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CONTENTS
PART I
PAGE
INTRODUCTION - - - - - - ix
SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE:
(Spletideurs et tnishes des Courtisanes)
ESTHER HAPPY ------ I
WHAT I.OVE COSTS AN OLD MAN ... 159
THE END OF EVIt, WAYS - - - - 30I
PART 11
INTRODUCTION ix
SCENES FRO 31 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
{ Concluded) :
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR . - . - i
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS - - - 147
( Les Employes ; )
Translator, James Waring.
ILLUSTRATIONS
PART 1
"open* the gate — THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR SENT ME —
TO SAVE THE DEAD MAN ! " i 409) - - Frontispiece
PAGE
LUCIEN" BURNT THE NOTE AT ONCE IN THE KEAME OF A
CANDLE - - - - - _ - g7
EUROPE LED THE WAY, CARRYING A CANDLE - - I40
PART II
THE CORSICAN AT ONCE KNELT DOWN AND PRETENDED
TO BE ABOUT TO CONFESS - - - - 66
'■don't say too MUCH ABOUT HER, MY DEAR FRIEND,
OR YOU WILL SPOIL IT ALL" - - - - 187
SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE
INTRODUCTION
Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes has the interest (which
it shares with only one or two others of Balzac's works), if
not exactly of touching the two extremities of his prosperous
career, at any rate of stretching over a great part of it. It
also exemplifies the very uncertain and fortuitous scheme of
the Comiklie and its component scenes. At first nothing
of it appeared but the first j)art, and only half of that,
under the title of La Torpille (Esther Gobseck's nickname),
which was published, together with La Femme Superieure,
the first form of Les Employes, and La Maison Nucingen,
in 1838. Five years later it appeared in a newspaper as
Esther, ou Les Amours d'un vieux Banquier, the first part
being now completed, and the second added. It was not till
1846 that Ou menent les mauvais Chemins appeared, and
this book itself had difi'erent titles. Finally, in Balzac's very
last period of writing at the end of 1846, or the beginning
of 1847 — for he and his bibliographer are at issue on that
point, — La derniere Incarnation de Vautrin was added as a
fourth part, making the book, already one of the longest, now
by far the longest of all. But the four were not published to-
gether till the edition definitive, many years after Balzac's
death.
It would in any case have been necessary to devote two
of these volumes to so great a mass of matter, and I have
taken the liberty of separating Vautrin from the rest for
(ix)
X INTRODUCTION
the purposes of introduction. The truth is that the book
ends much more artistically with Ou menent les mauvais
Chemins; and if Balzac really intended to make La derniere
Incarnation de Vautrin a continuation, this, as well as the
great length of the book, would lead me to imagine that he
had in mind rather a sort of sub-division of the Scenes de la
Vie Parisienne than a single work.
For it must be at once evident that with the deaths of
Esther and of Lucien, art, sense, and truth require that the
curtain should fall. It may have been very desirable to finish
off Vautrin ; and, as I shall have occasion to point out, he is a
very interesting person. But his mauvais chemin is quite a
different one from that of Esther; and he is only indirectly
concerned with the particular splendeurs et miseres.
On the other hand, the history of "La Torpille" and of
Lucien de Eubempre is by itself smoother and more com-
plete. It affords Balzac, no doubt, opportunities of indulg-
ing a very large number of his extensive assortment of fancies,
not to say fads, and of bringing in a great number of the
personages of his stock company. Vautrin, the terrible and
mysterious, in his new avatar, is only one of these. Corentin
reappears from the far distance of Les Chouans; but playing
no very dissimilar part, though his machinations are directed
against less innocent persons. We receive abundant informa-
tion as to the way in which Baron Nucingen got rid of the
money which he obtained by means already detailed with
equal care elsewhere. Madame de Maufrigneuse and Madame
de Serizy play important parts ; and many others come and go.
But still Esther van Gobseck and Lucien Chardon de
Eubempre are as much the hero and heroine of the story,
and make the first three parts as much a story to themselves,
INTRODUCTION xi
as Le Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet are the hero and hero-
ine of the books to which they very justly give their names.
I forget whether Lucien de Rubempre, in the numerous and
rather idle Balzac "keys" which MM. Cerfberr and Christophe
have not deigned to include in their Repertoire, is identified
with any actual personage. It has been, and will be observed,
that Balzac was too great an artist either to need, or, indeed,
often to attempt, this commonplace and catchpenny means of
interest. But in the world of fiction in general, and of the
Comedie in particular, Lucien is half-complement, half-
counterpart of Eugene de Eastignac. He is the adventurer,
not entirely without good blood in his veins, who ventures
into the intersecting or overlapping worlds of fashion, of
journalism, of speculation, and of politics, but who has not,
like Eastignac, either strength or coolness of head to swim
through the whirlpool and reach the shore. It may be in-
teresting to the reader to form his own opinion how far
Lucien' s ruin — brought about, be it remembered, by charges
of which he is actually innocent — is due to the evil, though
not in his case intentionally hostile, influence of Vautrin,
how far it is due to his own weakness. Balzac was too much
of an artist to decide very definitely either way; but despite
his rather mistaken admiration of Vautrin, I think he had
the sense to give most weight to the internal causes. The
moral — for there is always a moral in Balzac — is, of course,
the old one of a thousand fables and a thousand forms, the
best of which perhaps is the Spenserian apposition of "Be
bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold," with "Be not too bold"
— the moral that on the "Brigg of Dread" of ambition and
covetousness there is nothing but absolute perdition for him
who cannot keep his feet and his head. There is not perhaps
xll INTRODUCTION
so much irony as there would be in some writers about the
presentation of Lucien, who is really a poor creature enough,
as the very darling of all the great ladies of Paris as well as
of persons at the other end of the scale ; but it is there.
With Esther it is even plainer sailing. Her history is
simply that of a courtesan, embodying "lights and shadows"'
on a more fantastic and gorgeous scale, with the final fortune
thrown in (this applies to Lucien as well as to her) for a
climax of Kemesis. Perhaps there is another moral here —
that when any one has once embarked on this particular
mauvais chemin it is not merely idle, but ruinous, to in-
dulge in sincere affection for anybody — that you must "play
the game," here as elsewhere, and that you cannot be per-
mitted to play the fair game and the foul at once.
On the whole, I should put this book a little below Balzac's
very best, but in the forefront of his average work. Some I
know have rated it very highly ; but such a slightly glorified
"Alphonse" as Eubempre is too disgusting a hero to be toler-
ated without even greater power that Balzac has here put
forth, even though Esther to no small extent redeems him.
A good deal of the rather complicated bibliography of
Splendeurs et Miseres has necessarily been given above.
Some additional details here may complete the information,
in regard to the whole of it, as Balzac finalty arranged it,
that is to say, with the Derniere Incarnation included. La
Torpille {vide supra) came out as a book without any previous
newspaper publication, but with La Femme Superieure (now
called Les Employes) and La Maison Nucingen in 1838, pub-
lished in two volumes by Werdet. It was divided into three
chapters with a view to feuilUton publication in the Presse.
But this did not appear. The rest of the present Comment
aiment les Filles, with most of A Combien I'Amour revient
INTRODUCTION xiii
aux Vieillards, did appear in this form in Le Parisien dur-
ing the month of June 1843 and a few day in May and July.
The first part was included as well in this publication. Le
Parisien was not successful, and the end of A Combien
V Amour never came out, but is included in a three-volume
book publication of the thing next year by de Potter. Then
the whole, which had in Le Parisien been called Esther, ou
Les Amours d'un vieux Banquier, received its present general
heading with the addition "Esther.'' The book was next
entered in the Gomedie, the first part being called Esther
Heureuse. Ou menent les mauvais Chemins appeared in the
newspaper UEpoque during July 1846, and was then called
Une Instruction criiaineUe; but it was forthwith included in
the Comedie under its actual title, and a year later published
separately by Souverain. But Splendeurs et Miseres had a
bad habit of killing journals under it ; and L'Epoque too,
having died, La derniere Incarnation appeared in the Presse
(strangely enough, seeing that this was the journal which
ought to have published the first part ten years earlier) in
April and May ISIT. Chlendowski published it as a book
the same year. The date "December 1847" appears to have
been a mistake or a whim of Balzac's.
G. S.
SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE
To His Highness
Prince Alfonso Serafino di Porcia.
Allow me to place your name at the beginning of an essen-
tially Parisian work, thought out in your house during these latter
days. Is it not natural that I should offer you the flowers of
rhetoric that blossomed in your garden, watered with the regrets
I suffered from home-sickness, which you soothed, as I wandered
under the boschetti whose elms reminded me of the Champs-
;^lysees? Thus, perchance, may I .expiate the crime of having
dreamed of Paris under the shadow of the Duomo, of having
longed for our muddy streets on the clean and elegant flagstones
of Porta-Renza. When I have some book to publish which may
be dedicated to a Milanese lady, I shall have the happiness of
finding names already dear to your old Italian romancers among
those of women whom we love, and to whose memory I would
beg you to recall your sincerely affectionate
De Balzac.
July 1838.
ESTHER happy; OR, HOW A COURTESAN CAN LOVE
In ''^824^ at the last opera ball of the season, several masks
were struck by the beauty of a youth who was wandering
about the passages and greenroom with the air of a man
in search of a woman kept at home by unexpected
circumstances. The secret of this behavior, now dilator}^
and again hurried, is known only to old women and to
certain experienced loungers. In this immense assembly the
crowd does not trouble itself much to watch the crowd; each
(1)
2 A COURTESANS LIFE
one's interest is impassioned, and even idlers are pre-
occupied.
The young dandy was so much absorbed in his anxious
quest that he did not observe his own success; he did not
hear, he did not see the ironical exclamations of admiration,
the genuine appreciation, the biting gibes, the soft invita-
tions of some of the masks. Though he was so handsome
as to rank among those exceptional persons who come to
an opera ball in search of an adventure, and who expect it
as confidently as men looked for a lucky conp at roulette
in Frascati's day, he seemed quite philosophically sure of his
evening; he must be the hero of one of those mysteries with
three actors which constitute an opera ball, and are known
only to those who play a part in them ; for, to young wives who
come merely to say, "I have seen it," to country people,
to inexperienced youths, and to foreigners, the opera house
must on those nights be the palace of fatigue and dulness.
To these, that black swarm, slow and serried — coming, going,
winding, turning, returning, mounting, descending, com-
parable only to ants on a pile of wood — is no more intelligible
than the Bourse to a Breton peasant who has never heard of
the Grand livre.
With a few rare exceptions, men wear no masks in Paris;
a man in a domino is thought ridiculous. In this the spirit
of the nation betrays itself. Men who want to hide their
good fortune can enjoy the opera ball witliout going there :
and masks who are absolutely compelled to go in come out
again at once. One of the most amusing scenes is the crush
at the doors produced as soon as the dancing begins, by the
rush of persons getting away and struggling with those who
are pushing in. So the men who wear masks are either jeal-
ous husbands who come to watch their wives, or husbands
on the loose who do not wish to be watched by them — two
situations equally ridiculous.
Now, our young man was followed, though he knew it
not, by a man in a mask, dogging his steps, short and stout,
with a rolling gait, like a barrel. To every one familiar with
ESTHER HAPPY 3
the opera this disguise betrajed a stock-broker, a banker, a
lawyer, some citizen sonl suspicious of infidelity. For in
fact, in really high society, no one courts such humiliating
proofs. Several masks had laughed as they pointed this pre-
posterous figure out to each other; some had spoken to him,
a few young men had made game of him, but his stolid man-
ner showed entire contempt for these aimless shafts ; he went
on whither the young man led him, as a hunted wild boar
goes on and pays no heed to the bullets whistling about his
ears, or the dogs barking at his heels.
Though at first sight pleasure and anxiety wear the same
livery — the noble black robe of Venice — and though all is
confusion at an opera ball, the various circles composing
Parisian society meet there, recognize, and watch each other.
There are certain ideas so clear to the initiated that this
scrawled medley of interests is as legible to them as any
amusing novel. So, to these old hands, this man could not
be here by appointment ; he would infallibly have worn some
token, red. white, or green, such as notifies a happy meeting
previously agreed on. Was it a case of revenge?
Seeing the domino following so closely in the wake of a
man apparently happy in an assignation, some of the gazers
looked again at the handsome face, on which anticipation
had set its divine halo. The youth was interesting; the
longer he wandered, the more curiosity he excited. Every-
thing about him proclaimed the habits of refined life. ]n
obedience to a fatal law of the time we live in, there is not
much diiference, physical or moral, between the most elegant
and best bred son of a duke and peer and this attractive youth,
whom poverty had not long since held in its iron grip in the
heart of Paris. Beauty and youth might cover in him deep
gulfs, as in many a young man who longs to play a part in
Paris without having the capital to support his pretensions,
and who, day after day, risks all to win all, by sacrificing to
the god who has most votaries in this royal city, namely.
Chance. At the same time, his dress and manners were
above reproach; he trod the classic floor of the opera house
(.0-
4 A COURTESAN'S Llf^E
as one accustomed there. Who can have failed to observe
that there, as in every zone in Paris, there is a manner of
being which shows who you are, what you are doing, whence
you come, and what you want?
"What a handsome young fellow; and here we may turn
round to look at him," said a mask7Mn whom accustomed
eyes recognized a lady of position.
"Do not you remember him?" replied the man on whose
arm she was leaning. "Madame du Chatelet introduced him
to you "
"What, is that the apothecary's son she fancied herself
in love with, who became a journalist, Mademoiselle Coralie's
lover?"
"I fancied he had fallen too low ever to pull himself up
again, and I cannot understand how he can show himself
again in the world of Paris," said Comte Sixte du Chatelet.
"He has the air of a prince," the mask went on, "and it is
not the actress he lived with who could give it him. My
cousin, who understood him, could not lick him into shape.
I should like to know the mistress of this Sargine; tell me
something about him that will enable me to mystify him."
This couple, whispering as they watched the young man,
became the object of study to the square-shouldered domino.
"Dear Monsieur Chardon," said the Prefet of the Charente,
taking the dandy's hand, "allow me to introduce you to some
one who wishes to renew acquaintance with you "
"Dear Comte Chatelet," replied the j^oung man, "that lady
taught me how ridiculous was the name by which you address
me. A patent from the king has restored to me that of my
mother's family — the Rubempres. Although the fact has
been announced in the papers, it relates to so unimportant
a person that I need not blush to recall it to my friends, my
enemies, and those who are neither You may class
yourself where you will, but I am sure you will not disap-
prove of a step to which I was advised by your wife when
she was still only Madame de Bargeton."
This neat retort, which made the Marquise smile, gave
ESTHER HAPPY 5
the Prefet of la Charente a nervous chill. "You may tell
her,'" Lucien went on, "that 1 now bear gules, a bull raging
argent on a meadow vert."
"Eaging argent," echoed Chatelet.
"Madame la Marquise will explain to you, if you do not
know, why that old coat is a little better than the chamber-
lain^s key and Imperial gold bees which you bear on yours,
to the great despair of Madame Chatelet, nee Negrepelisse'
d'Espard," said Lucien quickly.
"Since you recognize me, I cannot puzzle you ; and I could
never tell you how much you puzzle me," said the Marquise
d'Espard, amazed at the coolness and impertinence to which
the man had risen whom she had formerly despised.
. "Then allow me, madame, to preserve my only chance of
occupying your thoughts by remaining in that mysterious
twilight," said he, with the smile of a man who does not
wish to risk assured happiness.
"I congratulate you on your changed fortunes," said the
Comte du Chatelet to Lucien.
"I take it as you offer it," replied Lucien, bowing with
much grace to the Marquise.
'^Vhat a coxcomb !" said the Count in an undertone to
Madame d'Espard. "He has succeeded in winning an an-
cestry."
"With these young men such coxcombry, when it is ad-
dressed to us, almost always implies some success in high
places," said the lady ; "for with you older men it means ill-
fortune. And I should very much like to know which of
my grand lady friends has taken this fine bird under her
patronage; then I might find the means of amusing myself
this evening. My ticket, anonymously sent, is no doubt a bit
of mischief planned by a rival and having something to do
with this young man. His impertinence is to order; keep
an eye on him. I will take the Due de Navarrein's
arm. You will be able to find me again."
Just as Madame d'Espard was about to address her cousin,
the mysterious mask came between her and the Duke to
whisper in her ear :
6 A COUKTESAN'S LIFE
"Lucien loves you; he wrote the note. Your Prefet is
his greatest foe ; how can he speak in his presence T
The stranger moved off, leaving Madame d'Espard a pi^ey
to a double surprise. The Marquise knew no one in the
world who was capable of playing the part assumed by this
mask; she suspected a snare, and went to sit down out of
.sight. The Comte Sixte du Chatelet — whom Lucien had
abridged of his ambitious du with an emphasis that betrayed
long meditated revenge — followed the handsome dandy, and
presently met a young man to whom he thought he could
speak without reserve.
"Well, Kastignac. have you seen Lucien? He has come
out in a new skin."
"If I were half as good looking as he is, I should be twice
as rich," replied the fine gentleman, in a light but meaning
tone, expressive of keen raillery.
"No !" said the fat mask in his ear, repaying a thousand
ironies in one by the accent he lent the monosyllable.
Rastignac, who was not the man to swallow an affront,
stood as if struck by lightning, and allowed himself to be
led into a recess by a grasp of iron which he could not
shake off.
"You young cockerel, hatched in Mother Vauquer's coop
— you, whose heart failed you to clutch old Taillefer's mill-
ions when the hardest part of the business was done — let
me tell you, for your personal safety, that if you do not treat
Lucien like the brother you love, you are in our power, while
we are not in yours. Silence and submission ! or I shall
join your game and upset the skittles. Lucien de Rubempre
is under the protection of the strongest power of the day
— the Church. Choose between life and death. — Answer.^'
Eastignac felt giddy, like a man who has slept in a forest
and wakes to see by his side a famishing lioness. He was
frightened, and there was no one to see him; the boldest
men yield to fear under such circumstances.
"No one but /le can know — or would dare " he mur-
mured to himself.
^ ESTHER HAPPY 7
The mask clutched his hand tighter to prevent his finish-
ing his sentence.
"Act us if I were he" he said.
Eastignac then acted like a millionaire on the highroad
with a brigand's pistol at his head; he surrendered.
"My dear Count," said he to du Chatelet, to whom he
presently returned, "if you care for your position in life,
treat Lucien de Eubempre as a man whom you will one day
see holding a place far above that where you stand."
The mask made an imperceptible gesture of approbation,
and went off in search of Lucien.
"My dear fellow, you have changed your opinion of him
very suddenly," replied the Prefet with justifiable surprise.
"As suddenly as mpn change who belong to the centre and
vote with the right," replied Eastignac to the Prefet-Depute,
whose vote had for a few days failed to support the Ministry.
"Are there such things as opinions nowadays? There are
only interests," observed des Lupeaulx, who had heard them.
"What is the case in point?"
"The case of the Sieur de Eubempre, whom Eastignac is
setting up as a person of consequence," said du Chatelet to
the Secretary-General.
"My dear Count," replied des Lupeaulx very seriously,
"Monsieur de Eubempre is a young man of the highest merit,
and has such good interest at his back tliat I should be de-
lighted to renew my acquaintance with him."
"There he is, rushing into the wasps' nest of the rakes of
the day," said Eastignac.
The three speakers looked towards a corner where a group
of recognized wits had gathered, men of more or less celebrity,
and several men of fashion. These gentlemen made com-
mon stock of their jests, their remarks, and their scandal, try-
ing to amuse themselves till something should amuse them.
Among this strangely mingled party were some men with
whom Lucien had had transactions, combining ostensibly
kind offices with covert false dealing.
8 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Hallo ! Lucien, my boy, why here we are patched up
again — new stuffing and a new cover. Where have we come
from? Have we mounted the high horse once more with
little offerings from Florine's boudoir ? Bravo, old chap !"
and Blondet released Finot to put his arm afEectionately
round Lucien and press him to his heart.
Andoche Finot was the proprietor of a review on which
Lucien had worked for almost nothing, and to which Blondet
gave the benefit of his collaboration, of the wisdom of his
suggestions and the depth of his views. Finot and Blondet
embodied Bertrand and Raton, with this difference — that
la Fontaine's cat at last showed that he knew himself to be
duped, while Blondet, though he knew that he was being
fleeced, still did all he could for Finot- This brilliant con-
dottiere of the pen was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot
hid a brutal strength of will under a heavy exterior, under
the drowsiness of impertinent stupidity, with a superficial
polish of wit, as a laborer rubs his bread with garlic. He
knew how to garner what he gleaned, ideas and crown-pieces
alike, in the fields of the dissolute life led by men engaged
in letters or in politics.
Blondet, for his sins, had placed his powers at the service
of Finot's vices and idleness. Always at war with necessity,
he was one of the race of poverty-stricken and superior men
who can do everything for the fortune of others and nothing
for their own, Aladdins who let other men borrow their
lamp. These excellent advisers have a clear and penetrating
judgment so long as it is not distracted by personal interest.
In them it is the head and not the arm that acts. Hence
the looseness of their morality, and hence the reproach heaped
v« upon them by inferior minds. Blondet would share his purse
' with a comrade he had affronted the day before; he would
dine, drink, and sleep with one whom he would demolish
on the morrow. His amusing paradoxes excused everything.
Accepting the whole world as a jest, he did not want to be
taken seriously; young, beloved, almost famous and con-
tented, he did not devote himself, like Finot, to acquiring the
fortune an . old man needs.
ESTHER HAPPY 9
The most difficult form of courage, perhaps, is that which
Lucien needed at this moment to get rid of Blondet as he
had just got rid of Madame d'Espard and Chatelet. In him,
unfortunately, the joys of vanity hindered the exercise of
pride — the basis, beyond doubt, of many great things. His
vanity had triumphed in the previous encounter; he had
shown himself as a rich man, happy and scornful, to two per-
sons who had scorned him when he was poor and wretched.
But how could a poet, like an old diplomate, run the gauntlet
with two self-styled friends, who had welcomed him in misery,
under whose roof he had slept in the worst of his troubles?
Finot, Blondet, and he had groveled together; they had
wallowed in such orgies as consume something more than
money. Like soldiers who find no market ^or their courage,
Lucien had just done what many men do in Paris : he had
still further compromised his character by shaking Finot's
hand, and not rejecting Blondet's afl^ection.
Every man who has dabbled, or still dabbles, in journalism
is under the painful necessity of bowing to men he despises,'
of smiling at his dearest foe, of compounding the foulest
meanness, of soiling his fingers to pay his aggressors in their
own coin. He becomes used to seeing evil done, and passing
it over; he begins by condoning it, and ends by committing
it. In the long run the soul, constantly stained by shame-
ful and perpetual compromise, sinks lower, the spring of
noble thoughts grows rusty, the hinges of familiarity wear
easy, and turn of their own accord. Alceste becomes Philinte,
natures lose their firmness, talents are perverted, faith in great
deeds evaporates. The man who yearned to be proud of
his work wastes himself in rubbishy articles which his
conscience regards, sooner or later, as so many evil actions.
He started, like Lousteau or Vernou, to be a great writer;
he finds himself a feeble scrivener. Hence it is impossible
to honor too highly men whose character stands as high as
their talent — men like d'Arthez, who know how to walk sure-
footed across the reefs of literary life.
Lucien could make no reply to Blondet's flattery; his wit
10 A GOUKTESAN S LIFE
liad an irresistible fliariii for him, and he maintained the
hold of the corrupter over his j)npil ; besides, he held a posi-
tion in the world through his connection with the Comtesse
de Montcornet.
"Has an uncle left you a fortune!'"* said Finot, laughing
at him.
"Like you, I have marked some fools for cutting down."
replied Lucien in the same tone.
"Then Monsieur has a review — a newspaper of his own?"
Andoche Finot retorted, with the impertinent presumption
of a chief to a subordinate.
"I have something better," replied Lucien, whose vanity,
nettled by the assumed superiority of his editor, restored
him to the sense of his new position.
"What is that, my dear boy ?"
"I have a party."
"There is a Lucien party?" said Vernou. smiling.
"Finot, the boy has left you in the lurch; I told you he
Avould. Lucien is a clever fellow, and you never were respect-
ful to him. You used him as a hack. Repent, blockhead !"
said Blondet.
Blondet, as sharp as a needle, could detect more than one
secret in Lucien's air and manner; while stroking him down,
he contrived to tighten the curb. He meant to know the
reasons of Lucien's return to Paris, his projects, and his
means of living.
"On your knees to a superiority you can never attain to,
albeit you are Finot!" he went on. "Admit this gentleman
forthwith to be one of the great men to whom the future
belongs ; he is one of us ! So w4tty and so handsome, can he
fail to succeed by j'our quibuscumque viisf Here he stands,
in his good Milan armor, his strong sword half unsheathed,
and his pennon tlyingi — Bless me, Lucien, where did you
steal that smart waistcoat? Love alone can tind such stuff
as that. Have you an address? At this moment I am
anxious to know where my friends are domiciled ; I don't know
where to sleep. Finot has turned me out of doors for the
night, under the vulgar pretext of 'a lady in the case." "
ESTHER HAPPY 11
"My boy/' said Lueien, "I put into practice a motto by
which you may secure a quiet life : Fuge, late, tace. I am
off."
"But I am not off till you pay me a sacred debt — that
little supper, you know, heh?" said Blondet, who was rather
too much given to good cheer, and got himself treated when
he was out of funds.
"What supper?" asked Lucien, with a little stamp of im-
patience.
"You don't remember? In that I recognize my pros-
perous friend; he has lost his memory."
"He knows what he owes us; I will go bail for his good
heart," said Finot, taking up Blondet's joke.
"Eastignac," said Blondet, taking the young dandy by the
arm as he came up the room to the column where the so-
called friends were standing. "There is a supper in the wind;
you will join us — unless," he added gravely, turning to
Lucien, "Monsieur persists in ignoring a debt of honor. He
can."
"Monsieur de Eubempre is incapable of such a thing; I
will answer for him," said_^astignac, who never dreamed
of a practical joke.
"And there is Bixiou, he will come too," cried Blondet;
"there is no fun without him. Without him champagne cloys
my tongue, and I find everj-thing insipid, even the pepper
of satire."
"My friends," said Bixiou, "I see you have gathered round
the wonder of the day. Our dear Lucien has revived the
Metamorphoses of Ovid. Just as the gods used to turn into
strange vegetables and other things to seduce the ladies, he
has turned the Chardon (the Thistle) into a gentleman to
bewitch — whom? Charles X. ! — My dear boy," he went on,
holding Lucien by his coat button, "a journalist who apes
the fine gentleman deserves rough music. In their place,"
said the merciless jester, as he pointed to Finot and Vernou,
"I should take you up in my society paper; you would bring
in a hundred francs for ten columns of fun."
12 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Bixiou," said Blondet, "an Amphitryon is sacred for
twenty-four hours before the feast and twelve hours after.
Our illustrious friend is giving us a supper."
"What then !" cried Bixiou ; "what is more imperative
than the duty of saving a great name from oblivion, of en-
dowing the indigent aristocracy with a man of talent?
Lucien, you enjoy the esteem of the press of which you were
a distinguished ornament, and we will give you our support.
— Finot, a paragraph in the 'latest items' ! — Blondet, a little
butter on the fourth page of your paper ! — We must advertise
the appearance of the finest book of the age, VArcher de
Charles IX. ! We will appeal to Dauriat to bring out as soon
as possible les Marguerites, those divine sonnets by the French
Petrarch! We must carry our friend through on the shield
of stamped paper by which reputations are made and un-
made."
"If you want a supper," said Lucien to Blondet, hoping to
rid himself of this mob, which threatened to increase, "it
seems to me that you need not work up hyperbole and parable
to attack an old friend as if he were a booby. To-morrow
night at Lointier's " he cried, seeing a woman come by,
whom he rushed to meet.
"Oh ! oh ! oh !" said Bisiou on three notes, with a mocking
glance, and seeming to recognize the mask to whom Lucien
addressed himself. "This needs confirmation."
He followed the handsome pair, got past them, examined
them keenly, and came back, to the great satisfaction of all
the envious crowd, who were eager to learn the source of
Lucien's change of fortune.
"Friends," said Bixiou, "you have long known the goddess
of the ^tre de Eubempre's fortune: She is des Lupeaulx's
former 'rat.' "
A form of dissipation, now forgotten, but still customary
at the beginning of this century, was the keeping of "rats."
The "rat" — a slang word that has become old-fashioned — ^was
a girl of ten or twelve in the chorus of some theatre, more
particularly at the opera, who was trained by young routes to
ESTHER HAPPY 13
vice and infamy. A "rat" was a sort of demon page, a tom-
boy who was forgiven a trick if it were but funny. The "rat"
might take what she pleased; she was to be watched like
a dangerous animal, and she brought an element of liveliness
into life, like Scapin, Sganarelle, and Frontin in old-fashioned
comtdy. But a "rat" was too expensive; it made no return
in honor, profit, or pleasure ; the fashion of rats so completely
went 0U+, that in these days few people knew anything of this
detail of fashionable life before the Restoration till certain
writers took up the "rat" as a new subject.
"What ! after having seen Coralie killed under him, Lucien
means to rob us of La Torpille?" (the torpedo fish) said
Blondet.
As he heard the name the brawny mask gave a signi-
ficant start, which, though repressed, was understood by
Kastignac.
"It is out of the question," replied Finot ; "La Torpille has
not a sou to give away; Nathan tells me she borrowed a
thousand francs of Fiorina."
"Come, gentlemen, gentlemen !" said Rastignac, anxious
to defend Lucien against so odious an imputation.
"Well," cried Vernou, "is Coralie's kept man likel}^ to be
so very particular?"
"Oh !" replied Bixiou, "those thousand francs prove to me
that our friend Lucien lives with La Torpille "
"What an irreparable loss to literature, science, art, and
politics !" exclaimed Blondet. "La Torpille is the only com-
mon prostitute in whom I ever found the stuff for a superior
courtesan; she has not been spoiled by education — she can
neither read nor write, she would have understood us. We
might have given to our era one of those magnificent Aspasias
without which there can be no golden age. See how admira-
bly Madame du Barry was suited to the eighteenth century,
Ninon de FEnclos to the seventeenth, Marion Delorme to the
sixteenth, Imperia to the fifteenth, Flora to Republican Rome,
which she made her heir, and which paid off the public debt
with her fortune ! What would Horace be without Lydia,
14 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Tibullus without Delia, Catullus without Lesbia, Propertius
without Cyntliia, Demetrius without Lamia, who is his glory
at this day?"
"Blondet talking of Demetrius in the opera house seems
to me rathertoostrongof the Dehats,'' said Bixiou in his neigh-
Itor's ears.
"And where would the empire of the Caesars have been
but for these queens ?" Blondet went on ; "Lai's and Ehodope
are Greece and Egypt. They all indeed are the poetry of
the ages in which they lived. This poetry, which Napoleon
lacked — for the Widow of his Great Army is a barrack jest,
was not wanting to the Revolution ; it had Madame Tallien !
In these days there is certainly a throne to let in France
Avhich is for her who can fill it. We among us could make
a queen. I should have given La Torpille an aunt, for her
mother is too decidedly dead on the field of dishonor; du
Tillet would have given her a mansion, Loustean a carriage,
Rastignac her footmen, des Lupeaulx a cook, Finot her hats"
— Finot could not suppress a shrug at standing the point-
blank fire of this epigram — "Vernou would have composed
her advertisements, and Bixiou her repartees ! The aristoc-
racy would have come to enjoy themselves with our Ninon,
where we would have got artists together, under pain of death
by newspaper articles. Ninon the second would have been
magnificently impertinent, overwhelming in luxury. She
would have set up opinions. Some prohibited dramatic mas-
terpiece should have been read in her drawing-room ; it should
have been written on purpose if necessary. She would not
have been liberal; a^eourtesan is essentially monarchical. Oh,
what a loss ! She ought to have embraced her whole century,
and she makes love with a little young man ! Lucienwillmake
a sort of hunting-dog of her."
"None of the female powers of whom you speak ever
trudged the streets," said Finot, "and that pretty little 'rat'
has rolled in the mire."
"Like a lily-seed in the soil," replied Vernou, "and she
has improved in it and flowered. Hence her superiority.
ESTHER HAPPY 15
Must we not have known everything to be able to create the
laughter and joy which are part of everytliing ?"
"He is right/' said Lousteau, who had hitherto listened
without speaking; "La Torpille can laugh and make others
laugh. That gift of all great writers and great actors is
proper to those who have investigated every social deep. At
eighteen that girl had already known the greatest wealth,
tlie most squalid misery — men of every degree. She bears
about her a sort of magic wand by which she lets loose the
brutal appetites so vehemently suppressed in men who still
have a heart while occupied with politics or science, literatiire
or art. There is not in Paris another woman who can say
to the beast as she does : 'Come out !' And the beast leaves
his lair and wallows in excesses. She feeds you up to the
chin, she helps you to drink and smoke. In short, this
woman is the salt of which Eabelais writes, which, thrown
on matter, animates it and elevates it to the marvelous
realms of art; her robe displays unimagined splendor, her
fingers drop gems as her lips shed smiles ; she gives the spirit
of the occasion to every little thing; her chatter twinkles
with bright sayings, she has the secret of the quaintest
onomatopoeia, full of color, and giving color; she "
"You are wasting five francs' worth of copy," said Bixiou,
interrupting Lousteau. "La Torpille is something far better
than all that; you have all been_inJ[ove_ with her more or
less, not one of you can say that she ever was his mistress.
She can always command you; you will never command her.
You may force your way in and ask her to do you a ser-
vice '"
"Oh, she is more generous than a brigand chief who knows
his business, and more devoted than the best of school-fellows,"
said Blondet. "You may trust her with your purse or your
secrets. But what made me choose her as queen is her Bour-
bon-like indifference for a fallen favorite."
"She, like her mother, is much too dear," said des Lupeauk.
"The handsome Dutch woman would have swallowed up the
income of the ArchbiBhop of Toledo ; she ate two notaries out
of house and home "
16 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"And kept Maxime de Trailles when he was a court page/'
said Bixiou.
"La Torpille is too dear, as Eaphael was, or Careme, or
Taglioni, or Lawrence, or Boule, or any artist of genius is
too dear/'" said Blondet.
"Esther never looked so thoroughly a lady/' said Eastignac,
pointing to the masked figure to whom Lucien had given
his arm. "I will bet on its being Madame de Serizy."
"Not a doubt of it," cried du Chatelet, "and Monsieur du
Eubempre's fortune is accounted for."
"Ah, the Church knows how to choose its Levites; what
a sweet ambassador's secretary he will make !" remarked des
Lupeaulx.
"All the more so," Eastignac went on, "because Lucien is
a really clever fellow. These gentlemen have had proof of
it more than once," and he turned to Blondet, Finot, and
Lousteau.
"Yes, the boy is cut out of the right stuff to get on," said
Lousteau, who was dying of jealousy. "And particularly
because he has what we call independent ideas . . ."
"It is you who trained him," said Vernou.
"Well," replied Bixiou, looking at des Lupeaulx, "1 trust
to the memory of Monsieur the Secretary-General and Master
of Appeals — that mask is La Torpille, and I will stand a supper
on it."
"I will hold the stakes," said du Chatelet, curious to know
the truth,
"Come, des Lupeaulx," said Finot, "try to identify your
rat's ears."
"There is no need for committing the crime of treason
against a mask," replied Bixiou. "La Torpille and Lucien
must pass us as they go up the room again, and I pledge my-
self to prove that it is she."
"So our friend Lucien has come above water once more,"
said Nathan, joining the group. "I thought he had gono
back to Angoumois for the rest of his days. Has he dis-
covered some secret to ruin the English ?"
ESTHER HAPPY 17
"He has done what you will not do in a hurry," retorted
Eastignac; "he has paid up."
The burly mask nodded in confirmation.
"A man who has sown his wild oats at his age puts him-
self out of court. He has no pluck; he puts money in the
funds," replied Nathan.
"Oh, that youngster will always be a fine gentleman, and
will always have such lofty notions as will place him far
above many men who think themselves his betters," replied
Eastignac.
At this moment journalists, dandies, and idlers were all
examining the charming subject of their bet as horse-dealers
examine a horse for sale. These connoisseurs, grown old in
familiarity with every form of Parisian depravity, all men
of superior talent each his own way, equally corrupt, equally
corrupting, all given over to unbridled ambition, accustomed
to assume and to guess everything, had their eyes centered on
a masked woman, a woman whom no one else could identify.
They, and certain habitual frequenters of the opera balls,
could alone recognize under the long shroud of the black
domino, the hood and falling ruff which make the wearer un-
recognizable, the rounded form, the individuality of figure
and gait, the sway of the waist, the carriage of the head —
the most intangible trifles to ordinary eyes, but to them the
easiest to discern.
In spite of this shapeless wrapper they could watch the
most appealing of dramas, that of a woman inspired by a
genuine passion. Were she La Torpille, the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, or Madame de Serizy, on the lowest or highest
rung of the social ladder, this woman was an exquisite crea-
ture, a flash from happy dreams. These old young men, like
these young old men, felt so keen an emotion, that they envied
Lucien the splendid privilege of working such a metamorpho-
sisifif^a woman into a goddess. The mask was there as
though she Tiad been alone with Lucien ; for that woman the
thousand other persons did not exist, nor the evil and dust-
ladeu atmosphere; no, she moved under the celestial vault
18 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
of love, as Raphael's Madonnas under their slender oval glory.
She did not feel herself elbowed; the fire of her glance shot
from the holes in her mask and sank into Lucien's e^'es; the
thrill of her frame seemed to answer to every movement of
her companion. Whence comes this flame that radiates from
a woman in love and distinguishes her above all others?
Whence that sylph-like lightness which seems to negative the
laws of gravitation? Is the soul become ambient? Has
happiness a physical effluence?
The ingenuousness of a girl, the graces of a child were
discernible under the domino. Though they walked apart,
these two beings suggested the figures of Flora and Zephyr
as we see them grouped by the cleverest sculptors; but they
were beyond sculpture, the gi"eatest of the arts ; Lucien and his
pretty domino were more like the angels busied with flowers
or birds, which Gian Bellini has placed beneath the effigies of
the Virgin ]\Iother. Lucien and this girl belonged to the
realm of fancy, which is as far above art as cause is above
effect.
When the domino, forgetful of everything, was within a
A ard of the group, Bixiou exclaimed :
"Esther!"
The unhappy girl turned her head quickly at hearing her-
self called, recognized the mischievous speaker, and bowed
her head like a dying creature that has drawn its last breath.
A sharp laugh followed, and the group of men melted
among the crowd like a knot of frightened field-rats whisking
into their holes by the roadside. Eastignac alone went no
further than was necessary, just to avoid making any shoM^
of shunning Lucien's flashing eye. He could thus note two
phases of distress equally deep though unconfessed ; first, the
liapless Torpille, stricken as by a lightning stroke, and then
the inscrutable mask, the only one of the group who had
remained. Esther murmured a word in Lucien's ear just as
her knees gave way, and Lucien, supporting her, led her
away,
Eastignac watched the pretty pair, lost in meditation.
ESTHER HAPPY Vb
"How did she get her name of La Torpille?" asked a
gloomy voice that struck to his vitals, for it was no longer
disguised.
''He again — he has made his escape !" muttered Eastignae
to himself.
"Be silent or I murder you," replied the mask, changing
his voice. "I am satisfied with you, you have kept your
word, and there is more than one arm ready to serve you.
Henceforth be as silent as the grave ; but, before that, answer
my question."
"Well, the girl is such a witch that she could have mag-
netized the Emperor Napoleon; she could magnetize a man
more difficult to influence — you yourself," replied Eastignae,
and he turned to go.
"One moment," said the mask; "I will prove to you that
you have never seen me anywhere."
The speaker took his mask ofl"; for a moment Eastignae
hesitated, recognizing nothing of the hideous being he had
known formerly at Madame Vauqiier's.
"The devil has enabled you to change in every particular,
excepting your eyes, which it is impossible to forget," said he.
The iron hand gripped his arm to enjoin eternal secrecy.
At three in the morning des Lupeaulx and Finot found
the elegant Eastignae on the same spot, leaning against the
column where the terrible mask had left him. Eastignae
had confessed to himself; he had been at once priest and
pentient, culprit and judge. He allowed himself to be led
away to breakfast, and reached home perfectly tipsy, but
taciturn.
The Kue de Langlade and the adjacent streets are a blot
on the Palais Eoyal and the Eue de Eivoli. This portion
of one of the handsomest quarters of Paris will long retain
the stain of foulness left by the hillocks formed of the mid-
dens of old Paris, on which mills formerly stood. These
narrow streets, dark and muddy, where such industries are
carried on as care little for appearances, wear at night an
20 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
aspect of mystery full of contrasts. On coming from the
well-lighted regions of the Eue Saint-Honore, the Rue Xeuve-
des-Petits-Champs, and the Eue de Eichelieu, where the
crowd is constantly pushing, where glitter the masterpieces
of industry, fashion, and art, ever}'' man to whom Paris by
night is unknown would feel a sense of dread and melancholy,
on finding himself in the labyrinth of little streets which lie
round that blaze of light reflected even from the sk3^ Dense
blackness is here, instead of floods of gaslight; a dim oil-
lamp here and there sheds its doubtful and smoky gleam, and
many blind alleys are not lighted at all. Foot passengers
are few, and walk fast. The shops are shut, the few that
are open are of a squalid kind; a dirty, unlighted wineshop,
or a seller of underclothing and eau-de-Cologne. An un-
wholesome chill lays a clammy cloak over your shoulders.
Few carriages drive past. There are sinister places here,
especially the Rue de Langlade, the entrance to the Passage
Saint-Guillaume, and the turnings of some streets.
The municipal council has not yet been able to purge this
vast lazar-place, for prostitution long since made it its head-
quarters. It is, perhaps, a good thing for Paris that these
alleys should be allowed to preserve their filthy aspect. Pass-
ing through them by day, it is impossible to imagine what
they become by night ; they are pervaded by strange creatures
of no known world; white, half-naked forms cling to the
walls — the darkness is alive. Between the passenger and
the wall a dress steals by — a dress that moves and speaks.
Half-open doors suddenly shout with laughter. Words fall
on the ear such as Rabelais speaks of as frozen and melting.
Snatches of songs come up from the pavement. The noise
is not vague ; it means something. When it is hoarse it is a
voice; but if it suggests a song, there is nothing human
about it, it is more like a croak. Often you hear a sharp
whistle, and then the tap of boot-heels has a peculiarly aggres-
sive and mocking ring. This medley of things makes you
giddy. Atmospheric conditions are reversed there — it is
warm in winter and cool in summer.
ESTHER HAPPY 21
Still, whatever the weather, this strange world always
wears the same aspect; it is the fantastic world of Hoffmann
of Berlin. The most mathematical of clerks never thinks of
it as real, after returning through the straits that lead into
decent streets, where there are passengers, shops, and taverns.
Modern administration, or modern policy, more scornful or
more shamefaced than the queens and kings of past ages,
no longer dare look boldly in the face of this plague of our
capitals. Measures, of course, must change with the times,
and such as bear on individuals and on their liberty are a
ticklish matter ; still, we ought, perhaps, to show some breadth
and boldness as to merely material measures — air, light, and
construction. The moralist, the artist, and the sage adminis-
trator alike must regret the old wooden galleries of the
Palais Royal, where the l^mbs were to be seen who will always
be found where there are loungers ; and is "it not best that
the loungers should go where they are to be found? What
is the consequence ? The gayest parts of the Boulevards, that
delightfulest of promenades, are impossible in the evening
for a family party. The police has failed to take advan-
tage of the outlet afforded by some small streets to purge
the main street.
The girl whom we have seen crushed by a word at the
opera ball had been for the last month or two living in
the Rue de Langlade, in a very poor-looking house. This
structure, stuck on to the wall of an enormously large one,
badly stuccoed, of no depth, and immensely high, has all its
windows on the street, and bears some resemblance to a
parrot^s perch. On each floor are two rooms, let as separate
flats. There is a narrow staircase clinging to the wall,
queerly lighted by windows which mark its ascent on the
outer wall, each landing being indicated by a sink, one of
the most odious peculiarities of Paris. The shop and entresol
at that time were tenanted by a tinman; the landlord oc-
cupied the first floor; the four upper stories were rented by
very decent working girls, who were treated by the portress
and the proprietor with some consideration and an obliging-
y
22 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
ness called forth by the difficulty of letting a he oddly
constructed and situated. The occupants of the quarier are
accounted for by the existence there of many houses of the
same character, for which trade has no use, and which can
only be rented by the poorer kinds of industry, of a pre-
carious or ignominious nature.
At three in the afternoon the portress, who had seen
Mademoiselle Esther brought home half dead by a young
man at two in the morning, had just held council with the
young woman of the floor above, who, before setting out in a
cab to join some party of pleasure, had expressed her uneasi-
ness about Esther ; she had not heard her move. Esther was,
no doubt, still asleep, but this slumber seemed suspicious.
The portress, alone in her cell, was regretting that she could
not go to see what was happening oq the fourth floor, where
Mademoiselle Esther lodged.
Just as she had made up her mind to leave the tinman's
son in charge of her room, a sort of den in a recess on the
entresol floor, a cab stopped at the door. A man stepped out,
wrapped from head to foot in a cloak evidently intended to
conceal his dress or his rank in life, and asked for Made-
moiselle Esther. The portress at one felt relieved; this ac-
counted for Esther's silence and quietude. As the stranger
mounted the stairs above the portress' room, she noticed silver
buckles in his shoes, and fancied she caught sight of the black
fringe of a priest's sash; she went downstairs and catechised
the driver, who answered without speech, and again the wo-
man understood.
The priest knocked, received no answer, heard a slight
gasp, and forced the door open with a thrust of his shoulder;
charity, no doubt, lent him strength, but in any one else it
would have been ascribed to practice. He rushed to the inner
room, and there found poor Esther in front of an image of
the Virgin in painted plaster, kneeling, or rather doubled up,
on the floor, her hands folded. The girl was dying. A
brazier of burnt charcoal told the tale of that dreadful morn-
ing. The domino cloak and hood were lying on the ground.
ERTHER HAPPY 23
The bed was undisturbed. The unhappy creatu're, stricken
to the heart by a mortal thrust, had, no doubt, n.mde all her
arrangements on her return from the opera. A ciindle-wick,
collapsed in the pool of grease that filled the can.dle-sconce,
showed how completely her last meditations had absorbed
her. A handkerchief soaked with tears proved the ^sincerity
of the Magdalen's despair, while her classic attitude wfis that
of the irreligious courtesan. This abject repentance made
the priest smile.
Esther, unskilled in dying, had left the door open, not
thinking that the air of two rooms would need a lar^zer
amount of charcoal to make it suffocating; she was only
stunned by the fumes; the fresh air from the staircase
gradually restored her to a consciousness of her woes.
The priest remained standing, lost in gloomy meditation,
without being touched by the girl's divine beauty, watching
her first movements as if she had been some animal. His
eyes went from the crouching figure to the surrounding ob-
jects with evident indifference. He looked at the furniture
in the room; the paved floor, red, polished, and cold, was
poorly covered with a shabby carpet worn to the string. A
little bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was
hung with yellow cotton printed with red stars, one armchair
and two small chairs, also of painted wood, and covered with
the same cotton print of which the window-curtains were also
made ; a gray wall-paper sprigged with flowers blackened and
greasy with age; a fireplace full of kitchen utensils of the
vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a stone shelf, on which
lay some jewelry false and real, a pair of scissors, a dirty
pincushion, and some white scented gloves; an exquisite hat
perched on the water- jug, a Ternaux shawl stopping a hole in
the window, a handsome gown hanging from a nail; a little
hard sofa, with no cushions ; broken clogs and dainty slippers,
boots that a queen might have coveted; cheap china plates,
cracked or chipped, with fragments of a past meal, and nickel
forks — the plate of the Paris poor; a basket full of potatoes
and dirty linen, with a smart gauze cap on the top ; a rickety
24 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
wardrobe, ,with a glass door, open and empt}^ and on the
shelves suridry pawn-tickets, — this was the medley of things,
dismal or pleasing, abject and handsome, that fell on his
eye. ,
These relics of splendor among the potsherds, these house-
hold belongings — so appropriate to the bohemian existence of
the girl who knelt stricken in her unbuttoned garments, like
a horse dying in harness under the broken shafts entangled
in the reins — did the whole strange scene suggest any thoughts
to the priest ? Did he say to himself that this erring creature
m,ust at least be disinterested to live in such poverty when her
lover was young and rich? Did he ascribe the disorder of
the room to the disorder of her life? Did he feel pity or
terror? Was his charity moved?
To see him, his arms folded, his brow dark, his lips set,
his eye harsh, an}'' one must have supposed him absorbed in
morose feelings of hatred, considerations that jostled each
^ other, sinister schemes. He was certainly insensible to the
**soft roundness of a bosom almost crushed under the weight
. I of the bowed shoulders, and to the beautiful modeling of
I the crouching Venus that was visible under the black petti-
3Li3oat, so closely was the dying girl curled up. The drooping
head which, seen from behind, showed the white, slender,
flexible neck and the fine shoulders of a well-developed figure,
did not appeal to him. He did not raise Esther, he did not
seem to hear the agonizing gasps which showed that she was
returning to life; a fearful sob and a terrifying glance from
the girl were needed before he condescended to lift her, and
he carried her to the bed with an ease that revealed enormous
strength.
"Lucien!" she murmured.
"Love is there, the woman is not far behind," said the
priest with some bitterness.
The victim of Parisian depravity then observed the dress
worn by her deliverer, and said, with a smile like a child's
when it takes possession of something longed for :
"Then I shall not die without being reconciled to Heaven ?"
ESTHER HAPPY 25
"You may yet expiate your sins," said the priest, moisten-
ing her forehead with water, and making her smell at a cruet;
of vinegar he found in a corner.
■ "I feel that life, instead of departing, is rushing in on
me," said she, after accepting the Father's care and express-
ing her gratitude by simple gestures. This engaging pan-
tomime, such as the Graces might have used to charm, per-
fectly justified the nickname given to this strange girl.
"Do you feel better?" said the priest, giving her a glass
of sugar and water to drink.
This man seemed accustomed to such queer establishments ;
he knew all about it. He was quite at home there. This
privilege of being everywhere at home is the prerogative of
kings, courtesans, and thieves.
"When you feel quite well," this strange priest went on
after a pause, "you must tell me the reasons which prompted
you to commit this last crime, this attempted suicide."
"My story is very simple, Father," replied she. "Three
months ago I was living the evil life to which I was born.
I was the lowest and vilest of creatures ; now I am only the
most unhappy. Excuse me from telling you the history of
my poor mother, who was murdered "
"By a Captain, in a house of ill-fame," said the priest, in-
terrupting the penitent. "I know your origin, and I know
that if a being of your sex can ever be excused for leading
a life of shame, it is you, who have always lacked good
examples."
"Alas ! I was never baptized, and have no religious teach-
ing."
"All may yet be remedied then," replied the priest, "pro-
vided that your faith, your repentance, are sincere and with-
out ulterior motive."
"Lueien and God fill my heart," said she with ingenuous
pathos.
"You might have said God and Lueien," answered the
priest, smiling. "You remind me of the purpose of my visit.
Omit nothing that concerns that young man."
2e A. COURTESAN'S LIFE
"You have come from him?" she asked^, with a tender look
that would have touched any other priest ! "Oh, he thought
I should do it !"
"No/' replied the priest ; "it is not your death, but your life
that we are interested in. Come, explain your position
toward each other."
"In one word," said she.
The poor child quaked at the priest's stern tone, but as
a woman quakes who has long ceased to be surprised at
brutality.
"Lucien is Lucien," said she, "the handsomest young man,
the kindest soul alive: if you know him, my love must seem
to you quite natural. I met him by chance, three months
ago, at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre, where I went one day
when I had leave, for we had a day a week at Madame Mey-
nardie's, where I then was. Xext day, you understand, I
went out without leave. Love had come into my heart, and
had so completely changed me, that on my return from the
theatre I did not know myself: I had a horror of m3rself.
Lucien would never have known. Instead of telling him
what I was, I gave him my address at these rooms, where a
friend of mine was then living, who was so kind as to give
them up to me. I swear on my sacred word "
"You must not swear."
"Is it swearing to give your sacred word? — Well, from
that day I have worked in this room like a lost creature at
shirt-making at twenty-eight sous apiece, so as to live by
honest labor. For a month I have had nothing to eat but
potatoes, that I might keep myself a good girl and worthy
of Lucien, who loves me and respects me as a pattern of
virtue. I have made my declaration before the police to
recover my rights, and submitted to two years' surveillance.
They are ready enough to enter your name on the lists of
disgrace, but make every difficulty about scratching it out
again. All I asked of Heaven was to enable me to keep my
resolution.
"I shall be nineteen in the month of April; at my age
ESTHER HAPPY 27
there is still a chance. It seems to me that I was never born
till three months ago. — I prayed to God every morning that
Lucien might never know what my former life had been.
I bought that Virgin you see there, and I prayed to her in
my own way, for I do not know any prayers; I cannot read
nor write, and I have never been into a church ; I have never
seen anything of God excepting in processions, out of
curiosity."
"And what do you say to the Virgin?"
"I talk to her as I talk to Lucien, with all my soul, till
I make him cry."
"Oh, so he cries ?"
"With joy," said she eagerly, "poor dear boy! "We un-
derstand each other so well that we have but one soul ! He
is so nice, so fond, so sweet in heart and mind and man-
ners ! He says he is a poet ; I say he is god. — Forgive me !
You priests, you see, don't know what love is. But, in fact,
only girls like me know enough of men to appreciate such as
Lucien. A Lucien, you see, is as rare as a woman without .
sin. When you come across him you can love no one else;^
so there ! But such a being must have his fellow ; so I want
to be worthy to be loved by my Lucien. That is where my
trouble began. Last evening, at the opera, I was recognized
by some young men who have no more feeling than a tiger
has pity — for that matter, I could come round the tiger!
The veil of innocence I had tried to Avear was torn off; their
laughter pierced my brain and my heart. Do not think you
have saved me; I shall die of grief."
"Your veil of innocence?" said the priest. "Then you
have treated Lucien with the sternest severity?"
"Oh, Father, how can you, who know him, ask me such
a question!" she replied with a smile. "Who can resist a
god?"
"Do not be blasphemous," said the priest mildly. "No
one can be like God. Exaggeration is out of place with true
love; you had not a pure and genuine love for your idol.
If you had undergone the conversion you boast of having
28 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
felt, you would have acquired the virtues which are a part
of womanhood ; you would have known the charm of chastity,
the refinements of modesty, the two virtues that are the glory
of a maiden. — You do not love."
Esther's gesture of horror was seen by the priest, but it
had no effect on the impassibility of her confessor.
"Yes; for you love him for yourself and not for himself,
for the temporal enjoyments that delight you, and not for
love itself. If he has thus taken possession of you, you
cannot have felt that sacred thrill that is inspired by a being
on whom God has set the seal of the most adorable perfec-
tions. Has it never occurred to you that you would degrade
him by your past impurit}', that you would corrupt a child
by the overpowering seductions which earned you your nick-
name glorious in infamy? You have been illogical with
yourself, and your passion of a day "
"Of a day ?" she repeated, raising her eyes.
"By what other name can you call a love that is not eternal,
that does not unite us in the future life of the Christian, to
the being we love?"
"Ah, I will be a Catholic !" she cried in a hollow, vehement
tone, that would have earned her the mercy of the Lord.
"Can a girl who has received neitlier the baptism of the
Church nor that of knowledge; who can neither read, nor
write, nor pray; who cannot take a step without the stones
in the street rising up to accuse her; noteworthy only for
the fugitive gift of beauty which sickness may destroy to-
morrow; can such a vile, degraded creature, fully aware too
of her degradation — for if you had been ignorant of it and
less devoted, you would have been more excusable — can the
intended victim to suicide and hell hope to be the wife of
Lucien de Eubempre?"
Every word was a poniard thrust piercing the depths of her
heart. At every word the louder sobs and abundant tears of
the desperate girl showed the power with which light had
ilashed upon an intelligence as pure as that of a savage, upon
a soul at length aroused, upon a nature over which depravity
ESTHER HAPPY 29
had laid a sheet of foul ice now thawed in the sunshine of
faith.
"Why did I not die !" was the only thought that found ut-
terance in the midst of a torrent of ideas that racked and
ravaged her brain.
"My daughter/' said the terrible judge, "there is a love
which is unconfessed before men, but of which the secret
is received by the angels with smiles of gladness."
"What is that?"
"Love without hope, when it inspires our life, when it
fills us with the spirit of sacrifice, when it ennobles every
act by the thought of reaching some ideal perfection. Yes,
the angels approve of such love; it leads to the knowledge
of God. To aim at perfection in order to be worthy of the
one you love, to make for him a thousand secret sacrifices,
adoring him from afar, giving your blood drop by drop,
abnegating your self-love, never feeling any pride or anger
as regards him, even concealing from him all knowledge of
the dreadful jealousy he fires in your heart, giving him all
he wishes were it to your own loss, loving what he loves,
always turning your face to him to follow him without his
knowing it — such love as that religion would have forgiven;
it is no offence to laws human or divine, and would have
led you into another road than that of your foul voluptuous-
ness."
As she heard this horrible verdict, uttered in a word —
and such a word ! and spoken in such a tone ! — Esther's spirit
rose up in fairly legitimate distrust. This word was like a
thunder-clap giving warning of a storm about to break. She
looked at the priest, and felt the grip on her vitals which
wrings the bravest when face to face with sudden and im-
minent danger. No eye could have read what was passing
in this man's mind; but the boldest would have found more
to quail at than to hope for in the expression of his eyes,
once bright and yellow like those of a tiger, but now shrouded,
from austerities and privations, with a haze like that which
overhangs the horizon in the dog-days, when, though the
30 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
earth is hot and luminous, the mist makes it indistinct and
dim — almost invisible.
The gravity of a Spaniard, the deep furrows wliich the
myriad scars of virulent smallpox made hideously like broken
ruts, were ploughed into his face, which was sallow and
tanned by the sun. The hardness of this countenance was
all the more conspicuous, being framed in the meagre dry
wig of a priest who takes no care of his person, a black wig
looking rusty in the light. His athletic frame, his hands
like an old soldier's, his broad, strong shoulders were those
of the Caryatides which the architects of the Middle Ages
introduced into some Italian palaces, remotely imitated in
those of the front of the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre. The
least clear-sighted observer might have seen that fiery pas-
sions or some unwonted accident must have thrown this man
into the bosom of the Church; certainly none but the most
tremendous shocks of lightning could have changed him, if
indeed such a nature were susceptible of change.
Women who have lived the life that Esther had so violently
repudiated come to feel absolute indifference as to the ex-
ternal form of a man. They are like the literary critics of
our day, who may be compared with them in some respects,
and who feel at last perfect disregard of the formulas of
art; they have read so many books, they see so many pass
away, they are so much accustomed to written pages, they
have gone through so many plots, they have seen so many
dramas, they have written so many articles without saying
what they meant, and have so often been treasonable to the
cause of Art in favor of their personal likings and aversions,
that they acquire a feeling of disgust of everything, and yet
continue to pass judgment. It needs a miracle to make
such a writer produce sound work, just as it needs another
miracle to give birth to pure and noble love in the heart of
a courtesan.
The tone and manner of this priest, who seemed to have
escaped from a picture by Zurbaran, struck this poor girl
as so hostile, little as externals affected her, that she per-
ESTHER HAPPY
ceived herself to be less the object ol his solicitude than
instrument he needed for some scheme. Being unable
distinguish between the insinuating tongue of personal in
terest and the unction of true charity, for we must be acutely
awake to recognize false coin when it is offered by a friend,
she felt herself, as it were, in the talons of some fierce and
monstrous bird of prey who, after hovering over her for long,
had pounced down on her; and in her terror she cried in a
voice of alarm:
"I thought it was a priest's duty to console us, and you
are killing me !''
At this innocent outcry the priest started and paused;
he meditated a moment before replying. During that in-
stant the two persons so strangely brought together studied
each other cautiously. The priest understood the girl, though
the girl could not understand the priest.
He, no doubt, put aside some plan which had threatened
the unhappy Esther, and came back to his first ideas.
"We are the physicians of the soul," said he, in a mild
voice, "and we know what remedies suit their maladies."
"Much must be forgiven to the wretched," said Esther.
She fancied she had been wrong; she slipped off the bed,
threw herself at the man's feet, kissed his gown with deep
humility, and looked up at him with eyes full of tears.
"I thought I had done so much !" she said.
"Listen, my child. Your terrible reputation has cast
Lueien's family into grief. They are afraid, and not with-
out reason, that you may lead him into dissipation, into
endless folly "
"That is true ; it was 1 who got him to the ball to mystify
him."
"You are handsome enough to make him wish to triumph
in you in the eyes of the world, to show you with pride,
and make you an object for display. And if he wasted money
only ! — but he will waste his time, his powers ; he will lose
his inclination for the fine future his friends can secure ro
him. Instead of being some day an ambassador, rich, ad-
A COURTESAN'S LIFE
-•ed, and triumphant, he, like so many debauchees who
oke their talents in the mud of Paris, will have been the
. over of a degraded woman.
"As for 3'^ou, after rising for a time to the level of a
sphere of elegance, you will presently sink back to your
former life, for you have not in yon the strength bestowed by
a good education to enable you to resist vice and think of the
future. You would no more be able to break with the women
of your own class than you have broken with the men who
shamed you at the opera this morning. Lucien's true friends,
alarmed by his passion for you, have dogged his steps and
know all. Filled with horror, they have sent me to you to
sound your views and decide your fate; but though they are
powerful enough to clear a stumbling-stone out of the young
man's way, they are merciful. Understand this, child: a
girl whom Lucien loves has claims on their regard, as a true
Christian M'orships the slough on which, by chance, the divine
light falls. 1 came to be the instrument of a beneficent pur-
pose ; — still, if I had found you utterly reprobate, armed with
effrontery and astuteness, corrupt to the marrow, deaf to
the voice of repentance, 1 should have abandoned you to their
wrath.
"The release, civil and political, which it is so hard to
win, which the police is so right to withhold for a time in
the interests of society, and which I heard you long for
with all the ardor of true repentance — is here," said the
priest, taking an othcial-lookiug paper out of his belt. "You
\7ere seen yesterday, this letter of release is dated to-day.
You see how powerful the people are who take an interest in
Lucien."
At the sight of this document Esther was so ingenuously
overcome by the convulsive agitation produced b}' unlooked-
for joy, that a fixed smile parted her lips, like that of a crazy
creature. The priest paused, looking at the girl to see
whether, when once she had lost the horrible strength which
corrupt natures find in corruption itself, and was thrown
back on her frail and delicate primitive nature, she could
ESTHER HAPPY 33
endure so much excitement. If she had been a deceitful
courtesan, Esther would have acted a part; but now that she
was innocent and herself once more, she might perhaps die,
as a blind man cured may lose his sight again if he is ex-
posed to too bright a light. At this moment this man looked
into the very depths of human nature, but his calmness was
terrible in its rigidity; a cold alp, snow-bound and near to
heaven, impenetrable and frowning, with flanks of granite,
and yet beneficent.
Such women are essentially impressionable beings, passing
without reason from the most idiotic distrust to absolute con-
fidence. In this respect they are lower than animals. Ex-
treme in everything — in their joy and despair, in their
religion and irreligion — they would almost all go mad if
they were not decimated b}^ the mortality peculiar to their
class, and if happy chances did not lift one now and then
from the slough in which they dwell. To understand the
very depths of the wretchedness of this horrible existence,
one must know how far in madness a creature can go without
remaining there, by studying La Torpille's violent ecstasy
at the priest's feet. The poor girl gazed at the paper of re-
lease with an expression which Dante has overlooked, and
which surpassed the inventiveness of his Inferno. But a
reaction came with tears. Esther rose, threw her arms round
the priest's neck, laid her head on his breast, which she
wetted with her weeping, kissing the coarse stuff that covered
that heart of steel as if she fain would touch it. She seized
hold of him; she covered his hands with kisses; she poured
out in a sacred efEusion of gratitude her most coaxing caresses,
lavished fond names on him, saying again and again in the
midst of her honeyed words, "Let me have it !" in a thousand
different tones of voice; she wrapped him in tenderness,
covered him with her looks with a .swiftness that found him
defenceless; at last she charmed away his wrath.
The priest perceived how well the girl had deserved her
nickname ; he understood how difficult it was to resist this
bewitching creature ; he suddenly comprehended Lucien's love,
84 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
and just what must have fascinated the poet. Such a pas-
sion hides among a thousand temptations a dart-like hook
which is most apt to catch the lofty soul of an artist. These
passions, inexplicable to the vulgar, are perfectly accounted
for by the thirst for ideal beauty, which is characteristic of
a creative mind. For are we not, in some degree, akin to
the angels, whose task it is to bring the guilty to a better
mind? are we not creative when we purify such a creature?
How delightful it is to harmonize moral with physical beauty !
What joy and pride if we succeed ! How noble a task is that
which has no instrument but love !
Such alliances, made famous by the example of Aristotle,
Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, Cethegus, and Pompey, and yet
so monstrous in the eyes of the vulgar, are based on the same
feeling that prompted Louis XIY. to build Versailles, or
that makes men rush into any ruinous enterprise — into con-
verting the miasma of a marsh into a mass of fragrance sur-
rounded by living waters; placing a lake at the top of a
hill, as the Prince de Conti did at Xointel ; or producing
Swiss scenery at Cassan, like Bergeret, the farmer-general.
In short, it is the application of art in the realm of morals.
The priest, ashamed of having jdelded to this weakness,
hastily pushed Esther away, and she sat down quite abashed,
for he said:
"You are still the courtesan." And he calmly replaced the
paper in his sash.
Esther, like a child who has a single wish in its head,
kept her eyes fixed on the spot where the document lay
hidden.
"My child," the priest went on after a pause, "your mother
was a Jewess, and you have not been baptized ; but, on the
other hand, you have never been taken to the synagogue.
You are in the limbo where little children are ''
"Little children !" she echoed, in a tenderly pathetic tone.
"As you are on the books of the police, a cipher outside
the pale of social beings," the priest went on, unmoved. "If
love, seen as it swept past, led you to believe three montlis
ESTHER HAPPY 35
since that you were then born, you must feel that since that
day you have been really an infant. You must, therefore, be
led as if you were a child; you must be completely changed,
and I will undertake to make you unrecognizable. To begin
with, you must forget Lucien."
The words crushed the poor girl's heart; she raised her
eyes to the priest and shook her head; she could not speak,
finding the executioner in the deliverer again.
"At any rate, you must give up^seeing him," he went on.
"I will take you to a religious house where young girls of
the best families are educated; there you will become a
Catholic, you will be trained in the practice of Christian
exercises, you will be taught religion. You may come out
an accomplished young lady, chaste, pure, well brought up,
if " The man lifted up a finger and paused.
"If," he went on, "you feel brave enough to leave the
'Torpille' behind you here."
"Ah!" cried the poor thing, to whom each word had been
like a note of some melody to which the gates of Paradise
were slowly opening. "Ah ! if it were possible to shed all
my blood here and have it renewed !"
"Listen to me."
She was silent.
"Your future fate depends on your power of forgetting.
Think of the extent to which you pledge yourself. A word,
a gesture, which betrays" La Torpille will kill Lucien's wife.
A word murmured in a dream, an involuntary thought, an
immodest glance, a gesture of impatience, a reminiscence of
dissipation, an omission, a shake of the head that might reveal
what you know, or what is known about you for your
woes "
"Yes, yes. Father," said the girl, with the exaltation of
a saint. "To walk in shoes of red-hot iron and smile, to
live in a pair of stays set with nails and maintain the grace
of a dancer, to eat bread salted with ashes, to drink worm-
wood,— all will be sweet and easy !"
She fell again on her knees, she kissed the priest's shoes,
36 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
she melted into tears that wetted them, she clasped his knees,
and clung to them, murmuring foolish words as she wept for
joy. Her long and beautiful light hair waved to the ground,
a sort of carpet under the feet of the celestial messenger,
whom she saw as gloomy and hard as ever when she lifted
herself up and looked at him.
"What have I done to offend j^ou?" cried she, quite
frightened. "I have heard of a woman, such as I am, who
washed the feet of Jesus with perfumes. Alas ! virtue has
made me so poor that I have nothing but tears to offer you."
"Have you not understood ?" he answered, in a cruel voice.
"I tell you, you must be able to come out of the house to
which I shall take you so completely changed, physically and
morally, that no man or woman you have ever known will
be able to call you 'Esther' and make you look round. Yes-
terday your love could not give you strength enough so com-
pletely to bury the prostitute that she could never reappear;
and again to-day she revives in adoration which is due to none
but God."
"Was it not He who sent you to me ?" said she.
"If during the course of your education you should even
see Lucien. all would be lost," he went on ; "remember that."
"Who will comfort him ?" said she.
"What was it that you comforted him for?" asked the
priest, in a tone in which, for the first time during this scene,
there was a nervous quaver.
"I do not know; he was often sad when he came."
"Sad!" said the priest. "Did he tell you why?"
"Never," answered she.
"He was sad at loving such a girl as you !" exclaimed he.
"Alas ! and well he might be," said she, with deep humility.
"I am the most despicable creature of my sex, and I could
find favor in his eyes only by the greatness of my love."
"That love must give you the courage to obey me blindly.
If I were to take you straight from hence to the house where
you are to be educated, everybody here would tell Lucien that
you had gone away to-day, Sunday, with a priest; he might
ESTHER HAPPY 3T
follow in 3'our tracks. In the course of a week, the portress,
not seeing me again, might suppose me to be what I am not.
So, one evening — this day week — at seven o'clock, go out
quietly and get into a cab that will be waiting for you at the
bottom of the Hue des Frondeurs. During this week avoid
Lucien. find excuses, have him sent from the door, and if he
should come in, go up to some friend's room. I shall know
if you have seen him, and in that event all will be at an end.
I shall not even come back. These eight days you will need
to make up some suitable clothing and to hide your look of
a prostitute," said he, laying a purse on the chimney-shelf.
"There is something in your manner, in your clothes — some-
thing indefinable which is well known to Parisians, and pro-
claims you what you are. Have you never met in the streets
or on the Boulevards a modest and virtuous girl walking with
her mother?"
"Oh yes, to my sorrow ! The sight of a mother and
daughter is one of our most cruel punishments; it arouses
the remorse that lurks in the innermost folds of our hearts,
and that is consuming us. — I know too well all I lack."
"Well, then, you know how you should look next Sun-
day," said the priest, rising.
"Oh !" said she, "teach me one real prayer before you go,
that I may pray to God."
It was a touching thing to see the priest making this girl
repeat Ave Maria and Paternoster in French.
"That is very fine !" said Esther, when she had repeated
these two grand and universal utterances of the Catholic
faith vidthout making a mistake.
"What is your name?" she asked the priest when he took
leave of her.
"Carlos Herrera; I am a Spaniard banished from my
country."
Esther took his hand and kissed it. She was no longer
the courtesan; she was an angel rising after a fall.
In a religious institution, famous for the aristocratic and
3
38 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
pious teaching imparted there, one Monday morning in the
beginning of March 1824 the pupils found their pretty flock
increased by a newcomer, whose beauty triumphed without
dispute not only over that of her companions, but over the
special details of beauty which were found severally in per-
fection in each one of them. In France it is extremely rare,
71 ot to say impossible, to meet with the thirty points of per-
fection, described in Persian verse, and engraved, it is said,
in the Seraglio, which are needed to make a woman abso-
lutely beautiful. Though in France the whole is seldom seen,
we find exquisite parts.- As to that imposing union which
sculpture tries to produce, and has produced in a few rare
examples like the Diana and the Callipyge, it is the privileged
possession of Greece and Asia Minor.
Esther came from that cradle of the human race; her
mother was a Jewess. The Jews, though so often deteriorated
by their contact with other nations, have, among their many
races, families in which this sublime type of Asiatic
beauty has been preserved. When they are not repulsively
hideous, they present the splendid characteristics of Arme-
nian beauty. Esther would have carried off the prize at the
Seraglio; she had the thirty points harmoniously combined.
Far from having damaged the finish of her modeling and
the freshness of her flesh, her strange life had given her the
mysterious charm of womanhood; it is no longer the close,
waxy texture of green fruit and not yet the warm glow of
maturity; there is still the scent of the flower. A few days
longer spent in dissolute living, and she would have been
too fat. This abundant health, this perfection of the animal
in a being in whom voluptuousness took the place of thought,
must be a remarkable fact in the eyes of physiologists. A
circumstance so rare, that it may be called impossible in
very young girls, was that her hands, incomparably fine
in shape, were as soft, transparent, and white as those of a
woman after the birth of her second child. She had exactly
the hair and the foot for which the Duchesse de Berri was so
famous, hair so thick that no hairdresser could gather it
ESTHEK HAPPY 39
into his hand, and so long tliat it fell to the ground in rings ;
for Esther was of that medium height which makes a woman
;i sort of toy, to be taken up and set down, taken up again
and carried without fatigue. Her skin, as fine as rice-paper,
of a warm amber hue showing the purple veins, was satiny
without dryness, soft without being clammy.
Esther, excessively strong though apparently fragile, ar-
rested attention by one feature that is conspicuous in the
faces in which Eaphael has shown his most artistic feeling,
for Raphael is the painter who has most studied and best
rendered Jewish beauty. This remarkable effect was pro-
duced by the depth of the eye-socket, under which the eye
moved free from its setting: the arch of the brow was so
accurate as to resemble the groining of a vault. When youth
lends this beautiful hollow its pure and diaphanous coloring,
and edges it with closely-set eyebrows, when the light steal-
ing into the circular cavity beneath lingers there with a rosy
hue, there are tender treasures in it to delight a lover, beauties
to drive a painter to despair. Those luminous curves, where
the shadows have a golden tone, that tissue as firm as a sinew
and as mobile as the most delicate membrane, is a crowniug
achievement of nature. The eye at rest within is like a
miraculous egg in a nest of silken wings. But as time goes
on this marvel acquires a dreadful melancholy, when passions
have laid dark smears on those fine forms, when grief has
furrowed that network of delicate veins. Esther's nationality
proclaimed itself in this Oriental modeling of her eyes with
their Turkish lids; their color was a slate-gray which by
night took on the blue sheen of a raven's wing. It was only
the extreme tenderness of her expression that could moderate
their fire.
Only those races that are native to deserts have in the
eye the power of fascinating everybody, for any woman can
fascinate some one person. Their eyes preserve, no doubt,
something of the infinitude they have gazed on. Has nature,
in her foresight, armed their retina with some reflecting back-
ground to enable them to endure the mirage of the sand.
40 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
the torrents of sunshine, and the burning cobalt of the sky?
or, do human beings, hke other creatures, derive something
from the surroundings among which they grow up, and pre-
serve for ages the qualities they have imbibed from them?
The great solution of this problem of race lies perhaps in
the question itself. Instincts are living facts, and their
cause dwells in past necessity. Variety in animals is the
result of the exercise of these instincts.
To convince ourselves of this long-sought-for truth, it is
enough to extend to the herd of mankind the observation
recently made on flocks of Spanish and English sheep which,
in low meadows where pasture is abundant, feed side by side
in close array, but on mountains, where grass is scarce, scatter
apart. Take these two kinds of sheep, transfer them to
Switzerland or France ; the mountain breeds will feed apart
even in a lowland meadow of thick grass, the lowland sheep
will keep together even on an alp. Hardly will a succession
of generations eliminate acquired and transmitted instincts.
After a century the highland spirit reappears in a refractory
lamb, just as, after eighteen centuries of exile, the spirit of
the East shone in Esther's eyes and features.
Her look had no terrible fascination; it shed a mild
warmth, it was pathetic without being startling, and the
sternest wills were melted in its flame. Esther had con-
quered hatred, she had astonished the depraved souls of Paris ;
in short, that look and the softness of her skin had earned her
the terrible nickname which had just led her to the verge of
the grave. Everything about her was in harmony with these
characteristics of the Peri of the burning sands. Her forehead
was firmly and proudly molded. Her nose, like that of the
Arab race, was delicate and narrow, with oval nostrils M^ell
set and open at the base. Her mouth, fresh and red, was a
rose unblemished by a flaw, dissipation had left no trace
there. Her chin, rounded as though some amorous sculptor
had polished its fulness, was as white as milk. One thing
onlv that she had not been able to remedy betrayed the
courtesan fallen very low: her broken nails, which needed
ESTHER HAPFY 41
time to recover their shape, so much had they been spoiled
by the vulgarest household tasks.
The young boarders began by being jealous of these marvels
of beauty, but they ended by admiring them. Before the
first week was at an end they were all attached to the artless
Jewess, for they were interested in the unknown misfortunes
of a girl of eighteen who could neither read nor write, to
whom all knowledge and instruction were new, and who was
to earn for the Archbishop the triumph of having converted
a Jewess to Catholicism and giving the convent a festival in
her baptism. They forgave her her beauty, finding them-
selves her superiors in education.
Esther very soon caught the manners, the accent, the car-
riage and attitudes of these highly-bred girls; in short, her
first nature reasserted itself. The change was so complete that
on his first visit Herrera was astonished— Herrera, whom
nothing in the world could astonish as it would seem — and
the Mother Superior congratulated him on his ward. Never
in their existence as teachers had these sisters met with a
more charming nature, more Christian meekness, true
modesty, nor a greater eagerness to learn. When a girl has
suffered such misery as had overwhelmed this poor child, and
looks forward to such a reward as the Spaniard held out to
Esther, it is hard if she does not realize the miracles of the
early Church which the Jesuits revived in Paraguay.
"She is edifying," said the Superior, kissing her on the
brow.
And this essentially Catholic word tells all.
In recreation hours Esther would question her companions,
but discreetly, as to the simplest matters in fashionable life,
which to her were like the first strange ideas of life to a
child. When she heard that she was to be dressed in white
on the day of her baptism and first Communion, that she
would wear a white satin fillet, white bows, white shoes, white
gloves, and white rosettes in her hair, she melted into tears,
to the amazement of her companions. It was the reverse of
the scene of Jephtha on the mountain- The courtesan was
42 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
afraid of being understood; she ascribed this dreadful de-
jection to the joy with which she looked forward to the
function. As there is certainly as wide a gulf between the
habits she had given up and the habits she was acquiring as
there is between the savage state and civilization, she had the
grace and simplicity and depth which distinguished the won-
derful heroine of the American Puritans. She had too, with-
out knowing it, a love that was eating out her heart — a
strange love, a desire more violent in her who knew every-
thing than it can be in a maiden who knows notliing, though
the two forms of desire have the same cause, and the same
end in view.
During the first few months the novelty of a secluded life,
the surprises of learning, the handiworks she was taught, the
practices of religion, the fer^-ency of a holy resolve, the gentle
affections she called forth, and the exercise of the faculties
of her awakened intelligence, all helped to repress her
memory, even the effort she made to acquire a new one, for
she had as much to unlearn as to learn. There is more than
one form of memory : the body and mind have each their
own; home-sickness, for instance, is a malady of the physical
memory. Thus, during the third month, the vehemence of
this virgin soul, soaring to Paradise on outspread wings, was
not indeed quelled, but fettered by a dull rebellion, of which
Esther herself did not know the cause. Like the Scottish
sheep, she wanted to pasture in solitude, she could not con-
quer the instincts begotten of debauchery.
Was it that the foul ways of the Paris she had abjured
were calling her back to them ? Did the chains of the hideous
habits she had renounced cling to her by forgotten rivets,
and was she feeling them, as old soldiers suffer still, the
surgeons tell us, in the limbs they have lost? Had vice and
excess so soaked into her marrow that holy waters had not
yet exorcised the devil lurking there? Was the sight of him
for whom her angelic efforts were made, necessary to the
poor soul, whom God would surely forgive for mingling
human and sacred love? One had led to the other. Was
ESTHER HAPPY 43
there some transposition of the vital force in her involving
her in inevitable suffering? Everything is doubtful and ob-
scure in a case which science scorns to study, regarding the
subject as too immoral and too compromising, as if the
physician and the writer, the priest and the political student,
were not above all suspicion. However, a doctor who was
stopped by death had the courage to begin an investigation
which he left unfinished.
Perhaps the dark depression to which Esther fell a victim,
and which cast a gloom over her happy life, was due to all
these causes ; and perhaps, unable as she v/as to suspect them
herself, she suffered as sick creatures suffer who know noth-
ing of medicine or surgery.
The fact is strange. Wholesome and abundant food in
the place of bad and inflammatory nourishment did not sus-
tain Esther. A pure and regular life, divided between recre-
ation and studies intentionally abridged, taking the place of
a disorderly existence of which the pleasures and the pains
were equally horrible, exhausted the convent-boarder. The
coolest rest, the calmest nights, taking the place of crushing
fatigue and the most torturing agitation, gave her low fever,
in which the common symptoms were imperceptible to the
nursing Sister's eye or finger. In fact, virtue and happiness
following on evil and misfortune, security in the stead of
anxiety, were as fatal to Esther as her past wretchedness
would have been to her young companions. Planted in cor-
ruption, she had grown up in it. That infernal home still
had a hold on her, in spite of the commands of a despotic
will. What she loathed was life to her, what she loved was
killing her.
Her faith was so ardent that her piety was a delight to
those about her. She loved to pray. She had opened her
spirit to the lights of true religion, and received it without
an effort or a doubt. The priest who was her director was
delighted with her. Still, at every turn her body resisted
the spirit.
To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon's, who fed
44 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
them with scraps from the royal table, some carp were taken
oiit of a muddy pool and placed in a marble basin of bright,
clean water. The carp perished. The animals might be
sacrificed, but man could never infect them with the leprosy
of flattery. A courtier remarked at Versailles on th's mute
resistance. "They are like me,"' said the uncrowned queen ;
"they pine for their obscure mud."
This speech epitomizes Esther's story.
At times the poor girl was driven to run about the splen-
did convent gardens; she hurried from tree to tree, she
rushed into the darkest nooks — seeking? What? She did
not know, but she fell a prey to the demon; she carried on
a flirtation with the trees, she appealed to them in unspoken
words. Sometimes, in the evening, she stole along under the
walls, like a snake, without any shawl over her bare
shoulders. Often in chapel, during the service, she remained
with her eyes fixed on the Crucifix, melted to tears ; the others
admired her; but she was crying with rage. Instead of the
sacred images she hoped to see, those glaring nights when she
had led some orgy as Habeneck leads a Beethoven symphony
at the Conservatoire — nights of laughter and lasciviousness,
with vehement gestures, inextinguishable laughter, rose be-
fore her. frenzied, furious, and brutal. She was as mild to
look upon as a virgin that clings to earth only by her woman's
shape; within raged an imperial Messalina.
She alone knew the secret of this struggle between the
devil and the angel. When the Superior reproved her for
having done her hair more fashionably than the rule of the
House allowed, she altered it with prompt and beautiful sub-
mission; she would have cut her hair ofE if the Mother had
required it of her. This moral home-sickness was truly
pathetic in a girl who would rather have perished than have
returned to the depths of impurity. She grew pale and
altered and thin. The Superior gave her shorter lessons,
and called the interesting creature to her room to question
her. But Esther was happy; she enjoyed the society of her
companions; she felt no pain in any vital part; still, it was
ESTHER HAPPY 45
vitality itself that was attacked. She regretted nothing;
she wanted nothing. The Superior, puzzled by her boarder's
answers, did not know what to think when she saw her pining
under consuming debility.
The doctor was called in when the girl's condition seemed
serious; but this doctor knew nothing of Esther's previous
life, and could not guess it; he found every organ sound,
the pain could not be localized. The invalid's replies were
such as to upset every hypothesis. There remained one way
of clearing up the learned man's doubts, which now lighted
on a frightful suggestion; but Esther obstinately refused to
submit to a medical examination.
In this difficulty the Superior appealed to the Abbe
Herrera. The Spaniard came, saw that Esther's condition
was desperate, and took the physician aside for a moment.
After this confidential interview, the man of science told the
man of faith that the only cure lay in a journey to Italy.
The Abbe would not hear of such a journey before Esther's
baptism and first Communion.
"How long will it be till then ?" asked the doctor.
"A month," replied the Superior.
"She will be dead," said the doctor.
"Yes, but in a state of grace and salvation," said the
Abbe.
In Spain the religious question is supreme, above all
political, civil, or vital considerations; so the physician did
not answer the Spaniard. He turned to the Mother Superior,
but the terrible Abbe took him by the arm and stopped
him.
"Not a word, monsieur !" said he.
The doctor, though a religious man and a Monarchist,
looked at Esther with an expression of tender pity. The girl
was as lovely as a lily drooping on its stem.
"God help her, then !" he exclaimed as he went away.
On the very day of this consultation, Esther was taken by
her protector to the Rocher de Cancale, a famous restaurant,
for his wish to save her had suggested strange expedients to
46 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
the priest. He tried the effect of two excesses — an excellent
dinner, which might remind the poor cliild of jjast orgies;
and the opera, which would give her mind some images of
worldliness. His despotic authority was needed to tempt the
young saint to such profanation. Herrera disguised himself
so effectually as a military man, that Esther hardly recognized
him: he took care to make his companion wear a veil, and
put her in a box where she was hidden from all eyes.
This palliative, which had no risks for innocence so sin-
cerely regained, soon lost its effect. The convent-boarder
viewed her protector's dinners with disgust, had a religious
aversion for the theatre, and relapsed into melancholy,
"She is dying of love for Lucien,'" said Herrera to him-
self; he had wanted to sound the depths of this soul, and
know how much could be exacted from it.
So the moment came when the poor child was no longer
upheld by moral force, and the body was about to break
down. The priest calculated the time with the hideous prac-
tical sagacity formerly shown by executioners in the art of
torture. He found his protegee in the garden, sitting on a
bench under a trellis on which the April sun fell gently; she
seemed to be cold and trying to warm herself : her companions
looked with interest at her pallor as of a faded plant, her
e3^es like those of a dying gazelle, her drooping attitude.
Esther rose and went to meet the Spaniard with a lassitude
that showed how little life there was in her, and, it may
be added, how little care to live. This hapless outcast, this
wild and wounded swallow, moved Carlos Herrera to com-
passion for the second time. The gloomy minister, whom
God should have employed only to carry out His revenges,
received the sick girl with a smile, which expressed. Indeed,
as much bitterness as sweetness, as much vengeance as
charity. Esther, practised in meditation, and used to revul-
sions of feeling since she had led this almost monastic life,
felt on her part, for the second time, distrust of her pro-
tector; but, as on the former occasion, his speech reassured
her.
ESTHER HAPPY 47
"Well, my dear child," said he, "and why have you never
spoken to me of Lucien?"
"I promised you," she said, shuddering convulsively from
head to foot; "I swore to you that I would never breathe his
name."
"And yet you have not ceased to think of him."
"That, monsieur, is the only fault I have committed. I
think of him always; and just as you came, I was saying his
name to myself."
"Absence is killing you ?"
Esther's only answer was to hang her head as the sick do
who already scent the breath of the grave.
"If you could see him ?" said he.
"It would be life !" she cried.
"And do you think of him only spiritually?"
"Ah, monsieur, love cannot be dissected!"
"Child of an accursed race ! I have done everything to
save you; I send you back to your fate. — You shall see him
again."
"Why insult my happiness ? Can I not love Lucien and be
virtuous ? Am I not ready to die here for virtue, as I should
be ready to die for him? Am I not dying for these two
fanaticisms — for virtue, which was to make me worthy of
him, and for him who flung me into the embrace of virtue?
Yes, and ready to die without seeing him or to live by seeing
him. God is my Judge."
The color had mounted to her face, her whiteness had
recovered its amber warmth. Esther looked beautiful again.
"The day after that on which you are washed in the waters
of baptism you shall see Lucien once more ; and if you think
you can live in virtue by living for him, you shall part no
more."
The priest was obliged to lift up Esther, whose knees failed
her; the poor child dropped as if the ground had slipped
from under her feet. The Abbe seated her on a bench; and
when she could speak again she asked him :
^'Why not to-day?"
"Do you want to rob Monseigneur of the triumph of your
48 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
baptism and conversion ? You are too close to Lucien not to
be far from God."
"Yes, I was not thinking "
^ "You will never be of any religion," said the priest, with
' a touch of the deepest irony.
"God is good," said she ; "He can read my heart."
Conquered by the exquisite artlessness that shone in her
look, ]\v her tone of voice, her attitude and gestures, Herrera
kissed her on the forehead for the first time.
"Your libertine friends named you well; you would be-
witch God the Father. — A few days more must pass, and
then you will both be free."
"Both !" she echoed in an ecstasy of joy.
This scene, observed from a distance, struck pupils and
superiors alike; they fancied they had looked on at a miracle
as they compared Esther with herself. She was completely
j| changed; she was alive. She reappeared her natural self,
: all love, sweet, coquettish, playful, and gay; in short, it was
a resurrection.
Herrera lived in the Eue Cassette, near Saint-Sulpice, the
church to which he was attached. This building, hard and
stern in style, suited this Spaniard, whose discipline was that
of the Dominicans. A lost son of Ferdinand VII.'s astute
policy, he devoted himself to the cause of the constitution,
knowing that this devotion could never be rewarded till the
restoration of the Rey netto. Carlos Herrera had thrown him-
self body and soul into the Camarilla at the moment when
the Cortes seemed likely to stand and hold their own. To the
world this conduct seemed to proclaim a superior soul. The
Due d'Angouleme's expedition had been carried out, King
Ferdinand was on the throne, and Carlos Herrera did not
go to claim the reward of his services at Madrid. Fortified
against curiosity by his diplomatic taciturnity, he assigned
as his reason for remaining in Paris his strong affection for
Lucien de Rubempre, to which the young man already owed
the King's patent relating to his change of name.
ESTHER HAPPY 49
1 lerrera lived very obscurely, as priests employed on serret
missions traditionally live. He fulfilled his religious duties
at Saint-Sulpice, never went out but on business, and then
after dark, and in a hackney cab. His day was filled up
with a siesta in the Spanish fashion, which arranges for sleep
between the two chief meals, and so occupies the hours when
Paris is in a busy turmoil. The Spanish cigar also played its^
part, and consumed time as well as tobacco. Laziness is :
a mask as gravity is, and that again is laziness.
Herrera lived on the second floor in one wing of the house,
and Lucien occupied the other wing. The two apartments
were separated and joined by a large reception room of
antique magnificence, suitable equally to the grave priest
and to the young poet. The courtyard was gloomy; large,
thick trees chaded the garden. Silence and reserve are always
found in the dwellings chosen by priests. Herrera's lodging
may be described in one word — a cell. Lucien's, splendid
with luxury, and furnished with every refinement of com-
fort, combined everything that the elegant life of a dandy
demands — a poet, a writer, ambitious and dissipated, at once
vain and vainglorious, utterly heedless, and yet wishing for
order, one of those incomplete geniuses who have some power
to wish, to conceive — which is perhaps the same thing — but
no power at all to execute.
These two, Lucien and Herrera, formed a body politic.
This, no doubt, was the secret of their union. Old men in
whom the activities of life have been uprooted and trans-
planted to the sphere of interest, often feel the need of a
pleasing instrument, a young and impassioned actor, to carry
out their schemes. Richelieu, too late, found a handsome
pale face with a young moustache to cast in the v/ay of women
whom he wanted to amuse. Misunderstood by giddy-pated
younger men, he was compelled to banish his master's mother
and terrify the Queen, after having tried to make each
fall in love with him, though he was not cut out to be loved
by queens.
Do what we will, always, in the course of an ambitious life.
50 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
we find a woman in the way just when we least expect such
an obstacle. However great a political man may be, he al-
ways needs a woman to set against a woman, Just as the
Dutch use a diamond to cut a diamond. Eome at the height
of its power yielded to this necessity. And observe how im-
measurably more imposing was the life of Mazarin, the
Italian cardinal, than that of Richelieu, the French
cardinal. Richelieu met with opposition from the great
nobles, and he applied the axe; he died in the flower
of his success, worn out by this duel, for which he had only
a Capuchin monk as his second. Mazarin was repulsed by
the citizen class and the nobility, armed allies who sometimes
victoriously put royalty to flight; but Anne of Austria's
devoted servant took off no heads, he succeeded in vanquish-
ing the whole of France, and trained Louis XIV., who com-
pleted Richelieu's work by strangling the nobility with gilded
cords in the grand Seraglio of Versailles. Madame de
Pompadour dead, Choiseul fell !
Had Herrera soaked his mind in these high doctrines?
Had he judged himself at an earlier age than Richelieu?
Had he chosen Lucien to be his Cinq-Mars, but a faithful
Cinq-Mars ? No one could answer these questions or measure
this Spaniard's ambition, as no one could foresee what his end
might be. These questions, asked by those who were able to
see anything of this coalition, which was long kept a secret,
might have unveiled a horrible mystery which Lucien himself
had known but a few days. Carlos was ambitious for two ;
that was what his conduct made plain to those persons who
knew him, and who all imagined that Lucien was the priest's
illegitimate son.
Fifteen months after Lucien's reappearance at the opera
ball, which led him too soon into a world where the priest
had not wished to see him till he should have fully armed
him against it, he had three fine horses in his stable, a coupe
for evening use, a cab and a tilbury to drive by day. He
dined out every day. Herrera's foresight was Justified; his
pupil Avas carried away by dissipation; he thought it neees-
ESTHER HAPP^t 51
sary to effect some diversion in the frenzied passion for
Esther that the young man still cherished in his heart. After
spending something like forty thousand francs, every folly
had brought Lucien back with increased eagerness to La
Torpille; he searched for her persistently; and as he could
not find her, she became to him what game is to the sports-
man.
Could Herrera understand the nature of a poet's love ?
When once this feeling has mounted to the brain of one
of these great little men, after firing his heart and absorbing
his senses, the poet becomes as far superior to humanity
through love as he already is through the power of his
imagination. A freak of intellectual heredity has given him
the faculty of expressing nature by imager}^ to which he
gives the stamp both of sentiment and of thought, and he
lends his love the wings of his spirit ; he feels, and he paints,
he acts and meditates, he multiplies his sensations by thought,
present felicity becomes threefold through aspiration for
the future and memory of the past; and with it he mingles
the exquisite delights of the soul, which make him the prince
of artists. Then the poet's passion becomes a fine poem in
which human proportion is often set at nought. Does not
the poet then place his mistress far higher than Avomen crave
to sit? Like the sublime Knight of la Mancha, he trans-
figures a peasant girl to be a princess. He uses for his own
behoof the wand with which he touches everything, turning
it into a wonder, and thus enhances the pleasure of
loving by the glorious glamour of the ideal.
Such a love is the very essence of passion. It is extreme
in all things, in its hopes, in its despair, in its rage, in its
melancholy, in its joy; it flies, it leaps, it crawls; it is not
like any of the emotions known to ordinary men; it is to
everyday love what the perennial Alpine torrent is to the
lowland brook.
These splendid geniuses are so rarely understood that
they spend themselves in hopes deceived ; they are exhausted
by the search for their ideal mistress, and almost always
52 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
die like gorgeous insects splendidly adorned for their love-
festival by the most poetical of nature's inventions, and
crushed under the foot of a passer-by. But there is another
danger ! When they meet with the form that answers to
their soul, and which not unfrequently is that of a baker's
wife, they do as Raphael did, as the beautiful insect does,
they die in the Fornarina's arms.
Lucien was at this pass. His poetical temperament, ex-
cessive in all things, in good as in evil, had discerned the
angel in this girl, who was tainted by corruption rather than
corrupt; he alwaj^s saw her white, winged, pure, and mys-
terious, as she had made herself for him, understanding that
he would have her so.
Towards the end of the month of May 1825 Lucien had
lost all his good spirits; he never went out, dined with
Herrera, sat pensive, worked, read volumes of diplomatic
treatises, squatted Turkish-fashion on a divan, and smoked
three or four hookahs a day. His groom had more to do in
cleaning and perfuming the tubes of this noble pipe than
in currying and brushing down the horses' coats, and dress-
ing them with cockades for driving in the Bois. As soon as
the Spaniard saw Lucien pale, and detected a malady in the
frenzy of suppressed passion, he determined to read to the
bottom of this man's heart on which he founded his life.
One fine evening, when Lucien, lounging in an armchair,
was mechanically contemplating the hues of the setting sun
through the trees in the garden, blowing up the mist of
scented smoke in slow, regular clouds, as pensive smokers
are wont, he was roused from his reverie by hearing a deep
sigh. He turned and saw the Abbe standing by him with
folded arms.
"You were there !" said the poet.
"For some time," said the priest, "my thoughts have been
following the wide sweep of yours." Lucien understood his
meaning.
"I have never affected to have an iron nature such as yours
is. To me life is by turns paradise and hell ; when by chance
it is neither, it bores me ; and I am bored "
ESTHER HAPPY 53
"How can you be bored when you huve such splendid pros-
pects before you?"
"If I have no faith in those prospects, or if they are too
much shrouded?"
"Do not talk nonsense/' said the priest. "It would be far
more worthy of you and of me that you should open your
heart to me. There is now that between us which ought never
to have come between us — a secret. This secret has subsisted
for sixteen months. You are in love."
"And what then?"
"A foul hussy called La Torpille '^
"Well?"'
"My boy, I told you you might have a mistress, but a wo-
man of rank, pretty, young, influential, a Countess at least.
I had chosen Madame d'Espard for you, to make her the
instrument of your fortune without scruple; for she would
never have perverted your heart, she would have left you
free. — To love a prostitute of the lowest class when you have
not, like kings, the power to give her high rank, is a monstrous
blunder."
"And am I the first man who has renounced ambition to
follow the lead of a boundless passion?"
"Good!" said the priest, stooping to pick up the mouth-
piece of the hookah which Lucien had dropped on the floor.
"I understand the retort. Cannot love and ambition be
reconciled? Child, you have a mother in old Herrera — a
mother who is wholly devoted to you "
"I know it, old friend," said Lucien, taking his hand and
shaking it.
"You wished for the toys of wealth; you have them. You
want to shine; I am guiding you into the paths of power, I
kiss very dirty hands to secure your advancement, and you
vvdll get on. A little while yet and you will lack nothing
of what can charm man or woman. Though effeminate in
your caprices, your intellect is manly. I have dreamed all
things of you ; I forgive you all. You have only to speak to
have your ephemeral passions gratified. I have aggrandized
54 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
your life by introducing into it that which makes it de-
lightful to most people — the stamp of political influence and
dominion. You will be as great as you now are small; but
we must not break the machine by which we coin money. I
grant you all you will excepting such blunders as will destroy
your future prospects. When I can open the drawing-rooms
of the Faubourg Saint-Germain to you, I forbid your wallow-
ing in the gutter. Lucien, I mean to be an iron stanchion
in your interest ; I will endure everything from you, for you.
Thus I have transformed your lack of tact in the game of
life into the shrewd stroke of a skilful player "
Lucien looked up with a start of furious impetuosity.
"I carried off La Torpille !"
"You?" cried Lucien.
In a fit of animal rage the poet jumped up, flung the
jeweled mouthpiece in the priest's face, and pushed him with
such violence as to throw down that strong man.
"1," said the Spaniard, getting up and preserving his ter-
rible gravity.
His black wig had fallen oft'. A bald skull, as shining as
a death's-head, showed the man's real countenance. It was
appalling. Lucien sat on his divan, his hands hanging limp,
overpowered, and gazing at the AJ)be with stupefaction,
"I carried her off," the priest repeated.
"What did you do with her? You took her away the day
after the opera ball."
"Yes, the day after I had seen a woman who belonged to
you insulted by wretches whom I would not have con-
descended to kick downstairs."
"Wretches !" interrupted Lucien, "say rather monsters,
compared with whom those who are guillotined are angels.
Do you know what the unhappy Torpille had done for three
of them? One of them was her lover for two months. She
was poor, and picked up a living in the gutter; he had not a
sou ; like me, when you rescued me, he was very near the river;
this fellow would get up at night and go to the cupboard where
the girl kept the remains of her dinner and eat it. At last
ESTHER HAPPY 55
she discovered the trick; she understood the shameful thing,
nnd took care to leave a great deal; then she was happy. She
never told any one but me, that night, coming home from
the opera.
"The second had stolen some money; but before the theft
was found out, she lent him the sum, which he was enabled
to replace, and which he always forgot to repay to the poor
child.
"As to the third, she made his fortune by playing out a
farce worthy of Figaro's genius. She passed as his wife and
became the mistress of a man in power, who believed her to
be the most innocent of good citizens. To one she gave life,
to another honor, to the third fortune — what does it all count
for to-day ? And this is how they reward her !"
"Would you like to see them dead ?" said Herrera, in whose
eyes there were tears.
"Come, that is just like you ! I know you by that "
"Nay, hear all, raving poet," said the priest. "La Torpille
is no more."
Lucien flew at Herrera to seize him by the throat, with
such violence that any other man must have fallen back-
wards; but the Spaniard's arm held off his assailant.
"Come, listen," said he coldly. "I have made another
Avoman of her, chaste, pure, well bred, religious, a perfect
lady. She is being educated. She can, if she may, under
the influence of your love, become a Mnon, a Marion Delorme,
a dii Barry, as the Journalist at the opera ball remarked.
You may proclaim her your mistress, or you may retire be-
hind a curtain of your own creating, which will be wiser.
By either method you Mdll gain profit and pride, pleasure
and advancement ; but if you are as great a politician as you
are a poet, Esther will be no more to you than any other
woman of the town ; for, later, perhaps she may help us out
of difficulties; she is worth her weight in gold. Drink, but
do not get tipsy.
"If I had not held the reins of your passion, where would
you be now? Eolling with La Torpille in the slough of
56 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
misery from which I dragged 5^ou. Here, read this," said
Herrera, as simply as Talma in Manlius, which he had never
seen.
A sheet of paper was laid on the poet's knees, and startled
him from the ecstasy and surprise with which he had listened
to this astounding speech : he took it, and read the first letter
written by Mademoiselle Esther: —
To Monsieur VAhhe Carlos H err era.
"My dear Protector, — Will you not suppose that grati-
tude is stronger in me than love, when you see that the first
use I make of the power of expressing my thoughts is to thank
you, instead of devoting it to pouring forth a passion that
Lucien has perhaps forgotten. But to you, divine man, I
can say what I should not dare to tell him, who, to my joy,
still clings to earth.
"Yesterday's ceremony has filled me with treasures of
grace, and I place my fate in your hands. Even if I must
die far away from m}^ beloved, I shall die purified like the
Magdalen, and my soul will become to him the rival of his
guardian angel. Can I ever forget yesterday's festival?
How could I wish to abdicate the glorious throne to which I
was raised? Yesterday I washed away every stain in the
waters of baptism, and received the Sacred Body of my Ke-
deemer; I am become one of His tabernacles. At that
moment I heard the songs of angels, I was more than a wo-
man, was born to a life of light amid the acclamations of
the whole earth, admired by the world in a cloud of incense
and prayers that were intoxicating, adorned like a virgin for
the lieavenly Spouse.
"Thus finding myself worthy of Lucien, which I had never
hoped to be, I abjured impure love and vowed to walk only
in the paths of virtue. If my flesh is weaker than my spirit,
let it perish. Be the arbiter of my destiny; and if I die, tell
Lucien that I died to him when I was born to God/'
ESTHER HAPPY 57
Lucien looked up at the Abbe with eyes full of tears.
"You know the rooms fat Caroline Bellefeuille had, in the
Rue Taitbout," the Spaniard said. "The poor creature, cast
off by her magistrate, was in the greatest poverty; she was
about to be sold up. I bought the place all standing, and she
turned out with her clothes. Esther, the angel who aspired
to heaven, has alighted there, and is waiting for you."
At this moment Lucien heard his horses pawing the ground
in the courtyard; he was incapable of expressing his admira-
tion for a devotion which he alone could appreciate ; he threw
himself into the arms of the man he had insulted, made
amends for all by a look and the speechless effusion of his
feelings. Then he flew downstairs, confided Esther's ad-
dress to his tiger's ear, and the horses went off as if their
master's passion had lived in their legs.
The next day a man, who by his dress might have been
mistaken by the passers-by for a gendarme in disguise, was
passing the Rue Taitbout, opposite a house, as if he were
waiting for some one to come out ; he walked with an agitated
air. You will often see in Paris such vehement promenaders,
real gendarmes watching a recalcitrant National Guardsman,
bailiff's taking steps to effect an arrest, creditors planning a
trick on the debtor who has shut himself in, lovers, or jealous
and suspicious husbands, or friends doing sentry for a friend ;
but rarely do you meet a face portending such coarse and
fierce thoughts as animated that of .the gloomy and powerful
man who paced to and fro under Mademoiselle Esther's win-
dows with the brooding haste of a bear in its cage.
At noon a window was opened, and a maid-servant's hand
was put out to push back the padded shutters. A few min-
utes later, Esther, in her dressing-gown, came to breathe the
air, leaning on Lucien; any one who saw them might have
taken them for the originals of some pretty English vignette.
Esther was the first to recognize the basilisk eyes of the
Spanish priest ; and the poor creature, stricken as if she had
been shot, gave a cry of horror.
58 A COURTESAN'S TJFE
"There is that terrible priest," said she, pointing him out
to Lucien.
"He!" said Lucien, smiling, "he is no more a priest than
you are."
"What then?" she said in alarm.
"Why, an old villain who believes in nothing but the
devil," said Lucien.
This light thrown on the sham priest's secrets, if revealed
to any one less devoted than Esther, might have ruined Lucien
for ever.
As they went along the corridor from their bedroom to
the dining-room, w^here their breakfast was served, the lovers
met Carlos Herrera.
"What have you come here for?" said Lucien roughly.
"To bless you," replied the audacious scoundrel, stopping
the pair and detaining them in the little drawing-room of the
apartment. "Listen to me, my pretty dears. Amuse your-
selves, be happy — well and good ! Happiness at^ any price
is my motto. — But you," he went on to Esther, "you whom
I dragged from the mud, and have soaped down body and
soul,, you surely do not dream that you can stand in Lucien's
way? — As for you, my boy," he went on after a pause, look-
ing at Lucien, "you are no longer poet enough to allow your-
self another Coralie. This is sober prose. What can be
done with Esther's lover? Nothing. Can Esther become
Madame de Kubempre? No.
"Well, my child," said he, laying his hand on Esther's, and
making her shiver as if some serpent had wound itself round
her, "the world must never know^ of your existence. Above
all, the world must never know that a certain Mademoiselle
Esther loves Lucien, and that Lucien is in love with her. —
These rooms are your prison, my pigeon. If you wish to go
out — and your health will require it — you must take ex-
ercise at night, at hours when you cannot be seen; for your
youth and beauty, and the style you have acquired at the Con-
vent, would at once be observed in Paris. The day when
any one in the world, whoever it be," he added in an awful
ESTHER HAPPY 59
voice, seconded by an awful look, "learns that Lucien is your
lover, or that you are his mistress, that day will be your last
but one on earth. I have procured that boy a patent per-
mitting him to bear the name and arms of his maternal an-
cestors. Still, this is not all; we have not yet recovered the
title of Marquis; and to get it, he must marry a girl of
good family, in whose favor the King will grant this distinc-
tion. Such an alliance will get Lucien on in the world and
at Court. This boy, of whom I have made a man, will be
first Secretary to an Embassy; later, he shall be Minister at
some German Court, and God, or I — better still — helping
him, he will take his seat some day on the bench reserved for
peers "
"Or on the bench reserved for " Lucien began, in-
terrupting the man.
"Hold your tongue !" cried Carlos, laying his broad hand
on Lucien's mouth. "Would you tell such a secret to a
woman?" he muttered in his ear.
"Esther ! A woman !" cried the poet of Les Marguerites.
"Still inditing sonnets !" said the Spaniard. "Nonsense !
Sooner or later all these angels relapse into being women,
and every woman at moments is a mixture of a monkey and a
child, two creatures who can kill us for fun. — Esther, my
jewel," said he to the terrified girl, "I have secured as your
waiting-maid a creature who is as much mine as if she were
my daughter. For your cook, you shall have a mulatto wo-
man, which gives style to a house. With Europe and Asie
you can live here for a thousand-franc note a month like a
queen — a stage queen. Europe has been a dressmaker, a
milliner, and a stage super; Asie has cooked for an epicure
Milord. These two women will serve you like two fairies."
Seeing Lucien go completely to the wall before this man,
who was guilty at least of sacrilege and forgery, this woman,
sanctified by her love, felt an awful fear in the depths of her
heart. She made no reply, but dragged Lucien into her
room, and asked him:
"Ls he the devil ?"
60 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"He is far worse to me!" he vehemently replied. "But
if you love me, try to imitate that man's devotion to me, and
obey him on pain of death ! "
"Of death !" she exclaimed, more frightened than ever.
"Of death," repeated Lucien. "Alas ! my darling, no
death could be compared with that which would befall me
if "
Esther turned pale at his words, and felt herself fainting-.
"Well, well/' cried the sacrilegious forger, 'Tiave you not
yet spelt out your daisy-petals ?"
Esther and Lucien came out, and the poor girl, not dar-
ing to look at the mysterious man, said:
"You shall be obeyed as God is obeyed, monsieur."
"Good," said he. "You may be very happy for a time,
and you will need only nightgowns and wrappers — that will
be very economical."
The two lovers went on towards the dining-room, but
Lucien's patron signed to the pretty pair to stop. And they
stopped.
"I have just been talking of your servants, my child/' said
he to Esther. "I must introduce them to you."
The Spaniard rang twice. The women he had called
Europe and Asie came in, and it was at once easy to see the
reason of these names.
Asie, who looked as if she might have been born in the
Island of Java, showed a face to scare the eye, as flat as a
board, with the copper complexion peculiar to Malays, with
a nose that looked as if it had been driven inwards by some
violent pressure. The strange conformation of the maxillary
])ones gave the lower part of this face a resemblance to that
of the larger species of apes. The brow, though sloping, was
not deficient in intelligence produced by habits of cunning.
Two fierce little eyes had the calm fixity of a tiger's, but they
never looked you straight in the face. Asie seemed afraid
lest she might terrify people. Her lips, a dull blue, were
parted over prominent teeth of dazzling whiteness, but grown
across. The leading expression of this animal countenance
-^ -Y^
'V
ESTHER HAPPY 61
was one of meanness. Her black hair, straight and greasy-
looking like her skin, lay in two shining bands, forming an
edge to a very handsome silk handkerchief. Her ears were
remarkably pretty, and graced with two large dark pearls.
Small, short, and squat, Asie bore a likeness to the grotesque
figures the Chinese love to paint on screens, or, more exactly,
to the Hindoo idols which seem to be imitated from some
non-existent type, found, nevertheless, now and again by
travelers. Esther shuddered as she looked at this mon-
strosity, dressed out in a white apron over a stuff gown.
"Asie," said the Spaniard, to whom the woman looked
up with a gesture that can only be compared to that of a
dog to its master, "this is your mistress."
And he pointed to Esther in her wrapper.
Asie looked at the young fairy with an almost distressful
expression; but at the same moment a flash, half hidden be-
tween her thick, short eyelashes, shot like an incendiary spark
at Lucien, who, in a magnificent dressing-gown thrown open
over a fine Holland linen shirt and red trousers, with a
fez on his head, beneath which his fair hair fell in thick
curls, presented a godlike appearance.
Italian genius could invent the tale of Othello; English
genius could put it on the stage; but Nature alone reserves
the power of throwing into a single glance an expression of
jealousy grander and more complete than England and Italy
together could imagine. This look, seen by Esther, made
her clutch the Spaniard by the arm, setting her nails in it
as a cat sets its claws to save itself from falling into a gulf
of which it cannot see the bottom.
The Spaniard spoke a few words, in some unfamiliar
tongue, to the Asiatic monster, who crept on her knees to
Esther's feet and kissed them.
"She is not merely a good cook," said Herrera to Esther;
"she is a past-master, and might make Careme mad with
jealousy. Asie can do everything by way of cooking. She'
will turn you out a simple dish of beans that will make you
wonder whether the angels have not come down to add some
62 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
herb from heaven. She will go to market herself every morn-
ing, and fight like the devil she is to get things at the lowest
prices ; she will tire out curiosity by silence.
"You are to be supposed to have been in India, and Asie
will help you to give effect to this fiction, for she is one of
those Parisians who are born to be of any nationality they
please. But I do not advise that you should give yourself
out to be a foreigner. — Europe, what do you say?"
Europe was a perfect contrast to Asie, for she was the
smartest waiting-maid that Monrose could have hoped to see
as her rival on the stage. Slight, with a scatter-brain man-
ner, a face like a ^yeasel, and a sharp nose, Europe's features
offered to the observer a countenance worn by the corruption
of Paris life, the unhealthy complexion of a girl fed on raw
apples, lymphatic but sinewy, soft but tenacious. One little
foot was set forward, her hands were in her apron-pockets,
and she fidgeted incessantly without moving, from sheer ex-
cess of liveliness. Grisette and stage super, in spite of her
youth she must have tried many trades. As full of evil as
a dozen Madelonnettes put together, she might have robbed
her parents, and sat on the bench of a police-court.
Asie was terrifying, but you knew her thoroughly from
the first ; she descended in a straight line from Locusta ; while
Europe filled you with uneasiness, which could not fail to in-
crease the more j'^ou had to do with her; her corruption
seemed boundless. You felt that she could set the devils
by the ears.
"Madame might say she had come from Valenciennes,"
said Europe in a precise little voice. "I was born there —
Perhaps monsieur," she added to Lucien in a pedantic tone,
"will be good enough to say what name he proposes to give to
madame?"
"Madame van Bogseck," the Spaniard put in, reversing
Esther's name. "Madame is a Jewess, a native of Holland,
the widow of a merchant, and suffering from a liver-com-
plaint contracted in Java. No great fortune — not to excite
curiosity."
ESTHER HAPPY 63
"Enough to live on — six thousand francs a year; and we
shall complain of her stinginess?" said Europe.
"That is the thing," said the Spaniard, with a bow.
"You limbs of Satan !" he went on, catching Asie and Europe
exchanging a glance that displeased him, "remember what I
have told you. You are serving a queen; you owe her as
much respect as to a queen; you are to cherish her as you
would cherish a revenge, and be as devoted to her as to me.
Neither the door-porter, nor the neighbors, nor the other
inhabitants of the house — in short, not a soul on earth is
to know what goes on here. It is your business to balk
curiosity if any should be roused. — And madame," he went
on, laying his broad hairy hand on Esther's arm, "madame
must not commit the smallest imprudence ; you must prevent
it in case of need, but always with perfect respect.
"Y"ou, Europe, are to go out for madame in anything that
concerns her dress, and you must do her sewing from motives
of economy. Finally, nobody, not even the most insignificant
creature, is ever to set foot in this apartment. You two, be-
tween you, must do all there is to be done.
"And you, my beauty," he went on, speaking to Esther,
"when you want to go out in your carriage by night, you can
tell Europe; she will know where to find your men, for
you will have a servant in livery, of my choosing, like these
two slaves."
Esther and Lucien had not a word ready. They listened
to the Spaniard, and looked at the two precious specimens to
whom he gave his orders. What was the secret hold to which
he owed the submission and servitude that were written on
these two faces — one mischievously recalcitrant, the other so
malignantly cruel?
He read the thoughts of Lucien and Esther, who seemed
paralyzed, as Paul and Virginia might have been at the sight
of two dreadful snakes, and he said in a good-natured un-
dertone :
"You can trust them as you can me; keep no secrets from
them; that will flatter them. — Go to your work, my little
64 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Asie," he added to the cook. — "And you, my girl, lay another
place/' he said to Europe; "the children cannot do less than
ask papa to breakfast/'
When the two women had shut the door, and the Spaniard
could hear Europe moving to and fro, he turned to Lucien
and Esther, and opening a wide palm, he said:
"I hold them in the hollow of my hand."
The words and gesture made his hearers shudder.
'^^here did you pick them up?" cried Lucien.
^^hat the devil ! I did not look for them at the foot of
the throne !" replied the man. "Europe has risen from the
mire, and is afraid of sinking into it again. Threaten them
with Monsieur Abbe when they do not please you, and you
will see them quake like mice when the cat is mentioned. I
am used to taming wild beasts," he added with a smile.
'T^ou strike me as being a demon," said Esther, clinging
closer to Lucien.
"My child, I tried to win you to heaven; but a repentant
Magdalen is always a practical joke on the Church. If
ever there were one, she would relapse into the courtesan in
Paradise. You have gained this much: you are forgotten,
and have acquired the manners of a lady, for you learned in
the convent what you never could have learned in the ranks
of infamy in which you were living. — You owe me nothing,"
said he, observing a beautiful look of gratitude on Esther's
face. "I did it all for him," and he pointed to Lucien.
"You are, you will always be, you will die a prostitute; for
in spite of the delightful theories of cattle-breeders, you can
never, here below, become anything but what you are. The
man who feels bumps is right. You have the bump of love."
The Spaniard, it will be seen, was a fatalist, like Xapoleon,
Mahomet, and many other great politicians. It is a strange
thing that most men of action have a tendency to fatalism,
just as most great thinkers have a tendency to believe in
Providence.
*^hat I am, I do not know," said Esther with angelic
ESTHER HAPPY 65
sweetness; 'T)ut I love Lucien, and shall die worshiping
him."
"Come to breakfast," said the Spaniard sharpl3^ "And
pray to God that Lucien may not marry too soon, for then
you would never see him again."
"His marriage would be my death," said she.
She allowed the sham priest to lead the Avay, that she
might stand on tiptoe and whisper to Lucien without being
seen.
"Is it your wish," said, she, "that I should remain in the
power of this man who sets two hyaenas to guard me ?"
Lucien bowed his head.
The poor child swallowed down her grief and affected glad-
ness, but she felt cruelly oppressed. It needed more than
a year of constant and devoted care before she was accustomed
to these two dreadful creatures whom Carlos Herrera called
the two watch-dogs.
Lucien's conduct since his return to Paris had borne the
stamp of such profound policy that it excited — and could not
fail to excite — the jealousy of all his former friends, on whom
he took no vengeance but by making them furious at his
success, at his exquisite "get up," and his way of keeping
every one at a distance. The poet, once so communicative,
so genial, had turned cold and reserved. De Marsa)^, the
model adopted by all the youths of Paris, did "not make a
greater display of reticence in speech and deed than did
Lucien. As to brains, the journalist had ere now proved his
mettle. De Marsay, against whom many people chose to pit
Lucien, giving a preference to the poet, was small-minded
enough to resent this.
Lucien, now in high favor with men who secretly pulled
the wires of power, was so completely indifferent to literary
fame, that he did not care about the success of his romance,
republished under its real title, L'Archer de Charles JX., or
the excitement caused by his volume of sonnets called Les
66 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Marguerites, of which Daiiriat sold out the edition in a
week.
"It is posthumous fame," said he, with a laugh, to Made-
moiselle des Touches, who congratulated him.
The terrible Spaniard held his creature with an iron hand,
keeping him in the road towards the goal where the trumpets
and gifts of victory await patient politicians. Lucien had
taken Beaudenord's bachelor quarters on the Quai Malaquais,
to be near the Rue Taitbout, and his adviser was lodging
under the same roof on the fourth floor. Lucien kept only
oTie horse to ride and drive, a man-servant, and a groom.
When he was not dining out, he dined "with Esther.
Carlos Herrera kept such a keen eye on the service in
the house on the Quai Malaquais, that Lucien did not spend
ten thousand francs a year, all told. Ten thousand more
were enough for Esther,- thanks to the unfailing and in-
explicable devotion of Asie and Europe. Lucien took the
utmost precautions in going in and out at the Rue Taitbout.
He never came but in a cab, with the blinds down, and al-
ways drove into the courtyard. Thus his passion for Esther
and the very existence of the establishment in the Rue Tait-
bout, being unknown to the world, did him no harm in his
connections or undertakings.. Xo rash word ever escaped
him on this delicate subject. His mistakes of this sort with
regard to Coralie, at the time of his first stay in Paris, had
given him experience.
In the first place, his life was marked by the correct reg-
ularity under which many mysteries can be hidden; he re-
mained in society every night till one in the morning; he
was always at home from ten till one in the afternoon; then
he drove in the Bois de Boulogne and paid calls till five. He
was rarely to be seen on foot, and thus avoided old acquaint-
ances. When some journalist or one of his former associates
waved him a greeting, he responded with a bow, polite enough
to avert annoyance, but significant of such deep contempt
as killed all French geniality. He thus had very soon got rid
of persons whom he would rather never have known.
ESTHER HAPPY 67
An old-established aversion kept him from going to see
Madame d'Espard, who often wished to get him to her house ;
but when he met her at those of the Duchesse de Maufri-
gneuse, of Mademoiselle des Touches, of the Comtesse de
Montcornet or elsewhere, he was always exquisitely polite to
her. This hatred, fully reciprocated by Madame d'Espard,
compelled Lucien to act with prudence; but it will be seen
how he had added fuel to it by allowing himself a stroke
of revenge, Avhich gained him indeed a severe lecture from
Carlos.
"You are not yet strong enough to be revenged on any
one, whoever it may be," said the Spaniard. "When we are
walking under a burning sun we do not stop to gather even
the finest flowers."
Lucien was so genuinely superior, and had so fine a future
before him, that the young men who chose to be offended
or puzzled by his return to Paris and his unaccountable good
fortune were enchanted whenever they could do him an ill
turn. He knew that he had many enemies, and was well
aware of these hostile feelings among his friends. The Abbe,
indeed, took admirable care of his adopted son, putting him
on his guard against the treachery of the world and the fatal
imprudence of youth. Lucien was expected to tell, and did
in fact tell the Abbe each evening, every trivial incident of
the day. Thanks to his Mentor's advice, he put the keenest
curiosity — ^the curiosity of the world — off the scent. En-
trenched in the gravity of an Englishman, and fortified by
the redoubts cast up by diplomatic circumspection, he never
gave any one the right or the opportunity of seeing a corner
even of his concerns. His handsome young face had, by
practice, become as expressionless in society as that of a
princess at a ceremonial.
Towards the middle of 1829 his marriage began to be
talked of to the eldest daughter of the Duchesse de Grandlieu,
who at that time had no less than four daughters to provide
for. No one doubted that in honor of such an alliance the
King would revive for Lucien the title of Marquis. This
68 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
distinction would establish Lucien's fortune as a diplomats,
and he would probably be accredited as Minister to
some German Court. For the last three years Lucien's life
had been regular and above reproach ; indeed, de Marsay had
made this remarkable speech about him:
"That young fellow must have a very strong hand behind
him."
Thus Lucien was almost a person of importance. His
passion for Esther had, in fact, helped him greatly to play
his part of a serious man. A habit of this kind guards an
ambitious man from many follies ; having no connection with
any woman of fashion, he cannot be caught by the reactions
of mere physical nature on his moral sense.
As to happiness, Lucien's was the realization of a poet's
dreams — a penniless poet's, hungering in a garret. Esther,
the ideal courtesan in love, while she reminded Lucien of
1 Coralie, the actress with whom he had lived for a year, com-
pletely eclipsed her. Every loving and devoted woman in-
vents seclusion, incognito, the life of a pearl in the depths of
the sea ; but to most of them this is no more than one of the
delightful whims which supply a subject for conversation,
a proof of love which they dream of giving, but do not give ;
Avhereas Esther, to whom her first enchantment was ever new,
who lived perpetually in the glow of Lucien's first incendiary
glance, never, in four years, had an impulse of curiosity.
She gave her whole mind to the task of adhering to the terms
of the programme prescribed by the sinister Spaniard. Nay,
more ! In the midst of intoxicating happiness she never took
unfair advantage of the unlimited power that the constantly
revived desire of a lover gives to the woman he loves to ask
Lucien a single question regarding Herrera, of whom indeed
she lived in constant awe ; she dared not even think of him.
The elaborate benefactions of that extraordinary man, to
whom Esther undoubtedly owed her feminine accomplish-
ment and her well-bred manner, struck the poor girl as ad-
vances on account of hell.
"T shall have to pay for all this some day," she would tell
herself with dismay.
ESTHER HAPPY 69
•
Every fine night she went out in a hired carriage. She
was driven with a rapidity no doubt insisted on by the Abbe,
in one or another of the beautiful woods round Paris,
Boulogne, Vincennes, Eomainville, or Ville-d'Avray, often
with Lucien, sometimes alone with Europe. There she could
walk about without fear; for when Lucien was not with her,
she was attended by a servant dressed like the smartest of
outriders, armed with a real knife, whose face and brawny
build alike proclaimed him a ruthless athlete. This pro-
tector was also provided, in the fashion of English footmen,
with a stick, but such as single-stick players use, with which
they can keep off more than one assailant. In obedience to
an order of the Abbe's, Esther had never spoken a word to
this escort. When madame wished to go home, Europe gave
a call; the man in waiting whistled to the driver, who was
always within hearing.
When Lucien was walking with Esther, Europe and this
man remained about a hundred paces behind, like two of
the infernal minions that figure in the Thousand and One
Nights, which enchanters place at the service of their devotees.
The men, and yet more the women of Paris, know noth-
ing of the charm of a vvalk in the woods on a fine night.
The stillness, the moonlight effects, the solitude, have the
soothing effect of a bath. Esther usually went out at ten,
walked about from midnight till one o'clock, and came in at
half-past two. It was never daylight in her rooms till eleven.
She then bathed and went through the elaborate toilet which
is unknown to most women, for it takes up too much time,
and is rarely carried out by any but courtesans, women of
the town, or fine ladies who have the day before them. She
was only just ready when Lucien came, and appeared before
him as a newly opened flower. Her only care was that her
poet should be happy; she Avas his toy, his chattel; she gave
him entire liberty. She never cast a glance beyond the circle
where she shone. On this the Abbe had insisted, for it was
part of his profound policy that Lucien should have gallant
adventures.
70 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
•
Happiness has no history, and the story-tellers of all
lands have understood this so well that the words, "They
were happy/' are the end of every love tale. Hence only
the ways and means can be recorded of this really romantic
happiness in the heart of Paris. It was happiness in its
loveliest form, a poem, a symphony, of four years' duration.
Every woman will exclaim, "Tliat was much !" Neither
Esther nor Lucien had ever said, "This is too much !" And
the formula, "They were happy," was more emphatically true
than even in a fairy tale, for "they had no children."
So Lucien could coquet with the world, give way to his
poet's caprices, and, it may be plainly admitted, to the
necessities of his position. All this time he was slowly making
his wa}', and was able to render secret service to certain
political personages by helping them in their work. In such
matters he was eminently discreet. He cultivated Madame
de Serizy's circle, being, it was rumored, on the very best
terms with that lady. Madame de Serizy had carried him
off from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who, it was said, had
"thrown him over," one of the phrases by which women
avenge themselves on happiness they envy. Lucien was in
the lap, so to speak, of the High Almoner's set. and intimate
with women who were the Archbishop's personal friends.
He was modest and reserved ; he waited patiently. So de
Marsay's speech — de ]\Iarsay was now married, and made his
wife live as retired a life as Esther — was significant in more
ways than one.
But the submarine perils of such a course as Lucien's will
be sufficiently obvious in the course of this chronicle.
Matters were in this position when, one fine night in
August, the Baron de Xucingen was driving back to Paris
from the country residence of a foreign banker, settled in
Prance, Avith whom he had been dining. The estate lay at
eight leagues from Paris in the district of la Brie. Xow,
the Baron's coachman having undertaken to drive his master
there and back with his own horses, at nightfall ventured
to moderate the pace.
ESTHER HAPPY 71
As they entered the forest of Vincennes the position of
beast, man, and master was as follows: — The coachman,
liberally soaked in the kitchen of the aristocrat of the Bourse,
was perfectly tipsy, and slept soundly, while still holding
the reins to deceive other wayfarers. The footman, seated
behind, was snoring like a wooden top from Germany — the
land of little carved figures, of large wine-vats, and of
humming-tops. The Baron had tried to think; but after
passing the bridge at Gournay, the soft somnolence of diges-
tion had sealed his eyes. The horses understood the coach-
man's plight from the slackness of the reins; they heard the
footman's hasso continuo from his perch behind; they saw
that they were masters of the situation, and took advantage
of their few minutes' freedom to make their own pace. Like
intelligent slaves, they gave highway robbers the chance of
plundering one of the richest capitalists in France, the most
deeply cunning of the race which, in France, have been en-
ergetically styled lynxes — loups-cerviers. Finally, being in-
dependent of control, and tempted by the curiosity which
every one must have remarked in domestic animals, they
stopped where four roads met, face to face with some other
horses, whom they, no doubt, asked in horses' language:
"Who may you be? What are you doing? Are you com-
fortable?"
When the chaise stopped, the Baron awoke from his nap.
At first he fancied that he was still in his friend's park;
then he was startled by a celestial vision, which found him
unarmed with his usual weapon— self-interest. The moon-
light was brilliant ; he could have read by it — even an evening
paper. In the silence of the forest, under this pure light,
the Baron saw a woman, alone, who, as she got into a hired
chaise, looked at the strange spectacle of this sleep-stricken
carriage. At the sight of this angel the Baron felt as though
a light had flashed into glory within him. The young lady,
seeing herself admired, pulled down her veil with terrified
haste. The man-servant gave a signal which the driver per-
fectly understood, for the vehicle went off like an arrow.
-i v
72 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
The old banker was fearfully agitated; the blood left his
feet cold and carried fire to his brain, his head sent the flame
back to his heart; he was choking. The unhappy man fore-
saw a fit of indigestion, but in spite of that supreme terror
he stood up.
"Follow qvick, fery qvick. — Tam ' you, you are ashleep !"
he cried. "A hundert franc if you catch up dat chaise."
At the words "A hundred francs," the coachman woke up.
The servant behind heard them, no doubt, in his dreams.
The Baron reiterated his orders, the coachman urged the
horses to a gallop, and at the Barriere du Trone had suc-
ceeded in overtaking a carriage resembling that in which
Nucingen had seen the divine fair one, but which contained
a swaggering head-clerk from some first-class shop and a
lady of the Rue Vivienne.
This blunder filled the Baron with consternation.
"If only I had prought Chorge inshtead of you, shtupid
fool, he shall have fount dat voman," said he to the servant,
while the excise officers were searching the carriage.
"Indeed, Monsieur le Baron, the devil was behind the
chaise, I believe, disguised as an armed escort, and he sent
this chaise instead of hers."
"Dere is no such ting as de Teufel," said the Baron.
The Baron de ISTucingen owned to sixty; he no longer
cared for women, and for his wife least of all. He boasted
that he had never known such love as makes a fool of a
man. He declared that he was happy to have done with
women; the most angelic of them, he frankly said, was not
worth w^hat she cost, even if you got her for nothing. He
was supposed to be so entirely blase, that he no longer paid
two thousand francs a month for the pleasure of being de-
ceived. His eyes looked coldly down from his opera box on
the corps de ballet; never a glance was shot at the capitalist
by any one of that formidable swarm of old young girls, and
young old women, the cream of Paris pleasure.
Natural love, artificial and love-of-show love, love based
on self-esteem and vanity, love as a display of taste, decent,
ESTHER HAPPY 73
conjugal love, eccentric love — the Baron had paid for them
all, had known them all excepting real spontaneous love.
This passion had now pounced down on him like an eagle on
its prey, as it did on Gentz, the confidential friend of His
Highness the Prince of Metternich. All the world knows
what follies the old diplomate committed for Fanny Elssler,
whose rehearsals took up a great deal more of his time than
the concerns of Europe.
The woman who had just overthrown that iron-bound
money-box, called Nucingen, had appeared to him as one of
those who are unique in their generation. It is not certain
that Titian's mistress, or Leonardo da Vinci's Monna Lisa,
or Raphael's Fornarina were as beautiful as this exquisite
Esther, in whom not the most practised eye of the most ex-
perienced Parisian could have detected the faintest trace of
the ordinary courtesan. The Baron was especially startled
by the noble and stately air, the air of a well-born woman,
which Esther, beloved, and lapped in luxury, elegance, and
devotedness, had in the highest degree. Happy love is the
divine unction of women; it makes them all as lofty as
empresses.
For eight nights in succession the Baron went to the forest
of Vincennes, then to the Bois de Boulogne, to the woods
of Ville-d'Avray, to Meudon, in short, everywhere in the
neighborhood of Paris, but failed to meet Esther. Thai
beautiful Jewish face, which he called "a face out of te
Biple," was always before his eyes. By the end of a fort-
night he had lost his appetite.
Delphine de Nucingen, and her daughter Augusta, whom
the Baroness was now taking out, did not at first perceive
the change that had come over the Baron. The mother
and daughter only saw him at breakfast in the morning and
at dinner in the evening, when they all dined at home, and
this was only on the evenings when Delphine received com-
pany. But by the end of two m.onths, tortured by a fever
of impatience, and in a state like that produced by acute
home-sickness, the Baron, amazed to find his millions im>po-
74 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
tent, grew so thin, and seemed so seriously ill, that Delphine
had secret hopes of finding herself a widow. She pitied
her husband, somewhat hypocritically, and kept her daughter
in seclusion. She bored her husband with questions; he an-
swered as Englishmen answer when suffering from spleen,
hardly a word.
Delphine de Nucingen gave a grand dinner every Sunday.
She had chosen that day for her receptions, after observing
that no people of fashion went to the play, and that the
day was pretty generally an open one. The emancipation of
the shopkeeping and middle classes makes Sunday almost
as tiresome, in Paris as it is deadly in London. So the
Baroness invited the famous Desplein to dinner, to consult
him in spite of the sick man, for Nucingen persisted in as-
serting that he was perfectly well.
Keller, Eastignac, de Marsay, du Tillet, all their friends
had made the Baroness understand that a man like Nucingen
could not be allowed to die without any notice being taken
of it; his enormous business transactions demanded some
care; it was absolutely necessary to know where he stood.
These gentlemen also were asked to dinner, and the Comte
de Gondreville, Francois Keller's father-in-law, the Chevalier
d'Espard, des Lupeaulx, Doctor Bianchon — Desplein's best
beloved pupil — Beaudenord and his wife, the Comte and
Comtesse de Montcornet, Blondet, Mademoiselle des Touches
and Conti, and finally, Lucien de Rubempre, for whom
Eastignac had for the last five years manifested the warmest
regard — by order, as the advertisements have it.
"We shall not find it easy to get rid of that young fellow,'*
said Blondet to Eastignac, when he saw Lucien come in
handsomer than ever, and uncommonly well dressed.
"It is wiser to make friends with him, for he is formidable,"
said Eastignac.
"He?" said de Marsay. "No one is formidable to my
knowledge but men whose position is assured, and his is
unattacked rather than unattackable ! Look here, what does
he live on? Where does his money come from? He has,
I am certain, sixty thousand francs in debts."
ESTHER HAPPY 75
"He has found a friend in a ver}^ rich Spanish priest who
has taken a fancy to him/' replied Eastignac.
"He is going to be married to the eldest Mademoiselle
de Grandlieu," said Mademoiselle des Touches.
"Yes," said the Chevalier d'Espard, "but they require him
to buy an estate worth thirty thousand francs a year as
security for the fortune he is to settle on the young lady,
and for that he needs a million francs, which are not to be
found in any Spaniard's shoes."
"That is dear, for Clotilde is very ugly," said the Baron-
ess.
Madame de Nueingen affected to call Mademoiselle de
Grandlieu by her Christian name, as though she, nee Goriot,
frequented that society.
"Xo," replied du Tillet, "the daughter of a duchess is
never ugly to the like of us, especially when she brings with
her the title of Marquis and a diplomatic appointment. But
the great obstacle to the marriage is Madame de Serizy's
insane passion for Lucien. She must give him a great deal
of money."
"Then I am not surprised at seeing Lucien so serious ; for
Madame de Serizy will certainly not give him a million
francs to help him to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. He
probably sees no way out of the scrape," said de Marsay.
"But Mademoiselle de Grandlieu worships him," said the
Comtesse de Montcornet; "and with the young person's as-
sistance, he may perhaps make better terms."
"And what will he do with his sister and brother-in-law at
Angouleme?" asked the Chevalier d'Espard.
"Well, his sister is rich," replied Rastignac, "and he now
speaks of her as Madame Sechard de Marsae."
"Whatever difficulties there may be, he is a very good-look-
ing fellow," said Bianchon, rising to greet Lucien.
"How 'do, my dear fellow ?" said Rastignac, shaking hands
warmly with Lucien.
De Marsay bowed coldly after Lucien had first bowed to
him.
76 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Before dinner Desplein and Bianchon, who studied the
Baron while amusing him, convinced themselves that his
malady was entirely nervous; but neither could guess the
cause, so impossible did it seem that the great politician of
the money market could be in love. When Bianchon, seeing
nothing but love to account for the banker's condition, hinted
as much to Delphine de jSTucingen, she smiled as a woman wlio
has long known all her husband's weaknesses. After dinner,
however, when thty all adjourned to the garden, the more
intimate of the party gathered round the banker, eager to
clear up this extraordinary ease when they heard Bianchon
pronounce that Xucingen must be in love.
"Do 5^ou know. Baron," said de Marsay, "that you have
grown very thin? You are suspected of violating the laws
of financial Xature."
"Ach, nefer!" said the Baron.
"Yes, yes," replied de Marsay. "They dare to say that
you are in love."
"Dat is true," replied iSTucingen piteously ; "I am in lof for
somebod}^ I do not know."
"You, in love, you? You are a coxcomb !" said the Cheva-
lier d'Espard.
"In lof, at my aje ! I know dat is too ridicilous. But
vat can I help it? Dat is so."
"A woman of the world?" asked Lucien.
"Nay," said de Marsay. "The Baron would not grow
so thin but for a hopeless love, and he has money enough to buy
all the women who will or can sell themselves !"
"I do not know who she it," said the Baron. "And as
Motame de jSTucingen is inside de trawing-room, I may say so.
dat till now I have nefer known what it is to lof. Lof ! I
tink it is to grow tin."
"And where did you meet this innocent daisy?" asked
Rastignac.
"In a carriage, at mitnight, in de forest of Fincennes."
"Describe her," said de Marsay.
"A vhite gaze hat, a rose gown, a vhite scharf , a vhite feil —
ESTHER HAPPY 77
a face yust out of de Biple. Eyes like feuer, an Eastern
color "
"You were dreaming," said Lucien, with a smile.
"Dat is true; I vas shleeping like a pig — a pig mit his
shkin full," he added, "for I vas on my vay home from tinner
at mine friend's "
"Was she alone?" said du Tillet, interrupting him.
"Ja," said the Baron dolefully ; "but she had ein heid/uque
behind dat carriage and a maid-shervant "
"Lucien looks as if he knew her," exclaimed Eastignac,
seeing Esther's lover smile.
"Who doesn't know the woman who would go out at mid-
night to meet Nucingen?" said Lucien, turning on his heel.
"Well, she is not a woman who is seen in society, or the
Baron would have recognized the man," said the Chevalier
d'Espard.
"I have nefer seen him," replied the Baron. "And for
forty days now I have had her seeked for by de Police, and
dey do not find her."
"It is better that she should cost you a few hundred francs
than cost 3^ou your life," said Desplein; "and, at your age, a
passion without hope is dangerous, you might die of it."
"Ja, ja," replied the Baron, addressing Desplein. "And
vat I eat does me no goot, de air I breade feels to choke me.
I go to de forest of Fincennes to see de place vat I see her —
and dat is all my life. I could not tink of de last loan — I
trust to my partners vat haf pity on me. I could pay one
million franc to see dat voman — and I should gain by dat,
for I do nothing on de Bourse. — Ask du Tillet."
"Very true," replied du Tillet; "he hates business; he is
quite unlike himself; it is a sign of death."
"A sign of lof," replied Nucingen ; "and for me, dat is all de
same ting."
The simple candor of the old man, no longer the stock-
jobber, who, for the first time in his life, saw that something
was more sacred and more precious than gold, really moved
these world-hardened men; some exchanged smiles; others
78 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
looked at Xiicingen with an expression that plainl}'^ said,
"Such a man to have come to this !" — And then they all re-
turned to the drawing-room, talking over the event.
For it was indeed an event calculated to produce the great-
est sensation. Madame de Nucingen went into fits of laugh-
ter when Lucien betrayed her husband's secret; but the
Baron, when he heard his wife's sarcasms, took her by the
arm and led her into the recess of a window.
"Motame," said he in an undertone, "have I ever laughed
at all at your passions, that you should laugh at mine? A
goot frau should help her husband out of his difficulty vidout
making game of him like vat you do.''
From the description given by the old banker, Lucien had
recognized his Esther. Much annoyed that his smile should
have been observed, he took advantage of a moment when
coffee was served, and the conversation became general, to
vanish from the scene.
'TVliat has become of Monsieur de Eubempre?" said the
Baroness.
"He is faithful to his motto: Quid me continehit?" said
Eastignac.
"Which means, 'Who can detain me?' or 'I am uncon-
querable,' as you choose," added de Marsay,
"Just as Monsieur le Baron was speaking of his unknown
lad}', Lucien smiled in a way that makes me fancy he may
know her," said Horace Bianchon, not thinking how danger-
ous such a natural remark might be.
"Goot !" said the banker to himself.
Like all incurables, the Baron clutched at everything that
seemed at all hopeful ; he promised himself that he would
have Lucien watched by some one besides Louchard and his
men — Louchard, the sharpest commercial detective in Paris
— to whom he had applied about a fortnight since.
Before going home to Esther, Lucien was due at the Hotel
Grandlieu, to spend the two hours which made Mademoiselle
Clotilde Frederique de Grandlieu the happiest girl in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain. But the prudence characteristic
ESTHER HAPPY 79
of this ambitious youth warned him to inform Carlos Herrera
forthwith of the effect resulting from the smile wrung from
him b}^ the Baron's description of Esther. The banker's pas-
sion for Esther, and the idea that had occurred to him of
setting the police to seek the unknown beauty, were indeed
events of sufficient importance to be at once communicated
to the man who had sought, under a priest's robe, the shelter
which criminals of old could find in a church. And Lucien's
road from the Rue Saint-Lazare, where ISTucingen at that time
lived, to the Eue Saint-Dominique, where was the Hotel
Grandlieu, led him past his lodgings on the Quai Malaquais.
Lucien found his formidable friend smoking his breviary
— that is to say, coloring a short pipe before retiring to
bed. The man, strange rather than foreign, had given up
Spanish cigarettes, finding them too mild.
"Matters look serious," said the Spaniard, when Lucien
had told him all. "The Baron, who employs Louchard to
hunt up the girl, will certainly be sharp enough to set a spy
at your heels, and everything will come out. To-night and
to-morrow morning will not give me more than enough time
to pack the cards for the game I must play against the Baron ;
first and foremost, I must prove to him that the police can-
not help him. When our lynx has given up all hope of find-
ing his ewe-lamb, I will undertake to sell her for all she is
worth to him "
"Sell Esther !" cried Lucien, whose first impulse was al-
ways the right one.
"Do you forget where we stand?" cried Carlos Herrera.
"No money left," the Spaniard went on, "and sixty
thousand francs of debts to be paid ! If you want to marry
Clotilde de Grandlieu, you must invest a million of francs
in land as security for that ugly creature's settlement. Well,
then, Esther is the quarry I mean to set before that lynx to
help us to ease him of that million. That is my concern."
"Esther will never "
"That is my concern."
"She will die of it."
80 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"That is the undertaker's concern. Besides, what then?"
cried the savage, cliecking Lucien's lamentations merely by
his attitude. "How many generals died in the prime of life
for the Emperor Xapoleon?" he asked, after a short silence.
"There are always plenty of women. In 1821 Coralie was
unique in 5'our eyes; and yet you found Esther. After her
will come — do you know who ? — the unknown fair. And she
of all women is the fairest, and 3'ou will find her in the
capital where the Due de Grandlieu's son-in-law will bt'
Minister and representative of the King of France. — And
do you tell me now, great Baby, that Esther will die of
it ? Again, can Mademoiselle de Grandlieu's husband keep
Esther ?
"You have only to leave everything to me; 3'OU need not
take the trouble to think at all; that is my concern. Only
you must do without Esther for a week or two; but go to
the Eue Taitbout, all the same. — Come, be off to bill and coo
on your plank of salvation, and play your part well ; slip the
flaming note j'ou wrote this morning into Clotilde's hand, and
bring me back a warm response. She will recompense her-
self for many woes in writing. I take to that girl.
"You will find Esther a little depressed, but tell her to
obey. We must display our livery of virtue, our doublet of
honesty, the screen behind which all great men hide their
infamy. — I must show off my handsomer self — you must
never be suspected. Chance has served us better than my
brain, which has been beating about in a void for these two
months past."
All the while he was jerking out these dreadful sentences,
one by one, like pistol shots, Carlos Herrera was dressing
himself to go out.
"You are evidently delighted," cried Lu'cien. "You never
liked poor Esther, and you look forward with joy to the
moment when you will be rid of her."
"You have never tired of loving her, have you? Well,
I have never tired of detesting her. But have I not always
behaved as though I were sincerely attached to the hussy — i,
ESTHER HAPPY 81
who, through Asie, hold her life in my hands? A few bad
mushrooms in a stew — and there an end. But Mademoiselle
Esther still lives ! — and is happy ! — And do you know why ?
Because you love her. Do not be a fool. For four years we
have been waiting for a chance to turn up, for us or against
us; well, it will take something more than mere cleverness
to wash the cabbage luck has flung at us now. There are
good and bad together in this turn of the wheel — as there
are in everything. Do you know what I was thinking of
when vou came in ?"
"No."
' "Of making myself heir here, as I did at Barcelona, to
an old bigot, by Asie's help."
"A crime?"
"I saw no other way of securing your fortune. The
creditors are making a stir. If once the bailiffs were at your
heels, and you were turned out of the Hotel Grandlieu, where
would you be? There would be the devil to pay then."
And Carlos Herrera, by a pantomimic gesture, showed the
suicide of a man throwing himself into the water; then he
fixed on Lucien one of those steady, piercing looks by which
the will of a strong man is injected, so to speak, into a weak
one. This fascinating glare, which relaxed all Lucien's fibres
of resistance, revealed the existence not merely of secrets of
life and death between him and his adviser, but also of feel-
ings as far above ordinary feeling as the man himself was
above his vile position.
Carlos Herrera, a man at once ignoble and magnanimous,
obscure and famous, compelled to live out of the world from
which the law had banned him, exhausted by vice and by
frenzied and terrible struggles, though endowed with powers
of mind that ate into his soul, consumed especially by a fever
of vitality, now lived again in the elegant person of Lucien
de Rubempre, whose soul had become his own. He was rep-
resented in social life by the poet, to whom he lent his tenacity
and iron will. To him Lucien was more than a son, more
than a woman beloved, more than a family, more than his
82 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
life; he was his revenge; and as souls cling more closely to
a feeling than to existence, he had bound the young man to
him by insoluble ties.
After rescuing Lucien's life at the moment when the poet
in desperation was on the verge of suicide, he had proposed
to him one of those infernal bargains which are heard ot
only in romances, but of which the hideous possibility has
often been proved in courts of justice by celebrated criminal
dramas. While lavishing on Lueien all the delights of Paris
life, and proving to him that he yet had a great future be-
fore him, he had made him his chattel.
But, indeed, no sacrifice was too great for this strange man
when it was to gratify his second self. With all his strength,
he was so weak to this creature of his making that he had
even told him all his secrets. Perhaps this abstract com-
plicity was a bond the more between them.
Since the day when La Torpille had been snatched away,
Lueien had known on what a vile foundation his good fortune
rested. That priest's robe covered Jacques Collin, a man
famous on the hulks, who ten years since had lived under
the homely name of Vautrih'in the Maison Vauquer, where
Rastignac and Bianchon were at that time boarders.
Jacques Collin, known as Trompe-la-Mort, had escaped
from Rochefort almost as soon as he was recaptured, profit-
ing by the example of the famous Comte de Sainte-Helene,
while modifying all that was ill planned in Goignard's daring
scheme. To take the place of an honest man and carry on
the convict's career is a proposition of which the two terms
are too contradictory for a disastrous outcome not to be in-
evitable, especially in Paris ; for, by establishing himself in a
family, a convict multiplies tenfold the perils of such a sub-
stitution. And to be safe from all investigation, must not
a man assume a position far above the ordinary interests
of life. A man of the world is subject to risks such as rarely
trouble those who have no contact with the world ; hence the
priest's gown is the safest disguise when it can be authen-
ticated by an exemplary life in solitude and inactivity.
ESTHER HAPPY 83
"So a priest I will be," said the legally dead man, who
was quite determined to resuscitate as a figure in the world,
and to satisfy passions as strange as himself.
The civil war caused by the Constitution of 1812 in Spain,
whither this energetic man had betaken himself, enabled
him to murder secretly the real Carlos Herrera from an
ambush. This ecclesiastic, the bastard son of a grandee, long
since deserted by his father, and not knowing to what woman
he owed his birth, was intrusted by King Ferdinand VII.,
to whom a bishop had recommended him, with a political
mission to France. The bishop, the only man who took
any interest in Carlos Herrera, died while this foundling
son of the Church was on his journey from Cadiz to Madrid,
and from Madrid to France. Delighted to have met with
this longed-for opportunity, and under the most desirable
conditions, Jacques Collin scored his back to efface the fatal
letters, and altered his complexion by the use of chemicals.
Thus metamorphosing himself face to face with the corpse,
he contrived to achieve some likeness to his Sosia. And to
complete a change almost as marvelous as that related in
the Arabian tale, where a dervish has acquired the power, old
as he is, of entering into a young body, by a magic spell, the
convict, who spoke Spanish, learned as much Latin as an
Andalusian priest need know.
As banker to three hulks, Collin was rich in the cash in-
trusted to his known, and indeed enforced, honesty. Among
such company a mistake is paid for by a dagger thrust. To
this capital he now added the money given by the bishop to
Don Carlos Herrera. Then, before leaving Spain, he was
able to possess himself of the treasure of an old bigot at
Barcelona, to whom he gave absolution, promising that he
would make restitution of the money constituting her fortune,
which his penitent had stolen by means of murder.
Jacques Collin, now a priest, and charged with a secret
mission which would secure him the most brilliant introduc-
tions in Paris, determined to do nothing that might com-
promise the character he had assumed, and had given himself
84 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
up to the chances of his new life, when he met Lucien on
the road between Angouleme and Paris. In this youth the
sham priest saw a wonderful instrument for power; he saved
him from suicide, saying:
"Give j^ourself over to me as to a man of God, as men give
themselves over to the devil, and you will have every chance
of a new career. You will live as in a dream, and the worst
awakening that can come to you will be death, which you
now wish to meet."
The alliance between these two beings, who were to be-
come one, as it were, was based on this substantial reason-
ing, and Carlos Herrera cemented it by an ingeniously plotted
complicity. He had the very genius of corruption, and un-
dermined Lucien's honesty by plunging him into cruel
necessity, and extricating him by obtaining his tacit consent
to bad or disgraceful actions, which nevertheless left him
pure, loyal, and noble in the eyes of the world. Lucien was
the social magnificence under whose shadow the forger meant
to live.
"I am the author, you are the play; if you fail, it is I
who shall be hissed," said he on the day when he confessed
his sacrilegious disguise.
Carlos prudently confessed only a little at a time, measur-
ing the horrors of his revelations by Lucien's progress and
needs. Thus Trompe-la-Mort did not let out his last secret
till the habit of Parisian pleasures and success, and gratified
vanity, had enslaved the weak-minded poet body and soul.
Where Eastignac, when tempted by this demon, had stood
firm, Lucien, better managed, and more ingeniously com-
promised, succumbed, conquered especially by his satisfaction
in having attained an eminent position. Incarnate evil,
whose poetical embodiment is called the Devil, displayed
every delightful seduction before this youth, who was half
a woman, and at first gave much and asked for little. The
great argument used by Carlos was the eternal secret prom-
ised by Tartufe to Elmire.
The repeated proofs of absolute devotion, such as that of
ESTHER HAPPY 85
Said to Mahomet, put the finishing touch to the horrible
achievement of Lucien's subjugation by a Jacques Collin.
At this moment not only had Esther and Lucien devoured
all the funds intrusted to the honesty of the banker of the
hulks, who, for their sakes, had rendered himself liable to a
dreadful calling to account, but the dandy, the forger, and
the courtesan were also in debt. Thus, at the very moment
of Lucien's expected success, the smallest pebble under the
foot of either of these three persons might involve the ruin
of the fantastic structure of fortune so audaciously built up.
At the opera ball Eastignac had recognized the man he
had known as Vautrin at Madame Vauquer's; but he knew
that if he did not hold his tongue, he was a dead man. So
Madame de Nucingen's lover and Lucien had exchanged
glances in which fear lurked, on both sides, under an ex-
pression of amity. In the moment of danger, Eastignac, it
is clear, would have been delighted to provide the vehicle that
should convey Jacques Collin to the scaffold. From all this
it may be understood that Carlos heard of the Baron's pas-
sion with a glow of sombre satisfaction, while he perceived
in a single flash all the advantage a man of his temper might
derive by means of the hapless Esther.
^'Go on," said he to Lucien. "The Devil is mindful of his
chaplain."
"You are smoking on a powder barrel."
"Incedo per ignes," replied Carlos with a smile. "That is
my trade."
The House of Grandlieu divided into two branches about
the middle of the last century : first, the ducal line destined
to lapse, since the present duke has only daughters ; and then
the Vicomtes de Grandlieu, who will now inherit the title
and armorial bearings of the elder branch. The ducal house
bears ^w/es^ three broad axes or in fess,with the famous motto :
Caveo non timeo, which epitomizes the history of the family.
The coat of the Vicomtes de Grandlieu is the same quar-
tered with that of Navarreins : gules, a fess crenelated or.
86 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
surmounted by a knight's helmet, with the motto: Grands
faits, grand lieu. The present Viscountess, widowed in 1813,
has a son and a daughter. Though she returned from the
Emigration almost ruined, she recovered a considerable for-
tune by the zealous aid of Derville the lawj-er.
The Due and Duchesse de Grandlieu, on coming home
in 1804, were the object of the Emperor's advances; indeed,
jSTapoleon, seeing them come to his court, restored to them all
of the Grandlieu estates that had been confiscated to the
nation, to the amount of about forty thousand francs a year.
Of all the great nobles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who
allowed themselves to be won over by Xapoleon, this Duke
and Duchess — she was an Ajuda of the senior branch, and
connected with the Braganzas — were the only family who
afterwards never disowned him and his liberality. When
the Faubourg Saint-Germain remembered this as a crime
against the Grandlieus, Louis XVIII. respected them for
it; but perhaps his only object was to annoy Moxsieur.
A marriage was considered likely between the young
Vicomte de Grandlieu and Marie- Athenais, the Duke's young-
est daughter, now nine years old. Sabine, the youngest but
one, married the Baron du Guenic after the revolution of
July 1830; Josephine, the third, became Madame d'Ajuda-
Pinto after the death of the Marquis' first wife. Made-
moiselle de Eochefide, or Eochegude. The eldest had taken
the veil in 1822. The second. Mademoiselle Clotilde
Frederique, at this time seven-and-twenty years of age, was
deeply in love with Lucien de Eubempre. It need not be
asked whether the Due de Grandlieu's mansion, one of the
finest in the Eue Saint-Dominique, did not exert a thousand
spells over Lucien's imagination. Every time the heavy gate
turned on its hinges to admit his cab, he experienced the grati-
fied vanity to which Mirabeau confessed.
"Though my father was a mere druggist at I'Houmeau, I
may enter here !" This was his thought.
And, indeed, he would have committed far worse crimes
than allying himself with a forger to preserve his right to
ESTHER HAPPY 87
mount the steps of that entrance, to hear himself announced,
"Monsieur de Eubempre" at the door of the fine Louis XIV.
drawing-room, decorated in the time of the grand monarque
on the pattern of those at Versailles, where that choicest cir-
cle met, that cream of Paris society, called then le petit
chateau.
The noble Portuguese lady, one of those who never care
to go out of their own home, was usually the centre of her
neighbors' attentions — the Chaulieus, the ISTavarreins, the
Lenoncourts. The pretty Baronne de Macumer — nee de
Chaulieu — the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Madame d'Espard,
Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches — a con-
nection of the Grandlieus, who are a Breton family — were
frequent visitors on their way to a ball or on their return
from the opera. The Vicomte de Grandlieu, the Due de
Ehetore, the Marquis de Chaulieu — afterwards Due de Len-
oncourt-Chaulieu — his wife, Madeleine de Mortsauf, the Due
de Lenoncourt's grand-daughter, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto,
the Prince de Blamont-Chauvry, the Marquis de Beauseant,
the Vidame de Pamiers, the Vandenesses, the old Prince de
Cadignan, and his son the Due de Maufrigneuse, were con-
stantly to be seen in this stately drawing-room, where they
breathed the atmosphere of a Court, where manners, tone,
and wit were in harmony with the dignity of the Master and
Mistress whose aristocratic mien and magnificence had ob-
literated the memory of their servility to Napoleon.
The old Duchesse d'Uxelles, mother of the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, was the oracle of this circle, to which Madame
de Serizy had never gained admittance, though nee de
Eonquerolles.
Lucien was brought thither by ]\'radame de Maufrigneuse,
who had won over her mother to speak in his favor, for she
had doted on him for two years; and the engaging young
poet had kept his footing there, thanks to the influence of
the high Almoner of France, and the support of the Arch-
bishop of Paris. Still, he had not been admitted till he had
obtained the patent restoring to him the name and arms of
88 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
the Rubempre family. The Due de Ehetore, the Chevalier
d'Espard, and some others, jealous of Lucien, periodically
stirred up the Due de Grandlieu's prejudices against him by
retailing anecdotes of the young man's previous career; biu
the Duchess, a devout Catholic surrounded by the great prel-
ates of the Church, and her daughter Clotilde would not give
him up.
Lucien accounted for these hostilities by his connection
Avith Madame de Bargeton, Madame d'Espard's cousin, and
now Comtesse du Chatelet. Then, feeling the importance
of allying himself with so powerful a family, and urged by
his privy adviser to win Clotilde, Lucien found the courage of
the parvenu; he came to the house five days in the week, he
swallowed all the affronts of the envious, he endured im-
jDcrtinent looks, and answered irony with wit. His per-
sistency, the charm of his manners, and his amiability, at
last neutralized opposition and reduced obstacles. He was
still in the highest favor with Madame de Maufrigneuse,
whose ardent letters, written under the influence of her pas-
sion, were preserved by Carlos Herrera ; he was idolized by
Madame de Seriz}-, and stood well in Mademoiselle des
Touches' good graces; and v»-ell content with being received
in these houses, Lucien was instructed by the Abbe to be as
reserved as possible in all other quarters.
"You cannot devote yourself to several houses at once,"
said his Mentor. "The man who goes everywhere finds no
one to take a lively interest in him. Great folks only
patronize those who emulate their furniture, whom they see
every day, and who have the art of becoming as necessary
to them as the seat they sit on."
Thus Lucien, accustomed to regard the Grandlieus' draw-
ing-room as his arena, reserved his wit, his jests, his news,
and his courtier's graces for the hours he spent there every
evening. Insinuating, tactful, and warned by Clotilde of
the shoals he should avoid, he flattered Monsieur de Grand-
lieu's little weaknesses. Clotilde, having begun by envying
Madame de Maufri.crncuse her happiness, ended by falling
desperately in tove with Lucien.
ESTHER HAPPY 89
Perceiving all the advantages of such a connection, Lucien
played his lover's part as well as it could have been acted
by Armand, the latest jeune premier at the Comedie Frangaise.
He wrote to Clotilde, letters which were certainly master-
pieces of literary workmanship ; and Clotilde replied, vying
with him in genius in the expression of perfervid love on
paper, for she had no other outlet. Lucien went to church
at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin every Sunday, giving himself out
as a devout Catholic, and he poured forth monarchical and
pious harangues which were a marvel to all. He also wrote
some exceedingly remarkable articles in papers devoted to the
"Congregation," refusing to be paid for them, and signing
them only with an "L." He produced political pamphlets
when required by King Charles X. or the High Almoner,
and for these he would take no payment.
"The King," he would say, "has done so much for me,
that I owe him my blood."
For some days past there had been an idea of attaching
Lucien to the prime ministers cabinet as his private secre-
tary ; but Madame d'Espard brought so many persons into the
field in opposition to Lucien, that Charles X.'s Maitre Jacques
hesitated to clinch the matter. Nor was Lucien's position
by any means clear; not only did the question, "What does
he live on?" on everybody's lips as the j^oung man rose in
life, require an answer, but even benevolent curiosit}^ — as
much as malevolent curiosity — went on from one inquiry
to another, and found more than one joint in the ambitious
youth's harness.
Clotilde de Grandlieu unconsciously served as a spy for
her father and mother. A few days since she had led Lucien
into a recess and told him of the difficulties raised by her
family.
"Invest a million francs in land, and my hand is yours :
that is my mother's ultimatum," Clotilde had explained.
"And presently they will ask you where you got the money,"
said Carlos, when Lucien reported this last word in the
bargain.
90 A COrRTESAN'S LIFE
"My brother-in-law will have made his fortune/' remarked
Lucien; "we can make him the responsible backer.'^
"Then only the million is needed/' said Carlos. "I will
think it over."
To be exact as to Lucien's position in the Hotel Grand-
lieu, he had never dined there. Neither Clotilde, nor the
Duchesse d'Uxelles, nor Madame de Maufrigneuse, who was
always extremely kind to Lucien, could ever obtain this favor
from the Duke, so persistently suspicious was the old noble-
man of the man he designated as "le Sire de Eubempre."
This shade of distinction, understood by every one who visited
at the house, constantly wounded Lucien's self-respect, for he
felt that he was no more than tolerated. But the world is
justified in being suspicious ; it is so often taken in !
To cut a figure in Paris with no known source of wealth
and no recognized employliient is a position which can by
no artifice be long maintained. So Lucien, as he crept up
in the world, gave more and more weight to the question.
"What does he live on?" He had been obliged indeed to
confess to Madame de Serizy, to whom he owed the patronage
of Monsieur Granville, the Public Prosecutor, and of the
Comte Octave de Bauvan, a Minister of State, and President
of one of the Supreme Courts : "I am dreadfully in debt."
As he entered the courtyard of the mansion where he found
an excuse for all his vanities, he was saying to himself as he
reflected on Trompe-la-]\Iort's scheming:
"I can hear the ground cracking under my feet !"
He loved Esther, and he wanted to marry Mademoiselle
de Grandlieu ! A strange dilemma ! One must be sold to
buy the other.
Only one person could effect this bargain without damage
to Lucien's honor, and that was the supposed Spaniard. Were
they not bound to be equally secret, each for the other?
Such a compact, in which each is in turn master and slave,
is not to be found twice in any one life.
Lucien drove away the clouds that darkened his brow, and
walked into the Grandlieu drawing-room gay and beaming.
ESTHER HAPPY 91
At this moment the windows were open, the fragrance from
the garden scented the room, the flower-basket in the centre
displayed its pyramid of flowers. The Duchess, seated on a
sofa in the corner, was talking to the Duchesse de Chaulieu.
Several women together formed a group remarkable for their
various attitudes, stamped with the different expression which
each strove to give to an affected sorrow. In the fashionable
world nobody takes any interest in grief or suffering; every-
thing is talk. The men were walking up and doAvn the room
or in the garden. Clotilde and Josephine were busy at the
tea-table. The Vidame de Pamiers, the Due de Grandlieu,
the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, and the Due de Maufrigneuse
were playing Wisk, as they called it, in a corner of the
room.
When Lucien was announced he walked across the room
to make his bow to the Duchess, asking the cause of the grief
he could read in her face.
"Madame de Chaulieu has just had dreadful news; her
son-in-law, the Baron de Macumer, ex-duke of Soria, is just
dead. The young Due de Soria and his wife, who had gone
to Chantepleurs to nurse their brother, have written this sad
intelligence. Louise is heart-broken."
"A woman is not loved twice in her life as Louise was
loved by her husband," said Madeleine de Mortsauf.
"She will be a rich widow," observed the old Duchesse
d'L^xelles, looking at Lucien, whose face showed no change of
expression.
"Poor Louise !" said Madame d'Espard. "I understand
her and pity her."
The Marquise d'Espard put on the pensive look of a woman
full of soul and feeling. Sabine de Grandlieu, who was but
ten years old, raised knowing eyes to her mother's face, but
the satirical glance was repressed by a glance from the Duch-
ess. This is bringing children up properly.
"If my daughter lives through the shock," said Madame de
Chaulieu, with a very maternal manner, "I shall be anxious
about her future life. Louise is so very romantic."
^'SS-'" A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"It is so difficult nowadays," said a venerable Cardinal,
"to reconcile feeling with the proprieties.'"'
Lucien, who had not a word to say, went to the tea-table
to do what was polite to the demoiselles de Grandlieu. When
the poet had gone a few yards away, the Marquise d'Espard
leaned over to whisper in the Duchess' ear:
"And do you really think that that young fellow is so much
in love with your Clotilde?"
The perfidy of this question cannot be fully understood
but with the help of a sketch of Clotilde. That young lady
was, at this moment, standing up. Her attitude allowed the
Marquise d'Espard's mocking eye to take in Clotilde's lean,
narrow figure, exactly like an asparagus stalk ; the poor girl's
bust was so flat that it did not allow of the artifice known to
dressmakers as fichus menteurs, or padded habitshirts. And
Clotilde, who knew that her name was a sufficient advantage
in life, far from trying to conceal this defect, heroically made
a display of it. By wearing plain, tight dresses she achieved
the effect of that stiff prim shape which mediaeval sculptors
succeeded in giving to the statuettes whose profiles are con-
spicuous against the background of the niches in which they
stand in cathedrals.
Clotilde was more than five feet four in height ; if we may
be allowed to use a familiar phrase, which has the merit at
any rate of being perfectly intelligible— she was all legs.
These defective proportions gave her figure an almost de-
formed appearance. With a dark complexion, harsh black
hair, very thick eyebrows, fiery eyes, set in sockets that were
already deeply discolored, a side face shaped like the moon
in its first quarter, and a prominent brow, she was the carica-
ture of her mother, one of the handsomest women in Portugal.
Nature amuses herself with such tricks. Often we see in
one family a sister of wonderful beauty, whose features in
her brother are absolutely hideous, though the two are amaz-
ingly alike. Clotilde's lips, excessively thin and sunken, wore
a permanent expression of disdain. And yet her mouth,
better than any other feature of her face, revealed every secret
ESTHER HAPPY 93
impulse of her heart, for affection lent it a sweet expression,
which was all the more remarkable because her cheeks were
too sallow for blushes, and her hard, black eyes never told
anything. Notwithstanding these defects, notwithstanding
her board-like carriage, she had by birth and education a
grand air, a proud demeanor, in short, everything that has
been well named le je ne sais quoi, due partly, perhaps, to her
uncompromising simplicity of dress, which stamped her as
a woman of noble blood. She dressed her hair to advantage,
and it might be accounted to her for a beauty, for it grew
vigorously, thick and long.
She had cultivated her voice, and it could cast a spell; she
sang exquisitely. Clotilde was just the woman of whom one
says, "She has fine eyes," or, "She has a delightful temper.''
If any one addressed her in the English fashion as "Your
Grace," she would say, "You mean 'Your leanness.' "
"Why should not my poor Clotilde have a lover?" replied
the Duchess to the Marquise. "Do you know what she said
to me yesterday? 'If I am loved for ambition's sake, I un-
dertake to make him love me for my own sake.' — She is
clever and ambitious, and there are men who like those two
qualities. As for him — my dear, he is as handsome as a
vision; and if he can but repurchase the Eubempre estates,
out of regard for us the King will reinstate him in the title
of Marquis. — After all, his mother was the last of the
Rubempres."
"Poor fellow ! where is he to find a million francs ?" said
the Marquise.
"That is no concern of ours," replied the Duchess. "He
is certainly incapable of stealing the money. — Besides, we
would never give Clotilde to an intriguing or dishonest man
even if he were handsome, young, and a poet, like Monsieur
de Eubempre."
"You are late this evening," said Clotilde, smiling at Lucien
with infinite graciousness.
"Yes, I have been dining out."
"You have been quite gay these last few days," said she,
concealing her jealousy and anxiety behind a smile.
94 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"^Quite gay?" replied Lucien. "No — only by the merest
chance 1 have been dining every day this week with bankers;
to-day with the Nucingens, yesterday with du Tiilet, the day
before with the Kellers "
Whence, it may be seen, that Lucien had succeeded in
assuming the tone of light impertinence of great people.
"You have many enemies," said Clotilde, offering him —
how graciously ! — a cup of tea. "Some one told my father
that you have debts to the amount of sixty thousand francs,
and that before long Sainte-Pelagie will be your summer
quarters. — If you could know what all these calumnies are
to me ! — It all recoils on me. — I say nothing of my own
suffering — my father has a way of looking that crucifies me
— but of what you must be suffering if any least part of it
should be the truth."
"Do not let such nonsense worry you; love me as I love
you, and give me time — a few months " said Lucien, re-
placing his empty cup on the silver tray.
"Do not let my father see you; he would say something
disagreeable; and as you could not submit to that, we should
be done for. — That odious Marquise d'Espard told him that
your mother had been a monthly nurse and that your sister
did ironing "
"We were in the most abject poverty," replied Lucien, the
tears rising to his eyes. "That is not calumny, but it is most
ill-natured gossip My sister now is a more than millionaire,
and my mother has been dead two years. — This information
has been kept in stock to use just when I should be on the
verge of success here "
"But what have you done to Madame d'Espard?"
"I was so rash, at Madame de Serizy's, as to tell the story,
with some added pleasantries, in the presence of j\IM. d(»
Bauvan and de Granville, of her attempt to get a commission
of lunacy appointed to sit on her husband, the Marquis
d'Espard. Bianchon had told it to me. Monsieur de Gran-
ville's opinion, siipported by those of Bauvan and Serizy, in-
fluenced the decision of the Keeper of the Seals. They all
ESTHER HAPPY 95
were afraid of the Gazette des Trihunaux, and dreaded the
scandal, and the Marquise got her knuckles rapped in the
summing np for the judgment finally recorded in that miser-
able business.
"Though M. de Serizy by his tattle has made the Marquise
my mortal foe, I gained his good offices, and those of the
Public Prosecutor, and Comte Octave de Bauvan ; for Madame
de Serizy told them the danger in which I stood in con-
sequence of their allowing the source of their information to
be guessed at. The Marquis d'Espard was so clumsy as to
call upon me, regarding me as the first cause of his winning
the day in that atrocious suit."
'"I will rescue you from Madame d'Espard," said Clotilde.
"How ?" cried Lucien.
"My mother shall ask the young d'Espards here; they are
charming boys, and growing up now. The father and sons
will sing your praises, and then we are sure never to see their
mother again."
"Oh, Clotilde, you are an angel ! If I did not love you
for yourself, I should love you for being so clever."
"It is not cleverness," said she, all her love beaming on
her lips. "Good-night. Do not come again for some few
days. When you see me in church, at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin,
with a pink scarf, my father will be in a better temper. — You
will find an answer stuck to the back of the chair you are
sitting in; it will comfort you perhaps for not seeing me.
Put the note you have brought under my handkerchief "
This young person was evidently more than seven-and-
twenty.
Lucien took a cab in the Rue de la Planche, got out of it
on the Boulevards, took another by the Madeleine, and desired
the driver to have the gates opened and drive in at the house
in the Eue Taitbout.
On going in at eleven o'clock, he found Esther in tears,
but dressed as she was wont to dress to do him honor. She
awaited her Lucien reclining on a sofa covered with white
96 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
satin brocaded with yellow flowers, dressed in a bewitching
wrapper of India muslin with cherry-colored bows; without
her stays, her hair simply twisted into a knot, her feet in
little velvet slippers lined with cherry-colored satin; all the
candles were burning, the hookah was prepared. But she had
not smoked her own, which stood beside her unlighted, em-
blematical of her loneliness. On hearing the doors open,
she sprang up like a gazelle, and threw her arms round
Lucien, wrapping him like a web caught by the wind and
flung about a tree.
"Parted.— Is it true?"
"Oh, just for a few days," replied Lucien.
Esther released him, and fell back on her divan like a dead
thing.
In these circumstances, most women babble like parrots.
Oh ! how they love ! At the end of five years they feel as if
their first happiness were a thing of yesterday, they cannot
give you up, they are magnificent in their indignation, de-
spair, love, grief, dread, dejection, presentiments. In short,
they are as sublime as a scene from Shakespeare. But make
no mistake ! These women do not love. When they are
really all that these profess, when they love truly, they do
as Esther did, as children do, as true love does; Esther did
not say a word, she lay with her face buried in the
pillows, shedding bitter tears.
Lucien, on his part, tried to lift her up, and spoke to her.
"But, my child, we are not to part. What, after four years
of happiness, is this the way you take a short absence. —
What on earth do I do to all these girls ?" he added to himself,
remembering that Coralie had loved him thus.
"Ah, monsieur, you are so handsome," said Europe.
The senses have their own ideal. When added to this
fascinating beauty we find the sweetness of nature, the poetry,
that characterized Lucien, it is easy to conceive of the mad
passion roused in such women, keenly alive as they are to ex-
ternal gifts, and artless in their admiration. Esther was
sobbing quietly, and lay in an attitude expressive of the
deepest distress.
Lucieu burnt the uote at once iu the flame of a candle.
ESTHER HAPPY 97
"But, little goose,'^ said Lucien, "did you not understand
that my life is at stake?"
At these words, which he chose on purpose, Esther started
up like a wild animal, her hair fell, tumbling about her
excited face like wreaths of foliage. She looked steadily at
Lucien.
"Your life?" she cried, throwing up her arms, and letting
them drop with a gesture known only to a courtesan in peril.
"To be sure; that friend's note speaks of serious risk."
She took a shabby scrap of paper out of her sash ; then see-
ing Europe, she said, "Leave us, my girl."
When Europe had shut the door she went on — "Here, this
is what he writes," and she handed to Lucien a note she had
just received from Carlos, which Lucien read aloud : —
"You must leave to-morrow at five in the morning; you
will be taken to a keeper's lodge in the heart of the Forest
of Saint-Germain, where you will have a room on the first
floor. Do not quit that room till I give you leave ; you will want
for nothing. The keeper and his wife are to be trusted. Do
not write to Lucien. Do not go to the window during day-
light ; but you may walk by night with the keeper if you wish
for exercise. Keep the carriage blinds down on the way.
Lucien's life is at stake. ^
"Lucien will go to-night to bid you good-bye; burn this
in his presence."
Lucien burned the note at once in the flame of a candle.
"Listen, my own Lucien," said Esther, after hearing him
read this letter as a criminal hears the sentence of death;
"I will not tell you that I love you; it would be idiotic. For
nearly five years it has been as natural to me to love you as
to breathe and live. From the first day when my happiness
began under the protection of that inscrutable being, who
placed me here as you place some little curious beast in a
cage, I have known that you must marry. Marriage is a
98 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
necessary factor in your career, and God preserve me from
hindering the development of your fortunes.
"That marriage will be my death. But I will not worry
you; I will not do as the common girls do who kill themselves
by means of a brazier of charcoal; I had enough of that
once; twice raises your gorge, as Mariette says. No, I will go
a long way off, out of France. Asie knows the secrets of her
country; she will help me to die quietly. A prick — whiff,
it is all over !
"I ask but one thing, my dearest, and that is that you will
not deceive me. I have had my share of living. Since the
day I first saw you, in 1824, till this day, I have known more
happiness than can be put into the lives of ten fortunate
wives. So take me for what I am — a woman as strong as
I am weak. Say 'I am going to be married.' I will ask no
more of you than a fond farewell, and you shall never hear
of me again."
There was a moment's silence after this explanation as
sincere as her action and tone were guileless.
"Is it that you are going to be married?" she repeated,
looking into Lucien's blue eyes with one of her fascinating
glances, as brilliant as a steel blade.
"We have been toiling at my marriage for eighteen months
past, and it is not yet settled," replied Lucien. "I do not
know when it can be settled; but it is not in question now.
child ! — It is the Abbe, I, you. — We are in real peril. Nucin-
gen saw you "
"Yes, in the wood at Yincennes," said she. "Did he rec-
ognize me?"
"No," said Lucien. "But he has fallen so desperately in
love with you, that he would sacrifice his coffers. After
dinner, when he was describing how he had met you, I was
so foolish as to smile involuntarily, and most imprudently,
for I live in the world like a savage surrounded by the traps
of a hostile tribe. Carlos, who spares me the pains of think-
ing, regards the position as dangerous, and he has undertaken
to pay Nucingen out if the Baron takes it into his head to
ESTHER HAPPY 99
spy on us; and he is quite capable of it; he spoke to me of
the incapacity of the police. You have lighted a flame in
an old chimne}^ choked with soot."
"And what does j^our Spaniard propose to do?" asked
Esther very softly.
"I do not know in the least," said Lucien; "he told me I
might sleep soundly and leave it to him ;" — but he dared not
look at Esther.
"If that is the case, I will obey him with the dog-like sub-
mission I profess," said Esther, putting her hand through
Lucien's arm and leading him into her bedroom, saying, "x\t
any rate, I hope you dined well, my Lulu, at that detestable
Baron's ?"
"Asie's cooking prevents my ever thinking a dinner good,
nowever famous the chef may be, where I happen to dine.
However, Carenie did the dinner to-night, as he does every
Sunday."
Lucien involuntarily compared Esther with Clotilde. The
mistress was so beautiful, so unfailingly charming, that she
had as yet kept at arm's length the monster who devours the
most perennial loves — Satiety.
"What a pity," thought he, "to find one's wife in two
volumes. In one — poetry, delight, love, devotion, beauty,
sweetness "
Esther was fussing about, as women do, before going to
bed; she came and went and fluttered round, singing all the
time; you might have thought her a humming-bird.
"In the other — a noble name, family, honors, rank,
knowledge of the world ! — And no earthly means of com-
bining them !" cried Lucien to himself.
Next morning, at seven, when the poet awoke in the pretty
pink-and-white room, he found himself alone. He rang,
and Europe hurried in.
"What are monsieur's orders?"
"Esther?"
"Madame went off this morning at a quarter to five. By
Monsieur 1' Abbe's order, I admitted a new face — carriage
paid."
100 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"A woman?"
"No, sir, an English woman — one of those people who do
their day's work by night, and we are ordered to treat her as
if she were madame. What can you have to say to such hack !
— Poor madame, how she cried when she got into the carriage.
'Well, it has to be done !' cried she. 'I left that poor dear
boy asleep,' said she, wiping away her tears; 'Europe, if he
had looked at me or spoken my name, I should have stayed
— I could but have died with him.' — I tell you, sir, I am so
fond of madame, that I did not sbow her the person who
has taken her place; some waiting-maids would have broken
her heart by doing so."
"And is the stranger there?"
"Well, sir, she came in the chaise that took away madame,
and I hid her in my room in obedience to my instruc-
tions "
"Is she nice-looking?"
"So far as such a second-band article can be. But she
will find her part easy enough if you play yours, sir," said
Europe, going to fetch the false Esther.
The night before, ere going to bed, the all-powerful banker
had given his orders to his valet, who, at seven in the morn-
ing, brought in to him the notorious Louchard, the most
famous of the commercial police, whom he left in a little
sitting-room; there the Baron joined him, in a dressing-gown
and slippers.
"You haf mate a fool of me!" he said, in reply to this
official's greeting.
"I could not help myself, Monsieur le Baron. I do not
want to lose my place, and I had the honor of explaining to
you that I could not meddle in a matter that had nothing to
do with my functions. What did I promise you? To put
you into communication with one of our agents, who, as it
seemed to me. would be best able to serve you. But you know,
Monsieur le Baron, the sharp lines that divide men of differ-
ent trades: if vou build a house, you do not set a carpenter
ESTHER HAPPY 101
/
to do smith's work. Well, there are two branches of the
police — the political police and the -.judicial , police. The
political police never interfere with tne'~-otlig^r branch, and
vice versa. If you apply to the chief of the political police,
he must get permission from the Minister to take up your
business, and you would not dare to explain it to the head of
the police throughout the kingdom. A police-agent who
should act on his own account would lose his place.
''Well, the ordinary police are quite as cautious as the
political police. So no one, whether in the Home Office or
at the Prefecture of Police, ever moves excepting in the in-
terests of the State or for the ends of Justice.
"If there is a plot or a crime to be followed up, then, in-
deed, the heads of the corps are at your service; but you
must understand, Monsieur le Baron, that they have other
fish to fry than looking after the fifty thousand love affairs
in Paris. As to me and my men, our only business is to
arrest debtors; and as soon as anything else is to be done,
we run enormous risks if we interfere with the peace and
quiet of any man or woman. I sent you one of my men,
but I told you I could not answer for him ; j'-ou instructed him
to find a particular woman in Paris; Contenson bled you of
a thousand-franc note, and did not even move. You might
as well look for a needle in the river as for a woman in Paris,
• who is supposed to haunt Vincennes, and of whom the
description answers to every pretty woman in the capital."
"And could not Contenson haf tolt me de truf, instead of
making me pleed out one tousand franc?"
"Listen to me, Monsieur le Baron," said Louchard. '^ill
you give me a thousand crowns ? I will give you — sell you —
a piece of advice?"
"Is it vort one tousand crown — your atvice?" asked Nucin-
gen.
"I am not to be caught, Monsieur le Baron," answered
Louchard. "You are in love, you want to discover the ob-
ject of your passion; you are getting as yellow as a lettuce
without water. Two physicians came to see you yesterday,
102 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
your man tells me, who think your life is in danger; now, I
alone can put you in the hands of a clever fellow. — But
the deuce is in it! If your life is not worth a thousand
crowns *'
"Tell me de name of dat defer fellow, and depent on my
generosity ■ "
Louchard took up his hat, bowed, and left the room.
"Wat ein teufel I" cried Nucingen. "Come back — look
here "
"Take notice," said Louchard, before taking the money,
"I am only selling a piece of information, pure and simple.
I can give you the name and address of the only man who
is able to be of use to you — but he is a master "
"Get out mit you," cried Xucingen. "Dere is not no name
dat is vort one tousant crown but dat von A'arschild — and
dat only ven it is sign at the bottom of a bank-bill. — I shall
gif you one tousant franc."
Louchard, a little weasel, who had never been able to pur-
chase an otBce as lawyer, notary, clerk, or attorney, leered
at the Baron in a significant fashion.
"To you — a thousand crowns, or let it alone. You will
get them back in a few seconds on the Bourse," said he.
"I vill gif you one tousant franc," repeated the Baron.
"You would cheapen a gold mine !" said Louchard, bow-
ing and leaving.
"I shall get dat address for five hundert franc !" cried the
Baron, who desired his servant to send his secretary to him.
Turcaret is no more. In these days the smallest banker,
like the greatest, exercises his acumen in the smallest trans-
actions ; he bargains over art, beneficence, and love ; he would
bargain with the Pope for a dispensation. Thus, as he
listened to Louchard, Xucingen had hastily concluded tha^^
Contenson, Louchard's right-hand man, must certainly kno\<^
the address of that master spy. Contenson would tell him for
five hundred francs what Louchard wanted to see a thousand
crowns for. The rapid calculation plainly proves that if
the man's heart was in possession of love, his head was still
that of the lynx stock-jobber.
ESTHER HAPPf 103
"Go your own self, mensieur," said the Baron to his secre-
tary, "to Contenson, dat spy of Louchart's de bailiff man —
but go in one capriolette, very qvick, and pring him here
qvick to me. I shall vait. — Go out trough de garten. — Here
is dat ke}', for no man shall see dat man in here. You shall
take him into dat little garten-house. Try to do dat little
business very defer."
Visitors called to see ISTucingen on business; but he waited
for Contenson, he was dreaming of Esther, telling himself
that before long he would see again the woman who had
aroused in him. such unhoped-for emotions, and he sent every-
body away with vague replies and double-edged promises.
Contenson was to him the most important person in Paris,
and he looked out into the garden every minute. Finally,
after giving orders that no one else was to be admitted, he
had his breakfast served in the summer-house at one corner
of the garden. In the banker's office the conduct and hesi-
tancy of the most knowing, the most clearsighted, the shrewd-
est of Paris financiers seemed inexplicable.
"What ails the chief?" said a stockbroker to one of the
head-clerks.
"No one knows; they are anxious about his health, it
would seem. Yesterday, Madame la Baronne got Desplein
and Bianchon to meet."
One day, when Sir Isaac Newton was engaged in physick-
ing one of his dogs, named "Beauty'^ (who, as is well known,
destroyed a vast mass of work, and whom he reproved only
in these words, "Ah! Beauty, you little know the mischief
you have done !"), some strangers called to see him; but they
at once retired, respecting the great man's occupation. In
every more or less lofty life, there is a little dog "Beauty."
When the Mareehal de Eichelieu came to pay his respects to
jouis XV. after taking Mahon, one of the greatest feats of
trms of the eighteenth century, the King said to him, "Have
you heard the great news? Poor Lansmatt is dead." — Lans-
matt was a gatekeeper in the secret of the King's intrigues.
The bankers of Paris never knew how much they owed
104 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
to Contenson. That spy was the cause of N'ucingen's allow-
ing an immense loan to be issued in which his share was
allotted to him, and which he gave over to them. The stock-
jobber could aim at a fortune any day with the artillery of
speculation, but the man was a slave to the hope of
happiness.
The great banker drank some tea, and was nibbling at a
slice of bread and butter, as a man does whose teeth have for
long not been sharpened by appetite, when he heard a carriage
stop at the little garden gate. In a few minutes his secretary
brought in Contenson, whom he had run to earth in a cafe
not far from Sainte-Pelagie, where the man was breakfasting
on the strength of a bribe given to him by an imprisoned
debtor for certain allowances that must be paid for.
Contenson, you must know, was a whole poem — a Paris
poem. Merely to see him would have been enough to tell
you that Beaumarchais' Figaro, Moliere's Mascarille, Mari-
vaux's Frontin, and Dancourt's Lafleur — those great repre-
sentatives of audacious swindling, of cunning driven to ba}",
of stratagem rising again from the ends of its broken wires —
were all quite second-rate by comparison with this giant of
cleverness and meanness. When in Paris you find a real
type, he is no longer a man, he is a spectacle : no longer a
factor in life, but a whole life, many lives.
Bake a plaster cast four times in a furnace, and you get
a sort of bastard imitation of Florentine bronze. Well, the
thunderbolts of numberless disasters, the pressure of terrible
necessities, had bronzed Contenson's head, as though sweating
in an oven had three times over stained his skin.
Closely-set wrinkles that could no longer be relaxed made
eternal furrows, whiter in their cracks. The yellow face was
all wrinkles. The bald skull, resembling Voltaire's, was as
parched as a death's-head, and but for a few hairs at the
back it would have seemed doubtful whether it was that of
a living man. Under a rigid brow, a pair of Chinese eyes,
like those of an image under a glass shade in a tea-shop —
artificial eyes, which sham life but never vary — moved but
ESTHER HAPPY 105
expressed nothing. The nose, as flat as that of a skull,
sniffed at fate ; and the mouth, as thin-lipped as a miser's,
was always open, but as expressionless as the grin of a letter-
box.
Contenson, as apathetic as a savage, with sunburned hands,
affected that Diogenes-like indifference which can never bend
to any formality of respect.
And what a commentary on his life was written on his
dress for any one who can decipher a dress ! Above all,
what trousers ! made, by long wear, as black and shiny as
the camlet of which lawyers' gowns are made ! A waistcoat,
bought in an old clothes shop in the Temple, with a deep
embroidered collar ! A rusty black coat ! — and everything
well brushed, clean after a fashion, and graced by a watch
and an imitation gold chain. Contenson allowed a triangle
of shirt to show, with pleats in which glittered a sham dia-
mond pin; his black velvet stock set stiff like a gorget, over
which lay rolls of flesh as red as that of a Caribbee. His
silk hat was as glossy as satin, but the lining would have
yielded grease enough for two street lamps if some grocer
had bought it to boil down.
But to enumerate these accessories is nothing; if only I
could give an idea of the air of immense importance that
Contenson contrived to impart to them ! There was some-
thing indescribably knowing in the collar of his coat, and
the fresh blacking on a pair of boots with gaping soles, to
which no language can do justice. However, to give some
notion of this medley of effect, it may be added that
any man of intelligence would have felt, only on seeing
Contenson, that if instead of being a sp}'' he had been a
thief, all these odds and ends, instead of raising a smile,
would have made one shudder with horror. Judging only
from his dress, the observer would have said to himself, "That
is a scoundrel ; he gambles, he drinks, he is full of vices ; but
he does not get drunk, he does not cheat, he is neither a
thief nor a murderer." And .Contenson remained inscrutable)
till the word spy suggested itself.
106 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
This man had followed as many unrecognized trades as
there are recognized ones. The sly smile on his lips, the
twinkle of his green eyes, the queer twitch of his snub nose,
showed that he was not deficient in humor. He had a face of
sheet-tin, and his soul must probably be like his face. Every
movement of his countenance was a grimace wrung from
him by politeness rather than any expression of an inmost
impulse. He would have been alarming if he had not seemed
so droll.
Contenson, one of the most curious products of the scum
that rises to the top of the seething Paris caldron, where every-
thing ferments, prided himself on being, above all things, a
philosopher. He would say, without any bitter feeling:
"I have grand talents, but of what use are they ? I might
as well have been an idiot."
And he blamed himself instead of accusing mankind.
Find, if you can, many spies who have not more venom about
them than Contenson had.
"Circumstances are against me," he would say to his chiefs.
"We might be fine crystal; we are but grains of sand,, that
is all."
His indifference to dress had some sense. He cared no
more about his everyday clothes than an actor does; he ex-
celled in disguising himself, in "make-up"; he could have
given Frederic Lemaitre a lesson, for he could be a dandy
when necessary. Formerly, in his younger days, he must
have mingled in the out-at-elbows society of people living on
a humble scale. He expressed excessive disgust for the crim-
inal police corps; for, under the Empire, he had belonged
to Fouche's police, and looked upon him as a great man. Since
the suppression of this Government department, he had de-
voted his energies to the tracking of commercial defaulters;
but his well-known talents and acumen made him a valuable
auxiliar}', and the unrecognized chiefs of the political police
had kept his name on their lists. Contenson, like his fellows,
was only a super in the dramas of which the leading parts
ESTHER HAPPY 107
were played by his chief when a political investigation was
in the wind.
"Go 'vay/' said Nucingen, dismissing his secretary with
a wave of the hand.
"Why should this man live in a mansion and I in a lodg-
ing?" wondered Contenson to himself. "He has dodged his
creditors three times; he has robbed them; I never stole a
farthing; I am a cleverer fellow than he is "
"Contenson, mein freund/' said the Baron, "you haf vat
you call pleed me of one tousand-franc note."
A"
"My girl owed God and the devil "
"Vat, you haf a girl, a mistress !" cried Nucingen, look-
ing at Contenson with admiration not unmixed with envy.
"I am but sixty-six," replied Contenson, as a man whom
vice has kept young as a bad example.
"And vat do she do?"
"She helps me," said Contenson. "When a man is a thief,
and an honest woman loves him, either she becomes a thief
or he becomes an honest man. I have always been a spy."
"And you vant money — alvays?" asked Nucingen.
"Always," said Contenson, with a smile. "It is part of
my business to want money, as it is yours to make it ; we
shall easily come to an understanding. You find me a little,
and I will undertake to spend it. You shall be the well,
and I the bucket."
"Vould you like to haf one note for fife hundert franc ?"
"What a question ! But what a fool I am ! — You do not
offer it out of a disinterested desire to repair the slights of
Fortune ?"
"Not at all. I gif it besides the one tousand-franc note
vat you pleed me off. Dat makes fifteen hundert franc vat
I gif you."
"Very good, you give me the thousand francs I have had,
and you will add five hundred francs."
"Yust so," said Nucingen, nodding.
"But that still leaves only five hundred francs," said Con-
tenson imperturbably.
r
108 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Dat I gif," added the Baron.
"That I take. Very good; and what. Monsieur le Baron,
do you want for it?"
''T haf been told dat dere vas in Paris one man vat could
find the voman vat I lof, and dat you know his address. . . .
A real master to spy.''
"Yery true."
"Yell den, gif me dat address, and I gif you fife hundert
franc."
"Where are they?" said Contenson.
"Here dey are," said the Baron, drawing a note out of his
pocket.
"All right, hand them over," said Contenson, holding out
his hand.
"Xoting for noting ! Let us see de man, and you get de
money; 3'ou might sell to me many address at dat price."
Contenson began to laugh.
"To be sure, you have a right to think that of me," said
he, with an air of blaming himself. "The more rascally
our business is, the more honesty is necessary. But look
here, Monsieur le Baron, make it six hundred, and I will
give you a bit of advice."
"Gif it, and trust to my generosity."
"I will risk it," Contenson said, 'Tjut it is playing high.
In such matters, you see, we have to work underground. You
say, 'Quick march !' — You are rich ; you think that money
can do everything. Well, money is something, no doubt.
Still, money can only buy men, as the two or three best heads
in our force so often say. And there are many things you
.vould never think of which money cannot buy. — You cannot
buy good luck. So good police work is not done in this
style. Will you show yourself in a carriage with me? We
should be seen. Chance is just as often for us as against
us."
'T?eally-truly ?" said the Baron.
"Why, of course, sir. A horseshoe picked up in the street
led the chief of the police to the discovery of the infernal
ESTHER HAPPY 109
machine. Well, if we were to go to-night in a hackney coach
to Monsieur de Saint-Germain, he would not like to see you
walk in any more than you would like to be seen going
there."
"Dat is true," said the Baron.
"Ah, he is the greatest of the great! such another as the
famous Corentin, Fouche's right arm, who was, some say,
his natural son, born while he was still a priest; but that is
nonsense. Fouche knew how to be a priest as he knew how
to be a Minister. Well, you will not get this man to do any-
thing for you, you see, for less than ten thousand-franc
notes — think of that. — But he will do the job, and do it well.
Neither seen nor heard, as they say. I ought to give Mon-
sieur de Saint-Germain notice, and he Avill fix a time for
your meeting in some place where no one can see or hear,
for it is a dangerous game to play policeman for private in-
terests. Still, what is to be said? He is a good fellow,
the king of good fellows, and a man who has undergone
much persecution, and for having saved his country too ! —
like me, like all who helped to save it."
"Veil den, write and name de happy day," said the Baron,
smiling at his humble jest.
"And Monsieur le Baron will allow me to drink his health ?"
said Contenson, with a manner at once cringing and threaten-
ing.
"Shean," cried the Baron to the gardener, "go and tell
Chorge to sent me one twenty francs, and pring dem to
me "
"Still, Monsieur le Baron, if you have no more informa-
tion than you have just given me, I doubt whether the great
man can be of any use to you."
"I know off oders !" replied the Baron with a cunning
look.
"I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le
Baron," said Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. "I
shall have the honor of calling again to tell Georges where
you are to go this evening, for we never write anything in
such cases when they are well managed."
110 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"It is funny how sharp dese rascals are V said the Baron
to himself ; "it is de same mit de police as it is in buss^niss."
When he left the Baron, Contenson went quietly from
the Rue Saint-Lazare to the Eue Saint-Honore, as far as
the Cafe David. He looked in through the windows, and
saw an old man who was known there by the name of le
Pere Canquoelle.
The Cafe David, at the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie
and the Rue Saint-Honore, enjoyed a certain celebrity dur-
ing the first thirty years of the century, though its fame was
limited to the quarter known as that of the Bourdonnais.
Here certain old retired merchants, and large shopkeepers
still in trade, were wont to meet — the Camusots, the Lebas,
the Pilleraults, the Popinots, and a few house-owners like
little old Molineux. Now and again old Guillaume might be
seen there, coming from the Rue du Colombier. Politics
were discussed in a quiet way, but cautiously, for the opiu-
ions of the Cafe David were liberal. The gossip of the neigh-
borhood was repeated, men so urgently feel the need of laugh-
ing at each other !
This cafe, like all cafes for that matter, had its eccentric
character in the person of the said Pere Canquoelle, who
had been regular in his attendance there since 1811, and who
seemed to be so completely in harmony with the good folks
who assembled there, that they all talked politics in his pres-
ence without reserve. Sometimes this old fellow, whose guile-
lessness was the subject of much laughter to the customers,
would disappear for a month or two; but his absence never
surprised anybody, and was always attributed to his in-
firmities or his great age, for he looked more than sixty in
1811.
"What has become of old Canquoelle?" one or another
would ask of the manageress at the desk.
"I quite expect that one fine day we shall read in the ad-
vertisment-sheet that he is dead," she would reply.
, Old Canquoelle bore a perpetual certificate of his native
ESTHEtl HAPPY 111
province in "his accent. He spoke of une estatue (a statue),
le peuble (the people), and said tu7-e for turc. His name
"was that of a tiny estate called les Canquoelles, a word mean-
ing cockchafer in some districts, situated in the department of
Vaucluse, whence he had come. At last every one had fallen
into the habit of calling him Canquoelle, instead of des Can-
quoelles, and the old man took no offence, for in his opinion
the nobility had perished in 1793; and besides, the land of
les Canquoelles did not belong to him; he was a younger
son's younger son.
Nowadays old Canquoelle's costume would look strange,
but between 1811 and 1820 it astonished no one. The old
man wore shoes with cut-steel buckles, silk stockings with
stripes round the leg, alternately blue and white, corded silk
knee-breeches with oval buckles cut to match those on his
shoes. A white embroidered waistcoat, an old coat of olive-
brown with metal buttons, and a shirt with a flat-pleated
frill completed his costume. In the middle of the shirt-frill
twinkled a small gold locket, in which might be seen, under
glass, a little temple worked in hair, one of those pathetic
trifles which give men confidence, just as a scarecrow frightens
sparrows. Most men, like other animals, are frightened or
reassured by trifles. Old Canquoelle's breeches were kept
in place by a buckle which, in the fashion of the last century,
tightened them across the stomach ; from the belt hung on
each side a short steel chain, composed of several finer chains,
and ending in a bunch of seals. His white neckcloth was
fastened behind by a small gold buckle. Finally, on his
snowy and powdered hair, he still, in 1816, wore the munici-
pal cocked hat which Monsieur Try, the President of the Law
Courts, also used to wear. But Pere Canquoelle had recently
substituted for this hat, so dear to old men, the undignified
top-hat, which no one dares to rebel against. The good man
thought he owed so much as this to the spirit of the age. A
small pigtail tied with a ribbon had traced a semicircle on
the back of his coat, the greasy mark being hidden by powder.
If you looked no further than the most conspicuous feature
112 A COrRTESAN'S LIFE
of his face, a nose covered with excrescences red and swollen
enough to figure in a dish of truffles, you might have inferred
that the worthy man had an easy temper, foolish and easy-
going, that of a perfect gaby; and you would have been de-
ceived, like all at the Cafe David, where no one had ever
remarked the studious brow, the sardonic mouth, and the
cold eyes of this old man, petted by his vices, and as calm as
Yitellius, whose imperial and portly stomach reappeared in
him palingenetically, so to speak.
In 1816 a 3'oung commercial traveler named Gaudissart,
who frequented the Cafe David, sat drinking from eleven
o'clock till midnight with a half-pay officer. He was so rash
as to discuss a conspiracy against the Bourbons, a rather
serious plot then on the point of execution. There was no
one to be seen in the cafe but Pere Canquoelle, who seemed
to be asleep, two waiters who were dozing, and the account-
ant at the desk. Within four-and-twenty hours Gaudissart
was arrested, the plot was discovered. Two men perished
on the scaffold. Neither Gaudissart nor any one else ever
suspected that worthy old Canquoelle of having peached. The
waiters were dismissed; for a year they were all on their
guard and afraid of the police — as Pere Canquoelle was too :
indeed, he talked of retiring from the Cafe David, such horror
had he of the police.
Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy,
and did not look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers;
but when he had gulped down the brandy, he took out the
Baron's gold piece, and called the waiter by rapping three
short raps on the table. The lady at the desk and the waiter
examined the coin with a minute care that was not flattering
to Contenson; but their suspicions were justified by the as-
tonishment produced on all the regular customers by Con-
tenson's appearance.
"Was that gold got by theft or by murder?"
This was the idea that rose to some clear and shrewd
minds as they looked at Contenson over their spectacles, while
affecting to read the news. Contenson, who saw everything,
ESTHER HAPPY 113
and never was surprised at anything, scornfully wiped his
lips with a bandana, in which there were but three darns,
took his change, slipped all the coppers into his side pocket,
of which the lining, once white, was now as black as the
cloth of the trousers, and did not leave one for the waiter.
"What a gallows-bird !" said Pere Canquoelle to his neigh-
bor Monsieur Pillerault.
"Pshaw !" said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for
he alone had expressed no astonishment, "it is Contenson,
Louchard's right-hand man, the police agent we employ in
business. The rascals want to nab some one who is hanging
about perhaps."
It would seem necessary to explain here the terrible and
profoundly cunning man who was hidden under the guise of
Pere Canquoelle, as Vautrin was hidden under that of the
Abbe Carlos.
Born at Canquoelles, the only possession of his family,
which was highly respectable, this Southerner's name was
I'eyrade,'^ He belonged, in fact, to the younger branch of
tlie"Peyrade family, an old but impoverished house of Franche
Comte, still owning the little estate of la Peyrade. The
seventh child of his father, he had come on foot to Paris in
1 773 at the age of seventeen, with two crowns of six francs in
his pocket, prompted by the vices of an ardent spirit and the
coarse desire to "get on," which brings so many men to Paris
from the south as soon as they understand that their father's
property can never supply them with means to gratify their
passions. It is enough to say of Peyrade's youth that in 1782
he was in the confidence of chiefs of the police and the hero
of the department, highly esteemed by MM. Lenoir and
d' Albert, the last Lieutenant-Generals of Police.
The Eevolution had no police; it needed none. Espion-^
age, though common enough, was called public spirit.
The Directorate, a rather more regular government than
that of the Committee of Public Safety, was obliged to re-
organize the Police, and the first Consul completed the work
114 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
by instituting a Prefect of Police and a department of police
,_ supervision.
■^ — Peyrade, a man knowing the traditions, collected the force
with the assistance of a man named Corentin, a far cleverer
man than Peyrade, though younger; but he was a genius only
in the subterranean ways of police inquiries. In 1808 the
great services Peyrade was able to achieve were rewarded by
an appointment to the eminent position of Chief Commis-
sioner of Police at Antwerp. In Napoleon's mind this sort
of Police Governorship was equivalent to a Minister's post,
.^ with the duty of superintending Holland. At the end of
J/ the campaign of 1809, Peyrade was removed from Antwerp
P by an order in Council from the Emperor, carried in a chaise
to Paris between two gendarmes, and imprisoned in la Force.
Two months later he was let out on bail furnished by his
friend Corentin, after having been subjected to three ex-
aminations, each lasting six hours, in the office of the head
of the Police.
Did Peyrade owe his overthrow to the miraculous energy
he displayed in aiding Fouche in the defence of the French
coast when threatened by what was known at the time as
the Walcheren expedition, when the Duke of Otranto mani-
fested such abilities as alarmed the Emperor? Fouche
thought it probable even then ; and now, when everybody
knows what went on in the Cabinet Council called together
by Cambaceres, it is absolutely certain. The Ministers, thun-
derstruck by the news of England's attempt, a retaliation on
Napoleon for the Boulogne expedition, and taken by sur-
prise when the Master was entrenched in the island of Lobau,
where all Europe believed him to be lost, had not an idea
which way to turn. The general opinion was in favor of
sending post haste to the Emperor; Fouche alone was bold
enough to sketch a plan of campaign, which, in fact, he
carried into execution.
"Do as you please," said Cambaceres; '^T)ut I, who prefer
to keep my head on my shoulders, shall send a report to the
Emperor."
ESTHER HAPPY 115
It is well known that the Emperor on his return found
an absurd pretext, at a full meeting of the Council of State,
for discarding his Minister and punishing him for having
saved France without the Sovereign's help. From that time
forth, Napoleon had doubled the hostility of Prince de Talley-
rand and the Duke of Otranto, the only two great politicians
formed by the Eevolution, who might perhaps have been able
to save Napoleon in 1813.
To get rid of Peyrade, he was simply accused of connivance
in favoring smuggling and sharing certain profits with the
great merchants. Such an indignity was hard on a man
who had earned the Marshal's baton of the Police Depart-
ment by the great services he had done. This man, who had
grown old in active business, knew all the secrets of every
Government since 1775, when he had entered the service.
The Emperor, who believed himself powerful enough to create
men for his own uses, paid no heed to the representations
subsequently laid before him in favor of a man who was
reckoned as one of the most trustworthy, most capable, and
most acute of the unknown genii whose task it is to watch over
the safety of a State. He thought he could put Contenson
in Pe3Tade's place; but Contenson was at that time employed
by Corentin for his own benefit.
Peyrade felt the blow all the more keenly because, being
greedy and a libertine, he had found himself, with regard
to women, in the position of a pastry-cook who loves sweet-
meats. His habits of vice had become to him a second na-
ture; he could not live without a good dinner, without
gambling, in short, without the life of an unpretentious fine
gentleman, in which men of powerful faculties so generally
indulge when they have allowed excessive dissipation to be-
come a necessity. Hitherto, he had lived in style without
ever being expected to entertain ; and living well, for no one
ever looked for a return from him, or from his friend Coren-
tin. He was cynically witty, and he liked his profession;
he was a philosopher. And besides, a spy, whatever grade
he may hold in the machinery of the police, can no more
116 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
return to a profession regarded as honorable or liberal, than
a prisoner from the hulks can. Once branded, once matric-
ulated, spies and convicts, like deacons, have assumed an in-
delible character. There are beings on whom social condi-
tions impose an inevitable fate.
Peyrade, for his further woe, was very fond of a pretty
little girl whom he knew to be his own child by a celebrated
actress to whom he had done a signal service, and who, for
three months, had been grateful to him. Peyrade, who had
sent for his child from Antwerp, now found himself without
employment in Paris and with no means beyond a pension of
twelve hundred francs a year allowed him by the Police De-
partment as Lenoir's olS disciple. He took lodgings in the
Eue des Moineaux on the fourth floor, five little rooms, at
a rent of two hundred and fifty francs.
If any man should be aware of the uses and sweets of
friendship, is it not the moral leper known to the world as
a spy, to the mob as a mouchard, to the department as an
"agent" ? Peyrade and Corentin were such friends as Orestes
and Pylades. Peyrade had trained Corentin as Vien trained
David; but the pupil soon surpassed his master. They had
carried out more than one undertaking together. Peyrade,
happy at having discerned Corentin's superior abilities, had
started him in his career by preparing a success for him. He
obliged his disciple to make use of a mistress who had scorned
him as a bait to catch a man (see The Chouans). And Co-
rentin at that time was hardly five-and-twenty.
Corentin, who had been retained as one of the generals of
whom the Minister of Police is the Pligh Constable, still held
under the Due de Rovigo the high position he had filled under
the Duke of Otranto. Xow at that time the general police
and the criminal police were managed on similar principles.
When any important business was on hand, an account was
opened, as it were, for the three, four, five, really capable
agents. The Minister, on being warned of some plot, by
whatever means, would say to one of his colonels of the police
force :
ESTHER HAPPY 117
"How much will you want to achieve this or that result ?"
Corentin or Contenson would go into the matter and
reply :
"Twenty, thirty, or forty thousand francs."
Then, as soon as the order was given to go ahead, all
the means and the men were left to the judgment of Coren-
tin or the agent selected. And the criminal police used to
act in the same way to discover crimes with the famous
Vidocq.
Both branches of the police chose their men chiefly from
among the ranks of well-known agents, who have matriculated
in the business, and are, as it were, as soldiers of the secret
army, so indispensable to a government, in spite of the public
orations of philanthropists or narrow-minded moralists. But
the absolute confidence placed in two men of the temper of
Peyrade and Corentin conveyed to them the right of employ-
ing perfect strangers, under the risk, moreover, of being re-
sponsible to the Minister in all serious cases. Peyrade's ex-
perience and acumen were too valuable to Corentin, who,
after the storm of 1820 had blown over, employed his old
friend, constantly consulted him, and contributed largely to
his maintenance. Corentin managed to put about a thousand
francs a month into Peyrade's hands.
Peyrade, on his part, did Corentin good service. In 1816
Corentin, on the strength of the discovery of the conspiracy
in which the Bonapartist Gaudissart was implicated, tried
to get Peyrade reinstated in his place in the police office ; but
-some unknown influence was working against Peyrade. This
was the reason why.
In their anxiety to make themselves necessary, Peyrade,
Corentin, and Contenson, at the Duke of Otranto's instiga-
tion, had organized for the benefit of Louis XVIII. a sort
of opposition police in which very capable agents were em-
ployed. Louis XVIII. died possessed of secrets which will
remain secrets from the best informed historians. The
struggle between the general police of the kingdom, and the
Ejng's opposition police, led to many horrible disasters, of
118 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
which a certain number of executions sealed the secrets.
This is neither the place nor the occasion for entering into
details on this subject, for these "Scenes of Paris Life" are
not "Scenes of Political Life." Enough has been said to
show what were the means of living of the man who at the
Cafe David was known as good old Canquoelle, and by what
threads he was tied to the terrible and mysterious powers of
the police.
Between 1817 and 1822, Corentin, Contenson, Peyrade,
and their myrmidons, were often required to keep watch over
the Minister of Police himself. This perhaps explains why
the Minister declined to employ Peyrade and Contenson, on
whom Corentin contrived to cast the Minister's suspicions,
in order to be able to make use of his friend when his re-
1 instatement was evidently out of the question. The ^linistry
j put their faith in Corentin; they enjoined him to keep an
eye on Peyrade, which amused Louis XVIII. Corentin and
Peyrade were then masters of the position. Contenson, long
attached to Peyrade, was still at his service. He had joined
the force of the commerical police (the Gardes du Com-
merce) by his friend's orders. And, in fact, as a result of
the sort of zeal that is inspired by a profession we love, these
two chiefs liked to place their best men in those posts where
information was most likely to flow in.
And, indeed, Contenson's vices and dissipated habits, which
had dragged him lower than his two friends, consumed so
much money, that he needed a great deal of business.
Contenson, without committing any indiscretion, had told
Louchard that he knew the onh'' man who was capable of
doing what the Baron de Nucingen required. Peyrade was,
in fact, the only police-agent who could act on behalf of a
' private individual with impunity. At the death of Louis
XVIII., Peyrade had not only ceased to be of consequence,
but had lost the profits of his position as spy-in-ordinary to
His Majesty. Believing himself to be indispensable, he had
lived fast. Women, high feeding, and the club, the Cercle
des Etrangers, had prevented this man from saving, and, like
ESTHER HAPPY 119
all men cut out for debauchery, he enjoyed an iron constitu-
tion. But between 1826 and 1829, when he was nearly
seventy-four years of age, he had stuck half-way, to use
his own expression. Year by year he saw his comforts
dwindling. He followed the police department to its grave,
and saw with regret that Charles X.'s government was de-
parting from its good old traditions. Every session saw the
estimates pared down which were necessary to keep up the
police, out of hatred for that method of government and a
firm determination to reform that institution.
"It is as if they thought they could cook in white gloves,"
said Peyrade to Corentin.
In 1822 this couple foresaw 1830. They knew how bit-
terly Louis XVIII. hated his successor, which accounts for
his recklessness with regard to the younger branch, and Avith-
out which his reign would be an unanswerable riddle.
As Peyrade grew older, his love for his natural daughter) ^
had increased. For her sake he had adopted his citizen guise,
for he intended that his Lydie should marry respectably. So
for the last three years he had been especially anxious to find
a corner, either at the Prefecture of Police, or in the general
Police Office — some ostensible and recognized post. He had
ended by inventing a place, of which the necessity, as he
told Corentin, would sooner or later be felt. He was anxious
to create an inquiry office at the Prefecture of Police, to be
intermediate between the Paris police in the strictest sense,
the criminal police, and the superior general police, so as to
enable the supreme board to profit by the various scattered
forces. No one but Peyrade, at his age, and after fifty-five
years of confidential work, could be the connecting link be-
tween the three branches of the police, or the keeper of the
records to whom political and Judicial authority alike could
apply for the elucidation of certain cases. By this means
Peyrade hoped, with Corentin's assistance, to find a husband
and scrape together a portion for his little Lydie. Corentin
had already mentioned the matter to the Director-General
120 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
of the police forces of the realm, without naming Peyrade;
and the Director-General, a man from the south, thought it
necessary that the suggestion should come from the chief of
the city police.
At the moment when Contenson struck three raps on the
table with the gold piece, a signal conveying, "I want to
speak to you," the senior was reflecting on this problem:
"By whom, and under what pressure can the Prefet of Police
be made to move?" — And he looked like a noodle studying
his Courrier Franqais.
"Poor Foucho!" thought he to himself, as he made his
way along the Eue Saint-Honore, "that great man is dead !
our go-betweens with Louis XYIII. are out of favor. And
besides, as Corentin said only yesterday, nobody believes in
the activity or the intelligence of a man of seventy. Oh,
Avliy did I get into a habit of dining at Very's, of drinking
choice wines, of singing La Mere Godichon, of gambling when
I am in funds? To get a place and keep it, as Corentin
says, it is not enough to be clever, you must have the gift of
management. Poor dear M. Lenoir was right when he wrote
to me in the matter of the Queen's necklace, TTou will never
do any good,' when he heard that I did not stay under that
slut Oliva's bed."
If the venerable Pere Canquoelle — he was called so in the
house — lived on in the Eue des Moineaux, on a fourth floor,
you may depend on it he had found some peculiarity in the
arrangement of the premises which favored the practice of
his terrible profession.
The house, standing at the corner of the Eue Saint-Eoch,
had no neighbors on one side; and as the staircase up the
middle divided it into two, there were on each floor two per-
fectly isolated rooms. Those two rooms looked out on the
Eue Saint-Eoch. There were garret rooms above the fourth
floor, one of them a kitchen, and the other a bedroom for
Pere Canquoelle's only servant, a Fleming named Katt. for-
merly Lydie's wet-nurse. Old Canquoelle had taken one of
the outside rooms for his bedroom, and the other for his
ESTHER HAPPY 121
study. The study ended at the party-wall, a very thick one.
The window opening on the Rue des Moineaux looked on a
blank wall at the opposite corner. As this study was divided
from the stairs by the whole width of Peyrade's bedroom,
the friends feared no eye, no ear, as they talked business in
this study made on purpose for his detestable trade.
Peyrade, as a further precaution, had furnished Katt's
room with a thick straw bed, a felt carpet, and a very heavy
rug, under the pretext of making his child's nurse comfort-
able. He had also stopped up the chimney, warming his room
by a stove, with a pipe through the wall to the Rue Saint-
Roch. Finally, he laid several rugs on his floor to prevent
the slightest sound being heard by the neighbors beneath. An
expert himself in the tricks of spies, he sounded the outer
wall, the ceiling, and the floor once a week, examining them
as if he were in search of noxious insects. It was the security
of this room from all witnesses or listeners that had made
Corentin select it as his council-chamber when he did not
hold a meeting in his own room.
Where Corentin lived was known, to no one but the Chief -^^
of the Superior Police and to Peyrade ; he received there such
personages as the Ministry or the King selected to conduct
very serious cases; but no agent or subordinate ever went
there, and he plotted everything connected with their busi-
ness at Peyrade's. In this unpretentious room schemes were
matured, and resolutions passed, which would have furnished
strange records and curious dramas if only walls could talk.
Between 1816 and 1826 the highest interests were discussed
there. There first germinated the events which grew to weigh
on France. There Peyrade and Corentin, with all the fore-
sight, and more than all the information of Bellart, the At-
torney-General, had said even in 1819: "If Louis XVIII.
does not consent to strike such or such a blow, to make away
with such or such a prince, is it because he hates his brother ?
He must wish to leave him heir to a revolution."
Peyrade's door was graced with a slate, on which very
strange marks might sometimes be seen, figures scrawled in
122 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
chalk. This sort of devil's algebra bore the clearest mean-
ing to the initiated.
Lydie's rooms, opposite to Peyrade's shabby lodging, con-
sisted of an ante-room, a little drawing-room, a bedroom, and
a small dressing-room. The door, like that of Peyrade's
room, was constructed of a plate of sheet-iron three lines
thick, sandwiched between two strong oak planks, fitted with
locks and elaborate hinges, making it as impossible to force
it as if it were a prison door. Thus, though the house had
a public passage through it, with a shop below and no door-
keeper, Lydie lived there without a fear. The dining-room,
the little drawing-room, and her bedroom — every window-
balcony a hanging garden — were luxurious in their Dutch
cleanliness.
The Flemish nurse had never left Lydie, whom she called
her daughter. The two went to church with a regularity
that gave the roj^alist grocer, who lived below, in the corner
shop, an excellent opinion of the worthy Canquoelle. The
grocer's family, kitchen, and counter-jumpers occupied the
first floor and the entresol; the landlord inhabited the second
floor; and the third had been let for twenty 3'ears past to a
lapidary. Each resident had a key of the street door. The
grocer's wife was all the more willing to receive letters and
parcels addressed to these three quiet households, because the
grocer's shop had a letter-box.
Without these details, strangers, or even those M'ho know
Paris well, could not have understood the privacy and
quietude, the isolation and safety which made this house ex-
ceptional in Paris. After midnight, Pere Canquoelle could
hatch plots, receive spies or ministers, wives or hussies, with-
out any one on earth knowing anything about it.
Peyrade, of whom the Flemish woman would say to the
grocer's cook, "He would not hurt a fly !" was regarded as
the best of men. He grudged his daughter nothing. Lydie,
who had been taught music by Schmucke, was herself a
musician capable of composing; she could wash in a sepia
drawing, and paint in gouache and water-color. Every Sun-
ESTHER HAPPY 123
day Peyrade dined at home with. her. On that day this
worthy was wholly paternal.
Lydie, religious but not a bigot, took the Sacrament at
Easter, and confessed every month. Still, she allowed her-
self from time to time to be treated to the play. She walked
in the Tuileries when it was fine. These were all her
pleasures, for she led a sedentary life. Lydie, who wor-
shiped her father, knew absolutely nothing of his sinister
gifts and dark employments. Not a wish had ever disturbed
this pure child's pure life. Slight and handsome like her
mother, gifted with an exquisite voice, and a delicate face
framed in fine tair hair, she looked like one of those angels,
mystical rather than real, which some of the early painters
grouped in the background of the Holy Family. The glance
of her blue eyes seemed to bring a beam from the sky on those
she favored with a look. Her dress, quite simple, with no ex-
aggeration of fashion, had a delightful middle-class modesty.
Picture to yourself an old Satan as the father of an angel.
and purified in her divine presence, and you will have an
idea of Peyrade and his daughter. If anybody had soiled
this jewel, her father would have invented, to swallow him
p.live, one of those dreadful plots in which, under the Eestora-
tion, the unhappy wretches were trapped who were designate
to die on the scaffold. A thousand crowns were ample main-
tenance for Lydie and Katt, whom she called nurse.
As Peyrade turned into the Rue des Moineaux, he saw Con-
tenson ; he outstripped him, went upstairs before him, heard
the man's steps on the stairs, and admitted him before the
woman had put her nose out of the kitchen door. A bell
rung by the opening of a glass door, on the third story v,'hei'e
the lapidary lived, warned the residents on that and the fourth
floors when a visitor was coming to them. It need hardly
be said that, after midnight, Peyrade muffled this bell.
"^'^hat is up in such a hurry. Philosopher?"
Philosopher was the nickname bestowed on Contenson bv
Peyrade, and well merited by this Epictetus among police
agents. The name of Contenson, alas! hid one of the most
ancient names of feudal Normandy.
124 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Well, there is something like ten thousand francs to be
netted."
"What is it ? Political ?"
"No, a piece of idiotcy. Baron de Xucingen, you know,
the old certified swindler, is neighing after a woman he saw
in the Bois de Vincennes, and she has got to be found, or he
will die of love. — They had a consultation of doctors yester-
day, by what his man tells me. — I have already eased him of
a thousand francs under pretence of seeking the fair one."
And Contenson related Xucingen's meeting with Esther,
adding that the Baron had now some further information.
"All right," said Peyrade, "we will find his Dulcinea; tell
the Baron to come to-night in a carriage to the Champs-
Elysees — the corner of the Avenue de Gabriel and the Allee
de Marigny."
Peyrade saw Contenson out, and knocked at his daughter's
rooms, as he always knocked to be let in. He was full of
glee; chance had just offered the means, at last, of getting
the place he longed for.
He flung himself into a deep armchair, after kissing Lydie
on the forehead, and said:
"Play me something."
Lydie played him a composition for the piano by Beethoven.
"That is very well played, my pet," said he, taking Lydie
on his knees. "Do you know that we are one-and-twenty years
old? We must get married soon, for our old daddy is more
than seventy "
"I am quite happy here," said she.
"You love no one but your ugly old father?" asked Pey-
rade.
"Why, whom should I love?"
"I am dining at home, my darling; go and tell Katt. I
am thinking of settling, of getting an appointment, and find-
ing a husband worthy of you ; some good young man, very
clever, whom you may some day be proud of "
"I have never seen but one yet that I should have liked
for a husband "
\A v*^
C- ESTHER HAPPY 125
"You have seen one then ?"
"Yes, in the Tuileries," replied Lydie. "He walked past
me; he was giving his arm to the Comtesse de Serizy."
"And his name is?"
"Lueien de Eubempre. — I was sitting with Katt under a
lime-tree, thinking of nothing. There were two ladies sitting
by me, and one said to the other, 'There are Madame de Serizy
and that handsome Lueien de Eubempre.' — I looked at the
couple the two ladies were watching. 'Oh, my dear !' said the
other, 'some women are very lucky ! That woman is allowed
to do everything she pleases just because she was a de
Eonquerolles, and her husband is in power.' — 'But, my dear,'
said the other lady, 'Lueien costs her very dear.' — What did
she mean, papa?"
"Just nonsense, such as people of fashion will talk," replied
Peyrade, with an air of perfect candor. "Perhaps they were
alluding to political matters."
"Well, in short, you asked me a question, so I answer you.
If you want me to marry, find me a husband just like that
young man."
"Silly child !" replied her father. "The fact that a man
is handsome is not always a sign of goodness. Young men
gifted with an attractive appearance meet with no obstacles
at the beginning of life, so they make no use of any talent;
they are corrupted by the advances made to them by society,
and they have to pay interest later for their attractiveness ! ^
— What I should like for you is what the middle classes, the
rich, and the fools loave unholpen and unprotected "
"What, father?"
"An unrecognized man of talent. But, there, child; I
have it in my power to hunt through every garret in Paris,
and carry out your programme by offering for your affection
a man as handsome as the young scamp you speak of; but
a man of promise, with a future before him destined to glory
and fortune. — By the way, I was forgetting. I must have a
whole flock of nephews, and among them there must be one
126 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
worthy of you ! — I will write, or get some one to write to
Provence."
A strange coincidence ! At this moment a young man,
half-dead of hunger and fatigue, who had come on foot from
the department of Vaucluse — a nephew of Pere Canquoelle's,
in search of his uncle, was entering Paris through the Bar-
riere de I'ltalie. In the day-dreams of the family, ignorant
of this uncle's fate, Peyrade had supplied the text for many
hopes; he was supposed to have returned from India with
millions ! Stimulated by these fireside romances, this grand-
nephew, named Theodore, had started on a voyage round the
world in quest of this eccentric uncle.
After enjoying for some hours the joys of paternity, Pey-
rade, his hair washed and dyed — for his powder was a disguise
— dressed in a stout, coarse, blue frock-coat buttoned up to
the chin, and a black cloak, shod in strong, thick-soled boots,
furnished himself with a private card and walked slowly
along the Avenue Gabriel, where Contenson, dressed as an old
costermonger woman, met him in front of the gardens of
the Elysee-Bourbon.
"Monsieur de Saint-Germain," said Contenson, giving his
old chief the name he was officially known by, "you have put
me in the way of making five hundred pieces (francs) ; but
what I came here for was to tell you that that damned Baron,
before he gave me the shiners, had been to ask questions
at the house (the Prefecture of Police)."
"I shall want you, no doubt," replied Peyrade. "Look up
numbers 7, 10, and 21; we can employ those men without
any one finding it out, either at the Police Ministry or at
the Prefecture."
Contenson went back to a post near the carriage in which
Monsieur de Nucingen was waiting for Peyrade.
"I am Monsieur de Saint-Germain," said Peyrade to the
Baron, raising himself to look over the carriage door.
"Ver' goot; get in mit me," replied the Baron, ordering
the coachman to go on slowly to the Arc de I'fitoile.
ESTHER HAPPY 127
'Ton have been to the Prefecture of Police, Monsieur le
Baron? That was not fair. Might I ask what you said to
M. le Pref et, and what he said in reply ?" asked Peyrade.
"Before I should gif fife hundert francs to a filain like
Contenson, I vant to know if he had earned dein. I simply
said to the Prefet of Police dat I vant to employ ein agent
name Peyrate to go abroat in a delicate matter, an' should I
trust him — unlimited ! — The Prefet telt me you vas a very
defer man an' ver' honest man. An' dat vas everyting."
"And now that you have learned my true name, IMonsieur
le Baron, will you tell me what it is you want?"
When the Baron had given a long and copious explanation,
in his hideous Polish-Jew dialect, of his meeting with Esther
and the cry of the man behind the carriage, and his vain
efforts, he ended by relating what had occurred at his house
the night before, Lucien's involuntary smile, and the opinion
expressed by Bianchon and some other young dandies that
there must be some acquaintance between him and the un-
known fair.
"Listen to me. Monsieur le Baron; you must, in the first
instance, place ten thousand francs in my hands, on account
for expenses: for, to you, this is a matter of life or death;
and as your life is a business-manufactory, nothing must be
left undone to find this woman for you. Oh, you are ^
caught! " v^^
"Ja, I am caught !" ^
"If more money is wanted. Baron, I will let you know;
put your trust in me," said Peyrade. "I am not a spy, as
you perhaps imagine. In 1807 I was Commissioner-General
of Police at Antwerp; and now that Louis XVIII. is dead, I
may tell you in confidence that for seven years I was the
chief of his counter-police. So there is no beating me down.
You must understand, Monsieur le Baron, that it is impossible
to make any estimate of the cost of each man's conscience
before going into the details of such an affair. Be quite easy;
I shall succeed. Do not fancy that you can satisfy me with
a sum of money : I want something else for my reward "
"So long as dat is not a kiugtom !"' said the Baron.
128 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"It is less than nothing to you."
"Den I am your man."
/ J "You know the Kellers ?"
y "Oh ! ver' well."
L" "Francois Keller is the Comte de Gondreville's son-in-law,
and the Comte de Gondreville and his son-in-law dined with
you yesterday."
-^ "Who der teufel tolt you dat?" cried the Baron. "Dat
*^ vill be Georche; he is alvays a gossip." Peyrade smiled,
and the banker at once formed strange suspicions of his man-
servant.
"The Comte de Gondreville is quite in a position to obtain
me a place I covet at the Prefecture of Police; within forty-
eight hours the prefet will have notice that such a place is to
be created," said Peyrade in continuation. "Ask for it for
me; get the Comte de Gondreville to interest himself in the
matter with some degree of warmth — and you will thus repay
me for the service I am about to do you. I ask your word
only; for, if you fail me, sooner or later you will curse the
day you were born — you have Peyrade's word for that."
"I gif you mein vort of honor to do vat is possible."'
"If I do no more for you than is possible, it will not be
enough."
"Veil, veil, I vill act qvite frankly."
"Frankly — that is all I ask," said Peyrade, "and frankness
is the only thing at all new that you and I can offer to each
other."
"Franklv," echoed the Baron. "Vere shall I put you
down."
"At the corner of the Pont Louis XVI."
"To the Pont de la Chambre," said the Baron to the foot-
man at the carriage door.
"Then I am to get dat unknown person," said the Baron
to himself as he drove home.
"What a queer business !" thought Peyrade, going back on
foot to the Palais-Eoyal, where he intended trying to multiply
his ten thousand francs by three, to make a little fortune for
ESTHER HAPPY 129
Lydie. "Here am I required to look into the private con-
cerns of the very young man who has bewitched my little girl
by a glance. He is, I suppose, one of those men who have an
eye for a woman," said he to himself, using an expression of
a language of his own, in which his observations, or Coren-
tin's, were summed up in words that were anything rather
than classical, but, for that very reason, energetic and pict-
uresque.
The Baron de Nucingen, when he went in, was an altered
man; he astonished his household and his wife by showing
them a face full of life and color, so cheerful did he feel.
''Our shareholders had better look out for themselves," said
du Tillet to Eastignac.
They were all at tea, in Delphine de Nucingen's boudoir,
having come in from the opera.
"Ja," said the Baron, smiling; "I feel ver' much dat I
shall do some business."
"Then you have seen the fair being?" asked Madame de
Nucingen.
"No,'' said he; "I have only hoped to see her."
"Do men ever love their wives so?" cried Madame de
Nucingen, feeling, or affecting to feel, a little jealous.
"When you have got her, you must ask us to sup with
her," said du Tillet to the Baron, "for I am very curious
to study the creature who has made you so young as you
are."
"She is a cheff-d'ceufre of creation !" replied the old banker.
"He will be swindled like a boy," said Eastignac in Del-
phine's ear.
"Pooh ! he makes quite enough money to "
"To give a little back, I suppose," said du Tillet, interrupt-
ing the Baroness.
Nucingen was walking up and down the room as if his legs
had the fidgets.
"Now is your time to make him pay your fresh debts," said
Eastignac in the Baroness' ear.
At this very moment Carlos was leaving the Eue Taitbout
130 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
full of hope; he had been there to give some last advice to
Europe, who was to play the principal part in the farce devised
to take in the Baron de Xucingen. He was acconpanied as
far a5 the Boulevard by Lucien, who was not at all easy at
finding this demon so perfectly disguised that even he had
only recognized him by his voice.
"Where the devil did you find a handsomer woman than
Esther?" he asked his evil genius.
"My boy, there is no such thing to be found in Paris.
Such a complexion is not made in France.'"
"I assure you, I am still quite amazed. Venus Callipyge
has not such a figure. A man would lose his soul for her.
But where did she spring from ?"
- "She was the handsomest girl in London. Drunk with
gin, she killed her lover in a fit of jealousy. The lover was
a wretch of whom the London police are well quit, and this
woman has been packed off to Paris for a time to let the matter
blow over. The hussy was well brought up — the daughter of
a clergATQan. She speaks French as if it were her mother
tongue. She does not know, and never will know, why she is
here. She was told that if you took a fancy to her she might
fleece you of millions, but that you were as jealous as a tiger,
and she was told how Esther lived."
'^But supposing Xucingen should prefer her to Esther?"
"Ah, it is out at last !" cried Carlos. "You dread now
lest what dismayed you yesterday should not take place after
all ! Be quite easy. That fair and fair-haired girl has blue
eyes; she is the antipode.'^ of the beautiful Jewe?s, and only
such eyes as Esther's could ever stir a man so rotten as Xucin-
gen. What the devil ! you could not hide an ugly woman.
When this puppet has played her part, I will send her off in
safe custody to Home or to Madrid, where she will be the
rage."
"If we have her only for a short time," said Lucien, "1
will go back to her "
"Go, my boy, amuse yourself. You will be a day older
to-morrow. For my part, I must wait for some one whont I
ESTHER HAPPY 131
have instructed to learn what is going on at the Baron de
Nucingen's."
"Who n
"His valet's mistress ; for, after all, we must keep ourselves
informed at every moment of what is going on in the enemy's
camp."
At midnight, Paccard, Esther's tall chasseur, met Carlos
on the Pont des Arts, the most favorable spot in all Paris
for saying a few words which no one must overhear. All
the time they talked the servant kept an eye on one side, while
his master looked out' on the other.
"The Baron went to the Prefecture of Police this morn-
ing between four and five," said the man, "and he boasted
this evening that he should find the woman he saw in the
Bois de Vincennes — he had been promised it "
"We are watched !" said Carlos. "By whom ?"
"They have already emploj'-ed Louchard the bailiff."
"That would be child's play," replied Carlos. "We need
fear nothing but the guardians of public safety, the criminal
police ; and so long as that is not set in motion, we can
go on !"
"That is not all."
"What else?"
"Our chums of the hulks. — I saw Lapouraille yesterday
He has choked off a married couple, and has bagged ten
thousand five-franc pieces — in gold."
"He will be nabbed," said Jacques Collin. "That is the
Rue Boucher crime."
"What is the order of the day?" said Paccard, with the
respectful demeanor a marshal must have assumed when tak-
ing his orders from Louis XVIII.
"You must get out every evening at ten o'clock," replied
Herrera. "Make your way pretty briskly to the Bois de
Vincennes, the Bois de Meudon, and de Ville-d'Avray. If
any one should follow you, let them do it ; l)o free of speech,
chatty, open to a bribe. Talk about Rubempre's jealousy
and his mad passion for madame, saying that he would not
132 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
on any account liave it known that he had a mistress of that
kind."
"Enough. — Must I have any weapons?"
"Never!'' exclaimed Carlos vehemently. "A weapon?
Of what use w^ould that be? To get us into a scrape. Do
not under any circumstances use your hunting-knife. When
you know that you can break the strongest man's legs by the
trick I showed you — when you can hold your own against
three armed warders, feeling quite sure that you can account
for two of them before they have got out flint and steel, what
is there to be afraid of? Have not you your cane?"
"To be sure," said the man.
Paccard, nicknamed The Old Guard, Old Wide-Awake, or
The Right Man — a man with legs of iron, arms of steel,
Italian whiskers, hair like an artist's, a beard like a sapper's,
and a face as colorless and immovable as Contenson's, kept
his spirit to himself, and rejoiced in a sort of drum-major
appearance which disarmed suspicion. A fugitive from
Poissy or Melun has no such serious self-consciousness and
belief in his own merit. As Giafar to the Haroun el Rasheed
of the hulks, he served him with the friendly admiration
which Peyrade felt for Corentin.
This huge fellow, with a small body in proportion to his
legs, flat-chested, and lean of limb, stalked solemnly about
on his two long pins. Whenever liis right leg moved, his
right eye took in everything around him with the placid
swiftness peculiar to thieves and spies. The left eye followed
the right eye's example. Wiry, nimble, ready for anything
at any time, but for a weakness for Dutch courage Paccard
would have been perfect, Jacques Collin used to say, so com-
pletely was he endowed with the talents indispensable to a
man at war with vsociety; but the master had succeeded in
persuading his slave to drink only in the evening. On going
home at night, Paccard tippled the liquid gold poured into
small glasses out of a pot-bellied stone jar from Danzig.
'^e will make them open their eyes," said Paccard, putting
on his grand hat and feathers after bowing to Carlos, whom
he called his Confessor.
ESTHER HAPPY 133
These were the events which had led three men, so clever,
each in his way, as Jacques Collin, Peyrade, and Corentin^ to
a hand-to-hand fight on the same ground, each exerting his
talents in a struggle for his own passions or interests. It
was one of those obscure but terrible conflicts on which are
expended in marches and countermarches, in strategy, skill,
hatred, and vexation, the powers that might make a fine for-
tune. Men and means were kept absolutely secret by Pey-
rade, seconded in this business by his friend Corentin — a
business they thought but a trifle. And so, as to them,
history is silent, as it is on the true causes of many revolu-
tions.
But this was the result.
Five days after Monsieur de Nucingen's interview with
Peyrade in the Champs Elysees, a man of about fifty called
in the morning, stepping out of a handsome cab, and flinging
the reins to his servant. He had the dead-white complexion
which a life in the "world" gives to diplomates, was dressed
in blue cloth, and had a general air of fashion — almost that
of a Minister of State.
He inquired of the servant who sat on a bench on the steps
whether the Baron de Nucingen were at home ; and the man
respectfully threw open the splendid plate-glass doors.
'^our name, sir?" said the footman.
"Tell the Baron that I have come from the Avenue Gabriel,"
said Corentin. "If anybody is with him, be sure not to say
so too loud, or you will find yourself out of place !"
A minute later the man came back and led Corentin by
the back passages to the Baron's private room.
Corentin and the banker exchanged impenetrable glances,
and both bowed politely,
"Monsieur Ic Baron," said Corentin, "I come in the name
of Peyrade "
"Yer' goot !" said the Baron, fastening the bolts of both
doors.
"Monsieur de Eubempre's mistress lives in the Eue Tait-
bout, in the apartment formerly occupied by Mademoiselle
134 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
de Bellefeuille, M. de Granville's ex-mistress — the Attornev-
General "
"Vat, so near to me?" exclaimed the Baron. "Dat is ver*
strange."
"1 can quite understand your being crazy about that
splendid creature ; it was a pleasure to me to look at her,'" re-
plied Corentin. "Lucien is so jealous of the girl that he never
allows her to be seen; and she loves him devotedly; for in
four years, since she succeeded la Bellefeuille in those rooms,
inheriting her furniture and her profession, neither the neigh-
bors, nor the porter, nor the other tenants in the house have
ever set eyes on her. My lady never stirs out but at night.
When she sets out, the blinds of the carriage are pulled
down, and she is closely veiled.
"Lucien has other reasons besides jealousy for concealing
this woman. He is to be married to Clotilde de Grandlieu,
and he is at this moment Madame de Serizy's favorite fancy.
He naturally wishes to keep a hold on his fashionable mis-
tress and on his promised bride. So, you are master of the
position, for Lucien will sacrifice his pleasure to his interests
and his vanity. You are rich; this is probably your last
chance of happiness; be liberal. You can gain your end
through her waiting-maid. Give the slut ten thousand
francs; she will hide you in her mistress' bedroom. It must
be quite worth that to you."
No figure of speech could describe the short, precise tone
of finality in which Corentin spoke ; the Baron could not fail
to observe it, and his face expressed his astonishment — an
expression he had long since expunged from his impenetrable
features.
"I have also to ask you for five thousand francs for my
friend Peyrade, who has dropped five of your thousand-franc
notes — a tiresome accident," Core'ntin went on, in a lordly
tone of command. "Peyrade knows his Paris too well to
spend money in advertising, and he trusts entirely to you.
But this is not the most important point," added Corentin,
checking himself in such a way as to make the request for
ESTHER HAPPY 135
money seem quite a trifle. "If you do not want to end your
days miserably, get the place for Peyrade that he asked you
to procure for him — and it is a thing you can easily do. The
Chief of the General Police must have had notice of the
matter yesterday. All that is needed is to get Gondreville
to speak to the Prefet of Police. — Very well, just say to
Malin, Comte de Gondreville, that it is to oblige one of the
men who relieved him of MM. de Simeuse, and he will work
it "
"Here den, mensieur," said the Baron, taking out five
thousand-franc notes and handing them to Corentin.
"The waiting-maid is great friends with a tall chasseur
named Paccard, living in the Eue de Provence, over a car-
riage-builder's; he goes out as heyduque to persons who give
themselves princely airs. You can get at Madame van Bog-
seck's woman through Paccard, a brawny Piemontese, who
has a liking for vermouth."
This information, gracefully thrown in as a postscript,
was evidently the return for the five thousand francs. The
Baron was trying to guess Corentin's place in life, for he
quite understood that the man was rather a master of spies
than a spy himself; but Corentin remained to him as mys-
terious as an inscription is to an archseologist when three-
quarters of the letters are missing.
"Vat is dat maid called?" he asked.
"Eugenie," replied Corentin, who bowed and withdrew.
The Baron, in a transport of joy, left his business for the
day, shut up his office, and went up to his rooms in the happy
frame of mind of a young man of twenty looking forward
to his first meeting with his first mistress.
The Baron took all the thousand-franc notes out of his
private cash-box — a sum sufficient to make a whole villaare
happy, fifty-five thousand francs — and stuffed them into the
pocket of his coat. But a millionaire's lavishness can only
be compared with his easrernpss for arain. As soon as a whim
or a passion is to be gratified, money is dross to a Croesus;
in fact, he finds it harder to have whims than gold. A
136 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
keen pleasure is the rarest thing in these satiated lives, full
of the excitement that comes of great strokes of speculation,
in which these driecl-up hearts have burned themselves out.
For instance, one of the richest capitalists in Paris one day
met an extremely pretty little working-girl. Her mother
was with her, but the girl had taken the arm of a young fellow
in very doubtful finery, with a very smart swagger. The
millionaire fell in love with the girl at first sight; he fol-
lowed her home, he went in; he heard all her story, a record
of alternations of dancing at Mabille and days of starvation,
of play-going and hard work; he took an interest in it, and
left five thousand-franc notes under a five-franc piece — an
act of generosity abused. Next day a famous upholsterer,
Braschon, came to take the damsel's orders, furnished rooms
that she had chosen, and laid out twenty thousand francs.
She gave herself up to the wildest hopes, dressed her mother
to match, and flattered herself she would find a place for her
ex-lover in an insurance office. She waited — a day, two days
— then a week, two weeks. She thought herself bound to be
faithful; she got into debt. The capitalist, called away to
Holland, had forgotten the girl; he never went once to the
Paradise where he had placed her, and from which she fell
as low as it is possible to fall even in Paris.
Nucingen did not gamble, Nucingen did not patronize the
Arts, Nucingen had no hobby ; thus he flung himself into his
passion for Esther with a headlong blindness, on which Carlos
Herrera had confidently counted.
After his breakfast, the Baron sent for Georges, his body-
servant, and desired him to go to the Eue Taitbout and ask
Mademoiselle Eugenie, Madame van Bogseck's maid, to come
to his office on a matter of importance.
'TTou shall look out for her," he added, "an' make her
valk up to my room, and tell her I shall make her fortune."
Georges had the greatest difficulty in persuading Europe-
Eugenie to come.
"Madame never lets me go out," said she; 'T^ might lose
my place," and so forth ; and Georges sang her praises loudly
to the Baron, who gave him ten louis.
ESTHER HAPPY 137
"If madame goes out without her this evening," said
Georges to his master, whose eyes glowed like carbuncles, "she
will be here by ten o'clock."
"Goot. You shall come to dress me at nine o'clock — and
do my hair. I shall look so goot as possible. I belief I shall
really see dat mistress — or money is not money any more."
The Baron spent an hour, from noon till one, in dyeing his
hair and whiskers. At nine in the evening, having taken a
bath before dinner, he made a toilet worthy of a bridegroom
and scented himself — a perfect Adonis. Madame de Nucin-
gen, informed of this metamorphosis, gave herself the treat
of inspecting her husband.
"Good heavens !" cried she, "what a ridiculous figure ! Do,
at least, put on a black satin stock instead of that white neck-
cloth which makes your whiskers look so black; besides, it is
so 'Empire,' quite the old fogy. You look like some super-
annuated parliamentary counsel. And take off these dia-
mond buttons; they are worth a hundred thousand francs
apiece — that slut will ask you for them, and you will not be
able to refuse her; and if a baggage is to have them, I may
as well wear them as earrings."
The unhappy banker, struck by the wisdom of his wife's
reflections, obeyed reluctantly.
"Eidikilous, ridikilous ! I hafe never telt you dat you
shall be ridikilous when you dressed yourself so smart to see
your little Mensieur de Eastignac !"
"I should hope that you never saw me make myself
ridiculous. Am I the woman to make such blunders in the
first syllable of my dress? Come, turn about. Button your
coat up to the neck, all but the two top buttons, as the Due
de Maufrigneuse does. In short, try to look young."
"Monsieur," said Georges, "here is Mademoiselle Eugenie."
"Adie, motame," said the banker, and he escorted his wife
as far as her own rooms, to make sure that she should not
overhear their conference.
On his return, he took Europe by the hand and led her
into his room with a sort of ironical respect.
188 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Veil, my chili, you are a happy creature, for you are de
maid of dat mc t besutiful voman in de vorlt. And your
fortune shall be made if you vill talk to her for me and in
mine interests."
"I would not do such a thing for ten thousand francs !"
exclaimed Europe. "I would have you to know, Monsieur le
Baron, that I am an honest girl."
"Oh yes. I expect to pay dear for your honesty. In
business dat is vat ve call curiosity."
"And that it not everything," Europe went on. "If you
should not take madame's fancy — and that is on the cards —
she would be angry, and I am done for ! — and my place is
worth a thousand francs a year."
"De capital to make ein tousant franc is twenty tousand
franc ; and if I shall gif you dat, you shall not lose noting."
"Well, to be sure, if that is the tone you take about it,
my worthy old fellow," said Europe, "that is quite another
story. — Where is the money?"
"Here," replied the Baron, holding up the banknotes, one
at a time.
He noted the flash struck by each in turn from Europe's
eyes, betraying the greed he had counted on.
"That pays for my place, but how about my principles, my
conscience?" said Europe, cocking her crafty little nose and
giving the Baron a serio-comic leer.
"Your conscience shall not be pait for so much as your
place ; but I shall say flfe tousand franc more," said he.
adding five thousand-franc notes.
"j^o, no. Twenty thousand for my conscience, and five
thousand for my place if I lose it "
"Yust vat you please," said he, adding the five notes. "But
to earn dem you shall hite me in your lady's room by night
ven she shall be 'lone."
"If you swear never to tell who let you in, I agree. But
I warn you of one thing. — Madame is as strong as a Turk,
she is madly in love with Monsieur de Eubempre, and if you
paid a million francs in banknotes she would never be un-
ESTHER HAPPY 139
faithful to him. It is very silly, but that is her way when
she is in love; she is worse than an honest woman, I tell
you ! When she goes out for a drive in the woods at night,
monsieur very seldom stays at home. She is gone out this
evening, so I can hide you in my room. If madame comes
in alone, I will fetch you ; you can wait in the drawing-room.
I will not lock the door into her room, and then — well, the
rest is your concern — so be ready."
"I shall pay you the twenty-fife tousand francs in dat draw-
ing-room.— You gife — I gife !"
"Indeed !" said Europe, "you are so confiding as all that ?
On my word !"
"Oh, you will hafe your chance to fleece me yet. We shall
be friends."
"Well, then, be in the Rue Taitbout at midnight; but
bring thirty thousand francs about you. A waiting-woman's
honesty, like a hackney cab, is much dearer after midnight."
"It shall be more prudent if I gif you a cheque on my
bank "
"No, no," said Europe. "Notes, or the bargain is off."
So at one in the morning the Baron de Nucingen, hidden
in the garret where Europe slept, was suffering all the
anxieties of a man who hopes to triumph. His blood seemed
to him to be tingling in his toe-nails, and his head ready to
burst like an overheated steam engine.
"I had more dan one hundert tousand crowns' vort of en-
joyment— in my mind," said he to du Tillet when telling him
the story.
He listened to every little noise in the street, and at two
in the morning he heard his mistress' carriage far away on
the boulevard. His heart beat vehemently under his silk
waistcoat as the gate turned on its hinges. He was about to
behold the heavenly, the glowing face of his Esther ! — the
clatter of the carriage-step and the slam of the door struck
upon his heart. He was more agitated in expectation of
this supreme moment than he would have been if his fortune
had been at stake.
140 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Ah, ha!" cried he, "dis is vat I call to lif — it is too
much to lif; I shall be incapable of everything."
'"Madame is alone; come down," said Europe, looking in.
"Above all, make no noise, great elephant."
"Great Elephant !" he repeated, laughing, and walking as
if he trod on red-hot iron.
Europe led the way, carrying a candle.
"Here — count dem!" said the Baron when he reached the
drawing-room, holding out the notes to Europe.
Europe took the thirty notes very gravely and left the
room, locking the banker in.
Nucingen went straight to the bedroom, where he found
the handsome Englishwoman.
"Is that you, Lucien?" said she.
"Nein, my peauty," said Nucingen, but he said no more.
He stood speechless on seeing a woman the very antipodes
to Esther; fair hair where he had seen black, slenderness
where he had admired a powerful frame ! A soft English
evening where he had looked for the bright sun of Arabia.
"Heyday ! were have you come from ? — who are you ? —
what do you want?" cried the Englishwoman, pulling the
bell, which made no sound.
"The bells dey are in cotton-vool, but hafe not any fear
— I shall go 'vay," said he. "Dat is dirty tousant franc T
hafe tron in de vater. Are you dat mistress of Mensieur
Lucien de Eubempre?"
"Eather, my son," said the lady, who spoke French well.
"But vat vas you?" she went on, mimicking Nucingen's ac-
cent.
"Ein man vat is ver' much took in," replied he lamentably.
"Is a man took in ven he finds a pretty voman ?" asked she,
with a laugh.
"Permit me to sent you to-morrow some chewels as a
soufenir of de Baron von Nucingen."
"Don't know him !" said she, laughing like a crazy creature.
"But the chewels will be welcome, my fat burglar friend."
"You shall know him. Goot night, motame. You are
Europe led the way, carryiug a caudle
ESTHER HAPPY 141
a tidbit for ein king.; but I am only a poor banker more dan
sixty year olt, and you hafe make me feel vat power the
voman I lofe hafe ofer me since your difine beauty hafe not
make me forget her."
"Veil, dat is ver' pretty vat you say," replied the English-
woman.
"It is not so pretty vat she is dat I say it to."
"You spoke of thirty thousand francs — to whom did you
give them?"
"To dat hussy, your maid "
The Englishwoman called Europe, who was not far off.
"Oh!" shrieked Europe, "a man in madame's room, and
he is not monsieur — how shocking !"
"Did he give you thirty thousand francs to let him in?"
"JSTo, madame, for we are not worth it, the pair of us."
And Europe set to screaming "Thief" so determinedly, that
the banker made for the door in a fright, and Europe,
tripping him up, rolled him down the stairs.
"Old wretch !" cried she, "you would tell tales to my mis-
tress ! Thief ! thief ! stop thief !"
The enamored Baron, in despair, succeeded in getting
unhurt to his carriage, which he had left on the boulevard ;
but he was now at his wits' end as to whom to apply to.
"And pray, madame, did you think to get my earnings out
of me?" said Europe, coming back like a fury to the lady's
room.
"I know nothing of French customs," said the English-
woman.
"But one word from me to-morrow to monsieur, and you,
madame, would find yourself in the streets," retorted Europe
insolently.
"Dat dam' maid !" said the Baron to Georges, who naturally
asked his master if all had gone well, "hafe do me out of
dirty tousant franc — but it vas my own fault, my own great
fault "
"And so monsieur's dress was all wasted. The deuce is
in it, I should advise you. Monsieur le Baron, not to have
taken your tonic for nothing "
142 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Georches, I shall be dying of despair. I hafe cold — I
hafe ice on mein heart — no more of Esther, my good friend."
Georges was always the Baron's friend when matters were
serious.
Two days after this scene, which Europe related far more
amusingly than it can be written, because she told it with
much mimicry, Carlos and Lucien were breakfasting tete-
a-tete.
"My dear boy, neither the police nor anybody else must
be allowed to poke a nose into our concerns," said Herrera
in a low voice, as he lighted his cigar from Lucien's. "It
would not agree with us. I have hit on a plan, daring but
effectual, to keep our Baron and his agents quiet. You must
go to see Madame de Serizy, and make yourself very agree-
able to her. Tell her, in the course of conversation, that to
oblige Eastifrnac, who has long been sick of Madame de Nucin-
gen, you have consented to play fence for him to conceal a
mistress. Monsieur de Nucingen, desperately in love with
the woman Hastignac keeps hidden — that will make her laugh
— has taken it into his head to set the police to keep an eye
on you — on you, who are innocent of all his tricks, and whose
interest with the Grandlieus may be seriously compromised.
Then you must beg the Countess to secure her husband's
support, for he is a Minister of State, to carry you to the
Prefecture of Police.
'•When 3'ou have got there, face to face with the Prefet.
make your complaint, but as a man of political consequence,
who will sooner or later be one of the motor powers of the
huge machine of government. You will speak of the police
as a statesman should, admiring everything, the Prefet in-
cluded. The very best machines make oil-stains or splutter.
Do not be angr}^ till the right moment. You have no sort of
grudge against Monsieur le Prefet, but persuade Mm to kee]>
a sharp lookout on his people, and pity him for having to
blow ihem up. The quieter and more gentlemanly you are,
the more terrible will the Prefet be to his men. Then we
ESTHER HAPPY 143
shall be left in peace, and we may send for Esther back, for
she must be belling like the does in the forest."
The Prefet at that time was a retired magistrate. Eetired
magistrates make far too young Prefets. Partisans of the
right, riding the high horse on points of law, they are not
light-handed in arbitary action such as critical circumstances
often require ; eases in which the Prefet should be as prompt
as a fireman called to a conflagration. So, face to face with
the Vice-President of the Council of State, the Prefet con-
fessed to more faults than the police really has, deplored its
abuses, and presently was able to recollect the visit paid him
by the Baron de Nucingen and his inquiries as to Peyrade.
The Prefet, while promising to check the rash zeal of his
agents, thanked Lucien for having come straight to him,
promised secrecy, and affected to understand the intrigue.
A few fine speeches about personal liberty and the sacred-
ness of home life were bandied between the Prefet and the
Minister; Monsieur de Serizy observing in conclusion that
though the high interests of the kingdom sometimes necessi-
tated illegal action in secret, crime began when these State
measures were applied to private cases.
Next da}'', just as Peyrade was going to his beloved Cafe
David, where he enjoyed watching the bourgeois eat, as an
artist watches flowers open, a gendarme in private clothes
spoke to him in the street.
"I was going to fetch you," said he in his ear. "I have
orders to take you to the Prefecture."
Peyrade called a hackney cab, and got in without saying
a single word, followed by the gendarme.
The Prefet treated Peyrade as though he were the lowest
warder on the hulks, walking to and fro in a side path of the
garden of the Prefecture, which at that time was on the Quai
des Orfevres.
'It is not without good reason, monsieur, that since 1830
you have been kept out of office. Do not you know to what
risk you expose us, not to mention yourself?"
The lecture ended in a thunderstroke. The Prefet sternly
144 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
informed poor Pevrade that not only would his yearly allow-
ance be cut oft', but that he himself would be narrowly
watched. The old man took the shock with an air of perfect
calm. Nothing can be more rigidly expressionless than a
man struck by lightning. Peyrade had lost all his stake in
the game. He had counted on getting an appointment, and
he found himself bereft of ever3i;hing but the alms bestowed
by his friend Corentin.
"I have been Prefet of Police myself ; I think you perfectly
right," said the old man quietly to the functionary who stood
before him in his judicial majesty, and who answered with
a significant shrug.
"But allow me, without any attempt to justify myself, to
point out that you do not know me at all," Peyrade went
on, with a keen glance at the Prefet. '^^our language is
either too severe to a man who has been the head of the police
in Holland, or not severe enough for a mere spy. But, Mon-
sieur le Prefet," Peyrade added after a pause, while the other
kept silence, 'T^ear in mind what I now have the honor of
telling you : I have no intention of interfering with 3^our police
nor of attempting to justify myself, but you will presently
discover that there is some one in this business who is being
deceived; at this moment it is your humble servant; by and
by you will say, ^t was I.' "
And he bowed to the chief, who sat passive to conceal his
amazement.
Peyrade returned home, his legs and anus feeling broken,
and full of cold fury with the Baron. Nobody but that burly
banker could have betrayed a secret contained in the minds
of Contenson, Peyrade, and Corentin. The old man accused
the banker of wishing to avoid paying now that he had gained
his end. A single interview had been enough to enable him
to read the astuteness of this most astute of bankers.
"He tries to compound with every one, even with us; but
I will be revenged," thought the old fellow. "I have never
asked a favor of Corentin ; I will ask him now to help me to
be revenged on that imbecile money-box. Curse the Baron!
ESTHER HAPPY 145
— Well, you will know the stufE I am made of one fine morn-
ing when you find your daughter disgraced ! — But does he
love his daughter, I wonder?'^
By the evening of the day when this catastrophe had upset
the old man's hopes he had aged by ten years. As he talked
to his friend Corentin, he mingled his lamentations with
tears wrung from him by the thought of the melancholy pros-
pects he must bequeath to his daughter, his idol, his treasure,
his peace-ofi'ering to God.
"We will follow the matter up," said Corentin. "First of
all, we must be sure that it was the Baron who peached.
Were we wise in enlisting Gondreville's support? That old
rascal owes us too much not to be anxious to swamp us;
indeed, I am keeping an eye on his son-in-law Keller, a
simpleton in politics, and quite capable of meddling in some
conspiracy to overthrow the elder Branch to the advantage
of the younger. — I shall know to-morrow what is going on at
Nucingen's, whether he has seen his beloved, and to whom we
owe this sharp pull up. — Do not be out of heart. In the first
place, the Prefet will not hold his appointment much longer ;
the times are big with revolution, and revolutions make good
fishing for us."
A peculiar whistle was just then heard in the street.
"That is Contenson," said Peyrade, who put a light in
the window, "and he has something to say that concerns
me."
A minute later the faithful Contenson appeared in the
presence of the two gnomes of the police, whom he revered
as though they were two genii.
"What is up?" asked Corentin.
"A new thing! I was coming out of 113, where I lost
everything, when whom do I spy under the gallery ? Georges !
The man has been dismissed by the Baron, who suspects him
of treachery."
"That is the effect of a smile I gave him," said Peyrade.
"Bah ! when I think of all the mischief I have known caused
by smiles !" said Corentin.
146 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"To say nothing of that caused by a whip-lash," said Pey-
rade, referring to the Simeuse case. (In Une Tmebreuse
affaire.) "But come, Contenson, what is going on?"
"This is what is going on," said Contenson. "I made
Georges blab b}' getting him to treat me to an endless series
of liqueurs of every color — I left him tipsy; I must be as
full as a still myself ! — Our Baron has been to the Kue Tait-
bout, crammed with Pastilles du Serail. There he found the
fair one you know of ; but — a good joke ! The English beauty
is not his fair unknown ! — And he has spent thirty thousand
francs to bribe the lady's-maid, a piece of folly I
"That creature thinks itself a great man because it does
mean things with great capital. Reverse the proposition,
and you have the problem of which a man of genius is the
solution. — The Baron came home in a pitiable condition.
Xext day Georges, to get his finger in the pie, said to his
master :
" 'Why, Monsieur le Baron, do you employ such black-
guards? If you would only trust to me, I would find the
unkno-mi lady, for your description of her is enough. I
would turn Paris upside down.' — 'Go ahead,' says the Baron ;
'T shall reward you handsomely !' — Georges told me the whole
stor}' with the most absurd details. But — man is born to be
rained upon I
"Xext day the Baron received an anonymous letter some-
thing to this eifect : 'Monsieur de Xucingen is dying of love
for an unknown lady ; he has already spent a great deal
utterly in vain ; if he will repair at midnight to the end of
the Xeuilly Bridge, and get into the carriage behind which
the chasseur he saw at Vincennes will be standing, allowing
himself to be blindfolded, he will see the woman he loves.
As his wealth may lead him to suspect the intentions of per-
sons who proceed in such a fasliion, he may bring, as an
escort, his faithful Georges. And there will be nobody in
the carriage.' — Ofl^ the Baron goes, taking Georges with him.
but telling him nothing. They both submit to have their
eyes bound up and their heads wrapped in veils; the Baron
reeognis^es the man-servant.
ESTHER HAPPY 147
'*Two hours later, the carriage, going at the pace of Louis
XVIII. — God rest his soul ! He knew what was meant by
the police, he did ! — pulled up in the middle of a wood. The
Baron had the handkerchief off, and saw, in a carriage stand-
ing still, his adored fair — when, whifl: ! she vanished. And
the carriage, at the same lively pace, brought him back to
the Neuilly Bridge, where he found his own.
"Some one had slipped into Georges' hand a note to this
effect : 'How many banknotes will the Baron part with to be
put into communication with his unknown fair?' Georges
handed this to his master ; and the Baron, never doubting that
Georges was in collusion with me or with you, Monsieur Pey-
rade, to drive a hard bargain, turned him out of the house.
What a fool that banker is ! He ought not to have sent away
Georges before he had known the unknown !"
"Then Georges saw the woman?" said Corentin.
"Yes," replied Contenson.
"Well," cried Peyrade, "and what is she like?"
"Oh," said Contenson, "he said but one word — 'A sun of
loveliness.' "
"We are being tricked by some rascals who beat us at the
game," said Peyrade. "Those villains mean to sell their
woman very dear to the Baron."
"Ja, mein Herr/' said Contenson. "And so, when I heard
you got slapped in the face at the Prefecture, I made Georges
blab."
"I should very much like to know who it is that has
stolen a march on me," said Peyrade. "We would measure
our spurs !"
"We must play eavesdropper," said Contenson.
"He is right," said Peyrade. "We must get into chinks
to listen, and wait "
"We will study that side of the subject," cried Corentin.
"For the present, I am out of work. You, Peyrade, be a
very good boy. We must always obey Monsieur le Prefet !"
"Monsieur de Nucingen wants bleeding," said Contenson;
"he has too many banknotes in his veins."
148 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"But it was Lydie's marriage-portion I looked for there !"
said Peyrade, in a whisper to Corentin.
"Xow, come along, Contenson, let ns be off, and leave our
daddy to by-bye, by-bye!"
"Monsieur," said Contenson to Corentin on the doorstep,
"what a queer piece of brokerage our good friend was plan-
ning ! Hell ! — What, marry a daughter with the price of
Ah, ha ! It would make a pretty little play, and very moral
too, entitled "^A Girl's Dower.' "'
"You are highly organized animals, indeed," replied Coren-
tin. "What ears you have ! Certainly Social Nature arms
all her species with the qualities needed for the duties she ex-
pects of them ! Society is second nature."
"Tliat is a highly philosophical view to take," cried Conten-
son. "A professor would work it up into a system."
"Let us find out all we can," replied Corentin with a smile,
as he made his way down the street ■wdth the spy, "as to
what goes on at Monsieur de Xucingens with regard to this
girl — the main facts; never mind the details "
"Just watch to see if his cliimneys are smoking !" said
Contenson.
"Such a man as the Baron de Xucingen cannot be happy
incognito," replied Corentin. "And besides, we for whom
men are but cards, ought never to be tricked by them."
"By Gad ! it would be the condemned jail-bird amusing
himself by cutting the executioner's throat."
"You always have something droll to say," replied Co-
rentin, with a dim smile, that faintly wrinkled his set white
face.
This business was exceedingly important in itself, apart
from its consequences. If it were not the Baron who had
betrayed Peyrade, who could have had any interest in seeing
the Prefet of Police? From Corentin's point of Aaew it
seemed suspicious. Were there any traitors among his men?
And as he went to bed, he wondered what Peyrade, too, was
considering.
"Who can have gone to complain to the Prefet? Whom
does the woman belong to?"
ESTHER HAPPY 149
And thus, without knowing each other, Jacques ColHn,
Peyrade, and Corentin were converging to a common point;
while the unhappy Esther, Nucingen, and Lucien were in-
evitably entangled in the struggle which had already begun,
and of which the point of pride, peculiar to police agents,
was making a war to the death.
Thanks to Europe's cleverness, the more pressing half of
the sixty thousand francs of debt owed by Esther and Lucien
was paid oif. The creditors did not even lose confidence.
Lucien and his evil genius could breathe for a moment. Like
two wild animals, drinking for an instant of the waters of
some pool, they could start again along the edge of the
precipice where the strong man was guiding the weak man to
the gibbet or to fortune.
"We are staking now," said Carlos to his puppet, "to
win or lose all. But, happily, the cards are beveled, and
the punters young."
For some little time Lucien, by his terrible Mentor's orders,
had been very attentive to Madame de Serizy. It was, in
fact, indispensable that Lucien should not be suspected of
having a kept woman for his mistress. And in the pleasure
of being loved, and the excitement of fashionable lii'e, he
found a spurious power of forgetting. He obeyed Made-
moiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu by never seeing her excepting
in the Bois or the Champs-filysees.
On the day after Esther was shut up in the park-keeper's
house, the being who was to her so enigmatic and terrible,
who weighed upon her soul, came to desire her to sign three
pieces of stamped paper, made terrible by these fateful words :
on the first, accepted payable for sixty thousand francs; on
the second, accepted payable for a hundred and twenty thou-
sand francs ; on the third, accepted payable for a hundred and
twenty thousand francs — three hundred thousand francs in
all. By writing Bon four, you simply promise to pay. The
word Accepted constitutes a bill of exchange, and makes you
liable to imprisonment. The word entails, on the person
150 A COURTESAN'8 MFE
who is so imprudent as to sign, the risk of five years' im-
prisonment— a punishment which the police magistrate hardly
ever inflicts, and which is reserved at the assizes for confirmed
rogues. The law of imprisonment for debt is a relic of the
days of barbarism, which combines with its stupidity the
rare merit of being useless, inasmuch as it never catches
swindlers.
"The point," said the Spaniard to Esther, "is to get Lucien
out of his difficulties. We have debts to the tune of sixty
thousand francs, and with these three hundred thousand
francs we may perhaps pull through."
Having antedated the bills by six months, Carlos had had
them drawn on Esther by a man whom the county court
had "misunderstood," and whose adventures, in spite of the
excitement they had caused, were soon forgotten, hidden, lost,
in the uproar of the great symphony of July 1830.
This young fellow, a most audacious adventurer, the son
of a lawyer's clerk of Boulogne, near Paris, was named
Georges Marie Destourny. His father, obliged by adverse
circumstances to sell his connection, died in 1824, leaving his
son without the means of living, after giving him a brilliant
education, the folly of the lower middle class. At twenty-
three the clever young law-student had denied his paternity
by printing on his cards
Georges d'Estourny.
This card gave him an odor of aristocracy; and now, as
a man of fashion, he was so impudent as to set up a tilbury
and a groom and haunt the clubs. One line will account
for this : he gambled on the Bourse with the money intrusted
to him by the kept women of his acquaintance. Finally he
fell into the hands of the police, and was charged with play-
ing at cards with too much luck.
He had accomplices, youths whom he had corrupted, his
compulsory satellites, accessory to his fashion and his credit.
Compelled to fly, he forgot to pay his differences on the
ESTHER HAPPY 151
Bourse. All Paris — the Paris of the Stock Exchange and
Clubs — was still shaken by this double stroke of swindling.
In the days of his splendor Georges d'Estourny, a hand-
some youth, and, above all, a jolly fellow, as generous as a
brigand chief, had for a few months "protected" La Torpille.
The false Abbe based his calculations on Esther's former in-
timacy with this famous scoundrel, an incident peculiar to
women of her class.
Georges d'Estourny, whose ambition grew bolder with suc-
cess, had taken under his patronage a man who had come from
the depths of the country to carry on a business in Paris, and
whom the Liberal party were anxious to indemnify for certain
sentences endured with much courage in the struggle of the
press with Charles X.'s government, the persecution being
relaxed, however, during the j\Iartignac administration. The
Sieur Cerizet had then been pardoned, and he was thenceforth
known as the Brave Cerizet.
Cerizet then, being patronized for form's sake by the big-
wigs of the Left, founded a house which combined the business
of a general agency with that of a bank and a commission
agency. It was one of those concerns which, in business,
remind one of the servants who advertise in the papers as
being able and willing to do everything. Cerizet was very
glad to ally himself with Georges d'Estourny, who gave him
hints.
Esther, in virtue of the anecdote about Ninon, might be
regarded as the faithful guardian of part of Georges
d'Estoumy's fortune. An endorsement in the name of
Georges d'Estourny made Carlos Herrera master of the money
he had created. This forgery was perfectly safe so long as
Mademoiselle Esther, or some one for her, could, or was
bound to pay.
After making inquiries as to the house of Cerizet, Carlos
perceived that he had to do with one of those humble men
who are bent on making a fortune, but — lawfully. Cerizet,
with whom d'Estourny had really deposited his moneys, had
in hand a considerable sum with which he was speculating
152 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
for a rise on the Bourse, a state of affairs which allowed him
to style himself a banker. Such things are done in Paris; a
man may be despised, — but money, never.
Carlos went ofP to Cerizet intending to work him after
his manner; for, as it happened, he was master of all this
worthy's secrets — a meet partner for d'Estourny.
Cerizet the Brave lived in an entresol in the Eue du Gros-
Chenet, and Carlos, who had himself mysteriously announced
as coming from Georges d'Estourny, found the self-styled
banker quite pale at the name. The Abbe saw in this humble
private room a little man with thin, light hair ; and recognized
him at once, from Lucicn's description, as the Judas who had
ruined David Sechard.
"Can we talk here without risk of being overheard ?"'
said the Spaniard, now metamorphosed into a red-haired Eng-
lishman with blue spectacles, as clean and prim as a Puritan
going to meeting.
"Why, monsieur?" said Cerizet. '^^ho are you?"
"Mr. William Barker, a creditor of M. d'Estourny's ; and
I can prove to you the necessity for keeping your doors closed
if you wish it. We know, monsieur, all about your con-
nections with the Petit-Clauds, the Cointets, and the Sechards
of Angouleme "
On hearing these words, Cerizet rushed to the door and shut
it, flew to another leading into a bedroom and bolted it ; then
he said to the stranger:
"Speak lower, monsieur," and he studied the sham Eng-
lishman as he asked him, "What do you want with me ?"
"Dear me," said William Barker, "every one for himself in
this world. You had the money of that rascal d'Estourny.
— Be quite easy, I have not come to ask for it; but that
scoundrel, who deserves hanging, between you and me, gave
me tliese bills, saying that there might be some chance of
recovering the money; and as 1 do not choose to prosecute in
my own name, he told me you would not refuse to back
them."
Cerizet looked at the bills.
ESTHER HAPPY 153
''But he is no longer at Frankfort," said he.
''I know it/' replied Barker, "but he may still have been
there at the date of those bills "
"I will not take the responsibility," said Cerizet.
''I do not ask such a sacrifice of you," replied Barker; "you
may be instructed to receive them. Endorse them, and I
will undertake to recover the money."
"1 am surprised that d'Estourny should show so little con-
fidence in me," said Cerizet.
"In his position," replied Barker, "you can hardly blame
him for having put his eggs in different baskets."
"Can you believe " the little broker began, as he handed
back to the Englishman the bills of exchange formally ac-
cepted.
"1 believe that you will take good care of his money," said
Barker. "1 am sure of it ! It is already on the green table
of the Bourse."
"My fortune depends "
"On your appearing to lose it," said Barker.
"Sir !" cried Cerizet.
"Look here, my dear Monsieur Cerizet," said Barker, coolly
interrupting him, "you will do me a service by facilitating
tiiis payment. Be so good as to write me a letter in which
yoti tell me that you are sending me these bills receipted on
d'Es'tourny's account, and that the collecting officer is to
regard the holder of the letter as the possessor of the three
bills."
"Will you give me your name?"
"No names," replied the English capitalist. "Put "^The
bearer of this letter and these bills.' — You will be handsomely
repaid for obliging me."
"How?" said Cerizet.
"In one word — You mean to stay in France, do not you ?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Well, Georges d'Estourny will never re-enter the country."
"Pray why ?"
"There are five persons at least to my knowledge who
would murder him, and he knows it."
154 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"^Then no wonder he is asking me for money enough lo
start him trading to the Indies ?" cried Cerizet. "And unfor-
tunately he has compelled me to risk everything in State
speculation. We already owe heavy differences to the house
of du Tillet. I live from hand to mouth."
"Withdraw your stakes."
"Oh ! if only I had known this sooner !" exclaimed Cerizet.
"I have missed my chance !"
"One last word," said Barker. "Keep your own counsel,
you are capable of that ; but you must be faithful too, which
is perhaps less certain. We shall meet again, and I will help
you to make a fortune."
Having thus tossed this sordid soul a crumb of hope that
would secure silence for some time to come, Carlos, still
disguised as Barker, betook himself to a bailiff whom he
could depend on, and instructed him to get the bills brought
home to Esther.
"They will be paid all right," said he to the officer. "It
is an affair of honor ; only we want to do the thing reg-
ularly."
Barker got a solicitor to represent Esther in court, so that
judgment might be given in presence of both parties. The
collecting officer, who was begged to act v/ith civility, took
with him all the warrants for procedure, and came in person
to seize the furniture in the Eue Taitbout, where he was re-
ceived by Europe. Her personal liability once proved, Esther
was ostensibly liable, beyond dispute, for three hundred and
more thousand francs of debts.
In all this Carlos displayed no great powers of invention.
The farce of false debts is often played in Paris. There are
many sub-Gobsecks and sub-Gigonnets who, for a percentage,
will lend themselves to this subterfuge, and regard the in-
famous trick as a jest. In France everything — even a crime
— is done with a laugh. By this means refractory parents
are made to pay, or rich mistresses who might drive a hard
bargain, but who, face to face with flagrant necessity, or
some impending dishonor, pay up, if with a bad grace.
ESTHER HAPPY 155
Maxime de Trailles had often used such means, borrowed
from the comedies of the old stage. Carlos Herrera, who
wanted to save the honor of his gown, as well as Lucien's, had
worked the spell by a forgery not dangerous for him, but now
so frequently practised that Justice is beginning to object.
There is, it is said, a Bourse for falsified bills near the Palais
Eoyal, where you may get a forged signature for three francs.
Before entering on the question of the hundred thousand
crowns that were to keep the door of the bedroom, Carlos de-
termined first to extract a hundred thousand more from M.
de Nucingen.
And this was the way: By his orders Asie got herself up
for the Baron's benefit as an old woman fully informed as
to the unknown beauty's affairs.
Hitherto, novelists of manners have placed on the stage
a great many usurers ; but the female money-lender has been
overlooked, the Madame la Kessource of the present day — a
very singular figure, euphemistically spoken of as a "ward-
robe purchaser"; a part that the ferocious Asie could play,
for she had two old-clothes shops managed by women she
could trust — one in the Temple, and the other in the Rue
Neuve- Saint-Marc.
"You must get into the skin of Madame de Saint-Esteve,"
said he.
Herrera wished to see Asie dressed.
The go-between arrived in a dress of flowered damask,
made of the curtains of some dismantled boudoir, and one
of those shawls of Indian design — out of date, Avorn, and
valueless, which end their career on the backs of these women.
She had a collar of magnificent lace, though torn, and a
terrible bonnet ; but her shoes were of fine kid, in which the
flesh of her fat feet made a roll of black-lace stocking.
"And my waist buckle !" she exclaimed, displaying a piece
of suspicious-looking finery, prominent on her cook's stomach.
"There's style for you ! and my front ! — Oh, Ma'me Nourris-
son has turned me out quite spiff !"
156 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Be as sweet as honey at first," said Carlos; "be almost
timid, as suspicious as a cat ; and, above all, make the Baron
ashamed of having employed the police, without betraying
that you quake before the constable. Finally, make your
customer understand in more or less plain terms that you
defy all tlie police in the world to discover his jewel. Take
care to destroy your traces.
"When the Baron gives you a right to tap him on the
stomach, and call him a pot-bellied old rip, you may be as
insolent as you please, and make him trot like a footman."
Nucingen — threatened by Asie with never seeing her again
if he attempted the smallest espionage — met the woman on
his way to the Bourse, in secret, in a wretched entresol in the
Rue Neuve-Saint-Marc. How often, and with what rapture,
have amorous millionaires trodden these squalid paths ! the
pavements of Paris know. Madame de Saint-Esteve, by
tossing the Baron from hope to despair by turns, brought him
to the point when he insisted on being informed of all that
related to the unkno^Ti beauty at any cost. Meanwhile, the
law was put in force, and with such effect that the bailiffs,
finding no resistance from Esther, put in an execution on her
effects without losing a day.
Lucien, guided by his adviser, paid the recluse at Saint-
Germain five or six visits. The merciless author of all these
machinations thought this necessary to save Esther from
pining to death, for her beauty was now their capital. When
the time came for them to quit the park-keeper's lodge, he
took Lucien and the poor girl to a place on the road whence
they could see Paris, where no one could overhear them.
They all three sat down in the rising sun, on the trunk of a
felled poplar, looking over one of the finest prospects in the
world, embracing the course of the Seine, with Montmartre,
Paris, and Saint-Denis.
"My children," said Carlos, "your dream is over. — You,
little one, will never see Lucien again ; or if you should,
you must have known him only for a few days, five years
ago."
ESTHER HAPPY 157
"Death has come upon me then," said she, without
shedding a tear.
"Well, you have been ill these iive years," said Herrera.
"Imagine yourself to be consumptive, and die without bor-
ing us with your lamentations. But you will see, you can
still live, and very comfortably too. — Leave us, Lucien — go
and gather sonnets !" said he, pointing to a field a little way
off.
Lucien cast a look of humble entreaty at Esther, one of
the looks peculiar to such men — weak and greedy, with ten-
der hearts and cowardly spirits. Esther answered with a
bow of her head, which said: "I will hear the executioner,
that I may know hoM'- to lay my head under the axe, and I
shall have courage enough to die decently."
The gesture was so gracious, but so full of dreadful mean-
ing, that the poet wept; Esther flew to him, clasped him in
her arms, drank away the tears, and said, "Be quite easy!"
one of those speeches that are spoken with the manner, the
look, the tones of delirium.
Carlos then explained to her quite clearly, without attenua-
tion, often with horrible plainness of speech, the critical posi-
tion in which Lucien found himself, his connection with the
Hotel Grandlieu, his splendid prospects if he should succeed ;
and finally, how necessary it was that Esther should sacrifice
herself to secure him this triumphant future.
"What must I do?" cried she, with the eagerness of a
fanatic.
"Obey me blindly," said Carlos. "And what have you to
complain of ? It rests u-ith you to achieve a happy lot. You
may be what Tullia is, what your old friends Florine,
Mariette, and la Val-Noble are — the mistress of a rich man
whom you need not love. When once our business is settled,
your lover is rich enough to make you happy."
"Happy !" said she, raising her eyes to heaven.
"You have lived in Paradise for four years," said he. "Can
you not live on such memories?"
"I will obey you," said she, wiping a tear from the corner
158 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
of her eye. "For the rest, do not worry yourself. You have
said it; my love is a mortal disease."
"That is not enough," said Carlos ; "you must preserve your
looks. At a little past two-and-twenty you are in the prime
of your beauty, thanks to your past happiness. And, above
all, be the 'Torpille' again. Be roguish, extravagant,
cunning, merciless to the millionaire I put in your power.
Listen to me ! That man is a robber on a grand scale ; he
has been ruthless to many persons; he has grown fat on the
fortunes of the widow and the orphan; you will avenge
them!
"Asie is coming to fetch you in a hackney coach, and you
will be in Paris this evening. If you allow any one to sus-
pect your connection with Lucien, you may as well blow his
brains out at once. You will be asked where you have been
for so long. You must say that you have been traveling with
a desperately jealous Englishman. — You used to have wit
enough to humbug people. Find such wit again now."
Have you ever seen a gorgeous kite, the giant butterfly of
childhood, twinkling with gilding, and soaring to the sky?
The children forget the string that holds it, some passer-by
cuts it, the gaudy toy turns head over heels, as the boys say,
and falls with terrific rapidity. Such was Esther as she
listened to Carlos.
WHAT LOVE COSTS AN OLD MAN
For a whole week Nucingen went almost every day to
the shop in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Marc to bargain for the wo-
man he was in love with. Here, sometimes under the name
of Saint-Esteve, sometimes under that of her tool, Madame
Nourrisson, Asie sat enthroned among beautiful clothes in
that hideous condition when they have ceased to be dresses
and are not yet rags.
The setting was in harmony with the appearance assumed
by the woman, for these shops are among the most hideous
characteristics of Paris. You find there the garments tossed
aside by the skinny hand of Death ; you hear, as it were, the
gasping of consumption under a shawl, or you detect the
agonies of beggary under a gown spangled with gold. The
horrible struggle between luxury and starvation is written
on filmy laces; you may picture the countenance of a queen
under a plumed turban placed in an attitude that recalls
and almost reproduces the absent features. It is all hideous
amid prettiness ! Juvenal's lash, in the hands of the ap-
praiser, scatters the shabby muffs, the ragged furs of courte-
sans at bay.
There is a dunghill of flowers, among which here and there
we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a
day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching
— first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and
toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she
used to sell the covering — the gown without the woman, or
the woman vtithout the gown !
Here Asie was in her element, like the warder among
convicts, like a vulture red-beaked amid corpses; more ter-
rible than the savage horrors that made the passer-by shud-
der in astonishment sometimes, at seeing one of their yonng-
(159)
160 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
est and sweetest reminiscences hung up in a dirty shop win-
dow, behind which a Saint-Esteve sits and grins.
From vexation to vexation, a thousand francs at a time,
the banker had gone so far as to offer sixty thousand francs
to Madame de Saint-Esteve, who still refused to help him,
with a grimace that would have outdone any monkey. xA.fter
a disturbed night, after confessing to himself that Esther
completely upset his ideas, after realizing some unexpected
turns of fortune on the Bourse, he came to her one day,
intending to give the hundred thousand francs on which Asie
insisted, but he was determined to have plenty of informa-
tion for the money.
"Well, have you made up your mind, old higgler?" said
Asie, clapping him on the shoulder.
The most dishonoring familiarit}^ is the tirst tax these wo-
men levy on the frantic passions or griefs that are confided
to them; they never rise to the level of their clients; they
make them squat beside them on their mudheap. Asie, it
will be seen, obeyed her master admirably.
"Xeed must !" said jSTucingen.
"And you have the best of the bargain," said Asie. ^'Wo-
men have been sold much dearer than this one to 3'ou — rela-
tively speaking. There are women and women ! De Marsay
paid sixty thousand francs for Coralie, who is dead now.
The woman you want cost a hundred thousand francs when
new; but to you, you old goat, it is a matter of agreement."
"But vere is she?"
"Ah ! you shall see. I am like you — a gift for a gift ! Oh,
my good man, your adored one has been extravagant. These
girls know no moderation. Your j^rincess is at this moment
what we call a fly by night "
"A fly ?"
"Come, come, don't play the simpleton. — Louchard is at
her heels, and I — I — have lent her fifty thousand
francs "
"Tventy-fife say !" cried the banker.
"Well, of course, twenty-five for fift}'-, that is only natural,"
WHAT LOVE COSTS 161
replied Asie. "To do the woman justice, she is honesty it-
self. She had nothing left but herself, and says she to me:
'My good Madame Saint-Esteve, the bailiffs are after me ; no
one can help me but you. Give me twenty thousand francs.
I will pledge my heart to you.' Oh, she has a sweet heart;
no one but me knows where it lies. Any folly on my part,
and I should lose my twenty thousand francs.
"Formerly she lived in the Eue Taitbout. Before leav-
ing— (her furniture was seized for costs — those rascally
bailiffs — You know them, you who are one of the great men
on the Bourse) — well, before leaving, she is no fool, she let
her rooms for two months to an Englishwoman, a splendid
creature who had little thingummy — Eubempre — for a lover,
and he was so jealous that he only let her go out at night.
But as the furniture is to be seized, the Englishwoman has
e:;t her stick, all the more because she cost too much for a
little whipper-snapper like Lucien."
"You cry up de goots," said Nucingen.
"Naturally," said Asie. "I lend to the beauties ; and it
pays, for you get two commissions for one job."
Asie was amusing herself by caricaturing the manners of
a class of women who are even greedier but more wheedling
and mealy-mouthed than the Malay woman, and who put a
gloss of the best motives on the trade they ply. Asie af-
fected to have lost all her illusions, five lovers, and some
children, and to have submitted to be robbed by everybody
in spite of her experience. From time to time she exhibited
some pawn-tickets, to prove how much bad luck there was in
her line of business. She represented herself as pinched
and in debt, and to crown all, she was so undisguisedly
hideous that the Baron at last believed her to be all she said
she was.
"Veil den, I shall pay de hundert tousant, and vere shall
I see her ?" said he, with the air of a man who has made up
his mind to any sacrifice.
"My fat friend, you shall come this evening — in your car-
riage, of course — opposite the Gymnase. It is on the way,"
162 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
said -Asie. "Stop at the corner of the Rue Saint-Barbe. I
will be on the lookout, and we will go and find my mortgaged
beauty with the black hair. — Oh, she has splendid hair, has
my mortgage. If she pulls out her comb, Esther is covered
as if it were a pall. But though you are knowing in arith-
metic, you strike me as a muff in other matters ; and I advise
you to hide the girl safely, for if she is found she will be
clapped into Sainte-Pelagie the very next day. — And they are
looking for her."
"Shall it not be possible to get holt of de bills?" said the
incorrigible bill-broker.
"The bailiffs have got them — but it is impossible. The
girl has had a passion, and has spent some money left in
her hands, which she is now called upon to pay. By the
poker ! — A queer thing is a heart of two-and-twenty."
'^'er' goot, ver' goot, I shall arrange all dat," said Nucin-
gen, assuming a cunning look. "It is qvite settled dat I
shall protect her."
"Well, old noodle, it is your business to make her fall in
love with you, and you certainly have ample means to buy
sham love as good as the real article. I will place your
princess in your keeping; she is bound to stick to you, and
after that I don't care. — But she is accustomed to luxury and
the greatest consideration. I tell you, my boy, she is quite
the lady. — If not, should I have given her twenty thousand
francs?"*
"Yer goot, it is a pargain. Till dis efening."'
The Baron repeated the bridal toilet he had already once
achieved; but this time, being certain of success, he took a
double dose of pillules.
At nine o'clock he found the dreadful woman at the ap-
pointed spot, and took her into his carriage.
"Vere to?" said the Baron.
"Where ?" echoed Asie. "Rue de la Perle in the Marais —
an address for the nonce ; for your pearl is in the mud, but
you will wash her clean."
Having reached the spot, the false Madame de Saint-Esteve
said to ISTucingen with a hideous smile:
WHAT LOVE COSTS 163
"We must go a short way on foot; I am not such a fool
as to have given you the right address."
"You tink of eferytink !" said the Baron.
"It is my business/' said she.
Asie led Nucingen to the Eue Barbette, where, in furnished
lodgings kept by an upholsterer, he was led up to the fourth
floor.
On finding Esther in a squalid room, dressed as a work-
woman, and employed on some embroidery, the millionaire
turned pale. At the end of a quarter of an hour, while Asie
affected to talk in whispers to Esther, the young old man
could still hardly speak. ♦
"Montemisselle," said he at length to the unhappy girl,
"vill you be so goot as to let me be your protector?"
"Why, I cannot help myself, monsieur," replied Esther,
letting fall two large tears.
"Do not veep. I shall make you de happiest of vomen.
Only permit that I shall lof you — you shall see."
"Well, well, child, the gentleman is reasonable," said Asie.
"He knows that he is more than sixty, and he will be very
kind to you. You see, my beauty, I have found you quite a
father — I had to say so," Asie whispered to the banker, who
was not best pleased. "You cannot catch swallows by firing
a pistol at them. — Come here," she went on, leading Nucin-
gen into the adjoining room. "You remember our bargain,
my angel ?"
Nucingen took out his j)ocketbook and counted out the
hundred thousand francs, which Carlos, hidden in a cup-
board, was impatiently Avaiting for, and which the cook
handed over to him.
"Here are the hundred thousand francs our man stakes
on Asie. Now we must make him lay on Europe," said Car-
los to his confidante when they were on the landing.
And he vanished after giving his instruction to the Malay,
who went back into the room. She found Esther weeping
bitterly. The poor girl, like a criminal condemned to death,
had woven a romance of hope, and the fatal hour had
tolled.
164 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"My dear children/' said Asie, "where do you mean to
go? — For the Baron de Nucingen "
Esther looked at the great banker with a start of surprise
that was admirably acted.
"Ja, mein kind, I am dat Baron von Kucingen."
"The Baron de Kucingen must not, cannot remain in such
a room as this/' Asie went on. "Listen to me; your former
maid Eugenie.''
"Eugenie, from de Eue Taitbout ?" cried the Baron.
"Just so ; the w^oman placed in possession of the furniture,"
replied Asie, "and who let the apartment to that handsome
Englishwoman "
"Hah ! I onderstant !" said the Baron.
"Madame's former waiting-maid," Asie went on, respect-
fully alluding to Esther, "will receive you very comfortably
this evening; and the commercial police will never think of
looking for her in her old rooms which she left three months
ago ^"
"Feerst rate, feerst rate !" cried the Baron. "An' besides,
I know dese commercial police, an' I know vat sorts shall
make dem disappear."
"You will find Eugenie a sharp customer," said Asie. "I
found her for madame."
"Hah ! I know her !" cried the millionaire, laughing. "She
haf fleeced me of dirty tousant franc."
Esther shuddered with horror in a way that would have led
a man of any feeling to trust her with his fortune.
"Oh, dat vas mein own fault," the Baron said. "I vas
seeking for you."
And he related the incident that had arisen out of the letting
of Esther's rooms to the Englishwoman.
"There, now, you see, madame, Eugenie never told you
all that, the sly thing!" said Asie. — "Still, madame is used
to the hussy," she added to the Baron. "Keep her on, all
the same."
She drew Nucingen aside and said :
"If you give Eugenie five hundred francs a month, which
WHAT LOVE COSTS 165
will fill up her stocking finely, you can know everything that
madame does : make her the lady's-maid. Eugenie will be all
the more devoted to you since she has already done you. —
jSTothing attaches a woman to a man more than the fact that
she has once fieeced him. But keep a tight rein on Eugenie ;
she will do any earthly thing for money; she is a dreadful
creature !"'
"An" vat of you ?"
"I," said Asie, "I make both ends meet."
Nucingen, the astute financier, had a bandage over his
eyes; he allowed himself to be led like a child. The sight
of that spotless and. adorable Esther wiping her eyes and
pricking in the stitches of her embroidery as demurely as
an innocent girl, revived in the amorous old man the sensa-
tions he had experienced in the Forest of Vincennes; he
would have given her the key of his safe. He felt so young,
his heart was so overflowing with adoration; he only waited
till Asie should be gone to throw himself at the feet of this
Raphael's Madonna.
This sudden blossoming of youth in the heart of a stock-
broker, of an old man, is one of the social phenomena which
must be left to physiology to account for. Crushed under
the burden of business, stifled under endless calculations
and the incessant anxieties of million-hunting, young emo-
tions revive with their sublime illusions, sprout and flower
like a forgotten cause or a forgotten seed, whose effects,
whose gorgeous bloom, are the sport of chance, brought out by
a late and sudden gleam of sunshine.
The Baron, a clerk by the time he was twelve years old in
the ancient house of Aldrigger at Strasbourg, had never set
foot in the world of sentiment. So there he stood in front
of his idol, hearing in his brain a thousand modes of speech,
while none came to his lips, till at length he acted on the
brutal promptings of desire that betrayed a man of sixty-
six.
"Vill you come to Eue Taitbout ?" said he.
"Wherever you please, monsieur," said Esther, rising.
166 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Verever I please !" he echoed in rapture. "'You are ein
anchel from de sky, and I lofe you more as if I was a little
young man, vile I hafe gray hairs "
"You had better say white, for they are too fine a biack
to be only gray,"' said Asie.
"Get out, foul dealer in human flesh ! You hafe got your
moneys ; do not slobber no more on dis flower of lofe !" cried
the banker, indemnifying himself by this violent abuse for
all the insolence he bad submitted to.
"You old rip ! I will pay you out for that speech !" said
Asie, threatening the banker with a gesture worthy of the
Halle, at which the Baron merely shrugged his shoulders.
"Between the lip of the pot and that of the guzzler there is
often a viper, and you will find me there !" she went on,
furious at Nucingen's contempt.
Millionaires, whose money is guarded by the Bank of
France, whose mansions are guarded by a squad of footmen,
whose person in the streets is safe behind the rampart of a
coach with swift English horses, fear no ill; so the Baron
looked calmly at Asie, as a man who had just given her a hun-
dred thousand francs.
This dignity had its effect. Asie beat a retreat, growling
down the stairs in highly revolutionary language; she spoke
of the guillotine !
"What have you said to her?" asked the Madonna a la
hroderie, "for she is a good soul."
"She hafe solt you, she hafe robbed you "
"When we are beggared," said she, in a tone to rend the
heart of a diplomate, "v/ho has ever any money or considera-
tion for us?"
"Poor leetle ting !" said ISTucingen. "Do not stop here
ein moment longer."
The Baron offered her his arm; he led her away just as
she was, and put her into his carriage with more respect per-
liaps than he would have shown to the handsome Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse.
"You shall hafe a fine carriage, de prettiest carriage in
WHAT LOVE COSTS 167
Paris," said Nucingen, as they drove along. "Everyting dat
luxury shall sopply shall be for you. Not any qveen shall
be more rich dan vat you shall be. You shall be respected
like ein Cherman Brant. I shall hafe you to be free. — Do
not veep ! Listen to me — I lof e you really, truly, mit de
purest lofe. Efery tear of yours breaks my heart."
''Can one truly love a woman one has bought?" said the
poor girl in the sweetest tones.
"Choseph vas solt by his broders for dat he was so comely.
Dat is so in de Biple. An' in de Eastern lants men buy deir
wifes."
On arriving at the Eue Taitbout, Esther could not return
to the scene of her happiness without some pain. She re-
mained sitting on a couch, motionless, drying away her tears
one by one, and never hearing a word of the crazy speeches
poured out by the banker. He fell at her feet, and she let
him kneel without saying a word to him, allowing him to take
her hands as he would, and never thinking of the sex of the
creature who was rubbing her feet to warm them ; for Nucin-
gen found that they were cold.
This scene of scalding tears shed on the Baron's head, and
of ice-cold feet that he tried to warm, lasted from midnight
till, two in the morning.
f^'Eugeme," cried the Baron at last to Europe, ''persvade
your^mis'ess that she shall go to bet."
"No !" cried Esther, starting to her feet like a scared
horse. "Never in this house !"
"Look here, monsieur, I know madame; she is as gentle
and kind as a lamb," said Europe to the Baron. "Only you
must not rub her the wrong way, you must get at her sideways
— she had been so miserable here. — You see how worn the
furniture is. — Let her go her own way.
"Furnish some pretty little house for her, very nicely.
Perhaps when she sees everything new about her she will
feel a stranger there, and think you better looking than you
are, and be angelically sweet. — Oh ! madame has not her
match, and you may boast of having done a very good stroke
1(58 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
of business: a good heart, genteel manners, a fine instep —
and a skin, a complexion ! Ah !
"And witty enough to make a condemned wretch laugh.
And madame can feel an attachment. — And then how she
can dress ! — Well, if it is costly, still, as they say, you get
your money's worth. — Here all the gowns were seized, every-
thing she has is three months old. — But madame is so kind,
you see, that I love her, and she is my mistress ! — But in all
justice — such a woman as she is, in the midst of furniture
that has been seized ! — And for whom ? For a young scamp
who has ruined her. Poor little thing, she is not at all
herself."
"Esther, Esther ; go to bet, my anchel ! If it is me vat
frighten you, I shall stay here on dis sofa " cried the
Baron, fired by the purest devotion, as he saw that Esther
was still weeping.
"Well, then," said Esther, taking the "lynx's" hand, and
kissing it with an impulse of gratitude which brought some-
thing very like a tear to his eye, "I shall be grateful to
you "
~^ And she fled into her room and locked the door.
"Dere is someting fery strange in all dat," thought Nucin-
gen, excited by his pillules. "Vat shall dey say at home?"
He got up and looked out of the window. "My carriage
still is dere. It shall soon be daylight." He walked up
and down the room.
"Vat Montame de Nucingen should laugh at me ven she
should know how I hafe spent dis night !"
He applied his ear to the bedroom door, thinking himself
rather too much of a simpleton.
"Esther !"
No reply.
"Mein Gott! an' she is still veeping!" said he to himself,
as he stretched himself on the sofa.
About ten minutes after sunrise, the Baron de Nucingen,
who was sleeping the uneasy slumbers that are snatched by
compulsion in an awkward position on a couch, was aroused
WHAT LOVE COSTS 169
with a start by Europe from one of those dreams that visit
us in such moments, and of which the swift complications are
a phenomenon inexplicable by medical physiology.
"Oh, God help us, madame !" she shrieked. "Madame !
— the soldiers — gendarmes — bailiffs! They have come to
take us."
At the moment when Esther opened her door and appeared,
hurriedly, wrapped in her dressing-gown, her bare feet in
slippers, her hair in disorder, lovely enough to bring
the angel Kaphael to perdition, the drawing-room door
vomited into the room a gutter of liuman mire that came
on, on ten feet, towards the beautiful girl, who stood like
an angel in some Flemish church picture. One man came
foremost. Contenson, the horrible Contenson, laid his hand
on Esthers dewy shoulder.
"You are Mademoiselle van " he began. Europe, by a
back-handed slap on Contenson' s cheek, sent him sprawling
to measure his length on the carpet, and with all the more
effect because at the same time she caught his leg with the
sharp kick known to those who practise the art as a coup de
savate.
"Hands off!" cried she. "No one shall touch my mis-
tress.^'
"She has broken my leg !" yelled Contenson, picking him-
self up ; "I will have damages !"
From the group of bumbailiffs, looking like what they
were, all standing with their horrible hats on their yet more
horrible heads, with mahogany-colored faces and bleared
eyes, damaged noses, and hideous mouths, Louchard now
stepped forth, more decently dressed than his men, but keep-
ing his hat on, his expression at once smooth-faced and
smiling.
"Mademoiselle, I arrest you !" said he to Esther. "As for
you, my girl," he added to Europe, "any resistance will be
punished, and perfectly useless."
The noise of muskets, let down, with a thud of their stocks
170 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
on the floor of the dining-room, showing that the invaders
had soldiers to back them, gave emphasis to this speech.
"And what am I arrested for?" said Esther.
"What about our little debts?" said Louchard.
"To be sure," cried Esther; "give me leave to dress."
"But, unfortunately, mademoiselle, I am obliged to make
sure that you have no way of getting out of your room," said
Louchard.
All this passed so quickly that the Baron had not yet had
time to intervene.
"Well, and am I still a foul dealer in human flesh. Baron
de Nucingen?" cried the hideous Asie, forcing her way past
the sheriff's officers to the couch, where she pretended to
have just discovered the banker.
"Contemptible wretch !" exclaimed Nucingen, drawing him-
self up in financial majesty.
He placed himself between Esther and Louchard, who took
off his hat as Contenson cried out, "Monsieur le Baron de Nu-
cingen."
At a signal from Louchard the bailiffs vanished from the
room, respectfully taking their hats off. Contenson alone
was left.
"Do you propose to pay, Monsieur le Baron?" asked he,
hat in hand.
"I shall pay," said the banker; "but I must know vat dis
is all about."
"Three hundred and twelve thousand francs and some
centimes, costs paid; but the charges for the arrest not in-
cluded."
"Three hundred thousand francs," cried the Baron; "dat
is a fery 'xpensive vaking for a man vat has passed de night
on a sofa," he added in Europe's ear.
"Is that man really the Baron de Nucingen ?" said Europe
to Louchard, giving weight to the doubt by a gesture which
Mademoiselle Dupont, the low comedy servant of the
Frangais, might have envied.
"Yes, mademoiselle," said Louchard.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 171
"Yes/' replied Contenson.
"I shall be answerable/' said the Baron, piqued in his
honor by Europe's doubt. "You shall 'llow me to. say ein
vort to her.''
Esther and her elderly lover retired to the bedroom,
Louchard finding it necessary to apply his ear to the key-
hole.
"I lofe you more as my life, Esther; but vy gife to your
creditors moneys vich shall be so much better in your pocket ?
Go into prison. I shall undertake to buy up dose hundert
tousant croAvns for ein hundert tousant francs, an' so you
shall hafe two hundert tousant francs for you "
"That scheme is perfectly useless," cried Louchard through
the door. "The creditor is not in love with mademoiselle —
not he ! You understand ? And he means to have more
than all, now he knows that you are in love with her."
"You dam' sneak !" cried Nucingen, opening the door,
and dragging Louchard into the bedroom; "you know not
dat vat you talk about. I shall gife you, you'self, tventy per
cent if you make the job."
"Impossible, M. le Baron."
"What, monsieur, you could have the heart to let my mis-
tress go to prison?" said Europe, intervening. "But take
my wages, my savings; take them, madame; I have forty
thousand francs "
"Ah, my good girl, I did not really know you !" cried
Esther, clasping Europe in her arms.
Europe proceeded to melt into tears.
"I shall pay," said the Baron piteously, as he drew out a
pocket-book, from which he took one of the little printed
forms which the Bank of France issues to bankers, on which
they have only to write a sum in figures and in words to
make them available as cheques to bearer.
"It is not worth the trouble. Monsieur le Baron/' said
Louchard; "I have instructions not to accept payment in
anything but coin of the realm — gold or silver. As it is you,
I will take banknotes."
172 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Der Teufel !" cried the Baron. "Well, show me your
papers."
Contenson handed him three packets covered with blue
paper, which the Baron took, looking at the man, and adding
in an undertone:
"It should hafe been a better day's vork for you ven you
had gife me notice."
"Wh}^ how should I know you were here, Monsieur le
Baron?" replied the spy, heedless whether Louchard heard
him. "You lost my services by withdrawing your con-
fidence. You are done," added this philosoplier, shrugging
his shoulders.
•"Qvite true," said the Baron. "Ah, my chilt," he ex-
claimed, seeing the bills of exchange, and turning to Esther,
"you are de fictim of a torough scoundrel, ein highway
tief !"
"Alas, yes," said poor Esther; "T)ut he loved me truly."
"Ven I should hafe known — I should hafe made you to
protest "
"You are off your head. Monsieur le Baron," said
Louchard; "there is a third endorsement."
"Yes, dere is a tird endorsement — Cerizet ! A man of
de opposition."
"Will you write an order on your cashier, Monsieur le
Baron?" said Louchard. "I will send Contenson to him and
dismiss my men. It is getting late, and everybody will know
that "
"Go den, Contenson," said Nucingen. "My cashier lives
at de corner of Rue des Mathi:^ins and Rue de I'Arcate.
Here is ein vort for dat he shall go to du Tillet or to de
Kellers, in case ve shall not hafe a hundert tousant franc —
for our cash shall be all at de Bank. — Get dress', my anchel,"
he said to Esther. "You are at liberty. — An' old vomans,"
he went on, looking at Asie, "are more dangerous as young
vomans."
"I will go and give the creditor a good laugh," said Asie,
"and he will give me something for a treat to-day. — We bear
WHAT LOVE COSTS 173
no malice, Monsieur le Baron," added Saint-Esteve with a
horrible courtesy.
Louchard took the bills out of the Baron's hands, and re-
mained alone with him in the drawing-room, whither, half
an hour later, the cashier came, followed by Contenson.
Esther then reappeared in a bewitching, though improvised,
costume. When the money had been counted by Louchard,
the Baron wished to examine the bills; but Esther snatched
them with a cat-like grab, and carried them away to her
desk.
"What will you give the rabble?" said Contenson to Nu-
cingen.
"You hafe not shown much consideration," said the Baron.
"And what about my leg?" cried Contenson.
"Louchart, you shall gife ein hundert francs to Contenson
out of the change of the tousand-franc note."
"De lady is a beauty," said the cashier to the Baron, as
they left the Eue Taitbout, "but she is costing you ver' dear.
Monsieur le Baron."
"Keep my segret," said the Baron, who had said the same
to Contenson and Louchard.
Louchard went away with Contenson; but on the boule-
vard Asie, who was looking out for him, stopped Louchard.
"The bailiff and the creditor are there in a cab," said she.
"They are thirsty, and there is money going."
While Louchard counted out the cash, Contenson studied
the customers. He recognized Carlos by his eyes, and traced
the form of his forehead under the wig. The wig he shrewdly
regarded as suspicious; he took the number of the cab while
seeming quite indifferent to what was going on ; Asie and
Europe puzzled him beyond measure. He thought that the
Baron was the victim of excessively clever sharpers, all the
more so because Louchard, when securing his services, had
been singularly close. And besides, the twist of Europe's
foot had not struck his shin only.
"A trick like that is learned at Saint-Lazare," he had re-
flected as he got up.
174 A COURTESANS LIFE
Carlos dismissed the bailift', paying him liberally, and as
he did so, said to the driver of the cab, "To the Perron, Palais
Eoyal."
"The rascal !" thought Contenson as he heard the order.
"There is something up !" Carlos drove to the Palais Eoyal
at a pace which precluded all fear of pursuit. He made his
way in his own fashion through the arcades, took another
cab on the Place du Chateau d'Eau, and bid the man go "to
the Passage de I'Opera, the end of the Eue Pinon."
A quarter of a hour later he was in the Eue Taitbout.
On seeing him, Esther said :
"Here are the fatal papers."
Carlos took the bills, examined them, and then burned them
in the kitchen fire.
"We have done the trick," he said, showing her three hun-
dred and ten thousand francs in a roll, which he took out of
the pocket of his coat. "This, and the hundred thousand
francs squeezed out by Asie, set us free to act."
"Oh God, oh God !" cried poor Esther.
"But, you idiot," said the ferocious swindler, "you have
only to be ostensibly Nucingen's mistress, and you can al-
ways see Lucien; he is Nucingen's friend; I do not forbid
your being madly in love with him."
Esther saw a glimmer of light in her darkened life; she
breathed once more.
"Europe, my girl," said Carlos, leading the creature into
a corner of the boudoir where no one could overhear a word,
"Europe, I am pleased with you."
Europe held up her head, and looked at this man with an
expression which so completely changed her faded features,
that Asie, witnessing the interview, as she watched her from
the door, wondered whether the interest by which Carlos held
Europe might not perhaps be even stronger than that by
which she herself was bound to him.
"That is not all, my child. Four hundred thousand francs
are a mere nothing to me. Paccard will give you an account
for some plate, amounting to thirty thousand francs, on which
WHAT LOVE COSTS 175
money has been paid on account; bnt our goldsmith, Biddin,
has paid money for us. Our furniture, seized by him, will
no doubt be advertised to-morrow. Go and see Biddin; he
lives in the Eue de I'Arbre Sec; he will give you Mont-de-
Piete tickets for ten thousand francs. You understand,
Esther ordered the plate ; she has not paid for it, and she put
it up the spout. She will be in danger of a little summons
for swindling. So we must pay the goldsmith the thirty
thousand francs, and pay up ten thousand francs to the Mont-
de-Piete to get the plate back. Forty-three thousand francs
in all, including the costs. The silver is very much alloyed ;
the Baron will give her a new service, and we shall bone a
few thousand francs out of that. You owe — what ? two years'
account with the dressmaker?"
"Put it at six thousand francs," replied Europe.
"Well, if Madame Auguste wants to be paid and keep our
custom, tell her to make out a bill for thirty thousand francs
over four years. Make a similar arrangement with the
milliner. The jeweler, Samuel Frisch the Jew, in the Rue
Sainte-Avoie, will lend you some pawn-tickets; we must owe
him twenty-five thousand francs, and we must want six thou-
sand for jewels pledged at the Mont-de-Piete. We will re-
turn the trinkets to the jeweler, half tlie stones will be imita-
tion, but the Baron will not examine them. In short, you
will make him fork out another hundred and fifty thousand
francs to add to our nest-eggs within a week."
"Madame might give me a little help," said Europe. "Tell
her so, for she sits there mumchance, and obliges me to find
more inventions than three authors for one piece."
"If Esther turns prudish, just let me know," said Carlos.
"Wucingen must give her a carriage and horses ; she will have
to choose and buy everything herself Go to the horse-dealer
and the coachmaker who are employed by the job-master
where Paccard finds work. We shall get handsome horses,
very dear, which will go lame within a month, and we shall
have to change them."
"We might get six thousand francs out of a perfumer's
bill," said Europe.
176 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Oh !" said he, shaking his head, "we must go gently. !N"u-
cingen has only got his. arm into the press; we must have
his liead. Besides all this, I must get five hundred thousand
francs."
"You can get them," replied Europe. "Madame will
soften towards the fat fool for about six hundred thousand,
and insist on four hundred thousand more to love him truly !"
"Listen to me, my child," said Carlos. "The day when I
get the last hundred thousand francs, there shall be twenty
thousand for you."
"What good will they do me?" said Europe, letting her
arms drop like a woman to whom life seems impossible.
"You could go back to Valenciennes, buy a good business,
and set up as an honest woman if you chose ; there are many
tastes in human nature. Paccard thinks of settling some-
times; he has no encumbrances on his hands, and not much
on his conscience ; you might suit each other," replied Carlos.
"Go back to Valenciennes ! What are you thinking of,
monsieur?" cried Europe in alarm.
Europe, who was born at Valenciennes, the child of very
poor parents, had been sent at seven years of age to a, spin-
ning factory, where the demands of modern industry had im-
paired her physical strength, just as vice had untimely de-
praved her. Corrupted at the age of twelve, and a mother
at thirteen, she found herself bound to the most degraded
of human creatures. On the occasion of a murder case, she
had been called as a witness before the Court. Haunted at
sixteen by a remnant of rectitude, and the terror inspired by
the law, her evidence led to the prisoner being sentenced to
twenty years of hard labor.
The convict, one of those men who have been in the hands
of justice more than once, and whose temper is apt at terrible
revenge, had said to the girl in open court :
"In ten years, as sure as you live. Prudence" (Europe's
name was Prudence Servien), "I will return to be the death
of you, if I am scragged for it."
The President of the Court tried to reassure the girl by
promising her the protection and the care of the law; but
the poor child was so terror-stricken that she fell ill, and
WHAT LOVE COSTS 177
was in hospital nearly a year. Justice is an abstract being,
represented by a collection of individuals who are incessantly
changing, whose good intentions and memories are, like them-
selves, liable to many vicissitudes. Courts and tribunals can
do nothing to hinder crimes; their business is to deal with
them when done. From this point of view, a preventive
police would be a boon to a country; but the mere word
Police is in these days a bugbear to legislators, who no longer
can distinguish between the three words — Government, Ad-
ministration, and Law-making. The legislator tends to
centralize everything in the State, as if the State could act.
The convict would be sure always to rem.ember his victim,
and to avenge himself when Justice had ceased to think of
either of them.
Prudence, who instinctively appreciated the danger — in
a general sense, so to speak — left Valenciennes and came to
Paris at the age of seventeen to hide there. She tried four
trades, of which the most successful was that of a "super" at
a minor theatre. She was picked up by Paccard, and to him
she told her woes. Paccard, Jacques Collin's disciple and
right-hand man, spoke of this girl to his master, and when
the master needed a slave he said to Prudence:
"If you will serve me as the devil must be served, I will
rid you of Durut."
Durut was the convict; the Damocles' sword hung over
Prudence Servien's head.
But for these details, many critics would have thought
Europe's attachment somewhat grotesque. And no one could
have understood the startling announcement that Carlos had
ready.
"Yes, my girl, you can go back to Valenciennes. Here,
read this."
And he held oiit to her yesterday's paper, pointing to this
paragraph :
" Toulon — Yesterday, Jenn Francois Dunit was executed here. Early
in the morning the garrison," etc.
178 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Prudence dropped the paper; her legs gave way under the
weight of her body; she lived again; for, to use her own
words, she never liked the taste of her food since the day
when Durut had threatened her.
"You see, I have kept my word. It has taken four years
to bring Durut to the scaffold by leading him into a snare.
— Well, finish my job here, and you will find yourself at the
head of a little country business in your native towju with
twenty thousand francs of your own as Paccard's wife, and I
will allow him to be virtuous as a form of pension.'^'
Europe picked up the paper and read with greedy eyes all
the details, of which for twenty years the papers have never
been tired, as to the death of convicted criminals: the im-
pressive scene, the chaplain — who has always converted the
victim — the hardened criminal preaching to his fellow con-
victs, the battery of guns, the convicts on their knees ; and then
the twaddle and reflections which never lead to any change
in the management of the prisons where eighteen hundred
crimes are herded.
"We must place Asie on the staff once more,"' said Carlos.
Asie came forward, not understanding Europe's panto-
mime.
"In bringing her back here as cook, you must begin by
giving the Baron such a dinner as he never ate in his life,"
lie went on. "Tell him that Asie has lost all her money at
play, and has taken service once more. We shall not need
;m outdoor servant. Paccard shall be coachman. Coach-
men do not leave their box, where they are safe out of the
way; and he will run less risk from spies. Madame must
turn him out in a powdered wig and a braided felt cocked
hat; that will alter his appearance. Besides, I will make
him up."
"Are we going to have men-servants in the house?" asked
Asie with a leer.
"All honest folks," said Carlos.
"All soft-heads,'" retorted the mulatto.
"If the Baron takes a house, Paccard has a friend who will
WHAT r.OYE COSTS 179
suit as the lodge porter," said Carlos. "Then we shall only
need a footman and a kitchen-maid, and you can surely keep
an eye on the two strangers "
As Carlos was leaving, Paccard made his appearance.
"Wait a little while, there are people in the street," said
the man.
This simple statement was alarming. Carlos went up to
Europe's room, and stayed there till Paccard came to fetch
him, having called a hackney cab that came into the court-
yard. Carlos pulled down the blinds, and was driven ofE at
a pace that defied pursuit.
Having reached the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, he got out
at a short distance from a hackney coach stand, to which he
went on foot, and thence returned to the Quai Malaquais,
escaping all inquiry.
"Here, child," said he to Lucien, showing him four hun-
dred banknotes for a thousand francs, "here is something
on account for the purchase of the estates of Eubempre. We
will risk a hundred thousand. Omnibuses have just been
started; the Parisians will take to the novelty; in three
months we shall have trebled our capital. I know the con-
cern; they will pay splendid dividends taken out of the
capital, to put a head on the shares — an old idea of Nucin-
gen's revived. If we acquire the Eubempre land, we shall
not have to pay on the nail.
"You must go and see des Lupeaulx, and beg him to give
you a personal recommendation to a lawyer named Desroches,
a cunning dog, whom you must call on at his office. Get
him to go to Eubempre and see how the land lies; promise
him a premium of twenty thousand francs if he manages to
secure you thirty thousand francs a year by investing eight
hundred thousand francs in land round about the ruins of the
old house."
"How you go on — on ! on !"
"I am always going on. This is no time for joking. — You
must then invest a hundred thousand crowns in Treasury
bonds, so as to lose no interest; you may safely leave it to
180 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Desroches, he is as honest as he is knowing. — That being
done, get off to Angoulenie, and persuade your sister and
your brother-in-law to pledge themselves to a little fib" in
the way of business. Your relations are to have given you
six hundred thousand francs to promote your marriage with
Clotilde de Grandlieu ; there is no disgrace in that."
"We are saved !" cried Lucien, dazzled.
"You are, yes !" replied Carlos. "But even you are not
safe till you walk out of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin with Clotilde
as your wife."
"And what have you to fear?" said Lucien, apparently
much concerned for his counselor.
"Some inquisitive souls are on my track — I must assume
the manners of a genuine priest ; it is most annoying. The
Devil wall cease to protect me if he sees me with a breviary
under my arm."
At this moment the Baron de ISTueingen, who was leaning
on his cashier's arm, reached the door of his mansion.
"1 am ver' much afrait," said he, as he went in, "dat I
hafe done a bat day's vork. Veil, we must make it up some
oder vays."
"De misfortune is dat you shall hafe been caught, mein
Herr Baron," said the worthy German, whose whole care was
for appearances.
"Ja, my miss'ess en titre should be in a position vordy of
me," said this Louis XIV. of the counting-house.
Feeling sure that sooner or later Esther would be his,
the Baron was now himself again, a masterly financier. He
resumed the management of his affairs, and with such effect
that his cashier, finding him in his office room at six o'clock
next morning, verifying his securities, rubbed his hands with
satisfaction.
"Ah, ha ! mein Herr Baron, you shall hafe saved money
last night !" said he, with a half-cunning, half-loutish
German grin.
Though men who are as rich as the Baron de Nucingen
WHAT LOVE COSTS 181
have more opportunities than others for losing money, they
also have more chances of making it, even when they indulge
their follies. Though the financial policy of the house of
Nucingen has been explained elsewhere, it may be as well
to point out that such immense fortunes are not made, are
not built up, are not increased, and are not retained in the
midst of the commercial, political, and industrial revolu-
tions of the present day but at the cost of immense losses, or,
if you choose to view it so, of heavy taxes on private fortunes.
Very little newly-created wealth is thrown into the common
treasury of the world. Every fresh accumulation represents
some new inequality in the general distribution of wealth.
What the State exacts it makes some return for; but what a
house like that of Nucingen takes, it keeps.
Such covert robbery escapes the law for the reason which
would have made a Jacques Collin of Frederick the Great,
if, instead of dealing with provinces by means of battles, he
had dealt in smuggled goods or transferable securities. The
high politics of money-making consist in forcing the States
of Europe to issue loans at twenty or at ten per cent, in
making that twenty or ten per cent by the use of public
funds, in squeezing industry on a vast scale by buying up raw
material, in throwing a rope to the first founder of a business
just to keep him above water till his drowned-out enterprise
is safely landed — in short, in all the great battles for money-
getting.
The banker, no doubt, like the conqueror, runs risks; but
there are so few men in a position to wage this warfare, that
the sheep have no business to meddle. Such grand struggles
are between the shepherds. Thus, as the defaulters are guilty
of having wanted to win too much, very little sympathy is
felt as a rule for the misfortunes brought about by the coali-
tion of the Nucingens. If a speculator blows his brains out,
if a stockbroker bolts, if a lawyer makes off with the fortune
of a hundred families — which is far worse than killing a
man — if a banker is insolvent, all these catastrophes are for-
gotten in Paris in a few months, and buried under the oceanic
surges of the great city.
182 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
The colossal fortunes of Jacques Coeur, of the Medici, of
the Angos of Dieppe, of the Auffredis of la Kochelle, of the
Fuggers, of the Tiepolos, of the Corners, were honestly made
long ago by the advantages they had over the ignorance of
the people as to the sources of precious products; but nowa-
days geographical information has reached the masses, and
competition has so effectually limited the profits, that every
rapidly made fortune is the result of chance, or of a discover}^
or of some legalized robbery. The lower grades of mercantile
enterprise have retorted on the perfidious dealings of higher
commerce, especially during the last ten years, by base adul-
teration of the raw material. "Wherever chemistry is prac-
tised, wine is no longer procurable ; the vine industry is con-
sequentl}'^ waning. Manufactured salt is sold to avoid the
excise. The tribunals are appalled by this universal dis-
honest3^ In short, French trade is regarded with suspicion
by the whole world, and England too is fast being demoral-
ized.
With us the mischief has its origin in the political situa-
tion. The Charter proclaimed the reign of Money, and suc-
cess has become the supreme consideration of an atheistic
age. And, indeed, the corruption of the higher ranks is in-
finitely more hideous, in spite of the dazzling display and
specious arguments of wealth, than that ignoble and more
personal corruption of the inferior classes, of which certain
details lend a comic element — terrible, if you will — to this
drama. The Government, always alarmed by a new idea,
has banished these materials of modern comedy from the
stage. The citizen class, less liberal than Louis XIV., dreads
the advent of its Manage de Figaro, forbids the appearance
of a political Tartuffe, and certainly would not allow Tur-
caret to be represented, for Turearet is king. Consequently,
comedy has to be narrated, and a book is now the weapon —
less swift, but no more sure — that writers wield.
In the course of this morning, amid the coming and going
of callers, orders to be given, and brief interviews, making
Nucingen's private office a sort of financial lobby, one of his
WHAT LOVE COSTS 183
stockbrokers announced to him the disappearance of a mem-
ber of the Company, one of the richest and cleverest too —
Jacques Falleix, brother of Martin Palleix, and the suc-
cessor of Jules Desmarets. Jacques Falleix was stockbroker
in ordinary to the house of ISTucingen. In concert with du
Tillet and the Kellers, the Baron had plotted the ruin of this
man in cold blood, as if it had been the killing of a Passover
lamb.
"He could not hafe belt on," replied the Baron quietly.
Jacques Falleix had done them immense service in stock-
jobbing. During a crisis a few months since he had saved
the situation by acting boldly. But to look for gratitude
from a money-dealer is as vain as to try to touch the heart
of the wolves of the Ukraine in winter.
"Poor fellow !" said the stockbroker. "He so little an-
ticipated such a catastrophe, that he had furnished a little
house for his mistress in the Eue Saint-Georges ; he has spent
a hundred and fifty thousand francs in decorations and furni-
ture. He was so devoted to Madame du Yal-Noble ! The
poor woman must give it all up. And nothing is paid
for.'-'
"Goot, goot !" thought ISTucingen, "dis is de very chance to
make up for vat I hafe lost dis night ! — He hafe paid for
noting?" he asked his informant.
"Why," said the stockbroker, "where would you find a
tradesman so ill informed as to refuse credit to Jacques
Falleix? There is a splendid cellar of wine, it would seem.
By the way, the house is for sale; he meant to buy it. The
lease is in his name. — What a piece of folly ! Plate, furni-
ture, wine, carriage-horses, everything will be valued in a
lump, and what will the creditors get out of it ?"
"Come again to-morrow," said Nucingen. "I shall hafe
seen all dat; and if it is not a declared bankruptcy, if tings
can be arranged and compromised, I shall tell you to offer
some reasonaple price for dat furniture, if I shall buy de
lease "
"That can be managed," said his friend. "If you go there
184 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
this morning, you will find one of Falleix's partners there
with the tradespeople, who want to establish a first claim ; but
la Val-ISToble has their accounts made out to Falleix."
The Baron sent off one of his clerks forthwith to his lawyer.
Jacques Falleix had spoken to him about this house, which
was worth sixty thousand francs at most, and he wished to be
put in possession of it at once, so as to avail himself of the
privileges of the householder.
The cashier, honest man, came to inquire whether his
master had lost anything by Falleix's bankruptcy.
"On de contrar', mein goot Volfgang, I stant to vin ein
hundert tousant francs."
"How vas dat ?*'
"Veil, I shall hafe de little house vat dat poor Teufel
Falleix should furnish for his mis'ess this year. I shall hafe
all dat for fifty tousant franc to de creditors ; and my notary,
Maitre Cardot, shall hafe my orders to buy de house, for de
lan'lord vant de money — I Imew dat, but I hat lost mein
head. Yer' soon my difine Esther shall life in a little
palace. ... I hafe been dere mit Falleix — it is close to
liere. — It shall fit me like a glofe."
Falleix's failure required the Baron's presence at the
Bourse; but he could not bear to leave his house in the Rue
Saint-Lazare without going to the Rue Taitbout; he was al-
ready miserable at having been away from Esther for
so many hours. He would have liked to keep her at his
elbow. The profits he hoped to make out of his stockbrokers'
plunder made the former loss of four hundred thousand
francs quite easy to endure.
Delighted to announce to his "anchel" that she was to move
from the Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where she
was to have "ein little palace" where her memories would no
longer rise up in antagonism to their happiness, the pavement
felt elastic under his feet ; he walked like a young man in a
vounc man's dream. As he turned the corner of the Rue des
Trois Freres, in the middle of his dream, and of the road,
the Baron beheld Europe coming towards him, looking very
much upset.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 185
''Vere shall you go?" he asked.
"Weil, monsieur, I was on my way to you. You were
quite right yesterday. I see now that poor madame had
better have gone to prison for a few days. But how should wo-
men understand money matters? When madame's creditors
heard that she had come home, they all came down upon us like
birds of prey. — Last evening, at seven o'clock, monsieur, men
came and stuck horrible posters up to announce a sale of
furniture on Saturday — but that is nothing. — Madame, who
is all heart, once upon a time to oblige that wretch of a man
you know "
"Vat wretch?"
"Well, the man she was in love with, d'Estourny — well,
he was charming ! He was only a gambler "
"He gambled with beveled cards !"
"Well — and what do you do at the Bourse ?" said Europe.
"But let me go on. One day, to hinder Georges, as he said,
from blowing out his brains, she pawned all her plate and
her jewels, which had never been paid for. ISTow on hearing
that she had given something to one of her creditors, they
came in a body and made a scene. They threaten her with
the police-court — ^your angel at that bar ! Is it not enough
to make a wig stand on end? She is bathed in tears; she
talks of throwing herself into the river — and she will do it."
"If I shall go to see her, dat is goot-bye to de Bourse; an'
it is impossible but I shall go, for I shall make some money
for her — ^you shall compose her. I shall pay her debts; I
shall go to see her at four o'clock. But tell me, Eugenie,
dat she shall lofe me a little "
"A little ? — A great deal ! — I tell you what, monsieur, noth-
ing but generosity can win a woman's heart. You would,
no doubt, have saved a hundred thousand francs or so by
letting her go to prison. Well, you would never have won
her heart. As she said to me — 'Eugenie, he has been noble,
grand — he has a great soul.' "
"She hafe said dat, Eugenie ?" cried the Baron.
186 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Yes, monsieur, to me, myself."
"Here — take dis ten louis."
"■'Thank you. — But she is crying at this moment; she has
been crying ever since yesterday as much as a weeping Mag-
dalen could have cried in six months. The woman you love
is in despair, and for debts that are not even hers I Oh !
men — thev devour women as women devour old fogies —
there !"
"Dey all is de same I — She hafe pledge' herself. — Yy, no
one shall ever pledge herself. — Tell her dat she shall sign
noting more. — I shall pay; but if she shall sign something
more — I ''
*^What will you do?" said Europe with an air.
"Mein Gott I I hafe no power over her. — I shall take de
management of her little affairs Dere, dere, go to comfort
her, and you shall say that in ein mont she shall live in a
little palace."
"You have invested heavily. Monsieur le Baron, and for
large interest, in a woman's heart. I tell you — jou look to
me younger. I am but a waiting-maid, but I have often seen
such a change. It is happiness — happiness gives a certain
glow. ... If you have spent a little money, do not let
that worr}- you; you "will see what a good return it will
bring. And I said to madame, I told her she would be the
lowest of the low, a perfect hussy, if she did not love you,
for you have picked her out of hell. — When once she has noth-
ing on her mind, you will see. Between you and me, I may
tell you, that night when she cried so much — What is to be
said, we value the esteem of the man who maintains us —
and she did not dare tell vou ever^i:hing. She wanted to
fly."
"To fly I" cried the Baron, in dismay at the notion. "But
the Bourse, the Bourse I — Go 'vay, I shall not come in. — But
tell her that I shall see her at her vindow — dat shall gife me
courage !''
Esther smiled at Monsieur de Xucingen as he passed the
house, and he went ponderously on his way, saying:
WHAT LOVE COSTS 187
"She is ein anchel !"
This was how Europe had succeeded in achieving the im-
possible. At about half-past two Esther had finished dress-
ing, as she was wont to dress when she expected Lucien; she
was looking charming. Seeing this. Prudence, looking out
of the window, said, "There is monsieur !"
The poor creature flew to the window, thinking she should
see Lucien; she saw Nucingen.
"Oh ! how cruelly 3^ou hurt me !" she said.
"There was no other way of getting you to seem to be
gracious to a poor old man, who, after all, is going to pay
your debts," said Europe. "For they are all to be paid."
"What debts ?" said the girl, who only cared to preserve her
love, which dreadful hands were scattering to the winds.
"Those which Monsieur Carlos made in your name."
"Why, here are nearly four hundred and fifty thousand
francs," cried Esther.
"And you owe a hundred and fifty thousand more. But
the Baron took it all very well. — He is going to remove you
from hence, and place you in a little palace. — On my honor,
you are not so badly off. In your place, as you have got on
the right side of this man, as soon as Carlos is satisfied, I
should make him give me a house and a settled income. You
are certainly the handsomest woman I ever saw, madame, and
the most attractive, but we so soon grow ugly ! I was fresh and
good-looking, and look at me ! I am twenty-three, about the
same age as madame, and I look ten years older. An illness is
enough. — Well, but when you have a house in Paris and in-
vestments, you need never be afraid of ending in the streets.''--T^
Esther had ceased to listen to Europe-Eugenie-Prudence :
Servien. The will of a man gifted with the genius of cor-
ruption had thrown Esther back into the mud with as much
force as he had used to drag her out of it.
Those who know love in its infinitude know that those who
do not accept its virtues do not experience its pleasures.
Since the scene in the den in the Eue de Langlade, Esther
had utterly forgotten her former existence. She had since
1
188 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
lived very virtuously, cloistered by her passion. Hence, to
avoid any obstacle, the skilful fiend had been clever enough
to lay such a train that the poor girl, prompted by her devo-
tion, had raerely to utter her consent to swindling actions
already done, or on the point of accomplishment. This sub-
tlety, revealing the mastery of the tempter, also characterized
the methods by which he had subjugated Lucien. He created
a terrible situation, dug a mine, filled it with powder, and at
the critical moment said to his accomplice, "You have only to
nod, and the whole will explode !"
Esther of old, knowing only the morality peculiar to
courtesans, thought all these attentions so natural, that she
measured her rivals only by what they could get men to spend
on them. Euined fortunes are the conduct-stripes of these
creatures. Carlos, in counting on Esther's memor}^, had not
^calculated wrongly.
These tricks of warfare, these stratagems employed a thou-
sand times, not only by these women, but by spendthrifts too,
did not disturb Esther's mind. She felt nothing but her per-
sonal degradation ; she loved Lucien, she was to be the Baron
de Xucingen's mistress "by appointment" ; this was all she
thought of. The supposed Spaniard might absorb the earnest-
mone}-, Lucien might build up his fortune with the stones of
her tomb, a single night of pleasure might cost the old banker
so many thousand-franc notes more or less, Europe might
extract a fevr hundred thousand francs by more or less in-
genious tricker}^, — none of these things troubled the enam-
ored girl ; this alone was the canker that ate into her heart.
For five years she had looked upon herself as being as white
as an angel. She loved, she was happy, she had never com-
mitted the smallest infidelity. This beautiful pure love was
now to be defiled.
There was, in her mind, no conscious contrasting of her
happy isolated past and her foul future life. It was neither
interest nor sentiment that moved her, only an indefinable
and all powerful feeling that she had been white and was now-
black, pure and was now impure, noble and was now ignoble.
WHAT LOVE COSTS ISO
Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her unen-
durable. And when the Baron's passion had threatened her,
she had really thought of throwing herself out of the window.
In short, she loved Lueien wholly, and as women very rarely^
love a man. Women who say they love, who often think they
love best, dance, waltz, and flirt with other men, dress for the
world, and look for a harvest of concupiscent glances; but
Esther, without any sacrifice, had 'achieved miracles of true
love. She had loved Lueien for six years as actresses love and
courtesans — women who, having rolled in mire and impurity,
thirst for something noble, for the self-devotion of true love,
and who practise exclusiveness — the only word for an idea so
little known in real life.
Vanished nations, Greece, Eome, and the East, have at all
times kept women shut up ; the woman who loves should shut
herself up. So it may easily be imagined that on quitting the
palace of her fancy, where this poem had been enacted, to go
to this old man's "little palace," Esther felt heartsick. Urged
by an iron hand, she had found herself waist-deep in disgrace
before she had time to reflect; but for the past two days she
had been reflecting, and felt a mortal chill about her heart.
At the words, "End in the street," she started to her feet
and said:
"In the street ! — ISTo, in the Seine rather."
"In the Seine? And what about Monsieur Lueien?" said
Europe.
This single word brought Esther to her seat again ; she re-
mained in her armchair, her eyes fixed on a rosette in the
carpet, the fire in her brain drying up her tears.
At four o'clock Nucingen found his angel lost in that sea
of meditations and resolutions whereon a woman's spirit
floats, and whence she emerges with utterances that are in-
comprehensible to those who have not sailed it in her convoy.
"Clear your brow, meine Schone," said the Baron, sitting
down by her. "You shall hafe no more debts — I shall ar-
range mit Eugenie, an' in ein mont you shall go 'vay from
dese rooms and go to dat little palace. — Vas a pretty hant. —
190 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Gife it me dat I shall kiss it." Esther gave him her hand as
a dog gives a paw, "Ach, ja ! You shall gife de hant, but
not de heart, and it is dat heart I lofe !"
The words were spoken with such sincerity of accent, that
poor Esther looked at the old man with a compassion in her
eyes that almost maddened him. Lovers, like martyrs, feel a
brotherhood in their sufferings ! Xothing in the world gives
such a sense of kindred as community of sorrow.
"Poor man !" said she, 'Tie really loves."
As he heard the words, misunderstanding their meaning,
the Baron turned pale, the Dlood tingled in his veins, he
breathed the airs of heaven. At his age a millionaire, for such
a sensation, will pay as much gold as a woman can ask.
"I lofe you like vat I lofe my daughter," said he. "An' I
feel dere" — and he laid her hand over his heart — "dat I shall
not bear to see you anyting but happy."
"If you would only be a father to me, I would love you very
much; I would never leave you; and you would see that I am
not a bad woman, not grasping or greedy, as I must seem to
you now "
"You hafe done some little follies," said the Baron, "like
all dose pretty vomen — dat is all. Say no more about dat. It
is our pusiness to make money for you. Be happy ! I shall be
your fater for some days yet, for I know I must make you
accustom' to my old carcase."
"Really !" she exclaimed, springing on to Nucingen's knees,
and clinging to him with her arm round his neck.
"Eeally !" repeated he, trying to force a smile.
She kissed his forehead ; she believed in an impossible com-
bination— she might remain untouched and see Lucien.
She was so coaxing to the banker that she was La Torpille
once more. She fairly bewitched the old man, who promised
to be a father to her for forty days. Those forty days were
to be emp'loyed in acquiring and arranging the house in the
Eue Sain^t- Georges.
When he was in the street again, as he went home, the
Baron said to himself, "I am an old flat."
WHAT LOVE COSTS 191
But though in Esther's presence he was a mere child, away
from her he resumed his lynx's skin; just as the gambler (in
le Joueur) becomes affectionate to Angelique when he has not
a Hard.
"A half a million francs I hafe paid, and I hafe not yet seen
vat her leg is like. — Dat is too silly ! but, happily, nobody
shall hafe known it !" said he to himself three weeks after.
And he made great resolutions to come to the point with
the woman who had cost him so dear ; then, in Esther's pres-
ence once more, he spent all the time he could spare her in
making up for the roughness of his first words.
"After all," said he, at the end of a month, "I cannot be de
fater eternal !"
Towards the end of the month of December 1829, just be-
fore installing Esther in the house in the Eue Saint-Georges,
the Baron begged du Tillet to take Florine there, that she
might see whether everything was suitable to Nucingen's
fortune, and if the description of "a little palace" were duly
realized by the artists commissioned to make the cage worthy
of the bird.
Every device known to luxury before the Eevolution of
1830 made this residence a masterpiece of taste. Grindot
the architect considered it his greatest achievement as a deco-
rator. The staircase, which had been reconstructed of marble,
the judicious use of stucco ornament, textiles, and gilding,
the smallest details as much as the general effect, outdid
everything of the kind left in Paris from the time of
iWs XV.
"This is my dream ! — This and virtue !" said Florine with
a smile. "And for whom are you spending all this money ?"
she asked Nucingen. "A virgin sent down from heaven ?"
"For a voman vat is going up there," replied the Baron.
"A way of playing Jupiter?" replied the actress. "And
when is she on show ?"
"On the day of the house-warming," cried du Tillet.
"Not before dat," said the Baron.
"My word, how we must lace and brush and fig ourselves
1U2 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
out/*' Florine went on. '^'TThat a dance the women will lead
their dressmakers and hairdressers for that evening's fun I —
And when is it to he ?''
"Dat is not for me to say.*'
'^VThat a woman she must be !" cried Florine. "How much
I should like to see her !"'
'■'An' so should I,'' answered the Baron artlessly.
'^*hat I is eventhiiig new together — the house, the furni-
ture, and the woman?"'
"Even the banker," said du Tillet, ''for my old friend seems
to me quite young again."
"Well, he must go back to his twentieth year," said Florine ;
"at any rate, for once."
In the early days of 1830 ever}'body in Paris was talking of
Xucingen's passion and the outrageous splendor of his house.
The poor Baron, pointed at, laughed at, and fuming with
rage, as may easily be imagined, took it into his head that on
the occasion of giving the house-warming he would at the same
time get rid of his paternal disguise, and get the price of so
much generosity. Always circumvented by "La Torpille,"
he determined to treat of their union by correspondence, so as
to win from her an autograph promise. Bankers have no
faith in anything less than a promissory note.
So one morning early in the year he rose early, locked him-
self into his room, and composed the following letter in very
good French; for though he spoke the language very badly,
he could write it very well : —
"Dear Esther, the flower of my thoughts and the only joy
of my life, when I told you that I loved you as I love my
daughter, I deceived you, I deceived myself. I only wished
to express the holiness of my sentiments, which are unlike
those felt by other men, in the first place, because I am an old
man, and also because I have never loved till now. I love you
=0 much, that if you cost me my fortune I should not love you
the less.
"Be just ! Most men would not. like me, have seen the
WHAT LOVE COSTS 193
angel in you ; I have never even glanced at your past. I love
you both as I love iny daughter Augusta, and as I might love
my wife, if my wife could have loved me. Since the only ex-
cuse for an old man's love is that he should be happy, ask
yourself if I am not playing a too ridiculous part. I have
taken you to be the consolation and joy of my declining days.
You know that till I die you will be as happy as a woman
can be; and you know, too, that after my death you will be
rich enough to be the envy of many women. In every stroke
of business I have effected since I have had the happiness of
your acquaintance, your share is set apart, and you have a
standing account with ISTucingen's bank. In a few days you
will move into a house which, sooner or later, will be your
own if you like it. Now, plainly, will you still receive me
then as a father, or will you make me happy?
"Forgive me for writing so frankly, but when I am with
you I lose all courage; I feel too keenly that you are indeed
my mistress. I have no wish to hurt you ; I only want to tell
you how much I suffer, and how hard it is to wait at my age,
when every day takes with it some hopes and some pleasures.
Besides, the delicacy of my conduct is a guarantee of the sin-
cerity of my intentions. Have I ever behaved as your cred-
itor? You are like a citadel, and I am not a young man.
In answer to my appeals, you say your life is at stake, and
when I hear you, you make me believe it ; but here I sink into
dark melancholy and doubts dishonorable to us both. You
seemed to me as sweet and innocent as you are lovely ; but you
insist on destroying my convictions. Ask yourself ! — You tell
me you bear a passion in your heart, an indomitable passion,
but you refuse to tell me the name of the man you love. — Is
this natural ?
"You have turned a fairly strong man into an incredibly
weak one. You see what I have come to ; I am induced to ask
you at the end of five months what future hope there is for
my passion. Again, I must know what part I am to play at
the opening of your house. Money is nothing to me when it
194 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
is spent for you ; I will not be so absurd as to make a merit
to you of this contempt ; but though my love knows no limits,
my fortune is limited, and I care for it only for your sake.
Well, if by giving you everything I possess I might, as a poor
man, win your affection, I would rather be poor and loved
than rich and scorned by you.
"You have altered me so completely, my dear Esther, that
no one knows me ; I paid ten thousand francs for a picture by
Joseph Bridau because you told me that he was clever and
unappreciated. I give every beggar I meet five francs in your
name. Well, and what does the poor old man ask, who
regards himself as your debtor when you do him the honor of
accepting anything he can give you? He asks only for a
hope — and what a hope, good God ! Is it not rather the cer-
tainty of never having anything from you but what my pas-
sion may seize ? The fire in my heart will abet your cruel de-
ceptions. You find me ready to submit to every condition
you can impose on my happiness, on my few pleasures; but
promise me at least that on the day when you take possession
of your house you will accept the heart and service of him
who, for, the rest of his days, must sign himself your slave,
"Fe^d^ric de ISTucingen."
"Faugh ! how he bores me — this money bag !" cried Esther,
a courtesan once more. She took a small sheet of notepaper
and wrote all over it, as close as it could go, Scribe's famous
phrase, which has become a proverb, "Prenez mon ours."
A quarter of an hour later, Esther, overcome by remorse,
wrote the following letter: —
"Monsieur le Baron, —
"Pay no heed to the note you have just received from me ;
I had relapsed into the folly of my youth. Forgive, monsieur,
a poor girl who ought to be your slave. I never more keenly
felt the degradation of my position than on the day when I
was handed over to you. \"ou have paid ; I owe myself to you.
There is nothing more sacred than a debt of dishonor. I
WHAT LOVE COSTS 195
have no right to compound it by throwing myself into the
Seine.
"A debt can always be discharged in that dreadful coin
which is good only to the debtor; you will find me yours to
command. I will pay off in one night all the sums for which
that fatal hour has been mortgaged ; and I am sure that such
an hour with me is worth millions — all the more because it
will be the only one, the last. I shall then have paid the debt,
and may get away from life. A good woman has a chance of
restoration after a fall ; but we, the like of us, fall too low.
"My determination is so fixed that I beg you will keep this
letter in evidence of the cause of death of her who remains,
for one day, your servant,
"Esther."
Having sent this letter, Esther felt a pang of regret. Ten
minutes after she wrote a third note, as follows : —
"Forgive me, dear Baron — it is I once more. I did not
mean either to make game of you or to wound you; I only
want you to reflect on this simple argument: If we were to
continue in the position towards each other of father and
daughter, your pleasure would be small, but it would be en-
during. If you insist on the terms of the bargain, you will
live to mourn for me.
"I will trouble you no more: the day when you shall choose
pleasure rather than happiness will have no morrow for me. —
Your daughter,
"Esther."
On receiving the first letter, the Baron fell into a cold fury
such as a millionaire may die of ; he looked at himself in the
glass and rang the bell.
"An hot bat for mein feet," said he to his new valet.
While he was sitting with his feet in the bath, the second
letter came ; he read it, and fainted away. He was carried to
bed.
196 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
When the banker recovered consciousness, Madame de Nu-
cingen was sitting at the foot of the bed.
"The hussy is right !" said she. "Wh}'- do you try to buy
love? Is it to be bought in the market? — Let me see your
letter to her."
The Baron gave her sundry rough drafts he had made;
Madame de ISTucingen read them, and smiled. Then came
Esther's third letter.
"She is a wonderful girl !" cried the Baroness, when she
^^had read it.
"Vat shall I do, montame ?" asked the Baron of his wife.
"Wait."
"Wait ? But nature is pitiless !" he cried.
"Look here, my dear, you have been admirably kind to me,"
said Delphine; "I will give you some good advice."
"You are a ver' goot voman," said he. "Ven you hafe any
debts I shall pay."
"Your state on receiving these letters touches a woman far
more than the spending of millions, or than all the letters
you could write, however fine they may be. Try to let her
know it, indirectly; perhaps she will be yours! And — have
no scruples, she will not die of that," added she, looking
keenly at her husband.
But Madame de Nucingen knew nothing whatever of the
nature of such women.
"Vat a defer voman is Montame de Nueingen !" said the
Baron to himself when his wife had left him.
Still, the more the Baron admired the subtlety of his
wife's counsel, the less could he see how he might act upon it ;
and he not only felt that he was stupid, but he told himself so.
The stupidity of wealthy men, though it is almost pro-
verbial, is only comparative. The faculties of the mind, like
the dexterity of the limbs, need exercise. The dancer's
strength is in his feet; the blacksmith's in his arms; the
market porter is trained to carry loads ; the singer works his
larynx ; and the pianist hardens his wrist. A banker is prac-
tised in business matters; he studies and plans them, and
WHAT LOVE COSTS 197
pulls the wires of various interests, just as a playwright trains
his intelligence in combining situations, studying his actors,
giving life to his dramatic figures.
We should no more look for powers of conversation in the
Baron de Nucingen than for the imagery of a poet in the
brain of a mathematician. How many poets occur in an age,
who are either good prose writers, or as witty in the inter-
course of daily life as Madame Cornuel? Buffon was dull
company; Newton was never in love; Lord Byron loved no-
body but himself; Eousseau was gloomy and half crazy; La
Fontaine absent-minded. Human energy, equally distrib-
uted, produces dolts, mediocrity in all ; unequally bestowed it
gives rise to those incongruities to whom the name of Genius
is given, and which, if we only could see them, would look like
deformities. The same law governs the body ; perfect beauty
is generally allied with coldness or silliness. Though Pascal
was both a great mathematician and a great writer, though
Beaumarchais was a good man of business, and Zamet a pro-
found courtier, these rare exceptions prove the general prin-
ciple of the specialization of brain faculties.
Within the sphere of speculative calculations the banker
put forth as much intelligence and skill, finesse and mental
power, as a practised diplomatist expends on national affairs.
If he were equally remarkabl}^ outside his office, the banker
would be a great man. Nucingen made one with the Prince
de Ligne, with Mazarin or with Diderot, is a human formula
that is almost inconceivable, but which has nevertheless been
known as Pericles, Aristotle, Voltaire, and JSTapoleon. The
splendor of the Imperial crown must not blind us to the merits
of the individual ; the Emperor was charming, well informed,
and witty.
Monsieur de Nucingen, a banker and nothing more, having
no inventiveness outside his business, like most bankers, had
no faith in anything but sound security. In matters of art
he had the good sense to go, cash in hand, to experts in every
branch, and had recourse to the best architect, the best sur-
geon, the greatest connoisseur in pictures or statues, the
13
198 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
cleverest lawyer, when he wished to build a house, to attend
to his health, to purchase a work of art or an estate. But as
there are no recognized experts in intrigue, no connoisseurs in
love affairs, a banker finds himself in difficulties when he is
in love, and much puzzled as to the management of a woman.
So Nucingen could think of no better method than that he
had hitherto pursued — to give a sum of money to some Fron-
• tin, male or female, to act and think for him.
Madame de Saint-Esteve alone could carry out the plan
imagined by the Baroness, Nucingen bitterly regretted hav-
ing quarreled with the odious old clothes-seller. However,
feeling confident of the attractions of his cash-box and the
soothing documents signed Garat, he rang for his man and
told him to inquire for the repulsive widow in the Eue Saint-
Mare, and desire her to come to see him.
In Paris extremes are made to meet by passion. Vice is
constantly binding the rich to the poor, the great to the mean.
The Empress consults Mademoiselle Lenormand; the fine
gentleman in every age can always find a Ramponneau.
The man returned within two hours.
"Monsieur le Baron," said he, "Madame de Saint-Esteve is
ruined."'
"Ah ! so much de better !" cried the Baron in glee. "I shall
hafe her safe den.^'
"The good woman is given to gambling, it would seem,"
the valet went on. "And, moreover, she is under the thumb
of a third-rate actor in a suburban theatre, whom, for de-
cency's sake, she calls her godson. She is a first-rate cook, it
would seem, and wants a place."
"Dose teufel of geniuses of de common people hafe alvays
ten vays of making money, and ein dozen vays of spending it,"
said the Baron to himself, quite unconscious that Panurge
had thought the same thing.
He sent his servant off in quest of Madame de Saint-
Esteve, who did not come till the next day. Being questioned
by Asie, the servant revealed to this female spy the terrible
effects of the notes written to Monsieur le Baron by his mis-
tress.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 199
"Monsieur must be desperately in love with the woman,"
said he in conclusion, "for he was very near dying. For my
part, I advised him never to go back to her, for he will be
wheedled over at once. A woman who has already cost Mon-
sieur le Baron five hundred thousand francs, they say, with-
out counting what he has spent on the house in the Eue Saint-
Georges ! But the woman cares for money, and for money
only. — As madame came out of monsieur's room, she said
with a laugh: 'If this goes on, that slut will make a widow
of me !' "
"The devil !" cried Asie ; "it will never do to kill the goose
that lays the golden eggs."
"Monsieur le Baron has no hope now but in you," said the
valet.
"Ah ! The fact is, I do know how to make a woman go."
"Well, walk in," said the man, bowing to such occult
powers.
'^ell," said the false Saint-Esteve, going into the suf-
ferer's room with an abject air, "Monsieur le Baron has met
with some little difficulties? What can you expect ! Every-
body is open to attack on his weak side. Dear me, I have had
my troubles too. Within two months the wheel of Fortune
has turned upside down for me. Here I am looking out for
a place ! — We have neither of us been very wise. If Monsieur
le Baron would take me as cook to Madame Esther, I would
be the most devoted of slaves. I should be useful to you,
monsieur, to keep an eye on Eugenie and madame."
"Dere is no hope of dat," said the Baron. "I cannot suc-
ceet in being de master, I am let such a tanee as "
"As a top," Asie put in. "Well, you have made others
dance, daddy, and the little slut has got you, and is making
a fool of you. — Heaven is just !"
"Just ?" said the Baron. "I hafe not sent for you to preach
to me "
"Pooh, my boy ! A little moralizing breaks no bones. It
is the salt of life to the like of us, as vice is to your bigots. —
Come, have you been generous? You have paid her debts?"
200 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Ja," said the Baron lamentably.
"That is well ; and you have taken her things out of pawn,
and that is better. But you must see that it is not enough.
All this gives her no occupation, and these creatures love to
cut a dash "
"I shall hafe a surprise for her, Eue Saint-Georches — she
knows dat/' said the Baron. "But I shall not be made a
fool of."
"Very well then, let her go."
"I am only af rait dat she shall let me go !" cried the Baron.
"And we want our money's worth, my boy," replied Asie.
"Listen to me. We have fleeced the public of some millions,
my little friend? Twenty-five millions I am told you
possess."
The Baron could not suppress a smile.
"Well, you must let one go."
"I shall let one go, but as soon as I shall let one go, I shall
hafe to give still another."
"Yes, I understand," replied Asie. "You will not say B
for fear of having to go on to Z. Still, Esther is a good
girl "
"A ver' honest girl," cried the banker. "An' she is ready
to submit ; but only as in payment of a debt."
"In short, she does not want to be your mistress ; she feels
an aversion. — Well, and I understand it ; the child has always
done just what she pleased. When a girl has never known
any but charming young men, she cannot take to an old one.
You are not handsome ; you are as big as Louis XVIII., and
rather dull company, as all men are who try to cajole for-
tune instead of devoting themselves to women. — Well, if you
don't think six hundred thovisand francs too much," said Asie,
"I pledge myself to make her whatever you can wish."
"Six huntert tousant franc !" cried the Baron, with a start.
"Esther is to cost me a million to begin with !"
"Happiness is surely worth sixteen hundred thousand
francs, you old sinner. You must know, men in these days
have certainly spent more than one or two millions on a mis-
WHAT LOVE COSTS 201
tress. I even know women who have cost men their lives, for
whom heads have rolled into the basket. — You know the
doctor who poisoned his friend? He wanted the money to
gratify a woman."
"Ja, I know all dat. But if I am in lofe, I am not ein
idiot, at least vile I am here; but if I shall see her, I shall
gife her my pocket-book "
"Well, listen, Monsieur le Baron," said Asie, assuming the
attitude of a Semiramis. "You have been squeezed dry
enough already. Now, as sure as my name is Saint-Esteve —
in the way of business, of course — I will stand by you."
"Goot, I shall repay you."
"I believe you, my boy, for I have shown you that I know
how to be revenged. Besides, I tell you this, daddy, I know
how to snuff out your Madame Esther as you would snuff a
candle. And I know my lady ! When the little huzzy has
once made you happy, she will be even more necessary to you
than she is at this moment. You paid me well ; you have
allowed yourself to be fooled, but, after all, you have forked
out. — I have fulfilled my part of the agreement, haven't I?
Well, look here, I will make a bargain with you."
"Let me hear."
"You shall get me the place as cook to Madame, engage
me for ten years, and pay the last five in advance — what is
that? Just a little earnest-money. When once I am about
madame, I can bring her to these terms. Of course, you
must first order her a lovely dress from Madame Auguste,
who knows her style and taste; and order the new carriage
to be at the door at four o'clock. After the Bourse closes,
go to her rooms and take her for a little drive in the Bois de
Boulogne. Well, by that act the woman proclaims herself
your mistress; she has advertised herself to the eyes and
knowledge of all Paris: A hundred thousand francs. — You
must dine with her — I know how to cook such a dinner ! —
You must take her to the play, to the Varietes, to a stage-box,
and then all Paris will say, 'There is that old rascal Nucingen
with his mistress.' It is very flattering to know that such
202 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
things are said. — Well, all this, for I am not grasping, is in-
cluded for the first hundred thousand francs. — In a week, by
such conduct, you will have made some wa}^ "
"But I shall hafe paid ein hundert tousant franc."
"In the course of the second week," Asie went on, as though
she had not heard this lamentable ejaculation, "madame,
tempted by these preliminaries, will have made up her mind
to leave her little apartment and move to the house you are
giving her. Your Esther will have seen the world again, have
found her old friends; she will wish to shine and do the
honors of her palace — it is in the nature of things : Another
hundred thousand francs ! — By Heaven ! you are at home
there, Esther compromised — she must be yours. The rest is
a mere trifle, in which you must play the principal part, old
elephant. (How wide the monster opens his eyes!) Well,
I will undertake that too: Four hundred thousand — and
that, my fine fellow, you need not pay till the day after. What
do you think of that for honesty? I have more confidence
in you than you have in me. If I persuade madame to show
herself as your mistress, to compromise herself, to take every
gift you offer her, — perhaps this very day, you will believe
that I am capable of inducing her to throw open the pass of
the Great Saint Bernard. And it is a hard job, I can tell
you ; it will take as much pulling to get your artillery through
as it took the -first Consul to get over the Alps."
"But vy?"
"Her heart is full of love, old shaver, rasibus, as you say
who know Latin," replied Asie. "She thinks herself the
Queen of Sheba, because she has washed herself in sacrifices
made for her lover — an idea that that sort of woman gets
into her head ! Well, well, old fellow, we must be just. — It
is fine ! That baggage would die of grief at being your mis-
tress— I really should not wonder. But what I trust to, and
I tell you to give you courage, is that there is good in the girl
at bottom."
"You hafe a genius for corruption," said the Baron, who
had listened to Asie in admiring silence, "just as I hafe de
knack of de banking,"
WHAT LOVE COSTS 203
"Then it is settled, my pigeon ?" said Asie.
"Done for fifty tousant franc insteat of ein hundert tou-
sant ! — An' I shall give you fife hundert tousant de day after
my triumph."
"Very good, I will set to work," said Asie. "And you may
come, monsieur," she added respectfully. "You will find
madame as soft already as a cat's back, and perhaps inclined
to make herself pleasant."
"Go, go, my goot voman," said the banker, rubbing his
hands.
And after seeing the horrible mulatto out of the house, he
said to himself:
"How vise it is to hafe much money."
He sprang out of bed, went down to his office, and resumed
the conduct of his immense business with a light heart.
Nothing could be more fatal to Esther than the steps taken
\ by Nucingen. The hapless girl, in defending her fidelity,
""was defending her life. This very natural instinct was what
Carlos called prudery. Now Asie, not without taking such
precautions as usual in such cases, went off to report to Carlos
the conference she had held with the Baron, and all the profit
she had made by it. The man's rage, like himself, was terri-
ble ; he came forthwith to Esther, in a carriage with the blinds
dra^M3, driving into the courtyard. Still almost white with
fury, the double-dyed forger went straight into the poor girl's
room; she looked at him — she was standing up — and she
dropped on to a chair as though her legs had snapped.
"What is the matter, monsieur ?" said she, quaking in every
limb.
"Leave us, Europe," said he to the maid.
Esther looked at the woman as a child might look at its
mother, from whom some assassin had snatched it to mur-
der it.
"Do you know where you will send Lucien?" Carlos went
on when he was alone with Esther.
"Where ?" asked she in a low voice, venturing to glance at
her executioner.
204 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Where I come from, my beauty." Esther, as she looked at
the man, saw red. "To the hulks," he added in an undertone.
Esther shut her eyes and stretched herself out, her arms
dropped, and she turned white. The man rang, and Prudence
appeared.
"Bring her round," he said coldly ; "I have not done."
He walked up and down the drawing-room while waiting.
Prudence-Europe was obliged to come and beg monsieur to
lift Esther on to the bed; he carried her with an ease that
betrayed athletic strength.
They had to procure all the chemist's strongest stimulants
to restore Esther to a sense of her woes. An hour later the
poor girl was able to listen to this living nightmare, seated at
the foot of her bed, his eyes fixed and glowing like two spots
of molten lead.
"My little sweetheart," said he, "Lucien now stands be-
tween a splendid life, honored, happy, and respected, and the
hole full of water, mud, and gravel into which he was going
to plunge when I met him. The house of Grandlieu requires
of the dear boy an estate worth a million francs before secur-
ing for him the title of Marquis, and handing over to him
that may-pole named Clotilde, by whose help he will rise to
power. Thanks to you, and me, Lucien has just purchased
his maternal manor, the old Chateau de Rubempre, which,
indeed, did not cost much — thirty thousand francs: but his
lawyer, by clever negotiations, has succeeded in adding to it.
estates worth a million, on which three hundred thousand
francs are paid. The chateau, the expenses, and percentages
to the men who were put forward as a blind to conceal the
transaction from the country people, have swallowed up the
remainder.
"We have, to be sure, a hundred thousand francs invested
in a business here, which a few months hence will be worth
two to three hundred thousand francs ; but there will still be
four hundred thousand francs to be paid.
"In three days Lucien will be home from Angouleme,
where he has been, because he must not be suspected of having
found a fortune in remaking your bed "
WHAT LOVE COSTS 205
"Oh no !" cried she, looking up with a noble impulse.
"I ask you, then, is this a moment to scare off the Baron ?""
he went on calmly. "And you very nearly killed him the day
before yesterday; he fainted like a woman on reading your
second letter. You have a fine style — I congratulate you!
If the Baron had died, where should we be now? — When
Lucien walks out of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin son-in-law to the
Due de Grandlieu, if you want to try a dip in the Seine
Well, my beauty, I offer you my hand for a dive together. It
is one way of ending matters.
"But consider a moment. Would it not be better to live
and say to yourself again and again, 'This fijie fortune, this
happy family' — for he will have children — children! — Have
you ever thought of the joy of running your fingers through
the hair of his children ?"
Esther closed her eyes with a little shiver.
"Well, as you gaze on that structure of happiness, you may
say to yourself, 'This is my doing !' "
There was a pause, and the two looked at each other.
"This is what I have tried to make out of such despair
as saw no issue but the river," said Carlos. "Am I selfish?
That is the way to love ! Men show such devotion to
none but kings! But I have anointed Lucien king. If I
were riveted for the rest of my days to my old chain, I fancy
I could stay there resigned so long as I could say, 'He is gay,
he is at Court.' My soul and mind would triumph, while
my carcase was given over to the jailers ! You are a mere
female ; you love like a female ! But in a courtesan, as in all
degraded creatures, love should be a means to motherhood,
in spite of Nature, which has stricken you with barrenness!
"If ever, under the skin of the Abbe Carlos Herrera, any
one were to detect the convict I have been, do you know what
I would do to avoid compromising Lucien?"
Esther awaited the reply with some anxiety.
"Well," he said after a brief pause, "I would die as the
negroes do — without a word. And you, with all your airs,
will put folks on my traces. What did I require of you ? — To
.206 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
be La Torpille again for six months — for six weeks; and to
do it to clutch a million.
"Lucien will never forget you. Men do not forget the
being of whom they are reminded day after day by the joy
of awaking rich every morning. Lucien is a better fellow
than you are. He began by loving Coralie. She died — good ;
but he had not money enough to bury her; he did not do as
you did just now, he did not faint, though he is a poet; he
wrote six rollicking songs, and earned three hundred francs,
with which he paid for Coralie's funeral. I have those songs ;
I know them by heart. Well, then, do you too compose your
songs : be cheerful, be wild, be irresistible and — insatiable !
You hear me? — Do not let me have to speak again.
"Kiss papa. Good-bye."
When, half an hour after, Europe went into her mistress'
room, she found her kneeling in front of a crucifix, in the
attitude which the most religious of painters has given to
Moses before the burning bush on Horeb, to depict his deep
and complete adoration of Jehovah. After saying her
prayers, Esther had renounced her better life, the honor she
had created for herself, her glory, her virtue, and her love.
She rose.
"Oh, madame, you will never look like that again !" cried
Prudence Servien, struck by her mistress' sublime beauty.
She hastily turned the long mirror so that the poor girl
should see herself. Her eyes still had a light as of the soul
flying heavenward. The Jewess' complexion was brilliant.
Sparkling with tears unshed in the fervor of prayer, her eye-
lashes were like leaves after a summer shower, for the last
time they shone with the sunshine of pure love. Her lips
seemed to preserve an expression as of her last appeal to the
angels, whose palm of martyrdom she had no doubt borrowed
while placing in their hands her past unspotted life. And she
had the majesty which Mary Stuart must have shown at the
moment when she bid adieu to her crown, to earth, and to
love.
"I wish Lucien could have seen me thus !" she said with a
WHAT LOVE COSTS 20T
smothered sigh. "Now," she added, in a strident tone, "now
for a fling !"
Europe stood dumb at hearing the words, as though she
had heard an angel blaspheme.
"Well, why need you stare at me to see if I have cloves in
my mouth instead df teeth ? I am nothing henceforth but a
vile, foul creature, a thief — and I expect milord. So get me
a hot bath, and put my dress out. It is twelve o'clock; the
Baron will look in, no doubt, when the Bourse closes ; I shall
tell him I was waiting for him, and Asie is to prepare us
dinner, first-chop, mind you ; I mean to turn the man's brain.
— Come, hurry, hurry, my girl; we are going to have some
fun — that is to say, we must go to work."
She sat down at the table and wrote the following note : —
"My Friend, — If the cook you have sent me had not
already been in my service, I might have thought that your
purpose was to let me know how often you had fainted yes-
terday on receiving my three notes. (What can I say? I was
very nervous that day; I was thinking over the memories of
my miserable existence.) But I know how sincere Asie is.
Still, I cannot repent of having caused you so much pain,
since it has availed to prove to me how much you love me.
This is how we are made, we luckless and despised creatures ;
true affection touches us far more deeply than finding our-
selves the objects of lavish liberality. For my part, I have al-
ways rather dreaded being a peg on which you would hang
your vanities. It annoyed me to be nothing else to you.
Yes, in spite of all your protestations, I fancied you re-
garded me merely as a woman paid for.
"Well, you will now find me a good girl, but on condition
of your always obeying me a little.
"If this letter can in any way take the place of the doctor's
prescription, prove it by coming to see me after the Bourse
closes. You will find me in full fig, dressed in your gifts,
for I am for life your pleasure-machine,
"Esther."
208 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
At the Bourse the Baron de Nucingen was so gay, so cheer-
ful, seemed so easy-going, and allowed himself so many jests,
that du Tillet and the Kellers, who were on 'change, could
not help asking him the reason of his high spirits.
"I am belofed. Ye shall soon gife dat house-varming,'" he
told du Tillet.
"And how much does it cost you?" asked Frangois Keller
rudely — it was said that he had spent twenty-five thousand
francs a year on Madame Colleville.
"Dat voman is an anchel ! She never has ask' me for one
sou."
"They never do," replied du Tillet. "And it is to avoid
asking that they have always aunts or mothers."
Between the Bourse and the Eue Taitbout seven times did
the Baron say to his servant :
"You go so slow — vip de horse !"
He ran lightly upstairs, and for the first time saw his mis-
tress in all the beauty of such women, who have no other
occupation than the care of their person and their dress. Just
out of her bath the flower was quite fresh, and perfumed
so as to inspire desire in Eobert d'Arbrissel.
Esther was in a charming toilette. A dress of black corded
silk trimmed with rose-colored gimp opened over a petticoat
of gray satin, the costume subsequently worn by Amigo, the
handsome singer, in / Puritani. A Honiton lace kerchief fell
or floated over her shoulders. The sleeves of her gown were
strapped round with cording to divide the puffs, which for
some little time fashion has substituted for the large sleeves
which had grown too monstrous. Esther had fastened a
Mechlin lace cap on her magnificent hair with a pin, a la folle,
as it was called, ready to fall, but not really falling, giving
her an appearance of being tumbled and in disorder, though
the white parting showed plainly on her little head between
the waves of her hair.
"Is it not a shame to see niadame so lovely in a shabby
drawing-room like this?" said Europe to the Baron, as she
admitted him.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 209
''Vel, den, come to de Rue Saint-Georches," said the Baron,
coming to a full stop like a dog marking a partridge. "The
veather is splendit, ve shall drife to de Champs filysees, and
Montame Saint-Estefe and Eugenie shall carry dere all your
clo'es an' your linen, an' ve shall dine in de Rue Saint-
Georches."
"I will do whatever you please," said Esther, "if only you
will be so kind as to call my cook Asie, and Eugenie Europe.
I have given those names to all the women who have served
me ever since the first two. I do not love change "
"Asie, Europe !" echoed the Baron, laughing. "How ver'
droll you are. — You hafe infentions. — I should hafe eaten
many dinners before I should hafe call' a cook Asie."
"It is our business to be droll," said Esther. "Come, now,
may not a poor girl be fed by Asia and dressed by Europe
when you live on the whole world ? It is a myth, I say ; some
women would devour the earth, I only ask for half. — You
see?"
"Vat a voman is Montame Saint-Estefe !" said the Baron
to himself as he admired Esther's changed demeanor.
"Europe, my girl, I want my bonnet," said Esther. "I
must have a black satin bonnet lined with pink and trimmed
with lace."
"Madame Thomas has not. sent it home. — Come, Monsieur
le Baron ; quick, off you go ! Begin your functions as a man-
of-all-work — that is to say, of all pleasure ! Happiness is
burdensome. You have your carriage here, go to Madame
Thomas," said Europe to the Baron. "Make your servant
ask for the bonnet for Madame van Bogseck. — And, above
all," she added in his ear, "bring her the most beautiful bou-
quet to be had in Paris. It is winter, so try to get tropical
flowers."
The Baron went downstairs and told his servants to go to
"Montame Thomas."
The coachman drove to a famous pastrycook's.
"She is a milliner, you damn' idiot, and not a cake-shop !"
cried the Baron, who rushed off to Madame Prevot's in the
210 A COURTESAN'S LWE
Palais-Royal, where he had a bouquet made up for the price
of teu louis, while his man went to the great modiste.
A superficial observer, walking about Paris, wonders who
the fools can be that buy the fabulous flowers that grace the
illustrious bouquetiere's shop window, and the choice products
displayed by Chevet of European fame — the only purveyor
who can vie Mdth the Eocher de Cancale in a real and deli-
cious Revue des deux Mondes.
Well, every day in Paris a hundred or more passions a la
Nucingen come into being, and find expression in offering
such rarities as queens dare not purchase, presented, kneeling,
to baggages who, to use Asie's word, like to cut a dash. But
for these little details, a decent citizen would be puzzled to
conceive how a fortune melts in the hands of these women,
whose social function, in Fourier's scheme, is perhaps to
rectify the disasters caused by avarice and cupidity. Such
squandering is, no doubt, to the social body what a prick of
the lancet is to a plethoric subject. In two months Nucingen
had shed broadcast on trade more than two hundred thousand
francs.
By the time the old lover returned, darkness was falling;
the bouquet was no longer of any use. The hour for driving
in the Champs-filysees in winter is between two and four.
However, the carriage was of use to convey Esther from the
Rue Taitbout to the Rue Saint-Georges, where she took pos-
session of the "little palace." Never before had Esther been
the object of such worship or such lavishness, and it amazed
her; but, like all royal ingrates, she took care to express no
surprise.
When you go into St. Peter's at Rome, to enable you to
appreciate the extent and height of this queen of cathedrals,
you are shovni the little finger of a statue which looks of a
natural size, and which measures I know not how much. De-
scriptions have been so severel}^ criticised, necessary as they
are to a history of manners, that I must here follow the ex-
ample of the Roman Cicerone. As they entered the dining-
room, the Baron could not resist asking Esther to feel the
WHAT LOVE COSTS 211
stuff of which the window curtains were made, draped with
magnificent fulness, lined with white watered silk, and bor-
dered with a gimp fit to trim a Portuguese princess' bodice.
The material was silk brought from Canton, on which Chi-
nese patience had painted Oriental birds with a perfection
only to be seen in mediaeval illuminations, or in the Missal
of Charles V., the pride of the Imperial library at Vienna.
"It hafe cost two tousand franc' an ell for a milord who
brought it from Intia "
"It is very nice, charming," said Esther. "How I shall
enjoy drinking champagne here; the froth will not get dirty
here on a bare floor."
"Oh ! madame !" cried Europe, "only look at the carpet !"
"Dis carpet hafe been made for de Due de Torlonia, a
frient of mine, who fount it too dear, so I took it for you who
are my qveen," said Nucingen.
By chance this carpet, by one of our cleverest designers,
matched with the whimsicalities of the Chinese curtains.
The walls, painted by Schinner and Leon de Lora, represented
voluptuous scenes, in carved ebony frames, purchased for
their weight in gold from Dusommerard, and forming panels
with a narrow line of gold that coyly caught the light.
From this you may judge of the rest.
"You did well to bring me here," said Esther. "It will
take me a week to get used to my home and not to look like a
parvenu in it "
"My home ! Den you shall accept it ?" cried the Baron in
glee.
"Why, of course, and a thousand time of course, stupid
animal," said she, smiling.
"Animal vas enough "
"Stupid is a term of endearment," said she, looking at him.
The poor man took Esther's hand and pressed it to his
heart. He was animal enough to feel, but too stupid to find
words.
"Feel how it beats — for ein little tender vort "
And he conducted his goddess to her room.
212 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Oh, madame, I cannot stay here!" cried Eugenie. "It
makes me long to go to bed."
"Well," said Esther, "I mean to please the magician who
has worked all these wonders. — Listen, my fat elephant, after
dinner we will go to the play together. I am starving to see
a play."
It was just five years since Esther had been to a theatre.
All Paris was rushing at that time to the Porte-Saint-Martin,
to see one of those pieces to which the power of the actors
lends a terrible expression of realitj, Richard Darlington. Like
all ingenuous natures, Esther loved to feel the thrills of fear
as much as to yield to tears of pathos.
"Let us go to see Frederick Lemaitre," said she ; "he is an
actor I adore."
"It is a horrible piece," said Nucingen, foreseeing the mo-
ment when he must show himself in public.
He sent his servant to secure one of the two stage-boxes on
the grand tier. — And this is another strange feature of Paris.
Whenever success, on feet of clay, fills a house, there is always
a stage-box to be had ten minutes before the curtain rises.
The managers keep it for themselves, unless it happens to be
taken for a passion d la Nucingen. This box, like Chevet's
dainties, is a tax levied on the whims of the Parisian
Olympus.
It would be superfluous to describe the plate and china.
Nucingen had provided three services of plate — common,
medium, and best ; and the best — plates, dishes, and all, was
of chased silver gilt. The banker, to avoid overloading the
table with gold and silver, had completed the array of each
service with porcelain of exquisite fragility in the style of
Dresden china, which had cost more than the plate. As to the
linen — Saxony, England, Flanders, and France vied in the
perfection of flowered damask.
At dinner it was the Baron's turn to be amazed on tasting
Asie's cookery.
"I understant," said he, "vy you call her Asie ; dis is Asiatic
cooking."
WHAT LOVE COSTS 213
"I begin to thiuk he loves me," said Esther to Europe ; "he
has said something almost like a bon mot."
"I said many vorts," said he.
"Well ! he is more like Turcaret than I had heard he was !"
cried the girl, laughing at this reply, worthy of the many
artless speeches for which the banker was famous.
The dishes were so highly spiced as to give the Baron an
indigestion, on purpose that he might go home early; so this
was all he got in the way of pleasure out of his first evening
with Esther. At the theatre he was obliged to drink an im-
mense number of glasses of eau sucree, leaving Esther alone
between the acts.
By a coincidence so probable that it can scarcely be called
chance, Tullia, Mariette, and Madame du Val-Noble were at
the play that evening. Richard Darlington enjoyed a wild
success — and a deserved success — such as is seen only in Paris.
The men who saw this play all came to the conclusion that a
lawful wife might be thrown out of window, and the wives
loved to see themselves unjustly persecuted.
The women said to each other : "This is too much ! we are
driven to it — but it often happens !"
jSTow a woman as beautiful as Esther, and dressed as Esther
was, could not show off with impunity in a stage-box at the
Porte-Saint-Martin. And so, during the second act, there
was quite a commotion in the box where the two dancers were
sitting, caused by the undoubted identity of the unknown fair
one with La Torpille.
"Heyday ! where has she dropped from ?" said Mariette
to Madame du Val-Noble. "I thought she was drowned."
"But is it she ? She looks to me thirty-seven times younger
and handsomer than she was six years ago."
"Perhaps she has preserved herself in ice like Madame
d'Espard and Madame Zayonchek," said the Comte de Bram-
bourg, who had brought the tlij-ee women to the play, to a pit-
tier box. "Isn't she the 'rat' you meant to send me to hocus
my uncle ?" said he, addressing Tullia.
"The very same," said the singer. "Du Bruel, go down to
the stalls and see if it is she."
14
214 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"What brass she has got !" exclaimed Madame du Val-
Noble, using an expressive but vulgar phrase.
''Oh !" said the Comte de Brambourg, "she very well may.
She is with my friend the Baron de Nucingen — I will go "
"Is that the immaculate Joan of Arc who has taken Nu-
cingen by storm, and who has been talked of till we are all
sick of her, these three months past ?" asked Mariette.
"Good-evening, my dear Baron," said Philippe Bridau, as
he went into Nucingen's box. "So here you are, married to
Mademoiselle Esther. — Mademoiselle, I am an old officer
whom you once on a time were to have got out of a scrape —
at Issoudun — Philippe Bridau "
"I know nothing of it," said Esther, looking round the
house through her opera-glasses.
"Dis lady," said the Baron, "is no longer known as 'Esther'
so short ! She is called Montame de Champy — ein little es-
tate vat I have bought for her "
"Though you do things in such style," said the Comte,
"these ladies are saying that Madame de Champy gives her-
self too great airs. — If you do not choose to remember me,
will you condescend to recognize Mariette, Tullia, Madame
du Val-Noble?" the parvenu went on — a man for whom the
Due de Maufrigneuse had won the Dauphin's favor.
"If those ladies are kind to me, I am willing to make
myself pleasant to them," replied Madame de Champy drily.
"Kind ! Why, they are excellent ; they have named you
Joan of Arc," replied Philippe.
"Veil den, if dese ladies vill keep you company," said Nu-
cingen, "I shall go 'vay, for I hafe eaten too much. Your
carriage shall come for you and your people. — Dat teufel
Asie !"
"The first time, and you leave me alone !" said Esther.
"Come, come, you must have courage enough to die on deck.
I must have my man with me as I go out. If I were insulted,
am I to cry out for nothing?"
The old millionaire's selfishness had to give way to his
duties as a lover. The Baron suffered but stayed.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 215
Esther had her own reasons for detaining "her man." If
she admitted her acquaintance, she would be less closely ques-
tioned in his presence than if she were alone. Philippe
Bridau hurried back to the box where the dancers were sitting,
and informed them of the state of affairs.
"Oh ! so it is she who has fallen heir to my house in the
Eue Saint-Georges," observed Madame du Val-Noble with
some bitterness ; for she, as she phrased it, was on the loose.
"Most likely," said the Colonel. "Du Tillet told me that
the Baron had spent three times as much there as your poor
Falleix." j
"Let us go round to her box," said Tullia.
"Not if I know it," said Mariette ; "she is much too hand-
some. I will call on her at home."
"I think myself good-looking enough to risk it," remarked
Tullia.
So the much-daring leading dancer went round between the
acts and renewed acquaintance with Esther, who would
talk only on general subjects.
"And where have you come back from, my dear child?"
asked Tullia, who could not restrain her curiosity.
"Oh, I was for five years in a castle in the Alps with an
Englishman, as jealous as a tiger, a nabob ; I called him a
nabot, a dwarf, for he was not so big as le bailli de Ferrette.
"And then I came across a banker — from a savage to salva-
tion, as Florine might say. And now here I am in Paris
again; I long so for amusement that I mean to have a rare
time. I shall keep open house. I have five years of solitary
confinement to make good, and I am beginning to do it. Five
years of an Englishman is rather too much ; six weeks are the
allowance according to the advertisements."
"Was it the Baron who gave you that lace?"
"No, it is a relic of the nabob. — What ill-luck I have, my
dear! He was as yellow as a friend's smile at a success; I
thought he would be dead in ten months. Pooh ! he was as
strong as a mountain. Always distrust men who say they
have a liver complaint. I will never listen to a man who talks
216 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
of his liver. — I have had too much of livers — who cannot die.
My nabob robbed me ; he died without making a will, and the
family turned me out of doors like a leper. — So, then, I said
to my fat friend here, 'Pay for two !' — You may well call me
Joan of Arc ; I have ruined England, and perhaps I shall die
at the stake "
"Of love ?" said Tullia.
"And burnt alive," answered Esther, and the question made
her thoughtful.
The Baron laughed at all this vulgar nonsense, but he did
not always follow it readily, so that his laughter sounded like
the forgotten crackers that go off after fireworks.
We all live in a sphere of some kind, and the inhabitants
of every sphere are endowed with an equal share of curiosity.
Next evening at the opera, Esther's reappearance was the
great news behind the scenes. Between two and four in the
afternoon all Paris in the Champs-Elysees had recognized
La Torpille, and knew at last who was the object of the Baron
de Nucingen's passion.
"Do you know," Blondet remarked to de Marsay in the
greenroom at the opera-house, "that La Torpille vanished
the very day after the evening when we saw her here and rec-
ognized her in little Rubempre's mistress."
In Paris, as in the provinces, everything is known. The
police of the Rue de Jerusalem are not so efficient as the world
itself, for every one is a spy on every one else, though uncon-
sciously. Carlos had fully understood the danger of Lucien's
position during and after the episode of the Rue Taitbout.
No position can be more dreadful than that in which Ma-
dame du Val-Noble now found herself ; and the phrase to be
on the loose, or, as the French say, left on foot, expresses it
perfectly. The recklessness and extravagance of these women
precludes all care for the future. In that strange world, far
more witty and amusing than might be supposed, only such
women as are not gifted with that perfect beauty which time
can hardly impair, and which is quite unmistakable — only
WHAT LOVE COSTS 217
such women, in short, as can be loved merely as a fancy, ever
think of old age and save a fortune. The handsomer they are,
the more improvident they are.
"Are you afraid of growing ugly that you are saving
money?" was a speech of Florine's to Mariette, which may
give a clue to one cause of this thriftlessness.
Thus, if a speculator kills himself, or a spendthrift comes
to the end of his resources, these women fall with hideous
promptitude from audacious wealth to the utmost misery.
They throw themselves into the clutches of the old-clothes
buyer, and sell exquisite jewels for a mere song ; they run into
debt, expressly to keep up a spurious luxury, in the hope of
recovering what they have lost — a cash-box to draw upon.
These ups and downs of their career account for the costliness
of such connections, generally brought about as Asie had
hooked (another word of her vocabulary) Nucingen for
Esther.
And so those who know their Paris are quite aware of the
state of affairs when, in the Champs-£)lysees — that bustling
and mongrel bazaar — they meet some woman in a hired fly
whom six months or a year before they had seen in a magnifi-
cent and dazzling carriage, turned out in the most luxurious
style.
"If you fall on Sainte-Pelagie, you must contrive to re-
bound on the Bois de Boulogne," said Florine, laughing with
Blondet over the little Vicomte de Portenduere.
Some clever women never run the risk of this contrast.
They bury themselves in horrible furnished lodgings, where
they expiate their extravagance by such privations as are en-
dured by travelers lost in a Sahara; but they never take the
smallest fancy for economy. They venture forth to masked
balls; they take journeys into the provinces; they turn out
well dressed on the boulevards when the weather is fine. And
then they find in each other the devoted kindness which is
known only among proscribed races. It costs a woman in
luck no effort to bestow some help, for she says to herself, "I
may be in the same plight by Sunday !"
218 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
However, the most efficient protector still is the purchaser
of dress. When this greedy money-lender finds herself the
creditor, she stirs and works on the hearts of all the old men
she knows in favor of the mortgaged creature in thin boots
and a fine bonnet.
In this way Madame du Val-Noble, unable to foresee the
downfall of one of the richest and cleverest of stockbrokers,
was left quite unprepared. She had spent Falleix's money on
her whims, and trusted to him for all necessaries and to
provide for the future.
"How could I have expected such a thing in a man who
seemed such a good fellow ?"
In almost every class of society the good fellow is an open-
handed man, who will lend a few cro\^Tis now and again with-
out expecting them back, who always behaves in accordance
with a certain code of delicate feeling above mere vulgar,
obligatory, and commonplace morality. Certain men, re-
garded as virtuous and honest, have, like Nucingen, ruined
their benefactors ; and certain others, who have been through
a criminal court, have an ingenious kind of honesty towards
women. Perfect virtue, the dream of Moliere, an Alceste, is
exceedingly rare; still, it is to be found everywhere, even in
Paris. The "good fellow" is the product of a certain facility
of nature which proves nothing. A man is a good fellow, as
a cat is silky, as a slipper is made to slip on to the foot. And
so, in the meaning given to the word by a kept woman, Falleix
ought to have warned his mistress of his approaching bank-
ruptcy and have given her enough to live upon.
D'Estourny, the dashing swindler, was a good fellow; he
cheated at cards, but he had set aside thirty thousand francs
for his mistress. And at carnival suppers women would re-
tort on his accusers: "No matter. You may say what you
like, Georges was a good fellow; he had charming manners,
he deserved a better fate."
These girls laugh laws to scorn, and adore a certain kind
of generosity ; they sell themselves, as Esther had done, for a
secret ideal, which is their religion.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 219
After saving a few jewels from the wreck with great diffi-
culty, Madame du Val-Noble was crushed under the burden
of the horrible report : "She ruined Falleix." She was almost
thirty; and though she was in the prime of her beauty, still
she might be called an old woman, and all the more so be-
cause in such a crisis all a woman's rivals are against her.
Mariette, Florine, Tullia would ask their friend to dinner,
and gave her some help ; but as they did not know the extent
of her debts, they did not dare to sound the depths of that
gulf. An interval of six years formed rather too long a gap
in the ebb and flow of the Paris tide, between La Torpille and
Madame du Val-Noble, for the woman "on foot" to speak to
the woman in her carriage; but La Val-Noble knew that
Esther was too generous not to remember sometimes that she
had, as she said, fallen heir to her possessions, and not to
seek her out by some meeting which might seem accidental
though arranged. To bring about such an accident, Madame
du Val-Noble, dressed in the most lady-like way, walked out
every day in the Champs-filysees on the arm of Theodore
Gaillard, who afterwards married her, and who, in these
straits, behaved very well to his former mistress, giving her
boxes at the play, and inviting her to every spree. She flat-
tered herself that Esther, driving out one fine day, would meet
her face to face.
Esther's coachman was Paccard — for her household had
been made up in five days by Asie, Europe, and Paccard under
Carlos' instructions, and in such a way that the house in the
Eue Saint-Georges was an impregnable fortress.
Peyrade, on his part, prompted by deep hatred, by the
thirst for vengeance, and, above all, by his wish to see his
darling Lydie married, made the Champs-filysees the end of
his walks as soon as he heard from Contenson that Monsieur
de Nucingen's mistress might be seen there. Peyrade could
dress so exactly like an Englishman, and spoke French so
perfectly with the mincing accent that the English give the
language; he knew England itself so well, and was so familiar
with all the customs of the country, having been sent to Eng-
220 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
land by the police authorities three times between 1779 and
1786, that he could play his part in London and at ambas-
sadors' residences without awaking suspicion. Peyrade,
who had some resemblance to Musson the famous juggler,
could disguise himself so effectually that once Contenson did
not recognize him.
Followed by Contenson dressed as a mulatto, Peyrade ex-
amined Esther and her servants with an eye which, seeming
heedless, took everything in. Hence it quite naturally hap-
pened that in the side alley where the carriage-company walk
in fine dry weather, he was on the spot one day when Esther
met Madame du Val-N^oble. Peyrade, his mulatto in livery
at his heels, was airing himself quite naturally, like a nabob
who is thinking of no one but himself, in a line with the two
women, so as to catch a few words of their conversation.
"Well, my dear child," said Esther to Madame du Val-
Noble, "come and see me. Nucingen owes it to himself not
to leave his stockbroker's mistress without a sou "
"All the more so because it is said that he ruined Falleix,"
.remarked Theodore Gaillard, "and that we have every right to
squeeze him."
"He dines with me to-morrow," said Esther; "come and
meet him." Then she added in an undertone:
"I can do what I like with him, and as yet he has not that !"
and she put the nail of a gloved finger under the prettiest of
her teeth with the click that is familiarly known to express
with peculiar energy: "Just nothing."
"You have him safe "
"My dear, as yet he has only paid my debts."
"How mean !" cried Suzanne du Val-JSToble.
"Oh !" said Esther, "I had debts enough to frighten a min-
ister of finance. Now, I mean to have thirty thousand a year
before the first stroke of midnight. Oh ! he is excellent, I
have nothitig to complain of. He does it well. — In a week
we give a house-warming ; you must come. — That morning he
is to make me a present of the lease of the house in the Eue
Saint-Georges. In decency, it is impossible to live in such a
WHAT LOVE COSTS 221
house on less than thirty thousand francs a year — of my own,
so as to have them safe in case of accident. I have known
poverty, and I want no more of it. There are certain ac-
quaintances one has had enough of at once."
"And you, who used to say, 'My face is my fortune !' — How
you have changed !" exclaimed Suzanne.
"It is the air of Switzerland; you grow thrifty there. —
Look here ; go there yourself, my dear ! Catch a Swiss, and
you may perhaps catch a husband, for they have not yet
learned what such women as we are can be. And, at any rate,
you may come back with a passion for investments in the
funds — a most respectable and elegant passion ! — Good-bye."
Esther got into her carriage again, a handsome carriage
drawn by the finest pair of dappled gray horses at that time
to be seen in Paris.
"The woman who is getting into the carriage is handsome,"
said Peyrade to Contenson, "but I like the one who is walking
best ; follow her, and find out who she is."
"That is what that Englishman has just remarked in
English," said Theodore Gaillard, repeating Peyrade's re-
mark to Madame du Val-ISToble.
Before making this speech in English, Peyrade had uttered
a word or two in that language, which had made Theodore
look up in a way that convinced him that the journalist under-
stood English.
Madame du Val-lSToble very slowly made her way home to
very decent furnished rooms in the Eue Louis-le-Grand,
glancing round now and then to see if the mulatto were fol-
lowing her.
This establishment was kept by a certain Madame Gerard,
whom Suzanne had obliged in the days of her splendor, and
who showed her gratitude by giving her a suitable home. This
good soul, an honest and virtuous citizen, even pious, looked
on the courtesan as a woman of a superior order; she had
always seen her in the midst of luxury, and thought of her
as a fallen queen ; she trusted her daughters with her ; and —
which is a fact more natural than might be supposed — the
222 . A COURTESAN'S LIFE
courtesan was as scrupulously careful in taking them to the
play as their mother could have been, and the two Gerard
girls loved her. The worthy, kind lodging-house keeper was
like those sublime priests who see in these outlawed women
only a creature to be saved and loved.
Madame du Val-ISToble respected this worth ; and often, as
she chatted with the good woman, she envied her while be-
wailing her own ill-fortune.
"You are still handsome; you may make a good end yet,"
Madame Gerard would say.
But, indeed, Madame du Yal-Noble was only relatively
impoverished. This woman's wardrobe, so extravagant and
elegant, was still sufficiently well furnished to allow of her
appearing on occasion — as on that evening at the Porte-Saint-
Martin to see Richard Darlington — in much splendor. And
Madame Gerard would most good-naturedly pay for the cabs
needed by the lady "on foot" to go out to dine, or to the play,
and to come home again.
^ "Well, dear Madame Gerard," said she to this worthy
mother, "my luck is about to change, I believe."
"Well, well, madame, so much the better. But be prudent ;
do not run into debt any more. I have such difficulty in get-
ting rid of the people who are hunting for you."
"Oh, never worry yourself about those hounds ! They have
all made no end of money out of me. — Here are some tickets
for the Varietes for your girls — a good box on the second tier.
If any one should ask for me this evening before I come in,
show them up all the same. Adele, my old maid, will be here ;
I will send her round."
Madame du Val-Noble, having neither mother nor aunt,
was obliged to have recourse to her maid — equally on foot —
to play the part of a Saint-Esteve with the unknown follower
whose conquest was to enable her to rise again in the world.
She went to dine with Theodore Gaillard, who, as it hap-
pened, had a spree on that day, that is to say, a dinner given
by ISTathan in payment of a bet he had lost, one of those orgies
when a man says to his guests, "You can bring a woman,"
WHAT LOVE COSTS 223
It was not without strong reasons that Peyrade had made up
his mind to rush in person on to the field of this intrigue.
At the same time, his curiosity, like Corentin's, was so keenly
excited, that, even in the absence of reasons, he would have
tried to play a part in the drama.
At this moment Charles X.'s policy had completed its last
evolution. After confiding the helm of State to Ministers of
his own choosing, the King was preparing to conquer Algiers,
and to utilize the glory that should accrue as a passport to
what has been called his Coup d'Etat. There were no more
conspiracies at home ; Charles X, believed he had no domestic
enemies. But in politics, as at sea, a calm may be deceptive.
Thus Corentin had lapsed into total idleness. In such a
case a true sportsman, to keep his hand in, for lack of larks
kills sparrows. Domitian, we know, for lack of Christians,
killed flies. Contenson, having witnessed Esther's arrest, had,
with the keen instinct of a spy, fully understood the upshot
of the business. The rascal, as we have seen, did not attempt
to conceal his opinion of the Baron de Nucingen.
"Who is benefiting by making the banker pay so dear for
his passion ?" was the first question the allies asked each other.
Recognizing Asie as a leader in the piece, Contenson hoped to
find out the author through her ; but she slipped through his
fingers again and again, hiding like an eel in the mud of
Paris ; and when he found her again as the cook in Esther's es-
tablishment, it seemed to him inexplicable that the half-caste
woman should have had a finger in the pie. Thus, for the
first time, these two artistic spies had come on a text that
they could not decipher, while suspecting a dark plot to the
story.
After three bold attempts on the house in the Eue Taitbout,
Contenson still met with absolute dumbness. So long as Es-
ther dwelt there the lodge porter seemed to live in mortal
terror. Asie had, perhaps, promised poisoned meat-balls to
all the family in the event of any indiscretion.
On the day after Esther's removal, Contenson found this
man rather more amenable ; he regretted the lady, he said,
224 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
who had fed him with the broken dishes from her table. Con-
tenson, disguised as a broker, tried to bargain for the rooms,
and listened to the porter's lamentations while he fooled him,
casting a doubt on all the man said by a questioning
^'Eeally?"
"Yes, monsieur, the lady lived here for five years without
ever going out, and more by token, her lover, desperately
jealous though she was beyond reproach, took the greatest
precautions when he came in or went out. And a very hand-
some young man he was too !"
^ Lucien was at this time still staying with his sister, Ma-
dame Sechard ; but as soon as he returned, Contenson sent the
porter to the Quai Malaquais to ask ]\Ionsieur de Eubempre
whether he were willing to part with the furniture left in the
rooms lately occupied by Madame van Bogseck. The porter
\ then recognized Lucien as the young widow's mysterious
lover, and this was all that Contenson wanted. The deep but
suppressed astonishment may be imagined with which Lucien
and Carlos received the porter, whom they affected to regard
as a madman ; they tried to upset his convictions.
Within twenty-four hours Carlos had organized a force
which detected Contenson red-handed in the act of espionage.
Contenson, disguised as a market-porter, had twice already
brought home the provisions purchased in the morning by
Asie, and had twice got into the little mansion in the Rue
Saint-Georges. Corentin, on his part, was making a stir ; but
he was stopped short by recognizing the certain identity of
Carlos Herrera ; for he learned at once that this Abbe, the
secret envoy of Ferdinand VIL, had come to Paris towards
the end of 1823. Still, Corentin thought it worth while to
study the reasons which had led the Spaniard to take an in-
terest in Lucien de Eubempre. It was soon clear to him,
beyond doubt, that Esther had for five years been Lucien's
mistress; so the substitution of the Englishwoman had
been effected for the advantage of that young dandy.
Xow Lucien had no means; he was rejected as a suitor for
]\Iademoiselle de Grandlieu; and he had just bought tip the
lands of Rubempre at the cost of a million francs.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 225
Corentin very skilfully made the head of the General Police
take the first steps ; and the Prefet de Police a propos to Pey-
rade, informed his chief that the appellants in that affair had
been in fact the Comte de Serizy and Lucien de Kubempre.
"We have it !" cried Peyrade and Corentin.
The two friends had laid plans in a moment.
"This hussy," said Corentin, "has had intimacies ; she must
have some women friends. Among them we shall certainly
find one or another who is down on her luck ; one of us must
play the part of a rich foreigner and take her up. We will
-throw them together. They always want something of each
other in the game of lovers, and we shall then be in the
citadel."
Peyrade naturally proposed to assume his disguise as an
Englishman. The wild life he should lead during the time
that he would take to disentangle the plot of which he had
been the victim, smiled on his fancy ; while Corentin, grown
old in his functions, and weakly too, did not care for it. .Dis-
guised as a mulatto, Contenson at once evaded Carlos' force.
Just three days before Peyrade's meeting with Madame du
Val-Noble in the Champs-filysees, this last of the agents
employed by MM. de Sartine and Lenoir had arrived, pro-
vided with a passport, at the Hotel Mirabeau, Hue de la Paix,
having come from the Colonies via le Havre, in a traveling
chaise, as mud-splashed as though it had really come from le
Havre, instead of no further than by the road from Saint-
Denis to Paris.
Carlos Herrera, on his part, had his passport vise at the
Spanish Embassy, and arranged everything at the Quai Mala-
quais to start for Madrid. And this is why. Within a few
days Esther was to become the owner of the house in the Eue
Saint-Georges and of shares yielding thirty thousand francs
a year; Europe and Asie were quite cunning enough to per-
suade her to sell these shares and privately transmit the
money to Lucien. Thus Lucien, proclaiming himself rich
through his sister's liberality, would pay the remainder of
the price of the Kubempre estates. Of this transaction no
226 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
one could complain. Esther alone could betray herself; but
she would die rather than blink an eyelash.
Clotilde had appeared with a little pink kerchief round her
crane's neck, so she had won her game at the Hotel de Grand-
lieu. The shares in the Omnibus Company were already
worth thrice their initial value. Carlos, by disappearing for
a few days, would put malice off the scent. Human prudence
had foreseen everything; no error was possible. The false
Spaniard was to start on the morrow of the day when Peyrade
met Madame du Val-Noble. But that very night, at two in
the morning, Asie came in a cab to the Quai Malaquais, and
found the stoker of the machine smoking in his room, and
reconsidering all the points of the situation here stated in a
few words, like an author going over a page of his book to dis-
cover any faults to be corrected. Such a man would not allow
himself a second time such an oversight as that of the porter
in the Kue Taitbout.
"Paccard," whispered Asie in her master's ear, "recognized
Contenson yesterday, at half-past two, in the Champs-filysees,
disguised as a mulatto servant to an Englishman, who for the
last three days has been seen walking in the Champs-filysees,
watching Esther. Paccard knew the hound by his eyes, as I
did when he dressed up as a market-porter. Paccard drove
the girl home, taking a round so as not to lose sight of the
wretch. Contenson is at the Hotel Mirabeau ; but he ex-
changed so many signs of intelligence with the Englishman,
that Paccard says the other cannot possibly be an English-
man."
} ^t' "We have a gadfly behind us," said Carlos. "I will not
leave till the day after to-morrow. That Contenson is cer-
tainly the man who sent the porter after us from the Rue
Taitbout; we must ascertain whether this sham Englishman
is our foe."
At noon Mr. Samuel Johnson's black servant was solemnly
waiting on his master, who always breakfasted too heartily,
with a purpose. Peyrade wished to pass for a tippling Eng-
lishman; he never went out till he was half-seas over. He
WHAT LOVE COSTS 227
wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and padded to make
his legs look stouter ; his trousers were lined with the thickest
fustian ; his waistcoat was buttoned to the chin ; a blue hand-
kerchief wrapped his throat up to his cheeks; a red scratch
wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three
inches to his height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the
Cafe David could not have recognized him. From his square-
cut coat of black cloth with full skirts he might have been
taken for an English millionaire.
Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob's
confidential servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and
uncommunicative, and indulged in fierce exclamations and
uncouth gestures.
Peyrade was finishing his second bottle when one of the
hotel waiters unceremoniously showed in a man in whom
Peyrade and Contenson both at once discerned a gendarme
in mufti.
"Monsieur Peyrade," said the gendarme to the nabob,
speaking in his ear, "my instructions are to take you to the
Prefecture."
( Peyrade, without saying a word, rose and took down his
"You will find a hackney coach at the door," said the man
as they went downstairs. "The Prefet thought of arresting
you, but he decided on sending for you to ask some explana-
tion of your conduct through the peace-officer whom you will
find in the coach."
"Shall I ride with you ?" asked the gendarme of the peace-
officer when Peyrade had got in.
"No," replied the other; "tell the coachman quietly to
drive to the Prefecture."
Peyrade and Carlos were now face to face in the coach.
Carlos had a stiletto under his hand. The coach-driver was
a man he could trust, quite capable of allowing Carlos to get
out without seeing him, or being surprised, on arriving at
his journey's end, to find a dead body in his cab. No in-
quiries are ever made about a spy. The law almost always
228 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
leaves such murders unpunished, it is so difficult to know the
rights of the case.
Peyrade looked with his keenest eye at the magistrate sent
y to examine him by the Prefet of Police. Carlos struck him
as satisfactory : a bald head, deeply wrinkled at the back, and
powdered hair; a pair of very light gold spectacles, with
double-green glasses over weak eyes, with red rims, evidently
needing care. These eyes seemed the trace of some squalid
malady. A cotton shirt with a flat-pleated frill, a shabby
black satin waistcoat, the trousers of a man of law, black
spun silk stockings, and shoes tied with ribbon ; a long black
overcoat, cheap gloves, black, and worn for ten days, and a
gold watch-chain — in every point the lower grade of magis-
trate known by a perversion of terms as a peace-officer.
"My dear Monsieur Peyrade, I regret to find such a man
as you the object of surveillance, and that you should act
so as to justify it. Your disguise is not to the Prefet's taste.
If you fancy that you can thus escape our vigilance, you are
mistaken. You traveled from England by way of Beaumont-
sur-Oise, no doubt."
"Beaumont-sur-Oise ?" repeated Peyr^4^.- — ^
"Or by Saint-Denis ?" said the sham lawyer. ^
Peyrade lost his presence of mind. The question must
be answered. Now any reply might be dangerous. In the
affirmative is was farcical ; in the negative, if this man knew
the truth, it would be Peyrade's ruin.
"He is a sharp fellow," thought he.
He tried to look at the man and smile, and he gave him
a smile for an answer; the smile passed muster without
protest.
"For what purpose have you disguised yourself, taken
rooms at the Mirabeau, and dressed Contenson as a black
servant?" asked the peace-officer.
"Monsieur le Prefet may do what he chooses with me, but
I owe no account of my actions to any one but my chief,"
said Peyrade with dignity.
"If you mean me to infer that you are acting by the orders
WHAT LOVE COSTS 229
of the General Police," said the other coldly, "we will change
our route, and drive to the Rue de Grenelle instead of the
Rue de Jerusalem. I have clear instructions with regard to
you. But be careful ! You are not in any deep disgrace,
and you may spoil your own game in a moment. As for me
— I owe you no grudge. — Come; tell me the truth."
"Well, then, this is the truth," said Peyrade, with a glance
at his Cerberus' red eyes.
The sham lawyer's face remained expressionless, impassi-
ble; he was doing his business, all truths were the same to
him, he looked as though he suspected the Prefet of some
caprice. Prefets have their little tantrums.
"I have fallen desperately in love with a woman — the mis-
tress of that stockbroker who is gone abroad for his own
pleasure and the displeasure of his creditors — Falleix."
"Madame du Val-Noble?"
"Yes," replied Peyrade. "To keep her for a month, which
will not cost me more than a thousand crowns, I have got myself
up as a nabob and taken Contenson as my servant. This is
so absolutely true, monsieur, that if you like to leave me in
the coach, where I will wait for you, on my honor as an old
Commissioner-General of Police, you can go to the hotel
and question Contenson. Not only will Contenson conjfirm
what I have the honor of stating, but you may see Madame
du Val-Noble's waiting-maid, who is to come this morning
to signify her mistress' acceptance of my offers, or the con-
ditions she makes.
"An old monkey knows what grimaces mean: I have of-
fered her a thousand francs a month and a carriage — that
comes to fifteen hundred ; five hundred francs' worth of pres-
ents, and as much again in some outings, dinners and play-
going; you see, I am not deceiving you by a centime when I
say a thousand crowns. — A man of my age may very well
spend a thousand crowns on his last fancy."
- "Bless me, Papa Peyrade ! and you still care enough for
women to ? But you are deceiving me. I am sixty my-
self, and I can do without 'em. — However, if the case is as
15
230 A COU-^TESAN'S LIFE
you state it, I quite understand that you should have found
it necessary to get yourself up as a foreigner to indulge your
fancy."
"You can understand that Peyrade, or old Canquoelle of
the Eue des Moineaux "
"Ay, neither of them would have suited ]\Iadame du Val-
Noble," Carlos put in, delighted to have picked up Can-
quoelle's address. "Before the Revolution," he went on, "I
had for my mistress a woman who had previously been kept
by the gentleman-in-waiting, as they then called the execu-
tioner. One evening at the play she pricked herself with a
pin, and cried out — a customary ejaculation in those days —
'Ah ! Bourreau !' on which her neighbor asked her if this were
a reminiscence ? — Well, my dear Peyrade, she cast off her man
for that speech.
"I suppose you have no wish to expose yourself to such
a slap in the face. — Madame du Val-ISToble is a woman for gen-
tlemen. I saw her once at the opera, and thought her very
handsome.
"Tell the driver to go back to the Rue de la Paix, my dear
Peyrade. I will go upstairs with you to your rooms and see
for myself. A verbal report will no doubt be enough for
Monsieur le Prefet."
Carlos took a snuff-box from his side-pocket — a black snuff-
box lined with silver-gilt — and offered it to Peyrade with
an impulse of delightful good-fellowship. Peyrade said to
himself :
"And these are their agents ! Good Heavens ! what would
Monsieur Lenoir say if he could come back to life, or Mon-
sieur de Sartines ?"
"That is part of the truth, no doubt, but it is not all,"
said the sham lawyer, snitfing up his pinch of snuff. "You
have had a finger in the Baron de ISTucingen's love affairs,
and you wish, no doubt, to entangle him in some slip-knot.
Y^ou missed fire with the pistol, and you are aiming at him
with a field-piece. Madame du Val-Noble is a friend of
Madame de Champy's "
WHAT LOVE COSTS 231
*T)evil take it. I must take care not to founder/' said Pey-
rade to himself. "He is a better man than I thought him;
He is playing me ; he talks of letting me go, and he goes on
making me blab."
"Well?" asked Carlos with a magisterial air.
"Monsieur, it is true that I have been so foolish as to seek
a woman in Monsieur de Nucingen's behoof, because he was
half mad with love. That is the cause of my being out of
favor, for it would seem that quite unconsciously I touched
some important interests."
The officer of the law remained immovable.
"But after fifty-two years' experience," Peyrade went on,
"I know the police well enough to have held my hand after
the blowing up I had from Monsieur le Pref et, who, no doubt,
was right "
"Then you would give up this fancy if Monsieur le Prefet
required it of you? That, I think, would be the best proof
you could give of the sincerity of what you say."
"He is going it ! he is going it !" thought Peyrade. "Ah !
by all that's holy, the police to-day is a match for that of
Monsieur Lenoir."
"Give it up ?" said he aloud. "I will wait till I have Mon-
sieur le Prefet's orders. — But here we are at the hotel, if you
wish to come up."
"Where do you find the money?" said Carlos point-blank,
with a sagacious glance.
"Monsieur, I have a friend "
"Get along," said Carlos ; "go and tell that story to an ex-
amining magistrate !"
This audacious stroke on Carlos' part was the outcome
of one of those calculations, so simple that none but a man
of his temper would have thought it out.
At a very early hour he had sent Lucien to Madame de
Serizjr's. Lucien had begged the Count's private secretary
— as from the Count — to go and obtain from the Prefet of
Police full particulars concerning the agent employed by the
Baron de Nucingen. The secretary came back provided with
232 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
a note concerning Peyrade, a copy of the summary noted on
the back of his record: —
"In the police force since 1778, having come to .Paris from
Avignon two years previously.
"Without money or character; possessed of certain State
secrets.
"Lives in the Bue des Moineaux under the name of Can-
quoelle, the name of a little estate where his family resides
in the department of Vaucluse; very respectable people.
'^as lately inquired for by a grand-nepliew named Theo-
dore de la Peyrade. (See the report of an agent, Xo. 37 of
the Documents.)"
"He must be the man to whom Contenson is playing the
mulatto servant !" cried Carlos, when Lueien returned with
other information besides this note.
Within three hours this man, with the energ}^ of a Com-
mander-in-Chief, had found, by Paccard's help, an innocent
accomplice capable of playing the part of a gendarme in dis-
guise, and had got himself up as a peace-officer. Three times
in the coach he had thought of killing Peyrade, but he had
made it a rule never to commit a murder with his own hand ;
he promised himself that he would get rid of Peyrade all in
good time by pointing him out as a millionaire to some re-
leased convicts about the town.
Peyrade and his Mentor, as they went in, heard Conten-
son's voice arguing with Madame du Val-Noble's maid. Pey-
rade signed to Carlos to remain in the outer room, with a
look meant to convey : "Thus you can assure yourself of my
sincerity."
"Madame agrees to everything," said Adele. "Madame is
at this moment calling on a friend, Madame de Champy, who
has some rooms in the Eue Taitbout on her hands for a year,
full of furniture, which she will let her have, no doubt.
Madame can receive Mr. Johnson more suitably there, for the
furniture is still very decent, and monsieur might buy it for
madame by coming to an agreement with Madame de
Champy."
WHAT LOVE COSTS 233
"Very good/ my girl. If this is not a job of fleecing, it is
a bit of the wool," said the mulatto to the astonished woman.
"However, we will go shares "
"That is your darkey all over !" cried Mademoiselle Adele.
"If your nabob' is a nabob, he can very well afEord to give
madame the furniture. The lease ends in April 1830 ; your
nabob may renew it if he likes."
"I am quite willing," said Peyrade, speaking French with
a strong English accent, as he came in and tapped the woman
on the shoulder.
He cast a knowing look back at Carlos, who replied by
an assenting nod, understanding that the nabob was to keep
up his part.
But the scene suddenly changed its aspect at the entrance
of a person over whom neither Carlos nor Peyrade had the
least power. Corentin suddenly came in. He had found
the door open, and looked in as he went by to see how his old
friend played his part as nabob.
"The Prefet is still bullying me!" said Peyrade in a
whisper to Corentin. "He has found me out as a nabob."
"We will spill the Prefet," Corentin muttered in reply.
Then after a cool bow he stood darkly scrutinizing the
magistrate.
"Stay here till I return," said Carlos; "I will go to the
Prefecture. If you do not see me again, you may go your own
way."
Having said this in an undertone to Peyrade, so as not to
humiliate him in the presence of the waiting-maid, Carlos
went away, not caring to remain under the eye of the new-
comer, in whom he detected one of those fair-haired, blue-
eyed men, coldly terrifying.
"That is the peace-officer sent after me by the Prefet,"
said Peyrade.
"That?" said Corentin. "You have walked into a trap.
That man has three packs of cards in his shoes ; you can see
that by the place of his foot in the shoe; besides, a peace-
officer need wear no dis^ise."
234 '^' A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Corentin hurried downstairs to verify his suspicions: Car-
los M'as getting into the fly.
"Hallo ! Monsieur I'Abbe !" cried Corentin.
Carlos looked around, saw Corentin, and got in quickly.
Still, Corentin had time to say:
"That was all I wanted to know. — Quai Malaquais," he
shouted to the driver with diabolical mockery in his tone
and expression.
"I am done !" said Jacques Collin to himself. "They have
got me. I must get ahead of them by sheer pace, and, above
all, find out what they want of us."
Corentin had seen the Abbe Carlos Herrera five or six
times, and the man's eyes were unforgettable. Corentin had
suspected him at once from the cut of his shoulders, then by
his puffy face, and the trick of three inches of added height
gained by a heel inside the shoe.
"Ah ! old fellow, they have drawn you," said Corentin, find-
ing no one in the room but Peyrade and Contenson.
"Who?" cried Peyrade, with metallic hardness; "I will
spend my last days in putting him on a gridiron and turning
him on it."
"It is the Abbe Carlos Herrera, the Corentin of Spain, as
I suppose. This explains everything. The Spaniard is a
demon of the first water, who has tried to make a fortune for
that little young man by coining money out of a pretty
baggage's bolster. — It is your lookout if you think you can
measure your skill with a man who seems to me the very devil
to deal with."
"Oh !" exclaimed Contenson, "he fingered the three hun-
dred thousand francs the day when Esther was arrested;
he was in the cab. I remember those eyes, that brow, and
those marks of the smallpox."
"Oh ! what a fortune my Lydie might have had !" cried
Peyrade.
"You m'^y still play the nabob," said Corentin. "To keep
an eye on Esther you must keep up her intimacy with Val-
Noble. She was really Lucien's mistress."
WHAT LOVE COSTS 235
"They have got more than five hundred thousand francs
out of Nucingen already," said Contenson.
"And they want as much again," Corentin went on. "The
Eubempre estate is to cost a million. — Daddy," added he,
slapping Peyrade on the shoulder, "you may get more than
a hundred thousand francs to settle on Lydie."
"Don't tell me that, Corentin. If your scheme should fail,
I cannot tell what I might not do "
"You will have it by to-morrow perhaps ! The Abbe, my
dear fellow, is most astute; we shall have to kiss his spurs;
he is a very superior devil. But I have him sure enough.
He is not a fool, and he will knock under. Try to be a
gaby as well as a nabob, and fear nothing."
In the evening of this day, when the opposing forces had
met face to face on level ground, Lucien spent the evening
at the Hotel Grandlieu. The party was a large one. In the
face of all the assembly, the Duchess kept Lucien at her side
for some time, and was most kind to him.
"You are going away for a little while?" said she.
"Yes, Madame la Duchesse. My sister, in her anxiety
to promote my marriage, has made great sacrifices, and I
have been enabled to repurchase the lands of the Rubempres,
to reconstitute the whole estate. But I have found in my
Paris lawyer a very clever man, who has managed to save
me from the extortionate terms that the holders would have
asked if they had known the name of the purchaser."
"Is there a chateau?" asked Clotilde, with too broad a
smile.
"There is something which might be called a chateau ; but
the wiser plan would be to use the building materials in the
construction of a modern residence."
Clotilde's eyes blazed with happiness above her smile of
satisfaction.
"You must play a rubber with my father this evening,"
said she. "In a fortnight I hope you will be asked to
dinner."
236 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Well, my dear sir/' said the Due de Grandlieu, "I am
told that you have bought the estate of Eubempre. I con-
gratulate you. It is an answer to those who say you are in
debt. We bigwigs, like France or England, are allowed to
have a public debt; but men of no fortune, beginners, you
see, may not assume that privilege "
"Indeed, Monsieur le Due, I still owe five hundred thou-
sand francs on my land."
"Well, well, you must marry a wife who can bring you
the money; but you will have some difficulty in finding a
match with such a fortune in our Faubourg, where daughters
do not get large dowries."
"Their name is enough," said Lucien.
"We are only three wisk players — Maufrigneuse, d'Espard,
and I — will you make the fourth?" said the Duke, pointing
to the card-table.
Clotilde came to the table to watch her father's game.
"She expects me to believe that she means it for me," said
the Duke, patting his daughter's hands, and looking round
at Lucien, who remained quite grave.
Lucien, Monsieur d'Espard's partner, lost twenty louis.
"My dear mother," said Clotilde to the Duchess, "he was
so judicious as to lose."
At eleven o'clock, after a few affectionate words with
Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, Lucien went home and to bed,
thinking of the complete triumph he was to enjoy a month
hence ; for he had not a doubt of being accepted as Clotilde's
lover, and married before Lent in 1830.
On the morrow, when Lucien was smoking his cigarettes
after breakfast, sitting with Carlos, who had become much
depressed, M. de Saint-Esteve was announced — what a touch
of irony — who begged to see either the Abbe Carlos Herrera
or Monsieur Lucien de Eubempre.
"Was he told downstairs that I had left Paris?" cried the
Abbe.
"Yes, sir," replied the groom.
*^ell, then, you must see the man," said he to Lucien.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 237
"But do not say a single compromising word, do not let a
sign of surprise escape you. It is the enemy."
"You will overhear me/' said Lucien.
Carlos hid in the adjoining room, and through the crack
of the door he saw Corentin, whom he recognized only by his
voice, such powers of transformation did the great man
possess. This time Corentin looked like an old paymaster-
general.
"I have not the honor of being known to you, monsieur,"
Corentin began, %ut "
"Excuse my interrupting you, monsieur, but "
"But the matter in point is your marriage to Mademoiselle
Clotilde de Grandli^a — which will never take place," Coren-
tin added eagerly.
Lucien sat down and made no reply,
"You are in the power of a man who is able and willing
and ready to prove to the Due de Grandlieu that the lands of
Rubempre are to be paid for with the money that a fool has
given your mistress, Mademoiselle Esther," Corentin went on.
"It will be quite easy to find the minutes of the legal opinions
in virtue of which Mademoiselle Esther was summoned ; there
are ways too of making d'Estourny speak. The very clever
manoeuvres employed against the Baron de Nucingen will be
brought to light.
"As yet all can be arranged. Pay down a hundred thou-
sand francs, and you will have peace. — All this is no concern
of mine. I am only the agent of those who levy this black-
mail ; nothing more."
Corentin might have talked for an hour; Lucien smoked
his cigarette with an air of perfect indifference.
"Monsieur," replied he, "I do not want to know who you
are, for men who undertake such jobs as these have no name —
at any rate, in my vocabulary. I have allowed you to talk at
your leisure; I am at home. — You seem to me not bereft of
common sense; listen to my dilemma."
There was a pause, during which Lucien met Corentin's
cat-like eye fixed on him with a perfectly icy stare.
238 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Either you are building on facts that are absolutely false,
and I need pay no heed to them," said Lucien ; "or you are in
the right; and in that case, by giving you a hundred thou-
sand francs, I put you in a position to ask me for as many
hundred thousand francs as your employer can find Saint-
Esteves to ask for.
"However, to put an end, once for all, to your kind inter-
vention, I would have you know that I, Lucien de Rubempre,
fear no one. I have no part in the jobbery of which you
speak. If the Grandlieus make difficulties, there are other
young ladies of very good family ready to be married. After
all, it is no loss to me if I remain single, especially if, as you
imagine, I deal in blank bills to such advantage."
"If Monsieur I'Abbe Carlos Herrera "
"Monsieur," Lucien put in, "the Abbe Herrera is at this
moment on the way to Spain. He has nothing to do with my
marriage, my interests are no concern of his. That remark-
able statesman was good enough to assist me at one time with
his advice, but he has reports to present to His Majesty the
King of Spain ; if you have anything to say to him, I recom-
mend you to set out for Madrid."
"Monsieur," said Corentin plainly, "you will never be
Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu's husband."
"So much the worse for her !" replied Lucien, impatiently
pushing Corentin towards the door.
"You have fully considered the matter?" asked Corentin
coldly.
"Monsieur, I do not recognize that you have any right
either to meddle in my affairs, or to make me waste a cigar-
ette," said Lucien, throwing away his cigarette that had goiie
out.
"Good-day, monsieur," said Corentin. "We shall not meet
again. — But there will certainly be a moment in your life
when you would give half your fortune to have called me
back from these stairs."
In answer to this threat, Carlos made as though he were
cutting off a head.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 239
"Now to business !" cried he, looking at Lucien, who was
as white as ashes after this dreadful interview.
If among the small number of my readers who take an in-
terest in the moral and philosophical side of this book there
should be only one capable of believing that the Baron de
Nucingen was happy, that one would prove how difficult it is
to explain the heart of a courtesan by any kind of physiolog-
ical formula. Esther was resolved to make the poor million-
aire pay dearly for what he called his day of triumph. And
at the beginning of February 1830 the house-warming party
had not yet been given in the "little palace."
"Well," said Esther in confidence to her friends, who re-
peated it to the Baron, "I shall open house at the Carnival,
and I mean to make my man as happy as a cock in plaster."
The phrase became proverbial among women of her kidney.
The Baron gave vent to much lamentation; like married
men, he made himself very ridiculous, he began to complain
to his intimate friends, and his dissatisfaction was generally
known.
Esther, meanwhile, took quite a serious view of her position
as the Pompadour of this prince of speculators. She had
given two or three small evening parties, solely to get Lucien
into the house. Lousteau, Eastignac, du Tillet, Bixiou,
ISTathan, the Comte de Brambourg — all the cream of the
dissipated crew — frequented her drawing-room. And, as
leading ladies in the piece she was playing, Esther accepted
Tullia, Florentine, Fanny Beaupre, and Florine — two dancers
and two actresses — besides Madame du Val-Noble. ISTothing
can be more dreary than a courtesan's home without the spice
of rivalry, the display of dress, and some variety of type.
In six weeks Esther had become the wittiest, the most amus-
ing, the loveliest, and the most elegant of those female pariahs
who form the class of kept women. Placed on the pedestal
that became her, she enjoyed all the delights of vanity which
fascinate women in general, but still as one who is raised above
her caste by a secret thought. She cherished in her heart an
240 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
image of herself which she gloried in, while it made her
blush; the hour when she must abdicate was ever present to
her consciousness ; thus she lived a double life, really scorning
herself. Her sarcastic remarks were tinged by the temper
which was roused in her by the intense contempt felt by the
Angel of Love, hidden in the courtesan, for the disgraceful
and odious part played by the body in the presence, as it were,
of the soul. At once actor and spectator, victim and judge,
she was a living realization of the beautiful Arabian Tales,
in which a noble creature lies hidden under a degrading form,
and of which the type is the story of Nebuchadnezzar in the
book of books — the Bible. Having granted herself a lease of
life till the day after her infidelity, the victim might surely
play awhile with the executioner.
Moreover, the enlightenment that had come to Esther as to
the secretly disgraceful means by which the Baron had made
his colossal fortune relieved her of every scruple. She could
play the part of Ate, the goddess of vengeance, as Carlos said.
And so she was by turns enchanting and odious to the banker,
who lived only for her. When the Baron had been worked up
to such a pitch of suffering that he wanted only to be quit of
Esther, she brought him round by a scene of tender affection.
Herrera, making a great show of starting for Spain, had
gone as far as Tours. He had sent the chaise on as far as
Bordeaux, with a servant inside, engaged to play the part of
master, and to wait for him at Bordeaux. Then, returning by
diligence, dressed as a commercial traveler, he had secretly
taken up his abode under Esther's roof, and thence, aided by
Asie and Europe, carefully directed all his machinations,
keeping an eye on every one, and especially on Peyrade.
About a fortnight before the day chosen for her great en-
tertainment, which was to be given in the evening after the
first opera ball, the courtesan, whose witticisms were begin-
ning to make her feared, happened to be at the Italian opera,
at the back of a box which the Baron — forced to give a box —
had secured in the lowest tier, in order to conceal his mistress,
and not to flaunt her in public within a few feet of Madame
L.V-'"
WHAT LOVE COSTS 241
de Nucingen. Esther had taken her seat, so as to "rake" that
of Madame de Serizy, whom Lucien almost invariably accom-
panied. The poor girl made her whole happiness centre in
watching Lucien on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays by
Madame de Serizy's side.
At about half-past nine in the evening Esther could see
Lucien enter the Countess' box, with a care-laden brow, pale,
and with almost drawn features. These symptoms of mental
anguish were legible only to Esther. The knowledge of a
man's countenance is, to the woman who loves him, like that
of the sea to a sailor.
. "Good God ! what can be the matter ? What has happened ?
Does he want to speak with that angel of hell, who is to him
a guardian angel, and who lives hidden in an attic between
those of Europe and Asie ?"
Tormented by such reflections, Esther scarcely listened to
the music. Still less, it may be believed, did she listen to the
Baron, who held one of his "Anchel's" hands in both his,
talking to her in his horrible Polish-Jewish accent, a jargon
which must be as unpleasant to read as it is to hear spoken.
"Esther," said he, releasing her hand, and pushing it away'
with a slight touch of temper, "you do not listen to me."
"I tell you what. Baron, you blunder in love as you gibber
in French."
"Der teufel!"
"I am not in my boudoir here, I am at the opera. If you
were not a barrel made by Huret or Fichet, metamorphosed-'
into a man by some trick of nature, you would not make so
much noise in a box with a woman who is fond of music. I
don't listen to you ? I should think not ! There you sit rus-
tling my dress like a cockchafer in a paper-bag, and making
me laugh with contempt. You say to me, 'You are so pretty,
I should like to eat you !' Old simpleton ! Supposing I were
to say to you, 'You are less intolerable this evening than you
were yesterday — we will go home ?' — Well, from the way you
puff and sigh — for I feel you if I don't listen to you — I per-
ceive that you have eaten an enormous dinner, and your diges-
X
242 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
tion is at work. Let me instruct you — for I cost you enough
to give some advice for your money now and then — let me tell
3^ou, my dear fellow, that a man whose digestion is so trouble-
some as yours is, is not justified in telling his mistress that
she is pretty at unseemly hours. An old soldier died of that
very folly 'in the arms of Eeligion,' as Blondet has it.
"It is now ten o'clock. You finished dinner at du Tillet's
at nine o'clock, with your pigeon the Comte de Brambourg;
you have millions and truffles to digest. Come to-morrow
night at ten."
"Vat you are cruel !" cried the Baron, recognizing the pro-
found truth of this medical argument.
"Cruel !" echoed Esther, still looking at Lucien. "Have
you not consulted Bianchon, Desplein, old Haudry? — Since
you have had a glimpse of future happiness, do you know
what vou seem like to me ?"
"No— vat?"
"A fat old fellow wrapped in flannel, who walks every hour
from his armchair to the window to see if the thermometer
has risen to the degree marked 'Silkworms/ the temperature
prescribed by his physician."
"You are really an ungrateful slut !" cried the Baron, in
despair at hearing a tune, which, however, amorous old men
not uuf requently hear at the opera.
"Ungrateful !" retorted Esther. "What have you given me
till now ? A great deal of annoyance. Come, papa ! Can I
1)6 proud of you ? You ! you are proud of me ; I wear your
livery and badge with an air. You paid my debts? So you
did. But you have grabbed so many millions — come, you
need not sulk ; you admitted that to me — ^that you need not
think twice of that. And this is your chief title to fame. A
baggage and a thief — a well-assorted couple !
"You have built a splendid cage for a parrot that amuses
you. Go and ask a Brazilian cockatoo what gratitude it owes
to the man who placed it in a gilded cage. — Don't look at me
like that ; 5^ou are just like a Buddhist Bonze.
"Well, you show your red-and-white cockatoo to all Paris.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 243
You say, 'Does anybody else in Paris own such a parrot ? And
how well it talks, how cleverly it picks its words !' If du
Tillet comes in, it says at once, 'How'do, little swindler?' —
Why, you are as happy as a Dutchman who has grown an
unique tulip, as an old nabob pensioned off in Asia by Eng-
land, when a commercial traveler sells him the first Swiss
snuff-box that opens in three places.
"You want to win my heart? "Well, now, I will tell you
how to do it."
"Speak, speak, dere is noting I shall not do for you. I lofe
to be fooled by you."
"Be young, be handsome, be like Lucien de Eubempre over
there by your wife, and you shall have gratis what you can
never buy with all your millions !"
"I shall go 'vay, for really you are too bat dis evening !"
said the banker, with a lengthened face.
"Very well, good-night then," said Esther. "Tell Georches
to make your pillows very high and place your feet low, for
you look apoplectic this evening. — You cannot say, my dear,
that I take no interest in your health."
The Baron was standing up, and held the door-knob in his
hand.
"Here, Nucingen," said Esther, with an imperious gesture.
The Baron bent over her with dog-like devotion.
"Do you want to see me very sweet, and giving you sugar-
and-water, and petting you in my house, this very evening,
old monster?"
"You shall break my heart !"
"Break your heart — ^you mean bore you," she went on.
"Well, bring me Lucien that I may invite him to our Bel-
shazzar's feast, and you may be sure he will not fail to come.
If you succeed in that little transaction, I will tell you that
I love you, my fat Frederic, in such plain terms that you
cannot but believe me."
"You are ein enchantress," said the Baron, kissing Esther's
glove. "I should be villing to listen to abuse for ein hour if
alvays der vas a kiss at de ent of it."
244 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"But if I am not obeyed, I " and she threatened the
Baron with her finger as we threaten children.
The Baron raised his head like a bird caught in a springe
and imploring the trapper's pity.
"Dear Heaven! What ails Lucien?" said she to herself
when she was alone, making no attempt to check her falling
tears; "I never saw him so sad."
This is what had happened to Lucien that very evening.
At nine o'clock he had gone out, as he did every evening,
in his brougham to go to the Hotel de Grandlieu. Using his
saddle-horse and cab in the morning only, like all young men,
he had hired a brougham for winter evenings, and had chosen
a first-class carriage and splendid horses from one of the best
job-masters. For the last month all had gone well with him ;
he had dined with the Grandlieus three times; the Duke was
delightful to him ; his shares in the Omnibus Company, sold
for three hundred thousand francs, had paid off a third more
of the price of the land ; Clotilde de Grandlieu, who dressed
beautifully now, reddened inch thick when he went into the
room, and loudly proclaimed her attachment to him. Some
personages of high estate discussed their marriage as a proba-
])le event. The Due de Chaulieu, formerly Ambassador to
Spain, and now for a short while Minisier for Foreign Affairs,
had promised the Duchesse de Grandlieu that he would ask
for the title of Marquis for Lucien.
So that evening, after dining with Madame de Serizy,
Lucien had driven to the Faubourg Saint-Germain to pay his
daily visit.
He arrives, the coachman calls for the gate to be opened,
he drives into the courtyard and stops at the steps. Lucien,
on getting out, remarks four other carriages in waiting. On
seeing Monsieur de Eubempre, one of the footmen placed to
open and shut the hall-door comes forward and out on to the
steps, in front of the door, like a soldier on guard.
"His Grace is not at home," says he.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 245
"Madame la Duchesse is receiving company," observes
Lucien to the servant.
"Madame la Duchesse is gone out/' replies the man sol-
emnly.
"Mademoiselle Clotilde "
"I do not think that Mademoiselle Clotilde will see you,
monsieur, in the absence of Madame la Duchesse."
"But there are people here," replies Lucien in dismay.
"I do not know, sir," says the man, trying to seem stupid
and to be respectful.
There is nothing more fatal than etiquette to those who
regard it as the most formidable arm of social law. Lucien
easily interpreted the meaning of this scene, so disastrous to
him. The Duke and Duchess would not admit him. He
felt the spinal marrow freezing in the core of his vertebral
column, and a sickly cold sweat bedewed his brow. The con-
versation had taken place in the presence of his own body-
servant, who held the door of the brougham, doubting
whether to shut it. Lucien signed to him that he was going
away again ; but as he stepped into the carriage, he heard the
noise of people coming downstairs, and the servant called out
first, "Madame la Duchesse de Chaulieu's people," then "Ma-
dame la Vicomtesse de Grandlieu's carriage !"
Lucien merely said, "To the Italian opera" ; but in spite of
his haste, the luckless dandy could not escape the Due de
Chaulieu and his son, the Due de Ehetore, to whom he was
obliged to bow, for they did not speak a word to him. A
great catastrophe at Court, the fall of a formidable favorite,
has ere now been pronounced on the threshold of a royal
study, in one word from an usher with a face like a plaster
cast.
"How am I to let my adviser know of this disaster — this
instant ?" thought Lucien as he drove to the opera-
house. "What is going on?"
He racked his brain with conjectures.
This was what had taken place. That morning, at eleven
o'clock, the Due de Grandlieu, as he went into the little room
246 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
where the family all breakfasted together, said lu Clotiide
after kissing her, "Until further orders, my child, think no
more of the Sieur de Rubempre.''
Then he had taken the Duchess by the hand, and led hei
into a window recess to say a few words in an undertone,
which made poor Clotiide turn pale; for she watched her
mother as she listened to the Duke, and saw her expression of
extreme surprise.
"Jean," said the Duke to one of his servants, "take this note
to Monsieur le Due de Chaulieu, and beg him to answer by
you. Yes or No. — I am asking him to dine here to-day," he
added to his wife.
Breakfast had been a most melancholy meal. The Duchess
was meditative, the Duke seemed to be vexed with himself,
and Clotiide could with difficulty restrain her tears.
"My child, your father is right; you must obey him," the
mother had said to the daughter with much emotion. "I do
not say as he does, 'Think no more of Lucien." No — for I
understand your suffering" — Clotiide kissed her mother's
hand — "but I do say, my darling. Wait, take no step, suffer in
silence since you love him, and put your trust in your parents'
care. — Great ladies, my child, are great just because they can
do their duty on every occasion, and do it nobly."
"But what is it about ?" asked Clotiide as white as a lily.
"Matters too serious to be discussed with you, my dearest,"
the Duchess replied. "For if they are untrue, your mind
would be unnecessarily sullied ; and if they are true, you must
never know them."
At six o'clock the Due de Chaulieu had come to join the
Due de Grandlieu, who awaited him in his study.
"Tell me, Henri"' — for the Dukes were on the most familiar
terms, and addressed each other by their Christian names.
This is one of the shades invented to mark a degree of inti-
macy, to repel the audacity of French familiarity, and hu-
miliate conceit — "tell me, Henri, I am in such a desperate
difficulty that I can only ask advice of an old friend who un-
derstands business, and you have practice and experience.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 247
My daughter Clotilde, as 3 ou know, is in love with that little
Rubempre, whom I have been almost compelled to accept as
her promised husband. I have always been averse to the mar-
riage; however, Madame de Grandlieu could not bear to
thwart Clotilde's passion. When the young fellow had re-
purchased the family estate and paid three-quarters of the
price, I could make no further objectiojas. ,
"But last evening I received aa. anonymous letter — -you
know how much that is worth — in which Tani informed that
the young fellow's fortune is derived from some disreputable
source, and that he is telling lies when he says that his sister
is giving him the necessary funds for his purchase. For my
daughter's happiness, and for the sake of our family, I am
adjured to make inquiries, and the means of doing so are sug-
gested to me. Here, read it."
"I am entirely of your opinion as to the value of anonymous
letters, my dear Ferdinand," said the Due de Chaulieu after
reading the letter. "Still, though we may contemn them,
we must make use of them. We must treat such letters as
we would treat a spy. Keep the young man out of the house,
and let us make inquiries
"I know how to do it. Your lawyer is Derville, a man in
whom we have perfect confidence; he knows the secrets of
many families, and can certainly be trusted with this. He is
an honest man, a man of weight, and a man of honor ; he is
cunning and wily ; but his wiliness is only in the way of busi-
ness, and you need only employ him to obtain evidence you
can depend upon.
"We have in the Foreign Office an agent of the superior
police who is unique in his power of discovering State secrets ;
we often send him on such missions. Inform Derville that
he will have a lieutenant in the case. Our spy is a gentleman
who will appear wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honor,
and looking like a diplomate. This rascal will do the hunt-
ing; Derville will only look on. Your lawyer will then tell
you if the mountain brings forth a mouse, or if you must
throw over this little Rubempre. Within a week you will
know what you are doing."
248 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"The 3'oung man is not yet so far a Marquis as to take
offence at my being 'ISTot at home' for a week/' said the Due
de Grandlieu.
. "Above all, if you end by giving him your daughter," re-
plied the Minister. "If the anonymous letter tells the truth,
what of that? You can send Clotilde to travel with my
daughter-in-law Madeleine, who wants to go to Italy."
"You relieve me immensely. I don't yet know whether I
ought to thank vou."
"Wait till the end."
"By the way," exclaimed the Due de Grandlieu, "what is
your man's name ? I must mention it to Derville. Send him
to me to-morrow by five o'clock ; I will have Derville here and
put them in communication."
"His real name," said M. de Chaulieu, "is, I think, Coren-
tin — a name you must never have heard, for my gentleman
will come ticketed with his official name. He calls himself
Monsieur de Saint-Something — Saint Yves — Saint- Valere ? —
Something of the kind. — You may trust him; Louis XVIII.
had perfect confidence in him."
After this confabulation the steward had orders to shut the
door on Monsieur de Kubempre — which was done.
Lucien paced the waiting-room at the opera-house like a
man who was drunk. He fancied himself the talk of all
Paris. He had in the Due de Rhetore one of those unrelenting
enemies on whom a man must smile, as he can never be
revenged, since their attacks are in conformity with the rules
of society. The Due de Ehetore knew the scene that had just
taken place on the outside steps of the Grandlieus' house.
Lucien, feeling the necessity of at once reporting the catas-
trophe to his high privy councillor, nevertheless was afraid
of compromising himself by going to Esther's house, where he
might find company. He actually forgot that Esther was
here, so confused were his thoughts, and in the midst of so
much perplexity he was obliged to make small talk with Ras-
tignac, who, knowing nothing of the news, congratulated him
on his approaching marriage.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 249
At this moment Nucingen appeared smiling, and said to
Lucien :
"Vill you do me de pleasure to come to see Montame de
Champy, vat vill infite you herself to von house-varming
party "
"With pleasure, Baron," replied Lucien, to whom the Baron
appeared as a rescuing angel.
"Leave us," said Esther to Monsieur de Nucingen, when she
saw him come in with Lucien. "Go and see Madame du Val-
Noble, whom I discover in a box on the third tier with her
nabob. — A great many nabobs grow in the Indies," she added,
with a knowing glance at Lucien.
"And that one," said Lucien, smiling, "is uncommonly like
yours."
"And then," said Esther, answering Lucien with another
look of intelligence, while still speaking to the Baron, ^'T)ring
her here with her nabob; he is very anxious to make your
acquaintance. They say he is very rich. The poor woman
has already poured out I know not how many elegies; she
complains that her nabob is no good; and if you relieve him
of his ballast, perhaps he will sail closer to the wind."
"You tink ve are all tieves !" said the Baron as he went
away.
"What ails you, my Lucien?" asked Esther in her friend's
ear, just touching it with her lips as soon as the box door was
shut.
"I am lost ! I have just been turned from the door of the
Hotel de Grandlieu under pretence that no one was admitted.
The Duke and Duchess were at home, and five pairs of horses
were champing in the courtyard."
"What ! will the marriage not take place ?" exclaimed
Esther, much agitated, for she saw a glimpse of Paradise.
"I do not yet know what is being plotted against me "
"My I^ucien," said she in a deliciously coaxing voice, "why
be worried about it? You can make a better match by and
by — I will get you the price of two estates "
"Give us supper to-night that I may be able to speak in
'4m A COURTESAN'S LIFE
secret to Carlos, and, above all. invite the sham Englishman
and Val-Noble. That nabob is my ruin; he is our enemy;
we will get hold of him, and we "
But l^ucien broke off with a gesture of despair.
"Well, what is it?" asked the poor girl.
''Oh ! Madame de Serizy sees me !"' cried Lucien, "and to
crown our woes, the Due de Ehetore, who witnessed my
dismissal, is with her."
In fact, at that very minute, the Due de Ehetore was amus-
ing himself with Madame de Serizy's discomfiture.
"Do you allow Lucien to be seen in Mademoiselle Esther's
box?"' said the young Duke, pointing to the box and to
Lucien ; ^'you, who take an interest in him, should really tell
liim such things are not allowed. He may sup at her house,
he may even — But, in fact, I am no longer surprised at the
Grandlieus' coolness towards the young man. I have just
seen their door shut in his face — on the front steps ''
"Women of tliat sort are very dangerous," said Madame de
Serizy, turning her opera-glass on Esther's box.
"Yes," said the Duke, "as much by what they can do as by
what they wish '"
"They will ruin him !" cried Madame de Serizy, "for T am
told they cost as much whether they are paid or no."
"Not to him !'' said the young Duke, affecting surprise.
"They are far from costing him anything; they give him
money at need, and all run after him."
The Countess' lips showed a little nervous twitching which
could not be included in any category of smiles.
"Well, then," said Esther, "come to supper at midnight.
Bring Blondet and Eastignac; let us have two amusing per-
sons at any rate ; and we won't be more than nine."
"You must find some excuse for sending the Baron to
fetch Eugenie under pretence of warning Asie, and tell her
what has befallen me, so that Carlos may know before he has
the nabob under his claws."
"That shall be done," said Esther.
And thus Pe3rrade was probably about to find himself un-
WHAT LOVE COSTS 251
wittingly under the same roof with his adversary. The tiger
was coming into the lion's den, and a lion surrounded by his
guards.
When Lucien went back to Madame de Serizy's box, in-
stead of turning to him, smiling and arranging her skirts for
him to sit by her, she affected to pay him not the slightest
attention, but looked about the house through her glass.
Lucien could see, however, by the shaking of her hand that
the Countess was suffering from one of those terrible emo-
tions by which illicit joys are paid for. He went to the front
of the box all the same, and sat down by her at the opposite
corner, leaving a little vacant space between himself and the
Countess. He leaned on the ledge of the box with his elbow,
resting his chin on his gloved hand ; then he half turned away,
waiting for a word. By the middle of the act the Countess
had still neither spoken to him nor looked at him.
"I do not know," said she at last, "why you are here ; your
place is in Mademoiselle Esther's box "
"I will go there," said Lucien, leaving the box without
looking at the Countess.
"My dear," said Madame du Val-Noble, going into Esther's
box with Peyrade, whom the Baron de ISTucingen did not
recognize, "I am delighted to introduce Mr. Samuel Jolmson.
He is a great admirer of M. de Nucingen's talents."
"Indeed, monsieur," said Esther, smiling at Peyrade.
"Oh yes, hocou," said Peyrade.
"Why, Baron, here is a way of speaking French which is
as much like yours as the low Breton dialect is like that of
Burgundy. It will be most amusing to hear you discuss
money matters. — Do you know, Monsieur Nabob, what I shall
require of you if you are to make acquaintance with my
Baron ?" said Esther with a smile.
"Oh ! — Thank you so much, you will introduce me to Sir
Baronet ?" said Peyrade with an extravagant English accent.
"Yes," said she, "you must give me the pleasure of your
company at supper. There is no pitch stronger than cham-
pagne for sticking men together. Tt seals every kind of busi-
252 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
ness, above all such as 3'ou put your foot in. — Come this even-
ing; you will find some jolly fellows. — As for you, my little
Frederic," she added in the Baron's ear, "you have your car-
riage here — just drive to the Eue Saint-Georges and bring
Europe to me here ; I have two words to say to her about the
supper. I have caught Lucien; he will bring two men who
will be fun. — We will draw the Englishman," she whispered
to Madame du Val-!N"oble.
Peyrade and the Baron left the women together.
"Oh, my dear, if you ever succeed in drawing that great
brute, you will be clever indeed," said Suzanne.
"If it proves impossible, you must lend him to me for a
week," replied Esther, laughing.
"You would but keep him half a day," replied Madame du
Val-Xoble.. "The bread I eat is too hard; it breaks my teeth.
Never again, to my dying day, will I try to make an English-
man happy. They are all cold and selfish — pigs on their
hind legs."
"What, no consideration?" said Esther with a smile.
"On the contrary, my dear, the monster has never shown
the least familiarity."
"Under no circumstances whatever?" asked Esther.
"The wretch always addresses me as Madame, and pre-
serves the most perfect coolness imaginable at moments when
every man is more or less amenable. To him love-making I —
on my word, it is nothing more nor less than shaving himself.
He wipes the razor, puts it back in its case, and looks in the
glass as if he were saying, '1 have not cut myself !'
"Then he treats me with such respect as is enough to send
a woman mad. That odious Milord Potboiler amuses himself
])y making poor Theodore hide in my dressing-room and
stand there half the day. In short, he tries to annoy me in
every way. And as stingy ! — As miserly as Gobseck and
Gigonnet rolled into one. He takes me out to dinner, but he
does not pay the cab that brings me home if I happen not to
have ordered my carriage to fetch me."
"Well," said Esther, "but what does he pay you for your
services ?"
WHAT LOVE COSTS 253
"Oh, my dear, positively nothing. Five hundred francs a
month and not a penny more, and the hire of a carriage.
But what is it ? A machine such as they hire out for a third-
rate wedding to carry an epicier to the Mairie, to Church,
and to the Cadran bleu. — Oh, he nettles me with his respect.
"If I try hysterics and feel ill, he is never vexed; he only
says : 'I wish my lady to have her own way, for there is noth-
ing more detestable — no gentleman — than to say to a nice
woman, "You are a cotton bale, a bundle of merchandise." —
Ha, hah ! Are you a member of the Temperance Society and
anti-slavery?" And my horror sits pale, and cold, and
hard while he gives me to understand that he has as much
respect for me as he might have for a negro, and that it has
nothing to do with his feelings, but with his opinions as an
abolitionist."
"A man cannot be a worse wretch," said Esther. "But I
will smash up that outlandish Chinee."
"Smash him up?" replied Madame du Val-Koble. "Not
if he does not love me. You, yourself, would you like to ask
him for two sous ? He would listen to you solemnly, and tell
you, with British precision that would make a slap in the
face seem genial, that he pays dear enough for the trifle that
love can be to his poor life ;" and, as before, Madame du Val-
Noble mimicked Peyrade's bad French.
"To think that in our line of life we are thrown in the
way of such men !" exclaimed Esther.
"Oh, my dear, you have been uncommonly lucky. Take
good care of your Nucingen."
"But your nabob must have got some idea in his head."
"That is what Adele says."
"Look here, my dear; that man, you may depend, has laid
a bet that he will make a woman hate him and pack him off
in a certain time."
"Or else he wants to do business with Nucingen, and took
me up knowing that you and I were friends ; that is what
Adele thinks," answered Madame du Val-Noble. "That is
why I introduced him to you this evening. Oh, if only I
254 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
could be sure what he is at, what tricks I could play with
you and Nucingen !"
"And you don't get angry ?" asked Esther ; "you don't speak
your mind now and then?"
"Try it — you are sharp and smooth. — Well, in spite of
your sweetness, he would kill you with his icy smiles. 'I am
anti-slavery,' he would say, 'and you are free.' — If you said
the funniest things, he would only look at you and say, 'Very
good !' and you would see that he regards you merely as a part
of the show."
"And if you turned furious?"
"The same thing ; it would still be a show. You might cut
him open under the left breast without hurting him in the
least ; his internals are of tinned-iron, I am sure. I told him
so. He replied, 'I am quite satisfied with that physical con-
stitution.'
"And always polite. My dear, he wears gloves on his
soul . . .
"I shall endure this martyrdom a few days longer to satisfy
my curiosity. But for that, I should have made Philippe slap
my lord's cheek — and he has not his match as a swordsman.
There is nothing else left for it "
"I was just going to say so," cried Esther. "But you must
ascertain first that Philippe is a boxer; for these old English
fellows, my dear, have a depth of malignity "
"This one has no match on earth. No, if you could but see
him asking my commands, to know at what hol^r he may come
— to take me by surprise, of course — and pouring out respect-
ful speeches like a so-called gentleman, you would say, 'Why,
he adores her !' and there is not a woman in the world who
would not say the same."
"And they envy us, my dear !" exclaimed Esther.
"Ah, well !" sighed Madame du Val-Xoble ; "in the course
of our lives we learn more or less how little men value us.
But, my dear, I have never been so cruelly, so deeply, so
utterly scorned by brutality as I am by this great skinful of
port wine.
WHAT I.OYE costs 255
'^hen he is tipsy he goes away — 'not to be unpleasant/ as
he tells Adele, and not to be 'under two powers at once; wine
and woman. He takes advantage of nay carriage ; he uses it
more than I do. — Oh ! if only we could see him under the
table to-night ! But he can drink ten bottles and only be
fuddled; when his eyes are full, he still sees clearly."
"Like people whose windows are dirty outside,"' said Esther,
"but who can see from inside what is going on in the street. —
I know that property in man. Du Tillet has it in the highest
degree."
"Try to get du Tillet, and if he and Kucingen between
them could only catch him in some of their plots,' I should at
least be revenged. They would bring him to beggary !
"Oh ! my dear, to have fallen into the hands of a hypocrit-
ical Protestant after that poor Falleix, who was so amusing,
so good-natured, so full of chaff ! How we used to laugh !
They say all stockbrokers are stupid. Well, he, for one, never
lacked wit but once "
"When he left you without a sou? That is what made you
acquainted with the unpleasant side of pleasure."
Europe, brought in by Monsieur de Nucingen, put her
viperine head in at the door, and after listening to a fev,-
words whispered in her ear by his mistress, she vanished.
At half -past eleven that evening, five carriages were sta-
tioned in the Eue Saint-Georges before the famous courte-
san's door. There was Lucien's, who had brought Eastignac,
Rixiou, and Blondet; du Tillet's, the Baron de Xucingen's,
the Nabob's, and Florine's — she was invited by du Tillet.
The closed and doubly-shuttered windows were screened by
the splendid Chinese silk curtains. Supper was to be served
at one; wax-lights were blazing, the dining-room and little
drawing-room displayed all their magnificence. The party
looked forward to such an orgy as only three such women and
such men as these could survive. They began by playing
cards, as they had to wait about two hours.
"Do yon play, milord?" said du Tillet to Peyrade.
256 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"I have played with O'Connell, Pitt, Fox, Canning, Lord
Brougham, Lord "
"Say at once no end of lords," said Bixiou.
"Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Hertford,
Lord "
Bixiou was looking at Peyrade's shoes, and stooped down.
"What are you looking for?" asked Blondet.
"For the spring one must touch to stop this machine," said
Florine.
"Do you play for twenty francs a point?"
"I will play for as much as you like to lose."
"He does it well !" said Esther to Lucien. "They all take
him for an Englishman."
Du Tillet, Kucingen, Peyrade, and Eastignac sat down to
a whist-table; Florine, Madame du Yal-Noble, Esther, Blon-
det, and Bixiou sat round the fire chatting. Lucien spent the
time in looking through a book of fine engravings.
"Supper is ready," Paccard presently announced, in mag-
nificent livery.
Peyrade was placed at Florine's left hand, and on the other
side of him Bixiou, whom Esther had enjoined to make the
Englishman drink freely, and challenge him to beat him.
Bixiou had the power of drinking an indefinite quantity.
Never in his life had Peyrade seen such splendor, or tasted
of such cookery, or seen such fine women.
"I am getting my money's worth this evening for the thou-
sand crowns la Val-Noble has cost me till now," thought he ;
"and besides, I have just won a thousand francs."
"This is an example for men to follow !" said Suzanne, who
was sitting by Lucien, with a wave of her hand at the splen-
dors of the dining-room.
Esther had placed Lucien next herself, and was holding his
foot between her own under the table.
"Do you hear?" said Madame du Val-Noble, addressing
Peyrade, who affected blindness. "This is how you ought to
furnish a house! When a man brings millions home from
India, and wants to do business with the Nucingens, he should
place himself on the same level."
WHAT LOVE COSTS 257
"I belong to a Temperance Society !"
"Then you will drink like a fish !" said Bixiou, "for the
Indies are uncommon hot, uncle !"
It was Bixiou's jest during supper to treat Peyrade as an
uncle of his, returned from India.
"Montame du Fal-ISToble tolt me you shall have some iteas,"
said Nucingen, scrutinizing Peyrade.
"Ah, this is what I wanted to hear," said du Tillet to Eas-
tignac; "the two talking gibberish together."
"You will see, they will understand each other at last,"
said Bixiou, guessing what du Tillet had said to Eastignac.
"Sir Baronet, I have imagined a speculation — oh ! a very
comfortable job — hocou profitable and rich in profits "
"Now you will see," said Blondet to du Tillet, "he will not
talk one minute without dragging in the Parliament and the
English Government."
"It is in China, in the opium trade "
"Ja, I know," said Nucingen at once, as a man who is well
acquainted with commercial geography. "But de English
Gover'ment hafe taken up de opium trate as a means dat shall
open up China, and she shall not allow dat ve "
"Nucingen has cut him out with the Government," re-
marked du Tillet to Blondet.
"Ah ! you have been in the opium trade !" cried Madame
du Val-Noble. "Now I understand why you are so narcotic ;
some has stuck in your soul."
"Dere ! you see !" cried the Baron to the self-styled opium
merchant, and pointing to Madame du Val-Noble. "You are
like me. Never shall a millionaire be able to make a voman
lofe him."
"I have loved much and often, milady," replied Peyrade.
"As a result of temperance," said Bixiou, who had just seen
Peyrade finish his third bottle of claret, and now had a bottle
of port wine uncorked.
"Oh !" cried Peyrade, "it is very fine, the Portugal of
England."
Blondet, du Tillet, and Bixiou smiled at each other. Pey-
258 A COURTESANS LIFE
rade had the power of travestying everything, even his wit.
There are very few Englishmen who will not maintain that
gold and silver are better in England than elsewhere. The
fowls and eggs exported from Normandy to the London mar-
ket enable the English to maintain that the poultry and eggs
in London are superior {very fine) to those of Paris, which
come from the same district.
Esther and Lucien were dumfounded by this perfection
of costume, language, and audacity.
They all ate and drank so well and so heartily, while talk-
ing and laughing, that it went on till four in the morning.
Bixiou flattered himself that he had achieved one of the vic-
tories so pleasantly related by Brillat-Savarin. But at the
moment when he was saying to himself, as he offered his
"uncle" some more wine, "I have vanquished England !'"
Peyrade replied in good French to this malicious scoffer.
''Tou jours, mon garqon" (Go it, my boy), which no one heard
but Bixiou.
"Hallo, good men all, he is as English as I am ! — My uncle
is a Gascon ! I could have no other !"
Bixiou and Peyrade were alone, so no one heard this an-
nouncement. Peyrade rolled off his chair on to the floor.
Paccard forth^vith picked him up and carried him to an attic,
where he fell sound asleep.
At six o'clock next evening, the Nabob was roused by the
application of a wet cloth, with which his face was being
washed, and awoke to find himself on a camp-bed, face to
face with Asie, wearing a mask and a black domino.
"Well, Papa Peyrade, you and I have to settle accounts,"
said she.
"Where am I P"" asked he, looking about him.
"Listen to me," said Asie, "and that will sober you. —
Though you do not love Madame du Val-Noble, you love
your daughter, I suppose?"
"My daughter?" Peyrade echoed with a roar.
"Yes, Mademoiselle Lydie."
"What then?"
WHAT LOVE COSTS 259
*'What then ? She is no longer in the Rue des Moineaux ;
phe has been carried off."
Peyrade breathed a sigh like that of a soldier dying of a
mortal wound on the battlefield.
"While you were pretending to be an Englishman, some one
else was pretending to be Peyrade. Your little Lydie thought
she was with her father, and she is now in a safe place. — Oh !
you will never find her! unless you undo the mischief you
have done."
"What mischief?"
"Yesterday Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had the door
shut in his face at the Due de Grandlieu's. This is due to
your intrigues, and to the man you let loose on us. Do not
speak, listen !" Asie went on, seeing Peyrade open his mouth.
"You will have your daughter again, pure and spotless," she
added, emphasizing her statement by the accent on every
word, "only on the day after that on which Monsieur Lucien de
Rubempre walks out of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin as the husband
of Mademoiselle Clotilde. If, within ten days Lucien de
Rubempre is not admitted, as he has been, to the Grandlieus"
house, you, to begin with, will die a violent death, and nothing
can save you from the fate that threatens you. — Then, when
you feel yourself dying, you will have time before breathing
your last to reflect, *My daughter is a prostitute for the rest
of her life !'
"Though you have been such a fool as give us this hold for
onr clutches, you still have sense enough to meditate on this
ultimatum from our government. Do not bark, say nothing
to any one; go to Contenson's, and change your dress, and
then go home. Katt will tell you that at a word from you
your little Lydie went downstairs, and has not been seen
since. If you make any fuss, if you take any steps, your
daughter will begin where I tell you she will end — she is
promised to de Marsay.
"With old Canquoelle I need not mince matters, I should
think, or wear gloves, heh ? Go on downstairs, and take
care not to meddle in our concerns any more."
260 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Asie left Peyrade in a pitiable state ; every word had been a
blow with a club. The spy had tears in his eyes, and tears
hanging from his cheeks at the end of a wet furrow.
"They are waiting dinner for Mr. Johnson," said Europe,
putting her head in a moment after.
Peyrade made no reply; he went down, walked till he
reached a cab-stand, and hurried off to undress at Conten-
son's, not saying a word to him; he resumed the costume of
Pere Canquoelle, and got home by eight o'clock. He mounted
the stairs with a beating heart. When the Flemish woman
heard her master, she asked him :
"Well, and where is mademoiselle?" with such simplicity,
that the old spy was obliged to lean against the wall. The
blow was more than he could bear. He went into his daugh-
ter's rooms, and ended by fainting with grief when he found
them empt}^, and heard Katt's story, which was that of an
abduction as skilfully planned as if he had arranged it him-
self.
"Well, well," though he, "I must knock under. I will be
revenged later; now I must go to Corentin. — This is the first
time we have met our foes. Corentin will leave that hand-
some boy free to marry an Empress if he wishes ! — Yes, I
understand that my little girl should have fallen in love with
him at first sight. — Oh ! that Spanish priest is a knowing one.
Courage, friend Peyrade ! disgorge your prey !"
The poor father never dreamed of the fearful blow that
awaited him.
On reaching Corentin's house, Bruno, the confidential ser-
vant, who knew Peyrade, said :
"Monsieur is gone away."
"For a long time?"
"For ten days."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"Good God, I am losing my wits ! I ask him where — as if
we ever told them " thought he.
A few hours before the moment when Peyrade was to be
WHAT LOVE COSTS 261
roused in his garret in the Rue Saint-Georges. Corentin,
coming in from his country place at Passy, had made his way
to the Due de Grandlieu's, in the costume of a retainer of a
superior class. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor
at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face
with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His
eyes were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like
a retired office-clerk. On giving his name as Monsieur de
Saint-Denis, he was led to the Duke's private room, where he
found Derville reading a letter, which he himself had dic-
tated to one of his agents, the "number" whose business it
was to write documents. The Duke took Corentin aside to
tell him all he already knew. Monsieur de Saint-Denis lis-
tened coldly and respectfully, amusing himself by studying
this grand gentleman, by penetrating the tufa beneath the
velvet cover, by scrutinizing this being, now and always ab-
sorbed in whist and in regard for the House of Grandlieu.
Such fine gentlemen are so guileless with their inferiors
that Corentin had only to lay few questions humbly before
Monsieur de Grandlieu to bring out his impertinence.
"If you will take my advice, monsieur," said Corentin to
Derville, after being duly introduced to the lawyer, "we shall
set out this very afternoon for Angouleme by the Bordeaux
coach, which goes quite as fast as the mail; and we shall not
need to stay there six hours to obtain the information Mon-
sieur le Due requires. It will be enough — if I have under-
stood your Grace — to ascertain whether Monsieur de Rubem-
pre's sister and brother-in-law are in a position to give him
twelve hundred thousand francs ?" and he turned to the Duke.
"You have understood me perfectly," said the Duke.
"We can be back again in four days," Corentin went on,
addressing Derville, "and neither of us will have neglected his
business long enough for it to suffer."
"That was the only difficulty I was about to mention to
his Grace," said Derville. "It is now four o'clock. I am
going home to say a word to my head-clerk, and pack my trav-
eling-bag, and after dinner, at eight o'clock, I will be
262 ^■'^ ' A COURTESAN'S LIFE
But shall we get places ?"' he said to Monsieur de Saint-Denis,
interrupting himself.
"I will answer for that," said Corentin. "Be in the yard
of the Chief Office of the Messageries at eight o'clock. If
there are no places, they shall make some, for that is the way
to serve Monseigneur le Due de Grandlieu."
"Gentlemen,"' said the Duke most graciously, "I postpone
my thanks "
Corentin and the lawyer, taking this as a dismissal, bowed,
and withdrew.
At the hour when Peyrade was questioning Corentin's ser-
vant, Monsieur de Saint-Denis and Derville, seated in the
Bordeaux coach, were studying each other in silence as they
drove out of Paris.
Xext morning, between Orleans and Tours, Derville, being
l)ored, began to converse, and Corentin condescended to amuse
him, but keeping his distance ; he left him to believe that he
was in the diplomatic service, and was hoping to become
Consul-General by the good offices of the Due de Grandlieu.
Two days after leaving Paris, Corentin and Derville got out
at Mansle, to the great surprise of the lawyer, who thought
he was going to Angouleme.
"In this little town," said Corentin, "we can get the most
positive information as regards Madame Sechard."
"Do you know her then?" asked Derville, astonished to find
Corentin so well informed.
"I made the conductor talk, finding he was a native of An-
gouleme. He tells me that Madame Sechard lives at Marsac,
and Marsac is but a league away from Mansle. I thought we
should be at greater advantage here than at Angouleme for
verifying the facts."
"And besides," thought Derville, "as Monsieur le Due said.
I act merely as the witness to the inquiries made by this con-
fidential agent "
The inn at Mansle, la Belle Etoile, had for its landlord one
of those fat and burl}' men whom we fear we may find no more
on our return ; but who still, ten years after, are seen standing
WHAT LOVE COSTS 263
at their door with as much superfluous flesh as ever, in the
same linen cap, the same apron, with the same knife, the same
oiled hair, the same triple chin, — all stereotyped by novel-
writers from the immortal Cervantes to the immortal Walter
Scott. Are they not all boastful of their cookery ? have they
not all "whatever you please to order" ? and do not all end
by giving you the same hectic chicken, and vegetables cooked
with rank butter ? They all boast of their fine wines, and all
make you drink the wine of the country.
But Corentin, from his earliest youth, had known the art
of getting out of an innkeeper things more essential to him-
self than doubtful dishes and apocryphal wines. So he
gave himself out as a man easy to please, and willing to leave
himself in the hands of the best cook in Mansle. as he told the
fat man.
"There is no difficulty about being the best — I am the only
one," said the host.
"Serve us in the side room," said Corentin, winking at
Derville. "And do not be afraid of setting the chimney on
fire ; we want to thaw out the frost in our fingers."
"It was not warm in the coach," said Derville.
"Is it far to Marsac?" asked Corentin of the innkeeper's
wife, who came down from the upper regions on hearing
that the diligence had dropped two travelers to sleep there.
"Are you going to Marsac, monsieur ?" replied the woman.
"I don't know," he said sharply. "Is it far from hence to
Marsac ?" he repeated, after giving the woman time to notice
his red ribbon.
"In a chaise, a matter of half an hour," said the inn-
keeper's wife.
"Do you think that Monsieur and Madame Sechard are
likely to be there in winter?"
"To be sure ; they live there all the year round."
"It is now five o'clock. We shall still find them up at nine."
"Oh yes, till ten. They have company every evening — the
cure, Monsieur Marron the doctor "
"Good folks then?" said Derville.
264 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Oh, the best of good souls," replied the woman, "straight-
forward, honest — and not ambitious neither. Monsieur
Sechard, though he is very well off — they say he might have
made millions if he had not allowed himself to be robbed of
an invention in the paper-making of which the brothers Coin-
tet are getting the benefit "
"Ah, to be sure, the Brothers Cointet !" said Corentin.
"Hold your tongue," said the innkeeper. "What can it
matter to these gentlemen whether Monsieur Sechard
has a right or no to a patent for his invention in paper-
making? — If you mean to spend the night here — at the
Belle J^toile " he went on, addressing the travelers, "here
is the book, and please to put your names down. We have an
officer in this town who has nothing to do, and spends all his
time in nagging at us "
"The devil !" said Corentin, while Derville entered their
names and his profession as attorney to the lower Court in
the department of the Seine, "I fancied the Sechards were
very rich."
"Some people say they are millionaires," replied the inn-
keeper. "But as to hindering tongues from wagging, you
might as well try to stop the river from flowing. Old Sechard
left two hundred thousand francs' worth of landed property,
it is said; and that is not amiss for a man who began as a
workman. Well, and he may have had as much again in
savings, for he made ten or twelve thousand francs out of his
land at last. So, supposing he were fool enough not to invest
his money for ten years, that would be all told. But even if
he lent it at high interest, as he is suspected of doing, there
would be three hundred thousand francs perhaps, and that is
all. Five hundred thousand francs is a long way 'short of a
million. I should be quite content with the difference, and
no more of the Belle ^toile for me !"
"Really !" said Corentin. "Then Monsieur David Sechard
and his wife have not a fortune of two or three millions?"
"Why," exclaimed the innkeeper's wife, "that is what the
Cointets are supposed to have, who robbed him of his inven-
y^^
/.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 265
tion, and he does not get more than twenty thousand francs
out of them. Where do you suppose such honest folks would
find millions ? They were very much pinched while the father
was alive. But for Kolb, their manager, and Madame Kolb,
who is as much attached to them as her husband, they could
scarcely have lived. Why, how much had they with La
Verberie? — A thousand francs a year perhaps."
Corentin drew Derville aside and said:
"In vino Veritas! Truth lives under a cork. For my
part, I regard an inn as the real registry office of the country-
side; the notary is not better informed than the innkeeper
as to all that goes on in a small neighborhood. — You see ! we
are supposed to know all about the Cointets and Kolb and
the rest.
"Your innkeeper is the living record of every incident ; he
does the work of the police without suspecting it. A govern-
ment should maintain two hundred spies at most, for in a
country like France there are ten millions of simple-minded
informers. — However, we need not trust to this report;
though even in this little town something would be known
about the twelve hundred thousand francs sunk in paying
for the Eubempre estate. We will not stop here long "
"I hope not !" Derville put in.
"And this is why," added Corentin ; "I have hit on the most
natural way of extracting the truth from the mouth of the
Sechard couple. I rely upon you to support, by your au-
thority as a lawyer, the little trick I shall employ to enable
you to hear a clear and complete account of their affairs. —
After dinner we shall set out to call on Monsieur Sechard,"
said Corentin to the innkeeper's wife. "Have beds ready for
us; we want separate rooms. There can be no difficulty
'under the stars.' "
"Oh, monsieur," said the woman, "we invented the sign."
"The pun is to be found in every department," said Coren-
tin ; "it is no monopoly of yours."
"Dinner is served, gentlemen," said the innkeeper.
"But where the devil can that young fellow have found
26« A COURTESANS I>1FE
the money ? Is the anonymous writer accurate. Can it be the
earnings of some handsome baggage?" said Derville, as they
sat dovm to dinner.
"Ah, that will be the subject of another inquiry," said
Corentin. "Lucien de Kubempre, as the Due de Chaulieu
tells me, lives with a converted Jewess, who passes for a Dutch
woman, and is called Esther van Bogseck."
"What a strange coincidence !"' said the lawyer. "I am
hunting for the heiress of a Dutchman named Gobseck — it is
the same name with a transposition of consonants."
"Well," said Corentin, "you shall have information as to
her parentage on my return to Paris."
An hour after, the two agents for the Grandlieu family set
out for La Verberie, where Monsieur and Madame Sechard
were living.
Never had Lucien felt any emotion so deep as that which
overcame him at La Verberie when comparing his own fate
with that of his brother-in-law. The two Parisians were
about to witness the same scene that had so much struck
Lucien a few days since. Everything spoke of peace and
abundance.
At the hour when the two strangers were arriving, a })arty
of four persons were being entertained in the drawing-room
of La Verberie: the cure of Marsac, a young priest of five-
and twenty, who, at Madame Sechard's request, had become
tutor to her little boy Lucien; the country doctor, Monsieui-
Marron; the Maire of the commune; and an old colonel, who
grew roses on a plot of land opposite to La Verberie on the
other side of the road. Every evening during the winter
these persons came to play an artless game of boston for
centime points, to borrow the papers, or return those they
had finished.
When Monsieur and Madame Sechard had bought La
Verberie, a fine house built of stone, and roofed with slate,
the pleasure-grounds consisted of a garden of two acres.
Li the course of time, by devoting her savings to the purpose,
WHAT LOVE COSTS 267
handsome Madame Sechard had extended her garden as far as
a brook, by cutting down the vines on some ground she pur-
chased, and replacing them with grass plots and clumps of
shrubbery. At the present time the house, surrounded by a
park of about twenty acres, and enclosed by walls, was con-
sidered the most imposing place in the neighborhood.
Old Sechard's former residence, with the outhouses at-
tached, was now used as the dwelling-house for the manager
of about twenty acres of vineyard left by him, of five farm-
steads, bringing in about six thousand francs a year, and
ten acres of meadow land lying on the further side of the
stream, exactly opposite the little park; indeed, Madame
Sechard hoped to include them in it the next year. La
Verberie was already spoken of in the neighborhood as a
chateau, and Eve Sechard was known as the Lady of Marsac.
Lucien, while flattering her vanity, had only followed the
example of the peasants and vine-dressers. Courtois, the
owner of the mill, very picturesquely situated a few hundred
yards from the meadows of La Verberie, was in treaty, it was
said, with Madame Sechard for the sale of his property ; and
this acquisition would give the finishing touch to the estate
and the rank of a "place" in the department.
Madame Sechard, who did a great deal of good, with as
much Judgment as generosity, was equally esteemed and loved.
Her beauty, now really splendid, was at the height of its
bloom. She was about six-and-twenty, but had preserved
all the freshness of youth from living in the tranquillity and
abundance of a country life. Still much in love with her hus-
band, she respected him as a clever man, who was modest
enough to renounce the display of fame; in short, to com-
plete her portrait, it is enough to say that in her whole ex-
istence she had never felt a throb of her heart that was not
inspired by her husband or her children.
The tax paid to grief by this happy household was, as may
be supposed, the deep anxiety caused by Lucien's career, in
which Eve Sechard suspected mysteries, which she dreaded
all the more because, during his last visit, Lucien roughly
268 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
cut short all his sister's questions b}'^ saying that an ambitious
man owed no account of his proceedings to any one but him-
self.
In six years Lucien had seen his sister but three times, and
had not written her more than six letters. His first visit to
La Yerberie had been on the occasion of his mother's death;
and his last had been paid with a view to asking the favor
of the lie which was so necessary to his advancement. This
gave rise to a very serious scene between Monsieur and Ma-
dame Sechard and their brother, and left their happy and
respected life troubled by the most terrible suspicions.
The interior of the house, as much altered as the surround-
ings, was comfortable without luxury, as will be understood
by a glance round the room where the little party were now
assembled. A pretty Aubusson carpet, hangings of gray
cotton twill bound mth green silk braid, the woodwork
painted to imitate Spa wood, carved mahogany furniture
covered with gray woolen stuff and green gimp, with flower-
stands, gay with flowers in spite of the time of year, pre-
sented a very pleasing and homelike aspect. The window
curtains, of green brocade, the chimney ornaments, and the
mirror frames were untainted by the bad taste that spoils
everything in the provinces; and the smallest details, all
elegant and appropriate, gave the mind and eye a sense of
repose and of the poetry which a clever and loving woman
can and ought to infuse into her home.
Madame Sechard, still in mourning for her father, sat
by the fire working at some large piece of tapestry with the
help of Madame Kolb, the housekeeper, to whom she intrusted
all the minor cares of the household.
Just as the hackney chaise reached the first houses of
Marsac, the usual party at La Verberie received the addition
of Courtois the miller, a widower, who was anxious to retire
from business, and who hoped to sell his property well, since
Madame Eve was eager to have it — Courtois knew why.
"A chaise has stopped at the door !" said Courtois, hear-
WHAT LOVE COSTS 269
ing the sound of wheels outside; "and to judge by the clatter
of metal, it belongs to these parts "
"Postel and his wife have come to see us, no doubt," said
the doctor.
"No," said Courtois, "the chaise has come from Mansle."
"Montame," said Kolb, the burly Alsatian we have made
acquaintance with in a former volume {IlliLsions perdues),
''here is a lawyer from Paris who wants to speak with mon-
sieur."
"A lawyer !" cried Sechard ; "the very word gives me the
colic !"
"Thank you !" said the Maire of Marsac, named Cachan,
who for twenty years had been an attorney at Angouleme,
and who had once been required to prosecute Sechard.
"My poor David will never improve; he will always be
absent-minded !" said Eve, smiling.
"A lawyer from Paris," said Courtois. "Have you any
business in Paris ?"
"No," said Eve.
"But you have a brother there," observed Courtois.
"Take care lest he should have anything to say about old
Sechard's estate," said Cachan. "He had his finger in some
very queer concerns, worthy man !"
Corentin and Derville, on entering the room, after bowing
to the company and giving their names, begged to have a
private interview with Monsieur and Madame Sechard.
"By all means," said Sechard. "But is it a matter of
business ?"
"Solely a matter regarding your father's property," said
Corentin.
"Then I beg you will allow monsieur — the Maire, a lawyer
formerly at Angouleme — to be present also."
"Are you Monsieur Derville?" said Cachan, addressing
Corentin.
"'No, monsieur, this is Monsieur Derville," replied Coren-
tin, introducing the lawyer, who bowed.
"But," said Sechard, "we are, so to speak, a family party:
270 A. COURTESAN'S LIFE
we have no secrets from our neighbors; there is no need to
retire to my study, where there is no fire — our life is in the
sight of all men "
"But your father's/' said Corentin, "was involved in cer-
tain mysteries which perhaps you would rather not make
public."
"Is it anything that we need blush for?" said Eve, in
alarm.
"Oh, no ! a sin of his youth," said Corentin, coldly setting
one of his mouse-traps. "Monsieur, your father left an elder
son "
"Oh, the old rascal !" cried Courtois. "He was never very
fond of you, Monsieur Sechard, and he kept that secret from
you, the deep old dog! — Now I understand what he meant
when he used to say to me, 'You shall see wliat you shall see
when I am under the turf.' "
"Do not be dismayed, monsieur," said Corentin to Sechard,
while he watched Eve out of the corner of his eye.
"A brother !" exclaimed the doctor. "Then your in-
heritance is divided into two I"
Derville was affecting to examine the fine engravings,
proofs before letters, which hung on the drawing-room walls.
"Do not be dismayed, madame," Corentin went on, seeing
amazement written on Madame Sechard's handsome features,
"it is only a natural son. The rights of a natural son are not
the same as those of a legitimate child. This man is in the
depths of poverty, and he has a right to a certain sum calcu-
lated on the amount of the estate. The millions left by your
father "
At the word millions there was a perfectly unanimous cry
from all the persons present. And now Derville ceased to
study the prints.
"Old Sechard ?— Millions ?" said Courtois. "Who on earth
told you that? Some peasant "
"Monsieur," said Cachan, "you are not attached to the
Treasury? You may be told all the facts "
WHAT LOVE COSTS 271
"Be quite easy," said Corentin, "I give you my word of
honor I am not employed by the Treasury."
Cachan, who had just signed to everybody to say nothing,
gave expression to his satisfaction.
"Monsieur," Corentin went on, "if the whole estate were
but a million, a natural child's share would still be something
considerable. But we have not come to threaten a lawsuit :
on the contrary, our purpose is to propose that you should
hand over one hundred thousand francs, and we will de-
part "
"One hundred thousand francs !" cried Cachan, interrupt-
ing him. "But, monsieur, old Sechard left twenty acres of
vineyard, five small farms, ten acres of meadowland here, and
not a sou besides ''
"Nothing on earth," cried David Sechard, "would induce
me to tell a lie, and less on a question of money than on
any other. — Monsieur," he said, turning to Corentin and
Derville, "my father left us, besides the land "
Courtois and Cachan signaled in vain to Sechard ; he
went on:
"Three liundred thousand francs, which raises the whole
estate to about five hundred thousand francs."
"Monsieur Cachan," asked Eve Sechard, "what proportion
does the law allot to a natural child?"
"Madame," said Corentin, "we are not Turks; we only
require you to swear before these gentlemen that you did not
inherit more than five hundred thousand francs from your
father-in-law, and we can come to an understanding."
"First give me your word of honor that you really are a
lawv'er," said Cachan to Derville.
"Here is my passport," replied Derville, handing him a
paper folded in four; "and monsieur is not, as you might
suppose, an inspector from the Treasury, so be easy," he
added. "We had an important reason for wanting to know
the truth as to the Sechard estate, and we now know it."
Derville took Madame Sechard's hand and led her very
courteously to the further end of the room.
272 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Madame/' said he, in a low voice, "if it were not that
the honor and future prospects of the house of Grandlieu
are implicated in this affair, I would never have lent myself
to the stratagem devised by this gentleman of the red ribbon.
But you must forgive him; it was necessary to detect the
falsehood by means of which your brother has stolen a march
on the beliefs of that ancient family. Beware now of allow-
ing it to be supposed that you have given your brother
twelve hundred thousand francs to repurchase the Eubempre
estates "
"Twelve hundred thousand francs!" cried Madame
Sechard, turning pale. "Where did he get them, wretched
boy?"
"Ah ! that is the question," replied Derville. "I fear that
the source of his wealth is far from pure."
The tears rose to Eve's eyes, as her neighbors could see.
"We have, perhaps, done you a great service by saving you
from abetting a falsehood of which the results may be posi-
tively dangerous," the lawyer went on.
Derville left Madame Sechard sitting pale and dejected
with tears on her cheeks, and bowed to the company.
"To Mansle!" said Corentin to the little boy who drove
the chaise.
There was but one vacant place in the diligence from
Bordeaux to Paris; Derville begged Corentin to allow him
to take it, urging a press of business ; but in his soul he was
distrustful of his traveling companion, whose diplomatic
dexterity and coolness struck him as being the result of prac-
tice. Corentin remained three days longer at Mansle, unable
to get away; he was obliged to secure a place in the Paris
coach by writing to Bordeaux, and did not get back till nine
days after leaving home.
Peyrade, meanwhile, had called every morning, either at
Passy or in Paris, to inquire whether Corentin had returned.
On the eighth day he left at each house a note, written in their
peculiar cipher, to explain to his friend what death hung
over him, and to tell him of Lydie's abduction and the hor-
WHAT LOVE COSTS 273
rible end to which his enemies had devoted them. Peyrade,
bereft of Corentin, but seconded by Contenson, still kept up
his disguise as a nabob. Even though his invisible foes had
discovered him, he very wisely reflected that he might glean
some light on the matter by remaining on the field of the
contest.
Contenson had brought all his experience into play in his
search for Lydie, and hoped to discover in what house she was
hidden ; but as the days went by, the impossibility, absolutely
demonstrated, of tracing the slightest clue, added, hour by
hour, to Peyrade's despair. The old spy had a sort of guard
about him of twelve or fifteen of the most experienced detec-
tives. They watched the neighborhood of the Eue des Moi-
neaux and the Eue Taitbout — where he lived, as a nabob, with
Madame du Val-Noble. During the last three days of the
term granted by Asie to reinstate Lucien on his old footing
in the Hotel de Grandlieu, Contenson never left the veteran
of the old general police office. And the poetic terror shed
throughout the forests of America by the arts of inimical
and warring tribes, of which Cooper made such good use in
his novels, was here associated with the petty details of Paris
life. The foot-passengers, the shops, the hackney cabs, a
figure standing at a window, — everything had to the human
ciphers to whom old Peyrade had intrusted his safety the
thrilling interest which attaches in Cooper's romances to a
beaver-village, a rock, a bison-robe, a floating canoe, a weed
straggling over the water.
"If the Spaniard is gone away, you have nothing to fear,"
said Contenson to Peyrade, remarking on the perfect peace
they lived in.
"But if he is not gone?" observed Peyrade.
"He took one of my men at the back of the chaise ; but at
Blois, my man having to get down, could not catch the chaise
up again."
Five days after Derville's return, Lucien one morning had
a call from Rastignac.
274 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"I am in despair, my dear boy/' said his visitor, "at finding
myself compelled to deliver a message which is intrusted to
me because we are known to be intimate. Your marriage is
broken off beyond all hope of reconciliation. Xever set foot
again in the Hotel de Grandlieu. To marry Clotilde you
must wait till her father dies, and he is too selfish to die yet
awhile. Old whist-players sit at table — the card-table — very
late.
"Clotilde is setting out for Italy with Madeleine de Lenon-
court-Chaulieu. The poor girl is so madly in love with you.
my dear fellow, that they have to keep an eye on her ; she was
bent on coming to see you, and had plotted an escape. That
may comfort 30U in misfortune !"'
Lucien made no reply ; he sat gazing at Kastignac.
"And is it a misfortune, after all?" his friend went on.
"You will easily find a girl as well born and better looking
than Clotilde ! Madame de Serizy will find you a wife out of
spite; she cannot endure the Grandlieus, who never would
have anything to say to her. She has a niece, little Clemencc
du Rouvre "'
"My dear boy," said J^ucien at length, "•since that si 'ler
I am not on terms with Madame de Serizy — she saw lue in
Esther's box and made a scene — and I left her to herself."
"A woman of forty does not long keep up a quarrel with so
handsome a man as you are,"' said Kastignac. "I know some-
thing of these sunsets. — It lasts ten minutes in the sky, and
ten years in a woman's heart."
"I have waited a week to hear from her."
"Go and call."
"Yes, I must now."
"Are you coming at any rate to the Val-Xoble's? Her
nabob is returning the supper given by i^ucingen."
"I am asked, and I shall go," said Lucien gravely.
The day after this confirmation of his disaster, which
Carlos heard of at once from Asie, Lucien went to the Rue
Taitbout with Rastignac and Nucingen.
At midnight nearly all the personages of this drama were
WHAT LOVE COSTS 275
assembled in the dining-room that had formerly been Es-
ther's— a drama of which the interest lay hidden under the
very bed of these tumultuous lives, and was known only to
Esther, to Lucien, to Peyrade, to Contenson, the mulatto, and
to Paccard, who attended his mistress. Asie, without its
being known to Contenson and Peyrade, had been asked by
Madame du Val-Noble to come and help her cook.
As they sat down to table, Peyrade, who had given Madame
du Val-Noble five hundred francs that the thing might be
well done, found under his napkin a scrap of paper on which
these words were written in pencil, "The ten days are up at
the moment when you sit down to supper.''
Peyrade handed the paper to Contenson, who was standing
behind him, saying in English :
"I>id you put my name here ?*'
Contenson read by the light of the wax-candles this "Mene,
Tehel, Upharsin" and slipped the scrap into his pocket; but
he knew how difficult it is to verify a handwriting in pencil,
and, above all, a sentence written in Eoman capitals, that is
to say, with mathematical lines, since capital letters are
^rij-i|y made up of straight lines and curves, in which it is
uip .ssible to detect any trick of the hand, as in what is called
unning-hand.
The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit. Peyrade was
\-,isibiy absent-minded. Of the men about town who give life
to a supper, only Rastignac and Lucien were present. Lucien
was gloomy and absorbed in thought; Rastignac, who had
lost two thousand francs before supper, ate and drank with
tlie hope of recovering them later. The thre^ women, stricken
by this chill, looked at each other. Dulness deprived the
dishes of all relish. Suppers, like plays and books, have their
good and bad luck.
At the end of the meal ices were served, of the kind called
plombieres. As everybody knows, this kind of dessert has
delicate preserved fruits laid on the top of the ice, which is
served in a little glass, not heaped above the rim. These ices
had been ordered by Madame du Val-Noble of Tortoni, whose
276 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
famous shop is at the corner of the Eue Taitbout and the
Boulevard.
The cook called Contenson out of the room to pay the bill.
Contenson, who thought this demand on the part of the
shop-boy rather strange, went downstairs and startled him by
saying:
"Then you have not come from Tortoni's ?" and then went
straight upstairs again.
Paccard had meanwhile handed the ices to the comps^iy in
his absence. The mulatto had hardly reached the door when
one of the police constables who had kept watch in the Rue
des Moineaux called up the stairs:
"ISTumber twenty-seven."
''What's up?" replied Contenson, flying down again.
"Tell Papa that his daughter has come home; but, good
God! in what a state. Tell him to come at once; she is
dying."
At the moment when Contenson re-entered the dining-
room, old Peyrade, who had drunk a great deal, was swal-
lowing the cherry off his ice. They were drinking to the
health of Madame du Val-jSToble; the nabob filled his glass
with Constantia and emptied it.
In spite of his distress at the news he had to give Peyrade,
Contenson was struck by the eager attention with which Pac--
card was looking at the nabob. His eyes sparkled like twt;
fixed flames. Although it seemed important, still this could
not delay the mulatto, who leaned over his master, just as
Peyrade set his glass down.
"Lydie is at home," said Contenson, "in a very sad state."
Peyrade rattled out the most French of all French oaths
with such a strong Southern accent that all the guests looked
up in amazement. Peyrade, discovering his blunder, ac-
knowledged his disguise by saying to Contenson in good
French :
"Find me a coach — I'm ofE/'
Every one rose.
"Why, who are you ?" said Lucien. «
WHAT LOVE COSTS 277
"Ja — who ?" said the Baron.
"Bixiou told me you shammed Englishman better than he
could, and I would not believe him/' said Rastignac.
"Some bankrupt caught in disguise," said du Tillet loudly.
"I suspected as much !"
"A strange place is Paris !" said Madame du Val-Noble.
"After being bankrupt in his own part of the town, a mer-
chant turns up as a nabob or a dandy in the Champs-filysees
with impunity ! — Oh ! I am unlucky ! bankrupts are my
bane."
"Every flower has its peculiar blight !" said Esther quietly.
"Mine is like Cleopatra's — an asp."
"Who am I?" echoed Peyrade from the door. "You will
know ere long; for if I die, I will rise from my grave to
clutch your feet every night !"
He looked at Esther and Lucien as he spoke, then he took
advantage of the general dismay to vanish with the utmost
rapidity, meaning to run home without waiting for the coach.
In the street the spy was gripped by the arm as he crossed the
threshold of the outer gate. It was Asie, wrapped in a black
hood such as ladies then wore on leaving a ball.
"Send for the Sacraments, Papa Peyrade," said she, in the
voice that had already prophesied ill.
A coach was waiting. Asie jumped in, and the carriage
vanished as though the wind had swept it away. There were
five carriages waiting ; Peyrade's men could find out nothing.
On reaching his house in the Rue des Vignes, one of the
quietest and prettiest nooks of the little town of Passy, Coren-
tin, who was known there as a retired merchant passionately
devoted to gardening, found his friend Peyrade's note in
cipher. Instead of resting, he got into the hackney coach
that had brought him thither, and was driven to the Rue des
Moineaux, where he found only Katt. From her he heard
of Lydie's disappearance, and remained astounded at Pey-
rade's and his own want of foresight.
"But they do not know me yet," said he to himself. "This
278 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
crew is capable of anything ; I must find out if they are kill-
ing Peyrade ; for if so, I must not be seen any more "
The viler a man's life is, the more he clings to it ; it becomes
at every moment a protest and a revenge.
Corentin went back to the cab, and drove to his rooms to
assume the disguise of a feeble old man, in a scanty greenish
overcoat and a tow wig. Then he returned on foot, prompted
by his friendship for Peyrade. He intended to give instruc-
tions to his most devoted and cleverest underlings.
As he went along the Eue Saint-Honore to reach the Eue
Saint-Eoch from the Place Yendome, he came up behind a
girl in slippers, and dressed as a woman dresses for the night.
She had on a white bed-jacket and a nightcap, and from time
to time gave vent to a sob and an involuntar}' groan. Coren-
tin out-paced her, and turning round, recognized Lydie.
"I am a friend of your father's, of Monsieur Canquoelle's,"
said he in his natural voice.
"Ah I then here is some one I can trust !" said she.
"Do not seem to have recognized me," Corentin went on,
"for we are pursued by relentless foes, and are obliged to dis-
guise ourselves. But tell me what has befallen you?"
"Oh, monsieur," said the poor child, "the facts but not the
story can be told — I am ruined, lost, and I do not know
how "
'^"here have you come from ?"
"I don't know, monsieur. I fled with such precipitancy,
I have come through so many streets, round so many turnings,
fancying I was being followed. And when I met any one
that seeitied decent, I asked my way to get back to the Boule-
vards, so as to find the Eue de la Paix. And at last, after
walking WTaat o'clock is it, monsieur ?"
"Half-past eleven," said Corentin.
"I escaped at nightfall," said Lydie. "I have been walking
for five hours."
'^ell, come along; you can rest now; you will find your
good Katt."
"Oh, monsieur, there is no rest for me ! I only want to
WHAT LOVE COSTS 279
rest in the grave, and I will go and wait for death in a con-
vent if I am worthy to be admitted ''
"Poor little girl ! — But you struggled ?"
"Oh yes ! Oh ! if you could only imagine the abject crea-
tures they placed me with !"
"They sent you to sleep, no doubt ?'"
"Ah ! that is it" cried poor Lydie. "A little more strength
and I should be at home. I feel I am dropping, and my brain
is not quite clear. — Just now I fancied I was in a garden "
Corentin took Lydie in his arms, and she lost consciousness ;
he carried her upstairs.
"Katt !'■ he called.
Katt came out with exclamations of joy.
"Don't be in too great a hurry to be glad I" said Corentin
gravely; "the girl is very ill."
When Lydie was laid on her bed and recognized her own
room by the light of two candles that Katt lighted, she be-
came delirious. She sang scraps of pretty airs, broken by
vociferations of horrible sentences she had heard. Her pretty
face was mottled with purple patches. She mixed up the
reminiscences of her pure childhood with those of these ten
days of infamy. Katt sat weeping ; Corentin paced the room,
stopping now and again to gaze at Lydie.
■-.^ "She is paying her father's debt," said he. "Is there a
Providence above ? Oh, I was wise not to have a family. On
my word of honor, a child is indeed a hostage given to mis-
fortune, as some philosopher has said."
"Oh !" cried the poor child, sitting up in bed and throwing
back her fine long hair, "instead of lying here, Katt, I ought
to be stretched in the sand at the bottom of the Seine !"
"Katt, instead of crying and looking at yo^^r child, which
will never cure her, you ought to go for a doctor ; the medical
officer in the first instance, and then Monsieur Desplein and
Monsieur Bianchon We must save this innocent crea-
ture."
And Corentin wrote down the addresses of these two famous
physicians.
2S0 "" A COURTESAN'S LIFE
At tlii^ moment, up the stairs came some one to whom they
were familiar, and the door was opened. Peyrade, in a violent
sweat, his face purple, his eyes almost blood-stained, and
gasping like a dolphin, rushed from the outer door to Lydie's
room, exclaiming:
"Where is my child ?"
He saw a melancholy sign from Corentin, and his eyes fol-
lowed his friend's hand. Lydie's condition can only be com-
pared to that of a flower tenderly cherished by a gardener,
now fallen from its stem, and crushed by the iron-clamped
shoes of some peasant. Ascribe this simile to a father's heart,
and you will understand the blow that fell on Peyrade; the
tears started to his eyes.
"You are crying ! — It is my father !" said the girl.
She could still recognize her father ; she got out of bed and
fell on her knees at the old man's side as he sank into a chair.
"Forgive me, papa," said she in a tone that pierced Pey-
rade's heart, and at the same moment he was conscious of
what felt like a tremendous blow on his head.
"I am dying ! — the villains !" were his last words.
Corentin tried to help his friend, and received his latest
breath.
"Dead ! Poisoned !" said he to himself. "Ah ! here is the
doctor!" he exclaimed, hearing the soimd of wheels.
Contenson, who came with his mulatto disguise removed,
[^tood like a bronze statue as he heard Lydie say:
"Then you do not forgive me, father? — But it was not my
fault !"
She did not understand that her father was dead.
"Oh, how he stares at me !" cried the poor crazy girl.
"We must close his eyes," said Contenson, lifting Peyrade
on to the bed.
"We are doing a stupid thing," said Corentin. "Let us
{ arry him into his own room. His daughter is half demented,
and she will go quite mad when she sees that he is dead ; she
will fancy that she has killed him."
Tjydie, seeing them carry away her father, looked quite
stupefied.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 281
"There lies my only friend !" said Corentin, seeming much
moved when Peyrade was laid out on the bed in his own
room. "In all his life he never had but one impulse of cu-
pidity, and that was for his daughter ! — Let him be an ex-
ample to you, Contenson. Every line of life has its code of
honor. Peyrade did wrong when he mixed himself up with
private concerns ; we have no business to meddle with any but
public cases.
"But come what may, I swear," said he with a voice, an
emphasis, a look that struck horror into Contenson, "to
avenge my poor Peyrade ! I will discover the men who are
guilty of his death and of his daughter's ruin. And as sure
as I am myself, as I have yet a few days to live, which I will
risk to accomplish that vengeance, every man of them shall
die at four o'clock, in good health, by a clean shave on the
Place de Greve."
"And I will help you," said Contenson with feeling.
Nothing, in fact, is more heart-stirring than the spectacle
of passion in a cold, self-contained, and methodical man, in
whom, for twenty years, no one has ever detected the smallest
impulse of sentiment. It is like a molten bar of iron which
melts everything it touches. And Contenson was moved to
his depths.
"Poor old Canquoelle !" said he, looking at Corentin. "He
has treated me many a time. — And, I tell you, only your bad
sort know how to do such things — ^but often has he given me
ten francs to go and gamble with . . ."
After this funeral oration, Peyrade's two avengers went
back to Lydie's room, hearing Katt and the medical officer
from the Mairie on the stairs.
"Go and fetch the Chief of the Police," said Corentin. "The
public prosecutor will not find grounds for a prosecution in
the case ; still, we will report it to the Prefecture ; it may,
perhaps, be of some use.
"Monsieur," he went on to the medical officer, "in this
room you will see a dead man. I do not believe that he died
from natural causes ; you will be good enough to make a post-
282 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
mortem in the presence of the Chief of the Police, who will
come at my request. Try to discover some traces of poison.
You will, in a few minutes, have the opinion of Monsieur
Desplein and Monsieur Bianchon, for whom I have sent to
examine the daughter of my best friend ; she is in a worse
plight than he, though he is dead."
"1 have no need of those gentlemen's assistance in the exer-
cise of my duty," said the medical officer.
"Well, well," thought Corentin. "Let us have no clashing,
monsieur," he said. "In two words I give you my opinion —
Those who have just murdered the father have also ruined the
daughter."
By daylight Lydie had yielded to fatigue; when the great
surgeon and the young physician arrived she was asleep.
The doctor, whose duty it was to sign the death certificate,
had now opened Peyrade's body, and was seeking the cause of
death.
"While waiting for your patient to awake," said Corentin
to the two famous doctors, "would you join one of your pro-
fessional brethren in an examination which cannot fail to in-
terest you, and your opinion will be valuable in case of an
inquiry."
"Your relation died of apoplexy^" said the official. "There
are all the symptoms of violent congestion of the brain."
"Examine him, gentlemen, and see if there is no poison
capable of producing similar symptoms."
"The stomach is, in fact, full of food substances ; but short
of chemical analysis, I find no evidence of poison.
"If the characters of cerebral congestion are well ascer-
tained, we have here, considering the patient's age, a sufficient
cause of death," observed Desplein, looking at the enormous
mass of material.
"Did he sup here ?" asked Bianchon. ^
"No," said Corentin; "he came here in great haste from
the Boulevard, and found his daughter ruined "
"That was the poison if he loved his daughter," said
Bianchon.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 283
''What known poison could produce a similar effect ?" asked
Corentin, clinging to his idea.
"There is but one/' said Desplein, after a careful examina-
tion. "It is a poison found in the Malayan Archipelago, and
derived from trees, as yet but little known, of the strychnos
family ; it is used to poison that dangerous weapon, the Malay
kris. — At least, so it is reported."
The Police Commissioner presently arrived; Corentin told
him his suspicions, and begged him to draw up a report, tell-
ing him where and with whom Peyrade had supped, and the
causes of the state in which he found Lydie.
Corentin then went to Lydie's rooms ; Desplein and Bian-
chon had been examining the poor child. He met them at the
door.
"Well, gentlemen?" asked Corentin.
"Place the girl under medical care ; unless she recovers her
wits when her child is born — if indeed she should have a child
— she will end her days melancholy-mad. There is no hope
of a cure but in the maternal instinct, if it can be aroused."
Corentin paid each of the physicians forty francs in gold.
and then turned to the Police Commissioner, who had pulled
him by the sleeve.
"The medical officer insists on it that death was natural,"
said this functionary, "and I can hardly report the case, es-
pecially as the dead man was old Canquoelle; he had his
finger in too many pies, and we should not be sure whom we
might run foul of. Men like that die to order very often "
"And my name is Corentin," said Corentin in the man's
ear.
The Commissioner started with surprise. '
"So just make a note of all this," Corentin went on ; "it will
be very useful by and by ; send it up only as confidential infor-
mation. The crime cannot be proved, and I know that any in-
quiry would be checked at the very outset. — But I will catch
the criminals some day yet. I will watch them and take them
red-handed."
The police official bowed to Corentin and left.
284 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
""Nronsieur," said Katt. "!Ma demoiselle does nothing but
dance and sing. What can I do?"
"Has any charge occurred then?"
"She has understood that her father is just dead."
"Put her into a hackney coach, and simply take her to Cha-
renton; I will write a note to the Commissioner-General of
Police to secure her being suitably provided for. — The
daughter in Charenton, the father in a pauper's grave !"
said Corentin — "Contenson, go and fetch the parish hearse.
And now, Don Carlos Herrera, you and I will fight it out !"
_ "Carlos?" said Contenson, "he is in Spain."
"He is in Paris," said Corentin positively. "There is a
touch of Spanish genius of the Philip II. type in all this; but
I have pitfalls for everybody, even for kings."
Five days after the nabob's disappearance, Madame du Val-
Noble was sitting by Esther's bedside weeping, for she felt her-
self on one of the slopes down to poverty.
"If I only had at least a hundred louis a year ! With that
sum, my dear, a woman can retire to some little town and find
a husband "
"I can get you as much as that;' said Esther.
"How ?" cried Madame du A^al-Xoble.
"Oh, in a very simple way. Listen. You must want to
kill yourself; play your part well. Send for Asie and offer
her ten thousand francs for two black beads of very thin glass
containing a poison which kills you in a second. Bring them
to me, and I will give you fifty thousand francs for them."
"^Yliy do you not ask her for them yourself?" said her
friend.
"Asie would not sell them to me."
"They are not for yourself ?" said Madame du Val- ■SToble.
"Perhaps."
"You I who live in the midst of pleasure and luxury, in a
house of your own? And on the eve of an entertainment
which will be the talk of Paris for ten years — which is to cost
Nucingen twenty thousand francs! There are to be straw-
WHAT LOVE COSTS 285
berries in mid-February, they say, asparagus, grapes, melons !
— and a thousand crowns' worth of flowers in the rooms."
"What are you talking about? There are a thousand
crowns' worth of roses on the stairs alone."
"And your gown is said to have cost ten thousand francs ?"
"Yes, it is of Brussels point, and Delphine, his wife, is
furious. But I had a fancy to be disguised as a bride."
"Where are the ten thousand francs?" asked Madame du
Val-Noble.
"It is all the ready money I have," said Esther, smiling.
"Open my table drawer ; it is under the curl-papers."
"People who talk of dying never kill themselves," said Ma-
dame du Val-Noble. "If it were to commit "
"A crime ? For shame !" said Esther, finishing her friend's
thought, as she hesitated. "Be quite easy, I have no inten-
tion of killing anybody. I had a friend — a very happy wo-
man; she is dead, I must follow her — that is all."
"How foolish !"
"How can I help it? I promised her I would."
"I should let that bill go dishonored," said her friend,
smiling.
"Do as I tell you, and go at once. I hear a carriage com-
ing. It is Nucingen, a man who will go mad with joy ! Yes,
he loves me ! — Why do we not love those who love us, for in-
deed they do all they can to please us ?"
"Ah, that is the question !" said Madame du Val-Noble.
"It is the old story of the herring, which is the most puzzling
fish that swims."
"Why?"
"Well, no one could ever find out."
"Get along, my dear ! — I must ask for your fifty thousand
francs."
"Good-bye then."
For three days past, Esther's ways with the Baron de Nu-
cingen had completely changed. The monkey had become a
cat, the cat had become a woman. Esther poured out treasures
of affection on the old man; she was quite charming. Her
286 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
way of addressing him, with a total absence of mischief or
bitterness, and all sorts of tender insinuation, had carried
conviction to the banker's slow wit ; she called him Fritz, and
he believed that she loved him.
"My pooi; Fritz, I have tried you sorely," said she. "I
have teased you shamefully. Your patience has been sublime.
You loved me, I see, and I will reward you. I like you now ;
I do not know how it is, but I should prefer you to a young
man. It is the result of experience perhaps. — In the long
run we discover at last that pleasure is the coin of the soul;
and it is not more flattering to be loved for the sake of
pleasure than it is to be loved for the sake of money.
"Besides, 3'oung men are too selfish; they think more of
themselves than of us ; while you, now, think only of me. I
am all your life to you. And I will take nothing more from
you. I want to prove to you how disinterested I am."
"Vy, I hafe gifen you notink," cried the Baron, enchanted.
"I propose to gife you to-morrow tirty tousant francs a year
in a Government bond. Dat is mein vedding gift."
Esther kissed the Baron so sweetly that he turned pale
without any pills.
"Oh !" cried she, "do not suppose that I am sweet to you
only for your thirty thousand francs ! It is because — now —
I love you, my good, fat Frederic."
"Ach, mein Gott ! Vy hafe you kept me vaiting ? I might
hafe been so happy all dese tree monts."
"In three or in five per cents, my pet ?" said Esther, pass-
ing her fingers through Nucingen's hair, and arranging it in
a fashion of her own.
"In trees — I hat a quautit}'."
So next morning the Baron brought the certificate of
shares; he came to breakfast with his dear little girl, and to
take her orders for the following evenijig, the famous Sat-
urday, the great day !
"Here, my little vife, my only vife," said the banker glee-
fully, his face radiant with ■ happiness. "Here is enough
money to pay for your keep for de rest of your days."
0" -v
WHAT LOVE COSTS 287
Esther took the paper without the slightest excitement,
folded it up, and put it in her dressing-table drawer.
"So now you are quite happy, you monster of iniquity !"
said she, giving ISTucingen a little slap on the cheek, "now
that I have at last accepted a present from you. I can no
longer tell you home-truths, for I share the fruit of what you
call your labors. This is not a gift, my poor old boy, it is
restitution. — Come, do not put on your Bourse face. You
know that I love you."
"My lofely Esther, mein anchel of lofe," said the banker,
"do not speak to me like dat. I tell you, I should not care
ten all de vorld took me for a tief, if you should tink me
ein honest man. — I lofe you every day more and more."
"That is my intention," said Esther. "And I will never
again say anything to distress you, my pet elephant, for yovi
are grown as artless as a baby. Bless me, you old rascal, you
have nev6r known any innocence ; the alloM^ance bestowed on
YOU when you came into the world was bound to come to the
top some day; but it was buried so deep that it is only now
reappearing at the age of sixty-six. Fished up by love's
barbed hook. — This phenomenon is seen in old men.
"And this is why I have learned to love you, you are young
— so young ! No one but I would ever have known this,
Frederic — I alone. For you were a banker at fifteen; even
at college you must have lent your school-fellows one marble
on condition of their returning two."
Seeing him laugh, she sprang on to his knee.
"Well, you must do as you please ! Bless me ! plunder
the men — go ahead, and I will help. Men are not worth lov-
ing; Napoleon killed them off like flies. Whether they pay
taxes to you or to the Government, what difference does it
make to them? You don't make love over the budget, and
on my honor ! — go ahead, I have thought it over, and you
are right. Shear the sheep ! you will find it in the gospel ac-
cording to Beranger.
"Now, kiss your Esther. — I say, you will give that poor
Val-Noble all the furniture in the Eue Taitbout? And to-
r
288 A COrRTESAN'S LIFE
morrow I wish 3^ou would give her fifty thousand francs — it
would look handsome, my duck. You see, you killed Falleix ;
people are beginning to cry out upon you, and this liberality
will look Babylonian — all the women will talk about it ! Oh !
there will be no one in Paris so grand, so noble as you; and
as the world is constituted, Falleix will be forgotten. So,
after all, it will be money deposited at interest."
"You are right, mein anchel ; you know the vorld," he re-
plied. "You shall be mein adfiser."'
"Well, you see," said Esther, "how I study my man's in-
terest, his position and honor. — Go at once and bring those
fifty thousand francs."
She wanted to get rid of Monsieur de Xucingen so as to
get a stockbroker to sell the bond that very afternoon.
"But vy dis minute?" asked he.
"Bless me, my sweetheart, you must give it to her in a
little satin box wrapped round a fan. You must say, 'Here,
madame, is a fan which I hope may be to your taste.' — You
are supposed to be a Turearet, and you will become a
Beaujon."
"Charming, charming!" cried the Baron. "I shall be so
clever henceforth. — Yes, I shall repeat your vorts."
Just as Esther had sat do\vn, tired with the eifort of playing
her part, Europe came in.
"Madame," said she, "here is a messenger sent from the
Quai Malaquais by Celestin, M. Lucien's servant "
"Bring him in — no, I will go into the ante-room."
"He has a letter for you, madame, from Celestin."
Esther rushed into the ante-room, looked at the messenger,
and saw that he looked like the genuine thing.
"Tell him to come down," said Esther, in a feeble voice,
and dropping into a chair after reading the letter. "Lucien
means to kill himself," she added in a whisper to Europe.
"No, take the letter up to him."
Carlos Herrera, still in bis disguise as a bagman, came
dovmstairs at once, and keenly scrutinized the messenger on
seeing a stranger in the ante-room.
WHAT LOVE COSTS J> 28J>
"You said there was no one here/" said he in a whisper to
Europe.
And with an excess of prudence, after looking at the mes-
senger, he went straight into the drawing-room. Trompe-la-
Mort did not know that for some time past the famous con-
stable of the detective force who had arrested him at the
Maison Vauquer had a rival, who, it was supposed, would re-
place him. This rival was the messenger.
"They are right," said the sham messenger to Contenson,
who was waiting for him in the street. "The man you
describe is in the house ; but he is not a Spaniard, and I will
burn my hand off if there is not a bird for our net under that
priest's gown."
"He is no more a priest than he is a Spaniard," said Con-
tenson.
"I am sure of that," said the detective.
"Oh, if only we were right !" said Contenson.
Lucien had been away for two days, and advantage had
been taken of his absence to lay this snare, but he returned
this evening, and the courtesan's anxieties were allayed. Next
morning, at the hour when Esther, having taken a bath, was
getting into bed again, Madame du Val-Noble arrived.
"I have the two pills !" said her friend.
"Let me see," said Esther, raising herself with her pretty
elbow buried in a pillow trimmed with lace.
Madame du Val-Noble held out to her what looked like
two black currants.
The Baron had given Esther a pair of greyhounds of
famous pedigree, which will be always known by the name
of the great contemporary poet who made them fashionable;
and Esther, proud of owning them, had called them by the
names of their parents, Romeo and Juliet. No need here to
describe the whiteness and grace of these beasts, trained for
the drawing-room, with manners suggestive of English pro-
priety. Esther called Eomeo ; Eomeo ran up on legs so
supple and thin, so strong and sinewy, that they seemed like
290 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
steel springs, and looked up at his mistress. Esther, to at-
tract his attention, pretended to throw one of the pills.
"He is doomed by his name to die thus," said she, as she
threw the pill, which Komeo crushed between his teeth.
The dog made no sound; he rolled over, and was stark
dead. It was all over while Esther spoke these words of
epitaph.
"Good God !" shrieked Madame du Val-Noble.
"You have a cab waiting. Carry away the departed
Romeo," said Esther. "His death would make a commotion
here. I have given him to you, and you have lost him —
advertise for him. Make haste; you will have your fifty
thousand francs this evening."
She spoke so calmly, so entirely with the cold indifference
of a courtesan, that Madame du Yal-Xoble exclaimed:
"You are the Queen of us all !"
"Come early, and look very well "
At five o'clock Esther dressed herself as a bride. She put
on her lace dress over white satin, she had a white sash, white
satin shoes, and a scarf of English point lace over her beau-
tiful shoulders. In her hair she placed white camellia flow-
ers, the simple ornament of an innocent girl. On her bosom
lay a pearl necklace worth thirty thousand francs, a gift from
Nucingen.
Though she was dressed by six, she refused to see anybody,
even the banker. Europe knew that Lucien was to be ad-
mitted to her room. Lucien came at about seven, and Europe
managed to get him up to her mistress without anybody
knowing of his arrival.
Lucien, as he looked at her, said to himself, "Why not
go and live with her at Rnbempre, far from the world, and
never see Paris again ? I have an earnest of five years of her
life, and the dear creature is one of those who never belie
themselves ! Where can I find such another perfect master-
piece ?"
"My dear,, you whom I have made my God," said Esther,
WHAT LOVE COSTS 291
kneeling down on a cushion in front of Lucien, "give me
your blessing."
Lucien tried to raise her and kiss her, saying, "What is this
jest, my dear love ?" And he would have put his arm round
her, but she freed herself with a gesture as much of respect as
of horror.
"I am no longer worthy of you, Lucien," said she, letting
the tears rise to her eyes. "I implore you, give me your bless-
ing, and swear to me that you will found two beds at the
Hotel -Dieu — for, as to prayers in church, God will never for-
give me unless I pray myself.
"I have loved you too well, my dear. Tell me that I made
you happy, and that you will sometimes think of me. — Tell
me that !"
Lucien saw that Esther was solemnly in earnest, and he
sat thinking.
"You mean to kill yourself," said he at last, in a tone of
voice that revealed deep reflection.
"No," said she. "But to-day, my dear, the woman dies,
the pure, chaste, and loving woman who once was yours. —
And I am very much afraid that I shall die of grief."
"Poor child," said Lucien, "wait ! I have worked hard
these two days. I have succeeded in seeing Clotilde "
"Always Clotilde !" cried Esther, in a tone of concen-
trated rage.
"Yes," said he, "we have written to each other. — On Tues-
day morning she is to set out for Italy, but I shall meet her on
the road for an interview at Fontainebleau."
"Bless me ! what is it that you men want for wives ?
Wooden laths ?" cried poor Esther. "If I had seven or eight
millions, would you not marry me — come now?"
"Child ! I was going to say that if all is over for me, I Avill
have no wife but you."
Esther bent her head to hide her sudden pallor and the
tears she wiped away.
"You love me?" said she. looking at Lucien with the deep-
est melancholy. "Well, that is my sufficient blessing. — Do
292 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
not compromise yourself. Go away by the side door, and
come in to the drawing-room through the ante-room. Kiss
me on the forehead."
She threw her arms round Lucien, clasped him to her heart
with frenzy, and said again:
"Go, only go — or I must live."
When the doomed woman appeared in the drawing-room,
there was a cry of admiration. Esther's eyes expressed in-
finitude in which the soul sank as it looked into them. Her
blue-black and beautiful hair set off the camellias. In short,
this exquisite creature achieved all the effects she had in-
tended. She had no rival. She looked like the supreme
expression of that unbridled luxury which surrounded her
in every form. Then she was brilliantly witty. She ruled
the orgy with the cold, calm power that Habeneck displays
when conducting at the Conservatoire, at those concerts where
the first musicians in Europe rise to the sublime in interpret-
ing Mozart and Beethoven.
But she observed with terror that Nucingen ate little, drank
nothing, and was quite the master of the house.
By midnight everybody was crazy. The glasses were
broken that they might never be used again; two of the
Chinese curtains were torn ; Bixiou was drunk, for the second
time in his life. ISTo one could keep his feet, the women were
asleep on the sofas, and the guests were incapable of carrying
out the practical joke they had planned of escorting Esther
and Nucingen to the bedroom, standing in two lines with
candles in their hands, and singing Buona sera from the
Barher of Seville.
Nucingen simply gave Esther his hand. Bixiou, who saw
them, though tipsy, was still able to say, like Eivarol, on the
occasion of the Due de Richelieu's last marriage, "The police
must be warned ; there is mischief brewing here."
The jester thought he was jesting; he was a prophet.
Monsieur de Xucingen did not go home till Monday at
about noon. But at one o'clock his broker informed him
WHAT LOVE COSTS 293
that Mademoiselle Esther van Bogseck had sold the bond
bearing thirty thousand francs interest on Friday last, and
had just received the money.
"But, Monsieur le Baron, Derville's head-clerk called on
me just as I was settling this transfer ; and after seeing Made-
moiselle Esther's real names, he told me she had come into a
fortune of seven millions."
"Pooh !"
"Yes; she is the only heir to the old bill-discounter Gob-
seek. — Derville will verify the facts. If your mistress'
mother was the handsome Dutch woman, la Bellei^Hollandaise,
as they called her, she comes in for " ~ "
"I know dat she is," cried the banker. "She tolt me all
her life. I shall write ein vort to Derville."
The Baron sat down at his desk, wrote a line to Derville,
and sent it by one of his servants. Then, after going to
the Bourse, he went back to Esther's house at about three
o'clock.
"Madame forbade our waking her on any pretence what-
ever. She is in bed — asleep "
"Ach der Teufel !" said the Baron. "But, Europe, she
shall not be angry to be tolt that she is fery, fery rich. She
shall inherit seven millions. Old Gobseck is deat, and your
mis'ess is his sole heir, for her moter vas Gobseck's own niece ;
and besides, he shall hafe left a vill. I could never hafe
tought that a millionaire like dat man should hafe left Esther
in misery !"
"Ah, ha ! Then your reign is over, old pantaloon !" said
Europe, looking at the Baron with an effrontery worthy of
one of Moliere's waiting-maids. "Shooh ! you old Alsatian
crow ! She loves you as we love the plague ! Heavens above
us ! Millions ! — Why, she may marry her lover ; won't she be
glad !"
And Prudence Servien left the Baron simply thunder-
stricken, to be the first to announce to her mistress this great
stroke of luck. The old man, intoxicated with superhuman
enjoyment, and believing himself happy, had just received a
294 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
cold shower-bath on his passion at the moment when it had
risen to the intensest white heat.
"She vas deceiving me !" cried he, with tears in his eyes.
"Yes, she vas cheating me. Oh, Esther, my life ! Vas a
fool hafe I been ! Can such flowers ever bloom for de old
men ! I can buy all vat I vill except only yout ! — Ach Gott,
ach Gott ! Vat shall I do ? Vat shall become of me ? — She
is right, dat cruel Europe. Esther, if she is rich, shall not
be for me. Shall I go hank myself? Vat is life midout de
divine flame of joy dat I have known ? Mein Gott, mein
Gott !"
The old man snatched off the false hair he had combed
in with his gray hairs these three months past.
A piercing shriek from Europe made Nucingen quail to
his very bowels. The poor banker rose and walked upstairs
on legs that were drunk with the bowl of disenchantment he
had just swallowed to the dregs, for nothing is more intoxi-
cating than the wine of disaster.
At the door of her room he could see Esther stiff on her
bed, blue with poison — dead 1
He went up to the bed and dropped on his knees.
"You are right ! She tolt me so ! — She is dead — of
me ''
Paccard, Asie, every one hurried in. It was a spectacle, a
shock, but not despair. Every one had their doubts. The
Baron was a banker again. A suspicion crossed his mind,
and he was so imprudent as to ask what had become of the
seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, the price of the
bond. Paccard, Asie, and Europe looked at each other so
strangely that Monsieur de jSTucingen left the house at once,
believing that robbery and murder had been committed.
Europe, detecting a packet of a soft consistency, betraying
the contents to be banknotes, under her mistress' pillow, pro-
ceeded at once to "lay her out," as she said.
"Go and tell monsieur, Asie ! — Oh, to die before she knew
that she had seven millions ! Gobseck was poor madame's
uncle !" said she.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 295
Europe's stratagem was understood by Paccard. As soon
as Asie's back was turned, Europe opened the packet, on
which the hapless courtesan had written : "To be delivered to
Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre."
Seven hundred and fifty thousand-franc notes shone in the
eyes of Prudence Servien, who exclaimed:
"Won't we be happy and honest for the rest of our
lives !"
Paccard made no objection. His instincts as a thief were
stronger than his attachment to Trompe-la-Mort.
"Durut is dead," he said at length; "my shoulder is still
a proof before letters. Let us be off together; divide the
money, so as not to have all our eggs in one basket, and then
get married."
"But where can we hide?" said Prudence.
"In Paris," replied Paccard.
Prudence and Paccard went off at once, with the prompti-
tude of two honest folks transformed into robbers.
"My child,'' said Carlos to Asie, as soon as she had said
three words, "find some letter of Esther's while I write a
formal will, and then take the copy and the letter to Girard ;
but he must be quick. The will must be under Esther's
pillow before the lawyers affix the seals here."
And he wrote out the following will : —
"Never having loved any one on earth but Monsieur Lucien
Chardon de Riibempre, and being resolved to end my life
rather than relapse into vice and the life of infamy from
which he rescued me, I give and bequeath to the said Lucien
Chardon de Rubempre all I may possess at the time of my
decease, on condition of his founding a mass in perpetuity
in the parish church of Saint-Roch for the repose of her who
gave him her all, to her last thought.
"Esther Gobseck."
"That is quite in her style," thought Trompe-la-Mort.
296 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
By seven in the evening this document, written and sealed,
was placed by Asie under Esther's bolster.
"■Jacques," said she, flying upstairs again, "just as I came
out of the room justice marched in ''
"The justice of the peace you mean?"
"Xo, my son. The justice of the peace was there, but
he had gendarmes with him. The public prosecutor and
the examining judge are there too, and the doors are guarded."
"This death has made a stir very quickly," remarked
Jacques Collin.
"Ay, and Paccard and Europe have vanished ; I am afraid
they may have scared away the seven hundred and fifty thou-
sand francs," said Asie.
"The low villains !" said Collin. "They have done for
us by their swindling game."
Human justice, and Paris justice, that is to say, the most
suspicious, keenest, cleverest, and omniscient type of justice
— too clever, indeed, for it insists on interpreting the law at
every turn — was at last on the point of laying its hand on the
agents of this horrible intrigue.
The Baron de Nucingen, on recognizing the evidence of
poison, and failing to find his seven hundred and fifty thou-
sand francs, imagined that one of two persons whom he
greatly disliked — either Paccard or Europe — was guilty of
the crime. In his first impulse of rage he flew to the prefec-
ture of police. This was a stroke of a bell that called up all
Corentin's men. The otficials of the prefecture, the legal
profession, the chief of the police, the justice of the peace, the
examining judge, — all were astir. By nine in the evening
tlu'ee medical men were called in to perform an autopsy on
poor Esther, and inquiries were set on foot.
Trompe-la-Mort, warned by Asie, exclaimed:
"No one knows that I am here ; I may take an airing." He
pulled himself up by the skylight of his garret, and with
marvelous agility was standing in an instant on the roof,
whence he surveyed the surroundings with the coolness of a
tiler.
WHAT LOVE COSTS 297
"Good !" said he, discerning a garden five houses off in
the Eue de Provence, "that will just do for me."
"You are paid out, Trompe-la-Mort," said Contenson, sud-
denly emerging from behind a stack of chimneys. "You may
explain to Monsieur Camusot what mass you were performing
on the roof, Monsieur I'Abbe, and, above all, why you were
escaping "
"I have enemies in Spain," said Carlos Herrera.
"We can go there by way of your attic," said Conten-
son.
The sham Spaniard pretended to yield; but, having set
his back and feet across the opening of the skylight, he
gripped Contenson and flung him off with such violence that
the spy fell in the gutter of the Eue Saint-Georges.
Contenson was dead on his field of honor; Jacques Collin
quietly dropped into the room again and went to bed.
"Give me something that will make me very sick without
killing me," said he to Asie ; "for I must be at death's door,
to avoid answering inquisitive persons. Do not be alarmed
— I am a priest, and shall still be a priest. I have just got
rid of a man in the most natural way, who might have un-
masked me."
At seven o'clock on the previous evening Lucien had set
out in his own chaise to post to Fontainebleau with a pass-
port he had procured in the morning; he slept in the nearest
inn on the Xemours side. At six in the morning he went
alone, and on foot, through the forest as far as Bouron.
"This," said he to himself, as he sat down on one of the
rocks that command the fine landscape of Bouron, "is the
fatal spot where ISTapoleon dreamed of making a final tre-
mendous effort on the eve of his abdication."
At daybreak he heard the approach of post-horses and saw
a britska drive past, in which sat the servants of the
Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu, and Clotilde de Grandlieu's
maid.
"Here they are !" thought Lucien. "Now, to play the farce
298 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
well, and I shall be saved ! — The Due de G-randlieu's son-in-
law in spite of him !"
It was an hour later when he heard the peculiar sound made
by a superior traveling carriage, as the berline came near in
which the two ladies were sitting. They had given orders that
the drag should be put on for the hill down to Bouron, and
the man-servant behind the carriage had it stopped.
At this instant Lucien came forward.
"Clotilde !" said he, tapping on the window.
"No," said the young Duchess to her friend, "he shall not
get into the carriage, and we will not be alone with him, my
dear. Speak to him for the last time — to that I consent ; but
on the road, where we will walk on, and where Baptiste can
escort us. — The morning is fine, we are well wrapped up, and
have no fear of the cold. The carriage can follow."
The two women got out.
"Baptiste," said the Duchess, "the post-boy can follow
slowly; we want to walk a little way. You must keep near
us."
Madeleine de Mortsauf took Clotilde by the arm and al-
lowed Lucien to talk. The}^ thus walked on as far as the
village of Grez. It was now eight o'clock, and there Clotilde
dismissed Lucien.
"Well, mj'' friend," said she, closing this long interview
with much dignity, "I never shall mapry any one but you.
I would rather believe in you than in other men, in my father
and mother — no woman ever gave greater proof of attach-
ment surely? — Now, try to counteract the fatal prejudices
which militate against you."
Just then the tramp of galloping horses was heard, and,
to the great amazement of the ladies, a force of gendarmes
surrounded the little party.
"What do you want?" said Lucien, with the arrogance
of a dandy.
"Are you Monsieur Lucien de Eubempre ?" asked the public
prosecutor of Fontainebleau.
"Yes, monsieur."
WHAT LOVE COSTS 299 /
'TTou will spend to-night in La Force," said he. "I have
a warrant for the detention of your person."
"Who are these ladies?" asked the sergeant.
"To be sure. — Excuse me, ladies — ^your passports? For
Monsieur Lucien, as I am instructed, had acquaintances
among the fair sex, who for him would " — -i
"Do you take the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu for a /
prostitute?" said Madeleine, with a magnificent flash at the /
public prosecutor. '
"You are handsome enough to excuse the error," the magis-
trate very cleverly retorted.
"Baptiste, produce the passports," said the young Duchess
with a smile.
"And with what crime is ]\Ionsieur de Rubempre charged ?"
asked Clotilde, whom the Duchess wished to see safe in the
carriage.
"Of being accessory to a robbery and murder," replied the
sergeant of gendarmes.
Baptiste lifted Mademoiselle de Grandlieu into the chaise
in a dead faint.
By midnight Lucien was entering La Force, a prison sit-
uated between the Rue Payenne and the Rue des Ballets,
w^here he was placed in solitary confinement.
The Abbe Carlos Herrera was also there, having been ar-
rested that evening.
THE END OF EVIL WAYS
At six o'clock next morning two vehicles with postilions,
prison vans, called in the vigorous language of the populace
pamers a saladc, came out of La Force to drive to the Con-
ciergerie by the Palais de Justice.
Few loafers in Paris can have failed to meet this prison
cell on wheels; still, though most stories are written for
Parisian readers, strangers will no doubt be satisfied to have
a description of this formidable machine. Who knows?
The police of Eussia, Germany, or Austria, the legal body of
countries to whom the "Salad-basket" is an unknown machine,
may profit by it; and in several foreign countries there can
be no doubt that an imitation of this vehicle would be a boon
to prisoners.
This ignominious conveyance, yellow-bodied, on high
wheels, and lined with sheet-iron, is divided into two com-
partments. In front is a box-seat, with leather cushions
and an apron. This is the free seat of the van, and accom-
modates a sheriff's officer and a gendarme. A strong iron
trellis, reaching to the top, separates this sort of cab-front
from the back division, in which there are two wooden seats
placed sideways, as in an omnibus, on which the prisoners sit.
They get in by a step behind and a door, with no window.
The nickname of Salad-basket arose from the fact that the
vehicle was originally made entirely of lattice, and the
prisoners were shaken in it just as a salad is shaken to
dry it.
For further security, in case of accident, a mounted gen-
darme follows the machine, especially when it conveys
criminals condemned to death to the place of execution. Thus
escape is impossible. The vehicle, lined with sheet-iron, is
impervious to any tool. The prisoners, carefully searched
(301)
302 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
when they are arrested or locked up, can have nothing but
watch-springs, perhaps, to file through bars, and useless on a
smooth surface.
So the panier a salade, improved by the genius of the Paris
police, became the model for the prison omnibus (known in
London as "Black Maria") in which convicts are transported
to the hulks, instead of the horrible tumbril which formerly
disgraced civilization, though Man on Lescaut has made it
famous.
The accused are, in the first instance, despatched in the
prison van from the various prisons in Paris to the Palais
de Justice, to be questioned by the examining judge. This,
in prison slang, is called "going up for examination." Then
the accused are again conveyed from prison to the Court
to be sentenced when their case is only a misdemeanor; or if,
in legal parlance, the case is one for the Upper Court, they
are transferred from the house of detention to the Concierge-
rie, the "Newgate" of the Department of the Seine.
Finally, the prison van carries the criminal condemned to
death from Bicetre to the Barriere Saint-Jacques, where ex-
ecutions are carried out, and have been ever since the Revolu-
tion of July. Thanks to philanthropic interference, the poor
wretches no longer have to face the horrors of the drive from
the Conciergerie to the Place de G-reve in a cart exactly like
that used by wood merchants. This cart is no longer used but
to bring the body back from the scaffold.
Without this explanation the words of a famous convict
to his accomplice, "It is now the horse's business !" as he got
into the van, would be unintelligible. It is impossible to
be carried to execution more comfortably than in Paris now-
adays.
At this moment the two vans, setting out at such an early
hour, were employed on the unwonted service o.* conveying
two accused prisoners from the jail of La Force to the
Conciergerie, and each man had a "Salad-basket" to him-
self.
Mne-tenths of my readers, ay, and nine-tenths of the re-
END OF EVIL WAYS 303
maining tenth, are certainly ignorant of the vast difference
of meaning in the words incriminated, suspected, accused,
and committed for trial — jail, house of detention, and pen-
itentiary ; and they may be surprised to learn here that it in-
volves all our criminal procedure, of which a clear and brief
outline will presently be sketched, as much for their informa-
tion as for the elucidation of this history. However, when
it is said that the first van contained Jacques Collin and the
second Lucien, who in a few hours had fallen from the sum-
mit of social splendor to the depths of a prison cell, curiosity
will for the moment be satisfied.
The conduct of the two accomplices was characteristic;
Lucien de Eubempre shrank back to avoid the gaze of the
passers-by, who looked at the grated window of the gloomy
and fateful vehicle on its road along the Rue Saint-Antoine
and the Rue du Martroi to reach the quay and the Arch of
Saint-Jean, the way, at that time, across the Place de I'Hotel
de Ville. This archway now forms the entrance gate to the
residence of the Prefet de la Seine in the huge municipal
palace. The daring convict, on the contrary, stuck his face
against the barred grating, between the officer and the gen-
darme, who, sure of their van, were chatting together.
The great days of' July 1830, and the tremendous storm
that then burst, have so completely wiped out the memory
of all previous events, and politics so entirely absorbed the
French during the last six months of that year, that no one
remembers — or a few scarcely remember — the various private,
judicial, and financial catastrophes, strange as they were,
which, forming the annual food of Parisian curiosity, were
not lacking during the first six months of the year. It is,'
therefore, needful to mention how Paris was, for the moment,
excited by the news of the arrest of a Spanish priest, dis-
covered in a courtesan's house, and that of the elegant Lucien
de Rubempr6, who had been engaged to Mademoiselle Clotilde
de Grandlieu, taken on the highroad to Italy, close to the
little village of Grez. Both were charged as being concerned
in a murder, of which the profits were stated at seven millions
304 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
of francs; and for some days the scandal of this trial pre-
ponderated over the absorbing importance of the last elections
held under Charles X.
In the first place, the charge had been based on an applica-
tion by the Baron de Xucingen ; then, Lucien's apprehension,
just as he was about to be appointed private secretary to the
Prime Minister, made a stir in the very highest circles of
society. In every drawing-room in Paris more than one
young man could recollect having envied Lucien when he was
honored by the notice of the beautiful Duchesse de Maufri-
gneuse; and every woman knew that he was the favored
attache of Madame de Serizy, the wife of one of the Govern-
ment bigwigs. And finally, his handsome person gave him
a singular notoriety in the various worlds that make up Paris
— the world of fashion, the financial world, the world of
courtesans, the young men's world, the literary world. So for
two days past all Paris had been talking of these two arrests.
The examining judge in whose hands the case was put re-
garded it as a chance for promotion; and, to proceed with
the utmost possible rapidity, he had given orders that both the
accused should be transferred from La Force to the Con-
ciergerie as soon as Lucien de Eubempre could be brought
from Fontainebleau.
As the Abbe Carlos had spent but twelve hours in La Force,
and Lucien only half a night, it is useless to describe that
prison, which has since been entirely remodeled ; and as to the
details of their consignment, it would be only a repetition of
the same story at the Conciergerie.
But before setting forth the terrible drama of a criminal
inquiry, it is indispensable, as I have said, that an account
should be given of the ordinary proceedings in a case of this
kind. To begin with, its various phases will be better under-
stood at home and abroad, and, besides, those who are igno-
rant of the action of the criminal law, as conceived of by the
lawgivers under Napoleon, will appreciate it better. This is
all the more important as, at this moment, this great and
END OF EVIL WAYS 305
noble institution is in danger of destruction by the system
known as penitentiary.
A crime is committed; if it is flagrant, the persons in-
criminated (inculpes) are taken to the nearest lock-up and
placed in the cell known to the vulgar as the Violon — perhaps
because they make a noise there, shrieking or crying. From
thence the suspected persons {inculpes) are taken before the
police commissioner or magistrate, who holds a preliminary
inquiry, and can dismiss the case if there is any mistake ;
finally, they are conveyed to the Depot of the Prefecture,
where the police detains them pending the convenience 'of the
public prosecutor and the examining judge. They, being
served with due notice, more or less quickly, accordiag to the
gravity of the case, come and examine the prisoners who are
still provisionally detained. Having due regard to the pre-
sumptive evidence, the examining judge then issues a warrant
for their imprisonment, and sends the suspected persons to
be confined in a jail. There are three such jails (Maisons
d' Arret) in Paris — Sainte-Pelagie, La Force, and les Made-
lonnettes.
Observe the word inculpS, incriminated, or suspected of
crime. The French Code has created three essential degrees
of criminality — inculpe, first degree of suspicion; prevenu,
under examination; accuse, fully committed for trial. So
long as the warrant for committal remains unsigned, the sup-
posed criminal is regarded as merely under suspicion, inculpe
of the crime or felony ; when the warrant has been issued, he
becomes "the accused" (prevenu), and is regarded as such
so long as the inquiry is proceeding; when the inquiry is
closed, and as soon as the Court has decided that the accused
is to be committed for trial, he becomes "the prisoner at the
bar" (accuse) as soon as the superior Court, at the instance
of the public prosecutor, has pronounced that the charge is so
far proved as to be carried to the Assizes.
Thus, persons suspected of crime go through three differ-
ent stages, three sif tings, before the coming up for trial be-
fore the judges of the upper Court — the High Justice of the
realm.
306 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
At the first stage, innocent persons have abundant means
of exculpating themselves — the public, the town watch, the
police. At the" second stage they appear before a magistrate
face to face with the witnesses, and are judged by a tribunal
in Paris, or by the Collective Court of the departments. At the
third stage they are brought before a bench of twelve council-
lors, and in case of any error or informality the prisoner com-
mitted for trial at the Assizes may appeal for protection to the
Supreme Court. The jury do not know what a slap in the face
they give to popular authority, to administrative and judicial
functionaries, when they acquit a prisoner. And so, in my
opinion, it is hardly possible that an innocent man should
ever find himself at the bar of an Assize Court in Paris — I
say nothing of other seats of justice.
The detenu is the convict. French criminal law recognizes
imprisonment of three degrees, corresponding in legal distinc-
tion to these three degrees of suspicion, inquiry, and con-
viction. Mere imprisonment is a light penalty for misde-
meanor, but detention is imprisonment with hard labor, a
severe and sometimes degrading punishment. Hence, those
persons who nowadays are in favor of the penitentiary system
would upset an admirable scheme of criminal law in which the
lieimlties are judiciously graduated, and they will end by
punishing the lightest peccadilloes as severely as the greatest
crimes.
The reader may compare in the Scenes of Political Life
(for instance, in Une Tmehreiise affaire) the curious differ-
ences subsisting between the criminal law of Brumaire in the
year lY., and that of the Code Napoleon which has taken its
place.
In most great trials, as in this one, the suspected persons
are at once examined (and from inculpes become prevenus) ;
justice immediately issues a warrant for their arrest and im-
prisonment. In point of fact, in most of such cases the
criminals have either fled, or have been instantly apprehended.
Indeed, as we have seen, the police, which is but an instru-
ment, and the officers of justice had descended on Esther's
END OF EVIL WAYS 307
house with the swiftness of a thuuderbolt. Even if there
had not been the reasons for revenge suggested to the superior
police by Corentin, there was a robbery to be investigated
of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs from the Baron
de Nucingen.
Just as the first prison van, conveying Jacques Collin,
reached the archway of Saint-Jean — a narrow, dark passage,
some block ahead compelled the postilion to stop under the
vault. The prisoner's eyes shone like carbuncles through
the grating, in spite of his aspect as of a dying man, which, the
day before, had led the governor of La Force to believe that
the doctor must be called in. These flaming eyes, free to rove
at this moment, for neither the officer nor the gendarme
looked round at their "customer," spoke so plain a language
that a clever' examining judge, M. Popinot, for instance,
would have identified the man convicted for sacrilege.
In fact, ever since the "salad-basket" had turned out of
the gate of La Force, Jacques Collin had studied everything
on his way. Notwithstanding the pace they had made, he
took in the houses with an eager and comprehensive glance,
from the ground floor to the attics. He saw and noted every
passer-by. God Himself is not more clear-seeing as to the
means and ends of His creatures than this man in observing
the slightest differences in the medley of things and people.
Armed with hope, as the last of the Horatii was armed with
his sword, he expected help. To anybody but this Machiavelli
of the hulks, this hope would have seemed so absolutely im-
possible to realize that he would have gone on mechanically,
as all guilty men do. Not one of them ever dreams of re-
sistance when he finds himself in the position to which justice
and the Paris police bring suspected persons, especially those
who, like Collin and Lucien, are in solitaty confinement.
It is impossible to conceive of the sudden isolation in which
a suspected criminal is placed. The gendarmes who appre-
hend him, the commissioner who questions him, those who
take him to prison, the warders who lead him to his cell —
308 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
which is actually called a cachot, a dungeon or hiding-place,
those again who take him by the arms to put him into a
prison-van — every being that comes near him from the mo-
ment of his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all
he says, to be repeated to the police or to the judge. This
total severance, so simply effected between the prisoner and
the world, gives rise to a complete overthrow of his faculties
and a terrible prostration of mind, especially when the man
has not been familiarized by his antecedents with the pro-
cesses of justice. The duel between the judge and the
criminal is all the more appalling because justice has on
its side the dumbness of blank walls and the incorruptible
coldness of its agents.
But Jacques Collin, or Carlos Herrera — it will be necessarv
to speak of him by one or the other of these names according
to the circumstances of the case — had long been familiar with
the methods of the police, of the jail, and of justice. This
colossus of cunning and corruption had employed all his
powers of mind, and all the resources of mimicry, to affect
the surprise and anility of an innocent man, while giving the
lawyers the spectacle of his sufferings. As has been told, Asia,
that skilled Loeusta, had given him a dose of poison so quali-
fied as to produce the effects of a dreadful illness.
Thus Monsieur Camusot, the police commissioner, and
the public prosecutor had been baffled in their proceedings
and inquiries by the effects apparently of an apoplectic
attack.
"He has taken poison !" cried Monsieur Camusot, horrified
by the sufferings of the self-styled priest when he had been
carried do'wn from the attic writhing in convulsions.
Four constables had with great difficulty brought the Abbe
Carlos downstairs to Esther's room, where the lawyers and
the gendarmes were assembled.
"That was the best thing he could do if he should be
guilty," replied the public prosecutor.
"Do you believe that he is ill?" the police commissioner
asked.
END OF EVIL WAYS 309
The police is always incredulous.
The three lawyers had spoken, as may be imagined, in a
whisper ; but Jacques Collin had guessed from their faces the
subject under discussion, and had taken advantage of it to
make the first brief examination which is gone through on
arrest absolutely impossible and useless; he had stammered
out sentences in which Spanish and French were so mingled
as to make nonsense.
At La Force this farce had been all the more successful in
the first instance because the head of the "safety" force — an
abbreviation of the title "Head of the brigade of the guardians
of public safety" — Bibi-Lupin, who had long since taken
Jacques Collin into custody at Madame Vauquer's boarding-
house, had been sent on special business into the country, and
his deputy was a man who hoped to succeed him, but to whom
the convict was unknown.
Bibi-Lupin, himself formerly a convict, and a comrade of
Jacques Collin's on the hulks, was his personal enemy. This
hostility had its rise in quarrels in which Jacques Collin had
always got the upper hand, and in the supremacy over his
fellow-prisoners which Trompe-la-Mort had always assumed.
And then, for ten years now, Jacques Collin had been the
ruling providence of released convicts in Paris, their head,
their adviser, and their banker, and consequently Bibi-Lupin's
antagonist.
Thus, though placed in solitary confinement, he trusted to
the intelligent and unreserved devotion of Asie, his right
hand, and perhaps, too, to Paccard, his left hand, who, as he
flattered himself, might return to his allegiance when once
that thrifty subaltern had safely bestowed the seven hundred
and fifty thousand francs that he had stolen. This was the
reason why his attention had been so superhumanly alert all
along the road. And, strange to say ! his hopes were about
to be amply fulfilled.
The two solid side-walls of the archway were covered, to
a height of six feet, with a permanent dado of mud formed
of the splashes from the gutter ; for, in those days, the foot
310 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
passenger had no protection from the constant tratiic of
vehicles and from what was called the kicking of the carts, but
curbstones placed upright at intervals, and much ground
away by the naves of the wheels. More than once a heavy
truck had crushed a heedless foot-passenger under that arch-
way. Such indeed Paris remained in many districts and till
long after. This circumstance may give some idea of the
narrowness of the Saint-Jean gate and the ease with which it
could be blocked. If a cab should be coming through from
the Place de Greve while a costermonger-woman was pushing
her little truck of apples in from the Eue du Martroi, a third
vehicle of any kind produced difficulties. The foot-passen-
gers fled in alarm, seeking a corner-stone to protect them from
the old-fashioned axles, which had attained such prominence
that a law was passed at last to reduce their length.
When the prison van came in, this passage was blocked by
a market woman with a costermonger's vegetable cart — one of
a type which is all the more strange because specimens still
exist in Paris in spite of the increasing number of green-
grocers' shops. She was so thoroughly a street hawker that
a Sergeant de Ville, if that particular class of police had been
then in existence, would have allowed her to ply her trade
without inspecting her permit, in spite of a sinister counte-
nance that reeked of crime. Her head, wrapped in a cheap
and ragged checked cotton kerchief, was horrid with rebellious
locks of hair, like the bristles of a wild boar. Her red and
wrinkled neck was disgusting, and her little shawl failed en-
tirely to conceal a chest tanned brown by the sun, dust, and
mud. Her gown was patchwork; her shoes gaped as though
they were grinning at a face as full of holes as the gov\Ti. And
what an apron ! a plaster would have been less filthy. This
moving and fetid rag must have stunk in the nostrils of
dainty folks ten yards away. Those hands had gleaned a
hundred harvest fields. Either the woman had returned from
a German witches' Sabbath, or she had come out of a men-
dicity asylum. But what eyes ! what audacious intelligence,
what repressed vitality when the magnetic flash of her look
and of Jacques Collin's met to exchange a thought !
END OF FiVIT. WAYR 311
"Get out of the wa}-, you old vermin-trap !" cried the pos-
tilion in harsh tones.
"Mind you don't crush me, you hangman's apprentice!''
she retorted. "Your cartful is not worth as much as mine."
And by trying to squeeze in between two corner-stones to
make way, the hawker managed to block the passage long
enough to achieve her purpose.
"Oh ! Asie !" said Jacques Collin to himself, at once recog-
nizing his accomplice. "Then all is well."
The post-boy was still exchanging amenities with Asie,
and vehicles were collecting in the Rue du Martroi.
"Look out, there — Pecaire fermati. Souni la — Vedrem"
shrieked old Asie, with the Eed-Indian intonations peculiar
to these female costermongers, who disfigure their words in
such a way that they are transformed in a sort onomatopoeia
incomprehensible to any but Parisians.
In the confusion in the alle}'', and among the outcries of all
the waiting drivers, no one paid any heed to this wild yell,
which might have been the woman's usual cry. But this gib-
berish, intelligible to Jacques Collin, sent to his ear in a mon-
grel language of their own — a mixture of bad Italian and
Provencal — this important news:
"Your poor boy is nabbed. I am here to keep an eye on
you. We shall meet again."'
In the midst of his joy at having thus triumphed over the
police, for he hoped to be able to keep up communications,
Jacques Collin had a blow which might have killed any other
man.
"Lucien in custody !" said he to himself.
He almost fainted. This news was to him more terrible
than the rejection of his appeal could have been if he had
been condemned to death.
jSTow that both the prison vans are rolling along the Quai,
the interest of this story requires that I should add a few
words about the Conciergerie, while they are making their
way thither. The Conciergerie, a historical name — a terrible
name — a still more terrible thing, is inseparable ffom the
312 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Eevolutions of France, and especially those of Paris. It has
known most of our great criminals. But if it is the most in-
teresting of the buildings of Paris, it is also the least known —
least known to persons of the upper classes; still, in spite of
the interest of this historical digression, it should be as short
as the journey of the prison vans.
What Parisian, what foreigner, or what provincial can
have failed to observe the gloomy and mysterious features of
the Quai des Lunettes — a structure of black walls flanked by
three round towers with conical roofs, two of them almost
touching each other? This quay, beginning at the Pont du
Change, ends at the Pont Xeuf . A square tower — the Clock
Tower, or Tour de I'Horloge, whence the signal was given
for the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew — a tower almost as
tall as that of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, shows where the
Palais de Justice stands, and forms the corner of the quay.
These four towers and these walls are shrouded in the black
winding sheet which, in Paris, falls on every facade to the
north. About half-way along the quay at a gloomy archway
we see the beginning of the private houses which were built
in consequence of the construction of the Pont Neuf in the
reign of Henri lY. The Place Ro3'ale was a replica of the
Place Dauphine. The style of architecture is the same, of
brick with binding courses of hewn stone. This archway and
the Eue de Harlay are the limit line of the Palais de Justice
on the west. Formerly the Prefecture de Police, once the
residence of the Presidents of the Parlement, was a depend-
ency of the Palace. The Court of Exchequer and Court of
Subsidies completed the Supreme Court of Justice, the Sov-
ereign's Court. It will be seen that before the Eevolution the
Palace enjoyed that isolation which now again is aimed at.
This block, this island of residences and official buildings,
in their midst the Sainte-Chapelle — that priceless jewel of
Saint-Louis' chaplet — is the sanctuary of Paris, its holy place,
its sacred ark.
For one thing, this island was at first the whole of the city,
for the plot now forming the Place Dauphine was a meadow
END OF EVIL WAYS 313
attached to the Eoyal demesne, where stood a stamping mill
for coining money. Hence the name of Eue de la Monnaie —
the street leading to the Pont Neuf . Hence, too, the name of
one of the round towers — the middle one — called the Toiir
d' Argent, which would seem to show that money was origi-
nally coined there. The famous mill, to be seen marked in old
maps of Paris, may very likely be more recent than the time
when money was coined in the Palace itself, and was erected,
no doubt, for the practice of improved methods in the art of
coining.
The first tower, hardly detached from the Tour d' Argent,
is the Tour de Montgomery ; the third, and smallest, but the
best preserved of the three, for it still has its battlements, is
the Tour Bonbec.
The Sainte-Chapelle and its four towers — counting the
clock tower as one — clearly define the precincts ; or, as a sur-
veyor would say, the perimeter of the Palace, as it was from
the time of the Merovingians till the accession of the first
race of Valois; but to us, as a result of certain alterations,
this Palace is more especially representative of the period of
Saint-Louis.
Charles V. was the first to give the Palace up to the Parle-
ment, then a new institution, and went to reside in the famous
Hotel Saint-Pol, under the protection of the Bastille. The
Palais des Tournelles was subsequently erected backing on
to the Hotel Saint-Pol. Thus, under the later Valois, the
kings came back from the Bastille to the Louvre, which had
been their first stronghold.
The original residence of the French kings, the Palace of
Saint-Louis, which has preserved the designation of Le Palais,
to indicate the Palace of palaces, is entirely buried under the
Palais de Justice; it forms the cellars, for it was built, like
the Cathedral, in the Seine, and with such care that the high-
est floods in the river scarcely cover the lowest steps. The
Quai de I'Horloge covers, twenty feet below the surface, its
foundations of a thousand years old. Carriages run on the
level of the capitals of the solid columns under these towers,
314 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
and formerly their appearance must have harmonized with
the elegajice of the Palace, and have had a picturesque effect
over the water, since to this day those towers vie in height
with the loftiest buildings in Paris.
As we look down on this vast capital from the lantern of
the Pantheon, the Palace with the Sainte-Chapelle is still the
most monumental of many monumental buildings. The home
of our kings, over which you tread as you pace the immense
hall known as the Salle des Pas-Perdus, was a miracle of
architecture ; and it is so still to the intelligent eye of the poet
who happens to study it when inspecting the Conciergerie.
Alas ! for the Conciergerie has invaded the home of kings.
One's heart bleeds to see the way in which cells, cupboards,
corridors, warders' rooms, and halls devoid of light or air,
have been hewn out of that beautiful structure in which By-
zantine, Gothic, and Romanesque — the three phases of ancient
art — were harmonized in one building by the architecture of
the twelfth century.
This palace is a monumental history of France in the
earliest times, just as Blois is that of a later period. As at
Blois you may admire in a single courtyard the chateau of
the Counts of Blois, that of Louis XII., that of Francis L,
that of Gaston ; so at the Conciergerie you will find within the
same precincts the stamp of the early races, and, in the Sainte-
Chapelle, the architecture of Saint-Louis.
Municipal Council (to you I speak), if you bestow millions,
get a poet or two to assist your architects if you wish to save
the cradle of Paris, the cradle of kings, while endeavoring
to endow Paris and the Supreme Court with a palace worthy
of France. It is a matter for study for some years before
beginning the work. Another new prison or two like that of
La Roquette, and the palace of Saint-Louis will be safe.
In these days many grievances afflict this vast mass of
buildings, buried under the Palais de Justice and the quay,
like some antediluvian creature in the soil of Montmartre;
but the worst affliction is that it is the Conciergerie. This
epigram is intelligible. In the early days of the monarchy,
END OP EVIL WAYS 315
noble criminals — for the villeins (a word signifying the peas-
antry in French and English alike) and the citizens came un-
der the jurisdiction of the municipality or of their liege lord
— the lords of the greater or the lesser fiefs, were brought
before the king and guarded in the Conciergerie. And as
these noble criminals were few, the Conciergerie was large
enough for the king's prisoners.
It is difficult now to be quite certain of the exact site of the
original Conciergerie. However, the kitchens built by Saint-
Louis still exist, forming what is now called the mousetrap;
and it is probable that the original Conciergerie was situated
in the place where, till 1825, the Conciergerie prisons of the
Parlement were still in use, under the archway to the right
of the wide outside steps leading to the supreme Court. From
thence, until 1825, condeumed criminals were taken to execu-
tion. From that gate came forth all the great criminals, all
the victims of political feeling — the Marechale d'Ancre and
the Queen of France, Semblanc^ay and Malesherbes, Damien
and Danton, Desrues and Castaing. Fouquier-Tinville's
private room, like that of the public prosecutor now, was so
placed that he could see the procession of carts containing
the persons whom the Revolutionary tril)unal had sentenced
to death. Thus this man, who had become a sword, could give
a last glance at each batch.
After 1825, when Monsieur de Peyronnet was Minister, a
great change was made in the Palais. The old entrance to
the Conciergerie, where the ceremonies of registering the
criminal and of the last toilet were performed, was closed and
removed to where it now is, between the Tour de I'Horloge
and the Tour de Montgomery, in an inner court entered
through an arched passage. To the left is the "mousetrap,"
to the right the prison gates. The "salad-baskets" can drive
into this irregularly shaped courtyard, can stand there and
turn with ease, and in case of a riot find some protection
behind the strong grating of the gate under the arch;
whereas they formerly had no room to move in the narrow
space dividing the outside steps from the right wing of the
palace.
316 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
In our day the Conciergerie, hardly large enough for the
prisoners committed for trial — room being needed for about
three hundred, men and women — no longer receives either
suspected or remanded criminals excepting in rare cases, as,
for instance, in these of Jacques Collin and Lucien. All who
are imprisoned there are committed for trial before the Bench.
As an exception criminals of the higher ranks are allowed to
sojourn there, since, being already disgraced by a sentence
in open court, their punishment would be too severe if they
served their term of imprisonment at Melun or at Poissy.
Ouvrard preferred to be imprisoned at the Conciergerie
rather than at Sainte-Pelagie. At this moment of writing
Lehon the notary and the Prince de Bergues are serving their
time there by an exercise of leniency which, though arbitrary,
is humane.
As a rule, suspected criminals, whether they are to be sub-
jected to a preliminary examination — to "go up," in the
slang of the Courts — or to appear before the magistrate of
the lower Court, are transferred in prison vans direct to the
"mousetraps."
The "mousetraps," opposite the gate, consist of a certain
number of old cells constructed in the old kitchens of Saint-
Louis' building, whither prisoners not yet fully committed
are brought to await the hour when the Court sits, or the
arrival of the examining judge. The "mousetraps" end on
the north at the quay, on the east at the headquarters of the
Municipal Guard, on the west at the courtyard of the Con-
ciergerie, and on the south they adjoin a large vaulted hall,
formerly, no doubt, the banqueting-room, but at present dis-
used.
Above the "mousetraps" is an inner guardroom with a win-
dow commanding the court of the Conciergerie; this is used
by the gendarmerie of the department, and the stairs lead up
to it. When the hour of trial strikes the sheriffs call the roll
of the prisoners, the gendarmes go down, one for each pris-
oner, and each gendarme takes a criminal by the arm; and
thus, in couples, they mount the stairs, cross the guardroom.
END OF EVIL WAYS 317
and are led along the passages to a room contiguous to the
hall where sits the famous sixth chamber of the law (whose
functions are those of an English county court). The same
road is trodden by the prisoners committed for trial on their
way to and from the Conciergerie and the Assize Court.
In the Salle des Pas-Perdus, between the door into the first
court of the inferior class and the steps leading to the sixth,
the visitor must observe the first time he goes there a door-
way without a door or any architectural adornment, a square
hole of the meanest type. Through this the judges and bar-
risters find their way into the passages, into the guardhouse,
down into the prison cells, and to the entrance to the Con-
ciergerie.
The private chambers of all the examining judges are on
different floors in this part of the building. They are reached
by squalid staircases, a maze in which those to whom the place
is unfamiliar inevitably lose themselves. The windows of
some look out on the quay, others on the yard of the Con-
ciergerie. In 1830 a few of these rooms commanded the Eue
de la Barillerie.
Thus, when a prison van turns to the left in this yard, it
has brought prisoners to be examined to the "mousetrap" ;
when it turns to the right, it conveys prisoners committed for
trial, to the Conciergerie. Now it was to the right that the
vehicle turned which conveyed Jacques Collin to set him down
at the prison gate. Nothing can be more sinister. Prisoners
and visitors see two barred gates of wrought iron, with a
space between them of about six feet. These are never both
opened at once, and through them everything is so cautiously
scrutinized that persons who have a visiting ticket pass the
permit through the bars before the key grinds in the lock.
The examining judges, or even the supreme judges, are not
admitted without being identified. Imagine, then, the chances
of communications or escape ! — The governor of the Con-
ciergerie would smile with an expression on his lips that
would freeze the mere suggestion in the most daring of
romancers who defy probability.
318 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
111 all the auualij oi' the Coueiergerie no escape has been
known but that of Lavalette; but the certain fact of august
connivance, now amply proven, if it does not detract from
the wife's devotion, certainly diminished the risk of failure.
The most ardent lover of the marvelous, judging on the
spot of the nature of the difficulties, must admit that at all
times the obstacles must have been, as they still are, insur-
mountable. No words can do justice to the strength of the
walls and vaulting; they must be seen.
Though the pavement of the yard is on a lower level than
that of the quay, in crossing this Barbican you go down sev-
eral steps to enter an immense vaulted hall, with solid walls
graced with magnificent columns. This hall abuts on the
Tour de Montgomery — which is now part of the governor's
residence — and on the Tour d' Argent, serving as a dormitory
for the warders, or porters, or turnkeys, as you may prefer
to call them. The number of the officials is less than might be
supposed ; there are but twenty ; their sleeping quarters, like
their beds, are in no respect different from those of the
pistoles or private cells. The name pistole originated, no
doubt, in the fact that prisoners formerly paid a pistole
(about ten francs) a week for this accommodation, its bare-
ness resembling that of the empty garrets in which great men
in poverty begin their career in Paris.
To the left, in the vast entrance hall, sits the Governor of
the Conciergerie, in a sort of office constructed of glass panes,
where he and his clerk keep the prison-registers. Here the
prisoners for examination, or committed for trial, have their
names entered with a full description, and are then searched.
The question of their lodging is also settled, this depending
on the prisoner's means.
Opposite the entrance to this hall there is a glass door.
This opens into a parlor where the prisoner's relations and his
counsel may speak with him across a double grating of wood.
The parlor window opens on to the prison yard, the inner
court where prisoners committed for trial take air and exer-
cise at certain fixed hours.
END OF EVIL WAYS 31P
This large hall, only lighted hy the doubtful daylight that
comes in through the gates — for the single window to the
front court is screened by the glass office built out in front of
it — has an atmosphere and a gloom that strike the eye in
perfect harmony with the pictures that force themselves on
the imagination. Its aspect is all the more sinister because,
parallel with the Tours d' Argent and de Montgomery, you
discover those mysterious vaulted and overwhelming crypts
which lead to the cells occupied by the Queen and Madame
Elizabeth, and to those known as the secret cells. This maze
of masonry, after being of old the scene of royal festivities,
is now the basement of the Palais de Justice.
Between 1825 and 1833 the operation of the last toilet was
performed in this enormous hall, between a large stove which
heats it and the inner gate. It is impossible even now to
tread without a shudder on the paved floor that has received
the shock and the confidences of so many last glances.
The apparently dying victim on this occasion could not
get out of the horrible vehicle without the assistance of two
gendarmes, who took him under the arms to support hin\
and led him half unconscious into the office. Thus dragged
along, the dying man raised his eyes to heaven in such a way
as to suggest a resemblance to the Saviour taken down from
the Cross. And certainly in no picture does Jesus present a
more cadaverous or tortured countenance than this of the
sham Spaniard ; he looked ready to breathe his last sigh. As
soon as he was seated in the office, he repeated in a weak voice
the speech he had made to everybody since he was arrested :
"I appeal to His Excellency the Spanish Ambassador."
"You can say that to the examining judge," replied the
Governor.
"Oh Lord !" said Jacques Collin, with a sigh. "But cannot
I have a breviary ? Shall I never be allowed to see a doctor ?
I have not two hours to live.''
As Carlos Herrera was to be placed in close confinement
in the secret cells, it was needless to ask him whether he
320 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
claimed the benefits of the pistole (as above described), that
is to say, the right of having one of the rooms where the pris-
oner enjoj^s such comfort as the law permits. These rooms
are on the other side of the prison-yard, of which mention will
presently be made. The sheriff and the clerk calmly carried
out the formalities of the consignment to prison.
"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin to the Governor in broken
French, "I am, as you see, a dying man. Pray, if you can,
tell that examining judge as soon as possible that I crave as a
favor what a criminal must most dread, namely, to be brought
before him as soon as he arrives ; for my sufferings are really
unbearable, and as soon as I see him the mistake will be
cleared up "
As an universal rule every criminal talks of a mistake.
Go to the hulks and question the convicts ; they are almost all
victims of a miscarriage of justice. So this speech raises a
faint smile in all who come into contact with the suspected,
accused, or condemned criminal.
"I will mention your request to the examining judge," re-
plied the Governor.
"And I shall bless you, monsieur !" replied the false Abbe,
raising his eyes to heaven.
As soon as his name was entered on the calendar, Carlos
Herrera, supported under each arm by a man of the municipal
guard, and followed by a turnkey instructed by the Governor
as to the number of the cell in which the prisoner was to be
placed, was led through the subterranean maze of the Con-
ciergerie into a perfectly wholesome room, whatever certain
philanthropists may say to the contrary, but cut off from all
possible communication with the outer world.
As soon as he was removed, the warders, the Governor, and
his clerk looked at each other as though asking each other's
opinion, and suspicion was legible on every face; but at the
appearance of the second man in custody the spectators re-
lapsed into their usual doubting frame of mind, concealed
under an air of indifference. Only in very extraordinary cases
do the functionaries of the Conciergerie feel any curiosity;
END OF EVIL WAYS 321
the prisoners are no more to them than a barber's customers
are to him. Hence all the formalities which appall the imagi-
nation are carried out with less fuss than a money transaction
at a banker's, and often with greater civility.
Lucien's expression was that of a dejected criminal. He
submitted to everything, and obeyed like a machine. All the
way from Fontainebleau the poet had been facing his ruin,
and telling himself that the hour of expiation had tolled.
Pale and exhausted, knowing nothing of what had happened
at Esther's house during his absence, he only knew that he was
the intimate ally of an escaped convict, a situation which en-
abled him to guess at disaster worse than death. When his
mind could command a thought, it was that of suicide. He
must, at any cost, escape the ignominy that loomed before him
like the phantasm of a dreadful dream.
Jacques Collin, as the more dangerous of the two culprits,
was placed in a cell of solid masonry, deriving its light from
one of the narrow yards, of which there are several in the
interior of the Palace, in the wing where the public prose-
cutor's chambers are. This little yard is the airing-ground
for the female prisoners. Lucien was taken to the same part
of the building, to a cell adjoining the rooms let to misde-
meanants ; for, by orders from the examining judge, the Gov-
ernor treated him with some consideration.
Persons who have never had anything to do with the action
of the law usually have the darkest notions as to the meaning
of solitary or secret confinement. Ideas as to the treatment of
criminals have not yet become disentangled from the old
pictures of torture chambers, of the unhealthiness of a prison,
the chill of stone walls sweating tears, the coarseness of the
jailers and of the food — inevitable accessories of the drama;
but it is not unnecessary to explain here that these exaggera-
tions exist only on the stage, and only make lawyers and
judges smile, as well as those who visit prisons out of curi-
osity, or who come to study them.
For a long time, no doubt, they were terrible. In the days
of the old Parlement, of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., the
S22 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
accused were, no doubt, flung peil-niell into a low room under-
neath the old gateway. The prisons were among the crimes
of 1789, and it is enough only to see the cells where the Queen
and Madame Elizabeth were incarcerated to conceive a horror
of old judicial proceedings.
In our day, though philanthropy has brought incalculable
mischief on society, it has produced some good for the indi-
vidual. It is to Napoleon that we owe our Criminal Code ;
and this, even more than the Civil Code — which still urgently
needs reform on some points — will remain one of the greatest
monuments of his short reign. This new view of criminal
law put an end to a perfect abyss of misery. Indeed, it may
be said that, apart from the terrible moral torture which men
of the better classes must suffer when they find themselves in
the power of the law, the action of that power is simple and
mild to a degree that would hardly be expected. Suspected or
accused criminals are certainly not lodged as if they were at
home ; but every necessary is supplied to them in the prisons
of Paris. Besides, the burden of feelings that weighs on them
deprives the details of daily life of their customary value.
It is never the body that suffers. The mind is in such a phase
of violence that every form of discomfort or of brutal treat-
ment, if such there were. Mould be easily endured in such a
frame of mind. And it must be admitted that an innocent
man is quickly released, especially in Paris.
So Lucien, on entering his cell, saw an exact reproduction
of the first room he had occupied in Paris at the Hotel Cluny.
A bed to compare with those in the worst furnished apart-
ments of the Quartier Latin, straw chairs with the bottoms
out, a table and a fcAV utensils, compose the furniture of such
a room, in which two accused prisoners are not unfrequently
placed together when they are quiet in their ways, and their
misdeeds are not crimes of violence, but such as forgery or
bankruptcy.
This resemblance between his starting-point, in the days of
his innocency, and his goal, the lowest depths ot degradation
and shame, was so direct an appeal to his last chord of poetic
END OF EVIL WAYS 323
feeling, that the unhappy fellow melted into tears. For four
hours he wept, as rigid in appearance as a figure of stone,
but enduring the subversion of all his hopes, the crushing of
all his social vanity, and the utter overthrow of his pride,
smarting in each separate / that exists in an ambitious man
— a lover, a success, a dandy, a Parisian, a poet, a libertine,
and a favorite. Everything in him was broken by this fall
as of Icarus.
Carlos Herrera, on the other hand, as soon as he was locked
into his cell and found himself alone, began pacing it to and
fro like the polar bear in his cage. He carefully examined
the door and assured himself that, with the exception of the
peephole, there was not a crack in it. He sounded all the
walls, he looked up the funnel down which a dim light came,
and he said to himself, "I am safe enough !"
He sat down in a corner where the eye of a prying warder
at the grating of the peephole could not see him. Then he
took off his wig, and hastily ungumm.ed a piece of paper that
did duty as lining. The side of the paper next his head was
so greasy that it looked like the very texture of the wig. If
it had occurred to Bibi-Lupin to snatch off the wig to es-
tablish the identity of the Spaniard with Jacques Collin, ho
would never have though twice about that paper, it looked
so exactly like part of the wigmaker's work. The other side
was still fairly white, and clean enough to have a few lines
written on it. The delicate and tiresome task of unsticking
it had been begun in La Force ; two hours would not have been
long enough; it had taken him half of the day before. The
prisoner began by tearing this precious scrap of paper so as
to have a strip four or five lines wide, which he divided into
several bits; he then replaced his store of paper in the same
strange hiding-place, after damping the gummed side so as
to make it stick again. He felt in a lock of his hair for one
of those pencil leads as thin as a stout pin, then recently in-
vented by Susse, and which he had put in with some gum ;
he broke off a scrap long enough to write with and small
enough to hide in his ear. Having made these preparations
324 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
with the rapidity and certainty of hand peculiar to old con-
victs, who are as light-fingered as monkeys, Jacques Collin
sat down on the edge of his bed to meditate on his instruc-
tions to Asie, in perfect confidence that he should come across
her, so entirely did he rely on the woman's genius.
"During the preliminary examination," he reflected, "I
pretended to be a Spaniard and spoke broken French, ap-
pealed to my Ambassador, and alleged diplomatic privilege,
not understanding anything I was asked, the whole per-
formance varied by fainting, pauses, sighs — in short, all the
vagaries of a dying nran. I must stick to that. My papers
are all regular. Asie and I can eat up Monsieur Camusot;
he is no great shakes !
"Xow I must think of Lucien; he must be made to pull
himself together. I must get at the boy at whatever cost,
and show him some plan of conduct, otherwise he will give
himself up, give me up, lose all ! He must be taught his
lesson before he is examined. And besides, I must find some
witnesses to swear to my being a priest !"
Such was the position, moral and physical, of these two
prisoners, whose fate at the moment depended on Monsieur
Camusot, examining judge to the Inferior Court of the Seine,
and sovereign master, during the time granted to him by the
Code, of the smallest details of their existence, since he alone
could grant leave for them to be visited by the chaplains, the
doctor, or any one else in the world.
ISTo human authority — neither the King, nor the Keeper
of the Seals, nor the Prime Minister, can encroach on the
power of an examining judge ; nothing can stop him, no one
can control him. He is a monarch, subject only to his
conscience and the Law. At the present time, when philoso-
phers, philanthropists, and politicians are constantly endeavor-
ing to reduce every social power, the rights conferred on the
examining judges have become the object of attacks that are
all the more serious because they are almost justified by those
rights, which, it must be owned, are enormous. And yet, as
every man of sense will own, that power ought to remain un-
END OF EVIL WAYS 325
impaired ; in certain cases, its exercise can be mitigated by a
strong infusion of caution; but society is already threatened
by the ineptitude and weakness of the jury — which is, in fact,
the really supreme bench, and which ought to be composed
only of choice and elected men — and it would be in danger
of ruin if this pillar were broken which now upholds our
criminal procedure.
Arrest on suspicion is one of the terrible but necessary
powers of which the risk to society is counterbalanced by its
immense importance. And besides, distrust of the magistracy
in general is a beginning of social dissolution. Destroy that
institution, and reconstruct it on another basis; insist — as
was the case before the Ee volution — that judges should show
a large guarantee of fortune ; but, at any cost, believe in it !
Do not make it an image of society to be insulted !
In these days a judge, paid as a functionary, and generally
a poor man, has in the place of his dignity of old a haughti-
ness of demeanor that seems odious to the men raised to be
his equals; for haughtiness is dignity without a solid basis.
That is the vicious element in the present system. If France
were divided into ten circuits, the magistracy might be re-
instated by conferring its dignities on men of fortune; but
with six-and-twenty circuits this is impossible.
The only real improvement to be insisted on in the exercise
of the power intrusted to the examining judge, is an alteration
in the conditions of preliminary imprisonment. The mere
fact of suspicion ought to make no difference in the habits of
life of the suspected parties. Houses of detention for them
ought to be constructed in Paris, furnished and arranged in
such a way as greatly to modify the feeling of the public
with regard to suspected persons. The law is good, and is
necessary; its application is ^ in fault, and public feeling
judges the laws from the way in which they are carried out.
And public opinion in France condemns persons under sus-
picion, while, by an inexplicable reaction, it justifies those
committed for trial. This, perhaps, is a result of the es-
sentially refractory nature of the French.
326 A COURTESAxX'S LIFE
This illogical temper of the Parisian people was one of the
factors which contributed to the climax of this drama; nay,
as may be seen, it was one of the most important.
To enter into the secret of the terrible scenes which are
acted out in the examining judge"s chambers; to understand
the respective positions of the two belligerent powers, the Law
and the examinee, the object of whose contest is a certain
secret kept by the prisoner from the inquisition of the magis-
trate— well named in prison slang, "the curious man" — it
must always be remembered that persons imprisoned under
suspicion know" nothing of what is being said by the seven or
eight publics that compose tlie Public, nothing of how much
the police know, or the authorities, or the little that news-
papers can publish as to the circumstances of the crime.
Thus, to give a man in custody such information as Jacques
Collin had just received from Asie as to Lucien's arrest,
is throwing a rope to a drowning man. As will be seen, in
consequence of this ignorance, a stratagem which, without this
warning, must certainly have been equally fatal to the convict,
was doomed to failure.
Monsieur Camusot, the son-in-law of' one of the clerks of
the cabinet, too well known for any account of his position
and connection to be necessary here, was at this moment al-
most as much perplexed as Carlos Herrera in view of the ex-
amination he was to conduct. He had formerly been Presi-
dent of a Court of the Paris circuit ; he had been raised from
that position and called to be a judge in Paris — one of the
most coveted posts in the magistracy — by the influence of the
celebrated Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, whose husband, at-
tached to the Dauphin's person, and Colonel of a cavalry
regiment of the Guards, was as much in favor with the King
as she was wMth Madame. In return for a very small service
which he had done the Duchess — an important matter to her
— on the occasion of a charge of forgery brought against the
young Comte d'Esgrignon by a banker of Alengon (see Le
Cabinet des Antiques; Scenes de la vie de Province), he was
END OF EVIL WAYS 327
promoted from being a provincial judge to be president of bis
Court, and from being president to be an examining judge in
Paris.
For eighteen months now he had sat on the most im-
portant Bench in the kingdom; and had once, at the desire
of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, had an opportunity of for-
warding the ends of a lady not less influential than the Duch-
ess, namely, the Marquise d'Espard, but he had failed. (See
the Commission in Lunacy.)
Lucien, as was told at the beginning of this Scene, to be
revenged on Madame d'Espard, who aimed at depriving her
husband of his liberty of action, was able to put the true facts
before the Public Prosecutor and the Comte de Serizy. These
two important authorities being thus won over to the Marquis
d'Espard's party, his wife had barely escaped the censure of
the Bench by her husband's generous intervention.
On hearing,- yesterday, of Lucien's arrest, the Marquise
d'Espard had sent her brother-in-law, the Chevalier d'Espard,
to see Madame Camusot. Madame Camusot had set off forth-
with to call on the notorious Marquise. Just before dinner,
on her return home, she had called her husband aside in the
bedroom.
"If you can commit that little fop Lucien de Eubempre
for trial, and secure his condemnation," said she in his ear,
"you will be Councillor to the Supreme Court "
"How ?"
"Madame d'Espard longs to see that poor young man
guillotined. I shivered as I heard what a pretty woman's
hatred can be !"
"Do not meddle in questions of law," said Camusot.
"I ! meddle I'' said she. "If a third person could have
heard us, he could not have guessed what we were talking
about. The Marquise and I were as exquisitely hypo-
critical to each other as you are to me at this moment. She
began by thanking me for your good offices in her suit, say-
ing that she was grateful in spite of its having failed. She
spoke of the terrible functions devolved on you by the law,
328 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
'It is fearful to have to send a man to the scaffold — but as
to that man, it would be no more than justice/ and so forth.
Then she lamented that such a handsome young fellow,
brought to Paris by her cousin, Madame du Chatelet, should
have turned out so badly. 'That,' said she, 'is what bad
women like Coralie and Esther bring young men to whe:^ they
are corrupt enough to share their disgraceful profits !' Next
came some fine speeches about charity and religion ! Madame
du Chatelet had said that Lucien deserved a thousand deaths
for having half killed his mother and his sister.
"Then she spoke of a vacancy in the Supreme Court — she
knows the Keeper of the Seals. 'Your husband, madame, has
a fine opportunity of distinguishing himself,' she said in
conclusion — and that is all."
"We distinguish ourselves every day when we do our duty,"
said Camusot.
"You will go far if you are always the lawyer even to your
wife," cried Madame Camusot. "Well, I used to think you a
goose. Now I admire you."
The lawyer's lips wore one of those smiles which are as
peculiar to them as dancers' smiles are to dancers.
"Madame, can I come in ?" said the maid.
"What is it?" said her mistress.
"Madame, the head lady's-maid came from the Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse while you were oi]t, and she will be obliged
if you would go at once to the Hotel de Cadignan."
"Keep dinner back," said the lawyer's wife, remembering
that the driver of the hackney coach that had brought her
home was waiting to be paid.
She put her bonnet on again, got into the coach, and in
twenty minutes was at the Hotel de Cadignan. Madame
Camusot was led up the private stairs, and sat alone for ten
minutes in a boudoir adjoining the Duchess' bedroom. The
Duchess presently appeared, splendidly dressed, for she
was starting for Saint-Cloud in obedience to a Eoyal invita-
tion.
"Between you and me, my dear, two words are enough."
END OP EVIL WAYS 329
"Yes, Madame la Duchesse."
"Lucien de Eubempre is in custody, your husband is con-
aucting the inquiry; I will answer for the poor boy's inno-
cence ; see that he is released within twenty-four hours. — This
is not all. Some one will ask to-morrow to see Lucien in
private in his cell ; your husband may be present if he chooses,
so long as he is not discovered. I am, as you know, true to
those who do me a service. The King looks for high courage
in his magistrates in the difficult position in which he will
presently find himself; I will bring your husband forward,
and recommend him as a man devoted to the King even at
the risk of his head. Our friend Camusot will be made first
a councillor, and then the President of Court somewhere or
other. — Good-bye. — I am under orders, you will excuse me,
I know?
"You will not only oblige the public prosecutor, who can-
not give an opinion in this affair; you will save the life of
a dying woman, Madame de Serizy. So you will not lack
support.
" In short, you see, I put my trust in you, I need not say
— you know "
She laid a finger to her lips and disappeared.
"And I had not a chance of telling her that Madame
d'Espard wants to see Lucien on the scaffold !" thought the
judge's wife as she returned to her hackney cab.
She got home in such a state of anxiety that her husband,
on seeing her, asked :
"What is the matter, Amelie?"
"We stand between two fires."
She told her husband of her interview with the Duchess,
speaking in his ear for fear the maid should be listening at
the door.
"Now, which of them has most power?" she said in conclu-
sion. "The Marquise was very near getting you into trouble
in the silly business of the commission on her husband, and
we owe everything to the Duchess.
"One made vague promises, while the other one tells you
330 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
you shall first be Councillor and then President. — Heaven
forbid I should advise you ; I -will never meddle in matters of
business; still, I am bound to repeat exactly what is said at
Court and what goes on '*
"But, Amelie, you do not know what the Prefet of police
sent me this morning, and by whom ? By one of the most im-
portant agents of the superior police, the Bibi-Lupin of
politics, who told me that the Government had a secret inter-
est in this trial. — Now let us dine and go to the Varietes.
We will talk all this over to-night in my private room, for
I shall need your intelligence ; that of a judge may not per-
haps be enough "
Nine magistrates out of ten would deny the influence of
the wife over her husband in such cases ; but though this may
be a remarkable exception in society, it may be insisted on as
true, even if improbable. The magistrate is like the priest,
especially in Paris, where the best of the profession are to
be found; he rarely speaks of his business in the Courts, ex-
cepting of settled cases. Not only do magistrates' wives
affect to know nothing ; they have enough sense of propriety
to understand that it would damage their husbands if, when
they are told some secret, they allowed their knowledge to be
suspected.
Nevertheless, on some great occasions, when promotion de-
pends on the decision taken, many a wife, like Amelie. has
helped the lawyer in his study of a case. And, after all. these
exceptions, which, of course, are easily denied, since they re-
main unknown, depend entirely on the way in which the
struggle between two natures has worked out in home-life.
Now, Madame Camusot controlled her husband completely.
When all in the house were asleep, the lawyer and his wife
sat down to the desk, where the magistrate had already laid
out the documents in the case.
"Here are the notes, forwarded to me, at my request, by
the Prefet of police," said Camusot.
END OF EVIL WAYS 331
"The Ahhe Carlos Herrera.
"This individual is undoubtedly the man named Jacques
Collin, known as Trompe-la-Mort, who was last arrested in
1819, in the dwelling-house of a certain Madame Vauquer,
who kept a common boardiog-house in the Eue Neuve-Sainte-
Genevieve, where he lived in concealment under the alias of
Yautrin."
A marginal note in the Prefet's handwriting ran thus:
"Orders have been sent by telegraph to Bibi-Lupin, chief of
the Safety department, to return forthwith, to be confronted
with the prisoner, as he is personally acquainted with Jacques
Collin, whom he, in fact, arrested in 1819 with the connivance
of a Mademoiselle Michonneau.
"The boarders who then lived in the Maison Vauquer
are still living, and may be called to establish his identity.
"The self-styled Carlos Herrera is Monsieur Lucien de
Eubempre's intimate friend and adviser, and for three years
past has furnished him with considerable sums, evidently ob-
tained by dishonest means.
"This partnership, if the identity of the Spaniard with
Jacques Collin can be proved, must involve the condemnation
of Lucien de Eubempre.
"The sudden death of Peyrade, the police agent, is at-
tributable to poison administered at the instigation of Jacques
Collin, Eubempre, or their accomplices. The reason for
this murder is the fact that justice had for a long time been
on the traces of these clever criminals."
And again, on the margin, the magistrate pointed to this
note written by the Pref et himself :
"This is the fact to my personal knowledge ; and I also
know that the Sieur Lucien de Eubempre has disgracefully
tricked the Comte de Serizy and the Public Prosecutor,"
"What do you say to this, Amelie?"
"It is frightful !" replied his wife. "Go on."
I
332 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"The transformation of the convict Jacques Collin into
a Spanish priest is the result of some crime more clever than
that by which Coignard made himself Comte de Sainte-
Helene/' »
"Lucien de Ruhempre.
"Lucien Chardon, son of an apothecary at Angouleme —
his mother a Demoiselle de Rubempre — bears the name of
Eubempre in virtue of a royal patent. This was granted by
the request of Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and
Monsieur le Comte de Serizy.
"This young man came to Paris in 182 . . . without any
means of subsistence, following Madame la Comtesse Sixte
du Chatelet, then Madame de Bargeton, a cousin of Madame
d'Espard's.
"He was ungrateful to Madame de Bargeton, and cohabited
with a girl named Coralie, an actress at the Gymnase, now
dead, who left Monsieur Camusot, a silk mercer in the Rue
des Bourdonnais, to live with Rubempre.
"Ere long, having sunk into poverty through the in-
sufficienc}' of the money allowed him by this actress, he seri-
ously compromised his brother-in-law, a highly-respected
printer of Angouleme, by giving forged bills, for which David
Sechard was arrested, during a short visit paid to Angouleme
by Lucien. In consequence of this affair Rubempre fled, but
suddenly reappeared in Paris with the Abbe Carlos Herrera.
"Though having no visible means of subsistence, the said
Lucien de Rubempre spent on an average three hundred thou-
sand francs during the three years of his second residence
in Paris, and can only have obtained the money from the
self-styled Abbe Carlos Herrera — but how did he come by it ?
"He has recently laid out above a million francs in re-
purchasing the Rubempre estates to fulfil the conditions on
which he was to be allowed to marrj^ Mademoiselle Clotilde
de Grandlieu. This marriage has been broken off in con-
sequence of inquiries made by the Craudlieu family, the said
Lucien having told them that he had obtained the money from
END OF EVIL WAYS 333
his brother-in-law and his sister; but the information ob-
tained, more especially by Monsieur Derville, attorney-at-law,
proves that not only were that worthy couple ignorant of his
having made this purchase, but that they believed the said
Lucien to be deeply in debt.
"Moreover, the property inherited by the Sechards consists
of houses; and the ready money, by their affidavit, amounted
to about two hundred thousand francs.
"Lucien was secretly cohabiting with Esther Gobseck ; hence
there can be no doubt that all the lavish gifts of the Baron
de Nucingen, the girl's protector, were handed over to the said
Lucien.
"Lucien and his companion, the convict, have succeeded in
keeping their footing in the face of the world longer than
Coignard did, deriving their income from the prostitution of
the said Esther, formerly on the register of the town."
Though these notes are to a great extent a repetition of the
story already told, it was necessary to reproduce them to show
the part played by the police in Paris. As has already been
seen from the note on Peyrade, the police has summaries,
almost invariably correct, concerning every family or in-
dividual whose life is under suspicion, or whose actions are of
a doubtful character. It knows every circumstance of their
delinquencies. This universal register and account of
consciences is as accurately kept as the register of the Bank
of France and its account of fortunes. Just as the Bank notes
the slightest delaj^ in payment, gauges every credit, takes
stock of every capitalist, and watches their proceedings, so
does the police weigh and measure the honesty of each citizen.
With it, as in a Court of Law, innocence has nothing to fear ;
it has no hold on anything but crime.
However high the rank of a family, it cannot evade this
social providence.
And its discretion is equal to the extent of its power. This
vast mass of written evidence compiled by the police — reports,
notes, and summaries — an ocean of information, sleeps un-
334 A COURTESAN'S 1,1 FB
disturbed, as deep and calm as the sea. Some accident oc-
curs, some crime or misdemeanor becomes aggressive, — then
the law refers to the police, and immediately, if any docu-
ments bear on the suspected criminal, the Judge is informed.
These records, an analysis of his antecedents, are merely
side-lights, and unknown beyond the walls of the Palais de
Justice. Xo legal use can be made of them ; Justice is in-
formed by them, and takes advantage of them; but that is
all. These documents form, as it were, the inner lining
of the tissue of crimes, their first cause, which is hardly ever
made public. Xo jury would accept it; and the whole
country would rise up in wrath if excerpts from those docu-
ments came out in the trial at the Assizes. In fact, it is the
truth which is doomed to remain in the well, as it is every-
where and at all times. There is not a magistrate who, after
twelve years' experience in Paris, is not fully aware that the
Assize Court and the police authorities keep the secret of half
these squalid atrocities, or who does not admit that half
the crimes that are committed are never punished by the
law.
If the public could know how reserved the employes of the
police are — who do not forget — they would reverence these
honest men as much as they do Cheverus. The police is
supposed to be astute. Machiavellian; it is, in fact, most
benign. But it hears every passion in its paroxysms, it
listens to every kind of treachery, and keeps notes of all.
The police is terrible on one side only. What it does for
justice it does no less for political interests ; but in these it is
as ruthless and as one-sided as the fires of the Inquisition.
"Put this aside," said the lawyer, replacing the notes in
their cover; "this is a secret between the police and the law.
The judge will estimate its value, but Monsieur and Madame
Camusot must know nothing of it."
"As if I needed telling that I" said his wife.
"Lucien is guilty," he went on ; "but of what ?"
"A man who is the favorite of the Duchesse de Mau-
fi'igneuse, of the Comtesse de Serizy, and loved by Clotilde
END OF EVIL WAYS 335
de Grandlieu, is not guilty," said Amelie. "The other must
be answerable for everything."
"But Lucien is his accomplice," cried Camusot.
"Take my advice," said Amelie. "Kestore this priest to the
diplomatic career he so greatly adorns, exculpate this little
wretch, and find some other criminal "
"How you run on !" said the magistrate with a smile. "Wo-
men go to the point, plunging through the law as birds fly
through the air, and find nothing to stop them."'
"But," said Amelie, "whether he is a diplomate or a con-
vict, the Abbe Carlos will find some one to get him out of
the scrape."
"I am only a considering cap ; you are the brain," said
Camusot.
"Well, the sitting is closed; give your Melie a kiss; it is
one o'clock."
And Madame Camusot went to bed, leaving her husband
to arrange his papers and his ideas in preparation for the task
of examining the two prisoners next morning.
And thus, while the prison vans were conveying Jacques
Collin and Lucien to the Conciergerie, the examining judge,
having breakfasted, was making his way across Paris on foot,
after the unpretentious fashion of Parisian magistrates, to go
to his chambers, where all the documents in the case were laid
ready for him.
This was the way of it: Every examining judge has a
head-clerk, a sort of sworn legal secretary — a race that per-
petuates itself without any premiums or encouragement, pro-
ducing a number of excellent souls in whom secrecy is natural
and incorruptible. From the origin of the Parlement to the
present day, no case has ever been known at the Palais de
Justice of any gossip or indiscretion on the part of a clerk
bound to the Courts of Inquiry. Gentil sold the release given
by Louise de Savoie to Semblangay; a War Office clerk sold
the plan of the Eussian campaign to Czernitchef ; and these
traitors were more or less rich. The prospect of a post in the
336 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Palais and professional conscientiousness are enough to make
a judge's clerk a successful rival of the tomb — for the tomb
has betrayed many secrets since chemistry has made such
progress.
This official is, in fact, the magistrate's pen. It will be
understood by many readers that a man may gladly be the
shaft of a machine, while they wonder why he is content to
remain a bolt ; still the bolt is content — perhaps the machin-
ery terrifies him.
Camusot's clerk, a young man of two-and-twenty, named
Coquart, had come in the morning to fetch all the documents
and the judge's notes, and laid everything ready in his
chambers, while the lawyer himself was wandering along the
quays, looking at the curiosities in the shops, and wondering
within himself : —
"How on earth am I to set to work with such a clever
rascal as this Jacques Collin, supposing it is he? The head
of the Safety will know him. I must look as if I knew what
I was about, if only for the sake of the police ! I see so many
insuperable difficulties, that the best plan would be to en-
lighten the Marquise and the Duchess by showing them the
notes of the police, and I should avenge my father, from
whom Lucien stole Coralie. — If I can unveil these scoundrels,
my skill will be loudly proclaimed, and Lucien will soon be
thrown over by his friends. — Well, well, the examination will
settle all that."
He turned into a curiosity shop, tempted by a Boule
clock.
"Not to be false to my conscience, and yet to oblige two
great ladies — that will be a triumph of skill," thought he.
"What, do you collect coins too, monsieur?" said Camusot to
the Public Prosecutor, whom he found in the shop.
"It is a taste dear to all dispensers of justice," said the
Comte de Granville, laughing. "They look at the reverse
said of every medal."
And after looking about the shop for some minutes, as if
continuing his search, he accompanied Camusot on his way
END OF EVIL WAYS 337
down the quay without its ever occurring to Camusot that
anything but chance had brought them together.
"You are examining Monsieur de Rubempre this morning,"
said the Public Prosecutor. "Poor fellow — I liked him."
"There are several charges against him," said Camusot.
"Yes, I saw the police papers; but some of the informa-
tion came from an agent who is independent of the Prefet,
the notorious Corentin, who has caused the death of more
innocent men than you will ever send guilty men to the
scaffold, and But that rascal is out of your reach. —
Without trying to influence the conscience of such a magis-
trate as you are, I may point out to you that if you could be
perfectly sure that Lucien was ignorant of the contents of
that woman's will, it would be self-evident that he had no in-
terest in her death, for she gave him enormous sums of
money."
"We can prove his absence at the time when this Esther
was poisoned," said Camusot. "He was at Fontainebleau, on
the watch for Mademoiselle de Grandlieu and the Duchesse
de Lenoncourt."
"And he still cherished such hopes of marrying Made-
moiselle de Grandlieu," said the Public Prosecutor — "I have
it from the Duchesse de Grandlieu herself — that it is in-
conceivable that such a clever young fellow should com-
promise his chances by a perfectly aimless crime."
"Yes," said Camusot, "especially if Esther gave him all
she got."
"Derville and Nucingen both say that she died in ignorance
of the inheritance she had long since come into," added Gran-
ville.
"But then what do you suppose is the meaning of it
all ?" asked Camusot. "For there is something at the bottom
of it."
"A crime committed by some servant," said the Public
Prosecutor.
"Unfortunately," remarked Camusot, "it would be quite
like Jacques Collin — for the Spanish priest is certainly none
o.-^S A COURTESAN'?! LIFE
other than that escaped convict — to iiave taken possession of
the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs derived from
the sale of the certificate of shares given to Esther by Nu-
cingen.''
"Weigh everything with care, my dear Canuisot. Be
prudent. The Abbe Carlos Herrera has diplomatic connec-
tions; still, an envoy who had committea a crime would not
be sheltered by his position. Is he or is he not the Abbe
Carlos Herrera? That is the important question."
And Monsieur de Granville bowed, and turned away, as re-
quiring no answer.
"So he too wants to save Lucien !"' thought Camusot, going
on by the Quai des Lunettes, while the Public Prosecutor
entered the Palais through the Cour de Harlay.
On reaching the courtyard of the Conciergerie, Camusot
went to the Governor's room and led him into the middle of
the pavement, where no one could overhear them.
"My dear sir, do me the favor of going to La Force, and
inquiring of your colleague there whether he happens at this
moment to have there any convicts who were on the hulks at
Toulon between 1810 and 1815; or have 3'ou any imprisoned
here? We will transfer those of La Force here for a few
days, and you will let me know whether this so-called Spanish
priest is known to them as Jacques Collin, other^'ise Trompe-
la-Mort."
'^ery good, Monsieur Camusot. — But Bibi-Lupin is
come . . ."
"What, already?" said the judge.
"He was at Melun. He was told that Trompe-la-Mort
had to be identified, and he smiled with joy. He awaits your
orders."
"Send him to me."
The Governor was then able to lay before Monsieur Camusot
Jacques Collin's request, and he described the man's de-
plorable condition.
"I intended to examine him first," replied the magistrate,
"but not on account of his health. I received a note this
END OF EVIL WAYS 339
morning from the Governor of La Force. Well, this rascal,
who described himself to you as having been dying for twenty-
four hours past, slept so soundly that they went into his
cell there, with the doctor for whom the Governor had sent,
without his hearing them; the doctor did not even feel his
pulse, he left him to sleep — which proves that his conscience
is as tough as his health. I shall accept this feigned illness
only so far as it may enable me to study my man," added Mon-
sieur Camusot, smiling.
"We live to learn every day with these various grades of
prisoners," said the Governor of the prison.
The Prefecture of police adjoins the Conciergerie, and
the magistrates, like the Governor, knowing all the sub-
terranean passages, can get to and fro with the greatest
rapidity. This explains the miraculous ease with which in-
formation can be conveyed, during the sitting of the Courts,
to the officials and the presidents of the Assize Courts. And by
the time Monsieur Camusot had reached the top of the stairs
leading to his chambers, Bibi-Lupin was there too, having
come by the Salle des Pas-Perdus.
"What zeal !" said Camusot, with a smile.
"Ah, well, you see if it is he,'' replied the man, "you will
see great fun in the prison-yard if by chance there are any
old stagers here."
"Why?"
"Trompe-la-Mort sneaked their chips, and I know that
they have vowed to be the death of him."
They were the convicts whose money, intrusted to Trompe-
la-Mort, had all been made away with by him for Lucien, as
has been told.
"Could you lay your hand on the witnesses of his former
arrest ?"
"Give me two summonses of witnesses and I will find you
some to-day."
"Coquart," said the lawyer, as he took off his gloves, and
placed his hat and stick in a corner, "fill up two summonses
by monsieur's directions."
340 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
He looked at himself in the glass over the chimney shelf,
where stood, in the place of a clock, a basin and jug. On
one side was a bottle of water and a glass, on the other a
lamp. He rang the bell; his usher came in a few minutes
after.
"Is anybody here for me yet?" he asked the man, whose
business it was to receive the witnesses, to verify their sum-
mons, and to set them in the order of their arrival.
"Yes, sir."
"Take their names, and bring me the list."
The examining judges, to save time, are often obliged to
carry on several inquiries at once. Hence the long waiting
inflicted on the witnesses, who have seats in the ushers' hall,
where the judges' bells are constantly ringing.
"And then," Camusot went on, 'T)ring up the Abbe Carlos
Herrera."
"Ah, ha ! I was told that he was a priest in Spanish. Pooh !
It is a new edition of Collet, Monsieur Camusot," said the
head of the Safety department.
"There is nothing new !" replied Camusot.
And he signed the two formidable documents which alarm
everybody, even the most innocent witnesses, whom the law
thus requires to appear, under severe penalties in case of
failure.
By this time Jacques Collin had, about half an hour since,
finished his deep meditations, and was armed for the fray.
Nothing is more perfectly characteristic of this type of the
mob in rebellion against the law than the few words he had
written on the greasy scraps of paper.
The sense of the first — for it was written in the language,
the very slang of slang, agreed upon by Asie and himself, a
cipher of words — was as follows : —
"Go to theDuchesse de Maufrigneuse or Madame de Serizy :
one of them must see Lucien before he is examined, and give
him the enclosed paper to read. Then find Europe and
Paccard ; those two thieves must be at my orders, and ready
to play any part I may set them.
END OF EVIL WAYS 341
"Go to Rastignac; tell him, from the man he met at the
opera-ball, to come and swear that the Abbe Carlos Herrera"
has no resemblance to Jacques Collin who was apprehended
at Vauquer's. Do the same with Dr. Bianchon, and get
Lucien's two women to work to the same end."
On the enclosed fragment were these words in good ^'^
French :
"Lucien, confess nothing about me. I am the Abbe Carlos
Herrera. Not only will this be your exculpation; but, if
you do not lose your head, you will have seven millions and
your honor cleared."
These two bits of paper, gummed on the side of the writing
so as to look like one piece, were then rolled tightly, with a
dexterity peculiar to men who have dreamed of getting free
from the hulks. The whole thing assumed the shape and con-
sistency of a ball of dirty rubbish, about as big as the sealing-
wax heads which thrifty women stick on the head of a large
needle when the eye is broken.
"If I am examined first, we are saved ; if it is the boy, all
is lost," said he to himself, while he waited.
His plight was so sore that the strong man's face was wet
with white sM^eat. Indeed, this wonderful man saw as clearly
in his sphere of crime as Moliere did in his sphere of
dramatic poetry, or Cuvier in that of extinct organisms.
Genius of whatever kind is intuition. Below this highest
manifestation other remarkable achievements may be due to
talent. This is what divides men of the first rank from those
of the second.
Crime has its men of genius. Jacques Collin, driven to
bay, had hit on the same notion as Madame Camusot's am-
bition and Madame de Serizy's passion, suddenly revived by
the shock of the dreadful disaster which was overwhelming
Lucien. This was the supreme effort of human intellect
directed against the steel armor of Justice.
On hearing the rasping of the heavy locks and bolts of his
door, Jacques Collin resumed his mask of a dying man; he
was helped in this by the intoxicating joy that he felt at the
342 A COURTESAN'S LTFE
sound of the warder's shoes in the passage. He had no idea
how Asie would get near him ; but he relied on meeting her
on the way, especially after her promise given in the Saint-
Jean gateway.
After that fortunate achievement she had gone on to the
Place de Greve.
Till 1830 the name of La Greve (the Strand) had a mean-
ing that is now lost. Every part of the river-shore from the
Pont d'Arcole to the Pont Louis-Philippe was then as nature
had made it, excepting the paved way which was at the top
of the bank. When the river was in flood a boat could pass
close under the houses and at the end of the streets running
down to the river. On the quay the footpath was for the
most part raised with a few steps ; and when the river was up
to the houses, vehicles had to pass along the horrible Eue de
la Mortellerie, which has now been completely removed to
make room for enlarging the Hotel de Ville.
So the sham costermonger could easily and quickly run
her truck down to the bottom of the quay, and hide it there
till the real owner — who was, in fact, drinking the price of
her wares, sold bodily to Asie, in one of the abominable
taverns in the Rue de la Mortellerie — should return to claim
it. At that time the Quai Pelletier was being extended, the
entrance to the works was guarded by a crippled soldier, and
the barrow would be quite safe in his keeping.
Asie then jumped into a hackney cab on the Place de
I'Hotel de Ville, and said to the driver, "To the Temple,
and look sharp, I'll tip you well."
A woman dressed like Asie could disappear, without any
questions being asked, in the huge market-place, where all the
rags in Paris are gathered together, where a thousand coster-
mongers wander round, and two hundred old-clothes sellers
are chaffering.
The two prisoners had hardly been locked up when she
was dressing herself in a low, damp entresol over one of those
foul shops where remnants are sold, pieces stolen by tailors
and dressmakers — an establishment kept by an old maid
END OF EVIL WAYS 343
known as La Romette, from her Christian name Jeromette.
La Romette was to the "purchasers of wardrobes" what these
women are to the better class of so-called ladies in difficulties
— Madame la Ressource, that is to say, money-lenders at a
hundred per cent.
"Now, child," said Asie, "I have got to be figged out. I
must be a Baroness of the Faubourg Saint-Germain at the
very least. And sharp's the word, for my feet are in
hot oil. You know what gowns suit me. Hand up the
rouge-pot, find me some first-class bits of lace, and the
swaggerest jewelry you can pick out. — Send the girl to call a
coach, and have it brought to the back door."
"Yes, madame," the woman replied very humbly, and with
the eagerness of a maid waiting on her mistress.
If there had been any one to witness the scene, he would
have understood that the woman known as Asie was at home
here.
"I have had some diamonds offered me," said la Romette,
as she dressed Asie's head.
"Stolen?"
"I should think so."
"Well, then, however cheap they may be, we must do with-
out 'em. We must fight shy of the beak for a long time to
come."
It will now be understood how Asie contrived to be in the
Salle des Pas-Perdus of the Palais de Justice with a summons
in her hand, asking her way along the passages and stairs
leading to the examining judge's chambers, and inquiring for
Monsieur Camusot, about a quarter of an hour before that
gentleman's arrival.
Asie was not recognizable. After washing off her "make-
up" as an old woman, like an actress, she applied rouge and
pearl powder, and covered her head with a well-made fair
wig. Dressed exactly as a lady of the Faubourg Saint-
Germain might be if in search of a dog she had lost, she looked
about forty, for she shrouded her features under a splendid
black lace veil. A pair of stays, severely laced, disguised her
344 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
cook's figure. With very good gloves and a rather large
bustle, she exhaled the perfumes of powder a la Marecliale,
Playing with a bag mounted in gold, she divided her attention
between the walls of the building, where she found herself
evidently for the first time, and the string by which she led
a dainty little spaniel. Such a dowager could not fail to
attract the notice of the black-robed natives of the Salle des
Pas-Perdus.
Besides the briefless law;\"ers who sweep this hall with their
gowns, and speak of the leading advocates by their Christian
names, as fine gentlemen address each other, to produce the
impression that they are of the aristocracy of the law, patient
youths are often to be seen, hangers-on of the attorneys, wait-
ing, waiting, in hope of a case put down for the end of the
da}^ which they may be so luck}^ as to be called to plead if the
advocates retained for the earlier cases should not come out
in time.
A very curious study would be that of the differences be-
tween these various black gowns, pacing the immense hall
in threes, or sometimes in fours, their persistent talk filling
the place with a loud, echoing hum — a hall well named in-
deed, for this slow walk exhausts the lawj'ers as much as
the waste of words. But such a study has its place in the
volumes destined to reveal the life of Paris pleaders.
Asie had counted on the presence of these youths; she
laughed in her sleeve at some of the pleasantries she over-
heard, and finally succeeded in attracting the attention of
Massol, a 3'oung lawyer whose time was more taken up by
the Police Gazette than b}^ clients, and who came up with a
laugh to place himself at the service of a woman so elegantly
scented and so handsomely dressed.
Asie put on a little, thin voice to explain to this obliging
gentleman that she appeared in answer to a summons from
a judge named Camusot.
"Oh ! in the Eubempre case ?"
So the affair had its name already.
"Oh, it is not my affair. It is my maid's, a girl named
END OP EVIL WAYS 345
Europe, who was with me twenty-four hours, and who
fled when she saw my servant bring in a piece of stamped
paper."
Then, like any old woman who spends her life gossiping
in the chimney-corner, prompted by Massol, she poured out
the story of her woes with her first husband, one of the three
Directors of the land revenue. She consulted the j^oung
lawyer as to whether she would do well to enter on a lawsuit
with her son-in-law, the Comte de Gross-ISTarp, who made her
daughter very miserable, and whether the law allowed her to
dispose of her fortune.
In spite of all his efforts, Massol could not be sure whether
the summons were addressed to the mistress or the maid. At
the first moment he had only glanced at this legal document
of most familiar aspect ; for, to save time, it is printed, and
the magistrates' clerks have only to fill in the blanks left for
the names and addresses of the witnesses, the hour for which
they are called, and so forth.
Asie made him tell her all about the Palais, which she
knew more intimately that the lawyer did. Finally, she in-
quired at what hour Monsieur Camusot would arrive.
"Well, the examining judges generally are here by about
ten o'clock."
"It is now a quarter to ten," said she, looking at a pretty
little watch, a perfect gem of goldsmith's work, which made
Massol say to himself :
"Where the devil will Fortune make herself at home next !"
At this moment Asie had come to the dark hall looking
out on the yard of the Conciergerie, where the ushers wait.
On seeing the gate through the window, she exclaimed:
"What are those high walls?"
"That is the Conciergerie."
"Oh ! so that is the Conciergerie where our poor queen
Oh ! I should so like to see her cell !"
"Impossible, Madame la Baronne," replied the young law-
yer, on whose arm the dowager was now leaning. "A permit
is indispensable, and very difficult to procure."
346 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"I have been told," she went on, "that Louis XVIII. him-
self composed the inscription that is to be seen in Marie-
Antoinette's cell."
"Yes, Madame la Baronne."
"How much I should like to know Latin that I might study
the words of that inscription !'' said she. "Do you think
that Monsieur Camusot could give me a permit ?"
"That is not in his power ; but he could take you there."
"But his business " objected she.
"Oh !" said Massol, "prisoners under suspicion can wait."
"To be sure," said she artlessly, "they are under suspicion.
— But I know Monsieur de Granville, your public prose-
cutor "
This hint had a magical effect on the ushers and the young
lawyer.
"Ah, you know Monsieur de Granville?" said Massol, who
was inclined to ask the client thus sent him by chance her
name and address.
"I often see him at my friend Monsieur de Serizy's house.
Madame de Serizy is a connection of mine through the
Eonquerolles."
"Well, if Madame wishes to go down to the Conciergerie,"
said an usher, "she "
"Yes," said Massol.
So the Baroness and the lawyer were allowed to pass, and
they presently found themselves in the little guard-room at
the top of the stairs leading to the "mousetrap." a spot well
known to Asie, forming, as has been said, a post of observa-
tion between those cells and the Court of the Sixth Chamber,
through which everybody is obliged to pass.
"Will you ask if Monsieur Camusot is come yet ?" said she,
seeing some gendarmes playing cards.
"Yes, madame, he has just come up from the 'mouse-
trap.' "
"The mousetrap !" said she. "What is that ? — Oh ! how
stupid of me not to have gone straight to the Comte de Gran-
ville.— But I have not time now. Pray take me to speak to
Monsieur Camusot before he is otherwise engaged."
END OF EVIL WAYS 847
"Oh, you have plenty of time for seeing Monsieur Camu-
sot/' said Massol. ''If you send him in your card, he will
spare you the discomfort of waiting in the ante-room with
the witnesses. — We can be civil here to ladies like you. —
You have a card about you?"
At this instant Asie and her lawyer were exactly in front
of the window of the guardroom whence the gendarmes could
observe the gate of the Conciergerie. The gendarmes, brought
up to respect the defenders of the widow and the orphan,
were aware too of the prerogative of the gown, and for a few
minutes allowed the Baroness to remain there escorted by
a pleader. Asie listened to the terrible tales which a young
lawyer is ready to tell about that prison-gate. She would
not believe that those who were condemned to death were
prepared for the scaffold behind those bars; but the sergeant-
at-arms assured her it was so.
"How much I should like to see it done !" cried she.
And there she remained, prattling to the lawyer and the
sergeant, till she saw Jacques Collin come out supported
by two gendarmes, and preceded by Monsieur Camusot's
clerk.
"Ah, there is a chaplain no doubt going to prepare a poor
wretch "
"Not at all, Madame la Baronne," said the gendarme.
"He is a prisoner coming to be examined."
"What is he accused of ?"
"He is concerned in this poisoning case."
"Oh ! 1 should like to see him."
"You cannot stay here," said the sergeant, "for he is under
close arrest, and he must pass through here. You see, ma-
dame, that door leads to the stairs "
"Oh ! thank you !" cried the Baroness, making for the door,
to rush down the stairs, where she at once shrieked out, "Oh !
where am I ?"
This cry reached the ear of Jacques Collin, who was thus
prepared to see her. The sergeant flew after Madame la
Baronne, seized her by the middle, and lifted her back like
348 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
a feather into the midst of a group of five gendarmes, who
started up as one man; for in that guardroom everything is
regarded as suspicious. The proceeding was arbitrary, but
the arbitrariness was necessary. The young lawyer himself
had cried out twice, "Madame ! madame !" in his horror, so
much did he fear finding himself in the wrong.
The Abbe Carlos Herrera, half fainting, sank on a chair
in the guardroom.
"Poor man !" said the Baroness. "Can he be a criminal?"
The words, though spoken low to the young advocate, could
be heard by all, for the silence of death reigned in that ter-
rible guardroom. Certain privileged persons are sometimes
allowed to see famous criminals on their way through this
room or through the passages, so that the clerk and the gen-
darmes who had charge of the Abbe Carlos made no remark.
Also, in consequence of the devoted zeal of the sergeant who
had snatched up the Baroness to hinder any communication
between the prisoner and the visitors, there was a considerable
space between them.
"Let us go on," said Jacques Collin, making an effort to
rise.
At the same moment the little ball rolled out of his sleeve,
and the spot where it fell was noted by the Baroness, who
could look about her freely from under her veil. The little
pellet, being damp and sticky, did not roll ; for such trivial
details, apparently unimportant, had all been duly considered
by Jacques Collin to insure success.
When the prisoner had been led up the higher part of the
steps, Asie very unaffectedly dropped her bag and picked it
up again; but in stooping she seized the pellet which had
escaped notice, its color being exactly like that of the dust
and mud on the floor.
"Oh dear!" cried she, "it goes to my heart. — He is
dying "
"Or seems to be," replied the sergeant.
"Monsieur," said Asie to the lawyer, "take me at once to
Monsieur Camusot; I have come about this case; and
END OP EVIL WAYS 349
he might be very glad to see me before examining that poor
priest."
The lawyer and the Baroness left the guardroom, with its
greasy, fuliginous walls; but as soon as they reached the top
of the stairs, Asie exclaimed:
"Oh, and my dog ! My poor little dog !" and she rushed
off like a mad creature down the Salle des Pas-Perdus, asking
every one where her dog was. She got to the corridor beyond
(la Galerie Marchande, or Merchant's Hall, as it is called),
and flew to the staircase, saying, "There he is !"
These stairs lead to the Cour de Harlay, through which
Asie, having played out the farce, passed out and took a
hackney cab on the Quai des Orf evres, where there is a stand ;
thus she vanished with the summons requiring "Europe" to
appear, her real name being unknown to the police and the
lawyers.
"Eue Neuve-Saint-Marc," cried she to the driver.
Asie could depend on the absolute secrecy of an old-clothes
purchaser, known as Madame Nourrisson, who also called her-
self Madame de Saint-Esteve ; and who would lend Asie not
merely her personality, but her shop at need, for it was there
that Nucingen had bargained for the surrender of Esther.
Asie was quite at home there, for she had a bedroom in Ma-
dame Nourrisson's establishment.
She paid the driver, and went up to her room, nodding to
Madame Nourrisson in a way to make her understand that
she had not time to say two words to her.
As soon as she was safe from observation, Asie unwrapped
the papers with the care of a savant unrolling a palimpsest.
After reading the instructions, she thought it wise to copy
the lines intended for Lucien on a sheet of letter-paper ; then
she went down to Madame Nourrisson, to whom she talked
while a little shop-girl went to fetch a cab from the Boulevard
des Italiens. She thus extracted the addresses of the
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and of Madame de Serizy, which
were known to Madame Nourrisson by her dealings with their
maids.
350 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
All this running about and elaborate business took up more
than two hours. Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
who lived at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Honore, kept Ma-
dame de Saint-Esteve waiting an hour, although the lady's-
maid, after knocking at the boudoir door, had handed in to
her mistress a card with Madame de Saint-Esteve's name, on
which Asie had written, "Called about pressing business con-
cerning Lucien."
Her first glance at the Duchess' face showed her how ill-
timed her visit must be; she apologized for disturbing Ma-
dame la Duchesse when she was resting, on the plea of the
danger in which Lucien stood.
"Who are you ?" asked the Duchess, without any pretence
at politeness, as she looked at Asie from head to foot ; for
Asie, though she might be taken for a Baroness by Maitre
Massol in the Salle des Pas-Perdus, when she stood on the
carpet in the boudoir of the Hotel de Cadignan, looked like
a splash of mud on a white satin gown.
"I am a dealer in cast-oif clothes, Madame la Duchesse;
for in such matters every lady applies to women whose
business rests on a basis of perfect secrecy. I have never be-
trayed anybody, though God knows how many great ladies
have intrusted their diamonds to me by the month while
wearing false jewels made to imitate them exactly."
"You have some other name?" said the Duchess, smiling
at a reminiscence recalled to her by this reply.
"Yes, Madame la Duchesse, I am j\Iadarae de Saint-
Esteve on great occasions, but in the trade I am Madame
Nourrisson."
"Well, well," said the Duchess in an altered tone.
"I am able to be of great service," Asie went on, "for we
hear the husbands' secrets as well as the wives'. I have done
many little jobs for Monsieur de Marsay, whom Madame la
Duchesse "
"That will do, that will do !" cried the Duchess. "What
about Lucien ?"
"If you wish to save him, madame, you must have courage
END OF EVIL WAYS 351
enough to lose no time in dressing. But, indeed, Madame
la Duchesse, you could not look more charming than you do
at this moment. You are sweet enough to charm anybody,
take an old woman's word for it ! In short, niadame, do not
wait for your carriage, but get into my hackney coach. Come
to Madame de Serizy's if you hope to avert worse misfortunes
than the death of that cherub "
"Go on, I will follow you," said the Duchess after a
moment's hesitation. "Between us we may give Leontine
some courage . .
JSTotwithstanding the really demoniacal activity of this
Dorine of the hulks, the clock was striking two when she
and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse went into the Comtesse
de Serizy's house in the Eue de la Chaussee-d'Antin. Once
there, thanks to the Duchess, not an instant was lost. The
two women were at once shown up to the Countess, whom
they found reclining on a couch in a miniature chalet, sur-
rounded by a garden fragrant with the rarest flowers.
"That is well," said Asie, looking about her. "No one
can overhear us.'"
"Oh ! my dear, I am half dead ! Tell me, Diane, what
have you done ?" cried the Countess, starting up like a fawn,
and, seizing the Duchess by the shoulders, she melted into
tears.
"Come, come, Leontine; there are occasions when women
like us must not cry, but act," said the Duchess, forcing the
Countess to sit down on the sofa by her side.
Asie studied the Countess' face with the scrutiny peculiar
to those old hands, which pierces to the soul of a woman as
certainly as a surgeon's instrument probes a wound ! Jacques
Collin's ally at once discerned the stamp of one of the rarest
feelings in a woman of the world : real sorrow ! — the sorrow
that graves ineradicable lines on the heart and on the fea-
tures. She was dressed without the least touch of vanity.
She was now forty-five, and her printed muslin wrapper,
tumbled and untidy, showed her bosom without any art or
even stays ! Her eyes were set in dark circles, and her mottled
352 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
cheeks showed the traces of bitter tears. She wore no sash
round her waist ; the embroidery on her petticoat and shift
was all crumpled. Her hair, knotted up under a lace cap,
had not been combed for four-and-twenty hours, and showed
as a thin, short plait and ragged little curls. Leontine had
forgotten to put on her false hair.
"You are in love for the first time in your life ?" said Asie
sententiously.
Leontine then saw the woman, and started with horror.
"Who is that, my dear Diane?" she asked of the Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse.
"Whom should I bring with me but a woman who is devoted
to Lucien and willing to help us ?"
Asie had hit the truth. Madame de Serizy, who was re-
garded as one of the most fickle of fashionable women, had
had an attachment of ten years' standing for the Marquis
d'Aiglemont. Since the Marquis' departure for the colonies,
she had gone wild about Lucien, and had won him from the
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, kno^ving nothing — like the Paris
world generally — of Lucien's passion for Esther. In the
world of fashion a recognized attachment does more to ruin
a woman's reputation than ten unconfessed liaisons; how
much more then two such attachments? However, as no
one thought of Madame de Serizy as a responsible person,
the historian cannot undertake to speak for her virtue thus
doubly dog's-eared.
She was fair, of medium height, and well preserved, as a
fair woman can be who is well preserved at all ; that is to say,
she did not look more than thirty, being slender, but not lean,
with a white skin and flaxen hair ; she had hands, feet, and a
shape of aristocratic elegance, and was as witty as all the
Konquerolles, spiteful, therefore, to women, and good-natured
to men. Her large fortune, her husband's fine position, and
that of her brother, the Marquis de Konquerolles, had pro-
tected her from the mortifications with which any other wo-
man would have been overwhelmed. She had this great
merit — that she was honest in her depravity, and confessed
her worship of the manners and customs of the Eegency.
END OF' EVIL WAYS 353
Now, at forty-two this woman — who had hitherto regarded
men as no more than pleasing playthings, to whom, indeed,
she had, strange to say, granted much, regarding love as
merely a matter of sacrifice to gain the upper hand, — this
woman, on first seeing Lucien, had been seized with such a
passion as the Baron de Nucingen's for Esther. She had
loved, as Asie had just told her, for the first time in her life.
This postponement of youth is more common with Parisian
women than might be supposed, and causes the ruin of some
virtuous souls just as they are reaching the haven of forty.
The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was the only person in the
secret of the vehement and absorbing passion, of which the
joys, from the girlish suspicion of first love to the preposter-
ous follies of fulfilment, had made Leontine half crazy and
insatiable.
True love, as we know, is merciless. The discovery of
Esther's existence had been followed by one of those outbursts
of rage which in a woman rise even to the pitch of murder;
then came the phase of meanness, to which a sincere affection
humbles itself so gladly. Indeed, for the last month the
Countess would have given ten years of her life to have Lucien
again for one week. At last she had even resigned herself to
accept Esther as her rival, just when the news of her lover's
arrest had come like the last trump on this paroxysm of devo-
tion.
The Countess had nearly died of it. Her husband had
him.self nursed her in bed, fearing the betrayal of delirium,
and for twenty-four hours she had been living with a knife in
her heart. She said to her husband in her fever:
"Save Lucien, and I will live henceforth for you alone."
"Indeed, as Madame la Duchesse tells you, it is of no use
to make your eyes like boiled gooseberries," cried the
dreadful Asie, shaking the Countess by the arm. "If you
want to save him, there is not a minute to lose. He is inno-
cent— I swear it by my mother's bones !"
"Yes, yes, of course he is !" cried the Countess, looking
quite kindly at the dreadful old woman.
;^54 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"But," Asie went on, "if Monsieur Camusot questions him
the wrong way, he can make a guilty man of him with two
sentences; so, if it is in your power to get the Conciergerie
opened to you, and to say a few words to him, go at once,
and give him this paper. — He will be released to-morrow; I
will answer for it. Now, get him out of the scrape, for you
got him into it."
"I ?"
"Yes, you I — You fine ladies never have a sou even when
you own millions. When I allowed myself the luxury of
keeping boys, they always had their pockets full of gold !
Their amusements amused me. It is delightful to be mother
and mistress in one. Now, you — you let the men you love
die of hunger without asking any questions. Esther, now.
made no speeches; she gave, at the cost of perdition, soul
and body, the million your Lucien was required to show, and
that is what has brought him to this pass "
"Poor girl I Did she do that ? I love her !" said Leontine.
"Yes — now I"' said Asie, with freezing irony.
"She was a real beauty ; but now, my angel, you are better
looking than she is. — And Lucien's marriage is so effectually
broken off, that nothing can mend it," said the Duchess in a
whisper to Leontine.
The effect of this revelation and forecast was so great on
the Countess that she was well again. She passed her hand
over her brow ; she was young once more.
"Now, my lady, hot foot, and make haste I'' said Asie, see-
ing the change, and guessing what had caused it.
"But," said Madame de Maufrigneuse, "if the first thing
is to prevent Lucien's being examined by Monsieur Camusot,
we can do that by writing two words to the judge and sending
your man with it to the Palais, Leontine."
"Then come into my room," said Madame de Serizy.
This is what was taking place at the Palais while Lucien's
protectresses were obeying the orders issued by Jacques Collin.
The gendarmes placed the moribund prisoner on c chair fac-
END OF EVIL WAYS 355
ing the window in Monsieur Camusot's room; lie was sitting
in his place in front of his table. Coquart, pen in hand, had
a little table to himself a few yards ofE.
The aspect of a magistrate's chambers is not a matter of in-
difference ; and if this room had not been chosen intentionally,
it must be owned that chance had favored justice. An ex-
amining judge, like a painter, requires the clear equable light
of a north window, for the criminal" s face is a picture which
he must constantly study. Hence most magistrates place
their table, as this of Camusot's was arranged, so as to sit
with their back to the window and leave the face of the ex-
aminee in broad daylight. Xot one of them all but, by the
end of six months, has assumed an absent-minded and in-
different expression, if he does not wear spectacles, and main-
tains it throughout the examination.
It was a sudden change of expression in the prisoner's face,
detected by these means, and caused by a sudden point-blank
question, that led to the discovery of the crime committed
by Castaing at the very moment when, after a long consulta-
tion with the public prosecutor, the magistrate was about to
let the criminal loose on society for lack of evidence. This
detail will show the least intelligent person how living, in-
teresting, curious, and dramatically terrible is the conflict
of an examination — a conflict without witnesses, but always
recorded. God knows what remains on the paper of the
scenes at white heat in which a look, a tone, a quiver of the
features, the faintest touch of color lent by some emotion,
has been fraught with danger, as though the adversaries were
savages watching each other to plant a fatal stroke. A report
is no more than the ashes of the fire.
"What is your real name ?" Camusot asked Jacques Collin.
"Don Carlos Herrera, canon of the Royal Chapter of
Toledo, and secret envoy of His Majesty Ferdinand VII."
It must here be observed that Jacques Collin spoke French
like a Spanish trollop, blundering over it in such a way as
to make his answers almost unintelligible, and to require
them to be repeated. But Monsieur de Nucingen's German
356 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
barbarisms have already weighted this Scene too much to
allow of the introduction of other sentences no less difficult
to read, and hindering the rapid progress of the tale.
"Then you have papers to prove your right to the dignities
of which you speak?'' asked Camusot.
"Yes, monsieur — my passport, a letter from his Catholic
Majesty authorizing my mission. — In short, if you will but
send at once to the Spanish Embassy two lines, which I will
write in your presence, I shall be identified. Then, if you wish
for further evidence, I will write to His Eminence the High
Almoner of France, and he will immediately send his private
secretary."
"And do you still pretend that you are dying?" asked the
magistrate. "If you have really gone through all the suffer-
ings you have complained of since your arrest, you ought to
be dead by this time," said Camusot ironically.
"You are simply trying the courage of an innocent man
and the strength of his constitution," said the prisoner
mildly.
"Coquart,ring. Send for the prison doctor and an infirmary
attendant. — We shall be obliged to remove your coat and pro-
ceed to verify the marks on your shoulder," Camusot went on.
"I am in your hands, monsieur."
The prisoner then inquired whether the magistrate would
be kind enough to explain to him what he meant by "the
marks," and why they should be sought on his shoulder. The
judge was prepared for this question.
"You are suspected of being Jacques Collin, an escaped con-
vict, whose daring shrinks at nothing, not even at sacrilege !"
said Camusot promptly, his eyes fixed on those of the prisoner.
Jacques Collin gave no sign, and did not color; he re-
mained quite calm, and assumed an air of guileless curiosity
as he gazed at Camusot.
"I, monsieur? A convict? May the Order I belong to
and God above forgive you for such an error. Tell me what
I can do to prevent your continuing to offer such an insult
to the rights of free men, to the Church, and to the King
my master."
END OF EVIL WAYS 357
The judge made no reply to this, but explained to the Abbe
that if he had been branded, a penalty at that time inflicted
by law on all convicts sent to the hulks, the letters could be
made to show by giving him a slap on the shoulder.
"Oh, monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "it would indeed be
unfortunate if my devotion to the Eoyal cause should prove
fatal to me."
"Explain yourself," said the judge, "that is what you are
here for."
"Well, monsieur, I must have a great many scars on my
back, for I was shot in the back as a traitor to my country
while I was faithful to my King, by constitutionalists who
left me for dead."
"You were shot, and you are alive !" said Camusot.
"I had made friends with some of the soldiers, to whom
certain pious persons had sent money, so they placed me so far
off that only spent balls reached me, and the men aimed at
my back. This is a fact that His Excellency the Ambassador
can bear witness to "
"This devil of a man has an answer for everything ! How-
ever, so much the better," thought Camusot, who assumed so
much severity only to satisfy the demands of justice and of
the police. "How is it that a man of your character," he
went on, addressing the convict, "should have been found in
the house of the Baron de Nucingen's mistress — and such a
mistress, a girl who had been a common prostitute !"
"This is why I was found in a. courtesan's house, monsieur,"
replied Jacques Collin. "But before telling you the reasons
for my being there, I ought to mention that at the moment
when I was just going upstairs I was seized with the first at-
tack of my illness, and I had no time to speak to the girl. I
knew of Mademoiselle Esther's intention of killing herself ;
and as young Lucien de Eubempre's interests were involved,
and I have a particular affection for him for sacredly secret
reasons, I was going to try to persuade the poor creature to
give up the idea, suggested to her by despair. I meant to tell
her that Lucien must certainly fail in his last attempt to win
358 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu; and 1 hoped that by
telling her she had inherited seven millions of francs, I raight
give her courage to live.
"1 am convinced. Monsieur le Juge, that I am a martyr
to the secrets confided to me. By the suddenness of my ill-
ness I believe that I had been poisoned that very morning,
but my strong constitution has saved me. I know that a cer-
tain agent of the political police is dogging me, and trying to
entangle me in some discreditable business.
"If, at my request, you had sent for a doctor on my arrival
here, you would have had ample proof of what I am telling
you as to the state of my health. Believe me, monsieur, some
persons far above our heads have some strong interest in get-
ting me mistaken for some villain, so as to have a right to get
rid of me. It is not all profit to serve a king ; they have their
meannesses. The Church alone is faultless."
It is impossible to do justice to the play of Jacques Collin's
countenance as he carefully spun out his speech, sentence by
sentence, for ten minutes; and it was all so plausible, espe-
cially the mention of Corentin, that the lawyer was shaken.
"Will you confide to me the reasons of your affection for
Monsieur Lucien de Eubempre?"
"Can you not guess them ? I am sixty years of age, mon-
sieur— I implore you do not write it. — It is because — must I
say it ?"
"It will be to your own advantage, and more particularly
to Monsieur Lucien de Eubempre's, if you tell everything,''
replied the judge.
"Because he is — Oh, God ! he is my son," he gasped out
with an effort.
And he fainted away.
"Do not write that down, Coquart,"' said Camusot in an
undertone.
Coquart rose to fetch a little phial of "Four thieves' Vine-
gar."
"If he is Jacques Collin, he is a splendid actor !" thought
Camusot.
END OF EVIL WAYS 359
Coqiiart held the phial under the convict's nose, while the
judge examined him with the keen eye of a lynx — and a mag-
istrate.
"Take his wig off," said Camusot, after waiting till the
man recovered consciousness.
Jacques Collin heard, and quaked with terror, for he knew
how vile an expression his face would assume.
"If you have not strength enough to take your wig off your-
self Yes, Coquart, remove it," said Camusot to his
clerk.
Jacques Collin bent his head to the clerk with admirable
resignation ; but then his head, bereft of that adornment, was
hideous to behold in its natural aspect.
The sight of it left Camusot in the greatest uncertainty.
While waiting for the doctor and the man from the infirmary,
he set to work to classify and examine the various papers and
the objects seized in Lucien's rooms. After carrying out their
functions in the Eue Saint-Georges at Mademoiselle Esther's
house, the police had searched the rooms at the Quai Mala-
quais.
"You have your hand on some letters from the Comtesse de
Serizy," said Carlos Herrera. "But I cannot imagine why you
should have almost all Lucien's papers," he added, with a
smile of overwhelming irony at the judge.
Camusot, as he saw the smile, understood the bearing of the
word "almost."
"Ijucien de Rubempre is in custody under suspicion of being
your accomplice," said he, watching to see the effect of this
news on his examinee.
"You have brought about a great misfortune, for he is as
innocent as I am," replied the sham Spaniard, without be-
traying the smallest agitation.
"We shall see. We have not as yet established your
identity," Camusot observed, surprised at the prisoner's in-
difference. "If you are really Don Carlos Herrera, the posi-
tion of Lucien Chardou will at once be completely altered."
"To be sure, she became Madame Chardon — Mademoiselle
360 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
de Eubempre I" murmured Carlos. "Ah I that was one of the
greatest sins of my life."
He raised his eyes to heaven, and by the movement of his
lips seemed to be uttering a fervent prayer.
"But if you are Jacques Collin, and if he was, and knew
that he was, the companion of an escaped convict, a sacri-
legious wretch, all the crimes of which he is suspected by the
law are more than probably true."
Carlos Herrera sat like bronze as he heard this speech, very
cleverly delivered by the judge, and his only reply to the
words "knew that he was" and "escaped convict" was to lift
his hands to heaven with a gesture of noble and dignified
sorrow.
"Monsieur TAbbe," Camusot went on, with the greatest
politeness, "if you are Don Carlos Herrera, you will forgive
us for what we are obliged to do in the interests of justice and
truth."
Jacques Collin detected a snare in the lawyer's very voice
as he spoke the words "Monsieur I'Abbe." The man's face
never changed ; Camusot had looked for a gleam of joy, which
might have been the first indication of his being a convict,
betraying the exquisite satisfaction of a criminal deceiving
his judge ; but this hero of the hulks was strong in Machiavel-
lian dissimulation.
"I am accustomed to diplomacy, and I belong to an Order
of very austere discipline," replied Jacques Collin, with apos-
tolic mildness. "I understand everything, and am inured to
suffering. I should be free by this time if you had discovered
in my room the hiding-place where I keep my papers — for I
see you have none but unimportant documents."
This was a finishing stroke to Camusot : Jacques Collin by
his air of ease and simplicity had counteracted all the sus-
picions to which his appearance, unwigged, had given rise.
"Where are those papers?"
"I will tell you exactly if you will get a secretary from the
Spanish Embassy to accompany your messenger. He will take
them and be answerable to you for the documents, for it is to
END OF EYIL WAYS 361
mc a matter of confidential duty — diplomatic secrets which
would compromise his late Majesty Louis XVIII. — Indeed,
monsieur, it would be better However, you are a magis-
trate— and, after all, the Ambassador, to whom I refer the
whole question, must decide."
At this juncture the usher announced the arrival of the
doctor and the infirmary attendant, who came in.
"Good-morning, Monsieur Lebrun," said Camusot to the
doctor. "I have sent for you to examine the state of health
of this prisoner under suspicion. He says he has been
poisoned and at the point of death since the day before yester-
day ; see if there is any risk in undressing him to look for the
brand."
Doctor Lebrun took Jacques Collin's hand, felt his pulse,
asked to look at his tongue, and scrutinized him steadily.
This inspection lasted about ten minutes.
"The prisoner has been suffering severely," said the medical
officer, "but at this moment he is amazingly strong "
"That spurious energy, monsieur, is due to nervous excite-
ment caused by my strange position," said Jacques Collin,
with the dignity of a bishop.
"That is possible," said Monsieur Lebrun.
At a sign from Camusot the prisoner was stripped of every-
thing but his trousers, even of his shirt, and the spectators
might admire the hairy torso of a Cyclops. It was that of
the Famese Hercules at Naples in its colossal exaggeration.
"For what does nature intend a man of this build?" said
Lebrun to the judge.
The usher brought in the ebony staff, which from time
immemorial has been the insignia of his office, and is called
his rod; he struck it several times over the place where the
executioner had branded the fatal letters. Seventeen spots
appeared, irregularly distributed, but the most careful
scrutiny could not recognize the shape of any letters. The
usher indeed pointed out that the top bar of the letter T was
shown by two spots, with an interval between of the length
of that bar between the two points at each end of it, and there
was another spot where the bottom of the T should be.
362 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Still, that is quite uncertain," said Camusot, seeing doubt
in the expression of the prison doctor's countenance.
Carlos begged them to make the same experiment on the
other shoulder and the middle of his back. About fifteen more
such scars appeared, which, at the Spaniard's request, the
doctor made a note of ; and he pronounced that the man's back
had been so extensively seamed by wounds that the brand
would not show even if it had been made by the executioner.
An office-clerk now came in from the Prefecture, and
handed a note to Monsieur Camusot, requesting an answer.
After reading it the lawj'er went to speak to Coquart, but in
such a low voice that no one could catch a word. Only, by a
glance from Camusot, Jacques Collin could guess that some
information concerning him had been sent by the Prefet of
Police.
"That friend of Peyrade's is still at my heels," thought
Jacques Collin. "If only I knew him, I would get rid of him
as I did of Contenson. If only I could see Asie once more !"
After signing a paper written by Coquart, the judge put it
into an envelope and handed it to the clerk of the Delegate's
office.
This is an indispensable auxiliary to Justice. It is under
the direction of a police commissioner, and consists of peace-
officers who, with the assistance of the police commissioners
of each district, carry into effect orders for searching the
houses or apprehending the persons of those who are suspected
of complicity in crimes and felonies. These functionaries
in authority save the examining magistrates a great deal of
very precious time.
At a sign from the judge the prisoner was dressed by Mon-
sieur Lebrun and the attendant, who then \\-ithdrew with the
usher. Camusot sat down at his table and played with his
pen.
"You have an aunt," he suddenly said to Jacques Collin.
"An aunt?" echoed Don Carlos Herrera with amazement.
"Vrhy, monsieur, I have no relations. I am the unacknowl-
edged son of the late Duke of Ossuua."
But to himself he said, "They are burning" — an allusion
END OF EVIL WAYS 363
to the game of hot cockles, which is indeed a childlike symhol
of the dreadful struggle between justice and the criminal.
"Pooh !" said Camusot. "You still have an aunt living,
Mademoiselle Jacqueline Collin, whom you placed in Esthers
service under the eccentric name of Asie."
Jacques Collin shrugged his shoulders with an indifference
that was in perfect harmony with the cool curiosity he gave
throughout to the judge's words, while Camusot studied him
with cunning attention.
"Take care," said Camusot ; "listen to me."
"I am listening, sir."
"Your aunt is a wardrobe dealer at the Temple ; her busi-
ness is managed by a demoiselle Paccard, the sister of a con-
vict— herself a very good girl, known as la Eomette. Justice
is on the traces of your aunt, and in a few hours we shall have
decisive evidence. The woman is wholly devoted to you "
"Pray go on. Monsieur le Juge," said Collin coolly, in an-
swer to a pause ; "I am listening to you."
"Your aunt, who is about five years older than you are, was
formerly Marat's mistress — of odious memory. From that
blood-stained source she derived the little fortune she pos-
sesses.
"From information I have received she must be a very
clever receiver of stolen goods, for no proofs have yet been
found to commit her on. After Marat's death she seems, from
the notes I have here, to have lived with a chemist who was
condemned to death in the year XII. for issuing false coin.
She was called as witness in the case. It was from this inti-
macy that she derived her knowledge of poisons.
"In 1812 and in 1816 she spent two years in prison for plac-
ing girls under age upon the streets.
"Y^ou were already convicted of forgery; you had left the
banking house where your aunt had been able to place you as
clerk, thanks to the education you had had, and the favor en-
joyed by your aunt with certain persons for whose debauch-
eries she supplied victims.
"All this, prisoner, is not much like the dignity of the
Dukes d'Ossuna.
364 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Do you persist in your denial?"
Jacques Collin sat listening to Monsieur Camusot, and
thinking of his happy childhood at the College of the Ora-
torians, where he had been brought up, a meditation which
lent him a truly amazed look. And in spite of his skill as a
practised examiner, Camusot could bring no sort of expression
to those placid features.
"If you have accurately recorded the account of myself
I gave you at first," said Jacques Collin, "you can read it
through again. I cannot alter the facts. I never went to the
woman's house; how should I know who her cook was? The
persons of whom you speak are utterly unknown to me."
"Notwithstanding your denial, we shall proceed to confront
you with persons who may succeed in diminishing your assur-
ance."
"A man who has been three times shot is used to anything,"
replied Jacques Collin meekly.
Camusot proceeded to examine the seized papers while
awaiting the return of the famous Bibi-Lupin, whose expedi-
tion was amazing; for at half -past eleven, the inquiry having
begun at ten o'clock, the usher came in to inform the judge
in an undertone of Bibi-Lupin's arrival.
"Show him in," replied M. Camusot.
Bibi-Lupin, who had been expected to exclaim, "It is he,"
as he came in, stood puzzled. He did not recognize his man
in a face pitted with smallpox. This hesitancy startled the
magistrate.
"It is his build, his height," said the agent. "Oh ! yes, it
is you, Jacques Collin !" he went on, as he examined his eyes,
forehead, and ears. "There are some things which no dis-
guise can alter. . . . Certainly it is he, Monsieur Camu-
sot. Jacques has the scar of a cut on his left arm. Take off
his coat, and you will see . . ."
Jacques Collin was again obliged to take off his coat; Bibi-
Lupin turned up his sleeve and showed the scar he had
spoken of.
"It is the scar of a bullet," replied Don Carlos Herrera.
"Here are several more."
END OP EVIL WAYS 3G5
"Ah ! It is certainly his voice," cried Bibi-Lupin.
"Your certainty/' said Camusot, "is merely an opinion; it
is not proof."
"I know that," said Bibi-Lupin with deference. "But I
will bring witnesses. One of the boarders from the Maison
Vauquer is here already," said he, with an eye on Collin.
But the prisoner's set, calm face did not move a muscle.
"Show the person in," said Camusot roughly, his dissatis-
faction betraying itself in spite of his seeming indifference.
This irritation was not lost on Jacques Collin, who had not
counted on the judge's sympathy, and sat lost in apathy, pro-
duced by his deep meditations in the effort to guess what the
cause could be.
The usher now showed in Madame Poiret. At this unex-
pected appearance the prisoner had a slight shiver, but his
trepidation was not remarked by Camusot, who seemed to
have made up his mind.
"What is your name ?" asked he, proceeding to carry out the
formalities introductory to all depositions and examinations.
Madame Poiret, a little old woman as white and wrinkled
as a sweetbread, dressed in a dark-blue silk gown, gave her
name as Christine Michelle Michonneau, wife of one Poiret.
and her age as fifty-one years, said that she was born in Paris,
lived in the Eue des Poules at the corner of the Rue des
Postes, and that her business was that of lodging-house
keeper.
"In 1818 and 1819," said the judge, "you lived, madame,
in a boarding-house kept by a Madame Vauquer ?"
"Yes, monsieur; it was there that I met Monsieur Poiret»
a retired official, who became my husband, and whom I have
nursed in his bed this twelvemonth past. Poor man ! he is
very bad; and I cannot be long away from him."
"There was a certain Vautrin in the house at the time?"
asked Camusot.
"Oh, monsieur, that is quite a long story; he was a horrible
man, from the galleys "
366 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"You helped to get him arrested?"
"That is not true, sir."
"You are in the presence of the Law; be careful," said
Monsieur Camusot severely.
Madame Poiret was silent.
"Try to remember/' Camusot went on. "Do you recol-
lect the man? Would you know him again?"
"1 think so."
"Is this the man ?"
Madame Poiret put on her "eye-preservers/' and looked
at the x\bbe Carlos Herrera.
"It is his build, his height ; and yet — no — if — Monsieur le
Juge," she said, "if I could see his chest I should recognize
him at once."
The magistrate and his clerk could not help laughing, not-
withstanding the gravity of their office; Jacques Collin joined
in their hilarity, but discreetly. The prisoner had not put
on his coat after Bibi-Lupin had removed it, and at a sign
from the judge he obligingly opened his shirt.
"Yes, that is his fur trimming, sure enough I — But it has
worn gray, Monsieur Vautrin," cried Madame Poiret.
"What have you to say to that?" asked the judge of the
prisoner.
"That she is mad," replied Jacques Collin.
"Bless me ! If I had a doubt — for his face is altered —
that voice would be enough. He is the man who threatened
me. Ah ! and those are his eyes !"
"The police agent and this woman," said Camusot, speak-
ing to Jacques Collin, "cannot possibly have conspired to say
the same thing, for neither of them had seen you till now.
How do you account for that?"
"Justice has blundered more conspicuously even than it
does now in accepting the evidence of a woman who recognizes
a man by the hair on his chest and the suspicions of a police
agent," replied Jacques Collin. "I am said to resemble a
great criminal in voice, eyes, and build; that seems a little
vague. As to the memory which would prove certain relations
END OF EVIL WAYS 367
between Madame and my Sosie — which she does not blush to
own — you yourself laughed at. Allow me, monsieur, in the
interests of truth, which I am far more anxious to establish
for my own sake than you can be for the sake of justice, to
ask this lady — Madame Foiret "
"Poiret."
"Poret — excuse me, I am a Spaniard — whether she remem-
bers the other persons who lived in this — what did you call
the house?"
"A boarding-house," said Madame Poiret.
"I do not know what that is."
"A house where you can dine and breakfast by subscrip-
tion."
"You are right," said Camusot, with a favorable nod to
Jacques Collin, whose apparent good faith in suggesting
means to arrive at some conclusion struck him greatly. "Try
to remember the boarders who were in the house when Jacques
Collin was apprehended."
"There were Monsieur de Rastignac, Doctor Bianchon, Pere
Goriot, Mademoiselle Taillefer "
"That will do," said Camusot, steadily watching Jacques
Collin, whose expression did not change. "Well, about this
Pere Goriot ?"
"He is dead," said Madame Poiret.
"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "I have several times met
Monsieur de Rastignac, a friend, I believe, of Madame de
Nucingen's ; and if it is the same, he certainly never supposed
me to be the convict with whom these persons trv to identify
me."
"Monsieur de Rastignac and Doctor Bianchon," said the
magistrate, "both hold such a social position that their evi-
dence, if it is in your favor, will be enough to procure your
release. — Coquart, fill up a summons for each of them."
The formalities attending Madame Poiret's examination
were over in a few minutes ; Coquart read aloud to her the
notes he had made of the little scene, and she signed the
paper ; but the prisoner refused to sign, alleging his ignorance
of the forms of French law.
368 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"That is enough for to-day," said Monsieur Camusot.
"You must be wanting food. I will have you taken back to
the Conciergerie."
"Alas ! I am suffering too much to be able to eat," said
Jacques Collin.
Camusot was anxious to time Jacques Collin's return to
coincide with the prisoners' hour of exercise in the prison
yard; but he needed a reply from the Governor of the Con-
ciergerie to the order he had given him in the morning, and
he rang for the usher. The usher appeared, and told him that
the porter's wife, from the house on the Quai Malaquais, had
an important document to communicate with reference to
Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre. This was so serious a matter
that it put Camusot's intentions out of his head.
"Show her in," said he.
-"Beg your pardon; pray excuse me, gentlemen all," said
the woman, courtesying to the judge and the Abbe Carlos by
turns. "We were so worried by the Law — my husband and
me — the twice when it has marched into our house, that we
had forgotten a letter that was lying, for Monsieur Lucien,
in our chest of draAvers, which we paid ten sous for it, though
it was posted in Paris, for it is very heavy, sir. Would you
please to pay me back the postage ? For God knows when we
shall see our lodgers again !"
"Was this letter handed to you by the postman?" asked
Camusot, after carefully examining the envelope.
"Yes, monsieur."
"Coquart, write full notes of this deposition. — Go on, my
good woman ; tell us your name and your business." Camusot
made the woman take the oath, and then he dictated the docu-
ment.
While these formalities were being carried out, he was
scrutinizing the postmark, which showed the hours of posting
and delivery, as well as the date of the day. And this letter,
left for Lucien the day after Esther's death, had beyond a
doubt been written and posted on the day of the catastrophe.
Monsieur Camusot's amazement may therefore be imagined
END OF EYIL WATS 369
when he read^this letter written and signed by her whom the
law believed to have been the victim of a crime : —
"Esther to Lucien.
"Monday, May ISth, 1830.
"My last day; ten in the morning.
"My Lucien, — I have not an hour to live. At eleven
o'clock I shall be dead, and I shall die without a pang. I have
paid fifty thousand francs for a neat little black currant, con-
taining a poison that will kill me with the swiftness of light-
ning. And so, my darling, you may tell yourself, 'My little
Esther had no suffering.' — And yet I shall suffer in writing
these pages.
"The monster who has paid so dear for me, knowing that
the day when I should know myself to be his would have no
morrow — N"ucingen has just left me, as drunk as a bear with
his skin full of wine. For the first and last time in my life
I have had the opportunity of comparing my old trade as a
street hussy with the life of true love, of placing the tender-
ness which unfolds in the infinite above the horrors of a duty
which longs to destroy itself and leave no room even for a
kiss. Only such loathing could make death delightful.
"I have taken a bath; I should have liked to send for the
father confessor of the convent where I was baptized, to have
confessed and washed my soul. But I have had enough of
prostitution ; it would be profaning a sacrament ; and besides,
1 feel myself cleansed in the waters of sincere repentance.
God must do what He will with me.
"But enough of all this maudlin ; for you I want to be your
Esther to the last moment, not to bore you with my death, or
the future, or God, who is good, and who would not be good
if He were to torture me in the next world when I have en-
dured so much misery in this.
"I have before me your beautiful portrait, painted by Ma-
dame de Mirbel. That sheet of ivory used to comfort me in
your absence, I look at it with rapture as I write you my last
370 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
thoughts, and tell you of the last throbbing of my heart. I
shall enclose the miniature in this letter, for I cannot bear
that it should be stolen or sold. The mere thought that what
has been my great joy may lie behind a shop window, mixed
up with the ladies and officers of the Empire, or a parcel of
Chinese absurdities, is a small death to me. Destroy that
picture, my sweetheart, wipe it out, never give it to any one —
unless, indeed, the gift might win back the heart of that walk-
ing, well-dressed maypole, that Clotilde de Grandiieu, who
will make you black and blue in her sleep, her bones are so
sharp. — Yes, to that I consent, and then I shall still be of
some use to you, as when I was alive. Oh! to give you
pleasure, or only to make you laugh, I would have stood over
a brazier with an apple in my mouth to cook it for you. — So
my death even will be of service to you. — I should have marred
your home.
"Oh I that Clotilde I I cannot understand her. — She might
have been your wife, have borne your name, have never left
you day or night, have belonged to you — and she could make
difficulties ! Only the Faubourg Saint-Germain can do that !
and yet she has not ten pounds of flesh on her bones !
"Poor Lucien ! Dear ambitious failure ! I am thinking of
your future life. Well, well ! you will more than once regret
your poor faithful dog, the good girl who Avould fly to serve
you, who would have been dragged into a police court to
secure your happiness, whose only occupation was to think of
your pleasures and invent new ones, who was so full of love
for you — in her hair, her feet, her ears — ^your hallerina, in
short, whose every look was a benediction; who for six years
has thought of nothing but you, who was so entirely your
chattel that I have never been anything but an effluence of
your soul, as light is that of the sun. However, for lack of
money and of honor, I can never be your wife. I have at any
rate provided for your future by giving you all I have.
"Come as soon as you get this letter and take what you
find under my pillow, for I do not trust the people about me.
Understand that I mean to look beautiful when I am dead.
END OF EVIL WAYS 371
I shall go to bed, and lay myself flat in an attitude — why not ?
Then 1 shall break the little pill against the roof of my
mouth, and shall not be disfigured by any convulsion or by a
ridiculous position.
"Madame de Serizy has quarreled with you, I know, because
of me ; but when she hears that I am dead, you see, dear pet,
she will forgive. Make it up with her, and she will find you
a suitable wife if the Grandlieus persist in their refusal.
"My dear, I do not want you to grieve too much when you
hear of ray death. To begin with, I must tell you that the
hour of eleven on Monday morning, the thirteenth of May, is
only the end of a long illness, which began on the day when,
on the Terrace of Saint-Germain, you threw me back on my
former line of life. The soul may be sick, as the body is.
But the soul cannot submit stupidly to suffering like the
body; the body does not uphold the soul as the soul upholds
the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the reflection
which leads to the needlewoman's resource — the bushel of
charcoal. You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday,
when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would
marry me. It would have been a great misfortune for us
both; I should have been still more dead, so to speak — for
there are more and less bitter deaths. The world would never
have recognized us.
"For two months past I have been thinking of many things,
I can tell you. A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I
went into the convent ; men think her handsome, they make her
serve their pleasure Avithout thinking any consideration neces-
sary; they pack her ofi' on foot after fetching her in a car-
riage; if they do not spit in her face, it is only because her
beauty preserves her from such indignity ; but, morally speak-
ing, they do worse. Well, and if this despised creature were
to inherit five or six millions of francs, she would be courted by
princes, bowed to with respect as she went past in her car-
riage, and might choose among the oldest names in France
and Navarre. That world which would have cried Raca to
us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy,
372 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her 'ro-
mances in real life/ because she had two hundred thousand
francs a year. The world, which grovels before money or
glory, will not bow down before happiness or virtue — for I
could have done good. Oh ! how many tears I would have
dried — as many as I have shed, I believe ! Yes, I would have
lived only for you and for charity.
"These are the thoughts that make death beautiful. So do
not lament, my dear. Say often to yourself, 'There were two
good creatures, two beautiful creatures, who both died for
me ungrudgingly, and who adored me.' Keep a memory
in your heart of Coralie and Esther, and go your way and
prosper. Do you recollect the day when you pointed
out to me a shriveled old woman, in a melon-green bonnet
and a puce wrapper, all over black grease-spots, the
mistress of a poet before the Revolution, hardly thawed
by the sun though she was sitting against the wall of the
Tuileries and fussing over a pug — the vilest of pugs?
She had had footmen and carriages, you know, and a
fine house ! And I said to you then, 'How much better to be
dead at thirty !' — Well, you thought I was melancholy, and
you played all sorts of pranks to amuse me, and between two
kisses I said, 'Every day some pretty woman leaves the play
before it is over !' — And I do not want to see the last piece ;
that is all.
"You must think me a great chatterbox ; but this is my last
effusion. I write as if I were talking to you, and I like to
talk cheerfully. I have always had a horror of a dressmaker
pitying herself. You know I knew how to die decently once
before, on my return from that fatal opera-ball where the
men said I had been a prostitute.
"No, no, my dear love, never give this portrait to any one !
If you could know with what a gush of love I have sat losing
myself in your eyes, looking at them with rapture during a
pause I allowed myself, you would feel as you gathered up the
affection with which I have tried to overlay the ivory, that the
soul of your little pet is indeed there.
END OP EVIL WAYS 373
"A dead woman craving alms ! That is a funny idea. —
Come, I must learn to lie quiet in my grave.
"You have no idea how heroic my death would seem to some
fools if they could know Nucingen last night offered me two
millions of francs if I would love him as I love you. He will
be handsomely robbed when he hears that I have kept my
word and died of him. I tried all I could still to breathe the
air you breathe. I said to the fat scoundrel, 'Do you want me
to love you as you wish ? To promise even that I will never
see Lucien again?' — 'What must I do?' he asked. — 'Give me
the two millions for him.' — You should have seen his face !
I could have laughed, if it had not been so tragical for me.
" 'Spare yourself the trouble of refusing,' said I ; 'I see you
care more for your two millions than for me. A woman is
always glad to know at what she is valued !' and I turned my
back on him.
"In a few hours the old rascal will know that I was not in
jest.
"Who will part your hair as nicely as I do ? Pooh ! — I will
think no more of anything in life; I have but five minutes,
I give them to God. Do not be jealous of Him, dear heart;
1 shall speak to Him of you, beseeching Him for your happi-
ness as the price of my death, and my punishment in the next
world. I am vexed enough at having to go to hell. I should
have liked to see the angels, to know if they are like you.
"Good-bye, my darling, good-bye ! I give you all the
blessing of my woes. Even in the grave I am your Esther.
"It is striking eleven. I have said my last prayers. I am
going to bed to die. Once more, farewell ! I wish that the
warmth of my hand could leave my soul there where I press
a last kiss — and once more I must call you my dearest love,
though you are the cause of the death of your Esther."
A vague feeling of jealousy tightened on the magistrate's
heart as he read this letter, the only letter from a suicide he
had ever found written with such lightness, though it was a
feverish lightness, and the last effort of a blind affection.
24
374 A rOTTRTESAN'S LIP'E
"What is there in the man that he should be loved so well ?"
thought he, saying what every man says who has not the gift
of attracting women.
"If you can prove not merely that you are not Jacques
Collin and an escaped convict, but that you are in fact Don
Carlos Herrera, canon of Toledo, and secret envoy of his
Majesty Ferdinand VII.," said he, addressing the prisoner,
"you will be released; for the impartiality demanded by my
office requires me to tell you that I have this moment received
a letter, written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, in which
she declares her intention of killing herself, and expresses
suspicions as to her servants, which would seem to point to
them as the thieves who have made off with the seven hundred
and fifty thousand francs."
As he spoke Monsieur Camusot was comparing the writing
of the letter with that of the will ; and it seemed to him self-
evident that the same person had written both.
"Monsieur, you were in too great a hurry to believe in a
murder; do not be too hasty in believing in a theft."
"Heh !" said Camusot, scrutinizing the prisoner with a
piercing eye.
"Do not suppose that I am compromising myself by telling
you that the sum may possibly be recovered," said Jacques
Collin, making the judge understand that he saw his sus-
picions. "That poor girl was much loved by those about her ;
and if I were free, I would undertake to search for this
mone}^, which no doubt belongs to the being I love best in the
world — to Lucien ! — Will you allow me to read that letter ; it
will not take long? It is evidence of my dear boy's innocence
— you cannot fear that I shall destroy it — nor that I shall
talk about it; I am in solitary confinement."
"In confinement ! You will be so no longer," cried the
magistrate. "It is I who must beg 3'ou to get well as soon as
possible. Refer to your ambassador if you choose "
And he handed the letter to Jacques Collin. Camusot was
glad to be out of a difficulty, to be able to satisfy the public
prosecutor, Mesdames de Maufrigneuse and de Serizy. Nev-
END OP EVIL WAYS 375
ertheless, he studied his prisoner's face with cold curiosity
while Collin read Esther's letter; in spite of the apparent
genuineness of the feelings it expressed, he said to himself :
"But it is a face worthy of the hulks, all the same !"
"That is the way to love !" said Jacques Collin, returning
the letter. And he showed Camusot a face bathed in tears.
"If only you knew him," he went on, "so youthful, so inno-
cent a soul, so splendidly handsome, a child, a poet ! — The
impulse to sacrifice oneself to him is irresistible, to satisfy his
lightest wish. That dear boy is so fascinating when he
chooses "
"And so," said the magistrate, making a final effort to dis-
cover the truth, "you cannot possibly be Jacques Collin "
"JSTo, monsieur," replied the convict.
And Jacques Collin was more entirely Don Carlos Herrera
than ever. In his anxiety to complete his work he went up to
the judge, led him to the window, and gave himself the airs
of a prince of the Church, assuming a confidential tone :
"I am so fond of that boy, monsieur, that if it were needful,
to spare that idol of my heart a mere discomfort even, that I
should be the criminal you take me for, I would surrender,"
said he in an undertone. "I would follow the example of the
poor girl who has killed herself for his benefit. And I beg
you, monsieur, to grant me a favor — namely, to set Lucien at
liberty forthwith."
"My duty forbids it," said Camusot very good-naturedly;
"but if a sinner may make a compromise with heaven, justice
too has its softer side, and if you can give me sufficient reasons
— speak ; your words will not be taken down."
"Well, then," Jacques Collin went on, taken in by Camu-
sot's apparent goodwill, "I know what that poor boy is suffer-
ing at this moment ; he is capable of trying to kill himself
when he finds himself a prisoner "
"Oh ! as to that !" said Camusot with a shrug.
"You do not know whom you will oblige by obliging me,"
added Jacques Collin, trying to harp on another string. "You
will be doing a service to others more powerful than any
376 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Comtesse de Serizy or Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who will
never forgive you for having had their letters in your cham-
bers " and he pointed to two packets of perfumed papers.
"My Order has a good memory."
''Monsieur/' said Camusot, "that is enough. You must
find better reasons to give me. I am as much interested in the
prisoner as in public vengeance."
"Believe me, then, I know Lucien; he has the soul of a
woman, of a poet, and a southerner, without persistency or
will," said Jacques Collin, who fancied that he saw that he
had won the judge over. "You are convinced of the young
man's innocence, do not torture him, do not question him.
Give him that letter, tell him that he is Esther's heir, and re-
store him to freedom. If you act otherwise, you will bring
despair on yourself; whereas, if you simply release him, I
will explain to you — keep me still in solitary confinement —
to-morrow or this evening, everything that may strike you as
mysterious in the case, and the reasons for the persecution
of which I am the object. But it will be at the risk of my
life; a price has been set on my head these six years past.
. . . Lucien free, rich, and married to Clotilde de Grand-
lieu, and my task on earth will be done ; I shall no longer try
to save my skin. — My persecutor was a spy under your late
King."
"What, Corentin?"
"Ah ! Is his name Corentin ? Thank you, monsieur. Well,
will you promise to do as I ask you ?"
"A magistrate can make no promises. — Coquart, tell the
usher and the gendarmes to take the prisoner back to the
Conciergerie. — I will give orders that you are to have a private
room," he added pleasantly, with a slight nod to the convict.
Struck by Jacques Collin's request, and remembering how
he had insisted that he wished to be examined first as a priv-
ilege to his state of health, Camusot's suspicions were aroused
once more. Allowing his vague doubts to make themselves
hearfl, he noticed that the self-styled dying man was walking
off with the strength of a Hercules, having abandoned all
END OP EVIL WAYS 377
the tricks he had aped so well on appearing before the magis-
trate.
"Monsieur V
Jacques Collin turned round.
"Notwithstanding your refusal to sign the document, my
clerk will read you the minutes of your examination."
The prisoner was evidently in excellent health; the read-
iness with which he came back, and sat down by the clerk,
was a fresh light to the magistrate's mind.
"You have got well very suddenly !" said Camusot.
"Caught !" thought Jacques Collin ; and he replied :
"Joy, monsieur, is the only panacea. — That letter, the proof
of innocence of which I had no doubt — these are the grand
remedy."
The judge kept a meditative eye on the prisoner when
the usher and the gendarmes again took him in charge.
Then, with a start like a waking man, he tossed Esther's letter
across to the table where his clerk sat, saying :
"Coquart, copy that letter."
If it is natural to man to be suspicious as to some favor
required of him when it is antagonistic to his interests or
his duty, and sometimes even when it is a matter of in-
difference, this feeling is law to an examining magistrate.
The more this prisoner — whose identity was not yet ascer-
tained— pointed to clouds on the horizon in the event of
Lucien's being examined, the more necessary did the inter-
rogatory seem to Camusot. Even if this formality had not
been required by the Code and by common practice, it was in-
dispensable as bearing on the identification of the Abbe
Carlos. There is in every walk of life the business conscience.
In default of curiosity Camusot would have examined Lucien
as he had examined Jacques Collin, with all the cunning
which the most honest magistrate allows himself to use in
such cases. The services he might render and his own pro-
motion were secondary in Camusot's mind to his anxiety to
know or guess the truth, even if he should never tell it.
He stood drumming on the window-pane while following
378 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
the river-like current of his conjectures, for in these moods
thought is like a stream flowing through many countries.
Magistrates, in love with truth, are like jealous women ; they
give way to a thousand hypotheses, and probe them with
the dagger-point of suspicion, as the sacrificing priest of
old eviscerated his victims; thus they arrive, not perhaps at
truth, but at probability, and at last see the truth beyond.
A woman cross-questions the man she loves as the judge cross-
questions a criminal. In such a frame of mind, a glance, a
word, a tone of voice, the slightest hesitation is enough to
certify the hidden fact — treason or crime.
"The style in which he depicted his devotion to his son —
if he is his son — is enough to make me think that he was in
the girl's house to keep an eye on the plunder; and never
suspecting that the dead woman's pillow covered a will, he no
doubt annexed, for his son, the seven hundred and fifty thou-
sand francs as a precaution. That is why he can promise to
recover the mone}'.
"M. de Eubempre owes it to himself and to justice to ac-
count for his father's position in the world
"And he offers me the protection of his Order — His Order !
— if I do not examine Lucien "
This thought gave him pause.
As has been seen, a magistrate conducts an examination
exactly as he thinks proper. He is at liberty to display his
acumen or be absolutely blunt. An examination may be
everything or nothing. Therein lies the favor.
Camusot rang. The usher had returned. He was sent to
fetch Monsieur Lucien de Eubempre with an injunction to
prohibit his speaking to anybody on his way up. It was by
this time two in the afternoon.
"There is some secret," said the judge to himself, "and that
secret must be very important. My amphibious friend —
since he is neither priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor
Spaniard, though he wants to hinder his protege from letting
out something dreadful — argues thus: 'The poet is weak and
effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in diplomacy, and
END OF EVIL WAYS 379
you will easily wring our secret from him.' — Well, we will
get everything out of this innocent."
And he sat tapping the edge of his table with the ivory
paper-knife, while Coquart copied Esther's letter.
How whimsical is the action of our faculties ! Camusot
conceived of every crime as possible, and overlooked the only
one that the prisoner had now committed — ^the forgery of the
will for Lucien's advantage. Let those whose envy vents
itself on magistrates think for a moment of their life spent
in perpetual suspicion, of the torments these men must inflict
on their minds, for civil cases are not less tortuous than
criminal examinations, and it will occur to them perhaps that
the priest and the lawyer wear an equally heavy coat of mail,
equally furnished with spikes in the lining. However, every
profession has its hair shirt and its Chinese puzzles.
It was about two o'clock when Monsieur Camusot saw
jjucien de Rubempre come in, pale, worn, his eyes red and
swollen, in short, in a state of dejection which enabled the
magistrate to compare nature with art, the really dying man
with the stage performance. His walk from the Conciergerie
to the Judge's chambers, between two gendarmes, and pre-
ceded by the usher, had put the crowning touch to Lucien's
despair. It is the poet's nature to prefer execution to con-^^
demnation.
As he saw this being, so completely bereft of the moral
courage which is the essence of a judge, and which the last
prisoner had so strongly manifested, Monsieur Camusot dis-
dained the easy victory ; and this scorn enabled him to strike
a decisive blow, since it left him, on the ground, that horrible
clearness of mind which the marksman feels when he is firing
at a puppet.
"Collect yourself, Monsieur de Eubempre; you are in the
presence of a magistrate who is eager to repair the mischief
done involuntarily by the law when a man is taken into
custody on suspicion that has no foundation. I believe you
to be innocent, and you will soon be at liberty. — Here is the
380 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
evidence of your innocence ; it is a letter kept for 5^011 during
your absence by your porter's wife; she has just brought it
here. In the commotion caused by the visitation of justice
and the news of your arrest at Fontainebleau, the woman for-
got the letter which was written by Mademoiselle Esther Gob-
seek. — Eead it !"
Lucien took the letter, read it, and melted into tears. He
sobbed, and could not say a single word. At the end of a
quarter of an hour, during which Lucien with great difficulty
recovered his self-command, the clerk laid before him the copy
of the letter, and begged him to sign a footnote certifying
that the copy was faithful to the orginal, and might be used
in its stead "on all occasions in the course of this preliminary
inquiry," giving him the option of comparing the two; but
Lucien, of course, took Coquart's word for its accuracy.
"Monsieur," said the lawyer, with friendly good nature, "it
is nevertheless impossible that I should release you without
carrying out the legal formalities, and asking you some ques-
tions.— It is almost as a witness that I require you to answer.
To such a man as you I think it is almost unnecessary to
point out that the oath to tell the whole truth is not in this
case a mere appeal to your conscience, but a necessity for
your own sake, your position having been for a time some-
what ambiguous. The truth can do you no harm, be it what
it may; falsehood will send you to trial, and compel me to
send you back to the Conciergerie ; whereas if you answer fully
to my questions, you will sleep to-night in your own house,
and be rehabilitated by this paragraph in the papers: 'Mon-
sieur de Rubempre, who was arrested yesterday at Fontaine-
bleau, was set at liberty after a very brief examination.' "
This speech made a deep impression on Lucien; and the
judge, seeing the temper of his prisoner, added :
"I may repeat to you that you were suspected of being
accessory to the murder by poison of this Demoiselle Esther.
Her suicide is clearly proved, and there is an end of that ; but
a sum of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs has been
stolen, which she had disposed of by will, and you are the
END OF EVIL WAYS 381
legatee. This is a felony. The crime was perpetrated before
the discovery of the will.
"Now there is reason to suppose that a person who loves
you as much as you loved Mademoiselle Esther committed
the theft for your benefit. — Do not interrupt me/' Camusot
went on, seeing that Lucien was about to speak, and com-
manding silence by a gesture; "I am asking you nothing so
far. I am anxious to make you understand how deeply your
honor is concerned in this question. Give up the false and
contemptible notion of the honor binding two accomplices,
and tell the whole truth."
The reader must already have observed the extreme dis-
proportion of the weapons in this conflict between the prisoner
under suspicion and the examining judge. Absolute denial
when skilfully used has in its favor its positive simplicity,
and sufficiently defends the criminal; but it is, in a way, a
coat of mail which becomes crushing as soon as the stiletto
of cross-examination finds a joint to it. As soon as mere
denial is ineffectual in face of certain proven facts, the ex-
aminee is entirely at the judge's mercy.
Now, supposing that a sort of half-criminal, like Lucien,
might, if he were saved from the first shipwreck of his hon-
esty, amend his ways, and become a useful member of society,
he will be lost in the pitfalls of his examination.
The judge has the driest possible record drawn up of the
proceedings, a faithful analysis of the questions and answers ;
but no trace remains of his insidiously paternal addresses or
his captious remonstrances, such as this speech. The judges
of the superior courts see the results, but see nothing of the
means. Hence, as some experienced persons have thought,
it would be a good plan that, as in England, a jury should
hear the examination. For a short while France enjoyed the
benefit of this system. Under the Code of Brumaire of the
year IV., this body was known as the examining jury, as
distinguished from the trying jury. As to the final trial, if
we should restore the examining jury, it would have to
be the function of the superior courts without the aid of a
jury.
382 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"And now," said Camusot, after a pause, "what is your
name ? — Attention, Monsieur Coquart !" said he to the clerk.
"Lucien Chardon de Rubempre."
"And you were born ?'■
"At Angouleme.-' And Lucien named the day, month,
and year.
"You inherited no fortune?"
"None whatever."
"And yet, during your first residence in Paris, you spent
a great deal, as compared with your small income ?"
"Yes, monsieur; but at that time I had a most devoted
friend in Mademoiselle Coralie, and I was so unhappy as
to lose her. It was my grief at her death that made me
return to my country home."
"That is right, monsieur," said Camusot ; "I commend
your frankness ; it will be thoroughly appreciated."
Lacien, it will be seen, v.'as prepared to make a clean breast
of it.
"On your return to Paris you lived even more expensively
than before," Camusot went on. "You lived like a man who
might have about sixty thousand francs a year."
"Yes, monsieur."
"Who supplied you with the money ?"
"My protector, the Abbe Carlos Herrera."
"Where did you meet him ?"'
"We met when traveling, just as I was about to be quit of
life by committing suicide."
"You never heard him spoken of by your family — by your
mother ?"
"Never."
"Can you remember the year and the month when you
first became connected with Mademoiselle Esther?"
"Towards the end of 1823, at a small theatre on the
Boulevard."
"At first she was an expense to yoii ?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Lately, in the hope of marrying Mademoiselle de Grand-
END OF EVIL WAYS 383
lieu, you purchased the ruins of the Chateau de Kubempre,
you added land to the value of a million francs, and you told
the family of Grandlieu that your sister and your brother-in-
law had just come into a considerable fortune, and that their
liberality had supplied you with the money. — Did you tell the
Grandlieus this, monsieur?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"You do not know the reason whv the marriage was broken
off?"
"Not in the least, monsieur."
"Well, the Grandlieus sent one of the most respectable
attorneys in Paris to see your brother-in-law and inquire
into the facts. At Angouleme this lawyer, from the state-
ments of your sister and brother-in-law, learned that they not
only had hardly lent you any money, but also that their in-
heritance consisted of land, of some extent no doubt, but that
the whole amount of invested capital was not more than about
two hundred thousand francs. — Xow you cannot wonder that
such people as the Grandlieus should reject a fortune of
M'hich the source is more than doubtful. This, monsieur, iS;
what a lie has led to "
Lucien was petrified by this revelation, and the little pres-
ence of mind he had preserved deserted him.
"Eemember," said Camusot, "that the police and the law
know all they want to know. — And now," he went on, recol-
lecting Jacques Collin's assumed paternity, "do you know who
this pretended Carlos Herrera is?"
"Yes, monsieur; but I knew it too late."
"Too late! How? Explain yourself."
"He is not a priest, not a Spaniard, he is "
"An escaped convict?" said the judge eagerly.
"Yes," replied Lucien, "when he told me the fatal secret,
I was already under obligations to him ; I had fancied I was
befriended by a respectable priest."
"Jacques Collin " said Monsieur Camusot, beginning
a sentence.
"Yes," said Lucien, "his name is Jacques Collin."
384 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Very good. Jacques Collin has just now been identified
by another person, and though he denies it, he does so, I
believe, in your interest. But I asked whether you knew
who the man is in order to prove another of Jacques Collin's
impostures."
Lucien felt as though he had hot iron in his inside as he
heard this alarming statement.
"Do you not know," Camusot went on, "that in order to give
color to the extraordinary affection he has for you, he de-
clares that he is your father?"'
"He ! My father ?— Oh, monsieur, did he tell you that ?"
"Have you any suspicion of where the money came from
that he used to give you ? For, if I am to believe the evidence
of the letter you have in your hand, that poor girl, ]\Iade-
moiselle Esther, must have done you lately the same services
as Coralie formerly rendered you. Still, for some years, as
you have just admitted, 5"ou lived very handsomely without
receiving anything from her."
"It is I who should ask you, monsieur, v.'hence convicts
get their money ! Jacques Collin my father ! — Oh, my poor
mother !" and Lucien burst into tears.
"Coquart, read out to the prisoner that part of Carlos
Herrera's examination in which he said that Lucien de
Rubempre was his son."
The poet listened in silence, and with a look that was ter-
rible to behold.
"I am done for !" he cried.
"A man is not done for who is faithful to the path of
honor and truth," said the judge.
"But you will commit Jacques Collin for trial?" said
Lucien.
"Undoubtedly," said Camusot, who aimed at making
Lucien talk "Speak out."
But in spite of all his persuasion and remonstrances,
Lucien would say no more. Reflection had come too late,
as it does to all men who are the slaves of impulse. There
lies the difference between the poet and the man of action;
END OF EVIL WAYS 385
one gives way to feeling to reproduce it in living images, his
judgment comes in after; the other feels and judges both at
once.
Lucien remained pale and gloomy; he saw himself at the
bottom of the precipice, down which the examining judge had
rolled him by the apparent candor which had entrapped his
poet's soul. He had betrayed, not his benefactor, but an ac-
complice who had defended their position with the courage of
a lion, and a skill that showed no flaw. Where Jacques Collin
had saved everything by his daring, Lucien, the man of brains,
had lost all by his lack of intelligence and reflection. This
infamous lie against which he revolted had screened a yet
more infamous truth.
Utterly confounded by the judge's skill, overpowered by
his cruel dexterity, by the swiftness of the blows he had dealt
him while making use of the errors of a life laid bare as
probes to search his conscience, Lucien sat like an animal
which the butcher's pole-axe had failed to kill. Free and
innocent when he came before the judge, in a moment his
own avowal had made him feel criminal.
To crown all, as a final grave irony, Camusot, cold and
calm, pointed out to Lucien that his self-betrayal was the re-
sult of a misapprehension. Camusot was thinking of Jacques
Collin's announcing himself as Lucien's father ; while Lucien,
wholly absorbed by his fear of seeing his confederacy with an
escaped convict made public, had imitated the famous in-
advertency of the murderers of Ibycus.
One of Eoyer-Collard's most famous achievements was
proclaiming the constant triumph of natural feeling over
engrafted sentiments, and defending the cause of anterior
oaths by asserting that the law of hospitality, for instance,
ought to be regarded as binding to the point of negativing
the obligation of a judicial oath. He promulgated this
theory, in the face of the world, from the French tribune ; he
boldly upheld conspirators, showing that it was human to
be true to friendship rather than to the tyrannical laws
brought out of the social arsenal to be adjusted to circum-
386 A COURTESANS LIFE
stances. And, indeed, natural rights have laws which have
never been codified, but which are more effectual and better
known than those laid down by society. Lucien had mis-
apprehended, to his cost, the law of cohesion, which required
him to be silent and leave Jacques Collin to protect himself ;
nay, more, he had accused him. In his own interests the man
ought always to be, to him, Carlos Herrera.
Monsieur Camusot was rejoicing in his triumph ; he had
secured two criminals. He had crushed with the hand of
justice one of the favorites of fashion, and he had found the
undiscoverable Jacques Collin. He would be regarded as one
of the cleverest of examining judges. So he left his prisoner
in peace; but he was studying this speechless consternation,
and he saw drops of sweat collect on the miserable face, swell
and fall, mingled with two streams of tears.
"Why should you weep. Monsieur de Eubempre? You
are, as I have told j-ou. Mademoiselle Esther's legatee, she hav-
ing no heirs nor near relations, and her property amounts to
nearly eight millions of francs if the lost seven hundred and
fifty thousand francs are recovered."
This was the last blow to the poor wretch. "If you do
not lose your head for ten minutes," Jacques Collin had said
in his note, and Lucien by keeping cool would have gained all
his desire. He might have paid his debt to Jacques Collin
and have cut him adrift, have been rich, and have married
Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. Xothing could more eloquently
demonstrate the powder with which the examining judge is
armed, as a consequence of the isolation or separation of
persons under suspicion, or the value of such a communica-
tion as Asie had conveyed to Jacques Collin.
"Ah, monsieur !" replied Lucien, with the satirical bitter-
ness of a man who makes a pedestal of his utter overthrow,
"how appropriate is the phrase in legal slang 'to undergo ex-
amination.' For my part, if I had to choose between the
physical torture of past ages and the moral torture of our
day, I would not hesitate to prefer the sufferings inflicted of
old by the executioner. — What more do you want of me?"
he added haughtily.
END OF EVIL WAYS 387
"In this place, monsieur," said the magistrate, answering
the poet's pride with mocking arrogance, "I alone have a right
to ask questions."
"I had the right to refuse to answer them," muttered the
hapless Lucien, whose wits had come back to him with perfect
lucidity.
"Coquart, read the minutes to the prisoner."
"I am the prisoner once more," said Lucien to himself.
While the clerk was reading, Lucien came to a determina-
tion which compelled him to smooth down Monsieur Camu-
sot. When Coquart's drone ceased, the poet started like a
man who has slept through a noise to Avhich he ears are ac-
customed, and who is roused by its cessation.
"You have to sign the report of your examination," said
the judg*^
"And am I at liberty ?" asked Lucien, ironical in his turn.
"Not yet," said Camusot ; "but to-morrow, after being con-
fronted with Jacques Collin, you will no doubt be free. Jus-
tice must now ascertain whether or no you are accessory to
the crimes this man may have committed since his escape so
long ago as 1820. However, you are no longer in the secret
cells. I will write to the Governor to give you a better room."
"Shall I find writing materials?"
"You can have anything supplied to you that you ask for ;
I will give orders -to that effect by the usher who will take
you back."
Lucien mechanically signed the minutes and initialed the
notes in obedience to Coquart's indications with the meekness
of a resigned victim. A single fact will show what a state
he was in better than the minutest description. The an-
nouncement that he would be confronted with Jacques Collin
had at once dried the drops of sweat from his brow, and his
dry eyes glittered with a terrible light. In short, he became,
in an instant as brief as a lightning flash, what Jacques
Collin was — a man of iron.
In men whose nature is like Lucien's, a nature which
Jacques Collin had so thoroughly fathomed, these sudden
388 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
transitions from a state of absolute demoralization to one that
is, so to speak, metallic, — so extreme is the tension of every
vital force, — are the most startling phenomena of mental
vitality. The will surges up like the lost waters of a spring ;
it diffuses itself throughout the machinery that lies ready
for the action of the unknown matter that constitutes it ; and
then the corpse is a man again, and the man rushes on full
of energy for a supreme struggle.
Lucien laid Esther's letter next his heart, with the minia-
ture she had returned to him. Then he haughtily bowed to
Monsieur Camusot, and went off with a firm step down the
corridors, between two gendarmes.
"That is a deep scoundrel !" said the judge to his clerk, to
avenge himself for the crushing scorn the poet had dis-
played. "He thought he might save himself by betraying
his accomplice."
"Of the two," said Coquart timidly, "the convict is the
most thorough-paced."
"You are free for the rest of the day, Coquart," said the
lawyer. "We have done enough. Send away any case that
is waiting, to be called to-morrow. — Ah ! and you must go at
once to the public prosecutor's chambers and ask if he is still
there ; if so, ask him if he can give me a few minutes. Yes ;
he will not be gone," he added, looking at a common clock
in a wooden case painted green with gilt lines. "It is but a
quarter-past three."
These examinations, which are so quickly read, being
written do^\Ti at full length, questions and answers alike, take
up an enormous amount of time. This is one of the reasons
of the slowness of these preliminaries to a trial and of these
imprisonments "on suspicion." To the poor this is ruin, to
the rich it is disgrace; to them only immediate release can
in any degree repair, so far as possible, the disaster of an
arrest.
This is why the two scenes here related had taken up the
whole of the time spent by Asie in deciphering her master's
END OF EVIL WAYS 389
orders, in getting a Duchess out of her boudoir, and putting
some energy into Madame de Serizy.
At this moment Camusot, who was anxious to get the full
benefit of his cleverness, took the two documents, read them
through, and promised himself that he would show them to
the public prosecutor and take his opinion on them. During
this meditation, his usher came back to tell him that Madame
la Comtesse de Serizy's man-servant insisted on speaking with
him. At a nod from Camusot, a servant out of livery came
in, looked first at the usher, and then at the magistrate, and
said, "I have the honor of speaking to Monsieur Camu-
sot ?"
"Yes," replied the lawyer and his clerk.
Camusot took a note which the servant offered him, and
read as follows: —
"For the sake of many interests which will be obvious to
you, my dear Camusot, do not examine Monsieur de
Eubempre. We have brought ample proofs of his innocence
that he may be released forthwith.
"D. DE Maufrigneuse.
"L. DE S:d!RiZY.
"P. ^.— Burn this note."
Camusot understood at once that he had blundered pre-
posterously in laying snares for Lucien, and he began by obey-
ing the two fine ladies — he lighted a taper, and burned the
letter written by the Duchess. The man bowed respectfully.
"Then Madame de Serizy is coming here?" asked Camu-
sot.
"The carriage was being brought round."
At this moment Coquart came in to tell Monsieur Camusot
that the public prosecutor expected him.
Oppressed by the blunder he had committed, in view of
his ambition, though to the better ends of justice, the lawyer,
in whom seven years' experience had perfected the sharpness
that comes to a man who in his practice has had to measure
25
390 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
his wits against the grisettes of Paris, was anxious to have
some shield against the resentment of two women of fashion.
The taper in which he had burned the note was still alight,
and he used it to seal up the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse's
notes to Lucien — about thirt}^ in all — and Madame de Serizy's
somewhat voluminous correspondence.
Then he waited on the public prosecutor.
The Palais de Justice is a perplexing maze of buildings
piled one above another, some fine and dignified, others very
mean, the whole disfigured by its lack of unity. The Salle
des Pas-Perdus is the largest known hall, but its nakedness
is hideous, and distresses the eye. This vast Cathedral of the
Law crushes the Supreme Court. The Galerie Marchande
ends in two drain-like passages. From this corrider there
is a double staircase, a little larger than that of the Criminal
Courts, and under it a large double door. The stairs lead
down to one of the Assize Courts, and the doors open into
another. In some years the number of crimes committed in
the circuit of the Seine is great enough to necessitate the
sitting of two Benches.
Close by are the public prosecutors offices, the attorney's
room and library, the chambers of the attorney-general, and
those of the public prosecutor's deputies. All these purlieus,
to use a generic term, communicate by narrow spiral stairs
and the dark passages, which are a disgrace to the architecture
not of Paris only, but of all France. The interior arrange-
ment of the sovereign court of Justice outdoes our prisons
in all that is most hideous. The writer describing our man-
ners and customs would shrink from the necessity of depict-
ing the squalid corridor of about a metre in width, in which
the witnesses wait in the Superior Criminal Court. As to the
stove which warms the court itself, it would disgrace a cafe
on the Boulevard Mont-Parnasse.
The public prosecutor's private room forms part of an
octagon wing flanking the Galerie Marchande, built out re-
cently in regard to the age of the structure, over the prison
yard, outside the women's quarters. All this part of the
END OF EVIL WAYS 391
Palais is overshadowed by the lofty and noble edifice of the
Sainte-Chapelle. And all is solemn and silent.
Monsieur de Granville, a worthy successor of the great
magistrates of the ancient Parlement, would not leave Paris
without coming to some conclusion in the matter of Lucien.
He expected to hear from Camusot, and the judge's message
had plunged him into the involuntary suspense which wait-
ing produces on even the strongest minds. He had been
sitting in the window-bay of his private room; he rose, and
walked up and down, for having lingered in the morning to
intercept Camusot, he had found him dull of apprehension;
he was vaguely uneasy and worried.
And this was why.
The dignity of his high functions forbade his attempting
to fetter the perfect independence of the inferior judge, and
yet this trial nearly touched the honor and good name of his
best friend and warmest supporter, the Comte de Serizy,
Minister of State, member of the Privy Council, Vice-Presi-
dent of the State Council, and prospective Chancellor of the
Realm, in the event of the death of the noble old man who
held that august office. It was Monsieur de Seriz/s mis-
fortune to adore his wife "through fire and water," and he
always shielded her with his protection. ISTow the public
prosecutor fully understood the terrible fuss that would be
made in the world and at court if a crime should be proved
against a man whose name had been so often and so malig-
nantly linked with that of the Countess.
"i\.h !" he sighed, folding his arms, "formerly the supreme
authority could take refuge in an appeal. Nowadays our
mania for equality" — he dared not say for Legality, as a
poetic orator in the Chamber courageously admitted a short
while since — "is the death of us."
This noble magistrate knew all the fascination and the mis-
eries of an illicit attachment. Esther and Lucien, as we
have seen, had taken the rooms where the Comte de Gran-
ville had lived secretly on connubial terms with Mademoiselle
de Bellefeuille, and whence she had fled one day, lured away
by a villain. (See A Double Marriage.)
392 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
At tKe very moment when the public prosecutor was saying
to himself, "Camusot is sure to have done something silly,"
the examining magistrate knocked twice at the door of his
room.
''Well, my dear Camusot, how is that case going on that
I spoke of this morning?"
"Badly, Monsieur le Comte; read and judge for your-
self."
He held out the minutes of the two examinations to Mon-
sieur de Granville, who took up his eyeglass and went to the
window to read them. He had soon run through them.
"You have done your dutv," said the Count in an agitated
voice. "It is all over. The law must take its course. You
have shown so much skill, that you need never fear being de-
prived of your appointment as examining judge "
If Monsieur de Granville had said to Camusot, "You will
remain an examining judge to your dying day," he could not
have been more explicit than in making this polite speech.
Camusot was cold in the very marrow.
"^Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, to whom I owe
much, had desired me . . ."
"Oh yes, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse is Madame de
Serizy's friend," said Granville, interrupting him. "To be
sure. — You have allowed nothing to influence you, I perceive.
And you did well, sir; you will be a great magistrate."
At this instant the Comte Octave de Bauvan opened the
door without knocking, and said to the Comte de Granville :
"I have brought you a fair lady, my dear fellow, who did
not know which way to turn ; she was on the point of losing
herself in our labyrinth "
And Comte Octave led in by the hand the Comtesse de
Serizy, who had been wandering about the place for the last
quarter of an hour.
"What, you here, madame !" exclaimed the public prose-
cutor, pushing forward his own armchair, "and at this
moment ! This, madame, is Monsieur Camusot," he added,
introducing the judge. — "Bauvan," said he to the dis-
END OF EVIL WAYS 393
tinguished ministerial orator of the Eestoration, 'Vait for
me in the president's chambers; he is still there, and I will
join you."
Comte Octave de Bauvan understood that not merely was
he in the way, hut that Monsieur de Granville wanted an
excuse for leaving his room.
Madame de Serizy had not made the mistake of coming to
the Palais de Justice in her handsome carriage with a blue
hammer-cloth and coats-of-arms, her coachman in gold lace,
and two footmen in breeches and silk stockings. Just as
they were starting Asie impressed on the two great ladies the
need for taking the hackney coach in which she and the Duch-
ess had arrived, and she had likewise insisted on Lucien's
mistress adopting the costume which is to women what a gray
cloak was of yore to men. The Countess wore a plain brown
dress, an old black shawl, and a velvet bonnet from which
the flowers had been removed, and the whole covered up under
a thick lace veil.
"You received our note?" said she to Camusot, whose dis-
may she mistook for respectful admiration.
"Alas ! but too late, Madame la Comtesse," replied the law-
yer, whose tact and wit failed him excepting in his chambers
and in presence of a prisoner,
"Too late! How?"
She looked at Monsieur de Granville, and saw consterna-
tion written in his face. "It cannot be, it must not be too
late !" she added, in the tone of a despot.
Women, pretty women, in the position of Madame de"
Serizy, are the spoiled children of French civilization. If the
women of other countries knew what a woman of fashion is in
Paris, a woman of wealth and rank, they would all want to
come and enjoy that splendid royalty. The women who
recognize no bonds but those of propriety, no law but the petty
charter which has been more than one alluded to in this
Comedie Humaine as the ladies' Code, laugh at the statutes
framed by men. They say everything, they do not shrink
from any blunder or hesitate at any folly, for they all accept
394 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
the fact that they are irresponsible beiugs, answerable for
nothing on earth but their good repute and their children.
They say the most preposterous things with a laugh, and are
ready on every occasion to repeat the speech made in the early
days of her married life by pretty Madame de Bauvan to her
husband, whom she came to fetch away from the Palais:
"Make haste and pass sentence, and come away."
"Madame," said the public prosecutor, "Monsieur Lucien
de Eubempre is not guilty either of robbery or of pqisoning;
but Monsieur Camusot has led him to confess a still greater
crime."'
"What is that ?" she asked.
"He acknowledged," said Monsieur Camusot in her ear,
"that he is the friend and pupil of an escaped convict. The
Abbe Carlos Herrera, the- Spaniard with whom he has been
living for the last seven vears, is the notorious Jacques
Collin."
Madame de Serizy felt as if it were a blow from an iron
rod at each word spoken by the judge, but this name was the
finishing stroke.
"And the upshot of all this ?" she said, in a voice that was
no more than a breath.
"Is," Monsieur de Granville went on, finishing the Count-
ess' sentence in an undertone, "that the convict will be com-
mitted for trial, and that if Lucien is not committed with him
as having profited as an accessory to the man's crimes, he
must appear as a witness very seriously compromised."
"Oh ! never, never I" she cried aloiid, with amazing firm-
ness. "For my part, I should not hesitate between death and
the disaster of seeing a man whom the world has knowni to be
my dearest friend declared by the bench to be the accomplice
of a convict. — The King has a great regard for my hus-
band "
"Madame," said the public prosecutor, also aloud, and with
a smile, "the King has not the smallest power over the
humblest examining Judge in his kingdom, nor over the pro-
ceedings in any court of justice. That is the grand feature
END OF EVIL WAYS 395
of our new code of laws. I myself have just congratulated
M. Camusot on his skill "
"On his clumsiness," said the Countess sharply, though
Lucien's intimacy with a scoundrel really disturbed her far
less than his attachment to Esther.
"If you will read the minutes of the examination of the
two prisoners by Monsieur Camusot, you will see that every-
thing is in his hands "
After this speech, the only thing the public prosecutor
could venture to say, and a flash of feminine — or, if you will,
lawyer-like — cunning, he went to the door; then, turning
round on the threshold, he added:
"Excuse me, madame; I have two words to say to Bauvan."
Which, translated by the worldly wise, conveyed to the
Countess: "I do not want to witness the scene between you
and Camusot."
"What is this examination business?" said Le'ontine very
blandly to Camusot, who stood downcast in the presence of
the wife of one of the most important personages in the
realm.
"Madame," said Camusot, "a clerk writes down all the
magistrate's questions and the prisoner's replies. This docu-
ment is signed by the clerk, by the judge, and by the prisoner.
This evidence is the raw material of the subsequent proceed-
ings ; on it the accused are committed for trial, and remanded
to appear before the Criminal Court."
"Well, then," said she, "if the evidence were sup-
pressed ?"
"Oh, madame, that is a crime which no magistrate could
possibly commit — a crime against society."
"It is a far worse crime against me to have ever allowed
it to be recorded ; still, at this moment it is the only evidence
against Lucien. Come, read me the minutes of his examina-
tion that I may see if there is still any way of salvation for us
all, monsieur. I do not speak for myself alone — I should
quite calmly kill myself — but Monsieur de Serizy's happiness
is also at stake."
396 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
*'Pray, madame, do not suppose that I have forgotten the
respect due you," said Camusot. "If Monsieur Popinot, for
instance, had undertaken this case, you would have had worse
luck than you have found with me; for he would not have
come to consult Monsieur de Granville; no one would have
heard anything about it. I tell you, madame, everything
has been seized in Monsieur Lucien's lodging, even your
letters "
"What ! my letters !"
"Here they are, madame, in a sealed packet."
The Countess in her agitation rang as if she had been at
home, and the office-boy came in.
"A light," said she.
The boy lighted a taper and placed it on the chimney-piece,
while the Countess looked through the letters, counted them,
crushed them in her hand, and flung them on the hearth. In
a few minutes she set the whole mass in a blaze, twisting up
the last note to serve as a torch.
Camusot stood, looking rather foolish as he watched the
papers burn, holding the legal documents in his hand.
The Countess, who seemed absorbed in the work of destroy-
ing the proofs of her passion, studied him out of the corner
of her eye. She took her time, she calculated her distance ;
with the spring of a cat she seized the two documents and
threw them on the flames. But Camusot saved them; the
Countess rushed on him and snatched back the burning
papers. A struggle ensued, Camusot calling out: "Madame,
but madame ! This is contempt — madame !"
A man hurried into the room, and the Countess could
not repress a scream as she beheld the Comte de Serizy, fol-
lowed by Monsieur de Granville and the Comte de Bauvan.
Leontine, however, determined to save Lucien at any cost,
would not let go of the terrible stamped documents, which
she clutched with the tenacity of a vise, though the flame had
already burnt her delicate skin like a moxa.
At last Camusot, whose fingers also were smarting from
the fire, seemed to be ashamed of the position; he let the
END OF EVIL WAYS 397
papers go; there was nothing left of them but the portions
so tightly held by the antagonists that the flame could not
touch them. The whole scene had taken less time than is
needed to read this account of it.
"What discussion can have arisen between you and Madame
dc Serizy ?" the husband asked of Camusot.
Before the lawyer could reply, the Countess held the
fragments in the candle and threw them on the remains of
lier letters, which were not entirely consumed.
"I shall be compelled," said Camusot, "to lay a complaint
against Madame la Comtesse "
"Ileh ! What has she done ?" asked the public prosecutor,
looking alternately at the lady and the magistrate.
"I have burned the record of the examinations," said the
lady of fashion with a laugh, so pleased at her high-handed
conduct that she did not yet feel the pain of the burns. "If
that is a crime — well, monsieur must get his odious scrawl
written out again."
"Very true," said Camusot, trying to recover his dignity.
"Well, well, 'All's well that ends well,' " said Monsieur de
Granville. "But, my dear Countess, you must not often take
such liberties with the Law ; it might fail to discern who and
what you are."
"Monsieur Camusot valiantly resisted a woman whom none
can resist ; the Honor of the Eobe is safe !" said the Comte
de Bauvan, laughing.
"Indeed ! Monsieur Camusot was resisting ?" said the
public prosecutor, laughing too. "He is a brave man in-
deed; I should not dare resist the Countess."
And thus for the moment this serious affair was no more
than a pretty woman's jest, at which Camusot himself must
laugh.
But Monsieur de Granville saw one man who was not
amused. N"ot a little alarmed by the Comte de Serizy's at-
titude and expression, his friend led him aside.
"My dear fellow," said he in a whisper, "your distress per-
398 A COURTESAN'S tIFB
suades me for the first and only time in my life to compromise
with my duty."
The public prosecutor rang, and the office boy appeared.
"Desire Monsieur de Chargeboeuf to come here."
Monsieur de Chargebceuf, a sucking barrister, was his
private secretary.
"My good friend," said the Comte de Granville to Camu-
sot, whom he took to the window, "go back to your chambers,
get your clerk to reconstruct the report of the Abbe Carlos
Herrera's depositions; as he had not signed the first copy,
there will be no difficulty about that. To-morrow you must
confront your Spanish diplomate with Rastignae and
Blanche n, who will not recognize him as Jacques Collin.
Then, being sure of his release, the man will sign the docu-
ment.
"As to Lucien de Eubempre, set him free this evening;
he is not likely to talk about an examination of which the
evidence is destroyed, especially after such a lecture as I shall
give him.
"Xow you will see how little justice suffers by these pro-
ceedings. If the Spaniard really is the convict, we have fifty
ways of recapturing him and committing him for trial — for
we will have his conduct in Spain thoroughly investigated.
Corentin, the police agent, will take care of him for us, and
we ourselves will keep an eye on him. So treat him decently ;
do not send him down to the cells again.
"Can we be the death of the Comte and Comtesse de Serizy,
as well as of Lucien, for the theft of seven hundred and fifty
thousand francs as yet unproven, and to Luciens personal
loss? Will it not be better for him to lose the money than
to lose his character ? Above all, if he is to drag with him in
his fall a Minister of State, and his wife, and the Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse.
"This young man is a speckled orange; do not leave it
to rot.
"All this will take you about half an hour; go and get
it done ; we will wait for you. It is half-past three ; you will
END OF EVIL WAYS 399
still find some judges about. Let me know if you can get a
rule of insufficient evidence — or Lucien must wait till to-
morrow morning."
Camusot bowed to the company and went; but Madame
de Serizy, who was suffering a good deal from her burns, did
not return his bow.
Monsieur de Serizy, who had suddenly rushed away while
the public prosecutor and the magistrate were talking to-
gether, presently returned, having fetched a small jar of
virgin wax. With this he dressed his wife's fingers, saying
in an undertone:
"Leontine, why did you come here without letting me
know ?"
"My dear," replied she in a whisper, "forgive me. I seem
mad, but indeed your interests were as much involved as
mine."
"Love this young fellow if fatality requires it, but do
not display your passion to all the world," said the luckless
husband.
"Well, my dear Countess," said Monsieur de Granville, who
had been engaged in conversation with Comte Octave, "I
hope you may take Monsieur de Eubempre home to dine with
you this evening."
This half promise produced a reaction ; Madame de Serizy
melted into tears.
"I thought I had no tears left," said she with a smile.
"But could vou not bring Monsieur de Eubempre to wait
here?"
"I will try if I can find ushers to fetch him, so that he may
not be seen under the escort of the gendarmes," said Mon-
sieur de Granville.
"You are as good as God !" cried she, with a gush of feel-
ing that made her voice sound like heavenly music.
"These are the women," said Comte Octave, "who are
fascinating, irresistible !"
And he became melancholy as he thought of his own wife.
(See Honorine.)
400 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
As he left the room, Monsieur de Granville was stopped
by young Chargeboeuf, to whom he spoke to give him instruc-
tions as to what he was to say to Massol, one of the editors
of the Gazette des Tribunaux.
While beauties, ministers, and magistrates were conspiring
to save Lucien, this was what he was doing at the Concierge-
rie. As he passed the gate the poet told the keeper that
Monsieur Camusot had granted him leave to write, and he
begged to have pens, ink, and paper. At a whispered word to
the Governor from Camusot's usher a warder was instructed
to take them to him at once. During the short time that it
took for the warder to fetch these things and carry them up
to Lucien, the hapless young man, to whom the idea of facing
Jacques Collin had become intolerable, sank into one of those
fatal moods in which the idea of suicide — to which he had
yielded before now, but without succeeding in carrying it
out — rises to the pitch of mania. According to certain mad-
doctors, suicide is in some temperaments the closing phase
of mental aberration; and since his arrest Lucien had been
possessed by that single idea. Esther's letter, read and re-
read many times, increased the vehemence of his desire to die
by reminding him of the catastrophe of Eomeo dying to be
with Juliet.
This is what he wrote: —
"This is my Last Will and Testament.
"At the Conciergerie, May 15th, 1830.
"I, the undersigned, give and bequeath to the children of
my sister, Madame Eve Chardon, wife of David Sechard,
formerly a printer at Angouleme, and of Monsieur David
Sechard, all the property, real and personal, of which I may be
possessed at the time of my decease, due deduction being
made for the pa^nnents and legacies, which I desire my ex-
ecutor to provide for.
"And I earnestly beg Monsieur de Serizy to undertake the
charge of being the executor of this my will.
END OF EVIL WAYS 401
"First, to Monsieur I'Abbe Carlos Herrera I direct the
payment of the sum of three hundred thousand francs. Sec-
ondly, to Monsieur le Baron de Nucingen the sum of fourteen
hundred thousand francs, less seven hundred and fifty thou-
sand francs if the sum stolen from Mademoiselle Esther
should be recovered.
"As universal legatee to Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, I
give and bequeath the sum of seven hundred and sixty thou-
sand francs to the Board of Asylums of Paris for the founda-
tion of a refuge especially dedicated to the use of public pros-
titutes who may wish to forsake their life of vice and ruin.
"I also bequeath to the Asylums of Paris the sum of money
necessary for the purchase of a certificate for dividends to the
amount of thirty thousand francs per annum in five per cents,
the annual income to be devoted every six months to the re-
lease of prisoners for debts not exceeding two thousand francs.
The Board of Asylums to select the most respectable of such
persons imprisoned for debt.
"I beg Monsieur de Serizy to devote the sum of forty
thousand francs to erecting a monument to Mademoiselle
Esther in the Eastern cemetery, and I desire to be buried by
her side. The tomb is to be like an antique tomb — square,
our two effigies lying thereon, in white marble, the heads on
pillows, the hands folded and raised to heaven. There is to
be no inscription whatever.
"I beg Monsieur de Serizy to give to Monsieur de Eastignac
a gold toilet-set that is in my room as a remembrance.
"And as a remembrance, I beg my executor to accept my
library of books as a gift from me.
"LuciEN Chardon de Rubempr:^."
This Will was inclosed in a letter addressed to Monsieur
le Comte de Granville, Public Prosecutor in the Supreme
Court at Paris, as follows: —
"Monsieur le Comte, —
"I place my Will in your hands. When you open this
letter I shall be no more. In my desire to be free, I made
402 A COl RTESANS JJFE
such cow aidly replies to Monsieur Camusots insidious ques-
tions, that, in spite of my innocence, I may find myself en-
tangled in a disgraceful trial. Even if I were acquitted, a
blameless life would henceforth be impossible to me in view
of the opinions of the world.
"I beg you to transmit the enclosed letter to the Abbe
Carlos Herrera without opening it, and deliver to Monsieur
Camusot the formal retraction I also enclose.
"I suppose no one will dare to break the seal of a packet
addressed to you. In this belief I bid you adieu, offering you
my best respects for the last time, and begging you to believe
that in writing to you I am giving you a token of my gratitude
for all the kindness you have shown to your deceased humble
servant,
"LUCIEN DE R."
"To the Abbe Carlos Herrera.
"My dear Abbe, — I have had only benefits from you, and
I have betrayed you. This involuntary ingratitude is killing
me, and when you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist.
You are not here now to save me.
'"You had given me full liberty, if I should find it ad-
vantageous, to destroy you by flinging you on the ground like
a cigar-end ; but I have ruined you by a blunder. To escape
from a difficulty, deluded by a clever question from the examin-
ing judge, your son by adoption and grace went over to the
side of those who aim at killing 3^ou at any cost, and insist or
proving an identity, which I know to be impossible, betv.'een
you and a French villain. All is said.
"Between a man of your calibre and me — me of whom you
tried to make a greater man that I am capable of being — no
foolish sentiment can come at the moment of final parting.
You hoped to make me powerful and famous, and 3^ou have
thrown me into the gulf of suicide, that is all. I have
long heard the broad pinions of that vertigo beating over
mv head.
END OF EVIL WAYS 403
"As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain
and the posterity of Abel. In the great human drama Cain
is in opposition. You are descended from Adam through
that line, in which the devil still fans the fire of which the
first spark was flung on Eve. Among the demons of that
pedigree, from time to time we see one of stupendous power,
summing up every form of human energy, and resembling
the fevered beasts of the desert, whose vitality demands the
vast spaces they find there. Such men are as dangerous as
lions would be in the heart of Normandy; they must have
their prey, and they devour common men and crop the money
of fools. Their sport is so dangerous that at last they kill
the humble dog whom they have taken for a companion and
made an idol of.
"When it is God's will, these mysterious beings may be a
Moses, an Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but
v,'hen He leaves a generation of these stupendous tools to rust
at the bottom of the ocean, they are no more than a
Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or the Abbe Carlos Herrera.
Gifted with immense power over tenderer souls, they entrap
them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine — in its way.
It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that
fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil.
Men like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of
them. You have made me live that vast life, and I have had
all my share of existence; so I may very well take my head
out of the Gordian knot of your policy and slip it into the
running knot of my cravat.
"To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to
the public prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You
will know how to take advantage of this document.
"In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will
be made, Monsieur I'Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your
Order which you so imprudently devoted to my use, as a
result of your paternal affection for me.
"And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
Corruption; farewell — to you who, if started on the right
404 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
road, might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than
Eichelieu ! You have kept your promises. I find myself
once more just as I was on the banks of the Charente, after
enjoying, by your help, the enchantments of a dream. But,
unfortunately, it is not now in the waters of my native place
that I shall drown the errors of a boy ; but in the Seine, and
my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.
"Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as
my admiration.
"LuciEN.'^
"Recantation.
"I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I retract, without
reservation, all that I deposed at my examination to-day be-
fore Monsieur Camusot.
"The Abbe Carlos Herrera always called himself my spirit-
ual father, and I was misled by the word father used in
another sense by the judge, no doubt under a misapprehen-
sion.
"I am aware that, for political ends, and to quash certain
secrets concerning the Cabinets of Spain and of the Tuileries,
some obscure diplomatic agents tried to show that the Abbe
Carlos Herrera was a forger named Jacques Collin ; but the Abbe
Carlos Herrera never told me anything about the matter ex-
cepting that he was doing his best to obtain evidence of the
death or of the continued existence of Jacques Collin.
"LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE.
"At the Conciergerie, May Ibth, 1830."
The fever for suicide had given Lucien immense clearness
of mind, and the swiftness of hand familiar to authors in the
fever of composition. The impetus was so strong within him
that these four documents were all written within half an
hour ; he folded them in a vrrapper, fastened with wafers, on
which he impressed with the strength of delirium the coat-
of-arms engraved on a seal-ring he wore, and he then laid the
packet very conspicuously in the middle of the floor.
END OP EVIL WAYS 405
Certainly it would have been impossible to conduct himself
with greater dignity, in the false position to which all this
infamy had led him; he was rescuing his memory from op-
probrium, and repairing the injury done to his accomplice, so
far as the wit of a man of the world could nullify the result of
the poet's trustfulness.
If Lucien had been taken back to one of the lower cells,
he would have been wrecked on the impossibility of carrying
out his intentions, for those boxes of masonry have no furni-
ture but a sort of camp-bed and a pail for necessary uses.
There is not a nail, not a chair, not even a stool. The camp-
bed is so firmly fixed that it is impossible to move it without
an amount of labor that the warder would not fail to detect,
for the iron-barred peephole is always open. Indeed, if a
prisoner under suspicion give reason for uneasiness, he is
watched by a gendarme or a constable.
In the private rooms for which prisoners pay, and in that
whither Lucien had been conveyed by the judge's courtesy to
a young man belonging to the upper ranks of society, the
movable bed, table, and chair might serve to carry out his pur-
pose of suicide, though they hardly made it easy. Lucien wore
a long blue silk necktie, and on his way back from examina-
tion he was already meditating on the means by which
Pichegru, more or less voluntarily, ended his days. Still, to
hang himself, a man must find a purchase, and have a
sufficient space between it and the ground for his feet to find
no support. Now the window of his room, looking out on the
prison-yard, had no handle to the fastening; and the bars,
being fixed outside, were divided from his reach by the thick-
ness of the wall, and could not be used for a support.
This, then, was the plan hit upon by Lucien to put him-
self out of the world. The boarding of the lower part of the
opening, which prevented his seeing out into the yard, also
hindered the warders outside from seeing what was done in
the room ; but while the lower portion of the window was re-
placed by two thick planks, the upper part of both halves still
was filled with small panes, held in place by the cross pieces
26
406 A COURTESANS LIFE
iu which they were set. By standing on his table Lucien
could reach the glazed part of the window, and take or break
out two panes, so as to have a firm point of attachment in
the angle of the lower bar. Eound this he would tie his
cravat, turn round once to tighten it round his neck
after securing it firmly, and kick the table from under his
feet.
He drew the table up under the window without making
any noise, took off his coat and waistcoat, and got on the table
unhesitatingly to break, a pane above and one below the iron
cross-bar. Standing on the table, he could look out across
the yard on a magical view, which he then beheld for the
first time. The Governor of the prison, in deference to Mon-
sieur Camusot's request that he should deal as leniently as pos-
sible with Lucien, had led him, as we have seen, through the
dark passages of the Conciergerie, entered from the dark
vault opposite the Tour d' Argent, thus avoiding the ex-
hibition of a young man of fashion to the crowd of prisoners
airing themselves in the yard. It will be for the reader to
judge whether the aspect of this promenade was not such as
to appeal deeply to a poet's soul.
The yard of the Conciergerie ends at the quai between the
Tour d' Argent and the Tour Bonbec; thus the distance be-
tween them exactly shows from the outside the width of the
plot of ground. The corridor called the Galerie de Saint-
Louis, which extends from the Galerie Marchande to the
Court of Appeals and the Tour Bonbec — in which, it is said,
Saint-Louis' room still exists — may enable the curious to
estimate the depth of the yard, as it is of the same length.
Thus the dark cells and the private rooms are under the
Galerie Marchande. And Queen Marie Antoinette, whose
dungeon was under the present cells, was conducted to the
presence of the Eevolutionary Tribunal, which held its sit-
tings in the place where the Court of Appeals now performs
its solemn functions, up a horrible flight of steps, now never
used, in the very thickness of the wall on which the Galerie
Marchande is built.
END OF EVIL WAYS 407
One side of the prison-yard — that on which the Hall of
Saint-Louis forms the first floor — displays a long row of
Gothic columns, between which the architects of I know not
what period have built up two floors of cells to accommodate
as many prisoners as possible, by choking the capitals, the
arches, and the vaults of this magnificent cloister with plaster,
barred loopholes, and partitions. Under the room known as
the Cabinet de Saint-Louis, in the Tour Bonbec, there is a
spiral stair leading to these dens. This degradation of one
of the immemorial buildings of France is hideous to behold.
From the height at v/hich Lucien was standing he saw
this cloister, and the details of the building that joins the
two towers, in sharp perspective ; before him were the pointed
caps of the towers. He stood amazed; his suicide was post-
poned to his admiration. The phenomena of hallucination
are in these days so fully recognized by the medical faculty
that this mirage of the senses, this strange illusion of the
mind is beyond dispute. A man under the stress of a feeling
which by its intensity has become a monomania, often finds
himself in the frame of mind to which opium, hasheesh, or
the protoxyde of '^ote might have brought him. Spectres
appear, phantoms and dreams take shape, things of the past
live again as once they were. What was but an image of
the brain becomes a moving or a living object. Science is
now beginning to believe that under the action of a paroxysm
of passion the blood rushes to the brain, and that such con-
gestion has the terrible effects of a dream in a waking state,
so averse are we to regard thought as a physical and genera-
tive force. (See Louis Lambert.)
Lucien saw the building in all its pristine beauty; the
columns were new, slender and bright; Saint-Louis' Palace
rose before him as it had once appeared; he admired its
Babjdonian proportions and Oriental fancy. He took this
exquisite vision as a poetic farewell from civilized creation.
While making his arrangements to die, he wondered how this
marvel of architecture could exist in Paris so utterly un-
known. He was two Luciens — one Lucien the poet, wander-
408 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
ing through the Middle Ages under the vaults and the turrets
of Saint-Louis, the other Lucien ready for suicide.
Just as Monsieur de Granville had ended giving his in-
structions to the young secretary, the Governor of the Con-
ciergerie came in, and the expression of his face was such as
to give the public prosecutor a presentiment of disaster.
"'Have you met Monsieur Camusot ?" he asked.
"Xo, monsieur," said the Governor; "his clerk Coquart in-
structed me to give the Abbe Carlos a private room and to
liberate Monsieur de Eubempre — but it is too late."
"Good God ! what has happened ?"
"Here, monsieur, is a letter for you which will explain the
catastrophe. The warder on duty in the prison-yard heard a
noise of breaking glass in the upper room, and Monsieur
Lucien's next neighbor shrieking wildly, for he heard the
young man's dying struggles. The warder came to me pale
from the sight that met his eyes. He found the prisoner
hanged from the window bar by his necktie."
Though the Governor spoke in a low voice, a fearful scream
from Madame de Serizy showed that under stress of feeling
our faculties are incalculably keen. The Countess heard,
or guessed. Before Monsieur de Granville could turn round,
or Monsieur de Bauvan or her husband could stop her, she
fled like a flash out of the door, and reached the Galerie
Marchande, where she ran on to the stairs leading out to the
Eue de la Barillerie.
A pleader was taking off his gown at the door of one of the
shops which from time immemorial have choked up this
arcade, where shoes are sold, and gowns and caps kept for
hire.
The Countess asked the way to the Conciergerie.
"Go down the steps and turn to the left. The entrance
is from the Quai de I'Horloge, the first archway."
"That woman is crazy," said the shop-woman ; "some one
ought to follow her."
But no one could have kept up with Leontine; she flew.
END OF EVIL WAYS 409
A physician may explain how it is that these ladies of
fashion, whose strength never finds employment, reveal such
powers in the critical moments of life.
The Countess rushed so swiftly through the archway to
the wicket-gate that the gendarme on sentry did not see her
pass. She flew at the barred gate like a feather driven by
the wind, and shook the iron bars with such fury that she
broke the one she grasped. The bent ends were thrust into
her breast, making the blood flow, and she dropped on the
ground, shrieking, "Open it, open it !" in a tone that struck
terror into the warders.
The gatekeepers hurried out.
"Open the gate — the public prosecutor sent me — to save
the dead man ! "
While the Countess was going round by the Eue de la
Barillerie and the Quai de I'Horloge, Monsieur de Granville
and Monsieur de Serizy went down to the Conciergerie
through the inner passages, suspecting Leontine's purpose;
but notwithstanding their haste, they only arrived in time to
see her fall fainting at the outer gate, where she was picked
up 6y two gendarmes who had come down from the guard-
room.
On seeing the Governor of the prison, the gate was opened,
and the Countess was carried into the office, but she stood up
and fell on her knees, clasping her hands.
"Only to see him — to see him ! Oh ! I will do no wrong !
But if you do not want to see me die on the spot, let me look
at Lucien dead or living. — Ah, my dear, are you here?
Choose between my death and "
She sank in a heap.
"You are kind," she said ; "I will always love you "
"Carry her away," said Monsieur de Bauvan.
"No, we will go to Lucien's cell," said Monsieur de Gran-
ville, reading a purpose in Monsieur de Serizy's wild looks.
And he lifted up the Countess, and took her under one
arm, while Monsieur de Bauvan supported her on the other
side.
410 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Monsieur," said the Comte de Serizy to the Governor,
"silence as of the grave about all this.'"
"Be easy," replied the Governor; "j^ou have done the
wisest thing. — If this lady "
"She is my viite/'
"Oh! I beg your pardon. Well, she will certainly faint
away when she sees the poor man, and while she is un-
conscious she can be taken home in a carriage."
"That is what I thought," replied the Count. "Pray send
one of your men to tell my servants in the Cour de Harlay
to come round to the gate. Mine is the only carriage
there."
"We can save him yet," said the Countess, walking on with
a degree of strength and spirit that surprised her friends.
"There are ways of restoring life "
And she dragged the gentlemen along, crying to the
warder :
"Come on, come faster — one second may cost three
lives !"
When the cell door was opened, and the Countess saw
Lucien hanging as though his clothes had been hung on a peg,
she made a spring towards him as if to embrace him and cling
to him; but she fell on her face on the floor with smothered
shrieks and a sort of rattle in her throat.
Five minutes later she was being taken home stretched on
the seat in the Count's carriage, her husband kneeling by her
side. Monsieur de Bauvan went ofl' to fetch a doctor to give
her the care she needed.
The Governor of the Conciergerie meanwhile was examin-
ing the outer gate, and saying to his clerk:
"!No expense was spared; the bars are of wrought iron,
the}^ were properly tested, and cost a large sum ; and yet there
was a flaw in that bar."
Monsieur de Granville on returning to his room had other
instructions to give to his private secretary. Massol, happily,
had not yet arrived.
Soon after Monsieur de Granville ha,d left, anxious to go
END OF EVIL WAYS 411
to see Monsieur de Serizy, Massol came and found his ally
Chargeboeuf in the public prosecutor's Court.
"My dear fellow," said the young secretary, "if you will do
me a great favor, you will put what I dictate to you in your
Gazette to-morrow under the heading of Law Eeports; you
can compose the heading. Write now.''
And he dictated as follows : —
"It has been ascertained that the Demoiselle Esther Gob-
seek killed herself of her own free will.
"Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre satisfactorily proved an
alibi, and his innocence leaves his arrest to be regretted, all
the more because just as the examining Judge had given the
order for his release the young gentleman died suddenly."
"I need not point out to you," said the young lawyer to
Massol, "how necessary it is to preserve absolute silence as
to the little service requested of you."
"Since it is you who do me the honor of so much con-
fidence,"' replied Massol, "allow me to make one observation.
This paragraph will give rise to odious comments on the
course of justice "
"Justice is strong enough to bear them," said the young
attache to the Courts, with the pride of a coming magistrate
trained by Monsieur de Granville.
"Allow me, my dear sir ; with two sentences this difficulty
may be avoided."
And the journalist-lawyer wrote as follows: —
"The forms of the law have nothing to do with this sad
event. The post-mortem examination, which was at once
made, proved that sudden death was due to the rupture of an
aneurism in its last stage. If Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre
had been upset by his arrest, death must have ensued sooner.
But we are in a position to state that, far from being dis-
tressed at being taken into custody, the young man, whom all
must lament, only laughed at it, and told those who escorted
him from Fontainebleau to Paris that as soon as he was
brought before a magistrate his innocence would be acknowl-
edged."
412 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"That saves it, I think?" said Massol.
"You are perfectly right."
"The public prosecutor will thank you for it to-morrow,"
said Massol slyly.
Now to the great majority, as to the more choice reader,
it will perhaps seem that this Study is not completed by the
death of Esther and of Lucien; Jacques Collin and Asie,
Europe and Paccard, in spite of their villainous lives, may
have been interesting enough to make their fate a matter of
curiosity.
The last act of the drama will also complete the picture
of life which this Study is intended to present, and give the
issue of various interests which Lucien's career had strangely
tangled by bringing some ignoble personages from the hulks
into contact with those of the highest rank.
Thus, as may be seen, the greatest events of life find their
expression in the more or less veracious gossip of the Paris
papers. And this is the case with many things of greater
importance than are here recorded.
END OF PART I.
SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE
(CONCLUDED)
AND
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
INTRODUCTION
As has been noted in the Introduction to the first volume
of the Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes, La deniiere
Incarnation de Vautrin, though forming, according to the
author's conception, an integral part of that work, stands in
more ways than one aloof from it. It was much later written
than the earlier parts, except Ou menent les mauvais Chemins,
and it was later written even than that. Moreover, it marks
in two different ways a much maturer stage of the author's
ideas as to heroic convicts — a stage in which, I think, it is
not fanciful to detect a considerable reduction of the
gigantesque element and a substitution of something else
for it.
We may note this in two ways. In the earlier conception
of the matter, as exemplified chiefly in Ferragus and Le Pere
Goriot, the heroic element considerably dominates the prac-
tical. In the one Balzac had shown an ex-convict defying
society and executing a sort of private justice or injustice,
just as he pleased. In the other he had adopted (and had
maintained still later in an apologetic epistle to a newspaper
editor, which will be found in his works) a notion of the
criminal as of a sort of puissance du mal pervading and
dominating society itself. In the present book, or section of
a book, which, it must never be forgotten, was one of his
very latest, things are adjusted to a much more actual level.
The thieves'-latin which it contains is only an indirect symp-
tom of this. Ainsworth in England and others in France had
(ix)
X INTRODUCTION
anticipated him notably in this. But indirectly it shows us
that he had come down many stages from his earlier heights.
Bourignard and the early Vautrin worked in clouds, afar
and apart; they had little to do with actual life: in La
derniere Incarnation de Vautrin we find ourselves face to
face with the actual, or only slightly "disrealized" realities
of convict life. Some of these details may be disgusting,
but most of them, as we know from unromantic authorities,
are tolerably true; and where truth is, there, with an artist
like Balzac, art never fails. It is the drawback of the youth-
ful poet or novelist that he is insufficiently provided with
veracity, of the aging novelist or poet that inspiration and
the faculty of turning fact into great fiction fail him. But
there was no danger of this latter with the author, at nearly
twenty years' interval, of Le dernier Chouan and La Cousine
Bette. He could only gain by the dispelling of illusion, and
he could not lose by the practice of his craft.
Another and still more interesting mark of resipiscence is
conveyed in the practical defeat of Vautrin and in his deser-
tion to the side of society itself, which, we are given to un-
derstand, he never afterwards left, nor less perhaps in the
virtual rebuff which Corentin (another hcros du mal of the
older time) receives at the end. The old betrayer of Mile,
de Verneuil is told in so many words that he can be dispensed
Avith ; the old enemy of society has to take its wages ; the funds
of la haute pegre are squandered on Lucien de Eubempre,
just as any foolish heir might squander them, and the whole
scheme of a conspiracy against order breaks down. True,
Madame de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy get their
letters; but that is neither here nor there.
The most interesting scene in the book, I suppose, is that
INTRODUCTION xi
in which the scheme of the prison authorities for trapping
Vautrin fails by dint of his adroitness, and the command
of a strong mind over a weak one, as between him and the
other convicts, to whom he had been a fraudulent trustee.
It is not free from unsavory details, but the mastery of it
quite exceeds its repulsiveness. It is worth noting, too, that
Balzac shows how thoroughly he has mastered the principles
of his art by intermixing this very success with evidences of
Vautrin's humanity after all. And of minor details there is
not, I think, one more interesting in the book, while there
are few more interesting in all Balzac, than the fact that in
the opening interview between Camusot and his wife the
author borrows from Guy Mannering the incident of Pleydell's
discovering the importance of Dirk Hatteraick's pocketbook
by the play of his countenance as his examiner passes from
that to other things, and vice versa. The fact is that Balzac
was to the very last an ardent devotee of Sir Walter, and that
— like all great novelists, I think, without exception, but not
like M. Zola and some other persons both abroad and at home
— he was perfectly alive to the fact that Scott's workmanship,
his analysis, his knowledge of human nature, and his use
of it, are about as far from superficiality as the equator is
from the pole. In construction and in style Scott was careless,
and as it happens, Balzac was in neither respect impeccable.
But in other ways the pupil had, and knew that he had, little
advantage over the master except in a certain parade of
motives and details, as well as (though not to a very great
extent) in a greater comprehension of passion, and, of course,
to a much greater extent in liberty of exhibiting that com-
prehension. Let us read Balzac and admire Balzac as much
as possible ; but when any one talks of Scott as shallow in
xil INTRODUCTION
comparison with Balzac, let us leave the answer to Balzac
himself.
(For bibliography, see Introduction to Splendeurs et
Miseres des Courtisanes.)
The long piece entitled Les Employes, which fills nearly
two-thirds of the volume, has rather dubious claims to be
called a novel or a story at all. Balzac, either from the fact
of his father having been employed in the civil department of
the array, or because he had been destined himself by kind
family friends to the rond-de-cuir (the office-stool), or be-
cause he was a typical Frenchman — for while half the French
nation sits on these stools, the other half divides its time be-
tween laughing at them and envying them — was always ex-
ceedingly intent on the ways and manners of government
offices. One of the least immature scenes of his CEuvres de
Jeimesse, the opening passage of Argow le Pirate, concerns
the subject. The collection of his CEuvres Diverses, only of
late years opened to the explorer who has less than libraries
at his command, contains repeated returns to it, of which the
Physiologie de UEmploye was the l)est known and most
popular; and the novels proper are full of dealings with it.
Tn this particular piece, indeed, Balzac has actually in-
corporated something from his earlier Physiologie, and has
thus made it even less of a story than it was when it first ap-
peared under the title of La Femme Superieure. In that
condition it Avas divided into three parts — Entre deux
Femmes, Les Bureaux, and A qui la place. The later shape,
with the additions just referred to, tended to overweight the
middle part still more at the expense of the two ends; and
INTRODUCTION xlll
as it stands, it is little more than a criticism, partly in argu-
ment, partly in dialogue, of administration and adminis-
trative methods, with a certain slight personal interest at
both ends.
Les Employes was originally dated July 1836. It ap-
peared in the Presse just a year after its composition, but
was then called La Femme Superieure, which name it kept
on its publication by Werdet as a book in 1838. It was here
enlarged, and had La Torpille (the first title of Esther or
Comment aiment les Filles) and La Maison Nucingen for
companions. There were, as usual, chapter divisions and
titles. At its first appearance in the Comedie, the actual
title and La Femme Superieure were given as alternatives,
but later Les Employes displaced the other.
G. S.
SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR
"What is it, Madeleine?" asked Madame Camusot, seeing
her maid come into the room with the particular air that ser-
vants assume in critical moments.
"Madame," said Madeleine, "monsieur has just come in
from Court ; but he looks so upset, and is in such a state, that
I think perhaps it would be well for you to go to his room."
"Did he say anything?" asked Madame Camusot.
"No, madame; but we never have seen monsieur look like
that ; he looks as if he were going to be ill, his face is yellow —
he seems all to pieces "
Madame Camusot waited for no more; she rushed out of
her room and flew to her husband's study. She found the
lawyer sitting in an armchair, pale and dazed, his legs
stretched out, his head against the back of it, his hands hang-
ing limp, exactly as if he were sinking into idiotcy.
"What is the matter, my dear?" said the young woman in
alarm.
"Oh ! my poor Amelie, the most dreadful thing has hap-
pened— I am still trembling. Imagine, the public prosecutor
— no, Madame de Serizy — that is — I do not know where to
begin."
"Begin at the end," said Madame Camusot.
"Well, just as Monsieur Popinot, in the council room of
the first Court, had put the last signature to the ruling of
'insufficient cause' for the apprehension of Lucien de Ru-
bempre on the ground of my report, setting him at liberty —
in fact, the whole thing was done, the clerk was going off with
the minute book, and I was quit of the whole business — the
(1)
2 A COURTESAN'S LIFE »
President of the Court came in and took up the papers. 'You
are releasing a dead man,' said he, with chilly irony; 'the
young man is gone, as Monsieur de Bonald says, to appear
before his natural Judge. He died of apoplexy '
"I breathed again, thinking it was sudden illness.
" 'As I understand you, Monsieur le President,' said Mon-
sieur Popinot, 'it is a case of apoplexy like Pichegru's.'
" 'Gentlemen,' said the President then*, very gravely, 'you
must please to understand that for the outside world Lucien
de Rubempre died of an aneurism.'
"We all looked at each other. 'Very great people arc con-
cerned in this deplorable business,' said the President. 'God
grant for your sake. Monsieur Camusot, though you did no
less than your duty, that ]\radame de Serizy may not go mad
from the shock she has had. She was carried away almost
dead. I have just met our public prosecutor in a painful state
of despair.' — 'You have made a mess of it, my dear Camusot,'
he added in my ear. — I assure you, my dear, as I came away
I could hardly stand. My legs shook so that I dared not
venture into the street. I went back to my room to rest.
Then Coquart, who was putting away the papers of this
wretched case, told me that a very handsome woman had taken
the Conciergerie by storm, wanting to save Lucien, whom she
was quite crazy about, and that she fainted away on seeing
him hanging by his necktie to the window-bar of his room.
The idea that the way in which I questioned that unhappy
young fellow — who, between ourselves, was guilty in many
ways — can have led to his committing suicide has haunted
me ever since I left the Palais, and I feel constantly on the
point of fainting "
"What next ? Are you going to think yourself a murderer
because a suspected criminal hangs himself in prison just as
you were about to release him?" cried Madame Camusot.
"Why, an examining judge in such a case is like a general
whose horse is killed under him ! — That is all."
"Such a comparison, my dear, is at best but a jest, and
jesting is out of place now. In this case the dead man
VAin^RIN'S r.AST AVATAR 3
chitchpp the living. All our hopes are buried in Lucien's
cotfiu."
"Indeed?" said Madame Camusot, with deep irony.
"Yes, my career is closed. I shall be no more than an
examining judge all my life. Before this fatal termination
Monsieur de Granville was annoyed at the turn the prelimi-
naries had taken; his speech to our President makes me quite
certain that so long as Monsieur de Granville is public prose-
cutor I shall get no promotion."
Promotion ! The terrible thought, which in these days
makes a judge a mere functionary.
Formerly a magistrate was made at once what he was to
remain. The three or four presidents' caps satisfied the am-
bitions of lawyers in each Parlement. An appointment as
councillor was enough for a de Brosses or a Mole, at Dijon
as much as in Paris. This office, in itself a fortune, required
a fortune brought to it to keep it up.
In Paris, outside the Parlement, men of the long robe could
hope only for three supreme appointments: those of Con-
troller-General, Keeper of the Seals, or Chancellor. Below
the Parlement, in the lower grades, the president of a lower
Court thought himself quite of sufficient importance to be
content to fill his chair to the end of his days.
Compare the position of a councillor in the High Court of
Justice in Paris, in 1829, who has nothing but his salary,
with that of a councillor to the Parlement in 1729. How
great is the difference ! In these days, when money is the
universal social guarantee, magistrates are not required to
have — as they used to have — fine private fortunes: hence we
see deputies and peers of France heaping office on office, at
once magistrates and legislators, borrowing dignity from
other positions than those which ought to give them all their
importance.
In short, a magistrate tries to distinguish himself for pro-
motion as men do in the army, or in a Government office.
This prevailing thought, even if it does not affect his inde-
pendence, is so well known and so natural, and its effects are
4 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
SO evident, that the law inevitably loses some of its majesty
in the eyes of the public. And, in fact, the salaries paid by
the State makes priests and magistrates mere employes. Steps
to be gained foster ambition, ambition engenders subservience
to power, and modern equality places the judge and the per-
son to be judged in the same category at the bar of society.
And so the two pillars of social order. Religion and Justice,
are lowered in this nineteenth century, which asserts itself
as progressive in all things.
"And why should you never be promoted?" said Amelie
Camusot.
She looked half-jestingly at her husband, feeling the ne-
cessity of reviving the energies of the man who embodied her
ambitions, and on whom she could play as on an instrument.
"Why despair?" she went on, with a shrug that suffi-
ciently expressed her indifference as to the prisoner's end.
"This suicide will delight Lucien's two enemies, Madame
d'Espard and her cousin, the Comtesse du Chatelet. Madame
d'Espard is on the best terms with the Keeper of the Seals ;
through her you can get an audience of His Excellency and
tell him all the secrets of this business. Then, if the head of
the law is on your side, what have you to fear from the presi-
dent of your Court or the public prosecutor?"
"But, Monsieur and Madame de Serizy?" cried the poor
man. "Madame de Serizy is gone mad, I tell you, and her
madness is my doing, they say."
"Well, if she is out of her mind, 0 judge devoid of judg-
ment," said Madame Camusot, laughing, "she can do you no
harm. — Come, tell me all the incidents of the day."
"Bless me !" said Camusot, "just as I had cross-questioned
the unhappy youth, and he had deposed that the self-styled
Spanish priest is really Jacques Collin, the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy sent me a note by a ser-
vant begging me not to examine him. It was all over ! "
"But you must have lost your head !" said Amelie. "What
was to prevent you, being so sure as you are of your clerk's
fidelity, from calling Lueien back, reassuring him cleverly,
and revisinff the examination?"
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 5
"Why, you are as bad as Madame de Serizy; you laugh
justice to scorn," said Camusot, who was incapable of flouting
his profession. "Madame de Serizy seized the minutes and
threw them into the fire."
"That is the right sort of woman ! Bravo !" cried Madame
Camusot.
"Madame de Serizy declared she would sooner see the
Palais blown up than leave a young man who had enjoyed the
favors of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and her own to stand
at the bar of a Criminal Court by the side of a convict !"
"But, Camusot," said Amelie, unable to suppress a superior
smile, "your position is splendid "
"Ah ! yes, splendid !"
"You did your duty."
"But all wrong ; and in spite of the Jesuitical advice of
Monsieur de Granville, who met me on the Quai Malaquais."
"This morning !"
"This morning."
"At what hour ?"
"At nine o'clock."
"Oh, Camusot !" cried Amelie, clasping and wringing her
hands, "and I am always imploring you to be constantly on
the alert. — Good heavens ! it is not a man, but a barrow-load
of stones that I have to drag on ! — Why, Camusot, your public
prosecutor was waiting for you. — He must have given you
some warning."
"Yes indeed "
"And you failed to understand him ! If you are so deaf, ^
you will indeed be an examining judge all your life without ^
any knowledge whatever of the question. — At any rate, have
sense enough to listen to me," she went on, silencing her hus-
band, who was about to speak. "You think the matter is done
for?" she asked.
Camusot looked at his wife as a country bumpkin looks at
a conjurer.
"If the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy
are compromised, you will find them both ready to patronize
6 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
you," said Amelie. "'Madame de Serizy will get you admis-
sion to the Keeper of the Seals, and you will tell him the
secret history of the affair ; then he will amuse the King with
the story, for sovereigns always wish to see the wrong side of
the tapestry and to know the real meaning of the events the
public stare at open-mouthed. Henceforth there will be no
cause to fear either the public prosecutor or Monsieur de
Serizy."
"What a treasure such a wife is !" cried the lawyer, pluck-
ing up courage. "After all, I have unearthed Jacques Collin ;
I shall send him to his account at the Assize Court and un-
mask his crimes. Such a trial is a triumph in the career of an
examining judge !"
"Camusot," Amelie began, pleased to see her husband rally
from the moral and physical prostration into which he had
been thrown by Lucien's suicide, "the President told you that
you had blundered to the wrong side. Xow you are blunder-
ing as much to the other — you are losing your way again, my
dear."
The magistrate stood up, looking at his wife with a stupid
stare.
"The King and the Keeper of the Seals will be glad, no
doubt, to know the truth of this business, and at the same
time much annoyed at seeing the lawyers on the Liberal side
dragging important persons to the bar of opinion and of the
Assize Court by their special pleading — such people as the
Maufrigneuses, the Serizys, and the Grandlieus, in short, all
who are directly or indirectly mixed up with this case."
"They are all in it ; I have them all !" cried Camusot.
And Camusot walked up and down the room like Sganarelle
on the stage when he is trying to get out of a scrape.
"Listen, Amelie," said he, standing in front of his wife.
"An incident recurs to my mind, a trifle in itself, but, in my
position, of vital importance.
"Realize, my dear, that this Jacques Collin is a giant of
cunning, of dissimulation, of deceit. — He is — what shall I
sav ? — the Cromwell of the hulks I — I never met such a scoun-
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 7
drel ; he almost took me in. — But in examining a criminal,
a little end of thread leads you to find a ball, is a clue to the
investigation of the darkest consciences and obscurest facts. —
When Jacques Collin saw me turning over the letters seized in
Lucien de Eubempre's lodgings, the villain glanced at them
with the evident intention of seeing whether some particular
packet were among them, and he allowed himself to give a
visible expression of satisfaction. This look, as of a thief
valuing his booty, this movement, as of a man in danger
saying to himself, 'My weapons are safe,' betrayed a world of
things.
"Only you women, besides us and our examinees, can in a
single flash epitomize a whole scene, revealing trickery as
complicated as safety-locks. Volumes of suspicion may thus
be communicated in a second. It is terrifying — life or death
lies in a wink.
"Said I to myself, 'The rascal has more letters in his hands
than these !' — Then the other details of the case filled my
mind ; I overlooked the incident, for I thought I should have
my men face to face, and clear up this point afterwards.
But it may be considered as quite certain that Jacques Collin,
after the fashion of such wretches, has hidden in some safe
place the most compromising of the young fellow's letters,
adored as he was by "
"And yet you are afraid, Camusot? Wh}^ you will be
President of the Supreme Court much sooner than I ex-
pected !" cried Madame Camusot, her face beaming. "Now,
then, you must proceed so as to give satisfaction to everybod}',
for the matter is looking so serious that it might quite possi-
bly be snatched from us. — Did they not take the proceedings
out of Popinot's hands to place them in ^^ours when Madame
d'Espard tried to get a Commission in Lunacy to incapacitate
her husband ?" she added, in reply to her husband's gesture of
astonishment. "Well, then, might not the public prosecutor,
who takes such keen interest in the honor of Monsieur and
Madame de Serizy, carry the case to the Upper Court and get
a councillor in his interest to open a fresh inquiry?"
8 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Bless me, my dear, where did j'ou study criminal law?"
cried Camusot. "You know everything; you can give me
points."
"Why, do yoii believe that, by to-morrow morning, Mon-
sieur de Granville will not have taken fright at the possible
line of defence that might be adopted by some liberal advo-
cate whom Jacques Collin would manage to secure; for law-
yers will be ready to pay him to place the case in their hands !
— And those ladies know their danger quite as well as you do
— not to say better; they will put themselves under the pro-
tection of the public prosecutor, who already sees their fam-
ilies unpleasantly close to the prisoner's bench, as a conse-
quence of the coalition between this convict and Lucien de
Rubempre, betrothed to Mademoiselle de Grandlieu — Lucien,
Esther's lover, Madame de Maufrigneuse's former lover, Ma-
dame de Serizy's darling. So you must conduct the affair in
such a way as to conciliate the favor of your public prosecutor,
the gratitude of Monsieur de Serizy, and that of the Marquise
d'Espard and the Comtesse du Chatelet, to reinforce j\Iadame
de Maufrigneuse's influence by that of the Grandlieus, and to
gain the complimentary approval of your President.
"I will undertake to deal with the ladies — d'Espard, de
Maufrigneuse, and de Grandlieu.
"You must go to-morrow morning to see the public prose-
cutor. Monsieur de Granville is a man who does not live with
his wife ; for ten years he had for his mistress a Mademoiselle
de Bellefeuille, who bore him illegitimate children — didn't
she ? Well, such a magistrate is no saint ; he is a man like any
other ; he can be won over ; he must give a hold somewhere ;
you must discover the weak spot and flatter him ; ask his ad-
vice, point out the dangers attending the case; in short, try
to get him into the same boat, and you will be "
"I ought to kiss your footprints !" exclaimed Camusot, in-
terrupting his wife, putting his arm round her, and pressing
her to his heart. "Amelie, you have saved me !"
"I brought you in tow from Aleneon to Mantes, and from
Mantes to the Metropolitan Court," replied Amelie. "Well,
t^ VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 9
well, be quite easy ! — I intend to be called Madame la Presi-
dente within five years' time. But, my dear, pray always
think over everything a long time before you come to any
determination. A judge's business is not that of a fireman;
your papers are never in a blaze, you have plenty of time to
think ; so in your place blunders are inexcusable."
"The whole strength of my position lies in identifying the
sham Spanish priest with Jacques Collin," the judge said,
after a long pause. "When once that identity is established,
even if the Bench should take .the credit of the whole affair,
that will still be an ascertained fact which no magistrate,
judge, or councillor can get rid of. I shall do like the boys
who tie a tin kettle to a cat's tail; the inquiry, whoever car-
ries it on, will make Jacques Collin's tin kettle clank."
"Bravo !" said Amelie.
"And the public prosecutor would rather come to an under-
standing with me than with any one else, since I am the only
man who can remove the Damocles' sword that hangs over the
heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
"Only you have no idea how hard it will be to achieve that
magnificent result. Just now, when I was with Monsieur de
Granville in his private office, we agreed, he and I, to take
Jacques Collin at his own valuation — a canon of the Chapter
of Toledo, Carlos Herrera. We consented to recognize his
position as a diplomatic envoy, and allow him to be claimed
by the Spanish Embassy. It was in consequence of this plan
that I made out the papers by which Lucien de Eubempre
was released, and revised the minutes of the examinations,
washing the prisoners as white as snow.
"To-morrow, Eastignac, Bianchon, and some others are
to be confronted with the self-styled Canon of Toledo; they
will not recognize him as Jacques Collin who was arrested in
their presence ten years since in a cheap boarding-house,
where they knew him under the name of Vautrin."
There was a short silence, while Madame Camusot sat
thinking.
"Are you sure your man is Jacques Collin ?" she asked.
10 A COURTESAN'S I>IFE
"Positive," said the lawyer, "and so is the public prose-
cutor/'
*^Vell, then, try to make some exposure at the Palais de
Justice without showing your claws too much under your
furred cat's paws. If your man is still in the secret cells,
go straight to the Governor of the Conciergerie and contrive
to have the convict publicly identified. Instead of behaving
like a child, act like the ministers of police under despotic
governments, who invent conspiracies against the monarch to
have the credit of discovering them and making themselves
indispensable. Put three families in danger to have the glory
of rescuing them."
"That luckiW reminds me I" cried Camusot. "My brain is
so bewildered that I had quite forgotten an important point.
The instructions to place Jacques Collin in a private room
were taken by Coquart to Monsieur Gault, the Governor of
the prison. Now, Bibi-Lupin, Jacques Collin's great enemy,
has taken steps to have three criminals, who know the man,
transferred from La Force to the Conciergerie ; if he appears
in the prison-yard to-morrow, a terrific scene is expected "
"Why?"
"Jacques Collin, my dear, was treasurer of the money
owned by the prisoners in the hulks, amounting to consider-
able sums ; now, he is supposed to have spent it all to maintain
the deceased Lucien in luxury, and he will be called to account.
There will be such a battle, Bibi-Lupin tells me, as will re-
quire the intervention of the warders, and the secret will be
-out. Jacques Collin's life is in danger.
"Now, if I get to the Palais early enough I may record the
evidence of identity."
"Oh, if only his creditors should take him off your hands !
You would be thought such a clever fellow ! — Do not go to
Monsieur de Granville's room ; wait for him in his Court with
that formidable great gun. It is a loaded cannon turned on
the three most important families of the Court and Peerage.
Be bold: propose to Monsieur de Granville that he should
relieve you of Jacques Collin by transferring him to La Force,
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 11
where the convicts know how to deal with those who betray
them.
"I will go to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who will take
me to the Grandlieus. Possibly I may see Monsieur de
Serizy. Trust me to sound the alarm everywhere. Above all,
send me a word we will agree upon to let me know if the
Spanish priest is officially recognized as Jacques Collin. Get
your business at the Palais over by two o'clock, and I will have
arranged for you to have an interview with the Keeper of the
Seals ; perhaps I may find him with the Marquise d'Espard."
Camusot stood squarely with a look of admiration that
made his knowing wife smile.
"Now, come to dinner and be cheerful," said she in conclu-
sion. "Why, you see ! We have been only two years in Paris,
and here you are on the highroad to be made Councillor be-
fore the end of the year. From that to the Presidency of a
Court, my dear, there is no gulf but what some political ser-
vice may bridge."
This conjugal sitting shows how greatly the deeds and
the lightest words of Jacques Collin, the lowest personage in
this drama, involved the honor of the families among whom
he had planted his now dead protege.
At the Conciergerie Lucien's death and Madame de Serizy's
incursion had produced such a block in the wheels of the
machinery that the Governor had forgotten to remove the
sham priest from his dungeon-cell.
Though more than one instance is on record of the death
of a prisoner during his preliminary examination, it was a
sufficiently rare event to disturb the warders, the clerk, and
the Governor, and hinder their working with their usual
serenity. At the same time, to them the important fact was
not the handsome young fellow so suddenly become a corpse,
but the breakage of the wrought-iron bar of the outer prison
gate by the frail hands of a fine lady. And indeed, as soon as
the public prosecutor and Comte Octave de Bauvan had gone
off with Monsieur de Serizy and his unconscious wife, the
12 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Governor, clerk, and turnkeys gathered round the gate, after
letting out Monsieur Lebrun, the prison doctor, who had been
called in to certify to Lucien's death, in concert with the
"death doctor" of the district in which the unfortunate youth
had been lodging.
In Paris, the "death doctor"' is the medical officer whose
duty it is in each district to register deaths and certify to their
causes.
With the rapid insight for which he was known, Monsieur
de Granville had judged it necessary, for the honor of the
families concerned, to have the certificate of Lucien's death
deposited at the Mairie of the district in which the Quai Mala-
quais lies, as the deceased had resided there, and to have the
body carried from his lodgings to the Church of Saint-Ger-
main des Pres, where the service was to be held. Monsieur de
Chargebcfiuf, Monsieur de Granville's private secretary, had
orders to this effect. The body was to be transferred from
the prison during the night. The secretary was desired to go
at once and settle matters at the Mairie with the parish au-
thorities and with the official undertakers. Thus, to the
world in general, Lucien would have died at liberty in his
own lodgings, the funeral would start from thence, and his
friends would be invited there for the ceremony.
So, when Camusot, his mind at ease, was sitting down to
dinner with his ambitious better-half, the Governor of the
Conciergerie and Monsieur Lebrun, the prison doctor, were
standing outside the gate bewailing the fragility of iron bars
and the strength of ladies in love.
"aSTo one knows," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "what
an amount of nervous force there is in a man wound up to
the highest pitch of passion. Dynamics and mathematics
have no formulas or symbols to express that power. Why,
only yesterday, I witnessed an experiment which gave me a
shudder, and which accounts for the terrible physical strength
put forth just now by that little woman."
"Tell me about it," said Monsieur Gault, "for I am so fool-
ish as to take an interest in magnetism ; I do not believe in it,
but it mystifies me."
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 13
"A physician who magnetizes — for there are men among
ns who believe in magnetism," Lebrun went on, "offered to
experiment on me in proof of a phenomenon that he described
and I doubted. Curious to see with my own eyes one of the
strange states of nervous tension by which the existence of
magnetism is demonstrated, I consented.
"These are the facts. — I should very much like to know
what our College of Medicine would say if each of its mem-
bers in turn were subjected to this influence, which leaves no
loophole for incredulity.
"My old friend — this doctor," said Doctor Lebrun paren-
thetically, "is an old man persecuted for his opinions since
Mesmers time by all the faculty ; he is seventy or seventy-two
years of age, and his name is^ouyard.-^^ At the present day
he is the patriarchal representative of the theory of animal
magnetism. This good man regards me as a son; I owe my
training to him. — Well, this worthy old Bouvard it was who
proposed to prove to me that nerve-force put in motion by the
magnetizer was, not indeed infinite, for man is under immuta-
ble laws, but a power acting like other powers of nature whose
elemental essence escapes our observation.
" 'For instance,' said he, 'if you place your hand in that of
a somnambulist who, when awake, can press it only up to a
certain average of tightness, you will see that in the somnam-
bulistic state — as it is stupidly termed — his fingers can clutch
like a vise screwed up by a blacksmith.' — Well, monsieur, I
placed my hand in that of a woman, not asleep, for Bouvard
rejects the word, but isolated, and when the old man bid her
squeeze my wrist as long and as tightly as she could, I begged
him to stop when the blood was almost bursting from my
finger tips. Look, you can see the mark of her clutch, which
I shall not lose for these three months."
"The deuce !" exclaimed Monsieur Gault, as he saw a band
of bruised flesh, looking like the sear of a burn.
"My dear Gault," the doctor went on, "if my wrist had
been gripped in an iron manacle screwed tight by a locksmith,
I should not have felt the bracelet of metal so hard as that
14 A COURTESANS LIFE
woman's fingers ; her hand was of unyielding steel, and I am
convinced that she could have crushed my bones and broken
my hand from the wrist. The pressure, beginning almost in-
sensibly, increased without relaxing, fresh force being con-
stantly added to the former grip ; a tourniquet could not have
been more effectual than that hand used as an instrument of
torture. — To me, therefore, it seems proven that under the
influence of passion, which is the will concentrated on one
point and raised to an incalculable power of animal force,
as the different varieties of electric force are also, man may
direct his whole vitalit}^, whether for attack or resistance, to
one of his organs. — N^ow, this little lady, under the stress of
her despair, had concentrated her vital force in her hands."'
"She must have a good deal too, to break a wrought-iron
bar," said the chief warder, with a shake of the head.
"There was a flaw in it,*' Monsieur Gault observed.
"For my part," said the doctor, "I dare assign no limits
to nervous force. And indeed it is by this that mothers, to
save their children, can magnetize lions, climb, in a fire, along
a parapet where a cat would not venture, and endure the tor-
ments that sometimes attend childbirth. In this lies the
secret of the attempts made by convicts and prisoners to re-
gain their liberty. The extent of our vital energies is as yet
unknown; they are part of the energy of nature itself, and
we draw them from unknown reservoirs."
"Monsieur," said the warder in an undertone to the Gov-
ernor, coming close to him as he was escorting Doctor Ijcbrun
as far as the outer gates of the Conciergerie, "jSTiynber 2 in
the secret cells says he is ill, and needs the doctor ; he declares
he is dying," added the turnkey.
"Indeed," said the Governor.
"His breath rattles in his throat," replied the man.
"It is five o'clock," said the doctor ; "I have l)ad no dinner.
But, after all, here I am at hand. Come, let us see."
"Number 2, as it happens, is the Spanish priest suspected
of being Jacques Collin," said Monsieur Gault to the doctor,
"and one of the persons suspected of the crime in which that
poor young man was implicated."
VAUTRIN'S TvAST AVATAR 15
"I saw him. this morning," replied the doctor. "Monsieur
Camusot sent for me to give evidence as to the state of the
rascal's health, and I may assure you that he is perfectly well,
and could make a fortune by playing the part of Hercules in
a troupe of athletes."
"Perhaps he wants to kill himself too," said Monsieur
Gault. "Let us both go down to the cells together, for I
ought to go there if only to transfer him to an upper room.
Monsieur Camusot has given orders to mitigate this anony-
mous gentleman's confinement."
Jacques Collin, known as Trompe-la-Mort in the world of
the hulks, who must henceforth be called only by his real
name, had gone through terrible distress of mind since, after
hearing Camusot's order, he had been taken back to the under-
ground cell — an anguish such as he had never before known
in the course of a life diversified by many crimes, by three
escapes, and two sentences at the Assizes. And is there not
something monstrously fine in the dog-like attachment shown
to the man he had made his friend by this wretch in whom
were concentrated all the life, the powers, the spirit, and the
passions of the hulks, who Was, so to speak, their highest ex-
pression ?
Wicked, infamous, and in so many ways horrible, this abso-
lute worship of his idol makes him so truly interesting that
this Study, long as it is already, would seem incomplete and
cut short if the close of this criminal career did not come as a
sequel to Lucien de Rubempre's end. The little spaniel being
dead, we want to know whether his terrible playfellow the
lion will live on.
In real life, in society, every event is so inevitably linked
to other events, that one cannot occur without the rest. The
water of the great river forms a sort of fluid floor; not a
wave, however rebellious, however high it may toss itself, but
its powerful crest must sink to the level of the mass of waters,
stronger by the momentum of its course than the revolt of the
surges it bears with it.
And just as you watch the current flow, seeing in it a con-
16 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
fused sheet of images, so perhaps you would like to measure
the pressure exerted by social energy on the vortex called
Vautrin ; to see how far away the rebellious eddy will be car-
ried ere it is lost, and what the end will be of this really dia-
bolical man, human still by the power of loving — so hardly
can that heavenly grace perish, even in the most cankered
heart.
This wretched convict, embodying the poem that has smiled
on many a poet's fancy — on Moore, on Lord Byron, on Ma-
thurin, on Canalis — the demon who has drawn an angel down
to hell to refresh him with dews stolen from heaven, — this
Jacques Collin will be seen, by the reader who has understood
that iron soul, to have sacrificed his own life for seven years
past. His vast powers, absorbed in Lucien, acted solely for
Lucien ; he lived in his progress, his loves, his ambitions. To
him Lucien was his own soul made visible.
It was Trompe-la-Mort who dined with the Grandlieus,
stole into ladies" boudoirs, and loved Esther by proxy. In
fact, in Lucien he saw Jacques Collin, young, handsome,
noble, and rising to the dignity of an ambassador.
Trompe-la-]\Iort had realized the German superstition of a
doppelganger -hj means of a spiritual paternity, a phenome-
non which will be quite intelligible to those women who have
ever truly loved, who have felt their soul merge in that of the
man they adore, who have lived his life, whether noble or
infamous, happy or unhappy, obscure or brilliant ; who, in
defiance of distance, have felt a pain in their leg if he were
wounded in his ; who if he fought a duel have been aware of
it ; and who, to put the matter in a nutshell, did not need to
be told he was unfaithful to know it.
As he went back to his cell, Jacques Collin said to himself,
"The boy is being examined."
And he shivered — he who thought no more of killing a
man than a laborer does of drinking.
"Has he been able to see his mistresses?" he wondered.
"Has my aunt succeeded in catching those damned females?
Have these Duchesses and Countesses bestirred themselves
VATTTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 17
and prevented his being examined ? Has Lncien had my in-
structions? And if ill-luck will have it that he is cross-
questioned, how will he carry it ofE? Poor boy, and I have
brought him to this ! It is that rascal Paccard and that
sneak Europe who have caused all this rumpus by collaring
the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs for the certificate
Nucingen gave Esther. That precious pair tripped us up at
the last step ; but I will make them pay dear for their pranks. q-
"One day more and Lucien would have been a rich man; ^ .
he might have married his Clotilde de Grandlieu. — Then tlie (^ '
boy would have been all my own ! — And to think that our iate--^ o
depends on a look, on a blush of Lucien's under Camusot's
eye, who sees everything, and has all a judge's wits about him !
For when he showed me the letters we tipped each other a
wink in which we took each other's measure, and he guessed
that I can make Lucien's lady-loves fork out."
This soliloquy lasted for three hours. His torments were
so great that they were too much for that frame of iron and
vitriol ; Jacques Collin, whose brain felt on fire with insanity,
suffered such fearful thirst that he unconsciously drank up
all the water contained in one of the pails with which the
cell was supplied, forming, with the bed, all its furniture.
"If he loses his head, what will become of him? — for the
poor child has not Theodore's tenacity," said he to himself, as
he lay down on the camp-bed — like a bed in a guard-room.
A word must here be said about this Theodore, remembered
by Jacques Collin at such a critical moment. Theodore Calvi,
a young Corsican, imprisoned for life at the age of eighteen
for eleven murders, thanks to influential interference paid for
with vast sums, had been made the fellow convict of Jacques
Collin, to whom he was chained, in 1819 and 1820. Jacques
Collin's last escape, one of his finest inventions — for he had
got out disguised as a gendarme leading Theodore Calvi as he
was, a convict called before the commissary of police — had
been effected in the seaport of Rochefort, where the convicts
die by dozens, and where, it was hoped, these two danger-
IS A COFRTESAX'S lAFK
>'
>^'
ous rascals would have ended their days. Though they es-
caped together, the difficulties of their flight had forced them
to separate. Theodore was caught and restored to the hulks.
After getting to Spain and metamorphosing himself into
Don Carlos Herrera, Jacques Collin was on his way to look
for his Corsican at Eochefort, when he met Lucien on the
banks of the Charente. The hero of the banditti of the Cor-
sican scrub, to whom Trompe-la-Mort owed his knowledge of
Italian, was of course sacrificed to the new idol.
Indeed, a life with Lucien, a youth innocent of all crime,
who had only minor sins on his conscience, dawned on him
as bright and glorious as a summer sun ; while with Theodore,
Jacques Collin could look forward to no end but the scaffold
after a career of indispensable crimes.
The thought of disaster as a result of Lucien's weakness —
for his experience of an underground cell would certainly
have turned his brain — took vast proportions in Jacques Col-
lin's mind; and, contemplating the probabilities of such a
misfortune, the unhappy man felt his eyes fill with tears, a
phenomenon that had been utterly unknown to him since his
earliest childhood.
"I must be in a furious fever,'' said he to himself; "and
perhaps if I send for the doctor and offer him a handsome
sum, he will put me in communication with Lucien."
At this moment the turnkey brought in his dinner.
"It is quite useless, my boy; I cannot eat. Tell the gov-
ernor of this prison to send the doctor to see me. I am very
bad, and I believe my last hour has come."
Hearing the guttural rattle that accompanied these words,
the warder bowed and went. Jacques Collin clung wildly to
this hope ; but when he saw the doctor and the governor come
in together, he perceived that the attempt was abortive, and
coolly awaited, the upshot of the visit, holding out his wrist
for the doctor to feel his pulse.
"The Abbe is feverish," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault,
"but it is the type of fever we always find in inculpated pris-
VAUTRINS LAST AYATAR 19
oners — and to me," he added, in the governor's ear, "it is
always a sign of some degree of guilt."
Just then the governor, to whom the public prosecutor had
intrusted Lucien's letter to be given to Jacques Collin, left
the doctor and the prisoner together under the guard of the
warder, and went to fetch the letter.
"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, seeing the warder outside
the door, and not understanding why the governor had left
them, "I should think nothing of thirty thousand francs if I
might send five lines to Lucien de Rubempre."
"I will not rob you of your money," said Doctor Lebrun ;
"no one in this world can ever communicate with him
again-
'No one?" said the prisoner in amazement. "Why?"
"He has hanged himself "
No tigress robbed of her whelps ever startled an Indian
jungle with a yell so fearful as that of Jacques Collin, who
rose to his feet as a tiger rears to spring, and fired a glance at
the doctor as scorching as the flash of a falling thunderbolt.
Then he fell back on the bed, exclaiming : >
"Oh, my son J" ^;^
"Poor maiiT' said the doctor, moved by this terrific convul-
sion of nature.
In fact, the first explosion gave way to such utter collapse,
that the words, "Oh, my son," were but a murmur.
"Is this one going to die in our hands too ?" said the turn-
key.
"No ; it is impossible !" Jacques Collin went on, raising
himself and looking at the two witnesses of the scene with a
dead, cold eye. "You are mistaken ; it is not Lucien ; you did
not see. A man cannot hang himself in one of these cells.
Look — ^how could I hang myself here ? All Paris shall answer
to me for that boy's life ! God owes it to me."
The warder and the doctor were amazed in their turn —
they, whom nothing had astonished for many a long day.
On seeing the governor, Jacques Collin, crushed by the very
violence of this outburst of grief, seemed somewhat calmer.
20 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Here is a letter which the public prosecutor placed in my
hands for you, with permission to give it you sealed," said
Monsieur Gault.
"From Lucien?" said Jacques Collin.
"Yes, monsieur."
"Is not that young man "
"He is dead," said the governor. "Even if the doctor had
been on the spot, he would, unfortunately, have been too late.
iThe young man died — there — in one of the rooms "
"May I see him with my own eyes ?" asked Jacques Collin
timidly. "Will you allow a father to weep over the body of
his son?"
"You can, if you like, take his room, for I have orders to
remove you from these cells ; you are no longer in such close
confinement, monsieur."
The prisoner's eyes, from which all light and warmth had
fled, turned slowly from the governor to the doctor; Jacques
Collin was examining them, fearing some trap, and he was
afraid to go out of the cell.
"If you wish to see the body," said Lebrun, "you have no
time to lose ; it is to be carried away to-night."
"If you have children, gentlemen," said Jacques Collin,
"you will understand my state of mind; I hardly know what
I am doing. This blow is worse to me than death ; but you
cannot know what I am saying. Even if you are fathers, it
is only after a fashion — I am a mother too — I — I am going
mad— I feel it !"
By going through certain passages which open only to the
governor, it is possible to get very quickly from the cells to the
private rooms. The two sets of rooms are divided by an un-
derground corridor formed of two massive walls supporting
the vault over which the Galerie Marchande, as it is called, is
built. So Jacques Collin, escorted by the warder, who took
his arm, preceded by the governor, and followed by the doctor,
in a few minutes reached the cell where Lucien was lying
stretched on the bed.
On seeing the body, he threw himself upon it, seizing it in
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 21
a desperate embrace with a passion and impulse that made
these spectators shudder.
"There," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "that is an in-
stance of what I was telling you. You see that man clutching
the body, and you do not know what a corpse is; it is
stone "
"Leave me alone !" said Jacques Collin in a smothered-
voice; "I have not long to look at him. They will take him
away to "
He paused at the word "bury him."
"You will allow me to have some relic of my dear boy !
Will you be so kind as to cut off a lock of his hair for me,
monsieur," he said to the doctor, "for I cannot "
"He was certainly his son," said Lebrun.
"Do you think so?" replied the governor in a meaning
tone, which made the doctor thoughtful for a few minutes.
The governor gave orders that the prisoner was to be left
in this cell, and that some locks of hair should be cut for the
self-styled father before the body should be removed.
At half-past five in the month of May it is easy to read a
letter in the Conciergerie in spite of the iron bars and the
close wire trellis that guard the windows. So Jacques Col-
lin read the dreadful letter while he still held Lueien's hand.
The man is not known who can hold a lump of ice for ten
minutes tightly clutched in the hollow of his hand. The cold
penetrates to the very life-springs with mortal rapidity. But
the effect of that cruel chill, acting like a poison, is as nothing
to that which strikes to the soul from the cold, rigid hand of
the dead thus held. Thus Death speaks to Life ; it tells many
dark secrets which kill many feelings ; for in matters of feel-
ing is not change death ?
As we read through once more, with Jacques Collin,
Lueien's last letter, it will strike us as being what it was to
this man — a cup of poison: —
22 ... A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"To the Ahhe Carlos H err era.
"My dear Abbe, — I have had only benefits from you, and
I have betrayed you. This involuntary ingratitude is killing
me, and when you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist.
You are not here now to save me.
"You had given me full liberty, if I should find it advan-
tageous, to destroy you by flinging you on the ground like a
cigar-end; but I have ruined you by a blunder. To escape
from a difficulty, deluded by a clever question from the ex-
amining judge, your son by adoption and grace went over to
the side of those who aim at killing you at any cost, and in-
sist on proving an identity which I know to be impossible,
between you and a French villain. All is said.
"Between a man of your calibre and me — me of whom you
tried to make a greater man than I am capable of being — no
foolish sentiment can come at the moment of final parting.
You hoped to make me powerful and famous, and you have
thrown me into the gulf of suicide — that is all. I have long
heard the broad pinions of that vertigo beating over my head.
"As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain
and the posterity of Abel. In the great human drama Cain
is in opposition. You are descended from Adam through that
line, in which the devil still fans the fire of which the first
spark was flung on Eve. Among the demons of that pedigree,
from time to time we see one of stupendous power, summing
up every form of human energy, and resembling the fevered
beasts of the desert, whose vitality demands the vast spaces
they find there. Such men are as dangerous as lions would
be in the heart of Normandy ; they must have their prey, and
they devour common men and crop the money of fools. Their
sport is so dangerous, that at last they kill the humble dog
whom they have taken for a companion and made an idol of.
"When it is God's will, these mysterious beings may be a
Moses, an Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but
when He leaves a generation of these stupendous tools to rust
at the bottom of the ocean, they are no more than a Pugat-
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 23
scheff, a Fouche, a Louvel, or the Abbe Carlos Herrera.
Gifted with immense power over tenderer souls, they entrap
them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine — in its way.
It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that fasci-
nates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men
like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them.
You have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my
share of existence ; so I may very well take my head out of the
Gordian knot of your policy, and slip it into the running knot
of my cravat.
"To repair the mischief I have done you, I am forwarding
to the public prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You
will know how to take advantage of this document.
"In virtue of a Will formally drawn up, restitution will be
made, Monsieur I'Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your
Order which you so imprudently devoted to my use as a re-
sult of your paternal affection for me.
"And so farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
Corruption ; farewell to you, who, if started on the right road,
might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Eiche-
lieu ! You have kept your promises. I find myself once more
just as I was on the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by
your help, the enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately,
it is not now in the waters of my native place that I shall
drown the errors of a boy, but in the Seine, and my hole is a
cell in the Conciergerie.
"Do not regret me : my contempt for you is as great as my J
admiration.
"LuciEN."
A little before one in the morning, when the men came to
fetch away the body, they found Jacques Collin kneeling by
the bed, the letter on the floor, dropped, no doubt, as a suicide
drops the pistol that has shot him ; but the unhappy man still
held Lucien's hand between his own, and was praying to God.
On seeing this man^ the porters paused for a moment, for
he looked like one of those stone images, kneeling to all eter-
24 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
nity on a mediaeval tomb, the work of some stone-carver's
genius. The sham priest, with eyes as bright as a tiger's, but
stiffened into supernatural rigidit)^, so impressed the men
that they gently bid him rise.
"Why?" he asked mildly. The audacious Trompe-la-Mort
was as meek as a child.
The governor pointed him out to Monsieur de Chargebceuf ;
and he, respecting such grief, and believing that Jacques Col-
lin was indeed the priest he called himself, explained the
orders given by Monsieur de Grranville with regard to the
funeral service and arrangements, showing that it was abso-
lutely necessary that the body should be transferred to
Lucien's lodgings, Quai Malaquais, where the priests were
waiting to watch by it for the rest of the night.
"It is worthy of that gentleman's well-known magnan-
imity," said Jacques Collin sadly. "Tell him, monsieur,
that he may rely on my gratitude. Yes, I am in a position
to do him great service. Do not forget these words ; they are
of the utmost importance to him.
"Oh, monsieur! strange changes come over a man's spirit
when for seven hours he has wept over such a son as he
And I shall see him no more !"
After gazing once more at Lucien with an expression of a
mother bereft of her child's remains, Jacques Collin sank in
a heap. As he saw Lucien's body carried away, he uttered a
groan that made the men hurry off. The public prosecutor's
private secretary and the governor of the prison had already
made their escape from the scene.
What had become of that iron spirit ; of the decision which
was a match in swiftness for the eye ; of the nature in which
thought and action flashed forth together like one flame ; of
the sinews hardened by three spells of labor on the hulks, and
bv three escapes, the muscles which had acquired the metallic
temper of a savage's limbs? Iron will yield to a certain
amount of hammering or persistent pressure ; its impenetrable
molecules, purified and made homogeneous by man. may be-
come disintegrated, and without being in a state of fusion the
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 25
metal has lost its power of resistance. Blacksmiths, lock-
smiths, tool-makers sometimes express this state by saying the
iron is retting, appropriating a word applied exclusively to
hemp, which is reduced to pulp and fibre by maceration.
Well, the human soul, or, if you will, the threefold powers of
body, heart, and intellect, under certain repeated shocks, get
into such a condition as fibrous iron. They too are disinte-
grated. Science and law and the public seek a thousand
causes for the terrible catastrophes on railways caused by the
rupture of an iron rail, that of Bellevue being a famous in-
stance; but no one has asked the evidence of the real experts
in such matters, the blacksmiths, who all say the same thing,
"The iron was stringy !" The danger cannot be foreseen.
Metal that has gone soft, and metal that has preserved its,
tenacity, both look exactly alike.
Priests and examining judges often find great criminals in
this state. The awful experiences of the Assize Court and the
"last toilet" commonly produce this dissolution of the nervous
system, even in the strongest natures. Then confessions are
blurted by the most firmly set lips; then the toughest hearts
break; and, strange to say, always at the moment when these
confessions are useless, when this weakness as of death
snatches from the man the mask of innocence which made
Justice uneasy — for it always is uneasy when the criminal
dies without confessing his crime.
Napoleon went through this collapse of every human power,
on the field of Waterloo.
At eight in the morning, when the warder of the better
cells entered the room where Jacques Collin was confined,
he found him pale and calm, like a man who has collected
all his strength by sheer determination.
"It is the hour for airing in the prison-yard," said the turn-
key; "you have not been out for three days; if you choose to
take air and exercise, you may."
Jacques Collin, lost in his absorbing thoughts, and taking
no interest in himself, regarding himself as a garment with
no body in it, a perfect rag, never suspected the trap laid for
2(> A COURTESAN'S LIFE
him by Bibi-Lupin, nor the importance attaching to his walk
in the prison-yard.
The unhappy man went out mechanically, along the cor-
ridor, by the cells built into the magnificent cloisters of the
Palace of the Kings, over which is the corridor Saint-Louis,
as it is called, leading to the various purlieus of the Court of
Appeals. This passage joins that of the better cells; and it
is worth noting that the cell in which Louvel was im-
prisoned, one of the most famous of the regicides, is the room
at the right angle formed by the junction of the two corridors.
Under the pretty room in the Tour Bonbec there is a spiral
staircase leading from the dark passage, and serving the
prisoners who are lodged in these cells to go up and down
on their way from or to the yard.
Every prisoner, whether committed for trial or already
sentenced, and the prisoners under suspicion who have been
reprieved from the closest cells — in short, every one in con-
finement in the Conciergerie takes exercise in this narrow
paved courtyard for some hours every day, especially the early
hours of summer mornings. This recreation ground, the
ante-room to the scaffold or the hulks on one side, on the other
still clings to the world through the gendarme, the examining
judge, and the Assize Court. It strikes a greater chill per-
haps than even the scaffold. The scaffold may be a pedestal
to soar to heaven from ; but the prison-yard is every infamy
on earth concentrated and unavoidable.
Whether at La Force or at Poissy, at Melun or at Sainte-
Pelagie, a prison-yard is a prison-yard. The same details
are exactly repeated, all but the color of the walls, their
height, and the space enclosed. So this Study of Manners
would be false to its name if it did not include an exact
description of this Pandemonium of Paris.
Under the mighty vaulting which supports the lower courts
arud the Court of Appeals there is, close to the fourth arch,
a stone slab, used by Saint-Louis, it is said, for the distribu-
tion of alms, and doing duty in our day as a counter for the
sale of eatables to the prisoners. So as soon as the prison-
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 27
yard is open to the prisoners, they gather round this stone
table, which displays such dainties as jail-birds desire —
brandy, rum, and the like.
The first two archways on that side of the yard, facing the
fine Byzantine corridor — the only vestige now of Saint-Louis'
elegant palace — form a parlor, where the prisoners and
their counsel may meet, to which the prisoners have access
through a formidable gateway — a double passage, railed off
by enormous bars, within the width of the third archway.
This double way is like the temporary passages arranged at
the door of a theatre to keep the line on occasions when a
great success brings a crowd. This parlor, at the very end
of the vast entrance-hall of the Conciergerie, and lighted by
loop-holes on the yard side, has lately been opened out towards
the back, and the opening filled with glass, so that the inter-
views of the lawyers with their clients are under supervision.
This innovation was made necessary by the too great fascina-
tions brought to bear by pretty women on their counsel.
Where will morality stop short? Such precautions are like
the ready-made sets of questions for self-examination, where
pure imaginations are defiled by meditating on unknown and
monstrous depravity. In this parlor, too, parents and friends
may be allowed by the authorities to meet the prisoners,
whether on remand or awaiting their sentence.
The reader may now understand what the prison-yard is
to the two hundred prisoners in the Conciergerie : their gar-
den— a garden without trees, beds, or flowers — in short, a
prison-yard. The parlor, and the stone of Saint-Louis, where
such food and liquor as are allowed are dispensed, are the only
possible means of communication with the outer world.
The hour spent in the yard is the only time when the
prisoner is in the open air or the society of his kind ; in other
prisons those who are sentenced for a term are brought to-
gether in workshops; but in the Conciergerie no occupation
is allowed, excepting in the privileged cells. There the
absorbing idea in every mind is the drama of the Assize
28 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Court, since the culprit comes only to be examined or to be
sentenced.
This yard is indeed terrible to behold; it cannot be
imagined, it must be seen.
In the first place, the assemblage, in a space forty metres
long by thirty wide, of a hundred condemned or suspected
criminals, does not constitute the cream of society. These
creatures, belonging for the most part to the lowest ranks,
are poorly clad; their countenances are base or horrible, for
a criminal from the upper sphere of society is, happily, a rare
exception. Peculation, forgery, or fradulent bankruptcy, the
only crimes that can bring decent folks so low, enjoy the
privilege of the better cells, and then the prisoner scarcely
ever quits it.
This promenade, bounded by fine but formidable blackened
walls, by a cloister divided up into cells, by fortifications on
the side towards the quay, by the barred cells of the better
class on the north, watched by vigilant warders, and filled
with a herd of criminals, all meanly suspicious of each other,
is depressing enough in itself ; and it becomes terrifying when
you find yourself the centre of all those eyes full of hatred,
curiosity, and despair, face to face with that degraded crew.
Not a gleam of gladness ! all is gloom — the place and the men.
All is speechless — the walls and men's consciences. To these
hapless creatures danger lies everywhere; excepting in the
case of an alliance as ominous as the prison where it was
formed, they dare not trust each other.
The police, all-pervading, poisons the atmosphere and
taints everything, even the hand-grasp of two criminals who
have been intimate. A convict who meets his most familiar
comrade does not know that he may not have repented and
have made a confession to save his life. This absence of con-
fidence, this dread of the narlc, mars the liberty, already so
illusory, of the prison-yard. The "nark" (in French, U
Mouton or le coqueur) is a spy who affects to be sentenced
for some serious offence, and whose skill consists in pretend-
ing to be a chum. The "chum," in thieves' slang, is a skilled
VATJTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 29
thief, a professional who has cut himself adrift from society,
and means to remain a thief all his days, and continues faith-
ful through thick and thin to the laws of the swell-mob.
Crime and madness have a certain resemblance. To see
the prisoners of the Conciergerie in the yard, or the madmen
in the garden of an asylum, is much the same thing. Pris-
oners and lunatics walk to and fro, avoiding each other, look-
ing up with more or less strange or vicious glances, accord-
ing to the mood of the moment, but never cheerful, never
grave; they know each other, or they dread each other. The
anticipation of their sentence, remorse, and apprehension
give all these men exercising, the anxious, furtive look of the
insane. Only the most consummate criminals have the au-
dacity that apes the quietude of respectability, the sincerity
of a clear conscience.
As men of the better class are few, and shame keeps the
few whose crimes have brought them within doors, the fre-
quenters of the prison-yard are for the most part dressed as
workmen. Blouses, long and short, and velveteen jackets pre-
ponderate. These coarse or dirty garments, harmonizing
with the coarse and sinister faces and brutal manner — some-
what subdued, indeed, by the gloomy reflections that weigh
on men in prison — everything, to the silence that reigns, con-
tributes to strike terror or disgust into the rare visitor who, by
high influence, has obtained the privilege, seldom granted,
of going over the Conciergerie.
Just as the sight of an anatomical museum, where foul
diseases are represented by wax models, makes the youth who
may be taken there more chaste and apt for nobler and purer
love, so the sight of the Conciergerie and of the prison-yard,
filled with men marked for the hulks or the scaffold or some
disgraceful punishment, inspires many, who might not fear
that Divine Justice whose voice speaks so loudly to the
conscience, with a fear of human justice ; and they come out
honest men for a long time after.
As the men M^ho were exercising in the prison-yard, when
30 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Trompe-la-Mort appeared there, were to be the actors in a
scene of crowning importance in the life of Jacques Collin,
it will be well to depict a few of the principal personages of
this sinister crowd.
Here, as everywhere when men are thrown together, here,
as at school even, force, physical and moral, wins the day.
Here, then, as on the hulks, crime stamps the man's rank.
Those whose head is doomed are the aristocracy. The prison-
yard, as may be supposed, is a school of criminal law, which
is far better learned there than at the Hall on the Place du
Pantheon.
A never-failing pleasantry is to rehearse the drama of the
Assize Court; to elect a president, a jury, a public prosecutor,
a counsel, and to go through the whole trial. This hideous
farce is played before almost every great trial. At this time
a famous case was proceeding in the Criminal Court, that of
the dreadful murder committed on the persons of Monsieur
and Madame Crottat, the notary's father and mother, retired
farmers who, as this horrible business showed, kept eight hun-
dred thousand francs in gold in their house.
One of the men concerned in this double murder was the
notorious Dannepont, known as la Pouraille, a released con-
vict, who for five years had eluded the most active search on
the part of the police, under the protection of seven or eight
different names. This villain's disguises were so perfect, that
he had served two years of imprisonment under the name of
Delsouq, who was one of his own disciples, and a famous thief,
though he never, in any of his achievements, went beyond
the jurisdiction of the lower Courts. La Pouraille had com-
mitted no less than three murders since his dismissal from
the hulks. The certainty that he would be executed, not less
than the large fortune he was supposed to have, made this
man an object of terror and admiration to his fellow-pris-
oners; for not a farthing of the stolen money had ever been
recovered. Even after the events of July 1830, some persons
may remember the terror caused in Paris by this daring crime,
worthy to compare in importance with the robbery of medals
VAUTRIN'S IvAST AVATAR 31
from the Public Library; for the unhappy tendency of our
age is to make a murder the more interesting in proportion ^
to the greater sum of money secured by it.
La Pouraille, a small, lean, dry man, with a face like a
ferret, forty-five years old, and one of the celebrities of the
prisons he had successively lived in since the age of nineteen,
knew Jacques Collin well ; how and why will be seen.
Two other convicts, brought with la Pouraille from La
Force within these twenty-four hours, had at once acknowl-
edged and made the whole prison-yard acknowledge the
supremacy of this past-master sealed to the scaffold. One of
these convicts, a ticket-of-leave man, named Selerier, alias
I'Auvergnat, Pere Ralleau, and le Rouleur, who in the sphere
known to the hulks as the swell-mob was called Fil-de-Soie
(or silken thread) — a nickname he owed to the skill with
which he slipped through the various perils of the business
— was an old ally of Jacques Collin's.
Trompe-la-Mort so keenly suspected Fil-de-Soie of playing
a double part, of being at once in the^ecfets of the swell-
mob and a spy paid by the police, that he had supposed him
to be the prime mover of his arrest in the Maison Vauquer in
1819 {Le Pere Goriot). Selerier, whom we must call Fil-de-
Soie, as we shall also call Dannepont la Pouraille, already;
guilty of evading surveillance, was concerned in certain well-
known robberies without bloodshed, which would certainly
take him back to the hulks for at least twenty years.
The other convict, named Riganson, and his kept woman,
known as la Biffe, were a most formidable couple, members
of the swell-mob. Riganson, on very distant terms with the
police from his earliest years, was nicknamed le Biffon.
Biffon was the male of la Biffe — for nothing is sacred to the
swell-mob. These fiends respect nothing, neither the law nor
religion, not even natural history, whose solemn nomencla-
ture, it is seen, is parodied by them.
Here a digression is necessary; for Jacques Collin's ap-
pearance in the prison-yard in the midst of his foes, as had
been so cleverly contrived by Bibi-Lupin and the examining
32 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
judge, and the strange scenes to ensue, would be incompre-
hensible and impossible without some explanation as to the
world of thieves and of the hulks, its laws, its manners, and,
above all, its language, its hideous figures of speech being in-
dispensable in this portion of my tale.
So, first of all, a few words must be said as to the vocabulary
of sharpers, pickpockets, thieves, and murderers, known as
Argot, or thieves' cant, which has of late been introduced into
literature with so much success that more than one word of
that strange lingo is familiar on the rosy lips of ladies, has
been heard in gilded boudoirs, and become the delight of
princes, who have often proclaimed themselves "done brown"
(floue) ! And it must be owned, to the surprise no doubt
of many persons, that no language is more vigorous or more
vivid than that of this underground world which, from the
beginnings of countries with capitals, has dwelt in cellars and
slums, in the third limbo of society everywhere {le troisieme
dessous, as the expressive and vivid slang of the theatres has
it). For is not the world a stage? Le troisieme dessous is
the lowest cellar under the stage at the Opera where the
machinery is kept and the men stay who work it, whence the
footlights are raised, the ghosts, the blue-devils shot up from
hell, and so forth.
Every word of this language is a bold ''metaphorjj ingenious
or horrible. A man's breeches are his kicks or trucks
{montante, a word that need not be explained). In this
language you do not sleep, you snooze, or doss {pioneer — and
note how vigorously expressive the word is of the sleep of the
hunted, weary, distrustful animal called a thief, which as
soon as it is in safety drops — rolls — into the gulf of deep
slumber so necessary under the mighty wings of suspicion
always hovering over it; a fearful sleep, like that of a wild
beast that can sleep, nay, and snore, and yet its ears are alert
with caution).
In this idiom everything is savage. The syllables which
begin or end the words are harsh and curiously startling. A
woman is a trip or a moll {une largue). And it is poetical
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 33
too: straw is la plume de Beauce, a farmyard feather bed.
The word midnight is paraphrased by twelve leads striking —
it makes one shiver ! Rincer une camhriole is to "screw the
shop," to rifle a room. What a feeble expression is to go to
bed in comparison with "to doss" {piausser, make a new
skin). What picturesque imagery! Work your dominoes
(jouer des dominos) is to eat ; how can men eat with the police
at their heels?
And this language is always growing; it keeps pace with
civilization, and is enriched with some new expression by
every fresh invention. The potato, discovered and introduced
by Louis XVI. and Parmentier, was at once dubbed in French
slang as the pig's orange {Orange a Cochons) [the Irish have
called them bog oranges]. Banknotes are invented; the
"mob" at once call them Flimsies (fafiots garoUs, from
"Garot," the name of the cashier whose signature they bear) .
Flimsy! (fafiot.) Cannot you hear the rustle of the thin
paper? The thousand franc-note is male flimsy (in
French), the five hundred franc-note is the female; and con-
victs will, you may be sure, find some whimsical name for the
hundred and two hundred franc-notes.
In 1790 Guillotin i'nvented, with humane intent, the ex-
peditious machine which solved all the difficulties involved
in the problem of capital punishment. Convicts and pris-
oners from the hulks forthwith investigated this contrivance,
standing as it did on the monarchical borderland of the old
system and the frontier of modern legislation ; they instantly 0- ^
gave it the name of VAbbaye de Monte-d-R egret. They
looked at the angle formed by the steel blade, and described
its action as reaping (faucher) ; and when it is remembered
that the hulks are called the meadow (le pre), philologists
must admire the inventiveness of these horrible vocables, as
Charles Nodier would have said.
The high antiquity of this kind of slang is also note-
worthy. A tenth of the words are of old Romanesque
origin, another tenth are the old Gaulish French of Rabelais.
Effondrer, to thrash a man, to give him what for ; otolondrer.
34 A COURTESANS I.IFB
to annoy or to ''spur" him; camhrioler, doing anything in a
room; auhert, money; Gironde, a beauty (the name of a river
of Languedoc) ; fouillousse, a pocket — a "cly" — are all French
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The word affe,
meaning life, is of the highest antiquity. From affe any-
thing that disturbs life is called affres (a rowing or scolding),
hence affreux, anything that troubles life.
About a hundred words are derived from the language of
Panurge, a name symbolizing the people, for it is derived
from two Greek words signifying All-working.
Science is changing the face of the world by constructing
railroads. In Argot the train is le roulant Yif, the Eattler.
The name given to the head while still on the shoulders
— la Sorhonnc — shows the antiquity of this dialect which is
mentioned by very early romance-writers, as Cervantes, the
Italian story-tellers, and Aretino. In all ages the moll, the
prostitute, the heroine of so many old-world romances, has
been the protectress, companion, and comfort of the sharper,
the thief, the pickpocket, the area-sneak, and the burglar.
Prostitution and robbery are the male and female forms
of protest made by the natural state against the social state.
Even philosophers, the innovators of to-day, the human-
itarians "u^ith the communists and Fourierists in their train,
come at last, without knowing it, to the same conclusion —
prostitution and theft. The thief does not argue out ques-
tions of property, of inheritance, and social responsibility, in
sophistical books ; he absolutely ignores them. To him theft
is appropriating his own. He does not discuss marriage ; he
does not complain of it ; he does not insist, in printed Utopian
dreams, on the mutual consent and bond of souls which can
never become general ; he pairs with a vehemence of which the
bonds are constantly riveted by the hammer of necessity.
Modem innovators write unctuous theories, long drawn, and
nebulous or philanthropical romances ; but the thief acts. He
is as clear as a fact, as logical as a blow ; and then his style !
Another thing worth noting: the world of prostitutes,
thieves, and murderers of the galleys and the prisons forms
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 35
•i
a population of about sixty to eighty thousand souls, men and
women. Such a world is not to be disdained in a picture
of modern manners and a literary reproduction of the social
body. The law, the gendarmerie, and the police constitute
a body almost equal in number; is not that strange? This
antagonism of persons perpetually seeking and avoiding each
other, and fighting a vast and highly dramatic duel, are what
are sketched in this Study. It has been the same thing withy^"^
thieving and public harlotry as with the stage, the police,
the priesthood, and the gendarmerie^ In these six walks
of life the individual contracts an indelible character. He
can no longer be himself. The stigmata of ordination are as
immutable as those of the soldier are. And it is the same
in other callings which are strongly in opposition, strong con-
trasts with civilization. These violent, eccentric, singular
signs — sui generis — are what make the harlot, the robber,
the murderer, the ticket-of -leave man, so easily recognizable
by their foes, the spy and the police, to whom they are as
game to the sportsman: they have a gait, a manner, a com-
plexion, a look, a color, a smell — in short, infallible marks \
about them. Hence the highly-developed art of disguise^ .^
which the heroes of the hulks acquire.
One word yet as to the constitution of this world apart,
which the abolition of branding, the mitigation of penalties,
and the silly leniency of juries are making a threatening evil.
In about twenty years Paris will be beleaguered by an army
of forty thousand reprieved criminals ; the department of the
Seine and its fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants being the
only place in France where these poor wretches can be hid- yo^
den. To them Paris is what the virgin forest is to beasts of
prey.
The swell-mob, or more exactly, thi^ upper class of thieves,
which is the Faubourg Saint-Germain, tlie aristocracy , of the
tribe, had, in 1816, after the peace which made life hard for
so many men, formed an association called les^ c/rands—^
fanandels — the Great Pals — consisting of the most noted
master-thieves and certain bold spirits at that time bereft of
\y
36 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
any means of living. This word pal means brother, friend,
and comrade all in one. And these "Great Pals," the cream
of the thieving fraternity, for more than twenty years were
the Court of Appeal, the Institute of Learning, and the
Chamber of Peers of this community. These men all had
their private means, with funds in common, and a code of
their own. They knew each other, and were pledged to help
and succor each other in difficulties. And they were all su-
perior to the tricks or snares of the police, had a charter of
their own, passwords and signs of recognition.
From 1815 to 1819 these dukes and peers of the prison
world had formed the famous association of the Ten-thousand
(see le Pere Goriot), so styled by reason of an agreement in
virtue of which no job was to be undertaken by which less
than ten thousand francs could be got.
At that very time, in 1829-30, some memoirs were brought
out in which the collective force of this association and the
names of the leaders were published by a famous member of
the police-force. It was terrifying to find there an army
of skilled rogues, male and female; so numerous, so clever,
so constantly lucky, that such thieves as Pastourel, Collonge,
or Chimaux, men of fifty and sixty, were described as outlaws
from society from their earliest years ! What a confession
of the ineptitude of justice that rogues so old should be at
large!
Jacques Collin had been the cashier, not only of the "Ten-
thousand," but also of the "Great Pals," the heroes of the
hulks. Competent authorities admit that the hulks have al-
ways owned large sums. This curious fact is quite conceivable.
Stolen goods are never recovered but in very singular cases.
The condemned criminal, who can take nothing with him, is
obliged to trust somebody's honesty and capacity, and to de-
posit his money as, in the world of honest folks, money is
placed in a bank.
Long ago Bibi-Lupin, now for ten years a chief of the
department of PubHc Safety, had been a member of the
aristocracy of "Pals." His treason had resulted from of-
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 37
fended pride; he had been constantly set aside in favor
of Trompe-la-Mort's superior intelligence and prodigious
strength. Hence his persistent vindictiveness against Jacques
Collin. Hence, also, certain compromises between Bibi-
Lupin and his old companions, which the magistrates were
beginning to take seriously.
So in his desire for vengeance, to which the examining
judge had given play under the necessity of idenj;ifying
Jacques Collin, the chief of the "Safety" had very skilfully
chosen his allies by setting la Pouraille, Fil-de-Soie, and le
Biffon on the sham Spaniard — for la Pouraille and Fil-de-
Soie both belonged to the "Ten-thousand," and le Biffon was
a "Great Pal."
La Biffe, le Biffon's formidable trip, who to this day evades
all the pursuit of the police by her skill in disguising herself
as a lady, was at liberty. This woman, who successfully apes
a marquise, a countess, a baroness, keeps a carriage and men-
servants. This Jacques Collin in petticoats is the only woman
who can compare with Asie, Jacques Collin's right hand.
And, in fact, every hero of the hulks is backed up by a devoted
woman. Prison records and the secret papers of the law
courts will tell you this; no honest woman's love, not even
that of a bigot for her spiritual director, has ever been greater
than the attachment of a mistress who shares the dangers of
a great criminal.
With these men a passion is almost always the first cause
of their daring enterprises and murders. The excessive love
which — constitutionally, as the doctors say — makes woman
irresistible to them, calls every moral and physical force of
these powerful natures into action. Hence the idleness
which consumes their days, for excesses of passion necessitate
sleep and restorative food. Hence their loathing of all work,
driving these creatures to have recourse to rapid ways of
getting money. And yet, the need of a living, and of high
living, violent as it is, is but a trifle in comparison with the
extravagance to which these generous Medors are prompted
by the mistress to whom they want to give jewels and dress,
3
38 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
and who — always greedy — love rich food. The baggage
wants a shawl, the lover steals it, and the woman sees in this
a proof of love.
This is how robbery begins; and robbery, if we examine
the human soul through a lens, will be seen to be an almost
natural instinct in man.
Eobbery leads to murder, and murder leads the lover step
by step to the scaffold.
Ill-regulated physical desire is therefore, in these men, if
we may believe the medical faculty, at the root of seven-tenths
of the crimes committed. And, indeed, the proof is always
found, evident, palpable at the post-mortem examination of
the criminal after his execution. And these monstrous
lovers, the scarecrows of society, are adored by their mis-
tresses. It is this female devotion, squatting faithfully at
the prison gate, always eagerly balking the cunning of the
examiner, and incorruptibly keeping the darkest secrets
which make so many trials impenetrable mysteries.
In this, again, lies the strength as well as the weakness
of the accused. In the vocabulary of a prostitute, to h>'
honest means to break none of the laws of this attachment,
to give all her money to the man who is nabhed, to look after
his comforts, to be faithftil to him in every way, to undertake
anything for his sake. The bitterest insult one of these wo-
men can fling in the teeth of another wretched creature is
to accuse her of infidelity to a lover in quod (in prison). In
that case such a woman is considered to have no heart.
La Pouraille was passionately in love with a woman, as
will be seen.
Fil-de-Soie, an egotistical philosopher, who thieved to pro-
vide for the future, was a good deal like Paccard, Jacques
Collin's satellite, who had fled with Prudence Servien and the
seven hundred and fifty thousand francs between them. He
had no attachment, he contemned women, and loved no one
but Fil-de-Soie.
As to le Biffon, he derived his nickname from his connec-
tion with la Biffe. (La Biffe is scavenging, rag-picking.)
VAUTRIN'S DAST AVATAR 39
And these three distinguished members of la haute pegre, the
aristocracy of roguery, had a reckoning to demand of
Jacques Collin, accounts that were somewhat hard to bring
to book.
No one but the cashier could know how many of his clients
were still alive, and what each man's share would be. The
mortality to which the depositors were peculiarly liable had
formed a basis for Trompe-la-Mort's calculations when he
resolved to embezzle the funds for Lucien's benefit. By keep-
ing himself out of the way of the police and of his pals for
nine years, Jacques Collin was almost certain to have fallen
heir, by the terms of agreement among the associates,
to two-thirds of the depositors. Besides, could he not
plead that he had repaid the pals who had been scragged?
In fact, no one had any hold over these Great Pals. His
comrades trusted him by compulsion, for the hunted life led
by convicts necessitates the most delicate confidence between
the gentry of this crew of savages. So Jacques Collin, a de-
faulter for a hundred thousand crowns, might now possibly
be quit for a hundred thousand francs. At this moment, as
we see, la Pouraille, one of Jacques Collin's creditors, had
but ninety days to live. And la Pouraille, the possessor of
a sum vastly greater, no doubt, than that placed in his pal's
keeping, would probably prove easy to deal with.
One of the infallible signs by which prison governors and
their agents, the police and warders, recognize old stagers
\chevaux de retour), that is to say, men who have already
eaten 'beans (les gourganes, a kind of haricots provided for
prison fare), is their familiarity with prison ways; those who
have been in before, of course, know the manners and cus-
toms ; they are at home, and nothing surprises them.
And Jacques Collin, thoroughly on his guard, had, until
now, played his part to admiration as an innocent man and
stranger, both at La Force and at the Conciergerie. But
now, broken by grief, and by two deaths — for he had died
twice over during that dreadful night — he was Jacques Collin
40 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
once more. The warder was astounded to find that the
Spanish priest needed no telling as to the way to the prison-
yard. The perfect actor forgot his part; he went down the
corkscrew stairs in the Tour Bonbec as one who knew the
Conciergerie.
"Bibi-Lupin is right/' said the turnkey to himself; "he is
an old stager ; he is Jacques Collin."
At the moment when Trompe-la-Mort appeared in the
sort of frame to his figure made by the door into the tower,
the prisoners, having made their purchases at the stone table
called after Saint-Louis, were scattered about the yard, al-
ways too small for their number. So the newcomer was seen
by all of them at once, and all the more promptly, because
nothing can compare for keenness with the eye of a prisoner,
who in a prison-yard feels like a spider watching in its web.
And this comparison is mathematically exact; for the range
of vision being limited on all sides by high dark walls, the
prisoners can always see, even without looking at them, the
doors through which the warders come and go, the windows
of the parlor, and the stairs of the Tour Bonbec — the only
exits from the yard. In this utter isolation every trivial
incident is an event, everything is interesting; the tedium —
a tedium like that of a tiger in a cage — increases their alert-
ness tenfold.
It is necessary to note that Jacques Collin, dressed like a
priest who is not strict as to costume, wore black knee
breeches, black stockings, shoes with silver buckles, a black
waistcoat, and a long coat of dark-brown cloth of a certain
cut that betrays the priest whatever he may do, especially when
these details are completed by a characteristic style of hair-
cutting. Jacques Collin's wig was eminently ecclesiastical,
and wonderfully natural.
"Hallo !" said la Pouraille to le Biffon, "that's a bad sign !
A rook! {sanglier, a priest). How did he come here?"
"He is one of their ^narks' " {trues, spies) "of a new
make," replied Fil-de-Soie, "some runner with the bracelets"
(march and de lacets — equivalent to a Bow Street runner)
"looking out for his man."
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 41
The gendarme boasts of many names in French slang;
when he is after a thief, he is "the man with the bracelets"
(marchand de lacets) ; when he has him in charge, he is a
bird of ill-omen (hirondelle de la Greve) ; when he escorts
him to the scaffold, he is "groom to the guillotine" {hussard de
la guillotine) .
To complete onr study of the prison-yard, two more of , "^X"
the prisoners must be hastily sketched in. -Selerier, alias .(> //
TAuvergnat, alias le Pere Ealleau, called le Rouleur, alias
Fil-de-Soie — he had thirty names, and as many passports —
will henceforth be spoken of by this name only, as he was
called by no other among the swell-mob. This profound
philosopher, who saw a spy in the sham priest, was a brawny
fellow of about five feet eight, whose muscles were all marked
by strange bosses. He had an enormous head in which a pair
of half-closed eyes sparkled like fire — the eyes of a bird of
prey, with gray, dull, skinny eyelids. At a first glance his
face resembled that of a wolf, his jaws were so broad, power-
ful, and prominent; but the cruelty and even ferocity sug-
gested by this likeness were counterbalanced by the cunning
and eagerness of his face, though it was scarred by the small-
pox. The margin of each scar being sharply cut, gave a sort
of wit to his expression; it was seamed with ironies. The
life of a criminal — a life of hunger and thirst, of nights spent
bivouacking on the quays and river banks, on bridges and
streets, and the orgies of strong drink by which successes are
celebrated — had laid, as it were, a varnish over these features.
Fil-de-Soie, if seen in his undisguised person, would have been
marked by any constable or gendarme as his prey ; but he was
a match for Jacques Collin in the arts of make-up and dress.
Just now Fil-de-Soie, in undress, like a great actor who is
well got up only on the stage, wore a sort of shooting jacket
bereft of buttons, and whose ripped button-holes showed
the white lining, squalid green slippers, nankin trousers now
a dingy gray, and on his head a cap without a peak, under
which an old bandana was tied, streaky with rents, and
washed out.
42 A COURTESANS I.IFE
Le Biffon was a complete contrast to Fil-de-Soie. This
famous robber, short, burly, and fat, but active, with a livid
complexion, and deep-set black eyes, dressed like a cook,
standing squarely on very bandy legs, was alarming to behold,
for in his countenance all the features predominated that are
most typical of the carnivorous beast.
Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon were always wheedling la
Pouraille, who had lost all hope. The murderer knew that
he would be tried, sentenced, and executed within four
months. Indeed, Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon, la Pouraille's
chums, never called him anything but le Chanoine de I'Ahhaye
de Monte-a-Regret (a grim paraphrase for a man condemned
to the guillotine). It is easy to understand why Fil-de-Soie
and le Biffon should fawn on la Pouraille. The man had
somewhere hidden two hundred and fifty thousand francs in
gold, his share of the spoil fund in the house of the Crottats,
the "victims," in newspaper phrase. What a splendid fortune
to leave to two pals, though the two old stagers would be sent
back to the galleys within a few days! Le Biffon and Fil-
de-Soie would be sentenced for a term of fifteen years for
robbery with violence, without prejudice to the ten years'
penal servitude on a former sentence, which they had taken
the liberty of cutting short. So, though one had twenty-two
and the other twenty-six years of imprisonment to look for-
ward to, they both hoped to escape, and come back to find la
Pouraille's mine of gold.
But the "Ten-thousand man" kept his secret; he did not
see the use of telling it before he was sentenced. He be-
longed to the "upper ten" of the hulks, and had never be-
trayed his accomplices. His temper was well known; Mon-
sieur ^ Popinot, who had examined him, had not been able to
get anything out of him.
This terrible trio were at the further end of the prison-
yard, that is to say, near the better class of cells. Fil-de-Soie
was giving a lecture to a young man who was in for his first
offence, and who, being certain of ten years' penal servitude,
was gaining information as to the various convict establish-
ments.
VAUTRIN'S LA.ST AVATAR 43
"Well, my boy," Fil-de-Soie was saying sententiously as
Jacques Collin appeared on the scene, "the difference between
Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort is ' '
"Well, old cock?" said the lad, with the curiosity of a
novice.
This prisoner, a man of good family, accused of forgery,
had come down from the cell next to that where Lucien had
been.
"My son," Fil-de-Soie went on, "at Brest you are sure to
get some beans at the third turn if you dip your spoon in the
bowl; at Toulon you never get any till the fifth; and at
Eoehefort you get none at all, unless you are an old hand."
Having spoken, the philosopher joined le Biff on and la
Pouraille, and all three, greatly puzzled by the priest, walked
down the yard, while Jacques Collin, lost in grief, came up
it. Trompe-la-Mort, absorbed in terrible meditations, the
meditations of a fallen emperor, did not think of himself as
the centre of observation, the object of general attention, and
he walked slowly, gazing at the fatal window where Lucien
had hanged himself. None of the prisoners knew of this
catastrophe, since, for reasons to be presently explained, the
young forger had not mentioned the subject. The three pals
agreed to cross the priest's path.
"He is no priest," said Fil-de-Soie; "he is an old stager.
Look how he drags his right foot."
It is needful to explain here — for not every reader has
had a fancy to visit the galleys — that each convict is chained
to another, an old one and a young one always as a couple;
the weight of this chain riveted to a ring above the ankle is
so great as to induce a limp, which the convict never loses.
Being obliged to exert one leg much more than the other to
drag this fetter (manicle is the slang name for such irons),
the prisoner inevitably gets into the habit of making the
effort. Afterwards, though he no longer wears the chain, it
acts upon him still; as a man still feels an amputated leg,
the convict is always conscious of the anklet, and can never
get over that trick of walking. In police slang, he "drags his
44 A COURTESAN'S JAVE
right." And this sign, as well known to convicts among
themselves as it is to the police, even if it does not help to
identify a comrade, at any rate confirms recognition.
In Trompe-la-Mort, who had escaped eight years since, this
trick had to a great extent worn off; but just now, lost in re-
flections, he walked at such a slow and solemn pace that,
slight as the limp was, it was strikingly evident to so prac-
tised an eye as la Pouraille's. And it is quite intelligible
that convicts, always thrown together, as they must be, and
never having any one else to study, will so thoroughly have
watched each other s faces and appearance, that certain tricks
will have impressed them which may escape their systematic
foes — spies, gendarmes, and police-inspectors.
Thus it was a peculiar twitch of the maxillary muscles
of the left cheek, recognized by a convict who was sent to
a review of the Legion of the Seine, which led to the arrest
of the lieutenant-colonel of that corps, the famous Coignard ;
for, in spite of Bibi-Lupin's confidence, the police could not
dare believe that the Comte Pontis de Sainte-Helene and
Coignard were one and the same man.
"He is our boss!" {dab or master,) said Fil-de-Soie, see-
ing in Jacques Collin's eye the vague glance a man sunk in
despair casts on all his surroundings.
"By Jingo ! Yes, it is Trompe-la-Mort," said le Biffon,
rubbing his hands. "Yes, it is his cut, his build; but what
has he done to himself? He looks quite different."
"I know what he is up to !" cried Fil-de-Soie ; "he has some
plan in his head. He wants to see the boy" (sa tante)
"who is to be executed before long."
The persons known in prison slang as tantes or aunts may
be best described in the ingenious words of the governor of
one of the great prisons to the late Lord Durham, who, dur-
ing his stay in Paris, visited every prison. So curious was
he to see every detail of French justice, that he even per-
suaded Sanson, at that time the executioner, to erect the
scaffold and decapitate a living calf, that he might thoroughly
understand the working of the machine made famous by the
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 45
Revolution. The governor having shown him everything —
the yards, the workshops, and the underground cells — pointed
to a part of the building, and said, "I need not take your
Lordship there; it is the quartier des tantes." — "Oh," said
Lord Durham, "what are they !" — "The third sex, my Lord."
"And they are going to scrag Theodore !" said la Pouraille,
"such a pretty boy ! And such a light hand ! such cheek !
What a loss to society !"
"Yes, Theodore Calvi is yamming his last meal," said le
Biffon. "His trips will pipe their eyes, for the little beggar
was a great pet."
"So you're here, old chap?" said la Pouraille to Jacques
Collin. And, arm-in-arm with his two acolytes, he barred
the way to the new arrival. "Why, Boss, have you got your-
self japanned?" he went on.
"I hear you have nobbled our pile" (stolen our money),
ie Biffon added, in a threatening tone.
"You have just got to stump up the tin!" said Fil-de-
Soie.
The three questions were fired at him like three pistol-
shots.
"Do not make game of an unhappy priest sent here by
mistake," Jacques Collin replied mechanically, recognizing
his three comrades.
"That is the sound of his pipe, if it is not quite the cut
of his mug," said la Pouraille, laying his hand on Jacques
Collin's shoulder.
This action, and the sight of his three chums, startled the
"Boss" out of his dejection, and brought him back to a
consciousness of reality; for during that dreadful night he
had lost himself in the infinite spiritual world of feeling,
seeking some new road.
"Do not blow the gaff on your Boss!" said Jacques Collin
in a hollow threatening tone, not unlike the low growl of a
lion. "The reelers are here; let them make fools of them-
selves. I am faking to help a pal who is awfully down on
his luck."
46 A rOTTRTBSANS LIFE
He spoke with the unction of a priest trxdng to convert
the wretched, and a look which flashed round the yard, took
in the warders under the archways, and pointed them out
with a wink to his three companions.
"Are there not narks about? Keep your peepers open
and a sharp outlook. Don't know me, Xanty parnarly, and
soap me down for a priest, or I will do for you all, you and
your molls and your blunt."
"What, do you funk our blabbing?" said Fil-de-Soie.
"Have you come to help your boy to guy ?"
"Madeleine is getting ready to be turned off in the Square"
(the Place de Greve), said la Pouraille.
"Theodore !"' said Jacques Collin, repressing a start and
aery.
"They will have his nut off," la Pouraille went on; "he
was booked for the scaffold two months ago."
Jacques Collin felt sick, his knees almost failed him; but
his three comrades held him up, and he had the presence of
mind to clasp his hands with an expression of contrition. La
Pouraille and le Biffon respectfully supported the sacrilegious
Trompe-la-Mort, while Fil-de-Soie ran to a warder on guard
at the gate leading to the parlor.
"That venerable priest wants to sit down ; send out a chair
for him," said he.
And so Bibi-Lupin's plot had failed.
Trompe-la-Mort, like a Xapoleon recognized by his
soldiers, had won the submission and respect of the three
felons. Two words had done it. Your molls and your blunt
— ^your women and your money — epitomizing every true af-
fection of man. This threat was to the three convicts an
indication of supreme power. The Boss still had their for-
tune in his hands. Still omnipotent outside the prison,
their Boss had not betrayed them, as the false pals said.
Their chief's immense reputation for skill and inventive-
ness stimulated their curiosity ; for, in prison, curiosity is the
only goad of these blighted spirits. And Jacques Collin's
daring disguise, kept up even under the bolts and locks of
the Conciergerie, dazzled the three felons.
VAUTKIXS LAST AVATAR 47
"I have been in close confinement for four days and did
not know that Theodore was so near the Abhaye," said Jacques
Collin. "I came in to save a poor little chap who scragged
himself here yesterday at four o'clock, and now here is an-
other misfortune. I have not an ace in my hand "
"Poor old boy !" said Fil-de-Soie.
"Old Scratch has cut me!" cried Jacques Collin, tearing
himself free from his supporters, and drawing himself up
with a fierce look. "There comes a time when the world is
too many for us ! The beaks gobble us up at last."
The governor of the Conciergerie, informed of the Spanish
priest's weak state, came himself to the prison-yard to observe
him; he made him sit down on a chair in the sun, studying
him with the keen acumen which increases day by day in the
practise of such functions, though hidden under an appear-
ance of indift'erence.
"Oh ! Heaven !" cried Jacques Collin. "To be mixed up
with such creatures, the dregs of society — felons and murder-
ers ! — But God will not desert His servant ! My dear sir,
my stay here shall be marked by deeds of charity which shall
live in men's memories. I will convert these unhappy crea-
tures, they shall learn they have souls, that life eternal awaits
them, and that though they have lost all on earth, they
still may win heaven — Heaven which they may purchase by
true and genuine repentance."
Twenty or thirty prisoners had gathered in a group behind
the three terrible convicts, whose ferocious looks had kept a
space of three feet between them and their inquisitive com-
panions, and they heard this address, spoken with evangelical
unction.
"Ay, Monsieur Gault," said the formidable la Pouraille,
"we will listen to what this one may say "
"I have been told," Jacques Coflin went on, "that there
is in this prison a man condemned to death."
"The rejection of his appeal is at this moment being read
to him," said Monsieur Gault.
"I do not know what that means," said Jacques Collin, art-
lessly looking about him.
48 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Golly, what a flat !" said the young fellow, who, a few
minutes since, had asked Fil-de-Soie about the beans on the
hulks.
''Why, it means that he is to be scragged to-day or to-
morrow."
"Scragged ?" asked Jacques Collin, whose air of innocence
and ignorance filled his three pals with admiration.
"In their slang," said the governor, "that means that he
will suffer the penalty of death. If the clerk is reading the
appeal, the executioner will no doubt have orders for the ex-
cution. The unhappy man has persistently refused the offices
of the chaplain."
"Ah ! Monsieur le Directeur, this is a soul to save !" cried
Jacques Collin, and the sacrilegious wretch clasped his hands
with the expression of a despairing lover, which to the watch-
ful governor seemed nothing less than divine fervor. "Ah,
monsieur," Trompe-la-Mort went on, "let me prove to you
what I am, and how much I can do, by allowing me to incite
that hardened heart to repentance. God has given me a
power of speech which produces great changes. I crush men's
hearts; I open them. — What are you afraid of? Send me
with an escort of gendarmes, of turnkeys — whom you will."
"I will inquire whether the prison chaplain will allow you
to take his place," said Monsieur Gault.
And the governor withdrew, struck by the expression, per-
fectly indifferent, though inquisitive, with which the convicts
and the prisoners on remand stared at this priest, whose
unctuous tones lent a charm to his half-French, half-Spanish
lingo.
"How did you come in here. Monsieur I'Abbe?" asked the
youth who had questioned Fil-de-Soie.
"Oh, by a mistake !" replied Jacques Collin, eyeing the
young gentleman from head to foot. "I was found in the
house of a courtesan who had died, and was immediately
robbed. It was proved that she had killed herself, and the
thieves — probably the servants — have not yet been caught."
"And it was for that theft that your young man hanged
himself?"
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 49
"The poor boy, no doubt, could not endure the thought
of being blighted by his unjust imprisonment," said Trompe-
la-Mort, raising his eyes to heaven.
"Ay,'" said the young man; "they were coming to set him
free just when he had killed himself. What bad luck !"
"Only innocent souls can be thus worked on by their im-
agination," said Jacques Collin. "For, observe, he was the
loser by the theft."
"How much money was it?" asked Fil-de-Soie, the deep
and cunning.
"Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Jacques
Collin blandly.
The three convicts looked at each other and withdrew from
the group that had gathered round the sham priest.
"He screwed the molFs place himself !" said Fil-de-Soie
in a whisper to le Biffon, "and they want to put us in a
blue funk for our cartwheels" (thunes de holies, five-franc
pieces).
"He will always be the boss of the swells," replied la Pou-
raille. "Our pieces are safe enough."
La Pouraille, wishing to find some man he could trust,
had an interest in considering Jacques Collin an honest man.
And in prison, of all places, a man believes what he hopes.
"I lay you anything, he will come round the big Boss
and save his chum !" said Fil-de-Soie.
"It he does that," said le Biffon, "though I don't believe
he is really God, he must certainly have smoked a pipe with/ >
old Scratch, as they say." \r
"Didn't you hear him say, 'Old Scratch has cut me'?"
said Fil-de-Soie.
"Oh !" cried la Pouraille, "if only he would save my nut,
what a time I would have with my whack of the shiners and
the yellow boys I have stowed."
"Do what he bids you !" said Fil-de-Soie.
"You don't say so?" retorted la Pouraille, looking at his
pal.
"What a flat you are! You will be booked for the
50 A COUKTESA.N'S Lih'H
Abbaye V said le Biffon. "You have no other door to budge,
if you want to keep on your pins, to yam, wet your whistle,
and fake to the end ; you must take his orders."
"That's all right," said la Pouraille. "There is not one
of us that will blow the gaff, or if he does, I will take him
where I am going "
"And he'll do it too," cried Fil-de-Soie.
The least sympathetic reader, who has no pity for this
strange race, may conceive of the state of mind of Jacques
Collin, finding himself between the dead body of the idol
whom he had been bewailing during five hours that night,
and the imminent end of his former comrade — the dead
body of Theodore, the young Corsican. Only to see the boy
would demand extraordinary cleverness; to save him would
need a miracle ; but he was thinking of it.
For the better comprehension of what Jacques Collin pro-
posed to attempt, it must here be remarked that murderers
and thieves, all the men who people the galleys, are not so
formidable as is generally supposed. With a few rare ex-
ceptions these creatures are all cowards, in consequence, no
doubt, of the constant alarms which weigh on their spirit.
The faculties being perpetually on the stretch in thieving,
and the success of a stroke of business depending on the ex-
ertion of every vital force, with a readiness of wit to match
their dexterity of hand, and an alertness which exhausts the
nervous system ; these violent exertions of will once over, they
become stupid, just as a singer or a dancer drops quite ex-
hausted after a fatiguing pas seul, or one of those tremendous
duets which modern composers inflict on the public.
Malefactors are, in fact, so entirely bereft of common sense,
or so much oppressed by fear, that they become absolutely
childish. Credulous to the last degree, they are caught by
the bird-lime of the simplest snare. When they have done a
successful joh^ they are in such a state of prostration that
they immediately rush into the debaucheries they crave for;
they get drunk on wine and spirits, and throw themselves
VATTTRIN'S I/AST AVATAR 51
madly into the arms of their women to recover composure by
dint of exhausting their strength, and to forget their crime
by forgetting their reason.
Then they are at the mercy of the police. When once
they are in custody they lose their head, and long for hope
so blindly that they believe anything; indeed, there is noth-
ing too absurd for them to accept it. An instance will suffice
to show how far the simplicity of a criminal who has been
nabhed will carry him. Bibi-Lupin, not long before, had
extracted a confession from a murderer of nineteen by mak-
ing him believe that no one under age was ever executed.
When this lad was transferred to the Conciergerie to be sen-
tenced after the rejection of his appeal, this terrible man
came to see him.
"Are you sure you are not yet twenty?" said he.
"Yes, I am only nineteen and a half."
"Well, then," replied Bibi-Lupin, "you may be quite sure
of one thing — you will never see twenty."
"Why ?"
"Because you will be scragged within three days," replied
the police agent.
The murderer, who had believed, even after sentence was
passed, that a minor would never be executed, collapsed like
an omelette soufftee.
Such men, cruel only from the necessity for suppressive
evidence, for they murder only to get rid of witnesses (and
this is one of the arguments adduced by those who desire
the abrogation of capital punishment), — these giants of dex-
terity and skill, whose sleight of hand, whose rapid sight,
whose every sense is as alert as that of a savage, are heroes of
evil only on the stage of their exploits. Not only do their
difficulties begin as soon as the crime is committed, for they
are as much bewildered by the need for concealing the stolen
goods as they were depressed by necessity — but they are as
weak as a woman in childbed. The vehemence of their
schemes is terrific ; in success they become like children. In
a word, their nature is that of the wild beast — easy to kill
552 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Avhen it is full fed. In prison these strange beings are men
in dissimulation and in secretiveness, which never yields till
the last moment, when they are crushed and broken by the
tedium of imprisonment.
It may hence be understood how it was that the three con-
victs, instead of betraying their chief, were eager to serve
him; and as they suspected he was now the owner of the
stolen seven himdred and fifty thousand francs, tjiey admired
him for his calm resignation, under bolt and bar of the Con-
ciergerie, believing him capable of protecting them all.
When Monsieur Gault left the sham priest, he returned
through the parlor to his office, and went in search of Bibi-
Lupin, who for twenty minutes, since Jacques Collin had
gone downstairs, had been on the watch with his eye at a peep-
hole in a window looking out on the prison-yard.
"Xot one of them recognized him," said Monsieur Gault,
"and Xapolitas, who is on duty, did not hear a word. The
jioor priest all through the night, in his deep distress, did
not say a word which could imply that his gown covers
Jacques Collin."
"That shows that he is used to prison life," said the police
. agent.
\ Xapolitas, Bibi-Lupin"s secretary, being unknown to the
i^ criminals then in the Conciergerie, was playing the part of
the young gentleman imprisoned for forgery.
"Well, but he wishes to be allowed to hear the confession
of the young fellow who is sentenced to death," said the
governor.
"To be sure ! That is our last chance," cried Bibi-Lupin.
"I had forgotten that. Theodore Calvi, the young Corsican,
was the man chained to Jacques Collin; they say that on the
hulks <Tacques Collin made him famous pads "
The convicts on the galleys contrive a kind of pad to slip
between their skin and the fetters to deaden the pressure of
the iron ring on their ankles and instep ; these pads, made of
tow and rags, are known as patarasses^
%\
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR ^] 53
"Who is warder over the man?" asked Bibi-Lupin.
"Coeur la Virole."
"Very well; I will go and make up as a gendarme, and
be on the watch ; I shall hear what they say. I will be even
with them."
"But if it should be Jacques Collin are you not afraid, of
his recognizing you and throttling you?" said the governor
to Bibi-Lupin.
"As a gendarme I shall have my sword," replied the other ;
"and, besides, if he is Jacques Collin, he will never do any-
thing that will risk his neck; and if he is a priest, I shall
be safe."
"Then you have no time to lose," said Monsieur Gault;
"it is half-past eight. Father Sauteloup has just read the
reply to his appeal, and Monsieur Sanson is waiting in the
order room."
"Yes, it is to-day's job, the Vidow's huzzars' " (les hussards
de la veuve, another horrible name for the functionaries of
the guillotine) "are ordered out," replied Bibi-Lupin. "Still,
I cannot wonder that the prosecutor-general should hesitate;
the boy has always declared that he is innocent, and there is,
in my opinion, no conclusive evidence against him."
"He is a thorough Coriscan," said Monsieur Gault; "he
has not said a word, and has held firm all through."
The last words of the governor of the prison summed up
the dismal tale of a man condemned to die. A man cut off
from among the living by law belongs to the Bench. The
Bench is paramount; it is answerable to nobody, it obeys its
own conscience. The prison belongs to the Bench, which con-
trols it absolutely. Poetry has taken possession of this social
theme, "the man condemned to death" — a subject truly apt
to strike the imagination ! And poetry has been sublime on
it. Prose has no resource but fact ; still, the fact is appalling
enough to hold its own against verse. The existence of a
condemned man who has not confessed his crime, or betrayed
his accomplices, is one of fearful torment. This is no case
of iron boots, of water poured into the stomach, or of limbs
4
54 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
racked by hideous machinery; it is hidden and, so to speak,
negative torture. The condemned wretch is given over to
himself with a companion whom he cannot but distrust.
The amiabilit}' of modern philanthropy fancies it has un-
derstood the dreadful torment of isolation, but this is a mis-
take. Since the abolition of torture, the Bench, in a natural
anxiety to reassure the too sensitive consciences of the jury,
had guessed what a terrible auxiliary isolation would prove
to justice in seconding remorse.
Solitude is void; and nature has as great a horror of a
moral void as she has of a physical vacuum. Solitude is
habitable only to a man of genius who can peoj)le it with
ideas, the children of the spiritual world ; or to one who con-
templates the works of the Creator, to whom it is bright with
the light of heaven, alive with the breath and voice of God.
Excepting for these two beings — so near to Paradise — solitude
is to the mind what torture is to the body. Between solitude
and the torture-chamber there is all the difference that there
is between a nervous malady and a surgical disease. It is
suffering multiplied by infinitude. The body borders on
the infinite through its nerves, as the spirit does through
thought. And, in fact, in tlie annals of the Paris law
courts the criminals who do not confess can be easily counted.
This terrible situation, which in some cases assumes ap-
palling importance — in politics, for instance, when a dynasty
or a state is involved — will find a place in the Human
Comedy. But here a description of the stone box in which,
after the Eestoration, the law shut up a man condemned to
death in Paris, may serve to give an idea of the terrors of a
felon's last day on earth.
Before the Kevolution of Jul}^ there was in the Con-
ciergerie, and indeed there still is, a condemned cell. This
room, backing on the governor's otfice, is divided from it by
a thick wall in strong masonry, and the other side of it is
formed by a wall seven or eight feet thick, which supports one
end of the immense Salle des Pas-Perdus. It is entered
through the first door in the long dark passage in which the
VATTTTRTN'S LAST AVATAR 55
eye loses itself when looking from the middle of the vaulted
gateway. This ill-omened room is lighted by a funnel, barred
by a formidable grating, and hardly perceptible on going into
the Conciergerie yard, for it has been pierced in the narrow
space between the office window close to the railing of the
gateway, and the place where the office clerk sits — a den like
a cupboard contrived by the architect at the end of the en-
trance court.
This position accounts for the fact that the room thus en-
closed between four immensely thick walls should have been
devoted, when the Conciergerie was reconstituted, to this
terrible and funereal service. Escape is impossible. The pas-
sage, leading to the cells for solitary confinement and to the
women's quarters, faces the stove where gendarmes and
warders are always collected together. The air-hole, the only
outlet to the open air, is nine feet above the floor, and looks
out on the first court, which is guarded by sentries at the
outer gate. No human power can make any impression on
the walls. Besides, a man sentenced to death is at once
secured in a straitwaistcoat, a garment which precludes all
use of the hands; he is chained by one foot to his camp bed,
and he has a fellow prisoner to watch and attend on him.
The room is paved with thick flags, and the light is so dim
that it is hard to see anything.
It is impossible not to feel chilled to the marrow on going
in, even now, though for sixteen years the cell has never been
used, in consequence of the changes effected in Paris in the
treatment of criminals under sentence. Imagine the guilty
man there with his remorse for company, in silence and dark-
ness, two elements of horror, and you will wonder how he ever
failed to go mad. What a nature must that be whose temper
can resist such treatment, with the added misery of enforced
idleness and inaction.
And yet Theodore Calvi, a Corsican, now twenty-seven
years of age, mufiled, as it were, in a shroud of absolute re-
serve, had for two months held out against the effects of this
dungeon and the insidious chatter of the prisoner placed to
entrap him.
56 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
These were the strange circumstances under which the
Corsican had been condemned to death. Though the case is
a very curious one, our account of it must be brief. It is
impossible to introduce a long digression at the climax of a
narrative already so much prolonged, since its only interest
is in so far as it concerns Jacques Collin, the vertebral col-
imm, so to speak, which, by its sinister persistency, connects
Le Pcre Goriot with lUiisions perdues, and Illusions per-
dues with this Study. And, indeed, the reader's imagina-
tion will be able to work out the obscure case which at
this moment was causing great uneasiness to the jury of
the sessions, before whom Theodore Calvi had been tried.
For a whole week, since the criminaFs appeal had been
rejected by the Supreme Court, Monsieur de Granville
had been worrying himself over the case, and postponing
from day to day the order for carrying out the sentence, so
anxious was he to reassure the jury by ^announcing that on
the threshold of death the accused hadvconfessed the crime.
A poor widow of Xanterre, whose dwelling stood apart
from the township, which is situated in the midst of the
infertile plain lying between Mount- Valerien, Saint-Germain,
the hills of Sartrouville, and Argenteuil, had been murdered
and robbed a few days after coming into her share of an un-
expected inheritance. This windfall amounted to three thou-
sand francs, a dozen silver spoons and forks, a gold watch and
chain, and some linen. Instead of depositing the three thou-
sand francs in Paris, as she was advised by the notary of the
wine-merchant who had left it her, the old woman insisted
on keeping it by her. In the first place, she had never seen
so much money of her own, and then she distrusted everybody
in every kind of affairs, as most common and country folk do.
After long discussion with a wine-merchant of Nanterre, a,
relation of her own and of the wine-merchant who had left her
the money, the widow decided on buying an annuity, on
selling her house at Nanterre, and living in the town of
Saint-Germain.
The house she was living in, with a good-sized garden en-
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 57
closed by a slight wooden fence, was the poor sort of dwelling
usually built by small landowners in the neighborhood of
Paris. It had been hastily constructed, with no architectural
design, of cement and rubble, the materials commonly used
near Paris, where, as at Nanterre, they are extremely abun-
dant, the ground being everywhere broken by quarries open
to the sky. This is the ordinary hut of the civilized savage.
The house consisted of a ground floor and one floor above,
with garrets in the roof.
The quarryman, her deceased husband, and the builder of
this dwelling, had put strong iron bars to all the windows;
the front door was remarkably thick. The man knew that
he was alone there in the open country — and what a country !
His customers were the principal master-masons in Paris, so
the more important materials for his house, which stood
within five hundred yards of his quarry, had been brought out
in his own carts returning empty. He could choose such as
suited him where houses were pulled down, and got them very
cheap. Thus the window-frames, the iron-work, the doors,
shutters, and wooden fittings were all derived from sanctioned
pilfering, presents from his customers, and good ones, care-
fully chosen. Of two window-frames, he could take the better.
The house, entered from a large stable-yard, was screened
from the road by a wall ; the gate was of strong iron-railing.
Watch-dogs were kept in the stables, and a little dog indoors
at night. There was a garden of more than two acres behind.
His widow, without children, lived here with only a woman
servant. The sale of the quarry had paid off the owner's
debts ; he had been dead about two years. This isolated house
was the widow's sole possession, and she kept fowls and cows,
selling the eggs and milk at Nanterre. Having no stable-
boy or carter or quarryman — her husband had made them do
every kind of work — she no longer kept up the garden ; she
only gathered the few greens and roots that the stony ground
allowed to grow self-sown.
The price of the house, with the money she had inherited,
would amount to seven or eight thousand francs, and she
58 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
could fancy herself living very happily at Saint-Germain
on seven or eight hundred francs a year, which she thought
she could buy with her eight thousand francs. She had had
many discussions over this with the notary at Saint-Germain,
for she refused to hand her money over for an annuity to the
wine-merchant at Xanterre, who was anxious to have it.
Under these circumstances, then, after a certain day the
widow Pigeau and her servant were seen no more. The front
gate, the house door, the shutters, all were closed. At the
end of three days, the police, being informed, made inquisi-
tion. Monsieur Popinot, the examining judge, and the public
prosecutor arrived from Paris, and this was what they re-
ported : —
Neither the outer gate nor the front door showed any marks
of violence. The key was in the lock of the door, inside. Xot
a single bar had been wrenched ; the locks, shutters, and bolts
were all untampered with. The walls showed no traces that
could betray the passage of the criminals. The chimney-
pots, of red clay, afforded no opportunity for ingress or
escape, and the roofing was sound and unbroken, showing no
damage by violence.
On entering the first-floor rooms, the magistrates, the
gendarmes, and Bibi-Lupin found the widow Pigeau strangled
in her bed and the woman strangled in hers, each by means
of the bandana she wore as a nightcap. The three thousand
francs were gone, with the silver-plate and the trinkets. The
two bodies were decomposing, as were those of the little dog
and of a large yard-dog.
The wooden palings of the garden were examined ; none were
broken. The garden paths showed no trace of footsteps. The
magistrate thought it probable that the robber had walked on
the grass to leave no foot-prints if he had come that way; bur
how could he have got into the house ? The back door to th^'
garden had an outer guard of three iron bars, uninjured ; and
there, too, the key was in the lock inside, as in the front door.
All these impossibilities having been duly noted by Mon-
sieur Popinot, by Bibi-Lupin, who stayed there a day to ex-
/
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 59
amine every detail, by the public prosecutor himself, and by
the sergeant of the gendarmerie at Nanterre, this murder be-
came an agitating mystery, in which the Law and the Police
were nonplussed.
This drama, published in the Gazette des Tribunaux, took
place in the winter of 1828-29. God alone knows what excite-
ment this puzzling crime occasioned in Paris ! But Paris has
a new drama to watch very morning, and forgets everything.
The police, on the contrary, forgets nothing.
Three months after this fruitless inquiry, a girl of the
town, whose extravagance had invited the attention of Bibi-
liUpin's agents, who watched her as being the ally of several
thieves, tried to persuade a woman she knew to pledge twelve
silver spoons and forks and a gold watch and chain. The
friend refused. This came to Bibi-Lupin's ears, and he re-
membered the plate and the watch and chain stolen at Nan-
terre. The commissioners of the Mont-de-Piete, and all the
receivers of stolen goods, were warned, while Manon la Blonde
was subjected to unremitting scrutiny.
It was very soon discovered that Manon la Blonde was
madly in love with a young man who was never to be seen,
and was supposed to be deaf to all the fair Manon's proofs
of devotion. Mystery on mystery. However, this youth, un-
der the diligent attentions of police spies, was soon seen and
identified as an escaped convict, the famous hero of the
Corsican vendetta, the handsome Theodore Calvi, known as
Madeleine.
A man was turned on to entrap Calvi, one of those double-
dealing buyers of stolen goods who serve the thieves and the
police both at once; he promised to purchase the silver and
the watch and chain. At the moment when the dealer of the
Cour Saint-Guillaume was counting out the cash to Theodore,
dressed as a woman, at half-past six in the evening, the police
came in and seized Theodore and the property.
The inquiry was at once begun. On such thin evidence it
was impossible to pass a sentence of death. Calvi never
swerved, he never contradicted himself. He said that a
60 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
country woman had sold him these objects at Argenteuil ; that
after buying them, the excitement over the murder com-
mitted at Nanterre had shown him thp danger of keeping
this plate and watch and chain in his possession, since, in fact,
they were proved by the inventory made after the death of the
wine merchant, the widow Pigeau's uncle, to be those that
were stolen from her. Compelled at last by poverty to sell
them, he said he wished to dispose of them by the intervention
of a person to whom no suspicion could attach.
And nothing else could be extracted from the convict, who,
by his taciturnity and firmness, contrived to insinuate that
the wine-merchant at jSTanterre had committed the crime, and
that the woman of whom he, Theodore, had bought them was
the wine-merchant's wife. The unhappy man and his wife
were both taken into custody; but, after a week's imprison-
ment, it was amply proved that neither the husband nor the
wife had been out of their house at the time. Also, Calvi
failed to recognize in the wife the woman who, as he declared,
had sold him the things.
As it was shown that Calvi's mistress, implicated in the case,
had spent about a thousand francs since the date of the
crime and the day when Calvi tried to pledge the plate and
trinkets, the evidence seemed strong enough to commit Calvi
and the girl for trial. This murder being the eighteenth
which Theodore had committed, he was condemned to death,
for he seemed certainly to be guilty of this skilfully contrived
crime. Though he did not recognize the wine-merchant's wife,
both she and her husband recognized him. The inquiry had
proved, by the evidence of several witnesses, that Theodore
had been living at Nanterre for about a month ; he had worked
at a mason's, his face whitened with plaster, and his clothes
very shabby. At ISTanterre the lad was supposed to be about
eighteen years old, and for the whole month he must have
been nursing that brat (nourri ce poupon, i. e. hatching the
crime).
The lawyers thought he must have had accomplices. The
chimney-pots were measured and compared with the size of
VATTTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 61
Manon la Blonde's body to see if she could have got in that
way; but a child of six could not have passed up or down
those red-clay pipes, which, in modern buildings, take the
place of the vast chimneys of old-fashioned houses. But for
this singular and annoying difficulty, Theodore would have
been executed within a week. The prison chaplain, it has
been seen, could make nothing of him.
All this business, and the name of Calvi, must have escaped
the notice of Jacques Collin, who, at the time, was absorbed
in his single-handed struggle with Contenson, Corentin, and
Peyrade. It had indeed been a point with Trompe-la-Mort
to forget as far as possible his chums and all that had to do
with the law courts ; he dreaded a meeting which should bring
him face to face with a pal who might demand an account of
his boss which Collin could not possibly render.
The governor of the prison went forthwith to the public
prosecutor's court, where he found the Attorney-General in
conversation with Monsieur de Granville, an order for the
execution in his hand. Monsieur de Granville, who had spent
the whole night at the Hotel de Serizy, was, in consequence
of this important case, obliged to give a few hours to his
duties, though overwhelmed with fatigue and grief; for the
physicians could not yet promise that the Countess would
recover her sanity.
After speaking a few words to the governor. Monsieur de
Granville took the warrant from the attorney and placed it
in Gault's hands.
"Let the matter proceed," said he, "unless some extraordi-
nary circumstances should arise. Of this you must judge.
I trust to your judgment. The scaffold need not be erected
till half-past ten, so you still have an hour. On such an occa-
sion hours are centuries, and many things may happen in a
century. Do not allow him to think he is reprieved ; prepare
the man for execution if necessary; and if nothing comes of
that, give Sanson the warrant at half -past nine. Let him
wait !"
t>2 A COURTESANS LIFE
As the governor of the prison left the public prosecutor's
room, under the archway of the passage into the hall he met
Monsieur Camusot, who was going there. He exchanged a
few hurried words with the examining judge; and after tell-
ing him what had been done at the Conciergerie with regard
to Jacques Collin, he went on to witness the meeting of
Trompe-la-Mort and Madeleine; and he did not allow the
so-called priest to see the condemned criminal till Bibi-Lupin,
admirably disguised as a gendarme, had taken the place of
the prisoner left in charge of the young Corsican.
Xo words can describe the amazement of the three convicts
when a warder came to fetch Jacques Collin and led him to
the condemned cell ! With one consent they rushed up to
the chair on which Jacques Collin was sitting.
"To-day, isn't it, monsieur?*' asked Fil-de-Soie of the
warder.
"Yes, Jack Ketch is waiting," said the man with perfect
indilfereace.
Chariot is the name by which the executioner is known to
the populace and the prison world in Paris. The nickname
dates from the Kevolution of 1789.
The words produced a great sensation. The prisoners
looked at each other.
"It is all over with him," the warder went on ; "the warrant
lias been delivered to Monsieur Gault, and the sentence has
just been read to him.''
"And so the fair Madeleine has received the last sacra-
ments ?" said la Pouraille, and he swallowed a deep mouthful
of air.
"Poor little Theodore !" cried le Biffon ; "he is a pretty
chap too. What a pity to drop your nut" (eternuer dans le
son) "so young."
The warder went towards the gate, thinking that Jacques
Collin was at his heels. But the Spaniard walked very slowly,
and when he was getting near to Julien he tottered and signed
to la Pouraille to give him his arm.
"He is a murderer," said Xapolitas to the priest, pointing
to la Pouraille, and offering his own arm.
VAUTRIN'S t>AST AVATAR (^^
"No, to me he is an unhappy wretch!" replied. Jaeqaes
Collin, with the presence of mind and the unction of the
Archbishop of Cambrai. And he drew away from ISTapolitas,
of whom he had been very suspicious from the first. Then
he said to his pals in an undertone :
"He is on the bottom step of the Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret,
but I am the Prior ! I will show you how well I know how
to come round the beaks. I mean to snatch this boy's nut
from their jaws."
"For the sake of his breeches!" said Fil-de-Soie with a
smile.
"I mean to win his soul to heaven !'' replied Jacques Collin
fervently, seeing some other prisoners about him. And he
joined the warder at the gate.
"He got in to save Madeleine," said Fil-de-Soie. "We
guessed rightly. What a boss he is !"
"But how can he ? Jack Ketch's men are waiting. He will
not even see the kid," objected le BifiPon.
"The devil is on his side !" cried la Pouraille. "He claim
our blunt ! Never ! He is too fond of his old chums ! We
are too useful to him ! They wanted to make us blow the gaff,
but we are not such flats ! If he saves his Madeleine,^'! will ^^
tell him all my secrets." "' \P^ ^
The effect of this speech was to increase the devotion of the
three convicts to their boss; for at this moment he was all
their hope.
Jacques Collin, in spite of Madeleine's peril, did not forget
to play his part. Though he knew the Conciergerie as well
as he knew the hulks in the three ports, he blundered so
naturally that the warder had to tell him, "This way, that
way," till they reached the office. There, at a glance, Jacques
Collin recognized a tall, stout man leaning on the stove, with
a long, red face not without distinction : it was Sanson.
"Monsieur is the chaplain?'' said he, going towards him
with simple cordiality.
The mistake was so shocking that it froze the bystanders.
"No, monsieur," said Sanson; "I have other functions."
64 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Sanson, the father of the last executioner of that name —
for he has recently been dismissed — was the son of the man
who beheaded Louis XVI. After four centuries of hereditary
office, this descendant of so many executioners had tried to
repudiate the traditional burden. The Sansons were for two
hundred years executioners at Rouen before being promoted
to the first rank in the kingdom, and had carried out the
decrees of justice from father to son since the thirteenth cen-
tury. Few families can boast of an office or of nobility handed
down in a direct line during six centuries.
This young man had been captain in a cavalry regiment,
and was looking forward to a brilliant military career, when
his father insisted on his help in decapitating the king. Then
he made his son his deputy when, in 1793, two guillotines
were in constant work — one at the Barriere du Trone, and the
other in the Place de Greve. This terrible functionary, now
a man of about sixty, was remarkable for his dignified air, his
gentle and deliberate manners, and his entire contempt for
Bibi-Lupin and his acolytes who fed the machine. The only
detail which betrayed the blood of the medijpval executioner
was the formidable breadth and thickness of his hands. Well
informed too, earing greatly for his position as a citizen and
an elector, and an enthusiastic florist, this tall, brawTiy man
with his low voice, his calm reserve, his few words, and a high
bald forehead, was like an English nobleman rather than an
executioner. And a Spanish priest would certainly have fallen
into the mistake which Jacques Collin had intentionally
made.
"He is no convict !"' said the head warder to the governor.
"I begin to think so too," replied Monsieur Gault, with a
nod to that official.
Jacques Collin was led to the cellar-like room where Theo-
dore Calvi, in a straitwaistcoat, was sitting on the edge of
the wretched camp bed. Trompe-la-Mort, under a transient
gleam of light from the passage, at once recognized Bibi-
Lupin in the gendarme who stood leaning on his sword.
"lo sono Gaba-Morto. Pari a nostro Italiano," said Jacques
Collin very rapidly. "Vengo ti salvar."
^W'
VAUTRINS LAST AVATAR 65
"I am Trompe-la-Mort. Talk our Italian. I have come to
save you."
All the two chums wanted to say had, of course, to be in-
comprehensible to the pretended gendarme; and as Bibi-
Lupin was left in charge of the prisoner, he could not leave
his post. The man's fury was quite indescribable.
Theodore Calvi, a young man with a pale olive complexion,
light hair, and hollow, dull, blue eyes, well built, hiding
prodigious strength under the lymphatic appearance that is
not uncommon in Southerners, would have had a charming
face but for the strongly-arched eyebrows and low forehead
that gave him a sinister expression, scarlet lips of savage
cruelty, and a twitching of the muscles peculiar to Corsicans,
denoting that excessive irritability which makes them so
prompt to kill in any sudden squabble.
Theodore, startled at the sound of that voice, raised his
head, and at first thought himself the victim of a delusion;
but as the experience of two months had accustomed him to
the darkness of this stone box, he looked at the sham priest,
and sighed deeply. He .did not recognize Jacques Collin,
whose face, scarred by the application of sulphuric acid, was
not that of his old boss.
"It is really your Jacques; I am your confessor, and have
come to get you off. Do not be such a ninny as to know me ;
and speak as if you were making a confession." He spoke
with the utmost rapidity. "This young fellow is very much
depressed; he is afraid to die, he will confess everything,"
said Jacques Collin, addressing the gendarme.
Bibi-Lupin dared not say a word for fear of being recog-
nized.
"Say something to show me that you are he ; you have noth-
ing but his voice," said Theodore.
"You see, poor boy, he assures me that he is innocent," said
Jacques Collin to Bibi-Lupin, who dared not speak for fear
of being recognized.
"S em pre mi" said Jacques, returning close to Theodore,
and speaking the word in his ear.
66 A COURTESANS LIFE
"Sempre ti," replied Theodore, giving the countersign.
*'Yes, you are the boss "
"Did vou do the trick ?"
"Yes.'"
"Tell me the whole story, that I may see what can be done
to save you; make haste, Jack Ketch is waiting."
The Corsican at once knelt down and pretended to be about
to confess.
Bibi-Lupin did not know what to do, for the conversation
was so rapid that it hardly took as much time as it does to
read it. Theodore hastily told all the details of the crime,
of which Jacques Collin knew nothing.
"The jury gave their verdict without proof," he said
finally.
"Child \ you want to argue when they are waiting to cut oflE
your hair "
"But I might have been sent to spout the wedge. — And
that is the way they judge you ! — and in Paris too I"
"But how did you do the job?" asked Trompe-la-Mort.
"Ah ! there you are. — Since I saw you I made acquaintance
with a girl, a Corsican, I met when I came to Paris."
"Men who are such fools as to love a woman," cried Jacques
Collin, "always come to grief that way. They are tigers
on the loose, tigers who blab and look at themselves in the
glass. — You were a gaby."
"But "
"Well, what good did she do you — that curse of a moll ?"
"That duck of a girl — no taller than a bundle of firewood,
as slippery as an eel, and as nimble as a monkey — got in at
the top of the oven, and opened the front door. The dogs
were well crammed with balls, and as dead as herrings. I
settled the two women. Then when I got the swag, Ginetta
locked the door and got out again by the oven."
"Such a clever dodge deserves life,"' said Jacques Collin,
admiring the execution of the crime as a sculptor admires the
modeling of a figure.
"And I was fool enough to waste all that cleverness for a
thousand crowns !"
TheCorsicau at omu kiieltdowiiaiid preteuded to be about to confess
VAITTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 6?
"No, for a woman," replied Jacques Collin. "I tell you,
they deprive us of all our wits," and Jacques Collin eyed
Theodore with a flashing glance of contempt.
"But you were not there !" said the Corsican ; "I was all
alone "
"And do you love the slut?" asked Jacques Collin, feeling
that the reproach was a just one.
"Oh! I want to live, but it is for you now rather than for
her."
"Be quite easy, I am not called Trompe-la-Mort for noth-
ing. I undertake the case."
"What ! life ?" cried the lad, lifting his swaddled hands
towards the damp vault of the cell.
"My little Madeleine, prepare to be lagged for life (penal
servitude)," replied Jacques Collin. "You can expect no
less ; they won't crown you with roses like a fatted ox. When
they first set us down for Eochefort, it was because they
wanted to be rid of us ! But if I can get you ticketed for
Toulon, you can get out and come back to Pantin (Paris),
where I will find you a tidy way of living."
A sigh such as had rarely been heard under that inexorable
roof struck the stones, which sent back the sound that has no
fellow in music, to the ear of the astounded Bibi-Lupin.
"It is the effect of the absolution I promised him in return
for his revelations," said Jacques Collin to the gendarme.
"These Corsicans, monsieur, are full of faith ! But he is as
innocent as the Immaculate Babe, and I mean to try to save
him."
"God bless you, Monsieur I'Abbe !" said Theodore in
French.
Trompe-la-Mort, more Carlos Herrera, more the canon
than ever, left the condemned cell, rushed back to the hall,
and appeared before Monsieur Gault in affected horror.
"Indeed, sir, the young man is innocent; he has told me
who the guilty person is ! He was ready to die for a false
point of honor — he is a Corsican! Go and beg the public
(58 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
prosecutor to grant me five minutes' interview. Monsieur
de Granville cannot refuse to listen at once to a Spanish
priest who is suffering so cruelly from the blunders of the
French police."
"I will go," said Monsieur Gault, to the extreme astonish-
ment of all the witnesses of this extraordinary scene.
"And meanwhile," said Jacques, "send me back to the
prison-yard where I may finish the conversion of a criminal
whose heart I have touched already — they have hearts, these
people !"
This speech produced a sensation in all who heard it. The
gendarmes, the registry clerk, Sanson, the warders, the execu-
tioner's assistant — all awaiting orders to go and get the
scaffold ready — to rig up the machine, in prison slang — all
these people, usually so indifferent, were agitated by very
natural curiosity.
Just then the rattle of a carriage with high-stepping horses
was heard; it stopped very suggestively at the gate of the
Conciergerie on the quay. The door was opened, and the step
let down in such haste, that every one supposed that some
great personage had arrived. Presently a lady waving a
sheet of blue paper came forward to the outer gate of the
prison, followed by a footman and a chasseur. Dressed very
handsomely, and all in black, with a veil over her bonnet, she
was wiping her eyes with a floridly embroidered handkerchief.
Jacques Collin at once recognized Asie, or, to give the
woman her true name, Jacqueline Collin, his aunt. This
horrible old woman — worthy of her nephew — whose thoughts
were all centered in the prisoner, and who was defending him
with intelligence and mother-wit that were a match for the
powers of the law, had a permit made out the evening before
in the name of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse's waiting-maid
by the request of Monsieur de Serizy, allowing her to see
Lucien de Rubempre, and the Abbe Carlos Herrera so soon as
he should be brought out of the secret cells. On this the
Colonel, who was the Governor-in-Chief of all the prisons,
had written a few words, and the mere color of the paper re-
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 69
vealed powerful influences; for these permits, like theatre-
tickets, difl'er in shape and appearance.
So the turnkey hastened to open the gate, especially when
he saw the chasseur with his plumes and an uniform of green
and gold as dazzling as a Eussian General's, proclaiming a
lady of aristocratic rank and almost royal birth.
"Oh, my dear Abbe !" exclaimed this fine lad}^ shedding
a torrent of tears at the sight of the priest, "how could any
one ever think of putting such a saintly man in here, even by
mistake ?"
The Governor took the permit and read, "Introduced by
His Excellency the Comte de Serizy."
"Ah ! Madame de San-Esteban, Madame la Marquise,"'
cried' Carlos Herrera, "what admirable devotion !"
"But, madame, such interviews are against the rules," said
the good old Governor. And he intercepted the advance of
this bale of black watered-silk and lace.
"But at such a distance !" said Jacques Collin, "and in your
presence— " and he looked round at the group.
His aunt, whose dress might well dazzle the clerk, the
Governor, the warders, and the gendarmes, stank of musk.
She had on, besides a thousand crowns worth of lace, a black
India cashmere shawl, worth six thousand francs. And her
chasseur was marching up and down outside with the inso-
lence of a lackey who knows that he is essential to an exacting
princess. He spoke never a word to the footman, who stood
by the gate on the quay, which is always open by day.
"What do you wish? What can I do?" said Madame de
San-Esteban in the lingo agreed upon by this aunt and
nephew.
This dialect consisted in adding terminations in ar or in
or, or in al or in i to every word, whether French or slang, so
as to disguise it by lengthening it. It was a diplomatic cipher
adapted to speech.
"Put all the letters in some safe place; take out those that
are most likely to compromise the ladies ; come back, dressed
very poorly, to the Salle des Pas-Perdus, and wait for my
orders."
5
70 A COURTESAN" S TJFE
Asie, otherwise Jacqueline, knelt as if to receive his bless-
ing, and the sham priest blessed his aunt with evangelical
unction.
"Addio, Marchesa" said he aloud, "And," he added in
their private language, "find Europe and Paccard with the
seven hundred and fifty thousand francs they bagged. We
must have them."'
"Paccard is out there,"' said the pious Marquise, pointing
to the chasseur, her eyes full of tears.
This intuitive comprehension brought not merely a smile
to the man's lips, but a gesture of surprise; no one could
astonish him but his aunt. The sham Marquise turned to the
bystanders with the air of a woman accustomed to give her-
self airs.
"He is in despair at being unable to attend his son's
funeral," said she in broken French, "for this monstrous
miscarriage of justice has betrayed the saintly man's secret. —
I am going to the funeral mass. — Here, monsieur," she added
to the Governor, handing him a purse of gold, "this is to give
your poor prisoners some comforts."
"What slap-up style !" her nephew whispered in approval.
Jacques Collin then followed the warder, who led him back
to the yard.
Bibi-Lupin, quite desperate, had at last caught the eye of
a real gendarme, to whom, since Jacques Collin had gone, he
had been addressing significant "Aliems" and who took
his place on guard in the condemned cell. But Trompe-la-
Mort"s sworn foe was released too late to see the great lady,
who drove off in her dashing turn-out, and ' whose voice,
though disguised, fell on his ear with a vicious twang.
"Three hundred shiners for the boarders," said the head
warder, showing Bibi-Lupin the purse, which Monsieur Gault
had handed over to his clerk.
"Let's see. Monsieur Jacomety,"' said Bibi-Lupin.
The police agent took the purse, poured out the money
into his hand, and examined it curiously.
"Yes, it is gold, sure enough I"" said he, "and a coat-of-
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 71
arms on the purse ! The scoundrel ! How clever he is ! What
an ail-round villain ! He does us all brown and all the
time ! He ought to be shot down like a dog !"
"Why, what's the matter ?" asked the clerk, taking back the
money. ^;. ^
"The matter ! Why, the hussy stole it !" cried Bibi-Lupin, H^
stamping with rage on the flags of the gateway.
The words produced a great sensation among the spectators,
who were standing at a little distance from Monsieur Sanson.
He, too, was still standing, his back against the large stove in
the middle of the vaulted hall, awaiting the order to crop
the felon's hair and erect the scaffold on the Place de Greve.
On re-entering the yard, Jacques Collin went towards his
chums at a pace suited to a frequenter of the galleys.
"What have you on your mind ?" said he to la Pouraille.
"My game is up," said the man, whom Jacques Collin led
into a corner. "What I want now is a pal I can trust."
"What for?"
La Pouraille, after telling the tale of all his crimes, but in
thieves' slang, gave an account of the murder and robbery of
the two Crottats.
"You have my respect," said Jacques Collin. "The job
was well done; but you seem to me to have blundered after-
wards."
"In what way?"
"Well, having done the trick, you ought to have had a
Eussian passport, have made up as a Russian prince, bought
a fine coach with a coat-of-arms on it, have boldly deposited
your money in a bank, have got a letter of credit on Hamburg,
and then have set out posting to Hamburg with a valet, a
ladies' maid, and your mistress disguised as a Eussian prin-
cess. At Hamburg you should have sailed for Mexico. A
chap of spirit, with two hundred and eighty thousand francs
in gold, ought to be able to do what he pleases and go where
he pleases, flathead!"
"Oh yes, you have such notions because you are the boss
Your nut is always square on your shoulders — but I "
72 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"In short, a word of good advice in your position is like
broth to a dead man," said Jacques Collin, with a serpent-
like gaze at his old pal.
"True enough !" said la Pouraille, looking dubious. "But
give me the broth, all the same. If it does not suit my stom-
ach, I can warm my feet in it "
"Here you are nabbed by the Justice, with five robberies
and three murders, the latest of them those of two rich and
respectable folks. . . . Xow, juries do not like to see
respectable folks killed. You will be put through the ma-
chine, and there is not a chance for you."
"I have heard all that," said la Pouraille lamentably.
"My aunt Jacqueline, with whom I have just exchanged
a few words in the office, and who is, as you know, a mother
10 the pals, told me that the authorities mean to be quit of
you; they are so much afraid of you.''
"But I am rich now," said la Pouraille, with a simplicity
which showed how convinced a thief is of his natural right
to steal. "What are they afraid of?"
"We have no time for philosophizing,"' said Jacques Col-
lin. "To come back to you "
"What do you want with me?" said la Pouraille, inter-
rupting his boss.
"You shall see. A dead dog is still worth something."
"To other people," said la Pouraille.
"I take you into my game !" said Jacques Collin.
"Well, that is something," said the murderer. "What
next ?"
"I do not ask you where your money is, but what you mean
to do with it ?"
La Pouraille looked into the convict's impenetrable e3''e,
and Jacques coldly went on : "Have you a trip you are sweet
upon, or a child, or a pal to be helped? I shall be outside
within an hour, and I can do much for any one you want to
be good-natured to."
La Pouraille still hesitated : he was delaying wnth indeci-
sion. Jacques Collin produced a clinching argument.
',= V? ^■
".^-.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 73
"Your whack of our money would be thirty thousand
francs. Do you leave it to the pals ? Do you bequeath it to
anybody? Your share is safe; I can give it this evening to
any one you leave it to."
The murderer gave a little start of satisfaction.
"I have him !*" said Jacques Collin to himself. "But we
have no time to play. Consider," he went on in la Pouraille's
car, "we have not ten minutes to spare, old chap; the public
prosecutor is to send for me, and I am to have a talk with
him. I have him safe, and can ring the old boss' neck. I am
certain I shall save Madeleine."
"If you save Madeleine, my good boss, you can just as
easily "
"Don't waste your spittle," said Jacques Collin shortly.
"Make your will."
"Well, then — I want to leave the money to la Gonore," re-
plied la Pouraille piteously.
"What ! Are you living with j\Ioses' widow — the Jew who
led the swindling gang in the South?" asked Jacques Collin.
For Trompe-la-Mort, like a great general, knew the person
of every one in his army.
"That's the woman," said la Pouraille, much flattered.
"A pretty woman," said Jacques Collin, who knew exactly
how to manage his dreadful tools. "The moll is a beauty;
she is well informed, and stands by her mates, and a first-rate
hand. Yes, la Gonore has made a new man of you ! What
a flat you must be to risk your nut when you have a trip like
her at home ! You noodle ; you should have set up some re-
spectable little shop and lived quietly. — And what does
she do?"
"She is settled in the Eue Sainte-Barbe, managing a
house "
"And she is to be your legatee? Ah, my dear boy, this is
what such sluts bring us to when we are such fools as to love
them."
"Yes, but don't you give her anything till T am done for."
"It is a sacred trust," said Jacques Collin very seriously.
74 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"And nothing to the pals ?"'
"i^othing ! They blowed the gaff for me," answered la
Pouraille vindictively.
"Who did? Shall I serve *em out?" asked Jacques Collin
eagerly, trying to rouse the last sentiment that survives in
these souls till the last hour. "Who knows, old pal, but 1
might at the same time do them a bad turn and serve you with
the public prosecutor?"'
The murderer looked at his boss with amazed satisfaction.
"At this moment,"' the boss replied to this expressive look,
"I am playing the game only for Theodore. When this farce
is played out, old boy, I might do wonders for a chum — for
you are a chum of mine.""
"If I see that you really can put off the engagement for
that poor little Theodore, I will do anything vou choose —
there !"
"But the trick is done. I am sure to save his head. If you
want to get out of the scrape, you see, la Pouraille, you must
be ready to do a good turn — we can do nothing single-
handed ''
"That"s true,"" said the felon.
His confidence was so strong, and his faith in the boss so
fanatical, that he no longer hesitated. La Pouraille re-
vealed the names of his accomplices, a secret hitherto well
kept. This was all Jacques needed to know.
"That is the whole story. Euffard was the third in the job
with me and Godet "'
"Arrache-Laine ?" cried Jacques Collin, giving Euffard his
nickname among the gang.
"That"s the man. — x\nd the blackguards peached because
I knew where they had hidden their whack, and they did not
know where mine was."
"You are making it all easy, my cherub !" said Jacques
Collin.
"What?"
"Well," replied the master, "you see how wise it is to trust
me entirely. Your revenge is now part of the hand I am
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 75
playing. — I do not ask you to tell me where the dibs are, you
can tell me at the last moment ; but tell me all about Eufl'ard
and Godet."
''You are, and you always will be, our boss; I have no
secrets from you," replied la Pouraille. *'My money is in the
cellar at la Gonore's."
"And you are not afraid of her telling?"
"Why, get along ! She knows nothing about my little
game !" replied la Pouraille. "I make her drunk, though she
is of the sort that would never blab even with her head under
the knife. — But such a lot of gold !"
"Yes, that turns the milk of the purest conscience," replied
Jacques Collin.
■ "So I could do the job with no peepers to spy me. All the
chickens were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet un-
derground behind some wine-bottles. And I spread some
stones and mortar over them."
"Good," said Jacques Collin. "And the others?"
"Ruffard's pieces are with la Gonore in the poor woman's
bedroom, and he has her tight by that, for she might be
nabbed as accessory after the fact, and end her days in Saint-
Lazare."
"The villain ! The reelers teach a thief what's what," said
Jacques.
"Godet left his pieces at his sister's, a washerwoman;
honest girl, she may be caught for five years in La Force with-
out dreaming of it. The pal raised the tiles of the floor, put
them back again, and guyed."
"Now do you know what I want you to do ?" said Jacques
Collin, with a magnetizing gaze at la Pouraille.
"What?"
"I want you to take Madeleine's job on your shoulders."
La Pouraille started queerly; but he at once recovered
himself and stood at attention under the boss' eye.
"So you shy at that ? You dare to spoil my game ? Come,
now ! Four murders or three. Does it not come to the same
thing?"
76 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Perhaps."
•^^y the God of good-fellowship, there is no blood in your
veins ! And I was thinking of saving you !"'
"How?"
"Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family,
you will only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for
your nut if we keep the blunt, but at this moment you are
worth seven hundred thousand francs, you flat."'
"Good for you, boss I" cried la Pouraille in great glee.
"And then,'"' said Jacques Collin, "Taesides casting all the
murders on EufPard — Bibi-Lupin will be finely sold. I have
him this time."
La Pouraille was speechless at this suggestion; his eyes
grew round, and he stood like an image.
He had been three months in custody, and was committed
for trial, and his chums at La Force, to whom he had never
mentioned his accomplices, had given him such small comfort,
that he was entirely hopeless after his examination, and this
simple expedient had been quite overlooked by these prison-
ridden minds. This semblance of a hope almost stupefied
his brain.
"Have Euffard and Godet had their spree yet ? Have they
forked out any of the yellow boys?" asked Jacques Collin.
"They dare not," replied la Pouraille. "The wretches are
waiting till I am turned off. That is what my moll sent me
word by la Biffe when she came to see le Biffon."
''Very well ; we will have their whack of money in twenty-
four hours," said Jacques Collin. "Then the blackguards
cannot pay up, as you will ; you will come out as white as
snow, and they will be red with all that blood ! By my kind
offices you will seem a good sort of fellow led away by them.
I shall have money enough of yours to prove alibis on the
other counts, and when you are back on the hulks — for you
are bound to go there — you must see about escaping. It is a
dog's life, still it is life!"
La Pouraille's eyes glittered with suppressed delirium.
"With seven hundred thousand francs you can get a good
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 77
many drinks," said Jacques Collin, making his pal quite
drunk with hope.
"Ay, ay, boss!"
"I can bamboozle the Minister of Justice. — Ah, ha! Kuf-
fard will shell out to do for a reeler. Bibi-Lupin is fairly
gulled !"
"Very good, it is a bargain," said la Pouraille with savage
glee. "You order, and 1 obey."
And he hugged Jacques Collin in his arms, while tears of
joy stood in his eyes, so hopeful did he feel of saving his head.
"That is not all," said Jacques Collin; "the public prose-
cutor does not swallow everything, you know, especially when
a new count is entered against you. The next thing is to
bring a moll into the case by blowing the gaff."
"But how, and what for ?"
"Do as I bid you; you will see." And Trompe-la-Mort
briefly told the secret of the Nanterre murders, showing him
how necessary it was to find a woman who would pretend to
be Ginetta. Then he and la. Pouraille, now in good spirits,
went across to le Biffon.
"I know how sweet you are on la Biffe," said Jacques Col-
lin to this man.
The expression in le Biffon's eyes was a horrible poem.
"What will she do while you are on the hulks?"
A tear sparkled in le Biffon's fierce eyes.
"Well, suppose I were to get her lodgings in the Lorcefe des
Largnes" (the women's La Force, i. e. les Madelonnettes or
Saint-Lazare) "for a stretch, allowing that time for you to
be sentenced and sent there, to arrive and to escape?"
"Even you cannot work such a miracle. She took no part
in the job," replied la Biffe's partner.
"Oh, my good Biffon," said la Pouraille, "our boss is more
powerful than God Almighty."
"What is your password for her?" asked Jacques Collin,
with the assurance of a master to whom nothing can be re
fused.
"Sorgue a Pantin" (night in Paris). "If you say that she
78 A rOURTBSAN'S T.TFE
knows you have come from me, and if you want her to do as
you bid her, show her a five-franc piece and say Tondif."
"She will be involved in the sentence on la Pouraille, and
let off with a year in quod for snitching,'' said Jacques Collin,
looking at la Pouraille.
La Pouraille understood his boss' scheme, and by a single
look promised to persuade le Biffon to promote it by induc-
ing la Biffe to take upon herself this complicity in the crime
la Pouraille was prepared to confess.
"Farewell, my children. You will presently hear that I
have saved my boy from Jack Ketch," said Trompe-la-Mort.
"Yes, Jack Ketch and his hairdresser were waiting in the
office to get Madeleine ready. — There," he added, "they have
come to fetch me to go to the public prosecutor."
And, in fact, a warder came out of the gate and beckoned
to this extraordinary man, who, in face of the young Corsi-
can's danger, had recovered the savage power which enabled
him to hold his own against his own society.
[t is worthy of note that at the moment when Lucien's
body was taken away from him, Jacques Collin had, with a
ta'owniug effort, made up his mind to attempt a last incarna-
tion, not as a human being, but as a thing. He had at last
1 aken the fateful step that Napoleon took on* board the boat
which conveyed him to the Bellerophon. And a strange con-
currence of events aided this genius of evil and corruption in
liis undertaking.
But though the unlooked-for conclusion of this life of
crime may perhaps be deprived of some of the marvelous
effect which, in our day, can be given to a narrative only by
incredible improbabilities, it is necessary, before we accom-
pany Jacques Collin to the public prosecutor's room, that
we should follow Madame Camusot in her visits during the
time we have spent in the Conciergerie.
One of the obligations which the historian of manners
must unfailingly observe is that of never marring the truth
for the sake of dramatic arrangement^ especially when the
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 79
truth is so kind as to be in itself romantic. Social nature,
particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks of chance, such
complications of whimsical entanglements, that it constantly
outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of
facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights
of "situation" forbidden to art, unless they are softened,
cleansed, and purified by the writer.
Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the
morning almost in good taste — a difficult task for the wife
of a judge who for six years has lived in a provincial town.
Her object was to give no hold for criticism to the Marquise
d'Espard or the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, in a call so
early as between eight and nine in the morning. Amelie
Cecile Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only half suc-
ceeded ; and in a matter of dress is this not a twofold blunder ?
Few people can imagine how useful the women of Paris are
to ambitious men of every class ; they are equally necessary in
the world of fashion and the world of thieves, where, as we
have seen, they fill a most important part. For instance, sup-
pose that a man, not to find himself left in the lurch, must
absolutely get speech within a given time with the high
functionary who was of such immense importance under the
Eestoration, and who is to this day called the Keeper of the
Seals — a man, let us say, in the most favorable position, a
judge, that is to say, a man familiar with the way of things.
He is compelled to seek out the presiding judge of a circuit,
or some private or official secretary, and prove to him his need
of an immediate interview. But is a Keeper of the Seals
ever visible "that very minute" ? In the middle of the day,
if he is not at the Chamber, he is at the Privy Council, or
signing papers, or hearing a case. In the early morning he
is out, no one knows where. In the evening he has public
and private engagements. If every magistrate could claim a
moment's interview under any pretext that might occur to
him, the Supreme Judge would be besieged.
The purpose of a private and immediate interview is there-
fore submitted to the judgment of one of those mediatory
80 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
potentates who are but an obstacle to be removed, a door that
can be unlocked, so long as it is not held by a rival. A wo-
man at once goes to another woman ; she can get straight into
her bedroom if she can arouse the curiosity of mistress or
maid, especially if the mistress is under the stress of a
strong interest or pressing necessity.
Call this female potentate Madame la Marquise d'Espard,
Math whom a Minister has to come to terms; this woman
writes a little scented note, which her man-servant carries
to the Minister's man-servant. The note greets the Minister
on his waking, and he reads it at once. Though the Minister
has business to attend to, the man is enchanted to have a
reason for calling on one of the Queens of Paris, one of the
Powers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, one of the favorites
01 the Dauphiness, of Madame^ or of the King. Casimir
Perier, the only real statesman of the Eevolution of July,
would leave anything to call on a retired Gentleman of the
Bed-chamber to King Charles X.
This theory accounts for the magical effect of the words :
"Madame, — Madame Camusot, on very important business,
which she says you know of," spoken in Madame d'Espard's
ear by her maid, who thought she Avas awake.
And the Marquise desired that Amelie should be shown in
at once.
The magistrate's wife was attentively heard when she be-
gan with these words :
"Madame la Marquise, we have ruined ourselves by trying
to avenge you "
"How is that, my dear?" replied the Marquise, looking at
Madame Camusot in the dim light that fell through the
half-open door. "You are vastly sweet this morning in that
little bonnet. Where do you get that shape?"
"You are very kind, madame. — Well, you know that Camu-
sot's way of examining Lucien de Rubempre drove the young
man to despair, and he hanged himself in prison."
"Oh, what will become of ]\[adame de Serizy?" cried the
Marquise, affecting ignorance, that she might hear the whole
story once more.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 81
"Alas ! they say she is quite mad," said Amelie. 'T!f you
could persuade the Lord Keeper to send for my husband this
minute, by special messenger, to meet him at the Palais, the
Minister M^ould hear some strange mysteries, and report them,
no doubt, to the King. . . . Then Camusot's enemies
would be reduced to silence."
"But who are Camusot's enemies?" asked Madame d'Es-
pard. "^^^ "
"The public prosecutor, and now Monsieur de Serizy."
"Very good, my dear," replied Madame d'Espard, who owed
to Monsieur de Granville and the Comte de Serizy her defeat
in the disgraceful proceedings by which she had tried to have
her husband treated as a lunatic, "I will protect you ; I never
forget either my foes or my friends."
She rang; the maid drew open the curtains, and daylight
flooded the room; she asked for her desk, and the maid
brought it in. The Marquise hastily scrawled a few lines.
"Tell Godard to go on horseback, and carry this note to
the Chancellor's office. — There is no reply," said she to the
maid.
The woman went out of the room quickh^, but, in spite of
the order, remained at the door for some minutes.
"There are great mysteries going forward then?" asked
Madame d'Espard. "Tell me all about it, dear child. Has
Clotilde de Grandlieu put a finger in the pie?"
"You will know everything from the Lord Keeper, for my
husband has told me nothing. He only told me he was in
danger. It would be better for us that Madame de Serizy
should die than that she should remain mad."
"Poor woman !" said the Marquise. "But was she not mad
already ?"
Women of the world, by a hundred ways of pronouncing
the same phrase, illustrate to attentive hearers the infinite
variety of musical modes. The soul goes out into the voice as
it does into the eyes ; it vibrates in light and in air — the ele-
ments acted on by the eyes and voice. By the tone she gave
to the two words, "Poor woman !" the Marquise betrayed the
82 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
joy of satisfied hatred, the pleasure of triumph. Oh ! what
woes did she not wish to befall Lucien's protectress. Eevenge,
which nothing can assuage, which can survive the person
hated, fills us with dark tenors. And Madame Camusot,
though harsh herself, vindictive, and quarrelsome, was over-
whelmed. She could find nothing to say, and was silent.
"Diane told me that Leontine went to the prison," Madame
d'Espard went on. "The dear Duchess is in despair at such a
scandal, for she is so foolish as to be very fond of Madame
de Serizy; however, it is comprehensible: they both adored
that little fool Lucien at about the same time, and nothing
so effectually binds or severs two women as worshiping at the
same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours yesterday
in Leontine's room. The poor Countess, it seems, says dread-
ful things! I heard that it was disgusting! A woman of
rank ought not to give way to such attacks. — Bah ! A purely
physical passion. — The Duchess came to see me as pale as
death ; she really was very brave. There are monstrous things
connected with this business."
"My husband will tell the Keeper of the Seals all he knows
for his own justification, for they wanted to save Lucien, and
he, Madame la Marquise, did his duty. An examining judge
always has to question people in private at the time fixed by
law ! He had to ask the poor little wretch something, if only
for form's sake, and the young fellow did not understand,
and confessed things "
"He was an impertinent fool !" said Madame d'Espard in a
hard tone.
The judge's wife kept silence on hearing this sentence.
"Though we failed in the matter of the Commission in
Lunacy, it was not Camusot's fault, I shall never forget
that," said the Marquise after a pause. "It was Lucien,
Monsieur de Serizy, Monsieur de Bauvan, and Monsieur de
Granville who overthrew us. With time God will be on my
side; all those people will come to grief. — Be quite easy, I
will send the Chevalier d'Espard to the Keeper of the Seals
that he may desire your husband's presence immediately, if
that is of any use."
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 83
"Oh ! madame-
"Listen," said the Marquise. "I promise you the ribbon
of the Legion of Honor at once — to-morrow. It will be a
conspicuous testimonial of satisfaction with your conduct in
this affair. Yes, it implies further blame on Lucien; it will
prove him guilty. Men do not commonly hang them-
selves for the pleasure of it. — Now, good-bye, my pretty
dear "
Ten minutes later IMadame Camusot was in the bedroom
of the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse, who had not gone to
bed till one, and at nine o'clock had not yet slept.
However insensible duchesses may be, even these women,
whose hearts are of stone, cannot see a friend a victim to
madness without being painfully impressed by it.
And besides, the connection between Diane and Lucien,
though at an end now eighteen months since, had left such
memories with the Duchess that the poor boy's disastrous
end had been to her also a fearful blow. All night Diane
had seen visions of the beautiful youth, so charming, so
poetical, who had been so delightful a lover — painted as
Leontine depicted him, with the vividness of wild delirium.
She had letters from Lucien that she had kept, intoxicating let-
ters worthy to compare with Mirabeau's to Sophie, but more
literary, more elaborate, for Lucien's letters had been dictated
by the most powerful of passions — Vanity. Having the most
bewitching of duchesses for his mistress, and seeing her com-
mit any folly for him — secret follies, of course — had turned
Lucien's head with happiness. The lovers pride had in-
spired the poet. And the Duchess had treasured these touch-
ing letters, as some old men keep indecent prints, for the sake
of their extravagant praise of all that was least duchess-like
in her nature.
"And he died in i squalid prison !" cried she to herself,
putting the letters away in a panic when she heard her maid
knocking gently at her door.
"Madame Camusot," said the woman, "on business of the
greatest importance to you, Madame la Duchesse."
84 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Diane sprang to her feet in terror.
"Oh!"' cried she, looking at Amelie, who had assumed a
duly condoling air, "I guess it all — my letters ! It is about
my letters. Oh ! my letters, my letters !"
She sank on to a couch. She remembered now how, in
the extravagance of her passion, she had answered Lucien in
the same vein, had lauded the man's poetry as he had sung
the charms of the woman, and in what a strain !
"Alas, yes, madame, I have come to save what is dearer to
you than life — your honor. Compose yourself and get
dressed, we must go to the Duchesse de Grandlieu ; happily
for you, you are not the only person compromised."
"But at the Palais, yesterday, Leontine burned, I am told,
all the letters found at poor Lucien' s."
"But, madame, behind Lucien there was Jacques Collin!"
cried the magistrate's wife. "You always forget that hor-
rible companionship which beyond question led to that charm-
ing and lamented young man's end. That Machiavelli of
the galleys never loses his head ! Monsieur Camusot is con-
vinced that the wretch has in some safe hiding-place all the
most compromising letters written by you ladies to his "
"His friend," the Duchess hastily put in. "You are right,
my child. We must hold council at the Grandlieus'. We
are all concerned in this matter, and Serizy happily will lend
us his aid."
Extreme peril — as we have observed in the scenes in the
Conciergerie — has a hold over the soul not less terrible than
that of powerful reagents over the body. It is a mental
Voltaic battery. The day, perhaps, is not far off when the
process shall be discovered by which feeling is chemically con-
verted into a fluid not unlike the electric fluid.
The phenomena were the same in the convict and the Duch-
ess. This crushed, half-dying woman, who had not slept,
who was so particular over her dressing, had recovered the
strength of a lioness at bay, and the presence of mind of a
general under fire. Diane chose her gown and got through her
dressing with the alacrity of a grisette who is her own wait-
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 85
ing-woman. It was so astounding, that the lady's-maid
stood for a moment stock-still, so greatly was she surprised
to see her mistress in her shift, not ill pleased perhaps to let
the judge's wife discern through the thin cloud of lawn a
form as white and as perfect as that of Canova's Venus. It
was like a gem in a fold of tissue paper. Diane suddenly re-
membered where a pair of stays had been put that fastened
in front, sparing a woman in a hurry the ill-spent time and
fatigue of being laced. She had arranged the lace trimming
of her shift and the fulness of the bosom by the time the maid
had fetched her petticoat, and crowned the work by putting
on her gown. While Amelie, at a sign from the maid, hooked
the bodice behind, the woman brought out a pair of thread
stockings, velvet boots, a shawl, and a bonnet. Amelie and
the maid each drew on a stocking.
"You are the loveliest creature I ever saw!" said Amelie,
insidiously kissing Diane's elegant and polished knee with an
eager impulse.
"Madame has not her match !" cried the maid.
"There, there, Josette, hold your tongue," replied the
Duchess. — "Have you a carriage?" she went on, to Madame
Camusot. "Then come along, my dear, we can talk on the
road."
And the Duchess ran down the great stairs of the Hotel de
Cadignan, putting on her gloves as she went — a thing she
had never been known to do.
"To the Hotel de Grandlieu, and drive fast," said she to
one of her men, signing to him to get up behind.
The footman hesitated — it was a" hackney coach.
"Ah ! Madame la Duchesse, you never told me that the
young man had letters of yours. Otherwise Camusot would
have proceeded differently . . ."
"Leontine's state so occupied my thoughts that I forgot
myself entirely. The poor woman was almost crazy the day
before yesterday ; imagine the effect on her of this tragical
termination. If you could only know, child, what a morning
we went through yesterday ! It is enough to make one f or-
6
86 A COURTESAN" S LIFE
swear love ! — Yesterday Leontine and I were dragged across
Paris by a horrible old woman, an old-clothes buyer, a dom-
ineering creature, to that stinking and blood-stained sty they
call the Palace of Justice, and I said to her as I took her
there: 'Is not this enough to make us fall on our knees and
cry out like Madame de Xucingen, when she went through
one of those awful Mediterranean storms on her way to
Naples, "Dear God, save me this time, and never again !" *
"These two days will certainly have shortened my life. —
What fools we are ever to write ! — But love prompts us ; we
receive pages that fire the heart through the eyes, and every-
thing is in a blaze ! Prudence deserts us — we reply "
"But why reply when you can act?" said Madame Camu-
sot.
"It is grand to lose oneself utterly !'' cried the Duchess with
pride. "It is the luxury of the soul."
"Beautiful women are excusable," said Madame Camu-
sot modestly. "They have more opportunities of falling than
we have."
The Duchess smiled.
"We are always too generous," said Diane de Maufrigneuse.
"I shall do just like that odious Madame d'Espard."
"And what does she do?" asked the judge's wife, very
curious.
"She has written a thousand love-notes "
"So many !" exclaimed Amelie, interrupting the Duchess.
"Well, my dear, and not a word that could compromise
her is to be found in any one of them."
"You would be incapable of maintaining such coldness,
such caution," said Madame Camusot. "You are a woman ;
vou are one of those angels who cannot stand out against the
devil "
"I have made a vow to write no more letters. I never in
my life wrote to anybody but that unhappy Lucien. — I will
keep his letters to my dying day ! My dear child, they are
fire, and sometimes we want "
"But if they were found !" said Amelie, with a little shocked
expression.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 87
"Oh ! I should say they were part of a romance I was writ-
ing; for I have copied them all;, my dear, and burned the
originals."
"Oh, madame, as a reward allow me to read them."
"Perhaps, child," said the Duchess. "And then you
will see that he did not write such letters as those to
Leontine."
This speech was woman all the world over, of every age
and every land.
Madame Camusot, like the frog in la Fontaine's fable, was
ready to burst her skin with the joy of going to the Grand-
lieus' in the society of the beautiful Diane de Mauf rigneuse.
This morning she would forge one of the links that are so
needful to ambition. She could already hear herself ad-
dressed as Madame la Presidente. She felt the ineffable glad-
ness of triumphing over stupendous obstacles, of which the
greatest was her husband's ineptitude, as yet unrevealed, but
to her well kno-woi. To win success for a second-rate man !-
This is to a woman — as to a king — the delight which tempts
great actors when they act a bad play a hundred times over.
It is the very drunkenness of egoism. It is in a way the
Saturnalia of power.
Power can prove itself to itself only by the strange mis-
application which leads it to crown some absurd person with
the laurels of success while insulting genius — the only strong-
hold which power cannot touch. The knighting of Caligula's
horse, an imperial farce, has been, and always will be, a
favorite performance.
In a few minutes Diane and Amelie had exchanged the
elegant disorder of the fair Diane's bedroom for the severe
but dignified and splendid austerity of the Duchesse de Grand-
lieu's rooms.
She, a Portuguese, and very pious, always rose at eight to
attend mass at the little church of Sainte-Valere, a chapelry
to Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, standing at that time on the es-
planade of the Invalides. This chapel, now destroyed, was
88 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
rebuilt in the Rue de Bourgogne, pending the building of a
Gothic church to be dedicated to Sainte-Clotilde.
On hearing the first words spoken in her ear by Diane
de IMaufrigneuse, this saintly lady went to find Monsieur de
Grandlieu, and brought him back at once. The Duke threw
a flashing look at Madame Camusot, one of those rapid
glances with which a man of the world can guess at a whole
existence, or often read a soul. Amelie's dress greatly helped
the Duke to decipher the story of a middle-class life, from
Alencon to ]\Iantes, and from Mantes to Paris.
Oh ! if only the lawyer's wife could have understood this
gift in dukes, she could never have endured that politely
ironical look; she saw the politeness only. Ignorance shares
the privileges of fine breeding.
■^'This is Madame Camusot, a daughter of Thirion's — one
of the Cabinet ushers," said the Duchess to her husband.
The Duke bowed with extreme politeness to the wife of a
legal official, and his face became a little less grave.
The Duke had rung for his valet, who now came in.
"Go to the Eue Saint-Honore : take a coach. Ring at a
side door, 'No. 10. Tell the man who opens the door that I
beg his master will come here, and if the gentleman is at
home, bring him back with you. — Mention my name, that will
remove all difficulties.
"And do not be gone more than a quarter of an hour in
all."
Another footman, the Duchess' servant, came in as soon
as the other was gone.
"Go from me to the Due de Chaulieu, and send up this
card."
The Duke gave him a card folded down in a particular way.
"When the two friends wanted to meet at once, on any urgent
or confidential business which would not allow of note-writ-
ing, they used this means of communication.
Thus we see that similar customs prevail in every rank of
society, and differ only in manner, civility, and small details.
The world of fashion, too, has its argot, its slang; but that
slang is called style.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 89
"Are you quite sure, madame, of the existence of the letters
you say were .written by Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu
to this young man ?" said the Due de Grandlieu.
And he cast a look at Madame Camusot as a sailor casts
a sounding line.
"I have not seen them, but there is reason to fear it,"
replied Madame Camusot, quaking.
"My daughter can have written nothing we would not own
to !" said the Duchess.
"Poor Duchess !" thought Diane, with a glance at the Duke
that terrified him.
"What do you think, my dear little Diane ?" said the Duke
in a whisper, as he led her away into a recess.
"Clotilde is so crazy about Lucien, my dear friend, that she
had made an assignation with him before leaving. If it had
not been for little Lenoncourt, she would perhaps have gone
off with him into the forest of Fontainebleau. I know that
Lucien used to write letters to her which were enough to turn
the brain of a saint. — We are three daughters of Eve in the
coils of the serpent of letter-writing."
The Duke and Diane came back to the Duchess and Ma-
dame Camusot, who were talking in undertones. Amelie,
following the advice of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, af-
fected piety to win the proud lady's favor.
"We are at the mercy of a dreadful escaped convict !" said
the Duke, with a peculiar shrug. "This is what comes of
opening one's house to people one is not absolutely sure of.
Before admitting an acquaintance, one ought to know all
about his fortune, his relations, all his previous history "
This speech is the moral of my story — from the aristocratic
point of view.
"That is past and over," said the Duchesse de Mau-
frigneuse. "Now we must think of saving that poor Madame
de Serizy, Clotilde, and me "
"We can but wait for Henri; I have sent to him. But
everything really depends on the man Gentil is gone to fetch.
God grant that man may be in Paris ! — Madame," he added
90 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
to Madame Camusot, "thank you so much for having thought
of us "
This was Madame Camusot's dismissal. The daughter of
the Court usher had wit enougli to understand the Duke ; she
rose. But the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, with the enchant-
ing grace which won her so much friendship and discretion,
took Amelie by the hand as if to show her, in a way, to the
Duke and Duchess.
"On my own account," said she, "to say nothing of her
having been up before daybreak to save us all, I may ask
for more than a remembrance for my little Madame Camusot.
In the first place, she has already done me such service as 1
cannot forget ; and then she is wholly devoted to our side,
she and her husband. I have promised that her Camusot
shall have advancement, and I beg you above everything to
help him on, for my sake."
"You need no such recommendation," said the Duke to .Ma-
dame Camusot. "The Grandlieus always remember a ser-
vice done them. The King's adherents will ere long have a
chance of distinguishing themselves; they will be called upon
to prove their devotion; your husband will be placed in the
front "
Madame Camusot withdrew, proud, happy, puffed up to
suffocation. She reached home triumphant ; she admired
herself, she made light of the public prosecutor's hostility.
She said to herself :
"Supposing we were to send Monsieur de Granville fly-
ing "
It was high time for ]\Iadame Camusot to vanish. The
Due de Chaulieu, one of the King's prime favorites, met the
hourgeoise on the outer steps.
"Henri," said the Due de Grandlieu when he heard his
friend announced, "make haste, I beg of you, to get to the
Chateau, try to see the King — the business is this;" and he
led the Duke into the window-recess, where he had been talk-
ing to the airy and charming Diane.
Now and then the Due de Chaulieu glanced in the direction
VAUTRINS LAST AVATAR 91
of the flighty Duchess, who, while talking to the pious Duch-
ess and submitting to be lectured, answered the Due de Chau-
lieu's expressive looks.
"My dear child," said the Due de Grandlieu to her at last,
the aside being ended, "do be good ! Come, now,"' and he
took Diane's hands, "observe the proprieties of life, do not
compromise yourself any more, write no letters. Letters, my
dear, have caused as much private woe as public mischief.
What might be excusable in a girl like Clotilde, in love for the
first time, had no excuse in "
"An old soldier who has been under fire," said Diane with
a pout.
This grimace and the Duchess' jest brought a smile to tlio
face of the two much-troubled Dukes, and of the pious Duch-
ess herself.
"But for four years I have never written a hillet-doux. —
Are we saved ?" asked Diane, who hid her curiosity under this
childishness.
"Not yet," said the Due de Chaulieu. "You have no
notion how difficult it is to do an arbitrary thing. In a
constitutional king it is what infidelity is in a wife: it is
adultery."
"The fascinating sin," said the Due de Grandlieu.
"Forbidden fruit !" said Diane, smiling. "Oh ! how I
wish I were the Government, for I have none of that fruit
left — I have eaten it all."
"Oh ! • my dear, my dear !" said the elder Duchess, "you
really go too far."
The two Dukes, hearing a coach stop at the door with the
clatter of horses checked in full gallop, bowed to the ladies
and left them, going into the Due de Grandlieu's study,
whither came the gentleman from the Eue Honore-Chevalier
— no less a man than the chief of the King's private police,
the obscure but puissant Corentin.
"Go on," said the Due de Grandlieu; "go first. Monsieur
de Saint-Denis."
Corentin, surprised that the Duke should have remem-
92 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
bered him, went forward after bowing low to the two noble-
men.
"Always about the same individual, or about his concerns,
my dear sir," said the Due de Grandlieu.
"But he is dead," said Corentin.
"He has left a partner," said the Due de Chaulieu, "a very
tough customer."
"The convict Jacques Collin," replied Corentin.
"Will you speak, Ferdinand ?" said the Due de Chaulieu to
his friend.
"That wretch is an object of fear," said the Due de Grand-
lieu, "for he has possessed himself, so as to be able to levy
blackmail, of the letters written by Madame de Serizy and
Madame de Maufrigneuse to Lucien Chardon, that man's tool.
It would seem that it was a matter of system in the young
man to extract passionate letters in return for his own, for I
am told that Mademoiselle de Grandlieu had written some —
at least, so we fear — and we cannot find out from her — she
is gone abroad."
"That little young man," replied Corentin, "was incapable
of so much foresight. That was a precaution due to the
Abbe Carlos Herrera."
Corentin rested his elbow on the arm of the chair on which
he was sitting, and his head on his hand, meditating.
"Money ! — The man has more than we have," said he.
"Esther Gobseck served him as a bait to extract nearly two
million francs from that well of gold called Nucingen. — Gen-
tlemen, get me full legal powers, and I will rid you of the
fellow."
"And — the letters ?" asked the Due de Grandlieu.
"Listen to me, gentlemen," said Corentin, standing up, his
weasel-face betraying his excitement.
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his black doeskin
trousers, shaped over the shoes. This great actor in the his-
torical drama of the day had only stopped to put on a waist-
coat and frock-coat, and had not changed his morning
trousers, so well he knew how grateful great men can be
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 93
for immediate action in certain cases. He walked up and
down the room quite at his ease, haranguing loudly, as if
he had been alone.
"He is a convict. He could be sent off to Bicetre without
trial, and put in solitary confinement, without a soul to speak
to, and left there to die. — But he may have given instructions
to his adherents, foreseeing this possibility."
"But he was put into the secret cells," said the Due de
Grandlieu, "the moment he was taken into custody at that
woman's house."
"Is there such a thing as a secret cell for such a fellow as
he is ?" said Corentin. "He is a match for — for me !"
"What is to be done?" said the Dukes to each other by a
glance.
"We can send the scoundrel back to the hulks at once — to
Eochef ort ; he will be dead in six months ! Oh ! without com-
mitting any crime," he added, in reply to a gesture on the
part of the Due de Grandlieu. "What do you expect? A
convict cannot hold' out more than six months of a hot sum-
mer if he is made to work really hard among the marshes of
the Charente. But this is of no use if our man has taken pre-
cautions with regard to the letters. If the villain has been
suspicious of his foes, and that is probable, we must find out
what steps he has taken. Then, if the present holder of the
letters is poor, he is open to bribery. So, now, we must make
Jacques Collin speak. What a duel ! He will beat me.
The better plan would be to purchase these letters by ex-
change for another document — a letter of reprieve — and to
place the man in my gang. Jacques Collin is the only man
alive who is clever enough to come after me, poor Contenson
and dear old Peyrade both being dead ! Jacques Collin killed
those two unrivaled spies on purpose, as it were, to make a
place for himself. So, you see, gentlemen, you must give me
a free hand. Jacques Collin is in the Conciergerie. I will
go to see Monsieur de Granville in his Court. Send some
one you can trust to meet me there, for I must have a letter
to show to Monsieur de Granville, who knows nothinfir of me.
94 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
I will hand the letter to the President of the Council, a very
impressive sponsor. You have half an hour before you, for
1 need half an hour to dress, that is to say, to make myself
presentable to the eyes of the public prosecutor."
"Monsieur," said the Due de Chaulieu, "I know your won-
derful skill, I only ask you to say Yes or No. Will you be
bound to succeed?"
"Yes, if I have full powers, and your word that I shall
never be questioned about the matter. — My plan is laid."
This sinister reply made the two fine gentlemen shiver.
"Go on, then, monsieur," said the Due de Chaulieu. "You
can set down the charges of the case p.mong those you are in
the habit of undertaking."
Corentin bowed and went away.
Henri de Lenoncourt, for whom Ferdinand de Grandlieu
had a carriage brought out, went off forthwith to the King,
whom he was privileged to see at all times in right of his
office.
Thus all the various interests that had got entangled from
the highest to the lowest ranks of society were to meet pres-
ently in Monsieur de Granville's room at the Palais, all
brought together by necessity embodied in three men — Justice
in Monsieur de Granville, and the family in Corentin, face
to face with Jacques Collin, the terrible foe who represented
social crime in its fiercest energy.
What a duel is that between justice and arbitrary wills
on one side and the hulks and cunning on the other ! The
hulks — symbolical of that daring which throws off calcula-
tion and reflection, which avails itself of any means, which
has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed justice, but is the
hideous outcome of the starving stomach — the swift and
bloodthirsty pretext of hunger. Is it not attack as against
self-protection, theft as against property? The terrible
quarrel between the social state and the natural man, fought
out on the narrowest possible ground ! In short, it is a ter-
rible and vivid image of those compromises, hostile to social
interests, which the representatives of authority, when they
lack power, submit to with the fiercest rebels.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 95
When Monsieur Camusot was announced, the public pros-
ecutor signed that he should be admitted. Monsieur de
Granville had foreseen this visit, and wished to come to an
understanding with the examining judge as to how to wind
up this business of Lucien's death. The end could no longer
be that on which he had decided the day before in agreement
with Camusot, before the suicide of the hapless poet.
"Sit down. Monsieur Camusot," said Monsieur de Gran-
ville, dropping into his armchair. The public prosecutor,*
alone with the inferior judge, made no secret of his depressed
state. Camusot looked at Monsieur de Granville and observed
his almost livid pallor, and such utter fatigue, such com-
plete prostration, as betrayed greater suffering perhaps than
that of the condemned man to whom the clerk had announced
the rejection of his appeal. And yet that announcement, in
the forms of justice, is as much as to say, "Prepare to die;
your last hour has come."
"I will .return later. Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot.
"Though the business is pressing "
"No, stav^," replied the public prosecutor with dignity. "A
magistrate, monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how
to hide them. I was in fault if you saw any traces of agita-
tion in me "
Camusot bowed apologetically.
"God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities
of our life. A man might sink under less ! I have just
spent the night with one of my most intimate friends. — I
have but two friends, the Comte Octave de Bauvan and the
Comte de Serizy. — We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy, the
Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning,
taking it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de
Serizy's bedside, fearing each time that we might find her
dead or irremediably insane. Desplein, Bianchon, and
Sinard never left the room, and she has two nurses. The
Count worships his wife. Imagine the night I have spent,
between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with
despair. And a statesman's despair is not like that of an
96 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
idiot. Serizy, as calm as if he were sitting in his place in
council, clutched his chair to force himself to show us an un-
moved countenance, while sweat stood over the brows bent by
so much hard thought. — Worn out by want of sleep, I dozed
from five till half-past seven, and I had to be here by half-
past eight to warrant an execution. Take my word for it,
Monsieur Camusot, when a judge has been toiling all night
in such gulfs of sorrow, feeling the heavy hand of God on all
human concerns, and heaviest on noble souls, it is hard to sit
down here, in front of a desk, and say in cold blood, 'Cut off
a head at four o'clock ! Destroy one of God's creatures full
of life, health, and strength !' — And yet this is my duty !
Sunk in grief myself, I must order the scaffold
"The condemned wretch cannot know that his judge suffers
anguish equal to his own. At this moment he and I, linked
by a sheet of paper — I, society avenging itself ; he, the crime
to be avenged — embody the same duty seen from two sides;
we are two lives joined for the moment by the sword of the
law.
"Who pities the judge's deep sorrow? Who can soothe
it ? Our glory is to bury it in the depth of our heart. The
priest with his life given to God, the soldier with a thousand
deaths for his country's sake, seem to me far happier than
the magistrate with his doubts and fears and appalling re-
sponsibility.
"You know who the condemned man is?" Monsieur de
Granville went on. "A young man of seven-and-twenty —
as handsome as he who killed himself yesterday, and as fair ;
condemned against all our anticipations, for the only proof
against him was his concealment of the stolen goods. Though
sentenced, the lad will confess nothing ! For seventy days
he has held out against every test, constantly declaring that
he is innocent. For two months I have felt two heads on my
shoulders ! I would give a year of my life if he would con-
fess, for juries need encouragement; and imagine what a
blow it would be to justice if some day it should be discovered
that the crime for which he is punished .was committed by
another.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 97
*^n Paris everything is so terribly important; the most
trivial incidents in the law courts have political consequences.
"The jury, an institution regarded by the legislators of ^i^
the Eevolution as a source of strength, is, in fact, an in- ^X,
strument of social rmhj,:,f or it fails in action ; it does not ^
sufficiently protect" society. The jury trifles with its "■
functions. The class of jurymen is divided into two
parties, one averse to capital punishment; the result is a
total upheaval of true equality in administration of the
law. Parricide, a most horrible crime, is in some depart-
ments treated with leniency, while in others a common mur-
der, so to speak, is punished with death.* And what would
happen if here in Paris, in our home district, an innocent
man should be executed !"
"He is an escaped convict," said Monsieur Camusot,
diffidently.
"The Opposition and the Press would make him a paschal
lamb !" cried Monsieur de Granville ; "and the Opposition
would enjoy white-washing him, for he is a fanatical Cor-
sican, full of his native notions, and his murders were a
Vendetta. In that island you may kill your enemy, and think
yourself, and be thought, a very good man.
"A thorough-paced magistrate, I tell you, is an unhappy
man. They ought to live apart from all society, like the
pontiffs of old. The world should never see them but at
fixed hours, leaving their cells, grave, and old, and venerable,
passing sentence like the high priests of antiquity, who com-
bined in their person the functions of judicial and sacerdotal
authority. We should be accessible only in our high seat. —
As it is, we are to be seen every day, amused or unhappy,
like other men. We are to be found in drawing-rooms and
at home, as ordinary citizens, moved by our passions ; and we
seem, perhaps, more grotesque than terrible."
This bitter cry, broken by pauses and interjections, and
emphasized by gestures which gave it an eloquence im-
* There are in penal servitude twenty-three parricides who have heen allowed the
benefit of extenuating circumstances.
98 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
possible to reduce to writing, made Camusot's blood run
chill.
"And I, monsieur,'' said he, "began yesterday my ap-
prenticeship to the sufferings of our calling. — I could have
died of that young fellow's death. He misunderstood my
wish to be lenient, and the poor wretch committed him-
self."
"x\h, you ought never to have examined him !" cried
Monsieur de Granville; "it is so easy to oblige by doing
nothing."
"And the law, monsieur?"' replied Camusot. "He had
been in custody two days."
"The mischief is done," said the public prosecutor. "I
have done my best to remed}' what is indeed irremediable.
My carriage and servants are following the poor weak poet
to the grave. Serizy has sent his too; nay, more, he accepts
the duty imposed on him by the unforrtunate boy, and will
act as his executor. By promising this to his wife he won
from her a gleam of returning sanity. And Count Octave
is attending the funeral in person."
"Well, then. Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot, "let us
complete our work. We have a very dangerous man on our
hands. He is Jacques Collin — and you know it as well as I
do. The ruffian will be recognized "
"Then we are lost !" cried Monsieur de Granville.
"He is at this moment shut up with your condemned mur-
derer, who, on the hulks, was to him what Lucien has been
in Paris — a favorite protege. Bibi-Lupin, disguised as a
gendarme, is watching the interview."
"What business has the superior police to interfere?" said
the public prosecutor. "He has no business to act without
my orders !"
"All the Conciergerie must know that we have caught
Jacques Collin. — Well, I have come on purpose to tell you
that this daring felon has in his possession the most com-
promising letters of Lucien's correspondence with Madame
de Serizy, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and Mademoiselle
Clotilde de Grandlieu."
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 99
"Are you sure of that?" asked Monsieur de Granville, his
face full of pained surprise.
"You shall hear, Monsieur le Comte, what reason I have to
fear such a misfortune. When I untied the papers found <_,)>
in the young man's rooms, Jacques Collin gave a keen look ' .^
at the parcel, and smiled with satisfaction in a way that no
examining judge could misunderstand. So deep a villain
as Jacques Collin takes good care not to let such a weapon
slip through his fingers. What is to be said if these docu-
ments should be placed in the hands of counsel chosen by
that rascal from among the foes of the government and the
aristocracy ! — My wife, to whom the Duchesse de Mau-
frigneuse has shown much kindness, is gone to warn her, and
by this time they nmst be with the Grandlieus holding
council."
"But we cannot possibly try the man !" cried the public
prosecutor, rising and striding up and down the room. "He
must have put the papers in some safe place "
"I know where," said Camusot.
These words finally effaced every prejudice the public pros-
ecutor had 'felt against him.
"Well, then -" said Monsieur de Granville, sitting down
again.
"On my way here this morning I reflected deeply on this
miserable business. Jacques Collin has an aunt — an aunt
by nature, not putative — a woman concerning whom the
superior police have communicated a report to the Prefecture.
He is this woman's pupil and idol ; she is his father's sister, '
her name Jacqueline Collin. This wretched woman carries
on a trade as wardrobe purchaser, and by the connection
this business has secured her she gets hold of many family
secrets. If Jacques Collin has intrusted those papers, which
would be his salvation, to any one's keeping, it is to that of
this creature. Have her arrested."
The public prosecutor gave Camusot a keen look, as much
as to say, "This man is not such a fool as I thought him;
he is still young, and does not yet know how to handle the
reins of iustice."
100 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"But," Camusot went on, "in order to succeed, we must
give up all the plans we laid yesterday, and I came to take
your advice — ^your orders "
The public prosecutor took up his paper-knife and tapped
it against the edge of the table with one of the tricky move-
ments familiar to thoughtful men when they give themselves
up to meditation.
"Three noble families involved !" he exclaimed. "We must
not make the smallest blunder ! — You are right : as a first
step let us act on Fouche's principle, 'Arrest !' — and Jacques
Collin must at once be sent back to the secret cells."
"That is to proclaim him a convict and to ruin Lucien's
memory !"
"What a desperate business !" said Monsieur de Granville.
"There is danger on every side."
At this instant the governor of the Conciergerie came in,
not without knocking ; and the private room of a public pros-
ecutor is so well guarded, that only those concerned about
the courts may even knock at the door.
"Monsieur le Comte," said Monsieur Gault, "the prisoner
calling himself Carlos Herrera wishes to speak with you."
"Has he had communication with anybody?" asked Mon-
sieur de Granville.
"With all the prisoners, for he has been out in the yard
since about half -past seven. And he has seen the condemned
man, who would seem to have talked to him."
A speech of Camusot's, which recurred to his mind like a
flash of light, showed Monsieur de Granville all the ad-
vantage that might be taken of a confession of intimacy be-
tween Jacques Collin and Theodore Calvi to obtain the letters.
The public prosecutor, glad to have an excuse for postponing
the execution, beckoned Monsieur Gault to his side.
"I intend," said he, "to put off the execution till to-
morrow; but let no one in the prison suspect it. Absolute
silence ! Let the executioner seem to be superintending the
preparations.
"Send the Spanish priest here under a strong guard; the
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 101
Spanish Embassy claims his person ! Gendarmes can bring
up the self-styled Carlos by your back stairs so that he may
see no one. Instruct the men each to hold him by one arm,
and never let him go till they reach this door.
"Are you quite sure, Monsieur Gault, that this dangerous
foreigner has spoken to no one but the prisoners !"
"Ah ! just as he came out of the condemned cell a lady
came to see him "
The two magistrates exchanged looks, and such looks !
"What lady was that?" asked Camusot.
"One of his penitents — a Marquise," replied Gault.
"Worse and worse !" said Monsieur de Granville, looking
at Camusot.
"She gave all the gendarmes and warders a sick head-
ache," said Monsieur Gault, much puzzled.
"Nothing can be a matter of indilference in your business,"
said the public prosecutor. "The Conciergerie has not such
tremendous walls for nothing. How did this lady get in ?"
"With a regular permit, monsieur," replied the governor.
"The lady, beautifully dressed, in a tine carriage with a
footman and a chasseur, came to see her confessor before
going to the funeral of the poor young man whose body you
had had removed."
"Bring me the order for admission," said Monsieur de
Granville.
"It was given on the recommendation of the Comte de
Serizy."
"What was the woman like ?" asked the public prosecutor.
"She seemed to be a lady."
"Did you see her face?"
"She wore a black veil."
"What did they say to each other?"
"Well — a pious person, with a prayer-book in her hand —
what could she say ? She asked the Abbe's blessing and went
on her knees."
"Did they talk together a long time ?"
"Not five minutes ; but we none of us understood what they
said; they spoke Spanish no doubt."
7
102 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Tell us everything, monsieur," the public prosecutor in-
sisted. "I repeat, the very smallest detail is to us of the first
importance. Let this be a caution to you."
"She was crying, monsieur,"
"Eeally weeping?"
"That we could not see, she hid her face in her handker-
chief. She left three hundred francs in gold for the pris-
oners."
"That was not she !" said Camusot.
"Bibi-Lupin at once said, 'She is a thief !' " said Monsieur
Gault.
"He knows the tribe," said Monsieur de Granville. — "Get
out your warrant," he added, turning to Camusot, "and have
seals placed on everything in her house — at once ! But how
can she have got hold of Monsieur de Serizy's recommenda-
tion ? — Bring me the order — and go, Monsieur Gault ; send me
that Abbe immediately. So long as we have him safe, the
danger cannot be greater. And in the course of two hours'
talk you get a long way into a man's mind."
"Especially such a public prosecutor as you are," said
Camusot insidiously.
"There will be two of us," replied Monsieur de Granville
politely.
And he became discursive once more.
"There ought to be created for every prison parlor, a post
of superintendent, to be given with a good salary to the clev-
erest and most energetic police officers," said he, after a long
pause. "Bibi-Lupin ought to end his days in such a place.
Then we should have an eye and an ear on the watch in a de-
partment that needs closer supervision than it gets. — Mon-
sieur Gault could tell us nothing positive."
"He has so much to do," said Camusot. "Still, between
these secret cells and us there lies a gap which ought not to
exist. On the way from the Conciergerie to the judges' rooms
there are passages, courtyards, and stairs. The attention of
the agents cannot be unflagging, whereas the prisoner is al-
ways alive to his own affairs.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 103
"I was told that a lady had already placed herself in the
way of Jacques Collin when he was brought up from the cells
to be examined. That woman got into the guardroom at the
top of the narrow stairs from the mousetrap ; the ushers told
me, and I blamed the gendarmes."
"Oh ! the Palais needs entire reconstruction," said Monsieur
de Granville. "But it is an outlay of twenty to thirty million
francs ! Just try asking the Chambers for thirty millions
for the more decent accommodation of Justice."
The sound of many footsteps and a clatter of arms fell on
their ear. It would be Jacques Collin.
The public prosecutor assumed a mask of gravity that hid
the man. Camusot imitated his chief.
The office-boy opened the door, and Jacqiies Collin came
in, quite calm and unmoved.
"You wished to speak to me," said Monsieur de Granville.
"I am ready to listen."
"Monsieur le Comte, I am Jacques Collin. I surrender !"
Camusot started; the public prosecutor was immovable.
"As you may suppose, I have my reasons for doing this,"
said Jacques Collin, with an ironical glance at the two magis-
trates. "I must inconvenience you greatly; for if I had re-
mained a Spanish priest, you would simply have packed me
off with an escort of gendarmes as far as the frontier by
Bayonne, and there Spanish bayonets would have relieved
you of me."
The lawyers sat silent and imperturbable.
"Monsieur le Comte," the convict went on, "the reasons
which have led me to this step are yet more pressing than this,
but devilish personal to myself. I can tell them to no one
but you. — If you are afraid "
"Afraid of whom? Of what?" said the Comte de Gran-
ville.
In attitude and expression, in the turn of his head, his
demeanor and his look, this distinguished judge was at this
moment a living embodiment of the law which ought to supply
us with the noblest examples of civic courage. In this brief
104 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
instant he was on a level with the magistrates of the old
French Parlement in the time of the civil wars, when the
presidents found themselves face to face with death, and
stood, made of marble, like the statues that commemorate
them.
"Afraid to be alone with an escaped convict !"
"Leave us. Monsieur Camusot," said the public prosecutor
at once.
"I was about to suggest that you should bind me hand
and foot," Jacques Collin coolly added, with an ominous
glare at the two gentlemen. He paused, and then said with
great gravity:
"Monsieur le Comte, you had my esteem, but you now
command my admiration."
"Then you think you are formidable ?" said the magistrate,
with a look of supreme contempt.
"ThinJc myself formidable?" retorted the convict. "Why
think about it? I am, and I know it."
Jacques Collin took a chair and sat down, with all the ease
of a man who feels himself a match for his adversary in an
interview where they would treat on equal terms.
At this instant Monsieur Camusot, who was on the point of
closing the door behind him, turned back, came up to Mon-
sieur de Granville, and handed him two folded papers.
"Look !" said he to Monsieur de Granville, pointing to one
of them.
"Call back Monsieur Gault !" cried the Comte de Granville,
as he read the name of Madame de Maufrigneuse's maid — a
woman he knew.
The governor of the prison came in.
"Describe the woman who came to see the prisoner," said
the public prosecutor in his ear.
"Short, thick-set, fat, and square," replied Monsieur Gault.
"The woman to whom this permit was given is tall and
thin," said Monsieur de Granville. "How old was she?"
"About sixty."
"This concerns me, gentlemen ?" said Jacques Collin.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 105
"Come, do not puzzle your heads. That person is my aunt, a
very plausible aunt, a woman, and an old Avoman. I can save
you a great deal of trouble. You will never find my aunt
unless I choose. If we beat about the bush, we shall never
get forwarder."
"Monsieur I'Abbe has lost his Spanish accent," observed
Monsieur Gault ; "he does not speak broken French."
"Because things are in a desperate mess, my dear Monsieur
Gault," replied Jacques Collin with a bitter smile, as he ad-
dressed the Governor by name.
Monsieur Gault went quickly up to his chief, and said in a
whisper, "Beware of that man. Monsieur le Comte ; he is mad
with rage."
Monsieur de Granville gazed slowly at Jacques Collin, and
saw that he was controlling himself; but he saw, too, that what
the governor said was true. This treacherous demeanor cov-
ered the cold but terrible nervous irritation of a savage. In
Jacques Collin's eyes were the lurid fires of a volcanic erup-
tion, his fists were clenched. He was a tiger gathering him-
self up to spring.
"Leave us," said the Count gravely to the prison governor
and the Judge.
"You did wisely to send away Lucien's murderer !" said
Jacques Collin, without caring whether Camusot heard him
or no; "I could not contain myself, I should have strangled
him."
Monsieur de Granville felt a chill; never had he seen a
man's eyes so full of blood, or cheeks so colorless, or muscles
so set.
"And what good would that murder have done you?" he
quietly asked.
"You avenge society, or fancy you avenge it, every day,
monsieur, and you ask ma to give a reason for revenge ? Have
you never felt vengeance throbbing in surges in your veins?
Don't you know that it was that idiot of a judge who killed
him? — For you were fond of mv Lucien, and he loved
you ! I know you by heart, sir. The dear boy would tell me
106 • A COURTESAN'S LIFE
everything at night when he came in; I used to put him to
bed as a nurse tucks up a child, and I made him tell me every-
thing. He confided everything to me, even his least sensa-
tions !
"The best of mothers never loved an only son so tenderly
as I loved that angel ! If only you knew ! All that is good
sprang up in his heart as flowers grow in the fields. He was
weak ; it was his only fault, weak as the string of a lyre, which
is so strong when it is taut. These are the most beautiful
natures; their weakness is simply tenderness, admiration,
the power of expanding in the sunshine of art, of love, of the
beauty God has made for man in a thousand shapes ! — In
short, Lucien was a woman spoiled. Oh ! what could I not
say to that brute beast who has just gone out of the room !
"I tell you, monsieur, in my degree, as a prisoner before
his judge, I did what God A'mighty would have done for His
Son if, hoping to save Him, He had gone with Him before
Pilate !"
A flood of tears fell from the convict's light tawny eyes,
which just now had glared like those of a wolf starved by six
months' snow in the plains of the Ukraine. He went on :
"That dolt would listen to nothing, and he killed the boy ! —
I tell you, sir, I bathed the child's corpse in my tears, crying
out to the Power I do not know, and which is above us all !
I, who do not believe in God ! — (For if I were not a material-
ist, I should not be myself.)
"I have told everything when I say that. You don't know
— no man knows what suffering is. I alone know it. The fire
of anguish so dried up my tears, that all last night I could
not weep. Now I can, because I feel that you can understand
me. I saw you, sitting there just now, an Image of Justice.
Oh ! monsieur, may God — for I am beginning to believe in
Him — preserve you from ever being as bereft as I am ! That
cursed judge has robbed me of my soul, Monsieur le Comte !
At this moment they are burying my life, my beauty, my
virtue, my conscience, all my powers ! Imagine a dog from
which a chemist had extracted the blood. — That's me ! I am
that dog
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 107
"And that is why 1 have come to teii you that I am
Jacques Collin, and to give myself up. I made up my mind
to it this morning when they came and carried away the body
I was kissing like a madman — like a mother — as the Virgin
must have kissed Jesus in the tomb.
"I meant then to give myself up to justice without driving
any bargain; but now I must make one, and you shall know
why."
"Are you speaking to the judge or to Monsieur de Gran-
ville?" asked the magistrate.
The two men,i, Crime and Law, looked at each other. The
magistrate had been strongly moved by the convict ; he felt a
sort of divine pity for the unhappy wretch; he understood
what his life and feelings were. And besides, the magistrate
— for a magistrate is always a magistrate — knowing nothing
of Jacques Collin's career since his escape from prison,
fancied that he could impress the criminal who, after all, had
only been sentenced for forgery. He would try the effect of
generosity on this nature, a compound, like bronze, of various
elements, of good and evil.
Again, Monsieur de Granville, who had reached the age_
of fifty-three without ever having been loved, admired a ten-
der soul, as all men do who have not been beloved. This de-
spair, the lot of many men to whom women can only give
esteem and friendship, was perhaps the unknown bond on
which the strong intimacy was based that united the Comtes
de Bauvan, de Granville, and de Serizy; for a common mis-
fortune brings souls into unison quite as much as a common
joy-
"You have the future before you," said the public prose-
cutor, with an inquisitorial glance at the dejected villain.
The man only expressed by a shrug the utmost indifference
to his fate.
"Lucien made a will by wliicli he leaves you three hundred
thousand francs."
"Poor, poor chap ! poor boy !" cried Jacques Collin. "Al-
ways too honest ! I was all wickedness, while he was good-
108 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
ness — noble, beautiful, sublime ! Such lovely souls cannot be
spoiled. He had taken nothing from me but my money, sir."
This utter and complete surrender of his individuality,
which the magistrate vainly strove to rally, so thoroughly
proved his dreadful words, that Monsieur de Granville was
won over to the criminal. The public prosecutor remained !
"If you really care for nothing," said Monsieur de Gran-
ville, "what did you want to say to me ?"
"Well, is it not something that I have given myself up?
You were getting warm, but you had not got me ; besides, you
would not have known what to do with me "
-.., "What an antagonist !" said the magistrate to himself.
"Monsieur le Comte, you are about to cut off the head of
an innocent man, and I have discovered the culprit," said
Jacques Collin, wiping away his tears. "I have come here not
for their sakes, but for yours. I have come to spare you re-
morse, for I love all who took an interest in Lucien, Just as I
will give my hatred full play against all who helped to cut off
his life — men or women !
"What can a convict more or less matter to me?" he went
pn, after a short pause. "A convict is no more in my eyes
than an emmet is in yours. I am like the Italian brigands —
fine men they are ! If a traveler is worth ever so little more
than the charge of their musket, they shoot him dead.
"I thought only of you. — I got the young man to make a
clean breast of it; he was bound to trust me, we had been
chained together. Theodore is very good stuff; he thought
he was doing his mistress a good turn by undertaking to sell
or pawn the stolen goods; but he is no more guilty of the
ISTanterre job than you are. He is a Corsican ; it is their way
to revenge themselves and kill each other like flies. In Italy
and Spain a man's life is not respected, and the reason is
plain. There we are believed to have a soul in our own image,
which survives us and lives for ever. Tell that to your an-
alyst ! It is only among atheistical or philosophical nations
that those who mar human life are made to pay so dearly;
and with reason from their point of view — a belief only in
matter and in the present.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 109
"If Calvi had told you who the woman was from whom he
obtained the stolen goods, you would not have found the real
murderer; he is already in your hands; but his accomplice,
whom poor Theodore will not betray because she is a wo-
man Well, every calling has its point of honor; con-
victs and thieves have theirs !
"Now, I know the murderer of those two women and the
inventors of that bold, strange plot; I have been told every
detail. Postpone Calvi's execution, and you shall know all ;
but you must give me your word that he shall be sent safe
back to the hulks and his punishment commuted. A man so
miserable as I am does not take the trouble to lie — ^you know
that. What I have told you is the truth."
"To you, Jacques Collin, though it is degrading Justice,
which ought never to condescend to such a compromise, I be-
lieve I may relax the rigidity of my office and refer the case
to my superiors."
"Will vou grant me this life?"
"Possibly."
"Monsieur, I implore you to give me your word ; it will be
enough."
Monsieur Granville drew himself up with offended pride.
"I hold in my hand the honor of three families, and you
only the lives of three convicts in yours," said Jacques Collin.
''I have the stronger hand."
"But you may be sent back to the dark cells: then, what
will you do?" said the public prosecutor.
"Oh ! we are to play the game out then !" said Jacques
Collin. "I was speaking as man to man — I was talking to
Monsieur de Granville. But if the public prosecutor is my
adversary, I take up the cards and hold them close. — And if
only you had given me your word, I was ready to give you
back the letters that Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grand-
lieu ''
This was said with a tone, an audacity, and a look which
showed Monsieur de Granville that against such an adversary
the least blunder was dangerous.
110 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"And is that all you ask ?" said the magistrate.
"I will speak for myself now," said Jacques. "The honor
of the Grandlieu family is to pay for the commutation of
Theodore's sentence. It is giving much to get very little. For
what is a convict in penal servitude for life ? If he escapes,
you can so easily settle the score. It is drawing a bill on the
guillotine ! Only, as he was consigned to Eochefort with no
amiable intentions, you must promise me that he shall be
quartered at Toulon, and well treated there.
"Now, for myself, I want something more. I have the
packets of letters from Madame de Serizy and Madame de
Mauf rigneuse. — And what letters ! — I tell you, Monsieur le
Comte, prostitutes, when they write letters, assume a style of
sentiment; well, sir, fine ladies, who are accustomed to style
and sentiment all day long, write as prostitutes behave.
Philosophers may know the reasons for this contrariness. I
do not care to seek them. "Woman is an inferior animal ; she
is ruled by her instincts. To my mind, a woman has no
beauty who is not like a man.
"So your smart duchesses, who are men in brains only,
write masterpieces. Oh ! they are splendid from beginning
to end, like Piron's famous ode ! "
"Indeed !"
"Would you like to see them?" said Jacques Collin, with
a laugh.
The magistrate felt ashamed.
"I cannot give them to you to read. But, there; no non-
sense; this is business and all above board, I suppose? — You
must give me back the letters, and allow no one to play the
spy or to follow or to watch the person who will bring them
to me."
"That will take time," said Monsieur de Granville.
"No. It is half-past nine," replied Jacques Collin, looking
at the clock; "well, in four minutes you will have a letter
from each of these ladies, and after reading them you will
countermand the guillotine. If matters were not as they are,
you would not see me taking things so easy. — The ladies
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 111
indeed have had warning." — Monsieur de Granville was
startled. — "They must be making a stir by now; they are
going to bring the Keeper of the Seals into the fray — they
may even appeal to the King, who knows? — Come, now, will
you give me your word that you will forget all that has
passed, and neither follow, nor send any. one to follow, that
person for a whole hour?"
"I promise it."
"Very well; you are not the man to deceive an escaped
convict. You are a chip of the block of which Turennes and
Condes are made, and would keep your word to a thief. — In
the Salle des Pas-Perdus there is at this moment a beggar
woman in rags, an old woman, in the very middle of the hall.
She is probably gossiping with one of the public writers, about
some lawsuit over a party-wall perhaps; send your office
messenger to fetch her, saying these words, 'Dahor ti Man-
dana' (the Boss wants you). She will come.
"But do not be unnecessarily cruel. Either you accept my
terms or you do not choose to be mixed up in a business with
a convict. — I am only a forger, you will remember ! — Well,
do not leave Calvi to go through the terrors of preparation
for the scalfold."
"I have already countermanded the execution," said Mon-
sieur de Granville to Jacques Collin. "I would not have Jus-
tice beneath you in dignity."
Jacques Collin looked at the public prosecutor with a sort
of amazement, and saw him ring his bell.
"Will you promise not to escape ? Give me your word, and
I shall be satisfied. Go and fetch the woman."
The office boy came in.
"Felix, send away the gendarmes," said Monsieur de Gran-
ville.
Jacques Collin was conquered.
In this duel with the magistrate he had tried to be the
superior, the stronger, the more magnanimous, and the mag-
istrate had crushed him. At the same time, the convict felt
himself the superior, inasmuch as he had tricked the Law ; he
112 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
had convinced it that the guilty man was innocent, and had
fought for a man's head and won it ; but this advantage must
be unconfessed, secret and hidden, while the magistrate tow-
ered above him majestically in the eye of day.
As Jacques Collin left Monsieur de Granville's room, the
Comte des Lupeaulx, Secretary-in-Chief of the President of
the Council, and a deputy, made his appearance, and with him
a feeble-looking, little old man. This individual, wrapped
in a puce-colored overcoat, as though it were still winter, with
powdered hair, and a cold, pale face, had a gouty gait, un-
steady on feet that were shod with loose calfskin boots ; lean-
ing on a gold-headed cane, he carried his hat in his hand, and
wore a row of seven orders in his button-hole.
"What is it, my dear des Lupeaulx ?" asked the public pros-
ecutor.
"I come from the Prince," replied the Count, in a low voice.
"You have carte blanche if you can only get the letters —
Madame de Serizy's, Madame de Maufrigneuse's and Made-
moiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu's. You may come to some
arrangement with this gentleman "
"Who is he ?" asked Monsieur de Granville, in a whisper.
"There are no secrets between you and me, my dear sir,"
said des Lupeaulx. "This is the famous Corentin. His
Majesty desires that you will yourself tell him all the details
of this affair and the conditions of success."
"Do me the kindness," replied the public prosecutor, "of
going to tell the Prince that the matter is settled, that I have
not needed this gentleman's assistance," and he turned to
Corentin. "I will wait on His Majesty for his commands
with regard to the last steps in the matter, which will lie
with the Keeper of the Seals, as two reprieves will need
signing."
"You have been wise to take the initiative," said des Lu-
peaulx, shaking hands with the Comte de Granville. "On
the very eve of a great undertaking the King is most anxious
that the peers and the great families should not be shown up.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 113
blown upon. It ceases to be a low criminal case; it becomes
an affair of State."
"But tell the Prince that by the time you came it was all
settled."
"Eeally !"
"I believe so."
"Then you, my dear fellow, will be Keeper of the Seals as
soon as the present Keeper is made Chancellor "
"I have no ambition," replied the magistrate.
Des Lupeaulx laughed, and went away.
"Beg of the Prince to request the King to grant me ten
minutes' audience at about half-past two," added Monsieur
de Granville, as he accompanied the Comte des Lupeaulx to
the door.
"So you are not ambitious !" said des Lupeaulx, with a keen
look at Monsieur de Granville. "Come, you have two chil-
dren, you would like at least to be made peer of France."
"If you have the letters. Monsieur le Procureur General,
my intervention is unnecessary," said Corentin, finding him-
self alone with Monsieur de Granville, who looked at him with
very natural curiosity.
"Such a man as you can never be superfluous in so delicate
a case," replied the magistrate, seeing that Corentin had
heard or guessed everything.
Corentin bowed with a patronizing air.
"Do you know the man in question, monsieur?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Comte, it is Jacques Collin, the head of
the 'Ten Thousand Francs Association,' the banker for. three
penal settlements, a convict who, for the last five years, has
succeeded in concealing himself under the robe of the Abbe
Carlos Herrera. How he ever came to be intrusted with a
mission to the late King from the King of Spain is a question
which we have all puzzled ourselves with trying to answer.
I am now expecting information from Madrid, whither I have
sent notes and a man. That convict holds the secrets of two
kings."
"He is a man of mettle and temper. We have only two
114 A COURTESAN'S l.IFE
courses open to us," said the public prosecutor. "We must
secure his fidelity, or get him out of the way."
"The same idea has struck us both, and that is a great honor
for me," said Corentin. "I am obliged to have so many ideas,
and for so many people, that out of them all I ought occasion-
ally to meet a clever man."
He spoke so drily, and in so icy a tone, that Monsieur de
Granville made no reply, and proceeded to attend to some
pressing matters.
Mademoiselle Jacqueline Collin's amazement on seeing
Jacques Collin in the Salle des Pas-Perdus is beyond imagin-
ing. She stood square on her feet, her hands on her hips, for
she was dressed as a costermonger. Accustomed as she was
to her nephew's conjuring tricks, this beat everything.
"Well, if you are going to stare at me as if I were a natural
history show," said Jacques Collin, taking his aunt by the arm
and leading her out of the hall, "we shall be taken for a pair
of curious specimens; they may take us into custody, and
then we should lose time."
And he went down the stairs of the Calorie Marchande
leading to the Rue de la Barillerie. "Where is Paccard ?"
"He is waiting for me at la Rousse's, walking up and
down the flower market."
"And Prudence?"
"Also at her house, as my god-daughter."
"Let us go there."
"Look round and see if we are watched."
La Rousse, a hardware dealer living on the Quai aux Fleurs,
was the widow of a famous murderer, one of the "Ten Thou-
sand." In 1819, Jacques Collin had faithfully handed over
twenty thousand francs and odd to this woman from her
lover, after he had been executed. Trompe-la-Mort was the
only person who knew of his pal's connection with the girl, at
that time a milliner.
"I am your young man's boss," the boarder at Madame
Vauquer's had told her, having sent for her to meet him at
the Jardin des Plantes. "He may have mentioned me to you.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 115
my dear. — Any one who plays me false dies within a year;
on the other hand, those who are true to me have nothing to
fear from me. I ain staunch through thick and thin, and
would die without saying a word that would compromise any-
body I wish well to. Stick to me as a soul sticks to the Devil,
and you will find the benefit of it. I promised your poor
Auguste that you should be happy ; he wanted to make you a
rich woman, and he got scragged for your sake.
"Don't cry ; listen to me. No one in the world knows that
you were mistress to a convict, to the murderer they choked
off last Saturday; and I shall never tell. You are two-and-
twenty, and pretty, and you have twenty-six thousand francs
of your own ; forget Auguste and get married ; be an honest
woman if you can. In return for peace and quiet, I only ask
you to serve me now and then, me, and any one I may send
you, but without stopping to think. I will never ask you to
do anything that can get you into trouble, you or your chil-
dren, or your husband, if you get one, or your- family.
"In my line of life I often want a safe place to talk in or
to hide in. Or I may want a trusty woman to carry a letter
or do an errand. You will be one of my letter-boxes, one of
my porters' lodges, one of my messengers, neither more nor
less.
"You are too red-haired ; Auguste and I used to call you la
Rousse; you can keep that name. My aunt, an old-clothes
dealer at the Temple, who will come and see you, is the only
person in the world you are to obey ; tell her everything that
happens to you ; she will find you a husband, and be very use-
ful to you."
And thus the bargain was struck, a diabolical compact
like that which had for so long bound Prudence Servien to
Jacques Collin, and which the man never failed to tighten ;
for, like the Devil, he had a passion for recruiting.
In about 1821 Jacques Collin found la Rousse a husband
in the person of the chief shopman under a rich wholesale tin
merchant. This head-clerk, having purchased his master's
house of business, was now a prosperous man, the father of
116 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
two children, and one of the district Maire's deputies. La
Eousse, now Madame Prelard, had never had the smallest
ground for complaint, either of Jacques Collin or of his aunt ;
still, each time she was required to help them, Madame Pre-
lard quaked in every limb. So, as she saw the terrible couple
come into her shop, she turned as pale as death.
*^e want to speak to you on business, madame," said
Jacques Collin.
"My husband is in there," said she.
"Very well; we have no immediate need of you. I never
put people out of their way for nothing."
"Send for a hackney coach, my dear," said Jacqueline
Collin, "and tell my god-daughter to come down. I hope to
place her as maid to a very. great lady, and the steward of the
house will take us there."
A shop-boy fetched the coach, and a few minutes later
Europe, or, to be rid of the name under which she had served
Esther, Prudence Servien, Paccard, Jacques Collin, and his
aunt, were, to la Pousse's great joy, packed into a coach, or-
dered by Trompe-la-Mort to drive to the Barriere d'lvry.
Prudence and Paccard, quaking in presence of the boss, felt
like guilty souls in the presence of God.
"^yhere are the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs ?"
asked the boss, looking at them with the clear, penetrating
gaze which so effectually curdled the blood of these tools of
his, these dmes damnees, when they were caught tripping,
that they felt as though their scalp were set with as many
pins as hairs.
"The seven hundred and thirty thousand francs," said
Jacqueline Collin to her nephew, "are quite safe ; I gave them
to la Romette this morning in a sealed packet."
"If you had not handed them over to Jacqueline," said
Trompe-la-Mort, "you would have gone straight there," and
he pointed to the Place de Greve, which they were just
passing.
Prudence Servien, in her country fashion, made the sign of
the Cross, as if she had seen a thunderbolt fall.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 117
'^I forgive yoii," said the boss, "on condition of your com-
mitting no more mistakes of this kind, and of your being
henceforth to me what these two fingers are of my right
hand." and he pointed to the first and middle fingers, "for
this good woman is the thumb," and he slapped his aunt on
the shoulder.
"Listen to me," he went on. "You, Paccard, have nothing
more to fear; you may follow your nose about Pantin (Paris)
as you please. I give you leave to marry Prudence Servien."
Paccard took Jacques Collin's hand and kissed it respect-
fully.
"And what must I do ?" said he.
"Nothing ; and you will have dividends and women, to say
nothing of your wife — for you have a touch of the Regency
about you, old boy ! — That comes of being such a fine man !"
Paccard colored under his sultan's ironical praises.
"You, Prudence," Jacques went on, "will want a career,
a position, a future ; you must remain in my service. Listen
to me. There is a very good house in the Rue Sainte-Barbe
l)elonging to that Madame de Saint-Esteve, whose name my
aunt occasionally borrows. It is a very good business, with
plenty of custom, bringing in fifteen to twenty thousand
francs a year. Saint-Esteve puts a woman in to keep the
shop "
"La Gonore," said Jacqueline.
"Poor la Pouraille's moll," said Paccard. "That is wB^e
I bolted to with Europe the day that poor Madame van Bog-
seek died, our mis'ess."
"Who jabbers when I am speaking?" said Jacques Collin.
Perfect silence fell in the coach. Paccard and Prudence
did not dare look at each other.
"The shop is kept by la Gonore," Jacques Collin went on.
"If that is where you went to hide with Prudence, I see,
Paccard, that you have wit enough to dodge the reelers (mis-
lead the police), but not enough to puzzle the old lady," and
he stroked his aunt's chin. "ISTow I see how she managed to
find you. — It all fits beautifully. You may go back to la
118 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
Gonore. — To go on: Jacqueline will arrange with Madame
Nourrisson to purchase her business in the line Sainte-Barbe ;
and if you manage well, child, you may make a fortune out
of it/' he said to Prudence. ''An Abbess at your age ! It is
worthy of a Daughter of France," he added in a hard tone.
Prudence flung her arms round Trompe-la-Mort's neck and
hugged him; but the boss flung her off with a sharp blow,
showing his extraordinary strength, and but for Paccard, the
girl's head would have struck and broken the coach window.
"Paws off! I don't like such ways," said the boss stiffly.
"It is disrespectful to me."
"He is right, child," said Paccard. "Why, you see, it is as
though the boss had made you a present of a hundred thou-
sand francs. The shop is worth that. It is on the Boulevard,
opposite the Gymnase. The people come out of the the-
atre "
"I will do more," said Trompe-la-Mort ; "I will buy the
house."
"And in six years we shall be millionaires," cried Paccard.
Tired of being interrupted, Trompe-la-Mort gave Paccard's
shin a kick hard enough to break it; but the man's tendons
were of india-rubber, and his bones of wrought iron.
"All right, boss, mum it is," said he.
"Do you think I am cramming you with lies ?" said Jacques
Collin, perceiving that Paccard had had a few drops too much.
"Well, listen. In the cellar of that house there are two hun-
dred and fifty thousand francs in gold "
Again silence reigned in the coach.
"The coin is in a very hard bed of masonry. It must be
got out, and you have only three nights to do it in. Jacqueline
will help you. — A hundred thousand francs will buy up the
business, fifty thousand will pay for the house; leave tlie re-
mainder."
"Where?" said Paccard.
"In the cellar?" asked Prudence.
"Silence !" cried Jacqueline.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR liy
"Yes, but to get the business transferred, we must have the
consent of the police authorities," Paccard objected.
"We shall have it," said Trompe-la-Mort. "Don't med-
dle in what does not concern you."
Jacqueline looked at her nephew, and was struck by the
alteration in his face, visible through the stern mask under
which the strong man generally hid his feelings.
"You, child," said he to Prudence Servien, "will receive
from my aunt the seven hundred and fifty thousand
francs "
"Seven hundred and thirty," said Paccard.
"Very good, seven hundred and thirty then," said Jacques
Collin. "You must return this evening under some pretext
to Madame Lucien's house. Get out on the roof through the
skylight ; get down the chimney into your mis'ess' room, and
liide the packet she had made of the money in the mat-
tress "
"And why not by the door?" asked Prudence Servien.
"Idiot ! there are seals on everything," replied Jacques
Collin. "In a few days the inventory will be taken, and you
will be innocent of the theft."
"Good for the boss !" cried Paccard. "That is really kind !"
"Stop, coachman !" said Jacques Collin's powerful voice.
The coach was close to the stand by the Jardin des
Plantes.
"Be off, young 'uns," said Jacques Collin, "and do nothing
silly! Be on the Pont des Arts this afternoon at five, and
my aunt will let you know if there are any orders to the con-
trary.— We must be prepared for evei'ything," he whispered
to his aunt. "To-morrow," he went on, "Jacqueline will tell
you how to dig up the gold without any risk. It is a ticklish
job "
Paccard and Prudence jumped out on to the King's high-
way, as happy as reprieved thieves.
"What a good fellow the boss is !" said Paccard.
"He would be the king of men if he were not so roT*gh on
women."
120 A COURTESANS LIFE
"Oh, yes ! He is a sweet creatvire," said Paccard. "Did
you see how he kicked me? Well, we deserved to be sent to
old Nick; for, after all, we got him into this scrape."
"If only he does not drag us into some dirty job, and get us
packed off to the hulks yet," said the wily Prudence.
"•Not he ! If he had that in his head, he would tell us ; you
don't know him. — He has provided handsomely for you.
Here we are, citizens at large ! Oh, when that man takes a
fancy to you, he has not his match for good-nature."
"Now, my jewel," said Jacques Collin to his aunt, "you
must take la Gonore in hand ; she must be humbugged. Five
days hence she will be taken into custody, and a hundred and
fifty thousand francs will be found in her rooms, the remains
of a share from the robbery and murder of the old Crottat
couple, the notary's father and mother."
"She will get five years in the Madelonnettes," said Jacque-
line.
"That's about it," said the nephew. "This will be a reason
for old Nourrisson to get rid of her house ; she cannot man-
age it herself, and a manager to suit is not to be found every
day. You can arrange all that. "We shall have a sharp eye
there. — But all these tliree things are secondary to the busi-
ness I have undertaken with regard to our letters. So unrip
your gown and give me the samples of the goods. Where are
the three packets?"
"At la Eousse's, of course."
"Coachman," cried Jacques Collin, "go back to the Palais
de Justice, and look sharp
"I promised to be quick, and I have been gone half an hour ;
that is too much. — Stay at la Eousse's, and give the sealed
parcels to the office clerk, who will come and ask for Madame
de Saint-Esteve ; the de will be the password. He will say
to you, 'Madame, I have come from the public prosecutor
for the things you know of.' Stand waiting outside the door,
staring about at what is going on in the Flower-Market, so
as not to arouse Prelard's suspicions. As soon as you have
given up the letters, you can start Paccard and Prudence."
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 121
"I see what you are at/"' said Jacqueline ; "you mean to step
into Bibi-Lupin's shoes. That boy's death has turned your
brain."
"And there is Theodore, who was just going to have his
hair cropped to be scragged at four this afternoon !" cried
Jacques Collin.
"Well, it is a notion ! We shall end our days as honest folks
in a fine property and a delightful climate — in Touraine."
"What was to become of me? Lucien has taken my soul
with him, and all my joy in life. I have thirty years before
me to be sick of life in, and I have no heart left. Instead
of being the boss of the hulks, I shall be a Figaro of the law,
and avenge Lucien. I can never be sure of demolishing '-^3
Corentin excepting in the skin of a police agent. And so long
as I have a man to devour, I shall still feel alive. — The pro-
fession a man follows in the eyes of the world is a mere sham ;
the reality is in the idea !" he added, striking his forehead. —
"How much have we left in the cash-box ?" he asked.
"Nothing," said his aunt, dismayed by the man's tone and
manner. "I gave you all I had for the boy. La Eomette has
not more than twenty thousand francs left in the business.
I took everything from Madame ISTourrisson ; she had about
sixty thousand francs of her own. Oh ! we are lying in sheets
that have not been washed this twelve months past. That
boy had all the pals' blunt, our savings, and all old Nourris-
son's."
"Making ?"
"Five hundred and sixty thousand."
"We have a hundred and fifty thousand which Paccard
and Prudence will pay us. I will tell you where to find two
hundred thousand more. The remainder will come to me
out of Esther's money. We must repay old Nourrisson. With
Theodore, Paccard, Prudence, ISTourrisson, and you, I shall
soon have the holy alliance I require. — Listen, now, we are
nearly there "
"Here are the three letters," said Jacqueline, who had
finished unsewing the lining of her gown.
122 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Quite right/' said Jacques Collin, taking the three
precious documents — autograph letters on vellum paper, and
still strongly scented. "Theodore did the Nanterre job."
"Oh ! it was he."
"Don't talk. Time is precious. He wanted to give the
proceeds to a little Corsican sparrow named Ginetta. You
must set old Nourrisson to find her ; I will give you the nec-
essary information in a letter which Gault will give you.
Come for it to the gate of the Conciergerie in two hours' time.
You must place the girl with a washerwoman, Godet's sister ;
she must seem at home there. Godet and Ruffard were con-
cerned with la Pouraille in robbing and murdering the
Crottats.
"The four hundred and fifty thousand francs are all safe,
one-third in la Gonore's cellar — la Pouraille's share; the
second third in la Gonore's bedroom, which is Euffard's ; and
the rest is hidden in Godet's sister's house. We will begin
by taking a hundred and fifty thousand francs out of la Pou-
raille's whack, a hundred thousand of Godet's, and a hun-
dred thousand of Ruffard's. As soon as Godet and Ruf-
fard are nabbed, they will be supposed to have got rid of
what is missing from their shares. And I will make Godet
believe that I have saved a hundred thousand francs for him,
and that la Gonore has done the same for la Pouraille and
Ruffard.
"Prudence and Paccard will do the job at la Gonore's ; you
and Ginetta — who seems to be a smart huss}^ — must manage
the job at Godet's sister's place.
"And so, as the first act in the farce, I can enable the public
prosecutor to lay his hand on four hundred thousand francs
stolen from the Crottats, and on the guilty parties. Then I
shall seem to have shown up the Nanterre murderer. We
shall get back our shiners, and are behind the scenes with the
police. We were the game, now we are the hunters — that is
all.
"Give the driver three francs."
The coach was at the Palais. Jacqueline, speechless with
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 123
astonishment, paid. Trompe-la-Mort went up the steps to
the public prosecutor's room.
A complete change of life is so violent a crisis, that Jacques
Collin, in spite of his resolution, mounted the steps but
slowly, going up from the Eue de la Barillerie to the Galerie
Marchande, where, under the gloomy peristyle of the court-
house, is the entrance to the Court itself.
Some civil case was going on which had brought a little
crowd together at the foot of the double stairs leading to the
Assize Court, so that the convict, lost in thought, stood for
some minutes, checked by the throng.
To the left of this double flight is one of the mainstays of
the building, like an enormous pillar, and in this tower is a
little door. This door opens on a spiral staircase down to the
Conciergerie, to which the public prosecutor, the governor of
the prison, the presiding judges, King's council, and the chief
of the Safety department have access by this back way.
It was up a side staircase from this, now walled up, that
Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, was led before the
Eevolutionary tribunal which sat, as we all know, in the great
hall where appeals are now heard before the Supreme Court.
The heart sinks within us at the sight of these dreadful steps,
when we think that Marie Therese's daughter, whose suite,
and head-dress, and hoops filled the great staircase at Ver-
sailles, once passed that way ! Perhaps it was in expiation
of her mother's crime — the atrocious division of Poland.
The sovereigns who commit such crimes evidently never think
of the retribution to be exacted by Providence.
When Jacques Collin went up the vaulted stairs to the
public prosecutor's room, Bibi-Lupin was just coming out of
the little door in the wall.
The chief of the "Safety" had come from the Conciergerie,
and was also going up to Monsieur de Granville. It was easy
to imagine Bibi-Lupin's surprise when he recognized, in front
of him, the gown of Carlos Herrera, which he had so thoroughly
studied that morning ; he ran on to pass him. Jacques Collin
124 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
turned round, and the enemies were face to face. Each stood
still, and the self-same look flashed in both pairs of eyes, so
different in themselves, as in a duel two pistols go off at the
same instant.
"This time I have got you, rascal !'' said the chief of the
Safety Department.
"Ah, ha !" replied Jacques Collin ironically.
It flashed through his mind that Monsieur de Granville
had sent some one to watch him, and, strange to say, it pained
him to think the magistrate less magnanimous than he had
supposed.
Bibi-Lupin bravely flew at Jacques Collin's throat ; but he,
keeping his e3'e on the foe, gave him a straight blow, and sent
him sprawling on his back three yards off; then Trompe-la-
Mort went calmly up to Bibi-Lupin, and held out a hand to
help him to rise, exactly like an English boxer who, sure of
his superiority, is ready for more. Bibi-Lupin knew better
than to call out ; but he sprang to his feet, ran to the entrance
to the passage, and signed to a gendarme to stand on guard.
Then, swift as lightning, he came back to the foe, who quietly
looked on. Jacques Collin had decided what to do.
"Either the public prosecutor has broken his word, or he
has not taken Bibi-Lupin into his confidence, and in that case
I must get the matter explained," thought he. — "Do you mean
to arrest me?" he asked his enemy. "Say so without more
ado. Don't I know that in the heart of this place you are
stronger than I am ? I could kill ^^ou with a well-placed kick,
but I could not tackle the gendarmes and the soldiers. Now,
make no noise. Where do you want to take me ?"
"To Monsieur Camusot."
"Come along to Monsieur Camusot," replied Jacques Col-
lin. '^Vhy should we not go to the public prosecutor's court ?
It is nearer," he added.
Bibi-Lupin, who knew that he was out of favor with the
upper ranks of judicial authorities, and suspected of having
made a fortune at the expense of criminals and their victims.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 125
was not unwilling to show himself in Court with so notable
a capture.
"All right, we will go there," said he. "But as you sur-
render, allow me to fit you with bracelets. I am afraid of
your claws."
And he took the handcuffs out of his pocket.
Jacques Collin held out his hands, and Bibi-Lupin snapped
on the manacles.
"Well, now, since you are feeling so good," said he, "tell
me how you got out of the Conciergerie ?"
"By the way you came; down the turret stairs."
"Then have you taught the gendarmes some new trick ?"
"No, Monsieur de Granville let me out on parole."
"You are gammoning me ?"
"You will see. Perhaps it will be your turn to wear the
bracelets."
Just then Corentin was saying to Monsieur de Grranville :
"Well, monsieur, it is just an hour since our man set out ;
are you not afraid that he may have fooled you? He is on
the road to Spain perhaps by this time, and we shall not find
him there, for Spain is a whimsical kind of country."
"Either I know nothing of men, or he will come back ; he is
bound by every interest ; he has more to look for at my hands
than he has to give."
Bibi-Lupin walked in.
"Monsieur le Comte," said he, "I have good news for you.
Jacques Collin, who had escaped, has been recaptured."
"And this," said Jacques Collin, addressing Monsieur de
Granville, "is the way you keep your word ! — Ask your double-
faced agent where he took me."
"Where ?" said the public prosecutor.
"Close to the Court, in the vaulted passage," said Bibi-
Lupin.
"Take your irons off the man," said Monsieur de Granville
sternly. "And remember that you are to leave him free till
further orders. — Go ! — You have a way of moving and acting
as if you alone were law and police in one."
126 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
The public prosecutor turned his back on Bibi-Lupin, who
became deadly pale, especially at a look from Jacques Collin,
in which he read disaster.
"I have not been out of this room. 1 expected you back,
and you cannot doubt that I have kept my word, as you kept
yours," said Monsieur de Granville to the convict.
"For a moment I did doubt you, sir, and in my place per-
haps you would have thought as I did, but on reflection I saw
that I was unjust. I bring you more than you can give me ;
you had no interest in betraying me.''
The magistrate flashed a look at Corentin. This glance,
which could not escape Trompe-la-Mort, who was watching
Monsieur de Granville, directed his attention to the strange
little old man sitting in an armchair in a corner. Warned
at once by the swift and anxious instinct that scents the
presence of an enemy, Collin examined this figure ; he saw at
a glance that the eyes were not so old as the costume would
suggest, and he detected a disguise. In one second Jacques
Collin was revenged on Corentin for the rapid insight with
which Corentin had unmasked him at Peyrade's.
'TVe are not alone !'' said Jacques Collin to Monsieur de
Granville.
"Xo," said the magistrate drily.
"And this gentleman is one of my oldest acquaintances, I
believe," replied the convict.
He went forward, recognizing Corentin, the real and con-
fessed originator of Lucien's overthrow.
Jacques Collin, whose face was of a brick-red hue, for a
scarcely perceptible moment turned white, almost ashy ; all his
blood rushed to his heart, so furious and maddening was his
longing to spring on this dangerous reptile and crush it ; but
he controlled the brutal impulse, suppressing it with the force
that made him so formidable. He put on a polite manner
and the tone of obsequious civility which he had practised
since assuming the garb of a priest of a superior Order, and
he bowed to the little old man.
"Monsieur Corentin," said he^ "do I owe the pleasure of
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 127
this meeting to chance, or am I so happy as to be the cause of
your visit here ?"
Monsieur de Granville's astonishment was at its height, and
he could not help staring at the two men who had thus come
face to face. Jacques Collin's behavior and the tone in which
he spoke denoted a crisis, and he Avas curious to know the
meaning of it. On being thus suddenly and miraculously
recognized, Corentin drew himself up like a snake when you
tread on its tail.
"Yes, it is I, my dear Abbe Carlos Herrera."
"And are you here," said Trompe-la-Mort, "to interfere
between monsieur the public prosecutor and me? Am I so
happy as to be the object of one of those negotiations in which
your talents shine so brightly? — Here, Monsieur le Comte,"
the convict went on, "not to waste time so precious as yours is,
read these — they are samples of my wares."
And he held out to Monsieur de Granville three letters,
which he took out of his breast-pocket.
"And while you are studying them, I will, with your per-
mission, have a little talk with this gentleman."
"You do me great honor," said Corentin, who could not
help giving a little shiver.
"You achieved a perfect success in our business," said
Jacques Collin. "I was beaten," he added lightly, in the tone
of a gambler who has lost his money, "but you left some men
on the field — your victory cost you dear."
"Yes," said Corentin, taking up the jest, "you lost your
queen, and I lost my two castles."
"Oh ! Contenson was a mere pawn," said Jacques Collin
scornfully; "you may easily replace him. You really are —
allow me to praise you to your face — you are, on my word of
honor, a magnificent man."
"No, no, I bow to your superiority," replied Corentin, as-
suming the air of a professional joker, as if he said, "If you
mean humbug, by all means humbug ! I have everything at
my command, while you are single-handed, so to speak,"
"Oh ! Oh !" said Jacques Collin.
128 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"And you were very near winning the day !" said Corentin,
noticing the exclamation. "You are quite the most extraordi-
nary man I ever met in my life, and I have seen many very
extraordinary men, for those I have to work with me are all
remarkable for daring and bold scheming.
"I was, for my sins, very intimate with the late Due
dOtranto; I have worked for Louis XVIII. when he was on
the throne ; and, when he was exiled, for the Emperor and for
the Directory. You have the tenacity of Louvel, the best
political instrument I ever met with ; but you are as supple
as the prince of diplomates. And what auxiliaries you have !
I would give many a head to the guillotine if I could have in
my service the cook who lived with poor little Esther. — And
where do you find such beautiful creatures as the woman who
took the Jewess' place for Monsieur de Xucingen? I don't
know where to get them when I want them."
"Monsieur, monsieur, you overpower me," said Jacques
Collin. "Such praise from you will turn my head "
"It is deserved. Why, j^ou took in Peyrade; he believed
you to be a police officer — he ! — I tell you what, if you had
not had that fool of a boy to take care of, you would have
thrashed us."
"Oh ! monsieur, but you are forgetting Contenson disguised
as a mulatto, and Peyrade as an Englishman. Actors have
the stage to help them, but to be so perfect by daylight, and at
all hours, no one but you and your men "
"Come, now," said Corentin, "we are fully convinced of our
worth and merits. And here we stand each of us quite alone.
I have lost my old friend, you your young companion. I, for
the moment, am in the stronger position, why should we not
do like the men in VAuherge des Adrets? I offer you my
hand, and say, 'Let us embrace, and let bygones be bygones.'
Here, in the presence of Monsieur le Comte, I propose to give
you full and plenary absolution, and you shall be one of my
men, the chief next to me, and perhaps my successor."
"You really offer me a situation?" said Jacques Collin.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 129
'■'A nice situation indeed ! — out of the fire into the frying-
pan!"
"You will be in a sphere where your talents will be highly
appreciated and well paid for, and you will act at your ease.
The Government police are not free from perils. I, as you
see me, have already been imprisoned twice, but I am none
the worse for that. And we travel, we are what we choose to
appear. We pull the wires of political dramas, and are
treated with politeness by very great people. — Come, my dear
Jacques Collin, do you say yes?"
"Have you orders to act in this matter?'' said the con-
vict.
"I have a free hand," replied Corentin, delighted at his
own happy idea.
"You are trifling with me; you are very shrewd, and you
must allow that a man may be suspicious of you. — You have
sold more than one man by tying him up in a sack after mak-
ing him go into it of his own accord. I know all your great
victories — the Montauran case, the Simeuse business — the
battles of Marengo of espionage."
"Well," said Corentin, "you have some esteem for the public
prosecutor ?"
"Yes," said Jacques Collin, bowing respectfully, "I admire
his noble character, his firmness, his dignity. I would give
my life to make him happy. Indeed, to begin with, I will
put an end to the dangerous condition in which Madame
de Serizy now is."
Monsieur de Granville turned to him with a look of satis-
faction.
"Then ask him," Corentin went on, "if I have not full
power to snatch you from the degrading position in which you
stand, and to attach you to me."
"It is quite true," said Monsieur de Granville, watching
the convict.
"Really and truly! I may have absolution for the past
and a promise of succeeding to you if I give sufficient evidence
of my intelligence ?"
/■
130 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Between two such men as we are there can be no mis-
understanding," said Corentin, with a lordly air that might
have taken anybody in.
"And the price of the bargain is, I suppose, the surrender
of those three packets of letters ?" said Jacques Collin.
"I did not think it would be necessary to say so to you "
"My dear Monsieur Corentin,'' said Trompe-la-Mort, with
irony worthy of that which made the fame of Talma in the
part of Nicomede, "I beg to decline. I am indebted to you
for the knowledge of what I am worth, and of the importance
you attach to seeing me deprived of my weapons — I will never
forget it.
"At all times and for ever I shall be at your service, but
instead of saying with Eobert Macaire, 'Let us embrace !' I
embrace you."
He seized Corentin round the middle so suddenly that the
other could not avoid the hug; he clutched him to his heart
like a doll, kissed him on both cheeks, carried him like a
feather with one hand, while with the other he opened the
door, and then set him down outside, quite battered by this
rough treatment.
"Good-bye, my dear fellow," said Jacques Collin in a low
voice, and in Corentin's ear: "the length of three corpses
parts you from me ; we have measured swords, they are of the
same temper and the same length. Let us treat each other
with due respect; but I mean to be your equal, not your
subordinate. Armed as you would be, it strikes me you would
be too dangerous a general for your lieutenant. We will
place a grave between us. Woe to you if you come over on to
my territory !
"You call yourself the State, as footmen call themselves
by their master's names. For my part, I will call myself
Justice. We shall often meet ; let us treat each other with
dignity and propriety — all the more because we shall always
remain — atrocious blackguards," he added in a whisper. "I
set you the example by embracing you "
Corentin stood nonplussed for the first time in his life, and
allowed his terrible antagonist to wring his hand.
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 131
"If SO," said he, "I think it will be to our interest on both
sides to remain chums."
"We shall be stronger each on our own side, but at the
same time more dangerous," added Jacques Collin in an un-
dertone. "And you will allow me to call on you to-morrow
to ask for some pledge of our agreement."
"Well, well," said Corentin amiably, "you are taking the
case out of my hands to place it in those of the public pros-
ecutor. You will help him to promotion ; but' I cannot but
own to you that you are acting wisely. — Bibi-Lupin is too well
known ; he has served his turn ; if you get his place, you will
have the only situation that suits you. I am delighted to see
you in it — on my honor "
"Till our next meeting, very soon," said Jacques Collin.
On turning round, Trompe-la-Mort saw the public pros-
ecutor sitting at his table, his head resting on his hands.
"Do you mean that you can save the Comtesse de Serizy
from going mad?" asked Monsieur de Granville.
"In five minutes," said Jacques Collin.
"And you can give me all those ladies' letters ?"
"Have you read the three ?"
"Yes," said the magistrate vehemently, "and I blush for
the women who wrote them."
"Well, we are now alone; admit no one, and let us come
to terms," said Jacques Collin.
"Excuse me. Justice must first take its course. Monsieur
Camusot has instructions to seize your aun,t."
"He will never find her," said Jacques Collin.
"Search is to be made at the Temple, in the house of a
demoiselle Paccard who superintends her shop."
"Nothing will be found there but rags, costumes, diamonds,
uniforms However, it will be as well to check Monsieur
Camusot's zeal."
Monsieur de Granville rang, and sent an office messenger
to desire Monsieur Camusot to come and speak with him.
"Now," said he to Jacques Collin, "an end to all this ! I
want to know your recipe for curing the Countess."
132 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Monsieur le Comte," said the convict very gravely, "T was,
as you know, sentenced to five years' penal servitude for
forgery. But I love my liberty. — This passion, like every
other, had defeated its own end, for lovers who insist on ador-
ing each other too fondly end by quarreling. By dint of es-
caping and being recaptured alternately, I have served seven
years on the hulks. So you have nothing to remit but the
added terms I earned in quod — I beg pardon, in prison. I
have, in fact, served my time, and till some ugly job can be
proved against me — which I defy Justice to do, or even
Corentin — I ought to be reinstated in my rights as a French
citizen.
"What is life if I am banned from Paris and subject to the
eye of the police? Where can I go, what can I do? You
know my capabilities. You have seen Corentin, that store-
house of treachery and wile, turn ghastly pale before me,
and doing justice to my powers. — That man has bereft me of
everything; for it was he, and he alone, who overthrew the
edifice of Lucien's fortunes, by what means and in whose in-
terest I know not. — Corentin and Camusot did it all "
"No recriminations," said Monsieur de Granville; "give
me the facts."
"Well, then, these are the facts. Last night, as I held
in my hand the icy hand of that dead youth, I vowed to
myself that I would give up the mad contest I have kept up
for twenty years past against society at large.
"You will not believe me capable of religious sentimentality
after what I have said of my religious opinions. Still, in
these twenty years I have seen a great deal of the seamy side
of the world. I have known its back-stairs, and I have dis-
cerned, in the march of events, a Power which you call Provi-
dence and I call Chance, and which my companions call Luck.
Every evil deed, however quickly it may hide its traces, is
overtaken by some retribution. In this struggle for existence,
when the game is going well — when you have quint and
quatorze in your hand and the lead — the candle tumbles
over and the cards are burned, or the player has a fit of
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 133
apoplex}^ ! — That is Lucien's story. That boy, that angel,
had not committed the shadow of a crime; he let himself be
led, he let things go ! He was to marry Mademoiselle de
Grandlieu, to be made marquis; he had a fine fortune; —
well, a prostitute poisons herself, she hides the price of a
certificate of stock, and the whole structure so laboriously
built up crumbles in an instant.
"And who is the first man to deal a blow? A man loaded
with secret infamy, a monster who, in the world of finance,
has committed such crimes that every coin of his vast for-
tune has been dipped in the tears of a whole family [see la
Maison Nucingen] — by Nucingen, who has been a legalized
Jacques Collin in the world of money. However, you know
as well as I do all the bankruptcies and tricks for which that
man deserves hanging. My fetters will leave a mark on all
my actions, however virtuous. To be a shuttlecock between
two racquets — one called the hulks, and the other the police
— is a life in which success means never-ending toil, and
peace and quiet seem quite impossible.
"At this moment, Monsieur de Granville, Jacques Collin
is buried with Lucien, who is being now sprinkled with holy
water and carried away to Pere-Lachaise. What I want
is a place not to live in, but to die in. As things are, you,
representing Justice, have never cared to make the released
convict's social status a concern of any interest. Though
the law may be satisfied, society is not; society is still sus-
picious, and does all it can to justify its suspicions;
it regards a released convict as an impossible creature;
it ought to restore him to his full rights, but, in fact,
it prohibits his living in certain circles. Society says to the
poor wretch, 'Paris, which is the only place you can be hidden
in ; Paris and its suburbs for so many miles round is the for-
bidden land, you shall not live there !' and it subjects the
convict to the watchfulness of the police. Do you think that
life is possible under such conditions? To live, the convict
must work, for he does not come out of prison with a
fortune.
134 A COUETESAN'S LIFE
"You arrange matters so that he is plainly ticketed, rec-
ognized, hedged round, and then you fancy that his fellow-
citizens will trust him, when society and justice and the
world around him do not. You condemn him to starvation
or crime. He cannot get work, and is inevitably dragged into
his old ways, which lead to the scaffold.
"Thus, while earnestly wishing to give up this struggle
with the law, I could find no place for myself under the sun.
One course alone is open to me, that is to become the servant
of the power that crushes us ; and as soon as this idea dawned
on me, the Power of which I spoke was shown in the clearest
light. Three great families are at my mercy. Do not sup-
pose I am thinking of blackmail — blackmail is the meanest
form of murder. In my eyes it is baser villainy than mur-
der. The murderer needs, at any rate, atrocious courage.
And I practise what I preach; for the letters which are my
safe-conduct, which allow me to address you thus, and for
the moment place me on an equality with you — I, Crime,
and you. Justice — those letters are in your power. Your
messenger may fetch them, and they will be given up to
him.
"I ask no price for them ; I do not sell them. Alas ! Mon-
sieur le Comte, I was not thinking of myself when I preserved
them ; I thought that Lucien might some day be in danger !
If you cannot agree to my request, my courage is out; I
hate life more than enough to make me blow out my own
brains and rid you of me ! — Or, with a passport, I can go to
America and live in the wilderness. I have all the character-
istics of a savage.
"These are the thoughts that came to me in the night. —
Your clerk, no doubt, carried you a message I sent by
him. When I saw what precautions you took to save Lucien's
memory from any stain, I dedicated my life to you — a poor
offering, for I no longer cared for it; it seemed to me im-
possible without the star that gave it light, the happiness
that glorified it, the thought that gave it meaning, the pros-
perity of the young poet who was its sun — and I determined
to give you the three packets of letters "
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAK 135
Monsieur de Granville bowed his head.
"I went down into the prison-yard, and there I found the
persons guilty of the ISTanterre crime, as well as my little
chain companion within an inch of the chopper as an in-
voluntary accessory after the fact/' Jacques Collin went on.
"I discovered that Bibi-Lupin is cheating the authorities,
that one of his men murdered the Crottats. Was not this
providential, as you say ? — So I perceived a remote possibility
of doing good, of turning my gifts and the dismal experience
I have gained to account for the benefit of society, of being
useful instead of mischievous, and I ventured to confide in.
your judgment, your generosity."
The man's air of candor, of artlessness, of childlike sim-
plicity, as he made his confession, without bitterness, or that
philosophy of vice which had hitherto made him so terrible
to hear, was like an absolute transformation. He was no
longer himself.
"I have such implicit trust in you," he went on, with the
humility of a penitent, "that I am wholly at your mercy.
You see me with three roads open to me — suicide, America,
and the Eue de Jerusalem. Bibi-Lupin is rich; he has
served his turn; he is a double-faced rascal. And if you
set me to work against him, I would catch him red-handed
in some trick within a week. If ^ou will put me in. that
sneak's shoes, you will do society a real service. I will be hon-
est. I have every quality that is needed in the profession. I
am better educated than Bibi-Lupin ; I went through my
schooling up to rhetoric; I shall not blunder as he does; I i^
have very good manners when I choose. My sole ambition is"^
to become an instrument of order and repression instead of
being the incarnation of corruption. I will enlist no more
recruits to the army of vice.
"In war, monsieur, when a hostile general is captured, he
is not shot, you know; his sword is returned to him, and his
prison is a large town; well, I am the general of the hulks,
and I have surrendered. — I am beaten, not by the law, but
by death. The sphere in which 1 crave to live and act is
136 A COURTESAN'S T>IFE
the onl}' one that is suited to me, and there I can develop the
powers I feel within me.
"Decide."
And Jacques Collin stood in an attitude of diffident sub-
mission.
"You place the letters in my hands, then ?" said the public
prosecutor.
"You have only to send for them; they will be delivered
to your messenger."
"But how?"
. Jacques Collin read the magistrate's mind, and kept up the
game.
"You promised me to commute the capital sentence on
Calvi for twenty years' penal servitude. Oh, I am not re-
minding 5'ou of that to drive a bargain," he added eagerly,
seeing j\Ionsieur de Granville's expression; "that life should
be safe for other reasons, the lad is innocent "
"How am I to get the letters?" asked the public pros-
ecutor. "It is my right and my business to convince myself
that you are the man you say you are. I must have you
without conditions."
"Send a man you can trust to the Flower Market on the
quay. At the door of a tinman's shop, under the sign of
Achilles' shield ''
"That house?"
"Yes," said Jacques Collin, smiling bitterly, "my shield
is there. — Your man will see an old woman dressed, as I
told you before, like a fish-woman who has saved money —
earrings in her ears, and clothes like a rich market-woman's.
He must ask for Madame de Saint-Esteve. Do not omit
the de. And he must say, '1 have come from the public
prosecutor to fetch you know what.' — You will immediately
receive three sealed packets."
"All the letters are there?" said Monsieur de Granville.
"There is no tricking you ; you did not get your place
for nothing!" said Jacques Collin, wath a smile. "I see
you still think me capable of testing you and giving you so
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 137
much blank paper. — No; you do not know me," said he. "I
trust you as a son trusts his father."
"You will be taken back to the Conciergerie," said the mag-
istrate, "and there await a decision as to your fate."
Monsieur de Granville rang, and said to the office-boy who
answered :
"Beg Monsieur Garnery to come here, if he is in his
room."
Besides the forty-eight police commissioners who watch
over Paris like forty-eight petty Providences, to say nothing of
the guardians of Public Safety — and who have earned the
nickname of quart d'oeil, in thieves' slang, a quarter of an
eye, because there are four of them to each district, — besides
these, there are two commissioners attached equally to the police
and to the legal authorities, whose duty it is to undertake
delicate negotiation, and not frequently to serve as deputies
to the examining judges. The office of these two magistrates,
for police commissioners are also magistrates, is known as
the Delegates' office; for they are, in fact, delegated on each
occasion, and formally empowered to carry out inquiries or
arrests.
These functions demand men of ripe age, proved in-
telligence, great rectitude, and perfect discretion; and it is
one of the miracles wrought by Heaven in favor of Paris,
that some men of that stamp are always forthcoming. Any
description of the Palais de Justice would be incomplete
without due mention of these preventive officials, as they
may be called, the most powerful adjuncts of the law; for
though it must be owned that the force of circumstances
has abrogated the ancient pomp and wealth of justice, it
has materially gained in many ways. In Paris especially
its machinery is admirably perfect.
Monsieur de Granville had sent his secretary. Monsieur de
Chargebceuf, to attend Lucien's funeral; he needed a substi-
tute for this business, a man he could trust, and Mon-
sieur Garnery was one of the commissioners in the Delegates'
office.
138 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "I have already proved
to you that I have a sense of honor. You let me go free,
and I came back. — By this time the funeral mass for Lucien
is ended; they will be carrying him to the grave. Instead
of remanding me to the Conciergerie, give me leave to fol-
low the boy's body to Pere-Lachaise. I will come back and
surrender myself prisoner."
"Go," said Monsieur de Gran\ille, in the kindest tone.
"One word more, monsieur. The money belonging to
that girl — Lucien's mistress — was not stolen. During the
short time of liberty you allowed me, I questioned her ser-
vants. I am sure of them as you are of your two commis-
sioners of the Delegates' oflice. The money paid for the
certificate sold by ]*dadenioiselle Esther Gobseck will cer-
tainly be found in her room when the seals are removed.
Her maid remarked to me that the deceased was given to
mystery-making, and very distrustful ; she no doubt hid the
banknotes in her bed. Let the bedstead be carefully ex-
amined and taken to pieces, the mattresses unsewn — the
money will be found."
"You are sure of that?"
"I am quite sure of the relative honesty of my rascals;
they never play any tricks on me. I hold the power of life
and death; I try and condemn them and carry out my
sentence without all your formalities. You can see for your-
self the results of my authority. I will recover the money
stolen from Monsieur and Madame Crottat; I will hand you
over one of Bibi-Lupin's men, his right hand, caught in the
act; and I will tell you the secret of the Xanterre murders.
This is not a bad beginning. And if you only employ me
in the service of the law and the police, by the end of a year
you will be satisfied with all I can tell you. I will be thor-
oughly all that I ought to be, and shall manage to succeed
in all the business that is placed in my hands."
"I can promise you nothing but my goodwill. What you
ask is not in my power. The privilege of granting pardons
is the King's alone, on the recommendation of the Keeper
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 139
of the Seals; and the place you wish to hold is in the gift
of the Prefet of Police."
"Monsieur Garnery," the office-boy announced.
At a nod from Monsieur de Granville the Delegate com-
missioner came in, glanced at Jacques Collin as one who
knows, and gulped down his astonishment on hearing the
word "Go !" spoken to Jacques Collin by Monsieur de Gran-
ville.
"Allow me," said Jacques Collin, "to remain here till
Monsieur Garnery has returned with the documents in
which all my strength lies, that I may take away with me
some expression of your satisfaction."
This absolute humility and sincerity touched the public
prosecutor.
"Go," said he; "1 can depend on you."
Jacques Collin bowed humbly, with the submissiveness
of an inferior to his master. Ten minutes later. Monsieur
de Granville was in possession of the letters in three sealed
packets that had not been opened ! But the importance
of this point, and Jacques Collin's avowal, had made him for-
get the convict's promise to cure Madame de Serizy.
When once he was outside, Jacques Collin had an in-
describable sense of satisfaction. He felt he was free, and
born to a new phase of life. He walked quickly from the
Palais to the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, where mass
was over. The coffin was being sprinkled with holy water,
and he arrived in time thus to bid farewell, in a Christian
fashion, to the mortal remains of the youth he had loved so
well. Then he got into a carriage and drove after the body
to the cemetery.
In Paris, unless on very exceptional occasions, or when
some famous man has died a natural death, the crowd that
gathers about a funeral diminishes by degrees as the pro-
cession approaches Pere-Lachaise. People make time to
show themselves in church; but every one has his business
to attend to, and returns to it as soon as possible. Thus of
140 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
ten mourning carriages, onl}' four were occupied. By the
time they reached Pere-Lachaise there were not more than
a dozen followers, among whom was Kastignac.
"That is right; it is well that you are faithful to him,"
said Jacques Collin to his old acquaintance.
Eastignac started with surprise at seeing Vautrin.
"Be calm," said his old fellow-boarder at Madame
Vauquer's. "I am your slave, if only because I find you here.
My help is not to be despised ; I am, or shall be, more power-
ful than ever. You slipped your cable, and you did it very
cleverly; but you may need me yet, and I will always be at
your service."
"But what are you going to do?"
"To supply the hulks with lodgers instead of lodging
there," replied Jacques Collin.
Eastignac gave a shrug of disgust.
"But if you were robbed "
Eastignac hurried on to get away from Jacques Collin.
"You do not know what circumstances you may find your-
self in."
They stood by the grave dug by the side of Esther's.
"Two beings who loved each other, and who were happy !"
said Jacques Collin. "They are united. — It is some comfort
to rot together. I will be buried here."
When Lucien's body was lowered into the grave, Jacques
Collin fell in a dead faint. This strong man could not en-
dure the light rattle of the spadefuls of earth thrown by the
gravediggers on the coffin as a hint for their payment.
Just then two men of the corps of Public Safety came up;
they recognized Jacques Collin, lifted him up, and carried him
to a hackney coach.
"What is up now?" asked Jacques Collin when he re-
covered consciousness and had looked about him.
He saw himself between two constables, one of whom was
EufF ard ; and he gave him a look which pierced the murderer's
soul to the very depths of la Gonore's secret.
"Why, the public prosecutor wants you," replied Euffard,
Vi-UTRIN'S LAST AVATAR 141
"and we have been hunting for you everywhere, and found
you in the cemetery, where you had nearly taken a header
into that boy's grave."
Jacques Collin was silent for a moment.
"Is it Bibi-Lupin that is after me?" he asked the other
man.
"No. Monsieur Garnery sent us to find you."
"And he told you nothing?''
The two men looked at each other, holding council in ex-
pressive pantomime.
"Come, what did he say when he gave you your orders?"
"He bid us fetch you at once," said Euffard, "and said we
should find you at the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres ;
or, if the funeral had left the church, at the cemetery."
"The public prosecutor wants me ?"
"Perhaps."
"That is it," said Jacques Collin; "he wants my assist-
ance."
And he relapsed into silence, which greatly puzzled the
two constables.
At about half-past two Jacques Collin once more went up
to Monsieur de Granville's room, and found there a fresh
arrival in the person of Monsieur de Granville's predecessor,
the Comte Octave de Bauvan, one of the Presidents of the
Court of Appeals.
"You forgot Madame de Serizy's dangerous condition, and
that you had promised to save her."
"Ask these rascals in what state they found me, mon-
sieur," said Jacques Collin, signing to the two constables to
come in.
"Unconscious, monsieur, lying on the edge of the grave
of the young man they were burying."
"Save Madame de Serizy," said the Comte de Bauvan,
"and you shall have what you will."
"I ask for nothing," said Jacques Collin. "I surrendered
at discretion, and Monsieur de Granville must have re-
ceived "
142 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"All the letters, yes/' said the magistrate. "But you prom-
ised to save Madame de Serizy's reason. Can you? Was
it not a vain boast?"
"I hope I can,'' replied Jacques Collin modestly.
"Well, then, come with me," said Comte Octave.
"No, monsieur; I will not be seen in the same carriage
by your side — I am still a convict. It is my wish to serve the
Law; I will not begin by discrediting it. Go back to the
Countess; I will be there soon after you. Tell her Lucien's
best friend is coming to see her, the Abbe Carlos Herrera;
the anticipation of my visit will make an impression on her
and favor the cure. You will forgive me for assuming once
more the false part of a Spanish priest; it is to do so much
good !"
"I shall find you there at about four o'clock," said Mon-
sieur de Granville, "for I have to wait on the King with the
Keeper of the Seals."
Jacques Collin went off to find his aunt, who was waiting
for him on the Quai aux Fleurs.
"So you have given yourself up to the authorities?" said
she.
"Yes."
"It is a risky game."
"N"o; I owed that poor Theodore his life, and he is re-
prieved."
"And you?"
"I — I shall be what I ought to be. I shall always make
our set shake in their shoes. — But we must get to work. Go
and tell Paccard to be off as fast as he can go, and see that
Europe does as I told her."
"That is a trifle; I know how to deal with la Gonore,"
said the terrible Jacqueline. "I have not been wasting my
time here among the gilliflowers."
"Let Ginetta, the Corsican girl, be found by to-morrow,"
Jacques Collin went on, smiling at his aunt.
"I shall want some clue."
"You can get it through Manon la Blonde," said Jacques,
VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR . 143
"Then we meet this evening," replied the aunt, "you are in
such a deuce of a hurry. Is there a fat job on?"
"I want to begin with a stroke that will beat everything
that Bibi-Lupin has ever done. I have spoken a few words
to the brute who killed Lucien, and I live only for revenge !
Thanks to our positions, he and I shall be equally strong,
equally protected. It will take years to strike the blow, but
the wretch shall have it straight in the heart."
"He must have vowed a Eoland for your Oliver," said the
aunt, "for he has taken charge of Peyrade's daughter, the girl
who was sold to Madame ISTourrisson, you know."
"Our first point must be to find him a servant."
"That will be difficult; he must be tolerably wide-awake,"
observed Jacqueline.
"Well, hatred keeps one alive ! We must work hard."
Jacques Collin took a cab and drove at once to the Quai
Malaquais, to the little room he lodged in, quite separate
from Lucien's apartment. The porter, greatly astonished
at seeing him, wanted to tell him all that had happened.
"I know everything," said the Abbe. "I have been in-
volved in it, in spite of my saintly reputation; but, thanks
to the intervention of the Spanish Ambassador, I have been
released."
He hurried up to his room, where, from under the cover of
a breviary, he took out a letter that Lucien had written to
Madame de Serizy after that lady had discarded him on
seeing him at the opera with Esther.
Lucien, in his despair, had decided on not sending this
letter, believing himself cast off for ever ; but Jacques Collin
had read the little masterpiece ; and as all that Lucien wrote
was to him sacred, he had treasured the letter in his prayer-
book for its poetical expression of a passion that was chiefly
vanity. When Monsieur de Granville told him of Madame
de Serizy's condition, the keen-witted man had very wisely
concluded that this fine lady's despair and frenzy must be
the result of the quarrel she had allowed to subsist between
144 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
herself and Lucien. He knew women as magistrates know
criminals ; he guessed the most secret impulses of their hearts ;
and he at once understood that the Countess probably
ascribed Lucien's death partly to her own severity, and re-
proached herself bitterly. Obviously a man on whom she
had shed her love would never have thrown away his life ! —
To know that he had loved her still, in spite of her cruelty,
might restore her reason.
If Jacques Collin was a grand general of convicts, he was,
it must be owned, a not less skilful physician of souls.
This man's arrival at the mansion of the Serizys was at
once a disgrace and a promise. Several persons, the Count,
and the doctors were assembled in the little drawing-room
adjoining the Countess' bedroom ; but to spare him this stain
on his soul's honor, the Comte de Bauvan dismissed every-
body, and remained alone with his friend. It was bad enough
even then for the Vice-President of the Privy Council to see
this gloomy and sinister visitor come in.
Jacques Collin had changed his dress. He was in black
with trousers, and a plain frock-coat, and his gait, his look,
and his manner were all that could be wished. He bowed to
the two statesmen, and asked if he might be admitted to see
the Countess.
"She awaits you with impatience," said Monsieur de
Bauvan.
"With impatience ! Then she is saved," said the dreadful
magician.
And, in fact, after an interview of half an hour, Jacques
Collin opened the door and said :
"Come in. Monsieur le Comte; there is nothing further
to fear."
The Countess had the letter clasped to her heart ; she was
calm, and seemed to have forgiven herself. The Count gave
expression to his joy at the sight.
"And these are the men who settle our fate and the fate
of nations," thought Jacques Collin, shrugging his shoulders
behind the two men. "A female has but to sigh in the wrong
VAFTRTN'S LAST AYATAR 145
way to turn their brain as if it were a glove ! A wink, and
they lose their head! A petticoat raised a little higher,
dropped a little lower, and they rush round Paris in despair !
The whims of a woman react on the whole country. Ah,
how much stronger is a man when, like me, he keeps far away
from this childish tyranny, from honor ruined by passion,
from this frank malignity, and wiles worthy of savages!
Woman, with her genius for ruthlessness, her talent for tor-
ture, is, and always will be, the marring of man. The public
prosecutor, the minister — here they are, all hoodwinked, all
moving the spheres for some letters written by a duchess and
a chit, or to save the reason of a woman who is more crazy in
her right mind than she was in her delirium."
And he smiled haughtily.
"Ay," said he to himself, "and they believe in me ! They
act on my information, and will leave me in power. I shall
still rule the world which has obeyed me these five-and-twenty
years."
Jacques Collin had brought into play the overpowering
influence he had exerted of yore over poor Esther; for he
had, as has often been shown, the mode of speech, the look,
the action which quell madmen, and he had depicted Lucien
as having died with the Countess' image in his heart.
jSTo woman can resist the idea of having been the one be-
loved.
"You now have no rival," had been this bitter jester's last
words.
He remained a whole hour alone and forgotten in that
little room. Monsieur de Granville arrived and found him
gloomy, standing up, and lost in a brown study, as a man
may well be who makes an 18th Brumaire in his life.
The public prosecutor went to the door of the Countess'
room, and remained there a few minutes ; then he turned to
Jacques Collin and said :
"You have not changed your mind?"
"No, monsieur."
146 A COURTESAN'S LIFE
"Well, then, you will take Bibi-Lupin's place, and Calvi's
sentence will be commuted."
"And he is not to be sent to Rochef ort ?"
"Not even to Toulon ; you may employ him in your service.
But these reprieves and your appointment depend on your
conduct for the next six months as subordinate to Bibi-
Lupin."
Within a week Bibi-Lupin's new deputy had helped the
Crottat family to recover four hundred thousand francs, and
had brought Ruffard and Godet to justice.
The price of the certificates sold by Esther Gobseck was
found in the courtesan's mattress, and Monsieur de Serizy
handed over to Jacques Collin the three hundred thousand
francs left to him by Lucien de Ruberapre.
The monument erected by Lucien's orders for Esther and
himself is considered one of the finest in Pere-Lachaise, and
the earth beneath it belongs to Jacques Collin.
After exercising his functions for about fifteen years
Jacques Collin retired in 1845.
December 1847.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
To the Contessa Serafina San Severino,
nee Porcia.
Being obliged to read everything, in the endeavor to repeat nothing,
I chanced, the other day, to turn over the pages of a collection of three
hundred more or less broadly humorous tales written by II Bandello,
a sixteenth century writer, but little known in France, whose works
have only lately been republished in extenso in the compact Floren-
tine edition entitled ' ' Raccolta di Novellieri Italian!. " As I glanced
for the first time through II Bandello's original text, your name,
Madame, and the name of the Count, suddenly caught my eyes, and
made~so vivid an impression upon my mind, that it seemed that I
had actually seen you. Then I discovered, not without surprise,
that every story, were it but five pages long, was prefaced by a
familiar letter of dedication to a king or queen, or to one of the
most illustrious personages of the time. I saw the names of noble
houses of Genoa, Florence, Milan, and II Bandello's native Pied-
mont. Sforze, Dorie, Fregosi, and Frascatori ; the Dolcini of Man-
tua, the San Severini of Crema, the Visconti of Milan, and the
Guidoboni of Tortona, all appear in his pages ; there is a Dante
Alighieri (some one of that name was then, it seems, in existence),
stories are inscribed to Queen Margaret of France, to the Emperor
of Germany, the King of Bohemia, the Archduke Maximilian.
There are Sauli, Medici, Soderini, Pallavicini, and a Bentivoglio of
Bologna ; there are Scaligeri and Colonne ; there is a Spanish Car-
dona ; and as for France, Anne de Polignac, Princesse de Marcillac,
and Comtesse de la Rochefoucauld, the Marignys, Cardinal d'Ar-
magnac, and the Bishop of Cahors — all the great company of the time
in short — are delighted and flattered by a correspondence with Boc-
caccio's successor. I saw, likewise, how much nobility there was in
II Bandello's own character; for while he adorns his pages with
(147)
148 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
such illustrious names as these, he is true to his personal friend-
ships. After the Signora Gallerana, Countess of Bergamo, comes the
name of a doctor to whom he inscribes his tale of " Romeo e Giu-
lietta;" after the " signora, molto magnifica, " Hipolita Visconti ed
Attellana follows the name of Livio Liviana, a simple captain of
light cavalry; a preacher succeeds the Duke of Orleans, and next in
order after one Riario you find " Messer magnifico, Girolamo Un-
garo, mercante Lucchese, " a virtuous person for whose benefit it is
narrated how ' ' un gentiluomo navarese sposa una che era sua sorella
e figliuola, non lo sapendo;" the subject being furnished by the
Queen of Navarre.
Then I thought that I, like L Bandello, might put one of my stories
under the protection of ' ' una virtuosa, gentilissima illustrissima ' '
Contessa Serafina San Severino, telling her truths that might be taken
for flatteries. Why should I not confess that I am proud to bear my
testimony here and elsewhere to the fact that fair and noble friend-
ships, now, as in the sixteenth century, are and have been the
solace of men of letters wherever the fashion of the day may rank
them ? that in those friendships they have ever found consolation
for slander, insult, and harsh criticism, w'hile the approval of such
an audience enables them to rise above the cares and vexations of
the literary life ? And because you found such pleasure in the
mental activity of Paris, that brain of the world ; because, with
your Venetian subtlety of intellect, you understand it so well ;
because you loved Gerard's sumptuous salon (now closed to us), in
which all the European celebrities of our quarter of the century
might be seen, as we see them in II Bandello's pages; because the
great and dangerous Siren's fetes and magical ceremonies struck you
with wonder, and you gave me your impressions of Paris so simply —
for all these reasons, surcJy, you will extend your protection to this
picture of a sphere of life which you cannot have know'n, albeit
it is not lacking in character.
1 could wish that I had some great poem to ofl'er instead to you
whose outward form is the visible expression of all the poetry in
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 149
your heart and soul ; but since a poor writer of prose can only give
what he has, the inadequacy of the oflering may perhaps be
redeemed, in your eyes, by the respectful homage paid by a deep
and sincere admiration, such as you can inspire.
De Balzac.
In Paris, where there is a certain family likeness among
students and thinkers who live under similar conditions, you
must have seen many faces not unlike M. Eabourdin's at the
point at which this history takes up his career. M. Rabour-
din at that time was a chief clerk in a most important Gov-
ernment department. He was a man of forty, with hair of
so pretty a shade of gray, that women really might love to
have it so; it was just the tint that softens the expression
of a melancholy face. There was plenty of light in the blue
eyes; his complexion, though still fair, was sanguine, and
there were little patches of bright red in it; his mouth was
grave; his nose and forehead resembled those features in
portraits of Louis XV. In person he was tall and spare, as
thin, indeed, as if he had but recently recovered from an ill-
ness; his gait suggested something of a lounger's indolence,
something too of the meditative mood of a busy man.
If this portrait gives the man's character by anticipation,
his costume may contribute to set it further in relief ; Eabour-
din invariably wore a long blue overcoat, a black stock, a
double-breasted waistcoat a la Robespierre, black trousers
without straps, gray silk stockings, and low shoes. At eight
every morning, punctual as the clock, he sallied forth duly
shaven and ballasted with a cup of coffee, and went, always
along the same streets, to the office, looking so prim and tidy
that you might have taken him for an Englishman on the
way to his embassy. By these tokens you discern the father
of a family, a man that has little of his own way in his own
house, and plenty of business cares to worry him at the office ;
and yet withal sufficient of a philosopher to take life as it is ;
an honest man, loving and serving his country without blink-
ing the difficulties in the way of getting the right thing done ;
150 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
a prudent man, since he knows something of human nature;
a man whose manner to women is exquisitely polite because
he expects nothing of them. Lasth', he was a man of very
considerable attainments, kindly to his inferiors, apt to keep
his equals at a distance, and to stand on his dignity with his
chiefs.
At this period of his life you would have noticed that he
wore a certain resigned, indifferent air; he seemed to have
buried his youthful illusions, and renounced personal am-
bitions; certain signs indicated that though discouraged he
had not yet given up his early projects in disgust, but he
persisted in his work rather for the sake of employing his
faculties than from any hope of a doubtful triumph. He
wore no "decorations," and occasionally blamed himself for
the weakness of wearing the Order of the Lily in the early
days of the Eestoration.
There were certain mysterious elements in Rabourdin's
life. His father he had never known. His mother had lived
in luxury and splendor; she had a fine carriage, she was al-
ways beautifully dressed, her life was a round of gaiety ; her
son remembered her as a marveloush^ beautiful and seldom-
seen vision. She left him scarcely anything when she died ;
but she had given him the ordinary imperfect school educa-
tion which develops great ambitions and little capacity for
realizing them. Then he left the Lycee Kapoleon only a few
days before her death to enter a Government office as a super-
numerary at the age of sixteen. Some unknown influence
promptly obtained the position for him. At twenty-two,
Eabourdin became senior clerk ; he was chief clerk at twenty-
five. After this, the patronage which had brought the young
fellow thus far on in life showed itself in but one more in-
stance. It procured him an entrance to the house of one M.
Leprince, a retired auctioneer, reputed to be wealthy. M.
Leprince was a widower with an only daughter. Xavier
Eabourdin fell over head and ears in love with Mile. Celestine
Leprince, then aged seventeen, and endowed (so it was said)
with two hundred thousand francs for her portion. Men in
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 151
the highest position might well turn their eyes in the direction
of this young lady. A tall, handsome girl with an admirable
figure, she had inherited the gifts of an artist mother, who
brought her up carefully. Mile. Leprince spoke several lan-
guages, and had acquired some smatterings of learning — a
dangerous advantage, which compels a woman to be very
careful if she would avoid any appearance of pedantry. And
Celestine's mother, blinded by unwise tenderness, had held
out hopes that could not be realized ; to hear her talk, nobody
short of a duke, an ambassador, a marshal of France, or a
cabinet minister could give her Celestine her rightful social
position. And, indeed. Mile. Leprince's manners, language,
and ways were fitted for the best society. Her dress was too
handsome and elegant for a girl of her age ; a husband could
give Celestine nothing but happiness. And, what was more,
the mother (who died a year after her marriage) had spoiled
her with such continual indulgence, that a lover had a toler-
ably difficult part to play.
A man had need have plenty of courage to undertake such
a wife ! Middle-class suitors took fright and retired.
Xavier, an orphan with nothing but his salary as chief clerk
in a Government office, was brought forward by M. Leprince,
but for a long time Celestine would not hear of him. Not
that Mile. Leprince had any objection to her suitor himself;
he was young, handsome, and very much in love, but she had
no mind to be called Mme. Eabourdin.
In vain M. Leprince told his daughter that Rabourdin
was of the stuff of which cabinet ministers are made.
Celestine retorted that a man of the name of Rabourdin
would never rise to be anything under the Bourbons, with
much more to the same purpose. Driven thus from his in-
trenchments, her parent was guilty of a grave indiscretion;
he hinted to Celestine that her suitor would be Rabourdin de
somewhere or other before he could reach the age that qualifies
for the Chamber. Xavier was sure to be a Master of Re-
quests before very long, and Secretary-General of his de-
partment. After those two steps, the young fellow would be
152 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
launched into the upper regions of the administration some
day; besides, Eabourdin would inherit a fortune and a name
by a certain will, as he (Leprince) knew of his own knowl-
edge. The marriage took place.
Eabourdin and his Avife believed in the mysterious power
discovered to them by the old auctioneer. Hope and the
improvidence counseled by love in the early days of married
life led the young couple into expense; and in five years M.
and Mme. Eabourdin had spent nearly a hundred thousand
francs of their principal. Celestine not unreasonably took
alarm when promotion did not come, and it was by her wish
that the remaining hundred thousand francs of her portion
were put into land. The investment only paid a very low in-
terest ; but then some day or other old M. Leprince would leave
his money to them, and their prudent self-denial would re-
ceive the reward of a pleasant competence.
But old M. Leprince saw that his son-in-law had lost his
interest, and tried, for his daughter's sake, to repair the secret
check. He risked a part of his capital in a very promising
speculation ; but the poor man became involved in one of the
liquidations of the firm of Nucingen, and worried over his
losses until he died, leaving nothing behind him but some ten
fine pictures which adorned his daughter's drawing-room,
and a little old-fashioned furniture which she consigned to
the attics.
After eight years of vain expectation, Mme. Eabourdin at
last grasped the idea that her husband's fatherly providence
must have died suddenly, and that the will had been mislaid
or suppressed. Two years before Leprince's death, when the
place of the head of the division fell vacant, it was given to
one M. de la Billardiere, a relative of a deputy on the Eight-
hand benches, who became a member of the Government in
1823. It was enough to drive a man to resign. But how
could Eabourdin give up a salary of eight thousand francs
(to say nothing of an occasional bonus) when he was living
up to his income, and three-fourths of it came from this
source? Besides, would he not have a right to a pension
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 153
after a few years of patience ? But what a fall was this for a
woman whose high pretensions at the outset were almost
justifiable, a woman who was supposed to be destined for
great things !
Mme. Eabourdin fulfilled the promise of Mile. Leprince.
She possessed the elements of an apparent superiority which
pleases in society; her great acquirements enabled her to
speak to every one in his own language. And her ability was
genuine ; she had an independent mind of no common order ;
her conversation was as charming for its variety as for the
originality of her ideas. Such qualities would have shone to
advantage and profit in a queen or an ambassadress; they
were worth little in the inevitably humdrum routine of
domestic life. If people talk well, they are apt to want an
audience; they like to talk at length, and sometimes they
grow wearisome. To satisfy her intellectual cravings, Mme.
Eabourdin received her friends one day in the week, and
went a good deal into society, for the sake of the admiration
to which she was accustomed.
Those who know life in Paris will understand what a wo-
man of this stamp must suffer when she continually feels the
pinch of straitened means at home. In spite of all the sense-
less rhetorical abuse of money, you must take your stand, if
you live in Paris, at the foot of a column of figures ; you must
bow down before arithmetic, and kiss the cloven foot of the
Golden Calf.
Given an income of twelve thousand francs a year, to
meet all the expenses of a household consisting of father,
mother, and two children, with a housemaid and a cook, and
to live on a second-floor flat in the Rue Duphot at a rent of a
hundred louis — what a problem was this ! Before you begin
to estimate the gross expenditure of the house, you must de-
duct the wife's expenses for dress and hired carriages (for
dress is the first thing to consider) ; then see how much re-
mains to pay for the education of two children (a girl of
seven and a boy of nine, who already cost two thousand
francs, in spite of a free scholarship), and you will find that
154 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Mme. Eabourdin could barely allow her husband thirty franco*
a month. Most married men in Paris are, in fact, in the
same predicament if they do not wish to be thought monsters
of cruelty.
And so it had come to pass that the woman who believed
that she was born to shine as one of the queens of society
was obliged to exert her intellect and all her powers in a
sordid struggle for which she was quite unprepared — a daily
wrestling-match with account books. And even so there had
been bitter mortifications to suffer. She had dismissed her
man-servant after her father's death. Most women grow
weary of the daily strain. They grumble for a while, and
then yield to their fate ; but Celestine's ambition, so far from
declining, was only increased by the difficulties. If she could
not overcome obstacles, she would clear them from her path.
Such complications in the machinery of existence ought to
be abolished; and if the Gordian knot could not be untied,
genius should cut it. So far from accepting the shabby lot
of the lower middle-class housewife, Celestine grew impatient
because her great future career was delayed. Fate had not
done fairly by her, she thought.
For Celestine honestly believed that she was meant for
great things. And perhaps she was right. Perhaps in great
circumstances she might have shown herself great. Perhaps
she was not in her place. Let us admit that among women,
as among men, there are certain types that can mould society
to their own wish. But as, in the natural world, not every
young sapling shoots up into a tree, and small fry are more
numerous than full-grown fish, so, in the artificial world
called society, many a human creature who might have done
great things, many an Athanase Granson,* is doomed to
perish undeveloped like the seeds that fall on stony ground.
Of course there are domesticated women, agreeable women,
and costly feminine works of art ; there are women born to be
mothers, wives, or mistresses; there are wholly intellectual
and wholly material women ; even as • among men there are
* See La VieiUe Pille.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 155
soldiers, artists, craftsmen, mathematicians, merchants, poets,
and men who understand nothing beyond money-making,
agriculture, or public business. And then the irony of fate
comes in and works strange contradictions; many are called,
but few chosen, and the law of spiritual election holds
equally good in worldly concerns.
Mme. Eabourdin, in her own opinion, was eminently fitted
to counsel a statesman, to kindle an artist's soul, to further
the interests of an inventor, and to help him in his struggles,
or to devote herself to the half-political, half-financial
schemes of a Nucingen, and to make a brilliant figure with a
large fortune. Perhaps this was how she tried to account
to herself for the disgust that she felt for laundress' bills,
for the daily schemes of kitchen expenditure and the small
economies and cares of a small establishment. In the life
that she liked she took a high place. And since she was
keenly sensitive to the prickings of the thorns in a lot which ~^.
might be compared with the position of St. Lawrence upon a . • ,
gridiron, some outcry surely was only to be expected of her.
And so it befell that in paroxysms of thwarted ambition, dur-
ing sharp throbs of pain, given by wounded vanity, Celestine
threw the blame upon Xavier Eabourdin. Was it not in-
cumbent upon her husband to give her a suitable position?
If she had been a man, she certainly would have had
energy enough to realize a fortune quickly and make a much
loved wife happy. He was "too honest," she said; and this
reproach in the mouths of some women is as good as a
certificate of idiocy.
Celestine would sketch out magnificent plans for him,
ignoring all the practical difficulties put in the way by men
and circumstances; and, after the manner of women when
under the influence of intense feeling, she became, in theory,
more machiavellian than a Gondreville, and Maxime de
Trailles himself was hardly such a scoundrel. At such times
Celestine's imagination conceived all possibilities ; she saw
herself in the whole extent of her ideas. Eabourdin, mean-
while, with his practical experience, was unmoved from the
156 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
outset by these glorious dreams. And Celestine, somewhat
dashed, came to the conclusion that her husband was a nar-
row-minded man, whose views were neither bold enough nor
comprehensive enough. Unconsciously she began to form an
utterl}'- false idea of her companion in life. She snuffed him
out continually, to begin with, by her brilliant arguments;
and when he began to explain matters to her, she was apt to
cut him short. Her own ideas were wont to occur to her in
flashes, and she was afraid to lose the spark of wit.
She had known from the very first days of their married
life that Eabourdin admired and loved her; and therefore
she treated him with careless security. She set herself above
all the laws of married life, and the courtesies of familiarity,
leaving all her little shortcomings to be pardoned in the
name of Love; and as she never corrected herself, she always
had her way. A man in this position is, as it were, confront-
ing a schoolmaster who cannot or will not believe that the boy
whom he used to keep in order has grown up. As Mme. de
Stael once received a remark made by a "greater man" than
herself, by exclaiming before a whole roomful of people, "Do
you know that you have just said something very profound ?"
so Mme. Eabourdin would say of her husband, "There is some-
times sense in what he says !" Gradually her opinion of
Xavier began to show itself in little ways. There was a lack
of respect in her manner and attitude towards him. And all
unconsciously she lowered him in the eyes of others, for every-
body all the world over takes a wife's estimate into account
in forming an opinion of a man; it is the universal rule in
taking a precognition of character ; un preavis, as the Genevese
say, or, to be more accurate, un preavisse.
When Eabourdin saw the mistake that he had made through
love, it was too late. The bent had been taken; he suffered
in silence. In some rare natures the power to feel is as great
as the power of thought, a great soul supplements a highly
organized brain ; and, after the manner of these, Eabourdin
was his wife's advocate at the bar of his judgment. Nature
(he told himself) had given her a role to play; it was entirely
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 157
by his fault that she had been cheated of her part. She was
like a thoroughbred racer harnessed to a cart full of flints —
she was not happy. He took the blame upon himself, in
short. His wife had inoculated him with her belief in herself
by dint of repeating the same things over and over again.
Ideas are infectious in family life. The 9th Thermidor, like
many other portentous events, was brought about by feminine
influence.
Urged on in this way by Celestine's ambition, Rabour-
din had long been meditating how to satisfy it; but he hid
his hopes from her to save her the torment of suspense. He
had made up his mind, good man that he was, to make his
way upwards in the administration by knocking a very con-
siderable hole in it. He wanted, in the first place, to bring
about a revolutiop. in the civil service, a radical reform of a
kind that puts a man at the head of some section of society ;
but as he was incapable of scheming a general overturn for
his particular benefit, he was revolving projects of reform in
his own mind and dreaming of a triumph to be nobly won.
The idea was both generous and ambitious. Perhaps few
employes have not thought of such plans ; but among officials,
as among artists, there are many abortive designs for one
that sees the light. Which saying brings us back to Buffon's
apophthegm, "Genius is patience." „-
Rabourdin's position enabled him to study the French ad-
ministrative system and to watch its working. Chance set
his speculative faculties moving in the sphere of his practical
experience (this, by the way, is the seciat of many a man's
achievements), and Rabourdin invented a new system of ad-
ministration. Knowing the men with whom he had to do,
he respected the machinery then in existence, still in exist-
ence, and likely to remain in existence for a long while to
come, every generation being scared by the thought of re-
construction; but while Rabourdin respected the mechanism
as a whole, nobody, he thought, could refuse to simplify it.
How to employ the same energy to better purpose — here,
to his thinking, lay the problem. Reduced to its simplest
158 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
expression, his plan consisted in redistributing the burden of
taxation in such a way that it should fall less heavily on the
nation, while there should be no falling off in the revenues
of the State ; and, furthermore, in those days when the budget
provoked such frantic discussion, he meant to make the un-
diminished national income go twice as far as before.
Long practical experience had made it clear to Rabourdin
that perfection is gradually attained by a succession of
simple modifications. Economy is simplification. If you
simplify, you dispense with a superfluous wheel ; and, conse-
quently, something must go. His system, therefore, involved
changes which found expression in a new administrative
nomenclature. Herein, probably, you may find the reason
of the unpopularity of the innovator, j^ecessary suppres-
sions are taken amiss from the outset; they threaten a class
which does not readily adapt itself to a change of environ-
ment. Rabourdin's real greatness lay in this — he restrained
the inventor's enthusiasm, while he sought patiently to gear
one measure into another so as to avoid unnecessary friction,
and left time and experience to demonstrate the excellence
of each successive modification. This idea of the gradual
nature of the change must not be lost sight of in a rapid
survey of the system, or it will seem impossible to bring about
so great a result. It is worth while, therefore, incomplete
as Rabourdin's disclosures were, to indicate the starting-point
from which he meant to embrace the whole administrative
horizon. The account of his scheme, moreover, brings us to
the very core of the intrigues of which it was the cause, and
may throw a light besides upon some present day evils.
Rabourdin had been deeply impressed by the hardships
of the lives of subordinate officials. He asked himself why
they were falling into discredit. He searched into the causes
of their decline, and found them in the little semi-revolutions,
the back eddies, as it were, of the great storm of 1789. His-
torians of great social movements have never examined into
these, though, as a matter of fact, they made our manners
and customs what they are.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 159
In former times, under the monarchy, armies of officials
did not exist. They were then few in number and under the
direct control of a prime minister, who was always in com-
munication with the crown. In this way the official staff
might be said to serve the King almost directly. The chiefs
of these zealous servitors were simply plain 'premiers commis
— first clerks. In all departments not under His Majesty's
direct control — such as the taxes, for instance — the staff were
to their chiefs pretty much as the clerks in a counting-
house are to their employer; they were receiving a training
which was to put them in the way of getting on in life. In
this way every point in the official circumference was in close
connection with the centre, and received its impetus there-
from. Consequently, there was devotion on one side and
trust on the other in those days.
Since 1789 the State, or if you like to have it so, La Patrie
has taken the place of the sovereign. The clerks no longer
take their instructions directly from one of the first magis-
trates in the realm. In our day, in spite of our fine ideas
of La Patrie, they are government employes, while their
chiefs are drifted hither and thither by every wind that blows
from a quarter known as the ministry, and the ministry can-
not tell to-day whether to-morrow will find it in existence.
As routine business must always be dispatched, there is al-
ways a fluctuating number of supernumeraries who cannot be
dispensed with, and yet are liable to dismissal at a moment's
notice. All of these naturally are anxious to be "established
clerks." And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded-
by pigmies, came into the world. Possibly Napoleon re-
tarded its influence for a time, for all things and all men
were forced to bend to his will; but none the less the heavy
curtain of Bureaucracy was drawn between the right thing
to be done and the right man to do it. Bureaucracy was
definitely organized, however, under a constitutional govern-
ment with a natural kindness for mediocrity, a predilection
for categorical statements and reports, a government as fussy
and meddlesome, in short, as a small shopkeeper's wife.
160 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Cabinet ministers' lives became a continual struggle with
some four hundred petty minds led by a dozen or so of rest-
less and intriguing spirits. It was a delightful spectacle for
the rank and file of the service. They hastened to make
themselves indispensable, hampering energy with documents,
thereby creating a vis inertice, styled the Eeport. Let us
explain the Eeport.
When kings had ministers, and they only began this prac-
tice under Louis XV., they were wont to have a report drawn
up on all important questions, instead of taking counsel as
before with the great men of the realm. Imperceptibly, min-
isters were compelled by their understrappers to follow the
royal example. They were so busy holding their own in the
two Chambers or at Court, that they allowed themselves to
be guided by the leading-string of the Eeport. If anything
of consequence came up in the administration, the minister
had but one answer to the most pressing question — "I have
asked for a report." In this way the Eeport became for men
in oflice, and in public business generally, pretty much what
it is for the Chamber of Deputies and the Legislature, a sort
of consultation in the course of which the reasons for and
against a measure are set forth with more or less impartial-
ity. The minister, like the Chamber, after reading it, is
very much where he was before.
Any kind of decision must be made instantaneously.
Whatever the preliminary process, the moment comes when
you must make up your mind, and the bigger the array of
arguments, the harder it is to come by a wise decision. The
greatest deeds were done in France before reports were in-
vented and decisions were made out of hand. The supreme
rule for statesman, lawyer, or physician is the same — he must
adopt a definite formula to suit each individual case.
Eabourdin, who thought within himself that "a minister is
there to give decisions, to understand public business, and to
dispatch it," beheld the report carrying all before it, from the
colonel to the marshal, from the commissary of police to the
king, from the prefect to the cabinet minister, from the Cham-
ber to the police-courts.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 161
Since 1808 everything had been on its trial ; everything
was weighed and pondered in conversation, books, and news-
papers, and every discussion took literary shape. France was
making dissertations instead of acting, and came to the brink
of ruin in spite of these fine reports. A million of them
would be drawn up in a year in those days ! Wherefore
Bureaucracy got the upper hand. Portfolios, letter-files,
wastepaper, documents, and vouchers, without which France
would be lost, and circulars which she could not do without,
increased and multiplied and waxed imposing. Bureaucracy
for its own ends fomented the ill-feeling between the receipts
and expenditure, and calumniated the administration for the
benefit of the administrator. Bureaucracy devised the
Lilliputian threads which chain France to Parisian central-
ization; as if from 1500 to 1800 France had managed to do
nothing without thirty thousand government clerks ! And
no sooner had the official fastened on the government as
mistletoe takes root on a pear-tree, than he ceased to take any
interest in his work, and for the following reasons: — '
The Princes and the Chambers compelled the ministers to
take their share of responsibility in the budget, by insisting
that their names and the amounts of salaries paid by and
to them should appear in detail therein. They were like-
wise obliged to keep a staff of clerks. Therefore they de-
creased the salaries, while they increased the number of
clerks, in the belief that a government is so much the stronger
for the number of people in its employ. The exact converse
of this is an axiom written large for all eyes to see. The
amount of energy secured varies inversely with the number
of agents. The Ministerialism of the Restoration made a
mistake, as the event proved, in July 1830. If a govern-
ment is to be firmly rooted in the heart of the nation, it must
be, not by attaching individuals, but by identifying itself with
the interests of the country.
The official class was led to despise the government which--
curtailed their salaries and lowered their social position ; in
retaliation they behaved as a courtesan behaves with an elderly
162 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
adorer. Thej gave the crown an adequate return for their
salaries. If the government and those in its employ had
dared to feel each other's pulses; if the big salaries had not
stifled the voices of the little ones, the situation would have
been recognized as equally intolerable on either side. An
official gave his whole mind to making a living; to draw a
salary till he could reach a pension was his one object ; and
to attain that great result, anything (in his opinion) was
permissible. Such a state of things made a serf of a clerk;
it was a source of never-ending intrigues in the departments ;
and to make matters worse, a degenerate aristocracy tried to
find pasture on the bourgeois common lands, using all its
influence to get the best places for spendthrift sons ; and with
these the poor civil servant was obliged to compete. A really
able man is hardly likely to try to make his way in these
tortuous mazes; he will not cringe and wriggle and crawl
through muddy by-paths where the appearance of a man of
brains creates a general scare. An ambitious man of genius
may grow old in the effort to reach the triple tiara, but he
will not follow in the footsteps of a Sixtus V., to be a chief
clerk for his pains. If a man came into the department and
stopped there, he was either indolent or incompetent, or ex-
cessively simple.
And so, by degrees, the administration was reduced to a
dead level of mediocrity,^ and an official hierarchy of petty
minds became a standing obstruction in the way of national
prosperity. A project for a canal, which would have de-
veloped the industries of a province, might lie in a pigeon-
hole for seven years. Bureaucracy shirked every question,
protracted delays, and perpetuated abuses the better to pro-
tract and perpetuate its own existence. Every one, even to
the minister in office, was kept in leading-strings ; and if any
man of ability was rash enough to try to do without bureau-
cracy, or to turn the light upon its blunders, he was incon-
tinently snuffed out. The list of pensions had just
been published. Eabourdin discovered that a retired
office messenger was drawing a larger sum from the Govern-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 163
ment than many a disabled colonel. The history of bureau-
cracy might be read at large in the pension list.
Eabourdin attributed the lurking demoralization in part
to another evil, which has its roots in our modern manners ;
there is no real subordination in the service. A complete
equality prevails from the head of the division to the lowest
copying clerk ; and one man is as good as another in the arena,
though when he leaves it, he takes a high place outside. A poet,
an artist, and an ordinary clerk are all alike employes; they
make no distinctions among themselves. Education dis-
pensed indiscriminately brings about the natural results.
Does not the son of a minister's hall-porter decide the fate of
a great man or some landed proprietor for whom his father
used to open the door? The latest comer therefore can com-
pete with the oldest. A wealthy supernumerary driving to
Longchamp in his tilbury with a pretty woman by his side,
points out the head of his office to his companion with his
whip. "There goes my chief !" he says, and his wheels splash
the poor father of a poor family who must go on foot through
the streets. The Liberals call this sort of thing Progress^
Eabourdin looked upon it as Anarchy in the core of the ad-
ministration. Did he not see the results of it? — ^the restless
intriguing as of women and eunuchs in the harem of an effete
sultan, the pettiness of bigots, the underhand spite, the school-
boy tyrann}^ the feats on a level with the tricks of perform-
ing fleas, the slave's petty revenges taken on the minister
himself, the toil and diplomacy from which an ambassador
would shrink dismayed — and all undertaken to gain a bonus
or an increase of salary ? And meanwhile the men who really
did the work, the few whose devotion to their country stood
out in strong contrast against the background of incom-
petence,— these were the victims of parasites, these were
forced out of the field by sordid trickery. As all high places
were no longer in the gift of the crown, but went by interest
in parliament, officials were certain, sooner or later, to be-
come wheels in the machinery of government ; they would be
kept more or less abundantly greased, and that was all they
164 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
cared about. This fatal conviction had already been brought
home to many a good worker ; it had suppressed many a
memorial conscientiously undertaken from a sense of deep-
seated evils; it was disheartening many a brave man, and
corroding the most vigorous honesty; the better sort were
growing weary of injustice; drudgery left them listless, and
they ceased to care.
A single one of Rothschild's clerks manages the whole of
the English correspondence of the firm; a single man in a
government office could undertake the whole of the corre-
spondence with the prefectures. But whereas the first man
is learning the rudiments of the art of getting on in the
world, the latter is wasting his time, health, and life. Here,
again, the ground rang hollow.
Of course, a nation is not threatened with extinction be-
cause a capable clerk retires and a third-rate man takes his
place. Unluckily for nations, it would seem that no man
is indispensable to their existence; but when all men have
come down to a low level, the nation disappears. If any
one wants an instructive example, he can go to Venice,
Madrid, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Rome: the places
where men of immense power used to shine conspicuous are
crumbling ruins, destroyed by pettiness which corroded its
way till it reached high places that it could not fill. When
the day of struggle came, everything collapsed at the first
threat of attack.
But what a difficult problem was this ! To rehabilitate
the official at a time when the Liberal press was clamoring
through every workshop that the nation was being robbed
year by year to pay official salaries, and every heading in the
budget was represented as a horse-leech. "What was the
good of paying a milliard of taxes every year?" cried the
Liberals.
To M. Rabourdin's thinking, the government employe
was to the national expenditure what the gambler is to the
gambling saloon — whatever he takes away in his pocket he
brings back again. A good salary, in his opinion, was a
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 165
good investment. If you only pay a man a thousand francs
a year, and ask for his whole time, do you not as good as
organize theft and misery? A convict costs you very nearly
as much, and does rather less work. But if the Government
pays a man a salary of twelve thousand francs, and expects
him to devote himself in return to the service, the contract
would pay both sides, and the prospect ought to attract really
capable men.
These reflections thereupon led Eabourdin to reconstitute
the stafl'; to have fewer clerks, salaries trebled or doubled,
and pensions suppressed. The Government should follow
the example set by Napoleon, Louis XIV., Richelieu, and
Ximenes, and employ young men ; but the young men should
grow old in the service. The higher posts and distinctions
should be the rewards of their career. These were the capi-
tal points of a reform by which the government and the
official staff would alike be benefited.
It is not easy to enter into details, to take heading by
heading, and go through a scheme of reform which em-
braced the whole of the budget and descended into all the
smallest ramifications of the administration, so that the
whole might be brought into harmony. Perhaps, too, an
indication of the principal reforms will be enough for those
who know the administrative system — and for those who do
not. But though the historian ventures upon dangerous
ground when he gives an account of a scheme that has very
much the look of armchair policy, he is none the less bound
to give a rough idea of Rabourdin's projects for the sake of
the light which a man's work throws on his character. If
all account of Rabourdin's labors were omitted, if this his-
torian contented himself with the simple statement that the
chief clerk in a government office possessed talent or au-
dacity, you would scarcely feel prepared to take his word
for it.
Rabourdin divided up the administration into three prin-
cipal departments. He thought that if in former times
there were heads capable of controlling the whole policy of
166 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
the government at home and abroad, the France of to-day
surely would not lack a Mazarin, a Suger, a Sully, a Choi-
seul, a Colbert, to direct far larger departments than those
of the actual system. From a constitutional point of view,
moreover, three ministers would work better together than
seven, and the chances of going wrong in the choice are re-
duced ; while, as a last consideration, the crown would be
spared the jolts of those perpetual changes of ministry which
make it impossible to adhere to any consistent course of for-
eign policy, or to carry through reforms at home. In Aus-
tria, where different nationalities present a problem of differ-
ent interests to be reconciled and furthered by the crown, two
statesmen carry the weight of public business without being
overburdened. Was France poorer in political capacity than
Germany? The sufficiently silly farce, entitled "Constitu-
tional Institutions," has since been carried to an unreason-
able extent ; and the end of it, as everybody knows, has been
a multiplication of ministerial portfolios to satisfy the wide-
spread ambition of the bourgeoisie.
In the first place, it seemed natural to Eabourdin to re-
unite the Admiralty and the War Office. The navy, like the
artillery, cavalry, infantry, and ordnance, was a spending
department of the War Office. It was surely an anomaly to
keep admirals and marshals on a separate footing, when all
worked together for a common end — to wit, the defence of
the country, the protection of national property, and wars of
aggression. The Minister of the Interior was to preside over
the Board of Trade, the Police, and the Exchequer, the bet-
ter to deserve his name; while the Minister of Foreign Af-
fairs controlled the administration of justice, the royal
household, and everything in the interior which concerned
arts, letters, or the graces. All patronage was to flow directly
from the crown. The last-named minister, by virtue of his
office, was also President of the Council of State. The work of
each of these departments would require a staff of two hun-
dred clerks at most at headquarters; and Eabourdin pro-
posed to house them all in one building, as in former days
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 167
under the monarchy. Keckoning the salaries at an average
of twelve thousand francs, the expense of this item in the
budget would a little exceed seven millions, as against twenty
millions on the actual system.
By reducing the number of the departments to three, Ra-
bourdin suppressed whole divisions, and saved the enormous
expense of their maintenance in Paris. He proved that an
arrondissement ought to be worked by ten men, and a pre-
fecture by a dozen at most; on v,"hieh computation the total
number of government officials employed all over France
(the army and courts of law excepted) would only amount
to about five thousand — a number then exceeded by the staff
in Paris alone. On this plan, however, mortgages became
the province of the clerks of the various courts; the staff of
counsel for the crown {minister e public) in each court would
undertake the registration of titles and the superintendence
of the crown lands.
In this way Eabourdin concentrated similar functions.
Mortgages, death-dues, and registration of titles remained
within judicial spheres, while three supernumeraries in each
court, and three in the Court-Royal, sufficed for the extra
work.
By the consistent application of the same principle, Ea-
bourdin proceeded to financial reform. He had amalga-
mated all Imperial taxes in one single tax, levied, not upon
property, but upon commodities consumed. An assessed tax
upon consumption, in his opinion, was the only way of rais-
ing the national revenue in times of peace, the land-tax being
reserved for times of war. Then, and then alone, the State
might demand sacrifices of the owners of the soil for the de-
fence of the soil; at other times it was a gross political
blunder to vex the land with burdens beyond a certain limit;
something should be left to fall back upon in great crises. On
the same principle, loans were to be negotiated in time of
peace, because they can then be issued at par, and not (as in
hard times) at fifty per cent, discount. If war broke out,
the land-tax remained as a resource.
168 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"The invasion of 1814 and 1815 did what neither Law nor
Napoleon could do," Eabourdin used to say to his friends;
"it proved the necessity of a National Debt, and created it."
Eabourdin held that the true principles of this wonderful
mechanism were, unfortunately, not sufficiently understood
at the time when he began his work, which is to say, in 1820.
He proposed to lay a direct tax upon commodities consumed
by the nation, and in this way to make a clean sweep of the
whole apparatus for the collection of indirect taxes. He
would do away with the vexatious barricades at town gates,
securing at the same time a far larger return by simplifying
the extremely costly system of collection in actual use.
The receipts from the one Imperial tax should be regulated
by a tariff comprising various articles of consumption, and
the amount fixed in each case by assessment. To diminish
the burdensomeness of a tax does not necessarily mean in
matters financial that you diminish the tax itself; it is only
more conveniently assessed. If you lighten the burden, busi-
ness is transacted more freely, and while the individual pays
less, the State gets more.
Tremendous as this reform may seem, it was carried out
in a very simple fashion. Eabourdin took for a basis the as-
sessments made by the Inland Eevenue Department and the
licenses, as the fairest way of computing consumption.
House rent in France is a remarkably accurate guide in the
matter of the incomes of private individuals; and servants,
horses, and carriages lend themselves to estimates for the
Exchequer. Houses and their contents vary very little in
yearly value, and do not easily disappear. Eabourdin pointed
out a method of obtaining more veracious returns than those
given by the system in use; then he took the total revenue
derived by the Exchequer from (so-called) indirect taxation,
divided it up, and assessed his single tax at so much per cent
on each individual taxpayer.
An Imperial tax is a preliminary charge paid on things
or persons, and paid under more or less specious disguises.
Such disguises were well enough for purposes of extortion;
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 169
but surely they arc absurd in these days when the classes
which bear the burden of taxation know perfectly well why
the money is wanted and how it is raised. As a matter of
fact, the budget is not a strong-box, rather it is a watering-
pot; as it is filled and the water distributed, the country
prospers. Suppose, for instance, that there were six millions
of taxpayers in easy circumstances — and Eabourdin was pre-
pared to show that so many existed, if the rich taxpayers were
included in the number — would it not be better, instead of
putting a vexatious tax on wine by the gallon, to ask the
consumer to pay a fixed sum per annum to the Government ?
Such "wine-dues" would not be more odious than the door
and window tax, while they would bring in a hundred mill-
ions to the Exchequer. If other taxes on consumption were
likewise assessed in proportion to the house rent, each in-
dividual would actually pay less; the Government would
save in the costs of collection ; and the consumer would bene-
fit by an immense reduction in the prices of commodities
which no longer would be subjected to endless vexatious regu-
lations.
Eabourdin reserved a tax on vineyard^, by way of a safe-
guard against over-production. And, the better to reach the
poor consumer, the charge for retailers' licenses was made in
proportion to the population of the district. In these three
ways the Exchequer would raise an enormous sum without
heavy expense, and do away with a tax which was not only
vexatious and burdensome, but also very expensive to collect.
The burden would fall on the rich instead of tormenting the
poor.
Take another instance. Suppose that the duty on salt
took the form of one or two francs levied on each taxpayer;
the modern gabelle would be abolished, the poor population
and agriculture generally would feel the relief, the revenue
would not be diminished, and no taxpayer would complain.
Every taxpayer indeed, whether farmer or manufacturer,
would be quick to recognize the improvement if the condi-
tions of living grew easier in country places, and trade in-
170 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
creased. And, in fact, the State would see an increase in the
number of taxpayers in easy circumstances. The Exchequer
would save enormously by sweeping away the extremely
costly apparatus for the collection of indirect taxation (a
government within a government) ; and both the Treasury
and private individuals would benefit by the economy. To-
bacco and gunpowder were to be put under a regie, beneath
State superintendence. The regie system, developed not by
Eabourdin, but by others, after the renewal of the legislation
on tobacco, was so convincing that that law would have had
no chance of passing the Chamber if the Government of the
day had not driven them to it. But, then, it was a question
of finance rather than of government.
The State should own no property; there should be no
Crown domains, no woods and forests, no State mines, no
State enterprise. The State as a landowner was an admin-
istrative anomaly, in Eabourdin's opinion. The State farms
at a disadvantage, and receives no taxes; there is a double
loss. The same anomaly reappeared in the commercial
world in the shajDC of State manufactures. ISTo government
could work as economically as private enterprise; the pro-
cesses were slower; and, besides, the State took a certain
proportion of raw materials off the market, and left so much
the less for other manufacturers who pay taxes. Is it the
duty of a government to manufacture or to encourage manu-
factures? to accumulate wealth, or to see instead that as
many different kinds of wealth as possible are created?
On Eabourdin's system, officials were no longer to pay
caution-money in cash; they should give security instead.
And for this reason: the State either keeps the money in
specie (withdrawing it needlessly from circulation), or puts
it out to interest at a rate either higher or lower than the
rate of interest paid to the official ; making an ignoble profit
out of its servants in the former case, or paying more than
the market price for a loan in the latter, which is folly.
Lastly, if at any time the State disposes of the mass of cau-
tion-money, it prepares the wa}', in certain contingencies, for
a terrible bankruptcy.
THE GOVEENMENT CLERKS 171
The land-tax was not to be done away with a,ltogether.
Raboufdm allowed a very small amount to remain for the
sake of keeping the machinery in working order in case of
a war. But clearly produce would be free, and manufac-
turers, finding cheap raw materials, could compete with the
foreigner without the insidious aid of protection.
The administration of the departments would be under-
taken gratuitously by the well-to-do, a possible peerage be-
ing held out as an inducement. Magistrates, and their sub-
altern, and the learned professions, should receive honors as
a recompense. The consideration in which government
officials were held would be immensely increased by the im-
portance of their posts and considerable salaries. Each
would be thinking, of liis career and France would no longer
suffer from the pension cancer.
As the outcome of all this, Rabourdin estimated that the
expenditure would be reduced to seven hundred millions,
while the receipts would amount, as before, to twelve hun-
dred millions of francs. An annual surplus of five millions
could be made to tell more effectually on the Debt than the
paltry Sinking Fund, of which-^-il^e fallacy had been clearly
shown. By establishing a Sinking^ Fund, the State became
a fundholder, as well as a landowner and manufacturer.
Lastly, to carry out his project without undue friction,
and to avoid a St. Bartholomew of employes, Eabourdin
asked for twenty years.
These were the matured ideas of the man whose place had
been given to the incompetent M. de la Billardiere. A
scheme so vast in appearance, yet so simple in the working,
a project which swept away more than one great official staff,
and suppressed many an equally useless little place, required
continual calculation, accurate statistics, and the clearest
proofs to substantiate it. For a long while Eabourdin had
studied the budget in its double aspect, that of ways and
means on the one side, and expenditure on the other. His
wife did not know how many nights he gave to these
thoughts.
172, THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
And yet to have conceived the project and superimposed
it on the dead body of the administration was as nothing;
Rabourdin had still to find a minister capable of appreciating
his reforms. His success clearly depended upon a quiet po-
litical outlook, and the times were still unsettled. He only
considered that the Government was finally secure when
three hundred deputies had the courage to form themselves
into a solid systematic ministerialist majority. An admin-
istration established on that basis had been inaugurated
since Rabourdin completed his scheme. The splendor of the
time of peace due to the Bourbons eclipsed the military
splendors of the brilliant da3^s when France was one vast
camp and victories abroad were followed by expenditure and
display at home. After the Spanish campaign, the Govern-
ment seemed as if it were surely entering upon a peaceful
era in which good might be done; and, indeed, but three
months before, a new reign had begun unhampered by any
obstacles, and the Liberals of the Left hailed Charles X. with
as much enthusiasm as the party of the Right. It was
enough to deceive the most clearsighted. Consequently, the
moment seemed propitious to Rabourdin; for if an ad-
ministration took up so great a scheme of reform, and under-
took to carry it through, it must of necessity ensure its own
continuance in office.
Never before had Rabourdin seemed more thoughtful and
preoccupied as he walked to his office of a morning, and
came back again at half-past four in the afternoon. And
Mme. Rabourdin, on her side, despairing over her spoilt life,
and weary of working in private for some few luxuries of
dress, had never seemed so sourly discontent. Still she was
attached to her husband; and the shameful intrigues by
which the wives of other officials supplemented an inadequate
salary, were, in her opinion, unworthy of a woman so much
above the ordinary level. For this reason she refused to
have anything to do with Mme. Colleville, who was intimate
with Francois Keller, and gave entertainments which
eclipsed the parties in the Rue Duphot. Celestine took the
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 173
impassive manner of the political thinker, the mental preoc-
cupation of a hard worker for the listless apathy of an official
drudge whose spirit has been broken by routine ; she thought
her husband was submitting to the yoke of the most hateful
poverty of all — the poverty of straitened means that Just en-
ables a man to live. She sighed to think that she should
have married a man of so little energy. x\nd so, about this
time, she determined that she would make her husband's for-
tune for him ; at all costs, she would launch him into a higher
sphere, and she would hide all the springs of action from
him. She set about this task with the originality of concep-
tion which distinguished her from other women ; she prided
herself on rising above their level, on totally disregarding
their little prejudices; the barriers that society raises about
her sex should not impede her. She would fight fools with
their own weapon, so she vowed in her frenzy; she would
stake herself upon the issue if there was no other way. In
short, she saw things from a heigh^.
The moment was favorable. . M. de la Billardiere was
hopelessly ill, and must die in a few days. If Eabourdin
succeeded to the place, his talents (Celestine admitted his
administrative ability) would be so well appreciated that the
post of Master of Eequests (promised before) would be
given to him. Then he would be Eoyal Commissary, and
bring forward the measures of the government in the
Chamber. How she would help him then! She would be
his secretary; if necessary, she would work all night. All
this that she might drive a charming caleche in the Bois de
Boulogne, and stand on a footing of equality with Mme.
Delphine de Nucingen, and raise her salon to a level with
Mme. Colleville's, and be invited to high Ministerial solemni-
ties, and gain an appreciative audience. People should call
her "Mme. Eabourdin de Something-or-other" (she did
not know yet where her estate should be), just as they said
Mme. d'Espard, Mme. d'Aiglemont, or Mme. de Carigliano.
In short, of all things she would put the odious-sounding
name of Eabourdin out of sight.
/
174 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
These secret aspirations produced certain corresponding
changes in the hou^e. Mme. Eabourdin began by walking
resolutely into debt. She engaged a man-servant and put
him into an inconspicuous livery, brown with red pipings.
She renewed some of the furniture; papered her rooms
afresh, decorated them with a constant succession of flowers,
and strewed them with nicknacks then in fashion; while
she herself, who used to feel occasional conscientious qualms
as to her expenses, no longer hesitated to dress in a manner
worthy of her ambitions. The various tradesmen who sup-
plied her with the munitions of war discounted her expecta-
tions. She gave a dinner-party regularly every Friday, the
guests being expected to call to take a cup of tea on the fol-
lowing Wednesday. And her dinner guests were carefully
chosen from among influential deputies and personages who
might directly or indirectly promote her interests. People
enjoyed those evenings very much ; or they professed to do so
at any rate, and that is enough to attract guests in Paris.
As for Eabourdin, he was so intently occupied with the con-
clusion of his great labors that he never noticed the outbreak
of luxury in his house.
And so it came to pass that the husband and wife, all un-
known to each other, were laying siege to the same place and
working on parallel lines.
I^ow there flourished in those days a certain secretary-gen-
eral, by name Clement Chardin de^ Lupeaulx, a personage
of a kind that is sometimes brought much into evidence for a
few years at a time by the tide of political events. Subse-
quently, if a storm arises, he and his like are swept away
again; you may find them stranded on the shore heaven
knows how far away. But even so the hulk has a certain air
of importance. The traveler wonders whether the wrecked
vessel contained valuable merchandise, whether it played a
part on some great occasion, took a share in a great sea-
fight, or carried the velvet canopy of a throne, or the dead
body of a king. At this precise juncture Clement des Lu-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 175
peaulx (the Lupeaulx had absorbed the Chardin) had
reached his apogee. In every life, however illustrious or
obscure, in the' careers of dumb animals as of secretaries-gen-
eral, is there not a zenith and a nadir ? — a period when gloss-
iness and sleekness reach a climar,'and prosperity reaches its
utmost radiance of glory? In the nomenclature of the fab-
ulist, des Lupeaulx belonged to the Bertrand genus, and his
whole occupation consisted in discovering Eatons. As he
happens to be one of the principal. characters in this drama,
he deserves to be described therein, and so"^ mtich the more
fully because the Kevolution of July abolished his place ; and
a secretary-general was an eminently useful institution for a
constitutional minister.
It is the wont of the moralist to pour forth his indigna-
tion upon transcendent abominations. Crimes for him are
deeds that bring a man into the police-courts, social subtleties
escape his analysis; the ingenuity which gains its ends with
the Code for a weapon is either too high or too low, he has
neither magnifying glass nor telescope; he must have good,
strong-colored horrors, abundantly visible to the naked eye.
And as he is always occupied, as one may say, with the car-
nivora, he had no attention to spare for reptiles; so, luckily
for the satirists, the fine shades of a Chardin des Lupeaulx
are left to them.
Selfish and vain; supple and proud; sensual and glutton-
ous; rapacious (for he had debts) ; discreet as a tomb which
keeps its own secrets and allows nothing to issue forth to
give the lie to the inscription meant to edify the passing
traveler; undaunted and fearless in asking favors; amiable
and witty in every sense of the latter word ; tactful and ironi-
cal at need; — the secretary-general was one among the crowd
of mediocrities which form the kernel of the political world.
As a politician, he was ready to leap gracefully over any
stream, however broad; he was the kind of man that can do
you more harm with a kiss than by a thrust with the elbow;
he was a brazen-fronted sceptic that would go to mass at
Saint Thomas d'Aquin's if there was a fashionable congrega-
176 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
tion there. Des Liipeaulx's knowledge consisted in knowing
what other people knew; he had chosen the profession of
^eavesdropper, and never did any of the confraternity pay a
more strict attention to business. In his care not to arouse
suspicion he was nauseatingly fulsome; subtle as a perfume,
caressing as a woman in his manners.
Chardin des Lupeaulx had just completed his fortieth
year. His youth had long been a source of affliction to him,
for he felt instinctively that only as a deputy could he lay a
sure foundation for his fortune. Does any one ask how he
had made his way? In a very simple manner. Des Lu-
peaulx was a political Bonneau. He undertook commissions
of the delicate kind which can neither be given to a man that
respects himself, nor yet to a man that has lost his self-re-
spect. Errands of that sort are usually undertaken by seri-
ous persons of somewhat doubtful authority, whom it is easy
to disavow should occasion require it. He was continually
compromised, that was his calling; and whether he failed or
succeeded, he got on equally fast.
The Eestoration was a time of compromise; compromise
between man and man, and between accomplished facts and
coming events. In all public business, in short, there was a
perpetual process of give and take. Des Lupeaulx grasped
~~'the idea that authority stood in need of a charwoman.
Let an old woman once get a footing in a house; let her
learn how to make the beds and turn them down to satisfac-
tion ; let her know where the spoons are kept, where to sweep
refuse, where to put the soiled linen, and where to find it ; let
her acquire the arts of pacifying duns and distinguishing
the right kind of person to admit ; let her once gain her foot-
ing, I repeat, and such a woman may have her faults, yet
were she toothless, crooked, uncleanly in her person and
habits — nay, were she addicted to the lottery and in the habit
of appropriating thirty sous daily for her stakes therein, — her
emplovers are used to her ways, and do not care to part vrith
her. They will hold counsel on the most delicate family
affairs in her presence ; she is on hand to remind them of re-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 177
sources and to scent out secrets ; she brings the rouge-pot and
the shawl at the psychological moment ; she allows them to
scold her, to bundle her downstairs ; but, lo ! next morning,
at their awakening, she enters gaily with an excellent cup of
broth. However great a statesman may be, he too needs a
charwoman, a factotum with whom he can show himself
weak and irresolute; somebody in whose presence he can
carp at his destiny, put questions to himself, and answer
them, and screw his courage up to the sticking-point. Does
not the savage get sparks by rubbing a bit of hard wood
against a softer piece? Many a bright genius is kindled on
the same principle. Napoleon found such a partner of his
joys and cares in Berthier, Richelieu in Pere Joseph; des
Lupeaulx took up with anybody and everybody. Did a min-
ister fall from power? Des Lupeaulx kept on good terms
with him, acting as intermediary between the outgoing and
incoming member of the government, soothing the former
with a parting piece of flattery, and perfuming a first com-
pliment for the latter. Des Lupeaulx, moreover, understood
to admiration those little trifles of which a statesman has
no leisure to think. He could recognize a necessity; he was
apt in obedience. He enhanced the value of his knavery by
being the first to laugh at it, the better to gain its full price ;
and he was always particularly careful to perform services
of a kind which were not likely to be forgotten. When, for
instance, people were obliged to cross the gulf fixed between
the Empire and the Restoration; when everybody was look-
ing about for a plank ; while all the curs in the Imperial ser-
vice were rushing over to the other side with voluble profes-
sions of devotion, des Lupeaulx had raised large sums of the
money-lenders, and was crossing the frontier. He staked all
to win all. He bought up the most pressing minor debts
contracted in exile by His Majesty Louis XVIII. ; and being
the first in the field, he contrived to discharge nearly three
millions at twenty per cent, for he had the good luck to
operate in the thick of the events of 1814 and 1815. The
profits were swallowed down by Messieurs Gobseck, Werbrust,
178 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
and Gigonnet, the croupiers of the enterprise; but des Lu-
peaulx had promised as much to them. He was not playing
a stake, he was venturing the whole bank, knowing well that
Louis XVIII. was not the man to forget such a white-washing.
Des Lupeaulx received the appointment of Master of Re-
quests ; he was made a chevalier of St. Louis and an officer of
the Legion of Honor. Having once gained a footing, the
adroit climber cast about for a way of maintaining himself
on the ladder. He had gained an entrance into the strong-
hold, but generals are not wont to keep any useless mouths
for long. And then it was that to his professions of useful
help and go-between he added a third — he gave gratuitous
advice on the internal diseases of power.
He discovered that the so-called great men of the Eestora-
tion were profoundly unequal to the occasion. Events were
ruling them. He overawed mediocre politicians by going to
them in the height of a crisis and selling them those watch-
words which men of talent hear as they listen to the future.
You are by no means to suppose that such watchwords origi-
nated with des Lupeaulx himself; if they had, he would have
been a genius, whereas he was simply a clever man. Ber-
trand Clement des Lupeaulx went everywhere, collecting
opinions, fathoming men's inner consciousness, and catching
the sounds they gave forth. Like a genuine and indefati-
gable political bee, he gathered knowledge from all sources.
He was a Bayles Dictionary in flesh and blood, but he im-
proved upon his famous prototype; he gathered all opinions,
but he did not leave others to draw their own conclusions,
and he had the instinct of the blue-fly; he dropped down
straightway upon the most succulent morsels of meat in the
kitchen.
For which reasons des Lupeaulx was supposed to be in-
dispensable to statesmen. Indeed, the idea took so deep a
root in people's minds, that ambitious and successful men
judged it expedient to compromise des Lupeaulx, lest he
should rise too high, and indemnified him for his lack of im-
portance in public by using tlieir interest for him in private.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 179
Nevertheless, as soon as this fisher of ideas felt that he
was geiierallj^ supported, he had insisted upon earnest-money.
He drew his pay as a staff officer of the National Guard, in
which he held a sinecure at the expense of the city of Paris;
he was a government commissioner for the superintendence
of a joint-stock company, and an inspector in the Royal
Household. His name appeared twice besides in the civil
list as a Secretary-General and Master of Eequests. At this
moment it was his ambition to be a commander of the Legion
of Honor, a gentleman of the bedchamber, a count, and a
deputy; but for this last position he had not the necessary
qualifications. A deputy in those days was boimd to pay a
thousand francs in taxes, and des Lupeaulx's miserable place
in the country was scarcely worth five hundred francs a year.
Where was he to find the money to build a country-house;
to surround it with respectable estates, and throw dust in the
eyes of his constituents ?
At the opening of this_^Scene he had scarce anything to call
his own save a round thirty thousand francs worth of debts,
to which nobody disputed his title. Des Lupeaulx dined out
every day. For nine years he had been housed at the ex-
pense of the State, and the ministers' carriages were at his
disposal. Marriage might set him afloat again, if he could
bail out the waters that threatened to submerge him; but a
good match deiaended upon advancement, and advancement
depended upon a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. Casting
about for some way of breaking through the vicious circle, he
saw but one expedient — ^to wit, some great service to be ren-
dered to the government, or some profitable bit of jobbery.
But conspiracies (alas!) were played out. The Bourbons,
to all appearance, had triumphed over faction. And as for
jobbery ! — the Left benches, unluckily, were doing all that
in them lay to make any government impossible in France;
for several years past their absurd discussions had thrown
such a searching light upon the doings of the government
that good bits of business were out of the question. The last
had been done in Spain, and what a fuss they had made about
180 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
it I To crown all, des Liipeaulx had multiplied difficulties
for himself. Believing in the ministers' friendship for him
he imprudently expressed his desire to be seated on the min-
isterial benches. The Ministry was not slow to perceive the
origin of this desire. Des Lupeaulx meant to strengthen a
precarious position, and to be no longer dependent upon
them. It was the revolt of the hound against the hunter.
Wherefore, the Ministry gave him now a cut or two with the
whip, and now a caress. They raised up rivals unto him.
But des Lupeaulx behaved towards these as a clever courte-
san treats newcomers in her profession : he spread snares,
they fell into them, and he made them feel the consequences
pretty promptly.. The more he felt that his position was un-
safe, the more he coveted a permanent berth; but clearly he
must not show his hand. In one moment he might lose
everything. A single stroke of the pen would clip away his
colonel's epaulettes, his controller's place, his sinecure with
the joint-stock company, and his two posts besides, with their
advantages — six salaries in all, cunningly preserved in the
teeth of the law against cumulative holdings !
Not unfrequently des Lupeaulx would hold out a threat
over his minister, as a mistress frightens her lover; he was
"'about to marry a rich widow," and then the minister would
coax the dear des Lupeaulx. It was during one of these re-
newals of love that the secretary-general received a promise
of the first vacancy at the Academic des Inscriptions et
Belles Lettres. It was enough to keep a horse upon, he said.
Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx flourished like a tree set in
congenial soil. He found satisfaction for his vices and vir-
tues, his fancies and defects.
Now for the burdens of his day. First of all, out of half
a dozen invitations to select the best dinner. This being de-
cided, he went the first thing in the morning to amuse the
minister and his wife, and fondle and play with the children.
Then he usually worked for an hour or two ; which is to say,
he spread himself out in a comfortable armchair to read the
papers, dictate the gist of a letter, receive all comers in the
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 181
minister's absence, lay down the rough outline of the day's
routine, receive and give promises that meant nothing, and
run over petitions with his eyeglass. To these he sometimes
affixed his signature, which, being interpreted, meant, "Do
as you like about this; I don't care." Everybody knew that
if des Lupeaulx were really interested in a matter, he would
interfere in person. Some confidential chat on delicate
topics was vouchsafed to the upper clerks, and he listened to
their gossip in return. Every now and again he went to the
Tuileries to take orders; then he waited till the minister
came back from the Chamber to see if there was any new
manoeuvre to invent and superintend. Then this ministerial
sybarite dressed and dined, and made the round of twelve or
fifteen salons between eight in the evening and three in the
morning. He talked with journalists at the Opera, for with
them he was on the best of" terms. There had been a con-
tinual exchange of small services. He gave out his false
news and swallowed down theirs; he prevented them from
attacking such and such a minister on such and such a point
— it would give real pain, he said, to their wives or mis-
tresses.
"Say that the proposed measure is no good, and prove it
if you can ; but you must not say that Mariette danced badly.
Put the worst construction, if you like, upon our love of our
neighbor in petticoats, but do not expose the pranks we played
in oitr salad days. Hang it all ! we have all cut our capers,
and we never know what we may come to as times go. You
that are spicing your paragraphs in the Constitutionnel may
be a minister yourself some of these days "
And des Lupeaulx did the journalists a good turn at a
pinch; he withdrew obstacles put in the way of producing
a piece; presents or a good dinner were forthcoming at the
right moment, and he would promise to facilitate the con-
elusion of a piece of business. He had a liking for litera-
ture and patronized the arts. He had autographs and
splendid albums and sketches and pictures, gratis. And he
did artists much service by refraining from doing harm, and
182 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
supporting them on occasions when their vanity demanded
a satisfaction which cost him little or nothing. Wherefore
he was popular in the world of journalists, artists, and actors.
Both he and they, to begin with, were infected by the same
vices and the same indolence; and they cut jokes so merrily
at other people's expense over their cups or between two opera
dancers — how they should not have been friends? If des
Lupeaulx had not been a secretary-general, he would have
been a journalist ; for which reason des Lupeaulx never re-
ceived so much as a scratch through those fifteen years, while
epigram was battering the breach through which insurrec-
tion would enter in.
The small fry of the department used to see him playing
at ball in the garden with his lordship's cliildren, and would
rack their brains to discover what he did and the secret of
his influence; while the talons rouges, the courtiers of men
in office, looked upon des Lupeaulx as the most dangerous
kind of Mephistoplieles, and bowed the knee to him, and paid
him back with usury the flatteries that he himself was wont
to lavish on his betters. Indecipherable as a hieroglyph
though he might be for small men, the secretary-general's
uses were as plain as a proportion sum to those who had any
interest in discovering them. A Prince of Wagram on a
small scale to a ministerial Napoleon, he knew all the secrets
of party politics ; it was his business to sift advice and ideas,
and make preliminary reports; he also confirmed weak-
kneed supporters; he brought in propositions and carried
them out and buried them; he uttered the "Yes" or "ISTo"
which the minister was afraid to pronounce. He bore the
brunt of the first explosion of despair or anger; he laughed
and mourned with his chief. A mysterious link in a chain
that connected many people's interests with the Tuileries,
he was discreet as the confessional; sometimes he knew
everything, sometimes he knew nothing; sometimes he said
for the minister what the minister could not say for himself.
With this Hephaestion, in short, the minister might dare
to show himself as he was; he could lay aside his wig and
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 183
false teeth, state his scruples, put on dressing-gown and slip-
pers, unbosom himself of his sins, and lay bare the minis-
terial conscience.
jSTot that des Lupeaulx lay exactly on a bed of roses. It
v.'as his duty tp flatter and advise, to give advice in the guise
of flattery, and"flattery in the form of advice. Politicians
in his profession were apt to look yellow enough; and the
constant habit of nodding to signify approval, or to apjjcar
to do so, gives a peculiar air to the head. Such men would
approve indifferently all that was said before them. Their
language bristled with "buts," "howevers," and "neverthe-
less,"' and formulas such as "for my own part," and "in your
place," which pave the way to a contrary opinion; they were
particularly fond, be it noted, of the expression "in your
place."
In person, Clement des Lupeaulx might be described as
the remains of a fine man : five feet four inches in height, not
unconscionably fat, with a comjslexion warmed by good liv-
ing, a jaded air, a powdered Titus, and small eyeglasses set
in a slender frame. He was pre-eminently a blond, as his
hand indicated; it was a plump hand like an old woman's, a
little too blunt perhaps, and short in the nails — a satrap's
hand. His feet were not wanting in distinction.
After five o'clock in the afternoon des Lupeaulx always
wore black silk open-work stockings, low shoes, black trou-
sers, a kerseymere waistcoat, an unscented cambric hand-
kerchief, a coat of royal blue, with engraved buttons, and a
bunch of orders at his buttonhole. In the morning he ap-
peared in a short closely-buttoned jacket (not inappropriate
to an intriguer), and a pair of creaking boots hidden by gray
trousers. In this costume his bearing suggested a crafty at-
torney rather than the demeanor of a minister. His eyes
had grown glassy with the use of spectacles, till he looked
uglier than he really was, if by accident he removed those
aids to weak sight. Shrewd judges of human nature and
straightforward men who only feel at ease when truth is
spoken, found des Lupeaulx intolerable. His gracioms man-
184 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
ners skimmed the surface of falsehood ; his friendly protesta-
tions, and the stale pretty speeches which always seemed
fresh for imbeciles, were growing threadbare. Any clear-
sighted man could see that this was a rotten plank on which
it was most desirable not to set foot. And when the fair
j't'elestiiie Kabourdin deigned to turn her thxjughts to making
her husband's fortune, she gauged Clement des Lupeaulx
pretty accurately, and fell to studying him. Was there still
a little sound fibre left ? Would the thin lath bear if one
crossed ever so lightly over it, from the office to the division,
ifrom eight thousand to twelve thousand francs a year? She
was no ordinary woman. She fancied that she could hold a
blackguard politician in play. And so it came to pass that
M. des Lupeaulx was to some extent a cause of the extrava-
gant expenditure of the Eabourdin household.
The Eue Duphot, built in the time of the Empire, is re-
markable for a good many houses of elegant appearance, and
as a rule their interiors are convenient. Mme. Rabourdin's
flat was excellently arranged, an advantage which does much
to raise the dignity of household life. From a pretty and
sufficiently spacious ante-chamber, lighted from the court-
yard, you entered the large drawing-room which looked upon
the street. Rabourdin's room and his study lay at the fur-
ther end of this room to the right, and beyond at a right
angle was the dining-room which lay to your left as you
entered the ante-chamber. A door to the left of the great
drawing-room gave admittance to ]\Ime. Eabourdin's bed-
room and dressing-room, and behind, at a right angle, was a
little room in which her daughter slept. When Mme. Ea-
bourdin was At Home, her bedroom and Eabourdin's cabi-
net were thrown open. The space enabled her to receive vis-
itors without drawing down ridicule upon herself: her re-
ceptions were not like certain unfortunate attempts at even-
ing parties, when the luxury is too evidently assumed for
the occasion, and involves a sacrifice of daily habits.
The drawing-room had been newly hung with yellow silk
and brown ornaments. Mme. Eabourdin's room was deco-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 185
rated with real Eastern chintz, and the furniture was in the
rococo style. Rabourdin's study inherited the discarded
drawing-room hangings, which had been cleaned, and Le-
prince's fine pictures adorned the walls. The late auctioneer
had picked up some enchanting Eastern carpets for trifling
sums; his daughter now turned them to account in the din-
ing-room, framing them in priceless old ebony. Wonder-
ful Boule sideboards, also purchased by the late auctioneer,
surrounded the walls, and in the midst stood a tortoise-shell
clock-case inlaid with gleaming brass scroll-work; the first
example of a square-shaped clock which reappeared to do
honor to the seventeenth century. The air was fragrant
with the scent of flowers; the rooms were tasteful and full
of beautiful things; every little thing in them was a work of
art in itself; everything was placed to advantage, and in ap-
propriate surroundings. And Mme. Rabourdin herself,
dressed with the simplicity and originality which artists can
devise, looked as though all these pleasant things were a
part of her life ; she never spoke of them, she left the charm
of her conversation to complete the effect, produced by the
whole. Thanks to her father, since rococo came into
fashion, Celestine had acquired celebrity.
Des Lupeaulx was accustomed to all sorts of splendor,
sham and real, but Mme. Eabourdin's house was a, surprise
to him. An illustration may explain the nature of the
charm that worked upon this Parisian Asmodeus. Suppose
that a traveler had seen all the best beauty of Italy, Brazil,
and India, till he was weary; suppose that on his return to
France his way brought him past some lovely little lake, the
Lake of Orta, under Monte Rosa, for instance, with its island
set in the midst of quiet waters — a spot coyly hidden and left
to nature, a wild garden, a lonely but not solitary island with
its shapely groves of trees and picturesquely placed statues.
The shores all round about it are half -wild, half -cultivated ;
grandeur and unrest encircle it; but within everything takes
human proportions. Here in miniature is the world that
our traveler has seen already; but that world has grown
186 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
modest and pure; its influences soothe his soul; the delicate
charm of the place affects him as music might; it awakens
all kinds of associations and harmonious echoes. It is a
hermitage, and yet it is life.
It had happened a few days previously that Mme. Firmiani
had spoken to des Lupeaulx of Mme. Rabourdin. Mme.
Firmiani, one of the most charming women of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, liked Mme. Eabourdin, and used to receive
her at her house, and on this occasion she had asked des Lu-
peaulx simply for the purpose of saying, "Why do you not
call on Mme. Eabourdin?" (indicating Celestine). "Her
evening parties are delightful; and, what is more, her din-
ners are — better than mine." Des Lupeaulx accordingly
allowed a promise to be extracted from him by the fair Mme.
Eabourdin (who raised her eyes to his face for the first time
as she spoke), and went to the Rue Duphot. Is there any
need to say more? Women have but one stratagem, as
Figaro cries; but it never fails.
Des Lupeaulx dined with this mere chief clerk, and regis-
tered a vow to go again. Thanks to the decorous and lady-
like strategy of the charming woman whom Mme. Colleville
dubbed "the Celimene of the Eue Duphot," he had dined
there regularly every Friday for a month past, and went of
his own accord for a cup of tea on Wednesdays. Only during
the last few days, after much delicate and skilful trying of
the ground, Mme. Eabourdin had come to the conclusion
that she had found the safe and solid spot in the plank. She
was sure now of success. The joy she felt in the depths of
her soul can only be understood in households that know
what it is to wait three or four years for promotion, and to
plan out an increase of comfort when the fondly-cherished
hope shall be realized. What hardships that hope makes
bearable ! What prayers are put up to the powers that be !
What visits paid to gain the desired end ! At last, thanks
to her spirited policy, Mme. Rabourdin was to have an in-
come of twenty thousand francs instead of eight. The hour
had struck.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 187
''And I shall have managed it very well," she told herself.
"I have gone to some little expense, but people are not on
the lookout for hidden merits in these days; on the con-
trary, if a man puts himself in evidence by going into so-
ciety, keeping up his connections and making new ones, he is
sure to get on. After all, the ministers and their friends
only take an interest in people whom they see, and Eabour-
din knows nothing of the world. If I had not got hold of
these three deputies, they might very likely have wanted la
Billardiere's place ; but now that they come here, they would
feel ashamed to try to take it. They will be our supporters,
not our rivals. I have had to flirt a little ; it is lucky for me
that there was no need to go further than the first stage with
the sort of folly that amuses men."
But a contest, as yet unforeseen, was about to begin for the
place; and its actual commencement may be dated from a
ministerial dinner, followed by an evening party of a kind
which ministers regard as public. The Minister's wife was
standing by the fire, and des Lupeaulx was at her side. As
he took his cup of coffee, it occurred to him to include Mme.
Eabourdin among the seven or eight really remarkable
women in Paris. He had done this before; Mme. Eabour-
din, like Corporal Trim's Montero cap, was always coming
up in conversation.
"Don't say too much about her, my dear friend, or you
will spoil it all," the Ministers wife returned, half laugh-
ingly.
No woman likes to listen to another woman's praises ; they
one and all keep a word in reserve, so as to put a little vine-
gar to the panegyric.
"Poor la Billardiere won't last long," remarked His Ex-
cellency; "Eabourdin is the next in succession, he is one of
our cleverest men. Our predecessors did not behave well to
him, although one of them owed his prefecture of police
under the Empire to a certain personage who was paid to
use his influence for Eabourdin. Frankly, my dear fellow.
188 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
vou are still voting enough yet to be loved for vour own
sake "
"If la Billardiere's place is Eabourdin's for a certainty, I
may be believed if I hold np his wife as a remarkable
woman," returned des Lupeaiilx, the irony in His Excel-
lency's tones had not escaped him ; "still, if Mme. la Com-
tesse cares to judge for herself "
"I can ask her to my next ball, that is it, is it not? Your
remarkable woman would come when certain ladies will be
here to quiz us; they will hear 'Mme. Eabourdin' an-
nounced."
"But do ngt they announce Mme. Firmiani at the house
of the Minister of Foreign Affairs?"
"A born Cadignan ! " the newly-made Count broke in
quickly, with a withering glance at his secretary-general.
Neither His Excellency nor his wife was noble. A good
many persons thought that something important was going
forward. Those who had come to ask favors kept to the
other end of the room. When des Lupeaulx came out, the
new-made Countess turned to her husband with, "Des Lu-
peaulx must be in love, I think."
"Then it will be for the first time in his life," returned the
Minister, shrugging his shoulders, as who should say that des
Lupeaulx was not taken up with such trifles.
Then the Minister beheld a deputy of the Eight Centre
entering the room, and left his wife to coax over a faltering
vote. But it so happened that the deputy was overwhelmed
by an unforeseen disaster, and wanted to secure the Minis-
ter's influence by coming to announce in strict confidence
that he would be forced to send in his resignation in a few
days' time. And His Excellency, warned in time, could get
his batteries into play before the Opposition had a chance.
The Minister (which is to say, des Lupeaulx) had in-
cluded among the dinner guests a personage who is practi-
cally apnointed for life in every government department.
This individual, being not a little puzzled to know what to
do with himself, and anxious to give himself a countenance,
" Don't say too much about iier, my dear frieud, or you will spoil
it all"
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 189
happened to stand planted on both feet with his legs close to-
gether, very much after the manner of an Egyptian terminal.
He was waiting, near the hearth, for an opportunity of ex-
pressing his thanks to the secretary -general ; indeed, the
abrupt retreat made by that worthy took him by surprise
just as he was about to formulate his little compliment.
The functionary in question^ was, in fact, none other than
the cashier of the department, the one employe who never
shook in his shoes over a change of government. In those
days the Chamber did not higgle over the budget as it is wont
to do in the present degenerate times; it did not cut down
the emoluments of office to effect what may be called "cheese-
paring economies" in kitchen phraseology. Every minister
on coming into office received a fixed sum for "expenses of
removal." It costs as much, alas ! to come in as to go out
of office; and the installation entails expenses of every sort
and description which need not be recorded here. The al-
lowance for expenses used to consist of twenty-five pretty
little thousand-franc notes.
When the ordinance appeared in the Moniteur, while all
officials, great and small, were grouped about their stoves or
open hearths, as the case might be, revolving the questions —
"What is this one going to do ? Will he increase the number
of clerks? Or will he dismiss two and take on three? "
while all this was going forward, I say, the placid cashier
used to bring out twenty-five notes and pin them together,
engraving a joyful expression meanwhile upon his beadle's
countenance. This done, he skipped up the staircase to the
residence, and was admitted to His Excellency's presence the
first thing in the morning; for servants are wont to confuse
the notions of the power of money with the custodian thereof,
the cash-box with its contents, the idea and its outward and
visible manifestation. The cashier, therefore, always came
upon the ministerial couple in that first blush of rapture
when a statesman is in a benign humor, and a good fellow
for the nonce. In reply to the Minister's inquiry, "What
do you want ?" the cashier produced his bits of paper, with a
190 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
speech to the effect that he had hastened to bring His Ex-
cellency the customary indemnity; he then explained the
why and wherefore of the allowance to the astonished and
delighted lady, who never failed to take some portion, and
not unfrequently took the whole. An indemnity for ex-
penses of removal comes within the province of housekeep-
ing. The cashier turned his compliment, slipping in a few
phrases for the Minister's benefit. "If His Excellency
vouchsafed to confirm him in his appointment, if he was
satisfied with the purely mechanical service which," etc., etc.
And as the man who brings twenty-five thousand francs is
always a good public servant, the cashier never failed to re-
ceive the desired confirmation in a post whence he watched
ministers come and go and come again for a quarter of a
century. Then he would put himself at madame's disposal;
he would bring the thirteen thousand francs every month at
the convenient time, a little earlier or later as required, and
thus, to use the ancient monastic expression, "he kept a vote
in the chapter."
The Sieur Saillard had been a book-keeper at the Treasury
while the Treasury kept books on a system of double-entry;
but the plan was afterwards given up, and they gave him a
cashier's place by way of compensation. Book-keeping was
his one strong point; he was little good at anything else.
He was a burly, fat old gentleman, round as a figure 0, and
simple in the extreme ; he walked like an elephant at a meas-
ured pace to and from the Place Eoyale, where he lived in a
house of his own. He had a companion on his daily way,
in the shape of his son-in-law, M. Isidore Baudoyer, the chief
clerk in. M. de la Billardiere's division, and in consequence Ea-
bourdin's colleague. Baudoyer had married Saillard's only
daughter Elizabeth, and, naturally, took up his abode on a
floor above his father-in-law. Nobody in the whole depart-
ment doubted Saillard's stupidity, but nobody at the same
time knew how far his stupidity would go; it was so dense
that no one could insinuate a question into it ; it had no hol-
low sounding spots ; it absorbed everything, and gave nothing
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 191
out. Bixiou (a clerk of whom mention will presently be
made) had drawn a caricature of the cashier, a bewigged
head surmounting an egg, with two tiny legs beneath, and
the inscription — "Born to pay and receive money without
making a mistake. A little less luck, and he would have
been a porter at the Bank of France; a little more ambition,
and the Government would have thanked him for his
services."
To return to the Minister, At this present moment he
was looking fixedly at his cashier, much as he might have
gazed at a hat-peg or at the ceiling, without imagining, that
is to say, that the peg could hear what he said, or understand
a single word.
"I am so much the more anxious that everything should
be arranged with the prefect with the utmost secrecy," His
Excellency was saying to the retiring deputy, 'Haecause des
Lupeaulx has some idea of the kind. His bit of a place is
somewhere in your part of the country, and we don't want
him in the House."
"He has not the electoral qualifications, and he is not old
enough," said the deputy.
"That is so, but you know how Casimir Perier decided
with regard to the age limit. As to annual income, des Lu-
peaulx has something, though it doesn't amount to much;
but the law made no provision for increase of landed prop-
erty, and he might buy more. — Committees give a good foot-
hold to a deputy of the Centre, and we could not openly
oppose the goodwill that people would show to serve our dear
friend."
"But where would he find the money to buy land ?"
"How did Manuel become the possessor of a house in
Paris?" retorted the Minister.
The hat-peg meanwhile was listening, and listening very
reluctantly. The two men had lowered their voices and
spoke rapidly; but every sound, by some as yet unexplained
law of acoustics, reached Saillard's ears. And what were the
feelings of that worthy, do you suppose, while he listened to
192 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
these political confidences? He experienced the most
poignant alarm. There are guileless people who are reduced
to despair if they appear to be listening to remarks that they
are not intended to hear, if they intrude where they are not
wanted, or seem to be inquisitive when they are really dis-
creet; and Saillard was one of them. He glided over the
carpet in such a sort that when the Minister became aware
of his existence, he was half-way across the room. Saillard
was a fanatical official. He was incapable of the slightest
indiscretion. If His Excellency had but known that the
cashier was in his counsel, he would have had no need to do
more than say "Mum." Saillard saw that the rooms were
beginning to fill with courtiers of office, went down to a cab
liired by the hour for such costly occasions as this, and re-
turned to the Place Eoyale.
While old Saillard was making his way across Paris, his
beloved Elizabeth and his son-in-law were engaged in play-
ing a virtuous game of boston with the Abbe Gaudron, their
director, and a neighbor or two. Another visitor was also
present. This was a certain Martin Falleix, a brass-founder
of the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, whom Saillard had set up in
business. Falleix, an honest Auvergnat, had come to Paris
with his caldron on his back, and promptly found work with
the Brezacs, a firm that bought old chateaux to pull down.
At the age of twenty-seven, Martin Falleix, being eager, like
every one else, to get on in life, had the good fortune to be
taken into partnership by M. Saillard. He was to be the ac-
tive partner, he was to exploit a patent invention in brass-
founding (gold medal awarded at the Exhibition in 1835).
Mme. Baudoyer, whose only daughter was just at the tail-
end of her twelfth year (to quote old Saillard), had views
of her own upon Falleix, a thick-set, swarthy young fellow,
active, sharp-witted, and honest. She was forming him. Ac-
cording to her ideas, the education consisted in teaching the
good Auvergnat to play boston, to hold his cards properly,
to allow no one to see his hand ; to shave and wash his hands
with coarse common soap before he came to them; to refrain
THE GOVEKNMENT CLERKS 193
from swearing, to speak French as they spoke it, to brush his
hair erect instead of flattening it down, and to discard shoes
for boots, and sackcloth shirts for calico. Only a week since,
Elizabeth Baudoyer succeeded in persuading Falleix to give
up two huge flat earrings like cask-hoops.
"You are going too far, Mme. Baudoyer," said he, as she
rejoiced over this sacrifice; "you are getting too much as-
cendency over me. You make me brush my teeth (which
loosens them) ; before long you will make me brush my nails
and curl my hair, and that will never do. They don't like
foppery in our line of business."
Elizabeth Baudoyer, nee Saillard, was a type that always
escapes the artist by the very fact that it is so commonplace.
Yet, nevertheless, such figures ought to be sketched, for they
represent the lower middle class in Paris, the rank just above
the well-to-do artisan. Their merits are almost defects, and
there is nothing lovable about their faults; but their way of
life, humdrum and uninteresting though it is, does not lack
a certain character of its own.
Elizabeth had a certain puny unwholesome look, which
was not good to see. She was barely four feet high, and so
thin that her waist measured scarcely half an ell. Her
thin features were crowded into the middle of her face ; a
certain vague resemblance to a weasel was the result. She
was thirty years old and more, but she looked more like a
girl of sixteen or seventeen. There was little brightness in
the china-blue eyes under heavy eyelids and lashes that met
the arch of eyebrows. Everything about Elizabeth was in-
significant ; she had pale flax-colored hair ; the flat shiny sur-
faces of her forehead seemed to catch the light; her com-
plexion was gray, almost livid in hue. The lower part of
her face was triangular rather than oval in shape, but her
features, generally speaking, were crooked, and the outlines
irregular. Lastly, she had a sub-acid voice, with a pretty
enough range of intonations. Elizabeth Baudoyer was the
very type of the lower middle-class housewife who counsels
her husband at night from her pillow; there is no merit in
294 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
her virtues, no motive in her ambition, it is simply a develop-
ment of domestic egoism. If Elizabeth had lived in the
provinces, she would have tried to round out the property;
as her husband happened to be in a Government office, she
wanted advancement. The story of Elizabeth's childhood
and girlhood will bring the whole woman before you; it is
the history of the Saillard couple.
M. Saillard had married the daughter of a second-hand
furniture dealer, one Bidault, who set up business under the
arcades of the Great Market. M. and Mme. Saillard had a
hard struggle in those early days; but now, after thirty-three
years of married life and twenty-nine of work at the office,
the fortune of "^'the Saillards"' (as they were called by their
acquaintances) consisted of sixty thousand francs in Falleix's
business; the big house in the Place Royale, purchased for
forty thousand francs in 180-i; and thirt3'-six thousand livres
paid down as their daughter's marriage portion. About fifty
thousand francs of their capital had come to them on the
death of Widow Bidault, Mme. Saillard's mother. Saillard's
post had brought in a steady income of four thousand five
hundred francs; no ori,e coveted his place for a long while,
because there were no prospects of promotion. This money
had been saved up, sou by sou, by sordid frugality, and very
carefully put out to interest. As a matter of fact, the Sail-
lards knew of but one way of investing money ; they used to
take their savings, five thousand francs at a time, to their
notar}', M. Sorbier, Cardot's predecessor, and he arranged
to lend it on mortgages. They were always careful to take
the first mortgage, with a further guarantee secured on the
wife's property if the borrower were a married man.
At this point of their history their big house was worth
a hundred thousand francs, and brought them in eight thou-
sand. Falleix paid seven per cent on his capital before
reckoning up the profits, which were equally divided. Al-
together, the Saillards possessed an income of seventeen thou-
sand francs at the least. To have the Cross and retire on a
pension was old Saillard's one ambition.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 195
Elizabeth's youth had been spent in continual drudgery
in a family with such laborious habits and such narrow ideas.
Great was the discussion before the purchase of a new hat for
Saillard; the career of a coat was reckoned by years; um-
brellas were carefully hung up from a brass ring.
No repairs had been made in the house since 1804. The
Saillard's ground-floor flat was precisely in the condition in
which the previous owners left it; but the gilding had de-
parted from the frames of the pier-glasses, and the painted
friezes over the doors were almost invisible beneath the ac-
cumulated grime of years. The great spacious rooms, with
carved marble chimney-pieces and ceilings worthy of Ver-
sailles, were filled with the furniture left by the Widow
Bidault. This consisted of easy-chairs of walnut wood, cov-
ered with tapestry, rosewood chests of drawers, old-fashioned
stands with brass rims and cracked white marble-tops; and
a chaos of bargains, in short, picked up by the furniture-
dealer in the Great Market. Among these was a superb Boule
bureau, to which fashion had not yet restored its proper value.
The pictures had been selected entirely for their handsome
frames; the chinaware was distinctly heterogeneous; a set of
splendid Oriental china dessert plates, for instance, was eked
out with porcelain from ever}^ possible factory ; the silver was
a collection of odd lots; the cut glass was old-fashioned; the
table linen fine damask. They slept in a tomb-shaped bed-
stead with chintz curtains hung from a coronal.
Amid all these relics of the past, Mme. Saillard used to
live in her low, modern mahogany armchair with her feet on
a foot-warmer, every hole in the latter article of furniture
charred and blackened. Her chair was drawn up to the grate,
where a heap of dead ashes took the place of a fire. On the
chimney-piece there stood a clock-case, one or two old-
fashioned bronze ornaments, and some flowered candle-
sconces. These last were empty, however. Mme. Saillard
nad a martinet for her own use, a small, flat brass candlestick
with a long handle ; and the candles she used were long tallow
dips that guttered as they burned. In Mme. Saillard's
196 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
countenance, iii spite of wrinkles, yon conld read wilfulness,
severity, and narrow-mindedness; together with a fair and
square honesty, a pitiless creed, an undisguised stinginess,
and the quiet of a clear conscience. You may see faces thus
composed by nature among portraits of the wives of Flemish
burgomasters ; but these latter are clad in splendid velvets and
precious stuffs. Mme. Saillard wore no such robes. She ad-
hered to the old-fashioned garments known as cottes in
Picardy and Touraine, and as cofdllo7is over the rest of
France — a petticoat gathered in thick overlying pleats at
the back and sides. The upper part of her person was but-
"^.oned into a short jacket, another bit of old-world costume,
like the butterfly caps and high-heeled shoes which she still
continued to wear. She knitted stockings for herself and her
husband and for an uncle as well. And although she was
fifty-seven years old, and fairly entitled to live at ease after
her laborious struggles with domestic economy, she used to
knit, after the manner of countrywomen, as she talked or
went about the house, or strolled round the garden, or took a
peep into the kitchen to see how things were going there.
~" ■ Niggardliness, at first compelled by painful necessity, had
become a habit with the Saillards. When old Saillard came
home from the office he took off his coat and worked in his
garden. It was a p"'^tty garden divided off from the yard
by an iron railing; ne had reserved it ana kept it in order
himself. Elizabeth had gone marketing with her mother in
the morning ; and, indeed, the two women did all the work of
the house. The mother could cook a duck with turnips to
admiration; but old Saillard maintained that for serving up
the remains of a leg of mutton with onions, Elizabeth had
not her equal. ''You could eat your uncle that way and
never find it out."
As soon as Elizabeth could hold a needle, her mother made
her mend her father's clothes and the house linen. The girl
was always busy as a servant over a servant's work ; she never
went out alone. They lived but a few paces awa}' from the
Boulevard de Temple; consequently, the Gaite, the Ambigu-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 197
Comique, and Franconi's were close at hand, and the Porte
8aint-Martin not very far away, yet Elizabeth had never been
"to the play."' When the fancy took her "to see what it was
like," M. Baudoyer, by way of doing things handsomely,
took her to the Opera so that she might see the finest play of
all (M. Gaudron having, of course, given permission). They
were giving Le Laboureur Chdnois at that time. Elizabeth
thought "the play" as dull as ditchwater. She did not want
to go again. On Sundays, after she hgd gone four times to
and fro between the Place Eoyale and the Church of St. Paul
(for her mother saw that she was punctual in the practice of
religious duties and precepts), her father and mother took
her to the Cafe Turc, where they seated themselves on chairs
placed between a barrier and the wall. The Cafe Turc at
that time was the resort of all the beauty and fashion of the
Marais, the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, and adjacent neighbor-
hoods; the Saillards always went early to secure their favorite
place, and then amused themselves by watching the passers-
by.
Elizabeth had never worn anything but print gowns in
summer, and merino in winter. She made her own dresses.
Her mother only allowed her twenty francs a month; but
her father was very fond of her, and tempered this rigor
with occasional presents. Of "profane literature," as the
Abbe Gaudron (curate of Saint Paul's and the family oracle)
Avas pleased to qualify it, Elizabeth knew nothing whatsoever.
The system had borne its fruits. Compelled to find an out-
let for her feelings in some passion, Elizabeth grew greedy^
of gain ; not that she was lacking in intelligence or per-
spicacity, but ignorance and her creed had shut her in with
a circle of brass. She had nothing on which to exercise her
faculties, save the most trivial affairs of daily life ; and as she
had few things to think about, the whole force of her nature
was brought to bear on the matter in hand. Her natural in-
telligence, being shackled by her religious opinions, could only
exert itself Avithin the limits imposed by casuistry, and
casuistry becomes a very storehouse of subtleties from which
13
198 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
self-interest selects shifts and evasions. Elizabeth was quite
capable of asking her neighbor to do evil that she herself might
reap the full benefit thereof ; resembling in this respect various
saintly personages in whom religion has not altogether ex-
tinguished ambition — with these, indeed, she had other points
in common; she was relentless in pursuit of her end, under-
hand in her measures. When offended, she watched her an-
tagonists with feline patience till she had accomplished a com-
plete and cold-blooded revenge to be put down to the account
of Providence.
Until the time of Elizabeth's marriage, the Saillards saw
no visitors except the Abbe Gaudron, the Auvergnat priest,
nominated to the curacy of St. Paul's since the re-establish-
ment of religious worship. This churchman had been
friendly with the late Mme. Bidault. Mme. Saillard's
paternal uncle was also an occasional visitor. He had been
a paper merchant, but he had retired in the year II. of the
Eepublic, at the age of sixty-nine. He never came except on
Sundays, because no business could be done on that day.
As for Bidault's personal appearance, there was not much
room in the little old man's olive-hued visage for anything
but a red bibulous nose and two little vulture-like slits of
eyes. His grizzled locks were allowed to hang loose under
the brim of his cocked hat. The tabs of his knee-breeches
projected grotesquely beyond the buckles. He wore cotton
stockings knitted by his niece {la petite Saillard he used to
call her), thick shoes with silver buckles, and a greatcoat of
many colors. Altogether he looked very much like the sex-
ton-beadle-bellringer-gravedigger-chanter of some village
church ; a sort of person whom you might take for some freak
of the caricaturist, until you met him in real life. Even at
this day he used to come on foot to dine with them, and walk
back afterwards to the Rue Grenetat, where he lived on a
third floor. Bidault was a bill-discounter. The Quartier
Saint-Martin, the scene of his professional activity, had nick-
named him Gigonnet, from his peculiar jerky, feverish man-
ner of picking his way in the streets. M. Bidault went into
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 199
the bill-discounting line in the year II. of the Eepublic with
a Dutchman, the Sieur Werbrust, a crony of Gobseck's, for
his partner.
These, it has been said, were at one time the Saillards' only
visitors; but afterwards, old Saillard struck up an acquaint-
ance with M. and Mme. Transon in the church- war den's pew
at St. Paul's. The Transons, wholesale earthenware dealers
in the Eue de Lesdiguieres, took an interest in Elizabeth,
and it was with a view to finding a husband for her that they
introduced young Isidore Baudoyer to the Saillards. The
good understanding between M. and Mme. Baudoyer and the
Saillard family was confirmed by Gigonnet's approbation.
He had employed Mme. Baudoyer's brother, the Sieur Mitral,
as his bailiff for many years ; and about this time Mitral was
thinking of retiring to a pretty house at He-Adam. M. and
Mme. Baudoyer, Isidore's father and mother, respectable
leather-dressers in the Eue Censier, had put by a little money
year by year in a jog-trot business. When they had married
their only son and made over fifty thousand francs to him,
they also thought of going to live in the country ; it was they,
• indeed, who had fixed upon He- Adam, and attracted Mitral
to that spot; but they still came frequently to Paris, where
they had kept a pied-d-terre in the house in the Eue Censier
which Isidore received on his marriage. The Baudoyers had
an income of a thousand crowns still left after providing for
their son.
M. Mitral, owner of a sinister-looking wig, and a visage
the color of Seine water, illuminated by eyes of the hue of
Spanish snuff, was as cool as a well-rope; he was a secretive,
mouse-like creature; no one knew about his money; but he
probably did in his corner as Gigonnet did in the Quartier
Saint-Martin.
But if the family circle grew wider, their ideas and habits
underwent no corresponding change. They kept all the
family festivals; birthdays and wedding-days; all the saints'
days of father and mother, son-in-law, daughter and grand-
daughter; Easter, Christmas^ New Year's Day, and Twelfth
200 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Night. And as these occasions always demanded a great
sweeping and general cleaning of the house, they might be
said to combine practical utility with the joys of domestic
life. Then out came the presents ; useful gifts produced with
much pomp and circumstance and accompaniment of bou-
quets ; a pair of silk stocking or a velvet skull-cap for Saillard ;
gold earrings, or silver plate for Elizabeth or her husband
(for whom they were making up a complete service by de-
grees), or a new silk petticoat for Mme. Saillard, who kept
-the stuff laid by in the piece. And before the presents were
given, the recipient was always made to sit in an armchair,
while the rest bade him:
"Guess what we are going to give you !"
Finally, they sat down to a grand dinner, which lasted for
five hours. M. Gaudron was invited, and Falleix and Rabour-
din and M. Gothard (formerly M. Baudoyer's deputy), and
M. Bataille, captain of the company in which Baudoyer and
his father-in-law were enrolled. M. Cardot had a standing
invitation, but, like Rabourdin, he only appeared one time
in six. They used to sing over the dessert, and embrace each
other with enthusiasm amid wishes for all possible good luck ;
and then the presents were on view, and all the guests must
give their opinion of them. On the day of the velvet skull-
cap, Saillard wore the article in question on his head during
the dessert, to the general satisfaction. In the evening more
acquaintances came in, and a dance followed. A single violin
did duty for a band for a long while ; but for the last six
years, M. Godard, a great amateur of the flute, had contributed
the shrill sounds of a flageolet to the festivity. The cook,
Mme. Baudoyer's general servant, and old Catherine, Mme.
Saillard's maid, stood looking on in the doorway with the
porter and his wife ; and a cro^Ti of three livres was given
to them to buy wine and coffee.
The whole family circle regarded Baudoyer and Saillard
as men of transcendent ability ; they were in the employ of
the Government; they had made their way by sheer merit;
they worked in concert with the Minister, so it was said;
THK GOVFJRNMENT CJLEKKS 201
they owed their success entirely to their talents. Baudoyer
was generally considered to be the more capable man of the
two, because his work as chief clerk was allowed to be more
arduous and complex than book-keeping. And besides,
Isidore had had the genius to study, although he was the
son of a leather dresser in the Rue Censier; he had had the
audacity also to give up his father's business to enter a Gov-
ernment office, and had reached a high position. As he was
a man of few words, he was supposed to be a deep thinker;
"he would perhaps represent the eighth arrondissement some
day," said the Transons. And as often as Gigonnet heard
this kind of talk, he would purse up lips that were
sufficiently pinched already, and glance at his grand-niece
Elizabeth.
As to physique, Isidore was a big heavy man of seven-and-
thirty ; he perspired easily ; his head suggested hydrocephalus.
It was an enormous head covered with closely cropped chest-
nut hair, and joined to the neck by a thick fleshy roll that
filled up his coat collar. He had the arms of a Hercules,
the hands of a Domitian, and a waist girth which sober living
kept "within the limits of the majestic," to quote Brillat-
Savarin. In face he was very much like the Emperor Alex-
ander. You recognized the Tartar type in the little eyes,
in a nose depressed in the middle and raised at the tip, in
the chilly lips and short chin. His forehead was narrow
and low. Isidore was of lymphatic temperament, but time
had no whit abated an excessive conjugal attachment. In
spite of his likeness to the handsome Eussian Emperor and
the terrific Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing but a
slave of red-tape; he was not very fit for the post of chief
clerk, but he was thoroughly accustomed to the routine work,
and his vacuity lay beneath such a thick covering that
no scalpel as yet had probed it. He had displayed the patience
and sagacity of the ox during those days of hard study; and
this fact, together with his square head, had deceived his rela-
tives. They took him for a man of extraordinary abilities.
At the office he was punctilious, pedantic, pompous, and
202 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
fussy ; a perfect terror to his clerks. He was always making
observatious for their benefit, always insisting upon commas
and full stops, always a stickler for rules and regulations,
and so terribly punctual that not one of the clerks failed to be
in his place before he came in.
Baudoyer "^used to wear a coat of cornflower blue with
yellow buttons, a buff waistcoat, gray trousers, and a colored
stock. He had big feet, and his boots fitted him badly. His
watch chain was adorned with a huge bunch of seals and
trinkets, among which he still retained the "American seeds"
which used to be the fashion in the year VII. ; and this in
1824 !
The restraints of reli^ion^and rigid habits of life were
forces that bound this family together; they had, moreover,
one common aim to unite them — the thought of making
money was the compass which guided their course. Elizabeth
Baudoyer was obliged to commune with herself for lack of
any one to comprehend her ideas; for she felt that she was
not among equals who could understand them. Facts had
compelled her to form her ov^m conclusions of her husband,
but as a woman of rigid principle she did her best to keep up
M. Baudoyer's reputation; she showed profoimd respect for
him, honoring in him the father of her child and her hus-
band; the "temporal power," in short, as the Abbe Gaudron
put it. For which reason she would have thought it a deadly sin
to allow a stranger to read her real opinion of her vapid mate
in any glance, or gesture, or word. She even professed a
passive obedience to his will in all things. Eumors of the
outer world reached her ears, she noted them and made her
own comparisons; and so sound was her judgment of men
and affairs, that she became an oracle in private for the two
functionaries. Indeed, at the time when this history begins,
they had unconsciously reached the point of doing nothing
without consulting her.
"She is a sharp one, is Elizabeth !" old Saillard used to
say ingenuously. But Baudoyer was too much of a fool not
to be puffed up by his ill-founded reputation in the Quartier
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 203
Saint-Antoine. He would not allow that his wife was clever,
while he turned her cleverness to account. Elizabeth felt
convinced that her uncle Bidault, alias Gigonnet, must be
a rich man, a capitalist with an enormous turnover. By the
light of self-interest, she read des Lupeaulx better than the
Minister read him. She saw that she was mated with a fool;
she shrewdly suspected that life might have been something
very different for her; but she preferred to leave that might-
have-been unexplored. All the gentle affections of Elizabeth's
nature found satisfaction in her daughter; she spared her
little girl the drudgery that she had known ; she loved her
child, and thought that this was all that could be expected of
her. It was for that daughter's sake that she had persuaded
her father to take the ordinary step of going into partnership
with Falleix. Falleix had been introduced to the family by
old Bidault, who lent him money on pledges. But Falleix
found his old fellow countryman too dear; he complained
with much candor before the Saillards that Gigonnet was
asking eighteen per cent of an Auvergnat. Old Mme. Sail-
lard went so far as to reproach her relative.
"It is just because he is an Auvergnat that I only ask
eighteen per cent!" retorted Gigonnet. It was about that
time that Falleix, aged twenty-eight, had hit upon a new in-
vention. It seemed to Saillard, to whom he explained it,
that the young man "talked straight" (to use an expression
from Saillard's dictionary), and that there was a fortune to
be made out of his idea. Elizabeth at once conceived the
notion of keeping Falleix to "simmer" for her daughter, and
forming her son-in-law herself. She was looking seven years
ahead. Martin Falleix's respect for Mme. Baudoyer knew no
bounds; he recognized her intellectual superiority. If he
had made millions, he would still have been devoted to the
house, where he was made one of the family circle. Eliza-
beth's little girl had been taught already to fill his glass
prettily and to take his hat when he came.
When M. Saillard came home after the Minister's dinner
204 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
party, the game of boston was in full swing. Elizabeth was
advising Falleix ; old Mme. Saillard, knitting in the fireside
corner, was looking over the curate's hand ; and M. Baudoyer,
impassive as a mile-stone, was exerting his intelligence to
discover where the cards were. Mitral sat opposite. He had
come up from Ile-Adam for Christmas. Nobody moved
when Saillard came in. For several minutes he walked up
and down the room, his broad countenance puckered by un-
wonted mental exercise.
"It is always the way when he dines with the Minister;
luckily, it only happens twice a year, or they would just kill
him outright," remarked Mme. Saillard. "Saillard was not
made to be in the government " Aloud she added, "Sail-
lard, I say, I hope j^ou are not going to keep your best clothes
on, your silk breeches, and Elbeuf cloth coat ? Just go and
take your things off; don"t wear them out here for nothing;
■ma mere."
"There is something the matter with your father," Baudoyer
remarked to his wife, when the cashier had gone to change
his clothes in his tireless room.
"Perhaps M. de la Billardiere is dead," Elizabeth re-
turned simply ; "he is anxious that you should have the place,
and that worries him."
"If I can be of service to you in any way, command me,"
said the curate of Saint Paul's, with a bow ; "I have the honor
to be known to Mme. la Dauphine. In our times all offices
should be filled by devoted subjects and men of staunch re-
ligious principle."
"Oh come!" said Falleix; "do men of merit want patron-
age if they are to get on in your line? I did the right thing
when I turned brass-founder; custom comes to find you out
if you make a good article."
"The Government, sir, is the Government," interrupted
Baudoyer ; "never attack it here."
"You are talking like the Constitutionnel, in fact," said
the curate.
"Just the sort of thing the Constitiifionvel always says,"
assented Baudoyer, who never sav/ the paper.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 205
The cashier fully believed that his son-in-law was as much
Eabourdin's superior in intellect "as God was above St,
Crispin" (to use his own expression) ; still, the good soul's
desire for the step was a guileless wish. He wanted success ;
he wanted it as all employes want their step, with a vehement,
intense, unreflecting, brutal desire to get on; but, at the
same time, he must have it, as he wished to have the Cross
of the Legion of Honor, to wit, entirely through his own
merits, and with a clear conscience. To his way of thinking,
if a man had sat for twenty-five years behind a grating in a
public office, he might be said to have given his life for his
country, and had fairly earned the Cross. He could think
of no way of serving the interests of his son-in-law, save by
putting in a word for him with the Minister's wife when he
took her the monthly stipend.
"Well, Saillard, you look as if you had lost all your rela-
tives! Speak out, my boy, pray tell us something," cried
Mme. Saillard when he came in again.
Saillard turned on his heel, with a sign to his daughter,
intimating that politics were forbidden while visitors were
present.
When M. Mitral and the curate had taken, their departure,
Saillard pushed back the table, and sat down in his armchair.
He had a way of seating himself which meant that a piece of
office gossip was about to be communicated; a sequence of
movements as unmistakable as the three raps on the stage at
the Comedie-Frangaise. First of all, he pledged his wife
and daughter and son-in-law to the most profound secrecy
(for however mild the gossip might be, their places, so he
was wont to say, depended upon their discretion) ; then he
brought out his incomprehensible riddle. How a deputy was
about to resign; how the secretary-general, very reasonably,
wanted to be nominated to succeed him ; how the Minister was
privately thwarting the wish of one of his firmest supporters
and most zealous servants ; and lastly, how the age limit and
pecuniary qualifications had been discussed. Then came an
avalanche of conjectures, washed away by a torrent of argu-
206 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
ments on the part of the two officials, who kept up an exchange
of ponderous banalities. As for Elizabeth, she asked but
three questions.
"If M. des Lupeaulx is for us, can he carry Baudoyer's
nomination ?"
"Quien! Begad, he could!" cried the cashier.
Elizabeth pondered this. "In 1814, Uncle Bidault and his
friend Gobseck obliged him," she thought. Aloud she asked,
"Is he still in debt ?"
"Yes-s-s," said the cashier, with a doleful prolongation of
the final sibilant. "They tried to attach his salary, but they
were stopped by an order from headquarters, an injunction
at sight."
"Then, where is his estate of the Lupeaulx?"
"Quien! begad! Your grandfather and great-uncle
Bidault came from the place, so did Falleix; it is not far
from the arrondissement of this deputy that is coming off
guard "
When her colossus of a husband was in bed, Elizabeth bent
over him, and though he had sneered at her questions for
"crotchets," she said:
"Dear, perhaps you are going to have M. de la Billardiere's
place."
"There you are again with your fancies !" cried Baudoyer.
"Just leave M. Gaudron to speak to the Dauphiness, and don't
meddle with the office."
At eleven o'clock, just as all was quiet in the Place Royale,
M. des Lupeaulx left the Opera to go to the Eue Duphot.
It chanced to be one of Mme. Rabourdin's most brilliant
Wednesdays. A good many frequenters of her house had come
in after the theatre to swell the groups already assembled in
her rooms, and many celebrities were there : Canalis the poet,
the painter Schinner, Dr. Bianchon, Lucien de Rubempre,
Octave de Camps, the Comte de Granville, the Vicomte de
Fontaine, du Bruel, writer of vaudevilles, Andoche Finot the
journalist, Derville, one of the longest-headed lawyers of the
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 207
day ; the Comte du Chatelet, and du Tillet the banker, were all
present, with several young men of fashion like Paul de
Manerville and the young Vicomte de Portenduere.
Celestine was dispensing tea when the secretary-general
came in. Her dress suited her well that evening. She wore
a perfectly plain black velvet gown and a black gauze scarf ;
her hair was carefully smoothed beneath a high coronet of
plaits, ringlets in the English fashion fell on each side of her
face. Her chief distinction was an artist's Italian negligence,
the ease with which she understood everything, and her
gracious way of welcoming her friends' least wishes. Nature
had given her a slender figure, so that she could turn swiftly
at the first questioning word ; her eyes were Oriental in shape,
and obliquely set in Chinese fashion, so that they could glance
sidewards. Her soft, insinuating voice was so well under
control, that she could throw a caressing charm into every
word, even her most spontaneous utterances; her feet were
such as you only see in portraits, for in this one respect
painters may flatter their sitters without sinning against the
laws of anatomy. Like most brunettes, she looked a little
sallow by daylight, but at night her complexion was dazzling,
setting off her dark eyes and hair. Lastly, the firm, slender
outlines of her form put an artist in mind of the Venus v>f
the Middle Ages discovered by Jean Goujon, the great sculptor
favored by Diane de Poitiers.
Des Lupeaulx stopped in the doorway, and leaned his
shoulder against the frame. He was accustomed to spy out
men's ideas ; he could not refuse himself the pleasure of spy-
ing a woman's feelings ; for Celestine interested him far more
than any woman had done before. And des Lupeaulx had
reached an age when men claim much from women. The first
white hairs are the signal for the last passions; and these
are the most tumultuous of all, for they are stimulated by the
last heat of youth and the sense of exhaustion. The fortieth
year is the age for follies, the age when a man desires to be
loved for his own sake. To love at forty is no longer sufficient
in itself, as it used to be when he was young, and could be
208 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
happy in falling in love at random in Cherubino's fashion.
At forty nothing less than all will satisfy a man, and he is
afraid lest he should obtain nothing; whereas at five-and-
twenty, he has so much, that it is not worth while to exert
his will. There is so much strength to spare at five-and-
twenty, that it may be squandered with impunity; but at
forty a man takes abuse of strength for vigor. The thoughts
that filled des Lupeaulx's mind at this moment were surely
melanchol}^ ones, for the elderly beau's countenance had
visibly lengthened; the agreeable smile which lent expression
to his face, and did duty as a mask, had ceased to contract
his features; the real man was visible; it was not a pleasant
sight. Eabourdin noticed it.
"What has come to him?"' he wondered. "Is he in dis-
grace ?" But the secretary-general was merely reflecting that he
had been dropped once before somewhat too promptly by pretty
Mme. Colleville, whose intentions had been precisely the same
as Celestine's own. Eabourdin also saw that the would-be
statesman's eyes were fixed upon his wife; and he made a
note of their expression in his memory. Eabourdin was too
clearsighted an observer not to see through des Lupeaulx;
indeed, he felt the most thorough contempt for the secretary-
general ; but if a man is much engrossed by some pursuit, his
feelings are less apt to rise to the surface, and mental ab-
sorption in the work that he loves is equivalent to the clever-
est dissimulation of his attitude of mind. For this reason,
Eabourdin's opinions were like a sealed book to des Lupeaulx.
The chief clerk was displeased by the iipstart politician's pres-
ence in his house; but he had not cared to cross Celestine's
will. He happened to be chatting confidentially at the
moment with a supernumerary, a young clerk destined to
play a part in the intrigue set on foot by la Billardiere's ap-
proaching death, so that it was but a wandering attention that
he gave to Celestine and des Lupeaulx.
Some account of the supernumerary ought perhaps to be
given here for the benefit of our nephews, and, at the same
time, for the edification of foreign readers.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 209
The supernumerary is to the administration what the
chorister boy is to the church ; what the child of the company
is to the regiment, or the "rat" to the theatre — an ingenuous,
innocent being, a creature blinded by illusions. How far
should we go without illusions ? On the strength of illusions
we struggle with the difficulties of art while we scarce keep
the wolf from the door, we digest the rudiments of the sciences
with faith drawn from the same source. Illusions mean un-
bounded faith, and the supernumerary has faith in the ad-
ministration. He does not take it for the unfeeling, cold-
blooded, hard-hearted system that it is.
Of supernumeraries, there are but two kinds — the well-to-
do and the poor. The poor supernumerary is rich in hope,
and needs a berth; the well-to-do supernumerary is poor in
spirit, and has need of nothing. No well-to-do family is so
simple as to put a man of brains into the administration. The
well-to-do supernumerary is usually committed to the care of
a senior clerk, or placed under the eye of a director-general,
to undergo his initiation into the "pure comedy" of the civil
service, as it would be styled by that profound philosopher
Bilboquet. The horrors of probation are mitigated for him
until he receives a definite appointment. Government offices
are never afraid of the well-to-do supernumerary. The clerks
all know that he is not at all dangerous ; he aims at nothing
short of the highest places in the service.
At this time many families were asking, "What shall we
do with our boys?" There were no chances of getting on in
the army. Special careers, such as the navy, the mines, civil
and military engineering, and professorships, are either
hedged about with regulations, or closed by competition;
whereas the rotatory movement which metamorphoses clerks
in a government office into prefects, sub-prefects, or receivers
and controllers of taxes, and the like (in much the same way
as the little figures revolve in a magic-lantern), — this move-
ment, to repeat, is subject to no rules, and there are no terms
to keep. Through this hole in the administrative system,
therefore, behold the well-to-do supernumeraries emerge;
210 THE OOVERXMENT CLERKS
these are youug men who drive cabs about town, and wear
good clothes and moustaches, and behave, one and all of them,
as insolently as any self-made upstart. The well-to-do super-
numerary was almost invariably a nephew or a cousin or a
relative of some minister, or civil servant, or of a very in-
fluential peer. Journalists used to be pretty hard upon him ;
not so the established clerks ; they aided and abetted the young
gentleman, and made interest with him.
But the poor supernumerary (the only genuine kind) is,
in nearly every case, a widow's son. His father before him
probably was a clerk in a government office ; his mother lives
on a meagre pension, and starves herself to support her boy
till he can get a permanent post as copying clerk; she dies
while he is within sight of that marshal's baton of the pro-
fession— the post of draughting clerk, with a prospect of
drawing up reports and formulating orders for the term of
his natural life, or even a problematical chance of becoming
a senior clerk. This kind of supernumerary always lives in
some neighborhood where rents are low, and leaves it at an
early hour. For him the state of the weather is the real
Eastern Question. He must walk the whole way to the office,
and keep his boots clean, and take care of his clothes ; he must
make allowance for the time that he is like to lose if a heavy
shower forces him to take shelter. The supernumerary has
plenty to think about ! Pavements in the streets and flag-
stones along the quays and boulevards were boons indeed for
him. If any strange chance should bring you out into the
streets of Paris between half-past seven and eight o'clock of a
winter morning, when there is a sharp frost, or the weather
is generally unpleasant; and if, furthermore, you happen to
see a pallid, timorous youth walking along without a cigar
in his mouth — look at his pocket ; you are pretty sure to dis-
cover the outlines of the roll which his mother gave him when
lie left home, so that he might hold out, without damage to
his internal economy, through the nine long hours that sepa-
rate breakfast from dinner. The period of unsophisticated
innocence is, however, but short. By the light of a very little
THE GOVERNMENT CLEUKS 211
knowledge of life in Paris, a lad soon acquires a notion of the
awful distance between a supernumerary and a copying clerk ;
a dist-ance which neither Archimedes, nor Newton, nor Pascal,
nor Leibnitz, nor Kepler, nor Laplace, nor any other mathe-
matician can compute. It is the difference between zero and
the unit, between a problematical bonus and a regularly paid
salary. The supernumerary accordingly is pretty quick to
see the impossibilities of the career; he hears the talk of the
clerks ; they explain to him how So-and-so was promoted over
their heads. By and by he discovers the intrigues of govern-
ment offices; he finds out how his superiors were promoted,
and the extraordinary circumstances that led to their suc-
cess. One, for instance, married a young lady with a past ;
another took to wife the natural daughter of a minister; yet
another took a heavy responsibility upon his shoulders ; while
a fourth, an extremely able man, imperiled his health with
working like a galley-slave; but this last employe had the
perseverance of a mole, and not every man feels himself
capable of performing such feats. Everything is known
in the office. Sometimes an incompetent man has a wife with
plenty of brains; she brought him thus far; it was she who
secured his nomination as a deputy; and though he has no
capacity for work, he can intrigue in a small way in the
Chamber. So-and-so has an intimate friend in a states-
man's wife. Such-an-one is in league with a formidable
journalist.
Then the supernumerary is disgusted and hands in his
resignation. Three-fourths of the supernumeraries leave be-
fore they secure permanent berths. Those that remain are
either dogged young men or simpletons that say to them-
selves, "I have been here for three years, I shall get a berth if
I stay on long enough !" or those that feel conscious of a
vocation. Clearly the supernumerary is, in the administra-
tion, pretty much what the novice is in religious orders. He
is passing through his probation, and the trial is severe. In
the course of it the State discovers the men that can bear
hunger and thirst and want without giving way under the
212 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
strain; men whom drudger}^ does not disgust; the tempera-
ment that will accept the horrible life, the disease, if you
prefer it, of a Government office. The supernumerary system
from this point of view, so far from being a scandalous at-
tempt on the part of the Government to get work done
for noUiing, might fairly be regarded as a beneficent institu-
tion.
The joung fellow with whom Rabourdin was speaking was
a poor supernumerary, by name Sebastien de la Roche. He
had walked on tiptoe from the Rue du Roi Dore, in the Marais,
but there was not the slightest speck of mud on his clothes,
lie spoke of his "mamma," and dared not lift his eyes to look
at Mme. Rabourdin. Her house seemed to him to be a second
Louvre. His poor mother had given him a five-franc piece in
case it should be absolutely necessary to play; admonishing
him, at the same time, to take nothing, to stand the whole time,
and to be very careful not to upset a lamp or any of the pretty
trifles on the whatnots. He was dressed entirely in black ;
his gloves had been cleaned with india.-rubber, and he exhibited
them as little as possible. His fair complexion and bright
hazel eyes, with gleams of gold in them, suited well with his
thick red-brown hair. Now and again the poor boy would
steal a glance at Mme. Rabourdin. "What a beautiful wo-
man !" he said to himself ; and when he went home that night,
he thought of the fairy till sleep closed his eyes.
Rabourdin saw that Sebastien had the making of a good
clerk in him; and as he took his position of supernumerary
seriously, the chief clerk was very much interested in the
poor boy. And not only so, he had made a pretty correct
guess at the poverty in the home of a poor widow with a
pension of seven hundred francs ; Sebastien had not long left
school, his education must necessarily have eaten into her
savings. So Rabourdin had been quite like a father to the
supernumerary ; he had often gone out of his way at the board
to get a bonus for him; sometimes, indeed, he had paid the
money out of his own pocket when the argument had grown
too warm with the distributers of favor.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 213
Then he heaped work upon Sebastien ; he was training him ;
he made him fill du Bruel's place; and du Bruel, a play-
wright known to the dramatic world and the public by the
pseudonym of de Cursy, paid Sebastien a hundred crowns
out of his salary. Mnie. de la Eoche and her son regarded
Rabourdin as a great man, a guardian angel and a tyrant
blended in one; all their hopes depended on him. Sebastien
always looked forward to the time when he should be an es-
tablished clerk. Ah ! it is a great day for the supernumerary
when he signs his receipt for his salary for the first time.
Many a time he has fingered the money for the first month,
and the whole of it is not paid over to the mother. Venus
smiles upon these first payments from the ministerial cash-
box. This hope could only be realized for Sebastien by M.
Rabourdin, his only protector; and accordingly, the lad's
devotion to his chief was unbounded. Twice a month he
dined in the Rue Duphot; but only with the family, and
Rabourdin always brought him home. Madame never gave
him an invitation except to balls, when dancing young men
were wanted. At _the_si^lit. of the awful des Lupeaulx his
heart beat fast. One of the Minister's carriages used to
come for des Lupeaulx at half-past four, just as he himself
was opening his umbrella under the archway before setting
off for the Marais. His fate depended upon the secretary-
general; one word from the man in the doorway could give
him a berth and a salary of twelve hundred francs. (Twelve
hundred francs ! It was the height of his ambition ; he and
his mother could live in comfort on such a stipend.) And
yet, the secretary-general did not know him. Des Lupeaulx
was scarcely aware there was such a person as Sebastien de la
Roche. If la Billardiere's son, a well-to-do supernumerary
in Baudoyer's office, chanced to be under the archway at the
same time, des Lupeaulx never failed to give him a friendly
nod; but then M. Benjamin de la Billardiere was the son of
a minister's cousin.
At this particular moment Rabourdin was giving poor little
Sebastien a scolding. Sebastien was the only person wholly
14
214 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
in the secret of Kabourdin's vast labors ; Sebastien had copied
and recopied the famous memorial on a hundred and fifty
sheets of foolscap, to say nothing of tabulated statistics in
support of the argument, abstracts on loose leaves, whole
columns of bracketed calculations, headings in capital letters,
and sub-headings in round hand. The mechanical part that
he played in a great design had kindled enthusiasm in the lad
of twenty, he would copy out a whole table again after a
single erasure; he took a pride in the handwriting that
counted for something in so great an enterprise.
Sebastien had been so thoughtless as to take the most dan-
gerous rough draft of all to the office in order to finish the fair
copy. This was a list of all the men in the head offices in
Paris, with notes of their prospects, their present circum-
stances, and private occupations after hours.
Most civil servants in Paris eke out their salaries by some
supplementary method of gaining a livelihood; unless, like
Eabourdin, they possess patriotic ambition or mental superi-
ority. Like M. Saillard, they become sleeping partners in a
business, and go through the books at night. A good many
clerks, again, marry seamstresses, or manageresses of lottery
offices, or their wives keep tobacconists' shops or reading-
rooms. Some, like Mme. Colleville's husband (Mme. Colle-
ville, it may be remembered, was Celestine's rival), have a
place in a theatre orchestra. Yet others, like du Bruel, for
instance, write plays, comic operas, and melodramas, or take
to stage-management. Witness Messrs. Sewrin, Pixerecourt,
Planard, and others as instances in point. Pigault-Lebrun,
Piis, and Duvicquet held posts in the civil service in their
time ; and M. Scribe's first publisher was a Treasury clerk.
Eabourdin's inventory contained other details. It was an
inquiry into the personal characteristics of individuals. Some
statement of their mental and physical capacities must of
necessity be included in the survey if the Government was to
recognize those who combined intelligence and aptitude for
work with good health, for these are three indispensable
qualifications in men who must bear the burden of public
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 215
business and do everything well and quickly. The inventory
was a great piece of work; it was the outcome of ten years
of labor, and a long experience of men and affairs acquired
in the course of intimacies with the heads of other depart-
ments ; but still it would savor somewhat of espionage, if it fell
into the hands of those who did not understand the drift of
it. If other eyes saw a single sheet, M. Eabourdin was ruined.
Sebastien's admiration for his chief was unbounded, and he
knew nothing as yet of the petty spite of bureaucracy. He
had had the disadvantages of simplicity as well as its charm.
So, although he had just been scolded for taking the sheet
to- his office, he had the courage to make a full confession.
The rough draft and the fair copy were at the office at that
moment ; he had put them away in a case where no one could
possibly find them. But as he saw the gravity of his mistake,
the' tears came into his eyes.
"Goihe, come, sir," Eabourdin added good-naturedly, "let
us have no more imprudence; but do not distress yourself.
Go down to the office very early to-morrow morning. Here is
the key of a box in my cylinder desk; it has a letter lock;
open it with the word del, and put the rough draft and the
copy safely away."
This piece of confidence dried the lad's tears. His chief
tried to induce him to take tea and cake.
"Mamma told me not to take tea because of my digestion,"
said Sebastien.
"Very well, my dear boy, here are some sandwiches and
cream ; come and sit beside me," said the awe-inspiring Mme.
Eabourdin, ostentatiously gracious. She made Sebastien sit
by her side at the table; and the light touch of the goddess'
dress as it brushed his coat brought the poor boy's heart into
his mouth. But at this moment the fair lady saw des Lu-
peaulx, and instead of waiting till he came to her, she went
smiling towards him.
"Why do you stay there as if you were sulking with us?"
she asked.
"I was not sulking," he replied. "But when I came to
216 THE GOVERNMENT CLEUKS
bring you a bit of good news, I could not help thinking to
m3'self that you would be more cruel now than ever. I fore-
saw that six months hence I should be almost a stranger to
you. No ; we cannot dupe each other — you have too much in-
telligence, and I on my side have had too much experience
— I have been taken in too often, if you like it better. Your
end is attained ; it has cost you nothing but smiles and a few
gracious words "
"Dupe each other !" she repeated, apparently half offended ;
"what do you mean ?"'
"Yes. M. de la Billardiere is worse again to-day; and
from what the Minister said to me, your husband is certain
to be head of the division."
He gave her the history of his "scene" with the Minister
(for so he was pleased to call it), of the Countess' jealousy,
and what she had said with regard to the invitation.
"Monsieur des Lupeaulx," the lady returned with dignity,
"permit me to point out to you that my husband is the most
capable chief clerk ; that he stands first in seniority ; that old
la Billardiere's appointment over his head made a sensation
all through the service ; that he has done the work of the head
of the division for the past twelve months ; and that we have
neither competitor nor rival."
, "That is true."
y "Well," she continued, with a smile that displayed the
prettiest teeth in the world, "can my friendship for you be
spotted with any thought of self-interest ? Can you think me
capable of it?"
Des Lupeaulx signified his admiring incredulity.
"Ah !" cried she, "a woman's heart will always be a secret
for the cleverest of you men. Yes, I have seen your visits
here with the greatest pleasure, and there was a thought of
self-interest at the back of the pleasure."
"Oh !"
"You have an unbounded future before you," she con-
tinued, lowering her voice for his ear; "you will be a deputy
and a minister some day!" (How pleasant it is to an am-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 217
bitious man to have such words as these murmured in his ear
by a pretty woman with a charming voice ! ) "Ah ! I know
you better than you know yourself ! Eabourdin will be im-
mensely useful to you in your career; he will do the work
while you are at the Chamber. And while you are dreaming
of taking office, I want Eabourdin to be a state-councillor and
a director-general. Here were two men who might be very
useful to one another, while their interests could never clash,
so I took it into my head to bring them together. That is a
woman's part, is it not? You will both get on faster as
friends, and it is time that you both should sail ahead. I have
burned my boats," she added, smiling at him. "You are not
as frank with me as I am with you."
"You will not listen to me," he returned in a. melancholy
tone, in spite of the satisfaction that her words gave him in
the depths of his heart. "What good will your promises of
promotion do me if you dismiss me here ?"
She turned on him with a Parisienne's quickness.
"Before I listen to you, we must be in a position to under-
stand each other," she said. And she left the elderly cox-
comb and went to talk to Mme. de Chessel, a provincial count-
ess, who made as though she meant to go.
"She is no ordinary woman !" thought des Lupeaulx. "I
am not myself when I am with her."
And it is a fact that this reprobate who had kept an opera-
dancer six years ago, and since then, thanks to his position,
had made a seraglio of pretty women for himself among the
wives of the employes, and lived in the world of actresses and
journalists, — this jaded man of forty, I repeat, was charming
with Celestine all that evening, and the very last to leave her
salon.
"At last !" thought Mme. Eabourdin, as she went to bed.
"At last we shall have the place. Twelve thousand francs a
year, besides extras and the rent of the farm at Grajeux;
twenty-five thousand francs altogether. It is not comfort;
but still it is not poverty."
Celestine thought of her debts till she fell asleep. They
218 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
could be paid oii in tiiree years by putting aside six thousand
francs a year. She was far from imagining, as she took
Eabourdin's promotion for granted, that somewhere in the
Marais a little shrewish, self-seeking, bigoted bourgeoise that
had never set foot in a salon, a woman without influence or
connections, was thinking of carrying the place by storm.
And if Mme. Eabourdin could have seen Mme. Baudoyer, she
would have despised her antagonist; she did not know the
power of pettiness, the penetrating force of the grub that
brings down the elm-tree by tracing a ring under the barkl'
If it were possible in literature to make use of the micro-
scope of a Leuwenhoek, a Malpighi, or a Raspail, as Hoffmann
(., of Berlin attempted to do ; if, furthermore, you could magnify J)
^ ^' and draw the teredo that brought Holland within a finger^s'
breadth of extinction by gnawing through the dykes, perhaps
you might see something within a little resembling the coun-
tenances of Messieurs Gigonnet, Mitral, Baudo3^er, Saillard,
Gaudron, Falleix, Transon, Godard and Company. These
human teredos, at any rate, showed what they could do in the
thirtieth year of this nineteenth century. And now is the
time for displaying the official teredo, as he burrows in the
public offices where most of the scenes in this history will take
place.
At Paris all public offices are alike. Xo matter to what
department you may betake yourself to ask for the redress of
a grievance, or for the smallest favor, you will find the same
gloomy corridors, the same dimly-lighted backways, the same
rows of doors each with an enigmatical inscription, and an
oval, glazed aperture like an eye; and if you look through
those windows, you may see fantastic scenes worthy of Callot.
When you discover the object of your search, you pass first of
all through an outer room, where the office messenger sits,
into a second, the general office; the senior clerk's sanctum
lies to the right or left at the f urtlier end of it, and either
beyond, or up above, you find the room appropriated to the
use of the chief clerk himself. As for the immense personage
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 219
styled the head of the division under the Empire, the director
under the Restoration, and the head of the division once more
in our day, he is housed either up above or down below his two
or three suites of offices ; but occasionally his room lies beyond
that of one of the chief clerks. As a rule it is remarkable for
its spaciousness, an advantage not a little prized in these
curious honeycomb cells of the big hive known as a govern-
ment department, or a director-general's department, if there
can be said to be such a thing as a director-general.
At the present day almost every department has absorbed
all the lesser administrations which used to be separate. By
this concentration the directors-general have been shorn of
all their splendor in the shape of hotels, servants, spacious
rooms, and little courtyards. Who would recognize the Com-
missioner of Woods and Forests, or the Comptroller of Ex-
cise, in a man that comes to the Treasury on foot and climbs
the stairs to a second floor ? Once these dignitaries were coun-
cillors, or ministers, or peers of France, the}' were housed in a
splendid hotel in the Rue Sainte-Avoye or the Rue-Saint-
Augustin. Messieurs Pasquier and Mole, among others, were
content with a comptroller-general's post after they had been
in office, thus illustrating the remark made bj^ the Due d'An-
tin to Louis XIV., "Sire, when Jesus Christ died on a Friday,
He was sure that on Sunday He should rise from the dead."
If the comptroller-general's sphere of activities had increased
in extent when his splendor was curtailed, perhaps no great
harm would have been done; but nowadays it is with great
difficulty that this personage becomes a Master of Requests
with a paltry twenty thousand francs a year. He is suffered
to retain a symbol of his vanished power in the shape of an
usher in small clothes, silk stockings, and a cut-away coat, if,
indeed, the usher has not latterly been reformed out of exist-
ence.
The staff of an office consists, in administrative style, of a
messenger, a number of supernumeraries who work for noth-
ing for so many years, and the established clerks ; to wit, the
writers or copying-clerks, the draughting-clerks, and first or
220 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
senior clerks, under a chief and his assistant the sous-chef.
A division usually comprises two or three such offices, and
sometimes more. The names of the functionaries vary with
the different departments ; in some the senior clerk may be re-
placed by a head book-keeper or an auditor.
The floor of the outer room, inhabited by the office mes-
senger, is tiled like the passage, the walls are covered with a
cheap paper; the furniture consists of a stove, a big black
table, an inkstand and pens, with sundry bare benches for the
accommodation of the public that dances attendance there
(the office messenger sits in a comfortable armchair, and rests
his feet on a hassock). Sometimes, in addition, there is a
water-cistern and a tap. The general office is a large and
more or less well-lighted apartment. Wooden floors are very
rare; parquetry and open fireplaces, like mahogany cupboards,
tables, and desks, red and green leather-covered chairs, silken
curtains, and other departmental luxuries are appropriated
to the use of chief clerks and heads of divisions. The general
office is supplied with a stove, the pipe enters the chimney-
opening, if there happens to be a flue. The wall-paper is
usually plain green or brown. The tables are of black wood.
A clerk's industry may be pretty accurately gauged by his
manner of installing himself. A chilly subject will have a
kind of wooden foot-rest; the man of bilious-sanguine tem-
perament is content with a straw mat; the lymphatic man
that lives in fear of draughts, open doors, or other causes of a
fall in the temperature, will intrench himself behind a little
screen of pasteboard cases. There is a cupboard somewhere
in which office-coats, over-sleeves, eye-shades, caps, fezs, and
other gear of the craft are kept. The chimney-piece is almost
always loaded with water-bottles and glasses and the re-
mains of luncheons; a lamp may be found in some dark cor-
ners. The door of the assistant's sanctum usually stands ajar,
so that that gentleman may keep an eye on the general office,
prevent too much talk, and come out to confer with the clerks
in great emergencies.
You can tell the quality of the official at a pinch from
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 221
the furniture of the room. The curtains vary, some are of
white or colored stuff, some are cotton, some silk; the chairs
are of cherry-wood or mahogany, and straw-seated, or uphol-
stered or cushioned w4th leather; the wall-papers are more
or less clean. But to whatever department this kind of public
property may chance to belong, nothing can look more
strange, when removed from its surroundings, than a collec-
tion of furniture that has seen so many changes of govern-
ment and come through so much rough treatment. Of all
removals in Paris, the migration of a public office is the most
grotesque to witness. The genius of Hoffmann, that high
priest of the impossible, could not invent anything more
whimsical. Some unaccountable change is wrought in the
hand-carts. The yawning pasteboard cases leave a track of
dust along the street; the tables appear with their castors in
the air. There is something dismaying in the aspect of the
ramshackle armchairs and inconceivably odd gear with which
the administration of France is carried on. In some ways it
reminds you of a turnout of the properties of a theatre, in
others of the stock-in-trade of an acrobat. Even so, upon
some obelisk you may behold traces of intelligent purpose in
the shadowy lettering which troubles your imagination, after
the wont of most things of which you cannot discern the end.
And lastly, these utensils from the administrative kitchen are
all so old, so battered, so faded, that the dirtiest array of pots
and pans wx)uld be an infinitely more pleasing spectacle.
If foreign and provincial readers would form an accurate
idea of the inner life of a public office at Paris, it may, per-
haps, suffice to describe M. de la Billardiere's division, for its
chief characteristics are common, no doubt, to all European
administrations.
First and foremost, picture, to suit your fancy, the person-
age thus set forth in large type in the Annuaire: —
"Head of the Division: M. le Baron Flamet de la Bil-
LARDiiiRE (Athanase Jean Frangois Michel), formerly Grand
Provost of the Departniunt of the Correze ; Gentleman in Or-
222 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
dinary of the Chamber; Master of Kequests Extraordinary,
President of the Electoral College of the Department of the
Dordogne, officer of the Legion of Honor; Chevalier of St.
Louis, and of the foreign orders of Christ, of Isabella, of St.
Vladimir, etc., etc. ; Member of the Academic of Gers and of
many other learned Societies, Vice-President of the Societe
des Bonnes-Lettres ; Member of the Association of St. Joseph,
and of the Prisoners' Aid Society ; one of the Mayors of Paris,
and so forth, and so forth."
The man that took up so much space in print was occupy-
ing at that moment some five feet and a half by two feet six
inches on the bed whereon he lay, his head adorned with a
cotton nightcap tied with flame-colored ribbons; with Des-
plein, the King's surgeon, and young Dr. Bianchon to visit
him, and two elderly kinswomen to mount guard over him
on either side ; a host of phials, bandages, syringes, and other
instruments of death encompassing him about, and the cure
of Saint-Eoch ever on the watch to insinuate a word or two
as to the salvation of his soul.
Every morning his son Benjamin de la Billardiere would
meet the two doctors with the formula, "Do you think that I
shall be so fortunate as to keep my father ?" It was only that
very day that, by a slip of the tongue, ho had brought out the
word "unfortunate" instead.
La Billardiere's division was situated below the latitude
of the attics by seventy-one degrees of longitude, measured
by the steps of the staircase, in the departmental ocean of a
great and imposing pile of buildings. It lay on the north-
east side of a courtyard, a space formerly taken up by the
stables, and now occupied by Clergeot's division. The two
distinct sets of offices were divided by the breadth of the stair-
head. All the doors were labeled along a spacious corridor
illuminated by borrowed lights. The offices and ante-cham-
bers belonging to the two chief clerks, Messrs. Eabourdin
and Baudoyer, were below on the second floor; and M. de la
Billardiere's ante-chamber, sitting-room, and two private
offices lay immediately beyond M. Eabourdin's rooms.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 223
The first floor was divided in two by an entresol, and here
M. Ernest de la Briere was established. M. Ernest de la
Briere was an occult power which shall be described in a few
words, for he certainly deserves a parenthetic mention. So
long as the Minister was in office, this young man was his
private secretary. For which reason his room communicated
by a secret door with His Excellency's sanctum. His Excel-
lency, be it said, had two private cabinets; one of these was
in keeping with the state apartments in which he received
visitors, and here he conferred with great personages in the
absence of his secretary ; the other was the study in which he
retired to work with his private secretary and without wit- ,
nesses. Now a private secretary is to a single minister what / ^
des Lupeaulx was to a whole government. Between young
la Briere and des Lupeaulx there was just the difference that
separates the aide de camp from the chief of the staff. The
private secretary is a minister's apprentice; he takes himself
off and reappears with his patron. If the minister is still in
favor, or if he has hopes when he goes out of office, he takes
his secretary with him, only to bring him back again. If it is
otherwise, he puts his protege out to grass in some adminis-
trative pasture — in the Audit Department, for example, that
hostelry where secretaries wait till the storm passes over. A
young gentleman in this position is not precisely a statesman ;
he is a man of politics; sometimes, too, he represents the
politics of a man. When you come to think of the quantity of
letters which he must open and read, to say nothing of his
other occupations, is it not evident that such a commodity
would be extremely expensive under an absolute monarchy?
At Paris a victim of this sort can be had for an annual sum
varying from ten to twenty thousand francs; but the young
man has the benefit of the minister's carriages, boxes at the
theatre, and invitations. The Emperor of Eussia would be
very glad to give fifty thousand francs a year for such a mar-
velously groomed and carefully curled Constitutional poodle ;
it is such a good guard; such an amiable, sweet-tempered,
docile animal ; so fond and — faithful ! But, alas ! the private
224 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
secretary is not to be grown, found, discovered, or developed
anywhere save in the hotbeds of a representative government.
Under an absolute monarch you can only have courtiers and
servitors; whereas with a Charter, free men will serve you,
and flatter you, and fawn upon you. Wherefore ministers in
France are more fortunate than women or crowned kings;
they have somebody to understand them. Perhaps, at the
same time, private secretaries are as much to be pitied as
women or white paper — they must take all that is put upon
them. Like a virtuous wife, a private secretary is bound to
display his talents in private only, and for his minister. If
he exhibits his abilities in public, he is ruined. Therefore a
private secretary is a friend given by the Government. But to
return to our Government offices.
Three office-messengers lived in harmony in la Billar-
diere's division, to wit, one messenger for the two offices;
another shared by the two chief clerks; and a third for the
head of the division exclusively. All three were clothed and
warmed at the public expense; all three wore the same well-
known livery — royal blue with a scarlet piping for an undress
uniform, and a wide red-white-and-blue galoon for state occa-
sions. La Billardiere's man had been put into an usher's uni-
form. The secretary-general, willing to flatter the self-love
of a ministers cousin, permitted an encroachment which re-
flected glory upon the administration. These three messen-
gers were veritable pillars of the department, and experts in
bureaucratic customs. They wanted for nothing; they were
well warmed and clothed at the expense of the State ; and
well-to-do, because they were frugal. They probed every man
in the department to the quick ; for the one interest in their
lives consisted in watching the clerks and studying their hob-
bies. Wherefore they knew exactly how far it was safe to
go in the matter of loans, performing their commissions with
the utmost discretion, undertaking errands to the pawnbroker,
buying pawn-tickets, lending money without interest. jSTo
one, however, borrowed any sum however trifling without giv-
ing a gratuity; and as the loans were usually very small, the
practice was equivalent to the pa}Tnent of a usurious interest.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 225
The three masterless servants had a salary of nine hundred
francs; New Year's tips and perquisites raised the income
to twelve hundred ; and they were in a position to make almost
as much again out of the clerks; for all the breakfasts of
those who breakfasted passed through their hands. In some
Government offices the doorkeeper actually provides the
breakfasts. The doorkeepers place in the finance department
had been worth something like four thousand francs to fat
old Thuillier senior, whose son was now a clerk in la Bil-
lardiere's division. Sometimes attendants feel a five-franc
piece slipped into the palm of their right hands if a petitioner
is in a hurry, an occurrence which they take with rare im-
passibility. The seniors only wear their uniform when on
duty, and go out in plain clothes.
The messenger of the general office was the best off, for he
exploited the staff of clerks. He was a thick-set corpulent
man of sixty, with bristling white hair, an apoplectic neck,
a common pimpled countenance, gray eyes, and a mouth like
a stove-door; here you have a sketch of Antoine, the oldest
messenger in the department. Antoine had sent for his
nephews from fichelles in Savoy, and found places for them ;
Laurent with the chief clerks, Gabriel with the head of the
division. The two Savoyards were dressed like their uncle,
in broadcloth. As to appearance, they were simply ordinary
servants in uniform. At night they took checks at a subsi-
dized theatre (la Billardiere had obtained the places for
them). Both had married skilled lace-cleaners, who also un-
dertook fine darning and repairs of cashmere shawls. As the
uncle was a bachelor, the whole family lived together, and
lived very much more comfortably than most chief clerks.
Gabriel and Laurent, having only been a matter of ten years
in the service, had not yet learned to look down upon the
government costume ; they went abroad in uniform, proud as
dramatic authors after a success from a pecuniary point of
view. The uncle, whom they took for a very acute person,
and served with blind devotion, gradually initiated them into
the mysteries of the craft.
226 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
The three had just opened the offices. Between seven and
eight they used to sweep out the offices, read the newspapers,
or discuss the politics of the division with other porters, after
the manner of their kind, with due exchange of information.
Modern domestic servants are perfectly acquainted with the
affairs of the family ; and the servants of the department, like
spiders in the middle of a web, could feel the slightest dis-
turbance in any part of it.
It was a Thursday morning, the day after the Minister's re-
ception and Mme. Eabourdin"s At Home. Uncle Antoine,
with the assistance of his nephews, was shaving in the ante-
chamber on the second floor, when the arrival of one of the
clerks took them all by surprise.
"That is M. Dutocq," remarked Antoine ; "I know him by
the way he comes sneaking in. He always goes about as if he
were skating, he does. He drops down upon you before you
can tell which way he came. Yesterday, he was the last to
leave the office, a thing that hasn't happened three times since
he has been here.''
A man of thirty-eight, with a long visage of a bilious hue,
and close-cropped woolly gray hair; a low forehead, thick
eyebrows that met in the middle, a crooked nose, compressed
lips, light green eyes that never looked you in the face ; a tall
figure, one shoulder slightly larger than the other; a brown
coat, black waistcoat, a silk handkerchief round the throat,
buff trousers, black woolen stockings, and shoes with mud-
bedraggled laces, — here you have M. Dutocq, senior clerk in
Rabourdin's office. Dutocq was incompetent and indolent.
He detested his chief. jSTothing could be more natural. Ea-
bourdin had no weakness to flatter, no vice to which Dutocq
could pander. The chief was far too high-minded to injure
a subordinate ; but, at the same time, he was too clear-sighted
to be duped by appearances. Dutocq only remained on suf-
ferance, through Rabourdin's generosity; there was no pros-
pect of advancement unless there was a change of chief.
Dutocq was well aware that he himself was not fit to fill a
higher post, but he knew enough of Government offices to
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 227
understaud that incompetence does not prevent a man from
affixing his signature to the work of others. He would get
out of the difficulty by finding a Rabourdin among the
draughting clerks, for la Billardiere's promotion had been
a striking and disastrous object lesson to the department.
Spite when combined with self-interest is a very fair substi-
tute for intelligence ; and Dutocq was very spiteful, and very
much bent on his own interests. Wherefore he had set him-
self to consolidate his position by taking the office of spy upon
himself. After 1816 he became a bigot of the deepest dye;
he foresaw that persons then indiscriminately labeled
"Jesuits," by fools that knew no better, would shortly be in
favor. He belonged to the Congregation, though he was not
admitted to its inner circles. He went from office to office,
sounded consciences with coarse jokes, and returned to para-
phrase his "reports" for des Lupeaulx's benefit. Des Lu-
peaulx was kept informed in this way of everything that went
on; and, indeed, the secretary-general's profound knowledge
of the ins and outs of affairs often astonished the Minister.
Dutocq in good earnest was the Bonneau of a political Bon-
neau; he was intriguing for the honor of taking des Lu-
peaulx's secret messages, and des Lupeaulx tolerated the un-
clean creature, thinking that he might sometime make him
useful, were it only to get himself or some great person out
of a scrape by some shameful marriage. On some such good
fortune indeed Dutocq was reckoning, for he remained a
bachelor. The pair understood one another. Dutocq had suc-
ceeded M. Poiret senior, who retired to a boarding-house, and
was put on a pension in 1814, at which time there had been
a grand general reform of the staff. Dutocq lived on a fifth
floor, in a house with a passage entry in the Rue Saint Louis
Saint Honore. As an enthusiastic amateur of old prints, it
was his ambition to possess complete collections of the works
of Rembrandt, Charlet, Sylvestre, Audran, Callot, Albrecht
Diirer, and others; and, like most collectors who live by
themselves, he aspired to pick these things up cheaply. Du-
tocq took his meals in a boarding-house in the Rue de Beaune,
228 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
and spent his evenings at the Palais Royal. Sometimes he
went to the play, thanks to du Bruel, who would give him an
author's ticket every week. A word as to du Bruel.
Du Bruel came to the office simply for the sake of drawing
his salary and believing and saying that he was the chief
clerk's assistant; but Sebastien did his work, as has been
seen, and received a very inadequate return for it. Du Bruel
did the minor theatres for a ministerial paper, for which he
also wrote articles to order. His position was known, de-
fined, and unassailable. Xor did he fail in any of the little
diplomatic shifts that gain a man the goodwill of his fellow
creatures. He always offered Mme. Rabourdin a box on a
first night, for instance, and called for her and took her
back in a carriage, an attention of which she was very sensible.
Rabourdin was very easy with his subordinates, very little
given to tormenting them; so he allowed du Bruel to attend
rehearsals and to come and go and work at his vaudevilles
pretty much as he pleased. M. le Due de Chaulieu was aware
that du. Bruel was writing a novel, and meant to dedicate the
book to him. Du Bruel accordingly dressed as carelessly
as a vaudevilliste ; in the morning he appeared in footed
trousers and thin-soled shoes, a superannuated waistcoat, a
greenish black greatcoat and a black cravat, but at night he
was fashionably arrayed, for he aimed at being a gentleman.
Du Bruel lived, for sufficient reasons, ^vith Florine,,the
actress for whom he wrote parts ; and Florine at that time
lodged with Tullia, a dancer more remarkable for beauty than
for talent. This arrangement permitted him to see a good
deal of the Due de Rhetore, oldest son of the Due de Chau-
lieu, a favorite with the King. The Due de Chaulieu had
obtained the Cross of the Legion of Honor for du Bruel after
his eleventh play on a topic of the hour. Du Bruel — or de
Cursy, if you prefer it — was at work at the moment on a
drama in five acts for the Frangais. Sebastien had a strong
liking for the assistant, who sometimes gave him an order
for the pit. Du Bruel used to point out any doubtful passages
beforehand, and Sebastien, with the sincerity of youth, would
3'. V
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 229
applaud with all his might; he regarded du Bruel as a great
man of letters. Once it happened that a vaudeville written,
as usual, with two collaborators had been hissed in several
places.
''The public find out the parts written in collaboration,"
du Bruel remarked next day to Sebastien.
"Why don't you write it all yourself?" Sebastien answered
in the simplicity of his heart.
There were excellent reasons why du Bruel should not write
the whole himself. He was the third part of a dramatic
author. Few people are aware that a dramatic author is a
,composite being. First, there is the Man of Ideas; it is his
duty to find the subject and construct the framework or
scenario of the vaudeville; the Plodder works out the dia-
logue; while the Man of Details sets the couplets to music,
arranges the choruses and the accompaniments, and grafts
the songs into the plot. The same personage also looks after
the practical aspects of the play; he sees after the drawing
up of the placards, and never leaves the manager until he
has definitely secured the representation of a piece written
by the three partners for the following day.
Du Bruel, a born plodder, was in the habit of reading new
books at the office, and picking out the clever bits; he made
a note of these, and embroidered his dialogues with them.
Cursy (that was his nom de guerre) was held in esteem by his
collaborators on account of his impeccable accuracy ; the Man
of Ideas could feel sure that Cursy would comprehend him,
and might fold his arms. His popularity among the clerks
was sufficient to bring them out in a body to applaud his
pieces, for he had the reputation of a "good fellow," and he
deserved it. He was free-handed; it was never very difficult
to screw a bowl of punch or ices out of him, and he would lend
fifty francs and never ask for the money. Du Bruel was a
man of regular habits; he had a house in the country at
Aulna3% and found investments for his money. Besides his
salary of four thousand five hundred francs, he had a pension
of twelve hundred from the civil list, and eight hundred
15
230 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS \k '
francs out of the hundred thousand crowns voted by the
Chamber for the encouragement of the arts. Add to these
various sources of income some nine thousand francs brought
in by the "thirds/' "fourths," and "halves" of vaudevilles at
three different theatres, and you will understand at once that
du Bruel was broad, rotund, and fatj and looked like a man
of substance. As to his morals, he was Tullia's lover ; and, as
usual, believed that he was preferred to'Tier protector, the
brilliant Due de Ehetore.
Dutocq beheld, not without dismay, the liaison (as he called
it) between des Lupeaulx and Mme. Eabourdin. His smoth-
ered fury was increased. What was more, his prying eyes
could not fail to detect that Eabourdin was throwing himself
into some great work outside his official duties, and he de-
spaired of finding out anything about it, whereas little Sebas-
tien was either wholly or partly in the secret. Dutocq had
tried successfully to make an ally of M. Godard, Baudoyer's
assistant, du BrueFs colleague ; the high esteem in which Du-
tocq held Baudoyer had led to an acquaintance. Not that
Dutocq was sincere ; but by crying up Baudoyer and saying
nothing of Eabourdin, he satisfied his spleen, after the fashion
of petty minds.
Joseph Godard was Mitral's cousin by the mothers side.
His relationship to Baudo5'^er, therefore, was distant enough,
but he had founded hopes upon it ; he meant to mafrr Mile.
Baudoyer, and consequently Isidore was a brilliant genius in
his eyes. He professed a high respect for Elizabeth and Mme.
Saillard, failing to perceive that Mme. Baudoyer was "sim-
mering" Falleix for her daughter ; and he used to bring little
presents for MWe. Baudoyer — artificial flowers, sugar-plums
on New Year's Day, and pretty boxes on her birthday.
Godard was a man of six-and-twenty, a dull plodder, well-
conducted as a young lady, humdrum and apathetic. Cafes,
cigars, and horse exercise he held in abhorrence; he went to
bed regularly at ten, and rose at seven. His various social
talents brought him into high favor with the Saillards and
Baudoyers ; he could play dance music on the flageolet ; and in
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 231
the National Guard he took a life in the band to avoid night-
duty. iSTatural history was Godard's special hobby. He col-
lected minerals and shells; he could stuff birds; his rooms
were warehouses of curiosities picked up for small sums; he
had landscape-stones, models of palaces in cork, various petri-
fied objects from the springs of Saint Allyre at Clermont
(Auvergne), and the like. Godard used to buy up scent-
bottles to hold his specimens of baryta, his sulphates, salts,
magnesia, coral, and the like. He kept collections of butter-
flies in frames ; he covered the walls with dried fish-skins and
Chinese umbrellas.
Godard lived with his sister, a flower-maker in the Eue de
Kichelieu. But though- this model young man was much ad-
mired by mothers of daughters, it is a fact that he was held
in much contempt by his sister's work-girls, and more particu-
larly by the young lady at the desk, who had long hoped to
entangle him. He was thin and slim, and of average height ;
there were dark circles about his eyes; his beard was scanty;
his breath was bad (according to Bixiou). Joseph Godard
took little pains with himself ; his clothes did not fit him, his
trousers were large and baggy; he wore white stockings all
the year round, a narrow-rimmed hat, and laced shoes. At
the office he sat in a cane chair with the seat broken through,
and a round leather cushion on the top of it. He complained
a good deal of indigestion. His principal failing was a ten-
dency to propose picnics and Sunday excursions in the sum-
mer to Montmorency, or a walk to a dairy on the Boulevard
Mont Parnasse.
After the acquaintance between Dutocq and Godard had
lasted for some six months, Dutocq began to go now and again
to Mile. Godard^ s,- hoping to do a piece of business in the
house, or to discover some feminine treasure.
And so it came to pass that in Dutocq and Godard Bau-
doyer had two men to sing his praises in the office. M. Sail-
lard was incapable of discovering Dutocq's real character;
sometimes he would drop in to speak to him at his desk.
Young la Billardiere, one of Baudoyer's supernumeraries, be-
232 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
longed to this set. Cleverer men laughed not a liLtle at the
alliance of Godard, Dutocq, and Baudoyer. Bixiou dubbed
it la Trinite sans Esprit, and christened little la Billardiere
"the Paschal Lamb."
"You are up early," said Antoine, with a laugh, as Dutocq
came in.
"And as for you, Antoine," returned Dutocq, "it is plain
that the newspapers sometimes come before you give them out
to us."
"It happens so to-day," said Antoine, not a whit discon-
certed; "they never come in at the same time for two days
together."
The nephews looked furtively at one another, as if to say
admiringly, "What a cool hand !"
"He brings me in two sous on his breakfasts," muttered
Antoine as Dutocq shut the door, "but I would as soon be
without it to have him out of the department."
"Ah ! you are not the first to-day, M. Sebastien," he re-
marked, a quarter of an hour afterwards.
"Who ever can have come?" the poor boy asked, and his
face turned white.
"M. Dutocq," said Laurent.
Virgin natures possess an unusual degree of that inex-
plicable power of second sight which perhaps depends upon
an un jaded nervous system, upon the sensibility of an or-
ganization that may be called new. Sebastien had guessed
that Dutocq hated the venerated Eabourdin. So Laurent
had scarcely pronounced the name before an ugly presenti-
ment flashed upon the supernumerary.
"I suspected as much," he exclaimed, and he was off like
an arrow down the corridor.
"There will be a row in the offices," remarked Antoine,
shaking his white head as he put on his uniform. "It is easy
to see that M. le Baron is going to his last account. Yes,
Mme. Gruget, his nurse, told me that he would not live the
day out. What a stir there will be here, to be sure. Go and
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 233
see if the stoves are burning up, some of you. Sahre de hois!
all of them will come tumbling in upon us in a minute."
"The poor little youngster was in a fine taking when he
heard that that Jesuit of a M. Dutocq was in before him,
and that's a fact," commented Laurent.
"Well, I for one have told him (for, after all, one can't do
less than tell a good clerk the truth, and what I call a good
clerk is a clerk like this youngster, that pays up his ten francs
sharp on New Year's Day), I have told him, I say, 'The more
you do, the more they will want you to do, and they will leave
you where you are !' But it is no good. He will not listen to
me. He kills himself with stopping till five o'clock, an hour
after everybody else" (Antoine shrugged his shoulders).
"All nonsense; that's not the way to get on! And here's
proof of it — nothing has been said yet of taking on the poor
boy as an established clerk, and an excellent one he would
make. After two years too ! It sets your back up, upon my
word !"
"M. Eabourdin has a liking for M. Sebastien," said Lau-
rent.
"But M. Eabourdin is not a minister," retorted Antoine.
"It will be a hot day when he is a minister ; the fowls will
cut their teeth. He is much too — never mind what ! When
I think that I take round the muster-roll of salaries, to be re-
ceipted by humbugs that stop away and do what they please,
while little la Eoche is working himself to death, I wonder
whether God gives a thought to Government offices. And as
for these pets of M. le Marechal and M. le Due ; what do they
give you? — They thank you" (Antoine made a patronizing
nod) . " 'Thanks, my dear Antoine.' — A pack of do-nothings ;
let them work, or they will bring on another Eevolution !
You should have seen whether they came it over us like this
in M. Eobert Lindet's time ; for, such as you see me, I came
to this shop under M. Eobert Lindet. The clerks used to work
when he was here ! You ought to have seen those quill-drivers
scratching away till midnight, all the stoves gone out, and
nobody so much as noticing it; but for one thing, the guillo-
234 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
tine was there too ; and no need to say, it was a very different
thing from simply taking down their names as we do now
when they come late."
"Daddy Antoine/' began Gabriel, "since you are in a talk-
ing humor this morning, what do you make out that a
clerk is?"
"A clerk !" Antoine returned gravely. "A clerk is a man
that sits in an office and writes. — What am I saying ? Where
should we be without clerks? Just go and look after your
stoves and never say a word against the clerks. The stove in
the large room draws like fury, Gabriel; you must shut off
some of the draught."
Antoine took up his position at the stairhead, so that he
could see all the clerks as they came in under the arched
gateway. He knew everybody in every office in the depart-
ment, and used to watch their ways and notice the differences
^ in their dress. And here, before entering upon the drama, it
*y is necessary to give portraits in outline of the principal actors
'^ in la Billardiere's division; for not merely will the reader
make the acquaintance of the various types of the genus clerk,
but he will find in them the justification of Eabourdin's ob-
, servations, and likewise the title of this essentially Parisian
y<^ Study.
And on this head, let there be no misapprehensions: from
the point of view of poverty and eccentricity there are clerks
and clerks, just as there are faggots and faggots. In the
first place, you must distinguish between the clerk in Paris
and his provincial brother. The provincial clerk is well off.
He is spaciously housed ; he has a garden ; he is comfortable
as a rule in his office. Sound wine is not dear; he does not
dine off horse-steaks; he is acquainted with the luxury of
dessert. People may not know precisely what he eats, but
every one will tell you that he does not "eat up his salary."'
So far from running into debt, he positively saves on his
income. If he is a bachelor, mothers of daughters greet
liim as he passes ; if he is married, he and his wife go to balls
at the receiver-general's, at the prefecture, at the sub-prefec-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 235
ture. People take an iuterest in his character; he makes
conquests ; he has a reputation for intelligence ; his loss would
probably be felt; the whole town knows him, and takes an
interest in his wife and family. He gives evening parties;
he may become a deputy if he has private means, and his
father-in-law is in easy circumstances. His wife is always
under the minute and inquisitive spy system of a small town ;
if he is unfortunate in his married life, he knows it, whereas
a clerk at Paris is not bound to hear of his misfortune.
Lastly, the provincial clerk is "somebody," while the Parisian
is almost "nobody."
The next comer was a draughting-clerk, Phellion by name,
a respectable father of a family. He was in Eabourdin's office.
His chiefs influence had obtained education for each of his
two boys at half-cost at the College Henri IV., a well-timed
favor; for Phellion had a third child, a girl, who was being
educated free of expense in a boarding-school where her
mother gave music lessons, and her father taught history and
geography of an evening. Phellion was a man of forty-five,
and a sergeant-major in the National Guard. He was very
ready to give sympathy ; but he never had a farthing to spare.
He lived, not very far from the Sourds-Muets, in the Eue du
Faubourg Saint-Jacques, on a floor of a house, with a garden
attached. "His place," to use his own expression, only cost
four hundred francs. The draughting-clerk was proud of his
position, and rejoiced in his lot ; he worked industriously for
the Government, believed that he was serving his country,
and boasted of his indifference to party politics; he looked
at nothing but Authority. Sometimes, to his delight, M.
Rabourdin would ask him to stay for half an hour to finish
some piece of work. Then Phellion would go to the boarding-
school in the Rue iSTotre Dame des Champs, where his wife
taught music, and say to the Demoiselles la Grave with whom
he dined :
"Affairs compelled me to stay late at the office, mesdemoi-
selles. When a man is in the service of the Government, he is
not his own master."
286 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
. Phellion had compiled various school-books in the form of
question and answer for the use of ladies' schools. These
"small but condensed treatises," as he called them, were on
sale at the University bookseller's under the name of "His-
torical and Geographical Catechisms." He felt it incumbent
upon him to present Mme. Kabourdin with each of these works
as they came out, taking a copy printed on hand-made paper
and bound in crimson morocco. On these occasions he ap-
peared in the Rue Duphot in full dress: silk small clothes,
silk stockings, shoes with gold buckles, and so forth. M.
Phellion gave beer and patty soirees on Thursday evenings
after the boarders had gone to bed. They played bouillotte,
with five sous in the pool; and in spite of the slenderness of
the stakes, it once fell out that M. Laudigeois, a registrar's
clerk, lost ten francs in an evening by reckless gambling.
The walls of the sitting-room were covered with a green
American paper with a red border, and adorned with portraits
of the Royal family. The visitor might behold His Majesty
the King, the Dauphiness, and Madame; with a pair of
framed engravings, to wit, Mazeppa, after Horace Vernet,
and The Pauper's Funeral, after Vigneron. This last-named
work of art, according to Phellion, was "sublime in its con-
ception. It ought to console the lower classes by reminding
them that they had more devoted friends than men, friends
whose affections go beyond the grave." From those words
you can guess that Phellion was the sort of man to take his
children to the Cimetiere de I'Ouest on All Souls' Day, and
point out the twenty square yards of earth (purchased "in
perpetuity") where his father and his mother-in-law lay
buried. "We shall come here some day," he used to say, to
familiarize his offspring with the idea of death.
It was one of Phellion's great amusements to explore Paris.
He had treated himself to a map. Antony, Arcueil, Bievre.
Fontenay-aux-Roses, and Aulnav, all of them famous as the
abode of more than one great writer, he knew already by
heart, and he hoped in time to know all the suburbs on the
west side. His eldest son he destined for the service of the
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 237
Government ; the second was to go to the Bicole polytechnique.
He often used to say to his eldest, "When you have the honor
to be employed by the Government !" but, at the same time,
he suspected the boy of a turn for the exact sciences, and
strove to repress the tendency, holding in reserve the extreme
course of leaving him to shift for himself if he persisted in
his ways.
Phellion had never ventured to ask M. Eabourdin to dine
with him, though he v/ould have regarded such a day as one
of the greatest in his life. He used to say that if he could
leave one of his sons to walk in the footsteps of M. Eabourdin,
he should die the happiest father in the world. He dinned
the praises of the worthy and much-respected chief into the
ears of the Demoiselles la Grave, till those ladies longed to
see M. Eabourdin, as a lad might crave a glimpse of M. de
Chateaubriand. They would have been very glad, they said,
to be intrusted with the education of his "young lady." If
the Minister's carriage chanced to come in or out, Phellion
took off his hat very respectfully whether there was anybody
in it or not, and said that it would be well for France if every-
body held authority in sufficient honor to revere it even in its
insignia. When Eabourdin sent for him "downstairs" to ex-
plain his work, Phellion summoned up all his intelligence,
and listened to his chief's lightest word as a dilettante listens
to an air at the Italiens. He sat silent in the office, his feet
perched aloft on his wooden foot-rest ; he never stirred from
his place; he conscientiously gave his mind to his work. In
administrative correspondence he expressed himself with
solemnity; he took everything seriously; he emphasized the
Minister's orders by translating them into pompous phrase-
ology. Yet, great as he was upon propriety, a disastrous thing
had happened once in his career — a disaster indeed. In spite
of the minute care with which he drafted his letters, he once
alloM^ed a phrase thus conceived to escape him, "You will
therefore repair to the closet with the necessary papers."
The copying-clerks, delighted at a chance of a laugh at the
expense of the harmless creature, went to consult Eabourdin
238 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
behind Fiiellion's back. Rabourdin, knowing his draughting-
c'lerk's character, could not help smiling as he endorsed the
margin with a note, "You will appear at the private office
with the documents indicated.'" The alteration was shown to
Phellion; he studied it, pondered, and weighed the difference
between the expressions, and candidly admitted that it would
have taken him a couple of hours to find the equivalents. "M.
Rabourdin is a man of genius !" he cried. He always thought
that his colleagues had shown a want of consideration for
him by referring the matter so promptly to the chief ; but he
had too much respect for the established order of things not
to admit that they had acted within their right, and so much
the more so since he, Phellion, was absent at the time. Still,
in their place, he himself would have waited — there was no
pressing need for the circular. This affair cost him several
nights' rest. If an}' one wished to make him angry, they had
only to remind him of the accursed phrase by asking as he
went out, "Have you the necessary papers ?" At which ques-
tion the worthy draughting-clerk would turn and give the
clerks a withering glance. "It seems to me, gentlemen, that
your remark is extremely unbecoming." One day, however,
lie waxed so wroth that Rabourdin was obliged to interfere,
and the clerks were forbidden to allude to the affair.
M. Phellion looked rather like a meditative ram. His face
was somewhat colorless, and marked with smallpox; his lips
were thick and underhiing, his eyes were pale blue, and in
figure he was rather above average height. Neat in his person
he was bound to be, as a master of history and geography in
a ladies' school ; he wore good linen, a pleated shirt-front, an
open black kerseymere waistcoat that afforded glimpses of
the braces which his daughter embroidered for him, a dia-
mond pin, a black coat, and blue trousers. In winter he
adopted a nut-brown box-coat with three capes, and it was his
wont to carry a loaded cane — "a precaution rendered neces-
sary by the extreme loneliness of some parts of the neighbor-
hood." He had given up the habit of taking snuff, a reform
which he was wont to cite as a striking instance of the com-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 239
mand that a man may gain over himself. Having what he
called a "fat chest," it was his wont to ascend staircases slowly
for fear of contractirg an asthma.
He saluted Antoine with dignity.
A copying-clerk, an odd contrast to this exemplary worthy,
immediately followed. Vimeux was a young fellow of five-
and-twtnty, with a salary of fifteen hundred francs. He was
well made and slim-waisted ; his eyes, eyebrows, and beard
were as black as jet; he had good teeth and sweetly pretty
hands, while his moustache was so luxuriant and well cared
for that its cultivation might have been his principal occupa-
tion in life. Yimeux's aptitude for his work was so great that
he had always finished it long before anybody else.
"He is a gifted young man !" Phellion would exclaim, as
he saw Vimeux cross his legs, at a loss to know what to do
with the rest of his time. "And look !" he would say to du
Bruel, "how exquisitely neat it is !"
Vimeux breakfasted off a roll of bread and a glass of water,
dined at Katcomb's for twenty sous, and lived in furnished
lodgings at twelve francs a month. Dress was his one joy and
pleasure in life. He ruined himself with wonderful waist-
coats, tight-fitting or semi-fitting trousers, thin boots, care-
fully-cut coats that outlined his figure, bewitching collars,
fresh gloves, and hats. His hand was adorned by a signet-
ring, which he wore outside his glove; he carried an elegant
walking-cane, and did his best to look and behave like a
wealthy young man. Toothpick in hand, he would repair to
the main alley in the Tuileries Gardens, and stroll about,
looking for all the world like a millionaire just arisen from
table. He had studied the art of twirling a cane and ogling
with an eye to business, a I'amh-icaine, as Bixiou said; for
Vimeux lived in the hope that some widow, Englishwoman
or foreign lady might be smitten with his charms ; he used to
laugh to show his fine set of teeth; he went without socks to
have his hair curled every day, Vimeux laid it down as a fixed
principle that an eligible hunch-backed girl must have six
thousand livres a year; he would take a woman of five-and-
240 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
forty with an income of eight thousand, or an English woman
with a thousand crowns. Phellion took compassion on the
young man. He was so much pleased with Vimeux's pen-
manship that he lectured him, and tried to persuade him to
turn writing-master; it was, he said, a respectable profession
which might ameliorate his existence and even render it
agreeable. He promised him the school kept by the Demoi-
selles la Grave. But Vimeux's belief in his star was not to
be shaken — it was too firmly fixed in his head. He continued,
therefore, to exhibit himself like one of Chevet's sturgeons;
albeit his luxuriant moustache had been displayed in vain for
three years. Vimeux lowered his eyes every time that he
passed Antoine; he owed the porter thirty francs for his
breakfasts, and yet towards noon he always asked him to bring
him a roll.
Eabourdin had tried several times to put a little sound
sense into the young fellow's foolish head, but he gave up at
last. Vimeux's father was a clerk to a justice of the peace
in the department of the Nord. Adolphe Vimeux had given
up dinners at Katcomb's lately, and lived entirely on bread.
He was saving up to buy a pair of spurs and a riding-switch.
In the office they jeered at his matrimonial calculations, call-
ing him the Villiaume pigeon; but any scoff at this vacuous
Amadis could only be attributed to the mocking spirit that
creates the vaudeville, for Vimeux was a friendly creature,
and nobody's enemy but his own. The great joke in both
offices was to bet that he wore stays.
Vimeux began his career under Baudoyer, and intrigued
to be transferred to Eabourdin, because Baudoyer was inex-
orable on the matter of "Englishmen," for so the clerks called
duns. The "Englishmen's," day is the day on which the pub-
lic is admitted; the creditors, being sure of finding their
debtors, flock thither to worry them, asking when they will be
paid, threatening to attach their salaries. Baudoyer the in-
exorable compelled his clerks to face it out. "It was their
affair," he said, "not to get into debt"' ; and he regarded his
severity as a thing necessary for the public welfare. Rabour-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 241
din, on the other hand, stood between his clerks and their
creditors; duns were put out at the door. "Government
offices/' he said, "were not meant for the transaction of pri-
vate business." Loud was the scoffing when Vimeux clanked
up the stairs and along the corridors with spurs on his boots.
Bixiou, practical joker to the department, drew a caricature
of Vimeux mounted on a pasteboard hobby horse, and sent
the drawing circulating through Clergeot's and la Billar-
diere's divisions. A subscription list was attached. M. Bau-
doyer's name was put down for a hundredweight of hay from
the stock supplied for his own private consumption, and all
the clerks cut gibes at their neighbor's expense. Vimeux
himself, like the good-natured fellow that he was, subscribed
under the name of "Miss Fairfax."
The handsome clerk of Vimeux's stamp has his post for a
living and his face for his fortune. He is a faithful supporter
of masked balls at. carnival-tide, though sometimes even there
he fails in his quest. A good many of his kind give up the
search, and end by marrying milliners or old women ; some-
times some young lady is charmed with his fine person, and
with her he spins out a clandestine romance that ends in mar-
riage, a love story diversified by tedious letters, which, how-
ever, produce their effect. Occasionally one here and there
waxes bolder. He sees a woman drive past in the Champs-
Elysees, procures her address, hurls impassioned letters at
her, finds a bargain which, unfortunately, encourages ignoble
speculation of this kind.
The Bixiou (pronounced Bisiou) mentioned above was a
caricaturist; Dutocq and Rabourdin, whom he dubbed La
vertueuse Rabourdin, were alike fair game to him; Baudoyer
he called La Place-Baudoyer, by way of summing up his
chief's commonplace character; du Bruel was christened
Flonflon. Bixiou was beyond question the wittiest and clev-
erest man in the division, or, indeed, in the department; but
his was a monkey's cleverness, desultory and aimless. Bau-
doyer and Godard protected him in spite of his malicious
ways, because he was extremely useful to them; he did their
vol.. 12—43
?42 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
work for them out of hand. He wanted du Bruel's or
Godard's place, but he stood in his own light. Sometimes —
this was when he had done some good stroke of business, such
as the portraits in the Fualdes case (which he drew out of
his own head), or pictures of the Castaing trial — he turned
the service to ridicule. Sometimes he would be very indus-
trious in a sudden fit of desire to get on; and then again he
would neglect the work for a vaudeville, which he never by
any chance finished. He was, moreover, .gelfish, close-fisted,
and yet extravagant; or, in other words, he lavished money
only upon himself; he was fractious, aggressive, and indis-
creet, making mischief for pure love of mischief.
Bixioii was especially given to attacking the weak; he
respected nothing and no one ; he believed neither in France,
nor God, nor Art, in neither Greek nor Turk, nor Champ-
d'Asile, nor in the Monarchy ; and he made a point of jeering
at everything which he did not understand. He was the ver}''
first to put a black priest's cap on Charles X.'s head on five-
franc pieces. He took off Dr. Gall at his lectures till the
most closely-buttoned diploraate must have choked with
laughter. It was a standing joke with this formidable wag
to heat the office stoves so hot that if any one imprudently
ventured out of the sudatorium he was prett}^ certain to catch
cold; while Bixiou enjoyed the further satisfaction of wast-
ing the fuel supplied by the Government. Bixiou M^as not
an ordinary man in his hoaxes ; he varied them with so much
ingenuity that somebody was invariably taken in. He guessed
every one's wishes; this was the secret of his success in this
line ; he knew the way to every castle in Spain ; and a man is
easy to hoax through his day-dreams, because he is a willing
accomplice. Bixiou would draw you out for hours together.
And yet, though Bixiou was a profound observer, though he
displayed extraordinary tact for purposes of quizzing, he could
not apply his aptitude to the purpose of making other men
useful to him, nor to the art of getting on in life. He liked
best of all to torment la Billardiere junior, his pet aversion
and nightmare; but nevertheless he coaxed and flattered the
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 243
young fellow the better to quiz him. He used to send him
love-letters signed "Comtesse de M " or "Marquise de
B ", making an appointment under the clock in the foyer
of the Opera at Shrovetide, and then after making a public
exhibition of the young man he would let loose a grisette
upon him. He made common cause with Dutocq (whom he
regarded as a serious hoaxer) ; he made it a labor of love to
support him in his detestation of Rabourdin and his praises
of Baudoyer.
Jean Jacques Bixiou was the grandson of a Paris grocer.
His father died as a colonel in the army, leaving the boy
to the care of his grandmother, who had lost her husband and
married one Descoings, her shopman. Descoings died in
1832. When Bixiou left school and looked about for some
means of earning a livelihood, he tried Art for a while ; but
in spite of his friendship for Joseph Bridau, a friend of
childhood, he gave up painting for caricatures, and vignettes,
and the kind of work known twenty years afterwards as book
illustration. The influence of the Dues de Maufrigneuse and
de Rhetore (whose acquaintance he made through opera-
dancers) procured him his place in 1819. He was on the
best of terms with des Lupeaulx, whom he met in society as
an equal; he talked familiarly to du Bruel; he was a living
proof of Rabourdin's observations on the continual process
of destruction at work in the administrative hierarchy of
Paris, when a man acquired personal importance outside the
office. Short but well made, small of feature, remarkable for
a vague resemblance to Napoleon; a young man of twenty-
seven, with thin lips, a flat, perpendicular chin, fair hair,
auburn whiskers, sparkling eyes, and a caustic voice — here
you have Bixiou. All senses and intellect, he spoiled his
career by an unbridled love of pleasure, which plunged him
into continual dissipation. He was an intrepid man of pleas-
ure; he ran about after grisettes, smoked, dined, and supped,
and told good stories, everywhere adapting himself to his
company, and shining behind the scenes, at a grisettes' ball,
or the Allee des Veuves. At table or as one of a pleasure
244 THE CxOVERNMENT CLERKS
party Bixiou was equally astonishing; he was equally alert
and in spirits at midnight in the street, or at his first waking
in the morning; but, like most great comic actors, he was
gloomy and depressed when by himself. Launched forth into a
world of actors, actresses, writers, artists, and a certain kind of
women whose riches are apt to take wings, he lived well, he went
to the theatre without payment, he played at Frascati's, and
often won. He was, in truth, profoundly an artist, but only
by flashes; life for him was a sort of swing on which he
swayed to and fro without troubling himself about the moment
when the cord would break. Among people accustomed to a
brilliant display of intellect, Bixiou was in great request for
the sake of his liveliness and prodigality of ideas; but none
of his friends liked him. He could not resist the temptation
of an epigram; he sacrificed his neighbor on either hand at
dinner before the first course was over. In spite of his super-
ficial gaiety, a certain secret discontent with his social position
crept into his conversation ; he aspired to something better,
and the fatal lurking imp in his character would not permit
him to assume the gravity which makes so much impression
on fools. He lived in chambers in the Eue de Ponthieu; it
was a regular bivouac ; the three rooms were given up to the
disorder of a bachelor establishment. Often he would talk
of leaving France to try a violent assault on fortune in
America. Xo fortune-teller could have predicted his future,
for all his talents were incomplete ; he could not work hard
and steadily ; he was always intoxicated with pleasure, always
behaving as if the world were to come to an end on the mor-
row.
As to dress, his claim was that he was not ridiculous on
that score; and, perhaps, he was the one man in the depart-
ment of whom it would not be said, "There goes a Govern-
ment clerk !" He wore elegant boots, black trousers witli
straps to them, a fancy waistcoat, a cravat (the eternal gift
of the grisette), a hat from Bandoni's, and dark kid gloves.
His bearing was not ungraceful, being both easy and un-
affected. So it came to pass that when summoned to hear a
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 245
leprimand from des Lupeaulx, after carrying his insolence
towards the Baron de la Billardiere a little too far, he was
content to rejoin, "You would take me on again for the sake
of my clothes." And des Lupeaulx could not help laugh-
ing.
The most pleasing hoax ever perpetrated by Bixiou in the
offices was devised for Godard's benefit. To him Bixiou pre- ..-ff'J
sented a Chinese butterfly, which tlie senior clerk put in his
collection, and exhibits to this day; he has not yet found
out that it is a piece of painted paper. Bixiou had the
patience to elaborate a masterpiece for the sake of playing a
trick upon the chief clerk's assistant.
The devil always provides a Bixiou with a victim. Baudoyer s
office accordingly contained a butt, a poor copying-clerk,
aged two-and-twenty. Auguste-Jean-Fran^ois Minard, for
that was his name, was in receipt of a salary of fifteen hundred
francs. He had married for love. His wife was a door-
keeper's daughter, an artificial-flower maker, who worked at
home for Mile. Godard. Minard had seen the girl in the*
shop in the Rue de Richelieu. Zelie Lorain, in the days
before her marriage, had many dreams of changing her sta-
tion in life. She had been trained at the Conservatoire as
dancer, singer, and actress by turns ; and often she had thought
of doing as many other girls did, but the fear that things
might turn out badly for her, and she might sink to un-
speakable depths, had kept Zelie in the paths of virtue. She
was revolving all kinds of hazy projects in her mind when
Minard came forward with his offer of marriage and gave
them a definite shape. Zelie was earning five hundred francs
a year; Minard had fifteen hundred. In the belief that two
persons can live on two thousand francs, they were
married without settlements and in the most economical fash-
ion. The pair of turtle-doves found a nest on a third floor
near the Barriere de Courcelles, at a rent of a hundred crowns.
There was a very neat little kitchen, with a cheap plaid paper
at fifteen sous the piece upon the walls, a brick floor as-
siduously beeswaxed and polished, walnut-wood furniture,
246 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
and white cotton curtains in the windows; there was a room
in which Zelie made her flowers; a parlor beyond, with a
round table in the middle, a looking-glass on the w^all, a
clock representing a revolving crystal fountain, dark haircloth
chairs, and gilt candlesticks in gauze covers ; and a blue-and-
white bedroom, with a mahogany bedstead, a bureau, a bit
of striped carpet at the bed-foot, half a dozen easy-chairs
and four chairs, and a little cherry-wood cot in the corner
where the little ones, a boy and girl, used to sleep. Zelie
nursed her children herself, did the cooking and the work of
the house, and made her flowers. There was something touch-
ing in their happ}*, hardworking, unpretending comfort. As
soon as Zelie felt that Minard loved her, she loved him with
all her heart. Love draws love; it is the "deep calling unto
deep" of the Bible.
Minard, poor fellow, used to leave his wife asleep in bed
in the morning and do her marketing for her. He took the
finished flowers to the shop on his way to the office of a morn-
ing, and bought the materials as he came home in the after-
noon. Then, as he waited for dinner, he cut or stamped out
the petals, made the stalks, and mixed the colors for her.
The little, thin, slight, nervous man, with the curled chestnut
hair, clear hazel eyes, and dazzlingly fair but freckled com-
plexion, possessed a quiet and unboasting courage below the
surface. He could write as well as Vimeux. At the office
he kept himself to himself, did his work, and maintained the
reserve of a thoughtful man whose life is hard. Bixiou, the
pitiless, nicknamed him "the white rabbit," on account of
his white eyelashes and scanty e3'ebrows. Minard was a
Eabourdin on a lower level. He was burning with a desire
to put his Zelie in a good position ; he wanted to make a for-
tune quickly, and to this end he was trvdng to hit upon an
idea, a discovery, or an improvement in the ocean of Parisian
industries and cravings for new luxur3\ Minard's seeming
stupidity was the result of mental tension ; he went from the
Double Pate des Sultanes to Cephalic Oil; from phosphorus
boxes to portable gas ; from hinged clogs to hydrostatic lamps.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 247
making the entire round of the infinitesimally small details
of material civilization. He bore Bixiou's jests as a busy man
bears with the buzzing of a ily ; he never even lost his temper.
And Bixiou, quick-witted though he was, never suspected the
depth of contempt that Minard felt for him. Minard re-
garded a quarrel with Bixiou as a waste of time, and so at
length he had tired out his persecutor.
Minard was very plainly dressed at the office; he wore
trousers of drill till October, shoes and gaiters, a mohair
waistcoat, a beaver-cloth coat in winter and twill in summer,
and a straw or silk hat according to the season, for Zelie was
his pride. He would have gone without food to buy a new
dress for her. He breakfasted at home with his wife, and
ate nothing till he returned. Once a month he took Zelie
to the theatre with a ticket given by du Bruel or Bixiou ; for
Bixiou did all sorts of things, even a kindness now and again.
On these occasions Zelie's mother left her porter's robm to
look after the baby. Minard had succeeded to Vimeux's
place in Baudoyer's office.
Mme. and M. Minard paid their calls in person on New
Year's Day. People used to wonder how the wife of a pox)r
clerk on fifteen hundred francs a year could manage to keep
her husband in a suit of hlack, and afford to drive in a cab,
and to wear embroidered muslin dresses and silk petticoats,
a Tuscan straw bonnet with flowers in it, prunella shoes,
magnificent fichus, and a Chinese parasol, and 3^et be virtuous ;
Avhile Mme. Colleville or such and such a "lady" could scarcely
make both ends meet on two thousand four hundred francs.
Two of the clerks were friends to a ridiculous degree, for
anything is matter for a joke in a Government office. One of
these was a senior draughting-clerk in Baudoyer's office; he
had been chief clerk's assistant, and even chief clerk, for
some considerable time during the Restoration. Colleville,
for that was his name, had in Mme. Colleville a wife as much
above the ordinary level in her way as Mme. Eabourdin in
another. Colleville, the son of a first violin at the Opera,
had been smitten with the daughter of a well-laioAATi opera-
248 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
dancer. Some clever and charming Parisiennes can make
their husbands happy without losing their liberty; Mnie.
Colleville was one of these. She made Colleville's house a
meeting-place for orators of the Chamber and the best artists
of the day. People were apt to forget how humble a place
Colleville occupied in his own house. Flavie was a little too
prolific ; her conduct offered such a handle to gossip that Mme.
Eabourdin had refused all her invitations.
Colleville's friend, one Thuillier, was senior draughting-
clerk in Rabourdin's office; and while he occupied precisely
the same position, his career in the service had been cut short
for the same reasons. If any one knew Colleville, he knew
Thuillier, and vice versa. It had so fallen out that tl:ey
both entered the office at the same time, and their friendship
arose out of this coincidence. Pretty Mme. Colleville (so it
was said among the clerks) had not repulsed Thuillier's as-
siduities. Thuillier's wife had brought him no children.
Thuillier, otherwise "Beau Thuillier," had been a lady-killer
in his youth, and now was as idle as Colleville was industrious.
Colleville not only played the first clarionet at the Opera-
Comique — he kept tradesmen's books in the morning before he
went to the office, and worked very hard to bring up his family
although he did not lack influence. Others regarded him as
a very shrewd individual, and so much the more so because he
hid his ambitions under a semblance of indifference. To all
appearance he was satisfied with his lot; he liked work; he
found everybody, even to the chiefs themselves, inclined to aid
so brave a struggle for a livelihood. Only recently, ^\ithin
the last few days in fact, Mme. Colleville had reformed her
ways, and seemed to be tending towards religion ; whereupon
a rumor went abroad through the offices that the lady meant to
betake herself to the Congregation in search of some more
certain support than the famous orator Francois Keller, for
his influence hitherto had failed to procure a good place for
Colleville. Flavie had previously addressed herself (it was
one of the mistakes of her life) to des Lupeaulx.
Colleville had a mania for reading the fortunes of famous
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 243
men in anagrams made by their names. He would spend
whole months in arranging and rearranging the letters to dis-
cover some significance in them. In Revolution frangaise,
he discovered Un Corse la finira; — Vierge de son marl in
Marie de Vigneros, Cardinal de Richelieu's niece; — Henrici
mei casta dea in Catharina de Medicis; — Eh! cest large nez
in Charles Genest, the Abbe whose big nose amused the Due
de Bourgogne so much at the Court of Louis XIV. All ana-
grams known to history had set Colleville wondering. He
raised the play on v/ords into a science; a man's fate (accord-
ing to him) was written in a phrase composed of the letters
of his name, style, and titles. Ever since Charles X. came to
the throne he had been busy with that monarch's anagram.
Thuillier maintained that an anagram was a pun in letters;
but Thuillier was rather given to puns. Colleville, a man of
generous nature, was bound by a well-nigh indissoluble friend-
ship to Thuillier, a pattern of an egoist ! It was an insoluble
problem, though many of the clerks explained it by the ob-
servation that "Thuillier is well to do, and Colleville's family
is a heavy burden !" And, truth to say, Thuillier was sup-
posed to supplement his salary by lending money out at in-
terest. Men in business often sent to ask to speak with him,
and Thuillier would go down for a few minutes' talk with
them in the courtyard; but these interviews were undertaken
on account of his sister. Mile. Thuillier. The friendship
thus consolidated by time was based upon events and attach-
ments that came about naturally enough ; but the story has
been given elsewhere,* and critics might complain of the
tedious length of it if it were repeated. Still, it is perhaps
worth while to point out that while a great deal was known in
the offices as to Mme. Colleville, the clerks scarcely knew
that there was a Mme. Thuillier. Colleville, the active man
with a burdensome family of children, was fat, flourishing,
and Jolly ; while Thuillier, the "buck of the Empire," with his
idle ways and no apparent cares, was slender in figure,
haggard, and almost melancholy to behold.
' In Les Petits Bourgeois.
250 THE GOA^ERNMENT CLERKS
"We do not know whether our friendships spring from our
unlikeness or likeness to each other/' Rabourdin would say,
in allusion to the pair.
Chazelle and Paulmier, in direct contrast to the Siamese
twins, were always at war with each other. One of them
smoked, the other took snuff, and the pair quarreled in-
cessantly as to the best way of using tobacco. One failing
common to both made them equally tiresome to their fellow-
clerks — they were perpetually squabbling over the cost of
commodities, the price of green peas or mackerel, the amounts
paid by their colleagues for hats, boots, coats, umbrellas, ties,
and gloves. Each bragged of his new discoveries, and always
kept them to himself. Chazelle collected bookseller's pros-
pectuses and pictorial placards and designs; but he never
subscribed to anything. Paulmier, Chazelle's fellow-chatter-
box, went once to the great Dauriat to congratulate him on
bringing out books printed on hot-pressed paper with printed
covers, and bade him persevere in the path of improvements
— and Paulmier had not a book in his possession ! Chazelle,
being henpecked at home, tried to give himself independent
airs abroad, and supplied Paulmier with endless gibes; while
Paulmier, a bachelor, fasted as frequently as Vimeux him-
self, and his threadbare clothes and thinly disguised poverty
furnished Chazelle with an inexhaustible text. Chazelle and
Paulmier were both visibly increasing in waist girth ;
Chazelle's small, rotund, pointed stomach had the impudence,
according to Bixiou, to be always first, Paulmier's fluctuated
from right to left ; Bixiou had them measured once or so in a
c[uarter. Both were between thirty and fort}^, and both were
sufficiently vapid; they did nothing after hours. They were
specimens of your thoroughbred Government clerk — their
brains had been addled with scribbling and long continuance
in the service. Chazelle used to doze over his work, while the
pen which he still held in his hand marked his breathings
with little dots on the paper. Then Paulmier would say that
Chazell's wife gave him no rest at night. And Chazello
would retort that Paulmier had taken drua:s for four months
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 251
out of the twelve, and prophesy that a grizette would be the
death of him. Whereupon Paulmier would demonstrate that
Chazelle was in the habit of marking the almanac when Mme.
Chazelle showed herself complaisant. By dint of washing
their dirty linen in public, and flinging particulars of their
domestic life at one another, the pair had won a fairly-merited
and general contempt. "Do you take me for a Chazelle?"
was a remark that put an end to a wearisome discussion.
M. Poiret Junior was so called to distinguish him from an
elder brother who had left the service. Poiret senior had
retired to the Maison Vauquer, at which boarding-house Poiret
junior occasionally dined, meaning likewise to retire thither
some day for good. Poiret junior had been thirty years in the
department. Every action in the poor creature's life was part
of a routine; Nature herself is more variable in her revolu-
tions. He always put his things in the same place, laid his
pen on the same mark in the grain of the wood, sat down in his
place at the same hour, and went to warm himself at the
stove at the same minute; for his one vanity consisted in
wearing an infallible watch, though he always set it daily by
the clock of the Hotel de Ville, which he passed on his way
from the Eue du Martroi.
Between six and eight o'clock in the morning Poiret made
up the books of a large draper's shop in the Eue Saint-
Antoine ; from six to eight in the evening he again acted as
book-keeper to the firm of Camusot in the Rue des Bourdon-
nais. In this way he made an income of a thousand crowns
a year, including his salary. By this time he was within a
few months of his retirement upon a pension, and therefore
treated office intrigues with much indifference. Eetirement
had already dealt Poiret senior his deathblow; and probably
when Poiret junior should no longer be obliged to walk daily
from the Eue du Martroi to the office, to sit on his chair at a
table and copy out documents daily, he too would age very
quickly. Poiret junior collected back numbers of the
Moniteur and of the newspaper to which the clerks subscribed.
He achieved this with a collector's enthusiasm. If a number
252 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
was mislaid, or if one of the clerks took away a copy anil
forgot to bring it back again, Poiret junior went forthwitli
to the newspaper office to ask for another copy, and returned
delighted with the cashier's politeness. He always came in
contact with a charming young fellow; journalists, according
to him, were pleasant and little known people. Poiret junior
was a man of average height, with dull eyes, a feeble, color-
less expression, a tanned skin puckered into gray wrinkles
with small bluish spots scattered over them, a snub nose, and
a sunken mouth, in which one or two bad teeth still lingered
on. Thuillier used to say that it was useless for Poiret to
look in the mirror, because he had lost his eye-teeth.* His
long, thin arms terminated in big hands without any pre-
tension to whiteness ; his gray hair, flattened down on his head
by the pressure of his hat, gave him something of a clerical
appearance; a resemblance the less welcome to him, because
though he was not able to give an account of his religious
opinions, he hated priests and ecclesiastics of every sort and
description. This antipathy, however, did not prevent him
from feeling an extreme attachment for the Government,
whatever it might happen to be. Even in the very coldest
weather, Poiret never buttoned his old-fashioned greatcoat,
or wore any but laced shoes or black trousers. He had gone
to the same shops for thirty years. When his tailor died, he
asked for leave to go to the funeral, shook hands at the
graveside with the man's son, and assured him of his custom.
Poiret was on friendly terms with all his tradesmen ; he took
an interest in their atfairs, chatted with them, listened to
the tale of their grievances, and paid promptly. If he had
occasion to write to make a change in an order, he observed
the utmost ceremony, dating the letter, and beginning with
"Monsieur" on a separate line; then he took a rough copy,
and kept it in a pasteboard case, labeled "My Correspondence."
No life could be more methodical. Poiret kept every
* Parce qu'il ne se voyait pas dedans {de dents). Here, as in many other instances,
it is only possible to suggest in the English version that a pun has been made in the
French.— 5fV.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 253
receipted bill, however small the amount; and all his private
account books, 3^ear by year, since he came into the office,
were put away in paper covers. He dined for a fixed sum per
month at the same eating-house (the sign of the Sucking
Calf, in the Place du Chatelet), and at the same table (the
waiters used to keep his place for him) ; and as he never gave
The Golden Cocoon^ the famous silk-mercer's establishment,
so much as five minutes more than the due time, he always
reached the Cafe David, the most famous cafe in the Quarter,
at half-past eight, and stayed there till eleven o'clock. He
had frequented that cafe likewise for thirty years, and
punctually took his havaroise at half-past ten; listening to
the political discussions with his arms crossed on his walking-
stick, and his chin on his right hand, but he never took part
in them. The lady at the desk was the one woman with
whom he liked to converse; to her ears he confided all the
little events of his daily existence, for he sat at a table close
beside her. Sometimes he would play at dominoes, the one
game that he had managed to learn ; but if his partners failed
to appear, Poiret was occasionally seen to dose, with his back
against the panels, while the newspaper frame in his hand
sank down on the slab before him.
Poiret took an interest in all that went on in Paris. He
spent Sunday in looking round at buildings in course of
construction ; he would talk to the pensioner who sees that no
one goes inside the hoardings, and fret over the delays, the
lack of money or of building materials, and other obstacles
in the way of the architect. He was heard to say, "I have seen
the Louvre rise from its ruins; I saw the first beginnings of
the Place du Chatelet, the Quai aux Fleurs, and the Markets."
He and his brother were born at Troyes ; their father, a clerk
of a farmer of taxes, had sent them both to Paris to learn
their business in a Government office. Their mother brought
a notorious life to a disastrous close ; for the brothers learned
to their sorrow that she died in the hospital at Troyes, in spite
of frequent remittances. And not merely did they vow them
and there never to marry, but held children in abhorrence;
254 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
they could not feel at ease with them ; they feared them much
as others might fear lunatics, and scrutinized them with
haggard eyes. Drudgery had crushed all the life out of them
both in Eobert Lindet's time. The Government had not
treated them justly, but they thought themselves lucky to keep
their heads on their shoulders, and only grumbled between
themselves at the ingratitude of the administration — for they
had "organized" the "Maximum" ! When the before-men-
tioned trick was pla3^ed upon Phellion, and his famous
sentence was taken to Rabourdin for correction, Poiret took
the draughting-clerk aside into the corridor to say, "You
may be sure, sir, that I opposed it with all my might."
Poiret had never been outside Paris since he came into
the city. He began from the first to keep a diary, in which
he set out the principal events of the day. Du Bruel told
him that Byron had done the same; the comparison over-
whelmed Poiret with joy, and induced him to buy a copy of
Chastopalli's translation of Byron's works, of which he un-
derstood not a word. At the office he was often seen in a
melancholy attitude; he looked as if he were meditating
deeply, but his mind was a blank. He did not know a single
one of his fellow-lodgers; he went about with the key of his
room in his pockets. On New Year's Day he left a card
himself on every clerk in the division, and paid no visits.
Once, it was in the dog-days, Bixiou took it into his
head to grease the inside of Poiret's hat with lard. Poiret
junior (he was then fifty-two years of age) had worn the
hat for nine whole years; Bixiou had never seen him in any
other. Bixiou had dreamed of the hat of nights ; it w^as before
his eyes while he ate; and in the interests of his digestion,
he made up his mind to rid the office of the unclean thing.
Poiret junior went out towards four o'clock. He went his
way through the streets of Paris, in a tropical heat, for the
sun's rays were reflected back again from the walls and the
pavement. Suddenly he felt that his head was streaming
with perspiration ; and he seldom perspired. Deeming that
he was ill, or on the verge of an illness, he went home instead
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 255
of repairing to the Sucking Calf, took out his diary, and made
the following entry:
"This day, July 3rd, 1823, surprised by an unaccountable
perspiration, possibly a symptom of the sweating sickness,
a malady peculiar to Champagne. Incline to consult Dr.
Haudry. First felt the attack by the Quai d'Ecole.''
Suddenly, as he wrote bareheaded, it struck him that the
supposed sweat arose from some external cause. He wiped
his countenance and examined his hat ; but he did not venture
to undo the lining, and could make nothing of it. Subse-
quently he made another entry in the diary :
"Took the hat to the Sieur Tournan, hatter in the Eue
Saint-Martin ; seeing that I suspect that something else caused
the sweat, which in that case would not be a sweat at all, but
simply the effect of an addition of some kind, more or less
recently made."
M. Tournan immediately detected the presence of a fatty
substance obtained by distillation from a hog or sow, and
pointed it out to his customer. Poiret departed in a hat
lent my M. Tournan till the new one should be ready for
him ; but before he went to bed he added another sentence to
his diary:
"It has been ascertained that my hat contained lard, other-
wise hog's fat."
The inexplicable fact occupied Poiret's mind for a fort-
night; he never could understand how the phenomenon had
been brought about. There was talk at the office of showers of
frogs and other canicular portents; a portrait of Napoleon
had been found in a elm-tree root; all kinds of grotesque
freaks of natural history cropped up. Vimeux told him one
day that he, Vimeux, had had his face dyed black by his hat.
256 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
and added that hatters sold terrible trash. Poiret went sev-
eral times after that to Sieur Tournan's to reassure his mind
as to the processes of manufacture.
There was yet another clerk in Rabourdin's ofhce. This
personage avowedhv had the courage of his opinions, professed
the politics of the Left Centre, and worked himself into in-
dignation over the unlucky white slaves in Baudoyers office,
and against that gentleman's tyranny. Fleufy openly took
in an Opposition sheet, wore a wide-brimmed gray felt hat,
blue trousers with red stripes, a blue waistcoat adorned with
gilt buttons, and a double-breasted overcoat that made him
look like a quartermaster in the gendarmerie. His principles
remained unshaken, and the administration nevertheless con-
tinued to employ him. Yet he prophesied evil of the Govern-
ment if it persisted in mixing politics and religion. He
made no secret of his predilection for iSTapoleon, especially
since the great man's death made a dead letter of the law
against all partisans of the "usurper.'' Fleury, ex-captain of
a regiment of the line under the Emperor, a tall, fine, dark-
haired fellow, was a money-taker at the Cirque-Olympique.
Bixiou had never indulged in a caricature of him; for the
rough trooper was not only a very good shot and a first-rate
swordsman, but he appeared capable of going to brutal ex-
tremities upon occasion. Fleury was a zealous subscriber to
Victoires et ConquUes; but he declined to pay, and kept the
issues as they appeared, basing his refusal upon the fact that
the number stated in the prospectus had been exceeded.
He worshiped M, Rabourdin, for M. Rabourdin had in-
terfered to save him from dismissal. A remark once escaped
the ex-warrior, to the effect that if anything should come to
M. Rabourdin through anybody else, he, Fleury, would kill
that some one else; and Dutocq ever since went m such fear
of Fleury, that he fawned upon him.
Fleury was overburdened with debts. He played his creditors
all kinds of tricks. Being expert in the lav/, he never by any
chance put his name to a bill ; and as he himself had attached
his salars' in the names of fictitious creditors, he drew pretty
nearly the whole of it. He had formed a very intimate eon-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 257
nection with a super at the Porte-Saint-Martin, and his furni-
ture was removed to her house. So he played ecarte joyously,
and charmed social gatherings with his talents; he could
drink off a glass of champagne at a draught without moisten-
ing his lips, and he knew all Beranger's songs by heart. His
voice was still fine and sonorous ; he allowed it to be seen that
he was proud of it. His three great men were Napoleon,
Bolivar, and Beranger. Foy, Laffitte, and Casimir Delavigne
only enjoyed his esteem. Fleury, as you guess, was a man of
the South ; he was pretty sure to end as the responsible editor
of some Liberal paper.
Desroys was the mysterious man of the division. He rubbed
shoulders with no one, talked little, and hid his life so suc-
cessfully that no one knew v.^here he lived, nor how he lived, nor
who his protectors were. Seeking a reason for this silence, some
held that Desroys was one of the Carbonari, and some that he
was an Orleanist ; some said that'he was a spy, others that he
was a deep individual. But Desroys was simply the son of a
member of the Convention who had not voted for the king's
death. Eeserved and cold by temperament, he had formed his
own conclusions of the world, and looked to no one but himself.
As a Republican in secret, an admirer of Paul Louis Courier,
and a friend of Michel Chrestien's, he was waiting till time
and the common-sense of the majority should bring about the
triumph of his political opinions in Europe. Wherefore
his dreams were of Young Germany and Young Italy. His
heart swelled high with that unintelligent collective affection
for the species, which must be called "humanitarianism," eld-
est child of a defunct philosophy, an affection which is to
the divine charity of the Catholic religion as system is to art.
as reasoning is to effort. This conscientious political Puri-
tan, this apostle of an impossible Equality, regretted that
penury forced him into the service of the Government: he
was trying to get employment in some coach ofifice. Lean and
lank, prosy and serious, as a man may be expected to be if
he feels that he may be called upon some day to give his head
for the great object of his life, Desroys lived on a page of
Vol. 13—44
258 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Volney, studied St. Just, and was engaged upon a rehabilita-
tion of Eobespierre, considered as a continuer of the work of
Jesus Christ.
One more among these personages deserves a stroke or
two of the pencil. This is little la Billardiere. For his
misfortune he had lost his mother. He had interest with
the minister ; he was exempt from the rough and ready treat-
ment that he should have received from "la Place-Baudoyer" ;
and all the ministerial salons were open to him. Everybody
1^ detested the youth for his insolence and conceit. Heads of
departments were civil to him, but the clerks had put him
beyond the pale of good fellowship with a grotesque politeness
invented for his benefit. Little la Billardiere was a tall,
slim, wizened youth of two-and-twenty, with the manners of
an Englishman ; his dandy's airs were an affront to the office ;
he came to it scented and curled, with impeccable collars and
primrose-colored gloves, and a constantly renewed hat lining ;
he carried an eyeglass; he breakfasted at the Palais Eoyal.
A veneer of manner which did not seem altogether to belong
to him covered his natural stupidity. Benjamin de la
Billardiere had an excellent opinion of himself ; he had every
aristocratic defect, and no corresponding graces. He felt
quite sure of being "somebody,'' and had thoughts of writing
a book ; he would gain the Cross as an author and set it down
to his administrative talents. So he cajoled Bixiou with a
view to exploiting him, but as yet he had not ventured to
broach the subject. This noble heart was waiting impatiently
for the death of the father who had but lately been made a
baron. "The Chevalier de la Billardiere" (so his name ap-
peared on his cards) had his armorial bearings framed and
hung up at the office, to wit, sable, two swords saltire-wise,
on a chief azure, three stars, and the motto: a toujours
FiDELE. He had a craze for talking of heraldry. Once he
asked the young Vicomte de Portenduere why his arms were
blazoned thus, and drew down upon himself the neat reply,
"It was none of my doing." Little la Billardiere talked
much of his devotion to the Monarchy, and of the Dauphiness'
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 259
graciousness to him. He was on very good terms with des
Lupeaulx, often breakfasted with him, and believed that des
Lupeaulx was his friend. Bixiou, posing as his mentor, had
hopes of ridding the division, and France likewise, of the
young coxcomb by plunging him into dissipation > and he made
no secret of his intentions.
Such were the principal figures in la Billardiere's division.
Some others there were besides which more or less approached
these types in habits of life or appearance. Baudoyer's office
boasted various examples of the genus clerk in divers bald-
fronted, chilly mortals, with frames well wadded round with
flannel. These individuals carried thorn-sticks, wore thread-
bare clothes, and never were seen without an umbrella. They
perched, as a rule, on fifth floors, and cultivated flowers at
that height. Clerks of this type rank half-way between the
prosperous porter .and the needy artisan; they are too far
from the administrative centre to hope for any promotion
whatsoever ; they are pawns upon the bureaucratic chessboard.
When their turn comes to go on guard, they rejoice to get a
day away from the office. There is nothing that they will
not do for extras. How they exist at all their very employers
would be puzzled to say ; their lives are an indictment against
the State that assuredly causes the misery by accepting such
a condition of things.
At sight of their strange faces it is hard to decide whether
these quill-bearing mammals become cretinous at their task,
or whether, on the other hand, they would never have under-
taken it if they had not been, to some extent, cretins from
birth. Perhaps Nature and the Government may divide the
responsibility between them. "Villagers," according to an
unknown writer, "are submitted to the influences of at-
mospheric conditions and surrounding circumstances. They
do not seek to explain the fact to themselves. They are in
a manner identified with their natural surroundings. Slowly
and imperceptibly the ideas and ways of feeling awakened by
those surroundings will permeate their being, and come to
the surface of their lives, in their personal appearance and in
260 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
their actions, with variations for each individual organization
and temperament. And thus, if any student feels attracted
to the little known and fruitful field of physiological inquiry,
which includes the effects produced by external natural agents
upon human character, for him the villager becomes a most
interesting and trustworthy book." But for the employe,
^STature is replaced by the office ; his horizon is bounded upon
all sides by green pasteboard cases. For him atmospheric in-
fluences mean the air of the corridors, the stuffy atmosphere
of unventilated rooms where men are crowded together; and
the odor of paper and quills. A floor of bare bricks or
parquetry, bestrewn with strange litter, and besprinkled from
the messenger's watering-can, is the scene of his labors; his
sky is the ceiling, to which his yawns are addressed : his ele-
ment is dust. The above remarks on the villager might have
been meant for the clerk; he too is ^'identified" with his sur-
roundings. The sun scarcely shines into the horrid dens
known as public offices ; the thinking powers of their occupants
are strictly confined to a monotonous round. Their prototype,
the mill-horse, j^awns hideously over such work, and cannot
stand it for long. And since several learned doctors see rea-
son to dread the effects of such half-barbarous, half-civilized
surroundings upon the mental constitution of human beings
pent up among them, Eabourdin sureh^ was profoundly right
.when he proposed to cut down the number of the staff, and
asked for heavy salaries and hard work for them. Men are
not bored when they have great things to do.
As government offices are at present constituted, four hours
out of the nine which the clerks are supposed to give to the
State are wasted, as will presently be seen, over talks,
anecdotes, and squabbles, and, more than all, over office in-
trigues. You do not know, unless you frequent government
offices, how much the clerks' little world resembles the world
of school ; the similarity strikes you wherever men live to-
gether ; and in the army or the laws-courts you find the school
again on a rnther larger scale. The body of clerks, thus pent
up for eight hours at a stretch, looked upon the offices as
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 26l
(Qlasgcooms in which a certain amount of lessons must be
done. The master on duty was called the head of the
division; extra pay took the place of good conduct prizes,
and always fell to favorites. They teased and disliked each
other, and yet there was a sort of good-fellowship among them
— though, even so, it was cooler than the same feeling in a
regiment; and in the regiment, again, it is not so strong as
it is am.ong schoolboys. As a man advances in life, egoism
develops with his growth and slackens the secondary ties of
affection. What is an office, in short, but a world in minia-
ture?— a world with its unaccountable freaks, its friendships
and hatreds, its envy and greed, its continual movement to
the front? There, too, is the light talk that makes many a
wound, and espionage that never ceases.
At this particular moment the whole division headed by
M. le Baron de la Billardiere was shaken by an extraordinary
commotion; and, indeed, coming events fully justified the
excitement, for heads of divisions do not die every day; and
no tontine insurance association can calculate the probabili-
ties of life and death with more sagacity than a government
office. In government clerks, as in children, self-interest
leaves no room for pity; but the clerk has hypocrisy in ad-
dition.
Towards eight o'clock Baudoyer's staff were taking their
places, whereas Rabourdin's clerks had scarcely begun to put
in an appearance at nine ; and yet the work was done much
more quickly in the latter office. Dutocq had weighty rea-
sons of his own for arriving early. "He had stolen into the
private office the night before, and detected Sebastien in the
act of copying out papers for Rabourdin. He had hidden
himself, and watched Sebastien go out without the papers ; \
and then, feeling sure of finding a tolerably bulky rough draft
and the fair copy, he had hunted through one pasteboard case
after another, till at last he found the terrible list. Hurrying
away to a lithographer's establishment, he had tv,^o impressions
of the sheet taken off with a copying-press, and in this way
became possessed of Rabourdin's own handwriting. Then.
^•A^J ^'
262 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
?
c
to prevent suspicion, he went to the office the first thing m
the morning and put the rough draft back in the case.
Sebastien had stayed till midnight in the Rue Duphot. In
spite of his diligence, hatred was beforehand with him.
Hatred dwelt in the Hue Saint Louis Saint-Honore, whereas
devotion lived in the Rue du Roi Dore in the Marais. Rabour-
din was to feel the effect of that trivial delay through the
rest of his life. Sebastien hurried to open the case, found all
in order, and locked up the rough draft and unfinished copy
in his chief's desk.
On a morning towards the end of December the light is
usually dim; in our offices, indeed, they often work by lamp-
light until ten o'clock. So Sebastien did not notice the mark
of the stone on the paper ; but at half-past nine, when Rabour-
din looked closely at his draft, he saw that it had been sub-
mitted to some copying process ; he was the more likely to see
the traces of the slab, because of late he had been much in-
terested in experiments in lithography, for he thought that a
press might do the work of a copying-clerk.
Rabourdin seated himself in his chair. So deeply was he
absorbed in his reflections, that he took the tongs and began
to build up the fire. Then, curious to know into what hands
his secret had fallen, he sent for Sebastien.
"Did any one come to the office before you?"
"Yes; M. Dutocq."
"Good. He is punctual. Send Antoine to me."
Rabourdin was too magnanimous to cause Sebastien need-
less distress by reproaching him now that the mischief was
done. He said no more about it. Antoine came. Rabourdin
asked if any of the clerks had stayed after four o'clock on the
previous day. Antoine said that M. Dutocq had stayed even
later than M. de la Roche. Rabourdin nodded, and resumed
the course of his reflections.
"Twice I have prevented his dismissal," he said to himself,
"and this is my reward!"
For Rabourdin that morning was to be the solemn crisis
when great captains decide upon a battle after weighing all
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 263
possible consequences. No one better knew the temper of the
offices ; he was perfectly aware that anything resembling
espionage or tale-telling is no more pardoned by clerks than by
schoolboys. The man that can tell tales of his comrades is
disgraced, ruined, and traduced ; ministers in such a case will
drop their instrument. Any man in the service, under these
circumstances, sends in his resignation — no other course is
open to him ; upon his honor there lies a stain that can never
be wiped out. Explanations are useless — nobody wants them,
nobody will listen to them. A cabinet minister in the like
case is a great man; it is his business to choose men; but a
mere subordinate is taken for a spy, no matter what his
motives may be. Even while Eabourdin measured the empti-
ness of this folly, he saw the depths of it — saw, too, that he
must sink. He was not so much overwhelmed as taken by
surprise; so he sat pondering his best course of action in the
matter, and knew nothing of the commotion caused in the
offices by the news of the death of M. de la Billardiere till
he heard of it through young de la Briere, who could ap-
preciate the immense value of the chief clerk.
Meanwhile in the Baudoyer's office (for the clerks were
respectively known as the Baudoyers and the Rabourdins)
Bixiou was giving the details of la Billardiere's last moments
for the benefit of Minard, Desroys, M. Godard (whom, he had
fetched out of his sanctum), and Dutocq. A double motive
had sent the last-named individual hurrying over to the Bau-
doyers,
Bixiou {standing before the stove, holding first one boot and
then the other to the fire to dry the soles). "This morning at
half-past seven I went to inquire after our worthy and revered
director. Chevalier of Christ, et csetera. Et cgetera? My
goodness, I should think so, gentlemen; only yesterday the
Baron was a score of e^ cceteras, and now to-day he is nothing,
not even a government clerk. I asked what sort of a night
he had had. His nurse, who does not die, but surrenders,
told me that towards five o'clock this morning he had felt un-
easy about the Royal Family. He got somebody to read over
264 THE GOVERNMENT CLEEKS
the names of those tliat had sent to make inquiries. Then he
said, 'Fill my snuff-box, give me the newspaper, bring me my
glasses, and change my ribbon of the Legion of Honor, for
it is getting very dirty.' (He wears his orders in bed, you
know.) So he was fully conscious, you see, quite in the posses-
sion of all his faculties and habitual ideas. But, pooh ! ten
minutes afterwards the water had gone up, up, up; up to his
heart and into his lungs. He knew he was dying when he
felt the cysts break. At that supreme moment he showed
what he was — how strong his character, his intellect how vast !
Ah ! some of us did not appreciate him. We used to laugh
at him; we took him for a dunce; for the veriest dunce, did
we not, M. Godard?"
GoDARD. "For my own part, nobody could have a higher
opinion of M. de la Billardiere's talents than I."
Bixiou. "You understood each other."
Godard. "After all, 'twas not a spiteful man. He never
did anybody harm."
Bixiou. "A man must do something if he is to do harm,
and he never did anything. Then if it was not you that
thought him hopelessly inept, it must have been Minard."
MiXARD {shrug gijig his shoulders). "I?"
Bixiou. "Well, then, it was you, Dutocq. {As Dutocq
makes signs of vehement protest.) What? you none of you
thought so ? Good I Everybody here, it seems, took him for
an intellectual Hercules? Very well, you were right; he
made an end like a man of talent, an intelligent man, a great
man, as he was, in fact."
Desroys {growing impatient). "Gracious me ! what has he
done that is so extraordinary? Did he make confession?"
Bixiou. "Yes, sir, and expressed a wish to receive the
sacraments. But do you know how he received them ? He
had himself put into a court suit as Gentleman in Ordinary,
he had all his orders, he even had his hair powdered ; they tied
up his queue (poor queue!) with a new ribbon (and it is only
a man of some cbaracter, I can tell you, that can mind his
p's and queues when he lies a-dying; there are eight of us
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 265
here, and not a single one of us could do it). And that is
not all; you know that celebrated men always make a last
'speech' — that is the English word for a parliamentary gag-
well, he said — what did he say now ? — ah ! yes ; he said, 'I
ought surely to put on my best to receive the King of Heaven,
when I have so many times dressed within an inch of my life
to pay my respects to an earthly sovereign !' Thus ended M.
de la Billardiere ; he might have done it on purpose to justify
the saying of Pythagoras that Sve never know men until they
are dead/ "
CoLLEViLLE (coming in). "At last, gentlemen, I have a
famous piece of news for you "
Omnes. "We know it."
CoLLEViLLE. "I defy you to guess it ! I have been at this
ever since His Majesty's accession to the thrones of France
and Xavarre ; and I finished it last night. It bothered me so
much that Mme. Colleville wanted to know what it was that
worried me so much."
DuTOCQ. "Do you suppose that anybody has time to think
of your anagrams when the highly-respected M. de la Billar-
diere has just died ?"
Colleville. "I recognize Bixiou's hand. I have only
just been to M. de la Billardiere's ; he was still alive, but he
is not expected to last long." ( Godard discovers that he has
been hoaxed, and goes hacTc in disgust to his sanctum.) "But,
gentlemen, you would never guess the events that lie in that
sacramental phrase" (holds out a paper), "Charles Dix, par
la grace de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre."
Godard {coming hack). "Out with it at once, and do not
waste their time."
Colleville (triumphantly, displaying the folded end of
the sheet).
A. H. V. il cedera
De S. C. I. d. partira
En nauf errera
Decede a Gorix.
266 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"All the letters are there: 'To H. Y.' (Henri V.) 'he will
yield' (his crown, that is) ; 'From S. C. 1. d.' (Saint Cloud)
'he will set forth; On a bark' (that means a boat, skiff, vessel,
whatever you like, it is an old French word), 'on a bark he
will wander abroad ' "
DuTOCQ. "What a tissue of absurdities ! How do you
make it out that the King vrill resign his crown to Henri V.,
who, on your showing, would be his grandson, when there is
His Highness the Dauphin in between? You are prophesy-
ing the Dauphin's death anj'how."
Bixiou. "What is Gorix ? A cat's name ?"
CoLLEviLLE {nettled). "It is a lapidar3^'s abbre%'iation
of the name of a town, ni}' dear friend; I looked it up in
Malte-Brun. Gorix, the Latin Gorixia, is situated somewhere
in Bohemia or Hungary ; it is in Austria any way "
Bixiou {interrupting). "Tyrol, Basque provinces, or
South America. You ought to have looked out an air at the
same time so as to play it on the clarionet."
GoDARD {shrugging his shoulders as he goes). "What
rubbish !"
CoLLEViLLE. "Eubbish ! rubbish ! I should be very glad
if you Avould take the trouble to study fatalism, the religion
of the Emperor jSTapoleon."
GoDARD {nettled by Colleville's tone). "M. Colleville,
Bonaparte may be styled 'Emperor* by historians, but in a
Government office he ought not to be recognized in that char-
acter."
Bixiou {smiling). "Find an anagram in that, my good
friend. There ! as for anagrams, I like your wife better.
{sotto voce). She is easier to turn round. — Flavie really
ought to make you chief clerk at some odd moment when she
has time to spare, if it were only to put you out of reach of a
Godard's stupidity "
DuTOCQ {coming to Godard's support). "If it wasn't all
rubbish, you might lose your place, for the things you pro-
phesy are not exactly pleasant for the King; every good
Royalist is bound to assume that when he has been twice in
exile he has seen enough of foreign parts."
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 267
CoLLEViLLE. "If they took away my post, Francois Keller
would walk into your Minister" {deep silence). "Know,
Master Dutocq, that every known anagram has been fulfilled.
Look here ! don't you marry, there is coqu in your name !"
Bixiou. "And D T left over for 'detestable.' '"
DuTOCQ {not apparently put out). "I would rather it
went no further than my name."
Paulmier {aside to Desroys). "Had you there, Master
Colleville !"
DuTOCQ {to Colleville). "Have you done, Xavier Ra-
hourdin, chef de bureau "
Colleville. "Egad, I have."
Bixiou {cutting a pen). "And what did you make out?"
Colleville. "It makes this: D'abord reva bureaux, E. U.
— Do you take it? — Et il eut fin riche. "Which means that
after beginning in the civil service he chucked it over to make
his fortune somewhere else."
DuTOCQ. "It is funny, anyhow."
Bixiou. "And Isidore Baudoyer?"
Colleville {mysteriously). "I would rather not tell
anybody but Thullier."
Bixiou. "Bet you a breakfast I will tell you what it is !"
Colleville. "I will pay if you find out."
Bixiou. "Then you are going to stand treat ; but don't be
vexed, two artists such as you and I will die of laughing.
Isidore Baudoyer gives Ris d'aboyeur d'oie, he laughs at the
fellow that barks at a goose."
Colleville {thunderstruck). "You stole it !"
Bixiou {stiffly). "M. Colleville, do me the honor to be-
lieve that I am so rich in folly that I have no need to steal
from my neighbors."
Baudoyer {a letter-file in his hand). "Talk just a little
louder, gentlemen, I beg; you will bring the office into good
odor. The estimable M. Clergeot, who did me the honor to
come to ask for some information, has had the benefit of
5''our conversation" {goes to Godard's office).
DuTOCQ {aside to Bixiou). "I have something to saj to
you."
268 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Bixiou {fingering Dutocq's waistcoat). "You are wearing
a neat waistcoat which cost you next to nothing, no doubt.
Is that the secret ?"
DuTOCQ. "What? iSText to nothing? I never gave so
much for a waistcoat before. The stuff costs six francs a
yard at the big shop in the Eue de la Paix; it is a fine dull
silk, just the thing for deep mourning."
Bixiou. "You understand prints, but you do not know the
rules of etiquette. One cannot know everything. Silk is not
the proper thing to wear in deep mourning. That is why I
only wear wool myself. M. Eabourdin, M. Clergeot, and the
Minister are all-wool; the Faubourg Saint-Germain is all-
wool. Every one goes about in wool except Minard; he is
afraid that people will take him for a sheep, styled laniger in
"rustical Latin ; and on that pretext he dispensed with mourn-
ing for King Louis XVIIL, a great legislator, a witty man,
the author of the Charter, a king that will hold his own in
history, as he held it everywhere else; for — do j^ou know the
finest touch of character in his life ? No ? — Well, then, when
he received all the allied sovereigns at his second entry, he
walked out first to table."
Paulmier {loohing at Dutocq). "I do not see "
DuTOCQ {looking at Paulmier) . "No more do I."
Bixiou. "You do not understand? Well, then; he did
not regard himself as at home in his own house. It was in-
genious, great, epigrammatic ! The allied sovereigns under-
stood it no more than you do, even when they put their heads
together to make it out. It is true that they were pretty
nearly all of them strangers "
Baudoyer {in his assistant clerTi's sanctum, where he has
been conversing in an undertone beside the fire, while the tall'
went on outside). "Yes, our worthy chief is breathing his
■ last. Both Ministers are there to receive his latest sigh ; my
father-in-law has just been informed of the event. If you
wish to do me a signal service, take a cabriolet and go to
Mme. Baudoyer with the news; M. Saillard cannot leave his
desk, and T dare not leave the office to look after itself. Put
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 269
yourself at Mme. Baudoyer's disposal ; she has her own views,
I believe, and might possibly wish to take several steps
simultaneously" {they go out together).
GoDAED, "M. Bixiou, I am leaving the office for the day,
so will you take my place ?"
Baudoyer {looking benignly at Bixiou). "You might
consult me should occasion require it."
Bixiou. "This time, la Billardiere is really dead!"
DuTOCQ {whispers to Bixiou) . "Look here ! Now is the
time for coming to an understanding about getting on.
Suppose that you are chief clerk and I assistant; what dc
you say?"
Bixiou {shrugging his shoulders). "Come, no nonsense!"
DuTOCQ. "If Baudoyer gets the appointment, Eabourdin
will not stay "on; he will send" in his resignation. Between
ourselYgs^'TBaudoyer is so incompetent that if you- and du
Bruel will not help him he will be cashiered in two months'
time. If I can put two and two together, we will have three
vacant places ahead of us."
Bixiou. "Three places that will be given away under our
noses; they v/ill go to swag-bellied toadies, flunkeys, spies,
and men of the 'Congregation' ; to Colleville here, whose
wife has gone the way of all pretty women, to — a devout end-
ing."
DuTOCQ. "It will go to you, my dear fellow, if for once in
your life you care to employ your wits consistently" {stop-
ping short to note the effect of the adverb upon his listener).
"Let us be open and above-board."
Bixiou (imperturbably) . "What is your game?"
DuTOCQ. "For my own part, I want to be chief clerk's
assistant and nothing else. I know myself; I know that I
have not the ability to be chief, and that you have. Du
Bruel may get la Billardiere's place, and then you would be
chief clerk under him. He will leave you his berth when he
has feathered his nest ; and as for me, with yon to protect me,
I shall potter along till I get m)'^ pension."
Bixiou. "Sly dog. But how do you mean to bring this
270 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
through? It is a matter of forcing a Minister's hand and
spitting out a man of talent. Between ourselves^ Rabourdin
is the only man that is fit to take the division — the depart-
ment, who knows ? And you propose to put that square block
of stupidity, that cube of incompetence. La Place-Baudoyer,
in his stead?"
DuTOCQ {bridling np). "My dear fellow, I can. set the
whole place against Eabourdin ? You know how Fleury loves
him? Well and good, Fleury shall look down upon him."
Bixiou. "To be despised by Fleury !"
DuTOCQ. "Xobody will stand by him. The clerks will go
in a body to the Minister to complain of him; and not our
division only, but Clergeot's division and the Bois-Levants,
all the departments in a mass."
Bixiou. "Just so; cavalry, infantry, artillery, and horse
marines, all to the front ! You are off your head, my dear
fellow ! And what have I, for one, to do in this ?"
DuTOCQ. "Draw a cutting caricature, a thing that a man
cannot get over."
Bixiou. "Are you going to pay for it ?"
DuTOCQ. "A hundred francs."
Bixiou (to himself). "There is something in it, then."
DuTOCQ. "Eabourdin might be dressed as a butcher; but
the likeness must be unmistakable. Find out points of re-
.-emblance between an office and a kitchen; put a larding-
knife in Rabourdin's hand; draw a lot of poultry, give them
the heads of the principal clerks in the department, and put
[hem in a huge coop with 'Dispatch Department' written
over it, and Rabourdin must be supposed to be cutting their
liiroats one after another. There should be geese, you know,
and ducks with faces like ours; just a sort of a likeness, you
understand ! Rabourdin ought to have a fowl in his hand —
Baudoyer, for example, got up as a turkey."
Bixiou. " 'Laughs at those that bark at a goose' " (stares
a long while at Dutocq). "Did you think of this yourself?"
DuTOCQ. "Yes."
Bixiou (to himself). "Violent hatred and talent, it seems.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 271
reach the same end!" {To Dutocq) "My dear fellow, I will
do it'' {Dutocq starts with joy in spite of himself) "if —
{pause) — "if 1 know whom I can look to to back me up; for
if you do not succeed, I shall lose my berth, and I must live.
And what is more, your good-nature is somewhat singular,
my dear colleague."
Dutocq. "Well, do not make the drawing until success is
plain to you "
Bixiou. "Why not make a clean breast of it at once ?"
Dutocq. "I must scent out how things are in the offices
first. We will talk of this again afterwards" {goes).
Bixiou {left standing hy himself in the corridor). "That
stock-fish (for he is more like a fish than a man), that Du-
tocq has got hold of a good idea, I do not know where he
found it. It would be funny if La Place-Baudoyer got la
Billardiere's place ; it would be better than funny ; we should
get something by it." {Goes hacTc to the office). "Gentle-
men, some famous changes v/ill be seen here directly; Daddy
la Billardiere is really dead this time. No humbug ! Word
of honor ! There goes Godard post-haste on an errand for
our revered chief Baudoyer, heir-presumptive to the late la-
mented !" {Mi?iard, Desroys, and Colleville raise their heads
and drop their pens in astonishment; Colleville blows his
nose.) "Some of us will get a step! Colleville is going to
be assistant clerk at least; Minard, perhaps, will be first
draughting-clerk; why not? He is every bit as great a fool
as I am. If you were raised to two thousand five hundred
francs — hey, Minard ! — your little wife would be finely
pleased, and you might buy yourself a pair of boots."
Colleville. "But you have not two thousand five hun-
dred francs yet."
Bixiou. "M. Dutocq gets as much as that in the Ealjour-
dins'. Why should not I within the A^ear? So had M. Bau-
doyer "
Colleville. "That was through M. Saillard's influence.
Not a single draughting-clerk gets so much in Clergeot's
division."
272 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Paulmiee. "By the way ! M. Cochin, may be, has not
three thousand ? He succeeded M. Vavasseur, and M. Vavas-
seur was here for ten years under the Empire on four thou-
sand, he was cut down to three thousand on the first return
of the Bourbons, and died on two thousand five hundred.
But M. Cochin's brother's influence raised it, and so he gets
three."
CoLLEviLLE. "M. Cochin signs himself E. L. L. E. Cochin ;
his name is Emile Louis Lucien Emmanuel, and his anagram
gives Cochenille. Well, and he became a partner in a drug
business in the Rue des Lombards, and the firm of Matifat
made money by speculating in that particular colonial
product."
Bixiou. "Matifat, poor man, he had a year of Florine."
CoLLEviLLE. "Cochin sometimes comes to our parties, for
he is a first-rate performer on the violin." {To Bixiou, who
has not begun to work). "You ought to come to our concert
next Tuesday. They will play a quartette by Eeicha."
Bixiou. "Thanks, I would rather look at the score."
COLLEVILLE. "Do you say that for a joke? For an artist
of your attainments ought surely to be fond of music."
Bixiou. "I am going, but it is for madame's sake."
B a.TJDOY'EB. {returning) . "M. Chazelle not here yet ? Give
him my compliments, gentlemen."
Bixiou {who had put a hat on Chazelle's place as soon as
he heard Baudoyer's footsteps). "Begging your pardon, sir,
he has gone to make an inquiry of the Rabourdin's for 3''ou."
Chazelle {coming in with his hat on his head, misses
Baudoyer) . "Old la Billardiere has gone out, gentlemen !
Rabourdin is head of the division, and Master of Requests !
He has fairly earned his step, he has ! "
Baudoyer {to Chazelle). "You found the appointment
in your second hat, sir, did you not?" {pointing to the hat
on Chazelle' s desk). "This is the third time this month that
you have come in after nine o'clock; if you keep it up, you
will get on, but in what sense remains to be seen." {To
Bixiou, ivlio is reading the newspaper.) "My dear M. Bixiou,
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 273
for pity's sake, leave the paper to these gentlemen (they are
just going to take their breakfasts), and come and set about
to-day's business. I do not know what M. Eabourdin does
with Gabriel ; he keeps him for his own private use, I suppose,
for I have rung three times" {disappears with Bixiou into
Godard's office).
Chazelle. "Cursed luck !"
Paulmier (delighted to tease Chazelle). "So they did not
tell you downstairs that he had gone up? Anyhow, could
you not use your eyes when you came in, and see the hat on
your desk, and that elephant "
Colleville (laughing). " — In the menagerie."
Paulmier. "You ought to have seen him — he is big
enough."
Chazelle (desperately). "Egad! even if the Government
pays us four francs seventy-five centimes per day, I do not see
that we are slaves in consequence."
Fleury (coming in at the door). "Down with Baudoyer!
Long live Eabourdin ! That is the cry all through the divi-
sion."
Chazelle (lashing himself into fury). "Baudoyer is
welcome to cashier me if he has a mind; I shall be no worse
off than before. There are a thousand ways of earning five
francs a day in Paris; you can make that at the Palais by
copying for the lawyers "
Paulmier. "So you say, but a berth is a berth ; and Colle-
ville, that courageous fellow who works like a galley-slave
after hours, and might make more than his salary if he lost
his post by giving music lessons — he will keep his berth.
Hang it all, a man does not throw up his chances."
Chazelle (continuing his philippic). "He may, not I.
We haven't any chance to lose. Confound it ! There was a
time when nothing was more tempting than a career in the
civil service ; there were so many men in the army that they
were wanted in the administration. The maimed and the
halt, toothless old men, unhealthy fellows like Paulmier, and
ehort-sighted people got on rapidly. The lycees swarmed
274 THE GOVERXMFA'T CT.ERKR
with boys, and families were dazzled with the brilliant pros-
pect. A 3^ouiig fellow in spectacles wore a blue coat, and a
red ribbon blazing at his button-hole, and drew a thousand
or so of francs every month for spending a few hours every
day at some office looking after something or other. He went
late and came away early; he had hours of leisure like Lord
Byron, and wrote novels; he strolled in the Tuileries Gar-
dens with a bit of a swagger; he was on exhibition at balls
and theatres and everywhere else; he was admitted into the
best society ; he spent his salary, returning to France all that
France gave him, and even doing something in return. In
those days, in fact, employes (like Thullier) were petted by
pretty women; they were supposed to be intelligent, and by
no means overworked themselves at the office. Empresses,
queens, and princesses had their fancies in those happy days.
All those noble ladies had the passion of noble natures — they
loved to play the protector. So there was a chance of filling
a high position in twenty-five years or so ; you might be au-
ditor to the Council of State; or a Master of Eequests, and
draw up reports for the Emperor, while you amused yourself
with his august family. People used to work and play at the
same time. Everything was done quickly. But nowadays,
since the Chamber bethought itself of entering the expediture
under separate items, and the heading '^Staff,' we are not
even like private soldiers. It is a thousand to one if you get
the smallest appointment, for there are a thousand sov-
ereigns "
Bixiou (returning). "Chazelle must be crazy. "Where
does he discover a thousand sovereigns? Are they by any
chance in his pocket ? "
Chazelle. "Let us reckon them up ! Four hundred at
the further end of the Pont de la Concorde (so called be-
cause it leads to perpetual discord between the Right and
the Left in the Chamber) ; three hundred more at the top of
the Rue de Tournon. So the Court, which ought to count
for three hundred, is obliged to have seven hundred times
the Emperor's strength of will, if it means to give any place
whatsoever by patronage "
THE GOVEiiMME^T CLERKS 275
Fleury, ''Which all means that, if a clerk has no interest
and no one to help him but himself in a country where there
are three centres of power, the betting is a thousand to one
that he will never get any further."
Bixiou (loohing front Fleury to Chazelle). "Aha! my
children, you have yet to learn that to be in the service of the
State is to be in the worst state of all "
Fleuey. "Because there is a Constitutional Government."
CoLLEViLLE. "Gentlemen, let us not talk politics."
Bixiou. "Fleury is right. If you serve the State in these
days, gentlemen, you do not serve a prince who rewards and
punishes. The State _is Anybody and Everybody. Now,
Everybody cares for Nobody. If you serve Everybody, you
serve NobodyJ^^i^d "iJTobody cares about Anybody. A civil
servant lives between these two negatives. The world is piti-
less, heartless, brainless, and thoughtless; Everybody is self-
ish. Everybody forgets the services of yesterday. You are
(like M. Baudoyer) an administrative genius from a most
tender age; you are the Chateaubriand of reports, the Bos-
suet of circulars, the Canalis of memorials, the 'sublime
child' of the dispatch — in vain ! There is a disheartening \^
law against administrative genius; the law of advancement
on the average.
"That fatal average is worked out from the tables of the
law of promotion and the tables of mortality. It is certain
that if you enter any department whatsoever at the age of
eighteen, you will not have a salary of eighteen hundred
francs till you are thirty years old ; if you are to get six thou-
sand by the time you are fifty, Colleville's career proves that
though you have a genius for a wife, and the support of vari-
ous peers of France, and of divers influential deputies to
boot, it profiteth you nothing. Let a young man have
studied the humanities, let him be vaccinated, exempt from
military service, and in full possession of his wits; well,
there is no free and independent career in which, without a
transcendent intellect, such a man could not put by a capital
of forty-five thousand francs of centimes in the time. That
27G THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
sum would bring in a yearly interest equal to our salary, and
it would be a perpetual income; whereas our salaries are by
their nature transitory, we have not even our berths, such as
they are, for life. In the same time, a tradesman would have
money put out to interest, and an independent income of ten
thousand francs; he would have filed his schedule, or he
would be a president of the commercial court. A painter
would have covered a square mile of canvas with paint; he
would either wear the Cross of the Legion of Honor, or set
up for a neglected genius. A man of letters would be a pro-
fessor of something or other; or a journalist, paid at the rate
of a hundred francs for a thousand lines; or he is a feuille-
tonniste, or some fine day he is landed in Sainte-Pelagie for
writing a humorous pamphlet which displeased the Jesuits;
his value incontinently goes up tremendously, and the
pamphlet makes a political personage of him. Indeed, your
idler that never did anything in his life (for there are idlers
that do something, and idlers that do nothing), your idler has
made debts and found a widow to pay them. A priest has
had time to become a bishop in partihus. A vaudevilliste is
a landed proprietor, even if, like du Bruel, he never wrote
a whole vaudeville by himself. If a steady, intelligent young
fellow starts in the money-lending line with a very small cap-
ital (like Mile. Thullier, for instance), he can buy a fourth
of a stockbroker's connection in twelve years. Let us go
lower down I A petty clerk becomes a notary ; the ragpicker
has a thousand crowns of independent income; the working
man at worst has managed to set up for himself; whereas,
in the midst of the rotatory movement of that civilization
which takes infinite subdivision for progress, a Chazelle has
been existing on twenty-two sous per head. He argues with
his tailor and shoemaker, he is in debt ; that's nothing — he is
cretinized! — Come, gentlemen, one glorious movement; let
us send in our resignations in a body, hey ? Fleury and Cha-
zelle, make a plunge into a new line, and become great men
in it ! "
Chazelle {calming down under Bixious discourse).
"Thanks" {general laiighter).
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 277
Bixiou. "Yon are wrong. In your position I would be
beforehand with the Secretary-General."
Chazelle (uneasily). "Why, what has he to say to me?"
Bixiou. "Odry would tell you, Chazelle, with more charm
in the manner of the telling than des Lupeaulx will put into
the observation, that the one place open to you is the Place
de la Concorde."
Paulmier (clasping the stove-pipe). "Egad! Baudoyer
will not have pity on you, that is certain !"
Fleury. "Another thing to put up with from Baudoyer.
Now, there's a queer fish for you ! Talk of M. Eabourdin —
there is a man ! The work he put on my table to-day would
take three days in this office, but he will have it by four
o'clock this afternoon. But he is not always at my heels to
stop my chat with friends."
Baudoyer (returning). "Gentlemen, if anybody has a
right to find fault with the parliamentary system or the
proceedings of the administration, you must admit that this
is not the proper place for such talk." (To Fleunj) "Why
are you here, sir?"
Fleury (insolently). "To advise these gentlemen of a
general move ! The Secretary-General has sent for du Bruel ;
Dutocq has gone too. Everybody is wondering about the
appointment."
Baudoyer (returning) . "That, sir, is no business of yours.
Go back to your office, and do not upset mine."
Fleury (from the doorway). "It would be tremendously
unfair if Rabourdin were to be done out of it. My word ! I
would leave the service." (Comes hacTc.) "Did you make
out your anagram, Daddy Colleville?"
Colleville. "Yes, here it is."
Fleury (leaning over Colleville' s deslc). "Famous!
famous ! It will be sure to happen if the Government keeps
to its hypocritical line." (Gives warning to the others that
Baudoyer is listening.) "If the Government openly stated
its intentions without an afterthought, then the Liberals
would see what they would have to do. But when a Govern-
i8
278 THE GOVERNMENT rT>ERKS
ment sets its best friends against ii, and sends such men as
Chateaubriand and Koyer-Collard and the Dehats into oppo-
sition, it makes you sorry to see it.'"
CoLLEViLLE (after a look round at his fellow-clerks).
'TLook here, Fleury, you are a good fellow, but you must not
talk politics here. You do us more harm than you know."
Fleury (drily). "Good-day, gentlemen. I will go to my
copying.'" (Comes hack and speaks to Bixiou in an under-
tone.) "They say that Mme. Colleville is making allies
among the Congregation.'"
Bixiou. "In what way? "
Fleury (ireakijig into a laugh). "You are never to be
caught napping !"
Colleville (uneasily), '^hat are you saying?"
Fleury. "Our theatre took a thousand crowns yesterday
with the new piece, though this is the fortieth representation.
You ought to come and see it. The scenery is something
superb."
Meanwhile, des Lupeaulx was giving du Bruel audience
in the secretary's rooms; and Dutocq had followed du Bruel.
Des Lupeaulx's man brought the news of M. de la Billar-
diere's death, and the Secretary-General intended to please
both Ministers by inserting an obituary notice in that even-
ing's paper.
"Good-day, my dear du Bruel." was the semi-minister's
greeting, as he saw the clerk enter, and left him to stand.
"You know the news ? La Billardiere is dead ; the two Min-
isters were present when he took the sacrament. The old
man strongly recommended Eabourdin; said that he could
not die easy unless he knew that his successor was to be the
man who had filled his place all along. It would seem that
the death-agony is like the 'question,' and everything comes
out. . . . The Minister is so much the more pledged
to this course because it is his intention, and the intention
of the Board likewise, to reward M. Rabourdin's numerous
services" (wagging his head) — "the Council of State desires
the benefit of his lights. They say that M. de la Billardiere is
THiil GOVEHISMEJST CLERKS 279
to be transferred to the Seals, which is as good as if the King
had made him a present of a hundred thousand francs — the
place is like a notary's connection, and may be sold. That
piece of news will be received with joy in your division, for
they might imagine that Benjamin would be put in there. —
Du Bruel, some one ought to knock off ten or a dozen lines
about the old boy, by way of a news item. It will come under
the notice of their Excellencies. Do you know all about old
la Billardiere ?" he added, taking up the papers.
Du Bruel made a gesture to signify that he knew nothing.
"No?" returned des Lupeaulx. "Oh, well, he was mixed
up in the la Vendee business ; he was in the late King's confi-
dence. Like M. le Comte de la Fontaine, he never would
come to terms with the First Consul. He did a little in
Chouannerie. He was born in Brittany of a parliamentary
family; but their dignities were so recent that he was en-
nobled by Louis XVIII. See — how old was he now? Never
mind. Just put it properly something this way: 'A loyalty
that never swerved, an enlightened piety' — (the poor old
boy had a craze for never setting foot in a church) . Give him
out for a pious servant of the Crown. Lead up nicely to the
remark that he might have sung the Song of Simeon over
the accession of Charles X. — The Comte d'Artois had a great
esteem for him, for la Billardiere unfortunately co-operated
with him in the Quiberon affair, and took all the blame upon
himself; you know, of course. ... La Billardiere justi-
fied the King in a pamphlet which he wrote to refute an im-
pertinent History of the Eevolution got up by some journal-
ist. So you can lay stress on the devotion. Finally, weigh
yovLT words well, so that the other papers may not laugh at us,
and bring me the article. Were you at Eabourdin's yester-
day?"
"Yes, my lord," said du Bruel, "that is — I beg pardon "
"There is no harm done," des Lupeaulx answered, laugh-
ing.
"His wife is delightfully pretty," continued du Bruel.
"There are not two such women in Paris. There are women
280 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
as clever, but they are not so charming in their cleverness;
and there may be a woman as handsome as Celestine, but
scaroely one so various in her beauty. Mme. Rabourdin is far
superior to Mme. Colleville !" added du Bruel, for he remem-
bered an old story about des Lupeaulx. "Flavie is what she
is, thanks to her intercourse with men, while Mme. Rabour-
din owes everything to herself; she knows everything; you
could not tell a secret in Latin before her. I should think
"that nothing was beyond my reach if I had such a wife."
"You have more brains than an author's allowance," re-
turned des Lupeaulx in a thrill of gratified vanity. And
turning his head, he saw Dutocq.
"Oh ! good-day, Dutocq. I sent to ask if you would lend
me your Charlet, if it is complete. The Countess knows
nothing of Charlet."
Du Bruel withdrew.
"AVhy do you come when you are not called?" des Lu-
peaulx asked in a hard voice, when they were alone. "^Vhy
do you come to me at ten o'clock, just as I am about to
breakfast with His Excellency? Is the Government in
danger ?"
"Perhaps, sir. If I had had the honor of an interview
with you this morning, you certainly would not have pro-
nounced the Sieur Rabourdin's panegyric after you had read
what he has written of you."
Dutocq unbuttoned his greatcoat, and took out a quire of
paper, with an impression on the side of the sheets. He laid
them down on des^Lupeaulx's desk and pointed to a para-
graph. Then he bolted the door, as though he feared an
explosion. This was what the Secretary-General read against
his name: —
"M. DES Lupeaulx. — A Government lowers itself by em-
ploying such a man openly. His proper place is in the diplo-
matic police. Such a person may be pitted with success
against the political buccaneers of other cabinets. It would
be a pity to put him into the ordinary police. . . . He
stands above the level of the common spy; he can grasp a
^.
.D"
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 281
scheme, he could carry out a necessary bit of dirty work suc-
cessfully, and cover his retreat with skill," and so forth and
so forth. Des Lupeaulx's character was succinctly analyzed
in five or six sentences. Eahourdin gave the gist of the bio-
graphical sketch at the beginning of this history.
At the first words the Secretary- General knew that he had
been weighed and found wanting by an abler man; but he
determined to reserve himself for a further examination into
a piece of work which went both high and far, without ad-
mitting such a man as Dutocq into his confidence. The
Secretary-General, like barristers, magistrates, diplomates,
and others, was obliged to explore the human heart; like
them too, he was astonished at nothing. He was accustomed
to treachery, to the snares set by hate, to traps of all kinds.
He could receive a stab in the back without a change of
countenance. So it was a calm and grave countenance that
des Lupeaulx turned upon the office spy.
"How did you get hold of this document ?" he asked.
Dutocq gave the history of his good luck; but des Lu-
peaulx's face showed no sign of approval while he listened.
Consequently the story begun in high triumph was ended in
fear and trembling.
"You have put your finger between the tree and the bark,
Dutocq," was the Secretary-General's dry comment. "Ob-
serve the utmost secrecy as to this affair, unless you want to
make very powerful enemies ; it is a work of the greatest im-
portance, and I have cognizance of it."
And des Lupeaulx dismissed Dutocq with a glance of a
kind which speaks more than words.
Dutocq was dismayed to find a rival in his chief. "Aha !"
he said to himself, "so that scoundrel of a Rabourdin is in it
too. He is a staff-officer, while I am a private soldier, I
would not have believed it."
So to all his previous motives for detesting Eabourdin,
was added another and most cogent reason for hate — the
jealousy that one workman feels of another in the same trade.
When des Lupeaulx was left alone his meditations took a
282 THE COVER XMENT CLERKS
singular turn. Rabourdiii was an instrument in the hands
of some power ; wliat power was it ? Should he profit by this
surprising document to ruin the man? Or should he use it
the better to succeed with the man's wife? The mystery was
perfectly obscure. Des Lupeaulx turned the pages in dis-
may. The men whom he knew were summed up with unheard-
of sagacity. He admired Rabourdin, while he felt the stab
to the heart. He was still reading when breakfast was an-
nounced.
"You will keep His Excellency waiting if you do not go
down at once," the j\Iinister's footman came to say.
The Minister breakfasted with his wife and children and
des Lupeaulx. There w^ere no servants in the room. The
morning meal is the one moment of home life that a states-
man can snatch from the all-absorbing demands of public
business; but in spite of the barriers raised with ingenious
care, so that one hour may be given up entirely to the family
and the affections, many intruders, great and small, find ways
of breaking in upon it. Public business, as at this moment,
often comes athwart their enjoyment.
"I thought -Eabourdin was above the ordinary level of
clerks ; and lo and behold ! ten minutes after la Billardiere's
death, he takes it into his head to send me a regular stage
billet through la Briere," said the Minister, and he held out
the sheet of paper which he was twisting in his fingers.
Rabourdin had written the note before he heard of M. de
la Billardiere's death through la Briere; he was too noble-
minded to think of the base construction that might be put
upon it, and allowed la Briere to retain and deliver the mis-
sive. Des Lupeaulx read as follows: —
"MoNSEiGNEUR, — If twenty-three years of irreproachable
service may merit a favor, I entreat Your Excellency to grant
me an audience this very day. It is a matter in which my
honor is involved," and the note ended with the usual respect-
ful formulas.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 283
'Toor man !" said des Lupeaulx, in a pitying tone, which
left the Minister still under a misapprehension; "we are by
ourselves, let him come. You go to the Council after the
House rises, and Your Excellency is boimd to give an answer
to the Opposition to-day; this is the only time that you can
give him "
Des Lupeaulx rose, sent for the usher, said a word to him,
and came back to the table.
"I am adjourning him to the dessert," said he.
His Excellency, like most other ministers under the Ees-
toration, was past his youth. The Charter granted by Louis
XVIII. , unluckily, tied the King's hands ; he was forced to
give the destinies of the country over to quadragenarians of
the Chamber of Deputies and peers of seventy. A king had
not power to look wheresoever he would for an able political
leader, and to put him forward in spite of his youth or pov-
erty. Napoleon, and Napoleon alone, might employ young
men if he chose ; no considerations led him to pause. And so
it fell out that since the fall of that mighty Will, energy
had deserted authority. And in France, of all countries in
the world, the contrast between slackness and vigor is a dan-
gerous one. As a rule, the minister who comes into power
late in life, is a mediocrity ; while young ministers have been
the glory of European kingdoms and Eepublics. The world
is ringing yet with the contest between Pitt and Kapoleon;
and they, like Henri IV., like Eichelieu, Mazarin, Colbert,
Louvois, the Prince of Orange, the Due de Guise, Francesco
della Eovere, and Machiavelli, like all great statesmen, in
short, whether they come of low origin or are born to a
throne, began to govern at an early age. The Convention,
that model of energy, was in great part composed of young
heads; and no sovereign can afford to forget that the Con-
vention brought fourteen armies into the field against Europe ;
the policy that brought about such disastrous results for
absolute power (as it is called) was none the less dictated by
true monarchical principles, and the Convention bore itself
as a great king.
2S4 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
After ten or twelve years of parliamentary strife, after
going again and again over the same ground till he grew
jaded, this particular minister had been, in truth, put in office
by a party which regarded him as its man of business.
Fortunately for him, he was nearer sixty than fifty years
old ; if he had shown any signs of youthful energy, he would
have come promptly to grief. But being accustomed to give
way, to beat a retreat, and return to the charge, he could
stand against the blows dealt him by all and sundry, by the
Opposition or by his own side, by the Court or the clergy;
opposing to it all the vis inertice of a soft but unyielding
substance. In short, he enjoyed the advantages of his mis-
fortune. Like some old barrister that has pleaded every
conceivable cause, he had passed through the fire on countless
questions of Government, till his mind no longer retained
the keen edge preserved by the solitary thinker ; and he lacked
that faculty of making prompt decisions, which is acquired
early in a life of action, and more especially in a military
career. How should he have been other than he was? All
his life long he had juggled with questions instead of using
his own judgment upon them ; he had criticised effects with-
out going into the causes ; and besides, and above all this, his
head was full of the endless reforms which a party thrusts
upon its leader; he was burdened with programmes designed
to gain the private ends of various personages; for if an
orator has a future before him, he is sure to be embarrassed
with all kinds of impracticable schemes and unpractical ad-
vice. So far from starting fresh, the minister was jaded and
tired with marches and counter-marches. And when at last
he reached the long-desired heights, he found his paths beset
with thorns on every side, and a thousand contrary dis-
positions to be reconciled. If the statesmen of the Eestora-
tion could but have followed out their own ideas, their
capacities would no doubt be less exposed to criticism; but
while their wills were overruled, their age was the salvation
of them; they were physically incapable of contending, as
younger men would have done, with low Intrigue in high
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 285
places, intrigues which sometimes proved too much even for
the strength of a Eichelieu. To such knavery in a. lawer
sphere Eabourdin was about to fall a victim. To the throes
of early struggles succeeded the throes of office, for men not
so much old as aged before the time. And so, just as they
needed the keen sight of the eagle, their eyes were growing
dim; and their faculties were exhausted when their work
called for redoubled vigor.
The Minister to whom Eabourdin meant to confide his
scheme was accustomed to hear the most ingenious theories
propounded to him daily by men of unquestioned ability;
schemes more or less applicable, or inapplicable, to public
business in France were brought continually before his eyes.
Their promoters had not the remotest conception of the
difficulties of general policy ; they used to waylay the Minister
on his return from a pitched battle in the House, or a struggle
with folly behind the scenes at Court; they assailed him on
the eve of a wrestling-bout with public opinion, or on the
morrow of some diplomatic question on which the Cabinet had
split in three. A statesman thus situated naturally has a
gag ready to apply at the first hint of an improvement in
the established order of things. Daring speculators and men
from behind the scenes in politics or finance were not wont to
meet round a dinner-table in those days to sum up the opin-
ions of the Stock Exchange and the Money Market, together
with some utterance let fall by Diplomacy, in one profound
saying. The Minister had, however, a sort of privy council
in his private secretary and secretary-general; they chewed
the cud of reflection, and controlled and analyzed the inter-
ests that spoke through so many insinuating voices.
It was the Minister's unfortunate habit (the invariable
habit of sexagenarian ministers) to shuffle out of difficulties.
No question was fairly faced; the Government was quietly
trying to gag journalism instead of striking openly; it was
evading the financial question; temporizing with the clergy
as with the National Property difficulty, with Liberalism as
with the control of the Chamber. Now as the Minister in
286 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
seven years had outflanked the powers tiiat be, he considered
that he could come round every question in the same way.
Tt was natural that a man should try to keep his position by
continuing to use the methods by which he rose; so natural,
that nobody ventured to criticise a system devised by
mediocrity to please mediocrity. The Kestoration (like the
Eevolution in Poland) clearly showed how much a great man
is worth to a nation, and what happens if he is not forth-
coming. The last and greatest defect of the Kestoration
statesmen was their honesty, for their opponents availed them-
selves of slander and lies and all the resources of political
rascality, until, by the most subversive methods, they let
loose the unintelligent masses ; and the large body of the peo-
ple are quick to grasp but one idea — the idea of riot.
All this Rabourdin had told himself. Still, he had decided
to hazard all to win all, much as a jaded gamester agrees with
himself to try but one more throw; and fate, meanwhile,
sent him a trickster for his opponent in the shape of des Lu-
peaulx. And yet, however sagacious Rabourdin might be,
he was better skilled in administrative work than in parlia-
mentary perspective. He did not imagine the whole truth ;
it had not occurred to him that the great practical work of
his life was about to become a theory for the Minister, or that
a statesman would inevitably class him with after-dinner in-
novators and armchair reformers.
His Excellency had just risen from table. He was
thinking not of Rabourdin, but of Frangois Keller. His
wife detained him by offering him a bunch of grapes, when
the chief clerk was announced. Des Lupeaulx had reckoned
upon this preoccupied mood; he knew that His Excellency's
mind would be taken up by his "extempore" speeches; so,
seeing that the Minister was engaged in a discussion with
his wife, the Secretary-General came forward. Rabourdin
was thunderstruck by the first words.
"We, His Excellency and I, have been informed of the
work in which you are engaged,"' said des I^upeaulx, lower-
ing his voice; "you have nothing to fear from Dutocq, or
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 287
from any one whatever," he added, speaking the last few
words aloud.
"Do not worry yourself in any way, Rabourdin," His Ex-
cellency said kindly, but he made as though he would re-
treat.
Rabourdin came forward respectfully, and the Minister
could not choose but remain.
"Will Your Excellency condescend to permit me to say
a few words in private?" said Rabourdin, with a significant
glance.
The Minister looked at the clock, then he went towards a
window, and Rabourdin followed him.
"When may I have the honor of submitting the affair to
Your Excellency, so that I may explain the scheme of ad-
ministration to which that paper relates? It is sure to be
used to sully "
"A scheme of administration," the Minister broke in,
knitting his brows as he spoke. "If you have anything of the
kind to lay before me, wait till the day when we work to-
gether. I have to attend the Council to-day, and I must
make a reply to a question raised by the Opposition yester-
day just before the House rose. 'Next Friday is your day;
we did no work yesterday, for I had no time to attend to the
business of the department. Political affairs stood in the
way of purely administrative business."
"I leave my honor with confidence in Your Excellency's
hands," Rabourdin answered gravely, "and I beg of you to
remember that I was not permitted to offer an explanation
of the missing document at once "
"Why, you need fear nothing," broke in des Lupeaulx, as
he came between them ; "you are sure of your nomination in
a week's time "
The Minister began to laugh; he remembered des Lu-
peaulx's enthusiasm over Mme. Rabourdin, and looked slyly
at his wife. The Countess smiled. This by-play surprised
Rabourdin ; he wondered what it meant ; for a moment he
ceased to hold the Minister with his eye, and His Excellency
took the opportunity of escape.
288 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
'^e will have a chat together over all this."' said des
Lupeaulx, when Eabourdin, not without bewilderment, found
himself alone with the Secretary-General. "But do not bear
malice against Dutocq; I will answer for him."
"Mme. Eabourdin is a charming woman," put in the Count-
ess, for the sake of saying something.
The children gazed curiously at the visitor. Eabourdin
had been prepared for a great ordeal; now he felt as if he
were a big fish taken in the toils of a fine net. He struggled
with himself.
"Mme. la Comtesse is very kind," he said.
"May I not have the pleasure of seeing you on one of my
Fridays?" continued the lady; "bring your wife to us, you
will do me a favor "'
"That is Mme. Eabourdin's night," put in des Lupeaulx,
knowing what official Fridays were like; "but since you are
so good, you are giving a small evening party soon, I be-
lieve "
The Minister's wife seemed annoyed.
"You are the master of the ceremonies," she said, address-
ing des Lupeaulx as she rose.
In those ambiguous words she expressed her vexation ; des
Lupeaulx was intruding guests upon one of her small parties,
to which none but a select few were admitted. Then, with
a bow to Eabourdin, she went, and des Lupleaux and the
chief clerk were left alone in the little breakfast-room. Des
Lupeaulx was crumpling a bit of paper between his fingers;
Eabourdin recognized his own confidential note.
"You do not really know me," the Secretary-General began
with a smile. "On Friday evening we will come to a thor-
ough understanding. I am bound to give audience now;
the Minister is putting everything on my shoulders to-day,
for he is preparing for the Chamber. But, Eabourdin, you
have nothing to fear, I repeat."
Slowl}!- Eabourdin made his way downstairs. He was be-
wildered by the unexpected turn that things were taking.
He believed that Dutocq had denounced him ; he was not mis-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 289
taken ; the list in which des Lupeaulx was so severely criticised
Avas now in the hands of that worthy, and yet des Lupeaulx
was flattering his judge. It was hopelessly bewildering.
Straightforward people find it hard to see their way through
a maze of intrigue, and Eabourdin lost himself in a labyrinth
of conjecture, but failed to understand the Secretary- Gen-
eral's game.
"Either he has not read the article upon himself, or he
is in love with my wife."
These words were the thoughts that brought him to a stand
as he crossed the courtyard ; and the glance exchanged between
Celestine and des Lupeaulx, and intercepted last night,
flashed like lightning upon his memory.
During Rabourdin's absence his office had, of course,
suffered from a sudden accession of vehement excitement;
the relations between the upper powers and subordinates
are very much laid down by rule; and great, therefore, was
the comment when an usher appeared from His Excellency
to ask for the chief clerk, especially as he came at an hour
when ministers are invisible. As this extraordinary com-
munication coincided, moreover, with the death of M. de la
Billardiere, it seemed peculiarly significant to M. Saillard
when he heard of it through M. Clergeot. He went to confer
with his son-in-law. Bixiou happened to be working with
his chief at the time; he left Baudoyer with his relative and
betook himself to the Rabourdins. Work was suspended.
Bixiou (coming in). "You are taking things coolly here,
gentlemen ! You don't know what is going on downstairs.
La Vertueuse Rahourdin is in for it ; yes, cashiered ! A pain-
ful scene with the Minister."
DuTOCQ (looJcing at Bixiou). "Is that a fact?"
Bixiou. "Who will be any the worse ? Not you for one ;
du Bruel will be chief clerk, and you his assistant. M. Bau-
doyer will be head of the division."
Fleury. "I'll bet a hundred francs that Baudoyer will
never be head of the division."
ViMEUX. "Will you join us, M, Poiret, and take the bet ?"
290 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
PoiEET. "I get my pension on the 1st of January."
Bixiou. "What, shall we never more behold your shoe-
laces ! What will the department do without you ? Who
will take my bet? "
DuTOCQ. "Not I ; I should be betting on a certainty. M.
Eabourdin is nominated. M. de la Billardiere, on his death-
bed, recommended him to the two ministers, and said that he
had drawn the pay while Eabourdin did all the work. He
had scruples of conscience; so, subject to orders from above,
they promised to nominate Eabourdin to ease his mind."
Bixiou. "Gentleman, all of you take my wager; there
are seven of you, for you will be one, M. Phellion. I bet
you a dinner of five hundred francs at the Rocher de Cancale
that Eabourdin will not get la Billardiere's place. It won't
cost you a hundred francs apiece, whereas I risk five hundred.
I'll take you single-handed, in short. Does that suit ? Will
you go in, du Bruel ?"
Phellion {laying down his pen). "On what, mosieur,
does your contingent proposition depend? for contingent it
is ! but I err in using the word "^proposition,' I mean to say
'contract.' A wager constitutes a contract."
Fleury. "No, you can't call it a contract, the Code
does not recognize a wager; you can't take action to enforce
it."
DuTOCQ. "The Code recognizes it if it makes provision
against it."
Bixiou. "Well put, Dutocq, my boy."
PoiRET. "Indeed !"
Fleury. "That is right. It is as if you refuse to pay
your debts, you admit them."
Thuillier. "Famous jurisconsults you would make !"
PoiRET. "I am as curious as M. Phellion to know what
M. Bixiou's bet is about "
Bixiou (shouts across the office). "Du Bruel I are you
going in?"
Du Bruel {showing himself). "Fiddle-de-dee! gentle-
men, I have something difficult to do : I have to draw up the
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 291
auuouuceineut of M. de la Billarciiere's death. For mercy's
sake, a little quiet; you had better laugh and bet after-
wards."
Thuillier. "Better bet ! you are infringing on my puns."
BixiOD {going into du BrueVs office). "The old boy's
panegyric is a very hard thing to write, du Bruel, and that is
a fact; I would sooner have made a caricature of him."
Du Bruel. "Do help me, Bixiou."
Bixiou. — "I am quite willing, though this sort of thing
is easier to do after dinner."
Du Bruel. "We will dine together." {Reads.) "'Every
day Religion and the Monarchy lose some one of those who
fought for them in the time of the Revolution — ■_ — ' "
Bixiou. "Bad. I should put — 'Death is particularly
busy among the oldest champions of the Monarchy and the
most faithful servants of a King, whose heart bleeds at each
fresh blow.'" {Du Bruel writes hastily.) " 'M. le Baron
Flamet de la Billardiere died this morning of dropsy on the
chest, brought on by heart complaint . . .' You see, it
is of some consequence to prove that a man in a government
office has a heart; you might slip in a little padding about
the emotions of Royalists during the Terror, eh? It would
not be amiss. Yet — no. The minor newspapers would be
saying that the emotions struck not the heart, but regions
lower down. We won't mention it. — What have you put ?"
Du Bruel {reads). "'A scion of an old parliamentary
stock ' "
Bixiou. "Very good ! That is poetical, and stock is pro-
foundly true."
Du Bruel {continues). "' — in whom devotion to the
throne, no less than attachment to the faith of our fathers,
M^as handed down from generation to generation; M. de la
Billardiere ' "
Bixiou. "I should put 'M. le Baron.' "
Du Bruel. "But he wasn't a baron in 1793."
Bixiou. "It is all one. Don't you know that Fouch6, in
the time of the Empire, was once telling an anecdote of the
292 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Convention and Eobespierre; and in the course of it he said,
'Eobespierre said to me, "Due d'Otrante, go to the Hotel de
Ville !" ' — so there is a precedent."
Du Bruel. "Just let me jot that down ! But we must
not put 'the Baron' here; I am keeping all the favors the
King showered upon him for the end."
Bixiou. "Ah ! right — it is the dramatic effect, the curtain
picture of the article."
Du Bruel. "It comes here, do you see? — 'By raising M.
de la Billardiere to the rank of Baron, by appointing him
Gentleman in Ordinary ' "
Bixiou {aside). "Very ordinary."
Du Bruel. " ' — of the Bedchamber, etc., His Majesty
rewarded the services of the provost who tempered a rigorous
performance of his duty with the habitual mildness of the
Bourbons, and the courage of a Vendean who did not bow
the knee to the Imperial idol. M. de la Billardiere leaves
a son who inherits his devotion and his talents,' and so on
and so on."
Bixiou. "Aren't you coming it rather too strong? Isn't
the coloring too rich? There is that poetical flight 'the
Imperial idol' and 'bowing the knee'; I should tone it down
a bit. Hang it all ! Vaudevilles spoil your hand, till you
cannot write pedestrian prose. / should put — 'He belonged
to the small number of those who,' etc. Simplify ; you have
a simpleton to deal with."
Du Bruel. "There is another joke for a vaudeville ! You
would make your fortune at writing for the stage, Bixiou !"
Bixiou. "What have you put about Quiberon?" (Reads.)
"That is not the thing ! This is how I should draft
it — 'In a work recently published, he took all the re-
sponsibility of the misfortunes of the Quiberon expedition
upon himself, thus giving the measure of a devotion which
shrank from no sacrifice.' — That is neat and ingenious, and
you save la Billardicre's character."
Du Bruel. "But at the expense of whom?"
Bixiou (serious as a priest in a pulpit). "Of Hoche and
Tallien, of course. Why, don't you know your history ?"
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 293
Du Bruel. "No. I have subscribed to the Baudoins' col-
lection, but I have not had time to look into it : there are no
subjects for vaudevilles."
Phellion {in the doorway). "M. Bixiou, we should all
like to know what it is that can induce you to believe that M.
Kabourdin will not be nominated as head of the division,
when the virtuous and worthy M. Rabourdin has taken the
responsibility of the division for nine months, and stands
first in order of seniority in the departments; and the Min-
ister no sooner comes back from M. de la Billardiere's than he
sends the usher to fetch him."
Bixiou. "Daddy Phellion, do you know geography?"
Phellion (swelling visibly). "So I flatter myself, sir."
Bixiou. "History ?"
Phellion" (modestly). "Perhaps."
Bixiou (looking at him). "Your diamond is not prop-
erly set; it will drop out directly. — Well, you know nothing
of human nature ; you have gone no further in that study than
in your explorations of the suburbs of Paris."
PoiRET (in a low voice to Vimeux). "Suburbs of Paris!
I thought that we were talking about M. Rabourdin."
Bixiou. "Does Eabourdin's office in a body take my bet ?"
Omnes. "Yes."
Bixiou. "Du Bruel, are you going in?"
Du Bruel. "I should think so ! It is to our interest that
our chief clerk should be head of the division, for all the
rest of us go up a step."
Thuillier. "We all go a-head!" (Aside to Phellion).
"That was neat."
Bixiou. "I bet he won't; and for this reason. You will
hardly understand it; but I will tell you why, all the same.
It is right and fair that M. Rabourdin should get the appoint-
ment (looks at Dutocq) ; for seniority, ability, and probity
are recognized, appreciated, and rewarded in his person. Be-
sides, it is, of course, to the interest of the administration to
appoint him." (Phellion, Poiret, and Thuillier, listening
without comprehenditig a word, look as though they were try-
19
294 THE GOVEIl^'MENT CLERKS
ing to see through darkness.) "Well, because the appoint-
ment is deserved and so suitable in all these ways, I (know-
ing all the while how wise and just the measure is) will bet
that it will not be taken. Xo ; it will end in failure, like the
Boulogne and Eussian expeditions, though genius had left
nothing undone to ensure success. I am playing the devil's
game."
Du Bruel. "But whom else can they appoint?"
BixiOD. "The more I think of Baudoyer, the more plainly
it appears that in the matter of qualifications for the post
he is the exact opposite of Kabourdin. Consequently, he
will be head of the division."
DuTOCQ (driven to extremities). "But M. des Lupeaulx
sent for me this morning to ask for my Charlet ; and he told
me that M. Eabourdin had just been nominated, and young
la Billardiere was to be transferred to the Audit Office."
Bixiou. "Appointed! appointed! The nomination will
not be so much as signed for ten days to come. They will
make the appointment for N"ew Year's Day. There, look
at your chief down there in the courtyard, and tell me if La
Vertueuse Rabourdin looks like a man in favor ! Any one
would think he had been cashiered." [Fleury rushes to the
window.) "Good-day, gentlemen. I am just going to an-
nounce the nomination to M. Baudoyer; it will infuriate
him, at any rate, the holy man ! And then I will tell him
about our bet, to hearten him up again. That is what Ave
call a peripateia on the stage, is it not, du Bruel ? — What does
it matter to me? If I win, he will take me for assistant
clerk?" (goes out.)
PoiRET. "Everybody says that that gentleman is clever;
well, for my own part, I never can make anything out of his
talk" (writing as he speaks). "I listen and listen, I hear
words, and cannot grasp any sense in them. He brings in
the suburbs of Paris when he is talking about human nature ;
then he begins with the Boulogne and Eussian expeditions,
and says that he is playing the Devil's game." (Lays down
his pen and goes to the stove.) "First of all, you must
THE G0VP:RNMENT Cr.ERKS 295
assume that the JJevil gambles, then lind out what game he
plays ! First of all, there is the game of dominoes "
{blows his nose.)
Fleury {interrupting him), "Old Poiret is blowing his
nose; it is eleven o'clock."
Du Bruel. "So it is ! — Already ! I am off to the secre-
tary's office."
Poiret. "Where am I?"
Thuillier. "Domino, which is 'to the lord'; for you
were talking of the Devil, and the Devil is a suzerain without
a charter. But this is not so much a pun as a play on words.
Anyhow, I see no difference between a play on words and "
{Sebastien comes in to collect circulars to be checked and
signed.)
Vimeux. "Here you are, my fine fellow! Your time of
trial is over ; you will be established ! M. Rabourdin will
get the appointment. You were at Mme. Rabourdin's
party yesterday. How lucky you are to go to that house !
They say that very handsome women go there."
Si^BASTiEN. "I do not know."
Fleury. "Are you blind?"
SEBASTIEN". "I am not at all fond of looking at things
when T cannot have them !"
Phellion {delighted). "Well said, young man."
Vtmeux. "You surely look at Mme. Rabourdin. Why,
hang it all ! a charming woman."
Fleury. "Pooh ! a thin figure. I have seen her at the
Tuileries Gardens. Percilliee, Ballet's mistress and Cas-
taing's victim, is much more to my taste."
Ppielligjst. "But what has an actress to do with a chief
clerk's wife?"
DuTOCQ. "Both are playing a comedy."
Fleury {looking askance at Dutocq). "The physical has
nothing to do with the moral; and if by that you under-
stand "
Dutocq. "For my own part, I understand nothing."
Fleury. "Which of us will be chief clerk? who wants
to know?"
296 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Omnes. "Tell us!"
Fleuey. "It will be Colleville."
Thuillier. "Why ?"
Fleury. "Mme. Colleville has finally taken the shortest
way — through the sacristy."
Thuillier (drily) . "I am too much M. Colleville's friend,
M. Fleury, not to beg of you to refrain from speaking lightly
of his wife."
Phellion. "Women, who have no way of defending
themselves, should never be the subject of our conversa-
tions "
Vimeux. "And so much the less, since pretty Mme. Colle-
ville would not ask Fleur}^ to her house; so he blackens her
character by way of revenge."
Fleury. "She would not receive me on the same footing
as Thuillier, but I went "
Thuillier. "When? Where? Under her windows?"
Fleury's swagger made him so formidable a person in the
office, that every one was surprised when he took Thuillier's
last word. His resignation had its source in a bill for two
hundred francs with a tolerably doubtful signature, which
document Thuillier was to present to his sister. A deep
silence succeeded to the skirmish. Everybody worked from
one o'clock till three. Du Bruel did not come back.
Towards half-past three preparations for departure were
made — brushing of hats and changing of coats went on
simultaneously all through the department. The cherished
half-hour thus spent on small domestic cares shortened the
working day by precisely thirty minutes. The temperature
of overheated rooms fell several degrees; the odor peculiar
to offices evaporated ; silence settled do^Ti once more ; and by
four o'clock none were left but the real workers, the clerks
who took their duties in earnest. A Minister may know the
men that do the work of the department by making a round
thereof punctually at four o'clock : but such great and serious
persons never by any chance indulge in espionage of this
kind.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 297
At that hour divers chief clerks met each other in the
courtyard and exchanged their ideas on the day's events.
Generally speaking, as they walked off by twos and threes,
the opinion was in favor of Rabourdin ; but a few old stagers,
such as M. Clergeot, would shake their heads with a "Habent
sua sidera lites/' Saillard and Baudoyer were courteously
avoided. Nobody knew quite what to say to them about
Billardiere's death, and everybody felt that Baudoyer might
■want the berth though he had no right to it.
When the last-named pair had left the buildings some
distance behind, Saillard broke silence with, "This is not
going well for you, my poor Baudoyer."
"I fail to understand what Elizabeth is thinking about,"
returned his son-in-law. "She sent Godard post-haste for
a passport for Falleix. Godard said that, acting on Uncle
Mitral's advice, she hired a post-chaise, and Falleix is on the
way back to his own country at this moment."
"Something connected with the business, no doubt," said
Saillard.
"The most urgent business for us just now is to find a
way of getting M. de la Billardiere's place."
They had come along the Eue Saint-Honore, till by this
time they had reached the Palais Eoj^al. Dutocq came up
and raised his hat.
"If I can be of any use to you, sir, under the circumstances,
pray command me," he said, addressing Baudoyer. "I am
not less devoted than M. Godard to your interests."
"Such an overture is, at any rate, a consolation," returned
Baudoyer ; "one has the esteem of honest people."
"If you will condescend to use your influence to procure
the place of assistant-clerk under you, and the chief clerk's
place for M. Bixiou, you will make the fortunes of two men,
and both of them are capable of doing anything to secure your
elevation."
"Are you laughing at us, sir?" asked Saillard, opening wide
foolish eyes.
"Par be the thought from me," said Dutocq. "I have
298 THE GOYEKNilENT CLERKS
just been to take the obituary notice of M. de la Billardiere
to the newspaper oflfice ; M. des Lupeaulx sent me. I have
the highest respect for your talents after reading the article
in the paper. When the time comes for making an end of
Eabourdin, it is in my power to strike the final blow^; con-
descend to recollect that."
Dutocq disappeared.
"I'll be hanged if I understand a word of this," said Sail-
lard, as he stared at Baudoyer, whose little eyes expressed no
common degree of bewilderment. "We must send out for
the paper this evening."
When the pair entered the sitting-room on the ground
floor, they found Mme. Saillard, Elizabeth, M. Gaudron, and
the vicar of St. Paul's all seated by a large fire. The vicar
turned as they came in; and Elizabeth, looking at her hus-
band, made a sign of intelligence, but to little purpose.
"Sir," the cure was saying, "I was unwilling to delay my
thanks for the magnificent gift with which you have adorned
my poor church; I could not venture into debt to buy that
splendid monstrance. It is fit for a cathedral. As one of
the most regular and pious of our parishioners, you must have
been particularly impressed by the bareness of the high altar.
I am just going to see M. le Coadjuteur; he will shortly
express his satisfaction."
"I have done nothing as yet " began Baudoyer, but
his wife broke in upon him.
"M. le CurCj," said she, "I may betray the whole of his
secret now. (M. Baudoyer counts upon completing what he
has begun by giving you a canopy against Corpus Domini.
But the purchase depends, to some extent, upon the state
of our finances, and our finances depend upon our advance-
ment."
"God rewards those who honor Him," said M. Gaudron,
as he followed the cure.
"Why do you not do us the honor to take pot-luck with us ?"
asked Saillard.
"Don't go, my dear Gaudron," said the cure. "I have an
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 299
invitation to dine with the cure of Saint-liocli, you know ;
he will take M. de la Billardiere's funeral service to-mor-
row."
"M. le Cure de Saint-Roch might say a word for us, per-
haps ?" began Baudoyer, but his wife gave a sharp tug at his
coat-tails.
"Do be quiet, Baudoyer !" she whispered, as she drew him
into a corner. "You have given a monstrance worth five
thousand francs to our parish church. I will explain it all
by and by."
Baudoyer, the close-fisted, made a hideous grimace, and
appeared pensive throughout dinner.
"What ever made you take so much trouble to get a pass-
port for Falleix? What is this that you are meddling in?"
he asked at length.
"It seems to me that Falleix's business is, to some extent,
ours," Elizabeth answered drily, warning her husband with
a glance not to speak before M. Gaudron.
"Certainly it is," said old Saillard, thinking of the partner-
ship.
"You reached the newspaper office in time, I hope," con-
tinued Elizabeth, addressing M. Gaudron, as she handed him
a plate of soup.
"Yes, my dear madam," the cure replied. "The editor
made not the slightest difficulty when he read the few words
from the Grand Almoner's secretary. Through his good
offices the little paragraph was put in the most suitable posi-
tion. I should never have thought of that, but the young
man at the newspaper office was very wide awake. The
champions of religion may now combat infidelity with equal
forces, for there is much talent shown in the Royalist news-
papers. I have every reason to believe that success will crown
your hopes. But you must remember, my dear Baudoyer,
to use your influence for M. Colleville. It is in him that
His Eminence is interested, and I received an injunction to
mention M. Colleville to you."
"If I am head of the division, he shall be one of my chief
clerks if they like," said Baudoyer
300 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
The clue to the riddle was discovered after dinner when
the porter came in with the ministerial paper. The two fol-
lowing paragraphs (called entre-filets in journalistic lan-
guage) appeared therein among the items of news: —
'*'M. LE Babon de la Billardiere died this morning after
a long and painful illness. In him the King loses a devoted
servant, and the Church one of the most pious among her chil-
dren. M. de la Billardiere's end was a worthy crown of a
great career, a fitting termination of a life that was wholly
devoted .to perilous missions in perilous times, and sub-
sequently to the fulfilment of very difficult duties. As grand
provost of a department, M. de la Billardiere's force of char-
acter triumphed over all obstacles raised by rebellion ; and
later, when he accepted an arduous post as the head of a de-
partment, his insight was not less useful than his Frenchman's
urbanity in the conduct of the weighty affairs transacted
in his province. No rewards were ever better deserved than
those by which His Majesty was pleased to crown a loyalty
that never wavered under the usurper. — The ancient family
will live again in a younger scion, who inherits the talent
and devotion of the excellent man whose loss is mourned by
so many friends. His Majesty, with a gracious word, has
already given out that M. Benjamin de la Billardiere is to be
one of the Gentleman in Ordinary of the Bedchamber.
"Any of the late M. de la Billardiere's numerous friends
who have not yet received cards, and may not receive them in
time, are informed that the funeral will take place to-morrow
at Saint-Roch at four o'clock. The funeral sermon will be
preached by M. I'Abbe Fontanon."
"M. Isidore Baudoter, representative of one of the oldest
burgher families in Paris, and chief clerk in the la Billardiere
division, has just revived memories of the old traditions of
piety which distinguished the great burgher houses of olden
times, when citizens were so jealous of the pomp of Religion,
and such lovers of her monuments. The Church of St. Paul,
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 301
a basilica which we owe to the Society of Jesus, lacked a
monstrance in keeping with its architectural splendors.
jSTeither the vestry nor the incumbent could afford to give
such an adornment to the altar. M. Baudoyer has just pre-
sented the parish with the monstrance that many persons have
admired at the establishment of M. Gohier, the King's gold-
smith ; and, thanks to piety that did not shrink from so large
a sum, the Church of St. Paul now possesses a masterpiece
of the goldsmith's craft, executed from M. de Sommervieux's
designs. We are glad to give publicity to a fact which shows
the absurdity of Liberal bombast as to the state of feel-
ing among the Parisian bourgeoisie. The upper middle
classes have been Royalist through all time, and always will
prove themselves Eoyalists at need."
"The price was five thousand francs," said the Abbe
Gaudron, "but for ready money the Court goldsmith lowered
his demands."
"Eepresentative of one of the oldest burgher families in
Paris !" repeated Saillard. "There it is in print, and in the
official paper too !"
"Dear M. Gaudron, do help my father to think of some-
thing to slip into the Countess' ear when he takes her the
monthly allowance — just a few words that say everything. I
will leave you now. I must go out with Uncle Mitral.
Would you believe it? — I could not find Uncle Bidault.
What dog-hole can he be living in ! M. Mitral, knowing his
ways, said that all his business is done between eight o'clock
and noon; after that hour he is only to be found at a place
called the Cafe Themis — a queer-sounding name "
"Do they do justice there ?" the Abbe asked, laughing.
"How does he get to a cafe at the corner of the Quai des
Augustins and the Rue Dauphine? He plays a game of
dominoes there with his friend M. Gobseck every night, they
say. I don't want to go all by myself, but uncle will take
me and bring me back again."
As she spoke. Mitral shoved his yellow countenance beneath
302 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
a wig that might have been made of twitch-grass and
plastered down on the top of his head. This worthy made
a sign, which, being interpreted, meant that his niece had
better come at once, without further waste of time which
was paid at the rate of two francs an hour; and Mme. Bau-
doyer went accordingly, without a word of explanation to
her father or husband.
When Elizabeth had gone, M. Gaudron turned to Bau-
doyer.
"Heaven," observed he, "^'has bestowed on you a treasure of
prudence and virtue in your wife ; she is a pattern of wisdom,
a Christian woman with a divine gift of understanding.
Religion alone can form a character so complete. To-mor-
row 1 will say the mass for the success of the good cause. In
the interests of the Monarchy and Religion you must be ap-
pointed. .M. Rabourdin is a Liberal; he subscribes to the
■Journal des~Debats, a disastrous publication that levies war
on M. le Comte de Villele to serve the interests of M. de
Chateaubriand. His Eminence is sure to see the paper this
evening, if it is only on account of his poor friend M. de la
Billardiere; and Monseigneur le Coadjuteur will be sure to
mention you and Rabourdin. I know M. le Cure; if any
one thinks of his dear Church, he does not forget them in his
sermon; and now, at this moment, he has the honor to dine
with the Coadjuteur at the house of M. le Cure de Saint-
Roch."
At these words it began to dawn upon Saillard and Bau-
doyer that Elizabeth had not been idle since Godard brought
her the news.
"She is a sharp one, is Elizabeth !" cried Saillard. He
could appreciate his daughter's quick, mole-like progress more
fully than' the Abbe could.
"She sent Godard to M. Rabourdin's to find out what news-
papers he takes," continued Gaudron, "and I gave His
Eminence's secretary a hint ; for as things are at this moment,
the Church and the Crown are bound to know their friends
and their enemies."
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 303
"These five d&yts i have been trying to think of something
to sa}' to His Excellency's wife," said Saillard.
Baudoyer could not take his eyes oif the paper. "All Paris
is reading that," he said.
"Your praise costs us four thousand eight hundred francs,
sonny !" said Mme. Saillard.
"You have adorned the house of God," put in the Abhe.
"We might have saved our souls without that though," re-
turned she. "But the place, if Baudoyer gets it, is worth an
extra eight thousand francs, so the sacrifice will not be great.
i\.nd if he doesn't? Eh! ma meref she continued, as she
looked at her husband. "If he doesn't — what a drain on
us !"
"Oh ! well," cried Saillard, in the enthusiasm of the
moment, "then we should make it up out of the business.
Falleix is going to expand his business. He made his brother
a stock-jobber on purpose to make him useful. Elizabeth
might as well have told us why Falleix had flown off. — But
let us think of something to say. This is what I thought
of: 'Madame, if you would only say a word to His Excel-
lency ' "
" 'Would only V " broke in Gaudron. " 'If you would
condescend' is more respectful. Besides, you must first make
sure that Madame la Dauphine will use her influence for you,
for in that case you might insinuate the notion of falling in
with Her Eoyal Highness' wishes."
"The vacant post ought to be expressly named," said Bau-
doyer.
" 'Madame la Comtesse,' " began Saillard, as he rose to
his feet, with an ingratiating smile directed at his wife.
"Good gracious, Saillard, how funny you look ! Do take
care, my boy, or you will make her laugh."
" 'Madame la Comtesse !' . . . (Is that better?)" he
asked of his wife.
"Yes, ducky."
" 'The late M. de la Billardiere's place is vacant ; my son-
in-law, M. Baudover "
304 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
" 'A man of talent and lofty piety/ " prompted Gaudron.
"Put it dovn, Baudoyer/' cried old Saillard; "put it
down !"
Baudoyer, in all simplicity, took up a pen and wrote his
own paneg}'ric without a blush, precisely as Xathan or Canalis
might review one of his own books.
" 'Madame la Comtesse,' " repeated Saillard for the third
time, then he broke off; "you see, mother, I am making be-
lieve that you are the Minister's wife."
"Do you take me for a fool?" retorted she. "I see that
quite well."
" 'The late worthy M. de la Billardiere's place is vacant ;
my son-in-law, M. Baudoyer, a man of consummate talent
and lofty piety ''
He paused for a moment, looked at M. Gaudron, who seemed
to be pondering something, and then added:
" 'Would be very glad to get it.' Ha ! not bad ; it is
short, and says all we want to say."
"But just wait a bit, Saillard! You surely can see that
M. I'Abbe is turning things over in his mind," exclaimed his
wife, "so don't disturb him."
" 'Would be very happy if you would deign to in-
terest yourself on his behalf,' " resumed Gaudron ; " 'and by
saying a few words to His Excellency you would be doing
Mme. la Dauphine a particular pleasure, for it has been his
good fortune to find a protectress in her.' "
"Ah ! M. Gaudron, that last remark was well worth the
monstrance; I am not so sorry now about the four thousand
eight hundred francs. — Besides, Baudoyer, I say, you are
going to pay for it, my boy. Have you put that down ?"
"I will hear you say that over, night and morning, ma
mere," said Mme. Saillard. "Yes, it is very well hit off, is
that speech. How fortunate you are to be so learned, M.
Gaudron ! That is what comes of studying in these
seminaries; you are taught how to speak to God and the
saints."
"He is as kind as he is learned." said Baudoyer, grasping
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS S05
the Abbe's hands as he spoke. "Did you write that article?"
he continued, pointing to the paper.
"No," returned Gaudron, "It was written by His
Eminence's secretary, a young fellow who lies under great
obligations to me, and takes an interest in M. Colleville. I
paid for his education at the Seminary."
"A good deed never loses its reward," commented Bau-
doyer.
When these four personages sat themselves down to their
game of boston, Elizabeth and Uncle Mitral had reached the
Cafe Themis, talking by the way of the business on hand.
Elizabeth's tact had discovered the most powerful lever to
force the Minister's hand. Uncle Mitral, a retired bailiff,
was an expert on chicanery, in legal expedients, and precau-
tions. He considered that the honor of the family was in-
volved in his nephew's success. Avarice had led him to cast
an eye into Gigonnet's strong box ; he knew that all the money
would go to his nephew Baudoyer ; and therefore he wished to
see Baudoyer in a position that befitted the fortunes of the
Saillards and Gigonnet, for all would come some day to Eliza-
beth's little daughter. What may not a girl look for when she
has more than a hundred thousand francs a year? Mitral
had taken up his niece's ideas and grasped them thoroughly.
So he had hastened Falleix's journey by explaining that you
can travel quicker by post. Since then he had reflected, over
his dinner, upon the proper curve to be given to a spring of
Elizabeth's designing.
Arrived at the Cafe Themis, he told his niece that he had
better go in alone to arrange with Gigonnet, and left her out-
side in the cab till the time should come for her intervention.
Elizabeth could see Gobseck and Bidault through the window-
panes; their heads were thrown into relief by the bright yel-
low-painted panels of the old-fashioned coffee-house ; they
looked like two cameos ; it seemed as if the cold, unchanging
expression on their countenances had been caught and fixed
there by the carver's art. The misers were surrounded by
aged faces, each one furrowed with curving wrinkles that
306 THE GOVERNMENT CT^BRKS
Started from the nose and brought the glazed cheek-bones
into prominence — wrinkles in which thirty per cent discount
seemed to- be written. All the faces brightened up at sight
of Mitral; a tigerish curiosity glittered in all eyes.
"Hey ! hey ! it is Daddy Mitral !" cried Chaboisseau, a
little old bill-discounter, who did his business among pub-
lishers and booksellers.
"My word! so it is," replied a paper merchant, by name
Metivier. "Ah ! 'tis an old monkey, you can't teach him
any tricks !"
"And you are an old raven, a good judge of corpses."
"Precisely so," said the stern Gobseck.
"Why have you come here, my boy? To nab our friend
Metivier?" asked Gigonnet, pointing out a man who looked
like a retired porter.
"Your grandniece Elizabeth is outside. Daddy Gigonnet,"
whispered Mitral.
"What? Anything wrong?" queried Bidault. The old
man scowled as he spoke, and his air was about as tender as
the expression of a headsman on a scaffold; but, in spite of
his Roman manhood, he must have felt perturbed, for his deep
carmine countenance lost a trifle of its color.
"Well, and if something had gone wrong, wouldn't you
help. .Saillard's child, a little thing that has knitted stockings
for you these thirty 3^ears?" cried Mitral.
"If security is forthcoming, I do not say no," returned
Gigonnet. "Falleix is in this. Your Falleix has set up his
brother as a stockbroker; he does as much business as the
Brezacs ; with what ? His brains, no doubt. After all. Sail-
lard is not a baby."
"He knows the value of money," remarked Chaboisseau.
And one and all the old men wagged their heads. A man
of imagination would have shuddered if he had heard those
words as they were uttered.
"Besides, if anything happens to my kith or kin, it is no
affair of mine," began Bidault-Gigonnet. "I make it a
principle," continued he, "never to be let in with my friends
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 307
or relatives ; for you only get your death through your weak-
est spot. Ask Gobseck; he is soft."
All the bill-discounters applauded this doctrine, nodding
their metallic heads, till you might have listened for the
creaking of ill-greased machinery.
"Oh, come now, Gigonnet," put in Chaboisseau, "a little
tenderness, when your stockings have been knitted for you for
thirty years."
"Ah ! that counts for something," commented Gobseck.
"There are no outsiders here," pursued Mitral, who had been
taking a look round, "so we can speak freely. I have come
here with a good bit of business "
"If it is good, what makes ^ou come to us?" Gigonnet
interrupted sourly.
"A chap that was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, an
old Chouan, what's his name — la Billardiere — is dead."
"Eeally?" asked Gobseck.
"And here is my nephew giving monstrances to churches !"
said Gigonnet.
"He is not such a fool as to give, he is selling them,
daddy," Mitral retorted proudly. "It is a question of
getting M. de la Billardiere's place ; and to reach it, one must
"Seize ! Always a bailiff !" cried Metivier, clapping
Mitral on the shoulder. "I like that, I do!"
"Seizing the Sieur Chardin des Lupeaulx between our
claws," continued Mitral. "Now, Elizabeth has found out
how to do it, and it is "
"Elizabeth !" Gigonnet broke in again. "Dear little
creature ! She takes after her grandfather, my poor brother.
Bidault had not his like. Ah ! if you had only seen him at
old furniture sales. Such an instinct ! Up to everything !
— What does she want?"
"Oh, come now ! Daddy Gigonnet, you find your family
affections very quickly. There must be some cause for this
phenomenon."
"You child !" said Gobseck, addressing Gigonnet, "always
too impetuous."
308 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"Come, my masters, Gobseck and Gigonnet both, you need
des Lupeaulx; you recollect how you plucked him, and you
are afraid that he may ask for a little of his down again,"
said Mitral.
"Can we talk of this business with him?" Gobseck asked,
indicating Mitral.
"Mitral is one of us ; he would not play a trick on old cus-
tomers," returned Gigonnet. "Very well. Mitral. Between
ourselves," he continued, lowering his voice for the retired
bailiff's ear, "we three have just been buying up certain
debts, and the admission of them lies with the Committee
of Liquidation."
"What can 3^ou concede?" asked Mitral.
"Nothing," said Gobseck.
"Our names don't appear in it," added Gigonnet. "Sa-
manon is acting as our fence."
"Look here, Gigonnet," began Mitral. "It is cold, and
your grandniece is waiting. I'll put the whole thing in a
word or two, and you will understand. You two between
you must lend Falleix two hundred and fifty thousand
francs, without interest. At this present moment he is tear-
ing along the road thirty leagues away from Paris, with a
courier riding ahead."
"Is it possible?" asked Gobseck.
"Where is he going?" cried Gigonnet.
"Why, he is going down to des Lupeaulx's fine estate in the
country. He knows the neighl)orhood ; and with the afore-
said two hundred and fifty thousand francs he is going to
buy up some of the excellent land round about the Secre-
tary-General's hovel. The land will always fetch what was
given for it. And a deed signed in the presence of a notary
need not be registered for nine days — bear that in mind !
With these trifling additions, des Lupeaulx's 'estate' will pay
a thousand francs per annum in taxes. Ergo, des Lupeaulx
will be an elector of the 'grand college' qualified for elec-
tion, a Count and anything that he likes. Do you know the
deputy that backed out of it?"
THE GOVEENMENT CLERKS 309
The two usurers nodded.
"Des L^^peaulx would cut off a leg to be a deputy," con-
tinued Mitral. "But when we show him the contracts, he
will be for having them made out in his name; our loan to
be charged, of course, as a mortgage on the land, reserving
the right to sell. (Aha! do you take me?) First of all,
we want the place for Baudoyer; afterwards we hand over
des Lupeaulx to you. Falleix is stopping down there, get-
ting ready for the election, so through Falleix you will have a
pjstol Jtield to jies Lupeaulx's head all through the election,
for Falleix's friends are in the majority. Do you see Falleix's
hand in this. Daddy Gigonnet ?"
"I see Mitral's too," remarked Metivier. "The trick is
neatly done."
"It is a bargain," said Gigonnet. "That is so, isn't it,
Gobseck? Falleix must sign counter-deeds for us, and have
the mortgage m^e out in his own name; and we will pay
des Lupeaulx a vi^it in the nick of time."
"And we are being robbed," put in Gobseck.
"Ah ! I should very much like to know the man that robs
you, daddy," retorted Mitral.
"Why, no one can rob us but ourselves," returned Gi-
gonnet. "We thought we were doing a good thing when we
bought up all des Lupeaulx's debts at a discount of sixty
per cent."
"You can add them to the mortgage on his place, and
have yet another hold on him through the interest," re-
turned Mitral.
"That is possible," said Gobseck.
Bidault, alias Gigonnet, exchanged a quick glance with
Gobseck, and went to the door.
"Go ahead, Elizabeth !" he said, addressing his niece.
"We have your man fast, but look after details. You have
made a good beginning, sly girl ! Go through with it, you
have your uncle's esteem " and he struck his hand play-
fully in hers.
"But Metivier and Chaboisseau may try a sudden stroke,"
20
310 THE OOVERNMENT f'LERKS
said Mitral ; "'tliey might go to-niglit to some Opposition
paper, catch the ball at a rebound, and pay ns back for the
Ministerialist article. Go back by yourself, child; I will
not let those two cormorants go out of sight."
And he returned to the Cafe.
"To-morrow the money shall go to its destination through
a word to the receiver-general. We will raise a hundred
thousand crowns' worth of his paper among friends,'^ said
Gigonnet, when Mitral came to speak to him.
Next day the readers of a Liberal paper in wide circu-
lation beheld the following paragraph among the items of
news. It had been inserted by command of MM. Chabois-
seau and Metivier, to whom no editor could refuse anything;
for were they not shareholders in two newspapers, and did
they not also discount the bills of publishers, printers, and
paper-merchants ?
"Yesterday," so ran the paragraph, "a Ministerialist
paper evidently pointed out ]\r. le Baron de la Billardiere's
successor. M. Baudoyer is one of the most eligible citizens
of a thickly populated district, where his beneficence is not
less known than the piety upon which the Ministerialist
sheet lays so much stress. But mention might have been
made of M. Baudoyer's abilities. Did our contemporary
remember that even in vaunting the antiquity of M. Bau-
doyer's burgher descent (and an ancient burgher ancestry is
as much a noblesse as any other), in the matter of that very
burgher descent she touched upon the reason of the probable
exclusion of her candidate ? Gratuitous treachery ! The
good lady, according to her wont, flatters those whom she
destroys. M. Baudoyer's appointment would be a tribute
to the virtue and capacity of the middle classes, and of the
middle class we shall always be the advocates, though we
may see that often we are only defending a lost cause. It
would be a piece of good policy and an act of justice to nom-
inate M. Baudoyer to the vacant post ; so the Ministry will
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 311
not permit it. The Religious sheet for once showed more
sense than its masters; it will get into trouble."
The next day was Friday, the day of Mme. Eabourdin's
dinner-party. At midnight on Thursday des Lupeaulx had
left her on the staircase at the Bouffons, where she stood, in
her radiant beauty, her hand on Mme. de Camps' arm (for
Mme. Firmiani had recently married) ; and when the old
libertine came to himself again, his ideas of revenge had
calmed down, or rather they had grown cooler — he could
think of nothing but that last glance exchanged with Mme.
Rabourdin.
"I will make sure of Rabourdin," he thought, "by for-
giving him in the first instance ; I will be even with him later
on. At present, if he does not get his step, I must give up a
woman who might be an invaluable aid to a great political
success, for she understands everything; she shrinks back
from no idea. What is more, in that case I should not find
out this administrative scheme of Rabourdin's until it was
laid before the Minister. Come, dear des Lupeaulx; it is a
question of overcoming all obstacles for your Celestine.
You may grimace, Mme. la Comtesse, but you are going to
invite Mme. Rabourdin to your next small select party."
Some men can put revenge into a corner of their hearts
till they gratify their passions; des Lupeaulx was one of
them. His mind was fully made up ; he determined to carry
Rabourdin^g -, nomination.
"1 am going to prove to you, dear chief clerk, that I de-
serve a high place in your diplomatic galleys," he said to
himself, as he took his seat in his private office and opened
his newspapers.
He had known the contents of the Ministerial sheet only
too well at five o'clock on the previous day, so he did not
care to amuse himself by reading it through ; but he opened
it to glance at the obituary notice of la Billardiere, think-
ing as he did so of the predicament in which du Bruel had
put him, when he brought in the satirical performance com-
312 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
posed under Bixiou's editorship. He could not help laugh-
ing as he perused the biography of the late Comte de la
Fontaine, adapted and reprinted, after a few months' inter-
val, for M. de la Billardiere. Then, all of a sudden, his
eyes were dazzled by the name of Baudoyer ! With fury
he read the specious article which compromised the depart-
ment. He rang the bell vigorously and sent for Dutocq,
meaning to send him to the newspaper office. But what was
his astonishment when he read the reply in the Opposition
paper, for it so happened that the Liberal sheet was the first
to come to hand. The thing was getting serious. He knew
the dodge; it seemed to him that the master hand was mak-
ing a mess of his cards, and he took his opponent for a
Greek of the first order. To dispose so adroitly of two
papers of opposite politics, and that at once, and on the
same evening; to begin the game, moreover, by guessing at
the Minister's intentions ! He fancied that he recognized
the hand of an acquaintance, a Liberal editorx^ and vowed
to question him that night at the Opera. Dutocq appeared.
"Read that," said des Lupeaulx, holding out the two
papers while he ran his eyes over the rest of the batch to see
whether Baudoyer had pulled other wires. "Just go and
find out who it was that took it into his head to compromise
the department in this way."
"It was not M. Baudoyer, anyhow," replied Dutocq. "He
did not leave the office yesterday. There is no need to go to
the office. When I took your article yesterda}^ I saw the
Abbe there. He came provided with a letter from the Grand
Almoner; you yourself would have given way if you had
seen it."
"Dutocq, you have some grudge against M. Eabourdin,
and it is not right of you, for he prevented jovlt dismissal
twice. Still we cannot help our feelings; and one may
happen to dislike a man who does one a kindness. Only,
bear in mind that if you permit yourself the smallest at-
tempt at treachery against him until I give the word, it will
be your ruin ; you can count me as your enemy. As for my
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 313
friend and his newspaper, let the Grand Almonry subscribe
for our number of copies, if its columns are to be devoted
to their exclusive use. The year is almost at an end, the
question of subscriptions will be raised directly, and then
we shall see. As for la Billardiere's post, there is one way
of putting a stop to this sort of thing, and that is, to make
the appointment this very day."
Dutocq went back to the office.
"Gentlemen," he remarked, "I do not know whether
Bixiou has the gift of reading the future; but if you have
not seen the Ministerial paper, I recommend the paragraph
on Baudoyer to your careful attention; and then as M.
Fleury takes the opposition paper, you may see the double
of it. Certainly, M. Eabourdin is a clever man ; but a man
who gives a monstrance worth six thousand francs to a
church, is deucedly clever too, as times go."
Bixiou {coming in). "What do you say to the first
chapter of an epistle to the Corinthians in our religious
paper, and the epistle to the ministers in the Liberal sheet?
— How is M. Eabourdin, du Bruel ?"
Du Bruel (coming in). "I do not know." (Draws
Bixou into his sanctum and lower's his voice.) "My dear
fellow, your way of helping a man is uncommonly like the
hangman's way, when he hoists you on his shoulders the bet-
ter to break your neck. You let me in for a whipping from
des Lupeaulx, and I deserved it for my stupidity. A nice
thing that article on la Billardiere ! It is a trick that I
shall not forget ! The very first sentence as good as told the
King that it was time to die. And the account of the Qui-
beron affair clearly meant that His Majesty was a
The whole thing was ironical, in fact."
Bixiou (bursting into a laugh). "Oh, come! are you
getting cross? Cannot one have a joke?"
Du Bruel. "A joke ! a joke ! When you want to be
chief clerk's assistant they will put you off with jokes, my
dear fellow.
Bixiou (with a threat in his tones). "Are we getting
cross ?"
314 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Du Bruel. "Yes."
Bixiou (drily). "Ver}' well, so much the worse for you."
Du Bruel (reflecting uneasily). "Could you get over it
yourself ?"
Bixiou (insinuatingly). "From a friend? I should
think I could." (Fleury's voice is heard in the office.)
"There is Fleury cursing Baudoyer. It was a neat trick,
hey? Baudoyer will get the step." (Confidentially.)
"After all, so much the better. Follow up the consequences
carefully, du Bruel. Rabourdin would show a poor spirit
if he stopped on under Baudoyer; he will resign, and that
will leave two vacant places. You will be chief clerk, and
you will take me with you as assistant. We will write vaude-
villes in collaboration, and I will fag for you at the office."
Du Bruel (brightening) . "I say, I did not think of that.
Poor Eabourdin ! Still, I should be sorry."
Bixiou. "Ah ! so that is how you love him!" (Changing
his tone.) "Oh, well, I do not pity him either. After all,
he is well to do ; his wife gives parties, and does not ask me,
when I go everywhere ! Come, good-bye, no malice, du
Bruel; there is a good fellow." (Goes out into the general
office.) "Good-da}', gentlemen! Did I not tell you yester-
day that if a man has nothing but principles and ability, he
will always be very badly off, even with a pretty wife?"
Fleury. "You are rich j^ourself!"
Bixiou. "Not bad, dear Cincinnatus ! But you are go-
ing to give me a dinner at the Rocher de Cancale."
Poiret. "I never know what to make of M. Bixiou !"
Phellion (ruefully). "M. Eabourdin so seldom reads
the papers, that it may be worth while to take them in for
him, and to do without them ourselves for a bit." (Fleury
hands over his sheet; Yimeux passes the newspaper taken
hy the office; and Phellion goes out with them).
At that moment des Lupeaulx was going downstairs to
breakfast with the Minister. As he went, he was wonder-
ing within himself whether prudence did not dictate that
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 315
he should fathom the wife's heart before displaying the fine
flower of scoundrelism for the husband, and make sure, first
of all, that his devotion would be rewarded. He was feel-
ing the little pulse that still throbbed in his heart, when he
met his attorney on the staircase, and was greeted with, "A
word or two with you, my lord !" uttered with the smiling
familiarity of a man who knows that he is indispensable.
"What, my dear Desroches !" exclaimed the politician.
"What has happened? These people lose their tempers;
they cannot do as I do, and wait."
"I came at once to give you warning that your bills are
in the hands of Messrs. Gobseck and Gigonnet, under the
name of one Samanon."
"Men that I put in the way of making enormous amounts
of money !"
"Look here !" continued Desroches in lowered tones ;
"Gigonnet's name is Bidault; Saillard your cashier is his
nephew; and Saillard is besides the father-in-law of a cer-
tain Baudoyer who thinks he has a right to the vacant post
in your department. I had cause to give you warning, had
I not?"
"Thanks," said des Lupeaulx, with a nod of good-bye and
a knowing glance.
"One stroke of the pen and you get a receipt in full," said
Desroches, as he went.
"That is the way with these immense sacrifices, you can't
speak of them to a woman," thought des Lupeaulx. "Is
Celestine worth the riddance of all my debts ? I will go and
see her this morning."
And so, in a few hours' time, the fair Mme. Eabourdin
was to be the arbiter of her^Jhusband's destinies; and no
power on earth could warn her of the importance of her re-
plies, no danger signal bid her compose her voice and man-
ner. And, unluckily, she was confident of success; she did
not know that the ground beneath Eabourdin was under-
mined in all directions with the burrowings of teredos.
"Well, my lord," said des Lupeaulx, as he entered the
316 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
breakfast-room, "have you seen the paragraphs on Bau-
doyer ?"
"For Heaven's sake, my dear fellow, let nominations alone
for a minute," returned the Minister. "I had that mon-
strance flung at my head yesterday. To secure Eabourdin,
the nomination must go before the board at once; I will not
have my hand forced. It is enough to make one sick of
public life. If we .are to keep Eabourdin, we must promote
one Colleville "
"Will you leave me to manage this farce and think no
more about it? I will amuse you every morning with an
account of the moves in a game of chess with the Grand
Almonry," said des Lupeaulx.
"Very well," replied the Minister, "work with the chief
of the staff. Don't you know that an argument in an Op-
position paper is the most likely thing of all to strike the
King's mind? A Minister overruled by a Baudoyer; just
think of it !"
"A bigot and a driveler," said des Lupeaulx; "he is as in-
competent as "
"La Billardiere," put in His Excellency.
"La Billardiere at least behaved like a Gentleman in
Ordinary of the Bedchamber," said des Lupeaulx. — "Ma-
dame,'' he continued, turning to the Countess, "it will be ab-
solutely necessary now to invite Mme. Eabourdin to your next
small party. I must point out that Mme. de Camps is a
friend of hers; they were at the Italiens together yesterday,
and she has been to my knowledge at the Hotel Firmiani;
so you can see whether she is likely to commit any solecism
in a salon."
"Send an invitation to Mme. Eabourdin, dear, and let us
change the subject," said the Minister.
"So Celestine is in my clutches !" des Lupeaulx said to
himself, as he went up to his rooms for a morning toilette.
Parisian households are eaten up with a desire to be in
harmony with tbe luxury which surrounds them on all sides;
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 317
those wlio are wise enough to live as their income prescribes
are in a small minority. Perhaps this failing is akin to a
very French patriotism, an effort to preserve supremacy in
matters of costume for France. France lays down the law
to all Europe in fashions, and everybody in the country re-
gards it as_a duty to preserve her commercial sceptre, for
Fraiice^rules the fashions if Britain rules the waves. The
patriotic fervor which leads the Frenchman to sacrifice
everything to "seemliness" (as d'Aubigne said of Henry
III.) causes an immense amount of hard work behind the
scenes; work that absorbs a Parisienne's whole morning,
especially if, like Mme. Eabourdin, she tries to live on an in-
come of twelve thousand livres in a style which many
wealthier people would not attempt on thirty thousand.
So, every Friday, the day of the weekly dinner-party)
Mme. Eabourdin used to assist the housemaid who swept
and dusted the rooms, for the cook was dispatched to the
market at an early hour, and the man-servant was busy
cleaning the silver, poli.shing the glasses, and arranging the
table napkins. If any ill-advised caller had escaped the por-
ter's vigilance and climbed the stairs to Mme. Rabourdin's
abode, he would have found her in a most unpicturesque dis-
order. Arrayed in a loose morning-gown, with her feet
thrust into an old pair of slippers, and her hair in a care-
less knot, she was engaged in trimming lamps or arranging
flowers, or hastily preparing an unromantic breakfast. If
the visitor had not been previously initiated into the mys-
teries of Paris life, he would certainly learn there and then
that it is inexpedient to set foot behind the scenes thereof ;
before very long he would be held up as an example, he
would be capable of the blackest deeds. A woman surprised
in her morning mysteries will talk of his stupidity and in-
discretion, till she ruins the intruder. Indulgent as the
Parisenne may be to curiosity that turns to her profit, she is
implacable to indiscretion which finds her at a disadvantage.
Such a domiciliary visit is not so nmeli an indecent assault,
to use the language of the police-courts, as flat burglary.
318 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
and theft of the dearest treasurt' of all, to wit. Credit. A
woman may have no objection to be discovered half dressed
with her hair about her shoulders; if all her hair is her own,
she is a gainer by the incident; but no woman cares to be
seen sweeping out her rooms, there is a loss of "seemliness"
in it.
Mme. Eabourdin was in the thick of her Friday prepara-
tions, and surrounded b}' provisions fished up from that
ocean, the Great Market, when M. des Lupeaulx made his
surreptitious call. Truly, the Secretary-General was the
last person whom the fair Eabourdin expected to see; so
hearing his boots creak on the stairs, she cried, "The hair-
dresser already !" If the sound of the words struck un-
pleasantly in des Lupeaulx's ears, the sight of des Lupeaulx i
\vas not a whit more agreeable to the lady. She took refuge"
in her bedroom amid a terrible muddle, a perfect Shrove-
tide assemblage of motley furniture and heterogeneous ele-
gance, which had been pent thither to be out of sight; but
the negligent morning-dress proved so alluring, that the
bold des Lupeaulx followed the frightened fair one. A
vague, indescribable something tantalized him; glimpses
cauglit through a half-fastened slip seemed a thousand times
more enticing than a full display of every graceful curve,
from the line traced round the shoulders by a low velvet
bodice to the vanishing point of the prettiest rounded swan-
like throat that ever lover kissed before a ball. If your eyes
rest on a splendidly developed bust set off by full dress, it
suggests a comparison with the elaborate dessert of a great
dinner; but the glance that steals under cambrics crumpled
by slumber will find dainties there on which to feast, sweets
to be relished like the stolen fruit that reddens among the
leaves upon the trellis.
"Wait ! wait !" cried the fair lady, bolting herself in with
her disorder.
She rang fbr Therese, for the cook, for the man-servant,
for her daughter, imploring a shawl. She longed for stage
machinery to shift the scene at the manager's whistle. And
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 319
the whistle was given and the transformation worked in a
hand's turn after all. And behold a new phenomenon !
The room took on a piqnant air of morning which harmon-
ized with an impromptu toilette, all devised for the greater
glory of a woman who, in this instance, clearly rose superior
to her sex.
"You !" she exclaimed, "and at this hour ! What ever can
it be?"
"The most serious thing in the world," returned des Lu-
peaulx. "To-day we must arrive at a clear understanding
of each other."
Celestine looked straight through the eyeglasses into the
man's thoughts, and understood.
"It is my chief weakness," said she, "to be prodigiously
fanciful ; I do not mingle politics and affection, for instance ;
let us talk of politics and business, and afterwards we shall
see. And besides, this is not a mere whim; it is one conse-
quence of my artistic taste; I cannot put discordant colors
or incongruous things together; I shun jarring contrasts.
We women have a policy of our owti."
Even as she spoke, her pretty ways and the tones of her
voice produced their effect ; the Secretary-General's brutality
was giving place to sentimental courtesy. She had recalled
him to a sense of what was due from him as a lover.
A clever, pretty woman creates her own atmosphere, as it
were; nerves are relaxed and sentiments softened in her
presence.
"You do not know what is going on," des Lupeaulx re-
turned abruptly, for he tried to persevere in his brutality.
"Read that !"
Des Lupeaulx had previously marked the paragraphs in
red ink; he now held out the newspapers to the graceful
woman before him. As Celestine read, her shawl slipped
open ; but she was either unconscious of this, or successfully
feigned unconsciousness. Des Lupeaulx had reached the age
when fancies are the more potent because they pass so
swiftly; but if he found it difficult to keep self-control,
Celestine was equally hard put to it.
/
320 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"What !" said she. "Why, this is dreadful ! Who is this
Baudoyer ?"
"A jackass," returned des Lupeaulx; 'T)ut, as you see, he
carries the relics, and with a clever hand on the bridle he
will reach his goal."'
Mine. Eabourdin's debts rose up before her eyes and
dazzled her; she seemed to see one lightning flash after
another: the blood surged through her veins till her ears
rang with the heavy pulse beats; she sat in a stupor, staring
with unseeing eyes at a bracket on the Avail. Then she
turned to des Lupeaulx.
"But you are true to us?'' she said, with a glance like a
caress, a glance that was meant to bind him to herself.
"That depends," he answered, returning her look with an
inquisitive glance that brought the red into the poor woman's
face.
"If you insist upon earnest-money, you will lose the full
payment/' she said with a laugh. "I imagined that you
were greater than you are. And as for you, you think I am
very small, a mere schoolgirl."
"You did not understand," he said meaningly. "I meant
that I cannot serve a man who is going against me, as
TEtourdi thwarts Mascarille."
"What does this mean?"
"This will show you that I am great," he said. And he
gave her Dutocq's stolen list, pointing as he did so to her
husband's shrewd analysis of his character.
"Eead that!''
Celestine recognized the handwriting, read, and turned
pale at this bludgeon blow.
"All the departments are in it," added des Lupeaulx.
"But, fortunately, no one but you possesses a copy. I can-
not explain it."
"The thief that stole it is not so simple that he M'ould not
take a duplicate ; he is too great a liar to confess to the copy,
and too intelligent in his trade to give it up. I have not
even asked him about it."
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 321
'^ho is he ?"
"Your first draughting-clerk."
"Dutocq. You are never punished except for doing a
kindness. — But he is a dog that wants a bone," she added.
"Do you know what a tentative offer has been held out to
me, poor devil of a Secretary-General that I am?" 4
"What?"
"I owe a miserable thirty thousand odd francs. You will
at once form a very poor opinion of me when you know that
I am not more in debt; but, indeed, in this respect I am
small ! Well and good. Baudoyer's uncle has just bought
up my debts, and is ready, no doubt, to give up my bills to
me."
"But all this is infernal."
"N"ot a bit of it; it is monarchical and religious, for the
Grand Almonry is mixed up in it "
"What are you going to do?"
"What are your orders?" he asked, holding out a hand
with an adorable charm of manner.
To Celestine he was no longer plain, nor old, nor frosted
with powder, nor a secretary-general, nor anything unclean ;
but she did not give him her hand. In her drawing-room
she would have allowed him to take it a hundred times in the
course of an evening; but such a proceeding in the morning,
when they were alone, was as good as a promise; it was
rather too decisive — it might lead her further than she
meant to go.
"And people say that statesmen have no hearts !" she
cried, trying to soften the refusal with a gracious speech.
"That frightened me," she added, with the most innocent
air in the world.
"What a slander !" returned des Lupeaulx. "One of the
most impassive of diplomatists, a man that has kept power
ever since he was born, has just married an actress' daugh-
ter, and imposed her upon the most rigorous of all Courts in
the matter of quarterings."
"And you will support us?"
A
322 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"I work the nominations. But no trickery."
She held out her hand for him to kiss, and gave him a
light tap on the cheek.
"You are mine," she said.
Des Lupeaulx admired that speech. (Indeed, the cox-
comb told the story that evening at the Opera, after his own
fashion, as follows: "A woman did not wish to tell a man
that she was his, an admission that a well-bred woman never
makes, so she said, 'You are mine !' What do you think of
the evasion?")
"But you must be my ally,^' he began. "Your husband
said something to the Minister about a scheme of adminis-
tration, and this list, in which I am handled so gently, is
connected with it. Find out, and let me know this evening."
"It shall be done,'" said she. She saw no great importance
in the matter that had brought des Lupeaulx to her house at
such an early hour.
"The hairdresser, madame," announced the housemaid.
"He has kept me waiting a very long time !' ' she said. "I
do not know how I should have come through if he had been
any later," she thought within herself.
"You do not know how far my devotion goes," said des
Lupeaulx, rising to his feet. "You are going to be invited
to the Countess' next special and intimate partv "
"Oh ! you are an angel," she said ; "and I see how much
you love me. You love me intelligently."
"This evening, dear child, I am going to the Opera to find
out who these journalists are that are conspiring for Bau-
doyer; and we will measure weapons."
"Yes, but you will dine here, will you not? I have or-
dered the things you like."
"All this is so much like love," des Lupeaulx said to him-
self as he went downstairs, "so much like love, that it would
be pleasant to be deceived in such a Avay for a long while.
But if she is laughing at me, I shall find it out. I have the
most ingenious of snares ready for lier, so that I may read
her very heart before I sign. Ah ! you kittens, we know
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 323
you; for, after all, women are just as we are. Twenty-eight
years old and virtuous, and here in the Eue Duphot ! It is
a rare piece of luck which is well worth the trouble of culti-
vation."
And this eligible butterfly fluttered away down the stair-
case.
"Oh, dear ! that man yonder without his spectacles must
look very funny in his dressing-gown when his hair is pow-
dered!" Celestine was sa3dng to herself meanwhile. "He
has the harpoon in his back ; he is going to tow me at last to
my goal — the Minister's house. He has played his pai:t_iB_
my comedy." ~. '\ "
When Rabourdin came home at five o'clock to dress, his
wife came into the room and brought him the list. It
seemed like the slipper in the Arabian Nights — the unlucky
man was fated to meet it everywhere.
"Who put that in your hands?" Rabourdin asked in
amazement.
"M. des Lupeaulx."
"Has he been here?" asked Rabourdin. A guilty woman
would surely have turned pale beneath the look that he gave
her, but his wife met it with marble brows and laughing eyes.
"Yes, and he is coming here again to dinner," said she.
"Why do you look so horrified?"
"Dear," said Rabourdin, "I have given des Lupeaulx
mortal offence. Men of that sort never forgive; and he is
caressing me ! Do you think that I cannot see why ?"
"It seems to me that he has a very discriminating taste,"
she said. "I cannot blame him for it. After all, I know
of nothing more flattering to a woman's vanity than the
knowledge that she stimulates a jaded palate."
"A truce to jesting, Celestine ! Spare an overburdened
man. I cannot speak with the Minister, and my honor is at
stake."
"Oh dear, no ! Dutocq shall have the promise of a place,
and you will be head of the division."
324 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"I jjee what you mean, darling," said Rabourdin; 'Tjut
you are plaj'ing a game that is quite as dishonoring as if you
meant it in earnest. A lie is a lie, and an honest
woman "
"Pray let me make use of the weapons that they turn
against us."
"Celestine, when that man sees how foolishly he has fallen
into the snare, he will be all the more furious against me."
. "And how if I upset him ?"
Rabourdin stared at his wife in amazement.
"I am only thinking of your advancement," continued
Celestine, "and it is time I did so, my poor love. — But you
are taking the sporting-dog for the game," she added after a
pause. "In a few days' time des Lupeaulx will have ful-
filled his mission very sufficiently. While you are trying to
say a word to the Minister, and before you can so much as
see him, I shall have had a talk with him. You have
strained every nerve to bring out this scheme that you have
kept from me ; and in three months your wife will have done
more than you have done in six years. Tell^jtne about this
great project of yours."
So Rabourdin, as he shaved himself, began to explain his
scheme, first obtaining a promise that his wife would not
say a single word of his work; warning her, at the same time,
that to give des Lupeaulx any idea of it would be to give the
cream jug to the cat. But at the fifth sentence Celestine m-
terrupted him.
"Rabourdin, why did you not speak to me about it?" she
said. "Why, you would have saved yourself useless trouble.
I can imagine that one may be blinded by an idea for a min-
ute ; but for six or seven years ! — that I cannot conceive.
You want to reduce the estimates? It is a commonplace,
penny-wise economy ! Rather we should aim at raising the
income to two milliards. France would be twice as great.
A new system would be this plan cried up by M. de Nucin-
gen, a loan that would send an impulse through trade
through the whole country. The poorest exchequer is the
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 325
one that has most francs lying idle. It is the Finance Min-
ister's mission to fling money out of the windows, and it
comes in at his cellars. And you would have him accumu-
late specie ! Why, instead of reducing the number of posts
under Government, you ought to increase them ! Instead
of paying off the national debt, you should increase the
number of fund-holders. If the Bourbons mean to reign in
peace, they ought to have fund-holders in every township;
and, of all things, they should beware of raising foreign
loans, for foreigners will be sure some day to require the re-
payment of the capital, whereas if none but Frenchmen have
money invested in the funds, neither France nor national
credit will perish. That saved England. This plan oi
yours is a little shopkeeper's scheme. An ambitious man
should only present himself in the character of a second
Law, without Law's ill-luck; he should explain the resources
of credit; he should show that we ought not to sink money
in extinguishing principal, but in payment of interest, as
the English do "
"Come, Celestine," said Eabourdin, "jumble up ideas to-
gether, make playthings of them, and contradict yourself !
I am used to it. But do not criticise a piece of work before
you know what it is."
"Is there any need to know what it is, when the gist of
the matter is to carry on the administration in France with
six thousand officials instead of twenty thousand? Why, my
dear, even if the scheme were invented by a man of genius,
a King of France would lose his crown if he attempted to
carry it into effect. You may subjugate an aristocracy b}^
striking off a few heads, but you cannot quell a hydra with
a thousand claws. No, no; insignificant folk cannot be
crushed, they lie too flat beneath the foot. — And do you mean
to move all these men through the ministers? Between our-
selves, they are very poor creatures. You may shift men's
interests, you cannot shift men; they make too much outcry,
whereas the francs are dumb."
"But, Celestine, if you talk all the time, and if you aim
21
326 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
your wit wide of the mark, we shall never arrive at an un-
derstanding "
"Ah ! I see the drift of that analysis of men's administra-
tive ability," she went on, without listening to her husband.
"Goodness, you have been sharpening the axe for yourself.
Sainte Viergel why did 3'ou not consult me? I would at
any rate have prevented you from putting a single line on
paper; or at the worst, if you wished to have the memo-
randum, I would have copied it myself, and it should never
have left this house. Oh ! dear, why did you say nothing
to me about it ? Just like a man ! A man can sleep beside
his wife and keep a secret for seven years ! He can hide him-
self from her, poor thing, for seven years and doubt her devo-
tion.""
"But,'' protested Rabourdin, "whenever I have tried to
discuss anything with you, for these eleven years, you have
cut me short, and immediately brought out your own ideas
instead. You know nothing of my work."
"Xothing? I know all about it!"'"
"Then, pray, tell me about it,'"" cried Eabourdin, losing
his temper for the first time since his marriage.
"There ! it is half-past six ; shave yourself and dress," she
retorted, answering him after the wont of women when pressed
upon a point on which they are bound to be silent ; "I will
finish dressing, and we will postj)one the argument, for I
do not want to be worried on my reception day. — Oh, dear
me, poor man," she said to herself as she went, "to think
that he should toil for seven years to bring about his own
ruin I And put no trust in his wife."
She turned back.
"If you had listened to me in time," she said, "you would
not have interfered on behalf of your first clerk; he, no
doubt, took the copies of that unlucky list. Good-bye, clever
man !"
But seeing her husband's pain in his tragic attitude, she
felt that she had gone too far; she sprang to him, and put
her arms about him lovingly, all covered with soap as he
was.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 327
"Dear Xavier, do not be vexed," she said, "this evening we
will go through your scheme; you shall talk at your ease,
and I am going to listen as long and as attentively as you
please ! — Is that nice of me ? There, I do not ask better than
to be Mahomet's wife."
She began to laugh, and Eabourdin could not help laugh-
ing too, for Celestine's mouth was white with soap, while
there was a wealth of the truest and most perdurable affection
in the tones of her voice.
"Go and dress, little one; and of all things, not a word of
this to des Lupeaulx ! Give me your promise. That is the
only penance I require "
"Require? Then 1 won't make any promise at all."
"Come, Celestine, I spoke seriously though I was joking.''
"To-night your secretary-general will know the foes with
whom we must fight; and I know whom to attack."
"Whom?" asked Eabourdin.
"The Minister," she said, growing two feet taller for her
words.
But in spite of Celestine's winning charm, a few painful
thoughts occurred to Eabourdin in spite of himself, and
darkened his forehead.
"When will she learn to appreciate me ?'' he thought. "She
did not even understand that all this work vras done for her
sake. What waywardness ! and how intelligent she is ! — If
I were not married, I should be very well off and in a high
position by this time. I should have put by five thousand
francs a year out of my salary ; and b}^ investing the money
carefully, I should have an independent income of ten
thousand francs at this day. I should be a bachelor; I
should stand a chance to become somebody ; through a
marriage Yes" (he interrupted himself), "but I have
Celestine and the two children."
He fell back upon his happiness. Even in the happiest
married life, there must always be some moments of regret.
He went to the drawing-room and looked round.
"There are not two women in Paris who can manage as
328 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
she does. All this on twelve thousand livres a 5'ear !" he
thought, as he glanced at the jars full of flowers, and thought
of the coming pleasure of gratified vanity. "She was meant
to be a Minister's wife. And when I think that my Minister's
wife is of no use to him — she looks like a stout homely house-
wife— and when she goes to the Tuileries, to other people's
houses, she ''
He compressed his lips. A very busy man's ideas of house-
keeping are so vague, that it is easy to persuade him to be-
lieve that a hundred thousand francs will do everything or
nothing.
But though des Lupeaulx was impatiently expected, though
the dinner had been designed to tickle the palate of a pro-
fessed epicure, he only came in at midnight, at which hour
conversation is wont to grow more personal and confidential.
Andoche Finot, journalist, was there likewise.
"I know all about it," began des Lupeaulx, when he was
comfortable settled on the settee by the fireside, with a cup
of tea in his hand; and Mme. Rabourdin stood before him
holding out a plate full of sandwiches and slices of the
weighty substance not inappropriately known as pound-cake.
— "Finot, my dear and intelligent friend, you may do our
gracious queen a service by letting loose some of your pack
on some men whom I am going to mention." — Then turning
to M. Rabourdin, and lowering his voice so that the words
should not travel beyond the three persons to whom they were
addressed, he continued — "You have the money-lenders and
the clergy, capital and the Church, against you. The para-
graph in the Liberal paper was inserted at the instance of an
old bill-discounter ; the proprietors lay under some obligation
to him, and the little fellow that actually did it did not think
that it mattered very much. The whole staff of the paper is to
be reconstituted in three days; we shall get over that. The
Royalist Opposition (for, thanks to M. de Chateaubriand, we
now have a Royalist Opposition, which is to say, that there are
Royalists half-way over to the Liberals ; but do not let us
talk of mighty matters in politics), — the Royal Opposition,
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 32S
I sa}^, hating Charles X. with a deadly hate, have promised
their support to you, if we will pass one of their amendments.
All my batteries are in the field. If they try to force Bau-
doyer upon us, we will say to the Grand Almonry, 'Such and
such newsj^apers and Messrs. So-and-so will attack this law
that you want to pass, and you will have the whole press
against you' (for the Ministerial papers under my control
shall be deaf and dumb ; and as they are pretty much deaf
and dumb alread}' — eh, Finot? — that will give them no diffi-
culty). 'jSTominate Eabourdin, and you will have public
opinion with you.' To think of the poor simple provincials
that intrench themselves in their armchairs by the fireside
and rejoice over the independence of the organs of opinion !
Ha ! ha !"
"He ! he ! he !" chuckled Finot.
"So be quite easy," continued des Lupeaulx. "I arranged
it all this evening. The Grand Almonry will give way."
"I would rather have given up all hope and have had you
here at dinner," Celestine whispered, and the look of reproach
in her eyes might easily have been taken for a love-distraught
glance.
"Here is something that will obtain my pardon," returned
he, and he gave her the invitation for the party on Tuesday.
Celestine face lighted up with the reddest glow of pleasure,
as she opened the envelope. No delight can be compared
with the joy of vanity triumphant.
"Do you know what a Tuesday is?" continued des Lu-
peaulx, with an air of mystery; "it is an inner circle; it is
to our department as the Petit-Chateau is to the Court. You
will be in the very centre. The Comtesse Feraud will be
there (she is still in favor in spite of the death of Louis
XVIII.) ; Delphine de Xucingen, Mme. de Listomere, and
the Marquise d'Espard are invited, so is your dear de Camps ;
I sent the invitation myself, so that you might find a sup-
porter in her in case the other women should 'black ball' you.
I should like to see you among them."
Celestine tossed her head; she looked like a thoroughbred
330 THE GOVERNMENT CI.ERKS
before the race. Again she read the card, as Baudoyer and
Saillard had read their paragraphs in the paper; and, like
them, she could not grasp the meaning of the words.
"This first, and some day the Tuileries !'' she said, turn-
ing to des Lupeaulx with such ambition and confidence in her
tone and manner that she struck dismay into him as he looked
at her.
"How if I should onl}^ be a stepping-stone for her?" he
asked himself.
He rose to his feet and went to her bedroom ; she followed,
for she understood by his sign that he wished to speak with
her in private.
"Well, and the scheme?" he began.
"Pooh ! an honest man's folly ! He wants to put down
fifteen thousand employes and keep a staff' of five or six thou-
sand. You could not imagine a more monstrous absurdity;
I will give you his memoranda to read when they are copied
out. He is quite in earnest. He made his analytical
catalogue with the best of motives. The poor, dear man !"
Des Lupeaulx felt the more reassured because genuine
laughter accompanied the light contemptuous words ; a lie
would not have deceived him, he was too old a hand, but
Celestine was sincere while she thus spoke.
"But, after all, there is something at the bottom of it all/'
he rejoined.
"Oh, well, he wants to do away with the land-tax and
replace it by a tax upon articles of consumption."
"Why, Francois Keller and N^ucingen brought forward an
almost identical plan a year ago; and the Minister is think-
ing of removing the burden from the land."
"There ! I told him that there was nothing new in the
idea," laughed Celestine.
"Yes; but if he and the great financier of the age, the
Kapoleon of finance (I can say so between ourselves), if he
and Nucingen have hit upon the same idea, he must at any
rate have some notion of the way of carrying it out."
"The whole thing is commonplace," she said, pursing up
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 331
her lips disdaiufully. '^He wants to govern France' (just
think of it!) with five or six thousand employes; when, on
the contrary, it ought to be to the interest of every person in
the country to maintain the present government."
Des Lupeaulx seemed relieved to find that the chief clerk,
whom he took for a man of extraordinary ability, was a
mediocrity after all.
"Are you quite sure of the appointment? Do you care
to take a piece of woman's advice ?" asked she.
"You women understand the art of polite treachery better
than we do," said des Lupeaulx, shaking his head.
"Very well; say 'Baudoyer' at Court and at the Grand
Almonry, so as to lull suspicion; but at the last moment
write 'Eabourdin.' "
"Some women say 'Yes' so long as they need a man, and
'No' when he has served their turn," remarked des Lupeaulx.
"I know them," Celestine answered, laughing. "But they
are very silly, for in politics you must come across the same
people again and again. It is all very well with fools, but
you are a clever man. In my opinion, it is the great-
est possible mistake in life to quarrel with a really clever
man."
"jSTo," said des Lupeaulx, "for he will forgive. There is
no danger except with petty rancorous minds that have noth-
ing to do but plan revenge, and I spend my life on that."
When every one had gone, Rabourdin stayed in his wife's
room, begged her to listen to him for once, and took the
opportunity of explaining his scheme. He made her under-
stand that he had no intention of diminishing the estimates ;
on the contrary, he gave a list of public enterprises to be
carried out with the public money ; private enterprise or local
improvements should be subsidized by a government grant of
one-third or one-fourth of the total outlay, and these grants
would set money in circulation. In short, he made it plain
to his wife that his scheme was not so much a theory on paper
as a practicable plan to be worked out in hundreds of ways.
332 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Celestine's entlmsiasm grew; she sprang to her husband and
put her arms about him, and sat on his knee beside the fire.
"And so, after all," she said, "I have found the husband
of whom I dreamed. My ignorance of your worth saved you
from des Lupeaulx's clutches. I slandered you to him
amazingh', and in good earnest too."
There were happy tears in Rabourdin's eyes. And so at
last he had his day of triumph. He had undertaken it all
to please his wife; he was a great man in the eyes of his
public.
"And for any one who knows how good and kind and loving
and equable you are, you are ten times greater ! But a man of
genius is always more or less of a child, and you are a child,"
she said, "a dearly-loved child."
She drew out her invitation card from its hiding-place and
showed it to him:
"This is what I wanted," Siie continued. "Des Lupeaulx
has brought me in contact with His Excellency, and His
Excellency shall be my servant for a while,, even if he is made
of bronzQ."
Next day Celestine was absorbed in preparations for her
introduction into the inner circle. It was to be her great
day. her success. Never did courtesan take more pains with
herself than this matron took. Never was dressmaker more
tormented, more sensible how much depended upon her art.
Mme. Rabourdin overlooked nothing, in short. She went
herself to choose a brougham for the occasion, so that her
carriage should be neither old-fashioned, nor insolent, nor
suggestive of the city madam. Her servant, as became the
servant of a good house, was to look like a gentleman.
Then, about ten o'clock on the great Tuesday evening,
Mme. Rabourdin emerged in an exquisite mourning toilet.
In her hair she wore bunches of Jet grapes, of the finest work-
manship, part of a complete set of ornaments ordered at
Fossin's by an Englishwoman who went away without taking
them. The leaves were thin flakos of stamped iron, light as
real vine-leaves, and the artist had not forgotten the little
graceful tendrils that clung among her curls, as the vine-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 333
tendrils cling to every branch. The bracelets and earrings
were of "Berlin iron," as it is called; but the delicate
arabesques from Vienna might have been made by the hands
of fairies for some task-mistress, some Carabosse with a passion
for collecting ants' eyes, or for spinning pieces of stuff to
pack into a hazel-nut. Celestine's dress had been carefully
cut to bring out all the grace of a slender figure, which looked
slenderer still in black. The curves all stopped short at the
line round the neck, for she wore no shoulder-straps; at every
moment she seemed about to emerge like a butterfly from the
sheath ; yet, through the dressmaker's skill, the gown clung
to the lines of her figure. The material was not yet known
in Paris; it was a inousseUiie de laine, an "adorable" stuff
that afterwards became the rage. Indeed, the success out-
lasted the fashion in France ; for the practical advantages of
a thin woolen material, which saves the expense of washing,
injured the cotton-spinning industry and revolutionized the
Eouen trade. Celestine's feet were daintily shod in Turkey
satin slippers (for bright satin could not be worn in mourn-
ing) and fine thin stockings.
Celestine looked very lovely thus dressed. Her complexion
was brilliant and softly colored, thanks to the reviving in-
fluence of a bran bath. Hope had flooded her eyes, her quick
intelligence sparlded in them; she looked like the woman
of a superior order, of whom des Lupeaulx spoke with such
pride and pleasure. She knew how to enter a room; all
Avomen will appreciate the meaning of that phrase. She
bowed gracefully to the Minister's wife, deference and dignity
blended in the right proportion in her manner; and wore her
air of majest}^ without giving offence, for every fair woman
is a queen. With the Minister she used the pretty insolence
that women are wont to assume with any male creature, were
he a grand-duke. And as she took her seat, she reconnoitered
the ground. She found herself in a small, carefully chosen
circle in which women can measure each other and form ac-
curate judgments; the lightest word reverberates in all ears,
every glance makes an impression, and conversation becomes
334 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
a duel before witnesses. Any remark pitched in the ordinary
key sounds flat; and good talk is quietly accepted as a matter
of course at that intellectual level. Rabourdin betook him-
self to an adjoining card-room, and there remained, planted
on both feet, to watch the play, which proves that he was not
wanting in sense.
"My dear," said the Marquise d'Espard, turning to the
Comtesse Feraud, Louis XVIII. 's last mistress, "Paris is
unique. Such women as this start up in it quite unexpect-
edly from no one knows where, and seemingly they have the
will and the power to do anything "
"And she has the will and the power to do anything," said
des Lupeaulx, bridling as he spoke.
The crafty Celestine, meanwhile, was paying court to the
Minister's wife. Drilled by des Lupeaulx on the previous
day, she knew all the Countess' weaknesses and flattered
them, without seeming to touch upon them. And she was
silent too at the right moment; for des Lupeaulx, in spite
of his infatuation, had noticed Celestine's shortcomings,
and warned her against them. "Of all things, do not talk
too much!" he had said the evening before. 'Twas an ex-
traordinary proof of attachment. Bertrand Barrere left be-
liind him the sublime maxim, "Xever interrupt a woman with
advice while she is dancing ;" which, with the supplementary
apophthegm here subjoined, "Do not find fault with a wo-
man for scattering her pearls," may be said to complete this
article of the code feminine. The conversation became gen-
eral. From time to time Mmc. Eabourdin put in a word,
much as a well-trained cat touclies her mistress' lace, Avitli
sheathed claws. The Minister's heart was not very suscepti-
ble; in the matter of gallantry, no statesman of the Restora-
tion was more accomplished ; the Opposition Miroir, the
Pandore, and the Figaro could not reproach him with the
faintest acceleration of the pulse. His mistress was L'Etoilo :
strange to say, she had been faithful in adversity, and
}irobably was reaping the benefit even at this moment. This
Mme. Rabourdin knew, but she knew also that people change
THE GOVERNMENT (U^KItKS 335
their minds in old chateaux, so she set herself to make the
Minister jealous of such good fortune as des Lupeaulx ap-
peared to enjoy. At that moment des Lupeaulx was expatiat-
ing upon Celestine, for the benefit of the Marquise d'Espard,
Mme. de Nucingen, and the Countess ; he was trying to make
them understand that Mme. Rabourdin must be admitted into
their coalition ; and Mme. de Camps, the fourth in the quar-
tette of listeners, was supporting him. At the end of an
hour the Minster had been well stroked down ; he was pleased
with Mme. Rabourdin s wit, and she had charmed his wife;
indeed, the Countess was so enchanted with this siren, that
she asked her to come whenever she pleased.
"For your husband will very soon be head of the division,
my dear," she had said, "and the Minister intends to bring
both the divisions under one head, and then you will be one
of us."
His Excellency took Mme. Rabourdin to see one of the
rooms. His suite of apartments was famous in those days,
for Opposition journalism had made itself ridiculous by de-
nouncing the lavish display therein. He gave his arm to the
lady.
"Indeed, madame, you really ought to favor us, the Count-
ess and myself, by coming frequently " and His Excel-
lency brought out his Ministerial pretty speeches.
"But, monseigneur," demurred Celestine, with one of the
glances that women keep for emergencies ; "but, monseigneur.
that depends upon you, it seems to me."
"How?"
"Why, you can give me the right to do so."
"Explain yourself."
"No. When I came here, I said to myself that I would
not have the bad taste to solicit your interest."
"Pray, speak ! Placets of this sort are never out of place,"
the Minister answered, laughing. And nothing amuses your
seriously-minded men so much as this kind of nonsense.
"Very well; it is rather absurd of a chief clerk's wife to
come here often, but a director's wife would not be 'out of
place.' "
336 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"Never mind that,"' said the Minister, "we cannot do with-
out your husband; he has been nominated."
"Eeally and truly?"
"Will you come to my study and see his name for your-
self ? The thing is done."
It seemed to her that there was something suspicious in the
Minister's eagerness and alacrity.
"Well," she said, as they stood apart in a corner, "let me
tell you that I can repay you "
She was on the point of unfolding her husband's scheme,
when des Lupeaulx came forward on tiptoe with an angry
little cough, which, being interpreted, meant that he had
been listening to their conversation, and did not wish to be
found out. The Minister looked in no pleasant humor at
the elderly coxcomb thus caught in a trap. Des Lupeaulx
had hurried on the work of the staff beyond all reason, in
his impatience for his conquest; he had put it in the Min-
isters hands, and next day he intended to bring the nomina-
tion to her who passed for his mistress.
Just at that moment the Minister's footman came, and
with a mysterious air informed des Lupeaulx that his own
man had brought a letter to be delivered to him immediately,
adding that it was of great importance.
The Secretary-General went to a lamp and read a missive
thus conceived:
"Contrary to my habit, I am waiting in an ante-chamber;
there is not a moment to lose if you mean to arrange with
your servant
Gdsec)^
The Secretary-General shuddered at the sight of that
signature. It would be a pity not to give a facsimile of it,
for it is rare on the market, and should be valuable to those
persons who discover character in handwriting. If ever
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 337
hierogl3'ph represented an animal, surely this name, with its
initial and final letter, suggests the voracious insatiable jaws
of a shark, jaws that are always agape, always catching hold
of the strong and the weak alike, and gobbling them down.
It has been found impossible to reproduce the whole note in
facsimile, for the handwriting, though clear, is to small and
close and fine ; the whole sentence, indeed, only fills one line.
The spirit of bill-discounting alone could inspire so insolently
imperative, so cruelly irreproachable a sentence; an explicit
yet non-committal statement, which told all yet revealed
nothing. If you had never heard of Gobseck before, you
might have guessed what manner of man it was that wrote
that line; and seen the implacable money-lender of the Rue
des Gres, who could summons you into his presence without
sending an order. Accordingly, des Lupeaulx straightway
disappeared, like a dog when the sportsman calls him off
the scent ; and went to his own abode, pondering by the way.
His whole position seemed to be compromised. Picture to
yourself the sensations of a general-in-chief when his aide-de-
camp announces that "the enemy with thirty thousand men,
all fresh troops, is taking us in flank" ! A word will explain
the arrival of Messieurs Gigonnet and Gobseck upon the field ;
for both those worthies were waiting upon des Lupeaulx.
At eight o'clock that evening, Martin Falleix had arrived
on the wings of the wind (thanks to three francs per stage
and a postilion sent on ahead). He had brought the con-
tracts, which all bore yesterday's date. Mitral took the docu-
ments at once to the Cafe Themis; they were duly handed
over, and the two money-lenders hurried off to des Lupeaulx.
They went on foot, however. The clock struck eleven.
Des Lupeaulx shuddered as he watched the two sinister-
looking faces light up with a gleeful expression, and saw a
look that shot out straight as a bullet, and blazed like the flash
of powder.
"Well, my masters, what is the matter?"
The two money-lenders sat motionless and impassive.
338 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Gigonnet glanced from his bundle of papers to the man-
servant.
"Let us go into my study," said des Lupeaulx, dismissing
the man with a sign.
"You understand French admirably," remarked Gigonnet.
"Have you come to torment a man that put you in the way
of making two hundred thousand francs apiece?" asked
des Lupeaulx, and in spite of himself his gesture was dis-
dainful.
"And will put us in the way of making more, I hope," said
Gigonnet.
"Is it a bit of business? If you want me, I have a
memory."
"And we have memoranda of yours," riposted Gigonnet.
"My debts will be paid," des Lupeaulx returned loftily.
He did not wish to be led into a discussion on the sub-
ject.
"Truly?" asked Gobseck.
"Let us go to the point, my son," said Gigonnet. "Don't
you draw yourself up in your stock like that ; it won't do with
us. Take these contracts and read them through."
Des Lupeaulx read with surprise and amazement ; angels
might have flung those contracts down from the clouds for
him; and meanwhile the pair took stock of his room.
"You have a couple of intelligent men of business in us,
haven't you?" asked Gigonnet.
"But to what do I owe such ingenious co-operation?" des
Lupeaulx inquired uneasily.
"We knew, a week ago, what you will not know till to-
morrow unless we tell you : the President of the Commercial
Court finds that he is obliged to resign his seat in the
Chamber."
Des Lupeaulx's eyes dilated till they grew as large as
meadow daisies.
"Your Minister was playing this trick upon you," added
Gobseck, the curt-spoken.
"You are my masters," said des Lupeaulx, saluting the
THE OOVRRNMENT CT.ERKS 339
pair with a profound respect in whicli there was a certain
tinge of irony.
"Precisely/' said Gobseck.
"But are you about to strangle me?"
"That is possible."
"Very well, then ; set about it, you executioners !" re-
turned the Secretary-General with a smile.
"Your debts," began Gigonnet, "are inscribed along with
the loan of the purchase-money, you see."
"Here are the deeds," added Gobseck, as he drew a bundle
of documents from the pocket of his faded greatcoat.
"And you have three years to pay the lot," said Gigonnet.
"But what do you want?" asked des Lupeaulx, much
alarmed by so much readiness to oblige, and such a fancy
settlement.
"La Billardiere's place for Baudoyer,"; Gigonnet answered
quickly.
"It is a very small thing," returned des Lupeaulx, "though
I should have to do the impossible. I myself have tied my
hands."
"You are going to gnaw the cords with your teeth," said
Gigonnet.
"They are sharp enough !" added Gobseck.
"Is that all ?"
"We shall keep the contracts until these claims are ad-
mitted," said Gigonnet, laying a statement under the Secre-
tary-General's eyes as he spoke; "if these are not recognized
within six days by the committee, my name will be filled in
instead of yours on the deeds."
"You are clever," exclaimed des Lupeaulx.
"Precisely," said Gobseck.
"And that is all ?"
"True," replied Gobseck.
"Is it a bargain?" demanded Gigonnet.
Des Lupeaulx nodded.
"Very well, then, sign this power of attorney," said
Gigonnet. "Baudoyer's nomination in two days; the admis-
sion of the claims in six, and "
340 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"And what?"
'We guarantee you-
"What ?" cried des Lupeaulx, more and more astonished.
"Your nomination," replied Gigonnet, swelling with pride.
"We are secure of a majority; fifty-two tenant-farmers and
tradesmen are ready to vote at the election as the lender of
the money may direct."
Des Lupeaulx grasped Gobseck's hand.
"We are the only people among whom misapprehensions
are impossible. This is what you may call business. So I
will throw in a make-weight."
"Precisely" (from Gobseck).
"What is it to be?" asked Gigonnet.
"The cross for your oaf of a nephew."
"Good !" said Gigonnet. "You know him."
With that the pair took their leave. Des Lupeaulx went
with them to the stairs.
"Those are secret envoys from some foreign power!" said
the footmen among themselves.
Out in the street the money-lenders looked in each other's
face by the light of a lamp and laughed.
"He will have to pay us nine thousand francs per annum
in the shape of interest, and the land scarcely brings in five
thousand nett," cried Gigonnet.
*'He will be in our hands for a long while to come," said
Gobseck.
"He will begin to build ; he will do foolish things," re-
turned Gigonnet. "Falleix will buy the laud."
"He wants to be a deputy; the wolf" {le lowp) "laughs at
the rest."
"Eh ! eh !"
"Eh! eh!"
The dry chirping exclamations did duty for laughter. The
usurers returned on foot to the Cafe Themis.
Des Lupeaulx went back to the drawing-room and found
Mme. Rabourdin in all her glory. She was charming. The
Minister's countenance, usually so melancholy, had relaxed
and grown gracious.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 341
"She is working miracles," des Lupeaulx said to himself.
"What an invaluable woman ! One must probe to the bottom
of her heart."
"Your little lady will decidedly do very well indeed," said
the Marquise ; "she wants nothing but your name."
"Yes, she is an auctioneer's daughter; it is the one thing
against her ; her want of birth will be the ruin of her." Des
Lupeaulx's air of cool indifference contrasted strangely with
his warmth of a few minutes ago.
The Marquise d'Espard looked steadily back at him.
"The glance you gave them just now was not lost upon
me," she said, indicating the Minister and Mme. Eabourdin;
"it pierced through the mist of your eyeglasses. You are
amusing, you two, to quarrel over that bone."
As the Marquise made her way past the door, the Minister
hurried across the room to her.
"Well," said des Lupeaulx, addressing Mme. Eabourdin,
"what do you think of our Minister?"
"He is charming. Eeally," she added, raising her voice
for the benefit of His Excellency's wife, "really, the poor
ministers must be known to be appreciated. The minor news-
papers and the slanders of the Opposition give one such
distorted ideas of politicians, and in the end one is in-
fluenced. But the prejudice turns in their favor when you
meet them."
"He is very pleasant."
"Well, I can assure you that one could be very fond of
him," she returned good-humoredly.
"Dear child," said des Lupeaulx, assuming a good-natured
and ingratiating air, "you have achieved the impossible."
"What ?" asked she.
"You have raised the dead to life, I did not think that he
had a heart ; ask his wife ! He has just enough to defray
a passing fancy, but take advantage of it. Come this way;
do not be surprised."
He led the way to the boudoir and sat down beside her
on a sofa.
342 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"You are crafty," he said, "and I like you the better for
it. Between ourselves, you are no ordinary woman. Des
Lupeaulx introduced you here, and there is an end of him;
is it not so? And besides, when we decide to love for in-
terest, a minister of seventy is to be preferred to a secretary-
general of forty; it pays better, and is less irksome. I wear
eyeglasses, and my hair is powdered, and I am the worse for
a life of pleasure ; a romantic love affair it would be ! Oh !
I have told myself all this. If one absolutely must, one
makes some concession to the useful, but I shall never be
the agreeable, shall I ? A man in my position would be mad
if he did not look at it from all sides. You can confess the
truth, and show me the bottom of 3'our heart. We are two
partners, not two lovers ; are we not ? If there is some fancy
on my side, you rise superior to such trifles ; you will pass it
over in me; you are not a little boarding-school miss, nor a
tradesman's wife from the Kue Saint-Denis. Pooh ! we are
above that, you and I. There is the Marquise d'Espard, now
leaving the room, do you suppose that she thinks otherwise?
We came to an understanding two years ago" (the coxcomb !),
"and now she has only to write me a line, and not a very long
one — 'My dear des Lupeaulx, you will oblige me by doing
so-and-so' — and the thing is done forthwith. We are think-
ing of bringing a petition for a commission in lunacy on her
husband. You women can have anything that you will at the
cost of pleasure. Well, then, dear child, take His Excellency
with your wiles; I will help you, it is to my interest to do so.
Yes, I should like to have him under a woman's influence ; he
would never slip through my fingers then, as he sometimes
does, and naturally, for I only keep a hold on his common-
sense, but with a pretty woman to help me, I should have him
on his weak side, and that is the surest. So let us be good
friends as before, and divide the credit that you will gain."
Mme. Eabourdin heard this singular profession of rascality
with the utmost astonishment. The barefaced simplicity
of the political business transaction put any idea of express-
ing surprise quite out of the question. She fell into the
snare.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 343
"Do you think that I have made any impression upon
him?" she asked.
"I know you have, I am sure of it."
"Is it true that Eabourdin's appointment is signed?"
"I put the report before him this morning. But it is
nothing to be the head of the division; he must be Master
of Requests."
"Yes."
"Very well, go in again and flirt with His Excellency."
"Indeed," she said, "I never really knew you till to-night.
There is nothing commonplace about you."
"And so, we are two old friends, and there is an end of
tender airs and tiresome love-making; we understand things
as they used to do under the Eegency; they had plenty of
sense in those days."
"You are in truth a great man, I admire you," she said,
smiling at him as she held out her hand. "You shall know
that a woman does more for her friend than for her "
She left the sentence unfinished and went.
"Dear little thing ! Des Lupeaulx need feel no remorse
over turning against you," said her companion, as he watched
her cross the room to the Minister. "To-morrow evening
when you hand me a cup of tea, you will offer me something
else which I shall not care to take. — There is no more to be
said. Ah ! when you come to your fortieth year, women take
you in; it is too late to be loved."
Des Lupeaulx also went back to the drawing-room, scanned
himself in a mirror, and knew that he was a very fine fellow
for political purposes, but unmistakably superannuated for
the Court of Cytherea. Mme. Rabourdin meanwhile was
working up her climax; she meditated taking her departure,
and did her best to leave a last pleasing impression upon
every one present. She succeeded. An unwonted exclama-
tion of "Charming woman !" broke from every one as soon
as she had gone, and the Minister went with her to the
farthest door.
"I am quite sure that you will think of me to-morrow,"
^
344 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
he said, alluding to the nomination. — "I am quite satisfied
with our acquisition, not many high officials have such charm-
ing wives," he added, as he came back to the room.
"Do you not think that she is inclined to encroach a little ?"'
des Lupeaulx began. He seemed rather put out.
The women exchanged meaning glances; the rivalry be-
tween the Secretary-General and the Minister amused them.
And forthwith they began one of those charming mystifica-
tions in which the Parisienne excels. They all began to talk
bout Mme. Rabourdin ; they stirred up the Minister and des
Lupeaulx. One lady thought Mme. Rabourdin too studied,
she aimed too much at wit; another began to compare the
graces of the bourgeoisie with the manners of persons of
fashion, criticising Celestine by implication; and des Lu-
peaulx defended the mistress attributed to him, but his de-
fence was of a kind reserved exclusively in polite society for
absent enemies.
"Pray be fair to her, mesdames ! Is it not an extraordinary
thing that an auctioneer's daughter should be so charming?
You see where she comes from, and where she is ; and she will
go to the Tuileries, she is aiming at that, she told me so."
"And if she is an auctioneer's daughter," said Mme. d'Es-
pard, smiling over her words, "how should that injure her
husband's prospects?"
"As times are, you mean ?" asked the Minister's wife, purs-
ing up her lips.
"Madame," the Minister said sternly, turning on the Mar-
quise, "such language brings on revolutions, and, unfortu-
nately, the Court spares no one. You would not believe how
much the heedlessness of the upper classes displeases certain
clear-sighted persons at the Chateau. If I were a great lord,
instead of a little provincial of good family, set here, as it
would seem, to do your business for you, the Monarchy
should rest on a firmer basis than it does at present. What
will be the end if the throne cannot shed its lustre upon its
representatives ? We are far indeed from the times when the
King's will ennobled a Louvois, a Colbert, a Richelieu, a
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 345
Jeannin, a Villeroy, or a Sully. Yes, Sully in the beginning
was nothing more than I. I speak in this way because we are
among ourselves, and I should be small indeed if I took of-
fence at such trifles. It rests with us, and not with others,
to make a great name for ourselves."
"You have the appointment, dear," said Celestine, squeezing
her husband's hand. "If it had not been for des Lupeaulx,
I would have explained your project to the Minister ; but that
must be left till next Tuesday now, and you will be Master
of Requests all the sooner."
There is one day in every woman's life in which she shines
in all her glory — a day that she remembers, and loves to re-
member, as long as she lives. As Mme. Rabourdin undid
her artfully adjusted ornaments one by one, she went over
that evening again, and reckoned it among the glorious days
of her life. All her beauty had been jealously noted; the
Minister's wife had paid her compliments (she was not ill-
pleased to praise the newcomer at the expense of her friends) ;
and more than all, satisfied vanity had redounded to her hus-
band's advantage. Xavier's appointment had been made !
"Did I not look well to-night?" she asked her husband,
as though there were any need to kindle his admiration.
At that very moment Mitral at the Cafe Themis saw the
two usurers come in. Their impassive faces gave no sign.
"How are we getting on ?" he asked, when they sat down to
the table.
"Oh, well, as usual," said Gigonnet, rubbing his hands;
"victory is on the side of the francs."
"That is so," remarked Gobseck.
Mitral lost no time. He took a cab and drove away with
the news. The game of boston had been long drawn out that
night at the Saillards', but every one had left except the Abbe
Gaudron. Falleix had gone to bed ; he was tired out.
"You will get the appointment, nephew, and there is a
surprise in store for you."
346 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
"What?" asked Saillard.
"The Cross !" cried Mitral.
"God is with those that care for His altars !" commented
Gaudron.
And thus was the Te Deuni chanted with equal joy in
either camp.
Next day was Friday. M. Eabourdin was to go to the
Minister, for he had done the work of the head of the division
ever since the late la Billardiere fell ill. On these occasions
the clerks were remarkably punctual, the office-messengers
zealous and attentive, for on signature days the offices are all
in a flurry. Why and Avherefore? Xobody knows. The
three messengers accordingly were all at their posts; they
flattered themselves that fees of some sort would come their
way, for rumors of M. Rabourdin's appointment had been
spread abroad on the previous day by des Lupeaulx. So
Uncle Antoine and Laurent were in full dress at a quarter
to eight when the Secretary's messenger came over with a
note, asking Antoine to give it, in private, to M. Dutocq.
The Secretary-General had bidden him take it round to the
first clerk's house at seven o'clock. "And I don't know how
it happened, old man, but I slept on and on, and I am onlj^
just awake now. He would give me an infernal blowing up
if he knew that the note had not gone to the private address ;
'stead of which I shall tell him as how I took it to M. Du-
tocq's. It is a great secret. Daddy Antoine. Don't say any-
thing to the clerks; or, my word, he would turn me away.
I should lose my place if I said a word about it, he said."
"Why, what is there inside it?"
"Nothing ; for I looked into it, like this — there !"
He pressed open the folded sheet, but they could only see
white paper inside.
"To-day is a great day for you, Laurent," continued the
Secretary's messenger. "You are going to have a new direc-
tor. They will retrench beyond a doubt, and put both divi-
sions under one director ; messengers may look out !"
"Yes ! nine clerks pensioned off," said Dutocq, coming up
at the moment. "How came you fellows to know that ?"
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 347
Antoine handed over the letter, Dutocq opened it, and
rushed headlong down the staircase to the Secretary's rooms.
Since the day of M. de la Billardiere's death, the Kabour-
dins and Baudoyers had settled down by degrees into their
wonted ways and the dolce-far-niente habits of administra-
tive routine. There had been plenty of gossip at first; but
an access of industry usually sets in among the clerks to-
wards the end of the year, and the doorkeepers and messen-
gers become more unctuously obsequious about the same time.
Everybody was punctual of a morning, and more faces might
be seen in the office after four o'clock; for the bonus at the
N^ew Year is apt to depend upon the final impression left on
the mind of your chief. Then rumor said that the la Bil-
lardiere and Clergeot divisions were to be brought under one
head. The news had caused a flutter in the department on
the previous day. The number of clerks to be dismissed was
known, but no one knew their names as yet. It was pretty
certain that Poiret would not be replaced — they would effect
an economy over his salary. Young la Billardiere had gone.
Two new supernumeraries were coming, and both were sons
of deputies — an appalling circumstance. This tidings had
arrived just as they were going away. It struck terror into
every conscience. And so for the first half-hour, as the
clerks were dropping in, there was talk round about the
stoves.
Des Lupeaulx was shaving when Dutocq appeared; he did
not put down his razor as he gave the clerk a glance with the
air of a general that issues an order.
"Are we by ourselves ?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. Go for Rabourdin ; walk ahead, and hold on.
You must have kept a copy of that list."
"Yes."
"Inde irce — you understand. We must have a general hue
and cry. Try to invent something to raise a clamor."
"^■■I can have a caricature drawn, but I have not five hundred
francs to pay for it."
348 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
''Who will draw it ?"
"Bixiou."
"He shall have a thousand francs and the assistant's place
under Colleville. Colleville will come to an understanding
with him."
■> "But he will not believe me."
"You want to mix me up in it perhaps? It is that or
nothing — do 3'ou understand?"
"If M. Baudoyer is director, he might possibly lend the
money "
"Yes, he is going to be director. Leave me, and be quick
about it. Don't seem as if you had been to see me. Go down
by the back stairs."
Dutocq went back to the office, his heart throbbing with
joy. He was wondering how to raise an outcry against his
chief without committing himself, when Bixiou looked in
just to wish his friends the Eabourdins good-day. Having
given up his wager for lost, it pleased that practical joker
to pose as though he had won.
Bixiou {mimicl-ing Phellions voice). "Gentlemen, I pre-
sent my compliments to you, and wish you collectively a good-
day. I appoint the coming Sunday for the dinner at the
Rocher de Cancale. But a serious dilemma presents itself:
are the retiring clerks to come or not ?"
PoiRET. "Yes; even those that are pensioned off."
Bixiou. "It is all one to me ; I shall not have to pay for
\i^^ {general amazement). "Baudoyer has been appointed. I
should love to hear him calling Laurent at this moment."
{Mimics Baudoyer.) " 'Laurent, lock up my hair-shirt, and
my scourge along mth it!'" {peals of laughter from the
clerks.) "Ris d'ahoyeur d'oie! There is sense in Colleville's
anagrams, for Xavier Eabourdin's name makes D'ahord reva
bureaux e u fin riche, you know. If my name happened to
be 'Charles X., by the grace of God King of France and
Navarre,' I should quake for fear lest my anagram might
come true likewise."
Thuillier. "Oh, come now, you want to make fun of it !"
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 349
Bixiou {laughing in his face). " Ris-au-laid ! {riz-au-
lait). That is neat. Daddy Thuillier, for you are not good-
looking. Eabourdin is sending in his resignation in a fury
because Baudoyer is director."
ViMEUx {coming in). "What stuff! I have just been re-
paying Antoine thirty or forty francs, and he tells me that
M. and Mme. Eabourdin were at the Minister's private party
last night, and stopped till a quarter to twelve. His Excel-
lency came as far as the stairs with Mme. Eabourdin. She
was divinely dressed, it seems. He is director in fact, and no
mistake. Eiffe, the confidential copying-clerk, stopped late
to finish the report sooner. There is no mystery about it now.
M. Clergeot is retiring. After thirty years of service, it is no
disgrace. M. Cochin, who is well-to-do "
Bixiou. "He makes cochineal {cochenille) , according to
Colleville."
ViMEUX. "Why, he is in the cochineal trade; he is a
partner in Matifat's business in the Eue des Lombards.
Well, he is to go, and Poiret is to go. Nobody else is coming
on instead. That much is positive. No more is known. M.
Eabourdin's appointment came this morning. They are
afraid of intrigues."
Bixiou. "What sort of intrigues?"
Fleury. "Baudoyer, begad ! The clericals are backing
him up. There is something new here in the Liberal paper;
it is only a couple of lines, but it is funny" — {reads) — " 'In
the foyer of the Italians yesterday there was some talk of M.
de Chateaubriand's return to office. This belief was founded
upon the appointment of M. Eabourdin to fill the post orig-
inally intended for M. Baudoyer — M. Eabourdin being a pro-
tege of the Vicomte's friends. The clerical party would
never have withdrawn except to make a compromise with the
great man of letters.' Scum of the earth !"
DuTOcq {comes i7i after listening outside) . "Scum! Who?
Eabourdin. Then you have heard the news?"
Fleury {rolling his eyes fiercely). "Eabourdin! — scum!
350 THE (iOVRRNMENT CI.ERKS
Have you taken leave of your wits, Dutocq? And do you
want a bullet for ballast in your brains ?"
Dutocq. "I did not say a word against M. Rabourdin;
only just now, out in the courtyard, it was told me as a secret
that he had been informing against a good many of the staff,
and had given notes; in short, I was told that he had sent in
a report of the departments, and we are all done for; that is
why he is in favor "
Phellion (shouts). "M. Eabourdin is incapable-
Bixiou. "Here is a nice state of things ! I say, Dutocq ?"
(They exchange a word or two, and go out into the corridor,)
Bixiou, "What ever can have happened ?"
Dutocq. "Do you remember the caricature ?"
Bixiou. "Yes; what about it?"
Dutocq, "Draw it, and you will be chief clerk's assistant,
and you will get something handsome besides. You see, my
dear fellow, dissension has been sown in the upper regions.
The Minister is pledged to Eabourdin; but if he does not
appoint Baudoyer, he will get into trouble with the clergy.
Don't you know? The King, the Dauphin, the Dauphiness,
the Grand Almonry, the whole Court, in fact, are for Bau-
doyer; the Minister wants Rabourdin."
Bixiou. "Good! "
Dutocq. "The Minister has begun to see that he must
give way, but he must get quit of the difficulty before he can
\\ go over. He wants a reason for ridding himself of Rabour-
din. So somebody has unearthed an old report that he made
with a view to reforming the service, and some of it is getting
about. That is how I try to explain the thing to myself, at
least. Do the drawing; you come on in a match played
among great folk; you will do a service to the Minister, the
Court, and all concerned, and you get your step. Do you
understand ?"
Bixiou. "I do not understand how you can know all this,
or whether you are just making it up."
Dutocq. "Would you like me to show you your para-
graph ?"
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 351
Bixiou. "Yes."
DuTOCQ. "Very well, come round to my place, for I want
to put the report in sure hands."
Bixiou. "Go by yourself" {goes lack to the Uabourdins) .
"People are talking of nothing but this news that Dutocq has
brought; upon my honor. M. Eabourdin's notes on the men
that he meant to reform out of the service can't have been
very complimentary. That is the secret of his promotion.
Nothing astonishes us in these days" {strikes an attitude,
after Talma).
" Illustrious heads have fallen before your eyes,
And yet, oh senseless men ! ye show surprise
— if somebody points out a reason of this sort when a man
gets into favor ! Our Baudoyer is too stupid to make his way
by such methods. Accept my congratulations, gentlemen,
you are under an illustrious chief" {goes).
PoiRET. "I shall retire from the service without under-
standing a single thing that that gentleman has said since
he came here. What does he mean with his falling heads?"
Fleury. "The four sergeants of La Eochelle, egad ! Ber-
ton, Ney, Caron, the brothers Faucher, and all the massacres."
Phellion". "He says risky things in a flippant manner."
Fleury. "Why don't you say at once that he lies ; that he
humbugs you ; that truth turns to verdegris in his throat ?"
Phellion. "Your remarks transgress the limits of polite-
ness and the considerations due to a colleague."
ViMEUX. "It seems to me that if what he says is false,
such remarks are called slander and defamation of character,
and the man who utters them deserves a horsewhipping."
Fleury {waxing wrathful). "And if a government office
were a public place, it would be an indictable offence, and go
straight to a court of law."
Phelliojst {anxious to avoid a quarrel, endeavors to change
the subject). "Calm yourselves, gentlemen. I am at work
upon a little treatise on morality, and have just come to the
soul "
352 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Fleuey (interrupting). "What do you say to it, M. Phel-
lion?"
Phellion (reading aloud). "'Question. — What is the
soul of man?
" 'Answer. — A spiritual substance which thinks and rea-
sons.' "
Thuillier. "A spiritual substance ! You might as well
say an ethereal block of stone."
Poiret. "Just let him go on "
Phellion (contijiues). " 'Q. — "Whence comes the soul?
"'A. — It comes from God, by whom it was created; God
made it simple and indivisible, consequently its destructi-
bility is inconceivable, and He has said ' "
Poiret (bewildered). "God?"
Phellion. "Yes, mosieur, tradition says so."
Fleury (to Poiret). "Don't you interrupt !"
Phellion (resumes). " ' — has said that He created it im-
mortal, which means that it will never die.
" 'Q. — To what end does the soul exist ?
"'A. — To comprehend, to will, and to remember; it com-
prises the understanding, the will, and the memory.
" 'Q. — To what end have we understanding ?
"'A. — That we may know. The understanding is the eye
of the soul.' "
Fleury. "And the soul is the eye of what ?"
Phellion (continuing). " 'Q. — What is the understand-
ing bound to know ?
" 'A.— The truth.
" 'Q. — Why has man a will ?
" 'A. — In order that he may love good and eschew evil.
" '^.— What is good ?
" 'A. — The source of man's happiness.' "
ViMEUX. "And are you writing this for young ladies?"
Phellion. "Yes" (continues). " 'Q. — How many kinds
of good are there ?' "
Fleury. "This is prodigiously improper !"
Phellion (indignantly). "Oh! mosieur" (cooling down).
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 353
"Here is the answer, anyhow. I have come to it" — (reads) —
'' 'A. — There are two kinds of good — temporal good and eter-
nal good.' "
PoiEET (with a contemptuous countenance). "And will
there be a great sale for thatf
Phellion. "I venture to hope so. It takes a lot of mental
exercise to keep up a system of questions and answers; that
was why I asked you to allow me to think, for the an-
swers
Thdillier. "The answers might be sold separately
though."
PoiRET. "Is it a pun?"
Thuillier. "Yes. They will sell the gammon without
spinach."
Phellion. "It was very wrong, indeed, of me to inter-
rupt you." {Dives in among Ms pasteboard cases. — To him-
self.) "But they have forgotten M. Rabourdin."
Meanwhile a scene that took place between the Minister
and des Lupeaulx decided Rabourdin's fate. The Secretary-
General went to find his chief in his study before breakfast.
"Your Excellency is not playing aboveboard with me," he
began, when he had made sure that la Briere could hear
nothing.
"Here, he is going to quarrel with me," thought the Min-
ister, "because his mistress flirted with me yesterday." Aloud
he said, "I did not think that you were such a boy, my dear
friend."
"Friend," repeated the Secretary-General; "I shall soon
know about that."
The Minister looked haughtily at des Lupeaulx.
"We are by ourselves, so we can have an explanation. The
deputy for the district in which my estate of des Lupeaulx
is situated "
"Then it really is an estate ?" laughed the Minister, to hide
his surprise.
"Enlarged by purchases to the extent of two hundred thon-
354 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
sand fraucs," des Lupeaulx added carelessly. "You knew ten
days ago that the deputy was going to resign his seat, and you
said nothing to me — you were not bound to do so; stiil, you
knew very well that it is my wish to sit on the Centre benches.
Did you not think that I might throw in my lot with the
doctrinaires, the party that will eat you up. Monarchy and
all, if they are allowed to recruit all the able men that you
slight ? Do you not know that there are not more than fifty or
sixty dangerous heads at a time in a nation, and that in those
fifty or sixty the intellect is on a level with the ambition?
The whole art of government consists in finding out those
heads, so that you may buy them or cut them off. I do not
know whether I have talent, but I have ambition; and you
make a blunder when you do not come to an understanding
with a man who means nothing but good to you. The coro-
nation dazzled you for a minute, but what follows ? The war
of words and arguments will begin again and grow more
acrimonious. Well, so far as you are concerned, you don't
find me in the Left Centre, believe me ! Your prefect has
had confidential instructions no doubt, but, in spite of his
manoeuvres, I am sure of a majority. It is time that we
came to a thorough understanding. Sometimes people are
better friends after a little coup de Jarnac. I shall be a
Count, and the Grand Cross of the Legion will not be refused
after my services; but I insist not so much on these two
points as upon a third which your influence can decide. Y"ou
have not yet appointed Rabourdin ; I have had news this
morning; you will give general satisfaction by nominating
Baudoyer "
"Baudoyer!" exclaimed the Minister; "you know him!"
"Y"es," said des Lupeaulx ; "but when he gives proof of his
incompetence, you can get rid of him by asking his patrons
to take him into their employ. Then you will have an im-
portant post in your gift, and that may facilitate a compro-
mise with some ambitious man."
"I have given my w^ord to Rabourdin !"
"Y"es, but I do not ask you to change your mind at once.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 355
1 know that it is dangerous to say 'Yes' and 'No' on tiie same
day. Wait, and you can sign tlie day after to-morrow. Well,
in two days' time you will see that it is impossible to keep
Rabourdin; and besides, he will have sent in his resignation,
plump and plain."
"Resignation ?"
"Yes."
"Why ?"
"He has been at work for some power unknown, playing
the spy on a large scale all through the departments. This
was found out by accident; it has got about, and the clerks
are furious. For mercy's sake, do not work with him to-day ;
let me find an excuse. Go to the King, I am sure you will
find that certain persons will be pleased by your concession
as to Baudoyer, and you will get something in exchange.
Then you will strengthen your position later on by getting
rid of the fool, seeing that he has been forced upon you, as
one may say."
"What made you change your mind about Rabourdin in
this way ?"
'^ould you assist M. de Chateaubriand to write an article
against the Government ? Well, this is how Rabourdin treats
me in his report," said des Lupeaulx, handing his note to the
Minister. "He is reorganizing the whole system, no doubt,
for the benefit of a confederation which we do not know. I
shall keep on friendly terms with him, so as to watch over
him. I think I will do some great service to the Government,
so as to reach the peerage; a peerage is the one thing that I
care about. I do not want office, nor anything else that can
cross your path. I am aiming at the peerage ; then I shall be
in a position to marry some banker's daughter with two
hundred thousand livres a year. So let me do you some
great service, so that the King can say that I have saved the
throne. This long time past I have said, 'Liberalism no
longer meets us in the field; Liberalism, has given up con-
spiracy, the Carbonari, and violent methods;' it is undermin-
ing us and preparing to say once for all, 'Get thee hence that
356 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
I may take thy place !' Do you think that I pay court to a
Rabourdin's wife for my pleasure ? iSTo ; I had information !
So for to-day there are two things — the adjournment of the
nominations and your sincere support at my election. At
the end of the session you shall see whether I have not paid
my debt with interest."
For all answer the Minister handed over the report.
"And I will tell Eabourdin that you postpone him till
Saturday."
The ^linister nodded. In a few minutes the messenger
had crossed the building and informed Eabourdin that he
must go to the Minister on Saturday; for that then the
Chamber would be engaged with petitions, and the Minister
would have the whole day at liberty.
Meanwhile Saillard went on his errand to the Minister's
wife and slipped in his speech, to which the lady replied,
with dignity, that she never meddled in State affairs, and
besides, she had heard that Eabourdin was appointed. Sail-
lard in alarm went up to Baudoyer's office, and there found
Dutocq, Godard, and Bixiou in a state of exasperation which
words fail to describe ; for they were reading the rough draft
of Eabourdin's terrible report.
Bixiou (pointing to a passage). "Here you are, Saillard:
'Saillard. — Cashiers to be suppressed throughout. The de-
partments should keep accounts current with the Treas-
ury. Saillard is well-to-do, and does not need a pen-
sion.' Would 3'ou like to see your son-in-law?" (turns over
the leaf.) "Here he is: 'Baudoter. — Utterly incompetent.
Dismiss without pension; he is well-to-do.' And our friend
Godard" (turns over another leaf). "'Godard. — Dismiss.
Pension one-third of present salary.' In short, we are all
here. Here am I — 'An artist to be employed at the Opera,
the Menus-Plaisirs, or the Museum, with a salary from the
Civil List. Plenty of ability, not very steady, incapable of
application, a restless disposition.' Oh! I will give you
enough of the artist."
Saillard. "Cashiers to be suppressed? . . . Why^
the man is a monster !"
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 357
Bixiou. "What has he to say about our mysterious Des-
roys?" {Turns the leaf and reads.) " 'Deseots. — A dan-
gerous man, in that he holds subversive principles that cannot
be shaken. As a son of a member of the Convention he ad-
mires that institution; he may become a pernicious pub-
licist.' "
Baudoyer. "A detective is not so clever."
GoDARD. "I shall go at once to the Secretary-General and
lodge a complaint in form. If that man is nominated, we
ought all to resign in a body."
DuTOCQ. "Listen, gentlemen; let us be prudent. If you
revolt at once, we should be accused of personal motives and
a desire for revenge. ISTo, let the rumor spread; and when
the whole service rises in protest, your proceedings will meet
with general support."
Bixiou. "Dutocq works on the principles of the sublime
Eossini's great aria in Basilio, which proves that the mighty
composer is a politic man. This seems to me to be fair and
reasonable. I think of leaving my card on M. Kabourdin to-
morrow morning; I shall have the name engraved upon it,
and the titles underneath: 'Bixiou. — Kot very steady, in-
capable of application, restless disposition.' "
GoDAED. "A good idea, gentlemen. Let us all have our
cards printed, and Kabourdin shall have them to-morrow
morning."
Baudoyer. "M. Bixiou, will you undertake these little
details, and see that the plates are destroyed after a single
card has been printed from each?"
DuTOCQ {taking Bixiou aside). "Well, will you draw that
caricature now?"
Bixiou. "I see, my dear fellow, that you have been in the
secret for ten days." {Looks him full in the face.) "Am
I going to be chief clerk's assistant ?"
Dutocq. "Yes, upon my word of honor, and a thousand
francs besides, as I told you. You do not know what a ser-
vice you are doing to powerful personages."
Bixiou. "Do you know them?"
23
358 THE GOVERXMEISiT CLERKS
DUTOCQ. *Tes."
Bixiou. "Very well, then, I want to speak with them.''
DuTOCQ (drily). "Do the caricature or let it alone; you
will be chief clerk's assistant, or you will not."
Bixiou. "Well, then, let us see those thousand francs."
DuTOCQ. "You shall have them against the drawing."
Bixiou. "Go ahead I The caricature shall go the round
of the offices to-morrow. So let us make fools of the Rabour-
dins!" (To Saillard, Godard, and Baudoyer, who are con-
ferring in whispers.) "We are going to set our neighbors
in a ferment." (Goes out with Dutocq, and crosses over to
Rahourdin's office. At sight of him, Fleury and Thuillier
show signs of excitement.) "Well, gentlemen, what is the
matter? All that I told you just now is so true that you may
have ocular demonstration at this moment of the most shame-
ful delation. Go to the office of the virtuous, honest, esti-
mable, upright, and pious Baudoyer; he is 'incompetent,'
at any rate, in such a business as this ! Your chief has in-
vented a sort of guillotine for clerks, that is certain. Go and
look at it, follow the crowd, there is nothing to pay if you are
not satisfied, you shall have the full benefit of your misfor-
tune gratis. What is more, the appointments have been post-
poned. The offices are in an uproar; and Eabourdin has
just heard that he is not to work with the Minister to-day. —
Just go !"
Phellion and Poiret stayed behind. Phellion was too much
attached to Eabourdin to go in search of proof that might
injure a man whom he had no wish to judge, and Poiret was
to retire in five days' time. Just at that moment Sebastien
came down stairs to collect some papers to be included with
the documents for signature. He was sufficiently astonished
to find the office empt}', but he showed no sign of surprise.
Phelliox (rising to his feet, a rare event). "My young
friend, do you know what is going on ? what rumors are cur-
rent with respect to Mosieur Eabourdin, to whom you are at-
tached; for whom" (loivering his voice for Sebastien's ear),
"for whom my affection is as great as my esteem? It is said
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 359
that he has been so imprudent as to leave a report of the
cleik*^ lying about somewhere " (stops suddenly short, for
SehastieriHurns as pale as a white rose, and sinks into a chair.
■PheUion is obliged to hold him in his muscular arms.) "Pat
a key down his back ; Mosieur Poiret ! have you a key ?"
PoiRET. "I always carry my door key." (Old Poiret,
junior, pushes his hey down Sehastiens collar; PheUion
brings a glass of cold water. The poor boy opens his eyes,
only to shed a torrent of tears; he lays his head on PheUion s
desk, flings himself down in a heap as if stricken by light-
ning, and sobs in such a heartrending fashion, with such a
genuine outpouring of grief, that Poiret, for the first time in
his life, is touched with the sorrow of a fellow -creature.)
Phellion (raising his voice). "Come, come, my young
friend ! bear up ! One must have courage in a great crisis !
You are a man. What is the matter? What is there to up-
set you so in this affair? it is out of all reason."
Sebastiex (through his sobs). "I have ruined M. Ka-
bourdin ! I left the paper about ; I had been copying it ; I
have ruined my benefactor. This will kill me ! Such a great
man ! A man that might have been a Minister !"
Poiret (blowing his nose). "Then he really made the
report ?"
S:^bastien" (through his sobs). "But it was for
There ! I am telling his secrets now ! . . . Oh ! that mis-
erable Dutocq, he took it "
At that the tears and sobs began afresh, and grew so vio-
lent, that Eabourdin came out of his office, recognized the
voice, and went upstairs. He found Sebastien, half swooning,
like a figure of Christ, in the arms of Phellion and Poiret;
and the two clerks, with countenances distorted by compas-
sion, grotesquely playing the parts of the Maries in the com-
position.
Eabourdin. "What is the matter, gentlemen?"
Sebastien (starting up, falls on his knees before Eabour-
din). "Oh, sir, I have ruined you! That list! Dutocq is
showing it about. He found it out, no doubt !"
360 • THE GOTERNMENT CLERKS
Eabouedin (composedly). "I knew it." {Raises Sebas-
tien and dratvs him aivay.) "My friend, you are a child!"
( To Phellion.) "Where are they all ?"'
Phelliox. "They have gone to M. Baudoyer's study, sir,
to look at a list which is said "
Eabourdix. "That will do" (goes out with Sehastien.
Poiret and PheUion, overcome with astonishment, looTc at one
another, completely at a loss).
FoiRET {to Phellioii). "M. Eabourdin! . . ."
Phelliox {to Poiret). "M. Eabourdin! . . ."
PoiEET. "Well, if ever ! M. Eabourdin ! . . ."
Phellion. "Did you see how he looked — quite calm and
dignified in spite of everything? "
Poiret {with a grimace intended for a knowing air). "I
should not be at all surprised if there were something at the
bottom of all this.'*
Phellion. "A man of honor, blameless and stainless "
Poiret. "And how about Dutocq?"
Phelliox. "Mosieur Poiret, you think as I think about
Dutocq; do you not understand me?"'
Poiret {with two or three little knowing nods). "Yes."
The others come hack.
Fleury. "This is coming it strong ! I have seen it with
my own eyes, and yet I can't believe it ! M. Eabourdin, the
best of men ! Upon my word, if such as he can play the
sneak, it is enough to sicken you with virtue. I used to put
Eabourdin among Plutarch's heroes."
Vimeux. "Oh ! it is true."
Poiret {bethinking himself that he has but five days to
stay). "But, gentlemen, what do you say about the man
that lay in wait for M. Eabourdin and stole the papers?"
Dutocq slips out of the room.
Fleury. "A Judas Iscariot ! Who is he ?"
Phellion {adroitly). "He is not among us, that is cer-
tain."
Vimeux {an idea beginning to dawn upon him). "It is
Dutocq !"
THE GOVERNMENf CLERKS 361
Phellion. "I have seen no proof whatever, mosieur.
While you were out of the room, that young fellow, M. de la
Roche, came in and was nearly heartbroken over it. Look,
you see his tears on my desk."
PoiRET. "He swooned in our arms Oh ! my door-key ;
dear, dear! it is still down his back!" {goes out.)
ViMEux. "The Minister would not work to-day with M.
Eabourdin ; the head of the staff came to say a word or two
to M. Saillard ; M. Baudoyer was advised to make application
for the Cross of the'Legion of Honor ; one will be granted to
the division at New Year, and it is to go to M. Baudoyer.
Is that clear ? M. Eabourdin is sacrificed by the very people
for whom he worked. That is what Bixiou says. We were all
dismissed except Phellion and Sebastien."
Du Bruel (comes in). "Well, gentlemen, is it true?"
Thuillier. "Strictly true."
Du Bruel. "Good-day, gentlemen" (puts on his hat and
goes out).
Thuillier. "That vaudevilliste does not waste time on
file-firing; he is off to the Due de Ehetore and the Due de
Mauf rigneuse, but he may run ! Colleville is to be our chief,
they say."
Phellion. "Yet he seemed to be attached to M. Ea-
bourdin."
Poiret (returns). "I had all the trouble in the world to
get back my door-key. The youngster is crying, and M. Ea-
bourdin has completely disappeared. (Dutocq and Bixiou
come in together.)
Bixiou. "Well, gentlemen, queer things are happening
in your office ! Du Bruel !" — (looks into du BrueVs cabinet.)
"Gone?"
Thuillier. "Out."
Bixiou. "And Eabourdin?"
Fleury. "Melted away, evaporated, vanished in smoke!
To think that such a man, the best of men ! "
Poiret (to Dutocq). "That youngster Sebastien, in his
grief, accused you of taking the work, M. Dutocq, ten days
ago—"
362 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Bixiou {looking at Dutocq). "My dear fellow, you must
clear yourself" {all the clerks stare at Dutocq).
Dutocq, "Where is the little viper that was copying it?''
Bixiou. "How do you know that he was copying it?
Nothing but a diamond can cut a diamond, my dear fellow !''
{Dutocq goes out.)
PoiRET. "Look here, M. Bixiou ; I have only five days and
a half to stay in the office, and I should like for once — just
for once — ^to have the pleasure of understanding you. Do
me the honor to explain where the diamond comes in under
the circumstances."'
Bixiou. "It means, old man (for I am quite willing to
descend to your level for once), it means that as the diamond
alone can polish the diamond, so none but a pry is a match
for his like."
Fleury. " Try' in this case being put for 'spy.' "
PoiRET. "I do not understand "
Bixiou. "Oh, well, another time you will."
M. Rabourdin had hurried away to the Minister. His Ex-
cellency was at the Chamber. Thither, accordingly, Eabour-
din went and wrote a few lines, but the Minister was on his
legs in the midst of a hot discussion. Eabourdin waited, not
in the Salle des Conferences, but outside in the courtyard;
he decided in spite of the cold to take up his post by His
Excellency's carriage, and to speak with him as he came out.
The sergeant-at-arms told him that a storm had been brewed
by the nineteen members of the Extreme Left, and there had
been a scene in the House. Eabourdin meanwhile, in fever-
ish excitement, paced up and down in the courtyard. He
waited for five mortal hours. At half-past six the House rose,
and the Minister's chasseur came out with a message for the
coachman.
"Hey, Jean ! His Excellency has gone to the Palace with
the Minister of War; they will dine together afterwards.
We are to fetch them at ten o'clock. There is to be a meeting
of the council."
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 363
Slowly Eabourdin walked home again in a state of exhaus-
tion easy to imagine. It was seven o'clock. He had barely
time to dress.
"Well !" his wife cried joyously, as he came into the draw-
ing-room. "You have the appointment now."
Rabourdin raised his head in melancholy anguish. "I am
very much afraid that I shall never set foot in the office
again."
"What !" cried his wife, trembling with cruel anxiety.
"That memorandum of mine on the staff has been the
round of the department ; I tried to speak with the Minister,
and could not."
A vision flashed before Celestine's eyes; some demon flung
a sudden lurid light upon her last conversation with des
Lupeaulx.
"If I had behaved like a vulgar woman," she thought, "we
should have had the place."
She gazed at Rabourdin with something like anguish.
There was a dreary silence, and at dinner both were absorbed
in musings.
"And it is our Wednesday !" she exclaimed.
"All is not lost, dear Celestine," he answered, putting a
kiss upon her forehead; "I may perhaps see the Minister to-
morrow morning,, and all will be cleared up. Sebastien sat
up late last night, all the fair copies are made and in order.
I will put the whole thing on the Minister's desk, and beg him
to go through it with me. La Briere will help me. A man
is never condemned without a hearing."
"I am curious to see whether M. des Lupeaulx will come to
us to-day."
"He ! — Of course he will come, he will not fail. There is
something of the tiger in him — he loves to lick the blood
after he has given the wound."
"My poor love, I do not know how a man that could think
of so grand a reform should not see, at the same time, that
no one must hear of it. Some ideas a man must keep within
himself, because he, and he alone, can carry them out. You,
364 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
in your sphere, should have done as Napoleon did in his; he
bent and twisted and crawled — yes, crawled ! — for Bonaparte
married Barras' mistress to gain a command. You should
have waited; you should have been elected as a deputy; you
should have watched the political changes, now in the trough
of the sea, now on the crest of a wave; you should have
adopted M. de Villele's Italian motto Col tempo, otherwise
rendered, 'All things come round to him that will but wait.'
For seven years it has been M. de Villele's aim to be in office ;
he took the first step in 1814, when he was just your present
age, with a protest against the Charter. That is your mis-
take; you have been ready to act under orders; you were
made to issue them."
The arrival of Schinner the painter put an end to this talk,
but Rabourdin grew thoughtful over his wife's words.
Schinner grasped his hand. "An artist's devotion is of very
little use, ray dear fellow; but at such times as these we are
staunch, we artists. I got an evening paper. Baudoyer is
to be director, I see, and he is to have the Cross of the Legion
of Honor.''
"I am first in order of seniority, and I have been twenty-
four years in the service," smiled Eabourdin.
"I know M. le Comte de Serizy, the Minister of State,
pretty well ; if you like to make use of bin], I can see him,"
said Schinner.
The rooms were filled with persons who knew nothing of
the movements of the administration. Du Bruel did not ap-
pear. Mme. Rabourdin was more charming, and in higher
spirits than usual ; the horse, wounded on the battlefield, will
summon up all its strength to carry its master.
The women behaved charmingly to her, now that she was
defeated.
"She is very brave," said some.
"And yet she was very attentive to des Lupeaulx," the
Baronne du Chatelet remarked to the Vicomtesse de Fon-
taine.
"Then do you think "
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 365
"If SO, M. Rabourdin would at least have had the Cross,"
said Mme. de Camps, defending her friend.
Towards ten o'clock des Lupeaulx appeared. To give an
idea of his appearance, it can only be said that his spectacles
looked melancholy, while there was laughter in his eyes; the
glass veiled their expression so completely, that no one but
a physiognomist could have seen the diabolical gleam in
them. He grasped Rabourdin's hand, and Rabourdin could
only submit to the pressure.
"We must have some talk together by and by," he said,
as he seated himself beside the fair Rabourdin, who behaved
to admiration. — "Ah ! you are great," he said, with a side
glance at her; "I find you as I imagined you — sublime in
defeat. Do you know how very seldom people respond to our
expectations of them ! And so you are not overwhelmed by
defeat. You are right, we shall triumph," he continued,
lowering his voice. "Your fate will always be in your own
hands so long as you have an ally in a man who worships
you. We will hold a council."
"But Baudoyer is appointed, is he not?"
"Yes."
"And the Cross?"
"Not yet, but he is going to have it."
"Well?"
"You do not understand policy."
To Mme. Rabourdin it seemed as if that evening would
never come to an end. Meanwhile, in the Place Royale a
comedy was being played, a comedy that is always repeated
in seven different salons after every change of government.
The Saillards' sitting-room was full. M. and Mme. Transon
came at eight o'clock. Mme. Transon kissed Mme. Baudoyer
nee Saillard. M. Bataille, the captain in the ISTational Guard,
came with his wife and the cure of Saint-Paul's.
"M. Baudoyer, I want to be the first to congratulate you,"
said Mme. Transon; "your talents have met with their
deserts. Well, you have fairly earned your advancement."
"So now you are a director," added M. Transon, rubbing
his hands ; "it is a great honor for the Quarter."
36C^ THE GOVERNMENT (M.ERKS
"And without scheming for it, oue may say iudeed," cried
old Saillard. "We are not intriguers; we do not go to the
Minister's parties.''
Uncle Mitral rubbed his nose, and smiled and looked at
his niece; Elizabeth was talking with Gigonnet. Falleix
did not know what to think of the blindness of Saillard and
Baudoyer. Dutocq, Bixiou, du Bruel, and Godard came in,
followed by Colleville, now chief clerk.
"What chumps !" said Bixiou, in an undertone for du
Bruel's benefit. "What a fine caricature one might make
of them — a lot of flat fish, stock-fish, and winkles all dancing
a saraband."
"M. le Directeur," began Colleville, "I have come to con-
gratulate you, or rather we all congratulate ourselves upon
your appointment, and we have come to assure you of our
zealous co-operation."
M. and Mme. Baudoyer, Isidore's father and mother, were
there, to enjoy the triumph of their son and his wife. Uncle
Bidault had dined at home ; his little twinkling eyes dismayed
Bixiou.
"There is a character that would do for a vaudeville," he
said, pointing him out to du Bruel. "What does that fellow
sell? Such an odd fish ought to be hung out for a sign at
the door of an old curiosity shop. What a greatcoat ! I
thought that no one but Poiret could keep such a thing on
exhibition after ten j^ears of exposure to the inclemencies of
the seasons."
."Baudoyer is magnificent," said du Bruel.
"Stunning!" returned Bixiou.
"Gentlemen," said Baudoyer, "this is my own uncle, M.
Mitral ; and this is my wife's great-uncle, M. Bidault !''
Gigonnet and Mitral looked keenly at the clerks; the
metallic gleam of gold seemed to glitter in the old men's
eyes ; it impressed the two scoffers.
"Did you take a good look at that pair of uncles, eh?"
asked Bixiou, as they walked under the arcades of the Palais
Royal. "Two specimens of the genus Shyloek. They go the
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 367
Market, I will be bound, and lend money at a hundred per
cent per week. They lend on pledges, traffic in clothes, gold
lace, cheese, women and children;* they be Arabs, they be
Greeks, they be Genoese-Genevese-Lombard Jews; brought
forth by a Tartar and suckled by a she-wolf."
"Uncle Mitral was a bailiff once, I am certain," said
Godard.
"There, you see !" said du Bruel.
"I must just go and see the sheets pulled off," continued
Bixiou; "but I should dearly like to make a careful study of
M. Eabourdin's salon ; you are very lucky, du Bruel, you can
go there."
"I ?" said du Bruel ; "what should I do there ? My face
does not lend itself to the expression of condolence. And be-
sides, it is very vulgar nowadays to dance attendance on per-
sons out of office."
At midnight Mme. Eabourdin's drawing-room was empty;
three persons only remained — des Lupeaulx and the master
and mistress of the house. When Schinner went, and M.
and Mme. Octave de Camps had taken their leave, des
Lupealx rose with a mysterious air, stood with his back to the
clock, and looked at the husband and wife in turn.
"Nothing is lost, my friends," he said, "for we remain to
you — the Minister and I. Dutoeq, put between two powers,
chose the stronger, as it seemed to him. He served the Grand
Almonry and the Court and played me false; it is all in the
day's work, a man in politics never complains of treachery.
Still, Baudoyer is sure to be cashiered in a few months' time
and transferred to the Prefecture of Police, for the Grand
Almonry will not desert him."
With that, des Lupeaulx broke out into a long tirade over
the Grand Almonry, and expatiated on the risks run by a
Government that looked to the Church and the Jesuits for
support. Still, it is worth while to point out that, though
the Liberal papers laid such stress upon the influence of Court
patronage and the Grand Almonry, neither of these counted
for much in Baudoyer's promotion. Petty intrigue died away
368 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
in the higher spheres because greater questions were at stake.
Perhaps M. Gaudron's importunities extorted a few words
in Baudoyer's favor, but at the Minister's first remark the
matter was allowed to drop. Passion in itself did the work
of a very efficient spy among the members of the Congrega-
tion; they used to denounce each other. And surely it was
permissible to oppose that society to the brazen-fronted fra-
ternity of the doctrine summed up by the formula, "Heaven
helps him who helps himself." As for the occult power ex-
ercised by the Congregation, it was for the most part wielded
by subordinates who used the name of that body to conjure
with for their private ends. Liberal rancor, in fact, delighted
to represent the Grand Almonry as a giant; in politics, in the
administration, in the army or the civil service. Fear always
makes idols for itself. At this moment Baudoyer believed in
the Grand Almonry, and all the while the only almonry that
befriended him held its sessions at the Cafe Themis. There
are times in the history of the world when everything that
happens amiss is set down to the account of some one in-
stitution, or man in power; nobody will give them credit
for their abilities, they serve as synonyms and equivalent
terms for crass stupidity. As M. de Talleyrand was sup-
posed to hail every political event with an epigram, so in the
same manner the Grand Almonry did and undid everything at
this period. Unluckily, it did and undid nothing whatever.
Its influence was not in the hands of a Cardinal Eichelieu
or a Cardinal Mazarin ; it fell, on the contrary, to a sort of
Cardinal Fleury, the kind of man that is timid for five years
and rash for a day. At Saint-Merri, at a later day, the
doctrine above-mentioned did with impunity what Charles X.
only attempted to do in July 1830. If the proviso as to the
censorship had not been so stupidly inserted in the new
Charter, journalism also would have seen its Saint-Merri.
The Orleans Branch would have carried out the scheme of
Charles X., with the law at its back.
"Stop on under Baudoyer, summon up courage for that,"
continued des Ijupeaulx, "be a true politician, put generous
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 369
thoughts and impulses aside, confine yourself to your duty.
say not a word to your director, never give him advice, and act
only upon his orders. In three months' time Baudoyer will
leave the department ; they will either dismiss him or transfer
him to some other sphere of activity. Perhaps he may go to
the Household, Twice in my life I have been buried under an
avalanche of folly in this way; I let it go by."
"Yes," said Eabourdin, "Tjut you were not slandered,
your honor was not involved, you were not compromised "
Des Lupeaulx interrupted him with a peal of Homeric
laughter. "Why, that is the daily bread of every man of
mark in the whole fair realm of France ! There are two ways
of taking it ; you can go under, which means you pack your-
self off and plant cabbages somewhere or other; or you rise
above it, and walk fearlessly on without so much as turning
your head."
"In my omti case," said Eabourdin, "there is but one way
of untying the slip-knot which espionage and treachery have
tightened about my neck ; it is this — I must have an explana-
tion with the Minister at once; and if you are as sincerely
attached to me as you say, it is in your power to bring me face
to face with him to-morrow."
"Do you wish to lay your plan of administrative reform
before him?"
Eabourdin bowed.
"Very well then, intrust your projects and memoranda
to me, and he shall spend the night over them, I will en-
gage."
"Then let us go together," Eabourdin answered quickly;
"for after six years of work, at least I may expect the gratifica-
tion of explaining it for an hour or two to a member of His
Majesty's Government, for the Minister cannot choose but
commend my perseverance."
Des Lupeaulx hesitated for a moment ; Eabourdin's tenacity
of purpose had put him on a road in which there was no cover
for duplicity, so he looked at Mme. Eabourdin. "Which
370 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
shall turn the scale?" he asked himself — "my hatred of
him, my liking for her?"
"If you cannot trust me," he returned after a pause, "I
can see that, as far as I am concerned, you will always be the
writer of that 'secret note." — Good-bye, madame."
Mme. Eabourdin bowed coldly. Celestine and Xavier went
to their own rooms without a word, so heavily their mis-
fortune lay upon them. The wife thought of her own un-
pleasant position. The chief clerk was making up his mind
never to set foot in the office again ; he was lost in far-reach-
ing thoughts. This step was to change the course of his
life ; he must strike out a new path. He sat all night before
his fire; Celestine, in her night-dress, stole in on tiptoe now
and again, but he did not see her.
"Since I must go back for the last time to take away my
papers and to put Baudoyer in possession, let us try the effect
of my resignation."
He drafted his resignation, meditated over his expressions,
and wrote the following letter:
"MoNSEiGNEUR, — I have the honor to enclose my resigna-
tion in the same cover; but I venture to believe that your
Excellency will recollect that I said that I had placed my
honor in your hands, and that an immediate explanation was
necessary. The explanation which I implored in vain would
probably now be useless, for a fragment of my work has been
surreptitiously taken and distorted and misinterpreted by
malevolence, and I am compelled to withdraw before the tacit
censure of those in authority. Your Excellency may have
thought, when I tried to obtain an interview that morning,
that I wished to speak of my own advancement, whereas I
was thinking only of the honor of your Excellency's depart-
ment and the public good; it is of some consequence to me
that your Excellency should lie under no misapprehen-
sion on this head," and the letter ended with the usual
formulas.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 371
By half-past seven o'clock the sacrifice had been made,
the whole manuscript had been burned. Tired out with
thought and overcome by moral suffering, Eabourdin fell
into a doze, with his head resting on the back of the armchair.
A strange sensation awakened him; he felt hot tears falling
on his hands, and saw his wife kneeling beside him. Celestine
had come in and read the letter. She understood the full
extent of their ruin. They were reduced to live upon four
thousand livres; and reckoning up her debts, she found that
they amounted to thirty-two thousand francs. It was the
most sordid poverty of all. And the noble man that had
put such trust in her had no suspicion of the way in which
she had abused his confidence. Celestine, fair as the
Magdalen, was sobbing at his feet.
"The misfortune is complete," Xavier exclaimed in his
disma}^; "dishonored in the department, dishonored "
A gleam of stainless honor fiashed from Celestine's eyes;
she sprang up like a frightened horse, her eyes flashed light-
nings.
"I, If" she cried in sublime tones. "Am I too an or-
dinary wife? If I had faltered, would you not have had
your appointment? But it is easier to believe that than to
believe the truth."
"What is it ?" asked Eabourdin.
"You shall have it all in a few words," said she ; "we owe
thirty thousand francs."
Eabourdin caught her to him in a frenzy of joy, and made
her sit on his knee.
"Never mind, darling," he said, and a great kindness that
slid into the tones of his voice changed the bitterness of her
tears into something vaguely and strangely sweet. "I too
have made mistakes. I worked for my country to very little
purpose; when I thought, at any rate, I might have done
something worth the doing. . . . Now I will start out
on a new path. If I had sold spices all this while, we should
be millionaires by now. Very well, let us sell spices. You
are only twenty-eight years old, my darling. In ten years'
372 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
time, hard work will give you back the luxury that you love,
though we must give it up now for a little while. I too,
darling, am not an ordinary husband. We will sell the farm ;
the value of the land has been going up for seven years ; the
surplus and the furniture will pay my debts.'"'
In Celestine's kiss there was love given back a thousand-
fold for that generous word.
"And then we shall have a hundred thousand francs to
put into some business or other. In a month's time I shall
find an investment. If Saillard happened upon a Martin
Falleix, chance cannot fail us. Wait breakfast for me. I
will come back from the Minister with my neck free of that
miserable yoke."
Celestine held her husband in a tight clasp, with super-
human force ; for the might of love gives a woman more than
a man's strength, more power than the utmost transports of
rage give to the strong. She was laughing and crying, talk-
ing and sobbing all at once.
When Eabourdin went out at eight o'clock, the porter
handed him the burlesque visiting-cards sent in by Baudoyer,
Bixiou, Godard, and the rest. Nevertheless, he went to the
office, and found Sebastien waiting for him at the door; the
lad begged him not to attempt to enter the place, a scurrilous
caricature was being handed about.
"If you wish to alleviate the bitterness of my fall, bring
me that drawing ; for I am just taking my resignation myself
to Ernest de la Briere, so that it may not be twisted out of all
knowledge on its way to headquarters. I have my reasons
for asking to see the caricature."
Eabourdin waited till he was sure that his letter was in
the Minister's hands; then he went down to the courtyard.
Sebastien gave him the lithographed drawing (of which a
sketch is given here). There were tears in the boy's eyes.
"It is very clever," said Eabourdin, and the face that he
turned upon the supernumerary was as serene as the Saviour's
brow beneath the crown of thorns.
He walked in quietly as usual, and went straight to Bau-
(373)
374 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
doyer's general office to give the necessary explanations be-
fore that slave of red-tape entered upon his new duties as
director.
"Tell M. Baudoyer there is no time to lose," he added
before Godard and the clerks. "My resignation is now in
the Ministers hands, and I do not choose to stay in the office
five minutes longer than I can help."
Then catching sight of Bixiou, Eabourdin walked up to
him, held out the drawing, and said, to the astonishment of
the clerks:
"Was I not right when I said that you were an artist?
Only it is a pity that you used your pencil against a man
whom it was impossible to judge in such a manner, or in the
offices. But people ridicule everything in France — even God
Himself."
With that he drew Baudo3^er into the late la Billardiere's
rooms. At the door he met Phellion and Sebastien. They
alone dared to show that they were faithful to the accused,
even in this great shipwreck. Eabourdin saw the tears in
Phellion's eyes, and in spite of himself he wrung the clerk's
hand.
"Mosieur," the good fellow said, "if we can be of any use
whatever, command us "
"Come in, my friends," Eabourdin said with a gracious
dignity. — "Sebastien, my boy, send in your resignation by
Laurent; you are sure to be implicated in the slander that
has driven me from my place, but I will take care of your
future. We will go together."
Sebastien burst into tears.
M. Eabourdin closeted himself with M. Baudoyer in the
late la Billardiere's room, and Phellion assisted him to ex-
plain the difficulties of the position to the new head of the
division. With each new file of papers displayed by Eabour-
din, with the opening of every pasteboard case, Baudoyer's
little eyes grew large as saucers.
"Good-day, monsieur," concluded Eabourdin, with ironical
gravity.
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 375
Sebastien meantime made up a packet of papers belonging
to the chief clerk, and took them away in a cab. Eabourdin
crossed the great courtyard to wait on the Minister. All the
clerks in the building were at the windows. Eabourdin
waited for a few minutes, but the Minister made no sign.
Then, accompanied by Phellion and Sebastien, he went out.
Phellion bravely went as far as the Eue Duphot with the
fallen official, by way of expressing his admiration and
respect; then he returned to his desk, quite satisfied with
himself. He had paid funeral honors to a great unappreci-
ated talent for administration.
Bixiou (as Phellion comes in). "Victrix causa diis
placuit, sed victa Catoni."
Phellion. "Yes, monsieur."
PoiRET. "What does that mean ?"
Fleury. "It means that the clericals rejoice, and that
M. Eabourdin goes out with the esteem of all men of
honor."
DuTOCQ {nettled). "You talked very differently yester-
day."
Fleuet, "Say another word to me, and you shall feel my
fist in your face. You sneaked M. Eabourdin's work, that
is certain!" (Dutocq goes out.) "Now, go and complain
to your M. des Lupeaulx, you spy !"
Bixiou {grinning and grimacing like a monJcey). "I am
curious to see how the division will get on. M. Eabourdin
was such a remarkable man, that he must have had some-
thing in view when he made that list. The department is
losing an uncommonly clever head" {rubbing his hands).
Laurent. "M. Fleury is wanted in the secretary's office."
Omnes. "Sacked !"
Fleury {from the door). "It is all one to me; I have got
a berth as a responsible editor. I can lounge about all day,
or find something amusing to do in the newspaper office."
Bixiou. "Dutocq has had poor old Desroys dismissed
already; he was accused of wanting to cut off people's
heads "
376 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Thuillier. "Les tetes des roisf (Desroys.)
Bixiou. "Accept my congratulations. That is neat."
Enter Colleville {exultant). "Gentlemen, I am your
chief clerk !"
Thuillier {embracing him). "Oh, my friend, if I were
chief myself, I should not be so pleased !"
Bixiou. "His wife did that stroke of business, but it is
not a master-stroke."
PoiRET. "I should like to know the meaning of all this."
Bixiou. "You want to know? — There it is. The Cham-
ber is, and always will be, the ante-chamber of the Adminis-
tration, the Court is the boudoir, the ordinary way is the
cellar, the bed is made now more than ever in the little by-
ways thereof."
PoiRET. "M. Bixiou, explain yourself, I beg."
Bixiou. "I will give you a paraphrase of my opinion. If
you mean to be anything at last, you must be everything at
first. Obviously, administrative reforms must be made; for,
upon my word and honor, if the employes rob the Govern-
ment of the time they ought to give to it, the Government
robs them in return to make matters even. We do little be-
cause we get next to nothing; there are far too many of us
for the work to be done, and La Vertueuse Rob our din saw all
that ! That great man among the scribes foresaw the in-
evitable result, gentlemen, the Vorking' (as simpletons are
pleased to call it) of our admirable Liberal institutions. The
Chamber will soon want to meddle with the Administration,
and officials will want to be legislators. The Government
will try to administer the laws, and the Administration will
try to govern the country. Laws, accordingly, will be trans-
formed into rules and regulations, and regulations will be
treated as laws. God made this epoch for those that can enjoy
a joke. I am looking on in admiration at the spectacle set
forth for us by Louis XVIII. , the greatest wag of modern
times {general amazement). And if France, gentlemen, the
best administered country in Europe, is in such a way, think
what a state the others must be in. Poor countries ! I won-
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 377
der how they get on at all without the two Chambers, the
Liberty of the Press, the Eeport, the Memorial, and the
Circular, and a whole army of clerks ! — Think, now, how do
they contrive to have an army or a navy? How can they
exist when there is no one to weigh the pros and eons of every
breath they draw and every mouthful that they eat? — Can
that sort of thing be called a government or a country?
These funny fellows that travel about have stood me out
that foreigners pretend to have a policy of their own, and
that they enjoy a certain influence ; but, there — I pity them !
They know nothing of 'the spread of enlightenment' ; they
cannot 'set ideas in circulation' ; they have no free and in-
dependent tribunes; they are sunk in barbarism. There is no
nation like the French for intelligence ! Do you grasp that,
M. Poiret? {Poiret looJcs as if he had received a sudden
shock.) Can you understand how a country can do without
heads of divisions, directors-general, and dispense with a
great staff of officials that is, and has been, the pride of
France and of the Emperor Napoleon, who had his very
sufficient reasons for creating places to fill? But, there —
since these countries have the impudence to exist; since the
War Office at Vienna employs scarcely a hundred clerks all
told (whereas with us, little as they expected it before the
Eevolution, salaries and pensions now eat up one-third of the
revenue), I will sum up by suggesting that as the Academic
des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres has very little to do, it
might as well offer a prize for the solution of the following
problem: 'Which is the better constituted — the State that
does a great deal with a few officials, or the State that does
little and keeps plenty of officials to do it ?' "
Poiret. "Is that your last word ?"
Bixiou. "J a, mein Herr! — Out, monsieur! — Si, signor!
— Da! I spare you the other languages."
Poiret {raising his hands to heaven). "Good Lord!
and they tell me that you are clever !"
Bixiou. "Then did you not understand after all?"
Phellion. "Anyhow, there is plenty of sense in that
last remark -"
378 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
BixiOD "It is like the budget, as complicated as it seems
to be simple; and thus I set it for you, like an illumination
lamp upon the edge of that break-neck precipice, that hole,
that abyss, volcano, or what not, which the Constitutionnel
calls 'the political horizon.' "
PoiEET. "I would rather have an explanation that I can
understand."
Bixiou. "Long live Eabourdin ! — that is my opinion.
Are you satisfied ?"
CoLLEviLLE (gravely). "There is only one thing to be
said against M. Eabourdin."
PoiRET. "What is it ?"
CoLLEViLLE. "He was not a chief clerk; he was a states-
man."
PHELLiOiSr (planting himself in front of Bixiou). "M6-
sieur, if you appreciated M. Eabourdin so well, what made you
draw that disgus — that inf — that shocking caricature?"
Bixiou. "How about that wager? Do you forget that
I was playing the devil's game, and that your office owes me
a dinner at the Roclier de Cancale?"
PoiKET (much ruffled). "It seems to be written that I
am to leave this place without comprehending a single idea in
anything that M. Bixiou says."
Bixiou. "It is your own fault. Ask these gentlemen !
Gentlemen, did you understand the gist of my observations?
Were they just? Were they luminous?"
Omnes. "Yes, alas!"
MiXARD. "Here is proof of it: I have just sent in my
resignation. Good-da}^, gentlemen; I am going into busi-
ness "
Bixiou. "Have you invented a mechanical corset or a
feeding-bottle, a fire-pump or pattens, a stove that gives
heat without fuel, or cooks a cutlet with three sheets of
paper ?"
MiXARD (going). "I shall keep my secret to m3'self."
Bixiou. "Ah, well, young Poiret, junior, these gentle-
men all understand me, you see !"
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 379
PoiRET {mortified). "M. Bixiou, will you do me the
honor to descend to my level just for once ''
Bixiou {winking at the others). "By all means. Be-
fore you go, you may perhaps be glad to know what you
are "
PoiRET {quickly). "An honest man, sir."
Bixiou {shrugging his shoulders). "To define, explain,
explore, and analyze the employe. Do you know how?"
PoiRET. "I think so."
Bixiou {twisting one of Poiret's buttons). "I doubt it."
PoiRET. "An employe is a man paid to work for the Gov-
ernment."
Bixiou. "Obviously. Then a soldier is an employe ?"
PoiRET {perplexed). "Why, no."
Bixiou. "At any rate, he is paid by the Government to
go on guard and to be passed in review. You will tell me that
he is too anxious to leave his post, that he is not long enough
at his post, that he works too hard, and touches metal too
seldom (the barrel of his gun always excepted)."
PoiRET {opening wide eyes). "Well, then, sir, an employe,
more strictly speaking, is a man who must draw his salary
if he is to live; he is not free to leave his post, and he can
do nothing but copy and dispatch documents."
Bixiou. "Ah, now we are arriving at a solution ! So
the government office is the employe's shell? You cannot
have the one without the other. Now, what are we to say
about the tide-waiter? {Poiret tries to stamp in vexation,
and escapes; but Bixiou, having pulled off one button, holds
him by another.) "Bah ! in the bureaucratic world he proba-
bly is a neuter. The customs-house official is a semi-em-
ploye; he is on the frontier just as he is on the borderland
between the civil service and the army; he is not exactly a
soldier, and not precisely an employe either. But look here,
daddy, where are we going?" {twists the button). "Where
does the employe end? It is an important question. Is a
prefect an employe?"
PoiRET {nervously). "He is a functionary."
380 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
Bixiou. "Oh ! you are coming to a contradiction in terms !
So a functionary is not an employe !"
PoiRET (looks round exhausted). "M. Godard looks as
though he had something to say."
Godard. "The employe represents the order, the function-
ary the genus."
Bixiou. "Clever SM&-ordinate ! I should not have
thought you capable of so ingenious a distinction."
PoiRET. "Where are we going?"
Bixiou. "There, daddy, let us not trip ourselves up with
words. Listen, and we shall come to an understanding in
the end. Look here, we will establish an axiom, which I
bequeath to the office — The functionary begins where the em-
ploye ends, and the functionary leaves off where the states-
man begins. There are very few statesmen, however, among
prefects. So the prefect would seem to be a kind of neuter
among superior orders of being; he is half-way between the
statesman and the employe, much as the tide-waiter is not
exactly a soldier or a civilian, but something of both. Let us
continue to unravel these lofty questions." (Poiret grows
red in the face.) "Can we not state the matter in a theorem
worthy of la Rochefoucauld? When salaries reach the limit
line of twenty thousand francs, the employe ceases. Hence
we may logically deduce the first corollary — The statesman
reveals himself in the sphere of high salaries. Likewise
this second and no less important corollary — It is possible
for a director-general to be a statesman. Perhaps deputies
mean something of this kind when they think within them-
selves that 'it is a fine thing to be a director-general.'
Still, in the interests of the French language and the Aca-
demy "
Poiret {completely fascinated hy Bixiou s fixity of gaze).
"The French language ! — the Academy ! "
Bixiou {twisting off a second button, and seizing upon
the one above it). "Yes, in the interests of our noble lan-
guage, your attention must be called to the fact that if a
qhief clerk, strictly speaking, may still be an employe, a head
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 381
of the division is of necessity a bureaucrat. These gentle-
men"— {turning to the clerks, and holding up Poiret's third
button for their inspection) — "these gentlemen will ap-
preciate all the delicacy of that subtle shade of distinction.
— And so, Papa Poiret, the employe ends absolutely at the
head of a division. So here is the question settled once for
all — there is no more doubt about it ; the employe, vrho might
seem to be indefinable, is defined."
PoiRET. "Beyond a doubt, as it seems to me."
Bixiou. "And yet, be so far my friend as to solve me this
problem: A judge is permanently appointed, consequently,
according to your subtle distinction, he cannot be a function-
ary ; and as his salary and the amount of work do not corre-
spond, ought he to be included among employes?"
PoiRET (gazing at the ceiling). "Monsieur, I cannot fol-
low you now "
Bixiou (nipping off a fourth button). "I wanted to show
you, monsieur, in the first place, that nothing is simple; but
more particularly — and what I am about to remark is meant
for the benefit of philosophists (if you will permit me to
twist a saying attributed to Louis XVIII.) — I wish to point
out that, side by side with the need of a definition, lies the
peril of getting mixed."
PoiRET (wiping Ms forehead). "I beg your pardon, mon-
sieur, I feel queasy" (tries to button his overcoat). "Oh!
you have cut off all my buttons !"
Bixiou. "Well, now do you understand?"
PoiRET (vea^ecZ). "Yes, sir. Yes. I understand that you
meant to play me a very nasty trick by cutting off my
buttons while I was not looking."
Bixiou (solemnly). "Old man, you err. I was trying to
engrave upon your mind as lively an image of the Govern-
ment as is possible" (all eyes are turned on Bixiou. Poiret,
in his amazement, loolcs round at the others with vague un-
easiness). "That is how I kept my word. I took the
parabolic method known to savages. (Now listen!) While
the Ministers are at the Chambers, starting discussions just
382 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
about as profitable and conclusive as ours, the Administration
is cutting off the taxpayers' buttons."
Omnes. "Bravo, Bixiou !"
PoiRET {as he begins to comprehend). "I do not grudge
my buttons now."
Bixiou. "And I shall do as Minard does. I do not care
to sign receipts for such trifling sums any longer; I deprive
the department of my co-operation" (goes out amid general
laughter) .
Meanwhile another and more instructive scene was taking
place in the Minister's reception-room ; more instructive, be it
said, because it may give some idea of the way in which great
ideas come to nothing in lofty regions, and how the in-
habitants thereof find consolation in misfortune. At this
particular moment des Lupeaulx was introducing M. Bau-
doyer, the new director. Two or three Ministerialist deputies
were present besides M. Clergeot, to whom His Excellency
gave assurance of an honorable retiring pension. After
various commonplace remarks, the event of the day came up
in conversation.
A Deputy. "So Rabourdin has gone for good."
Des Lupeaulx. "He has sent in his resignation."
Clergeot. "He wanted to reform the service, they said."
The Minister {looking at the deputies). "Perhaps the
salaries are not proportionate to the services required."
De la Briere. "According to M. Eabourdin, a hundred
men, with salaries of twelve thousand francs apiece, will do
the same work better and more expeditiously than a thou-
sand at twelve hundred francs."
Clergeot. "Perhaps he is right."
The Minister. "There is no help for it ! The machine
is made that way; the whole thing would have to be taken'
to pieces and reconstructed ; and who would have the courage
to do that in front of the tribune and under the fire of stupid
declamation from the Opposition or terrific articles in the
press? Still, some day or other there will be a disastrous
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 383
hitch somewhere between the Government and the Adminis-
tration."
The Deputy. "What will happen?"
The Minister. "Some Minister will see a good thing to
be done, and will be unable to do it. You will have created
interminable delays between legislation and carrying the law
into effect. You may make it impossible to steal a five-franc
piece, but you cannot prevent collusion to gain private ends.
Some things will never be done until clandestine stipulations
have been made; and it is very difficult to detect such things.
And, then, every man on the staff, from the chief down to the
lowest clerk, will soon have his own opinion on this matter and
that; they will no longer be hands directed by a brain, they
will not carry out the intentions of the Government. The
Opposition is gradually giving them a right to speak and vote
against the Government, and to condemn it."
Baudoyer {in a low voice, hut not so low as to he in-
audihle). "His Excellency is sublime !"
Des Lupeaulx. "Bureaucracy certainly has its bad side;
it is slow and insolent, I think ; it hampers the action of the
department overmuch ; it snuffs out many a project ; it stops
progress ; but, still, the French administration is wonderfully
useful "
Baudoyer. "Certainly."
Des Lupeaulx. " if only as a support to the trade in
stationery and stamps. And if, like many excellent housewives,
the civil service is apt to be a little bit fussy, she can give an
account of her expenditure at any moment. Where is the
clever man in business that would not be only too glad to drop
five per cent on his turnover if some insurance agent would
undertake to guarantee him against 'leakage.' "
The Deputy (a manufacturer) . "Manufacturers on both
sides of the Atlantic would be delighted to make a bargain
with the imp known as 'leakage' on such terms as those."
Des Lupeaulx. "Well, statistics may be the weakness of
the modern statesman ; he is apt to take figures for calcula-
tion, but we must use figures to make calculations ; therefore,
384 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
let us calculate. If a society is based on money and self-
interest, it takes its stand on figures, and society has been
thus based since the Charter was dra^vn up; so I think, at
least. And, then, there is nothing like a column of figures
for carrying conviction to the 'intelligent masses.' Every-
thing, in fact, so say our statesmen of the Left, can be re-
solved into figures. So to figures let us betake ourselves"
(the Minister takes one of the deputies aside and begins to
talk in a low voice.) "Here, in France, there are about forty
thousand men in the employ of the Government; not count-
ing road-menders, crossing-sweepers, and cigarette-makers.
Fifteen hundred francs is the average amount of a salary.
Multiply fifteen hundred francs by forty thousand, and you
get sixty millions. — And before we go any farther, a publicist
might call the attention of China, Austria, Eussia (where
civil servants rob the Government), and divers American
republics to the fact that for this sum France obtains the
fussiest, most fidget}', interfering, inquisitive, meddlesome,
pains-taking, categorical set of scribblers and hoarders of
wastepaper, the veriest old wife among all known administra-
tions. Not one farthing can be paid or received in France
but a written order must be made out, checked off by a
counterfoil, produced again and again at every stage of the
business, and duly receipted at the end. And afterwards
the demand and the receipt must be filed, entered, posted, and
checked by a set of men in spectacles. The official under-
strapper takes fright at the least sign of an informality, for
he lives by such minutice. "Well, plenty of countries would
be satisfied with that ; but Napoleon went further. He, great
organizer as he was, re-established supreme magistrates in
one court, a unique court in the world. These functionaries
spent their days in checking off all the bills, pay-sheets, muster-
rolls, deposit certificates, receipts, and statements of expendi-
ture, and all the files and bundles of wastepaper which the
staff first covered with writing. Those austere judges pos-
sessed a talent for minutice, a genius for investigation, and a
lynx-eyed perspicacity in book-keeping, which reached such an
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 385.
extreme, that they went through every column of additions
in their quest of frauds. They were sublime martyrs of
arithmetic; they would send back a statement of accounts
to a superintendent of army stores because they had detected
an error of two farthings made two years previously. So the
French administration is the most incorruptible service that
ever accumulated wastepaper on the surface of the globe;
theft, as His Excellency observed just now, it all but im-
possible in France, and malversation a figment of the imag-
ination.
"Well, where is the objection? France draws an annual
revenue of twelve hundred millions, and she spends it; that
is all. Twelve hundred millions come into her cash-box, and
twelve hundred millions go out. She actually handles two
milliards four hundred millions, and only pays two and a
half per cent to guarantee herself against leakage. Our
political kitchen account only amounts to sixty millions; the
gendarmerie, the law-courts, the prisons, and detectives cost
us more and do nothing in return. And we find employment
for a class of men who are fit for nothing else, you may be
very sure. The waste, if waste there is, could not be better
regulated; the Chambers are art and part in it; the public
money is squandered in strictly legal fashion. The real
leakage consists in ordering public works that are not needed,
or not immediately needed ; in altering soldiers' uniforms ;
in ordering men-of-war without ascertaining whether timber
is dear or no at the time; in unnecessary preparations for
M^ar; in paying the debts of a state without demanding
repayment or security, and so forth, and so forth."
Baudoyer. "But the employe has nothing to do with
leakage in high quarters. Mismanagement of national
affairs concerns the statesman at the helm."
The Minister (his conversation being concluded).
"There is truth in what des Lupeaulx was saying just now;
but" {turning to Baudoyer) "you must bear in mind that no
one is looking at the matter from a statesman's point of view.
It does not follow that because such and such a piece of ex-
386 THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
penditure was unwise or even useless that it was a case of
maladministration. In any ease, it sets money circulating;
and in France, of all countries, stagnation in trade is fatal,
because the profoundly illogical habit of hoarding coin is
so prevalent in the provinces, and so much gold is kept out of
circulation as it is "
The Deputy (who has been listening to des Lupeaulx).
"But it seems to me that if Your Excellency is right, and
if our witty friend here" {taking des Lupeaulx hy the arm),
"if our friend is not wrong, what are we to think?"
Des Lupeaulx {after exchanging a glance with the Min-
ister). "Something must be done, no doubt."
De la Briere {diffidently). "Then M. Eabourdin is
right?"
The Minister. "I am going to see Eabourdin."
Des Lupeaulx. "The poor man was so misguided as to
constitute himself supreme judge of the administration
and the staff; he wants to have no more than three depart-
ments."
The Minister {interrupting). "Why, the man is mad!"
The Deputy. "How is he going to represent the different
parties in the Chamber?"
Baudoyer {with an air that is meant to he hnowing).
"Perhaps, at the same time, M. Eabourdin is changing the
Constitution which we owe to the King-Legislator."
The Minister {growing thoughtful, takes de la Briere
hy the arm and steps aside). "I should like to look at Ea-
bourdin's scheme ; and since you know about it "
De la BriJire {in the cahinet). "He has burned it all.
You allowed him to be dishonored; he has resigned. You
must not suppose, my lord, that he entertained the preposter-
ous idea, attributed to him by des Lupeaulx, of making any
change in the admirable centralization of authority."
The Minister {to himself). "I have made a mistake."
{A moment's pause). "Bah ! there will never be any scarcity
of schemes of reform "
De la BriI:re. "We have ideas in plenty; we lack the
men that can carry them out."
THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS 387
Just then des LupeauLx, insinuating advocate of abuses,
entered the cabinet.
"1 am going down to my constituents. Your Excellency."
"Wait !" returned His Excellency, and turning from his
private secretary, he drew des Lupeaulx to a window. "Give
up that arrondissement to me, my dear fellow; you shall
have the title of Count, and I will pay your debts. . . .
And — and if I am still in office after next election, I will find
a way of putting you in with a batch to be made a peer of
France."
"You are a man of honor; I accept."
And so it came to pass that Clement Chardin des Lupeaulx,
whose father was ennobled by Louis XV., and bore quarterly;
of the first, argent, a wolf sahle, ravissant, carrying a lamb,
gules; of the second, purpur, three hucMes argent, two and
one; of the third, harry of six, gules and argent; of the
fourth, gules, a caduceus winged and wreathed with serpents,
vert; with four griffins' claws for supporters; and en lupus
IN HISTORIA for a motto, managed to surmount his half-
burlesque escutcheon with a Count's coronet.
Towards the end of December 1830, business brought Ea-
bourdin back to his old office. The whole department had
been shaken by changes from top to bottom ; and the revolu-
tion affected the messengers more than anybody else — they
are never very fond of new faces. Knowing all the people in
the place, Eabourdin had come early in the morning, and so
chanced to overhear a conversation between Laurent's
nephews, for Antoine had been pensioned.
"Well, how is your chief?"
"Don't speak of him; I can make nothing of him. He
rings to ask whether I have seen his pocket-handkerchief or
his snuff-box. He does not keep people waiting, but has them
shown in at once ; he has not the least dignity, in fact. I my-
self am obliged to say, 'Why, sir, the Count, your predecessor,
in the interests of authority, used to whittle his armchair with
a penknife to make people believe that he worked.' In short,
he makes a regular muddle of it; the place does not know
388 V THE GOVERNMENT CLERKS
itself, to my thinking; he is a very poor creature. How is
yours ?"
"Mine? Oh, I have trained him at last; he knows where
his paper and envelopes are kept, and where the firewood is,
and all his things. My other used to swear ; this one is good-
tempered. But he is not the big style of thing; he has no
order at his buttonhole. I like a chief to have an order;
if he hasn't, they may take him for one of us, and that is so
mortifying. He takes home office stationery, and asked me if
I could go to his house to wait at evening parties."
"Ah ! what a Government, my dear fellow !"
'TTes, a set of swindlers."
"I wish they may not nibble at our poor salaries."
"I am afraid they will. The Chambers keep a sharp look-
out on you. They haggle over the firewood."
"Oh well, if that is the style of them, it will not last
long."
"We are in for it ! Somebody is listening."
"Oh ! it is M. Eabourdin that used to be. . . . Ah !
sir, I knew you by your way of coming in. . . . If you
want anything here, there is nobody that will know the
respect that is owing to you; there is nobody of your time
left now but us. M. Colleville and M. Baudoj^er did not
wear out the leather on their chairs after you went. Lord !
six months afterwards they got appointments as receivers of
taxes at Paris."
Paris, July 1836.
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