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Updated: September 25, 2025
From his squarecut coat of black cloth with full skirts he might have been taken for an English millionaire. Contenson made a show of the cold insolence of a nabob's confidential servant; he was taciturn, abrupt, scornful, and uncommunicative, and indulged in fierce exclamations and uncouth gestures.
And he bowed to the chief, who sat passive to conceal his amazement. Peyrade returned home, his legs and arms feeling broken, and full of cold fury with the Baron. Nobody but that burly banker could have betrayed a secret contained in the minds of Contenson, Peyrade, and Corentin. The old man accused the banker of wishing to avoid paying now that he had gained his end.
Corentin had seen the Abbe Carlos Herrera five or six times, and the man's eyes were unforgettable. Corentin had suspected him at once from the cut of his shoulders, then by his puffy face, and the trick of three inches of added height gained by a heel inside the shoe. "Ah! old fellow, they have drawn you," said Corentin, finding no one in the room but Peyrade and Contenson.
Thus, for the first time, these two artistic spies had come on a text that they could not decipher, while suspecting a dark plot to the story. After three bold attempts on the house in the Rue Taitbout, Contenson still met with absolute dumbness. So long as Esther dwelt there the lodge porter seemed to live in mortal terror.
"If the Spaniard has gone away, you have nothing to fear," said Contenson to Peyrade, remarking on the perfect peace they lived in. "But if he is not gone?" observed Peyrade. "He took one of my men at the back of the chaise; but at Blois, my man having to get down, could not catch the chaise up again." Five days after Derville's return, Lucien one morning had a call from Rastignac.
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.
And Contenson related Nucingen's meeting with Esther, adding that the Baron had now some further information. "All right," said Peyrade, "we will find his Dulcinea; tell the Baron to come to-night in a carriage to the Champs-Elysees the corner of the Avenue de Gabriel and the Allee de Marigny." Peyrade saw Contenson out, and knocked at his daughter's rooms, as he always knocked to be let in.
"I have the honor to bid you good-morning, Monsieur le Baron," said Contenson, taking the twenty-franc piece. "I shall have the honor of calling again to tell Georges where you are to go this evening, for we never write anything in such cases when they are well managed." "It is funny how sharp dese rascals are!" said the Baron to himself; "it is de same mit de police as it is in buss'niss."
Jacques Collin is the only man alive who is clever enough to come after me, poor Contenson and dear old Peyrade both being dead! Jacques Collin killed those two unrivaled spies on purpose, as it were, to make a place for himself. So, you see, gentlemen, you must give me a free hand. Jacques Collin is in the Conciergerie. I will go to see Monsieur de Granville in his Court.
At the moment when Contenson struck three raps on the table with the gold piece, a signal conveying, "I want to speak to you," the senior was reflecting on this problem: "By whom, and under what pressure can the Prefet of Police be made to move?" And he looked like a noodle studying his Courrier Francais.
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