What Love Costs an Old Man - Part 6

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_ Five days after Derville's return, Lucien one morning had a call from Rastignac.

"I am in despair, my dear boy," said his visitor, "at finding myself compelled to deliver a message which is intrusted to me because we are known to be intimate. Your marriage is broken off beyond all hope of reconciliation. Never set foot again in the Hotel de Grandlieu. To marry Clotilde you must wait till her father dies, and he is too selfish to die yet awhile. Old whist-players sit at table--the card-table--very late.

"Clotilde is setting out for Italy with Madeleine de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu. The poor girl is so madly in love with you, my dear fellow, that they have to keep an eye on her; she was bent on coming to see you, and had plotted an escape. That may comfort you in misfortune!"

Lucien made no reply; he sat gazing at Rastignac.

"And is it a misfortune, after all?" his friend went on. "You will easily find a girl as well born and better looking than Clotilde! Madame de Serizy will find you a wife out of spite; she cannot endure the Grandlieus, who never would have anything to say to her. She has a niece, little Clemence du Rouvre----"

"My dear boy," said Lucien at length, "since that supper I am not on terms with Madame de Serizy--she saw me in Esther's box and made a scene--and I left her to herself."

"A woman of forty does not long keep up a quarrel with so handsome a man as you are," said Rastignac. "I know something of these sunsets. --It lasts ten minutes in the sky, and ten years in a woman's heart."

"I have waited a week to hear from her."

"Go and call."

"Yes, I must now."

"Are you coming at any rate to the Val-Noble's? Her nabob is returning the supper given by Nucingen."

"I am asked, and I shall go," said Lucien gravely.

The day after this confirmation of his disaster, which Carlos heard of at once from Asie, Lucien went to the Rue Taitbout with Rastignac and Nucingen.

At midnight nearly all the personages of this drama were assembled in the dining-room that had formerly been Esther's--a drama of which the interest lay hidden under the very bed of these tumultuous lives, and was known only to Esther, to Lucien, to Peyrade, to Contenson, the mulatto, and to Paccard, who attended his mistress. Asie, without its being known to Contenson and Peyrade, had been asked by Madame du Val-Noble to come and help her cook.

As they sat down to table, Peyrade, who had given Madame du Val-Noble five hundred francs that the thing might be well done, found under his napkin a scrap of paper on which these words were written in pencil, "The ten days are up at the moment when you sit down to supper."

Peyrade handed the paper to Contenson, who was standing behind him, saying in English:

"Did you put my name here?"

Contenson read by the light of the wax-candles this "Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," and slipped the scrap into his pocket; but he knew how difficult it is to verify a handwriting in pencil, and, above all, a sentence written in Roman capitals, that is to say, with mathematical lines, since capital letters are wholly made up of straight lines and curves, in which it is impossible to detect any trick of the hand, as in what is called running-hand.

The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit. Peyrade was visibly absent-minded. Of the men about town who give life to a supper, only Rastignac and Lucien were present. Lucien was gloomy and absorbed in thought; Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper, ate and drank with the hope of recovering them later. The three women, stricken by this chill, looked at each other. Dulness deprived the dishes of all relish. Suppers, like plays and books, have their good and bad luck.

At the end of the meal ices were served, of the kind called plombieres. As everybody knows, this kind of dessert has delicate preserved fruits laid on the top of the ice, which is served in a little glass, not heaped above the rim. These ices had been ordered by Madame du Val-Noble of Tortoni, whose shop is at the corner of the Rue Taitbout and the Boulevard.

The cook called Contenson out of the room to pay the bill.

Contenson, who thought this demand on the part of the shop-boy rather strange, went downstairs and startled him by saying:

"Then you have not come from Tortoni's?" and then went straight upstairs again.

Paccard had meanwhile handed the ices to the company in his absence. The mulatto had hardly reached the door when one of the police constables who had kept watch in the Rue des Moineaux called up the stairs:

"Number twenty-seven."

"What's up?" replied Contenson, flying down again.

"Tell Papa that his daughter has come home; but, good God! in what a state. Tell him to come at once; she is dying."

At the moment when Contenson re-entered the dining-room, old Peyrade, who had drunk a great deal, was swallowing the cherry off his ice. They were drinking to the health of Madame du Val-Noble; the nabob filled his glass with Constantia and emptied it.

In spite of his distress at the news he had to give Peyrade, Contenson was struck by the eager attention with which Paccard was looking at the nabob. His eyes sparkled like two fixed flames. Although it seemed important, still this could not delay the mulatto, who leaned over his master, just as Peyrade set his glass down.

"Lydie is at home," said Contenson, "in a very bad state."

Peyrade rattled out the most French of all French oaths with such a strong Southern accent that all the guests looked up in amazement. Peyrade, discovering his blunder, acknowledged his disguise by saying to Contenson in good French:

"Find me a coach--I'm off."

Every one rose.

"Why, who are you?" said Lucien.

"Ja--who?" said the Baron.

"Bixiou told me you shammed Englishman better than he could, and I would not believe him," said Rastignac.

"Some bankrupt caught in disguise," said du Tillet loudly. "I suspected as much!"

"A strange place is Paris!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "After being bankrupt in his own part of town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a dandy in the Champs-Elysees with impunity!--Oh! I am unlucky! bankrupts are my bane."

"Every flower has its peculiar blight!" said Esther quietly. "Mine is like Cleopatra's--an asp."

"Who am I?" echoed Peyrade from the door. "You will know ere long; for if I die, I will rise from my grave to clutch your feet every night!"

He looked at Esther and Lucien as he spoke, then he took advantage of the general dismay to vanish with the utmost rapidity, meaning to run home without waiting for the coach. In the street the spy was gripped by the arm as he crossed the threshold of the outer gate. It was Asie, wrapped in a black hood such as ladies then wore on leaving a ball.

"Send for the Sacraments, Papa Peyrade," said she, in the voice that had already prophesied ill.

A coach was waiting. Asie jumped in, and the carriage vanished as though the wind had swept it away. There were five carriages waiting; Peyrade's men could find out nothing.

On reaching his house in the Rue des Vignes, one of the quietest and prettiest nooks of the little town of Passy, Corentin, who was known there as a retired merchant passionately devoted to gardening, found his friend Peyrade's note in cipher. Instead of resting, he got into the hackney coach that had brought him thither, and was driven to the Rue des Moineaux, where he found only Katt. From her he heard of Lydie's disappearance, and remained astounded at Peyrade's and his own want of foresight.

"But they do not know me yet," said he to himself. "This crew is capable of anything; I must find out if they are killing Peyrade; for if so, I must not be seen any more----"

The viler a man's life is, the more he clings to it; it becomes at every moment a protest and a revenge.

Corentin went back to the cab, and drove to his rooms to assume the disguise of a feeble old man, in a scanty greenish overcoat and a tow wig. Then he returned on foot, prompted by his friendship for Peyrade. He intended to give instructions to his most devoted and cleverest underlings.

As he went along the Rue Saint-Honore to reach the Rue Saint-Roch from the Place Vendome, he came up behind a girl in slippers, and dressed as a woman dresses for the night. She had on a white bed-jacket and a nightcap, and from time to time gave vent to a sob and an involuntary groan. Corentin out-paced her, and turning round, recognized Lydie.

"I am a friend of your father's, of Monsieur Canquoelle's," said he in his natural voice.

"Ah! then here is some one I can trust!" said she.

"Do not seem to have recognized me," Corentin went on, "for we are pursued by relentless foes, and are obliged to disguise ourselves. But tell me what has befallen you?"

"Oh, monsieur," said the poor child, "the facts but not the story can be told--I am ruined, lost, and I do not know how----"

"Where have you come from?"

"I don't know, monsieur. I fled with such precipitancy, I have come through so many streets, round so many turnings, fancying I was being followed. And when I met any one that seemed decent, I asked my way to get back to the Boulevards, so as to find the Rue de la Paix. And at last, after walking----What o'clock is it, monsieur?"

"Half-past eleven," said Corentin.

"I escaped at nightfall," said Lydie. "I have been walking for five hours."

"Well, come along; you can rest now; you will find your good Katt."

"Oh, monsieur, there is no rest for me! I only want to rest in the grave, and I will go and wait for death in a convent if I am worthy to be admitted----"

"Poor little girl!--But you struggled?"

"Oh yes! Oh! if you could only imagine the abject creatures they placed me with----!"

"They sent you to sleep, no doubt?"

"Ah! that is it" cried poor Lydie. "A little more strength and I should be at home. I feel that I am dropping, and my brain is not quite clear.--Just now I fancied I was in a garden----"

Corentin took Lydie in his arms, and she lost consciousness; he carried her upstairs.

"Katt!" he called.

Katt came out with exclamations of joy.

"Don't be in too great a hurry to be glad!" said Corentin gravely; "the girl is very ill."

When Lydie was laid on her bed and recognized her own room by the light of two candles that Katt lighted, she became delirious. She sang scraps of pretty airs, broken by vociferations of horrible sentences she had heard. Her pretty face was mottled with purple patches. She mixed up the reminiscences of her pure childhood with those of these ten days of infamy. Katt sat weeping; Corentin paced the room, stopping now and again to gaze at Lydie.

"She is paying her father's debt," said he. "Is there a Providence above? Oh, I was wise not to have a family. On my word of honor, a child is indeed a hostage given to misfortune, as some philosopher has said."

"Oh!" cried the poor child, sitting up in bed and throwing back her fine long hair, "instead of lying here, Katt, I ought to be stretched in the sand at the bottom of the Seine!"

"Katt, instead of crying and looking at your child, which will never cure her, you ought to go for a doctor; the medical officer in the first instance, and then Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon ----We must save this innocent creature."

And Corentin wrote down the addresses of these two famous physicians.

At this moment, up the stairs came some one to whom they were familiar, and the door was opened. Peyrade, in a violent sweat, his face purple, his eyes almost blood-stained, and gasping like a dolphin, rushed from the outer door to Lydie's room, exclaiming:

"Where is my child?"

He saw a melancholy sign from Corentin, and his eyes followed his friend's hand. Lydie's condition can only be compared to that of a flower tenderly cherished by a gardener, now fallen from its stem, and crushed by the iron-clamped shoes of some peasant. Ascribe this simile to a father's heart, and you will understand the blow that fell on Peyrade; the tears started to his eyes.

"You are crying!--It is my father!" said the girl.

She could still recognize her father; she got out of bed and fell on her knees at the old man's side as he sank into a chair.

"Forgive me, papa," said she in a tone that pierced Peyrade's heart, and at the same moment he was conscious of what felt like a tremendous blow on his head.

"I am dying!--the villains!" were his last words.

Corentin tried to help his friend, and received his latest breath.

"Dead! Poisoned!" said he to himself. "Ah! here is the doctor!" he exclaimed, hearing the sound of wheels.

Contenson, who came with his mulatto disguise removed, stood like a bronze statue as he heard Lydie say:

"Then you do not forgive me, father?--But it was not my fault!"

She did not understand that her father was dead.

"Oh, how he stares at me!" cried the poor crazy girl.

"We must close his eyes," said Contenson, lifting Peyrade on to the bed.

"We are doing a stupid thing," said Corentin. "Let us carry him into his own room. His daughter is half demented, and she will go quite mad when she sees that he is dead; she will fancy that she has killed him."

Lydie, seeing them carry away her father, looked quite stupefied.

"There lies my only friend!" said Corentin, seeming much moved when Peyrade was laid out on the bed in his own room. "In all his life he never had but one impulse of cupidity, and that was for his daughter! --Let him be an example to you, Contenson. Every line of life has its code of honor. Peyrade did wrong when he mixed himself up with private concerns; we have no business to meddle with any but public cases.

"But come what may, I swear," said he with a voice, an emphasis, a look that struck horror into Contenson, "to avenge my poor Peyrade! I will discover the men who are guilty of his death and of his daughter's ruin. And as sure as I am myself, as I have yet a few days to live, which I will risk to accomplish that vengeance, every man of them shall die at four o'clock, in good health, by a clean shave on the Place de Greve."

"And I will help you," said Contenson with feeling.

Nothing, in fact, is more heart-stirring than the spectacle of passion in a cold, self-contained, and methodical man, in whom, for twenty years, no one has ever detected the smallest impulse of sentiment. It is like a molten bar of iron which melts everything it touches. And Contenson was moved to his depths.

"Poor old Canquoelle!" said he, looking at Corentin. "He has treated me many a time.--And, I tell you, only your bad sort know how to do such things--but often has he given me ten francs to go and gamble with . . ."

After this funeral oration, Peyrade's two avengers went back to Lydie's room, hearing Katt and the medical officer from the Mairie on the stairs.

"Go and fetch the Chief of Police," said Corentin. "The public prosecutor will not find grounds for a prosecution in the case; still, we will report it to the Prefecture; it may, perhaps, be of some use.

"Monsieur," he went on to the medical officer, "in this room you will see a dead man. I do not believe that he died from natural causes; you will be good enough to make a post-mortem in the presence of the Chief of the Police, who will come at my request. Try to discover some traces of poison. You will, in a few minutes, have the opinion of Monsieur Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon, for whom I have sent to examine the daughter of my best friend; she is in a worse plight than he, though he is dead."

"I have no need of those gentlemen's assistance in the exercise of my duty," said the medical officer.

"Well, well," thought Corentin. "Let us have no clashing, monsieur," he said. "In a few words I give you my opinion--Those who have just murdered the father have also ruined the daughter."

By daylight Lydie had yielded to fatigue; when the great surgeon and the young physician arrived she was asleep.

The doctor, whose duty it was to sign the death certificate, had now opened Peyrade's body, and was seeking the cause of death.

"While waiting for your patient to awake," said Corentin to the two famous doctors, "would you join one of your professional brethren in an examination which cannot fail to interest you, and your opinion will be valuable in case of an inquiry."

"Your relations died of apoplexy," said the official. "There are all the symptoms of violent congestion of the brain."

"Examine him, gentlemen, and see if there is no poison capable of producing similar symptoms."

"The stomach is, in fact, full of food substances; but short of chemical analysis, I find no evidence of poison.

"If the characters of cerebral congestion are well ascertained, we have here, considering the patient's age, a sufficient cause of death," observed Desplein, looking at the enormous mass of material.

"Did he sup here?" asked Bianchon.

"No," said Corentin; "he came here in great haste from the Boulevard, and found his daughter ruined----"

"That was the poison if he loved his daughter," said Bianchon.

"What known poison could produce a similar effect?" asked Corentin, clinging to his idea.

"There is but one," said Desplein, after a careful examination. "It is a poison found in the Malayan Archipelago, and derived from trees, as yet but little known, of the strychnos family; it is used to poison that dangerous weapon, the Malay kris.--At least, so it is reported."

The Police Commissioner presently arrived; Corentin told him his suspicions, and begged him to draw up a report, telling him where and with whom Peyrade had supped, and the causes of the state in which he found Lydie.

Corentin then went to Lydie's rooms; Desplein and Bianchon had been examining the poor child. He met them at the door.

"Well, gentlemen?" asked Corentin.

"Place the girl under medical care; unless she recovers her wits when her child is born--if indeed she should have a child--she will end her days melancholy-mad. There is no hope of a cure but in the maternal instinct, if it can be aroused."

Corentin paid each of the physicians forty francs in gold, and then turned to the Police Commissioner, who had pulled him by the sleeve.

"The medical officer insists on it that death was natural," said this functionary, "and I can hardly report the case, especially as the dead man was old Canquoelle; he had his finger in too many pies, and we should not be sure whom we might run foul of. Men like that die to order very often----"

"And my name is Corentin," said Corentin in the man's ear.

The Commissioner started with surprise.

"So just make a note of all this," Corentin went on; "it will be very useful by and by; send it up only as confidential information. The crime cannot be proved, and I know that any inquiry would be checked at the very outset.--But I will catch the criminals some day yet. I will watch them and take them red-handed."

The police official bowed to Corentin and left.

"Monsieur," said Katt. "Mademoiselle does nothing but dance and sing. What can I do?"

"Has any change occurred then?"

"She has understood that her father is just dead."

"Put her into a hackney coach, and simply take her to Charenton; I will write a note to the Commissioner-General of Police to secure her being suitably provided for.--The daughter in Charenton, the father in a pauper's grave!" said Corentin--"Contenson, go and fetch the parish hearse. And now, Don Carlos Herrera, you and I will fight it out!"

"Carlos?" said Contenson, "he is in Spain."

"He is in Paris," said Corentin positively. "There is a touch of Spanish genius of the Philip II. type in all this; but I have pitfalls for everybody, even for kings."

Five days after the nabob's disappearance, Madame du Val-Noble was sitting by Esther's bedside weeping, for she felt herself on one of the slopes down to poverty.

"If I only had at least a hundred louis a year! With that sum, my dear, a woman can retire to some little town and find a husband----"

"I can get you as much as that," said Esther.

"How?" cried Madame du Val-Noble.

"Oh, in a very simple way. Listen. You must plan to kill yourself; play your part well. Send for Asie and offer her ten thousand francs for two black beads of very thin glass containing a poison which kills you in a second. Bring them to me, and I will give you fifty thousand francs for them."

"Why do you not ask her for them yourself?" said her friend.

"Asie would not sell them to me."

"They are not for yourself?" asked Madame du Val-Noble.

"Perhaps."

"You! who live in the midst of pleasure and luxury, in a house of your own? And on the eve of an entertainment which will be the talk of Paris for ten years--which is to cost Nucingen twenty thousand francs! There are to be strawberries in mid-February, they say, asparagus, grapes, melons!--and a thousand crowns' worth of flowers in the rooms."

"What are you talking about? There are a thousand crowns' worth of roses on the stairs alone."

"And your gown is said to have cost ten thousand francs?"

"Yes, it is of Brussels point, and Delphine, his wife, is furious. But I had a fancy to be disguised as a bride."

"Where are the ten thousand francs?" asked Madame du Val-Noble.

"It is all the ready money I have," said Esther, smiling. "Open my table drawer; it is under the curl-papers."

"People who talk of dying never kill themselves," said Madame du Val-Noble. "If it were to commit----"

"A crime? For shame!" said Esther, finishing her friend's thought, as she hesitated. "Be quite easy, I have no intention of killing anybody. I had a friend--a very happy woman; she is dead, I must follow her --that is all."

"How foolish!"

"How can I help it? I promised her I would."

"I should let that bill go dishonored," said her friend, smiling.

"Do as I tell you, and go at once. I hear a carriage coming. It is Nucingen, a man who will go mad with joy! Yes, he loves me!--Why do we not love those who love us, for indeed they do all they can to please us?"

"Ah, that is the question!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "It is the old story of the herring, which is the most puzzling fish that swims."

"Why?"

"Well, no one could ever find out."

"Get along, my dear!--I must ask for your fifty thousand francs."

"Good-bye then."

For three days past, Esther's ways with the Baron de Nucingen had completely changed. The monkey had become a cat, the cat had become a woman. Esther poured out treasures of affection on the old man; she was quite charming. Her way of addressing him, with a total absence of mischief or bitterness, and all sorts of tender insinuation, had carried conviction to the banker's slow wit; she called him Fritz, and he believed that she loved him.

"My poor Fritz, I have tried you sorely," said she. "I have teased you shamefully. Your patience has been sublime. You loved me, I see, and I will reward you. I like you now, I do not know how it is, but I should prefer you to a young man. It is the result of experience perhaps.--In the long run we discover at last that pleasure is the coin of the soul; and it is not more flattering to be loved for the sake of pleasure than it is to be loved for the sake of money.

"Besides, young men are too selfish; they think more of themselves than of us; while you, now, think only of me. I am all your life to you. And I will take nothing more from you. I want to prove to you how disinterested I am."

"Vy, I hafe gifen you notink," cried the Baron, enchanted. "I propose to gife you to-morrow tirty tousant francs a year in a Government bond. Dat is mein vedding gift."

Esther kissed the Baron so sweetly that he turned pale without any pills.

"Oh!" cried she, "do not suppose that I am sweet to you only for your thirty thousand francs! It is because--now--I love you, my good, fat Frederic."

"Ach, mein Gott! Vy hafe you kept me vaiting? I might hafe been so happy all dese tree monts."

"In three or in five per cents, my pet?" said Esther, passing her fingers through Nucingen's hair, and arranging it in a fashion of her own.

"In trees--I hat a quantity."

So next morning the Baron brought the certificate of shares; he came to breakfast with his dear little girl, and to take her orders for the following evening, the famous Saturday, the great day!

"Here, my little vife, my only vife," said the banker gleefully, his face radiant with happiness. "Here is enough money to pay for your keep for de rest of your days."

Esther took the paper without the slightest excitement, folded it up, and put it in her dressing-table drawer.

"So now you are quite happy, you monster of iniquity!" said she, giving Nucingen a little slap on the cheek, "now that I have at last accepted a present from you. I can no longer tell you home-truths, for I share the fruit of what you call your labors. This is not a gift, my poor old boy, it is restitution.--Come, do not put on your Bourse face. You know that I love you."

"My lofely Esther, mein anchel of lofe," said the banker, "do not speak to me like dat. I tell you, I should not care ven all de vorld took me for a tief, if you should tink me ein honest man.--I lofe you every day more and more."

"That is my intention," said Esther. "And I will never again say anything to distress you, my pet elephant, for you are grown as artless as a baby. Bless me, you old rascal, you have never known any innocence; the allowance bestowed on you when you came into the world was bound to come to the top some day; but it was buried so deep that it is only now reappearing at the age of sixty-six. Fished up by love's barbed hook.--This phenomenon is seen in old men.

"And this is why I have learned to love you, you are young--so young! No one but I would ever have known this, Frederic--I alone. For you were a banker at fifteen; even at college you must have lent your school-fellows one marble on condition of their returning two."

Seeing him laugh, she sprang on to his knee.

"Well, you must do as you please! Bless me! plunder the men--go ahead, and I will help. Men are not worth loving; Napoleon killed them off like flies. Whether they pay taxes to you or to the Government, what difference does it make to them? You don't make love over the budget, and on my honor!--go ahead, I have thought it over, and you are right. Shear the sheep! you will find it in the gospel according to Beranger.

"Now, kiss your Esther.--I say, you will give that poor Val-Noble all the furniture in the Rue Taitbout? And to-morrow I wish you would give her fifty thousand francs--it would look handsome, my duck. You see, you killed Falleix; people are beginning to cry out upon you, and this liberality will look Babylonian--all the women will talk about it! Oh! there will be no one in Paris so grand, so noble as you; and as the world is constituted, Falleix will be forgotten. So, after all, it will be money deposited at interest."

"You are right, mein anchel; you know the vorld," he replied. "You shall be mein adfiser."

"Well, you see," said Esther, "how I study my man's interest, his position and honor.--Go at once and bring those fifty thousand francs."

She wanted to get rid of Monsieur de Nucingen so as to get a stockbroker to sell the bond that very afternoon.

"But vy dis minute?" asked he.

"Bless me, my sweetheart, you must give it to her in a little satin box wrapped round a fan. You must say, 'Here, madame, is a fan which I hope may be to your taste.'--You are supposed to be a Turcaret, and you will become a Beaujon."

"Charming, charming!" cried the Baron. "I shall be so clever henceforth.--Yes, I shall repeat your vorts."

Just as Esther had sat down, tired with the effort of playing her part, Europe came in.

"Madame," said she, "here is a messenger sent from the Quai Malaquais by Celestin, M. Lucien's servant----"

"Bring him in--no, I will go into the ante-room."

"He has a letter for you, madame, from Celestin."

Esther rushed into the ante-room, looked at the messenger, and saw that he looked like the genuine thing.

"Tell _him_ to come down," said Esther, in a feeble voice and dropping into a chair after reading the letter. "Lucien means to kill himself," she added in a whisper to Europe. "No, take the letter up to him."

Carlos Herrera, still in his disguise as a bagman, came downstairs at once, and keenly scrutinized the messenger on seeing a stranger in the ante-room.

"You said there was no one here," said he in a whisper to Europe.

And with an excess of prudence, after looking at the messenger, he went straight into the drawing-room. _Trompe-la-Mort_ did not know that for some time past the famous constable of the detective force who had arrested him at the Maison Vauquer had a rival, who, it was supposed, would replace him. This rival was the messenger.

"They are right," said the sham messenger to Contenson, who was waiting for him in the street. "The man you describe is in the house; but he is not a Spaniard, and I will burn my hand off if there is not a bird for our net under that priest's gown."

"He is no more a priest than he is a Spaniard," said Contenson.

"I am sure of that," said the detective.

"Oh, if only we were right!" said Contenson.

Lucien had been away for two days, and advantage had been taken of his absence to lay this snare, but he returned this evening, and the courtesan's anxieties were allayed. Next morning, at the hour when Esther, having taken a bath, was getting into bed again, Madame du Val-Noble arrived.

"I have the two pills!" said her friend.

"Let me see," said Esther, raising herself with her pretty elbow buried in a pillow trimmed with lace.

Madame du Val-Noble held out to her what looked like two black currants.

The Baron had given Esther a pair of greyhounds of famous pedigree, which will be always known by the name of the great contemporary poet who made them fashionable; and Esther, proud of owning them, had called them by the names of their parents, Romeo and Juliet. No need here to describe the whiteness and grace of these beasts, trained for the drawing-room, with manners suggestive of English propriety. Esther called Romeo; Romeo ran up on legs so supple and thin, so strong and sinewy, that they seemed like steel springs, and looked up at his mistress. Esther, to attract his attention, pretended to throw one of the pills.

"He is doomed by his nature to die thus," said she, as she threw the pill, which Romeo crushed between his teeth.

The dog made no sound, he rolled over, and was stark dead. It was all over while Esther spoke these words of epitaph.

"Good God!" shrieked Madame du Val-Noble.

"You have a cab waiting. Carry away the departed Romeo," said Esther. "His death would make a commotion here. I have given him to you, and you have lost him--advertise for him. Make haste; you will have your fifty thousand francs this evening."

She spoke so calmly, so entirely with the cold indifference of a courtesan, that Madame du Val-Noble exclaimed:

"You are the Queen of us all!"

"Come early, and look very well----"

At five o'clock Esther dressed herself as a bride. She put on her lace dress over white satin, she had a white sash, white satin shoes, and a scarf of English point lace over her beautiful shoulders. In her hair she placed white camellia flowers, the simple ornament of an innocent girl. On her bosom lay a pearl necklace worth thirty thousand francs, a gift from Nucingen.

Though she was dressed by six, she refused to see anybody, even the banker. Europe knew that Lucien was to be admitted to her room. Lucien came at about seven, and Europe managed to get him up to her mistress without anybody knowing of his arrival.

Lucien, as he looked at her, said to himself, "Why not go and live with her at Rubempre, far from the world, and never see Paris again? I have an earnest of five years of her life, and the dear creature is one of those who never belie themselves! Where can I find such another perfect masterpiece?"

"My dear, you whom I have made my God," said Esther, kneeling down on a cushion in front of Lucien, "give me your blessing."

Lucien tried to raise her and kiss her, saying, "What is this jest, my dear love?" And he would have put his arm round her, but she freed herself with a gesture as much of respect as of horror.

"I am no longer worthy of you, Lucien," said she, letting the tears rise to her eyes. "I implore you, give me your blessing, and swear to me that you will found two beds at the Hotel-Dieu--for, as to prayers in church, God will never forgive me unless I pray myself.

"I have loved you too well, my dear. Tell me that I made you happy, and that you will sometimes think of me.--Tell me that!"

Lucien saw that Esther was solemnly in earnest, and he sat thinking.

"You mean to kill yourself," said he at last, in a tone of voice that revealed deep reflection.

"No," said she. "But to-day, my dear, the woman dies, the pure, chaste, and loving woman who once was yours.--And I am very much afraid that I shall die of grief."

"Poor child," said Lucien, "wait! I have worked hard these two days. I have succeeded in seeing Clotilde----"

"Always Clotilde!" cried Esther, in a tone of concentrated rage.

"Yes," said he, "we have written to each other.--On Tuesday morning she is to set out for Italy, but I shall meet her on the road for an interview at Fontainebleau."

"Bless me! what is it that you men want for wives? Wooden laths?" cried poor Esther. "If I had seven or eight millions, would you not marry me--come now?"

"Child! I was going to say that if all is over for me, I will have no wife but you."

Esther bent her head to hide her sudden pallor and the tears she wiped away.

"You love me?" said she, looking at Lucien with the deepest melancholy. "Well, that is my sufficient blessing.--Do not compromise yourself. Go away by the side door, and come in to the drawing-room through the ante-room. Kiss me on the forehead."

She threw her arms round Lucien, clasped him to her heart with frenzy, and said again:

"Go, only go--or I must live."

When the doomed woman appeared in the drawing-room, there was a cry of admiration. Esther's eyes expressed infinitude in which the soul sank as it looked into them. Her blue-black and beautiful hair set off the camellias. In short, this exquisite creature achieved all the effects she had intended. She had no rival. She looked like the supreme expression of that unbridled luxury which surrounded her in every form. Then she was brilliantly witty. She ruled the orgy with the cold, calm power that Habeneck displays when conducting at the Conservatoire, at those concerts where the first musicians in Europe rise to the sublime in interpreting Mozart and Beethoven.

But she observed with terror that Nucingen ate little, drank nothing, and was quite the master of the house.

By midnight everybody was crazy. The glasses were broken that they might never be used again; two of the Chinese curtains were torn; Bixiou was drunk, for the second time in his life. No one could keep his feet, the women were asleep on the sofas, and the guests were incapable of carrying out the practical joke they had planned of escorting Esther and Nucingen to the bedroom, standing in two lines with candles in their hands, and singing _Buona sera_ from the _Barber of Seville_.

Nucingen simply gave Esther his hand. Bixiou, who saw them, though tipsy, was still able to say, like Rivarol, on the occasion of the Duc de Richelieu's last marriage, "The police must be warned; there is mischief brewing here."

The jester thought he was jesting; he was a prophet.

Monsieur de Nucingen did not go home till Monday at about noon. But at one o'clock his broker informed him that Mademoiselle Esther van Bogseck had sold the bond bearing thirty thousand francs interest on Friday last, and had just received the money.

"But, Monsieur le Baron, Derville's head-clerk called on me just as I was settling this transfer; and after seeing Mademoiselle Esther's real names, he told me she had come into a fortune of seven millions."

"Pooh!"

"Yes, she is the only heir to the old bill-discounter Gobseck. --Derville will verify the facts. If your mistress' mother was the handsome Dutch woman, _la Belle Hollandaise_, as they called her, she comes in for----"

"I know dat she is," cried the banker. "She tolt me all her life. I shall write ein vort to Derville."

The Baron at down at his desk, wrote a line to Derville, and sent it by one of his servants. Then, after going to the Bourse, he went back to Esther's house at about three o'clock.

"Madame forbade our waking her on any pretence whatever. She is in bed --asleep----"

"Ach der Teufel!" said the Baron. "But, Europe, she shall not be angry to be tolt that she is fery, fery rich. She shall inherit seven millions. Old Gobseck is deat, and your mis'ess is his sole heir, for her moter vas Gobseck's own niece; and besides, he shall hafe left a vill. I could never hafe tought that a millionaire like dat man should hafe left Esther in misery!"

"Ah, ha! Then your reign is over, old pantaloon!" said Europe, looking at the Baron with an effrontery worthy of one of Moliere's waiting-maids. "Shooh! you old Alsatian crow! She loves you as we love the plague! Heavens above us! Millions!--Why, she may marry her lover; won't she be glad!"

And Prudence Servien left the Baron simply thunder-stricken, to be the first to announce to her mistress this great stroke of luck. The old man, intoxicated with superhuman enjoyment, and believing himself happy, had just received a cold shower-bath on his passion at the moment when it had risen to the intensest white heat.

"She vas deceiving me!" cried he, with tears in his eyes. "Yes, she vas cheating me. Oh, Esther, my life! Vas a fool hafe I been! Can such flowers ever bloom for de old men! I can buy all vat I vill except only yout!--Ach Gott, ach Gott! Vat shall I do! Vat shall become of me!--She is right, dat cruel Europe. Esther, if she is rich, shall not be for me. Shall I go hank myself? Vat is life midout de divine flame of joy dat I have known? Mein Gott, mein Gott!"

The old man snatched off the false hair he had combed in with his gray hairs these three months past.

A piercing shriek from Europe made Nucingen quail to his very bowels. The poor banker rose and walked upstairs on legs that were drunk with the bowl of disenchantment he had just swallowed to the dregs, for nothing is more intoxicating than the wine of disaster.

At the door of her room he could see Esther stiff on her bed, blue with poison--dead!

He went up to the bed and dropped on his knees.

"You are right! She tolt me so!--She is dead--of me----"

Paccard, Asie, every one hurried in. It was a spectacle, a shock, but not despair. Every one had their doubts. The Baron was a banker again. A suspicion crossed his mind, and he was so imprudent as to ask what had become of the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, the price of the bond. Paccard, Asie, and Europe looked at each other so strangely that Monsieur de Nucingen left the house at once, believing that robbery and murder had been committed. Europe, detecting a packet of soft consistency, betraying the contents to be banknotes, under her mistress' pillow, proceeded at once to "lay her out," as she said.

"Go and tell monsieur, Asie!--Oh, to die before she knew that she had seven millions! Gobseck was poor madame's uncle!" said she.

Europe's stratagem was understood by Paccard. As soon as Asie's back was turned, Europe opened the packet, on which the hapless courtesan had written: "To be delivered to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre."

Seven hundred and fifty thousand-franc notes shone in the eyes of Prudence Servien, who exclaimed:

"Won't we be happy and honest for the rest of our lives!"

Paccard made no objection. His instincts as a thief were stronger than his attachment to _Trompe-la-Mort_.

"Durut is dead," he said at length; "my shoulder is still a proof before letters. Let us be off together; divide the money, so as not to have all our eggs in one basket, and then get married."

"But where can we hide?" said Prudence.

"In Paris," replied Paccard.

Prudence and Paccard went off at once, with the promptitude of two honest folks transformed into robbers.

"My child," said Carlos to Asie, as soon as she had said three words, "find some letter of Esther's while I write a formal will, and then take the copy and the letter to Girard; but he must be quick. The will must be under Esther's pillow before the lawyers affix the seals here."

And he wrote out the following will:--

"Never having loved any one on earth but Monsieur Lucien Chardon de Rubempre, and being resolved to end my life rather than relapse into vice and the life of infamy from which he rescued me, I give and bequeath to the said Lucien Chardon de Rubempre all I may possess at the time of my decease, on condition of his founding a mass in perpetuity in the parish church of Saint-Roch for the repose of her who gave him her all, to her last thought.

"ESTHER GOBSECK."

"That is quite in her style," thought _Trompe-la-Mort_.

By seven in the evening this document, written and sealed, was placed by Asie under Esther's bolster.

"Jacques," said she, flying upstairs again, "just as I came out of the room justice marched in----"

"The justice of the peace you mean?"

"No, my son. The justice of the peace was there, but he had gendarmes with him. The public prosecutor and the examining judge are there too, and the doors are guarded."

"This death has made a stir very quickly," remarked Jacques Collin.

"Ay, and Paccard and Europe have vanished; I am afraid they may have scared away the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Asie.

"The low villains!" said Collin. "They have done for us by their swindling game."

Human justice, and Paris justice, that is to say, the most suspicious, keenest, cleverest, and omniscient type of justice--too clever, indeed, for it insists on interpreting the law at every turn--was at last on the point of laying its hand on the agents of this horrible intrigue.

The Baron of Nucingen, on recognizing the evidence of poison, and failing to find his seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, imagined that one of two persons whom he greatly disliked--either Paccard or Europe--was guilty of the crime. In his first impulse of rage he flew to the prefecture of police. This was a stroke of a bell that called up all Corentin's men. The officials of the prefecture, the legal profession, the chief of the police, the justice of the peace, the examining judge,--all were astir. By nine in the evening three medical men were called in to perform an autopsy on poor Esther, and inquiries were set on foot.

_Trompe-la-Mort_, warned by Asie, exclaimed:

"No one knows that I am here; I may take an airing." He pulled himself up by the skylight of his garret, and with marvelous agility was standing in an instant on the roof, whence he surveyed the surroundings with the coolness of a tiler.

"Good!" said he, discerning a garden five houses off in the Rue de Provence, "that will just do for me."

"You are paid out, _Trompe-la-Mort_," said Contenson, suddenly emerging from behind a stack of chimneys. "You may explain to Monsieur Camusot what mass you were performing on the roof, Monsieur l'Abbe, and, above all, why you were escaping----"

"I have enemies in Spain," said Carlos Herrera.

"We can go there by way of your attic," said Contenson.

The sham Spaniard pretended to yield; but, having set his back and feet across the opening of the skylight, he gripped Contenson and flung him off with such violence that the spy fell in the gutter of the Rue Saint-Georges.

Contenson was dead on his field of honor; Jacques Collin quietly dropped into the room again and went to bed.

"Give me something that will make me very sick without killing me," said he to Asie; "for I must be at death's door, to avoid answering inquisitive persons. I have just got rid of a man in the most natural way, who might have unmasked me."

At seven o'clock on the previous evening Lucien had set out in his own chaise to post to Fontainebleau with a passport he had procured in the morning; he slept in the nearest inn on the Nemours side. At six in the morning he went alone, and on foot, through the forest as far as Bouron.

"This," said he to himself, as he sat down on one of the rocks that command the fine landscape of Bouron, "is the fatal spot where Napoleon dreamed of making a final tremendous effort on the eve of his abdication."

At daybreak he heard the approach of post-horses and saw a britska drive past, in which sat the servants of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu and Clotilde de Grandlieu's maid.

"Here they are!" thought Lucien. "Now, to play the farce well, and I shall be saved!--the Duc de Grandlieu's son-in-law in spite of him!"

It was an hour later when he heard the peculiar sound made by a superior traveling carriage, as the berline came near in which two ladies were sitting. They had given orders that the drag should be put on for the hill down to Bouron, and the man-servant behind the carriage had it stopped.

At this instant Lucien came forward.

"Clotilde!" said he, tapping on the window.

"No," said the young Duchess to her friend, "he shall not get into the carriage, and we will not be alone with him, my dear. Speak to him for the last time--to that I consent; but on the road, where we will walk on, and where Baptiste can escort us.--The morning is fine, we are well wrapped up, and have no fear of the cold. The carriage can follow."

The two women got out.

"Baptiste," said the Duchess, "the post-boy can follow slowly; we want to walk a little way. You must keep near us."

Madeleine de Mortsauf took Clotilde by the arm and allowed Lucien to talk. They thus walked on as far as the village of Grez. It was now eight o'clock, and there Clotilde dismissed Lucien.

"Well, my friend," said she, closing this long interview with much dignity, "I never shall marry any one but you. I would rather believe in you than in other men, in my father and mother--no woman ever gave greater proof of attachment surely?--Now, try to counteract the fatal prejudices which militate against you."

Just then the tramp of galloping horses was heard, and, to the great amazement of the ladies, a force of gendarmes surrounded the little party.

"What do you want?" said Lucien, with the arrogance of a dandy.

"Are you Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre?" asked the public prosecutor of Fontainebleau.

"Yes, monsieur."

"You will spend to-night in La Force," said he. "I have a warrant for the detention of your person."

"Who are these ladies?" asked the sergeant.

"To be sure.--Excuse me, ladies--your passports? For Monsieur Lucien, as I am instructed, had acquaintances among the fair sex, who for him would----"

"Do you take the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu for a prostitute?" said Madeleine, with a magnificent flash at the public prosecutor.

"You are handsome enough to excuse the error," the magistrate very cleverly retorted.

"Baptiste, produce the passports," said the young Duchess with a smile.

"And with what crime is Monsieur de Rubempre charged?" asked Clotilde, whom the Duchess wished to see safe in the carriage.

"Of being accessory to a robbery and murder," replied the sergeant of gendarmes.

Baptiste lifted Mademoiselle de Grandlieu into the chaise in a dead faint.

By midnight Lucien was entering La Force, a prison situated between the Rue Payenne and the Rue des Ballets, where he was placed in solitary confinement.

The Abbe Carlos Herrera was also there, having been arrested that evening. _

Read next: The End of Evil Ways: Part 1

Read previous: What Love Costs an Old Man: Part 5

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