In Paris, as in the provinces, everything is known.  The police of the Rue de Jerusalem are not so efficient as the world itself, for every one is a spy on every one else, though unconsciously.  Carlos had fully understood the danger of Lucien’s position during and after the episode of the Rue Taitbout.

No position can be more dreadful than that in which Madame du Val-Noble now found herself; and the phrase to be on the loose, or, as the French say, left on foot, expresses it perfectly.  The recklessness and extravagance of these women precludes all care for the future.  In that strange world, far more witty and amusing than might be supposed, only such women as are not gifted with that perfect beauty which time can hardly impair, and which is quite unmistakable—­only such women, in short, as can be loved merely as a fancy, ever think of old age and save a fortune.  The handsomer they are, the more improvident they are.

“Are you afraid of growing ugly that you are saving money?” was a speech of Florine’s to Mariette, which may give a clue to one cause of this thriftlessness.

Thus, if a speculator kills himself, or a spendthrift comes to the end of his resources, these women fall with hideous promptitude from audacious wealth to the utmost misery.  They throw themselves into the clutches of the old-clothes buyer, and sell exquisite jewels for a mere song; they run into debt, expressly to keep up a spurious luxury, in the hope of recovering what they have lost—­a cash-box to draw upon.  These ups and downs of their career account for the costliness of such connections, generally brought about as Asie had hooked (another word of her vocabulary) 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.  They bury themselves in horrible furnished lodgings, where they expiate their extravagance by such privations as are endured by travelers lost in a Sahara; but they never take the smallest fancy for economy.  They venture forth to masked balls; they take journeys into the provinces; they turn out well dressed on the boulevards when the weather is fine.  And then they find in each other the devoted kindness which is known only among proscribed races.  It costs a woman in luck no effort to bestow some help, for she says to herself, “I may be in the same plight by Sunday!”

However, the most efficient protector still is the purchaser of dress.  When this greedy money-lender finds herself the creditor, she stirs and works on the hearts of all the old men she knows in favor of the mortgaged creature in thin boots and a fine bonnet.