Two rival master-minds in ferocious competition, one a former Napoleonic police spy and the other an escaped convict and both based on real-life figures, attempt under a variety of disguises and each with pawns of his own to sell for a high price to the gullible banker a passingly-valuable commodity –. “In this way, all in ignorance of each other, Jacques Collin, Peyrade and Corentin were being drawn together without knowing it; and poor Esther, Nucingen and Lucien were, to become involved in the battle already begun; to which the special vanity of the policemen would add its own terror”. In the fashion of early nineteenth century novelists generally, including Scott, Hugo and Dickens and even to some degree George Elliot, as an ideal of man's better self, there has to be a heroine of saintly ignorance, self-sacrifice and pure love, even if she's a prostitute, or perhaps particularly if she is.
