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

/> Every one rose.

"Why, who are you?" said Lucien.

"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 town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a dandy in the Champs-Elysees 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, Corentin, 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 Peyrade's and his own want of foresight.

"But they do not know me yet," said he to himself. "This crew is capable of anything; I must find out if they are killing 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 instructions to his most devoted and cleverest underlings.

As he went along the Rue Saint-Honore to reach the Rue Saint-Roch from the Place Vendome, 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 involuntary groan. Corentin 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! 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 disguise 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----"

"Where 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 seemed decent, I asked my way to get back to the Boulevards, so as to find the Rue de la Paix. And at last, after walking----What o'clock is it, monsieur?"

"Half-past eleven," said Corentin.

"I escaped at nightfall," said Lydie. "I have been walking for five hours."

"Well, come along; you can rest now; you will find your good Katt."

"Oh, monsieur, there is no rest for me! I only want to rest in the grave, and I will go and wait for death in a convent if I am worthy to be admitted----"

"Poor little girl!--But you struggled?"

"Oh yes! Oh! if you could only imagine the abject creatures 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 that 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!" 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 became 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 misfortune, 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 your 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 creature."

And Corentin wrote down the addresses of these two famous physicians.

At this 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 followed his friend's hand. Lydie's condition can only be compared 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 Peyrade'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 sound of wheels.

Contenson, who came with his mulatto disguise removed, stood 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 carry 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."

Lydie, seeing them carry away her father, looked quite stupefied.

"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 cupidity, and that was for his daughter!--Let him be an example 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 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-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."

"I have no need of those gentlemen's assistance in the exercise of my duty," said the medical officer.

"Well, well," thought Corentin. "Let us have no clashing, monsieur," he said. "In a few 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 professional brethren in an examination which cannot fail to interest you, and your opinion will be valuable in case of an inquiry."

"Your relations died of apoplexy," said the official. "There are all