Chapter 18

At the Bourse the Baron de Nucingen was so gay, so cheerful, seemed so easy-going, and allowed himself so many jests, that du Tillet and the Kellers, who were on ‘change, could not help asking him the reason of his high spirits.

“I am belofed. Ve shall soon gife dat house-varming,” he told du Tillet.

“And how much does it cost you?” asked Francois Keller rudely--it was said that he had spent twenty-five thousand francs a year on Madame Colleville.

“Dat voman is an anchel! She never has ask’ me for one sou.”

“They never do,” replied du Tillet. “And it is to avoid asking that they have always aunts or mothers.”

Between the Bourse and the Rue Taitbout seven times did the Baron say to his servant:

“You go so slow--vip de horse!”

He ran lightly upstairs, and for the first time he saw his mistress in all the beauty of such women, who have no other occupation than the care of their person and their dress. Just out of her bath the flower was quite fresh, and perfumed so as to inspire desire in Robert d’Arbrissel.

Esther was in a charming toilette. A dress of black corded silk trimmed with rose-colored gimp opened over a petticoat of gray satin, the costume subsequently worn by Amigo, the handsome singer, in _I Puritani_. A Honiton lace kerchief fell or floated over her shoulders. The sleeves of her gown were strapped round with cording to divide the puffs, which for some little time fashion has substituted for the large sleeves which had grown too monstrous. Esther had fastened a Mechlin lace cap on her magnificent hair with a pin, _a la folle_, as it is called, ready to fall, but not really falling, giving her an appearance of being tumbled and in disorder, though the white parting showed plainly on her little head between the waves of her hair.

“Is it not a shame to see madame so lovely in a shabby drawing-room like this?” said Europe to the Baron, as she admitted him.

“Vel, den, come to the Rue Saint-Georches,” said the Baron, coming to a full stop like a dog marking a partridge. “The veather is splendit, ve shall drife to the Champs Elysees, and Montame Saint-Estefe and Eugenie shall carry dere all your clo’es an’ your linen, an’ ve shall dine in de Rue Saint-Georches.”

“I will do whatever you please,” said Esther, “if only you will be so kind as to call my cook Asie, and Eugenie Europe. I have given those names to all the women who have served me ever since the first two. I do not love change----”

“Asie, Europe!” echoed the Baron, laughing. “How ver’ droll you are.--You hafe infentions.--I should hafe eaten many dinners before I should hafe call’ a cook Asie.”

“It is our business to be droll,” said Esther. “Come, now, may not a poor girl be fed by Asia and dressed by Europe when you live on the whole world? It is a myth, I say; some women would devour the earth, I only ask for half.--You see?”

“Vat a voman is Montame Saint-Estefe!” said the Baron to himself as he admired Esther’s changed demeanor.

“Europe, my girl, I want my bonnet,” said Esther. “I must have a black silk bonnet lined with pink and trimmed with lace.”

“Madame Thomas has not sent it home.--Come, Monsieur le Baron; quick, off you go! Begin your functions as a man-of-all-work--that is to say, of all pleasure! Happiness is burdensome. You have your carriage here, go to Madame Thomas,” said Europe to the Baron. “Make your servant ask for the bonnet for Madame van Bogseck.--And, above all,” she added in his ear, “bring her the most beautiful bouquet to be had in Paris. It is winter, so try to get tropical flowers.”

The Baron went downstairs and told his servants to go to “Montame Thomas.”

The coachman drove to a famous pastrycook’s.

“She is a milliner, you damn’ idiot, and not a cake-shop!” cried the Baron, who rushed off to Madame Prevot’s in the Palais-Royal, where he had a bouquet made up for the price of ten louis, while his man went to the great modiste.

A superficial observer, walking about Paris, wonders who the fools can be that buy the fabulous flowers that grace the illustrious bouquetiere’s shop window, and the choice products displayed by Chevet of European fame--the only purveyor who can vie with the _Rocher de Cancale_ in a real and delicious _Revue des deux Mondes_.

Well, every day in Paris a hundred or more passions a la Nucingen come into being, and find expression in offering such rarities as queens dare not purchase, presented, kneeling, to baggages who, to use Asie’s word, like to cut a dash. But for these little details, a decent citizen would be puzzled to conceive how a fortune melts in the hands of these women, whose social function, in Fourier’s scheme, is perhaps to rectify the disasters caused by avarice and cupidity. Such squandering is, no doubt, to the social body what a prick of the lancet is to a plethoric subject. In two months Nucingen had shed broadcast on trade more than two hundred thousand francs.

By the time the old lover returned, darkness was falling; the bouquet was no longer of any use. The hour for driving in the Champs-Elysees in winter is between two and four. However, the carriage was of use to convey Esther from the Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where she took possession of the “little palace.” Never before had Esther been the object of such worship or such lavishness, and it amazed her; but, like all royal ingrates, she took care to express no surprise.

When you go into St. Peter’s at Rome, to enable you to appreciate the extent and height of this queen of cathedrals, you are shown the little finger of a statue which looks of a natural size, and which measures I know not how much. Descriptions have been so severely criticised, necessary as they are to a history of manners, that I must here follow the example of the Roman Cicerone. As they entered the dining-room, the Baron could not resist asking Esther to feel the stuff of which the window curtains were made, draped with magnificent fulness, lined with white watered silk, and bordered with a gimp fit to trim a Portuguese princess’ bodice. The material was silk brought from Canton, on which Chinese patience had painted Oriental birds with a perfection only to be seen in mediaeval illuminations, or in the Missal of Charles V., the pride of the Imperial library at Vienna.

“It hafe cost two tousand franc’ an ell for a milord who brought it from Intia----”

“It is very nice, charming,” said Esther. “How I shall enjoy drinking champagne here; the froth will not get dirty here on a bare floor.”

“Oh! madame!” cried Europe, “only look at the carpet!”

“Dis carpet hafe been made for de Duc de Torlonia, a frient of mine, who fount it too dear, so I took it for you who are my qveen,” said Nucingen.

By chance this carpet, by one of our cleverest designers, matched with the whimsicalities of the Chinese curtains. The walls, painted by Schinner and Leon de Lora, represented voluptuous scenes, in carved ebony frames, purchased for their weight in gold from Dusommerard, and forming panels with a narrow line of gold that coyly caught the light.

From this you may judge of the rest.

“You did well to bring me here,” said Esther. “It will take me a week to get used to my home and not to look like a parvenu in it----”

“_My_ home! Den you shall accept it?” cried the Baron in glee.

“Why, of course, and a thousand times of course, stupid animal,” said she, smiling.

“Animal vas enough----”

“Stupid is a term of endearment,” said she, looking at him.

The poor man took Esther’s hand and pressed it to his heart. He was animal enough to feel, but too stupid to find words.

“Feel how it beats--for ein little tender vort----”

And he conducted his goddess to her room.

“Oh, madame, I cannot stay here!” cried Eugenie. “It makes me long to go to bed.”

“Well,” said Esther, “I mean to please the magician who has worked all these wonders.--Listen, my fat elephant, after dinner we will go to the play together. I am starving to see a play.”

It was just five years since Esther had been to a theatre. All Paris was rushing at that time to the Porte-Saint-Martin, to see one of those pieces to which the power of the actors lends a terrible expression of reality, _Richard Darlington_. Like all ingenuous natures, Esther loved to feel the thrills of fear as much as to yield to tears of pathos.

“Let us go to see Frederick Lemaitre,” said she; “he is an actor I adore.”

“It is a horrible piece,” said Nucingen foreseeing the moment when he must show himself in public.

He sent his servant to secure one of the two stage-boxes on the grand tier.--And this is another strange feature of Paris. Whenever success, on feet of clay, fills a house, there is always a stage-box to be had ten minutes before the curtain rises. The managers keep it for themselves, unless it happens to be taken for a passion a la Nucingen. This box, like Chevet’s dainties, is a tax levied on the whims of the Parisian Olympus.

It would be superfluous to describe the plate and china. Nucingen had provided three services of plate--common, medium, and best; and the best--plates, dishes, and all, was of chased silver gilt. The banker, to avoid overloading the table with gold and silver, had completed the array of each service with porcelain of exquisite fragility in the style of Dresden china, which had cost more than the plate. As to the linen--Saxony, England, Flanders, and France vied in the perfection of flowered damask.

At dinner it was the Baron’s turn to be amazed on tasting Asie’s cookery.

“I understant,” said he, “vy you call her Asie; dis is Asiatic cooking.”

“I begin to think he loves me,” said Esther to Europe; “he has said something almost like a _bon mot_.”

“I said many vorts,” said he.

“Well! he is more like Turcaret than I had heard he was!” cried the girl, laughing at this reply, worthy of the many artless speeches for which the banker was famous.

The dishes were so highly spiced as to give the Baron an indigestion, on purpose that he might go home early; so this was all he got in the way of pleasure out of his first evening with Esther. At the theatre he was obliged to drink an immense number of glasses of eau sucree, leaving Esther alone between the acts.

By a coincidence so probable that it can scarcely be called chance, Tullia, Mariette, and Madame du Val-Noble were at the play that evening. _Richard Darlington_ enjoyed a wild success--and a deserved success--such as is seen only in Paris. The men who saw this play all came to the conclusion that a lawful wife might be thrown out of window, and the wives loved to see themselves unjustly persecuted.

The women said to each other: “This is too much! we are driven to it--but it often happens!”

Now a woman as beautiful as Esther, and dressed as Esther was, could not show off with impunity in a stage-box at the Porte-Saint-Martin. And so, during the second act, there was quite a commotion in the box where the two dancers were sitting, caused by the undoubted identity of the unknown fair one with La Torpille.

“Heyday! where has she dropped from?” said Mariette to Madame du Val-Noble. “I thought she was drowned.”

“But is it she? She looks to me thirty-seven times younger and handsomer than she was six years ago.”

“Perhaps she has preserved herself in ice like Madame d’Espard and Madame Zayonchek,” said the Comte de Brambourg, who had brought the three women to the play, to a pit-tier box. “Isn’t she the ‘rat’ you meant to send me to hocus my uncle?” said he, addressing Tullia.

“The very same,” said the singer. “Du Bruel, go down to the stalls and see if it is she.”

“What brass she has got!” exclaimed Madame du Val-Noble, using an expressive but vulgar phrase.

“Oh!” said the Comte de Brambourg, “she very well may. She is with my friend the Baron de Nucingen--I will go----”

“Is that the immaculate Joan of Arc who has taken Nucingen by storm, and who has been talked of till we are all sick of her, these three months past?” asked Mariette.

“Good-evening, my dear Baron,” said Philippe Bridau, as he went into Nucingen’s box. “So here you are, married to Mademoiselle Esther.--Mademoiselle, I am an old officer whom you once on a time were to have got out of a scrape--at Issoudun--Philippe Bridau----”

“I know nothing of it,” said Esther, looking round the house through her opera-glasses.

“Dis lady,” said the Baron, “is no longer known as ‘Esther’ so short! She is called Montame de Champy--ein little estate vat I have bought for her----”

“Though you do things in such style,” said the Comte, “these ladies are saying that Madame de Champy gives herself too great airs.--If you do not choose to remember me, will you condescend to recognize Mariette, Tullia, Madame du Val-Noble?” the parvenu went on--a man for whom the Duc de Maufrigneuse had won the Dauphin’s favor.

“If these ladies are kind to me, I am willing to make myself pleasant to them,” replied Madame de Champy drily.

“Kind! Why, they are excellent; they have named you Joan of Arc,” replied Philippe.

“Vell den, if dese ladies vill keep you company,” said Nucingen, “I shall go ‘vay, for I hafe eaten too much. Your carriage shall come for you and your people.--Dat teufel Asie!”

“The first time, and you leave me alone!” said Esther. “Come, come, you must have courage enough to die on deck. I must have my man with me as I go out. If I were insulted, am I to cry out for nothing?”

The old millionaire’s selfishness had to give way to his duties as a lover. The Baron suffered but stayed.

Esther had her own reasons for detaining “her man.” If she admitted her acquaintance, she would be less closely questioned in his presence than if she were alone. Philippe Bridau hurried back to the box where the dancers were sitting, and informed them of the state of affairs.

“Oh! so it is she who has fallen heir to my house in the Rue Saint-Georges,” observed Madame du Val-Noble with some bitterness; for she, as she phrased it, was on the loose.

“Most likely,” said the Colonel. “Du Tillet told me that the Baron had spent three times as much there as your poor Falleix.”

“Let us go round to her box,” said Tullia.

“Not if I know it,” said Mariette; “she is much too handsome, I will call on her at home.”

“I think myself good-looking enough to risk it,” remarked Tullia.

So the much-daring leading dancer went round between the acts and renewed acquaintance with Esther, who would talk only on general subjects.

“And where have you come back from, my dear child?” asked Tullia, who could not restrain her curiosity.

“Oh, I was for five years in a castle in the Alps with an Englishman, as jealous as a tiger, a nabob; I called him a nabot, a dwarf, for he was not so big as le bailli de Ferrette.

“And then I came across a banker--from a savage to salvation, as Florine might say. And now here I am in Paris again; I long so for amusement that I mean to have a rare time. I shall keep open house. I have five years of solitary confinement to make good, and I am beginning to do it. Five years of an Englishman is rather too much; six weeks are the allowance according to the advertisements.”

“Was it the Baron who gave you that lace?”

“No, it is a relic of the nabob.--What ill-luck I have, my dear! He was as yellow as a friend’s smile at a success; I thought he would be dead in ten months. Pooh! he was a strong as a mountain. Always distrust men who say they have a liver complaint. I will never listen to a man who talks of his liver.--I have had too much of livers--who cannot die. My nabob robbed me; he died without making a will, and the family turned me out of doors like a leper.--So, then, I said to my fat friend here, ‘Pay for two!’--You may as well call me Joan of Arc; I have ruined England, and perhaps I shall die at the stake----”

“Of love?” said Tullia.

“And burnt alive,” answered Esther, and the question made her thoughtful.

The Baron laughed at all this vulgar nonsense, but he did not always follow it readily, so that his laughter sounded like the forgotten crackers that go off after fireworks.

We all live in a sphere of some kind, and the inhabitants of every sphere are endowed with an equal share of curiosity.

Next evening at the opera, Esther’s reappearance was the great news behind the scenes. Between two and four in the afternoon all Paris in the Champs-Elysees had recognized La Torpille, and knew at last who was the object of the Baron de Nucingen’s passion.

“Do you know,” Blondet remarked to de Marsay in the greenroom at the opera-house, “that La Torpille vanished the very day after the evening when we saw her here and recognized her in little Rubempre’s mistress.”

In Paris, as in the provinces, everything is known. The police of the Rue de Jerusalem are not so efficient as the world itself, for every one is a spy on every one else, though unconsciously. Carlos had fully understood the danger of Lucien’s position during and after the episode of the Rue Taitbout.

No position can be more dreadful than that in which Madame du Val-Noble now found herself; and the phrase to be on the loose, or, as the French say, left on foot, expresses it perfectly. The recklessness and extravagance of these women precludes all care for the future. In that strange world, far more witty and amusing than might be supposed, only such women as are not gifted with that perfect beauty which time can hardly impair, and which is quite unmistakable--only such women, in short, as can be loved merely as a fancy, ever think of old age and save a fortune. The handsomer they are, the more improvident they are.

“Are you afraid of growing ugly that you are saving money?” was a speech of Florine’s to Mariette, which may give a clue to one cause of this thriftlessness.

Thus, if a speculator kills himself, or a spendthrift comes to the end of his resources, these women fall with hideous promptitude from audacious wealth to the utmost misery. They throw themselves into the clutches of the old-clothes buyer, and sell exquisite jewels for a mere song; they run into debt, expressly to keep up a spurious luxury, in the hope of recovering what they have lost--a cash-box to draw upon. These ups and downs of their career account for the costliness of such connections, generally brought about as Asie had hooked (another word of her vocabulary) Nucingen for Esther.

And so those who know their Paris are quite aware of the state of affairs when, in the Champs-Elysees--that bustling and mongrel bazaar--they meet some woman in a hired fly whom six months or a year before they had seen in a magnificent and dazzling carriage, turned out in the most luxurious style.

“If you fall on Sainte-Pelagie, you must contrive to rebound on the Bois de Boulogne,” said Florine, laughing with Blondet over the little Vicomte de Portenduere.

Some clever women never run the risk of this contrast. They bury themselves in horrible furnished lodgings, where they expiate their extravagance by such privations as are endured by travelers lost in a Sahara; but they never take the smallest fancy for economy. They venture forth to masked balls; they take journeys into the provinces; they turn out well dressed on the boulevards when the weather is fine. And then they find in each other the devoted kindness which is known only among proscribed races. It costs a woman in luck no effort to bestow some help, for she says to herself, “I may be in the same plight by Sunday!”

However, the most efficient protector still is the purchaser of dress. When this greedy money-lender finds herself the creditor, she stirs and works on the hearts of all the old men she knows in favor of the mortgaged creature in thin boots and a fine bonnet.

In this way Madame du Val-Noble, unable to foresee the downfall of one of the richest and cleverest of stockbrokers, was left quite unprepared. She had spent Falleix’s money on her whims, and trusted to him for all necessaries and to provide for the future.

“How could I have expected such a thing in a man who seemed such a good fellow?”

In almost every class of society the good fellow is an open-handed man, who will lend a few crowns now and again without expecting them back, who always behaves in accordance with a certain code of delicate feeling above mere vulgar, obligatory, and commonplace morality. Certain men, regarded as virtuous and honest, have, like Nucingen, ruined their benefactors; and certain others, who have been through a criminal court, have an ingenious kind of honesty towards women. Perfect virtue, the dream of Moliere, an Alceste, is exceedingly rare; still, it is to be found everywhere, even in Paris. The “good fellow” is the product of a certain facility of nature which proves nothing. A man is a good fellow, as a cat is silky, as a slipper is made to slip on to the foot. And so, in the meaning given to the word by a kept woman, Falleix ought to have warned his mistress of his approaching bankruptcy and have given her enough to live upon.

D’Estourny, the dashing swindler, was a good fellow; he cheated at cards, but he had set aside thirty thousand francs for his mistress. And at carnival suppers women would retort on his accusers: “No matter. You may say what you like, Georges was a good fellow; he had charming manners, he deserved a better fate.”

These girls laugh laws to scorn, and adore a certain kind of generosity; they sell themselves, as Esther had done, for a secret ideal, which is their religion.

After saving a few jewels from the wreck with great difficulty, Madame du Val-Noble was crushed under the burden of the horrible report: “She ruined Falleix.” She was almost thirty; and though she was in the prime of her beauty, still she might be called an old woman, and all the more so because in such a crisis all a woman’s rivals are against her. Mariette, Florine, Tullia would ask their friend to dinner, and gave her some help; but as they did not know the extent of her debts, they did not dare to sound the depths of that gulf. An interval of six years formed rather too long a gap in the ebb and flow of the Paris tide, between La Torpille and Madame du Val-Noble, for the woman “on foot” to speak to the woman in her carriage; but La Val-Noble knew that Esther was too generous not to remember sometimes that she had, as she said, fallen heir to her possessions, and not to seek her out by some meeting which might seem accidental though arranged. To bring about such an accident, Madame du Val-Noble, dressed in the most lady-like way, walked out every day in the Champs-Elysees on the arm of Theodore Gaillard, who afterwards married her, and who, in these straits, behaved very well to his former mistress, giving her boxes at the play, and inviting her to every spree. She flattered herself that Esther, driving out one fine day, would meet her face to face.

Esther’s coachman was Paccard--for her household had been made up in five days by Asie, Europe, and Paccard under Carlos’ instructions, and in such a way that the house in the Rue Saint-Georges was an impregnable fortress.

Peyrade, on his part, prompted by deep hatred, by the thirst for vengeance, and, above all, by his wish to see his darling Lydie married, made the Champs-Elysees the end of his walks as soon as he heard from Contenson that Monsieur de Nucingen’s mistress might be seen there. Peyrade could dress so exactly like an Englishman, and spoke French so perfectly with the mincing accent that the English give the language; he knew England itself so well, and was so familiar with all the customs of the country, having been sent to England by the police authorities three times between 1779 and 1786, that he could play his part in London and at ambassadors’ residences without awaking suspicion. Peyrade, who had some resemblance to Musson the famous juggler, could disguise himself so effectually that once Contenson did not recognize him.