Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

“The King,” he would say, “has done so much for me, that I owe him my blood.”

For some days past there had been an idea of attaching Lucien to the prime minister’s cabinet as his private secretary; but Madame d’Espard brought so many persons into the field in opposition to Lucien, that Charles X.‘s Maitre Jacques hesitated to clinch the matter. Nor was Lucien’s position by any means clear; not only did the question, “What does he live on?” on everybody’s lips as the young man rose in life, require an answer, but even benevolent curiosity – as much as malevolent curiosity – went on from one inquiry to another, and found more than one joint in the ambitious youth’s harness.

Clotilde de Grandlieu unconsciously served as a spy for her father and mother. A few days since she had led Lucien into a recess and told him of the difficulties raised by her family.

“Invest a million francs in land, and my hand is yours: that is my mother’s ultimatum,” Clotilde had explained.

“And presently they will ask you where you got the money,” said Carlos, when Lucien reported this last word in the bargain.

“My brother-in-law will have made his fortune,” remarked Lucien; “we can make him the responsible backer.”

“Then only the million is needed,” said Carlos. “I will think it over.”

To be exact as to Lucien’s position in the Hotel Grandlieu, he had never dined there. Neither Clotilde, nor the Duchesse d’Uxelles, nor Madame de Maufrigneuse, who was always extremely kind to Lucien, could ever obtain this favor from the Duke, so persistently suspicious was the old nobleman of the man that he designated as “le Sire de Rubempre.” This shade of distinction, understood by every one who visited at the house, constantly wounded Lucien’s self-respect, for he felt that he was no more than tolerated. But the world is justified in being suspicious; it is so often taken in!

To cut a figure in Paris with no known source of wealth and no recognized employment is a position which can by no artifice be long maintained. So Lucien, as he crept up in the world, gave more and more weight to the question, “What does he live on?” He had been obliged indeed to confess to Madame de Serizy, to whom he owed the patronage of Monsieur Granville, the Public Prosecutor, and of the Comte Octave de Bauvan, a Minister of State, and President of one of the Supreme Courts: “I am dreadfully in debt.”

As he entered the courtyard of the mansion where he found an excuse for all his vanities, he was saying to himself as he reflected on Trompe-la-Mort’s scheming:

“I can hear the ground cracking under my feet!”

He loved Esther, and he wanted to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu! A strange dilemma! One must be sold to buy the other.

Only one person could effect this bargain without damage to Lucien’s honor, and that was the supposed Spaniard. Were they not bound to be equally secret, each for the other? Such a compact, in which each is in turn master and slave, is not to be found twice in any one life.

Lucien drove away the clouds that darkened his brow, and walked into the Grandlieu drawing-room gay and beaming. At this moment the windows were open, the fragrance from the garden scented the room, the flower-basket in the centre displayed its pyramid of flowers. The Duchess, seated on a sofa in the corner, was talking to the Duchesse de Chaulieu. Several women together formed a group remarkable for their various attitudes, stamped with the different expression which each strove to give to an affected sorrow. In the fashionable world nobody takes any interest in grief or suffering; everything is talk. The men were walking up and down the room or in the garden. Clotilde and Josephine were busy at the tea-table. The Vidame de Pamiers, the Duc de Grandlieu, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse were playing Wisk, as they called it, in a corner of the room.

When Lucien was announced he walked across the room to make his bow to the Duchess, asking the cause of the grief he could read in her face.

“Madame de Chaulieu has just had dreadful news; her son-in-law, the Baron de Macumer, ex-duke of Soria, is just dead. The young Duc de Soria and his wife, who had gone to Chantepleurs to nurse their brother, have written this sad intelligence. Louise is heart-broken.”

“A women is not loved twice in her life as Louise was loved by her husband,” said Madeleine de Mortsauf.

“She will be a rich widow,” observed the old Duchesse d’Uxelles, looking at Lucien, whose face showed no change of expression.

“Poor Louise!” said Madame d’Espard. “I understand her and pity her.”

The Marquise d’Espard put on the pensive look of a woman full of soul and feeling. Sabine de Grandlieu, who was but ten years old, raised knowing eyes to her mother’s face, but the satirical glance was repressed by a glance from the Duchess. This is bringing children up properly.

“If my daughter lives through the shock,” said Madame de Chaulieu, with a very maternal manner, “I shall be anxious about her future life. Louise is so very romantic.”

“It is so difficult nowadays,” said a venerable Cardinal, “to reconcile feeling with the proprieties.”

Lucien, who had not a word to say, went to the tea-table to do what was polite to the demoiselles de Grandlieu. When the poet had gone a few yards away, the Marquise d’Espard leaned over to whisper in the Duchess’ ear:

“And do you really think that that young fellow is so much in love with your Clotilde?”

The perfidy of this question cannot be fully understood but with the help of a sketch of Clotilde. That young lady was, at this moment, standing up. Her attitude allowed the Marquise d’Espard’s mocking eye to take in Clotilde’s lean, narrow figure, exactly like an asparagus stalk; the poor girl’s bust was so flat that it did not allow of the artifice known to dressmakers as fichus menteurs, or padded habitshirts. And Clotilde, who knew that her name was a sufficient advantage in life, far from trying to conceal this defect, heroically made a display of it. By wearing plain, tight dresses she achieved the effect of that stiff prim shape which medieval sculptors succeeded in giving to the statuettes whose profiles are conspicuous against the background of the niches in which they stand in cathedrals.

Clotilde was more than five feet four in height; if we may be allowed to use a familiar phrase, which has the merit at any rate of being perfectly intelligible – she was all legs. These defective proportions gave her figure an almost deformed appearance. With a dark complexion, harsh black hair, very thick eyebrows, fiery eyes, set in sockets that were already deeply discolored, a side face shaped like the moon in its first quarter, and a prominent brow, she was the caricature of her mother, one of the handsomest women in Portugal. Nature amuses herself with such tricks. Often we see in one family a sister of wonderful beauty, whose features in her brother are absolutely hideous, though the two are amazingly alike. Clotilde’s lips, excessively thin and sunken, wore a permanent expression of disdain. And yet her mouth, better than any other feature of her face, revealed every secret impulse of her heart, for affection lent it a sweet expression, which was all the more remarkable because her cheeks were too sallow for blushes, and her hard, black eyes never told anything. Notwithstanding these defects, notwithstanding her board-like carriage, she had by birth and education a grand air, a proud demeanor, in short, everything that has been well named le je ne sais quoi, due partly, perhaps, to her uncompromising simplicity of dress, which stamped her as a woman of noble blood. She dressed her hair to advantage, and it might be accounted to her for a beauty, for it grew vigorously, thick and long.

She had cultivated her voice, and it could cast a spell; she sang exquisitely. Clotilde was just the woman of whom one says, “She has fine eyes,” or, “She has a delightful temper.” If any one addressed her in the English fashion as “Your Grace,” she would say, “You mean ‘Your leanness.’”

“Why should not my poor Clotilde have a lover?” replied the Duchess to the Marquise. “Do you know what she said to me yesterday? ‘If I am loved for ambition’s sake, I undertake to make him love me for my own sake.’ – She is clever and ambitious, and there are men who like those two qualities. As for him – my dear, he is as handsome as a vision; and if he can but repurchase the Rubempre estates, out of regard for us the King will reinstate him in the title of Marquis. – After all, his mother was the last of the Rubempres.”

“Poor fellow! where is he to find a million francs?” said the Marquise.

“That is no concern of ours,” replied the Duchess. “He is certainly incapable of stealing the money. – Besides, we would never give Clotilde to an intriguing or dishonest man even if he were handsome, young, and a poet, like Monsieur de Rubempre.”

“You are late this evening,” said Clotilde, smiling at Lucien with infinite graciousness.

“Yes, I have been dining out.”

“You have been quite gay these last few days,” said she, concealing her jealousy and anxiety behind a smile.

“Quite gay?” replied Lucien. “No – only by the merest chance I have been dining every day this week with bankers; to-day with the Nucingens, yesterday with du Tillet, the day before with the Kellers – ”

Whence, it may be seen, that Lucien had succeeded in assuming the tone of light impertinence of great people.

“You have many enemies,” said Clotilde, offering him – how graciously! – a cup of tea. “Some one told my father that you have debts to the amount of sixty thousand francs, and that before long Sainte-Pelagie will be your summer quarters. – If you could know what all these calumnies are to me! – It all recoils on me. – I say nothing of my own suffering – my father has a way of looking that crucifies me – but of what you must be suffering if any least part of it should be the truth.”

“Do not let such nonsense worry you; love me as I love you, and give me time – a few months – ” said Lucien, replacing his empty cup on the silver tray.

“Do not let my father see you; he would say something disagreeable; and as you could not submit to that, we should be done for. – That odious Marquise d’Espard told him that your mother had been a monthly nurse and that your sister did ironing – ”

“We were in the most abject poverty,” replied Lucien, the tears rising to his eyes. “That is not calumny, but it is most ill-natured gossip. My sister now is a more than millionaire, and my mother has been dead two years. – This information has been kept in stock to use just when I should be on the verge of success here – ”

“But what have you done to Madame d’Espard?”

“I was so rash, at Madame de Serizy’s, as to tell the story, with some added pleasantries, in the presence of MM. de Bauvan and de Granville, of her attempt to get a commission of lunacy appointed to sit on her husband, the Marquis d’Espard. Bianchon had told it to me. Monsieur de Granville’s opinion, supported by those of Bauvan and Serizy, influenced the decision of the Keeper of the Seals. They all were afraid of the Gazette des Tribunaux, and dreaded the scandal, and the Marquise got her knuckles rapped in the summing up for the judgment finally recorded in that miserable business.

“Though M. de Serizy by his tattle has made the Marquise my mortal foe, I gained his good offices, and those of the Public Prosecutor, and Comte Octave de Bauvan; for Madame de Serizy told them the danger in which I stood in consequence of their allowing the source of their information to be guessed at. The Marquis d’Espard was so clumsy as to call upon me, regarding me as the first cause of his winning the day in that atrocious suit.”

“I will rescue you from Madame d’Espard,” said Clotilde.

“How?” cried Lucien.

“My mother will ask the young d’Espards here; they are charming boys, and growing up now. The father and sons will sing your praises, and then we are sure never to see their mother again.”

“Oh, Clotilde, you are an angel! If I did not love you for yourself, I should love you for being so clever.”

“It is not cleverness,” said she, all her love beaming on her lips. “Goodnight. Do not come again for some few days. When you see me in church, at Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, with a pink scarf, my father will be in a better temper. – You will find an answer stuck to the back of the chair you are sitting in; it will comfort you perhaps for not seeing me. Put the note you have brought under my handkerchief – ”

This young person was evidently more than seven-and-twenty.

Lucien took a cab in the Rue de la Planche, got out of it on the Boulevards, took another by the Madeleine, and desired the driver to have the gates opened and drive in at the house in the Rue Taitbout.

On going in at eleven o’clock, he found Esther in tears, but dressed as she was wont to dress to do him honor. She awaited her Lucien reclining on a sofa covered with white satin brocaded with yellow flowers, dressed in a bewitching wrapper of India muslin with cherry-colored bows; without her stays, her hair simply twisted into a knot, her feet in little velvet slippers lined with cherry-colored satin; all the candles were burning, the hookah was prepared. But she had not smoked her own, which stood beside her unlighted, emblematical of her loneliness. On hearing the doors open she sprang up like a gazelle, and threw her arms round Lucien, wrapping him like a web caught by the wind and flung about a tree.

“Parted. – Is it true?”

“Oh, just for a few days,” replied Lucien.

Esther released him, and fell back on her divan like a dead thing.

In these circumstances, most women babble like parrots. Oh! how they love! At the end of five years they feel as if their first happiness were a thing of yesterday, they cannot give you up, they are magnificent in their indignation, despair, love, grief, dread, dejection, presentiments. In short, they are as sublime as a scene from Shakespeare. But make no mistake! These women do not love. When they are really all that they profess, when they love truly, they do as Esther did, as children do, as true love does; Esther did not say a word, she lay with her face buried in the pillows, shedding bitter tears.

Lucien, on his part, tried to lift her up, and spoke to her.

“But, my child, we are not to part. What, after four years of happiness, is this the way you take a short absence. – What on earth do I do to all these girls?” he added to himself, remembering that Coralie had loved him thus.

“Ah, monsieur, you are so handsome,” said Europe.

The senses have their own ideal. When added to this fascinating beauty we find the sweetness of nature, the poetry, that characterized Lucien, it is easy to conceive of the mad passion roused in such women, keenly alive as they are to external gifts, and artless in their admiration. Esther was sobbing quietly, and lay in an attitude expressive of the deepest distress.

“But, little goose,” said Lucien, “did you not understand that my life is at stake?”

At these words, which he chose on purpose, Esther started up like a wild animal, her hair fell, tumbling about her excited face like wreaths of foliage. She looked steadily at Lucien.

“Your life?” she cried, throwing up her arms, and letting them drop with a gesture known only to a courtesan in peril. “To be sure; that friend’s note speaks of serious risk.”

She took a shabby scrap of paper out of her sash; then seeing Europe, she said, “Leave us, my girl.”

When Europe had shut the door she went on – “Here, this is what he writes,” and she handed to Lucien a note she had just received from Carlos, which Lucien read aloud: —

“You must leave to-morrow at five in the morning; you will be taken to a keeper’s lodge in the heart of the Forest of Saint-Germain, where you will have a room on the first floor. Do not quit that room till I give you leave; you will want for nothing. The keeper and his wife are to be trusted. Do not write to Lucien. Do not go to the window during daylight; but you may walk by night with the keeper if you wish for exercise. Keep the carriage blinds down on the way. Lucien’s life is at stake.

“Lucien will go to-night to bid you good-bye; burn this in his presence.”

Lucien burned the note at once in the flame of a candle.

“Listen, my own Lucien,” said Esther, after hearing him read this letter as a criminal hears the sentence of death; “I will not tell you that I love you; it would be idiotic. For nearly five years it has been as natural to me to love you as to breathe and live. From the first day when my happiness began under the protection of that inscrutable being, who placed me here as you place some little curious beast in a cage, I have known that you must marry. Marriage is a necessary factor in your career, and God preserve me from hindering the development of your fortunes.

“That marriage will be my death. But I will not worry you; I will not do as the common girls do who kill themselves by means of a brazier of charcoal; I had enough of that once; twice raises your gorge, as Mariette says. No, I will go a long way off, out of France. Asie knows the secrets of her country; she will help me to die quietly. A prick – whiff, it is all over!

“I ask but one thing, my dearest, and that is that you will not deceive me. I have had my share of living. Since the day I first saw you, in 1824, till this day, I have known more happiness than can be put into the lives of ten fortunate wives. So take me for what I am – a woman as strong as I am weak. Say ‘I am going to be married.’ I will ask no more of you than a fond farewell, and you shall never hear of me again.”

There was a moment’s silence after this explanation as sincere as her action and tone were guileless.

“Is it that you are going to be married?” she repeated, looking into Lucien’s blue eyes with one of her fascinating glances, as brilliant as a steel blade.

“We have been toiling at my marriage for eighteen months past, and it is not yet settled,” replied Lucien. “I do not know when it can be settled; but it is not in question now, child! – It is the Abbe, I, you. – We are in real peril. Nucingen saw you – ”

“Yes, in the wood at Vincennes,” said she. “Did he recognize me?”

“No,” said Lucien. “But he has fallen so desperately in love with you, that he would sacrifice his coffers. After dinner, when he was describing how he had met you, I was so foolish as to smile involuntarily, and most imprudently, for I live in a world like a savage surrounded by the traps of a hostile tribe. Carlos, who spares me the pains of thinking, regards the position as dangerous, and he has undertaken to pay Nucingen out if the Baron takes it into his head to spy on us; and he is quite capable of it; he spoke to me of the incapacity of the police. You have lighted a flame in an old chimney choked with soot.”

“And what does your Spaniard propose to do?” asked Esther very softly.

“I do not know in the least,” said Lucien; “he told me I might sleep soundly and leave it to him;” – but he dared not look at Esther.

“If that is the case, I will obey him with the dog-like submission I profess,” said Esther, putting her hand through Lucien’s arm and leading him into her bedroom, saying, “At any rate, I hope you dined well, my Lulu, at that detestable Baron’s?”

“Asie’s cooking prevents my ever thinking a dinner good, however famous the chef may be, where I happen to dine. However, Careme did the dinner to-night, as he does every Sunday.”

Lucien involuntarily compared Esther with Clotilde. The mistress was so beautiful, so unfailingly charming, that she had as yet kept at arm’s length the monster who devours the most perennial loves – Satiety.

“What a pity,” thought he, “to find one’s wife in two volumes. In one – poetry, delight, love, devotion, beauty, sweetness – ”

Esther was fussing about, as women do, before going to bed; she came and went and fluttered round, singing all the time; you might have thought her a humming-bird.

“In the other – a noble name, family, honors, rank, knowledge of the world! – And no earthly means of combining them!” cried Lucien to himself.

Next morning, at seven, when the poet awoke in the pretty pink-and-white room, he found himself alone. He rang, and Europe hurried in.

“What are monsieur’s orders?”

“Esther?”

“Madame went off this morning at a quarter to five. By Monsieur l’Abbe’s order, I admitted a new face – carriage paid.”

“A woman?”

“No, sir, an English woman – one of those people who do their day’s work by night, and we are ordered to treat her as if she were madame. What can you have to say to such hack! – Poor Madame, how she cried when she got into the carriage. ‘Well, it has to be done!’ cried she. ‘I left that poor dear boy asleep,’ said she, wiping away her tears; ‘Europe, if he had looked at me or spoken my name, I should have stayed – I could but have died with him.’ – I tell you, sir, I am so fond of madame, that I did not show her the person who has taken her place; some waiting maids would have broken her heart by doing so.”

“And is the stranger there?”

“Well, sir, she came in the chaise that took away madame, and I hid her in my room in obedience to my instructions – ”

“Is she nice-looking?”

“So far as such a second-hand article can be. But she will find her part easy enough if you play yours, sir,” said Europe, going to fetch the false Esther.

The night before, ere going to bed, the all-powerful banker had given his orders to his valet, who, at seven in the morning, brought in to him the notorious Louchard, the most famous of the commercial police, whom he left in a little sitting-room; there the Baron joined him, in a dressing gown and slippers.

“You haf mate a fool of me!” he said, in reply to this official’s greeting.

“I could not help myself, Monsieur le Baron. I do not want to lose my place, and I had the honor of explaining to you that I could not meddle in a matter that had nothing to do with my functions. What did I promise you? To put you into communication with one of our agents, who, as it seemed to me, would be best able to serve you. But you know, Monsieur le Baron, the sharp lines that divide men of different trades: if you build a house, you do not set a carpenter to do smith’s work. Well, there are two branches of the police – the political police and the judicial police. The political police never interfere with the other branch, and vice versa. If you apply to the chief of the political police, he must get permission from the Minister to take up our business, and you would not dare to explain it to the head of the police throughout the kingdom. A police-agent who should act on his own account would lose his place.

“Well, the ordinary police are quite as cautious as the political police. So no one, whether in the Home Office or at the Prefecture of Police, ever moves excepting in the interests of the State or for the ends of Justice.

“If there is a plot or a crime to be followed up, then, indeed, the heads of the corps are at your service; but you must understand, Monsieur le Baron, that they have other fish to fry than looking after the fifty thousand love affairs in Paris. As to me and my men, our only business is to arrest debtors; and as soon as anything else is to be done, we run enormous risks if we interfere with the peace and quiet of any man or woman. I sent you one of my men, but I told you I could not answer for him; you instructed him to find a particular woman in Paris; Contenson bled you of a thousand-franc note, and did not even move. You might as well look for a needle in the river as for a woman in Paris, who is supposed to haunt Vincennes, and of whom the description answers to every pretty woman in the capital.”

“And could not Contenson haf tolt me de truf, instead of making me pleed out one tousand franc?”

“Listen to me, Monsieur le Baron,” said Louchard. “Will you give me a thousand crowns? I will give you – sell you – a piece of advice?”

“Is it vort one tousand crowns – your atvice?” asked Nucingen.

“I am not to be caught, Monsieur le Baron,” answered Louchard. “You are in love, you want to discover the object of your passion; you are getting as yellow as a lettuce without water. Two physicians came to see you yesterday, your man tells me, who think your life is in danger; now, I alone can put you in the hands of a clever fellow. – But the deuce is in it! If your life is not worth a thousand crowns – ”