"How,then,can I help you,"said Eugenie,in a low voice."He would be suspicious at once if he surprised us here,and would insist on knowing all that you have been saying to me.I should be forced to tell a lie,which is difficult indeed with so sly and treacherous a man;he would lay traps for me.But enough of my own miseries;let us think of yours.The forty thousand francs you want would be,of course,a mere nothing to Ferdinand,who handles millions with that fat banker,Baron de Nucingen.Sometimes,at dinner,in my presence,they say things to each other which make me shudder.Du Tillet knows my discretion,and they often talk freely before me,being sure of my silence.Well,robbery and murder on the high-road seem to me merciful compared to some of their financial schemes.Nucingen and he no more mind destroying a man than if he were an animal.Often I am told to receive poor dupes whose fate I have heard them talk of the night before,--men who rush into some business where they are certain to lose their all.I am tempted,like Leonardo in the brigand's cave,to cry out,'Beware!'But if I did,what would become of me?So I keep silence.This splendid house is a cut-throat's den!But Ferdinand and Nucingen will lavish millions for their own caprices.Ferdinand is now buying from the other du Tillet family the site of their old castle;he intends to rebuild it and add a forest with large domains to the estate,and make his son a count;he declares that by the third generation the family will be noble.Nucingen,who is tired of his house in the rue Saint-Lazare,is building a palace.His wife is a friend of mine--Ah!"she cried,interrupting herself,"she might help us;she is very bold with her husband;her fortune is in her own right.Yes,she could save you.""Dear heart,I have but a few hours left;let us go to her this evening,now,instantly,"said Madame de Vandenesse,throwing herself into Madame du Tillet's arms with a burst of tears.
"I can't go out at eleven o'clock at night,"replied her sister.
"My carriage is here."
"What are you two plotting together?"said du Tillet,pushing open the door of the boudoir.
He came in showing a torpid face lighted now by a speciously amiable expression.The carpets had dulled his steps and the preoccupation of the two sisters had kept them from noticing the noise of his carriage-wheels on entering the court-yard.The countess,in whom the habits of social life and the freedom in which her husband had left her had developed both wit and shrewdness,--qualities repressed in her sister by marital despotism,which simply continued that of their mother,--saw that Eugenie's terror was on the point of betraying them,and she evaded that danger by a frank answer.
"I thought my sister richer than she is,"she replied,looking straight at her brother-in-law."Women are sometimes embarrassed for money,and do not wish to tell their husbands,like Josephine with Napoleon.I came here to ask Eugenie to do me a service.""She can easily do that,madame.Eugenie is very rich,"replied du Tillet,with concealed sarcasm.
"Is she?"replied the countess,smiling bitterly.
"How much do you want?"asked du Tillet,who was not sorry to get his sister-in-law into his meshes.