There is no woman in Paris who can so effectively say to the Animal: “Out!…” And the Animal trots from its kennel, and it wallows in excesses; she sits you at table up to the chin, she helps you to drink, to smoke. In fact this woman is the salt celebrated by Rabelais, which, sprinkled on matter, animates it and raises it to the wonderful realms of Art : her dress displays unknown magnificences, her fingers drip jewels, her mouth is lavish with its smiles; she gives a sense of occasion to everything; her chatter sparkles and pricks; she knows the secret of onomatopeias themselves highly coloured and lending colour; she…’

‘That’s a hundred sous worth of copy wasted,’ said Bixiou interrupting Lousteau, ‘the Torpedo is infinitely better value than that: you’ve all been more or less her lovers, none of you can say she was his mistress; she can have you any time, but you won’t get her. You force your way into her room, there is something you want from her…’

‘Oh, she’s more generous than a brigand chief in a good way of business, and more loyal than the best of school-friends,’ said Blondet: ‘you can entrust your purse or your secrets to her. But what made me elect her for queen, is her Bourbonian indifference to the fallen favourite.’

‘She’s like her mother, much too costly,’ said des Lupeaulx. ‘The fair Hollander would have swallowed up the revenues of the Archbishop of Toledo, she ate two notaries…’

‘ And fed Maxime de Trailles when he was a page,’ said Bixiou.

‘The Torpedo is too costly, like Raphael, like Carême, like Taglioni, like Lawrence, like Boule, just as all artists of genius have been too costly… ’ said Blondet.

‘Esther never had that look about her of a respectable woman,’ Rastignac suddenly observed as he watched the masker to whom Lucien gave his arm. ‘I bet it’s Madame de Sérisy.’

‘There can be no doubt about it,’ du Châtelet agreed, ‘and Monsieur de Rubempré’s fortune is explained.’

‘The Church knows how to pick its Levites, what a pretty embassy secretary he’ll make!’ said des Lupeaulx.

‘Especially,’ said Rastignac, ‘as Lucien’s a man of talent. These gentlemen have had more than one proof of that,’ he added with a look at Blondet, Finot and Lousteau.

‘Yes, the lad’s cut out to go far,’ said Lousteau eaten up with jealousy, ‘especially as he possesses what we call independence of mind…’

‘It was you who formed him,’ said Vernou.

‘Well, now,’ Bixiou went on, looking at des Lupeaulx, ‘I submit my case to the memory of the Secretary-General and Master of Petitions; that mask is the Torpedo, I’ll wager a supper…’

‘I’ll hold the stakes,’ said Châtelet interested in knowing the truth.

‘Come on, des Lupeaulx,’ said Finot, ‘see if you don’t recognize the ears of your quondam rat.’

‘There’s no need for outrageous peeping under masks,’ Bixiou continued, ‘the Torpedo and Lucien will be forced to pass this way again, I undertake then to prove that it is she.’

‘He’s put to sea again, friend Lucien, has he?’ said Nathan who had joined the group, ‘I thought he’d gone back to the Angoulême country for the rest of his days. Has he found some way of getting round the English?’

‘He’s done what you’re in no hurry to do, he’s paid his debts,’ Rastignac told him.

The big masker nodded his head in assent.

‘A man has to give up a lot to live within his income at that age, all the dash has gone out of him, he’s finished,’ said Nathan.

‘Not that one,’ Rastignac said, ‘he’ll always cut a figure, and always entertain a loftiness of idea that puts him above most of those who consider themselves superior.’

At this moment, journalists, dandies, idlers, all examined, like so many copers inspecting a horse for sale, the delightful subject of their wager. These judges grown old in the knowledge of Parisian depravity, all clever in one or another way, equally corrupt, equally corrupting, all pledged to insatiable ambitions, accustomed to guess, to imagine anything, had their eyes ardently fixed on a masked woman, a woman to be deciphered only by them. They alone and one or two who regularly attended the Opera ball were able to distinguish, beneath the long shroud of the black domino, beneath the hood, beneath the collar falling over the bosom in such a way as to put in doubt even the sex of the wearer, the roundedness of form, the particularities of carriage and gait, the turn of the waist, the way the head was held, those things which the common eye would most have failed to perceive but which to them were unmistakable. In spite of the formless envelope, they were thus able to recognize that most moving of spectacles, a woman truly animated by love. Whether it was the Torpedo the Duchess of Maufrigneuse or Madame de Sérisy, the lowest or highest rung in the social ladder, this creature was of admirable creation, the light of happy dreams. Those aged young men, as well as the youthful ancients, experienced so lively a sensation that they envied Lucien the high privilege of this metamorphosis of a woman into a goddess. The mask was there as though it had been alone with Lucien, for this woman there were no longer ten thousand persons, in an atmosphere heavy and full of dust; no; she was there beneath the celestial vault of Love, like the madonnas of Raphael under a threadlike oval of gold. She didn’t feel the nudges, the ardour of her gaze started through the two holes of the mask and was reunited in Lucien’s eyes, the very tremor of her body seemed to originate in the movements of her lover. What is the source of this light which shines about a woman in love and marks her out from the rest? of this sylphine lightness which seems to change the laws of gravity? Is it the freed soul? Are there physical virtues in happiness? The artlessness of a virgin, the graces of childhood were disclosed beneath the domino. Though walking separated, these two beings resembled statuary groups of Flora and Zephyr cunningly intertwined by the sculptor’s hand; but it was not only sculpture, the greatest of the arts, which Lucien and his pretty domino recalled, but also those angels which the brush of Gian’ Bellini depicted playing with birds and flowers below his images of Virgin Motherhood; Lucien and this woman belonged to the realm of Fantasy, which is higher than Art as cause stands above effect.

When this woman, forgetful of everything, was a pace away from the group, Bixiou called out: ‘Esther?’ The unfortunate creature turned quickly on hearing the name, saw the malicious individual, and lowered her head like a dying person who has just yielded up her last breath. A strident laugh broke out, and the group melted into the crowd like so many startled field-mice darting into their holes at the roadside. Rastignac alone moved no farther away than he needed to in order not to seem to be avoiding the blaze of Lucien’s eyes; he was able to gaze in wonder upon two griefs equally deep though veiled: first the wretched Torpedo stricken as though by lightning, then the incomprehensible masker, the only one standing nearby who had not moved. Esther spoke a word in Lucien’s ear just as her knees were giving way, and the two disappeared, Lucien bearing her weight. Rastignac followed the charming couple with his eyes, remaining sunk in his reflections.

‘How did she come by this name of Torpedo?’ said a gloomy voice which struck home to the depths of his soul, for it was no longer disguised.

‘It is really he who has escaped again…,’ said Rastignac aside.

‘Quiet, or I cut your throat,’ replied the masker adopting another voice. ‘I am pleased with you, you kept your word, and there are one or two on your side. Henceforward be silent as the tomb; but first, answer my question.’

‘Why, then, this electric ray, this cramp-fish, is so attractive she’d have benumbed the Emperor Napoleon, and she’d numb a man harder to charm: you!’ Rastignac answered moving away.

‘One moment,’ said the masker. ‘I am going to show you that you can never have seen me anywhere.’

The man unmasked, Rastignac was at first taken aback to discover nothing of the hideous personage he had formerly known at the Maison Vauquer.

‘The devil has allowed you to change yourself completely, except your eyes which could never be forgotten,’ he said at last.

The grip of steel tightened on his arm to enjoin perpetual silence.

At three o‘ clock in the morning, des Lupeaulx and Finot found the elegant Rastignac in the same place, leaning against the pillar where the terrible masker had left him. Rastignac had been to confession with himself: he had been priest and penitent, judge and accused. He allowed himself to be led away to breakfast, and returned home decidedly tipsy, but taciturn.

Α Parisian landscape

THE rue de Langlade, like the adjacent streets, runs between the Palais Royal and the rue de Rivoli. This part of one of the smartest districts of Paris will long preserve the contamination it received from those hillocks that were the middens of old Paris, topped with windmills. These narrow streets, dark and muddy, where trades are carried on which do not care about external appearance, take on at night a mysterious physiognomy and one full of contrasts. Coming from the bright lights of the rue Saint Honoré, the rue Neuve des Petits Champs and the rue de Richelieu, where there are always crowds and where are displayed the masterpieces of Industry, Fashion and the Arts, any man to whom Paris at night is unknown would be seized with gloom and terror as he plunged into the network of little streets which surround that brightness reflected in the sky itself. Thick shadow succeeds upon a torrent of gaslight.