fectually that once Contenson did not recognize him.

Followed by Contenson dressed as a mulatto, Peyrade examined Esther and
her servants with an eye which, seeming heedless, took everything in.
Hence it quite naturally happened that in the side alley where the
carriage-company walk in fine dry weather, he was on the spot one day
when Esther met Madame du Val-Noble. Peyrade, his mulatto in livery
at his heels, was airing himself quite naturally, like a nabob who is
thinking of no one but himself, in a line with the two women, so as to
catch a few words of their conversation.

"Well, my dear child," said Esther to Madame du Val-Noble, "come and see
me. Nucingen owes it to himself not to leave his stockbroker's mistress
without a sou----"

"All the more so because it is said that he ruined Falleix," remarked
Theodore Gaillard, "and that we have every right to squeeze him."

"He dines with me to-morrow," said Esther; "come and meet him." Then she
added in an undertone:

"I can do what I like with him, and as yet he has not that!" and she put
the nail of a gloved finger under the prettiest of her teeth with the
click that is familiarly known to express with peculiar energy: "Just
nothing."

"You have him safe----"

"My dear, as yet he has only paid my debts."

"How mean!" cried Suzanne du Val-Noble.

"Oh!" said Esther, "I had debts enough to frighten a minister of
finance. Now, I mean to have thirty thousand a year before the first
stroke of midnight. Oh! he is excellent, I have nothing to complain
of. He does it well.--In a week we give a house-warming; you must
come.--That morning he is to make me a present of the lease of the house
in the Rue Saint-Georges. In decency, it is impossible to live in such
a house on less than thirty thousand francs a year--of my own, so as to
have them safe in case of accident. I have known poverty, and I want
no more of it. There are certain acquaintances one has had enough of at
once."

"And you, who used to say, 'My face is my fortune!'--How you have
changed!" exclaimed Suzanne.

"It is the air of Switzerland; you grow thrifty there.--Look here; go
there yourself, my dear! Catch a Swiss, and you may perhaps catch a
husband, for they have not yet learned what such women as we are can be.
And, at any rate, you may come back with a passion for investments in
the funds--a most respectable and elegant passion!--Good-bye."

Esther got into her carriage again, a handsome carriage