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"Put all the letters in some safe place; take out those that are most likely to compromise the ladies; come back, dressed very poorly, to the Salle des Pas-Perdus, and wait for my orders." Asie, otherwise Jacqueline, knelt as if to receive his blessing, and the sham priest blessed his aunt with evengelical unction. "Addio, Marchesa," said he aloud.
Carlos Herrera kept such a keen eye on the service in the house on the Quai Malaquais, that Lucien did not spend ten thousand francs a year, all told. Ten thousand more were enough for Esther, thanks to the unfailing and inexplicable devotion of Asie and Europe. Lucien took the utmost precautions in going in and out at the Rue Taitbout.
A suspicion crossed his mind, and he was so imprudent as to ask what had become of the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, the price of the bond. Paccard, Asie, and Europe looked at each other so strangely that Monsieur de Nucingen left the house at once, believing that robbery and murder had been committed.
"That is quite in her style," thought Trompe-la-Mort. By seven in the evening this document, written and sealed, was placed by Asie under Esther's bolster. "Jacques," said she, flying upstairs again, "just as I came out of the room justice marched in " "The justice of the peace you mean?" "No, my son. The justice of the peace was there, but he had gendarmes with him.
She had loved, as Asie had just told her, for the first time in her life. This postponement of youth is more common with Parisian women than might be supposed, and causes the ruin of some virtuous souls just as they are reaching the haven of forty.
Asie beat a retreat, growling down the stairs in highly revolutionary language; she spoke of the guillotine! "What have you said to her?" asked the Madonna a la broderie, "for she is a good soul." "She hafe solt you, she hafe robbed you " "When we are beggared," said she, in a tone to rend the heart of a diplomate, "who has ever any money or consideration for us?"
He read the thoughts of Lucien and Esther, who seemed paralyzed, as Paul and Virginia might have been at the sight of two dreadful snakes, and he said in a good-natured undertone: "You can trust them as you can me; keep no secrets from them; that will flatter them. Go to your work, my little Asie," he added to the cook.
Asie had counted on the presence of these youths; she laughed in her sleeve at some of the pleasantries she overheard, and finally succeeded in attracting the attention of Massol, a young lawyer whose time was more taken up by the Police Gazette than by clients, and who came up with a laugh to place himself at the service of a woman so elegantly scented and so handsomely dressed.
Now Asie, not without taking such precautions as usual in such cases, went off to report to Carlos the conference she had held with the Baron, and all the profit she had made by it. The man's rage, like himself, was terrible; he came forthwith to Esther, in a carriage with the blinds drawn, driving into the courtyard.
"Oh, in a very simple way. Listen. You must plan to kill yourself; play your part well. Send for Asie and offer her ten thousand francs for two black beads of very thin glass containing a poison which kills you in a second. Bring them to me, and I will give you fifty thousand francs for them." "Why do you not ask her for them yourself?" said her friend. "Asie would not sell them to me."
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