LITMIR.BIZ

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de Biple. Eyes like Feuer, an Eastern color——”

      “You were dreaming,” said Lucien, with a smile.

      “Dat is true; I vas shleeping like a pig—a pig mit his shkin full,” he added, “for I vas on my vay home from tinner at mine friend’s——”

      “Was she alone?” said du Tillet, interrupting him.

      “Ja,” said the Baron dolefully; “but she had ein heiduque behind dat carriage and a maid-shervant——”

      “Lucien looks as if he knew her,” exclaimed Rastignac, seeing Esther’s lover smile.

      “Who doesn’t know the woman who would go out at midnight to meet Nucingen?” said Lucien, turning on his heel.

      “Well, she is not a woman who is seen in society, or the Baron would have recognized the man,” said the Chevalier d’Espard.

      “I have nefer seen him,” replied the Baron. “And for forty days now I have had her seeked for by de Police, and dey do not find her.”

      “It is better that she should cost you a few hundred francs than cost you your life,” said Desplein; “and, at your age, a passion without hope is dangerous, you might die of it.”

      “Ja, ja,” replied the Baron, addressing Desplein. “And vat I eat does me no goot, de air I breade feels to choke me. I go to de forest of Fincennes to see de place vat I see her—and dat is all my life. I could not tink of de last loan—I trust to my partners vat haf pity on me. I could pay one million franc to see dat voman—and I should gain by dat, for I do nothing on de Bourse.—Ask du Tillet.”

      “Very true,” replied du Tillet; “he hates business; he is quite unlike himself; it is a sign of death.”

      “A sign of lof,” replied Nucingen; “and for me, dat is all de same ting.”

      The simple candor of the old man, no longer the stock-jobber, who, for the first time in his life, saw that something was more sacred and more precious than gold, really moved these world-hardened men; some exchanged smiles; other looked at Nucingen with an expression that plainly said, “Such a man to have come to this!”—And then they all returned to the drawing-room, talking over the event.

      For it was indeed an event calculated to produce the greatest sensation. Madame de Nucingen went into fits of laughter when Lucien betrayed her husband’s secret; but the Baron, when he heard his wife’s sarcasms, took her by the arm and led her into the recess of a window.

      “Motame,” said he in an undertone, “have I ever laughed at all at your passions, that you should laugh at mine? A goot frau should help her husband out of his difficulty vidout making game of him like vat you do.”

      From the description given by the old banker, Lucien had recognized his Esther. Much annoyed that his smile should have been observed, he took advantage of a moment when coffee was served, and the conversation became general, to vanish from the scene.

      “What has become of Monsieur de Rubempre?” said the Baroness.

      “He is faithful to his motto: Quid me continebit?” said Rastignac.

      “Which means, ‘Who can detain me?’ or ‘I am unconquerable,’ as you choose,” added de Marsay.

      “Just as Monsieur le Baron was speaking of his unknown lady, Lucien smiled in a way that makes me fancy he may know her,” said Horace Bianchon, not thinking how dangerous such a natural remark might be.

      “Goot!” said the banker to himself.

      Like all incurables, the Baron clutched at everything that seemed at all hopeful; he promised himself that he would have Lucien watched by some one besides Louchard and his men—Louchard, the sharpest commercial detective in Paris—to whom he had applied about a fortnight since.

      Before going home to Esther, Lucien was due at the Hotel Grandlieu, to spend the two hours which made Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique de Grandlieu the happiest girl in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But the prudence characteristic of this ambitious youth warned him to inform Carlos Herrera forthwith of the effect resulting from the smile wrung from him by the Baron’s description of Esther. The banker’s passion for Esther, and the idea that had occurred to him of setting the police to seek the unknown beauty, were indeed events of sufficient importance to be at once communicated to the man who had sought, under a priest’s robe, the shelter which criminals of old could find in a church. And Lucien’s road from the Rue Saint-Lazare, where Nucingen at that time lived, to the Rue Saint-Dominique, where was the Hotel Grandlieu, led him past his lodgings on the Quai Malaquais.

      Lucien found his formidable friend smoking his breviary—that is to say, coloring a short pipe before retiring to bed. The man, strange rather than foreign, had given up Spanish cigarettes, finding them too mild.

      “Matters look serious,” said the Spaniard, when Lucien had told him all. “The Baron, who employs Louchard to hunt up the girl, will certainly be sharp enough to set a spy at your heels, and everything will come out. To-night and to-morrow morning will not give me more than enough time to pack the cards for the game I must play against the Baron; first and foremost, I must prove to him that the police cannot help him. When our lynx has given up all hope of finding his ewe-lamb, I will undertake to sell her for all she is worth to him——”

      “Sell Esther!” cried Lucien, whose first impulse was always the right one.

      “Do you forget where we stand?” cried Carlos Herrera.

      “No money left,” the Spaniard went on, “and sixty thousand francs of debts to be paid! If you want to marry Clotilde de Grandlieu, you must invest a million of francs in land as security for that ugly creature’s settlement. Well, then, Esther is the quarry I mean to set before that lynx to help us to ease him of that million. That is my concern.”

      “Esther will never——”

      “That is my concern.”

      “She will die of it.”

      “That is the undertaker’s concern. Besides, what then?” cried the savage, checking Lucien’s lamentations merely by his attitude. “How many generals died in the prime of life for the Emperor Napoleon?” he asked, after a short silence. “There are always plenty of women. In 1821 Coralie was unique in your eyes; and yet you found Esther. After her will come—do you know who?—the unknown fair. And she of all women is the fairest, and you will find her in the capital where the Duc de Grandlieu’s son-in-law will be Minister and representative of the King of France.—And do you tell me now, great Baby, that Esther will die of it? Again, can Mademoiselle de Grandlieu’s husband keep Esther?

      “You have only to leave everything to me; you need not take the trouble to think at all; that is my concern. Only you must do without Esther for a week or two; but go to the Rue Taitbout, all the same.—Come, be off to bill and coo on your plank of salvation, and play your part well; slip the flaming note you wrote this morning into Clotilde’s hand, and bring me back a warm response. She will recompense herself for many woes in writing. I take to that girl.

      “You will find Esther a little depressed, but tell her to obey. We must display our livery of virtue, our doublet of honesty, the screen behind which all great men hide their infamy.—I must show off my handsomer self—you must never be suspected. Chance has served us better than my brain, which has been beating about in a void for these two months past.”

      All the while he was jerking out these dreadful sentences, one by one, like pistol shots, Carlos Herrera was dressing himself to go out.

      “You are evidently delighted,” cried Lucien. “You never liked poor Esther, and you look forward with joy to the moment when you will be rid of her.”

      “You have never tired of loving her, have you? Well, I have never tired of detesting her. But have I not always behaved as though I were sincerely attached to the hussy—I, who, through Asie, hold her life in my hands? A few bad mushrooms in a stew—and there an end. But Mademoiselle

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