A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘That is my dream: that and virtue!’ said Florine with a smile. ‘And all this expense is for whom?’ she asked Nucingen. ‘Some virgin just fallen from the skies?’

  ‘Iss a woman who must go back zere,’ replied the baron.

  ‘A way of playing Jupiter,’ the actress continued. ‘And when are we to see her?’

  ‘Oh, the day of the house-warming!’ cried du Tillet.

  ‘Nod until den…’ said the baron.

  ‘Well, we shall have to get ourselves well and truly brushed up, turned out, positively inlaid,’ added Florine. ‘Oh, won’t the women just be giving their dressmakers and hairdressers headaches that day!… When is it?…’

  ‘I em not de master.’

  ‘Well, there’s a woman for you!…’ Florine exclaimed. ‘How I should like to see her!…’

  ‘I also,’ replied the baron artlessly.

  ‘What! the house, the woman, the furnishings, all new!’

  ‘Even the baron,’ said du Tillet, ‘for my old friend is looking very young.’

  ‘We must get him down to twenty,’ said Florine, ‘if only for a moment.’

  During the early days of 1830, everybody in Paris was talking of Nucingen’s passion and the unbridled luxury of his house. Talked about everywhere and made constant fun of, the poor baron reacted violently in a manner which may be easily understood and joined the determination of a financier to the passion raging in his heart. At the house-warming he proposed to cast off his part as a kindly father and touch the reward of so much sacrifice. Too easily numbed by the Torpedo, he resolved to deal with this marriage question by correspondence, and so get agreement signed and sealed. Bankers only believe in firm bills of exchange. And so, one fine morning in the New Year, the Shark rose early, went to his office and composed the following letter, written in good French; for if he spoke it badly, there was nothing wrong with his spelling.

  Dear Esther, flower of my thoughts and sole happiness of my life, when I told you that I loved you as I love my daughter, I deceived both you and myself. I meant thus simply to express to you the sanctity of my feelings, so different from those which men commonly experience, first because I am old and secondly because I had never loved. I love you so much that, if you cost me my whole fortune, I should not therefore love you less. Be just! Few men would have seen in you, as I did, an angel: I have never cast eyes on your past. I love you at one and the same time as I love my daughter Augusta, who is my only child, and as I should love my wife if my wife had been capable of loving me. If happiness alone can absolve an old man in love, ask yourself whether I am not playing an absurd part. I have made you the joy, the consolation of my declining years. You know very well that, as long as I live, you will live in as much contentment as a woman could hope for, and you must also know well that after my death you will be rich enough for your good fortune to be the envy of other women. Since I first had the pleasure of speaking to you, you have had your share in all the business I did, and you have an account at the House of Nucingen. Within a matter of days, you will occupy a house which, sooner or later, will be yours, if you like it. Will it indeed be as a father that I visit you there, or shall I at last be made happy?… Forgive me for writing to you so plainly; but when I am with you, I lack courage, and I am too much aware of you as mistress. It is not my wish to offend you, I simply want to let you know how much I suffer and how cruel it is at my age to wait, when each day deprives me of hope and pleasure. The delicacy of my behaviour is a warrant of the sincerity of my intentions. Have I ever acted as though I were a creditor? You are like a citadel, and I am not a young man. To my complaints you reply that to you it is a matter of life and death, and you make me believe it while I am listening to you; but at home I become a prey to black mortification, to doubts which dishonour both you and me. You seemed to me as kind, as frank as you were beautiful; but now you seem bent on destroying my conviction. Judge for yourself! You tell me that your heart nourishes a passion, a pitiless passion, and yet you refuse to tell me the name of the one you love… Is that natural? You have turned a man not without strength into a man of incredible weakness… See to what a pass you have brought me! after five months I am compelled to ask you what future there is for my passion? I must know what part I am to play when you are installed in your house. Money means nothing to me where you are concerned; I am not foolish enough to think that such a contempt for money will impress you; but if my love is boundless, there is a limit to my fortune, which I respect only for your sake. Well if by giving you everything I possess I could, then poor, gain your affection, I would rather be poor and loved by you than rich and despised. You have wrought such a change in me, my dear Esther, that nobody knows me any longer: I paid ten thousand francs for a picture by Joseph Bridau, because you told me that he was a gifted painter and neglected. To all the poor I meet I give five francs in your name. Well! this poor old man, who considers himself your debtor when you do him the honour of accepting anything from him, what is it he asks?… All he wants is a single hope, though what a.hope it is, dear God! a certainty, rather, of receiving from you only what my passion exacts. The flame in my heart will itself help you to deceive me cruelly. I am ready to submit to all the conditions you impose on my happiness, my infrequent pleasures; but, at least, tell me that the day you take possession of your house, you will accept the heart and the devotion of one who inscribes himself till the end of his days,

  Your slave,

  FRÉDÉRIC DE NUCINGEN.

  ‘Christ, the old money-bags, what a bore he is!’ exclaimed Esther, all harlot again.

  She took writing paper and wrote, in letters as big as the paper would hold, the famous Scribe phrase, now proverbial: You can have my teddy bear.

  A quarter of an hour later, Esther remorsefully wrote the letter which follows:

  MONSIEUR LE BARON,

  Please pay no attention to the letter you’ve just received from me, I wrote as though I’d returned to the madness of my early life; so forgive a wretched girl who ought to see herself as a slave. I have never so deeply felt the degradation of my state as since the day I was abandoned to you. You have paid, I am the debt. Nothing is more sacred than debts of dishonour. I have no right to clear myself by jumping in the Seine. A debt can always be paid in this dreadful currency valid only on one side: I therefore await your commands. I am willing to pay in one night every penny mortgaged on that fatal moment, and I have no doubt that an hour of me is worth millions, since it will be the last, the only hour. After that, my account will be straight, and I can give up my life. An honest woman may rise again after a fall; but, those like me, we have fallen too low. My decision is so finally taken that I shall beg you to keep this letter as evidence of the cause of death of her who signs herself for one day,

  Your servant,

  ESTHER.

  Having sent this letter off, Esther regretted it. Ten minutes later, she wrote a third, as follows:

  Pardon, dear baron, it is me again. I did not mean either to make fun of you or to hurt you; I only meant you to ponder this simple piece of reasoning: if we stay as father and daughter to each other, your pleasure will be slight, but it will last; if you insist on the contract being fulfilled, you will have me to grieve for. I won’t vex you any further: the day on which you choose pleasure instead of happiness will have no tomorrow for me.

  Your daughter,

  ESTHER.

  At the first letter, the baron fell into one of those cold furies which may prove fatal to millionaires, he looked at himself in the glass, he rang. ‘A voot path!…’ he called to his new manservant. While he was taking his foot bath, the second letter arrived, he read it, and fell unconscious. The millionaire was carried to his bed. When the financier recovered consciousness, Madame de Nucingen was sitting at the foot of the bed.

  ‘The wench is right!’ she said, ‘what makes you think you can buy love?… it isn’t a commodity. Let’s have a look at your letter?’

  The baron gave her the various
scribbled drafts he’d made, Madame de Nucingen read them smiling. The third letter arrived.

  ‘This is a remarkable tart!’ the baroness exclaimed when she’d read the last letter.

  ‘Vot vill I do, Matame?’ the baron asked his wife.

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘Vait!’ he went on, ‘de flesh iss veak…’

  ‘Look, my dear,’ said the baroness, ‘you’ve been rather nice to me lately, I’ll give you a bit of advice.’

  ‘You are kind, I am krateful!…’ he said. ‘Run up tebts if you like, I bay dem…’

  ‘The effect these letters had on you will touch a woman more than any amount of expenditure, or any letter, however movingly conceived; see that she learns about it indirectly, you may possess her! and… don’t worry, it won’t kill her,’ she said examining her husband.

  Madame de Nucingen did not understand the nature of a harlot.

  Peace treaty between Asia and the House of Nucingen

  ‘How indellichent Matame de Nucingen iss!’ the baron said to himself, when his wife had left him. But the more the banker marvelled at the subtlety of the advice the baroness had just given him, the less was he able to see precisely how he should make use of it; and not only did he think himself stupid, he said so aloud.

  The proverbial stupidity of money men is only relative, however. It is the same with our faculties of mind as it is with physical aptitude. The dancer’s strength lies in his feet, the blacksmith’s in his arms; the market porter exercises himself by carrying great weights, the singer toughens his larynx, and the pianist’s wrist becomes strong. A banker is accustomed to weigh and balance different pieces of business and to set interests in motion, just as a writer of vaudevilles is trained in creating a situation and moving his characters about the stage. Conversational wit should no more be demanded of Baron Nucingen than poetic images of the understanding of a mathematician. In any age, how many poets are there who can write prose or who excel on social occasions like Madame de Cornuel? Buffon was dull, Newton never loved, Lord Byron loved hardly anyone but himself, Rousseau was gloomy and near madness, La Fontaine absent-minded. Equally distributed, human energy produces fools, or universal mediocrity; unequally, it gives rise to those incongruities we call genius, which, if they were discernible by the eye, would seem deformities. The same law governs the body: perfect beauty is almost invariably coupled with coldness or silliness. That Pascal should be at once a great geometer and a great writer, that Beaumarchais was a first-class businessman, Zamet a remarkable courtier; such rare exceptions only prove the rule of the specialization of intelligence. In the field of calculated speculation, the banker may deploy just as much skill, cleverness, subtlety and high qualities as a brilliant diplomat shows in the sphere of conflicting national interests. If a banker were still remarkable outside his office, he would be a great man. Nucingen multiplied by the Prince de Ligne, Mazarin or Diderot is not a likely human formula, and yet it has borne the names of Pericles, Aristotle, Voltaire and Napoleon. The rays of the imperial sun should not blind us to the qualities of the man, the Emperor also had charm, he was cultivated and witty. Monsieur de Nucingen, purely a banker, with no inventive capacity outside his calculations, like most bankers, believed only in the safe investment. In the matter of art, he had the good sense to seek out, money in hand, the recognized experts, engaging the best architect, the best surgeon, the man acknowledged to know most about pictures or statues, the smartest solicitor, once it was a matter of building a house, looking after his health, buying curiosities or an estate. But, as there are no accredited experts in intrigue or graduate masters of passion, a banker has little guidance when he’s in love and cannot be expected to manage women. Nucingen could therefore think of nothing better to do than what he had done before: give money to some Frontin, male or female, to act or think in his place. Madame Saint Estève alone could put the baroness’s plan into action. The banker bitterly regretted quarrelling with the odious old-clothes woman. Nevertheless, confident in the magnetic influence of his coffers and the soothing drugs dispensed by the Bank of France on the signed prescription of Garat, he rang for his manservant and told him to inquire, in the rue Neuve Saint Marc, for this horrible widow, asking her to call. In Paris, extremes meet by way of the passions. Vice indissolubly welds the rich to the poor, the great to the small. The Empress there consults Mademoiselle Lenormand. In every age, the great lord has his Cabaret Ramponneau.

  The new manservant returned two hours later.

  ‘Monsieur le Baron,’ he said, ‘Madame Saint-Estève has gone bankrupt.’

  ‘Och, zat iss gut!’ said the baron beaming, ‘she iss in my hand!’

  ‘The good woman is, it seems, given to gambling,’ the manservant went on. ‘Moreover, she is under the domination of a small-part actor from the outlying theatres, whom, for decency’s sake, she passes off as her godson. It seems she’s a first-rate cook, and she wants a place.’

  ‘Dese toffles of suportinade cheniuses oll hef ten wayss off earning money, und zwelf wayss off zbending it,’ the baron thought without realizing that Panurge had once thought something of the kind.

  He sent the domestic off in search of Madame Saint-Estève who came next day. Questioned by Asia, the new valet told the female spy of the dreadful results of the letters written by the mistress of Monsieur le Baron.

  ‘He really must be in love with that woman,’ said the manservant in conclusion, ‘he nearly died. Me, I advised him not to try again, he’d only be diddled. A woman who’s already cost Monsieur le Baron five hundred thousand francs,’ he said, ‘without counting what he’s spent on the house in the rue Saint Georges!… But that woman wants money, nothing but money. As I was leaving the baron’s, his wife said with a laugh: “If this goes on, that tart will leave me a widow.” ’

  ‘Damn it!’ replied Asia, ‘we can’t kill the hen that lays the golden eggs!’

  ‘Monsieur le Baron’s only hope lies in you,’ said the valet.

  ‘It’s only natural, I know how to deal with women!…’

  ‘Well, here we are, in you go,’ said the manservant grovel-ling before her occult power.

  ‘Well,’ said the false Madame Saint-Estève entering the invalid’s room with an obsequious manner, ‘it seems that Monsieur le Baron has had a little disappointment?… Ah, well! everyone suffers from the same complaint. Even I’ve had my troubles. Within two months the wheel of fortune’s turned oddly for me! here I am wanting a place… Neither of us was very sensible. If Monsieur le Baron cared to place me as cook at Madame Esther’s, he’d find me the most devoted of the devoted, and I should be very useful to him in keeping an eye on Eugénie and Madame.’

  ‘Iss not a qvestion of det,’ said the baron. ‘I em nod yed de masder, end I em dreated like…’

  ‘A top,’ Asia went on. ‘You’ve made other people spin, Daddy, and now the child’s got the whip… Well, God is just, you can’t deny that! ’

  ‘ “Chust “?’ said the baron. ‘I tit not pring you here to hear you moralize…’

  ‘Oh, go on, my child, a bit of morality does nobody any harm. It’s the salt of life to people like me, just as vice is to the pious. Look now, were you generous? Did you pay her debts?…’

  ‘Yo!’ said the baron piteously.

  ‘Good. And you cleared her belongings, even better; but let’s face it!… that isn’t enough: it’ll keep her warm, but, you know, the creatures like to have money to burn…’

  ‘I em brebaring for her a zurbrise, rue Saint Georges… She knowss,…’ said the baron. ‘Pud I ton’d vish to be a vool.’

  ‘Well, leave her!…’

  ‘I em avrait she let me,’ exclaimed the baron.

  ‘And we want something for our money, eh, my boy?’ replied Asia. ‘Well, listen. It was the public we bilked of these millions, my child! You’re suppose to have twenty-five.’ (The baron couldn’t repress a smile.) ‘Well, you’d better resign yourself to the loss of one…’

  ‘I vould lose von glat
ly,’ answered the baron, ‘but I vill hef no sooner lose it dan a secont iss esk.’

  ‘Yes, I see that,’ replied Asia, ‘you don’t want to say B, for fear you’ll have to go as far as Z. Esther is an honest girl, all the same…’

  ‘Yo, iss honest!’ exclaimed the banker; ‘iss villing seddle, ass you bay a tebt.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to be your mistress, she feels repugnance. Well, that’s likely enough, the child has always had a mind of her own. When you’ve only known nice young people, you don’t think much of an old man… You’re no beauty, you’re fat like Louis XVIII, and a bit of a numskull, like everybody who plays about with money instead of women. Well, if you don’t mind another six hundred thousand francs,’ said Asia, ‘I’ll undertake to see she becomes just what you want her to be.’

  ‘Six hundert tausend vrancs!…’ cried the baron with a start. ‘Esder is gosting me a million already!…’

  ‘Happiness is well worth sixteen hundred thousand francs, you old fraud. You certainly know men, these days, who’ve swallowed up more than a million or two with their mistresses. I know women who’ve even cost men their lives, men who’ve spilt their heads into a basket… You know that doctor who poisoned his friend?… he wanted the money to please a woman.’

  ‘‘Yo, yo, put if I em in luf I em not a vool, not in zis, at least, for vhen I zee her, I vould gif her pordvolio…’

  ‘Listen, Monsieur le Baron,’ said Asia taking up a Semira-mis pose, ‘you’ve been swindled enough like that. As true as I’m called Saint-Estéve, at any rate professionally, I’m on your side.’

  ‘Gut!… I vili revard you.’

  ‘I should hope so, for I made it plain I knew how to take my revenge. Besides, you know, Daddy,’ she said casting him a glance to make the blood run cold, ‘I have the means to whistle Madame Esther away from you just as I’d snuff out a candle. And I know my woman! When the little trollop has made you happy, she’ll be even more necessary to you than she is at this moment. You paid me well, you needed your ears pulling, but in the end you settled! Me, I kept my part of the bargain, didn’t I? Well, then, look, I’ll make you a new offer.’