_ 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. _