This wretched convict, embodying the poem that has smiled on many a poet’s fancy—­on Moore, on Lord Byron, on Mathurin, on Canalis—­the demon who has drawn an angel down to hell to refresh him with dews stolen from heaven,—­this Jacques Collin will be seen, by the reader who has understood that iron soul, to have sacrificed his own life for seven years past.  His vast powers, absorbed in Lucien, acted solely for Lucien; he lived for his progress, his loves, his ambitions.  To him, Lucien was his own soul made visible.

It was Trompe-la-Mort who dined with the Grandlieus, stole into ladies’ boudoirs, and loved Esther by proxy.  In fact, in Lucien he saw Jacques Collin, young, handsome, noble, and rising to the dignity of an ambassador.

Trompe-la-Mort had realized the German superstition of a doppelganger by means of a spiritual paternity, a phenomenon which will be quite intelligible to those women who have ever truly loved, who have felt their soul merge in that of the man they adore, who have lived his life, whether noble or infamous, happy or unhappy, obscure or brilliant; who, in defiance of distance, have felt a pain in their leg if he were wounded in his; who if he fought a duel would have been aware of it; and who, to put the matter in a nutshell, did not need to be told he was unfaithful to know it.

As he went back to his cell Jacques Collin said to himself, “The boy is being examined.”

And he shivered—­he who thought no more of killing a man than a laborer does of drinking.

“Has he been able to see his mistresses?” he wondered.  “Has my aunt succeeded in catching those damned females?  Have the Duchesses and Countesses bestirred themselves and prevented his being examined?  Has Lucien had my instructions?  And if ill-luck will have it that he is cross-questioned, how will he carry it off?  Poor boy, and I have brought him to this!  It is that rascal Paccard and that sneak Europe who have caused all this rumpus by collaring the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs for the certificate Nucingen gave Esther.  That precious pair tripped us up at the last step; but I will make them pay dear for their pranks.

“One day more and Lucien would have been a rich man; he might have married his Clotilde de Grandlieu.—­Then the boy would have been all my own!—­And to think that our fate depends on a look, on a blush of Lucien’s under Camusot’s eye, who sees everything, and has all a judge’s wits about him!  For when he showed me the letters we tipped each other a wink in which we took each other’s measure, and he guessed that I can make Lucien’s lady-loves fork out.”

This soliloquy lasted for three hours.  His torments were so great that they were too much for that frame of iron and vitriol; Jacques Collin, whose brain felt on fire with insanity, suffered such fearful thirst that he unconsciously drank up all the water contained in one of the pails with which the cell was supplied, forming, with the bed, all its furniture.