LITMIR.BIZ

      Section 1

       Table of Contents

      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. There are women and women! De Marsay paid sixty thousand francs for Coralie, who is dead now. The woman you want cost a hundred thousand francs when new; but to you, you old goat, it is a matter of agreement."

      "But vere is she?"

      "Ah! you shall see. I am like you—a gift for a gift! Oh, my good man, your adored one has been extravagant. These girls know no moderation. Your princess is at this moment what we call a fly by night——"

      "A fly——?"

      "Come, come, don't play the simpleton.—Louchard is at her heels, and I—I—have lent her fifty thousand francs——"

      "Twenty-fife say!" cried the banker.

      "Well, of course, twenty-five for fifty, that is only natural," replied Asie. "To do the woman justice, she is honesty itself. She had nothing left but herself, and says she to me: 'My good Madame Saint-Esteve, the bailiffs are after me; no one can help me but you. Give me twenty thousand francs. I will pledge my heart to you.' Oh, she has a sweet heart; no one but me knows where it lies. Any folly on my part, and I should lose my twenty thousand francs.

      "Formerly she lived in the Rue Taitbout. Before leaving—(her furniture was seized for costs—those rascally bailiffs—You know them, you who are one of the great men on the Bourse)—well, before leaving, she is no fool, she let her rooms for two months to an Englishwoman, a splendid creature who had a little thingummy—Rubempre—for a lover, and he was so jealous that he only let her go out at night. But as the furniture is to be seized, the Englishwoman has cut her stick, all the more because she cost too much for a little whipper-snapper like Lucien."

      "You cry up de goots," said Nucingen.

      "Naturally," said Asie. "I lend to the beauties; and it pays, for you get two commissions for one job."

      Asie was amusing herself by caricaturing the manners of a class of women who are even greedier but more wheedling and mealy-mouthed than the Malay woman, and who put a gloss of the best motives on the trade they ply. Asie affected to have lost all her illusions, five lovers, and some children, and to have submitted to be robbed by everybody in spite of her experience. From time to time she exhibited some pawn-tickets, to prove how much bad luck there was in her line of business. She represented herself as pinched and in debt, and to crown all, she was so undisguisedly hideous that the Baron at last believed her to be all she said she was.

      "Vell den, I shall pay the hundert tousant, and vere shall I see her?" said he, with the air of a man who has made up his mind to any sacrifice.

      "My fat friend, you shall come this evening—in your carriage, of course—opposite the Gymnase. It is on the way," said

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