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"She is not merely a good cook," said Herrera to Esther; "she is a past-master, and might make Careme mad with jealousy. Asie can do everything by way of cooking. She will turn you out a simple dish of beans that will make you wonder whether the angels have not come down to add some herb from heaven.
She will go to market herself every morning, and fight like the devil she is to get things at the lowest prices; she will tire out curiosity by silence. "You are to be supposed to have been in India, and Asie will help you to give effect to this fiction, for she is one of those Parisians who are born to be of any nationality they please.
This is due to your intrigues, and to the man you let loose on us. Do not speak, listen!" Asie went on, seeing Peyrade open his mouth. "You will have your daughter again, pure and spotless," she added, emphasizing her statement by the accent on every word, "only on the day after that on which Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre walks out of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin as the husband of Mademoiselle Clotilde.
Asie could depend on the absolute secrecy of an old-clothes purchaser, known as Madame Nourrisson, who also called herself Madame de Saint-Esteve; and who would lend Asie not merely her personality, but her shop at need, for it was there that Nucingen had bargained for the surrender of Esther. Asie was quite at home there, for she had a bedroom in Madame Nourrisson's establishment.
The officials of the prefecture, the legal profession, the chief of the police, the justice of the peace, the examining judge, all were astir. By nine in the evening three medical men were called in to perform an autopsy on poor Esther, and inquiries were set on foot. Trompe-la-Mort, warned by Asie, exclaimed: "No one knows that I am here; I may take an airing."
I think I have told you about my favourite city in the middle of Asia, la sainte Asie, where the rainfall is absolutely nil, and you are protected on every side by hundreds of metres of warm, dry sand. I was there when I was a child once, and it is still my intention to retire there when I have finished with all this.
"You must find some excuse for sending the Baron to fetch Eugenie under pretence of warning Asie, and tell her what has befallen me, so that Carlos may know before he has the nabob under his claws." "That shall be done," said Esther. And thus Peyrade was probably about to find himself unwittingly under the same roof with his adversary.
"Give me something that will make me very sick without killing me," said he to Asie; "for I must be at death's door, to avoid answering inquisitive persons. I have just got rid of a man in the most natural way, who might have unmasked me."
Contenson, disguised as a market-porter, had twice already brought home the provisions purchased in the morning by Asie, and had twice got into the little mansion in the Rue Saint-Georges.
The women he had called Europe and Asie came in, and it was at once easy to see the reason of these names. Asie, who looked as if she might have been born in the Island of Java, showed a face to scare the eye, as flat as a board, with the copper complexion peculiar to Malays, with a nose that looked as if it had been driven inwards by some violent pressure.
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