“I should let that bill go dishonored,” said her friend, smiling.
“Do as I tell you, and go at once. I hear a carriage coming. It is Nucingen, a man who will go mad with joy! Yes, he loves me!—Why do we not love those who love us, for indeed they do all they can to please us?”
“Ah, that is the question!” said Madame du Val-Noble. “It is the old story of the herring, which is the most puzzling fish that swims.”
“Why?”
“Well, no one could ever find out.”
“Get along, my dear!—I must ask for your fifty thousand francs.”
“Good-bye then.”
For three days past, Esther’s ways with the Baron de Nucingen had completely changed. The monkey had become a cat, the cat had become a woman. Esther poured out treasures of affection on the old man; she was quite charming. Her way of addressing him, with a total absence of mischief or bitterness, and all sorts of tender insinuation, had carried conviction to the banker’s slow wit; she called him Fritz, and he believed that she loved him.
“My poor Fritz, I have tried you sorely,” said she. “I have teased you shamefully. Your patience has been sublime. You loved me, I see, and I will reward you. I like you now, I do not know how it is, but I should prefer you to a young man. It is the result of experience perhaps.—In the long run we discover at last that pleasure is the coin of the soul; and it is not more flattering to be loved for the sake of pleasure than it is to be loved for the sake of money.
“Besides, young men are too selfish; they think more of themselves than of us; while you, now, think only of me. I am all your life to you. And I will take nothing more from you. I want to prove to you how disinterested I am.”