And as stingy! — As miserly as Gobseck and Gigonnet rolled into one.
He takes me out to dinner, but he does not pay the cab that brings me home if I happen not to have ordered my carriage to fetch me.”
“Well,” said Esther, “but what does he pay you for your services?”
“Oh, my dear, positively nothing.
Five hundred francs a month and not a penny more, and the hire of a carriage.
But what is it?
A machine such as they hire out for a third-rate wedding to carry an epicier to the Mairie, to Church, and to the Cadran bleu. — Oh, he nettles me with his respect.
“If I try hysterics and feel ill, he is never vexed; he only says:
‘I wish my lady to have her own way, for there is nothing more detestable — no gentleman — than to say to a nice woman, “You are a cotton bale, a bundle of merchandise.”— Ha, hah!
Are you a member of the Temperance Society and anti-slavery?’
And my horror sits pale, and cold, and hard while he gives me to understand that he has as much respect for me as he might have for a Negro, and that it has nothing to do with his feelings, but with his opinions as an abolitionist.”
“A man cannot be a worse wretch,” said Esther. “But I will smash up that outlandish Chinee.”
“Smash him up?” replied Madame du Val–Noble. “Not if he does not love me.
You, yourself, would you like to ask him for two sous?
He would listen to you solemnly, and tell you, with British precision that would make a slap in the face seem genial, that he pays dear enough for the trifle that love can be to his poor life;” and, as before, Madame du Val–Noble mimicked Peyrade’s bad French.
“To think that in our line of life we are thrown in the way of such men!” exclaimed Esther.
“Oh, my dear, you have been uncommonly lucky.
Take good care of your Nucingen.”
“But your nabob must have got some idea in his head.”
“That is what Adele says.”
“Look here, my dear; that man, you may depend, has laid a bet that he will make a woman hate him and pack him off in a certain time.”
“Or else he wants to do business with Nucingen, and took me up knowing that you and I were friends; that is what Adele thinks,” answered Madame du Val–Noble. “That is why I introduced him to you this evening.
Oh, if only I could be sure what he is at, what tricks I could play with you and Nucingen!”
“And you don’t get angry?” asked Esther; “you don’t speak your mind now and then?”
“Try it — you are sharp and smooth.
— Well, in spite of your sweetness, he would kill you with his icy smiles.
‘I am anti-slavery,’ he would say, ‘and you are free.’— If you said the funniest things, he would only look at you and say, ‘Very good!’ and you would see that he regards you merely as a part of the show.”
“And if you turned furious?”
“The same thing; it would still be a show.
You might cut him open under the left breast without hurting him in the least; his internals are of tinned-iron, I am sure.
I told him so.
He replied, ‘I am quite satisfied with that physical constitution.’
“And always polite.
My dear, he wears gloves on his soul . . . “I shall endure this martyrdom for a few days longer to satisfy my curiosity.
But for that, I should have made Philippe slap my lord’s cheek — and he has not his match as a swordsman. There is nothing else left for it ——”
“I was just going to say so,” cried Esther. “But you must ascertain first that Philippe is a boxer; for these old English fellows, my dear, have a depth of malignity ——”
“This one has no match on earth.
No, if you could but see him asking my commands, to know at what hour he may come — to take me by surprise, of course — and pouring out respectful speeches like a so-called gentleman, you would say,
‘Why, he adores her!’ and there is not a woman in the world who would not say the same.”
“And they envy us, my dear!” exclaimed Esther.
“Ah, well!” sighed Madame du Val–Noble; “in the course of our lives we learn more or less how little men value us. But, my dear, I have never been so cruelly, so deeply, so utterly scorned by brutality as I am by this great skinful of port wine.
“When he is tipsy he goes away —‘not to be unpleasant,’ as he tells Adele, and not to be ‘under two powers at once,’ wine and woman.
He takes advantage of my carriage; he uses it more than I do. — Oh! if only we could see him under the table to-night! But he can drink ten bottles and only be fuddled; when his eyes are full, he still sees clearly.”
“Like people whose windows are dirty outside,” said Esther, “but who can see from inside what is going on in the street. — I know that property in man. Du Tillet has it in the highest degree.”
“Try to get du Tillet, and if he and Nucingen between them could only catch him in some of their plots, I should at least be revenged.
They would bring him to beggary!
“Oh! my dear, to have fallen into the hands of a hypocritical Protestant after that poor Falleix, who was so amusing, so good-natured, so full of chaff!
How we used to laugh!
They say all stockbrokers are stupid. Well, he, for one, never lacked wit but once ——”
“When he left you without a sou? That is what made you acquainted with the unpleasant side of pleasure.”