“My children,” said Carlos, “your dream is over.
— You, little one, will never see Lucien again; or if you should, you must have known him only for a few days, five years ago.”
“Death has come upon me then,” said she, without shedding a tear.
“Well, you have been ill these five years,” said Herrera. “Imagine yourself to be consumptive, and die without boring us with your lamentations.
But you will see, you can still live, and very comfortably too.
— Leave us, Lucien — go and gather sonnets!” said he, pointing to a field a little way off.
Lucien cast a look of humble entreaty at Esther, one of the looks peculiar to such men — weak and greedy, with tender hearts and cowardly spirits.
Esther answered with a bow of her head, which said:
“I will hear the executioner, that I may know how to lay my head under the axe, and I shall have courage enough to die decently.”
The gesture was so gracious, but so full of dreadful meaning, that the poet wept; Esther flew to him, clasped him in her arms, drank away the tears, and said,
“Be quite easy!” one of those speeches that are spoken with the manner, the look, the tones of delirium.
Carlos then explained to her quite clearly, without attenuation, often with horrible plainness of speech, the critical position in which Lucien found himself, his connection with the Hotel Grandlieu, his splendid prospects if he should succeed; and finally, how necessary it was that Esther should sacrifice herself to secure him this triumphant future.
“What must I do?” cried she, with the eagerness of a fanatic.
“Obey me blindly,” said Carlos. “And what have you to complain of?
It rests with you to achieve a happy lot.
You may be what Tullia is, what your old friends Florine, Mariette, and la Val–Noble are — the mistress of a rich man whom you need not love.
When once our business is settled, your lover is rich enough to make you happy.”
“Happy!” said she, raising her eyes to heaven.
“You have lived in Paradise for four years,” said he. “Can you not live on such memories?”
“I will obey you,” said she, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “For the rest, do not worry yourself.
You have said it; my love is a mortal disease.”
“That is not enough,” said Carlos; “you must preserve your looks.
At a little past two-and-twenty you are in the prime of your beauty, thanks to your past happiness.
And, above all, be the ‘Torpille’ again. Be roguish, extravagant, cunning, merciless to the millionaire I put in your power.
Listen to me!
That man is a robber on a grand scale; he has been ruthless to many persons; he has grown fat on the fortunes of the widow and the orphan; you will avenge them!
“Asie is coming to fetch you in a hackney coach, and you will be in Paris this evening.
If you allow any one to suspect your connection with Lucien, you may as well blow his brains out at once.
You will be asked where you have been for so long. You must say that you have been traveling with a desperately jealous Englishman. — You used to have wit enough to humbug people. Find such wit again now.”
Have you ever seen a gorgeous kite, the giant butterfly of childhood, twinkling with gilding, and soaring to the sky?
The children forget the string that holds it, some passer-by cuts it, the gaudy toy turns head over heels, as the boys say, and falls with terrific rapidity.
Such was Esther as she listened to Carlos.
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life, by Honore de Balzac
What Love Costs an Old Man
For a whole week Nucingen went almost every day to the shop in the Rue Nueve–Saint-Marc to bargain for the woman he was in love with.
Here, sometimes under the name of Saint–Esteve, sometimes under that of her tool, Madame Nourrisson, Asie sat enthroned among beautiful clothes in that hideous condition when they have ceased to be dresses and are not yet rags.
The setting was in harmony with the appearance assumed by the woman, for these shops are among the most hideous characteristics of Paris.
You find there the garments tossed aside by the skinny hand of Death; you hear, as it were, the gasping of consumption under a shawl, or you detect the agonies of beggery under a gown spangled with gold.
The horrible struggle between luxury and starvation is written on filmy laces; you may picture the countenance of a queen under a plumed turban placed in an attitude that recalls and almost reproduces the absent features.
It is all hideous amid prettiness!
Juvenal’s lash, in the hands of the appraiser, scatters the shabby muffs, the ragged furs of courtesans at bay.
There is a dunghill of flowers, among which here and there we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching — first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she used to sell the covering — the gown without the woman, or the woman without the gown!
Here Asie was in her element, like the warder among convicts, like a vulture red-beaked amid corpses; more terrible than the savage horrors that made the passer-by shudder in astonishment sometimes, at seeing one of their youngest and sweetest reminiscences hung up in a dirty shop window, behind which a Saint–Esteve sits and grins.
From vexation to vexation, a thousand francs at a time, the banker had gone so far as to offer sixty thousand francs to Madame de Saint–Esteve, who still refused to help him, with a grimace that would have outdone any monkey.
After a disturbed night, after confessing to himself that Esther completely upset his ideas, after realizing some unexpected turns of fortune on the Bourse, he came to her one day, intending to give the hundred thousand francs on which Asie insisted, but he was determined to have plenty of information for the money.
“Well, have you made up your mind, old higgler?” said Asie, clapping him on the shoulder.
The most dishonoring familiarity is the first tax these women levy on the frantic passions or griefs that are confided to them; they never rise to the level of their clients; they make them seem squat beside them on their mudheap.
Asie, it will be seen, obeyed her master admirably.
“Need must!” said Nucingen.
“And you have the best of the bargain,” said Asie. “Women have been sold much dearer than this one to you — relatively speaking.