Not a wish had ever disturbed this pure child’s pure life.
Slight and handsome like her mother, gifted with an exquisite voice, and a delicate face framed in fine fair hair, she looked like one of those angels, mystical rather than real, which some of the early painters grouped in the background of the Holy Family.
The glance of her blue eyes seemed to bring a beam from the sky on those she favored with a look.
Her dress, quite simple, with no exaggeration of fashion, had a delightful middle-class modesty.
Picture to yourself an old Satan as the father of an angel, and purified in her divine presence, and you will have an idea of Peyrade and his daughter.
If anybody had soiled this jewel, her father would have invented, to swallow him alive, one of those dreadful plots in which, under the Restoration, the unhappy wretches were trapped who were designate to die on the scaffold.
A thousand crowns were ample maintenance for Lydie and Katt, whom she called nurse.
As Peyrade turned into the Rue des Moineaux, he saw Contenson; he outstripped him, went upstairs before him, heard the man’s steps on the stairs, and admitted him before the woman had put her nose out of the kitchen door.
A bell rung by the opening of a glass door, on the third story where the lapidary lived warned the residents on that and the fourth floors when a visitor was coming to them.
It need hardly be said that, after midnight, Peyrade muffled this bell.
“What is up in such a hurry, Philosopher?”
Philosopher was the nickname bestowed on Contenson by Peyrade, and well merited by the Epictetus among police agents.
The name of Contenson, alas! hid one of the most ancient names of feudal Normandy.
“Well, there is something like ten thousand francs to be netted.”
“What is it?
Political?”
“No, a piece of idiocy.
Baron de Nucingen, you know, the old certified swindler, is neighing after a woman he saw in the Bois de Vincennes, and she has got to be found, or he will die of love. — They had a consultation of doctors yesterday, by what his man tells me. — I have already eased him of a thousand francs under pretence of seeking the fair one.”
And Contenson related Nucingen’s meeting with Esther, adding that the Baron had now some further information.
“All right,” said Peyrade, “we will find his Dulcinea; tell the Baron to come to-night in a carriage to the Champs–Elysees — the corner of the Avenue de Gabriel and the Allee de Marigny.”
Peyrade saw Contenson out, and knocked at his daughter’s rooms, as he always knocked to be let in.
He was full of glee; chance had just offered the means, at last, of getting the place he longed for.
He flung himself into a deep armchair, after kissing Lydie on the forehead, and said:
“Play me something.”
Lydie played him a composition for the piano by Beethoven.
“That is very well played, my pet,” said he, taking Lydie on his knees. “Do you know that we are one-and-twenty years old?
We must get married soon, for our old daddy is more than seventy ——”
“I am quite happy here,” said she.
“You love no one but your ugly old father?” asked Peyrade.
“Why, whom should I love?”
“I am dining at home, my darling; go and tell Katt.
I am thinking of settling, of getting an appointment, and finding a husband worthy of you; some good young man, very clever, whom you may some day be proud of ——”
“I have never seen but one yet that I should have liked for a husband ——”
“You have seen one then?”
“Yes, in the Tuileries,” replied Lydie. “He walked past me; he was giving his arm to the Comtesse de Serizy.”
“And his name is?”
“Lucien de Rubempre.
— I was sitting with Katt under a lime-tree, thinking of nothing.
There were two ladies sitting by me, and one said to the other,
‘There are Madame de Serizy and that handsome Lucien de Rubempre.’— I looked at the couple that the two ladies were watching.
‘Oh, my dear!’ said the other, ‘some women are very lucky!
That woman is allowed to do everything she pleases just because she was a de Ronquerolles, and her husband is in power.’—‘But, my dear,’ said the other lady, ‘Lucien costs her very dear.’— What did she mean, papa?”
“Just nonsense, such as people of fashion will talk,” replied Peyrade, with an air of perfect candor. “Perhaps they were alluding to political matters.”
“Well, in short, you asked me a question, so I answer you.
If you want me to marry, find me a husband just like that young man.”
“Silly child!” replied her father. “The fact that a man is handsome is not always a sign of goodness.
Young men gifted with an attractive appearance meet with no obstacles at the beginning of life, so they make no use of any talent; they are corrupted by the advances made to them by society, and they have to pay interest later for their attractiveness!
— What I should like for you is what the middle classes, the rich, and the fools leave unholpen and unprotected ——”
“What, father?”
“An unrecognized man of talent. But, there, child; I have it in my power to hunt through every garret in Paris, and carry out your programme by offering for your affection a man as handsome as the young scamp you speak of; but a man of promise, with a future before him destined to glory and fortune.