"and he will give me something for a treat to-day.—We bear no malice, Monsieur le Baron," added Saint-Esteve with a horrible courtesy.
Louchard took the bills out of the Baron's hands, and remained alone with him in the drawing-room, whither, half an hour later, the cashier came, followed by Contenson. Esther then reappeared in a bewitching, though improvised, costume. When the money had been counted by Louchard, the Baron wished to examine the bills; but Esther snatched them with a cat-like grab, and carried them away to her desk.
"What will you give the rabble?" said Contenson to Nucingen.
"You hafe not shown much consideration," said the Baron.
"And what about my leg?" cried Contenson.
"Louchard, you shall gife ein hundert francs to Contenson out of the change of the tousand-franc note."
"De lady is a beauty," said the cashier to the Baron, as they left the Rue Taitbout, "but she is costing you ver' dear, Monsieur le Baron."
"Keep my segret," said the Baron, who had said the same to Contenson and Louchard.
Louchard went away with Contenson; but on the boulevard Asie, who was looking out for him, stopped Louchard.
"The bailiff and the creditor are there in a cab," said she. "They are thirsty, and there is money going."
While Louchard counted out the cash, Contenson studied the customers. He recognized Carlos by his eyes, and traced the form of his forehead under the wig. The wig he shrewdly regarded as suspicious; he took the number of the cab while seeming quite indifferent to what was going on; Asie and Europe puzzled him beyond measure. He thought that the Baron was the victim of excessively clever sharpers, all the more so because Louchard, when securing his services, had been singularly close. And besides, the twist of Europe's foot had not struck his shin only.
"A trick like that is learned at Saint-Lazare," he had reflected as he got up.
Carlos dismissed the bailiff, paying him liberally, and as he did so, said to the driver of the cab, "To the Perron, Palais Royal."
"The rascal!" thought Contenson as he heard the order. "There is something up!" Carlos drove to the Palais Royal at a pace which precluded all fear of pursuit. He made his way in his own fashion through the arcades, took another cab on the Place du Chateau d'Eau, and bid the man go "to the Passage de l'Opera, the end of the Rue Pinon."
A quarter of a hour later he was in the Rue Taitbout. On seeing him, Esther said:
"Here are the fatal papers."
Carlos took the bills, examined them, and then burned them in the kitchen fire.
"We have done the trick," he said, showing her three hundred and ten thousand francs in a roll, which he took out of the pocket of his coat. "This, and the hundred thousand francs squeezed out by Asie, set us free to act."
"Oh God, oh God!" cried poor Esther.
"But, you idiot," said the ferocious swindler, "you have only to be ostensibly Nucingen's mistress, and you can always see Lucien; he is Nucingen's friend; I do not forbid your being madly in love with him."
Esther saw a glimmer of light in her darkened life; she breathed once more.
"Europe, my girl," said Carlos, leading the creature into a corner of the boudoir where no one could overhear a word, "Europe, I am pleased with you."
Europe held up her head, and looked at this man with an expression which so completely changed her faded features, that Asie, witnessing the interview, as she watched her from the door, wondered whether the interest by which Carlos held Europe might not perhaps be even stronger than that by which she herself was bound to him.
"That is not all, my child. Four hundred thousand francs are a mere nothing to me. Paccard will give you an account for some plate, amounting to thirty thousand francs, on which money has been paid on account; but our goldsmith, Biddin, has paid money for us. Our furniture, seized by him, will no doubt be advertised to-morrow. Go and see Biddin; he lives in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec; he will give you Mont-de-Piete tickets for ten thousand francs. You understand, Esther ordered the plate; she had not paid for it, and she put it up the spout. She will be in danger of a little summons for swindling. So we must pay the goldsmith the thirty thousand francs, and pay up ten thousand francs to the Mont-de-Piete to get the plate back. Forty-three thousand francs in all, including the costs. The silver is very much alloyed; the Baron will give her a new service, and we shall bone a few thousand francs out of that. You owe—what? two years' account with the dressmaker?"
"Put it at six thousand francs," replied Europe.
"Well, if Madame Auguste wants to be paid and keep our custom, tell her to make out a bill for thirty thousand francs over four years. Make a similar arrangement with the milliner. The jeweler, Samuel Frisch the Jew, in the Rue Saint-Avoie, will lend you some pawn-tickets; we must owe him twenty-five thousand francs, and we must want six thousand for jewels pledged at the Mont-de-Piete. We will return the trinkets to the jeweler, half the stones will be imitation, but the Baron will not examine them. In short, you will make him fork out another hundred and fifty thousand francs to add to our nest-eggs within a week."
"Madame might give me a little help," said Europe. "Tell her so, for she sits there mumchance, and obliges me to find more inventions than three authors for one piece."
"If Esther turns prudish, just let me know," said Carlos. "Nucingen must give her a carriage and horses; she will have to choose and buy everything herself. Go to the horse-dealer and the coachmaker who are employed by the job-master where Paccard finds work. We shall get handsome horses, very dear, which will go lame within a month, and we shall have to change them."
"We might get six thousand francs out of a perfumer's bill," said Europe.
"Oh!" said he, shaking his head, "we must go gently. Nucingen has only got his arm into the press; we must have his head. Besides all this, I must get five hundred thousand francs."
"You can get them," replied Europe. "Madame will soften towards the fat fool for about six hundred thousand, and insist on four hundred thousand more to love him truly!"
"Listen to me, my child," said Carlos. "The day when I get the last hundred thousand francs, there shall be twenty thousand for you."
"What good will they do me?" said Europe, letting her arms drop like a woman to whom life seems impossible.
"You could go back to Valenciennes, buy a good business, and set up as an honest woman if you chose; there are many tastes in human nature. Paccard thinks of settling sometimes; he has no encumbrances on his hands, and not much on his conscience; you might suit each other," replied Carlos.
"Go back to Valenciennes! What are you thinking of, monsieur?" cried Europe in alarm.
Europe, who was born at Valenciennes, the child of very poor parents, had been sent at seven years of age to a spinning factory, where the demands of modern industry had impaired her physical strength, just as vice had untimely depraved her. Corrupted at the age of twelve, and a mother at thirteen, she found herself bound to the most degraded of human creatures. On the occasion of a murder case, she had been as a witness before the Court. Haunted at sixteen by a remnant of rectitude, and the terror inspired by the law, her evidence led to the prisoner being sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.
The convict, one of those men who have
