“Oh!” exclaimed Contenson, “he fingered the three hundred thousand francs the day when Esther was arrested; he was in the cab. I remember those eyes, that brow, and those marks of the smallpox.”
“Oh! what a fortune my Lydie might have had!” cried Peyrade.
“You may still play the nabob,” said Corentin. “To keep an eye on Esther you must keep up her intimacy with Val-Noble. She was really Lucien’s mistress.”
“They have got more than five hundred thousand francs out of Nucingen already,” said Contenson.
“And they want as much again,” Corentin went on. “The Rubempre estate is to cost a million.—Daddy,” added he, slapping Peyrade on the shoulder, “you may get more than a hundred thousand francs to settle on Lydie.”
“Don’t tell me that, Corentin. If your scheme should fail, I cannot tell what I might not do——”
“You will have it by to-morrow perhaps! The Abbe, my dear fellow, is most astute; we shall have to kiss his spurs; he is a very superior devil. But I have him sure enough. He is not a fool, and he will knock under. Try to be a gaby as well as a nabob, and fear nothing.”
In the evening of this day, when the opposing forces had met face to face on level ground, Lucien spent the evening at the Hotel Grandlieu. The party was a large one. In the face of all the assembly, the Duchess kept Lucien at her side for some time, and was most kind to him.
“You are going away for a little while?” said she.
“Yes, Madame la Duchesse. My sister, in her anxiety to promote my marriage, has made great sacrifices, and I have been enabled to repurchase the lands of the Rubempres, to reconstitute the whole estate. But I have found in my Paris lawyer a very clever man, who has managed to save me from the extortionate terms that the holders would have asked if they had known the name of the purchaser.”