A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Has an uncle left you something?’ asked Finot banteringly.

  ‘Like you,’ said Lucien in the same tone, ‘I take my cut off fools from time to time.’

  ‘Has the gentleman acquired a review or a newspaper?’ continued Andoche Finot with the offensive self-complacency of an operator towards one whom he exploits.

  ‘I’ve done better than that,’ replied Lucien, to whom vanity, wounded by the superiority the editor affected, had restored the sense of his new position.

  ‘What have you got, then, dear boy?…’

  ‘I have my Party.’

  ‘There’s a Lucien party?’ said Vernou with a smile.

  ‘Finot, you’ve been outstripped by the boy, as I predicted’, said Blondet. ‘Lucien has talent, and you didn’t foster it, you wore him down. Old bull-of-the-bog, I hope you rue it.’

  Blondet’s sensitive nose had caught a whiff of important secrets in Lucien’s accent, his bearing, his gestures; easing the rein, he yet, with his words, took a firm hold on the bit. He wanted to know the reasons for Lucien’s return to Paris, what he planned, what he lived on.

  ‘On your knees before your betters, Finot!’ he went on. ‘Lucien is one of us, but he must also be admitted now to that band of strong men to whom the future belongs! Handsome and witty, is he not bound to advance by your quibuscum viis? There he stands in his fine Milan armour, the powerful stiletto half out of its scabbard, pennon raised! ’Sdeath, Lucien, where did you pick up that pretty waistcoat? Stuff like that is only discovered by men in love. Where do we live? At this moment, I need to know my friends’ addresses, I’ve got nowhere to sleep. Finot has pitched me out for the night, under the vulgar pretext of a lady having said yes.’

  ‘My dear fellow,’ replied Lucien, ‘I have adopted a maxim with which I trust to lead a quiet life: Fuge, late, tace! I leave you.’

  ‘But I don’t leave you till we’ve squared a sacred debt, eh, that little supper?’ said Blondet, who was excessively fond of good cheer and, when he was short of money, liked to be treated.

  ‘What supper?’ Lucien rejoined, with a touch of impatience.

  ‘Don’t you remember? That’s how you can tell when a friend is prosperous: he loses his memory.’

  ‘He knows what he owes us, I’ll go warrant for his heart,’ commented Finot, taking up the joke.

  ‘Rastignac,’ said Blondet, taking the young man of fashion by the arm as he came to the top end of the crush-room by the pillar where the self-styled friends were grouped, ‘we’re talking of a supper: you must join us… Unless the gentleman,’ he went on solemnly, indicating Lucien, ‘persists in denying a debt of honour; he may, of course.’

  ‘Monsieur de Rubempré, I’ll undertake, is quite incapable of it,’ said Rastignac, whose mind was not on practical jokes.

  ‘There’s Bixiou!’ cried Blondet, ‘he must come, too: nothing’s complete without him. Without him, champagne coats the tongue, and everything becomes insipid, even the spice of an epigram.’

  ‘My friends,’ said Bixiou, ‘I see you gathered about the wonder of the day. Our dear Lucien has started his own version of Ovid’s metamorphoses. Just as the gods turned themselves into local bigwigs and others to seduce women, he has turned Chardon into a gentleman to seduce – eh? – Charles X! Lucien, dear boy,’ taking him by a button, ‘a journalist promoted lord deserves a great reception. In their place,’ said the pitiless clown, indicating Finot and Vernou, ‘I’d open the pages of my little journal to you; ten columns of fine words should bring them in at least a hundred francs.’

  ‘Bixiou,’ said Blondet, ‘an amphitryon should always be sacred to us twenty-four hours before and twelve after the feast: our illustrious friend has invited us all to supper.’

  ‘What, what?’ Bixiou persisted. ‘What more deserving cause could there be than that of preserving a great name from oblivion, than endowing our indigent aristocracy with a man of talent? Lucien, you enjoy the esteem of the Press, whose fairest ornament you were, and we shall uphold you. Finot, a paragraph in all the Paris leaders ! Blondet, a sly rigmarole on your page four! Let us announce the appearance of the greatest book of our time, Charles IX’s Archer! Let us beg Dauriat not to delay giving us Pearls, those divine sonnets by the French Petrarch! Let us raise up our friend on the royal shield of stamped paper which makes and unmakes reputations!’

  ‘If you want to eat,’ said Lucien to Blondet to be free of this growing mob, ‘you had no need to use hyperbole and parabole with an old friend, as though I were green. Tomorrow evening, then, at Lointier’s,’ he concluded smartly, seeing approach a woman towards whom he hurried.

  ‘Oh! oh! oh!’ said Bixiou mockingly on three descending notes, evidently recognizing the masker Lucien had advanced to meet, ‘this merits confirmation.’

  The Torpedo

  AND he followed the handsome couple, overtook it, examined it with a shrewd eye, and returned to satisfy the envious, interested to learn the origin of Lucien’s change of fortune.

  ‘My friends,’ they heard Bixiou say, ‘the Sire de Rubempré’s fortune is a person long known to you, it is des Lupeaulx’s quondam rat.’

  A perversity now forgotten, but common enough in the early years of the century, was the luxury known as a rat. The word, already outmoded, was applied to a child of ten or eleven, a supernumerary at some theatre, generally the Opera, formed by some rake for infamy and vice. A rat was a kind of infernal page, a female urchin to whom everything was forgiven. A rat could take whatever it pleased; it was best distrusted as a dangerous animal, it introduced an element of gaiety into life, like the Scapins, Sganarelles and Frontins of the old comedy. A rat was a costly indulgence: it brought neither honour, nor profit, nor pleasure; the fashion for rats faded so completely that few people today knew this intimate detail of the life of elegance before the Restoration until it was taken up as a new subject by one or two writers.

  ‘What, after having Coralie shot under him, is Lucien now to steal the Torpedo from us?’ said Blondet.

  Hearing this name, the powerfully built masker made a brief movement which, though he controlled it, Rastignac observed.

  ‘It isn’t possible!’ rejoined Finot. ‘The Torpedo hasn’t a farthing to give away, she’s borrowed, Nathan told me, a thousand francs from Florine.’

  ‘Gentlemen, please!…’ said Rastignac, wishing to defend Lucien against such odious imputations.

  ‘Why,’ cried Vernou, once kept by Coralie, ‘is he then such a prude?…’

  ‘That thousand francs itself,’ said Bixiou, ‘is evidence of the fact that Lucien is living with the Torpedo.’

  ‘What an irreparable loss,’ said Blondet, ‘to the world of literature, science, art and politics! The Torpedo is the one common whore with the makings of a true hetaira; she hadn’t been spoilt by education, she can neither read nor write: she’d have understood us. We should have bestowed on our time one of those magnificent Aspasian figures without which no age can be great. Think how well Dubarry became the eighteenth century, Ninon de Lenclos the seventeenth, Marion de Lorme the sixteenth, Imperia the fifteenth, Flora the Roman republic, which she made her heir, and which in consequence was able to pay the public debt! What would Horace be without Lydia, Tibullus without Delia, Catullus without Lesbia, Propertius without Cynthia, Demetrius without the Lamia upon whom to this day his reputation rests?’

  ‘Blondet, talking about Demetrius in the crush-room at the Opera,’ Bixiou whispered to his neighbour, ‘strikes me as a little too Journal des débats.’

  ‘And without all those queens,’ Blondet went on, ‘what would the empire of the Caesars have been? Laïs, Rhodope are Greece and Egypt. The poetry of the centuries in which they all lived is theirs. This poetry, which Napoleon lacked, for his Grande Armée’s widow is a barrack-room joke, was not lacking at the Revolution, which had Madame Tallien! In France now, where thrones are in fashion, one, certainly, is vacant! For my part, I’d have given the Torpedo an aunt, for her mother died all too a
uthentically on the field of dishonour; du Tillet would have bought her a town house, Lousteau a coach, Rastignac lackeys, des Lupeaulx a cook, Finot providing hats (Finot could not repress his reaction as this epigram went home), Vernou would have advertised her, Bixiou would have supplied her witticisms! The aristocracy would come to Ninon’s for its amusement, and artists would have been summoned under pain of mortiferous articles. Ninon II’s rudeness would have been magnificent, her luxuriousness overwhelming. She would have had opinions. One would have read at her house some banned theatrical masterpiece which might at need have been written for the occasion. She would not have been a liberal, a courtesan is always a monarchist. Ah, what a loss! she should have embraced a whole century, and is in love with a commonplace young man! Lucien will make a gun-dog of her!’

  ‘None of the feminine powers you name ever picked pockets,’ said Finot, ‘and this pretty rat paddled in the mud.’

  ‘Like the seed of a lily in leaf-mould,’ Vernou replied, ‘she took up nourishment there, it brought her into bloom. Whence her superiority. Mustn’t one have known all to be able to give laughter and joy to all?’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Lousteau who till that moment had stood by without speaking, ‘the Torpedo knows how to laugh and how to make others laugh. This skill of great authors and great actors belongs to those who have penetrated to the depths of society. At eighteen, this girl had already known the highest wealth, total destitution, men at all levels. She holds a magic wand with which she unlooses the brutish appetites so violently curbed in men not without heart who are occupied in politics or science, literature or art. There is no woman in Paris who can so effectively say to the Animal: “Out!…” And the Animal trots from its kennel, and it wallows in excesses; she sits you at table up to the chin, she helps you to drink, to smoke. In fact this woman is the salt celebrated by Rabelais, which, sprinkled on matter, animates it and raises it to the wonderful realms of Art : her dress displays unknown magnificences, her fingers drip jewels, her mouth is lavish with its smiles; she gives a sense of occasion to everything; her chatter sparkles and pricks; she knows the secret of onomatopeias themselves highly coloured and lending colour; she…’

  ‘That’s a hundred sous worth of copy wasted,’ said Bixiou interrupting Lousteau, ‘the Torpedo is infinitely better value than that: you’ve all been more or less her lovers, none of you can say she was his mistress; she can have you any time, but you won’t get her. You force your way into her room, there is something you want from her…’

  ‘Oh, she’s more generous than a brigand chief in a good way of business, and more loyal than the best of school-friends,’ said Blondet: ‘you can entrust your purse or your secrets to her. But what made me elect her for queen, is her Bourbonian indifference to the fallen favourite.’

  ‘She’s like her mother, much too costly,’ said des Lupeaulx. ‘The fair Hollander would have swallowed up the revenues of the Archbishop of Toledo, she ate two notaries…’

  ‘ And fed Maxime de Trailles when he was a page,’ said Bixiou.

  ‘The Torpedo is too costly, like Raphael, like Carême, like Taglioni, like Lawrence, like Boule, just as all artists of genius have been too costly… ’ said Blondet.

  ‘Esther never had that look about her of a respectable woman,’ Rastignac suddenly observed as he watched the masker to whom Lucien gave his arm. ‘I bet it’s Madame de Sérisy.’

  ‘There can be no doubt about it,’ du Châtelet agreed, ‘and Monsieur de Rubempré’s fortune is explained.’

  ‘The Church knows how to pick its Levites, what a pretty embassy secretary he’ll make!’ said des Lupeaulx.

  ‘Especially,’ said Rastignac, ‘as Lucien’s a man of talent. These gentlemen have had more than one proof of that,’ he added with a look at Blondet, Finot and Lousteau.

  ‘Yes, the lad’s cut out to go far,’ said Lousteau eaten up with jealousy, ‘especially as he possesses what we call independence of mind…’

  ‘It was you who formed him,’ said Vernou.

  ‘Well, now,’ Bixiou went on, looking at des Lupeaulx, ‘I submit my case to the memory of the Secretary-General and Master of Petitions; that mask is the Torpedo, I’ll wager a supper…’

  ‘I’ll hold the stakes,’ said Châtelet interested in knowing the truth.

  ‘Come on, des Lupeaulx,’ said Finot, ‘see if you don’t recognize the ears of your quondam rat.’

  ‘There’s no need for outrageous peeping under masks,’ Bixiou continued, ‘the Torpedo and Lucien will be forced to pass this way again, I undertake then to prove that it is she.’

  ‘He’s put to sea again, friend Lucien, has he?’ said Nathan who had joined the group, ‘I thought he’d gone back to the Angoulême country for the rest of his days. Has he found some way of getting round the English?’

  ‘He’s done what you’re in no hurry to do, he’s paid his debts,’ Rastignac told him.

  The big masker nodded his head in assent.

  ‘A man has to give up a lot to live within his income at that age, all the dash has gone out of him, he’s finished,’ said Nathan.

  ‘Not that one,’ Rastignac said, ‘he’ll always cut a figure, and always entertain a loftiness of idea that puts him above most of those who consider themselves superior.’

  At this moment, journalists, dandies, idlers, all examined, like so many copers inspecting a horse for sale, the delightful subject of their wager. These judges grown old in the knowledge of Parisian depravity, all clever in one or another way, equally corrupt, equally corrupting, all pledged to insatiable ambitions, accustomed to guess, to imagine anything, had their eyes ardently fixed on a masked woman, a woman to be deciphered only by them. They alone and one or two who regularly attended the Opera ball were able to distinguish, beneath the long shroud of the black domino, beneath the hood, beneath the collar falling over the bosom in such a way as to put in doubt even the sex of the wearer, the roundedness of form, the particularities of carriage and gait, the turn of the waist, the way the head was held, those things which the common eye would most have failed to perceive but which to them were unmistakable. In spite of the formless envelope, they were thus able to recognize that most moving of spectacles, a woman truly animated by love. Whether it was the Torpedo the Duchess of Maufrigneuse or Madame de Sérisy, the lowest or highest rung in the social ladder, this creature was of admirable creation, the light of happy dreams. Those aged young men, as well as the youthful ancients, experienced so lively a sensation that they envied Lucien the high privilege of this metamorphosis of a woman into a goddess. The mask was there as though it had been alone with Lucien, for this woman there were no longer ten thousand persons, in an atmosphere heavy and full of dust; no; she was there beneath the celestial vault of Love, like the madonnas of Raphael under a threadlike oval of gold. She didn’t feel the nudges, the ardour of her gaze started through the two holes of the mask and was reunited in Lucien’s eyes, the very tremor of her body seemed to originate in the movements of her lover. What is the source of this light which shines about a woman in love and marks her out from the rest? of this sylphine lightness which seems to change the laws of gravity? Is it the freed soul? Are there physical virtues in happiness? The artlessness of a virgin, the graces of childhood were disclosed beneath the domino. Though walking separated, these two beings resembled statuary groups of Flora and Zephyr cunningly intertwined by the sculptor’s hand; but it was not only sculpture, the greatest of the arts, which Lucien and his pretty domino recalled, but also those angels which the brush of Gian’ Bellini depicted playing with birds and flowers below his images of Virgin Motherhood; Lucien and this woman belonged to the realm of Fantasy, which is higher than Art as cause stands above effect.