This letter posted, he went next to his man of business, a very acute fellow, full of resource, and withal honest.
Him he begged to personate a friend, to whom the visit of Mme. de Vandenesse should have been confided by Schmucke, aroused to a tardy suspicion by the fourfold repetition of the words, “I promise to pay ten thousand francs,” and who should have come to request from M. Nathan a bill for forty thousand francs in exchange. It was a risky game. Nathan might already have learned how the thing had been arranged, but something had to be dared for so great a prize. In her agitation, Marie might easily have forgotten to ask her beloved Raoul for an acknowledgment for Schmucke. The man of business went at once to Nathan’s office, and returned triumphant to the Count by five o’clock with the bill of forty thousand francs. The very first words exchanged with Nathan had enabled him to pass for an emissary from the Countess.
This success obliged Félix to take steps for preventing a meeting between Raoul and his wife before the masked ball, whither he intended to escort her, in order that she might discover for herself the relation in which Nathan stood to Florine. He knew the jealous pride of the Countess, and was anxious to bring her to renounce the love affair of her own will, so that she might be spared from humiliation before himself. He also hoped to show her before it was too late her letters to Nathan sold by Florine, from whom he reckoned on buying them back. This prudent plan, so swiftly conceived and in part executed, was destined to fail through one of those chances to which the affairs of mortals are subject. After dinner Félix turned the conversation on the masked ball, remarking that Marie had never been to one, and proposed to take her there the following day by way of diversion.
“I will find someone for you to mystify.”
“Ah! I should like that immensely.”
“To make it really amusing, a woman ought to get hold of a foeman worthy of her steel, some celebrity or wit, and make mincemeat of him. What do you say to Nathan? A man who knows Florine could put me up to a few little things that would drive him wild.”
“Florine,” said the Countess, “the actress?”
Marie had already heard this name from the lips of Quillet the office attendant; a thought flashed through her like lightning.
“Well, yes, his mistress,” replied the Count. “What is there surprising in that?”
“I should have thought M. Nathan was too busy for such things. How can literary men find time for love?”
“I say nothing about love, my dear, but they have to lodge somewhere, like other people; and when they have no home and the bloodhounds of the law are after them, they lodge with their mistresses, which may seem a little strong to you, but which is infinitely preferable to lodging in prison.”
The fire was less red than the cheeks of the Countess.
“Would you like him for your victim? You could easily give him a fright,” the Count went on, paying no attention to his wife’s looks. “I can give you proofs by which you can show him that he has been a mere child in the hands of your brother-in-law du Tillet. The wretch wanted to clap him in prison in order to disqualify him for opposing his candidature in Nucingen’s constituency. I have learned from a friend of Florine’s the amount produced by the sale of her furniture, the whole of which she gave to Nathan for starting his paper, and I know what portion was sent to him of the harvest which she reaped this year in the provinces and Belgium; money which, in the long run, all goes into the pockets of du Tillet, Nucingen, and Massol. These three have sold the paper in advance to the Government, so confident are they of dispossessing the great man.”
“M. Nathan would never take money from an actress.”
“You don’t know these people, my dear,” said the Count; “he won’t deny the fact.”
“I shall certainly go to the ball,” said the Countess.
“You will have some fun,” replied Vandenesse. “Armed with such weapons, you will read a sharp lesson to Nathan’s vanity, and it will be a kindness to him. You will watch the ebb and flow of his rage, and his writhings under your stinging epigrams. Your badinage will be quite enough to show a clever man like him the danger in which he stands, and you will have the satisfaction of getting a good trouncing for the juste milieu team within their own stables. … You are not listening, my child.”
“Yes, indeed, I am only too much interested,” she answered. “I will tell you later why I am so anxious to be certain about all this.”
“Certain?” replied Vandenesse. “If you keep on your mask, I will take you to supper with Florine and Nathan. It will be sport for a great lady like you to take in an actress after having kept a famous man on the stretch, manoeuvring round his most precious secrets; you can harness them both to the same mystification. I shall put myself on the track of Nathan’s infidelities. If I can lay hold of the details of any recent affair, you will be able to indulge yourself in the spectacle of a courtesan’s rage, which is worth seeing. The fury of Florine will seethe like an Alpine torrent. She adores Nathan; he is everything to her, precious as the marrow of her bones, dear as her cubs to a lioness. I remember in my youth having seen a celebrated actress, whose writing was like a kitchen-maid’s, come to demand back her letters from one of my friends. I have never seen anything like it since; that quiet fury, that impudent dignity, that
