Honoré de Balzac

“ You are not handsome; you are as big as Louis XVIII., and rather dull company, as all men are who try to cajole fortune instead of devoting themselves to women.—Well, if you don't think six hundred thousand francs too much," said Asie, "I pledge myself to make her whatever you can wish."
"Six huntert tousant franc!" cried the Baron, with a start. "Esther is to cost me a million to begin with!"
"Happiness is surely worth sixteen hundred thousand francs, you old sinner. You must know, men in these days have certainly spent more than one or two millions on a mistress. ”

“ She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses love and courtesans—women who, having rolled in mire and impurity, thirst for something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and who practice exclusiveness—the only word for an idea so little known in real life.
Vanished nations, Greece, Rome, and the East, have at all times kept women shut up; the woman who loves should shut herself up. So it may easily be imagined that on quitting the palace of her fancy, where this poem had been enacted, to go to this old man's "little palace," Esther felt heartsick. ”

“ A woman who has already cost Monsieur le Baron five hundred thousand francs, they say, without counting what he has spent on the house in the Rue Saint-Georges! But the woman cares for money, and for money only.—As madame came out of monsieur's room, she said with a laugh: 'If this goes on, that slut will make a widow of me!'"
"The devil!" cried Asie; "it will never do to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." ”

“ Now, kiss your Esther.—I say, you will give that poor Val-Noble all the furniture in the Rue Taitbout? And to-morrow I wish you would give her fifty thousand francs—it would look handsome, my duck. You see, you killed Falleix; people are beginning to cry out upon you, and this liberality will look Babylonian—all the women will talk about it! Oh! there will be no one in Paris so grand, so noble as you; and as the world is constituted, Falleix will be forgotten. ”

“ The words were spoken with such sincerity of accent, that poor Esther looked at the old man with a compassion in her eyes that almost maddened him. Lovers, like martyrs, feel a brotherhood in their sufferings! Nothing in the world gives such a sense of kindred as community of sorrow. ”

“ A superficial observer, walking about Paris, wonders who the fools can be that buy the fabulous flowers that grace the illustrious bouquetiere's shop window, and the choice products displayed by Chevet of European fame—the only purveyor who can vie with the Rocher de Cancale in a real and delicious Revue des deux Mondes.
Well, every day in Paris a hundred or more passions a la Nucingen come into being, and find expression in offering such rarities as queens dare not purchase, presented, kneeling, to baggages who, to use Asie's word, like to cut a dash. ”

“ If I were riveted for the rest of my days to my old chain, I fancy I could stay there resigned so long as I could say, 'He is gay, he is at Court.' My soul and mind would triumph, while my carcase was given over to the jailers! You are a mere female; you love like a female! But in a courtesan, as in all degraded creatures, love should be a means to motherhood, in spite of Nature, which has stricken you with barrenness! ”

“ But, my dear, I have never been so cruelly, so deeply, so utterly scorned by brutality as I am by this great skinful of port wine.
"When he is tipsy he goes away—'not to be unpleasant,' as he tells Adele, and not to be 'under two powers at once,' wine and woman. He takes advantage of my carriage; he uses it more than I do.—Oh! if only we could see him under the table to-night! But he can drink ten bottles and only be fuddled; when his eyes are full, he still sees clearly." ”

“ The sham lawyer's face remained expressionless, impassible; 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-Noble?"
"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. ”

“ I am not in my boudoir here, I am at the opera. If you were not a barrel made by Huret or Fichet, metamorphosed into a man by some trick of nature, you would not make so much noise in a box with a woman who is fond of music. ”

“ Monsieur de Nucingen, a banker and nothing more, having no inventiveness outside his business, like most bankers, had no faith in anything but sound security. In matters of art he had the good sense to go, cash in hand, to experts in every branch, and had recourse to the best architect, the best surgeon, the greatest connoisseur in pictures or statues, the cleverest lawyer, when he wished to build a house, to attend to his health, to purchase a work of art or an estate. ”

“ Esther, to attract his attention, pretended to throw one of the pills.
"He is doomed by his nature to die thus," said she, as she threw the pill, which Romeo crushed between his teeth.
The dog made no sound, he rolled over, and was stark dead. It was all over while Esther spoke these words of epitaph.
"Good God!" shrieked Madame du Val-Noble.
"You have a cab waiting. Carry away the departed Romeo," said Esther. "His death would make a commotion here. I have given him to you, and you have lost him—advertise for him. Make haste; you will have your fifty thousand francs this evening." ”

“ So the much-daring leading dancer went round between the acts and renewed acquaintance with Esther, who would talk only on general subjects.
"And where have you come back from, my dear child?" asked Tullia, who could not restrain her curiosity.
"Oh, I was for five years in a castle in the Alps with an Englishman, as jealous as a tiger, a nabob; I called him a nabot, a dwarf, for he was not so big as le bailli de Ferrette.
"And then I came across a banker—from a savage to salvation, as Florine might say. And now here I am in Paris again; I long so for amusement that I mean to have a rare time. ”

“ At about half-past nine in the evening Esther could see Lucien enter the Countess' box, with a care-laden brow, pale, and with almost drawn features. These symptoms of mental anguish were legible only to Esther. The knowledge of a man's countenance is, to the woman who loves him, like that of the sea to a sailor. ”

“ A banker is practised in business matters; he studies and plans them, and pulls the wires of various interests, just as a playwright trains his intelligence in combining situations, studying his actors, giving life to his dramatic figures.
We should no more look for powers of conversation in the Baron de Nucingen than for the imagery of a poet in the brain of a mathematician. How many poets occur in an age, who are either good prose writers, or as witty in the intercourse of daily life as Madame Cornuel? ”

“ Pooh! he was a strong as a mountain. Always distrust men who say they have a liver complaint. I will never listen to a man who talks of his liver.—I have had too much of livers—who cannot die. My nabob robbed me; he died without making a will, and the family turned me out of doors like a leper.—So, then, I said to my fat friend here, 'Pay for two!'—You may as well call me Joan of Arc; I have ruined England, and perhaps I shall die at the stake——"
"Of love?" said Tullia.
"And burnt alive," answered Esther, and the question made her thoughtful. ”

“ If a speculator blows his brains out, if a stockbroker bolts, if a lawyer makes off with the fortune of a hundred families—which is far worse than killing a man—if a banker is insolvent, all these catastrophes are forgotten in Paris in few months, and buried under the oceanic surges of the great city. ”

“ Your marriage is broken off beyond all hope of reconciliation. Never set foot again in the Hotel de Grandlieu. To marry Clotilde you must wait till her father dies, and he is too selfish to die yet awhile. Old whist-players sit at table—the card-table—very late.
"Clotilde is setting out for Italy with Madeleine de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu. The poor girl is so madly in love with you, my dear fellow, that they have to keep an eye on her; she was bent on coming to see you, and had plotted an escape. That may comfort you in misfortune!"
Lucien made no reply; he sat gazing at Rastignac. ”

“ But keep a tight rein on Eugenie; she will do any earthly thing for money; she is a dreadful creature!"
"An' vat of you?"
"I," said Asie, "I make both ends meet."
Nucingen, the astute financier, had a bandage over his eyes; he allowed himself to be led like a child. The sight of that spotless and adorable Esther wiping her eyes and pricking in the stitches of her embroidery as demurely as an innocent girl, revived in the amorous old man the sensations he had experienced in the Forest of Vincennes; he would have given her the key of his safe. ”

“ Supposing I were to say to you, 'You are less intolerable this evening than you were yesterday—we will go home?'—Well, from the way you puff and sigh—for I feel you if I don't listen to you—I perceive that you have eaten an enormous dinner, and your digestion is at work. Let me instruct you—for I cost you enough to give some advice for your money now and then—let me tell you, my dear fellow, that a man whose digestion is so troublesome as yours is, is not justified in telling his mistress that she is pretty at unseemly hours. ”

“ The high politics of money-making consist in forcing the States of Europe to issue loans at twenty or at ten per cent, in making that twenty or ten per cent by the use of public funds, in squeezing industry on a vast scale by buying up raw material, in throwing a rope to the first founder of a business just to keep him above water till his drowned-out enterprise is safely landed—in short, in all the great battles for money-getting. ”

“ In short, she loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who say they love, who often think they love best, dance, waltz, and flirt with other men, dress for the world, and look for a harvest of concupiscent glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved miracles of true love. ”

“ So one morning early in the year he rose early, locked himself into his room, and composed the following letter in very good French; for though he spoke the language very badly, he could write it very well:—
"DEAR ESTHER, the flower of my thoughts and the only joy of my
life, when I told you that I loved you as I love my daughter, I
deceived you, I deceived myself. I only wished to express the
holiness of my sentiments, which are unlike those felt by other
men, in the first place, because I am an old man, and also because
I have never loved till now. ”

“ The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit. Peyrade was visibly absent-minded. Of the men about town who give life to a supper, only Rastignac and Lucien were present. Lucien was gloomy and absorbed in thought; Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper, ate and drank with the hope of recovering them later. The three women, stricken by this chill, looked at each other. Dulness deprived the dishes of all relish. Suppers, like plays and books, have their good and bad luck. ”

“ Human justice, and Paris justice, that is to say, the most suspicious, keenest, cleverest, and omniscient type of justice—too clever, indeed, for it insists on interpreting the law at every turn—was at last on the point of laying its hand on the agents of this horrible intrigue.
The Baron of Nucingen, on recognizing the evidence of poison, and failing to find his seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, imagined that one of two persons whom he greatly disliked—either Paccard or Europe—was guilty of the crime. In his first impulse of rage he flew to the prefecture of police. ”

“ Nucingen for Esther.
And so those who know their Paris are quite aware of the state of affairs when, in the Champs-Elysees—that bustling and mongrel bazaar—they meet some woman in a hired fly whom six months or a year before they had seen in a magnificent and dazzling carriage, turned out in the most luxurious style.
"If you fall on Sainte-Pelagie, you must contrive to rebound on the Bois de Boulogne," said Florine, laughing with Blondet over the little Vicomte de Portenduere.
Some clever women never run the risk of this contrast. ”

“ Perfect virtue, the dream of Moliere, an Alceste, is exceedingly rare; still, it is to be found everywhere, even in Paris. The "good fellow" is the product of a certain facility of nature which proves nothing. A man is a good fellow, as a cat is silky, as a slipper is made to slip on to the foot. And so, in the meaning given to the word by a kept woman, Falleix ought to have warned his mistress of his approaching bankruptcy and have given her enough to live upon. ”

“ But as there are no recognized experts in intrigue, no connoisseurs in love affairs, a banker finds himself in difficulties when he is in love, and much puzzled as to the management of a woman. So Nucingen could think of no better method than that he had hitherto pursued—to give a sum of money to some Frontin, male or female, to act and think for him. ”

“ This is one of the shades invented to mark a degree of intimacy, to repel the audacity of French familiarity, and humiliate conceit—"tell me, Henri, I am in such a desperate difficulty that I can only ask advice of an old friend who understands business, and you have practice and experience. My daughter Clotilde, as you know, is in love with that little Rubempre, whom I have been almost compelled to accept as her promised husband. I have always been averse to the marriage; however, Madame de Grandlieu could not bear to thwart Clotilde's passion. ”

“ No. if you could but see him asking my commands, to know at what hour he may come—to take me by surprise, of course—and pouring out respectful speeches like a so-called gentleman, you would say, 'Why, he adores her!' and there is not a woman in the world who would not say the same."
"And they envy us, my dear!" exclaimed Esther.
"Ah, well!" sighed Madame du Val-Noble; "in the course of our lives we learn more or less how little men value us. ”

“ Paccard thinks of settling sometimes; he has no encumbrances on his hands, and not much on his conscience; you might suit each other," replied Carlos.
"Go back to Valenciennes! What are you thinking of, monsieur?" cried Europe in alarm.
Europe, who was born at Valenciennes, the child of very poor parents, had been sent at seven years of age to a spinning factory, where the demands of modern industry had impaired her physical strength, just as vice had untimely depraved her. ”