“If you swear never to tell who let you in, I agree. But I warn you of one thing.—Madame is as strong as a Turk, she is madly in love with Monsieur de Rubempre, and if you paid a million francs in banknotes she would never be unfaithful to him. It is very silly, but that is her way when she is in love; she is worse than an honest woman, I tell you! When she goes out for a drive in the woods at night, monsieur very seldom stays at home. She is gone out this evening, so I can hide you in my room. If madame comes in alone, I will fetch you; you can wait in the drawing-room. I will not lock the door into her room, and then—well, the rest is your concern—so be ready.”
“I shall pay you the twenty-fife tousand francs in dat drawing-room.—You gife—I gife!”
“Indeed!” said Europe, “you are so confiding as all that? On my word!”
“Oh, you will hafe your chance to fleece me yet. We shall be friends.”
“Well, then, be in the Rue Taitbout at midnight; but bring thirty thousand francs about you. A waiting-woman’s honesty, like a hackney cab, is much dearer after midnight.”
“It shall be more prudent if I gif you a cheque on my bank——”
“No, no” said Europe. “Notes, or the bargain is off.”
So at one in the morning the Baron de Nucingen, hidden in the garret where Europe slept, was suffering all the anxieties of a man who hopes to triumph. His blood seemed to him to be tingling in his toe-nails, and his head ready to burst like an overheated steam engine.
“I had more dan one hundert tousand crowns’ vort of enjoyment—in my mind,” he said to du Tillet when telling him the story.
He listened to every little noise in the street, and at two in the morning he heard his mistress’ carriage far away on the boulevard. His heart beat vehemently under his silk waistcoat as the gate turned on its hinges. He was about to behold the heavenly, the glowing face of his Esther!—the clatter of the carriage-step and the slam of the door struck upon his heart. He was more agitated in expectation of this supreme moment than he would have been if his fortune had been at stake.