eed never be afraid of ending in the
streets."

Esther had ceased to listen to Europe-Eugenie-Prudence Servien. The will
of a man gifted with the genius of corruption had thrown Esther back
into the mud with as much force as he had used to drag her out of it.

Those who know love in its infinitude know that those who do not accept
its virtues do not experience its pleasures. Since the scene in the
den in the Rue de Langlade, Esther had utterly forgotten her former
existence. She had since lived very virtuously, cloistered by her
passion. Hence, to avoid any obstacle, the skilful fiend had been clever
enough to lay such a train that the poor girl, prompted by her devotion,
had merely to utter her consent to swindling actions already done, or on
the point of accomplishment. This subtlety, revealing the mastery of
the tempter, also characterized the methods by which he had subjugated
Lucien. He created a terrible situation, dug a mine, filled it with
powder, and at the critical moment said to his accomplice, "You have
only to nod, and the whole will explode!"

Esther of old, knowing only the morality peculiar to courtesans, thought
all these attentions so natural, that she measured her rivals only
by what they could get men to spend on them. Ruined fortunes are the
conduct-stripes of these creatures. Carlos, in counting on Esther's
memory, had not calculated wrongly.

These tricks of warfare, these stratagems employed a thousand times, not
only by these women, but by spendthrifts too, did not disturb Esther's
mind. She felt nothing but her personal degradation; she loved Lucien,
she was to be the Baron de Nucingen's mistress "by appointment";
this was all she thought of. The supposed Spaniard might absorb the
earnest-money, Lucien might build up his fortune with the stones of
her tomb, a single night of pleasure might cost the old banker so many
thousand-franc notes more or less, Europe might extract a few hundred
thousand francs by more or less ingenious trickery,--none of these
things troubled the enamored girl; this alone was the canker that ate
into her heart. For five years she had looked upon herself as being as
white as an angel. She loved, she was happy, she had never committed the
smallest infidelity. This beautiful pure love was now to be defiled.

There was, in her mind, no conscious contrasting of her happy isolated
past and her foul future life. It was neither interest nor sentiment
that moved her, only a