said the Baroness.

"He is faithful to his motto: Quid me continebit?" said Rastignac.

"Which means, 'Who can detain me?' or 'I am unconquerable,' as you
choose," added de Marsay.

"Just as Monsieur le Baron was speaking of his unknown lady, Lucien
smiled in a way that makes me fancy he may know her," said Horace
Bianchon, not thinking how dangerous such a natural remark might be.

"Goot!" said the banker to himself.

Like all incurables, the Baron clutched at everything that seemed at all
hopeful; he promised himself that he would have Lucien watched by some
one besides Louchard and his men--Louchard, the sharpest commercial
detective in Paris--to whom he had applied about a fortnight since.

Before going home to Esther, Lucien was due at the Hotel Grandlieu,
to spend the two hours which made Mademoiselle Clotilde Frederique
de Grandlieu the happiest girl in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But the
prudence characteristic of this ambitious youth warned him to inform
Carlos Herrera forthwith of the effect resulting from the smile wrung
from him by the Baron's description of Esther. The banker's passion for
Esther, and the idea that had occurred to him of setting the police to
seek the unknown beauty, were indeed events of sufficient importance
to be at once communicated to the man who had sought, under a priest's
robe, the shelter which criminals of old could find in a church. And
Lucien's road from the Rue Saint-Lazare, where Nucingen at that time
lived, to the Rue Saint-Dominique, where was the Hotel Grandlieu, led
him past his lodgings on the Quai Malaquais.

Lucien found his formidable friend smoking his breviary--that is to say,
coloring a short pipe before retiring to bed. The man, strange rather
than foreign, had given up Spanish cigarettes, finding them too mild.

"Matters look serious," said the Spaniard, when Lucien had told him all.
"The Baron, who employs Louchard to hunt up the girl, will certainly be
sharp enough to set a spy at your heels, and everything will come out.
To-night and to-morrow morning will not give me more than enough time
to pack the cards for the game I must play against the Baron; first and
foremost, I must prove to him that the police cannot help him. When our
lynx has given up all hope of finding his ewe-lamb, I will undertake to
sell her for all she is worth to him----"

"Sell Esther!" cried Lucien, whose first impulse was always the right
one.

"Do you forget where we stand?"