A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘What are you in such a hurry about, then, Philosopher?’

  Philosopher was the nickname Peyrade gave Contenson, and which that Epictetus of informers deserved. The name Contenson itself, alas! concealed one of the oldest names of the Norman feudality.

  ‘Well, there’s ten thousand or so to be picked up.’

  ‘What is it? politics?’

  ‘No, a bit of nonsense! Baron Nucingen, you know, the old licensed thief, is whinnying after a woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes, and she’s got to be found for him, or he’ll die of love… Yesterday doctors were called in for consultation, so his valet tells me… I’ve already extracted a thousand francs from him, on the pretext of looking for the child.’

  And Contenson recounted the meeting of Nucingen with Esther, adding that the baron had received a little further information.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Peyrade, ‘we’ll find this Dulcinea; tell the baron to come by carriage this evening to the Champs Élysées, corner of the Avenue Gabriel and the Allée de Marigny.’

  Peyrade showed Contenson out, and knocked at his daughter’s door to be admitted. He went in joyfully, chance had just put in his way a means to the position he desired. He sank into a fine chair of the Voltaire style after kissing Lydia on the forehead, and said to her: ‘Play me something…’

  Lydia played him a fragment written for the piano by Beethoven.

  ‘That was nicely played, my little doe,’ said he holding his daughter between his knees, ‘had you realized that we’re twenty-one? Time to get married, our father, you know, is over seventy…’

  ‘I’m happy here,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m the only one you love, so ugly, so old?’ asked Peyrade.

  ‘Whom do you expect me to love?’

  ‘I’m dining with you, my little doe, tell Katt. I’m thinking of setting us up, of taking a place and looking for a husband worthy of you,… some good young man, full of talent, of whom you’ll be able to be proud one day…’

  ‘So far I’ve only seen one I’d care to marry…’

  ‘You’ve seen one?…’

  ‘Yes, in the Tuileries,’ Lydia went on, ‘he was passing, Countess Sérisy was on his arm.’

  ‘And he’s called?…’

  ‘Lucien de Rubempré!… I was sitting under a lime-tree with Katt, not thinking of anything. Beside me were sitting two ladies who said to each other: “There’s Madame de Sérisy with the handsome Lucien de Rubempré.” I looked at the couple the two ladies were looking at. “Ah! my dear,” said the other, “some women have all the luck!… That one’s permitted anything, because she was born a Ronquerolles, and her husband can afford it.” “Still, my dear,” replied the other lady, “Lucien costs her a lot…” What does that mean, papa?’

  ‘Just rubbish, like most of what these society people say,’ Peyrade told his daughter with a good-natured air. ‘Perhaps they were alluding to some political matter.’

  ‘Anyway, you questioned me, and I’ve answered. If you’re wanting to marry me off, find me a husband like that young man…’

  ‘Child!’ said her father, ‘looks in a man are not always signs of goodness. Young fellows endowed with an agreeable exterior meet with no difficulty in early life, they don’t need to exert any gifts, they are corrupted by the advances society makes to them, and later they have to pay interest on what they’ve borrowed!… I’d rather find you somebody whom established citizens, rich men and fools leave unprotected to their own resources…’

  ‘Such as who, father dear?’

  ‘A young man of unsuspected talent… But there we are, my dear child, I know how to rummage in all the garrets of Paris and carry out your programme by presenting for your loving approbation a man as handsome as the bad lot you spoke of, but with a future before him, a man marked out for fame and fortune… Oh! I never thought of it! I must have a horde of nephews, and there must be one among them worthy of you!… I’ll write or get somebody else to write to Provence!’

  A remarkable coincidence! at that very moment a young man, dying of hunger and fatigue, travelling on foot from the department of Vaucluse, a nephew of Father Canquoëlle’s, came in by the Barriére d’Italie, in search of his uncle. In the dreams of a family which knew nothing of that uncle’s destiny, Peyrade represented a word of hope: he was thought to have returned a millionaire from the Indies! Stimulated by fireside-corner novels, this great-nephew, called Theodosius, had undertaken a voyage of circumnavigation in quest of his legendary uncle.

  Three men at grips

  AFTER savouring the pleasures of fatherhood for several hours, Peyrade, his hair washed and died (the powder was a disguise), dressed in a solid frock-coat of blue cloth buttoned up to the chin, a black mantle on top, shod in heavy boots with thick soles and provided with a map specially made, walked slowly along the Avenue Gabriel, where Contenson, disguised as an old costerwoman, met him outside the Élysée-Bourbon gardens.

  ‘Monsieur de Saint Germain,’ Contenson said to him, addressing his former chief by the name he used on the job, ‘I’ve earned five facers through you; but the reason why I planted myself there is, the ruddy baron, before he gave them to me, went looking for information at the House,’ by which he meant the Prefecture.

  ‘I dare say I shall need you,’ replied Peyrade. ‘Dig out numbers 7, 10 and 21, we can make use of them without anybody noticing, either at the House or at Police HQ.’

  Contenson went and took up his station again by the carriage in which M. de Nucingen awaited Peyrade.

  ‘I am M. de Saint-Germain,’ said the southerner to the baron, raising himself up to the carriage door.

  ‘Gut, come in wiz me,’ replied the baron, giving the order to move on towards the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile.

  ‘You went to the Prefecture, baron? that wasn’t right… May one know what you said to the Prefect, and what answer he made you?’ asked Peyrade.

  ‘Before I will gif five hundert vrancs to ein mensch wie Contenson, I will know if he hess hearnt zem… I hef to ze Prefect of Police said simply set I wished ein agent by name Peyrade to employ abroad on a delicate mission, and if I could hef in him boundless confidence… Der Prefect hes replied you were of cleverest and honestest men. Thet is all.’

  ‘Now that he’s learnt my real name, M. le Baron might like to tell me what all this is about?…’

  When the baron had explained wordily and at great length in his dreadful Polish Jew’s jargon, both his meeting with Esther and the cry of the runner behind the coach, and his vain search, he ended by recounting what had passed at his house the evening before, Lucien de Rubempré’s involuntary smile, the belief expressed by Bianchon and more than one dandy present, relative to an acquaintance between the unknown woman and that young man.

  ‘Listen, baron, to begin with you’re going to give me ten thousand francs on account towards my expenses, because, for you, this is a matter of life and death; and, as your life is strung together of things like that, we must leave no stone unturned to find you this woman. Oh, you’re caught, well and truly!’

  ‘Yo, yo, caught is it…’

  ‘If I need more, I’ll tell you, baron; trust me,’ said Peyrade. ‘I’m not, as you may think, a spy… I was, in 1807, general police superintendent in Antwerp, and now that Louis XVIII is dead, I may confide to you that, for seven years, I was the head of his counter-police… So I can’t be haggled with. You’ll understand, baron, that you can’t precisely estimate the price of consciences to be bought, until you’ve gone into the matter. Don’t be uneasy, I shall succeed. And don’t think I shall be satisfied just with a sum of money, there’s something else I want by way of payment…’

  ‘ Zo long ass it iss less dan a kingdom…,’ said the baron.

  ‘It’ll be a mere nothing to you.’

  ‘Zen I vill pay!’

  ‘Do you know the Kellers?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘François Keller is the Comte de Gondreville’s son-in-law, and Count Gondre
ville yesterday dined with his son-in-law at your house.’

  ‘How in devil you know?’ cried the baron. ‘Iss doubtless Georges who always talk too much.’

  Peyrade laughed briefly. The banker thereupon conceived remarkable suspicions of his domestic, watching the man smile.

  ‘Count Gondreville is very much in a position to get me into a place I want at the Prefecture of Police, and within forty-eight hours the Prefect will be giving his mind to it,’ Peyrade continued. ‘Canvass the place for me, see that the Comte de Gondreville is willing to concern himself with the matter, zealously at that, and that will be sufficient recognition of the service I am going to do you. All I need is your word, for, if you didn’t keep it, you would sooner or later curse the day you were born,… and it’s I, Peyrade, who say that and mean it…’

  ‘I am give you my wort off honour I do all vhich iss possiple…’

  ‘If I did only what’s possible for you, that wouldn’t be enough.’

  ‘Ay, ay, ay, it will be frankly, I will persist.’

  ‘That’s it…. That’s all I want,’ said Peyrade, ‘and a little frankness between us is the best present we can make each other to start with.’

  ‘I am frank,’ repeated the baron. ‘Where do you want me to put you down?’

  ‘At the end of the Pont Louis XVI.’

  ‘To ze Bond de la Jambre,’ said the baron to his footman who came to the carriage door.

  ‘So I shell hef the unknown woman…,’ the baron said to himself as he drove away.

  ‘A remarkable coincidence,’ was Peyrade’s reflection as he proceeded on foot to the Palais Royal where he meant if he could to triple the ten thousand francs for Lydia’s dowry. ‘Here I am, having to investigate the little ways of the young man whose glance bewitched my daughter. I dare say he’s one of those men who’ve got ladies’ eyes,’ he said to himself employing an expression in the special lingo he’d made for his own use, in which his own observations or, rather, those of Corentin were summed up in words in which language was often outraged, but which that fact itself may have rendered more energetic and vivid.

  On his return home, Baron Nucingen seemed no longer himself; his dependents and his wife were astounded, the face he showed them was full of colour and animation, he was gay.

  ‘Watch out for the shareholders,’ said du Tillet to Rastignac.

  They were at the moment taking tea in the little drawing-room of Delphine de Nucingen, just back from the Opera.

  ‘Yo, shoah,’ replied the baron with a smile, catching his colleague’s little joke, ‘I feel much wish to do business…’

  ‘You’ve seen your Unknown, then?’ asked Madame de Nucingen.

  ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I hef only hope of finding her.’

  ‘Does anyone ever love his wife like that?…’ cried Madame de Nucingen feeling a stab of jealousy or feigning to.

  ‘When she’s yours,’ said du Tillet to the baron, ‘we shall come to supper with her, for I’m curious to examine the creature who’s been able to make you look as young as you are.’

  ‘She is a masterpiz off creation,’ replied the old banker.

  ‘He’ll get himself caught like a beginner,’ said Rastignac in Delphine’s ear.

  ‘Oh, he makes enough money to…’

  ‘To give a little of it back, you mean!…’ said du Tillet interrupting the baroness.

  Nucingen walked about the room as if his legs were giving him trouble.

  ‘Now’s the moment to get him to pay your latest debts,’ said Rastignac in the baroness’s ear.

  At that very moment, Carlos, who had been to the rue Taitbout to give his last instructions to Europe who was to play the leading part in the comedy devised to trick Baron Nucingen, was leaving full of hope. He was accompanied as far as the boulevard by Lucien, uneasy at seeing this demi-fiend so perfectly disguised that even he had only recognized him by his voice.

  ‘Where the devil did you find a woman more beautiful than Esther?’ he asked his corruptor.

  ‘Little one, you wouldn’t find that in Paris. That colouring wasn’t made in France.’

  ‘I still feel a bit stunned… The Callipygian Venus is less well-made! One might damn oneself for her… But where did you pick her up?’

  ‘ She was the best-looking tart in London. Drunk on gin, she killed her lover in a fit of jealousy… The lover was a waster the London police were glad to be rid of, and they’ve sent this creature to Paris for a while, to let the affair blow over… The jade was very well brought up. She’s a clergyman’s daughter, she speaks French as if it were her mother tongue; she doesn’t know and never will how she came to be where she is. She’s been told that if you liked her, she’d be able to get millions out of you; but that you’re as jealous as a tiger, and she’s been given the same time-table as Esther. She doesn’t know your name.’

  ‘But suppose Nucingen preferred her to Esther…’

  ‘Ah, you’ve reached that point already…,’ cried Carlos. ‘Now you’re afraid that what so frightened you yesterday won’t come off! Don’t worry. This white-skinned, fair-haired wench has blue eyes; it’s the reverse with the lovely Jewess, and there are no eyes but Esther’s so to disturb a man as depraved as Nucingen. You couldn’t be hiding a plain Jane, after all! When this doll has played her part, I shall send her, in safe company, to Rome or Madrid, where they’ll run mad over her.’

  ‘Since she’s only with us for a while,’ said Lucien, ‘I’d better go back to her…’

  ‘Off you go, my child, enjoy yourself… You’ll have a day extra tomorrow. Me, I’m waiting for somebody I’ve commissioned to find out what is going on at Baron Nucingen’s.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His manservant’s girl-friend, for you’ve got to know from moment to moment what the enemy’s up to.’

  At midnight, Paccard, who ran Esther’s errands, found Carlos on the Pont des Arts, the best spot in Paris for a brief discussion which mustn’t be overheard. As they talked, the messenger kept his eyes turned in one direction and his master in the other.

  ‘This morning the baron went to the Prefecture of Police, very early, and this evening he prides himself on having found the woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes, he’s been promised her…’

  ‘We shall be watched!’ said Carlos, ‘but by whom?…’

  ‘They’ve already tried Louchard, at Trade Protection.’

  ‘That was a waste of time,’ replied Carlos. ‘The only people we have to fear are the Security Brigade, the Judicial Police; and the moment they won’t move, we can!…’

  ‘There’s something else!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The chums… Yesterday I saw La Pouraille,… he’s chilled a loving couple and he’d got five thousand nicker… in gold!’

  ‘He’ll be arrested,’ said Jacques Collin, ‘it’s the rue Boucher murders.’

  ‘What’s my orders?’ said Paccard with the air of respect a marshal might wear on presenting himself for orders to Louis XVIII.

  ‘You will go out every evening at ten o’clock,’ replied Carlos, ‘you’ll get out fast to the Bois de Vincennes, by way of the woods round Meudon and Ville d’Avray. If anybody’s watching or following you, take it easy, make friends, talk, let them think they can bribe you. Talk about Rubempré’s jealousy, say he’s crazy about Madame, say he doesn’t want anybody to know he’s got a mistress like that…’

  ‘Right! Do I go armed?…’

  ‘Never!’ said Carlos emphatically. ‘A weapon!… what use is that? except to cause trouble. Whatever you do, don’t use that hunting knife. When you can break the strongest man’s legs with the throw I showed you!… when you can take on three armed coppers in the certainty of flooring two of them before they’re out with their small arms, what is there to fear? You’ve got your stick, haven’t you?…’

  ‘Too true!’ said the runner.

  Paccard, who’d been called Old Guard, Big Rabbit, Bang On, a man with a leg like iron, an arm of ste
el, an Italian’s whiskers, artist’s hair, sapper’s beard, his face as pale and impassive as Contenson’s, kept his fiery nature under and held himself like a drum-major which put suspicion off the scent. A man escaped from Poissy or Melun doesn’t exhibit this pompous fatuity and this consciousness of merit. Ja’far to the Harun al-Rashid of the hulks, he felt for the latter the comradely admiration which Peyrade himself had for Corentin. This colossus, excessively long-legged, without much chest or much flesh on his bones, moved about on his two pins with solemn gait. His right foot took no step without his right eye taking in the external circumstances with that unruffled speed peculiar to the thief and the spy. The left eye imitated the right. A step, a look! Curt, agile, ready for anything at any minute, but for that intimate foe known as fire-water, Paccard would have been perfect, Carlos used to say, so deeply was he imbued with the gifts indispensable to a man at war with society; but the master had succeeded in persuading the slave to clear the ground in order to stop the blaze spreading and so not drink in the day-time. Back at home in the evening, Paccard absorbed in thimblefuls the golden liquid poured out of a big-bellied stoneware bottle from Danzig.

  ‘I’ll keep my blinkers peeled,’ said Paccard putting his magnificent plumed hat back on his head after saluting the man he called his confessor.

  And that is how three men each as strong in his own sphere as Jacques Collin, Peyrade and Corentin came to find themselves at grips on the same ground, and to put their genius into a struggle in which each fought for his own passion or his own interest. It was one of those unknown but terrible battles in which all the strength and talent needed to establish a fortune expend themselves in hatred, petty irritations, marching and countermarching, ruses.

  Nucingen in the expectation of happiness addresses himself to his toilet

  MEΝ and means, all was secret on Peyrade’s side, his friend Corentin being behind him in this exploit, a stupid trifle to them. And so history is silent on the subject, as it is on the real causes of many revolutions. However, the result was as follows.