Scenes from a Courtesan's Life - Honoré de Balzac (philippa perry book .txt) 📗

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 terrible; he came forthwith to Esther, in a carriage with the blinds drawn, 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 murder 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.

"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 the 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 between 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 securing 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----"

"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 Duc 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 fine 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 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 enough money 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 eyelashes 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 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 of 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 yesterday 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
ourselves the objects of lavish liberality. For my part, I have
always 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 regarded 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."

At the Bourse the Baron de Nucingen was so gay, so cheerful, 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. Ve shall soon gife dat house-varming," he told du Tillet.

"And how much does it cost you?" asked Francois 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 Rue 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 he saw his mistress 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 Robert d'Arbrissel.

Esther was in a charming toilette. A dress of black corded silk trimmed