A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  The interior of the house, as markedly transformed as the outside, was comfortable rather than luxurious. It may be judged by a rapid glance at the drawing-room where the company was seated at that moment. A pretty Aubusson carpet, hangings of grey cotton twill decorated with green silk braid, paintwork grained to look like Spa pine timbering, carved mahogany furniture upholstered in grey kerseymere also green-braided, flower stands loaded with flowers, in spite of the season, offered to the eye a well-composed whole. The window curtains of green silk, the ornaments over the fireplace, the frames of the mirrors were exempt from that false taste which spoils everything in the provinces. Elegant and clean, the smallest details rested the soul and the eyes in that poetic element with which a loving and intelligent woman may and should suffuse all in her household.

  Madame Séchard, still in mourning for her father, was working in the fire-corner at a piece of tapestry, helped by Madame Kolb, the housekeeper, who took most of the burden of daily chores off her shoulders. Just as the hired carriage reached the first dwellings in Marsac, the regular company at the Verberie was augmented by the arrival of Courtois, the miller, a widower, who wanted to retire and who was hoping to get a good price for his property of which Madame Ève appeared very desirous, and Courtois knew why.

  ‘There’s a cab just pulling up here!’ said Courtois hearing the sound of a carriage at the door; ‘and, to judge by the way it rattles it must be a local one…’

  ‘No doubt it will be Postel and his wife who want to see me,’ said the doctor.

  ‘No,’ said Courtois, ‘that cab was coming from the direction of Mansle.’

  ‘Matame,’ said Kolb (a great, fat Alsatian), ‘here iss a zolizitor vrom Baris who vishes to zbeak to Monzieur.’

  ‘A solicitor!…’ cried Séchard, ‘that word gives me the colic.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the mayor of Marsac, a man by the name of Cachan, twenty years a solicitor in Angoulême, who at one time had been instructed to proceed against Séchard.

  ‘My poor David will never change, he’s so absent-minded!’ said Ève with a smile.

  ‘A lawyer from Paris,’ said Courtois, ‘have you some business in Paris?’

  ‘No,’ said Éve.

  ‘You have a brother there,’ said Courtois also smiling.

  ‘Watch out it hasn’t to do with old Séchard’s succession,’ said Cachan. ‘The old boy got up to some pretty fishy business!…’

  On entering, Corentin and Derville, having bowed to the company and stated their names, asked if they could speak privately with Madame Séchard and her husband.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Séchard. ‘Is it a matter of business?’

  ‘Purely to do with your late father’s succession,’ replied Corentin.

  ‘Then please allow our mayor, who was formerly a solicitor in Angoulême, to be present at the discussion.’

  ‘Are you Monsieur Derville?…’ said Cachan looking at Corentin.

  ‘No, sir, that’s this gentleman,’ replied Corentin indicating the solicitor who bowed.

  ‘But, indeed,’ said Séchard, ‘we’re all close friends here, we have nothing to hide from our neighbours, there’s no need to go to my study where there isn’t a fire… Everything is, open and above board…’

  ‘There were things in your father’s life,’ said Corentin, ‘which you might not feel altogether happy to have everyone hear about.’

  ‘Is it something, then, we need to be ashamed of?…’ said Éve with a sudden fear.

  ‘No, no, just something that happened in his youth, as such things will,’ said Corentin calmly setting one of his numerous mouse-traps. ‘Your father gave you an elder brother…’

  ‘Well, the old grump!’ cried Courtois, ‘he never cared for you, Monsieur Séchard, and he kept that up his sleeve, the crafty old boor… Ah, now I understand what he meant, when he said to me: “You’ll see some fun when I’m in my grave!” ’

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, sir,’ said Corentin to Séchard studying Ève with a glance to the side.

  ‘A brother!’ exclaimed the doctor, ‘but that means the inheritance will be divided!…’

  Derville affected to examine the fine first pulls of engravings displayed on the panelling of the room.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, Madame,’ said Corentin seeing the astonishment on Madame Séchard’s beautiful face, ‘it is only a matter of an illegitimate child. The rights of a natural son are not the same as those of one born in wedlock. This child is living in the direst poverty, he is entitled to a sum based on the size of the total succession… The millions left by your late father…’

  At the word ‘millions’, there arose a cry of perfect unanimity in the drawing-room. At that moment, Derville no longer examined the engravings.

  ‘Old Séchard, millions?…’ said the burly Courtois. ‘Who told you that? some peasant.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Cachan, ‘you don’t belong to the inland revenue, so you can be told just how things are…’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Corentin, ‘I give you my word of honour, I’m not concerned with Crown property.’

  Cachan, who’d just made a sign to everybody to be quiet, now evinced satisfaction.

  ‘Sir,’ Corentin went on, ‘were there only one million, the natural child’s share would still be considerable. We haven’t come to institute any proceedings, we simply want to propose to you a gift of a hundred thousand francs, after which we shall leave you quite…’

  ‘A hundred thousand francs!…’ exclaimed Cachan interrupting Corentin. ‘What old Séchard left, sir, was twenty acres of vineyard, five little farms, ten acres of meadowland in Marsac and not a penny with it…’

  ‘Not for anything in the world,’ interposed David Séchard, ‘would I tell a lie, Monsieur Cachan: least of all in a matter of this kind… Gentlemen,’ he said to Corentin and Derville, ‘besides land my father left us…’ Courtois and Cachan vainly signalled to him, he added: ‘Three hundred thousand francs, which brings the total value of his estate to some five hundred thousand francs.’

  ‘Monsieur Cachan, what share does the law allot to illegitimate children?’ asked Éve Séchard.

  ‘Madame,’ said Corentin, ‘we aren’t Turks, we only ask you to swear before these gentlemen that you collected no more than a hundred thousand crowns in money from your father-in-law’s estate, and we shall proceed no further…’

  ‘First,’ said the former solicitor in Angoulême, ‘give us your word of honour that you are legally qualified.’

  ‘Here is my passport,’ said Derville to Cachan handing him a paper folded in four, ‘and this gentleman is not, as you might fancy, an inspector of Crown lands, you can be assured,’ added Derville. ‘Our interest is solely to know the truth about the Séchard inheritance, and now we know it…’ Derville took Ève by the hand, and very politely led her to the far end of the room. ‘Madame,’ he said to her in a low voice, ‘if the honour and the future of the house of Grandlieu were not involved in the question, I should not have lent myself to the stratagem devised by the gentleman with the decoration; but you will excuse him, it was a matter of exposing the lie by means of which your brother gained access to the sanctuary of this noble family. Take care now not to let it be supposed that you gave twelve hundred thousand francs to your brother to buy the Rubempré estate…’

  ‘Twelve hundred thousand francs!’ exclaimed Madame Séchard turning pale. ‘Where can he have found all that, poor fellow?…’

  ‘Ah! there,’ said Derville, ‘I fear that the source of his fortune will turn out to be tainted.’

  Ève had tears in her eyes which her neighbours perceived.

  ‘We may have done you a great service,’ Derville said to her, ‘by stopping you becoming involved in a lie whose conse-quences may be dangerous.’

  Derville left Madame Séchard sitting down, pale, tears on her cheeks, and bowed to the company.

  ‘To Mansle!’ said Corentin to the little boy who was driving the hackney carriage.

/>   The diligence from Bordeaux to Paris, which passed that way at night, had one place free; Derville begged Corentin to allow him to take it, claiming business; but, at bottom, he mistrusted his travelling companion, whose cold-blooded diplomatic adroitness seemed to him a matter of habit. Corentin stayed three days in Mansle without finding means to get away; he was obliged to write to Bordeaux and book a seat for Paris, to which he did not return until nine days after his departure.

  During that time, Peyrade called every morning, either at Passy or in Paris, at Corentin’s, to see whether he had returned. On the eighth day, he left at one address or the other a letter written in their private code, to explain to his friend the, manner of death which threatened him, the kidnapping of Lydia and the dreadful fate to which his enemies destined her.

  Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

  ATTACKED as till then he had attacked other people, Peyrade deprived of Corentin but with Contenson still beside him, remained nevertheless disguised as a Nabob. Discovered as he had been by his invisible enemies, he thought reasonably enough that he might learn something by remaining on the battlefield. Contenson had set everyone he knew on the trail of Lydia, he hoped to find out in what house she was hidden; but, from day to day, the ever more evident impossibility of discovering anything hourly added to Peyrade’s despair. The old spy surrounded himself with a guard of twelve or fifteen of the cleverest agents. Close observation was kept on the neighbourhood of the rue des Moineaux and the rue Taitbout where he was living as a Nabob at Madame du Val-Noble’s. During the last three days of the fatal period allowed him by Asia to restore Lucien to his former position at the Grandlieu house, Contenson never left the veteran of the old Lieutenancy General of police. Thus, that poetry of terror which the stratagems of enemy tribes at war create in the heart of the forests of America, and of which Cooper has made such good use, was attached to the smallest details of Parisian life. The passers-by, the shops, the hackney carriages, a person standing at a window, to the men who had been numbered off for the defence of Peyrade’s life, everything presented the ominous interest which in Cooper’s novels may be found in a tree trunk, a beaver’s dam, a rock, a buffalo skin, a motionless canoe, a branch drooping over the water.

  ‘If the Spaniard has gone, you have nothing to fear,’ said Contenson to Peyrade pointing out to him the deep calm all about them.

  ‘And if he hasn’t gone?’ replied Peyrade.

  ‘He took one of my men behind his barouche; but, at Blois my man was forced to get down and couldn’t catch the carriage up.’

  Five days after Derville’s return, one morning, Lucien received a visit from Rastignac.

  ‘I’m in despair, my dear, at having to deliver myself of a mission which has been entrusted to me because of our close acquaintance. Your marriage is broken off without the least hope of you ever renewing it. Never set foot again in the Grandlieu house. To marry Clotilde, one would have to wait until her father died, and he is too much of an egoist to die quickly. Old whist-players stick to their tables. Clotilde is leaving for Italy with Madeleine de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu. The poor girl is so in love with you, my dear fellow, that she has to be kept under observation; she wanted to come and see you, she’d already made her little plan of escape… That may be some consolation to you.’

  Lucien did not reply. He looked at Rastignac.

  ‘Is it really a misfortune!…’ his compatriot said to him, ‘you’ll soon find another girl as well-born and better-looking than Clotilde !… Madame de Sérisy will marry you off out of revenge, she can’t abide the Grandlieus, they’ve never invited her to their house; she has a niece, little Clémence du Rouvre…’

  ‘My friend, since our last supper I’m not on good terms with Madame de Sérisy, she saw me in Esther’s box, she made a scene, and I did nothing about it.’

  ‘A woman turned forty doesn’t quarrel for long with a young man as handsome as you,’ said Rastignac. ‘I know something about these sunsets… they last ten minutes on the horizon, and ten years in a woman’s heart.’

  ‘I’ve waited all week for a letter from her.’

  ‘Do something!’

  ‘I shall have to, now.’

  ‘At any rate, are you going to Madame du Val-Noble’s? her Nabob is returning Nucingen’s hospitality with a supper.’

  ‘They’ve asked me, and I shall go,’ said Lucien with a solemn air.

  The day after the confirmation of his misfortune, the news of which was at once given by Asia to Carlos, Lucien went with Rastignac and Nucingen to the sham Nabob’s.

  At midnight, in Esther’s old dining-room were gathered together almost all the characters in this drama of which the interest, hidden far beneath the surface of these torrential lives, was known only to Esther, to Lucien, to Peyrade, to the mulatto Contenson and to Paccard, who came to wait upon his mistress. Unknown to Peyrade and Contenson, Madame du Val-Noble had asked Asia to come in and help the cook. Peyrade, who’d given Madame du Val-Noble five hundred francs extra for the occasion, found folded in his napkin a piece of paper on which he read these words written in pencil: The ten days expire at the moment at which you sit down at table. Peyrade passed the note to Contenson, who stood behind him, and said to him in English: ‘Was it you who tucked that in with my name?’ Contenson read this Mene, Tekel, Upharsin by the candlelight, and stuffed the paper in his pocket, but he knew how difficult it is to detect a handwriting in pencil especially when only capital letters are used, that is to say when the spacing is almost mathematical, since capital letters consist wholly of curves and straight. lines from which it is impossible to discover the hand’s common habit, so evident in the writing known as cursive.

  That supper lacked all gaiety. Peyrade was visibly preoccupied. Of those young sparks who know how to enliven a supper, there were only Lucien and Rastignac. Lucien was thoughtful and depressed. Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper, ate and drank with little thought but how to make it up afterwards. The three women looked at each other, conscious of a certain chill. Boredom robbed the dishes of all savour. Supper-parties are like plays and books, they may go well or badly. At the end of the meal, ices with tiny preserved fruits were served in small glasses, the ice and the delicate fruit forming a pyramid. These sundaes had been ordered by Madame du Val-Noble from Tortoni’s, whose famous establishment was at the corner of the rue Taitbout and the boulevard. The cook sent for the mulatto to pay the ice-cream vendor’s note. Contenson, to whom the boy’s insistence seemed unusual, went down and got rid of him by saying: ‘Aren’t you from Tortoni’s, then?…’ and went straight up again. But Paccard had already taken advantage of his absence to distribute the ices to the guests. Hardly had the mulatto reached the door of the apartment when one of the agents appointed to watch the rue des Moineaux called up the staircase: ‘Number twenty-seven.’

  ‘What is it?’ replied Contenson hurrying down again.

  ‘Tell the old man his daughter is back at home, and in what a state! my God! he must come at once, she’s half dead.’

  Just as Contenson returned to the dining-room, old Peyrade, who had been drinking heavily, swallowed the cherry from the top of his ice. Somebody proposed Madame du Val-Noble’s health, the Nabob filled his glass with Constantia wine, and emptied it. Troubled as Contenson was by the news he was about to transmit to Peyrade, he was, on his return, struck by the close attention with which Paccard was watching the Nabob. The two eyes of Madame de Champy’s manservant were like two steadily burning flames. Despite its importance, this observation could not delay the mulatto, and he bent over his master just as Peyrade replaced his empty glass on the table.

  ‘Lydia is at home,’ said Contenson, ‘and in a poor way.’

  Peyrade let out the most French of French oaths with so marked a southern accent that the deepest astonishment appeared on all the guests’ faces. Perceiving his mistake, Peyrade cast off all disguise by saying to Contenson in good French: ‘Find a cab!… I’m off.’

  Everybody ro
se from table.

  ‘Who are you, then?’ exclaimed Lucien.

  ‘Yo, yo!…’ said the baron.

  ‘ Bixiou told me you could play the Englishman better than himself, and I wouldn’t believe him,’ said Rastignac.

  ‘This is some undisclosed bankrupt,’ said du Tillet in a loud voice, ‘I thought as much!…’

  ‘What an odd place Paris is!…’ said Madame du Val-Noble. ‘If he goes broke on his own doorstep, a man can reappear there dressed up as a Nabob or strut like a dandy in the Champs Élysées with impunity!… Oh! what a luckless creature I am, insolvency follows me around.’

  ‘Most ladies have their familiar,’ said Esther calmly, ‘mine is like Cleopatra’s, an aspic.’

  ‘Who am I?…’ said Peyrade at the door, ‘Ah! you shall know, for, if I die, I shall rise from my tomb to plague you every night of your lives!…’