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-complaint contracted in Java. No great fortune – not to excite curiosity.”
“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.
“You, 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, between 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 those 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 undertone:
“You can trust them as you can me; keep no secrets from them; that will flatter them. – Go to your work, my little 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.
“Where did you pick them up?” cried Lucien.
“What 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.
“You 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 Napoleon, 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.
“What I am, I do not know,” said Esther with angelic sweetness; “but I love Lucien, and shall die worshiping him.”
“Come to breakfast,” said the Spaniard sharply. “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 way, 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 hyenas to guard me?”
Lucien bowed his head.
The poor child swallowed down her grief and affected gladness, 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 Marsay, the model adopted by all the youth 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 IX., or the excitement caused by his volume of sonnets called Les Marguerites, of which Dauriat sold out the edition in a week.
“It is posthumous fame,” said he, with a laugh, to Mademoiselle 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 one 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 inexplicable 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 always drove into the courtyard. Thus his passion for Esther and the very existence of the establishment in the Rue Taitbout, being unknown to the world, did him no harm in his connections or undertakings. No 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 regularity under which many mysteries can be hidden; he remained 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
