Scenes from a Courtesan's Life. Honore de Balzac
his well-known talents and acumen made him a valuable auxiliary, and the unrecognized chiefs of the political police had kept his name on their lists. Contenson, like his fellows, was only a super in the dramas of which the leading parts were played by his chief when a political investigation was in the wind.
“Go ‘vay,” said Nucingen, dismissing his secretary with a wave of the hand.
“Why should this man live in a mansion and I in a lodging?” wondered Contenson to himself. “He has dodged his creditors three times; he has robbed them; I never stole a farthing; I am a cleverer fellow than he is——”
“Contenson, mein freund,” said the Baron, “you haf vat you call pleed me of one tousand-franc note.”
“My girl owed God and the devil——”
“Vat, you haf a girl, a mistress!” cried Nucingen, looking at Contenson with admiration not unmixed with envy.
“I am but sixty-six,” replied Contenson, as a man whom vice has kept young as a bad example.
“And vat do she do?”
“She helps me,” said Contenson. “When a man is a thief, and an honest woman loves him, either she becomes a thief or he becomes an honest man. I have always been a spy.”
“And you vant money—alvays?” asked Nucingen.
“Always,” said Contenson, with a smile. “It is part of my business to want money, as it is yours to make it; we shall easily come to an understanding. You find me a little, and I will undertake to spend it. You shall be the well, and I the bucket.”
“Vould you like to haf one note for fife hundert franc?”
“What a question! But what a fool I am!—You do not offer it out of a disinterested desire to repair the slights of Fortune?”
“Not at all. I gif it besides the one tousand-franc note vat you pleed me off. Dat makes fifteen hundert franc vat I gif you.”
“Very good, you give me the thousand francs I have had and you will add five hundred francs.”
“Yust so,” said Nucingen, nodding.
“But that still leaves only five hundred francs,” said Contenson imperturbably.
“Dat I gif,” added the Baron.
“That I take. Very good; and what, Monsieur le Baron, do you want for it?”
“I haf been told dat dere vas in Paris one man vat could find the voman vat I lof, and dat you know his address. … A real master to spy.”
“Very true.”
“Vell den, gif me dat address, and I gif you fife hundert franc.”
“Where are they?” said Contenson.
“Here dey are,” said the Baron, drawing a note out of his pocket.
“All right, hand them over,” said Contenson, holding out his hand.
“Noting for noting! Le us see de man, and you get de money; you might sell to me many address at dat price.”
Contenson began to laugh.
“To be sure, you have a right to think that of me,” said he, with an air of blaming himself. “The more rascally our business is, the more honesty is necessary. But look here, Monsieur le Baron, make it six hundred, and I will give you a bit of advice.”
“Gif it, and trust to my generosity.”
“I will risk it,” Contenson said, “but it is playing high. In such matters, you see, we have to work underground. You say, ‘Quick march!’—You are rich; you think that money can do everything. Well, money is something, no doubt. Still, money can only buy men, as the two or three best heads in our force so often say. And there are many things you would never think of which money cannot buy.—You cannot buy good luck. So good police work is not done in this style. Will you show yourself in a carriage with me? We should be seen. Chance is just as often for us as against us.”
“Really-truly?” said the Baron.
“Why, of course, sir. A horseshoe picked up in the street led the chief of the police to the discovery of the infernal machine. Well, if we were to go to-night in a hackney coach to Monsieur de Saint-Germain, he would not like to see you walk in any more than you would like to be seen going there.”
“Dat is true,” said the Baron.
“Ah, he is the greatest of the great! such another as the famous Corentin, Fouche’s right arm, who was, some say, his natural son, born while he was still a priest; but that is nonsense. Fouche knew how to be a priest as he knew how to be a Minister. Well, you will not get this man to do anything for you, you see, for less than ten thousand-franc notes—think of that.—But he will do the job, and do it well. Neither seen nor heard, as they say. I ought to give Monsieur de Saint-Germanin notice, and he will fix a time for your meeting in some place where no one can see or hear, for it is a dangerous game to play policeman for private interests. Still, what is to be said? He is a good fellow, the king of good fellows, and a man who has undergone much persecution, and for having saving his country too!—like me, like all who helped to save it.”
“Vell den, write and name de happy day,” said the Baron, smiling at his humble jest.
“And Monsieur le Baron will allow me to drink his health?” said Contenson, with a manner at once cringing and threatening.
“Shean,” cried the Baron to the gardener, “go and tell Chorge to sent me one twenty francs, and pring dem to me——”
“Still, Monsieur le Baron, if you have no more information than you have just given me, I doubt whether the great man can be of any use to you.”
“I know off oders!” replied the Baron with a cunning look.
“I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron,” said Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. “I shall have the honor of calling again to tell Georges where you are to go this evening, for we never write anything in such cases when they are well managed.”
“It is funny how sharp dese rascals are!” said the Baron to himself; “it is de same mit de police as it is in buss’niss.”
When he left the Baron, Contenson went quietly from the Rue Saint-Lazare to the Rue Saint-Honore, as far as the Cafe David. He looked in through the windows, and saw an old man who was known there by the name of le Pere Canquoelle.
The Cafe David, at the corner of the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Saint-Honore, enjoyed a certain celebrity during the first thirty years of the century, though its fame was limited to the quarter known as that of the Bourdonnais. Here certain old retired merchants, and large shopkeepers still in trade, were wont to meet—the Camusots, the Lebas, the Pilleraults, the Popinots, and a few house-owners like little old Molineux. Now and again old Guillaume might be seen there, coming from the Rue du Colombier. Politics were discussed in a quiet way, but cautiously, for the opinions of the Cafe David were liberal. The gossip of the neighborhood was repeated, men so urgently feel the need of laughing at each other!
This cafe, like all cafes for that matter, had its eccentric character in the person of the said Pere Canquoelle, who had been regular in his attendance there since 1811, and who seemed to be so completely in harmony with the good folks who assembled there, that they all talked politics in his presence without reserve. Sometimes this old fellow, whose guilelessness was the subject of much laughter to the customers, would disappear for a month or two; but his absence never surprised anybody, and was always attributed to his infirmities or his great age, for he looked more than sixty in 1811.
“What has become of old Canquoelle?” one or another would ask of the manageress at the desk.
“I quite expect that one fine day we shall read in the advertisement-sheet that he is dead,” she would reply.
Old Canquoelle bore a perpetual