n indefinable and all powerful feeling that she
had been white and was now black, pure and was now impure, noble and
was now ignoble. Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her
unendurable. And when the Baron's passion had threatened her, she had
really thought of throwing herself out of the window. In short, she
loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who say
they love, who often think they love best, dance, waltz, and flirt with
other men, dress for the world, and look for a harvest of concupiscent
glances; but Esther, without any sacrifice, had achieved miracles of
true love. She had loved Lucien for six years as actresses love and
courtesans--women who, having rolled in mire and impurity, thirst for
something noble, for the self-devotion of true love, and who practice
exclusiveness--the only word for an idea so little known in real life.

Vanished nations, Greece, Rome, and the East, have at all times kept
women shut up; the woman who loves should shut herself up. So it may
easily be imagined that on quitting the palace of her fancy, where this
poem had been enacted, to go to this old man's "little palace," Esther
felt heartsick. Urged by an iron hand, she had found herself waist-deep
in disgrace before she had time to reflect; but for the past two days
she had been reflecting, and felt a mortal chill about her heart.

At the words, "End in the street," she started to her feet and said:

"In the street!--No, in the Seine rather."

"In the Seine? And what about Monsieur Lucien?" said Europe.

This single word brought Esther to her seat again; she remained in her
armchair, her eyes fixed on a rosette in the carpet, the fire in her
brain drying up her tears.

At four o'clock Nucingen found his angel lost in that sea of meditations
and resolutions whereon a woman's spirit floats, and whence she emerges
with utterances that are incomprehensible to those who have not sailed
it in her convoy.

"Clear your brow, meine Schone," said the Baron, sitting down by her.
"You shall hafe no more debts--I shall arrange mit Eugenie, an' in ein
mont you shall go 'vay from dese rooms and go to dat little palace.--Vas
a pretty hant.--Gife it me dat I shall kiss it." Esther gave him her
hand as a dog gives a paw. "Ach, ja! You shall gife de hant, but not de
heart, and it is dat heart I lofe!"

The words were spoken with such sincerity of accent, that poor Esther
looked at the old man with a compas