“Did he give you thirty thousand francs to let him in?”
“No, madame, for we are not worth it, the pair of us.”
And Europe set to screaming “Thief” so determinedly, that the banker made for the door in a fright, and Europe, tripping him up, rolled him down the stairs.
“Old wretch!” cried she, “you would tell tales to my mistress!
Thief! thief! stop thief!”
The enamored Baron, in despair, succeeded in getting unhurt to his carriage, which he had left on the boulevard; but he was now at his wits’ end as to whom to apply to.
“And pray, madame, did you think to get my earnings out of me?” said Europe, coming back like a fury to the lady’s room.
“I know nothing of French customs,” said the Englishwoman.
“But one word from me to-morrow to monsieur, and you, madame, would find yourself in the streets,” retorted Europe insolently.
“Dat dam’ maid!” said the Baron to Georges, who naturally asked his master if all had gone well, “hafe do me out of dirty tousant franc — but it vas my own fault, my own great fault ——”
“And so monsieur’s dress was all wasted.
The deuce is in it, I should advise you, Monsieur le Baron, not to have taken your tonic for nothing ——”
“Georches, I shall be dying of despair. I hafe cold — I hafe ice on mein heart — no more of Esther, my good friend.”
Georges was always the Baron’s friend when matters were serious.
Two days after this scene, which Europe related far more amusingly than it can be written, because she told it with much mimicry, Carlos and Lucien were breakfasting tete-a-tete.
“My dear boy, neither the police nor anybody else must be allowed to poke a nose into our concerns,” said Herrera in a low voice, as he lighted his cigar from Lucien’s. “It would not agree with us.
I have hit on a plan, daring but effectual, to keep our Baron and his agents quiet.
You must go to see Madame de Serizy, and make yourself very agreeable to her.
Tell her, in the course of conversation, that to oblige Rastignac, who has long been sick of Madame de Nucingen, you have consented to play fence for him to conceal a mistress.
Monsieur de Nucingen, desperately in love with this woman Rastignac keeps hidden — that will make her laugh — has taken it into his head to set the police to keep an eye on you — on you, who are innocent of all his tricks, and whose interest with the Grandlieus may be seriously compromised.
Then you must beg the Countess to secure her husband’s support, for he is a Minister of State, to carry you to the Prefecture of Police.
“When you have got there, face to face with the Prefet, make your complaint, but as a man of political consequence, who will sooner or later be one of the motor powers of the huge machine of government.
You will speak of the police as a statesman should, admiring everything, the Prefet included.
The very best machines make oil-stains or splutter.
Do not be angry till the right moment.
You have no sort of grudge against Monsieur le Prefet, but persuade him to keep a sharp lookout on his people, and pity him for having to blow them up.
The quieter and more gentlemanly you are, the more terrible will the Prefet be to his men.
Then we shall be left in peace, and we may send for Esther back, for she must be belling like the does in the forest.”
The Prefet at that time was a retired magistrate.
Retired magistrates make far too young Prefets.
Partisans of the right, riding the high horse on points of law, they are not light-handed in arbitary action such as critical circumstances often require; cases in which the Prefet should be as prompt as a fireman called to a conflagration.
So, face to face with the Vice–President of the Council of State, the Prefet confessed to more faults than the police really has, deplored its abuses, and presently was able to recollect the visit paid to him by the Baron de Nucingen and his inquiries as to Peyrade.
The Prefet, while promising to check the rash zeal of his agents, thanked Lucien for having come straight to him, promised secrecy, and affected to understand the intrigue.
A few fine speeches about personal liberty and the sacredness of home life were bandied between the Prefet and the Minister; Monsieur de Serizy observing in conclusion that though the high interests of the kingdom sometimes necessitated illegal action in secret, crime began when these State measures were applied to private cases.
Next day, just as Peyrade was going to his beloved Cafe David, where he enjoyed watching the bourgeois eat, as an artist watches flowers open, a gendarme in private clothes spoke to him in the street.
“I was going to fetch you,” said he in his ear. “I have orders to take you to the Prefecture.”
Peyrade called a hackney cab, and got in without saying a single word, followed by the gendarme.
The Prefet treated Peyrade as though he were the lowest warder on the hulks, walking to and fro in a side path of the garden of the Prefecture, which at that time was on the Quai des Orfevres.
“It is not without good reason, monsieur, that since 1830 you have been kept out of office. Do not you know to what risk you expose us, not to mention yourself?”
The lecture ended in a thunderstroke.
The Prefet sternly informed poor Peyrade that not only would his yearly allowance be cut off, but that he himself would be narrowly watched.
The old man took the shock with an air of perfect calm.
Nothing can be more rigidly expressionless than a man struck by lightning.
Peyrade had lost all his stake in the game.
He had counted on getting an appointment, and he found himself bereft of everything but the alms bestowed by his friend Corentin.
“I have been the Prefet of Police myself; I think you perfectly right,” said the old man quietly to the functionary who stood before him in his judicial majesty, and who answered with a significant shrug. “But allow me, without any attempt to justify myself, to point out that you do not know me at all,” Peyrade went on, with a keen glance at the Prefet. “Your language is either too severe to a man who has been the head of the police in Holland, or not severe enough for a mere spy.
But, Monsieur le Prefet,” Peyrade added after a pause, while the other kept silence, “bear in mind what I now have the honor to telling you: I have no intention of interfering with your police nor of attempting to justify myself, but you will presently discover that there is some one in this business who is being deceived; at this moment it is your humble servant; by and by you will say,
‘It was I.’”
And he bowed to the chief, who sat passive to conceal his amazement.
Peyrade returned home, his legs and arms feeling broken, and full of cold fury with the Baron.