‘Vot iss?’
‘You install me with Madame as cook, you take me on for ten years, I get a thousand francs wages, you pay the last five years in advance (just a gratuity, eh?). Once I’m there on the spot, I shall be able to persuade Madame to make the following concessions. For example, you get her a lovely dress sent round by Madame Auguste, who knows Madame’s tastes and little ways, and you give orders for the new equipage to be at the door at four o‘clock. You call in on your way home from the Bourse, and you take her for a little run in the Bois de Boulogne. So then this woman has proclaimed herself your mistress, she’s committed in the sight and knowledge of all Paris… A hundred thousand francs… You’ll dine with her (I know how to lay out dinners of that kind); you take her to the theatre, to the Variétés, in a box, and all Paris then says: “Look, there’s that old swindler Nucingen with his mistress…” That flatters both you and her, yes? And all these advantages, as I’m an honest woman, you get for the hundred thousand francs… At the end of a week, if you keep it up, you’ll have made headway.’
‘I shell hef bait out hundert tausend vrancs…’
‘The second week,’ continued Asia without appearing to have heard this piteous expression, ‘Madame will make up her mind, urged on by these preliminaries, to leave her little apartment and settle into the house you’re offering her. Your Esther has caught a glimpse of society again, she’s met her old friends, she’ll want to cut a figure, she’ll do the honours in her little palace! It stands to reason… Another hundred thousand francs! And there you are, you’re at home. Esther is compromised,… she belongs to you. That leaves only one trifle, though you think it’s the main thing, you old elephant! (Oh, the fat monster, that makes him open his eyes!) I’ll see to that… Four hundred thousand… But that lot, my love, you don’t pay up till next day… How’s that for honesty, eh?… I trust you more than you trust me. If I can persuade Madame to appear in public as your mistress, to compromise herself, to take everything you offer, this very day may be, then perhaps you’ll believe I can lead her to yield up the pass to the Great Saint Bernard. It isn’t easy, mind you!… To get your artillery through, it’ll be as hard pulling as it was for the First Consul over the Alps.’
‘Vot for so?’
‘Her heart is full of love, razibus, as you say, you people who know Latin,’ Asia went on. ‘She thinks she’s the Queen of Sheba because she’s been washed in the sacrifices she’s made for her lover,… a notion women like that do stuff their heads with! Ah, my little one, let’s be fair, it’s a beautiful thought! The joker’d die of grief at belonging to you, I shouldn’t wonder; only, what I find reassuring, personally, and I tell you this to encourage you, is, there’s a good bit of the tart in her still, that one.’
‘You hef,’ said the baron who had listened to Asia in deep silence and with admiration, ‘ze chenius off gorruption, es I hef zet for panking.’
‘Just as you say, my angel,’ added Asia.
‘Oll right for vifty tausend vrancs inzdeat of hundert!… End I gif you vife hundert tausend de morning efter my driumph.’
‘Well, I’ll get to work,’ replied Asia… ‘Ah, call when you like!’ continued Asia with respect. ‘MONSIEUR will already find MADAME as soft as a cat’s back, and quite disposed to be agreeable to him.’
‘Gut, gut,’ said the banker rubbing his hands. And, having dismissed the frightful mulattress with a smile, he said to himself: ‘How zenziple off me to hef a lot off money!’
And he sprang out of bed, went to his office and took up the management of his immense business, with a gay heart.
Abdication
NOTHING could have been more fatal to Esther than the path adopted by Nucingen. The poor harlot was defending her life in defending herself against infidelity. Carlos called this perfectly natural defence squeamishness. Not without taking the customary precautions, Asia went to inform Carlos of the discussion she had just had with the baron, and the use she’d put it to. Like himself, the man’s anger was terrible; he at once took a carriage, the blinds down, to Esther’s, driving into the yard. Still almost white when he went up, the double forger appeared before the poor wench; she looked at him, she was standing up, she fell on to a chair, her legs giving way.
‘What’s the matter, sir?’ she asked him trembling through all her limbs.
‘Leave us, Europe,’ said he to the lady’s maid.
Esther looked at the creature as a child might have looked at its mother, from whom a murderer was taking it away to kill.
‘Do you know where you will be sending Lucien?’ Carlos went on when he found himself alone with Esther.
‘Where?…’ she asked in a weak voice hazarding a glance at her executioner.
‘There where I came from, my jewel.’
There was a red mist before Esther’s eyes as she looked at the man.
‘To the galleys,’ he added in a low voice.
Esther’s eyes closed, her legs stretched out, her arms hung down, she went white. The man rang. Prudence came.
‘See that she recovers consciousness,’ he said coldly. ‘I haven’t finished.’
He paced about the drawing-room as he waited. Prudence-Europe was obliged to come and ask the gentleman to lift Esther on to the bed; he picked her up with an ease which indicated his athletic strength. The most violent resources of the Pharmacy had to be drawn on to bring Esther back to awareness of her ills. An hour later, the poor trollop was in a state to listen to the living nightmare, who sat at the foot of her bed, his fixed and glaring eyes two jets of molten lead.
‘Little one,’ he proceeded, ‘Lucien stands between a splendid life, honoured, happy, full of dignity, and the hole full of water, mud and pebbles into which he was going to jump when I met him. The house of Grandlieu requires the dear child to show an estate worth a million before getting him the title of marquess and offering him the hand of that long pole called Clotilde, with whose help he will rise to power. Thanks to us two, Lucien has just acquired his maternal manor, the old house of Rubempré which didn’t cost much, thirty thousand francs; but his solicitor, by the luck of the market, has managed to add to it a million’s worth of land, on which three hundred thousand francs have been paid. The house, the costs, the considerations paid out to those who provided a front to disguise the nature of the transaction from local people, have used up the rest. True, we have a hundred thousand francs in business which, in a few months’ time, will be worth two or three hundred thousand francs; but there will still be four hundred thousand francs to pay… Three days from now, Lucien comes back from Angoulême where he’s just been, for he mustn’t be suspected of having come into money through carding your mattresses…’
‘No, indeed!’ she said raising her eyes with a sublime effort.
‘I ask you, is this the moment to frighten the baron?’ he asked calmly, ‘and you almost killed him the day before yesterday! he fainted like a woman on reading your second letter. Your style is magnificent, I must compliment you on it. If the baron had died, what would have happened to us? When Lucien walks out of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s, son-in-law of the Duc de Grandlieu, if you then feel like jumping into the Seine,… well, my love, we’ll join hands and jump in together. It’s one way of making an end. But just think! Wouldn’t it be better to live and to be able to say to oneself at every minute: “That dazzling fortune, that happy family” – for he will have children,… children!… (have you ever thought of the pleasure of running your fingers through his children’s hair?).’
Esther closed her eyes and quivered gently.
‘Well, seeing that edifice of happiness, one says to oneself: “That is my work!” ’
There was a pause, during which the two creatures looked at each other.
‘That’s what I’ve tried to make of a despair which was for throwing itself in the water. Am I the egoist? That’s what love is! Only kings receive such devotion; but I anointed my Lucien king! If I were riveted for the rest of my days to my old chains, I c
ould, I think, retain my tranquillity by saying to myself: “He is at the ball, he is at Court.” My soul and my mind would triumph while my carcass was given over to the screws! You are only a wretched female, you love like a female! But with a courtesan, as with all such degraded creatures, love should be a means of becoming a mother, in spite of nature which has stricken you with infecundity! If ever, under the skin of the Abbé Carlos Herrera, they were to discover the convict I was at one time, do you know what I would do to avoid compromising Lucien?’
Esther awaited his reply with a certain anxiety.
‘Well,’ he went on after a slight pause, ‘I should die as black men do, by swallowing my tongue. But you, with your affectations, are putting them on my tracks. What did I demand of you?… to wear the Torpedo’s skirts again for six months, for six weeks, and make use of them to lay hold on a million… Lucien will never forget you! Men don’t forget a being recalled to memory by the happiness they enjoy every morning awaking always rich. Lucien is even kinder than you,… he began by loving Coralie, she dies, fine; but he couldn’t pay for her funeral, he didn’t act as you were just doing, he didn’t faint, poet or not; he wrote six naughty songs, he got three hundred francs for them, to pay the undertaker. I have those songs, I know them by heart. Well, you too, make up songs; be gay, be irresistible… and insatiable! You hear me? don’t oblige me to speak again… There, kiss Daddy. Good-bye…’
When, half an hour later, Europe went into her mistress’s room, she found her kneeling before a crucifix in the pose which the most religious of all painters gave to Moses before the bush in Horeb, to portray his deep and complete adoration of Jehovah. After saying her last prayers, Esther renounced her fine life, honour as she had come to know it, glory, her virtues, love. She rose.
‘Oh, Madame, I shall never see you like that again!’ cried Prudence Servien struck almost dumb by the sublime beauty of her mistress.
She quickly turned the cheval-glass so that the poor harlot could see herself. Her eyes still showed traces of the soul ascending to heaven. The Jewish complexion glowed. Moist with tears half-dried by the heat of prayer, her lashes were like foliage after summer rain, the sun of pure love made them sparkle for the last time. The expression on her lips was that of her last invocations to the angels, from whom it may be she had borrowed the martyr’s palm in return for the spotless life she offered up. In short, she bore about her the majesty which must have shone from Mary Stuart at the moment at which she bade farewell to her crown, to the earth and to love.
‘I should have liked Lucien to see me thus,’ she said breathing a stifled sigh. ‘Now,’ she continued in vibrant tones, ‘let’s have a bit of fun…’
At this, Europe stood open-mouthed, as though she had heard an angel blaspheme.
‘Why, what’s the matter with you, looking to see if I’ve got a mouthful of cloves instead of teeth? From now on, I’m just a vile and filthy creature, a thief, a tart, and I’m waiting for my gentleman friend. So heat up a bath and get my glad rags out. It is mid-day, the baron will no doubt be coming on here from ‘Change, I’ll tell him that I’m only waiting for him, and I understand Asia is to lay on a fancy dinner, I’ll turn the man crazy… Come along, jump to it, my girl… We’re going to have fun, that is to say we’re going to work.’
She sat down at her table, and wrote the following letter:
My dear, if the cook you’ve sent me had never been in my service, I might have supposed your intention was to let me know how many times you’d fainted the day before yesterday on receiving my three little notes. (What do you expect? I was very on edge that day, I was dwelling on memories of my deplorable existence.) But I know the sincerity of Asia. So I’m not going to go on feeling sorry for having upset you, since it helped to prove how fond of me you are. We’re like that, we poor despised creatures: real affection touches us far more than all the money you can spend on us. Me, I’ve always been afraid of being a coat-rack on which you hung your vanity. It irritated me to think I was nothing but that. Yes, despite all your fine protestations, I thought you took me for a bought woman. Well, now you’ll find me a good girl, so long as you’ll always do a little what I say. If this letter may take the place of doctor’s orders, you can prove it by coming to see me on your way from the Stock Exchange. You will find fully armed, and wearing your favours, her who calls herself now, for life, your pleasure machine,
ESTHER.
At the Bourse, Baron Nucingen was so jovial, so happy, so easy to please, and made so many jokes, that du Tillet and the Kellers, who were there, could not refrain from asking him for an explanation of his jollity.
‘She lofs me… Ve shell soon hef housevarming,’ he said to du Tillet.
‘How much is that costing you?’ asked François Keller whom Madame Colleville was said to have cost twenty-five thousand francs a year.
‘Nefer hes dis woman, who iss an ainchel, esk me for two bress varthinks.’
‘They never do that,’ du Tillet replied no less abruptly. ‘It’s so they need never ask for anything themselves that they equip themselves with aunts and mothers.’
Esther reappears on the surface of Paris
FROM the Bourse to the rue Taitbout, the baron said to his coachman seven times: ‘Ve aren’t moofing, vy don’t you vip ze horse!…’
He climbed up eagerly, and for the first time found his mistress beautiful in the way of those women whose sole occupation is to wear fine clothes and adorn themselves. Newly bathed, the flower was fresh, fragrant enough to inspire concupiscence in a Robert d’Arbrissel. Esther was dressed to perfection but informally. A light coat of black rep, trimmed with pink silk, opened on a skirt of grey satin, the costume later adopted by the fair Amigo in I Puritani. A neckerchief of English needle-point fluttered about her shoulders. The sleeves of her gown were caught up with piping into the separate puffs which, for some time past, fashionable woman had substituted for the leg-of-mutton sleeves which had begun to seem monstrous. Upon her magnificent hair, Esther had pinned a madwoman’s bonnet of Mechlin lace, which looked as though it would fall off but never did, giving her the appearance of uncombed disorder, though one distinctly saw the white parting of her little head between the furrows of hair.
‘Isn’t it terrible to see Madame looking so beautiful in a shabby little drawing-room like this?’ said Europe to the baron as she opened the door to him.
‘Ha, veil, go ve rue Saint Georges?’ said the baron, still as a pointer before a partridge. ‘De vedder iss maknivizent, ve vill drife in de Champs-Élysées, and Matame Saint-Estéfe mit Eugénie vill dranzbord oll your glothes, your linen und our tinner rue Saint Georges.’
‘I shall do anything you wish,’ said Esther, ‘if you will oblige me by calling my cook Asia, and Eugénie Europe. I’ve given those nicknames to all the women who’ve served me, since the first two I had. I don’t like change…’
‘Asia,… Europe,…’ repeated the baron laughing heartily. ‘ Wie komisch,… you hef soch imachinazion… I vould hef eaden a lod off tinners pevore I vould hef colled a gook Asia.’
‘Girls like me need our little jokes,’ said Esther. ‘Can’t a woman be fed by Asia and dressed by Europe, when you live on everybody? Is it a myth? There are women who would eat up the whole world, I only want half. So there!’
‘Vot a voman Matame Saint-Estéfe iss!’ the baron said to himself, marvelling at the change wrought in Esther’s ways.
‘Europe, my child, I need a hat,’ said Esther. ‘I should have a black satin bonnet lined with pink, with a bit of lace.’
‘Madame Thomas hasn’t sent it.… Come along, baron, quick! paws up! start your life as a slave, that is to say a happy man!… Happiness is a great weight!… You have your gig, go to Madame Thomas’s,’ said Europe to the baron. ‘Get your man to ask for Madame van Bogseck’s bonnet… And whatever you do,’ she whispered into his ear, ‘bring her the finest bouquet in Paris. It’s winter, see if you can’t get tropical flowers.’
The baron went dow
n and said to his people: ‘To Matame Domas’s.’ The coachman took his master to a famous pastrycook’s. ‘She zells glothes, impezile, nod gakes,’ said the baron who hurried to the Palais Royal to Madame Prévôt’s, where a bouquet at five louis was put up for him, while his man went to the dressmaker’s.
On his way about Paris, the superficial observer may wonder who the fools are who buy the fabulous flowers exposed in the celebrated florist’s windows and the early fruit and vegetables at Chevet’s, the only place, apart from the Rocher de Cancale, to offer a true and delightful Two Worlds Review… Every day in Paris are awakened a hundred and one passions like Nucingen’s, bent on proving themselves with rarities which queens cannot afford, and which men offer, on their knees, to whores who, as Asia put it, like to shine. But for this little fact, virtuous wives would never be able to explain how a fortune may melt away in the hands of these creatures whose social function, in the Fourier system, is perhaps to make good the ravages of Avarice and Cupidity. Such dissipation is no doubt to the Body Social what the prick of a lancet is to a body afflicted with plethora. In two months Nucingen had watered trade to the extent of more than two hundred thousand francs.
When the amorous old man returned, night was falling, the posy was useless. In winter, the time for driving in the Champs Élysées is between two and four. The carriage nevertheless served to take Esther from the rue Taitbout to the rue Saint Georges, where she took possession of her little palace. Never, let it be said, had Esther before been the object of such devotion or equal outlay, she was astonished; but she carefully avoided, like all such regal ingrates, showing the least surprise. When you go into Saint Peter’s in Rome, to make you appreciate the breadth and height of the queen of cathedrals, they show you the little finger of a statue which has I know not what length, and which looks to you like an ordinary little finger. Now, people have so criticized those descriptions, nevertheless so necessary to the historian of his own time, that here we had better imitate the Roman guide. Thus, then, as they went into the dining-room, the baron could not help making Esther feel the curtain material, draped over the windows in royal abundance, lined with white watered silk and trimmed with braid worthy of the corsage of a Portuguese princess. The curtaining was a heavy silk bought in Canton upon which Chinese patience had depicted the birds of Asia with a perfection otherwise to be found only in parchment volumes of the Middle Ages or in the missal of Charles V, pride of the imperial library in Vienna.
A Harlot High and Low Page 23