of the Gordian knot
+  of your policy and slip it into the running knot of my cravat.
+
+  "To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to the public
+  prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You will know how to
+  take advantage of this document.
+
+  "In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made,
+  Monsieur l'Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you
+  so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal
+  affection for me.
+
+  "And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
+  Corruption; farewell--to you who, if started on the right road,
+  might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You
+  have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on
+  the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the
+  enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the
+  waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy;
+  but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.
+
+  "Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as my
+  admiration.
+
+                                                    "LUCIEN."
+
+
+A little before one in the morning, when the men came to fetch away
+the body, they found Jacques Collin kneeling by the bed, the letter on
+the floor, dropped, no doubt, as a suicide drops the pistol that has
+shot him; but the unhappy man still held Lucien's hand between his
+own, and was praying to God.
+
+On seeing this man, the porters paused for a moment, for he looked
+like one of those stone images, kneeling to all eternity on a
+mediaeval tomb, the work of some stone-carver's genius. The sham
+priest, with eyes as bright as a tiger's, but stiffened into
+supernatural rigidity, so impressed the men that they gently bid him
+rise.
+
+"Why?" he asked mildly. The audacious _Trompe-la-Mort_ was as meek as a
+child.
+
+The governor pointed him out to Monsieur de Chargeboeuf; and he,
+respecting such grief, and believing that Jacques Collin was indeed
+the priest he called himself, explained the orders given by Monsieur
+de Granville with regard to the funeral service and arrangements,
+showing that it was absolutely necessary that the body should be
+transferred to Lucien's lodgings, Quai Malaquais, where the priests
+were waiting to watch by it for the rest of the night.
+
+"It is worthy of that gentleman's well-known magnanimity," said
+Jacques Collin sadly. "Tell him, monsieur, that he may rely on my
+gratitude. Yes, I am in a position to do him great service. Do not
+forget these words; they are of the utmost importance to him.
+
+"Oh, monsieur! strange changes come over a man's spirit when for seven
+hours he has wept over such a son as he----And I shall see him no
+more!"
+
+After gazing once more at Lucien with an expression of a mother bereft
+of her child's remains, Jacques Collin sank in a heap. As he saw
+Lucien's body carried away, he uttered a groan that made the men hurry
+off. The public prosecutor's private secretary and the governor of the
+prison had already made their escape from the scene.
+
+What had become of that iron spirit; of the decision which was a match
+in swiftness for the eye; of the nature in which thought and action
+flashed forth together like one flame; of the sinews hardened by three
+spells of labor on the hulks, and by three escapes, the muscles which
+had acquired the metallic temper of a savage's limbs? Iron will yield
+to a certain amount of hammering or persistent pressure; its
+impenetrable molecules, purified and made homogeneous by man, may
+become disintegrated, and without being in a state of fusion the metal
+had lost its power of resistance. Blacksmiths, locksmiths, tool-makers
+sometimes express this state by saying the iron is retting,
+appropriating a word applied exclusively to hemp, which is reduced to
+pulp and fibre by maceration. Well, the human soul, or, if you will,
+the threefold powers of body, heart, and intellect, under certain
+repeated shocks, get into such a condition as fibrous iron. They too
+are disintegrated. Science and law and the public seek a thousand
+causes for the terrible catastrophes on railways caused by the rupture
+of an iron rail, that of Bellevue being a famous instance; but no one
+has asked the evidence of real experts in such matters, the
+blacksmiths, who all say the same thing, "The iron was stringy!" The
+danger cannot be foreseen. Metal that has gone soft, and metal that
+has preserved its tenacity, both look exactly alike.
+
+Priests and examining judges often find great criminals in this state.
+The awful experiences of the Assize Court and the "last toilet"
+commonly produce this dissolution of the nervous system, even in the
+strongest natures. Then confessions are blurted by the most firmly set
+lips; then the toughest hearts break; and, strange to say, always at
+the moment when these confessions are useless, when this weakness as
+of death snatches from the man the mask of innocence which made
+Justice uneasy--for it always is uneasy when the criminal dies without
+confessing his crime.
+
+Napoleon went through this collapse of every human power on the field
+of Waterloo.
+
+At eight in the morning, when the warder of the better cells entered
+the room where Jacques Collin was confined, he found him pale and
+calm, like a man who has collected all his strength by sheer
+determination.
+
+"It is the hour for airing in the prison-yard," said the turnkey; "you
+have not been out for three days; if you choose to take air and
+exercise, you may."
+
+Jacques Collin, lost in his absorbing thoughts, and taking no interest
+in himself, regarding himself as a garment with no body in it, a
+perfect rag, never suspected the trap laid for him by Bibi-Lupin, nor
+the importance attaching to his walk in the prison-yard.
+
+The unhappy man went out mechanically, along the corridor, by the
+cells built into the magnificent cloisters of the Palace of the Kings,
+over which is the corridor Saint-Louis, as it is called, leading to
+the various purlieus of the Court of Appeals. This passage joins that
+of the better cells; and it is worth noting that the cell in which
+Louvel was imprisoned, one of the most famous of the regicides, is the
+room at the right angle formed by the junction of the two corridors.
+Under the pretty room in the Tour Bonbec there is a spiral staircase
+leading from the dark passage, and serving the prisoners who are
+lodged in these cells to go up and down on their way from or to the
+yard.
+
+Every prisoner, whether committed for trial or already sentenced, and
+the prisoners under suspicion who have been reprieved from the closest
+cells--in short, every one in confinement in the Conciergerie takes
+exercise in this narrow paved courtyard for some hours every day,
+especially the early hours of summer mornings. This recreation ground,
+the ante-room to the scaffold or the hulks on one side, on the other
+still clings to the world through the gendarme, the examining judge,
+and the Assize Court. It strikes a greater chill perhaps than even the
+scaffold. The scaffold may be a pedestal to soar to heaven from; but
+the prison-yard is every infamy on earth concentrated and unavoidable.
+
+Whether at La Force or at Poissy, at Melun or at Sainte-Pelagie, a
+prison-yard is a prison-yard. The same details are exactly repeated,
+all but the color of the walls, their height, and the space enclosed.
+So this Study of Manners would be false to its name if it did not
+include an exact description of this Pandemonium of Paris.
+
+Under the mighty vaulting which supports the lower courts and the
+Court of Appeals there is, close to the fourth arch, a stone slab,
+used by Saint-Louis, it is said, for the distribution of alms, and
+doing duty in our day as a counter for the sale of eatables to the
+prisoners. So as soon as the prison-yard is open to the prisoners,
+they gather round this stone table, which displays such dainties as
+jail-birds desire--brandy, rum, and the like.
+
+The first two archways on that side of the yard, facing the fine
+Byzantine corridor--the only vestige now of Saint-Louis' elegant
+palace--form a parlor, where the prisoners and their counsel may meet,
+to which the prisoners have access through a formidable gateway--a
+double passage, railed off by enormous bars, within the width of the
+third archway. This double way is like the temporary passages arranged
+at the door of a theatre to keep a line on occasions when a great
+success brings a crowd. This parlor, at the very end of the vast
+entrance-hall of the Conciergerie, and lighted by loop-holes on the
+yard side, has lately been opened out towards the back, and the
+opening filled with glass, so that the interviews of the lawyers with
+their clients are under supervision. This innovation was made
+necessary by the too great fascinations brought to bear by pretty
+women on their counsel. Where will morality stop short? Such
+precautions are like the ready-made sets of questions for
+self-examination, where pure imaginations are defiled by meditating
+on unknown and monstrous depravity. In this parlor, too, parents and
+friends may be allowed by the authorities to meet the prisoners,
+whether on remand or awaiting their sentence.
+
+The reader may now understand what the prison-yard is to the two
+hundred prisoners in the Conciergerie: their garden--a garden without
+trees, beds, or flowers--in short, a prison-yard. The parlor, and the
+stone of Saint-Louis, where such food and liquor as are allowed are
+dispensed, are the only possible means of communication with the outer
+world.
+
+The hour spent in the yard is the only time when the prisoner is in
+the open air or the society of his kind; in other prisons those who
+are sentenced for a term are brought together in workshops; but in the
+Conciergerie no occupation is allowed, excepting in the privileged
+cells. There the absorbing idea in every mind is the drama of the
+Assize Court, since the culprit comes only to be examined or to be
+sentenced.
+
+This yard is indeed terrible to behold; it cannot be imagined, it must
+be seen.
+
+In the first place, the assemblage, in a space forty metres long by
+thirty wide, of a hundred condemned or suspected criminals, does not
+constitute the cream of society. These creatures, belonging for the
+most part to the lowest ranks, are poorly clad; their countenances are
+base or horrible, for a criminal from the upper sphere of society is
+happily, a rare exception. Peculation, forgery, or fraudulent
+bankruptcy, the only crimes that can bring decent folks so low, enjoy
+the privilege of the better cells, and then the prisoner scarcely ever
+quits it.
+
+This promenade, bounded by fine but formidable blackened walls, by a
+cloister divided up into cells, by fortifications on the side towards
+the quay, by the barred cells of the better class on the north,
+watched by vigilant warders, and filled with a herd of criminals, all
+meanly suspicious of each other, is depressing enough in itself; and
+it becomes terrifying when you find yourself the centre of all those
+eyes full of hatred, curiosity, and despair, face to face with that
+degraded crew. Not a gleam of gladness! all is gloom--the place and
+the men. All is speechless--the walls and men's consciences. To these
+hapless creatures danger lies everywhere; excepting in the case of an
+alliance as ominous as the prison where it was formed, they dare not
+trust each other.
+
+The police, all-pervading, poisons the atmosphere and taints
+everything, even the hand-grasp of two criminals who have been
+intimate. A convict who meets his most familiar comrade does not know
+that he may not have repented and have made a confession to save his
+life. This absence of confidence, this dread of the nark, marks the
+liberty, already so illusory, of the prison-yard. The "nark" (in
+French, le Mouton or le coqueur) is a spy who affects to be sentenced
+for some serious offence, and whose skill consists in pretending to be
+a chum. The "chum," in thieves' slang, is a skilled thief, a
+professional who has cut himself adrift from society, and means to
+remain a thief all his days, and continues faithful through thick and
+thin to the laws of the swell-mob.
+
+Crime and madness have a certain resemblance. To see the prisoners of
+the Conciergerie in the yard, or the madmen in the garden of an
+asylum, is much the same thing. Prisoners and lunatics walk to and
+fro, avoiding each other, looking up with more or less strange or
+vicious glances, according to the mood of the moment, but never
+cheerful, never grave; they know each other, or they dread each other.
+The anticipation of their sentence, remorse, and apprehension give all
+these men exercising, the anxious, furtive look of the insane. Only
+the most consummate criminals have the audacity that apes the quietude
+of respectability, the sincerity of a clear conscience.
+
+As men of the better class are few, and shame keeps the few whose
+crimes have brought them within doors, the frequenters of the
+prison-yard are for the most part dressed as workmen. Blouses, long
+and short, and velveteen jackets preponderate. These coarse or dirty
+garments, harmonizing with the coarse and sinister faces and brutal
+manner--somewhat subdued, indeed, by the gloomy reflections that weigh
+on men in prison--everything, to the silence that reigns, contributes
+to strike terror or disgust into the rare visitor who, by high
+influence, has obtained the privilege, seldom granted, of going over
+the Conciergerie.
+
+Just as the sight of an anatomical museum, where foul diseases are
+represented by wax models, makes the youth who may be taken there more
+chaste and apt for nobler and purer love, so the sight of the
+Conciergerie and of the prison-yard, filled with men marked for the
+hulks or the scaffold or some disgraceful punishment, inspires many,
+who might not fear that Divine Justice whose voice speaks so loudly to
+the conscience, with a fear of human justice; and they come out honest
+men for a long time after.
+
+
+
+As the men who were exercising in the prison-yard, when _Trompe-la-Mort_
+appeared there, were to be the actors in a scene of crowning
+importance in the life of Jacques Collin, it will be well to depict a
+few of the principal personages of this sinister crowd.
+
+Here, as everywhere when men are thrown together, here, as at school
+even, force, physical and moral, wins the day. Here, then, as on the
+hulks, crime stamps the man's rank. Those whose head is doomed are the
+aristocracy. The prison-yard, as may be supposed, is a school of
+criminal law, which is far better learned there than at the Hall on
+the Place du Pantheon.
+
+A never-failing pleasantry is to rehearse the drama of the Assize
+Court; to elect a president, a jury, a public prosecutor, a counsel,
+and to go through the whole trial. This hideous farce is played before
+almost every great trial. At this time a famous case was proceeding in
+the Criminal Court, that of the dreadful murder committed on the
+persons of Monsieur and Madame Crottat, the notary's father and
+mother, retired farmers who, as this horrible business showed, kept
+eight hundred thousand francs in gold in their house.
+
+One of the men concerned in this double murder was the notorious
+Dannepont, known as la Pouraille, a released convict, who for five
+years had eluded the most active search on the part of the police,
+under the protection of seven or eight different names. This villain's
+disguises were so perfect, that he had served two years of
+imprisonment under the name of Delsouq, who was one of his own
+disciples, and a famous thief, though he never, in any of his
+achievements, went beyond the jurisdiction of the lower Courts. La
+Pouraille had committed no less than three murders since his dismissal
+from the hulks. The certainty that he would be executed, not less than
+the large fortune he was supposed to have, made this man an object of
+terror and admiration to his fellow-prisoners; for not a farthing of
+the stolen money had ever been recovered. Even after the events of
+July 1830, some persons may remember the terror caused in Paris by
+this daring crime, worthy to compare in importance with the robbery of
+medals from the Public Library; for the unhappy tendency of our age is
+to make a murder the more interesting in proportion to the greater sum
+of money secured by it.
+
+La Pouraille, a small, lean, dry man, with a face like a ferret,
+forty-five years old, and one of the celebrities of the prisons he had
+successively lived in since the age of nineteen, knew Jacques Collin
+well, how and why will be seen.
+
+Two other convicts, brought with la Pouraille from La Force within
+these twenty-four hours, had at once acknowledged and made the whole
+prison-yard acknowledge the supremacy of this past-master sealed to
+the scaffold. One of these convicts, a ticket-of-leave man, named
+Selerier, alias l'Avuergnat, Pere Ralleau, and le Rouleur, who in the
+sphere known to the hulks as the swell-mob was called Fil-de-Soie (or
+silken thread)--a nickname he owed to the skill with which he slipped
+through the various perils of the business--was an old ally of Jacques
+Collin's.
+
+_Trompe-la-Mort_ so keenly suspected Fil-de-Soie of playing a double
+part, of being at once in the secrets of the swell-mob and a spy laid
+by the police, that he had supposed him to be the prime mover of his
+arrest in the Maison Vauquer in 1819 (_Le Pere Goriot_). Selerier, whom
+we must call Fil-de-Soie, as we shall also call Dannepont la
+Pouraille, already guilty of evading surveillance, was concerned in
+certain well-known robberies without bloodshed, which would certainly
+take him back to the hulks for at least twenty years.
+
+The other convict, named Riganson, and his kept woman, known as la
+Biffe, were a most formidable couple, members of the swell-mob.
+Riganson, on very distant terms with the police from his earliest
+years, was nicknamed le Biffon. Biffon was the male of la Biffe--for
+nothing is sacred to the swell-mob. These fiends respect nothing,
+neither the law nor religions, not even natural history, whose solemn
+nomenclature, it is seen, is parodied by them.
+
+Here a digression is necessary; for Jacques Collin's appearance in the
+prison-yard in the midst of his foes, as had been so cleverly
+contrived by Bibi-Lupin and the examining judge, and the strange
+scenes to ensue, would be incomprehensible and impossible without some
+explanation as to the world of thieves and of the hulks, its laws, its
+manners, and above all, its language, its hideous figures of speech
+being indispensable in this portion of my tale.
+
+So, first of all, a few words must be said as to the vocabulary of
+sharpers, pickpockets, thieves, and murderers, known as Argot, or
+thieves' cant, which has of late been introduced into literature with
+so much success that more than one word of that strange lingo is
+familiar on the rosy lips of ladies, has been heard in gilded
+boudoirs, and become the delight of princes, who have often proclaimed
+themselves "done brown" (floue)! And it must be owned, to the surprise
+no doubt of many persons, that no language is more vigorous or more
+vivid than that of this underground world which, from the beginnings
+of countries with capitals, has dwelt in cellars and slums, in the
+third limbo of society everywhere (le troisieme dessous, as the
+expressive and vivid slang of the theatres has it). For is not the
+world a stage? Le troisieme dessous is the lowest cellar under the
+stage at the Opera where the machinery is kept and men stay who work
+it, whence the footlights are raised, the ghosts, the blue-devils shot
+up from hell, and so forth.
+
+Every word of this language is a bold metaphor, ingenious or horrible.
+A man's breeches are his kicks or trucks (montante, a word that need
+not be explained). In this language you do not sleep, you snooze, or
+doze (pioncer--and note how vigorously expressive the word is of the
+sleep of the hunted, weary, distrustful animal called a thief, which
+as soon as it is in safety drops--rolls--into the gulf of deep slumber
+so necessary under the mighty wings of suspicion always hovering over
+it; a fearful sleep, like that of a wild beast that can sleep, nay,
+and snore, and yet its ears are alert with caution).
+
+In this idiom everything is savage. The syllables which begin or end
+the words are harsh and curiously startling. A woman is a trip or a
+moll (une largue). And it is poetical too: straw is la plume de
+Beauce, a farmyard feather bed. The word midnight is paraphrased by
+twelve leads striking--it makes one shiver! Rincer une cambriole is to
+"screw the shop," to rifle a room. What a feeble expression is to go
+to bed in comparison with "to doss" (piausser, make a new skin). What
+picturesque imagery! Work your dominoes (jouer des dominos) is to eat;
+how can men eat with the police at their heels?
+
+And this language is always growing; it keeps pace with civilization,
+and is enriched with some new expression by every fresh invention. The
+potato, discovered and introduced by Louis XVI. and Parmentier, was at
+once dubbed in French slang as the pig's orange (Orange a Cochons)[the
+Irish have called them bog oranges]. Banknotes are invented; the "mob"
+at once call them Flimsies (fafiots garotes, from "Garot," the name of
+the cashier whose signature they bear). Flimsy! (fafiot.) Cannot you
+hear the rustle of the thin paper? The thousand franc-note is male
+flimsy (in French), the five hundred franc-note is the female; and
+convicts will, you may be sure, find some whimsical name for the
+hundred and two hundred franc-notes.
+
+In 1790 Guillotin invented, with humane intent, the expeditious
+machine which solved all the difficulties involved in the problem of
+capital punishment. Convicts and prisoners from the hulks forthwith
+investigated this contrivance, standing as it did on the monarchical
+borderland of the old system and the frontier of modern legislation;
+they instantly gave it the name of _l'Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret_. They
+looked at the angle formed by the steel blade, and described its
+action as repeating (faucher); and when it is remembered that the
+hulks are called the meadow (le pre), philologists must admire the
+inventiveness of these horrible vocables, as Charles Nodier would have
+said.
+
+The high antiquity of this kind of slang is also noteworthy. A tenth
+of the words are of old Romanesque origin, another tenth are the old
+Gaulish French of Rabelais. Effondrer, to thrash a man, to give him
+what for; otolondrer, to annoy or to "spur" him; cambrioler, doing
+anything in a room; aubert, money; Gironde, a beauty (the name of a
+river of Languedoc); fouillousse, a pocket--a "cly"--are all French of
+the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The word affe, meaning life,
+is of the highest antiquity. From affe anything that disturbs life is
+called affres (a rowing or scolding), hence affreux, anything that
+troubles life.
+
+About a hundred words are derived from the language of Panurge, a name
+symbolizing the people, for it is derived from two Greek words
+signifying All-working.
+
+Science is changing the face of the world by constructing railroads.
+In Argot the train is le roulant Vif, the Rattler.
+
+The name given to the head while still on the shoulders--la
+Sorbonne--shows the antiquity of this dialect which is mentioned by
+very early romance-writers, as Cervantes, the Italian story-tellers,
+and Aretino. In all ages the moll, the prostitute, the heroine of so
+many old-world romances, has been the protectress, companion, and
+comfort of the sharper, the thief, the pickpocket, the area-sneak,
+and the burglar.
+
+Prostitution and robbery are the male and female forms of protest made
+by the natural state against the social state. Even philosophers, the
+innovators of to-day, the humanitarians with the communists and
+Fourierists in their train, come at last, without knowing it, to the
+same conclusion--prostitution and theft. The thief does not argue out
+questions of property, of inheritance, and social responsibility, in
+sophistical books; he absolutely ignores them. To him theft is
+appropriating his own. He does not discuss marriage; he does not
+complain of it; he does not insist, in printed Utopian dreams, on the
+mutual consent and bond of souls which can never become general; he
+pairs with a vehemence of which the bonds are constantly riveted by
+the hammer of necessity. Modern innovators write unctuous theories,
+long drawn, and nebulous or philanthropical romances; but the thief
+acts. He is as clear as a fact, as logical as a blow; and then his
+style!
+
+Another thing worth noting: the world of prostitutes, thieves, and
+murders of the galleys and the prisons forms a population of about
+sixty to eighty thousand souls, men and women. Such a world is not to
+be disdained in a picture of modern manners and a literary
+reproduction of the social body. The law, the gendarmerie, and the
+police constitute a body almost equal in number; is not that strange?
+This antagonism of persons perpetually seeking and avoiding each
+other, and fighting a vast and highly dramatic duel, are what are
+sketched in this Study. It has been the same thing with thieving and
+public harlotry as with the stage, the police, the priesthood, and the
+gendarmerie. In these six walks of life the individual contracts an
+indelible character. He can no longer be himself. The stigmata of
+ordination are as immutable as those of the soldier are. And it is the
+same in other callings which are strongly in opposition, strong
+contrasts with civilization. These violent, eccentric, singular signs
+--sui generis--are what make the harlot, the robber, the murderer, the
+ticket-of-leave man, so easily recognizable by their foes, the spy and
+the police, to whom they are as game to the sportsman: they have a
+gait, a manner, a complexion, a look, a color, a smell--in short,
+infallible marks about them. Hence the highly-developed art of
+disguise which the heroes of the hulks acquire.
+
+One word yet as to the constitution of this world apart, which the
+abolition of branding, the mitigation of penalties, and the silly
+leniency of furies are making a threatening evil. In about twenty
+years Paris will be beleaguered by an army of forty thousand reprieved
+criminals; the department of the Seine and its fifteen hundred
+thousand inhabitants being the only place in France where these poor
+wretches can be hidden. To them Paris is what the virgin forest is to
+beasts of prey.
+
+The swell-mob, or more exactly, the upper class of thieves, which is
+the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the aristocracy of the tribe, had, in
+1816, after the peace which made life hard for so many men, formed an
+association called les grands fanandels--the Great Pals--consisting of
+the most noted master-thieves and certain bold spirits at that time
+bereft of any means of living. This word pal means brother, friend,
+and comrade all in one. And these "Great Pals," the cream of the
+thieving fraternity, for more than twenty years were the Court of
+Appeal, the Institute of Learning, and the Chamber of Peers of this
+community. These men all had their private means, with funds in
+common, and a code of their own. They knew each other, and were
+pledged to help and succor each other in difficulties. And they were
+all superior to the tricks or snares of the police, had a charter of
+their own, passwords and signs of recognition.
+
+From 1815 to 1819 these dukes and peers of the prison world had formed
+the famous association of the Ten-thousand (see _le Pere Goriot_), so
+styled by reason of an agreement in virtue of which no job was to be
+undertaken by which less than ten thousand francs could be got.
+
+At that very time, in 1829-30, some memoirs were brought out in which
+the collective force of this association and the names of the leaders
+were published by a famous member of the police-force. It was
+terrifying to find there an army of skilled rogues, male and female;
+so numerous, so clever, so constantly lucky, that such thieves as
+Pastourel, Collonge, or Chimaux, men of fifty and sixty, were
+described as outlaws from society from their earliest years! What a
+confession of the ineptitude of justice that rogues so old should be
+at large!
+
+Jacques Collin had been the cashier, not only of the "Ten-thousand,"
+but also of the "Great Pals," the heroes of the hulks. Competent
+authorities admit that the hulks have always owned large sums. This
+curious fact is quite conceivable. Stolen goods are never recovered
+but in very singular cases. The condemned criminal, who can take
+nothing with him, is obliged to trust somebody's honesty and capacity,
+and to deposit his money; as in the world of honest folks, money is
+placed in a bank.
+
+Long ago Bibi-Lupin, now for ten years a chief of the department of
+Public Safety, had been a member of the aristocracy of "Pals." His
+treason had resulted from offended pride; he had been constantly set
+aside in favor of _Trompe-la-Mort's_ superior intelligence and
+prodigious strength. Hence his persistent vindictiveness against
+Jacques Collin. Hence, also, certain compromises between Bibi-Lupin
+and his old companions, which the magistrates were beginning to take
+seriously.
+
+So in his desire for vengeance, to which the examining judge had given
+play under the necessity of identifying Jacques Collin, the chief of
+the "Safety" had very skilfully chosen his allies by setting la
+Pouraille, Fil-de-Soie, and le Biffon on the sham Spaniard--for la
+Pouraille and Fil-de-Soie both belonged to the "Ten-thousand," and le
+Biffon was a "Great Pal."
+
+La Biffe, le Biffon's formidable trip, who to this day evades all the
+pursuit of the police by her skill in disguising herself as a lady,
+was at liberty. This woman, who successfully apes a marquise, a
+countess, a baroness, keeps a carriage and men-servants. This Jacques
+Collin in petticoats is the only woman who can compare with Asie,
+Jacques Collin's right hand. And, in fact, every hero of the hulks is
+backed up by a devoted woman. Prison records and the secret papers of
+the law courts will tell you this; no honest woman's love, not even
+that of the bigot for her spiritual director, has ever been greater
+than the attachment of a mistress who shares the dangers of a great
+criminal.
+
+With these men a passion is almost always the first cause of their
+daring enterprises and murders. The excessive love which
+--constitutionally, as the doctors say--makes woman irresistible to
+them, calls every moral and physical force of these powerful natures
+into action. Hence the idleness which consumes their days, for
+excesses of passion necessitate sleep and restorative food. Hence
+their loathing of all work, driving these creatures to have recourse
+to rapid ways of getting money. And yet, the need of a living, and of
+high living, violent as it is, is but a trifle in comparison with the
+extravagance to which these generous Medors are prompted by the
+mistress to whom they want to give jewels and dress, and who--always
+greedy--love rich food. The baggage wants a shawl, the lover steals
+it, and the woman sees in this a proof of love.
+
+This is how robbery begins; and robbery, if we examine the human soul
+through a lens, will be seen to be an almost natural instinct in man.
+
+Robbery leads to murder, and murder leads the lover step by step to
+the scaffold.
+
+Ill-regulated physical desire is therefore, in these men, if we may
+believe the medical faculty, at the root of seven-tenths of the crimes
+committed. And, indeed, the proof is always found, evident, palpable
+at the post-mortem examination of the criminal after his execution.
+And these monstrous lovers, the scarecrows of society, are adored by
+their mistresses. It is this female devotion, squatting faithfully at
+the prison gate, always eagerly balking the cunning of the examiner,
+and incorruptibly keeping the darkest secrets which make so many
+trials impenetrable mysteries.
+
+In this, again, lies the strength as well as the weakness of the
+accused. In the vocabulary of a prostitute, to be honest means to
+break none of the laws of this attachment, to give all her money to
+the man who is nabbed, to look after his comforts, to be faithful to
+him in every way, to undertake anything for his sake. The bitterest
+insult one of these women can fling in the teeth of another wretched
+creature is to accuse her of infidelity to a lover in quod (in
+prison). In that case such a woman is considered to have no heart.
+
+La Pouraille was passionately in love with a woman, as will be seen.
+
+Fil-de-Soie, an egotistical philosopher, who thieved to provide for
+the future, was a good deal like Paccard, Jacques Collin's satellite,
+who had fled with Prudence Servien and the seven hundred and fifty
+thousand francs between them. He had no attachment, he condemned
+women, and loved no one but Fil-de-Soie.
+
+As to le Biffon, he derived his nickname from his connection with la
+Biffe. (La Biffe is scavenging, rag-picking.) And these three
+distinguished members of _la haute pegre_, the aristocracy of roguery,
+had a reckoning to demand of Jacques Collin, accounts that were
+somewhat hard to bring to book.
+
+No one but the cashier could know how many of his clients were still
+alive, and what each man's share would be. The mortality to which the
+depositors were peculiarly liable had formed a basis for
+_Trompe-la-Mort's_ calculations when he resolved to embezzle the funds
+for Lucien's benefit. By keeping himself out of the way of the police
+and of his pals for nine years, Jacques Collin was almost certain to
+have fallen heir, by the terms of the agreement among the associates, to
+two-thirds of the depositors. Besides, could he not plead that he had
+repaid the pals who had been scragged? In fact, no one had any hold
+over these _Great Pals_. His comrades trusted him by compulsion, for the
+hunted life led by convicts necessitates the most delicate confidence
+between the gentry of this crew of savages. So Jacques Collin, a
+defaulter for a hundred thousand crowns, might now possibly be quit
+for a hundred thousand francs. At this moment, as we see, la
+Pouraille, one of Jacques Collin's creditors, had but ninety days to
+live. And la Pouraille, the possessor of a sum vastly greater, no
+doubt, than that placed in his pal's keeping, would probably prove
+easy to deal with.
+
+
+
+One of the infallible signs by which prison governors and their
+agents, the police and warders, recognize old stagers (chevaux de
+retour), that is to say, men who have already eaten beans (les
+gourganes, a kind of haricots provided for prison fare), is their
+familiarity with prison ways; those who have been _in_ before, of
+course, know the manners and customs; they are at home, and nothing
+surprises them.
+
+And Jacques Collin, thoroughly on his guard, had, until now, played
+his part to admiration as an innocent man and stranger, both at La
+Force and at the Conciergerie. But now, broken by grief, and by two
+deaths--for he had died twice over during that dreadful night--he was
+Jacques Collin once more. The warder was astounded to find that the
+Spanish priest needed no telling as to the way to the prison-yard. The
+perfect actor forgot his part; he went down the corkscrew stairs in
+the Tour Bonbec as one who knew the Conciergerie.
+
+"Bibi-Lupin is right," said the turnkey to himself; "he is an old
+stager; he is Jacques Collin."
+
+At the moment when _Trompe-la-Mort_ appeared in the sort of frame to
+his figure made by the door into the tower, the prisoners, having made
+their purchases at the stone table called after Saint-Louis, were
+scattered about the yard, always too small for their number. So the
+newcomer was seen by all of them at once, and all the more promptly,
+because nothing can compare for keenness with the eye of a prisoner,
+who in a prison-yard feels like a spider watching in its web. And this
+comparison is mathematically exact; for the range of vision being
+limited on all sides by high dark walls, the prisoners can always see,
+even without looking at them, the doors through which the warders come
+and go, the windows of the parlor, and the stairs of the Tour Bonbec
+--the only exits from the yard. In this utter isolation every trivial
+incident is an event, everything is interesting; the tedium--a tedium
+like that of a tiger in a cage--increases their alertness tenfold.
+
+It is necessary to note that Jacques Collin, dressed like a priest who
+is not strict as to costume, wore black knee breeches, black
+stockings, shoes with silver buckles, a black waistcoat, and a long
+coat of dark-brown cloth of a certain cut that betrays the priest
+whatever he may do, especially when these details are completed by a
+characteristic style of haircutting. Jacques Collin's wig was
+eminently ecclesiastical, and wonderfully natural.
+
+"Hallo!" said la Pouraille to le Biffon, "that's a bad sign! A rook!
+(sanglier, a priest). How did he come here?"
+
+"He is one of their 'narks'" (trucs, spies) "of a new make," replied
+Fil-de-Soie, "some runner with the bracelets" (marchand de lacets
+--equivalent to a Bow Street runner) "looking out for his man."
+
+The gendarme boasts of many names in French slang; when he is after a
+thief, he is "the man with the bracelets" (marchand de lacets); when
+he has him in charge, he is a bird of ill-omen (hirondelle de la
+Greve); when he escorts him to the scaffold, he is "groom to the
+guillotine" (hussard de la guillotine).
+
+To complete our study of the prison-yard, two more of the prisoners
+must be hastily sketched in. Selerier, alias l'Auvergnat, alias le
+Pere Ralleau, called le Rouleur, alias Fil-de-Soie--he had thirty
+names, and as many passports--will henceforth be spoken of by this
+name only, as he was called by no other among the swell-mob. This
+profound philosopher, who saw a spy in the sham priest, was a brawny
+fellow of about five feet eight, whose muscles were all marked by
+strange bosses. He had an enormous head in which a pair of half-closed
+eyes sparkled like fire--the eyes of a bird of prey, with gray, dull,
+skinny eyelids. At first glance his face resembled that of a wolf, his
+jaws were so broad, powerful, and prominent; but the cruelty and even
+ferocity suggested by this likeness were counterbalanced by the
+cunning and eagerness of his face, though it was scarred by the
+smallpox. The margin of each scar being sharply cut, gave a sort of
+wit to his expression; it was seamed with ironies. The life of a
+criminal--a life of danger and thirst, of nights spent bivouacking on
+the quays and river banks, on bridges and streets, and the orgies of
+strong drink by which successes are celebrated--had laid, as it were,
+a varnish over these features. Fil-de-Soie, if seen in his undisguised
+person, would have been marked by any constable or gendarme as his
+prey; but he was a match for Jacques Collin in the arts of make-up and
+dress. Just now Fil-de-Soie, in undress, like a great actor who is
+well got up only on the stage, wore a sort of shooting jacket bereft
+of buttons, and whose ripped button-holes showed the white lining,
+squalid green slippers, nankin trousers now a dingy gray, and on his
+head a cap without a peak, under which an old bandana was tied,
+streaky with rents, and washed out.
+
+Le Biffon was a complete contrast to Fil-de-Soie. This famous robber,
+short, burly, and fat, but active, with a livid complexion, and
+deep-set black eyes, dressed like a cook, standing squarely on very
+bandy legs, was alarming to behold, for in his countenance all the
+features predominated that are most typical of the carnivorous beast.
+
+Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon were always wheedling la Pouraille, who had
+lost all hope. The murderer knew that he would be tried, sentenced,
+and executed within four months. Indeed, Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon, la
+Pouraille's chums, never called him anything but _le Chanoine de
+l'Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret_ (a grim paraphrase for a man condemned to
+the guillotine). It is easy to understand why Fil-de-Soie and le
+Biffon should fawn on la Pouraille. The man had somewhere hidden two
+hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold, his share of the spoil
+found in the house of the Crottats, the "victims," in newspaper
+phrase. What a splendid fortune to leave to two pals, though the two
+old stagers would be sent back to the galleys within a few days! Le
+Biffon and Fil-de-Soie would be sentenced for a term of fifteen years
+for robbery with violence, without prejudice to the ten years' penal
+servitude on a former sentence, which they had taken the liberty of
+cutting short. So, though one had twenty-two and the other twenty-six
+years of imprisonment to look forward to, they both hoped to escape,
+and come back to find la Pouraille's mine of gold.
+
+But the "Ten-thousand man" kept his secret; he did not see the use of
+telling it before he was sentenced. He belonged to the "upper ten" of
+the hulks, and had never betrayed his accomplices. His temper was well
+known; Monsieur Popinot, who had examined him, had not been able to
+get anything out of him.
+
+This terrible trio were at the further end of the prison-yard, that is
+to say, near the better class of cells. Fil-de-Soie was giving a
+lecture to a young man who was IN for his first offence, and who,
+being certain of ten years' penal servitude, was gaining information
+as to the various convict establishments.
+
+"Well, my boy," Fil-de-Soie was saying sententiously as Jacques Collin
+appeared on the scene, "the difference between Brest, Toulon, and
+Rochefort is----"
+
+"Well, old cock?" said the lad, with the curiosity of a novice.
+
+This prisoner, a man of good family, accused of forgery, had come down
+from the cell next to that where Lucien had been.
+
+"My son," Fil-de-Soie went on, "at Brest you are sure to get some
+beans at the third turn if you dip your spoon in the bowl; at Toulon
+you never get any till the fifth; and at Rochefort you get none at
+all, unless you are an old hand."
+
+Having spoken, the philosopher joined le Biffon and la Pouraille, and
+all three, greatly puzzled by the priest, walked down the yard, while
+Jacques Collin, lost in grief, came up it. _Trompe-la-Mort_, absorbed in
+terrible meditations, the meditations of a fallen emperor, did not
+think of himself as the centre of observation, the object of general
+attention, and he walked slowly, gazing at the fatal window where
+Lucien had hanged himself. None of the prisoners knew of this
+catastrophe, since, for reasons to be presently explained, the young
+forger had not mentioned the subject. The three pals agreed to cross
+the priest's path.
+
+"He is no priest," said Fil-de-Soie; "he is an old stager. Look how he
+drags his right foot."
+
+It is needful to explain here--for not every reader has had a fancy to
+visit the galleys--that each convict is chained to another, an old one
+and a young one always as a couple; the weight of this chain riveted
+to a ring above the ankle is so great as to induce a limp, which the
+convict never loses. Being obliged to exert one leg much more than the
+other to drag this fetter (manicle is the slang name for such irons),
+the prisoner inevitably gets into the habit of making the effort.
+Afterwards, though he no longer wears the chain, it acts upon him
+still; as a man still feels an amputated leg, the convict is always
+conscious of the anklet, and can never get over that trick of walking.
+In police slang, he "drags his right." And this sign, as well known to
+convicts among themselves as it is to the police, even if it does not
+help to identify a comrade, at any rate confirms recognition.
+
+In _Trompe-la Mort_, who had escaped eight years since, this trick had
+to a great extent worn off; but just now, lost in reflections, he
+walked at such a slow and solemn pace that, slight as the limp was, it
+was strikingly evident to so practiced an eye as la Pouraille's. And
+it is quite intelligible that convicts, always thrown together, as
+they must be, and never having any one else to study, will so
+thoroughly have watched each other's faces and appearance, that
+certain tricks will have impressed them which may escape their
+systematic foes--spies, gendarmes, and police-inspectors.
+
+Thus it was a peculiar twitch of the maxillary muscles of the left
+cheek, recognized by a convict who was sent to a review of the Legion
+of the Seine, which led to the arrest of the lieutenant-colonel of
+that corps, the famous Coignard; for, in spite of Bibi-Lupin's
+confidence, the police could not dare believe that the Comte Pontis de
+Sainte-Helene and Coignard were one and the same man.
+
+"He is our boss" (dab or master) said Fil-de-Soie, seeing in Jacques
+Collin's eyes the vague glance a man sunk in despair casts on all his
+surroundings.
+
+"By Jingo! Yes, it is _Trompe-la-Mort_," said le Biffon, rubbing his
+hands. "Yes, it is his cut, his build; but what has he done to
+himself? He looks quite different."
+
+"I know what he is up to!" cried Fil-de-Soie; "he has some plan in his
+head. He wants to see the boy" (sa tante) "who is to be executed
+before long."
+
+The persons known in prison as tantes or aunts may be best described
+in the ingenious words of the governor of one of the great prisons to
+the late Lord Durham, who, during his stay in Paris, visited every
+prison. So curious was he to see every detail of French justice, that
+he even persuaded Sanson, at that time the executioner, to erect the
+scaffold and decapitate a living calf, that he might thoroughly
+understand the working of the machine made famous by the Revolution.
+The governor having shown him everything--the yards, the workshops,
+and the underground cells--pointed to a part of the building, and
+said, "I need not take your Lordship there; it is the quartier des
+tantes."--"Oh," said Lord Durham, "what are they!"--"The third sex, my
+Lord."
+
+"And they are going to scrag Theodore!" said la Pouraille, "such a
+pretty boy! And such a light hand! such cheek! What a loss to
+society!"
+
+"Yes, Theodore Calvi is yamming his last meal," said le Biffon. "His
+trips will pipe their eyes, for the little beggar was a great pet."
+
+"So you're here, old chap?" said la Pouraille to Jacques Collin. And,
+arm-in-arm with his two acolytes, he barred the way to the new
+arrival. "Why, Boss, have you got yourself japanned?" he went on.
+
+"I hear you have nobbled our pile" (stolen our money), le Biffon
+added, in a threatening tone.
+
+"You have just got to stump up the tin!" said Fil-de-Soie.
+
+The three questions were fired at him like three pistol-shots.
+
+"Do not make game of an unhappy priest sent here by mistake," Jacques
+Collin replied mechanically, recognizing his three comrades.
+
+"That is the sound of his pipe, if it is not quite the cut of his
+mug," said la Pouraille, laying his hand on Jacques Collin's shoulder.
+
+This action, and the sight of his three chums, startled the "Boss" out
+of his dejection, and brought him back to a consciousness of reality;
+for during that dreadful night he had lost himself in the infinite
+spiritual world of feeling, seeking some new road.
+
+"Do not blow the gaff on your Boss!" said Jacques Collin in a hollow
+threatening tone, not unlike the low growl of a lion. "The reelers are
+here; let them make fools of themselves. I am faking to help a pal who
+is awfully down on his luck."
+
+He spoke with the unction of a priest trying to convert the wretched,
+and a look which flashed round the yard, took in the warders under the
+archways, and pointed them out with a wink to his three companions.
+
+"Are there not narks about? Keep your peepers open and a sharp
+lookout. Don't know me, Nanty parnarly, and soap me down for a priest,
+or I will do for you all, you and your molls and your blunt."
+
+"What, do you funk our blabbing?" said Fil-de-Soie. "Have you come to
+help your boy to guy?"
+
+"Madeleine is getting ready to be turned off in the Square" (the Place
+de Greve), said la Pouraille.
+
+"Theodore!" said Jacques Collin, repressing a start and a cry.
+
+"They will have his nut off," la Pouraille went on; "he was booked for
+the scaffold two months ago."
+
+Jacques Collin felt sick, his knees almost failed him; but his three
+comrades held him up, and he had the presence of mind to clasp his
+hands with an expression of contrition. La Pouraille and le Biffon
+respectfully supported the sacrilegious _Trompe-la-Mort_, while
+Fil-de-Soie ran to a warder on guard at the gate leading to the parlor.
+
+"That venerable priest wants to sit down; send out a chair for him,"
+said he.
+
+And so Bibi-Lupin's plot had failed.
+
+_Trompe-la-Mort_, like a Napoleon recognized by his soldiers, had won
+the submission and respect of the three felons. Two words had done it.
+Your molls and your blunt--your women and your money--epitomizing
+every true affection of man. This threat was to the three convicts an
+indication of supreme power. The Boss still had their fortune in his
+hands. Still omnipotent outside the prison, their Boss had not
+betrayed them, as the false pals said.
+
+Their chief's immense reputation for skill and inventiveness
+stimulated their curiosity; for, in prison, curiosity is the only goad
+of these blighted spirits. And Jacques Collin's daring disguise, kept
+up even under the bolts and locks of the Conciergerie, dazzled the
+three felons.
+
+"I have been in close confinement for four days and did not know that
+Theodore was so near the Abbaye," said Jacques Collin. "I came in to
+save a poor little chap who scragged himself here yesterday at four
+o'clock, and now here is another misfortune. I have not an ace in my
+hand----"
+
+"Poor old boy!" said Fil-de-Soie.
+
+"Old Scratch has cut me!" cried Jacques Collin, tearing himself free
+from his supporters, and drawing himself up with a fierce look. "There
+comes a time when the world is too many for us! The beaks gobble us up
+at last."
+
+The governor of the Conciergerie, informed of the Spanish priest's
+weak state, came himself to the prison-yard to observe him; he made
+him sit down on a chair in the sun, studying him with the keen acumen
+which increases day by day in the practise of such functions, though
+hidden under an appearance of indifference.
+
+"Oh! Heaven!" cried Jacques Collin. "To be mixed up with such
+creatures, the dregs of society--felons and murders!--But God will not
+desert His servant! My dear sir, my stay here shall be marked by deeds
+of charity which shall live in men's memories. I will convert these
+unhappy creatures, they shall learn they have souls, that life eternal
+awaits them, and that though they have lost all on earth, they still
+may win heaven--Heaven which they may purchase by true and genuine
+repentance."
+
+Twenty or thirty prisoners had gathered in a group behind the three
+terrible convicts, whose ferocious looks had kept a space of three
+feet between them and their inquisitive companions, and they heard
+this address, spoken with evangelical unction.
+
+"Ay, Monsieur Gault," said the formidable la Pouraille, "we will
+listen to what this one may say----"
+
+"I have been told," Jacques Collin went on, "that there is in this
+prison a man condemned to death."
+
+"The rejection of his appeal is at this moment being read to him,"
+said Monsieur Gault.
+
+"I do not know what that means," said Jacques Collin, artlessly
+looking about him.
+
+"Golly, what a flat!" said the young fellow, who, a few minutes since,
+had asked Fil-de-Soie about the beans on the hulks.
+
+"Why, it means that he is to be scragged to-day or to-morrow."
+
+"Scragged?" asked Jacques Collin, whose air of innocence and ignorance
+filled his three pals with admiration.
+
+"In their slang," said the governor, "that means that he will suffer
+the penalty of death. If the clerk is reading the appeal, the
+executioner will no doubt have orders for the execution. The unhappy
+man has persistently refused the offices of the chaplain."
+
+"Ah! Monsieur le Directeaur, this is a soul to save!" cried Jacques
+Collin, and the sacrilegious wretch clasped his hands with the
+expression of a despairing lover, which to the watchful governor
+seemed nothing less than divine fervor. "Ah, monsieur," _Trompe-la-Mort_
+went on, "let me prove to you what I am, and how much I can do, by
+allowing me to incite that hardened heart to repentance. God has given
+me a power of speech which produces great changes. I crush men's
+hearts; I open them.--What are you afraid of? Send me with an escort
+of gendarmes, of turnkeys--whom you will."
+
+"I will inquire whether the prison chaplain will allow you to take his
+place," said Monsieur Gault.
+
+And the governor withdrew, struck by the expression, perfectly
+indifferent, though inquisitive, with which the convicts and the
+prisoners on remand stared at this priest, whose unctuous tones lent a
+charm to his half-French, half-Spanish lingo.
+
+"How did you come in here, Monsieur l'Abbe?" asked the youth who had
+questioned Fil-de-Soie.
+
+"Oh, by a mistake!" replied Jacques Collin, eyeing the young gentleman
+from head to foot. "I was found in the house of a courtesan who had
+died, and was immediately robbed. It was proved that she had killed
+herself, and the thieves--probably the servants--have not yet been
+caught."
+
+"And it was for that theft that your young man hanged himself?"
+
+"The poor boy, no doubt, could not endure the thought of being
+blighted by his unjust imprisonment," said _Trompe-la-Mort_, raising
+his eyes to heaven.
+
+"Ay," said the young man; "they were coming to set him free just when
+he had killed himself. What bad luck!"
+
+"Only innocent souls can be thus worked on by their imagination," said
+Jacques Collin. "For, observe, he was the loser by the theft."
+
+"How much money was it?" asked Fil-de-Soie, the deep and cunning.
+
+"Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Jacques Collin
+blandly.
+
+The three convicts looked at each other and withdrew from the group
+that had gathered round the sham priest.
+
+"He screwed the moll's place himself!" said Fil-de-Soie in a whisper
+to le Biffon, "and they want to put us in a blue funk for our
+cartwheels" (thunes de balles, five-franc pieces).
+
+"He will always be the boss of the swells," replied la Pouraille. "Our
+pieces are safe enough."
+
+La Pouraille, wishing to find some man he could trust, had an interest
+in considering Jacques Collin an honest man. And in prison, of all
+places, a man believes what he hopes.
+
+"I lay you anything, he will come round the big Boss and save his
+chum!" said Fil-de-Soie.
+
+"If he does that," said le Biffon, "though I don't believe he is
+really God, he must certainly have smoked a pipe with old Scratch, as
+they say."
+
+"Didn't you hear him say, 'Old Scratch has cut me'?" said
+Fil-de-Soie.
+
+"Oh!" cried la Pouraille, "if only he would save my nut, what a time I
+would have with my whack of the shiners and the yellow boys I have
+stowed."
+
+"Do what he bids you!" said Fil-de Soie.
+
+"You don't say so?" retorted la Pouraille, looking at his pal.
+
+"What a flat you are! You will be booked for the Abbaye!" said le
+Biffon. "You have no other door to budge, if you want to keep on your
+pins, to yam, wet your whistle, and fake to the end; you must take his
+orders."
+
+"That's all right," said la Pouraille. "There is not one of us that
+will blow the gaff, or if he does, I will take him where I am
+going----"
+
+"And he'll do it too," cried Fil-de-Soie.
+
+
+
+The least sympathetic reader, who has no pity for this strange race,
+may conceive of the state of mind of Jacques Collin, finding himself
+between the dead body of the idol whom he had been bewailing during
+five hours that night, and the imminent end of his former comrade--the
+dead body of Theodore, the young Corsican. Only to see the boy would
+demand extraordinary cleverness; to save him would need a miracle; but
+he was thinking of it.
+
+For the better comprehension of what Jacques Collin proposed to
+attempt, it must be remarked that murderers and thieves, all the men
+who people the galleys, are not so formidable as is generally
+supposed. With a few rare exceptions these creatures are all cowards,
+in consequence no doubt, of the constant alarms which weigh on their
+spirit. The faculties being perpetually on the stretch in thieving,
+and the success of a stroke of business depending on the exertion of
+every vital force, with a readiness of wit to match their dexterity of
+hand, and an alertness which exhausts the nervous system; these
+violent exertions of will once over, they become stupid, just as a
+singer or a dancer drops quite exhausted after a fatiguing pas seul,
+or one of those tremendous duets which modern composers inflict on the
+public.
+
+Malefactors are, in fact, so entirely bereft of common sense, or so
+much oppressed by fear, that they become absolutely childish.
+Credulous to the last degree, they are caught by the bird-lime of the
+simplest snare. When they have done a successful _job_, they are in
+such a state of prostration that they immediately rush into the
+debaucheries they crave for; they get drunk on wine and spirits, and
+throw themselves madly into the arms of their women to recover
+composure by dint of exhausting their strength, and to forget their
+crime by forgetting their reason.
+
+Then they are at the mercy of the police. When once they are in
+custody they lose their head, and long for hope so blindly that they
+believe anything; indeed, there is nothing too absurd for them to
+accept it. An instance will suffice to show how far the simplicity of
+a criminal who has been _nabbed_ will carry him. Bibi-Lupin, not long
+before, had extracted a confession from a murderer of nineteen by
+making him believe that no one under age was ever executed. When this
+lad was transferred to the Conciergerie to be sentenced after the
+rejection of his appeal, this terrible man came to see him.
+
+"Are you sure you are not yet twenty?" said he.
+
+"Yes, I am only nineteen and a half."
+
+"Well, then," replied Bibi-Lupin, "you may be quite sure of one thing
+--you will never see twenty."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you will be scragged within three days," replied the police
+agent.
+
+The murderer, who had believed, even after sentence was passed, that a
+minor would never be executed, collapsed like an omelette soufflee.
+
+Such men, cruel only from the necessity for suppressive evidence, for
+they murder only to get rid of witnesses (and this is one of the
+arguments adduced by those who desire the abrogation of capital
+punishment),--these giants of dexterity and skill, whose sleight of
+hand, whose rapid sight, whose every sense is as alert as that of a
+savage, are heroes of evil only on the stage of their exploits. Not
+only do their difficulties begin as soon as the crime is committed,
+for they are as much bewildered by the need for concealing the stolen
+goods as they were depressed by necessity--but they are as weak as a
+woman in childbed. The vehemence of their schemes is terrific; in
+success they become like children. In a word, their nature is that of
+the wild beast--easy to kill when it is full fed. In prison these
+strange beings are men in dissimulation and in secretiveness, which
+never yields till the last moment, when they are crushed and broken by
+the tedium of imprisonment.
+
+It may hence be understood how it was that the three convicts, instead
+of betraying their chief, were eager to serve him; and as they
+suspected he was now the owner of the stolen seven hundred and fifty
+thousand francs, they admired him for his calm resignation, under bolt
+and bar of the Conciergerie, believing him capable of protecting them
+all.
+
+
+
+When Monsieur Gault left the sham priest, he returned through the
+parlor to his office, and went in search of Bibi-Lupin, who for twenty
+minutes, since Jacques Collin had gone downstairs, had been on the
+watch with his eye at a peephole in a window looking out on the
+prison-yard.
+
+"Not one of them recognized him," said Monsieur Gault, "and Napolitas,
+who is on duty, did not hear a word. The poor priest all through the
+night, in his deep distress, did not say a word which could imply that
+his gown covers Jacques Collin."
+
+"That shows that he is used to prison life," said the police agent.
+
+Napolitas, Bibi-Lupin's secretary, being unknown to the criminals then
+in the Conciergerie, was playing the part of the young gentlemen
+imprisoned for forgery.
+
+"Well, but he wishes to be allowed to hear the confession of the young
+fellow who is sentenced to death," said the governor.
+
+"To be sure! That is our last chance," cried Bibi-Lupin. "I had
+forgotten that. Theodore Calvi, the young Corsican, was the man
+chained to Jacques Collin; they say that on the hulks Jacques Collin
+made him famous pads----"
+
+The convicts on the galleys contrive a kind of pad to slip between
+their skin and the fetters to deaden the pressure of the iron ring on
+their ankles and instep; these pads, made of tow and rags, are known
+as patarasses.
+
+"Who is warder over the man?" asked Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"Coeur la Virole."
+
+"Very well, I will go and make up as a gendarme, and be on the watch;
+I shall hear what they say. I will be even with them."
+
+"But if it should be Jacques Collin are you not afraid of his
+recognizing you and throttling you?" said the governor to Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"As a gendarme I shall have my sword," replied the other; "and,
+besides, if he is Jacques Collin, he will never do anything that will
+risk his neck; and if he is a priest, I shall be safe."
+
+"Then you have no time to lose," said Monsieur Gault; "it is half-past
+eight. Father Sauteloup has just read the reply to his appeal, and
+Monsieur Sanson is waiting in the order room."
+
+"Yes, it is to-day's job, the 'widow's huzzars'" (les hussards de la
+veuve, another horrible name for the functionaries of the guillotine)
+"are ordered out," replied Bibi-Lupin. "Still, I cannot wonder that
+the prosecutor-general should hesitate; the boy has always declared
+that he is innocent, and there is, in my opinion, no conclusive
+evidence against him."
+
+"He is a thorough Corsican," said Monsieur Gault; "he has not said a
+word, and has held firm all through."
+
+The last words of the governor of the prison summed up the dismal tale
+of a man condemned to die. A man cut off from among the living by law
+belongs to the Bench. The Bench is paramount; it is answerable to
+nobody, it obeys its own conscience. The prison belongs to the Bench,
+which controls it absolutely. Poetry has taken possession of this
+social theme, "the man condemned to death"--a subject truly apt to
+strike the imagination! And poetry has been sublime on it. Prose has
+no resource but fact; still, the fact is appalling enough to hold its
+own against verse. The existence of a condemned man who has not
+confessed his crime, or betrayed his accomplices, is one of fearful
+torment. This is no case of iron boots, of water poured into the
+stomach, or of limbs racked by hideous machinery; it is hidden and, so
+to speak, negative torture. The condemned wretch is given over to
+himself with a companion whom he cannot but trust.
+
+The amiability of modern philanthropy fancies it has understood the
+dreadful torment of isolation, but this is a mistake. Since the
+abolition of torture, the Bench, in a natural anxiety to reassure the
+too sensitive consciences of the jury, had guessed what a terrible
+auxiliary isolation would prove to justice in seconding remorse.
+
+Solitude is void; and nature has as great a horror of a moral void as
+she has of a physical vacuum. Solitude is habitable only to a man of
+genius who can people it with ideas, the children of the spiritual
+world; or to one who contemplates the works of the Creator, to whom it
+is bright with the light of heaven, alive with the breath and voice of
+God. Excepting for these two beings--so near to Paradise--solitude is
+to the mind what torture is to the body. Between solitude and the
+torture-chamber there is all the difference that there is between a
+nervous malady and a surgical disease. It is suffering multiplied by
+infinitude. The body borders on the infinite through its nerves, as
+the spirit does through thought. And, in fact, in the annals of the
+Paris law courts the criminals who do not confess can be easily
+counted.
+
+This terrible situation, which in some cases assumes appalling
+importance--in politics, for instance, when a dynasty or a state is
+involved--will find a place in the HUMAN COMEDY. But here a
+description of the stone box in which after the Restoration, the law
+shut up a man condemned to death in Paris, may serve to give an idea
+of the terrors of a felon's last day on earth.
+
+Before the Revolution of July there was in the Conciergerie, and
+indeed there still is, a condemned cell. This room, backing on the
+governor's office, is divided from it by a thick wall in strong
+masonry, and the other side of it is formed by a wall seven or eight
+feet thick, which supports one end of the immense _Salle des
+Pas-Perdus_. It is entered through the first door in the long dark
+passage in which the eye loses itself when looking from the middle of
+the vaulted gateway. This ill-omened room is lighted by a funnel, barred
+by a formidable grating, and hardly perceptible on going into the
+Conciergerie yard, for it has been pierced in the narrow space between
+the office window close to the railing of the gateway, and the place
+where the office clerk sits--a den like a cupboard contrived by the
+architect at the end of the entrance court.
+
+This position accounts for the fact that the room thus enclosed
+between four immensely thick walls should have been devoted, when the
+Conciergerie was reconstituted, to this terrible and funereal service.
+Escape is impossible. The passage, leading to the cells for solitary
+confinement and to the women's quarters, faces the stove where
+gendarmes and warders are always collected together. The air-hole, the
+only outlet to the open air, is nine feet above the floor, and looks
+out on the first court, which is guarded by sentries at the outer
+gate. No human power can make any impression on the walls. Besides, a
+man sentenced to death is at once secured in a straitwaistcoat, a
+garment which precludes all use of the hands; he is chained by one
+foot to his camp bed, and he has a fellow prisoner to watch and attend
+on him. The room is paved with thick flags, and the light is so dim
+that it is hard to see anything.
+
+It is impossible not to feel chilled to the marrow on going in, even
+now, though for sixteen years the cell has never been used, in
+consequence of the changes effected in Paris in the treatment of
+criminals under sentence. Imagine the guilty man there with his
+remorse for company, in silence and darkness, two elements of horror,
+and you will wonder how he ever failed to go mad. What a nature must
+that be whose temper can resist such treatment, with the added misery
+of enforced idleness and inaction.
+
+And yet Theodore Calvi, a Corsican, now twenty-seven years of age,
+muffled, as it were, in a shroud of absolute reserve, had for two
+months held out against the effects of this dungeon and the insidious
+chatter of the prisoner placed to entrap him.
+
+These were the strange circumstances under which the Corsican had been
+condemned to death. Though the case is a very curious one, our account
+of it must be brief. It is impossible to introduce a long digression
+at the climax of a narrative already so much prolonged, since its only
+interest is in so far as it concerns Jacques Collin, the vertebral
+column, so to speak, which, by its sinister persistency, connects _Le
+Pere Goriot_ with _Illusions perdues_, and _Illusions perdues_ with this
+Study. And, indeed, the reader's imagination will be able to work out
+the obscure case which at this moment was causing great uneasiness to
+the jury of the sessions, before whom Theodore Calvi had been tried.
+For a whole week, since the criminal's appeal had been rejected by the
+Supreme Court, Monsieur de Granville had been worrying himself over
+the case, and postponing from day to day the order for carrying out
+the sentence, so anxious was he to reassure the jury by announcing
+that on the threshold of death the accused had confessed the crime.
+
+A poor widow of Nanterre, whose dwelling stood apart from the
+township, which is situated in the midst of the infertile plain lying
+between Mount-Valerian, Saint-Germain, the hills of Sartrouville, and
+Argenteuil, had been murdered and robbed a few days after coming into
+her share of an unexpected inheritance. This windfall amounted to
+three thousand francs, a dozen silver spoons and forks, a gold watch
+and chain and some linen. Instead of depositing the three thousand
+francs in Paris, as she was advised by the notary of the wine-merchant
+who had left it her, the old woman insisted on keeping it by her. In
+the first place, she had never seen so much money of her own, and then
+she distrusted everybody in every kind of affairs, as most common and
+country folk do. After long discussion with a wine-merchant of
+Nanterre, a relation of her own and of the wine-merchant who had left
+her the money, the widow decided on buying an annuity, on selling her
+house at Nanterre, and living in the town of Saint-Germain.
+
+The house she was living in, with a good-sized garden enclosed by a
+slight wooden fence, was the poor sort of dwelling usually built by
+small landowners in the neighborhood of Paris. It had been hastily
+constructed, with no architectural design, of cement and rubble, the
+materials commonly used near Paris, where, as at Nanterre, they are
+extremely abundant, the ground being everywhere broken by quarries
+open to the sky. This is the ordinary hut of the civilized savage. The
+house consisted of a ground floor and one floor above, with garrets in
+the roof.
+
+The quarryman, her deceased husband, and the builder of this dwelling,
+had put strong iron bars to all the windows; the front door was
+remarkably thick. The man knew that he was alone there in the open
+country--and what a country! His customers were the principal
+master-masons in Paris, so the more important materials for his house,
+which stood within five hundred yards of his quarry, had been brought
+out in his own carts returning empty. He could choose such as suited
+him where houses were pulled down, and got them very cheap. Thus the
+window frames, the iron-work, the doors, shutters, and wooden fittings
+were all derived from sanctioned pilfering, presents from his
+customers, and good ones, carefully chosen. Of two window-frames, he
+could take the better.
+
+The house, entered from a large stable-yard, was screened from the
+road by a wall; the gate was of strong iron-railing. Watch-dogs were
+kept in the stables, and a little dog indoors at night. There was a
+garden of more than two acres behind.
+
+His widow, without children, lived here with only a woman servant. The
+sale of the quarry had paid off the owner's debts; he had been dead
+about two years. This isolated house was the widow's sole possession,
+and she kept fowls and cows, selling the eggs and milk at Nanterre.
+Having no stableboy or carter or quarryman--her husband had made them
+do every kind of work--she no longer kept up the garden; she only
+gathered the few greens and roots that the stony ground allowed to
+grow self-sown.
+
+The price of the house, with the money she had inherited, would amount
+to seven or eight thousand francs, and she could fancy herself living
+very happily at Saint-Germain on seven or eight hundred francs a year,
+which she thought she could buy with her eight thousand francs. She
+had had many discussions over this with the notary at Saint-Germain,
+for she refused to hand her money over for an annuity to the
+wine-merchant at Nanterre, who was anxious to have it.
+
+Under these circumstances, then, after a certain day the widow Pigeau
+and her servant were seen no more. The front gate, the house door, the
+shutters, all were closed. At the end of three days, the police, being
+informed, made inquisition. Monsieur Popinot, the examining judge, and
+the public prosecutor arrived from Paris, and this was what they
+reported:--
+
+Neither the outer gate nor the front door showed any marks of
+violence. The key was in the lock of the door, inside. Not a single
+bar had been wretched; the locks, shutters, and bolts were all
+untampered with. The walls showed no traces that could betray the
+passage of the criminals. The chimney-posts, of red clay, afforded no
+opportunity for ingress or escape, and the roofing was sound and
+unbroken, showing no damage by violence.
+
+On entering the first-floor rooms, the magistrates, the gendarmes, and
+Bibi-Lupin found the widow Pigeau strangled in her bed and the woman
+strangled in hers, each by means of the bandana she wore as a
+nightcap. The three thousand francs were gone, with the silver-plate
+and the trinkets. The two bodies were decomposing, as were those of
+the little dog and of a large yard-dog.
+
+The wooden palings of the garden were examined; none were broken. The
+garden paths showed no trace of footsteps. The magistrate thought it
+probable that the robber had walked on the grass to leave no
+foot-prints if he had come that way; but how could he have got into
+the house? The back door to the garden had an outer guard of three
+iron bars, uninjured; and there, too, the key was in the lock inside,
+as in the front door.
+
+All these impossibilities having been duly noted by Monsieur Popinot,
+by Bibi-Lupin, who stayed there a day to examine every detail, by the
+public prosecutor himself, and by the sergeant of the gendarmerie at
+Nanterre, this murder became an agitating mystery, in which the Law
+and the Police were nonplussed.
+
+This drama, published in the _Gazette des Tribunaux_, took place in the
+winter of 1828-29. God alone knows what excitement this puzzling crime
+occasioned in Paris! But Paris has a new drama to watch every morning,
+and forgets everything. The police, on the contrary, forgets nothing.
+
+Three months after this fruitless inquiry, a girl of the town, whose
+extravagance had invited the attention of Bibi-Lupin's agents, who
+watched her as being the ally of several thieves, tried to persuade a
+woman she knew to pledge twelve silver spoons and forks and a gold
+watch and chain. The friend refused. This came to Bibi-Lupin's ears,
+and he remembered the plate and the watch and chain stolen at
+Nanterre. The commissioners of the Mont-de-Piete, and all the
+receivers of stolen goods, were warned, while Manon la Blonde was
+subjected to unremitting scrutiny.
+
+It was very soon discovered that Manon la Blonde was madly in love
+with a young man who was never to be seen, and was supposed to be deaf
+to all the fair Manon's proofs of devotion. Mystery on mystery.
+However, this youth, under the diligent attentions of police spies,
+was soon seen and identified as an escaped convict, the famous hero of
+the Corsican vendetta, the handsome Theodore Calvi, known as
+Madeleine.
+
+A man was turned on to entrap Calvi, one of those double-dealing
+buyers of stolen goods who serve the thieves and the police both at
+once; he promised to purchase the silver and the watch and chain. At
+the moment when the dealer of the Cour Saint-Guillaume was counting
+out the cash to Theodore, dressed as a woman, at half-past six in the
+evening, the police came in and seized Theodore and the property.
+
+The inquiry was at once begun. On such thin evidence it was impossible
+to pass a sentence of death. Calvi never swerved, he never
+contradicted himself. He said that a country woman had sold him these
+objects at Argenteuil; that after buying them, the excitement over the
+murder committed at Nanterre had shown him the danger of keeping this
+plate and watch and chain in his possession, since, in fact, they were
+proved by the inventory made after the death of the wine merchant, the
+widow Pigeau's uncle, to be those that were stolen from her. Compelled
+at last by poverty to sell them, he said he wished to dispose of them
+by the intervention of a person to whom no suspicion could attach.
+
+And nothing else could be extracted from the convict, who, by his
+taciturnity and firmness, contrived to insinuate that the
+wine-merchant at Nanterre had committed the crime, and that the woman
+of whom he, Theodore, had bought them was the wine-merchant's wife. The
+unhappy man and his wife were both taken into custody; but, after a
+week's imprisonment, it was amply proved that neither the husband nor
+the wife had been out of their house at the time. Also, Calvi failed
+to recognize in the wife the woman who, as he declared, had sold him
+the things.
+
+As it was shown that Calvi's mistress, implicated in the case, had
+spent about a thousand francs since the date of the crime and the day
+when Calvi tried to pledge the plate and trinkets, the evidence seemed
+strong enough to commit Calvi and the girl for trial. This murder
+being the eighteenth which Theodore had committed, he was condemned to
+death for he seemed certainly to be guilty of this skilfully contrived
+crime. Though he did not recognize the wine-merchant's wife, both she
+and her husband recognized him. The inquiry had proved, by the
+evidence of several witnesses, that Theodore had been living at
+Nanterre for about a month; he had worked at a mason's, his face
+whitened with plaster, and his clothes very shabby. At Nanterre the
+lad was supposed to be about eighteen years old, for the whole month
+he must have been nursing that brat (nourri ce poupon, i.e. hatching
+the crime).
+
+The lawyers thought he must have had accomplices. The chimney-pots
+were measured and compared with the size of Manon la Blonde's body to
+see if she could have got in that way; but a child of six could not
+have passed up or down those red-clay pipes, which, in modern
+buildings, take the place of the vast chimneys of old-fashioned
+houses. But for this singular and annoying difficulty, Theodore would
+have been executed within a week. The prison chaplain, it has been
+seen, could make nothing of him.
+
+
+
+All this business, and the name of Calvi, must have escaped the notice
+of Jacques Collin, who, at the time, was absorbed in his single-handed
+struggle with Contenson, Corentin, and Peyrade. It had indeed been a
+point with _Trompe-la-Mort_ to forget as far as possible his chums and
+all that had to do with the law courts; he dreaded a meeting which
+should bring him face to face with a pal who might demand an account
+of his boss which Collin could not possibly render.
+
+The governor of the prison went forthwith to the public prosecutor's
+court, where he found the Attorney-General in conversation with
+Monsieur de Granville, who had spent the whole night at the Hotel de
+Serizy, was, in consequence of this important case, obliged to give a
+few hours to his duties, though overwhelmed with fatigue and grief;
+for the physicians could not yet promise that the Countess would
+recover her sanity.
+
+After speaking a few words to the governor, Monsieur de Granville took
+the warrant from the attorney and placed it in Gault's hands.
+
+"Let the matter proceed," said he, "unless some extraordinary
+circumstances should arise. Of this you must judge. I trust to your
+judgment. The scaffold need not be erected till half-past ten, so you
+still have an hour. On such an occasion hours are centuries, and many
+things may happen in a century. Do not allow him to think he is
+reprieved; prepare the man for execution if necessary; and if nothing
+comes of that, give Sanson the warrant at half-past nine. Let him
+wait!"
+
+As the governor of the prison left the public prosecutor's room, under
+the archway of the passage into the hall he met Monsieur Camusot, who
+was going there. He exchanged a few hurried words with the examining
+judge; and after telling him what had been done at the Conciergerie
+with regard to Jacques Collin, he went on to witness the meeting of
+_Trompe-la-Mort_ and Madeleine; and he did not allow the so-called
+priest to see the condemned criminal till Bibi-Lupin, admirably
+disguised as a gendarme, had taken the place of the prisoner left in
+charge of the young Corsican.
+
+No words can describe the amazement of the three convicts when a
+warder came to fetch Jacques Collin and led him to the condemned cell!
+With one consent they rushed up to the chair on which Jacques Collin
+was sitting.
+
+"To-day, isn't it, monsieur?" asked Fil-de-Soie of the warder.
+
+"Yes, Jack Ketch is waiting," said the man with perfect indifference.
+
+Charlot is the name by which the executioner is known to the populace
+and the prison world in Paris. The nickname dates from the Revolution
+of 1789.
+
+The words produced a great sensation. The prisoners looked at each
+other.
+
+"It is all over with him," the warder went on; "the warrant has been
+delivered to Monsieur Gault, and the sentence has just been read to
+him."
+
+"And so the fair Madeleine has received the last sacraments?" said la
+Pouraille, and he swallowed a deep mouthful of air.
+
+"Poor little Theodore!" cried le Biffon; "he is a pretty chap too.
+What a pity to drop your nut" (eternuer dans le son) "so young."
+
+The warder went towards the gate, thinking that Jacques Collin was at
+his heels. But the Spaniard walked very slowly, and when he was
+getting near to Julien he tottered and signed to la Pouraille to give
+him his arm.
+
+"He is a murderer," said Napolitas to the priest, pointing to la
+Pouraille, and offering his own arm.
+
+"No, to me he is an unhappy wretch!" replied Jacques Collin, with the
+presence of mind and the unction of the Archbishop of Cambrai. And he
+drew away from Napolitas, of whom he had been very suspicious from the
+first. Then he said to his pals in an undertone:
+
+"He is on the bottom step of the Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret, but I am
+the Prior! I will show you how well I know how to come round the
+beaks. I mean to snatch this boy's nut from their jaws."
+
+"For the sake of his breeches!" said Fil-de-Soie with a smile.
+
+"I mean to win his soul to heaven!" replied Jacques Collin fervently,
+seeing some other prisoners about him. And he joined the warder at the
+gate.
+
+"He got in to save Madeleine," said Fil-de-Soie. "We guessed rightly.
+What a boss he is!"
+
+"But how can he? Jack Ketch's men are waiting. He will not even see
+the kid," objected le Biffon.
+
+"The devil is on his side!" cried la Pouraille. "He claim our blunt!
+Never! He is too fond of his old chums! We are too useful to him! They
+wanted to make us blow the gaff, but we are not such flats! If he
+saves his Madeleine, I will tell him all my secrets."
+
+The effect of this speech was to increase the devotion of the three
+convicts to their boss; for at this moment he was all their hope.
+
+Jacques Collin, in spite of Madeleine's peril, did not forget to play
+his part. Though he knew the Conciergerie as well as he knew the hulks
+in the three ports, he blundered so naturally that the warder had to
+tell him, "This way, that way," till they reached the office. There,
+at a glance, Jacques Collin recognized a tall, stout man leaning on
+the stove, with a long, red face not without distinction: it was
+Sanson.
+
+"Monsieur is the chaplain?" said he, going towards him with simple
+cordiality.
+
+The mistake was so shocking that it froze the bystanders.
+
+"No, monsieur," said Sanson; "I have other functions."
+
+Sanson, the father of the last executioner of that name--for he has
+recently been dismissed--was the son of the man who beheaded Louis
+XVI. After four centuries of hereditary office, this descendant of so
+many executioners had tried to repudiate the traditional burden. The
+Sansons were for two hundred years executioners at Rouen before being
+promoted to the first rank in the kingdom, and had carried out the
+decrees of justice from father to son since the thirteenth century.
+Few families can boast of an office or of nobility handed down in a
+direct line during six centuries.
+
+This young man had been captain in a cavalry regiment, and was looking
+forward to a brilliant military career, when his father insisted on
+his help in decapitating the king. Then he made his son his deputy
+when, in 1793, two guillotines were in constant work--one at the
+Barriere du Trone, and the other in the Place de Greve. This terrible
+functionary, now a man of about sixty, was remarkable for his
+dignified air, his gentle and deliberate manners, and his entire
+contempt for Bibi-Lupin and his acolytes who fed the machine. The only
+detail which betrayed the blood of the mediaeval executioner was the
+formidable breadth and thickness of his hands. Well informed too,
+caring greatly for his position as a citizen and an elector, and an
+enthusiastic florist, this tall, brawny man with his low voice, his
+calm reserve, his few words, and a high bald forehead, was like an
+English nobleman rather than an executioner. And a Spanish priest
+would certainly have fallen into the mistake which Jacques Collin had
+intentionally made.
+
+"He is no convict!" said the head warder to the governor.
+
+"I begin to think so too," replied Monsieur Gault, with a nod to that
+official.
+
+Jacques Collin was led to the cellar-like room where Theodore Calvi,
+in a straitwaistcoat, was sitting on the edge of the wretched camp
+bed. _Trompe-la-Mort_, under a transient gleam of light from the
+passage, at once recognized Bibi-Lupin in the gendarme who stood
+leaning on his sword.
+
+"Io sono Gaba-Morto. Parla nostro Italiano," said Jacques Collin very
+rapidly. "Vengo ti salvar."
+
+"I am _Trompe-la-Mort_. Talk our Italian. I have come to save you."
+
+All the two chums wanted to say had, of course, to be incomprehensible
+to the pretended gendarme; and as Bibi-Lupin was left in charge of the
+prisoner, he could not leave his post. The man's fury was quite
+indescribable.
+
+Theodore Calvi, a young man with a pale olive complexion, light hair,
+and hollow, dull, blue eyes, well built, hiding prodigious strength
+under the lymphatic appearance that is not uncommon in Southerners,
+would have had a charming face but for the strongly-arched eyebrows
+and low forehead that gave him a sinister expression, scarlet lips of
+savage cruelty, and a twitching of the muscles peculiar to Corsicans,
+denoting that excessive irritability which makes them so prompt to
+kill in any sudden squabble.
+
+Theodore, startled at the sound of that voice, raised his head, and at
+first thought himself the victim of a delusion; but as the experience
+of two months had accustomed him to the darkness of this stone box, he
+looked at the sham priest, and sighed deeply. He did not recognize
+Jacques Collin, whose face, scarred by the application of sulphuric
+acid, was not that of his old boss.
+
+"It is really your Jacques; I am your confessor, and have come to get
+you off. Do not be such a ninny as to know me; and speak as if you
+were making a confession." He spoke with the utmost rapidity. "This
+young fellow is very much depressed; he is afraid to die, he will
+confess everything," said Jacques Collin, addressing the gendarme.
+
+Bibi-Lupin dared not say a word for fear of being recognized.
+
+"Say something to show me that you are he; you have nothing but his
+voice," said Theodore.
+
+"You see, poor boy, he assures me that he is innocent," said Jacques
+Collin to Bibi-Lupin, who dared not speak for fear of being
+recognized.
+
+"Sempre mi," said Jacques, returning close to Theodore, and speaking
+the word in his ear.
+
+"Sempre ti," replied Theodore, giving the countersign. "Yes, you are
+the boss----"
+
+"Did you do the trick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell me the whole story, that I may see what can be done to save you;
+make haste, Jack Ketch is waiting."
+
+The Corsican at once knelt down and pretended to be about to confess.
+
+Bibi-Lupin did not know what to do, for the conversation was so rapid
+that it hardly took as much time as it does to read it. Theodore
+hastily told all the details of the crime, of which Jacques Collin
+knew nothing.
+
+"The jury gave their verdict without proof," he said finally.
+
+"Child! you want to argue when they are waiting to cut off your
+hair----"
+
+"But I might have been sent to spout the wedge.--And that is the way
+they judge you!--and in Paris too!"
+
+"But how did you do the job?" asked _Trompe-la-Mort_.
+
+"Ah! there you are.--Since I saw you I made acquaintance with a girl,
+a Corsican, I met when I came to Paris."
+
+"Men who are such fools as to love a woman," cried Jacques Collin,
+"always come to grief that way. They are tigers on the loose, tigers
+who blab and look at themselves in the glass.--You were a gaby."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Well, what good did she do you--that curse of a moll?"
+
+"That duck of a girl--no taller than a bundle of firewood, as slippery
+as an eel, and as nimble as a monkey--got in at the top of the oven,
+and opened the front door. The dogs were well crammed with balls, and
+as dead as herrings. I settled the two women. Then when I got the
+swag, Ginetta locked the door and got out again by the oven."
+
+"Such a clever dodge deserves life," said Jacques Collin, admiring the
+execution of the crime as a sculptor admires the modeling of a figure.
+
+"And I was fool enough to waste all that cleverness for a thousand
+crowns!"
+
+"No, for a woman," replied Jacques Collin. "I tell you, they deprive
+us of all our wits," and Jacques Collin eyed Theodore with a flashing
+glance of contempt.
+
+"But you were not there!" said the Corsican; "I was all alone----"
+
+"And do you love the slut?" asked Jacques Collin, feeling that the
+reproach was a just one.
+
+"Oh! I want to live, but it is for you now rather than for her."
+
+"Be quite easy, I am not called _Trompe-la-Mort_ for nothing. I
+undertake the case."
+
+"What! life?" cried the lad, lifting his swaddled hands towards the
+damp vault of the cell.
+
+"My little Madeleine, prepare to be lagged for life (penal
+servitude)," replied Jacques Collin. "You can expect no less; they
+won't crown you with roses like a fatted ox. When they first set us
+down for Rochefort, it was because they wanted to be rid of us! But if
+I can get you ticketed for Toulon, you can get out and come back to
+Pantin (Paris), where I will find you a tidy way of living."
+
+A sigh such as had rarely been heard under that inexorable roof struck
+the stones, which sent back the sound that has no fellow in music, to
+the ear of the astounded Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"It is the effect of the absolution I promised him in return for his
+revelations," said Jacques Collin to the gendarme. "These Corsicans,
+monsieur, are full of faith! But he is as innocent as the Immaculate
+Babe, and I mean to try to save him."
+
+"God bless you, Monsieur l'Abbe!" said Theodore in French.
+
+
+
+_Trompe-la-Mort_, more Carlos Herrera, more the canon than ever, left
+the condemned cell, rushed back to the hall, and appeared before
+Monsieur Gault in affected horror.
+
+"Indeed, sir, the young man is innocent; he has told me who the guilty
+person is! He was ready to die for a false point of honor--he is a
+Corsican! Go and beg the public prosecutor to grant me five minutes'
+interview. Monsieur de Granville cannot refuse to listen at once to a
+Spanish priest who is suffering so cruelly from the blunders of the
+French police."
+
+"I will go," said Monsieur Gault, to the extreme astonishment of all
+the witnesses of this extraordinary scene.
+
+"And meanwhile," said Jacques, "send me back to the prison-yard where
+I may finish the conversion of a criminal whose heart I have touched
+already--they have hearts, these people!"
+
+This speech produced a sensation in all who heard it. The gendarmes,
+the registry clerk, Sanson, the warders, the executioner's assistant
+--all awaiting orders to go and get the scaffold ready--to rig up the
+machine, in prison slang--all these people, usually so indifferent,
+were agitated by very natural curiosity.
+
+Just then the rattle of a carriage with high-stepping horses was
+heard; it stopped very suggestively at the gate of the Conciergerie on
+the quay. The door was opened, and the step let down in such haste,
+that every one supposed that some great personage had arrived.
+Presently a lady waving a sheet of blue paper came forward to the
+outer gate of the prison, followed by a footman and a chasseur.
+Dressed very handsomely, and all in black, with a veil over her
+bonnet, she was wiping her eyes with a floridly embroidered
+handkerchief.
+
+Jacques Collin at once recognized Asie, or, to give the woman her true
+name, Jacqueline Collin, his aunt. This horrible old woman--worthy of
+her nephew--whose thoughts were all centered in the prisoner, and who
+was defending him with intelligence and mother-wit that were a match
+for the powers of the law, had a permit made out the evening before in
+the name of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse's waiting-maid by the request
+of Monsieur de Serizy, allowing her to see Lucien de Rubempre, and the
+Abbe Carlos Herrera so soon as he should be brought out of the secret
+cells. On this the Colonel, who was the Governor-in-Chief of all the
+prisons had written a few words, and the mere color of the paper
+revealed powerful influences; for these permits, like theatre-tickets,
+differ in shape and appearance.
+
+So the turnkey hastened to open the gate, especially when he saw the
+chasseur with his plumes and an uniform of green and gold as dazzling
+as a Russian General's, proclaiming a lady of aristocratic rank and
+almost royal birth.
+
+"Oh, my dear Abbe!" exclaimed this fine lady, shedding a torrent of
+tears at the sight of the priest, "how could any one ever think of
+putting such a saintly man in here, even by mistake?"
+
+The Governor took the permit and read, "Introduced by His Excellency
+the Comte de Serizy."
+
+"Ah! Madame de San-Esteban, Madame la Marquise," cried Carlos Herrera,
+"what admirable devotion!"
+
+"But, madame, such interviews are against the rules," said the good
+old Governor. And he intercepted the advance of this bale of black
+watered-silk and lace.
+
+"But at such a distance!" said Jacques Collin, "and in your
+presence----" and he looked round at the group.
+
+His aunt, whose dress might well dazzle the clerk, the Governor, the
+warders, and the gendarmes, stank of musk. She had on, besides a
+thousand crowns of lace, a black India cashmere shawl, worth six
+thousand francs. And her chasseur was marching up and down outside
+with the insolence of a lackey who knows that he is essential to an
+exacting princess. He spoke never a word to the footman, who stood by
+the gate on the quay, which is always open by day.
+
+"What do you wish? What can I do?" said Madame de San-Esteban in the
+lingo agreed upon by this aunt and nephew.
+
+This dialect consisted in adding terminations in ar or in or, or in al
+or in i to every word, whether French or slang, so as to disguise it
+by lengthening it. It was a diplomatic cipher adapted to speech.
+
+"Put all the letters in some safe place; take out those that are most
+likely to compromise the ladies; come back, dressed very poorly, to
+the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_, and wait for my orders."
+
+Asie, otherwise Jacqueline, knelt as if to receive his blessing, and
+the sham priest blessed his aunt with evengelical unction.
+
+"Addio, Marchesa," said he aloud. "And," he added in their private
+language, "find Europe and Paccard with the seven hundred and fifty
+thousand francs they bagged. We must have them."
+
+"Paccard is out there," said the pious Marquise, pointing to the
+chasseur, her eyes full of tears.
+
+This intuitive comprehension brought not merely a smile to the man's
+lips, but a gesture of surprise; no one could astonish him but his
+aunt. The sham Marquise turned to the bystanders with the air of a
+woman accustomed to give herself airs.
+
+"He is in despair at being unable to attend his son's funeral," said
+she in broken French, "for this monstrous miscarriage of justice has
+betrayed the saintly man's secret.--I am going to the funeral mass.
+--Here, monsieur," she added to the Governor, handing him a purse of
+gold, "this is to give your poor prisoners some comforts."
+
+"What slap-up style!" her nephew whispered in approval.
+
+Jacques Collin then followed the warder, who led him back to the yard.
+
+Bibi-Lupin, quite desperate, had at last caught the eye of a real
+gendarme, to whom, since Jacques Collin had gone, he had been
+addressing significant "Ahems," and who took his place on guard in the
+condemned cell. But _Trompe-la-Mort's_ sworn foe was released too late
+to see the great lady, who drove off in her dashing turn-out, and
+whose voice, though disguised, fell on his ear with a vicious twang.
+
+"Three hundred shiners for the boarders," said the head warder,
+showing Bibi-Lupin the purse, which Monsieur Gault had handed over to
+his clerk.
+
+"Let's see, Monsieur Jacomety," said Bibi-Lupin.
+
+The police agent took the purse, poured out the money into his hand,
+and examined it curiously.
+
+"Yes, it is gold, sure enough!" said he, "and a coat-of-arms on the
+purse! The scoundrel! How clever he is! What an all-round villain! He
+does us all brown----and all the time! He ought to be shot down like a
+dog!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" asked the clerk, taking back the money.
+
+"The matter! Why, the hussy stole it!" cried Bibi-Lupin, stamping with
+rage on the flags of the gateway.
+
+The words produced a great sensation among the spectators, who were
+standing at a little distance from Monsieur Sanson. He, too, was still
+standing, his back against the large stove in the middle of the
+vaulted hall, awaiting the order to crop the felon's hair and erect
+the scaffold on the Place de Greve.
+
+On re-entering the yard, Jacques Collin went towards his chums at a
+pace suited to a frequenter of the galleys.
+
+"What have you on your mind?" said he to la Pouraille.
+
+"My game is up," said the man, whom Jacques Collin led into a corner.
+"What I want now is a pal I can trust."
+
+"What for?"
+
+La Pouraille, after telling the tale of all his crimes, but in
+thieves' slang, gave an account of the murder and robbery of the two
+Crottats.
+
+"You have my respect," said Jacques Collin. "The job was well done;
+but you seem to me to have blundered afterwards."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Well, having done the trick, you ought to have had a Russian
+passport, have made up as a Russian prince, bought a fine coach with a
+coat-of-arms on it, have boldly deposited your money in a bank, have
+got a letter of credit on Hamburg, and then have set out posting to
+Hamburg with a valet, a ladies' maid, and your mistress disguised as a
+Russian princess. At Hamburg you should have sailed for Mexico. A chap
+of spirit, with two hundred and eighty thousand francs in gold, ought
+to be able to do what he pleases and go where he pleases, flathead!"
+
+"Oh yes, you have such notions because you are the boss. Your nut is
+always square on your shoulders--but I----"
+
+"In short, a word of good advice in your position is like broth to a
+dead man," said Jacques Collin, with a serpentlike gaze at his old
+pal.
+
+"True enough!" said la Pouraille, looking dubious. "But give me the
+broth, all the same. If it does not suit my stomach, I can warm my
+feet in it----"
+
+"Here you are nabbed by the Justice, with five robberies and three
+murders, the latest of them those of two rich and respectable
+folks. . . . Now, juries do not like to see respectable folks killed.
+You will be put through the machine, and there is not a chance for
+you."
+
+"I have heard all that," said la Pouraille lamentably.
+
+"My aunt Jacqueline, with whom I have just exchanged a few words in
+the office, and who is, as you know, a mother to the pals, told me
+that the authorities mean to be quit of you; they are so much afraid
+of you."
+
+"But I am rich now," said La Pouraille, with a simplicity which showed
+how convinced a thief is of his natural right to steal. "What are they
+afraid of?"
+
+"We have no time for philosophizing," said Jacques Collin. "To come
+back to you----"
+
+"What do you want with me?" said la Pouraille, interrupting his boss.
+
+"You shall see. A dead dog is still worth something."
+
+"To other people," said la Pouraille.
+
+"I take you into my game!" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"Well, that is something," said the murderer. "What next?"
+
+"I do not ask you where your money is, but what you mean to do with
+it?"
+
+La Pouraille looked into the convict's impenetrable eye, and Jacques
+coldly went on: "Have you a trip you are sweet upon, or a child, or a
+pal to be helped? I shall be outside within an hour, and I can do much
+for any one you want to be good-natured to."
+
+La Pouraille still hesitated; he was delaying with indecision. Jacques
+Collin produced a clinching argument.
+
+"Your whack of our money would be thirty thousand francs. Do you leave
+it to the pals? Do you bequeath it to anybody? Your share is safe; I
+can give it this evening to any one you leave it to."
+
+The murderer gave a little start of satisfaction.
+
+"I have him!" said Jacques Collin to himself. "But we have no time to
+play. Consider," he went on in la Pouraille's ear, "we have not ten
+minutes to spare, old chap; the public prosecutor is to send for me,
+and I am to have a talk with him. I have him safe, and can ring the
+old boss' neck. I am certain I shall save Madeleine."
+
+"If you save Madeleine, my good boss, you can just as easily----"
+
+"Don't waste your spittle," said Jacques Collin shortly. "Make your
+will."
+
+"Well, then--I want to leave the money to la Gonore," replied la
+Pouraille piteously.
+
+"What! Are you living with Moses' widow--the Jew who led the swindling
+gang in the South?" asked Jacques Collin.
+
+For _Trompe-la-Mort_, like a great general, knew the person of every one
+of his army.
+
+"That's the woman," said la Pouraille, much flattered.
+
+"A pretty woman," said Jacques Collin, who knew exactly how to manage
+his dreadful tools. "The moll is a beauty; she is well informed, and
+stands by her mates, and a first-rate hand. Yes, la Gonore has made a
+new man of you! What a flat you must be to risk your nut when you have
+a trip like her at home! You noodle; you should have set up some
+respectable little shop and lived quietly.--And what does she do?"
+
+"She is settled in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, managing a house----"
+
+"And she is to be your legatee? Ah, my dear boy, this is what such
+sluts bring us to when we are such fools as to love them."
+
+"Yes, but don't you give her anything till I am done for."
+
+"It is a sacred trust," said Jacques Collin very seriously.
+
+"And nothing to the pals?"
+
+"Nothing! They blowed the gaff for me," answered la Pouraille
+vindictively.
+
+"Who did? Shall I serve 'em out?" asked Jacques Collin eagerly, trying
+to rouse the last sentiment that survives in these souls till the last
+hour. "Who knows, old pal, but I might at the same time do them a bad
+turn and serve you with the public prosecutor?"
+
+The murderer looked at his boss with amazed satisfaction.
+
+"At this moment," the boss replied to this expressive look, "I am
+playing the game only for Theodore. When this farce is played out, old
+boy, I might do wonders for a chum--for you are a chum of mine."
+
+"If I see that you really can put off the engagement for that poor
+little Theodore, I will do anything you choose--there!"
+
+"But the trick is done. I am sure to save his head. If you want to get
+out of the scrape, you see, la Pouraille, you must be ready to do a
+good turn--we can do nothing single-handed----"
+
+"That's true," said the felon.
+
+His confidence was so strong, and his faith in the boss so fanatical,
+that he no longer hesitated. La Pouraille revealed the names of his
+accomplices, a secret hitherto well kept. This was all Jacques needed
+to know.
+
+"That is the whole story. Ruffard was the third in the job with me and
+Godet----"
+
+"Arrache-Laine?" cried Jacques Collin, giving Ruffard his nickname
+among the gang.
+
+"That's the man.--And the blackguards peached because I knew where
+they had hidden their whack, and they did not know where mine was."
+
+"You are making it all easy, my cherub!" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well," replied the master, "you see how wise it is to trust me
+entirely. Your revenge is now part of the hand I am playing.--I do not
+ask you to tell me where the dibs are, you can tell me at the last
+moment; but tell me all about Ruffard and Godet."
+
+"You are, and you always will be, our boss; I have no secrets from
+you," replied la Pouraille. "My money is in the cellar at la
+Gonore's."
+
+"And you are not afraid of her telling?"
+
+"Why, get along! She knows nothing about my little game!" replied la
+Pouraille. "I make her drunk, though she is of the sort that would
+never blab even with her head under the knife.--But such a lot of
+gold----!"
+
+"Yes, that turns the milk of the purest conscience," replied Jacques
+Collin.
+
+"So I could do the job with no peepers to spy me. All the chickens
+were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet underground behind some
+wine-bottles. And I spread some stones and mortar over them."
+
+"Good," said Jacques Collin. "And the others?"
+
+"Ruffard's pieces are with la Gonore in the poor woman's bedroom, and
+he has her tight by that, for she might be nabbed as accessory after
+the fact, and end her days in Saint-Lazare."
+
+"The villain! The reelers teach a thief what's what," said Jacques.
+
+"Godet left his pieces at his sister's, a washerwoman; honest girl,
+she may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it.
+The pal raised the tiles of the floor, put them back again, and
+guyed."
+
+"Now do you know what I want you to do?" said Jacques Collin, with a
+magnetizing gaze at la Pouraille.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I want you to take Madeleine's job on your shoulders."
+
+La Pouraille started queerly; but he at once recovered himself and
+stood at attention under the boss' eye.
+
+"So you shy at that? You dare to spoil my game? Come, now! Four
+murders or three. Does it not come to the same thing?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"By the God of good-fellowship, there is no blood in your veins! And I
+was thinking of saving you!"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family, you will
+only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for your nut if we
+keep the blunt, but at this moment you are worth seven hundred
+thousand francs, you flat."
+
+"Good for you, boss!" cried la Pouraille in great glee.
+
+"And then," said Jacques Collin, "besides casting all the murders on
+Ruffard--Bibi-Lupin will be finely cold. I have him this time."
+
+La Pouraille was speechless at this suggestion; his eyes grew round,
+and he stood like an image.
+
+He had been three months in custody, and was committed for trial, and
+his chums at La Force, to whom he had never mentioned his accomplices,
+had given him such small comfort, that he was entirely hopeless after
+his examination, and this simple expedient had been quite overlooked
+by these prison-ridden minds. This semblance of a hope almost
+stupefied his brain.
+
+"Have Ruffard and Godet had their spree yet? Have they forked out any
+of the yellow boys?" asked Jacques Collin.
+
+"They dare not," replied la Pouraille. "The wretches are waiting till
+I am turned off. That is what my moll sent me word by la Biffe when
+she came to see le Biffon."
+
+"Very well; we will have their whack of money in twenty-four hours,"
+said Jacques Collin. "Then the blackguards cannot pay up, as you will;
+you will come out as white as snow, and they will be red with all that
+blood! By my kind offices you will seem a good sort of fellow led away
+by them. I shall have money enough of yours to prove alibis on the
+other counts, and when you are back on the hulks--for you are bound to
+go there--you must see about escaping. It is a dog's life, still it is
+life!"
+
+La Pouraille's eyes glittered with suppressed delirium.
+
+"With seven hundred thousand francs you can get a good many drinks,"
+said Jacques Collin, making his pal quite drunk with hope.
+
+"Ay, ay, boss!"
+
+"I can bamboozle the Minister of Justice.--Ah, ha! Ruffard will shell
+out to do for a reeler. Bibi-Lupin is fairly gulled!"
+
+"Very good, it is a bargain," said la Pouraille with savage glee. "You
+order, and I obey."
+
+And he hugged Jacques Collin in his arms, while tears of joy stood in
+his eyes, so hopeful did he feel of saving his head.
+
+"That is not all," said Jacques Collin; "the public prosecutor does
+not swallow everything, you know, especially when a new count is
+entered against you. The next thing is to bring a moll into the case
+by blowing the gaff."
+
+"But how, and what for?"
+
+"Do as I bid you; you will see." And _Trompe-la-Mort_ briefly told the
+secret of the Nanterre murders, showing him how necessary it was to
+find a woman who would pretend to be Ginetta. Then he and la
+Pouraille, now in good spirits, went across to le Biffon.
+
+"I know how sweet you are on la Biffe," said Jacques Collin to this
+man.
+
+The expression in le Biffon's eyes was a horrible poem.
+
+"What will she do while you are on the hulks?"
+
+A tear sparkled in le Biffon's fierce eyes.
+
+"Well, suppose I were to get her lodgings in the Lorcefe des Largues"
+(the women's La Force, i. e. les Madelonnettes or Saint-Lazare) "for a
+stretch, allowing that time for you to be sentenced and sent there, to
+arrive and to escape?"
+
+"Even you cannot work such a miracle. She took no part in the job,"
+replied la Biffe's partner.
+
+"Oh, my good Biffon," said la Pouraille, "our boss is more powerful
+than God Almighty."
+
+"What is your password for her?" asked Jacques Collin, with the
+assurance of a master to whom nothing can be refused.
+
+"Sorgue a Pantin (night in Paris). If you say that she knows you have
+come from me, and if you want her to do as you bid her, show her a
+five-franc piece and say Tondif."
+
+"She will be involved in the sentence on la Pouraille, and let off
+with a year in quod for snitching," said Jacques Collin, looking at la
+Pouraille.
+
+La Pouraille understood his boss' scheme, and by a single look
+promised to persuade le Biffon to promote it by inducing la Biffe to
+take upon herself this complicity in the crime la Pouraille was
+prepared to confess.
+
+"Farewell, my children. You will presently hear that I have saved my
+boy from Jack Ketch," said _Trompe-la-Mort_. "Yes, Jack Ketch and his
+hairdresser were waiting in the office to get Madeleine ready.
+--There," he added, "they have come to fetch me to go to the public
+prosecutor."
+
+And, in fact, a warder came out of the gate and beckoned to this
+extraordinary man, who, in face of the young Corsican's danger, had
+recovered his own against his own society.
+
+
+
+It is worthy of note that at the moment when Lucien's body was taken
+away from him, Jacques Collin had, with a crowning effort, made up his
+mind to attempt a last incarnation, not as a human being, but as a
+_thing_. He had at last taken the fateful step that Napoleon took on
+board the boat which conveyed him to the Bellerophon. And a strange
+concurrence of events aided this genius of evil and corruption in his
+undertaking.
+
+But though the unlooked-for conclusion of this life of crime may
+perhaps be deprived of some of the marvelous effect which, in our day,
+can be given to a narrative only by incredible improbabilities, it is
+necessary, before we accompany Jacques Collin to the public
+prosecutor's room, that we should follow Madame Camusot in her visits
+during the time we have spent in the Conciergerie.
+
+One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly
+observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic
+arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself
+romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks
+of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it
+constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of
+facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of
+"situation" forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and
+purified by the writer.
+
+Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the morning almost
+in good taste--a difficult task for the wife of a judge who for six
+years has lived in a provincial town. Her object was to give no hold
+for criticism to the Marquise d'Espard or the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse, in a call so early as between eight and nine in the
+morning. Amelie Cecile Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only
+half succeeded; and in a matter of dress is this not a twofold
+blunder?
+
+Few people can imagine how useful the women of Paris are to ambitious
+men of every class; they are equally necessary in the world of fashion
+and the world of thieves, where, as we have seen, they fill a most
+important part. For instance, suppose that a man, not to find himself
+left in the lurch, must absolutely get speech within a given time with
+the high functionary who was of such immense importance under the
+Restoration, and who is to this day called the Keeper of the Seals--a
+man, let us say, in the most favorable position, a judge, that is to
+say, a man familiar with the way of things. He is compelled to seek
+out the presiding judge of a circuit, or some private or official
+secretary, and prove to him his need of an immediate interview. But is
+a Keeper of the Seals ever visible "that very minute"? In the middle
+of the day, if he is not at the Chamber, he is at the Privy Council,
+or signing papers, or hearing a case. In the early morning he is out,
+no one knows where. In the evening he has public and private
+engagements. If every magistrate could claim a moment's interview
+under any pretext that might occur to him, the Supreme Judge would be
+besieged.
+
+The purpose of a private and immediate interview is therefore
+submitted to the judgment of one of those mediatory potentates who are
+but an obstacle to be removed, a door that can be unlocked, so long as
+it is not held by a rival. A woman at once goes to another woman; she
+can get straight into her bedroom if she can arouse the curiosity of
+mistress or maid, especially if the mistress is under the stress of a
+strong interest or pressing necessity.
+
+Call this female potentate Madame la Marquise d'Espard, with whom a
+Minister has to come to terms; this woman writes a little scented
+note, which her man-servant carries to the Minister's man-servant. The
+note greets the Minister on his waking, and he reads it at once.
+Though the Minister has business to attend to, the man is enchanted to
+have a reason for calling on one of the Queens of Paris, one of the
+Powers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, one of the favorites of the
+Dauphiness, of MADAME, or of the King. Casimir Perier, the only real
+statesman of the Revolution of July, would leave anything to call on a
+retired Gentleman of the bed-chamber to King Charles X.
+
+This theory accounts for the magical effect of the words:
+
+"Madame,--Madame Camusot, on very important business, which she says
+you know of," spoken in Madame d'Espard's ear by her maid, who thought
+she was awake.
+
+And the Marquise desired that Amelie should be shown in at once.
+
+The magistrate's wife was attentively heard when she began with these
+words:
+
+"Madame la Marquise, we have ruined ourselves by trying to avenge
+you----"
+
+"How is that, my dear?" replied the Marquise, looking at Madame
+Camusot in the dim light that fell through the half-open door. "You
+are vastly sweet this morning in that little bonnet. Where do you get
+that shape?"
+
+"You are very kind, madame.--Well, you know that Camusot's way of
+examining Lucien de Rubempre drove the young man to despair, and he
+hanged himself in prison."
+
+"Oh, what will become of Madame de Serizy?" cried the Marquise,
+affecting ignorance, that she might hear the whole story once more.
+
+"Alas! they say she is quite mad," said Amelie. "If you could persuade
+the Lord Keeper to send for my husband this minute, by special
+messenger, to meet him at the Palais, the Minister would hear some
+strange mysteries, and report them, no doubt, to the King. . . . Then
+Camusot's enemies would be reduced to silence."
+
+"But who are Camusot's enemies?" asked Madame d'Espard.
+
+"The public prosecutor, and now Monsieur de Serizy."
+
+"Very good, my dear," replied Madame d'Espard, who owed to Monsieur de
+Granville and the Comte de Serizy her defeat in the disgraceful
+proceedings by which she had tried to have her husband treated as a
+lunatic, "I will protect you; I never forget either my foes or my
+friends."
+
+She rang; the maid drew open the curtains, and daylight flooded the
+room; she asked for her desk, and the maid brought it in. The Marquise
+hastily scrawled a few lines.
+
+"Tell Godard to go on horseback, and carry this note to the
+Chancellor's office.--There is no reply," said she to the maid.
+
+The woman went out of the room quickly, but, in spite of the order,
+remained at the door for some minutes.
+
+"There are great mysteries going forward then?" asked Madame d'Espard.
+"Tell me all about it, dear child. Has Clotilde de Grandlieu put a
+finger in the pie?"
+
+"You will know everything from the Lord Keeper, for my husband has
+told me nothing. He only told me he was in danger. It would be better
+for us that Madame de Serizy should die than that she should remain
+mad."
+
+"Poor woman!" said the Marquise. "But was she not mad already?"
+
+Women of the world, by a hundred ways of pronouncing the same phrase,
+illustrate to attentive hearers the infinite variety of musical modes.
+The soul goes out into the voice as it does into the eyes; it vibrates
+in light and in air--the elements acted on by the eyes and the voice.
+By the tone she gave to the two words, "Poor woman!" the Marquise
+betrayed the joy of satisfied hatred, the pleasure of triumph. Oh!
+what woes did she not wish to befall Lucien's protectress. Revenge,
+which nothing can assuage, which can survive the person hated, fills
+us with dark terrors. And Madame Camusot, though harsh herself,
+vindictive, and quarrelsome, was overwhelmed. She could find nothing
+to say, and was silent.
+
+"Diane told me that Leontine went to the prison," Madame d'Espard went
+on. "The dear Duchess is in despair at such a scandal, for she is so
+foolish as to be very fond of Madame de Serizy; however, it is
+comprehensible: they both adored that little fool Lucien at about the
+same time, and nothing so effectually binds or severs two women as
+worshiping at the same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours
+yesterday in Leontine's room. The poor Countess, it seems, says
+dreadful things! I heard that it was disgusting! A woman of rank ought
+not to give way to such attacks.--Bah! A purely physical passion.--The
+Duchess came to see me as pale as death; she really was very brave.
+There are monstrous things connected with this business."
+
+"My husband will tell the Keeper of the Seals all he knows for his own
+justification, for they wanted to save Lucien, and he, Madame la
+Marquise, did his duty. An examining judge always has to question
+people in private at the time fixed by law! He had to ask the poor
+little wretch something, if only for form's sake, and the young fellow
+did not understand, and confessed things----"
+
+"He was an impertinent fool!" said Madame d'Espard in a hard tone.
+
+The judge's wife kept silence on hearing this sentence.
+
+"Though we failed in the matter of the Commission in Lunacy, it was
+not Camusot's fault, I shall never forget that," said the Marquise
+after a pause. "It was Lucien, Monsieur de Serizy, Monsieur de Bauvan,
+and Monsieur de Granville who overthrew us. With time God will be on
+my side; all those people will come to grief.--Be quite easy, I will
+send the Chevalier d'Espard to the Keeper of the Seals that he may
+desire your husbands's presence immediately, if that is of any use."
+
+"Oh! madame----"
+
+"Listen," said the Marquise. "I promise you the ribbon of the Legion
+of Honor at once--to-morrow. It will be a conspicuous testimonial of
+satisfaction with your conduct in this affair. Yes, it implies further
+blame on Lucien; it will prove him guilty. Men do not commonly hang
+themselves for the pleasure of it.--Now, good-bye, my pretty dear----"
+
+Ten minutes later Madame Camusot was in the bedroom of the beautiful
+Diane de Maufrigneuse, who had not gone to bed till one, and at nine
+o'clock had not yet slept.
+
+However insensible duchesses may be, even these women, whose hearts
+are of stone, cannot see a friend a victim to madness without being
+painfully impressed by it.
+
+And besides, the connection between Diane and Lucien, though at an end
+now eighteen months since, had left such memories with the Duchess
+that the poor boy's disastrous end had been to her also a fearful
+blow. All night Diane had seen visions of the beautiful youth, so
+charming, so poetical, who had been so delightful a lover--painted as
+Leontine depicted him, with the vividness of wild delirium. She had
+letters from Lucien that she had kept, intoxicating letters worthy to
+compare with Mirabeau's to Sophie, but more literary, more elaborate,
+for Lucien's letters had been dictated by the most powerful of
+passions--Vanity. Having the most bewitching of duchesses for his
+mistress, and seeing her commit any folly for him--secret follies, of
+course--had turned Lucien's head with happiness. The lover's pride had
+inspired the poet. And the Duchess had treasured these touching
+letters, as some old men keep indecent prints, for the sake of their
+extravagant praise of all that was least duchess-like in her nature.
+
+"And he died in a squalid prison!" cried she to herself, putting the
+letters away in a panic when she heard her maid knocking gently at her
+door.
+
+"Madame Camusot," said the woman, "on business of the greatest
+importance to you, Madame la Duchesse."
+
+Diane sprang to her feet in terror.
+
+"Oh!" cried she, looking at Amelie, who had assumed a duly condoling
+air, "I guess it all--my letters! It is about my letters. Oh, my
+letters, my letters!"
+
+She sank on to a couch. She remembered now how, in the extravagance of
+her passion, she had answered Lucien in the same vein, had lauded the
+man's poetry as he has sung the charms of the woman, and in what a
+strain!
+
+"Alas, yes, madame, I have come to save what is dearer to you than
+life--your honor. Compose yourself and get dressed, we must go to the
+Duchesse de Grandlieu; happily for you, you are not the only person
+compromised."
+
+"But at the Palais, yesterday, Leontine burned, I am told, all the
+letters found at poor Lucien's."
+
+"But, madame, behind Lucien there was Jacques Collin!" cried the
+magistrate's wife. "You always forget that horrible companionship
+which beyond question led to that charming and lamented young man's
+end. That Machiavelli of the galleys never loses his head! Monsieur
+Camusot is convinced that the wretch has in some safe hiding-place all
+the most compromising letters written by you ladies to his----"
+
+"His friend," the Duchess hastily put in. "You are right, my child. We
+must hold council at the Grandlieus'. We are all concerned in this
+matter, and Serizy happily will lend us his aid."
+
+Extreme peril--as we have observed in the scenes in the Conciergerie
+--has a hold over the soul not less terrible than that of powerful
+reagents over the body. It is a mental Voltaic battery. The day,
+perhaps, is not far off when the process shall be discovered by which
+feeling is chemically converted into a fluid not unlike the electric
+fluid.
+
+The phenomena were the same in the convict and the Duchess. This
+crushed, half-dying woman, who had not slept, who was so particular
+over her dressing, had recovered the strength of a lioness at bay, and
+the presence of mind of a general under fire. Diane chose her gown and
+got through her dressing with the alacrity of a grisette who is her
+own waiting-woman. It was so astounding, that the lady's-maid stood
+for a moment stock-still, so greatly was she surprised to see her
+mistress in her shift, not ill pleased perhaps to let the judge's wife
+discern through the thin cloud of lawn a form as white and as perfect
+as that of Canova's Venus. It was like a gem in a fold of tissue
+paper. Diane suddenly remembered where a pair of stays had been put
+that fastened in front, sparing a woman in a hurry the ill-spent time
+and fatigue of being laced. She had arranged the lace trimming of her
+shift and the fulness of the bosom by the time the maid had fetched
+her petticoat, and crowned the work by putting on her gown. While
+Amelie, at a sign from the maid, hooked the bodice behind, the woman
+brought out a pair of thread stockings, velvet boots, a shawl, and a
+bonnet. Amelie and the maid each drew on a stocking.
+
+"You are the loveliest creature I ever saw!" said Amelie, insidiously
+kissing Diane's elegant and polished knee with an eager impulse.
+
+"Madame has not her match!" cried the maid.
+
+"There, there, Josette, hold your tongue," replied the Duchess.--"Have
+you a carriage?" she went on, to Madame Camusot. "Then come along, my
+dear, we can talk on the road."
+
+And the Duchess ran down the great stairs of the Hotel de Cadignan,
+putting on her gloves as she went--a thing she had never been known to
+do.
+
+"To the Hotel de Grandlieu, and drive fast," said she to one of her
+men, signing to him to get up behind.
+
+The footman hesitated--it was a hackney coach.
+
+"Ah! Madame la Duchesse, you never told me that the young man had
+letters of yours. Otherwise Camusot would have proceeded
+differently . . ."
+
+"Leontine's state so occupied my thoughts that I forgot myself
+entirely. The poor woman was almost crazy the day before yesterday;
+imagine the effect on her of this tragical termination. If you could
+only know, child, what a morning we went through yesterday! It is
+enough to make one forswear love!--Yesterday Leontine and I were
+dragged across Paris by a horrible old woman, an old-clothes buyer, a
+domineering creature, to that stinking and blood-stained sty they call
+the Palace of Justice, and I said to her as I took her there: 'Is not
+this enough to make us fall on our knees and cry out like Madame de
+Nucingen, when she went through one of those awful Mediterranean
+storms on her way to Naples, "Dear God, save me this time, and never
+again----!"'
+
+"These two days will certainly have shortened my life.--What fools we
+are ever to write!--But love prompts us; we receive pages that fire
+the heart through the eyes, and everything is in a blaze! Prudence
+deserts us--we reply----"
+
+"But why reply when you can act?" said Madame Camusot.
+
+"It is grand to lose oneself utterly!" cried the Duchess with pride.
+"It is the luxury of the soul."
+
+"Beautiful women are excusable," said Madame Camusot modestly. "They
+have more opportunities of falling than we have."
+
+The Duchess smiled.
+
+"We are always too generous," said Diane de Maufrigneuse. "I shall do
+just like that odious Madame d'Espard."
+
+"And what does she do?" asked the judge's wife, very curious.
+
+"She has written a thousand love-notes----"
+
+"So many!" exclaimed Amelie, interrupting the Duchess.
+
+"Well, my dear, and not a word that could compromise her is to be
+found in any one of them."
+
+"You would be incapable of maintaining such coldness, such caution,"
+said Madame Camusot. "You are a woman; you are one of those angels who
+cannot stand out against the devil----"
+
+"I have made a vow to write no more letters. I never in my life wrote
+to anybody but that unhappy Lucien.--I will keep his letters to my
+dying day! My dear child, they are fire, and sometimes we want----"
+
+"But if they were found!" said Amelie, with a little shocked
+expression.
+
+"Oh! I should say they were part of a romance I was writing; for I
+have copied them all, my dear, and burned the originals."
+
+"Oh, madame, as a reward allow me to read them."
+
+"Perhaps, child," said the Duchess. "And then you will see that he did
+not write such letters as those to Leontine."
+
+This speech was woman all the world over, of every age and every land.
+
+
+
+Madame Camusot, like the frog in la Fontaine's fable, was ready to
+burst her skin with the joy of going to the Grandlieus' in the society
+of the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse. This morning she would forge
+one of the links that are so needful to ambition. She could already
+hear herself addressed as Madame la Presidente. She felt the ineffable
+gladness of triumphing over stupendous obstacles, of which the
+greatest was her husband's ineptitude, as yet unrevealed, but to her
+well known. To win success for a second-rate man! that is to a woman
+--as to a king--the delight which tempts great actors when they act a
+bad play a hundred times over. It is the very drunkenness of egoism.
+It is in a way the Saturnalia of power.
+
+Power can prove itself to itself only by the strange misapplication
+which leads it to crown some absurd person with the laurels of success
+while insulting genius--the only strong-hold which power cannot touch.
+The knighting of Caligula's horse, an imperial farce, has been, and
+always will be, a favorite performance.
+
+In a few minutes Diane and Amelie had exchanged the elegant disorder
+of the fair Diane's bedroom for the severe but dignified and splendid
+austerity of the Duchesse de Grandlieu's rooms.
+
+She, a Portuguese, and very pious, always rose at eight to attend mass
+at the little church of Sainte-Valere, a chapelry to Saint-Thomas
+d'Aquin, standing at that time on the esplanade of the Invalides. This
+chapel, now destroyed, was rebuilt in the Rue de Bourgogne, pending
+the building of a Gothic church to be dedicated to Sainte-Clotilde.
+
+On hearing the first words spoken in her ear by Diane de Maufrigneuse,
+this saintly lady went to find Monsieur de Grandlieu, and brought him
+back at once. The Duke threw a flashing look at Madame Camusot, one of
+those rapid glances with which a man of the world can guess at a whole
+existence, or often read a soul. Amelie's dress greatly helped the
+Duke to decipher the story of a middle-class life, from Alencon to
+Mantes, and from Mantes to Paris.
+
+Oh! if only the lawyer's wife could have understood this gift in
+dukes, she could never have endured that politely ironical look; she
+saw the politeness only. Ignorance shares the privileges of fine
+breeding.
+
+"This is Madame Camusot, a daughter of Thirion's--one of the Cabinet
+ushers," said the Duchess to her husband.
+
+The Duke bowed with extreme politeness to the wife of a legal
+official, and his face became a little less grave.
+
+The Duke had rung for his valet, who now came in.
+
+"Go to the Rue Saint-Honore: take a coach. Ring at a side door, No.
+10. Tell the man who opens the door that I beg his master will come
+here, and if the gentleman is at home, bring him back with you.
+--Mention my name, that will remove all difficulties.
+
+"And do not be gone more than a quarter of an hour in all."
+
+Another footman, the Duchess' servant, came in as soon as the other
+was gone.
+
+"Go from me to the Duc de Chaulieu, and send up this card."
+
+The Duke gave him a card folded down in a particular way. When the two
+friends wanted to meet at once, on any urgent or confidential business
+which would not allow of note-writing, they used this means of
+communication.
+
+Thus we see that similar customs prevail in every rank of society, and
+differ only in manner, civility, and small details. The world of
+fashion, too, has its argot, its slang; but that slang is called
+style.
+
+"Are you quite sure, madame, of the existence of the letters you say
+were written by Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu to this young man?"
+said the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+And he cast a look at Madame Camusot as a sailor casts a sounding
+line.
+
+"I have not seen them, but there is reason to fear it," replied Madame
+Camusot, quaking.
+
+"My daughter can have written nothing we would not own to!" said the
+Duchess.
+
+"Poor Duchess!" thought Diane, with a glance at the Duke that
+terrified him.
+
+"What do you think, my dear little Diane?" said the Duke in a whisper,
+as he led her away into a recess.
+
+"Clotilde is so crazy about Lucien, my dear friend, that she had made
+an assignation with him before leaving. If it had not been for little
+Lenoncourt, she would perhaps have gone off with him into the forest
+of Fontainebleau. I know that Lucien used to write letters to her
+which were enough to turn the brain of a saint.--We are three
+daughters of Eve in the coils of the serpent of letter-writing."
+
+The Duke and Diane came back to the Duchess and Madame Camusot, who
+were talking in undertones. Amelie, following the advice of the
+Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, affected piety to win the proud lady's
+favor.
+
+"We are at the mercy of a dreadful escaped convict!" said the Duke,
+with a peculiar shrug. "This is what comes of opening one's house to
+people one is not absolutely sure of. Before admitting an
+acquaintance, one ought to know all about his fortune, his relations,
+all his previous history----"
+
+This speech is the moral of my story--from the aristocratic point of
+view.
+
+"That is past and over," said the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. "Now we
+must think of saving that poor Madame de Serizy, Clotilde, and me----"
+
+"We can but wait for Henri; I have sent to him. But everything really
+depends on the man Gentil is gone to fetch. God grant that man may be
+in Paris!--Madame," he added to Madame Camusot, "thank you so much for
+having thought of us----"
+
+This was Madame Camusot's dismissal. The daughter of the court usher
+had wit enough to understand the Duke; she rose. But the Duchess de
+Maufrigneuse, with the enchanting grace which had won her so much
+friendship and discretion, took Amelie by the hand as if to show her,
+in a way, to the Duke and Duchess.
+
+"On my own account," said she, "to say nothing of her having been up
+before daybreak to save us all, I may ask for more than a remembrance
+for my little Madame Camusot. In the first place, she has already done
+me such a service as I cannot forget; and then she is wholly devoted
+to our side, she and her husband. I have promised that her Camusot
+shall have advancement, and I beg you above everything to help him on,
+for my sake."
+
+"You need no such recommendation," said the Duke to Madame Camusot.
+"The Grandlieus always remember a service done them. The King's
+adherents will ere long have a chance of distinguishing themselves;
+they will be called upon to prove their devotion; your husband will be
+placed in the front----"
+
+Madame Camusot withdrew, proud, happy, puffed up to suffocation. She
+reached home triumphant; she admired herself, she made light of the
+public prosecutor's hostility. She said to herself:
+
+"Supposing we were to send Monsieur de Granville flying----"
+
+It was high time for Madame Camusot to vanish. The Duc de Chaulieu,
+one of the King's prime favorites, met the bourgeoise on the outer
+steps.
+
+"Henri," said the Duc de Grandlieu when he heard his friend announced,
+"make haste, I beg of you, to get to the Chateau, try to see the King
+--the business of this;" and he led the Duke into the window-recess,
+where he had been talking to the airy and charming Diane.
+
+Now and then the Duc de Chaulieu glanced in the direction of the
+flighty Duchess, who, while talking to the pious Duchess and
+submitting to be lectured, answered the Duc de Chaulieu's expressive
+looks.
+
+"My dear child," said the Duc de Grandlieu to her at last, the _aside_
+being ended, "do be good! Come, now," and he took Diane's hands,
+"observe the proprieties of life, do not compromise yourself any more,
+write no letters. Letters, my dear, have caused as much private woe as
+public mischief. What might be excusable in a girl like Clotilde, in
+love for the first time, had no excuse in----"
+
+"An old soldier who has been under fire," said Diane with a pout.
+
+This grimace and the Duchess' jest brought a smile to the face of the
+two much-troubled Dukes, and of the pious Duchess herself.
+
+"But for four years I have never written a billet-doux.--Are we
+saved?" asked Diane, who hid her curiosity under this childishness.
+
+"Not yet," said the Duc de Chaulieu. "You have no notion how difficult
+it is to do an arbitrary thing. In a constitutional king it is what
+infidelity is in a wife: it is adultery."
+
+"The fascinating sin," said the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"Forbidden fruit!" said Diane, smiling. "Oh! how I wish I were the
+Government, for I have none of that fruit left--I have eaten it all."
+
+"Oh! my dear, my dear!" said the elder Duchess, "you really go too
+far."
+
+The two Dukes, hearing a coach stop at the door with the clatter of
+horses checked in full gallop, bowed to the ladies and left them,
+going into the Duc de Grandlieu's study, whither came the gentleman
+from the Rue Honore-Chevalier--no less a man than the chief of the
+King's private police, the obscure but puissant Corentin.
+
+"Go on," said the Duc de Grandlieu; "go first, Monsieur de
+Saint-Denis."
+
+Corentin, surprised that the Duke should have remembered him, went
+forward after bowing low to the two noblemen.
+
+"Always about the same individual, or about his concerns, my dear
+sir," said the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"But he is dead," said Corentin.
+
+"He has left a partner," said the Duc de Chaulieu, "a very tough
+customer."
+
+"The convict Jacques Collin," replied Corentin.
+
+"Will you speak, Ferdinand?" said the Duke de Chaulieu to his friend.
+
+"That wretch is an object of fear," said the Duc de Grandlieu, "for he
+has possessed himself, so as to be able to levy blackmail, of the
+letters written by Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse to
+Lucien Chardon, that man's tool. It would seem that it was a matter of
+system in the young man to extract passionate letters in return for
+his own, for I am told that Mademoiselle de Grandlieu had written some
+--at least, so we fear--and we cannot find out from her--she is gone
+abroad."
+
+"That little young man," replied Corentin, "was incapable of so much
+foresight. That was a precaution due to the Abbe Carlos Herrera."
+
+Corentin rested his elbow on the arm of the chair on which he was
+sitting, and his head on his hand, meditating.
+
+"Money!--The man has more than we have," said he. "Esther Gobseck
+served him as a bait to extract nearly two million francs from that
+well of gold called Nucingen.--Gentlemen, get me full legal powers,
+and I will rid you of the fellow."
+
+"And--the letters?" asked the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"Listen to me, gentlemen," said Corentin, standing up, his weasel-face
+betraying his excitement.
+
+He thrust his hands into the pockets of his black doeskin trousers,
+shaped over the shoes. This great actor in the historical drama of the
+day had only stopped to put on a waistcoat and frock-coat, and had not
+changed his morning trousers, so well he knew how grateful men can be
+for immediate action in certain cases. He walked up and down the room
+quite at his ease, haranguing loudly, as if he had been alone.
+
+"He is a convict. He could be sent off to Bicetre without trial, and
+put in solitary confinement, without a soul to speak to, and left
+there to die.--But he may have given instructions to his adherents,
+foreseeing this possibility."
+
+"But he was put into the secret cells," said the Duc de Grandlieu,
+"the moment he was taken into custody at that woman's house."
+
+"Is there such a thing as a secret cell for such a fellow as he is?"
+said Corentin. "He is a match for--for me!"
+
+"What is to be done?" said the Dukes to each other by a glance.
+
+"We can send the scoundrel back to the hulks at once--to Rochefort; he
+will be dead in six months! Oh! without committing any crime," he
+added, in reply to a gesture on the part of the Duc de Grandlieu.
+"What do you expect? A convict cannot hold out more than six months of
+a hot summer if he is made to work really hard among the marshes of
+the Charente. But this is of no use if our man has taken precautions
+with regard to the letters. If the villain has been suspicious of his
+foes, and that is probable, we must find out what steps he has taken.
+Then, if the present holder of the letters is poor, he is open to
+bribery. So, no, we must make Jacques Collin speak. What a duel! He
+will beat me. The better plan would be to purchase those letters by
+exchange for another document--a letter of reprieve--and to place the
+man in my gang. Jacques Collin is the only man alive who is clever
+enough to come after me, poor Contenson and dear old Peyrade both
+being dead! Jacques Collin killed those two unrivaled spies on
+purpose, as it were, to make a place for himself. So, you see,
+gentlemen, you must give me a free hand. Jacques Collin is in the
+Conciergerie. I will go to see Monsieur de Granville in his Court.
+Send some one you can trust to meet me there, for I must have a letter
+to show to Monsieur de Granville, who knows nothing of me. I will hand
+the letter to the President of the Council, a very impressive sponsor.
+You have half an hour before you, for I need half an hour to dress,
+that is to say, to make myself presentable to the eyes of the public
+prosecutor."
+
+"Monsieur," said the Duc de Chaulieu, "I know your wonderful skill. I
+only ask you to say Yes or No. Will you be bound to succeed?"
+
+"Yes, if I have full powers, and your word that I shall never be
+questioned about the matter.--My plan is laid."
+
+This sinister reply made the two fine gentlemen shiver. "Go on, then,
+monsieur," said the Duc de Chaulieu. "You can set down the charges of
+the case among those you are in the habit of undertaking."
+
+Corentin bowed and went away.
+
+Henri de Lenoncourt, for whom Ferdinand de Grandlieu had a carriage
+brought out, went off forthwith to the King, whom he was privileged to
+see at all times in right of his office.
+
+Thus all the various interests that had got entangled from the highest
+to the lowest ranks of society were to meet presently in Monsieur de
+Granville's room at the Palais, all brought together by necessity
+embodied in three men--Justice in Monsieur de Granville, and the
+family in Corentin, face to face with Jacques Collin, the terrible foe
+who represented social crime in its fiercest energy.
+
+What a duel is that between justice and arbitrary wills on one side
+and the hulks and cunning on the other! The hulks--symbolical of that
+daring which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails
+itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed
+justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach--the swift
+and bloodthirsty pretext of hunger. Is it not attack as against
+self-protection, theft as against property? The terrible quarrel
+between the social state and the natural man, fought out on the
+narrowest possible ground! In short, it is a terrible and vivid image
+of those compromises, hostile to social interests, which the
+representatives of authority, when they lack power, submit to with the
+fiercest rebels.
+
+When Monsieur Camusot was announced, the public prosecutor signed that
+he should be admitted. Monsieur de Granville had foreseen this visit,
+and wished to come to an understanding with the examining judge as to
+how to wind up this business of Lucien's death. The end could no
+longer be that on which he had decided the day before in agreement
+with Camusot, before the suicide of the hapless poet.
+
+"Sit down, Monsieur Camusot," said Monsieur de Granville, dropping
+into his armchair. The public prosecutor, alone with the inferior
+judge, made no secret of his depressed state. Camusot looked at
+Monsieur de Granville and observed his almost livid pallor, and such
+utter fatigue, such complete prostration, as betrayed greater
+suffering perhaps than that of the condemned man to whom the clerk had
+announced the rejection of his appeal. And yet that announcement, in
+the forms of justice, is a much as to say, "Prepare to die; your last
+hour has come."
+
+"I will return later, Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot. "Though
+business is pressing----"
+
+"No, stay," replied the public prosecutor with dignity. "A magistrate,
+monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how to hide them. I was
+in fault if you saw any traces of agitation in me----"
+
+Camusot bowed apologetically.
+
+"God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities of our life.
+A man might sink under less! I have just spent the night with one of
+my most intimate friends.--I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de
+Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy.--We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy,
+the Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning,
+taking it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de Serizy's
+bedside, fearing each time that we might find her dead or irremediably
+insane. Desplein, Bianchon, and Sinard never left the room, and she
+has two nurses. The Count worships his wife. Imagine the night I have
+spent, between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with despair.
+And a statesman's despair is not like that of an idiot. Serizy, as
+calm as if he were sitting in his place in council, clutched his chair
+to force himself to show us an unmoved countenance, while sweat stood
+over the brows bent by so much hard thought.--Worn out by want of
+sleep, I dozed from five till half-past seven, and I had to be here by
+half-past eight to warrant an execution. Take my word for it, Monsieur
+Camusot, when a judge has been toiling all night in such gulfs of
+sorrow, feeling the heavy hand of God on all human concerns, and
+heaviest on noble souls, it is hard to sit down here, in front of a
+desk, and say in cold blood, 'Cut off a head at four o'clock! Destroy
+one of God's creatures full of life, health, and strength!'--And yet
+this is my duty! Sunk in grief myself, I must order the scaffold----
+
+"The condemned wretch cannot know that his judge suffers anguish equal
+to his own. At this moment he and I, linked by a sheet of paper--I,
+society avenging itself; he, the crime to be avenged--embody the same
+duty seen from two sides; we are two lives joined for the moment by
+the sword of the law.
+
+"Who pities the judge's deep sorrow? Who can soothe it? Our glory is
+to bury it in the depth of our heart. The priest with his life given
+to God, the soldier with a thousand deaths for his country's sake,
+seem to me far happier than the magistrate with his doubts and fears
+and appalling responsibility.
+
+"You know who the condemned man is?" Monsieur de Granville went on. "A
+young man of seven-and-twenty--as handsome as he who killed himself
+yesterday, and as fair; condemned against all our anticipations, for
+the only proof against him was his concealment of the stolen goods.
+Though sentenced, the lad will confess nothing! For seventy days he
+has held out against every test, constantly declaring that he is
+innocent. For two months I have felt two heads on my shoulders! I
+would give a year of my life if he would confess, for juries need
+encouragement; and imagine what a blow it would be to justice if some
+day it should be discovered that the crime for which he is punished
+was committed by another.
+
+"In Paris everything is so terribly important; the most trivial
+incidents in the law courts have political consequences.
+
+"The jury, an institution regarded by the legislators of the
+Revolution as a source of strength, is, in fact, an instrument of
+social ruin, for it fails in action; it does not sufficiently protect
+society. The jury trifles with its functions. The class of jurymen is
+divided into two parties, one averse to capital punishment; the result
+is a total upheaval of true equality in administration of the law.
+Parricide, a most horrible crime, is in some departments treated with
+leniency, while in others a common murder, so to speak, is punished
+with death. [There are in penal servitude twenty-three parricides who
+have been allowed the benefit of _extenuating circumstances_.] And
+what would happen if here in Paris, in our home district, an innocent
+man should be executed!"
+
+"He is an escaped convict," said Monsieur Camusot, diffidently.
+
+"The Opposition and the Press would make him a paschal lamb!" cried
+Monsieur de Granville; "and the Opposition would enjoy white-washing
+him, for he is a fanatical Corsican, full of his native notions, and
+his murders were a _Vendetta_. In that island you may kill your enemy,
+and think yourself, and be thought, a very good man.
+
+"A thorough-paced magistrate, I tell you, is an unhappy man. They
+ought to live apart from all society, like the pontiffs of old. The
+world should never see them but at fixed hours, leaving their cells,
+grave, and old, and venerable, passing sentence like the high priests
+of antiquity, who combined in their person the functions of judicial
+and sacerdotal authority. We should be accessible only in our high
+seat.--As it is, we are to be seen every day, amused or unhappy, like
+other men. We are to be found in drawing-rooms and at home, as
+ordinary citizens, moved by our passions; and we seem, perhaps, more
+grotesque than terrible."
+
+This bitter cry, broken by pauses and interjections, and emphasized by
+gestures which gave it an eloquence impossible to reduce to writing,
+made Camusot's blood run chill.
+
+"And I, monsieur," said he, "began yesterday my apprenticeship to the
+sufferings of our calling.--I could have died of that young fellow's
+death. He misunderstood my wish to be lenient, and the poor wretch
+committed himself."
+
+"Ah, you ought never to have examined him!" cried Monsieur de
+Granville; "it is so easy to oblige by doing nothing."
+
+"And the law, monsieur?" replied Camusot. "He had been in custody two
+days."
+
+"The mischief is done," said the public prosecutor. "I have done my
+best to remedy what is indeed irremediable. My carriage and servants
+are following the poor weak poet to the grave. Serizy has sent his
+too; nay, more, he accepts the duty imposed on him by the unfortunate
+boy, and will act as his executor. By promising this to his wife he
+won from her a gleam of returning sanity. And Count Octave is
+attending the funeral in person."
+
+"Well, then, Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot, "let us complete our
+work. We have a very dangerous man on our hands. He is Jacques Collin
+--and you know it as well as I do. The ruffian will be recognized----"
+
+"Then we are lost!" cried Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"He is at this moment shut up with your condemned murderer, who, on
+the hulks, was to him what Lucien has been in Paris--a favorite
+protege. Bibi-Lupin, disguised as a gendarme, is watching the
+interview."
+
+"What business has the superior police to interfere?" said the public
+prosecutor. "He has no business to act without my orders!"
+
+"All the Conciergerie must know that we have caught Jacques Collin.
+--Well, I have come on purpose to tell you that this daring felon has
+in his possession the most compromising letters of Lucien's
+correspondence with Madame de Serizy, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
+and Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu."
+
+"Are you sure of that?" asked Monsieur de Granville, his face full of
+pained surprise.
+
+"You shall hear, Monsieur le Comte, what reason I have to fear such a
+misfortune. When I untied the papers found in the young man's rooms,
+Jacques Collin gave a keen look at the parcel, and smiled with
+satisfaction in a way that no examining judge could misunderstand. So
+deep a villain as Jacques Collin takes good care not to let such a
+weapon slip through his fingers. What is to be said if these documents
+should be placed in the hands of counsel chosen by that rascal from
+among the foes of the government and the aristocracy!--My wife, to
+whom the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse has shown so much kindness, is gone
+to warn her, and by this time they must be with the Grandlieus holding
+council."
+
+"But we cannot possibly try the man!" cried the public prosecutor,
+rising and striding up and down the room. "He must have put the papers
+in some safe place----"
+
+"I know where," said Camusot.
+
+These words finally effaced every prejudice the public prosecutor had
+felt against him.
+
+"Well, then----" said Monsieur de Granville, sitting down again.
+
+"On my way here this morning I reflected deeply on this miserable
+business. Jacques Collin has an aunt--an aunt by nature, not putative
+--a woman concerning whom the superior police have communicated a
+report to the Prefecture. He is this woman's pupil and idol; she is
+his father's sister, her name is Jacqueline Collin. This wretched
+woman carries on a trade as a wardrobe purchaser, and by the
+connection this business has secured her she gets hold of many family
+secrets. If Jacques Collin has intrusted those papers, which would be
+his salvation, to any one's keeping, it is to that of this creature.
+Have her arrested."
+
+The public prosecutor gave Camusot a keen look, as much as to say,
+"This man is not such a fool as I thought him; he is still young, and
+does not yet know how to handle the reins of justice."
+
+"But," Camusot went on, "in order to succeed, we must give up all the
+plans we laid yesterday, and I came to take your advice--your
+orders----"
+
+The public prosecutor took up his paper-knife and tapped it against
+the edge of the table with one of the tricky movements familiar to
+thoughtful men when they give themselves up to meditation.
+
+"Three noble families involved!" he exclaimed. "We must not make the
+smallest blunder!--You are right: as a first step let us act on
+Fouche's principle, 'Arrest!'--and Jacques Collin must at once be sent
+back to the secret cells."
+
+"That is to proclaim him a convict and to ruin Lucien's memory!"
+
+"What a desperate business!" said Monsieur de Granville. "There is
+danger on every side."
+
+At this instant the governor of the Conciergerie came in, not without
+knocking; and the private room of a public prosecutor is so well
+guarded, that only those concerned about the courts may even knock at
+the door.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," said Monsieur Gault, "the prisoner calling
+himself Carlos Herrera wishes to speak with you."
+
+"Has he had communication with anybody?" asked Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"With all the prisoners, for he has been out in the yard since about
+half-past seven. And he has seen the condemned man, who would seem to
+have talked to him."
+
+A speech of Camusot's, which recurred to his mind like a flash of
+light, showed Monsieur de Granville all the advantage that might be
+taken of a confession of intimacy between Jacques Collin and Theodore
+Calvi to obtain the letters. The public prosecutor, glad to have an
+excuse for postponing the execution, beckoned Monsieur Gault to his
+side.
+
+"I intend," said he, "to put off the execution till to-morrow; but let
+no one in the prison suspect it. Absolute silence! Let the executioner
+seem to be superintending the preparations.
+
+"Send the Spanish priest here under a strong guard; the Spanish
+Embassy claims his person! Gendarmes can bring up the self-styled
+Carlos by your back stairs so that he may see no one. Instruct the men
+each to hold him by one arm, and never let him go till they reach this
+door.
+
+"Are you sure, Monsieur Gault, that this dangerous foreigner has
+spoken to no one but the prisoners!"
+
+"Ah! just as he came out of the condemned cell a lady came to see
+him----"
+
+The two magistrates exchanged looks, and such looks!
+
+"What lady was that!" asked Camusot.
+
+"One of his penitents--a Marquise," replied Gault.
+
+"Worse and worse!" said Monsieur de Granville, looking at Camusot.
+
+"She gave all the gendarmes and warders a sick headache," said
+Monsieur Gault, much puzzled.
+
+"Nothing can be a matter of indifference in your business," said the
+public prosecutor. "The Conciergerie has not such tremendous walls for
+nothing. How did this lady get in?"
+
+"With a regular permit, monsieur," replied the governor. "The lady,
+beautifully dressed, in a fine carriage with a footman and a chasseur,
+came to see her confessor before going to the funeral of the poor
+young man whose body you had had removed."
+
+"Bring me the order for admission," said Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"It was given on the recommendation of the Comte de Serizy."
+
+"What was the woman like?" asked the public prosecutor.
+
+"She seemed to be a lady."
+
+"Did you see her face?"
+
+"She wore a black veil."
+
+"What did they say to each other?"
+
+"Well--a pious person, with a prayer-book in her hand--what could she
+say? She asked the Abbe's blessing and went on her knees."
+
+"Did they talk together a long time?"
+
+"Not five minutes; but we none of us understood what they said; they
+spoke Spanish no doubt."
+
+"Tell us everything, monsieur," the public prosecutor insisted. "I
+repeat, the very smallest detail is to us of the first importance. Let
+this be a caution to you."
+
+"She was crying, monsieur."
+
+"Really weeping?"
+
+"That we could not see, she hid her face in her handkerchief. She left
+three hundred francs in gold for the prisoners."
+
+"That was not she!" said Camusot.
+
+"Bibi-Lupin at once said, 'She is a thief!'" said Monsieur Gault.
+
+"He knows the tribe," said Monsieur de Granville.--"Get out your
+warrant," he added, turning to Camusot, "and have seals placed on
+everything in her house--at once! But how can she have got hold of
+Monsieur de Serizy's recommendation?--Bring me the order--and go,
+Monsieur Gault; send me that Abbe immediately. So long as we have him
+safe, the danger cannot be greater. And in the course of two hours'
+talk you get a long way into a man's mind."
+
+"Especially such a public prosecutor as you are," said Camusot
+insidiously.
+
+"There will be two of us," replied Monsieur de Granville politely.
+
+And he became discursive once more.
+
+"There ought to be created for every prison parlor, a post of
+superintendent, to be given with a good salary to the cleverest and
+most energetic police officers," said he, after a long pause.
+"Bibi-Lupin ought to end his days in such a place. Then we should
+have an eye and ear on the watch in a department that needs closer
+supervision than it gets.--Monsieur Gault could tell us nothing
+positive."
+
+"He has so much to do," said Camusot. "Still, between these secret
+cells and us there lies a gap which ought not to exist. On the way
+from the Conciergerie to the judges' rooms there are passages,
+courtyards, and stairs. The attention of the agents cannot be
+unflagging, whereas the prisoner is always alive to his own affairs.
+
+"I was told that a lady had already placed herself in the way of
+Jacques Collin when he was brought up from the cells to be examined.
+That woman got into the guardroom at the top of the narrow stairs from
+the mousetrap; the ushers told me, and I blamed the gendarmes."
+
+"Oh! the Palais needs entire reconstruction," said Monsieur de
+Granville. "But it is an outlay of twenty to thirty million francs!
+Just try asking the Chambers for thirty millions for the more decent
+accommodation of Justice."
+
+The sound of many footsteps and a clatter of arms fell on their ear.
+It would be Jacques Collin.
+
+The public prosecutor assumed a mask of gravity that hid the man.
+Camusot imitated his chief.
+
+The office-boy opened the door, and Jacques Collin came in, quite calm
+and unmoved.
+
+"You wished to speak to me," said Monsieur de Granville. "I am ready
+to listen."
+
+"Monsieur le Comte, I am Jacques Collin. I surrender!"
+
+Camusot started; the public prosecutor was immovable.
+
+"As you may suppose, I have my reasons for doing this," said Jacques
+Collin, with an ironical glance at the two magistrates. "I must
+inconvenience you greatly; for if I had remained a Spanish priest, you
+would simply have packed me off with an escort of gendarmes as far as
+the frontier by Bayonne, and there Spanish bayonets would have
+relieved you of me."
+
+The lawyers sat silent and imperturbable.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," the convict went on, "the reasons which have led
+me to this step are yet more pressing than this, but devilish personal
+to myself. I can tell them to no one but you.--If you are afraid----"
+
+"Afraid of whom? Of what?" said the Comte de Granville.
+
+In attitude and expression, in the turn of his head, his demeanor and
+his look, this distinguished judge was at this moment a living
+embodiment of the law which ought to supply us with the noblest
+examples of civic courage. In this brief instant he was on a level
+with the magistrates of the old French Parlement in the time of the
+civil wars, when the presidents found themselves face to face with
+death, and stood, made of marble, like the statues that commemorate
+them.
+
+"Afraid to be alone with an escaped convict!"
+
+"Leave us, Monsieur Camusot," said the public prosecutor at once.
+
+"I was about to suggest that you should bind me hand and foot,"
+Jacques Collin coolly added, with an ominous glare at the two
+gentlemen. He paused, and then said with great gravity:
+
+"Monsieur le Comte, you had my esteem, but you now command my
+admiration."
+
+"Then you think you are formidable?" said the magistrate, with a look
+of supreme contempt.
+
+"_Think_ myself formidable?" retorted the convict. "Why think about
+it? I am, and I know it."
+
+Jacques Collin took a chair and sat down, with all the ease of a man
+who feels himself a match for his adversary in an interview where they
+would treat on equal terms.
+
+At this instant Monsieur Camusot, who was on the point of closing the
+door behind him, turned back, came up to Monsieur de Granville, and
+handed him two folded papers.
+
+"Look!" said he to Monsieur de Granville, pointing to one of them.
+
+"Call back Monsieur Gault!" cried the Comte de Granville, as he read
+the name of Madame de Maufrigneuse's maid--a woman he knew.
+
+The governor of the prison came in.
+
+"Describe the woman who came to see the prisoner," said the public
+prosecutor in his ear.
+
+"Short, thick-set, fat, and square," replied Monsieur Gault.
+
+"The woman to whom this permit was given is tall and thin," said
+Monsieur de Granville. "How old was she?"
+
+"About sixty."
+
+"This concerns me, gentlemen?" said Jacques Collin. "Come, do not
+puzzle your heads. That person is my aunt, a very plausible aunt, a
+woman, and an old woman. I can save you a great deal of trouble. You
+will never find my aunt unless I choose. If we beat about the bush, we
+shall never get forwarder."
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe has lost his Spanish accent," observed Monsieur
+Gault; "he does not speak broken French."
+
+"Because things are in a desperate mess, my dear Monsieur Gault,"
+replied Jacques Collin with a bitter smile, as he addressed the
+Governor by name.
+
+Monsieur Gault went quickly up to his chief, and said in a whisper,
+"Beware of that man, Monsieur le Comte; he is mad with rage."
+
+Monsieur de Granville gazed slowly at Jacques Collin, and saw that he
+was controlling himself; but he saw, too, that what the governor said
+was true. This treacherous demeanor covered the cold but terrible
+nervous irritation of a savage. In Jacques Collin's eyes were the
+lurid fires of a volcanic eruption, his fists were clenched. He was a
+tiger gathering himself up to spring.
+
+"Leave us," said the Count gravely to the prison governor and the
+judge.
+
+"You did wisely to send away Lucien's murderer!" said Jacques Collin,
+without caring whether Camusot heard him or no; "I could not contain
+myself, I should have strangled him."
+
+Monsieur de Granville felt a chill; never had he seen a man's eyes so
+full of blood, or cheeks so colorless, or muscles so set.
+
+"And what good would that murder have done you?" he quietly asked.
+
+"You avenge society, or fancy you avenge it, every day, monsieur, and
+you ask me to give a reason for revenge? Have you never felt vengeance
+throbbing in surges in your veins? Don't you know that it was that
+idiot of a judge who killed him?--For you were fond of my Lucien, and
+he loved you! I know you by heart, sir. The dear boy would tell me
+everything at night when he came in; I used to put him to bed as a
+nurse tucks up a child, and I made him tell me everything. He confided
+everything to me, even his least sensations!
+
+"The best of mothers never loved an only son so tenderly as I loved
+that angel! If only you knew! All that is good sprang up in his heart
+as flowers grow in the fields. He was weak; it was his only fault,
+weak as the string of a lyre, which is so strong when it is taut.
+These are the most beautiful natures; their weakness is simply
+tenderness, admiration, the power of expanding in the sunshine of art,
+of love, of the beauty God has made for man in a thousand shapes!--In
+short, Lucien was a woman spoiled. Oh! what could I not say to that
+brute beast who had just gone out of the room!
+
+"I tell you, monsieur, in my degree, as a prisoner before his judge, I
+did what God A'mighty would have done for His Son if, hoping to save
+Him, He had gone with Him before Pilate!"
+
+A flood of tears fell from the convict's light tawny eyes, which just
+now had glared like those of a wolf starved by six months' snow in the
+plains of the Ukraine. He went on:
+
+"That dolt would listen to nothing, and he killed the boy!--I tell
+you, sir, I bathed the child's corpse in my tears, crying out to the
+Power I do not know, and which is above us all! I, who do not believe
+in God!--(For if I were not a materialist, I should not be myself.)
+
+"I have told everything when I say that. You don't know--no man knows
+what suffering is. I alone know it. The fire of anguish so dried up my
+tears, that all last night I could not weep. Now I can, because I feel
+that you can understand me. I saw you, sitting there just now, an
+Image of Justice. Oh! monsieur, may God--for I am beginning to believe
+in Him--preserve you from ever being as bereft as I am! That cursed
+judge has robbed me of my soul, Monsieur le Comte! At this moment they
+are burying my life, my beauty, my virtue, my conscience, all my
+powers! Imagine a dog from which a chemist had extracted the blood.
+--That's me! I am that dog----
+
+"And that is why I have come to tell you that I am Jacques Collin, and
+to give myself up. I made up my mind to it this morning when they came
+and carried away the body I was kissing like a madman--like a mother
+--as the Virgin must have kissed Jesus in the tomb.
+
+"I meant then to give myself up to justice without driving any
+bargain; but now I must make one, and you shall know why."
+
+"Are you speaking to the judge or to Monsieur de Granville?" asked the
+magistrate.
+
+The two men, Crime and Law, looked at each other. The magistrate had
+been strongly moved by the convict; he felt a sort of divine pity for
+the unhappy wretch; he understood what his life and feelings were. And
+besides, the magistrate--for a magistrate is always a
+magistrate--knowing nothing of Jacques Collin's career since his escape
+from prison, fancied that he could impress the criminal who, after all,
+had only been sentenced for forgery. He would try the effect of
+generosity on this nature, a compound, like bronze, of various elements,
+of good and evil.
+
+Again, Monsieur de Granville, who had reached the age of fifty-three
+without ever having been loved, admired a tender soul, as all men do
+who have not been loved. This despair, the lot of many men to whom
+women can only give esteem and friendship, was perhaps the unknown
+bond on which a strong intimacy was based that united the Comtes de
+Bauvan, de Granville, and de Serizy; for a common misfortune brings
+souls into unison quite as much as a common joy.
+
+"You have the future before you," said the public prosecutor, with an
+inquisitorial glance at the dejected villain.
+
+The man only expressed by a shrug the utmost indifference to his fate.
+
+"Lucien made a will by which he leaves you three hundred thousand
+francs."
+
+"Poor, poor chap! poor boy!" cried Jacques Collin. "Always too honest!
+I was all wickedness, while he was goodness--noble, beautiful,
+sublime! Such lovely souls cannot be spoiled. He had taken nothing
+from me but my money, sir."
+
+This utter and complete surrender of his individuality, which the
+magistrate vainly strove to rally, so thoroughly proved his dreadful
+words, that Monsieur de Granville was won over to the criminal. The
+public prosecutor remained!
+
+"If you really care for nothing," said Monsieur de Granville, "what
+did you want to say to me?"
+
+"Well, is it not something that I have given myself up? You were
+getting warm, but you had not got me; besides, you would not have
+known what to do with me----"
+
+"What an antagonist!" said the magistrate to himself.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte, you are about to cut off the head of an innocent
+man, and I have discovered the culprit," said Jacques Collin, wiping
+away his tears. "I have come here not for their sakes, but for yours.
+I have come to spare you remorse, for I love all who took an interest
+in Lucien, just as I will give my hatred full play against all who
+helped to cut off his life--men or women!
+
+"What can a convict more or less matter to me?" he went on, after a
+short pause. "A convict is no more in my eyes than an emmet is in
+yours. I am like the Italian brigands--fine men they are! If a
+traveler is worth ever so little more than the charge of their musket,
+they shoot him dead.
+
+"I thought only of you.--I got the young man to make a clean breast of
+it; he was bound to trust me, we had been chained together. Theodore
+is very good stuff; he thought he was doing his mistress a good turn
+by undertaking to sell or pawn stolen goods; but he is no more guilty
+of the Nanterre job than you are. He is a Corsican; it is their way to
+revenge themselves and kill each other like flies. In Italy and Spain
+a man's life is not respected, and the reason is plain. There we are
+believed to have a soul in our own image, which survives us and lives
+for ever. Tell that to your analyst! It is only among atheistical or
+philosophical nations that those who mar human life are made to pay so
+dearly; and with reason from their point of view--a belief only in
+matter and in the present.
+
+"If Calvi had told you who the woman was from whom he obtained the
+stolen goods, you would not have found the real murderer; he is
+already in your hands; but his accomplice, whom poor Theodore will not
+betray because she is a woman----Well, every calling has its point of
+honor; convicts and thieves have theirs!
+
+"Now, I know the murderer of those two women and the inventors of that
+bold, strange plot; I have been told every detail. Postpone Calvi's
+execution, and you shall know all; but you must give me your word that
+he shall be sent safe back to the hulks and his punishment commuted. A
+man so miserable as I am does not take the trouble to lie--you know
+that. What I have told you is the truth."
+
+"To you, Jacques Collin, though it is degrading Justice, which ought
+never to condescend to such a compromise, I believe I may relax the
+rigidity of my office and refer the case to my superiors."
+
+"Will you grant me this life?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"Monsieur, I implore you to give me your word; it will be enough."
+
+Monsieur Granville drew himself up with offended pride.
+
+"I hold in my hand the honor of three families, and you only the lives
+of three convicts in yours," said Jacques Collin. "I have the stronger
+hand."
+
+"But you may be sent back to the dark cells: then, what will you do?"
+said the public prosecutor.
+
+"Oh! we are to play the game out then!" said Jacques Collin. "I was
+speaking as man to man--I was talking to Monsieur de Granville. But if
+the public prosecutor is my adversary, I take up the cards and hold
+them close.--And if only you had given me your word, I was ready to
+give you back the letters that Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu----"
+
+This was said with a tone, an audacity, and a look which showed
+Monsieur de Granville, that against such an adversary the least
+blunder was dangerous.
+
+"And is that all you ask?" said the magistrate.
+
+"I will speak for myself now," said Jacques. "The honor of the
+Grandlieu family is to pay for the commutation of Theodore's sentence.
+It is giving much to get very little. For what is a convict in penal
+servitude for life? If he escapes, you can so easily settle the score.
+It is drawing a bill on the guillotine! Only, as he was consigned to
+Rochefort with no amiable intentions, you must promise me that he
+shall be quartered at Toulon, and well treated there.
+
+"Now, for myself, I want something more. I have the packets of letters
+from Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse.--And what letters!
+--I tell you, Monsieur le Comte, prostitutes, when they write letters,
+assume a style of sentiment; well, sir, fine ladies, who are
+accustomed to style and sentiment all day long, write as prostitutes
+behave. Philosophers may know the reasons for this contrariness. I do
+not care to seek them. Woman is an inferior animal; she is ruled by
+her instincts. To my mind a woman has no beauty who is not like a man.
+
+"So your smart duchesses, who are men in brains only, write
+masterpieces. Oh! they are splendid from beginning to end, like
+Piron's famous ode!----"
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Would you like to see them?" said Jacques Collin, with a laugh.
+
+The magistrate felt ashamed.
+
+"I cannot give them to you to read. But, there; no nonsense; this is
+business and all above board, I suppose?--You must give me back the
+letters, and allow no one to play the spy or to follow or to watch the
+person who will bring them to me."
+
+"That will take time," said Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"No. It is half-past nine," replied Jacques Collin, looking at the
+clock; "well, in four minutes you will have a letter from each of
+these ladies, and after reading them you will countermand the
+guillotine. If matters were not as they are, you would not see me
+taking things so easy.--The ladies indeed have had warning."--Monsieur
+de Granville was startled.--"They must be making a stir by now; they
+are going to bring the Keeper of the Seals into the fray--they may
+even appeal to the King, who knows?--Come, now, will you give me your
+word that you will forget all that has passed, and neither follow, nor
+send any one to follow, that person for a whole hour?"
+
+"I promise it."
+
+"Very well; you are not the man to deceive an escaped convict. You are
+a chip of the block of which Turennes and Condes are made, and would
+keep your word to a thief.--In the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_ there is at
+this moment a beggar woman in rags, an old woman, in the very middle
+of the hall. She is probably gossiping with one of the public writers,
+about some lawsuit over a party-wall perhaps; send your office
+messenger to fetch her, saying these words, 'Dabor ti Mandana' (the
+Boss wants you). She will come.
+
+"But do not be unnecessarily cruel. Either you accept my terms or you
+do not choose to be mixed up in a business with a convict.--I am only
+a forger, you will remember!--Well, do not leave Calvi to go through
+the terrors of preparation for the scaffold."
+
+"I have already countermanded the execution," said Monsieur de
+Granville to Jacques Collin. "I would not have Justice beneath you in
+dignity."
+
+Jacques Collin looked at the public prosecutor with a sort of
+amazement, and saw him ring his bell.
+
+"Will you promise not to escape? Give me your word, and I shall be
+satisfied. Go and fetch the woman."
+
+The office-boy came in.
+
+"Felix, send away the gendarmes," said Monsieur de Granville.
+
+Jacques Collin was conquered.
+
+In this duel with the magistrate he had tried to be the superior, the
+stronger, the more magnanimous, and the magistrate had crushed him. At
+the same time, the convict felt himself the superior, inasmuch as he
+had tricked the Law; he had convinced it that the guilty man was
+innocent, and had fought for a man's head and won it; but this
+advantage must be unconfessed, secret and hidden, while the magistrate
+towered above him majestically in the eye of day.
+
+
+
+As Jacques Collin left Monsieur de Granville's room, the Comte des
+Lupeaulx, Secretary-in-Chief of the President of the Council, and a
+deputy, made his appearance, and with him a feeble-looking, little old
+man. This individual, wrapped in a puce-colored overcoat, as though it
+were still winter, with powdered hair, and a cold, pale face, had a
+gouty gait, unsteady on feet that were shod with loose calfskin boots;
+leaning on a gold-headed cane, he carried his hat in his hand, and
+wore a row of seven orders in his button-hole.
+
+"What is it, my dear des Lupeaulx?" asked the public prosecutor.
+
+"I come from the Prince," replied the Count, in a low voice. "You have
+carte blanche if you can only get the letters--Madame de Serizy's,
+Madame de Maufrigneuse's and Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu's. You
+may come to some arrangement with this gentleman----"
+
+"Who is he?" asked Monsieur de Granville, in a whisper.
+
+"There are no secrets between you and me, my dear sir," said des
+Lupeaulx. "This is the famous Corentin. His Majesty desires that you
+will yourself tell him all the details of this affair and the
+conditions of success."
+
+"Do me the kindness," replied the public prosecutor, "of going to tell
+the Prince that the matter is settled, that I have not needed this
+gentleman's assistance," and he turned to Corentin. "I will wait on
+His Majesty for his commands with regard to the last steps in the
+matter, which will lie with the Keeper of the Seals, as two reprieves
+will need signing."
+
+"You have been wise to take the initiative," said des Lupeaulx,
+shaking hands with the Comte de Granville. "On the very eve of a great
+undertaking the King is most anxious that the peers and the great
+families should not be shown up, blown upon. It ceases to be a low
+criminal case; it becomes an affair of State."
+
+"But tell the Prince that by the time you came it was all settled."
+
+"Really!"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Then you, my dear fellow, will be Keeper of the Seals as soon as the
+present Keeper is made Chancellor----"
+
+"I have no ambition," replied the magistrate.
+
+Des Lupeaulx laughed, and went away.
+
+"Beg of the Prince to request the King to grant me ten minutes'
+audience at about half-past two," added Monsieur de Granville, as he
+accompanied the Comte des Lupeaulx to the door.
+
+"So you are not ambitious!" said des Lupeaulx, with a keen look at
+Monsieur de Granville. "Come, you have two children, you would like at
+least to be made peer of France."
+
+"If you have the letters, Monsieur le Procureur General, my
+intervention is unnecessary," said Corentin, finding himself alone
+with Monsieur de Granville, who looked at him with very natural
+curiosity.
+
+"Such a man as you can never be superfluous in so delicate a case,"
+replied the magistrate, seeing that Corentin had heard or guessed
+everything.
+
+Corentin bowed with a patronizing air.
+
+"Do you know the man in question, monsieur?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Comte, it is Jacques Collin, the head of the 'Ten
+Thousand Francs Association,' the banker for three penal settlements,
+a convict who, for the last five years, has succeeded in concealing
+himself under the robe of the Abbe Carlos Herrera. How he ever came to
+be intrusted with a mission to the late King from the King of Spain is
+a question which we have all puzzled ourselves with trying to answer.
+I am now expecting information from Madrid, whither I have sent notes
+and a man. That convict holds the secrets of two kings."
+
+"He is a man of mettle and temper. We have only two courses open to
+us," said the public prosecutor. "We must secure his fidelity, or get
+him out of the way."
+
+"The same idea has struck us both, and that is a great honor for me,"
+said Corentin. "I am obliged to have so many ideas, and for so many
+people, that out of them all I ought occasionally to meet a clever
+man."
+
+He spoke so drily, and in so icy a tone, that Monsieur de Granville
+made no reply, and proceeded to attend to some pressing matters.
+
+Mademoiselle Jacqueline Collin's amazement on seeing Jacques Collin in
+the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_ is beyond imagining. She stood square on her
+feet, her hands on her hips, for she was dressed as a costermonger.
+Accustomed as she was to her nephew's conjuring tricks, this beat
+everything.
+
+"Well, if you are going to stare at me as if I were a natural history
+show," said Jacques Collin, taking his aunt by the arm and leading her
+out of the hall, "we shall be taken for a pair of curious specimens;
+they may take us into custody, and then we should lose time."
+
+And he went down the stairs of the Galerie Marchande leading to the
+Rue de la Barillerie. "Where is Paccard?"
+
+"He is waiting for me at la Rousse's, walking up and down the flower
+market."
+
+"And Prudence?"
+
+"Also at her house, as my god-daughter."
+
+"Let us go there."
+
+"Look round and see if we are watched."
+
+La Rousse, a hardware dealer living on the Quai aux Fleurs, was the
+widow of a famous murderer, one of the "Ten Thousand." In 1819,
+Jacques Collin had faithfully handed over twenty thousand francs and
+odd to this woman from her lover, after he had been executed.
+_Trompe-la-Mort_ was the only person who knew of his pal's connection
+with the girl, at that time a milliner.
+
+"I am your young man's boss," the boarder at Madame Vauquer's had told
+her, having sent for her to meet him at the Jardin des Plantes. "He
+may have mentioned me to you, my dear.--Any one who plays me false
+dies within a year; on the other hand, those who are true to me have
+nothing to fear from me. I am staunch through thick and thin, and
+would die without saying a word that would compromise anybody I wish
+well to. Stick to me as a soul sticks to the Devil, and you will find
+the benefit of it. I promised your poor Auguste that you should be
+happy; he wanted to make you a rich woman, and he got scragged for
+your sake.
+
+"Don't cry; listen to me. No one in the world knows that you were
+mistress to a convict, to the murderer they choked off last Saturday;
+and I shall never tell. You are two-and-twenty, and pretty, and you
+have twenty-six thousand francs of your own; forget Auguste and get
+married; be an honest woman if you can. In return for peace and quiet,
+I only ask you to serve me now and then, me, and any one I may send
+you, but without stopping to think. I will never ask you to do
+anything that can get you into trouble, you or your children, or your
+husband, if you get one, or your family.
+
+"In my line of life I often want a safe place to talk in or to hide
+in. Or I may want a trusty woman to carry a letter or do an errand.
+You will be one of my letter-boxes, one of my porters' lodges, one of
+my messengers, neither more nor less.
+
+"You are too red-haired; Auguste and I used to call you la Rousse; you
+can keep that name. My aunt, an old-clothes dealer at the Temple, who
+will come and see you, is the only person in the world you are to
+obey; tell her everything that happens to you; she will find you a
+husband, and be very useful to you."
+
+And thus the bargain was struck, a diabolical compact like that which
+had for so long bound Prudence Servien to Jacques Collin, and which
+the man never failed to tighten; for, like the Devil, he had a passion
+for recruiting.
+
+In about 1821 Jacques Collin found la Rousse a husband in the person
+of the chief shopman under a rich wholesale tin merchant. This
+head-clerk, having purchased his master's house of business, was now a
+prosperous man, the father of two children, and one of the district
+Maire's deputies. La Rousse, now Madame Prelard, had never had the
+smallest ground for complaint, either of Jacques Collin or of his
+aunt; still, each time she was required to help them, Madame Prelard
+quaked in every limb. So, as she saw the terrible couple come into her
+shop, she turned as pale as death.
+
+"We want to speak to you on business, madame," said Jacques Collin.
+
+"My husband is in there," said she.
+
+"Very well; we have no immediate need of you. I never put people out
+of their way for nothing."
+
+"Send for a hackney coach, my dear," said Jacqueline Collin, "and tell
+my god-daughter to come down. I hope to place her as maid to a very
+great lady, and the steward of the house will take us there."
+
+A shop-boy fetched the coach, and a few minutes later Europe, or, to
+be rid of the name under which she had served Esther, Prudence
+Servien, Paccard, Jacques Collin, and his aunt, were, to la Rousse's
+great joy, packed into a coach, ordered by _Trompe-la-Mort_ to drive to
+the Barriere d'Ivry.
+
+Prudence and Paccard, quaking in presence of the boss, felt like
+guilty souls in the presence of God.
+
+"Where are the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs?" asked the
+boss, looking at them with the clear, penetrating gaze which so
+effectually curdled the blood of these tools of his, these ames
+damnees, when they were caught tripping, that they felt as though
+their scalp were set with as many pins as hairs.
+
+"The seven hundred and _thirty_ thousand francs," said Jacqueline Collin
+to her nephew, "are quite safe; I gave them to la Romette this morning
+in a sealed packet."
+
+"If you had not handed them over to Jacqueline," said _Trompe-la-Mort_,
+"you would have gone straight there," and he pointed to the Place de
+Greve, which they were just passing.
+
+Prudence Servien, in her country fashion, made the sign of the Cross,
+as if she had seen a thunderbolt fall.
+
+"I forgive you," said the boss, "on condition of your committing no
+more mistakes of this kind, and of your being henceforth to me what
+these two fingers are of my right hand," and he pointed to the first
+and middle fingers, "for this good woman is the thumb," and he slapped
+his aunt on the shoulder.
+
+"Listen to me," he went on. "You, Paccard, have nothing more to fear;
+you may follow your nose about Pantin (Paris) as you please. I give
+you leave to marry Prudence Servien."
+
+Paccard took Jacques Collin's hand and kissed it respectfully.
+
+"And what must I do?" said he.
+
+"Nothing; and you will have dividends and women, to say nothing of
+your wife--for you have a touch of the Regency about you, old boy!
+--That comes of being such a fine man!"
+
+Paccard colored under his sultan's ironical praises.
+
+"You, Prudence," Jacques went on, "will want a career, a position, a
+future; you must remain in my service. Listen to me. There is a very
+good house in the Rue Sainte-Barbe belonging to that Madame de
+Saint-Esteve, whose name my aunt occasionally borrows. It is a very
+good business, with plenty of custom, bringing in fifteen to twenty
+thousand francs a year. Saint-Esteve puts a woman in to keep the
+shop----"
+
+"La Gonore," said Jacqueline.
+
+"Poor la Pouraille's moll," said Paccard. "That is where I bolted to
+with Europe the day that poor Madame van Bogseck died, our mis'ess."
+
+"Who jabbers when I am speaking?" said Jacques Collin.
+
+Perfect silence fell in the coach. Paccard and Prudence did not dare
+look at each other.
+
+"The shop is kept by la Gonore," Jacques Collin went on. "If that is
+where you went to hide with Prudence, I see, Paccard, that you have
+wit enough to dodge the reelers (mislead the police), but not enough
+to puzzle the old lady," and he stroked his aunt's chin. "Now I see
+how she managed to find you.--It all fits beautifully. You may go back
+to la Gonore.--To go on: Jacqueline will arrange with Madame
+Nourrisson to purchase her business in the Rue Sainte-Barbe; and if
+you manage well, child, you may make a fortune out of it," he said to
+Prudence. "An Abbess at your age! It is worthy of a Daughter of
+France," he added in a hard tone.
+
+Prudence flung her arms round _Trompe-la-Mort's_ neck and hugged him;
+but the boss flung her off with a sharp blow, showing his
+extraordinary strength, and but for Paccard, the girl's head would
+have struck and broken the coach window.
+
+"Paws off! I don't like such ways," said the boss stiffly. "It is
+disrespectful to me."
+
+"He is right, child," said Paccard. "Why, you see, it is as though the
+boss had made you a present of a hundred thousand francs. The shop is
+worth that. It is on the Boulevard, opposite the Gymnase. The people
+come out of the theatre----"
+
+"I will do more," said _Trompe-la-Mort_; "I will buy the house."
+
+"And in six years we shall be millionaires," cried Paccard.
+
+Tired of being interrupted, _Trompe-la-Mort_ gave Paccard's shin a kick
+hard enough to break it; but the man's tendons were of india-rubber,
+and his bones of wrought iron.
+
+"All right, boss, mum it is," said he.
+
+"Do you think I am cramming you with lies?" said Jacques Collin,
+perceiving that Paccard had had a few drops too much. "Well, listen.
+In the cellar of that house there are two hundred and fifty thousand
+francs in gold----"
+
+Again silence reigned in the coach.
+
+"The coin is in a very hard bed of masonry. It must be got out, and
+you have only three nights to do it in. Jacqueline will help you.--A
+hundred thousand francs will buy up the business, fifty thousand will
+pay for the house; leave the remainder."
+
+"Where?" said Paccard.
+
+"In the cellar?" asked Prudence.
+
+"Silence!" cried Jacqueline.
+
+"Yes, but to get the business transferred, we must have the consent of
+the police authorities," Paccard objected.
+
+"We shall have it," said _Trompe-la-Mort_. "Don't meddle in what does
+not concern you."
+
+Jacqueline looked at her nephew, and was struck by the alteration in
+his face, visible through the stern mask under which the strong man
+generally hid his feelings.
+
+"You, child," said he to Prudence Servien, "will receive from my aunt
+the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs----"
+
+"Seven hundred and thirty," said Paccard.
+
+"Very good, seven hundred and thirty then," said Jacques Collin. "You
+must return this evening under some pretext to Madame Lucien's house.
+Get out on the roof through the skylight; get down the chimney into
+your miss'ess' room, and hide the packet she had made of the money in
+the mattress----"
+
+"And why not by the door?" asked Prudence Servien.
+
+"Idiot! there are seals on everything," replied Jacques Collin. "In a
+few days the inventory will be taken, and you will be innocent of the
+theft."
+
+"Good for the boss!" cried Paccard. "That is really kind!"
+
+"Stop, coachman!" cried Jacques Collin's powerful voice.
+
+The coach was close to the stand by the Jardin des Plantes.
+
+"Be off, young 'uns," said Jacques Collin, "and do nothing silly! Be
+on the Pont des Arts this afternoon at five, and my aunt will let you
+know if there are any orders to the contrary.--We must be prepared for
+everything," he whispered to his aunt. "To-morrow," he went on,
+"Jacqueline will tell you how to dig up the gold without any risk. It
+is a ticklish job----"
+
+Paccard and Prudence jumped out on to the King's highway, as happy as
+reprieved thieves.
+
+"What a good fellow the boss is!" said Paccard.
+
+"He would be the king of men if he were not so rough on women."
+
+"Oh, yes! He is a sweet creature," said Paccard. "Did you see how he
+kicked me? Well, we deserved to be sent to old Nick; for, after all,
+we got him into this scrape."
+
+"If only he does not drag us into some dirty job, and get us packed
+off to the hulks yet," said the wily Prudence.
+
+"Not he! If he had that in his head, he would tell us; you don't know
+him.--He has provided handsomely for you. Here we are, citizens at
+large! Oh, when that man takes a fancy to you, he has not his match
+for good-nature."
+
+"Now, my jewel," said Jacques Collin to his aunt, "you must take la
+Gonore in hand; she must be humbugged. Five days hence she will be
+taken into custody, and a hundred and fifty thousand francs will be
+found in her rooms, the remains of a share from the robbery and murder
+of the old Crottat couple, the notary's father and mother."
+
+"She will get five years in the Madelonnettes," said Jacqueline.
+
+"That's about it," said the nephew. "This will be a reason for old
+Nourrisson to get rid of her house; she cannot manage it herself, and
+a manager to suit is not to be found every day. You can arrange all
+that. We shall have a sharp eye there.--But all these three things are
+secondary to the business I have undertaken with regard to our
+letters. So unrip your gown and give me the samples of the goods.
+Where are the three packets?"
+
+"At la Rousse's, of course."
+
+"Coachman," cried Jacques Collin, "go back to the Palais de Justice,
+and look sharp----
+
+"I promised to be quick, and I have been gone half an hour; that is
+too much.--Stay at la Rousse's, and give the sealed parcels to the
+office clerk, who will come and ask for Madame _de_ Saint-Esteve; the
+_de_ will be the password. He will say to you,'Madame, I have come
+from the public prosecutor for the things you know of.' Stand waiting
+outside the door, staring about at what is going on in the
+Flower-Market, so as not to arouse Prelard's suspicions. As soon as
+you have given up the letters, you can start Paccard and Prudence."
+
+"I see what you are at," said Jacqueline; "you mean to step into
+Bibi-Lupin's shoes. That boy's death has turned your brain."
+
+"And there is Theodore, who was just going to have his hair cropped to
+be scragged at four this afternoon!" cried Jacques Collin.
+
+"Well, it is a notion! We shall end our days as honest folks in a fine
+property and a delightful climate--in Touraine."
+
+"What was to become of me? Lucien has taken my soul with him, and all
+my joy in life. I have thirty years before me to be sick of life in,
+and I have no heart left. Instead of being the boss of the hulks, I
+shall be a Figaro of the law, and avenge Lucien. I can never be sure
+of demolishing Corentin excepting in the skin of a police agent. And
+so long as I have a man to devour, I shall still feel alive.--The
+profession a man follows in the eyes of the world is a mere sham; the
+reality is in the idea!" he added, striking his forehead.--"How much
+have we left in the cash-box?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing," said his aunt, dismayed by the man's tone and manner. "I
+gave you all I had for the boy. La Romette has not more than twenty
+thousand francs left in the business. I took everything from Madame
+Nourrisson; she had about sixty thousand francs of her own. Oh! we are
+lying in sheets that have been washed this twelve months past. That
+boy had all the pals' blunt, our savings, and all old Nourrisson's."
+
+"Making----?"
+
+"Five hundred and sixty thousand."
+
+"We have a hundred and fifty thousand which Paccard and Prudence will
+pay us. I will tell you where to find two hundred thousand more. The
+remainder will come to me out of Esther's money. We must repay old
+Nourrisson. With Theodore, Paccard, Prudence, Nourrisson, and you, I
+shall soon have the holy alliance I require.--Listen, now we are
+nearly there----"
+
+"Here are the three letters," said Jacqueline, who had finished
+unsewing the lining of her gown.
+
+"Quite right," said Jacques Collin, taking the three precious
+documents--autograph letters on vellum paper, and still strongly
+scented. "Theodore did the Nanterre job."
+
+"Oh! it was he."
+
+"Don't talk. Time is precious. He wanted to give the proceeds to a
+little Corsican sparrow named Ginetta. You must set old Nourrisson to
+find her; I will give you the necessary information in a letter which
+Gault will give you. Come for it to the gate of the Conciergerie in
+two hours' time. You must place the girl with a washerwoman, Godet's
+sister; she must seem at home there. Godet and Ruffard were concerned
+with la Pouraille in robbing and murdering the Crottats.
+
+"The four hundred and fifty thousand francs are all safe, one-third in
+la Gonore's cellar--la Pouraille's share; the second third in la
+Gonore's bedroom, which is Ruffard's; and the rest is hidden in
+Godet's sister's house. We will begin by taking a hundred and fifty
+thousand francs out of la Pouraille's whack, a hundred thousand of
+Godet's, and a hundred thousand of Ruffard's. As soon as Godet and
+Ruffard are nabbed, they will be supposed to have got rid of what is
+missing from their shares. And I will make Godet believe that I have
+saved a hundred thousand francs for him, and that la Gonore has done
+the same for la Pouraille and Ruffard.
+
+"Prudence and Paccard will do the job at la Gonore's; you and Ginetta
+--who seems to be a smart hussy--must manage the job at Godet's
+sister's place.
+
+"And so, as the first act in the farce, I can enable the public
+prosecutor to lay his hands on four hundred thousand francs stolen
+from the Crottats, and on the guilty parties. Then I shall seem to
+have shown up the Nanterre murderer. We shall get back our shiners,
+and are behind the scenes with the police. We were the game, now we
+are the hunters--that is all.
+
+"Give the driver three francs."
+
+The coach was at the Palais. Jacqueline, speechless with astonishment,
+paid. _Trompe-la-Mort_ went up the steps to the public prosecutor's
+room.
+
+
+
+A complete change of life is so violent a crisis, that Jacques Collin,
+in spite of his resolution, mounted the steps but slowly, going up
+from the Rue de la Barillerie to the Galerie Marchande, where, under
+the gloomy peristyle of the courthouse, is the entrance to the Court
+itself.
+
+Some civil case was going on which had brought a little crowd together
+at the foot of the double stairs leading to the Assize Court, so that
+the convict, lost in thought, stood for some minutes, checked by the
+throng.
+
+To the left of this double flight is one of the mainstays of the
+building, like an enormous pillar, and in this tower is a little door.
+This door opens on a spiral staircase down to the Conciergerie, to
+which the public prosecutor, the governor of the prison, the presiding
+judges, King's council, and the chief of the Safety department have
+access by this back way.
+
+It was up a side staircase from this, now walled up, that Marie
+Antoinette, the Queen of France, was led before the Revolutionary
+tribunal which sat, as we all know, in the great hall where appeals
+are now heard before the Supreme Court. The heart sinks within us at
+the sight of these dreadful steps, when we think that Marie Therese's
+daughter, whose suite, and head-dress, and hoops filled the great
+staircase at Versailles, once passed that way! Perhaps it was in
+expiation of her mother's crime--the atrocious division of Poland. The
+sovereigns who commit such crimes evidently never think of the
+retribution to be exacted by Providence.
+
+When Jacques Collin went up the vaulted stairs to the public
+prosecutor's room, Bibi-Lupin was just coming out of the little door
+in the wall.
+
+The chief of the "Safety" had come from the Conciergerie, and was also
+going up to Monsieur de Granville. It was easy to imagine Bibi-Lupin's
+surprise when he recognized, in front of him, the gown of Carlos
+Herrera, which he had so thoroughly studied that morning; he ran on to
+pass him. Jacques Collin turned round, and the enemies were face to
+face. Each stood still, and the self-same look flashed in both pairs
+of eyes, so different in themselves, as in a duel two pistols go off
+at the same instant.
+
+"This time I have got you, rascal!" said the chief of the Safety
+Department.
+
+"Ah, ha!" replied Jacques Collin ironically.
+
+It flashed through his mind that Monsieur de Granville had sent some
+one to watch him, and, strange to say, it pained him to think the
+magistrate less magnanimous than he had supposed.
+
+Bibi-Lupin bravely flew at Jacques Collin's throat; but he, keeping
+his eye on the foe, gave him a straight blow, and sent him sprawling
+on his back three yards off; then _Trompe-la-Mort_ went calmly up to
+Bibi-Lupin, and held out a hand to help him rise, exactly like an
+English boxer who, sure of his superiority, is ready for more.
+Bibi-Lupin knew better than to call out; but he sprang to his feet,
+ran to the entrance to the passage, and signed to a gendarme to stand
+on guard. Then, swift as lightning, he came back to the foe, who
+quietly looked on. Jacques Collin had decided what to do.
+
+"Either the public prosecutor has broken his word, or he had not taken
+Bibi-Lupin into his confidence, and in that case I must get the matter
+explained," thought he.--"Do you mean to arrest me?" he asked his
+enemy. "Say so without more ado. Don't I know that in the heart of
+this place you are stronger than I am? I could kill you with a
+well-placed kick, but I could not tackle the gendarmes and the
+soldiers. Now, make no noise. Where to you want to take me?"
+
+"To Monsieur Camusot."
+
+"Come along to Monsieur Camusot," replied Jacques Collin. "Why should
+we not go to the public prosecutor's court? It is nearer," he added.
+
+Bibi-Lupin, who knew that he was out of favor with the upper ranks of
+judicial authorities, and suspected of having made a fortune at the
+expense of criminals and their victims, was not unwilling to show
+himself in Court with so notable a capture.
+
+"All right, we will go there," said he. "But as you surrender, allow
+me to fit you with bracelets. I am afraid of your claws."
+
+And he took the handcuffs out of his pocket.
+
+Jacques Collin held out his hands, and Bibi-Lupin snapped on the
+manacles.
+
+"Well, now, since you are feeling so good," said he, "tell me how you
+got out of the Conciergerie?"
+
+"By the way you came; down the turret stairs."
+
+"Then have you taught the gendarmes some new trick?"
+
+"No, Monsieur de Granville let me out on parole."
+
+"You are gammoning me?"
+
+"You will see. Perhaps it will be your turn to wear the bracelets."
+
+Just then Corentin was saying to Monsieur de Granville:
+
+"Well, monsieur, it is just an hour since our man set out; are you not
+afraid that he may have fooled you? He is on the road to Spain perhaps
+by this time, and we shall not find him there, for Spain is a
+whimsical kind of country."
+
+"Either I know nothing of men, or he will come back; he is bound by
+every interest; he has more to look for at my hands than he has to
+give."
+
+Bibi-Lupin walked in.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," said he, "I have good news for you. Jacques
+Collin, who had escaped, has been recaptured."
+
+"And this," said Jacques Collin, addressing Monsieur de Granville, "is
+the way you keep your word!--Ask your double-faced agent where he took
+me."
+
+"Where?" said the public prosecutor.
+
+"Close to the Court, in the vaulted passage," said Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"Take your irons off the man," said Monsieur de Granville sternly.
+"And remember that you are to leave him free till further orders.--Go!
+--You have a way of moving and acting as if you alone were law and
+police in one."
+
+The public prosecutor turned his back on Bibi-Lupin, who became deadly
+pale, especially at a look from Jacques Collin, in which he read
+disaster.
+
+"I have not been out of this room. I expected you back, and you cannot
+doubt that I have kept my word, as you kept yours," said Monsieur de
+Granville to the convict.
+
+"For a moment I did doubt you, sir, and in my place perhaps you would
+have thought as I did, but on reflection I saw that I was unjust. I
+bring you more than you can give me; you had no interest in betraying
+me."
+
+The magistrate flashed a look at Corentin. This glance, which could
+not escape _Trompe-la-Mort_, who was watching Monsieur de Granville,
+directed his attention to the strange little old man sitting in an
+armchair in a corner. Warned at once by the swift and anxious instinct
+that scents the presence of an enemy, Collin examined this figure; he
+saw at a glance that the eyes were not so old as the costume would
+suggest, and he detected a disguise. In one second Jacques Collin was
+revenged on Corentin for the rapid insight with which Corentin had
+unmasked him at Peyrade's.
+
+"We are not alone!" said Jacques Collin to Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"No," said the magistrate drily.
+
+"And this gentleman is one of my oldest acquaintances, I believe,"
+replied the convict.
+
+He went forward, recognizing Corentin, the real and confessed
+originator of Lucien's overthrow.
+
+Jacques Collin, whose face was of a brick-red hue, for a scarcely
+perceptible moment turned white, almost ashy; all his blood rushed to
+his heart, so furious and maddening was his longing to spring on this
+dangerous reptile and crush it; but he controlled the brutal impulse,
+suppressing it with the force that made him so formidable. He put on a
+polite manner and the tone of obsequious civility which he had
+practised since assuming the garb of a priest of a superior Order, and
+he bowed to the little old man.
+
+"Monsieur Corentin," said he, "do I owe the pleasure of this meeting
+to chance, or am I so happy as to be the cause of your visit here?"
+
+Monsieur de Granville's astonishment was at its height, and he could
+not help staring at the two men who had thus come face to face.
+Jacques Collin's behavior and the tone in which he spoke denoted a
+crisis, and he was curious to know the meaning of it. On being thus
+suddenly and miraculously recognized, Corentin drew himself up like a
+snake when you tread on its tail.
+
+"Yes, it is I, my dear Abbe Carlos Herrera."
+
+"And are you here," said _Trompe-la-Mort_, "to interfere between
+monsieur the public prosecutor and me? Am I so happy as to be the
+object of one of those negotiations in which your talents shine so
+brightly?--Here, Monsieur le Comte," the convict went on, "not to
+waste time so precious as yours is, read these--they are samples of my
+wares."
+
+And he held out to Monsieur de Granville three letters, which he took
+out of his breast-pocket.
+
+"And while you are studying them, I will, with your permission, have a
+little talk with this gentleman."
+
+"You do me great honor," said Corentin, who could not help giving a
+little shiver.
+
+"You achieved a perfect success in our business," said Jacques Collin.
+"I was beaten," he added lightly, in the tone of a gambler who has
+lost his money, "but you left some men on the field--your victory cost
+you dear."
+
+"Yes," said Corentin, taking up the jest, "you lost your queen, and I
+lost my two castles."
+
+"Oh! Contenson was a mere pawn," said Jacques Collin scornfully; "you
+may easily replace him. You really are--allow me to praise you to your
+face--you are, on my word of honor, a magnificent man."
+
+"No, no, I bow to your superiority," replied Corentin, assuming the
+air of a professional joker, as if he said, "If you mean humbug, by
+all means humbug! I have everything at my command, while you are
+single-handed, so to speak."
+
+"Oh! Oh!" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"And you were very near winning the day!" said Corentin, noticing the
+exclamation. "You are quite the most extraordinary man I ever met in
+my life, and I have seen many very extraordinary men, for those I have
+to work with me are all remarkable for daring and bold scheming.
+
+"I was, for my sins, very intimate with the late Duc d'Otranto; I have
+worked for Louis XVIII. when he was on the throne; and, when he was
+exiled, for the Emperor and for the Directory. You have the tenacity
+of Louvel, the best political instrument I ever met with; but you are
+as supple as the prince of diplomates. And what auxiliaries you have!
+I would give many a head to the guillotine if I could have in my
+service the cook who lived with poor little Esther.--And where do you
+find such beautiful creatures as the woman who took the Jewess' place
+for Monsieur de Nucingen? I don't know where to get them when I want
+them."
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur, you overpower me," said Jacques Collin. "Such
+praise from you will turn my head----"
+
+"It is deserved. Why, you took in Peyrade; he believed you to be a
+police officer--he!--I tell you what, if you had not that fool of a
+boy to take care of, you would have thrashed us."
+
+"Oh! monsieur, but you are forgetting Contenson disguised as a
+mulatto, and Peyrade as an Englishman. Actors have the stage to help
+them, but to be so perfect by daylight, and at all hours, no one but
+you and your men----"
+
+"Come, now," said Corentin, "we are fully convinced of our worth and
+merits. And here we stand each of us quite alone; I have lost my old
+friend, you your young companion. I, for the moment, am in the
+stronger position, why should we not do like the men in _l'Auberge des
+Adrets_? I offer you my hand, and say, 'Let us embrace, and let bygones
+be bygones.' Here, in the presence of Monsieur le Comte, I propose to
+give you full and plenary absolution, and you shall be one of my men,
+the chief next to me, and perhaps my successor."
+
+"You really offer me a situation?" said Jacques Collin. "A nice
+situation indeed!--out of the fire into the frying-pan!"
+
+"You will be in a sphere where your talents will be highly appreciated
+and well paid for, and you will act at your ease. The Government
+police are not free from perils. I, as you see me, have already been
+imprisoned twice, but I am none the worse for that. And we travel, we
+are what we choose to appear. We pull the wires of political dramas,
+and are treated with politeness by very great people.--Come, my dear
+Jacques Collin, do you say yes?"
+
+"Have you orders to act in this matter?" said the convict.
+
+"I have a free hand," replied Corentin, delighted at his own happy
+idea.
+
+"You are trifling with me; you are very shrewd, and you must allow
+that a man may be suspicious of you.--You have sold more than one man
+by tying him up in a sack after making him go into it of his own
+accord. I know all your great victories--the Montauran case, the
+Simeuse business--the battles of Marengo of espionage."
+
+"Well," said Corentin, "you have some esteem for the public
+prosecutor?"
+
+"Yes," said Jacques Collin, bowing respectfully, "I admire his noble
+character, his firmness, his dignity. I would give my life to make him
+happy. Indeed, to begin with, I will put an end to the dangerous
+condition in which Madame de Serizy now is."
+
+Monsieur de Granville turned to him with a look of satisfaction.
+
+"Then ask him," Corentin went on, "if I have not full power to snatch
+you from the degrading position in which you stand, and to attach you
+to me."
+
+"It is quite true," said Monsieur de Granville, watching the convict.
+
+"Really and truly! I may have absolution for the past and a promise of
+succeeding to you if I give sufficient evidence of my intelligence?"
+
+"Between two such men as we are there can be no misunderstanding,"
+said Corentin, with a lordly air that might have taken anybody in.
+
+"And the price of the bargain is, I suppose, the surrender of those
+three packets of letters?" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"I did not think it would be necessary to say so to you----"
+
+"My dear Monsieur Corentin," said _Trompe-la-Mort_, with irony worthy of
+that which made the fame of Talma in the part of Nicomede, "I beg to
+decline. I am indebted to you for the knowledge of what I am worth,
+and of the importance you attach to seeing me deprived of my weapons
+--I will never forget it.
+
+"At all times and for ever I shall be at your service, but instead of
+saying with Robert Macaire, 'Let us embrace!' I embrace you."
+
+He seized Corentin round the middle so suddenly that the other could
+not avoid the hug; he clutched him to his heart like a doll, kissed
+him on both cheeks, carried him like a feather with one hand, while
+with the other he opened the door, and then set him down outside,
+quite battered by this rough treatment.
+
+"Good-bye, my dear fellow," said Jacques Collin in a low voice, and in
+Corentin's ear: "the length of three corpses parts you from me; we
+have measured swords, they are of the same temper and the same length.
+Let us treat each other with due respect; but I mean to be your equal,
+not your subordinate. Armed as you would be, it strikes me you would
+be too dangerous a general for your lieutenant. We will place a grave
+between us. Woe to you if you come over on to my territory!
+
+"You call yourself the State, as footmen call themselves by their
+master's names. For my part, I will call myself Justice. We shall
+often meet; let us treat each other with dignity and propriety--all
+the more because we shall always remain--atrocious blackguards," he
+added in a whisper. "I set you the example by embracing you----"
+
+Corentin stood nonplussed for the first time in his life, and allowed
+his terrible antagonist to wring his hand.
+
+"If so," said he, "I think it will be to our interest on both sides to
+remain chums."
+
+"We shall be stronger each on our own side, but at the same time more
+dangerous," added Jacques Collin in an undertone. "And you will allow
+me to call on you to-morrow to ask for some pledge of our agreement."
+
+"Well, well," said Corentin amiably, "you are taking the case out of
+my hands to place it in those of the public prosecutor. You will help
+him to promotion; but I cannot but own to you that you are acting
+wisely.--Bibi-Lupin is too well known; he has served his turn; if you
+get his place, you will have the only situation that suits you. I am
+delighted to see you in it--on my honor----"
+
+"Till our next meeting, very soon," said Jacques Collin.
+
+On turning round, _Trompe-la-Mort_ saw the public prosecutor sitting at
+his table, his head resting on his hands.
+
+"Do you mean that you can save the Comtesse de Serizy from going mad?"
+asked Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"In five minutes," said Jacques Collin.
+
+"And you can give me all those ladies' letters?"
+
+"Have you read the three?"
+
+"Yes," said the magistrate vehemently, "and I blush for the women who
+wrote them."
+
+"Well, we are now alone; admit no one, and let us come to terms," said
+Jacques Collin.
+
+"Excuse me, Justice must first take its course. Monsieur Camusot has
+instructions to seize your aunt."
+
+"He will never find her," said Jacques Collin.
+
+"Search is to be made at the Temple, in the shop of a demoiselle
+Paccard who superintends her shop."
+
+"Nothing will be found there but rags, costumes, diamonds,
+uniforms----However, it will be as well to check Monsieur Camusot's
+zeal."
+
+Monsieur de Granville rang, and sent an office messenger to desire
+Monsieur Camusot to come and speak with him.
+
+"Now," said he to Jacques Collin, "an end to all this! I want to know
+your recipe for curing the Countess."
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," said the convict very gravely, "I was, as you
+know, sentenced to five years' penal servitude for forgery. But I love
+my liberty.--This passion, like every other, had defeated its own end,
+for lovers who insist on adoring each other too fondly end by
+quarreling. By dint of escaping and being recaptured alternately, I
+have served seven years on the hulks. So you have nothing to remit but
+the added terms I earned in quod--I beg pardon, in prison. I have, in
+fact, served my time, and till some ugly job can be proved against me,
+--which I defy Justice to do, or even Corentin--I ought to be
+reinstated in my rights as a French citizen.
+
+"What is life if I am banned from Paris and subject to the eye of the
+police? Where can I go, what can I do? You know my capabilities. You
+have seen Corentin, that storehouse of treachery and wile, turn
+ghastly pale before me, and doing justice to my powers.--That man has
+bereft me of everything; for it was he, and he alone, who overthrew
+the edifice of Lucien's fortunes, by what means and in whose interest
+I know not.--Corentin and Camusot did it all----"
+
+"No recriminations," said Monsieur de Granville; "give me the facts."
+
+"Well, then, these are the facts. Last night, as I held in my hand the
+icy hand of that dead youth, I vowed to myself that I would give up
+the mad contest I have kept up for twenty years past against society
+at large.
+
+"You will not believe me capable of religious sentimentality after
+what I have said of my religious opinions. Still, in these twenty
+years I have seen a great deal of the seamy side of the world. I have
+known its back-stairs, and I have discerned, in the march of events, a
+Power which you call Providence and I call Chance, and which my
+companions call Luck. Every evil deed, however quickly it may hide its
+traces, is overtaken by some retribution. In this struggle for
+existence, when the game is going well--when you have quint and
+quartorze in your hand and the lead--the candle tumbles over and the
+cards are burned, or the player has a fit of apoplexy!--That is
+Lucien's story. That boy, that angel, had not committed the shadow of
+a crime; he let himself be led, he let things go! He was to marry
+Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, to be made marquis; he had a fine fortune;
+--well, a prostitute poisons herself, she hides the price of a
+certificate of stock, and the whole structure so laboriously built up
+crumbles in an instant.
+
+"And who is the first man to deal a blow? A man loaded with secret
+infamy, a monster who, in the world of finance, has committed such
+crimes that every coin of his vast fortune has been dipped in the
+tears of a whole family [see _la Maison Nucingen_]--by Nucingen, who
+has been a legalized Jacques Collin in the world of money. However,
+you know as well as I do all the bankruptcies and tricks for which
+that man deserves hanging. My fetters will leave a mark on all my
+actions, however virtuous. To be a shuttlecock between two racquets
+--one called the hulks, and the other the police--is a life in which
+success means never-ending toil, and peace and quiet seem quite
+impossible.
+
+"At this moment, Monsieur de Granville, Jacques Collin is buried with
+Lucien, who is being now sprinkled with holy water and carried away to
+Pere-Lachaise. What I want is a place not to live in, but to die in.
+As things are, you, representing Justice, have never cared to make the
+released convict's social status a concern of any interest. Though the
+law may be satisfied, society is not; society is still suspicious, and
+does all it can to justify its suspicions; it regards a released
+convict as an impossible creature; it ought to restore him to his full
+rights, but, in fact, it prohibits his living in certain circles.
+Society says to the poor wretch, 'Paris, which is the only place you
+can be hidden in; Paris and its suburbs for so many miles round is the
+forbidden land, you shall not live there!' and it subjects the convict
+to the watchfulness of the police. Do you think that life is possible
+under such conditions? To live, the convict must work, for he does not
+come out of prison with a fortune.
+
+"You arrange matters so that he is plainly ticketed, recognized,
+hedged round, and then you fancy that his fellow-citizens will trust
+him, when society and justice and the world around him do not. You
+condemn him to starvation or crime. He cannot get work, and is
+inevitably dragged into his old ways, which lead to the scaffold.
+
+"Thus, while earnestly wishing to give up this struggle with the law,
+I could find no place for myself under the sun. One course alone is
+open to me, that is to become the servant of the power that crushes
+us; and as soon as this idea dawned on me, the Power of which I spoke
+was shown in the clearest light. Three great families are at my mercy.
+Do not suppose I am thinking of blackmail--blackmail is the meanest
+form of murder. In my eyes it is baser villainy than murder. The
+murderer needs, at any rate, atrocious courage. And I practise what I
+preach; for the letters which are my safe-conduct, which allow me to
+address you thus, and for the moment place me on an equality with you
+--I, Crime, and you, Justice--those letters are in your power. Your
+messenger may fetch them, and they will be given up to him.
+
+"I ask no price for them; I do not sell them. Alas! Monsieur le Comte,
+I was not thinking of myself when I preserved them; I thought that
+Lucien might some day be in danger! If you cannot agree to my request,
+my courage is out; I hate life more than enough to make me blow out my
+own brains and rid you of me!--Or, with a passport, I can go to
+America and live in the wilderness. I have all the characteristics of
+a savage.
+
+"These are the thoughts that came to me in the night.--Your clerk, no
+doubt, carried you a message I sent by him. When I saw what
+precautions you took to save Lucien's memory from any stain, I
+dedicated my life to you--a poor offering, for I no longer cared for
+it; it seemed to me impossible without the star that gave it light,
+the happiness that glorified it, the thought that gave it meaning, the
+prosperity of the young poet who was its sun--and I determined to give
+you the three packets of letters----"
+
+Monsieur de Granville bowed his head.
+
+"I went down into the prison-yard, and there I found the persons
+guilty of the Nanterre crime, as well as my little chain companion
+within an inch of the chopper as an involuntary accessory after the
+fact," Jacques Collin went on. "I discovered that Bibi-Lupin is
+cheating the authorities, that one of his men murdered the Crottats.
+Was not this providential, as you say?--So I perceived a remote
+possibility of doing good, of turning my gifts and the dismal
+experience I have gained to account for the benefit of society, of
+being useful instead of mischievous, and I ventured to confide in your
+judgment, your generosity."
+
+The man's air of candor, of artlessness, of childlike simplicity, as
+he made his confession, without bitterness, or that philosophy of vice
+which had hitherto made him so terrible to hear, was like an absolute
+transformation. He was no longer himself.
+
+"I have such implicit trust in you," he went on, with the humility of
+a penitent, "that I am wholly at your mercy. You see me with three
+roads open to me--suicide, America, and the Rue de Jerusalem.
+Bibi-Lupin is rich; he has served his turn; he is a double-faced
+rascal. And if you set me to work against him, I would catch him
+red-handed in some trick within a week. If you will put me in that
+sneak's shoes, you will do society a real service. I will be honest.
+I have every quality that is needed in the profession. I am better
+educated than Bibi-Lupin; I went through my schooling up to rhetoric;
+I shall not blunder as he does; I have very good manners when I choose.
+My sole ambition is to become an instrument of order and repression
+instead of being the incarnation of corruption. I will enlist no more
+recruits to the army of vice.
+
+"In war, monsieur, when a hostile general is captured, he is not shot,
+you know; his sword is returned to him, and his prison is a large
+town; well, I am the general of the hulks, and I have surrendered.--I
+am beaten, not by the law, but by death. The sphere in which I crave
+to live and act is the only one that is suited to me, and there I can
+develop the powers I feel within me.
+
+"Decide."
+
+And Jacques Collin stood in an attitude of diffident submission.
+
+"You place the letters in my hands, then?" said the public prosecutor.
+
+"You have only to send for them; they will be delivered to your
+messenger."
+
+"But how?"
+
+Jacques Collin read the magistrate's mind, and kept up the game.
+
+"You promised me to commute the capital sentence on Calvi for twenty
+years' penal servitude. Oh, I am not reminding you of that to drive a
+bargain," he added eagerly, seeing Monsieur de Granville's expression;
+"that life should be safe for other reasons, the lad is innocent----"
+
+"How am I to get the letters?" asked the public prosecutor. "It is my
+right and my business to convince myself that you are the man you say
+you are. I must have you without conditions."
+
+"Send a man you can trust to the Flower Market on the quay. At the
+door of a tinman's shop, under the sign of Achilles' shield----"
+
+"That house?"
+
+"Yes," said Jacques Collin, smiling bitterly, "my shield is there.
+--Your man will see an old woman dressed, as I told you before, like a
+fish-woman who has saved money--earrings in her ears, and clothes like
+a rich market-woman's. He must ask for Madame de Saint-Esteve. Do not
+omit the DE. And he must say, 'I have come from the public prosecutor
+to fetch you know what.'--You will immediately receive three sealed
+packets."
+
+"All the letters are there?" said Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"There is no tricking you; you did not get your place for nothing!"
+said Jacques Collin, with a smile. "I see you still think me capable
+of testing you and giving you so much blank paper.--No; you do not
+know me," said he. "I trust you as a son trusts his father."
+
+"You will be taken back to the Conciergerie," said the magistrate,
+"and there await a decision as to your fate."
+
+Monsieur de Granville rang, and said to the office-boy who answered:
+
+"Beg Monsieur Garnery to come here, if he is in his room."
+
+Besides the forty-eight police commissioners who watch over Paris like
+forty-eight petty Providences, to say nothing of the guardians of
+Public Safety--and who have earned the nickname of quart d'oeil, in
+thieves' slang, a quarter of an eye, because there are four of them to
+each district,--besides these, there are two commissioners attached
+equally to the police and to the legal authorities, whose duty it is
+to undertake delicate negotiation, and not frequently to serve as
+deputies to the examining judges. The office of these two magistrates,
+for police commissioners are also magistrates, is known as the
+Delegates' office; for they are, in fact, delegated on each occasion,
+and formally empowered to carry out inquiries or arrests.
+
+These functions demand men of ripe age, proved intelligence, great
+rectitude, and perfect discretion; and it is one of the miracles
+wrought by Heaven in favor of Paris, that some men of that stamp are
+always forthcoming. Any description of the Palais de Justice would be
+incomplete without due mention of these _preventive_ officials, as they
+may be called, the most powerful adjuncts of the law; for though it
+must be owned that the force of circumstances has abrogated the
+ancient pomp and wealth of justice, it has materially gained in many
+ways. In Paris especially its machinery is admirably perfect.
+
+Monsieur de Granville had sent his secretary, Monsieur de Chargeboeuf,
+to attend Lucien's funeral; he needed a substitute for this business,
+a man he could trust, and Monsieur Garnery was one of the
+commissioners in the Delegates' office.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "I have already proved to you that I
+have a sense of honor. You let me go free, and I came back.--By this
+time the funeral mass for Lucien is ended; they will be carrying him
+to the grave. Instead of remanding me to the Conciergerie, give me
+leave to follow the boy's body to Pere-Lachaise. I will come back and
+surrender myself prisoner."
+
+"Go," said Monsieur de Granville, in the kindest tone.
+
+"One word more, monsieur. The money belonging to that girl--Lucien's
+mistress--was not stolen. During the short time of liberty you allowed
+me, I questioned her servants. I am sure of them as you are of your
+two commissioners of the Delegates' office. The money paid for the
+certificate sold by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck will certainly be
+found in her room when the seals are removed. Her maid remarked to me
+that the deceased was given to mystery-making, and very distrustful;
+she no doubt hid the banknotes in her bed. Let the bedstead be
+carefully examined and taken to pieces, the mattresses unsewn--the
+money will be found."
+
+"You are sure of that?"
+
+"I am sure of the relative honesty of my rascals; they never play any
+tricks on me. I hold the power of life and death; I try and condemn
+them and carry out my sentence without all your formalities. You can
+see for yourself the results of my authority. I will recover the money
+stolen from Monsieur and Madame Crottat; I will hand you over one of
+Bibi-Lupin's men, his right hand, caught in the act; and I will tell
+you the secret of the Nanterre murders. This is not a bad beginning.
+And if you only employ me in the service of the law and the police, by
+the end of a year you will be satisfied with all I can tell you. I
+will be thoroughly all that I ought to be, and shall manage to succeed
+in all the business that is placed in my hands."
+
+"I can promise you nothing but my goodwill. What you ask is not in my
+power. The privilege of granting pardons is the King's alone, on the
+recommendation of the Keeper of the Seals; and the place you wish to
+hold is in the gift of the Prefet of Police."
+
+"Monsieur Garnery," the office-boy announced.
+
+At a nod from Monsieur de Granville the Delegate commissioner came in,
+glanced at Jacques Collin as one who knows, and gulped down his
+astonishment on hearing the word "Go!" spoken to Jacques Collin by
+Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"Allow me," said Jacques Collin, "to remain here till Monsieur Garnery
+has returned with the documents in which all my strength lies, that I
+may take away with me some expression of your satisfaction."
+
+This absolute humility and sincerity touched the public prosecutor.
+
+"Go," said he; "I can depend on you."
+
+Jacques Collin bowed humbly, with the submissiveness of an inferior to
+his master. Ten minutes later, Monsieur de Granville was in possession
+of the letters in three sealed packets that had not been opened! But
+the importance of this point, and Jacques Collin's avowal, had made
+him forget the convict's promise to cure Madame de Serizy.
+
+
+
+When once he was outside, Jacques Collin had an indescribable sense of
+satisfaction. He felt he was free, and born to a new phase of life. He
+walked quickly from the Palais to the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres,
+where mass was over. The coffin was being sprinkled with holy
+water, and he arrived in time thus to bid farewell, in a Christian
+fashion, to the mortal remains of the youth he had loved so well. Then
+he got into a carriage and drove after the body to the cemetery.
+
+In Paris, unless on very exceptional occasions, or when some famous
+man has died a natural death, the crowd that gathers about a funeral
+diminishes by degrees as the procession approaches Pere-Lachaise.
+People make time to show themselves in church; but every one has his
+business to attend to, and returns to it as soon as possible. Thus of
+ten mourning carriages, only four were occupied. By the time they
+reached Pere-Lachaise there were not more than a dozen followers,
+among whom was Rastignac.
+
+"That is right; it is well that you are faithful to him," said Jacques
+Collin to his old acquaintance.
+
+Rastignac started with surprise at seeing Vautrin.
+
+"Be calm," said his old fellow-boarder at Madame Vauquer's. "I am your
+slave, if only because I find you here. My help is not to be despised;
+I am, or shall be, more powerful than ever. You slipped your cable,
+and you did it very cleverly; but you may need me yet, and I will
+always be at your service.
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+"To supply the hulks with lodgers instead of lodging there," replied
+Jacques Collin.
+
+Rastignac gave a shrug of disgust.
+
+"But if you were robbed----"
+
+Rastignac hurried on to get away from Jacques Collin.
+
+"You do not know what circumstances you may find yourself in."
+
+They stood by the grave dug by the side of Esther's.
+
+"Two beings who loved each other, and who were happy!" said Jacques
+Collin. "They are united.--It is some comfort to rot together. I will
+be buried here."
+
+When Lucien's body was lowered into the grave, Jacques Collin fell in
+a dead faint. This strong man could not endure the light rattle of the
+spadefuls of earth thrown by the gravediggers on the coffin as a hint
+for their payment.
+
+Just then two men of the corps of Public Safety came up; they
+recognized Jacques Collin, lifted him up, and carried him to a hackney
+coach.
+
+"What is up now?" asked Jacques Collin when he recovered consciousness
+and had looked about him.
+
+He saw himself between two constables, one of whom was Ruffard; and he
+gave him a look which pierced the murderer's soul to the very depths
+of la Gonore's secret.
+
+"Why, the public prosecutor wants you," replied Ruffard, "and we have
+been hunting for you everywhere, and found you in the cemetery, where
+you had nearly taken a header into that boy's grave."
+
+Jacques Collin was silent for a moment.
+
+"Is it Bibi-Lupin that is after me?" he asked the other man.
+
+"No. Monsieur Garnery sent us to find you."
+
+"And he told you nothing?"
+
+The two men looked at each other, holding council in expressive
+pantomime.
+
+"Come, what did he say when he gave you your orders?"
+
+"He bid us fetch you at once," said Ruffard, "and said we should find
+you at the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres; or, if the funeral had
+left the church, at the cemetery."
+
+"The public prosecutor wants me?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"That is it," said Jacques Collin; "he wants my assistance."
+
+And he relapsed into silence, which greatly puzzled the two
+constables.
+
+At about half-past two Jacques Collin once more went up to Monsieur de
+Granville's room, and found there a fresh arrival in the person of
+Monsieur de Granville's predecessor, the Comte Octave de Bauvan, one
+of the Presidents of the Court of Appeals.
+
+"You forgot Madame de Serizy's dangerous condition, and that you had
+promised to save her."
+
+"Ask these rascals in what state they found me, monsieur," said
+Jacques Collin, signing to the two constables to come in.
+
+"Unconscious, monsieur, lying on the edge of the grave of the young
+man they were burying."
+
+"Save Madame de Serizy," said the Comte de Bauvan, "and you shall have
+what you will."
+
+"I ask for nothing," said Jacques Collin. "I surrendered at
+discretion, and Monsieur de Granville must have received----"
+
+"All the letters, yes," said the magistrate. "But you promised to save
+Madame de Serizy's reason. Can you? Was it not a vain boast?"
+
+"I hope I can," replied Jacques Collin modestly.
+
+"Well, then, come with me," said Comte Octave.
+
+"No, monsieur; I will not be seen in the same carriage by your side--I
+am still a convict. It is my wish to serve the Law; I will not begin
+by discrediting it. Go back to the Countess; I will be there soon
+after you. Tell her Lucien's best friend is coming to see her, the
+Abbe Carlos Herrera; the anticipation of my visit will make an
+impression on her and favor the cure. You will forgive me for assuming
+once more the false part of a Spanish priest; it is to do so much
+good!"
+
+"I shall find you there at about four o'clock," said Monsieur de
+Granville, "for I have to wait on the King with the Keeper of the
+Seals."
+
+Jacques Collin went off to find his aunt, who was waiting for him on
+the Quai aux Fleurs.
+
+"So you have given yourself up to the authorities?" said she.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is a risky game."
+
+"No; I owed that poor Theodore his life, and he is reprieved."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"I--I shall be what I ought to be. I shall always make our set shake
+in their shoes.--But we must get to work. Go and tell Paccard to be
+off as fast as he can go, and see that Europe does as I told her."
+
+"That is a trifle; I know how to deal with la Gonore," said the
+terrible Jacqueline. "I have not been wasting my time here among the
+gilliflowers."
+
+"Let Ginetta, the Corsican girl, be found by to-morrow," Jacques
+Collin went on, smiling at his aunt.
+
+"I shall want some clue."
+
+"You can get it through Manon la Blonde," said Jacques.
+
+"Then we meet this evening," replied the aunt, "you are in such a
+deuce of a hurry. Is there a fat job on?"
+
+"I want to begin with a stroke that will beat everything that
+Bibi-Lupin has ever done. I have spoken a few words to the brute who
+killed Lucien, and I live only for revenge! Thanks to our positions,
+he and I shall be equally strong, equally protected. It will take
+years to strike the blow, but the wretch shall have it straight in
+the heart."
+
+"He must have vowed a Roland for your Oliver," said the aunt, "for he
+has taken charge of Peyrade's daughter, the girl who was sold to
+Madame Nourrisson, you know."
+
+"Our first point must be to find him a servant."
+
+"That will be difficult; he must be tolerably wide-awake," observed
+Jacqueline.
+
+"Well, hatred keeps one alive! We must work hard."
+
+
+
+Jacques Collin took a cab and drove at once to the Quai Malaquais, to
+the little room he lodged in, quite separate from Lucien's apartment.
+The porter, greatly astonished at seeing him, wanted to tell him all
+that had happened.
+
+"I know everything," said the Abbe. "I have been involved in it, in
+spite of my saintly reputation; but, thanks to the intervention of the
+Spanish Ambassador, I have been released."
+
+He hurried up to his room, where, from under the cover of a breviary,
+he took out a letter that Lucien had written to Madame de Serizy after
+that lady had discarded him on seeing him at the opera with Esther.
+
+Lucien, in his despair, had decided on not sending this letter,
+believing himself cast off for ever; but Jacques Collin had read the
+little masterpiece; and as all that Lucien wrote was to him sacred, he
+had treasured the letter in his prayer-book for its poetical
+expression of a passion that was chiefly vanity. When Monsieur de
+Granville told him of Madame de Serizy's condition, the keen-witted
+man had very wisely concluded that this fine lady's despair and frenzy
+must be the result of the quarrel she had allowed to subsist between
+herself and Lucien. He knew women as magistrates know criminals; he
+guessed the most secret impulses of their hearts; and he at once
+understood that the Countess probably ascribed Lucien's death partly
+to her own severity, and reproached herself bitterly. Obviously a man
+on whom she had shed her love would never have thrown away his life!
+--To know that he had loved her still, in spite of her cruelty, might
+restore her reason.
+
+If Jacques Collin was a grand general of convicts, he was, it must be
+owned, a not less skilful physician of souls.
+
+This man's arrival at the mansion of the Serizys was at once a
+disgrace and a promise. Several persons, the Count, and the doctors
+were assembled in the little drawing-room adjoining the Countess'
+bedroom; but to spare him this stain on his soul's honor, the Comte de
+Bauvan dismissed everybody, and remained alone with his friend. It was
+bad enough even then for the Vice-President of the Privy Council to
+see this gloomy and sinister visitor come in.
+
+Jacques Collin had changed his dress. He was in black with trousers,
+and a plain frock-coat, and his gait, his look, and his manner were
+all that could be wished. He bowed to the two statesmen, and asked if
+he might be admitted to see the Countess.
+
+"She awaits you with impatience," said Monsieur de Bauvan.
+
+"With impatience! Then she is saved," said the dreadful magician.
+
+And, in fact, after an interview of half an hour, Jacques Collin
+opened the door and said:
+
+"Come in, Monsieur le Comte; there is nothing further to fear."
+
+The Countess had the letter clasped to her heart; she was calm, and
+seemed to have forgiven herself. The Count gave expression to his joy
+at the sight.
+
+"And these are the men who settle our fate and the fate of nations,"
+thought Jacques Collin, shrugging his shoulders behind the two men. "A
+female has but to sigh in the wrong way to turn their brain as if it
+were a glove! A wink, and they lose their head! A petticoat raised a
+little higher, dropped a little lower, and they rush round Paris in
+despair! The whims of a woman react on the whole country. Ah, how much
+stronger is a man when, like me, he keeps far away from this childish
+tyranny, from honor ruined by passion, from this frank malignity, and
+wiles worthy of savages! Woman, with her genius for ruthlessness, her
+talent for torture, is, and always will be, the marring of man. The
+public prosecutor, the minister--here they are, all hoodwinked, all
+moving the spheres for some letters written by a duchess and a chit,
+or to save the reason of a woman who is more crazy in her right mind
+than she was in her delirium."
+
+And he smiled haughtily.
+
+"Ay," said he to himself, "and they believe in me! They act on my
+information, and will leave me in power. I shall still rule the world
+which has obeyed me these five-and-twenty years."
+
+Jacques Collin had brought into play the overpowering influence he had
+exerted of yore over poor Esther; for he had, as has often been shown,
+the mode of speech, the look, the action which quell madmen, and he
+had depicted Lucien as having died with the Countess' image in his
+heart.
+
+No woman can resist the idea of having been the one beloved.
+
+"You now have no rival," had been this bitter jester's last words.
+
+He remained a whole hour alone and forgotten in that little room.
+Monsieur de Granville arrived and found him gloomy, standing up, and
+lost in a brown study, as a man may well be who makes an 18th Brumaire
+in his life.
+
+The public prosecutor went to the door of the Countess' room, and
+remained there a few minutes; then he turned to Jacques Collin and
+said:
+
+"You have not changed your mind?"
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+"Well, then, you will take Bibi-Lupin's place, and Calvi's sentence
+will be commuted."
+
+"And he is not to be sent to Rochefort?"
+
+"Not even to Toulon; you may employ him in your service. But these
+reprieves and your appointment depend on your conduct for the next six
+months as subordinate to Bibi-Lupin."
+
+
+
+Within a week Bibi-Lupin's new deputy had helped the Crottat family to
+recover four hundred thousand francs, and had brought Ruffard and
+Godet to justice.
+
+The price of the certificates sold by Esther Gobseck was found in the
+courtesan's mattress, and Monsieur de Serizy handed over to Jacques
+Collin the three hundred thousand francs left to him by Lucien de
+Rubempre.
+
+The monument erected by Lucien's orders for Esther and himself is
+considered one of the finest in Pere-Lachaise, and the earth beneath
+it belongs to Jacques Collin.
+
+After exercising his functions for about fifteen years Jacques Collin
+retired in 1845.
+
+
+
+  DECEMBER 1847.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Ajuda-Pinto, Marquis Miguel d'
+  Father Goriot
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  Beatrix
+
+Bauvan, Comte Octave de
+  Honorine
+
+Beaumesnil, Mademoiselle
+  The Middle Classes
+  A Second Home
+
+Beaupre, Fanny
+  A Start in Life
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Muse of the Department
+
+Bianchon, Horace
+  Father Goriot
+  The Atheist's Mass
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  The Government Clerks
+  Pierrette
+  A Study of Woman
+  Honorine
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  The Magic Skin
+  A Second Home
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Muse of the Department
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Country Parson
+In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
+  Another Study of Woman
+  La Grande Breteche
+
+Bibi-Lupin (chief of secret police, called himself Gondureau)
+  Father Goriot
+
+Bixiou, Jean-Jacques
+  The Purse
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Government Clerks
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Member for Arcis
+  Beatrix
+  A Man of Business
+  Gaudissart II.
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Blondet, Emile
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  The Peasantry
+
+Bouvard, Doctor
+  Ursule Mirouet
+
+Braschon
+  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Bridau, Philippe
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+
+Cachan
+  Lost Illusions
+
+Camusot de Marville
+  Cousin Pons
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+
+Camusot de Marville, Madame
+  The Vendetta
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Cerizet
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Chardon, Madame (nee Rubempre)
+  Lost Illusions
+
+Chatelet, Sixte, Baron du
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Thirteen
+
+Chaulieu, Henri, Duc de
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Modeste Mignon
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Thirteen
+
+Collin, Jacqueline
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Collin, Jacques
+  Father Goriot
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Corentin
+  The Chouans
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Crottat, Monsieur and Madame
+  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Dauriat
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Modeste Mignon
+
+Derville
+  Gobseck
+  A Start in Life
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  Father Goriot
+  Colonel Chabert
+
+Desplein
+  The Atheist's Mass
+  Cousin Pons
+  Lost Illusions
+  The Thirteen
+  The Government Clerks
+  Pierrette
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Honorine
+
+Desroches (son)
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Colonel Chabert
+  A Start in Life
+  A Woman of Thirty
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Espard, Charles-Maurice-Marie-Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis d'
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+
+Espard, Chevalier d'
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+
+Espard, Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, Marquise d'
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Beatrix
+
+Estourny, Charles d'
+  Modeste Mignon
+  A Man of Business
+
+Falleix, Jacques
+  The Government Clerks
+  The Thirteen
+
+Finot, Andoche
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Start in Life
+  Gaudissart the Great
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+
+Fouche, Joseph
+  The Chouans
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+
+Gaillard, Theodore
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Beatrix
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Gaillard, Madame Theodore
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Beatrix
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Gaudissart, Felix
+  Cousin Pons
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Honorine
+  Gaudissart the Great
+
+Givry
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Lily of the Valley
+
+Gobseck, Esther Van
+  Gobseck
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+
+Gobseck, Sarah Van
+  Gobseck
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Maranas
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Godeschal, Marie
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Start in Life
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Grandlieu, Duc Ferdinand de
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Thirteen
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Modeste Mignon
+
+Grandlieu, Duchesse Ferdinand de
+  Beatrix
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Grandlieu, Mademoiselle de
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+
+Grandlieu, Vicomtesse de
+  Colonel Chabert
+  Gobseck
+
+Grandlieu, Vicomte Juste de
+  Gobseck
+
+Grandlieu, Vicomtesse Juste de
+  Gobseck
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Granville, Vicomte de
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  A Second Home
+  Farewell (Adieu)
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Granville, Baron Eugene de
+  A Second Home
+
+Grindot
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Start in Life
+  Beatrix
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Herrera, Carlos
+  Lost Illusions
+
+Katt
+  The Middle Classes
+
+La Peyrade, Charles-Marie-Theodose de
+  The Middle Classes
+
+La Peyrade, Madame de
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Lebrun
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Lenoncourt-Givry, Duchesse de
+  The Lily of the Valley
+  Letters of Two Brides
+
+Louchard
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
+  The Chouans
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+   The Ball at Sceaux
+  The Lily of the Valley
+  Colonel Chabert
+  The Government Clerks
+
+Lousteau, Etienne
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Beatrix
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Cousin Betty
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Government Clerks
+  Ursule Mirouet
+
+Madeleine
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Marron
+  Lost Illusions
+
+Massol
+  The Magic Skin
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Maufrigneuse, Duc de
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Start in Life
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+
+Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Meynardie, Madame
+  The Thirteen
+
+Mirbel, Madame de
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+
+Montcornet, Marechal, Comte de
+  Domestic Peace
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Peasantry
+  A Man of Business
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Nathan, Raoul
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  The Muse of the Department
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  A Man of Business
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Nathan, Madame Raoul
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Navarreins, Duc de
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Colonel Chabert
+  The Muse of the Department
+  The Thirteen
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Peasantry
+  The Country Parson
+  The Magic Skin
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Nourrisson, Madame
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Nucingen, Baron Frederic de
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Father Goriot
+  Pierrette
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Man of Business
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Muse of the Department
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
+  Father Goriot
+  The Thirteen
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Melmoth Reconciled
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Another Study of Woman
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Peyrade
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+
+Poiret, the elder
+  The Government Clerks
+  Father Goriot
+  A Start in Life
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Poiret, Madame (nee Christine-Michelle Michonneau)
+  Father Goriot
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Portenduere, Vicomte Savinien de
+  The Ball at Sceaux
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Beatrix
+
+Rastignac, Eugene de
+  Father Goriot
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Ball at Sceaux
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  A Study of Woman
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Magic Skin
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Member for Arcis
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Rhetore, Duc Alphonse de
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Albert Savarus
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Rubempre, Lucien-Chardon de
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Government Clerks
+  Ursule Mirouet
+
+Schmucke, Wilhelm
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Sechard, David
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial At Paris
+
+Sechard, Madame David
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial At Paris
+
+Selerier
+  Father Goriot
+
+Serizy, Comte Hugret de
+  A Start in Life
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Honorine
+  Modeste Mignon
+
+Serizy, Comtesse de
+  A Start in Life
+  The Thirteen
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Woman of Thirty
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+
+Tours-Minieres, Bernard-Polydor Bryond, Baron des
+  The Seamy Side of History
+
+Vernou, Felicien
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Vivet, Madeleine
+  Cousin Pons
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Scenes From a Courtesan's Life, by Honore de Balzac
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+Project Gutenberg Etext Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Balzac
+#56 in our series by Honore de Balzac
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+Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Translated by James Waring
+
+March, 1999  [Etext #1660]
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Balzac
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+and John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
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+
+
+
+
+SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+
+
+
+Translated by James Waring
+
+
+
+
+PREPARER'S NOTE
+
+  Note: The story of Lucien de Rubempre begins in the Lost Illusions
+  trilogy which consists of Two Poets, A Distinguished Provincial at
+  Paris, and Eve and David.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+To His Highness
+Prince Alfonso Serafino di Porcia.
+
+  Allow me to place your name at the beginning of an essentially
+  Parisian work, thought out in your house during these latter days.
+  Is it not natural that I should offer you the flowers of rhetoric
+  that blossomed in your garden, watered with the regrets I suffered
+  from home-sickness, which you soothed, as I wandered under the
+  boschetti whose elms reminded me of the Champs-Elysees? Thus,
+  perchance, may I expiate the crime of having dreamed of Paris
+  under the shadow of the Duomo, of having longed for our muddy
+  streets on the clean and elegant flagstones of Porta-Renza. When I
+  have some book to publish which may be dedicated to a Milanese
+  lady, I shall have the happiness of finding names already dear to
+  your old Italian romancers among those of women whom we love, and
+  to whose memory I would beg you to recall your sincerely
+  affectionate
+
+
+DE BALZAC.
+July 1838.
+
+
+
+
+SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE
+
+
+
+ESTHER HAPPY;
+OR, HOW A COURTESAN CAN LOVE
+
+In 1824, at the last opera ball of the season, several masks were
+struck by the beauty of a youth who was wandering about the passages
+and greenroom with the air of a man in search of a woman kept at home
+by unexpected circumstances. The secret of this behavior, now dilatory
+and again hurried, is known only to old women and to certain
+experienced loungers. In this immense assembly the crowd does not
+trouble itself much to watch the crowd; each one's interest is
+impassioned, and even idlers are preoccupied.
+
+The young dandy was so much absorbed in his anxious quest that he did
+not observe his own success; he did not hear, he did not see the
+ironical exclamations of admiration, the genuine appreciation, the
+biting gibes, the soft invitations of some of the masks. Though he was
+so handsome as to rank among those exceptional persons who come to an
+opera ball in search of an adventure, and who expect it as confidently
+as men looked for a lucky coup at roulette in Frascati's day, he
+seemed quite philosophically sure of his evening; he must be the hero
+of one of those mysteries with three actors which constitute an opera
+ball, and are known only to those who play a part in them; for, to
+young wives who come merely to say, "I have seen it," to country
+people, to inexperienced youths, and to foreigners, the opera house
+must on those nights be the palace of fatigue and dulness. To these,
+that black swarm, slow and serried--coming, going, winding, turning,
+returning, mounting, descending, comparable only to ants on a pile of
+wood--is no more intelligible than the Bourse to a Breton peasant who
+has never heard of the Grand livre.
+
+With a few rare exceptions, men wear no masks in Paris; a man in a
+domino is thought ridiculous. In this the spirit of the nation betrays
+itself. Men who want to hide their good fortune can enjoy the opera
+ball without going there; and masks who are absolutely compelled to go
+in come out again at once. One of the most amusing scenes is the crush
+at the doors produced as soon as the dancing begins, by the rush of
+persons getting away and struggling with those who are pushing in. So
+the men who wear masks are either jealous husbands who come to watch
+their wives, or husbands on the loose who do not wish to be watched by
+them--two situations equally ridiculous.
+
+Now, our young man was followed, though he knew it not, by a man in a
+mask, dogging his steps, short and stout, with a rolling gait, like a
+barrel. To every one familiar with the opera this disguise betrayed a
+stock-broker, a banker, a lawyer, some citizen soul suspicious of
+infidelity. For in fact, in really high society, no one courts such
+humiliating proofs. Several masks had laughed as they pointed this
+preposterous figure out to each other; some had spoken to him, a few
+young men had made game of him, but his stolid manner showed entire
+contempt for these aimless shafts; he went on whither the young man
+led him, as a hunted wild boar goes on and pays no heed to the bullets
+whistling about his ears, or the dogs barking at his heels.
+
+Though at first sight pleasure and anxiety wear the same livery--the
+noble black robe of Venice--and though all is confusion at an opera
+ball, the various circles composing Parisian society meet there,
+recognize, and watch each other. There are certain ideas so clear to
+the initiated that this scrawled medley of interests is as legible to
+them as any amusing novel. So, to these old hands, this man could not
+be here by appointment; he would infallibly have worn some token, red,
+white, or green, such as notifies a happy meeting previously agreed
+on. Was it a case of revenge?
+
+Seeing the domino following so closely in the wake of a man apparently
+happy in an assignation, some of the gazers looked again at the
+handsome face, on which anticipation had set its divine halo. The
+youth was interesting; the longer he wandered, the more curiosity he
+excited. Everything about him proclaimed the habits of refined life.
+In obedience to a fatal law of the time we live in, there is not much
+difference, physical or moral, between the most elegant and best bred
+son of a duke and peer and this attractive youth, whom poverty had not
+long since held in its iron grip in the heart of Paris. Beauty and
+youth might cover him in deep gulfs, as in many a young man who longs
+to play a part in Paris without having the capital to support his
+pretensions, and who, day after day, risks all to win all, by
+sacrificing to the god who has most votaries in this royal city,
+namely, Chance. At the same time, his dress and manners were above
+reproach; he trod the classic floor of the opera house as one
+accustomed there. Who can have failed to observe that there, as in
+every zone in Paris, there is a manner of being which shows who you
+are, what you are doing, whence you come, and what you want?
+
+"What a handsome young fellow; and here we may turn round to look at
+him," said a mask, in whom accustomed eyes recognized a lady of
+position.
+
+"Do you not remember him?" replied the man on whose arm she was
+leaning. "Madame du Chatelet introduced him to you----"
+
+"What, is that the apothecary's son she fancied herself in love with,
+who became a journalist, Mademoiselle Coralie's lover?"
+
+"I fancied he had fallen too low ever to pull himself up again, and I
+cannot understand how he can show himself again in the world of
+Paris," said the Comte Sixte du Chatelet.
+
+"He has the air of a prince," the mask went on, "and it is not the
+actress he lived with who could give it to him. My cousin, who
+understood him, could not lick him into shape. I should like to know
+the mistress of this Sargine; tell me something about him that will
+enable me to mystify him."
+
+This couple, whispering as they watched the young man, became the
+object of study to the square-shouldered domino.
+
+"Dear Monsieur Chardon," said the Prefet of the Charente, taking the
+dandy's hand, "allow me to introduce you to some one who wishes to
+renew acquaintance with you----"
+
+"Dear Comte Chatelet," replied the young man, "that lady taught me how
+ridiculous was the name by which you address me. A patent from the
+king has restored to me that of my mother's family--the Rubempres.
+Although the fact has been announced in the papers, it relates to so
+unimportant a person that I need not blush to recall it to my friends,
+my enemies, and those who are neither---- You may class yourself where
+you will, but I am sure you will not disapprove of a step to which I
+was advised by your wife when she was still only Madame de Bargeton."
+
+This neat retort, which made the Marquise smile, gave the Prefet of la
+Charente a nervous chill. "You may tell her," Lucien went on, "that I
+now bear gules, a bull raging argent on a meadow vert."
+
+"Raging argent," echoed Chatelet.
+
+"Madame la Marquise will explain to you, if you do not know, why that
+old coat is a little better than the chamberlain's key and Imperial
+gold bees which you bear on yours, to the great despair of Madame
+Chatelet, nee Negrepelisse d'Espard," said Lucien quickly.
+
+"Since you recognize me, I cannot puzzle you; and I could never tell
+you how much you puzzle me," said the Marquise d'Espard, amazed at the
+coolness and impertinence to which the man had risen whom she had
+formerly despised.
+
+"Then allow me, madame, to preserve my only chance of occupying your
+thoughts by remaining in that mysterious twilight," said he, with the
+smile of a man who does not wish to risk assured happiness.
+
+"I congratulate you on your changed fortunes," said the Comte du
+Chatelet to Lucien.
+
+"I take it as you offer it," replied Lucien, bowing with much grace to
+the Marquise.
+
+"What a coxcomb!" said the Count in an undertone to Madame d'Espard.
+"He has succeeded in winning an ancestry."
+
+"With these young men such coxcombry, when it is addressed to us,
+almost always implies some success in high places," said the lady;
+"for with you older men it means ill-fortune. And I should very much
+like to know which of my grand lady friends has taken this fine bird
+under her patronage; then I might find the means of amusing myself
+this evening. My ticket, anonymously sent, is no doubt a bit of
+mischief planned by a rival and having something to do with this young
+man. His impertinence is to order; keep an eye on him. I will take the
+Duc de Navarrein's arm. You will be able to find me again."
+
+Just as Madame d'Espard was about to address her cousin, the
+mysterious mask came between her and the Duke to whisper in her ear:
+
+"Lucien loves you; he wrote the note. Your Prefet is his greatest foe;
+how can he speak in his presence?"
+
+The stranger moved off, leaving Madame d'Espard a prey to a double
+surprise. The Marquise knew no one in the world who was capable of
+playing the part assumed by this mask; she suspected a snare, and went
+to sit down out of sight. The Comte Sixte du Chatelet--whom Lucien had
+abridged of his ambitious du with an emphasis that betrayed long
+meditated revenge--followed the handsome dandy, and presently met a
+young man to whom he thought he could speak without reserve.
+
+"Well, Rastignac, have you seen Lucien? He has come out in a new
+skin."
+
+"If I were half as good looking as he is, I should be twice as rich,"
+replied the fine gentleman, in a light but meaning tone, expressive of
+keen raillery.
+
+"No!" said the fat mask in his ear, repaying a thousand ironies in one
+by the accent he lent the monosyllable.
+
+Rastignac, who was not the man to swallow an affront, stood as if
+struck by lightning, and allowed himself to be led into a recess by a
+grasp of iron which he could not shake off.
+
+"You young cockerel, hatched in Mother Vauquer's coop--you, whose
+heart failed you to clutch old Taillefer's millions when the hardest
+part of the business was done--let me tell you, for your personal
+safety, that if you do not treat Lucien like the brother you love, you
+are in our power, while we are not in yours. Silence and submission!
+or I shall join your game and upset the skittles. Lucien de Rubempre
+is under the protection of the strongest power of the day--the Church.
+Choose between life and death--Answer."
+
+Rastignac felt giddy, like a man who has slept in a forest and wakes
+to see by his side a famishing lioness. He was frightened, and there
+was no one to see him; the boldest men yield to fear under such
+circumstances.
+
+"No one but HE can know--or would dare----" he murmured to himself.
+
+The mask clutched his hand tighter to prevent his finishing his
+sentence.
+
+"Act as if I were HE," he said.
+
+Rastignac then acted like a millionaire on the highroad with a
+brigand's pistol at his head; he surrendered.
+
+"My dear Count," said he to du Chatelet, to whom he presently
+returned, "if you care for your position in life, treat Lucien de
+Rubempre as a man whom you will one day see holding a place far above
+where you stand."
+
+The mask made a imperceptible gesture of approbation, and went off in
+search of Lucien.
+
+"My dear fellow, you have changed your opinion of him very suddenly,"
+replied the Prefet with justifiable surprise.
+
+"As suddenly as men change who belong to the centre and vote with the
+right," replied Rastignac to the Prefet-Depute, whose vote had for a
+few days failed to support the Ministry.
+
+"Are there such things as opinions nowadays? There are only
+interests," observed des Lupeaulx, who had heard them. "What is the
+case in point?"
+
+"The case of the Sieur de Rubempre, whom Rastignac is setting up as a
+person of consequence," said du Chatelet to the Secretary-General.
+
+"My dear Count," replied des Lupeaulx very seriously, "Monsieur de
+Rubempre is a young man of the highest merit, and has such good
+interest at his back that I should be delighted to renew my
+acquaintance with him."
+
+"There he is, rushing into the wasps' nest of the rakes of the day,"
+said Rastignac.
+
+
+
+The three speakers looked towards a corner where a group of recognized
+wits had gathered, men of more or less celebrity, and several men of
+fashion. These gentlemen made common stock of their jests, their
+remarks, and their scandal, trying to amuse themselves till something
+should amuse them. Among this strangely mingled party were some men
+with whom Lucien had had transactions, combining ostensibly kind
+offices with covert false dealing.
+
+"Hallo! Lucien, my boy, why here we are patched up again--new stuffing
+and a new cover. Where have we come from? Have we mounted the high
+horse once more with little offerings from Florine's boudoir? Bravo,
+old chap!" and Blondet released Finot to put his arm affectionately
+around Lucien and press him to his heart.
+
+Andoche Finot was the proprietor of a review on which Lucien had
+worked for almost nothing, and to which Blondet gave the benefit of
+his collaboration, of the wisdom of his suggestions and the depth of
+his views. Finot and Blondet embodied Bertrand and Raton, with this
+difference--that la Fontaine's cat at last showed that he knew himself
+to be duped, while Blondet, though he knew that he was being fleeced,
+still did all he could for Finot. This brilliant condottiere of the
+pen was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot hid a brutal strength
+of will under a heavy exterior, under polish of wit, as a laborer rubs
+his bread with garlic. He knew how to garner what he gleaned, ideas
+and crown-pieces alike, in the fields of the dissolute life led by men
+engaged in letters or in politics.
+
+Blondet, for his sins, had placed his powers at the service of Finot's
+vices and idleness. Always at war with necessity, he was one of the
+race of poverty-stricken and superior men who can do everything for
+the fortune of others and nothing for their own, Aladdins who let
+other men borrow their lamp. These excellent advisers have a clear and
+penetrating judgment so long as it is not distracted by personal
+interest. In them it is the head and not the arm that acts. Hence the
+looseness of their morality, and hence the reproach heaped upon them
+by inferior minds. Blondet would share his purse with a comrade he had
+affronted the day before; he would dine, drink, and sleep with one
+whom he would demolish on the morrow. His amusing paradoxes excused
+everything. Accepting the whole world as a jest, he did not want to be
+taken seriously; young, beloved, almost famous and contented, he did
+not devote himself, like Finot, to acquiring the fortune an old man
+needs.
+
+The most difficult form of courage, perhaps, is that which Lucien
+needed at this moment to get rid of Blondet as he had just got rid of
+Madame d'Espard and Chatelet. In him, unfortunately, the joys of
+vanity hindered the exercise of pride--the basis, beyond doubt, of
+many great things. His vanity had triumphed in the previous encounter;
+he had shown himself as a rich man, happy and scornful, to two persons
+who had scorned him when he was poor and wretched. But how could a
+poet, like an old diplomate, run the gauntlet with two self-styled
+friends, who had welcomed him in misery, under whose roof he had slept
+in the worst of his troubles? Finot, Blondet, and he had groveled
+together; they had wallowed in such orgies as consume something more
+than money. Like soldiers who find no market for their courage, Lucien
+had just done what many men do in Paris: he had still further
+compromised his character by shaking Finot's hand, and not rejecting
+Blondet's affection.
+
+Every man who has dabbled, or still dabbles, in journalism is under
+the painful necessity of bowing to men he despises, of smiling at his
+dearest foe, of compounding the foulest meanness, of soiling his
+fingers to pay his aggressors in their own coin. He becomes used to
+seeing evil done, and passing it over; he begins by condoning it, and
+ends by committing it. In the long run the soul, constantly strained
+by shameful and perpetual compromise, sinks lower, the spring of noble
+thoughts grows rusty, the hinges of familiarity wear easy, and turn of
+their own accord. Alceste becomes Philinte, natures lose their
+firmness, talents are perverted, faith in great deeds evaporates. The
+man who yearned to be proud of his work wastes himself in rubbishy
+articles which his conscience regards, sooner or later, as so many
+evil actions. He started, like Lousteau or Vernou, to be a great
+writer; he finds himself a feeble scrivener. Hence it is impossible to
+honor too highly men whose character stands as high as their talent--
+men like d'Arthez, who know how to walk surefooted across the reefs of
+literary life.
+
+Lucien could make no reply to Blondet's flattery; his wit had an
+irresistible charm for him, and he maintained the hold of the
+corrupter over his pupil; besides, he held a position in the world
+through his connection with the Comtesse de Montcornet.
+
+"Has an uncle left you a fortune?" said Finot, laughing at him.
+
+"Like you, I have marked some fools for cutting down," replied Lucien
+in the same tone.
+
+"Then Monsieur has a review--a newspaper of his own?" Andoche Finot
+retorted, with the impertinent presumption of a chief to a
+subordinate.
+
+"I have something better," replied Lucien, whose vanity, nettled by
+the assumed superiority of his editor, restored him to the sense of
+his new position.
+
+"What is that, my dear boy?"
+
+"I have a party."
+
+"There is a Lucien party?" said Vernou, smiling
+
+"Finot, the boy has left you in the lurch; I told you he would. Lucien
+is a clever fellow, and you never were respectful to him. You used him
+as a hack. Repent, blockhead!" said Blondet.
+
+Blondet, as sharp as a needle, could detect more than one secret in
+Lucien's air and manner; while stroking him down, he contrived to
+tighten the curb. He meant to know the reasons of Lucien's return to
+Paris, his projects, and his means of living.
+
+"On your knees to a superiority you can never attain to, albeit you
+are Finot!" he went on. "Admit this gentleman forthwith to be one of
+the great men to whom the future belongs; he is one of us! So witty
+and so handsome, can he fail to succeed by your quibuscumque viis?
+Here he stands, in his good Milan armor, his strong sword half
+unsheathed, and his pennon flying!--Bless me, Lucien, where did you
+steal that smart waistcoat? Love alone can find such stuff as that.
+Have you an address? At this moment I am anxious to know where my
+friends are domiciled; I don't know where to sleep. Finot has turned
+me out of doors for the night, under the vulgar pretext of 'a lady in
+the case.' "
+
+"My boy," said Lucien, "I put into practice a motto by which you may
+secure a quiet life: Fuge, late, tace. I am off."
+
+"But I am not off till you pay me a sacred debt--that little supper,
+you know, heh?" said Blondet, who was rather too much given to good
+cheer, and got himself treated when he was out of funds.
+
+"What supper?" asked Lucien with a little stamp of impatience.
+
+"You don't remember? In that I recognize my prosperous friend; he has
+lost his memory."
+
+"He knows what he owes us; I will go bail for his good heart," said
+Finot, taking up Blondet's joke.
+
+"Rastignac," said Blondet, taking the young dandy by the arm as he
+came up the room to the column where the so-called friends were
+standing. "There is a supper in the wind; you will join us--unless,"
+he added gravely, turning to Lucien, "Monsieur persists in ignoring a
+debt of honor. He can."
+
+"Monsieur de Rubempre is incapable of such a thing; I will answer for
+him," said Rastignac, who never dreamed of a practical joke.
+
+"And there is Bixiou, he will come too," cried Blondet; "there is no
+fun without him. Without him champagne cloys my tongue, and I find
+everything insipid, even the pepper of satire."
+
+"My friends," said Bixiou, "I see you have gathered round the wonder
+of the day. Our dear Lucien has revived the Metamorphoses of Ovid.
+Just as the gods used to turn into strange vegetables and other things
+to seduce the ladies, he has turned the Chardon (the Thistle) into a
+gentleman to bewitch--whom? Charles X.!--My dear boy," he went on,
+holding Lucien by his coat button, "a journalist who apes the fine
+gentleman deserves rough music. In their place," said the merciless
+jester, as he pointed to Finot and Vernou, "I should take you up in my
+society paper; you would bring in a hundred francs for ten columns of
+fun."
+
+"Bixiou," said Blondet, "an Amphitryon is sacred for twenty-four hours
+before a feast and twelve hours after. Our illustrious friend is
+giving us a supper."
+
+"What then!" cried Bixiou; "what is more imperative than the duty of
+saving a great name from oblivion, of endowing the indigent
+aristocracy with a man of talent? Lucien, you enjoy the esteem of the
+press of which you were a distinguished ornament, and we will give you
+our support.--Finot, a paragraph in the 'latest items'!--Blondet, a
+little butter on the fourth page of your paper!--We must advertise the
+appearance of one of the finest books of the age, l'Archer de Charles
+IX.! We will appeal to Dauriat to bring out as soon as possible les
+Marguerites, those divine sonnets by the French Petrarch! We must
+carry our friend through on the shield of stamped paper by which
+reputations are made and unmade."
+
+"If you want a supper," said Lucien to Blondet, hoping to rid himself
+of this mob, which threatened to increase, "it seems to me that you
+need not work up hyperbole and parable to attack an old friend as if
+he were a booby. To-morrow night at Lointier's----" he cried, seeing a
+woman come by, whom he rushed to meet.
+
+"Oh! oh! oh!" said Bixiou on three notes, with a mocking glance, and
+seeming to recognize the mask to whom Lucien addressed himself. "This
+needs confirmation."
+
+He followed the handsome pair, got past them, examined them keenly,
+and came back, to the great satisfaction of all the envious crowd, who
+were eager to learn the source of Lucien's change of fortune.
+
+"Friends," said Bixiou, "you have long known the goddess of the Sire
+de Rubempre's fortune: She is des Lupeaulx's former 'rat.' "
+
+A form of dissipation, now forgotten, but still customary at the
+beginning of this century, was the keeping of "rats." The "rat"--a
+slang word that has become old-fashioned--was a girl of ten or twelve
+in the chorus of some theatre, more particularly at the opera, who was
+trained by young roues to vice and infamy. A "rat" was a sort of demon
+page, a tomboy who was forgiven a trick if it were but funny. The
+"rat" might take what she pleased; she was to be watched like a
+dangerous animal, and she brought an element of liveliness into life,
+like Scapin, Sganarelle, and Frontin in old-fashioned comedy. But a
+"rat" was too expensive; it made no return in honor, profit, or
+pleasure; the fashion of rats so completely went out, that in these
+days few people knew anything of this detail of fashionable life
+before the Restoration till certain writers took up the "rat" as a new
+subject.
+
+"What! after having seen Coralie killed under him, Lucien means to rob
+us of La Torpille?" (the torpedo fish) said Blondet.
+
+As he heard the name the brawny mask gave a significant start, which,
+though repressed, was understood by Rastignac.
+
+"It is out of the question," replied Finot; "La Torpille has not a sou
+to give away; Nathan tells me she borrowed a thousand francs of
+Florine."
+
+"Come, gentlemen, gentlemen!" said Rastignac, anxious to defend Lucien
+against so odious an imputation.
+
+"Well," cried Vernou, "is Coralie's kept man likely to be so very
+particular?"
+
+"Oh!" replied Bixiou, "those thousand francs prove to me that our
+friend Lucien lives with La Torpille----"
+
+"What an irreparable loss to literature, science, art, and politics!"
+exclaimed Blondet. "La Torpille is the only common prostitute in whom
+I ever found the stuff for a superior courtesan; she has not been
+spoiled by education--she can neither read nor write, she would have
+understood us. We might have given to our era one of those magnificent
+Aspasias without which there can be no golden age. See how admirably
+Madame du Barry was suited to the eighteenth century, Ninon de
+l'Enclos to the seventeenth, Marion Delorme to the sixteenth, Imperia
+to the fifteenth, Flora to Republican Rome, which she made her heir,
+and which paid off the public debt with her fortune! What would Horace
+be without Lydia, Tibullus without Delia, Catullus without Lesbia,
+Propertius without Cynthia, Demetrius without Lamia, who is his glory
+at this day?"
+
+"Blondet talking of Demetrius in the opera house seems to me rather
+too strong of the Debats," said Bixiou in his neighbor's ears.
+
+"And where would the empire of the Caesars have been but for these
+queens?" Blondet went on; "Lais and Rhodope are Greece and Egypt. They
+all indeed are the poetry of the ages in which they lived. This
+poetry, which Napoleon lacked--for the Widow of his Great Army is a
+barrack jest, was not wanting to the Revolution; it had Madame
+Tallien! In these days there is certainly a throne to let in France
+which is for her who can fill it. We among us could make a queen. I
+should have given La Torpille an aunt, for her mother is too decidedly
+dead on the field of dishonor; du Tillet would have given her a
+mansion, Lousteau a carriage, Rastignac her footmen, des Lupeaulx a
+cook, Finot her hats"--Finot could not suppress a shrug at standing
+the point-blank fire of this epigram--"Vernou would have composed her
+advertisements, and Bixiou her repartees! The aristocracy would have
+come to enjoy themselves with our Ninon, where we would have got
+artists together, under pain of death by newspaper articles. Ninon the
+second would have been magnificently impertinent, overwhelming in
+luxury. She would have set up opinions. Some prohibited dramatic
+masterpiece should have been read in her drawing-room; it should have
+been written on purpose if necessary. She would not have been liberal;
+a courtesan is essentially monarchical. Oh, what a loss! She ought to
+have embraced her whole century, and she makes love with a little
+young man! Lucien will make a sort of hunting-dog of her."
+
+"None of the female powers of whom you speak ever trudged the
+streets," said Finot, "and that pretty little 'rat' has rolled in the
+mire."
+
+"Like a lily-seed in the soil," replied Vernou, "and she has improved
+in it and flowered. Hence her superiority. Must we not have known
+everything to be able to create the laughter and joy which are part of
+everything?"
+
+"He is right," said Lousteau, who had hitherto listened without
+speaking; "La Torpille can laugh and make others laugh. That gift of
+all great writers and great actors is proper to those who have
+investigated every social deep. At eighteen that girl had already
+known the greatest wealth, the most squalid misery--men of every
+degree. She bears about her a sort of magic wand by which she lets
+loose the brutal appetites so vehemently suppressed in men who still
+have a heart while occupied with politics or science, literature or
+art. There is not in Paris another woman who can say to the beast as
+she does: 'Come out!' And the beast leaves his lair and wallows in
+excesses. She feeds you up to the chin, she helps you to drink and
+smoke. In short, this woman is the salt of which Rabelais writes,
+which, thrown on matter, animates it and elevates it to the marvelous
+realms of art; her robe displays unimagined splendor, her fingers drop
+gems as her lips shed smiles; she gives the spirit of the occasion to
+every little thing; her chatter twinkles with bright sayings, she has
+the secret of the quaintest onomatopoeia, full of color, and giving
+color; she----"
+
+"You are wasting five francs' worth of copy," said Bixiou,
+interrupting Lousteau. "La Torpille is something far better than all
+that; you have all been in love with her more or less, not one of you
+can say that she ever was his mistress. She can always command you;
+you will never command her. You may force your way in and ask her to
+do you a service----"
+
+"Oh, she is more generous than a brigand chief who knows his business,
+and more devoted than the best of school-fellows," said Blondet. "You
+may trust her with your purse or your secrets. But what made me choose
+her as queen is her Bourbon-like indifference for a fallen favorite."
+
+"She, like her mother, is much too dear," said des Lupeaulx. "The
+handsome Dutch woman would have swallowed up the income of the
+Archbishop of Toledo; she ate two notaries out of house and home----"
+
+"And kept Maxime de Trailles when he was a court page," said Bixiou.
+
+"La Torpille is too dear, as Raphael was, or Careme, or Taglioni, or
+Lawrence, or Boule, or any artist of genius is too dear," said
+Blondet.
+
+"Esther never looked so thoroughly a lady," said Rastignac, pointing
+to the masked figure to whom Lucien had given his arm. "I will bet on
+its being Madame de Serizy."
+
+"Not a doubt of it," cried du Chatelet, "and Monsieur du Rubempre's
+fortune is accounted for."
+
+"Ah, the Church knows how to choose its Levites; what a sweet
+ambassador's secretary he will make!" remarked des Lupeaulx.
+
+"All the more so," Rastignac went on, "because Lucien is a really
+clever fellow. These gentlemen have had proof of it more than once,"
+and he turned to Blondet, Finot, and Lousteau.
+
+"Yes, the boy is cut out of the right stuff to get on," said Lousteau,
+who was dying of jealousy. "And particularly because he has what we
+call independent ideas . . ."
+
+"It is you who trained him," said Vernou.
+
+"Well," replied Bixiou, looking at des Lupeaulx, "I trust to the
+memory of Monsieur the Secretary-General and Master of Appeals--that
+mask is La Torpille, and I will stand a supper on it."
+
+"I will hold the stakes," said du Chatelet, curious to know the truth.
+
+"Come, des Lupeaulx," said Finot, "try to identify your rat's ears."
+
+"There is no need for committing the crime of treason against a mask,"
+replied Bixiou. "La Torpille and Lucien must pass us as they go up the
+room again, and I pledge myself to prove that it is she."
+
+"So our friend Lucien has come above water once more," said Nathan,
+joining the group. "I thought he had gone back to Angoumois for the
+rest of his days. Has he discovered some secret to ruin the English?"
+
+"He has done what you will not do in a hurry," retorted Rastignac; "he
+has paid up."
+
+The burly mask nodded in confirmation.
+
+"A man who has sown his wild oats at his age puts himself out of
+court. He has no pluck; he puts money in the funds," replied Nathan.
+
+"Oh, that youngster will always be a fine gentleman, and will always
+have such lofty notions as will place him far above many men who think
+themselves his betters," replied Rastignac.
+
+At this moment journalists, dandies, and idlers were all examining the
+charming subject of their bet as horse-dealers examine a horse for
+sale. These connoisseurs, grown old in familiarity with every form of
+Parisian depravity, all men of superior talent each his own way,
+equally corrupt, equally corrupting, all given over to unbridled
+ambition, accustomed to assume and to guess everything, had their eyes
+centered on a masked woman, a woman whom no one else could identify.
+They, and certain habitual frequenters of the opera balls, could alone
+recognize under the long shroud of the black domino, the hood and
+falling ruff which make the wearer unrecognizable, the rounded form,
+the individuality of figure and gait, the sway of the waist, the
+carriage of the head--the most intangible trifles to ordinary eyes,
+but to them the easiest to discern.
+
+In spite of this shapeless wrapper they could watch the most appealing
+of dramas, that of a woman inspired by a genuine passion. Were she La
+Torpille, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, or Madame de Serizy, on the
+lowest or highest rung of the social ladder, this woman was an
+exquisite creature, a flash from happy dreams. These old young men,
+like these young old men, felt so keen an emotion, that they envied
+Lucien the splendid privilege of working such a metamorphosis of a
+woman into a goddess. The mask was there as though she had been alone
+with Lucien; for that woman the thousand other persons did not exist,
+nor the evil and dust-laden atmosphere; no, she moved under the
+celestial vault of love, as Raphael's Madonnas under their slender
+oval glory. She did not feel herself elbowed; the fire of her glance
+shot from the holes in her mask and sank into Lucien's eyes; the
+thrill of her frame seemed to answer to every movement of her
+companion. Whence comes this flame that radiates from a woman in love
+and distinguishes her above all others? Whence that sylph-like
+lightness which seems to negative the laws of gravitation? Is the soul
+become ambient? Has happiness a physical effluence?
+
+The ingenuousness of a girl, the graces of a child were discernible
+under the domino. Though they walked apart, these two beings suggested
+the figures of Flora and Zephyr as we see them grouped by the
+cleverest sculptors; but they were beyond sculpture, the greatest of
+the arts; Lucien and his pretty domino were more like the angels
+busied with flowers or birds, which Gian Bellini has placed beneath
+the effigies of the Virgin Mother. Lucien and this girl belonged to
+the realm of fancy, which is as far above art as cause is above
+effect.
+
+When the domino, forgetful of everything, was within a yard of the
+group, Bixiou exclaimed:
+
+"Esther!"
+
+The unhappy girl turned her head quickly at hearing herself called,
+recognized the mischievous speaker, and bowed her head like a dying
+creature that has drawn its last breath.
+
+A sharp laugh followed, and the group of men melted among the
+crowd like a knot of frightened field-rats whisking into their
+holes by the roadside. Rastignac alone went no further than was
+necessary, just to avoid making any show of shunning Lucien's
+flashing eye. He could thus note two phases of distress equally
+deep though unconfessed; first, the hapless Torpille, stricken as
+by a lightning stroke, and then the inscrutable mask, the only
+one of the group who had remained. Esther murmured a word in
+Lucien's ear just as her knees gave way, and Lucien, supporting
+her, led her away.
+
+Rastignac watched the pretty pair, lost in meditation.
+
+"How did she get her name of La Torpille?" asked a gloomy voice that
+struck to his vitals, for it was no longer disguised.
+
+"HE again--he has made his escape!" muttered Rastignac to himself.
+
+"Be silent or I murder you," replied the mask, changing his voice. "I
+am satisfied with you, you have kept your word, and there is more than
+one arm ready to serve you. Henceforth be as silent as the grave; but,
+before that, answer my question."
+
+"Well, the girl is such a witch that she could have magnetized the
+Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man more difficult to
+influence--you yourself," replied Rastignac, and he turned to go.
+
+"One moment," said the mask; "I will prove to you that you have never
+seen me anywhere."
+
+The speaker took his mask off; for a moment Rastignac hesitated,
+recognizing nothing of the hideous being he had known formerly at
+Madame Vauquer's.
+
+"The devil has enabled you to change in every particular, excepting
+your eyes, which it is impossible to forget," said he.
+
+The iron hand gripped his arm to enjoin eternal secrecy.
+
+At three in the morning des Lupeaulx and Finot found the elegant
+Rastignac on the same spot, leaning against the column where the
+terrible mask had left him. Rastignac had confessed to himself; he had
+been at once priest and pentient, culprit and judge. He allowed
+himself to be led away to breakfast, and reached home perfectly tipsy,
+but taciturn.
+
+
+
+The Rue de Langlade and the adjacent streets are a blot on the Palais
+Royal and the Rue de Rivoli. This portion of one of the handsomest
+quarters of Paris will long retain the stain of foulness left by the
+hillocks formed of the middens of old Paris, on which mills formerly
+stood. These narrow streets, dark and muddy, where such industries are
+carried on as care little for appearances wear at night an aspect of
+mystery full of contrasts. On coming from the well-lighted regions of
+the Rue Saint-Honore, the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, and the Rue de
+Richelieu, where the crowd is constantly pushing, where glitter the
+masterpieces of industry, fashion, and art, every man to whom Paris by
+night is unknown would feel a sense of dread and melancholy, on
+finding himself in the labyrinth of little streets which lie round
+that blaze of light reflected even from the sky. Dense blackness is
+here, instead of floods of gaslight; a dim oil-lamp here and there
+sheds its doubtful and smoky gleam, and many blind alleys are not
+lighted at all. Foot passengers are few, and walk fast. The shops are
+shut, the few that are open are of a squalid kind; a dirty, unlighted
+wineshop, or a seller of underclothing and eau-de-Cologne. An
+unwholesome chill lays a clammy cloak over your shoulders. Few
+carriages drive past. There are sinister places here, especially the
+Rue de Langlade, the entrance to the Passage Saint-Guillaume, and the
+turnings of some streets.
+
+The municipal council has not yet been to purge this vast lazar-place,
+for prostitution long since made it its headquarters. It is, perhaps,
+a good thing for Paris that these alleys should be allowed to preserve
+their filthy aspect. Passing through them by day, it is impossible to
+imagine what they become by night; they are pervaded by strange
+creatures of no known world; white, half-naked forms cling to the
+walls--the darkness is alive. Between the passenger and the wall a
+dress steals by--a dress that moves and speaks. Half-open doors
+suddenly shout with laughter. Words fall on the ear such as Rabelais
+speaks of as frozen and melting. Snatches of songs come up from the
+pavement. The noise is not vague; it means something. When it is
+hoarse it is a voice; but if it suggests a song, there is nothing
+human about it, it is more like a croak. Often you hear a sharp
+whistle, and then the tap of boot-heels has a peculiarly aggressive
+and mocking ring. This medley of things makes you giddy. Atmospheric
+conditions are reversed there--it is warm in winter and cool in
+summer.
+
+Still, whatever the weather, this strange world always wears the same
+aspect; it is the fantastic world of Hoffmann of Berlin. The most
+mathematical of clerks never thinks of it as real, after returning
+through the straits that lead into decent streets, where there are
+passengers, shops, and taverns. Modern administration, or modern
+policy, more scornful or more shamefaced than the queens and kings of
+past ages, no longer dare look boldly in the face of this plague of
+our capitals. Measures, of course, must change with the times, and
+such as bear on individuals and on their liberty are a ticklish
+matter; still, we ought, perhaps, to show some breadth and boldness as
+to merely material measures--air, light, and construction. The
+moralist, the artist, and the sage administrator alike must regret the
+old wooden galleries of the Palais Royal, where the lambs were to be
+seen who will always be found where there are loungers; and is it not
+best that the loungers should go where they are to be found? What is
+the consequence? The gayest parts of the Boulevards, that
+delightfulest of promenades, are impossible in the evening for a
+family party. The police has failed to take advantage of the outlet
+afforded by some small streets to purge the main street.
+
+The girl whom we have seen crushed by a word at the opera ball had
+been for the last month or two living in the Rue de Langlade, in a
+very poor-looking house. This structure, stuck on to the wall of an
+enormously large one, badly stuccoed, of no depth, and immensely high,
+has all its windows on the street, and bears some resemblance to a
+parrot's perch. On each floor are two rooms, let as separate flats.
+There is a narrow staircase clinging to the wall, queerly lighted by
+windows which mark its ascent on the outer wall, each landing being
+indicated by a stink, one of the most odious peculiarities of Paris.
+The shop and entresol at that time were tenanted by a tinman; the
+landlord occupied the first floor; the four upper stories were rented
+by very decent working girls, who were treated by the portress and the
+proprietor with some consideration and an obligingness called forth by
+the difficulty of letting a house so oddly constructed and situated.
+The occupants of the quarter are accounted for by the existence there
+of many houses of the same character, for which trade has no use, and
+which can only be rented by the poorer kinds of industry, of a
+precarious or ignominious nature.
+
+At three in the afternoon the portress, who had seen Mademoiselle
+Esther brought home half dead by a young man at two in the morning,
+had just held council with the young woman of the floor above, who,
+before setting out in a cab to join some party of pleasure, had
+expressed her uneasiness about Esther; she had not heard her move.
+Esther was, no doubt, still asleep, but this slumber seemed
+suspicious. The portress, alone in her cell, was regretting that she
+could not go to see what was happening on the fourth floor, where
+Mademoiselle Esther lodged.
+
+Just as she had made up her mind to leave the tinman's son in charge
+of her room, a sort of den in a recess on the entresol floor, a cab
+stopped at the door. A man stepped out, wrapped from head to foot in a
+cloak evidently intended to conceal his dress or his rank in life, and
+asked for Mademoiselle Esther. The portress at one felt relieved; this
+accounted for Esther's silence and quietude. As the stranger mounted
+the stairs above the portress' room, she noticed silver buckles in his
+shoes, and fancied she caught sight of the black fringe of a priest's
+sash; she went downstairs and catechised the driver, who answered
+without speech, and again the woman understood.
+
+The priest knocked, received no answer, heard a slight gasp, and
+forced the door open with a thrust of his shoulder; charity, no doubt
+lent him strength, but in any one else it would have been ascribed to
+practice. He rushed to the inner room, and there found poor Esther in
+front of an image of the Virgin in painted plaster, kneeling, or
+rather doubled up, on the floor, her hands folded. The girl was dying.
+A brazier of burnt charcoal told the tale of that dreadful morning.
+The domino cloak and hood were lying on the ground. The bed was
+undisturbed. The unhappy creature, stricken to the heart by a mortal
+thrust, had, no doubt, made all her arrangements on her return from
+the opera. A candle-wick, collapsed in the pool of grease that filled
+the candle-sconce, showed how completely her last meditations had
+absorbed her. A handkerchief soaked with tears proved the sincerity of
+the Magdalen's despair, while her classic attitude was that of the
+irreligious courtesan. This abject repentance made the priest smile.
+
+Esther, unskilled in dying, had left the door open, not thinking that
+the air of two rooms would need a larger amount of charcoal to make it
+suffocating; she was only stunned by the fumes; the fresh air from the
+staircase gradually restored her to a consciousness of her woes.
+
+The priest remained standing, lost in gloomy meditation, without being
+touched by the girl's divine beauty, watching her first movements as
+if she had been some animal. His eyes went from the crouching figure
+to the surrounding objects with evident indifference. He looked at the
+furniture in the room; the paved floor, red, polished, and cold, was
+poorly covered with a shabby carpet worn to the string. A little
+bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was hung with
+yellow cotton printed with red stars, one armchair and two small
+chairs, also of painted wood, and covered with the same cotton print
+of which the window-curtains were also made; a gray wall-paper
+sprigged with flowers blackened and greasy with age; a fireplace full
+of kitchen utensils of the vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a
+stone shelf, on which lay some jewelry false and real, a pair of
+scissors, a dirty pincushion, and some white scented gloves; an
+exquisite hat perched on the water-jug, a Ternaux shawl stopping a
+hole in the window, a handsome gown hanging from a nail; a little hard
+sofa, with no cushions; broken clogs and dainty slippers, boots that a
+queen might have coveted; cheap china plates, cracked or chipped, with
+fragments of a past meal, and nickel forks--the plate of the Paris
+poor; a basket full of potatoes and dirty linen, with a smart gauze
+cap on the top; a rickety wardrobe, with a glass door, open and empty,
+and on the shelves sundry pawn-tickets,--this was the medley of
+things, dismal or pleasing, abject and handsome, that fell on his eye.
+
+These relics of splendor among the potsherds, these household
+belongings--so appropriate to the bohemian existence of the girl who
+knelt stricken in her unbuttoned garments, like a horse dying in
+harness under the broken shafts entangled in the reins--did the whole
+strange scene suggest any thoughts to the priest? Did he say to
+himself that this erring creature must at least be disinterested to
+live in such poverty when her lover was young and rich? Did he ascribe
+the disorder of the room to the disorder of her life? Did he feel pity
+or terror? Was his charity moved?
+
+To see him, his arms folded, his brow dark, his lips set, his eye
+harsh, any one must have supposed him absorbed in morose feelings of
+hatred, considerations that jostled each other, sinister schemes. He
+was certainly insensible to the soft roundness of a bosom almost
+crushed under the weight of the bowed shoulders, and to the beautiful
+modeling of the crouching Venus that was visible under the black
+petticoat, so closely was the dying girl curled up. The drooping head
+which, seen from behind, showed the white, slender, flexible neck and
+the fine shoulders of a well-developed figure, did not appeal to him.
+He did not raise Esther, he did not seem to hear the agonizing gasps
+which showed that she was returning to life; a fearful sob and a
+terrifying glance from the girl were needed before he condescended to
+lift her, and he carried her to the bed with an ease that revealed
+enormous strength.
+
+"Lucien!" she murmured.
+
+"Love is there, the woman is not far behind," said the priest with
+some bitterness.
+
+The victim of Parisian depravity then observed the dress worn by her
+deliverer, and said, with a smile like a child's when it takes
+possession of something longed for:
+
+"Then I shall not die without being reconciled to Heaven?"
+
+"You may yet expiate your sins," said the priest, moistening her
+forehead with water, and making her smell at a cruet of vinegar he
+found in a corner.
+
+"I feel that life, instead of departing, is rushing in on me," said
+she, after accepting the Father's care and expressing her gratitude by
+simple gestures. This engaging pantomime, such as the Graces might
+have used to charm, perfectly justified the nickname given to this
+strange girl.
+
+"Do you feel better?" said the priest, giving her a glass of sugar and
+water to drink.
+
+This man seemed accustomed to such queer establishments; he knew all
+about it. He was quite at home there. This privilege of being
+everywhere at home is the prerogative of kings, courtesans, and
+thieves.
+
+"When you feel quite well," this strange priest went on after a pause,
+"you must tell me the reasons which prompted you to commit this last
+crime, this attempted suicide."
+
+"My story is very simple, Father," replied she. "Three months ago I
+was living the evil life to which I was born. I was the lowest and
+vilest of creatures; now I am only the most unhappy. Excuse me from
+telling you the history of my poor mother, who was murdered----"
+
+"By a Captain, in a house of ill-fame," said the priest, interrupting
+the penitent. "I know your origin, and I know that if a being of your
+sex can ever be excused for leading a life of shame, it is you, who
+have always lacked good examples."
+
+"Alas! I was never baptized, and have no religious teaching."
+
+"All may yet be remedied then," replied the priest, "provided that
+your faith, your repentance, are sincere and without ulterior motive."
+
+"Lucien and God fill my heart," said she with ingenuous pathos.
+
+"You might have said God and Lucien," answered the priest, smiling.
+"You remind me of the purpose of my visit. Omit nothing that concerns
+that young man."
+
+"You have come from him?" she asked, with a tender look that would
+have touched any other priest! "Oh, he thought I should do it!"
+
+"No," replied the priest; "it is not your death, but your life that we
+are interested in. Come, explain your position toward each other."
+
+"In one word," said she.
+
+The poor child quaked at the priest's stern tone, but as a woman
+quakes who has long ceased to be surprised at brutality.
+
+"Lucien is Lucien," said she, "the handsomest young man, the kindest
+soul alive; if you know him, my love must seem to you quite natural. I
+met him by chance, three months ago, at the Porte-Saint-Martin
+theatre, where I went one day when I had leave, for we had a day a
+week at Madame Meynardie's, where I then was. Next day, you
+understand, I went out without leave. Love had come into my heart, and
+had so completely changed me, that on my return from the theatre I did
+not know myself: I had a horror of myself. Lucien would never have
+known. Instead of telling him what I was, I gave him my address at
+these rooms, where a friend of mine was then living, who was so kind
+as to give them up to me. I swear on my sacred word----"
+
+"You must not swear."
+
+"Is it swearing to give your sacred word?--Well, from that day I have
+worked in this room like a lost creature at shirt-making at twenty-
+eight sous apiece, so as to live by honest labor. For a month I have
+had nothing to eat but potatoes, that I might keep myself a good girl
+and worthy of Lucien, who loves me and respects me as a pattern of
+virtue. I have made my declaration before the police to recover my
+rights, and submitted to two years' surveillance. They are ready
+enough to enter your name on the lists of disgrace, but make every
+difficulty about scratching it out again. All I asked of Heaven was to
+enable me to keep my resolution.
+
+"I shall be nineteen in the month of April; at my age there is still a
+chance. It seems to me that I was never born till three months ago.--I
+prayed to God every morning that Lucien might never know what my
+former life had been. I bought that Virgin you see there, and I prayed
+to her in my own way, for I do not know any prayers; I cannot read nor
+write, and I have never been into a church; I have never seen anything
+of God excepting in processions, out of curiosity."
+
+"And what do you say to the Virgin?"
+
+"I talk to her as I talk to Lucien, with all my soul, till I make him
+cry."
+
+"Oh, so he cries?"
+
+"With joy," said she eagerly, "poor dear boy! We understand each other
+so well that we have but one soul! He is so nice, so fond, so sweet in
+heart and mind and manners! He says he is a poet; I say he is god.--
+Forgive me! You priests, you see, don't know what love is. But, in
+fact, only girls like me know enough of men to appreciate such as
+Lucien. A Lucien, you see, is as rare as a woman without sin. When you
+come across him you can love no one else; so there! But such a being
+must have his fellow; so I want to be worthy to be loved by my Lucien.
+That is where my trouble began. Last evening, at the opera, I was
+recognized by some young men who have no more feeling than a tiger has
+pity--for that matter, I could come round the tiger! The veil of
+innocence I had tried to wear was worn off; their laughter pierced my
+brain and my heart. Do not think you have saved me; I shall die of
+grief."
+
+"Your veil of innocence?" said the priest. "Then you have treated
+Lucien with the sternest severity?"
+
+"Oh, Father, how can you, who know him, ask me such a question!" she
+replied with a smile. "Who can resist a god?"
+
+"Do not be blasphemous," said the priest mildly. "No one can be like
+God. Exaggeration is out of place with true love; you had not a pure
+and genuine love for your idol. If you had undergone the conversion
+you boast of having felt, you would have acquired the virtues which
+are a part of womanhood; you would have known the charm of chastity,
+the refinements of modesty, the two virtues that are the glory of a
+maiden.--You do not love."
+
+Esther's gesture of horror was seen by the priest, but it had no
+effect on the impassibility of her confessor.
+
+"Yes; for you love him for yourself and not for himself, for the
+temporal enjoyments that delight you, and not for love itself. If he
+has thus taken possession of you, you cannot have felt that sacred
+thrill that is inspired by a being on whom God has set the seal of the
+most adorable perfections. Has it never occurred to you that you would
+degrade him by your past impurity, that you would corrupt a child by
+the overpowering seductions which earned you your nickname glorious in
+infamy? You have been illogical with yourself, and your passion of a
+day----"
+
+"Of a day?" she repeated, raising her eyes.
+
+"By what other name can you call a love that is not eternal, that does
+not unite us in the future life of the Christian, to the being we
+love?"
+
+"Ah, I will be a Catholic!" she cried in a hollow, vehement tone, that
+would have earned her the mercy of the Lord.
+
+"Can a girl who has received neither the baptism of the Church nor
+that of knowledge; who can neither read, nor write, nor pray; who
+cannot take a step without the stones in the street rising up to
+accuse her; noteworthy only for the fugitive gift of beauty which
+sickness may destroy to-morrow; can such a vile, degraded creature,
+fully aware too of her degradation--for if you had been ignorant of it
+and less devoted, you would have been more excusable--can the intended
+victim to suicide and hell hope to be the wife of Lucien de Rubempre?"
+
+Every word was a poniard thrust piercing the depths of her heart. At
+every word the louder sobs and abundant tears of the desperate girl
+showed the power with which light had flashed upon an intelligence as
+pure as that of a savage, upon a soul at length aroused, upon a nature
+over which depravity had laid a sheet of foul ice now thawed in the
+sunshine of faith.
+
+"Why did I not die!" was the only thought that found utterance in the
+midst of a torrent of ideas that racked and ravaged her brain.
+
+"My daughter," said the terrible judge, "there is a love which is
+unconfessed before men, but of which the secret is received by the
+angels with smiles of gladness."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Love without hope, when it inspires our life, when it fills us with
+the spirit of sacrifice, when it ennobles every act by the thought of
+reaching some ideal perfection. Yes, the angels approve of such love;
+it leads to the knowledge of God. To aim at perfection in order to be
+worthy of the one you love, to make for him a thousand secret
+sacrifices, adoring him from afar, giving your blood drop by drop,
+abnegating your self-love, never feeling any pride or anger as regards
+him, even concealing from him all knowledge of the dreadful jealousy
+he fires in your heart, giving him all he wishes were it to your own
+loss, loving what he loves, always turning your face to him to follow
+him without his knowing it--such love as that religion would have
+forgiven; it is no offence to laws human or divine, and would have led
+you into another road than that of your foul voluptuousness."
+
+As she heard this horrible verdict, uttered in a word--and such a
+word! and spoken in such a tone!--Esther's spirit rose up in fairly
+legitimate distrust. This word was like a thunder-clap giving warning
+of a storm about to break. She looked at the priest, and felt the grip
+on her vitals which wrings the bravest when face to face with sudden
+and imminent danger. No eye could have read what was passing in this
+man's mind; but the boldest would have found more to quail at than to
+hope for in the expression of his eyes, once bright and yellow like
+those of a tiger, but now shrouded, from austerities and privations,
+with a haze like that which overhangs the horizon in the dog-days,
+when, though the earth is hot and luminous, the mist makes it
+indistinct and dim--almost invisible.
+
+The gravity of a Spaniard, the deep furrows which the myriad scars of
+virulent smallpox made hideously like broken ruts, were ploughed into
+his face, which was sallow and tanned by the sun. The hardness of this
+countenance was all the more conspicuous, being framed in the meagre
+dry wig of a priest who takes no care of his person, a black wig
+looking rusty in the light. His athletic frame, his hands like an old
+soldier's, his broad, strong shoulders were those of the Caryatides
+which the architects of the Middle Ages introduced into some Italian
+palaces, remotely imitated in those of the front of the Porte-Saint-
+Martin theatre. The least clear-sighted observer might have seen that
+fiery passions or some unwonted accident must have thrown this man
+into the bosom of the Church; certainly none but the most tremendous
+shocks of lightning could have changed him, if indeed such a nature
+were susceptible of change.
+
+Women who have lived the life that Esther had so violently repudiated
+come to feel absolute indifference as to the critics of our day, who
+may be compared with them in some respects, and who feel at last
+perfect disregard of the formulas of art; they have read so many
+books, they see so many pass away, they are so much accustomed to
+written pages, they have gone through so many plots, they have seen so
+many dramas, they have written so many articles without saying what
+they meant, and have so often been treasonable to the cause of Art in
+favor of their personal likings and aversions, that they acquire a
+feeling of disgust of everything, and yet continue to pass judgment.
+It needs a miracle to make such a writer produce sound work, just as
+it needs another miracle to give birth to pure and noble love in the
+heart of a courtesan.
+
+The tone and manner of this priest, who seemed to have escaped from a
+picture by Zurbaran, struck this poor girl as so hostile, little as
+externals affected her, that she perceived herself to be less the
+object of his solitude than the instrument he needed for some scheme.
+Being unable to distinguish between the insinuating tongue of personal
+interest and the unction of true charity, for we must be acutely awake
+to recognize false coin when it is offered by a friend, she felt
+herself, as it were, in the talons of some fierce and monstrous bird
+of prey who, after hovering over her for long, had pounced down on
+her; and in her terror she cried in a voice of alarm:
+
+"I thought it was a priest's duty to console us, and you are killing
+me!"
+
+At this innocent outcry the priest started and paused; he meditated a
+moment before replying. During that instant the two persons so
+strangely brought together studied each other cautiously. The priest
+understood the girl, though the girl could not understand the priest.
+
+He, no doubt, put aside some plan which had threatened the unhappy
+Esther, and came back to his first ideas.
+
+"We are physicians of the soul," said he, in a mild voice, "and we
+know what remedies suit their maladies."
+
+"Much must be forgiven to the wretched," said Esther.
+
+She fancied she had been wrong; she slipped off the bed, threw herself
+at the man's feet, kissed his gown with deep humility, and looked up
+at him with eyes full of tears.
+
+"I thought I had done so much!" she said.
+
+"Listen, my child. Your terrible reputation has cast Lucien's family
+into grief. They are afraid, and not without reason, that you may lead
+him into dissipation, into endless folly----"
+
+"That is true; it was I who got him to the ball to mystify him."
+
+"You are handsome enough to make him wish to triumph in you in the
+eyes of the world, to show you with pride, and make you an object for
+display. And if he wasted money only!--but he will waste his time, his
+powers; he will lose his inclination for the fine future his friends
+can secure to him. Instead of being some day an ambassador, rich,
+admired and triumphant, he, like so many debauchees who choke their
+talents in the mud of Paris, will have been the lover of a degraded
+woman.
+
+"As for you, after rising for a time to the level of a sphere of
+elegance, you will presently sink back to your former life, for you
+have not in you the strength bestowed by a good education to enable
+you to resist vice and think of the future. You would no more be able
+to break with the women of your own class than you have broken with
+the men who shamed you at the opera this morning. Lucien's true
+friends, alarmed by his passion for you, have dogged his steps and
+know all. Filled with horror, they have sent me to you to sound your
+views and decide your fate; but though they are powerful enough to
+clear a stumbling-stone out of the young man's way, they are merciful.
+Understand this, child: a girl whom Lucien loves has claims on their
+regard, as a true Christian worships the slough on which, by chance,
+the divine light falls. I came to be the instrument of a beneficent
+purpose;--still, if I had found you utterly reprobate, armed with
+effrontery and astuteness, corrupt to the marrow, deaf to the voice of
+repentance, I should have abandoned you to their wrath.
+
+"The release, civil and political, which it is so hard to win, which
+the police is so right to withhold for a time in the interests of
+society, and which I heard you long for with all the ardor of true
+repentance--is here," said the priest, taking an official-looking
+paper out of his belt. "You were seen yesterday, this letter of
+release is dated to-day. You see how powerful the people are who take
+an interest in Lucien."
+
+At the sight of this document Esther was so ingenuously overcome by
+the convulsive agitation produced by unlooked-for joy, that a fixed
+smile parted her lips, like that of a crazy creature. The priest
+paused, looking at the girl to see whether, when once she had lost the
+horrible strength which corrupt natures find in corruption itself, and
+was thrown back on her frail and delicate primitive nature, she could
+endure so much excitement. If she had been a deceitful courtesan,
+Esther would have acted a part; but now that she was innocent and
+herself once more, she might perhaps die, as a blind man cured may
+lose his sight again if he is exposed to too bright a light. At this
+moment this man looked into the very depths of human nature, but his
+calmness was terrible in its rigidity; a cold alp, snow-bound and near
+to heaven, impenetrable and frowning, with flanks of granite, and yet
+beneficent.
+
+Such women are essentially impressionable beings, passing without
+reason from the most idiotic distrust to absolute confidence. In this
+respect they are lower than animals. Extreme in everything--in their
+joy and despair, in their religion and irreligion--they would almost
+all go mad if they were not decimated by the mortality peculiar to
+their class, and if happy chances did not lift one now and then from
+the slough in which they dwell. To understand the very depths of the
+wretchedness of this horrible existence, one must know how far in
+madness a creature can go without remaining there, by studying La
+Torpille's violent ecstasy at the priest's feet. The poor girl gazed
+at the paper of release with an expression which Dante has overlooked,
+and which surpassed the inventiveness of his Inferno. But a reaction
+came with tears. Esther rose, threw her arms round the priest's neck,
+laid her head on his breast, which she wetted with her weeping,
+kissing the coarse stuff that covered that heart of steel as if she
+fain would touch it. She seized hold of him; she covered his hands
+with kisses; she poured out in a sacred effusion of gratitude her most
+coaxing caresses, lavished fond names on him, saying again and again
+in the midst of her honeyed words, "Let me have it!" in a thousand
+different tones of voice; she wrapped him in tenderness, covered him
+with her looks with a swiftness that found him defenceless; at last
+she charmed away his wrath.
+
+The priest perceived how well the girl had deserved her nickname; he
+understood how difficult it was to resist this bewitching creature; he
+suddenly comprehended Lucien's love, and just what must have
+fascinated the poet. Such a passion hides among a thousand temptations
+a dart-like hook which is most apt to catch the lofty soul of an
+artist. These passions, inexplicable to the vulgar, are perfectly
+accounted for by the thirst for ideal beauty, which is characteristic
+of a creative mind. For are we not, in some degree, akin to the
+angels, whose task it is to bring the guilty to a better mind? are we
+not creative when we purify such a creature? How delightful it is to
+harmonize moral with physical beauty! What joy and pride if we
+succeed! How noble a task is that which has no instrument but love!
+
+Such alliances, made famous by the example of Aristotle, Socrates,
+Plato, Alcibiades, Cethegus, and Pompey, and yet so monstrous in the
+eyes of the vulgar, are based on the same feeling that prompted Louis
+XIV. to build Versailles, or that makes men rush into any ruinous
+enterprise--into converting the miasma of a marsh into a mass of
+fragrance surrounded by living waters; placing a lake at the top of a
+hill, as the Prince de Conti did at Nointel; or producing Swiss
+scenery at Cassan, like Bergeret, the farmer-general. In short, it is
+the application of art in the realm of morals.
+
+The priest, ashamed of having yielded to this weakness, hastily pushed
+Esther away, and she sat down quite abashed, for he said:
+
+"You are still the courtesan." And he calmly replaced the paper in his
+sash.
+
+Esther, like a child who has a single wish in its head, kept her eyes
+fixed on the spot where the document lay hidden.
+
+"My child," the priest went on after a pause, "your mother was a
+Jewess, and you have not been baptized; but, on the other hand, you
+have never been taken to the synagogue. You are in the limbo where
+little children are----"
+
+"Little children!" she echoed, in a tenderly pathetic tone.
+
+"As you are on the books of the police, a cipher outside the pale of
+social beings," the priest went on, unmoved. "If love, seen as it
+swept past, led you to believe three months since that you were then
+born, you must feel that since that day you have been really an
+infant. You must, therefore, be led as if you were a child; you must
+be completely changed, and I will undertake to make you
+unrecognizable. To begin with, you must forget Lucien."
+
+The words crushed the poor girl's heart; she raised her eyes to the
+priest and shook her head; she could not speak, finding the
+executioner in the deliverer again.
+
+"At any rate, you must give up seeing him," he went on. "I will take
+you to a religious house where young girls of the best families are
+educated; there you will become a Catholic, you will be trained in the
+practice of Christian exercises, you will be taught religion. You may
+come out an accomplished young lady, chaste, pure, well brought up,
+if----" The man lifted up a finger and paused.
+
+"If," he went on, "you feel brave enough to leave the 'Torpille'
+behind you here."
+
+"Ah!" cried the poor thing, to whom each word had been like a note of
+some melody to which the gates of Paradise were slowly opening. "Ah!
+if it were possible to shed all my blood here and have it renewed!"
+
+"Listen to me."
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Your future fate depends on your power of forgetting. Think of the
+extent to which you pledge yourself. A word, a gesture, which betrays
+La Torpille will kill Lucien's wife. A word murmured in a dream, an
+involuntary thought, an immodest glance, a gesture of impatience, a
+reminiscence of dissipation, an omission, a shake of the head that
+might reveal what you know, or what is known about you for your
+woes----"
+
+"Yes, yes, Father," said the girl, with the exaltation of a saint. "To
+walk in shoes of red-hot iron and smile, to live in a pair of stays
+set with nails and maintain the grace of a dancer, to eat bread salted
+with ashes, to drink wormwood,--all will be sweet and easy!"
+
+She fell again on her knees, she kissed the priest's shoes, she melted
+into tears that wetted them, she clasped his knees, and clung to them,
+murmuring foolish words as she wept for joy. Her long and beautiful
+light hair waved to the ground, a sort of carpet under the feet of the
+celestial messenger, whom she saw as gloomy and hard as ever when she
+lifted herself up and looked at him.
+
+"What have I done to offend you?" cried she, quite frightened. "I have
+heard of a woman, such as I am, who washed the feet of Jesus with
+perfumes. Alas! virtue has made me so poor that I have nothing but
+tears to offer you."
+
+"Have you not understood?" he answered, in a cruel voice. "I tell you,
+you must be able to come out of the house to which I shall take you so
+completely changed, physically and morally, that no man or woman you
+have ever known will be able to call you 'Esther' and make you look
+round. Yesterday your love could not give you strength enough so
+completely to bury the prostitute that she could never reappear; and
+again to-day she revives in adoration which is due to none but God."
+
+"Was it not He who sent you to me?" said she.
+
+"If during the course of your education you should even see Lucien,
+all would be lost," he went on; "remember that."
+
+"Who will comfort him?" said she.
+
+"What was it that you comforted him for?" asked the priest, in a tone
+in which, for the first time during this scene, there was a nervous
+quaver.
+
+"I do not know; he was often sad when he came."
+
+"Sad!" said the priest. "Did he tell you why?"
+
+"Never," answered she.
+
+"He was sad at loving such a girl as you!" exclaimed he.
+
+"Alas! and well he might be," said she, with deep humility. "I am the
+most despicable creature of my sex, and I could find favor in his eyes
+only by the greatness of my love."
+
+"That love must give you the courage to obey me blindly. If I were to
+take you straight from hence to the house where you are to be
+educated, everybody here would tell Lucien that you had gone away
+to-day, Sunday, with a priest; he might follow in your tracks. In the
+course of a week, the portress, not seeing me again, might suppose me
+to be what I am not. So, one evening--this day week--at seven o'clock,
+go out quietly and get into a cab that will be waiting for you at the
+bottom of the Rue des Frondeurs. During this week avoid Lucien, find
+excuses, have him sent from the door, and if he should come in, go up
+to some friend's room. I shall know if you have seen him, and in that
+event all will be at an end. I shall not even come back. These eight
+days you will need to make up some suitable clothing and to hide your
+look of a prostitute," said he, laying a purse on the chimney-shelf.
+"There is something in your manner, in your clothes--something
+indefinable which is well known to Parisians, and proclaims you what
+you are. Have you never met in the streets or on the Boulevards a
+modest and virtuous girl walking with her mother?"
+
+"Oh yes, to my sorrow! The sight of a mother and daughter is one of
+our most cruel punishments; it arouses the remorse that lurks in the
+innermost folds of our hearts, and that is consuming us.--I know too
+well all I lack."
+
+"Well, then, you know how you should look next Sunday," said the
+priest, rising.
+
+"Oh!" said she, "teach me one real prayer before you go, that I may
+pray to God."
+
+It was a touching thing to see the priest making this girl repeat Ave
+Maria and Paternoster in French.
+
+"That is very fine!" said Esther, when she had repeated these two
+grand and universal utterances of the Catholic faith without making a
+mistake.
+
+"What is your name?" she asked the priest when he took leave of her.
+
+"Carlos Herrera; I am a Spaniard banished from my country."
+
+Esther took his hand and kissed it. She was no longer the courtesan;
+she was an angel rising after a fall.
+
+
+
+In a religious institution, famous for the aristocratic and pious
+teaching imparted there, one Monday morning in the beginning of March
+1824 the pupils found their pretty flock increased by a newcomer,
+whose beauty triumphed without dispute not only over that of her
+companions, but over the special details of beauty which were found
+severally in perfection in each one of them. In France it is extremely
+rare, not to say impossible, to meet with the thirty points of
+perfection, described in Persian verse, and engraved, it is said, in
+the Seraglio, which are needed to make a woman absolutely beautiful.
+Though in France the whole is seldom seen, we find exquisite parts. As
+to that imposing union which sculpture tries to produce, and has
+produced in a few rare examples like the Diana and the Callipyge, it
+is the privileged possession of Greece and Asia Minor.
+
+Esther came from that cradle of the human race; her mother was a
+Jewess. The Jews, though so often deteriorated by their contact with
+other nations, have, among their many races, families in which this
+sublime type of Asiatic beauty has been preserved. When they are not
+repulsively hideous, they present the splendid characteristics of
+Armenian beauty. Esther would have carried off the prize at the
+Seraglio; she had the thirty points harmoniously combined. Far from
+having damaged the finish of her modeling and the freshness of her
+flesh, her strange life had given her the mysterious charm of
+womanhood; it is no longer the close, waxy texture of green fruit and
+not yet the warm glow of maturity; there is still the scent of the
+flower. A few days longer spent in dissolute living, and she would
+have been too fat. This abundant health, this perfection of the animal
+in a being in whom voluptuousness took the place of thought, must be a
+remarkable fact in the eyes of physiologists. A circumstance so rare,
+that it may be called impossible in very young girls, was that her
+hands, incomparably fine in shape, were as soft, transparent, and
+white as those of a woman after the birth of her second child. She had
+exactly the hair and the foot for which the Duchesse de Berri was so
+famous, hair so thick that no hairdresser could gather it into his
+hand, and so long that it fell to the ground in rings; for Esther was
+of that medium height which makes a woman a sort of toy, to be taken
+up and set down, taken up again and carried without fatigue. Her skin,
+as fine as rice-paper, of a warm amber hue showing the purple veins,
+was satiny without dryness, soft without being clammy.
+
+Esther, excessively strong though apparently fragile, arrested
+attention by one feature that is conspicuous in the faces in which
+Raphael has shown his most artistic feeling, for Raphael is the
+painter who has most studied and best rendered Jewish beauty. This
+remarkable effect was produced by the depth of the eye-socket, under
+which the eye moved free from its setting; the arch of the brow was so
+accurate as to resemble the groining of a vault. When youth lends this
+beautiful hollow its pure and diaphanous coloring, and edges it with
+closely-set eyebrows, when the light stealing into the circular cavity
+beneath lingers there with a rosy hue, there are tender treasures in
+it to delight a lover, beauties to drive a painter to despair. Those
+luminous curves, where the shadows have a golden tone, that tissue as
+firm as a sinew and as mobile as the most delicate membrane, is a
+crowning achievement of nature. The eye at rest within is like a
+miraculous egg in a nest of silken wings. But as time goes on this
+marvel acquires a dreadful melancholy, when passions have laid dark
+smears on those fine forms, when grief had furrowed that network of
+delicate veins. Esther's nationality proclaimed itself in this
+Oriental modeling of her eyes with their Turkish lids; their color was
+a slate-gray which by night took on the blue sheen of a raven's wing.
+It was only the extreme tenderness of her expression that could
+moderate their fire.
+
+Only those races that are native to deserts have in the eye the power
+of fascinating everybody, for any woman can fascinate some one person.
+Their eyes preserve, no doubt, something of the infinitude they have
+gazed on. Has nature, in her foresight, armed their retina with some
+reflecting background to enable them to endure the mirage of the sand,
+the torrents of sunshine, and the burning cobalt of the sky? or, do
+human beings, like other creatures, derive something from the
+surroundings among which they grow up, and preserve for ages the
+qualities they have imbibed from them? The great solution of this
+problem of race lies perhaps in the question itself. Instincts are
+living facts, and their cause dwells in past necessity. Variety in
+animals is the result of the exercise of these instincts.
+
+To convince ourselves of this long-sought-for truth, it is enough to
+extend to the herd of mankind the observation recently made on flocks
+of Spanish and English sheep which, in low meadows where pasture is
+abundant, feed side by side in close array, but on mountains, where
+grass is scarce, scatter apart. Take these two kinds of sheep,
+transfer them to Switzerland or France; the mountain breeds will feed
+apart even in a lowland meadow of thick grass, the lowland sheep will
+keep together even on an alp. Hardly will a succession of generations
+eliminate acquired and transmitted instincts. After a century the
+highland spirit reappears in a refractory lamb, just as, after
+eighteen centuries of exile, the spirit of the East shone in Esther's
+eyes and features.
+
+Her look had no terrible fascination; it shed a mild warmth, it was
+pathetic without being startling, and the sternest wills were melted
+in its flame. Esther had conquered hatred, she had astonished the
+depraved souls of Paris; in short, that look and the softness of her
+skin had earned her the terrible nickname which had just led her to
+the verge of the grave. Everything about her was in harmony with these
+characteristics of the Peri of the burning sands. Her forehead was
+firmly and proudly molded. Her nose, like that of the Arab race, was
+delicate and narrow, with oval nostrils well set and open at the base.
+Her mouth, fresh and red, was a rose unblemished by a flaw,
+dissipation had left no trace there. Her chin, rounded as though some
+amorous sculptor had polished its fulness, was as white as milk. One
+thing only that she had not been able to remedy betrayed the courtesan
+fallen very low: her broken nails, which needed time to recover their
+shape, so much had they been spoiled by the vulgarest household tasks.
+
+The young boarders began by being jealous of these marvels of beauty,
+but they ended by admiring them. Before the first week was at an end
+they were all attached to the artless Jewess, for they were interested
+in the unknown misfortunes of a girl of eighteen who could neither
+read nor write, to whom all knowledge and instruction were new, and
+who was to earn for the Archbishop the triumph of having converted a
+Jewess to Catholicism and giving the convent a festival in her
+baptism. They forgave her beauty, finding themselves her superiors in
+education.
+
+Esther very soon caught the manners, the accent, the carriage and
+attitudes of these highly-bred girls; in short, her first nature
+reasserted itself. The change was so complete that on his first visit
+Herrera was astonished as it would seem--and the Mother Superior
+congratulated him on his ward. Never in their existence as teachers
+had these sisters met with a more charming nature, more Christian
+meekness, true modesty, nor a greater eagerness to learn. When a girl
+has suffered such misery as had overwhelmed this poor child, and looks
+forward to such a reward as the Spaniard held out to Esther, it is
+hard if she does not realize the miracles of the early Church which
+the Jesuits revived in Paraguay.
+
+"She is edifying," said the Superior, kissing her on the brow.
+
+And this essentially Catholic word tells all.
+
+In recreation hours Esther would question her companions, but
+discreetly, as to the simplest matters in fashionable life, which to
+her were like the first strange ideas of life to a child. When she
+heard that she was to be dressed in white on the day of her baptism
+and first Communion, that she should wear a white satin fillet, white
+bows, white shoes, white gloves, and white rosettes in her hair, she
+melted into tears, to the amazement of her companions. It was the
+reverse of the scene of Jephtha on the mountain. The courtesan was
+afraid of being understood; she ascribed this dreadful dejection to
+the joy with which she looked forward to the function. As there is
+certainly as wide a gulf between the habits she had given up and the
+habits she was acquiring as there is between the savage state and
+civilization, she had the grace and simplicity and depth which
+distinguished the wonderful heroine of the American Puritans. She had
+too, without knowing it, a love that was eating out her heart--a
+strange love, a desire more violent in her who knew everything than it
+can be in a maiden who knows nothing, though the two forms of desire
+have the same cause, and the same end in view.
+
+During the first few months the novelty of a secluded life, the
+surprises of learning, the handiworks she was taught, the practices of
+religion, the fervency of a holy resolve, the gentle affections she
+called forth, and the exercise of the faculties of her awakened
+intelligence, all helped to repress her memory, even the effort she
+made to acquire a new one, for she had as much to unlearn as to learn.
+There is more than one form of memory: the body and mind have each
+their own; home-sickness, for instance, is a malady of the physical
+memory. Thus, during the third month, the vehemence of this virgin
+soul, soaring to Paradise on outspread wings, was not indeed quelled,
+but fettered by a dull rebellion, of which Esther herself did not know
+the cause. Like the Scottish sheep, she wanted to pasture in solitude,
+she could not conquer the instincts begotten of debauchery.
+
+Was it that the foul ways of the Paris she had abjured were calling
+her back to them? Did the chains of the hideous habits she had
+renounced cling to her by forgotten rivets, and was she feeling them,
+as old soldiers suffer still, the surgeons tell us, in the limbs they
+have lost? Had vice and excess so soaked into her marrow that holy
+waters had not yet exorcised the devil lurking there? Was the sight of
+him for whom her angelic efforts were made, necessary to the poor
+soul, whom God would surely forgive for mingling human and sacred
+love? One had led to the other. Was there some transposition of the
+vital force in her involving her in inevitable suffering? Everything
+is doubtful and obscure in a case which science scorns to study,
+regarding the subject as too immoral and too compromising, as if the
+physician and the writer, the priest and the political student, were
+not above all suspicion. However, a doctor who was stopped by death
+had the courage to begin an investigation which he left unfinished.
+
+Perhaps the dark depression to which Esther fell a victim, and which
+cast a gloom over her happy life, was due to all these causes; and
+perhaps, unable as she was to suspect them herself, she suffered as
+sick creatures suffer who know nothing of medicine or surgery.
+
+The fact is strange. Wholesome and abundant food in the place of bad
+and inflammatory nourishment did not sustain Esther. A pure and
+regular life, divided between recreation and studies intentionally
+abridged, taking the place of a disorderly existence of which the
+pleasures and the pains were equally horrible, exhausted the convent-
+boarder. The coolest rest, the calmest nights, taking the place of
+crushing fatigue and the most torturing agitation, gave her low fever,
+in which the common symptoms were imperceptible to the nursing
+Sister's eye or finger. In fact, virtue and happiness following on
+evil and misfortune, security in the stead of anxiety, were as fatal
+to Esther as her past wretchedness would have been to her young
+companions. Planted in corruption, she had grown up in it. That
+infernal home still had a hold on her, in spite of the commands of a
+despotic will. What she loathed was life to her, what she loved was
+killing her.
+
+Her faith was so ardent that her piety was a delight to those about
+her. She loved to pray. She had opened her spirit to the lights of
+true religion, and received it without an effort or a doubt. The
+priest who was her director was delighted with her. Still, at every
+turn her body resisted the spirit.
+
+To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon's, who fed them with scraps
+from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and
+placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished.
+The animals might be sacrificed, but man could never infect them with
+the leprosy of flattery. A courtier remarked at Versailles on this
+mute resistance. "They are like me," said the uncrowned queen; "they
+pine for their obscure mud."
+
+This speech epitomizes Esther's story.
+
+At times the poor girl was driven to run about the splendid convent
+gardens; she hurried from tree to tree, she rushed into the darkest
+nooks--seeking? What? She did not know, but she fell a prey to the
+demon; she carried on a flirtation with the trees, she appealed to
+them in unspoken words. Sometimes, in the evening, she stole along
+under the walls, like a snake, without any shawl over her bare
+shoulders. Often in chapel, during the service, she remained with her
+eyes fixed on the Crucifix, melted to tears; the others admired her;
+but she was crying with rage. Instead of the sacred images she hoped
+to see, those glaring nights when she had led some orgy as Habeneck
+leads a Beethoven symphony at the Conservatoire--nights of laughter
+and lasciviousness, with vehement gestures, inextinguishable laughter,
+rose before her, frenzied, furious, and brutal. She was as mild to
+look upon as a virgin that clings to earth only by her woman's shape;
+within raged an imperial Messalina.
+
+She alone knew the secret of this struggle between the devil and the
+angel. When the Superior reproved her for having done her hair more
+fashionably than the rule of the House allowed, she altered it with
+prompt and beautiful submission; she would have cut her hair off if
+the Mother had required it of her. This moral home-sickness was truly
+pathetic in a girl who would rather have perished than have returned
+to the depths of impurity. She grew pale and altered and thin. The
+Superior gave her shorter lessons, and called the interesting creature
+to her room to question her. But Esther was happy; she enjoyed the
+society of her companions; she felt no pain in any vital part; still,
+it was vitality itself that was attacked. She regretted nothing; she
+wanted nothing. The Superior, puzzled by her boarder's answers, did
+not know what to think when she saw her pining under consuming
+debility.
+
+The doctor was called in when the girl's condition seemed serious; but
+this doctor knew nothing of Esther's previous life, and could not
+guess it; he found every organ sound, the pain could not be localized.
+The invalid's replies were such as to upset every hypothesis. There
+remained one way of clearing up the learned man's doubts, which now
+lighted on a frightful suggestion; but Esther obstinately refused to
+submit to a medical examination.
+
+In this difficulty the Superior appealed to the Abbe Herrera. The
+Spaniard came, saw that Esther's condition was desperate, and took the
+physician aside for a moment. After this confidential interview, the
+man of science told the man of faith that the only cure lay in a
+journey to Italy. The Abbe would not hear of such a journey before
+Esther's baptism and first Communion.
+
+"How long will it be till then?" asked the doctor.
+
+"A month," replied the Superior.
+
+"She will be dead," said the doctor.
+
+"Yes, but in a state of grace and salvation," said the Abbe.
+
+In Spain the religious question is supreme, above all political,
+civil, or vital considerations; so the physician did not answer the
+Spaniard. He turned to the Mother Superior, but the terrible Abbe took
+him by the arm and stopped him.
+
+"Not a word, monsieur!" said he.
+
+The doctor, though a religious man and a Monarchist, looked at Esther
+with an expression of tender pity. The girl was as lovely as a lily
+drooping on its stem.
+
+"God help her, then!" he exclaimed as he went away.
+
+On the very day of this consultation, Esther was taken by her
+protector to the Rocher de Cancale, a famous restaurant, for his wish
+to save her had suggested strange expedients to the priest. He tried
+the effect of two excesses--an excellent dinner, which might remind
+the poor child of past orgies; and the opera, which would give her
+mind some images of worldliness. His despotic authority was needed to
+tempt the young saint to such profanation. Herrera disguised himself
+so effectually as a military man, that Esther hardly recognized him;
+he took care to make his companion wear a veil, and put her in a box
+where she was hidden from all eyes.
+
+This palliative, which had no risks for innocence so sincerely
+regained, soon lost its effect. The convent-boarder viewed her
+protector's dinners with disgust, had a religious aversion for the
+theatre, and relapsed into melancholy.
+
+"She is dying of love for Lucien," said Herrera to himself; he had
+wanted to sound the depths of this soul, and know how much could be
+exacted from it.
+
+So the moment came when the poor child was no longer upheld by moral
+force, and the body was about to break down. The priest calculated the
+time with the hideous practical sagacity formerly shown by
+executioners in the art of torture. He found his protegee in the
+garden, sitting on a bench under a trellis on which the April sun fell
+gently; she seemed to be cold and trying to warm herself; her
+companions looked with interest at her pallor as of a folded plant,
+her eyes like those of a dying gazelle, her drooping attitude. Esther
+rose and went to meet the Spaniard with a lassitude that showed how
+little life there was in her, and, it may be added, how little care to
+live. This hapless outcast, this wild and wounded swallow, moved
+Carlos Herrera to compassion for the second time. The gloomy minister,
+whom God should have employed only to carry out His revenges, received
+the sick girl with a smile, which expressed, indeed, as much
+bitterness as sweetness, as much vengeance as charity. Esther,
+practised in meditation, and used to revulsions of feeling since she
+had led this almost monastic life, felt on her part, for the second
+time, distrust of her protector; but, as on the former occasion, his
+speech reassured her.
+
+"Well, my dear child," said he, "and why have you never spoken to me
+of Lucien?"
+
+"I promised you," she said, shuddering convulsively from head to foot;
+"I swore to you that I would never breathe his name."
+
+"And yet you have not ceased to think of him."
+
+"That, monsieur, is the only fault I have committed. I think of him
+always; and just as you came, I was saying his name to myself."
+
+"Absence is killing you?"
+
+Esther's only answer was to hang her head as the sick do who already
+scent the breath of the grave.
+
+"If you could see him----?" said he.
+
+"It would be life!" she cried.
+
+"And do you think of him only spiritually?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur, love cannot be dissected!"
+
+"Child of an accursed race! I have done everything to save you; I send
+you back to your fate.--You shall see him again."
+
+"Why insult my happiness? Can I not love Lucien and be virtuous? Am I
+not ready to die here for virtue, as I should be ready to die for him?
+Am I not dying for these two fanaticisms--for virtue, which was to
+make me worthy of him, and for him who flung me into the embrace of
+virtue? Yes, and ready to die without seeing him or to live by seeing
+him. God is my Judge."
+
+The color had mounted to her face, her whiteness had recovered its
+amber warmth. Esther looked beautiful again.
+
+"The day after that on which you are washed in the waters of baptism
+you shall see Lucien once more; and if you think you can live in
+virtue by living for him, you shall part no more."
+
+The priest was obliged to lift up Esther, whose knees failed her; the
+poor child dropped as if the ground had slipped from under her feet.
+The Abbe seated her on a bench; and when she could speak again she
+asked him:
+
+"Why not to-day?"
+
+"Do you want to rob Monseigneur of the triumph of your baptism and
+conversion? You are too close to Lucien not to be far from God."
+
+"Yes, I was not thinking----"
+
+"You will never be of any religion," said the priest, with a touch of
+the deepest irony.
+
+"God is good," said she; "He can read my heart."
+
+Conquered by the exquisite artlessness and gestures, Herrera kissed
+her on the forehead for the first time.
+
+"Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the
+Father.--A few days more must pass, and then you will both be free."
+
+"Both!" she echoed in an ecstasy of joy.
+
+This scene, observed from a distance, struck pupils and superiors
+alike; they fancied they had looked on at a miracle as they compared
+Esther with herself. She was completely changed; she was alive. She
+reappeared her natural self, all love, sweet, coquettish, playful, and
+gay; in short, it was a resurrection.
+
+
+
+Herrera lived in the Rue Cassette, near Saint-Sulpice, the church to
+which he was attached. This building, hard and stern in style, suited
+this Spaniard, whose discipline was that of the Dominicans. A lost son
+of Ferdinand VII.'s astute policy, he devoted himself to the cause of
+the constitution, knowing that this devotion could never be rewarded
+till the restoration of the Rey netto. Carlos Herrera had thrown
+himself body and soul into the Camarilla at the moment when the Cortes
+seemed likely to stand and hold their own. To the world this conduct
+seemed to proclaim a superior soul. The Duc d'Angouleme's expedition
+had been carried out, King Ferdinand was on the throne, and Carlos
+Herrera did not go to claim the reward of his services at Madrid.
+Fortified against curiosity by his diplomatic taciturnity, he assigned
+as his reason for remaining in Paris his strong affection for Lucien
+de Rubempre, to which the young man already owed the King's patent
+relating to his change of name.
+
+Herrera lived very obscurely, as priests employed on secret missions
+traditionally live. He fulfilled his religious duties at Saint-
+Sulpice, never went out but on business, and then after dark, and in a
+hackney cab. His day was filled up with a siesta in the Spanish
+fashion, which arranges for sleep between the two chief meals, and so
+occupies the hours when Paris is in a busy turmoil. The Spanish cigar
+also played its part, and consumed time as well as tobacco. Laziness
+is a mask as gravity is, and that again is laziness.
+
+Herrera lived on the second floor in one wing of the house, and Lucien
+occupied the other wing. The two apartments were separated and joined
+by a large reception room of antique magnificence, suitable equally to
+the grave priest and to the young poet. The courtyard was gloomy;
+large, thick trees shaded the garden. Silence and reserve are always
+found in the dwellings chosen by priests. Herrera's lodging may be
+described in one word--a cell. Lucien's, splendid with luxury, and
+furnished with every refinement of comfort, combined everything that
+the elegant life of a dandy demands--a poet, a writer, ambitious and
+dissipated, at once vain and vainglorious, utterly heedless, and yet
+wishing for order, one of those incomplete geniuses who have some
+power to wish, to conceive--which is perhaps the same thing--but no
+power at all to execute.
+
+These two, Lucien and Herrera, formed a body politic. This, no doubt,
+was the secret of their union. Old men in whom the activities of life
+have been uprooted and transplanted to the sphere of interest, often
+feel the need of a pleasing instrument, a young and impassioned actor,
+to carry out their schemes. Richelieu, too late, found a handsome pale
+face with a young moustache to cast in the way of women whom he wanted
+to amuse. Misunderstood by giddy-pated younger men, he was compelled
+to banish his master's mother and terrify the Queen, after having
+tried to make each fall in love with him, though he was not cut out to
+be loved by queens.
+
+Do what we will, always, in the course of an ambitious life, we find a
+woman in the way just when we least expect such an obstacle. However
+great a political man may be, he always needs a woman to set against a
+woman, just as the Dutch use a diamond to cut a diamond. Rome at the
+height of its power yielded to this necessity. And observe how
+immeasurably more imposing was the life of Mazarin, the Italian
+cardinal, than that of Richelieu, the French cardinal. Richelieu met
+with opposition from the great nobles, and he applied the axe; he died
+in the flower of his success, worn out by this duel, for which he had
+only a Capuchin monk as his second. Mazarin was repulsed by the
+citizen class and the nobility, armed allies who sometimes
+victoriously put royalty to flight; but Anne of Austria's devoted
+servant took off no heads, he succeeded in vanquishing the whole of
+France, and trained Louis XIV., who completed Richelieu's work by
+strangling the nobility with gilded cords in the grand Seraglio of
+Versailles. Madame de Pompadour dead, Choiseul fell!
+
+Had Herrera soaked his mind in these high doctrines? Had he judged
+himself at an earlier age than Richelieu? Had he chosen Lucien to be
+his Cinq-Mars, but a faithful Cinq-Mars? No one could answer these
+questions or measure this Spaniard's ambition, as no one could foresee
+what his end might be. These questions, asked by those who were able
+to see anything of this coalition, which was long kept a secret, might
+have unveiled a horrible mystery which Lucien himself had known but a
+few days. Carlos was ambitious for two; that was what his conduct made
+plain to those persons who knew him, and who all imagined that Lucien
+was the priest's illegitimate son.
+
+Fifteen months after Lucien's reappearance at the opera ball, which
+led him too soon into a world where the priest had not wished to see
+him till he should have fully armed him against it, he had three fine
+horses in his stable, a coupe for evening use, a cab and a tilbury to
+drive by day. He dined out every day. Herrera's foresight was
+justified; his pupil was carried away by dissipation; he thought it
+necessary to effect some diversion in the frenzied passion for Esther
+that the young man still cherished in his heart. After spending
+something like forty thousand francs, every folly had brought Lucien
+back with increased eagerness to La Torpille; he searched for her
+persistently; and as he could not find her, she became to him what
+game is to the sportsman.
+
+Could Herrera understand the nature of a poet's love?
+
+When once this feeling has mounted to the brain of one of these great
+little men, after firing his heart and absorbing his senses, the poet
+becomes as far superior to humanity through love as he already is
+through the power of his imagination. A freak of intellectual heredity
+has given him the faculty of expressing nature by imagery, to which he
+gives the stamp both of sentiment and of thought, and he lends his
+love the wings of his spirit; he feels, and he paints, he acts and
+meditates, he multiplies his sensations by thought, present felicity
+becomes threefold through aspiration for the future and memory of the
+past; and with it he mingles the exquisite delights of the soul, which
+makes him the prince of artists. Then the poet's passion becomes a
+fine poem in which human proportion is often set at nought. Does not
+the poet then place his mistress far higher than women crave to sit?
+Like the sublime Knight of la Mancha, he transfigures a peasant girl
+to be a princess. He uses for his own behoof the wand with which he
+touches everything, turning it into a wonder, and thus enhances the
+pleasure of loving by the glorious glamour of the ideal.
+
+Such a love is the very essence of passion. It is extreme in all
+things, in its hopes, in its despair, in its rage, in its melancholy,
+in its joy; it flies, it leaps, it crawls; it is not like any of the
+emotions known to ordinary men; it is to everyday love what the
+perennial Alpine torrent is to the lowland brook.
+
+These splendid geniuses are so rarely understood that they spend
+themselves in hopes deceived; they are exhausted by the search for
+their ideal mistress, and almost always die like gorgeous insects
+splendidly adorned for their love-festival by the most poetical of
+nature's inventions, and crushed under the foot of a passer-by. But
+there is another danger! When they meet with the form that answers to
+their soul, and which not unfrequently is that of a baker's wife, they
+do as Raphael did, as the beautiful insect does, they die in the
+Fornarina's arms.
+
+Lucien was at this pass. His poetical temperament, excessive in all
+things, in good as in evil, had discerned the angel in this girl, who
+was tainted by corruption rather than corrupt; he always saw her
+white, winged, pure, and mysterious, as she had made herself for him,
+understanding that he would have her so.
+
+Towards the end of the month of May 1825 Lucien had lost all his good
+spirits; he never went out, dined with Herrera, sat pensive, worked,
+read volumes of diplomatic treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a
+divan, and smoked three or four hookahs a day. His groom had more to
+do in cleaning and perfuming the tubes of this noble pipe than in
+currying and brushing down the horses' coats, and dressing them with
+cockades for driving in the Bois. As soon as the Spaniard saw Lucien
+pale, and detected a malady in the frenzy of suppressed passion, he
+determined to read to the bottom of this man's heart on which he
+founded his life.
+
+One fine evening, when Lucien, lounging in an armchair, was
+mechanically contemplating the hues of the setting sun through the
+trees in the garden, blowing up the mist of scented smoke in slow,
+regular clouds, as pensive smokers are wont, he was roused from his
+reverie by hearing a deep sigh. He turned and saw the Abbe standing by
+him with folded arms.
+
+"You were there!" said the poet.
+
+"For some time," said the priest, "my thoughts have been following the
+wide sweep of yours." Lucien understood his meaning.
+
+"I have never affected to have an iron nature such as yours is. To me
+life is by turns paradise and hell; when by chance it is neither, it
+bores me; and I am bored----"
+
+"How can you be bored when you have such splendid prospects before
+you?"
+
+"If I have no faith in those prospects, or if they are too much
+shrouded?"
+
+"Do not talk nonsense," said the priest. "It would be far more worthy
+of you and of me that you should open your heart to me. There is now
+that between us which ought never to have come between us--a secret.
+This secret has subsisted for sixteen months. You are in love."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"A foul hussy called La Torpille----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"My boy, I told you you might have a mistress, but a woman of rank,
+pretty, young, influential, a Countess at least. I had chosen Madame
+d'Espard for you, to make her the instrument of your fortune without
+scruple; for she would never have perverted your heart, she would have
+left you free.--To love a prostitute of the lowest class when you have
+not, like kings, the power to give her high rank, is a monstrous
+blunder."
+
+"And am I the first man who had renounced ambition to follow the lead
+of a boundless passion?"
+
+"Good!" said the priest, stooping to pick up the mouthpiece of the
+hookah which Lucien had dropped on the floor. "I understand the
+retort. Cannot love and ambition be reconciled? Child, you have a
+mother in old Herrera--a mother who is wholly devoted to you----"
+
+"I know it, old friend," said Lucien, taking his hand and shaking it.
+
+"You wished for the toys of wealth; you have them. You want to shine;
+I am guiding you into the paths of power, I kiss very dirty hands to
+secure your advancement, and you will get on. A little while yet and
+you will lack nothing of what can charm man or woman. Though
+effeminate in your caprices, your intellect is manly. I have dreamed
+all things of you; I forgive you all. You have only to speak to have
+your ephemeral passions gratified. I have aggrandized your life by
+introducing into it that which makes it delightful to most people--the
+stamp of political influence and dominion. You will be as great as you
+now are small; but you must not break the machine by which we coin
+money. I grant you all you will excepting such blunders as will
+destroy your future prospects. When I can open the drawing-rooms of
+the Faubourg Saint-Germain to you, I forbid your wallowing in the
+gutter. Lucien, I mean to be an iron stanchion in your interest; I
+will endure everything from you, for you. Thus I have transformed your
+lack of tact in the game of life into the shrewd stroke of a skilful
+player----"
+
+Lucien looked up with a start of furious impetuosity.
+
+"I carried off La Torpille!"
+
+"You?" cried Lucien.
+
+In a fit of animal rage the poet jumped up, flung the jeweled
+mouthpiece in the priest's face, and pushed him with such violence as
+to throw down that strong man.
+
+"I," said the Spaniard, getting up and preserving his terrible
+gravity.
+
+His black wig had fallen off. A bald skull, as shining as a death's
+head, showed the man's real countenance. It was appalling. Lucien sat
+on his divan, his hands hanging limp, overpowered, and gazing at the
+Abbe with stupefaction.
+
+"I carried her off," the priest repeated.
+
+"What did you do with her? You took her away the day after the opera
+ball."
+
+"Yes, the day after I had seen a woman who belonged to you insulted by
+wretches whom I would not have condescended to kick downstairs."
+
+"Wretches!" interrupted Lucien, "say rather monsters, compared with
+whom those who are guillotined are angels. Do you know what the
+unhappy Torpille had done for three of them? One of them was her lover
+for two months. She was poor, and picked up a living in the gutter; he
+had not a sou; like me, when you rescued me, he was very near the
+river; this fellow would get up at night and go to the cupboard where
+the girl kept the remains of her dinner and eat it. At last she
+discovered the trick; she understood the shameful thing, and took care
+to leave a great deal; then she was happy. She never told any one but
+me, that night, coming home from the opera.
+
+"The second had stolen some money; but before the theft was found out,
+she lent him the sum, which he was enabled to replace, and which he
+always forgot to repay to the poor child.
+
+"As to the third, she made his fortune by playing out a farce worthy
+of Figaro's genius. She passed as his wife and became the mistress of
+a man in power, who believed her to be the most innocent of good
+citizens. To one she gave life, to another honor, to the third fortune
+--what does it all count for to-day? And this is how they reward her!"
+
+"Would you like to see them dead?" said Herrera, in whose eyes there
+were tears.
+
+"Come, that is just like you! I know you by that----"
+
+"Nay, hear all, raving poet," said the priest. "La Torpille is no
+more."
+
+Lucien flew at Herrera to seize him by the throat, with such violence
+that any other man must have fallen backwards; but the Spaniard's arm
+held off his assailant.
+
+"Come, listen," said he coldly. "I have made another woman of her,
+chaste, pure, well bred, religious, a perfect lady. She is being
+educated. She can, if she may, under the influence of your love,
+become a Ninon, a Marion Delorme, a du Barry, as the journalist at the
+opera ball remarked. You may proclaim her your mistress, or you may
+retire behind a curtain of your own creating, which will be wiser. By
+either method you will gain profit and pride, pleasure and
+advancement; but if you are as great a politician as you are a poet,
+Esther will be no more to you than any other woman of the town; for,
+later, perhaps she may help us out of difficulties; she is worth her
+weight in gold. Drink, but do not get tipsy.
+
+"If I had not held the reins of your passion, where would you be now?
+Rolling with La Torpille in the slough of misery from which I dragged
+you. Here, read this," said Herrera, as simply as Talma in Manlius,
+which he had never seen.
+
+A sheet of paper was laid on the poet's knees, and startled him from
+the ecstasy and surprise with which he had listened to this astounding
+speech; he took it, and read the first letter written by Mademoiselle
+Esther:--
+
+  To Monsieur l'Abbe Carlos Herrera.
+
+  "MY DEAR PROTECTOR,--Will you not suppose that gratitude is
+  stronger in me than love, when you see that the first use I make
+  of the power of expressing my thoughts is to thank you, instead of
+  devoting it to pouring forth a passion that Lucien has perhaps
+  forgotten. But to you, divine man, I can say what I should not
+  dare to tell him, who, to my joy, still clings to earth.
+
+  "Yesterday's ceremony has filled me with treasures of grace, and I
+  place my fate in your hands. Even if I must die far away from my
+  beloved, I shall die purified like the Magdalen, and my soul will
+  become to him the rival of his guardian angel. Can I ever forget
+  yesterday's festival? How could I wish to abdicate the glorious
+  throne to which I was raised? Yesterday I washed away every stain
+  in the waters of baptism, and received the Sacred Body of my
+  Redeemer; I am become one of His tabernacles. At that moment I
+  heard the songs of angels, I was more than a woman, born to a life
+  of light amid the acclamations of the whole earth, admired by the
+  world in a cloud of incense and prayers that were intoxicating,
+  adorned like a virgin for the Heavenly Spouse.
+
+  "Thus finding myself worthy of Lucien, which I had never hoped to
+  be, I abjured impure love and vowed to walk only in the paths of
+  virtue. If my flesh is weaker than my spirit, let it perish. Be
+  the arbiter of my destiny; and if I die, tell Lucien that I died
+  to him when I was born to God."
+
+Lucien looked up at the Abbe with eyes full of tears.
+
+"You know the rooms fat Caroline Bellefeuille had, in the Rue
+Taitbout," the Spaniard said. "The poor creature, cast off by her
+magistrate, was in the greatest poverty; she was about to be sold up.
+I bought the place all standing, and she turned out with her clothes.
+Esther, the angel who aspired to heaven, has alighted there, and is
+waiting for you."
+
+At this moment Lucien heard his horses pawing the ground in the
+courtyard; he was incapable of expressing his admiration for a
+devotion which he alone could appreciate; he threw himself into the
+arms of the man he had insulted, made amends for all by a look and the
+speechless effusion of his feelings. Then he flew downstairs, confided
+Esther's address to his tiger's ear, and the horses went off as if
+their master's passion had lived in their legs.
+
+
+
+The next day a man, who by his dress might have been mistaken by the
+passers-by for a gendarme in disguise, was passing the Rue Taitbout,
+opposite a house, as if he were waiting for some one to come out; he
+walked with an agitated air. You will often see in Paris such vehement
+promenaders, real gendarmes watching a recalcitrant National
+Guardsman, bailiffs taking steps to effect an arrest, creditors
+planning a trick on the debtor who has shut himself in, lovers, or
+jealous and suspicious husbands, or friends doing sentry for a friend;
+but rarely do you meet a face portending such coarse and fierce
+thoughts as animated that of the gloomy and powerful man who paced to
+and fro under Mademoiselle Esther's windows with the brooding haste of
+a bear in its cage.
+
+At noon a window was opened, and a maid-servant's hand was put out to
+push back the padded shutters. A few minutes later, Esther, in her
+dressing-gown, came to breathe the air, leaning on Lucien; any one who
+saw them might have taken them for the originals of some pretty
+English vignette. Esther was the first to recognize the basilisk eyes
+of the Spanish priest; and the poor creature, stricken as if she had
+been shot, gave a cry of horror.
+
+"There is that terrible priest," said she, pointing him out to Lucien.
+
+"He!" said Lucien, smiling, "he is no more a priest than you are."
+
+"What then?" she said in alarm.
+
+"Why, an old villain who believes in nothing but the devil," said
+Lucien.
+
+This light thrown on the sham priest's secrets, if revealed to any one
+less devoted than Esther, might have ruined Lucien for ever.
+
+As they went along the corridor from their bedroom to the dining-room,
+where their breakfast was served, the lovers met Carlos Herrera.
+
+"What have you come here for?" said Lucien roughly.
+
+"To bless you," replied the audacious scoundrel, stopping the pair and
+detaining them in the little drawing-room of the apartment. "Listen to
+me, my pretty dears. Amuse yourselves, be happy--well and good!
+Happiness at any price is my motto.--But you," he went on to Esther,
+"you whom I dragged from the mud, and have soaped down body and soul,
+you surely do not dream that you can stand in Lucien's way?--As for
+you, my boy," he went on after a pause, looking at Lucien, "you are no
+longer poet enough to allow yourself another Coralie. This is sober
+prose. What can be done with Esther's lover? Nothing. Can Esther
+become Madame de Rubempre? No.
+
+"Well, my child," said he, laying his hand on Esther's, and making her
+shiver as if some serpent had wound itself round her, "the world must
+never know of your existence. Above all, the world must never know
+that a certain Mademoiselle Esther loves Lucien, and that Lucien is in
+love with her.--These rooms are your prison, my pigeon. If you wish to
+go out--and your health will require it--you must take exercise at
+night, at hours when you cannot be seen; for your youth and beauty,
+and the style you have acquired at the Convent, would at once be
+observed in Paris. The day when any one in the world, whoever it be,"
+he added in an awful voice, seconded by an awful look, "learns that
+Lucien is your lover, or that you are his mistress, that day will be
+your last but one on earth. I have procured that boy a patent
+permitting him to bear the name and arms of his maternal ancestors.
+Still, this is not all; we have not yet recovered the title of
+Marquis; and to get it, he must marry a girl of good family, in whose
+favor the King will grant this distinction. Such an alliance will get
+Lucien on in the world and at Court. This boy, of whom I have made a
+man, will be first Secretary to an Embassy; later, he shall be
+Minister at some German Court, and God, or I--better still--helping
+him, he will take his seat some day on the bench reserved for
+peers----"
+
+"Or on the bench reserved for----" Lucien began, interrupting the man.
+
+"Hold your tongue!" cried Carlos, laying his broad hand on Lucien's
+mouth. "Would you tell such a secret to a woman?" he muttered in his
+ear.
+
+"Esther! A woman!" cried the poet of Les Marguerites.
+
+"Still inditing sonnets!" said the Spaniard. "Nonsense! Sooner or
+later all these angels relapse into being women, and every woman at
+moments is a mixture of a monkey and a child, two creatures who can
+kill us for fun.--Esther, my jewel," said he to the terrified girl, "I
+have secured as your waiting-maid a creature who is as much mine as if
+she were my daughter. For your cook, you shall have a mulatto woman,
+which gives style to a house. With Europe and Asie you can live here
+for a thousand-franc note a month like a queen--a stage queen. Europe
+has been a dressmaker, a milliner, and a stage super; Asie has cooked
+for an epicure Milord. These two women will serve you like two
+fairies."
+
+Seeing Lucien go completely to the wall before this man, who was
+guilty at least of sacrilege and forgery, this woman, sanctified by
+her love, felt an awful fear in the depths of her heart. She made no
+reply, but dragged Lucien into her room, and asked him:
+
+"Is he the devil?"
+
+"He is far worse to me!" he vehemently replied. "But if you love me,
+try to imitate that man's devotion to me, and obey him on pain of
+death!----"
+
+"Of death!" she exclaimed, more frightened than ever.
+
+"Of death," repeated Lucien. "Alas! my darling, no death could be
+compared with that which would befall me if----"
+
+Esther turned pale at his words, and felt herself fainting.
+
+"Well, well," cried the sacrilegious forger, "have you not yet spelt
+out your daisy-petals?"
+
+Esther and Lucien came out, and the poor girl, not daring to look at
+the mysterious man, said:
+
+"You shall be obeyed as God is obeyed, monsieur."
+
+"Good," said he. "You may be very happy for a time, and you will need
+only nightgowns and wrappers--that will be very economical."
+
+The two lovers went on towards the dining-room, but Lucien's patron
+signed to the pretty pair to stop. And they stopped.
+
+"I have just been talking of your servants, my child," said he to
+Esther. "I must introduce them to you."
+
+The Spaniard rang twice. The women he had called Europe and Asie came
+in, and it was at once easy to see the reason of these names.
+
+Asie, who looked as if she might have been born in the Island of Java,
+showed a face to scare the eye, as flat as a board, with the copper
+complexion peculiar to Malays, with a nose that looked as if it had
+been driven inwards by some violent pressure. The strange conformation
+of the maxillary bones gave the lower part of this face a resemblance
+to that of the larger species of apes. The brow, though sloping, was
+not deficient in intelligence produced by habits of cunning. Two
+fierce little eyes had the calm fixity of a tiger's, but they never
+looked you straight in the face. Asie seemed afraid lest she might
+terrify people. Her lips, a dull blue, were parted over prominent
+teeth of dazzling whiteness, but grown across. The leading expression
+of this animal countenance was one of meanness. Her black hair,
+straight and greasy-looking like her skin, lay in two shining bands,
+forming an edge to a very handsome silk handkerchief. Her ears were
+remarkably pretty, and graced with two large dark pearls. Small,
+short, and squat, Asie bore a likeness to the grotesque figures the
+Chinese love to paint on screens, or, more exactly, to the Hindoo
+idols which seem to be imitated from some non-existent type, found,
+nevertheless, now and again by travelers. Esther shuddered as she
+looked at this monstrosity, dressed out in a white apron over a stuff
+gown.
+
+"Asie," said the Spaniard, to whom the woman looked up with a gesture
+that can only be compared to that of a dog to its master, "this is
+your mistress."
+
+And he pointed to Esther in her wrapper.
+
+Asie looked at the young fairy with an almost distressful expression;
+but at the same moment a flash, half hidden between her thick, short
+eyelashes, shot like an incendiary spark at Lucien, who, in a
+magnificent dressing-gown thrown open over a fine Holland linen shirt
+and red trousers, with a fez on his head, beneath which his fair hair
+fell in thick curls, presented a godlike appearance.
+
+Italian genius could invent the tale of Othello; English genius could
+put it on the stage; but Nature alone reserves the power of throwing
+into a single glance an expression of jealousy grander and more
+complete than England and Italy together could imagine. This look,
+seen by Esther, made her clutch the Spaniard by the arm, setting her
+nails in it as a cat sets its claws to save itself from falling into a
+gulf of which it cannot see the bottom.
+
+The Spaniard spoke a few words, in some unfamiliar tongue, to the
+Asiatic monster, who crept on her knees to Esther's feet and kissed
+them.
+
+"She is not merely a good cook," said Herrera to Esther; "she is a
+past-master, and might make Careme mad with jealousy. Asie can do
+everything by way of cooking. She will turn you out a simple dish of
+beans that will make you wonder whether the angels have not come down
+to add some herb from heaven. She will go to market herself every
+morning, and fight like the devil she is to get things at the lowest
+prices; she will tire out curiosity by silence.
+
+"You are to be supposed to have been in India, and Asie will help you
+to give effect to this fiction, for she is one of those Parisians who
+are born to be of any nationality they please. But I do not advise
+that you should give yourself out to be a foreigner.--Europe, what do
+you say?"
+
+Europe was a perfect contrast to Asie, for she was the smartest
+waiting-maid that Monrose could have hoped to see as her rival on the
+stage. Slight, with a scatter-brain manner, a face like a weasel, and
+a sharp nose, Europe's features offered to the observer a countenance
+worn by the corruption of Paris life, the unhealthy complexion of a
+girl fed on raw apples, lymphatic but sinewy, soft but tenacious. One
+little foot was set forward, her hands were in her apron-pockets, and
+she fidgeted incessantly without moving, from sheer excess of
+liveliness. Grisette and stage super, in spite of her youth she must
+have tried many trades. As full of evil as a dozen Madelonnettes put
+together, she might have robbed her parents, and sat on the bench of a
+police-court.
+
+Asie was terrifying, but you knew her thoroughly from the first; she
+descended in a straight line from Locusta; while Europe filled you
+with uneasiness, which could not fail to increase the more you had to
+do with her; her corruption seemed boundless. You felt that she could
+set the devils by the ears.
+
+"Madame might say she had come from Valenciennes," said Europe in a
+precise little voice. "I was born there--Perhaps monsieur," she added
+to Lucien in a pedantic tone, "will be good enough to say what name he
+proposes to give to madame?"
+
+"Madame van Bogseck," the Spaniard put in, reversing Esther's name.
+"Madame is a Jewess, a native of Holland, the widow of a merchant, and
+suffering from a liver-complaint contracted in Java. No great fortune
+--not to excite curiosity."
+
+"Enough to live on--six thousand francs a year; and we shall complain
+of her stinginess?" said Europe.
+
+"That is the thing," said the Spaniard, with a bow. "You limbs of
+Satan!" he went on, catching Asie and Europe exchanging a glance that
+displeased him, "remember what I have told you. You are serving a
+queen; you owe her as much respect as to a queen; you are to cherish
+her as you would cherish a revenge, and be as devoted to her as to me.
+Neither the door-porter, nor the neighbors, nor the other inhabitants
+of the house--in short, not a soul on earth is to know what goes on
+here. It is your business to balk curiosity if any should be roused.--
+And madame," he went on laying his broad hairy hand on Esther's arm,
+"madame must not commit the smallest imprudence; you must prevent it
+in case of need, but always with perfect respect.
+
+"You, Europe, are to go out for madame in anything that concerns her
+dress, and you must do her sewing from motives of economy. Finally,
+nobody, not even the most insignificant creature, is ever to set foot
+in this apartment. You two, between you, must do all there is to be
+done.
+
+"And you, my beauty," he went on, speaking to Esther, "when you want
+to go out in your carriage by night, you can tell Europe; she will
+know where to find your men, for you will have a servant in livery, of
+my choosing, like those two slaves."
+
+Esther and Lucien had not a word ready. They listened to the Spaniard,
+and looked at the two precious specimens to whom he gave his orders.
+What was the secret hold to which he owed the submission and servitude
+that were written on these two faces--one mischievously recalcitrant,
+the other so malignantly cruel?
+
+He read the thoughts of Lucien and Esther, who seemed paralyzed, as
+Paul and Virginia might have been at the sight of two dreadful snakes,
+and he said in a good-natured undertone:
+
+"You can trust them as you can me; keep no secrets from them; that
+will flatter them.--Go to your work, my little Asie," he added to the
+cook.--"And you, my girl, lay another place," he said to Europe; "the
+children cannot do less than ask papa to breakfast."
+
+When the two women had shut the door, and the Spaniard could hear
+Europe moving to and fro, he turned to Lucien and Esther, and opening
+a wide palm, he said:
+
+"I hold them in the hollow of my hand."
+
+The words and gesture made his hearers shudder.
+
+"Where did you pick them up?" cried Lucien.
+
+"What the devil! I did not look for them at the foot of the throne!"
+replied the man. "Europe has risen from the mire, and is afraid of
+sinking into it again. Threaten them with Monsieur Abbe when they do
+not please you, and you will see them quake like mice when the cat is
+mentioned. I am used to taming wild beasts," he added with a smile.
+
+"You strike me as being a demon," said Esther, clinging closer to
+Lucien.
+
+"My child, I tried to win you to heaven; but a repentant Magdalen is
+always a practical joke on the Church. If ever there were one, she
+would relapse into the courtesan in Paradise. You have gained this
+much: you are forgotten, and have acquired the manners of a lady, for
+you learned in the convent what you never could have learned in the
+ranks of infamy in which you were living.--You owe me nothing," said
+he, observing a beautiful look of gratitude on Esther's face. "I did
+it all for him," and he pointed to Lucien. "You are, you will always
+be, you will die a prostitute; for in spite of the delightful theories
+of cattle-breeders, you can never, here below, become anything but
+what you are. The man who feels bumps is right. You have the bump of
+love."
+
+The Spaniard, it will be seen, was a fatalist, like Napoleon, Mahomet,
+and many other great politicians. It is a strange thing that most men
+of action have a tendency to fatalism, just as most great thinkers
+have a tendency to believe in Providence.
+
+"What I am, I do not know," said Esther with angelic sweetness; "but I
+love Lucien, and shall die worshiping him."
+
+"Come to breakfast," said the Spaniard sharply. "And pray to God that
+Lucien may not marry too soon, for then you would never see him
+again."
+
+"His marriage would be my death," said she.
+
+She allowed the sham priest to lead the way, that she might stand on
+tiptoe and whisper to Lucien without being seen.
+
+"Is it your wish," said she, "that I should remain in the power of
+this man who sets two hyenas to guard me?"
+
+Lucien bowed his head.
+
+The poor child swallowed down her grief and affected gladness, but she
+felt cruelly oppressed. It needed more than a year of constant and
+devoted care before she was accustomed to these two dreadful creatures
+whom Carlos Herrera called the two watch-dogs.
+
+
+
+Lucien's conduct since his return to Paris had borne the stamp of such
+profound policy that it excited--and could not fail to excite--the
+jealousy of all his former friends, on whom he took no vengeance but
+by making them furious at his success, at his exquisite "get up," and
+his way of keeping every one at a distance. The poet, once so
+communicative, so genial, had turned cold and reserved. De Marsay, the
+model adopted by all the youth of Paris, did not make a greater
+display of reticence in speech and deed than did Lucien. As to brains,
+the journalist had ere now proved his mettle. De Marsay, against whom
+many people chose to pit Lucien, giving a preference to the poet, was
+small-minded enough to resent this.
+
+Lucien, now in high favor with men who secretly pulled the wires of
+power, was so completely indifferent to literary fame, that he did not
+care about the success of his romance, republished under its real
+title, L'Archer de Charles IX., or the excitement caused by his volume
+of sonnets called Les Marguerites, of which Dauriat sold out the
+edition in a week.
+
+"It is posthumous fame," said he, with a laugh, to Mademoiselle des
+Touches, who congratulated him.
+
+The terrible Spaniard held his creature with an iron hand, keeping him
+in the road towards the goal where the trumpets and gifts of victory
+await patient politicians. Lucien had taken Beaudenord's bachelor
+quarters on the Quai Malaquais, to be near the Rue Taitbout, and his
+adviser was lodging under the same roof on the fourth floor. Lucien
+kept only one horse to ride and drive, a man-servant, and a groom.
+When he was not dining out, he dined with Esther.
+
+Carlos Herrera kept such a keen eye on the service in the house on the
+Quai Malaquais, that Lucien did not spend ten thousand francs a year,
+all told. Ten thousand more were enough for Esther, thanks to the
+unfailing and inexplicable devotion of Asie and Europe. Lucien took
+the utmost precautions in going in and out at the Rue Taitbout. He
+never came but in a cab, with the blinds down, and always drove into
+the courtyard. Thus his passion for Esther and the very existence of
+the establishment in the Rue Taitbout, being unknown to the world, did
+him no harm in his connections or undertakings. No rash word ever
+escaped him on this delicate subject. His mistakes of this sort with
+regard to Coralie, at the time of his first stay in Paris, had given
+him experience.
+
+In the first place, his life was marked by the correct regularity
+under which many mysteries can be hidden; he remained in society every
+night till one in the morning; he was always at home from ten till one
+in the afternoon; then he drove in the Bois de Boulogne and paid calls
+till five. He was rarely seen to be on foot, and thus avoided old
+acquaintances. When some journalist or one of his former associates
+waved him a greeting, he responded with a bow, polite enough to avert
+annoyance, but significant of such deep contempt as killed all French
+geniality. He thus had very soon got rid of persons whom he would
+rather never have known.
+
+An old-established aversion kept him from going to see Madame
+d'Espard, who often wished to get him to her house; but when he met
+her at those of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, of Mademoiselle des
+Touches, of the Comtesse de Montcornet or elsewhere, he was always
+exquisitely polite to her. This hatred, fully reciprocated by Madame
+d'Espard, compelled Lucien to act with prudence; but it will be seen
+how he had added fuel to it by allowing himself a stroke of revenge,
+which gained him indeed a severe lecture from Carlos.
+
+"You are not yet strong enough to be revenged on any one, whoever it
+may be," said the Spaniard. "When we are walking under a burning sun
+we do not stop to gather even the finest flowers."
+
+Lucien was so genuinely superior, and had so fine a future before him,
+that the young men who chose to be offended or puzzled by his return
+to Paris and his unaccountable good fortune were enchanted whenever
+they could do him an ill turn. He knew that he had many enemies, and
+was well aware of those hostile feelings among his friends. The Abbe,
+indeed, took admirable care of his adopted son, putting him on his
+guard against the treachery of the world and the fatal imprudence of
+youth. Lucien was expected to tell, and did in fact tell the Abbe each
+evening, every trivial incident of the day. Thanks to his Mentor's
+advice, he put the keenest curiosity--the curiosity of the world--off
+the scent. Entrenched in the gravity of an Englishman, and fortified
+by the redoubts cast up by diplomatic circumspection, he never gave
+any one the right or the opportunity of seeing a corner even of his
+concerns. His handsome young face had, by practice, become as
+expressionless in society as that of a princess at a ceremonial.
+
+Towards the middle of 1829 his marriage began to be talked of to the
+eldest daughter of the Duchesse de Grandlieu, who at that time had no
+less than four daughters to provide for. No one doubted that in honor
+of such an alliance the King would revive for Lucien the title of
+Marquis. This distinction would establish Lucien's fortune as a
+diplomate, and he would probably be accredited as Minister to some
+German Court. For the last three years Lucien's life had been regular
+and above reproach; indeed, de Marsay had made this remarkable speech
+about him:
+
+"That young fellow must have a very strong hand behind him."
+
+Thus Lucien was almost a person of importance. His passion for Esther
+had, in fact, helped him greatly to play his part of a serious man. A
+habit of this kind guards an ambitious man from many follies; having
+no connection with any woman of fashion, he cannot be caught by the
+reactions of mere physical nature on his moral sense.
+
+As to happiness, Lucien's was the realization of a poet's dreams--a
+penniless poet's, hungering in a garret. Esther, the ideal courtesan
+in love, while she reminded Lucien of Coralie, the actress with whom
+he had lived for a year, completely eclipsed her. Every loving and
+devoted woman invents seclusion, incognito, the life of a pearl in the
+depths of the sea; but to most of them this is no more than one of the
+delightful whims which supply a subject for conversation; a proof of
+love which they dream of giving, but do not give; whereas Esther, to
+whom her first enchantment was ever new, who lived perpetually in the
+glow of Lucien's first incendiary glance, never, in four yours, had an
+impulse of curiosity. She gave her whole mind to the task of adhering
+to the terms of the programme prescribed by the sinister Spaniard.
+Nay, more! In the midst of intoxicating happiness she never took
+unfair advantage of the unlimited power that the constantly revived
+desire of a lover gives to the woman he loves to ask Lucien a single
+question regarding Herrera, of whom indeed she lived in constant awe;
+she dared not even think of him. The elaborate benefactions of that
+extraordinary man, to whom Esther undoubtedly owed her feminine
+accomplishment and her well-bred manner, struck the poor girl as
+advances on account of hell.
+
+"I shall have to pay for all this some day," she would tell herself
+with dismay.
+
+Every fine night she went out in a hired carriage. She was driven with
+a rapidity no doubt insisted on by the Abbe, in one or another of the
+beautiful woods round Paris, Boulogne, Vincennes, Romainville, or
+Ville-d'Avray, often with Lucien, sometimes alone with Europe. There
+she could walk about without fear; for when Lucien was not with her,
+she was attended by a servant dressed like the smartest of outriders,
+armed with a real knife, whose face and brawny build alike proclaimed
+him a ruthless athlete. This protector was also provided, in the
+fashion of English footmen, with a stick, but such as single-stick
+players use, with which they can keep off more than one assailant. In
+obedience to an order of the Abbe's, Esther had never spoken a word to
+this escort. When madame wished to go home, Europe gave a call; the
+man in waiting whistled to the driver, who was always within hearing.
+
+When Lucien was walking with Esther, Europe and this man remained
+about a hundred paces behind, like two of the infernal minions that
+figure in the Thousand and One Nights, which enchanters place at the
+service of their devotees.
+
+The men, and yet more the women of Paris, know nothing of the charm of
+a walk in the woods on a fine night. The stillness, the moonlight
+effects, the solitude, have the soothing effect of a bath. Esther
+usually went out at ten, walked about from midnight till one o'clock,
+and came in at half-past two. It was never daylight in her rooms till
+eleven. She then bathed and went through an elaborate toilet which is
+unknown to most women, for it takes up too much time, and is rarely
+carried out by any but courtesans, women of the town, or fine ladies
+who have the day before them. She was only just ready when Lucien
+came, and appeared before him as a newly opened flower. Her only care
+was that her poet should be happy; she was his toy, his chattel; she
+gave him entire liberty. She never cast a glance beyond the circle
+where she shone. On this the Abbe had insisted, for it was part of his
+profound policy that Lucien should have gallant adventures.
+
+Happiness has no history, and the story-tellers of all lands have
+understood this so well that the words, "They are happy," are the end
+of every love tale. Hence only the ways and means can be recorded of
+this really romantic happiness in the heart of Paris. It was happiness
+in its loveliest form, a poem, a symphony, of four years' duration.
+Every woman will exclaim, "That was much!" Neither Esther nor Lucien
+had ever said, "This is too much!" And the formula, "They were happy,"
+was more emphatically true, than even in a fairy tale, for "they had
+NO children."
+
+So Lucien could coquet with the world, give way to his poet's
+caprices, and, it may be plainly admitted, to the necessities of his
+position. All this time he was slowly making his way, and was able to
+render secret service to certain political personages by helping them
+in their work. In such matters he was eminently discreet. He
+cultivated Madame de Serizy's circle, being, it was rumored, on the
+very best terms with that lady. Madame de Serizy had carried him off
+from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who, it was said, had "thrown him
+over," one of the phrases by which women avenge themselves on
+happiness they envy. Lucien was in the lap, so to speak, of the High
+Almoner's set, and intimate with women who were the Archbishop's
+personal friends. He was modest and reserved; he waited patiently. So
+de Marsay's speech--de Marsay was now married, and made his wife live
+as retired a life as Esther--was significant in more ways that one.
+
+But the submarine perils of such a course as Lucien's will be
+sufficiently obvious in the course of this chronicle.
+
+
+
+Matters were in this position when, one fine night in August, the
+Baron de Nucingen was driving back to Paris from the country residence
+of a foreign banker, settled in France, with whom he had been dining.
+The estate lay at eight leagues from Paris in the district of la Brie.
+Now, the Baron's coachman having undertaken to drive his master there
+and back with his own horses, at nightfall ventured to moderate the
+pace.
+
+As they entered the forest of Vincennes the position of beast, man,
+and master was as follows:--The coachman, liberally soaked in the
+kitchen of the aristocrat of the Bourse, was perfectly tipsy, and
+slept soundly, while still holding the reins to deceive other
+wayfarers. The footman, seated behind, was snoring like a wooden top
+from Germany--the land of little carved figures, of large wine-vats,
+and of humming-tops. The Baron had tried to think; but after passing
+the bridge at Gournay, the soft somnolence of digestion had sealed his
+eyes. The horses understood the coachman's plight from the slackness
+of the reins; they heard the footman's basso continuo from his perch
+behind; they saw that they were masters of the situation, and took
+advantage of their few minutes' freedom to make their own pace. Like
+intelligent slaves, they gave highway robbers the chance of plundering
+one of the richest capitalists in France, the most deeply cunning of
+the race which, in France, have been energetically styled lynxes--
+loups-cerviers. Finally, being independent of control, and tempted by
+the curiosity which every one must have remarked in domestic animals,
+they stopped where four roads met, face to face with some other
+horses, whom they, no doubt, asked in horses' language: "Who may you
+be? What are you doing? Are you comfortable?"
+
+When the chaise stopped, the Baron awoke from his nap. At first he
+fancied that he was still in his friend's park; then he was startled
+by a celestial vision, which found him unarmed with his usual weapon--
+self-interest. The moonlight was brilliant; he could have read by it--
+even an evening paper. In the silence of the forest, under this pure
+light, the Baron saw a woman, alone, who, as she got into a hired
+chaise, looked at the strange spectacle of this sleep-stricken
+carriage. At the sight of this angel the Baron felt as though a light
+had flashed into glory within him. The young lady, seeing herself
+admired, pulled down her veil with terrified haste. The man-servant
+gave a signal which the driver perfectly understood, for the vehicle
+went off like an arrow.
+
+The old banker was fearfully agitated; the blood left his feet cold
+and carried fire to his brain, his head sent the flame back to his
+heart; he was chocking. The unhappy man foresaw a fit of indigestion,
+but in spite of that supreme terror he stood up.
+
+"Follow qvick, fery qvick.--Tam you, you are ashleep!" he cried. "A
+hundert franc if you catch up dat chaise."
+
+At the words "A hundred francs," the coachman woke up. The servant
+behind heard them, no doubt, in his dreams. The baron reiterated his
+orders, the coachman urged the horses to a gallop, and at the Barriere
+du Trone had succeeded in overtaking a carriage resembling that in
+which Nucingen had seen the divine fair one, but which contained a
+swaggering head-clerk from some first-class shop and a lady of the Rue
+Vivienne.
+
+This blunder filled the Baron with consternation.
+
+"If only I had prought Chorge inshtead of you, shtupid fool, he should
+have fount dat voman," said he to the servant, while the excise
+officers were searching the carriage.
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur le Baron, the devil was behind the chaise, I
+believe, disguised as an armed escort, and he sent this chaise instead
+of hers."
+
+"Dere is no such ting as de Teufel," said the Baron.
+
+The Baron de Nucingen owned to sixty; he no longer cared for women,
+and for his wife least of all. He boasted that he had never known such
+love as makes a fool of a man. He declared that he was happy to have
+done with women; the most angelic of them, he frankly said, was not
+worth what she cost, even if you got her for nothing. He was supposed
+to be so entirely blase, that he no longer paid two thousand francs a
+month for the pleasure of being deceived. His eyes looked coldly down
+from his opera box on the corps de ballet; never a glance was shot at
+the capitalist by any one of that formidable swarm of old young girls,
+and young old women, the cream of Paris pleasure.
+
+Natural love, artificial and love-of-show love, love based on self-
+esteem and vanity, love as a display of taste, decent, conjugal love,
+eccentric love--the Baron had paid for them all, had known them all
+excepting real spontaneous love. This passion had now pounced down on
+him like an eagle on its prey, as it did on Gentz, the confidential
+friend of His Highness the Prince of Metternich. All the world knows
+what follies the old diplomate committed for Fanny Elssler, whose
+rehearsals took up a great deal more of his time than the concerns of
+Europe.
+
+The woman who had just overthrown that iron-bound money-box, called
+Nucingen, had appeared to him as one of those who are unique in their
+generation. It is not certain that Titian's mistress, or Leonardo da
+Vinci's Monna Lisa, or Raphael's Fornarina were as beautiful as this
+exquisite Esther, in whom not the most practised eye of the most
+experienced Parisian could have detected the faintest trace of the
+ordinary courtesan. The Baron was especially startled by the noble and
+stately air, the air of a well-born woman, which Esther, beloved, and
+lapped in luxury, elegance, and devotedness, had in the highest
+degree. Happy love is the divine unction of women; it makes them all
+as lofty as empresses.
+
+For eight nights in succession the Baron went to the forest of
+Vincennes, then to the Bois de Boulogne, to the woods of Ville-
+d'Avray, to Meudon, in short, everywhere in the neighborhood of Paris,
+but failed to meet Esther. That beautiful Jewish face, which he called
+"a face out of te Biple," was always before his eyes. By the end of a
+fortnight he had lost his appetite.
+
+Delphine de Nucingen, and her daughter Augusta, whom the Baroness was
+now taking out, did not at first perceive the change that had come
+over the Baron. The mother and daughter only saw him at breakfast in
+the morning and at dinner in the evening, when they all dined at home,
+and this was only on the evenings when Delphine received company. But
+by the end of two months, tortured by a fever of impatience, and in a
+state like that produced by acute home-sickness, the Baron, amazed to
+find his millions impotent, grew so thin, and seemed so seriously ill,
+that Delphine had secret hopes of finding herself a widow. She pitied
+her husband, somewhat hypocritically, and kept her daughter in
+seclusion. She bored her husband with questions; he answered as
+Englishmen answer when suffering from spleen, hardly a word.
+
+Delphine de Nucingen gave a grand dinner every Sunday. She had chosen
+that day for her receptions, after observing that no people of fashion
+went to the play, and that the day was pretty generally an open one.
+The emancipation of the shopkeeping and middle classes makes Sunday
+almost as tiresome in Paris as it is deadly in London. So the Baroness
+invited the famous Desplein to dinner, to consult him in spite of the
+sick man, for Nucingen persisted in asserting that he was perfectly
+well.
+
+Keller, Rastignac, de Marsay, du Tillet, all their friends had made
+the Baroness understand that a man like Nucingen could not be allowed
+to die without any notice being taken of it; his enormous business
+transactions demanded some care; it was absolutely necessary to know
+where he stood. These gentlemen also were asked to dinner, and the
+Comte de Gondreville, Francois Keller's father-in-law, the Chevalier
+d'Espard, des Lupeaulx, Doctor Bianchon--Desplein's best beloved pupil
+--Beaudenord and his wife, the Comte and Comtesse de Montcornet,
+Blondet, Mademoiselle des Touches and Conti, and finally, Lucien de
+Rubempre, for whom Rastignac had for the last five years manifested
+the warmest regard--by order, as the advertisements have it.
+
+"We shall not find it easy to get rid of that young fellow," said
+Blondet to Rastignac, when he saw Lucien come in handsomer than ever,
+and uncommonly well dressed.
+
+"It is wiser to make friends with him, for he is formidable," said
+Rastignac.
+
+"He?" said de Marsay. "No one is formidable to my knowledge but men
+whose position is assured, and his is unattacked rather than
+attackable! Look here, what does he live on? Where does his money come
+from? He has, I am certain, sixty thousand francs in debts."
+
+"He has found a friend in a very rich Spanish priest who has taken a
+fancy to him," replied Rastignac.
+
+"He is going to be married to the eldest Mademoiselle de Grandlieu,"
+said Mademoiselle des Touches.
+
+"Yes," said the Chevalier d'Espard, "but they require him to buy an
+estate worth thirty thousand francs a year as security for the fortune
+he is to settle on the young lady, and for that he needs a million
+francs, which are not to be found in any Spaniard's shoes."
+
+"That is dear, for Clotilde is very ugly," said the Baroness.
+
+Madame de Nucingen affected to call Mademoiselle de Grandlieu by her
+Christian name, as though she, nee Goriot, frequented that society.
+
+"No," replied du Tillet, "the daughter of a duchess is never ugly to
+the like of us, especially when she brings with her the title of
+Marquis and a diplomatic appointment. But the great obstacle to the
+marriage is Madame de Serizy's insane passion for Lucien. She must
+give him a great deal of money."
+
+"Then I am not surprised at seeing Lucien so serious; for Madame de
+Serizy will certainly not give him a million francs to help him to
+marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. He probably sees no way out of the
+scrape," said de Marsay.
+
+"But Mademoiselle de Grandlieu worships him," said the Comtesse de
+Montcornet; "and with the young person's assistance, he may perhaps
+make better terms."
+
+"And what will he do with his sister and brother-in-law at Angouleme?"
+asked the Chevalier d'Espard.
+
+"Well, his sister is rich," replied Rastignac, "and he now speaks of
+her as Madame Sechard de Marsac."
+
+"Whatever difficulties there may be, he is a very good-looking
+fellow," said Bianchon, rising to greet Lucien.
+
+"How 'do, my dear fellow?" said Rastignac, shaking hands warmly with
+Lucien.
+
+De Marsay bowed coldly after Lucien had first bowed to him.
+
+Before dinner Desplein and Bianchon, who studied the Baron while
+amusing him, convinced themselves that this malady was entirely
+nervous; but neither could guess the cause, so impossible did it seem
+that the great politician of the money market could be in love. When
+Bianchon, seeing nothing but love to account for the banker's
+condition, hinted as much to Delphine de Nucingen, she smiled as a
+woman who has long known all her husband's weaknesses. After dinner,
+however, when they all adjourned to the garden, the more intimate of
+the party gathered round the banker, eager to clear up this
+extraordinary case when they heard Bianchon pronounce that Nucingen
+must be in love.
+
+"Do you know, Baron," said de Marsay, "that you have grown very thin?
+You are suspected of violating the laws of financial Nature."
+
+"Ach, nefer!" said the Baron.
+
+"Yes, yes," replied de Marsay. "They dare to say that you are in
+love."
+
+"Dat is true," replied Nucingen piteously; "I am in lof for somebody I
+do not know."
+
+"You, in love, you? You are a coxcomb!" said the Chevalier d'Espard.
+
+"In lof, at my aje! I know dat is too ridiculous. But vat can I help
+it! Dat is so."
+
+"A woman of the world?" asked Lucien.
+
+"Nay," said de Marsay. "The Baron would not grow so thin but for a
+hopeless love, and he has money enough to buy all the women who will
+or can sell themselves!"
+
+"I do not know who she it," said the Baron. "And as Motame de Nucingen
+is inside de trawing-room, I may say so, dat till now I have nefer
+known what it is to lof. Lof! I tink it is to grow tin."
+
+"And where did you meet this innocent daisy?" asked Rastignac.
+
+"In a carriage, at mitnight, in de forest of Fincennes."
+
+"Describe her," said de Marsay.
+
+"A vhite gaze hat, a rose gown, a vhite scharf, a vhite feil--a face
+just out of de Biple. Eyes like Feuer, an Eastern color----"
+
+"You were dreaming," said Lucien, with a smile.
+
+"Dat is true; I vas shleeping like a pig--a pig mit his shkin full,"
+he added, "for I vas on my vay home from tinner at mine friend's----"
+
+"Was she alone?" said du Tillet, interrupting him.
+
+"Ja," said the Baron dolefully; "but she had ein heiduque behind dat
+carriage and a maid-shervant----"
+
+"Lucien looks as if he knew her," exclaimed Rastignac, seeing Esther's
+lover smile.
+
+"Who doesn't know the woman who would go out at midnight to meet
+Nucingen?" said Lucien, turning on his heel.
+
+"Well, she is not a woman who is seen in society, or the Baron would
+have recognized the man," said the Chevalier d'Espard.
+
+"I have nefer seen him," replied the Baron. "And for forty days now I
+have had her seeked for by de Police, and dey do not find her."
+
+"It is better that she should cost you a few hundred francs than cost
+you your life," said Desplein; "and, at your age, a passion without
+hope is dangerous, you might die of it."
+
+"Ja, ja," replied the Baron, addressing Desplein. "And vat I eat does
+me no goot, de air I breade feels to choke me. I go to de forest of
+Fincennes to see de place vat I see her--and dat is all my life. I
+could not tink of de last loan--I trust to my partners vat haf pity on
+me. I could pay one million franc to see dat voman--and I should gain
+by dat, for I do nothing on de Bourse.--Ask du Tillet."
+
+"Very true," replied du Tillet; "he hates business; he is quite unlike
+himself; it is a sign of death."
+
+"A sign of lof," replied Nucingen; "and for me, dat is all de same
+ting."
+
+The simple candor of the old man, no longer the stock-jobber, who, for
+the first time in his life, saw that something was more sacred and
+more precious than gold, really moved these world-hardened men; some
+exchanged smiles; other looked at Nucingen with an expression that
+plainly said, "Such a man to have come to this!"--And then they all
+returned to the drawing-room, talking over the event.
+
+For it was indeed an event calculated to produce the greatest
+sensation. Madame de Nucingen went into fits of laughter when Lucien
+betrayed her husband's secret; but the Baron, when he heard his wife's
+sarcasms, took her by the arm and led her into the recess of a window.
+
+"Motame," said he in an undertone, "have I ever laughed at all at your
+passions, that you should laugh at mine? A goot frau should help her
+husband out of his difficulty vidout making game of him like vat you
+do."
+
+From the description given by the old banker, Lucien had recognized
+his Esther. Much annoyed that his smile should have been observed, he
+took advantage of a moment when coffee was served, and the
+conversation became general, to vanish from the scene.
+
+"What has become of Monsieur de Rubempre?" said the Baroness.
+
+"He is faithful to his motto: Quid me continebit?" said Rastignac.
+
+"Which means, 'Who can detain me?' or 'I am unconquerable,' as you
+choose," added de Marsay.
+
+"Just as Monsieur le Baron was speaking of his unknown lady, Lucien
+smiled in a way that makes me fancy he may know her," said Horace
+Bianchon, not thinking how dangerous such a natural remark might be.
+
+"Goot!" said the banker to himself.
+
+Like all incurables, the Baron clutched at everything that seemed at
+all hopeful; he promised himself that he would have Lucien watched by
+some one besides Louchard and his men--Louchard, the sharpest
+commercial detective in Paris--to whom he had applied about a
+fortnight since.
+
+"Before going home to Esther, Lucien was due at the Hotel Grandlieu,
+to spend the two hours which made Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique de
+Grandlieu the happiest girl in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But the
+prudence characteristic of this ambitious youth warned him to inform
+Carlos Herrera forthwith of the effect resulting from the smile wrung
+from him by the Baron's description of Esther. The banker's passion
+for Esther, and the idea that had occurred to him of setting the
+police to seek the unknown beauty, were indeed events of sufficient
+importance to be at once communicated to the man who had sought, under
+a priest's robe, the shelter which criminals of old could find in a
+church. And Lucien's road from the Rue Saint-Lazare, where Nucingen at
+that time lived, to the Rue Saint-Dominique, where was the Hotel
+Grandlieu, led him past his lodgings on the Quai Malaquais.
+
+Lucien found his formidable friend smoking his breviary--that is to
+say, coloring a short pipe before retiring to bed. The man, strange
+rather than foreign, had given up Spanish cigarettes, finding them too
+mild.
+
+"Matters look serious," said the Spaniard, when Lucien had told him
+all. "The Baron, who employs Louchard to hunt up the girl, will
+certainly be sharp enough to set a spy at your heels, and everything
+will come out. To-night and to-morrow morning will not give me more
+than enough time to pack the cards for the game I must play against
+the Baron; first and foremost, I must prove to him that the police
+cannot help him. When our lynx has given up all hope of finding his
+ewe-lamb, I will undertake to sell her for all she is worth to
+him----"
+
+"Sell Esther!" cried Lucien, whose first impulse was always the right
+one.
+
+"Do you forget where we stand?" cried Carlos Herrera.
+
+"No money left," the Spaniard went on, "and sixty thousand francs of
+debts to be paid! If you want to marry Clotilde de Grandlieu, you must
+invest a million of francs in land as security for that ugly
+creature's settlement. Well, then, Esther is the quarry I mean to set
+before that lynx to help us to ease him of that million. That is my
+concern."
+
+"Esther will never----"
+
+"That is my concern."
+
+"She will die of it."
+
+"That is the undertaker's concern. Besides, what then?" cried the
+savage, checking Lucien's lamentations merely by his attitude. "How
+many generals died in the prime of life for the Emperor Napoleon?" he
+asked, after a short silence. "There are always plenty of women. In
+1821 Coralie was unique in your eyes; and yet you found Esther. After
+her will come--do you know who?--the unknown fair. And she of all
+women is the fairest, and you will find her in the capital where the
+Duc de Grandlieu's son-in-law will be Minister and representative of
+the King of France.--And do you tell me now, great Baby, that Esther
+will die of it? Again, can Mademoiselle de Grandlieu's husband keep
+Esther?
+
+"You have only to leave everything to me; you need not take the
+trouble to think at all; that is my concern. Only you must do without
+Esther for a week or two; but go to the Rue Taitbout, all the same.--
+Come, be off to bill and coo on your plank of salvation, and play your
+part well; slip the flaming note you wrote this morning into
+Clotilde's hand, and bring me back a warm response. She will
+recompense herself for many woes in writing. I take to that girl.
+
+"You will find Esther a little depressed, but tell her to obey. We
+must display our livery of virtue, our doublet of honesty, the screen
+behind which all great men hide their infamy.--I must show off my
+handsomer self--you must never be suspected. Chance has served us
+better than my brain, which has been beating about in a void for these
+two months past."
+
+All the while he was jerking out these dreadful sentences, one by one,
+like pistol shots, Carlos Herrera was dressing himself to go out.
+
+"You are evidently delighted," cried Lucien. "You never liked poor
+Esther, and you look forward with joy to the moment when you will be
+rid of her."
+
+"You have never tired of loving her, have you? Well, I have never
+tired of detesting her. But have I not always behaved as though I were
+sincerely attached to the hussy--I, who, through Asie, hold her life
+in my hands? A few bad mushrooms in a stew--and there an end. But
+Mademoiselle Esther still lives!--and is happy!--And do you know why?
+Because you love her. Do not be a fool. For four years we have been
+waiting for a chance to turn up, for us or against us; well, it will
+take something more than mere cleverness to wash the cabbage luck has
+flung at us now. There are good and bad together in this turn of the
+wheel--as there are in everything. Do you know what I was thinking of
+when you came in?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Of making myself heir here, as I did at Barcelona, to an old bigot,
+by Asie's help."
+
+"A crime?"
+
+"I saw no other way of securing your fortune. The creditors are making
+a stir. If once the bailiffs were at your heels, and you were turned
+out of the Hotel Grandlieu, where would you be? There would be the
+devil to pay then."
+
+And Carlos Herrera, by a pantomimic gesture, showed the suicide of a
+man throwing himself into the water; then he fixed on Lucien one of
+those steady, piercing looks by which the will of a strong man is
+injected, so to speak, into a weak one. This fascinating glare, which
+relaxed all Lucien's fibres of resistance, revealed the existence not
+merely of secrets of life and death between him and his adviser, but
+also of feelings as far above ordinary feeling as the man himself was
+above his vile position.
+
+Carlos Herrera, a man at once ignoble and magnanimous, obscure and
+famous, compelled to live out of the world from which the law had
+banned him, exhausted by vice and by frenzied and terrible struggles,
+though endowed with powers of mind that ate into his soul, consumed
+especially by a fever of vitality, now lived again in the elegant
+person of Lucien de Rubempre, whose soul had become his own. He was
+represented in social life by the poet, to whom he lent his tenacity
+and iron will. To him Lucien was more than a son, more than a woman
+beloved, more than a family, more than his life; he was his revenge;
+and as souls cling more closely to a feeling than to existence, he had
+bound the young man to him by insoluble ties.
+
+After rescuing Lucien's life at the moment when the poet in
+desperation was on the verge of suicide, he had proposed to him one of
+those infernal bargains which are heard of only in romances, but of
+which the hideous possibility has often been proved in courts of
+justice by celebrated criminal dramas. While lavishing on Lucien all
+the delights of Paris life, and proving to him that he yet had a great
+future before him, he had made him his chattel.
+
+But, indeed, no sacrifice was too great for this strange man when it
+was to gratify his second self. With all his strength, he was so weak
+to this creature of his making that he had even told him all his
+secrets. Perhaps this abstract complicity was a bond the more between
+them.
+
+Since the day when La Torpille had been snatched away, Lucien had
+known on what a vile foundation his good fortune rested. That priest's
+robe covered Jacques Collin, a man famous on the hulks, who ten years
+since had lived under the homely name of Vautrin in the Maison
+Vauquer, where Rastignac and Bianchon were at that time boarders.
+
+Jacques Collin, known as Trompe-la-Mort, had escaped from Rochefort
+almost as soon as he was recaptured, profiting by the example of the
+famous Comte de Sainte-Helene, while modifying all that was ill
+planned in Coignard's daring scheme. To take the place of an honest
+man and carry on the convict's career is a proposition of which the
+two terms are too contradictory for a disastrous outcome not to be
+inevitable, especially in Paris; for, by establishing himself in a
+family, a convict multiplies tenfold the perils of such a
+substitution. And to be safe from all investigation, must not a man
+assume a position far above the ordinary interests of life. A man of
+the world is subject to risks such as rarely trouble those who have no
+contact with the world; hence the priest's gown is the safest disguise
+when it can be authenticated by an exemplary life in solitude and
+inactivity.
+
+"So a priest I will be," said the legally dead man, who was quite
+determined to resuscitate as a figure in the world, and to satisfy
+passions as strange as himself.
+
+The civil war caused by the Constitution of 1812 in Spain, whither
+this energetic man had betaken himself, enabled him to murder secretly
+the real Carlos Herrera from an ambush. This ecclesiastic, the bastard
+son of a grandee, long since deserted by his father, and not knowing
+to what woman he owed his birth, was intrusted by King Ferdinand VII.,
+to whom a bishop had recommended him, with a political mission to
+France. The bishop, the only man who took any interest in Carlos
+Herrera, died while this foundling son of the Church was on his
+journey from Cadiz to Madrid, and from Madrid to France. Delighted to
+have met with this longed-for opportunity, and under the most
+desirable conditions, Jacques Collin scored his back to efface the
+fatal letters, and altered his complexion by the use of chemicals.
+Thus metamorphosing himself face to face with the corpse, he contrived
+to achieve some likeness to his Sosia. And to complete a change almost
+as marvelous as that related in the Arabian tale, where a dervish has
+acquired the power, old as he is, of entering into a young body, by a
+magic spell, the convict, who spoke Spanish, learned as much Latin as
+an Andalusian priest need know.
+
+As banker to three hulks, Collin was rich in the cash intrusted to his
+known, and indeed enforced, honesty. Among such company a mistake is
+paid for by a dagger thrust. To this capital he now added the money
+given by the bishop to Don Carlos Herrera. Then, before leaving Spain,
+he was able to possess himself of the treasure of an old bigot at
+Barcelona, to whom he gave absolution, promising that he would make
+restitution of the money constituting her fortune, which his penitent
+had stolen by means of murder.
+
+Jacques Collin, now a priest, and charged with a secret mission which
+would secure him the most brilliant introductions in Paris, determined
+to do nothing that might compromise the character he had assumed, and
+had given himself up to the chances of his new life, when he met
+Lucien on the road between Angouleme and Paris. In this youth the sham
+priest saw a wonderful instrument for power; he saved him from suicide
+saying:
+
+"Give yourself over to me as to a man of God, as men give themselves
+over to the devil, and you will have every chance of a new career. You
+will live as in a dream, and the worst awakening that can come to you
+will be death, which you now wish to meet."
+
+The alliance between these two beings, who were to become one, as it
+were, was based on this substantial reasoning, and Carlos Herrera
+cemented it by an ingeniously plotted complicity. He had the very
+genius of corruption, and undermined Lucien's honesty by plunging him
+into cruel necessity, and extricating him by obtaining his tacit
+consent to bad or disgraceful actions, which nevertheless left him
+pure, loyal, and noble in the eyes of the world. Lucien was the social
+magnificence under whose shadow the forger meant to live.
+
+"I am the author, you are the play; if you fail, it is I who shall be
+hissed," said he on the day when he confessed his sacrilegious
+disguise.
+
+Carlos prudently confessed only a little at a time, measuring the
+horrors of his revelations by Lucien's progress and needs. Thus
+Trompe-la-Mort did not let out his last secret till the habit of
+Parisian pleasures and success, and gratified vanity, had enslaved the
+weak-minded poet body and soul. Where Rastignac, when tempted by this
+demon, had stood firm, Lucien, better managed, and more ingeniously
+compromised, succumbed, conquered especially by his satisfaction in
+having attained an eminent position. Incarnate evil, whose poetical
+embodiment is called the Devil, displayed every delightful seduction
+before this youth, who was half a woman, and at first gave much and
+asked for little. The great argument used by Carlos was the eternal
+secret promised by Tartufe to Elmire.
+
+The repeated proofs of absolute devotion, such as that of Said to
+Mahomet, put the finishing touch to the horrible achievement of
+Lucien's subjugation by a Jacques Collin.
+
+At this moment not only had Esther and Lucien devoured all the funds
+intrusted to the honesty of the banker of the hulks, who, for their
+sakes, had rendered himself liable to a dreadful calling to account,
+but the dandy, the forger, and the courtesan were also in debt. Thus,
+as the very moment of Lucien's expected success, the smallest pebble
+under the foot of either of these three persons might involve the ruin
+of the fantastic structure of fortune so audaciously built up.
+
+At the opera ball Rastignac had recognized the man he had known as
+Vautrin at Madame Vauquer's; but he knew that if he did not hold his
+tongue, he was a dead man. So Madame de Nucingen's lover and Lucien
+had exchanged glances in which fear lurked, on both sides, under an
+expression of amity. In the moment of danger, Rastignac, it is clear,
+would have been delighted to provide the vehicle that should convey
+Jacques Collin to the scaffold. From all this it may be understood
+that Carlos heard of the Baron's passion with a glow of sombre
+satisfaction, while he perceived in a single flash all the advantage a
+man of his temper might derive by means of a hapless Esther.
+
+"Go on," said he to Lucien. "The Devil is mindful of his chaplain."
+
+"You are smoking on a powder barrel."
+
+"Incedo per ignes," replied Carlos with a smile. "That is my trade."
+
+
+
+The House of Grandlieu divided into two branches about the middle of
+the last century: first, the ducal line destined to lapse, since the
+present duke has only daughters; and then the Vicomtes de Grandlieu,
+who will now inherit the title and armorial bearings of the elder
+branch. The ducal house bears gules, three broad axes or in fess, with
+the famous motto: Caveo non timeo, which epitomizes the history of the
+family.
+
+The coat of the Vicomtes de Grandlieu is the same quartered with that
+of Navarreins: gules, a fess crenelated or, surmounted by a knight's
+helmet, with the motto: Grands faits, grand lieu. The present
+Viscountess, widowed in 1813, has a son and a daughter. Though she
+returned from the Emigration almost ruined, she recovered a
+considerable fortune by the zealous aid of Derville the lawyer.
+
+The Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu, on coming home in 1804, were the
+object of the Emperor's advances; indeed, Napoleon, seeing them come
+to his court, restored to them all of the Grandlieu estates that had
+been confiscated to the nation, to the amount of about forty thousand
+francs a year. Of all the great nobles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain
+who allowed themselves to be won over by Napoleon, this Duke and
+Duchess--she was an Ajuda of the senior branch, and connected with the
+Braganzas--were the only family who afterwards never disowned him and
+his liberality. When the Faubourg Saint-Germain remembered this as a
+crime against the Grandlieus, Louis XVIII. respected them for it; but
+perhaps his only object was to annoy MONSIEUR.
+
+A marriage was considered likely between the young Vicomte de
+Grandlieu and Marie-Athenais, the Duke's youngest daughter, now nine
+years old. Sabine, the youngest but one, married the Baron du Guenic
+after the revolution of July 1830; Josephine, the third, became Madame
+d'Ajuda-Pinto after the death of the Marquis' first wife, Mademoiselle
+de Rochefide, or Rochegude. The eldest had taken the veil in 1822. The
+second, Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique, at this time seven-and-
+twenty years of age, was deeply in love with Lucien de Rubempre. It
+need not be asked whether the Duc de Grandlieu's mansion, one of the
+finest in the Rue Saint-Dominique, did not exert a thousand spells
+over Lucien's imagination. Every time the heavy gate turned on its
+hinges to admit his cab, he experienced the gratified vanity to which
+Mirabeau confessed.
+
+"Though my father was a mere druggist at l'Houmeau, I may enter here!"
+This was his thought.
+
+And, indeed, he would have committed far worse crimes than allying
+himself with a forger to preserve his right to mount the steps of that
+entrance, to hear himself announced, "Monsieur de Rubempre" at the
+door of the fine Louis XIV. drawing-room, decorated in the time of the
+grand monarque on the pattern of those at Versailles, where that
+choicest circle met, that cream of Paris society, called then le petit
+chateau.
+
+The noble Portuguese lady, one of those who never care to go out of
+their own home, was usually the centre of her neighbors' attentions--
+the Chaulieus, the Navarreins, the Lenoncourts. The pretty Baronne de
+Macumer--nee de Chaulieu--the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Madame
+d'Espard, Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches--a connection
+of the Grandlieus, who are a Breton family--were frequent visitors on
+their way to a ball or on their return from the opera. The Vicomte de
+Grandlieu, the Duc de Rhetore, the Marquis de Chaulieu--afterwards Duc
+de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu--his wife, Madeleine de Mortsauf, the Duc de
+Lenoncourt's grand-daughter, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, the Prince de
+Blamont-Chauvry, the Marquis de Beauseant, the Vidame de Pamiers, the
+Vandenesses, the old Prince de Cadignan, and his son the Duc de
+Maufrigneuse, were constantly to be seen in this stately drawing-room,
+where they breathed the atmosphere of a Court, where manners, tone,
+and wit were in harmony with the dignity of the Master and Mistress
+whose aristocratic mien and magnificence had obliterated the memory of
+their servility to Napoleon.
+
+The old Duchesse d'Uxelles, mother of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
+was the oracle of this circle, to which Madame de Serizy had never
+gained admittance, though nee de Ronquerolles.
+
+Lucien was brought thither by Madame de Maufrigneuse, who had won over
+her mother to speak in his favor, for she had doted on him for two
+years; and the engaging young poet had kept his footing there, thanks
+to the influence of the high Almoner of France, and the support of the
+Archbishop of Paris. Still, he had not been admitted till he had
+obtained the patent restoring to him the name and arms of the Rubempre
+family. The Duc de Rhetore, the Chevalier d'Espard, and some others,
+jealous of Lucien, periodically stirred up the Duc de Grandlieu's
+prejudices against him by retailing anecdotes of the young man's
+previous career; but the Duchess, a devout Catholic surrounded by the
+great prelates of the Church, and her daughter Clotilde would not give
+him up.
+
+Lucien accounted for these hostilities by his connection with Madame
+de Bargeton, Madame d'Espard's cousin, and now Comtesse du Chatelet.
+Then, feeling the importance of allying himself to so powerful a
+family, and urged by his privy adviser to win Clotilde, Lucien found
+the courage of the parvenu; he came to the house five days in the
+week, he swallowed all the affronts of the envious, he endured
+impertinent looks, and answered irony with wit. His persistency, the
+charm of his manners, and his amiability, at last neutralized
+opposition and reduced obstacles. He was still in the highest favor
+with Madame de Maufrigneuse, whose ardent letters, written under the
+influence of her passion, were preserved by Carlos Herrera; he was
+idolized by Madame de Serizy, and stood well in Mademoiselle des
+Touches' good graces; and well content with being received in these
+houses, Lucien was instructed by the Abbe to be as reserved as
+possible in all other quarters.
+
+"You cannot devote yourself to several houses at once," said his
+Mentor. "The man who goes everywhere finds no one to take a lively
+interest in him. Great folks only patronize those who emulate their
+furniture, whom they see every day, and who have the art of becoming
+as necessary to them as the seat they sit on."
+
+Thus Lucien, accustomed to regard the Grandlieus' drawing-room as his
+arena, reserved his wit, his jests, his news, and his courtier's
+graces for the hours he spent there every evening. Insinuating,
+tactful, and warned by Clotilde of the shoals he should avoid, he
+flattered Monsieur de Grandlieu's little weaknesses. Clotilde, having
+begun by envying Madame de Maufrigneuse her happiness, ended by
+falling desperately in love with Lucien.
+
+Perceiving all the advantages of such a connection, Lucien played his
+lover's part as well as it could have been acted by Armand, the latest
+jeune premier at the Comedie Francaise.
+
+He wrote to Clotilde, letters which were certainly masterpieces of
+literary workmanship; and Clotilde replied, vying with him in genius
+in the expression of perfervid love on paper, for she had no other
+outlet. Lucien went to church at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin every Sunday,
+giving himself out as a devout Catholic, and he poured forth
+monarchical and pious harangues which were a marvel to all. He also
+wrote some exceedingly remarkable articles in papers devoted to the
+"Congregation," refusing to be paid for them, and signing them only
+with an "L." He produced political pamphlets when required by King
+Charles X. or the High Almoner, and for these he would take no
+payment.
+
+"The King," he would say, "has done so much for me, that I owe him my
+blood."
+
+For some days past there had been an idea of attaching Lucien to the
+prime minister's cabinet as his private secretary; but Madame d'Espard
+brought so many persons into the field in opposition to Lucien, that
+Charles X.'s Maitre Jacques hesitated to clinch the matter. Nor was
+Lucien's position by any means clear; not only did the question, "What
+does he live on?" on everybody's lips as the young man rose in life,
+require an answer, but even benevolent curiosity--as much as
+malevolent curiosity--went on from one inquiry to another, and found
+more than one joint in the ambitious youth's harness.
+
+Clotilde de Grandlieu unconsciously served as a spy for her father and
+mother. A few days since she had led Lucien into a recess and told him
+of the difficulties raised by her family.
+
+"Invest a million francs in land, and my hand is yours: that is my
+mother's ultimatum," Clotilde had explained.
+
+"And presently they will ask you where you got the money," said
+Carlos, when Lucien reported this last word in the bargain.
+
+"My brother-in-law will have made his fortune," remarked Lucien; "we
+can make him the responsible backer."
+
+"Then only the million is needed," said Carlos. "I will think it
+over."
+
+To be exact as to Lucien's position in the Hotel Grandlieu, he had
+never dined there. Neither Clotilde, nor the Duchesse d'Uxelles, nor
+Madame de Maufrigneuse, who was always extremely kind to Lucien, could
+ever obtain this favor from the Duke, so persistently suspicious was
+the old nobleman of the man that he designated as "le Sire de
+Rubempre." This shade of distinction, understood by every one who
+visited at the house, constantly wounded Lucien's self-respect, for he
+felt that he was no more than tolerated. But the world is justified in
+being suspicious; it is so often taken in!
+
+To cut a figure in Paris with no known source of wealth and no
+recognized employment is a position which can by no artifice be long
+maintained. So Lucien, as he crept up in the world, gave more and more
+weight to the question, "What does he live on?" He had been obliged
+indeed to confess to Madame de Serizy, to whom he owed the patronage
+of Monsieur Granville, the Public Prosecutor, and of the Comte Octave
+de Bauvan, a Minister of State, and President of one of the Supreme
+Courts: "I am dreadfully in debt."
+
+As he entered the courtyard of the mansion where he found an excuse
+for all his vanities, he was saying to himself as he reflected on
+Trompe-la-Mort's scheming:
+
+"I can hear the ground cracking under my feet!"
+
+He loved Esther, and he wanted to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu! A
+strange dilemma! One must be sold to buy the other.
+
+Only one person could effect this bargain without damage to Lucien's
+honor, and that was the supposed Spaniard. Were they not bound to be
+equally secret, each for the other? Such a compact, in which each is
+in turn master and slave, is not to be found twice in any one life.
+
+Lucien drove away the clouds that darkened his brow, and walked into
+the Grandlieu drawing-room gay and beaming. At this moment the windows
+were open, the fragrance from the garden scented the room, the flower-
+basket in the centre displayed its pyramid of flowers. The Duchess,
+seated on a sofa in the corner, was talking to the Duchesse de
+Chaulieu. Several women together formed a group remarkable for their
+various attitudes, stamped with the different expression which each
+strove to give to an affected sorrow. In the fashionable world nobody
+takes any interest in grief or suffering; everything is talk. The men
+were walking up and down the room or in the garden. Clotilde and
+Josephine were busy at the tea-table. The Vidame de Pamiers, the Duc
+de Grandlieu, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse
+were playing Wisk, as they called it, in a corner of the room.
+
+When Lucien was announced he walked across the room to make his bow to
+the Duchess, asking the cause of the grief he could read in her face.
+
+"Madame de Chaulieu has just had dreadful news; her son-in-law, the
+Baron de Macumer, ex-duke of Soria, is just dead. The young Duc de
+Soria and his wife, who had gone to Chantepleurs to nurse their
+brother, have written this sad intelligence. Louise is heart-broken."
+
+"A women is not loved twice in her life as Louise was loved by her
+husband," said Madeleine de Mortsauf.
+
+"She will be a rich widow," observed the old Duchesse d'Uxelles,
+looking at Lucien, whose face showed no change of expression.
+
+"Poor Louise!" said Madame d'Espard. "I understand her and pity her."
+
+The Marquise d'Espard put on the pensive look of a woman full of soul
+and feeling. Sabine de Grandlieu, who was but ten years old, raised
+knowing eyes to her mother's face, but the satirical glance was
+repressed by a glance from the Duchess. This is bringing children up
+properly.
+
+"If my daughter lives through the shock," said Madame de Chaulieu,
+with a very maternal manner, "I shall be anxious about her future
+life. Louise is so very romantic."
+
+"It is so difficult nowadays," said a venerable Cardinal, "to
+reconcile feeling with the proprieties."
+
+Lucien, who had not a word to say, went to the tea-table to do what
+was polite to the demoiselles de Grandlieu. When the poet had gone a
+few yards away, the Marquise d'Espard leaned over to whisper in the
+Duchess' ear:
+
+"And do you really think that that young fellow is so much in love
+with your Clotilde?"
+
+The perfidy of this question cannot be fully understood but with the
+help of a sketch of Clotilde. That young lady was, at this moment,
+standing up. Her attitude allowed the Marquise d'Espard's mocking eye
+to take in Clotilde's lean, narrow figure, exactly like an asparagus
+stalk; the poor girl's bust was so flat that it did not allow of the
+artifice known to dressmakers as fichus menteurs, or padded
+habitshirts. And Clotilde, who knew that her name was a sufficient
+advantage in life, far from trying to conceal this defect, heroically
+made a display of it. By wearing plain, tight dresses she achieved the
+effect of that stiff prim shape which medieval sculptors succeeded in
+giving to the statuettes whose profiles are conspicuous against the
+background of the niches in which they stand in cathedrals.
+
+Clotilde was more than five feet four in height; if we may be allowed
+to use a familiar phrase, which has the merit at any rate of being
+perfectly intelligible--she was all legs. These defective proportions
+gave her figure an almost deformed appearance. With a dark complexion,
+harsh black hair, very thick eyebrows, fiery eyes, set in sockets that
+were already deeply discolored, a side face shaped like the moon in
+its first quarter, and a prominent brow, she was the caricature of her
+mother, one of the handsomest women in Portugal. Nature amuses herself
+with such tricks. Often we see in one family a sister of wonderful
+beauty, whose features in her brother are absolutely hideous, though
+the two are amazingly alike. Clotilde's lips, excessively thin and
+sunken, wore a permanent expression of disdain. And yet her mouth,
+better than any other feature of her face, revealed every secret
+impulse of her heart, for affection lent it a sweet expression, which
+was all the more remarkable because her cheeks were too sallow for
+blushes, and her hard, black eyes never told anything. Notwithstanding
+these defects, notwithstanding her board-like carriage, she had by
+birth and education a grand air, a proud demeanor, in short,
+everything that has been well named le je ne sais quoi, due partly,
+perhaps, to her uncompromising simplicity of dress, which stamped her
+as a woman of noble blood. She dressed her hair to advantage, and it
+might be accounted to her for a beauty, for it grew vigorously, thick
+and long.
+
+She had cultivated her voice, and it could cast a spell; she sang
+exquisitely. Clotilde was just the woman of whom one says, "She has
+fine eyes," or, "She has a delightful temper." If any one addressed
+her in the English fashion as "Your Grace," she would say, "You mean
+'Your leanness.' "
+
+"Why should not my poor Clotilde have a lover?" replied the Duchess to
+the Marquise. "Do you know what she said to me yesterday? 'If I am
+loved for ambition's sake, I undertake to make him love me for my own
+sake.'--She is clever and ambitious, and there are men who like those
+two qualities. As for him--my dear, he is as handsome as a vision; and
+if he can but repurchase the Rubempre estates, out of regard for us
+the King will reinstate him in the title of Marquis.--After all, his
+mother was the last of the Rubempres."
+
+"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 would 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."
+
+Visitors called to see Nucingen on business; but he waited for
+Contenson, he was dreaming of Esther, telling himself that before long
+he would see again the woman who had aroused in him such unhoped-for
+emotions, and he sent everybody away with vague replies and double-
+edged promises. Contenson was to him the most important person in
+Paris, and he looked out into the garden every minute. Finally, after
+giving orders that no one else was to be admitted, he had his
+breakfast served in the summer-house at one corner of the garden. In
+the banker's office the conduct and hesitancy of the most knowing, the
+most clearsighted, the shrewdest of Paris financiers seemed
+inexplicable.
+
+"What ails the chief?" said a stockbroker to one of the head-clerks.
+
+"No one knows; they are anxious about his health, it would seem.
+Yesterday, Madame la Baronne got Desplein and Bianchon to meet."
+
+One day, when Sir Isaac Newton was engaged in physicking one of his
+dogs, named "Beauty" (who, as is well known, destroyed a vast amount
+of work, and whom he reproved only in these words, "Ah! Beauty, you
+little know the mischief you have done!"), some strangers called to
+see him; but they at once retired, respecting the great man's
+occupation. In every more or less lofty life, there is a little dog
+"Beauty." When the Marechal de Richelieu came to pay his respects to
+Louis XV. after taking Mahon, one of the greatest feats of arms of the
+eighteenth century, the King said to him, "Have you heard the great
+news? Poor Lansmatt is dead."--Lansmatt was a gatekeeper in the secret
+of the King's intrigues.
+
+The bankers of Paris never knew how much they owed to Contenson. That
+spy was the cause of Nucingen's allowing an immense loan to be issued
+in which his share was allotted to him, and which he gave over to
+them. The stock-jobber could aim at a fortune any day with the
+artillery of speculation, but the man was a slave to the hope of
+happiness.
+
+The great banker drank some tea, and was nibbling at a slice of bread
+and butter, as a man does whose teeth have for long been sharpened by
+appetite, when he heard a carriage stop at the little garden gate. In
+a few minutes his secretary brought in Contenson, whom he had run to
+earth in a cafe not far from Sainte-Pelagie, where the man was
+breakfasting on the strength of a bribe given to him by an imprisoned
+debtor for certain allowances that must be paid for.
+
+Contenson, you must know, was a whole poem--a Paris poem. Merely to
+see him would have been enough to tell you that Beaumarchais' Figaro,
+Moliere's Mascarille, Marivaux's Frontin, and Dancourt's Lafleur--
+those great representatives of audacious swindling, of cunning driven
+to bay, of stratagem rising again from the ends of its broken wires--
+were all quite second-rate by comparison with this giant of cleverness
+and meanness. When in Paris you find a real type, he is no longer a
+man, he is a spectacle; no longer a factor in life, but a whole life,
+many lives.
+
+Bake a plaster cast four times in a furnace, and you get a sort of
+bastard imitation of Florentine bronze. Well, the thunderbolts of
+numberless disasters, the pressure of terrible necessities, had
+bronzed Contenson's head, as though sweating in an oven had three
+times over stained his skin. Closely-set wrinkles that could no longer
+be relaxed made eternal furrows, whiter in their cracks. The yellow
+face was all wrinkles. The bald skull, resembling Voltaire's, was as
+parched as a death's-head, and but for a few hairs at the back it
+would have seemed doubtful whether it was that of a living man. Under
+a rigid brow, a pair of Chinese eyes, like those of an image under a
+glass shade in a tea-shop--artificial eyes, which sham life but never
+vary--moved but expressed nothing. The nose, as flat as that of a
+skull, sniffed at fate; and the mouth, as thin-lipped as a miser's,
+was always open, but as expressionless as the grin of a letterbox.
+
+Contenson, as apathetic as a savage, with sunburned hands, affected
+that Diogenes-like indifference which can never bend to any formality
+of respect.
+
+And what a commentary on his life was written on his dress for any one
+who can decipher a dress! Above all, what trousers! made, by long
+wear, as black and shiny as the camlet of which lawyers' gowns are
+made! A waistcoat, bought in an old clothes shop in the Temple, with a
+deep embroidered collar! A rusty black coat!--and everything well
+brushed, clean after a fashion, and graced by a watch and an imitation
+gold chain. Contenson allowed a triangle of shirt to show, with pleats
+in which glittered a sham diamond pin; his black velvet stock set
+stiff like a gorget, over which lay rolls of flesh as red as that of a
+Caribbee. His silk hat was as glossy as satin, but the lining would
+have yielded grease enough for two street lamps if some grocer had
+bought it to boil down.
+
+But to enumerate these accessories is nothing; if only I could give an
+idea of the air of immense importance that Contenson contrived to
+impart to them! There was something indescribably knowing in the
+collar of his coat, and the fresh blacking on a pair of boots with
+gaping soles, to which no language can do justice. However, to give
+some notion of this medley of effect, it may be added that any man of
+intelligence would have felt, only on seeing Contenson, that if
+instead of being a spy he had been a thief, all these odds and ends,
+instead of raising a smile, would have made one shudder with horror.
+Judging only from his dress, the observer would have said to himself,
+"That is a scoundrel; he gambles, he drinks, he is full of vices; but
+he does not get drunk, he does not cheat, he is neither a thief nor a
+murderer." And Contenson remained inscrutable till the word spy
+suggested itself.
+
+This man had followed as many unrecognized trades as there are
+recognized ones. The sly smile on his lips, the twinkle of his green
+eyes, the queer twitch of his snub nose, showed that he was not
+deficient in humor. He had a face of sheet-tin, and his soul must
+probably be like his face. Every movement of his countenance was a
+grimace wrung from him by politeness rather than by any expression of
+an inmost impulse. He would have been alarming if he had not seemed so
+droll.
+
+Contenson, one of the most curious products of the scum that rises to
+the top of the seething Paris caldron, where everything ferments,
+prided himself on being, above all things, a philosopher. He would
+say, without any bitter feeling:
+
+"I have great talents, but of what use are they? I might as well have
+been an idiot."
+
+And he blamed himself instead of accusing mankind. Find, if you can,
+many spies who have not had more venom about them than Contenson had.
+
+"Circumstances are against me," he would say to his chiefs. "We might
+be fine crystal; we are but grains of sand, that is all."
+
+His indifference to dress had some sense. He cared no more about his
+everyday clothes than an actor does; he excelled in disguising
+himself, in "make-up"; he could have given Frederic Lemaitre a lesson,
+for he could be a dandy when necessary. Formerly, in his younger days,
+he must have mingled in the out-at-elbows society of people living on
+a humble scale. He expressed excessive disgust for the criminal police
+corps; for, under the Empire, he had belonged to Fouche's police, and
+looked upon him as a great man. Since the suppression of this
+Government department, he had devoted his energies to the tracking of
+commercial defaulters; but his well-known talents and acumen made him
+a valuable auxiliary, and the unrecognized chiefs of the political
+police had kept his name on their lists. Contenson, like his fellows,
+was only a super in the dramas of which the leading parts were played
+by his chief when a political investigation was in the wind.
+
+"Go 'vay," said Nucingen, dismissing his secretary with a wave of the
+hand.
+
+"Why should this man live in a mansion and I in a lodging?" wondered
+Contenson to himself. "He has dodged his creditors three times; he has
+robbed them; I never stole a farthing; I am a cleverer fellow than he
+is----"
+
+"Contenson, mein freund," said the Baron, "you haf vat you call pleed
+me of one tousand-franc note."
+
+"My girl owed God and the devil----"
+
+"Vat, you haf a girl, a mistress!" cried Nucingen, looking at
+Contenson with admiration not unmixed with envy.
+
+"I am but sixty-six," replied Contenson, as a man whom vice has kept
+young as a bad example.
+
+"And vat do she do?"
+
+"She helps me," said Contenson. "When a man is a thief, and an honest
+woman loves him, either she becomes a thief or he becomes an honest
+man. I have always been a spy."
+
+"And you vant money--alvays?" asked Nucingen.
+
+"Always," said Contenson, with a smile. "It is part of my business to
+want money, as it is yours to make it; we shall easily come to an
+understanding. You find me a little, and I will undertake to spend it.
+You shall be the well, and I the bucket."
+
+"Vould you like to haf one note for fife hundert franc?"
+
+"What a question! But what a fool I am!--You do not offer it out of a
+disinterested desire to repair the slights of Fortune?"
+
+"Not at all. I gif it besides the one tousand-franc note vat you pleed
+me off. Dat makes fifteen hundert franc vat I gif you."
+
+"Very good, you give me the thousand francs I have had and you will
+add five hundred francs."
+
+"Yust so," said Nucingen, nodding.
+
+"But that still leaves only five hundred francs," said Contenson
+imperturbably.
+
+"Dat I gif," added the Baron.
+
+"That I take. Very good; and what, Monsieur le Baron, do you want for
+it?"
+
+"I haf been told dat dere vas in Paris one man vat could find the
+voman vat I lof, and dat you know his address. . . . A real master to
+spy."
+
+"Very true."
+
+"Vell den, gif me dat address, and I gif you fife hundert franc."
+
+"Where are they?" said Contenson.
+
+"Here dey are," said the Baron, drawing a note out of his pocket.
+
+"All right, hand them over," said Contenson, holding out his hand.
+
+"Noting for noting! Le us see de man, and you get de money; you might
+sell to me many address at dat price."
+
+Contenson began to laugh.
+
+"To be sure, you have a right to think that of me," said he, with an
+air of blaming himself. "The more rascally our business is, the more
+honesty is necessary. But look here, Monsieur le Baron, make it six
+hundred, and I will give you a bit of advice."
+
+"Gif it, and trust to my generosity."
+
+"I will risk it," Contenson said, "but it is playing high. In such
+matters, you see, we have to work underground. You say, 'Quick
+march!'--You are rich; you think that money can do everything. Well,
+money is something, no doubt. Still, money can only buy men, as the
+two or three best heads in our force so often say. And there are many
+things you would never think of which money cannot buy.--You cannot
+buy good luck. So good police work is not done in this style. Will you
+show yourself in a carriage with me? We should be seen. Chance is just
+as often for us as against us."
+
+"Really-truly?" said the Baron.
+
+"Why, of course, sir. A horseshoe picked up in the street led the
+chief of the police to the discovery of the infernal machine. Well, if
+we were to go to-night in a hackney coach to Monsieur de Saint-
+Germain, he would not like to see you walk in any more than you would
+like to be seen going there."
+
+"Dat is true," said the Baron.
+
+"Ah, he is the greatest of the great! such another as the famous
+Corentin, Fouche's right arm, who was, some say, his natural son, born
+while he was still a priest; but that is nonsense. Fouche knew how to
+be a priest as he knew how to be a Minister. Well, you will not get
+this man to do anything for you, you see, for less than ten thousand-
+franc notes--think of that.--But he will do the job, and do it well.
+Neither seen nor heard, as they say. I ought to give Monsieur de
+Saint-Germanin notice, and he will fix a time for your meeting in some
+place where no one can see or hear, for it is a dangerous game to play
+policeman for private interests. Still, what is to be said? He is a
+good fellow, the king of good fellows, and a man who has undergone
+much persecution, and for having saving his country too!--like me,
+like all who helped to save it."
+
+"Vell den, write and name de happy day," said the Baron, smiling at
+his humble jest.
+
+"And Monsieur le Baron will allow me to drink his health?" said
+Contenson, with a manner at once cringing and threatening.
+
+"Shean," cried the Baron to the gardener, "go and tell Chorge to sent
+me one twenty francs, and pring dem to me----"
+
+"Still, Monsieur le Baron, if you have no more information than you
+have just given me, I doubt whether the great man can be of any use to
+you."
+
+"I know off oders!" replied the Baron with a cunning look.
+
+"I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron," said
+Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. "I shall have the honor of
+calling again to tell Georges where you are to go this evening, for we
+never write anything in such cases when they are well managed."
+
+"It is funny how sharp dese rascals are!" said the Baron to himself;
+"it is de same mit de police as it is in buss'niss."
+
+
+
+When he left the Baron, Contenson went quietly from the Rue Saint-
+Lazare to the Rue Saint-Honore, as far as the Cafe David. He looked in
+through the windows, and saw an old man who was known there by the
+name of le Pere Canquoelle.
+
+The Cafe David, at the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue
+Saint-Honore, enjoyed a certain celebrity during the first thirty
+years of the century, though its fame was limited to the quarter known
+as that of the Bourdonnais. Here certain old retired merchants, and
+large shopkeepers still in trade, were wont to meet--the Camusots, the
+Lebas, the Pilleraults, the Popinots, and a few house-owners like
+little old Molineux. Now and again old Guillaume might be seen there,
+coming from the Rue du Colombier. Politics were discussed in a quiet
+way, but cautiously, for the opinions of the Cafe David were liberal.
+The gossip of the neighborhood was repeated, men so urgently feel the
+need of laughing at each other!
+
+This cafe, like all cafes for that matter, had its eccentric character
+in the person of the said Pere Canquoelle, who had been regular in his
+attendance there since 1811, and who seemed to be so completely in
+harmony with the good folks who assembled there, that they all talked
+politics in his presence without reserve. Sometimes this old fellow,
+whose guilelessness was the subject of much laughter to the customers,
+would disappear for a month or two; but his absence never surprised
+anybody, and was always attributed to his infirmities or his great
+age, for he looked more than sixty in 1811.
+
+"What has become of old Canquoelle?" one or another would ask of the
+manageress at the desk.
+
+"I quite expect that one fine day we shall read in the advertisement-
+sheet that he is dead," she would reply.
+
+Old Canquoelle bore a perpetual certificate of his native province in
+his accent. He spoke of une estatue (a statue), le peuble (the
+people), and said ture for turc. His name was that of a tiny estate
+called les Canquoelles, a word meaning cockchafer in some districts,
+situated in the department of Vaucluse, whence he had come. At last
+every one had fallen into the habit of calling him Canquoelle, instead
+of des Canquoelles, and the old man took no offence, for in his
+opinion the nobility had perished in 1793; and besides, the land of
+les Canquoelles did not belong to him; he was a younger son's younger
+son.
+
+Nowadays old Canquoelle's costume would look strange, but between 1811
+and 1820 it astonished no one. The old man wore shoes with cut-steel
+buckles, silk stockings with stripes round the leg, alternately blue
+and white, corded silk knee-breeches with oval buckles cut to match
+those on his shoes. A white embroidered waistcoat, an old coat of
+olive-brown with metal buttons, and a shirt with a flat-pleated frill
+completed his costume. In the middle of the shirt-frill twinkled a
+small gold locket, in which might be seen, under glass, a little
+temple worked in hair, one of those pathetic trifles which give men
+confidence, just as a scarecrow frightens sparrows. Most men, like
+other animals, are frightened or reassured by trifles. Old
+Canquoelle's breeches were kept in place by a buckle which, in the
+fashion of the last century, tightened them across the stomach; from
+the belt hung on each side a short steel chain, composed of several
+finer chains, and ending in a bunch of seals. His white neckcloth was
+fastened behind by a small gold buckle. Finally, on his snowy and
+powdered hair, he still, in 1816, wore the municipal cocked hat which
+Monsieur Try, the President of the Law Courts, also used to wear. But
+Pere Canquoelle had recently substituted for this hat, so dear to old
+men, the undignified top-hat, which no one dares to rebel against. The
+good man thought he owed so much as this to the spirit of the age. A
+small pigtail tied with a ribbon had traced a semicircle on the back
+of his coat, the greasy mark being hidden by powder.
+
+If you looked no further than the most conspicuous feature of his
+face, a nose covered with excrescences red and swollen enough to
+figure in a dish of truffles, you might have inferred that the worthy
+man had an easy temper, foolish and easy-going, that of a perfect
+gaby; and you would have been deceived, like all at the Cafe David,
+where no one had ever remarked the studious brow, the sardonic mouth,
+and the cold eyes of this old man, petted by his vices, and as calm as
+Vitellius, whose imperial and portly stomach reappeared in him
+palingenetically, so to speak.
+
+In 1816 a young commercial traveler named Gaudissart, who frequented
+the Cafe David, sat drinking from eleven o'clock till midnight with a
+half-pay officer. He was so rash as to discuss a conspiracy against
+the Bourbons, a rather serious plot then on the point of execution.
+There was no one to be seen in the cafe but Pere Canquoelle, who
+seemed to be asleep, two waiters who were dozing, and the accountant
+at the desk. Within four-and-twenty hours Gaudissart was arrested, the
+plot was discovered. Two men perished on the scaffold. Neither
+Gaudissart nor any one else ever suspected that worthy old Canquoelle
+of having peached. The waiters were dismissed; for a year they were
+all on their guard and afraid of the police--as Pere Canquoelle was
+too; indeed, he talked of retiring from the Cafe David, such horror
+had he of the police.
+
+Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy, and did not
+look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers; but when he had gulped
+down the brandy, he took out the Baron's gold piece, and called the
+waiter by rapping three short raps on the table. The lady at the desk
+and the waiter examined the coin with a minute care that was not
+flattering to Contenson; but their suspicions were justified by the
+astonishment produced on all the regular customers by Contenson's
+appearance.
+
+"Was that gold got by theft or by murder?"
+
+This was the idea that rose to some clear and shrewd minds as they
+looked at Contenson over their spectacles, while affecting to read the
+news. Contenson, who saw everything and never was surprised at
+anything, scornfully wiped his lips with a bandana, in which there
+were but three darns, took his change, slipped all the coppers into
+his side pocket, of which the lining, once white, was now as black as
+the cloth of the trousers, and did not leave one for the waiter.
+
+"What a gallows-bird!" said Pere Canquoelle to his neighbor Monsieur
+Pillerault.
+
+"Pshaw!" said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for he alone had
+expressed no astonishment, "it is Contenson, Louchard's right-hand
+man, the police agent we employ in business. The rascals want to nab
+some one who is hanging about perhaps."
+
+It would seem necessary to explain here the terrible and profoundly
+cunning man who was hidden under the guise of Pere Canquoelle, as
+Vautrin was hidden under that of the Abbe Carlos.
+
+Born at Canquoelles, the only possession of his family, which was
+highly respectable, this Southerner's name was Peyrade. He belonged,
+in fact, to the younger branch of the Peyrade family, an old but
+impoverished house of Franche Comte, still owning the little estate of
+la Peyrade. The seventh child of his father, he had come on foot to
+Paris in 1772 at the age of seventeen, with two crowns of six francs
+in his pocket, prompted by the vices of an ardent spirit and the
+coarse desire to "get on," which brings so many men to Paris from the
+south as soon as they understand that their father's property can
+never supply them with means to gratify their passions. It is enough
+to say of Peyrade's youth that in 1782 he was in the confidence of
+chiefs of the police and the hero of the department, highly esteemed
+by MM. Lenoir and d'Albert, the last Lieutenant-Generals of Police.
+
+The Revolution had no police; it needed none. Espionage, though common
+enough, was called public spirit.
+
+The Directorate, a rather more regular government than that of the
+Committee of Public Safety, was obliged to reorganize the Police, and
+the first Consul completed the work by instituting a Prefect of Police
+and a department of police supervision.
+
+Peyrade, a man knowing the traditions, collected the force with the
+assistance of a man named Corentin, a far cleverer man than Peyrade,
+though younger; but he was a genius only in the subterranean ways of
+police inquiries. In 1808 the great services Peyrade was able to
+achieve were rewarded by an appointment to the eminent position of
+Chief Commissioner of Police at Antwerp. In Napoleon's mind this sort
+of Police Governorship was equivalent to a Minister's post, with the
+duty of superintending Holland. At the end of the campaign of 1809,
+Peyrade was removed from Antwerp by an order in Council from the
+Emperor, carried in a chaise to Paris between two gendarmes, and
+imprisoned in la Force. Two months later he was let out on bail
+furnished by his friend Corentin, after having been subjected to three
+examinations, each lasting six hours, in the office of the head of the
+Police.
+
+Did Peyrade owe his overthrow to the miraculous energy he displayed in
+aiding Fouche in the defence of the French coast when threatened by
+what was known at the time as the Walcheren expedition, when the Duke
+of Otranto manifested such abilities as alarmed the Emperor? Fouche
+thought it probable even then; and now, when everybody knows what went
+on in the Cabinet Council called together by Cambaceres, it is
+absolutely certain. The Ministers, thunderstruck by the news of
+England's attempt, a retaliation on Napoleon for the Boulogne
+expedition, and taken by surprise when the Master was entrenched in
+the island of Lobau, where all Europe believed him to be lost, had not
+an idea which way to turn. The general opinion was in favor of sending
+post haste to the Emperor; Fouche alone was bold enough to sketch a
+plan of campaign, which, in fact, he carried into execution.
+
+"Do as you please," said Cambaceres; "but I, who prefer to keep my
+head on my shoulders, shall send a report to the Emperor."
+
+It is well known that the Emperor on his return found an absurd
+pretext, at a full meeting of the Council of State, for discarding his
+Minister and punishing him for having saved France without the
+Sovereign's help. From that time forth, Napoleon had doubled the
+hostility of Prince de Talleyrand and the Duke of Otranto, the only
+two great politicians formed by the Revolution, who might perhaps have
+been able to save Napoleon in 1813.
+
+To get rid of Peyrade, he was simply accused of connivance in favoring
+smuggling and sharing certain profits with the great merchants. Such
+an indignity was hard on a man who had earned the Marshal's baton of
+the Police Department by the great services he had done. This man, who
+had grown old in active business, knew all the secrets of every
+Government since 1775, when he had entered the service. The Emperor,
+who believed himself powerful enough to create men for his own uses,
+paid no heed to the representations subsequently laid before him in
+favor of a man who was reckoned as one of the most trustworthy, most
+capable, and most acute of the unknown genii whose task it is to watch
+over the safety of a State. He thought he could put Contenson in
+Peyrade's place; but Contenson was at that time employed by Corentin
+for his own benefit.
+
+Peyrade felt the blow all the more keenly because, being greedy and a
+libertine, he had found himself, with regard to women, in the position
+of a pastry-cook who loves sweetmeats. His habits of vice had become
+to him a second nature; he could not live without a good dinner,
+without gambling, in short, without the life of an unpretentious fine
+gentleman, in which men of powerful faculties so generally indulge
+when they have allowed excessive dissipation to become a necessity.
+Hitherto, he had lived in style without ever being expected to
+entertain; and living well, for no one ever looked for a return from
+him, or from his friend Corentin. He was cynically witty, and he liked
+his profession; he was a philosopher. And besides, a spy, whatever
+grade he may hold in the machinery of the police, can no more return
+to a profession regarded as honorable or liberal, than a prisoner from
+the hulks can. Once branded, once matriculated, spies and convicts,
+like deacons, have assumed an indelible character. There are beings on
+whom social conditions impose an inevitable fate.
+
+Peyrade, for his further woe, was very fond of a pretty little girl
+whom he knew to be his own child by a celebrated actress to whom he
+had done a signal service, and who, for three months, had been
+grateful to him. Peyrade, who had sent for his child from Antwerp, now
+found himself without employment in Paris and with no means beyond a
+pension of twelve hundred francs a year allowed him by the Police
+Department as Lenoir's old disciple. He took lodgings in the Rue des
+Moineaux on the fourth floor, five little rooms, at a rent of two
+hundred and fifty francs.
+
+If any man should be aware of the uses and sweets of friendship, is it
+not the moral leper known to the world as a spy, to the mob as a
+mouchard, to the department as an "agent"? Peyrade and Corentin were
+such friends as Orestes and Pylades. Peyrade had trained Corentin as
+Vien trained David; but the pupil soon surpassed his master. They had
+carried out more than one undertaking together. Peyrade, happy at
+having discerned Corentin's superior abilities, had started him in his
+career by preparing a success for him. He obliged his disciple to make
+use of a mistress who had scorned him as a bait to catch a man (see
+The Chouans). And Corentin at that time was hardly five-and-twenty.
+
+Corentin, who had been retained as one of the generals of whom the
+Minister of Police is the High Constable, still held under the Duc de
+Rovigo the high position he had filled under the Duke of Otranto. Now
+at that time the general police and the criminal police were managed
+on similar principles. When any important business was on hand, an
+account was opened, as it were, for the three, four, five, really
+capable agents. The Minister, on being warned of some plot, by
+whatever means, would say to one of his colonels of the police force:
+
+"How much will you want to achieve this or that result?"
+
+Corentin or Contenson would go into the matter and reply:
+
+"Twenty, thirty, or forty thousand francs."
+
+Then, as soon as the order was given to go ahead, all the means and
+the men were left to the judgment of Corentin or the agent selected.
+And the criminal police used to act in the same way to discover crimes
+with the famous Vidocq.
+
+Both branches of the police chose their men chiefly from among the
+ranks of well-known agents, who have matriculated in the business, and
+are, as it were, as soldiers of the secret army, so indispensable to a
+government, in spite of the public orations of philanthropists or
+narrow-minded moralists. But the absolute confidence placed in two men
+of the temper of Peyrade and Corentin conveyed to them the right of
+employing perfect strangers, under the risk, moreover, of being
+responsible to the Minister in all serious cases. Peyrade's experience
+and acumen were too valuable to Corentin, who, after the storm of 1820
+had blown over, employed his old friend, constantly consulted him, and
+contributed largely to his maintenance. Corentin managed to put about
+a thousand francs a month into Peyrade's hands.
+
+Peyrade, on his part, did Corentin good service. In 1816 Corentin, on
+the strength of the discovery of the conspiracy in which the
+Bonapartist Gaudissart was implicated, tried to get Peyrade reinstated
+in his place in the police office; but some unknown influence was
+working against Peyrade. This was the reason why.
+
+In their anxiety to make themselves necessary, Peyrade, Corentin, and
+Contenson, at the Duke of Otranto's instigation, had organized for the
+benefit of Louis XVIII. a sort of opposition police in which very
+capable agents were employed. Louis XVIII. died possessed of secrets
+which will remain secrets from the best informed historians. The
+struggle between the general police of the kingdom, and the King's
+opposition police, led to many horrible disasters, of which a certain
+number of executions sealed the secrets. This is neither the place nor
+the occasion for entering into details on this subject, for these
+"Scenes of Paris Life" are not "Scenes of Political Life." Enough has
+been said to show what were the means of living of the man who at the
+Cafe David was known as good old Canquoelle, and by what threads he
+was tied to the terrible and mysterious powers of the police.
+
+Between 1817 and 1822, Corentin, Contenson, Peyrade, and their
+myrmidons, were often required to keep watch over the Minister of
+Police himself. This perhaps explains why the Minister declined to
+employ Peyrade and Contenson, on whom Corentin contrived to cast the
+Minister's suspicions, in order to be able to make use of his friend
+when his reinstatement was evidently out of the question. The Ministry
+put their faith in Corentin; they enjoined him to keep an eye on
+Peyrade, which amused Louis XVIII. Corentin and Peyrade were then
+masters of the position. Contenson, long attached to Peyrade, was
+still at his service. He had joined the force of the commercial police
+(the Gardes du Commerce) by his friend's orders. And, in fact, as a
+result of the sort of zeal that is inspired by a profession we love,
+these two chiefs liked to place their best men in those posts where
+information was most likely to flow in.
+
+And, indeed, Contenson's vices and dissipated habits, which had
+dragged him lower than his two friends, consumed so much money, that
+he needed a great deal of business.
+
+Contenson, without committing any indiscretion, had told Louchard
+that he knew the only man who was capable of doing what the Baron
+de Nucingen required. Peyrade was, in fact, the only police-agent
+who could act on behalf of a private individual with impunity. At
+the death of Louis XVIII., Peyrade had not only ceased to be of
+consequence, but had lost the profits of his position as spy-in-
+ordinary to His Majesty. Believing himself to be indispensable,
+he had lived fast. Women, high feeding, and the club, the Cercle
+des Etrangers, had prevented this man from saving, and, like all
+men cut out for debauchery, he enjoyed an iron constitution. But
+between 1826 and 1829, when he was nearly seventy-four years of
+age, he had stuck half-way, to use his own expression. Year by
+year he saw his comforts dwindling. He followed the police
+department to its grave, and saw with regret that Charles X.'s
+government was departing from its good old traditions. Every
+session saw the estimates pared down which were necessary to keep
+up the police, out of hatred for that method of government and a
+firm determination to reform that institution.
+
+"It is as if they thought they could cook in white gloves," said
+Peyrade to Corentin.
+
+In 1822 this couple foresaw 1830. They knew how bitterly Louis XVIII.
+hated his successor, which accounts for his recklessness with regard
+to the younger branch, and without which his reign would be an
+unanswerable riddle.
+
+
+
+As Peyrade grew older, his love for his natural daughter had
+increased. For her sake he had adopted his citizen guise, for he
+intended that his Lydie should marry respectably. So for the last
+three years he had been especially anxious to find a corner, either at
+the Prefecture of Police, or in the general Police Office--some
+ostensible and recognized post. He had ended by inventing a place, of
+which the necessity, as he told Corentin, would sooner or later be
+felt. He was anxious to create an inquiry office at the Prefecture of
+Police, to be intermediate between the Paris police in the strictest
+sense, the criminal police, and the superior general police, so as to
+enable the supreme board to profit by the various scattered forces. No
+one but Peyrade, at his age, and after fifty-five years of
+confidential work, could be the connecting link between the three
+branches of the police, or the keeper of the records to whom political
+and judicial authority alike could apply for the elucidation of
+certain cases. By this means Peyrade hoped, with Corentin's
+assistance, to find a husband and scrape together a portion for his
+little Lydie. Corentin had already mentioned the matter to the
+Director-General of the police forces of the realm, without naming
+Peyrade; and the Director-General, a man from the south, thought it
+necessary that the suggestion should come from the chief of the city
+police.
+
+At the moment when Contenson struck three raps on the table with the
+gold piece, a signal conveying, "I want to speak to you," the senior
+was reflecting on this problem: "By whom, and under what pressure can
+the Prefet of Police be made to move?"--And he looked like a noodle
+studying his Courrier Francais.
+
+"Poor Fouche!" thought he to himself, as he made his way along the Rue
+Saint-Honore, "that great man is dead! our go-betweens with Louis
+XVIII. are out of favor. And besides, as Corentin said only yesterday,
+nobody believes in the activity or the intelligence of a man of
+seventy. Oh, why did I get into a habit of dining at Very's, of
+drinking choice wines, of singing La Mere Godichon, of gambling when I
+am in funds? To get a place and keep it, as Corentin says, it is not
+enough to be clever, you must have the gift of management. Poor dear
+M. Lenoir was right when he wrote to me in the matter of the Queen's
+necklace, 'You will never do any good,' when he heard that I did not
+stay under that slut Oliva's bed."
+
+If the venerable Pere Canquoelle--he was called so in the house--lived
+on in the Rue des Moineaux, on a fourth floor, you may depend on it he
+had found some peculiarity in the arrangement of the premises which
+favored the practice of his terrible profession.
+
+The house, standing at the corner of the Rue Saint-Roch, had no
+neighbors on one side; and as the staircase up the middle divided it
+into two, there were on each floor two perfectly isolated rooms. Those
+two rooms looked out on the Rue Saint-Roch. There were garret rooms
+above the fourth floor, one of them a kitchen, and the other a bedroom
+for Pere Canquoelle's only servant, a Fleming named Katt, formerly
+Lydie's wet-nurse. Old Canquoelle had taken one of the outside rooms
+for his bedroom, and the other for his study. The study ended at the
+party-wall, a very thick one. The window opening on the Rue des
+Moineaux looked on a blank wall at the opposite corner. As this study
+was divided from the stairs by the whole width of Peyrade's bedroom,
+the friends feared no eye, no ear, as they talked business in this
+study made on purpose for his detestable trade.
+
+Peyrade, as a further precaution, had furnished Katt's room with a
+thick straw bed, a felt carpet, and a very heavy rug, under the
+pretext of making his child's nurse comfortable. He had also stopped
+up the chimney, warming his room by a stove, with a pipe through the
+wall to the Rue Saint-Roch. Finally, he laid several rugs on his floor
+to prevent the slightest sound being heard by the neighbors beneath.
+An expert himself in the tricks of spies, he sounded the outer wall,
+the ceiling, and the floor once a week, examining them as if he were
+in search of noxious insects. It was the security of this room from
+all witnesses or listeners that had made Corentin select it as his
+council-chamber when he did not hold a meeting in his own room.
+
+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, novelists 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
+road whence 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.
+
+On finding Esther in a squalid room, dressed as a work-woman, and
+employed on some embroidery, the millionaire turned pale. At the end
+of a quarter of an hour, while Asie affected to talk in whispers to
+Esther, the young old man could hardly speak.
+
+"Montemisselle," said he at length to the unhappy girl, "vill you be
+so goot as to let me be your protector?"
+
+"Why, I cannot help myself, monsieur," replied Esther, letting fall
+two large tears.
+
+"Do not veep. I shall make you de happiest of vomen. Only permit that
+I shall lof you--you shall see."
+
+"Well, well, child, the gentleman is reasonable," said Asie. "He knows
+that he is more than sixty, and he will be very kind to you. You see,
+my beauty, I have found you quite a father--I had to say so," Asie
+whispered to the banker, who was not best pleased. "You cannot catch
+swallows by firing a pistol at them.--Come here," she went on, leading
+Nucingen into the adjoining room. "You remember our bargain, my
+angel?"
+
+Nucingen took out his pocketbook and counted out the hundred thousand
+francs, which Carlos, hidden in a cupboard, was impatiently waiting
+for, and which the cook handed over to him.
+
+"Here are the hundred thousand francs our man stakes on Asie. Now we
+must make him lay on Europe," said Carlos to his confidante when they
+were on the landing.
+
+And he vanished after giving his instruction to the Malay who went
+back into the room. She found Esther weeping bitterly. The poor girl,
+like a criminal condemned to death, had woven a romance of hope, and
+the fatal hour had tolled.
+
+"My dear children," said Asie, "where do you mean to go?--For the
+Baron de Nucingen----"
+
+Esther looked at the great banker with a start of surprise that was
+admirably acted.
+
+"Ja, mein kind, I am dat Baron von Nucingen."
+
+"The Baron de Nucingen must not, cannot remain in such a room as
+this," Asie went on. "Listen to me; your former maid Eugenie."
+
+"Eugenie, from the Rue Taitbout?" cried the Baron.
+
+"Just so; the woman placed in possession of the furniture," replied
+Asie, "and who let the apartment to that handsome Englishwoman----"
+
+"Hah! I onderstant!" said the Baron.
+
+"Madame's former waiting-maid," Asie went on, respectfully alluding to
+Esther, "will receive you very comfortably this evening; and the
+commercial police will never think of looking for her in her old rooms
+which she left three months ago----"
+
+"Feerst rate, feerst rate!" cried the Baron. "An' besides, I know dese
+commercial police, an' I know vat sorts shall make dem disappear."
+
+"You will find Eugenie a sharp customer," said Asie. "I found her for
+madame."
+
+"Hah! I know her!" cried the millionaire, laughing. "She haf fleeced
+me out of dirty tousant franc."
+
+Esther shuddered with horror in a way that would have led a man of any
+feeling to trust her with his fortune.
+
+"Oh, dat vas mein own fault," the Baron said. "I vas seeking for you."
+
+And he related the incident that had arisen out of the letting of
+Esther's rooms to the Englishwoman.
+
+"There, now, you see, madame, Eugenie never told you all that, the sly
+thing!" said Asie.--"Still, madame is used to the hussy," she added to
+the Baron. "Keep her on, all the same."
+
+She drew Nucingen aside and said:
+
+"If you give Eugenie five hundred francs a month, which will fill up
+her stocking finely, you can know everything that madame does: make
+her the lady's-maid. Eugenie will be all the more devoted to you since
+she has already done you.--Nothing attaches a woman to a man more than
+the fact that she has once fleeced him. But keep a tight rein on
+Eugenie; she will do any earthly thing for money; she is a dreadful
+creature!"
+
+"An' vat of you?"
+
+"I," said Asie, "I make both ends meet."
+
+Nucingen, the astute financier, had a bandage over his eyes; he
+allowed himself to be led like a child. The sight of that spotless and
+adorable Esther wiping her eyes and pricking in the stitches of her
+embroidery as demurely as an innocent girl, revived in the amorous old
+man the sensations he had experienced in the Forest of Vincennes; he
+would have given her the key of his safe. He felt so young, his heart
+was so overflowing with adoration; he only waited till Asie should be
+gone to throw himself at the feet of this Raphael's Madonna.
+
+This sudden blossoming of youth in the heart of a stockbroker, of an
+old man, is one of the social phenomena which must be left to
+physiology to account for. Crushed under the burden of business,
+stifled under endless calculations and the incessant anxieties of
+million-hunting, young emotions revive with their sublime illusions,
+sprout and flower like a forgotten cause or a forgotten seed, whose
+effects, whose gorgeous bloom, are the sport of chance, brought out by
+a late and sudden gleam of sunshine.
+
+The Baron, a clerk by the time he was twelve years old in the ancient
+house of Aldrigger at Strasbourg, had never set foot in the world of
+sentiment. So there he stood in front of his idol, hearing in his
+brain a thousand modes of speech, while none came to his lips, till at
+length he acted on the brutal promptings of desire that betrayed a man
+of sixty-six.
+
+"Vill you come to Rue Taitbout?" said he.
+
+"Wherever you please, monsieur," said Esther, rising.
+
+"Verever I please!" he echoed in rapture. "You are ein anchel from de
+sky, and I lofe you more as if I was a little man, vile I hafe gray
+hairs----"
+
+"You had better say white, for they are too fine a black to be only
+gray," said Asie.
+
+"Get out, foul dealer in human flesh! You hafe got your moneys; do not
+slobber no more on dis flower of lofe!" cried the banker, indemnifying
+himself by this violent abuse for all the insolence he had submitted
+to.
+
+"You old rip! I will pay you out for that speech!" said Asie,
+threatening the banker with a gesture worthy of the Halle, at which
+the Baron merely shrugged his shoulders. "Between the lip of the pot
+and that of the guzzler there is often a viper, and you will find me
+there!" she went on, furious at Nucingen's contempt.
+
+Millionaires, whose money is guarded by the Bank of France, whose
+mansions are guarded by a squad of footmen, whose person in the
+streets is safe behind the rampart of a coach with swift English
+horses, fear no ill; so the Baron looked calmly at Asie, as a man who
+had just given her a hundred thousand francs.
+
+This dignity had its effect. Asie beat a retreat, growling down the
+stairs in highly revolutionary language; she spoke of the guillotine!
+
+"What have you said to her?" asked the Madonna a la broderie, "for she
+is a good soul."
+
+"She hafe solt you, she hafe robbed you----"
+
+"When we are beggared," said she, in a tone to rend the heart of a
+diplomate, "who has ever any money or consideration for us?"
+
+"Poor leetle ting!" said Nucingen. "Do not stop here ein moment
+longer."
+
+The Baron offered her his arm; he led her away just as she was, and
+put her into his carriage with more respect perhaps than he would have
+shown to the handsome Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.
+
+"You shall hafe a fine carriage, de prettiest carriage in Paris," said
+Nucingen, as they drove along. "Everyting dat luxury shall sopply
+shall be for you. Not any qveen shall be more rich dan vat you shall
+be. You shall be respected like ein Cherman Braut. I shall hafe you to
+be free.--Do not veep! Listen to me--I lofe you really, truly, mit de
+purest lofe. Efery tear of yours breaks my heart."
+
+"Can one truly love a woman one has bought?" said the poor girl in the
+sweetest tones.
+
+"Choseph vas solt by his broders for dat he was so comely. Dat is so
+in de Biple. An' in de Eastern lants men buy deir wifes."
+
+On arriving at the Rue Taitbout, Esther could not return to the scene
+of her happiness without some pain. She remained sitting on a couch,
+motionless, drying away her tears one by one, and never hearing a word
+of the crazy speeches poured out by the banker. He fell at her feet,
+and she let him kneel without saying a word to him, allowing him to
+take her hands as he would, and never thinking of the sex of the
+creature who was rubbing her feet to warm them; for Nucingen found
+that they were cold.
+
+This scene of scalding tears shed on the Baron's head, and of ice-cold
+feet that he tried to warm, lasted from midnight till two in the
+morning.
+
+"Eugenie," cried the Baron at last to Europe, "persvade your mis'ess
+that she shall go to bet."
+
+"No!" cried Esther, starting to her feet like a scared horse. "Never
+in this house!"
+
+"Look her, monsieur, I know madame; she is as gentle and kind as a
+lamb," said Europe to the Baron. "Only you must not rub her the wrong
+way, you must get at her sideways--she had been so miserable here.--
+You see how worn the furniture is.--Let her go her own way.
+
+"Furnish some pretty little house for her, very nicely. Perhaps when
+she sees everything new about her she will feel a stranger there, and
+think you better looking than you are, and be angelically sweet.--Oh!
+madame has not her match, and you may boast of having done a very good
+stroke of business: a good heart, genteel manners, a fine instep--and
+a skin, a complexion! Ah!----
+
+"And witty enough to make a condemned wretch laugh. And madame can
+feel an attachment.--And then how she can dress!--Well, if it is
+costly, still, as they say, you get your money's worth.--Here all the
+gowns were seized, everything she has is three months old.--But madame
+is so kind, you see, that I love her, and she is my mistress!--But in
+all justice--such a woman as she is, in the midst of furniture that
+has been seized!--And for whom? For a young scamp who has ruined her.
+Poor little thing, she is not at all herself."
+
+"Esther, Esther; go to bet, my anchel! If it is me vat frighten you, I
+shall stay here on dis sofa----" cried the Baron, fired by the purest
+devotion, as he saw that Esther was still weeping.
+
+"Well, then," said Esther, taking the "lynx's" hand, and kissing it
+with an impulse of gratitude which brought something very like a tear
+to his eye, "I shall be grateful to you----"
+
+And she fled into her room and locked the door.
+
+"Dere is someting fery strange in all dat," thought Nucingen, excited
+by his pillules. "Vat shall dey say at home?"
+
+He got up and looked out of the window. "My carriage still is dere. It
+shall soon be daylight." He walked up and down the room.
+
+"Vat Montame de Nucingen should laugh at me ven she should know how I
+hafe spent dis night!"
+
+He applied his ear to the bedroom door, thinking himself rather too
+much of a simpleton.
+
+"Esther!"
+
+No reply.
+
+"Mein Gott! and she is still veeping!" said he to himself, as he
+stretched himself on the sofa.
+
+About ten minutes after sunrise, the Baron de Nucingen, who was
+sleeping the uneasy slumbers that are snatched by compulsion in an
+awkward position on a couch, was aroused with a start by Europe from
+one of those dreams that visit us in such moments, and of which the
+swift complications are a phenomenon inexplicable by medical
+physiology.
+
+"Oh, God help us, madame!" she shrieked. "Madame!--the soldiers--
+gendarmes--bailiffs! They have come to take us."
+
+At the moment when Esther opened her door and appeared, hurriedly,
+wrapped in her dressing-gown, her bare feet in slippers, her hair in
+disorder, lovely enough to bring the angel Raphael to perdition, the
+drawing-room door vomited into the room a gutter of human mire that
+came on, on ten feet, towards the beautiful girl, who stood like an
+angel in some Flemish church picture. One man came foremost.
+Contenson, the horrible Contenson, laid his hand on Esther's dewy
+shoulder.
+
+"You are Mademoiselle van----" he began. Europe, by a back-handed slap
+on Contenson's cheek, sent him sprawling to measure his length on the
+carpet, and with all the more effect because at the same time she
+caught his leg with the sharp kick known to those who practise the art
+as a coup de savate.
+
+"Hands off!" cried she. "No one shall touch my mistress."
+
+"She has broken my leg!" yelled Contenson, picking himself up; "I will
+have damages!"
+
+From the group of bumbailiffs, looking like what they were, all
+standing with their horrible hats on their yet more horrible heads,
+with mahogany-colored faces and bleared eyes, damaged noses, and
+hideous mouths, Louchard now stepped forth, more decently dressed than
+his men, but keeping his hat on, his expression at once smooth-faced
+and smiling.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I arrest you!" said he to Esther. "As for you, my
+girl," he added to Europe, "any resistance will be punished, and
+perfectly useless."
+
+The noise of muskets, let down with a thud of their stocks on the
+floor of the dining-room, showing that the invaders had soldiers to
+bake them, gave emphasis to this speech.
+
+"And what am I arrested for?" said Esther.
+
+"What about our little debts?" said Louchard.
+
+"To be sure," cried Esther; "give me leave to dress."
+
+"But, unfortunately, mademoiselle, I am obliged to make sure that you
+have no way of getting out of your room," said Louchard.
+
+All this passed so quickly that the Baron had not yet had time to
+intervene.
+
+"Well, and am I still a foul dealer in human flesh, Baron de
+Nucingen?" cried the hideous Asie, forcing her way past the sheriff's
+officers to the couch, where she pretended to have just discovered the
+banker.
+
+"Contemptible wretch!" exclaimed Nucingen, drawing himself up in
+financial majesty.
+
+He placed himself between Esther and Louchard, who took off his hat as
+Contenson cried out, "Monsieur le Baron de Nucingen."
+
+At a signal from Louchard the bailiffs vanished from the room,
+respectfully taking their hats off. Contenson alone was left.
+
+"Do you propose to pay, Monsieur le Baron?" asked he, hat in hand.
+
+"I shall pay," said the banker; "but I must know vat dis is all
+about."
+
+"Three hundred and twelve thousand francs and some centimes, costs
+paid; but the charges for the arrest not included."
+
+"Three hundred thousand francs," cried the Baron; "dat is a fery
+'xpensive vaking for a man vat has passed the night on a sofa," he
+added in Europe's ear.
+
+"Is that man really the Baron de Nucingen?" asked Europe to Louchard,
+giving weight to the doubt by a gesture which Mademoiselle Dupont, the
+low comedy servant of the Francais, might have envied.
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle," said Louchard.
+
+"Yes," replied Contenson.
+
+"I shall be answerable," said the Baron, piqued in his honor by
+Europe's doubt. "You shall 'llow me to say ein vort to her."
+
+Esther and her elderly lover retired to the bedroom, Louchard finding
+it necessary to apply his ear to the keyhole.
+
+"I lofe you more as my life, Esther; but vy gife to your creditors
+moneys vich shall be so much better in your pocket? Go into prison. I
+shall undertake to buy up dose hundert tousant crowns for ein hundert
+tousant francs, an' so you shall hafe two hundert tousant francs for
+you----"
+
+"That scheme is perfectly useless," cried Louchard through the door.
+"The creditor is not in love with mademoiselle--not he! You
+understand? And he means to have more than all, now he knows that you
+are in love with her."
+
+"You dam' sneak!" cried Nucingen, opening the door, and dragging
+Louchard into the bedroom; "you know not dat vat you talk about. I
+shall gife you, you'self, tventy per cent if you make the job."
+
+"Impossible, M. le Baron."
+
+"What, monsieur, you could have the heart to let my mistress go to
+prison?" said Europe, intervening. "But take my wages, my savings;
+take them, madame; I have forty thousand francs----"
+
+"Ah, my good girl, I did not really know you!" cried Esther, clasping
+Europe in her arms.
+
+Europe proceeded to melt into tears.
+
+"I shall pay," said the Baron piteously, as he drew out a pocket-book,
+from which he took one of the little printed forms which the Bank of
+France issues to bankers, on which they have only to write a sum in
+figures and in words to make them available as cheques to bearer.
+
+"It is not worth the trouble, Monsieur le Baron," said Louchard; "I
+have instructions not to accept payment in anything but coin of the
+realm--gold or silver. As it is you, I will take banknotes."
+
+"Der Teufel!" cried the Baron. "Well, show me your papers."
+
+Contenson handed him three packets covered with blue paper, which the
+Baron took, looking at the man, and adding in an undertone:
+
+"It should hafe been a better day's vork for you ven you had gife me
+notice."
+
+"Why, how should I know you were here, Monsieur le Baron?" replied the
+spy, heedless whether Louchard heard him. "You lost my services by
+withdrawing your confidence. You are done," added this philosopher,
+shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"Qvite true," said the baron. "Ah, my chilt," he exclaimed, seeing the
+bills of exchange, and turning to Esther, "you are de fictim of a
+torough scoundrel, ein highway tief!"
+
+"Alas, yes," said poor Esther; "but he loved me truly."
+
+"Ven I should hafe known--I should hafe made you to protest----"
+
+"You are off your head, Monsieur le Baron," said Louchard; "there is a
+third endorsement."
+
+"Yes, dere is a tird endorsement--Cerizet! A man of de opposition."
+
+"Will you write an order on your cashier, Monsieur le Baron?" said
+Louchard. "I will send Contenson to him and dismiss my men. It is
+getting late, and everybody will know that----"
+
+"Go den, Contenson," said Nucingen. "My cashier lives at de corner of
+Rue des Mathurins and Rue de l'Arcate. Here is ein vort for dat he
+shall go to du Tillet or to de Kellers, in case ve shall not hafe a
+hundert tousant franc--for our cash shall be at de Bank.--Get dress',
+my anchel," he said to Esther. "You are at liberty.--An' old vomans,"
+he went on, looking at Asie, "are more dangerous as young vomans."
+
+"I will go and give the creditor a good laugh," said Asie, "and he
+will give me something for a treat to-day.--We bear no malice,
+Monsieur le Baron," added Saint-Esteve with a horrible courtesy.
+
+Louchard took the bills out of the Baron's hands, and remained alone
+with him in the drawing-room, whither, half an hour later, the cashier
+came, followed by Contenson. Esther then reappeared in a bewitching,
+though improvised, costume. When the money had been counted by
+Louchard, the Baron wished to examine the bills; but Esther snatched
+them with a cat-like grab, and carried them away to her desk.
+
+"What will you give the rabble?" said Contenson to Nucingen.
+
+"You hafe not shown much consideration," said the Baron.
+
+"And what about my leg?" cried Contenson.
+
+"Louchard, you shall gife ein hundert francs to Contenson out of the
+change of the tousand-franc note."
+
+"De lady is a beauty," said the cashier to the Baron, as they left the
+Rue Taitbout, "but she is costing you ver' dear, Monsieur le Baron."
+
+"Keep my segret," said the Baron, who had said the same to Contenson
+and Louchard.
+
+Louchard went away with Contenson; but on the boulevard Asie, who was
+looking out for him, stopped Louchard.
+
+"The bailiff and the creditor are there in a cab," said she. "They are
+thirsty, and there is money going."
+
+While Louchard counted out the cash, Contenson studied the customers.
+He recognized Carlos by his eyes, and traced the form of his forehead
+under the wig. The wig he shrewdly regarded as suspicious; he took the
+number of the cab while seeming quite indifferent to what was going
+on; Asie and Europe puzzled him beyond measure. He thought that the
+Baron was the victim of excessively clever sharpers, all the more so
+because Louchard, when securing his services, had been singularly
+close. And besides, the twist of Europe's foot had not struck his shin
+only.
+
+"A trick like that is learned at Saint-Lazare," he had reflected as he
+got up.
+
+Carlos dismissed the bailiff, paying him liberally, and as he did so,
+said to the driver of the cab, "To the Perron, Palais Royal."
+
+"The rascal!" thought Contenson as he heard the order. "There is
+something up!" Carlos drove to the Palais Royal at a pace which
+precluded all fear of pursuit. He made his way in his own fashion
+through the arcades, took another cab on the Place du Chateau d'Eau,
+and bid the man go "to the Passage de l'Opera, the end of the Rue
+Pinon."
+
+A quarter of a hour later he was in the Rue Taitbout. On seeing him,
+Esther said:
+
+"Here are the fatal papers."
+
+Carlos took the bills, examined them, and then burned them in the
+kitchen fire.
+
+"We have done the trick," he said, showing her three hundred and ten
+thousand francs in a roll, which he took out of the pocket of his
+coat. "This, and the hundred thousand francs squeezed out by Asie, set
+us free to act."
+
+"Oh God, oh God!" cried poor Esther.
+
+"But, you idiot," said the ferocious swindler, "you have only to be
+ostensibly Nucingen's mistress, and you can always see Lucien; he is
+Nucingen's friend; I do not forbid your being madly in love with him."
+
+Esther saw a glimmer of light in her darkened life; she breathed once
+more.
+
+"Europe, my girl," said Carlos, leading the creature into a corner of
+the boudoir where no one could overhear a word, "Europe, I am pleased
+with you."
+
+Europe held up her head, and looked at this man with an expression
+which so completely changed her faded features, that Asie, witnessing
+the interview, as she watched her from the door, wondered whether the
+interest by which Carlos held Europe might not perhaps be even
+stronger than that by which she herself was bound to him.
+
+"That is not all, my child. Four hundred thousand francs are a mere
+nothing to me. Paccard will give you an account for some plate,
+amounting to thirty thousand francs, on which money has been paid on
+account; but our goldsmith, Biddin, has paid money for us. Our
+furniture, seized by him, will no doubt be advertised to-morrow. Go
+and see Biddin; he lives in the Rue d l'Arbre Sec; he will give you
+Mont-de-Piete tickets for ten thousand francs. You understand, Esther
+ordered the plate; she had not paid for it, and she put it up the
+spout. She will be in danger of a little summons for swindling. So we
+must pay the goldsmith the thirty thousand francs, and pay up ten
+thousand francs to the Mont-de-Piete to get the plate back. Forty-
+three thousand francs in all, including the costs. The silver is very
+much alloyed; the Baron will give her a new service, and we shall bone
+a few thousand francs out of that. You owe--what? two years' account
+with the dressmaker?"
+
+"Put it at six thousand francs," replied Europe.
+
+"Well, if Madame Auguste wants to be paid and keep our custom, tell
+her to make out a bill for thirty thousand francs over four years.
+Make a similar arrangement with the milliner. The jeweler, Samuel
+Frisch the Jew, in the Rue Saint-Avoie, will lend you some pawn-
+tickets; we must owe him twenty-five thousand francs, and we must want
+six thousand for jewels pledged at the Mont-de-Piete. We will return
+the trinkets to the jeweler, half the stones will be imitation, but
+the Baron will not examine them. In short, you will make him fork out
+another hundred and fifty thousand francs to add to our nest-eggs
+within a week."
+
+"Madame might give me a little help," said Europe. "Tell her so, for
+she sits there mumchance, and obliges me to find more inventions than
+three authors for one piece."
+
+"If Esther turns prudish, just let me know," said Carlos. "Nucingen
+must give her a carriage and horses; she will have to choose and buy
+everything herself. Go to the horse-dealer and the coachmaker who are
+employed by the job-master where Paccard finds work. We shall get
+handsome horses, very dear, which will go lame within a month, and we
+shall have to change them."
+
+"We might get six thousand francs out of a perfumer's bill," said
+Europe.
+
+"Oh!" said he, shaking his head, "we must go gently. Nucingen has only
+got his arm into the press; we must have his head. Besides all this, I
+must get five hundred thousand francs."
+
+"You can get them," replied Europe. "Madame will soften towards the
+fat fool for about six hundred thousand, and insist on four hundred
+thousand more to love him truly!"
+
+"Listen to me, my child," said Carlos. "The day when I get the last
+hundred thousand francs, there shall be twenty thousand for you."
+
+"What good will they do me?" said Europe, letting her arms drop like a
+woman to whom life seems impossible.
+
+"You could go back to Valenciennes, buy a good business, and set up as
+an honest woman if you chose; there are many tastes in human nature.
+Paccard thinks of settling sometimes; he has no encumbrances on his
+hands, and not much on his conscience; you might suit each other,"
+replied Carlos.
+
+"Go back to Valenciennes! What are you thinking of, monsieur?" cried
+Europe in alarm.
+
+Europe, who was born at Valenciennes, the child of very poor parents,
+had been sent at seven years of age to a spinning factory, where the
+demands of modern industry had impaired her physical strength, just as
+vice had untimely depraved her. Corrupted at the age of twelve, and a
+mother at thirteen, she found herself bound to the most degraded of
+human creatures. On the occasion of a murder case, she had been as a
+witness before the Court. Haunted at sixteen by a remnant of
+rectitude, and the terror inspired by the law, her evidence led to the
+prisoner being sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.
+
+The convict, one of those men who have been in the hands of justice
+more than once, and whose temper is apt at terrible revenge, had said
+to the girl in open court:
+
+"In ten years, as sure as you live, Prudence" (Europe's name was
+Prudence Servien), "I will return to be the death of you, if I am
+scragged for it."
+
+The President of the Court tried to reassure the girl by promising her
+the protection and the care of the law; but the poor child was so
+terror-stricken that she fell ill, and was in hospital nearly a year.
+Justice is an abstract being, represented by a collection of
+individuals who are incessantly changing, whose good intentions and
+memories are, like themselves, liable to many vicissitudes. Courts and
+tribunals can do nothing to hinder crimes; their business is to deal
+with them when done. From this point of view, a preventive police
+would be a boon to a country; but the mere word Police is in these
+days a bugbear to legislators, who no longer can distinguish between
+the three words--Government, Administration, and Law-making. The
+legislator tends to centralize everything in the State, as if the
+State could act.
+
+The convict would be sure always to remember his victim, and to avenge
+himself when Justice had ceased to think of either of them.
+
+Prudence, who instinctively appreciated the danger--in a general
+sense, so to speak--left Valenciennes and came to Paris at the age of
+seventeen to hide there. She tried four trades, of which the most
+successful was that of a "super" at a minor theatre. She was picked up
+by Paccard, and to him she told her woes. Paccard, Jacques Collin's
+disciple and right-hand man, spoke of this girl to his master, and
+when the master needed a slave he said to Prudence:
+
+"If you will serve me as the devil must be served, I will rid you of
+Durut."
+
+Durut was the convict; the Damocles' sword hung over Prudence
+Servien's head.
+
+But for these details, many critics would have thought Europe's
+attachment somewhat grotesque. And no one could have understood the
+startling announcement that Carlos had ready.
+
+"Yes, my girl, you can go back to Valenciennes. Here, read this."
+
+And he held out to her yesterday's paper, pointing to this paragraph:
+
+  "TOULON--Yesterday, Jean Francois Durut was executed here. Early
+  in the morning the garrison," etc.
+
+Prudence dropped the paper; her legs gave way under the weight of her
+body; she lived again; for, to use her own words, she never liked the
+taste of her food since the day when Durut had threatened her.
+
+"You see, I have kept my word. It has taken four years to bring Durut
+to the scaffold by leading him into a snare.--Well, finish my job
+here, and you will find yourself at the head of a little country
+business in your native town, with twenty thousand francs of your own
+as Paccard's wife, and I will allow him to be virtuous as a form of
+pension."
+
+Europe picked up the paper and read with greedy eyes all the details,
+of which for twenty years the papers have never been tired, as to the
+death of convicted criminals: the impressive scene, the chaplain--who
+has always converted the victim--the hardened criminal preaching to
+his fellow convicts, the battery of guns, the convicts on their knees;
+and then the twaddle and reflections which never lead to any change in
+the management of the prisons where eighteen hundred crimes are
+herded.
+
+"We must place Asie on the staff once more," said Carlos.
+
+Asie came forward, not understanding Europe's pantomime.
+
+"In bringing her back here as cook, you must begin by giving the Baron
+such a dinner as he never ate in his life," he went on. "Tell him that
+Asie has lost all her money at play, and has taken service once more.
+We shall not need an outdoor servant. Paccard shall be coachman.
+Coachmen do not leave their box, where they are safe out of the way;
+and he will run less risk from spies. Madame must turn him out in a
+powdered wig and a braided felt cocked hat; that will alter his
+appearance. Besides, I will make him us."
+
+"Are we going to have men-servants in the house?" asked Asie with a
+leer.
+
+"All honest folks," said Carlos.
+
+"All soft-heads," retorted the mulatto.
+
+"If the Baron takes a house, Paccard has a friend who will suit as the
+lodge porter," said Carlos. "Then we shall only need a footman and a
+kitchen-maid, and you can surely keep an eye on two strangers----"
+
+As Carlos was leaving, Paccard made his appearance.
+
+"Wait a little while, there are people in the street," said the man.
+
+This simple statement was alarming. Carlos went up to Europe's room,
+and stayed there till Paccard came to fetch him, having called a
+hackney cab that came into the courtyard. Carlos pulled down the
+blinds, and was driven off at a pace that defied pursuit.
+
+Having reached the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, he got out at a short
+distance from a hackney coach stand, to which he went on foot, and
+thence returned to the Quai Malaquais, escaping all inquiry.
+
+"Here, child," said he to Lucien, showing him four hundred banknotes
+for a thousand francs, "here is something on account for the purchase
+of the estates of Rubempre. We will risk a hundred thousand. Omnibuses
+have just been started; the Parisians will take to the novelty; in
+three months we shall have trebled our capital. I know the concern;
+they will pay splendid dividends taken out of the capital, to put a
+head on the shares--an old idea of Nucingen's revived. If we acquire
+the Rubempre land, we shall not have to pay on the nail.
+
+"You must go and see des Lupeaulx, and beg him to give you a personal
+recommendation to a lawyer named Desroches, a cunning dog, whom you
+must call on at his office. Get him to go to Rubempre and see how the
+land lies; promise him a premium of twenty thousand francs if he
+manages to secure you thirty thousand francs a year by investing eight
+hundred thousand francs in land round the ruins of the old house."
+
+"How you go on--on! on!"
+
+"I am always going on. This is no time for joking.--You must then
+invest a hundred thousand crowns in Treasury bonds, so as to lose no
+interest; you may safely leave it to Desroches, he is as honest as he
+is knowing.--That being done, get off to Angouleme, and persuade your
+sister and your brother-in-law to pledge themselves to a little fib in
+the way of business. Your relations are to have given you six hundred
+thousand francs to promote your marriage with Clotilde de Grandlieu;
+there is no disgrace in that."
+
+"We are saved!" cried Lucien, dazzled.
+
+"You are, yes!" replied Carlos. "But even you are not safe till you
+walk out of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin with Clotilde as your wife."
+
+"And what have you to fear?" said Lucien, apparently much concerned
+for his counselor.
+
+"Some inquisitive souls are on my track--I must assume the manners of
+a genuine priest; it is most annoying. The Devil will cease to protect
+me if he sees me with a breviary under my arm."
+
+
+
+At this moment the Baron de Nucingen, who was leaning on his cashier's
+arm, reached the door of his mansion.
+
+"I am ver' much afrait," said he, as he went in, "dat I hafe done a
+bat day's vork. Vell, we must make it up some oder vays."
+
+"De misfortune is dat you shall hafe been caught, mein Herr Baron,"
+said the worthy German, whose whole care was for appearances.
+
+"Ja, my miss'ess en titre should be in a position vody of me," said
+this Louis XIV. of the counting-house.
+
+Feeling sure that sooner or later Esther would be his, the Baron was
+now himself again, a masterly financier. He resumed the management of
+his affairs, and with such effect that his cashier, finding him in his
+office room at six o'clock next morning, verifying his securities,
+rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
+
+"Ah, ha! mein Herr Baron, you shall hafe saved money last night!" said
+he, with a half-cunning, half-loutish German grin.
+
+Though men who are as rich as the Baron de Nucingen have more
+opportunities than others for losing money, they also have more
+chances of making it, even when they indulge their follies. Though the
+financial policy of the house of Nucingen has been explained
+elsewhere, it may be as well to point out that such immense fortunes
+are not made, are not built up, are not increased, and are not
+retained in the midst of the commercial, political, and industrial
+revolutions of the present day but at the cost of immense losses, or,
+if you choose to view it so, of heavy taxes on private fortunes. Very
+little newly-created wealth is thrown into the common treasury of the
+world. Every fresh accumulation represents some new inequality in the
+general distribution of wealth. What the State exacts it makes some
+return for; but what a house like that of Nucingen takes, it keeps.
+
+Such covert robbery escapes the law for the reason which would have
+made a Jacques Collin of Frederick the Great, if, instead of dealing
+with provinces by means of battles, he had dealt in smuggled goods or
+transferable securities. The high politics of money-making consist in
+forcing the States of Europe to issue loans at twenty or at ten per
+cent, in making that twenty or ten per cent by the use of public
+funds, in squeezing industry on a vast scale by buying up raw
+material, in throwing a rope to the first founder of a business just
+to keep him above water till his drowned-out enterprise is safely
+landed--in short, in all the great battles for money-getting.
+
+The banker, no doubt, like the conqueror, runs risks; but there are so
+few men in a position to wage this warfare, that the sheep have no
+business to meddle. Such grand struggles are between the shepherds.
+Thus, as the defaulters are guilty of having wanted to win too much,
+very little sympathy is felt as a rule for the misfortunes brought
+about by the coalition of the Nucingens. If a speculator blows his
+brains out, if a stockbroker bolts, if a lawyer makes off with the
+fortune of a hundred families--which is far worse than killing a man--
+if a banker is insolvent, all these catastrophes are forgotten in
+Paris in few months, and buried under the oceanic surges of the great
+city.
+
+The colossal fortunes of Jacques Coeur, of the Medici, of the Angos of
+Dieppe, of the Auffredis of la Rochelle, of the Fuggers, of the
+Tiepolos, of the Corners, were honestly made long ago by the
+advantages they had over the ignorance of the people as to the sources
+of precious products; but nowadays geographical information has
+reached the masses, and competition has so effectually limited the
+profits, that every rapidly made fortune is the result of chance, or
+of a discovery, or of some legalized robbery. The lower grades of
+mercantile enterprise have retorted on the perfidious dealings of
+higher commerce, especially during the last ten years, by base
+adulteration of the raw material. Wherever chemistry is practised,
+wine is no longer procurable; the vine industry is consequently
+waning. Manufactured salt is sold to avoid the excise. The tribunals
+are appalled by this universal dishonesty. In short, French trade is
+regarded with suspicion by the whole world, and England too is fast
+being demoralized.
+
+With us the mischief has its origin in the political situation. The
+Charter proclaimed the reign of Money, and success has become the
+supreme consideration of an atheistic age. And, indeed, the corruption
+of the higher ranks is infinitely more hideous, in spite of the
+dazzling display and specious arguments of wealth, than that ignoble
+and more personal corruption of the inferior classes, of which certain
+details lend a comic element--terrible, if you will--to this drama.
+The Government, always alarmed by a new idea, has banished these
+materials of modern comedy from the stage. The citizen class, less
+liberal than Louis XIV., dreads the advent of its Mariage de Figaro,
+forbids the appearance of a political Tartuffe, and certainly would
+not allow Turcaret to be represented, for Turcaret is king.
+Consequently, comedy has to be narrated, and a book is now the weapon
+--less swift, but no more sure--that writers wield.
+
+In the course of this morning, amid the coming and going of callers,
+orders to be given, and brief interviews, making Nucingen's private
+office a sort of financial lobby, one of his stockbrokers announced to
+him the disappearance of a member of the Company, one of the richest
+and cleverest too--Jacques Falleix, brother of Martin Falleix, and the
+successor of Jules Desmarets. Jacques Falleix was stockbroker in
+ordinary to the house of Nucingen. In concert with du Tillet and the
+Kellers, the Baron had plotted the ruin of this man in cold blood, as
+if it had been the killing of a Passover lamb.
+
+"He could not hafe helt on," replied the Baron quietly.
+
+Jacques Falleix had done them immense service in stock-jobbing. During
+a crisis a few months since he had saved the situation by acting
+boldly. But to look for gratitude from a money-dealer is as vain as to
+try to touch the heart of the wolves of the Ukraine in winter.
+
+"Poor fellow!" said the stockbroker. "He so little anticipated such a
+catastrophe, that he had furnished a little house for his mistress in
+the Rue Saint-Georges; he has spent one hundred and fifty thousand
+francs in decorations and furniture. He was so devoted to Madame du
+Val-Noble! The poor woman must give it all up. And nothing is paid
+for."
+
+"Goot, goot!" thought Nucingen, "dis is de very chance to make up for
+vat I hafe lost dis night!--He hafe paid for noting?" he asked his
+informant.
+
+"Why," said the stockbroker, "where would you find a tradesman so ill
+informed as to refuse credit to Jacques Falleix? There is a splendid
+cellar of wine, it would seem. By the way, the house is for sale; he
+meant to buy it. The lease is in his name.--What a piece of folly!
+Plate, furniture, wine, carriage-horses, everything will be valued in
+a lump, and what will the creditors get out of it?"
+
+"Come again to-morrow," said Nucingen. "I shall hafe seen all dat; and
+if it is not a declared bankruptcy, if tings can be arranged and
+compromised, I shall tell you to offer some reasonaple price for dat
+furniture, if I shall buy de lease----"
+
+"That can be managed," said his friend. "If you go there this morning,
+you will find one of Falleix's partners there with the tradespeople,
+who want to establish a first claim; but la Val-Noble has their
+accounts made out to Falleix."
+
+The Baron sent off one of his clerks forthwith to his lawyer. Jacques
+Falleix had spoken to him about this house, which was worth sixty
+thousand francs at most, and he wished to be put in possession of it
+at once, so as to avail himself of the privileges of the householder.
+
+The cashier, honest man, came to inquire whether his master had lost
+anything by Falleix's bankruptcy.
+
+"On de contrar' mein goot Volfgang, I stant to vin ein hundert tousant
+francs."
+
+"How vas dat?"
+
+"Vell, I shall hafe de little house vat dat poor Teufel Falleix should
+furnish for his mis'ess this year. I shall hafe all dat for fifty
+tousant franc to de creditors; and my notary, Maitre Cardot, shall
+hafe my orders to buy de house, for de lan'lord vant de money--I knew
+dat, but I hat lost mein head. Ver' soon my difine Esther shall life
+in a little palace. . . . I hafe been dere mit Falleix--it is close to
+here.--It shall fit me like a glofe."
+
+Falleix's failure required the Baron's presence at the Bourse; but he
+could not bear to leave his house in the Rue Saint-Lazare without
+going to the Rue Taitbout; he was already miserable at having been
+away from Esther for so many hours. He would have liked to keep her at
+his elbow. The profits he hoped to make out of his stockbrokers'
+plunder made the former loss of four hundred thousand francs quite
+easy to endure.
+
+Delighted to announce to his "anchel" that she was to move from the
+Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where she was to have "ein
+little palace" where her memories would no longer rise up in
+antagonism to their happiness, the pavement felt elastic under his
+feet; he walked like a young man in a young man's dream. As he turned
+the corner of the Rue des Trois Freres, in the middle of his dream,
+and of the road, the Baron beheld Europe coming towards him, looking
+very much upset.
+
+"Vere shall you go?" he asked.
+
+"Well, monsieur, I was on my way to you. You were quite right
+yesterday. I see now that poor madame had better have gone to prison
+for a few days. But how should women understand money matters? When
+madame's creditors heard that she had come home, they all came down
+upon us like birds of prey.--Last evening, at seven o'clock, monsieur,
+men came and stuck terrible posters up to announce a sale of furniture
+on Saturday--but that is nothing.--Madame, who is all heart, once upon
+a time to oblige that wretch of a man you know----"
+
+"Vat wretch?"
+
+"Well, the man she was in love with, d'Estourny--well, he was
+charming! He was only a gambler----"
+
+"He gambled with beveled cards!"
+
+"Well--and what do you do at the Bourse?" said Europe. "But let me go
+on. One day, to hinder Georges, as he said, from blowing out his
+brains, she pawned all her plate and her jewels, which had never been
+paid for. Now on hearing that she had given something to one of her
+creditors, they came in a body and made a scene. They threaten her
+with the police-court--your angel at that bar! Is it not enough to
+make a wig stand on end? She is bathed in tears; she talks of throwing
+herself into the river-- and she will do it."
+
+"If I shall go to see her, dat is goot-bye to de Bourse; an' it is
+impossible but I shall go, for I shall make some money for her--you
+shall compose her. I shall pay her debts; I shall go to see her at
+four o'clock. But tell me, Eugenie, dat she shall lofe me a
+little----"
+
+"A little?--A great deal!--I tell you what, monsieur, nothing but
+generosity can win a woman's heart. You would, no doubt, have saved a
+hundred thousand francs or so by letting her go to prison. Well, you
+would never have won her heart. As she said to me--'Eugenie, he has
+been noble, grand--he has a great soul.' "
+
+"She hafe said dat, Eugenie?" cried the Baron.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, to me, myself."
+
+"Here--take dis ten louis."
+
+"Thank you.--But she is crying at this moment; she has been crying
+ever since yesterday as much as a weeping Magdalen could have cried in
+six months. The woman you love is in despair, and for debts that are
+not even hers! Oh! men--they devour women as women devour old fogies--
+there!"
+
+"Dey all is de same!--She hafe pledge' herself.--Vy, no one shall ever
+pledge herself.--Tell her dat she shall sign noting more.--I shall
+pay; but if she shall sign something more--I----"
+
+"What will you do?" said Europe with an air.
+
+"Mein Gott! I hafe no power over her.--I shall take de management of
+her little affairs----Dere, dere, go to comfort her, and you shall say
+that in ein mont she shall live in a little palace."
+
+"You have invested heavily, Monsieur le Baron, and for large interest,
+in a woman's heart. I tell you--you look to me younger. I am but a
+waiting-maid, but I have often seen such a change. It is happiness--
+happiness gives a certain glow. . . . If you have spent a little
+money, do not let that worry you; you will see what a good return it
+will bring. And I said to madame, I told her she would be the lowest
+of the low, a perfect hussy, if she did not love you, for you have
+picked her out of hell.--When once she has nothing on her mind, you
+will see. Between you and me, I may tell you, that night when she
+cried so much--What is to be said, we value the esteem of the man who
+maintains us--and she did not dare tell you everything. She wanted to
+fly."
+
+"To fly!" cried the Baron, in dismay at the notion. "But the Bourse,
+the Bourse!--Go 'vay, I shall not come in.--But tell her that I shall
+see her at her window--dat shall gife me courage!"
+
+Esther smiled at Monsieur de Nucingen as he passed the house, and he
+went ponderously on his way, saying:
+
+"She is ein anchel!"
+
+This was how Europe had succeeded in achieving the impossible. At
+about half-past two Esther had finished dressing, as she was wont to
+dress when she expected Lucien; she was looking charming. Seeing this,
+Prudence, looking out of the window, said, "There is monsieur!"
+
+The poor creature flew to the window, thinking she would see Lucien;
+she saw Nucingen.
+
+"Oh! how cruelly you hurt me!" she said.
+
+"There is no other way of getting you to seem to be gracious to a poor
+old man, who, after all, is going to pay your debts," said Europe.
+"For they are all to be paid."
+
+"What debts?" said the girl, who only cared to preserve her love,
+which dreadful hands were scattering to the winds.
+
+"Those which Monsieur Carlos made in your name."
+
+"Why, here are nearly four hundred and fifty thousand francs," cried
+Esther.
+
+"And you owe a hundred and fifty thousand more. But the Baron took it
+all very well.--He is going to remove you from hence, and place you in
+a little palace.--On my honor, you are not so badly off. In your
+place, as you have got on the right side of this man, as soon as
+Carlos is satisfied, I should make him give me a house and a settled
+income. You are certainly the handsomest woman I ever saw, madame, and
+the most attractive, but we so soon grow ugly! I was fresh and good-
+looking, and look at me! I am twenty-three, about the same age as
+madame, and I look ten years older. An illness is enough.--Well, but
+when you have a house in Paris and investments, you need never be
+afraid of ending in the streets."
+
+Esther had ceased to listen to Europe-Eugenie-Prudence Servien. The
+will of a man gifted with the genius of corruption had thrown Esther
+back into the mud with as much force as he had used to drag her out of
+it.
+
+Those who know love in its infinitude know that those who do not
+accept its virtues do not experience its pleasures. Since the scene in
+the den in the Rue de Langlade, Esther had utterly forgotten her
+former existence. She had since lived very virtuously, cloistered by
+her passion. Hence, to avoid any obstacle, the skilful fiend had been
+clever enough to lay such a train that the poor girl, prompted by her
+devotion, had merely to utter her consent to swindling actions already
+done, or on the point of accomplishment. This subtlety, revealing the
+mastery of the tempter, also characterized the methods by which he had
+subjugated Lucien. He created a terrible situation, dug a mine, filled
+it with powder, and at the critical moment said to his accomplice,
+"You have only to nod, and the whole will explode!"
+
+Esther of old, knowing only the morality peculiar to courtesans,
+thought all these attentions so natural, that she measured her rivals
+only by what they could get men to spend on them. Ruined fortunes are
+the conduct-stripes of these creatures. Carlos, in counting on
+Esther's memory, had not calculated wrongly.
+
+These tricks of warfare, these stratagems employed a thousand times,
+not only by these women, but by spendthrifts too, did not disturb
+Esther's mind. She felt nothing but her personal degradation; she
+loved Lucien, she was to be the Baron de Nucingen's mistress "by
+appointment"; this was all she thought of. The supposed Spaniard might
+absorb the earnest-money, Lucien might build up his fortune with the
+stones of her tomb, a single night of pleasure might cost the old
+banker so many thousand-franc notes more or less, Europe might extract
+a few hundred thousand francs by more or less ingenious trickery,--
+none of these things troubled the enamored girl; this alone was the
+canker that ate into her heart. For five years she had looked upon
+herself as being as white as an angel. She loved, she was happy, she
+had never committed the smallest infidelity. This beautiful pure love
+was now to be defiled.
+
+There was, in her mind, no conscious contrasting of her happy isolated
+past and her foul future life. It was neither interest nor sentiment
+that moved her, only an indefinable and all powerful feeling that she
+had been white and was now black, pure and was now impure, noble and
+was now ignoble. Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her
+unendurable. And when the Baron's passion had threatened her, she had
+really thought of throwing herself out of the window. In short, she
+loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who
+say they love, who often think they love best, dance, waltz, and flirt
+with other men, dress for the world, and look for a harvest of
+concupiscent glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved
+miracles of true love. She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses
+love and courtesans--women who, having rolled in mire and impurity,
+thirst for something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and
+who practice exclusiveness--the only word for an idea so little known
+in real life.
+
+Vanished nations, Greece, Rome, and the East, have at all times kept
+women shut up; the woman who loves should shut herself up. So it may
+easily be imagined that on quitting the palace of her fancy, where
+this poem had been enacted, to go to this old man's "little palace,"
+Esther felt heartsick. Urged by an iron hand, she had found herself
+waist-deep in disgrace before she had time to reflect; but for the
+past two days she had been reflecting, and felt a mortal chill about
+her heart.
+
+At the words, "End in the street," she started to her feet and said:
+
+"In the street!--No, in the Seine rather."
+
+"In the Seine? And what about Monsieur Lucien?" said Europe.
+
+This single word brought Esther to her seat again; she remained in her
+armchair, her eyes fixed on a rosette in the carpet, the fire in her
+brain drying up her tears.
+
+At four o'clock Nucingen found his angel lost in that sea of
+meditations and resolutions whereon a woman's spirit floats, and
+whence she emerges with utterances that are incomprehensible to those
+who have not sailed it in her convoy.
+
+"Clear your brow, meine Schone," said the Baron, sitting down by her.
+"You shall hafe no more debts--I shall arrange mit Eugenie, an' in ein
+mont you shall go 'vay from dese rooms and go to dat little palace.--
+Vas a pretty hant.--Gife it me dat I shall kiss it." Esther gave him
+her hand as a dog gives a paw. "Ach, ja! You shall gife de hant, but
+not de heart, and it is dat heart I lofe!"
+
+The words were spoken with such sincerity of accent, that poor Esther
+looked at the old man with a compassion in her eyes that almost
+maddened him. Lovers, like martyrs, feel a brotherhood in their
+sufferings! Nothing in the world gives such a sense of kindred as
+community of sorrow.
+
+"Poor man!" said she, "he really loves."
+
+As he heard the words, misunderstanding their meaning, the Baron
+turned pale, the blood tingled in his veins, he breathed the airs of
+heaven. At his age a millionaire, for such a sensation, will pay as
+much gold as a woman can ask.
+
+"I lofe you like vat I lofe my daughter," said he. "An' I feel dere"--
+and he laid her hand over his heart--"dat I shall not bear to see you
+anyting but happy."
+
+"If you would only be a father to me, I would love you very much; I
+would never leave you; and you would see that I am not a bad woman,
+not grasping or greedy, as I must seem to you now----"
+
+"You hafe done some little follies," said the Baron, "like all dose
+pretty vomen--dat is all. Say no more about dat. It is our pusiness to
+make money for you. Be happy! I shall be your fater for some days yet,
+for I know I must make you accustom' to my old carcase."
+
+"Really!" she exclaimed, springing on to Nucingen's knees, and
+clinging to him with her arm round his neck.
+
+"Really!" repeated he, trying to force a smile.
+
+She kissed his forehead; she believed in an impossible combination--
+she might remain untouched and see Lucien.
+
+She was so coaxing to the banker that she was La Torpille once more.
+She fairly bewitched the old man, who promised to be a father to her
+for forty days. Those forty days were to be employed in acquiring and
+arranging the house in the Rue Saint-Georges.
+
+When he was in the street again, as he went home, the Baron said to
+himself, "I am an old flat."
+
+But though in Esther's presence he was a mere child, away from her he
+resumed his lynx's skin; just as the gambler (in le Joueur) becomes
+affectionate to Angelique when he has not a liard.
+
+"A half a million francs I hafe paid, and I hafe not yet seen vat her
+leg is like.--Dat is too silly! but, happily, nobody shall hafe known
+it!" said he to himself three weeks after.
+
+And he made great resolutions to come to the point with the woman who
+had cost him so dear; then, in Esther's presence once more, he spent
+all the time he could spare her in making up for the roughness of his
+first words.
+
+"After all," said he, at the end of a month, "I cannot be de fater
+eternal!"
+
+Towards the end of the month of December 1829, just before installing
+Esther in the house in the Rue Saint-Georges, the Baron begged du
+Tillet to take Florine there, that she might see whether everything
+was suitable to Nucingen's fortune, and if the description of "a
+little palace" were duly realized by the artists commissioned to make
+the cage worthy of the bird.
+
+Every device known to luxury before the Revolution of 1830 made this
+residence a masterpiece of taste. Grindot the architect considered it
+his greatest achievement as a decorator. The staircase, which had been
+reconstructed of marble, the judicious use of stucco ornament,
+textiles, and gilding, the smallest details as much as the general
+effect, outdid everything of the kind left in Paris from the time of
+Louis XV.
+
+"This is my dream!--This and virtue!" said Florine with a smile. "And
+for whom are you spending all this money?"
+
+"For a voman vat is going up there," replied the Baron.
+
+"A way of playing Jupiter?" replied the actress. "And when is she on
+show?"
+
+"On the day of the house-warming," cried du Tillet.
+
+"Not before dat," said the Baron.
+
+"My word, how we must lace and brush and fig ourselves out," Florine
+went on. "What a dance the women will lead their dressmakers and
+hairdressers for that evening's fun!--And when is it to be?"
+
+"Dat is not for me to say."
+
+"What a woman she must be!" cried Florine. "How much I should like to
+see her!"
+
+"An' so should I," answered the Baron artlessly.
+
+"What! is everything new together--the house, the furniture, and the
+woman?"
+
+"Even the banker," said du Tillet, "for my old friend seems to me
+quite young again."
+
+"Well, he must go back to his twentieth year," said Florine; "at any
+rate, for once."
+
+In the early days of 1830 everybody in Paris was talking of Nucingen's
+passion and the outrageous splendor of his house. The poor Baron,
+pointed at, laughed at, and fuming with rage, as may easily be
+imagined, took it into his head that on the occasion of giving the
+house-warming he would at the same time get rid of his paternal
+disguise, and get the price of so much generosity. Always circumvented
+by "La Torpille," he determined to treat of their union by
+correspondence, so as to win from her an autograph promise. Bankers
+have no faith in anything less than a promissory note.
+
+So one morning early in the year he rose early, locked himself into
+his room, and composed the following letter in very good French; for
+though he spoke the language very badly, he could write it very
+well:--
+
+  "DEAR ESTHER, the flower of my thoughts and the only joy of my
+  life, when I told you that I loved you as I love my daughter, I
+  deceived you, I deceived myself. I only wished to express the
+  holiness of my sentiments, which are unlike those felt by other
+  men, in the first place, because I am an old man, and also because
+  I have never loved till now. I love you so much, that if you cost
+  me my fortune I should not love you the less.
+
+  "Be just! Most men would not, like me, have seen the angel in you;
+  I have never even glanced at your past. I love you both as I love
+  my daughter, Augusta, and as I might love my wife, if my wife
+  could have loved me. Since the only excuse for an old man's love
+  is that he should be happy, ask yourself if I am not playing a too
+  ridiculous part. I have taken you to be the consolation and joy of
+  my declining days. You know that till I die you will be as happy
+  as a woman can be; and you know, too, that after my death you will
+  be rich enough to be the envy of many women. In every stroke of
+  business I have effected since I have had the happiness of your
+  acquaintance, your share is set apart, and you have a standing
+  account with Nucingen's bank. In a few days you will move into a
+  house, which sooner or later, will be your own if you like it.
+  Now, plainly, will you still receive me then as a father, or will
+  you make me happy?
+
+  "Forgive me for writing so frankly, but when I am with you I lose
+  all courage; I feel too keenly that you are indeed my mistress. I
+  have no wish to hurt you; I only want to tell you how much I
+  suffer, and how hard it is to wait at my age, when every day takes
+  with it some hopes and some pleasures. Besides, the delicacy of my
+  conduct is a guarantee of the sincerity of my intentions. Have I
+  ever behaved as your creditor? You are like a citadel, and I am
+  not a young man. In answer to my appeals, you say your life is at
+  stake, and when I hear you, you make me believe it; but here I
+  sink into dark melancholy and doubts dishonorable to us both. You
+  seemed to me as sweet and innocent as you are lovely; but you
+  insist on destroying my convictions. Ask yourself!--You tell me
+  you bear a passion in your heart, an indomitable passion, but you
+  refuse to tell me the name of the man you love.--Is this natural?
+
+  "You have turned a fairly strong man into an incredibly weak one.
+  You see what I have come to; I am induced to ask you at the end of
+  five months what future hope there is for my passion. Again, I
+  must know what part I am to play at the opening of your house.
+  Money is nothing to me when it is spent for you; I will not be so
+  absurd as to make a merit to you of this contempt; but though my
+  love knows no limits, my fortune is limited, and I care for it
+  only for your sake. Well, if by giving you everything I possess I
+  might, as a poor man, win your affection, I would rather be poor
+  and loved than rich and scorned by you.
+
+  "You have altered me so completely, my dear Esther, that no one
+  knows me; I paid ten thousand francs for a picture by Joseph
+  Bridau because you told me that he was clever and unappreciated. I
+  give every beggar I meet five francs in your name. Well, and what
+  does the poor man ask, who regards himself as your debtor when you
+  do him the honor of accepting anything he can give you? He asks
+  only for a hope--and what a hope, good God! Is it not rather the
+  certainty of never having anything from you but what my passion
+  may seize? The fire in my heart will abet your cruel deceptions.
+  You find me ready to submit to every condition you can impose on
+  my happiness, on my few pleasures; but promise me at least that on
+  the day when you take possession of your house you will accept the
+  heart and service of him who, for the rest of his days, must sign
+  himself your slave,
+
+"FREDERIC DE NUCINGEN."
+
+
+"Faugh! how he bores me--this money bag!" cried Esther, a courtesan
+once more. She took a small sheet of notepaper and wrote all over it,
+as close as it could go, Scribe's famous phrase, which has become a
+proverb, "Prenez mon ours."
+
+A quarter of an hour later, Esther, overcome by remorse, wrote the
+following letter:--
+
+  "MONSIEUR LE BARON,--
+
+  "Pay no heed to the note you have just received from me; I had
+  relapsed into the folly of my youth. Forgive, monsieur, a poor
+  girl who ought to be your slave. I never more keenly felt the
+  degradation of my position than on the day when I was handed over
+  to you. You have paid; I owe myself to you. There is nothing more
+  sacred than a debt of dishonor. I have no right to compound it by
+  throwing myself into the Seine.
+
+  "A debt can always be discharged in that dreadful coin which is
+  good only to the debtor; you will find me yours to command. I will
+  pay off in one night all the sums for which that fatal hour has
+  been mortgaged; and I am sure that such an hour with me is worth
+  millions--all the more because it will be the only one, the last.
+  I shall then have paid the debt, and may get away from life. A
+  good woman has a chance of restoration after a fall; but we, the
+  like of us, fall too low.
+
+  "My determination is so fixed that I beg you will keep this letter
+  in evidence of the cause of death of her who remains, for one day,
+  your servant,
+
+"ESTHER."
+
+
+Having sent this letter, Esther felt a pang of regret. Ten minutes
+after she wrote a third note, as follows:--
+
+  "Forgive me, dear Baron--it is I once more. I did not mean either
+  to make game of you or to wound you; I only want you to reflect on
+  this simple argument: If we were to continue in the position
+  towards each other of father and daughter, your pleasure would be
+  small, but it would be enduring. If you insist on the terms of the
+  bargain, you will live to mourn for me.
+
+  "I will trouble you no more: the day when you shall choose
+  pleasure rather than happiness will have no morrow for me.--Your
+  daughter,
+
+"ESTHER."
+
+
+On receiving the first letter, the Baron fell into a cold fury such as
+a millionaire may die of; he looked at himself in the glass and rang
+the bell.
+
+"An hot bat for mein feet," said he to his new valet.
+
+While he was sitting with his feet in the bath, the second letter
+came; he read it, and fainted away. He was carried to bed.
+
+When the banker recovered consciousness, Madame de Nucingen was
+sitting at the foot of the bed.
+
+"The hussy is right!" said she. "Why do you try to buy love? Is it to
+be bought in the market!--Let me see your letter to her."
+
+The Baron gave her sundry rough drafts he had made; Madame de Nucingen
+read them, and smiled. Then came Esther's third letter.
+
+"She is a wonderful girl!" cried the Baroness, when she had read it.
+
+"Vat shall I do, montame?" asked the Baron of his wife.
+
+"Wait."
+
+"Wait? But nature is pitiless!" he cried.
+
+"Look here, my dear, you have been admirably kind to me," said
+Delphine; "I will give you some good advice."
+
+"You are a ver' goot voman," said he. "Ven you hafe any debts I shall
+pay."
+
+"Your state on receiving these letters touches a woman far more than
+the spending of millions, or than all the letters you could write,
+however fine they may be. Try to let her know it, indirectly; perhaps
+she will be yours! And--have no scruples, she will not die of that,"
+added she, looking keenly at her husband.
+
+But Madame de Nucingen knew nothing whatever of the nature of such
+women.
+
+"Vat a clefer voman is Montame de Nucingen!" said the Baron to himself
+when his wife had left him.
+
+Still, the more the Baron admired the subtlety of his wife's counsel,
+the less he could see how he might act upon it; and he not only felt
+that he was stupid, but he told himself so.
+
+The stupidity of wealthy men, though it is almost proverbial, is only
+comparative. The faculties of the mind, like the dexterity of the
+limbs, need exercise. The dancer's strength is in his feet; the
+blacksmith's in his arms; the market porter is trained to carry loads;
+the singer works his larynx; and the pianist hardens his wrist. A
+banker is practised in business matters; he studies and plans them,
+and pulls the wires of various interests, just as a playwright trains
+his intelligence in combining situations, studying his actors, giving
+life to his dramatic figures.
+
+We should no more look for powers of conversation in the Baron de
+Nucingen than for the imagery of a poet in the brain of a
+mathematician. How many poets occur in an age, who are either good
+prose writers, or as witty in the intercourse of daily life as Madame
+Cornuel? Buffon was dull company; Newton was never in love; Lord Byron
+loved nobody but himself; Rousseau was gloomy and half crazy; La
+Fontaine absent-minded. Human energy, equally distributed, produces
+dolts, mediocrity in all; unequally bestowed it gives rise to those
+incongruities to whom the name of Genius is given, and which, if we
+only could see them, would look like deformities. The same law governs
+the body; perfect beauty is generally allied with coldness or
+silliness. Though Pascal was both a great mathematician and a great
+writer, though Beaumarchais was a good man of business, and Zamet a
+profound courtier, these rare exceptions prove the general principle
+of the specialization of brain faculties.
+
+Within the sphere of speculative calculations the banker put forth as
+much intelligence and skill, finesse and mental power, as a practised
+diplomatist expends on national affairs. If he were equally remarkable
+outside his office, the banker would be a great man. Nucingen made one
+with the Prince de Ligne, with Mazarin or with Diderot, is a human
+formula that is almost inconceivable, but which has nevertheless been
+known as Pericles, Aristotle, Voltaire, and Napoleon. The splendor of
+the Imperial crown must not blind us to the merits of the individual;
+the Emperor was charming, well informed, and witty.
+
+Monsieur de Nucingen, a banker and nothing more, having no
+inventiveness outside his business, like most bankers, had no faith in
+anything but sound security. In matters of art he had the good sense
+to go, cash in hand, to experts in every branch, and had recourse to
+the best architect, the best surgeon, the greatest connoisseur in
+pictures or statues, the cleverest lawyer, when he wished to build a
+house, to attend to his health, to purchase a work of art or an
+estate. But as there are no recognized experts in intrigue, no
+connoisseurs in love affairs, a banker finds himself in difficulties
+when he is in love, and much puzzled as to the management of a woman.
+So Nucingen could think of no better method than that he had hitherto
+pursued--to give a sum of money to some Frontin, male or female, to
+act and think for him.
+
+Madame de Saint-Esteve alone could carry out the plan imagined by the
+Baroness. Nucingen bitterly regretted having quarreled with the odious
+old clothes-seller. However, feeling confident of the attractions of
+his cash-box and the soothing documents signed Garat, he rang for his
+man and told him in inquire for the repulsive widow in the Rue Saint-
+Marc, and desire her to come to see him.
+
+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
+  creatures; true affection touches us far more deeply than finding
+  ourselves the objects of lavish liberality. For my part, I have
+  always rather dreaded being a peg on which you would hang your
+  vanities. It annoyed me to be nothing else to you. Yes, in spite
+  of all your protestations, I fancied you regarded me merely as a
+  woman paid for.
+
+  "Well, you will now find me a good girl, but on condition of your
+  always obeying me a little.
+
+  "If this letter can in any way take the place of the doctor's
+  prescription, prove it by coming to see me after the Bourse
+  closes. You will find me in full fig, dressed in your gifts, for I
+  am for life your pleasure-machine,
+
+"ESTHER."
+
+
+At the Bourse the Baron de Nucingen was so gay, so cheerful, seemed so
+easy-going, and allowed himself so many jests, that du Tillet and the
+Kellers, who were on 'change, could not help asking him the reason of
+his high spirits.
+
+"I am belofed. Ve shall soon gife dat house-varming," he told du
+Tillet.
+
+"And how much does it cost you?" asked Francois Keller rudely--it was
+said that he had spent twenty-five thousand francs a year on Madame
+Colleville.
+
+"Dat voman is an anchel! She never has ask' me for one sou."
+
+"They never do," replied du Tillet. "And it is to avoid asking that
+they have always aunts or mothers."
+
+Between the Bourse and the Rue Taitbout seven times did the Baron say
+to his servant:
+
+"You go so slow--vip de horse!"
+
+He ran lightly upstairs, and for the first time he saw his mistress in
+all the beauty of such women, who have no other occupation than the
+care of their person and their dress. Just out of her bath the flower
+was quite fresh, and perfumed so as to inspire desire in Robert
+d'Arbrissel.
+
+Esther was in a charming toilette. A dress of black corded silk
+trimmed with rose-colored gimp opened over a petticoat of gray satin,
+the costume subsequently worn by Amigo, the handsome singer, in I
+Puritani. A Honiton lace kerchief fell or floated over her shoulders.
+The sleeves of her gown were strapped round with cording to divide the
+puffs, which for some little time fashion has substituted for the
+large sleeves which had grown too monstrous. Esther had fastened a
+Mechlin lace cap on her magnificent hair with a pin, a la folle, as it
+is called, ready to fall, but not really falling, giving her an
+appearance of being tumbled and in disorder, though the white parting
+showed plainly on her little head between the waves of her hair.
+
+"Is it not a shame to see madame so lovely in a shabby drawing-room
+like this?" said Europe to the Baron, as she admitted him.
+
+"Vel, den, come to the Rue Saint-Georches," said the Baron, coming to
+a full stop like a dog marking a partridge. "The veather is splendit,
+ve shall drife to the Champs Elysees, and Montame Saint-Estefe and
+Eugenie shall carry dere all your clo'es an' your linen, an' ve shall
+dine in de Rue Saint-Georches."
+
+"I will do whatever you please," said Esther, "if only you will be so
+kind as to call my cook Asie, and Eugenie Europe. I have given those
+names to all the women who have served me ever since the first two. I
+do not love change----"
+
+"Asie, Europe! echoed the Baron, laughing. "How ver' droll you are.--
+You hafe infentions.--I should hafe eaten many dinners before I should
+hafe call' a cook Asie."
+
+"It is our business to be droll," said Esther. "Come, now, may not a
+poor girl be fed by Asia and dressed by Europe when you live on the
+whole world? It is a myth, I say; some women would devour the earth, I
+only ask for half.--You see?"
+
+"Vat a voman is Montame Saint-Estefe!" said the Baron to himself as he
+admired Esther's changed demeanor.
+
+"Europe, my girl, I want my bonnet," said Esther. "I must have a black
+silk bonnet lined with pink and trimmed with lace."
+
+"Madame Thomas has not sent it home.--Come, Monsieur le Baron; quick,
+off you go! Begin your functions as a man-of-all-work--that is to say,
+of all pleasure! Happiness is burdensome. You have your carriage here,
+go to Madame Thomas," said Europe to the Baron. "Make your servant ask
+for the bonnet for Madame van Bogseck.--And, above all," she added in
+his ear, "bring her the most beautiful bouquet to be had in Paris. It
+is winter, so try to get tropical flowers."
+
+The Baron went downstairs and told his servants to go to "Montame
+Thomas."
+
+The coachman drove to a famous pastrycook's.
+
+"She is a milliner, you damn' idiot, and not a cake-shop!" cried the
+Baron, who rushed off to Madame Prevot's in the Palais-Royal, where he
+had a bouquet made up for the price of ten louis, while his man went
+to the great modiste.
+
+A superficial observer, walking about Paris, wonders who the fools can
+be that buy the fabulous flowers that grace the illustrious
+bouquetiere's shop window, and the choice products displayed by Chevet
+of European fame--the only purveyor who can vie with the Rocher de
+Cancale in a real and delicious Revue des deux Mondes.
+
+Well, every day in Paris a hundred or more passions a la Nucingen come
+into being, and find expression in offering such rarities as queens
+dare not purchase, presented, kneeling, to baggages who, to use Asie's
+word, like to cut a dash. But for these little details, a decent
+citizen would be puzzled to conceive how a fortune melts in the hands
+of these women, whose social function, in Fourier's scheme, is perhaps
+to rectify the disasters caused by avarice and cupidity. Such
+squandering is, no doubt, to the social body what a prick of the
+lancet is to a plethoric subject. In two months Nucingen had shed
+broadcast on trade more than two hundred thousand francs.
+
+By the time the old lover returned, darkness was falling; the bouquet
+was no longer of any use. The hour for driving in the Champs-Elysees
+in winter is between two and four. However, the carriage was of use to
+convey Esther from the Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where
+she took possession of the "little palace." Never before had Esther
+been the object of such worship or such lavishness, and it amazed her;
+but, like all royal ingrates, she took care to express no surprise.
+
+When you go into St. Peter's at Rome, to enable you to appreciate the
+extent and height of this queen of cathedrals, you are shown the
+little finger of a statue which looks of a natural size, and which
+measures I know not how much. Descriptions have been so severely
+criticised, necessary as they are to a history of manners, that I must
+here follow the example of the Roman Cicerone. As they entered the
+dining-room, the Baron could not resist asking Esther to feel the
+stuff of which the window curtains were made, draped with magnificent
+fulness, lined with white watered silk, and bordered with a gimp fit
+to trim a Portuguese princess' bodice. The material was silk brought
+from Canton, on which Chinese patience had painted Oriental birds with
+a perfection only to be seen in mediaeval illuminations, or in the
+Missal of Charles V., the pride of the Imperial library at Vienna.
+
+"It hafe cost two tousand franc' an ell for a milord who brought it
+from Intia----"
+
+"It is very nice, charming," said Esther. "How I shall enjoy drinking
+champagne here; the froth will not get dirty here on a bare floor."
+
+"Oh! madame!" cried Europe, "only look at the carpet!"
+
+"Dis carpet hafe been made for de Duc de Torlonia, a frient of mine,
+who fount it too dear, so I took it for you who are my qveen," said
+Nucingen.
+
+By chance this carpet, by one of our cleverest designers, matched with
+the whimsicalities of the Chinese curtains. The walls, painted by
+Schinner and Leon de Lora, represented voluptuous scenes, in carved
+ebony frames, purchased for their weight in gold from Dusommerard, and
+forming panels with a narrow line of gold that coyly caught the light.
+
+From this you may judge of the rest.
+
+"You did well to bring me here," said Esther. "It will take me a week
+to get used to my home and not to look like a parvenu in it----"
+
+"MY home! Den you shall accept it?" cried the Baron in glee.
+
+"Why, of course, and a thousand times of course, stupid animal," said
+she, smiling.
+
+"Animal vas enough----"
+
+"Stupid is a term of endearment," said she, looking at him.
+
+The poor man took Esther's hand and pressed it to his heart. He was
+animal enough to feel, but too stupid to find words.
+
+"Feel how it beats--for ein little tender vort----"
+
+And he conducted his goddess to her room.
+
+"Oh, madame, I cannot stay here!" cried Eugenie. "It makes me long to
+go to bed."
+
+"Well," said Esther, "I mean to please the magician who has worked all
+these wonders.--Listen, my fat elephant, after dinner we will go to
+the play together. I am starving to see a play."
+
+It was just five years since Esther had been to a theatre. All Paris
+was rushing at that time to the Porte-Saint-Martin, to see one of
+those pieces to which the power of the actors lends a terrible
+expression of reality, Richard Darlington. Like all ingenuous natures,
+Esther loved to feel the thrills of fear as much as to yield to tears
+of pathos.
+
+"Let us go to see Frederick Lemaitre," said she; "he is an actor I
+adore."
+
+"It is a horrible piece," said Nucingen foreseeing the moment when he
+must show himself in public.
+
+He sent his servant to secure one of the two stage-boxes on the grand
+tier.--And this is another strange feature of Paris. Whenever success,
+on feet of clay, fills a house, there is always a stage-box to be had
+ten minutes before the curtain rises. The managers keep it for
+themselves, unless it happens to be taken for a passion a la Nucingen.
+This box, like Chevet's dainties, is a tax levied on the whims of the
+Parisian Olympus.
+
+It would be superfluous to describe the plate and china. Nucingen had
+provided three services of plate--common, medium, and best; and the
+best--plates, dishes, and all, was of chased silver gilt. The banker,
+to avoid overloading the table with gold and silver, had completed the
+array of each service with porcelain of exquisite fragility in the
+style of Dresden china, which had cost more than the plate. As to the
+linen--Saxony, England, Flanders, and France vied in the perfection of
+flowered damask.
+
+At dinner it was the Baron's turn to be amazed on tasting Asie's
+cookery.
+
+"I understant," said he, "vy you call her Asie; dis is Asiatic
+cooking."
+
+"I begin to think he loves me," said Esther to Europe; "he has said
+something almost like a bon mot."
+
+"I said many vorts," said he.
+
+"Well! he is more like Turcaret than I had heard he was!" cried the
+girl, laughing at this reply, worthy of the many artless speeches for
+which the banker was famous.
+
+The dishes were so highly spiced as to give the Baron an indigestion,
+on purpose that he might go home early; so this was all he got in the
+way of pleasure out of his first evening with Esther. At the theatre
+he was obliged to drink an immense number of glasses of eau sucree,
+leaving Esther alone between the acts.
+
+By a coincidence so probable that it can scarcely be called chance,
+Tullia, Mariette, and Madame du Val-Noble were at the play that
+evening. Richard Darlington enjoyed a wild success--and a deserved
+success--such as is seen only in Paris. The men who saw this play all
+came to the conclusion that a lawful wife might be thrown out of
+window, and the wives loved to see themselves unjustly persecuted.
+
+The women said to each other: "This is too much! we are driven to it--
+but it often happens!"
+
+Now a woman as beautiful as Esther, and dressed as Esther was, could
+not show off with impunity in a stage-box at the Porte-Saint-Martin.
+And so, during the second act, there was quite a commotion in the box
+where the two dancers were sitting, caused by the undoubted identity
+of the unknown fair one with La Torpille.
+
+"Heyday! where has she dropped from?" said Mariette to Madame du Val-
+Noble. "I thought she was drowned."
+
+"But is it she? She looks to me thirty-seven times younger and
+handsomer than she was six years ago."
+
+"Perhaps she has preserved herself in ice like Madame d'Espard and
+Madame Zayonchek," said the Comte de Brambourg, who had brought the
+three women to the play, to a pit-tier box. "Isn't she the 'rat' you
+meant to send me to hocus my uncle?" said he, addressing Tullia.
+
+"The very same," said the singer. "Du Bruel, go down to the stalls and
+see if it is she."
+
+"What brass she has got!" exclaimed Madame du Val-Noble, using an
+expressive but vulgar phrase.
+
+"Oh!" said the Comte de Brambourg, "she very well may. She is with my
+friend the Baron de Nucingen--I will go----"
+
+"Is that the immaculate Joan of Arc who has taken Nucingen by storm,
+and who has been talked of till we are all sick of her, these three
+months past?" asked Mariette.
+
+"Good-evening, my dear Baron," said Philippe Bridau, as he went into
+Nucingen's box. "So here you are, married to Mademoiselle Esther.--
+Mademoiselle, I am an old officer whom you once on a time were to have
+got out of a scrape--at Issoudun--Philippe Bridau----"
+
+"I know nothing of it," said Esther, looking round the house through
+her opera-glasses.
+
+"Dis lady," said the Baron, "is no longer known as 'Esther' so short!
+She is called Montame de Champy--ein little estate vat I have bought
+for her----"
+
+"Though you do things in such style," said the Comte, "these ladies
+are saying that Madame de Champy gives herself too great airs.--If you
+do not choose to remember me, will you condescend to recognize
+Mariette, Tullia, Madame du Val-Noble?" the parvenu went on--a man for
+whom the Duc de Maufrigneuse had won the Dauphin's favor.
+
+"If these ladies are kind to me, I am willing to make myself pleasant
+to them," replied Madame de Champy drily.
+
+"Kind! Why, they are excellent; they have named you Joan of Arc,"
+replied Philippe.
+
+"Vell den, if dese ladies vill keep you company," said Nucingen, "I
+shall go 'vay, for I hafe eaten too much. Your carriage shall come for
+you and your people.--Dat teufel Asie!"
+
+"The first time, and you leave me alone!" said Esther. "Come, come,
+you must have courage enough to die on deck. I must have my man with
+me as I go out. If I were insulted, am I to cry out for nothing?"
+
+The old millionaire's selfishness had to give way to his duties as a
+lover. The Baron suffered but stayed.
+
+Esther had her own reasons for detaining "her man." If she admitted
+her acquaintance, she would be less closely questioned in his presence
+than if she were alone. Philippe Bridau hurried back to the box where
+the dancers were sitting, and informed them of the state of affairs.
+
+"Oh! so it is she who has fallen heir to my house in the Rue Saint-
+Georges," observed Madame du Val-Noble with some bitterness; for she,
+as she phrased it, was on the loose.
+
+"Most likely," said the Colonel. "Du Tillet told me that the Baron had
+spent three times as much there as your poor Falleix."
+
+"Let us go round to her box," said Tullia.
+
+"Not if I know it," said Mariette; "she is much too handsome, I will
+call on her at home."
+
+"I think myself good-looking enough to risk it," remarked Tullia.
+
+So the much-daring leading dancer went round between the acts and
+renewed acquaintance with Esther, who would talk only on general
+subjects.
+
+"And where have you come back from, my dear child?" asked Tullia, who
+could not restrain her curiosity.
+
+"Oh, I was for five years in a castle in the Alps with an Englishman,
+as jealous as a tiger, a nabob; I called him a nabot, a dwarf, for he
+was not so big as le bailli de Ferrette.
+
+"And then I came across a banker--from a savage to salvation, as
+Florine might say. And now here I am in Paris again; I long so for
+amusement that I mean to have a rare time. I shall keep open house. I
+have five years of solitary confinement to make good, and I am
+beginning to do it. Five years of an Englishman is rather too much;
+six weeks are the allowance according to the advertisements."
+
+"Was it the Baron who gave you that lace?"
+
+"No, it is a relic of the nabob.--What ill-luck I have, my dear! He
+was as yellow as a friend's smile at a success; I thought he would be
+dead in ten months. Pooh! he was a strong as a mountain. Always
+distrust men who say they have a liver complaint. I will never listen
+to a man who talks of his liver.--I have had too much of livers--who
+cannot die. My nabob robbed me; he died without making a will, and the
+family turned me out of doors like a leper.--So, then, I said to my
+fat friend here, 'Pay for two!'--You may as well call me Joan of Arc;
+I have ruined England, and perhaps I shall die at the stake----"
+
+"Of love?" said Tullia.
+
+"And burnt alive," answered Esther, and the question made her
+thoughtful.
+
+The Baron laughed at all this vulgar nonsense, but he did not always
+follow it readily, so that his laughter sounded like the forgotten
+crackers that go off after fireworks.
+
+
+
+We all live in a sphere of some kind, and the inhabitants of every
+sphere are endowed with an equal share of curiosity.
+
+Next evening at the opera, Esther's reappearance was the great news
+behind the scenes. Between two and four in the afternoon all Paris in
+the Champs-Elysees had recognized La Torpille, and knew at last who
+was the object of the Baron de Nucingen's passion.
+
+"Do you know," Blondet remarked to de Marsay in the greenroom at the
+opera-house, "that La Torpille vanished the very day after the evening
+when we saw her here and recognized her in little Rubempre's
+mistress."
+
+In Paris, as in the provinces, everything is known. The police of the
+Rue de Jerusalem are not so efficient as the world itself, for every
+one is a spy on every one else, though unconsciously. Carlos had fully
+understood the danger of Lucien's position during and after the
+episode of the Rue Taitbout.
+
+No position can be more dreadful than that in which Madame du Val-
+Noble now found herself; and the phrase to be on the loose, or, as the
+French say, left on foot, expresses it perfectly. The recklessness and
+extravagance of these women precludes all care for the future. In that
+strange world, far more witty and amusing than might be supposed, only
+such women as are not gifted with that perfect beauty which time can
+hardly impair, and which is quite unmistakable--only such women, in
+short, as can be loved merely as a fancy, ever think of old age and
+save a fortune. The handsomer they are, the more improvident they are.
+
+"Are you afraid of growing ugly that you are saving money?" was a
+speech of Florine's to Mariette, which may give a clue to one cause of
+this thriftlessness.
+
+Thus, if a speculator kills himself, or a spendthrift comes to the end
+of his resources, these women fall with hideous promptitude from
+audacious wealth to the utmost misery. They throw themselves into the
+clutches of the old-clothes buyer, and sell exquisite jewels for a
+mere song; they run into debt, expressly to keep up a spurious luxury,
+in the hope of recovering what they have lost--a cash-box to draw
+upon. These ups and downs of their career account for the costliness
+of such connections, generally brought about as Asie had hooked
+(another word of her vocabulary) Nucingen for Esther.
+
+And so those who know their Paris are quite aware of the state of
+affairs when, in the Champs-Elysees--that bustling and mongrel bazaar
+--they meet some woman in a hired fly whom six months or a year before
+they had seen in a magnificent and dazzling carriage, turned out in
+the most luxurious style.
+
+"If you fall on Sainte-Pelagie, you must contrive to rebound on the
+Bois de Boulogne," said Florine, laughing with Blondet over the little
+Vicomte de Portenduere.
+
+Some clever women never run the risk of this contrast. They bury
+themselves in horrible furnished lodgings, where they expiate their
+extravagance by such privations as are endured by travelers lost in a
+Sahara; but they never take the smallest fancy for economy. They
+venture forth to masked balls; they take journeys into the provinces;
+they turn out well dressed on the boulevards when the weather is fine.
+And then they find in each other the devoted kindness which is known
+only among proscribed races. It costs a woman in luck no effort to
+bestow some help, for she says to herself, "I may be in the same
+plight by Sunday!"
+
+However, the most efficient protector still is the purchaser of dress.
+When this greedy money-lender finds herself the creditor, she stirs
+and works on the hearts of all the old men she knows in favor of the
+mortgaged creature in thin boots and a fine bonnet.
+
+In this way Madame du Val-Noble, unable to foresee the downfall of one
+of the richest and cleverest of stockbrokers, was left quite
+unprepared. She had spent Falleix's money on her whims, and trusted to
+him for all necessaries and to provide for the future.
+
+"How could I have expected such a thing in a man who seemed such a
+good fellow?"
+
+In almost every class of society the good fellow is an open-handed
+man, who will lend a few crowns now and again without expecting them
+back, who always behaves in accordance with a certain code of delicate
+feeling above mere vulgar, obligatory, and commonplace morality.
+Certain men, regarded as virtuous and honest, have, like Nucingen,
+ruined their benefactors; and certain others, who have been through a
+criminal court, have an ingenious kind of honesty towards women.
+Perfect virtue, the dream of Moliere, an Alceste, is exceedingly rare;
+still, it is to be found everywhere, even in Paris. The "good fellow"
+is the product of a certain facility of nature which proves nothing. A
+man is a good fellow, as a cat is silky, as a slipper is made to slip
+on to the foot. And so, in the meaning given to the word by a kept
+woman, Falleix ought to have warned his mistress of his approaching
+bankruptcy and have given her enough to live upon.
+
+D'Estourny, the dashing swindler, was a good fellow; he cheated at
+cards, but he had set aside thirty thousand francs for his mistress.
+And at carnival suppers women would retort on his accusers: "No
+matter. You may say what you like, Georges was a good fellow; he had
+charming manners, he deserved a better fate."
+
+These girls laugh laws to scorn, and adore a certain kind of
+generosity; they sell themselves, as Esther had done, for a secret
+ideal, which is their religion.
+
+After saving a few jewels from the wreck with great difficulty, Madame
+du Val-Noble was crushed under the burden of the horrible report: "She
+ruined Falleix." She was almost thirty; and though she was in the
+prime of her beauty, still she might be called an old woman, and all
+the more so because in such a crisis all a woman's rivals are against
+her. Mariette, Florine, Tullia would ask their friend to dinner, and
+gave her some help; but as they did not know the extent of her debts,
+they did not dare to sound the depths of that gulf. An interval of six
+years formed rather too long a gap in the ebb and flow of the Paris
+tide, between La Torpille and Madame du Val-Noble, for the woman "on
+foot" to speak to the woman in her carriage; but La Val-Noble knew
+that Esther was too generous not to remember sometimes that she had,
+as she said, fallen heir to her possessions, and not to seek her out
+by some meeting which might seem accidental though arranged. To bring
+about such an accident, Madame du Val-Noble, dressed in the most lady-
+like way, walked out every day in the Champs-Elysees on the arm of
+Theodore Gaillard, who afterwards married her, and who, in these
+straits, behaved very well to his former mistress, giving her boxes at
+the play, and inviting her to every spree. She flattered herself that
+Esther, driving out one fine day, would meet her face to face.
+
+Esther's coachman was Paccard--for her household had been made up in
+five days by Asie, Europe, and Paccard under Carlos' instructions, and
+in such a way that the house in the Rue Saint-Georges was an
+impregnable fortress.
+
+Peyrade, on his part, prompted by deep hatred, by the thirst for
+vengeance, and, above all, by his wish to see his darling Lydie
+married, made the Champs-Elysees the end of his walks as soon as he
+heard from Contenson that Monsieur de Nucingen's mistress might be
+seen there. Peyrade could dress so exactly like an Englishman, and
+spoke French so perfectly with the mincing accent that the English
+give the language; he knew England itself so well, and was so familiar
+with all the customs of the country, having been sent to England by
+the police authorities three times between 1779 and 1786, that he
+could play his part in London and at ambassadors' residences without
+awaking suspicion. Peyrade, who had some resemblance to Musson the
+famous juggler, could disguise himself so effectually that once
+Contenson did not recognize him.
+
+Followed by Contenson dressed as a mulatto, Peyrade examined Esther
+and her servants with an eye which, seeming heedless, took everything
+in. Hence it quite naturally happened that in the side alley where the
+carriage-company walk in fine dry weather, he was on the spot one day
+when Esther met Madame du Val-Noble. Peyrade, his mulatto in livery at
+his heels, was airing himself quite naturally, like a nabob who is
+thinking of no one but himself, in a line with the two women, so as to
+catch a few words of their conversation.
+
+"Well, my dear child," said Esther to Madame du Val-Noble, "come and
+see me. Nucingen owes it to himself not to leave his stockbroker's
+mistress without a sou----"
+
+"All the more so because it is said that he ruined Falleix," remarked
+Theodore Gaillard, "and that we have every right to squeeze him."
+
+"He dines with me to-morrow," said Esther; "come and meet him." Then
+she added in an undertone:
+
+"I can do what I like with him, and as yet he has not that!" and she
+put the nail of a gloved finger under the prettiest of her teeth with
+the click that is familiarly known to express with peculiar energy:
+"Just nothing."
+
+"You have him safe----"
+
+"My dear, as yet he has only paid my debts."
+
+"How mean!" cried Suzanne du Val-Noble.
+
+"Oh!" said Esther, "I had debts enough to frighten a minister of
+finance. Now, I mean to have thirty thousand a year before the first
+stroke of midnight. Oh! he is excellent, I have nothing to complain
+of. He does it well.--In a week we give a house-warming; you must
+come.--That morning he is to make me a present of the lease of the
+house in the Rue Saint-Georges. In decency, it is impossible to live
+in such a house on less than thirty thousand francs a year--of my own,
+so as to have them safe in case of accident. I have known poverty, and
+I want no more of it. There are certain acquaintances one has had
+enough of at once."
+
+"And you, who used to say, 'My face is my fortune!'--How you have
+changed!" exclaimed Suzanne.
+
+"It is the air of Switzerland; you grow thrifty there.--Look here; go
+there yourself, my dear! Catch a Swiss, and you may perhaps catch a
+husband, for they have not yet learned what such women as we are can
+be. And, at any rate, you may come back with a passion for investments
+in the funds--a most respectable and elegant passion!--Good-bye."
+
+Esther got into her carriage again, a handsome carriage drawn by the
+finest pair of dappled gray horses at that time to be seen in Paris.
+
+"The woman who is getting into the carriage is handsome," said Peyrade
+to Contenson, "but I like the one who is walking best; follow her, and
+find out who she is."
+
+"That is what that Englishman has just remarked in English," said
+Theodore Gaillard, repeating Peyrade's remark to Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+Before making this speech in English, Peyrade had uttered a word or
+two in that language, which had made Theodore look up in a way that
+convinced him that the journalist understood English.
+
+Madame du Val-Noble very slowly made her way home to very decent
+furnished rooms in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, glancing round now and then
+to see if the mulatto were following her.
+
+This establishment was kept by a certain Madame Gerard, whom Suzanne
+had obliged in the days of her splendor, and who showed her gratitude
+by giving her a suitable home. This good soul, an honest and virtuous
+citizen, even pious, looked on the courtesan as a woman of a superior
+order; she had always seen her in the midst of luxury, and thought of
+her as a fallen queen; she trusted her daughters with her; and--which
+is a fact more natural than might be supposed--the courtesan was as
+scrupulously careful in taking them to the play as their mother could
+have been, and the two Gerard girls loved her. The worthy, kind
+lodging-house keeper was like those sublime priests who see in these
+outlawed women only a creature to be saved and loved.
+
+Madame du Val-Noble respected this worth; and often, as she chatted
+with the good woman, she envied her while bewailing her own ill-
+fortune.
+
+"Your are still handsome; you may make a good end yet," Madame Gerard
+would say.
+
+But, indeed, Madame du Val-Noble was only relatively impoverished.
+This woman's wardrobe, so extravagant and elegant, was still
+sufficiently well furnished to allow of her appearing on occasion--as
+on that evening at the Porte-Saint-Martin to see Richard Darlington--
+in much splendor. And Madame Gerard would most good-naturedly pay for
+the cabs needed by the lady "on foot" to go out to dine, or to the
+play, and to come home again.
+
+"Well, dear Madame Gerard," said she to this worthy mother, "my luck
+is about to change, I believe."
+
+"Well, well, madame, so much the better. But be prudent; do not run
+into debt any more. I have such difficulty in getting rid of the
+people who are hunting for you."
+
+"Oh, never worry yourself about those hounds! They have all made no
+end of money out of me.--Here are some tickets for the Varietes for
+your girls--a good box on the second tier. If any one should ask for
+me this evening before I come in, show them up all the same. Adele, my
+old maid, will be here; I will send her round."
+
+Madame du Val-Noble, having neither mother nor aunt, was obliged to
+have recourse to her maid--equally on foot--to play the part of a
+Saint-Esteve with the unknown follower whose conquest was to enable
+her to rise again in the world. She went to dine with Theodore
+Gaillard, who, as it happened, had a spree on that day, that is to
+say, a dinner given by Nathan in payment of a bet he had lost, one of
+those orgies when a man says to his guests, "You can bring a woman."
+
+It was not without strong reasons that Peyrade had made up his mind to
+rush in person on to the field of this intrigue. At the same time, his
+curiosity, like Corentin's, was so keenly excited, that, even in the
+absence of reasons, he would have tried to play a part in the drama.
+
+At this moment Charles X.'s policy had completed its last evolution.
+After confiding the helm of State to Ministers of his own choosing,
+the King was preparing to conquer Algiers, and to utilize the glory
+that should accrue as a passport to what has been called his Coup
+d'Etat. There were no more conspiracies at home; Charles X. believed
+he had no domestic enemies. But in politics, as at sea, a calm may be
+deceptive.
+
+Thus Corentin had lapsed into total idleness. In such a case a true
+sportsman, to keep his hand in, for lack of larks kills sparrows.
+Domitian, we know, for lack of Christians, killed flies. Contenson,
+having witnessed Esther's arrest, had, with the keen instinct of a
+spy, fully understood the upshot of the business. The rascal, as we
+have seen, did not attempt to conceal his opinion of the Baron de
+Nucingen.
+
+"Who is benefiting by making the banker pay so dear for his passion?"
+was the first question the allies asked each other. Recognizing Asie
+as a leader in the piece, Contenson hoped to find out the author
+through her; but she slipped through his fingers again and again,
+hiding like an eel in the mud of Paris; and when he found her again as
+the cook in Esther's establishment, it seemed to him inexplicable that
+the half-caste woman should have had a finger in the pie. Thus, for
+the first time, these two artistic spies had come on a text that they
+could not decipher, while suspecting a dark plot to the story.
+
+After three bold attempts on the house in the Rue Taitbout, Contenson
+still met with absolute dumbness. So long as Esther dwelt there the
+lodge porter seemed to live in mortal terror. Asie had, perhaps,
+promised poisoned meat-balls to all the family in the event of any
+indiscretion.
+
+On the day after Esther's removal, Contenson found this man rather
+more amenable; he regretted the lady, he said, who had fed him with
+the broken dishes from her table. Contenson, disguised as a broker,
+tried to bargain for the rooms, and listened to the porter's
+lamentations while he fooled him, casting a doubt on all the man said
+by a questioning "Really?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, the lady lived here for five years without ever going
+out, and more by token, her lover, desperately jealous though she was
+beyond reproach, took the greatest precautions when he came in or went
+out. And a very handsome young man he was too!"
+
+Lucien was at this time still staying with his sister, Madame Sechard;
+but as soon as he returned, Contenson sent the porter to the Quai
+Malaquais to ask Monsieur de Rubempre whether he were willing to part
+with the furniture left in the rooms lately occupied by Madame van
+Bogseck. The porter then recognized Lucien as the young widow's
+mysterious lover, and this was all that Contenson wanted. The deep but
+suppressed astonishment may be imagined with which Lucien and Carlos
+received the porter, whom they affected to regard as a madman; they
+tried to upset his convictions.
+
+Within twenty-four hours Carlos had organized a force which detected
+Contenson red-handed in the act of espionage. Contenson, disguised as
+a market-porter, had twice already brought home the provisions
+purchased in the morning by Asie, and had twice got into the little
+mansion in the Rue Saint-Georges. Corentin, on his part, was making a
+stir; but he was stopped short by recognizing the certain identity of
+Carlos Herrera; for he learned at once that this Abbe, the secret
+envoy of Ferdinand VII., had come to Paris towards the end of 1823.
+Still, Corentin thought it worth while to study the reasons which had
+led the Spaniard to take an interest in Lucien de Rubempre. It was
+soon clear to him, beyond doubt, that Esther had for five years been
+Lucien's mistress; so the substitution of the Englishwoman had been
+effected for the advantage of that young dandy.
+
+Now Lucien had no means; he was rejected as a suitor for Mademoiselle
+de Grandlieu; and he had just bought up the lands of Rubempre at the
+cost of a million francs.
+
+Corentin very skilfully made the head of the General Police take the
+first steps; and the Prefet de Police a propos to Peyrade, informed
+his chief that the appellants in that affair had been in fact the
+Comte de Serizy and Lucien de Rubempre.
+
+"We have it!" cried Peyrade and Corentin.
+
+The two friends had laid plans in a moment.
+
+"This hussy," said Corentin, "has had intimacies; she must have some
+women friends. Among them we shall certainly find one or another who
+is down on her luck; one of us must play the part of a rich foreigner
+and take her up. We will throw them together. They always want
+something of each other in the game of lovers, and we shall then be in
+the citadel."
+
+Peyrade naturally proposed to assume his disguise as an Englishman.
+The wild life he should lead during the time that he would take to
+disentangle the plot of which he had been the victim, smiled on his
+fancy; while Corentin, grown old in his functions, and weakly too, did
+not care for it. Disguised as a mulatto, Contenson at once evaded
+Carlos' force. Just three days before Peyrade's meeting with Madame du
+Val-Noble in the Champs-Elysees, this last of the agents employed by
+MM. de Sartine and Lenoir had arrived, provided with a passport, at
+the Hotel Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, having come from the Colonies via
+le Havre, in a traveling chaise, as mud-splashed as though it had
+really come from le Havre, instead of no further than by the road from
+Saint-Denis to Paris.
+
+Carlos Herrera, on his part, had his passport vise at the Spanish
+Embassy, and arranged everything at the Quai Malaquais to start for
+Madrid. And this is why. Within a few days Esther was to become the
+owner of the house in the Rue Saint-Georges and of shares yielding
+thirty thousand francs a year; Europe and Asie were quite cunning
+enough to persuade her to sell these shares and privately transmit the
+money to Lucien. Thus Lucien, proclaiming himself rich through his
+sister's liberality, would pay the remainder of the price of the
+Rubempre estates. Of this transaction no one could complain. Esther
+alone could betray herself; but she would die rather than blink an
+eyelash.
+
+Clotilde had appeared with a little pink kerchief round her crane's
+neck, so she had won her game at the Hotel de Grandlieu. The shares in
+the Omnibus Company were already worth thrice their initial value.
+Carlos, by disappearing for a few days, would put malice off the
+scent. Human prudence had foreseen everything; no error was possible.
+The false Spaniard was to start on the morrow of the day when Peyrade
+met Madame du Val-Noble. But that very night, at two in the morning,
+Asie came in a cab to the Quai Malaquais, and found the stoker of the
+machine smoking in his room, and reconsidering all the points of the
+situation here stated in a few words, like an author going over a page
+in his book to discover any faults to be corrected. Such a man would
+not allow himself a second time such an oversight as that of the
+porter in the Rue Taitbout.
+
+"Paccard," whispered Asie in her master's ear, "recognized Contenson
+yesterday, at half-past two, in the Champs-Elysees, disguised as a
+mulatto servant to an Englishman, who for the last three days has been
+seen walking in the Champs-Elysees, watching Esther. Paccard knew the
+hound by his eyes, as I did when he dressed up as a market-porter.
+Paccard drove the girl home, taking a round so as not to lose sight of
+the wretch. Contenson is at the Hotel Mirabeau; but he exchanged so
+many signs of intelligence with the Englishman, that Paccard says the
+other cannot possibly be an Englishman."
+
+"We have a gadfly behind us," said Carlos. "I will not leave till the
+day after to-morrow. That Contenson is certainly the man who sent the
+porter after us from the Rue Taitbout; we must ascertain whether this
+sham Englishman is our foe."
+
+At noon Mr. Samuel Johnson's black servant was solemnly waiting on his
+master, who always breakfasted too heartily, with a purpose. Peyrade
+wished to pass for a tippling Englishman; he never went out till he
+was half-seas over. He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and
+padded to make his legs look stouter; his trousers were lined with the
+thickest fustian; his waistcoat was buttoned up to his cheeks; a red
+scratch wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three
+inches to his height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the Cafe
+David could not have recognized him. From his squarecut coat of black
+cloth with full skirts he might have been taken for an English
+millionaire.
+
+Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob's confidential
+servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and uncommunicative, and
+indulged in fierce exclamations and uncouth gestures.
+
+Peyrade was finishing his second bottle when one of the hotel waiters
+unceremoniously showed in a man in whom Peyrade and Contenson both at
+once discerned a gendarme in mufti.
+
+"Monsieur Peyrade," said the gendarme to the nabob, speaking in his
+ear, "my instructions are to take you to the Prefecture."
+
+Peyrade, without saying a word, rose and took down his hat.
+
+"You will find a hackney coach at the door," said the man as they went
+downstairs. "The Prefet thought of arresting you, but he decided on
+sending for you to ask some explanation of your conduct through the
+peace-officer whom you will find in the coach."
+
+"Shall I ride with you?" asked the gendarme of the peace-officer when
+Peyrade had got in.
+
+"No," replied the other; "tell the coachman quietly to drive to the
+Prefecture."
+
+Peyrade and Carlos were now face to face in the coach. Carlos had a
+stiletto under his hand. The coach-driver was a man he could trust,
+quite capable of allowing Carlos to get out without seeing him, or
+being surprised, on arriving at his journey's end, to find a dead body
+in his cab. No inquiries are ever made about a spy. The law almost
+always leaves such murders unpunished, it is so difficult to know the
+rights of the case.
+
+Peyrade looked with his keenest eye at the magistrate sent to examine
+him by the Prefet of Police. Carlos struck him as satisfactory: a bald
+head, deeply wrinkled at the back, and powdered hair; a pair of very
+light gold spectacles, with double-green glasses over weak eyes, with
+red rims, evidently needing care. These eyes seemed the trace of some
+squalid malady. A cotton shirt with a flat-pleated frill, a shabby
+black satin waistcoat, the trousers of a man of law, black spun silk
+stockings, and shoes tied with ribbon; a long black overcoat, cheap
+gloves, black, and worn for ten days, and a gold watch-chain--in every
+point the lower grade of magistrate known by a perversion of terms as
+a peace-officer.
+
+"My dear Monsieur Peyrade, I regret to find such a man as you the
+object of surveillance, and that you should act so as to justify it.
+Your disguise is not to the Prefet's taste. If you fancy that you can
+thus escape our vigilance, you are mistaken. You traveled from England
+by way of Beaumont-sur-Oise, no doubt."
+
+"Beaumont-sur-Oise?" repeated Peyrade.
+
+"Or by Saint-Denis?" said the sham lawyer.
+
+Peyrade lost his presence of mind. The question must be answered. Now
+any reply might be dangerous. In the affirmative it was farcical; in
+the negative, if this man knew the truth, it would be Peyrade's ruin.
+
+"He is a sharp fellow," thought he.
+
+He tried to look at the man and smile, and he gave him a smile for an
+answer; the smile passed muster without protest.
+
+"For what purpose have you disguised yourself, taken rooms at the
+Mirabeau, and dressed Contenson as a black servant?" asked the peace-
+officer.
+
+"Monsieur le Prefet may do what he chooses with me, but I owe no
+account of my actions to any one but my chief," said Peyrade with
+dignity.
+
+"If you mean me to infer that you are acting by the orders of the
+General Police," said the other coldly, "we will change our route, and
+drive to the Rue de Grenelle instead of the Rue de Jerusalem. I have
+clear instructions with regard to you. But be careful! You are not in
+any deep disgrace, and you may spoil your own game in a moment. As for
+me--I owe you no grudge.--Come; tell me the truth."
+
+"Well, then, this is the truth, said Peyrade, with a glance at his
+Cerberus' red eyes.
+
+The sham lawyer's face remained expressionless, impassible; he was
+doing his business, all truths were the same to him, he looked as
+though he suspected the Prefet of some caprice. Prefets have their
+little tantrums.
+
+"I have fallen desperately in love with a woman--the mistress of that
+stockbroker who is gone abroad for his own pleasure and the
+displeasure of his creditors--Falleix."
+
+"Madame du Val-Noble?"
+
+"Yes," replied Peyrade. "To keep her for a month, which will not cost
+me more than a thousand crowns, I have got myself up as a nabob and
+taken Contenson as my servant. This is so absolutely true, monsieur,
+that if you like to leave me in the coach, where I will wait for you,
+on my honor as an old Commissioner-General of Police, you can go to
+the hotel and question Contenson. Not only will Contenson confirm what
+I have the honor of stating, but you may see Madame du Val-Noble's
+waiting-maid, who is to come this morning to signify her mistress'
+acceptance of my offers, or the conditions she makes.
+
+"An old monkey knows what grimaces mean: I have offered her a thousand
+francs a month and a carriage--that comes to fifteen hundred; five
+hundred francs' worth of presents, and as much again in some outings,
+dinners and play-going; you see, I am not deceiving you by a centime
+when I say a thousand crowns.--A man of my age may well spend a
+thousand crowns on his last fancy."
+
+"Bless me, Papa Peyrade! and you still care enough for women to----?
+But you are deceiving me. I am sixty myself, and I can do without 'em.
+--However, if the case is as you state it, I quite understand that you
+should have found it necessary to get yourself up as a foreigner to
+indulge your fancy."
+
+"You can understand that Peyrade, or old Canquoelle of the Rue des
+Moineaux----"
+
+"Ay, neither of them would have suited Madame du Val-Noble," Carlos
+put in, delighted to have picked up Canquoelle's address. "Before the
+Revolution," he went on, "I had for my mistress a woman who had
+previously been kept by the gentleman-in-waiting, as they then called
+the executioner. One evening at the play she pricked herself with a
+pin, and cried out--a customary ejaculation in those days--'Ah!
+Bourreau!' on which her neighbor asked her if this were a
+reminiscence?--Well, my dear Peyrade, she cast off her man for that
+speech.
+
+"I suppose you have no wish to expose yourself to such a slap in the
+face.--Madame du Val-Noble is a woman for gentlemen. I saw her once at
+the opera, and thought her very handsome.
+
+"Tell the driver to go back to the Rue de la Paix, my dear Peyrade. I
+will go upstairs with you to your rooms and see for myself. A verbal
+report will no doubt be enough for Monsieur le Prefet."
+
+Carlos took a snuff-box from his side-pocket--a black snuff-box lined
+with silver-gilt--and offered it to Peyrade with an impulse of
+delightful good-fellowship. Peyrade said to himself:
+
+"And these are their agents! Good Heavens! what would Monsieur Lenoir
+say if he could come back to life, or Monsieur de Sartines?"
+
+"That is part of the truth, no doubt, but it is not all," said the
+sham lawyer, sniffing up his pinch of snuff. "You have had a finger in
+the Baron de Nucingen's love affairs, and you wish, no doubt, to
+entangle him in some slip-knot. You missed fire with the pistol, and
+you are aiming at him with a field-piece. Madame du Val-Noble is a
+friend of Madame de Champy's----"
+
+"Devil take it. I must take care not to founder," said Peyrade to
+himself. "He is a better man than I thought him. He is playing me; he
+talks of letting me go, and he goes on making me blab."
+
+"Well?" asked Carlos with a magisterial air.
+
+"Monsieur, it is true that I have been so foolish as to seek a woman
+in Monsieur de Nucingen's behoof, because he was half mad with love.
+That is the cause of my being out of favor, for it would seem that
+quite unconsciously I touched some important interests."
+
+The officer of the law remained immovable.
+
+"But after fifty-two years' experience," Peyrade went on, "I know the
+police well enough to have held my hand after the blowing up I had
+from Monsieur le Prefet, who, no doubt, was right----"
+
+"Then you would give up this fancy if Monsieur le Prefet required it
+of you? That, I think, would be the best proof you could give of the
+sincerity of what you say."
+
+"He is going it! he is going it!" thought Peyrade. "Ah! by all that's
+holy, the police to-day is a match for that of Monsieur Lenoir."
+
+"Give it up?" said he aloud. "I will wait till I have Monsieur le
+Prefet's orders.--But here we are at the hotel, if you wish to come
+up."
+
+"Where do you find the money?" said Carlos point-blank, with a
+sagacious glance.
+
+"Monsieur, I have a friend----"
+
+"Get along," said Carlos; "go and tell that story to an examining
+magistrate!"
+
+This audacious stroke on Carlos' part was the outcome of one of those
+calculations, so simple that none but a man of his temper would have
+thought it out.
+
+At a very early hour he had sent Lucien to Madame de Serizy's. Lucien
+had begged the Count's private secretary--as from the Count--to go and
+obtain from the Prefet of Police full particulars concerning the agent
+employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The secretary came back provided
+with a note concerning Peyrade, a copy of the summary noted on the
+back of his record:--
+
+  "In the police force since 1778, having come to Paris from Avignon
+  two years previously.
+
+  "Without money or character; possessed of certain State secrets.
+
+  "Lives in the Rue des Moineaux under the name of Canquoelle, the
+  name of a little estate where his family resides in the department
+  of Vaucluse; very respectable people.
+
+  "Was lately inquired for by a grand-nephew named Theodore de la
+  Peyrade. (See the report of an agent, No. 37 of the Documents.)"
+
+"He must be the man to whom Contenson is playing the mulatto servant!"
+cried Carlos, when Lucien returned with other information besides this
+note.
+
+Within three hours this man, with the energy of a Commander-in-Chief,
+had found, by Paccard's help, an innocent accomplice capable of
+playing the part of a gendarme in disguise, and had got himself up as
+a peace-officer. Three times in the coach he had thought of killing
+Peyrade, but he had made it a rule never to commit a murder with his
+own hand; he promised himself that he would get rid of Peyrade all in
+good time by pointing him out as a millionaire to some released
+convicts about the town.
+
+Peyrade and his Mentor, as they went in, heard Contenson's voice
+arguing with Madame du Val-Noble's maid. Peyrade signed to Carlos to
+remain in the outer room, with a look meant to convey: "Thus you can
+assure yourself of my sincerity."
+
+"Madame agrees to everything," said Adele. "Madame is at this moment
+calling on a friend, Madame de Champy, who has some rooms in the Rue
+Taitbout on her hands for a year, full of furniture, which she will
+let her have, no doubt. Madame can receive Mr. Johnson more suitably
+there, for the furniture is still very decent, and monsieur might buy
+it for madame by coming to an agreement with Madame de Champy."
+
+"Very good, my girl. If this is not a job of fleecing, it is a bit of
+the wool," said the mulatto to the astonished woman. "However, we will
+go shares----"
+
+"That is your darkey all over!" cried Mademoiselle Adele. "If your
+nabob is a nabob, he can very well afford to give madame the
+furniture. The lease ends in April 1830; your nabob may renew it if he
+likes."
+
+"I am quite willing," said Peyrade, speaking French with a strong
+English accent, as he came in and tapped the woman on the shoulder.
+
+He cast a knowing look back at Carlos, who replied by an assenting
+nod, understanding that the nabob was to keep up his part.
+
+But the scene suddenly changed its aspect at the entrance of a person
+over whom neither Carlos nor Peyrade had the least power. Corentin
+suddenly came in. He had found the door open, and looked in as he went
+by to see how his old friend played his part as nabob.
+
+"The Prefet is still bullying me!" said Peyrade in a whisper to
+Corentin. "He has found me out as a nabob."
+
+"We will spill the Prefet," Corentin muttered in reply.
+
+Then after a cool bow he stood darkly scrutinizing the magistrate.
+
+"Stay here till I return," said Carlos; "I will go to the Prefecture.
+If you do not see me again, you may go your own way."
+
+Having said this in an undertone to Peyrade, so as not to humiliate
+him in the presence of the waiting-maid, Carlos went away, not caring
+to remain under the eye of the newcomer, in whom he detected one of
+those fair-haired, blue-eyed men, coldly terrifying.
+
+"That is the peace-officer sent after me by the Prefet," said Peyrade.
+
+"That?" said Corentin. "You have walked into a trap. That man has
+three packs of cards in his shoes; you can see that by the place of
+his foot in the shoe; besides, a peace-officer need wear no disguise."
+
+Corentin hurried downstairs to verify his suspicions: Carlos was
+getting into the fly.
+
+"Hallo! Monsieur l'Abbe!" cried Corentin.
+
+Carlos looked around, saw Corentin, and got in quickly. Still,
+Corentin had time to say:
+
+"That was all I wanted to know.--Quai Malaquais," he shouted to the
+driver with diabolical mockery in his tone and expression.
+
+"I am done!" said Jacques Collin to himself. "They have got me. I must
+get ahead of them by sheer pace, and, above all, find out what they
+want of us."
+
+Corentin had seen the Abbe Carlos Herrera five or six times, and the
+man's eyes were unforgettable. Corentin had suspected him at once from
+the cut of his shoulders, then by his puffy face, and the trick of
+three inches of added height gained by a heel inside the shoe.
+
+"Ah! old fellow, they have drawn you," said Corentin, finding no one
+in the room but Peyrade and Contenson.
+
+"Who?" cried Peyrade, with metallic hardness; "I will spend my last
+days in putting him on a gridiron and turning him on it."
+
+"It is the Abbe Carlos Herrera, the Corentin of Spain, as I suppose.
+This explains everything. The Spaniard is a demon of the first water,
+who has tried to make a fortune for that little young man by coining
+money out of a pretty baggage's bolster.--It is your lookout if you
+think you can measure your skill with a man who seems to me the very
+devil to deal with."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Contenson, "he fingered the three hundred thousand
+francs the day when Esther was arrested; he was in the cab. I remember
+those eyes, that brow, and those marks of the smallpox."
+
+"Oh! what a fortune my Lydie might have had!" cried Peyrade.
+
+"You may still play the nabob," said Corentin. "To keep an eye on
+Esther you must keep up her intimacy with Val-Noble. She was really
+Lucien's mistress."
+
+"They have got more than five hundred thousand francs out of Nucingen
+already," said Contenson.
+
+"And they want as much again," Corentin went on. "The Rubempre estate
+is to cost a million.--Daddy," added he, slapping Peyrade on the
+shoulder, "you may get more than a hundred thousand francs to settle
+on Lydie."
+
+"Don't tell me that, Corentin. If your scheme should fail, I cannot
+tell what I might not do----"
+
+"You will have it by to-morrow perhaps! The Abbe, my dear fellow, is
+most astute; we shall have to kiss his spurs; he is a very superior
+devil. But I have him sure enough. He is not a fool, and he will knock
+under. Try to be a gaby as well as a nabob, and fear nothing."
+
+
+
+In the evening of this day, when the opposing forces had met face to
+face on level ground, Lucien spent the evening at the Hotel Grandlieu.
+The party was a large one. In the face of all the assembly, the
+Duchess kept Lucien at her side for some time, and was most kind to
+him.
+
+"You are going away for a little while?" said she.
+
+"Yes, Madame la Duchesse. My sister, in her anxiety to promote my
+marriage, has made great sacrifices. and I have been enabled to
+repurchase the lands of the Rubempres, to reconstitute the whole
+estate. But I have found in my Paris lawyer a very clever man, who has
+managed to save me from the extortionate terms that the holders would
+have asked if they had known the name of the purchaser."
+
+"Is there a chateau?" asked Clotilde, with too broad a smile.
+
+"There is something which might be called a chateau; but the wiser
+plan would be to use the building materials in the construction of a
+modern residence."
+
+Clotilde's eyes blazed with happiness above her smile of satisfaction.
+
+"You must play a rubber with my father this evening," said she. "In a
+fortnight I hope you will be asked to dinner."
+
+"Well, my dear sir," said the Duc de Grandlieu, "I am told that you
+have bought the estate of Rubempre. I congratulate you. It is an
+answer to those who say you are in debt. We bigwigs, like France or
+England, are allowed to have a public debt; but men of no fortune,
+beginners, you see, may not assume that privilege----"
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur le Duc, I still owe five hundred thousand francs on
+my land."
+
+"Well, well, you must marry a wife who can bring you the money; but
+you will have some difficulty in finding a match with such a fortune
+in our Faubourg, where daughters do not get large dowries."
+
+"Their name is enough," said Lucien.
+
+"We are only three wisk players--Maufrigneuse, d'Espard, and I--will
+you make a fourth?" said the Duke, pointing to the card-table.
+
+Clotilde came to the table to watch her father's game.
+
+"She expects me to believe that she means it for me," said the Duke,
+patting his daughter's hands, and looking round at Lucien, who
+remained quite grave.
+
+Lucien, Monsieur d'Espard's partner, lost twenty louis.
+
+"My dear mother," said Clotilde to the Duchess, "he was so judicious
+as to lose."
+
+At eleven o'clock, after a few affectionate words with Mademoiselle de
+Grandlieu, Lucien went home and to bed, thinking of the complete
+triumph he was to enjoy a month hence; for he had not a doubt of being
+accepted as Clotilde's lover, and married before Lent in 1830.
+
+On the morrow, when Lucien was smoking his cigarettes after breakfast,
+sitting with Carlos, who had become much depressed, M. de Saint-Esteve
+was announced--what a touch of irony--who begged to see either the
+Abbe Carlos Herrera or Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre.
+
+"Was he told downstairs that I had left Paris?" cried the Abbe.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the groom.
+
+"Well, then, you must see the man," said he to Lucien. "But do not say
+a single compromising word, do not let a sign of surprise escape you.
+It is the enemy."
+
+"You will overhear me," said Lucien.
+
+Carlos hid in the adjoining room, and through the crack of the door he
+saw Corentin, whom he recognized only by his voice, such powers of
+transformation did the great man possess. This time Corentin looked
+like an old paymaster-general.
+
+"I have not had the honor of being known to you, monsieur," Corentin
+began, "but----"
+
+"Excuse my interrupting you, monsieur, but----"
+
+"But the matter in point is your marriage to Mademoiselle Clotilde de
+Grandlieu--which will never take place," Corentin added eagerly.
+
+Lucien sat down and made no reply.
+
+"You are in the power of a man who is able and willing and ready to
+prove to the Duc de Grandlieu that the lands of Rubempre are to be
+paid for with the money that a fool has given to your mistress,
+Mademoiselle Esther," Corentin went on. "It will be quite easy to find
+the minutes of the legal opinions in virtue of which Mademoiselle
+Esther was summoned; there are ways too of making d'Estourny speak.
+The very clever manoeuvres employed against the Baron de Nucingen will
+be brought to light.
+
+"As yet all can be arranged. Pay down a hundred thousand francs, and
+you will have peace.--All this is no concern of mine. I am only the
+agent of those who levy this blackmail; nothing more."
+
+Corentin might have talked for an hour; Lucien smoked his cigarette
+with an air of perfect indifference.
+
+"Monsieur," replied he, "I do not want to know who you are, for men
+who undertake such jobs as these have no name--at any rate, in my
+vocabulary. I have allowed you to talk at your leisure; I am at home.
+--You seem to me not bereft of common sense; listen to my dilemma."
+
+There was a pause, during which Lucien met Corentin's cat-like eye
+fixed on him with a perfectly icy stare.
+
+"Either you are building on facts that are absolutely false, and I
+need pay no heed to them," said Lucien; "or you are in the right; and
+in that case, by giving you a hundred thousand francs, I put you in a
+position to ask me for as many hundred thousand francs as your
+employer can find Saint-Esteves to ask for.
+
+"However, to put an end, once and for all, to your kind intervention,
+I would have you know that I, Lucien de Rubempre, fear no one. I have
+no part in the jobbery of which you speak. If the Grandlieus make
+difficulties, there are other young ladies of very good family ready
+to be married. After all, it is no loss to me if I remain single,
+especially if, as you imagine, I deal in blank bills to such
+advantage."
+
+"If Monsieur l'Abbe Carlos Herrera----"
+
+"Monsieur," Lucien put in, "the Abbe Herrera is at this moment on the
+way to Spain. He has nothing to do with my marriage, my interests are
+no concern of his. That remarkable statesman was good enough to assist
+me at one time with his advice, but he has reports to present to his
+Majesty the King of Spain; if you have anything to say to him, I
+recommend you to set out for Madrid."
+
+"Monsieur," said Corentin plainly, "you will never be Mademoiselle
+Clotilde de Grandlieu's husband."
+
+"So much the worse for her!" replied Lucien, impatiently pushing
+Corentin towards the door.
+
+"You have fully considered the matter?" asked Corentin coldly.
+
+"Monsieur, I do not recognize that you have any right either to meddle
+in my affairs, or to make me waste a cigarette," said Lucien, throwing
+away his cigarette that had gone out.
+
+"Good-day, monsieur," said Corentin. "We shall not meet again.--But
+there will certainly be a moment in your life when you would give half
+your fortune to have called me back from these stairs."
+
+In answer to this threat, Carlos made as though he were cutting off a
+head.
+
+"Now to business!" cried he, looking at Lucien, who was as white as
+ashes after this dreadful interview.
+
+
+
+If among the small number of my readers who take an interest in the
+moral and philosophical side of this book there should be only one
+capable of believing that the Baron de Nucingen was happy, that one
+would prove how difficult it is to explain the heart of a courtesan by
+any kind of physiological formula. Esther was resolved to make the
+poor millionaire pay dearly for what he called his day of triumph. And
+at the beginning of February 1830 the house-warming party had not yet
+been given in the "little palace."
+
+"Well," said Esther in confidence to her friends, who repeated it to
+the Baron, "I shall open house at the Carnival, and I mean to make my
+man as happy as a cock in plaster."
+
+The phrase became proverbial among women of her kidney.
+
+The Baron gave vent to much lamentation; like married men, he made
+himself very ridiculous, he began to complain to his intimate friends,
+and his dissatisfaction was generally known.
+
+Esther, meanwhile, took quite a serious view of her position as the
+Pompadour of this prince of speculators. She had given two or three
+small evening parties, solely to get Lucien into the house. Lousteau,
+Rastignac, du Tillet, Bixiou, Nathan, the Comte de Brambourg--all the
+cream of the dissipated crew--frequented her drawing-room. And, as
+leading ladies in the piece she was playing, Esther accepted Tullia,
+Florentine, Fanny Beaupre, and Florine--two dancers and two actresses
+--besides Madame du Val-Noble. Nothing can be more dreary than a
+courtesan's home without the spice of rivalry, the display of dress,
+and some variety of type.
+
+In six weeks Esther had become the wittiest, the most amusing, the
+loveliest, and the most elegant of those female pariahs who form the
+class of kept women. Placed on the pedestal that became her, she
+enjoyed all the delights of vanity which fascinate women in general,
+but still as one who is raised above her caste by a secret thought.
+She cherished in her heart an image of herself which she gloried in,
+while it made her blush; the hour when she must abdicate was ever
+present to her consciousness; thus she lived a double life, really
+scorning herself. Her sarcastic remarks were tinged by the temper
+which was roused in her by the intense contempt felt by the Angel of
+Love, hidden in the courtesan, for the disgraceful and odious part
+played by the body in the presence, as it were, of the soul. At once
+actor and spectator, victim and judge, she was a living realization of
+the beautiful Arabian Tales, in which a noble creature lies hidden
+under a degrading form, and of which the type is the story of
+Nebuchadnezzar in the book of books--the Bible. Having granted herself
+a lease of life till the day after her infidelity, the victim might
+surely play awhile with the executioner.
+
+Moreover, the enlightenment that had come to Esther as to the secretly
+disgraceful means by which the Baron had made his colossal fortune
+relieved her of every scruple. She could play the part of Ate, the
+goddess of vengeance, as Carlos said. And so she was by turns
+enchanting and odious to the banker, who lived only for her. When the
+Baron had been worked up to such a pitch of suffering that he wanted
+only to be quit of Esther, she brought him round by a scene of tender
+affection.
+
+Herrera, making a great show of starting for Spain, had gone as far as
+Tours. He had sent the chaise on as far as Bordeaux, with a servant
+inside, engaged to play the part of master, and to wait for him at
+Bordeaux. Then, returning by diligence, dressed as a commercial
+traveler, he had secretly taken up his abode under Esther's roof, and
+thence, aided by Asie and Europe, carefully directed all his
+machinations, keeping an eye on every one, and especially on Peyrade.
+
+About a fortnight before the day chosen for her great entertainment,
+which was to be given in the evening after the first opera ball, the
+courtesan, whose witticisms were beginning to make her feared,
+happened to be at the Italian opera, at the back of a box which the
+Baron--forced to give a box--had secured in the lowest tier, in order
+to conceal his mistress, and not to flaunt her in public within a few
+feet of Madame de Nucingen. Esther had taken her seat, so as to "rake"
+that of Madame de Serizy, whom Lucien almost invariably accompanied.
+The poor girl made her whole happiness centre in watching Lucien on
+Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays by Madame de Serizy's side.
+
+At about half-past nine in the evening Esther could see Lucien enter
+the Countess' box, with a care-laden brow, pale, and with almost drawn
+features. These symptoms of mental anguish were legible only to
+Esther. The knowledge of a man's countenance is, to the woman who
+loves him, like that of the sea to a sailor.
+
+"Good God! what can be the matter? What has happened? Does he want to
+speak with that angel of hell, who is to him a guardian angel, and who
+lives in an attic between those of Europe and Asie?"
+
+Tormented by such reflections, Esther scarcely listened to the music.
+Still less, it may be believed, did she listen to the Baron, who held
+one of his "Anchel's" hands in both his, talking to her in his
+horrible Polish-Jewish accent, a jargon which must be as unpleasant to
+read as it is to hear spoken.
+
+"Esther," said he, releasing her hand, and pushing it away with a
+slight touch of temper, "you do not listen to me."
+
+"I tell you what, Baron, you blunder in love as you gibber in French."
+
+"DER TEUFEL!"
+
+"I am not in my boudoir here, I am at the opera. If you were not a
+barrel made by Huret or Fichet, metamorphosed into a man by some trick
+of nature, you would not make so much noise in a box with a woman who
+is fond of music. I don't listen to you? I should think not! There you
+sit rustling my dress like a cockchafer in a paper-bag, and making me
+laugh with contempt. You say to me, 'You are so pretty, I should like
+to eat you!' Old simpleton! Supposing I were to say to you, 'You are
+less intolerable this evening than you were yesterday--we will go
+home?'--Well, from the way you puff and sigh--for I feel you if I
+don't listen to you--I perceive that you have eaten an enormous
+dinner, and your digestion is at work. Let me instruct you--for I cost
+you enough to give some advice for your money now and then--let me
+tell you, my dear fellow, that a man whose digestion is so troublesome
+as yours is, is not justified in telling his mistress that she is
+pretty at unseemly hours. An old soldier died of that very folly 'in
+the arms of Religion,' as Blondet has it.
+
+"It is now ten o'clock. You finished dinner at du Tillet's at nine
+o'clock, with your pigeon the Comte de Brambourg; you have millions
+and truffles to digest. Come to-morrow night at ten."
+
+"Vat you are cruel!" cried the Baron, recognizing the profound truth
+of this medical argument.
+
+"Cruel!" echoed Esther, still looking at Lucien. "Have you not
+consulted Bianchon, Desplein, old Haudry?--Since you have had a
+glimpse of future happiness, do you know what you seem like to me?"
+
+"No--vat?"
+
+"A fat old fellow wrapped in flannel, who walks every hour from his
+armchair to the window to see if the thermometer has risen to the
+degree marked 'SILKWORMS,' the temperature prescribed by his
+physician."
+
+"You are really an ungrateful slut!" cried the Baron, in despair at
+hearing a tune, which, however, amorous old men not unfrequently hear
+at the opera.
+
+"Ungrateful!" retorted Esther. "What have you given me till now? A
+great deal of annoyance. Come, papa! Can I be proud of you? You! you
+are proud of me; I wear your livery and badge with an air. You paid my
+debts? So you did. But you have grabbed so many millions--come, you
+need not sulk; you admitted that to me--that you need not think twice
+of that. And this is your chief title to fame. A baggage and a thief--
+a well-assorted couple!
+
+"You have built a splendid cage for a parrot that amuses you. Go and
+ask a Brazilian cockatoo what gratitude it owes to the man who placed
+it in a gilded cage.--Don't look at me like that; you are just like a
+Buddist Bonze.
+
+"Well, you show your red-and-white cockatoo to all Paris. You say,
+'Does anybody else in Paris own such a parrot? And how well it talks,
+how cleverly it picks its words!' If du Tillet comes in, it says at
+once, 'How'do, little swindler!'--Why, you are as happy as a Dutchman
+who has grown an unique tulip, as an old nabob pensioned off in Asia
+by England, when a commercial traveler sells him the first Swiss
+snuff-box that opens in three places.
+
+"You want to win my heart? Well, now, I will tell you how to do it."
+
+"Speak, speak, dere is noting I shall not do for you. I lofe to be
+fooled by you."
+
+"Be young, be handsome, be like Lucien de Rubempre over there by your
+wife, and you shall have gratis what you can never buy with all your
+millions!"
+
+"I shall go 'vay, for really you are too bat dis evening!" said the
+banker, with a lengthened face.
+
+"Very well, good-night then," said Esther. "Tell Georches to make your
+pillows very high and place your fee low, for you look apoplectic this
+evening.--You cannot say, my dear, that I take no interest in your
+health."
+
+The Baron was standing up, and held the door-knob in his hand.
+
+"Here, Nucingen," said Esther, with an imperious gesture.
+
+The Baron bent over her with dog-like devotion.
+
+"Do you want to see me very sweet, and giving you sugar-and-water, and
+petting you in my house, this very evening, old monster?"
+
+"You shall break my heart!"
+
+"Break your heart--you mean bore you," she went on. "Well, bring me
+Lucien that I may invite him to our Belshazzar's feast, and you may be
+sure he will not fail to come. If you succeed in that little
+transaction, I will tell you that I love you, my fat Frederic, in such
+plain terms that you cannot but believe me."
+
+"You are an enchantress," said the Baron, kissing Esther's glove. "I
+should be villing to listen to abuse for ein hour if alvays der vas a
+kiss at de ent of it."
+
+"But if I am not obeyed, I----" and she threatened the Baron with her
+finger as we threaten children.
+
+The Baron raised his head like a bird caught in a springe and
+imploring the trapper's pity.
+
+"Dear Heaven! What ails Lucien?" said she to herself when she was
+alone, making no attempt to check her falling tears; "I never saw him
+so sad."
+
+
+
+This is what had happened to Lucien that very evening.
+
+At nine o'clock he had gone out, as he did every evening, in his
+brougham to go to the Hotel de Grandlieu. Using his saddle-horse and
+cab in the morning only, like all young men, he had hired a brougham
+for winter evenings, and had chosen a first-class carriage and
+splendid horses from one of the best job-masters. For the last month
+all had gone well with him; he had dined with the Grandlieus three
+times; the Duke was delightful to him; his shares in the Omnibus
+Company, sold for three hundred thousand francs, had paid off a third
+more of the price of the land; Clotilde de Grandlieu, who dressed
+beautifully now, reddened inch thick when he went into the room, and
+loudly proclaimed her attachment to him. Some personages of high
+estate discussed their marriage as a probable event. The Duc de
+Chaulieu, formerly Ambassador to Spain, and now for a short while
+Minister for Foreign Affairs, had promised the Duchesse de Grandlieu
+that he would ask for the title of Marquis for Lucien.
+
+So that evening, after dining with Madame de Serizy, Lucien had driven
+to the Faubourg Saint-Germain to pay his daily visit.
+
+He arrives, the coachman calls for the gate to be opened, he drives
+into the courtyard and stops at the steps. Lucien, on getting out,
+remarks four other carriages in waiting. On seeing Monsieur de
+Rubempre, one of the footmen placed to open and shut the hall-door
+comes forward and out on to the steps, in front of the door, like a
+soldier on guard.
+
+"His Grace is not at home," says he.
+
+"Madame la Duchesse is receiving company," observes Lucien to the
+servant.
+
+"Madame la Duchesse is gone out," replies the man solemnly.
+
+"Mademoiselle Clotilde----"
+
+"I do not think that Mademoiselle Clotilde will see you, monsieur, in
+the absence of Madame la Duchesse."
+
+"But there are people here," replies Lucien in dismay.
+
+"I do not know, sir," says the man, trying to seem stupid and to be
+respectful.
+
+There is nothing more fatal than etiquette to those who regard it as
+the most formidable arm of social law. Lucien easily interpreted the
+meaning of this scene, so disastrous to him. The Duke and Duchess
+would not admit him. He felt the spinal marrow freezing in the core of
+his vertebral column, and a sickly cold sweat bedewed his brow. The
+conversation had taken place in the presence of his own body-servant,
+who held the door of the brougham, doubting whether to shut it. Lucien
+signed to him that he was going away again; but as he stepped into the
+carriage, he heard the noise of people coming downstairs, and the
+servant called out first, "Madame la Duchesse de Chaulieu's people,"
+then "Madame la Vicomtesse de Grandlieu's carriage!"
+
+Lucien merely said, "To the Italian opera"; but in spite of his haste,
+the luckless dandy could not escape the Duc de Chaulieu and his son,
+the Duc de Rhetore, to whom he was obliged to bow, for they did not
+speak a word to him. A great catastrophe at Court, the fall of a
+formidable favorite, has ere now been pronounced on the threshold of a
+royal study, in one word from an usher with a face like a plaster
+cast.
+
+"How am I to let my adviser know of this disaster--this instant----?"
+thought Lucien as he drove to the opera-house. "What is going on?"
+
+He racked his brain with conjectures.
+
+This was what had taken place. That morning, at eleven o'clock, the
+Duc de Grandlieu, as he went into the little room where the family all
+breakfasted together, said to Clotilde after kissing her, "Until
+further orders, my child, think no more of the Sieur de Rubempre."
+
+Then he had taken the Duchesse by the hand, and led her into a window
+recess to say a few words in an undertone, which made poor Clotilde
+turn pale; for she watched her mother as she listened to the Duke, and
+saw her expression of extreme surprise.
+
+"Jean," said the Duke to one of his servants, "take this note to
+Monsieur le Duc de Chaulieu, and beg him to answer by you, Yes or No.
+--I am asking him to dine here to-day," he added to his wife.
+
+Breakfast had been a most melancholy meal. The Duchess was meditative,
+the Duke seemed to be vexed with himself, and Clotilde could with
+difficulty restrain her tears.
+
+"My child, your father is right; you must obey him," the mother had
+said to the daughter with much emotion. "I do not say as he does,
+'Think no more of Lucien.' No--for I understand your suffering"--
+Clotilde kissed her mother's hand--"but I do say, my darling, Wait,
+take no step, suffer in silence since you love him, and put your trust
+in your parents' care.--Great ladies, my child, are great just because
+they can do their duty on every occasion, and do it nobly."
+
+"But what is it about?" asked Clotilde as white as a lily.
+
+"Matters too serious to be discussed with you, my dearest," the
+Duchess replied. "For if they are untrue, your mind would be
+unnecessarily sullied; and if they are true, you must never know
+them."
+
+At six o'clock the Duc de Chaulieu had come to join the Duc de
+Grandlieu, who awaited him in his study.
+
+"Tell me, Henri"--for the Dukes were on the most familiar terms, and
+addressed each other by their Christian names. This is one of the
+shades invented to mark a degree of intimacy, to repel the audacity of
+French familiarity, and humiliate conceit--"tell me, Henri, I am in
+such a desperate difficulty that I can only ask advice of an old
+friend who understands business, and you have practice and experience.
+My daughter Clotilde, as you know, is in love with that little
+Rubempre, whom I have been almost compelled to accept as her promised
+husband. I have always been averse to the marriage; however, Madame de
+Grandlieu could not bear to thwart Clotilde's passion. When the young
+fellow had repurchased the family estate and paid three-quarters of
+the price, I could make no further objections.
+
+"But last evening I received an anonymous letter--you know how much
+that is worth--in which I am informed that the young fellow's fortune
+is derived from some disreputable source, and that he is telling lies
+when he says that his sister is giving him the necessary funds for his
+purchase. For my daughter's happiness, and for the sake of our family,
+I am adjured to make inquiries, and the means of doing so are
+suggested to me. Here, read it."
+
+"I am entirely of your opinion as to the value of anonymous letters,
+my dear Ferdinand," said the Duc de Chaulieu after reading the letter.
+"Still, though we may contemn them, we must make use of them. We must
+treat such letters as we would treat a spy. Keep the young man out of
+the house, and let us make inquiries----
+
+"I know how to do it. Your lawyer is Derville, a man in whom we have
+perfect confidence; he knows the secrets of many families, and can
+certainly be trusted with this. He is an honest man, a man of weight,
+and a man of honor; he is cunning and wily; but his wiliness is only
+in the way of business, and you need only employ him to obtain
+evidence you can depend upon.
+
+"We have in the Foreign Office an agent of the superior police who is
+unique in his power of discovering State secrets; we often send him on
+such missions. Inform Derville that he will have a lieutenant in the
+case. Our spy is a gentleman who will appear wearing the ribbon of the
+Legion of Honor, and looking like a diplomate. This rascal will do the
+hunting; Derville will only look on. Your lawyer will then tell you if
+the mountain brings forth a mouse, or if you must throw over this
+little Rubempre. Within a week you will know what you are doing."
+
+"The young man is not yet so far a Marquis as to take offence at my
+being 'Not at home' for a week," said the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"Above all, if you end by giving him your daughter," replied the
+Minister. "If the anonymous letter tells the truth, what of that? You
+can send Clotilde to travel with my daughter-in-law Madeleine, who
+wants to go to Italy."
+
+"You relieve me immensely. I don't know whether I ought to thank you."
+
+"Wait till the end."
+
+"By the way," exclaimed the Duc de Grandlieu, "what is your man's
+name? I must mention it to Derville. Send him to me to-morrow by five
+o'clock; I will have Derville here and put them in communication."
+
+"His real name," said M. de Chaulieu, "is, I think, Corentin--a name
+you must never have heard, for my gentleman will come ticketed with
+his official name. He calls himself Monsieur de Saint-Something--Saint
+Yves--Saint-Valere?--Something of the kind.--You may trust him; Louis
+XVIII. had perfect confidence in him."
+
+After this confabulation the steward had orders to shut the door on
+Monsieur de Rubempre--which was done.
+
+Lucien paced the waiting-room at the opera-house like a man who was
+drunk. He fancied himself the talk of all Paris. He had in the Duc de
+Rhetore one of those unrelenting enemies on whom a man must smile, as
+he can never be revenged, since their attacks are in conformity with
+the rules of society. The Duc de Rhetore knew the scene that had just
+taken place on the outside steps of the Grandlieus' house. Lucien,
+feeling the necessity of at once reporting the catastrophe to his high
+privy councillor, nevertheless was afraid of compromising himself by
+going to Esther's house, where he might find company. He actually
+forgot that Esther was here, so confused were his thoughts, and in the
+midst of so much perplexity he was obliged to make small talk with
+Rastignac, who, knowing nothing of the news, congratulated him on his
+approaching marriage.
+
+At this moment Nucingen appeared smiling, and said to Lucien:
+
+"Vill you do me de pleasure to come to see Montame de Champy, vat vill
+infite you herself to von house-varming party----"
+
+"With pleasure, Baron," replied Lucien, to whom the Baron appeared as
+a rescuing angel.
+
+"Leave us," said Esther to Monsieur de Nucingen, when she saw him come
+in with Lucien. "Go and see Madame du Val-Noble, whom I discover in a
+box on the third tier with her nabob.--A great many nabobs grow in the
+Indies," she added, with a knowing glance at Lucien.
+
+"And that one," said Lucien, smiling, "is uncommonly like yours."
+
+"And them," said Esther, answering Lucien with another look of
+intelligence, while still speaking to the Baron, "bring her here with
+her nabob; he is very anxious to make your acquaintance. They say he
+is very rich. The poor woman has already poured out I know not how
+many elegies; she complains that her nabob is no good; and if you
+relieve him of his ballast, perhaps he will sail closer to the wind."
+
+"You tink ve are all tieves!" said the Baron as he went away.
+
+"What ails you, my Lucien?" asked Esther in her friend's ear, just
+touching it with her lips as soon as the box door was shut.
+
+"I am lost! I have just been turned from the door of the Hotel de
+Grandlieu under pretence that no one was admitted. The Duke and
+Duchess were at home, and five pairs of horses were champing in the
+courtyard."
+
+"What! will the marriage not take place?" exclaimed Esther, much
+agitated, for she saw a glimpse of Paradise.
+
+"I do not yet know what is being plotted against me----"
+
+"My Lucien," said she in a deliciously coaxing voice, "why be worried
+about it? You can make a better match by and by--I will get you the
+price of two estates----"
+
+"Give us supper to-night that I may be able to speak in secret to
+Carlos, and, above all, invite the sham Englishman and Val-Noble. That
+nabob is my ruin; he is our enemy; we will get hold of him, and
+we----"
+
+But Lucien broke off with a gesture of despair.
+
+"Well, what is it?" asked the poor girl.
+
+"Oh! Madame de Serizy sees me!" cried Lucien, "and to crown our woes,
+the Duc de Rhetore, who witnessed my dismissal, is with her."
+
+In fact, at that very minute, the Duc de Rhetore was amusing himself
+with Madame de Serizy's discomfiture.
+
+"Do you allow Lucien to be seen in Mademoiselle Esther's box?" said
+the young Duke, pointing to the box and to Lucien; "you, who take an
+interest in him, should really tell him such things are not allowed.
+He may sup at her house, he may even--But, in fact, I am no longer
+surprised at the Grandlieus' coolness towards the young man. I have
+just seen their door shut in his face--on the front steps----"
+
+"Women of that sort are very dangerous," said Madame de Serizy,
+turning her opera-glass on Esther's box.
+
+"Yes," said the Duke, "as much by what they can do as by what they
+wish----"
+
+"They will ruin him!" cried Madame de Serizy, "for I am told they cost
+as much whether they are paid or no."
+
+"Not to him!" said the young Duke, affecting surprise. "They are far
+from costing him anything; they give him money at need, and all run
+after him."
+
+The Countess' lips showed a little nervous twitching which could not
+be included in any category of smiles.
+
+"Well, then," said Esther, "come to supper at midnight. Bring Blondet
+and Rastignac; let us have two amusing persons at any rate; and we
+won't be more than nine."
+
+"You must find some excuse for sending the Baron to fetch Eugenie
+under pretence of warning Asie, and tell her what has befallen me, so
+that Carlos may know before he has the nabob under his claws."
+
+"That shall be done," said Esther.
+
+And thus Peyrade was probably about to find himself unwittingly under
+the same roof with his adversary. The tiger was coming into the lion's
+den, and a lion surrounded by his guards.
+
+When Lucien went back to Madame de Serizy's box, instead of turning to
+him, smiling and arranging her skirts for him to sit by her, she
+affected to pay him not the slightest attention, but looked about the
+house through her glass. Lucien could see, however, by the shaking of
+her hand that the Countess was suffering from one of those terrible
+emotions by which illicit joys are paid for. He went to the front of
+the box all the same, and sat down by her at the opposite corner,
+leaving a little vacant space between himself and the Countess. He
+leaned on the ledge of the box with his elbow, resting his chin on his
+gloved hand; then he half turned away, waiting for a word. By the
+middle of the act the Countess had still neither spoken to him nor
+looked at him.
+
+"I do not know," said she at last, "why you are here; your place is in
+Mademoiselle Esther's box----"
+
+"I will go there," said Lucien, leaving the box without looking at the
+Countess.
+
+"My dear," said Madame du Val-Noble, going into Esther's box with
+Peyrade, whom the Baron de Nucingen did not recognize, "I am delighted
+to introduce Mr. Samuel Johnson. He is a great admirer of M. de
+Nucingen's talents."
+
+"Indeed, monsieur," said Esther, smiling at Peyrade.
+
+"Oh yes, bocou," said Peyrade.
+
+"Why, Baron, here is a way of speaking French which is as much like
+yours as the low Breton dialect is like that of Burgundy. It will be
+most amusing to hear you discuss money matters.--Do you know, Monsieur
+Nabob, what I shall require of you if you are to make acquaintance
+with my Baron?" said Esther with a smile.
+
+"Oh!--Thank you so much, you will introduce me to Sir Baronet?" said
+Peyrade with an extravagant English accent.
+
+"Yes," said she, "you must give me the pleasure of your company at
+supper. There is no pitch stronger than champagne for sticking men
+together. It seals every kind of business, above all such as you put
+your foot in.--Come this evening; you will find some jolly fellows.--
+As for you, my little Frederic," she added in the Baron's ear, "you
+have your carriage here--just drive to the Rue Saint-Georges and bring
+Europe to me here; I have a few words to say to her about the supper.
+I have caught Lucien; he will bring two men who will be fun.--We will
+draw the Englishman," she whispered to Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+Peyrade and the Baron left the women together.
+
+"Oh, my dear, if you ever succeed in drawing that great brute, you
+will be clever indeed," said Suzanne.
+
+"If it proves impossible, you must lend him to me for a week," replied
+Esther, laughing.
+
+"You would but keep him half a day," replied Madame du Val-Noble. "The
+bread I eat is too hard; it breaks my teeth. Never again, to my dying
+day, will I try to make an Englishman happy. They are all cold and
+selfish--pigs on their hind legs."
+
+"What, no consideration?" said Esther with a smile.
+
+"On the contrary, my dear, the monster has never shown the least
+familiarity."
+
+"Under no circumstances whatever?" asked Esther.
+
+"The wretch always addresses me as Madame, and preserves the most
+perfect coolness imaginable at moments when every man is more or less
+amenable. To him love-making!--on my word, it is nothing more nor less
+than shaving himself. He wipes the razor, puts it back in its case,
+and looks in the glass as if he were saying, 'I have not cut myself!'
+
+"Then he treats me with such respect as is enough to send a woman mad.
+That odious Milord Potboiler amuses himself by making poor Theodore
+hide in my dressing-room and stand there half the day. In short, he
+tries to annoy me in every way. And as stingy!--As miserly as Gobseck
+and Gigonnet rolled into one. He takes me out to dinner, but he does
+not pay the cab that brings me home if I happen not to have ordered my
+carriage to fetch me."
+
+"Well," said Esther, "but what does he pay you for your services?"
+
+"Oh, my dear, positively nothing. Five hundred francs a month and not
+a penny more, and the hire of a carriage. But what is it? A machine
+such as they hire out for a third-rate wedding to carry an epicier to
+the Mairie, to Church, and to the Cadran bleu.--Oh, he nettles me with
+his respect.
+
+"If I try hysterics and feel ill, he is never vexed; he only says: 'I
+wish my lady to have her own way, for there is nothing more detestable
+--no gentleman--than to say to a nice woman, "You are a cotton bale, a
+bundle of merchandise."--Ha, hah! Are you a member of the Temperance
+Society and anti-slavery?' And my horror sits pale, and cold, and hard
+while he gives me to understand that he has as much respect for me as
+he might have for a Negro, and that it has nothing to do with his
+feelings, but with his opinions as an abolitionist."
+
+"A man cannot be a worse wretch," said Esther. "But I will smash up
+that outlandish Chinee."
+
+"Smash him up?" replied Madame du Val-Noble. "Not if he does not love
+me. You, yourself, would you like to ask him for two sous? He would
+listen to you solemnly, and tell you, with British precision that
+would make a slap in the face seem genial, that he pays dear enough
+for the trifle that love can be to his poor life;" and, as before,
+Madame du Val-Noble mimicked Peyrade's bad French.
+
+"To think that in our line of life we are thrown in the way of such
+men!" exclaimed Esther.
+
+"Oh, my dear, you have been uncommonly lucky. Take good care of your
+Nucingen."
+
+"But your nabob must have got some idea in his head."
+
+"That is what Adele says."
+
+"Look here, my dear; that man, you may depend, has laid a bet that he
+will make a woman hate him and pack him off in a certain time."
+
+"Or else he wants to do business with Nucingen, and took me up knowing
+that you and I were friends; that is what Adele thinks," answered
+Madame du Val-Noble. "That is why I introduced him to you this
+evening. Oh, if only I could be sure what he is at, what tricks I
+could play with you and Nucingen!"
+
+"And you don't get angry?" asked Esther; "you don't speak your mind
+now and then?"
+
+"Try it--you are sharp and smooth.--Well, in spite of your sweetness,
+he would kill you with his icy smiles. 'I am anti-slavery,' he would
+say, 'and you are free.'--If you said the funniest things, he would
+only look at you and say, 'Very good!' and you would see that he
+regards you merely as a part of the show."
+
+"And if you turned furious?"
+
+"The same thing; it would still be a show. You might cut him open
+under the left breast without hurting him in the least; his internals
+are of tinned-iron, I am sure. I told him so. He replied, 'I am quite
+satisfied with that physical constitution.'
+
+"And always polite. My dear, he wears gloves on his soul . . .
+
+"I shall endure this martyrdom for a few days longer to satisfy my
+curiosity. But for that, I should have made Philippe slap my lord's
+cheek--and he has not his match as a swordsman. There is nothing else
+left for it----"
+
+"I was just going to say so," cried Esther. "But you must ascertain
+first that Philippe is a boxer; for these old English fellows, my
+dear, have a depth of malignity----"
+
+"This one has no match on earth. No. if you could but see him asking
+my commands, to know at what hour he may come--to take me by surprise,
+of course--and pouring out respectful speeches like a so-called
+gentleman, you would say, 'Why, he adores her!' and there is not a
+woman in the world who would not say the same."
+
+"And they envy us, my dear!" exclaimed Esther.
+
+"Ah, well!" sighed Madame du Val-Noble; "in the course of our lives we
+learn more or less how little men value us. But, my dear, I have never
+been so cruelly, so deeply, so utterly scorned by brutality as I am by
+this great skinful of port wine.
+
+"When he is tipsy he goes away--'not to be unpleasant,' as he tells
+Adele, and not to be 'under two powers at once,' wine and woman. He
+takes advantage of my carriage; he uses it more than I do.--Oh! if
+only we could see him under the table to-night! But he can drink ten
+bottles and only be fuddled; when his eyes are full, he still sees
+clearly."
+
+"Like people whose windows are dirty outside," said Esther, "but who
+can see from inside what is going on in the street.--I know that
+property in man. Du Tillet has it in the highest degree."
+
+"Try to get du Tillet, and if he and Nucingen between them could only
+catch him in some of their plots, I should at least be revenged. They
+would bring him to beggary!
+
+"Oh! my dear, to have fallen into the hands of a hypocritical
+Protestant after that poor Falleix, who was so amusing, so good-
+natured, so full of chaff! How we used to laugh! They say all
+stockbrokers are stupid. Well, he, for one, never lacked wit but
+once----"
+
+"When he left you without a sou? That is what made you acquainted with
+the unpleasant side of pleasure."
+
+Europe, brought in by Monsieur de Nucingen, put her viperine head in
+at the door, and after listening to a few words whispered in her ear
+by her mistress, she vanished.
+
+
+
+At half-past eleven that evening, five carriages were stationed in the
+Rue Saint-Georges before the famous courtesan's door. There was
+Lucien's, who had brought Rastignac, Bixiou, and Blondet; du Tillet's,
+the Baron de Nucingen's, the Nabob's, and Florine's--she was invited
+by du Tillet. The closed and doubly-shuttered windows were screened by
+the splendid Chinese silk curtains. Supper was to be served at one;
+wax-lights were blazing, the dining-room and little drawing-room
+displayed all their magnificence. The party looked forward to such an
+orgy as only three such women and such men as these could survive.
+They began by playing cards, as they had to wait about two hours.
+
+"Do you play, milord?" asked du Tillet to Peyrade.
+
+"I have played with O'Connell, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Lord Brougham,
+Lord----"
+
+"Say at once no end of lords," said Bixiou.
+
+"Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Hertford, Lord----"
+
+Bixiou was looking at Peyrade's shoes, and stooped down.
+
+"What are you looking for?" asked Blondet.
+
+"For the spring one must touch to stop this machine," said Florine.
+
+"Do you play for twenty francs a point?"
+
+"I will play for as much as you like to lose."
+
+"He does it well!" said Esther to Lucien. "They all take him for an
+Englishman."
+
+Du Tillet, Nucingen, Peyrade, and Rastignac sat down to a whist-table;
+Florine, Madame du Val-Noble, Esther, Blondet, and Bixiou sat round
+the fire chatting. Lucien spent the time in looking through a book of
+fine engravings.
+
+"Supper is ready," Paccard presently announced, in magnificent livery.
+
+Peyrade was placed at Florine's left hand, and on the other side of
+him Bixiou, whom Esther had enjoined to make the Englishman drink
+freely, and challenge him to beat him. Bixiou had the power of
+drinking an indefinite quantity.
+
+Never in his life had Peyrade seen such splendor, or tasted of such
+cookery, or seen such fine women.
+
+"I am getting my money's worth this evening for the thousand crowns la
+Val-Noble has cost me till now," thought he; "and besides, I have just
+won a thousand francs."
+
+"This is an example for men to follow!" said Suzanne, who was sitting
+by Lucien, with a wave of her hand at the splendors of the dining-
+room.
+
+Esther had placed Lucien next herself, and was holding his foot
+between her own under the table.
+
+"Do you hear?" said Madame du Val-Noble, addressing Peyrade, who
+affected blindness. "This is how you ought to furnish a house! When a
+man brings millions home from India, and wants to do business with the
+Nucingens, he should place himself on the same level."
+
+"I belong to a Temperance Society!"
+
+"Then you will drink like a fish!" said Bixiou, "for the Indies are
+uncommon hot, uncle!"
+
+It was Bixiou's jest during supper to treat Peyrade as an uncle of
+his, returned from India.
+
+"Montame du Fal-Noble tolt me you shall have some iteas," said
+Nucingen, scrutinizing Peyrade.
+
+"Ah, this is what I wanted to hear," said du Tillet to Rastignac;
+"the two talking gibberish together."
+
+"You will see, they will understand each other at last," said Bixiou,
+guessing what du Tillet had said to Rastignac.
+
+"Sir Baronet, I have imagined a speculation--oh! a very comfortable
+job--bocou profitable and rich in profits----"
+
+"Now you will see," said Blondet to du Tillet, "he will not talk one
+minute without dragging in the Parliament and the English Government."
+
+"It is in China, in the opium trade----"
+
+"Ja, I know," said Nucingen at once, as a man who is well acquainted
+with commercial geography. "But de English Gover'ment hafe taken up de
+opium trate as a means dat shall open up China, and she shall not
+allow dat ve----"
+
+"Nucingen has cut him out with the Government," remarked du Tillet to
+Blondet.
+
+"Ah! you have been in the opium trade!" cried Madame du Val-Noble.
+"Now I understand why you are so narcotic; some has stuck in your
+soul."
+
+"Dere! you see!" cried the Baron to the self-styled opium merchant,
+and pointing to Madame du Val-Noble. "You are like me. Never shall a
+millionaire be able to make a voman lofe him."
+
+"I have loved much and often, milady," replied Peyrade.
+
+"As a result of temperance," said Bixiou, who had just seen Peyrade
+finish his third bottle of claret, and now had a bottle of port wine
+uncorked.
+
+"Oh!" cried Peyrade, "it is very fine, the Portugal of England."
+
+Blondet, du Tillet, and Bixiou smiled at each other. Peyrade had the
+power of travestying everything, even his wit. There are very few
+Englishmen who will not maintain that gold and silver are better in
+England than elsewhere. The fowls and eggs exported from Normandy to
+the London market enable the English to maintain that the poultry and
+eggs in London are superior (very fine) to those of Paris, which come
+from the same district.
+
+Esther and Lucien were dumfounded by this perfection of costume,
+language, and audacity.
+
+They all ate and drank so well and so heartily, while talking and
+laughing, that it went on till four in the morning. Bixiou flattered
+himself that he had achieved one of the victories so pleasantly
+related by Brillat-Savarin. But at the moment when he was saying to
+himself, as he offered his "uncle" some more wine, "I have vanquished
+England!" Peyrade replied in good French to this malicious scoffer,
+"Toujours, mon garcon" (Go it, my boy), which no one heard but Bixiou.
+
+"Hallo, good men all, he is as English as I am!--My uncle is a Gascon!
+I could have no other!"
+
+Bixiou and Peyrade were alone, so no one heard this announcement.
+Peyrade rolled off his chair on to the floor. Paccard forthwith picked
+him up and carried him to an attic, where he fell sound asleep.
+
+At six o'clock next evening, the Nabob was roused by the application
+of a wet cloth, with which his face was being washed, and awoke to
+find himself on a camp-bed, face to face with Asie, wearing a mask and
+a black domino.
+
+"Well, Papa Peyrade, you and I have to settle accounts," said she.
+
+"Where am I?" asked he, looking about him.
+
+"Listen to me," said Asie, "and that will sober you.--Though you do
+not love Madame du Val-Noble, you love your daughter, I suppose?"
+
+"My daughter?" Peyrade echoed with a roar.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle Lydie."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"What then? She is no longer in the Rue des Moineaux; she has been
+carried off."
+
+Peyrade breathed a sigh like that of a soldier dying of a mortal wound
+on the battlefield.
+
+"While you were pretending to be an Englishman, some one else was
+pretending to be Peyrade. Your little Lydie thought she was with her
+father, and she is now in a safe place.--Oh! you will never find her!
+unless you undo the mischief you have done."
+
+"What mischief?"
+
+"Yesterday Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had the door shut in his face
+at the Duc de Grandlieu's. This is due to your intrigues, and to the
+man you let loose on us. Do not speak, listen!" Asie went on, seeing
+Peyrade open his mouth. "You will have your daughter again, pure and
+spotless," she added, emphasizing her statement by the accent on every
+word, "only on the day after that on which Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre
+walks out of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin as the husband of Mademoiselle
+Clotilde. If, within ten days Lucien de Rubempre is not admitted, as
+he has been, to the Grandlieus' house, you, to begin with, will die a
+violent death, and nothing can save you from the fate that threatens
+you.--Then, when you feel yourself dying, you will have time before
+breathing your last to reflect, 'My daughter is a prostitute for the
+rest of her life!'
+
+"Though you have been such a fool as give us this hold for our
+clutches, you still have sense enough to meditate on this ultimatum
+from our government. Do not bark, say nothing to any one; go to
+Contenson's, and change your dress, and then go home. Katt will tell
+you that at a word from you your little Lydie went downstairs, and has
+not been seen since. If you make any fuss, if you take any steps, your
+daughter will begin where I tell you she will end--she is promised to
+de Marsay.
+
+"With old Canquoelle I need not mince matters, I should think, or wear
+gloves, heh?---- Go on downstairs, and take care not to meddle in our
+concerns any more."
+
+Asie left Peyrade in a pitiable state; every word had been a blow with
+a club. The spy had tears in his eyes, and tears hanging from his
+cheeks at the end of a wet furrow.
+
+"They are waiting dinner for Mr. Johnson," said Europe, putting her
+head in a moment after.
+
+Peyrade made no reply; he went down, walked till he reached a cab-
+stand, and hurried off to undress at Contenson's, not saying a word to
+him; he resumed the costume of Pere Canquoelle, and got home by eight
+o'clock. He mounted the stairs with a beating heart. When the Flemish
+woman heard her master, she asked him:
+
+"Well, and where is mademoiselle?" with such simplicity, that the old
+spy was obliged to lean against the wall. The blow was more than he
+could bear. He went into his daughter's rooms, and ended by fainting
+with grief when he found them empty, and heard Katt's story, which was
+that of an abduction as skilfully planned as if he had arranged it
+himself.
+
+"Well, well," thought he, "I must knock under. I will be revenged
+later; now I must go to Corentin.--This is the first time we have met
+our foes. Corentin will leave that handsome boy free to marry an
+Empress if he wishes!--Yes, I understand that my little girl should
+have fallen in love with him at first sight.--Oh! that Spanish priest
+is a knowing one. Courage, friend Peyrade! disgorge your prey!"
+
+The poor father never dreamed of the fearful blow that awaited him.
+
+On reaching Corentin's house, Bruno, the confidential servant, who
+knew Peyrade, said:
+
+"Monsieur is gone away."
+
+"For a long time?"
+
+"For ten days."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know.
+
+"Good God, I am losing my wits! I ask him where--as if we ever told
+them----" thought he.
+
+A few hours before the moment when Peyrade was to be roused in his
+garret in the Rue Saint-Georges, Corentin, coming in from his country
+place at Passy, had made his way to the Duc de Grandlieu's, in the
+costume of a retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the
+Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face
+with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes were
+hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired office-
+clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de Saint-Denis, he was led to
+the Duke's private room, where he found Derville reading a letter,
+which he himself had dictated to one of his agents, the "number" whose
+business it was to write documents. The Duke took Corentin aside to
+tell him all he already knew. Monsieur de Saint-Denis listened coldly
+and respectfully, amusing himself by studying this grand gentleman, by
+penetrating the tufa beneath the velvet cover, by scrutinizing this
+being, now and always absorbed in whist and in regard for the House of
+Grandlieu.
+
+"If you will take my advice, monsieur," said Corentin to Derville,
+after being duly introduced to the lawyer, "we shall set out this very
+afternoon for Angouleme by the Bordeaux coach, which goes quite as
+fast as the mail; and we shall not need to stay there six hours to
+obtain the information Monsieur le Duc requires. It will be enough--if
+I have understood your Grace--to ascertain whether Monsieur de
+Rubempre's sister and brother-in-law are in a position to give him
+twelve hundred thousand francs?" and he turned to the Duke.
+
+"You have understood me perfectly," said the Duke.
+
+"We can be back again in four days," Corentin went on, addressing
+Derville, "and neither of us will have neglected his business long
+enough for it to suffer."
+
+"That was the only difficulty I was about to mention to his Grace,"
+said Derville. "It is now four o'clock. I am going home to say a word
+to my head-clerk, and pack my traveling-bag, and after dinner, at
+eight o'clock, I will be---- But shall we get places?" he said to
+Monsieur de Saint-Denis, interrupting himself.
+
+"I will answer for that," said Corentin. "Be in the yard of the Chief
+Office of the Messageries at eight o'clock. If there are no places,
+they shall make some, for that is the way to serve Monseigneur le Duc
+de Grandlieu."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Duke most graciously, "I postpone my thanks----"
+
+Corentin and the lawyer, taking this as a dismissal, bowed, and
+withdrew.
+
+At the hour when Peyrade was questioning Corentin's servant, Monsieur
+de Saint-Denis and Derville, seated in the Bordeaux coach, were
+studying each other in silence as they drove out of Paris.
+
+Next morning, between Orleans and Tours, Derville, being bored, began
+to converse, and Corentin condescended to amuse him, but keeping his
+distance; he left him to believe that he was in the diplomatic
+service, and was hoping to become Consul-General by the good offices
+of the Duc de Grandlieu. Two days after leaving Paris, Corentin and
+Derville got out at Mansle, to the great surprise of the lawyer, who
+thought he was going to Angouleme.
+
+"In this little town," said Corentin, "we can get the most positive
+information as regards Madame Sechard."
+
+"Do you know her then?" asked Derville, astonished to find Corentin so
+well informed.
+
+"I made the conductor talk, finding he was a native of Angouleme. He
+tells me that Madame Sechard lives at Marsac, and Marsac is but a
+league away from Mansle. I thought we should be at greater advantage
+here than at Angouleme for verifying the facts."
+
+"And besides," thought Derville, "as Monsieur le Duc said, I act
+merely as the witness to the inquiries made by this confidential
+agent----"
+
+The inn at Mansle, la Belle Etoile, had for its landlord one of those
+fat and burly men whom we fear we may find no more on our return; but
+who still, ten years after, are seen standing at their door with as
+much superfluous flesh as ever, in the same linen cap, the same apron,
+with the same knife, the same oiled hair, the same triple chin,--all
+stereotyped by novel-writers from the immortal Cervantes to the
+immortal Walter Scott. Are they not all boastful of their cookery?
+have they not all "whatever you please to order"? and do not all end
+by giving you the same hectic chicken, and vegetables cooked with rank
+butter? They all boast of their fine wines, and all make you drink the
+wine of the country.
+
+But Corentin, from his earliest youth, had known the art of getting
+out of an innkeeper things more essential to himself than doubtful
+dishes and apocryphal wines. So he gave himself out as a man easy to
+please, and willing to leave himself in the hands of the best cook in
+Mansle, as he told the fat man.
+
+"There is no difficulty about being the best--I am the only one," said
+the host.
+
+"Serve us in the side room," said Corentin, winking at Derville. "And
+do not be afraid of setting the chimney on fire; we want to thaw out
+the frost in our fingers."
+
+"It was not warm in the coach," said Derville.
+
+"Is it far to Marsac?" asked Corentin of the innkeeper's wife, who
+came down from the upper regions on hearing that the diligence had
+dropped two travelers to sleep there.
+
+"Are you going to Marsac, monsieur?" replied the woman.
+
+"I don't know," he said sharply. "Is it far from hence to Marsac?" he
+repeated, after giving the woman time to notice his red ribbon.
+
+"In a chaise, a matter of half an hour," said the innkeeper's wife.
+
+"Do you think that Monsieur and Madame Sechard are likely to be there
+in winter?"
+
+"To be sure; they live there all the year round."
+
+"It is now five o'clock. We shall still find them up at nine."
+
+"Oh yes, till ten. They have company every evening--the cure, Monsieur
+Marron the doctor----"
+
+"Good folks then?" said Derville.
+
+"Oh, the best of good souls," replied the woman, "straight-forward,
+honest--and not ambitious neither. Monsieur Sechard, though he is very
+well off--they say he might have made millions if he had not allowed
+himself to be robbed of an invention in the paper-making of which the
+brothers Cointet are getting the benefit----"
+
+"Ah, to be sure, the Brothers Cointet!" said Corentin.
+
+"Hold your tongue," said the innkeeper. "What can it matter to these
+gentlemen whether Monsieur Sechard has a right or no to a patent for
+his inventions in paper-making?--If you mean to spend the night here--
+at the Belle Etoile----" he went on, addressing the travelers, "here
+is the book, and please to put your names down. We have an officer in
+this town who has nothing to do, and spends all his time in nagging at
+us----"
+
+"The devil!" said Corentin, while Derville entered their names and his
+profession as attorney to the lower Court in the department of the
+Seine, "I fancied the Sechards were very rich."
+
+"Some people say they are millionaires," replied the innkeeper. "But
+as to hindering tongues from wagging, you might as well try to stop
+the river from flowing. Old Sechard left two hundred thousand francs'
+worth of landed property, it is said; and that is not amiss for a man
+who began as a workman. Well, and he may have had as much again in
+savings, for he made ten or twelve thousand francs out of his land at
+last. So, supposing he were fool enough not to invest his money for
+ten years, that would be all told. But even if he lent it at high
+interest, as he is suspected of doing there would be three hundred
+thousand francs perhaps, and that is all. Five hundred thousand francs
+is a long way short of a million. I should be quite content with the
+difference, and no more of the Belle Etoile for me.!"
+
+"Really!" said Corentin. "Then Monsieur David Sechard and his wife
+have not a fortune of two or three millions?"
+
+"Why," exclaimed the innkeeper's wife, "that is what the Cointets are
+supposed to have, who robbed him of his invention, and he does not get
+more than twenty thousand francs out of them. Where do you suppose
+such honest folks would find millions? They were very much pinched
+while the father was alive. But for Kolb, their manager, and Madame
+Kolb, who is as much attached to them as her husband, they could
+scarcely have lived. Why, how much had they with La Verberie!--A
+thousand francs a year perhaps."
+
+Corentin drew Derville aside and said:
+
+"In vino veritas! Truth lives under a cork. For my part, I regard an
+inn as the real registry office of the countryside; the notary is not
+better informed than the innkeeper as to all that goes on in a small
+neighborhood.--You see! we are supposed to know all about the Cointets
+and Kolb and the rest.
+
+"Your innkeeper is the living record of every incident; he does the
+work of the police without suspecting it. A government should maintain
+two hundred spies at most, for in a country like France there are ten
+millions of simple-minded informers.--However, we need not trust to
+this report; though even in this little town something would be known
+about the twelve hundred thousand francs sunk in paying for the
+Rubempre estate. We will not stop here long----"
+
+"I hope not!" Derville put in.
+
+"And this is why," added Corentin; "I have hit on the most natural way
+of extracting the truth from the mouth of the Sechard couple. I rely
+upon you to support, by your authority as a lawyer, the little trick I
+shall employ to enable you to hear a clear and complete account of
+their affairs.--After dinner we shall set out to call on Monsieur
+Sechard," said Corentin to the innkeeper's wife. "Have beds ready for
+us, we want separate rooms. There can be no difficulty 'under the
+stars.' "
+
+"Oh, monsieur," said the woman, "we invented the sign."
+
+"The pun is to be found in every department," said Corentin; "it is no
+monopoly of yours."
+
+"Dinner is served, gentlemen," said the innkeeper.
+
+"But where the devil can that young fellow have found the money? Is
+the anonymous writer accurate? Can it be the earnings of some handsome
+baggage?" said Derville, as they sat down to dinner.
+
+"Ah, that will be the subject of another inquiry," said Corentin.
+"Lucien de Rubempre, as the Duc de Chaulieu tells me, lives with a
+converted Jewess, who passes for a Dutch woman, and is called Esther
+van Bogseck."
+
+"What a strange coincidence!" said the lawyer. "I am hunting for the
+heiress of a Dutchman named Gobseck--it is the same name with a
+transposition of consonants."
+
+"Well," said Corentin, "you shall have information as to her parentage
+on my return to Paris."
+
+
+
+An hour later, the two agents for the Grandlieu family set out for La
+Verberie, where Monsieur and Madame Sechard were living.
+
+Never had Lucien felt any emotion so deep as that which overcame him
+at La Verberie when comparing his own fate with that of his brother-
+in-law. The two Parisians were about to witness the same scene that
+had so much struck Lucien a few days since. Everything spoke of peace
+and abundance.
+
+At the hour when the two strangers were arriving, a party of four
+persons were being entertained in the drawing-room of La Verberie: the
+cure of Marsac, a young priest of five-and-twenty, who, at Madame
+Sechard's request, had become tutor to her little boy Lucien; the
+country doctor, Monsieur Marron; the Maire of the commune; and an old
+colonel, who grew roses on a plot of land opposite to La Verberie on
+the other side of the road. Every evening during the winter these
+persons came to play an artless game of boston for centime points, to
+borrow the papers, or return those they had finished.
+
+When Monsieur and Madame Sechard had bought La Verberie, a fine house
+built of stone, and roofed with slate, the pleasure-grounds consisted
+of a garden of two acres. In the course of time, by devoting her
+savings to the purpose, handsome Madame Sechard had extended her
+garden as far as a brook, by cutting down the vines on some ground she
+purchased, and replacing them with grass plots and clumps of
+shrubbery. At the present time the house, surrounded by a park of
+about twenty acres, and enclosed by walls, was considered the most
+imposing place in the neighborhood.
+
+Old Sechard's former residence, with the outhouses attached, was now
+used as the dwelling-house for the manager of about twenty acres of
+vineyard left by him, of five farmsteads, bringing in about six
+thousand francs a year, and ten acres of meadow land lying on the
+further side of the stream, exactly opposite the little park; indeed,
+Madame Sechard hoped to include them in it the next year. La Verberie
+was already spoken of in the neighborhood as a chateau, and Eve
+Sechard was known as the Lady of Marsac. Lucien, while flattering her
+vanity, had only followed the example of the peasants and vine-
+dressers. Courtois, the owner of the mill, very picturesquely situated
+a few hundred yards from the meadows of La Verberie, was in treaty, it
+was said, with Madame Sechard for the sale of his property; and this
+acquisition would give the finishing touch to the estate and the rank
+of a "place" in the department.
+
+Madame Sechard, who did a great deal of good, with as much judgment as
+generosity, was equally esteemed and loved. Her beauty, now really
+splendid, was at the height of its bloom. She was about six-and-
+twenty, but had preserved all the freshness of youth from living in
+the tranquillity and abundance of a country life. Still much in love
+with her husband, she respected him as a clever man, who was modest
+enough to renounce the display of fame; in short, to complete her
+portrait, it is enough to say that in her whole existence she had
+never felt a throb of her heart that was not inspired by her husband
+or her children.
+
+The tax paid to grief by this happy household was, as may be supposed,
+the deep anxiety caused by Lucien's career, in which Eve Sechard
+suspected mysteries, which she dreaded all the more because, during
+his last visit, Lucien roughly cut short all his sister's questions by
+saying that an ambitious man owed no account of his proceedings to any
+one but himself.
+
+In six years Lucien had seen his sister but three times, and had not
+written her more than six letters. His first visit to La Verberie had
+been on the occasion of his mother's death; and his last had been paid
+with a view to asking the favor of the lie which was so necessary to
+his advancement. This gave rise to a very serious scene between
+Monsieur and Madame Sechard and their brother, and left their happy
+and respected life troubled by the most terrible suspicions.
+
+The interior of the house, as much altered as the surroundings, was
+comfortable without luxury, as will be understood by a glance round
+the room where the little party were now assembled. A pretty Aubusson
+carpet, hangings of gray cotton twill bound with green silk brocade,
+the woodwork painted to imitate Spa wood, carved mahogany furniture
+covered with gray woolen stuff and green gimp, with flower-stands, gay
+with flowers in spite of the time of year, presented a very pleasing
+and homelike aspect. The window curtains, of green brocade, the
+chimney ornaments, and the mirror frames were untainted by the bad
+taste that spoils everything in the provinces; and the smallest
+details, all elegant and appropriate, gave the mind and eye a sense of
+repose and of poetry which a clever and loving woman can and ought to
+infuse into her home.
+
+Madame Sechard, still in mourning for her father, sat by the fire
+working at some large piece of tapestry with the help of Madame Kolb,
+the housekeeper, to whom she intrusted all the minor cares of the
+household.
+
+"A chaise has stopped at the door!" said Courtois, hearing the sound
+of wheels outside; "and to judge by the clatter of metal, it belongs
+to these parts----"
+
+"Postel and his wife have come to see us, no doubt," said the doctor.
+
+"No," said Courtois, "the chaise has come from Mansle."
+
+"Montame," said Kolb, the burly Alsatian we have made acquaintance
+with in a former volume (Illusions perdues), "here is a lawyer from
+Paris who wants to speak with monsieur."
+
+"A lawyer!" cried Sechard; "the very word gives me the colic!"
+
+"Thank you!" said the Maire of Marsac, named Cachan, who for twenty
+years had been an attorney at Angouleme, and who had once been
+required to prosecute Sechard.
+
+"My poor David will never improve; he will always be absent-minded!"
+said Eve, smiling.
+
+"A lawyer from Paris," said Courtois. "Have you any business in
+Paris?"
+
+"No," said Eve.
+
+"But you have a brother there," observed Courtois.
+
+"Take care lest he should have anything to say about old Sechard's
+estate," said Cachan. "HE had his finger in some very queer concerns,
+worthy man!"
+
+Corentin and Derville, on entering the room, after bowing to the
+company, and giving their names, begged to have a private interview
+with Monsieur and Madame Sechard.
+
+"By all means," said Sechard. "But is it a matter of business?"
+
+"Solely a matter regarding your father's property," said Corentin.
+
+"Then I beg you will allow monsieur--the Maire, a lawyer formerly at
+Angouleme--to be present also."
+
+"Are you Monsieur Derville?" said Cachan, addressing Corentin.
+
+"No, monsieur, this is Monsieur Derville," replied Corentin,
+introducing the lawyer, who bowed.
+
+"But," said Sechard, "we are, so to speak, a family party; we have no
+secrets from our neighbors; there is no need to retire to my study,
+where there is no fire--our life is in the sight of all men----"
+
+"But your father's," said Corentin, "was involved in certain mysteries
+which perhaps you would rather not make public."
+
+"Is it anything we need blush for?" said Eve, in alarm.
+
+"Oh, no! a sin of his youth," said Corentin, coldly setting one of his
+mouse-traps. "Monsieur, your father left an elder son----"
+
+"Oh, the old rascal!" cried Courtois. "He was never very fond of you,
+Monsieur Sechard, and he kept that secret from you, the deep old dog!
+--Now I understand what he meant when he used to say to me, 'You shall
+see what you shall see when I am under the turf.' "
+
+"Do not be dismayed, monsieur," said Corentin to Sechard, while he
+watched Eve out of the corner of his eye.
+
+"A brother!" exclaimed the doctor. "Then your inheritance is divided
+into two!"
+
+Derville was affecting to examine the fine engravings, proofs before
+letters, which hung on the drawing-room walls.
+
+"Do not be dismayed, madame," Corentin went on, seeing amazement
+written on Madame Sechard's handsome features, "it is only a natural
+son. The rights of a natural son are not the same as those of a
+legitimate child. This man is in the depths of poverty, and he has a
+right to a certain sum calculated on the amount of the estate. The
+millions left by your father----"
+
+At the word millions there was a perfectly unanimous cry from all the
+persons present. And now Derville ceased to study the prints.
+
+"Old Sechard?--Millions?" said Courtois. "Who on earth told you that?
+Some peasant----"
+
+"Monsieur," said Cachan, "you are not attached to the Treasury? You
+may be told all the facts----"
+
+"Be quite easy," said Corentin, "I give you my word of honor I am not
+employed by the Treasury."
+
+Cachan, who had just signed to everybody to say nothing, gave
+expression to his satisfaction.
+
+"Monsieur," Corentin went on, "if the whole estate were but a million,
+a natural child's share would still be something considerable. But we
+have not come to threaten a lawsuit; on the contrary, our purpose is
+to propose that you should hand over one hundred thousand francs, and
+we will depart----"
+
+"One hundred thousand francs!" cried Cachan, interrupting him. "But,
+monsieur, old Sechard left twenty acres of vineyard, five small farms,
+ten acres of meadowland here, and not a sou besides----"
+
+"Nothing on earth," cried David Sechard, "would induce me to tell a
+lie, and less to a question of money than on any other.-- Monsieur,"
+he said, turning to Corentin and Derville, "my father left us, besides
+the land----"
+
+Courtois and Cachan signaled in vain to Sechard; he went on:
+
+"Three hundred thousand francs, which raises the whole estate to about
+five hundred thousand francs."
+
+"Monsieur Cachan," asked Eve Sechard, "what proportion does the law
+allot to a natural child?"
+
+"Madame," said Corentin, "we are not Turks; we only require you to
+swear before these gentlemen that you did not inherit more than five
+hundred thousand francs from your father-in-law, and we can come to an
+understanding."
+
+"First give me your word of honor that you really are a lawyer," said
+Cachan to Derville.
+
+"Here is my passport," replied Derville, handing him a paper folded in
+four; "and monsieur is not, as you might suppose, an inspector from
+the Treasury, so be easy," he added. "We had an important reason for
+wanting to know the truth as to the Sechard estate, and we now know
+it."
+
+Derville took Madame Sechard's hand and led her very courteously to
+the further end of the room.
+
+"Madame," said he, in a low voice, "if it were not that the honor and
+future prospects of the house of Grandlieu are implicated in this
+affair, I would never have lent myself to the stratagem devised by
+this gentleman of the red ribbon. But you must forgive him; it was
+necessary to detect the falsehood by means of which your brother has
+stolen a march on the beliefs of that ancient family. Beware now of
+allowing it to be supposed that you have given your brother twelve
+hundred thousand francs to repurchase the Rubempre estates----"
+
+"Twelve hundred thousand francs!" cried Madame Sechard, turning pale.
+"Where did he get them, wretched boy?"
+
+"Ah! that is the question," replied Derville. "I fear that the source
+of his wealth is far from pure."
+
+The tears rose to Eve's eyes, as her neighbors could see.
+
+"We have, perhaps, done you a great service by saving you from
+abetting a falsehood of which the results may be positively
+dangerous," the lawyer went on.
+
+Derville left Madame Sechard sitting pale and dejected with tears on
+her cheeks, and bowed to the company.
+
+"To Mansle!" said Corentin to the little boy who drove the chaise.
+
+There was but one vacant place in the diligence from Bordeaux to
+Paris; Derville begged Corentin to allow him to take it, urging a
+press of business; but in his soul he was distrustful of his traveling
+companion, whose diplomatic dexterity and coolness struck him as being
+the result of practice. Corentin remained three days longer at Mansle,
+unable to get away; he was obliged to secure a place in the Paris
+coach by writing to Bordeaux, and did not get back till nine days
+after leaving home.
+
+Peyrade, meanwhile, had called every morning, either at Passy or in
+Paris, to inquire whether Corentin had returned. On the eighth day he
+left at each house a note, written in their peculiar cipher, to
+explain to his friend what death hung over him, and to tell him of
+Lydie's abduction and the horrible end to which his enemies had
+devoted them. Peyrade, bereft of Corentin, but seconded by Contenson,
+still kept up his disguise as a nabob. Even though his invisible foes
+had discovered him, he very wisely reflected that he might glean some
+light on the matter by remaining on the field of the contest.
+
+Contenson had brought all his experience into play in his search for
+Lydie, and hoped to discover in what house she was hidden; but as the
+days went by, the impossibility, absolutely demonstrated, of tracing
+the slightest clue, added, hour by hour, to Peyrade's despair. The old
+spy had a sort of guard about him of twelve or fifteen of the most
+experienced detectives. They watched the neighborhood of the Rue des
+Moineaux and the Rue Taitbout--where he lived, as a nabob, with Madame
+du Val-Noble. During the last three days of the term granted by Asie
+to reinstate Lucien on his old footing in the Hotel de Grandlieu,
+Contenson never left the veteran of the old general police office. And
+the poetic terror shed throughout the forests of America by the arts
+of inimical and warring tribes, of which Cooper made such good use in
+his novels, was here associated with the petty details of Paris life.
+The foot-passengers, the shops, the hackney cabs, a figure standing at
+a window,--everything had to the human ciphers to whom old Peyrade had
+intrusted his safety the thrilling interest which attaches in Cooper's
+romances to a beaver-village, a rock, a bison-robe, a floating canoe,
+a weed straggling over the water.
+
+"If the Spaniard has gone away, you have nothing to fear," said
+Contenson to Peyrade, remarking on the perfect peace they lived in.
+
+"But if he is not gone?" observed Peyrade.
+
+"He took one of my men at the back of the chaise; but at Blois, my man
+having to get down, could not catch the chaise up again."
+
+
+
+Five days after Derville's return, Lucien one morning had a call from
+Rastignac.
+
+"I am in despair, my dear boy," said his visitor, "at finding myself
+compelled to deliver a message which is intrusted to me because we are
+known to be intimate. Your marriage is broken off beyond all hope of
+reconciliation. Never set foot again in the Hotel de Grandlieu. To
+marry Clotilde you must wait till her father dies, and he is too
+selfish to die yet awhile. Old whist-players sit at table--the card-
+table--very late.
+
+"Clotilde is setting out for Italy with Madeleine de Lenoncourt-
+Chaulieu. The poor girl is so madly in love with you, my dear fellow,
+that they have to keep an eye on her; she was bent on coming to see
+you, and had plotted an escape. That may comfort you in misfortune!"
+
+Lucien made no reply; he sat gazing at Rastignac.
+
+"And is it a misfortune, after all?" his friend went on. "You will
+easily find a girl as well born and better looking than Clotilde!
+Madame de Serizy will find you a wife out of spite; she cannot endure
+the Grandlieus, who never would have anything to say to her. She has a
+niece, little Clemence du Rouvre----"
+
+"My dear boy," said Lucien at length, "since that supper I am not on
+terms with Madame de Serizy--she saw me in Esther's box and made a
+scene--and I left her to herself."
+
+"A woman of forty does not long keep up a quarrel with so handsome a
+man as you are," said Rastignac. "I know something of these sunsets.--
+It lasts ten minutes in the sky, and ten years in a woman's heart."
+
+"I have waited a week to hear from her."
+
+"Go and call."
+
+"Yes, I must now."
+
+"Are you coming at any rate to the Val-Noble's? Her nabob is returning
+the supper given by Nucingen."
+
+"I am asked, and I shall go," said Lucien gravely.
+
+The day after this confirmation of his disaster, which Carlos heard of
+at once from Asie, Lucien went to the Rue Taitbout with Rastignac and
+Nucingen.
+
+At midnight nearly all the personages of this drama were assembled in
+the dining-room that had formerly been Esther's--a drama of which the
+interest lay hidden under the very bed of these tumultuous lives, and
+was known only to Esther, to Lucien, to Peyrade, to Contenson, the
+mulatto, and to Paccard, who attended his mistress. Asie, without its
+being known to Contenson and Peyrade, had been asked by Madame du Val-
+Noble to come and help her cook.
+
+As they sat down to table, Peyrade, who had given Madame du Val-Noble
+five hundred francs that the thing might be well done, found under his
+napkin a scrap of paper on which these words were written in pencil,
+"The ten days are up at the moment when you sit down to supper."
+
+Peyrade handed the paper to Contenson, who was standing behind him,
+saying in English:
+
+"Did you put my name here?"
+
+Contenson read by the light of the wax-candles this "Mene, Tekel,
+Upharsin," and slipped the scrap into his pocket; but he knew how
+difficult it is to verify a handwriting in pencil, and, above all, a
+sentence written in Roman capitals, that is to say, with mathematical
+lines, since capital letters are wholly made up of straight lines and
+curves, in which it is impossible to detect any trick of the hand, as
+in what is called running-hand.
+
+The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit. Peyrade was visibly
+absent-minded. Of the men about town who give life to a supper, only
+Rastignac and Lucien were present. Lucien was gloomy and absorbed in
+thought; Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper,
+ate and drank with the hope of recovering them later. The three women,
+stricken by this chill, looked at each other. Dulness deprived the
+dishes of all relish. Suppers, like plays and books, have their good
+and bad luck.
+
+At the end of the meal ices were served, of the kind called
+plombieres. As everybody knows, this kind of dessert has delicate
+preserved fruits laid on the top of the ice, which is served in a
+little glass, not heaped above the rim. These ices had been ordered by
+Madame du Val-Noble of Tortoni, whose shop is at the corner of the Rue
+Taitbout and the Boulevard.
+
+The cook called Contenson out of the room to pay the bill.
+
+Contenson, who thought this demand on the part of the shop-boy rather
+strange, went downstairs and startled him by saying:
+
+"Then you have not come from Tortoni's?" and then went straight
+upstairs again.
+
+Paccard had meanwhile handed the ices to the company in his absence.
+The mulatto had hardly reached the door when one of the police
+constables who had kept watch in the Rue des Moineaux called up the
+stairs:
+
+"Number twenty-seven."
+
+"What's up?" replied Contenson, flying down again.
+
+"Tell Papa that his daughter has come home; but, good God! in what a
+state. Tell him to come at once; she is dying."
+
+At the moment when Contenson re-entered the dining-room, old Peyrade,
+who had drunk a great deal, was swallowing the cherry off his ice.
+They were drinking to the health of Madame du Val-Noble; the nabob
+filled his glass with Constantia and emptied it.
+
+In spite of his distress at the news he had to give Peyrade, Contenson
+was struck by the eager attention with which Paccard was looking at
+the nabob. His eyes sparkled like two fixed flames. Although it seemed
+important, still this could not delay the mulatto, who leaned over his
+master, just as Peyrade set his glass down.
+
+"Lydie is at home," said Contenson, "in a very bad state."
+
+Peyrade rattled out the most French of all French oaths with such a
+strong Southern accent that all the guests looked up in amazement.
+Peyrade, discovering his blunder, acknowledged his disguise by saying
+to Contenson in good French:
+
+"Find me a coach--I'm off."
+
+Every one rose.
+
+"Why, who are you?" said Lucien.
+
+"Ja--who?" said the Baron.
+
+"Bixiou told me you shammed Englishman better than he could, and I
+would not believe him," said Rastignac.
+
+"Some bankrupt caught in disguise," said du Tillet loudly. "I
+suspected as much!"
+
+"A strange place is Paris!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "After being
+bankrupt in his own part of town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a
+dandy in the Champs-Elysees with impunity!--Oh! I am unlucky!
+bankrupts are my bane."
+
+"Every flower has its peculiar blight!" said Esther quietly. "Mine is
+like Cleopatra's--an asp."
+
+"Who am I?" echoed Peyrade from the door. "You will know ere long; for
+if I die, I will rise from my grave to clutch your feet every night!"
+
+He looked at Esther and Lucien as he spoke, then he took advantage of
+the general dismay to vanish with the utmost rapidity, meaning to run
+home without waiting for the coach. In the street the spy was gripped
+by the arm as he crossed the threshold of the outer gate. It was Asie,
+wrapped in a black hood such as ladies then wore on leaving a ball.
+
+"Send for the Sacraments, Papa Peyrade," said she, in the voice that
+had already prophesied ill.
+
+A coach was waiting. Asie jumped in, and the carriage vanished as
+though the wind had swept it away. There were five carriages waiting;
+Peyrade's men could find out nothing.
+
+
+
+On reaching his house in the Rue des Vignes, one of the quietest and
+prettiest nooks of the little town of Passy, Corentin, who was known
+there as a retired merchant passionately devoted to gardening, found
+his friend Peyrade's note in cipher. Instead of resting, he got into
+the hackney coach that had brought him thither, and was driven to the
+Rue des Moineaux, where he found only Katt. From her he heard of
+Lydie's disappearance, and remained astounded at Peyrade's and his own
+want of foresight.
+
+"But they do not know me yet," said he to himself. "This crew is
+capable of anything; I must find out if they are killing Peyrade; for
+if so, I must not be seen any more----"
+
+The viler a man's life is, the more he clings to it; it becomes at
+every moment a protest and a revenge.
+
+Corentin went back to the cab, and drove to his rooms to assume the
+disguise of a feeble old man, in a scanty greenish overcoat and a tow
+wig. Then he returned on foot, prompted by his friendship for Peyrade.
+He intended to give instructions to his most devoted and cleverest
+underlings.
+
+As he went along the Rue Saint-Honore to reach the Rue Saint-Roch from
+the Place Vendome, he came up behind a girl in slippers, and dressed
+as a woman dresses for the night. She had on a white bed-jacket and a
+nightcap, and from time to time gave vent to a sob and an involuntary
+groan. Corentin out-paced her, and turning round, recognized Lydie.
+
+"I am a friend of your father's, of Monsieur Canquoelle's," said he in
+his natural voice.
+
+"Ah! then here is some one I can trust!" said she.
+
+"Do not seem to have recognized me," Corentin went on, "for we are
+pursued by relentless foes, and are obliged to disguise ourselves. But
+tell me what has befallen you?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur," said the poor child, "the facts but not the story can
+be told--I am ruined, lost, and I do not know how----"
+
+"Where have you come from?"
+
+"I don't know, monsieur. I fled with such precipitancy, I have come
+through so many streets, round so many turnings, fancying I was being
+followed. And when I met any one that seemed decent, I asked my way to
+get back to the Boulevards, so as to find the Rue de la Paix. And at
+last, after walking---- What o'clock is it, monsieur?"
+
+"Half-past eleven," said Corentin.
+
+"I escaped at nightfall," said Lydie. "I have been walking for five
+hours."
+
+"Well, come along; you can rest now; you will find your good Katt."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, there is no rest for me! I only want to rest in the
+grave, and I will go and wait for death in a convent if I am worthy to
+be admitted----"
+
+"Poor little girl!--But you struggled?"
+
+"Oh yes! Oh! if you could only imagine the abject creatures they
+placed me with----!"
+
+"They sent you to sleep, no doubt?"
+
+"Ah! that is it" cried poor Lydie. "A little more strength and I
+should be at home. I feel that I am dropping, and my brain is not
+quite clear.--Just now I fancied I was in a garden----"
+
+Corentin took Lydie in his arms, and she lost consciousness; he
+carried her upstairs.
+
+"Katt!" he called.
+
+Katt came out with exclamations of joy.
+
+"Don't be in too great a hurry to be glad!" said Corentin gravely;
+"the girl is very ill."
+
+When Lydie was laid on her bed and recognized her own room by the
+light of two candles that Katt lighted, she became delirious. She sang
+scraps of pretty airs, broken by vociferations of horrible sentences
+she had heard. Her pretty face was mottled with purple patches. She
+mixed up the reminiscences of her pure childhood with those of these
+ten days of infamy. Katt sat weeping; Corentin paced the room,
+stopping now and again to gaze at Lydie.
+
+"She is paying her father's debt," said he. "Is there a Providence
+above? Oh, I was wise not to have a family. On my word of honor, a
+child is indeed a hostage given to misfortune, as some philosopher has
+said."
+
+"Oh!" cried the poor child, sitting up in bed and throwing back her
+fine long hair, "instead of lying here, Katt, I ought to be stretched
+in the sand at the bottom of the Seine!"
+
+"Katt, instead of crying and looking at your child, which will never
+cure her, you ought to go for a doctor; the medical officer in the
+first instance, and then Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon----
+We must save this innocent creature."
+
+And Corentin wrote down the addresses of these two famous physicians.
+
+At this moment, up the stairs came some one to whom they were
+familiar, and the door was opened. Peyrade, in a violent sweat, his
+face purple, his eyes almost blood-stained, and gasping like a
+dolphin, rushed from the outer door to Lydie's room, exclaiming:
+
+"Where is my child?"
+
+He saw a melancholy sign from Corentin, and his eyes followed his
+friend's hand. Lydie's condition can only be compared to that of a
+flower tenderly cherished by a gardener, now fallen from its stem, and
+crushed by the iron-clamped shoes of some peasant. Ascribe this simile
+to a father's heart, and you will understand the blow that fell on
+Peyrade; the tears started to his eyes.
+
+"You are crying!--It is my father!" said the girl.
+
+She could still recognize her father; she got out of bed and fell on
+her knees at the old man's side as he sank into a chair.
+
+"Forgive me, papa," said she in a tone that pierced Peyrade's heart,
+and at the same moment he was conscious of what felt like a tremendous
+blow on his head.
+
+"I am dying!--the villains!" were his last words.
+
+Corentin tried to help his friend, and received his latest breath.
+
+"Dead! Poisoned!" said he to himself. "Ah! here is the doctor!" he
+exclaimed, hearing the sound of wheels.
+
+Contenson, who came with his mulatto disguise removed, stood like a
+bronze statue as he heard Lydie say:
+
+"Then you do not forgive me, father?--But it was not my fault!"
+
+She did not understand that her father was dead.
+
+"Oh, how he stares at me!" cried the poor crazy girl.
+
+"We must close his eyes," said Contenson, lifting Peyrade on to the
+bed.
+
+"We are doing a stupid thing," said Corentin. "Let us carry him into
+his own room. His daughter is half demented, and she will go quite mad
+when she sees that he is dead; she will fancy that she has killed
+him."
+
+Lydie, seeing them carry away her father, looked quite stupefied.
+
+"There lies my only friend!" said Corentin, seeming much moved when
+Peyrade was laid out on the bed in his own room. "In all his life he
+never had but one impulse of cupidity, and that was for his daughter!
+--Let him be an example to you, Contenson. Every line of life has its
+code of honor. Peyrade did wrong when he mixed himself up with private
+concerns; we have no business to meddle with any but public cases.
+
+"But come what may, I swear," said he with a voice, an emphasis, a
+look that struck horror into Contenson, "to avenge my poor Peyrade! I
+will discover the men who are guilty of his death and of his
+daughter's ruin. And as sure as I am myself, as I have yet a few days
+to live, which I will risk to accomplish that vengeance, every man of
+them shall die at four o'clock, in good health, by a clean shave on
+the Place de Greve."
+
+"And I will help you," said Contenson with feeling.
+
+Nothing, in fact, is more heart-stirring than the spectacle of passion
+in a cold, self-contained, and methodical man, in whom, for twenty
+years, no one has ever detected the smallest impulse of sentiment. It
+is like a molten bar of iron which melts everything it touches. And
+Contenson was moved to his depths.
+
+"Poor old Canquoelle!" said he, looking at Corentin. "He has treated
+me many a time.--And, I tell you, only your bad sort know how to do
+such things--but often has he given me ten francs to go and gamble
+with . . ."
+
+After this funeral oration, Peyrade's two avengers went back to
+Lydie's room, hearing Katt and the medical officer from the Mairie on
+the stairs.
+
+"Go and fetch the Chief of Police," said Corentin. "The public
+prosecutor will not find grounds for a prosecution in the case; still,
+we will report it to the Prefecture; it may, perhaps, be of some use.
+
+"Monsieur," he went on to the medical officer, "in this room you will
+see a dead man. I do not believe that he died from natural causes; you
+will be good enough to make a post-mortem in the presence of the Chief
+of the Police, who will come at my request. Try to discover some
+traces of poison. You will, in a few minutes, have the opinion of
+Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon, for whom I have sent to
+examine the daughter of my best friend; she is in a worse plight than
+he, though he is dead."
+
+"I have no need of those gentlemen's assistance in the exercise of my
+duty," said the medical officer.
+
+"Well, well," thought Corentin. "Let us have no clashing, monsieur,"
+he said. "In a few words I give you my opinion--Those who have just
+murdered the father have also ruined the daughter."
+
+By daylight Lydie had yielded to fatigue; when the great surgeon and
+the young physician arrived she was asleep.
+
+The doctor, whose duty it was to sign the death certificate, had now
+opened Peyrade's body, and was seeking the cause of death.
+
+"While waiting for your patient to awake," said Corentin to the two
+famous doctors, "would you join one of your professional brethren in
+an examination which cannot fail to interest you, and your opinion
+will be valuable in case of an inquiry."
+
+"Your relations died of apoplexy," said the official. "There are all
+the symptoms of violent congestion of the brain."
+
+"Examine him, gentlemen, and see if there is no poison capable of
+producing similar symptoms."
+
+"The stomach is, in fact, full of food substances; but short of
+chemical analysis, I find no evidence of poison.
+
+"If the characters of cerebral congestion are well ascertained, we
+have here, considering the patient's age, a sufficient cause of
+death," observed Desplein, looking at the enormous mass of material.
+
+"Did he sup here?" asked Bianchon.
+
+"No," said Corentin; "he came here in great haste from the Boulevard,
+and found his daughter ruined----"
+
+"That was the poison if he loved his daughter," said Bianchon.
+
+"What known poison could produce a similar effect?" asked Corentin,
+clinging to his idea.
+
+"There is but one," said Desplein, after a careful examination. "It is
+a poison found in the Malayan Archipelago, and derived from trees, as
+yet but little known, of the strychnos family; it is used to poison
+that dangerous weapon, the Malay kris.--At least, so it is reported."
+
+The Police Commissioner presently arrived; Corentin told him his
+suspicions, and begged him to draw up a report, telling him where and
+with whom Peyrade had supped, and the causes of the state in which he
+found Lydie.
+
+Corentin then went to Lydie's rooms; Desplein and Bianchon had been
+examining the poor child. He met them at the door.
+
+"Well, gentlemen?" asked Corentin.
+
+"Place the girl under medical care; unless she recovers her wits when
+her child is born--if indeed she should have a child--she will end her
+days melancholy-mad. There is no hope of a cure but in the maternal
+instinct, if it can be aroused."
+
+Corentin paid each of the physicians forty francs in gold, and then
+turned to the Police Commissioner, who had pulled him by the sleeve.
+
+"The medical officer insists on it that death was natural," said this
+functionary, "and I can hardly report the case, especially as the dead
+man was old Canquoelle; he had his finger in too many pies, and we
+should not be sure whom we might run foul of. Men like that die to
+order very often----"
+
+"And my name is Corentin," said Corentin in the man's ear.
+
+The Commissioner started with surprise.
+
+"So just make a note of all this," Corentin went on; "it will be very
+useful by and by; send it up only as confidential information. The
+crime cannot be proved, and I know that any inquiry would be checked
+at the very outset.--But I will catch the criminals some day yet. I
+will watch them and take them red-handed."
+
+The police official bowed to Corentin and left.
+
+"Monsieur," said Katt. "Mademoiselle does nothing but dance and sing.
+What can I do?"
+
+"Has any change occurred then?"
+
+"She has understood that her father is just dead."
+
+"Put her into a hackney coach, and simply take her to Charenton; I
+will write a note to the Commissioner-General of Police to secure her
+being suitably provided for.--The daughter in Charenton, the father in
+a pauper's grave!" said Corentin--"Contenson, go and fetch the parish
+hearse. And now, Don Carlos Herrera, you and I will fight it out!"
+
+"Carlos?" said Contenson, "he is in Spain."
+
+"He is in Paris," said Corentin positively. "There is a touch of
+Spanish genius of the Philip II. type in all this; but I have pitfalls
+for everybody, even for kings."
+
+
+
+Five days after the nabob's disappearance, Madame du Val-Noble was
+sitting by Esther's bedside weeping, for she felt herself on one of
+the slopes down to poverty.
+
+"If I only had at least a hundred louis a year! With that sum, my
+dear, a woman can retire to some little town and find a husband----"
+
+"I can get you as much as that," said Esther.
+
+"How?" cried Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+"Oh, in a very simple way. Listen. You must plan to kill yourself;
+play your part well. Send for Asie and offer her ten thousand francs
+for two black beads of very thin glass containing a poison which kills
+you in a second. Bring them to me, and I will give you fifty thousand
+francs for them."
+
+"Why do you not ask her for them yourself?" said her friend.
+
+"Asie would not sell them to me."
+
+"They are not for yourself?" asked Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"You! who live in the midst of pleasure and luxury, in a house of your
+own? And on the eve of an entertainment which will be the talk of
+Paris for ten years--which is to cost Nucingen twenty thousand francs!
+There are to be strawberries in mid-February, they say, asparagus,
+grapes, melons!--and a thousand crowns' worth of flowers in the
+rooms."
+
+"What are you talking about? There are a thousand crowns' worth of
+roses on the stairs alone."
+
+"And your gown is said to have cost ten thousand francs?"
+
+"Yes, it is of Brussels point, and Delphine, his wife, is furious. But
+I had a fancy to be disguised as a bride."
+
+"Where are the ten thousand francs?" asked Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+"It is all the ready money I have," said Esther, smiling. "Open my
+table drawer; it is under the curl-papers."
+
+"People who talk of dying never kill themselves," said Madame du Val-
+Noble. "If it were to commit----"
+
+"A crime? For shame!" said Esther, finishing her friend's thought, as
+she hesitated. "Be quite easy, I have no intention of killing anybody.
+I had a friend--a very happy woman; she is dead, I must follow her--
+that is all."
+
+"How foolish!"
+
+"How can I help it? I promised her I would."
+
+"I should let that bill go dishonored," said her friend, smiling.
+
+"Do as I tell you, and go at once. I hear a carriage coming. It is
+Nucingen, a man who will go mad with joy! Yes, he loves me!--Why do we
+not love those who love us, for indeed they do all they can to please
+us?"
+
+"Ah, that is the question!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "It is the old
+story of the herring, which is the most puzzling fish that swims."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, no one could ever find out."
+
+"Get along, my dear!--I must ask for your fifty thousand francs."
+
+"Good-bye then."
+
+For three days past, Esther's ways with the Baron de Nucingen had
+completely changed. The monkey had become a cat, the cat had become a
+woman. Esther poured out treasures of affection on the old man; she
+was quite charming. Her way of addressing him, with a total absence of
+mischief or bitterness, and all sorts of tender insinuation, had
+carried conviction to the banker's slow wit; she called him Fritz, and
+he believed that she loved him.
+
+"My poor Fritz, I have tried you sorely," said she. "I have teased you
+shamefully. Your patience has been sublime. You loved me, I see, and I
+will reward you. I like you now, I do not know how it is, but I should
+prefer you to a young man. It is the result of experience perhaps.--In
+the long run we discover at last that pleasure is the coin of the
+soul; and it is not more flattering to be loved for the sake of
+pleasure than it is to be loved for the sake of money.
+
+"Besides, young men are too selfish; they think more of themselves
+than of us; while you, now, think only of me. I am all your life to
+you. And I will take nothing more from you. I want to prove to you how
+disinterested I am."
+
+"Vy, I hafe gifen you notink," cried the Baron, enchanted. "I propose
+to gife you to-morrow tirty tousant francs a year in a Government
+bond. Dat is mein vedding gift."
+
+Esther kissed the Baron so sweetly that he turned pale without any
+pills.
+
+"Oh!" cried she, "do not suppose that I am sweet to you only for your
+thirty thousand francs! It is because--now--I love you, my good, fat
+Frederic."
+
+"Ach, mein Gott! Vy hafe you kept me vaiting? I might hafe been so
+happy all dese tree monts."
+
+"In three or in five per cents, my pet?" said Esther, passing her
+fingers through Nucingen's hair, and arranging it in a fashion of her
+own.
+
+"In trees--I hat a quantity."
+
+So next morning the Baron brought the certificate of shares; he came
+to breakfast with his dear little girl, and to take her orders for the
+following evening, the famous Saturday, the great day!
+
+"Here, my little vife, my only vife," said the banker gleefully, his
+face radiant with happiness. "Here is enough money to pay for your
+keep for de rest of your days."
+
+Esther took the paper without the slightest excitement, folded it up,
+and put it in her dressing-table drawer.
+
+"So now you are quite happy, you monster of iniquity!" said she,
+giving Nucingen a little slap on the cheek, "now that I have at last
+accepted a present from you. I can no longer tell you home-truths, for
+I share the fruit of what you call your labors. This is not a gift, my
+poor old boy, it is restitution.--Come, do not put on your Bourse
+face. You know that I love you."
+
+"My lofely Esther, mein anchel of lofe," said the banker, "do not
+speak to me like dat. I tell you, I should not care ven all de vorld
+took me for a tief, if you should tink me ein honest man.--I lofe you
+every day more and more."
+
+"That is my intention," said Esther. "And I will never again say
+anything to distress you, my pet elephant, for you are grown as
+artless as a baby. Bless me, you old rascal, you have never known any
+innocence; the allowance bestowed on you when you came into the world
+was bound to come to the top some day; but it was buried so deep that
+it is only now reappearing at the age of sixty-six. Fished up by
+love's barbed hook.--This phenomenon is seen in old men.
+
+"And this is why I have learned to love you, you are young--so young!
+No one but I would ever have known this, Frederic--I alone. For you
+were a banker at fifteen; even at college you must have lent your
+school-fellows one marble on condition of their returning two."
+
+Seeing him laugh, she sprang on to his knee.
+
+"Well, you must do as you please! Bless me! plunder the men--go ahead,
+and I will help. Men are not worth loving; Napoleon killed them off
+like flies. Whether they pay taxes to you or to the Government, what
+difference does it make to them? You don't make love over the budget,
+and on my honor!--go ahead, I have thought it over, and you are right.
+Shear the sheep! you will find it in the gospel according to Beranger.
+
+"Now, kiss your Esther.--I say, you will give that poor Val-Noble all
+the furniture in the Rue Taitbout? And to-morrow I wish you would give
+her fifty thousand francs--it would look handsome, my duck. You see,
+you killed Falleix; people are beginning to cry out upon you, and this
+liberality will look Babylonian--all the women will talk about it! Oh!
+there will be no one in Paris so grand, so noble as you; and as the
+world is constituted, Falleix will be forgotten. So, after all, it
+will be money deposited at interest."
+
+"You are right, mein anchel; you know the vorld," he replied. "You
+shall be mein adfiser."
+
+"Well, you see," said Esther, "how I study my man's interest, his
+position and honor.--Go at once and bring those fifty thousand
+francs."
+
+She wanted to get rid of Monsieur de Nucingen so as to get a
+stockbroker to sell the bond that very afternoon.
+
+"But vy dis minute?" asked he.
+
+"Bless me, my sweetheart, you must give it to her in a little satin
+box wrapped round a fan. You must say, 'Here, madame, is a fan which I
+hope may be to your taste.'--You are supposed to be a Turcaret, and
+you will become a Beaujon."
+
+"Charming, charming!" cried the Baron. "I shall be so clever
+henceforth.--Yes, I shall repeat your vorts."
+
+Just as Esther had sat down, tired with the effort of playing her
+part, Europe came in.
+
+"Madame," said she, "here is a messenger sent from the Quai Malaquais
+by Celestin, M. Lucien's servant----"
+
+"Bring him in--no, I will go into the ante-room."
+
+"He has a letter for you, madame, from Celestin."
+
+Esther rushed into the ante-room, looked at the messenger, and saw
+that he looked like the genuine thing.
+
+"Tell HIM to come down," said Esther, in a feeble voice and dropping
+into a chair after reading the letter. "Lucien means to kill himself,"
+she added in a whisper to Europe. "No, take the letter up to him."
+
+Carlos Herrera, still in his disguise as a bagman, came downstairs at
+once, and keenly scrutinized the messenger on seeing a stranger in the
+ante-room.
+
+"You said there was no one here," said he in a whisper to Europe.
+
+And with an excess of prudence, after looking at the messenger, he
+went straight into the drawing-room. Trompe-la-Mort did not know that
+for some time past the famous constable of the detective force who had
+arrested him at the Maison Vauquer had a rival, who, it was supposed,
+would replace him. This rival was the messenger.
+
+"They are right," said the sham messenger to Contenson, who was
+waiting for him in the street. "The man you describe is in the house;
+but he is not a Spaniard, and I will burn my hand off if there is not
+a bird for our net under that priest's gown."
+
+"He is no more a priest than he is a Spaniard," said Contenson.
+
+"I am sure of that," said the detective.
+
+"Oh, if only we were right!" said Contenson.
+
+Lucien had been away for two days, and advantage had been taken of his
+absence to lay this snare, but he returned this evening, and the
+courtesan's anxieties were allayed. Next morning, at the hour when
+Esther, having taken a bath, was getting into bed again, Madame du
+Val-Noble arrived.
+
+"I have the two pills!" said her friend.
+
+"Let me see," said Esther, raising herself with her pretty elbow
+buried in a pillow trimmed with lace.
+
+Madame du Val-Noble held out to her what looked like two black
+currants.
+
+The Baron had given Esther a pair of greyhounds of famous pedigree,
+which will be always known by the name of the great contemporary poet
+who made them fashionable; and Esther, proud of owning them, had
+called them by the names of their parents, Romeo and Juliet. No need
+here to describe the whiteness and grace of these beasts, trained for
+the drawing-room, with manners suggestive of English propriety. Esther
+called Romeo; Romeo ran up on legs so supple and thin, so strong and
+sinewy, that they seemed like steel springs, and looked up at his
+mistress. Esther, to attract his attention, pretended to throw one of
+the pills.
+
+"He is doomed by his nature to die thus," said she, as she threw the
+pill, which Romeo crushed between his teeth.
+
+The dog made no sound, he rolled over, and was stark dead. It was all
+over while Esther spoke these words of epitaph.
+
+"Good God!" shrieked Madame du Val-Noble.
+
+"You have a cab waiting. Carry away the departed Romeo," said Esther.
+"His death would make a commotion here. I have given him to you, and
+you have lost him--advertise for him. Make haste; you will have your
+fifty thousand francs this evening."
+
+She spoke so calmly, so entirely with the cold indifference of a
+courtesan, that Madame du Val-Noble exclaimed:
+
+"You are the Queen of us all!"
+
+"Come early, and look very well----"
+
+At five o'clock Esther dressed herself as a bride. She put on her lace
+dress over white satin, she had a white sash, white satin shoes, and a
+scarf of English point lace over her beautiful shoulders. In her hair
+she placed white camellia flowers, the simple ornament of an innocent
+girl. On her bosom lay a pearl necklace worth thirty thousand francs,
+a gift from Nucingen.
+
+Though she was dressed by six, she refused to see anybody, even the
+banker. Europe knew that Lucien was to be admitted to her room. Lucien
+came at about seven, and Europe managed to get him up to her mistress
+without anybody knowing of his arrival.
+
+Lucien, as he looked at her, said to himself, "Why not go and live
+with her at Rubempre, far from the world, and never see Paris again? I
+have an earnest of five years of her life, and the dear creature is
+one of those who never belie themselves! Where can I find such another
+perfect masterpiece?"
+
+"My dear, you whom I have made my God," said Esther, kneeling down on
+a cushion in front of Lucien, "give me your blessing."
+
+Lucien tried to raise her and kiss her, saying, "What is this jest, my
+dear love?" And he would have put his arm round her, but she freed
+herself with a gesture as much of respect as of horror.
+
+"I am no longer worthy of you, Lucien," said she, letting the tears
+rise to her eyes. "I implore you, give me your blessing, and swear to
+me that you will found two beds at the Hotel-Dieu--for, as to prayers
+in church, God will never forgive me unless I pray myself.
+
+"I have loved you too well, my dear. Tell me that I made you happy,
+and that you will sometimes think of me.--Tell me that!"
+
+Lucien saw that Esther was solemnly in earnest, and he sat thinking.
+
+"You mean to kill yourself," said he at last, in a tone of voice that
+revealed deep reflection.
+
+"No," said she. "But to-day, my dear, the woman dies, the pure,
+chaste, and loving woman who once was yours.--And I am very much
+afraid that I shall die of grief."
+
+"Poor child," said Lucien, "wait! I have worked hard these two days. I
+have succeeded in seeing Clotilde----"
+
+"Always Clotilde!" cried Esther, in a tone of concentrated rage.
+
+"Yes," said he, "we have written to each other.--On Tuesday morning
+she is to set out for Italy, but I shall meet her on the road for an
+interview at Fontainebleau."
+
+"Bless me! what is it that you men want for wives? Wooden laths?"
+cried poor Esther. "If I had seven or eight millions, would you not
+marry me--come now?"
+
+"Child! I was going to say that if all is over for me, I will have no
+wife but you."
+
+Esther bent her head to hide her sudden pallor and the tears she wiped
+away.
+
+"You love me?" said she, looking at Lucien with the deepest
+melancholy. "Well, that is my sufficient blessing.--Do not compromise
+yourself. Go away by the side door, and come in to the drawing-room
+through the ante-room. Kiss me on the forehead."
+
+She threw her arms round Lucien, clasped him to her heart with frenzy,
+and said again:
+
+"Go, only go--or I must live."
+
+When the doomed woman appeared in the drawing-room, there was a cry of
+admiration. Esther's eyes expressed infinitude in which the soul sank
+as it looked into them. Her blue-black and beautiful hair set off the
+camellias. In short, this exquisite creature achieved all the effects
+she had intended. She had no rival. She looked like the supreme
+expression of that unbridled luxury which surrounded her in every
+form. Then she was brilliantly witty. She ruled the orgy with the
+cold, calm power that Habeneck displays when conducting at the
+Conservatoire, at those concerts where the first musicians in Europe
+rise to the sublime in interpreting Mozart and Beethoven.
+
+But she observed with terror that Nucingen ate little, drank nothing,
+and was quite the master of the house.
+
+By midnight everybody was crazy. The glasses were broken that they
+might never be used again; two of the Chinese curtains were torn;
+Bixiou was drunk, for the second time in his life. No one could keep
+his feet, the women were asleep on the sofas, and the guests were
+incapable of carrying out the practical joke they had planned of
+escorting Esther and Nucingen to the bedroom, standing in two lines
+with candles in their hands, and singing Buona sera from the Barber of
+Seville.
+
+Nucingen simply gave Esther his hand. Bixiou, who saw them, though
+tipsy, was still able to say, like Rivarol, on the occasion of the Duc
+de Richelieu's last marriage, "The police must be warned; there is
+mischief brewing here."
+
+The jester thought he was jesting; he was a prophet.
+
+
+
+Monsieur de Nucingen did not go home till Monday at about noon. But at
+one o'clock his broker informed him that Mademoiselle Esther van
+Bogseck had sold the bond bearing thirty thousand francs interest on
+Friday last, and had just received the money.
+
+"But, Monsieur le Baron, Derville's head-clerk called on me just as I
+was settling this transfer; and after seeing Mademoiselle Esther's
+real names, he told me she had come into a fortune of seven millions."
+
+"Pooh!"
+
+"Yes, she is the only heir to the old bill-discounter Gobseck.--
+Derville will verify the facts. If your mistress' mother was the
+handsome Dutch woman, la Belle Hollandaise, as they called her, she
+comes in for----"
+
+"I know dat she is," cried the banker. "She tolt me all her life. I
+shall write ein vort to Derville."
+
+The Baron at down at his desk, wrote a line to Derville, and sent it
+by one of his servants. Then, after going to the Bourse, he went back
+to Esther's house at about three o'clock.
+
+"Madame forbade our waking her on any pretence whatever. She is in bed
+--asleep----"
+
+"Ach der Teufel!" said the Baron. "But, Europe, she shall not be angry
+to be tolt that she is fery, fery rich. She shall inherit seven
+millions. Old Gobseck is deat, and your mis'ess is his sole heir, for
+her moter vas Gobseck's own niece; and besides, he shall hafe left a
+vill. I could never hafe tought that a millionaire like dat man should
+hafe left Esther in misery!"
+
+"Ah, ha! Then your reign is over, old pantaloon!" said Europe, looking
+at the Baron with an effrontery worthy of one of Moliere's waiting-
+maids. "Shooh! you old Alsatian crow! She loves you as we love the
+plague! Heavens above us! Millions!--Why, she may marry her lover;
+won't she be glad!"
+
+And Prudence Servien left the Baron simply thunder-stricken, to be the
+first to announce to her mistress this great stroke of luck. The old
+man, intoxicated with superhuman enjoyment, and believing himself
+happy, had just received a cold shower-bath on his passion at the
+moment when it had risen to the intensest white heat.
+
+"She vas deceiving me!" cried he, with tears in his eyes. "Yes, she
+vas cheating me. Oh, Esther, my life,! Vas a fool hafe I been! Can
+such flowers ever bloom for de old men! I can buy all vat I vill
+except only yout!--Ach Gott, ach Gott! Vat shall I do! Vat shall
+become of me!--She is right, dat cruel Europe. Esther, if she is rich,
+shall not be for me. Shall I go hank myself? Vat is life midout de
+divine flame of joy dat I have known? Mein Gott, mein Gott!"
+
+The old man snatched off the false hair he had combed in with his gray
+hairs these three months past.
+
+A piercing shriek from Europe made Nucingen quail to his very bowels.
+The poor banker rose and walked upstairs on legs that were drunk with
+the bowl of disenchantment he had just swallowed to the dregs, for
+nothing is more intoxicating than the wine of disaster.
+
+At the door of her room he could see Esther stiff on her bed, blue
+with poison--dead!
+
+He went up to the bed and dropped on his knees.
+
+"You are right! She tolt me so!--She is dead--of me----"
+
+Paccard, Asie, every one hurried in. It was a spectacle, a shock, but
+not despair. Every one had their doubts. The Baron was a banker again.
+A suspicion crossed his mind, and he was so imprudent as to ask what
+had become of the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, the price
+of the bond. Paccard, Asie, and Europe looked at each other so
+strangely that Monsieur de Nucingen left the house at once, believing
+that robbery and murder had been committed. Europe, detecting a packet
+of soft consistency, betraying the contents to be banknotes, under her
+mistress' pillow, proceeded at once to "lay her out," as she said.
+
+"Go and tell monsieur, Asie!--Oh, to die before she knew that she had
+seven millions! Gobseck was poor madame's uncle!" said she.
+
+Europe's stratagem was understood by Paccard. As soon as Asie's back
+was turned, Europe opened the packet, on which the hapless courtesan
+had written: "To be delivered to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre."
+
+Seven hundred and fifty thousand-franc notes shone in the eyes of
+Prudence Servien, who exclaimed:
+
+"Won't we be happy and honest for the rest of our lives!"
+
+Paccard made no objection. His instincts as a thief were stronger than
+his attachment to Trompe-la-Mort.
+
+"Durut is dead," he said at length; "my shoulder is still a proof
+before letters. Let us be off together; divide the money, so as not to
+have all our eggs in one basket, and then get married."
+
+"But where can we hide?" said Prudence.
+
+"In Paris," replied Paccard.
+
+Prudence and Paccard went off at once, with the promptitude of two
+honest folks transformed into robbers.
+
+"My child," said Carlos to Asie, as soon as she had said three words,
+"find some letter of Esther's while I write a formal will, and then
+take the copy and the letter to Girard; but he must be quick. The will
+must be under Esther's pillow before the lawyers affix the seals
+here."
+
+And he wrote out the following will:--
+
+  "Never having loved any one on earth but Monsieur Lucien Chardon
+  de Rubempre, and being resolved to end my life rather than relapse
+  into vice and the life of infamy from which he rescued me, I give
+  and bequeath to the said Lucien Chardon de Rubempre all I may
+  possess at the time of my decease, on condition of his founding a
+  mass in perpetuity in the parish church of Saint-Roch for the
+  repose of her who gave him her all, to her last thought.
+
+"ESTHER GOBSECK."
+
+
+"That is quite in her style," thought Trompe-la-Mort.
+
+By seven in the evening this document, written and sealed, was placed
+by Asie under Esther's bolster.
+
+"Jacques," said she, flying upstairs again, "just as I came out of the
+room justice marched in----"
+
+"The justice of the peace you mean?"
+
+"No, my son. The justice of the peace was there, but he had gendarmes
+with him. The public prosecutor and the examining judge are there too,
+and the doors are guarded."
+
+"This death has made a stir very quickly," remarked Jacques Collin.
+
+"Ay, and Paccard and Europe have vanished; I am afraid they may have
+scared away the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Asie.
+
+"The low villains!" said Collin. "They have done for us by their
+swindling game."
+
+Human justice, and Paris justice, that is to say, the most suspicious,
+keenest, cleverest, and omniscient type of justice--too clever,
+indeed, for it insists on interpreting the law at every turn--was at
+last on the point of laying its hand on the agents of this horrible
+intrigue.
+
+The Baron of Nucingen, on recognizing the evidence of poison, and
+failing to find his seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, imagined
+that one of two persons whom he greatly disliked--either Paccard or
+Europe--was guilty of the crime. In his first impulse of rage he flew
+to the prefecture of police. This was a stroke of a bell that called
+up all Corentin's men. The officials of the prefecture, the legal
+profession, the chief of the police, the justice of the peace, the
+examining judge,--all were astir. By nine in the evening three medical
+men were called in to perform an autopsy on poor Esther, and inquiries
+were set on foot.
+
+Trompe-la-Mort, warned by Asie, exclaimed:
+
+"No one knows that I am here; I may take an airing." He pulled himself
+up by the skylight of his garret, and with marvelous agility was
+standing in an instant on the roof, whence he surveyed the
+surroundings with the coolness of a tiler.
+
+"Good!" said he, discerning a garden five houses off in the Rue de
+Provence, "that will just do for me."
+
+"You are paid out, Trompe-la-Mort," said Contenson, suddenly emerging
+from behind a stack of chimneys. "You may explain to Monsieur Camusot
+what mass you were performing on the roof, Monsieur l'Abbe, and, above
+all, why you were escaping----"
+
+"I have enemies in Spain," said Carlos Herrera.
+
+"We can go there by way of your attic," said Contenson.
+
+The sham Spaniard pretended to yield; but, having set his back and
+feet across the opening of the skylight, he gripped Contenson and
+flung him off with such violence that the spy fell in the gutter of
+the Rue Saint-Georges.
+
+Contenson was dead on his field of honor; Jacques Collin quietly
+dropped into the room again and went to bed.
+
+"Give me something that will make me very sick without killing me,"
+said he to Asie; "for I must be at death's door, to avoid answering
+inquisitive persons. I have just got rid of a man in the most natural
+way, who might have unmasked me."
+
+
+
+At seven o'clock on the previous evening Lucien had set out in his own
+chaise to post to Fontainebleau with a passport he had procured in the
+morning; he slept in the nearest inn on the Nemours side. At six in
+the morning he went alone, and on foot, through the forest as far as
+Bouron.
+
+"This," said he to himself, as he sat down on one of the rocks that
+command the fine landscape of Bouron, "is the fatal spot where
+Napoleon dreamed of making a final tremendous effort on the eve of his
+abdication."
+
+At daybreak he heard the approach of post-horses and saw a britska
+drive past, in which sat the servants of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-
+Chaulieu and Clotilde de Grandlieu's maid.
+
+"Here they are!" thought Lucien. "Now, to play the farce well, and I
+shall be saved!--the Duc de Grandlieu's son-in-law in spite of him!"
+
+It was an hour later when he heard the peculiar sound made by a
+superior traveling carriage, as the berline came near in which two
+ladies were sitting. They had given orders that the drag should be put
+on for the hill down to Bouron, and the man-servant behind the
+carriage had it stopped.
+
+At this instant Lucien came forward.
+
+"Clotilde!" said he, tapping on the window.
+
+"No," said the young Duchess to her friend, "he shall not get into the
+carriage, and we will not be alone with him, my dear. Speak to him for
+the last time--to that I consent; but on the road, where we will walk
+on, and where Baptiste can escort us.--The morning is fine, we are
+well wrapped up, and have no fear of the cold. The carriage can
+follow."
+
+The two women got out.
+
+"Baptiste," said the Duchess, "the post-boy can follow slowly; we want
+to walk a little way. You must keep near us."
+
+Madeleine de Mortsauf took Clotilde by the arm and allowed Lucien to
+talk. They thus walked on as far as the village of Grez. It was now
+eight o'clock, and there Clotilde dismissed Lucien.
+
+"Well, my friend," said she, closing this long interview with much
+dignity, "I never shall marry any one but you. I would rather believe
+in you than in other men, in my father and mother--no woman ever gave
+greater proof of attachment surely?--Now, try to counteract the fatal
+prejudices which militate against you."
+
+Just then the tramp of galloping horses was heard, and, to the great
+amazement of the ladies, a force of gendarmes surrounded the little
+party.
+
+"What do you want?" said Lucien, with the arrogance of a dandy.
+
+"Are you Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre?" asked the public prosecutor of
+Fontainebleau.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"You will spend to-night in La Force," said he. "I have a warrant for
+the detention of your person."
+
+"Who are these ladies?" asked the sergeant.
+
+"To be sure.--Excuse me, ladies--your passports? For Monsieur Lucien,
+as I am instructed, had acquaintances among the fair sex, who for him
+would----"
+
+"Do you take the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu for a prostitute?"
+said Madeleine, with a magnificent flash at the public prosecutor.
+
+"You are handsome enough to excuse the error," the magistrate very
+cleverly retorted.
+
+"Baptiste, produce the passports," said the young Duchess with a
+smile.
+
+"And with what crime is Monsieur de Rubempre charged?" asked Clotilde,
+whom the Duchess wished to see safe in the carriage.
+
+"Of being accessory to a robbery and murder," replied the sergeant of
+gendarmes.
+
+Baptiste lifted Mademoiselle de Grandlieu into the chaise in a dead
+faint.
+
+
+
+By midnight Lucien was entering La Force, a prison situated between
+the Rue Payenne and the Rue des Ballets, where he was placed in
+solitary confinement.
+
+The Abbe Carlos Herrera was also there, having been arrested that
+evening.
+
+
+
+THE END OF EVIL WAYS
+
+At six o'clock next morning two vehicles with postilions, prison vans,
+called in the vigorous language of the populace, paniers a salade,
+came out of La Force to drive to the Conciergerie by the Palais de
+Justice.
+
+Few loafers in Paris can have failed to meet this prison cell on
+wheels; still, though most stories are written for Parisian readers,
+strangers will no doubt be satisfied to have a description of this
+formidable machine. Who knows? A police of Russia, Germany, or
+Austria, the legal body of countries to whom the "Salad-basket" is an
+unknown machine, may profit by it; and in several foreign countries
+there can be no doubt that an imitation of this vehicle would be a
+boon to prisoners.
+
+This ignominious conveyance, yellow-bodied, on high wheels, and lined
+with sheet-iron, is divided into two compartments. In front is a box-
+seat, with leather cushions and an apron. This is the free seat of the
+van, and accommodates a sheriff's officer and a gendarme. A strong
+iron trellis, reaching to the top, separates this sort of cab-front
+from the back division, in which there are two wooden seats placed
+sideways, as in an omnibus, on which the prisoners sit. They get in by
+a step behind and a door, with no window. The nickname of Salad-basket
+arose from the fact that the vehicle was originally made entirely of
+lattice, and the prisoners were shaken in it just as a salad is shaken
+to dry it.
+
+For further security, in case of accident, a mounted gendarme follows
+the machine, especially when it conveys criminals condemned to death
+to the place of execution. Thus escape is impossible. The vehicle,
+lined with sheet-iron, is impervious to any tool. The prisoners,
+carefully searched when they are arrested or locked up, can have
+nothing but watch-springs, perhaps, to file through bars, and useless
+on a smooth surface.
+
+So the panier a salade, improved by the genius of the Paris police,
+became the model for the prison omnibus (known in London as "Black
+Maria") in which convicts are transported to the hulks, instead of the
+horrible tumbril which formerly disgraced civilization, though Manon
+Lescaut had made it famous.
+
+The accused are, in the first instance, despatched in the prison van
+from the various prisons in Paris to the Palais de Justice, to be
+questioned by the examining judge. This, in prison slang, is called
+"going up for examination." Then the accused are again conveyed from
+prison to the Court to be sentenced when their case is only a
+misdemeanor; or if, in legal parlance, the case is one for the Upper
+Court, they are transferred from the house of detention to the
+Conciergerie, the "Newgate" of the Department of the Seine.
+
+Finally, the prison van carries the criminal condemned to death from
+Bicetre to the Barriere Saint-Jacques, where executions are carried
+out, and have been ever since the Revolution of July. Thanks to
+philanthropic interference, the poor wretches no longer have to face
+the horrors of the drive from the Conciergerie to the Place de Greve
+in a cart exactly like that used by wood merchants. This cart is no
+longer used but to bring the body back from the scaffold.
+
+Without this explanation the words of a famous convict to his
+accomplice, "It is now the horse's business!" as he got into the van,
+would be unintelligible. It is impossible to be carried to execution
+more comfortably than in Paris nowadays.
+
+At this moment the two vans, setting out at such an early hour, were
+employed on the unwonted service of conveying two accused prisoners
+from the jail of La Force to the Conciergerie, and each man had a
+"Salad-basket" to himself.
+
+Nine-tenths of my readers, ay, and nine-tenths of the remaining tenth,
+are certainly ignorant of the vast difference of meaning in the words
+incriminated, suspected, accused, and committed for trial--jail, house
+of detention, and penitentiary; and they may be surprised to learn
+here that it involves all our criminal procedure, of which a clear and
+brief outline will presently be sketched, as much for their
+information as for the elucidation of this history. However, when it
+is said that the first van contained Jacques Collin and the second
+Lucien, who in a few hours had fallen from the summit of social
+splendor to the depths of a prison cell, curiosity will for the moment
+be satisfied.
+
+The conduct of the two accomplices was characteristic; Lucien de
+Rubempre shrank back to avoid the gaze of the passers-by, who looked
+at the grated window of the gloomy and fateful vehicle on its road
+along the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Rue du Martroi to reach the quay
+and the Arch of Saint-Jean, the way, at that time, across the Place de
+l'Hotel de Ville. This archway now forms the entrance gate to the
+residence of the Prefet de la Seine in the huge municipal palace. The
+daring convict, on the contrary, stuck his face against the barred
+grating, between the officer and the gendarme, who, sure of their van,
+were chatting together.
+
+The great days of July 1830, and the tremendous storm that then burst,
+have so completely wiped out the memory of all previous events, and
+politics so entirely absorbed the French during the last six months of
+that year, that no one remembers--or a few scarcely remember--the
+various private, judicial, and financial catastrophes, strange as they
+were, which, forming the annual flood of Parisian curiosity, were not
+lacking during the first six months of the year. It is, therefore,
+needful to mention how Paris was, for the moment, excited by the news
+of the arrest of a Spanish priest, discovered in a courtesan's house,
+and that of the elegant Lucien de Rubempre, who had been engaged to
+Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu, taken on the highroad to Italy,
+close to the little village of Grez. Both were charged as being
+concerned in a murder, of which the profits were stated at seven
+millions of francs; and for some days the scandal of this trial
+preponderated over the absorbing importance of the last elections held
+under Charles X.
+
+In the first place, the charge had been based on an application by the
+Baron de Nucingen; then, Lucien's apprehension, just as he was about
+to be appointed private secretary to the Prime Minister, made a stir
+in the very highest circles of society. In every drawing-room in Paris
+more than one young man could recollect having envied Lucien when he
+was honored by the notice of the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse;
+and every woman knew that he was the favored attache of Madame de
+Serizy, the wife of one of the Government bigwigs. And finally, his
+handsome person gave him a singular notoriety in the various worlds
+that make up Paris--the world of fashion, the financial world, the
+world of courtesans, the young men's world, the literary world. So for
+two days past all Paris had been talking of these two arrests. The
+examining judge in whose hands the case was put regarded it as a
+chance for promotion; and, to proceed with the utmost rapidity, he had
+given orders that both the accused should be transferred from La Force
+to the Conciergerie as soon as Lucien de Rubempre could be brought
+from Fontainebleau.
+
+As the Abbe Carlos had spent but twelve hours in La Force, and Lucien
+only half a night, it is useless to describe that prison, which has
+since been entirely remodeled; and as to the details of their
+consignment, it would be only a repetition of the same story at the
+Conciergerie.
+
+
+
+But before setting forth the terrible drama of a criminal inquiry, it
+is indispensable, as I have said, that an account should be given of
+the ordinary proceedings in a case of this kind. To begin with, its
+various phases will be better understood at home and abroad, and,
+besides, those who are ignorant of the action of the criminal law, as
+conceived of by the lawgivers under Napoleon, will appreciate it
+better. This is all the more important as, at this moment, this great
+and noble institution is in danger of destruction by the system known
+as penitentiary.
+
+A crime is committed; if it is flagrant, the persons incriminated
+(inculpes) are taken to the nearest lock-up and placed in the cell
+known to the vulgar as the Violon--perhaps because they make a noise
+there, shrieking or crying. From thence the suspected persons
+(inculpes) are taken before the police commissioner or magistrate, who
+holds a preliminary inquiry, and can dismiss the case if there is any
+mistake; finally, they are conveyed to the Depot of the Prefecture,
+where the police detains them pending the convenience of the public
+prosecutor and the examining judge. They, being served with due
+notice, more or less quickly, according to the gravity of the case,
+come and examine the prisoners who are still provisionally detained.
+Having due regard to the presumptive evidence, the examining judge
+then issues a warrant for their imprisonment, and sends the suspected
+persons to be confined in a jail. There are three such jails (Maisons
+d'Arret) in Paris--Sainte-Pelagie, La Force, and les Madelonettes.
+
+Observe the word inculpe, incriminated, or suspected of crime. The
+French Code has created three essential degrees of criminality--
+inculpe, first degree of suspicion; prevenu, under examination;
+accuse, fully committed for trial. So long as the warrant for
+committal remains unsigned, the supposed criminal is regarded as
+merely under suspicion, inculpe of the crime or felony; when the
+warrant has been issued, he becomes "the accused" (prevenu), and is
+regarded as such so long as the inquiry is proceeding; when the
+inquiry is closed, and as soon as the Court has decided that the
+accused is to be committed for trial, he becomes "the prisoner at the
+bar" (accuse) as soon as the superior court, at the instance of the
+public prosecutor, has pronounced that the charge is so far proved as
+to be carried to the Assizes.
+
+Thus, persons suspected of crime go through three different stages,
+three siftings, before coming up for trial before the judges of the
+upper Court--the High Justice of the realm.
+
+At the first stage, innocent persons have abundant means of
+exculpating themselves--the public, the town watch, the police. At the
+second state they appear before a magistrate face to face with the
+witnesses, and are judged by a tribunal in Paris, or by the Collective
+Court of the departments. At the third stage they are brought before a
+bench of twelve councillors, and in case of any error or informality
+the prisoner committed for trial at the Assizes may appeal for
+protection to the Supreme court. The jury do not know what a slap in
+the face they give to popular authority, to administrative and
+judicial functionaries, when they acquit a prisoner. And so, in my
+opinion, it is hardly possible that an innocent man should ever find
+himself at the bar of an Assize Court in Paris--I say nothing of other
+seats of justice.
+
+The detenu is the convict. French criminal law recognizes imprisonment
+of three degrees, corresponding in legal distinction to these three
+degrees of suspicion, inquiry, and conviction. Mere imprisonment is a
+light penalty for misdemeanor, but detention is imprisonment with hard
+labor, a severe and sometimes degrading punishment. Hence, those
+persons who nowadays are in favor of the penitentiary system would
+upset an admirable scheme of criminal law in which the penalties are
+judiciously graduated, and they will end by punishing the lightest
+peccadilloes as severely as the greatest crimes.
+
+The reader may compare in the Scenes of Political Life (for instance,
+in Une Tenebreuse affaire) the curious differences subsisting between
+the criminal law of Brumaire in the year IV., and that of the Code
+Napoleon which has taken its place.
+
+In most trials, as in this one, the suspected persons are at once
+examined (and from inculpes become prevenus); justice immediately
+issues a warrant for their arrest and imprisonment. In point of fact,
+in most of such cases the criminals have either fled, or have been
+instantly apprehended. Indeed, as we have seen the police, which is
+but an instrument, and the officers of justice had descended on
+Esther's house with the swiftness of a thunderbolt. Even if there had
+not been the reasons for revenge suggested to the superior police by
+Corentin, there was a robbery to be investigated of seven hundred and
+fifty thousand francs from the Baron de Nucingen.
+
+
+
+Just as the first prison van, conveying Jacques Collin, reached the
+archway of Saint-Jean--a narrow, dark passage, some block ahead
+compelled the postilion to stop under the vault. The prisoner's eyes
+shone like carbuncles through the grating, in spite of his aspect as
+of a dying man, which, the day before, had led the governor of La
+Force to believe that the doctor must be called in. These flaming
+eyes, free to rove at this moment, for neither the officer nor the
+gendarme looked round at their "customer," spoke so plain a language
+that a clever examining judge, M. Popinot, for instance, would have
+identified the man convicted for sacrilege.
+
+In fact, ever since the "salad-basket" had turned out of the gate of
+La Force, Jacques Collin had studied everything on his way.
+Notwithstanding the pace they had made, he took in the houses with an
+eager and comprehensive glance from the ground floor to the attics. He
+saw and noted every passer-by. God Himself is not more clear-seeing as
+to the means and ends of His creatures than this man in observing the
+slightest differences in the medley of things and people. Armed with
+hope, as the last of the Horatii was armed with his sword, he expected
+help. To anybody but this Machiavelli of the hulks, this hope would
+have seemed so absolutely impossible to realize that he would have
+gone on mechanically, as all guilty men do. Not one of them ever
+dreams of resistance when he finds himself in the position to which
+justice and the Paris police bring suspected persons, especially those
+who, like Collin and Lucien, are in solitary confinement.
+
+It is impossible to conceive of the sudden isolation in which a
+suspected criminal is placed. The gendarmes who apprehend him, the
+commissioner who questions him, those who take him to prison, the
+warders who lead him to his cell--which is actually called a cachot, a
+dungeon or hiding-place, those again who take him by the arms to put
+him into a prison-van--every being that comes near him from the moment
+of his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all he says, to
+be repeated to the police or to the judge. This total severance, so
+simply effected between the prisoner and the world, gives rise to a
+complete overthrow of his faculties and a terrible prostration of
+mind, especially when the man has not been familiarized by his
+antecedents with the processes of justice. The duel between the judge
+and the criminal is all the more appalling because justice has on its
+side the dumbness of blank walls and the incorruptible coldness of its
+agents.
+
+But Jacques Collin, or Carlos Herrera--it will be necessary to speak
+of him by one or the other of these names according to the
+circumstances of the case--had long been familiar with the methods of
+the police, of the jail, and of justice. This colossus of cunning and
+corruption had employed all his powers of mind, and all the resources
+of mimicry, to affect the surprise and anility of an innocent man,
+while giving the lawyers the spectacle of his sufferings. As has been
+told, Asie, that skilled Locusta, had given him a dose of poison so
+qualified as to produce the effects of a dreadful illness.
+
+Thus Monsieur Camusot, the police commissioner, and the public
+prosecutor had been baffled in their proceedings and inquiries by the
+effects apparently of an apoplectic attack.
+
+"He has taken poison!" cried Monsieur Camusot, horrified by the
+sufferings of the self-styled priest when he had been carried down
+from the attic writhing in convulsions.
+
+Four constables had with great difficulty brought the Abbe Carlos
+downstairs to Esther's room, where the lawyers and the gendarmes were
+assembled.
+
+"That was the best thing he could do if he should be guilty," replied
+the public prosecutor.
+
+"Do you believe that he is ill?" the police commissioner asked.
+
+The police is always incredulous.
+
+The three lawyers had spoken, as may be imagined, in a whisper; but
+Jacques Collin had guessed from their faces the subject under
+discussion, and had taken advantage of it to make the first brief
+examination which is gone through on arrest absolutely impossible and
+useless; he had stammered out sentences in which Spanish and French
+were so mingled as to make nonsense.
+
+At La Force this farce had been all the more successful in the first
+instance because the head of the "safety" force--an abbreviation of
+the title "Head of the brigade of the guardians of public safety"--
+Bibi-Lupin, who had long since taken Jacques Collin into custody at
+Madame Vauquer's boarding-house, had been sent on special business
+into the country, and his deputy was a man who hoped to succeed him,
+but to whom the convict was unknown.
+
+Bibi-Lupin, himself formerly a convict, and a comrade of Jacques
+Collin's on the hulks, was his personal enemy. This hostility had its
+rise in quarrels in which Jacques Collin had always got the upper
+hand, and in the supremacy over his fellow-prisoners which Trompe-la-
+Mort had always assumed. And then, for ten years now, Jacques Collin
+had been the ruling providence of released convicts in Paris, their
+head, their adviser, and their banker, and consequently Bibi-Lupin's
+antagonist.
+
+Thus, though placed in solitary confinement, he trusted to the
+intelligent and unreserved devotion of Asie, his right hand, and
+perhaps, too, to Paccard, his left hand, who, as he flattered himself,
+might return to his allegiance when once that thrifty subaltern had
+safely bestowed the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs that he
+had stolen. This was the reason why his attention had been so
+superhumanly alert all along the road. And, strange to say! his hopes
+were about to be amply fulfilled.
+
+The two solid side-walls of the archway were covered, to a height of
+six feet, with a permanent dado of mud formed of the splashes from the
+gutter; for, in those days, the foot passenger had no protection from
+the constant traffic of vehicles and from what was called the kicking
+of the carts, but curbstones placed upright at intervals, and much
+ground away by the naves of the wheels. More than once a heavy truck
+had crushed a heedless foot-passenger under that arch-way. Such indeed
+Paris remained in many districts and till long after. This
+circumstance may give some idea of the narrowness of the Saint-Jean
+gate and the ease with which it could be blocked. If a cab should be
+coming through from the Place de Greve while a costermonger-woman was
+pushing her little truck of apples in from the Rue du Martroi, a third
+vehicle of any kind produced difficulties. The foot-passengers fled in
+alarm, seeking a corner-stone to protect them from the old-fashioned
+axles, which had attained such prominence that a law was passed at
+last to reduce their length.
+
+When the prison van came in, this passage was blocked by a market
+woman with a costermonger's vegetable cart--one of a type which is all
+the more strange because specimens still exist in Paris in spite of
+the increasing number of green-grocers' shops. She was so thoroughly a
+street hawker that a Sergeant de Ville, if that particular class of
+police had been then in existence, would have allowed her to ply her
+trade without inspecting her permit, in spite of a sinister
+countenance that reeked of crime. Her head, wrapped in a cheap and
+ragged checked cotton kerchief, was horrid with rebellious locks of
+hair, like the bristles of a wild boar. Her red and wrinkled neck was
+disgusting, and her little shawl failed entirely to conceal a chest
+tanned brown by the sun, dust, and mud. Her gown was patchwork; her
+shoes gaped as though they were grinning at a face as full of holes as
+the gown. And what an apron! a plaster would have been less filthy.
+This moving and fetid rag must have stunk in the nostrils of dainty
+folks ten yards away. Those hands had gleaned a hundred harvest
+fields. Either the woman had returned from a German witches' Sabbath,
+or she had come out of a mendicity asylum. But what eyes! what
+audacious intelligence, what repressed vitality when the magnetic
+flash of her look and of Jacques Collin's met to exchange a thought!
+
+"Get out of the way, you old vermin-trap!" cried the postilion in
+harsh tones.
+
+"Mind you don't crush me, you hangman's apprentice!" she retorted.
+"Your cartful is not worth as much as mine."
+
+And by trying to squeeze in between two corner-stones to make way, the
+hawker managed to block the passage long enough to achieve her
+purpose.
+
+"Oh! Asie!" said Jacques Collin to himself, at once recognizing his
+accomplice. "Then all is well."
+
+The post-boy was still exchanging amenities with Asie, and vehicles
+were collecting in the Rue du Martroi.
+
+"Look out, there--Pecaire fermati. Souni la--Vedrem," shrieked old
+Asie, with the Red-Indian intonations peculiar to these female
+costermongers, who disfigure their words in such a way that they are
+transformed into a sort onomatopoeia incomprehensible to any but
+Parisians.
+
+In the confusion in the alley, and among the outcries of all the
+waiting drivers, no one paid any heed to this wild yell, which might
+have been the woman's usual cry. But this gibberish, intelligible to
+Jacques Collin, sent to his ear in a mongrel language of their own--a
+mixture of bad Italian and Provencal--this important news:
+
+"Your poor boy is nabbed. I am here to keep an eye on you. We shall
+meet again."
+
+In the midst of his joy at having thus triumphed over the police, for
+he hoped to be able to keep up communications, Jacques Collin had a
+blow which might have killed any other man.
+
+"Lucien in custody!" said he to himself.
+
+He almost fainted. This news was to him more terrible than the
+rejection of his appeal could have been if he had been condemned to
+death.
+
+Now that both the prison vans are rolling along the Quai, the interest
+of this story requires that I should add a few words about the
+Conciergerie, while they are making their way thither. The
+Conciergerie, a historical name--a terrible name,--a still more
+terrible thing, is inseparable from the Revolutions of France, and
+especially those of Paris. It has known most of our great criminals.
+But if it is the most interesting of the buildings of Paris, it is
+also the least known--least known to persons of the upper classes;
+still, in spite of the interest of this historical digression, it
+should be as short as the journey of the prison vans.
+
+What Parisian, what foreigner, or what provincial can have failed to
+observe the gloomy and mysterious features of the Quai des Lunettes--a
+structure of black walls flanked by three round towers with conical
+roofs, two of them almost touching each other? This quay, beginning at
+the Pont du Change, ends at the Pont Neuf. A square tower--the Clock
+Tower, or Tour de l'Horloge, whence the signal was given for the
+massacre of Saint-Bartholomew--a tower almost as tall as that of
+Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, shows where the Palais de Justice
+stands, and forms the corner of the quay.
+
+These four towers and these walls are shrouded in the black winding
+sheet which, in Paris, falls on every facade to the north. About half-
+way along the quay at a gloomy archway we see the beginning of the
+private houses which were built in consequence of the construction of
+the Pont Neuf in the reign of Henry IV. The Place Royale was a replica
+of the Place Dauphine. The style of architecture is the same, of brick
+with binding courses of hewn stone. This archway and the Rue de Harlay
+are the limit line of the Palais de Justice on the west. Formerly the
+Prefecture de Police, once the residence of the Presidents of
+Parlement, was a dependency of the Palace. The Court of Exchequer and
+Court of Subsidies completed the Supreme Court of Justice, the
+Sovereign's Court. It will be seen that before the Revolution the
+Palace enjoyed that isolation which now again is aimed at.
+
+This block, this island of residences and official buildings, in their
+midst the Sainte-Chapelle--that priceless jewel of Saint-Louis'
+chaplet--is the sanctuary of Paris, its holy place, its sacred ark.
+
+For one thing, this island was at first the whole of the city, for the
+plot now forming the Place Dauphine was a meadow attached to the Royal
+demesne, where stood a stamping mill for coining money. Hence the name
+of Rue de la Monnaie--the street leading to the Pont Neuf. Hence, too,
+the name of one of the round towers--the middle one--called the Tour
+d'Argent, which would seem to show that money was originally coined
+there. The famous mill, to be seen marked in old maps of Paris, may
+very likely be more recent than the time when money was coined in the
+Palace itself, and was erected, no doubt, for the practice of improved
+methods in the art of coining.
+
+The first tower, hardly detached from the Tour d'Argent, is the Tour
+de Montgomery; the third, and smallest, but the best preserved of the
+three, for it still has its battlements, is the Tour Bonbec.
+
+The Sainte-Chapelle and its four towers--counting the clock tower as
+one--clearly define the precincts; or, as a surveyor would say, the
+perimeter of the Palace, as it was from the time of the Merovingians
+till the accession of the first race of Valois; but to us, as a result
+of certain alterations, this Palace is more especially representative
+of the period of Saint-Louis.
+
+Charles V. was the first to give the Palace up to the Parlement, then
+a new institution, and went to reside in the famous Hotel Saint-Pol,
+under the protection of the Bastille. The Palais des Tournelles was
+subsequently erected backing on to the Hotel Saint-Pol. Thus, under
+the later Valois, the kings came back from the Bastille to the Louvre,
+which had been their first stronghold.
+
+The original residence of the French kings, the Palace of Saint-Louis,
+which has preserved the designation of Le Palais, to indicate the
+Palace of palaces, is entirely buried under the Palais de Justice; it
+forms the cellars, for it was built, like the Cathedral, in the Seine,
+and with such care that the highest floods in the river scarcely cover
+the lowest steps. The Quai de l'Horloge covers, twenty feet below the
+surface, its foundations of a thousand years old. Carriages run on the
+level of the capitals of the solid columns under these towers, and
+formerly their appearance must have harmonized with the elegance of
+the Palace, and have had a picturesque effect over the water, since to
+this day those towers vie in height with the loftiest buildings in
+Paris.
+
+As we look down on this vast capital from the lantern of the Pantheon,
+the Palace with the Sainte-Chapelle is still the most monumental of
+many monumental buildings. The home of our kings, over which you tread
+as you pace the immense hall known as the Salle des Pas-Perdus, was a
+miracle of architecture; and it is so still to the intelligent eye of
+the poet who happens to study it when inspecting the Conciergerie.
+Alas! for the Conciergerie has invaded the home of kings. One's heart
+bleeds to see the way in which cells, cupboards, corridors, warders'
+rooms, and halls devoid of light or air, have been hewn out of that
+beautiful structure in which Byzantine, Gothic, and Romanesque--the
+three phases of ancient art--were harmonized in one building by the
+architecture of the twelfth century.
+
+This palace is a monumental history of France in the earliest times,
+just as Blois is that of a later period. As at Blois you may admire in
+a single courtyard the chateau of the Counts of Blois, that of Louis
+XII., that of Francis I., that of Gaston; so at the Conciergerie you
+will find within the same precincts the stamp of the early races, and,
+in the Sainte-Chapelle, the architecture of Saint-Louis.
+
+Municipal Council (to you I speak), if you bestow millions, get a poet
+or two to assist your architects if you wish to save the cradle of
+Paris, the cradle of kings, while endeavoring to endow Paris and the
+Supreme Court with a palace worthy of France. It is a matter for study
+for some years before beginning the work. Another new prison or two
+like that of La Roquette, and the palace of Saint-Louis will be safe.
+
+In these days many grievances afflict this vast mass of buildings,
+buried under the Palais de Justice and the quay, like some
+antediluvian creature in the soil of Montmartre; but the worst
+affliction is that it is the Conciergerie. This epigram is
+intelligible. In the early days of the monarchy, noble criminals--for
+the villeins (a word signifying the peasantry in French and English
+alike) and the citizens came under the jurisdiction of the
+municipality or of their liege lord--the lords of the greater or the
+lesser fiefs, were brought before the king and guarded in the
+Conciergerie. And as these noble criminals were few, the Conciergerie
+was large enough for the king's prisoners.
+
+It is difficult now to be quite certain of the exact site of the
+original Conciergerie. However, the kitchens built by Saint-Louis
+still exist, forming what is now called the mousetrap; and it is
+probable that the original Conciergerie was situated in the place
+where, till 1825, the Conciergerie prisons of the Parlement were still
+in use, under the archway to the right of the wide outside steps
+leading to the supreme Court. From thence, until 1825, condemned
+criminals were taken to execution. From that gate came forth all the
+great criminals, all the victims of political feeling--the Marechale
+d'Ancre and the Queen of France, Semblancay and Malesherbes, Damien
+and Danton, Desrues and Castaing. Fouquier-Tinville's private room,
+like that of the public prosecutor now, was so placed that he could
+see the procession of carts containing the persons whom the
+Revolutionary tribunal had sentenced to death. Thus this man, who had
+become a sword, could give a last glance at each batch.
+
+After 1825, when Monsieur de Peyronnet was Minister, a great change
+was made in the Palais. The old entrance to the Conciergerie, where
+the ceremonies of registering the criminal and of the last toilet were
+performed, was closed and removed to where it now is, between the Tour
+de l'Horloge and the Tour de Montgomery, in an inner court entered
+through an arched passage. To the left is the "mousetrap," to the
+right the prison gates. The "salad-baskets" can drive into this
+irregularly shaped courtyard, can stand there and turn with ease, and
+in case of a riot find some protection behind the strong grating of
+the gate under the arch; whereas they formerly had no room to move in
+the narrow space dividing the outside steps from the right wing of the
+palace.
+
+In our day the Conciergerie, hardly large enough for the prisoners
+committed for trial--room being needed for about three hundred, men
+and women--no longer receives either suspected or remanded criminals
+excepting in rare cases, as, for instance, in these of Jacques Collin
+and Lucien. All who are imprisoned there are committed for trial
+before the Bench. As an exception criminals of the higher ranks are
+allowed to sojourn there, since, being already disgraced by a sentence
+in open court, their punishment would be too severe if they served
+their term of imprisonment at Melun or at Poissy. Ouvrard preferred to
+be imprisoned at the Conciergerie rather than at Sainte-Pelagie. At
+this moment of writing Lehon the notary and the Prince de Bergues are
+serving their time there by an exercise of leniency which, though
+arbitrary, is humane.
+
+As a rule, suspected criminals, whether they are to be subjected to a
+preliminary examination--to "go up," in the slang of the Courts--or to
+appear before the magistrate of the lower Court, are transferred in
+prison vans direct to the "mousetraps."
+
+The "mousetraps," opposite the gate, consist of a certain number of
+old cells constructed in the old kitchens of Saint-Louis' building,
+whither prisoners not yet fully committed are brought to await the
+hour when the Court sits, or the arrival of the examining judge. The
+"mousetraps" end on the north at the quay, on the east at the
+headquarters of the Municipal Guard, on the west at the courtyard of
+the Conciergerie, and on the south they adjoin a large vaulted hall,
+formerly, no doubt, the banqueting-room, but at present disused.
+
+Above the "mousetraps" is an inner guardroom with a window commanding
+the court of the Conciergerie; this is used by the gendarmerie of the
+department, and the stairs lead up to it. When the hour of trial
+strikes the sheriffs call the roll of the prisoners, the gendarmes go
+down, one for each prisoner, and each gendarme takes a criminal by the
+arm; and thus, in couples, they mount the stairs, cross the guardroom,
+and are led along the passages to a room contiguous to the hall where
+sits the famous sixth chamber of the law (whose functions are those of
+an English county court). The same road is trodden by the prisoners
+committed for trial on their way to and from the Conciergerie and the
+Assize Court.
+
+In the Salle des Pas-Perdus, between the door into the first court of
+the inferior class and the steps leading to the sixth, the visitor
+must observe the first time he goes there a doorway without a door or
+any architectural adornment, a square hole of the meanest type.
+Through this the judges and barristers find their way into the
+passages, into the guardhouse, down into the prison cells, and to the
+entrance to the Conciergerie.
+
+The private chambers of all the examining judges are on different
+floors in this part of the building. They are reached by squalid
+staircases, a maze in which those to whom the place is unfamiliar
+inevitably lose themselves. The windows of some look out on the quay,
+others on the yard of the Conciergerie. In 1830 a few of these rooms
+commanded the Rue de la Barillerie.
+
+Thus, when a prison van turns to the left in this yard, it has brought
+prisoners to be examined to the "mousetrap"; when it turns to the
+right, it conveys prisoners committed for trial, to the Conciergerie.
+Now it was to the right that the vehicle turned which conveyed Jacques
+Collin to set him down at the prison gate. Nothing can be more
+sinister. Prisoners and visitors see two barred gates of wrought iron,
+with a space between them of about six feet. These are never both
+opened at once, and through them everything is so cautiously
+scrutinized that persons who have a visiting ticket pass the permit
+through the bars before the key grinds in the lock. The examining
+judges, or even the supreme judges, are not admitted without being
+identified. Imagine, then, the chances of communications or escape!--
+The governor of the Conciergerie would smile with an expression on his
+lips that would freeze the mere suggestion in the most daring of
+romancers who defy probability.
+
+In all the annals of the Conciergerie no escape has been known but
+that of Lavalette; but the certain fact of august connivance, now
+amply proven, if it does not detract from the wife's devotion,
+certainly diminished the risk of failure.
+
+The most ardent lover of the marvelous, judging on the spot of the
+nature of the difficulties, must admit that at all times the obstacles
+must have been, as they still are, insurmountable. No words can do
+justice to the strength of the walls and vaulting; they must be seen.
+
+Though the pavement of the yard is on a lower level than that of the
+quay, in crossing this Barbican you go down several steps to enter an
+immense vaulted hall, with solid walls graced with magnificent
+columns. This hall abuts on the Tour de Montgomery--which is now part
+of the governor's residence--and on the Tour d'Argent, serving as a
+dormitory for the warders, or porters, or turnkeys, as you may prefer
+to call them. The number of the officials is less than might be
+supposed; there are but twenty; their sleeping quarters, like their
+beds, are in no respect different from those of the pistoles or
+private cells. The name pistole originated, no doubt, in the fact that
+the prisoners formerly paid a pistole (about ten francs) a week for
+this accommodation, its bareness resembling that of the empty garrets
+in which great men in poverty begin their career in Paris.
+
+To the left, in the vast entrance hall, sits the Governor of the
+Conciergerie, in a sort of office constructed of glass panes, where he
+and his clerk keep the prison-registers. Here the prisoners for
+examination, or committed for trial, have their names entered with a
+full description, and are then searched. The question of their lodging
+is also settled, this depending on the prisoner's means.
+
+Opposite the entrance to this hall there is a glass door. This opens
+into a parlor where the prisoner's relations and his counsel may speak
+with him across a double grating of wood. The parlor window opens on
+to the prison yard, the inner court where prisoners committed for
+trial take air and exercise at certain fixed hours.
+
+This large hall, only lighted by the doubtful daylight that comes in
+through the gates--for the single window to the front court is
+screened by the glass office built out in front of it--has an
+atmosphere and a gloom that strike the eye in perfect harmony with the
+pictures that force themselves on the imagination. Its aspect is all
+the more sinister because, parallel with the Tours d'Argent and de
+Montgomery, you discover those mysterious vaulted and overwhelming
+crypts which lead to the cells occupied by the Queen and Madame
+Elizabeth, and to those known as the secret cells. This maze of
+masonry, after being of old the scene of royal festivities, is now the
+basement of the Palais de Justice.
+
+Between 1825 and 1832 the operation of the last toilet was performed
+in this enormous hall, between a large stove which heats it and the
+inner gate. It is impossible even now to tread without a shudder on
+the paved floor that has received the shock and the confidences of so
+many last glances.
+
+
+
+The apparently dying victim on this occasion could not get out of the
+horrible vehicle without the assistance of two gendarmes, who took him
+under the arms to support him, and led him half unconscious into the
+office. Thus dragged along, the dying man raised his eyes to heaven in
+such a way as to suggest a resemblance to the Saviour taken down from
+the Cross. And certainly in no picture does Jesus present a more
+cadaverous or tortured countenance than this of the sham Spaniard; he
+looked ready to breathe his last sigh. As soon as he was seated in the
+office, he repeated in a weak voice the speech he had made to
+everybody since he was arrested:
+
+"I appeal to His Excellency the Spanish Ambassador."
+
+"You can say that to the examining judge," replied the Governor.
+
+"Oh Lord!" said Jacques Collin, with a sigh. "But cannot I have a
+breviary! Shall I never be allowed to see a doctor? I have not two
+hours to live."
+
+As Carlos Herrera was to be placed in close confinement in the secret
+cells, it was needless to ask him whether he claimed the benefits of
+the pistole (as above described), that is to say, the right of having
+one of the rooms where the prisoner enjoys such comfort as the law
+permits. These rooms are on the other side of the prison-yard, of
+which mention will presently be made. The sheriff and the clerk calmly
+carried out the formalities of the consignment to prison.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin to the Governor in broken French, "I
+am, as you see, a dying man. Pray, if you can, tell that examining
+judge as soon as possible that I crave as a favor what a criminal must
+most dread, namely, to be brought before him as soon as he arrives;
+for my sufferings are really unbearable, and as soon as I see him the
+mistake will be cleared up----"
+
+As an universal rule every criminal talks of a mistake. Go to the
+hulks and question the convicts; they are almost all victims of a
+miscarriage of justice. So this speech raises a faint smile in all who
+come into contact with the suspected, accused, or condemned criminal.
+
+"I will mention your request to the examining judge," replied the
+Governor.
+
+"And I shall bless you, monsieur!" replied the false Abbe, raising his
+eyes to heaven.
+
+As soon as his name was entered on the calendar, Carlos Herrera,
+supported under each arm by a man of the municipal guard, and followed
+by a turnkey instructed by the Governor as to the number of the cell
+in which the prisoner was to be placed, was led through the
+subterranean maze of the Conciergerie into a perfectly wholesome room,
+whatever certain philanthropists may say to the contrary, but cut off
+from all possible communication with the outer world.
+
+As soon as he was removed, the warders, the Governor, and his clerk
+looked at each other as though asking each other's opinion, and
+suspicion was legible on every face; but at the appearance of the
+second man in custody the spectators relapsed into their usual
+doubting frame of mind, concealed under the air of indifference. Only
+in very extraordinary cases do the functionaries of the Conciergerie
+feel any curiosity; the prisoners are no more to them than a barber's
+customers are to him. Hence all the formalities which appall the
+imagination are carried out with less fuss than a money transaction at
+a banker's, and often with greater civility.
+
+Lucien's expression was that of a dejected criminal. He submitted to
+everything, and obeyed like a machine. All the way from Fontainebleau
+the poet had been facing his ruin, and telling himself that the hour
+of expiation had tolled. Pale and exhausted, knowing nothing of what
+had happened at Esther's house during his absence, he only knew that
+he was the intimate ally of an escaped convict, a situation which
+enabled him to guess at disaster worse than death. When his mind could
+command a thought, it was that of suicide. He must, at any cost,
+escape the ignominy that loomed before him like the phantasm of a
+dreadful dream.
+
+Jacques Collin, as the more dangerous of the two culprits, was placed
+in a cell of solid masonry, deriving its light from one of the narrow
+yards, of which there are several in the interior of the Palace, in
+the wing where the public prosecutor's chambers are. This little yard
+is the airing-ground for the female prisoners. Lucien was taken to the
+same part of the building, to a cell adjoining the rooms let to
+misdemeanants; for, by orders from the examining judge, the Governor
+treated him with some consideration.
+
+Persons who have never had anything to do with the action of the law
+usually have the darkest notions as to the meaning of solitary or
+secret confinement. Ideas as to the treatment of criminals have not
+yet become disentangled from the old pictures of torture chambers, of
+the unhealthiness of a prison, the chill of stone walls sweating
+tears, the coarseness of the jailers and of the food--inevitable
+accessories of the drama; but it is not unnecessary to explain here
+that these exaggerations exist only on the stage, and only make
+lawyers and judges smile, as well as those who visit prisons out of
+curiosity, or who come to study them.
+
+For a long time, no doubt, they were terrible. In the days of the old
+Parlement, of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., the accused were, no doubt,
+flung pell-mell into a low room underneath the old gateway. The
+prisons were among the crimes of 1789, and it is enough only to see
+the cells where the Queen and Madame Elizabeth were incarcerated to
+conceive a horror of old judicial proceedings.
+
+In our day, though philanthropy has brought incalculable mischief on
+society, it has produced some good for the individual. It is to
+Napoleon that we owe our Criminal Code; and this, even more than the
+Civil Code--which still urgently needs reform on some points--will
+remain one of the greatest monuments of his short reign. This new view
+of criminal law put an end to a perfect abyss of misery. Indeed, it
+may be said that, apart from the terrible moral torture which men of
+the better classes must suffer when they find themselves in the power
+of the law, the action of that power is simple and mild to a degree
+that would hardly be expected. Suspected or accused criminals are
+certainly not lodged as if they were at home; but every necessary is
+supplied to them in the prisons of Paris. Besides, the burden of
+feelings that weighs on them deprives the details of daily life of
+their customary value. It is never the body that suffers. The mind is
+in such a phase of violence that every form of discomfort or of brutal
+treatment, if such there were, would be easily endured in such a frame
+of mind. And it must be admitted that an innocent man is quickly
+released, especially in Paris.
+
+So Lucien, on entering his cell, saw an exact reproduction of the
+first room he had occupied in Paris at the Hotel Cluny. A bed to
+compare with those in the worst furnished apartments of the Quartier
+Latin, straw chairs with the bottoms out, a table and a few utensils,
+compose the furniture of such a room, in which two accused prisoners
+are not unfrequently placed together when they are quiet in their
+ways, and their misdeeds are not crimes of violence, but such as
+forgery or bankruptcy.
+
+This resemblance between his starting-point, in the days of his
+innocency, and his goal, the lowest depths of degradation and sham,
+was so direct an appeal to his last chord of poetic feeling, that the
+unhappy fellow melted into tears. For four hours he wept, as rigid in
+appearance as a figure of stone, but enduring the subversion of all
+his hopes, the crushing of all his social vanity, and the utter
+overthrow of his pride, smarting in each separate _I_ that exists in
+an ambitious man--a lover, a success, a dandy, a Parisian, a poet, a
+libertine, and a favorite. Everything in him was broken by this fall
+as of Icarus.
+
+Carlos Herrera, on the other hand, as soon as he was locked into his
+cell and found himself alone, began pacing it to and fro like the
+polar bear in his cage. He carefully examined the door and assured
+himself that, with the exception of the peephole, there was not a
+crack in it. He sounded all the walls, he looked up the funnel down
+which a dim light came, and he said to himself, "I am safe enough!"
+
+He sat down in a corner where the eye of a prying warder at the
+grating of the peephole could not see him. Then he took off his wig,
+and hastily ungummed a piece of paper that did duty as lining. The
+side of the paper next his head was so greasy that it looked like the
+very texture of the wig. If it had occurred to Bibi-Lupin to snatch
+off the wig to establish the identity of the Spaniard with Jacques
+Collin, he would never have thought twice about the paper, it looked
+so exactly like part of the wigmaker's work. The other side was still
+fairly white, and clean enough to have a few lines written on it. The
+delicate and tiresome task of unsticking it had been begun in La
+Force; two hours would not have been long enough; it had taken him
+half of the day before. The prisoner began by tearing this precious
+scrap of paper so as to have a strip four or five lines wide, which he
+divided into several bits; he then replaced his store of paper in the
+same strange hiding-place, after damping the gummed side so as to make
+it stick again. He felt in a lock of his hair for one of those pencil
+leads as thin as a stout pin, then recently invented by Susse, and
+which he had put in with some gum; he broke off a scrap long enough to
+write with and small enough to hide in his ear. Having made these
+preparations with the rapidity and certainty of hand peculiar to old
+convicts, who are as light-fingered as monkeys, Jacques Collin sat
+down on the edge of his bed to meditate on his instructions to Asie,
+in perfect confidence that he should come across her, so entirely did
+he rely on the woman's genius.
+
+"During the preliminary examination," he reflected, "I pretended to be
+a Spaniard and spoke broken French, appealed to my Ambassador, and
+alleged diplomatic privilege, not understanding anything I was asked,
+the whole performance varied by fainting, pauses, sighs--in short, all
+the vagaries of a dying man. I must stick to that. My papers are all
+regular. Asie and I can eat up Monsieur Camusot; he is no great
+shakes!
+
+"Now I must think of Lucien; he must be made to pull himself together.
+I must get at the boy at whatever cost, and show him some plan of
+conduct, otherwise he will give himself up, give me up, lose all! He
+must be taught his lesson before he is examined. And besides, I must
+find some witnesses to swear to my being a priest!"
+
+Such was the position, moral and physical, of these two prisoners,
+whose fate at the moment depended on Monsieur Camusot, examining judge
+to the Inferior Court of the Seine, and sovereign master, during the
+time granted to him by the Code, of the smallest details of their
+existence, since he alone could grant leave for them to be visited by
+the chaplains, the doctor, or any one else in the world.
+
+No human authority--neither the King, nor the Keeper of the Seals, nor
+the Prime Minister, can encroach on the power of an examining judge;
+nothing can stop him, no one can control him. He is a monarch, subject
+only to his conscience and the Law. At the present time, when
+philosophers, philanthropists, and politicians are constantly
+endeavoring to reduce every social power, the rights conferred on the
+examining judges have become the object of attacks that are all the
+more serious because they are almost justified by those rights, which,
+it must be owned, are enormous. And yet, as every man of sense will
+own, that power ought to remain unimpaired; in certain cases, its
+exercise can be mitigated by a strong infusion of caution; but society
+is already threatened by the ineptitude and weakness of the jury--
+which is, in fact, the really supreme bench, and which ought to be
+composed only of choice and elected men--and it would be in danger of
+ruin if this pillar were broken which now upholds our criminal
+procedure.
+
+Arrest on suspicion is one of the terrible but necessary powers of
+which the risk to society is counterbalanced by its immense
+importance. And besides, distrust of the magistracy in general is a
+beginning of social dissolution. Destroy that institution, and
+reconstruct it on another basis; insist--as was the case before the
+Revolution--that judges should show a large guarantee of fortune; but,
+at any cost, believe in it! Do not make it an image of society to be
+insulted!
+
+In these days a judge, paid as a functionary, and generally a poor
+man, has in the place of his dignity of old a haughtiness of demeanor
+that seems odious to the men raised to be his equals; for haughtiness
+is dignity without a solid basis. That is the vicious element in the
+present system. If France were divided into ten circuits, the
+magistracy might be reinstated by conferring its dignities on men of
+fortune; but with six-and-twenty circuits this is impossible.
+
+The only real improvement to be insisted on in the exercise of the
+power intrusted to the examining judge, is an alteration in the
+conditions of preliminary imprisonment. The mere fact of suspicion
+ought to make no difference in the habits of life of the suspected
+parties. Houses of detention for them ought to be constructed in
+Paris, furnished and arranged in such a way as greatly to modify the
+feeling of the public with regard to suspected persons. The law is
+good, and is necessary; its application is in fault, and public
+feeling judges the laws from the way in which they are carried out.
+And public opinion in France condemns persons under suspicion, while,
+by an inexplicable reaction, it justifies those committed for trial.
+This, perhaps, is a result of the essentially refractory nature of the
+French.
+
+This illogical temper of the Parisian people was one of the factors
+which contributed to the climax of this drama; nay, as may be seen, it
+was one of the most important.
+
+To enter into the secret of the terrible scenes which are acted out in
+the examining judge's chambers; to understand the respective positions
+of the two belligerent powers, the Law and the examinee, the object of
+whose contest is a certain secret kept by the prisoner from the
+inquisition of the magistrate--well named in prison slang, "the
+curious man"--it must always be remembered that persons imprisoned
+under suspicion know nothing of what is being said by the seven or
+eight publics that compose THE PUBLIC, nothing of how much the police
+know, or the authorities, or the little that newspapers can publish as
+to the circumstances of the crime.
+
+Thus, to give a man in custody such information as Jacques Collin had
+just received from Asie as to Lucien's arrest, is throwing a rope to a
+drowning man. As will be seen, in consequence of this ignorance, a
+stratagem which, without this warning, must certainly have been
+equally fatal to the convict, was doomed to failure.
+
+
+
+Monsieur Camusot, the son-in-law of one of the clerks of the cabinet,
+too well known for any account of his position and connection to be
+necessary here, was at this moment almost as much perplexed as Carlos
+Herrera in view of the examination he was to conduct. He had formerly
+been President of a Court of the Paris circuit; he had been raised
+from that position and called to be a judge in Paris--one of the most
+coveted posts in the magistracy--by the influence of the celebrated
+Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, whose husband, attached to the Dauphin's
+person, and Colonel of a cavalry regiment of the Guards, was as much
+in favor with the King as she was with MADAME. In return for a very
+small service which he had done the Duchess--an important matter to
+her--on occasion of a charge of forgery brought against the young
+Comte d'Esgrignon by a banker of Alencon (see La Cabinet des Antiques;
+Scenes de la vie de Province), he was promoted from being a provincial
+judge to be president of his Court, and from being president to being
+an examining judge in Paris.
+
+For eighteen months now he had sat on the most important Bench in the
+kingdom; and had once, at the desire of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
+had an opportunity of forwarding the ends of a lady not less
+influential than the Duchess, namely, the Marquise d'Espard, but he
+had failed. (See the Commission in Lunacy.)
+
+Lucien, as was told at the beginning of the Scene, to be revenged on
+Madame d'Espard, who aimed at depriving her husband of his liberty of
+action, was able to put the true facts before the Public Prosecutor
+and the Comte de Serizy. These two important authorities being thus
+won over to the Marquis d'Espard's party, his wife had barely escaped
+the censure of the Bench by her husband's generous intervention.
+
+On hearing, yesterday, of Lucien's arrest, the Marquise d'Espard had
+sent her brother-in-law, the Chevalier d'Espard, to see Madame
+Camusot. Madame Camusot had set off forthwith to call on the notorious
+Marquise. Just before dinner, on her return home, she had called her
+husband aside in the bedroom.
+
+"If you can commit that little fop Lucien de Rubempre for trial, and
+secure his condemnation," said she in his ear, "you will be Councillor
+to the Supreme Court----"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Madame d'Espard longs to see that poor young man guillotined. I
+shivered as I heard what a pretty woman's hatred can be!"
+
+"Do not meddle in questions of the law," said Camusot.
+
+"I! meddle!" said she. "If a third person could have heard us, he
+could not have guessed what we were talking about. The Marquise and I
+were as exquisitely hypocritical to each other as you are to me at
+this moment. She began by thanking me for your good offices in her
+suit, saying that she was grateful in spite of its having failed. She
+spoke of the terrible functions devolved on you by the law, 'It is
+fearful to have to send a man to the scaffold--but as to that man, it
+would be no more than justice,' and so forth. Then she lamented that
+such a handsome young fellow, brought to Paris by her cousin, Madame
+du Chatelet, should have turned out so badly. 'That,' said she, 'is
+what bad women like Coralie and Esther bring young men to when they
+are corrupt enough to share their disgraceful profits!' Next came some
+fine speeches about charity and religion! Madame du Chatelet had said
+that Lucien deserved a thousand deaths for having half killed his
+mother and his sister
+
+"Then she spoke of a vacancy in the Supreme Court--she knows the
+Keeper of the Seals. 'Your husband, madame, has a fine opportunity of
+distinguishing himself,' she said in conclusion--and that is all."
+
+"We distinguish ourselves every day when we do our duty," said
+Camusot.
+
+"You will go far if you are always the lawyer even to your wife,"
+cried Madame Camusot. "Well, I used to think you a goose. Now I admire
+you."
+
+The lawyer's lips wore one of those smiles which are as peculiar to
+them as dancers' smiles are to dancers.
+
+"Madame, can I come in?" said the maid.
+
+"What is it?" said her mistress.
+
+"Madame, the head lady's-maid came from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse
+while you were out, and she will be obliged if you would go at once to
+the Hotel de Cadignan."
+
+"Keep dinner back," said the lawyer's wife, remembering that the
+driver of the hackney coach that had brought her home was waiting to
+be paid.
+
+She put her bonnet on again, got into the coach, and in twenty minutes
+was at the Hotel de Cadignan. Madame Camusot was led up the private
+stairs, and sat alone for ten minutes in a boudoir adjoining the
+Duchess' bedroom. The Duchess presently appeared, splendidly dressed,
+for she was starting for Saint-Cloud in obedience to a Royal
+invitation.
+
+"Between you and me, my dear, a few words are enough."
+
+"Yes, Madame la Duchesse."
+
+"Lucien de Rubempre is in custody, your husband is conducting the
+inquiry; I will answer for the poor boy's innocence; see that he is
+released within twenty-four hours.--This is not all. Some one will ask
+to-morrow to see Lucien in private in his cell; your husband may be
+present if he chooses, so long as he is not discovered. The King looks
+for high courage in his magistrates in the difficult position in which
+he will presently find himself; I will bring your husband forward, and
+recommend him as a man devoted to the King even at the risk of his
+head. Our friend Camusot will be made first a councillor, and then the
+President of Court somewhere or other.--Good-bye.--I am under orders,
+you will excuse me, I know?
+
+"You will not only oblige the public prosecutor, who cannot give an
+opinion in this affair; you will save the life of a dying woman,
+Madame de Serizy. So you will not lack support.
+
+"In short, you see, I put my trust in you, I need not say--you
+know----"
+
+She laid a finger to her lips and disappeared.
+
+"And I had not a chance of telling her that Madame d'Espard wants to
+see Lucien on the scaffold!" thought the judge's wife as she returned
+to her hackney cab.
+
+She got home in such a state of anxiety that her husband, on seeing
+her, asked:
+
+"What is the matter, Amelie?"
+
+"We stand between two fires."
+
+She told her husband of her interview with the Duchess, speaking in
+his ear for fear the maid should be listening at the door.
+
+"Now, which of them has the most power?" she said in conclusion. "The
+Marquise was very near getting you into trouble in the silly business
+of the commission on her husband, and we owe everything to the
+Duchess.
+
+"One made vague promises, while the other tells you you shall first be
+Councillor and then President.--Heaven forbid I should advise you; I
+will never meddle in matters of business; still, I am bound to repeat
+exactly what is said at Court and what goes on----"
+
+"But, Amelie, you do not know what the Prefet of police sent me this
+morning, and by whom? By one of the most important agents of the
+superior police, the Bibi-Lupin of politics, who told me that the
+Government had a secret interest in this trial.--Now let us dine and
+go to the Varietes. We will talk all this over to-night in my private
+room, for I shall need your intelligence; that of a judge may not
+perhaps be enough----"
+
+Nine magistrates out of ten would deny the influence of the wife over
+her husband in such cases; but though this may be a remarkable
+exception in society, it may be insisted on as true, even if
+improbable. The magistrate is like the priest, especially in Paris,
+where the best of the profession are to be found; he rarely speaks of
+his business in the Courts, excepting of settled cases. Not only do
+magistrates' wives affect to know nothing; they have enough sense of
+propriety to understand that it would damage their husbands if, when
+they are told some secret, they allowed their knowledge to be
+suspected.
+
+Nevertheless, on some great occasions, when promotion depends on the
+decision taken, many a wife, like Amelie, has helped the lawyer in his
+study of a case. And, after all, these exceptions, which, of course,
+are easily denied, since they remain unknown, depend entirely on the
+way in which the struggle between two natures has worked out in home-
+life. Now, Madame Camusot controlled her husband completely.
+
+When all in the house were asleep, the lawyer and his wife sat down to
+the desk, where the magistrate had already laid out the documents in
+the case.
+
+"Here are the notes, forwarded to me, at my request, by the Prefet of
+police," said Camusot.
+
+
+"THE ABBE CARLOS HERRERA.
+
+  "This individual is undoubtedly the man named Jacques Collin,
+  known as Trompe-la-Mort, who was last arrested in 1819, in the
+  dwelling-house of a certain Madame Vauquer, who kept a common
+  boarding-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, where he lived
+  in concealment under the alias of Vautrin."
+
+A marginal note in the Prefet's handwriting ran thus:
+
+  "Orders have been sent by telegraph to Bibi-Lupin, chief of the
+  Safety department, to return forthwith, to be confronted with the
+  prisoner, as he is personally acquainted with Jacques Collin, whom
+  he, in fact, arrested in 1819 with the connivance of a
+  Mademoiselle Michonneau.
+
+  "The boarders who then lived in the Maison Vauquer are still
+  living, and may be called to establish his identity.
+
+  "The self-styled Carlos Herrera is Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre's
+  intimate friend and adviser, and for three years past has
+  furnished him with considerable sums, evidently obtained by
+  dishonest means.
+
+  "This partnership, if the identity of the Spaniard with Jacques
+  Collin can be proved, must involve the condemnation of Lucien de
+  Rubempre.
+
+  "The sudden death of Peyrade, the police agent, is attributable to
+  poison administered at the instigation of Jacques Collin,
+  Rubempre, or their accomplices. The reason for this murder is the
+  fact that justice had for a long time been on the traces of these
+  clever criminals."
+
+And again, on the margin, the magistrate pointed to this note written
+by the Prefet himself:
+
+  "This is the fact to my personal knowledge; and I also know that
+  the Sieur Lucien de Rubempre has disgracefully tricked the Comte
+  de Serizy and the Public Prosecutor."
+
+"What do you say to this, Amelie?"
+
+"It is frightful!" repled his wife. "Go on."
+
+"The transformation of the convict Jacques Collin into a Spanish
+priest is the result of some crime more clever than that by which
+Coignard made himself Comte de Sainte-Helene."
+
+
+"LUCIEN DE RUBEMBPRE.
+
+  "Lucien Chardon, son of an apothecary at Angouleme--his mother a
+  Demoiselle de Rubempre--bears the name of Rubempre in virtue of a
+  royal patent. This was granted by the request of Madame la
+  Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Monsieur le Comte de Serizy.
+
+  "This young man came to Paris in 182 . . . without any means of
+  subsistence, following Madame la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, then
+  Madame de Bargeton, a cousin of Madame d'Espard's.
+
+  "He was ungrateful to Madame de Bargeton, and cohabited with a
+  girl named Coralie, an actress at the Gymnase, now dead, who left
+  Monsieur Camusot, a silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, to
+  live with Rubempre.
+
+  "Ere long, having sunk into poverty through the insufficiency of
+  the money allowed him by this actress, he seriously compromised
+  his brother-in-law, a highly respected printer of Angouleme, by
+  giving forged bills, for which David Sechard was arrested, during
+  a short visit paid to Angouleme by Lucien. In consequence of this
+  affair Rubempre fled, but suddenly reappeared in Paris with the
+  Abbe Carlos Herrera.
+
+  "Though having no visible means of subsistence, the said Lucien de
+  Rubempre spent on an average three hundred thousand francs during
+  the three years of his second residence in Paris, and can only
+  have obtained the money from the self-styled Abbe Carlos Herrera--
+  but how did he come by it?
+
+  "He has recently laid out above a million francs in repurchasing
+  the Rubempre estates to fulfil the conditions on which he was to
+  be allowed to marry Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu. This
+  marriage has been broken off in consequence of inquiries made by
+  the Grandlieu family, the said Lucien having told them that he had
+  obtained the money from his brother-in-law and his sister; but the
+  information obtained, more especially by Monsieur Derville,
+  attorney-at-law, proves that not only were that worthy couple
+  ignorant of his having made this purchase, but that they believed
+  the said Lucien to be deeply in debt.
+
+  "Moreover, the property inherited by the Sechards consists of
+  houses; and the ready money, by their affidavit, amounted to about
+  two hundred thousand francs.
+
+  "Lucien was secretly cohabiting with Esther Gobseck; hence there
+  can be no doubt that all the lavish gifts of the Baron de
+  Nucingen, the girl's protector, were handed over to the said
+  Lucien.
+
+  "Lucien and his companion, the convict, have succeeded in keeping
+  their footing in the face of the world longer than Coignard did,
+  deriving their income from the prostitution of the said Esther,
+  formerly on the register of the town."
+
+Though these notes are to a great extent a repetition of the story
+already told, it was necessary to reproduce them to show the part
+played by the police in Paris. As has already been seen from the note
+on Peyrade, the police has summaries, almost invariably correct,
+concerning every family or individual whose life is under suspicion,
+or whose actions are of a doubtful character. It knows every
+circumstance of their delinquencies. This universal register and
+account of consciences is as accurately kept as the register of the
+Bank of France and its accounts of fortunes. Just as the Bank notes
+the slightest delay in payment, gauges every credit, takes stock of
+every capitalist, and watches their proceedings, so does the police
+weigh and measure the honesty of each citizen. With it, as in a Court
+of Law, innocence has nothing to fear; it has no hold on anything but
+crime.
+
+However high the rank of a family, it cannot evade this social
+providence.
+
+And its discretion is equal to the extent of its power. This vast mass
+of written evidence compiled by the police--reports, notes, and
+summaries--an ocean of information, sleeps undisturbed, as deep and
+calm as the sea. Some accident occurs, some crime or misdemeanor
+becomes aggressive,--then the law refers to the police, and
+immediately, if any documents bear on the suspected criminal, the
+judge is informed. These records, an analysis of his antecedents, are
+merely side-lights, and unknown beyond the walls of the Palais de
+Justice. No legal use can be made of them; Justice is informed by
+them, and takes advantage of them; but that is all. These documents
+form, as it were, the inner lining of the tissue of crimes, their
+first cause, which is hardly ever made public. No jury would accept
+it; and the whole country would rise up in wrath if excerpts from
+those documents came out in the trial at the Assizes. In fact, it is
+the truth which is doomed to remain in the well, as it is everywhere
+and at all times. There is not a magistrate who, after twelve years'
+experience in Paris, is not fully aware that the Assize Court and the
+police authorities keep the secret of half these squalid atrocities,
+or who does not admit that half the crimes that are committed are
+never punished by the law.
+
+If the public could know how reserved the employes of the police are--
+who do not forget--they would reverence these honest men as much as
+they do Cheverus. The police is supposed to be astute, Machiavellian;
+it is, in fact most benign. But it hears every passion in its
+paroxysms, it listens to every kind of treachery, and keeps notes of
+all. The police is terrible on one side only. What it does for justice
+it does no less for political interests; but in these it is as
+ruthless and as one-sided as the fires of the Inquisition.
+
+"Put this aside," said the lawyer, replacing the notes in their cover;
+"this is a secret between the police and the law. The judge will
+estimate its value, but Monsieur and Madame Camusot must know nothing
+of it."
+
+"As if I needed telling that!" said his wife.
+
+"Lucien is guilty," he went on; "but of what?"
+
+"A man who is the favorite of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, of the
+Comtesse de Serizy, and loved by Clotilde de Grandlieu, is not
+guilty," said Amelie. "The other MUST be answerable for everything."
+
+"But Lucien is his accomplice," cried Camusot.
+
+"Take my advice," said Amelie. "Restore this priest to the diplomatic
+career he so greatly adorns, exculpate this little wretch, and find
+some other criminal----"
+
+"How you run on!" said the magistrate with a smile. "Women go to the
+point, plunging through the law as birds fly through the air, and find
+nothing to stop them."
+
+"But," said Amelie, "whether he is a diplomate or a convict, the Abbe
+Carlos will find some one to get him out of the scrape."
+
+"I am only a considering cap; you are the brain," said Camusot.
+
+"Well, the sitting is closed; give your Melie a kiss; it is one
+o'clock.
+
+And Madame Camusot went to bed, leaving her husband to arrange his
+papers and his ideas in preparation for the task of examining the two
+prisoners next morning.
+
+
+
+And thus, while the prison vans were conveying Jacques Collin and
+Lucien to the Conciergerie, the examining judge, having breakfasted,
+was making his way across Paris on foot, after the unpretentious
+fashion of Parisian magistrates, to go to his chambers, where all the
+documents in the case were laid ready for him.
+
+This was the way of it: Every examining judge has a head-clerk, a sort
+of sworn legal secretary--a race that perpetuates itself without any
+premiums or encouragement, producing a number of excellent souls in
+whom secrecy is natural and incorruptible. From the origin of the
+Parlement to the present day, no case has ever been known at the
+Palais de Justice of any gossip or indiscretion on the part of a clerk
+bound to the Courts of Inquiry. Gentil sold the release given by
+Louise de Savoie to Semblancay; a War Office clerk sold the plan of
+the Russian campaign to Czernitchef; and these traitors were more or
+less rich. The prospect of a post in the Palais and professional
+conscientiousness are enough to make a judge's clerk a successful
+rival of the tomb--for the tomb has betrayed many secrets since
+chemistry has made such progress.
+
+This official is, in fact, the magistrate's pen. It will be understood
+by many readers that a man may gladly be the shaft of a machine, while
+they wonder why he is content to remain a bolt; still a bolt is
+content--perhaps the machinery terrifies him.
+
+Camusot's clerk, a young man of two-and-twenty, named Coquart, had
+come in the morning to fetch all the documents and the judge's notes,
+and laid everything ready in his chambers, while the lawyer himself
+was wandering along the quays, looking at the curiosities in the
+shops, and wondering within himself:--
+
+"How on earth am I to set to work with such a clever rascal as this
+Jacques Collin, supposing it is he? The head of the Safety will know
+him. I must look as if I knew what I was about, if only for the sake
+of the police! I see so many insuperable difficulties, that the best
+plan would be to enlighten the Marquise and the Duchess by showing
+them the notes of the police, and I should avenge my father, from whom
+Lucien stole Coralie.--If I can unveil these scoundrels, my skill will
+be loudly proclaimed, and Lucien will soon be thrown over by his
+friends.--Well, well, the examination will settle all that."
+
+He turned into a curiosity shop, tempted by a Boule clock.
+
+"Not to be false to my conscience, and yet to oblige two great ladies
+--that will be a triumph of skill," thought he. "What, do you collect
+coins too, monsieur?" said Camusot to the Public Prosecutor, whom he
+found in the shop.
+
+"It is a taste dear to all dispensers of justice," said the Comte de
+Granville, laughing. "They look at the reverse side of every medal."
+
+And after looking about the shop for some minutes, as if continuing
+his search, he accompanied Camusot on his way down the quay without
+it ever occurring to Camusot that anything but chance had brought them
+together.
+
+"You are examining Monsieur de Rubempre this morning," said the Public
+Prosecutor. "Poor fellow--I liked him."
+
+"There are several charges against him," said Camusot.
+
+"Yes, I saw the police papers; but some of the information came from
+an agent who is independent of the Prefet, the notorious Corentin, who
+had caused the death of more innocent men than you will ever send
+guilty men to the scaffold, and---- But that rascal is out of your
+reach.--Without trying to influence the conscience of such a
+magistrate as you are, I may point out to you that if you could be
+perfectly sure that Lucien was ignorant of the contents of that
+woman's will, it would be self-evident that he had no interest in her
+death, for she gave him enormous sums of money."
+
+"We can prove his absence at the time when this Esther was poisoned,"
+said Camusot. "He was at Fontainebleau, on the watch for Mademoiselle
+de Grandlieu and the Duchesse de Lenoncourt."
+
+"And he still cherished such hopes of marrying Mademoiselle de
+Grandlieu," said the Public Prosecutor--"I have it from the Duchesse
+de Grandlieu herself--that it is inconceivable that such a clever
+young fellow should compromise his chances by a perfectly aimless
+crime."
+
+"Yes," said Camusot, "especially if Esther gave him all she got."
+
+"Derville and Nucingen both say that she died in ignorance of the
+inheritance she had long since come into," added Granville.
+
+"But then what do you suppose is the meaning of it all?" asked
+Camusot. "For there is something at the bottom of it."
+
+"A crime committed by some servant," said the Public Prosecutor.
+
+"Unfortunately," remarked Camusot, "it would be quite like Jacques
+Collin--for the Spanish priest is certainly none other than that
+escaped convict--to have taken possession of the seven hundred and
+fifty thousand francs derived from the sale of the certificate of
+shares given to Esther by Nucingen."
+
+"Weigh everything with care, my dear Camusot. Be prudent. The Abbe
+Carlos Herrera has diplomatic connections; still, an envoy who had
+committed a crime would not be sheltered by his position. Is he or is
+he not the Abbe Carlos Herrera? That is the important question."
+
+And Monsieur de Granville bowed, and turned away, as requiring no
+answer.
+
+"So he too wants to save Lucien!" thought Camusot, going on by the
+Quai des Lunettes, while the Public Prosecutor entered the Palais
+through the Cour de Harlay.
+
+On reaching the courtyard of the Conciergerie, Camusot went to the
+Governor's room and led him into the middle of the pavement, where no
+one could overhear them.
+
+"My dear sir, do me the favor of going to La Force, and inquiring of
+your colleague there whether he happens at this moment to have there
+any convicts who were on the hulks at Toulon between 1810 and 1815; or
+have you any imprisoned here? We will transfer those of La Force here
+for a few days, and you will let me know whether this so-called
+Spanish priest is known to them as Jacques Collin, otherwise Trompe-
+la-Mort."
+
+"Very good, Monsieur Camusot.--But Bibi-Lupin is come . . ."
+
+"What, already?" said the judge.
+
+"He was at Melun. He was told that Trompe-la-Mort had to be
+identified, and he smiled with joy. He awaits your orders."
+
+"Send him to me."
+
+The Governor was then able to lay before Monsieur Camusot Jacques
+Collin's request, and he described the man's deplorable condition.
+
+"I intended to examine him first," replied the magistrate, "but not on
+account of his health. I received a note this morning from the
+Governor of La Force. Well, this rascal, who described himself to you
+as having been dying for twenty-four hours past, slept so soundly that
+they went into his cell there, with the doctor for whom the Governor
+had sent, without his hearing them; the doctor did not even feel his
+pulse, he left him to sleep--which proves that his conscience is as
+tough as his health. I shall accept this feigned illness only so far
+as it may enable me to study my man," added Monsieur Camusot, smiling.
+
+"We live to learn every day with these various grades of prisoners,"
+said the Governor of the prison.
+
+The Prefecture of police adjoins the Conciergerie, and the
+magistrates, like the Governor, knowing all the subterranean passages,
+can get to and fro with the greatest rapidity. This explains the
+miraculous ease with which information can be conveyed, during the
+sitting of the Courts, to the officials and the presidents of the
+Assize Courts. And by the time Monsieur Camusot had reached the top of
+the stairs leading to his chambers, Bibi-Lupin was there too, having
+come by the Salle des Pas-Perdus.
+
+"What zeal!" said Camusot, with a smile.
+
+"Ah, well, you see if it is HE," replied the man, "you will see great
+fun in the prison-yard if by chance there are any old stagers here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Trompe-la-Mort sneaked their chips, and I know that they have vowed
+to be the death of him."
+
+THEY were the convicts whose money, intrusted to Trompe-la-Mort, had
+all been made away with by him for Lucien, as has been told.
+
+"Could you lay your hand on the witnesses of his former arrest?"
+
+"Give me two summonses of witnesses and I will find you some to-day."
+
+"Coquart," said the lawyer, as he took off his gloves, and placed his
+hat and stick in a corner, "fill up two summonses by monsieur's
+directions."
+
+He looked at himself in the glass over the chimney shelf, where stood,
+in the place of a clock, a basin and jug. On one side was a bottle of
+water and a glass, on the other a lamp. He rang the bell; his usher
+came in a few minutes after.
+
+"Is anybody here for me yet?" he asked the man, whose business it was
+to receive the witnesses, to verify their summons, and to set them in
+the order of their arrival.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Take their names, and bring me the list."
+
+The examining judges, to save time, are often obliged to carry on
+several inquiries at once. Hence the long waiting inflicted on the
+witnesses, who have seats in the ushers' hall, where the judges' bells
+are constantly ringing.
+
+"And then," Camusot went on, "bring up the Abbe Carlos Herrera."
+
+"Ah, ha! I was told that he was a priest in Spanish. Pooh! It is a new
+edition of Collet, Monsieur Camusot," said the head of the Safety
+department.
+
+"There is nothing new!" replied Camusot.
+
+And he signed the two formidable documents which alarm everybody, even
+the most innocent witnesses, whom the law thus requires to appear,
+under severe penalties in case of failure.
+
+
+
+By this time Jacques Collin had, about half an hour since, finished
+his deep meditations, and was armed for the fray. Nothing is more
+perfectly characteristic of this type of the mob in rebellion against
+the law than the few words he had written on the greasy scraps of
+paper.
+
+The sense of the first--for it was written in the language, the very
+slang of slang, agreed upon by Asie and himself, a cipher of words--
+was as follows:--
+
+  "Go to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse or Madame de Serizy: one of
+  them must see Lucien before he is examined, and give him the
+  enclosed paper to read. Then find Europe and Paccard; those two
+  thieves must be at my orders, and ready to play any part I may
+  set them.
+
+  "Go to Rastignac; tell him, from the man he met at the opera-ball,
+  to come and swear that the Abbe Carlos Herrera has no resemblance
+  to Jacques Collin who was apprehended at Vauquer's. Do the same
+  with Dr. Bianchon, and get Lucien's two women to work to the same
+  end."
+
+On the enclosed fragment were these words in good French:
+
+  "Lucien, confess nothing about me. I am the Abbe Carlos Herrera.
+  Not only will this be your exculpation; but, if you do not lose
+  your head, you will have seven millions and your honor cleared."
+
+These two bits of paper, gummed on the side of the writing so as to
+look like one piece, were then rolled tightly, with a dexterity
+peculiar to men who have dreamed of getting free from the hulks. The
+whole thing assumed the shape and consistency of a ball of dirty
+rubbish, about as big as the sealing-wax heads which thrifty women
+stick on the head of a large needle when the eye is broken.
+
+"If I am examined first, we are saved; if it is the boy, all is lost,"
+said he to himself while he waited.
+
+His plight was so sore that the strong man's face was wet with white
+sweat. Indeed, this wonderful man saw as clearly in his sphere of
+crime as Moliere did in his sphere of dramatic poetry, or Cuvier in
+that of extinct organisms. Genius of whatever kind is intuition. Below
+this highest manifestation other remarkable achievements may be due to
+talent. This is what divides men of the first rank from those of the
+second.
+
+Crime has its men of genius. Jacques Collin, driven to bay, had hit on
+the same notion as Madame Camusot's ambition and Madame de Serizy's
+passion, suddenly revived by the shock of the dreadful disaster which
+was overwhelming Lucien. This was the supreme effort of human
+intellect directed against the steel armor of Justice.
+
+On hearing the rasping of the heavy locks and bolts of his door,
+Jacques Collin resumed his mask of a dying man; he was helped in this
+by the intoxicating joy that he felt at the sound of the warder's
+shoes in the passage. He had no idea how Asie would get near him; but
+he relied on meeting her on the way, especially after her promise
+given in the Saint-Jean gateway.
+
+After that fortunate achievement she had gone on to the Place de
+Greve.
+
+Till 1830 the name of La Greve (the Strand) had a meaning that is now
+lost. Every part of the river-shore from the Pont d'Arcole to the Pont
+Louis-Philippe was then as nature had made it, excepting the paved way
+which was at the top of the bank. When the river was in flood a boat
+could pass close under the houses and at the end of the streets
+running down to the river. On the quay the footpath was for the most
+part raised with a few steps; and when the river was up to the houses,
+vehicles had to pass along the horrible Rue de la Mortellerie, which
+has now been completely removed to make room for enlarging the Hotel
+de Ville.
+
+So the sham costermonger could easily and quickly run her truck down
+to the bottom of the quay, and hide it there till the real owner--who
+was, in fact, drinking the price of her wares, sold bodily to Asie, in
+one of the abominable taverns in the Rue de la Mortellerie--should
+return to claim it. At that time the Quai Pelletier was being
+extended, the entrance to the works was guarded by a crippled soldier,
+and the barrow would be quite safe in his keeping.
+
+Asie then jumped into a hackney cab on the Place de l'Hotel de Ville,
+and said to the driver, "To the Temple, and look sharp, I'll tip you
+well."
+
+A woman dressed like Asie could disappear, without any questions being
+asked, in the huge market-place, where all the rags in Paris are
+gathered together, where a thousand costermongers wander round, and
+two hundred old-clothes sellers are chaffering.
+
+The two prisoners had hardly been locked up when she was dressing
+herself in a low, damp entresol over one of those foul shops where
+remnants are sold, pieces stolen by tailors and dressmakers--an
+establishment kept by an old maid known as La Romette, from her
+Christian name Jeromette. La Romette was to the "purchasers of
+wardrobes" what these women are to the better class of so-called
+ladies in difficulties--Madame la Ressource, that is to say, money-
+lenders at a hundred per cent.
+
+"Now, child," said Asie, "I have got to be figged out. I must be a
+Baroness of the Faubourg Saint-Germain at the very least. And sharp's
+the word, for my feet are in hot oil. You know what gowns suit me.
+Hand up the rouge-pot, find me some first-class bits of lace, and the
+swaggerest jewelry you can pick out.--Send the girl to call a coach,
+and have it brought to the back door."
+
+"Yes, madame," the woman replied very humbly, and with the eagerness
+of a maid waiting on her mistress.
+
+If there had been any one to witness the scene, he would have
+understood that the woman known as Asie was at home here.
+
+"I have had some diamonds offered me," said la Romette as she dressed
+Asie's head.
+
+"Stolen?"
+
+"I should think so."
+
+"Well, then, however cheap they may be, we must do without 'em. We
+must fight shy of the beak for a long time to come."
+
+It will now be understood how Asie contrived to be in the Salle des
+Pas-Perdus of the Palais de Justice with a summons in her hand, asking
+her way along the passages and stairs leading to the examining judge's
+chambers, and inquiring for Monsieur Camusot, about a quarter of an
+hour before that gentleman's arrival.
+
+Asie was not recognizable. After washing off her "make-up" as an old
+woman, like an actress, she applied rouge and pearl powder, and
+covered her head with a well-made fair wig. Dressed exactly as a lady
+of the Faubourg Saint-Germain might be if in search of a dog she had
+lost, she looked about forty, for she shrouded her features under a
+splendid black lace veil. A pair of stays, severely laced, disguised
+her cook's figure. With very good gloves and a rather large bustle,
+she exhaled the perfume of powder a la Marechale. Playing with a bag
+mounted in gold, she divided her attention between the walls of the
+building, where she found herself evidently for the first time, and
+the string by which she led a dainty little spaniel. Such a dowager
+could not fail to attract the notice of the black-robed natives of the
+Salle des Pas-Perdus.
+
+Besides the briefless lawyers who sweep this hall with their gowns,
+and speak of the leading advocates by their Christian names, as fine
+gentlemen address each other, to produce the impression that they are
+of the aristocracy of the law, patient youths are often to be seen,
+hangers-on of the attorneys, waiting, waiting, in hope of a case put
+down for the end of the day, which they may be so lucky as to be
+called to plead if the advocates retained for the earlier cases should
+not come out in time.
+
+A very curious study would be that of the differences between these
+various black gowns, pacing the immense hall in threes, or sometimes
+in fours, their persistent talk filling the place with a loud, echoing
+hum--a hall well named indeed, for this slow walk exhausts the lawyers
+as much as the waste of words. But such a study has its place in the
+volumes destined to reveal the life of Paris pleaders.
+
+Asie had counted on the presence of these youths; she laughed in her
+sleeve at some of the pleasantries she overheard, and finally
+succeeded in attracting the attention of Massol, a young lawyer whose
+time was more taken up by the Police Gazette than by clients, and who
+came up with a laugh to place himself at the service of a woman so
+elegantly scented and so handsomely dressed.
+
+Asie put on a little, thin voice to explain to this obliging gentleman
+that she appeared in answer to a summons from a judge named Camusot.
+
+"Oh! in the Rubempre case?"
+
+So the affair had its name already.
+
+"Oh, it is not my affair. It is my maid's, a girl named Europe, who
+was with me twenty-four hours, and who fled when she saw my servant
+bring in a piece of stamped paper."
+
+Then, like any old woman who spends her life gossiping in the chimney-
+corner, prompted by Massol, she poured out the story of her woes with
+her first husband, one of the three Directors of the land revenue. She
+consulted the young lawyer as to whether she would do well to enter on
+a lawsuit with her son-in-law, the Comte de Gross-Narp, who made her
+daughter very miserable, and whether the law allowed her to dispose of
+her fortune.
+
+In spite of all his efforts, Massol could not be sure whether the
+summons were addressed to the mistress or the maid. At the first
+moment he had only glanced at this legal document of the most familiar
+aspect; for, to save time, it is printed, and the magistrates' clerks
+have only to fill in the blanks left for the names and addresses of
+the witnesses, the hour for which they are called, and so forth.
+
+Asie made him tell her all about the Palais, which she knew more
+intimately than the lawyer did. Finally, she inquired at what hour
+Monsieur Camusot would arrive.
+
+"Well, the examining judges generally are here by about ten o'clock."
+
+"It is now a quarter to ten," said she, looking at a pretty little
+watch, a perfect gem of goldsmith's work, which made Massol say to
+himself:
+
+"Where the devil will Fortune make herself at home next!"
+
+At this moment Asie had come to the dark hall looking out on the yard
+of the Conciergerie, where the ushers wait. On seeing the gate through
+the window, she exclaimed:
+
+"What are those high walls?"
+
+"That is the Conciergerie."
+
+"Oh! so that is the Conciergerie where our poor queen---- Oh! I should
+so like to see her cell!"
+
+"Impossible, Madame la Baronne," replied the young lawyer, on whose
+arm the dowager was now leaning. "A permit is indispensable, and very
+difficult to procure."
+
+"I have been told," she went on, "that Louis XVIII. himself composed
+the inscription that is to be seen in Marie-Antoinette's cell."
+
+"Yes, Madame la Baronne."
+
+"How much I should like to know Latin that I might study the words of
+that inscription!" said she. "Do you think that Monsieur Camusot could
+give me a permit?"
+
+"That is not in his power; but he could take you there."
+
+"But his business----" objected she.
+
+"Oh!" said Massol, "prisoners under suspicion can wait."
+
+"To be sure," said she artlessly, "they are under suspicion.--But I
+know Monsieur de Granville, your public prosecutor----"
+
+This hint had a magical effect on the ushers and the young lawyer.
+
+"Ah, you know Monsieur de Granville?" said Massol, who was inclined to
+ask the client thus sent to him by chance her name and address.
+
+"I often see him at my friend Monsieur de Serizy's house. Madame de
+Serizy is a connection of mine through the Ronquerolles."
+
+"Well, if Madame wishes to go down to the Conciergerie," said an
+usher, "she----"
+
+"Yes," said Massol.
+
+So the Baroness and the lawyer were allowed to pass, and they
+presently found themselves in the little guard-room at the top of the
+stairs leading to the "mousetrap," a spot well known to Asie, forming,
+as has been said, a post of observation between those cells and the
+Court of the Sixth Chamber, through which everybody is obliged to
+pass.
+
+"Will you ask if Monsieur Camusot is come yet?" said she, seeing some
+gendarmes playing cards.
+
+"Yes, madame, he has just come up from the 'mousetrap.' "
+
+"The mousetrap!" said she. "What is that?--Oh! how stupid of me not to
+have gone straight to the Comte de Granville.--But I have not time
+now. Pray take me to speak to Monsieur Camusot before he is otherwise
+engaged."
+
+"Oh, you have plenty of time for seeing Monsieur Camusot," said
+Massol. "If you send him in your card, he will spare you the
+discomfort of waiting in the ante-room with the witnesses.--We can be
+civil here to ladies like you.--You have a card about you?"
+
+At this instant Asie and her lawyer were exactly in front of the
+window of the guardroom whence the gendarmes could observe the gate of
+the Conciergerie. The gendarmes, brought up to respect the defenders
+of the widow and the orphan, were aware too of the prerogative of the
+gown, and for a few minutes allowed the Baroness to remain there
+escorted by a pleader. Asie listened to the terrible tales which a
+young lawyer is ready to tell about that prison-gate. She would not
+believe that those who were condemned to death were prepared for the
+scaffold behind those bars; but the sergeant-at-arms assured her it
+was so.
+
+"How much I should like to see it done!" cried she.
+
+And there she remained, prattling to the lawyer and the sergeant, till
+she saw Jacques Collin come out supported by two gendarmes, and
+preceded by Monsieur Camusot's clerk.
+
+"Ah, there is a chaplain no doubt going to prepare a poor wretch----"
+
+"Not at all, Madame la Baronne," said the gendarme. "He is a prisoner
+coming to be examined."
+
+"What is he accused of?"
+
+"He is concerned in this poisoning case."
+
+"Oh! I should like to see him."
+
+"You cannot stay here," said the sergeant, "for he is under close
+arrest, and he must pass through here. You see, madame, that door
+leads to the stairs----"
+
+"Oh! thank you!" cried the Baroness, making for the door, to rush down
+the stairs, where she at once shrieked out, "Oh! where am I?"
+
+This cry reached the ear of Jacques Collin, who was thus prepared to
+see her. The sergeant flew after Madame la Baronne, seized her by the
+middle, and lifted her back like a feather into the midst of a group
+of five gendarmes, who started up as one man; for in that guardroom
+everything is regarded as suspicious. The proceeding was arbitrary,
+but the arbitrariness was necessary. The young lawyer himself had
+cried out twice, "Madame! madame!" in his horror, so much did he fear
+finding himself in the wrong.
+
+The Abbe Carlos Herrera, half fainting, sank on a chair in the
+guardroom.
+
+"Poor man!" said the Baroness. "Can he be a criminal?"
+
+The words, though spoken low to the young advocate, could be heard by
+all, for the silence of death reigned in that terrible guardroom.
+Certain privileged persons are sometimes allowed to see famous
+criminals on their way through this room or through the passages, so
+that the clerk and the gendarmes who had charge of the Abbe Carlos
+made no remark. Also, in consequence of the devoted zeal of the
+sergeant who had snatched up the Baroness to hinder any communication
+between the prisoner and the visitors, there was a considerable space
+between them.
+
+"Let us go on," said Jacques Collin, making an effort to rise.
+
+At the same moment the little ball rolled out of his sleeve, and the
+spot where it fell was noted by the Baroness, who could look about her
+freely from under her veil. The little pellet, being damp and sticky,
+did not roll; for such trivial details, apparently unimportant, had
+all been duly considered by Jacques Collin to insure success.
+
+When the prisoner had been led up the higher part of the steps, Asie
+very unaffectedly dropped her bag and picked it up again; but in
+stooping she seized the pellet which had escaped notice, its color
+being exactly like that of the dust and mud on the floor.
+
+"Oh dear!" cried she, "it goes to my heart.--He is dying----"
+
+"Or seems to be," replied the sergeant.
+
+"Monsieur," said Asie to the lawyer, "take me at once to Monsieur
+Camusot; I have come about this case; and he might be very glad to see
+me before examining that poor priest."
+
+The lawyer and the Baroness left the guardroom, with its greasy,
+fuliginous walls; but as soon as they reached the top of the stairs,
+Asie exclaimed:
+
+"Oh, and my dog! My poor little dog!" and she rushed off like a mad
+creature down the Salle des Pas-Perdus, asking every one where her dog
+was. She got to the corridor beyond (la Galerie Marchande, or
+Merchant's Hall, as it is called), and flew to the staircase, saying,
+"There he is!"
+
+These stairs lead to the Cour de Harlay, through which Asie, having
+played out the farce, passed out and took a hackney cab on the Quai
+des Orfevres, where there is a stand; thus she vanished with the
+summons requiring "Europe" to appear, her real name being unknown to
+the police and the lawyers.
+
+"Rue Neuve-Saint-Marc," cried she to the driver.
+
+
+
+Asie could depend on the absolute secrecy of an old-clothes purchaser,
+known as Madame Nourrisson, who also called herself Madame de Saint-
+Esteve; and who would lend Asie not merely her personality, but her
+shop at need, for it was there that Nucingen had bargained for the
+surrender of Esther. Asie was quite at home there, for she had a
+bedroom in Madame Nourrisson's establishment.
+
+She paid the driver, and went up to her room, nodding to Madame
+Nourrisson in a way to make her understand that she had not time to
+say two words to her.
+
+As soon as she was safe from observation, Asie unwrapped the papers
+with the care of a savant unrolling a palimpsest. After reading the
+instructions, she thought it wise to copy the lines intended for
+Lucien on a sheet of letter-paper; then she went down to Madame
+Nourrisson, to whom she talked while a little shop-girl went to fetch
+a cab from the Boulevard des Italiens. She thus extracted the
+addresses of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and of Madame de Serizy,
+which were known to Madame Nourrisson by her dealings with their
+maids.
+
+All this running about and elaborate business took up more than two
+hours. Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who lived at the top of the
+Faubourg Saint-Honore, kept Madame de Saint-Esteve waiting an hour,
+although the lady's-maid, after knocking at the boudoir door, had
+handed in to her mistress a card with Madame de Saint-Esteve's name,
+on which Asie had written, "Called about pressing business concerning
+Lucien."
+
+Her first glance at the Duchess' face showed her how till-timed her
+visit must be; she apologized for disturbing Madame la Duchesse when
+she was resting, on the plea of the danger in which Lucien stood.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the Duchess, without any pretence at politeness,
+as she looked at Asie from head to foot; for Asie, though she might be
+taken for a Baroness by Maitre Massol in the Salle des Pas-Perdus,
+when she stood on the carpet in the boudoir of the Hotel de Cadignan,
+looked like a splash of mud on a white satin gown.
+
+"I am a dealer in cast-off clothes, Madame la Duchesse; for in such
+matters every lady applies to women whose business rests on a basis of
+perfect secrecy. I have never betrayed anybody, though God knows how
+many great ladies have intrusted their diamonds to me by the month
+while wearing false jewels made to imitate them exactly."
+
+"You have some other name?" said the Duchess, smiling at a
+reminiscence recalled to her by this reply.
+
+"Yes, Madame la Duchesse, I am Madame de Saint-Esteve on great
+occasions, but in the trade I am Madame Nourrisson."
+
+"Well, well," said the Duchess in an altered tone.
+
+"I am able to be of great service," Asie went on, "for we hear the
+husbands' secrets as well as the wives'. I have done many little jobs
+for Monsieur de Marsay, whom Madame la Duchesse----"
+
+"That will do, that will do!" cried the Duchess. "What about Lucien?"
+
+"If you wish to save him, madame, you must have courage enough to lose
+no time in dressing. But, indeed, Madame la Duchesse, you could not
+look more charming than you do at this moment. You are sweet enough to
+charm anybody, take an old woman's word for it! In short, madame, do
+not wait for your carriage, but get into my hackney coach. Come to
+Madame de Serizy's if you hope to avert worse misfortunes than the
+death of that cherub----"
+
+"Go on, I will follow you," said the Duchess after a moment's
+hesitation. "Between us we may give Leontine some courage . . ."
+
+Notwithstanding the really demoniacal activity of this Dorine of the
+hulks, the clock was striking two when she and the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse went into the Comtesse de Serizy's house in the Rue de la
+Chaussee-d'Antin. Once there, thanks to the Duchess, not an instant
+was lost. The two women were at once shown up to the Countess, whom
+they found reclining on a couch in a miniature chalet, surrounded by a
+garden fragrant with the rarest flowers.
+
+"That is well," said Asie, looking about her. "No one can overhear
+us."
+
+"Oh! my dear, I am half dead! Tell me, Diane, what have you done?"
+cried the Duchess, starting up like a fawn, and, seizing the Duchess
+by the shoulders, she melted into tears.
+
+"Come, come, Leontine; there are occasions when women like us must not
+cry, but act," said the Duchess, forcing the Countess to sit down on
+the sofa by her side.
+
+Asie studied the Countess' face with the scrutiny peculiar to those
+old hands, which pierces to the soul of a woman as certainly as a
+surgeon's instrument probes a wound!--the sorrow that engraves
+ineradicable lines on the heart and on the features. She was dressed
+without the least touch of vanity. She was now forty-five, and her
+printed muslin wrapper, tumbled and untidy, showed her bosom without
+any art or even stays! Her eyes were set in dark circles, and her
+mottled cheeks showed the traces of bitter tears. She wore no sash
+round her waist; the embroidery on her petticoat and shift was all
+crumpled. Her hair, knotted up under a lace cap, had not been combed
+for four-and-twenty hours, and showed as a thin, short plait and
+ragged little curls. Leontine had forgotten to put on her false hair.
+
+"You are in love for the first time in your life?" said Asie
+sententiously.
+
+Leontine then saw the woman and started with horror.
+
+"Who is that, my dear Diane?" she asked of the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse.
+
+"Whom should I bring with me but a woman who is devoted to Lucien and
+willing to help us?"
+
+Asie had hit the truth. Madame de Serizy, who was regarded as one of
+the most fickle of fashionable women, had had an attachment of ten
+years' standing for the Marquis d'Aiglemont. Since the Marquis'
+departure for the colonies, she had gone wild about Lucien, and had
+won him from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, knowing nothing--like the
+Paris world generally--of Lucien's passion for Esther. In the world of
+fashion a recognized attachment does more to ruin a woman's reputation
+than ten unconfessed liaisons; how much more then two such
+attachments? However, as no one thought of Madame de Serizy as a
+responsible person, the historian cannot undertake to speak for her
+virtue thus doubly dog's-eared.
+
+She was fair, of medium height, and well preserved, as a fair woman
+can be who is well preserved at all; that is to say, she did not look
+more than thirty, being slender, but not lean, with a white skin and
+flaxen hair; she had hands, feet, and a shape of aristocratic
+elegance, and was as witty as all the Ronquerolles, spiteful,
+therefore, to women, and good-natured to men. Her large fortune, her
+husband's fine position, and that of her brother, the Marquis de
+Ronquerolles, had protected her from the mortifications with which any
+other woman would have been overwhelmed. She had this great merit--
+that she was honest in her depravity, and confessed her worship of the
+manners and customs of the Regency.
+
+Now, at forty-two this woman--who had hitherto regarded men as no more
+than pleasing playthings, to whom, indeed, she had, strange to say,
+granted much, regarding love as merely a matter of sacrifice to gain
+the upper hand,--this woman, on first seeing Lucien, had been seized
+with such a passion as the Baron de Nucingen's for Esther. She had
+loved, as Asie had just told her, for the first time in her life.
+
+This postponement of youth is more common with Parisian women than
+might be supposed, and causes the ruin of some virtuous souls just as
+they are reaching the haven of forty. The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was
+the only person in the secret of the vehement and absorbing passion,
+of which the joys, from the girlish suspicion of first love to the
+preposterous follies of fulfilment, had made Leontine half crazy and
+insatiable.
+
+True love, as we know, is merciless. The discovery of Esther's
+existence had been followed by one of those outbursts of rage which in
+a woman rise even to the pitch of murder; then came the phase of
+meanness, to which a sincere affection humbles itself so gladly.
+Indeed, for the last month the Countess would have given ten years of
+her life to have Lucien again for one week. At last she had even
+resigned herself to accept Esther as her rival, just when the news of
+her lover's arrest had come like the last trump on this paroxysm of
+devotion.
+
+The Countess had nearly died of it. Her husband had himself nursed her
+in bed, fearing the betrayal of delirium, and for twenty-four hours
+she had been living with a knife in her heart. She said to her husband
+in her fever:
+
+"Save Lucien, and I will live henceforth for you alone."
+
+"Indeed, as Madame la Duchesse tells you, it is of no use to make your
+eyes like boiled gooseberries," cried the dreadful Asie, shaking the
+Countess by the arm. "If you want to save him, there is not a minute
+to lose. He is innocent--I swear it by my mother's bones!"
+
+"Yes, yes, of course he is!" cried the Countess, looking quite kindly
+at the dreadful old woman.
+
+"But," Asie went on, "if Monsieur Camusot questions him the wrong way,
+he can make a guilty man of him with two sentences; so, if it is in
+your power to get the Conciergerie opened to you, and to say a few
+words to him, go at once, and give him this paper.--He will be
+released to-morrow; I will answer for it. Now, get him out of the
+scrape, for you got him into it."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you!--You fine ladies never have a son even when you own
+millions. When I allowed myself the luxury of keeping boys, they
+always had their pockets full of gold! Their amusements amused me. It
+is delightful to be mother and mistress in one. Now, you--you let the
+men you love die of hunger without asking any questions. Esther, now,
+made no speeches; she gave, at the cost of perdition, soul and body,
+the million your Lucien was required to show, and that is what has
+brought him to this pass----"
+
+"Poor girl! Did she do that! I love her!" said Leontine.
+
+"Yes--now!" said Asie, with freezing irony.
+
+"She was a real beauty; but now, my angel, you are better looking than
+she is.--And Lucien's marriage is so effectually broken off, that
+nothing can mend it," said the Duchess in a whisper to Leontine.
+
+The effect of this revelation and forecast was so great on the
+Countess that she was well again. She passed her hand over her brow;
+she was young once more.
+
+"Now, my lady, hot foot, and make haste!" said Asie, seeing the
+change, and guessing what had caused it.
+
+"But," said Madame de Maufrigneuse, "if the first thing is to prevent
+Lucien's being examined by Monsieur Camusot, we can do that by writing
+two words to the judge and sending your man with it to the Palais,
+Leontine."
+
+"Then come into my room," said Madame de Serizy.
+
+
+
+This is what was taking place at the Palais while Lucien's
+protectresses were obeying the orders issued by Jacques Collin. The
+gendarmes placed the moribund prisoner on a chair facing the window in
+Monsieur Camusot's room; he was sitting in his place in front of his
+table. Coquart, pen in hand, had a little table to himself a few yards
+off.
+
+The aspect of a magistrate's chambers is not a matter of indifference;
+and if this room had not been chosen intentionally, it must be owned
+that chance had favored justice. An examining judge, like a painter,
+requires the clear equable light of a north window, for the criminal's
+face is a picture which he must constantly study. Hence most
+magistrates place their table, as this of Camusot's was arranged, so
+as to sit with their back to the window and leave the face of the
+examinee in broad daylight. Not one of them all but, by the end of six
+months, has assumed an absent-minded and indifferent expression, if he
+does not wear spectacles, and maintains it throughout the examination.
+
+It was a sudden change of expression in the prisoner's face, detected
+by these means, and caused by a sudden point-blank question, that led
+to the discovery of the crime committed by Castaing at the very moment
+when, after a long consultation with the public prosecutor, the
+magistrate was about to let the criminal loose on society for lack of
+evidence. This detail will show the least intelligent person how
+living, interesting, curious, and dramatically terrible is the
+conflict of an examination--a conflict without witnesses, but always
+recorded. God knows what remains on the paper of the scenes at white
+heat in which a look, a tone, a quiver of the features, the faintest
+touch of color lent by some emotion, has been fraught with danger, as
+though the adversaries were savages watching each other to plant a
+fatal stroke. A report is no more than the ashes of the fire.
+
+"What is your real name?" Camusot asked Jacques Collin.
+
+"Don Carlos Herrera, canon of the Royal Chapter of Toledo, and secret
+envoy of His Majesty Ferdinand VII."
+
+It must here be observed that Jacques Collin spoke French like a
+Spanish trollop, blundering over it in such a way as to make his
+answers almost unintelligible, and to require them to be repeated. But
+Monsieur de Nucingen's German barbarisms have already weighted this
+Scene too much to allow of the introduction of other sentences no less
+difficult to read, and hindering the rapid progress of the tale.
+
+"Then you have papers to prove your right to the dignities of which
+you speak?" asked Camusot.
+
+"Yes, monsieur--my passport, a letter from his Catholic Majesty
+authorizing my mission.--In short, if you will but send at once to the
+Spanish Embassy two lines, which I will write in your presence, I
+shall be identified. Then, if you wish for further evidence, I will
+write to His Eminence the High Almoner of France, and he will
+immediately send his private secretary."
+
+"And do you still pretend that you are dying?" asked the magistrate.
+"If you have really gone through all the sufferings you have
+complained of since your arrest, you ought to be dead by this time,"
+said Camusot ironically.
+
+"You are simply trying the courage of an innocent man and the strength
+of his constitution," said the prisoner mildly.
+
+"Coquart, ring. Send for the prison doctor and an infirmary attendant.
+--We shall be obliged to remove your coat and proceed to verify the
+marks on your shoulder," Camusot went on.
+
+"I am in your hands, monsieur."
+
+The prisoner then inquired whether the magistrate would be kind enough
+to explain to him what he meant by "the marks," and why they should be
+sought on his shoulder. The judge was prepared for this question.
+
+"You are suspected of being Jacques Collin, an escaped convict, whose
+daring shrinks at nothing, not even at sacrilege!" said Camusot
+promptly, his eyes fixed on those of the prisoner.
+
+Jacques Collin gave no sign, and did not color; he remained quite
+calm, and assumed an air of guileless curiosity as he gazed at
+Camusot.
+
+"I, monsieur? A convict? May the Order I belong to and God above
+forgive you for such an error. Tell me what I can do to prevent your
+continuing to offer such an insult to the rights of free men, to the
+Church, and to the King my master."
+
+The judge made no reply to this, but explained to the Abbe that if he
+had been branded, a penalty at that time inflicted by law on all
+convicts sent to the hulks, the letters could be made to show by
+giving him a slap on the shoulder.
+
+"Oh, monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "it would indeed be unfortunate
+if my devotion to the Royal cause should prove fatal to me."
+
+"Explain yourself," said the judge, "that is what you are here for."
+
+"Well, monsieur, I must have a great many scars on my back, for I was
+shot in the back as a traitor to my country while I was faithful to my
+King, by constitutionalists who left me for dead."
+
+"You were shot, and you are alive!" said Camusot.
+
+"I had made friends with some of the soldiers, to whom certain pious
+persons had sent money, so they placed me so far off that only spent
+balls reached me, and the men aimed at my back. This is a fact that
+His Excellency the Ambassador can bear witness to----"
+
+"This devil of a man has an answer for everything! However, so much
+the better," thought Camusot, who assumed so much severity only to
+satisfy the demands of justice and of the police. "How is it that a
+man of your character," he went on, addressing the convict, "should
+have been found in the house of the Baron de Nucingen's mistress--and
+such a mistress, a girl who had been a common prostitute!"
+
+"This is why I was found in a courtesan's house, monsieur," replied
+Jacques Collin. "But before telling you the reasons for my being
+there, I ought to mention that at the moment when I was just going
+upstairs I was seized with the first attack of my illness, and I had
+no time to speak to the girl. I knew of Mademoiselle Esther's
+intention of killing herself; and as young Lucien de Rubempre's
+interests were involved, and I have a particular affection for him for
+sacredly secret reasons, I was going to try to persuade the poor
+creature to give up the idea, suggested to her by despair. I meant to
+tell her that Lucien must certainly fail in his last attempt to win
+Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu; and I hoped that by telling her
+she had inherited seven millions of francs, I might give her courage
+to live.
+
+"I am convinced, Monsieur le Juge, that I am a martyr to the secrets
+confided to me. By the suddenness of my illness I believe that I had
+been poisoned that very morning, but my strong constitution has saved
+me. I know that a certain agent of the political police is dogging me,
+and trying to entangle me in some discreditable business.
+
+"If, at my request, you had sent for a doctor on my arrival here, you
+would have had ample proof of what I am telling you as to the state of
+my health. Believe me, monsieur, some persons far above our heads have
+some strong interest in getting me mistaken for some villain, so as to
+have a right to get rid of me. It is not all profit to serve a king;
+they have their meannesses. The Church alone is faultless."
+
+It is impossible to do justice to the play of Jacques Collin's
+countenance as he carefully spun out his speech, sentence by sentence,
+for ten minutes; and it was all so plausible, especially the mention
+of Corentin, that the lawyer was shaken.
+
+"Will you confide to me the reasons of your affection for Monsieur
+Lucien de Rubempre?"
+
+"Can you not guess them? I am sixty years of age, monsieur--I implore
+you do not write it.--It is because--must I say it?"
+
+"It will be to your own advantage, and more particularly to Monsieur
+Lucien de Rubempre's, if you tell everything," replied the judge.
+
+"Because he is--Oh, God! he is my son," he gasped out with an effort.
+
+And he fainted away.
+
+"Do not write that down, Coquart," said Camusot in an undertone.
+
+Coquart rose to fetch a little phial of "Four thieves' Vinegar."
+
+"If he is Jacques Collin, he is a splendid actor!" thought Camusot.
+
+Coquart held the phial under the convict's nose, while the judge
+examined him with the keen eye of a lynx--and a magistrate.
+
+"Take his wig off," said Camusot, after waiting till the man recovered
+consciousness.
+
+Jacques Collin heard, and quaked with terror, for he knew how vile an
+expression his face would assume.
+
+"If you have not strength enough to take your wig off yourself----
+Yes, Coquart, remove it," said Camusot to his clerk.
+
+Jacques Collin bent his head to the clerk with admirable resignation;
+but then his head, bereft of that adornment, was hideous to behold in
+its natural aspect.
+
+The sight of it left Camusot in the greatest uncertainty. While
+waiting for the doctor and the man from the infirmary, he set to work
+to classify and examine the various papers and the objects seized in
+Lucien's rooms. After carrying out their functions in the Rue Saint-
+Georges at Mademoiselle Esther's house, the police had searched the
+rooms at the Quai Malaquais.
+
+"You have your hand on some letters from the Comtesse de Serizy," said
+Carlos Herrera. "But I cannot imagine why you should have almost all
+Lucien's papers," he added, with a smile of overwhelming irony at the
+judge.
+
+Camusot, as he saw the smile, understood the bearing of the word
+"almost."
+
+"Lucien de Rubempre is in custody under suspicion of being your
+accomplice," said he, watching to see the effect of this news on his
+examinee.
+
+"You have brought about a great misfortune, for he is as innocent as I
+am," replied the sham Spaniard, without betraying the smallest
+agitation.
+
+"We shall see. We have not as yet established your identity," Camusot
+observed, surprised at the prisoner's indifference. "If you are really
+Don Carlos Herrera, the position of Lucien Chardon will at once be
+completely altered."
+
+"To be sure, she became Madame Chardon--Mademoiselle de Rubempre!"
+murmured Carlos. "Ah! that was one of the greatest sins of my life."
+
+He raised his eyes to heaven, and by the movement of his lips seemed
+to be uttering a fervent prayer.
+
+"But if you are Jacques Collin, and if he was, and knew that he was,
+the companion of an escaped convict, a sacrilegious wretch, all the
+crimes of which he is suspected by the law are more than probably
+true."
+
+Carlos Herrera sat like bronze as he heard this speech, very cleverly
+delivered by the judge, and his only reply to the words "KNEW THAT HE
+WAS" and "ESCAPED CONVICT" was to lift his hands to heaven with a
+gesture of noble and dignified sorrow.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," Camusot went on, with the greatest politeness, "if
+you are Don Carlos Herrera, you will forgive us for what we are
+obliged to do in the interests of justice and truth."
+
+Jacques Collin detected a snare in the lawyer's very voice as he spoke
+the words "Monsieur l'Abbe." The man's face never changed; Camusot had
+looked for a gleam of joy, which might have been the first indication
+of his being a convict, betraying the exquisite satisfaction of a
+criminal deceiving his judge; but this hero of the hulks was strong in
+Machiavellian dissimulation.
+
+"I am accustomed to diplomacy, and I belong to an Order of very
+austere discipline," replied Jacques Collin, with apostolic mildness.
+"I understand everything, and am inured to suffering. I should be free
+by this time if you had discovered in my room the hiding-place where I
+keep my papers--for I see you have none but unimportant documents."
+
+This was a finishing stroke to Camusot: Jacques Collin by his air of
+ease and simplicity had counteracted all the suspicions to which his
+appearance, unwigged, had given rise.
+
+"Where are these papers?"
+
+"I will tell you exactly if you will get a secretary from the Spanish
+Embassy to accompany your messenger. He will take them and be
+answerable to you for the documents, for it is to me a matter of
+confidential duty--diplomatic secrets which would compromise his late
+Majesty Louis XVIII--Indeed, monsieur, it would be better---- However,
+you are a magistrate--and, after all, the Ambassador, to whom I refer
+the whole question, must decide."
+
+At this juncture the usher announced the arrival of the doctor and the
+infirmary attendant, who came in.
+
+"Good-morning, Monsieur Lebrun," said Camusot to the doctor. "I have
+sent for you to examine the state of health of this prisoner under
+suspicion. He says he had been poisoned and at the point of death
+since the day before yesterday; see if there is any risk in undressing
+him to look for the brand."
+
+Doctor Lebrun took Jacques Collin's hand, felt his pulse, asked to
+look at his tongue, and scrutinized him steadily. This inspection
+lasted about ten minutes.
+
+"The prisoner has been suffering severely," said the medical officer,
+"but at this moment he is amazingly strong----"
+
+"That spurious energy, monsieur, is due to nervous excitement caused
+by my strange position," said Jacques Collin, with the dignity of a
+bishop.
+
+"That is possible," said Monsieur Lebrun.
+
+At a sign from Camusot the prisoner was stripped of everything but his
+trousers, even of his shirt, and the spectators might admire the hairy
+torso of a Cyclops. It was that of the Farnese Hercules at Naples in
+its colossal exaggeration.
+
+"For what does nature intend a man of this build?" said Lebrun to the
+judge.
+
+The usher brought in the ebony staff, which from time immemorial has
+been the insignia of his office, and is called his rod; he struck it
+several times over the place where the executioner had branded the
+fatal letters. Seventeen spots appeared, irregularly distributed, but
+the most careful scrutiny could not recognize the shape of any
+letters. The usher indeed pointed out that the top bar of the letter T
+was shown by two spots, with an interval between of the length of that
+bar between the two points at each end of it, and there was another
+spot where the bottom of the T should be.
+
+"Still that is quite uncertain," said Camusot, seeing doubt in the
+expression of the prison doctor's countenance.
+
+Carlos begged them to make the same experiment on the other shoulder
+and the middle of his back. About fifteen more such scars appeared,
+which, at the Spaniard's request, the doctor made a note of; and he
+pronounced that the man's back had been so extensively seamed by
+wounds that the brand would not show even if it had been made by the
+executioner.
+
+An office-clerk now came in from the Prefecture, and handed a note to
+Monsieur Camusot, requesting an answer. After reading it the lawyer
+went to speak to Coquart, but in such a low voice that no one could
+catch a word. Only, by a glance from Camusot, Jacques Collin could
+guess that some information concerning him had been sent by the Prefet
+of Police.
+
+"That friend of Peyrade's is still at my heels," thought Jacques
+Collin. "If only I knew him, I would get rid of him as I did of
+Contenson. If only I could see Asie once more!"
+
+After signing a paper written by Coquart, the judge put it into an
+envelope and handed it to the clerk of the Delegate's office.
+
+This is an indispensable auxiliary to justice. It is under the
+direction of a police commissioner, and consists of peace-officers
+who, with the assistance of the police commissioners of each district,
+carry into effect orders for searching the houses or apprehending the
+persons of those who are suspected of complicity in crimes and
+felonies. These functionaries in authority save the examining
+magistrates a great deal of very precious time.
+
+At a sign from the judge the prisoner was dressed by Monsieur Lebrun
+and the attendant, who then withdrew with the usher. Camusot sat down
+at his table and played with his pen.
+
+"You have an aunt," he suddenly said to Jacques Collin.
+
+"An aunt?" echoed Don Carlos Herrera with amazement. "Why, monsieur, I
+have no relations. I am the unacknowledged son of the late Duke of
+Ossuna."
+
+But to himself he said, "They are burning"--an allusion to the game of
+hot cockles, which is indeed a childlike symbol of the dreadful
+struggle between justice and the criminal.
+
+"Pooh!" said Camusot. "You still have an aunt living, Mademoiselle
+Jacqueline Collin, whom you placed in Esther's service under the
+eccentric name of Asie."
+
+Jacques Collin shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that was in
+perfect harmony with the cool curiosity he gave throughout to the
+judge's words, while Camusot studied him with cunning attention.
+
+"Take care," said Camusot; "listen to me."
+
+"I am listening, sir."
+
+"You aunt is a wardrobe dealer at the Temple; her business is managed
+by a demoiselle Paccard, the sister of a convict--herself a very good
+girl, known as la Romette. Justice is on the traces of your aunt, and
+in a few hours we shall have decisive evidence. The woman is wholly
+devoted to you----"
+
+"Pray go on, Monsieur le Juge," said Collin coolly, in answer to a
+pause; "I am listening to you."
+
+"Your aunt, who is about five years older than you are, was formerly
+Marat's mistress--of odious memory. From that blood-stained source she
+derived the little fortune she possesses.
+
+"From information I have received she must be a very clever receiver
+of stolen goods, for no proofs have yet been found to commit her on.
+After Marat's death she seems, from the notes I have here, to have
+lived with a chemist who was condemned to death in the year XII. for
+issuing false coin. She was called as witness in the case. It was from
+this intimacy that she derived her knowledge of poisons.
+
+"In 1812 and in 1816 she spent two years in prison for placing girls
+under age upon the streets.
+
+"You were already convicted of forgery; you had left the banking house
+where your aunt had been able to place you as clerk, thanks to the
+education you had had, and the favor enjoyed by your aunt with certain
+persons for whose debaucheries she supplied victims.
+
+"All this, prisoner, is not much like the dignity of the Dukes
+d'Ossuna.
+
+"Do you persist in your denial?"
+
+Jacques Collin sat listening to Monsieur Camusot, and thinking of his
+happy childhood at the College of the Oratorians, where he had been
+brought up, a meditation which lent him a truly amazed look. And in
+spite of his skill as a practised examiner, Camusot could bring no
+sort of expression to those placid features.
+
+"If you have accurately recorded the account of myself I gave you at
+first," said Jacques Collin, "you can read it through again. I cannot
+alter the facts. I never went to the woman's house; how should I know
+who her cook was? The persons of whom you speak are utterly unknown to
+me."
+
+"Notwithstanding your denial, we shall proceed to confront you with
+persons who may succeed in diminishing your assurance"
+
+"A man who has been three times shot is used to anything," replied
+Jacques Collin meekly.
+
+Camusot proceeded to examine the seized papers while awaiting the
+return of the famous Bibi-Lupin, whose expedition was amazing; for at
+half-past eleven, the inquiry having begun at ten o'clock, the usher
+came in to inform the judge in an undertone of Bibi-Lupin's arrival.
+
+"Show him in," replied M. Camusot.
+
+Bibi-Lupin, who had been expected to exclaim, "It is he," as he came
+in, stood puzzled. He did not recognize his man in a face pitted with
+smallpox. This hesitancy startled the magistrate.
+
+"It is his build, his height," said the agent. "Oh! yes, it is you,
+Jacques Collin!" he went on, as he examined his eyes, forehead, and
+ears. "There are some things which no disguise can alter. . . .
+Certainly it is he, Monsieur Camusot. Jacques has the scar of a cut on
+his left arm. Take off his coat, and you will see . . ."
+
+Jacques Collin was again obliged to take off his coat; Bibi-Lupin
+turned up his sleeve and showed the scar he had spoken of.
+
+"It is the scar of a bullet," replied Don Carlos Herrera. "Here are
+several more."
+
+"Ah! It is certainly his voice," cried Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"Your certainty," said Camusot, "is merely an opinion; it is not
+proof."
+
+"I know that," said Bibi-Lupin with deference. "But I will bring
+witnesses. One of the boarders from the Maison Vauquer is here
+already," said he, with an eye on Collin.
+
+But the prisoner's set, calm face did not move a muscle.
+
+"Show the person in," said Camusot roughly, his dissatisfaction
+betraying itself in spite of his seeming indifference.
+
+This irritation was not lost on Jacques Collin, who had not counted on
+the judge's sympathy, and sat lost in apathy, produced by his deep
+meditations in the effort to guess what the cause could be.
+
+
+
+The usher now showed in Madame Poiret. At this unexpected appearance
+the prisoner had a slight shiver, but his trepidation was not remarked
+by Camusot, who seemed to have made up his mind.
+
+"What is your name?" asked he, proceeding to carry out the formalities
+introductory to all depositions and examinations.
+
+Madame Poiret, a little old woman as white and wrinkled as a
+sweetbread, dressed in a dark-blue silk gown, gave her name as
+Christine Michelle Michonneau, wife of one Poiret, and her age as
+fifty-one years, said that she was born in Paris, lived in the Rue des
+Poules at the corner of the Rue des Postes, and that her business was
+that of lodging-house keeper.
+
+"In 1818 and 1819," said the judge, "you lived, madame, in a boarding-
+house kept by a Madame Vauquer?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; it was there that I met Monsieur Poiret, a retired
+official, who became my husband, and whom I have nursed in his bed
+this twelvemonth past. Poor man! he is very bad; and I cannot be long
+away from him."
+
+"There was a certain Vautrin in the house at the time?" asked Camusot.
+
+"Oh, monsieur, that is quite a long story; he was a horrible man, from
+the galleys----"
+
+"You helped to get him arrested?"
+
+"That is not true sir."
+
+"You are in the presence of the Law; be careful," said Monsieur
+Camusot severely.
+
+Madame Poiret was silent.
+
+"Try to remember," Camusot went on. "Do you recollect the man? Would
+you know him again?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Is this the man?"
+
+Madame Poiret put on her "eye-preservers," and looked at the Abbe
+Carlos Herrera.
+
+"It is his build, his height; and yet--no--if--Monsieur le Juge," she
+said, "if I could see his chest I should recognize him at once."
+
+The magistrate and his clerk could not help laughing, notwithstanding
+the gravity of their office; Jacques Collin joined in their hilarity,
+but discreetly. The prisoner had not put on his coat after Bibi-Lupin
+had removed it, and at a sign from the judge he obligingly opened his
+shirt.
+
+"Yes, that is his fur trimming, sure enough!--But it has worn gray,
+Monsieur Vautrin," cried Madame Poiret.
+
+"What have you to say to that?" asked the judge of the prisoner.
+
+"That she is mad," replied Jacques Collin.
+
+"Bless me! If I had a doubt--for his face is altered--that voice would
+be enough. He is the man who threatened me. Ah! and those are his
+eyes!"
+
+"The police agent and this woman," said Camusot, speaking to Jacques
+Collin, "cannot possibly have conspired to say the same thing, for
+neither of them had seen you till now. How do you account for that?"
+
+"Justice has blundered more conspicuously even than it does now in
+accepting the evidence of a woman who recognizes a man by the hair on
+his chest and the suspicions of a police agent," replied Jacques
+Collin. "I am said to resemble a great criminal in voice, eyes, and
+build; that seems a little vague. As to the memory which would prove
+certain relations between Madame and my Sosie--which she does not
+blush to own--you yourself laughed at. Allow me, monsieur, in the
+interests of truth, which I am far more anxious to establish for my
+own sake than you can be for the sake of justice, to ask this lady--
+Madame Foiret----"
+
+"Poiret."
+
+"Poret--excuse me, I am a Spaniard--whether she remembers the other
+persons who lived in this--what did you call the house?"
+
+"A boarding-house," said Madame Poiret.
+
+"I do not know what that is."
+
+"A house where you can dine and breakfast by subscription."
+
+"You are right," said Camusot, with a favorable nod to Jacques Collin,
+whose apparent good faith in suggesting means to arrive at some
+conclusion struck him greatly. "Try to remember the boarders who were
+in the house when Jacques Collin was apprehended."
+
+"There were Monsieur de Rastignac, Doctor Bianchon, Pere Goriot,
+Mademoiselle Taillefer----"
+
+"That will do," said Camusot, steadily watching Jacques Collin, whose
+expression did not change. "Well, about this Pere Goriot?"
+
+"He is dead," said Madame Poiret.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "I have several times met Monsieur de
+Rastignac, a friend, I believe, of Madame de Nucingen's; and if it is
+the same, he certainly never supposed me to be the convict with whom
+these persons try to identify me."
+
+"Monsieur de Rastignac and Doctor Bianchon," said the magistrate,
+"both hold such a social position that their evidence, if it is in
+your favor, will be enough to procure your release.--Coquart, fill up
+a summons for each of them."
+
+The formalities attending Madame Poiret's examination were over in a
+few minutes; Coquart read aloud to her the notes he had made of the
+little scene, and she signed the paper; but the prisoner refused to
+sign, alleging his ignorance of the forms of French law.
+
+"That is enough for to-day," said Monsieur Camusot. "You must be
+wanting food. I will have you taken back to the Conciergerie."
+
+"Alas! I am suffering too much to be able to eat," said Jacques
+Collin.
+
+Camusot was anxious to time Jacques Collin's return to coincide with
+the prisoners' hour of exercise in the prison yard; but he needed a
+reply from the Governor of the Conciergerie to the order he had given
+him in the morning, and he rang for the usher. The usher appeared, and
+told him that the porter's wife, from the house on the Quai Malaquais,
+had an important document to communicate with reference to Monsieur
+Lucien de Rubempre. This was so serious a matter that it put Camusot's
+intentions out of his head.
+
+"Show her in," said he.
+
+"Beg your pardon; pray excuse me, gentlemen all," said the woman,
+courtesying to the judge and the Abbe Carlos by turns. "We were so
+worried by the Law--my husband and me--the twice when it has marched
+into our house, that we had forgotten a letter that was lying, for
+Monsieur Lucien, in our chest of drawers, which we paid ten sous for
+it, though it was posted in Paris, for it is very heavy, sir. Would
+you please to pay me back the postage? For God knows when we shall see
+our lodgers again!"
+
+"Was this letter handed to you by the postman?" asked Camusot, after
+carefully examining the envelope.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Coquart, write full notes of this deposition.--Go on, my good woman;
+tell us your name and your business." Camusot made the woman take the
+oath, and then he dictated the document.
+
+While these formalities were being carried out, he was scrutinizing
+the postmark, which showed the hours of posting and delivery, as well
+at the date of the day. And this letter, left for Lucien the day after
+Esther's death, had beyond a doubt been written and posted on the day
+of the catastrophe. Monsieur Camusot's amazement may therefore be
+imagined when he read this letter written and signed by her whom the
+law believed to have been the victim of a crime:--
+
+  "ESTHER TO LUCIEN.
+  MONDAY, May 13th, 1830.
+
+  "My last day; ten in the morning.
+
+  "MY LUCIEN,--I have not an hour to live. At eleven o'clock I shall
+  be dead, and I shall die without a pang. I have paid fifty
+  thousand francs for a neat little black currant, containing a
+  poison that will kill me with the swiftness of lightning. And so,
+  my darling, you may tell yourself, 'My little Esther had no
+  suffering.'--and yet I shall suffer in writing these pages.
+
+  "The monster who has paid so dear for me, knowing that the day
+  when I should know myself to be his would have no morrow--Nucingen
+  has just left me, as drunk as a bear with his skin full of wind.
+  For the first and last time in my life I have had the opportunity
+  of comparing my old trade as a street hussy with the life of true
+  love, of placing the tenderness which unfolds in the infinite
+  above the horrors of a duty which longs to destroy itself and
+  leave no room even for a kiss. Only such loathing could make death
+  delightful.
+
+  "I have taken a bath; I should have liked to send for the father
+  confessor of the convent where I was baptized, to have confessed
+  and washed my soul. But I have had enough of prostitution; it
+  would be profaning a sacrament; and besides, I feel myself
+  cleansed in the waters of sincere repentance. God must do what He
+  will with me.
+
+  "But enough of all this maudlin; for you I want to be your Esther
+  to the last moment, not to bore you with my death, or the future,
+  or God, who is good, and who would not be good if He were to
+  torture me in the next world when I have endured so much misery in
+  this.
+
+  "I have before me your beautiful portrait, painted by Madame de
+  Mirbel. That sheet of ivory used to comfort me in your absence, I
+  look at it with rapture as I write you my last thoughts, and tell
+  you of the last throbbing of my heart. I shall enclose the
+  miniature in this letter, for I cannot bear that it should be
+  stolen or sold. The mere thought that what has been my great joy
+  may lie behind a shop window, mixed up with the ladies and
+  officers of the Empire, or a parcel of Chinese absurdities, is a
+  small death to me. Destroy that picture, my sweetheart, wipe it
+  out, never give it to any one--unless, indeed, the gift might win
+  back the heart of that walking, well-dressed maypole, that
+  Clotilde de Grandlieu, who will make you black and blue in her
+  sleep, her bones are so sharp.--Yes, to that I consent, and then I
+  shall still be of some use to you, as when I was alive. Oh! to
+  give you pleasure, or only to make you laugh, I would have stood
+  over a brazier with an apple in my mouth to cook it for you.--So
+  my death even will be of service to you.--I should have marred
+  your home.
+
+  "Oh! that Clotilde! I cannot understand her.--She might have been
+  your wife, have borne your name, have never left you day or night,
+  have belonged to you--and she could make difficulties! Only the
+  Faubourg Saint-Germain can do that! and yet she has not ten pounds
+  of flesh on her bones!
+
+  "Poor Lucien! Dear ambitious failure! I am thinking of your future
+  life. Well, well! you will more than once regret your poor
+  faithful dog, the good girl who would fly to serve you, who would
+  have been dragged into a police court to secure your happiness,
+  whose only occupation was to think of your pleasures and invent
+  new ones, who was so full of love for you--in her hair, her feet,
+  her ears--your ballerina, in short, whose every look was a
+  benediction; who for six years has thought of nothing but you, who
+  was so entirely your chattel that I have never been anything but
+  an effluence of your soul, as light is that of the sun. However,
+  for lack of money and of honor, I can never be your wife. I have
+  at any rate provided for your future by giving you all I have.
+
+  "Come as soon as you get this letter and take what you find under
+  my pillow, for I do not trust the people about me. Understand that
+  I mean to look beautiful when I am dead. I shall go to bed, and
+  lay myself flat in an attitude--why not? Then I shall break the
+  little pill against the roof of my mouth, and shall not be
+  disfigured by any convulsion or by a ridiculous position.
+
+  "Madame de Serizy has quarreled with you, I know, because of me;
+  but when she hears that I am dead, you see, dear pet, she will
+  forgive. Make it up with her, and she will find you a suitable
+  wife if the Grandlieus persist in their refusal.
+
+  "My dear, I do not want you to grieve too much when you hear of my
+  death. To begin with, I must tell you that the hour of eleven on
+  Monday morning, the thirteenth of May, is only the end of a long
+  illness, which began on the day when, on the Terrace of Saint-
+  Germain, you threw me back on my former line of life. The soul may
+  be sick, as the body is. But the soul cannot submit stupidly to
+  suffering like the body; the body does not uphold the soul as the
+  soul upholds the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the
+  reflection which leads to the needlewoman's resource--the bushel
+  of charcoal. You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday,
+  when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would marry
+  me. It would have been a great misfortune for us both; I should
+  have been still more dead, so to speak--for there are more and
+  less bitter deaths. The world would never have recognized us.
+
+  "For two months past I have been thinking of many things, I can
+  tell you. A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I went into
+  the convent; men think her handsome, they make her serve their
+  pleasure without thinking any consideration necessary; they pack
+  her off on foot after fetching her in a carriage; if they do not
+  spit in her face, it is only because her beauty preserves her from
+  such indignity; but, morally speaking they do worse. Well, and if
+  this despised creature were to inherit five or six millions of
+  francs, she would be courted by princes, bowed to with respect as
+  she went past in her carriage, and might choose among the oldest
+  names in France and Navarre. That world which would have cried
+  Raca to us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy,
+  always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her 'romances in
+  real life,' because she had two hundred thousand francs a year.
+  The world, which grovels before money or glory, will not bow down
+  before happiness or virtue--for I could have done good. Oh! how
+  many tears I would have dried--as many as I have shed--I believe!
+  Yes, I would have lived only for you and for charity.
+
+  "These are the thoughts that make death beautiful. So do not
+  lament, my dear. Say often to yourself, 'There were two good
+  creatures, two beautiful creatures, who both died for me
+  ungrudgingly, and who adored me.' Keep a memory in your heart of
+  Coralie and Esther, and go your way and prosper. Do you recollect
+  the day when you pointed out to me a shriveled old woman, in a
+  melon-green bonnet and a puce wrapper, all over black grease-
+  spots, the mistress of a poet before the Revolution, hardly thawed
+  by the sun though she was sitting against the wall of the
+  Tuileries and fussing over a pug--the vilest of pugs? She had had
+  footmen and carriages, you know, and a fine house! And I said to
+  you then, 'How much better to be dead at thirty!'--Well, you
+  thought I was melancholy, and you played all sorts of pranks to
+  amuse me, and between two kisses I said, 'Every day some pretty
+  woman leaves the play before it is over!'--And I do not want to
+  see the last piece; that is all.
+
+  "You must think me a great chatterbox; but this is my last
+  effusion. I write as if I were talking to you, and I like to talk
+  cheerfully. I have always had a horror of a dressmaker pitying
+  herself. You know I knew how to die decently once before, on my
+  return from that fatal opera-ball where the men said I had been a
+  prostitute.
+
+  "No, no, my dear love, never give this portrait to any one! If you
+  could know with what a gush of love I have sat losing myself in
+  your eyes, looking at them with rapture during a pause I allowed
+  myself, you would feel as you gathered up the affection with which
+  I have tried to overlay the ivory, that the soul of your little
+  pet is indeed there.
+
+  "A dead woman craving alms! That is a funny idea.--Come, I must
+  learn to lie quiet in my grave.
+
+  "You have no idea how heroic my death would seem to some fools if
+  they could know Nucingen last night offered me two millions of
+  francs if I would love him as I love you. He will be handsomely
+  robbed when he hears that I have kept my word and died of him. I
+  tried all I could still to breathe the air you breathe. I said to
+  the fat scoundrel, 'Do you want me to love you as you wish? To
+  promise even that I will never see Lucien again?'--'What must I
+  do?' he asked.--'Give me the two millions for him.'--You should
+  have seen his face! I could have laughed, if it had not been so
+  tragical for me.
+
+  " 'Spare yourself the trouble of refusing,' said I; 'I see you
+  care more for your two millions than for me. A woman is always
+  glad to know at what she is valued!' and I turned my back on him.
+
+  "In a few hours the old rascal will know that I was not in jest.
+
+  "Who will part your hair as nicely as I do? Pooh!--I will think no
+  more of anything in life; I have but five minutes, I give them to
+  God. Do not be jealous of Him, dear heart; I shall speak to Him of
+  you, beseeching Him for your happiness as the price of my death,
+  and my punishment in the next world. I am vexed enough at having
+  to go to hell. I should have liked to see the angels, to know if
+  they are like you.
+
+  "Good-bye, my darling, good-bye! I give you all the blessing of my
+  woes. Even in the grave I am your Esther.
+
+  "It is striking eleven. I have said my last prayers. I am going to
+  bed to die. Once more, farewell! I wish that the warmth of my hand
+  could leave my soul there where I press a last kiss--and once more
+  I must call you my dearest love, though you are the cause of the
+  death of your Esther."
+
+A vague feeling of jealousy tightened on the magistrate's heart as he
+read this letter, the only letter from a suicide he had ever found
+written with such lightness, though it was a feverish lightness, and
+the last effort of a blind affection.
+
+"What is there in the man that he should be loved so well?" thought
+he, saying what every man says who has not the gift of attracting
+women.
+
+"If you can prove not merely that you are not Jacques Collin and an
+escaped convict, but that you are in fact Don Carlos Herrera, canon of
+Toledo, and secret envoy of this Majesty Ferdinand VII.," said he,
+addressing the prisoner "you will be released; for the impartiality
+demanded by my office requires me to tell you that I have this moment
+received a letter, written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, in which
+she declares her intention of killing herself, and expresses
+suspicions as to her servants, which would seem to point to them as
+the thieves who have made off with the seven hundred and fifty
+thousand francs."
+
+As he spoke Monsieur Camusot was comparing the writing of the letter
+with that of the will; and it seemed to him self-evident that the same
+person had written both
+
+"Monsieur, you were in too great a hurry to believe in a murder; do
+not be too hasty in believing in a theft."
+
+"Heh!" said Camusot, scrutinizing the prisoner with a piercing eye.
+
+"Do not suppose that I am compromising myself by telling you that the
+sum may possibly be recovered," said Jacques Collin, making the judge
+understand that he saw his suspicions. "That poor girl was much loved
+by those about her; and if I were free, I would undertake to search
+for this money, which no doubt belongs to the being I love best in the
+world--to Lucien!--Will you allow me to read that letter; it will not
+take long? It is evidence of my dear boy's innocence--you cannot fear
+that I shall destroy it--nor that I shall talk about it; I am in
+solitary confinement."
+
+"In confinement! You will be so no longer," cried the magistrate. "It
+is I who must beg you to get well as soon as possible. Refer to your
+ambassador if you choose----"
+
+And he handed the letter to Jacques Collin. Camusot was glad to be out
+of a difficulty, to be able to satisfy the public prosecutor, Mesdames
+de Maufrigneuse and de Serizy. Nevertheless, he studied his prisoner's
+face with cold curiosity while Collin read Esther's letter; in spite
+of the apparent genuineness of the feelings it expressed, he said to
+himself:
+
+"But it is a face worthy of the hulks, all the same!"
+
+"That is the way to love!" said Jacques Collin, returning the letter.
+And he showed Camusot a face bathed in tears.
+
+"If only you knew him," he went on, "so youthful, so innocent a soul,
+so splendidly handsome, a child, a poet!--The impulse to sacrifice
+oneself to him is irresistible, to satisfy his lightest wish. That
+dear boy is so fascinating when he chooses----"
+
+"And so," said the magistrate, making a final effort to discover the
+truth, "you cannot possibly be Jacques Collin----"
+
+"No, monsieur," replied the convict.
+
+And Jacques Collin was more entirely Don Carlos Herrera than ever. In
+his anxiety to complete his work he went up to the judge, led him to
+the window, and gave himself the airs of a prince of the Church,
+assuming a confidential tone:
+
+"I am so fond of that boy, monsieur, that if it were needful, to spare
+that idol of my heart a mere discomfort even, that I should be the
+criminal you take me for, I would surrender," said he in an undertone.
+"I would follow the example of the poor girl who has killed herself
+for his benefit. And I beg you, monsieur, to grant me a favor--namely,
+to set Lucien at liberty forthwith."
+
+"My duty forbids it," said Camusot very good-naturedly; "but if a
+sinner may make a compromise with heaven, justice too has its softer
+side, and if you can give me sufficient reasons--speak; your words
+will not be taken down."
+
+"Well, then," Jacques Collin went on, taken in by Camusot's apparent
+goodwill, "I know what that poor boy is suffering at this moment; he
+is capable of trying to kill himself when he finds himself a
+prisoner----"
+
+"Oh! as to that!" said Camusot with a shrug.
+
+"You do not know whom you will oblige by obliging me," added Jacques
+Collin, trying to harp on another string. "You will be doing a service
+to others more powerful than any Comtesse de Serizy or Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse, who will never forgive you for having had their letters
+in your chambers----" and he pointed to two packets of perfumed
+papers. "My Order has a good memory."
+
+"Monsieur," said Camusot, "that is enough. You must find better
+reasons to give me. I am as much interested in the prisoner as in
+public vengeance."
+
+"Believe me, then, I know Lucien; he has a soul of a woman, of a poet,
+and a southerner, without persistency or will," said Jacques Collin,
+who fancied that he saw that he had won the judge over. "You are
+convinced of the young man's innocence, do not torture him, do not
+question him. Give him that letter, tell him that he is Esther's heir,
+and restore him to freedom. If you act otherwise, you will bring
+despair on yourself; whereas, if you simply release him, I will
+explain to you--keep me still in solitary confinement--to-morrow or
+this evening, everything that may strike you as mysterious in the
+case, and the reasons for the persecution of which I am the object.
+But it will be at the risk of my life, a price has been set on my head
+these six years past. . . . Lucien free, rich, and married to Clotilde
+de Grandlieu, and my task on earth will be done; I shall no longer try
+to save my skin.--My persecutor was a spy under your late King."
+
+"What, Corentin?"
+
+"Ah! Is his name Corentin? Thank you, monsieur. Well, will you promise
+to do as I ask you?"
+
+"A magistrate can make no promises.--Coquart, tell the usher and the
+gendarmes to take the prisoner back to the Conciergerie.--I will give
+orders that you are to have a private room," he added pleasantly, with
+a slight nod to the convict.
+
+Struck by Jacques Collin's request, and remembering how he had
+insisted that he wished to be examined first as a privilege to his
+state of health, Camusot's suspicions were aroused once more. Allowing
+his vague doubts to make themselves heard, he noticed that the self-
+styled dying man was walking off with the strength of a Hercules,
+having abandoned all the tricks he had aped so well on appearing
+before the magistrate.
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+Jacques Collin turned round.
+
+"Notwithstanding your refusal to sign the document, my clerk will read
+you the minutes of your examination."
+
+The prisoner was evidently in excellent health; the readiness with
+which he came back, and sat down by the clerk, was a fresh light to
+the magistrate's mind.
+
+"You have got well very suddenly!" said Camusot.
+
+"Caught!" thought Jacques Collin; and he replied:
+
+"Joy, monsieur, is the only panacea.--That letter, the proof of
+innocence of which I had no doubt--these are the grand remedy."
+
+The judge kept a meditative eye on the prisoner when the usher and the
+gendarmes again took him in charge. Then, with a start like a waking
+man, he tossed Esther's letter across to the table where his clerk
+sat, saying:
+
+"Coquart, copy that letter."
+
+If it is natural to man to be suspicious as to some favor required of
+him when it is antagonistic to his interests or his duty, and
+sometimes even when it is a matter of indifference, this feeling is
+law to an examining magistrate. The more this prisoner--whose identity
+was not yet ascertained--pointed to clouds on the horizon in the event
+of Lucien's being examined, the more necessary did the interrogatory
+seem to Camusot. Even if this formality had not been required by the
+Code and by common practice, it was indispensable as bearing on the
+identification of the Abbe Carlos. There is in every walk of life the
+business conscience. In default of curiosity Camusot would have
+examined Lucien as he had examined Jacques Collin, with all the
+cunning which the most honest magistrate allows himself to use in such
+cases. The services he might render and his own promotion were
+secondary in Camusot's mind to his anxiety to know or guess the truth,
+even if he should never tell it.
+
+He stood drumming on the window-pane while following the river-like
+current of his conjectures, for in these moods thought is like a
+stream flowing through many countries. Magistrates, in love with
+truth, are like jealous women; they give way to a thousand hypotheses,
+and probe them with the dagger-point of suspicion, as the sacrificing
+priest of old eviscerated his victims; thus they arrive, not perhaps
+at truth, but at probability, and at last see the truth beyond. A
+woman cross-questions the man she loves as the judge cross-questions a
+criminal. In such a frame of mind, a glance, a word, a tone of voice,
+the slightest hesitation is enough to certify the hidden fact--treason
+or crime.
+
+"The style in which he depicted his devotion to his son--if he is his
+son--is enough to make me think that he was in the girl's house to
+keep an eye on the plunder; and never suspecting that the dead woman's
+pillow covered a will, he no doubt annexed, for his son, the seven
+hundred and fifty thousand francs as a precaution. That is why he can
+promise to recover the money.
+
+"M. de Rubempre owes it to himself and to justice to account for his
+father's position in the world----
+
+"And he offers me the protection of his Order--His Order!--if I do not
+examine Lucien----"
+
+As has been seen, a magistrate conducts an examination exactly as he
+thinks proper. He is at liberty to display his acumen or be absolutely
+blunt. An examination may be everything or nothing. Therein lies the
+favor.
+
+Camusot rang. The usher had returned. He was sent to fetch Monsieur
+Lucien de Rubempre with an injunction to prohibit his speaking to
+anybody on his way up. It was by this time two in the afternoon.
+
+"There is some secret," said the judge to himself, "and that secret
+must be very important. My amphibious friend--since he is neither
+priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor Spaniard, though he wants to
+hinder his protege from letting out something dreadful--argues thus:
+'The poet is weak and effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in
+diplomacy, and you will easily wring our secret from him.'--Well, we
+will get everything out of this innocent."
+
+And he sat tapping the edge of his table with the ivory paper-knife,
+while Coquart copied Esther's letter.
+
+How whimsical is the action of our faculties! Camusot conceived of
+every crime as possible, and overlooked the only one that the prisoner
+had now committed--the forgery of the will for Lucien's advantage. Let
+those whose envy vents itself on magistrates think for a moment of
+their life spent in perpetual suspicion, of the torments these men
+must inflict on their minds, for civil cases are not less tortuous
+than criminal examinations, and it will occur to them perhaps that the
+priest and the lawyer wear an equally heavy coat of mail, equally
+furnished with spikes in the lining. However, every profession has its
+hair shirt and its Chinese puzzles.
+
+
+
+It was about two o'clock when Monsieur Camusot saw Lucien de Rubempre
+come in, pale, worn, his eyes red and swollen, in short, in a state of
+dejection which enabled the magistrate to compare nature with art, the
+really dying man with the stage performance. His walk from the
+Conciergerie to the judge's chambers, between two gendarmes, and
+preceded by the usher, had put the crowning touch to Lucien's despair.
+It is the poet's nature to prefer execution to condemnation.
+
+As he saw this being, so completely bereft of the moral courage which
+is the essence of a judge, and which the last prisoner had so strongly
+manifested, Monsieur Camusot disdained the easy victory; and this
+scorn enabled him to strike a decisive blow, since it left him, on the
+ground, that horrible clearness of mind which the marksman feels when
+he is firing at a puppet.
+
+"Collect yourself, Monsieur de Rubempre; you are in the presence of a
+magistrate who is eager to repair the mischief done involuntarily by
+the law when a man is taken into custody on suspicion that has no
+foundation. I believe you to be innocent, and you will soon be at
+liberty.--Here is the evidence of your innocence; it is a letter kept
+for you during your absence by your porter's wife; she has just
+brought it here. In the commotion caused by the visitation of justice
+and the news of your arrest at Fontainebleau, the woman forgot the
+letter which was written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck.--Read it!"
+
+Lucien took the letter, read it, and melted into tears. He sobbed, and
+could not say a single word. At the end of a quarter of an hour,
+during which Lucien with great difficulty recovered his self-command,
+the clerk laid before him the copy of the letter and begged him to
+sign a footnote certifying that the copy was faithful to the original,
+and might be used in its stead "on all occasions in the course of this
+preliminary inquiry," giving him the option of comparing the two; but
+Lucien, of course, took Coquart's word for its accuracy.
+
+"Monsieur," said the lawyer, with friendly good nature, "it is
+nevertheless impossible that I should release you without carrying out
+the legal formalities, and asking you some questions.--It is almost as
+a witness that I require you to answer. To such a man as you I think
+it is almost unnecessary to point out that the oath to tell the whole
+truth is not in this case a mere appeal to your conscience, but a
+necessity for your own sake, your position having been for a time
+somewhat ambiguous. The truth can do you no harm, be it what it may;
+falsehood will send you to trial, and compel me to send you back to
+the Conciergerie; whereas if you answer fully to my questions, you
+will sleep to-night in your own house, and be rehabilitated by this
+paragraph in the papers: 'Monsieur de Rubempre, who was arrested
+yesterday at Fontainebleau, was set at liberty after a very brief
+examination.' "
+
+This speech made a deep impression on Lucien; and the judge, seeing
+the temper of his prisoner, added:
+
+"I may repeat to you that you were suspected of being accessory to the
+murder by poison of this Demoiselle Esther. Her suicide is clearly
+proved, and there is an end of that; but a sum of seven hundred and
+fifty thousand francs has been stolen, which she had disposed of by
+will, and you are the legatee. This is a felony. The crime was
+perpetrated before the discovery of the will.
+
+"Now there is reason to suppose that a person who loves you as much as
+you loved Mademoiselle Esther committed the theft for your benefit.--
+Do not interrupt me," Camusot went on, seeing that Lucien was about to
+speak, and commanding silence by a gesture; "I am asking you nothing
+so far. I am anxious to make you understand how deeply your honor is
+concerned in this question. Give up the false and contemptible notion
+of the honor binding two accomplices, and tell the whole truth."
+
+The reader must already have observed the extreme disproportion of the
+weapons in this conflict between the prisoner under suspicion and the
+examining judge. Absolute denial when skilfully used has in its favor
+its positive simplicity, and sufficiently defends the criminal; but it
+is, in a way, a coat of mail which becomes crushing as soon as the
+stiletto of cross-examination finds a joint to it. As soon as mere
+denial is ineffectual in face of certain proven facts, the examinee is
+entirely at the judge's mercy.
+
+Now, supposing that a sort of half-criminal, like Lucien, might, if he
+were saved from the first shipwreck of his honesty, amend his ways,
+and become a useful member of society, he will be lost in the pitfalls
+of his examination.
+
+The judge has the driest possible record drawn up of the proceedings,
+a faithful analysis of the questions and answers; but no trace remains
+of his insidiously paternal addresses or his captious remonstrances,
+such as this speech. The judges of the superior courts see the
+results, but see nothing of the means. Hence, as some experienced
+persons have thought, it would be a good plan that, as in England, a
+jury should hear the examination. For a short while France enjoyed the
+benefit of this system. Under the Code of Brumaire of the year IV.,
+this body was known as the examining jury, as distinguished from the
+trying jury. As to the final trial, if we should restore the examining
+jury, it would have to be the function of the superior courts without
+the aid of a jury.
+
+"And now," said Camusot, after a pause, "what is your name?--
+Attention, Monsieur Coquart!" said he to the clerk.
+
+"Lucien Chardon de Rubempre."
+
+"And you were born----?"
+
+"At Angouleme." And Lucien named the day, month, and year.
+
+"You inherited no fortune?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"And yet, during your first residence in Paris, you spent a great
+deal, as compared with your small income?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; but at that time I had a most devoted friend in
+Mademoiselle Coralie, and I was so unhappy as to lose her. It was my
+grief at her death that made me return to my country home."
+
+"That is right, monsieur," said Camusot; "I commend your frankness; it
+will be thoroughly appreciated."
+
+Lucien, it will be seen, was prepared to make a clean breast of it.
+
+"On your return to Paris you lived even more expensively than before,"
+Camusot went on. "You lived like a man who might have about sixty
+thousand francs a year."
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Who supplied you with the money?"
+
+"My protector, the Abbe Carlos Herrera."
+
+"Where did you meet him?"
+
+"We met when traveling, just as I was about to be quit of life by
+committing suicide."
+
+"You never heard him spoken of by your family--by your mother?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Can you remember the year and the month when you first became
+connected with Mademoiselle Esther?"
+
+"Towards the end of 1823, at a small theatre on the Boulevard."
+
+"At first she was an expense to you?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Lately, in the hope of marrying Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, you
+purchased the ruins of the Chateau de Rubempre, you added land to the
+value of a million francs, and you told the family of Grandlieu that
+your sister and your brother-in-law had just come into a considerable
+fortune, and that their liberality had supplied you with the money.--
+Did you tell the Grandlieus this, monsieur?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"You do not know the reason why the marriage was broken off?"
+
+"Not in the least, monsieur."
+
+"Well, the Grandlieus sent one of the most respectable attorneys in
+Paris to see your brother-in-law and inquire into the facts. At
+Angouleme this lawyer, from the statements of your sister and brother-
+in-law, learned that they not only had hardly lent you any money, but
+also that their inheritance consisted of land, of some extent no
+doubt, but that the whole amount of invested capital was not more than
+about two hundred thousand francs.--Now you cannot wonder that such
+people as the Grandlieus should reject a fortune of which the source
+is more than doubtful. This, monsieur, is what a lie has led to----"
+
+Lucien was petrified by this revelation, and the little presence of
+mind he had preserved deserted him.
+
+"Remember," said Camusot, "that the police and the law know all they
+want to know.--And now," he went on, recollecting Jacques Collin's
+assumed paternity, "do you know who this pretended Carlos Herrera is?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; but I knew it too late."
+
+"Too late! How? Explain yourself."
+
+"He is not a priest, not a Spaniard, he is----"
+
+"An escaped convict?" said the judge eagerly.
+
+"Yes," replied Lucien, "when he told me the fatal secret, I was
+already under obligations to him; I had fancied I was befriended by a
+respectable priest."
+
+"Jacques Collin----" said Monsieur Camusot, beginning a sentence.
+
+"Yes, said Lucien, "his name is Jacques Collin."
+
+"Very good. Jacques Collin has just now been identified by another
+person, and though he denies it, he does so, I believe, in your
+interest. But I asked whether you knew who the man is in order to
+prove another of Jacques Collin's impostures."
+
+Lucien felt as though he had hot iron in his inside as he heard this
+alarming statement.
+
+"Do you not know," Camusot went on, "that in order to give color to
+the extraordinary affection he has for you, he declares that he is
+your father?"
+
+"He! My father?--Oh, monsieur, did he tell you that?"
+
+"Have you any suspicion of where the money came from that he used to
+give you? For, if I am to believe the evidence of the letter you have
+in your hand, that poor girl, Mademoiselle Esther, must have done you
+lately the same services as Coralie formerly rendered you. Still, for
+some years, as you have just admitted, you lived very handsomely
+without receiving anything from her."
+
+"It is I who should ask you, monsieur, whence convicts get their
+money! Jacques Collin my father!--Oh, my poor mother!" and Lucien
+burst into tears.
+
+"Coquart, read out to the prisoner that part of Carlos Herrera's
+examination in which he said that Lucien de Rubempre was his son."
+
+The poet listened in silence, and with a look that was terrible to
+behold.
+
+"I am done for!" he cried.
+
+"A man is not done for who is faithful to the path of honor and
+truth," said the judge.
+
+"But you will commit Jacques Collin for trial?" said Lucien.
+
+"Undoubtedly," said Camusot, who aimed at making Lucien talk. "Speak
+out."
+
+But in spite of all his persuasion and remonstrances, Lucien would say
+no more. Reflection had come too late, as it does to all men who are
+the slaves of impulse. There lies the difference between the poet and
+the man of action; one gives way to feeling to reproduce it in living
+images, his judgement comes in after; the other feels and judges both
+at once.
+
+Lucien remained pale and gloomy; he saw himself at the bottom of the
+precipice, down which the examining judge had rolled him by the
+apparent candor which had entrapped his poet's soul. He had betrayed,
+not his benefactor, but an accomplice who had defended their position
+with the courage of a lion, and a skill that showed no flaw. Where
+Jacques Collin had saved everything by his daring, Lucien, the man of
+brains, had lost all by his lack of intelligence and reflection. This
+infamous lie against which he revolted had screened a yet more
+infamous truth.
+
+Utterly confounded by the judge's skill, overpowered by his cruel
+dexterity, by the swiftness of the blows he had dealt him while making
+use of the errors of a life laid bare as probes to search his
+conscience, Lucien sat like an animal which the butcher's pole-axe had
+failed to kill. Free and innocent when he came before the judge, in a
+moment his own avowal had made him feel criminal.
+
+To crown all, as a final grave irony, Camusot, cold and calm, pointed
+out to Lucien that his self-betrayal was the result of a
+misapprehension. Camusot was thinking of Jacques Collin's announcing
+himself as Lucien's father; while Lucien, wholly absorbed by his fear
+of seeing his confederacy with an escaped convict made public, had
+imitated the famous inadvertency of the murderers of Ibycus.
+
+One of Royer-Collard's most famous achievements was proclaiming the
+constant triumph of natural feeling over engrafted sentiments, and
+defending the cause of anterior oaths by asserting that the law of
+hospitality, for instance, ought to be regarded as binding to the
+point of negativing the obligation of a judicial oath. He promulgated
+this theory, in the face of the world, from the French tribune; he
+boldly upheld conspirators, showing that it was human to be true to
+friendship rather than to the tyrannical laws brought out of the
+social arsenal to be adjusted to circumstances. And, indeed, natural
+rights have laws which have never been codified, but which are more
+effectual and better known than those laid down by society. Lucien had
+misapprehended, to his cost, the law of cohesion, which required him
+to be silent and leave Jacques Collin to protect himself; nay, more,
+he had accused him. In his own interests the man ought always to be,
+to him, Carlos Herrera.
+
+Monsieur Camusot was rejoicing in his triumph; he had secured two
+criminals. He had crushed with the hand of justice one of the
+favorites of fashion, and he had found the undiscoverable Jacques
+Collin. He would be regarded as one of the cleverest of examining
+judges. So he left his prisoner in peace; but he was studying this
+speechless consternation, and he saw drops of sweat collect on the
+miserable face, swell and fall, mingled with two streams of tears.
+
+"Why should you weep, Monsieur de Rubempre? You are, as I have told
+you, Mademoiselle Esther's legatee, she having no heirs nor near
+relations, and her property amounts to nearly eight millions of francs
+if the lost seven hundred and fifty thousand francs are recovered."
+
+This was the last blow to the poor wretch. "If you do not lose your
+head for ten minutes," Jacques Collin had said in his note, and Lucien
+by keeping cool would have gained all his desire. He might have paid
+his debt to Jacques Collin and have cut him adrift, have been rich,
+and have married Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. Nothing could more
+eloquently demonstrate the power with which the examining judge is
+armed, as a consequence of the isolation or separation of persons
+under suspicion, or the value of such a communication as Asie had
+conveyed to Jacques Collin.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" replied Lucien, with the satirical bitterness of a man
+who makes a pedestal of his utter overthrow, "how appropriate is the
+phrase in legal slang 'to UNDERGO examination.' For my part, if I had
+to choose between the physical torture of past ages and the moral
+torture of our day, I would not hesitate to prefer the sufferings
+inflicted of old by the executioner.--What more do you want of me?" he
+added haughtily.
+
+"In this place, monsieur," said the magistrate, answering the poet's
+pride with mocking arrogance, "I alone have a right to ask questions."
+
+"I had the right to refuse to answer them," muttered the hapless
+Lucien, whose wits had come back to him with perfect lucidity.
+
+"Coquart, read the minutes to the prisoner."
+
+"I am the prisoner once more," said Lucien to himself.
+
+While the clerk was reading, Lucien came to a determination which
+compelled him to smooth down Monsieur Camusot. When Coquart's drone
+ceased, the poet started like a man who has slept through a noise to
+which his ears are accustomed, and who is roused by its cessation.
+
+"You have to sign the report of your examination," said the judge.
+
+"And am I at liberty?" asked Lucien, ironical in his turn.
+
+"Not yet," said Camusot; "but to-morrow, after being confronted with
+Jacques Collin, you will no doubt be free. Justice must now ascertain
+whether or no you are accessory to the crimes this man may have
+committed since his escape so long ago as 1820. However, you are no
+longer in the secret cells. I will write to the Governor to give you a
+better room."
+
+"Shall I find writing materials?"
+
+"You can have anything supplied to you that you ask for; I will give
+orders to that effect by the usher who will take you back."
+
+Lucien mechanically signed the minutes and initialed the notes in
+obedience to Coquart's indications with the meekness of a resigned
+victim. A single fact will show what a state he was in better than the
+minutest description. The announcement that he would be confronted
+with Jacques Collin had at once dried the drops of sweat from his
+brow, and his dry eyes glittered with a terrible light. In short, he
+became, in an instant as brief as a lightning flash, what Jacques
+Collin was--a man of iron.
+
+In men whose nature is like Lucien's, a nature which Jacques Collin
+had so thoroughly fathomed, these sudden transitions from a state of
+absolute demoralization to one that is, so to speak, metallic,--so
+extreme is the tension of every vital force,--are the most startling
+phenomena of mental vitality. The will surges up like the lost waters
+of a spring; it diffuses itself throughout the machinery that lies
+ready for the action of the unknown matter that constitutes it; and
+then the corpse is a man again, and the man rushes on full of energy
+for a supreme struggle.
+
+Lucien laid Esther's letter next his heart, with the miniature she had
+returned to him. Then he haughtily bowed to Monsieur Camusot, and went
+off with a firm step down the corridors, between two gendarmes.
+
+"That is a deep scoundrel!" said the judge to his clerk, to avenge
+himself for the crushing scorn the poet had displayed. "He thought he
+might save himself by betraying his accomplice."
+
+"Of the two," said Coquart timidly, "the convict is the most thorough-
+paced."
+
+"You are free for the rest of the day, Coquart," said the lawyer. "We
+have done enough. Send away any case that is waiting, to be called
+to-morrow.--Ah! and you must go at once to the public prosecutor's
+chambers and ask if he is still there; if so, ask him if he can give
+me a few minutes. Yes; he will not be gone," he added, looking at a
+common clock in a wooden case painted green with gilt lines. "It is
+but a quarter-past three."
+
+
+
+These examinations, which are so quickly read, being written down at
+full length, questions and answers alike, take up an enormous amount
+of time. This is one of the reasons of the slowness of these
+preliminaries to a trial and of these imprisonments "on suspicion." To
+the poor this is ruin, to the rich it is disgrace; to them only
+immediate release can in any degree repair, so far as possible, the
+disaster of an arrest.
+
+This is why the two scenes here related had taken up the whole of the
+time spent by Asie in deciphering her master's orders, in getting a
+Duchess out of her boudoir, and putting some energy into Madame de
+Serizy.
+
+At this moment Camusot, who was anxious to get the full benefit of his
+cleverness, took the two documents, read them through, and promised
+himself that he would show them to the public prosecutor and take his
+opinion on them. During this meditation, his usher came back to tell
+him that Madame la Comtesse de Serizy's man-servant insisted on
+speaking with him. At a nod from Camusot, a servant out of livery came
+in, looked first at the usher, and then at the magistrate, and said,
+"I have the honor of speaking to Monsieur Camusot?"
+
+"Yes," replied the lawyer and his clerk.
+
+Camusot took a note which the servant offered him, and read as
+follows:--
+
+  "For the sake of many interests which will be obvious to you, my
+  dear Camusot, do not examine Monsieur de Rubempre. We have brought
+  ample proofs of his innocence that he may be released forthwith.
+
+"D. DE MAUFRIGNEUSE.
+"L. DE SERIZY.
+
+  "P. S.--Burn this note."
+
+
+Camusot understood at once that he had blundered preposterously in
+laying snares for Lucien, and he began by obeying the two fine ladies
+--he lighted a taper, and burned the letter written by the Duchess.
+The man bowed respectfully.
+
+"Then Madame de Serizy is coming here?" asked Camusot.
+
+"The carriage is being brought round."
+
+At this moment Coquart came in to tell Monsieur Camusot that the
+public prosecutor expected him.
+
+Oppressed by the blunder he had committed, in view of his ambitions,
+though to the better ends of justice, the lawyer, in whom seven years'
+experience had perfected the sharpness that comes to a man who in his
+practice has had to measure his wits against the grisettes of Paris,
+was anxious to have some shield against the resentment of two women of
+fashion. The taper in which he had burned the note was still alight,
+and he used it to seal up the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse's notes to
+Lucien--about thirty in all--and Madame de Serizy's somewhat
+voluminous correspondence.
+
+Then he waited on the public prosecutor.
+
+The Palais de Justice is a perplexing maze of buildings piled one
+above another, some fine and dignified, others very mean, the whole
+disfigured by its lack of unity. The Salle des Pas-Perdus is the
+largest known hall, but its nakedness is hideous, and distresses the
+eye. This vast Cathedral of the Law crushes the Supreme Court. The
+Galerie Marchande ends in two drain-like passages. From this corridor
+there is a double staircase, a little larger than that of the Criminal
+Courts, and under it a large double door. The stairs lead down to one
+of the Assize Courts, and the doors open into another. In some years
+the number of crimes committed in the circuit of the Seine is great
+enough to necessitate the sitting of two Benches.
+
+Close by are the public prosecutor's offices, the attorney's room and
+library, the chambers of the attorney-general, and those of the public
+prosecutor's deputies. All these purlieus, to use a generic term,
+communicate by narrow spiral stairs and the dark passages, which are a
+disgrace to the architecture not of Paris only, but of all France. The
+interior arrangement of the sovereign court of justice outdoes our
+prisons in all that is most hideous. The writer describing our manners
+and customs would shrink from the necessity of depicting the squalid
+corridor of about a metre in width, in which the witnesses wait in the
+Superior Criminal Court. As to the stove which warms the court itself,
+it would disgrace a cafe on the Boulevard Mont-Parnasse.
+
+The public prosecutor's private room forms part of an octagon wing
+flanking the Galerie Marchande, built out recently in regard to the
+age of the structure, over the prison yard, outside the women's
+quarters. All this part of the Palais is overshadowed by the lofty and
+noble edifice of the Sainte-Chapelle. And all is solemn and silent.
+
+Monsieur de Granville, a worthy successor of the great magistrates of
+the ancient Parlement, would not leave Paris without coming to some
+conclusion in the matter of Lucien. He expected to hear from Camusot,
+and the judge's message had plunged him into the involuntary suspense
+which waiting produces on even the strongest minds. He had been
+sitting in the window-bay of his private room; he rose, and walked up
+and down, for having lingered in the morning to intercept Camusot, he
+had found him dull of apprehension; he was vaguely uneasy and worried.
+
+And this was why.
+
+The dignity of his high functions forbade his attempting to fetter the
+perfect independence of the inferior judge, and yet this trial nearly
+touched the honor and good name of his best friend and warmest
+supporter, the Comte de Serizy, Minister of State, member of the Privy
+Council, Vice-President of the State Council, and prospective
+Chancellor of the Realm, in the event of the death of the noble old
+man who held that august office. It was Monsieur de Serizy's
+misfortune to adore his wife "through fire and water," and he always
+shielded her with his protection. Now the public prosecutor fully
+understood the terrible fuss that would be made in the world and at
+court if a crime should be proved against a man whose name had been so
+often and so malignantly linked with that of the Countess.
+
+"Ah!" he sighed, folding his arms, "formerly the supreme authority
+could take refuge in an appeal. Nowadays our mania for equality"--he
+dared not say FOR LEGALITY, as a poetic orator in the Chamber
+courageously admitted a short while since--"is the death of us."
+
+This noble magistrate knew all the fascination and the miseries of an
+illicit attachment. Esther and Lucien, as we have seen, had taken the
+rooms where the Comte de Granville had lived secretly on connubial
+terms with Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, and whence she had fled one
+day, lured away by a villain. (See A Double Marriage.)
+
+At the very moment when the public prosecutor was saying to himself,
+"Camusot is sure to have done something silly," the examining
+magistrate knocked twice at the door of his room.
+
+"Well, my dear Camusot, how is that case going on that I spoke of this
+morning?"
+
+"Badly, Monsieur le Comte; read and judge for yourself."
+
+He held out the minutes of the two examinations to Monsieur de
+Granville, who took up his eyeglass and went to the window to read
+them. He had soon run through them.
+
+"You have done your duty," said the Count in an agitated voice. "It is
+all over. The law must take its course. You have shown so much skill,
+that you need never fear being deprived of your appointment as
+examining judge---"
+
+If Monsieur de Granville had said to Camusot, "You will remain an
+examining judge to your dying day," he could not have been more
+explicit than in making this polite speech. Camusot was cold in the
+very marrow.
+
+"Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, to whom I owe much, had desired
+me . . ."
+
+"Oh yes, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse is Madame de Serizy's friend,"
+said Granville, interrupting him. "To be sure.--You have allowed
+nothing to influence you, I perceive. And you did well, sir; you will
+be a great magistrate."
+
+At this instant the Comte Octave de Bauvan opened the door without
+knocking, and said to the Comte de Granville:
+
+"I have brought you a fair lady, my dear fellow, who did not know
+which way to turn; she was on the point of losing herself in our
+labyrinth----"
+
+And Comte Octave led in by the hand the Comtesse de Serizy, who had
+been wandering about the place for the last quarter of an hour.
+
+"What, you here, madame!" exclaimed the public prosecutor, pushing
+forward his own armchair, "and at this moment! This, madame, is
+Monsieur Camusot," he added, introducing the judge.--"Bauvan," said he
+to the distinguished ministerial orator of the Restoration, "wait for
+me in the president's chambers; he is still there, and I will join
+you."
+
+Comte Octave de Bauvan understood that not merely was he in the way,
+but that Monsieur de Granville wanted an excuse for leaving his room.
+
+Madame de Serizy had not made the mistake of coming to the Palais de
+Justice in her handsome carriage with a blue hammer-cloth and coats-
+of-arms, her coachman in gold lace, and two footmen in breeches and
+silk stockings. Just as they were starting Asie impressed on the two
+great ladies the need for taking the hackney coach in which she and
+the Duchess had arrived, and she had likewise insisted on Lucien's
+mistress adopting the costume which is to women what a gray cloak was
+of yore to men. The Countess wore a plain brown dress, an old black
+shawl, and a velvet bonnet from which the flowers had been removed,
+and the whole covered up under a thick lace veil.
+
+"You received our note?" said she to Camusot, whose dismay she mistook
+for respectful admiration.
+
+"Alas! but too late, Madame la Comtesse," replied the lawyer, whose
+tact and wit failed him excepting in his chambers and in presence of a
+prisoner.
+
+"Too late! How?"
+
+She looked at Monsieur de Granville, and saw consternation written in
+his face. "It cannot be, it must not be too late!" she added, in the
+tone of a despot.
+
+Women, pretty women, in the position of Madame de Serizy, are the
+spoiled children of French civilization. If the women of other
+countries knew what a woman of fashion is in Paris, a woman of wealth
+and rank, they would all want to come and enjoy that splendid royalty.
+The women who recognize no bonds but those of propriety, no law but
+the petty charter which has been more than once alluded to in this
+Comedie Humaine as the ladies' Code, laugh at the statutes framed by
+men. They say everything, they do not shrink from any blunder or
+hesitate at any folly, for they all accept the fact that they are
+irresponsible beings, answerable for nothing on earth but their good
+repute and their children. They say the most preposterous things with
+a laugh, and are ready on every occasion to repeat the speech made in
+the early days of her married life by pretty Madame de Bauvan to her
+husband, whom she came to fetch away from the Palais: "Make haste and
+pass sentence, and come away."
+
+"Madame," said the public prosecutor, "Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre is
+not guilty either of robbery or of poisoning; but Monsieur Camusot has
+led him to confess a still greater crime."
+
+"What is that?" she asked.
+
+"He acknowledged," said Monsieur Camusot in her ear, "that he is the
+friend and pupil of an escaped convict. The Abbe Carlos Herrera, the
+Spaniard with whom he has been living for the last seven years, is the
+notorious Jacques Collin."
+
+Madame de Serizy felt as if it were a blow from an iron rod at each
+word spoken by the judge, but this name was the finishing stroke.
+
+"And the upshot of all this?" she said, in a voice that was no more
+than a breath.
+
+"Is," Monsieur de Granville went on, finishing the Countess' sentence
+in an undertone, "that the convict will be committed for trial, and
+that if Lucien is not committed with him as having profited as an
+accessory to the man's crimes, he must appear as a witness very
+seriously compromised."
+
+"Oh! never, never!" she cried aloud, with amazing firmness. "For my
+part, I should not hesitate between death and the disaster of seeing a
+man whom the world has known to be my dearest friend declared by the
+bench to be the accomplice of a convict.--The King has a great regard
+for my husband----"
+
+"Madame," said the public prosecutor, also aloud, and with a smile,
+"the King has not the smallest power over the humblest examining judge
+in his kingdom, nor over the proceedings in any court of justice. That
+is the grand feature of our new code of laws. I myself have just
+congratulated M. Camusot on his skill----"
+
+"On his clumsiness," said the Countess sharply, though Lucien's
+intimacy with a scoundrel really disturbed her far less than his
+attachment to Esther.
+
+"If you will read the minutes of the examination of the two prisoners
+by Monsieur Camusot, you will see that everything is in his hands----"
+
+After this speech, the only thing the public prosecutor could venture
+to say, and a flash of feminine--or, if you will, lawyer-like--
+cunning, he went to the door; then, turning round on the threshold, he
+added:
+
+"Excuse me, madame; I have two words to say to Bauvan." Which,
+translated by the worldly wise, conveyed to the Countess: "I do not
+want to witness the scene between you and Camusot."
+
+"What is this examination business?" said Leontine very blandly to
+Camusot, who stood downcast in the presence of the wife of one of the
+most important personages in the realm.
+
+"Madame," said Camusot, "a clerk writes down all the magistrate's
+questions and the prisoner's replies. This document is signed by the
+clerk, by the judge, and by the prisoner. This evidence is the raw
+material of the subsequent proceedings; on it the accused are
+committed for trial, and remanded to appear before the Criminal
+Court."
+
+"Well, then," said she, "if the evidence were suppressed----?"
+
+"Oh, madame, that is a crime which no magistrate could possibly commit
+--a crime against society."
+
+"It is a far worse crime against me to have ever allowed it to be
+recorded; still, at this moment it is the only evidence against
+Lucien. Come, read me the minutes of his examination that I may see if
+there is still a way of salvation for us all, monsieur. I do not speak
+for myself alone--I should quite calmly kill myself--but Monsieur de
+Serizy's happiness is also at stake."
+
+"Pray, madame, do not suppose that I have forgotten the respect due
+you," said Camusot. "If Monsieur Popinot, for instance, had undertaken
+this case, you would have had worse luck than you have found with me;
+for he would not have come to consult Monsieur de Granville; no one
+would have heard anything about it. I tell you, madame, everything has
+been seized in Monsieur Lucien's lodging, even your letters----"
+
+"What! my letters!"
+
+"Here they are, madame, in a sealed packet."
+
+The Countess in her agitation rang as if she had been at home, and the
+office-boy came in.
+
+"A light," said she.
+
+The boy lighted a taper and placed it on the chimney-piece, while the
+Countess looked through the letters, counted them, crushed them in her
+hand, and flung them on the hearth. In a few minutes she set the whole
+mass in a blaze, twisting up the last note to serve as a torch.
+
+Camusot stood, looking rather foolish as he watched the papers burn,
+holding the legal documents in his hand. The Countess, who seemed
+absorbed in the work of destroying the proofs of her passion, studied
+him out of the corner of her eye. She took her time, she calculated
+her distance; with the spring of a cat she seized the two documents
+and threw them on the flames. But Camusot saved them; the Countess
+rushed on him and snatched back the burning papers. A struggle ensued,
+Camusot calling out: "Madame, but madame! This is contempt--madame!"
+
+A man hurried into the room, and the Countess could not repress a
+scream as she beheld the Comte de Serizy, followed by Monsieur de
+Granville and the Comte de Bauvan. Leontine, however, determined to
+save Lucien at any cost, would not let go of the terrible stamped
+documents, which she clutched with the tenacity of a vise, though the
+flame had already burnt her delicate skin like a moxa.
+
+At last Camusot, whose fingers also were smarting from the fire,
+seemed to be ashamed of the position; he let the papers go; there was
+nothing left of them but the portions so tightly held by the
+antagonists that the flame could not touch them. The whole scene had
+taken less time than is needed to read this account of it.
+
+"What discussion can have arisen between you and Madame de Serizy?"
+the husband asked of Camusot.
+
+Before the lawyer could reply, the Countess held the fragments in the
+candle and threw them on the remains of her letters, which were not
+entirely consumed.
+
+"I shall be compelled," said Camusot, "to lay a complaint against
+Madame la Comtesse----"
+
+"Heh! What has she done?" asked the public prosecutor, looking
+alternately at the lady and the magistrate.
+
+"I have burned the record of the examinations," said the lady of
+fashion with a laugh, so pleased at her high-handed conduct that she
+did not yet feel the pain of the burns, "If that is a crime--well,
+monsieur must get his odious scrawl written out again."
+
+"Very true," said Camusot, trying to recover his dignity.
+
+"Well, well, 'All's well that ends well,' " said Monsieur de
+Granville. "But, my dear Countess, you must not often take such
+liberties with the Law; it might fail to discern who and what you
+are."
+
+"Monsieur Camusot valiantly resisted a woman whom none can resist; the
+Honor of the Robe is safe!" said the Comte de Bauvan, laughing.
+
+"Indeed! Monsieur Camusot was resisting?" said the public prosecutor,
+laughing too. "He is a brave man indeed; I should not dare resist the
+Countess."
+
+And thus for the moment this serious affair was no more than a pretty
+woman's jest, at which Camusot himself must laugh.
+
+But Monsieur de Granville saw one man who was not amused. Not a little
+alarmed by the Comte de Serizy's attitude and expression, his friend
+led him aside.
+
+"My dear fellow," said he in a whisper, "your distress persuades me
+for the first and only time in my life to compromise with my duty."
+
+The public prosecutor rang, and the office-boy appeared.
+
+"Desire Monsieur de Chargeboeuf to come here."
+
+Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, a sucking barrister, was his private
+secretary.
+
+"My good friend," said the Comte de Granville to Camusot, whom he took
+to the window, "go back to your chambers, get your clerk to
+reconstruct the report of the Abbe Carlos Herrera's depositions; as he
+had not signed the first copy, there will be no difficulty about that.
+To-morrow you must confront your Spanish diplomate with Rastignac and
+Bianchon, who will not recognize him as Jacques Collin. Then, being
+sure of his release, the man will sign the document.
+
+"As to Lucien de Rubempre, set him free this evening; he is not likely
+to talk about an examination of which the evidence is destroyed,
+especially after such a lecture as I shall give him.
+
+"Now you will see how little justice suffers by these proceedings. If
+the Spaniard really is the convict, we have fifty ways of recapturing
+him and committing him for trial--for we will have his conduct in
+Spain thoroughly investigated. Corentin, the police agent, will take
+care of him for us, and we ourselves will keep an eye on him. So treat
+him decently; do not send him down to the cells again.
+
+"Can we be the death of the Comte and Comtesse de Serizy, as well as
+of Lucien, for the theft of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs as
+yet unproven, and to Lucien's personal loss? Will it not be better for
+him to lose the money than to lose his character? Above all, if he is
+to drag with him in his fall a Minister of State, and his wife, and
+the Duchesse du Maufrigneuse.
+
+"This young man is a speckled orange; do not leave it to rot.
+
+"All this will take you about half an hour; go and get it done; we
+will wait for you. It is half-past three; you will find some judges
+about. Let me know if you can get a rule of insufficient evidence--or
+Lucien must wait till to-morrow morning."
+
+Camusot bowed to the company and went; but Madame de Serizy, who was
+suffering a good deal from her burns, did not return his bow.
+
+Monsieur de Serizy, who had suddenly rushed away while the public
+prosecutor and the magistrate were talking together, presently
+returned, having fetched a small jar of virgin wax. With this he
+dressed his wife's fingers, saying in an undertone:
+
+"Leontine, why did you come here without letting me know?"
+
+"My dear," replied she in a whisper, "forgive me. I seem mad, but
+indeed your interests were as much involved as mine."
+
+"Love this young fellow if fatality requires it, but do not display
+your passion to all the world," said the luckless husband.
+
+"Well, my dear Countess," said Monsieur de Granville, who had been
+engaged in conversation with Comte Octave, "I hope you may take
+Monsieur de Rubempre home to dine with you this evening."
+
+This half promise produced a reaction; Madame de Serizy melted into
+tears.
+
+"I thought I had no tears left," said she with a smile. "But could you
+not bring Monsieur de Rubempre to wait here?"
+
+"I will try if I can find the ushers to fetch him, so that he may not
+be seen under the escort of the gendarmes," said Monsieur de
+Granville.
+
+"You are as good as God!" cried she, with a gush of feeling that made
+her voice sound like heavenly music.
+
+"These are the women," said Comte Octave, "who are fascinating,
+irresistible!"
+
+And he became melancholy as he thought of his own wife. (See
+Honorine.)
+
+As he left the room, Monsieur de Granville was stopped by young
+Chargeboeuf, to whom he spoke to give him instructions as to what he
+was to say to Massol, one of the editors of the Gazette des Tribunaux.
+
+
+
+While beauties, ministers, and magistrates were conspiring to save
+Lucien, this was what he was doing at the Conciergerie. As he passed
+the gate the poet told the keeper that Monsieur Camusot had granted
+him leave to write, and he begged to have pens, ink, and paper. At a
+whispered word to the Governor from Camusot's usher a warder was
+instructed to take them to him at once. During the short time that it
+took for the warder to fetch these things and carry them up to Lucien,
+the hapless young man, to whom the idea of facing Jacques Collin had
+become intolerable, sank into one of those fatal moods in which the
+idea of suicide--to which he had yielded before now, but without
+succeeding in carrying it out--rises to the pitch of mania. According
+to certain mad-doctors, suicide is in some temperaments the closing
+phase of mental aberration; and since his arrest Lucien had been
+possessed by that single idea. Esther's letter, read and reread many
+times, increased the vehemence of his desire to die by reminding him
+of the catastrophe of Romeo dying to be with Juliet.
+
+This is what he wrote:--
+
+  "THIS IS MY LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
+  "AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830.
+
+  "I, the undersigned, give and bequeath to the children of my
+  sister, Madame Eve Chardon, wife of David Sechard, formerly a
+  printer at Angouleme, and of Monsieur David Sechard, all the
+  property, real and personal, of which I may be possessed at the
+  time of my decease, due deduction being made for the payments and
+  legacies, which I desire my executor to provide for.
+
+  "And I earnestly beg Monsieur de Serizy to undertake the charge of
+  being the executor of this my will.
+
+  "First, to Monsieur l'Abbe Carlos Herrera I direct the payment of
+  the sum of three hundred thousand francs. Secondly, to Monsieur le
+  Baron de Nucingen the sum of fourteen hundred thousand francs,
+  less seven hundred and fifty thousand if the sum stolen from
+  Mademoiselle Esther should be recovered.
+
+  "As universal legatee to Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, I give and
+  bequeath the sum of seven hundred and sixty thousand francs to the
+  Board of Asylums of Paris for the foundation of a refuge
+  especially dedicated to the use of public prostitutes who may wish
+  to forsake their life of vice and ruin.
+
+  "I also bequeath to the Asylums of Paris the sum of money
+  necessary for the purchase of a certificate for dividends to the
+  amount of thirty thousand francs per annum in five per cents, the
+  annual income to be devoted every six months to the release of
+  prisoners for debts not exceeding two thousand francs. The Board
+  of Asylums to select the most respectable of such persons
+  imprisoned for debt.
+
+  "I beg Monsieur de Serizy to devote the sum of forty thousand
+  francs to erecting a monument to Mademoiselle Esther in the
+  Eastern cemetery, and I desire to be buried by her side. The tomb
+  is to be like an antique tomb--square, our two effigies lying
+  thereon, in white marble, the heads on pillows, the hands folded
+  and raised to heaven. There is to be no inscription whatever.
+
+  "I beg Monsieur de Serizy to give to Monsieur de Rastignac a gold
+  toilet-set that is in my room as a remembrance.
+
+  "And as a remembrance, I beg my executor to accept my library of
+  books as a gift from me.
+
+"LUCIEN CHARDON DE RUBEMPRE."
+
+
+This Will was enclosed in a letter addressed to Monsieur le Comte de
+Granville, Public Prosecutor in the Supreme Court at Paris, as
+follows:
+
+  "MONSIEUR LE COMTE,--
+
+  "I place my Will in your hands. When you open this letter I shall
+  be no more. In my desire to be free, I made such cowardly replies
+  to Monsieur Camusot's insidious questions, that, in spite of my
+  innocence, I may find myself entangled in a disgraceful trial.
+  Even if I were acquitted, a blameless life would henceforth be
+  impossible to me in view of the opinions of the world.
+
+  "I beg you to transmit the enclosed letter to the Abbe Carlos
+  Herrera without opening it, and deliver to Monsieur Camusot the
+  formal retraction I also enclose.
+
+  "I suppose no one will dare to break the seal of a packet
+  addressed to you. In this belief I bid you adieu, offering you my
+  best respects for the last time, and begging you to believe that
+  in writing to you I am giving you a token of my gratitude for all
+  the kindness you have shown to your deceased humble servant,
+
+"LUCIEN DE R."
+
+
+  "TO THE ABBE CARLOS HERRERA.
+
+  "MY DEAR ABBE,--I have had only benefits from you, and I have
+  betrayed you. This involuntary ingratitude is killing me, and when
+  you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist. You are not
+  here now to save me.
+
+  "You had given me full liberty, if I should find it advantageous,
+  to destroy you by flinging you on the ground like a cigar-end; but
+  I have ruined you by a blunder. To escape from a difficulty,
+  deluded by a clever question from the examining judge, your son by
+  adoption and grace went over to the side of those who aim at
+  killing you at any cost, and insist on proving an identity, which
+  I know to be impossible, between you and a French villain. All is
+  said.
+
+  "Between a man of your calibre and me--me of whom you tried to
+  make a greater man than I am capable of being--no foolish
+  sentiment can come at the moment of final parting. You hoped to
+  make me powerful and famous, and you have thrown me into the gulf
+  of suicide, that is all. I have long heard the broad pinions of
+  that vertigo beating over my head.
+
+  "As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain and
+  the posterity of Abel. In the great human drama Cain is in
+  opposition. You are descended from Adam through that line, in
+  which the devil still fans the fire of which the first spark was
+  flung on Eve. Among the demons of that pedigree, from time to time
+  we see one of stupendous power, summing up every form of human
+  energy, and resembling the fevered beasts of the desert, whose
+  vitality demands the vast spaces they find there. Such men are as
+  dangerous as lions would be in the heart of Normandy; they must
+  have their prey, and they devour common men and crop the money of
+  fools. Their sport is so dangerous that at last they kill the
+  humble dog whom they have taken for a companion and made an idol
+  of.
+
+  "When it is God's will, these mysterious beings may be a Moses, an
+  Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but when He leaves a
+  generation of these stupendous tools to rust at the bottom of the
+  ocean, they are no more than a Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or
+  the Abbe Carlos Herrera. Gifted with immense power over tenderer
+  souls, they entrap them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine--
+  in its way. It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that
+  fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men
+  like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them. You
+  have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my share of
+  existence; so I may very well take my head out of the Gordian knot
+  of your policy and slip it into the running knot of my cravat.
+
+  "To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to the public
+  prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You will know how to
+  take advantage of this document.
+
+  "In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made,
+  Monsieur l'Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you
+  so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal
+  affection for me.
+
+  "And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
+  Corruption; farewell--to you who, if started on the right road,
+  might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You
+  have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on
+  the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the
+  enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the
+  waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy;
+  but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.
+
+  "Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as my
+  admiration.
+
+"LUCIEN."
+
+
+  "Recantation.
+
+  "I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I retract, without
+  reservation, all that I deposed at my examination to-day before
+  Monsieur Camusot.
+
+  "The Abbe Carlos Herrera always called himself my spiritual
+  father, and I was misled by the word father used in another sense
+  by the judge, no doubt under a misapprehension.
+
+  "I am aware that, for political ends, and to quash certain secrets
+  concerning the Cabinets of Spain and of the Tuileries, some
+  obscure diplomatic agents tried to show that the Abbe Carlos
+  Herrera was a forger named Jacques Collin; but the Abbe Carlos
+  Herrera never told me anything about the matter excepting that he
+  was doing his best to obtain evidence of the death or of the
+  continued existence of Jacques Collin.
+
+"LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE.
+
+
+  "AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830."
+
+The fever for suicide had given Lucien immense clearness of mind, and
+the swiftness of hand familiar to authors in the fever of composition.
+The impetus was so strong within him that these four documents were
+all written within half an hour; he folded them in a wrapper, fastened
+with wafers, on which he impressed with the strength of delirium the
+coat-of-arms engraved on a seal-ring he wore, and he then laid the
+packet very conspicuously in the middle of the floor.
+
+Certainly it would have been impossible to conduct himself with
+greater dignity, in the false position to which all this infamy had
+led him; he was rescuing his memory from opprobrium, and repairing the
+injury done to his accomplice, so far as the wit of a man of the world
+could nullify the result of the poet's trustfulness.
+
+If Lucien had been taken back to one of the lower cells, he would have
+been wrecked on the impossibility of carrying out his intentions, for
+those boxes of masonry have no furniture but a sort of camp-bed and a
+pail for necessary uses. There is not a nail, not a chair, not even a
+stool. The camp-bed is so firmly fixed that it is impossible to move
+it without an amount of labor that the warder would not fail to
+detect, for the iron-barred peephole is always open. Indeed, if a
+prisoner under suspicion gives reason for uneasiness, he is watched by
+a gendarme or a constable.
+
+In the private rooms for which prisoners pay, and in that whither
+Lucien had been conveyed by the judge's courtesy to a young man
+belonging to the upper ranks of society, the movable bed, table, and
+chair might serve to carry out his purpose of suicide, though they
+hardly made it easy. Lucien wore a long blue silk necktie, and on his
+way back from examination he was already meditating on the means by
+which Pichegru, more or less voluntarily, ended his days. Still, to
+hang himself, a man must find a purchase, and have a sufficient space
+between it and the ground for his feet to find no support. Now the
+window of his room, looking out on the prison-yard, had no handle to
+the fastening; and the bars, being fixed outside, were divided from
+his reach by the thickness of the wall, and could not be used for a
+support.
+
+This, then, was the plan hit upon by Lucien to put himself out of the
+world. The boarding of the lower part of the opening, which prevented
+his seeing out into the yard, also hindered the warders outside from
+seeing what was done in the room; but while the lower portion of the
+window was replaced by two thick planks, the upper part of both halves
+still was filled with small panes, held in place by the cross pieces
+in which they were set. By standing on his table Lucien could reach
+the glazed part of the window, and take or break out two panes, so as
+to have a firm point of attachment in the angle of the lower bar.
+Round this he would tie his cravat, turn round once to tighten it
+round his neck after securing it firmly, and kick the table from under
+his feet.
+
+He drew the table up under the window without making any noise, took
+off his coat and waistcoat, and got on the table unhesitatingly to
+break a pane above and one below the iron cross-bar. Standing on the
+table, he could look out across the yard on a magical view, which he
+then beheld for the first time. The Governor of the prison, in
+deference to Monsieur Camusot's request that he should deal as
+leniently as possible with Lucien, had led him, as we have seen,
+through the dark passages of the Conciergerie, entered from the dark
+vault opposite the Tour d'Argent, thus avoiding the exhibition of a
+young man of fashion to the crowd of prisoners airing themselves in
+the yard. It will be for the reader to judge whether the aspect of the
+promenade was not such as to appeal deeply to a poet's soul.
+
+The yard of the Conciergerie ends at the quai between the Tour
+d'Argent and the Tour Bonbec; thus the distance between them exactly
+shows from the outside the width of the plot of ground. The corridor
+called the Galerie de Saint-Louis, which extends from the Galerie
+Marchande to the Courts of Appeals and the Tour Bonbec--in which, it
+is said, Saint-Louis' room still exists--may enable the curious to
+estimate the depths of the yard, as it is of the same length. Thus the
+dark cells and the private rooms are under the Galerie Marchande. And
+Queen Marie Antoinette, whose dungeon was under the present cells, was
+conducted to the presence of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which held
+its sittings in the place where the Court of Appeals now performs its
+solemn functions, up a horrible flight of steps, now never used, in
+the very thickness of the wall on which the Galerie Marchande is
+built.
+
+One side of the prison-yard--that on which the Hall of Saint-Louis
+forms the first floor--displays a long row of Gothic columns, between
+which the architects of I know not what period have built up two
+floors of cells to accommodate as many prisoners as possible, by
+choking the capitals, the arches, and the vaults of this magnificent
+cloister with plaster, barred loopholes, and partitions. Under the
+room known as the Cabinet de Saint-Louis, in the Tour Bonbec, there is
+a spiral stair leading to these dens. This degradation of one of the
+immemorial buildings of France is hideous to behold.
+
+From the height at which Lucien was standing he saw this cloister, and
+the details of the building that joins the two towers, in sharp
+perspective; before him were the pointed caps of the towers. He stood
+amazed; his suicide was postponed to his admiration. The phenomena of
+hallucination are in these days so fully recognized by the medical
+faculty that this mirage of the senses, this strange illusion of the
+mind is beyond dispute. A man under the stress of a feeling which by
+its intensity has become a monomania, often finds himself in the frame
+of mind to which opium, hasheesh, or the protoxyde of azote might have
+brought him. Spectres appear, phantoms and dreams take shape, things
+of the past live again as they once were. What was but an image of the
+brain becomes a moving or a living object. Science is now beginning to
+believe that under the action of a paroxysm of passion the blood
+rushes to the brain, and that such congestion has the terrible effects
+of a dream in a waking state, so averse are we to regard thought as a
+physical and generative force. (See Louis Lambert.)
+
+Lucien saw the building in all its pristine beauty; the columns were
+new, slender and bright; Saint-Louis' Palace rose before him as it had
+once appeared; he admired its Babylonian proportions and Oriental
+fancy. He took this exquisite vision as a poetic farewell from
+civilized creation. While making his arrangements to die, he wondered
+how this marvel of architecture could exist in Paris so utterly
+unknown. He was two Luciens--one Lucien the poet, wandering through
+the Middle Ages under the vaults and the turrets of Saint-Louis, the
+other Lucien ready for suicide.
+
+
+
+Just as Monsieur de Granville had ended giving his instructions to the
+young secretary, the Governor of the Conciergerie came in, and the
+expression of his face was such as to give the public prosecutor a
+presentiment of disaster.
+
+"Have you met Monsieur Camusot?" he asked.
+
+"No, monsieur," said the Governor; "his clerk Coquart instructed me to
+give the Abbe Carlos a private room and to liberate Monsieur de
+Rubempre--but it is too late."
+
+"Good God! what has happened?"
+
+"Here, monsieur, is a letter for you which will explain the
+catastrophe. The warder on duty in the prison-yard heard a noise of
+breaking glass in the upper room, and Monsieur Lucien's next neighbor
+shrieking wildly, for he heard the young man's dying struggles. The
+warder came to me pale from the sight that met his eyes. He found the
+prisoner hanged from the window bar by his necktie."
+
+Though the Governor spoke in a low voice, a fearful scream from Madame
+de Serizy showed that under stress of feeling our faculties are
+incalculably keen. The Countess heard, or guessed. Before Monsieur de
+Granville could turn round, or Monsieur de Bauvan or her husband could
+stop her, she fled like a flash out of the door, and reached the
+Galerie Marchande, where she ran on to the stairs leading out to the
+Rue de la Barillerie.
+
+A pleader was taking off his gown at the door of one of the shops
+which from time immemorial have choked up this arcade, where shoes are
+sold, and gowns and caps kept for hire.
+
+The Countess asked the way to the Conciergerie.
+
+"Go down the steps and turn to the left. The entrance is from the Quai
+de l'Horloge, the first archway."
+
+"That woman is crazy," said the shop-woman; "some one ought to follow
+her."
+
+But no one could have kept up with Leontine; she flew.
+
+A physician may explain how it is that these ladies of fashion, whose
+strength never finds employment, reveal such powers in the critical
+moments of life.
+
+The Countess rushed so swiftly through the archway to the wicket-gate
+that the gendarme on sentry did not see her pass. She flew at the
+barred gate like a feather driven by the wind, and shook the iron bars
+with such fury that she broke the one she grasped. The bent ends were
+thrust into her breast, making the blood flow, and she dropped on the
+ground, shrieking, "Open it, open it!" in a tone that struck terror
+into the warders.
+
+The gatekeepers hurried out.
+
+"Open the gate--the public prosecutor sent me--to save the dead
+man!----"
+
+While the Countess was going round by the Rue de la Barillerie and the
+Quai de l'Horloge, Monsieur de Granville and Monsieur de Serizy went
+down to the Conciergerie through the inner passages, suspecting
+Leontine's purpose; but notwithstanding their haste, they only arrived
+in time to see her fall fainting at the outer gate, where she was
+picked up by two gendarmes who had come down from the guardroom.
+
+On seeing the Governor of the prison, the gate was opened, and the
+Countess was carried into the office, but she stood up and fell on her
+knees, clasping her hands.
+
+"Only to see him--to see him! Oh! I will do no wrong! But if you do
+not want to see me die on the spot, let me look at Lucien dead or
+living.--Ah, my dear, are you here? Choose between my death and----"
+
+She sank in a heap.
+
+"You are kind," she said; "I will always love you----"
+
+"Carry her away," said Monsieur de Bauvan.
+
+"No, we will go to Lucien's cell," said Monsieur de Granville, reading
+a purpose in Monsieur de Serizy's wild looks.
+
+And he lifted up the Countess, and took her under one arm, while
+Monsieur de Bauvan supported her on the other side.
+
+"Monsieur," said the Comte de Serizy to the Governor, "silence as of
+the grave about all this."
+
+"Be easy," replied the Governor; "you have done the wisest thing.--If
+this lady----"
+
+"She is my wife."
+
+"Oh! I beg your pardon. Well, she will certainly faint away when she
+sees the poor man, and while she is unconscious she can be taken home
+in a carriage.
+
+"That is what I thought," replied the Count. "Pray send one of your
+men to tell my servants in the Cour de Harlay to come round to the
+gate. Mine is the only carriage there."
+
+"We can save him yet," said the Countess, walking on with a degree of
+strength and spirit that surprised her friends. "There are ways of
+restoring life----"
+
+And she dragged the gentlemen along, crying to the warder:
+
+"Come on, come faster--one second may cost three lives!"
+
+When the cell door was opened, and the Countess saw Lucien hanging as
+though his clothes had been hung on a peg, she made a spring towards
+him as if to embrace him and cling to him; but she fell on her face on
+the floor with smothered shrieks and a sort of rattle in her throat.
+
+Five minutes later she was being taken home stretched on the seat in
+the Count's carriage, her husband kneeling by her side. Monsieur de
+Bauvan went off to fetch a doctor to give her the care she needed.
+
+The Governor of the Conciergerie meanwhile was examining the outer
+gate, and saying to his clerk:
+
+"No expense was spared; the bars are of wrought iron, they were
+properly tested, and cost a large sum; and yet there was a flaw in
+that bar."
+
+Monsieur de Granville on returning to his room had other instructions
+to give to his private secretary. Massol, happily had not yet arrived.
+
+Soon after Monsieur de Granville had left, anxious to go to see
+Monsieur de Serizy, Massol came and found his ally Chargeboeuf in the
+public prosecutor's Court.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the young secretary, "if you will do me a great
+favor, you will put what I dictate to you in your Gazette to-morrow
+under the heading of Law Reports; you can compose the heading. Write
+now."
+
+And he dictated as follows:--
+
+  "It has been ascertained that the Demoiselle Esther Gobseck killed
+  herself of her own free will.
+
+  "Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre satisfactorily proved an alibi, and
+  his innocence leaves his arrest to be regretted, all the more
+  because just as the examining judge had given the order for his
+  release the young gentleman died suddenly."
+
+"I need not point out to you," said the young lawyer to Massol, "how
+necessary it is to preserve absolute silence as to the little service
+requested of you."
+
+"Since it is you who do me the honor of so much confidence," replied
+Massol, "allow me to make one observation. This paragraph will give
+rise to odious comments on the course of justice----"
+
+"Justice is strong enough to bear them," said the young attache to the
+Courts, with the pride of a coming magistrate trained by Monsieur de
+Granville.
+
+"Allow me, my dear sir; with two sentences this difficulty may be
+avoided."
+
+And the journalist-lawyer wrote as follows:--
+
+  "The forms of the law have nothing to do with this sad event. The
+  post-mortem examination, which was at once made, proved that
+  sudden death was due to the rupture of an aneurism in its last
+  stage. If Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had been upset by his
+  arrest, death must have ensued sooner. But we are in a position to
+  state that, far from being distressed at being taken into custody,
+  the young man, whom all must lament, only laughed at it, and told
+  those who escorted him from Fontainebleau to Paris that as soon as
+  he was brought before a magistrate his innocence would be
+  acknowledged."
+
+"That saves it, I think?" said Massol.
+
+"You are perfectly right."
+
+"The public prosecutor will thank you for it to-morrow," said Massol
+slyly.
+
+Now to the great majority, as to the more choice reader, it will
+perhaps seem that this Study is not completed by the death of Esther
+and of Lucien; Jacques Collin and Asie, Europe and Paccard, in spite
+of their villainous lives, may have been interesting enough to make
+their fate a matter of curiosity.
+
+The last act of the drama will also complete the picture of life which
+this Study is intended to present, and give the issue of various
+interests which Lucien's career had strangely tangled by bringing some
+ignoble personages from the hulks into contact with those of the
+highest rank.
+
+Thus, as may be seen, the greatest events of life find their
+expression in the more or less veracious gossip of the Paris papers.
+And this is the case with many things of greater importance than are
+here recorded.
+
+
+
+VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR
+
+"What is it, Madeleine?" asked Madame Camusot, seeing her maid come
+into the room with the particular air that servants assume in critical
+moments.
+
+"Madame," said Madeleine, "monsieur has just come in from Court; but
+he looks so upset, and is in such a state, that I think perhaps it
+would be well for you to go to his room."
+
+"Did he say anything?" asked Madame Camusot.
+
+"No, madame; but we never have seen monsieur look like that; he looks
+as if he were going to be ill, his face is yellow--he seems all to
+pieces----"
+
+Madame Camusot waited for no more; she rushed out of her room and flew
+to her husband's study. She found the lawyer sitting in an armchair,
+pale and dazed, his legs stretched out, his head against the back of
+it, his hands hanging limp, exactly as if he were sinking into
+idiotcy.
+
+"What is the matter, my dear?" said the young woman in alarm.
+
+"Oh! my poor Amelie, the most dreadful thing has happened--I am still
+trembling. Imagine, the public prosecutor--no, Madame de Serizy--that
+is--I do not know where to begin."
+
+"Begin at the end," said Madame Camusot.
+
+"Well, just as Monsieur Popinot, in the council room of the first
+Court, had put the last signature to the ruling of 'insufficient
+cause' for the apprehension of Lucien de Rubempre on the ground of my
+report, setting him at liberty--in fact, the whole thing was done, the
+clerk was going off with the minute book, and I was quit of the whole
+business--the President of the Court came in and took up the papers.
+'You are releasing a dead man,' said he, with chilly irony; 'the young
+man is gone, as Monsieur de Bonald says, to appear before his natural
+Judge. He died of apoplexy----'
+
+"I breathed again, thinking it was sudden illness.
+
+" 'As I understand you, Monsieur le President,' said Monsieur Popinot,
+'it is a case of apoplexy like Pichegru's.'
+
+" 'Gentlemen,' said the President then, very gravely, 'you must please
+to understand that for the outside world Lucien de Rubempre died of an
+aneurism.'
+
+"We all looked at each other. 'Very great people are concerned in this
+deplorable business,' said the President. 'God grant for your sake,
+Monsieur Camusot, though you did no less than your duty, that Madame
+de Serizy may not go mad from the shock she has had. She was carried
+away almost dead. I have just met our public prosecutor in a painful
+state of despair.'--'You have made a mess of it, my dear Camusot,' he
+added in my ear.--I assure you, my dear, as I came away I could hardly
+stand. My legs shook so that I dared not venture into the street. I
+went back to my room to rest. Then Coquart, who was putting away the
+papers of this wretched case, told me that a very handsome woman had
+taken the Conciergerie by storm, wanting to save Lucien, whom she was
+quite crazy about, and that she fainted away on seeing him hanging by
+his necktie to the window-bar of his room. The idea that the way in
+which I questioned that unhappy young fellow--who, between ourselves,
+was guilty in many ways--can have led to his committing suicide has
+haunted me ever since I left the Palais, and I feel constantly on the
+point of fainting----"
+
+"What next? Are you going to think yourself a murderer because a
+suspected criminal hangs himself in prison just as you were about to
+release him?" cried Madame Camusot. "Why, an examining judge in such a
+case is like a general whose horse is killed under him!--That is all."
+
+"Such a comparison, my dear, is at best but a jest, and jesting is out
+of place now. In this case the dead man clutches the living. All our
+hopes are buried in Lucien's coffin."
+
+"Indeed?" said Madame Camusot, with deep irony.
+
+"Yes, my career is closed. I shall be no more than an examining judge
+all my life. Before this fatal termination Monsieur de Granville was
+annoyed at the turn the preliminaries had taken; his speech to our
+President makes me quite certain that so long as Monsieur de Granville
+is public prosecutor I shall get no promotion."
+
+Promotion! The terrible thought, which in these days makes a judge a
+mere functionary.
+
+Formerly a magistrate was made at once what he was to remain. The
+three or four presidents' caps satisfied the ambitions of lawyers in
+each Parlement. An appointment as councillor was enough for a de
+Brosses or a Mole, at Dijon as much as in Paris. This office, in
+itself a fortune, required a fortune brought to it to keep it up.
+
+In Paris, outside the Parlement, men of the long robe could hope only
+for three supreme appointments: those of Controller-General, Keeper of
+the Seals, or Chancellor. Below the Parlement, in the lower grades,
+the president of a lower Court thought himself quite of sufficient
+importance to be content to fill his chair to the end of his days.
+
+Compare the position of a councillor in the High Court of Justice in
+Paris, in 1829, who has nothing but his salary, with that of a
+councillor to the Parlement in 1729. How great is the difference! In
+these days, when money is the universal social guarantee, magistrates
+are not required to have--as they used to have--fine private fortunes:
+hence we see deputies and peers of France heaping office on office, at
+once magistrates and legislators, borrowing dignity from other
+positions than those which ought to give them all their importance.
+
+In short, a magistrate tries to distinguish himself for promotion as
+men do in the army, or in a Government office.
+
+This prevailing thought, even if it does not affect his independence,
+is so well known and so natural, and its effects are so evident, that
+the law inevitably loses some of its majesty in the eyes of the
+public. And, in fact, the salaries paid by the State makes priests and
+magistrates mere employes. Steps to be gained foster ambition,
+ambition engenders subservience to power, and modern equality places
+the judge and the person to be judged in the same category at the bar
+of society. And so the two pillars of social order, Religion and
+Justice, are lowered in this nineteenth century, which asserts itself
+as progressive in all things.
+
+"And why should you never be promoted?" said Amelie Camusot.
+
+She looked half-jestingly at her husband, feeling the necessity of
+reviving the energies of the man who embodied her ambitions, and on
+whom she could play as on an instrument.
+
+"Why despair?" she went on, with a shrug that sufficiently expressed
+her indifference as to the prisoner's end. "This suicide will delight
+Lucien's two enemies, Madame d'Espard and her cousin, the Comtesse du
+Chatelet. Madame d'Espard is on the best terms with the Keeper of the
+Seals; through her you can get an audience of His Excellency and tell
+him all the secrets of this business. Then, if the head of the law is
+on your side, what have you to fear from the president of your Court
+or the public prosecutor?"
+
+"But, Monsieur and Madame de Serizy?" cried the poor man. "Madame de
+Serizy is gone mad, I tell you, and her madness is my doing, they
+say."
+
+"Well, if she is out of her mind, O judge devoid of judgment," said
+Madame Camusot, laughing, "she can do you no harm.--Come, tell me all
+the incidents of the day."
+
+"Bless me!" said Camusot, "just as I had cross-questioned the unhappy
+youth, and he had deposed that the self-styled Spanish priest is
+really Jacques Collin, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de
+Serizy sent me a note by a servant begging me not to examine him. It
+was all over!----"
+
+"But you must have lost your head!" said Amelie. "What was to prevent
+you, being so sure as you are of your clerk's fidelity, from calling
+Lucien back, reassuring him cleverly, and revising the examination?"
+
+"Why, you are as bad as Madame de Serizy; you laugh justice to scorn,"
+said Camusot, who was incapable of flouting his profession. "Madame de
+Serizy seized the minutes and threw them into the fire."
+
+"That is the right sort of woman! Bravo!" cried Madame Camusot.
+
+"Madame de Serizy declared she would sooner see the Palais blown up
+than leave a young man who had enjoyed the favors of the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse and her own to stand at the bar of a Criminal court by
+the side of a convict!"
+
+"But, Camusot," said Amelie, unable to suppress a superior smile,
+"your position is splendid----"
+
+"Ah! yes, splendid!"
+
+"You did your duty."
+
+"But all wrong; and in spite of the jesuitical advice of Monsieur de
+Granville, who met me on the Quai Malaquais."
+
+"This morning!"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"At what hour?"
+
+"At nine o'clock."
+
+"Oh, Camusot!" cried Amelie, clasping and wringing her hands, "and I
+am always imploring you to be constantly on the alert.--Good heavens!
+it is not a man, but a barrow-load of stones that I have to drag on!--
+Why, Camusot, your public prosecutor was waiting for you.--He must
+have given you some warning."
+
+"Yes, indeed----"
+
+"And you failed to understand him! If you are so deaf, you will indeed
+be an examining judge all your life without any knowledge whatever of
+the question.--At any rate, have sense enough to listen to me," she
+went on, silencing her husband, who was about to speak. "You think the
+matter is done for?" she asked.
+
+Camusot looked at his wife as a country bumpkin looks at a conjurer.
+
+"If the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy are compromised,
+you will find them both ready to patronize you," said Amelie. "Madame
+de Serizy will get you admission to the Keeper of the Seals, and you
+will tell him the secret history of the affair; then he will amuse the
+King with the story, for sovereigns always wish to see the wrong side
+of the tapestry and to know the real meaning of the events the public
+stare at open-mouthed. Henceforth there will be no cause to fear
+either the public prosecutor or Monsieur de Serizy."
+
+"What a treasure such a wife is!" cried the lawyer, plucking up
+courage. "After all, I have unearthed Jacques Collin; I shall send him
+to his account at the Assize Court and unmask his crimes. Such a trial
+is a triumph in the career of an examining judge!"
+
+"Camusot," Amelie began, pleased to see her husband rally from the
+moral and physical prostration into which he had been thrown by
+Lucien's suicide, "the President told you that you had blundered to
+the wrong side. Now you are blundering as much to the other--you are
+losing your way again, my dear."
+
+The magistrate stood up, looking at his wife with a stupid stare.
+
+"The King and the Keeper of the Seals will be glad, no doubt, to know
+the truth of this business, and at the same time much annoyed at
+seeing the lawyers on the Liberal side dragging important persons to
+the bar of opinion and of the Assize Court by their special pleading--
+such people as the Maufrigneuses, the Serizys, and the Grandlieus, in
+short, all who are directly or indirectly mixed up with this case."
+
+"They are all in it; I have them all!" cried Camusot.
+
+And Camusot walked up and down the room like Sganarelle on the stage
+when he is trying to get out of a scrape.
+
+"Listen, Amelie," said he, standing in front of his wife. "An incident
+recurs to my mind, a trifle in itself, but, in my position, of vital
+importance.
+
+"Realize, my dear, that this Jacques Collin is a giant of cunning, of
+dissimulation, of deceit.--He is--what shall I say?--the Cromwell of
+the hulks!--I never met such a scoundrel; he almost took me in.--But
+in examining a criminal, a little end of thread leads you to find a
+ball, is a clue to the investigation of the darkest consciences and
+obscurest facts.--When Jacques Collin saw me turning over the letters
+seized in Lucien de Rubempre's lodgings, the villain glanced at them
+with the evident intention of seeing whether some particular packet
+were among them, and he allowed himself to give a visible expression
+of satisfaction. This look, as of a thief valuing his booty, this
+movement, as of a man in danger saying to himself, 'My weapons are
+safe,' betrayed a world of things.
+
+"Only you women, besides us and our examinees, can in a single flash
+epitomize a whole scene, revealing trickery as complicated as safety-
+locks. Volumes of suspicion may thus be communicated in a second. It
+is terrifying--life or death lies in a wink.
+
+"Said I to myself, "The rascal has more letters in his hands than
+these!'--Then the other details of the case filled my mind; I
+overlooked the incident, for I thought I should have my men face to
+face, and clear up this point afterwards. But it may be considered as
+quite certain that Jacques Collin, after the fashion of such wretches,
+has hidden in some safe place the most compromising of the young
+fellow's letters, adored as he was by----"
+
+"And yet you are afraid, Camusot? Why, you will be President of the
+Supreme Court much sooner than I expected!" cried Madame Camusot, her
+face beaming. "Now, then, you must proceed so as to give satisfaction
+to everybody, for the matter is looking so serious that it might quite
+possibly be snatched from us.--Did they not take the proceedings out
+of Popinot's hands to place them in yours when Madame d'Espard tried
+to get a Commission in Lunacy to incapacitate her husband?" she added,
+in reply to her husband's gesture of astonishment. "Well, then, might
+not the public prosecutor, who takes such keen interest in the honor
+of Monsieur and Madame de Serizy, carry the case to the Upper Court
+and get a councillor in his interest to open a fresh inquiry?"
+
+"Bless me, my dear, where did you study criminal law?" cried Camusot.
+"You know everything; you can give me points."
+
+"Why, do you believe that, by to-morrow morning, Monsieur de Granville
+will not have taken fright at the possible line of defence that might
+be adopted by some liberal advocate whom Jacques Collin would manage
+to secure; for lawyers will be ready to pay him to place the case in
+their hands!--And those ladies know their danger quite as well as you
+do--not to say better; they will put themselves under the protection
+of the public prosecutor, who already sees their families unpleasantly
+close to the prisoner's bench, as a consequence of the coalition
+between this convict and Lucien de Rubempre, betrothed to Mademoiselle
+de Grandlieu--Lucien, Esther's lover, Madame de Maufrigneuse's former
+lover, Madame de Serizy's darling. So you must conduct the affair in
+such a way as to conciliate the favor of your public prosecutor, the
+gratitude of Monsieur de Serizy, and that of the Marquise d'Espard and
+the Comtesse du Chatelet, to reinforce Madame de Maufrigneuse's
+influence by that of the Grandlieus, and to gain the complimentary
+approval of your President.
+
+"I will undertake to deal with the ladies--d'Espard, de Maufrigneuse,
+and de Grandlieu.
+
+"You must go to-morrow morning to see the public prosecutor. Monsieur
+de Granville is a man who does not live with his wife; for ten years
+he had for his mistress a Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, who bore him
+illegitimate children--didn't she? Well, such a magistrate is no
+saint; he is a man like any other; he can be won over; he must give a
+hold somewhere; you must discover the weak spot and flatter him; ask
+his advice, point out the dangers of attending the case; in short, try
+to get him into the same boat, and you will be----"
+
+"I ought to kiss your footprints!" exclaimed Camusot, interrupting his
+wife, putting his arm round her, and pressing her to his heart.
+"Amelie, you have saved me!"
+
+"I brought you in tow from Alencon to Mantes, and from Mantes to the
+Metropolitan Court," replied Amelie. "Well, well, be quite easy!--I
+intend to be called Madame la Presidente within five years' time. But,
+my dear, pray always think over everything a long time before you come
+to any determination. A judge's business is not that of a fireman;
+your papers are never in a blaze, you have plenty of time to think; so
+in your place blunders are inexcusable."
+
+"The whole strength of my position lies in identifying the sham
+Spanish priest with Jacques Collin," the judge said, after a long
+pause. "When once that identity is established, even if the Bench
+should take the credit of the whole affair, that will still be an
+ascertained fact which no magistrate, judge, or councillor can get rid
+of. I shall do like the boys who tie a tin kettle to a cat's tail; the
+inquiry, whoever carries it on, will make Jacques Collin's tin kettle
+clank."
+
+"Bravo!" said Amelie.
+
+"And the public prosecutor would rather come to an understanding with
+me than with any one else, since I am the only man who can remove the
+Damocles' sword that hangs over the heart of the Faubourg Saint-
+Germain.
+
+"Only you have no idea how hard it will be to achieve that magnificent
+result. Just now, when I was with Monsieur de Granville in his private
+office, we agreed, he and I, to take Jacques Collin at his own
+valuation--a canon of the Chapter of Toledo, Carlos Herrera. We
+consented to recognize his position as a diplomatic envoy, and allow
+him to be claimed by the Spanish Embassy. It was in consequence of
+this plan that I made out the papers by which Lucien de Rubempre was
+released, and revised the minutes of the examinations, washing the
+prisoners as white as snow.
+
+"To-morrow, Rastignac, Bianchon, and some others are to be confronted
+with the self-styled Canon of Toledo; they will not recognize him as
+Jacques Collin who was arrested in their presence ten years ago in a
+cheap boarding-house, where they knew him under the name of Vautrin."
+
+There was a short silence, while Madame Camusot sat thinking.
+
+"Are you sure your man is Jacques Collin?" she asked.
+
+"Positive," said the lawyer, "and so is the public prosecutor."
+
+"Well, then, try to make some exposure at the Palais de Justice
+without showing your claws too much under your furred cat's paws. If
+your man is still in the secret cells, go straight to the Governor of
+the Conciergerie and contrive to have the convict publicly identified.
+Instead of behaving like a child, act like the ministers of police
+under despotic governments, who invent conspiracies against the
+monarch to have the credit of discovering them and making themselves
+indispensable. Put three families in danger to have the glory of
+rescuing them."
+
+"That luckily reminds me!" cried Camusot. "My brain is so bewildered
+that I had quite forgotten an important point. The instructions to
+place Jacques Collin in a private room were taken by Coquart to
+Monsieur Gault, the Governor of the prison. Now, Bibi-Lupin, Jacques
+Collin's great enemy, has taken steps to have three criminals, who
+know the man, transferred from La Force to the Conciergerie; if he
+appears in the prison-yard to-morrow, a terrific scene is
+expected----"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Jacques Collin, my dear, was treasurer of the money owned by the
+prisoners in the hulks, amounting to considerable sums; now, he is
+supposed to have spent it all to maintain the deceased Lucien in
+luxury, and he will be called to account. There will be such a battle,
+Bibi-Lupin tells me, as will require the intervention of the warders,
+and the secret will be out. Jacques Collin's life is in danger.
+
+"Now, if I get to the Palais early enough I may record the evidence of
+identity."
+
+"Oh, if only his creditors should take him off your hands! You would
+be thought such a clever fellow!--Do not go to Monsieur de Granville's
+room; wait for him in his Court with that formidable great gun. It is
+a loaded cannon turned on the three most important families of the
+Court and Peerage. Be bold: propose to Monsieur de Granville that he
+should relieve you of Jacques Collin by transferring him to La Force,
+where the convicts know how to deal with those who betray them.
+
+"I will go to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who will take me to the
+Grandlieus. Possibly I may see Monsieur de Serizy. Trust me to sound
+the alarm everywhere. Above all, send me a word we will agree upon to
+let me know if the Spanish priest is officially recognized as Jacques
+Collin. Get your business at the Palais over by two o'clock, and I
+will have arranged for you to have an interview with the Keeper of the
+Seals; perhaps I may find him with the Marquise d'Espard."
+
+Camusot stood squarely with a look of admiration that made his knowing
+wife smile.
+
+
+
+"Now, come to dinner and be cheerful," said she in conclusion. "Why,
+you see! We have been only two years in Paris, and here you are on the
+highroad to be made Councillor before the end of the year. From that
+to the Presidency of a court, my dear, there is no gulf but what some
+political service may bridge."
+
+This conjugal sitting shows how greatly the deeds and the lightest
+words of Jacques Collin, the lowest personage in this drama, involved
+the honor of the families among whom he had planted his now dead
+protege.
+
+
+
+At the Conciergerie Lucien's death and Madame de Serizy's incursion
+had produced such a block in the wheels of the machinery that the
+Governor had forgotten to remove the sham priest from his dungeon-
+cell.
+
+Though more than one instance is on record of the death of a prisoner
+during his preliminary examination, it was a sufficiently rare event
+to disturb the warders, the clerk, and the Governor, and hinder their
+working with their usual serenity. At the same time, to them the
+important fact was not the handsome young fellow so suddenly become a
+corpse, but the breakage of the wrought-iron bar of the outer prison
+gate by the frail hands of a fine lady. And indeed, as soon as the
+public prosecutor and Comte Octave de Bauvan had gone off with
+Monsieur de Serizy and his unconscious wife, the Governor, clerk, and
+turnkeys gathered round the gate, after letting out Monsieur Lebrun,
+the prison doctor, who had been called in to certify to Lucien's
+death, in concert with the "death doctor" of the district in which the
+unfortunate youth had been lodging.
+
+In Paris, the "death doctor" is the medical officer whose duty it is
+in each district to register deaths and certify to their causes.
+
+With the rapid insight for which he was known, Monsieur de Granville
+had judged it necessary, for the honor of the families concerned, to
+have the certificate of Lucien's death deposited at the Mairie of the
+district in which the Quai Malaquais lies, as the deceased had resided
+there, and to have the body carried from his lodgings to the Church of
+Saint-Germain des Pres, where the service was to be held. Monsieur de
+Chargeboeuf, Monsieur de Granville's private secretary, had orders to
+this effect. The body was to be transferred from the prison during the
+night. The secretary was desired to go at once and settle matters at
+the Mairie with the parish authorities and with the official
+undertakers. Thus, to the world in general, Lucien would have died at
+liberty in his own lodgings, the funeral would start from thence, and
+his friends would be invited there for the ceremony.
+
+So, when Camusot, his mind at ease, was sitting down to dinner with
+his ambitious better-half, the Governor of the Conciergerie and
+Monsieur Lebrun, the prison doctor, were standing outside the gate
+bewailing the fragility of iron bars and the strength of ladies in
+love.
+
+"No one knows," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "what an amount of
+nervous force there is in a man wound up to the highest pitch of
+passion. Dynamics and mathematics have no formulas or symbols to
+express that power. Why, only yesterday, I witnessed an experiment
+which gave me a shudder, and which accounts for the terrible strength
+put forth just now by that little woman."
+
+"Tell me about it," said Monsieur Gault, "for I am so foolish as to
+take an interest in magnetism; I do not believe in it, but it
+mystifies me."
+
+"A physician who magnetizes--for there are men among us who believe in
+magnetism," Lebrun went on, "offered to experiment on me in proof of a
+phenomenon that he described and I doubted. Curious to see with my own
+eyes one of the strange states of nervous tension by which the
+existence of magnetism is demonstrated, I consented.
+
+"These are the facts.--I should very much like to know what our
+College of Medicine would say if each of its members in turn were
+subjected to this influence, which leaves no loophole for incredulity.
+
+"My old friend--this doctor," said Doctor Lebrun parenthetically, "is
+an old man persecuted for his opinions since Mesmer's time by all the
+faculty; he is seventy or seventy-two years of age, and his name is
+Bouvard. At the present day he is the patriarchal representative of
+the theory of animal magnetism. This good man regards me as a son; I
+owe my training to him.--Well, this worthy old Bouvard it was who
+proposed to prove to me that nerve-force put in motion by the
+magnetizer was, not indeed infinite, for man is under immutable laws,
+but a power acting like other powers of nature whose elemental essence
+escapes our observation.
+
+" 'For instance,' said he, 'if you place your hand in that of a
+somnambulist who, when awake, can press it only up to a certain
+average of tightness, you will see that in the somnambulistic state--
+as it is stupidly termed--his fingers can clutch like a vise screwed
+up by a blacksmith.'--Well, monsieur, I placed my hand in that of a
+woman, not asleep, for Bouvard rejects the word, but isolated, and
+when the old man bid her squeeze my wrist as long and as tightly as
+she could, I begged him to stop when the blood was almost bursting
+from my finger tips. Look, you can see the marks of her clutch, which
+I shall not lose for these three months."
+
+"The deuce!" exclaimed Monsieur Gault, as he saw a band of bruised
+flesh, looking like the scar of a burn.
+
+"My dear Gault," the doctor went on, "if my wrist had been gripped in
+an iron manacle screwed tight by a locksmith, I should not have felt
+the bracelet of metal so hard as that woman's fingers; her hand was of
+unyielding steel, and I am convinced that she could have crushed my
+bones and broken my hand from the wrist. The pressure, beginning
+almost insensibly, increased without relaxing, fresh force being
+constantly added to the former grip; a tourniquet could not have been
+more effectual than that hand used as an instrument of torture.--To
+me, therefore, it seems proven that under the influence of passion,
+which is the will concentrated on one point and raised to an
+incalculable power of animal force, as the different varieties of
+electric force are also, man may direct his whole vitality, whether
+for attack or resistance, to one of his organs.--Now, this little
+lady, under the stress of her despair, had concentrated her vital
+force in her hands."
+
+"She must have a good deal too, to break a wrought-iron bar," said the
+chief warder, with a shake of the head.
+
+"There was a flaw in it," Monsieur Gault observed.
+
+"For my part," said the doctor, "I dare assign no limits to nervous
+force. And indeed it is by this that mothers, to save their children,
+can magnetize lions, climb, in a fire, along a parapet where a cat
+would not venture, and endure the torments that sometimes attend
+childbirth. In this lies the secret of the attempts made by convicts
+and prisoners to regain their liberty. The extent of our vital
+energies is as yet unknown; they are part of the energy of nature
+itself, and we draw them from unknown reservoirs."
+
+"Monsieur," said the warder in an undertone to the Governor, coming
+close to him as he was escorting Doctor Lebrun as far as the outer
+gates of the Conciergerie, "Number 2 in the secret cells says he is
+ill, and needs the doctor; he declares he is dying," added the
+turnkey.
+
+"Indeed," said the Governor.
+
+"His breath rattles in his throat," replied the man.
+
+"It is five o'clock," said the doctor; "I have had no dinner. But,
+after all, I am at hand. Come, let us see."
+
+"Number 2, as it happens, is the Spanish priest suspected of being
+Jacques Collin," said Monsieur Gault to the doctor, "and one of the
+persons suspected of the crime in which that poor young man was
+implicated."
+
+"I saw him this morning," replied the doctor. "Monsieur Camusot sent
+for me to give evidence as to the state of the rascal's health, and I
+may assure you that he is perfectly well, and could make a fortune by
+playing the part of Hercules in a troupe of athletes."
+
+"Perhaps he wants to kill himself too," said Monsieur Gault. "Let us
+both go down to the cells together, for I ought to go there if only to
+transfer him to an upper room. Monsieur Camusot has given orders to
+mitigate this anonymous gentleman's confinement."
+
+Jacques Collin, known as Trompe-la-Mort in the world of the hulks, who
+must henceforth be called only by his real name, had gone through
+terrible distress of mind since, after hearing Camusot's order, he had
+been taken back to the underground cell--an anguish such as he had
+never before known in the course of a life diversified by many crimes,
+by three escapes, and two sentences at the Assizes. And is there not
+something monstrously fine in the dog-like attachment shown to the man
+he had made his friend by this wretch in whom were concentrated all
+the life, the powers, the spirit, and the passions of the hulks, who
+was, so to speak, their highest expression?
+
+Wicked, infamous, and in so many ways horrible, this absolute worship
+of his idol makes him so truly interesting that this Study, long as it
+is already, would seem incomplete and cut short if the close of this
+criminal career did not come as a sequel to Lucien de Rubempre's end.
+The little spaniel being dead, we want to know whether his terrible
+playfellow the lion will live on.
+
+In real life, in society, every event is so inevitably linked to other
+events, that one cannot occur without the rest. The water of the great
+river forms a sort of fluid floor; not a wave, however rebellious,
+however high it may toss itself, but its powerful crest must sink to
+the level of the mass of waters, stronger by the momentum of its
+course than the revolt of the surges it bears with it.
+
+And just as you watch the current flow, seeing in it a confused sheet
+of images, so perhaps you would like to measure the pressure exerted
+by social energy on the vortex called Vautrin; to see how far away the
+rebellious eddy will be carried ere it is lost, and what the end will
+be of this really diabolical man, human still by the power of loving--
+so hardly can that heavenly grace perish, even in the most cankered
+heart.
+
+This wretched convict, embodying the poem that has smiled on many a
+poet's fancy--on Moore, on Lord Byron, on Mathurin, on Canalis--the
+demon who has drawn an angel down to hell to refresh him with dews
+stolen from heaven,--this Jacques Collin will be seen, by the reader
+who has understood that iron soul, to have sacrificed his own life for
+seven years past. His vast powers, absorbed in Lucien, acted solely
+for Lucien; he lived for his progress, his loves, his ambitions. To
+him, Lucien was his own soul made visible.
+
+It was Trompe-la-Mort who dined with the Grandlieus, stole into
+ladies' boudoirs, and loved Esther by proxy. In fact, in Lucien he saw
+Jacques Collin, young, handsome, noble, and rising to the dignity of
+an ambassador.
+
+Trompe-la-Mort had realized the German superstition of a doppelganger
+by means of a spiritual paternity, a phenomenon which will be quite
+intelligible to those women who have ever truly loved, who have felt
+their soul merge in that of the man they adore, who have lived his
+life, whether noble or infamous, happy or unhappy, obscure or
+brilliant; who, in defiance of distance, have felt a pain in their leg
+if he were wounded in his; who if he fought a duel would have been
+aware of it; and who, to put the matter in a nutshell, did not need to
+be told he was unfaithful to know it.
+
+As he went back to his cell Jacques Collin said to himself, "The boy
+is being examined."
+
+And he shivered--he who thought no more of killing a man than a
+laborer does of drinking.
+
+"Has he been able to see his mistresses?" he wondered. "Has my aunt
+succeeded in catching those damned females? Have the Duchesses and
+Countesses bestirred themselves and prevented his being examined? Has
+Lucien had my instructions? And if ill-luck will have it that he is
+cross-questioned, how will he carry it off? Poor boy, and I have
+brought him to this! It is that rascal Paccard and that sneak Europe
+who have caused all this rumpus by collaring the seven hundred and
+fifty thousand francs for the certificate Nucingen gave Esther. That
+precious pair tripped us up at the last step; but I will make them pay
+dear for their pranks.
+
+"One day more and Lucien would have been a rich man; he might have
+married his Clotilde de Grandlieu.--Then the boy would have been all
+my own!--And to think that our fate depends on a look, on a blush of
+Lucien's under Camusot's eye, who sees everything, and has all a
+judge's wits about him! For when he showed me the letters we tipped
+each other a wink in which we took each other's measure, and he
+guessed that I can make Lucien's lady-loves fork out."
+
+This soliloquy lasted for three hours. His torments were so great that
+they were too much for that frame of iron and vitriol; Jacques Collin,
+whose brain felt on fire with insanity, suffered such fearful thirst
+that he unconsciously drank up all the water contained in one of the
+pails with which the cell was supplied, forming, with the bed, all its
+furniture.
+
+"If he loses his head, what will become of him?--for the poor child
+has not Theodore's tenacity," said he to himself, as he lay down on
+the camp-bed--like a bed in a guard-room.
+
+
+
+A word must here be said about this Theodore, remembered by Jacques
+Collin at such a critical moment. Theodore Calvi, a young Corsican,
+imprisoned for life at the age of eighteen for eleven murders, thanks
+to the influential interference paid for with vast sums, had been made
+the fellow convict of Jacques Collin, to whom he was chained, in 1819
+and 1820. Jacques Collin's last escape, one of his finest inventions--
+for he had got out disguised as a gendarme leading Theodore Calvi as
+he was, a convict called before the commissary of police--had been
+effected in the seaport of Rochefort, where the convicts die by
+dozens, and where, it was hoped, these two dangerous rascals would
+have ended their days. Though they escaped together, the difficulties
+of their flight had forced them to separate. Theodore was caught and
+restored to the hulks.
+
+Indeed, a life with Lucien, a youth innocent of all crime, who had
+only minor sins on his conscience, dawned on him as bright and
+glorious as a summer sun; while with Theodore, Jacques Collin could
+look forward to no end but the scaffold after a career of
+indispensable crimes.
+
+The thought of disaster as a result of Lucien's weakness--for his
+experience of an underground cell would certainly have turned his
+brain--took vast proportions in Jacques Collin's mind; and,
+contemplating the probabilities of such a misfortune, the unhappy man
+felt his eyes fill with tears, a phenomenon that had been utterly
+unknown to him since his earliest childhood.
+
+"I must be in a furious fever," said he to himself; "and perhaps if I
+send for the doctor and offer him a handsome sum, he will put me in
+communication with Lucien."
+
+At this moment the turnkey brought in his dinner.
+
+"It is quite useless my boy; I cannot eat. Tell the governor of this
+prison to send the doctor to see me. I am very bad, and I believe my
+last hour has come."
+
+Hearing the guttural rattle that accompanied these words, the warder
+bowed and went. Jacques Collin clung wildly to this hope; but when he
+saw the doctor and the governor come in together, he perceived that
+the attempt was abortive, and coolly awaited the upshot of the visit,
+holding out his wrist for the doctor to feel his pulse.
+
+"The Abbe is feverish," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "but it is
+the type of fever we always find in inculpated prisoners--and to me,"
+he added, in the governor's ear, "it is always a sign of some degree
+of guilt."
+
+Just then the governor, to whom the public prosecutor had intrusted
+Lucien's letter to be given to Jacques Collin, left the doctor and the
+prisoner together under the guard of the warder, and went to fetch the
+letter.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, seeing the warder outside the door,
+and not understanding why the governor had left them, "I should think
+nothing of thirty thousand francs if I might send five lines to Lucien
+de Rubempre."
+
+"I will not rob you of your money," said Doctor Lebrun; "no one in
+this world can ever communicate with him again----"
+
+"No one?" said the prisoner in amazement. "Why?"
+
+"He has hanged himself----"
+
+No tigress robbed of her whelps ever startled an Indian jungle with a
+yell so fearful as that of Jacques Collin, who rose to his feet as a
+tiger rears to spring, and fired a glance at the doctor as scorching
+as the flash of a falling thunderbolt. Then he fell back on the bed,
+exclaiming:
+
+"Oh, my son!"
+
+"Poor man!" said the doctor, moved by this terrific convulsion of
+nature.
+
+In fact, the first explosion gave way to such utter collapse, that the
+words, "Oh, my son," were but a murmur.
+
+"Is this one going to die in our hands too?" said the turnkey.
+
+"No; it is impossible!" Jacques Collin went on, raising himself and
+looking at the two witnesses of the scene with a dead, cold eye. "You
+are mistaken; it is not Lucien; you did not see. A man cannot hang
+himself in one of these cells. Look--how could I hang myself here? All
+Paris shall answer to me for that boy's life! God owes it to me."
+
+The warder and the doctor were amazed in their turn--they, whom
+nothing had astonished for many a long day.
+
+On seeing the governor, Jacques Collin, crushed by the very violence
+of this outburst of grief, seemed somewhat calmer.
+
+"Here is a letter which the public prosecutor placed in my hands for
+you, with permission to give it to you sealed," said Monsieur Gault.
+
+"From Lucien?" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"Yes, monsieur."
+
+"Is not that young man----"
+
+"He is dead," said the governor. "Even if the doctor had been on the
+spot, he would, unfortunately, have been too late. The young man died
+--there--in one of the rooms----"
+
+"May I see him with my own eyes?" asked Jacques Collin timidly. "Will
+you allow a father to weep over the body of his son?"
+
+"You can, if you like, take his room, for I have orders to remove you
+from these cells; you are no longer in such close confinement,
+monsieur."
+
+The prisoner's eyes, from which all light and warmth had fled, turned
+slowly from the governor to the doctor; Jacques Collin was examining
+them, fearing some trap, and he was afraid to go out of the cell.
+
+"If you wish to see the body," said Lebrun, "you have no time to lose;
+it is to be carried away to-night."
+
+"If you have children, gentlemen," said Jacques Collin, "you will
+understand my state of mind; I hardly know what I am doing. This blow
+is worse to me than death; but you cannot know what I am saying. Even
+if you are fathers, it is only after a fashion--I am a mother too--I--
+I am going mad--I feel it!"
+
+By going through certain passages which open only to the governor, it
+is possible to get very quickly from the cells to the private rooms.
+The two sets of rooms are divided by an underground corridor formed of
+two massive walls supporting the vault over which Galerie Marchande,
+as it is called, is built. So Jacques Collin, escorted by the warder,
+who took his arm, preceded by the governor, and followed by the
+doctor, in a few minutes reached the cell where Lucien was lying
+stretched on the bed.
+
+On seeing the body, he threw himself upon it, seizing it in a
+desperate embrace with a passion and impulse that made these
+spectators shudder.
+
+"There," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "that is an instance of
+what I was telling you. You see that man clutching the body, and you
+do not know what a corpse is; it is stone----"
+
+"Leave me alone!" said Jacques Collin in a smothered voice; "I have
+not long to look at him. They will take him away to----"
+
+He paused at the word "bury him."
+
+"You will allow me to have some relic of my dear boy! Will you be so
+kind as to cut off a lock of his hair for me, monsieur," he said to
+the doctor, "for I cannot----"
+
+"He was certainly his son," said Lebrun.
+
+"Do you think so?" replied the governor in a meaning tone, which made
+the doctor thoughtful for a few minutes.
+
+The governor gave orders that the prisoner should be left in this
+cell, and that some locks of hair should be cut for the self-styled
+father before the body should be removed.
+
+At half-past five in the month of May it is easy to read a letter in
+the Conciergerie in spite of the iron bars and the close wire trellis
+that guard the windows. So Jacques Collin read the dreadful letter
+while he still held Lucien's hand.
+
+The man is not known who can hold a lump of ice for ten minutes
+tightly clutched in the hollow of his hand. The cold penetrates to the
+very life-springs with mortal rapidity. But the effect of that cruel
+chill, acting like a poison, is as nothing to that which strikes to
+the soul from the cold, rigid hand of the dead thus held. Thus Death
+speaks to Life; it tells many dark secrets which kill many feelings;
+for in matters of feeling is not change death?
+
+As we read through once more, with Jacques Collin, Lucien's last
+letter, it will strike us as being what it was to this man--a cup of
+poison:--
+
+  "TO THE ABBE CARLOS HERRERA.
+
+  "MY DEAR ABBE,--I have had only benefits from you, and I have
+  betrayed you. This involuntary ingratitude is killing me, and when
+  you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist. You are not
+  here now to save me.
+
+  "You had given me full liberty, if I should find it advantageous,
+  to destroy you by flinging you on the ground like a cigar-end; but
+  I have ruined you by a blunder. To escape from a difficulty,
+  deluded by a clever question from the examining judge, your son by
+  adoption and grace went over to the side of those who aim at
+  killing you at any cost, and insist on proving an identity, which
+  I know to be impossible, between you and a French villain. All is
+  said.
+
+  "Between a man of your calibre and me--me of whom you tried to
+  make a greater man than I am capable of being--no foolish
+  sentiment can come at the moment of final parting. You hoped to
+  make me powerful and famous, and you have thrown me into the gulf
+  of suicide, that is all. I have long heard the broad pinions of
+  that vertigo beating over my head.
+
+  "As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain and
+  the posterity of Abel. In the great human drama Cain is in
+  opposition. You are descended from Adam through that line, in
+  which the devil still fans the fire of which the first spark was
+  flung on Eve. Among the demons of that pedigree, from time to time
+  we see one of stupendous power, summing up every form of human
+  energy, and resembling the fevered beasts of the desert, whose
+  vitality demands the vast spaces they find there. Such men are as
+  dangerous as lions would be in the heart of Normandy; they must
+  have their prey, and they devour common men and crop the money of
+  fools. Their sport is so dangerous that at last they kill the
+  humble dog whom they have taken for a companion and made an idol
+  of.
+
+  "When it is God's will, these mysterious beings may be a Moses, an
+  Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but when He leaves a
+  generation of these stupendous tools to rust at the bottom of the
+  ocean, they are no more than a Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or
+  the Abbe Carlos Herrera. Gifted with immense power over tenderer
+  souls, they entrap them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine--
+  in its way. It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that
+  fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men
+  like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them. You
+  have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my share of
+  existence; so I may very well take my head out of the Gordian knot
+  of your policy and slip it into the running knot of my cravat.
+
+  "To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to the public
+  prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You will know how to
+  take advantage of this document.
+
+  "In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made,
+  Monsieur l'Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you
+  so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal
+  affection for me.
+
+  "And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
+  Corruption; farewell--to you who, if started on the right road,
+  might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You
+  have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on
+  the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the
+  enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the
+  waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy;
+  but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.
+
+  "Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as my
+  admiration.
+
+"LUCIEN."
+
+
+A little before one in the morning, when the men came to fetch away
+the body, they found Jacques Collin kneeling by the bed, the letter on
+the floor, dropped, no doubt, as a suicide drops the pistol that has
+shot him; but the unhappy man still held Lucien's hand between his
+own, and was praying to God.
+
+On seeing this man, the porters paused for a moment, for he looked
+like one of those stone images, kneeling to all eternity on a
+mediaeval tomb, the work of some stone-carver's genius. The sham
+priest, with eyes as bright as a tiger's, but stiffened into
+supernatural rigidity, so impressed the men that they gently bid him
+rise.
+
+"Why?" he asked mildly. The audacious Trompe-la-Mort was as meek as a
+child.
+
+The governor pointed him out to Monsieur de Chargeboeuf; and he,
+respecting such grief, and believing that Jacques Collin was indeed
+the priest he called himself, explained the orders given by Monsieur
+de Granville with regard to the funeral service and arrangements,
+showing that it was absolutely necessary that the body should be
+transferred to Lucien's lodgings, Quai Malaquais, where the priests
+were waiting to watch by it for the rest of the night.
+
+"It is worthy of that gentleman's well-known magnanimity," said
+Jacques Collin sadly. "Tell him, monsieur, that he may rely on my
+gratitude. Yes, I am in a position to do him great service. Do not
+forget these words; they are of the utmost importance to him.
+
+"Oh, monsieur! strange changes come over a man's spirit when for seven
+hours he has wept over such a son as he---- And I shall see him no
+more!"
+
+After gazing once more at Lucien with an expression of a mother bereft
+of her child's remains, Jacques Collin sank in a heap. As he saw
+Lucien's body carried away, he uttered a groan that made the men hurry
+off. The public prosecutor's private secretary and the governor of the
+prison had already made their escape from the scene.
+
+What had become of that iron spirit; of the decision which was a match
+in swiftness for the eye; of the nature in which thought and action
+flashed forth together like one flame; of the sinews hardened by three
+spells of labor on the hulks, and by three escapes, the muscles which
+had acquired the metallic temper of a savage's limbs? Iron will yield
+to a certain amount of hammering or persistent pressure; its
+impenetrable molecules, purified and made homogeneous by man, may
+become disintegrated, and without being in a state of fusion the metal
+had lost its power of resistance. Blacksmiths, locksmiths, tool-makers
+sometimes express this state by saying the iron is retting,
+appropriating a word applied exclusively to hemp, which is reduced to
+pulp and fibre by maceration. Well, the human soul, or, if you will,
+the threefold powers of body, heart, and intellect, under certain
+repeated shocks, get into such a condition as fibrous iron. They too
+are disintegrated. Science and law and the public seek a thousand
+causes for the terrible catastrophes on railways caused by the rupture
+of an iron rail, that of Bellevue being a famous instance; but no one
+has asked the evidence of real experts in such matters, the
+blacksmiths, who all say the same thing, "The iron was stringy!" The
+danger cannot be foreseen. Metal that has gone soft, and metal that
+has preserved its tenacity, both look exactly alike.
+
+Priests and examining judges often find great criminals in this state.
+The awful experiences of the Assize Court and the "last toilet"
+commonly produce this dissolution of the nervous system, even in the
+strongest natures. Then confessions are blurted by the most firmly set
+lips; then the toughest hearts break; and, strange to say, always at
+the moment when these confessions are useless, when this weakness as
+of death snatches from the man the mask of innocence which made
+Justice uneasy--for it always is uneasy when the criminal dies without
+confessing his crime.
+
+Napoleon went through this collapse of every human power on the field
+of Waterloo.
+
+At eight in the morning, when the warder of the better cells entered
+the room where Jacques Collin was confined, he found him pale and
+calm, like a man who has collected all his strength by sheer
+determination.
+
+"It is the hour for airing in the prison-yard," said the turnkey; "you
+have not been out for three days; if you choose to take air and
+exercise, you may."
+
+Jacques Collin, lost in his absorbing thoughts, and taking no interest
+in himself, regarding himself as a garment with no body in it, a
+perfect rag, never suspected the trap laid for him by Bibi-Lupin, nor
+the importance attaching to his walk in the prison-yard.
+
+The unhappy man went out mechanically, along the corridor, by the
+cells built into the magnificent cloisters of the Palace of the Kings,
+over which is the corridor Saint-Louis, as it is called, leading to
+the various purlieus of the Court of Appeals. This passage joins that
+of the better cells; and it is worth noting that the cell in which
+Louvel was imprisoned, one of the most famous of the regicides, is the
+room at the right angle formed by the junction of the two corridors.
+Under the pretty room in the Tour Bonbec there is a spiral staircase
+leading from the dark passage, and serving the prisoners who are
+lodged in these cells to go up and down on their way from or to the
+yard.
+
+Every prisoner, whether committed for trial or already sentenced, and
+the prisoners under suspicion who have been reprieved from the closest
+cells--in short, every one in confinement in the Conciergerie takes
+exercise in this narrow paved courtyard for some hours every day,
+especially the early hours of summer mornings. This recreation ground,
+the ante-room to the scaffold or the hulks on one side, on the other
+still clings to the world through the gendarme, the examining judge,
+and the Assize Court. It strikes a greater chill perhaps than even the
+scaffold. The scaffold may be a pedestal to soar to heaven from; but
+the prison-yard is every infamy on earth concentrated and unavoidable.
+
+Whether at La Force or at Poissy, at Melun or at Sainte-Pelagie, a
+prison-yard is a prison-yard. The same details are exactly repeated,
+all but the color of the walls, their height, and the space enclosed.
+So this Study of Manners would be false to its name if it did not
+include an exact description of this Pandemonium of Paris.
+
+Under the mighty vaulting which supports the lower courts and the
+Court of Appeals there is, close to the fourth arch, a stone slab,
+used by Saint-Louis, it is said, for the distribution of alms, and
+doing duty in our day as a counter for the sale of eatables to the
+prisoners. So as soon as the prison-yard is open to the prisoners,
+they gather round this stone table, which displays such dainties as
+jail-birds desire--brandy, rum, and the like.
+
+The first two archways on that side of the yard, facing the fine
+Byzantine corridor--the only vestige now of Saint-Louis' elegant
+palace--form a parlor, where the prisoners and their counsel may meet,
+to which the prisoners have access through a formidable gateway--a
+double passage, railed off by enormous bars, within the width of the
+third archway. This double way is like the temporary passages arranged
+at the door of a theatre to keep a line on occasions when a great
+success brings a crowd. This parlor, at the very end of the vast
+entrance-hall of the Conciergerie, and lighted by loop-holes on the
+yard side, has lately been opened out towards the back, and the
+opening filled with glass, so that the interviews of the lawyers with
+their clients are under supervision. This innovation was made
+necessary by the too great fascinations brought to bear by pretty
+women on their counsel. Where will morality stop short? Such
+precautions are like the ready-made sets of questions for self-
+examination, where pure imaginations are defiled by meditating on
+unknown and monstrous depravity. In this parlor, too, parents and
+friends may be allowed by the authorities to meet the prisoners,
+whether on remand or awaiting their sentence.
+
+The reader may now understand what the prison-yard is to the two
+hundred prisoners in the Conciergerie: their garden--a garden without
+trees, beds, or flowers--in short, a prison-yard. The parlor, and the
+stone of Saint-Louis, where such food and liquor as are allowed are
+dispensed, are the only possible means of communication with the outer
+world.
+
+The hour spent in the yard is the only time when the prisoner is in
+the open air or the society of his kind; in other prisons those who
+are sentenced for a term are brought together in workshops; but in the
+Conciergerie no occupation is allowed, excepting in the privileged
+cells. There the absorbing idea in every mind is the drama of the
+Assize Court, since the culprit comes only to be examined or to be
+sentenced.
+
+This yard is indeed terrible to behold; it cannot be imagined, it must
+be seen.
+
+In the first place, the assemblage, in a space forty metres long by
+thirty wide, of a hundred condemned or suspected criminals, does not
+constitute the cream of society. These creatures, belonging for the
+most part to the lowest ranks, are poorly clad; their countenances are
+base or horrible, for a criminal from the upper sphere of society is
+happily, a rare exception. Peculation, forgery, or fraudulent
+bankruptcy, the only crimes that can bring decent folks so low, enjoy
+the privilege of the better cells, and then the prisoner scarcely ever
+quits it.
+
+This promenade, bounded by fine but formidable blackened walls, by a
+cloister divided up into cells, by fortifications on the side towards
+the quay, by the barred cells of the better class on the north,
+watched by vigilant warders, and filled with a herd of criminals, all
+meanly suspicious of each other, is depressing enough in itself; and
+it becomes terrifying when you find yourself the centre of all those
+eyes full of hatred, curiosity, and despair, face to face with that
+degraded crew. Not a gleam of gladness! all is gloom--the place and
+the men. All is speechless--the walls and men's consciences. To these
+hapless creatures danger lies everywhere; excepting in the case of an
+alliance as ominous as the prison where it was formed, they dare not
+trust each other.
+
+The police, all-pervading, poisons the atmosphere and taints
+everything, even the hand-grasp of two criminals who have been
+intimate. A convict who meets his most familiar comrade does not know
+that he may not have repented and have made a confession to save his
+life. This absence of confidence, this dread of the nark, marks the
+liberty, already so illusory, of the prison-yard. The "nark" (in
+French, le Mouton or le coqueur) is a spy who affects to be sentenced
+for some serious offence, and whose skill consists in pretending to be
+a chum. The "chum," in thieves' slang, is a skilled thief, a
+professional who has cut himself adrift from society, and means to
+remain a thief all his days, and continues faithful through thick and
+thin to the laws of the swell-mob.
+
+Crime and madness have a certain resemblance. To see the prisoners of
+the Conciergerie in the yard, or the madmen in the garden of an
+asylum, is much the same thing. Prisoners and lunatics walk to and
+fro, avoiding each other, looking up with more or less strange or
+vicious glances, according to the mood of the moment, but never
+cheerful, never grave; they know each other, or they dread each other.
+The anticipation of their sentence, remorse, and apprehension give all
+these men exercising, the anxious, furtive look of the insane. Only
+the most consummate criminals have the audacity that apes the quietude
+of respectability, the sincerity of a clear conscience.
+
+As men of the better class are few, and shame keeps the few whose
+crimes have brought them within doors, the frequenters of the prison-
+yard are for the most part dressed as workmen. Blouses, long and
+short, and velveteen jackets preponderate. These coarse or dirty
+garments, harmonizing with the coarse and sinister faces and brutal
+manner--somewhat subdued, indeed, by the gloomy reflections that weigh
+on men in prison--everything, to the silence that reigns, contributes
+to strike terror or disgust into the rare visitor who, by high
+influence, has obtained the privilege, seldom granted, of going over
+the Conciergerie.
+
+Just as the sight of an anatomical museum, where foul diseases are
+represented by wax models, makes the youth who may be taken there more
+chaste and apt for nobler and purer love, so the sight of the
+Conciergerie and of the prison-yard, filled with men marked for the
+hulks or the scaffold or some disgraceful punishment, inspires many,
+who might not fear that Divine Justice whose voice speaks so loudly to
+the conscience, with a fear of human justice; and they come out honest
+men for a long time after.
+
+
+
+As the men who were exercising in the prison-yard, when Trompe-la-Mort
+appeared there, were to be the actors in a scene of crowning
+importance in the life of Jacques Collin, it will be well to depict a
+few of the principal personages of this sinister crowd.
+
+Here, as everywhere when men are thrown together, here, as at school
+even, force, physical and moral, wins the day. Here, then, as on the
+hulks, crime stamps the man's rank. Those whose head is doomed are the
+aristocracy. The prison-yard, as may be supposed, is a school of
+criminal law, which is far better learned there than at the Hall on
+the Place du Pantheon.
+
+A never-failing pleasantry is to rehearse the drama of the Assize
+Court; to elect a president, a jury, a public prosecutor, a counsel,
+and to go through the whole trial. This hideous farce is played before
+almost every great trial. At this time a famous case was proceeding in
+the Criminal Court, that of the dreadful murder committed on the
+persons of Monsieur and Madame Crottat, the notary's father and
+mother, retired farmers who, as this horrible business showed, kept
+eight hundred thousand francs in gold in their house.
+
+One of the men concerned in this double murder was the notorious
+Dannepont, known as la Pouraille, a released convict, who for five
+years had eluded the most active search on the part of the police,
+under the protection of seven or eight different names. This villain's
+disguises were so perfect, that he had served two years of
+imprisonment under the name of Delsouq, who was one of his own
+disciples, and a famous thief, though he never, in any of his
+achievements, went beyond the jurisdiction of the lower Courts. La
+Pouraille had committed no less than three murders since his dismissal
+from the hulks. The certainty that he would be executed, not less than
+the large fortune he was supposed to have, made this man an object of
+terror and admiration to his fellow-prisoners; for not a farthing of
+the stolen money had ever been recovered. Even after the events of
+July 1830, some persons may remember the terror caused in Paris by
+this daring crime, worthy to compare in importance with the robbery of
+medals from the Public Library; for the unhappy tendency of our age is
+to make a murder the more interesting in proportion to the greater sum
+of money secured by it.
+
+La Pouraille, a small, lean, dry man, with a face like a ferret,
+forty-five years old, and one of the celebrities of the prisons he had
+successively lived in since the age of nineteen, knew Jacques Collin
+well, how and why will be seen.
+
+Two other convicts, brought with la Pouraille from La Force within
+these twenty-four hours, had at once acknowledged and made the whole
+prison-yard acknowledge the supremacy of this past-master sealed to
+the scaffold. One of these convicts, a ticket-of-leave man, named
+Selerier, alias l'Avuergnat, Pere Ralleau, and le Rouleur, who in the
+sphere known to the hulks as the swell-mob was called Fil-de-Soie (or
+silken thread)--a nickname he owed to the skill with which he slipped
+through the various perils of the business--was an old ally of Jacques
+Collin's.
+
+Trompe-la-Mort so keenly suspected Fil-de-Soie of playing a double
+part, of being at once in the secrets of the swell-mob and a spy laid
+by the police, that he had supposed him to be the prime mover of his
+arrest in the Maison Vauquer in 1819 (Le Pere Goriot). Selerier, whom
+we must call Fil-de-Soie, as we shall also call Dannepont la
+Pouraille, already guilty of evading surveillance, was concerned in
+certain well-known robberies without bloodshed, which would certainly
+take him back to the hulks for at least twenty years.
+
+The other convict, named Riganson, and his kept woman, known as la
+Biffe, were a most formidable couple, members of the swell-mob.
+Riganson, on very distant terms with the police from his earliest
+years, was nicknamed le Biffon. Biffon was the male of la Biffe--for
+nothing is sacred to the swell-mob. These fiends respect nothing,
+neither the law nor religions, not even natural history, whose solemn
+nomenclature, it is seen, is parodied by them.
+
+Here a digression is necessary; for Jacques Collin's appearance in the
+prison-yard in the midst of his foes, as had been so cleverly
+contrived by Bibi-Lupin and the examining judge, and the strange
+scenes to ensue, would be incomprehensible and impossible without some
+explanation as to the world of thieves and of the hulks, its laws, its
+manners, and above all, its language, its hideous figures of speech
+being indispensable in this portion of my tale.
+
+So, first of all, a few words must be said as to the vocabulary of
+sharpers, pickpockets, thieves, and murderers, known as Argot, or
+thieves' cant, which has of late been introduced into literature with
+so much success that more than one word of that strange lingo is
+familiar on the rosy lips of ladies, has been heard in gilded
+boudoirs, and become the delight of princes, who have often proclaimed
+themselves "done brown" (floue)! And it must be owned, to the surprise
+no doubt of many persons, that no language is more vigorous or more
+vivid than that of this underground world which, from the beginnings
+of countries with capitals, has dwelt in cellars and slums, in the
+third limbo of society everywhere (le troisieme dessous, as the
+expressive and vivid slang of the theatres has it). For is not the
+world a stage? Le troisieme dessous is the lowest cellar under the
+stage at the Opera where the machinery is kept and men stay who work
+it, whence the footlights are raised, the ghosts, the blue-devils shot
+up from hell, and so forth.
+
+Every word of this language is a bold metaphor, ingenious or horrible.
+A man's breeches are his kicks or trucks (montante, a word that need
+not be explained). In this language you do not sleep, you snooze, or
+doze (pioncer--and note how vigorously expressive the word is of the
+sleep of the hunted, weary, distrustful animal called a thief, which
+as soon as it is in safety drops--rolls--into the gulf of deep slumber
+so necessary under the mighty wings of suspicion always hovering over
+it; a fearful sleep, like that of a wild beast that can sleep, nay,
+and snore, and yet its ears are alert with caution).
+
+In this idiom everything is savage. The syllables which begin or end
+the words are harsh and curiously startling. A woman is a trip or a
+moll (une largue). And it is poetical too: straw is la plume de
+Beauce, a farmyard feather bed. The word midnight is paraphrased by
+twelve leads striking--it makes one shiver! Rincer une cambriole is to
+"screw the shop," to rifle a room. What a feeble expression is to go
+to bed in comparison with "to doss" (piausser, make a new skin). What
+picturesque imagery! Work your dominoes (jouer des dominos) is to eat;
+how can men eat with the police at their heels?
+
+And this language is always growing; it keeps pace with civilization,
+and is enriched with some new expression by every fresh invention. The
+potato, discovered and introduced by Louis XVI. and Parmentier, was at
+once dubbed in French slang as the pig's orange (Orange a Cochons)[the
+Irish have called them bog oranges]. Banknotes are invented; the "mob"
+at once call them Flimsies (fafiots garotes, from "Garot," the name of
+the cashier whose signature they bear). Flimsy! (fafiot.) Cannot you
+hear the rustle of the thin paper? The thousand franc-note is male
+flimsy (in French), the five hundred franc-note is the female; and
+convicts will, you may be sure, find some whimsical name for the
+hundred and two hundred franc-notes.
+
+In 1790 Guillotin invented, with humane intent, the expeditious
+machine which solved all the difficulties involved in the problem of
+capital punishment. Convicts and prisoners from the hulks forthwith
+investigated this contrivance, standing as it did on the monarchical
+borderland of the old system and the frontier of modern legislation;
+they instantly gave it the name of l'Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret. They
+looked at the angle formed by the steel blade, and described its
+action as repeating (faucher); and when it is remembered that the
+hulks are called the meadow (le pre), philologists must admire the
+inventiveness of these horrible vocables, as Charles Nodier would have
+said.
+
+The high antiquity of this kind of slang is also noteworthy. A tenth
+of the words are of old Romanesque origin, another tenth are the old
+Gaulish French of Rabelais. Effondrer, to thrash a man, to give him
+what for; otolondrer, to annoy or to "spur" him; cambrioler, doing
+anything in a room; aubert, money; Gironde, a beauty (the name of a
+river of Languedoc); fouillousse, a pocket--a "cly"--are all French of
+the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The word affe, meaning life,
+is of the highest antiquity. From affe anything that disturbs life is
+called affres (a rowing or scolding), hence affreux, anything that
+troubles life.
+
+About a hundred words are derived from the language of Panurge, a name
+symbolizing the people, for it is derived from two Greek words
+signifying All-working.
+
+Science is changing the face of the world by constructing railroads.
+In Argot the train is le roulant Vif, the Rattler.
+
+The name given to the head while still on the shoulders--la Sorbonne--
+shows the antiquity of this dialect which is mentioned by very early
+romance-writers, as Cervantes, the Italian story-tellers, and Aretino.
+In all ages the moll, the prostitute, the heroine of so many old-world
+romances, has been the protectress, companion, and comfort of the
+sharper, the thief, the pickpocket, the area-sneak, and the burglar.
+
+Prostitution and robbery are the male and female forms of protest made
+by the natural state against the social state. Even philosophers, the
+innovators of to-day, the humanitarians with the communists and
+Fourierists in their train, come at last, without knowing it, to the
+same conclusion--prostitution and theft. The thief does not argue out
+questions of property, of inheritance, and social responsibility, in
+sophistical books; he absolutely ignores them. To him theft is
+appropriating his own. He does not discuss marriage; he does not
+complain of it; he does not insist, in printed Utopian dreams, on the
+mutual consent and bond of souls which can never become general; he
+pairs with a vehemence of which the bonds are constantly riveted by
+the hammer of necessity. Modern innovators write unctuous theories,
+long drawn, and nebulous or philanthropical romances; but the thief
+acts. He is as clear as a fact, as logical as a blow; and then his
+style!
+
+Another thing worth noting: the world of prostitutes, thieves, and
+murders of the galleys and the prisons forms a population of about
+sixty to eighty thousand souls, men and women. Such a world is not to
+be disdained in a picture of modern manners and a literary
+reproduction of the social body. The law, the gendarmerie, and the
+police constitute a body almost equal in number; is not that strange?
+This antagonism of persons perpetually seeking and avoiding each
+other, and fighting a vast and highly dramatic duel, are what are
+sketched in this Study. It has been the same thing with thieving and
+public harlotry as with the stage, the police, the priesthood, and the
+gendarmerie. In these six walks of life the individual contracts an
+indelible character. He can no longer be himself. The stigmata of
+ordination are as immutable as those of the soldier are. And it is the
+same in other callings which are strongly in opposition, strong
+contrasts with civilization. These violent, eccentric, singular signs
+--sui generis--are what make the harlot, the robber, the murderer, the
+ticket-of-leave man, so easily recognizable by their foes, the spy and
+the police, to whom they are as game to the sportsman: they have a
+gait, a manner, a complexion, a look, a color, a smell--in short,
+infallible marks about them. Hence the highly-developed art of
+disguise which the heroes of the hulks acquire.
+
+One word yet as to the constitution of this world apart, which the
+abolition of branding, the mitigation of penalties, and the silly
+leniency of furies are making a threatening evil. In about twenty
+years Paris will be beleaguered by an army of forty thousand reprieved
+criminals; the department of the Seine and its fifteen hundred
+thousand inhabitants being the only place in France where these poor
+wretches can be hidden. To them Paris is what the virgin forest is to
+beasts of prey.
+
+The swell-mob, or more exactly, the upper class of thieves, which is
+the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the aristocracy of the tribe, had, in
+1816, after the peace which made life hard for so many men, formed an
+association called les grands fanandels--the Great Pals--consisting of
+the most noted master-thieves and certain bold spirits at that time
+bereft of any means of living. This word pal means brother, friend,
+and comrade all in one. And these "Great Pals," the cream of the
+thieving fraternity, for more than twenty years were the Court of
+Appeal, the Institute of Learning, and the Chamber of Peers of this
+community. These men all had their private means, with funds in
+common, and a code of their own. They knew each other, and were
+pledged to help and succor each other in difficulties. And they were
+all superior to the tricks or snares of the police, had a charter of
+their own, passwords and signs of recognition.
+
+From 1815 to 1819 these dukes and peers of the prison world had formed
+the famous association of the Ten-thousand (see le Pere Goriot), so
+styled by reason of an agreement in virtue of which no job was to be
+undertaken by which less than ten thousand francs could be got.
+
+At that very time, in 1829-30, some memoirs were brought out in which
+the collective force of this association and the names of the leaders
+were published by a famous member of the police-force. It was
+terrifying to find there an army of skilled rogues, male and female;
+so numerous, so clever, so constantly lucky, that such thieves as
+Pastourel, Collonge, or Chimaux, men of fifty and sixty, were
+described as outlaws from society from their earliest years! What a
+confession of the ineptitude of justice that rogues so old should be
+at large!
+
+Jacques Collin had been the cashier, not only of the "Ten-thousand,"
+but also of the "Great Pals," the heroes of the hulks. Competent
+authorities admit that the hulks have always owned large sums. This
+curious fact is quite conceivable. Stolen goods are never recovered
+but in very singular cases. The condemned criminal, who can take
+nothing with him, is obliged to trust somebody's honesty and capacity,
+and to deposit his money; as in the world of honest folks, money is
+placed in a bank.
+
+Long ago Bibi-Lupin, now for ten years a chief of the department of
+Public Safety, had been a member of the aristocracy of "Pals." His
+treason had resulted from offended pride; he had been constantly set
+aside in favor of Trompe-la-Mort's superior intelligence and
+prodigious strength. Hence his persistent vindictiveness against
+Jacques Collin. Hence, also, certain compromises between Bibi-Lupin
+and his old companions, which the magistrates were beginning to take
+seriously.
+
+So in his desire for vengeance, to which the examining judge had given
+play under the necessity of identifying Jacques Collin, the chief of
+the "Safety" had very skilfully chosen his allies by setting la
+Pouraille, Fil-de-Soie, and le Biffon on the sham Spaniard--for la
+Pouraille and Fil-de-Soie both belonged to the "Ten-thousand," and le
+Biffon was a "Great Pal."
+
+La Biffe, le Biffon's formidable trip, who to this day evades all the
+pursuit of the police by her skill in disguising herself as a lady,
+was at liberty. This woman, who successfully apes a marquise, a
+countess, a baroness, keeps a carriage and men-servants. This Jacques
+Collin in petticoats is the only woman who can compare with Asie,
+Jacques Collin's right hand. And, in fact, every hero of the hulks is
+backed up by a devoted woman. Prison records and the secret papers of
+the law courts will tell you this; no honest woman's love, not even
+that of the bigot for her spiritual director, has ever been greater
+than the attachment of a mistress who shares the dangers of a great
+criminal.
+
+With these men a passion is almost always the first cause of their
+daring enterprises and murders. The excessive love which--
+constitutionally, as the doctors say--makes woman irresistible to
+them, calls every moral and physical force of these powerful natures
+into action. Hence the idleness which consumes their days, for
+excesses of passion necessitate sleep and restorative food. Hence
+their loathing of all work, driving these creatures to have recourse
+to rapid ways of getting money. And yet, the need of a living, and of
+high living, violent as it is, is but a trifle in comparison with the
+extravagance to which these generous Medors are prompted by the
+mistress to whom they want to give jewels and dress, and who--always
+greedy--love rich food. The baggage wants a shawl, the lover steals
+it, and the woman sees in this a proof of love.
+
+This is how robbery begins; and robbery, if we examine the human soul
+through a lens, will be seen to be an almost natural instinct in man.
+
+Robbery leads to murder, and murder leads the lover step by step to
+the scaffold.
+
+Ill-regulated physical desire is therefore, in these men, if we may
+believe the medical faculty, at the root of seven-tenths of the crimes
+committed. And, indeed, the proof is always found, evident, palpable
+at the post-mortem examination of the criminal after his execution.
+And these monstrous lovers, the scarecrows of society, are adored by
+their mistresses. It is this female devotion, squatting faithfully at
+the prison gate, always eagerly balking the cunning of the examiner,
+and incorruptibly keeping the darkest secrets which make so many
+trials impenetrable mysteries.
+
+In this, again, lies the strength as well as the weakness of the
+accused. In the vocabulary of a prostitute, to be honest means to
+break none of the laws of this attachment, to give all her money to
+the man who is nabbed, to look after his comforts, to be faithful to
+him in every way, to undertake anything for his sake. The bitterest
+insult one of these women can fling in the teeth of another wretched
+creature is to accuse her of infidelity to a lover in quod (in
+prison). In that case such a woman is considered to have no heart.
+
+La Pouraille was passionately in love with a woman, as will be seen.
+
+Fil-de-Soie, an egotistical philosopher, who thieved to provide for
+the future, was a good deal like Paccard, Jacques Collin's satellite,
+who had fled with Prudence Servien and the seven hundred and fifty
+thousand francs between them. He had no attachment, he condemned
+women, and loved no one but Fil-de-Soie.
+
+As to le Biffon, he derived his nickname from his connection with la
+Biffe. (La Biffe is scavenging, rag-picking.) And these three
+distinguished members of la haute pegre, the aristocracy of roguery,
+had a reckoning to demand of Jacques Collin, accounts that were
+somewhat hard to bring to book.
+
+No one but the cashier could know how many of his clients were still
+alive, and what each man's share would be. The mortality to which the
+depositors were peculiarly liable had formed a basis for Trompe-la-
+Mort's calculations when he resolved to embezzle the funds for
+Lucien's benefit. By keeping himself out of the way of the police and
+of his pals for nine years, Jacques Collin was almost certain to have
+fallen heir, by the terms of the agreement among the associates, to
+two-thirds of the depositors. Besides, could he not plead that he had
+repaid the pals who had been scragged? In fact, no one had any hold
+over these Great Pals. His comrades trusted him by compulsion, for the
+hunted life led by convicts necessitates the most delicate confidence
+between the gentry of this crew of savages. So Jacques Collin, a
+defaulter for a hundred thousand crowns, might now possibly be quit
+for a hundred thousand francs. At this moment, as we see, la
+Pouraille, one of Jacques Collin's creditors, had but ninety days to
+live. And la Pouraille, the possessor of a sum vastly greater, no
+doubt, than that placed in his pal's keeping, would probably prove
+easy to deal with.
+
+
+
+One of the infallible signs by which prison governors and their
+agents, the police and warders, recognize old stagers (chevaux de
+retour), that is to say, men who have already eaten beans (les
+gourganes, a kind of haricots provided for prison fare), is their
+familiarity with prison ways; those who have been IN before, of
+course, know the manners and customs; they are at home, and nothing
+surprises them.
+
+And Jacques Collin, thoroughly on his guard, had, until now, played
+his part to admiration as an innocent man and stranger, both at La
+Force and at the Conciergerie. But now, broken by grief, and by two
+deaths--for he had died twice over during that dreadful night--he was
+Jacques Collin once more. The warder was astounded to find that the
+Spanish priest needed no telling as to the way to the prison-yard. The
+perfect actor forgot his part; he went down the corkscrew stairs in
+the Tour Bonbec as one who knew the Conciergerie.
+
+"Bibi-Lupin is right," said the turnkey to himself; "he is an old
+stager; he is Jacques Collin."
+
+At the moment when Trompe-la-Mort appeared in the sort of frame to his
+figure made by the door into the tower, the prisoners, having made
+their purchases at the stone table called after Saint-Louis, were
+scattered about the yard, always too small for their number. So the
+newcomer was seen by all of them at once, and all the more promptly,
+because nothing can compare for keenness with the eye of a prisoner,
+who in a prison-yard feels like a spider watching in its web. And this
+comparison is mathematically exact; for the range of vision being
+limited on all sides by high dark walls, the prisoners can always see,
+even without looking at them, the doors through which the warders come
+and go, the windows of the parlor, and the stairs of the Tour Bonbec--
+the only exits from the yard. In this utter isolation every trivial
+incident is an event, everything is interesting; the tedium--a tedium
+like that of a tiger in a cage--increases their alertness tenfold.
+
+It is necessary to note that Jacques Collin, dressed like a priest who
+is not strict as to costume, wore black knee breeches, black
+stockings, shoes with silver buckles, a black waistcoat, and a long
+coat of dark-brown cloth of a certain cut that betrays the priest
+whatever he may do, especially when these details are completed by a
+characteristic style of haircutting. Jacques Collin's wig was
+eminently ecclesiastical, and wonderfully natural.
+
+"Hallo!" said la Pouraille to le Biffon, "that's a bad sign! A rook!
+(sanglier, a priest). How did he come here?"
+
+"He is one of their 'narks' " (trucs, spies) "of a new make," replied
+Fil-de-Soie, "some runner with the bracelets" (marchand de lacets--
+equivalent to a Bow Street runner) "looking out for his man."
+
+The gendarme boasts of many names in French slang; when he is after a
+thief, he is "the man with the bracelets" (marchand de lacets); when
+he has him in charge, he is a bird of ill-omen (hirondelle de la
+Greve); when he escorts him to the scaffold, he is "groom to the
+guillotine" (hussard de la guillotine).
+
+To complete our study of the prison-yard, two more of the prisoners
+must be hastily sketched in. Selerier, alias l'Auvergnat, alias le
+Pere Ralleau, called le Rouleur, alias Fil-de-Soie--he had thirty
+names, and as many passports--will henceforth be spoken of by this
+name only, as he was called by no other among the swell-mob. This
+profound philosopher, who saw a spy in the sham priest, was a brawny
+fellow of about five feet eight, whose muscles were all marked by
+strange bosses. He had an enormous head in which a pair of half-closed
+eyes sparkled like fire--the eyes of a bird of prey, with gray, dull,
+skinny eyelids. At first glance his face resembled that of a wolf, his
+jaws were so broad, powerful, and prominent; but the cruelty and even
+ferocity suggested by this likeness were counterbalanced by the
+cunning and eagerness of his face, though it was scarred by the
+smallpox. The margin of each scar being sharply cut, gave a sort of
+wit to his expression; it was seamed with ironies. The life of a
+criminal--a life of danger and thirst, of nights spent bivouacking on
+the quays and river banks, on bridges and streets, and the orgies of
+strong drink by which successes are celebrated--had laid, as it were,
+a varnish over these features. Fil-de-Soie, if seen in his undisguised
+person, would have been marked by any constable or gendarme as his
+prey; but he was a match for Jacques Collin in the arts of make-up and
+dress. Just now Fil-de-Soie, in undress, like a great actor who is
+well got up only on the stage, wore a sort of shooting jacket bereft
+of buttons, and whose ripped button-holes showed the white lining,
+squalid green slippers, nankin trousers now a dingy gray, and on his
+head a cap without a peak, under which an old bandana was tied,
+streaky with rents, and washed out.
+
+Le Biffon was a complete contrast to Fil-de-Soie. This famous robber,
+short, burly, and fat, but active, with a livid complexion, and deep-
+set black eyes, dressed like a cook, standing squarely on very bandy
+legs, was alarming to behold, for in his countenance all the features
+predominated that are most typical of the carnivorous beast.
+
+Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon were always wheedling la Pouraille, who had
+lost all hope. The murderer knew that he would be tried, sentenced,
+and executed within four months. Indeed, Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon, la
+Pouraille's chums, never called him anything but le Chanoine de
+l'Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret (a grim paraphrase for a man condemned to
+the guillotine). It is easy to understand why Fil-de-Soie and le
+Biffon should fawn on la Pouraille. The man had somewhere hidden two
+hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold, his share of the spoil
+found in the house of the Crottats, the "victims," in newspaper
+phrase. What a splendid fortune to leave to two pals, though the two
+old stagers would be sent back to the galleys within a few days! Le
+Biffon and Fil-de-Soie would be sentenced for a term of fifteen years
+for robbery with violence, without prejudice to the ten years' penal
+servitude on a former sentence, which they had taken the liberty of
+cutting short. So, though one had twenty-two and the other twenty-six
+years of imprisonment to look forward to, they both hoped to escape,
+and come back to find la Pouraille's mine of gold.
+
+But the "Ten-thousand man" kept his secret; he did not see the use of
+telling it before he was sentenced. He belonged to the "upper ten" of
+the hulks, and had never betrayed his accomplices. His temper was well
+known; Monsieur Popinot, who had examined him, had not been able to
+get anything out of him.
+
+This terrible trio were at the further end of the prison-yard, that is
+to say, near the better class of cells. Fil-de-Soie was giving a
+lecture to a young man who was IN for his first offence, and who,
+being certain of ten years' penal servitude, was gaining information
+as to the various convict establishments.
+
+"Well, my boy," Fil-de-Soie was saying sententiously as Jacques Collin
+appeared on the scene, "the difference between Brest, Toulon, and
+Rochefort is----"
+
+"Well, old cock?" said the lad, with the curiosity of a novice.
+
+This prisoner, a man of good family, accused of forgery, had come down
+from the cell next to that where Lucien had been.
+
+"My son," Fil-de-Soie went on, "at Brest you are sure to get some
+beans at the third turn if you dip your spoon in the bowl; at Toulon
+you never get any till the fifth; and at Rochefort you get none at
+all, unless you are an old hand."
+
+Having spoken, the philosopher joined le Biffon and la Pouraille, and
+all three, greatly puzzled by the priest, walked down the yard, while
+Jacques Collin, lost in grief, came up it. Trompe-la-Mort, absorbed in
+terrible meditations, the meditations of a fallen emperor, did not
+think of himself as the centre of observation, the object of general
+attention, and he walked slowly, gazing at the fatal window where
+Lucien had hanged himself. None of the prisoners knew of this
+catastrophe, since, for reasons to be presently explained, the young
+forger had not mentioned the subject. The three pals agreed to cross
+the priest's path.
+
+"He is no priest," said Fil-de-Soie; "he is an old stager. Look how he
+drags his right foot."
+
+It is needful to explain here--for not every reader has had a fancy to
+visit the galleys--that each convict is chained to another, an old one
+and a young one always as a couple; the weight of this chain riveted
+to a ring above the ankle is so great as to induce a limp, which the
+convict never loses. Being obliged to exert one leg much more than the
+other to drag this fetter (manicle is the slang name for such irons),
+the prisoner inevitably gets into the habit of making the effort.
+Afterwards, though he no longer wears the chain, it acts upon him
+still; as a man still feels an amputated leg, the convict is always
+conscious of the anklet, and can never get over that trick of walking.
+In police slang, he "drags his right." And this sign, as well known to
+convicts among themselves as it is to the police, even if it does not
+help to identify a comrade, at any rate confirms recognition.
+
+In Trompe-la Mort, who had escaped eight years since, this trick had
+to a great extent worn off; but just now, lost in reflections, he
+walked at such a slow and solemn pace that, slight as the limp was, it
+was strikingly evident to so practiced an eye as la Pouraille's. And
+it is quite intelligible that convicts, always thrown together, as
+they must be, and never having any one else to study, will so
+thoroughly have watched each other's faces and appearance, that
+certain tricks will have impressed them which may escape their
+systematic foes--spies, gendarmes, and police-inspectors.
+
+Thus it was a peculiar twitch of the maxillary muscles of the left
+cheek, recognized by a convict who was sent to a review of the Legion
+of the Seine, which led to the arrest of the lieutenant-colonel of
+that corps, the famous Coignard; for, in spite of Bibi-Lupin's
+confidence, the police could not dare believe that the Comte Pontis de
+Sainte-Helene and Coignard were one and the same man.
+
+"He is our boss" (dab or master) said Fil-de-Soie, seeing in Jacques
+Collin's eyes the vague glance a man sunk in despair casts on all his
+surroundings.
+
+"By Jingo! Yes, it is Trompe-la-Mort," said le Biffon, rubbing his
+hands. "Yes, it is his cut, his build; but what has he done to
+himself? He looks quite different."
+
+"I know what he is up to!" cried Fil-de-Soie; "he has some plan in his
+head. He wants to see the boy" (sa tante) "who is to be executed
+before long."
+
+The persons known in prison as tantes or aunts may be best described
+in the ingenious words of the governor of one of the great prisons to
+the late Lord Durham, who, during his stay in Paris, visited every
+prison. So curious was he to see every detail of French justice, that
+he even persuaded Sanson, at that time the executioner, to erect the
+scaffold and decapitate a living calf, that he might thoroughly
+understand the working of the machine made famous by the Revolution.
+The governor having shown him everything--the yards, the workshops,
+and the underground cells--pointed to a part of the building, and
+said, "I need not take your Lordship there; it is the quartier des
+tantes."--"Oh," said Lord Durham, "what are they!"--"The third sex, my
+Lord."
+
+"And they are going to scrag Theodore!" said la Pouraille, "such a
+pretty boy! And such a light hand! such cheek! What a loss to
+society!"
+
+"Yes, Theodore Calvi is yamming his last meal," said le Biffon. "His
+trips will pipe their eyes, for the little beggar was a great pet."
+
+"So you're here, old chap?" said la Pouraille to Jacques Collin. And,
+arm-in-arm with his two acolytes, he barred the way to the new
+arrival. "Why, Boss, have you got yourself japanned?" he went on.
+
+"I hear you have nobbled our pile" (stolen our money), le Biffon
+added, in a threatening tone.
+
+"You have just got to stump up the tin!" said Fil-de-Soie.
+
+The three questions were fired at him like three pistol-shots.
+
+"Do not make game of an unhappy priest sent here by mistake," Jacques
+Collin replied mechanically, recognizing his three comrades.
+
+"That is the sound of his pipe, if it is not quite the cut of his
+mug," said la Pouraille, laying his hand on Jacques Collin's shoulder.
+
+This action, and the sight of his three chums, startled the "Boss" out
+of his dejection, and brought him back to a consciousness of reality;
+for during that dreadful night he had lost himself in the infinite
+spiritual world of feeling, seeking some new road.
+
+"Do not blow the gaff on your Boss!" said Jacques Collin in a hollow
+threatening tone, not unlike the low growl of a lion. "The reelers are
+here; let them make fools of themselves. I am faking to help a pal who
+is awfully down on his luck."
+
+He spoke with the unction of a priest trying to convert the wretched,
+and a look which flashed round the yard, took in the warders under the
+archways, and pointed them out with a wink to his three companions.
+
+"Are there not narks about? Keep your peepers open and a sharp
+lookout. Don't know me, Nanty parnarly, and soap me down for a priest,
+or I will do for you all, you and your molls and your blunt."
+
+"What, do you funk our blabbing?" said Fil-de-Soie. "Have you come to
+help your boy to guy?"
+
+"Madeleine is getting ready to be turned off in the Square" (the Place
+de Greve), said la Pouraille.
+
+"Theodore!" said Jacques Collin, repressing a start and a cry.
+
+"They will have his nut off," la Pouraille went on; "he was booked for
+the scaffold two months ago."
+
+Jacques Collin felt sick, his knees almost failed him; but his three
+comrades held him up, and he had the presence of mind to clasp his
+hands with an expression of contrition. La Pouraille and le Biffon
+respectfully supported the sacrilegious Trompe-la-Mort, while Fil-de-
+Soie ran to a warder on guard at the gate leading to the parlor.
+
+"That venerable priest wants to sit down; send out a chair for him,"
+said he.
+
+And so Bibi-Lupin's plot had failed.
+
+Trompe-la-Mort, like a Napoleon recognized by his soldiers, had won
+the submission and respect of the three felons. Two words had done it.
+Your molls and your blunt--your women and your money--epitomizing
+every true affection of man. This threat was to the three convicts an
+indication of supreme power. The Boss still had their fortune in his
+hands. Still omnipotent outside the prison, their Boss had not
+betrayed them, as the false pals said.
+
+Their chief's immense reputation for skill and inventiveness
+stimulated their curiosity; for, in prison, curiosity is the only goad
+of these blighted spirits. And Jacques Collin's daring disguise, kept
+up even under the bolts and locks of the Conciergerie, dazzled the
+three felons.
+
+"I have been in close confinement for four days and did not know that
+Theodore was so near the Abbaye," said Jacques Collin. "I came in to
+save a poor little chap who scragged himself here yesterday at four
+o'clock, and now here is another misfortune. I have not an ace in my
+hand----"
+
+"Poor old boy!" said Fil-de-Soie.
+
+"Old Scratch has cut me!" cried Jacques Collin, tearing himself free
+from his supporters, and drawing himself up with a fierce look. "There
+comes a time when the world is too many for us! The beaks gobble us up
+at last."
+
+The governor of the Conciergerie, informed of the Spanish priest's
+weak state, came himself to the prison-yard to observe him; he made
+him sit down on a chair in the sun, studying him with the keen acumen
+which increases day by day in the practise of such functions, though
+hidden under an appearance of indifference.
+
+"Oh! Heaven!" cried Jacques Collin. "To be mixed up with such
+creatures, the dregs of society--felons and murders!--But God will not
+desert His servant! My dear sir, my stay here shall be marked by deeds
+of charity which shall live in men's memories. I will convert these
+unhappy creatures, they shall learn they have souls, that life eternal
+awaits them, and that though they have lost all on earth, they still
+may win heaven--Heaven which they may purchase by true and genuine
+repentance."
+
+Twenty or thirty prisoners had gathered in a group behind the three
+terrible convicts, whose ferocious looks had kept a space of three
+feet between them and their inquisitive companions, and they heard
+this address, spoken with evangelical unction.
+
+"Ay, Monsieur Gault," said the formidable la Pouraille, "we will
+listen to what this one may say----"
+
+"I have been told," Jacques Collin went on, "that there is in this
+prison a man condemned to death."
+
+"The rejection of his appeal is at this moment being read to him,"
+said Monsieur Gault.
+
+"I do not know what that means," said Jacques Collin, artlessly
+looking about him.
+
+"Golly, what a flat!" said the young fellow, who, a few minutes since,
+had asked Fil-de-Soie about the beans on the hulks.
+
+"Why, it means that he is to be scragged to-day or to-morrow."
+
+"Scragged?" asked Jacques Collin, whose air of innocence and ignorance
+filled his three pals with admiration.
+
+"In their slang," said the governor, "that means that he will suffer
+the penalty of death. If the clerk is reading the appeal, the
+executioner will no doubt have orders for the execution. The unhappy
+man has persistently refused the offices of the chaplain."
+
+"Ah! Monsieur le Directeaur, this is a soul to save!" cried Jacques
+Collin, and the sacrilegious wretch clasped his hands with the
+expression of a despairing lover, which to the watchful governor
+seemed nothing less than divine fervor. "Ah, monsieur," Trompe-la-Mort
+went on, "let me prove to you what I am, and how much I can do, by
+allowing me to incite that hardened heart to repentance. God has given
+me a power of speech which produces great changes. I crush men's
+hearts; I open them.--What are you afraid of? Send me with an escort
+of gendarmes, of turnkeys--whom you will."
+
+"I will inquire whether the prison chaplain will allow you to take his
+place," said Monsieur Gault.
+
+And the governor withdrew, struck by the expression, perfectly
+indifferent, though inquisitive, with which the convicts and the
+prisoners on remand stared at this priest, whose unctuous tones lent a
+charm to his half-French, half-Spanish lingo.
+
+"How did you come in here, Monsieur l'Abbe?" asked the youth who had
+questioned Fil-de-Soie.
+
+"Oh, by a mistake!" replied Jacques Collin, eyeing the young gentleman
+from head to foot. "I was found in the house of a courtesan who had
+died, and was immediately robbed. It was proved that she had killed
+herself, and the thieves--probably the servants--have not yet been
+caught."
+
+"And it was for that theft that your young man hanged himself?"
+
+"The poor boy, no doubt, could not endure the thought of being
+blighted by his unjust imprisonment," said Trompe-la-Mort, raising his
+eyes to heaven.
+
+"Ay," said the young man; "they were coming to set him free just when
+he had killed himself. What bad luck!"
+
+"Only innocent souls can be thus worked on by their imagination," said
+Jacques Collin. "For, observe, he was the loser by the theft."
+
+"How much money was it?" asked Fil-de-Soie, the deep and cunning.
+
+"Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Jacques Collin
+blandly.
+
+The three convicts looked at each other and withdrew from the group
+that had gathered round the sham priest.
+
+"He screwed the moll's place himself!" said Fil-de-Soie in a whisper
+to le Biffon, "and they want to put us in a blue funk for our
+cartwheels" (thunes de balles, five-franc pieces).
+
+"He will always be the boss of the swells," replied la Pouraille. "Our
+pieces are safe enough."
+
+La Pouraille, wishing to find some man he could trust, had an interest
+in considering Jacques Collin an honest man. And in prison, of all
+places, a man believes what he hopes.
+
+"I lay you anything, he will come round the big Boss and save his
+chum!" said Fil-de-Soie.
+
+"If he does that," said le Biffon, "though I don't believe he is
+really God, he must certainly have smoked a pipe with old Scratch, as
+they say."
+
+"Didn't you hear him say, 'Old Scratch has cut me'?" said Fil-de-
+Soie.
+
+"Oh!" cried la Pouraille, "if only he would save my nut, what a time I
+would have with my whack of the shiners and the yellow boys I have
+stowed."
+
+"Do what he bids you!" said Fil-de Soie.
+
+"You don't say so?" retorted la Pouraille, looking at his pal.
+
+"What a flat you are! You will be booked for the Abbaye!" said le
+Biffon. "You have no other door to budge, if you want to keep on your
+pins, to yam, wet your whistle, and fake to the end; you must take his
+orders."
+
+"That's all right," said la Pouraille. "There is not one of us that
+will blow the gaff, or if he does, I will take him where I am
+going----"
+
+"And he'll do it too," cried Fil-de-Soie.
+
+
+
+The least sympathetic reader, who has no pity for this strange race,
+may conceive of the state of mind of Jacques Collin, finding himself
+between the dead body of the idol whom he had been bewailing during
+five hours that night, and the imminent end of his former comrade--the
+dead body of Theodore, the young Corsican. Only to see the boy would
+demand extraordinary cleverness; to save him would need a miracle; but
+he was thinking of it.
+
+For the better comprehension of what Jacques Collin proposed to
+attempt, it must be remarked that murderers and thieves, all the men
+who people the galleys, are not so formidable as is generally
+supposed. With a few rare exceptions these creatures are all cowards,
+in consequence no doubt, of the constant alarms which weigh on their
+spirit. The faculties being perpetually on the stretch in thieving,
+and the success of a stroke of business depending on the exertion of
+every vital force, with a readiness of wit to match their dexterity of
+hand, and an alertness which exhausts the nervous system; these
+violent exertions of will once over, they become stupid, just as a
+singer or a dancer drops quite exhausted after a fatiguing pas seul,
+or one of those tremendous duets which modern composers inflict on the
+public.
+
+Malefactors are, in fact, so entirely bereft of common sense, or so
+much oppressed by fear, that they become absolutely childish.
+Credulous to the last degree, they are caught by the bird-lime of the
+simplest snare. When they have done a successful JOB, they are in such
+a state of prostration that they immediately rush into the
+debaucheries they crave for; they get drunk on wine and spirits, and
+throw themselves madly into the arms of their women to recover
+composure by dint of exhausting their strength, and to forget their
+crime by forgetting their reason.
+
+Then they are at the mercy of the police. When once they are in
+custody they lose their head, and long for hope so blindly that they
+believe anything; indeed, there is nothing too absurd for them to
+accept it. An instance will suffice to show how far the simplicity of
+a criminal who has been NABBED will carry him. Bibi-Lupin, not long
+before, had extracted a confession from a murderer of nineteen by
+making him believe that no one under age was ever executed. When this
+lad was transferred to the Conciergerie to be sentenced after the
+rejection of his appeal, this terrible man came to see him.
+
+"Are you sure you are not yet twenty?" said he.
+
+"Yes, I am only nineteen and a half."
+
+"Well, then," replied Bibi-Lupin, "you may be quite sure of one thing
+--you will never see twenty."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you will be scragged within three days," replied the police
+agent.
+
+The murderer, who had believed, even after sentence was passed, that a
+minor would never be executed, collapsed like an omelette soufflee.
+
+Such men, cruel only from the necessity for suppressive evidence, for
+they murder only to get rid of witnesses (and this is one of the
+arguments adduced by those who desire the abrogation of capital
+punishment),--these giants of dexterity and skill, whose sleight of
+hand, whose rapid sight, whose every sense is as alert as that of a
+savage, are heroes of evil only on the stage of their exploits. Not
+only do their difficulties begin as soon as the crime is committed,
+for they are as much bewildered by the need for concealing the stolen
+goods as they were depressed by necessity--but they are as weak as a
+woman in childbed. The vehemence of their schemes is terrific; in
+success they become like children. In a word, their nature is that of
+the wild beast--easy to kill when it is full fed. In prison these
+strange beings are men in dissimulation and in secretiveness, which
+never yields till the last moment, when they are crushed and broken by
+the tedium of imprisonment.
+
+It may hence be understood how it was that the three convicts, instead
+of betraying their chief, were eager to serve him; and as they
+suspected he was now the owner of the stolen seven hundred and fifty
+thousand francs, they admired him for his calm resignation, under bolt
+and bar of the Conciergerie, believing him capable of protecting them
+all.
+
+
+
+When Monsieur Gault left the sham priest, he returned through the
+parlor to his office, and went in search of Bibi-Lupin, who for twenty
+minutes, since Jacques Collin had gone downstairs, had been on the
+watch with his eye at a peephole in a window looking out on the
+prison-yard.
+
+"Not one of them recognized him," said Monsieur Gault, "and Napolitas,
+who is on duty, did not hear a word. The poor priest all through the
+night, in his deep distress, did not say a word which could imply that
+his gown covers Jacques Collin."
+
+"That shows that he is used to prison life," said the police agent.
+
+Napolitas, Bibi-Lupin's secretary, being unknown to the criminals then
+in the Conciergerie, was playing the part of the young gentlemen
+imprisoned for forgery.
+
+"Well, but he wishes to be allowed to hear the confession of the young
+fellow who is sentenced to death," said the governor.
+
+"To be sure! That is our last chance," cried Bibi-Lupin. "I had
+forgotten that. Theodore Calvi, the young Corsican, was the man
+chained to Jacques Collin; they say that on the hulks Jacques Collin
+made him famous pads----"
+
+The convicts on the galleys contrive a kind of pad to slip between
+their skin and the fetters to deaden the pressure of the iron ring on
+their ankles and instep; these pads, made of tow and rags, are known
+as patarasses.
+
+"Who is warder over the man?" asked Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"Coeur la Virole."
+
+"Very well, I will go and make up as a gendarme, and be on the watch;
+I shall hear what they say. I will be even with them."
+
+"But if it should be Jacques Collin are you not afraid of his
+recognizing you and throttling you?" said the governor to Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"As a gendarme I shall have my sword," replied the other; "and,
+besides, if he is Jacques Collin, he will never do anything that will
+risk his neck; and if he is a priest, I shall be safe."
+
+"Then you have no time to lose," said Monsieur Gault; "it is half-past
+eight. Father Sauteloup has just read the reply to his appeal, and
+Monsieur Sanson is waiting in the order room."
+
+"Yes, it is to-day's job, the 'widow's huzzars' " (les hussards de la
+veuve, another horrible name for the functionaries of the guillotine)
+"are ordered out," replied Bibi-Lupin. "Still, I cannot wonder that
+the prosecutor-general should hesitate; the boy has always declared
+that he is innocent, and there is, in my opinion, no conclusive
+evidence against him."
+
+"He is a thorough Corsican," said Monsieur Gault; "he has not said a
+word, and has held firm all through."
+
+The last words of the governor of the prison summed up the dismal tale
+of a man condemned to die. A man cut off from among the living by law
+belongs to the Bench. The Bench is paramount; it is answerable to
+nobody, it obeys its own conscience. The prison belongs to the Bench,
+which controls it absolutely. Poetry has taken possession of this
+social theme, "the man condemned to death"--a subject truly apt to
+strike the imagination! And poetry has been sublime on it. Prose has
+no resource but fact; still, the fact is appalling enough to hold its
+own against verse. The existence of a condemned man who has not
+confessed his crime, or betrayed his accomplices, is one of fearful
+torment. This is no case of iron boots, of water poured into the
+stomach, or of limbs racked by hideous machinery; it is hidden and, so
+to speak, negative torture. The condemned wretch is given over to
+himself with a companion whom he cannot but trust.
+
+The amiability of modern philanthropy fancies it has understood the
+dreadful torment of isolation, but this is a mistake. Since the
+abolition of torture, the Bench, in a natural anxiety to reassure the
+too sensitive consciences of the jury, had guessed what a terrible
+auxiliary isolation would prove to justice in seconding remorse.
+
+Solitude is void; and nature has as great a horror of a moral void as
+she has of a physical vacuum. Solitude is habitable only to a man of
+genius who can people it with ideas, the children of the spiritual
+world; or to one who contemplates the works of the Creator, to whom it
+is bright with the light of heaven, alive with the breath and voice of
+God. Excepting for these two beings--so near to Paradise--solitude is
+to the mind what torture is to the body. Between solitude and the
+torture-chamber there is all the difference that there is between a
+nervous malady and a surgical disease. It is suffering multiplied by
+infinitude. The body borders on the infinite through its nerves, as
+the spirit does through thought. And, in fact, in the annals of the
+Paris law courts the criminals who do not confess can be easily
+counted.
+
+This terrible situation, which in some cases assumes appalling
+importance--in politics, for instance, when a dynasty or a state is
+involved--will find a place in the HUMAN COMEDY. But here a
+description of the stone box in which after the Restoration, the law
+shut up a man condemned to death in Paris, may serve to give an idea
+of the terrors of a felon's last day on earth.
+
+Before the Revolution of July there was in the Conciergerie, and
+indeed there still is, a condemned cell. This room, backing on the
+governor's office, is divided from it by a thick wall in strong
+masonry, and the other side of it is formed by a wall seven or eight
+feet thick, which supports one end of the immense Salle des Pas-
+Perdus. It is entered through the first door in the long dark passage
+in which the eye loses itself when looking from the middle of the
+vaulted gateway. This ill-omened room is lighted by a funnel, barred
+by a formidable grating, and hardly perceptible on going into the
+Conciergerie yard, for it has been pierced in the narrow space between
+the office window close to the railing of the gateway, and the place
+where the office clerk sits--a den like a cupboard contrived by the
+architect at the end of the entrance court.
+
+This position accounts for the fact that the room thus enclosed
+between four immensely thick walls should have been devoted, when the
+Conciergerie was reconstituted, to this terrible and funereal service.
+Escape is impossible. The passage, leading to the cells for solitary
+confinement and to the women's quarters, faces the stove where
+gendarmes and warders are always collected together. The air-hole, the
+only outlet to the open air, is nine feet above the floor, and looks
+out on the first court, which is guarded by sentries at the outer
+gate. No human power can make any impression on the walls. Besides, a
+man sentenced to death is at once secured in a straitwaistcoat, a
+garment which precludes all use of the hands; he is chained by one
+foot to his camp bed, and he has a fellow prisoner to watch and attend
+on him. The room is paved with thick flags, and the light is so dim
+that it is hard to see anything.
+
+It is impossible not to feel chilled to the marrow on going in, even
+now, though for sixteen years the cell has never been used, in
+consequence of the changes effected in Paris in the treatment of
+criminals under sentence. Imagine the guilty man there with his
+remorse for company, in silence and darkness, two elements of horror,
+and you will wonder how he ever failed to go mad. What a nature must
+that be whose temper can resist such treatment, with the added misery
+of enforced idleness and inaction.
+
+And yet Theodore Calvi, a Corsican, now twenty-seven years of age,
+muffled, as it were, in a shroud of absolute reserve, had for two
+months held out against the effects of this dungeon and the insidious
+chatter of the prisoner placed to entrap him.
+
+These were the strange circumstances under which the Corsican had been
+condemned to death. Though the case is a very curious one, our account
+of it must be brief. It is impossible to introduce a long digression
+at the climax of a narrative already so much prolonged, since its only
+interest is in so far as it concerns Jacques Collin, the vertebral
+column, so to speak, which, by its sinister persistency, connects Le
+Pere Goriot with Illusions perdues, and Illusions perdues with this
+Study. And, indeed, the reader's imagination will be able to work out
+the obscure case which at this moment was causing great uneasiness to
+the jury of the sessions, before whom Theodore Calvi had been tried.
+For a whole week, since the criminal's appeal had been rejected by the
+Supreme Court, Monsieur de Granville had been worrying himself over
+the case, and postponing from day to day the order for carrying out
+the sentence, so anxious was he to reassure the jury by announcing
+that on the threshold of death the accused had confessed the crime.
+
+A poor widow of Nanterre, whose dwelling stood apart from the
+township, which is situated in the midst of the infertile plain lying
+between Mount-Valerian, Saint-Germain, the hills of Sartrouville, and
+Argenteuil, had been murdered and robbed a few days after coming into
+her share of an unexpected inheritance. This windfall amounted to
+three thousand francs, a dozen silver spoons and forks, a gold watch
+and chain and some linen. Instead of depositing the three thousand
+francs in Paris, as she was advised by the notary of the wine-merchant
+who had left it her, the old woman insisted on keeping it by her. In
+the first place, she had never seen so much money of her own, and then
+she distrusted everybody in every kind of affairs, as most common and
+country folk do. After long discussion with a wine-merchant of
+Nanterre, a relation of her own and of the wine-merchant who had left
+her the money, the widow decided on buying an annuity, on selling her
+house at Nanterre, and living in the town of Saint-Germain.
+
+The house she was living in, with a good-sized garden enclosed by a
+slight wooden fence, was the poor sort of dwelling usually built by
+small landowners in the neighborhood of Paris. It had been hastily
+constructed, with no architectural design, of cement and rubble, the
+materials commonly used near Paris, where, as at Nanterre, they are
+extremely abundant, the ground being everywhere broken by quarries
+open to the sky. This is the ordinary hut of the civilized savage. The
+house consisted of a ground floor and one floor above, with garrets in
+the roof.
+
+The quarryman, her deceased husband, and the builder of this dwelling,
+had put strong iron bars to all the windows; the front door was
+remarkably thick. The man knew that he was alone there in the open
+country--and what a country! His customers were the principal master-
+masons in Paris, so the more important materials for his house, which
+stood within five hundred yards of his quarry, had been brought out in
+his own carts returning empty. He could choose such as suited him
+where houses were pulled down, and got them very cheap. Thus the
+window frames, the iron-work, the doors, shutters, and wooden fittings
+were all derived from sanctioned pilfering, presents from his
+customers, and good ones, carefully chosen. Of two window-frames, he
+could take the better.
+
+The house, entered from a large stable-yard, was screened from the
+road by a wall; the gate was of strong iron-railing. Watch-dogs were
+kept in the stables, and a little dog indoors at night. There was a
+garden of more than two acres behind.
+
+His widow, without children, lived here with only a woman servant. The
+sale of the quarry had paid off the owner's debts; he had been dead
+about two years. This isolated house was the widow's sole possession,
+and she kept fowls and cows, selling the eggs and milk at Nanterre.
+Having no stableboy or carter or quarryman--her husband had made them
+do every kind of work--she no longer kept up the garden; she only
+gathered the few greens and roots that the stony ground allowed to
+grow self-sown.
+
+The price of the house, with the money she had inherited, would amount
+to seven or eight thousand francs, and she could fancy herself living
+very happily at Saint-Germain on seven or eight hundred francs a year,
+which she thought she could buy with her eight thousand francs. She
+had had many discussions over this with the notary at Saint-Germain,
+for she refused to hand her money over for an annuity to the wine-
+merchant at Nanterre, who was anxious to have it.
+
+Under these circumstances, then, after a certain day the widow Pigeau
+and her servant were seen no more. The front gate, the house door, the
+shutters, all were closed. At the end of three days, the police, being
+informed, made inquisition. Monsieur Popinot, the examining judge, and
+the public prosecutor arrived from Paris, and this was what they
+reported:--
+
+Neither the outer gate nor the front door showed any marks of
+violence. The key was in the lock of the door, inside. Not a single
+bar had been wretched; the locks, shutters, and bolts were all
+untampered with. The walls showed no traces that could betray the
+passage of the criminals. The chimney-posts, of red clay, afforded no
+opportunity for ingress or escape, and the roofing was sound and
+unbroken, showing no damage by violence.
+
+On entering the first-floor rooms, the magistrates, the gendarmes, and
+Bibi-Lupin found the widow Pigeau strangled in her bed and the woman
+strangled in hers, each by means of the bandana she wore as a
+nightcap. The three thousand francs were gone, with the silver-plate
+and the trinkets. The two bodies were decomposing, as were those of
+the little dog and of a large yard-dog.
+
+The wooden palings of the garden were examined; none were broken. The
+garden paths showed no trace of footsteps. The magistrate thought it
+probable that the robber had walked on the grass to leave no foot-
+prints if he had come that way; but how could he have got into the
+house? The back door to the garden had an outer guard of three iron
+bars, uninjured; and there, too, the key was in the lock inside, as in
+the front door.
+
+All these impossibilities having been duly noted by Monsieur Popinot,
+by Bibi-Lupin, who stayed there a day to examine every detail, by the
+public prosecutor himself, and by the sergeant of the gendarmerie at
+Nanterre, this murder became an agitating mystery, in which the Law
+and the Police were nonplussed.
+
+This drama, published in the Gazette des Tribunaux, took place in the
+winter of 1828-29. God alone knows what excitement this puzzling crime
+occasioned in Paris! But Paris has a new drama to watch every morning,
+and forgets everything. The police, on the contrary, forgets nothing.
+
+Three months after this fruitless inquiry, a girl of the town, whose
+extravagance had invited the attention of Bibi-Lupin's agents, who
+watched her as being the ally of several thieves, tried to persuade a
+woman she knew to pledge twelve silver spoons and forks and a gold
+watch and chain. The friend refused. This came to Bibi-Lupin's ears,
+and he remembered the plate and the watch and chain stolen at
+Nanterre. The commissioners of the Mont-de-Piete, and all the
+receivers of stolen goods, were warned, while Manon la Blonde was
+subjected to unremitting scrutiny.
+
+It was very soon discovered that Manon la Blonde was madly in love
+with a young man who was never to be seen, and was supposed to be deaf
+to all the fair Manon's proofs of devotion. Mystery on mystery.
+However, this youth, under the diligent attentions of police spies,
+was soon seen and identified as an escaped convict, the famous hero of
+the Corsican vendetta, the handsome Theodore Calvi, known as
+Madeleine.
+
+A man was turned on to entrap Calvi, one of those double-dealing
+buyers of stolen goods who serve the thieves and the police both at
+once; he promised to purchase the silver and the watch and chain. At
+the moment when the dealer of the Cour Saint-Guillaume was counting
+out the cash to Theodore, dressed as a woman, at half-past six in the
+evening, the police came in and seized Theodore and the property.
+
+The inquiry was at once begun. On such thin evidence it was impossible
+to pass a sentence of death. Calvi never swerved, he never
+contradicted himself. He said that a country woman had sold him these
+objects at Argenteuil; that after buying them, the excitement over the
+murder committed at Nanterre had shown him the danger of keeping this
+plate and watch and chain in his possession, since, in fact, they were
+proved by the inventory made after the death of the wine merchant, the
+widow Pigeau's uncle, to be those that were stolen from her. Compelled
+at last by poverty to sell them, he said he wished to dispose of them
+by the intervention of a person to whom no suspicion could attach.
+
+And nothing else could be extracted from the convict, who, by his
+taciturnity and firmness, contrived to insinuate that the wine-
+merchant at Nanterre had committed the crime, and that the woman of
+whom he, Theodore, had bought them was the wine-merchant's wife. The
+unhappy man and his wife were both taken into custody; but, after a
+week's imprisonment, it was amply proved that neither the husband nor
+the wife had been out of their house at the time. Also, Calvi failed
+to recognize in the wife the woman who, as he declared, had sold him
+the things.
+
+As it was shown that Calvi's mistress, implicated in the case, had
+spent about a thousand francs since the date of the crime and the day
+when Calvi tried to pledge the plate and trinkets, the evidence seemed
+strong enough to commit Calvi and the girl for trial. This murder
+being the eighteenth which Theodore had committed, he was condemned to
+death for he seemed certainly to be guilty of this skilfully contrived
+crime. Though he did not recognize the wine-merchant's wife, both she
+and her husband recognized him. The inquiry had proved, by the
+evidence of several witnesses, that Theodore had been living at
+Nanterre for about a month; he had worked at a mason's, his face
+whitened with plaster, and his clothes very shabby. At Nanterre the
+lad was supposed to be about eighteen years old, for the whole month
+he must have been nursing that brat (nourri ce poupon, i.e. hatching
+the crime).
+
+The lawyers thought he must have had accomplices. The chimney-pots
+were measured and compared with the size of Manon la Blonde's body to
+see if she could have got in that way; but a child of six could not
+have passed up or down those red-clay pipes, which, in modern
+buildings, take the place of the vast chimneys of old-fashioned
+houses. But for this singular and annoying difficulty, Theodore would
+have been executed within a week. The prison chaplain, it has been
+seen, could make nothing of him.
+
+
+
+All this business, and the name of Calvi, must have escaped the notice
+of Jacques Collin, who, at the time, was absorbed in his single-handed
+struggle with Contenson, Corentin, and Peyrade. It had indeed been a
+point with Trompe-la-Mort to forget as far as possible his chums and
+all that had to do with the law courts; he dreaded a meeting which
+should bring him face to face with a pal who might demand an account
+of his boss which Collin could not possibly render.
+
+The governor of the prison went forthwith to the public prosecutor's
+court, where he found the Attorney-General in conversation with
+Monsieur de Granville, who had spent the whole night at the Hotel de
+Serizy, was, in consequence of this important case, obliged to give a
+few hours to his duties, though overwhelmed with fatigue and grief;
+for the physicians could not yet promise that the Countess would
+recover her sanity.
+
+After speaking a few words to the governor, Monsieur de Granville took
+the warrant from the attorney and placed it in Gault's hands.
+
+"Let the matter proceed," said he, "unless some extraordinary
+circumstances should arise. Of this you must judge. I trust to your
+judgment. The scaffold need not be erected till half-past ten, so you
+still have an hour. On such an occasion hours are centuries, and many
+things may happen in a century. Do not allow him to think he is
+reprieved; prepare the man for execution if necessary; and if nothing
+comes of that, give Sanson the warrant at half-past nine. Let him
+wait!"
+
+As the governor of the prison left the public prosecutor's room, under
+the archway of the passage into the hall he met Monsieur Camusot, who
+was going there. He exchanged a few hurried words with the examining
+judge; and after telling him what had been done at the Conciergerie
+with regard to Jacques Collin, he went on to witness the meeting of
+Trompe-la-Mort and Madeleine; and he did not allow the so-called
+priest to see the condemned criminal till Bibi-Lupin, admirably
+disguised as a gendarme, had taken the place of the prisoner left in
+charge of the young Corsican.
+
+No words can describe the amazement of the three convicts when a
+warder came to fetch Jacques Collin and led him to the condemned cell!
+With one consent they rushed up to the chair on which Jacques Collin
+was sitting.
+
+"To-day, isn't it, monsieur?" asked Fil-de-Soie of the warder.
+
+"Yes, Jack Ketch is waiting," said the man with perfect indifference.
+
+Charlot is the name by which the executioner is known to the populace
+and the prison world in Paris. The nickname dates from the Revolution
+of 1789.
+
+The words produced a great sensation. The prisoners looked at each
+other.
+
+"It is all over with him," the warder went on; "the warrant has been
+delivered to Monsieur Gault, and the sentence has just been read to
+him."
+
+"And so the fair Madeleine has received the last sacraments?" said la
+Pouraille, and he swallowed a deep mouthful of air.
+
+"Poor little Theodore!" cried le Biffon; "he is a pretty chap too.
+What a pity to drop your nut" (eternuer dans le son) "so young."
+
+The warder went towards the gate, thinking that Jacques Collin was at
+his heels. But the Spaniard walked very slowly, and when he was
+getting near to Julien he tottered and signed to la Pouraille to give
+him his arm.
+
+"He is a murderer," said Napolitas to the priest, pointing to la
+Pouraille, and offering his own arm.
+
+"No, to me he is an unhappy wretch!" replied Jacques Collin, with the
+presence of mind and the unction of the Archbishop of Cambrai. And he
+drew away from Napolitas, of whom he had been very suspicious from the
+first. Then he said to his pals in an undertone:
+
+"He is on the bottom step of the Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret, but I am
+the Prior! I will show you how well I know how to come round the
+beaks. I mean to snatch this boy's nut from their jaws."
+
+"For the sake of his breeches!" said Fil-de-Soie with a smile.
+
+"I mean to win his soul to heaven!" replied Jacques Collin fervently,
+seeing some other prisoners about him. And he joined the warder at the
+gate.
+
+"He got in to save Madeleine," said Fil-de-Soie. "We guessed rightly.
+What a boss he is!"
+
+"But how can he? Jack Ketch's men are waiting. He will not even see
+the kid," objected le Biffon.
+
+"The devil is on his side!" cried la Pouraille. "He claim our blunt!
+Never! He is too fond of his old chums! We are too useful to him! They
+wanted to make us blow the gaff, but we are not such flats! If he
+saves his Madeleine, I will tell him all my secrets."
+
+The effect of this speech was to increase the devotion of the three
+convicts to their boss; for at this moment he was all their hope.
+
+Jacques Collin, in spite of Madeleine's peril, did not forget to play
+his part. Though he knew the Conciergerie as well as he knew the hulks
+in the three ports, he blundered so naturally that the warder had to
+tell him, "This way, that way," till they reached the office. There,
+at a glance, Jacques Collin recognized a tall, stout man leaning on
+the stove, with a long, red face not without distinction: it was
+Sanson.
+
+"Monsieur is the chaplain?" said he, going towards him with simple
+cordiality.
+
+The mistake was so shocking that it froze the bystanders.
+
+"No, monsieur," said Sanson; "I have other functions."
+
+Sanson, the father of the last executioner of that name--for he has
+recently been dismissed--was the son of the man who beheaded Louis
+XVI. After four centuries of hereditary office, this descendant of so
+many executioners had tried to repudiate the traditional burden. The
+Sansons were for two hundred years executioners at Rouen before being
+promoted to the first rank in the kingdom, and had carried out the
+decrees of justice from father to son since the thirteenth century.
+Few families can boast of an office or of nobility handed down in a
+direct line during six centuries.
+
+This young man had been captain in a cavalry regiment, and was looking
+forward to a brilliant military career, when his father insisted on
+his help in decapitating the king. Then he made his son his deputy
+when, in 1793, two guillotines were in constant work--one at the
+Barriere du Trone, and the other in the Place de Greve. This terrible
+functionary, now a man of about sixty, was remarkable for his
+dignified air, his gentle and deliberate manners, and his entire
+contempt for Bibi-Lupin and his acolytes who fed the machine. The only
+detail which betrayed the blood of the mediaeval executioner was the
+formidable breadth and thickness of his hands. Well informed too,
+caring greatly for his position as a citizen and an elector, and an
+enthusiastic florist, this tall, brawny man with his low voice, his
+calm reserve, his few words, and a high bald forehead, was like an
+English nobleman rather than an executioner. And a Spanish priest
+would certainly have fallen into the mistake which Jacques Collin had
+intentionally made.
+
+"He is no convict!" said the head warder to the governor.
+
+"I begin to think so too," replied Monsieur Gault, with a nod to that
+official.
+
+Jacques Collin was led to the cellar-like room where Theodore Calvi,
+in a straitwaistcoat, was sitting on the edge of the wretched camp
+bed. Trompe-la-Mort, under a transient gleam of light from the
+passage, at once recognized Bibi-Lupin in the gendarme who stood
+leaning on his sword.
+
+"Io sono Gaba-Morto. Parla nostro Italiano," said Jacques Collin very
+rapidly. "Vengo ti salvar."
+
+"I am Trompe-la-Mort. Talk our Italian. I have come to save you."
+
+All the two chums wanted to say had, of course, to be incomprehensible
+to the pretended gendarme; and as Bibi-Lupin was left in charge of the
+prisoner, he could not leave his post. The man's fury was quite
+indescribable.
+
+Theodore Calvi, a young man with a pale olive complexion, light hair,
+and hollow, dull, blue eyes, well built, hiding prodigious strength
+under the lymphatic appearance that is not uncommon in Southerners,
+would have had a charming face but for the strongly-arched eyebrows
+and low forehead that gave him a sinister expression, scarlet lips of
+savage cruelty, and a twitching of the muscles peculiar to Corsicans,
+denoting that excessive irritability which makes them so prompt to
+kill in any sudden squabble.
+
+Theodore, startled at the sound of that voice, raised his head, and at
+first thought himself the victim of a delusion; but as the experience
+of two months had accustomed him to the darkness of this stone box, he
+looked at the sham priest, and sighed deeply. He did not recognize
+Jacques Collin, whose face, scarred by the application of sulphuric
+acid, was not that of his old boss.
+
+"It is really your Jacques; I am your confessor, and have come to get
+you off. Do not be such a ninny as to know me; and speak as if you
+were making a confession." He spoke with the utmost rapidity. "This
+young fellow is very much depressed; he is afraid to die, he will
+confess everything," said Jacques Collin, addressing the gendarme.
+
+Bibi-Lupin dared not say a word for fear of being recognized.
+
+"Say something to show me that you are he; you have nothing but his
+voice," said Theodore.
+
+"You see, poor boy, he assures me that he is innocent," said Jacques
+Collin to Bibi-Lupin, who dared not speak for fear of being
+recognized.
+
+"Sempre mi," said Jacques, returning close to Theodore, and speaking
+the word in his ear.
+
+"Sempre ti," replied Theodore, giving the countersign. "Yes, you are
+the boss----"
+
+"Did you do the trick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell me the whole story, that I may see what can be done to save you;
+make haste, Jack Ketch is waiting."
+
+The Corsican at once knelt down and pretended to be about to confess.
+
+Bibi-Lupin did not know what to do, for the conversation was so rapid
+that it hardly took as much time as it does to read it. Theodore
+hastily told all the details of the crime, of which Jacques Collin
+knew nothing.
+
+"The jury gave their verdict without proof," he said finally.
+
+"Child! you want to argue when they are waiting to cut off your
+hair----"
+
+"But I might have been sent to spout the wedge.--And that is the way
+they judge you!--and in Paris too!"
+
+"But how did you do the job?" asked Trompe-la-Mort.
+
+"Ah! there you are.--Since I saw you I made acquaintance with a girl,
+a Corsican, I met when I came to Paris."
+
+"Men who are such fools as to love a woman," cried Jacques Collin,
+"always come to grief that way. They are tigers on the loose, tigers
+who blab and look at themselves in the glass.--You were a gaby."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Well, what good did she do you--that curse of a moll?"
+
+"That duck of a girl--no taller than a bundle of firewood, as slippery
+as an eel, and as nimble as a monkey--got in at the top of the oven,
+and opened the front door. The dogs were well crammed with balls, and
+as dead as herrings. I settled the two women. Then when I got the
+swag, Ginetta locked the door and got out again by the oven."
+
+"Such a clever dodge deserves life," said Jacques Collin, admiring the
+execution of the crime as a sculptor admires the modeling of a figure.
+
+"And I was fool enough to waste all that cleverness for a thousand
+crowns!"
+
+"No, for a woman," replied Jacques Collin. "I tell you, they deprive
+us of all our wits," and Jacques Collin eyed Theodore with a flashing
+glance of contempt.
+
+"But you were not there!" said the Corsican; "I was all alone----"
+
+"And do you love the slut?" asked Jacques Collin, feeling that the
+reproach was a just one.
+
+"Oh! I want to live, but it is for you now rather than for her."
+
+"Be quite easy, I am not called Trompe-la-Mort for nothing. I
+undertake the case."
+
+"What! life?" cried the lad, lifting his swaddled hands towards the
+damp vault of the cell.
+
+"My little Madeleine, prepare to be lagged for life (penal
+servitude)," replied Jacques Collin. "You can expect no less; they
+won't crown you with roses like a fatted ox. When they first set us
+down for Rochefort, it was because they wanted to be rid of us! But if
+I can get you ticketed for Toulon, you can get out and come back to
+Pantin (Paris), where I will find you a tidy way of living."
+
+A sigh such as had rarely been heard under that inexorable roof struck
+the stones, which sent back the sound that has no fellow in music, to
+the ear of the astounded Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"It is the effect of the absolution I promised him in return for his
+revelations," said Jacques Collin to the gendarme. "These Corsicans,
+monsieur, are full of faith! But he is as innocent as the Immaculate
+Babe, and I mean to try to save him."
+
+"God bless you, Monsieur l'Abbe!" said Theodore in French.
+
+
+
+Trompe-la-Mort, more Carlos Herrera, more the canon than ever, left
+the condemned cell, rushed back to the hall, and appeared before
+Monsieur Gault in affected horror.
+
+"Indeed, sir, the young man is innocent; he has told me who the guilty
+person is! He was ready to die for a false point of honor--he is a
+Corsican! Go and beg the public prosecutor to grant me five minutes'
+interview. Monsieur de Granville cannot refuse to listen at once to a
+Spanish priest who is suffering so cruelly from the blunders of the
+French police."
+
+"I will go," said Monsieur Gault, to the extreme astonishment of all
+the witnesses of this extraordinary scene.
+
+"And meanwhile," said Jacques, "send me back to the prison-yard where
+I may finish the conversion of a criminal whose heart I have touched
+already--they have hearts, these people!"
+
+This speech produced a sensation in all who heard it. The gendarmes,
+the registry clerk, Sanson, the warders, the executioner's assistant--
+all awaiting orders to go and get the scaffold ready--to rig up the
+machine, in prison slang--all these people, usually so indifferent,
+were agitated by very natural curiosity.
+
+Just then the rattle of a carriage with high-stepping horses was
+heard; it stopped very suggestively at the gate of the Conciergerie on
+the quay. The door was opened, and the step let down in such haste,
+that every one supposed that some great personage had arrived.
+Presently a lady waving a sheet of blue paper came forward to the
+outer gate of the prison, followed by a footman and a chasseur.
+Dressed very handsomely, and all in black, with a veil over her
+bonnet, she was wiping her eyes with a floridly embroidered
+handkerchief.
+
+Jacques Collin at once recognized Asie, or, to give the woman her true
+name, Jacqueline Collin, his aunt. This horrible old woman--worthy of
+her nephew--whose thoughts were all centered in the prisoner, and who
+was defending him with intelligence and mother-wit that were a match
+for the powers of the law, had a permit made out the evening before in
+the name of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse's waiting-maid by the request
+of Monsieur de Serizy, allowing her to see Lucien de Rubempre, and the
+Abbe Carlos Herrera so soon as he should be brought out of the secret
+cells. On this the Colonel, who was the Governor-in-Chief of all the
+prisons had written a few words, and the mere color of the paper
+revealed powerful influences; for these permits, like theatre-tickets,
+differ in shape and appearance.
+
+So the turnkey hastened to open the gate, especially when he saw the
+chasseur with his plumes and an uniform of green and gold as dazzling
+as a Russian General's, proclaiming a lady of aristocratic rank and
+almost royal birth.
+
+"Oh, my dear Abbe!" exclaimed this fine lady, shedding a torrent of
+tears at the sight of the priest, "how could any one ever think of
+putting such a saintly man in here, even by mistake?"
+
+The Governor took the permit and read, "Introduced by His Excellency
+the Comte de Serizy."
+
+"Ah! Madame de San-Esteban, Madame la Marquise," cried Carlos Herrera,
+"what admirable devotion!"
+
+"But, madame, such interviews are against the rules," said the good
+old Governor. And he intercepted the advance of this bale of black
+watered-silk and lace.
+
+"But at such a distance!" said Jacques Collin, "and in your
+presence----" and he looked round at the group.
+
+His aunt, whose dress might well dazzle the clerk, the Governor, the
+warders, and the gendarmes, stank of musk. She had on, besides a
+thousand crowns of lace, a black India cashmere shawl, worth six
+thousand francs. And her chasseur was marching up and down outside
+with the insolence of a lackey who knows that he is essential to an
+exacting princess. He spoke never a word to the footman, who stood by
+the gate on the quay, which is always open by day.
+
+"What do you wish? What can I do?" said Madame de San-Esteban in the
+lingo agreed upon by this aunt and nephew.
+
+This dialect consisted in adding terminations in ar or in or, or in al
+or in i to every word, whether French or slang, so as to disguise it
+by lengthening it. It was a diplomatic cipher adapted to speech.
+
+"Put all the letters in some safe place; take out those that are most
+likely to compromise the ladies; come back, dressed very poorly, to
+the Salle des Pas-Perdus, and wait for my orders."
+
+Asie, otherwise Jacqueline, knelt as if to receive his blessing, and
+the sham priest blessed his aunt with evengelical unction.
+
+"Addio, Marchesa," said he aloud. "And," he added in their private
+language, "find Europe and Paccard with the seven hundred and fifty
+thousand francs they bagged. We must have them."
+
+"Paccard is out there," said the pious Marquise, pointing to the
+chasseur, her eyes full of tears.
+
+This intuitive comprehension brought not merely a smile to the man's
+lips, but a gesture of surprise; no one could astonish him but his
+aunt. The sham Marquise turned to the bystanders with the air of a
+woman accustomed to give herself airs.
+
+"He is in despair at being unable to attend his son's funeral," said
+she in broken French, "for this monstrous miscarriage of justice has
+betrayed the saintly man's secret.--I am going to the funeral mass.--
+Here, monsieur," she added to the Governor, handing him a purse of
+gold, "this is to give your poor prisoners some comforts."
+
+"What slap-up style!" her nephew whispered in approval.
+
+Jacques Collin then followed the warder, who led him back to the yard.
+
+Bibi-Lupin, quite desperate, had at last caught the eye of a real
+gendarme, to whom, since Jacques Collin had gone, he had been
+addressing significant "Ahems," and who took his place on guard in the
+condemned cell. But Trompe-la-Mort's sworn foe was released too late
+to see the great lady, who drove off in her dashing turn-out, and
+whose voice, though disguised, fell on his ear with a vicious twang.
+
+"Three hundred shiners for the boarders," said the head warder,
+showing Bibi-Lupin the purse, which Monsieur Gault had handed over to
+his clerk.
+
+"Let's see, Monsieur Jacomety," said Bibi-Lupin.
+
+The police agent took the purse, poured out the money into his hand,
+and examined it curiously.
+
+"Yes, it is gold, sure enough!" said he, "and a coat-of-arms on the
+purse! The scoundrel! How clever he is! What an all-round villain! He
+does us all brown----and all the time! He ought to be shot down like a
+dog!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" asked the clerk, taking back the money.
+
+"The matter! Why, the hussy stole it!" cried Bibi-Lupin, stamping with
+rage on the flags of the gateway.
+
+The words produced a great sensation among the spectators, who were
+standing at a little distance from Monsieur Sanson. He, too, was still
+standing, his back against the large stove in the middle of the
+vaulted hall, awaiting the order to crop the felon's hair and erect
+the scaffold on the Place de Greve.
+
+On re-entering the yard, Jacques Collin went towards his chums at a
+pace suited to a frequenter of the galleys.
+
+"What have you on your mind?" said he to la Pouraille.
+
+"My game is up," said the man, whom Jacques Collin led into a corner.
+"What I want now is a pal I can trust."
+
+"What for?"
+
+La Pouraille, after telling the tale of all his crimes, but in
+thieves' slang, gave an account of the murder and robbery of the two
+Crottats.
+
+"You have my respect," said Jacques Collin. "The job was well done;
+but you seem to me to have blundered afterwards."
+
+"In what say?"
+
+"Well, having done the trick, you ought to have had a Russian
+passport, have made up as a Russian prince, bought a fine coach with a
+coat-of-arms on it, have boldly deposited your money in a bank, have
+got a letter of credit on Hamburg, and then have set out posting to
+Hamburg with a valet, a ladies' maid, and your mistress disguised as a
+Russian princess. At Hamburg you should have sailed for Mexico. A chap
+of spirit, with two hundred and eighty thousand francs in gold, ought
+to be able to do what he pleases and go where he pleases, flathead!"
+
+"Oh yes, you have such notions because you are the boss. Your nut is
+always square on your shoulders--but I----"
+
+"In short, a word of good advice in your position is like broth to a
+dead man," said Jacques Collin, with a serpentlike gaze at his old
+pal.
+
+"True enough!" said la Pouraille, looking dubious. "But give me the
+broth, all the same. If it does not suit my stomach, I can warm my
+feet in it----"
+
+"Here you are nabbed by the Justice, with five robberies and three
+murders, the latest of them those of two rich and respectable
+folks. . . . Now, juries do not like to see respectable folks killed.
+You will be put through the machine, and there is not a chance for
+you."
+
+"I have heard all that," said la Pouraille lamentably.
+
+"My aunt Jacqueline, with whom I have just exchanged a few words in
+the office, and who is, as you know, a mother to the pals, told me
+that the authorities mean to be quit of you; they are so much afraid
+of you."
+
+"But I am rich now," said La Pouraille, with a simplicity which showed
+how convinced a thief is of his natural right to steal. "What are they
+afraid of?"
+
+"We have no time for philosophizing," said Jacques Collin. "To come
+back to you----"
+
+"What do you want with me?" said la Pouraille, interrupting his boss.
+
+"You shall see. A dead dog is still worth something."
+
+"To other people," said la Pouraille.
+
+"I take you into my game!" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"Well, that is something," said the murderer. "What next?"
+
+"I do not ask you where your money is, but what you mean to do with
+it?"
+
+La Pouraille looked into the convict's impenetrable eye, and Jacques
+coldly went on: "Have you a trip you are sweet upon, or a child, or a
+pal to be helped? I shall be outside within an hour, and I can do much
+for any one you want to be good-natured to."
+
+La Pouraille still hesitated; he was delaying with indecision. Jacques
+Collin produced a clinching argument.
+
+"Your whack of our money would be thirty thousand francs. Do you leave
+it to the pals? Do you bequeath it to anybody? Your share is safe; I
+can give it this evening to any one you leave it to."
+
+The murderer gave a little start of satisfaction.
+
+"I have him!" said Jacques Collin to himself. "But we have no time to
+play. Consider," he went on in la Pouraille's ear, "we have not ten
+minutes to spare, old chap; the public prosecutor is to send for me,
+and I am to have a talk with him. I have him safe, and can ring the
+old boss' neck. I am certain I shall save Madeleine."
+
+"If you save Madeleine, my good boss, you can just as easily----"
+
+"Don't waste your spittle," said Jacques Collin shortly. "Make your
+will."
+
+"Well, then--I want to leave the money to la Gonore," replied la
+Pouraille piteously.
+
+"What! Are you living with Moses' widow--the Jew who led the swindling
+gang in the South?" asked Jacques Collin.
+
+For Trompe-la-Mort, like a great general, knew the person of every one
+of his army.
+
+"That's the woman," said la Pouraille, much flattered.
+
+"A pretty woman," said Jacques Collin, who knew exactly how to manage
+his dreadful tools. "The moll is a beauty; she is well informed, and
+stands by her mates, and a first-rate hand. Yes, la Gonore has made a
+new man of you! What a flat you must be to risk your nut when you have
+a trip like her at home! You noodle; you should have set up some
+respectable little shop and lived quietly.--And what does she do?"
+
+"She is settled in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, managing a house----"
+
+"And she is to be your legatee? Ah, my dear boy, this is what such
+sluts bring us to when we are such fools as to love them."
+
+"Yes, but don't you give her anything till I am done for."
+
+"It is a sacred trust," said Jacques Collin very seriously.
+
+"And nothing to the pals?"
+
+"Nothing! They blowed the gaff for me," answered la Pouraille
+vindictively.
+
+"Who did? Shall I serve 'em out?" asked Jacques Collin eagerly, trying
+to rouse the last sentiment that survives in these souls till the last
+hour. "Who knows, old pal, but I might at the same time do them a bad
+turn and serve you with the public prosecutor?"
+
+The murderer looked at his boss with amazed satisfaction.
+
+"At this moment," the boss replied to this expressive look, "I am
+playing the game only for Theodore. When this farce is played out, old
+boy, I might do wonders for a chum--for you are a chum of mine."
+
+"If I see that you really can put off the engagement for that poor
+little Theodore, I will do anything you choose--there!"
+
+"But the trick is done. I am sure to save his head. If you want to get
+out of the scrape, you see, la Pouraille, you must be ready to do a
+good turn--we can do nothing single-handed----"
+
+"That's true," said the felon.
+
+His confidence was so strong, and his faith in the boss so fanatical,
+that he no longer hesitated. La Pouraille revealed the names of his
+accomplices, a secret hitherto well kept. This was all Jacques needed
+to know.
+
+"That is the whole story. Ruffard was the third in the job with me and
+Godet----"
+
+"Arrache-Laine?" cried Jacques Collin, giving Ruffard his nickname
+among the gang.
+
+"That's the man.--And the blackguards peached because I knew where
+they had hidden their whack, and they did not know where mine was."
+
+"You are making it all easy, my cherub!" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well," replied the master, "you see how wise it is to trust me
+entirely. Your revenge is now part of the hand I am playing.--I do not
+ask you to tell me where the dibs are, you can tell me at the last
+moment; but tell me all about Ruffard and Godet."
+
+"You are, and you always will be, our boss; I have no secrets from
+you," replied la Pouraille. "My money is in the cellar at la
+Gonore's."
+
+"And you are not afraid of her telling?"
+
+"Why, get along! She knows nothing about my little game!" replied la
+Pouraille. "I make her drunk, though she is of the sort that would
+never blab even with her head under the knife.--But such a lot of
+gold----!"
+
+"Yes, that turns the milk of the purest conscience," replied Jacques
+Collin.
+
+"So I could do the job with no peepers to spy me. All the chickens
+were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet underground behind some
+wine-bottles. And I spread some stones and mortar over them."
+
+"Good," said Jacques Collin. "And the others?"
+
+"Ruffard's pieces are with la Gonore in the poor woman's bedroom, and
+he has her tight by that, for she might be nabbed as accessory after
+the fact, and end her days in Saint-Lazare."
+
+"The villain! The reelers teach a thief what's what," said Jacques.
+
+"Godet left his pieces at his sister's, a washerwoman; honest girl,
+she may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it.
+The pal raised the tiles of the floor, put them back again, and
+guyed."
+
+"Now do you know what I want you to do?" said Jacques Collin, with a
+magnetizing gaze at la Pouraille.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I want you to take Madeleine's job on your shoulders."
+
+La Pouraille started queerly; but he at once recovered himself and
+stood at attention under the boss' eye.
+
+"So you shy at that? You dare to spoil my game? Come, now! Four
+murders or three. Does it not come to the same thing?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"By the God of good-fellowship, there is no blood in your veins! And I
+was thinking of saving you!"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family, you will
+only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for your nut if we
+keep the blunt, but at this moment you are worth seven hundred
+thousand francs, you flat."
+
+"Good for you, boss!" cried la Pouraille in great glee.
+
+"And then," said Jacques Collin, "besides casting all the murders on
+Ruffard--Bibi-Lupin will be finely cold. I have him this time."
+
+La Pouraille was speechless at this suggestion; his eyes grew round,
+and he stood like an image.
+
+He had been three months in custody, and was committed for trial, and
+his chums at La Force, to whom he had never mentioned his accomplices,
+had given him such small comfort, that he was entirely hopeless after
+his examination, and this simple expedient had been quite overlooked
+by these prison-ridden minds. This semblance of a hope almost
+stupefied his brain.
+
+"Have Ruffard and Godet had their spree yet? Have they forked out any
+of the yellow boys?" asked Jacques Collin.
+
+"They dare not," replied la Pouraille. "The wretches are waiting till
+I am turned off. That is what my moll sent me word by la Biffe when
+she came to see le Biffon."
+
+"Very well; we will have their whack of money in twenty-four hours,"
+said Jacques Collin. "Then the blackguards cannot pay up, as you will;
+you will come out as white as snow, and they will be red with all that
+blood! By my kind offices you will seem a good sort of fellow led away
+by them. I shall have money enough of yours to prove alibis on the
+other counts, and when you are back on the hulks--for you are bound to
+go there--you must see about escaping. It is a dog's life, still it is
+life!"
+
+La Pouraille's eyes glittered with suppressed delirium.
+
+"With seven hundred thousand francs you can get a good many drinks,"
+said Jacques Collin, making his pal quite drunk with hope.
+
+"Ay, ay, boss!"
+
+"I can bamboozle the Minister of Justice.--Ah, ha! Ruffard will shell
+out to do for a reeler. Bibi-Lupin is fairly gulled!"
+
+"Very good, it is a bargain," said la Pouraille with savage glee. "You
+order, and I obey."
+
+And he hugged Jacques Collin in his arms, while tears of joy stood in
+his eyes, so hopeful did he feel of saving his head.
+
+"That is not all," said Jacques Collin; "the public prosecutor does
+not swallow everything, you know, especially when a new count is
+entered against you. The next thing is to bring a moll into the case
+by blowing the gaff."
+
+"But how, and what for?"
+
+"Do as I bid you; you will see." And Trompe-la-Mort briefly told the
+secret of the Nanterre murders, showing him how necessary it was to
+find a woman who would pretend to be Ginetta. Then he and la
+Pouraille, now in good spirits, went across to le Biffon.
+
+"I know how sweet you are on la Biffe," said Jacques Collin to this
+man.
+
+The expression in le Biffon's eyes was a horrible poem.
+
+"What will she do while you are on the hulks?"
+
+A tear sparkled in le Biffon's fierce eyes.
+
+"Well, suppose I were to get her lodgings in the Lorcefe des Largues"
+(the women's La Force, i. e. les Madelonnettes or Saint-Lazare) "for a
+stretch, allowing that time for you to be sentenced and sent there, to
+arrive and to escape?"
+
+"Even you cannot work such a miracle. She took no part in the job,"
+replied la Biffe's partner.
+
+"Oh, my good Biffon," said la Pouraille, "our boss is more powerful
+than God Almighty."
+
+"What is your password for her?" asked Jacques Collin, with the
+assurance of a master to whom nothing can be refused.
+
+"Sorgue a Pantin (night in Paris). If you say that she knows you have
+come from me, and if you want her to do as you bid her, show her a
+five-franc piece and say Tondif."
+
+"She will be involved in the sentence on la Pouraille, and let off
+with a year in quod for snitching," said Jacques Collin, looking at la
+Pouraille.
+
+La Pouraille understood his boss' scheme, and by a single look
+promised to persuade le Biffon to promote it by inducing la Biffe to
+take upon herself this complicity in the crime la Pouraille was
+prepared to confess.
+
+"Farewell, my children. You will presently hear that I have saved my
+boy from Jack Ketch," said Trompe-la-Mort. "Yes, Jack Ketch and his
+hairdresser were waiting in the office to get Madeleine ready.--
+There," he added, "they have come to fetch me to go to the public
+prosecutor."
+
+And, in fact, a warder came out of the gate and beckoned to this
+extraordinary man, who, in face of the young Corsican's danger, had
+recovered his own against his own society.
+
+
+
+It is worthy of note that at the moment when Lucien's body was taken
+away from him, Jacques Collin had, with a crowning effort, made up his
+mind to attempt a last incarnation, not as a human being, but as a
+THING. He had at last taken the fateful step that Napoleon took on
+board the boat which conveyed him to the Bellerophon. And a strange
+concurrence of events aided this genius of evil and corruption in his
+undertaking.
+
+But though the unlooked-for conclusion of this life of crime may
+perhaps be deprived of some of the marvelous effect which, in our day,
+can be given to a narrative only by incredible improbabilities, it is
+necessary, before we accompany Jacques Collin to the public
+prosecutor's room, that we should follow Madame Camusot in her visits
+during the time we have spent in the Conciergerie.
+
+One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly
+observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic
+arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself
+romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks
+of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it
+constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of
+facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of
+"situation" forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and
+purified by the writer.
+
+Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the morning almost
+in good taste--a difficult task for the wife of a judge who for six
+years has lived in a provincial town. Her object was to give no hold
+for criticism to the Marquise d'Espard or the Duchesse de
+Maufrigneuse, in a call so early as between eight and nine in the
+morning. Amelie Cecile Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only
+half succeeded; and in a matter of dress is this not a twofold
+blunder?
+
+Few people can imagine how useful the women of Paris are to ambitious
+men of every class; they are equally necessary in the world of fashion
+and the world of thieves, where, as we have seen, they fill a most
+important part. For instance, suppose that a man, not to find himself
+left in the lurch, must absolutely get speech within a given time with
+the high functionary who was of such immense importance under the
+Restoration, and who is to this day called the Keeper of the Seals--a
+man, let us say, in the most favorable position, a judge, that is to
+say, a man familiar with the way of things. He is compelled to seek
+out the presiding judge of a circuit, or some private or official
+secretary, and prove to him his need of an immediate interview. But is
+a Keeper of the Seals ever visible "that very minute"? In the middle
+of the day, if he is not at the Chamber, he is at the Privy Council,
+or signing papers, or hearing a case. In the early morning he is out,
+no one knows where. In the evening he has public and private
+engagements. If every magistrate could claim a moment's interview
+under any pretext that might occur to him, the Supreme Judge would be
+besieged.
+
+The purpose of a private and immediate interview is therefore
+submitted to the judgment of one of those mediatory potentates who are
+but an obstacle to be removed, a door that can be unlocked, so long as
+it is not held by a rival. A woman at once goes to another woman; she
+can get straight into her bedroom if she can arouse the curiosity of
+mistress or maid, especially if the mistress is under the stress of a
+strong interest or pressing necessity.
+
+Call this female potentate Madame la Marquise d'Espard, with whom a
+Minister has to come to terms; this woman writes a little scented
+note, which her man-servant carries to the Minister's man-servant. The
+note greets the Minister on his waking, and he reads it at once.
+Though the Minister has business to attend to, the man is enchanted to
+have a reason for calling on one of the Queens of Paris, one of the
+Powers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, one of the favorites of the
+Dauphiness, of MADAME, or of the King. Casimir Perier, the only real
+statesman of the Revolution of July, would leave anything to call on a
+retired Gentleman of the bed-chamber to King Charles X.
+
+This theory accounts for the magical effect of the words:
+
+"Madame,--Madame Camusot, on very important business, which she says
+you know of," spoken in Madame d'Espard's ear by her maid, who thought
+she was awake.
+
+And the Marquise desired that Amelie should be shown in at once.
+
+The magistrate's wife was attentively heard when she began with these
+words:
+
+"Madame la Marquise, we have ruined ourselves by trying to avenge
+you----"
+
+"How is that, my dear?" replied the Marquise, looking at Madame
+Camusot in the dim light that fell through the half-open door. "You
+are vastly sweet this morning in that little bonnet. Where do you get
+that shape?"
+
+"You are very kind, madame.--Well, you know that Camusot's way of
+examining Lucien de Rubempre drove the young man to despair, and he
+hanged himself in prison."
+
+"Oh, what will become of Madame de Serizy?" cried the Marquise,
+affecting ignorance, that she might hear the whole story once more.
+
+"Alas! they say she is quite mad," said Amelie. "If you could persuade
+the Lord Keeper to send for my husband this minute, by special
+messenger, to meet him at the Palais, the Minister would hear some
+strange mysteries, and report them, no doubt, to the King. . . . Then
+Camusot's enemies would be reduced to silence."
+
+"But who are Camusot's enemies?" asked Madame d'Espard.
+
+"The public prosecutor, and now Monsieur de Serizy."
+
+"Very good, my dear," replied Madame d'Espard, who owed to Monsieur de
+Granville and the Comte de Serizy her defeat in the disgraceful
+proceedings by which she had tried to have her husband treated as a
+lunatic, "I will protect you; I never forget either my foes or my
+friends."
+
+She rang; the maid drew open the curtains, and daylight flooded the
+room; she asked for her desk, and the maid brought it in. The Marquise
+hastily scrawled a few lines.
+
+"Tell Godard to go on horseback, and carry this note to the
+Chancellor's office.--There is no reply," said she to the maid.
+
+The woman went out of the room quickly, but, in spite of the order,
+remained at the door for some minutes.
+
+"There are great mysteries going forward then?" asked Madame d'Espard.
+"Tell me all about it, dear child. Has Clotilde de Grandlieu put a
+finger in the pie?"
+
+"You will know everything from the Lord Keeper, for my husband has
+told me nothing. He only told me he was in danger. It would be better
+for us that Madame de Serizy should die than that she should remain
+mad."
+
+"Poor woman!" said the Marquise. "But was she not mad already?"
+
+Women of the world, by a hundred ways of pronouncing the same phrase,
+illustrate to attentive hearers the infinite variety of musical modes.
+The soul goes out into the voice as it does into the eyes; it vibrates
+in light and in air--the elements acted on by the eyes and the voice.
+By the tone she gave to the two words, "Poor woman!" the Marquise
+betrayed the joy of satisfied hatred, the pleasure of triumph. Oh!
+what woes did she not wish to befall Lucien's protectress. Revenge,
+which nothing can assuage, which can survive the person hated, fills
+us with dark terrors. And Madame Camusot, though harsh herself,
+vindictive, and quarrelsome, was overwhelmed. She could find nothing
+to say, and was silent.
+
+"Diane told me that Leontine went to the prison," Madame d'Espard went
+on. "The dear Duchess is in despair at such a scandal, for she is so
+foolish as to be very fond of Madame de Serizy; however, it is
+comprehensible: they both adored that little fool Lucien at about the
+same time, and nothing so effectually binds or severs two women as
+worshiping at the same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours
+yesterday in Leontine's room. The poor Countess, it seems, says
+dreadful things! I heard that it was disgusting! A woman of rank ought
+not to give way to such attacks.--Bah! A purely physical passion.--The
+Duchess came to see me as pale as death; she really was very brave.
+There are monstrous things connected with this business."
+
+"My husband will tell the Keeper of the Seals all he knows for his own
+justification, for they wanted to save Lucien, and he, Madame la
+Marquise, did his duty. An examining judge always has to question
+people in private at the time fixed by law! He had to ask the poor
+little wretch something, if only for form's sake, and the young fellow
+did not understand, and confessed things----"
+
+"He was an impertinent fool!" said Madame d'Espard in a hard tone.
+
+The judge's wife kept silence on hearing this sentence.
+
+"Though we failed in the matter of the Commission in Lunacy, it was
+not Camusot's fault, I shall never forget that," said the Marquise
+after a pause. "It was Lucien, Monsieur de Serizy, Monsieur de Bauvan,
+and Monsieur de Granville who overthrew us. With time God will be on
+my side; all those people will come to grief.--Be quite easy, I will
+send the Chevalier d'Espard to the Keeper of the Seals that he may
+desire your husbands's presence immediately, if that is of any use."
+
+"Oh! madame----"
+
+"Listen," said the Marquise. "I promise you the ribbon of the Legion
+of Honor at once--to-morrow. It will be a conspicuous testimonial of
+satisfaction with your conduct in this affair. Yes, it implies further
+blame on Lucien; it will prove him guilty. Men do not commonly hang
+themselves for the pleasure of it.--Now, good-bye, my pretty dear----"
+
+Ten minutes later Madame Camusot was in the bedroom of the beautiful
+Diane de Maufrigneuse, who had not gone to bed till one, and at nine
+o'clock had not yet slept.
+
+However insensible duchesses may be, even these women, whose hearts
+are of stone, cannot see a friend a victim to madness without being
+painfully impressed by it.
+
+And besides, the connection between Diane and Lucien, though at an end
+now eighteen months since, had left such memories with the Duchess
+that the poor boy's disastrous end had been to her also a fearful
+blow. All night Diane had seen visions of the beautiful youth, so
+charming, so poetical, who had been so delightful a lover--painted as
+Leontine depicted him, with the vividness of wild delirium. She had
+letters from Lucien that she had kept, intoxicating letters worthy to
+compare with Mirabeau's to Sophie, but more literary, more elaborate,
+for Lucien's letters had been dictated by the most powerful of
+passions--Vanity. Having the most bewitching of duchesses for his
+mistress, and seeing her commit any folly for him--secret follies, of
+course--had turned Lucien's head with happiness. The lover's pride had
+inspired the poet. And the Duchess had treasured these touching
+letters, as some old men keep indecent prints, for the sake of their
+extravagant praise of all that was least duchess-like in her nature.
+
+"And he died in a squalid prison!" cried she to herself, putting the
+letters away in a panic when she heard her maid knocking gently at her
+door.
+
+"Madame Camusot," said the woman, "on business of the greatest
+importance to you, Madame la Duchesse."
+
+Diane sprang to her feet in terror.
+
+"Oh!" cried she, looking at Amelie, who had assumed a duly condoling
+air, "I guess it all--my letters! It is about my letters. Oh, my
+letters, my letters!"
+
+She sank on to a couch. She remembered now how, in the extravagance of
+her passion, she had answered Lucien in the same vein, had lauded the
+man's poetry as he has sung the charms of the woman, and in what a
+strain!
+
+"Alas, yes, madame, I have come to save what is dearer to you than
+life--your honor. Compose yourself and get dressed, we must go to the
+Duchesse de Grandlieu; happily for you, you are not the only person
+compromised."
+
+"But at the Palais, yesterday, Leontine burned, I am told, all the
+letters found at poor Lucien's."
+
+"But, madame, behind Lucien there was Jacques Collin!" cried the
+magistrate's wife. "You always forget that horrible companionship
+which beyond question led to that charming and lamented young man's
+end. That Machiavelli of the galleys never loses his head! Monsieur
+Camusot is convinced that the wretch has in some safe hiding-place all
+the most compromising letters written by you ladies to his----"
+
+"His friend," the Duchess hastily put in. "You are right, my child. We
+must hold council at the Grandlieus'. We are all concerned in this
+matter, and Serizy happily will lend us his aid."
+
+Extreme peril--as we have observed in the scenes in the Conciergerie--
+has a hold over the soul not less terrible than that of powerful
+reagents over the body. It is a mental Voltaic battery. The day,
+perhaps, is not far off when the process shall be discovered by which
+feeling is chemically converted into a fluid not unlike the electric
+fluid.
+
+The phenomena were the same in the convict and the Duchess. This
+crushed, half-dying woman, who had not slept, who was so particular
+over her dressing, had recovered the strength of a lioness at bay, and
+the presence of mind of a general under fire. Diane chose her gown and
+got through her dressing with the alacrity of a grisette who is her
+own waiting-woman. It was so astounding, that the lady's-maid stood
+for a moment stock-still, so greatly was she surprised to see her
+mistress in her shift, not ill pleased perhaps to let the judge's wife
+discern through the thin cloud of lawn a form as white and as perfect
+as that of Canova's Venus. It was like a gem in a fold of tissue
+paper. Diane suddenly remembered where a pair of stays had been put
+that fastened in front, sparing a woman in a hurry the ill-spent time
+and fatigue of being laced. She had arranged the lace trimming of her
+shift and the fulness of the bosom by the time the maid had fetched
+her petticoat, and crowned the work by putting on her gown. While
+Amelie, at a sign from the maid, hooked the bodice behind, the woman
+brought out a pair of thread stockings, velvet boots, a shawl, and a
+bonnet. Amelie and the maid each drew on a stocking.
+
+"You are the loveliest creature I ever saw!" said Amelie, insidiously
+kissing Diane's elegant and polished knee with an eager impulse.
+
+"Madame has not her match!" cried the maid.
+
+"There, there, Josette, hold your tongue," replied the Duchess.--"Have
+you a carriage?" she went on, to Madame Camusot. "Then come along, my
+dear, we can talk on the road."
+
+And the Duchess ran down the great stairs of the Hotel de Cadignan,
+putting on her gloves as she went--a thing she had never been known to
+do.
+
+"To the Hotel de Grandlieu, and drive fast," said she to one of her
+men, signing to him to get up behind.
+
+The footman hesitated--it was a hackney coach.
+
+"Ah! Madame la Duchesse, you never told me that the young man had
+letters of yours. Otherwise Camusot would have proceeded
+differently . . ."
+
+"Leontine's state so occupied my thoughts that I forgot myself
+entirely. The poor woman was almost crazy the day before yesterday;
+imagine the effect on her of this tragical termination. If you could
+only know, child, what a morning we went through yesterday! It is
+enough to make one forswear love!--Yesterday Leontine and I were
+dragged across Paris by a horrible old woman, an old-clothes buyer, a
+domineering creature, to that stinking and blood-stained sty they call
+the Palace of Justice, and I said to her as I took her there: 'Is not
+this enough to make us fall on our knees and cry out like Madame de
+Nucingen, when she went through one of those awful Mediterranean
+storms on her way to Naples, "Dear God, save me this time, and never
+again----!" '
+
+"These two days will certainly have shortened my life.--What fools we
+are ever to write!--But love prompts us; we receive pages that fire
+the heart through the eyes, and everything is in a blaze! Prudence
+deserts us--we reply----"
+
+"But why reply when you can act?" said Madame Camusot.
+
+"It is grand to lose oneself utterly!" cried the Duchess with pride.
+"It is the luxury of the soul."
+
+"Beautiful women are excusable," said Madame Camusot modestly. "They
+have more opportunities of falling than we have."
+
+The Duchess smiled.
+
+"We are always too generous," said Diane de Maufrigneuse. "I shall do
+just like that odious Madame d'Espard."
+
+"And what does she do?" asked the judge's wife, very curious.
+
+"She has written a thousand love-notes----"
+
+"So many!" exclaimed Amelie, interrupting the Duchess.
+
+"Well, my dear, and not a word that could compromise her is to be
+found in any one of them."
+
+"You would be incapable of maintaining such coldness, such caution,"
+said Madame Camusot. "You are a woman; you are one of those angels who
+cannot stand out against the devil----"
+
+"I have made a vow to write no more letters. I never in my life wrote
+to anybody but that unhappy Lucien.--I will keep his letters to my
+dying day! My dear child, they are fire, and sometimes we want----"
+
+"But if they were found!" said Amelie, with a little shocked
+expression.
+
+"Oh! I should say they were part of a romance I was writing; for I
+have copied them all, my dear, and burned the originals."
+
+"Oh, madame, as a reward allow me to read them."
+
+"Perhaps, child," said the Duchess. "And then you will see that he did
+not write such letters as those to Leontine."
+
+This speech was woman all the world over, of every age and every land.
+
+
+
+Madame Camusot, like the frog in la Fontaine's fable, was ready to
+burst her skin with the joy of going to the Grandlieus' in the society
+of the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse. This morning she would forge
+one of the links that are so needful to ambition. She could already
+hear herself addressed as Madame la Presidente. She felt the ineffable
+gladness of triumphing over stupendous obstacles, of which the
+greatest was her husband's ineptitude, as yet unrevealed, but to her
+well known. To win success for a second-rate man! that is to a woman--
+as to a king--the delight which tempts great actors when they act a
+bad play a hundred times over. It is the very drunkenness of egoism.
+It is in a way the Saturnalia of power.
+
+Power can prove itself to itself only by the strange misapplication
+which leads it to crown some absurd person with the laurels of success
+while insulting genius--the only strong-hold which power cannot touch.
+The knighting of Caligula's horse, an imperial farce, has been, and
+always will be, a favorite performance.
+
+In a few minutes Diane and Amelie had exchanged the elegant disorder
+of the fair Diane's bedroom for the severe but dignified and splendid
+austerity of the Duchesse de Grandlieu's rooms.
+
+She, a Portuguese, and very pious, always rose at eight to attend mass
+at the little church of Sainte-Valere, a chapelry to Saint-Thomas
+d'Aquin, standing at that time on the esplanade of the Invalides. This
+chapel, now destroyed, was rebuilt in the Rue de Bourgogne, pending
+the building of a Gothic church to be dedicated to Sainte-Clotilde.
+
+On hearing the first words spoken in her ear by Diane de Maufrigneuse,
+this saintly lady went to find Monsieur de Grandlieu, and brought him
+back at once. The Duke threw a flashing look at Madame Camusot, one of
+those rapid glances with which a man of the world can guess at a whole
+existence, or often read a soul. Amelie's dress greatly helped the
+Duke to decipher the story of a middle-class life, from Alencon to
+Mantes, and from Mantes to Paris.
+
+Oh! if only the lawyer's wife could have understood this gift in
+dukes, she could never have endured that politely ironical look; she
+saw the politeness only. Ignorance shares the privileges of fine
+breeding.
+
+"This is Madame Camusot, a daughter of Thirion's--one of the Cabinet
+ushers," said the Duchess to her husband.
+
+The Duke bowed with extreme politeness to the wife of a legal
+official, and his face became a little less grave.
+
+The Duke had rung for his valet, who now came in.
+
+"Go to the Rue Saint-Honore: take a coach. Ring at a side door, No.
+10. Tell the man who opens the door that I beg his master will come
+here, and if the gentleman is at home, bring him back with you.--
+Mention my name, that will remove all difficulties.
+
+"And do not be gone more than a quarter of an hour in all."
+
+Another footman, the Duchess' servant, came in as soon as the other
+was gone.
+
+"Go from me to the Duc de Chaulieu, and send up this card."
+
+The Duke gave him a card folded down in a particular way. When the two
+friends wanted to meet at once, on any urgent or confidential business
+which would not allow of note-writing, they used this means of
+communication.
+
+Thus we see that similar customs prevail in every rank of society, and
+differ only in manner, civility, and small details. The world of
+fashion, too, has its argot, its slang; but that slang is called
+style.
+
+"Are you quite sure, madame, of the existence of the letters you say
+were written by Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu to this young man?"
+said the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+And he cast a look at Madame Camusot as a sailor casts a sounding
+line.
+
+"I have not seen them, but there is reason to fear it," replied Madame
+Camusot, quaking.
+
+"My daughter can have written nothing we would not own to!" said the
+Duchess.
+
+"Poor Duchess!" thought Diane, with a glance at the Duke that
+terrified him.
+
+"What do you think, my dear little Diane?" said the Duke in a whisper,
+as he led her away into a recess.
+
+"Clotilde is so crazy about Lucien, my dear friend, that she had made
+an assignation with him before leaving. If it had not been for little
+Lenoncourt, she would perhaps have gone off with him into the forest
+of Fontainebleau. I know that Lucien used to write letters to her
+which were enough to turn the brain of a saint.--We are three
+daughters of Eve in the coils of the serpent of letter-writing."
+
+The Duke and Diane came back to the Duchess and Madame Camusot, who
+were talking in undertones. Amelie, following the advice of the
+Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, affected piety to win the proud lady's
+favor.
+
+"We are at the mercy of a dreadful escaped convict!" said the Duke,
+with a peculiar shrug. "This is what comes of opening one's house to
+people one is not absolutely sure of. Before admitting an
+acquaintance, one ought to know all about his fortune, his relations,
+all his previous history----"
+
+This speech is the moral of my story--from the aristocratic point of
+view.
+
+"That is past and over," said the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. "Now we
+must think of saving that poor Madame de Serizy, Clotilde, and me----"
+
+"We can but wait for Henri; I have sent to him. But everything really
+depends on the man Gentil is gone to fetch. God grant that man may be
+in Paris!--Madame," he added to Madame Camusot, "thank you so much for
+having thought of us----"
+
+This was Madame Camusot's dismissal. The daughter of the court usher
+had wit enough to understand the Duke; she rose. But the Duchess de
+Maufrigneuse, with the enchanting grace which had won her so much
+friendship and discretion, took Amelie by the hand as if to show her,
+in a way, to the Duke and Duchess.
+
+"On my own account," said she, "to say nothing of her having been up
+before daybreak to save us all, I may ask for more than a remembrance
+for my little Madame Camusot. In the first place, she has already done
+me such a service as I cannot forget; and then she is wholly devoted
+to our side, she and her husband. I have promised that her Camusot
+shall have advancement, and I beg you above everything to help him on,
+for my sake."
+
+"You need no such recommendation," said the Duke to Madame Camusot.
+"The Grandlieus always remember a service done them. The King's
+adherents will ere long have a chance of distinguishing themselves;
+they will be called upon to prove their devotion; your husband will be
+placed in the front----"
+
+Madame Camusot withdrew, proud, happy, puffed up to suffocation. She
+reached home triumphant; she admired herself, she made light of the
+public prosecutor's hostility. She said to herself:
+
+"Supposing we were to send Monsieur de Granville flying----"
+
+It was high time for Madame Camusot to vanish. The Duc de Chaulieu,
+one of the King's prime favorites, met the bourgeoise on the outer
+steps.
+
+"Henri," said the Duc de Grandlieu when he heard his friend announced,
+"make haste, I beg of you, to get to the Chateau, try to see the King
+--the business of this;" and he led the Duke into the window-recess,
+where he had been talking to the airy and charming Diane.
+
+Now and then the Duc de Chaulieu glanced in the direction of the
+flighty Duchess, who, while talking to the pious Duchess and
+submitting to be lectured, answered the Duc de Chaulieu's expressive
+looks.
+
+"My dear child," said the Duc de Grandlieu to her at last, the ASIDE
+being ended, "do be good! Come, now," and he took Diane's hands,
+"observe the proprieties of life, do not compromise yourself any more,
+write no letters. Letters, my dear, have caused as much private woe as
+public mischief. What might be excusable in a girl like Clotilde, in
+love for the first time, had no excuse in----"
+
+"An old soldier who has been under fire," said Diane with a pout.
+
+This grimace and the Duchess' jest brought a smile to the face of the
+two much-troubled Dukes, and of the pious Duchess herself.
+
+"But for four years I have never written a billet-doux.--Are we
+saved?" asked Diane, who hid her curiosity under this childishness.
+
+"Not yet," said the Duc de Chaulieu. "You have no notion how difficult
+it is to do an arbitrary thing. In a constitutional king it is what
+infidelity is in a wife: it is adultery."
+
+"The fascinating sin," said the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"Forbidden fruit!" said Diane, smiling. "Oh! how I wish I were the
+Government, for I have none of that fruit left--I have eaten it all."
+
+"Oh! my dear, my dear!" said the elder Duchess, "you really go too
+far."
+
+The two Dukes, hearing a coach stop at the door with the clatter of
+horses checked in full gallop, bowed to the ladies and left them,
+going into the Duc de Grandlieu's study, whither came the gentleman
+from the Rue Honore-Chevalier--no less a man than the chief of the
+King's private police, the obscure but puissant Corentin.
+
+"Go on," said the Duc de Grandlieu; "go first, Monsieur de Saint-
+Denis."
+
+Corentin, surprised that the Duke should have remembered him, went
+forward after bowing low to the two noblemen.
+
+"Always about the same individual, or about his concerns, my dear
+sir," said the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"But he is dead," said Corentin.
+
+"He has left a partner," said the Duc de Chaulieu, "a very tough
+customer."
+
+"The convict Jacques Collin," replied Corentin.
+
+"Will you speak, Ferdinand?" said the Duke de Chaulieu to his friend.
+
+"That wretch is an object of fear," said the Duc de Grandlieu, "for he
+has possessed himself, so as to be able to levy blackmail, of the
+letters written by Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse to
+Lucien Chardon, that man's tool. It would seem that it was a matter of
+system in the young man to extract passionate letters in return for
+his own, for I am told that Mademoiselle de Grandlieu had written some
+--at least, so we fear--and we cannot find out from her--she is gone
+abroad."
+
+"That little young man," replied Corentin, "was incapable of so much
+foresight. That was a precaution due to the Abbe Carlos Herrera."
+
+Corentin rested his elbow on the arm of the chair on which he was
+sitting, and his head on his hand, meditating.
+
+"Money!--The man has more than we have," said he. "Esther Gobseck
+served him as a bait to extract nearly two million francs from that
+well of gold called Nucingen.--Gentlemen, get me full legal powers,
+and I will rid you of the fellow."
+
+"And--the letters?" asked the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"Listen to me, gentlemen," said Corentin, standing up, his weasel-face
+betraying his excitement.
+
+He thrust his hands into the pockets of his black doeskin trousers,
+shaped over the shoes. This great actor in the historical drama of the
+day had only stopped to put on a waistcoat and frock-coat, and had not
+changed his morning trousers, so well he knew how grateful men can be
+for immediate action in certain cases. He walked up and down the room
+quite at his ease, haranguing loudly, as if he had been alone.
+
+"He is a convict. He could be sent off to Bicetre without trial, and
+put in solitary confinement, without a soul to speak to, and left
+there to die.--But he may have given instructions to his adherents,
+foreseeing this possibility."
+
+"But he was put into the secret cells," said the Duc de Grandlieu,
+"the moment he was taken into custody at that woman's house."
+
+"Is there such a thing as a secret cell for such a fellow as he is?"
+said Corentin. "He is a match for--for me!"
+
+"What is to be done?" said the Dukes to each other by a glance.
+
+"We can send the scoundrel back to the hulks at once--to Rochefort; he
+will be dead in six months! Oh! without committing any crime," he
+added, in reply to a gesture on the part of the Duc de Grandlieu.
+"What do you expect? A convict cannot hold out more than six months of
+a hot summer if he is made to work really hard among the marshes of
+the Charente. But this is of no use if our man has taken precautions
+with regard to the letters. If the villain has been suspicious of his
+foes, and that is probable, we must find out what steps he has taken.
+Then, if the present holder of the letters is poor, he is open to
+bribery. So, no, we must make Jacques Collin speak. What a duel! He
+will beat me. The better plan would be to purchase those letters by
+exchange for another document--a letter of reprieve--and to place the
+man in my gang. Jacques Collin is the only man alive who is clever
+enough to come after me, poor Contenson and dear old Peyrade both
+being dead! Jacques Collin killed those two unrivaled spies on
+purpose, as it were, to make a place for himself. So, you see,
+gentlemen, you must give me a free hand. Jacques Collin is in the
+Conciergerie. I will go to see Monsieur de Granville in his Court.
+Send some one you can trust to meet me there, for I must have a letter
+to show to Monsieur de Granville, who knows nothing of me. I will hand
+the letter to the President of the Council, a very impressive sponsor.
+You have half an hour before you, for I need half an hour to dress,
+that is to say, to make myself presentable to the eyes of the public
+prosecutor."
+
+"Monsieur," said the Duc de Chaulieu, "I know your wonderful skill. I
+only ask you to say Yes or No. Will you be bound to succeed?"
+
+"Yes, if I have full powers, and your word that I shall never be
+questioned about the matter.--My plan is laid."
+
+This sinister reply made the two fine gentlemen shiver. "Go on, then,
+monsieur," said the Duc de Chaulieu. "You can set down the charges of
+the case among those you are in the habit of undertaking."
+
+Corentin bowed and went away.
+
+Henri de Lenoncourt, for whom Ferdinand de Grandlieu had a carriage
+brought out, went off forthwith to the King, whom he was privileged to
+see at all times in right of his office.
+
+Thus all the various interests that had got entangled from the highest
+to the lowest ranks of society were to meet presently in Monsieur de
+Granville's room at the Palais, all brought together by necessity
+embodied in three men--Justice in Monsieur de Granville, and the
+family in Corentin, face to face with Jacques Collin, the terrible foe
+who represented social crime in its fiercest energy.
+
+What a duel is that between justice and arbitrary wills on one side
+and the hulks and cunning on the other! The hulks--symbolical of that
+daring which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails
+itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed
+justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach--the swift
+and bloodthirsty pretext of hunger. Is it not attack as against self-
+protection, theft as against property? The terrible quarrel between
+the social state and the natural man, fought out on the narrowest
+possible ground! In short, it is a terrible and vivid image of those
+compromises, hostile to social interests, which the representatives of
+authority, when they lack power, submit to with the fiercest rebels.
+
+When Monsieur Camusot was announced, the public prosecutor signed that
+he should be admitted. Monsieur de Granville had foreseen this visit,
+and wished to come to an understanding with the examining judge as to
+how to wind up this business of Lucien's death. The end could no
+longer be that on which he had decided the day before in agreement
+with Camusot, before the suicide of the hapless poet.
+
+"Sit down, Monsieur Camusot," said Monsieur de Granville, dropping
+into his armchair. The public prosecutor, alone with the inferior
+judge, made no secret of his depressed state. Camusot looked at
+Monsieur de Granville and observed his almost livid pallor, and such
+utter fatigue, such complete prostration, as betrayed greater
+suffering perhaps than that of the condemned man to whom the clerk had
+announced the rejection of his appeal. And yet that announcement, in
+the forms of justice, is a much as to say, "Prepare to die; your last
+hour has come."
+
+"I will return later, Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot. "Though
+business is pressing----"
+
+"No, stay," replied the public prosecutor with dignity. "A magistrate,
+monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how to hide them. I was
+in fault if you saw any traces of agitation in me----"
+
+Camusot bowed apologetically.
+
+"God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities of our life.
+A man might sink under less! I have just spent the night with one of
+my most intimate friends.--I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de
+Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy.--We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy,
+the Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning,
+taking it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de Serizy's
+bedside, fearing each time that we might find her dead or irremediably
+insane. Desplein, Bianchon, and Sinard never left the room, and she
+has two nurses. The Count worships his wife. Imagine the night I have
+spent, between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with despair.
+And a statesman's despair is not like that of an idiot. Serizy, as
+calm as if he were sitting in his place in council, clutched his chair
+to force himself to show us an unmoved countenance, while sweat stood
+over the brows bent by so much hard thought.--Worn out by want of
+sleep, I dozed from five till half-past seven, and I had to be here by
+half-past eight to warrant an execution. Take my word for it, Monsieur
+Camusot, when a judge has been toiling all night in such gulfs of
+sorrow, feeling the heavy hand of God on all human concerns, and
+heaviest on noble souls, it is hard to sit down here, in front of a
+desk, and say in cold blood, 'Cut off a head at four o'clock! Destroy
+one of God's creatures full of life, health, and strength!'--And yet
+this is my duty! Sunk in grief myself, I must order the scaffold----
+
+"The condemned wretch cannot know that his judge suffers anguish equal
+to his own. At this moment he and I, linked by a sheet of paper--I,
+society avenging itself; he, the crime to be avenged--embody the same
+duty seen from two sides; we are two lives joined for the moment by
+the sword of the law.
+
+"Who pities the judge's deep sorrow? Who can soothe it? Our glory is
+to bury it in the depth of our heart. The priest with his life given
+to God, the soldier with a thousand deaths for his country's sake,
+seem to me far happier than the magistrate with his doubts and fears
+and appalling responsibility.
+
+"You know who the condemned man is?" Monsieur de Granville went on. "A
+young man of seven-and-twenty--as handsome as he who killed himself
+yesterday, and as fair; condemned against all our anticipations, for
+the only proof against him was his concealment of the stolen goods.
+Though sentenced, the lad will confess nothing! For seventy days he
+has held out against every test, constantly declaring that he is
+innocent. For two months I have felt two heads on my shoulders! I
+would give a year of my life if he would confess, for juries need
+encouragement; and imagine what a blow it would be to justice if some
+day it should be discovered that the crime for which he is punished
+was committed by another.
+
+"In Paris everything is so terribly important; the most trivial
+incidents in the law courts have political consequences.
+
+"The jury, an institution regarded by the legislators of the
+Revolution as a source of strength, is, in fact, an instrument of
+social ruin, for it fails in action; it does not sufficiently protect
+society. The jury trifles with its functions. The class of jurymen is
+divided into two parties, one averse to capital punishment; the result
+is a total upheaval of true equality in administration of the law.
+Parricide, a most horrible crime, is in some departments treated with
+leniency, while in others a common murder, so to speak, is punished
+with death. [There are in penal servitude twenty-three parricides who
+have been allowed the benefit of EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES.] And what
+would happen if here in Paris, in our home district, an innocent man
+should be executed!"
+
+"He is an escaped convict," said Monsieur Camusot, diffidently.
+
+"The Opposition and the Press would make him a paschal lamb!" cried
+Monsieur de Granville; "and the Opposition would enjoy white-washing
+him, for he is a fanatical Corsican, full of his native notions, and
+his murders were a Vendetta. In that island you may kill your enemy,
+and think yourself, and be thought, a very good man.
+
+"A thorough-paced magistrate, I tell you, is an unhappy man. They
+ought to live apart from all society, like the pontiffs of old. The
+world should never see them but at fixed hours, leaving their cells,
+grave, and old, and venerable, passing sentence like the high priests
+of antiquity, who combined in their person the functions of judicial
+and sacerdotal authority. We should be accessible only in our high
+seat.--As it is, we are to be seen every day, amused or unhappy, like
+other men. We are to be found in drawing-rooms and at home, as
+ordinary citizens, moved by our passions; and we seem, perhaps, more
+grotesque than terrible."
+
+This bitter cry, broken by pauses and interjections, and emphasized by
+gestures which gave it an eloquence impossible to reduce to writing,
+made Camusot's blood run chill.
+
+"And I, monsieur," said he, "began yesterday my apprenticeship to the
+sufferings of our calling.--I could have died of that young fellow's
+death. He misunderstood my wish to be lenient, and the poor wretch
+committed himself."
+
+"Ah, you ought never to have examined him!" cried Monsieur de
+Granville; "it is so easy to oblige by doing nothing."
+
+"And the law, monsieur?" replied Camusot. "He had been in custody two
+days."
+
+"The mischief is done," said the public prosecutor. "I have done my
+best to remedy what is indeed irremediable. My carriage and servants
+are following the poor weak poet to the grave. Serizy has sent his
+too; nay, more, he accepts the duty imposed on him by the unfortunate
+boy, and will act as his executor. By promising this to his wife he
+won from her a gleam of returning sanity. And Count Octave is
+attending the funeral in person."
+
+"Well, then, Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot, "let us complete our
+work. We have a very dangerous man on our hands. He is Jacques Collin
+--and you know it as well as I do. The ruffian will be recognized----"
+
+"Then we are lost!" cried Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"He is at this moment shut up with your condemned murderer, who, on
+the hulks, was to him what Lucien has been in Paris--a favorite
+protege. Bibi-Lupin, disguised as a gendarme, is watching the
+interview."
+
+"What business has the superior police to interfere?" said the public
+prosecutor. "He has no business to act without my orders!"
+
+"All the Conciergerie must know that we have caught Jacques Collin.--
+Well, I have come on purpose to tell you that this daring felon has in
+his possession the most compromising letters of Lucien's
+correspondence with Madame de Serizy, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
+and Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu."
+
+"Are you sure of that?" asked Monsieur de Granville, his face full of
+pained surprise.
+
+"You shall hear, Monsieur le Comte, what reason I have to fear such a
+misfortune. When I untied the papers found in the young man's rooms,
+Jacques Collin gave a keen look at the parcel, and smiled with
+satisfaction in a way that no examining judge could misunderstand. So
+deep a villain as Jacques Collin takes good care not to let such a
+weapon slip through his fingers. What is to be said if these documents
+should be placed in the hands of counsel chosen by that rascal from
+among the foes of the government and the aristocracy!--My wife, to
+whom the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse has shown so much kindness, is gone
+to warn her, and by this time they must be with the Grandlieus holding
+council."
+
+"But we cannot possibly try the man!" cried the public prosecutor,
+rising and striding up and down the room. "He must have put the papers
+in some safe place----"
+
+"I know where," said Camusot.
+
+These words finally effaced every prejudice the public prosecutor had
+felt against him.
+
+"Well, then----" said Monsieur de Granville, sitting down again.
+
+"On my way here this morning I reflected deeply on this miserable
+business. Jacques Collin has an aunt--an aunt by nature, not putative
+--a woman concerning whom the superior police have communicated a
+report to the Prefecture. He is this woman's pupil and idol; she is
+his father's sister, her name is Jacqueline Collin. This wretched
+woman carries on a trade as a wardrobe purchaser, and by the
+connection this business has secured her she gets hold of many family
+secrets. If Jacques Collin has intrusted those papers, which would be
+his salvation, to any one's keeping, it is to that of this creature.
+Have her arrested."
+
+The public prosecutor gave Camusot a keen look, as much as to say,
+"This man is not such a fool as I thought him; he is still young, and
+does not yet know how to handle the reins of justice."
+
+"But," Camusot went on, "in order to succeed, we must give up all the
+plans we laid yesterday, and I came to take your advice--your
+orders----"
+
+The public prosecutor took up his paper-knife and tapped it against
+the edge of the table with one of the tricky movements familiar to
+thoughtful men when they give themselves up to meditation.
+
+"Three noble families involved!" he exclaimed. "We must not make the
+smallest blunder!--You are right: as a first step let us act on
+Fouche's principle, 'Arrest!'--and Jacques Collin must at once be sent
+back to the secret cells."
+
+"That is to proclaim him a convict and to ruin Lucien's memory!"
+
+"What a desperate business!" said Monsieur de Granville. "There is
+danger on every side."
+
+At this instant the governor of the Conciergerie came in, not without
+knocking; and the private room of a public prosecutor is so well
+guarded, that only those concerned about the courts may even knock at
+the door.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," said Monsieur Gault, "the prisoner calling
+himself Carlos Herrera wishes to speak with you."
+
+"Has he had communication with anybody?" asked Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"With all the prisoners, for he has been out in the yard since about
+half-past seven. And he has seen the condemned man, who would seem to
+have talked to him."
+
+A speech of Camusot's, which recurred to his mind like a flash of
+light, showed Monsieur de Granville all the advantage that might be
+taken of a confession of intimacy between Jacques Collin and Theodore
+Calvi to obtain the letters. The public prosecutor, glad to have an
+excuse for postponing the execution, beckoned Monsieur Gault to his
+side.
+
+"I intend," said he, "to put off the execution till to-morrow; but let
+no one in the prison suspect it. Absolute silence! Let the executioner
+seem to be superintending the preparations.
+
+"Send the Spanish priest here under a strong guard; the Spanish
+Embassy claims his person! Gendarmes can bring up the self-styled
+Carlos by your back stairs so that he may see no one. Instruct the men
+each to hold him by one arm, and never let him go till they reach this
+door.
+
+"Are you sure, Monsieur Gault, that this dangerous foreigner has
+spoken to no one but the prisoners!"
+
+"Ah! just as he came out of the condemned cell a lady came to see
+him----"
+
+The two magistrates exchanged looks, and such looks!
+
+"What lady was that!" asked Camusot.
+
+"One of his penitents--a Marquise," replied Gault.
+
+"Worse and worse!" said Monsieur de Granville, looking at Camusot.
+
+"She gave all the gendarmes and warders a sick headache," said
+Monsieur Gault, much puzzled.
+
+"Nothing can be a matter of indifference in your business," said the
+public prosecutor. "The Conciergerie has not such tremendous walls for
+nothing. How did this lady get in?"
+
+"With a regular permit, monsieur," replied the governor. "The lady,
+beautifully dressed, in a fine carriage with a footman and a chasseur,
+came to see her confessor before going to the funeral of the poor
+young man whose body you had had removed."
+
+"Bring me the order for admission," said Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"It was given on the recommendation of the Comte de Serizy."
+
+"What was the woman like?" asked the public prosecutor.
+
+"She seemed to be a lady."
+
+"Did you see her face?"
+
+"She wore a black veil."
+
+"What did they say to each other?"
+
+"Well--a pious person, with a prayer-book in her hand--what could she
+say? She asked the Abbe's blessing and went on her knees."
+
+"Did they talk together a long time?"
+
+"Not five minutes; but we none of us understood what they said; they
+spoke Spanish no doubt."
+
+"Tell us everything, monsieur," the public prosecutor insisted. "I
+repeat, the very smallest detail is to us of the first importance. Let
+this be a caution to you."
+
+"She was crying, monsieur."
+
+"Really weeping?"
+
+"That we could not see, she hid her face in her handkerchief. She left
+three hundred francs in gold for the prisoners."
+
+"That was not she!" said Camusot.
+
+"Bibi-Lupin at once said, 'She is a thief!' " said Monsieur Gault.
+
+"He knows the tribe," said Monsieur de Granville.--"Get out your
+warrant," he added, turning to Camusot, "and have seals placed on
+everything in her house--at once! But how can she have got hold of
+Monsieur de Serizy's recommendation?--Bring me the order--and go,
+Monsieur Gault; send me that Abbe immediately. So long as we have him
+safe, the danger cannot be greater. And in the course of two hours'
+talk you get a long way into a man's mind."
+
+"Especially such a public prosecutor as you are," said Camusot
+insidiously.
+
+"There will be two of us," replied Monsieur de Granville politely.
+
+And he became discursive once more.
+
+"There ought to be created for every prison parlor, a post of
+superintendent, to be given with a good salary to the cleverest and
+most energetic police officers," said he, after a long pause. "Bibi-
+Lupin ought to end his days in such a place. Then we should have an
+eye and ear on the watch in a department that needs closer supervision
+than it gets.--Monsieur Gault could tell us nothing positive."
+
+"He has so much to do," said Camusot. "Still, between these secret
+cells and us there lies a gap which ought not to exist. On the way
+from the Conciergerie to the judges' rooms there are passages,
+courtyards, and stairs. The attention of the agents cannot be
+unflagging, whereas the prisoner is always alive to his own affairs.
+
+"I was told that a lady had already placed herself in the way of
+Jacques Collin when he was brought up from the cells to be examined.
+That woman got into the guardroom at the top of the narrow stairs from
+the mousetrap; the ushers told me, and I blamed the gendarmes."
+
+"Oh! the Palais needs entire reconstruction," said Monsieur de
+Granville. "But it is an outlay of twenty to thirty million francs!
+Just try asking the Chambers for thirty millions for the more decent
+accommodation of Justice."
+
+The sound of many footsteps and a clatter of arms fell on their ear.
+It would be Jacques Collin.
+
+The public prosecutor assumed a mask of gravity that hid the man.
+Camusot imitated his chief.
+
+The office-boy opened the door, and Jacques Collin came in, quite calm
+and unmoved.
+
+"You wished to speak to me," said Monsieur de Granville. "I am ready
+to listen."
+
+"Monsieur le Comte, I am Jacques Collin. I surrender!"
+
+Camusot started; the public prosecutor was immovable.
+
+"As you may suppose, I have my reasons for doing this," said Jacques
+Collin, with an ironical glance at the two magistrates. "I must
+inconvenience you greatly; for if I had remained a Spanish priest, you
+would simply have packed me off with an escort of gendarmes as far as
+the frontier by Bayonne, and there Spanish bayonets would have
+relieved you of me."
+
+The lawyers sat silent and imperturbable.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," the convict went on, "the reasons which have led
+me to this step are yet more pressing than this, but devilish personal
+to myself. I can tell them to no one but you.--If you are afraid----"
+
+"Afraid of whom? Of what?" said the Comte de Granville.
+
+In attitude and expression, in the turn of his head, his demeanor and
+his look, this distinguished judge was at this moment a living
+embodiment of the law which ought to supply us with the noblest
+examples of civic courage. In this brief instant he was on a level
+with the magistrates of the old French Parlement in the time of the
+civil wars, when the presidents found themselves face to face with
+death, and stood, made of marble, like the statues that commemorate
+them.
+
+"Afraid to be alone with an escaped convict!"
+
+"Leave us, Monsieur Camusot," said the public prosecutor at once.
+
+"I was about to suggest that you should bind me hand and foot,"
+Jacques Collin coolly added, with an ominous glare at the two
+gentlemen. He paused, and then said with great gravity:
+
+"Monsieur le Comte, you had my esteem, but you now command my
+admiration."
+
+"Then you think you are formidable?" said the magistrate, with a look
+of supreme contempt.
+
+"THINK myself formidable?" retorted the convict. "Why think about it?
+I am, and I know it."
+
+Jacques Collin took a chair and sat down, with all the ease of a man
+who feels himself a match for his adversary in an interview where they
+would treat on equal terms.
+
+At this instant Monsieur Camusot, who was on the point of closing the
+door behind him, turned back, came up to Monsieur de Granville, and
+handed him two folded papers.
+
+"Look!" said he to Monsieur de Granville, pointing to one of them.
+
+"Call back Monsieur Gault!" cried the Comte de Granville, as he read
+the name of Madame de Maufrigneuse's maid--a woman he knew.
+
+The governor of the prison came in.
+
+"Describe the woman who came to see the prisoner," said the public
+prosecutor in his ear.
+
+"Short, thick-set, fat, and square," replied Monsieur Gault.
+
+"The woman to whom this permit was given is tall and thin," said
+Monsieur de Granville. "How old was she?"
+
+"About sixty."
+
+"This concerns me, gentlemen?" said Jacques Collin. "Come, do not
+puzzle your heads. That person is my aunt, a very plausible aunt, a
+woman, and an old woman. I can save you a great deal of trouble. You
+will never find my aunt unless I choose. If we beat about the bush, we
+shall never get forwarder."
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe has lost his Spanish accent," observed Monsieur
+Gault; "he does not speak broken French."
+
+"Because things are in a desperate mess, my dear Monsieur Gault,"
+replied Jacques Collin with a bitter smile, as he addressed the
+Governor by name.
+
+Monsieur Gault went quickly up to his chief, and said in a whisper,
+"Beware of that man, Monsieur le Comte; he is mad with rage."
+
+Monsieur de Granville gazed slowly at Jacques Collin, and saw that he
+was controlling himself; but he saw, too, that what the governor said
+was true. This treacherous demeanor covered the cold but terrible
+nervous irritation of a savage. In Jacques Collin's eyes were the
+lurid fires of a volcanic eruption, his fists were clenched. He was a
+tiger gathering himself up to spring.
+
+"Leave us," said the Count gravely to the prison governor and the
+judge.
+
+"You did wisely to send away Lucien's murderer!" said Jacques Collin,
+without caring whether Camusot heard him or no; "I could not contain
+myself, I should have strangled him."
+
+Monsieur de Granville felt a chill; never had he seen a man's eyes so
+full of blood, or cheeks so colorless, or muscles so set.
+
+"And what good would that murder have done you?" he quietly asked.
+
+"You avenge society, or fancy you avenge it, every day, monsieur, and
+you ask me to give a reason for revenge? Have you never felt vengeance
+throbbing in surges in your veins? Don't you know that it was that
+idiot of a judge who killed him?--For you were fond of my Lucien, and
+he loved you! I know you by heart, sir. The dear boy would tell me
+everything at night when he came in; I used to put him to bed as a
+nurse tucks up a child, and I made him tell me everything. He confided
+everything to me, even his least sensations!
+
+"The best of mothers never loved an only son so tenderly as I loved
+that angel! If only you knew! All that is good sprang up in his heart
+as flowers grow in the fields. He was weak; it was his only fault,
+weak as the string of a lyre, which is so strong when it is taut.
+These are the most beautiful natures; their weakness is simply
+tenderness, admiration, the power of expanding in the sunshine of art,
+of love, of the beauty God has made for man in a thousand shapes!--In
+short, Lucien was a woman spoiled. Oh! what could I not say to that
+brute beast who had just gone out of the room!
+
+"I tell you, monsieur, in my degree, as a prisoner before his judge, I
+did what God A'mighty would have done for His Son if, hoping to save
+Him, He had gone with Him before Pilate!"
+
+A flood of tears fell from the convict's light tawny eyes, which just
+now had glared like those of a wolf starved by six months' snow in the
+plains of the Ukraine. He went on:
+
+"That dolt would listen to nothing, and he killed the boy!--I tell
+you, sir, I bathed the child's corpse in my tears, crying out to the
+Power I do not know, and which is above us all! I, who do not believe
+in God!--(For if I were not a materialist, I should not be myself.)
+
+"I have told everything when I say that. You don't know--no man knows
+what suffering is. I alone know it. The fire of anguish so dried up my
+tears, that all last night I could not weep. Now I can, because I feel
+that you can understand me. I saw you, sitting there just now, an
+Image of Justice. Oh! monsieur, may God--for I am beginning to believe
+in Him--preserve you from ever being as bereft as I am! That cursed
+judge has robbed me of my soul, Monsieur le Comte! At this moment they
+are burying my life, my beauty, my virtue, my conscience, all my
+powers! Imagine a dog from which a chemist had extracted the blood.--
+That's me! I am that dog----
+
+"And that is why I have come to tell you that I am Jacques Collin, and
+to give myself up. I made up my mind to it this morning when they came
+and carried away the body I was kissing like a madman--like a mother--
+as the Virgin must have kissed Jesus in the tomb.
+
+"I meant then to give myself up to justice without driving any
+bargain; but now I must make one, and you shall know why."
+
+"Are you speaking to the judge or to Monsieur de Granville?" asked the
+magistrate.
+
+The two men, Crime and Law, looked at each other. The magistrate had
+been strongly moved by the convict; he felt a sort of divine pity for
+the unhappy wretch; he understood what his life and feelings were. And
+besides, the magistrate--for a magistrate is always a magistrate--
+knowing nothing of Jacques Collin's career since his escape from
+prison, fancied that he could impress the criminal who, after all, had
+only been sentenced for forgery. He would try the effect of generosity
+on this nature, a compound, like bronze, of various elements, of good
+and evil.
+
+Again, Monsieur de Granville, who had reached the age of fifty-three
+without ever having been loved, admired a tender soul, as all men do
+who have not been loved. This despair, the lot of many men to whom
+women can only give esteem and friendship, was perhaps the unknown
+bond on which a strong intimacy was based that united the Comtes de
+Bauvan, de Granville, and de Serizy; for a common misfortune brings
+souls into unison quite as much as a common joy.
+
+"You have the future before you," said the public prosecutor, with an
+inquisitorial glance at the dejected villain.
+
+The man only expressed by a shrug the utmost indifference to his fate.
+
+"Lucien made a will by which he leaves you three hundred thousand
+francs."
+
+"Poor, poor chap! poor boy!" cried Jacques Collin. "Always too honest!
+I was all wickedness, while he was goodness--noble, beautiful,
+sublime! Such lovely souls cannot be spoiled. He had taken nothing
+from me but my money, sir."
+
+This utter and complete surrender of his individuality, which the
+magistrate vainly strove to rally, so thoroughly proved his dreadful
+words, that Monsieur de Granville was won over to the criminal. The
+public prosecutor remained!
+
+"If you really care for nothing," said Monsieur de Granville, "what
+did you want to say to me?"
+
+"Well, is it not something that I have given myself up? You were
+getting warm, but you had not got me; besides, you would not have
+known what to do with me----"
+
+"What an antagonist!" said the magistrate to himself.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte, you are about to cut off the head of an innocent
+man, and I have discovered the culprit," said Jacques Collin, wiping
+away his tears. "I have come here not for their sakes, but for yours.
+I have come to spare you remorse, for I love all who took an interest
+in Lucien, just as I will give my hatred full play against all who
+helped to cut off his life--men or women!
+
+"What can a convict more or less matter to me?" he went on, after a
+short pause. "A convict is no more in my eyes than an emmet is in
+yours. I am like the Italian brigands--fine men they are! If a
+traveler is worth ever so little more than the charge of their musket,
+they shoot him dead.
+
+"I thought only of you.--I got the young man to make a clean breast of
+it; he was bound to trust me, we had been chained together. Theodore
+is very good stuff; he thought he was doing his mistress a good turn
+by undertaking to sell or pawn stolen goods; but he is no more guilty
+of the Nanterre job than you are. He is a Corsican; it is their way to
+revenge themselves and kill each other like flies. In Italy and Spain
+a man's life is not respected, and the reason is plain. There we are
+believed to have a soul in our own image, which survives us and lives
+for ever. Tell that to your analyst! It is only among atheistical or
+philosophical nations that those who mar human life are made to pay so
+dearly; and with reason from their point of view--a belief only in
+matter and in the present.
+
+"If Calvi had told you who the woman was from whom he obtained the
+stolen goods, you would not have found the real murderer; he is
+already in your hands; but his accomplice, whom poor Theodore will not
+betray because she is a woman---- Well, every calling has its point of
+honor; convicts and thieves have theirs!
+
+"Now, I know the murderer of those two women and the inventors of that
+bold, strange plot; I have been told every detail. Postpone Calvi's
+execution, and you shall know all; but you must give me your word that
+he shall be sent safe back to the hulks and his punishment commuted. A
+man so miserable as I am does not take the trouble to lie--you know
+that. What I have told you is the truth."
+
+"To you, Jacques Collin, though it is degrading Justice, which ought
+never to condescend to such a compromise, I believe I may relax the
+rigidity of my office and refer the case to my superiors."
+
+"Will you grant me this life?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"Monsieur, I implore you to give me your word; it will be enough."
+
+Monsieur Granville drew himself up with offended pride.
+
+"I hold in my hand the honor of three families, and you only the lives
+of three convicts in yours," said Jacques Collin. "I have the stronger
+hand."
+
+"But you may be sent back to the dark cells: then, what will you do?"
+said the public prosecutor.
+
+"Oh! we are to play the game out then!" said Jacques Collin. "I was
+speaking as man to man--I was talking to Monsieur de Granville. But if
+the public prosecutor is my adversary, I take up the cards and hold
+them close.--And if only you had given me your word, I was ready to
+give you back the letters that Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu----"
+
+This was said with a tone, an audacity, and a look which showed
+Monsieur de Granville, that against such an adversary the least
+blunder was dangerous.
+
+"And is that all you ask?" said the magistrate.
+
+"I will speak for myself now," said Jacques. "The honor of the
+Grandlieu family is to pay for the commutation of Theodore's sentence.
+It is giving much to get very little. For what is a convict in penal
+servitude for life? If he escapes, you can so easily settle the score.
+It is drawing a bill on the guillotine! Only, as he was consigned to
+Rochefort with no amiable intentions, you must promise me that he
+shall be quartered at Toulon, and well treated there.
+
+"Now, for myself, I want something more. I have the packets of letters
+from Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse.--And what letters!--
+I tell you, Monsieur le Comte, prostitutes, when they write letters,
+assume a style of sentiment; well, sir, fine ladies, who are
+accustomed to style and sentiment all day long, write as prostitutes
+behave. Philosophers may know the reasons for this contrariness. I do
+not care to seek them. Woman is an inferior animal; she is ruled by
+her instincts. To my mind a woman has no beauty who is not like a man.
+
+"So your smart duchesses, who are men in brains only, write
+masterpieces. Oh! they are splendid from beginning to end, like
+Piron's famous ode!----"
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Would you like to see them?" said Jacques Collin, with a laugh.
+
+The magistrate felt ashamed.
+
+"I cannot give them to you to read. But, there; no nonsense; this is
+business and all above board, I suppose?--You must give me back the
+letters, and allow no one to play the spy or to follow or to watch the
+person who will bring them to me."
+
+"That will take time," said Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"No. It is half-past nine," replied Jacques Collin, looking at the
+clock; "well, in four minutes you will have a letter from each of
+these ladies, and after reading them you will countermand the
+guillotine. If matters were not as they are, you would not see me
+taking things so easy.--The ladies indeed have had warning."--Monsieur
+de Granville was startled.--"They must be making a stir by now; they
+are going to bring the Keeper of the Seals into the fray--they may
+even appeal to the King, who knows?--Come, now, will you give me your
+word that you will forget all that has passed, and neither follow, nor
+send any one to follow, that person for a whole hour?"
+
+"I promise it."
+
+"Very well; you are not the man to deceive an escaped convict. You are
+a chip of the block of which Turennes and Condes are made, and would
+keep your word to a thief.--In the Salle des Pas-Perdus there is at
+this moment a beggar woman in rags, an old woman, in the very middle
+of the hall. She is probably gossiping with one of the public writers,
+about some lawsuit over a party-wall perhaps; send your office
+messenger to fetch her, saying these words, 'Dabor ti Mandana' (the
+Boss wants you). She will come.
+
+"But do not be unnecessarily cruel. Either you accept my terms or you
+do not choose to be mixed up in a business with a convict.--I am only
+a forger, you will remember!--Well, do not leave Calvi to go through
+the terrors of preparation for the scaffold."
+
+"I have already countermanded the execution," said Monsieur de
+Granville to Jacques Collin. "I would not have Justice beneath you in
+dignity."
+
+Jacques Collin looked at the public prosecutor with a sort of
+amazement, and saw him ring his bell.
+
+"Will you promise not to escape? Give me your word, and I shall be
+satisfied. Go and fetch the woman."
+
+The office-boy came in.
+
+"Felix, send away the gendarmes," said Monsieur de Granville.
+
+Jacques Collin was conquered.
+
+In this duel with the magistrate he had tried to be the superior, the
+stronger, the more magnanimous, and the magistrate had crushed him. At
+the same time, the convict felt himself the superior, inasmuch as he
+had tricked the Law; he had convinced it that the guilty man was
+innocent, and had fought for a man's head and won it; but this
+advantage must be unconfessed, secret and hidden, while the magistrate
+towered above him majestically in the eye of day.
+
+
+
+As Jacques Collin left Monsieur de Granville's room, the Comte des
+Lupeaulx, Secretary-in-Chief of the President of the Council, and a
+deputy, made his appearance, and with him a feeble-looking, little old
+man. This individual, wrapped in a puce-colored overcoat, as though it
+were still winter, with powdered hair, and a cold, pale face, had a
+gouty gait, unsteady on feet that were shod with loose calfskin boots;
+leaning on a gold-headed cane, he carried his hat in his hand, and
+wore a row of seven orders in his button-hole.
+
+"What is it, my dear des Lupeaulx?" asked the public prosecutor.
+
+"I come from the Prince," replied the Count, in a low voice. "You have
+carte blanche if you can only get the letters--Madame de Serizy's,
+Madame de Maufrigneuse's and Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu's. You
+may come to some arrangement with this gentleman----"
+
+"Who is he?" asked Monsieur de Granville, in a whisper.
+
+"There are no secrets between you and me, my dear sir," said des
+Lupeaulx. "This is the famous Corentin. His Majesty desires that you
+will yourself tell him all the details of this affair and the
+conditions of success."
+
+"Do me the kindness," replied the public prosecutor, "of going to tell
+the Prince that the matter is settled, that I have not needed this
+gentleman's assistance," and he turned to Corentin. "I will wait on
+His Majesty for his commands with regard to the last steps in the
+matter, which will lie with the Keeper of the Seals, as two reprieves
+will need signing."
+
+"You have been wise to take the initiative," said des Lupeaulx,
+shaking hands with the Comte de Granville. "On the very eve of a great
+undertaking the King is most anxious that the peers and the great
+families should not be shown up, blown upon. It ceases to be a low
+criminal case; it becomes an affair of State."
+
+"But tell the Prince that by the time you came it was all settled."
+
+"Really!"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Then you, my dear fellow, will be Keeper of the Seals as soon as the
+present Keeper is made Chancellor----"
+
+"I have no ambition," replied the magistrate.
+
+Des Lupeaulx laughed, and went away.
+
+"Beg of the Prince to request the King to grant me ten minutes'
+audience at about half-past two," added Monsieur de Granville, as he
+accompanied the Comte des Lupeaulx to the door.
+
+"So you are not ambitious!" said des Lupeaulx, with a keen look at
+Monsieur de Granville. "Come, you have two children, you would like at
+least to be made peer of France."
+
+"If you have the letters, Monsieur le Procureur General, my
+intervention is unnecessary," said Corentin, finding himself alone
+with Monsieur de Granville, who looked at him with very natural
+curiosity.
+
+"Such a man as you can never be superfluous in so delicate a case,"
+replied the magistrate, seeing that Corentin had heard or guessed
+everything.
+
+Corentin bowed with a patronizing air.
+
+"Do you know the man in question, monsieur?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Comte, it is Jacques Collin, the head of the 'Ten
+Thousand Francs Association,' the banker for three penal settlements,
+a convict who, for the last five years, has succeeded in concealing
+himself under the robe of the Abbe Carlos Herrera. How he ever came to
+be intrusted with a mission to the late King from the King of Spain is
+a question which we have all puzzled ourselves with trying to answer.
+I am now expecting information from Madrid, whither I have sent notes
+and a man. That convict holds the secrets of two kings."
+
+"He is a man of mettle and temper. We have only two courses open to
+us," said the public prosecutor. "We must secure his fidelity, or get
+him out of the way."
+
+"The same idea has struck us both, and that is a great honor for me,"
+said Corentin. "I am obliged to have so many ideas, and for so many
+people, that out of them all I ought occasionally to meet a clever
+man."
+
+He spoke so drily, and in so icy a tone, that Monsieur de Granville
+made no reply, and proceeded to attend to some pressing matters.
+
+Mademoiselle Jacqueline Collin's amazement on seeing Jacques Collin in
+the Salle des Pas-Perdus is beyond imagining. She stood square on her
+feet, her hands on her hips, for she was dressed as a costermonger.
+Accustomed as she was to her nephew's conjuring tricks, this beat
+everything.
+
+"Well, if you are going to stare at me as if I were a natural history
+show," said Jacques Collin, taking his aunt by the arm and leading her
+out of the hall, "we shall be taken for a pair of curious specimens;
+they may take us into custody, and then we should lose time."
+
+And he went down the stairs of the Galerie Marchande leading to the
+Rue de la Barillerie. "Where is Paccard?"
+
+"He is waiting for me at la Rousse's, walking up and down the flower
+market."
+
+"And Prudence?"
+
+"Also at her house, as my god-daughter."
+
+"Let us go there."
+
+"Look round and see if we are watched."
+
+La Rousse, a hardware dealer living on the Quai aux Fleurs, was the
+widow of a famous murderer, one of the "Ten Thousand." In 1819,
+Jacques Collin had faithfully handed over twenty thousand francs and
+odd to this woman from her lover, after he had been executed. Trompe-
+la-Mort was the only person who knew of his pal's connection with the
+girl, at that time a milliner.
+
+"I am your young man's boss," the boarder at Madame Vauquer's had told
+her, having sent for her to meet him at the Jardin des Plantes. "He
+may have mentioned me to you, my dear.--Any one who plays me false
+dies within a year; on the other hand, those who are true to me have
+nothing to fear from me. I am staunch through thick and thin, and
+would die without saying a word that would compromise anybody I wish
+well to. Stick to me as a soul sticks to the Devil, and you will find
+the benefit of it. I promised your poor Auguste that you should be
+happy; he wanted to make you a rich woman, and he got scragged for
+your sake.
+
+"Don't cry; listen to me. No one in the world knows that you were
+mistress to a convict, to the murderer they choked off last Saturday;
+and I shall never tell. You are two-and-twenty, and pretty, and you
+have twenty-six thousand francs of your own; forget Auguste and get
+married; be an honest woman if you can. In return for peace and quiet,
+I only ask you to serve me now and then, me, and any one I may send
+you, but without stopping to think. I will never ask you to do
+anything that can get you into trouble, you or your children, or your
+husband, if you get one, or your family.
+
+"In my line of life I often want a safe place to talk in or to hide
+in. Or I may want a trusty woman to carry a letter or do an errand.
+You will be one of my letter-boxes, one of my porters' lodges, one of
+my messengers, neither more nor less.
+
+"You are too red-haired; Auguste and I used to call you la Rousse; you
+can keep that name. My aunt, an old-clothes dealer at the Temple, who
+will come and see you, is the only person in the world you are to
+obey; tell her everything that happens to you; she will find you a
+husband, and be very useful to you."
+
+And thus the bargain was struck, a diabolical compact like that which
+had for so long bound Prudence Servien to Jacques Collin, and which
+the man never failed to tighten; for, like the Devil, he had a passion
+for recruiting.
+
+In about 1821 Jacques Collin found la Rousse a husband in the person
+of the chief shopman under a rich wholesale tin merchant. This head-
+clerk, having purchased his master's house of business, was now a
+prosperous man, the father of two children, and one of the district
+Maire's deputies. La Rousse, now Madame Prelard, had never had the
+smallest ground for complaint, either of Jacques Collin or of his
+aunt; still, each time she was required to help them, Madame Prelard
+quaked in every limb. So, as she saw the terrible couple come into her
+shop, she turned as pale as death.
+
+"We want to speak to you on business, madame," said Jacques Collin.
+
+"My husband is in there," said she.
+
+"Very well; we have no immediate need of you. I never put people out
+of their way for nothing."
+
+"Send for a hackney coach, my dear," said Jacqueline Collin, "and tell
+my god-daughter to come down. I hope to place her as maid to a very
+great lady, and the steward of the house will take us there."
+
+A shop-boy fetched the coach, and a few minutes later Europe, or, to
+be rid of the name under which she had served Esther, Prudence
+Servien, Paccard, Jacques Collin, and his aunt, were, to la Rousse's
+great joy, packed into a coach, ordered by Trompe-la-Mort to drive to
+the Barriere d'Ivry.
+
+Prudence and Paccard, quaking in presence of the boss, felt like
+guilty souls in the presence of God.
+
+"Where are the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs?" asked the
+boss, looking at them with the clear, penetrating gaze which so
+effectually curdled the blood of these tools of his, these ames
+damnees, when they were caught tripping, that they felt as though
+their scalp were set with as many pins as hairs.
+
+"The seven hundred and THIRTY thousand francs," said Jacqueline Collin
+to her nephew, "are quite safe; I gave them to la Romette this morning
+in a sealed packet."
+
+"If you had not handed them over to Jacqueline," said Trompe-la-Mort,
+"you would have gone straight there," and he pointed to the Place de
+Greve, which they were just passing.
+
+Prudence Servien, in her country fashion, made the sign of the Cross,
+as if she had seen a thunderbolt fall.
+
+"I forgive you," said the boss, "on condition of your committing no
+more mistakes of this kind, and of your being henceforth to me what
+these two fingers are of my right hand," and he pointed to the first
+and middle fingers, "for this good woman is the thumb," and he slapped
+his aunt on the shoulder.
+
+"Listen to me," he went on. "You, Paccard, have nothing more to fear;
+you may follow your nose about Pantin (Paris) as you please. I give
+you leave to marry Prudence Servien."
+
+Paccard took Jacques Collin's hand and kissed it respectfully.
+
+"And what must I do?" said he.
+
+"Nothing; and you will have dividends and women, to say nothing of
+your wife--for you have a touch of the Regency about you, old boy!--
+That comes of being such a fine man!"
+
+Paccard colored under his sultan's ironical praises.
+
+"You, Prudence," Jacques went on, "will want a career, a position, a
+future; you must remain in my service. Listen to me. There is a very
+good house in the Rue Sainte-Barbe belonging to that Madame de Saint-
+Esteve, whose name my aunt occasionally borrows. It is a very good
+business, with plenty of custom, bringing in fifteen to twenty
+thousand francs a year. Saint-Esteve puts a woman in to keep the
+shop----"
+
+"La Gonore," said Jacqueline.
+
+"Poor la Pouraille's moll," said Paccard. "That is where I bolted to
+with Europe the day that poor Madame van Bogseck died, our mis'ess."
+
+"Who jabbers when I am speaking?" said Jacques Collin.
+
+Perfect silence fell in the coach. Paccard and Prudence did not dare
+look at each other.
+
+"The shop is kept by la Gonore," Jacques Collin went on. "If that is
+where you went to hide with Prudence, I see, Paccard, that you have
+wit enough to dodge the reelers (mislead the police), but not enough
+to puzzle the old lady," and he stroked his aunt's chin. "Now I see
+how she managed to find you.--It all fits beautifully. You may go back
+to la Gonore.--To go on: Jacqueline will arrange with Madame
+Nourrisson to purchase her business in the Rue Sainte-Barbe; and if
+you manage well, child, you may make a fortune out of it," he said to
+Prudence. "An Abbess at your age! It is worthy of a Daughter of
+France," he added in a hard tone.
+
+Prudence flung her arms round Trompe-la-Mort's neck and hugged him;
+but the boss flung her off with a sharp blow, showing his
+extraordinary strength, and but for Paccard, the girl's head would
+have struck and broken the coach window.
+
+"Paws off! I don't like such ways," said the boss stiffly. "It is
+disrespectful to me."
+
+"He is right, child," said Paccard. "Why, you see, it is as though the
+boss had made you a present of a hundred thousand francs. The shop is
+worth that. It is on the Boulevard, opposite the Gymnase. The people
+come out of the theatre----"
+
+"I will do more," said Trompe-la-Mort; "I will buy the house."
+
+"And in six years we shall be millionaires," cried Paccard.
+
+Tired of being interrupted, Trompe-la-Mort gave Paccard's shin a kick
+hard enough to break it; but the man's tendons were of india-rubber,
+and his bones of wrought iron.
+
+"All right, boss, mum it is," said he.
+
+"Do you think I am cramming you with lies?" said Jacques Collin,
+perceiving that Paccard had had a few drops too much. "Well, listen.
+In the cellar of that house there are two hundred and fifty thousand
+francs in gold----"
+
+Again silence reigned in the coach.
+
+"The coin is in a very hard bed of masonry. It must be got out, and
+you have only three nights to do it in. Jacqueline will help you.--A
+hundred thousand francs will buy up the business, fifty thousand will
+pay for the house; leave the remainder."
+
+"Where?" said Paccard.
+
+"In the cellar?" asked Prudence.
+
+"Silence!" cried Jacqueline.
+
+"Yes, but to get the business transferred, we must have the consent of
+the police authorities," Paccard objected.
+
+"We shall have it," said Trompe-la-Mort. "Don't meddle in what does
+not concern you."
+
+Jacqueline looked at her nephew, and was struck by the alteration in
+his face, visible through the stern mask under which the strong man
+generally hid his feelings.
+
+"You, child," said he to Prudence Servien, "will receive from my aunt
+the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs----"
+
+"Seven hundred and thirty," said Paccard.
+
+"Very good, seven hundred and thirty then," said Jacques Collin. "You
+must return this evening under some pretext to Madame Lucien's house.
+Get out on the roof through the skylight; get down the chimney into
+your miss'ess' room, and hide the packet she had made of the money in
+the mattress----"
+
+"And why not by the door?" asked Prudence Servien.
+
+"Idiot! there are seals on everything," replied Jacques Collin. "In a
+few days the inventory will be taken, and you will be innocent of the
+theft."
+
+"Good for the boss!" cried Paccard. "That is really kind!"
+
+"Stop, coachman!" cried Jacques Collin's powerful voice.
+
+The coach was close to the stand by the Jardin des Plantes.
+
+"Be off, young 'uns," said Jacques Collin, "and do nothing silly! Be
+on the Pont des Arts this afternoon at five, and my aunt will let you
+know if there are any orders to the contrary.--We must be prepared for
+everything," he whispered to his aunt. "To-morrow," he went on,
+"Jacqueline will tell you how to dig up the gold without any risk. It
+is a ticklish job----"
+
+Paccard and Prudence jumped out on to the King's highway, as happy as
+reprieved thieves.
+
+"What a good fellow the boss is!" said Paccard.
+
+"He would be the king of men if he were not so rough on women."
+
+"Oh, yes! He is a sweet creature," said Paccard. "Did you see how he
+kicked me? Well, we deserved to be sent to old Nick; for, after all,
+we got him into this scrape."
+
+"If only he does not drag us into some dirty job, and get us packed
+off to the hulks yet," said the wily Prudence.
+
+"Not he! If he had that in his head, he would tell us; you don't know
+him.--He has provided handsomely for you. Here we are, citizens at
+large! Oh, when that man takes a fancy to you, he has not his match
+for good-nature."
+
+"Now, my jewel," said Jacques Collin to his aunt, "you must take la
+Gonore in hand; she must be humbugged. Five days hence she will be
+taken into custody, and a hundred and fifty thousand francs will be
+found in her rooms, the remains of a share from the robbery and murder
+of the old Crottat couple, the notary's father and mother."
+
+"She will get five years in the Madelonnettes," said Jacqueline.
+
+"That's about it," said the nephew. "This will be a reason for old
+Nourrisson to get rid of her house; she cannot manage it herself, and
+a manager to suit is not to be found every day. You can arrange all
+that. We shall have a sharp eye there.--But all these three things are
+secondary to the business I have undertaken with regard to our
+letters. So unrip your gown and give me the samples of the goods.
+Where are the three packets?"
+
+"At la Rousse's, of course."
+
+"Coachman," cried Jacques Collin, "go back to the Palais de Justice,
+and look sharp----
+
+"I promised to be quick, and I have been gone half an hour; that is
+too much.--Stay at la Rousse's, and give the sealed parcels to the
+office clerk, who will come and ask for Madame DE Saint-Esteve; the DE
+will be the password. He will say to you,'Madame, I have come from the
+public prosecutor for the things you know of.' Stand waiting outside
+the door, staring about at what is going on in the Flower-Market, so
+as not to arouse Prelard's suspicions. As soon as you have given up
+the letters, you can start Paccard and Prudence."
+
+"I see what you are at," said Jacqueline; "you mean to step into Bibi-
+Lupin's shoes. That boy's death has turned your brain."
+
+"And there is Theodore, who was just going to have his hair cropped to
+be scragged at four this afternoon!" cried Jacques Collin.
+
+"Well, it is a notion! We shall end our days as honest folks in a fine
+property and a delightful climate--in Touraine."
+
+"What was to become of me? Lucien has taken my soul with him, and all
+my joy in life. I have thirty years before me to be sick of life in,
+and I have no heart left. Instead of being the boss of the hulks, I
+shall be a Figaro of the law, and avenge Lucien. I can never be sure
+of demolishing Corentin excepting in the skin of a police agent. And
+so long as I have a man to devour, I shall still feel alive.--The
+profession a man follows in the eyes of the world is a mere sham; the
+reality is in the idea!" he added, striking his forehead.--"How much
+have we left in the cash-box?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing," said his aunt, dismayed by the man's tone and manner. "I
+gave you all I had for the boy. La Romette has not more than twenty
+thousand francs left in the business. I took everything from Madame
+Nourrisson; she had about sixty thousand francs of her own. Oh! we are
+lying in sheets that have been washed this twelve months past. That
+boy had all the pals' blunt, our savings, and all old Nourrisson's."
+
+"Making----?"
+
+"Five hundred and sixty thousand."
+
+"We have a hundred and fifty thousand which Paccard and Prudence will
+pay us. I will tell you where to find two hundred thousand more. The
+remainder will come to me out of Esther's money. We must repay old
+Nourrisson. With Theodore, Paccard, Prudence, Nourrisson, and you, I
+shall soon have the holy alliance I require.--Listen, now we are
+nearly there----"
+
+"Here are the three letters," said Jacqueline, who had finished
+unsewing the lining of her gown.
+
+"Quite right," said Jacques Collin, taking the three precious
+documents--autograph letters on vellum paper, and still strongly
+scented. "Theodore did the Nanterre job."
+
+"Oh! it was he."
+
+"Don't talk. Time is precious. He wanted to give the proceeds to a
+little Corsican sparrow named Ginetta. You must set old Nourrisson to
+find her; I will give you the necessary information in a letter which
+Gault will give you. Come for it to the gate of the Conciergerie in
+two hours' time. You must place the girl with a washerwoman, Godet's
+sister; she must seem at home there. Godet and Ruffard were concerned
+with la Pouraille in robbing and murdering the Crottats.
+
+"The four hundred and fifty thousand francs are all safe, one-third in
+la Gonore's cellar--la Pouraille's share; the second third in la
+Gonore's bedroom, which is Ruffard's; and the rest is hidden in
+Godet's sister's house. We will begin by taking a hundred and fifty
+thousand francs out of la Pouraille's whack, a hundred thousand of
+Godet's, and a hundred thousand of Ruffard's. As soon as Godet and
+Ruffard are nabbed, they will be supposed to have got rid of what is
+missing from their shares. And I will make Godet believe that I have
+saved a hundred thousand francs for him, and that la Gonore has done
+the same for la Pouraille and Ruffard.
+
+"Prudence and Paccard will do the job at la Gonore's; you and Ginetta
+--who seems to be a smart hussy--must manage the job at Godet's
+sister's place.
+
+"And so, as the first act in the farce, I can enable the public
+prosecutor to lay his hands on four hundred thousand francs stolen
+from the Crottats, and on the guilty parties. Then I shall seem to
+have shown up the Nanterre murderer. We shall get back our shiners,
+and are behind the scenes with the police. We were the game, now we
+are the hunters--that is all.
+
+"Give the driver three francs."
+
+The coach was at the Palais. Jacqueline, speechless with astonishment,
+paid. Trompe-la-Mort went up the steps to the public prosecutor's
+room.
+
+
+
+A complete change of life is so violent a crisis, that Jacques Collin,
+in spite of his resolution, mounted the steps but slowly, going up
+from the Rue de la Barillerie to the Galerie Marchande, where, under
+the gloomy peristyle of the courthouse, is the entrance to the Court
+itself.
+
+Some civil case was going on which had brought a little crowd together
+at the foot of the double stairs leading to the Assize Court, so that
+the convict, lost in thought, stood for some minutes, checked by the
+throng.
+
+To the left of this double flight is one of the mainstays of the
+building, like an enormous pillar, and in this tower is a little door.
+This door opens on a spiral staircase down to the Conciergerie, to
+which the public prosecutor, the governor of the prison, the presiding
+judges, King's council, and the chief of the Safety department have
+access by this back way.
+
+It was up a side staircase from this, now walled up, that Marie
+Antoinette, the Queen of France, was led before the Revolutionary
+tribunal which sat, as we all know, in the great hall where appeals
+are now heard before the Supreme Court. The heart sinks within us at
+the sight of these dreadful steps, when we think that Marie Therese's
+daughter, whose suite, and head-dress, and hoops filled the great
+staircase at Versailles, once passed that way! Perhaps it was in
+expiation of her mother's crime--the atrocious division of Poland. The
+sovereigns who commit such crimes evidently never think of the
+retribution to be exacted by Providence.
+
+When Jacques Collin went up the vaulted stairs to the public
+prosecutor's room, Bibi-Lupin was just coming out of the little door
+in the wall.
+
+The chief of the "Safety" had come from the Conciergerie, and was also
+going up to Monsieur de Granville. It was easy to imagine Bibi-Lupin's
+surprise when he recognized, in front of him, the gown of Carlos
+Herrera, which he had so thoroughly studied that morning; he ran on to
+pass him. Jacques Collin turned round, and the enemies were face to
+face. Each stood still, and the self-same look flashed in both pairs
+of eyes, so different in themselves, as in a duel two pistols go off
+at the same instant.
+
+"This time I have got you, rascal!" said the chief of the Safety
+Department.
+
+"Ah, ha!" replied Jacques Collin ironically.
+
+It flashed through his mind that Monsieur de Granville had sent some
+one to watch him, and, strange to say, it pained him to think the
+magistrate less magnanimous than he had supposed.
+
+Bibi-Lupin bravely flew at Jacques Collin's throat; but he, keeping
+his eye on the foe, gave him a straight blow, and sent him sprawling
+on his back three yards off; then Trompe-la-Mort went calmly up to
+Bibi-Lupin, and held out a hand to help him rise, exactly like an
+English boxer who, sure of his superiority, is ready for more. Bibi-
+Lupin knew better than to call out; but he sprang to his feet, ran to
+the entrance to the passage, and signed to a gendarme to stand on
+guard. Then, swift as lightning, he came back to the foe, who quietly
+looked on. Jacques Collin had decided what to do.
+
+"Either the public prosecutor has broken his word, or he had not taken
+Bibi-Lupin into his confidence, and in that case I must get the matter
+explained," thought he.--"Do you mean to arrest me?" he asked his
+enemy. "Say so without more ado. Don't I know that in the heart of
+this place you are stronger than I am? I could kill you with a well-
+placed kick, but I could not tackle the gendarmes and the soldiers.
+Now, make no noise. Where to you want to take me?"
+
+"To Monsieur Camusot."
+
+"Come along to Monsieur Camusot," replied Jacques Collin. "Why should
+we not go to the public prosecutor's court? It is nearer," he added.
+
+Bibi-Lupin, who knew that he was out of favor with the upper ranks of
+judicial authorities, and suspected of having made a fortune at the
+expense of criminals and their victims, was not unwilling to show
+himself in Court with so notable a capture.
+
+"All right, we will go there," said he. "But as you surrender, allow
+me to fit you with bracelets. I am afraid of your claws."
+
+And he took the handcuffs out of his pocket.
+
+Jacques Collin held out his hands, and Bibi-Lupin snapped on the
+manacles.
+
+"Well, now, since you are feeling so good," said he, "tell me how you
+got out of the Conciergerie?"
+
+"By the way you came; down the turret stairs."
+
+"Then have you taught the gendarmes some new trick?"
+
+"No, Monsieur de Granville let me out on parole."
+
+"You are gammoning me?"
+
+"You will see. Perhaps it will be your turn to wear the bracelets."
+
+Just then Corentin was saying to Monsieur de Granville:
+
+"Well, monsieur, it is just an hour since our man set out; are you not
+afraid that he may have fooled you? He is on the road to Spain perhaps
+by this time, and we shall not find him there, for Spain is a
+whimsical kind of country."
+
+"Either I know nothing of men, or he will come back; he is bound by
+every interest; he has more to look for at my hands than he has to
+give."
+
+Bibi-Lupin walked in.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," said he, "I have good news for you. Jacques
+Collin, who had escaped, has been recaptured."
+
+"And this," said Jacques Collin, addressing Monsieur de Granville, "is
+the way you keep your word!--Ask your double-faced agent where he took
+me."
+
+"Where?" said the public prosecutor.
+
+"Close to the Court, in the vaulted passage," said Bibi-Lupin.
+
+"Take your irons off the man," said Monsieur de Granville sternly.
+"And remember that you are to leave him free till further orders.--Go!
+--You have a way of moving and acting as if you alone were law and
+police in one."
+
+The public prosecutor turned his back on Bibi-Lupin, who became deadly
+pale, especially at a look from Jacques Collin, in which he read
+disaster.
+
+"I have not been out of this room. I expected you back, and you cannot
+doubt that I have kept my word, as you kept yours," said Monsieur de
+Granville to the convict.
+
+"For a moment I did doubt you, sir, and in my place perhaps you would
+have thought as I did, but on reflection I saw that I was unjust. I
+bring you more than you can give me; you had no interest in betraying
+me."
+
+The magistrate flashed a look at Corentin. This glance, which could
+not escape Trompe-la-Mort, who was watching Monsieur de Granville,
+directed his attention to the strange little old man sitting in an
+armchair in a corner. Warned at once by the swift and anxious instinct
+that scents the presence of an enemy, Collin examined this figure; he
+saw at a glance that the eyes were not so old as the costume would
+suggest, and he detected a disguise. In one second Jacques Collin was
+revenged on Corentin for the rapid insight with which Corentin had
+unmasked him at Peyrade's.
+
+"We are not alone!" said Jacques Collin to Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"No," said the magistrate drily.
+
+"And this gentleman is one of my oldest acquaintances, I believe,"
+replied the convict.
+
+He went forward, recognizing Corentin, the real and confessed
+originator of Lucien's overthrow.
+
+Jacques Collin, whose face was of a brick-red hue, for a scarcely
+perceptible moment turned white, almost ashy; all his blood rushed to
+his heart, so furious and maddening was his longing to spring on this
+dangerous reptile and crush it; but he controlled the brutal impulse,
+suppressing it with the force that made him so formidable. He put on a
+polite manner and the tone of obsequious civility which he had
+practised since assuming the garb of a priest of a superior Order, and
+he bowed to the little old man.
+
+"Monsieur Corentin," said he, "do I owe the pleasure of this meeting
+to chance, or am I so happy as to be the cause of your visit here?"
+
+Monsieur de Granville's astonishment was at its height, and he could
+not help staring at the two men who had thus come face to face.
+Jacques Collin's behavior and the tone in which he spoke denoted a
+crisis, and he was curious to know the meaning of it. On being thus
+suddenly and miraculously recognized, Corentin drew himself up like a
+snake when you tread on its tail.
+
+"Yes, it is I, my dear Abbe Carlos Herrera."
+
+"And are you here," said Trompe-la-Mort, "to interfere between
+monsieur the public prosecutor and me? Am I so happy as to be the
+object of one of those negotiations in which your talents shine so
+brightly?--Here, Monsieur le Comte," the convict went on, "not to
+waste time so precious as yours is, read these--they are samples of my
+wares."
+
+And he held out to Monsieur de Granville three letters, which he took
+out of his breast-pocket.
+
+"And while you are studying them, I will, with your permission, have a
+little talk with this gentleman."
+
+"You do me great honor," said Corentin, who could not help giving a
+little shiver.
+
+"You achieved a perfect success in our business," said Jacques Collin.
+"I was beaten," he added lightly, in the tone of a gambler who has
+lost his money, "but you left some men on the field--your victory cost
+you dear."
+
+"Yes," said Corentin, taking up the jest, "you lost your queen, and I
+lost my two castles."
+
+"Oh! Contenson was a mere pawn," said Jacques Collin scornfully; "you
+may easily replace him. You really are--allow me to praise you to your
+face--you are, on my word of honor, a magnificent man."
+
+"No, no, I bow to your superiority," replied Corentin, assuming the
+air of a professional joker, as if he said, "If you mean humbug, by
+all means humbug! I have everything at my command, while you are
+single-handed, so to speak."
+
+"Oh! Oh!" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"And you were very near winning the day!" said Corentin, noticing the
+exclamation. "You are quite the most extraordinary man I ever met in
+my life, and I have seen many very extraordinary men, for those I have
+to work with me are all remarkable for daring and bold scheming.
+
+"I was, for my sins, very intimate with the late Duc d'Otranto; I have
+worked for Louis XVIII. when he was on the throne; and, when he was
+exiled, for the Emperor and for the Directory. You have the tenacity
+of Louvel, the best political instrument I ever met with; but you are
+as supple as the prince of diplomates. And what auxiliaries you have!
+I would give many a head to the guillotine if I could have in my
+service the cook who lived with poor little Esther.--And where do you
+find such beautiful creatures as the woman who took the Jewess' place
+for Monsieur de Nucingen? I don't know where to get them when I want
+them."
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur, you overpower me," said Jacques Collin. "Such
+praise from you will turn my head----"
+
+"It is deserved. Why, you took in Peyrade; he believed you to be a
+police officer--he!--I tell you what, if you had not that fool of a
+boy to take care of, you would have thrashed us."
+
+"Oh! monsieur, but you are forgetting Contenson disguised as a
+mulatto, and Peyrade as an Englishman. Actors have the stage to help
+them, but to be so perfect by daylight, and at all hours, no one but
+you and your men----"
+
+"Come, now," said Corentin, "we are fully convinced of our worth and
+merits. And here we stand each of us quite alone; I have lost my old
+friend, you your young companion. I, for the moment, am in the
+stronger position, why should we not do like the men in l'Auberge des
+Adrets? I offer you my hand, and say, 'Let us embrace, and let bygones
+be bygones.' Here, in the presence of Monsieur le Comte, I propose to
+give you full and plenary absolution, and you shall be one of my men,
+the chief next to me, and perhaps my successor."
+
+"You really offer me a situation?" said Jacques Collin. "A nice
+situation indeed!--out of the fire into the frying-pan!"
+
+"You will be in a sphere where your talents will be highly appreciated
+and well paid for, and you will act at your ease. The Government
+police are not free from perils. I, as you see me, have already been
+imprisoned twice, but I am none the worse for that. And we travel, we
+are what we choose to appear. We pull the wires of political dramas,
+and are treated with politeness by very great people.--Come, my dear
+Jacques Collin, do you say yes?"
+
+"Have you orders to act in this matter?" said the convict.
+
+"I have a free hand," replied Corentin, delighted at his own happy
+idea.
+
+"You are trifling with me; you are very shrewd, and you must allow
+that a man may be suspicious of you.--You have sold more than one man
+by tying him up in a sack after making him go into it of his own
+accord. I know all your great victories--the Montauran case, the
+Simeuse business--the battles of Marengo of espionage."
+
+"Well," said Corentin, "you have some esteem for the public
+prosecutor?"
+
+"Yes," said Jacques Collin, bowing respectfully, "I admire his noble
+character, his firmness, his dignity. I would give my life to make him
+happy. Indeed, to begin with, I will put an end to the dangerous
+condition in which Madame de Serizy now is."
+
+Monsieur de Granville turned to him with a look of satisfaction.
+
+"Then ask him," Corentin went on, "if I have not full power to snatch
+you from the degrading position in which you stand, and to attach you
+to me."
+
+"It is quite true," said Monsieur de Granville, watching the convict.
+
+"Really and truly! I may have absolution for the past and a promise of
+succeeding to you if I give sufficient evidence of my intelligence?"
+
+"Between two such men as we are there can be no misunderstanding,"
+said Corentin, with a lordly air that might have taken anybody in.
+
+"And the price of the bargain is, I suppose, the surrender of those
+three packets of letters?" said Jacques Collin.
+
+"I did not think it would be necessary to say so to you----"
+
+"My dear Monsieur Corentin," said Trompe-la-Mort, with irony worthy of
+that which made the fame of Talma in the part of Nicomede, "I beg to
+decline. I am indebted to you for the knowledge of what I am worth,
+and of the importance you attach to seeing me deprived of my weapons--
+I will never forget it.
+
+"At all times and for ever I shall be at your service, but instead of
+saying with Robert Macaire, 'Let us embrace!' I embrace you."
+
+He seized Corentin round the middle so suddenly that the other could
+not avoid the hug; he clutched him to his heart like a doll, kissed
+him on both cheeks, carried him like a feather with one hand, while
+with the other he opened the door, and then set him down outside,
+quite battered by this rough treatment.
+
+"Good-bye, my dear fellow," said Jacques Collin in a low voice, and in
+Corentin's ear: "the length of three corpses parts you from me; we
+have measured swords, they are of the same temper and the same length.
+Let us treat each other with due respect; but I mean to be your equal,
+not your subordinate. Armed as you would be, it strikes me you would
+be too dangerous a general for your lieutenant. We will place a grave
+between us. Woe to you if you come over on to my territory!
+
+"You call yourself the State, as footmen call themselves by their
+master's names. For my part, I will call myself Justice. We shall
+often meet; let us treat each other with dignity and propriety--all
+the more because we shall always remain--atrocious blackguards," he
+added in a whisper. "I set you the example by embracing you----"
+
+Corentin stood nonplussed for the first time in his life, and allowed
+his terrible antagonist to wring his hand.
+
+"If so," said he, "I think it will be to our interest on both sides to
+remain chums."
+
+"We shall be stronger each on our own side, but at the same time more
+dangerous," added Jacques Collin in an undertone. "And you will allow
+me to call on you to-morrow to ask for some pledge of our agreement."
+
+"Well, well," said Corentin amiably, "you are taking the case out of
+my hands to place it in those of the public prosecutor. You will help
+him to promotion; but I cannot but own to you that you are acting
+wisely.--Bibi-Lupin is too well known; he has served his turn; if you
+get his place, you will have the only situation that suits you. I am
+delighted to see you in it--on my honor----"
+
+"Till our next meeting, very soon," said Jacques Collin.
+
+On turning round, Trompe-la-Mort saw the public prosecutor sitting at
+his table, his head resting on his hands.
+
+"Do you mean that you can save the Comtesse de Serizy from going mad?"
+asked Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"In five minutes," said Jacques Collin.
+
+"And you can give me all those ladies' letters?"
+
+"Have you read the three?"
+
+"Yes," said the magistrate vehemently, "and I blush for the women who
+wrote them."
+
+"Well, we are now alone; admit no one, and let us come to terms," said
+Jacques Collin.
+
+"Excuse me, Justice must first take its course. Monsieur Camusot has
+instructions to seize your aunt."
+
+"He will never find her," said Jacques Collin.
+
+"Search is to be made at the Temple, in the shop of a demoiselle
+Paccard who superintends her shop."
+
+"Nothing will be found there but rags, costumes, diamonds,
+uniforms---- However, it will be as well to check Monsieur Camusot's
+zeal."
+
+Monsieur de Granville rang, and sent an office messenger to desire
+Monsieur Camusot to come and speak with him.
+
+"Now," said he to Jacques Collin, "an end to all this! I want to know
+your recipe for curing the Countess."
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," said the convict very gravely, "I was, as you
+know, sentenced to five years' penal servitude for forgery. But I love
+my liberty.--This passion, like every other, had defeated its own end,
+for lovers who insist on adoring each other too fondly end by
+quarreling. By dint of escaping and being recaptured alternately, I
+have served seven years on the hulks. So you have nothing to remit but
+the added terms I earned in quod--I beg pardon, in prison. I have, in
+fact, served my time, and till some ugly job can be proved against me,
+--which I defy Justice to do, or even Corentin--I ought to be
+reinstated in my rights as a French citizen.
+
+"What is life if I am banned from Paris and subject to the eye of the
+police? Where can I go, what can I do? You know my capabilities. You
+have seen Corentin, that storehouse of treachery and wile, turn
+ghastly pale before me, and doing justice to my powers.--That man has
+bereft me of everything; for it was he, and he alone, who overthrew
+the edifice of Lucien's fortunes, by what means and in whose interest
+I know not.--Corentin and Camusot did it all----"
+
+"No recriminations," said Monsieur de Granville; "give me the facts."
+
+"Well, then, these are the facts. Last night, as I held in my hand the
+icy hand of that dead youth, I vowed to myself that I would give up
+the mad contest I have kept up for twenty years past against society
+at large.
+
+"You will not believe me capable of religious sentimentality after
+what I have said of my religious opinions. Still, in these twenty
+years I have seen a great deal of the seamy side of the world. I have
+known its back-stairs, and I have discerned, in the march of events, a
+Power which you call Providence and I call Chance, and which my
+companions call Luck. Every evil deed, however quickly it may hide its
+traces, is overtaken by some retribution. In this struggle for
+existence, when the game is going well--when you have quint and
+quartorze in your hand and the lead--the candle tumbles over and the
+cards are burned, or the player has a fit of apoplexy!--That is
+Lucien's story. That boy, that angel, had not committed the shadow of
+a crime; he let himself be led, he let things go! He was to marry
+Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, to be made marquis; he had a fine fortune;
+--well, a prostitute poisons herself, she hides the price of a
+certificate of stock, and the whole structure so laboriously built up
+crumbles in an instant.
+
+"And who is the first man to deal a blow? A man loaded with secret
+infamy, a monster who, in the world of finance, has committed such
+crimes that every coin of his vast fortune has been dipped in the
+tears of a whole family [see la Maison Nucingen]--by Nucingen, who has
+been a legalized Jacques Collin in the world of money. However, you
+know as well as I do all the bankruptcies and tricks for which that
+man deserves hanging. My fetters will leave a mark on all my actions,
+however virtuous. To be a shuttlecock between two racquets--one called
+the hulks, and the other the police--is a life in which success means
+never-ending toil, and peace and quiet seem quite impossible.
+
+"At this moment, Monsieur de Granville, Jacques Collin is buried with
+Lucien, who is being now sprinkled with holy water and carried away to
+Pere-Lachaise. What I want is a place not to live in, but to die in.
+As things are, you, representing Justice, have never cared to make the
+released convict's social status a concern of any interest. Though the
+law may be satisfied, society is not; society is still suspicious, and
+does all it can to justify its suspicions; it regards a released
+convict as an impossible creature; it ought to restore him to his full
+rights, but, in fact, it prohibits his living in certain circles.
+Society says to the poor wretch, 'Paris, which is the only place you
+can be hidden in; Paris and its suburbs for so many miles round is the
+forbidden land, you shall not live there!' and it subjects the convict
+to the watchfulness of the police. Do you think that life is possible
+under such conditions? To live, the convict must work, for he does not
+come out of prison with a fortune.
+
+"You arrange matters so that he is plainly ticketed, recognized,
+hedged round, and then you fancy that his fellow-citizens will trust
+him, when society and justice and the world around him do not. You
+condemn him to starvation or crime. He cannot get work, and is
+inevitably dragged into his old ways, which lead to the scaffold.
+
+"Thus, while earnestly wishing to give up this struggle with the law,
+I could find no place for myself under the sun. One course alone is
+open to me, that is to become the servant of the power that crushes
+us; and as soon as this idea dawned on me, the Power of which I spoke
+was shown in the clearest light. Three great families are at my mercy.
+Do not suppose I am thinking of blackmail--blackmail is the meanest
+form of murder. In my eyes it is baser villainy than murder. The
+murderer needs, at any rate, atrocious courage. And I practise what I
+preach; for the letters which are my safe-conduct, which allow me to
+address you thus, and for the moment place me on an equality with you
+--I, Crime, and you, Justice--those letters are in your power. Your
+messenger may fetch them, and they will be given up to him.
+
+"I ask no price for them; I do not sell them. Alas! Monsieur le Comte,
+I was not thinking of myself when I preserved them; I thought that
+Lucien might some day be in danger! If you cannot agree to my request,
+my courage is out; I hate life more than enough to make me blow out my
+own brains and rid you of me!--Or, with a passport, I can go to
+America and live in the wilderness. I have all the characteristics of
+a savage.
+
+"These are the thoughts that came to me in the night.--Your clerk, no
+doubt, carried you a message I sent by him. When I saw what
+precautions you took to save Lucien's memory from any stain, I
+dedicated my life to you--a poor offering, for I no longer cared for
+it; it seemed to me impossible without the star that gave it light,
+the happiness that glorified it, the thought that gave it meaning, the
+prosperity of the young poet who was its sun--and I determined to give
+you the three packets of letters----"
+
+Monsieur de Granville bowed his head.
+
+"I went down into the prison-yard, and there I found the persons
+guilty of the Nanterre crime, as well as my little chain companion
+within an inch of the chopper as an involuntary accessory after the
+fact," Jacques Collin went on. "I discovered that Bibi-Lupin is
+cheating the authorities, that one of his men murdered the Crottats.
+Was not this providential, as you say?--So I perceived a remote
+possibility of doing good, of turning my gifts and the dismal
+experience I have gained to account for the benefit of society, of
+being useful instead of mischievous, and I ventured to confide in your
+judgment, your generosity."
+
+The man's air of candor, of artlessness, of childlike simplicity, as
+he made his confession, without bitterness, or that philosophy of vice
+which had hitherto made him so terrible to hear, was like an absolute
+transformation. He was no longer himself.
+
+"I have such implicit trust in you," he went on, with the humility of
+a penitent, "that I am wholly at your mercy. You see me with three
+roads open to me--suicide, America, and the Rue de Jerusalem. Bibi-
+Lupin is rich; he has served his turn; he is a double-faced rascal.
+And if you set me to work against him, I would catch him red-handed in
+some trick within a week. If you will put me in that sneak's shoes,
+you will do society a real service. I will be honest. I have every
+quality that is needed in the profession. I am better educated than
+Bibi-Lupin; I went through my schooling up to rhetoric; I shall not
+blunder as he does; I have very good manners when I choose. My sole
+ambition is to become an instrument of order and repression instead of
+being the incarnation of corruption. I will enlist no more recruits to
+the army of vice.
+
+"In war, monsieur, when a hostile general is captured, he is not shot,
+you know; his sword is returned to him, and his prison is a large
+town; well, I am the general of the hulks, and I have surrendered.--I
+am beaten, not by the law, but by death. The sphere in which I crave
+to live and act is the only one that is suited to me, and there I can
+develop the powers I feel within me.
+
+"Decide."
+
+And Jacques Collin stood in an attitude of diffident submission.
+
+"You place the letters in my hands, then?" said the public prosecutor.
+
+"You have only to send for them; they will be delivered to your
+messenger."
+
+"But how?"
+
+Jacques Collin read the magistrate's mind, and kept up the game.
+
+"You promised me to commute the capital sentence on Calvi for twenty
+years' penal servitude. Oh, I am not reminding you of that to drive a
+bargain," he added eagerly, seeing Monsieur de Granville's expression;
+"that life should be safe for other reasons, the lad is innocent----"
+
+"How am I to get the letters?" asked the public prosecutor. "It is my
+right and my business to convince myself that you are the man you say
+you are. I must have you without conditions."
+
+"Send a man you can trust to the Flower Market on the quay. At the
+door of a tinman's shop, under the sign of Achilles' shield----"
+
+"That house?"
+
+"Yes," said Jacques Collin, smiling bitterly, "my shield is there.--
+Your man will see an old woman dressed, as I told you before, like a
+fish-woman who has saved money--earrings in her ears, and clothes like
+a rich market-woman's. He must ask for Madame de Saint-Esteve. Do not
+omit the DE. And he must say, 'I have come from the public prosecutor
+to fetch you know what.'-- You will immediately receive three sealed
+packets."
+
+"All the letters are there?" said Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"There is no tricking you; you did not get your place for nothing!"
+said Jacques Collin, with a smile. "I see you still think me capable
+of testing you and giving you so much blank paper.--No; you do not
+know me," said he. "I trust you as a son trusts his father."
+
+"You will be taken back to the Conciergerie," said the magistrate,
+"and there await a decision as to your fate."
+
+Monsieur de Granville rang, and said to the office-boy who answered:
+
+"Beg Monsieur Garnery to come here, if he is in his room."
+
+Besides the forty-eight police commissioners who watch over Paris like
+forty-eight petty Providences, to say nothing of the guardians of
+Public Safety--and who have earned the nickname of quart d'oeil, in
+thieves' slang, a quarter of an eye, because there are four of them to
+each district,--besides these, there are two commissioners attached
+equally to the police and to the legal authorities, whose duty it is
+to undertake delicate negotiation, and not frequently to serve as
+deputies to the examining judges. The office of these two magistrates,
+for police commissioners are also magistrates, is known as the
+Delegates' office; for they are, in fact, delegated on each occasion,
+and formally empowered to carry out inquiries or arrests.
+
+These functions demand men of ripe age, proved intelligence, great
+rectitude, and perfect discretion; and it is one of the miracles
+wrought by Heaven in favor of Paris, that some men of that stamp are
+always forthcoming. Any description of the Palais de Justice would be
+incomplete without due mention of these PREVENTIVE officials, as they
+may be called, the most powerful adjuncts of the law; for though it
+must be owned that the force of circumstances has abrogated the
+ancient pomp and wealth of justice, it has materially gained in many
+ways. In Paris especially its machinery is admirably perfect.
+
+Monsieur de Granville had sent his secretary, Monsieur de Chargeboeuf,
+to attend Lucien's funeral; he needed a substitute for this business,
+a man he could trust, and Monsieur Garnery was one of the
+commissioners in the Delegates' office.
+
+"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "I have already proved to you that I
+have a sense of honor. You let me go free, and I came back.--By this
+time the funeral mass for Lucien is ended; they will be carrying him
+to the grave. Instead of remanding me to the Conciergerie, give me
+leave to follow the boy's body to Pere-Lachaise. I will come back and
+surrender myself prisoner."
+
+"Go," said Monsieur de Granville, in the kindest tone.
+
+"One word more, monsieur. The money belonging to that girl--Lucien's
+mistress--was not stolen. During the short time of liberty you allowed
+me, I questioned her servants. I am sure of them as you are of your
+two commissioners of the Delegates' office. The money paid for the
+certificate sold by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck will certainly be
+found in her room when the seals are removed. Her maid remarked to me
+that the deceased was given to mystery-making, and very distrustful;
+she no doubt hid the banknotes in her bed. Let the bedstead be
+carefully examined and taken to pieces, the mattresses unsewn--the
+money will be found."
+
+"You are sure of that?"
+
+"I am sure of the relative honesty of my rascals; they never play any
+tricks on me. I hold the power of life and death; I try and condemn
+them and carry out my sentence without all your formalities. You can
+see for yourself the results of my authority. I will recover the money
+stolen from Monsieur and Madame Crottat; I will hand you over one of
+Bibi-Lupin's men, his right hand, caught in the act; and I will tell
+you the secret of the Nanterre murders. This is not a bad beginning.
+And if you only employ me in the service of the law and the police, by
+the end of a year you will be satisfied with all I can tell you. I
+will be thoroughly all that I ought to be, and shall manage to succeed
+in all the business that is placed in my hands."
+
+"I can promise you nothing but my goodwill. What you ask is not in my
+power. The privilege of granting pardons is the King's alone, on the
+recommendation of the Keeper of the Seals; and the place you wish to
+hold is in the gift of the Prefet of Police."
+
+"Monsieur Garnery," the office-boy announced.
+
+At a nod from Monsieur de Granville the Delegate commissioner came in,
+glanced at Jacques Collin as one who knows, and gulped down his
+astonishment on hearing the word "Go!" spoken to Jacques Collin by
+Monsieur de Granville.
+
+"Allow me," said Jacques Collin, "to remain here till Monsieur Garnery
+has returned with the documents in which all my strength lies, that I
+may take away with me some expression of your satisfaction."
+
+This absolute humility and sincerity touched the public prosecutor.
+
+"Go," said he; "I can depend on you."
+
+Jacques Collin bowed humbly, with the submissiveness of an inferior to
+his master. Ten minutes later, Monsieur de Granville was in possession
+of the letters in three sealed packets that had not been opened! But
+the importance of this point, and Jacques Collin's avowal, had made
+him forget the convict's promise to cure Madame de Serizy.
+
+
+
+When once he was outside, Jacques Collin had an indescribable sense of
+satisfaction. He felt he was free, and born to a new phase of life. He
+walked quickly from the Palais to the Church of Saint-Germain-des-
+Pres, where mass was over. The coffin was being sprinkled with holy
+water, and he arrived in time thus to bid farewell, in a Christian
+fashion, to the mortal remains of the youth he had loved so well. Then
+he got into a carriage and drove after the body to the cemetery.
+
+In Paris, unless on very exceptional occasions, or when some famous
+man has died a natural death, the crowd that gathers about a funeral
+diminishes by degrees as the procession approaches Pere-Lachaise.
+People make time to show themselves in church; but every one has his
+business to attend to, and returns to it as soon as possible. Thus of
+ten mourning carriages, only four were occupied. By the time they
+reached Pere-Lachaise there were not more than a dozen followers,
+among whom was Rastignac.
+
+"That is right; it is well that you are faithful to him," said Jacques
+Collin to his old acquaintance.
+
+Rastignac started with surprise at seeing Vautrin.
+
+"Be calm," said his old fellow-boarder at Madame Vauquer's. "I am your
+slave, if only because I find you here. My help is not to be despised;
+I am, or shall be, more powerful than ever. You slipped your cable,
+and you did it very cleverly; but you may need me yet, and I will
+always be at your service.
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+"To supply the hulks with lodgers instead of lodging there," replied
+Jacques Collin.
+
+Rastignac gave a shrug of disgust.
+
+"But if you were robbed----"
+
+Rastignac hurried on to get away from Jacques Collin.
+
+"You do not know what circumstances you may find yourself in."
+
+They stood by the grave dug by the side of Esther's.
+
+"Two beings who loved each other, and who were happy!" said Jacques
+Collin. "They are united.--It is some comfort to rot together. I will
+be buried here."
+
+When Lucien's body was lowered into the grave, Jacques Collin fell in
+a dead faint. This strong man could not endure the light rattle of the
+spadefuls of earth thrown by the gravediggers on the coffin as a hint
+for their payment.
+
+Just then two men of the corps of Public Safety came up; they
+recognized Jacques Collin, lifted him up, and carried him to a hackney
+coach.
+
+"What is up now?" asked Jacques Collin when he recovered consciousness
+and had looked about him.
+
+He saw himself between two constables, one of whom was Ruffard; and he
+gave him a look which pierced the murderer's soul to the very depths
+of la Gonore's secret.
+
+"Why, the public prosecutor wants you," replied Ruffard, "and we have
+been hunting for you everywhere, and found you in the cemetery, where
+you had nearly taken a header into that boy's grave."
+
+Jacques Collin was silent for a moment.
+
+"Is it Bibi-Lupin that is after me?" he asked the other man.
+
+"No. Monsieur Garnery sent us to find you."
+
+"And he told you nothing?"
+
+The two men looked at each other, holding council in expressive
+pantomime.
+
+"Come, what did he say when he gave you your orders?"
+
+"He bid us fetch you at once," said Ruffard, "and said we should find
+you at the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres; or, if the funeral had
+left the church, at the cemetery."
+
+"The public prosecutor wants me?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"That is it," said Jacques Collin; "he wants my assistance."
+
+And he relapsed into silence, which greatly puzzled the two
+constables.
+
+At about half-past two Jacques Collin once more went up to Monsieur de
+Granville's room, and found there a fresh arrival in the person of
+Monsieur de Granville's predecessor, the Comte Octave de Bauvan, one
+of the Presidents of the Court of Appeals.
+
+"You forgot Madame de Serizy's dangerous condition, and that you had
+promised to save her."
+
+"Ask these rascals in what state they found me, monsieur," said
+Jacques Collin, signing to the two constables to come in.
+
+"Unconscious, monsieur, lying on the edge of the grave of the young
+man they were burying."
+
+"Save Madame de Serizy," said the Comte de Bauvan, "and you shall have
+what you will."
+
+"I ask for nothing," said Jacques Collin. "I surrendered at
+discretion, and Monsieur de Granville must have received----"
+
+"All the letters, yes," said the magistrate. "But you promised to save
+Madame de Serizy's reason. Can you? Was it not a vain boast?"
+
+"I hope I can," replied Jacques Collin modestly.
+
+"Well, then, come with me," said Comte Octave.
+
+"No, monsieur; I will not be seen in the same carriage by your side--I
+am still a convict. It is my wish to serve the Law; I will not begin
+by discrediting it. Go back to the Countess; I will be there soon
+after you. Tell her Lucien's best friend is coming to see her, the
+Abbe Carlos Herrera; the anticipation of my visit will make an
+impression on her and favor the cure. You will forgive me for assuming
+once more the false part of a Spanish priest; it is to do so much
+good!"
+
+"I shall find you there at about four o'clock," said Monsieur de
+Granville, "for I have to wait on the King with the Keeper of the
+Seals."
+
+Jacques Collin went off to find his aunt, who was waiting for him on
+the Quai aux Fleurs.
+
+"So you have given yourself up to the authorities?" said she.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is a risky game."
+
+"No; I owed that poor Theodore his life, and he is reprieved."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"I--I shall be what I ought to be. I shall always make our set shake
+in their shoes.--But we must get to work. Go and tell Paccard to be
+off as fast as he can go, and see that Europe does as I told her."
+
+"That is a trifle; I know how to deal with la Gonore," said the
+terrible Jacqueline. "I have not been wasting my time here among the
+gilliflowers."
+
+"Let Ginetta, the Corsican girl, be found by to-morrow," Jacques
+Collin went on, smiling at his aunt.
+
+"I shall want some clue."
+
+"You can get it through Manon la Blonde," said Jacques.
+
+"Then we meet this evening," replied the aunt, "you are in such a
+deuce of a hurry. Is there a fat job on?"
+
+"I want to begin with a stroke that will beat everything that Bibi-
+Lupin has ever done. I have spoken a few words to the brute who killed
+Lucien, and I live only for revenge! Thanks to our positions, he and I
+shall be equally strong, equally protected. It will take years to
+strike the blow, but the wretch shall have it straight in the heart."
+
+"He must have vowed a Roland for your Oliver," said the aunt, "for he
+has taken charge of Peyrade's daughter, the girl who was sold to
+Madame Nourrisson, you know."
+
+"Our first point must be to find him a servant."
+
+"That will be difficult; he must be tolerably wide-awake," observed
+Jacqueline.
+
+"Well, hatred keeps one alive! We must work hard."
+
+
+
+Jacques Collin took a cab and drove at once to the Quai Malaquais, to
+the little room he lodged in, quite separate from Lucien's apartment.
+The porter, greatly astonished at seeing him, wanted to tell him all
+that had happened.
+
+"I know everything," said the Abbe. "I have been involved in it, in
+spite of my saintly reputation; but, thanks to the intervention of the
+Spanish Ambassador, I have been released."
+
+He hurried up to his room, where, from under the cover of a breviary,
+he took out a letter that Lucien had written to Madame de Serizy after
+that lady had discarded him on seeing him at the opera with Esther.
+
+Lucien, in his despair, had decided on not sending this letter,
+believing himself cast off for ever; but Jacques Collin had read the
+little masterpiece; and as all that Lucien wrote was to him sacred, he
+had treasured the letter in his prayer-book for its poetical
+expression of a passion that was chiefly vanity. When Monsieur de
+Granville told him of Madame de Serizy's condition, the keen-witted
+man had very wisely concluded that this fine lady's despair and frenzy
+must be the result of the quarrel she had allowed to subsist between
+herself and Lucien. He knew women as magistrates know criminals; he
+guessed the most secret impulses of their hearts; and he at once
+understood that the Countess probably ascribed Lucien's death partly
+to her own severity, and reproached herself bitterly. Obviously a man
+on whom she had shed her love would never have thrown away his life!--
+To know that he had loved her still, in spite of her cruelty, might
+restore her reason.
+
+If Jacques Collin was a grand general of convicts, he was, it must be
+owned, a not less skilful physician of souls.
+
+This man's arrival at the mansion of the Serizys was at once a
+disgrace and a promise. Several persons, the Count, and the doctors
+were assembled in the little drawing-room adjoining the Countess'
+bedroom; but to spare him this stain on his soul's honor, the Comte de
+Bauvan dismissed everybody, and remained alone with his friend. It was
+bad enough even then for the Vice-President of the Privy Council to
+see this gloomy and sinister visitor come in.
+
+Jacques Collin had changed his dress. He was in black with trousers,
+and a plain frock-coat, and his gait, his look, and his manner were
+all that could be wished. He bowed to the two statesmen, and asked if
+he might be admitted to see the Countess.
+
+"She awaits you with impatience," said Monsieur de Bauvan.
+
+"With impatience! Then she is saved," said the dreadful magician.
+
+And, in fact, after an interview of half an hour, Jacques Collin
+opened the door and said:
+
+"Come in, Monsieur le Comte; there is nothing further to fear."
+
+The Countess had the letter clasped to her heart; she was calm, and
+seemed to have forgiven herself. The Count gave expression to his joy
+at the sight.
+
+"And these are the men who settle our fate and the fate of nations,"
+thought Jacques Collin, shrugging his shoulders behind the two men. "A
+female has but to sigh in the wrong way to turn their brain as if it
+were a glove! A wink, and they lose their head! A petticoat raised a
+little higher, dropped a little lower, and they rush round Paris in
+despair! The whims of a woman react on the whole country. Ah, how much
+stronger is a man when, like me, he keeps far away from this childish
+tyranny, from honor ruined by passion, from this frank malignity, and
+wiles worthy of savages! Woman, with her genius for ruthlessness, her
+talent for torture, is, and always will be, the marring of man. The
+public prosecutor, the minister--here they are, all hoodwinked, all
+moving the spheres for some letters written by a duchess and a chit,
+or to save the reason of a woman who is more crazy in her right mind
+than she was in her delirium."
+
+And he smiled haughtily.
+
+"Ay," said he to himself, "and they believe in me! They act on my
+information, and will leave me in power. I shall still rule the world
+which has obeyed me these five-and-twenty years."
+
+Jacques Collin had brought into play the overpowering influence he had
+exerted of yore over poor Esther; for he had, as has often been shown,
+the mode of speech, the look, the action which quell madmen, and he
+had depicted Lucien as having died with the Countess' image in his
+heart.
+
+No woman can resist the idea of having been the one beloved.
+
+"You now have no rival," had been this bitter jester's last words.
+
+He remained a whole hour alone and forgotten in that little room.
+Monsieur de Granville arrived and found him gloomy, standing up, and
+lost in a brown study, as a man may well be who makes an 18th Brumaire
+in his life.
+
+The public prosecutor went to the door of the Countess' room, and
+remained there a few minutes; then he turned to Jacques Collin and
+said:
+
+"You have not changed your mind?"
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+"Well, then, you will take Bibi-Lupin's place, and Calvi's sentence
+will be commuted."
+
+"And he is not to be sent to Rochefort?"
+
+"Not even to Toulon; you may employ him in your service. But these
+reprieves and your appointment depend on your conduct for the next six
+months as subordinate to Bibi-Lupin."
+
+
+
+Within a week Bibi-Lupin's new deputy had helped the Crottat family to
+recover four hundred thousand francs, and had brought Ruffard and
+Godet to justice.
+
+The price of the certificates sold by Esther Gobseck was found in the
+courtesan's mattress, and Monsieur de Serizy handed over to Jacques
+Collin the three hundred thousand francs left to him by Lucien de
+Rubempre.
+
+The monument erected by Lucien's orders for Esther and himself is
+considered one of the finest in Pere-Lachaise, and the earth beneath
+it belongs to Jacques Collin.
+
+After exercising his functions for about fifteen years Jacques Collin
+retired in 1845.
+
+
+
+DECEMBER 1847.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Ajuda-Pinto, Marquis Miguel d'
+  Father Goriot
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  Beatrix
+
+Bauvan, Comte Octave de
+  Honorine
+
+Beaumesnil, Mademoiselle
+  The Middle Classes
+  A Second Home
+
+Beaupre, Fanny
+  A Start in Life
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Muse of the Department
+
+Bianchon, Horace
+  Father Goriot
+  The Atheist's Mass
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  The Government Clerks
+  Pierrette
+  A Study of Woman
+  Honorine
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  The Magic Skin
+  A Second Home
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Muse of the Department
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Country Parson
+In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
+  Another Study of Woman
+  La Grande Breteche
+
+Bibi-Lupin (chief of secret police, called himself Gondureau)
+  Father Goriot
+
+Bixiou, Jean-Jacques
+  The Purse
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Government Clerks
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Member for Arcis
+  Beatrix
+  A Man of Business
+  Gaudissart II.
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Blondet, Emile
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  The Peasantry
+
+Bouvard, Doctor
+  Ursule Mirouet
+
+Braschon
+  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Bridau, Philippe
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+
+Cachan
+  Lost Illusions
+
+Camusot de Marville
+  Cousin Pons
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+
+Camusot de Marville, Madame
+  The Vendetta
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Cerizet
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Chardon, Madame (nee Rubempre)
+  Lost Illusions
+
+Chatelet, Sixte, Baron du
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Thirteen
+
+Chaulieu, Henri, Duc de
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Modeste Mignon
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Thirteen
+
+Collin, Jacqueline
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Collin, Jacques
+  Father Goriot
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Corentin
+  The Chouans
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Crottat, Monsieur and Madame
+  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Dauriat
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Modeste Mignon
+
+Derville
+  Gobseck
+  A Start in Life
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  Father Goriot
+  Colonel Chabert
+
+Desplein
+  The Atheist's Mass
+  Cousin Pons
+  Lost Illusions
+  The Thirteen
+  The Government Clerks
+  Pierrette
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Honorine
+
+Desroches (son)
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Colonel Chabert
+  A Start in Life
+  A Woman of Thirty
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Espard, Charles-Maurice-Marie-Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis d'
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+
+Espard, Chevalier d'
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+
+Espard, Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, Marquise d'
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Beatrix
+
+Estourny, Charles d'
+  Modeste Mignon
+  A Man of Business
+
+Falleix, Jacques
+  The Government Clerks
+  The Thirteen
+
+Finot, Andoche
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Start in Life
+  Gaudissart the Great
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+
+Fouche, Joseph
+  The Chouans
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+
+Gaillard, Theodore
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Beatrix
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Gaillard, Madame Theodore
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Beatrix
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Gaudissart, Felix
+  Cousin Pons
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Honorine
+  Gaudissart the Great
+
+Givry
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Lily of the Valley
+
+Gobseck, Esther Van
+  Gobseck
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+
+Gobseck, Sarah Van
+  Gobseck
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Maranas
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Godeschal, Marie
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Start in Life
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Grandlieu, Duc Ferdinand de
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Thirteen
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Modeste Mignon
+
+Grandlieu, Duchesse Ferdinand de
+  Beatrix
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Grandlieu, Mademoiselle de
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+
+Grandlieu, Vicomtesse de
+  Colonel Chabert
+  Gobseck
+
+Grandlieu, Vicomte Juste de
+  Gobseck
+
+Grandlieu, Vicomtesse Juste de
+  Gobseck
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Granville, Vicomte de
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  A Second Home
+  Farewell (Adieu)
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Granville, Baron Eugene de
+  A Second Home
+
+Grindot
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Start in Life
+  Beatrix
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Herrera, Carlos
+  Lost Illusions
+
+Katt
+  The Middle Classes
+
+La Peyrade, Charles-Marie-Theodose de
+  The Middle Classes
+
+La Peyrade, Madame de
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Lebrun
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Lenoncourt-Givry, Duchesse de
+  The Lily of the Valley
+  Letters of Two Brides
+
+Louchard
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
+  The Chouans
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+   The Ball at Sceaux
+  The Lily of the Valley
+  Colonel Chabert
+  The Government Clerks
+
+Lousteau, Etienne
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Beatrix
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Cousin Betty
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Government Clerks
+  Ursule Mirouet
+
+Madeleine
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Marron
+  Lost Illusions
+
+Massol
+  The Magic Skin
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Maufrigneuse, Duc de
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Start in Life
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+
+Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Meynardie, Madame
+  The Thirteen
+
+Mirbel, Madame de
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+
+Montcornet, Marechal, Comte de
+  Domestic Peace
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Peasantry
+  A Man of Business
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Nathan, Raoul
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Seamy Side of History
+  The Muse of the Department
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  A Man of Business
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Nathan, Madame Raoul
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  A Prince of Bohemia
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Navarreins, Duc de
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Colonel Chabert
+  The Muse of the Department
+  The Thirteen
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Peasantry
+  The Country Parson
+  The Magic Skin
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Nourrisson, Madame
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Nucingen, Baron Frederic de
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Father Goriot
+  Pierrette
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Man of Business
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Muse of the Department
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de
+  Father Goriot
+  The Thirteen
+  Eugenie Grandet
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Melmoth Reconciled
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Another Study of Woman
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Peyrade
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+
+Poiret, the elder
+  The Government Clerks
+  Father Goriot
+  A Start in Life
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Poiret, Madame (nee Christine-Michelle Michonneau)
+  Father Goriot
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Portenduere, Vicomte Savinien de
+  The Ball at Sceaux
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Beatrix
+
+Rastignac, Eugene de
+  Father Goriot
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Ball at Sceaux
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  A Study of Woman
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Magic Skin
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Member for Arcis
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+Rhetore, Duc Alphonse de
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Albert Savarus
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Rubempre, Lucien-Chardon de
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  The Government Clerks
+  Ursule Mirouet
+
+Schmucke, Wilhelm
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Sechard, David
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial At Paris
+
+Sechard, Madame David
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial At Paris
+
+Selerier
+  Father Goriot
+
+Serizy, Comte Hugret de
+  A Start in Life
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Honorine
+  Modeste Mignon
+
+Serizy, Comtesse de
+  A Start in Life
+  The Thirteen
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Woman of Thirty
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+
+Tours-Minieres, Bernard-Polydor Bryond, Baron des
+  The Seamy Side of History
+
+Vernou, Felicien
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Vivet, Madeleine
+  Cousin Pons
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:17:32 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 05:17:32 -0700
commit	4a3bcdbc541b4435f4915216ae0408c6b36c3dda (patch)
tree	05be95072ad137171e24de3fddf693d654326b64 /old