“Vat you are cruel!” cried the Baron, recognizing the profound truth of this medical argument.

“Cruel!” echoed Esther, still looking at Lucien.  “Have you not consulted Bianchon, Desplein, old Haudry?—­Since you have had a glimpse of future happiness, do you know what you seem like to me?”

“No—­vat?”

“A fat old fellow wrapped in flannel, who walks every hour from his armchair to the window to see if the thermometer has risen to the degree marked ‘Silkworms,’ the temperature prescribed by his physician.”

“You are really an ungrateful slut!” cried the Baron, in despair at hearing a tune, which, however, amorous old men not unfrequently hear at the opera.

“Ungrateful!” retorted Esther.  “What have you given me till now?  A great deal of annoyance.  Come, papa!  Can I be proud of you?  You! you are proud of me; I wear your livery and badge with an air.  You paid my debts?  So you did.  But you have grabbed so many millions—­come, you need not sulk; you admitted that to me—­that you need not think twice of that.  And this is your chief title to fame.  A baggage and a thief —­a well-assorted couple!

“You have built a splendid cage for a parrot that amuses you.  Go and ask a Brazilian cockatoo what gratitude it owes to the man who placed it in a gilded cage.—­Don’t look at me like that; you are just like a Buddist Bonze.

“Well, you show your red-and-white cockatoo to all Paris.  You say, ’Does anybody else in Paris own such a parrot?  And how well it talks, how cleverly it picks its words!’ If du Tillet comes in, it says at once, ’How’do, little swindler!’—­Why, you are as happy as a Dutchman who has grown an unique tulip, as an old nabob pensioned off in Asia by England, when a commercial traveler sells him the first Swiss snuff-box that opens in three places.

“You want to win my heart?  Well, now, I will tell you how to do it.”

“Speak, speak, dere is noting I shall not do for you.  I lofe to be fooled by you.”

“Be young, be handsome, be like Lucien de Rubempre over there by your wife, and you shall have gratis what you can never buy with all your millions!”

“I shall go ’vay, for really you are too bat dis evening!” said the banker, with a lengthened face.

“Very well, good-night then,” said Esther.  “Tell Georches to make your pillows very high and place your fee low, for you look apoplectic this evening.—­You cannot say, my dear, that I take no interest in your health.”

The Baron was standing up, and held the door-knob in his hand.

“Here, Nucingen,” said Esther, with an imperious gesture.

The Baron bent over her with dog-like devotion.

“Do you want to see me very sweet, and giving you sugar-and-water, and petting you in my house, this very evening, old monster?”

“You shall break my heart!”

“Break your heart—­you mean bore you,” she went on.  “Well, bring me Lucien that I may invite him to our Belshazzar’s feast, and you may be sure he will not fail to come.  If you succeed in that little transaction, I will tell you that I love you, my fat Frederic, in such plain terms that you cannot but believe me.”