Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

PREPARER’S NOTE: The story of Lucien de Rubempre begins in the Lost Illusions trilogy which consists of Two Poets, A Distinguished Provincial at Paris, and Eve and David. The ac...

A form of dissipation, now forgotten, but still customary at the beginning of this century, was the keeping of “rats.” The “rat”--a slang word that has become old-fashioned--was...

To see him, his arms folded, his brow dark, his lips set, his eye harsh, any one must have supposed him absorbed in morose feelings of hatred, considerations that jostled each o...

“Alas! and well he might be,” said she, with deep humility. “I am the most despicable creature of my sex, and I could find favor in his eyes only by the greatness of my love.”

This scene, observed from a distance, struck pupils and superiors alike; they fancied they had looked on at a miracle as they compared Esther with herself. She was completely ch...

Asie, who looked as if she might have been born in the Island of Java, showed a face to scare the eye, as flat as a board, with the copper complexion peculiar to Malays, with a...

“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.

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 secre...

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...

“Why, of course, sir. A horseshoe picked up in the street led the chief of the police to the discovery of the infernal machine. Well, if we were to go to-night in a hackney coac...

The house, standing at the corner of the Rue Saint-Roch, had no neighbors on one side; and as the staircase up the middle divided it into two, there were on each floor two perfe...

These were the events which had led three men, so clever, each in his way, as Jacques Collin, Peyrade, and Corentin, to a hand-to-hand fight on the same ground, each exerting hi...

“We will follow the matter up,” said Corentin. “First of all, we must be sure that it was the Baron who peached. Were we wise in enlisting Gondreville’s support? That old rascal...

“Obey me blindly,” said Carlos. “And what have you to complain of? It rests with you to achieve a happy lot. You may be what Tullia is, what your old friends Florine, Mariette,...

“I lofe you more as my life, Esther; but vy gife to your creditors moneys vich shall be so much better in your pocket? Go into prison. I shall undertake to buy up dose hundert t...

“Why,” said the stockbroker, “where would you find a tradesman so ill informed as to refuse credit to Jacques Falleix? There is a splendid cellar of wine, it would seem. By the...

On receiving the first letter, the Baron fell into a cold fury such as a millionaire may die of; he looked at himself in the glass and rang the bell.

At the Bourse the Baron de Nucingen was so gay, so cheerful, seemed so easy-going, and allowed himself so many jests, that du Tillet and the Kellers, who were on ‘change, could...

Followed by Contenson dressed as a mulatto, Peyrade examined Esther and her servants with an eye which, seeming heedless, took everything in. Hence it quite naturally happened t...

Within three hours this man, with the energy of a Commander-in-Chief, had found, by Paccard’s help, an innocent accomplice capable of playing the part of a gendarme in disguise,...

There is nothing more fatal than etiquette to those who regard it as the most formidable arm of social law. Lucien easily interpreted the meaning of this scene, so disastrous to...

“Ja, I know,” said Nucingen at once, as a man who is well acquainted with commercial geography. “But de English Gover’ment hafe taken up de opium trate as a means dat shall open...

“Oh, the old rascal!” cried Courtois. “He was never very fond of you, Monsieur Sechard, and he kept that secret from you, the deep old dog!--Now I understand what he meant when...

“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 strychn...

“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.”

Bibi-Lupin, himself formerly a convict, and a comrade of Jacques Collin’s on the hulks, was his personal enemy. This hostility had its rise in quarrels in which Jacques Collin h...

As soon as he was removed, the warders, the Governor, and his clerk looked at each other as though asking each other’s opinion, and suspicion was legible on every face; but at t...

“Though having no visible means of subsistence, the said Lucien de Rubempre spent on an average three hundred thousand francs during the three years of his second residence in P...

Then, like any old woman who spends her life gossiping in the chimney-corner, prompted by Massol, she poured out the story of her woes with her first husband, one of the three D...

“This devil of a man has an answer for everything! However, so much the better,” thought Camusot, who assumed so much severity only to satisfy the demands of justice and of the...

“I have before me your beautiful portrait, painted by Madame de Mirbel. That sheet of ivory used to comfort me in your absence, I look at it with rapture as I write you my last...

Now, supposing that a sort of half-criminal, like Lucien, might, if he were saved from the first shipwreck of his honesty, amend his ways, and become a useful member of society,...

Women, pretty women, in the position of Madame de Serizy, are the spoiled children of French civilization. If the women of other countries knew what a woman of fashion is in Par...

He drew the table up under the window without making any noise, took off his coat and waistcoat, and got on the table unhesitatingly to break a pane above and one below the iron...

“Realize, my dear, that this Jacques Collin is a giant of cunning, of dissimulation, of deceit.--He is--what shall I say?--the Cromwell of the hulks!--I never met such a scoundr...

“It is quite useless my boy; I cannot eat. Tell the governor of this prison to send the doctor to see me. I am very bad, and I believe my last hour has come.”

One of the men concerned in this double murder was the notorious Dannepont, known as la Pouraille, a released convict, who for five years had eluded the most active search on th...

Le Biffon was a complete contrast to Fil-de-Soie. This famous robber, short, burly, and fat, but active, with a livid complexion, and deep-set black eyes, dressed like a cook, s...

Solitude is void; and nature has as great a horror of a moral void as she has of a physical vacuum. Solitude is habitable only to a man of genius who can people it with ideas, t...

Bibi-Lupin did not know what to do, for the conversation was so rapid that it hardly took as much time as it does to read it. Theodore hastily told all the details of the crime,...

One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic arrangement, especially when the truth...

“My dear child,” said the Duc de Grandlieu to her at last, the _aside_ being ended, “do be good! Come, now,” and he took Diane’s hands, “observe the proprieties of life, do not...

“As you may suppose, I have my reasons for doing this,” said Jacques Collin, with an ironical glance at the two magistrates. “I must inconvenience you greatly; for if I had rema...

In about 1821 Jacques Collin found la Rousse a husband in the person of the chief shopman under a rich wholesale tin merchant. This head-clerk, having purchased his master’s hou...

“It is deserved. Why, you took in Peyrade; he believed you to be a police officer--he!--I tell you what, if you had not that fool of a boy to take care of, you would have thrash...

He saw himself between two constables, one of whom was Ruffard; and he gave him a look which pierced the murderer’s soul to the very depths of la Gonore’s secret.