Still, Corentin had time to say:
“That was all I wanted to know.
— Quai Malaquais,” he shouted to the driver with diabolical mockery in his tone and expression.
“I am done!” said Jacques Collin to himself. “They have got me. I must get ahead of them by sheer pace, and, above all, find out what they want of us.”
Corentin had seen the Abbe Carlos Herrera five or six times, and the man’s eyes were unforgettable.
Corentin had suspected him at once from the cut of his shoulders, then by his puffy face, and the trick of three inches of added height gained by a heel inside the shoe.
“Ah! old fellow, they have drawn you,” said Corentin, finding no one in the room but Peyrade and Contenson.
“Who?” cried Peyrade, with metallic hardness; “I will spend my last days in putting him on a gridiron and turning him on it.”
“It is the Abbe Carlos Herrera, the Corentin of Spain, as I suppose.
This explains everything.
The Spaniard is a demon of the first water, who has tried to make a fortune for that little young man by coining money out of a pretty baggage’s bolster. — It is your lookout if you think you can measure your skill with a man who seems to me the very devil to deal with.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Contenson, “he fingered the three hundred thousand francs the day when Esther was arrested; he was in the cab.
I remember those eyes, that brow, and those marks of the smallpox.”
“Oh! what a fortune my Lydie might have had!” cried Peyrade.
“You may still play the nabob,” said Corentin. “To keep an eye on Esther you must keep up her intimacy with Val–Noble.
She was really Lucien’s mistress.”
“They have got more than five hundred thousand francs out of Nucingen already,” said Contenson.
“And they want as much again,” Corentin went on. “The Rubempre estate is to cost a million.
— Daddy,” added he, slapping Peyrade on the shoulder, “you may get more than a hundred thousand francs to settle on Lydie.”
“Don’t tell me that, Corentin.
If your scheme should fail, I cannot tell what I might not do ——”
“You will have it by to-morrow perhaps!
The Abbe, my dear fellow, is most astute; we shall have to kiss his spurs; he is a very superior devil. But I have him sure enough. He is not a fool, and he will knock under.
Try to be a gaby as well as a nabob, and fear nothing.”
In the evening of this day, when the opposing forces had met face to face on level ground, Lucien spent the evening at the Hotel Grandlieu.
The party was a large one.
In the face of all the assembly, the Duchess kept Lucien at her side for some time, and was most kind to him.
“You are going away for a little while?” said she.
“Yes, Madame la Duchesse.
My sister, in her anxiety to promote my marriage, has made great sacrifices, and I have been enabled to repurchase the lands of the Rubempres, to reconstitute the whole estate.
But I have found in my Paris lawyer a very clever man, who has managed to save me from the extortionate terms that the holders would have asked if they had known the name of the purchaser.”
“Is there a chateau?” asked Clotilde, with too broad a smile.
“There is something which might be called a chateau; but the wiser plan would be to use the building materials in the construction of a modern residence.”
Clotilde’s eyes blazed with happiness above her smile of satisfaction.
“You must play a rubber with my father this evening,” said she. “In a fortnight I hope you will be asked to dinner.”
“Well, my dear sir,” said the Duc de Grandlieu, “I am told that you have bought the estate of Rubempre. I congratulate you.
It is an answer to those who say you are in debt.
We bigwigs, like France or England, are allowed to have a public debt; but men of no fortune, beginners, you see, may not assume that privilege ——”
“Indeed, Monsieur le Duc, I still owe five hundred thousand francs on my land.”
“Well, well, you must marry a wife who can bring you the money; but you will have some difficulty in finding a match with such a fortune in our Faubourg, where daughters do not get large dowries.”
“Their name is enough,” said Lucien.
“We are only three wisk players — Maufrigneuse, d’Espard, and I— will you make a fourth?” said the Duke, pointing to the card-table.
Clotilde came to the table to watch her father’s game.
“She expects me to believe that she means it for me,” said the Duke, patting his daughter’s hands, and looking round at Lucien, who remained quite grave.
Lucien, Monsieur d’Espard’s partner, lost twenty louis.
“My dear mother,” said Clotilde to the Duchess, “he was so judicious as to lose.”
At eleven o’clock, after a few affectionate words with Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, Lucien went home and to bed, thinking of the complete triumph he was to enjoy a month hence; for he had not a doubt of being accepted as Clotilde’s lover, and married before Lent in 1830.
On the morrow, when Lucien was smoking his cigarettes after breakfast, sitting with Carlos, who had become much depressed, M. de Saint–Esteve was announced — what a touch of irony — who begged to see either the Abbe Carlos Herrera or Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre.
“Was he told downstairs that I had left Paris?” cried the Abbe.
“Yes, sir,” replied the groom.