“That young fellow must have a very strong hand behind him.”

Thus Lucien was almost a person of importance.  His passion for Esther had, in fact, helped him greatly to play his part of a serious man.  A habit of this kind guards an ambitious man from many follies; having no connection with any woman of fashion, he cannot be caught by the reactions of mere physical nature on his moral sense.

As to happiness, Lucien’s was the realization of a poet’s dreams—­a penniless poet’s, hungering in a garret.  Esther, the ideal courtesan in love, while she reminded Lucien of Coralie, the actress with whom he had lived for a year, completely eclipsed her.  Every loving and devoted woman invents seclusion, incognito, the life of a pearl in the depths of the sea; but to most of them this is no more than one of the delightful whims which supply a subject for conversation; a proof of love which they dream of giving, but do not give; whereas Esther, to whom her first enchantment was ever new, who lived perpetually in the glow of Lucien’s first incendiary glance, never, in four yours, had an impulse of curiosity.  She gave her whole mind to the task of adhering to the terms of the programme prescribed by the sinister Spaniard.  Nay, more!  In the midst of intoxicating happiness she never took unfair advantage of the unlimited power that the constantly revived desire of a lover gives to the woman he loves to ask Lucien a single question regarding Herrera, of whom indeed she lived in constant awe; she dared not even think of him.  The elaborate benefactions of that extraordinary man, to whom Esther undoubtedly owed her feminine accomplishment and her well-bred manner, struck the poor girl as advances on account of hell.

“I shall have to pay for all this some day,” she would tell herself with dismay.

Every fine night she went out in a hired carriage.  She was driven with a rapidity no doubt insisted on by the Abbe, in one or another of the beautiful woods round Paris, Boulogne, Vincennes, Romainville, or Ville-d’Avray, often with Lucien, sometimes alone with Europe.  There she could walk about without fear; for when Lucien was not with her, she was attended by a servant dressed like the smartest of outriders, armed with a real knife, whose face and brawny build alike proclaimed him a ruthless athlete.  This protector was also provided, in the fashion of English footmen, with a stick, but such as single-stick players use, with which they can keep off more than one assailant.  In obedience to an order of the Abbe’s, Esther had never spoken a word to this escort.  When madame wished to go home, Europe gave a call; the man in waiting whistled to the driver, who was always within hearing.

When Lucien was walking with Esther, Europe and this man remained about a hundred paces behind, like two of the infernal minions that figure in the Thousand and One Nights, which enchanters place at the service of their devotees.