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Updated: June 25, 2025
In a few minutes his secretary brought in Contenson, whom he had run to earth in a cafe not far from Sainte-Pelagie, where the man was breakfasting on the strength of a bribe given to him by an imprisoned debtor for certain allowances that must be paid for. Contenson, you must know, was a whole poem a Paris poem.
In these days the smallest banker, like the greatest, exercises his acumen in the smallest transactions; he bargains over art, beneficence, and love; he would bargain with the Pope for a dispensation. Thus, as he listened to Louchard, Nucingen had hastily concluded that Contenson, Louchard's right-hand man, must certainly know the address of that master spy.
"He must be the man to whom Contenson is playing the mulatto servant!" cried Carlos, when Lucien returned with other information besides this note. Within three hours this man, with the energy of a Commander-in-Chief, had found, by Paccard's help, an innocent accomplice capable of playing the part of a gendarme in disguise, and had got himself up as a peace-officer.
"What a gallows-bird!" said Pere Canquoelle to his neighbor Monsieur Pillerault. "Pshaw!" said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for he alone had expressed no astonishment, "it is Contenson, Louchard's right-hand man, the police agent we employ in business. The rascals want to nab some one who is hanging about perhaps."
Contenson, one of the most curious products of the scum that rises to the top of the seething Paris caldron, where everything ferments, prided himself on being, above all things, a philosopher. He would say, without any bitter feeling: "I have great talents, but of what use are they? I might as well have been an idiot." And he blamed himself instead of accusing mankind.
Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy, and did not look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers; but when he had gulped down the brandy, he took out the Baron's gold piece, and called the waiter by rapping three short raps on the table.
That personage is, as the prosecuting officer, the police of Paris, and the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty well know, the Sieur Bernard-Polydor Bryond des Tours-Minieres, the correspondent, since 1794, of the Comte de Lille, known elsewhere as the Baron des Tours-Minieres, and on records of the Parisian police under the name of Contenson. He is notorious.
On the eighth day he left at each house a note, written in their peculiar cipher, to explain to his friend what death hung over him, and to tell him of Lydie's abduction and the horrible end to which his enemies had devoted them. Peyrade, bereft of Corentin, but seconded by Contenson, still kept up his disguise as a nabob.
One man came foremost. Contenson, the horrible Contenson, laid his hand on Esther's dewy shoulder. "You are Mademoiselle van " he began. Europe, by a back-handed slap on Contenson's cheek, sent him sprawling to measure his length on the carpet, and with all the more effect because at the same time she caught his leg with the sharp kick known to those who practise the art as a coup de savate.
You might as well look for a needle in the river as for a woman in Paris, who is supposed to haunt Vincennes, and of whom the description answers to every pretty woman in the capital." "And could not Contenson haf tolt me de truf, instead of making me pleed out one tousand franc?" "Listen to me, Monsieur le Baron," said Louchard. "Will you give me a thousand crowns?
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