With these parting words, he gazed at Esther and Lucien; then he profited by the general astonishment to disappear with remarkable agility, for he meant to run home without waiting for the cab. In the street, Asia, her head enveloped in a black shawl such as women carried in those days for leaving a ball, caught at the spy’s arm, as he left by the carriage entrance.
‘Send out for the sacraments, Papa Peyrade,’ she said in the voice which had foretold his misfortune in the first place.
A carriage was there, Asia stepped in, the carriage disappeared as though borne away by the wind. There were five carriages, Peyrade’s men didn’t know one from another.
The oath sworn by Corentin
WHEN he arrived at his country house in one of the quietest and pleasantest streets in the little town of Passy, the rue des Vignes, Corentin, who passed for a business man passionately fond of gardening, found his friend Peyrade’s coded note. Instead of resting, he climbed back into the cab which had brought him, had himself driven to the rue des Moineaux and found only Katt there. From this Fleming he learned of Lydia’s disappearance and marvelled at his own and Peyrade’s lack of foresight.
‘They don’t know me yet,’ he said to himself. ‘People like that will stop at nothing, it remains to be seen whether they will kill Peyrade, if they do I shall have to remain unknown…’
The more infamous a man’s life is, the more he will cling to it; its every minute is then a protestation, a vengeance. Corentin went away, at home disguised himself as a needy little old man, in a short frock coat turning green, a dog’s tooth wig, and returned on foot, impelled by his friendship for Peyrade. He wanted to give his orders to the cleverest and most conscientious of his Numbers. Along the rue Saint Honoré on his way from the Place Vendôme to the rue Saint Roch, he found himself walking behind a girl in slippers, dressed in women’s night clothes. This girl, who wore a white bed-jacket, a night-cap on her head, from time to time uttered a sob or other sound of involuntary complaint; Corentin passed her, looked back and saw that it was Lydia.
‘I am a friend of your father, Monsieur Canquoëlle,’ he said in his natural voice.
‘Ah! then you are someone I can trust!…’ she said.
‘Pretend not to know me,’ Corentin went on, ‘for we are pursued by cruel enemies, and forced to wear disguise. But tell me what happened to you…’
‘Oh, sir,’ said the poor girl, ‘I can tell you what it was, but I can’t describe it… I’m dishonoured, lost, without being able to say how!…’
‘Where have you come from?…’
‘I don’t know, sir! I ran away in such a hurry, I’ve been along so many streets, by so many turnings, thinking I was followed… And when I met someone respectable, I asked the way to the boulevards, so that I could reach the rue de la Paix! At last, after walking for… What time is it?’
‘Half past eleven!’ said Corentin.
‘I escaped just at nightfall, so I’ve been walking for five hours!…’ exclaimed Lydia.
‘Come along, you need a rest, you’ll find your kind old Katt…’
‘Oh, sir, there’ll be no more rest for me! The only rest I want is in the grave; and I shall go to wait for it in a convent, if they think I’m fit to enter one…’
‘Poor child! you did all you could to resist?’
‘Yes, sir. Ah! if you knew among what abject creatures they put me…’
‘I dare say they put you to sleep?’
‘ Ah, was that it?’ said poor Lydia. ‘Still a little strength, and I shall reach the house. I think I’m going to faint, and my thoughts aren’t very clear… Just now I thought I was in a garden…’
Corentin took Lydia up in his arms, where she lost consciousness, and he climbed the flights of stairs.
‘Katt!’ he cried.
Katt appeared and uttered cries of joy.
‘Don’t be in a hurry to celebrate!’ said Corentin gravely, ‘this girl is very unwell.’
When Lydia had been placed on her bed, when, by the light of two candles Katt brought, she recognized her room, she became delirious. She sang the refrains of pretty tunes, and every now and then uttered foul expressions she’d heard! Her beautiful face was mottled with purple tints. She mingled memories of her pure earlier life with those of the past ten days of infamy. Katt wept. Corentin paced about the room stopping at moments to examine Lydia.
‘She’s praying for her father! ’ he said. ‘Could there possibly be a Providence? Oh! how right I am to have no family… A child! it is, on my word of honour, as I don’t know which philosopher says, a hostage given to fortune!…’
‘Oh!’ said the poor child sitting up in bed and letting her beautiful hair fall down, ‘instead of lying here, Katt, I should be lying on the sand at the bottom of the Seine…’
‘Katt, instead of weeping and gazing at your child, which won’t cure her, you should go and look for a doctor, the one from the Town Hall first, then Messieurs Desplein and Bianchon… This innocent creature must be saved…’
And Corentin wrote down the addresses of the two famous doctors. At that moment, the stairs were climbed by a man whose step was familiar, the door opened. Peyrade, in a sweat, his face purple, his eyes bloodshot, blowing like a porpoise, ran from the door of the apartment to Lydia’s room crying: ‘Where is my daughter?…’
He saw Corentin’s woeful gesture, Peyrade’s eyes followed the pointing finger. Lydia’s condition could only be compared with that of a flower, lovingly tended by a botanist, fallen from its stalk, crushed by the iron-shod clogs of a peasant. Translate this image into the very heart of Fatherhood, you will understand the blow received by Peyrade, whose eyes at once filled with big tears.
‘Somebody’s crying, it’s my father,’ said the child.
Lydia was still able to recognize her father; she got up and fell at the old man’s knees just as he collapsed into an armchair.
‘Forgive me, papa!…’ she said in a voice which pierced Peyrade’s heart at the moment at which he experienced what might have been the blow of a club on his skull.
‘I’m dying… ah! the scoundrels!’ were his last words.
Corentin rushed to his friend’s side, receiving his last breath.
‘Died poisoned !…’ said Corentin to himself. ‘Good, here’s the doctor,’ he exclaimed hearing the sound of a carriage.
Contenson appeared, without the mulatto’s make-up on his face, and stood like a bronze statue on hearing Lydia say: ‘Won’t you forgive me, then, father?… It wasn’t my fault!’ (She didn’t notice that her father was dead.) ‘Oh, what a strange look he gives me!…’ said the poor child out of her mind…
‘We must close his eyes,’ said Contenson, lifting the late Peyrade on to the bed.
‘What we are doing is foolish,’ said Corentin, ‘we must carry him into his own room; his daughter is half out of her mind, she’d go right out of it if she saw he was dead, she’d think she’d killed him.’
Seeing them take her father away, Lydia stared in bewilderment.
‘That was my only friend!…’ said Corentin clearly moved by the sight of Peyrade on the bed in his own room. ‘In all his life, the only thought of money was for his daughter!… Let that be a lesson to you, Contenson. There is a code for every condition. Peyrade was wrong to become involved with the affairs of individuals, we must concern ourselves only with public affairs. But, whatever happens, I hereby swear,’ said he with an accent, a look and a gesture which struck Contenson with fear, ‘to avenge poor Peyrade, my friend! I shall discover the authors of his death and those of his daughter’s shame!… And, by my own self-respect, by the few years which remain to me, and which I imperil by this revenge, they shall all end their days at four o’clock, in perfect health, shaved, suddenly, on the scaffold in the Strand!…’
‘I’ll help you!’ said Contenson equally moved.
Nothing is indeed more deeply moving than the spectacle of passion in a cold, formal, methodical man, in whom, for twenty years, nobody h
ad perceived the least flicker of sensibility. It is the iron bar molten and melting all it meets. Thus Contenson felt his entrails turn.
‘Poor father Canquoëlle,’ he went on looking at Corentin, ‘he often wined and dined me… What’s more – it’s only those with vices of their own who think of such things – he’d often give me ten francs to gamble with…’
After this eulogy of the dead, Peyrade’s two avengers went to Lydia’s apartment hearing Katt and the Town Hall doctor on the stairs.
‘Go to the police station,’ said Corentin, ‘the district attorney wouldn’t find the makings of a legal action in this; but we shall make a report to the Prefecture, that may produce some effect.’
‘Sir,’ said Corentin to the Town Hall doctor, ‘you will find a dead man in that room; I don’t believe he died from natural causes, you’ll have to perform an autopsy in the presence of the police superintendent, who will be coming presently at my invitation. See if you can discover traces of poison; you will have the assistance of Doctors Desplein and Bianchon in a few moments, I’ve called them in to examine my best friend’s daughter whose state is worse than her father’s, although he is dead…’
‘I do not,’ said the municipal doctor, ‘need these gentlemen’s help to carry on my profession…’
‘Well, all right,’ thought Corentin. ‘Let us not get in each other’s way, sir,’ Corentin went on. ‘In a few words, here is my opinion. Those who have just killed the father also dishonoured the daughter.’
By dawn, Lydia had finally succumbed to her fatigue; she was asleep when the famous surgeon and the young doctor arrived. The doctor whose business it was to state the cause of death had by then opened Peyrade up to that end.
‘Until we feel we can waken the invalid,’ said Corentin to the two distinguished medical men, ‘would you help one of your colleagues in an examination which will certainly be of interest to you, while your opinion might usefully be shown in the police report.’
‘Your kinsman died of apoplexy,’ said the doctor, ‘there are symptoms of a terrifying cerebral congestion…’
‘Take a look at him, gentlemen,’ said Corentin, ‘and see whether Toxicology doesn’t show poisons which produce the same effect.’
‘The stomach,’ said the doctor, ‘was absolutely full of various matters; but, without submitting them to chemical analysis, I see no trace of poison.’
‘If the characteristics of cerebral congestion are evident, that alone, given the patient’s age, would be a sufficient cause of death,’ said Desplein indicating the enormous quantity of foodstuffs…
‘Did he eat here?’ asked Bianchon.
‘No,’ said Corentin, ‘he came here at speed from the boulevard, and found his daughter had been raped…’
‘That’s the real poison, if he loved his daughter,’ said Bianchon.
‘What poison could produce those effects?’ asked Corentin not relinquishing his idea.
‘There’s only one,’ said Desplein after examining everything carefully. ‘It’s a poison from the archipelago of Java, taken from shrubs about which we don’t yet know very much, but they’re related to the strychnos group, and they’re used to poison those very dangerous weapons,… the krisses of the Malays… At least so I’m told…’
The police superintendent arrived, Corentin told him what he suspected, and asked him to draw up a report stating at what house and in what company Peyrade had supped; also outlining the known plot against Peyrade’s life and the cause of Lydia’s present condition. Then Corentin went along to the poor girl’s apartment, where Desplein and Bianchon were examining their patient; but he met them at the door.
‘Well, gentlemen?’ asked Corentin.
‘Put that girl in a clinic. If she turns out to be pregnant and doesn’t recover her reason in childbirth, she’ll end her days in melancholy-madness. There’s no other cure for her state but the maternal instinct, if it awakes…’
Corentin gave forty francs in gold to each of the doctors, and turned to the police superintendent, who was pulling at his sleeve.
‘The doctor claims that death was natural,’ said this functionary, ‘and the fact that he was Father Canquoëlle makes it very difficult for me to write a report, he got mixed up with all kinds of things, and we should hardly know who was at the other end… People like him often die by order…’
‘My name is Corentin,’ said Corentin in an undertone to the police superintendent.
The superintendent betrayed surprise.
‘So make a note,’ continued Corentin, ‘it will be useful later, and pass it on only as private and confidential. Crime can’t be proved, and I know that the judicial inquiry could be brought to a sudden halt… But one of these days I shall be turning the guilty parties in, I’m going to keep them under close observation and catch them in some act or other.’
The police superintendent bowed to Corentin and left.
‘Sir,’ said Katt, ‘Mademoiselle does nothing but sing and dance, what shall I do?…’
‘Has something new happened?…’
‘She knows now that her father has just died…’
‘Put her into a cab and take her straight off to Charenton; I shall write a note to the Director General of the Police of the Kingdom to see that she’s properly looked after. The daughter at Charenton, the father in a common grave,’ said Corentin. ‘Contenson, go and order the poor man’s funeral wagon… Now, Don Carlos Herrera, it is between us two…’
‘Carlos!’ said Contenson, ‘he’s in Spain.’
‘He is in Paris!’ said Corentin in his most peremptory tone. ‘In this there is the touch of Spanish genius in the time of Philip II, but I have traps for everybody, including kings.’
The mousetrap catches a rat
FIVE days after the Nabob’s disappearance, at nine o’clock in the morning, Madame du Val-Noble was sitting at Esther’s bedside weeping, for she saw herself on the slopes of destitution.
‘If, at least, I had a hundred louis‘ income! With that, my dear, one may retire to some small town, and there would‘ always be somebody to marry…’
‘I could get you that amount,’ said Esther.
‘How?’ exclaimed Madame du Val-Noble.
‘Oh! quite easily. Listen. You decide you’re going to kill yourself, put on that act; send for Asia, and offer her ten thousand francs for two black pearls in fine glass containing a poison which kills in one second; bring those to me, and I’ll give you fifty thousand francs…’
‘Why don’t you place the order yourself?’ said Madame du Val-Noble.
‘Asia wouldn’t let me have them.’
‘You’re not going to use them yourself?…’ said Madame du Val-Noble.
‘Perhaps.’
‘You! who live a life of happiness and luxury, in a house of your own! preparing for a celebration which will be talked of for ten years to come! which is costing Nucingen twenty thousand francs. You’ll be eating, they tell me, strawberries in February, asparagus, grapes,… melons… There’ll be a thousand crowns worth of flowers up and down the place.’
‘More than that! there’ll be a thousand crowns worth of roses in the staircase alone.’
‘They say you’ll be dressed to the tune of ten thousand francs?’
‘Yes, my gown is of Brussels lace, and Delphine, his wife, is furious. But I wanted to look like a bride.’
‘Where are the ten thousand francs?’ said Madame du Val-Noble.
‘It’s all the change I have,’ said Esther smiling. ‘Open my dressing-table drawer, it’s under my curl-paper.’
‘When people talk of dying, they don’t kill themselves,’ said Madame du Val-Noble. ‘If what you meant to do was…’
‘Commit a crime, really!’ said Esther completing the thought over which her friend hesitated. ‘You needn’t worry,’ Esther went on, ‘I wasn’t thinking of killing anyone. I had a friend, a woman who was happy, she’s dead, I shall follow her,… that’s all.’
‘How stupid!
’
‘What do you expect, we promised each other.’
‘Let them protest that bill,’ said the friend with a smile.
‘Do as I tell you, and be off. I hear a carriage at the door, and it’s Nucingen, a man who will soon be out of his mind with happiness! He loves me, that one… Why don’t we love those who love us, for after all they do everything to please…’
‘Ah, there we are!’ said Madame du Val-Noble, ‘it’s the tale of the herring which is the most interesting of fishes.’
‘Why?…’
‘The fact is, nobody’s ever discovered.’
‘Well, be off, my lamb! I have to ask for your fifty thousand francs.’
‘Good-bye, then…’
Over the past three days, Esther’s manner with Baron Nucingen had quite changed. The monkey had become a pussy-cat and the cat had become a woman. Esther lavished treasures of affection upon the old man, she was charm itself with him. Her conversation, void of all malice and acridity, full of tender insinuation, had brought conviction to the banker’s dull mind, she called him Fritz, he believed himself to be loved.
‘My poor Fritz, I’ve tried you sorely,’ she said, ‘I tormented you, your patience was sublime, you love me, I see that it is so, and I shall repay you. I’m fond of you now, and I don’t know how it came about, but I would prefer you to a young man. It may be the result of experience. In the end one comes to see that pleasure is simply the small change of the soul, and it is no more flattering to be loved for the pleasure one gives than to be loved for one’s money… Besides, young men are all egoists, they think more of themselves than they do of us; while you think only of me. I am your whole life. And so I shall ask nothing more of you, I mean to prove to you how disinterested I am.’
‘I hef gif you nossing,’ replied the baron, delighted, ‘I vill tomorrow pring you dirty tausend vrancs ingome… Dot iss my vedding bresent…’
Esther kissed Nucingen so nicely that he grew pale, without the aid of pills.