As he heard the words, misunderstanding their meaning, the Baron turned pale, the blood tingled in his veins, he breathed the airs of heaven. At his age a millionaire, for such a sensation, will pay as much gold as a woman can ask. “I lofe you like vat I lofe my daughter,” said he. “An’ I feel dere”--and he laid her hand over his heart--“dat I shall not bear to see you anyting but happy.” “If you would only be a father to me, I would love you very much; I would never leave you; and you would see that I am not a bad woman, not grasping or greedy, as I must seem to you now----” “You hafe done some little follies,” said the Baron, “like all dose pretty vomen--dat is all. Say no more about dat. It is our pusiness to make money for you. Be happy! I shall be your fater for some days yet, for I know I must make you accustom’ to my old carcase.” “Really!” she exclaimed, springing on to Nucingen’s knees, and clinging to him with her arm round his neck. “Really!” repeated he, trying to force a smile. She kissed his forehead; she believed in an impossible combination--she might remain untouched and see Lucien. She was so coaxing to the banker that she was La Torpille once more. She fairly bewitched the old man, who promised to be a father to her for forty days. Those forty days were to be employed in acquiring and arranging the house in the Rue Saint-Georges. When he was in the street again, as he went home, the Baron said to himself, “I am an old flat.” But though in Esther’s presence he was a mere child, away from her he resumed his lynx’s skin; just as the gambler (in _le Joueur_) becomes affectionate to Angelique when he has not a liard. “A half a million francs I hafe paid, and I hafe not yet seen vat her leg is like.--Dat is too silly! but, happily, nobody shall hafe known it!” said he to himself three weeks after. And he made great resolutions to come to the point with the woman who had cost him so dear; then, in Esther’s presence once more, he spent all the time he could spare her in making up for the roughness of his first words. “After all,” said he, at the end of a month, “I cannot be de fater eternal!” Towards the end of the month of December 1829, just before installing Esther in the house in the Rue Saint-Georges, the Baron begged du Tillet to take Florine there, that she might see whether everything was suitable to Nucingen’s fortune, and if the description of “a little palace” were duly realized by the artists commissioned to make the cage worthy of the bird. Every device known to luxury before the Revolution of 1830 made this residence a masterpiece of taste. Grindot the architect considered it his greatest achievement as a decorator. The staircase, which had been reconstructed of marble, the judicious use of stucco ornament, textiles, and gilding, the smallest details as much as the general effect, outdid everything of the kind left in Paris from the time of Louis XV.