was, in her mind, no conscious contrasting of her happy isolated past and her foul future life. It was neither interest nor sentiment that moved her, only an indefinable and all powerful feeling that she had been white and was now black, pure and was now impure, noble and was now ignoble. Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her unendurable. And when the Baron's passion had threatened her, she had really thought of throwing herself out of the window. In short, she loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who say they love, who often think they love best, dance, waltz, and flirt with other men, dress for the world, and look for a harvest of concupiscent glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved miracles of true love. She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses love and courtesans—women who, having rolled in mire and impurity, thirst for something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and who practice exclusiveness—the only word for an idea so little known in real life.
Vanished nations, Greece, Rome, and the East, have at all times kept women shut up; the woman who loves should shut herself up. So it may easily be imagined that on quitting the palace of her fancy, where this poem had been enacted, to go to this old man's "little palace," Esther felt heartsick. Urged by an iron hand, she had found herself waist-deep in disgrace before she had time to reflect; but for the past two days she had been reflecting, and felt a mortal chill about her heart.
At the words, "End in the street," she started to her feet and said:
"In the street!—No, in the Seine rather."
"In the Seine? And what about Monsieur Lucien?" said Europe.
This single word brought Esther to her seat again; she remained in her armchair, her eyes fixed on a rosette in the carpet, the fire in her brain drying up her tears.
At four o'clock Nucingen found his angel lost in that sea of meditations and resolutions whereon a woman's spirit floats, and whence she emerges with utterances that are incomprehensible to those who have not sailed it in her convoy.
"Clear your brow, meine Schone," said the Baron, sitting down by her. "You shall hafe no more debts—I shall arrange mit Eugenie, an' in ein mont you shall go 'vay from dese rooms and go to dat little palace.—Vas a pretty hant.—Gife it me dat I shall kiss it." Esther gave him her hand as a dog gives a paw. "Ach, ja! You shall gife de hant, but not de heart, and it is dat heart I lofe!"
The words were spoken with such sincerity of accent, that poor Esther looked at the old man with a compassion in her eyes that almost maddened him. Lovers, like martyrs, feel a brotherhood in their sufferings! Nothing in the world gives such a sense of kindred as community of sorrow.
"Poor man!" said she, "he really loves."
As he heard the words, misunderstanding their meaning, the Baron turned pale, the blood tingled in his veins, he breathed the airs of heaven. At his age a millionaire, for such a sensation, will pay as much gold as a woman can ask.
"I lofe you like vat I lofe my daughter," said he. "An' I feel dere"—and he laid her hand over his heart—"dat I shall not bear to see you anyting but happy."
"If you would only be a father to me, I would love you very much; I would never leave you; and you would see that I am not a bad woman, not grasping or greedy, as I must seem to you now——"
"You hafe done some little follies," said the Baron, "like all dose pretty vomen—dat is all. Say no more about dat. It is our pusiness to make money for you. Be happy! I shall be your fater for some days yet, for I know I must make you accustom' to my old carcase."
"Really!" she exclaimed, springing on to Nucingen's knees, and clinging to him with her arm round his neck.
"Really!" repeated he, trying to force a smile.
She kissed his forehead; she believed in an impossible combination—she might remain untouched and see Lucien.
She was so coaxing to the banker that she was La Torpille once more. She fairly bewitched the old man, who promised to be a father to her for forty days. Those forty days were to be employed in acquiring and arranging the house in the Rue Saint-Georges.
When he was in the street again, as he went home, the Baron said to himself, "I am an old flat."
But though in Esther's presence he was a mere child, away from her he resumed his lynx's skin; just as the gambler (in le Joueur) becomes affectionate to Angelique when he has not a liard.
"A half a million francs I hafe paid, and I hafe not yet seen vat her leg is like.—Dat is too silly! but, happily, nobody shall hafe known it!" said he to himself three weeks after.
And he made great resolutions to come to the point with the woman who had cost him so dear; then, in Esther's presence once more, he spent all the time he could spare her in making up for the roughness of his first words.
"After all," said he, at the end of a month, "I cannot be de fater eternal!"
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