wiping her eyes and pricking in the stitches of her embroidery as demurely as an innocent girl, revived in the amorous old man the sensations he had experienced in the Forest of Vincennes; he would have given her the key of his safe. He felt so young, his heart was so overflowing with adoration; he only waited till Asie should be gone to throw himself at the feet of this Raphael's Madonna.
This sudden blossoming of youth in the heart of a stockbroker, of an old man, is one of the social phenomena which must be left to physiology to account for. Crushed under the burden of business, stifled under endless calculations and the incessant anxieties of million-hunting, young emotions revive with their sublime illusions, sprout and flower like a forgotten cause or a forgotten seed, whose effects, whose gorgeous bloom, are the sport of chance, brought out by a late and sudden gleam of sunshine.
The Baron, a clerk by the time he was twelve years old in the ancient house of Aldrigger at Strasbourg, had never set foot in the world of sentiment. So there he stood in front of his idol, hearing in his brain a thousand modes of speech, while none came to his lips, till at length he acted on the brutal promptings of desire that betrayed a man of sixty-six.
"Vill you come to Rue Taitbout?" said he.
"Wherever you please, monsieur," said Esther, rising.
"Verever I please!" he echoed in rapture. "You are ein anchel from de sky, and I lofe you more as if I was a little man, vile I hafe gray hairs——"
"You had better say white, for they are too fine a black to be only gray," said Asie.
"Get out, foul dealer in human flesh! You hafe got your moneys; do not slobber no more on dis flower of lofe!" cried the banker, indemnifying himself by this violent abuse for all the insolence he had submitted to.
"You old rip! I will pay you out for that speech!" said Asie, threatening the banker with a gesture worthy of the Halle, at which the Baron merely shrugged his shoulders. "Between the lip of the pot and that of the guzzler there is often a viper, and you will find me there!" she went on, furious at Nucingen's contempt.
Millionaires, whose money is guarded by the Bank of France, whose mansions are guarded by a squad of footmen, whose person in the streets is safe behind the rampart of a coach with swift English horses, fear no ill; so the Baron looked calmly at Asie, as a man who had just given her a hundred thousand francs.
This dignity had its effect. Asie beat a retreat, growling down the stairs in highly revolutionary language; she spoke of the guillotine!
"What have you said to her?" asked the Madonna a la broderie, "for she is a good soul."
"She hafe solt you, she hafe robbed you——"
"When we are beggared," said she, in a tone to rend the heart of a diplomate, "who has ever any money or consideration for us?"
"Poor leetle ting!" said Nucingen. "Do not stop here ein moment longer."
The Baron offered her his arm; he led her away just as she was, and put her into his carriage with more respect perhaps than he would have shown to the handsome Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.
"You shall hafe a fine carriage, de prettiest carriage in Paris," said Nucingen, as they drove along. "Everyting dat luxury shall sopply shall be for you. Not any qveen shall be more rich dan vat you shall be. You shall be respected like ein Cherman Braut. I shall hafe you to be free.—Do not veep! Listen to me—I lofe you really, truly, mit de purest lofe. Efery tear of yours breaks my heart."
"Can one truly love a woman one has bought?" said the poor girl in the sweetest tones.
"Choseph vas solt by his broders for dat he was so comely. Dat is so in de Biple. An' in de Eastern lants men buy deir wifes."
Section 2
On arriving at the Rue Taitbout, Esther could not return to the scene of her happiness without some pain. She remained sitting on a couch, motionless, drying away her tears one by one, and never hearing a word of the crazy speeches poured out by the banker. He fell at her feet, and she let him kneel without saying a word to him, allowing him to take her hands as he would, and never thinking of the sex of the creature who was rubbing her feet to warm them; for Nucingen found that they were cold.
This scene of scalding tears shed on the Baron's head, and of ice-cold feet that he tried to warm, lasted from midnight till two in the morning.
"Eugenie," cried the Baron at last to Europe, "persvade your mis'ess that she shall go to bet."
"No!" cried Esther, starting to her feet like a scared horse. "Never in this house!"
"Look her, monsieur, I know madame; she is as gentle and kind as a lamb," said Europe to the Baron. "Only you must not rub her the wrong way, you must get at her sideways—she had been so miserable here.—You see how worn the furniture is.—Let her go her own way.
"Furnish some pretty little house for her, very nicely. Perhaps when she sees everything new about her she will feel a stranger there, and think you better looking than you are, and be angelically sweet.—Oh! madame has not her match, and you may boast of having done a very good stroke of business: a good heart, genteel manners, a fine instep—and a skin, a complexion! Ah!——
"And witty enough to make a condemned wretch laugh. And madame can feel an attachment.—And then how she can dress!—Well, if it is costly, still, as they say, you get your money's worth.—Here all the gowns were seized, everything she has is three months old.—But madame is so kind, you see, that I love her, and she is my mistress!—But in all justice—such a woman as she is, in the midst of furniture that has been seized!—And for whom? For a young scamp who has ruined her. Poor little thing, she is not at all herself."
"Esther, Esther; go to bet, my anchel! If it is me vat frighten you, I shall stay here on dis sofa——" cried the Baron, fired by the purest devotion, as he saw that Esther was still weeping.
"Well, then," said Esther, taking the "lynx's" hand, and kissing it with an impulse of gratitude which brought something very like a tear to his eye, "I shall be grateful to you——"
And she fled into her room and locked the door.
"Dere is someting fery strange in all dat," thought Nucingen, excited by his pillules. "Vat shall dey say at home?"
He got up and looked out of the window. "My carriage still is dere. It shall soon be daylight." He walked up and down the room.
"Vat Montame de Nucingen should laugh at me ven she should know how I hafe spent dis night!"
He applied his ear to the bedroom door, thinking himself rather too much of a simpleton.
"Esther!"
No reply.
"Mein Gott! and she is still veeping!" said he to himself, as he stretched himself on the sofa.
About ten minutes after sunrise, the Baron de Nucingen, who was sleeping the uneasy slumbers that are snatched by compulsion in an awkward position on a couch, was aroused with a start by Europe from one of those dreams that visit us in such moments, and of which the swift complications are a phenomenon inexplicable by medical
