Father Goriot HonorĂ© de Balzac (love books to read .TXT) đ
- Author: Honoré de Balzac
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âYou are quite right, sir,â said Poiret, âutterly disgraced he would be.â
âBut none of all this explains why you do not come and take him without more ado,â remarked Mlle. Michonneau.
âVery well, mademoiselle, I will explainâ âbut,â he added in her ear, âkeep your companion quiet, or I shall never have done. The old boy ought to pay people handsomely for listening to him.â âTrompe-la-Mort, when he came back here,â he went on aloud âslipped into the skin of an honest man; he turned up disguised as a decent Parisian citizen, and took up his quarters in an unpretending lodging-house. He is cunning, that he is! You donât catch him napping. Then M. Vautrin is a man of consequence, who transacts a good deal of business.â
âNaturally,â said Poiret to himself.
âAnd suppose that the Minister were to make a mistake and get hold of the real Vautrin, he would put everyoneâs back up among the business men in Paris, and public opinion would be against him. M. le Prefet de Police is on slippery ground; he has enemies. They would take advantage of any mistake. There would be a fine outcry and fuss made by the Opposition, and he would be sent packing. We must set about this just as we did about the Coignard affair, the sham Comte de Sainte-HĂ©lĂšne; if he had been the real Comte de Sainte-HĂ©lĂšne, we should have been in the wrong box. We want to be quite sure what we are about.â
âYes, but what you want is a pretty woman,â said Mlle. Michonneau briskly.
âTrompe-la-Mort would not let a woman come near him,â said the detective. âI will tell you a secretâ âhe does not like them.â
âStill, I do not see what I can do, supposing that I did agree to identify him for two thousand francs.â
âNothing simpler,â said the stranger. âI will send you a little bottle containing a dose that will send a rush of blood to the head; it will do him no harm whatever, but he will fall down as if he were in a fit. The drug can be put into wine or coffee; either will do equally well. You carry your man to bed at once, and undress him to see that he is not dying. As soon as you are alone, you give him a slap on the shoulder, and presto! the letters will appear.â
âWhy, that is just nothing at all,â said Poiret.
âWell, do you agree?â said Gondureau, addressing the old maid.
âBut, my dear sir, suppose there are no letters at all,â said Mlle. Michonneau; âam I to have the two thousand francs all the same?â
âNo.â
âWhat will you give me then?â
âFive hundred francs.â
âIt is such a thing to do for so little! It lies on your conscience just the same, and I must quiet my conscience, sir.â
âI assure you,â said Poiret, âthat mademoiselle has a great deal of conscience, and not only so, she is a very amiable person, and very intelligent.â
âWell, now,â Mlle. Michonneau went on, âmake it three thousand francs if he is Trompe-la-Mort, and nothing at all if he is an ordinary man.â
âDone!â said Gondureau, âbut on the condition that the thing is settled tomorrow.â
âNot quite so soon, my dear sir; I must consult my confessor first.â
âYou are a sly one,â said the detective as he rose to his feet. âGoodbye till tomorrow, then. And if you should want to see me in a hurry, go to the Petite Rue Saint-Anne at the bottom of the Cour de la Sainte-Chapelle. There is one door under the archway. Ask there for M. Gondureau.â
Bianchon, on his way back from Cuvierâs lecture, overheard the sufficiently striking nickname of âTrompe-la-Mort,â and caught the celebrated chief detectiveâs âDone!â
âWhy didnât you close with him? It would be three hundred francs a year,â said Poiret to Mlle. Michonneau.
âWhy didnât I?â she asked. âWhy, it wants thinking over. Suppose that M. Vautrin is this Trompe-la-Mort, perhaps we might do better for ourselves with him. Still, on the other hand, if you ask him for money, it would put him on his guard, and he is just the man to clear out without paying, and that would be an abominable sell.â
âAnd suppose you did warn him,â Poiret went on, âdidnât that gentleman say that he was closely watched? You would spoil everything.â
âAnyhow,â thought Mlle. Michonneau, âI canât abide him. He says nothing but disagreeable things to me.â
âBut you can do better than that,â Poiret resumed. âAs that gentleman said (and he seemed to me to be a very good sort of man, besides being very well got up), it is an act of obedience to the laws to rid society of a criminal, however virtuous he may be. Once a thief, always a thief. Suppose he were to take it into his head to murder us all? The deuce! We should be guilty of manslaughter, and be the first to fall victims into the bargain!â
Mlle. Michonneauâs musings did not permit her to listen very closely to the remarks that fell one by one from Poiretâs lips like water dripping from a leaky tap. When once this elderly babbler began to talk, he would go on like clockwork unless Mlle. Michonneau stopped him. He started on some subject or other, and wandered on through parenthesis after parenthesis, till he came to regions as remote as possible from his premises without coming to any conclusions by the way.
By the time they reached the Maison Vauquer he had tacked together a whole string of examples and quotations more or less irrelevant to the subject in hand, which led him to give a full account of his own deposition in the case of the Sieur Ragoulleau versus Dame Morin, when he had been summoned as a witness for the defence.
As they entered the dining-room, EugĂšne de Rastignac was talking apart with Mlle. Taillefer; the conversation appeared to be of such thrilling interest that the
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