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Updated: June 28, 2025
Mme. du val-Noble exercised a certain influence over the great personages, Royalist writers, and bankers who met in her splendid rooms "fit for a tale out of the Arabian Nights," as the elegant and clever courtesan herself used to say to transact business which could not be arranged elsewhere. The editorship had been promised to Hector Merlin.
No position can be more dreadful than that in which Madame du Val-Noble now found herself; and the phrase to be on the loose, or, as the French say, left on foot, expresses it perfectly. The recklessness and extravagance of these women precludes all care for the future.
At the moment when Contenson re-entered the dining-room, old Peyrade, who had drunk a great deal, was swallowing the cherry off his ice. They were drinking to the health of Madame du Val-Noble; the nabob filled his glass with Constantia and emptied it.
After dinner, Merlin and Lucien, Coralie and Mme. du Val-Noble, went to the Opera, where Merlin had a box. The whole party adjourned thither, and Lucien triumphant reappeared upon the scene of his first serious check. He walked in the lobby, arm in arm with Merlin and Blondet, looking the dandies who had once made merry at his expense between the eyes. Chatelet was under his feet.
"I will go there," said Lucien, leaving the box without looking at the Countess. "My dear," said Madame du Val-Noble, going into Esther's box with Peyrade, whom the Baron de Nucingen did not recognize, "I am delighted to introduce Mr. Samuel Johnson. He is a great admirer of M. de Nucingen's talents." "Indeed, monsieur," said Esther, smiling at Peyrade. "Oh yes, bocou," said Peyrade.
"That is part of the truth, no doubt, but it is not all," said the sham lawyer, sniffing up his pinch of snuff. "You have had a finger in the Baron de Nucingen's love affairs, and you wish, no doubt, to entangle him in some slip-knot. You missed fire with the pistol, and you are aiming at him with a field-piece. Madame du Val-Noble is a friend of Madame de Champy's " "Devil take it.
To bring about such an accident, Madame du Val-Noble, dressed in the most lady-like way, walked out every day in the Champs-Elysees on the arm of Theodore Gaillard, who afterwards married her, and who, in these straits, behaved very well to his former mistress, giving her boxes at the play, and inviting her to every spree.
"Oh! so it is she who has fallen heir to my house in the Rue Saint-Georges," observed Madame du Val-Noble with some bitterness; for she, as she phrased it, was on the loose. "Most likely," said the Colonel. "Du Tillet told me that the Baron had spent three times as much there as your poor Falleix." "Let us go round to her box," said Tullia.
And so, during the second act, there was quite a commotion in the box where the two dancers were sitting, caused by the undoubted identity of the unknown fair one with La Torpille. "Heyday! where has she dropped from?" said Mariette to Madame du Val-Noble. "I thought she was drowned." "But is it she? She looks to me thirty-seven times younger and handsomer than she was six years ago."
At an epoch when, as Monsieur de Valois said, Woman no longer existed, she was simply "Madame du Val-Noble"; in other days she would have rivalled the Rhodopes, the Imperias, the Ninons of the past. One of the most distinguished writers of the Restoration has taken her under his protection; perhaps he may marry her.
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