while amusing him, convinced themselves that this 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 Nucingen, she smiled as a woman who has long known all her husband’s weaknesses. After dinner, however, when they all adjourned to the garden, the more intimate of the party gathered round the banker, eager to clear up this extraordinary case when they heard Bianchon pronounce that Nucingen must be in love.
“Do you know, Baron,” said de Marsay, “that you have grown very thin? You are suspected of violating the laws of financial Nature.”
“Ach, nefer!” said the Baron.
“Yes, yes,” replied de Marsay. “They dare to say that you are in love.”
“Dat is true,” replied Nucingen piteously; “I am in lof for somebody I do not know.”
“You, in love, you? You are a coxcomb!” said the Chevalier d’Espard.
“In lof, at my aje! I know dat is too ridiculous. 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 Nucingen 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—a face just 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 heiduque behind dat carriage and a maid-shervant——”
“Lucien looks as if he knew her,” exclaimed Rastignac, seeing Esther’s lover smile.
“Who doesn’t know the woman who would go out at midnight 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 you 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; other looked at Nucingen with an expression that plainly said, “Such a man to have come to this!”—And then they all returned to the drawing-room, talking over the event.
For it was indeed an event calculated to produce the greatest sensation. Madame de Nucingen went into fits of laughter 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.
“What has become of Monsieur de Rubempre?” said the Baroness.
“He is faithful to his motto: Quid me continebit?” said Rastignac.
“Which means, ‘Who can detain me?’ or ‘I am unconquerable,’ as you choose,” added de Marsay.
“Just as Monsieur le Baron was speaking of his unknown lady, Lucien smiled in a way that makes me fancy he may know her,” said Horace Bianchon, not thinking how dangerous 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 of this ambitious youth warned him to inform Carlos Herrera forthwith of the effect resulting from the smile wrung from him by the Baron’s description of Esther. The banker’s passion 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 Nucingen at that time lived, to the Rue 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 cannot help him. When our lynx has given up all hope of finding his ewe-lamb, I will undertake to sell her for all
