Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. Honore de BalzacЧитать онлайн книгу.
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