“Then it is settled, my pigeon?” said Asie.

“Done for fifty tousant franc insteat of ein hundert tousant!—­An’ I shall give you fife hundert tousant de day after my triumph.”

“Very good, I will set to work,” said Asie.  “And you may come, monsieur,” she added respectfully.  “You will find madame as soft already as a cat’s back, and perhaps inclined to make herself pleasant.”

“Go, go, my goot voman,” said the banker, rubbing his hands.

And after seeing the horrible mulatto out of the house, he said to himself: 

“How vise it is to hafe much money.”

He sprang out of bed, went down to his office, and resumed the conduct of his immense business with a light heart.

Nothing could be more fatal to Esther than the steps taken by Nucingen.  The hapless girl, in defending her fidelity, was defending her life.  This very natural instinct was what Carlos called prudery.  Now Asie, not without taking such precautions as usual in such cases, went off to report to Carlos the conference she had held with the Baron, and all the profit she had made by it.  The man’s rage, like himself, was terrible; he came forthwith to Esther, in a carriage with the blinds drawn, driving into the courtyard.  Still almost white with fury, the double-dyed forger went straight into the poor girl’s room; she looked at him—­she was standing up—­and she dropped on to a chair as though her legs had snapped.

“What is the matter, monsieur?” said she, quaking in every limb.

“Leave us, Europe,” said he to the maid.

Esther looked at the woman as a child might look at its mother, from whom some assassin had snatched it to murder it.

“Do you know where you will send Lucien?” Carlos went on when he was alone with Esther.

“Where?” asked she in a low voice, venturing to glance at her executioner.

“Where I come from, my beauty.”  Esther, as she looked at the man, saw red.  “To the hulks,” he added in an undertone.

Esther shut her eyes and stretched herself out, her arms dropped, and she turned white.  The man rang, and Prudence appeared.

“Bring her round,” he said coldly; “I have not done.”

He walked up and down the drawing-room while waiting.  Prudence-Europe was obliged to come and beg monsieur to lift Esther on to the bed; he carried her with the ease that betrayed athletic strength.

They had to procure all the chemist’s strongest stimulants to restore Esther to a sense of her woes.  An hour later the poor girl was able to listen to this living nightmare, seated at the foot of her bed, his eyes fixed and glowing like two spots of molten lead.