“You, Europe, are to go out for madame in anything that concerns her dress, and you must do her sewing from motives of economy.  Finally, nobody, not even the most insignificant creature, is ever to set foot in this apartment.  You two, between you, must do all there is to be done.

“And you, my beauty,” he went on, speaking to Esther, “when you want to go out in your carriage by night, you can tell Europe; she will know where to find your men, for you will have a servant in livery, of my choosing, like those two slaves.”

Esther and Lucien had not a word ready.  They listened to the Spaniard, and looked at the two precious specimens to whom he gave his orders.  What was the secret hold to which he owed the submission and servitude that were written on these two faces—­one mischievously recalcitrant, the other so malignantly cruel?

He read the thoughts of Lucien and Esther, who seemed paralyzed, as Paul and Virginia might have been at the sight of two dreadful snakes, and he said in a good-natured undertone: 

“You can trust them as you can me; keep no secrets from them; that will flatter them.—­Go to your work, my little Asie,” he added to the cook.—­“And you, my girl, lay another place,” he said to Europe; “the children cannot do less than ask papa to breakfast.”

When the two women had shut the door, and the Spaniard could hear Europe moving to and fro, he turned to Lucien and Esther, and opening a wide palm, he said: 

“I hold them in the hollow of my hand.”

The words and gesture made his hearers shudder.

“Where did you pick them up?” cried Lucien.

“What the devil!  I did not look for them at the foot of the throne!” replied the man.  “Europe has risen from the mire, and is afraid of sinking into it again.  Threaten them with Monsieur Abbe when they do not please you, and you will see them quake like mice when the cat is mentioned.  I am used to taming wild beasts,” he added with a smile.

“You strike me as being a demon,” said Esther, clinging closer to Lucien.

“My child, I tried to win you to heaven; but a repentant Magdalen is always a practical joke on the Church.  If ever there were one, she would relapse into the courtesan in Paradise.  You have gained this much:  you are forgotten, and have acquired the manners of a lady, for you learned in the convent what you never could have learned in the ranks of infamy in which you were living.—­You owe me nothing,” said he, observing a beautiful look of gratitude on Esther’s face.  “I did it all for him,” and he pointed to Lucien.  “You are, you will always be, you will die a prostitute; for in spite of the delightful theories of cattle-breeders, you can never, here below, become anything but what you are.  The man who feels bumps is right.  You have the bump of love.”

The Spaniard, it will be seen, was a fatalist, like Napoleon, Mahomet, and many other great politicians.  It is a strange thing that most men of action have a tendency to fatalism, just as most great thinkers have a tendency to believe in Providence.