A Harlot High and Low

  ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘don’t think it’s for your thirty thousand francs’ income that I’m like that, it’s because now… I love you, my big Frédéric…’

  ‘Och, goot Lort! vhy dry me so.… I vould hef been sc heppy zese tree monts…’

  ‘Is it in three per cents or in five, my lambkin?’ said Esther playing with Nucingen’s hair and arranging it fancifully.

  ‘In tree… I hed a lot of zem.’

  So that morning the baron had brought her registration in the Great Book of the Public Debt; he had come to lunch with his dear little girl, and to receive his orders for tomorrow, the famous Saturday, the great day!

  ‘Dere, my liddle vife, my only vife,’ said the banker joyously, his face shining with happiness, ‘dot vill bay your householt gosts to ze ent off your tays…’

  Esther took the paper without the least emotion, she folded it and put it in her dressing-table drawer.

  ‘So now you’re happy, you monster of iniquity,’ she said patting Nucingen’s cheek, ‘to see me accept something from you at last. I can no longer tell you home truths, for now I share the proceeds of what you call your work… That isn’t a present, my child, it’s an act of restitution… Come, don’t put on your Stock Exchange face. You know I love you.’

  ‘My peautivul Esdher, my enchel of lof,’ said the banker, ‘ton’t pliss zbeak to me like dot,… look,… it iss oll de zame to me if oll de vorlt tink me a tief, so long ess I em an honest man in your eyes… I lof you olvays more und more.’

  ‘That is what I intend,’ said Esther. ‘So I won’t ever again say anything to upset you, my little elephant ducky, for you’ve become as innocent as a babe… Heavens, you great scroun-drel, you never had any innocence before, the bit you were born with needed bringing to the surface; but it was buried so deep it didn’t appear till you were past sixty-six… and needed the long arm of love to hook it out. The phenomenon may be observed in the very old… And that’s why I’ve come to love you, you are young now, really young… Nobody else but me will have known that Frédéric… I alone!… for you were a banker at fifteen… At school, you must have lent bills to our friends and got two back…’ (She jumped on to his knee as she saw him laugh.) ‘Well, you shall do as you please! Lord! go hold men to ransom… I’ll come and help you. Men aren’t worth the trouble of loving, Napoleon killed them like flies. Let the French nation pay taxes to the Treasury or to you, what difference does it make!… One doesn’t make love with the Budget, and, goodness me – yes, I’ve thought about it, you’re right – shear my sheep, it’s in the Gospel according to Béranger… Kiss your Esdher… Now, tell me, you’ll give poor little Val-Noble all the furniture in the apartment in the rue Taitbout! And then, tomorrow, you’ll offer her fifty thousand francs,… that will settle things for you, kitten. You killed Falleix, there’s a hue and cry after you… To be generous like that will seem Babylonian,… and all the women will talk about you. Oh!… you’ll be the only great one, the only true nobleman in Paris, and the world is such that Falleix will be forgotten. So, after all, it will be money laid out to some purpose!…’

  ‘You are right, my enchel, you know de vorlt,’ he replied, ‘you shell be my atficer.’

  ‘You see,’ she continued, ‘how I think about my man’s business, his standing in the world, his honour… Off with you, go and find me fifty thousand francs…’

  She wanted to get rid of Monsieur Nucingen so that she could send for a broker and sell her registration that very evening at the Stock Exchange.

  ‘Zo zoon, vhy?…’ he asked.

  ‘Why, yes, pet, they must be offered in a little satin box wrapped round a fan. You will say to her: “There, Madame, a fan which, I trust, will be to your liking…” They think you’re only a Turcaret, they’ll see you’re a Beaujon!’

  ‘Jarming! jarming!’ exclaimed the baron, ‘I shall pe vitty now!… Yo, I shall rebead your chokes…’

  Just as poor Esther was sitting down, worn out with the effort she had made to play her part, Europe entered.

  ‘Madame,’ she said, ‘here is a messenger sent from the Quai Malaquais by Célestin, Monsieur Lucien’s manservant… ’

  ‘Show him in!… but no, I’ll see him in the other room.’

  ‘He has a letter for Madame from Célestin.’

  Esther hurried into the outer room, she glanced at the messenger, who seemed to her the purest embodiment of a street porter.

  ‘Tell him to come down!…’ said Esther in a feeble voice, letting herself fall into a chair after reading the letter. ‘Lucien means to kill himself,…’ she added in a whisper to Europe. ‘In any case take the letter up to him.’

  Carlos Herrera, who was still dressed like a commercial traveller, came down at once, and his glance immediately fell on the messenger when he saw a stranger in the outer room. ‘You’d told me there was nobody,’ he whispered to Europe. And with an excess of caution he went straight into the drawing-room after examining the messenger. Dodgedeath didn’t know that for some time past the famous head of the crime squad who’d arrested him at the Maison Vauquer had a rival already designated to succeed him. This rival was the messenger.

  ‘They’re right,’ said the sham messenger to Contenson who was waiting for him in the street. ‘The man you described to me is in the house; but he isn’t a Spaniard, and I’d stake anything there’s our sort of game under that cassock.’

  ‘He’s no more a priest than he is a Spaniard,’ said Contenson.

  ‘I’m certain of it,’ said the agent of the Brigade de Sûreté.

  ‘Oh! if only we could be sure!…’ said Contenson.

  Lucien had in fact been away for two days, and advantage had been taken of his absence to lay this trap; but he came back that evening, and Esther’s fears were calmed.

  A farewell

  NEXT morning, as the courtesan emerged from her bath and returned to bed her friend arrived.

  ‘I have your two pearls!’ said the Val-Noble.

  ‘Let’s see?’ said Esther sitting up and plunging her pretty elbow into a lace-trimmed pillow.

  Madame du Val-Noble handed to her friend what looked like two large blackcurrants. The baron had given Esther two of those Italian greyhounds of a special breed, made fashionable by a living poet; she was proud of these and had called them Romeo and Juliet, names which occurred in their pedigree. It would be impossible to praise too highly the charm, the whiteness, the grace of these animals, bred for indoors and in their ways exhibiting something of an English discreetness. Esther called Romeo, Romeo approached on his small, flexible paws, which were yet so firm and muscular they might have been thought rods of steel, and gazed up at his mistress. Esther made as if to throw him one of the two pearls, to attract his attention.

  ‘His name destined him to die thus!’ said Esther and threw the pearl which Romeo crunched between his teeth.

  The dog uttered no cry, he spun round and fell in the rigidity of death. This happened while Esther was still speaking her brief elegy.

  ‘Heavens!’ cried Madame du Val-Noble.

  ‘You have a carriage, take the late Romeo away,’ said Esther, ‘his death would cause trouble here, let’s say I gave him to you, you lost him, put out an advertisement. Hurry, and you shall have your fifty thousand francs this evening.’

  This was said so calmly, and with so perfect a harlot’s air of insensibility, that Madame du Val-Noble exclaimed: ‘You are queen of us all!’

  ‘Come early, and look your best…’

  At five o’ clock that evening, Esther dressed herself like a bride. She put on her lace gown over a skirt of white satin, with a waistband also white and white satin slippers, a shawl of English point about her beautiful shoulders. In her hair she put white camellias, so that she appeared garlanded like a young virgin. Upon her bosom was displayed a necklace of pearls worth thirty thousand francs given her by Nucingen. Although she had finished dressing by six o’clock, she shut her door to everyone, even Nucingen. Europe knew that Luci
en was to be introduced into the bedroom. Lucien arrived at seven sharp, Europe found a way to show him in to Madame without anybody noticing his arrival.

  At the sight of Esther, Lucien wondered: ‘Why not go live with her at Rubempré, far from the social whirl, without ever returning to Paris!… I paid five years’ deposit on this life, and the dear creature is not of a nature to deny it!… And where shall I ever find such a masterpiece?’

  ‘My dear friend, you of whom I made my God,’ said Esther bending one knee on a cushion before Lucien, ‘bless me…’

  Lucien made to raise Esther and kiss her saying: ‘What pleasantry is this, my beloved?’ And he attempted to seize Esther by the waist; but she drew away with a movement which depicted both horror and respect.

  ‘I am no longer worthy of you, Lucien,’ she said letting her tears flow, ‘I beg you, bless me, and swear to endow two beds at some hospital… Prayers in church will only cause God to forgive me to myself… I loved you too much, my dear. Tell me, at least, that I made you happy, and that you will think of me sometimes… yes?’

  Lucien saw that Esther was speaking in solemn good faith, and he remained thoughtful.

  ‘You’re going to kill yourself!’ he said at length in a voice whose sound betokened deep meditation.

  ‘No, my love, but today, you see, will be the end of the pure, chaste, loving woman you had… And I’m rather afraid that the shock of her death may kill me.’

  ‘Don’t be in a hurry, my poor child!’ said Lucien, ‘during the past two days I’ve made a great effort, and I’ve managed to see Clotilde.’

  ‘Still Clotilde!…’ said Esther in a tone of concentrated fury.

  ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘we wrote to each other… On Tuesday morning, she’s leaving for Italy, but I shall have an interview with her on the way, at Fontainebleau…’

  ‘Oh, that! what sort of wives do you want, you men?… planks!…’ cried poor Esther. ‘Look now, suppose I had seven or eight millions, wouldn’t you marry me?’

  ‘Child! What I was going to say is that, if everything’s over for me, I don’t want any other wife but you…’

  Esther lowered her head so as not to show her sudden pallor and the tears she wiped away.

  ‘You love me?…’ she said gazing at Lucien with the deepest grief. ‘Well, that shall be my blessing. Don’t compromise yourself, go out by the hidden door, and act as though you’d gone straight from the hall to the drawing-room. Kiss me on the forehead,’ she said. She held Lucien, pressed him to her heart furiously and said to him: ‘Go!… Go… or I live.’

  When the doomed woman appeared in the drawing-room, there was a cry of admiration. Esther’s eyes gave off a light of infinity in which the soul lost itself as it saw them. The blue-black of her splendid hair showed off the camellias. In short, every effect the sublime whore aimed at had been achieved. She had no rivals. She was the very embodiment of the unbridled luxury with which she was surrounded and adorned. Her wit, too, was at its most sparkling. She ruled the orgy with the cold, tranquil power deployed by Habeneck at the Conservatoire in those concerts at which the leading musicians of Europe attain the peak of execution in their interpretations of Mozart and Beethoven. She nevertheless observed fearfully that Nucingen ate little, didn’t drink and was acting as master of the house. At midnight, nobody was in his right mind. They broke glasses so that they shouldn’t be used again. Two curtains of Pekin print were torn. Bixiou was drunk for the only time in his life. As nobody could stand up, and the women lay more or less asleep on the divans, the guests were unable to carry out the joke they had originally planned of leading Esther and Nucingen to the bedroom, standing in two lines, holding candelabra and singing the Buona Sera from The Barber of Seville. Nucingen alone gave his hand to Esther; though drunk, Bixiou, who noticed them, still found strength to say, like Rivarol at the last marriage of the Duc de Richelieu: ‘The Prefect of Police should be told… A foul trick is about to be played…’ Intended as light chaff, this would turn out to be prophecy.

  Nucingen’s lament

  MONSIEUR DE NUCINGEN didn’t appear at home till near mid-day on Monday; but at one o’clock, his stockbroker told him that Mademoiselle Esther van Gobseck had sold her thirty thousand francs’ inscription on Friday already and had just been paid.

  ‘What is more, Monsieur le Baron,’ he said, ‘just as I was talking about the transfer, Maître Derville’s head clerk came to see me; and, when he realized what Mademoiselle Esther’s real name was, he told me she’d come into a fortune of seven millions.’

  ‘Pah!’

  ‘Yes, it seems that she’s the sole heir of the old discount-broker Gobseck… Derville is going to check the facts. If the mother of your mistress was “la belle Hollandaise”, she inherits…’

  ‘It voss so,’ said the banker, ‘she dolt me her live-story… I vill write a vort to Terville!…’

  The baron sat down at his desk, wrote a little note to Derville, and sent it by one of his servants. Then, after going to the Stock Exchange, he returned promptly at three o’ clock to Esther’s. ‘Madame has forbidden anyone to wake her under any pretext whatever, she has gone to bed, she is asleep…’

  ‘Ah, ze toffle!’ exclaimed the baron. ‘Eurobe, it von’t tis-blease her to learn dot she is now ferry rich… She inerids zefen millions. Olt Copsegg iss teat and leafes zese zefen millions, and your misdress iss his zole heir, her mudder peing Copsegg’s own nieze, pezites he levd a vill. I vould nefer hef zuspected zet a millionaire, like him, vould leafe Esdher benniless…’

  ‘Why, then, that’s the end of your reign, you old mountebank!’ said Europe looking at the baron with an effrontery worthy of one of Molière’s maidservants. ‘Ho! you old Alsatian crow!… She likes you about as much as one likes the plague!… Good God! millions!… but she can marry her lover! Oh! won’t she be pleased!’

  And Prudence Servien left the baron struck dumb while she went off to be the first to announce the stroke of luck to her mistress. The old man, intoxicated with pleasures beyond his belief, and believing in happiness, had had cold water thrown on his love just as he was coming to a point of something like incandescence.

  ‘She tezeifed me…’ he exclaimed with tears in his eyes. ‘She tezeifed me!… O Esdher,… O my live… How stubit I hef peen! Do such vlowers efer crow for olt men?… I can puy eferyding, except yout’!… O heafens!… vot shall I do? vot vill begome off me? She iss right, ziss gruel Eurobe. Vhen she iss rich, Esdher esgabes me. Musd I heng myzelf? Vot iss live widout ze tifine vlame off bleasure vhich I hef dastet? Mein Gott…’

  And the Shark tore off the wig with which he had been covering his grey hair for the past three months. A piercing cry uttered by Europe made Nucingen tremble in his innermost parts. The poor banker got up, tottered on drunkard’s legs after draining his cup of Disenchantment, for no liquor is so potent as misfortune. From the doorway of her bedroom, he saw Esther rigid upon her bed, her face blue with poison, dead!… He went to the bed, and fell on his knees.

  ‘You are right, she dolt you!… I gaused her deat’…’ Paccard, Asia, all the household came running. It was a spectacle, a wonder, not a desolation. At first nobody quite knew how to behave. The banker became a banker again, he was suspicious, he committed the imprudence of asking where were the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs of annual income. Paccard, Asia and Europe thereupon looked at each other in so singular a manner that Monsieur de Nucingen left at once, believing that theft and murder had taken place. Seeing under her mistress’s pillow a folded package whose softness told her that it contained bank notes, Europe set herself to laying the deceased out properly, as she put it.

  ‘Go and tell Monsieur, Asia!… Dying before she knew she had seven million! Gobseck was the late Madame’s uncle!…’ she exclaimed.

  Paccard noticed what Europe was up to. As soon as Asia had turned her back, Europe unsealed the packet, on which the poor harlot had written: To be handed to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempré! Seven hundred and fift
y thousand-franc notes shone before the eyes of Prudence Servien, who cried: ‘You could be happy and honest on that to the end of your days!…’

  Paccard said nothing, his thief’s nature was stronger than his attachment to Dodgedeath.

  ‘Durut is dead,’ he finally replied taking the sum, ‘my shoulder is still unmarked, let’s go away together and share this so as not to have all our eggs in one basket, and then we’ll be married.’

  ‘But where shall we hide?’ said Prudence.

  ‘Here in Paris,’ answered Paccard.

  Prudence and Paccard went down at once with the speed of two honest people who had turned thief.

  ‘My child,’ said Dodgedeath to the Malay as soon as she had given him the gist of what had happened, ‘find the letter Esther must have left while I write out a will in due form, then you can take the letter and the draft will to Girard; but he’ll have to hurry, the will must be slipped under Esther’s pillow before they put seals on here.’

  And he drafted the following last will and testament:

  Never having loved anyone in the world but Monsieur Lucien Chardon de Rubempré, and being resolved to put an end to my days sooner than slip back into vice and into the infamous life from which his charity raised me, I give and bequeath to the said Lucien Chardon de Rubempré all that I possess at the time of my demise, with the condition that he establish a mass to be said in perpetuity at Saint Roch for the repose of her who gave him everything, even her last thought.

  ESTHER GOBSECK.

  ‘That is just her style,’ said Dodgedeath to himself.

  By seven o’clock the will, copied and sealed, was put by Asia under Esther’s bolster.

  ‘Jacques,’ she said hurrying precipitately upstairs again, ‘just as I left the bedroom, the Law arrived…’

  ‘You mean, a justice of the peace…’

  ‘No, laddie; there was a justice all right, but there are armed constables with him. The district attorney and the examining magistrate are there, the doors are guarded.’