Esther Happy - Part 3

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_ 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. _

Read next: Esther Happy: Part 4

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