The Flemish nurse had never left Lydie, whom she called her daughter. The two went to church with a regularity that gave the royalist grocer, who lived below, in the corner shop, an excellent opinion of the worthy Canquoelle. The grocer’s family, kitchen, and counter-jumpers occupied the first floor and the entresol; the landlord inhabited the second floor; and the third had been let for twenty years past to a lapidary. Each resident had a key of the street door. The grocer’s wife was all the more willing to receive letters and parcels addressed to these three quiet households, because the grocer’s shop had a letter-box.
Without these details, strangers, or even those who know Paris well, could not have understood the privacy and quietude, the isolation and safety which made this house exceptional in Paris. After midnight, Pere Canquoelle could hatch plots, receive spies or ministers, wives or hussies, without any one on earth knowing anything about it.
Peyrade, of whom the Flemish woman would say to the grocer’s cook, “He would not hurt a fly!” was regarded as the best of men. He grudged his daughter nothing. Lydie, who had been taught music by Schmucke, was herself a musician capable of composing; she could wash in a sepia drawing, and paint in gouache and water-color. Every Sunday Peyrade dined at home with her. On that day this worthy was wholly paternal.
Lydie, religious but not a bigot, took the Sacrament at Easter, and confessed every month. Still, she allowed herself from time to time to be treated to the play. She walked in the Tuileries when it was fine. These were all her pleasures, for she led a sedentary life. Lydie, who worshiped her father, knew absolutely nothing of his sinister gifts and dark employments. Not a wish had ever disturbed this pure child’s pure life. Slight and handsome like her mother, gifted with an exquisite voice, and a delicate face framed in fine fair hair, she looked like one of those angels, mystical rather than real, which some of the early painters grouped in the background of the Holy Family. The glance of her blue eyes seemed to bring a beam from the sky on those she favored with a look. Her dress, quite simple, with no exaggeration of fashion, had a delightful middle-class modesty. Picture to yourself an old Satan as the father of an angel, and purified in her divine presence, and you will have an idea of Peyrade and his daughter. If anybody had soiled this jewel, her father would have invented, to swallow him alive, one of those dreadful plots in which, under the Restoration, the unhappy wretches were trapped who were designate to die on the scaffold. A thousand crowns were ample maintenance for Lydie and Katt, whom she called nurse.
As Peyrade turned into the Rue des Moineaux, he saw Contenson; he outstripped him, went upstairs before him, heard the man’s steps on the stairs, and admitted him before the woman had put her nose out of the kitchen door. A bell rung by the opening of a glass door, on the third story where the lapidary lived warned the residents on that and the fourth floors when a visitor was coming to them. It need hardly be said that, after midnight, Peyrade muffled this bell.
“What is up in such a hurry, Philosopher?”
Philosopher was the nickname bestowed on Contenson by Peyrade, and well merited by the Epictetus among police agents. The name of Contenson, alas! hid one of the most ancient names of feudal Normandy.
“Well, there is something like ten thousand francs to be netted.”
“What is it? Political?”
“No, a piece of idiocy. Baron de Nucingen, you know, the old certified swindler, is neighing after a woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes, and she has got to be found, or he will die of love. — They had a consultation of doctors yesterday, by what his man tells me. — I have already eased him of a thousand francs under pretence of seeking the fair one.”
And Contenson related Nucingen’s meeting with Esther, adding that the Baron had now some further information.
“All right,” said Peyrade, “we will find his Dulcinea; tell the Baron to come to-night in a carriage to the Champs-Elysees — the corner of the Avenue de Gabriel and the Allee de Marigny.”
Peyrade saw Contenson out, and knocked at his daughter’s rooms, as he always knocked to be let in. He was full of glee; chance had just offered the means, at last, of getting the place he longed for.
He flung himself into a deep armchair, after kissing Lydie on the forehead, and said:
“Play me something.”
Lydie played him a composition for the piano by Beethoven.
“That is very well played, my pet,” said he, taking Lydie on his knees. “Do you know that we are one-and-twenty years old? We must get married soon, for our old daddy is more than seventy — — ”
“I am quite happy here,” said she.
“You love no one but your ugly old father?” asked Peyrade.
“Why, whom should I love?”
“I am dining at home, my darling; go and tell Katt. I am thinking of settling, of getting an appointment, and finding a husband worthy of you; some good young man, very clever, whom you may some day be proud of — — ”
“I have never seen but one yet that I should have liked for a husband — — ”
“You have seen one then?”
“Yes, in the Tuileries,” replied Lydie. “He walked past me; he was giving his arm to the Comtesse de Serizy.”
“And his name is?”
“Lucien de Rubempre. — I was sitting with Katt under a lime-tree, thinking of nothing. There were two ladies sitting by me, and one said to the other, ‘There are Madame de Serizy and that handsome Lucien de Rubempre.’ — I looked at the couple that the two ladies were watching. ‘Oh, my dear!’ said the other, ‘some women are very lucky! That woman is allowed to do everything she pleases just because she was a de Ronquerolles, and her husband is in power.’ — ’But, my dear,’ said the other lady, ‘Lucien costs her very dear.’ — What did she mean, papa?”
“Just nonsense, such as people of fashion will talk,” replied Peyrade, with an air of perfect candor. “Perhaps they were alluding to political matters.”
“Well, in short, you asked me a question, so I answer you. If you want me to marry, find me a husband just like that young man.”
“Silly child!” replied her father. “The fact that a man is handsome is not always a sign of goodness. Young men gifted with an attractive appearance meet with no obstacles at the beginning of life, so they make no use of any talent; they are corrupted by the advances made to them by society, and they have to pay interest later for their attractiveness! — What I should like for you is what the middle classes, the rich, and the fools leave unholpen and unprotected — — ”
“What, father?”
“An unrecognized man of talent. But, there, child; I have it in my power to hunt through every garret in Paris, and carry out your programme by offering for your affection a man as handsome as the young scamp you speak of; but a man of promise, with a future before him destined to glory and fortune. — By the way, I was forgetting. I must have a whole flock of nephews, and among them there must be one worthy of you! — I will write, or get some one to write to Provence.”
A strange coincidence! At this moment a young man, half-dead of hunger and fatigue, who had come on foot from the department of Vaucluse — a nephew of Pere Canquoelle’s in search of his uncle, was entering Paris through the Barriere de l’Italie. In the day-dreams of the family, ignorant of this uncle’s fate, Peyrade had supplied the text for many hopes; he was supposed to have returned from India with millions! Stimulated by these fireside romances, this grand-nephew, named Theodore, had started on a voyage round the world in quest of this eccentric uncle.
After enjoying for some hours the joys of paternity, Peyrade, his hair washed and dyed — for his powder was a disguise — dressed in a stout, coarse, blue frock-coat buttoned up to the chin, and a black cloak, shod in strong, thick-soled boots, furnished himself with a private card and walked slowly along the Avenue Gabriel, where Contenson, dressed as an old costermonger woman, met him in front of the gardens of the Elysee-Bourbon.
“Monsieur de Saint-Germain,” said Contenson, g
iving his old chief the name he was officially known by, “you have put me in the way of making five hundred pieces (francs); but what I came here for was to tell you that that damned Baron, before he gave me the shiners, had been to ask questions at the house (the Prefecture of Police).”
“I shall want you, no doubt,” replied Peyrade. “Look up numbers 7, 10, and 21; we can employ those men without any one finding it out, either at the Police Ministry or at the Prefecture.”
Contenson went back to a post near the carriage in which Monsieur de Nucingen was waiting for Peyrade.
“I am Monsieur de Saint-Germain,” said Peyrade to the Baron, raising himself to look over the carriage door.
“Ver’ goot; get in mit me,” replied the Baron, ordering the coachman to go on slowly to the Arc de l’Etoile.
“You have been to the Prefecture of Police, Monsieur le Baron? That was not fair. Might I ask what you said to M. le Prefet, and what he said in reply?” asked Peyrade.
“Before I should gif fife hundert francs to a filain like Contenson, I vant to know if he had earned dem. I simply said to the Prefet of Police dat I vant to employ ein agent named Peyrate to go abroat in a delicate matter, an’ should I trust him — unlimited! — The Prefet telt me you vas a very clefer man an’ ver’ honest man. An’ dat vas everything.”
“And now that you have learned my true name, Monsieur le Baron, will you tell me what it is you want?”
When the Baron had given a long and copious explanation, in his hideous Polish-Jew dialect, of his meeting with Esther and the cry of the man behind the carriage, and his vain efforts, he ended by relating what had occurred at his house the night before, Lucien’s involuntary smile, and the opinion expressed by Bianchon and some other young dandies that there must be some acquaintance between him and the unknown fair.
“Listen to me, Monsieur le Baron; you must, in the first instance, place ten thousand francs in my hands, on account for expenses; for, to you, this is a matter of life or death; and as your life is a business-manufactory, nothing must be left undone to find this woman for you. Oh, you are caught! — — ”
“Ja, I am caught!”
“If more money is wanted, Baron, I will let you know; put your trust in me,” said Peyrade. “I am not a spy, as you perhaps imagine. In 1807 I was Commissioner-General of Police at Antwerp; and now that Louis XVIII. is dead, I may tell you in confidence that for seven years I was the chief of his counter-police. So there is no beating me down. You must understand, Monsieur le Baron, that it is impossible to make any estimate of the cost of each man’s conscience before going into the details of such an affair. Be quite easy; I shall succeed. Do not fancy that you can satisfy me with a sum of money; I want something for my reward — — ”
“So long as dat is not a kingtom!” said the Baron.
“It is less than nothing to you.”
“Den I am your man.”
“You know the Kellers?”
“Oh! ver’ well.”
“Francois Keller is the Comte de Gondreville’s son-in-law, and the Comte de Gondreville and his son-in-law dined with you yesterday.”
“Who der teufel tolt you dat?” cried the Baron. “Dat vill be Georche; he is always a gossip.” Peyrade smiled, and the banker at once formed strange suspicions of his man-servant.
“The Comte de Gondreville is quite in a position to obtain me a place I covet at the Prefecture of Police; within forty-eight hours the prefet will have notice that such a place is to be created,” said Peyrade in continuation. “Ask for it for me; get the Comte de Gondreville to interest himself in the matter with some degree of warmth — and you will thus repay me for the service I am about to do you. I ask your word only; for, if you fail me, sooner or later you will curse the day you were born — you have Peyrade’s word for that.”
“I gif you mein vort of honor to do vat is possible.”
“If I do no more for you than is possible, it will not be enough.”
“Vell, vell, I vill act qvite frankly.”
“Frankly — that is all I ask,” said Peyrade, “and frankness is the only thing at all new that you and I can offer to each other.”
“Frankly,” echoed the Baron. “Vere shall I put you down.”
“At the corner of the Pont Louis XVI.”
“To the Pont de la Chambre,” said the Baron to the footman at the carriage door.
“Then I am to get dat unknown person,” said the Baron to himself as he drove home.
“What a queer business!” thought Peyrade, going back on foot to the Palais-Royal, where he intended trying to multiply his ten thousand francs by three, to make a little fortune for Lydie. “Here I am required to look into the private concerns of a very young man who has bewitched my little girl by a glance. He is, I suppose, one of those men who have an eye for a woman,” said he to himself, using an expression of a language of his own, in which his observations, or Corentin’s, were summed up in words that were anything rather than classical, but, for that very reason, energetic and picturesque.
The Baron de Nucingen, when he went in, was an altered man; he astonished his household and his wife by showing them a face full of life and color, so cheerful did he feel.
“Our shareholders had better look out for themselves,” said du Tillet to Rastignac.
They were all at tea, in Delphine de Nucingen’s boudoir, having come in from the opera.
“Ja,” said the Baron, smiling; “I feel ver’ much dat I shall do some business.”
“Then you have seen the fair being?” asked Madame de Nucingen.
“No,” said he; “I have only hoped to see her.”
“Do men ever love their wives so?” cried Madame de Nucingen, feeling, or affecting to feel, a little jealous.
“When you have got her, you must ask us to sup with her,” said du Tillet to the Baron, “for I am very curious to study the creature who has made you so young as you are.”
“She is a cheff-d’oeufre of creation!” replied the old banker.
“He will be swindled like a boy,” said Rastignac in Delphine’s ear.
“Pooh! he makes quite enough money to — — ”
“To give a little back, I suppose,” said du Tillet, interrupting the Baroness.
Nucingen was walking up and down the room as if his legs had the fidgets.
“Now is your time to make him pay your fresh debts,” said Rastignac in the Baroness’ ear.
At this very moment Carlos was leaving the Rue Taitbout full of hope; he had been there to give some last advice to Europe, who was to play the principal part in the farce devised to take in the Baron de Nucingen. He was accompanied as far as the Boulevard by Lucien, who was not at all easy at finding this demon so perfectly disguised that even he had only recognized him by his voice.
“Where the devil did you find a handsomer woman than Esther?” he asked his evil genius.
“My boy, there is no such thing to be found in Paris. Such a complexion is not made in France.”
“I assure you, I am still quite amazed. Venus Callipyge has not such a figure. A man would lose his soul for her. But where did she spring from?”
“She was the handsomest girl in London. Drunk with gin, she killed her lover in a fit of jealousy. The lover was a wretch of whom the London police are well quit, and this woman was packed off to Paris for a time to let the matter blow over. The hussy was well brought up — the daughter of a clergyman. She speaks French as if it were her mother tongue. She does not know, and never will know, why she is here. She was told that if you took a fancy to her she might fleece you of millions, but that you were as jealous as a tiger, and she was told how Esther lived.”
“But supposing Nucingen should prefer her to Esther?”
“Ah, it is out at last!” cried Carlos. “You dread now lest what dismayed you yesterday should not take place after all! Be quite easy. That fair and fair-haired girl has blue eyes; she is the antipodes of the beautiful Jewess, and only such eyes as Esther’s c
ould ever stir a man so rotten as Nucingen. What the devil! you could not hide an ugly woman. When this puppet has played her part, I will send her off in safe custody to Rome or to Madrid, where she will be the rage.”
“If we have her only for a short time,” said Lucien, “I will go back to her — — ”
“Go, my boy, amuse yourself. You will be a day older to-morrow. For my part, I must wait for some one whom I have instructed to learn what is going on at the Baron de Nucingen’s.”
“Who?”
“His valet’s mistress; for, after all, we must keep ourselves informed at every moment of what is going on in the enemy’s camp.”
At midnight, Paccard, Esther’s tall chasseur, met Carlos on the Pont des Arts, the most favorable spot in all Paris for saying a few words which no one must overhear. All the time they talked the servant kept an eye on one side, while his master looked out on the other.
“The Baron went to the Prefecture of Police this morning between four and five,” said the man, “and he boasted this evening that he should find the woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes — he had been promised it — — ”
“We are watched!” said Carlos. “By whom?”
“They have already employed Louchard the bailiff.”
“That would be child’s play,” replied Carlos. “We need fear nothing but the guardians of public safety, the criminal police; and so long as that is not set in motion, we can go on!”
“That is not all.”
“What else?”
“Our chums of the hulks. — I saw Lapouraille yesterday — — He has choked off a married couple, and has bagged ten thousand five-franc pieces — in gold.”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 618