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Updated: June 7, 2025
"Now, my lady, hot foot, and make haste!" said Asie, seeing the change, and guessing what had caused it. "But," said Madame de Maufrigneuse, "if the first thing is to prevent Lucien's being examined by Monsieur Camusot, we can do that by writing two words to the judge and sending your man with it to the Palais, Leontine." "Then come into my room," said Madame de Serizy.
"I understant," said he, "vy you call her Asie; dis is Asiatic cooking." "I begin to think he loves me," said Esther to Europe; "he has said something almost like a bon mot." "I said many vorts," said he. "Well! he is more like Turcaret than I had heard he was!" cried the girl, laughing at this reply, worthy of the many artless speeches for which the banker was famous.
At six o'clock next evening, the Nabob was roused by the application of a wet cloth, with which his face was being washed, and awoke to find himself on a camp-bed, face to face with Asie, wearing a mask and a black domino. "Well, Papa Peyrade, you and I have to settle accounts," said she. "Where am I?" asked he, looking about him. "Listen to me," said Asie, "and that will sober you.
Before entering on the question of the hundred thousand crowns that were to keep the door of the bedroom, Carlos determined first to extract a hundred thousand more from M. de Nucingen. And this was the way: By his orders Asie got herself up for the Baron's benefit as an old woman fully informed as to the unknown beauty's affairs.
"Need must!" said Nucingen. "And you have the best of the bargain," said Asie. "Women have been sold much dearer than this one to you relatively speaking. There are women and women! De Marsay paid sixty thousand francs for Coralie, who is dead now. The woman you want cost a hundred thousand francs when new; but to you, you old goat, it is a matter of agreement." "But vere is she?"
"Asie," said the Spaniard, to whom the woman looked up with a gesture that can only be compared to that of a dog to its master, "this is your mistress." And he pointed to Esther in her wrapper.
"When the Baron gives you a right to tap him on the stomach, and call him a pot-bellied old rip, you may be as insolent as you please, and make him trot like a footman." Nucingen threatened by Asie with never seeing her again if he attempted the smallest espionage met the woman on his way to the Bourse, in secret, in a wretched entresol in the Rue Nueve-Saint-Marc.
Dressed very handsomely, and all in black, with a veil over her bonnet, she was wiping her eyes with a floridly embroidered handkerchief. Jacques Collin at once recognized Asie, or, to give the woman her true name, Jacqueline Collin, his aunt.
Small, short, and squat, Asie bore a likeness to the grotesque figures the Chinese love to paint on screens, or, more exactly, to the Hindoo idols which seem to be imitated from some non-existent type, found, nevertheless, now and again by travelers. Esther shuddered as she looked at this monstrosity, dressed out in a white apron over a stuff gown.
For a whole week Nucingen went almost every day to the shop in the Rue Nueve-Saint-Marc to bargain for the woman he was in love with. Here, sometimes under the name of Saint-Esteve, sometimes under that of her tool, Madame Nourrisson, Asie sat enthroned among beautiful clothes in that hideous condition when they have ceased to be dresses and are not yet rags.
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