to them. Her blue-black and beautiful hair set off the
camellias. In short, this exquisite creature achieved all the effects
she had intended. She had no rival. She looked like the supreme
expression of that unbridled luxury which surrounded her in every form.
Then she was brilliantly witty. She ruled the orgy with the cold, calm
power that Habeneck displays when conducting at the Conservatoire, at
those concerts where the first musicians in Europe rise to the sublime
in interpreting Mozart and Beethoven.

But she observed with terror that Nucingen ate little, drank nothing,
and was quite the master of the house.

By midnight everybody was crazy. The glasses were broken that they might
never be used again; two of the Chinese curtains were torn; Bixiou was
drunk, for the second time in his life. No one could keep his feet,
the women were asleep on the sofas, and the guests were incapable of
carrying out the practical joke they had planned of escorting Esther
and Nucingen to the bedroom, standing in two lines with candles in their
hands, and singing _Buona sera_ from the _Barber of Seville_.

Nucingen simply gave Esther his hand. Bixiou, who saw them, though
tipsy, was still able to say, like Rivarol, on the occasion of the
Duc de Richelieu's last marriage, "The police must be warned; there is
mischief brewing here."

The jester thought he was jesting; he was a prophet.

Monsieur de Nucingen did not go home till Monday at about noon. But at
one o'clock his broker informed him that Mademoiselle Esther van Bogseck
had sold the bond bearing thirty thousand francs interest on Friday
last, and had just received the money.

"But, Monsieur le Baron, Derville's head-clerk called on me just as I
was settling this transfer; and after seeing Mademoiselle Esther's real
names, he told me she had come into a fortune of seven millions."

"Pooh!"

"Yes, she is the only heir to the old bill-discounter Gobseck.--Derville
will verify the facts. If your mistress' mother was the handsome Dutch
woman, _la Belle Hollandaise_, as they called her, she comes in for----"

"I know dat she is," cried the banker. "She tolt me all her life. I
shall write ein vort to Derville."

The Baron at down at his desk, wrote a line to Derville, and sent it by
one of his servants. Then, after going to the Bourse, he went back to
Esther's house at about three o'clock.

"Madame forbade our waking her on any pretence whatever. She is in
bed--asleep--