Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Part 36

Thus Corentin had lapsed into total idleness. In such a case a true sportsman, to keep his hand in, for lack of larks kills sparrows.

Domitian, we know, for lack of Christians, killed flies. Contenson, having witnessed Esther's arrest, had, with the keen instinct of a spy, fully understood the upshot of the business. The rascal, as we have seen, did not attempt to conceal his opinion of the Baron de Nucingen.

"Who is benefiting by making the banker pay so dear for his pa.s.sion?"

was the first question the allies asked each other. Recognizing Asie as a leader in the piece, Contenson hoped to find out the author through her; but she slipped through his fingers again and again, hiding like an eel in the mud of Paris; and when he found her again as the cook in Esther's establishment, it seemed to him inexplicable that the half-caste woman should have had a finger in the pie. Thus, for the first time, these two artistic spies had come on a text that they could not decipher, while suspecting a dark plot to the story.

After three bold attempts on the house in the Rue Taitbout, Contenson still met with absolute dumbness. So long as Esther dwelt there the lodge porter seemed to live in mortal terror. Asie had, perhaps, promised poisoned meat-b.a.l.l.s to all the family in the event of any indiscretion.

On the day after Esther's removal, Contenson found this man rather more amenable; he regretted the lady, he said, who had fed him with the broken dishes from her table. Contenson, disguised as a broker, tried to bargain for the rooms, and listened to the porter's lamentations while he fooled him, casting a doubt on all the man said by a questioning "Really?"

"Yes, monsieur, the lady lived here for five years without ever going out, and more by token, her lover, desperately jealous though she was beyond reproach, took the greatest precautions when he came in or went out. And a very handsome young man he was too!"

Lucien was at this time still staying with his sister, Madame Sechard; but as soon as he returned, Contenson sent the porter to the Quai Malaquais to ask Monsieur de Rubempre whether he were willing to part with the furniture left in the rooms lately occupied by Madame van Bogseck. The porter then recognized Lucien as the young widow's mysterious lover, and this was all that Contenson wanted. The deep but suppressed astonishment may be imagined with which Lucien and Carlos received the porter, whom they affected to regard as a madman; they tried to upset his convictions.

Within twenty-four hours Carlos had organized a force which detected Contenson red-handed in the act of espionage. Contenson, disguised as a market-porter, had twice already brought home the provisions purchased in the morning by Asie, and had twice got into the little mansion in the Rue Saint-Georges. Corentin, on his part, was making a stir; but he was stopped short by recognizing the certain ident.i.ty of Carlos Herrera; for he learned at once that this Abbe, the secret envoy of Ferdinand VII., had come to Paris towards the end of 1823. Still, Corentin thought it worth while to study the reasons which had led the Spaniard to take an interest in Lucien de Rubempre. It was soon clear to him, beyond doubt, that Esther had for five years been Lucien's mistress; so the subst.i.tution of the Englishwoman had been effected for the advantage of that young dandy.

Now Lucien had no means; he was rejected as a suitor for Mademoiselle de Grandlieu; and he had just bought up the lands of Rubempre at the cost of a million francs.

Corentin very skilfully made the head of the General Police take the first steps; and the Prefet de Police a propos to Peyrade, informed his chief that the appellants in that affair had been in fact the Comte de Serizy and Lucien de Rubempre.

"We have it!" cried Peyrade and Corentin.

The two friends had laid plans in a moment.

"This hussy," said Corentin, "has had intimacies; she must have some women friends. Among them we shall certainly find one or another who is down on her luck; one of us must play the part of a rich foreigner and take her up. We will throw them together. They always want something of each other in the game of lovers, and we shall then be in the citadel."

Peyrade naturally proposed to a.s.sume his disguise as an Englishman.

The wild life he should lead during the time that he would take to disentangle the plot of which he had been the victim, smiled on his fancy; while Corentin, grown old in his functions, and weakly too, did not care for it. Disguised as a mulatto, Contenson at once evaded Carlos' force. Just three days before Peyrade's meeting with Madame du Val-n.o.ble in the Champs-Elysees, this last of the agents employed by MM. de Sartine and Lenoir had arrived, provided with a pa.s.sport, at the Hotel Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, having come from the Colonies via le Havre, in a traveling chaise, as mud-splashed as though it had really come from le Havre, instead of no further than by the road from Saint-Denis to Paris.

Carlos Herrera, on his part, had his pa.s.sport _vise_ at the Spanish Emba.s.sy, and arranged everything at the Quai Malaquais to start for Madrid. And this is why. Within a few days Esther was to become the owner of the house in the Rue Saint-Georges and of shares yielding thirty thousand francs a year; Europe and Asie were quite cunning enough to persuade her to sell these shares and privately transmit the money to Lucien. Thus Lucien, proclaiming himself rich through his sister's liberality, would pay the remainder of the price of the Rubempre estates. Of this transaction no one could complain. Esther alone could betray herself; but she would die rather than blink an eyelash.

Clotilde had appeared with a little pink kerchief round her crane's neck, so she had won her game at the Hotel de Grandlieu. The shares in the Omnibus Company were already worth thrice their initial value.

Carlos, by disappearing for a few days, would put malice off the scent.

Human prudence had foreseen everything; no error was possible. The false Spaniard was to start on the morrow of the day when Peyrade met Madame du Val-n.o.ble. But that very night, at two in the morning, Asie came in a cab to the Quai Malaquais, and found the stoker of the machine smoking in his room, and reconsidering all the points of the situation here stated in a few words, like an author going over a page in his book to discover any faults to be corrected. Such a man would not allow himself a second time such an oversight as that of the porter in the Rue Taitbout.

"Paccard," whispered Asie in her master's ear, "recognized Contenson yesterday, at half-past two, in the Champs-Elysees, disguised as a mulatto servant to an Englishman, who for the last three days has been seen walking in the Champs-Elysees, watching Esther. Paccard knew the hound by his eyes, as I did when he dressed up as a market-porter.

Paccard drove the girl home, taking a round so as not to lose sight of the wretch. Contenson is at the Hotel Mirabeau; but he exchanged so many signs of intelligence with the Englishman, that Paccard says the other cannot possibly be an Englishman."

"We have a gadfly behind us," said Carlos. "I will not leave till the day after to-morrow. That Contenson is certainly the man who sent the porter after us from the Rue Taitbout; we must ascertain whether this sham Englishman is our foe."

At noon Mr. Samuel Johnson's black servant was solemnly waiting on his master, who always breakfasted too heartily, with a purpose. Peyrade wished to pa.s.s for a tippling Englishman; he never went out till he was half-seas over. He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and padded to make his legs look stouter; his trousers were lined with the thickest fustian; his waistcoat was b.u.t.toned up to his cheeks; a red scratch wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three inches to his height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the Cafe David could not have recognized him. From his squarecut coat of black cloth with full skirts he might have been taken for an English millionaire.

Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob's confidential servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and uncommunicative, and indulged in fierce exclamations and uncouth gestures.

Peyrade was finis.h.i.+ng his second bottle when one of the hotel waiters unceremoniously showed in a man in whom Peyrade and Contenson both at once discerned a gendarme in mufti.

"Monsieur Peyrade," said the gendarme to the nabob, speaking in his ear, "my instructions are to take you to the Prefecture."

Peyrade, without saying a word, rose and took down his hat.

"You will find a hackney coach at the door," said the man as they went downstairs. "The Prefet thought of arresting you, but he decided on sending for you to ask some explanation of your conduct through the peace-officer whom you will find in the coach."

"Shall I ride with you?" asked the gendarme of the peace-officer when Peyrade had got in.

"No," replied the other; "tell the coachman quietly to drive to the Prefecture."

Peyrade and Carlos were now face to face in the coach. Carlos had a stiletto under his hand. The coach-driver was a man he could trust, quite capable of allowing Carlos to get out without seeing him, or being surprised, on arriving at his journey's end, to find a dead body in his cab. No inquiries are ever made about a spy. The law almost always leaves such murders unpunished, it is so difficult to know the rights of the case.

Peyrade looked with his keenest eye at the magistrate sent to examine him by the Prefet of Police. Carlos struck him as satisfactory: a bald head, deeply wrinkled at the back, and powdered hair; a pair of very light gold spectacles, with double-green gla.s.ses over weak eyes, with red rims, evidently needing care. These eyes seemed the trace of some squalid malady. A cotton s.h.i.+rt with a flat-pleated frill, a shabby black satin waistcoat, the trousers of a man of law, black spun silk stockings, and shoes tied with ribbon; a long black overcoat, cheap gloves, black, and worn for ten days, and a gold watch-chain--in every point the lower grade of magistrate known by a perversion of terms as a peace-officer.

"My dear Monsieur Peyrade, I regret to find such a man as you the object of surveillance, and that you should act so as to justify it. Your disguise is not to the Prefet's taste. If you fancy that you can thus escape our vigilance, you are mistaken. You traveled from England by way of Beaumont-sur-Oise, no doubt."

"Beaumont-sur-Oise?" repeated Peyrade.

"Or by Saint-Denis?" said the sham lawyer.

Peyrade lost his presence of mind. The question must be answered. Now any reply might be dangerous. In the affirmative it was farcical; in the negative, if this man knew the truth, it would be Peyrade's ruin.

"He is a sharp fellow," thought he.

He tried to look at the man and smile, and he gave him a smile for an answer; the smile pa.s.sed muster without protest.

"For what purpose have you disguised yourself, taken rooms at the Mirabeau, and dressed Contenson as a black servant?" asked the peace-officer.

"Monsieur le Prefet may do what he chooses with me, but I owe no account of my actions to any one but my chief," said Peyrade with dignity.

"If you mean me to infer that you are acting by the orders of the General Police," said the other coldly, "we will change our route, and drive to the Rue de Grenelle instead of the Rue de Jerusalem. I have clear instructions with regard to you. But be careful! You are not in any deep disgrace, and you may spoil your own game in a moment. As for me--I owe you no grudge.--Come; tell me the truth."

"Well, then, this is the truth," said Peyrade, with a glance at his Cerberus' red eyes.

The sham lawyer's face remained expressionless, impa.s.sible; he was doing his business, all truths were the same to him, he looked as though he suspected the Prefet of some caprice. Prefets have their little tantrums.

"I have fallen desperately in love with a woman--the mistress of that stockbroker who is gone abroad for his own pleasure and the displeasure of his creditors--Falleix."

"Madame du Val-n.o.ble?"

"Yes," replied Peyrade. "To keep her for a month, which will not cost me more than a thousand crowns, I have got myself up as a nabob and taken Contenson as my servant. This is so absolutely true, monsieur, that if you like to leave me in the coach, where I will wait for you, on my honor as an old Commissioner-General of Police, you can go to the hotel and question Contenson. Not only will Contenson confirm what I have the honor of stating, but you may see Madame du Val-n.o.ble's waiting-maid, who is to come this morning to signify her mistress' acceptance of my offers, or the conditions she makes.

"An old monkey knows what grimaces mean: I have offered her a thousand francs a month and a carriage--that comes to fifteen hundred; five hundred francs' worth of presents, and as much again in some outings, dinners and play-going; you see, I am not deceiving you by a centime when I say a thousand crowns.--A man of my age may well spend a thousand crowns on his last fancy."

"Bless me, Papa Peyrade! and you still care enough for women to----?

But you are deceiving me. I am sixty myself, and I can do without 'em.--However, if the case is as you state it, I quite understand that you should have found it necessary to get yourself up as a foreigner to indulge your fancy."

"You can understand that Peyrade, or old Canquoelle of the Rue des Moineaux----"

"Ay, neither of them would have suited Madame du Val-n.o.ble," Carlos put in, delighted to have picked up Canquoelle's address. "Before the Revolution," he went on, "I had for my mistress a woman who had previously been kept by the gentleman-in-waiting, as they then called the executioner. One evening at the play she p.r.i.c.ked herself with a pin, and cried out--a customary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n in those days--'Ah! Bourreau!' on which her neighbor asked her if this were a reminiscence?--Well, my dear Peyrade, she cast off her man for that speech.

"I suppose you have no wish to expose yourself to such a slap in the face.--Madame du Val-n.o.ble is a woman for gentlemen. I saw her once at the opera, and thought her very handsome.