“Oh, never worry yourself about those hounds!  They have all made no end of money out of me.—­Here are some tickets for the Varietes for your girls—­a good box on the second tier.  If any one should ask for me this evening before I come in, show them up all the same.  Adele, my old maid, will be here; I will send her round.”

Madame du Val-Noble, having neither mother nor aunt, was obliged to have recourse to her maid—­equally on foot—­to play the part of a Saint-Esteve with the unknown follower whose conquest was to enable her to rise again in the world.  She went to dine with Theodore Gaillard, who, as it happened, had a spree on that day, that is to say, a dinner given by Nathan in payment of a bet he had lost, one of those orgies when a man says to his guests, “You can bring a woman.”

It was not without strong reasons that Peyrade had made up his mind to rush in person on to the field of this intrigue.  At the same time, his curiosity, like Corentin’s, was so keenly excited, that, even in the absence of reasons, he would have tried to play a part in the drama.

At this moment Charles X.’s policy had completed its last evolution.  After confiding the helm of State to Ministers of his own choosing, the King was preparing to conquer Algiers, and to utilize the glory that should accrue as a passport to what has been called his Coup d’Etat.  There were no more conspiracies at home; Charles X. believed he had no domestic enemies.  But in politics, as at sea, a calm may be deceptive.

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 passion?” 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-balls 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?”