The two women were at once shown up to the Countess, whom they found reclining on a couch in a miniature chalet, surrounded by a garden fragrant with the rarest flowers.
“That is well,” said Asie, looking about her. “No one can overhear us.”
“Oh! my dear, I am half dead!
Tell me, Diane, what have you done?” cried the Duchess, starting up like a fawn, and, seizing the Duchess by the shoulders, she melted into tears.
“Come, come, Leontine; there are occasions when women like us must not cry, but act,” said the Duchess, forcing the Countess to sit down on the sofa by her side.
Asie studied the Countess’ face with the scrutiny peculiar to those old hands, which pierces to the soul of a woman as certainly as a surgeon’s instrument probes a wound! — the sorrow that engraves ineradicable lines on the heart and on the features.
She was dressed without the least touch of vanity.
She was now forty-five, and her printed muslin wrapper, tumbled and untidy, showed her bosom without any art or even stays!
Her eyes were set in dark circles, and her mottled cheeks showed the traces of bitter tears. She wore no sash round her waist; the embroidery on her petticoat and shift was all crumpled.
Her hair, knotted up under a lace cap, had not been combed for four-and-twenty hours, and showed as a thin, short plait and ragged little curls.
Leontine had forgotten to put on her false hair.
“You are in love for the first time in your life?” said Asie sententiously.
Leontine then saw the woman and started with horror.
“Who is that, my dear Diane?” she asked of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.
“Whom should I bring with me but a woman who is devoted to Lucien and willing to help us?”
Asie had hit the truth.
Madame de Serizy, who was regarded as one of the most fickle of fashionable women, had had an attachment of ten years’ standing for the Marquis d’Aiglemont.
Since the Marquis’ departure for the colonies, she had gone wild about Lucien, and had won him from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, knowing nothing — like the Paris world generally — of Lucien’s passion for Esther.
In the world of fashion a recognized attachment does more to ruin a woman’s reputation than ten unconfessed liaisons; how much more then two such attachments?
However, as no one thought of Madame de Serizy as a responsible person, the historian cannot undertake to speak for her virtue thus doubly dog’s-eared.
She was fair, of medium height, and well preserved, as a fair woman can be who is well preserved at all; that is to say, she did not look more than thirty, being slender, but not lean, with a white skin and flaxen hair; she had hands, feet, and a shape of aristocratic elegance, and was as witty as all the Ronquerolles, spiteful, therefore, to women, and good-natured to men.
Her large fortune, her husband’s fine position, and that of her brother, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, had protected her from the mortifications with which any other woman would have been overwhelmed.
She had this great merit — that she was honest in her depravity, and confessed her worship of the manners and customs of the Regency.
Now, at forty-two this woman — who had hitherto regarded men as no more than pleasing playthings, to whom, indeed, she had, strange to say, granted much, regarding love as merely a matter of sacrifice to gain the upper hand — this woman, on first seeing Lucien, had been seized with such a passion as the Baron de Nucingen’s for Esther.
She had loved, as Asie had just told her, for the first time in her life.
This postponement of youth is more common with Parisian women than might be supposed, and causes the ruin of some virtuous souls just as they are reaching the haven of forty.
The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was the only person in the secret of the vehement and absorbing passion, of which the joys, from the girlish suspicion of first love to the preposterous follies of fulfilment, had made Leontine half crazy and insatiable.
True love, as we know, is merciless.
The discovery of Esther’s existence had been followed by one of those outbursts of rage which in a woman rise even to the pitch of murder; then came the phase of meanness, to which a sincere affection humbles itself so gladly.
Indeed, for the last month the Countess would have given ten years of her life to have Lucien again for one week.
At last she had even resigned herself to accept Esther as her rival, just when the news of her lover’s arrest had come like the last trump on this paroxysm of devotion.
The Countess had nearly died of it. Her husband had himself nursed her in bed, fearing the betrayal of delirium, and for twenty-four hours she had been living with a knife in her heart.
She said to her husband in her fever:
“Save Lucien, and I will live henceforth for you alone.”
“Indeed, as Madame la Duchesse tells you, it is of no use to make your eyes like boiled gooseberries,” cried the dreadful Asie, shaking the Countess by the arm.
“If you want to save him, there is not a minute to lose.
He is innocent — I swear it by my mother’s bones!”
“Yes, yes, of course he is!” cried the Countess, looking quite kindly at the dreadful old woman.
“But,” Asie went on, “if Monsieur Camusot questions him the wrong way, he can make a guilty man of him with two sentences; so, if it is in your power to get the Conciergerie opened to you, and to say a few words to him, go at once, and give him this paper. — He will be released to-morrow; I will answer for it.
Now, get him out of the scrape, for you got him into it.”
“I?”
“Yes, you!
— You fine ladies never have a son even when you own millions.
When I allowed myself the luxury of keeping boys, they always had their pockets full of gold!
Their amusements amused me.
It is delightful to be mother and mistress in one.
Now, you — you let the men you love die of hunger without asking any questions.
Esther, now, made no speeches; she gave, at the cost of perdition, soul and body, the million your Lucien was required to show, and that is what has brought him to this pass ——”
“Poor girl!
Did she do that!