“No,” said she.
“But to-day, my dear, the woman dies, the pure, chaste, and loving woman who once was yours. — And I am very much afraid that I shall die of grief.”
“Poor child,” said Lucien, “wait! I have worked hard these two days. I have succeeded in seeing Clotilde ——”
“Always Clotilde!” cried Esther, in a tone of concentrated rage.
“Yes,” said he, “we have written to each other. — On Tuesday morning she is to set out for Italy, but I shall meet her on the road for an interview at Fontainebleau.”
“Bless me! what is it that you men want for wives?
Wooden laths?” cried poor Esther. “If I had seven or eight millions, would you not marry me — come now?”
“Child! I was going to say that if all is over for me, I will have no wife but you.”
Esther bent her head to hide her sudden pallor and the tears she wiped away.
“You love me?” said she, looking at Lucien with the deepest melancholy. “Well, that is my sufficient blessing. — Do not compromise yourself. Go away by the side door, and come in to the drawing-room through the ante-room.
Kiss me on the forehead.” She threw her arms round Lucien, clasped him to her heart with frenzy, and said again:
“Go, only go — or I must live.”
When the doomed woman appeared in the drawing-room, there was a cry of admiration.
Esther’s eyes expressed infinitude in which the soul sank as it looked into them.
Her blue-black and beautiful hair set off the camellias.
In short, this exquisite creature achieved all the effects she had intended.
She had no rival.
She looked like the supreme expression of that unbridled luxury which surrounded her in every form.
Then she was brilliantly witty.
She ruled the orgy with the cold, calm power that Habeneck displays when conducting at the Conservatoire, at those concerts where the first musicians in Europe rise to the sublime in interpreting Mozart and Beethoven.
But she observed with terror that Nucingen ate little, drank nothing, and was quite the master of the house.
By midnight everybody was crazy.
The glasses were broken that they might never be used again; two of the Chinese curtains were torn; Bixiou was drunk, for the second time in his life.
No one could keep his feet, the women were asleep on the sofas, and the guests were incapable of carrying out the practical joke they had planned of escorting Esther and Nucingen to the bedroom, standing in two lines with candles in their hands, and singing Buona sera from the Barber of Seville.
Nucingen simply gave Esther his hand. Bixiou, who saw them, though tipsy, was still able to say, like Rivarol, on the occasion of the Duc de Richelieu’s last marriage,
“The police must be warned; there is mischief brewing here.” The jester thought he was jesting; he was a prophet.
Monsieur de Nucingen did not go home till Monday at about noon. But at one o’clock his broker informed him that Mademoiselle Esther van Bogseck had sold the bond bearing thirty thousand francs interest on Friday last, and had just received the money.
“But, Monsieur le Baron, Derville’s head-clerk called on me just as I was settling this transfer; and after seeing Mademoiselle Esther’s real names, he told me she had come into a fortune of seven millions.”
“Pooh!”
“Yes, she is the only heir to the old bill-discounter Gobseck. — Derville will verify the facts.
If your mistress’ mother was the handsome Dutch woman, la Belle Hollandaise, as they called her, she comes in for ——”
“I know dat she is,” cried the banker. “She tolt me all her life. I shall write ein vort to Derville.”
The Baron at down at his desk, wrote a line to Derville, and sent it by one of his servants.
Then, after going to the Bourse, he went back to Esther’s house at about three o’clock.
“Madame forbade our waking her on any pretence whatever. She is in bed — asleep ——”
“Ach der Teufel!” said the Baron. “But, Europe, she shall not be angry to be tolt that she is fery, fery rich. She shall inherit seven millions.
Old Gobseck is deat, and your mis’ess is his sole heir, for her moter vas Gobseck’s own niece; and besides, he shall hafe left a vill.
I could never hafe tought that a millionaire like dat man should hafe left Esther in misery!”
“Ah, ha!
Then your reign is over, old pantaloon!” said Europe, looking at the Baron with an effrontery worthy of one of Moliere’s waiting-maids. “Shooh! you old Alsatian crow!
She loves you as we love the plague!
Heavens above us!
Millions!
— Why, she may marry her lover; won’t she be glad!”
And Prudence Servien left the Baron simply thunder-stricken, to be the first to announce to her mistress this great stroke of luck.
The old man, intoxicated with superhuman enjoyment, and believing himself happy, had just received a cold shower-bath on his passion at the moment when it had risen to the intensest white heat.
“She vas deceiving me!” cried he, with tears in his eyes. “Yes, she vas cheating me. Oh, Esther, my life! Vas a fool hafe I been!
Can such flowers ever bloom for de old men!
I can buy all vat I vill except only yout!
— Ach Gott, ach Gott!