A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  TO M. L’ABBÉ CARLOS HERRERA.

  My dear guardian, will you not believe that in me gratitude takes precedence of love, seeing that it is to thank you that, for the first time, I make use of the faculty of expressing my thoughts, instead of devoting it to describing a love which Lucien has perhaps forgotten? But I will say to you, man of God, what I should never dare to say to him, whose presence on earth is still happiness to me. Yesterday’s ceremony poured out the treasures of grace upon me, I therefore place my destiny again in your hands. Must I die far away from my beloved, I shall die purified like Mary Magdalene, and my soul will be his guardian angel’s rival. Shall I ever forget yesterday’s festival? How could I abdicate from the throne of glory to which I ascended? Yesterday, I washed away all my pollution in the water of baptism, and I received the sacred body of our Saviour; I have become a tabernacle to him. At that moment, I heard the choirs of angels, I was no longer a woman, I was born into a world of light, amid the acclamations of the earth, admired by the world, in an intoxicating cloud of incense and prayers, and adorned like a virgin for a celestial bridegroom. Finding myself, what I had never hoped to be, worthy of Lucien, I renounced all impure love, and desire to walk only in the ways of virtue. Tf my body is weaker than my soul, let it perish. Be the judge of my destiny, and, if I die, say to Lucien that I died for him on being born to God.

  This Sunday evening

  Lucien raised to the priest eyes wet with tears.

  ‘You know the apartment of fat Caroline Bellefeuille, in the rue Taitbout,’ the Spaniard went on. ‘Abandoned by her legal gentleman, the wench was in dreadful need, she was on the point of being taken in; I’ve bought the house as it stood, and she’s left with her old clothes. Esther, that angel who wished to rise up to heaven, has come down there and awaits you.’

  At that moment, Lucien heard his horses pawing the ground in the courtyard, he lacked strength to express his appreciation of a devotion he nevertheless truly valued at its full worth; he cast himself into the arms of the man he had so lately insulted, redressing all with a single glance and the mute effusion of his feelings; then he rushed down the stairs, yelled Esther’s address at his tiger’s ear, and the horses set off as if their legs were brisked up by their master’s passion.

  In which it is discovered that the Abbé Herrera was no priest

  NEXT day, a man whom, from his garments, passers-by might have taken for a constable in disguise, walked up and down in the rue Taitbout, opposite a house from which he seemed to be waiting for someone to emerge; his gait betrayed agitation. In Paris, you will often meet walkers intent in this way, real policemen looking for a soldier absent from his unit, process-servers hoping to catch their man, creditors bent on extorting something from a debtor who has shut himself in, jealous and suspicious lovers or husbands, friends standing guard on behalf of their friends; but you will rarely meet a visage upon which play the hard, brutal thoughts which animated that of the gloomy athlete pacing beneath the windows of Mademoiselle Esther with the meditative savagery of a caged bear. At noon, a casement opened and let through the hand of a lady’s maid which pushed back the padded shutters. A few moments later, Esther in a tea-gown came to the window for a breath of air, she was leaning on Lucien; anyone seeing them would have taken them for the original of a sentimental English engraving. Esther then caught the basilisk stare of the Spanish priest, and the poor creature, as though struck by a passing bullet, uttered a cry of fear.

  ‘There’s the terrible priest,’ she said pointing him out to Lucien.

  ‘That one!’ said he with a smile, ‘he’s no more a priest than you are…’

  ‘What is he,then?’ said she,afraid.

  ‘Oh, he’s an old Lascar who only believes in the devil,’ said Lucien.

  Caught by anyone less devoted than Esther, this gleam cast on the secrets of the false priest might have proved Lucien’s ultimate downfall. Passing from the window of their bedroom to the dining-room where their breakfast had just been served, the two lovers met Carlos Herrera.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Lucien said abruptly.

  ‘Bringing you my blessing,’ replied that audacious character, stopping the couple and forcing them to stay in the apartment’s drawing-room. ‘Listen to me, my darlings. Amuse yourselves, be happy, I ask nothing better. Happiness at all costs, that’s my motto. But you,’ he said to Esther, ‘you whom I raised up from the mud and gave a good soaping all over, body and soul, you won’t presume to stand in Lucien’s way?… As to you, young fellow,’ he went on after a pause looking at Lucien, ‘you are no longer mere poet enough to let yourself be carried off by another Coralie. We’re writing prose now. What could Esther’s lover become? Nothing. Could Esther be Madame de Rubempré. No. Well, then, the world, little one,’ said he placing his hand in that of Esther who shuddered as though a snake had coiled about her, ‘the world must be ignorant of your existence; society above all must not know that any Mademoiselle Esther loves Lucien, and that Lucien is infatuated with her… This apartment will be your prison, little one. If you want to go out, and no doubt your health will require it, you will go out late at night, when you won’t be seen; for your beauty, your youth and the distinction of manner you picked up at the convent would be too promptly noticed in Paris. The day on which anybody whatever,’ he said in a terrible voice accompanied by an even more terrible look, ‘should learn that Lucien is your lover or that you are his mistress, that would be your last day but one. I procured for that younger son an ordinance which allowed him to bear the name and the arms of his maternal ancestors. But it doesn’t stop there! the title of marquis was not granted us; and, in order to regain it, he must marry the daughter of a good family in whose favour the King will do us this grace. The alliance will bring Lucien into the world of the Court. This child, whom I have succeeded in turning into a man, will first become an embassy secretary; later, he will be minister in some little German court, and, with God’s help or mine (which is more to the point), will take his seat one day on the peers’ benches…’

  ‘Or the hulks… ’ said Lucien interrupting the man.

  ‘Be silent,’ cried Carlos, clapping his big hand over Lucien’s mouth. ‘A secret like that to a woman!…’ he breathed in Lucien’s ear.

  ‘Esther, a woman?…’ cried the author of Marguerites.

  ‘More sonnets! ‘ said the Spaniard, ‘and without rhyme or reason. All these angels turn into women again, sooner or later; and at moments all women are at once ape and child! two forms of life in which we encourage laughter at our cost, if only in boredom… Esther, my pet,’ he said to the terrified young boarder, ‘I have engaged as your personal maid a creature who belongs to me as though she were my daughter. For cook, you shall have a mulatto, which gives style to the house. With Europe and Asia, you will be able to live here for a thousand-franc note a month, inclusive, like a queen… of the stage. Europe was a milliner, seamstress and small-part actress, Asia served an immensely wealthy man who was a big eater. These two creatures will be your good fairies.’

  Seeing Lucien stand like a little boy before this man who was guilty at least of sacrilege and forgery, she, consecrated by love, felt dread deep in her heart. Without reply, she drew Lucien into the bedroom where she said to him: ‘Is this the devil?’

  ‘Far worse than that… for me!’ he quickly answered. ‘But, if you love me, try to imitate this man’s devotion, and obey him on pain of death…’

  ‘Of death?…’ she said in yet greater fear.

  ‘Of death,’ Lucien went on. ‘Alas, my darling, no death could be compared with the one that would strike me, if…’

  Esther paled and grew faint at these words.

  ‘Well, then?’ called out the impious forger, ‘haven’t you finished daisy-picking yet?’

  Esther and Lucien returned to him, and the poor wench said, without daring to look at the man of mystery: ‘You shall be obeyed, sir, as one obeys God!’

  ‘Good!’ he answered, ‘for a rea
sonable time, you will be able to go on being happy, and… you will need only night attire and indoor clothes, that will be very economical.’

  Two capital watchdogs

  THE two lovers continued on their way towards the dining-room; but Lucien’s protector signed to the fair couple to stop. ‘I’ve just mentioned your retinue, my child,’ he said to Esther, ‘I must introduce them to you.’

  The Spaniard rang twice. The two women, whom he called Europe and Asia, appeared, and it was easy to see how they had come to be called by those names.

  Asia, who might have been born in the island of Java, presented frighteningly to the gaze that copper-coloured visage peculiar to the Malays, flat as a board, where the nose seems to have been pushed in with great force. The curious formation of the maxillary bones gave the lower part of the face a resemblance to those of the higher apes. The forehead, though low, did not lack the intelligence of a practised cunning. Two small, burning eyes remained as tranquil as those of a tiger, but were averted. Asia seemed afraid of causing fear. Her lips, of a pallid blue, exposed irregular teeth of a dazzling whiteness. The general expression of this animal physiognomy was one of treacherous sloth. The hair, oily and shining, like the skin of the visage, edged with its two black bands a scarf of rich silk. The unquestionably pretty ears were ornamented with two big black pearls. Asia recalled those quaint beings which figure on Chinese screens, or perhaps rather those Hindu idols which clearly do not exist in nature, but which travellers always discover sooner or later. At the sight of this monster, dressed in a white apron over a stuff gown, Esther shivered.

  ‘Asia!’ said the Spaniard towards whom the woman raised her head with a movement like that of a dog looking at its master, ‘there is your mistress…’

  And he pointed to Esther in her house-coat. Asia contemplated the fairylike young creature with an expression almost of pain; but at the same time a suppressed gleam between her small, narrowed eyelids darted like the spark of a fire upon Lucien who, wearing a magnificent open dressing-gown, a frieze shirt and red trousers, his fair curls escaping from beneath a Turkish cap, looked like a god. The Italian genius may recount the tale of Othello, the English genius put it on the stage; but it is nature’s right alone to express jealousy more magnificently and completely than either England or Italy in a single glance. This glance, caught by Esther, caused her to clutch at the Spaniard’s arm and print her nails there as might a cat which takes hold in order not to fall over a precipice whose bottom it cannot see. The Spaniard then spoke three or four words of an unknown tongue to the Asiatic monster, who knelt to grovel at Esther’s feet, and kissed them.

  ‘She is,’ said the Spaniard to Esther, ‘no ordinary cook, but a master who would send Carême out of his mind with jealousy. Asia knows all that can be done in a kitchen. She will put you up a simple dish of beans that will make you wonder whether the angels have not come down to add the herbs of heaven. She will go every morning to the Market herself, and will fight like the demon she is to get things at the fairest price; her discretion will baffle the most inquisitive. As you will pass for a person who has come from the Indies, Asia will be a great help to you in keeping up the part, for she is one of those Parisians who were born to belong to whatever country they choose. But if you take my advice, you won’t be a foreigner… Europe, what do you say about it?’

  Europe formed a perfect contrast to Asia, for she was the nicest little lady’s maid Monrose could ever have wished to play opposite him on the stage. Slender, apparently scatterbrained, pretty as a weasel, with a gimlet nose, Europe presented to the gaze a face wearied with Parisian corruption, the wan face of a child fed on sour apples, lymphatic and stringy, soft and clinging. Her little foot forward, hands in her apron pockets, she wriggled without moving, so great was her animation. At once part-time street-girl and stage extra, she must, despite her youth, already have fulfilled many vocations. Depraved as a whole prisonful of women, she might have robbed her parents and shuffled on police-court benches. Asia inspired immediate fear; but at a glance one understood her, she was a direct descendant of Locusta; while Europe inspired an uneasiness which could only grow as one continued to employ her services; one felt her to be boundlessly corrupt; she would be able, as people say, to rock the hills.

  ‘Madame might come from Valenciennes,’ said Europe in a dry little voice, ‘like me. Would Monsieur,’ she said to Lucien with the air of a schoolmistress, ‘care to teach us the name he wishes Madame to be known by?’

  ‘Madame van Bogseck,’ replied the Spaniard promptly turning Esther’s name about. ‘Madame is a Dutch Jewess, widow of a merchant and ill with a liver complaint brought back from Java… Not particularly wealthy, so as not to excite curiosity.’

  ‘Enough to live on, six thousand francs a year, and we shall complain of her meanness,’ said Europe.

  ‘That’s it,’ said the Spaniard inclining his head. ‘The devil take you and your jokes!’ he added in a terrible voice as he caught passing between Asia and Europe looks which displeased him, ‘you know what I told you? You serve a queen, you owe her the respect due to a queen, you will be as devoted to her as to me. Neither the porter, nor the neighbours, nor the other tenants, nor in fact anybody must know what goes on here. It is up to you to thwart any curiosity which may be aroused. And Madame,’ he continued placing his broad hairy hand on Esther’s arm, ‘Madame mustn’t commit the slightest imprudence, you would prevent her if it became necessary, but… always respectfully. Europe, you will see to the upkeep of Madame’s wardrobe, and you will take trouble over it, so as to economize. Finally, let nobody, not even the most insignificant persons, set foot in the apartment. You two, between you, must learn to do everything here. My little beauty,’ said he to Esther, ‘when you wish to drive out in the evening, you will tell Europe, she knows where to find your people, for you’ll have a footman, one trained by me, like these two slaves.’

  Esther and Lucien could think of nothing to say, they listened to the Spaniard and looked at the two priceless specimens he was giving his orders to. To what secret did they owe the submissiveness, the devotion written on these two faces, the one so spitefully pert, the other so profoundly cruel? He divined what Esther and Lucien were thinking, the two of them looking as bemused as Paul and Virginia would have looked at the sight of two horrible snakes, and he said to them in a reassuring aside: ‘You can count on them as you would on myself; don’t keep any secrets from them, that will flatter them. Go and serve, my little Asia,’ said he to the cook; ‘and you, my pretty, lay another place,’ he said to Europe, ‘the least these children can do is give Daddy his breakfast.’

  When the two women had closed the door, and the Spaniard could hear Europe moving about, he said to Lucien and the girl, opening his broad hand: ‘I have a hold on them!’ An observation and a gesture to shudder at.

  ‘Where did you find them?’ cried Lucien.

  ‘Well, of course,’ the man answered, ‘I didn’t look for them in court circles! Europe rose from the mire and is afraid of returning to it… Threaten them with the good father when they don’t do what you want, and you’ll see them trembling like mice when a cat is mentioned. I am a trainer of wild animals,’ he added with a smile.

  ‘You seem like the demon to me!’ Esther cried becomingly, pressing herself against Lucien.

  ‘My child, I tried to bring you to Heaven; but the penitent harlot will always be a puzzle to the Church; if It found one, she would turn whore again in Paradise… The advantage you gained was to be forgotten and to take on the ways of a respectable woman; for what you learned there you’d never have picked up in the foul sphere you were living in… You owe me nothing,’ he said, perceiving a delightful expression of gratitude on Esther’s face, ‘I did it all for him…’ And he indicated Lucien… ‘You are a whore, you will remain a whore, you will die a whore; for, despite the seductive theories of people who keep wild animals, in this world you can’t become what you aren’t. The bumps man is right. You have the bu
mp of love.’

  The Spaniard was, as may be seen, a fatalist, like Napoleon, Mahomet and many great statesmen. A strange thing, nearly all men of action incline to Fatality, just as most thinkers incline to Providence.

  ‘I don’t know what I am,’ Esther answered with angelic sweetness; ‘but I love Lucien, and I shall adore him till I die.’

  ‘Come and have your breakfast,’ said the Spaniard abruptly, ‘and pray God that Lucien doesn’t get married too promptly, or you wouldn’t see him again.’

  ‘His marriage would be the death of me,’ she said.

  She allowed the sham priest to pass first in order to reach up to Lucien’s ear, without being seen.

  ‘Is it your wish,’ she said, ‘that I remain in the power of this man who has me guarded by those two hyenas?’

  Lucien inclined his head. The poor wench controlled her sadness and kept a joyous expression; but she felt horribly oppressed. It needed more than a year of constant and devoted care before she became accustomed to the two dreadful creatures, whom Carlos Herrera named the two watchdogs.

  A boring chapter, since it describes four years of happiness

  LUCIEN’S conduct, since his return to Paris, so clearly bore the mark of high politics that it was bound to excite and did excite the jealousy of all his former friends, upon whom he executed no other revenge than that of letting them rage at his successes, his irreproachable comportment and his way of keeping people at a distance. The poet once so communicative, so expansive, was now cold and reserved. De Marsay, taken as a model by the youth of Paris, brought no more temperance to his actions and utterance than did Lucien. As to wit, the journalist had already shown proof of that. De Marsay, with whom many people idly compared Lucien to the poet’s advantage, was small enough to chafe at this. Lucien, much in favour with the men who exercised power, so completely abandoned all thought of literary fame, that he was insensible to the success of his novel, reissued under its real title A Bowman of Charles IX, and to the stir made by his collection of sonnets entitled Marguerites, sold out by Dauriat in a week. ‘It is posthumous success,’ he replied with a laugh to Mademoiselle des Touches when she complimented him. The terrible Spaniard kept his creature with an arm of steel on the path at whose end the fanfares and profits of victory await the patient politician. Lucien had taken Beaudenord’s bachelor apartment, on the Quai Malaquais, in order to be nearer the rue Taitbout, and his counsellor was lodged in three rooms of the same house, on the fourth floor. Lucien now kept only one saddle-horse which he further harnessed to his gig, a manservant and a stable-boy. When he was not dining out, he dined at Esther’s. Carlos Herrera so carefully looked after the Quai Malaquais household, that Lucien spent less in all than ten thousand francs a year. Ten thousand were enough for Esther, thanks to the constant and inexplicable devotion of Europe and Asia. Lucien, moreover, took the greatest precautions when visiting the rue Taitbout. He always went by cab, with the blinds down, and made the carriage turn into the yard. Thus his passion for Esther and the very existence of the rue Taitbout set-up, wholly unknown to the world, harmed none of his undertakings or relations; never an indiscreet word escaped him on this delicate subject. His mistakes in that respect over Coralie, at the time of his first sojourn in Paris, had taught him a lesson. In the first place, his life displayed that regularity of good form under which abundant mysteries may be concealed: he remained in society every evening until one o’clock in the morning; he could be found at home between ten o’clock and one o’clock in the afternoon; then he went to the Bois de Boulogne and paid calls till five o’clock. He was rarely seen on foot, in that way he avoided his former acquaintance. When he was greeted by some journalist or by one of his earlier companions, his response was an inclination of the head polite enough not to give offence, but with a hint of deep disdain which discouraged French familiarity. He was thus rid of those whom he no longer wanted to know. A ripe hatred prevented him from calling on Madame d’Espard, who, more than once, had shown that she wanted him to call; if he met her at the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse’s or Mademoiselle des Touches’s, at Countess Montcornet’s, or elsewhere, he behaved towards her with exquisite politeness. This hatred, which Madame d’Espard shared, obliged Lucien to use prudence, for it will be seen how he had revived it by permitting himself a revenge which, in fact, got him a dressing-down from Carlos Herrera. ‘You are not yet powerful enough to avenge yourself on anybody whatever,’ the Spaniard had said to him. ‘When you’re on the road, under a hot sun, you don’t stop to pick flowers…’ Lucien had too evident a future and too much true superiority for the young men, whom his return to Paris and his unexplained fortune shocked or irritated, not to welcome the opportunity to do him a bad turn. Lucien, who knew that he had many enemies, was not ignorant of this ill-disposition among his friends. The abbé therefore wisely put his adopted son on his guard against the treacheries of society, against those imprudences which are so fatal to youth. Lucien was made every evening to recount to the abbé the smallest happenings of his day. Thanks to the advice of his mentor, he frustrated the cleverest inquisitiveness, that of society. Guarded by a positively English gravity of manner, protected within the walls raised by diplomatic circumspection, he gave nobody the right or the opportunity to cast an eye on his affairs. His youthful, handsome face had become, in society, as impassible as that of a princess on some royal occasion. Half way through the year 1829, the question arose of his marriage to the eldest daughter of the Duchesse de Grandlieu, who at that moment had no fewer than four daughters to set up. Nobody doubted that, in connection with such an alliance, the King would accord Lucien the favour of restoring the title of marquis to him. The marriage would decide Lucien’s political fortunes, and he would very likely be named ambassador to a German court. For the past three years certainly, Lucien’s life had been quite beyond attack; even de Marsay had had this to say about him: ‘The fellow must have somebody very powerful behind him!’ Lucien had thus become quite a figure. His passion for Esther had in its way greatly helped him to play the part of a sound man. A habit of that kind preserves the ambitious from all kinds of foolishness; caring little for any woman, they are not liable to let physical attractions gain the upper hand. As to the happiness Lucien enjoyed, it realized the dreams of a penniless poet, starving in his garret. Esther, the ideal of the courtesan in love, while reminding Lucien of Coralie, the actress with whom he had lived for a year, totally effaced her. All loving and devoted women desire seclusion, the incognito, the life of a pearl in the depths of the sea; but, with most of them, it remains a delightful whim to be talked about, a proof of love they would like to be able to give but cannot; while Esther, still in her dawn of happiness, living hourly beneath Lucien’s first burning glance, did not, in four years, feel curiosity for a moment. Her entire mind was set on remaining within the terms of the programme traced by the fatal hand of the Spaniard. Even more! in the midst of her most intoxicating delights, she did not abuse the power which a lover’s returning desire gives to a loved woman to question Lucien about Herrera, who, indeed, still terrified her: she dared not think about him. The cunning benefactions of this inexplicable character, to whom Esther certainly owed at once her boarding-school accomplishments, her ladylike ways and her moral regeneration, seemed to the little tart to be on loan from Hell. ‘I shall pay for all that one day,’ she told herself in fear. Whenever it was fine, she went out after dark by hired coach. She went, at a speed no doubt laid down by the abbé, to one of those charming woods outside Paris, at Boulogne-sur-Seine, Vincennes, Romainville or Ville d’Avray, often with Lucien, sometimes alone with Europe. There she walked without fear, for, when Lucien wasn’t with her, she was accompanied by a tall lackey liveried as a huntsman, armed with a real knife, his features and build those of a powerful athlete. This second guardian was provided, in the English manner, with a long, heavy stick, called a quarterstaff and known to singlestick-players, with which several assailants may be fended off. In conformity with an order given
by the abbé, Esther had never spoken a word to this fellow. Europe, when Madame wished to return, called out; the runner whistled to the coachman, who was always conveniently within distance. When Lucien walked beside Esther, Europe and the huntsman stayed a hundred yards away, like two of those infernal pages of whom The Arabian Nights speak, given by the enchanter to those whom he protects. Parisians, above all Parisian women, know little of the charms of a woodland walk on a fine night. The silence, the moonlight and the solitude have all the soothing action of a bath. In general, Esther set out at ten o’clock, walked from midnight to one o’clock, and returned home at half past two. It was never light in the apartment before eleven o’clock. She bathed, then embarked on a scrupulously careful process of dressing, unknown to most women in Paris, for it takes too long, and is rarely practised by any but the better class of prostitutes or great ladies who have the day to themselves. She was just about ready when Lucien arrived and always offered herself to his gaze like a flower newly opened. She cared only for her poet’s happiness; she belonged to him as a thing that was his, that is to say, she allowed him every freedom. Never did she cast a glance beyond the realm in which she shone so radiantly; the abbé had advised this, for it was part of the deep politician’s plans that Lucien should enjoy every kind of good fortune. Happiness is without history, and the story-tellers of all countries know this so well that the phrase: They lived happily, with or without an ever after, has always been the end of love-stories. A happiness so truly fantastic in the heart of Paris can only be explained by its circumstances. It was happiness in its purest form, a poem, a symphony whose four movements were years! All women will say: ‘That’s a good deal!’ Neither Esther nor Lucien had said: ‘It is too much!’ Finally, the formula: They lived happily, was more explicit in their case than in fairy-stories, for they had no children. In consequence, nothing-stopped Lucien flirting around in society, yielding to the impulses of the artistic temperament and, let it be admitted, the needs of his position. During the time when he was slowly making his way, he performed a variety of services, never mentioned, for certain politicians who needed assistance. In all such matters, his discretion was absolute. He greatly cultivated the company of Madame de Sérisy, for whom, it was said in drawing-rooms everywhere, he did all that was necessary. Madame de Sérisy had taken Lucien away from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who, it was said, didn’t want him any longer, one of those things that women put about by way of revenge for a happiness they would like. Lucien was, to put it that way, in the bosom of the High Chaplaincy, and intimate with a number of women who were friends of the Archbishop of Paris. Modest in his discretion, he waited patiently. Marsay’s pronouncement, Marsay himself being by that time married and leading his wife the kind of life Esther led, thus showed some penetration. But the submarine perils of Lucien’s position will be sufficiently explained in the course of this story.