A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  Asia put on a tiny little voice to explain to this obliging young fellow that she was here in response to a summons issued by a judge, named Camusot…

  ‘Ah! the Rubempré case.’

  The trial had a name already!

  ‘Oh! it isn’t myself, it’s my maid, a girl nicknamed Europe who’s only been with me twenty-four hours and who ran away as soon as she saw my porter bring me an official document.’

  Then, like any old woman whose life is spent in fireside gossip, egged on by Massol, she went off at various tangents, she told him of her troubles with her first husband, one of the three leading provincial bankers. She asked the youthful barrister’s advice on whether she ought to bring an action against her son-in-law, Count Gross-Narp, who was making her daughter very unhappy, and whether she was entitled by law to do as she pleased with her own fortune. Despite his best efforts, Massol was unable to discover whether it was to the mistress or her maid that the summons had been addressed. In the first place, he had merely glanced at this small judicial form of which everyone has seen copies; for rapid issue, it is printed, and examining magistrates’ clerks only have to fill in blanks left for witnesses’ names and addresses, time at which required and so on. Asia asked innumerable questions about the Law Courts, which in fact she knew better than the lawyer himself did; finally, she asked him at what time Monsieur Camusot arrived.

  ‘In general, examining magistrates begin questioning their prisoners at about ten o’clock.’

  ‘It is a quarter to ten,’ she said looking at a pretty little watch, a true jeweller’s masterpiece which made Massol think: ‘What is it going to please her to do with that fortune!…’

  Massol dreams of marriage

  IN the course of their perambulations, he and Asia had approached that dark room gazing out on the Conciergerie yard where the ushers collect. Looking out of the window and seeing the wicket, she exclaimed: ‘What are those big walls there?’

  ‘That’s the Conciergerie.’

  ‘Ah! so that’s the Conciergerie where our poor queen… Oh! I would so like to see the dungeon she was in!…’

  ‘It can’t be done, Madame la Baronne,’ replied the barrister giving the dowager his arm, ‘people have to have permits which are very difficult to obtain.’

  ‘I’ve been told,’ she went on, ‘that Louis XVIII himself composed, and in Latin, the inscription which has been carved in Marie-Antoinette’s dungeon.’

  ‘That is so, Madame la Baronne.’

  ‘I wish I knew Latin so that I could study the words of that inscription,’ she replied. ‘Do you think Monsieur Camusot could give me a permit…?’

  ‘It isn’t his job of course, but he could go with you…’

  ‘But what about his prisoners?’ said she.

  ‘Oh, they can wait,’ replied Massol.

  ‘That’s true, they’ve got plenty of time,’ said Asia ingenuously. ‘Of course I know Monsieur de Granville, your chief procurator…’

  This interjection produced a magical effect on the ushers and the barrister.

  ‘Ah! you know the Attorney General,’ said Massol who was thinking how best to ask this chance client for her name and address.

  ‘I often see him at his friend Monsieur de Sérisy’s. Madame de Sérisy is a Ronquerolles kinswoman of mine…’

  ‘If Madame wishes to go down to the Conciergerie,’ said an usher, ‘she…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Massol.

  And the ushers made way for barrister and baroness who presently found themselves in the small guardroom at the head of the staircase from the Mousetrap, a place well known to Asia, forming, as we have seen, as it were an observation post through which everyone is obliged to pass between the Mousetrap and Court Six.

  ‘Ask these gentlemen whether Monsieur Camusot has arrived!’ she said watching the constables who were playing at cards.

  ‘Yes, Madame, he’s just come up from the Mousetrap…’

  ‘The Mousetrap!’ she said. ‘What’s that…? Oh! how stupid I am not to have gone straight to Count Granville… But I haven’t the time… Take me, sir, to talk to Monsieur Camusot before he gets busy.’

  ‘Oh! Madame, you’re in plenty of time for Monsieur Camusot,’ said Massol. ‘If you send your card in, you’ll be spared the disagreeable business of waiting among the witnesses… At the Palais, we do show some consideration for women like yourself,… who have cards…’

  Purposes served by Massol and the little spaniel

  AT that moment Asia and her lawyer stood directly in front of the window of the guardroom from which the constabulary can watch the movements of people at the wicket of the Conciergerie. The armed constables, brought up to respect the defenders of the widow and the orphan, knowing moreover what privileges went with a barrister’s gown, for some while tolerated the presence of a baroness accompanied by her lawyer. Asia allowed herself to listen to the dreadful things the young barrister told her about the wicket. She refused to believe that a condemned man’s head and neck were trimmed before execution behind the grill that was pointed out to her; but the sergeant in charge confirmed this.

  ‘How I should like to see that!…’ she said.

  She remained there flirting with the sergeant and her lawyer until she saw Jacques Collin, held up by two constables and preceded by Monsieur Camusot’s usher, emerging from the Wicket.

  ‘Ah! there’s the prison chaplain who has no doubt come to prepare some unfortunate person for his fate…’

  ‘No, no, Madame la Baronne,’ replied the sergeant. ‘It’s an accused person due to be examined.’

  ‘Whatever is he accused of?’

  ‘He’s involved in that poisoning case…’

  ‘Oh! I should so like to see him…’

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ said the constable, ‘he’s in solitary, and he’ll have to go through this guardroom. Here we are, Madame, this door gives on to the staircase,’

  ‘Thank you, officer,’ said the baroness turning to the door and emerging on to the staircase where she cried: ‘But where am I?’

  Her voice reached the ears of Jacques Collin whom she wished thus to alert to her presence. The sergeant ran after the baroness, seized her by the waist, and bore her like a feather into the midst of five constables who had stood up like one man; for nobody is trusted in that guardroom.’ That kind of arbitrariness is sometimes necessary. The lawyer himself had twice called out: ‘Madame! Madame!’ in a tone of alarm, so much did he fear to be compromised.

  Father Carlos Herrera, in a fainting condition, collapsed on a chair in the guardroom.

  ‘Poor man!’ said the baroness. ‘Can that be a guilty man?’

  These words, though spoken into the ear of the young barrister, were heard by everybody, for the silence in that dreadful guardroom was deathly. Occasionally privileged persons do obtain permission to see famous criminals while they are passing through that guardroom or along the corridors, so that the usher and the constables charged with conveying Abbé Carlos Herrera made no comment. Moreover, thanks to the conscientiousness of the sergeant who had laid hold of the baroness to prevent all possibility of communication between the prisoner and visitors, a reassuring space was set between them.

  ‘Come along, then! ’ said Jacques Collin making an effort to stand up.

  At that moment the little ball fell out of his sleeve, and the place where it came to rest was duly noted by the baroness whose veil allowed her gaze to move freely. Damp and sticky, the little ball did not roll far, such apparently insignificant details having been calculated by Jacques Collin to assure the success of his manoeuvre. When the prisoner was led off to the upper part of the staircase, Asia dropped her bag in the most natural manner and hurriedly picked it up; but in stooping she had also picked up the little ball whose colour, indistinguishable from the dust and grime of the floor, had prevented it being noticed.

  ‘Ah!’ said she, ‘that gave me a turn,… he’s at his last gasp…’

  ‘You might think
so,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Sir,’ said Asia to the barrister, ‘take me at once to Monsieur Camusot’s; this is the case I’m here for,… and he might like to see me before interrogating the poor priest…’

  The lawyer and the baroness left the guardroom with its sooty, oleaginous walls; but when they were at the head of the staircase, Asia suddenly exclaimed: ‘My dog!… oh, sir, my poor dog!’

  And she made off, like a madwoman, back to the waiting hall, asking everyone if they had seen her dog. She reached the Galerie Marchande, and hurried towards a staircase saying: ‘There he is!…’

  This was the staircase which led to the Cour de Harlay, whence, having finished her performance, Asia made haste to pick up one of the cabs which stand in the Quai des Orfèvres, and she disappeared with the summons in fact made out for Europe whose real names were still unknown to either main branch of the Law.

  Asia very friendly with the Duchess

  ‘RUE Neuve Saint Marc,’ she cried to the driver.

  Asia could count on the inviolable discretion of a wardrobe dealer called Madame Nourrisson, known also under the name of Madame Saint Estéve, who lent her not only her identity but her shop, at which Nucingen had bargained for the delivery of Esther. Asia was at home there, for she kept a room in Madame Nourrisson’s living quarters. She paid off the cab and went up to her room after greeting Madame Nourrisson in a manner which gave her to understand that there was no time for words.

  Once out of the way of all onlookers, Asia set to work unfolding the pieces of paper with all the care which a scholar might give to unrolling a palimpsest. Having read these instructions, she judged it desirable to transcribe the lines destined for Lucien on to writing paper; then she went down to Madame Nourrisson whom she kept talking just long enough for a little girl about the shop to go and get a cab from the Boulevard des Italiens. Asia had wanted the addresses of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Sérisy which Madame Nourrisson knew from her dealings with their maids.

  These various errands, and the occupation with matters of detail, took more than two hours. Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who lived towards the far end of the Faubourg Saint Honoré, kept Madame de Saint Estève waiting an hour, although her maid had passed in through the door of her dressing-room, after knocking, Madame de Saint Estève’s card on which Asia had written: ‘Called on urgent mission respecting Lucien.’

  ‘Who are you?…’ asked the duchess without any show of politeness taking stock of Asia who might well be taken for a baroness by Massol in the waiting hall, but who, on the carpets of the little drawing-room in the Hôtel de Cadignan, produced the effect of a grease stain on a white satin gown.

  ‘I’m a wardrobe dealer, Madame la Duchesse; in matters like this, you go to women whose profession calls for absolute discretion. I’ve never given anybody away, and God knows how many great ladies have trusted me with their diamonds for a month, wanting false jewellery exactly like their own…’

  ‘Have you another name?’ said the duchess smiling at a reminiscence which this answer brought to her mind.

  ‘Yes, Madame la Duchesse, I am Madame Saint Estéve on reat occasions but my business name is Madame Nourrisson.’

  ‘Yes, of course…’ said the duchess briskly with a change of tone.

  ‘I can be helpful in all kinds of ways,’ Asia went, ‘women like me know the secrets of husbands as well as wives. I’ve had a lot to do with Monsieur de Marsay whom Madame la Duchesse…’

  ‘That’ll do!…’ exclaimed the duchess, ‘let’s concern ourselves with Lucien.’

  ‘If Madame la Duchesse wants to save him, she’ll need the courage not to waste time about getting dressed; in any case Madame la Duchesse couldn’t look more beautiful than she does at this moment. You are pretty enough to eat, on an old woman’s word of honour! In short, don’t have your carriage brought round, Madame, get in my cab with me… Come and see Madame de Sérisy, if you want to avoid troubles worse nor the cherub’s death would be…’

  ‘Hurry, then! I’ll come with you,’ the duchess then said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Between us, we’ll give Léontine heart…’

  A splendid grief

  DESPITE the truly infernal activity of this underworld Dorine, it was striking two when with the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse she was admitted to the house of Madame de Sérisy who lived in the rue Chaussée d’Antin. There, however, thanks to the duchess, not a moment was lost. The two were taken straight in to the countess, whom they found extended upon a divan in a summer house in a garden fragrant with the rarest flowers.

  ‘This is all right,’ said Asia looking about her, ‘nobody’ll be able to hear us here.’

  ‘Ah! my dear! this will be the death of me! Listen, Diana, what have you done?…’ exclaimed the countess springing up like a fawn, seizing the duchess by the shoulders and bursting into tears.

  ‘Come, Léontine, there are times when women like us mustn’t weep, but act,’ said the duchess forcing the countess to sit down again beside her on the sofa.

  Asia studied this countess with the look peculiar to old reprobates like herself, a look which may search the soul of a woman with the speed of a surgeon’s lancet probing a sore. Jacques Collin’s accomplice thereupon recognized the traces of a feeling which is rare among society women, true grief!… that grief which ineffacably furrows both heart and visage. No finery about her person! The countess was then forty-five, and the crumpled morning wrapper of printed muslin boldly displayed her uncorseted bust!… The black rings round her eyes, her blotchy cheeks spoke of bitter tears. No girdle about her wrapper. The embroidery on her shift and petticoat was frayed. The hair gathered up under a lace cap, uncombed for the past twenty-four hours, showed in all their poverty a thin, short plait and loose ringlets. Léontine had forgotten to put on her false braids.

  ‘You’re in love for the first time in your life…’ said Asia sententiously.

  Léontine thereupon caught sight of Asia and gave an expression of fright.

  ‘Who’s that, my dear Diana?’ she said to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.

  ‘Whom do you expect me to bring you, except a woman devoted to Lucien and ready to serve us?’

  A Parisian type

  ASIA had aguessete trut.aameersy, wo passe for one of society’s most frivolous women, had been attached, for ten years, to the Marquis d’Aiglemont. Since the marquess's departure for the colonies, she had doted madly on Lucien and detached him from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, ignorant, as indeed was all Paris, of Lucien’s love for Esther. In the best society, a known attachment does more to spoil a woman’s reputation than ten secret adventures, while two attachments are obviously worse. Nevertheless, as nobody counted with Madame de Sérisy, the historian cannot guarantee her virtue no more than twice-chipped. She was a blonde of medium height, preserved as blondes are when they look after themselves, that is to say looking no more than thirty, slight without being thin, white-skinned, her hair silvery; feet, hands, body of aristocratic fineness; witty in the Ronquerolles fashion, and consequently as malicious towards other women as she was kind towards men. Her great fortune, her husband’s elevated position and that of her brother the Marquis de Ronquerolles had no doubt kept her from the disappointments and rebuffs which any other woman would have had to put up with. She had one great merit: in her depravity she was frank, she openly admitted a taste for Regency customs. Then, at forty-two, this woman, to whom men had till then been agreeable toys and who, oddly, had granted them much because she saw love as a matter of making sacrifices in order to dominate the lover, had been seized at the sight of Lucien by a love like that of Baron Nucingen for Esther. She had thenceforward loved, as Asia told her, for the first time in her life. Such transpositions of youth are more frequent than people think among the women of Paris, even among great ladies, and cause the inexplicable downfall of some of the most virtuous just as they reach the haven of their forties. The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse alone was in the secret of this unbound
ed and terrible passion whose moments of happiness, from the childish sensations of first love to the giant folly of sensual delight, had made Léontine mad and insatiable.

  True love, as we know, is pitiless. The discovery of an Esther had led to a break in such anger as may lead a woman to thoughts of murder; this had been followed by that weakness to which a sincere love abandons itself with so much pleasure. Thus, for a month past, the countess would have given ten years of her life to see Lucien again for a week. In the end, she had reached the point of accepting Esther as her rival, just when the paroxysm of tenderness was to be shattered by the trumpet-blast announcing that last judgment, Lucien’s arrest. It had indeed almost proved the death of the countess, whom her husband himself had tended in bed fearing what revelations might be heard in her raving; for the past twenty-four hours, she had been living with a dagger in her heart. In her delirium, she had said to her husband: ‘Free Lucien, and from then on I shall live for nobody but you!’

  Asia as a peasant from the Danube

  ‘ IT won’t help to make eyes like a dead goat, as the duchess says,’ exclaimed the terrible Asia shaking the countess by the arm. ‘If you want to save him, there isn’t a minute to lose. He is innocent, I swear it on the bones of my mothe! ’