Mme. de Vandenesse, it was plain, was crushed by the burden of troubles too heavy for a mind still unsophisticated after six years of marriage. She lay at length, her limbs flaccid, her body bent, her head fallen anyhow on the back of the lounge. Having looked in at the opera before hurrying to her sister’s, she had still a few flowers in the plaits of her hair, while others lay scattered on the carpet, together with her gloves, her mantle of fur-lined silk, her muff, and her hood. Bright tears mingled with the pearls on her white bosom and brimming eyes told a tale in gruesome contrast with the luxury around. The Countess had no heart for further words.

“You poor darling,” said Mme. du Tillet, “what strange delusion as to my married life made you come to me for help?”

It seemed as though the torrent of her sister’s grief had forced these words from the heart of the banker’s wife, as melting snow will set free stones that are held the fastest in the river’s bed. The Countess gazed stupidly on her with fixed eyes, in which terror had dried the tears.

“Can it be that the waters have closed over your head too, my sweet one?” she said in a low voice.

“Nay, dear, my troubles won’t lessen yours.”

“But tell me them, dear child. Do you think I am so sunk in self already as not to listen? Then we are comrades again in suffering as of old!”

“But we suffer apart,” sadly replied Mme. du Tillet. “We live in opposing camps. It is my turn to visit the Tuileries now that you have ceased to go. Our husbands belong to rival parties. I am the wife of an ambitious banker, a bad man. Your husband, sweetest, is kind, noble, generous⁠—”

“Ah! do not reproach me,” cried the Countess. “No woman has the right to do so, who has not suffered the weariness of a tame, colorless life and passed from it straight to the paradise of love. She must have known the bliss of living her whole life in another, of espousing the ever-varying emotions of a poet’s soul. In every flight of his imagination, in all the efforts of his ambition, in the great part he plays upon the stage of life, she must have borne her share, suffering in his pain and mounting on the wings of his measureless delights; and all this while never losing her cold, impassive demeanor before a prying world. Yes, dear, a tumult of emotion may rage within, while one sits by the fire at home, quietly and comfortably like this. And yet what joy to have at every instant one overwhelming interest which expands the heart and makes it live in every fibre. Nothing is indifferent to you; your very life seems to depend on a drive, which gives you the chance of seeing in the crowd the one man before the flash of whose eye the sunlight pales; you tremble if he is late, and could strangle the bore who steals from you one of those precious moments when happiness throbs in every vein! To be alive, only to be alive is rapture. Think of it, dear, to live, when so many women would give the world to feel as I do, and cannot. Remember, child, that for this poetry of life there is but one season⁠—the season of youth. Soon, very soon, will come the chills of winter. Oh! if you were rich as I am in these living treasures of the heart and were threatened with losing them⁠—”

Mme. du Tillet, terrified, had hidden her face in her hands during this wild rhapsody. At last, seeing the warm tears on her sister’s cheek, she began:

“I never dreamed of reproaching you, my darling. Your words have, in a single instant, stirred in my heart more burning thoughts than all my tears have quenched, for indeed the life I lead might well plead within me for a passion such as you describe. Let me cling to the belief that if we had seen more of each other we should not have drifted to this point. The knowledge of my sufferings would have enabled you to realize your own happiness, and I might perhaps have learned from you courage to resist the tyranny which has crushed the sweetness out of my life. Your misery is an accident which chance may remedy, mine is unceasing. My husband neither has real affection for me nor does he trust me. I am a mere peg for his magnificence, the hallmark of his ambition, a tidbit for his vanity.

“Ferdinand”⁠—and she struck her hand upon the mantelpiece⁠—“is hard and smooth like this marble. He is suspicious of me. If I ask anything for myself I know beforehand that refusal is certain; but for whatever may tickle his self-importance or advertise his wealth I have not even to express a desire. He decorates my rooms, and spends lavishly on my table; my servants, my boxes at the theatre, all the trappings of my life are of the smartest. He grudges nothing to his vanity. His children’s baby-linen must be trimmed with lace, but he would never trouble about their real needs, and would shut his ears to their cries. Can you understand such a state of things? I go to court loaded with diamonds, and my ornaments are of the most costly whenever I am in society; yet I have not a sou of my own. Mme. du Tillet, whom envious onlookers no doubt suppose to be rolling in wealth, cannot lay her hand on a hundred francs. If the father cares little for his children, he cares still less for their mother. Never does he allow me to forget that I have been paid for as a chattel, and that my personal fortune, which has never been in my possession, has been filched from him. If he stood alone I might have a chance of fascinating him, but there is an alien influence at work. He is under the thumb of a woman, a notary’s widow, over fifty, but who still reckons on her charms, and I can see very well that while she lives I shall never be free.

“My whole life here is planned out like a sovereign’s. A bell is rung for my lunch and dinner as at your castle. I never miss going to the Bois at a certain hour, accompanied by two footmen in full livery, and returning at a fixed time. In place of giving orders, I receive them. At balls and the theatre, a lackey comes up to me saying, ‘Your carriage waits, madame,’ and I have to go, whether I am enjoying myself or not. Ferdinand would be vexed if I did not carry out the code of rules drawn up for his wife, and I am afraid of him. Surrounded by all this hateful splendor, I sometimes look back with regret, and begin to think we had a kind mother. At least she left us our nights, and I had you to talk to. In my sufferings, then, I had a loving companion, but this gorgeous house is a desert to me.”

It was for the Countess now to play the comforter. As this tale of misery fell from her sister’s lips she took her hand and kissed it with tears.

“How is it possible for me to help you?” Eugénie went on in a low voice. “If he were to find us together he would suspect something. He would want to know what we had been talking about this hour, and it is not easy to put off the scent anyone so false and full of wiles. He would be sure to lay a trap for me. But enough of my troubles; let us think of you. Your forty thousand francs, darling, would be nothing to Ferdinand. He and the Baron de Nucingen, another of these rich bankers, are accustomed to handle millions. Sometimes at dinner I hear them talking of things to make your flesh creep. Du Tillet knows I am no talker, so they speak freely before me, confident that it will go no further, and I can assure you that highway murder would be an act of mercy compared to some of their financial schemes. Nucingen and he make as little of ruining a man as I do of all their display. Among the people who come to see me, often there are poor dupes whose affairs I have heard settled overnight, and who are plunging into speculations which will beggar them. How I long to act Leonarde in the brigands’ cave, and cry, ‘Beware!’ But what would become of me? I hold my tongue, but this luxurious mansion is nothing but a den of cutthroats. And du Tillet and Nucingen scatter banknotes in handfuls for any whim that takes their fancy. Ferdinand has bought the site of the old castle at Tillet, and intends rebuilding it, and then adding a forest and magnificent grounds. He says his son will be a count and his grandson a peer. Nucingen is tired of his house in the Hue Saint-Lazare and is having a palace built. His wife is a friend of mine.⁠ ⁠… Ah!” she cried, “she might be of use to us. She is not in awe of her husband, her property is in her own hands; she is the person to save you.”

“Darling,” cried Mme. de Vandenesse, throwing herself into her sister’s arms and bursting into tears, “there are only a few hours left. Let us go there tonight, this very instant.”

“How can I go out at eleven o’clock at night?”

“My carriage is here.”

“Well, what are you two plotting here?” It was du Tillet who threw open the door of the boudoir.

A false geniality lit up the blank countenance which met the sisters’ gaze. They had been too much absorbed in talking to notice the wheels of du Tillet’s carriage, and the thick carpets had muffled the sound of his steps. The Countess, who had an indulgent husband and was well used to society, had acquired a tact and address such as her sister, passing straight from a mother’s to a husband’s yoke, had had no opportunity of cultivating. She was able then to save the situation, which she saw that Eugénie’s terror was on the point of betraying, by a frank reply.

“I thought my sister wealthier than she is,” she said, looking her brother-in-law in the face. “Women sometimes get into difficulties which they don’t care to speak of to their husbands⁠—witness Napoleon and Joséphine⁠—and I came to ask a favor of her.”

“There will be no difficulty about that. Eugénie is a rich woman,” replied du Tillet, in a tone of honeyed acerbity.

“Only for you,” said the Countess, with a bitter smile.

“How much do you want?” said du Tillet, who was not sorry at the prospect of getting his sister-in-law into his toils.

“How dense you are! Didn’t I tell you that we want to keep our husbands out of this?” was the prudent reply of Mme. de Vandenesse, who feared to place herself at the mercy of the man whose character had by good luck just been sketched by her sister. “I shall come and see Eugénie tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? No,” said the banker coldly. “Mme. du Tillet dines tomorrow with a future peer of the realm, Baron de Nucingen, who is resigning to me his seat in the Chamber of Deputies.”

“Won’t you allow her to accept my box at the opera?” said the Countess, without exchanging even a look with her sister, in her terror lest their secret understanding should be betrayed.

“Thank you, she has her own,” said du Tillet, offended.

“Very well, then, I shall see her there,” replied the Countess.

“It will be the first time you have done us that honor,” said du Tillet.

The Countess felt the reproach and began to laugh.

“Keep your mind easy, you shan’t be asked to pay this time,” she said.⁠—“Goodbye, darling.”

“The jade!” cried du Tillet, picking up the flowers which had fallen from the Countess’ hair. “You would do well,” he said to his wife, “to take a lesson from Mme. de Vandenesse. I should like to see you as saucy in society as she was here just now. Your want of style and spirit are enough to drive a man wild.”

For all reply, Eugénie raised her eyes to heaven.

“Well, madame, what have you two been about here?” said the banker after a pause, pointing to the flowers. “What has happened to bring your sister to your box tomorrow?”

In order to get away to her bedroom, and escape the cross-questioning she dreaded, the poor thrall made an excuse of being sleepy. But du Tillet took his wife’s arm and, dragging her back, planted her before him beneath the full blaze of the candles, flaming in their silver-gilt branches between two beautiful bunches of flowers. Fixing her eyes with his keen glance, he began with cold deliberation.

“Your sister came to borrow forty thousand francs to pay the debts of a man in whom she is interested, and who, within three days, will be under lock and key in the Rue de Clichy. He’s too precious to be left loose.”

The miserable woman tried to repress the nervous shiver which ran through her.

“You gave me a fright,” she said. “But you know that my sister has too much principle and too much affection for her husband to take that sort of interest in any man.”

“On the contrary,” he replied drily. “Girls brought up as you were, in a very straitlaced and puritan fashion, always pant for liberty and happiness, and the happiness they have never comes up to what they imagined. Those are the girls that make bad wives.”

“Speak for me if you like,” said poor Eugénie, in a tone of bitter irony, “but respect my sister. The Comtesse de Vandenesse is too happy, too completely trusted by her husband, not to be attached to him. Besides, supposing what you say were true, she would not have told me.”

“It is as I said,” persisted du Tillet, “and I forbid you to have anything to do with the matter. It is to my interest that the man go to prison. Let that suffice.”

Mme. du Tillet left the room.

“She is sure to disobey me,” said du Tillet to himself, left alone in the boudoir, “and if I keep my eye on them I may be able to find out what they are up to. Poor fools, to pit themselves against us!”

He shrugged his shoulders and went to rejoin his wife, or, more properly speaking, his slave.