sion in her eyes that almost maddened
him. Lovers, like martyrs, feel a brotherhood in their sufferings!
Nothing in the world gives such a sense of kindred as community of
sorrow.

"Poor man!" said she, "he really loves."

As he heard the words, misunderstanding their meaning, the Baron turned
pale, the blood tingled in his veins, he breathed the airs of heaven. At
his age a millionaire, for such a sensation, will pay as much gold as a
woman can ask.

"I lofe you like vat I lofe my daughter," said he. "An' I feel
dere"--and he laid her hand over his heart--"dat I shall not bear to see
you anyting but happy."

"If you would only be a father to me, I would love you very much; I
would never leave you; and you would see that I am not a bad woman, not
grasping or greedy, as I must seem to you now----"

"You hafe done some little follies," said the Baron, "like all dose
pretty vomen--dat is all. Say no more about dat. It is our pusiness to
make money for you. Be happy! I shall be your fater for some days yet,
for I know I must make you accustom' to my old carcase."

"Really!" she exclaimed, springing on to Nucingen's knees, and clinging
to him with her arm round his neck.

"Really!" repeated he, trying to force a smile.

She kissed his forehead; she believed in an impossible combination--she
might remain untouched and see Lucien.

She was so coaxing to the banker that she was La Torpille once more.
She fairly bewitched the old man, who promised to be a father to her
for forty days. Those forty days were to be employed in acquiring and
arranging the house in the Rue Saint-Georges.

When he was in the street again, as he went home, the Baron said to
himself, "I am an old flat."

But though in Esther's presence he was a mere child, away from her he
resumed his lynx's skin; just as the gambler (in _le Joueur_) becomes
affectionate to Angelique when he has not a liard.

"A half a million francs I hafe paid, and I hafe not yet seen vat her
leg is like.--Dat is too silly! but, happily, nobody shall hafe known
it!" said he to himself three weeks after.

And he made great resolutions to come to the point with the woman who
had cost him so dear; then, in Esther's presence once more, he spent all
the time he could spare her in making up for the roughness of his first
words.

"After all," said he, at the end of a month, "I cannot be de fater
eternal!"

Towards the end of the month of December 1829, just before install