Father Goriot

FATHER GORIOT

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Ellen Marriage

To the great and illustrious Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a token

of admiration for his works and genius.

DE BALZAC.

FATHER GORIOT

Mme. Vauquer (_nee_ de Conflans) is an elderly person, who for the past

forty years has kept a lodging-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve,

in the district that lies between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg

Saint-Marcel. Her house (known in the neighborhood as the _Maison

Vauquer_) receives men and women, old and young, and no word has ever

been breathed against her respectable establishment; but, at the same

time, it must be said that as a matter of fact no young woman has been

under her roof for thirty years, and that if a young man stays there for

any length of time it is a sure sign that his allowance must be of the

slenderest. In 1819, however, the time when this drama opens, there was

an almost penniless young girl among Mme. Vauquer’s boarders.

That word drama has been somewhat discredited of late; it has been

overworked and twisted to strange uses in these days of dolorous

literature; but it must do service again here, not because this story is

dramatic in the restricted sense of the word, but because some tears may

perhaps be shed _intra et extra muros_ before it is over.

Will any one without the walls of Paris understand it? It is open to

doubt. The only audience who could appreciate the results of close

observation, the careful reproduction of minute detail and local color,

are dwellers between the heights of Montrouge and Montmartre, in a vale

of crumbling stucco watered by streams of black mud, a vale of sorrows

which are real and joys too often hollow; but this audience is so

accustomed to terrible sensations, that only some unimaginable and

well-neigh impossible woe could produce any lasting impression there.

Now and again there are tragedies so awful and so grand by reason of the

complication of virtues and vices that bring them about, that egotism

and selfishness are forced to pause and are moved to pity; but the

impression that they receive is like a luscious fruit, soon consumed.

Civilization, like the car of Juggernaut, is scarcely stayed perceptibly

in its progress by a heart less easy to break than the others that lie

in its course; this also is broken, and Civilization continues on her

course triumphant. And you, too, will do the like; you who with this

book in your white hand will sink back among the cushions of your

armchair, and say to yourself, “Perhaps this may amuse me.” You will

read the story of Father Goriot’s secret woes, and, dining thereafter

with an unspoiled appetite, will lay the blame of your insensibility

upon the writer, and accuse him of exaggeration, of writing romances.

Ah! once for all, this drama is neither a fiction nor a romance! _All is

true_,--so true, that every one can discern the elements of the tragedy

in his own house, perhaps in his own heart.

The lodging-house is Mme. Vauquer’s own property. It is still standing

in the lower end of the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, just where the road

slopes so sharply down to the Rue de l’Arbalete, that wheeled traffic

seldom passes that way, because it is so stony and steep. This position

is sufficient to account for the silence prevalent in the streets shut

in between the dome of the Pantheon and the dome of the Val-de-Grace,

two conspicuous public buildings which give a yellowish tone to the

landscape and darken the whole district that lies beneath the shadow of

their leaden-hued cupolas.

In that district the pavements are clean and dry, there is neither mud

nor water in the gutters, grass grows in the chinks of the walls. The

most heedless passer-by feels the depressing influences of a place where

the sound of wheels creates a sensation; there is a grim look about the

houses, a suggestion of a jail about those high garden walls. A Parisian

straying into a suburb apparently composed of lodging-houses and public

institutions would see poverty and dullness, old age lying down to die,

and joyous youth condemned to drudgery. It is the ugliest quarter of

Paris, and, it may be added, the least known. But, before all things,

the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve is like a bronze frame for a picture for

which the mind cannot be too well prepared by the contemplation of sad

hues and sober images. Even so, step by step the daylight decreases,

and the cicerone’s droning voice grows hollower as the traveler descends

into the Catacombs. The comparison holds good! Who shall say which is

more ghastly, the sight of the bleached skulls or of dried-up human

hearts?

The front of the lodging-house is at right angles to the road, and

looks out upon a little garden, so that you see the side of the house

in section, as it were, from the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve. Beneath the

wall of the house front there lies a channel, a fathom wide, paved with

cobble-stones, and beside it runs a graveled walk bordered by geraniums

and oleanders and pomegranates set in great blue and white glazed

earthenware pots. Access into the graveled walk is afforded by a door,

above which the words MAISON VAUQUER may be read, and beneath, in rather

smaller letters, “_Lodgings for both sexes, etc._”

During the day a glimpse into the garden is easily obtained through a

wicket to which a bell is attached. On the opposite wall, at the further

end of the graveled walk, a green marble arch was painted once upon

a time by a local artist, and in this semblance of a shrine a statue

representing Cupid is installed; a Parisian Cupid, so blistered and

disfigured that he looks like a candidate for one of the adjacent

hospitals, and might suggest an allegory to lovers of symbolism. The

half-obliterated inscription on the pedestal beneath determines the date

of this work of art, for it bears witness to the widespread enthusiasm

felt for Voltaire on his return to Paris in 1777:

“Whoe’er thou art, thy master see;

He is, or was, or ought to be.”

At night the wicket gate is replaced by a solid door. The little garden

is no wider than the front of the house; it is shut in between the wall

of the street and the partition wall of the neighboring house. A mantle

of ivy conceals the bricks and attracts the eyes of passers-by to an

effect which is picturesque in Paris, for each of the walls is covered

with trellised vines that yield a scanty dusty crop of fruit, and

furnish besides a subject of conversation for Mme. Vauquer and her

lodgers; every year the widow trembles for her vintage.

A straight path beneath the walls on either side of the garden leads to

a clump of lime-trees at the further end of it; _line_-trees, as Mme.

Vauquer persists in calling them, in spite of the fact that she was a de

Conflans, and regardless of repeated corrections from her lodgers.

The central space between the walls is filled with artichokes and

rows of pyramid fruit-trees, and surrounded by a border of lettuce,

pot-herbs, and parsley. Under the lime-trees there are a few

green-painted garden seats and a wooden table, and hither, during the

dog-days, such of the lodgers as are rich enough to indulge in a cup

of coffee come to take their pleasure, though it is hot enough to roast

eggs even in the shade.

The house itself is three stories high, without counting the attics

under the roof. It is built of rough stone, and covered with the

yellowish stucco that gives a mean appearance to almost every house in

Paris. There are five windows in each story in the front of the house;

all the blinds visible through the small square panes are drawn up awry,

so that the lines are all at cross purposes. At the side of the house

there are but two windows on each floor, and the lowest of all are

adorned with a heavy iron grating.

Behind the house a yard extends for some twenty feet, a space inhabited

by a happy family of pigs, poultry, and rabbits; the wood-shed is

situated on the further side, and on the wall between the wood-shed and

the kitchen window hangs the meat-safe, just above the place where the

sink discharges its greasy streams. The cook sweeps all the refuse

out through a little door into the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, and

frequently cleanses the yard with copious supplies of water, under pain

of pestilence.

The house might have been built on purpose for its present uses. Access

is given by a French window to the first room on the ground floor, a

sitting-room which looks out upon the street through the two barred

windows already mentioned. Another door opens out of it into the

dining-room, which is separated from the kitchen by the well of the

staircase, the steps being constructed partly of wood, partly of tiles,

which are colored and beeswaxed. Nothing can be more depressing than

the sight of that sitting-room. The furniture is covered with horse hair

woven in alternate dull and glossy stripes. There is a round table in

the middle, with a purplish-red marble top, on which there stands, by

way of ornament, the inevitable white china tea-service, covered with

a half-effaced gilt network. The floor is sufficiently uneven, the

wainscot rises to elbow height, and the rest of the wall space is

decorated with a varnished paper, on which the principal scenes from

_Telemaque_ are depicted, the various classical personages being

colored. The subject between the two windows is the banquet given by

Calypso to the son of Ulysses, displayed thereon for the admiration of

the boarders, and has furnished jokes these forty years to the young

men who show themselves superior to their position by making fun of the

dinners to which poverty condemns them. The hearth is always so clean

and neat that it is evident that a fire is only kindled there on great

occasions; the stone chimney-piece is adorned by a couple of vases

filled with faded artificial flowers imprisoned under glass shades, on

either side of a bluish marble clock in the very worst taste.

The first room exhales an odor for which there is no name in the

language, and which should be called the _odeur de pension_. The damp

atmosphere sends a chill through you as you breathe it; it has a stuffy,

musty, and rancid quality; it permeates your clothing; after-dinner

scents seem to be mingled in it with smells from the kitchen and

scullery and the reek of a hospital. It might be possible to describe

it if some one should discover a process by which to distil from the

atmosphere all the nauseating elements with which it is charged by the

catarrhal exhalations of every individual lodger, young or old. Yet,

in spite of these stale horrors, the sitting-room is as charming and

as delicately perfumed as a boudoir, when compared with the adjoining

dining-room.

The paneled walls of that apartment were once painted some color, now

a matter of conjecture, for the surface is incrusted with accumulated

layers of grimy deposit, which cover it with fantastic outlines. A

collection of dim-ribbed glass decanters, metal discs with a satin sheen

on them, and piles of blue-edged earthenware plates of Touraine ware

cover the sticky surfaces of the sideboards that line the room. In a

corner stands a box containing a set of numbered pigeon-holes, in which

the lodgers’ table napkins, more or less soiled and stained with wine,

are kept. Here you see that indestructible furniture never met with

elsewhere, which finds its way into lodging-houses much as the wrecks of

our civilization drift into hospitals for incurables. You expect in such

places as these to find the weather-house whence a Capuchin issues on

wet days; you look to find the execrable engravings which spoil your

appetite, framed every one in a black varnished frame, with a gilt

beading round it; you know the sort of tortoise-shell clock-case, inlaid

with brass; the green stove, the Argand lamps, covered with oil and

dust, have met your eyes before. The oilcloth which covers the long

table is so greasy that a waggish _externe_ will write his name on the

surface, using his thumb-nail as a style. The chairs are broken-down

invalids; the wretched little hempen mats slip away from under your

feet without slipping away for good; and finally, the foot-warmers are

miserable wrecks, hingeless, charred, broken away about the holes. It

would be impossible to give an idea of the old, rotten, shaky, cranky,

worm-eaten, halt, maimed, one-eyed, rickety, and ramshackle condition of

the furniture without an exhaustive description, which would delay

the progress of the story to an extent that impatient people would not

pardon. The red tiles of the floor are full of depressions brought about

by scouring and periodical renewings of color. In short, there is

no illusory grace left to the poverty that reigns here; it is dire,

parsimonious, concentrated, threadbare poverty; as yet it has not sunk

into the mire, it is only splashed by it, and though not in rags as yet,

its clothing is ready to drop to pieces.

This apartment is in all its glory at seven o’clock in the morning,

when Mme. Vauquer’s cat appears, announcing the near approach of his

mistress, and jumps upon the sideboards to sniff at the milk in the

bowls, each protected by a plate, while he purrs his morning greeting to

the world. A moment later the widow shows her face; she is tricked out

in a net cap attached to a false front set on awry, and shuffles into

the room in her slipshod fashion. She is an oldish woman, with a bloated

countenance, and a nose like a parrot’s beak set in the middle of

it; her fat little hands (she is as sleek as a church rat) and her

shapeless, slouching figure are in keeping with the room that reeks of

misfortune, where hope is reduced to speculate for the meanest

stakes. Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air without being

disheartened by it. Her face is as fresh as a frosty morning in autumn;

there are wrinkles about the eyes that vary in their expression from

the set smile of a ballet-dancer to the dark, suspicious scowl of

a discounter of bills; in short, she is at once the embodiment and

interpretation of her lodging-house, as surely as her lodging-house

implies the existence of its mistress. You can no more imagine the one

without the other, than you can think of a jail without a turnkey. The

unwholesome corpulence of the little woman is produced by the life she

leads, just as typhus fever is bred in the tainted air of a hospital.

The very knitted woolen petticoat that she wears beneath a skirt made

of an old gown, with the wadding protruding through the rents in the

material, is a sort of epitome of the sitting-room, the dining-room,

and the little garden; it discovers the cook, it foreshadows the

lodgers--the picture of the house is completed by the portrait of its

mistress.

Mme. Vauquer at the age of fifty is like all women who “have seen a deal

of trouble.” She has the glassy eyes and innocent air of a trafficker

in flesh and blood, who will wax virtuously indignant to obtain a higher

price for her services, but who is quite ready to betray a Georges or

a Pichegru, if a Georges or a Pichegru were in hiding and still to be

betrayed, or for any other expedient that may alleviate her lot. Still,

“she is a good woman at bottom,” said the lodgers who believed that

the widow was wholly dependent upon the money that they paid her, and

sympathized when they heard her cough and groan like one of themselves.

What had M. Vauquer been? The lady was never very explicit on this head.

How had she lost her money? “Through trouble,” was her answer. He had

treated her badly, had left her nothing but her eyes to cry over his

cruelty, the house she lived in, and the privilege of pitying nobody,

because, so she was wont to say, she herself had been through every

possible misfortune.

Sylvie, the stout cook, hearing her mistress’ shuffling footsteps,

hastened to serve the lodgers’ breakfasts. Beside those who lived in the

house, Mme. Vauquer took boarders who came for their meals; but these

_externes_ usually only came to dinner, for which they paid thirty

francs a month.

At the time when this story begins, the lodging-house contained seven

inmates. The best rooms in the house were on the first story, Mme.

Vauquer herself occupying the least important, while the rest were let

to a Mme. Couture, the widow of a commissary-general in the service of

the Republic. With her lived Victorine Taillefer, a schoolgirl, to whom

she filled the place of mother. These two ladies paid eighteen hundred

francs a year.

The two sets of rooms on the second floor were respectively occupied by

an old man named Poiret and a man of forty or thereabouts, the wearer

of a black wig and dyed whiskers, who gave out that he was a retired

merchant, and was addressed as M. Vautrin. Two of the four rooms on

the third floor were also let--one to an elderly spinster, a Mlle.

Michonneau, and the other to a retired manufacturer of vermicelli,

Italian paste and starch, who allowed the others to address him as

“Father Goriot.” The remaining rooms were allotted to various birds of

passage, to impecunious students, who like “Father Goriot” and Mlle.

Michonneau, could only muster forty-five francs a month to pay for their

board and lodging. Mme. Vauquer had little desire for lodgers of this

sort; they ate too much bread, and she only took them in default of

better.

At that time one of the rooms was tenanted by a law student, a young man

from the neighborhood of Angouleme, one of a large family who pinched

and starved themselves to spare twelve hundred francs a year for him.

Misfortune had accustomed Eugene de Rastignac, for that was his name, to

work. He belonged to the number of young men who know as children that

their parents’ hopes are centered on them, and deliberately prepare

themselves for a great career, subordinating their studies from the

first to this end, carefully watching the indications of the course of

events, calculating the probable turn that affairs will take, that they

may be the first to profit by them. But for his observant curiosity, and

the skill with which he managed to introduce himself into the salons

of Paris, this story would not have been colored by the tones of

truth which it certainly owes to him, for they are entirely due to his

penetrating sagacity and desire to fathom the mysteries of an appalling

condition of things, which was concealed as carefully by the victim as

by those who had brought it to pass.

Above the third story there was a garret where the linen was hung to

dry, and a couple of attics. Christophe, the man-of-all-work, slept in

one, and Sylvie, the stout cook, in the other. Beside the seven inmates

thus enumerated, taking one year with another, some eight law or medical

students dined in the house, as well as two or three regular comers who

lived in the neighborhood. There were usually eighteen people at dinner,

and there was room, if need be, for twenty at Mme. Vauquer’s table; at

breakfast, however, only the seven lodgers appeared. It was almost like

a family party. Every one came down in dressing-gown and slippers,

and the conversation usually turned on anything that had happened

the evening before; comments on the dress or appearance of the dinner

contingent were exchanged in friendly confidence.

These seven lodgers were Mme. Vauquer’s spoiled children. Among them

she distributed, with astronomical precision, the exact proportion of

respect and attention due to the varying amounts they paid for their

board. One single consideration influenced all these human beings thrown

together by chance. The two second-floor lodgers only paid seventy-two

francs a month. Such prices as these are confined to the Faubourg

Saint-Marcel and the district between La Bourbe and the Salpetriere;

and, as might be expected, poverty, more or less apparent, weighed upon

them all, Mme. Couture being the sole exception to the rule.

The dreary surroundings were reflected in the costumes of the inmates of

the house; all were alike threadbare. The color of the men’s coats were

problematical; such shoes, in more fashionable quarters, are only to be

seen lying in the gutter; the cuffs and collars were worn and frayed at

the edges; every limp article of clothing looked like the ghost of its

former self. The women’s dresses were faded, old-fashioned, dyed and

re-dyed; they wore gloves that were glazed with hard wear, much-mended

lace, dingy ruffles, crumpled muslin fichus. So much for their

clothing; but, for the most part, their frames were solid enough; their

constitutions had weathered the storms of life; their cold, hard faces

were worn like coins that have been withdrawn from circulation, but

there were greedy teeth behind the withered lips. Dramas brought to a

close or still in progress are foreshadowed by the sight of such actors

as these, not the dramas that are played before the footlights and

against a background of painted canvas, but dumb dramas of life,

frost-bound dramas that sere hearts like fire, dramas that do not end

with the actors’ lives.

Mlle. Michonneau, that elderly young lady, screened her weak eyes from

the daylight by a soiled green silk shade with a rim of brass, an object

fit to scare away the Angel of Pity himself. Her shawl, with its scanty,

draggled fringe, might have covered a skeleton, so meagre and angular

was the form beneath it. Yet she must have been pretty and shapely once.

What corrosive had destroyed the feminine outlines? Was it trouble,

or vice, or greed? Had she loved too well? Had she been a second-hand

clothes dealer, a frequenter of the backstairs of great houses, or had

she been merely a courtesan? Was she expiating the flaunting triumphs

of a youth overcrowded with pleasures by an old age in which she was

shunned by every passer-by? Her vacant gaze sent a chill through you;

her shriveled face seemed like a menace. Her voice was like the shrill,

thin note of the grasshopper sounding from the thicket when winter is at

hand. She said that she had nursed an old gentleman, ill of catarrh of

the bladder, and left to die by his children, who thought that he had

nothing left. His bequest to her, a life annuity of a thousand francs,

was periodically disputed by his heirs, who mingled slander with their

persecutions. In spite of the ravages of conflicting passions, her face

retained some traces of its former fairness and fineness of tissue, some

vestiges of the physical charms of her youth still survived.

M. Poiret was a sort of automaton. He might be seen any day sailing like

a gray shadow along the walks of the Jardin des Plantes, on his head a

shabby cap, a cane with an old yellow ivory handle in the tips of his

thin fingers; the outspread skirts of his threadbare overcoat failed

to conceal his meagre figure; his breeches hung loosely on his shrunken

limbs; the thin, blue-stockinged legs trembled like those of a drunken

man; there was a notable breach of continuity between the dingy white

waistcoat and crumpled shirt frills and the cravat twisted about a

throat like a turkey gobbler’s; altogether, his appearance set people

wondering whether this outlandish ghost belonged to the audacious race

of the sons of Japhet who flutter about on the Boulevard Italien. What

devouring kind of toil could have so shriveled him? What devouring

passions had darkened that bulbous countenance, which would have seemed

outrageous as a caricature? What had he been? Well, perhaps he had been

part of the machinery of justice, a clerk in the office to which the

executioner sends in his accounts,--so much for providing black veils

for parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for

the knife. Or he might have been a receiver at the door of a public

slaughter-house, or a sub-inspector of nuisances. Indeed, the man

appeared to have been one of the beasts of burden in our great social

mill; one of those Parisian Ratons whom their Bertrands do not even know

by sight; a pivot in the obscure machinery that disposes of misery and

things unclean; one of those men, in short, at sight of whom we are

prompted to remark that, “After all, we cannot do without them.”

Stately Paris ignores the existence of these faces bleached by moral or

physical suffering; but, then, Paris is in truth an ocean that no line

can plumb. You may survey its surface and describe it; but no matter how

numerous and painstaking the toilers in this sea, there will always be

lonely and unexplored regions in its depths, caverns unknown, flowers

and pearls and monsters of the deep overlooked or forgotten by the

divers of literature. The Maison Vauquer is one of these curious

monstrosities.

Two, however, of Mme. Vauquer’s boarders formed a striking contrast to

the rest. There was a sickly pallor, such as is often seen in anaemic

girls, in Mlle. Victorine Taillefer’s face; and her unvarying expression

of sadness, like her embarrassed manner and pinched look, was in

keeping with the general wretchedness of the establishment in the Rue

Nueve-Saint-Genevieve, which forms a background to this picture; but her

face was young, there was youthfulness in her voice and elasticity

in her movements. This young misfortune was not unlike a shrub, newly

planted in an uncongenial soil, where its leaves have already begun

to wither. The outlines of her figure, revealed by her dress of the

simplest and cheapest materials, were also youthful. There was the same

kind of charm about her too slender form, her faintly colored face and

light-brown hair, that modern poets find in mediaeval statuettes; and a

sweet expression, a look of Christian resignation in the dark gray eyes.

She was pretty by force of contrast; if she had been happy, she would

have been charming. Happiness is the poetry of woman, as the toilette

is her tinsel. If the delightful excitement of a ball had made the pale

face glow with color; if the delights of a luxurious life had brought

the color to the wan cheeks that were slightly hollowed already; if love

had put light into the sad eyes, then Victorine might have ranked among

the fairest; but she lacked the two things which create woman a second

time--pretty dresses and love-letters.

A book might have been made of her story. Her father was persuaded that

he had sufficient reason for declining to acknowledge her, and allowed

her a bare six hundred francs a year; he had further taken measures

to disinherit his daughter, and had converted all his real estate into

personalty, that he might leave it undivided to his son. Victorine’s

mother had died broken-hearted in Mme. Couture’s house; and the

latter, who was a near relation, had taken charge of the little orphan.

Unluckily, the widow of the commissary-general to the armies of the

Republic had nothing in the world but her jointure and her widow’s

pension, and some day she might be obliged to leave the helpless,

inexperienced girl to the mercy of the world. The good soul, therefore,

took Victorine to mass every Sunday, and to confession once a fortnight,

thinking that, in any case, she would bring up her ward to be devout.

She was right; religion offered a solution of the problem of the

young girl’s future. The poor child loved the father who refused to

acknowledge her. Once every year she tried to see him to deliver her

mother’s message of forgiveness, but every year hitherto she had knocked

at that door in vain; her father was inexorable. Her brother, her only

means of communication, had not come to see her for four years, and had

sent her no assistance; yet she prayed to God to unseal her father’s

eyes and to soften her brother’s heart, and no accusations mingled with

her prayers. Mme. Couture and Mme. Vauquer exhausted the vocabulary

of abuse, and failed to find words that did justice to the banker’s

iniquitous conduct; but while they heaped execrations on the

millionaire, Victorine’s words were as gentle as the moan of the wounded

dove, and affection found expression even in the cry drawn from her by

pain.

Eugene de Rastignac was a thoroughly southern type; he had a fair

complexion, blue eyes, black hair. In his figure, manner, and his whole

bearing it was easy to see that he had either come of a noble family,

or that, from his earliest childhood, he had been gently bred. If he

was careful of his wardrobe, only taking last year’s clothes into

daily wear, still upon occasion he could issue forth as a young man of

fashion. Ordinarily he wore a shabby coat and waistcoat, the limp black

cravat, untidily knotted, that students affect, trousers that matched

the rest of his costume, and boots that had been resoled.

Vautrin (the man of forty with the dyed whiskers) marked a transition

stage between these two young people and the others. He was the kind of

man that calls forth the remark: “He looks a jovial sort!” He had

broad shoulders, a well-developed chest, muscular arms, and strong

square-fisted hands; the joints of his fingers were covered with tufts

of fiery red hair. His face was furrowed by premature wrinkles; there

was a certain hardness about it in spite of his bland and insinuating

manner. His bass voice was by no means unpleasant, and was in keeping

with his boisterous laughter. He was always obliging, always in good

spirits; if anything went wrong with one of the locks, he would soon

unscrew it, take it to pieces, file it, oil and clean and set it in

order, and put it back in its place again; “I am an old hand at it,”

he used to say. Not only so, he knew all about ships, the sea, France,

foreign countries, men, business, law, great houses and prisons,--there

was nothing that he did not know. If any one complained rather more than

usual, he would offer his services at once. He had several times lent

money to Mme. Vauquer, or to the boarders; but, somehow, those whom he

obliged felt that they would sooner face death than fail to repay him; a

certain resolute look, sometimes seen on his face, inspired fear of him,

for all his appearance of easy good-nature. In the way he spat there was

an imperturbable coolness which seemed to indicate that this was a

man who would not stick at a crime to extricate himself from a false

position. His eyes, like those of a pitiless judge, seemed to go to

the very bottom of all questions, to read all natures, all feelings and

thoughts. His habit of life was very regular; he usually went out after

breakfast, returning in time for dinner, and disappeared for the rest

of the evening, letting himself in about midnight with a latch key, a

privilege that Mme. Vauquer accorded to no other boarder. But then he

was on very good terms with the widow; he used to call her “mamma,” and

put his arm round her waist, a piece of flattery perhaps not appreciated

to the full! The worthy woman might imagine this to be an easy feat;

but, as a matter of fact, no arm but Vautrin’s was long enough to

encircle her.

It was a characteristic trait of his generously to pay fifteen francs a

month for the cup of coffee with a dash of brandy in it, which he took

after dinner. Less superficial observers than young men engulfed by the

whirlpool of Parisian life, or old men, who took no interest in anything

that did not directly concern them, would not have stopped short at the

vaguely unsatisfactory impression that Vautrin made upon them. He knew

or guessed the concerns of every one about him; but none of them had

been able to penetrate his thoughts, or to discover his occupation. He

had deliberately made his apparent good-nature, his unfailing readiness

to oblige, and his high spirits into a barrier between himself and the

rest of them, but not seldom he gave glimpses of appalling depths

of character. He seemed to delight in scourging the upper classes of

society with the lash of his tongue, to take pleasure in convicting it

of inconsistency, in mocking at law and order with some grim jest worthy

of Juvenal, as if some grudge against the social system rankled in him,

as if there were some mystery carefully hidden away in his life.

Mlle. Taillefer felt attracted, perhaps unconsciously, by the strength

of the one man, and the good looks of the other; her stolen glances and

secret thoughts were divided between them; but neither of them seemed

to take any notice of her, although some day a chance might alter her

position, and she would be a wealthy heiress. For that matter, there was

not a soul in the house who took any trouble to investigate the various

chronicles of misfortunes, real or imaginary, related by the rest. Each

one regarded the others with indifference, tempered by suspicion; it was

a natural result of their relative positions. Practical assistance not

one could give, this they all knew, and they had long since exhausted

their stock of condolence over previous discussions of their grievances.

They were in something the same position as an elderly couple who have

nothing left to say to each other. The routine of existence kept them in

contact, but they were parts of a mechanism which wanted oil. There was

not one of them but would have passed a blind man begging in the street,

not one that felt moved to pity by a tale of misfortune, not one who

did not see in death the solution of the all-absorbing problem of misery

which left them cold to the most terrible anguish in others.

The happiest of these hapless beings was certainly Mme. Vauquer, who

reigned supreme over this hospital supported by voluntary contributions.

For her, the little garden, which silence, and cold, and rain, and

drought combined to make as dreary as an Asian _steppe_, was a pleasant

shaded nook; the gaunt yellow house, the musty odors of a back shop had

charms for her, and for her alone. Those cells belonged to her. She fed

those convicts condemned to penal servitude for life, and her authority

was recognized among them. Where else in Paris would they have found

wholesome food in sufficient quantity at the prices she charged them,

and rooms which they were at liberty to make, if not exactly elegant or

comfortable, at any rate clean and healthy? If she had committed some

flagrant act of injustice, the victim would have borne it in silence.

Such a gathering contained, as might have been expected, the elements

out of which a complete society might be constructed. And, as in a

school, as in the world itself, there was among the eighteen men and

women who met round the dinner table a poor creature, despised by

all the others, condemned to be the butt of all their jokes. At the

beginning of Eugene de Rastignac’s second twelvemonth, this figure

suddenly started out into bold relief against the background of human

forms and faces among which the law student was yet to live for

another two years to come. This laughing-stock was the retired

vermicelli-merchant, Father Goriot, upon whose face a painter, like the

historian, would have concentrated all the light in his picture.

How had it come about that the boarders regarded him with a

half-malignant contempt? Why did they subject the oldest among their

number to a kind of persecution, in which there was mingled some pity,

but no respect for his misfortunes? Had he brought it on himself by some

eccentricity or absurdity, which is less easily forgiven or forgotten

than more serious defects? The question strikes at the root of many a

social injustice. Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering

on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine

humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness. Do we not, one and

all, like to feel our strength even at the expense of some one or of

something? The poorest sample of humanity, the street arab, will pull

the bell handle at every street door in bitter weather, and scramble up

to write his name on the unsullied marble of a monument.

In the year 1813, at the age of sixty-nine or thereabouts, “Father

Goriot” had sold his business and retired--to Mme. Vauquer’s boarding

house. When he first came there he had taken the rooms now occupied by

Mme. Couture; he had paid twelve hundred francs a year like a man to

whom five louis more or less was a mere trifle. For him Mme. Vauquer had

made various improvements in the three rooms destined for his use, in

consideration of a certain sum paid in advance, so it was said, for the

miserable furniture, that is to say, for some yellow cotton curtains, a

few chairs of stained wood covered with Utrecht velvet, several wretched

colored prints in frames, and wall papers that a little suburban tavern

would have disdained. Possibly it was the careless generosity with which

Father Goriot allowed himself to be overreached at this period of his

life (they called him Monsieur Goriot very respectfully then) that gave

Mme. Vauquer the meanest opinion of his business abilities; she looked

on him as an imbecile where money was concerned.

Goriot had brought with him a considerable wardrobe, the gorgeous

outfit of a retired tradesman who denies himself nothing. Mme. Vauquer’s

astonished eyes beheld no less than eighteen cambric-fronted shirts, the

splendor of their fineness being enhanced by a pair of pins each bearing

a large diamond, and connected by a short chain, an ornament which

adorned the vermicelli-maker’s shirt front. He usually wore a coat of

corn-flower blue; his rotund and portly person was still further set

off by a clean white waistcoat, and a gold chain and seals which dangled

over that broad expanse. When his hostess accused him of being “a bit

of a beau,” he smiled with the vanity of a citizen whose foible is

gratified. His cupboards (_ormoires_, as he called them in the popular

dialect) were filled with a quantity of plate that he brought with him.

The widow’s eyes gleamed as she obligingly helped him to unpack the

soup ladles, table-spoons, forks, cruet-stands, tureens, dishes,

and breakfast services--all of silver, which were duly arranged upon

shelves, besides a few more or less handsome pieces of plate, all

weighing no inconsiderable number of ounces; he could not bring himself

to part with these gifts that reminded him of past domestic festivals.

“This was my wife’s present to me on the first anniversary of our

wedding day,” he said to Mme. Vauquer, as he put away a little silver

posset dish, with two turtle-doves billing on the cover. “Poor dear! she

spent on it all the money she had saved before we were married. Do

you know, I would sooner scratch the earth with my nails for a living,

madame, than part with that. But I shall be able to take my coffee out

of it every morning for the rest of my days, thank the Lord! I am not to

be pitied. There’s not much fear of my starving for some time to come.”

Finally, Mme. Vauquer’s magpie’s eye had discovered and read certain

entries in the list of shareholders in the funds, and, after a rough

calculation, was disposed to credit Goriot (worthy man) with something

like ten thousand francs a year. From that day forward Mme. Vauquer

(_nee_ de Conflans), who, as a matter of fact, had seen forty-eight

summers, though she would only own to thirty-nine of them--Mme. Vauquer

had her own ideas. Though Goriot’s eyes seemed to have shrunk in their

sockets, though they were weak and watery, owing to some glandular

affection which compelled him to wipe them continually, she considered

him to be a very gentlemanly and pleasant-looking man. Moreover, the

widow saw favorable indications of character in the well-developed

calves of his legs and in his square-shaped nose, indications still

further borne out by the worthy man’s full-moon countenance and look

of stupid good-nature. This, in all probability, was a strongly-build

animal, whose brains mostly consisted in a capacity for affection. His

hair, worn in _ailes de pigeon_, and duly powdered every morning by the

barber from the Ecole Polytechnique, described five points on his low

forehead, and made an elegant setting to his face. Though his manners

were somewhat boorish, he was always as neat as a new pin and he took

his snuff in a lordly way, like a man who knows that his snuff-box is

always likely to be filled with maccaboy, so that when Mme. Vauquer lay

down to rest on the day of M. Goriot’s installation, her heart, like a

larded partridge, sweltered before the fire of a burning desire to shake

off the shroud of Vauquer and rise again as Goriot. She would marry

again, sell her boarding-house, give her hand to this fine flower of

citizenship, become a lady of consequence in the quarter, and ask for

subscriptions for charitable purposes; she would make little Sunday

excursions to Choisy, Soissy, Gentilly; she would have a box at the

theatre when she liked, instead of waiting for the author’s tickets that

one of her boarders sometimes gave her, in July; the whole Eldorado of

a little Parisian household rose up before Mme. Vauquer in her

dreams. Nobody knew that she herself possessed forty thousand francs,

accumulated _sou by sou_, that was her secret; surely as far as money

was concerned she was a very tolerable match. “And in other respects,

I am quite his equal,” she said to herself, turning as if to assure

herself of the charms of a form that the portly Sylvie found moulded in

down feathers every morning.

For three months from that day Mme. Veuve Vauquer availed herself of

the services of M. Goriot’s coiffeur, and went to some expense over her

toilette, expense justifiable on the ground that she owed it to herself

and her establishment to pay some attention to appearances when such

highly-respectable persons honored her house with their presence. She

expended no small amount of ingenuity in a sort of weeding process of

her lodgers, announcing her intention of receiving henceforward none but

people who were in every way select. If a stranger presented himself,

she let him know that M. Goriot, one of the best known and most

highly-respected merchants in Paris, had singled out her boarding-house

for a residence. She drew up a prospectus headed MAISON VAUQUER, in

which it was asserted that hers was “_one of the oldest and most highly

recommended boarding-houses in the Latin Quarter_.” “From the windows

of the house,” thus ran the prospectus, “there is a charming view of

the Vallee des Gobelins (so there is--from the third floor), and a

_beautiful_ garden, _extending_ down to _an avenue of lindens_ at the

further end.” Mention was made of the bracing air of the place and its

quiet situation.

It was this prospectus that attracted Mme. la Comtesse de l’Ambermesnil,

a widow of six and thirty, who was awaiting the final settlement of her

husband’s affairs, and of another matter regarding a pension due to her

as the wife of a general who had died “on the field of battle.” On this

Mme. Vauquer saw to her table, lighted a fire daily in the sitting-room

for nearly six months, and kept the promise of her prospectus, even

going to some expense to do so. And the Countess, on her side, addressed

Mme. Vauquer as “my dear,” and promised her two more boarders, the

Baronne de Vaumerland and the widow of a colonel, the late Comte de

Picquoisie, who were about to leave a boarding-house in the Marais,

where the terms were higher than at the Maison Vauquer. Both these

ladies, moreover, would be very well to do when the people at the

War Office had come to an end of their formalities. “But Government

departments are always so dilatory,” the lady added.

After dinner the two widows went together up to Mme. Vauquer’s room, and

had a snug little chat over some cordial and various delicacies reserved

for the mistress of the house. Mme. Vauquer’s ideas as to Goriot were

cordially approved by Mme. de l’Ambermesnil; it was a capital notion,

which for that matter she had guessed from the very first; in her

opinion the vermicelli maker was an excellent man.

“Ah! my dear lady, such a well-preserved man of his age, as sound as my

eyesight--a man who might make a woman happy!” said the widow.

The good-natured Countess turned to the subject of Mme. Vauquer’s dress,

which was not in harmony with her projects. “You must put yourself on a

war footing,” said she.

After much serious consideration the two widows went shopping

together--they purchased a hat adorned with ostrich feathers and a cap

at the Palais Royal, and the Countess took her friend to the Magasin de

la Petite Jeannette, where they chose a dress and a scarf. Thus equipped

for the campaign, the widow looked exactly like the prize animal hung

out for a sign above an a la mode beef shop; but she herself was so much

pleased with the improvement, as she considered it, in her appearance,

that she felt that she lay under some obligation to the Countess; and,

though by no means open-handed, she begged that lady to accept a hat

that cost twenty francs. The fact was that she needed the Countess’

services on the delicate mission of sounding Goriot; the countess must

sing her praises in his ears. Mme. de l’Ambermesnil lent herself very

good-naturedly to this manoeuvre, began her operations, and succeeded in

obtaining a private interview; but the overtures that she made, with a

view to securing him for herself, were received with embarrassment, not

to say a repulse. She left him, revolted by his coarseness.

“My angel,” said she to her dear friend, “you will make nothing of that

man yonder. He is absurdly suspicious, and he is a mean curmudgeon, an

idiot, a fool; you would never be happy with him.”

After what had passed between M. Goriot and Mme. de l’Ambermesnil, the

Countess would no longer live under the same roof. She left the next

day, forgot to pay for six months’ board, and left behind her wardrobe,

cast-off clothing to the value of five francs. Eagerly and persistently

as Mme. Vauquer sought her quondam lodger, the Comtesse de l’Ambermesnil

was never heard of again in Paris. The widow often talked of this

deplorable business, and regretted her own too confiding disposition. As

a matter of fact, she was as suspicious as a cat; but she was like many

other people, who cannot trust their own kin and put themselves at the

mercy of the next chance comer--an odd but common phenomenon, whose

causes may readily be traced to the depths of the human heart.

Perhaps there are people who know that they have nothing more to look

for from those with whom they live; they have shown the emptiness of

their hearts to their housemates, and in their secret selves they are

conscious that they are severely judged, and that they deserve to

be judged severely; but still they feel an unconquerable craving for

praises that they do not hear, or they are consumed by a desire to

appear to possess, in the eyes of a new audience, the qualities which

they have not, hoping to win the admiration or affection of strangers at

the risk of forfeiting it again some day. Or, once more, there are other

mercenary natures who never do a kindness to a friend or a relation

simply because these have a claim upon them, while a service done to a

stranger brings its reward to self-love. Such natures feel but little

affection for those who are nearest to them; they keep their kindness

for remoter circles of acquaintance, and show most to those who dwell on

its utmost limits. Mme. Vauquer belonged to both these essentially mean,

false, and execrable classes.

“If I had been there at the time,” Vautrin would say at the end of the

story, “I would have shown her up, and that misfortune would not have

befallen you. I know that kind of phiz!”

Like all narrow natures, Mme. Vauquer was wont to confine her attention

to events, and did not go very deeply into the causes that brought them

about; she likewise preferred to throw the blame of her own mistakes on

other people, so she chose to consider that the honest vermicelli maker

was responsible for her misfortune. It had opened her eyes, so she said,

with regard to him. As soon as she saw that her blandishments were in

vain, and that her outlay on her toilette was money thrown away, she was

not slow to discover the reason of his indifference. It became plain

to her at once that there was _some other attraction_, to use her own

expression. In short, it was evident that the hope she had so fondly

cherished was a baseless delusion, and that she would “never make

anything out of that man yonder,” in the Countess’ forcible phrase.

The Countess seemed to have been a judge of character. Mme. Vauquer’s

aversion was naturally more energetic than her friendship, for her

hatred was not in proportion to her love, but to her disappointed

expectations. The human heart may find here and there a resting-place

short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the

steep, downward slope of hatred. Still, M. Goriot was a lodger, and

the widow’s wounded self-love could not vent itself in an explosion of

wrath; like a monk harassed by the prior of his convent, she was forced

to stifle her sighs of disappointment, and to gulp down her craving for

revenge. Little minds find gratification for their feelings, benevolent

or otherwise, by a constant exercise of petty ingenuity. The widow

employed her woman’s malice to devise a system of covert persecution.

She began by a course of retrenchment--various luxuries which had found

their way to the table appeared there no more.

“No more gherkins, no more anchovies; they have made a fool of me!” she

said to Sylvie one morning, and they returned to the old bill of fare.

The thrifty frugality necessary to those who mean to make their way in

the world had become an inveterate habit of life with M. Goriot. Soup,

boiled beef, and a dish of vegetables had been, and always would be, the

dinner he liked best, so Mme. Vauquer found it very difficult to annoy

a boarder whose tastes were so simple. He was proof against her malice,

and in desperation she spoke to him and of him slightingly before the

other lodgers, who began to amuse themselves at his expense, and so

gratified her desire for revenge.

Towards the end of the first year the widow’s suspicions had reached

such a pitch that she began to wonder how it was that a retired merchant

with a secure income of seven or eight thousand livres, the owner of

such magnificent plate and jewelry handsome enough for a kept mistress,

should be living in her house. Why should he devote so small a

proportion of his money to his expenses? Until the first year was nearly

at an end, Goriot had dined out once or twice every week, but these

occasions came less frequently, and at last he was scarcely absent from

the dinner-table twice a month. It was hardly expected that Mme. Vauquer

should regard the increased regularity of her boarder’s habits with

complacency, when those little excursions of his had been so much to her

interest. She attributed the change not so much to a gradual diminution

of fortune as to a spiteful wish to annoy his hostess. It is one of the

most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with

its own malignant pettiness.

Unluckily, towards the end of the second year, M. Goriot’s conduct gave

some color to the idle talk about him. He asked Mme. Vauquer to give him

a room on the second floor, and to make a corresponding reduction in

her charges. Apparently, such strict economy was called for, that he did

without a fire all through the winter. Mme. Vauquer asked to be paid in

advance, an arrangement to which M. Goriot consented, and thenceforward

she spoke of him as “Father Goriot.”

What had brought about this decline and fall? Conjecture was keen, but

investigation was difficult. Father Goriot was not communicative; in

the sham countess’ phrase he was “a curmudgeon.” Empty-headed people who

babble about their own affairs because they have nothing else to occupy

them, naturally conclude that if people say nothing of their doings it

is because their doings will not bear being talked about; so the highly

respectable merchant became a scoundrel, and the late beau was an old

rogue. Opinion fluctuated. Sometimes, according to Vautrin, who came

about this time to live in the Maison Vauquer, Father Goriot was a man

who went on ‘Change and _dabbled_ (to use the sufficiently expressive

language of the Stock Exchange) in stocks and shares after he had ruined

himself by heavy speculation. Sometimes it was held that he was one of

those petty gamblers who nightly play for small stakes until they win a

few francs. A theory that he was a detective in the employ of the Home

Office found favor at one time, but Vautrin urged that “Goriot was not

sharp enough for one of that sort.” There were yet other solutions;

Father Goriot was a skinflint, a shark of a money-lender, a man

who lived by selling lottery tickets. He was by turns all the most

mysterious brood of vice and shame and misery; yet, however vile his

life might be, the feeling of repulsion which he aroused in others was

not so strong that he must be banished from their society--he paid

his way. Besides, Goriot had his uses, every one vented his spleen or

sharpened his wit on him; he was pelted with jokes and belabored with

hard words. The general consensus of opinion was in favor of a theory

which seemed the most likely; this was Mme. Vauquer’s view. According

to her, the man so well preserved at his time of life, as sound as her

eyesight, with whom a woman might be very happy, was a libertine who had

strange tastes. These are the facts upon which Mme. Vauquer’s slanders

were based.

Early one morning, some few months after the departure of the unlucky

Countess who had managed to live for six months at the widow’s expense,

Mme. Vauquer (not yet dressed) heard the rustle of a silk dress and

a young woman’s light footstep on the stair; some one was going to

Goriot’s room. He seemed to expect the visit, for his door stood ajar.

The portly Sylvie presently came up to tell her mistress that a girl too

pretty to be honest, “dressed like a goddess,” and not a speck of mud

on her laced cashmere boots, had glided in from the street like a snake,

had found the kitchen, and asked for M. Goriot’s room. Mme. Vauquer

and the cook, listening, overheard several words affectionately spoken

during the visit, which lasted for some time. When M. Goriot went

downstairs with the lady, the stout Sylvie forthwith took her basket

and followed the lover-like couple, under pretext of going to do her

marketing.

“M. Goriot must be awfully rich, all the same, madame,” she reported

on her return, “to keep her in such style. Just imagine it! There was a

splendid carriage waiting at the corner of the Place de l’Estrapade, and

_she_ got into it.”

While they were at dinner that evening, Mme. Vauquer went to the window

and drew the curtain, as the sun was shining into Goriot’s eyes.

“You are beloved of fair ladies, M. Goriot--the sun seeks you out,” she

said, alluding to his visitor. “_Peste!_ you have good taste; she was

very pretty.”

“That was my daughter,” he said, with a kind of pride in his voice, and

the rest chose to consider this as the fatuity of an old man who wishes

to save appearances.

A month after this visit M. Goriot received another. The same daughter

who had come to see him that morning came again after dinner, this time

in evening dress. The boarders, in deep discussion in the dining-room,

caught a glimpse of a lovely, fair-haired woman, slender, graceful, and

much too distinguished-looking to be a daughter of Father Goriot’s.

“Two of them!” cried the portly Sylvie, who did not recognize the lady

of the first visit.

A few days later, and another young lady--a tall, well-moulded brunette,

with dark hair and bright eyes--came to ask for M. Goriot.

“Three of them!” said Sylvie.

Then the second daughter, who had first come in the morning to see her

father, came shortly afterwards in the evening. She wore a ball dress,

and came in a carriage.

“Four of them!” commented Mme. Vauquer and her plump handmaid. Sylvie

saw not a trace of resemblance between this great lady and the girl in

her simple morning dress who had entered her kitchen on the occasion of

her first visit.

At that time Goriot was paying twelve hundred francs a year to his

landlady, and Mme. Vauquer saw nothing out of the common in the fact

that a rich man had four or five mistresses; nay, she thought it very

knowing of him to pass them off as his daughters. She was not at all

inclined to draw a hard-and-fast line, or to take umbrage at his sending

for them to the Maison Vauquer; yet, inasmuch as these visits explained

her boarder’s indifference to her, she went so far (at the end of the

second year) as to speak of him as an “ugly old wretch.” When at length

her boarder declined to nine hundred francs a year, she asked him very

insolently what he took her house to be, after meeting one of these

ladies on the stairs. Father Goriot answered that the lady was his

eldest daughter.

“So you have two or three dozen daughters, have you?” said Mme. Vauquer

sharply.

“I have only two,” her boarder answered meekly, like a ruined man who is

broken in to all the cruel usage of misfortune.

Towards the end of the third year Father Goriot reduced his expenses

still further; he went up to the third story, and now paid forty-five

francs a month. He did without snuff, told his hairdresser that he no

longer required his services, and gave up wearing powder. When Goriot

appeared for the first time in this condition, an exclamation of

astonishment broke from his hostess at the color of his hair--a dingy

olive gray. He had grown sadder day by day under the influence of some

hidden trouble; among all the faces round the table, his was the

most woe-begone. There was no longer any doubt. Goriot was an elderly

libertine, whose eyes had only been preserved by the skill of the

physician from the malign influence of the remedies necessitated by the

state of his health. The disgusting color of his hair was a result of

his excesses and of the drugs which he had taken that he might continue

his career. The poor old man’s mental and physical condition afforded

some grounds for the absurd rubbish talked about him. When his outfit

was worn out, he replaced the fine linen by calico at fourteen _sous_

the ell. His diamonds, his gold snuff-box, watch-chain and trinkets,

disappeared one by one. He had left off wearing the corn-flower blue

coat, and was sumptuously arrayed, summer as well as winter, in a coarse

chestnut-brown coat, a plush waistcoat, and doeskin breeches. He grew

thinner and thinner; his legs were shrunken, his cheeks, once so puffed

out by contented bourgeois prosperity, were covered with wrinkles, and

the outlines of the jawbones were distinctly visible; there were deep

furrows in his forehead. In the fourth year of his residence in the Rue

Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve he was no longer like his former self. The hale

vermicelli manufacturer, sixty-two years of age, who had looked scarce

forty, the stout, comfortable, prosperous tradesman, with an almost

bucolic air, and such a brisk demeanor that it did you good to look at

him; the man with something boyish in his smile, had suddenly sunk into

his dotage, and had become a feeble, vacillating septuagenarian.

The keen, bright blue eyes had grown dull, and faded to a steel-gray

color; the red inflamed rims looked as though they had shed tears of

blood. He excited feelings of repulsion in some, and of pity in others.

The young medical students who came to the house noticed the drooping

of his lower lip and the conformation of the facial angle; and, after

teasing him for some time to no purpose, they declared that cretinism

was setting in.

One evening after dinner Mme. Vauquer said half banteringly to him, “So

those daughters of yours don’t come to see you any more, eh?” meaning to

imply her doubts as to his paternity; but Father Goriot shrank as if his

hostess had touched him with a sword-point.

“They come sometimes,” he said in a tremulous voice.

“Aha! you still see them sometimes?” cried the students. “Bravo, Father

Goriot!”

The old man scarcely seemed to hear the witticisms at his expense that

followed on the words; he had relapsed into the dreamy state of mind

that these superficial observers took for senile torpor, due to his lack

of intelligence. If they had only known, they might have been deeply

interested by the problem of his condition; but few problems were more

obscure. It was easy, of course, to find out whether Goriot had really

been a vermicelli manufacturer; the amount of his fortune was readily

discoverable; but the old people, who were most inquisitive as to his

concerns, never went beyond the limits of the Quarter, and lived in

the lodging-house much as oysters cling to a rock. As for the rest, the

current of life in Paris daily awaited them, and swept them away with

it; so soon as they left the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, they forgot the

existence of the old man, their butt at dinner. For those narrow souls,

or for careless youth, the misery in Father Goriot’s withered face

and its dull apathy were quite incompatible with wealth or any sort of

intelligence. As for the creatures whom he called his daughters, all

Mme. Vauquer’s boarders were of her opinion. With the faculty for severe

logic sedulously cultivated by elderly women during long evenings of

gossip till they can always find an hypothesis to fit all circumstances,

she was wont to reason thus:

“If Father Goriot had daughters of his own as rich as those ladies who

came here seemed to be, he would not be lodging in my house, on the

third floor, at forty-five francs a month; and he would not go about

dressed like a poor man.”

No objection could be raised to these inferences. So by the end of

the month of November 1819, at the time when the curtain rises on this

drama, every one in the house had come to have a very decided opinion as

to the poor old man. He had never had either wife or daughter; excesses

had reduced him to this sluggish condition; he was a sort of human

mollusk who should be classed among the capulidoe, so one of the dinner

contingent, an _employe_ at the Museum, who had a pretty wit of his own.

Poiret was an eagle, a gentleman, compared with Goriot. Poiret would

join the talk, argue, answer when he was spoken to; as a matter of

fact, his talk, arguments, and responses contributed nothing to the

conversation, for Poiret had a habit of repeating what the others said

in different words; still, he did join in the talk; he was alive, and

seemed capable of feeling; while Father Goriot (to quote the Museum

official again) was invariably at zero degrees--Reaumur.

Eugene de Rastignac had just returned to Paris in a state of mind not

unknown to young men who are conscious of unusual powers, and to those

whose faculties are so stimulated by a difficult position, that for the

time being they rise above the ordinary level.

Rastignac’s first year of study for the preliminary examinations in law

had left him free to see the sights of Paris and to enjoy some of its

amusements. A student has not much time on his hands if he sets himself

to learn the repertory of every theatre, and to study the ins and outs

of the labyrinth of Paris. To know its customs; to learn the language,

and become familiar with the amusements of the capital, he must explore

its recesses, good and bad, follow the studies that please him best, and

form some idea of the treasures contained in galleries and museums.

At this stage of his career a student grows eager and excited about all

sorts of follies that seem to him to be of immense importance. He has

his hero, his great man, a professor at the College de France, paid

to talk down to the level of his audience. He adjusts his cravat, and

strikes various attitudes for the benefit of the women in the first

galleries at the Opera-Comique. As he passes through all these

successive initiations, and breaks out of his sheath, the horizons of

life widen around him, and at length he grasps the plan of society with

the different human strata of which it is composed.

If he begins by admiring the procession of carriages on sunny afternoons

in the Champs-Elysees, he soon reaches the further stage of envying

their owners. Unconsciously, Eugene had served his apprenticeship before

he went back to Angouleme for the long vacation after taking his degrees

as bachelor of arts and bachelor of law. The illusions of childhood had

vanished, so also had the ideas he brought with him from the provinces;

he had returned thither with an intelligence developed, with loftier

ambitions, and saw things as they were at home in the old manor house.

His father and mother, his two brothers and two sisters, with an aged

aunt, whose whole fortune consisted in annuities, lived on the little

estate of Rastignac. The whole property brought in about three thousand

francs; and though the amount varied with the season (as must always

be the case in a vine-growing district), they were obliged to spare an

unvarying twelve hundred francs out of their income for him. He saw

how constantly the poverty, which they had generously hidden from him,

weighed upon them; he could not help comparing the sisters, who had

seemed so beautiful to his boyish eyes, with women in Paris, who had

realized the beauty of his dreams. The uncertain future of the whole

family depended upon him. It did not escape his eyes that not a crumb

was wasted in the house, nor that the wine they drank was made from the

second pressing; a multitude of small things, which it is useless to

speak of in detail here, made him burn to distinguish himself, and his

ambition to succeed increased tenfold.

He meant, like all great souls, that his success should be owing

entirely to his merits; but his was pre-eminently a southern

temperament, the execution of his plans was sure to be marred by the

vertigo that seizes on youth when youth sees itself alone in a wide sea,

uncertain how to spend its energies, whither to steer its course, how

to adapt its sails to the winds. At first he determined to fling himself

heart and soul into his work, but he was diverted from this purpose by

the need of society and connections; then he saw how great an influence

women exert in social life, and suddenly made up his mind to go out

into this world to seek a protectress there. Surely a clever and

high-spirited young man, whose wit and courage were set off to advantage

by a graceful figure and the vigorous kind of beauty that readily

strikes a woman’s imagination, need not despair of finding a

protectress. These ideas occurred to him in his country walks with his

sisters, whom he had once joined so gaily. The girls thought him very

much changed.

His aunt, Mme. de Marcillac, had been presented at court, and had moved

among the brightest heights of that lofty region. Suddenly the young

man’s ambition discerned in those recollections of hers, which had been

like nursery fairy tales to her nephews and nieces, the elements of

a social success at least as important as the success which he had

achieved at the Ecole de Droit. He began to ask his aunt about those

relations; some of the old ties might still hold good. After much

shaking of the branches of the family tree, the old lady came to the

conclusion that of all persons who could be useful to her nephew among

the selfish genus of rich relations, the Vicomtesse de Beauseant was

the least likely to refuse. To this lady, therefore, she wrote in the

old-fashioned style, recommending Eugene to her; pointing out to

her nephew that if he succeeded in pleasing Mme. de Beauseant, the

Vicomtesse would introduce him to other relations. A few days after his

return to Paris, therefore, Rastignac sent his aunt’s letter to Mme.

de Beauseant. The Vicomtesse replied by an invitation to a ball for

the following evening. This was the position of affairs at the Maison

Vauquer at the end of November 1819.

A few days later, after Mme. de Beauseant’s ball, Eugene came in at two

o’clock in the morning. The persevering student meant to make up for the

lost time by working until daylight. It was the first time that he had

attempted to spend the night in this way in that silent quarter. The

spell of a factitious energy was upon him; he had beheld the pomp and

splendor of the world. He had not dined at the Maison Vauquer; the

boarders probably would think that he would walk home at daybreak from

the dance, as he had done sometimes on former occasions, after a fete at

the Prado, or a ball at the Odeon, splashing his silk stockings thereby,

and ruining his pumps.

It so happened that Christophe took a look into the street before

drawing the bolts of the door; and Rastignac, coming in at that

moment, could go up to his room without making any noise, followed by

Christophe, who made a great deal. Eugene exchanged his dress suit for a

shabby overcoat and slippers, kindled a fire with some blocks of patent

fuel, and prepared for his night’s work in such a sort that the faint

sounds he made were drowned by Christophe’s heavy tramp on the stairs.

Eugene sat absorbed in thought for a few moments before plunging into

his law books. He had just become aware of the fact that the Vicomtesse

de Beauseant was one of the queens of fashion, that her house was

thought to be the pleasantest in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. And not

only so, she was, by right of her fortune, and the name she bore, one of

the most conspicuous figures in that aristocratic world. Thanks to the

aunt, thanks to Mme. de Marcillac’s letter of introduction, the poor

student had been kindly received in that house before he knew the extent

of the favor thus shown to him. It was almost like a patent of nobility

to be admitted to those gilded salons; he had appeared in the most

exclusive circle in Paris, and now all doors were open for him. Eugene

had been dazzled at first by the brilliant assembly, and had scarcely

exchanged a few words with the Vicomtesse; he had been content to single

out a goddess among this throng of Parisian divinities, one of those

women who are sure to attract a young man’s fancy.

The Comtesse Anastasie de Restaud was tall and gracefully made; she

had one of the prettiest figures in Paris. Imagine a pair of great dark

eyes, a magnificently moulded hand, a shapely foot. There was a fiery

energy in her movements; the Marquis de Ronquerolles had called her “a

thoroughbred,” “a pure pedigree,” these figures of speech have replaced

the “heavenly angel” and Ossianic nomenclature; the old mythology of

love is extinct, doomed to perish by modern dandyism. But for Rastignac,

Mme. Anastasie de Restaud was the woman for whom he had sighed. He had

contrived to write his name twice upon the list of partners upon her

fan, and had snatched a few words with her during the first quadrille.

“Where shall I meet you again, Madame?” he asked abruptly, and the tones

of his voice were full of the vehement energy that women like so well.

“Oh, everywhere!” said she, “in the Bois, at the Bouffons, in my own

house.”

With the impetuosity of his adventurous southern temper, he did all he

could to cultivate an acquaintance with this lovely countess, making the

best of his opportunities in the quadrille and during a waltz that she

gave him. When he told her that he was a cousin of Mme. de Beauseant’s,

the Countess, whom he took for a great lady, asked him to call at her

house, and after her parting smile, Rastignac felt convinced that he

must make this visit. He was so lucky as to light upon some one who did

not laugh at his ignorance, a fatal defect among the gilded and insolent

youth of that period; the coterie of Maulincourts, Maximes de Trailles,

de Marsays, Ronquerolles, Ajuda-Pintos, and Vandenesses who shone there

in all the glory of coxcombry among the best-dressed women of fashion

in Paris--Lady Brandon, the Duchesse de Langeais, the Comtesse de

Kergarouet, Mme. de Serizy, the Duchesse de Carigliano, the Comtesse

Ferraud, Mme. de Lanty, the Marquise d’Aiglemont, Mme. Firmiani,

the Marquise de Listomere and the Marquise d’Espard, the Duchesse de

Maufrigneuse and the Grandlieus. Luckily, therefore, for him, the novice

happened upon the Marquis de Montriveau, the lover of the Duchesse de

Langeais, a general as simple as a child; from him Rastignac learned

that the Comtesse lived in the Rue du Helder.

Ah, what it is to be young, eager to see the world, greedily on the

watch for any chance that brings you nearer the woman of your dreams,

and behold two houses open their doors to you! To set foot in the

Vicomtesse de Beauseant’s house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; to fall

on your knees before a Comtesse de Restaud in the Chaussee d’Antin;

to look at one glance across a vista of Paris drawing-rooms, conscious

that, possessing sufficient good looks, you may hope to find aid and

protection there in a feminine heart! To feel ambitious enough to spurn

the tight-rope on which you must walk with the steady head of an acrobat

for whom a fall is impossible, and to find in a charming woman the best

of all balancing poles.

He sat there with his thoughts for a while, Law on the one hand, and

Poverty on the other, beholding a radiant vision of a woman rise above

the dull, smouldering fire. Who would not have paused and questioned

the future as Eugene was doing? who would not have pictured it full of

success? His wondering thoughts took wings; he was transported out

of the present into that blissful future; he was sitting by Mme. de

Restaud’s side, when a sort of sigh, like the grunt of an overburdened

St. Joseph, broke the silence of the night. It vibrated through the

student, who took the sound for a death groan. He opened his door

noiselessly, went out upon the landing, and saw a thin streak of light

under Father Goriot’s door. Eugene feared that his neighbor had been

taken ill; he went over and looked through the keyhole; the old man

was busily engaged in an occupation so singular and so suspicious that

Rastignac thought he was only doing a piece of necessary service

to society to watch the self-styled vermicelli maker’s nocturnal

industries.

The table was upturned, and Goriot had doubtless in some way secured a

silver plate and cup to the bar before knotting a thick rope round them;

he was pulling at this rope with such enormous force that they were

being crushed and twisted out of shape; to all appearance he meant to

convert the richly wrought metal into ingots.

“_Peste!_ what a man!” said Rastignac, as he watched Goriot’s muscular

arms; there was not a sound in the room while the old man, with the aid

of the rope, was kneading the silver like dough. “Was he then, indeed,

a thief, or a receiver of stolen goods, who affected imbecility and

decrepitude, and lived like a beggar that he might carry on his pursuits

the more securely?” Eugene stood for a moment revolving these questions,

then he looked again through the keyhole.

Father Goriot had unwound his coil of rope; he had covered the table

with a blanket, and was now employed in rolling the flattened mass

of silver into a bar, an operation which he performed with marvelous

dexterity.

“Why, he must be as strong as Augustus, King of Poland!” said Eugene to

himself when the bar was nearly finished.

Father Goriot looked sadly at his handiwork, tears fell from his

eyes, he blew out the dip which had served him for a light while he

manipulated the silver, and Eugene heard him sigh as he lay down again.

“He is mad,” thought the student.

“_Poor child!_” Father Goriot said aloud. Rastignac, hearing those

words, concluded to keep silence; he would not hastily condemn his

neighbor. He was just in the doorway of his room when a strange sound

from the staircase below reached his ears; it might have been made

by two men coming up in list slippers. Eugene listened; two men there

certainly were, he could hear their breathing. Yet there had been no

sound of opening the street door, no footsteps in the passage. Suddenly,

too, he saw a faint gleam of light on the second story; it came from M.

Vautrin’s room.

“There are a good many mysteries here for a lodging-house!” he said to

himself.

He went part of the way downstairs and listened again. The rattle of

gold reached his ears. In another moment the light was put out, and

again he distinctly heard the breathing of two men, but no sound of a

door being opened or shut. The two men went downstairs, the faint sounds

growing fainter as they went.

“Who is there?” cried Mme. Vauquer out of her bedroom window.

“I, Mme. Vauquer,” answered Vautrin’s deep bass voice. “I am coming in.”

“That is odd! Christophe drew the bolts,” said Eugene, going back to his

room. “You have to sit up at night, it seems, if you really mean to know

all that is going on about you in Paris.”

These incidents turned his thought from his ambitious dreams; he betook

himself to his work, but his thought wandered back to Father Goriot’s

suspicious occupation; Mme. de Restaud’s face swam again and again

before his eyes like a vision of a brilliant future; and at last he lay

down and slept with clenched fists. When a young man makes up his mind

that he will work all night, the chances are that seven times out of

ten he will sleep till morning. Such vigils do not begin before we are

turned twenty.

The next morning Paris was wrapped in one of the dense fogs that throw

the most punctual people out in their calculations as to the time; even

the most business-like folk fail to keep their appointments in such

weather, and ordinary mortals wake up at noon and fancy it is eight

o’clock. On this morning it was half-past nine, and Mme. Vauquer

still lay abed. Christophe was late, Sylvie was late, but the two sat

comfortably taking their coffee as usual. It was Sylvie’s custom to take

the cream off the milk destined for the boarders’ breakfast for her

own, and to boil the remainder for some time, so that madame should not

discover this illegal exaction.

“Sylvie,” said Christophe, as he dipped a piece of toast into the

coffee, “M. Vautrin, who is not such a bad sort, all the same, had two

people come to see him again last night. If madame says anything, mind

you say nothing about it.”

“Has he given you something?”

“He gave me a five-franc piece this month, which is as good as saying,

‘Hold your tongue.’”

“Except him and Mme. Couture, who doesn’t look twice at every penny,

there’s no one in the house that doesn’t try to get back with the left

hand all that they give with the right at New Year,” said Sylvie.

“And, after all,” said Christophe, “what do they give you? A miserable

five-franc piece. There is Father Goriot, who has cleaned his shoes

himself these two years past. There is that old beggar Poiret, who goes

without blacking altogether; he would sooner drink it than put it on his

boots. Then there is that whipper-snapper of a student, who gives me a

couple of francs. Two francs will not pay for my brushes, and he sells

his old clothes, and gets more for them than they are worth. Oh! they’re

a shabby lot!”

“Pooh!” said Sylvie, sipping her coffee, “our places are the best in the

Quarter, that I know. But about that great big chap Vautrin, Christophe;

has any one told you anything about him?”

“Yes. I met a gentleman in the street a few days ago; he said to me,

‘There’s a gentleman in your place, isn’t there? a tall man that dyes

his whiskers?’ I told him, ‘No, sir; they aren’t dyed. A gay fellow

like him hasn’t the time to do it.’ And when I told M. Vautrin about

it afterwards, he said, ‘Quite right, my boy. That is the way to

answer them. There is nothing more unpleasant than to have your little

weaknesses known; it might spoil many a match.’”

“Well, and for my part,” said Sylvie, “a man tried to humbug me at the

market wanting to know if I had seen him put on his shirt. Such bosh!

There,” she cried, interrupting herself, “that’s a quarter to ten

striking at the Val-de-Grace, and not a soul stirring!”

“Pooh! they are all gone out. Mme. Couture and the girl went out at

eight o’clock to take the wafer at Saint-Etienne. Father Goriot started

off somewhere with a parcel, and the student won’t be back from his

lecture till ten o’clock. I saw them go while I was sweeping the stairs;

Father Goriot knocked up against me, and his parcel was as hard as iron.

What is the old fellow up to, I wonder? He is as good as a plaything for

the rest of them; they can never let him alone; but he is a good man,

all the same, and worth more than all of them put together. He doesn’t

give you much himself, but he sometimes sends you with a message to

ladies who fork out famous tips; they are dressed grandly, too.”

“His daughters, as he calls them, eh? There are a dozen of them.”

“I have never been to more than two--the two who came here.”

“There is madame moving overhead; I shall have to go, or she will raise

a fine racket. Just keep an eye on the milk, Christophe; don’t let the

cat get at it.”

Sylvie went up to her mistress’ room.

“Sylvie! How is this? It’s nearly ten o’clock, and you let me sleep like

a dormouse! Such a thing has never happened before.”

“It’s the fog; it is that thick, you could cut it with a knife.”

“But how about breakfast?”

“Bah! the boarders are possessed, I’m sure. They all cleared out before

there was a wink of daylight.”

“Do speak properly, Sylvie,” Mme. Vauquer retorted; “say a blink of

daylight.”

“Ah, well, madame, whichever you please. Anyhow, you can have breakfast

at ten o’clock. La Michonnette and Poiret have neither of them stirred.

There are only those two upstairs, and they are sleeping like the logs

they are.”

“But, Sylvie, you put their names together as if----”

“As if what?” said Sylvie, bursting into a guffaw. “The two of them make

a pair.”

“It is a strange thing, isn’t it, Sylvie, how M. Vautrin got in last

night after Christophe had bolted the door?”

“Not at all, madame. Christophe heard M. Vautrin, and went down and

undid the door. And here are you imagining that----?”

“Give me my bodice, and be quick and get breakfast ready. Dish up the

rest of the mutton with the potatoes, and you can put the stewed pears

on the table, those at five a penny.”

A few moments later Mme. Vauquer came down, just in time to see the cat

knock down a plate that covered a bowl of milk, and begin to lap in all

haste.

“Mistigris!” she cried.

The cat fled, but promptly returned to rub against her ankles.

“Oh! yes, you can wheedle, you old hypocrite!” she said. “Sylvie!

Sylvie!”

“Yes, madame; what is it?”

“Just see what the cat has done!”

“It is all that stupid Christophe’s fault. I told him to stop and lay

the table. What has become of him? Don’t you worry, madame; Father

Goriot shall have it. I will fill it up with water, and he won’t know

the difference; he never notices anything, not even what he eats.”

“I wonder where the old heathen can have gone?” said Mme. Vauquer,

setting the plates round the table.

“Who knows? He is up to all sorts of tricks.”

“I have overslept myself,” said Mme. Vauquer.

“But madame looks as fresh as a rose, all the same.”

The door bell rang at that moment, and Vautrin came through the

sitting-room, singing loudly:

“‘Tis the same old story everywhere,

A roving heart and a roving glance..

“Oh! Mamma Vauquer! good-morning!” he cried at the sight of his hostess,

and he put his arm gaily round her waist.

“There! have done----”

“‘Impertinence!’ Say it!” he answered. “Come, say it! Now, isn’t that

what you really mean? Stop a bit, I will help you to set the table. Ah!

I am a nice man, am I not?

“For the locks of brown and the golden hair

A sighing lover...

“Oh! I have just seen something so funny----

.... led by chance.”

“What?” asked the widow.

“Father Goriot in the goldsmith’s shop in the Rue Dauphine at half-past

eight this morning. They buy old spoons and forks and gold lace there,

and Goriot sold a piece of silver plate for a good round sum. It had

been twisted out of shape very neatly for a man that’s not used to the

trade.”

“Really? You don’t say so?”

“Yes. One of my friends is expatriating himself; I had been to see him

off on board the Royal Mail steamer, and was coming back here. I waited

after that to see what Father Goriot would do; it is a comical affair.

He came back to this quarter of the world, to the Rue des Gres, and went

into a money-lender’s house; everybody knows him, Gobseck, a stuck-up

rascal, that would make dominoes out of his father’s bones, a Turk,

a heathen, an old Jew, a Greek; it would be a difficult matter to rob

_him_, for he puts all his coin into the Bank.”

“Then what was Father Goriot doing there?”

“Doing?” said Vautrin. “Nothing; he was bent on his own undoing. He is a

simpleton, stupid enough to ruin himself by running after----”

“There he is!” cried Sylvie.

“Christophe,” cried Father Goriot’s voice, “come upstairs with me.”

Christophe went up, and shortly afterwards came down again.

“Where are you going?” Mme. Vauquer asked of her servant.

“Out on an errand for M. Goriot.”

“What may that be?” said Vautrin, pouncing on a letter in Christophe’s

hand. “_Mme. la Comtesse Anastasie de Restaud_,” he read. “Where are you

going with it?” he added, as he gave the letter back to Christophe.

“To the Rue du Helder. I have orders to give this into her hands

myself.”

“What is there inside it?” said Vautrin, holding the letter up to the

light. “A banknote? No.” He peered into the envelope. “A receipted

account!” he cried. “My word! ‘tis a gallant old dotard. Off with you,

old chap,” he said, bringing down a hand on Christophe’s head, and

spinning the man round like a thimble; “you will have a famous tip.”

By this time the table was set. Sylvie was boiling the milk, Mme.

Vauquer was lighting a fire in the stove with some assistance from

Vautrin, who kept humming to himself:

“The same old story everywhere,

A roving heart and a roving glance.”

When everything was ready, Mme. Couture and Mlle. Taillefer came in.

“Where have you been this morning, fair lady?” said Mme. Vauquer,

turning to Mme. Couture.

“We have just been to say our prayers at Saint-Etienne du Mont. To-day

is the day when we must go to see M. Taillefer. Poor little thing! She

is trembling like a leaf,” Mme. Couture went on, as she seated herself

before the fire and held the steaming soles of her boots to the blaze.

“Warm yourself, Victorine,” said Mme. Vauquer.

“It is quite right and proper, mademoiselle, to pray to Heaven to soften

your father’s heart,” said Vautrin, as he drew a chair nearer to the

orphan girl; “but that is not enough. What you want is a friend who

will give the monster a piece of his mind; a barbarian that has three

millions (so they say), and will not give you a dowry; and a pretty girl

needs a dowry nowadays.”

“Poor child!” said Mme. Vauquer. “Never mind, my pet, your wretch of a

father is going just the way to bring trouble upon himself.”

Victorine’s eyes filled with tears at the words, and the widow checked

herself at a sign from Mme. Couture.

“If we could only see him!” said the Commissary-General’s widow; “if I

could speak to him myself and give him his wife’s last letter! I

have never dared to run the risk of sending it by post; he knew my

handwriting----”

“‘Oh woman, persecuted and injured innocent!’” exclaimed Vautrin,

breaking in upon her. “So that is how you are, is it? In a few days’

time I will look into your affairs, and it will be all right, you shall

see.”

“Oh! sir,” said Victorine, with a tearful but eager glance at Vautrin,

who showed no sign of being touched by it, “if you know of any way

of communicating with my father, please be sure and tell him that his

affection and my mother’s honor are more to me than all the money in the

world. If you can induce him to relent a little towards me, I will pray

to God for you. You may be sure of my gratitude----”

“_The same old story everywhere_,” sang Vautrin, with a satirical

intonation. At this juncture, Goriot, Mlle. Michonneau, and Poiret came

downstairs together; possibly the scent of the gravy which Sylvie was

making to serve with the mutton had announced breakfast. The seven

people thus assembled bade each other good-morning, and took their

places at the table; the clock struck ten, and the student’s footstep

was heard outside.

“Ah! here you are, M. Eugene,” said Sylvie; “every one is breakfasting

at home to-day.”

The student exchanged greetings with the lodgers, and sat down beside

Goriot.

“I have just met with a queer adventure,” he said, as he helped himself

abundantly to the mutton, and cut a slice of bread, which Mme. Vauquer’s

eyes gauged as usual.

“An adventure?” queried Poiret.

“Well, and what is there to astonish you in that, old boy?” Vautrin

asked of Poiret. “M. Eugene is cut out for that kind of thing.”

Mlle. Taillefer stole a timid glance at the young student.

“Tell us about your adventure!” demanded M. Vautrin.

“Yesterday evening I went to a ball given by a cousin of mine, the

Vicomtesse de Beauseant. She has a magnificent house; the rooms are hung

with silk--in short, it was a splendid affair, and I was as happy as a

king---”

“Fisher,” put in Vautrin, interrupting.

“What do you mean, sir?” said Eugene sharply.

“I said ‘fisher,’ because kingfishers see a good deal more fun than

kings.”

“Quite true; I would much rather be the little careless bird than a

king,” said Poiret the ditto-ist, “because----”

“In fact”--the law-student cut him short--“I danced with one of the

handsomest women in the room, a charming countess, the most exquisite

creature I have ever seen. There was peach blossom in her hair, and she

had the loveliest bouquet of flowers--real flowers, that scented the

air----but there! it is no use trying to describe a woman glowing with

the dance. You ought to have seen her! Well, and this morning I met this

divine countess about nine o’clock, on foot in the Rue de Gres. Oh! how

my heart beat! I began to think----”

“That she was coming here,” said Vautrin, with a keen look at the

student. “I expect that she was going to call on old Gobseck, a

money-lender. If ever you explore a Parisian woman’s heart, you will

find the money-lender first, and the lover afterwards. Your countess is

called Anastasie de Restaud, and she lives in the Rue du Helder.”

The student stared hard at Vautrin. Father Goriot raised his head at the

words, and gave the two speakers a glance so full of intelligence and

uneasiness that the lodgers beheld him with astonishment.

“Then Christophe was too late, and she must have gone to him!” cried

Goriot, with anguish in his voice.

“It is just as I guessed,” said Vautrin, leaning over to whisper in Mme.

Vauquer’s ear.

Goriot went on with his breakfast, but seemed unconscious of what he was

doing. He had never looked more stupid nor more taken up with his own

thoughts than he did at that moment.

“Who the devil could have told you her name, M. Vautrin?” asked Eugene.

“Aha! there you are!” answered Vautrin. “Old Father Goriot there knew it

quite well! and why should I not know it too?”

“M. Goriot?” the student cried.

“What is it?” asked the old man. “So she was very beautiful, was she,

yesterday night?”

“Who?”

“Mme. de Restaud.”

“Look at the old wretch,” said Mme. Vauquer, speaking to Vautrin; “how

his eyes light up!”

“Then does he really keep her?” said Mlle. Michonneau, in a whisper to

the student.

“Oh! yes, she was tremendously pretty,” Eugene answered. Father Goriot

watched him with eager eyes. “If Mme. de Beauseant had not been there,

my divine countess would have been the queen of the ball; none of the

younger men had eyes for any one else. I was the twelfth on her list,

and she danced every quadrille. The other women were furious. She must

have enjoyed herself, if ever creature did! It is a true saying

that there is no more beautiful sight than a frigate in full sail, a

galloping horse, or a woman dancing.”

“So the wheel turns,” said Vautrin; “yesterday night at a duchess’

ball, this morning in a money-lender’s office, on the lowest rung of the

ladder--just like a Parisienne! If their husbands cannot afford to pay

for their frantic extravagance, they will sell themselves. Or if

they cannot do that, they will tear out their mothers’ hearts to find

something to pay for their splendor. They will turn the world upside

down. Just a Parisienne through and through!”

Father Goriot’s face, which had shone at the student’s words like the

sun on a bright day, clouded over all at once at this cruel speech of

Vautrin’s.

“Well,” said Mme. Vauquer, “but where is your adventure? Did you speak

to her? Did you ask her if she wanted to study law?”

“She did not see me,” said Eugene. “But only think of meeting one of the

prettiest women in Paris in the Rue des Gres at nine o’clock! She could

not have reached home after the ball till two o’clock this morning.

Wasn’t it queer? There is no place like Paris for this sort of

adventures.”

“Pshaw! much funnier things than _that_ happen here!” exclaimed Vautrin.

Mlle. Taillefer had scarcely heeded the talk, she was so absorbed by the

thought of the new attempt that she was about to make. Mme. Couture made

a sign that it was time to go upstairs and dress; the two ladies went

out, and Father Goriot followed their example.

“Well, did you see?” said Mme. Vauquer, addressing Vautrin and the rest

of the circle. “He is ruining himself for those women, that is plain.”

“Nothing will ever make me believe that that beautiful Comtesse de

Restaud is anything to Father Goriot,” cried the student.

“Well, and if you don’t,” broke in Vautrin, “we are not set on

convincing you. You are too young to know Paris thoroughly yet; later on

you will find out that there are what we call men with a passion----”

Mlle. Michonneau gave Vautrin a quick glance at these words. They seemed

to be like the sound of a trumpet to a trooper’s horse. “Aha!” said

Vautrin, stopping in his speech to give her a searching glance, “so we

have had our little experiences, have we?”

The old maid lowered her eyes like a nun who sees a statue.

“Well,” he went on, “when folk of that kind get a notion into their

heads, they cannot drop it. They must drink the water from some

particular spring--it is stagnant as often as not; but they will sell

their wives and families, they will sell their own souls to the devil to

get it. For some this spring is play, or the stock-exchange, or music,

or a collection of pictures or insects; for others it is some woman who

can give them the dainties they like. You might offer these last all the

women on earth--they would turn up their noses; they will have the only

one who can gratify their passion. It often happens that the woman

does not care for them at all, and treats them cruelly; they buy their

morsels of satisfaction very dear; but no matter, the fools are never

tired of it; they will take their last blanket to the pawnbroker’s to

give their last five-franc piece to her. Father Goriot here is one of

that sort. He is discreet, so the Countess exploits him--just the way of

the gay world. The poor old fellow thinks of her and of nothing else.

In all other respects you see he is a stupid animal; but get him on

that subject, and his eyes sparkle like diamonds. That secret is not

difficult to guess. He took some plate himself this morning to the

melting-pot, and I saw him at Daddy Gobseck’s in the Rue des Gres. And

now, mark what follows--he came back here, and gave a letter for the

Comtesse de Restaud to that noodle of a Christophe, who showed us the

address; there was a receipted bill inside it. It is clear that it was

an urgent matter if the Countess also went herself to the old money

lender. Father Goriot has financed her handsomely. There is no need to

tack a tale together; the thing is self-evident. So that shows you, sir

student, that all the time your Countess was smiling, dancing, flirting,

swaying her peach-flower crowned head, with her gown gathered into her

hand, her slippers were pinching her, as they say; she was thinking of

her protested bills, or her lover’s protested bills.”

“You have made me wild to know the truth,” cried Eugene; “I will go to

call on Mme. de Restaud to-morrow.”

“Yes,” echoed Poiret; “you must go and call on Mme. de Restaud.”

“And perhaps you will find Father Goriot there, who will take payment

for the assistance he politely rendered.”

Eugene looked disgusted. “Why, then, this Paris of yours is a slough.”

“And an uncommonly queer slough, too,” replied Vautrin. “The mud

splashes you as you drive through it in your carriage--you are a

respectable person; you go afoot and are splashed--you are a scoundrel.

You are so unlucky as to walk off with something or other belonging

to somebody else, and they exhibit you as a curiosity in the Place du

Palais-de-Justice; you steal a million, and you are pointed out in every

salon as a model of virtue. And you pay thirty millions for the police

and the courts of justice, for the maintenance of law and order! A

pretty slate of things it is!”

“What,” cried Mme. Vauquer, “has Father Goriot really melted down his

silver posset-dish?”

“There were two turtle-doves on the lid, were there not?” asked Eugene.

“Yes, that there were.”

“Then, was he fond of it?” said Eugene. “He cried while he was breaking

up the cup and plate. I happened to see him by accident.”

“It was dear to him as his own life,” answered the widow.

“There! you see how infatuated the old fellow is!” cried Vautrin. “The

woman yonder can coax the soul out of him.”

The student went up to his room. Vautrin went out, and a few moments

later Mme. Couture and Victorine drove away in a cab which Sylvie had

called for them. Poiret gave his arm to Mlle. Michonneau, and they went

together to spend the two sunniest hours of the day in the Jardin des

Plantes.

“Well, those two are as good as married,” was the portly Sylvie’s

comment. “They are going out together to-day for the first time. They

are such a couple of dry sticks that if they happen to strike against

each other they will draw sparks like flint and steel.”

“Keep clear of Mlle. Michonneau’s shawl, then,” said Mme. Vauquer,

laughing; “it would flare up like tinder.”

At four o’clock that evening, when Goriot came in, he saw, by the light

of two smoky lamps, that Victorine’s eyes were red. Mme. Vauquer was

listening to the history of the visit made that morning to M. Taillefer;

it had been made in vain. Taillefer was tired of the annual application

made by his daughter and her elderly friend; he gave them a personal

interview in order to arrive at an understanding with them.

“My dear lady,” said Mme. Couture, addressing Mme. Vauquer, “just

imagine it; he did not even ask Victorine to sit down, she was standing

the whole time. He said to me quite coolly, without putting himself in a

passion, that we might spare ourselves the trouble of going there; that

the young lady (he would not call her his daughter) was injuring her

cause by importuning him (_importuning!_ once a year, the wretch!); that

as Victorine’s mother had nothing when he married her, Victorine ought

not to expect anything from him; in fact, he said the most cruel things,

that made the poor child burst out crying. The little thing threw

herself at her father’s feet and spoke up bravely; she said that she

only persevered in her visits for her mother’s sake; that she would

obey him without a murmur, but that she begged him to read her poor dead

mother’s farewell letter. She took it up and gave it to him, saying the

most beautiful things in the world, most beautifully expressed; I do not

know where she learned them; God must have put them into her head, for

the poor child was inspired to speak so nicely that it made me cry like

a fool to hear her talk. And what do you think the monster was doing all

the time? Cutting his nails! He took the letter that poor Mme. Taillefer

had soaked with tears, and flung it on to the chimney-piece. ‘That is

all right,’ he said. He held out his hands to raise his daughter, but

she covered them with kisses, and he drew them away again. Scandalous,

isn’t it? And his great booby of a son came in and took no notice of his

sister.”

“What inhuman wretches they must be!” said Father Goriot.

“And then they both went out of the room,” Mme. Couture went on, without

heeding the worthy vermicelli maker’s exclamation; “father and son bowed

to me, and asked me to excuse them on account of urgent business! That

is the history of our call. Well, he has seen his daughter at any rate.

How he can refuse to acknowledge her I cannot think, for they are as

alike as two peas.”

The boarders dropped in one after another, interchanging greetings and

empty jokes that certain classes of Parisians regard as humorous and

witty. Dulness is their prevailing ingredient, and the whole point

consists in mispronouncing a word or a gesture. This kind of argot is

always changing. The essence of the jest consists in some catchword

suggested by a political event, an incident in the police courts, a

street song, or a bit of burlesque at some theatre, and forgotten in a

month. Anything and everything serves to keep up a game of battledore

and shuttlecock with words and ideas. The diorama, a recent invention,

which carried an optical illusion a degree further than panoramas, had

given rise to a mania among art students for ending every word with

_rama_. The Maison Vauquer had caught the infection from a young artist

among the boarders.

“Well, Monsieur-r-r Poiret,” said the _employe_ from the Museum, “how

is your health-orama?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to

Mme. Couture and Victorine with a “Ladies, you seem melancholy.”

“Is dinner ready?” cried Horace Bianchon, a medical student, and a

friend of Rastignac’s; “my stomach is sinking _usque ad talones_.”

“There is an uncommon _frozerama_ outside,” said Vautrin. “Make room

there, Father Goriot! Confound it, your foot covers the whole front of

the stove.”

“Illustrious M. Vautrin,” put in Bianchon, “why do you say _frozerama_?

It is incorrect; it should be _frozenrama_.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” said the official from the Museum; “_frozerama_ is

right by the same rule that you say ‘My feet are _froze_.’”

“Ah! ah!”

“Here is his Excellency the Marquis de Rastignac, Doctor of the Law of

Contraries,” cried Bianchon, seizing Eugene by the throat, and almost

throttling him.

“Hallo there! hallo!”

Mlle. Michonneau came noiselessly in, bowed to the rest of the party,

and took her place beside the three women without saying a word.

“That old bat always makes me shudder,” said Bianchon in a low voice,

indicating Mlle. Michonneau to Vautrin. “I have studied Gall’s system,

and I am sure she has the bump of Judas.”

“Then you have seen a case before?” said Vautrin.

“Who has not?” answered Bianchon. “Upon my word, that ghastly old maid

looks just like one of the long worms that will gnaw a beam through,

give them time enough.”

“That is the way, young man,” returned he of the forty years and the

dyed whiskers:

“The rose has lived the life of a rose--

A morning’s space.”

“Aha! here is a magnificent _soupe-au-rama_,” cried Poiret as Christophe

came in bearing the soup with cautious heed.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mme. Vauquer; “it is _soupe aux choux_.”

All the young men roared with laughter.

“Had you there, Poiret!”

“Poir-r-r-rette! she had you there!”

“Score two points to Mamma Vauquer,” said Vautrin.

“Did any of you notice the fog this morning?” asked the official.

“It was a frantic fog,” said Bianchon, “a fog unparalleled, doleful,

melancholy, sea-green, asthmatical--a Goriot of a fog!”

“A Goriorama,” said the art student, “because you couldn’t see a thing

in it.”

“Hey! Milord Gaoriotte, they air talking about yoo-o-ou!”

Father Goriot, seated at the lower end of the table, close to the door

through which the servant entered, raised his face; he had smelt at a

scrap of bread that lay under his table napkin, an old trick acquired in

his commercial capacity, that still showed itself at times.

“Well,” Madame Vauquer cried in sharp tones, that rang above the rattle

of spoons and plates and the sound of other voices, “and is there

anything the matter with the bread?”

“Nothing whatever, madame,” he answered; “on the contrary, it is made of

the best quality of corn; flour from Etampes.”

“How could you tell?” asked Eugene.

“By the color, by the flavor.”

“You knew the flavor by the smell, I suppose,” said Mme. Vauquer. “You

have grown so economical, you will find out how to live on the smell of

cooking at last.”

“Take out a patent for it, then,” cried the Museum official; “you would

make a handsome fortune.”

“Never mind him,” said the artist; “he does that sort of thing to delude

us into thinking that he was a vermicelli maker.”

“Your nose is a corn-sampler, it appears?” inquired the official.

“Corn _what_?” asked Bianchon.

“Corn-el.”

“Corn-et.”

“Corn-elian.”

“Corn-ice.”

“Corn-ucopia.”

“Corn-crake.”

“Corn-cockle.”

“Corn-orama.”

The eight responses came like a rolling fire from every part of the

room, and the laughter that followed was the more uproarious because

poor Father Goriot stared at the others with a puzzled look, like a

foreigner trying to catch the meaning of words in a language which he

does not understand.

“Corn?...” he said, turning to Vautrin, his next neighbor.

“Corn on your foot, old man!” said Vautrin, and he drove Father Goriot’s

cap down over his eyes by a blow on the crown.

The poor old man thus suddenly attacked was for a moment too bewildered

to do anything. Christophe carried off his plate, thinking that he had

finished his soup, so that when Goriot had pushed back his cap from his

eyes his spoon encountered the table. Every one burst out laughing. “You

are a disagreeable joker, sir,” said the old man, “and if you take any

further liberties with me----”

“Well, what then, old boy?” Vautrin interrupted.

“Well, then, you shall pay dearly for it some day----”

“Down below, eh?” said the artist, “in the little dark corner where they

put naughty boys.”

“Well, mademoiselle,” Vautrin said, turning to Victorine, “you are

eating nothing. So papa was refractory, was he?”

“A monster!” said Mme. Couture.

“Mademoiselle might make application for aliment pending her suit; she

is not eating anything. Eh! eh! just see how Father Goriot is staring at

Mlle. Victorine.”

The old man had forgotten his dinner, he was so absorbed in gazing at

the poor girl; the sorrow in her face was unmistakable,--the slighted

love of a child whose father would not recognize her.

“We are mistaken about Father Goriot, my dear boy,” said Eugene in a low

voice. “He is not an idiot, nor wanting in energy. Try your Gall system

on him, and let me know what you think. I saw him crush a silver dish

last night as if it had been made of wax; there seems to be something

extraordinary going on in his mind just now, to judge by his face. His

life is so mysterious that it must be worth studying. Oh! you may laugh,

Bianchon; I am not joking.”

“The man is a subject, is he?” said Bianchon; “all right! I will dissect

him, if he will give me the chance.”

“No; feel his bumps.”

“Hm!--his stupidity might perhaps be contagious.”

The next day Rastignac dressed himself very elegantly, and about three

o’clock in the afternoon went to call on Mme. de Restaud. On the way

thither he indulged in the wild intoxicating dreams which fill a young

head so full of delicious excitement. Young men at his age take

no account of obstacles nor of dangers; they see success in every

direction; imagination has free play, and turns their lives into a

romance; they are saddened or discouraged by the collapse of one of the

visionary schemes that have no existence save in their heated fancy. If

youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

Eugene took unheard-of pains to keep himself in a spotless condition,

but on his way through the streets he began to think about Mme. de

Restaud and what he should say to her. He equipped himself with wit,

rehearsed repartees in the course of an imaginary conversation, and

prepared certain neat speeches a la Talleyrand, conjuring up a series of

small events which should prepare the way for the declaration on which

he had based his future; and during these musings the law student was

bespattered with mud, and by the time he reached the Palais Royal he was

obliged to have his boots blacked and his trousers brushed.

“If I were rich,” he said, as he changed the five-franc piece he had

brought with him in case anything might happen, “I would take a cab,

then I could think at my ease.”

At last he reached the Rue du Helder, and asked for the Comtesse de

Restaud. He bore the contemptuous glances of the servants, who had seen

him cross the court on foot, with the cold fury of a man who knows that

he will succeed some day. He understood the meaning of their glances at

once, for he had felt his inferiority as soon as he entered the court,

where a smart cab was waiting. All the delights of life in Paris

seemed to be implied by this visible and manifest sign of luxury and

extravagance. A fine horse, in magnificent harness, was pawing the

ground, and all at once the law student felt out of humor with himself.

Every compartment in his brain which he had thought to find so full of

wit was bolted fast; he grew positively stupid. He sent up his name

to the Countess, and waited in the ante-chamber, standing on one foot

before a window that looked out upon the court; mechanically he leaned

his elbow against the sash, and stared before him. The time seemed long;

he would have left the house but for the southern tenacity of purpose

which works miracles when it is single-minded.

“Madame is in her boudoir, and cannot see any one at present, sir,”

said the servant. “She gave me no answer; but if you will go into the

dining-room, there is some one already there.”

Rastignac was impressed with a sense of the formidable power of the

lackey who can accuse or condemn his masters by a word; he coolly opened

the door by which the man had just entered the ante-chamber, meaning,

no doubt, to show these insolent flunkeys that he was familiar with the

house; but he found that he had thoughtlessly precipitated himself into

a small room full of dressers, where lamps were standing, and hot-water

pipes, on which towels were being dried; a dark passage and a back

staircase lay beyond it. Stifled laughter from the ante-chamber added to

his confusion.

“This way to the drawing-room, sir,” said the servant, with the

exaggerated respect which seemed to be one more jest at his expense.

Eugene turned so quickly that he stumbled against a bath. By good luck,

he managed to keep his hat on his head, and saved it from immersion in

the water; but just as he turned, a door opened at the further end of

the dark passage, dimly lighted by a small lamp. Rastignac heard voices

and the sound of a kiss; one of the speakers was Mme. de Restaud,

the other was Father Goriot. Eugene followed the servant through the

dining-room into the drawing-room; he went to a window that looked

out into the courtyard, and stood there for a while. He meant to know

whether this Goriot was really the Goriot that he knew. His heart

beat unwontedly fast; he remembered Vautrin’s hideous insinuations. A

well-dressed young man suddenly emerged from the room almost as Eugene

entered it, saying impatiently to the servant who stood at the door: “I

am going, Maurice. Tell Madame la Comtesse that I waited more than half

an hour for her.”

Whereupon this insolent being, who, doubtless, had a right to be

insolent, sang an Italian trill, and went towards the window where

Eugene was standing, moved thereto quite as much by a desire to see the

student’s face as by a wish to look out into the courtyard.

“But M. le Comte had better wait a moment longer; madame is disengaged,”

said Maurice, as he returned to the ante-chamber.

Just at that moment Father Goriot appeared close to the gate; he had

emerged from a door at the foot of the back staircase. The worthy soul

was preparing to open his umbrella regardless of the fact that the great

gate had opened to admit a tilbury, in which a young man with a ribbon

at his button-hole was seated. Father Goriot had scarcely time to start

back and save himself. The horse took fright at the umbrella, swerved,

and dashed forward towards the flight of steps. The young man looked

round in annoyance, saw Father Goriot, and greeted him as he went out

with constrained courtesy, such as people usually show to a money-lender

so long as they require his services, or the sort of respect they feel

it necessary to show for some one whose reputation has been blown upon,

so that they blush to acknowledge his acquaintance. Father Goriot gave

him a little friendly nod and a good-natured smile. All this happened

with lightning speed. Eugene was so deeply interested that he forgot

that he was not alone till he suddenly heard the Countess’ voice.

“Oh! Maxime, were you going away?” she said reproachfully, with a shade

of pique in her manner. The Countess had not seen the incident nor the

entrance of the tilbury. Rastignac turned abruptly and saw her standing

before him, coquettishly dressed in a loose white cashmere gown with

knots of rose-colored ribbon here and there; her hair was carelessly

coiled about her head, as is the wont of Parisian women in the morning;

there was a soft fragrance about her--doubtless she was fresh from

a bath;--her graceful form seemed more flexible, her beauty more

luxuriant. Her eyes glistened. A young man can see everything at a

glance; he feels the radiant influence of woman as a plant discerns and

absorbs its nutriment from the air; he did not need to touch her hands

to feel their cool freshness. He saw faint rose tints through the

cashmere of the dressing gown; it had fallen slightly open, giving

glimpses of a bare throat, on which the student’s eyes rested. The

Countess had no need of the adventitious aid of corsets; her girdle

defined the outlines of her slender waist; her throat was a challenge

to love; her feet, thrust into slippers, were daintily small. As Maxime

took her hand and kissed it, Eugene became aware of Maxime’s existence,

and the Countess saw Eugene.

“Oh! is that you M. de Rastignac? I am very glad to see you,” she said,

but there was something in her manner that a shrewd observer would have

taken as a hint to depart.

Maxime, as the Countess Anastasie had called the young man with the

haughty insolence of bearing, looked from Eugene to the lady, and from

the lady to Eugene; it was sufficiently evident that he wished to be rid

of the latter. An exact and faithful rendering of the glance might be

given in the words: “Look here, my dear; I hope you intend to send this

little whipper-snapper about his business.”

The Countess consulted the young man’s face with an intent

submissiveness that betrays all the secrets of a woman’s heart, and

Rastignac all at once began to hate him violently. To begin with, the

sight of the fair carefully arranged curls on the other’s comely

head had convinced him that his own crop was hideous; Maxime’s boots,

moreover, were elegant and spotless, while his own, in spite of all

his care, bore some traces of his recent walk; and, finally, Maxime’s

overcoat fitted the outline of his figure gracefully, he looked like a

pretty woman, while Eugene was wearing a black coat at half-past two.

The quick-witted child of the Charente felt the disadvantage at which he

was placed beside this tall, slender dandy, with the clear gaze and

the pale face, one of those men who would ruin orphan children without

scruple. Mme. de Restaud fled into the next room without waiting for

Eugene to speak; shaking out the skirts of her dressing-gown in her

flight, so that she looked like a white butterfly, and Maxime hurried

after her. Eugene, in a fury, followed Maxime and the Countess, and

the three stood once more face to face by the hearth in the large

drawing-room. The law student felt quite sure that the odious Maxime

found him in the way, and even at the risk of displeasing Mme. de

Restaud, he meant to annoy the dandy. It had struck him all at once that

he had seen the young man before at Mme. de Beauseant’s ball; he guessed

the relation between Maxime and Mme. de Restaud; and with the youthful

audacity that commits prodigious blunders or achieves signal success, he

said to himself, “This is my rival; I mean to cut him out.”

Rash resolve! He did not know that M. le Comte Maxime de Trailles would

wait till he was insulted, so as to fire first and kill his man. Eugene

was a sportsman and a good shot, but he had not yet hit the bulls’s eye

twenty times out of twenty-two. The young Count dropped into a low chair

by the hearth, took up the tongs, and made up the fire so violently and

so sulkily, that Anastasie’s fair face suddenly clouded over. She turned

to Eugene, with a cool, questioning glance that asked plainly, “Why do

you not go?” a glance which well-bred people regard as a cue to make

their exit.

Eugene assumed an amiable expression.

“Madame,” he began, “I hastened to call upon you----”

He stopped short. The door opened, and the owner of the tilbury suddenly

appeared. He had left his hat outside, and did not greet the Countess;

he looked meditatively at Rastignac, and held out his hand to Maxime

with a cordial “Good morning,” that astonished Eugene not a little. The

young provincial did not understand the amenities of a triple alliance.

“M. de Restaud,” said the Countess, introducing her husband to the law

student.

Eugene bowed profoundly.

“This gentleman,” she continued, presenting Eugene to her husband,

“is M. de Rastignac; he is related to Mme. la Vicomtesse de Beauseant

through the Marcillacs; I had the pleasure of meeting him at her last

ball.”

_Related to Mme. la Vicomtesse de Beauseant through the Marcillacs!_

These words, on which the countess threw ever so slight an emphasis, by

reason of the pride that the mistress of a house takes in showing

that she only receives people of distinction as visitors in her house,

produced a magical effect. The Count’s stiff manner relaxed at once as

he returned the student’s bow.

“Delighted to have an opportunity of making your acquaintance,” he said.

Maxime de Trailles himself gave Eugene an uneasy glance, and suddenly

dropped his insolent manner. The mighty name had all the power of a

fairy’s wand; those closed compartments in the southern brain flew open

again; Rastignac’s carefully drilled faculties returned. It was as if a

sudden light had pierced the obscurity of this upper world of Paris, and

he began to see, though everything was indistinct as yet. Mme. Vauquer’s

lodging-house and Father Goriot were very far remote from his thoughts.

“I thought that the Marcillacs were extinct,” the Comte de Restaud said,

addressing Eugene.

“Yes, they are extinct,” answered the law student. “My great-uncle, the

Chevalier de Rastignac, married the heiress of the Marcillac family.

They had only one daughter, who married the Marechal de Clarimbault,

Mme. de Beauseant’s grandfather on the mother’s side. We are the younger

branch of the family, and the younger branch is all the poorer because

my great-uncle, the Vice-Admiral, lost all that he had in the King’s

service. The Government during the Revolution refused to admit our

claims when the Compagnie des Indes was liquidated.”

“Was not your great-uncle in command of the _Vengeur_ before 1789?”

“Yes.”

“Then he would be acquainted with my grandfather, who commanded the

_Warwick_.”

Maxime looked at Mme. de Restaud and shrugged his shoulders, as who

should say, “If he is going to discuss nautical matters with that

fellow, it is all over with us.” Anastasie understood the glance that M.

de Trailles gave her. With a woman’s admirable tact, she began to smile

and said:

“Come with me, Maxime; I have something to say to you. We will leave

you two gentlemen to sail in company on board the _Warwick_ and the

_Vengeur_.”

She rose to her feet and signed to Maxime to follow her, mirth and

mischief in her whole attitude, and the two went in the direction of the

boudoir. The _morganatic_ couple (to use a convenient German expression

which has no exact equivalent) had reached the door, when the Count

interrupted himself in his talk with Eugene.

“Anastasie!” he cried pettishly, “just stay a moment, dear; you know

very well that----”

“I am coming back in a minute,” she interrupted; “I have a commission

for Maxime to execute, and I want to tell him about it.”

She came back almost immediately. She had noticed the inflection in her

husband’s voice, and knew that it would not be safe to retire to the

boudoir; like all women who are compelled to study their husbands’

characters in order to have their own way, and whose business it is

to know exactly how far they can go without endangering a good

understanding, she was very careful to avoid petty collisions in

domestic life. It was Eugene who had brought about this untoward

incident; so the Countess looked at Maxime and indicated the law student

with an air of exasperation. M. de Trailles addressed the Count, the

Countess, and Eugene with the pointed remark, “You are busy, I do not

want to interrupt you; good-day,” and he went.

“Just wait a moment, Maxime!” the Count called after him.

“Come and dine with us,” said the Countess, leaving Eugene and her

husband together once more. She followed Maxime into the little

drawing-room, where they sat together sufficiently long to feel sure

that Rastignac had taken his leave.

The law student heard their laughter, and their voices, and the pauses

in their talk; he grew malicious, exerted his conversational powers for

M. de Restaud, flattered him, and drew him into discussions, to the

end that he might see the Countess again and discover the nature of her

relations with Father Goriot. This Countess with a husband and a lover,

for Maxime clearly was her lover, was a mystery. What was the secret tie

that bound her to the old tradesman? This mystery he meant to penetrate,

hoping by its means to gain a sovereign ascendency over this fair

typical Parisian.

“Anastasie!” the Count called again to his wife.

“Poor Maxime!” she said, addressing the young man. “Come, we must resign

ourselves. This evening----”

“I hope, Nasie,” he said in her ear, “that you will give orders not to

admit that youngster, whose eyes light up like live coals when he looks

at you. He will make you a declaration, and compromise you, and then you

will compel me to kill him.”

“Are you mad, Maxime?” she said. “A young lad of a student is, on the

contrary, a capital lightning-conductor; is not that so? Of course, I

mean to make Restaud furiously jealous of him.”

Maxime burst out laughing, and went out, followed by the Countess, who

stood at the window to watch him into his carriage; he shook his whip,

and made his horse prance. She only returned when the great gate had

been closed after him.

“What do you think, dear?” cried the Count, her husband, “this

gentleman’s family estate is not far from Verteuil, on the Charente; his

great-uncle and my grandfather were acquainted.”

“Delighted to find that we have acquaintances in common,” said the

Countess, with a preoccupied manner.

“More than you think,” said Eugene, in a low voice.

“What do you mean?” she asked quickly.

“Why, only just now,” said the student, “I saw a gentleman go out at

the gate, Father Goriot, my next door neighbor in the house where I am

lodging.”

At the sound of this name, and the prefix that embellished it, the

Count, who was stirring the fire, let the tongs fall as though they had

burned his fingers, and rose to his feet.

“Sir,” he cried, “you might have called him ‘Monsieur Goriot’!”

The Countess turned pale at first at the sight of her husband’s

vexation, then she reddened; clearly she was embarrassed, her answer

was made in a tone that she tried to make natural, and with an air of

assumed carelessness:

“You could not know any one who is dearer to us both...”

She broke off, glanced at the piano as if some fancy had crossed her

mind, and asked, “Are you fond of music, M. de Rastignac?”

“Exceedingly,” answered Eugene, flushing, and disconcerted by a dim

suspicion that he had somehow been guilty of a clumsy piece of folly.

“Do you sing?” she cried, going to the piano, and, sitting down before

it, she swept her fingers over the keyboard from end to end. R-r-r-rah!

“No, madame.”

The Comte de Restaud walked to and fro.

“That is a pity; you are without one great means of success.--_Ca-ro,

ca-a-ro, ca-a-a-ro, non du-bi-ta-re_,” sang the Countess.

Eugene had a second time waved a magic wand when he uttered Goriot’s

name, but the effect seemed to be entirely opposite to that produced by

the formula “related to Mme. de Beauseant.” His position was not

unlike that of some visitor permitted as a favor to inspect a private

collection of curiosities, when by inadvertence he comes into collision

with a glass case full of sculptured figures, and three or four heads,

imperfectly secured, fall at the shock. He wished the earth would open

and swallow him. Mme. de Restaud’s expression was reserved and chilly,

her eyes had grown indifferent, and sedulously avoided meeting those of

the unlucky student of law.

“Madame,” he said, “you wish to talk with M. de Restaud; permit me to

wish you good-day----”

The Countess interrupted him by a gesture, saying hastily, “Whenever you

come to see us, both M. de Restaud and I shall be delighted to see you.”

Eugene made a profound bow and took his leave, followed by M. de

Restaud, who insisted, in spite of his remonstrances, on accompanying

him into the hall.

“Neither your mistress nor I are at home to that gentleman when he

calls,” the Count said to Maurice.

As Eugene set foot on the steps, he saw that it was raining.

“Come,” said he to himself, “somehow I have just made a mess of it, I

do not know how. And now I am going to spoil my hat and coat into the

bargain. I ought to stop in my corner, grind away at law, and never

look to be anything but a boorish country magistrate. How can I go

into society, when to manage properly you want a lot of cabs, varnished

boots, gold watch chains, and all sorts of things; you have to wear

white doeskin gloves that cost six francs in the morning, and primrose

kid gloves every evening? A fig for that old humbug of a Goriot!”

When he reached the street door, the driver of a hackney coach, who had

probably just deposited a wedding party at their door, and asked nothing

better than a chance of making a little money for himself without his

employer’s knowledge, saw that Eugene had no umbrella, remarked his

black coat, white waistcoat, yellow gloves, and varnished boots, and

stopped and looked at him inquiringly. Eugene, in the blind desperation

that drives a young man to plunge deeper and deeper into an abyss, as if

he might hope to find a fortunate issue in its lowest depths, nodded

in reply to the driver’s signal, and stepped into the cab; a few stray

petals of orange blossom and scraps of wire bore witness to its recent

occupation by a wedding party.

“Where am I to drive, sir?” demanded the man, who, by this time, had

taken off his white gloves.

“Confound it!” Eugene said to himself, “I am in for it now, and at least

I will not spend cab-hire for nothing!--Drive to the Hotel Beauseant,”

he said aloud.

“Which?” asked the man, a portentous word that reduced Eugene to

confusion. This young man of fashion, species incerta, did not know that

there were two Hotels Beauseant; he was not aware how rich he was in

relations who did not care about him.

“The Vicomte de Beauseant, Rue----”

“De Grenelle,” interrupted the driver, with a jerk of his head. “You

see, there are the hotels of the Marquis and Comte de Beauseant in the

Rue Saint-Dominique,” he added, drawing up the step.

“I know all about that,” said Eugene, severely.--“Everybody is laughing

at me to-day, it seems!” he said to himself, as he deposited his hat on

the opposite seat. “This escapade will cost me a king’s ransom, but,

at any rate, I shall call on my so-called cousin in a thoroughly

aristocratic fashion. Goriot has cost me ten francs already, the old

scoundrel. My word! I will tell Mme. de Beauseant about my adventure;

perhaps it may amuse her. Doubtless she will know the secret of the

criminal relation between that handsome woman and the old rat without a

tail. It would be better to find favor in my cousin’s eyes than to

come in contact with that shameless woman, who seems to me to have very

expensive tastes. Surely the beautiful Vicomtesse’s personal interest

would turn the scale for me, when the mere mention of her name produces

such an effect. Let us look higher. If you set yourself to carry the

heights of heaven, you must face God.”

The innumerable thoughts that surged through his brain might be summed

up in these phrases. He grew calmer, and recovered something of his

assurance as he watched the falling rain. He told himself that though

he was about to squander two of the precious five-franc pieces that

remained to him, the money was well laid out in preserving his coat,

boots, and hat; and his cabman’s cry of “Gate, if you please,” almost

put him in spirits. A Swiss, in scarlet and gold, appeared, the great

door groaned on its hinges, and Rastignac, with sweet satisfaction,

beheld his equipage pass under the archway and stop before the flight

of steps beneath the awning. The driver, in a blue-and-red greatcoat,

dismounted and let down the step. As Eugene stepped out of the cab, he

heard smothered laughter from the peristyle. Three or four lackeys

were making merry over the festal appearance of the vehicle. In

another moment the law student was enlightened as to the cause of their

hilarity; he felt the full force of the contrast between his equipage

and one of the smartest broughams in Paris; a coachman, with powdered

hair, seemed to find it difficult to hold a pair of spirited horses, who

stood chafing the bit. In Mme. de Restaud’s courtyard, in the Chaussee

d’Antin, he had seen the neat turnout of a young man of six-and-twenty;

in the Faubourg Saint-Germain he found the luxurious equipage of a man

of rank; thirty thousand francs would not have purchased it.

“Who can be here?” said Eugene to himself. He began to understand,

though somewhat tardily, that he must not expect to find many women in

Paris who were not already appropriated, and that the capture of one

of these queens would be likely to cost something more than bloodshed.

“Confound it all! I expect my cousin also has her Maxime.”

He went up the steps, feeling that he was a blighted being. The glass

door was opened for him; the servants were as solemn as jackasses under

the curry comb. So far, Eugene had only been in the ballroom on the

ground floor of the Hotel Beauseant; the fete had followed so closely on

the invitation, that he had not had time to call on his cousin, and had

therefore never seen Mme. de Beauseant’s apartments; he was about to

behold for the first time a great lady among the wonderful and elegant

surroundings that reveal her character and reflect her daily life.

He was the more curious, because Mme. de Restaud’s drawing-room had

provided him with a standard of comparison.

At half-past four the Vicomtesse de Beauseant was visible. Five minutes

earlier she would not have received her cousin, but Eugene knew nothing

of the recognized routine of various houses in Paris. He was conducted

up the wide, white-painted, crimson-carpeted staircase, between the

gilded balusters and masses of flowering plants, to Mme. de Beauseant’s

apartments. He did not know the rumor current about Mme. de Beauseant,

one of the biographies told, with variations, in whispers, every evening

in the salons of Paris.

For three years past her name had been spoken of in connection with

that of one of the most wealthy and distinguished Portuguese nobles,

the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto. It was one of those innocent _liaisons_ which

possess so much charm for the two thus attached to each other that

they find the presence of a third person intolerable. The Vicomte de

Beauseant, therefore, had himself set an example to the rest of the

world by respecting, with as good a grace as might be, this morganatic

union. Any one who came to call on the Vicomtesse in the early days of

this friendship was sure to find the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto there. As,

under the circumstances, Mme. de Beauseant could not very well shut her

door against these visitors, she gave them such a cold reception, and

showed so much interest in the study of the ceiling, that no one could

fail to understand how much he bored her; and when it became known in

Paris that Mme. de Beauseant was bored by callers between two and four

o’clock, she was left in perfect solitude during that interval. She

went to the Bouffons or to the Opera with M. de Beauseant and M.

d’Ajuda-Pinto; and M. de Beauseant, like a well-bred man of the world,

always left his wife and the Portuguese as soon as he had installed

them. But M. d’Ajuda-Pinto must marry, and a Mlle. de Rochefide was the

young lady. In the whole fashionable world there was but one person who

as yet knew nothing of the arrangement, and that was Mme. de Beauseant.

Some of her friends had hinted at the possibility, and she had laughed

at them, believing that envy had prompted those ladies to try to make

mischief. And now, though the bans were about to be published, and

although the handsome Portuguese had come that day to break the news to

the Vicomtesse, he had not found courage as yet to say one word about

his treachery. How was it? Nothing is doubtless more difficult than the

notification of an ultimatum of this kind. There are men who feel more

at their ease when they stand up before another man who threatens their

lives with sword or pistol than in the presence of a woman who, after

two hours of lamentations and reproaches, falls into a dead swoon and

requires salts. At this moment, therefore, M. d’Ajuda-Pinto was on

thorns, and anxious to take his leave. He told himself that in some

way or other the news would reach Mme. de Beauseant; he would write, it

would be much better to do it by letter, and not to utter the words that

should stab her to the heart.

So when the servant announced M. Eugene de Rastignac, the Marquis

d’Ajuda-Pinto trembled with joy. To be sure, a loving woman shows even

more ingenuity in inventing doubts of her lover than in varying the

monotony of his happiness; and when she is about to be forsaken, she

instinctively interprets every gesture as rapidly as Virgil’s courser

detected the presence of his companion by snuffing the breeze. It was

impossible, therefore, that Mme. de Beauseant should not detect that

involuntary thrill of satisfaction; slight though it was, it was

appalling in its artlessness.

Eugene had yet to learn that no one in Paris should present himself in

any house without first making himself acquainted with the whole history

of its owner, and of its owner’s wife and family, so that he may avoid

making any of the terrible blunders which in Poland draw forth the

picturesque exclamation, “Harness five bullocks to your cart!” probably

because you will need them all to pull you out of the quagmire into

which a false step has plunged you. If, down to the present day, our

language has no name for these conversational disasters, it is probably

because they are believed to be impossible, the publicity given in Paris

to every scandal is so prodigious. After the awkward incident at Mme. de

Restaud’s, no one but Eugene could have reappeared in his character

of bullock-driver in Mme. de Beauseant’s drawing-room. But if Mme. de

Restaud and M. de Trailles had found him horribly in the way, M. d’Ajuda

hailed his coming with relief.

“Good-bye,” said the Portuguese, hurrying to the door, as Eugene made

his entrance into a dainty little pink-and-gray drawing-room, where

luxury seemed nothing more than good taste.

“Until this evening,” said Mme. de Beauseant, turning her head to give

the Marquis a glance. “We are going to the Bouffons, are we not?”

“I cannot go,” he said, with his fingers on the door handle.

Mme. de Beauseant rose and beckoned to him to return. She did not

pay the slightest attention to Eugene, who stood there dazzled by the

sparkling marvels around him; he began to think that this was some story

out of the Arabian Nights made real, and did not know where to hide

himself, when the woman before him seemed to be unconscious of his

existence. The Vicomtesse had raised the forefinger of her right hand,

and gracefully signed to the Marquis to seat himself beside her. The

Marquis felt the imperious sway of passion in her gesture; he came back

towards her. Eugene watched him, not without a feeling of envy.

“That is the owner of the brougham!” he said to himself. “But is it

necessary to have a pair of spirited horses, servants in livery, and

torrents of gold to draw a glance from a woman here in Paris?”

The demon of luxury gnawed at his heart, greed burned in his veins, his

throat was parched with the thirst of gold.

He had a hundred and thirty francs every quarter. His father, mother,

brothers, sisters, and aunt did not spend two hundred francs a month

among them. This swift comparison between his present condition and the

aims he had in view helped to benumb his faculties.

“Why not?” the Vicomtesse was saying, as she smiled at the Portuguese.

“Why cannot you come to the Italiens?”

“Affairs! I am to dine with the English Ambassador.”

“Throw him over.”

When a man once enters on a course of deception, he is compelled to

add lie to lie. M. d’Ajuda therefore said, smiling, “Do you lay your

commands on me?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“That was what I wanted to have you say to me,” he answered, dissembling

his feelings in a glance which would have reassured any other woman.

He took the Vicomtesse’s hand, kissed it, and went.

Eugene ran his fingers through his hair, and constrained himself to bow.

He thought that now Mme. de Beauseant would give him her attention;

but suddenly she sprang forward, rushed to a window in the gallery, and

watched M. d’Ajuda step into his carriage; she listened to the order

that he gave, and heard the Swiss repeat it to the coachman:

“To M. de Rochefide’s house.”

Those words, and the way in which M. d’Ajuda flung himself back in the

carriage, were like a lightning flash and a thunderbolt for her; she

walked back again with a deadly fear gnawing at her heart. The most

terrible catastrophes only happen among the heights. The Vicomtesse

went to her own room, sat down at a table, and took up a sheet of dainty

notepaper.

“When, instead of dining with the English Ambassador,”

she wrote, “you go to the Rochefides, you owe me an

explanation, which I am waiting to hear.”

She retraced several of the letters, for her hand was trembling so that

they were indistinct; then she signed the note with an initial C for

“Claire de Bourgogne,” and rang the bell.

“Jacques,” she said to the servant, who appeared immediately, “take

this note to M. de Rochefide’s house at half-past seven and ask for the

Marquis d’Ajuda. If M. d’Ajuda is there, leave the note without waiting

for an answer; if he is not there, bring the note back to me.”

“Madame la Vicomtess, there is a visitor in the drawing-room.”

“Ah! yes, of course,” she said, opening the door.

Eugene was beginning to feel very uncomfortable, but at last the

Vicomtesse appeared; she spoke to him, and the tremulous tones of her

voice vibrated through his heart.

“Pardon me, monsieur,” she said; “I had a letter to write. Now I am

quite at liberty.”

She scarcely knew what she was saying, for even as she spoke she

thought, “Ah! he means to marry Mlle. de Rochefide? But is he still

free? This evening the marriage shall be broken off, or else... But

before to-morrow I shall know.”

“Cousin...” the student replied.

“Eh?” said the Countess, with an insolent glance that sent a cold

shudder through Eugene; he understood what that “Eh?” meant; he had

learned a great deal in three hours, and his wits were on the alert. He

reddened:

“Madame...” he began; he hesitated a moment, and then went on.

“Pardon me; I am in such need of protection that the nearest scrap of

relationship could do me no harm.”

Mme. de Beauseant smiled but there was sadness in her smile; even now

she felt forebodings of the coming pain, the air she breathed was heavy

with the storm that was about to burst.

“If you knew how my family are situated,” he went on, “you would love to

play the part of a beneficent fairy godmother who graciously clears the

obstacles from the path of her protege.”

“Well, cousin,” she said, laughing, “and how can I be of service to

you?”

“But do I know even that? I am distantly related to you, and this

obscure and remote relationship is even now a perfect godsend to me. You

have confused my ideas; I cannot remember the things that I meant to say

to you. I know no one else here in Paris.... Ah! if I could only ask you

to counsel me, ask you to look upon me as a poor child who would fain

cling to the hem of your dress, who would lay down his life for you.”

“Would you kill a man for me?”

“Two,” said Eugene.

“You, child. Yes, you are a child,” she said, keeping back the tears

that came to her eyes; “you would love sincerely.”

“Oh!” he cried, flinging up his head.

The audacity of the student’s answer interested the Vicomtesse in him.

The southern brain was beginning to scheme for the first time. Between

Mme. de Restaud’s blue boudoir and Mme. de Beauseant’s rose-colored

drawing-room he had made a three years’ advance in a kind of law which

is not a recognized study in Paris, although it is a sort of higher

jurisprudence, and, when well understood, is a highroad to success of

every kind.

“Ah! that is what I meant to say!” said Eugene. “I met Mme. de Restaud

at your ball, and this morning I went to see her.

“You must have been very much in the way,” said Mme. de Beauseant,

smiling as she spoke.

“Yes, indeed. I am a novice, and my blunders will set every one against

me, if you do not give me your counsel. I believe that in Paris it is

very difficult to meet with a young, beautiful, and wealthy woman of

fashion who would be willing to teach me, what you women can explain so

well--life. I shall find a M. de Trailles everywhere. So I have come to

you to ask you to give me a key to a puzzle, to entreat you to tell me

what sort of blunder I made this morning. I mentioned an old man----”

“Madame la Duchess de Langeais,” Jacques cut the student short; Eugene

gave expression to his intense annoyance by a gesture.

“If you mean to succeed,” said the Vicomtesse in a low voice, “in the

first place you must not be so demonstrative.”

“Ah! good morning, dear,” she continued, and rising and crossing the

room, she grasped the Duchess’ hands as affectionately as if they had

been sisters; the Duchess responded in the prettiest and most gracious

way.

“Two intimate friends!” said Rastignac to himself. “Henceforward I shall

have two protectresses; those two women are great friends, no doubt, and

this newcomer will doubtless interest herself in her friend’s cousin.”

“To what happy inspiration do I owe this piece of good fortune, dear

Antoinette?” asked Mme. de Beauseant.

“Well, I saw M. d’Ajuda-Pinto at M. de Rochefide’s door, so I thought

that if I came I should find you alone.”

Mme. de Beauseant’s mouth did not tighten, her color did not rise, her

expression did not alter, or rather, her brow seemed to clear as the

Duchess uttered those deadly words.

“If I had known that you were engaged----” the speaker added, glancing

at Eugene.

“This gentleman is M. Eugene de Rastignac, one of my cousins,” said the

Vicomtesse. “Have you any news of General de Montriveau?” she continued.

“Serizy told me yesterday that he never goes anywhere now; has he been

to see you to-day?”

It was believed that the Duchess was desperately in love with M. de

Montriveau, and that he was a faithless lover; she felt the question in

her very heart, and her face flushed as she answered:

“He was at the Elysee yesterday.”

“In attendance?”

“Claire,” returned the Duchess, and hatred overflowed in the glances she

threw at Mme. de Beauseant; “of course you know that M. d’Ajuda-Pinto

is going to marry Mlle. de Rochefide; the bans will be published

to-morrow.”

This thrust was too cruel; the Vicomtesse’s face grew white, but she

answered, laughing, “One of those rumors that fools amuse themselves

with. What should induce M. d’Ajuda to take one of the noblest names

in Portugal to the Rochefides? The Rochefides were only ennobled

yesterday.”

“But Bertha will have two hundred thousand livres a year, they say.”

“M. d’Ajuda is too wealthy to marry for money.”

“But, my dear, Mlle. de Rochefide is a charming girl.”

“Indeed?”

“And, as a matter of fact, he is dining with them to-day; the thing

is settled. It is very surprising to me that you should know so little

about it.”

Mme. de Beauseant turned to Rastignac. “What was the blunder that you

made, monsieur?” she asked. “The poor boy is only just launched into the

world, Antoinette, so that he understands nothing of all this that

we are speaking of. Be merciful to him, and let us finish our talk

to-morrow. Everything will be announced to-morrow, you know, and

your kind informal communication can be accompanied by official

confirmation.”

The Duchess gave Eugene one of those insolent glances that measure a man

from head to foot, and leave him crushed and annihilated.

“Madame, I have unwittingly plunged a dagger into Mme. de Restaud’s

heart; unwittingly--therein lies my offence,” said the student of law,

whose keen brain had served him sufficiently well, for he had detected

the biting epigrams that lurked beneath this friendly talk. “You

continue to receive, possibly you fear, those who know the amount of

pain that they deliberately inflict; but a clumsy blunderer who has no

idea how deeply he wounds is looked upon as a fool who does not know how

to make use of his opportunities, and every one despises him.”

Mme. de Beauseant gave the student a glance, one of those glances in

which a great soul can mingle dignity and gratitude. It was like balm

to the law student, who was still smarting under the Duchess’ insolent

scrutiny; she had looked at him as an auctioneer might look at some

article to appraise its value.

“Imagine, too, that I had just made some progress with the Comte de

Restaud; for I should tell you, madame,” he went on, turning to the

Duchess with a mixture of humility and malice in his manner, “that as

yet I am only a poor devil of a student, very much alone in the world,

and very poor----”

“You should not tell us that, M. de Rastignac. We women never care about

anything that no one else will take.”

“Bah!” said Eugene. “I am only two-and-twenty, and I must make up my

mind to the drawbacks of my time of life. Besides, I am confessing

my sins, and it would be impossible to kneel in a more charming

confessional; you commit your sins in one drawing-room, and receive

absolution for them in another.”

The Duchess’ expression grew colder, she did not like the flippant tone

of these remarks, and showed that she considered them to be in bad

taste by turning to the Vicomtesse with--“This gentleman has only just

come----”

Mme. de Beauseant began to laugh outright at her cousin and at the

Duchess both.

“He has only just come to Paris, dear, and is in search of some one who

will give him lessons in good taste.”

“Mme. la Duchesse,” said Eugene, “is it not natural to wish to be

initiated into the mysteries which charm us?” (“Come, now,” he said to

himself, “my language is superfinely elegant, I’m sure.”)

“But Mme. de Restaud is herself, I believe, M. de Trailles’ pupil,” said

the Duchess.

“Of that I had no idea, madame,” answered the law student, “so I rashly

came between them. In fact, I got on very well with the lady’s husband,

and his wife tolerated me for a time until I took it into my head to

tell them that I knew some one of whom I had just caught a glimpse as he

went out by a back staircase, a man who had given the Countess a kiss at

the end of a passage.”

“Who was it?” both women asked together.

“An old man who lives at the rate of two louis a month in the Faubourg

Saint-Marceau, where I, a poor student, lodge likewise. He is a truly

unfortunate creature, everybody laughs at him--we all call him ‘Father

Goriot.’”

“Why, child that you are,” cried the Vicomtesse, “Mme. de Restaud was a

Mlle. Goriot!”

“The daughter of a vermicelli manufacturer,” the Duchess added; “and

when the little creature went to Court, the daughter of a pastry-cook

was presented on the same day. Do you remember, Claire? The King began

to laugh, and made some joke in Latin about flour. People--what was

it?--people----”

“_Ejusdem farinoe_,” said Eugene.

“Yes, that was it,” said the Duchess.

“Oh! is that her father?” the law student continued, aghast.

“Yes, certainly; the old man had two daughters; he dotes on them, so to

speak, though they will scarcely acknowledge him.”

“Didn’t the second daughter marry a banker with a German name?” the

Vicomtesse asked, turning to Mme. de Langeais, “a Baron de Nucingen? And

her name is Delphine, is it not? Isn’t she a fair-haired woman who has

a side-box at the Opera? She comes sometimes to the Bouffons, and laughs

loudly to attract attention.”

The Duchess smiled and said:

“I wonder at you, dear. Why do you take so much interest in people of

that kind? One must have been as madly in love as Restaud was, to be

infatuated with Mlle. Anastasie and her flour sacks. Oh! he will not

find her a good bargain! She is in M. de Trailles’ hands, and he will

ruin her.”

“And they do not acknowledge their father!” Eugene repeated.

“Oh! well, yes, their father, the father, a father,” replied the

Vicomtesse, “a kind father who gave them each five or six hundred

thousand francs, it is said, to secure their happiness by marrying

them well; while he only kept eight or ten thousand livres a year for

himself, thinking that his daughters would always be his daughters,

thinking that in them he would live his life twice over again, that

in their houses he should find two homes, where he would be loved

and looked up to, and made much of. And in two years’ time both his

sons-in-law had turned him out of their houses as if he were one of the

lowest outcasts.”

Tears came into Eugene’s eyes. He was still under the spell of youthful

beliefs, he had just left home, pure and sacred feelings had been

stirred within him, and this was his first day on the battlefield of

civilization in Paris. Genuine feeling is so infectious that for a

moment the three looked at each other in silence.

“_Eh, mon Dieu!_” said Mme. de Langeais; “yes, it seems very horrible,

and yet we see such things every day. Is there not a reason for it?

Tell me, dear, have you ever really thought what a son-in-law is? A

son-in-law is the man for whom we bring up, you and I, a dear little

one, bound to us very closely in innumerable ways; for seventeen years

she will be the joy of her family, its ‘white soul,’ as Lamartine says,

and suddenly she will become its scourge. When HE comes and takes her

from us, his love from the very beginning is like an axe laid to the

root of all the old affection in our darling’s heart, and all the ties

that bound her to her family are severed. But yesterday our little

daughter thought of no one but her mother and father, as we had no

thought that was not for her; by to-morrow she will have become a

hostile stranger. The tragedy is always going on under our eyes. On the

one hand you see a father who has sacrificed himself to his son, and

his daughter-in-law shows him the last degree of insolence. On the other

hand, it is the son-in-law who turns his wife’s mother out of the house.

I sometimes hear it said that there is nothing dramatic about society in

these days; but the Drama of the Son-in-law is appalling, to say nothing

of our marriages, which have come to be very poor farces. I can explain

how it all came about in the old vermicelli maker’s case. I think I

recollect that Foriot----”

“Goriot, madame.”

“Yes, that Moriot was once President of his Section during the

Revolution. He was in the secret of the famous scarcity of grain, and

laid the foundation of his fortune in those days by selling flour for

ten times its cost. He had as much flour as he wanted. My grandmother’s

steward sold him immense quantities. No doubt Noriot shared the plunder

with the Committee of Public Salvation, as that sort of person always

did. I recollect the steward telling my grandmother that she might live

at Grandvilliers in complete security, because her corn was as good as

a certificate of civism. Well, then, this Loriot, who sold corn to

those butchers, has never had but one passion, they say--he idolizes his

daughters. He settled one of them under Restaud’s roof, and grafted the

other into the Nucingen family tree, the Baron de Nucingen being a rich

banker who had turned Royalist. You can quite understand that so long as

Bonaparte was Emperor, the two sons-in-law could manage to put up with

the old Ninety-three; but after the restoration of the Bourbons, M. de

Restaud felt bored by the old man’s society, and the banker was still

more tired of it. His daughters were still fond of him; they wanted

‘to keep the goat and the cabbage,’ so they used to see Joriot whenever

there was no one there, under pretence of affection. ‘Come to-day, papa,

we shall have you all to ourselves, and that will be much nicer!’

and all that sort of thing. As for me, dear, I believe that love has

second-sight: poor Ninety-three; his heart must have bled. He saw that

his daughters were ashamed of him, that if they loved their husbands

his visits must make mischief. So he immolated himself. He made the

sacrifice because he was a father; he went into voluntary exile. His

daughters were satisfied, so he thought that he had done the best thing

he could; but it was a family crime, and father and daughters were

accomplices. You see this sort of thing everywhere. What could this old

Doriot have been but a splash of mud in his daughters’ drawing-rooms? He

would only have been in the way, and bored other people, besides being

bored himself. And this that happened between father and daughters may

happen to the prettiest woman in Paris and the man she loves the best;

if her love grows tiresome, he will go; he will descend to the basest

trickery to leave her. It is the same with all love and friendship. Our

heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are

bankrupt. We show no more mercy to the affection that reveals its utmost

extent than we do to another kind of prodigal who has not a penny left.

Their father had given them all he had. For twenty years he had given

his whole heart to them; then, one day, he gave them all his fortune

too. The lemon was squeezed; the girls left the rest in the gutter.”

“The world is very base,” said the Vicomtesse, plucking at the threads

of her shawl. She did not raise her head as she spoke; the words that

Mme. de Langeais had meant for her in the course of her story had cut

her to the quick.

“Base? Oh, no,” answered the Duchess; “the world goes its own way, that

is all. If I speak in this way, it is only to show that I am not duped

by it. I think as you do,” she said, pressing the Vicomtesse’s hand.

“The world is a slough; let us try to live on the heights above it.”

She rose to her feet and kissed Mme. de Beauseant on the forehead as

she said: “You look very charming to-day, dear. I have never seen such a

lovely color in your cheeks before.”

Then she went out with a slight inclination of the head to the cousin.

“Father Goriot is sublime!” said Eugene to himself, as he remembered how

he had watched his neighbor work the silver vessel into a shapeless mass

that night.

Mme. de Beauseant did not hear him; she was absorbed in her own

thoughts. For several minutes the silence remained unbroken till the

law student became almost paralyzed with embarrassment, and was equally

afraid to go or stay or speak a word.

“The world is basely ungrateful and ill-natured,” said the Vicomtesse

at last. “No sooner does a trouble befall you than a friend is ready

to bring the tidings and to probe your heart with the point of a

dagger while calling on you to admire the handle. Epigrams and sarcasms

already! Ah! I will defend myself!”

She raised her head like the great lady that she was, and lightnings

flashed from her proud eyes.

“Ah!” she said, as she saw Eugene, “are you there?”

“Still,” he said piteously.

“Well, then, M. de Rastignac, deal with the world as it deserves. You

are determined to succeed? I will help you. You shall sound the depths

of corruption in woman; you shall measure the extent of man’s pitiful

vanity. Deeply as I am versed in such learning, there were pages in the

book of life that I had not read. Now I know all. The more cold-blooded

your calculations, the further you will go. Strike ruthlessly; you will

be feared. Men and women for you must be nothing more than post-horses;

take a fresh relay, and leave the last to drop by the roadside; in this

way you will reach the goal of your ambition. You will be nothing here,

you see, unless a woman interests herself in you; and she must be young

and wealthy, and a woman of the world. Yet, if you have a heart, lock

it carefully away like a treasure; do not let any one suspect it, or you

will be lost; you would cease to be the executioner, you would take

the victim’s place. And if ever you should love, never let your secret

escape you! Trust no one until you are very sure of the heart to which

you open your heart. Learn to mistrust every one; take every precaution

for the sake of the love which does not exist as yet. Listen,

Miguel”--the name slipped from her so naturally that she did not

notice her mistake--“there is something still more appalling than the

ingratitude of daughters who have cast off their old father and wish

that he were dead, and that is a rivalry between two sisters. Restaud

comes of a good family, his wife has been received into their circle;

she has been presented at court; and her sister, her wealthy sister,

Mme. Delphine de Nucingen, the wife of a great capitalist, is consumed

with envy, and ready to die of spleen. There is gulf set between the

sisters--indeed, they are sisters no longer--the two women who refuse

to acknowledge their father do not acknowledge each other. So Mme. de

Nucingen would lap up all the mud that lies between the Rue Saint-Lazare

and the Rue de Grenelle to gain admittance to my salon. She fancied

that she should gain her end through de Marsay; she has made herself

de Marsay’s slave, and she bores him. De Marsay cares very little about

her. If you will introduce her to me, you will be her darling, her

Benjamin; she will idolize you. If, after that, you can love her, do so;

if not, make her useful. I will ask her to come once or twice to one of

my great crushes, but I will never receive her here in the morning. I

will bow to her when I see her, and that will be quite sufficient.

You have shut the Comtesse de Restaud’s door against you by mentioning

Father Goriot’s name. Yes, my good friend, you may call at her house

twenty times, and every time out of the twenty you will find that she

is not at home. The servants have their orders, and will not admit you.

Very well, then, now let Father Goriot gain the right of entry into her

sister’s house for you. The beautiful Mme. de Nucingen will give the

signal for a battle. As soon as she singles you out, other women will

begin to lose their heads about you, and her enemies and rivals and

intimate friends will all try to take you from her. There are women who

will fall in love with a man because another woman has chosen him; like

the city madams, poor things, who copy our millinery, and hope thereby

to acquire our manners. You will have a success, and in Paris success is

everything; it is the key of power. If the women credit you with wit and

talent, the men will follow suit so long as you do not undeceive them

yourself. There will be nothing you may not aspire to; you will go

everywhere, and you will find out what the world is--an assemblage of

fools and knaves. But you must be neither the one nor the other. I am

giving you my name like Ariadne’s clue of thread to take with you into

the labyrinth; make no unworthy use of it,” she said, with a queenly

glance and curve of her throat; “give it back to me unsullied. And now,

go; leave me. We women also have our battles to fight.”

“And if you should ever need some one who would gladly set a match to a

train for you----”

“Well?” she asked.

He tapped his heart, smiled in answer to his cousin’s smile, and went.

It was five o’clock, and Eugene was hungry; he was afraid lest he should

not be in time for dinner, a misgiving which made him feel that it was

pleasant to be borne so quickly across Paris. This sensation of physical

comfort left his mind free to grapple with the thoughts that assailed

him. A mortification usually sends a young man of his age into a furious

rage; he shakes his fist at society, and vows vengeance when his belief

in himself is shaken. Just then Rastignac was overwhelmed by the words,

“You have shut the Countess’ door against you.”

“I shall call!” he said to himself, “and if Mme. de Beauseant is right,

if I never find her at home--I... well, Mme. de Restaud shall meet me

in every salon in Paris. I will learn to fence and have some pistol

practice, and kill that Maxime of hers!”

“And money?” cried an inward monitor. “How about money, where is that

to come from?” And all at once the wealth displayed in the Countess de

Restaud’s drawing-room rose before his eyes. That was the luxury which

Goriot’s daughter had loved too well, the gilding, the ostentatious

splendor, the unintelligent luxury of the parvenu, the riotous

extravagance of a courtesan. Then the attractive vision suddenly went

under an eclipse as he remembered the stately grandeur of the Hotel de

Beauseant. As his fancy wandered among these lofty regions in the great

world of Paris, innumerable dark thoughts gathered in his heart; his

ideas widened, and his conscience grew more elastic. He saw the world as

it is; saw how the rich lived beyond the jurisdiction of law and public

opinion, and found in success the _ultima ratio mundi_.

“Vautrin is right, success is virtue!” he said to himself.

Arrived in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, he rushed up to his room for

ten francs wherewith to satisfy the demands of the cabman, and went

in to dinner. He glanced round the squalid room, saw the eighteen

poverty-stricken creatures about to feed like cattle in their stalls,

and the sight filled him with loathing. The transition was too sudden,

and the contrast was so violent that it could not but act as a powerful

stimulant; his ambition developed and grew beyond all social bounds. On

the one hand, he beheld a vision of social life in its most charming

and refined forms, of quick-pulsed youth, of fair, impassioned faces

invested with all the charm of poetry, framed in a marvelous setting of

luxury or art; and, on the other hand, he saw a sombre picture, the miry

verge beyond these faces, in which passion was extinct and nothing was

left of the drama but the cords and pulleys and bare mechanism. Mme. de

Beauseant’s counsels, the words uttered in anger by the forsaken lady,

her petulant offer, came to his mind, and poverty was a ready expositor.

Rastignac determined to open two parallel trenches so as to insure

success; he would be a learned doctor of law and a man of fashion.

Clearly he was still a child! Those two lines are asymptotes, and will

never meet.

“You are very dull, my lord Marquis,” said Vautrin, with one of the

shrewd glances that seem to read the innermost secrets of another mind.

“I am not in the humor to stand jokes from people who call me ‘my lord

Marquis,’” answered Eugene. “A marquis here in Paris, if he is not the

veriest sham, ought to have a hundred thousand livres a year at least;

and a lodger in the Maison Vauquer is not exactly Fortune’s favorite.”

Vautrin’s glance at Rastignac was half-paternal, half-contemptuous.

“Puppy!” it seemed to say; “I should make one mouthful of him!” Then he

answered:

“You are in a bad humor; perhaps your visit to the beautiful Comtesse de

Restaud was not a success.”

“She has shut her door against me because I told her that her father

dined at our table,” cried Rastignac.

Glances were exchanged all round the room; Father Goriot looked down.

“You have sent some snuff into my eye,” he said to his neighbor, turning

a little aside to rub his hand over his face.

“Any one who molests Father Goriot will have henceforward to reckon with

me,” said Eugene, looking at the old man’s neighbor; “he is worth all

the rest of us put together.--I am not speaking of the ladies,” he

added, turning in the direction of Mlle. Taillefer.

Eugene’s remarks produced a sensation, and his tone silenced the

dinner-table. Vautrin alone spoke. “If you are going to champion Father

Goriot, and set up for his responsible editor into the bargain, you

had need be a crack shot and know how to handle the foils,” he said,

banteringly.

“So I intend,” said Eugene.

“Then you are taking the field to-day?”

“Perhaps,” Rastignac answered. “But I owe no account of myself to any

one, especially as I do not try to find out what other people do of a

night.”

Vautrin looked askance at Rastignac.

“If you do not mean to be deceived by the puppets, my boy, you must

go behind and see the whole show, and not peep through holes in the

curtain. That is enough,” he added, seeing that Eugene was about to fly

into a passion. “We can have a little talk whenever you like.”

There was a general feeling of gloom and constraint. Father Goriot was

so deeply dejected by the student’s remark that he did not notice the

change in the disposition of his fellow-lodgers, nor know that he had

met with a champion capable of putting an end to the persecution.

“Then, M. Goriot sitting there is the father of a countess,” said Mme.

Vauquer in a low voice.

“And of a baroness,” answered Rastignac.

“That is about all he is capable of,” said Bianchon to Rastignac; “I

have taken a look at his head; there is only one bump--the bump of

Paternity; he must be an _eternal father_.”

Eugene was too intent on his thoughts to laugh at Bianchon’s joke. He

determined to profit by Mme. de Beauseant’s counsels, and was asking

himself how he could obtain the necessary money. He grew grave. The wide

savannas of the world stretched before his eyes; all things lay before

him, nothing was his. Dinner came to an end, the others went, and he was

left in the dining-room.

“So you have seen my daughter?” Goriot spoke tremulously, and the sound

of his voice broke in upon Eugene’s dreams. The young man took the

elder’s hand, and looked at him with something like kindness in his

eyes.

“You are a good and noble man,” he said. “We will have some talk about

your daughters by and by.”

He rose without waiting for Goriot’s answer, and went to his room. There

he wrote the following letter to his mother:--

“My Dear Mother,--Can you nourish your child from your breast

again? I am in a position to make a rapid fortune, but I want

twelve hundred francs--I must have them at all costs. Say nothing

about this to my father; perhaps he might make objections, and

unless I have the money, I may be led to put an end to myself, and

so escape the clutches of despair. I will tell you everything when

I see you. I will not begin to try to describe my present

situation; it would take volumes to put the whole story clearly

and fully. I have not been gambling, my kind mother, I owe no one

a penny; but if you would preserve the life that you gave me, you

must send me the sum I mention. As a matter of fact, I go to see

the Vicomtesse de Beauseant; she is using her influence for me; I

am obliged to go into society, and I have not a penny to lay out

on clean gloves. I can manage to exist on bread and water, or go

without food, if need be, but I cannot do without the tools with

which they cultivate the vineyards in this country. I must

resolutely make up my mind at once to make my way, or stick in the

mire for the rest of my days. I know that all your hopes are set

on me, and I want to realize them quickly. Sell some of your old

jewelry, my kind mother; I will give you other jewels very soon. I

know enough of our affairs at home to know all that such a

sacrifice means, and you must not think that I would lightly ask

you to make it; I should be a monster if I could. You must think

of my entreaty as a cry forced from me by imperative necessity.

Our whole future lies in the subsidy with which I must begin my

first campaign, for life in Paris is one continual battle. If you

cannot otherwise procure the whole of the money, and are forced to

sell our aunt’s lace, tell her that I will send her some still

handsomer,” and so forth.

He wrote to ask each of his sisters for their savings--would they

despoil themselves for him, and keep the sacrifice a secret from the

family? To his request he knew that they would not fail to respond

gladly, and he added to it an appeal to their delicacy by touching the

chord of honor that vibrates so loudly in young and high-strung natures.

Yet when he had written the letters, he could not help feeling

misgivings in spite of his youthful ambition; his heart beat fast, and

he trembled. He knew the spotless nobleness of the lives buried away in

the lonely manor house; he knew what trouble and what joy his request

would cause his sisters, and how happy they would be as they talked

at the bottom of the orchard of that dear brother of theirs in Paris.

Visions rose before his eyes; a sudden strong light revealed his

sisters secretly counting over their little store, devising some girlish

stratagem by which the money could be sent to him _incognito_, essaying,

for the first time in their lives, a piece of deceit that reached the

sublime in its unselfishness.

“A sister’s heart is a diamond for purity, a deep sea of tenderness!” he

said to himself. He felt ashamed of those letters.

What power there must be in the petitions put up by such hearts;

how pure the fervor that bears their souls to Heaven in prayer! What

exquisite joy they would find in self-sacrifice! What a pang for his

mother’s heart if she could not send him all that he asked for! And this

noble affection, these sacrifices made at such terrible cost, were to

serve as the ladder by which he meant to climb to Delphine de Nucingen.

A few tears, like the last grains of incense flung upon the sacred

alter fire of the hearth, fell from his eyes. He walked up and down,

and despair mingled with his emotion. Father Goriot saw him through the

half-open door.

“What is the matter, sir?” he asked from the threshold.

“Ah! my good neighbor, I am as much a son and brother as you are a

father. You do well to fear for the Comtesse Anastasie; there is one M.

Maxime de Trailles, who will be her ruin.”

Father Goriot withdrew, stammering some words, but Eugene failed to

catch their meaning.

The next morning Rastignac went out to post his letters. Up to the last

moment he wavered and doubted, but he ended by flinging them into the

box. “I shall succeed!” he said to himself. So says the gambler; so says

the great captain; but the three words that have been the salvation of

some few, have been the ruin of many more.

A few days after this Eugene called at Mme. de Restaud’s house; she was

not at home. Three times he tried the experiment, and three times he

found her doors closed against him, though he was careful to choose an

hour when M. de Trailles was not there. The Vicomtesse was right.

The student studied no longer. He put in an appearance at lectures

simply to answer to his name, and after thus attesting his presence,

departed forthwith. He had been through a reasoning process familiar to

most students. He had seen the advisability of deferring his studies

to the last moment before going up for his examinations; he made up his

mind to cram his second and third years’ work into the third year, when

he meant to begin to work in earnest, and to complete his studies in law

with one great effort. In the meantime he had fifteen months in which to

navigate the ocean of Paris, to spread the nets and set the lines that

would bring him a protectress and a fortune. Twice during that week he

saw Mme. de Beauseant; he did not go to her house until he had seen the

Marquis d’Ajuda drive away.

Victory for yet a few more days was with the great lady, the most poetic

figure in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; and the marriage of the Marquis

d’Ajuda-Pinto with Mlle. de Rochefide was postponed. The dread of losing

her happiness filled those days with a fever of joy unknown before,

but the end was only so much the nearer. The Marquis d’Ajuda and the

Rochefides agreed that this quarrel and reconciliation was a very

fortunate thing; Mme. de Beauseant (so they hoped) would gradually

become reconciled to the idea of the marriage, and in the end would be

brought to sacrifice d’Ajuda’s morning visits to the exigencies of a

man’s career, exigencies which she must have foreseen. In spite of the

most solemn promises, daily renewed, M. d’Ajuda was playing a part,

and the Vicomtesse was eager to be deceived. “Instead of taking a leap

heroically from the window, she is falling headlong down the staircase,”

said her most intimate friend, the Duchesse de Langeais. Yet this

after-glow of happiness lasted long enough for the Vicomtesse to be of

service to her young cousin. She had a half-superstitious affection for

him. Eugene had shown her sympathy and devotion at a crisis when a woman

sees no pity, no real comfort in any eyes; when if a man is ready with

soothing flatteries, it is because he has an interested motive.

Rastignac made up his mind that he must learn the whole of Goriot’s

previous history; he would come to his bearings before attempting to

board the Maison de Nucingen. The results of his inquiries may be given

briefly as follows:--

In the days before the Revolution, Jean-Joachim Goriot was simply a

workman in the employ of a vermicelli maker. He was a skilful, thrifty

workman, sufficiently enterprising to buy his master’s business when

the latter fell a chance victim to the disturbances of 1789. Goriot

established himself in the Rue de la Jussienne, close to the Corn

Exchange. His plain good sense led him to accept the position of

President of the Section, so as to secure for his business the

protection of those in power at that dangerous epoch. This prudent step

had led to success; the foundations of his fortune were laid in the time

of the Scarcity (real or artificial), when the price of grain of all

kinds rose enormously in Paris. People used to fight for bread at the

bakers’ doors; while other persons went to the grocers’ shops and bought

Italian paste foods without brawling over it. It was during this year

that Goriot made the money, which, at a later time, was to give him

all the advantage of the great capitalist over the small buyer; he had,

moreover, the usual luck of average ability; his mediocrity was the

salvation of him. He excited no one’s envy, it was not even suspected

that he was rich till the peril of being rich was over, and all his

intelligence was concentrated, not on political, but on commercial

speculations. Goriot was an authority second to none on all questions

relating to corn, flour, and “middlings”; and the production, storage,

and quality of grain. He could estimate the yield of the harvest, and

foresee market prices; he bought his cereals in Sicily, and imported

Ukrainian wheat. Any one who had heard him hold forth on the regulations

that control the importation and exportation of grain, who had seen his

grasp of the subject, his clear insight into the principles involved,

his appreciation of weak points in the way that the system worked,

would have thought that here was the stuff of which a minister is made.

Patient, active, and persevering, energetic and prompt in action, he

surveyed his business horizon with an eagle eye. Nothing there took him

by surprise; he foresaw all things, knew all that was happening, and

kept his own counsel; he was a diplomatist in his quick comprehension

of a situation; and in the routine of business he was as patient and

plodding as a soldier on the march. But beyond this business horizon he

could not see. He used to spend his hours of leisure on the threshold of

his shop, leaning against the framework of the door. Take him from

his dark little counting-house, and he became once more the rough,

slow-witted workman, a man who cannot understand a piece of reasoning,

who is indifferent to all intellectual pleasures, and falls asleep at

the play, a Parisian Dolibom in short, against whose stupidity other

minds are powerless.

Natures of this kind are nearly all alike; in almost all of them you

will find some hidden depth of sublime affection. Two all-absorbing

affections filled the vermicelli maker’s heart to the exclusion of every

other feeling; into them he seemed to put all the forces of his nature,

as he put the whole power of his brain into the corn trade. He had

regarded his wife, the only daughter of a rich farmer of La Brie, with a

devout admiration; his love for her had been boundless. Goriot had

felt the charm of a lovely and sensitive nature, which, in its delicate

strength, was the very opposite of his own. Is there any instinct more

deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a

protection which is constantly exerted for a fragile and defenceless

creature? Join love thereto, the warmth of gratitude that all generous

souls feel for the source of their pleasures, and you have the

explanation of many strange incongruities in human nature.

After seven years of unclouded happiness, Goriot lost his wife. It was

very unfortunate for him. She was beginning to gain an ascendency over

him in other ways; possibly she might have brought that barren soil

under cultivation, she might have widened his ideas and given other

directions to his thoughts. But when she was dead, the instinct of

fatherhood developed in him till it almost became a mania. All the

affection balked by death seemed to turn to his daughters, and he found

full satisfaction for his heart in loving them. More or less brilliant

proposals were made to him from time to time; wealthy merchants or

farmers with daughters vied with each other in offering inducements

to him to marry again; but he determined to remain a widower. His

father-in-law, the only man for whom he felt a decided friendship, gave

out that Goriot had made a vow to be faithful to his wife’s memory. The

frequenters of the Corn Exchange, who could not comprehend this sublime

piece of folly, joked about it among themselves, and found a ridiculous

nickname for him. One of them ventured (after a glass over a bargain)

to call him by it, and a blow from the vermicelli maker’s fist sent him

headlong into a gutter in the Rue Oblin. He could think of nothing else

when his children were concerned; his love for them made him fidgety

and anxious; and this was so well known, that one day a competitor, who

wished to get rid of him to secure the field to himself, told Goriot

that Delphine had just been knocked down by a cab. The vermicelli maker

turned ghastly pale, left the Exchange at once, and did not return for

several days afterwards; he was ill in consequence of the shock and the

subsequent relief on discovering that it was a false alarm. This time,

however, the offender did not escape with a bruised shoulder; at a

critical moment in the man’s affairs, Goriot drove him into bankruptcy,

and forced him to disappear from the Corn Exchange.

As might have been expected, the two girls were spoiled. With an income

of sixty thousand francs, Goriot scarcely spent twelve hundred on

himself, and found all his happiness in satisfying the whims of the two

girls. The best masters were engaged, that Anastasie and Delphine

might be endowed with all the accomplishments which distinguish a good

education. They had a chaperon--luckily for them, she was a woman

who had good sense and good taste;--they learned to ride; they had a

carriage for their use; they lived as the mistress of a rich old lord

might live; they had only to express a wish, their father would hasten

to give them their most extravagant desires, and asked nothing of them

in return but a kiss. Goriot had raised the two girls to the level of

the angels; and, quite naturally, he himself was left beneath them. Poor

man! he loved them even for the pain that they gave him.

When the girls were old enough to be married, they were left free to

choose for themselves. Each had half her father’s fortune as her dowry;

and when the Comte de Restaud came to woo Anastasie for her beauty,

her social aspirations led her to leave her father’s house for a more

exalted sphere. Delphine wished for money; she married Nucingen, a

banker of German extraction, who became a Baron of the Holy Roman

Empire. Goriot remained a vermicelli maker as before. His daughters

and his sons-in-law began to demur; they did not like to see him still

engaged in trade, though his whole life was bound up with his business.

For five years he stood out against their entreaties, then he yielded,

and consented to retire on the amount realized by the sale of his

business and the savings of the last few years. It was this capital

that Mme. Vauquer, in the early days of his residence with her, had

calculated would bring in eight or ten thousand livres in a year. He had

taken refuge in her lodging-house, driven there by despair when he knew

that his daughters were compelled by their husbands not only to refuse

to receive him as an inmate in their houses, but even to see him no more

except in private.

This was all the information which Rastignac gained from a M. Muret

who had purchased Goriot’s business, information which confirmed

the Duchesse de Langeais’ suppositions, and herewith the preliminary

explanation of this obscure but terrible Parisian tragedy comes to an

end.

Towards the end of the first week in December Rastignac received two

letters--one from his mother, and one from his eldest sister. His heart

beat fast, half with happiness, half with fear, at the sight of the

familiar handwriting. Those two little scraps of paper contained life

or death for his hopes. But while he felt a shiver of dread as he

remembered their dire poverty at home, he knew their love for him so

well that he could not help fearing that he was draining their very

life-blood. His mother’s letter ran as follows:--

“MY DEAR CHILD,--I am sending you the money that you asked for.

Make a good use of it. Even to save your life I could not raise so

large a sum a second time without your father’s knowledge, and

there would be trouble about it. We should be obliged to mortgage

the land. It is impossible to judge of the merits of schemes of

which I am ignorant; but what sort of schemes can they be, that

you should fear to tell me about them? Volumes of explanation

would not have been needed; we mothers can understand at a word,

and that word would have spared me the anguish of uncertainty. I

do not know how to hide the painful impression that your letter

has made upon me, my dear son. What can you have felt when you

were moved to send this chill of dread through my heart? It must

have been very painful to you to write the letter that gave me so

much pain as I read it. To what courses are you committed? You are

going to appear to be something that you are not, and your whole

life and success depends upon this? You are about to see a society

into which you cannot enter without rushing into expense that you

cannot afford, without losing precious time that is needed for

your studies. Ah! my dear Eugene, believe your mother, crooked

ways cannot lead to great ends. Patience and endurance are the two

qualities most needed in your position. I am not scolding you; I

do not want any tinge of bitterness to spoil our offering. I am

only talking like a mother whose trust in you is as great as her

foresight for you. You know the steps that you must take, and I,

for my part, know the purity of heart, and how good your

intentions are; so I can say to you without a doubt, ‘Go forward,

beloved!’ If I tremble, it is because I am a mother, but my

prayers and blessings will be with you at every step. Be very

careful, dear boy. You must have a man’s prudence, for it lies

with you to shape the destinies of five others who are dear to

you, and must look to you. Yes, our fortunes depend upon you, and

your success is ours. We all pray to God to be with you in all

that you do. Your aunt Marcillac has been most generous beyond

words in this matter; she saw at once how it was, even down to

your gloves. ‘But I have a weakness for the eldest!’ she said

gaily. You must love your aunt very much, dear Eugene. I shall

wait till you have succeeded before telling you all that she has

done for you, or her money would burn your fingers. You, who are

young, do not know what it is to part with something that is a

piece of your past! But what would we not sacrifice for your

sakes? Your aunt says that I am to send you a kiss on the forehead

from her, and that kiss is to bring you luck again and again, she

says. She would have written you herself, the dear kind-hearted

woman, but she is troubled with the gout in her fingers just now.

Your father is very well. The vintage of 1819 has turned out

better than we expected. Good-bye, dear boy; I will say nothing

about your sisters, because Laure is writing to you, and I must

let her have the pleasure of giving you all the home news. Heaven

send that you may succeed! Oh! yes, dear Eugene, you must succeed.

I have come, through you, to a knowledge of a pain so sharp that I

do not think I could endure it a second time. I have come to know

what it is to be poor, and to long for money for my children’s

sake. There, good-bye! Do not leave us for long without news of

you; and here, at the last, take a kiss from your mother.”

By the time Eugene had finished the letter he was in tears. He thought

of Father Goriot crushing his silver keepsake into a shapeless mass

before he sold it to meet his daughter’s bill of exchange.

“Your mother has broken up her jewels for you,” he said to himself;

“your aunt shed tears over those relics of hers before she sold them

for your sake. What right have you to heap execrations on Anastasie? You

have followed her example; you have selfishly sacrificed others to your

own future, and she sacrifices her father to her lover; and of you two,

which is the worse?”

He was ready to renounce his attempts; he could not bear to take

that money. The fires of remorse burned in his heart, and gave him

intolerable pain, the generous secret remorse which men seldom take into

account when they sit in judgment upon their fellow-men; but perhaps

the angels in heaven, beholding it, pardon the criminal whom our justice

condemns. Rastignac opened his sister’s letter; its simplicity and

kindness revived his heart.

“Your letter came just at the right time, dear brother. Agathe and

I had thought of so many different ways of spending our money,

that we did not know what to buy with it; and now you have come

in, and, like the servant who upset all the watches that belonged

to the King of Spain, you have restored harmony; for, really and

truly, we did not know which of all the things we wanted we wanted

most, and we were always quarreling about it, never thinking, dear

Eugene, of a way of spending our money which would satisfy us

completely. Agathe jumped for you. Indeed, we have been like two

mad things all day, ‘to such a prodigious degree’ (as aunt would

say), that mother said, with her severe expression, ‘Whatever can

be the matter with you, mesdemoiselles?’ I think if we had been

scolded a little, we should have been still better pleased. A

woman ought to be very glad to suffer for one she loves! I,

however, in my inmost soul, was doleful and cross in the midst of

all my joy. I shall make a bad wife, I am afraid, I am too fond of

spending. I had bought two sashes and a nice little stiletto for

piercing eyelet-holes in my stays, trifles that I really did not

want, so that I have less than that slow-coach Agathe, who is so

economical, and hoards her money like a magpie. She had two

hundred francs! And I have only one hundred and fifty! I am nicely

punished; I could throw my sash down the well; it will be painful

to me to wear it now. Poor dear, I have robbed you. And Agathe was

so nice about it. She said, ‘Let us send the three hundred and

fifty francs in our two names!’ But I could not help telling you

everything just as it happened.

“Do you know how we managed to keep your commandments? We took our

glittering hoard, we went out for a walk, and when once fairly on

the highway we ran all the way to Ruffec, where we handed over the

coin, without more ado, to M. Grimbert of the Messageries Royales.

We came back again like swallows on the wing. ‘Don’t you think

that happiness has made us lighter?’ Agathe said. We said all

sorts of things, which I shall not tell you, Monsieur le Parisien,

because they were all about you. Oh, we love you dearly, dear

brother; it was all summed up in those few words. As for keeping

the secret, little masqueraders like us are capable of anything

(according to our aunt), even of holding our tongues. Our mother

has been on a mysterious journey to Angouleme, and the aunt went

with her, not without solemn councils, from which we were shut

out, and M. le Baron likewise. They are silent as to the weighty

political considerations that prompted their mission, and

conjectures are rife in the State of Rastignac. The Infantas are

embroidering a muslin robe with open-work sprigs for her Majesty

the Queen; the work progresses in the most profound secrecy. There

be but two more breadths to finish. A decree has gone forth that

no wall shall be built on the side of Verteuil, but that a hedge

shall be planted instead thereof. Our subjects may sustain some

disappointment of fruit and espaliers, but strangers will enjoy

a fair prospect. Should the heir-presumptive lack

pocket-handkerchiefs, be it known unto him that the dowager Lady

of Marcillac, exploring the recesses of her drawers and boxes

(known respectively as Pompeii and Herculaneum), having brought to

light a fair piece of cambric whereof she wotted not, the Princesses

Agathe and Laure place at their brother’s disposal their thread,

their needles, and hands somewhat of the reddest. The two young

Princes, Don Henri and Don Gabriel, retain their fatal habits of

stuffing themselves with grape-jelly, of teasing their sisters, of

taking their pleasure by going a-bird-nesting, and of cutting

switches for themselves from the osier-beds, maugre the laws of

the realm. Moreover, they list not to learn naught, wherefore the

Papal Nuncio (called of the commonalty, M. le Cure) threateneth

them with excommunication, since that they neglect the sacred

canons of grammatical construction for the construction of other

canon, deadly engines made of the stems of elder.

“Farewell, dear brother, never did letter carry so many wishes for

your success, so much love fully satisfied. You will have a great

deal to tell us when you come home! You will tell me everything,

won’t you? I am the oldest. From something the aunt let fall, we

think you must have had some success.

“Something was said of a lady, but nothing more was said...

“Of course not, in our family! Oh, by-the-by, Eugene, would you

rather that we made that piece of cambric into shirts for you

instead of pocket-handkerchiefs? If you want some really nice

shirts at once, we ought to lose no time in beginning upon them;

and if the fashion is different now in Paris, send us one for a

pattern; we want more particularly to know about the cuffs. Good-

bye! Good-bye! Take my kiss on the left side of your forehead, on

the temple that belongs to me, and to no one else in the world. I

am leaving the other side of the sheet for Agathe, who has

solemnly promised not to read a word that I have written; but, all

the same, I mean to sit by her side while she writes, so as to be

quite sure that she keeps her word.--Your loving sister,

“LAURE DE RASTIGNAC.”

“Yes!” said Eugene to himself. “Yes! Success at all costs now! Riches

could not repay such devotion as this. I wish I could give them every

sort of happiness! Fifteen hundred and fifty francs,” he went on after a

pause. “Every shot must go to the mark! Laure is right. Trust a woman!

I have only calico shirts. Where some one else’s welfare is concerned, a

young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself

is in question, and full of foresight for me,--she is like a heavenly

angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.”

The world lay before him. His tailor had been summoned and sounded, and

had finally surrendered. When Rastignac met M. de Trailles, he had seen

at once how great a part the tailor plays in a young man’s career; a

tailor is either a deadly enemy or a staunch friend, with an invoice

for a bond of friendship; between these two extremes there is, alack! no

middle term. In this representative of his craft Eugene discovered a man

who understood that his was a sort of paternal function for young men

at their entrance into life, who regarded himself as a stepping-stone

between a young man’s present and future. And Rastignac in gratitude

made the man’s fortune by an epigram of a kind in which he excelled at a

later period of his life.

“I have twice known a pair of trousers turned out by him make a match of

twenty thousand livres a year!”

Fifteen hundred francs, and as many suits of clothes as he chose to

order! At that moment the poor child of the South felt no more doubts of

any kind. The young man went down to breakfast with the indefinable air

which the consciousness of the possession of money gives to youth. No

sooner are the coins slipped into a student’s pocket than his wealth,

in imagination at least, is piled into a fantastic column, which affords

him a moral support. He begins to hold up his head as he walks; he is

conscious that he has a means of bringing his powers to bear on a given

point; he looks you straight in the face; his gestures are quick and

decided; only yesterday he was diffident and shy, any one might have

pushed him aside; to-morrow, he will take the wall of a prime minister.

A miracle has been wrought in him. Nothing is beyond the reach of

his ambition, and his ambition soars at random; he is light-hearted,

generous, and enthusiastic; in short, the fledgling bird has discovered

that he has wings. A poor student snatches at every chance pleasure

much as a dog runs all sorts of risks to steal a bone, cracking it and

sucking the marrow as he flies from pursuit; but a young man who can

rattle a few runaway gold coins in his pocket can take his pleasure

deliberately, can taste the whole of the sweets of secure possession; he

soars far above earth; he has forgotten what the word _poverty_ means;

all Paris is his. Those are days when the whole world shines radiant

with light, when everything glows and sparkles before the eyes of youth,

days that bring joyous energy that is never brought into harness, days

of debts and of painful fears that go hand in hand with every delight.

Those who do not know the left bank of the Seine between the Rue

Saint-Jacques and the Rue des Saints-Peres know nothing of life.

“Ah! if the women of Paris but knew,” said Rastignac, as he devoured

Mme. Vauquer’s stewed pears (at five for a penny), “they would come here

in search of a lover.”

Just then a porter from the Messageries Royales appeared at the door of

the room; they had previously heard the bell ring as the wicket opened

to admit him. The man asked for M. Eugene de Rastignac, holding out two

bags for him to take, and a form of receipt for his signature. Vautrin’s

keen glance cut Eugene like a lash.

“Now you will be able to pay for those fencing lessons and go to the

shooting gallery,” he said.

“Your ship has come in,” said Mme. Vauquer, eyeing the bags.

Mlle. Michonneau did not dare to look at the money, for fear her eyes

should betray her cupidity.

“You have a kind mother,” said Mme. Couture.

“You have a kind mother, sir,” echoed Poiret.

“Yes, mamma has been drained dry,” said Vautrin, “and now you can have

your fling, go into society, and fish for heiresses, and dance with

countesses who have peach blossom in their hair. But take my advice,

young man, and don’t neglect your pistol practice.”

Vautrin struck an attitude, as if he were facing an antagonist.

Rastignac, meaning to give the porter a tip, felt in his pockets and

found nothing. Vautrin flung down a franc piece on the table.

“Your credit is good,” he remarked, eyeing the student, and Rastignac

was forced to thank him, though, since the sharp encounter of wits at

dinner that day, after Eugene came in from calling on Mme. de Beauseant,

he had made up his mind that Vautrin was insufferable. For a week, in

fact, they had both kept silence in each other’s presence, and watched

each other. The student tried in vain to account to himself for this

attitude.

An idea, of course, gains in force by the energy with which it

is expressed; it strikes where the brain sends it, by a law as

mathematically exact as the law that determines the course of a shell

from a mortar. The amount of impression it makes is not to be determined

so exactly. Sometimes, in an impressible nature, the idea works havoc,

but there are, no less, natures so robustly protected, that this sort

of projectile falls flat and harmless on skulls of triple brass,

as cannon-shot against solid masonry; then there are flaccid and

spongy-fibred natures into which ideas from without sink like spent

bullets into the earthworks of a redoubt. Rastignac’s head was something

of the powder-magazine order; the least shock sufficed to bring about an

explosion. He was too quick, too young, not to be readily accessible

to ideas; and open to that subtle influence of thought and feeling in

others which causes so many strange phenomena that make an impression

upon us of which we are all unconscious at the time. Nothing escaped his

mental vision; he was lynx-eyed; in him the mental powers of perception,

which seem like duplicates of the senses, had the mysterious power

of swift projection that astonishes us in intellects of a high

order--slingers who are quick to detect the weak spot in any armor.

In the past month Eugene’s good qualities and defects had rapidly

developed with his character. Intercourse with the world and the

endeavor to satisfy his growing desires had brought out his defects.

But Rastignac came from the South side of the Loire, and had the good

qualities of his countrymen. He had the impetuous courage of the South,

that rushes to the attack of a difficulty, as well as the southern

impatience of delay or suspense. These traits are held to be defects in

the North; they made the fortune of Murat, but they likewise cut short

his career. The moral would appear to be that when the dash and boldness

of the South side of the Loire meets, in a southern temperament, with

the guile of the North, the character is complete, and such a man will

gain (and keep) the crown of Sweden.

Rastignac, therefore, could not stand the fire from Vautrin’s batteries

for long without discovering whether this was a friend or a foe. He felt

as if this strange being was reading his inmost soul, and dissecting

his feelings, while Vautrin himself was so close and secretive that

he seemed to have something of the profound and unmoved serenity of

a sphinx, seeing and hearing all things and saying nothing. Eugene,

conscious of that money in his pocket, grew rebellious.

“Be so good as to wait a moment,” he said to Vautrin, as the latter

rose, after slowly emptying his coffee-cup, sip by sip.

“What for?” inquired the older man, as he put on his large-brimmed hat

and took up the sword-cane that he was wont to twirl like a man who will

face three or four footpads without flinching.

“I will repay you in a minute,” returned Eugene. He unsealed one of the

bags as he spoke, counted out a hundred and forty francs, and pushed

them towards Mme. Vauquer. “Short reckonings make good friends” he

added, turning to the widow; “that clears our accounts till the end of

the year. Can you give me change for a five-franc piece?”

“Good friends make short reckonings,” echoed Poiret, with a glance at

Vautrin.

“Here is your franc,” said Rastignac, holding out the coin to the sphinx

in the black wig.

“Any one might think that you were afraid to owe me a trifle,” exclaimed

this latter, with a searching glance that seemed to read the young man’s

inmost thoughts; there was a satirical and cynical smile on Vautrin’s

face such as Eugene had seen scores of times already; every time he saw

it, it exasperated him almost beyond endurance.

“Well... so I am,” he answered. He held both the bags in his hand, and

had risen to go up to his room.

Vautrin made as if he were going out through the sitting-room, and the

student turned to go through the second door that opened into the square

lobby at the foot of the staircase.

“Do you know, Monsieur le Marquis de Rastignacorama, that what you were

saying just now was not exactly polite?” Vautrin remarked, as he rattled

his sword-cane across the panels of the sitting-room door, and came up

to the student.

Rastignac looked coolly at Vautrin, drew him to the foot of the

staircase, and shut the dining-room door. They were standing in the

little square lobby between the kitchen and the dining-room; the place

was lighted by an iron-barred fanlight above a door that gave access

into the garden. Sylvie came out of her kitchen, and Eugene chose that

moment to say:

“_Monsieur_ Vautrin, I am not a marquis, and my name is not

Rastignacorama.”

“They will fight,” said Mlle. Michonneau, in an indifferent tone.

“Fight!” echoed Poiret.

“Not they,” replied Mme. Vauquer, lovingly fingering her pile of coins.

“But there they are under the lime-trees,” cried Mlle. Victorine, who

had risen so that she might see out into the garden. “Poor young man! he

was in the right, after all.”

“We must go upstairs, my pet,” said Mme. Couture; “it is no business of

ours.”

At the door, however, Mme. Couture and Victorine found their progress

barred by the portly form of Sylvie the cook.

“What ever can have happened?” she said. “M. Vautrin said to M. Eugene,

‘Let us have an explanation!’ then he took him by the arm, and there

they are, out among the artichokes.”

Vautrin came in while she was speaking. “Mamma Vauquer,” he said

smiling, “don’t frighten yourself at all. I am only going to try my

pistols under the lime-trees.”

“Oh! monsieur,” cried Victorine, clasping her hands as she spoke, “why

do you want to kill M. Eugene?”

Vautrin stepped back a pace or two, and gazed at Victorine.

“Oh! this is something fresh!” he exclaimed in a bantering tone, that

brought the color into the poor girl’s face. “That young fellow yonder

is very nice, isn’t he?” he went on. “You have given me a notion, my

pretty child; I will make you both happy.”

Mme. Couture laid her hand on the arm of her ward, and drew the girl

away, as she said in her ear:

“Why, Victorine, I cannot imagine what has come over you this morning.”

“I don’t want any shots fired in my garden,” said Mme. Vauquer. “You

will frighten the neighborhood and bring the police up here all in a

moment.”

“Come, keep cool, Mamma Vauquer,” answered Vautrin. “There, there; it’s

all right; we will go to the shooting-gallery.”

He went back to Rastignac, laying his hand familiarly on the young man’s

arm.

“When I have given you ocular demonstration of the fact that I can put

a bullet through the ace on a card five times running at thirty-five

paces,” he said, “that won’t take away your appetite, I suppose? You

look to me to be inclined to be a trifle quarrelsome this morning, and

as if you would rush on your death like a blockhead.”

“Do you draw back?” asked Eugene.

“Don’t try to raise my temperature,” answered Vautrin, “it is not cold

this morning. Let us go and sit over there,” he added, pointing to the

green-painted garden seats; “no one can overhear us. I want a little

talk with you. You are not a bad sort of youngster, and I have no

quarrel with you. I like you, take Trump--(confound it!)--take Vautrin’s

word for it. What makes me like you? I will tell you by-and-by.

Meantime, I can tell you that I know you as well as if I had made you

myself, as I will prove to you in a minute. Put down your bags,” he

continued, pointing to the round table.

Rastignac deposited his money on the table, and sat down. He was

consumed with curiosity, which the sudden change in the manner of the

man before him had excited to the highest pitch. Here was a strange

being who, a moment ago, had talked of killing him, and now posed as his

protector.

“You would like to know who I really am, what I was, and what I do now,”

Vautrin went on. “You want to know too much, youngster. Come! come! keep

cool! You will hear more astonishing things than that. I have had

my misfortunes. Just hear me out first, and you shall have your turn

afterwards. Here is my past in three words. Who am I? Vautrin. What do

I do? Just what I please. Let us change the subject. You want to know my

character. I am good-natured to those who do me a good turn, or to those

whose hearts speak to mine. These last may do anything they like with

me; they may bruise my shins, and I shall not tell them to ‘mind what

they are about’; but, _nom d’une pipe_, the devil himself is not an

uglier customer than I can be if people annoy me, or if I don’t happen

to take to them; and you may just as well know at once that I think no

more of killing a man than of that,” and he spat before him as he spoke.

“Only when it is absolutely necessary to do so, I do my best to kill him

properly. I am what you call an artist. I have read Benvenuto Cellini’s

_Memoirs_, such as you see me; and, what is more, in Italian: A

fine-spirited fellow he was! From him I learned to follow the example

set us by Providence, who strikes us down at random, and to admire

the beautiful whenever and wherever it is found. And, setting other

questions aside, is it not a glorious part to play, when you pit

yourself against mankind, and the luck is on your side? I have thought

a good deal about the constitution of your present social Dis-order. A

duel is downright childish, my boy! utter nonsense and folly! When one

of two living men must be got out of the way, none but an idiot

would leave chance to decide which it is to be; and in a duel it is a

toss-up--heads or tails--and there you are! Now I, for instance, can

hit the ace in the middle of a card five times running, send one bullet

after another through the same hole, and at thirty-five paces, moreover!

With that little accomplishment you might think yourself certain of

killing your man, mightn’t you. Well, I have fired, at twenty paces, and

missed, and the rogue who had never handled a pistol in his life--look

here!”--(he unbuttoned his waistcoat and exposed his chest, covered,

like a bear’s back, with a shaggy fell; the student gave a startled

shudder)--“he was a raw lad, but he made his mark on me,” the

extraordinary man went on, drawing Rastignac’s fingers over a deep scar

on his breast. “But that happened when I myself was a mere boy; I was

one-and-twenty then (your age), and I had some beliefs left--in a

woman’s love, and in a pack of rubbish that you will be over head and

ears in directly. You and I were to have fought just now, weren’t we?

You might have killed me. Suppose that I were put under the earth, where

would you be? You would have to clear out of this, go to Switzerland,

draw on papa’s purse--and he has none too much in it as it is. I mean to

open your eyes to your real position, that is what I am going to do: but

I shall do it from the point of view of a man who, after studying the

world very closely, sees that there are but two alternatives--stupid

obedience or revolt. I obey nobody; is that clear? Now, do you know how

much you will want at the pace you are going? A million; and promptly,

too, or that little head of ours will be swaying to and fro in the

drag-nets at Saint-Cloud, while we are gone to find out whether or no

there is a Supreme Being. I will put you in the way of that million.”

He stopped for a moment and looked at Eugene.

“Aha! you do not look so sourly at papa Vautrin now! At the mention of

the million you look like a young girl when somebody has said, ‘I will

come for you this evening!’ and she betakes herself to her toilette as a

cat licks its whiskers over a saucer of milk. All right. Come, now, let

us go into the question, young man; all between ourselves, you know.

We have a papa and mamma down yonder, a great-aunt, two sisters (aged

eighteen and seventeen), two young brothers (one fifteen, and the other

ten), that is about the roll-call of the crew. The aunt brings up the

two sisters; the cure comes and teaches the boys Latin. Boiled chestnuts

are oftener on the table than white bread. Papa makes a suit of clothes

last a long while; if mamma has a different dress winter and summer, it

is about as much as she has; the sisters manage as best they can. I know

all about it; I have lived in the south.

“That is how things are at home. They send you twelve hundred francs a

year, and the whole property only brings in three thousand francs all

told. We have a cook and a manservant; papa is a baron, and we must keep

up appearances. Then we have our ambitions; we are connected with the

Beauseants, and we go afoot through the streets; we want to be rich,

and we have not a penny; we eat Mme. Vauquer’s messes, and we like grand

dinners in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; we sleep on a truckle-bed, and

dream of a mansion! I do not blame you for wanting these things. What

sort of men do the women run after? Men of ambition. Men of ambition

have stronger frames, their blood is richer in iron, their hearts are

warmer than those of ordinary men. Women feel that when their power is

greatest, they look their best, and that those are their happiest hours;

they like power in men, and prefer the strongest even if it is a power

that may be their own destruction. I am going to make an inventory of

your desires in order to put the question at issue before you. Here it

is:--

“We are as hungry as a wolf, and those newly-cut teeth of ours are

sharp; what are we to do to keep the pot boiling? In the first place,

we have the Code to browse upon; it is not amusing, and we are none the

wiser for it, but that cannot be helped. So far so good. We mean to make

an advocate of ourselves with a prospect of one day being made President

of a Court of Assize, when we shall send poor devils, our betters, to

the galleys with a T.F.[*] on their shoulders, so that the rich may be

convinced that they can sleep in peace. There is no fun in that; and you

are a long while coming to it; for, to begin with, there are two years

of nauseous drudgery in Paris, we see all the lollipops that we long for

out of our reach. It is tiresome to want things and never to have them.

If you were a pallid creature of the mollusk order, you would have

nothing to fear, but it is different when you have the hot blood of

a lion and are ready to get into a score of scrapes every day of your

life. This is the ghastliest form of torture known in this inferno of

God’s making, and you will give in to it. Or suppose that you are a good

boy, drink nothing stronger than milk, and bemoan your hard lot; you,

with your generous nature, will endure hardships that would drive a dog

mad, and make a start, after long waiting, as deputy to some rascal

or other in a hole of a place where the Government will fling you a

thousand francs a year like the scraps that are thrown to the butcher’s

dog. Bark at thieves, plead the cause of the rich, send men of heart

to the guillotine, that is your work! Many thanks! If you have no

influence, you may rot in your provincial tribunal. At thirty you will

be a Justice with twelve hundred francs a year (if you have not flung

off the gown for good before then). By the time you are forty you may

look to marry a miller’s daughter, an heiress with some six thousand

livres a year. Much obliged! If you have influence, you may possibly

be a Public Prosecutor by the time you are thirty; with a salary of

a thousand crowns, you could look to marry the mayor’s daughter. Some

petty piece of political trickery, such as mistaking Villele for Manuel

in a bulletin (the names rhyme, and that quiets your conscience), and

you will probably be a Procureur General by the time you are forty, with

a chance of becoming a deputy. Please to observe, my dear boy, that our

conscience will have been a little damaged in the process, and that we

shall endure twenty years of drudgery and hidden poverty, and that

our sisters are wearing Dian’s livery. I have the honor to call your

attention to another fact: to wit, that there are but twenty Procureurs

Generaux at a time in all France, while there are some twenty thousand

of you young men who aspire to that elevated position; that there are

some mountebanks among you who would sell their family to screw their

fortunes a peg higher. If this sort of thing sickens you, try another

course. The Baron de Rastignac thinks of becoming an advocate, does he?

There’s a nice prospect for you! Ten years of drudgery straight away.

You are obliged to live at the rate of a thousand francs a month; you

must have a library of law books, live in chambers, go into society, go

down on your knees to ask a solicitor for briefs, lick the dust off

the floor of the Palais de Justice. If this kind of business led to

anything, I should not say no; but just give me the names of five

advocates here in Paris who by the time that they are fifty are making

fifty thousand francs a year! Bah! I would sooner turn pirate on the

high seas than have my soul shrivel up inside me like that. How will

you find the capital? There is but one way, marry a woman who has money.

There is no fun in it. Have you a mind to marry? You hang a stone around

your neck; for if you marry for money, what becomes of our exalted

notions of honor and so forth? You might as well fly in the face of

social conventions at once. Is it nothing to crawl like a serpent before

your wife, to lick her mother’s feet, to descend to dirty actions

that would sicken swine--faugh!--never mind if you at least make your

fortune. But you will be as doleful as a dripstone if you marry for

money. It is better to wrestle with men than to wrangle at home with

your wife. You are at the crossway of the roads of life, my boy; choose

your way.

[*] Travaux forces, forced labour.

“But you have chosen already. You have gone to see your cousin of

Beauseant, and you have had an inkling of luxury; you have been to Mme.

de Restaud’s house, and in Father Goriot’s daughter you have seen a

glimpse of the Parisienne for the first time. That day you came

back with a word written on your forehead. I knew it, I could read

it--‘_Success_!’ Yes, success at any price. ‘Bravo,’ said I to myself,

‘here is the sort of fellow for me.’ You wanted money. Where was it all

to come from? You have drained your sisters’ little hoard (all brothers

sponge more or less on their sisters). Those fifteen hundred francs of

yours (got together, God knows how! in a country where there are more

chestnuts than five-franc pieces) will slip away like soldiers after

pillage. And, then, what will you do? Shall you begin to work? Work, or

what you understand by work at this moment, means, for a man of Poiret’s

calibre, an old age in Mamma Vauquer’s lodging-house. There are fifty

thousand young men in your position at this moment, all bent as you are

on solving one and the same problem--how to acquire a fortune rapidly.

You are but a unit in that aggregate. You can guess, therefore, what

efforts you must make, how desperate the struggle is. There are not

fifty thousand good positions for you; you must fight and devour one

another like spiders in a pot. Do you know how a man makes his way here?

By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your

way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them

like a plague. Honesty is nothing to the purpose. Men bow before the

power of genius; they hate it, and try to slander it, because genius

does not divide the spoil; but if genius persists, they bow before it.

To sum it all up in a phrase, if they fail to smother genius in the mud,

they fall on their knees and worship it. Corruption is a great power

in the world, and talent is scarce. So corruption is the weapon of

superfluous mediocrity; you will be made to feel the point of it

everywhere. You will see women who spend more than ten thousand francs

a year on dress, while their husband’s salary (his whole income) is

six thousand francs. You will see officials buying estates on twelve

thousand francs a year. You will see women who sell themselves body and

soul to drive in a carriage belonging to the son of a peer of France,

who has a right to drive in the middle rank at Longchamp. You have

seen that poor simpleton of a Goriot obliged to meet a bill with his

daughter’s name at the back of it, though her husband has fifty thousand

francs a year. I defy you to walk a couple of yards anywhere in Paris

without stumbling on some infernal complication. I’ll bet my head to

a head of that salad that you will stir up a hornet’s nest by taking a

fancy to the first young, rich, and pretty woman you meet. They are all

dodging the law, all at loggerheads with their husbands. If I were to

begin to tell you all that vanity or necessity (virtue is not often

mixed up in it, you may be sure), all that vanity and necessity drive

them to do for lovers, finery, housekeeping, or children, I should never

come to an end. So an honest man is the common enemy.

“But do you know what an honest man is? Here, in Paris, an honest man is

the man who keeps his own counsel, and will not divide the plunder. I am

not speaking now of those poor bond-slaves who do the work of the world

without a reward for their toil--God Almighty’s outcasts, I call them.

Among them, I grant you, is virtue in all the flower of its stupidity,

but poverty is no less their portion. At this moment, I think I see the

long faces those good folk would pull if God played a practical joke on

them and stayed away at the Last Judgment.

“Well, then, if you mean to make a fortune quickly, you must either be

rich to begin with, or make people believe that you are rich. It is no

use playing here except for high stakes; once take to low play, it is

all up with you. If in the scores of professions that are open to you,

there are ten men who rise very rapidly, people are sure to call them

thieves. You can draw your own conclusions. Such is life. It is no

cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to

cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is

in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our

epoch. If I take this tone in speaking of the world to you, I have the

right to do so; I know it well. Do you think that I am blaming it? Far

from it; the world has always been as it is now. Moralists’ strictures

will never change it. Mankind are not perfect, but one age is more

or less hypocritical than another, and then simpletons say that its

morality is high or low. I do not think that the rich are any worse than

the poor; man is much the same, high or low, or wherever he is. In a

million of these human cattle there may be half a score of bold spirits

who rise above the rest, above the laws; I am one of them. And you, if

you are cleverer than your fellows, make straight to your end, and hold

your head high. But you must lay your account with envy and slander and

mediocrity, and every man’s hand will be against you. Napoleon met with

a Minister of War, Aubry by name, who all but sent him to the colonies.

“Feel your pulse. Think whether you can get up morning after morning,

strengthened in yesterday’s purpose. In that case I will make you an

offer that no one would decline. Listen attentively. You see, I have an

idea of my own. My idea is to live a patriarchal life on a vast estate,

say a hundred thousand acres, somewhere in the Southern States of

America. I mean to be a planter, to have slaves, to make a few snug

millions by selling my cattle, timber, and tobacco; I want to live an

absolute monarch, and to do just as I please; to lead such a life as no

one here in these squalid dens of lath and plaster ever imagines. I am a

great poet; I do not write my poems, I feel them, and act them. At this

moment I have fifty thousand francs, which might possibly buy forty

negroes. I want two hundred thousand francs, because I want to have

two hundred negroes to carry out my notions of the patriarachal life

properly. Negroes, you see, are like a sort of family ready grown, and

there are no inquisitive public prosecutors out there to interfere with

you. That investment in ebony ought to mean three or four million francs

in ten years’ time. If I am successful, no one will ask me who I am. I

shall be Mr. Four Millions, an American citizen. I shall be fifty years

old by then, and sound and hearty still; I shall enjoy life after my own

fashion. In two words, if I find you an heiress with a million, will you

give me two hundred thousand francs? Twenty per cent commission, eh? Is

that too much? Your little wife will be very much in love with you. Once

married, you will show signs of uneasiness and remorse; for a couple of

weeks you will be depressed. Then, some night after sundry grimacings,

comes the confession, between two kisses, ‘Two hundred thousand francs

of debts, my darling!’ This sort of farce is played every day in Paris,

and by young men of the highest fashion. When a young wife has given her

heart, she will not refuse her purse. Perhaps you are thinking that

you will lose the money for good? Not you. You will make two hundred

thousand francs again by some stroke of business. With your capital and

your brains you should be able to accumulate as large a fortune as you

could wish. _Ergo_, in six months you will have made your own fortune,

and our old friend Vautrin’s, and made an amiable woman very happy, to

say nothing of your people at home, who must blow on their fingers

to warm them, in the winter, for lack of firewood. You need not be

surprised at my proposal, nor at the demand I make. Forty-seven out

of every sixty great matches here in Paris are made after just such a

bargain as this. The Chamber of Notaries compels my gentleman to----”

“What must I do?” said Rastignac, eagerly interrupting Vautrin’s speech.

“Next to nothing,” returned the other, with a slight involuntary

movement, the suppressed exultation of the angler when he feels a bite

at the end of his line. “Follow me carefully! The heart of a girl whose

life is wretched and unhappy is a sponge that will thirstily absorb

love; a dry sponge that swells at the first drop of sentiment. If you

pay court to a young girl whose existence is a compound of loneliness,

despair, and poverty, and who has no suspicion that she will come into

a fortune, good Lord! it is quint and quatorze at piquet; it is knowing

the numbers of the lottery before-hand; it is speculating in the funds

when you have news from a sure source; it is building up a marriage on

an indestructible foundation. The girl may come in for millions, and she

will fling them, as if they were so many pebbles, at your feet. ‘Take

it, my beloved! Take it, Alfred, Adolphe, Eugene!’ or whoever it

was that showed his sense by sacrificing himself for her. And as for

sacrificing himself, this is how I understand it. You sell a coat that

is getting shabby, so that you can take her to the _Cadran bleu_, treat

her to mushrooms on toast, and then go to the Ambigu-Comique in the

evening; you pawn your watch to buy her a shawl. I need not remind you

of the fiddle-faddle sentimentality that goes down so well with all

women; you spill a few drops of water on your stationery, for instance;

those are the tears you shed while far away from her. You look to me as

if you were perfectly acquainted with the argot of the heart. Paris, you

see, is like a forest in the New World, where you have to deal with

a score of varieties of savages--Illinois and Hurons, who live on the

proceed of their social hunting. You are a hunter of millions; you set

your snares; you use lures and nets; there are many ways of hunting.

Some hunt heiresses, others a legacy; some fish for souls, yet others

sell their clients, bound hand and foot. Every one who comes back from

the chase with his game-bag well filled meets with a warm welcome in

good society. In justice to this hospitable part of the world, it must

be said that you have to do with the most easy and good-natured of

great cities. If the proud aristocracies of the rest of Europe refuse

admittance among their ranks to a disreputable millionaire, Paris

stretches out a hand to him, goes to his banquets, eats his dinners, and

hobnobs with his infamy.”

“But where is such a girl to be found?” asked Eugene.

“Under your eyes; she is yours already.”

“Mlle. Victorine?”

“Precisely.”

“And what was that you said?”

“She is in love with you already, your little Baronne de Rastignac!”

“She has not a penny,” Eugene continued, much mystified.

“Ah! now we are coming to it! Just another word or two, and it will all

be clear enough. Her father, Taillefer, is an old scoundrel; it is said

that he murdered one of his friends at the time of the Revolution. He is

one of your comedians that sets up to have opinions of his own. He is a

banker--senior partner in the house of Frederic Taillefer and Company.

He has one son, and means to leave all he has to the boy, to the

prejudice of Victorine. For my part, I don’t like to see injustice of

this sort. I am like Don Quixote, I have a fancy for defending the weak

against the strong. If it should please God to take that youth away from

him, Taillefer would have only his daughter left; he would want to leave

his money to some one or other; an absurd notion, but it is only human

nature, and he is not likely to have any more children, as I know.

Victorine is gentle and amiable; she will soon twist her father round

her fingers, and set his head spinning like a German top by plying him

with sentiment! She will be too much touched by your devotion to

forget you; you will marry her. I mean to play Providence for you,

and Providence is to do my will. I have a friend whom I have attached

closely to myself, a colonel in the Army of the Loire, who has just been

transferred into the _garde royale_. He has taken my advice and turned

ultra-royalist; he is not one of those fools who never change their

opinions. Of all pieces of advice, my cherub, I would give you

this--don’t stick to your opinions any more than to your words. If any

one asks you for them, let him have them--at a price. A man who prides

himself on going in a straight line through life is an idiot who

believes in infallibility. There are no such things as principles; there

are only events, and there are no laws but those of expediency: a man of

talent accepts events and the circumstances in which he finds himself,

and turns everything to his own ends. If laws and principles were fixed

and invariable, nations would not change them as readily as we change

our shirts. The individual is not obliged to be more particular than the

nation. A man whose services to France have been of the very slightest

is a fetich looked on with superstitious awe because he has always

seen everything in red; but he is good, at the most, to be put into the

Museum of Arts and Crafts, among the automatic machines, and labeled La

Fayette; while the prince at whom everybody flings a stone, the man who

despises humanity so much that he spits as many oaths as he is asked for

in the face of humanity, saved France from being torn in pieces at the

Congress of Vienna; and they who should have given him laurels fling

mud at him. Oh! I know something of affairs, I can tell you; I have the

secrets of many men! Enough. When I find three minds in agreement as

to the application of a principle, I shall have a fixed and immovable

opinion--I shall have to wait a long while first. In the Tribunals you

will not find three judges of the same opinion on a single point of law.

To return to the man I was telling you of. He would crucify Jesus Christ

again, if I bade him. At a word from his old chum Vautrin he will pick

a quarrel with a scamp that will not send so much as five francs to his

sister, poor girl, and” (here Vautrin rose to his feet and stood like a

fencing-master about to lunge)--“turn him off into the dark!” he added.

“How frightful!” said Eugene. “You do not really mean it? M. Vautrin,

you are joking!”

“There! there! Keep cool!” said the other. “Don’t behave like a baby.

But if you find any amusement in it, be indignant, flare up! Say that

I am a scoundrel, a rascal, a rogue, a bandit; but do not call me a

blackleg nor a spy! There, out with it, fire away! I forgive you; it is

quite natural at your age. I was like that myself once. Only remember

this, you will do worse things yourself some day. You will flirt with

some pretty woman and take her money. You have thought of that, of

course,” said Vautrin, “for how are you to succeed unless love is laid

under contribution? There are no two ways about virtue, my dear student;

it either is, or it is not. Talk of doing penance for your sins! It is

a nice system of business, when you pay for your crime by an act of

contrition! You seduce a woman that you may set your foot on such and

such a rung of the social ladder; you sow dissension among the children

of a family; you descend, in short, to every base action that can be

committed at home or abroad, to gain your own ends for your own pleasure

or your profit; and can you imagine that these are acts of faith, hope,

or charity? How is it that a dandy, who in a night has robbed a boy of

half his fortune, gets only a couple of months in prison; while a poor

devil who steals a banknote for a thousand francs, with aggravating

circumstances, is condemned to penal servitude? Those are your laws. Not

a single provision but lands you in some absurdity. That man with yellow

gloves and a golden tongue commits many a murder; he sheds no blood, but

he drains his victim’s veins as surely; a desperado forces open a door

with a crowbar, dark deeds both of them! You yourself will do every one

of those things that I suggest to you to-day, bar the bloodshed. Do

you believe that there is any absolute standard in this world? Despise

mankind and find out the meshes that you can slip through in the net of

the Code. The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss

to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was

properly executed.”

“Silence, sir! I will not hear any more; you make me doubt myself. At

this moment my sentiments are all my science.”

“Just as you please, my fine fellow; I did think you were so

weak-minded,” said Vautrin, “I shall say no more about it. One last

word, however,” and he looked hard at the student--“you have my secret,”

he said.

“A young man who refuses your offer knows that he must forget it.”

“Quite right, quite right; I am glad to hear you say so. Somebody else

might not be so scrupulous, you see. Keep in mind what I want to do for

you. I will give you a fortnight. The offer is still open.”

“What a head of iron the man has!” said Eugene to himself, as he watched

Vautrin walk unconcernedly away with his cane under his arm. “Yet Mme.

de Beauseant said as much more gracefully; he has only stated the case

in cruder language. He would tear my heart with claws of steel. What

made me think of going to Mme. de Nucingen? He guessed my motives before

I knew them myself. To sum it up, that outlaw has told me more about

virtue than all I have learned from men and books. If virtue admits of

no compromises, I have certainly robbed my sisters,” he said, throwing

down the bags on the table.

He sat down again and fell, unconscious of his surroundings, into deep

thought.

“To be faithful to an ideal of virtue! A heroic martyrdom! Pshaw! every

one believes in virtue, but who is virtuous? Nations have made an idol

of Liberty, but what nation on the face of the earth is free? My youth

is still like a blue and cloudless sky. If I set myself to obtain wealth

or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and

cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? To consent to be the

servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered?

Must I cringe to them before I can hope to be their accomplice? Well,

then, I decline. I mean to work nobly and with a single heart. I

will work day and night; I will owe my fortune to nothing but my own

exertions. It may be the slowest of all roads to success, but I shall

lay my head on the pillow at night untroubled by evil thoughts. Is there

a greater thing than this--to look back over your life and know that

it is stainless as a lily? I and my life are like a young man and his

betrothed. Vautrin has put before me all that comes after ten years of

marriage. The devil! my head is swimming. I do not want to think at all;

the heart is a sure guide.”

Eugene was roused from his musings by the voice of the stout Sylvie,

who announced that the tailor had come, and Eugene therefore made his

appearance before the man with the two money bags, and was not ill

pleased that it should be so. When he had tried on his dress suit, he

put on his new morning costume, which completely metamorphosed him.

“I am quite equal to M. de Trailles,” he said to himself. “In short, I

look like a gentleman.”

“You asked me, sir, if I knew the houses where Mme. de Nucingen goes,”

Father Goriot’s voice spoke from the doorway of Eugene’s room.

“Yes.”

“Very well then, she is going to the Marechale Carigliano’s ball on

Monday. If you can manage to be there, I shall hear from you whether my

two girls enjoyed themselves, and how they were dressed, and all about

it in fact.”

“How did you find that out, my good Goriot?” said Eugene, putting a

chair by the fire for his visitor.

“Her maid told me. I hear all about their doings from Therese and

Constance,” he added gleefully.

The old man looked like a lover who is still young enough to be made

happy by the discovery of some little stratagem which brings him

information of his lady-love without her knowledge.

“_You_ will see them both!” he said, giving artless expression to a pang

of jealousy.

“I do not know,” answered Eugene. “I will go to Mme. de Beauseant and

ask her for an introduction to the Marechale.”

Eugene felt a thrill of pleasure at the thought of appearing before the

Vicomtesse, dressed as henceforward he always meant to be. The “abysses

of the human heart,” in the moralists’ phrase, are only insidious

thoughts, involuntary promptings of personal interest. The instinct of

enjoyment turns the scale; those rapid changes of purpose which have

furnished the text for so much rhetoric are calculations prompted by

the hope of pleasure. Rastignac beholding himself well dressed and

impeccable as to gloves and boots, forgot his virtuous resolutions.

Youth, moreover, when bent upon wrongdoing does not dare to behold

himself in the mirror of consciousness; mature age has seen itself; and

therein lies the whole difference between these two phases of life.

A friendship between Eugene and his neighbor, Father Goriot, had

been growing up for several days past. This secret friendship and the

antipathy that the student had begun to entertain for Vautrin arose

from the same psychological causes. The bold philosopher who shall

investigate the effects of mental action upon the physical world

will doubtless find more than one proof of the material nature of our

sentiments in other animals. What physiognomist is as quick to discern

character as a dog is to discover from a stranger’s face whether this

is a friend or no? Those by-words--“atoms,” “affinities”--are facts

surviving in modern languages for the confusion of philosophic wiseacres

who amuse themselves by winnowing the chaff of language to find its

grammatical roots. We _feel_ that we are loved. Our sentiments make

themselves felt in everything, even at a great distance. A letter is

a living soul, and so faithful an echo of the voice that speaks in it,

that finer natures look upon a letter as one of love’s most precious

treasures. Father Goriot’s affection was of the instinctive order, a

canine affection raised to a sublime pitch; he had scented compassion in

the air, and the kindly respect and youthful sympathy in the student’s

heart. This friendship had, however, scarcely reached the stage at which

confidences are made. Though Eugene had spoken of his wish to meet Mme.

de Nucingen, it was not because he counted on the old man to introduce

him to her house, for he hoped that his own audacity might stand him in

good stead. All that Father Goriot had said as yet about his daughters

had referred to the remarks that the student had made so freely in

public on that day of the two visits.

“How could you think that Mme. de Restaud bore you a grudge for

mentioning my name?” he had said on the day following that scene at

dinner. “My daughters are very fond of me; I am a happy father; but

my sons-in-law have behaved badly to me, and rather than make trouble

between my darlings and their husbands, I choose to see my daughters

secretly. Fathers who can see their daughters at any time have no idea

of all the pleasure that all this mystery gives me; I cannot always see

mine when I wish, do you understand? So when it is fine I walk out in

the Champs-Elysees, after finding out from their waiting-maids whether

my daughters mean to go out. I wait near the entrance; my heart beats

fast when the carriages begin to come; I admire them in their dresses,

and as they pass they give me a little smile, and it seems as if

everything was lighted up for me by a ray of bright sunlight. I wait,

for they always go back the same way, and then I see them again; the

fresh air has done them good and brought color into their cheeks; all

about me people say, ‘What a beautiful woman that is!’ and it does my

heart good to hear them.

“Are they not my own flesh and blood? I love the very horses that draw

them; I envy the little lap-dog on their knees. Their happiness is my

life. Every one loves after his own fashion, and mine does no one any

harm; why should people trouble their heads about me? I am happy in my

own way. Is there any law against going to see my girls in the evening

when they are going out to a ball? And what a disappointment it is when

I get there too late, and am told that ‘Madame has gone out!’ Once I

waited till three o’clock in the morning for Nasie; I had not seen her

for two whole days. I was so pleased, that it was almost too much for

me! Please do not speak of me unless it is to say how good my daughters

are to me. They are always wanting to heap presents upon me, but I will

not have it. ‘Just keep your money,’ I tell them. ‘What should I do

with it? I want nothing.’ And what am I, sir, after all? An old carcase,

whose soul is always where my daughters are. When you have seen Mme.

de Nucingen, tell me which you like the most,” said the old man after a

moment’s pause, while Eugene put the last touches to his toilette. The

student was about to go out to walk in the Garden of the Tuileries

until the hour when he could venture to appear in Mme. de Beauseant’s

drawing-room.

That walk was a turning-point in Eugene’s career. Several women noticed

him; he looked so handsome, so young, and so well dressed. This almost

admiring attention gave a new turn to his thoughts. He forgot his

sisters and the aunt who had robbed herself for him; he no longer

remembered his own virtuous scruples. He had seen hovering above his

head the fiend so easy to mistake for an angel, the Devil with rainbow

wings, who scatters rubies, and aims his golden shafts at palace fronts,

who invests women with purple, and thrones with a glory that dazzles the

eyes of fools till they forget the simple origins of royal dominion; he

had heard the rustle of that Vanity whose tinsel seems to us to be the

symbol of power. However cynical Vautrin’s words had been, they had made

an impression on his mind, as the sordid features of the old crone who

whispers, “A lover, and gold in torrents,” remain engraven on a young

girl’s memory.

Eugene lounged about the walks till it was nearly five o’clock, then

he went to Mme. de Beauseant, and received one of the terrible blows

against which young hearts are defenceless. Hitherto the Vicomtesse had

received him with the kindly urbanity, the bland grace of manner that is

the result of fine breeding, but is only complete when it comes from the

heart.

To-day Mme. de Beauseant bowed constrainedly, and spoke curtly:

“M. de Rastignac, I cannot possibly see you, at least not at this

moment. I am engaged...”

An observer, and Rastignac instantly became an observer, could read the

whole history, the character and customs of caste, in the phrase, in the

tones of her voice, in her glance and bearing. He caught a glimpse of

the iron hand beneath the velvet glove--the personality, the egoism

beneath the manner, the wood beneath the varnish. In short, he heard

that unmistakable I THE KING that issues from the plumed canopy of

the throne, and finds its last echo under the crest of the simplest

gentleman.

Eugene had trusted too implicitly to the generosity of a woman; he

could not believe in her haughtiness. Like all the unfortunate, he had

subscribed, in all good faith, the generous compact which should bind

the benefactor to the recipient, and the first article in that bond,

between two large-hearted natures, is a perfect equality. The kindness

which knits two souls together is as rare, as divine, and as little

understood as the passion of love, for both love and kindness are the

lavish generosity of noble natures. Rastignac was set upon going to the

Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball, so he swallowed down this rebuff.

“Madame,” he faltered out, “I would not have come to trouble you about

a trifling matter; be so kind as to permit me to see you later, I can

wait.”

“Very well, come and dine with me,” she said, a little confused by

the harsh way in which she had spoken, for this lady was as genuinely

kind-hearted as she was high-born.

Eugene was touched by this sudden relenting, but none the less he said

to himself as he went away, “Crawl in the dust, put up with every kind

of treatment. What must the rest of the world be like when one of the

kindest of women forgets all her promises of befriending me in a moment,

and tosses me aside like an old shoe? So it is every one for himself? It

is true that her house is not a shop, and I have put myself in the wrong

by needing her help. You should cut your way through the world like a

cannon ball, as Vautrin said.”

But the student’s bitter thoughts were soon dissipated by the pleasure

which he promised himself in this dinner with the Vicomtesse. Fate

seemed to determine that the smallest accidents in his life should

combine to urge him into a career, which the terrible sphinx of the

Maison Vauquer had described as a field of battle where you must either

slay or be slain, and cheat to avoid being cheated. You leave your

conscience and your heart at the barriers, and wear a mask on entering

into this game of grim earnest, where, as in ancient Sparta, you must

snatch your prize without being detected if you would deserve the crown.

On his return he found the Vicomtesse gracious and kindly, as she had

always been to him. They went together to the dining-room, where the

Vicomte was waiting for his wife. In the time of the Restoration the

luxury of the table was carried, as is well known, to the highest

degree, and M. de Beauseant, like many jaded men of the world, had few

pleasures left but those of good cheer; in this matter, in fact, he was

a gourmand of the schools of Louis XVIII. and of the Duc d’Escars, and

luxury was supplemented by splendor. Eugene, dining for the first time

in a house where the traditions of grandeur had descended through many

generations, had never seen any spectacle like this that now met his

eyes. In the time of the Empire, balls had always ended with a supper,

because the officers who took part in them must be fortified for

immediate service, and even in Paris might be called upon to leave the

ballroom for the battlefield. This arrangement had gone out of fashion

under the Monarchy, and Eugene had so far only been asked to dances.

The self-possession which pre-eminently distinguished him in later life

already stood him in good stead, and he did not betray his amazement.

Yet as he saw for the first time the finely wrought silver plate, the

completeness of every detail, the sumptuous dinner, noiselessly served,

it was difficult for such an ardent imagination not to prefer this life

of studied and refined luxury to the hardships of the life which he had

chosen only that morning.

His thoughts went back for a moment to the lodging-house, and with a

feeling of profound loathing, he vowed to himself that at New Year he

would go; prompted at least as much by a desire to live among cleaner

surroundings as by a wish to shake off Vautrin, whose huge hand he

seemed to feel on his shoulder at that moment. When you consider the

numberless forms, clamorous or mute, that corruption takes in Paris,

common-sense begins to wonder what mental aberration prompted the State

to establish great colleges and schools there, and assemble young men in

the capital; how it is that pretty women are respected, or that the gold

coin displayed in the money-changer’s wooden saucers does not take to

itself wings in the twinkling of an eye; and when you come to think

further, how comparatively few cases of crime there are, and to count

up the misdemeanors committed by youth, is there not a certain amount of

respect due to these patient Tantaluses who wrestle with themselves and

nearly always come off victorious? The struggles of the poor student

in Paris, if skilfully drawn, would furnish a most dramatic picture of

modern civilization.

In vain Mme. de Beauseant looked at Eugene as if asking him to speak;

the student was tongue-tied in the Vicomte’s presence.

“Are you going to take me to the Italiens this evening?” the Vicomtesse

asked her husband.

“You cannot doubt that I should obey you with pleasure,” he answered,

and there was a sarcastic tinge in his politeness which Eugene did not

detect, “but I ought to go to meet some one at the Varietes.”

“His mistress,” said she to herself.

“Then, is not Ajuda coming for you this evening?” inquired the Vicomte.

“No,” she answered, petulantly.

“Very well, then, if you really must have an arm, take that of M. de

Rastignac.”

The Vicomtess turned to Eugene with a smile.

“That would be a very compromising step for you,” she said.

“‘A Frenchman loves danger, because in danger there is glory,’ to quote

M. de Chateaubriand,” said Rastignac, with a bow.

A few moments later he was sitting beside Mme. de Beauseant in

a brougham, that whirled them through the streets of Paris to a

fashionable theatre. It seemed to him that some fairy magic had suddenly

transported him into a box facing the stage. All the lorgnettes of the

house were pointed at him as he entered, and at the Vicomtesse in her

charming toilette. He went from enchantment to enchantment.

“You must talk to me, you know,” said Mme. de Beauseant. “Ah! look!

There is Mme. de Nucingen in the third box from ours. Her sister and M.

de Trailles are on the other side.”

The Vicomtesse glanced as she spoke at the box where Mlle. de Rochefide

should have been; M. d’Ajuda was not there, and Mme. de Beauseant’s face

lighted up in a marvelous way.

“She is charming,” said Eugene, after looking at Mme. de Nucingen.

“She has white eyelashes.”

“Yes, but she has such a pretty slender figure!”

“Her hands are large.”

“Such beautiful eyes!”

“Her face is long.”

“Yes, but length gives distinction.”

“It is lucky for her that she has some distinction in her face. Just see

how she fidgets with her opera-glass! The Goriot blood shows itself in

every movement,” said the Vicomtesse, much to Eugene’s astonishment.

Indeed, Mme. de Beauseant seemed to be engaged in making a survey of

the house, and to be unconscious of Mme. Nucingen’s existence; but no

movement made by the latter was lost upon the Vicomtesse. The house was

full of the loveliest women in Paris, so that Delphine de Nucingen was

not a little flattered to receive the undivided attention of Mme. de

Beauseant’s young, handsome, and well-dressed cousin, who seemed to have

no eyes for any one else.

“If you look at her so persistently, you will make people talk, M. de

Rastignac. You will never succeed if you fling yourself at any one’s

head like that.”

“My dear cousin,” said Eugene, “you have protected me indeed so far,

and now if you would complete your work, I only ask of you a favor which

will cost you but little, and be of very great service to me. I have

lost my heart.”

“Already!”

“Yes.”

“And to that woman!”

“How could I aspire to find any one else to listen to me?” he asked,

with a keen glance at his cousin. “Her Grace the Duchesse de Carigliano

is a friend of the Duchesse de Berri,” he went on, after a pause; “you

are sure to see her, will you be so kind as to present me to her, and to

take me to her ball on Monday? I shall meet Mme. de Nucingen there, and

enter into my first skirmish.”

“Willingly,” she said. “If you have a liking for her already, your

affairs of the heart are like to prosper. That is de Marsay over there

in the Princesse Galathionne’s box. Mme. de Nucingen is racked with

jealousy. There is no better time for approaching a woman, especially

if she happens to be a banker’s wife. All those ladies of the

Chaussee-d’Antin love revenge.”

“Then, what would you do yourself in such a case?”

“I should suffer in silence.”

At this point the Marquis d’Ajuda appeared in Mme. de Beauseant’s box.

“I have made a muddle of my affairs to come to you,” he said, “and I am

telling you about it, so that it may not be a sacrifice.”

Eugene saw the glow of joy on the Vicomtesse’s face, and knew that this

was love, and learned the difference between love and the affectations

of Parisian coquetry. He admired his cousin, grew mute, and yielded his

place to M. d’Ajuda with a sigh.

“How noble, how sublime a woman is when she loves like that!” he said to

himself. “And _he_ could forsake her for a doll! Oh! how could any one

forsake her?”

There was a boy’s passionate indignation in his heart. He could have

flung himself at Mme. de Beauseant’s feet; he longed for the power of

the devil if he could snatch her away and hide her in his heart, as an

eagle snatches up some white yearling from the plains and bears it to

its eyrie. It was humiliating to him to think that in all this gallery

of fair pictures he had not one picture of his own. “To have a mistress

and an almost royal position is a sign of power,” he said to himself.

And he looked at Mme. de Nucingen as a man measures another who has

insulted him.

The Vicomtesse turned to him, and the expression of her eyes thanked him

a thousand times for his discretion. The first act came to an end just

then.

“Do you know Mme. de Nucingen well enough to present M. de Rastignac to

her?” she asked of the Marquis d’Ajuda.

“She will be delighted,” said the Marquis. The handsome Portuguese rose

as he spoke and took the student’s arm, and in another moment Eugene

found himself in Mme. de Nucingen’s box.

“Madame,” said the Marquis, “I have the honor of presenting to you the

Chevalier Eugene de Rastignac; he is a cousin of Mme. de Beauseant’s.

You have made so deep an impression upon him, that I thought I would

fill up the measure of his happiness by bringing him nearer to his

divinity.”

Words spoken half jestingly to cover their somewhat disrespectful

import; but such an implication, if carefully disguised, never gives

offence to a woman. Mme. de Nucingen smiled, and offered Eugene the

place which her husband had just left.

“I do not venture to suggest that you should stay with me, monsieur,”

she said. “Those who are so fortunate as to be in Mme. de Beauseant’s

company do not desire to leave it.”

“Madame,” Eugene said, lowering his voice, “I think that to please my

cousin I should remain with you. Before my lord Marquis came we were

speaking of you and of your exceedingly distinguished appearance,” he

added aloud.

M. d’Ajuda turned and left them.

“Are you really going to stay with me, monsieur?” asked the Baroness.

“Then we shall make each other’s acquaintance. Mme. de Restaud told me

about you, and has made me anxious to meet you.”

“She must be very insincere, then, for she has shut her door on me.”

“What?”

“Madame, I will tell you honestly the reason why; but I must crave your

indulgence before confiding such a secret to you. I am your father’s

neighbor; I had no idea that Mme. de Restaud was his daughter. I was

rash enough to mention his name; I meant no harm, but I annoyed your

sister and her husband very much. You cannot think how severely the

Duchesse de Langeais and my cousin blamed this apostasy on a daughter’s

part, as a piece of bad taste. I told them all about it, and they both

burst out laughing. Then Mme. de Beauseant made some comparison between

you and your sister, speaking in high terms of you, and saying how very

fond you were of my neighbor, M. Goriot. And, indeed, how could you help

loving him? He adores you so passionately that I am jealous already. We

talked about you this morning for two hours. So this evening I was quite

full of all that your father had told me, and while I was dining with my

cousin I said that you could not be as beautiful as affectionate. Mme.

de Beauseant meant to gratify such warm admiration, I think, when she

brought me here, telling me, in her gracious way, that I should see

you.”

“Then, even now, I owe you a debt of gratitude, monsieur,” said the

banker’s wife. “We shall be quite old friends in a little while.”

“Although a friendship with you could not be like an ordinary

friendship,” said Rastignac; “I should never wish to be your friend.”

Such stereotyped phrases as these, in the mouths of beginners, possess

an unfailing charm for women, and are insipid only when read coldly; for

a young man’s tone, glance and attitude give a surpassing eloquence to

the banal phrases. Mme. de Nucingen thought that Rastignac was adorable.

Then, woman-like, being at a loss how to reply to the student’s

outspoken admiration, she answered a previous remark.

“Yes, it is very wrong of my sister to treat our poor father as she

does,” she said; “he has been a Providence to us. It was not until M. de

Nucingen positively ordered me only to receive him in the mornings that

I yielded the point. But I have been unhappy about it for a long while;

I have shed many tears over it. This violence to my feelings, with my

husband’s brutal treatment, have been two causes of my unhappy married

life. There is certainly no woman in Paris whose lot seems more enviable

than mine, and yet, in reality, there is not one so much to be pitied.

You will think I must be out of my senses to talk to you like this; but

you know my father, and I cannot regard you as a stranger.”

“You will find no one,” said Eugene, “who longs as eagerly as I do to be

yours. What do all women seek? Happiness.” (He answered his own question

in low, vibrating tones.) “And if happiness for a woman means that she

is to be loved and adored, to have a friend to whom she can pour out her

wishes, her fancies, her sorrows and joys; to whom she can lay bare

her heart and soul, and all her fair defects and her gracious virtues,

without fear of a betrayal; believe me, the devotion and the warmth that

never fails can only be found in the heart of a young man who, at a bare

sign from you, would go to his death, who neither knows nor cares to

know anything as yet of the world, because you will be all the world to

him. I myself, you see (you will laugh at my simplicity), have just come

from a remote country district; I am quite new to this world of Paris; I

have only known true and loving hearts; and I made up my mind that here

I should find no love. Then I chanced to meet my cousin, and to see

my cousin’s heart from very near; I have divined the inexhaustible

treasures of passion, and, like Cherubino, I am the lover of all women,

until the day comes when I find _the_ woman to whom I may devote myself.

As soon as I saw you, as soon as I came into the theatre this evening, I

felt myself borne towards you as if by the current of a stream. I had so

often thought of you already, but I had never dreamed that you would be

so beautiful! Mme. de Beauseant told me that I must not look so much at

you. She does not know the charm of your red lips, your fair face, nor

see how soft your eyes are.... I also am beginning to talk nonsense; but

let me talk.”

Nothing pleases a woman better than to listen to such whispered words as

these; the most puritanical among them listens even when she ought not

to reply to them; and Rastignac, having once begun, continued to pour

out his story, dropping his voice, that she might lean and listen; and

Mme. de Nucingen, smiling, glanced from time to time at de Marsay, who

still sat in the Princesse Galathionne’s box.

Rastignac did not leave Mme. de Nucingen till her husband came to take

her home.

“Madame,” Eugene said, “I shall have the pleasure of calling upon you

before the Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball.”

“If Matame infites you to come,” said the Baron, a thickset Alsatian,

with indications of a sinister cunning in his full-moon countenance,

“you are quide sure of being well receifed.”

“My affairs seem to be in a promising way,” said Eugene to himself.--

“‘Can you love me?’ I asked her, and she did not resent it. “The bit is in

the horse’s mouth, and I have only to mount and ride;” and with that

he went to pay his respects to Mme. de Beauseant, who was leaving the

theatre on d’Ajuda’s arm.

The student did not know that the Baroness’ thoughts had been wandering;

that she was even then expecting a letter from de Marsay, one of those

letters that bring about a rupture that rends the soul; so, happy in his

delusion, Eugene went with the Vicomtesse to the peristyle, where people

were waiting till their carriages were announced.

“That cousin of yours is hardly recognizable for the same man,” said the

Portuguese laughingly to the Vicomtesse, when Eugene had taken leave of

them. “He will break the bank. He is as supple as an eel; he will go a

long way, of that I am sure. Who else could have picked out a woman for

him, as you did, just when she needed consolation?”

“But it is not certain that she does not still love the faithless

lover,” said Mme. de Beauseant.

The student meanwhile walked back from the Theatre-Italien to the Rue

Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, making the most delightful plans as he went. He

had noticed how closely Mme. de Restaud had scrutinized him when he sat

beside Mme. de Nucingen, and inferred that the Countess’ doors would not

be closed in the future. Four important houses were now open to him--for

he meant to stand well with the Marechale; he had four supporters in the

inmost circle of society in Paris. Even now it was clear to him that,

once involved in this intricate social machinery, he must attach himself

to a spoke of the wheel that was to turn and raise his fortunes; he

would not examine himself too curiously as to the methods, but he was

certain of the end, and conscious of the power to gain and keep his

hold.

“If Mme. de Nucingen takes an interest in me, I will teach her how to

manage her husband. That husband of hers is a great speculator; he might

put me in the way of making a fortune by a single stroke.”

He did not say this bluntly in so many words; as yet, indeed, he was

not sufficient of a diplomatist to sum up a situation, to see its

possibilities at a glance, and calculate the chances in his favor. These

were nothing but hazy ideas that floated over his mental horizon; they

were less cynical than Vautrin’s notions; but if they had been tried in

the crucible of conscience, no very pure result would have issued from

the test. It is by a succession of such like transactions that men sink

at last to the level of the relaxed morality of this epoch, when there

have never been so few of those who square their courses with their

theories, so few of those noble characters who do not yield to

temptation, for whom the slightest deviation from the line of rectitude

is a crime. To these magnificent types of uncompromising Right we owe

two masterpieces--the Alceste of Moliere, and, in our own day, the

characters of Jeanie Deans and her father in Sir Walter Scott’s novel.

Perhaps a work which should chronicle the opposite course, which should

trace out all the devious courses through which a man of the world, a

man of ambitions, drags his conscience, just steering clear of crime

that he may gain his end and yet save appearances, such a chronicle

would be no less edifying and no less dramatic.

Rastignac went home. He was fascinated by Mme. de Nucingen; he seemed to

see her before him, slender and graceful as a swallow. He recalled the

intoxicating sweetness of her eyes, her fair hair, the delicate silken

tissue of the skin, beneath which it almost seemed to him that he could

see the blood coursing; the tones of her voice still exerted a spell

over him; he had forgotten nothing; his walk perhaps heated his

imagination by sending a glow of warmth through his veins. He knocked

unceremoniously at Goriot’s door.

“I have seen Mme. Delphine, neighbor,” said he.

“Where?”

“At the Italiens.”

“Did she enjoy it?.... Just come inside,” and the old man left his bed,

unlocked the door, and promptly returned again.

It was the first time that Eugene had been in Father Goriot’s room, and

he could not control his feeling of amazement at the contrast between

the den in which the father lived and the costume of the daughter whom

he had just beheld. The window was curtainless, the walls were damp, in

places the varnished wall-paper had come away and gave glimpses of the

grimy yellow plaster beneath. The wretched bed on which the old man

lay boasted but one thin blanket, and a wadded quilt made out of large

pieces of Mme. Vauquer’s old dresses. The floor was damp and gritty.

Opposite the window stood a chest of drawers made of rosewood, one of

the old-fashioned kind with a curving front and brass handles, shaped

like rings of twisted vine stems covered with flowers and leaves. On a

venerable piece of furniture with a wooden shelf stood a ewer and

basin and shaving apparatus. A pair of shoes stood in one corner; a

night-table by the bed had neither a door nor marble slab. There was not

a trace of a fire in the empty grate; the square walnut table with

the crossbar against which Father Goriot had crushed and twisted his

posset-dish stood near the hearth. The old man’s hat was lying on a

broken-down bureau. An armchair stuffed with straw and a couple of

chairs completed the list of ramshackle furniture. From the tester of

the bed, tied to the ceiling by a piece of rag, hung a strip of some

cheap material in large red and black checks. No poor drudge in a

garret could be worse lodged than Father Goriot in Mme. Vauquer’s

lodging-house. The mere sight of the room sent a chill through you and

a sense of oppression; it was like the worst cell in a prison. Luckily,

Goriot could not see the effect that his surroundings produced on Eugene

as the latter deposited his candle on the night-table. The old man

turned round, keeping the bedclothes huddled up to his chin.

“Well,” he said, “and which do you like the best, Mme. de Restaud or

Mme. de Nucingen?”

“I like Mme. Delphine the best,” said the law student, “because she

loves you the best.”

At the words so heartily spoken the old man’s hand slipped out from

under the bedclothes and grasped Eugene’s.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said, gratefully. “Then what did she say

about me?”

The student repeated the Baroness’ remarks with some embellishments of

his own, the old man listening the while as though he heard a voice from

Heaven.

“Dear child!” he said. “Yes, yes, she is very fond of me. But you must

not believe all that she tells you about Anastasie. The two sisters are

jealous of each other, you see, another proof of their affection. Mme.

de Restaud is very fond of me too. I know she is. A father sees his

children as God sees all of us; he looks into the very depths of their

hearts; he knows their intentions; and both of them are so loving. Oh!

if I only had good sons-in-law, I should be too happy, and I dare

say there is no perfect happiness here below. If I might live with

them--simply hear their voices, know that they are there, see them go

and come as I used to do at home when they were still with me; why, my

heart bounds at the thought.... Were they nicely dressed?”

“Yes,” said Eugene. “But, M. Goriot, how is it that your daughters have

such fine houses, while you live in such a den as this?”

“Dear me, why should I want anything better?” he replied, with seeming

carelessness. “I can’t quite explain to you how it is; I am not used to

stringing words together properly, but it all lies there----” he said,

tapping his heart. “My real life is in my two girls, you see; and so

long as they are happy, and smartly dressed, and have soft carpets under

their feet, what does it matter what clothes I wear or where I lie down

of a night? I shall never feel cold so long as they are warm; I shall

never feel dull if they are laughing. I have no troubles but theirs.

When you, too, are a father, and you hear your children’s little voices,

you will say to yourself, ‘That has all come from me.’ You will feel

that those little ones are akin to every drop in your veins, that they

are the very flower of your life (and what else are they?); you will

cleave so closely to them that you seem to feel every movement that they

make. Everywhere I hear their voices sounding in my ears. If they are

sad, the look in their eyes freezes my blood. Some day you will find

out that there is far more happiness in another’s happiness than in your

own. It is something that I cannot explain, something within that sends

a glow of warmth all through you. In short, I live my life three times

over. Shall I tell you something funny? Well, then, since I have been

a father, I have come to understand God. He is everywhere in the world,

because the whole world comes from Him. And it is just the same with my

children, monsieur. Only, I love my daughters better than God loves

the world, for the world is not so beautiful as God Himself is, but my

children are more beautiful than I am. Their lives are so bound up with

mine that I felt somehow that you would see them this evening. Great

Heaven! If any man would make my little Delphine as happy as a wife is

when she is loved, I would black his boots and run on his errands. That

miserable M. de Marsay is a cur; I know all about him from her maid. A

longing to wring his neck comes over me now and then. He does not love

her! does not love a pearl of a woman, with a voice like a nightingale

and shaped like a model. Where can her eyes have been when she married

that great lump of an Alsatian? They ought both of them to have married

young men, good-looking and good-tempered--but, after all, they had

their own way.”

Father Goriot was sublime. Eugene had never yet seen his face light

up as it did now with the passionate fervor of a father’s love. It is

worthy of remark that strong feeling has a very subtle and pervasive

power; the roughest nature, in the endeavor to express a deep and

sincere affection, communicates to others the influence that has put

resonance into the voice, and eloquence into every gesture, wrought a

change in the very features of the speaker; for under the inspiration

of passion the stupidest human being attains to the highest eloquence of

ideas, if not of language, and seems to move in some sphere of light.

In the old man’s tones and gesture there was something just then of the

same spell that a great actor exerts over his audience. But does not the

poet in us find expression in our affections?

“Well,” said Eugene, “perhaps you will not be sorry to hear that she is

pretty sure to break with de Marsay before long. That sprig of fashion

has left her for the Princesse Galathionne. For my part, I fell in love

with Mme. Delphine this evening.”

“Stuff!” said Father Goriot.

“I did indeed, and she did not regard me with aversion. For a whole hour

we talked of love, and I am to go to call on her on Saturday, the day

after to-morrow.”

“Oh! how I should love you, if she should like you. You are

kind-hearted; you would never make her miserable. If you were to forsake

her, I would cut your throat at once. A woman does not love twice, you

see! Good heavens! what nonsense I am talking, M. Eugene! It is cold;

you ought not to stay here. _Mon Dieu!_ so you have heard her speak?

What message did she give you for me?”

“None at all,” said Eugene to himself; aloud he answered, “She told me

to tell you that your daughter sends you a good kiss.”

“Good-night, neighbor! Sleep well, and pleasant dreams to you! I have

mine already made for me by that message from her. May God grant you

all your desires! You have come in like a good angel on me to-night, and

brought with you the air that my daughter breathes.”

“Poor old fellow!” said Eugene as he lay down. “It is enough to melt a

heart of stone. His daughter no more thought of him than of the Grand

Turk.”

Ever after this conference Goriot looked upon his neighbor as a

friend, a confidant such as he had never hoped to find; and there was

established between the two the only relationship that could attach this

old man to another man. The passions never miscalculate. Father Goriot

felt that this friendship brought him closer to his daughter Delphine;

he thought that he should find a warmer welcome for himself if the

Baroness should care for Eugene. Moreover, he had confided one of his

troubles to the younger man. Mme. de Nucingen, for whose happiness he

prayed a thousand times daily, had never known the joys of love. Eugene

was certainly (to make use of his own expression) one of the nicest

young men that he had ever seen, and some prophetic instinct seemed to

tell him that Eugene was to give her the happiness which had not been

hers. These were the beginnings of a friendship that grew up between the

old man and his neighbor; but for this friendship the catastrophe of the

drama must have remained a mystery.

The affection with which Father Goriot regarded Eugene, by whom he

seated himself at breakfast, the change in Goriot’s face, which as a

rule, looked as expressionless as a plaster cast, and a few words that

passed between the two, surprised the other lodgers. Vautrin, who saw

Eugene for the first time since their interview, seemed as if he would

fain read the student’s very soul. During the night Eugene had had some

time in which to scan the vast field which lay before him; and now, as

he remembered yesterday’s proposal, the thought of Mlle. Taillefer’s

dowry came, of course, to his mind, and he could not help thinking

of Victorine as the most exemplary youth may think of an heiress. It

chanced that their eyes met. The poor girl did not fail to see that

Eugene looked very handsome in his new clothes. So much was said in

the glance, thus exchanged, that Eugene could not doubt but that he was

associated in her mind with the vague hopes that lie dormant in a girl’s

heart and gather round the first attractive newcomer. “Eight hundred

thousand francs!” a voice cried in his ears, but suddenly he took refuge

in the memories of yesterday evening, thinking that his extemporized

passion for Mme. de Nucingen was a talisman that would preserve him from

this temptation.

“They gave Rossini’s _Barber of Seville_ at the Italiens yesterday

evening,” he remarked. “I never heard such delicious music. Good

gracious! how lucky people are to have a box at the Italiens!”

Father Goriot drank in every word that Eugene let fall, and watched him

as a dog watches his master’s slightest movement.

“You men are like fighting cocks,” said Mme. Vauquer; “you do what you

like.”

“How did you get back?” inquired Vautrin.

“I walked,” answered Eugene.

“For my own part,” remarked the tempter, “I do not care about doing

things by halves. If I want to enjoy myself that way, I should prefer

to go in my carriage, sit in my own box, and do the thing comfortably.

Everything or nothing; that is my motto.”

“And a good one, too,” commented Mme. Vauquer.

“Perhaps you will see Mme. de Nucingen to-day,” said Eugene, addressing

Goriot in an undertone. “She will welcome you with open arms, I am sure;

she would want to ask you for all sorts of little details about me. I

have found out that she will do anything in the world to be known by my

cousin Mme. de Beauseant; don’t forget to tell her that I love her too

well not to think of trying to arrange this.”

Rastignac went at once to the Ecole de Droit. He had no mind to stay

a moment longer than was necessary in that odious house. He wasted his

time that day; he had fallen a victim to that fever of the brain that

accompanies the too vivid hopes of youth. Vautrin’s arguments had set

him meditating on social life, and he was deep in these reflections when

he happened on his friend Bianchon in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

“What makes you look so solemn?” said the medical student, putting an

arm through Eugene’s as they went towards the Palais.

“I am tormented by temptations.”

“What kind? There is a cure for temptation.”

“What?”

“Yielding to it.”

“You laugh, but you don’t know what it is all about. Have you read

Rousseau?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember that he asks the reader somewhere what he would do if

he could make a fortune by killing an old mandarin somewhere in China by

mere force of wishing it, and without stirring from Paris?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then?”

“Pshaw! I am at my thirty-third mandarin.”

“Seriously, though. Look here, suppose you were sure that you could do

it, and had only to give a nod. Would you do it?”

“Is he well stricken in years, this mandarin of yours? Pshaw! after all,

young or old, paralytic, or well and sound, my word for it. ... Well,

then. Hang it, no!”

“You are a good fellow, Bianchon. But suppose you loved a woman well

enough to lose your soul in hell for her, and that she wanted money for

dresses and a carriage, and all her whims, in fact?”

“Why, here you are taking away my reason, and want me to reason!”

“Well, then, Bianchon, I am mad; bring me to my senses. I have two

sisters as beautiful and innocent as angels, and I want them to be

happy. How am I to find two hundred thousand francs apiece for them in

the next five years? Now and then in life, you see, you must play for

heavy stakes, and it is no use wasting your luck on low play.”

“But you are only stating the problem that lies before every one at the

outset of his life, and you want to cut the Gordian knot with a sword.

If that is the way of it, dear boy, you must be an Alexander, or to the

hulks you go. For my own part, I am quite contented with the little lot

I mean to make for myself somewhere in the country, when I mean to step

into my father’s shoes and plod along. A man’s affections are just

as fully satisfied by the smallest circle as they can be by a vast

circumference. Napoleon himself could only dine once, and he could not

have more mistresses than a house student at the Capuchins. Happiness,

old man, depends on what lies between the sole of your foot and the

crown of your head; and whether it costs a million or a hundred louis,

the actual amount of pleasure that you receive rests entirely with you,

and is just exactly the same in any case. I am for letting that Chinaman

live.”

“Thank you, Bianchon; you have done me good. We will always be friends.”

“I say,” remarked the medical student, as they came to the end of a

broad walk in the Jardin des Plantes, “I saw the Michonneau and Poiret a

few minutes ago on a bench chatting with a gentleman whom I used to see

in last year’s troubles hanging about the Chamber of Deputies; he seems

to me, in fact, to be a detective dressed up like a decent retired

tradesman. Let us keep an eye on that couple; I will tell you why some

time. Good-bye; it is nearly four o’clock, and I must be in to answer to

my name.”

When Eugene reached the lodging-house, he found Father Goriot waiting

for him.

“Here,” cried the old man, “here is a letter from her. Pretty

handwriting, eh?”

Eugene broke the seal and read:--

“Sir,--I have heard from my father that you are fond of Italian

music. I shall be delighted if you will do me the pleasure of

accepting a seat in my box. La Fodor and Pellegrini will sing on

Saturday, so I am sure that you will not refuse me. M. de Nucingen

and I shall be pleased if you will dine with us; we shall be quite

by ourselves. If you will come and be my escort, my husband will

be glad to be relieved from his conjugal duties. Do not answer,

but simply come.--Yours sincerely, D. DE N.”

“Let me see it,” said Father Goriot, when Eugene had read the letter.

“You are going, aren’t you?” he added, when he had smelled the

writing-paper. “How nice it smells! Her fingers have touched it, that is

certain.”

“A woman does not fling herself at a man’s head in this way,” the

student was thinking. “She wants to use me to bring back de Marsay;

nothing but pique makes a woman do a thing like this.”

“Well,” said Father Goriot, “what are you thinking about?”

Eugene did not know the fever or vanity that possessed some women in

those days; how should he imagine that to open a door in the Faubourg

Saint-Germain a banker’s wife would go to almost any length. For the

coterie of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was a charmed circle, and the

women who moved in it were at that time the queens of society; and among

the greatest of these _Dames du Petit-Chateau_, as they were called,

were Mme. de Beauseant and her friends the Duchesse de Langeais and the

Duchesse de Maufrigneause. Rastignac was alone in his ignorance of the

frantic efforts made by women who lived in the Chausee-d’Antin to enter

this seventh heaven and shine among the brightest constellations of

their sex. But his cautious disposition stood him in good stead,

and kept his judgment cool, and the not altogether enviable power of

imposing instead of accepting conditions.

“Yes, I am going,” he replied.

So it was curiosity that drew him to Mme. de Nucingen; while, if she had

treated him disdainfully, passion perhaps might have brought him to her

feet. Still he waited almost impatiently for to-morrow, and the hour

when he could go to her. There is almost as much charm for a young

man in a first flirtation as there is in first love. The certainty of

success is a source of happiness to which men do not confess, and all

the charm of certain women lies in this. The desire of conquest springs

no less from the easiness than from the difficulty of triumph, and every

passion is excited or sustained by one or the other of these two motives

which divide the empire of love. Perhaps this division is one result of

the great question of temperaments; which, after all, dominates social

life. The melancholic temperament may stand in need of the tonic of

coquetry, while those of nervous or sanguine complexion withdraw if

they meet with a too stubborn resistance. In other words, the lymphatic

temperament is essentially despondent, and the rhapsodic is bilious.

Eugene lingered over his toilette with an enjoyment of all its little

details that is grateful to a young man’s self-love, though he will not

own to it for fear of being laughed at. He thought, as he arranged his

hair, that a pretty woman’s glances would wander through the dark curls.

He indulged in childish tricks like any young girl dressing for a dance,

and gazed complacently at his graceful figure while he smoothed out the

creases of his coat.

“There are worse figures, that is certain,” he said to himself.

Then he went downstairs, just as the rest of the household were sitting

down to dinner, and took with good humor the boisterous applause excited

by his elegant appearance. The amazement with which any attention to

dress is regarded in a lodging-house is a very characteristic trait. No

one can put on a new coat but every one else must say his say about it.

“Clk! clk! clk!” cried Bianchon, making the sound with his tongue

against the roof of his mouth, like a driver urging on a horse.

“He holds himself like a duke and a peer of France,” said Mme. Vauquer.

“Are you going a-courting?” inquired Mlle. Michonneau.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” cried the artist.

“My compliments to my lady your wife,” from the _employe_ at the Museum.

“Your wife; have you a wife?” asked Poiret.

“Yes, in compartments, water-tight and floats, guaranteed fast color,

all prices from twenty-five to forty sous, neat check patterns in the

latest fashion and best taste, will wash, half-linen, half-cotton,

half-wool; a certain cure for toothache and other complaints under the

patronage of the Royal College of Physicians! children like it! a remedy

for headache, indigestion, and all other diseases affecting the

throat, eyes, and ears!” cried Vautrin, with a comical imitation of the

volubility of a quack at a fair. “And how much shall we say for this

marvel, gentlemen? Twopence? No. Nothing of the sort. All that is left

in stock after supplying the Great Mogul. All the crowned heads of

Europe, including the Gr-r-rand Duke of Baden, have been anxious to get

a sight of it. Walk up! walk up! gentlemen! Pay at the desk as you go

in! Strike up the music there! Brooum, la, la, trinn! la, la, boum!

boum! Mister Clarinette, there you are out of tune!” he added gruffly;

“I will rap your knuckles for you!”

“Goodness! what an amusing man!” said Mme. Vauquer to Mme. Couture; “I

should never feel dull with him in the house.”

This burlesque of Vautrin’s was the signal for an outburst of merriment,

and under cover of jokes and laughter Eugene caught a glance from Mlle.

Taillefer; she had leaned over to say a few words in Mme. Couture’s ear.

“The cab is at the door,” announced Sylvie.

“But where is he going to dine?” asked Bianchon.

“With Madame la Baronne de Nucingen.”

“M. Goriot’s daughter,” said the law student.

At this, all eyes turned to the old vermicelli maker; he was gazing at

Eugene with something like envy in his eyes.

Rastignac reached the house in the Rue Saint-Lazare, one of those

many-windowed houses with a mean-looking portico and slender columns,

which are considered the thing in Paris, a typical banker’s house,

decorated in the most ostentatious fashion; the walls lined with stucco,

the landings of marble mosaic. Mme. de Nucingen was sitting in a little

drawing-room; the room was painted in the Italian fashion, and decorated

like a restaurant. The Baroness seemed depressed. The effort that she

made to hide her feelings aroused Eugene’s interest; it was plain

that she was not playing a part. He had expected a little flutter of

excitement at his coming, and he found her dispirited and sad. The

disappointment piqued his vanity.

“My claim to your confidence is very small, madame,” he said, after

rallying her on her abstracted mood; “but if I am in the way, please

tell me so frankly; I count on your good faith.”

“No, stay with me,” she said; “I shall be all alone if you go. Nucingen

is dining in town, and I do not want to be alone; I want to be taken out

of myself.”

“But what is the matter?”

“You are the very last person whom I should tell,” she exclaimed.

“Then I am connected in some way in this secret. I wonder what it is?”

“Perhaps. Yet, no,” she went on; “it is a domestic quarrel, which ought

to be buried in the depths of the heart. I am very unhappy; did I not

tell you so the day before yesterday? Golden chains are the heaviest of

all fetters.”

When a woman tells a young man that she is very unhappy, and when the

young man is clever, and well dressed, and has fifteen hundred francs

lying idle in his pocket, he is sure to think as Eugene said, and he

becomes a coxcomb.

“What can you have left to wish for?” he answered. “You are young,

beautiful, beloved, and rich.”

“Do not let us talk of my affairs,” she said shaking her head

mournfully. “We will dine together _tete-a-tete_, and afterwards we will

go to hear the most exquisite music. Am I to your taste?” she went on,

rising and displaying her gown of white cashmere, covered with Persian

designs in the most superb taste.

“I wish that you were altogether mine,” said Eugene; “you are charming.”

“You would have a forlorn piece of property,” she said, smiling

bitterly. “There is nothing about me that betrays my wretchedness;

and yet, in spite of appearances, I am in despair. I cannot sleep; my

troubles have broken my night’s rest; I shall grow ugly.”

“Oh! that is impossible,” cried the law student; “but I am curious to

know what these troubles can be that a devoted love cannot efface.”

“Ah! if I were to tell you about them, you would shun me,” she said.

“Your love for me is as yet only the conventional gallantry that men use

to masquerade in; and, if you really loved me, you would be driven to

despair. I must keep silence, you see. Let us talk of something else,

for pity’s sake,” she added. “Let me show you my rooms.”

“No; let us stay here,” answered Eugene; he sat down on the sofa

before the fire, and boldly took Mme. de Nucingen’s hand in his. She

surrendered it to him; he even felt the pressure of her fingers in one

of the spasmodic clutches that betray terrible agitation.

“Listen,” said Rastignac; “if you are in trouble, you ought to tell me

about it. I want to prove to you that I love you for yourself alone. You

must speak to me frankly about your troubles, so that I can put an end

to them, even if I have to kill half-a-dozen men; or I shall go, never

to return.”

“Very well,” she cried, putting her hand to her forehead in an agony of

despair, “I will put you to the proof, and this very moment. Yes,” she

said to herself, “I have no other resource left.”

She rang the bell.

“Are the horses put in for the master?” she asked of the servant.

“Yes, madame.”

“I shall take his carriage myself. He can have mine and my horses. Serve

dinner at seven o’clock.”

“Now, come with me,” she said to Eugene, who thought as he sat in

the banker’s carriage beside Mme. de Nucingen that he must surely be

dreaming.

“To the Palais-Royal,” she said to the coachman; “stop near the

Theatre-Francais.”

She seemed to be too troubled and excited to answer the innumerable

questions that Eugene put to her. He was at a loss what to think of her

mute resistance, her obstinate silence.

“Another moment and she will escape me,” he said to himself.

When the carriage stopped at last, the Baroness gave the law student a

glance that silenced his wild words, for he was almost beside himself.

“Is it true that you love me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, and in his manner and tone there was no trace of the

uneasiness that he felt.

“You will not think ill of me, will you, whatever I may ask of you?”

“No.”

“Are you ready to do my bidding?”

“Blindly.”

“Have you ever been to a gaming-house?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

“Never.”

“Ah! now I can breathe. You will have luck. Here is my purse,” she said.

“Take it! there are a hundred francs in it, all that such a fortunate

woman as I can call her own. Go up into one of the gaming-houses--I do

not know where they are, but there are some near the Palais-Royal. Try

your luck with the hundred francs at a game they call roulette; lose

it all or bring me back six thousand francs. I will tell you about my

troubles when you come back.”

“Devil take me, I’m sure, if I have a glimmer of a notion of what I am

about, but I will obey you,” he added, with inward exultation, as he

thought, “She has gone too far to draw back--she can refuse me nothing

now!”

Eugene took the dainty little purse, inquired the way of a second-hand

clothes-dealer, and hurried to number 9, which happened to be the

nearest gaming-house. He mounted the staircase, surrendered his hat, and

asked the way to the roulette-table, whither the attendant took him, not

a little to the astonishment of the regular comers. All eyes were fixed

on Eugene as he asked, without bashfulness, where he was to deposit his

stakes.

“If you put a louis on one only of those thirty-six numbers, and it

turns up, you will win thirty-six louis,” said a respectable-looking,

white-haired old man in answer to his inquiry.

Eugene staked the whole of his money on the number 21 (his own age).

There was a cry of surprise; before he knew what he had done, he had

won.

“Take your money off, sir,” said the old gentleman; “you don’t often win

twice running by that system.”

Eugene took the rake that the old man handed to him, and drew in his

three thousand six hundred francs, and, still perfectly ignorant of

what he was about, staked again on the red. The bystanders watched him

enviously as they saw him continue to play. The disc turned, and again

he won; the banker threw him three thousand six hundred francs once

more.

“You have seven thousand, two hundred francs of your own,” the old

gentleman said in his ear. “Take my advice and go away with your

winnings; red has turned up eight times already. If you are charitable,

you will show your gratitude for sound counsel by giving a trifle to an

old prefect of Napoleon who is down on his luck.”

Rastignac’s head was swimming; he saw ten of his louis pass into the

white-haired man’s possession, and went down-stairs with his seven

thousand francs; he was still ignorant of the game, and stupefied by his

luck.

“So, that is over; and now where will you take me?” he asked, as soon as

the door was closed, and he showed the seven thousand francs to Mme. de

Nucingen.

Delphine flung her arms about him, but there was no passion in that wild

embrace.

“You have saved me!” she cried, and tears of joy flowed fast.

“I will tell you everything, my friend. For you will be my friend, will

you not? I am rich, you think, very rich; I have everything I want, or

I seem as if I had everything. Very well, you must know that M. de

Nucingen does not allow me the control of a single penny; he pays all

the bills for the house expenses; he pays for my carriages and opera

box; he does not give me enough to pay for my dress, and he reduces

me to poverty in secret on purpose. I am too proud to beg from him. I

should be the vilest of women if I could take his money at the price at

which he offers it. Do you ask how I, with seven hundred thousand francs

of my own, could let myself be robbed? It is because I was proud, and

scorned to speak. We are so young, so artless when our married life

begins! I never could bring myself to ask my husband for money; the

words would have made my lips bleed, I did not dare to ask; I spent my

savings first, and then the money that my poor father gave me, then I

ran into debt. Marriage for me is a hideous farce; I cannot talk about

it, let it suffice to say that Nucingen and I have separate rooms, and

that I would fling myself out of the window sooner than consent to any

other manner of life. I suffered agonies when I had to confess to my

girlish extravagance, my debts for jewelry and trifles (for our poor

father had never refused us anything, and spoiled us), but at last I

found courage to tell him about them. After all, I had a fortune of my

own. Nucingen flew into a rage; he said that I should be the ruin of

him, and used frightful language! I wished myself a hundred feet down

in the earth. He had my dowry, so he paid my debts, but he stipulated at

the same time that my expenses in future must not exceed a certain fixed

sum, and I gave way for the sake of peace. And then,” she went on, “I

wanted to gratify the self-love of some one whom you know. He may have

deceived me, but I should do him the justice to say that there was

nothing petty in his character. But, after all, he threw me over

disgracefully. If, at a woman’s utmost need, _somebody_ heaps gold upon

her, he ought never to forsake her; that love should last for ever!

But you, at one-and-twenty, you, the soul of honor, with the unsullied

conscience of youth, will ask me how a woman can bring herself to accept

money in such a way? _Mon Dieu_! is it not natural to share everything

with the one to whom we owe our happiness? When all has been given, why

should we pause and hesitate over a part? Money is as nothing between

us until the moment when the sentiment that bound us together ceases to

exist. Were we not bound to each other for life? Who that believes in

love foresees such an end to love? You swear to love us eternally; how,

then, can our interests be separate?

“You do not know how I suffered to-day when Nucingen refused to give

me six thousand francs; he spends as much as that every month on his

mistress, an opera dancer! I thought of killing myself. The wildest

thoughts came into my head. There have been moments in my life when I

have envied my servants, and would have changed places with my maid. It

was madness to think of going to our father, Anastasie and I have bled

him dry; our poor father would have sold himself if he could have raised

six thousand francs that way. I should have driven him frantic to no

purpose. You have saved me from shame and death; I was beside myself

with anguish. Ah! monsieur, I owed you this explanation after my mad

ravings. When you left me just now, as soon as you were out of sight, I

longed to escape, to run away... where, I did not know. Half the women

in Paris lead such lives as mine; they live in apparent luxury, and in

their souls are tormented by anxiety. I know of poor creatures even

more miserable than I; there are women who are driven to ask their

tradespeople to make out false bills, women who rob their husbands. Some

men believe that an Indian shawl worth a thousand louis only cost five

hundred francs, others that a shawl costing five hundred francs is worth

a hundred louis. There are women, too, with narrow incomes, who scrape

and save and starve their children to pay for a dress. I am innocent

of these base meannesses. But this is the last extremity of my torture.

Some women will sell themselves to their husbands, and so obtain their

way, but I, at any rate, am free. If I chose, Nucingen would cover me

with gold, but I would rather weep on the breast of a man whom I can

respect. Ah! tonight, M. de Marsay will no longer have a right to think

of me as a woman whom he has paid.” She tried to conceal her tears from

him, hiding her face in her hands; Eugene drew them away and looked at

her; she seemed to him sublime at that moment.

“It is hideous, is it not,” she cried, “to speak in a breath of money

and affection. You cannot love me after this,” she added.

The incongruity between the ideas of honor which make women so great,

and the errors in conduct which are forced upon them by the constitution

of society, had thrown Eugene’s thoughts into confusion; he uttered

soothing and consoling words, and wondered at the beautiful woman before

him, and at the artless imprudence of her cry of pain.

“You will not remember this against me?” she asked; “promise me that you

will not.”

“Ah! madame, I am incapable of doing so,” he said. She took his hand and

held it to her heart, a movement full of grace that expressed her deep

gratitude.

“I am free and happy once more, thanks to you,” she said. “Oh! I have

felt lately as if I were in the grasp of an iron hand. But after this

I mean to live simply and to spend nothing. You will think me just as

pretty, will you not, my friend? Keep this,” she went on, as she took

only six of the banknotes. “In conscience I owe you a thousand crowns,

for I really ought to go halves with you.”

Eugene’s maiden conscience resisted; but when the Baroness said, “I

am bound to look on you as an accomplice or as an enemy,” he took the

money.

“It shall be a last stake in reserve,” he said, “in case of misfortune.”

“That was what I was dreading to hear,” she cried, turning pale. “Oh,

if you would that I should be anything to you, swear to me that you will

never re-enter a gaming-house. Great Heaven! that I should corrupt you!

I should die of sorrow!”

They had reached the Rue Saint-Lazare by this time. The contrast between

the ostentation of wealth in the house, and the wretched condition of

its mistress, dazed the student; and Vautrin’s cynical words began to

ring in his ears.

“Seat yourself there,” said the Baroness, pointing to a low chair beside

the fire. “I have a difficult letter to write,” she added. “Tell me what

to say.”

“Say nothing,” Eugene answered her. “Put the bills in an envelope,

direct it, and send it by your maid.”

“Why, you are a love of a man,” she said. “Ah! see what it is to have

been well brought up. That is the Beauseant through and through,” she

went on, smiling at him.

“She is charming,” thought Eugene, more and more in love. He looked

round him at the room; there was an ostentatious character about the

luxury, a meretricious taste in the splendor.

“Do you like it?” she asked, as she rang for the maid.

“Therese, take this to M. de Marsay, and give it into his hands

yourself. If he is not at home, bring the letter back to me.”

Therese went, but not before she had given Eugene a spiteful glance.

Dinner was announced. Rastignac gave his arm to Mme. de Nucingen, she

led the way into a pretty dining-room, and again he saw the luxury of

the table which he had admired in his cousin’s house.

“Come and dine with me on opera evenings, and we will go to the Italiens

afterwards,” she said.

“I should soon grow used to the pleasant life if it could last, but I am

a poor student, and I have my way to make.”

“Oh! you will succeed,” she said laughing. “You will see. All that you

wish will come to pass. _I_ did not expect to be so happy.”

It is the wont of women to prove the impossible by the possible, and to

annihilate facts by presentiments. When Mme. de Nucingen and Rastignac

took their places in her box at the Bouffons, her face wore a look of

happiness that made her so lovely that every one indulged in those small

slanders against which women are defenceless; for the scandal that

is uttered lightly is often seriously believed. Those who know Paris,

believe nothing that is said, and say nothing of what is done there.

Eugene took the Baroness’ hand in his, and by some light pressure of the

fingers, or a closer grasp of the hand, they found a language in which

to express the sensations which the music gave them. It was an evening

of intoxicating delight for both; and when it ended, and they went out

together, Mme. de Nucingen insisted on taking Eugene with her as far as

the Pont Neuf, he disputing with her the whole of the way for a single

kiss after all those that she had showered upon him so passionately at

the Palais-Royal; Eugene reproached her with inconsistency.

“That was gratitude,” she said, “for devotion that I did not dare to

hope for, but now it would be a promise.”

“And will you give me no promise, ingrate?”

He grew vexed. Then, with one of those impatient gestures that fill a

lover with ecstasy, she gave him her hand to kiss, and he took it with a

discontented air that delighted her.

“I shall see you at the ball on Monday,” she said.

As Eugene went home in the moonlight, he fell to serious reflections.

He was satisfied, and yet dissatisfied. He was pleased with an adventure

which would probably give him his desire, for in the end one of the

prettiest and best-dressed women in Paris would be his; but, as a

set-off, he saw his hopes of fortune brought to nothing; and as soon as

he realized this fact, the vague thoughts of yesterday evening began to

take a more decided shape in his mind. A check is sure to reveal to us

the strength of our hopes. The more Eugene learned of the pleasures of

life in Paris, the more impatient he felt of poverty and obscurity. He

crumpled the banknote in his pocket, and found any quantity of plausible

excuses for appropriating it.

He reached the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve at last, and from the

stairhead he saw a light in Goriot’s room; the old man had lighted a

candle, and set the door ajar, lest the student should pass him by, and

go to his room without “telling him all about his daughter,” to use

his own expression. Eugene, accordingly, told him everything without

reserve.

“Then they think that I am ruined!” cried Father Goriot, in an agony of

jealousy and desperation. “Why, I have still thirteen hundred livres a

year! _Mon Dieu!_ Poor little girl! why did she not come to me? I would

have sold my rentes; she should have had some of the principal, and I

would have bought a life-annuity with the rest. My good neighbor, why

did not _you_ come to tell me of her difficulty? How had you the

heart to go and risk her poor little hundred francs at play? This is

heart-breaking work. You see what it is to have sons-in-law. Oh! if I

had hold of them, I would wring their necks. _Mon Dieu! crying!_ Did you

say she was crying?”

“With her head on my waistcoat,” said Eugene.

“Oh! give it to me,” said Father Goriot. “What! my daughter’s tears have

fallen there--my darling Delphine, who never used to cry when she was

a little girl! Oh! I will buy you another; do not wear it again; let me

have it. By the terms of her marriage-contract, she ought to have the

use of her property. To-morrow morning I will go and see Derville; he is

an attorney. I will demand that her money should be invested in her own

name. I know the law. I am an old wolf, I will show my teeth.”

“Here, father; this is a banknote for a thousand francs that she wanted

me to keep out of our winnings. Keep them for her, in the pocket of the

waistcoat.”

Goriot looked hard at Eugene, reached out and took the law student’s

hand, and Eugene felt a tear fall on it.

“You will succeed,” the old man said. “God is just, you see. I know an

honest man when I see him, and I can tell you, there are not many men

like you. I am to have another dear child in you, am I? There, go to

sleep; you can sleep; you are not yet a father. She was crying! and I

have to be told about it!--and I was quietly eating my dinner, like an

idiot, all the time--I, who would sell the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to

save one tear to either of them.”

“An honest man!” said Eugene to himself as he lay down. “Upon my word, I

think I will be an honest man all my life; it is so pleasant to obey

the voice of conscience.” Perhaps none but believers in God do good in

secret; and Eugene believed in a God.

The next day Rastignac went at the appointed time to Mme. de Beauseant,

who took him with her to the Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball. The

Marechale received Eugene most graciously. Mme. de Nucingen was there.

Delphine’s dress seemed to suggest that she wished for the admiration

of others, so that she might shine the more in Eugene’s eyes; she

was eagerly expecting a glance from him, hiding, as she thought, this

eagerness from all beholders. This moment is full of charm for one who

can guess all that passes in a woman’s mind. Who has not refrained from

giving his opinion, to prolong her suspense, concealing his pleasure

from a desire to tantalize, seeking a confession of love in her

uneasiness, enjoying the fears that he can dissipate by a smile? In

the course of the evening the law student suddenly comprehended his

position; he saw that, as the cousin of Mme. de Beauseant, he was a

personage in this world. He was already credited with the conquest

of Mme. de Nucingen, and for this reason was a conspicuous figure;

he caught the envious glances of other young men, and experienced the

earliest pleasures of coxcombry. People wondered at his luck, and scraps

of these conversations came to his ears as he went from room to room;

all the women prophesied his success; and Delphine, in her dread of

losing him, promised that this evening she would not refuse the kiss

that all his entreaties could scarcely win yesterday.

Rastignac received several invitations. His cousin presented him to

other women who were present; women who could claim to be of the highest

fashion; whose houses were looked upon as pleasant; and this was

the loftiest and most fashionable society in Paris into which he was

launched. So this evening had all the charm of a brilliant debut; it

was an evening that he was to remember even in old age, as a woman looks

back upon her first ball and the memories of her girlish triumphs.

The next morning, at breakfast, he related the story of his success for

the benefit of Father Goriot and the lodgers. Vautrin began to smile in

a diabolical fashion.

“And do you suppose,” cried that cold-blooded logician, “that a young

man of fashion can live here in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the

Maison Vauquer--an exceedingly respectable boarding-house in every way,

I grant you, but an establishment that, none the less, falls short

of being fashionable? The house is comfortable, it is lordly in its

abundance; it is proud to be the temporary abode of a Rastignac; but,

after all, it is in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, and luxury would be

out of place here, where we only aim at the purely _patriarchalorama_.

If you mean to cut a figure in Paris, my young friend,” Vautrin

continued, with half-paternal jocularity, “you must have three horses,

a tilbury for the mornings, and a closed carriage for the evening; you

should spend altogether about nine thousand francs on your stables. You

would show yourself unworthy of your destiny if you spent no more than

three thousand francs with your tailor, six hundred in perfumery, a

hundred crowns to your shoemaker, and a hundred more to your hatter. As

for your laundress, there goes another thousand francs; a young man of

fashion must of necessity make a great point of his linen; if your linen

comes up to the required standard, people often do not look any further.

Love and the Church demand a fair altar-cloth. That is fourteen thousand

francs. I am saying nothing of losses at play, bets, and presents; it

is impossible to allow less than two thousand francs for pocket money. I

have led that sort of life, and I know all about these expenses. Add the

cost of necessaries next; three hundred louis for provender, a thousand

francs for a place to roost in. Well, my boy, for all these little wants

of ours we had need to have twenty-five thousand francs every year in

our purse, or we shall find ourselves in the kennel, and people laughing

at us, and our career is cut short, good-bye to success, and good-bye to

your mistress! I am forgetting your valet and your groom! Is Christophe

going to carry your _billets-doux_ for you? Do you mean to employ the

stationery you use at present? Suicidal policy! Hearken to the wisdom

of your elders!” he went on, his bass voice growing louder at each

syllable. “Either take up your quarters in a garret, live virtuously,

and wed your work, or set about the thing in a different way.”

Vautrin winked and leered in the direction of Mlle. Taillefer to enforce

his remarks by a look which recalled the late tempting proposals by

which he had sought to corrupt the student’s mind.

Several days went by, and Rastignac lived in a whirl of gaiety. He dined

almost every day with Mme. de Nucingen, and went wherever she went, only

returning to the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve in the small hours. He rose

at mid-day, and dressed to go into the Bois with Delphine if the day was

fine, squandering in this way time that was worth far more than he knew.

He turned as eagerly to learn the lessons of luxury, and was as quick

to feel its fascination, as the flowers of the date palm to receive the

fertilizing pollen. He played high, lost and won large sums of money,

and at last became accustomed to the extravagant life that young men

lead in Paris. He sent fifteen hundred francs out of his first winnings

to his mother and sisters, sending handsome presents as well as the

money. He had given out that he meant to leave the Maison Vauquer; but

January came and went, and he was still there, still unprepared to go.

One rule holds good of most young men--whether rich or poor. They never

have money for the necessaries of life, but they have always money to

spare for their caprices--an anomaly which finds its explanation in

their youth and in the almost frantic eagerness with which youth grasps

at pleasure. They are reckless with anything obtained on credit, while

everything for which they must pay in ready money is made to last as

long as possible; if they cannot have all that they want, they make

up for it, it would seem, by squandering what they have. To state the

matter simply--a student is far more careful of his hat than of his

coat, because the latter being a comparatively costly article of dress,

it is in the nature of things that a tailor should be a creditor; but

it is otherwise with the hatter; the sums of money spent with him are so

modest, that he is the most independent and unmanageable of his tribe,

and it is almost impossible to bring him to terms. The young man in the

balcony of a theatre who displays a gorgeous waistcoat for the benefit

of the fair owners of opera glasses, has very probably no socks in his

wardrobe, for the hosier is another of the genus of weevils that nibble

at the purse. This was Rastignac’s condition. His purse was always

empty for Mme. Vauquer, always full at the demand of vanity; there was

a periodical ebb and flow in his fortunes, which was seldom favorable

to the payment of just debts. If he was to leave that unsavory and mean

abode, where from time to time his pretensions met with humiliation, the

first step was to pay his hostess for a month’s board and lodging, and

the second to purchase furniture worthy of the new lodgings he must take

in his quality of dandy, a course that remained impossible. Rastignac,

out of his winnings at cards, would pay his jeweler exorbitant prices

for gold watches and chains, and then, to meet the exigencies of play,

would carry them to the pawnbroker, that discreet and forbidding-looking

friend of youth; but when it was a question of paying for board or

lodging, or for the necessary implements for the cultivation of his

Elysian fields, his imagination and pluck alike deserted him. There was

no inspiration to be found in vulgar necessity, in debts contracted for

past requirements. Like most of those who trust to their luck, he put

off till the last moment the payment of debts that among the bourgeoisie

are regarded as sacred engagements, acting on the plan of Mirabeau,

who never settled his baker’s bill until it underwent a formidable

transformation into a bill of exchange.

It was about this time when Rastignac was down on his luck and fell into

debt, that it became clear to the law student’s mind that he must have

some more certain source of income if he meant to live as he had been

doing. But while he groaned over the thorny problems of his precarious

situation, he felt that he could not bring himself to renounce the

pleasures of this extravagant life, and decided that he must continue it

at all costs. His dreams of obtaining a fortune appeared more and more

chimerical, and the real obstacles grew more formidable. His initiation

into the secrets of the Nucingen household had revealed to him that if

he were to attempt to use this love affair as a means of mending his

fortunes, he must swallow down all sense of decency, and renounce all

the generous ideas which redeem the sins of youth. He had chosen this

life of apparent splendor, but secretly gnawed by the canker worm of

remorse, a life of fleeting pleasure dearly paid for by persistent pain;

like _Le Distrait_ of La Bruyere, he had descended so far as to make

his bed in a ditch; but (also like _Le Distrait_) he himself was

uncontaminated as yet by the mire that stained his garments.

“So we have killed our mandarin, have we?” said Bianchon one day as they

left the dinner table.

“Not yet,” he answered, “but he is at his last gasp.”

The medical student took this for a joke, but it was not a jest. Eugene

had dined in the house that night for the first time for a long while,

and had looked thoughtful during the meal. He had taken his place beside

Mlle. Taillefer, and stayed through the dessert, giving his neighbor an

expressive glance from time to time. A few of the boarders discussed

the walnuts at the table, and others walked about the room, still taking

part in the conversation which had begun among them. People usually went

when they chose; the amount of time that they lingered being determined

by the amount of interest that the conversation possessed for them, or

by the difficulty of the process of digestion. In winter-time the room

was seldom empty before eight o’clock, when the four women had it all to

themselves, and made up for the silence previously imposed upon them by

the preponderating masculine element. This evening Vautrin had noticed

Eugene’s abstractedness, and stayed in the room, though he had seemed

to be in a hurry to finish his dinner and go. All through the talk

afterwards he had kept out of the sight of the law student, who quite

believed that Vautrin had left the room. He now took up his position

cunningly in the sitting-room instead of going when the last boarders

went. He had fathomed the young man’s thoughts, and felt that a crisis

was at hand. Rastignac was, in fact, in a dilemma, which many another

young man must have known.

Mme. de Nucingen might love him, or might merely be playing with

him, but in either case Rastignac had been made to experience all

the alternations of hope and despair of genuine passion, and all

the diplomatic arts of a Parisienne had been employed on him. After

compromising herself by continually appearing in public with Mme. de

Beauseant’s cousin she still hesitated, and would not give him the

lover’s privileges which he appeared to enjoy. For a whole month she had

so wrought on his senses, that at last she had made an impression on

his heart. If in the earliest days the student had fancied himself to be

master, Mme. de Nucingen had since become the stronger of the two, for

she had skilfully roused and played upon every instinct, good or bad, in

the two or three men comprised in a young student in Paris. This was not

the result of deep design on her part, nor was she playing a part, for

women are in a manner true to themselves even through their grossest

deceit, because their actions are prompted by a natural impulse. It may

have been that Delphine, who had allowed this young man to gain such an

ascendency over her, conscious that she had been too demonstrative, was

obeying a sentiment of dignity, and either repented of her concessions,

or it pleased her to suspend them. It is so natural to a Parisienne,

even when passion has almost mastered her, to hesitate and pause before

taking the plunge; to probe the heart of him to whom she intrusts her

future. And once already Mme. de Nucingen’s hopes had been betrayed,

and her loyalty to a selfish young lover had been despised. She had good

reason to be suspicious. Or it may have been that something in Eugene’s

manner (for his rapid success was making a coxcomb of him) had warned

her that the grotesque nature of their position had lowered her somewhat

in his eyes. She doubtless wished to assert her dignity; he was young,

and she would be great in his eyes; for the lover who had forsaken her

had held her so cheap that she was determined that Eugene should not

think her an easy conquest, and for this very reason--he knew that

de Marsay had been his predecessor. Finally, after the degradation of

submission to the pleasure of a heartless young rake, it was so sweet

to her to wander in the flower-strewn realms of love, that it was not

wonderful that she should wish to dwell a while on the prospect, to

tremble with the vibrations of love, to feel the freshness of the breath

of its dawn. The true lover was suffering for the sins of the false.

This inconsistency is unfortunately only to be expected so long as men

do not know how many flowers are mown down in a young woman’s soul by

the first stroke of treachery.

Whatever her reasons may have been, Delphine was playing with Rastignac,

and took pleasure in playing with him, doubtless because she felt sure

of his love, and confident that she could put an end to the torture

as soon as it was her royal pleasure to do so. Eugene’s self-love was

engaged; he could not suffer his first passage of love to end in a

defeat, and persisted in his suit like a sportsman determined to

bring down at least one partridge to celebrate his first Feast of

Saint-Hubert. The pressure of anxiety, his wounded self-love, his

despair, real or feigned, drew him nearer and nearer to this woman. All

Paris credited him with this conquest, and yet he was conscious that he

had made no progress since the day when he saw Mme. de Nucingen for the

first time. He did not know as yet that a woman’s coquetry is sometimes

more delightful than the pleasure of secure possession of her love, and

was possessed with helpless rage. If, at this time, while she denied

herself to love, Eugene gathered the springtide spoils of his life,

the fruit, somewhat sharp and green, and dearly bought, was no less

delicious to the taste. There were moments when he had not a sou in

his pockets, and at such times he thought in spite of his conscience of

Vautrin’s offer and the possibility of fortune by a marriage with Mlle.

Taillefer. Poverty would clamor so loudly that more than once he was on

the point of yielding to the cunning temptations of the terrible sphinx,

whose glance had so often exerted a strange spell over him.

Poiret and Mlle. Michonneau went up to their rooms; and Rastignac,

thinking that he was alone with the women in the dining-room, sat

between Mme. Vauquer and Mme. Couture, who was nodding over the woolen

cuffs that she was knitting by the stove, and looked at Mlle. Taillefer

so tenderly that she lowered her eyes.

“Can you be in trouble, M. Eugene?” Victorine said after a pause.

“Who has not his troubles?” answered Rastignac. “If we men were sure

of being loved, sure of a devotion which would be our reward for the

sacrifices which we are always ready to make, then perhaps we should

have no troubles.”

For answer Mlle. Taillefer only gave him a glance but it was impossible

to mistake its meaning.

“You, for instance, mademoiselle; you feel sure of your heart to-day,

but are you sure that it will never change?”

A smile flitted over the poor girl’s lips; it seemed as if a ray of

light from her soul had lighted up her face. Eugene was dismayed at the

sudden explosion of feeling caused by his words.

“Ah! but suppose,” he said, “that you should be rich and happy

to-morrow, suppose that a vast fortune dropped down from the clouds

for you, would you still love the man whom you loved in your days of

poverty?”

A charming movement of the head was her only answer.

“Even if he were very poor?”

Again the same mute answer.

“What nonsense are you talking, you two?” exclaimed Mme. Vauquer.

“Never mind,” answered Eugene; “we understand each other.”

“So there is to be an engagement of marriage between M. le Chevalier

Eugene de Rastignac and Mlle. Victorine Taillefer, is there?” The words

were uttered in Vautrin’s deep voice, and Vautrin appeared at the door

as he spoke.

“Oh! how you startled me!” Mme. Couture and Mme. Vauquer exclaimed

together.

“I might make a worse choice,” said Rastignac, laughing. Vautrin’s voice

had thrown him into the most painful agitation that he had yet known.

“No bad jokes, gentlemen!” said Mme. Couture. “My dear, let us go

upstairs.”

Mme. Vauquer followed the two ladies, meaning to pass the evening in

their room, an arrangement that economized fire and candlelight. Eugene

and Vautrin were left alone.

“I felt sure you would come round to it,” said the elder man with the

coolness that nothing seemed to shake. “But stay a moment! I have as

much delicacy as anybody else. Don’t make up your mind on the spur of

the moment; you are a little thrown off your balance just now. You are

in debt, and I want you to come over to my way of thinking after sober

reflection, and not in a fit of passion or desperation. Perhaps you want

a thousand crowns. There, you can have them if you like.”

The tempter took out a pocketbook, and drew thence three banknotes,

which he fluttered before the student’s eyes. Eugene was in a most

painful dilemma. He had debts, debts of honor. He owed a hundred louis

to the Marquis d’Ajuda and to the Count de Trailles; he had not the

money, and for this reason had not dared to go to Mme. de Restaud’s

house, where he was expected that evening. It was one of those informal

gatherings where tea and little cakes are handed round, but where it is

possible to lose six thousand francs at whist in the course of a night.

“You must see,” said Eugene, struggling to hide a convulsive tremor,

“that after what has passed between us, I cannot possibly lay myself

under any obligation to you.”

“Quite right; I should be sorry to hear you speak otherwise,” answered

the tempter. “You are a fine young fellow, honorable, brave as a lion,

and as gentle as a young girl. You would be a fine haul for the devil! I

like youngsters of your sort. Get rid of one or two more prejudices, and

you will see the world as it is. Make a little scene now and then, and

act a virtuous part in it, and a man with a head on his shoulders can

do exactly as he likes amid deafening applause from the fools in the

gallery. Ah! a few days yet, and you will be with us; and if you would

only be tutored by me, I would put you in the way of achieving all your

ambitions. You should no sooner form a wish than it should be realized

to the full; you should have all your desires--honors, wealth, or women.

Civilization should flow with milk and honey for you. You should be our

pet and favorite, our Benjamin. We would all work ourselves to death for

you with pleasure; every obstacle should be removed from your path. You

have a few prejudices left; so you think that I am a scoundrel, do you?

Well, M. de Turenne, quite as honorable a man as you take yourself to

be, had some little private transactions with bandits, and did not

feel that his honor was tarnished. You would rather not lie under any

obligation to me, eh? You need not draw back on that account,” Vautrin

went on, and a smile stole over his lips. “Take these bits of paper

and write across this,” he added, producing a piece of stamped paper,

“_Accepted the sum of three thousand five hundred francs due this day

twelvemonth_, and fill in the date. The rate of interest is stiff enough

to silence any scruples on your part; it gives you the right to call me

a Jew. You can call quits with me on the score of gratitude. I am quite

willing that you should despise me to-day, because I am sure that you

will have a kindlier feeling towards me later on. You will find out

fathomless depths in my nature, enormous and concentrated forces that

weaklings call vices, but you will never find me base or ungrateful.

In short, I am neither a pawn nor a bishop, but a castle, a tower of

strength, my boy.”

“What manner of man are you?” cried Eugene. “Were you created to torment

me?”

“Why no; I am a good-natured fellow, who is willing to do a dirty piece

of work to put you high and dry above the mire for the rest of your

days. Do you ask the reason of this devotion? All right; I will tell you

that some of these days. A word or two in your ear will explain it. I

have begun by shocking you, by showing you the way to ring the changes,

and giving you a sight of the mechanism of the social machine; but your

first fright will go off like a conscript’s terror on the battlefield.

You will grow used to regarding men as common soldiers who have made up

their minds to lose their lives for some self-constituted king. Times

have altered strangely. Once you could say to a bravo, ‘Here are a

hundred crowns; go and kill Monsieur So-and-so for me,’ and you could

sup quietly after turning some one off into the dark for the least thing

in the world. But nowadays I propose to put you in the way of a handsome

fortune; you have only to nod your head, it won’t compromise you in any

way, and you hesitate. ‘Tis an effeminate age.”

Eugene accepted the draft, and received the banknotes in exchange for

it.

“Well, well. Come, now, let us talk rationally,” Vautrin continued. “I

mean to leave this country in a few months’ time for America, and set

about planting tobacco. I will send you the cigars of friendship. If

I make money at it, I will help you in your career. If I have no

children--which will probably be the case, for I have no anxiety to

raise slips of myself here--you shall inherit my fortune. That is what

you may call standing by a man; but I myself have a liking for you. I

have a mania, too, for devoting myself to some one else. I have done it

before. You see, my boy, I live in a loftier sphere than other men do;

I look on all actions as means to an end, and the end is all that I look

at. What is a man’s life to me? Not _that_,” he said, and he snapped his

thumb-nail against his teeth. “A man, in short, is everything to me, or

just nothing at all. Less than nothing if his name happens to be Poiret;

you can crush him like a bug, he is flat and he is offensive. But a man

is a god when he is like you; he is not a machine covered with a skin,

but a theatre in which the greatest sentiments are displayed--great

thoughts and feelings--and for these, and these only, I live. A

sentiment--what is that but the whole world in a thought? Look at Father

Goriot. For him, his two girls are the whole universe; they are the clue

by which he finds his way through creation. Well, for my own part,

I have fathomed the depths of life, there is only one real

sentiment--comradeship between man and man. Pierre and Jaffier, that is

my passion. I knew _Venice Preserved_ by heart. Have you met many men

plucky enough when a comrade says, ‘Let us bury a dead body!’ to go and

do it without a word or plaguing him by taking a high moral tone? I have

done it myself. I should not talk like this to just everybody, but you

are not like an ordinary man; one can talk to you, you can understand

things. You will not dabble about much longer among the tadpoles in

these swamps. Well, then, it is all settled. You will marry. Both of us

carry our point. Mine is made of iron, and will never soften, he! he!”

Vautrin went out. He would not wait to hear the student’s repudiation,

he wished to put Eugene at his ease. He seemed to understand the secret

springs of the faint resistance still made by the younger man; the

struggles in which men seek to preserve their self-respect by justifying

their blameworthy actions to themselves.

“He may do as he likes; I shall not marry Mlle. Taillefer, that is

certain,” said Eugene to himself.

He regarded this man with abhorrence, and yet the very cynicism of

Vautrin’s ideas, and the audacious way in which he used other men for

his own ends, raised him in the student’s eyes; but the thought of a

compact threw Eugene into a fever of apprehension, and not until he

had recovered somewhat did he dress, call for a cab, and go to Mme. de

Restaud’s.

For some days the Countess had paid more and more attention to a young

man whose every step seemed a triumphal progress in the great world; it

seemed to her that he might be a formidable power before long. He paid

Messieurs de Trailles and d’Ajuda, played at whist for part of the

evening, and made good his losses. Most men who have their way to make

are more or less of fatalists, and Eugene was superstitious; he chose to

consider that his luck was heaven’s reward for his perseverance in the

right way. As soon as possible on the following morning he asked Vautrin

whether the bill he had given was still in the other’s possession; and

on receiving a reply in the affirmative, he repaid the three thousand

francs with a not unnatural relief.

“Everything is going on well,” said Vautrin.

“But I am not your accomplice,” said Eugene.

“I know, I know,” Vautrin broke in. “You are still acting like a child.

You are making mountains out of molehills at the outset.”

Two days later, Poiret and Mlle. Michonneau were sitting together on

a bench in the sun. They had chosen a little frequented alley in the

Jardin des Plantes, and a gentleman was chatting with them, the same

person, as a matter of fact, about whom the medical student had, not

without good reason, his own suspicions.

“Mademoiselle,” this M. Gondureau was saying, “I do not see any

cause for your scruples. His Excellency, Monseigneur the Minister of

Police----”

“Yes, his Excellency is taking a personal interest in the matter,” said

Gondureau.

Who would think it probable that Poiret, a retired clerk, doubtless

possessed of some notions of civic virtue, though there might be nothing

else in his head--who would think it likely that such a man would

continue to lend an ear to this supposed independent gentleman of the

Rue de Buffon, when the latter dropped the mask of a decent citizen by

that word “police,” and gave a glimpse of the features of a detective

from the Rue de Jerusalem? And yet nothing was more natural. Perhaps the

following remarks from the hitherto unpublished records made by certain

observers will throw a light on the particular species to which Poiret

belonged in the great family of fools. There is a race of quill-drivers,

confined in the columns of the budget between the first degree of

latitude (a kind of administrative Greenland where the salaries begin at

twelve hundred francs) to the third degree, a more temperate zone, where

incomes grow from three to six thousand francs, a climate where

the _bonus_ flourishes like a half-hardy annual in spite of some

difficulties of culture. A characteristic trait that best reveals the

feeble narrow-mindedness of these inhabitants of petty officialdom is a

kind of involuntary, mechanical, and instinctive reverence for the Grand

Lama of every Ministry, known to the rank and file only by his signature

(an illegible scrawl) and by his title--“His Excellency Monseigneur

le Ministre,” five words which produce as much effect as the _il Bondo

Cani_ of the _Calife de Bagdad_, five words which in the eyes of this

low order of intelligence represent a sacred power from which there is

no appeal. The Minister is administratively infallible for the clerks

in the employ of the Government, as the Pope is infallible for good

Catholics. Something of this peculiar radiance invests everything he

does or says, or that is said or done in his name; the robe of office

covers everything and legalizes everything done by his orders; does not

his very title--His Excellency--vouch for the purity of his intentions

and the righteousness of his will, and serve as a sort of passport and

introduction to ideas that otherwise would not be entertained for a

moment? Pronounce the words “His Excellency,” and these poor folk will

forthwith proceed to do what they would not do for their own interests.

Passive obedience is as well known in a Government department as in

the army itself; and the administrative system silences consciences,

annihilates the individual, and ends (give it time enough) by fashioning

a man into a vise or a thumbscrew, and he becomes part of the machinery

of Government. Wherefore, M. Gondureau, who seemed to know something

of human nature, recognized Poiret at once as one of those dupes of

officialdom, and brought out for his benefit, at the proper moment, the

_deus ex machina_, the magical words “His Excellency,” so as to dazzle

Poiret just as he himself unmasked his batteries, for he took Poiret and

the Michonneau for the male and female of the same species.

“If his Excellency himself, his Excellency the Minister... Ah! that is

quite another thing,” said Poiret.

“You seem to be guided by this gentleman’s opinion, and you hear what he

says,” said the man of independent means, addressing Mlle. Michonneau.

“Very well, his Excellency is at this moment absolutely certain that the

so-called Vautrin, who lodges at the Maison Vauquer, is a convict

who escaped from penal servitude at Toulon, where he is known by the

nickname _Trompe-la-Mort_.”

“Trompe-la-Mort?” said Pioret. “Dear me, he is very lucky if he deserves

that nickname.”

“Well, yes,” said the detective. “They call him so because he has been

so lucky as not to lose his life in the very risky businesses that he

has carried through. He is a dangerous man, you see! He has qualities

that are out of the common; the thing he is wanted for, in fact, was a

matter which gained him no end of credit with his own set----”

“Then is he a man of honor?” asked Poiret.

“Yes, according to his notions. He agreed to take another man’s crime

upon himself--a forgery committed by a very handsome young fellow that

he had taken a great fancy to, a young Italian, a bit of a gambler,

who has since gone into the army, where his conduct has been

unexceptionable.”

“But if his Excellency the Minister of Police is certain that M.

Vautrin is this _Trompe-la-Mort_, why should he want me?” asked Mlle.

Michonneau.

“Oh yes,” said Poiret, “if the Minister, as you have been so obliging as

to tell us, really knows for a certainty----”

“Certainty is not the word; he only suspects. You will soon understand

how things are. Jacques Collin, nicknamed _Trompe-la-Mort_, is in the

confidence of every convict in the three prisons; he is their man of

business and their banker. He makes a very good thing out of managing

their affairs, which want a _man of mark_ to see about them.”

“Ha! ha! do you see the pun, mademoiselle?” asked Poiret. “This

gentleman calls himself a _man of mark_ because he is a _marked

man_--branded, you know.”

“This so-called Vautrin,” said the detective, “receives the money

belonging to my lords the convicts, invests it for them, and holds it at

the disposal of those who escape, or hands it over to their families if

they leave a will, or to their mistresses when they draw upon him for

their benefit.”

“Their mistresses! You mean their wives,” remarked Poiret.

“No, sir. A convict’s wife is usually an illegitimate connection. We

call them concubines.”

“Then they all live in a state of concubinage?”

“Naturally.”

“Why, these are abominations that his Excellency ought not to allow.

Since you have the honor of seeing his Excellency, you, who seem to have

philanthropic ideas, ought really to enlighten him as to their immoral

conduct--they are setting a shocking example to the rest of society.”

“But the Government does not hold them up as models of all the virtues,

my dear sir----”

“Of course not, sir; but still----”

“Just let the gentleman say what he has to say, dearie,” said Mlle.

Michonneau.

“You see how it is, mademoiselle,” Gondureau continued. “The Government

may have the strongest reasons for getting this illicit hoard into its

hands; it mounts up to something considerable, by all that we can

make out. Trompe-la-Mort not only holds large sums for his friends the

convicts, but he has other amounts which are paid over to him by the

Society of the Ten Thousand----”

“Ten Thousand Thieves!” cried Pioret in alarm.

“No. The Society of the Ten Thousand is not an association of petty

offenders, but of people who set about their work on a large scale--they

won’t touch a matter unless there are ten thousand francs in it. It is

composed of the most distinguished of the men who are sent straight to

the Assize Courts when they come up for trial. They know the Code

too well to risk their necks when they are nabbed. Collin is their

confidential agent and legal adviser. By means of the large sums of

money at his disposal he has established a sort of detective system of

his own; it is widespread and mysterious in its workings. We have had

spies all about him for a twelvemonth, and yet we could not manage to

fathom his games. His capital and his cleverness are at the service of

vice and crime; this money furnishes the necessary funds for a regular

army of blackguards in his pay who wage incessant war against society.

If we can catch Trompe-la-Mort, and take possession of his funds,

we should strike at the root of this evil. So this job is a kind of

Government affair--a State secret--and likely to redound to the honor

of those who bring the thing to a successful conclusion. You, sir, for

instance, might very well be taken into a Government department again;

they might make you secretary to a Commissary of Police; you could

accept that post without prejudice to your retiring pension.”

Mlle. Michonneau interposed at this point with, “What is there to hinder

Trompe-la-Mort from making off with the money?”

“Oh!” said the detective, “a man is told off to follow him everywhere he

goes, with orders to kill him if he were to rob the convicts. Then it is

not quite as easy to make off with a lot of money as it is to run away

with a young lady of family. Besides, Collin is not the sort of fellow

to play such a trick; he would be disgraced, according to his notions.”

“You are quite right, sir,” said Poiret, “utterly disgraced he would

be.”

“But none of all this explains why you do not come and take him without

more ado,” remarked Mlle. Michonneau.

“Very well, mademoiselle, I will explain--but,” he added in her ear,

“keep your companion quiet, or I shall never have done. The old boy

ought to pay people handsomely for listening to him.--Trompe-la-Mort,

when he came back here,” he went on aloud “slipped 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 don’t catch him napping. Then M. Vautrin is a man of

consequence, who transacts a good deal of business.”

“Naturally,” said Poiret to himself.

“And suppose that the Minister were to make a mistake and get hold of

the real Vautrin, he would put every one’s 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-Helene; if

he had been the real Comte de Sainte-Helene, we should have been in the

wrong box. We want to be quite sure what we are about.”

“Yes, but what you want is a pretty woman,” said Mlle. Michonneau

briskly.

“Trompe-la-Mort would not let a woman come near him,” said the

detective. “I will tell you a secret--he does not like them.”

“Still, I do not see what I can do, supposing that I did agree to

identify him for two thousand francs.”

“Nothing simpler,” said the stranger. “I 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.”

“Why, that is just nothing at all,” said Poiret.

“Well, do you agree?” said Gondureau, addressing the old maid.

“But, my dear sir, suppose there are no letters at all,” said Mlle.

Michonneau; “am I to have the two thousand francs all the same?”

“No.”

“What will you give me then?”

“Five hundred francs.”

“It is such a thing to do for so little! It lies on your conscience just

the same, and I must quiet my conscience, sir.”

“I assure you,” said Poiret, “that mademoiselle has a great deal of

conscience, and not only so, she is a very amiable person, and very

intelligent.”

“Well, now,” Mlle. Michonneau went on, “make it three thousand francs if

he is Trompe-la-Mort, and nothing at all if he is an ordinary man.”

“Done!” said Gondureau, “but on the condition that the thing is settled

to-morrow.”

“Not quite so soon, my dear sir; I must consult my confessor first.”

“You are a sly one,” said the detective as he rose to his feet.

“Good-bye till to-morrow, 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.”

Bianchon, on his way back from Cuvier’s lecture, overheard the

sufficiently striking nickname of _Trompe-la-Mort_, and caught the

celebrated chief detective’s “_Done!_”

“Why didn’t you close with him? It would be three hundred francs a

year,” said Poiret to Mlle. Michonneau.

“Why didn’t I?” she asked. “Why, 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.”

“And suppose you did warn him,” Poiret went on, “didn’t that gentleman

say that he was closely watched? You would spoil everything.”

“Anyhow,” thought Mlle. Michonneau, “I can’t abide him. He says nothing

but disagreeable things to me.”

“But you can do better than that,” Poiret resumed. “As 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!”

Mlle. Michonneau’s musings did not permit her to listen very closely to

the remarks that fell one by one from Poiret’s 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, Eugene de Rastignac was talking apart

with Mlle. Taillefer; the conversation appeared to be of such thrilling

interest that the pair never noticed the two older lodgers as they

passed through the room. None of this was thrown away on Mlle.

Michonneau.

“I knew how it would end,” remarked that lady, addressing Poiret. “They

have been making eyes at each other in a heartrending way for a week

past.”

“Yes,” he answered. “So she was found guilty.”

“Who?”

“Mme. Morin.”

“I am talking about Mlle. Victorine,” said Mlle, Michonneau, as she

entered Poiret’s room with an absent air, “and you answer, ‘Mme. Morin.’

Who may Mme. Morin be?”

“What can Mlle. Victorine be guilty of?” demanded Poiret.

“Guilty of falling in love with M. Eugene de Rastignac and going further

and further without knowing exactly where she is going, poor innocent!”

That morning Mme. de Nucingen had driven Eugene to despair. In his own

mind he had completely surrendered himself to Vautrin, and deliberately

shut his eyes to the motive for the friendship which that extraordinary

man professed for him, nor would he look to the consequences of such an

alliance. Nothing short of a miracle could extricate him now out of the

gulf into which he had walked an hour ago, when he exchanged vows in the

softest whispers with Mlle. Taillefer. To Victorine it seemed as if she

heard an angel’s voice, that heaven was opening above her; the Maison

Vauquer took strange and wonderful hues, like a stage fairy-palace. She

loved and she was loved; at any rate, she believed that she was loved;

and what woman would not likewise have believed after seeing Rastignac’s

face and listening to the tones of his voice during that hour snatched

under the Argus eyes of the Maison Vauquer? He had trampled on his

conscience; he knew that he was doing wrong, and did it deliberately;

he had said to himself that a woman’s happiness should atone for this

venial sin. The energy of desperation had lent new beauty to his face;

the lurid fire that burned in his heart shone from his eyes. Luckily

for him, the miracle took place. Vautrin came in in high spirits, and

at once read the hearts of these two young creatures whom he had brought

together by the combinations of his infernal genius, but his deep voice

broke in upon their bliss.

“A charming girl is my Fanchette

In her simplicity,”

he sang mockingly.

Victorine fled. Her heart was more full than it had ever been, but it

was full of joy, and not of sorrow. Poor child! A pressure of the hand,

the light touch of Rastignac’s hair against her cheek, a word whispered

in her ear so closely that she felt the student’s warm breath on

her, the pressure of a trembling arm about her waist, a kiss upon her

throat--such had been her betrothal. The near neighborhood of the stout

Sylvie, who might invade that glorified room at any moment, only made

these first tokens of love more ardent, more eloquent, more entrancing

than the noblest deeds done for love’s sake in the most famous

romances. This _plain-song_ of love, to use the pretty expression of our

forefathers, seemed almost criminal to the devout young girl who went to

confession every fortnight. In that one hour she had poured out more of

the treasures of her soul than she could give in later days of wealth

and happiness, when her whole self followed the gift.

“The thing is arranged,” Vautrin said to Eugene, who remained. “Our two

dandies have fallen out. Everything was done in proper form. It is

a matter of opinion. Our pigeon has insulted my hawk. They will meet

to-morrow in the redoubt at Clignancourt. By half-past eight in the

morning Mlle. Taillefer, calmly dipping her bread and butter in her

coffee cup, will be sole heiress of her father’s fortune and affections.

A funny way of putting it, isn’t it? Taillefer’s youngster is an expert

swordsman, and quite cocksure about it, but he will be bled; I have just

invented a thrust for his benefit, a way of raising your sword point

and driving it at the forehead. I must show you that thrust; it is an

uncommonly handy thing to know.”

Rastignac heard him in dazed bewilderment; he could not find a word in

reply. Just then Goriot came in, and Bianchon and a few of the boarders

likewise appeared.

“That is just as I intended.” Vautrin said. “You know quite well what

you are about. Good, my little eaglet! You are born to command, you are

strong, you stand firm on your feet, you are game! I respect you.”

He made as though he would take Eugene’s hand, but Rastignac hastily

withdrew it, sank into a chair, and turned ghastly pale; it seemed to

him that there was a sea of blood before his eyes.

“Oh! so we still have a few dubious tatters of the swaddling clothes

of virtue about us!” murmured Vautrin. “But Papa Doliban has three

millions; I know the amount of his fortune. Once have her dowry in your

hands, and your character will be as white as the bride’s white dress,

even in your own eyes.”

Rastignac hesitated no longer. He made up his mind that he would go that

evening to warn the Taillefers, father and son. But just as Vautrin left

him, Father Goriot came up and said in his ear, “You look melancholy, my

boy; I will cheer you up. Come with me.”

The old vermicelli dealer lighted his dip at one of the lamps as he

spoke. Eugene went with him, his curiosity had been aroused.

“Let us go up to your room,” the worthy soul remarked, when he had

asked Sylvie for the law student’s key. “This morning,” he resumed, “you

thought that _she_ did not care about you, did you not? Eh? She would

have nothing to say to you, and you went away out of humor and out of

heart. Stuff and rubbish! She wanted you to go because she was expecting

_me_! Now do you understand? We were to complete the arrangements for

taking some chambers for you, a jewel of a place, you are to move

into it in three days’ time. Don’t split upon me. She wants it to be a

surprise; but I couldn’t bear to keep the secret from you. You will be

in the Rue d’Artois, only a step or two from the Rue Saint-Lazare, and

you are to be housed like a prince! Any one might have thought we were

furnishing the house for a bride. Oh! we have done a lot of things in

the last month, and you knew nothing about it. My attorney has appeared

on the scene, and my daughter is to have thirty-six thousand francs a

year, the interest on her money, and I shall insist on having her eight

hundred thousand invested in sound securities, landed property that

won’t run away.”

Eugene was dumb. He folded his arms and paced up and down in his

cheerless, untidy room. Father Goriot waited till the student’s back was

turned, and seized the opportunity to go to the chimney-piece and set

upon it a little red morocco case with Rastignac’s arms stamped in gold

on the leather.

“My dear boy,” said the kind soul, “I have been up to the eyes in this

business. You see, there was plenty of selfishness on my part; I have an

interested motive in helping you to change lodgings. You will not refuse

me if I ask you something; will you, eh?”

“What is it?”

“There is a room on the fifth floor, up above your rooms, that is to let

along with them; that is where I am going to live, isn’t that so? I am

getting old: I am too far from my girls. I shall not be in the way, but

I shall be there, that is all. You will come and talk to me about her

every evening. It will not put you about, will it? I shall have gone to

bed before you come in, but I shall hear you come up, and I shall say

to myself, ‘He has just seen my little Delphine. He has been to a dance

with her, and she is happy, thanks to him.’ If I were ill, it would do

my heart good to hear you moving about below, to know when you leave

the house and when you come in. It is only a step to the Champs-Elysees,

where they go every day, so I shall be sure of seeing them, whereas now

I am sometimes too late. And then--perhaps she may come to see you! I

shall hear her, I shall see her in her soft quilted pelisse tripping

about as daintily as a kitten. In this one month she has become my

little girl again, so light-hearted and gay. Her soul is recovering, and

her happiness is owing to you! Oh! I would do impossibilities for you.

Only just now she said to me, ‘I am very happy, papa!’ When they say

‘father’ stiffly, it sends a chill through me; but when they call me

‘papa,’ it brings all the old memories back. I feel most their father

then; I even believe that they belong to me, and to no one else.”

The good man wiped his eyes, he was crying.

“It is a long while since I have heard them talk like that, a long, long

time since she took my arm as she did to-day. Yes, indeed, it must be

quite ten years since I walked side by side with one of my girls. How

pleasant it was to keep step with her, to feel the touch of her gown,

the warmth of her arm! Well, I took Delphine everywhere this morning; I

went shopping with her, and I brought her home again. Oh! you must let

me live near you. You may want some one to do you a service some of

these days, and I shall be on the spot to do it. Oh! if only that great

dolt of an Alsatian would die, if his gout would have the sense to

attack his stomach, how happy my poor child would be! You would be my

son-in-law; you would be her husband in the eyes of the world. Bah! she

has known no happiness, that excuses everything. Our Father in heaven is

surely on the side of fathers on earth who love their children. How fond

of you she is!” he said, raising his head after a pause. “All the time

we were going about together she chatted away about you. ‘He is so

nice-looking, papa; isn’t he? He is kind-hearted! Does he talk to you

about me?’ Pshaw! she said enough about you to fill whole volumes;

between the Rue d’Artois and the Passage des Panoramas she poured her

heart out into mine. I did not feel old once during that delightful

morning; I felt as light as a feather. I told her how you had given the

banknote to me; it moved my darling to tears. But what can this be on

your chimney-piece?” said Father Goriot at last. Rastignac had showed no

sign, and he was dying of impatience.

Eugene stared at his neighbor in dumb and dazed bewilderment. He thought

of Vautrin, of that duel to be fought to-morrow morning, and of this

realization of his dearest hopes, and the violent contrast between the

two sets of ideas gave him all the sensations of nightmare. He went to

the chimney-piece, saw the little square case, opened it, and found

a watch of Breguet’s make wrapped in paper, on which these words were

written:

“I want you to think of me every hour, _because_...

“DELPHINE.”

That last word doubtless contained an allusion to some scene that

had taken place between them. Eugene felt touched. Inside the gold

watch-case his arms had been wrought in enamel. The chain, the key, the

workmanship and design of the trinket were all such as he had imagined,

for he had long coveted such a possession. Father Goriot was radiant. Of

course he had promised to tell his daughter every little detail of the

scene and of the effect produced upon Eugene by her present; he shared

in the pleasure and excitement of the young people, and seemed to be not

the least happy of the three. He loved Rastignac already for his own as

well as for his daughter’s sake.

“You must go and see her; she is expecting you this evening. That great

lout of an Alsatian is going to have supper with his opera-dancer. Aha!

he looked very foolish when my attorney let him know where he was. He

says he idolizes my daughter, does he? He had better let her alone, or I

will kill him. To think that my Delphine is his”--he heaved a sigh--“it

is enough to make me murder him, but it would not be manslaughter to

kill that animal; he is a pig with a calf’s brains.--You will take me

with you, will you not?”

“Yes, dear Father Goriot; you know very well how fond I am of you----”

“Yes, I do know very well. You are not ashamed of me, are you? Not you!

Let me embrace you,” and he flung his arms around the student’s neck.

“You will make her very happy; promise me that you will! You will go to

her this evening, will you not?”

“Oh! yes. I must go out; I have some urgent business on hand.”

“Can I be of any use?”

“My word, yes! Will you go to old Taillefer’s while I go to Mme. de

Nucingen? Ask him to make an appointment with me some time this evening;

it is a matter of life and death.”

“Really, young man!” cried Father Goriot, with a change of countenance;

“are you really paying court to his daughter, as those simpletons were

saying down below?... _Tonnerre de dieu!_ you have no notion what a tap

_a la Goriot_ is like, and if you are playing a double game, I shall put

a stop to it by one blow of the fist... Oh! the thing is impossible!”

“I swear to you that I love but one woman in the world,” said the

student. “I only knew it a moment ago.”

“Oh! what happiness!” cried Goriot.

“But young Taillefer has been called out; the duel comes off to-morrow

morning, and I have heard it said that he may lose his life in it.”

“But what business is it of yours?” said Goriot.

“Why, I ought to tell him so, that he may prevent his son from putting

in an appearance----”

Just at that moment Vautrin’s voice broke in upon them; he was standing

at the threshold of his door and singing:

“Oh! Richard, oh my king!

All the world abandons thee!

Broum! broum! broum! broum! broum!

The same old story everywhere,

A roving heart and a... tra la la.”

“Gentlemen!” shouted Christophe, “the soup is ready, and every one is

waiting for you.”

“Here,” Vautrin called down to him, “come and take a bottle of my

Bordeaux.”

“Do you think your watch is pretty?” asked Goriot. “She has good taste,

hasn’t she? Eh?”

Vautrin, Father Goriot, and Rastignac came downstairs in company, and,

all three of them being late, were obliged to sit together.

Eugene was as distant as possible in his manner to Vautrin during

dinner; but the other, so charming in Mme. Vauquer’s opinion, had never

been so witty. His lively sallies and sparkling talk put the whole

table in good humor. His assurance and coolness filled Eugene with

consternation.

“Why, what has come to you to-day?” inquired Mme. Vauquer. “You are as

merry as a skylark.”

“I am always in spirits after I have made a good bargain.”

“Bargain?” said Eugene.

“Well, yes, bargain. I have just delivered a lot of goods, and I shall

be paid a handsome commission on them--Mlle. Michonneau,” he went on,

seeing that the elderly spinster was scrutinizing him intently, “have

you any objection to some feature in my face, that you are making those

lynx eyes at me? Just let me know, and I will have it changed to oblige

you... We shall not fall out about it, Poiret, I dare say?” he added,

winking at the superannuated clerk.

“Bless my soul, you ought to stand as model for a burlesque Hercules,”

said the young painter.

“I will, upon my word! if Mlle. Michonneau will consent to sit as the

Venus of Pere-Lachaise,” replied Vautrin.

“There’s Poiret,” suggested Bianchon.

“Oh! Poiret shall pose as Poiret. He can be a garden god!” cried

Vautrin; “his name means a pear----”

“A sleepy pear!” Bianchon put in. “You will come in between the pear and

the cheese.”

“What stuff are you all talking!” said Mme. Vauquer; “you would do

better to treat us to your Bordeaux; I see a glimpse of a bottle there.

It would keep us all in a good humor, and it is good for the stomach

besides.”

“Gentlemen,” said Vautrin, “the Lady President calls us to order. Mme.

Couture and Mlle. Victorine will take your jokes in good part, but

respect the innocence of the aged Goriot. I propose a glass or two of

Bordeauxrama, rendered twice illustrious by the name of Laffite, no

political allusions intended.--Come, you Turk!” he added, looking at

Christophe, who did not offer to stir. “Christophe! Here! What, you

don’t answer to your own name? Bring us some liquor, Turk!”

“Here it is, sir,” said Christophe, holding out the bottle.

Vautrin filled Eugene’s glass and Goriot’s likewise, then he

deliberately poured out a few drops into his own glass, and sipped it

while his two neighbors drank their wine. All at once he made a grimace.

“Corked!” he cried. “The devil! You can drink the rest of this,

Christophe, and go and find another bottle; take from the right-hand

side, you know. There are sixteen of us; take down eight bottles.”

“If you are going to stand treat,” said the painter, “I will pay for a

hundred chestnuts.”

“Oh! oh!”

“Booououh!”

“Prrr!”

These exclamations came from all parts of the table like squibs from a

set firework.

“Come, now, Mama Vauquer, a couple of bottles of champagne,” called

Vautrin.

“_Quien!_ just like you! Why not ask for the whole house at once. A

couple of bottles of champagne; that means twelve francs! I shall never

see the money back again, I know! But if M. Eugene has a mind to pay for

it, I have some currant cordial.”

“That currant cordial of hers is as bad as a black draught,” muttered

the medical student.

“Shut up, Bianchon,” exclaimed Rastignac; “the very mention of black

draught makes me feel----. Yes, champagne, by all means; I will pay for

it,” he added.

“Sylvie,” called Mme. Vauquer, “bring in some biscuits, and the little

cakes.”

“Those little cakes are mouldy graybeards,” said Vautrin. “But trot out

the biscuits.”

The Bordeaux wine circulated; the dinner table became a livelier scene

than ever, and the fun grew fast and furious. Imitations of the cries

of various animals mingled with the loud laughter; the Museum official

having taken it into his head to mimic a cat-call rather like the

caterwauling of the animal in question, eight voices simultaneously

struck up with the following variations:

“Scissors to grind!”

“Chick-weeds for singing bir-ds!”

“Brandy-snaps, ladies!”

“China to mend!”

“Boat ahoy!”

“Sticks to beat your wives or your clothes!”

“Old clo’!”

“Cherries all ripe!”

But the palm was awarded to Bianchon for the nasal accent with which he

rendered the cry of “Umbrellas to me-end!”

A few seconds later, and there was a head-splitting racket in the

room, a storm of tomfoolery, a sort of cats’ concert, with Vautrin

as conductor of the orchestra, the latter keeping an eye the while on

Eugene and Father Goriot. The wine seemed to have gone to their heads

already. They leaned back in their chairs, looking at the general

confusion with an air of gravity, and drank but little; both of them

were absorbed in the thought of what lay before them to do that evening,

and yet neither of them felt able to rise and go. Vautrin gave a side

glance at them from time to time, and watched the change that came over

their faces, choosing the moment when their eyes drooped and seemed

about to close, to bend over Rastignac and to say in his ear:--

“My little lad, you are not quite shrewd enough to outwit Papa Vautrin

yet, and he is too fond of you to let you make a mess of your affairs.

When I have made up my mind to do a thing, no one short of Providence

can put me off. Aha! we were for going round to warn old Taillefer,

telling tales out of school! The oven is hot, the dough is kneaded, the

bread is ready for the oven; to-morrow we will eat it up and whisk away

the crumbs; and we are not going to spoil the baking? ... No, no, it is

all as good as done! We may suffer from a few conscientious scruples,

but they will be digested along with the bread. While we are having our

forty winks, Colonel Count Franchessini will clear the way to Michel

Taillefer’s inheritance with the point of his sword. Victorine will come

in for her brother’s money, a snug fifteen thousand francs a year. I

have made inquiries already, and I know that her late mother’s property

amounts to more than three hundred thousand----”

Eugene heard all this, and could not answer a word; his tongue seemed

to be glued to the roof of his mouth, an irresistible drowsiness was

creeping over him. He still saw the table and the faces round it, but it

was through a bright mist. Soon the noise began to subside, one by one

the boarders went. At last, when their numbers had so dwindled that the

party consisted of Mme. Vauquer, Mme. Couture, Mlle. Victorine, Vautrin,

and Father Goriot, Rastignac watched as though in a dream how Mme.

Vauquer busied herself by collecting the bottles, and drained the

remainder of the wine out of each to fill others.

“Oh! how uproarious they are! what a thing it is to be young!” said the

widow.

These were the last words that Eugene heard and understood.

“There is no one like M. Vautrin for a bit of fun like this,” said

Sylvie. “There, just hark at Christophe, he is snoring like a top.”

“Good-bye, mamma,” said Vautrin; “I am going to a theatre on the

boulevard to see M. Marty in _Le Mont Sauvage_, a fine play taken

from _Le Solitaire_.... If you like, I will take you and these two

ladies----”

“Thank you; I must decline,” said Mme. Couture.

“What! my good lady!” cried Mme. Vauquer, “decline to see a play founded

on the _Le Solitaire_, a work by Atala de Chateaubriand? We were so fond

of that book that we cried over it like Magdalens under the _line-trees_

last summer, and then it is an improving work that might edify your

young lady.”

“We are forbidden to go to the play,” answered Victorine.

“Just look, those two yonder have dropped off where they sit,” said

Vautrin, shaking the heads of the two sleepers in a comical way.

He altered the sleeping student’s position, settled his head more

comfortably on the back of his chair, kissed him warmly on the forehead,

and began to sing:

“Sleep, little darlings;

I watch while you slumber.”

“I am afraid he may be ill,” said Victorine.

“Then stop and take care of him,” returned Vautrin. “‘Tis your duty as

a meek and obedient wife,” he whispered in her ear. “The young fellow

worships you, and you will be his little wife--there’s your fortune for

you. In short,” he added aloud, “they lived happily ever afterwards,

were much looked up to in all the countryside, and had a numerous

family. That is how all the romances end.--Now, mamma,” he went on, as

he turned to Madame Vauquer and put his arm round her waist, “put on

your bonnet, your best flowered silk, and the countess’ scarf, while I

go out and call a cab--all my own self.”

And he started out, singing as he went:

“Oh! sun! divine sun!

Ripening the pumpkins every one.”

“My goodness! Well, I’m sure! Mme. Couture, I could live happily in a

garret with a man like that.--There, now!” she added, looking round for

the old vermicelli maker, “there is that Father Goriot half seas over.

_He_ never thought of taking me anywhere, the old skinflint. But he will

measure his length somewhere. My word! it is disgraceful to lose his

senses like that, at his age! You will be telling me that he couldn’t

lose what he hadn’t got--Sylvie, just take him up to his room!”

Sylvie took him by the arm, supported him upstairs, and flung him just

as he was, like a package, across the bed.

“Poor young fellow!” said Mme. Couture, putting back Eugene’s hair that

had fallen over his eyes; “he is like a young girl, he does not know

what dissipation is.”

“Well, I can tell you this, I know,” said Mme. Vauquer, “I have taken

lodgers these thirty years, and a good many have passed through my

hands, as the saying is, but I have never seen a nicer nor a more

aristocratic looking young man than M. Eugene. How handsome he looks

sleeping! Just let his head rest on your shoulder, Mme. Couture. Pshaw!

he falls over towards Mlle. Victorine. There’s a special providence for

young things. A little more, and he would have broken his head against

the knob of the chair. They’d make a pretty pair those two would!”

“Hush, my good neighbor,” cried Mme. Couture, “you are saying such

things----”

“Pooh!” put in Mme. Vauquer, “he does not hear.--Here, Sylvie! come and

help me to dress. I shall put on my best stays.”

“What! your best stays just after dinner, madame?” said Sylvie. “No, you

can get some one else to lace you. I am not going to be your murderer.

It’s a rash thing to do, and might cost you your life.”

“I don’t care, I must do honor to M. Vautrin.”

“Are you so fond of your heirs as all that?”

“Come, Sylvie, don’t argue,” said the widow, as she left the room.

“At her age, too!” said the cook to Victorine, pointing to her mistress

as she spoke.

Mme. Couture and her ward were left in the dining-room, and Eugene

slept on Victorine’s shoulder. The sound of Christophe’s snoring echoed

through the silent house; Eugene’s quiet breathing seemed all the

quieter by force of contrast, he was sleeping as peacefully as a child.

Victorine was very happy; she was free to perform one of those acts of

charity which form an innocent outlet for all the overflowing sentiments

of a woman’s nature; he was so close to her that she could feel the

throbbing of his heart; there was a look of almost maternal protection

and conscious pride in Victorine’s face. Among the countless thoughts

that crowded up in her young innocent heart, there was a wild flutter of

joy at this close contact.

“Poor, dear child!” said Mme. Couture, squeezing her hand.

The old lady looked at the girl. Victorine’s innocent, pathetic face,

so radiant with the new happiness that had befallen her, called to

mind some naive work of mediaeval art, when the painter neglected the

accessories, reserving all the magic of his brush for the quiet,

austere outlines and ivory tints of the face, which seems to have caught

something of the golden glory of heaven.

“After all, he only took two glasses, mamma,” said Victorine, passing

her fingers through Eugene’s hair.

“Indeed, if he had been a dissipated young man, child, he would have

carried his wine like the rest of them. His drowsiness does him credit.”

There was a sound of wheels outside in the street.

“There is M. Vautrin, mamma,” said the girl. “Just take M. Eugene. I

would rather not have that man see me like this; there are some ways of

looking at you that seem to sully your soul and make you feel as though

you had nothing on.”

“Oh, no, you are wrong!” said Mme. Couture. “M. Vautrin is a worthy man;

he reminds me a little of my late husband, poor dear M. Couture, rough

but kind-hearted; his bark is worse than his bite.”

Vautrin came in while she was speaking; he did not make a sound, but

looked for a while at the picture of the two young faces--the lamplight

falling full upon them seemed to caress them.

“Well,” he remarked, folding his arms, “here is a picture! It would have

suggested some pleasing pages to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (good

soul), who wrote _Paul et Virginie_. Youth is very charming, Mme.

Couture!--Sleep on, poor boy,” he added, looking at Eugene, “luck

sometimes comes while you are sleeping.--There is something touching and

attractive to me about this young man, madame,” he continued; “I know

that his nature is in harmony with his face. Just look, the head of

a cherub on an angel’s shoulder! He deserves to be loved. If I were a

woman, I would die (no--not such a fool), I would live for him.” He

bent lower and spoke in the widow’s ear. “When I see those two together,

madame, I cannot help thinking that Providence meant them for each

other; He works by secret ways, and tries the reins and the heart,” he

said in a loud voice. “And when I see you, my children, thus united by

a like purity and by all human affections, I say to myself that it is

quite impossible that the future should separate you. God is just.”--He

turned to Victorine. “It seems to me,” he said, “that I have seen the

line of success in your hand. Let me look at it, Mlle. Victorine; I am

well up in palmistry, and I have told fortunes many a time. Come, now,

don’t be frightened. Ah! what do I see? Upon my word, you will be one of

the richest heiresses in Paris before very long. You will heap riches

on the man who loves you. Your father will want you to go and live with

him. You will marry a young and handsome man with a title, and he will

idolize you.”

The heavy footsteps of the coquettish widow, who was coming down the

stairs, interrupted Vautrin’s fortune-telling. “Here is Mamma Vauquerre,

fair as a starr-r-r, dressed within an inch of her life.--Aren’t we a

trifle pinched for room?” he inquired, with his arm round the lady;

“we are screwed up very tightly about the bust, mamma! If we are much

agitated, there may be an explosion; but I will pick up the fragments

with all the care of an antiquary.”

“There is a man who can talk the language of French gallantry!” said the

widow, bending to speak in Mme. Couture’s ear.

“Good-bye, little ones!” said Vautrin, turning to Eugene and Victorine.

“Bless you both!” and he laid a hand on either head. “Take my word for

it, young lady, an honest man’s prayers are worth something; they should

bring you happiness, for God hears them.”

“Good-bye, dear,” said Mme. Vauquer to her lodger. “Do you think that M.

Vautrin means to run away with me?” she added, lowering her voice.

“Lack-a-day!” said the widow.

“Oh! mamma dear, suppose it should really happen as that kind M. Vautrin

said!” said Victorine with a sigh as she looked at her hands. The two

women were alone together.

“Why, it wouldn’t take much to bring it to pass,” said the elderly lady;

“just a fall from his horse, and your monster of a brother----”

“Oh! mamma.”

“Good Lord! Well, perhaps it is a sin to wish bad luck to an enemy,” the

widow remarked. “I will do penance for it. Still, I would strew

flowers on his grave with the greatest pleasure, and that is the truth.

Black-hearted, that he is! The coward couldn’t speak up for his own

mother, and cheats you out of your share by deceit and trickery. My

cousin had a pretty fortune of her own, but unluckily for you, nothing

was said in the marriage-contract about anything that she might come in

for.”

“It would be very hard if my fortune is to cost some one else his life,”

said Victorine. “If I cannot be happy unless my brother is to be taken

out of the world, I would rather stay here all my life.”

“_Mon Dieu!_ it is just as that good M. Vautrin says, and he is full of

piety, you see,” Mme. Couture remarked. “I am very glad to find that

he is not an unbeliever like the rest of them that talk of the Almighty

with less respect than they do of the Devil. Well, as he was saying, who

can know the ways by which it may please Providence to lead us?”

With Sylvie’s help the two women at last succeeded in getting Eugene

up to his room; they laid him on the bed, and the cook unfastened

his clothes to make him more comfortable. Before they left the room,

Victorine snatched an opportunity when her guardian’s back was turned,

and pressed a kiss on Eugene’s forehead, feeling all the joy that this

stolen pleasure could give her. Then she looked round the room, and

gathering up, as it were, into one single thought all the untold bliss

of that day, she made a picture of her memories, and dwelt upon it until

she slept, the happiest creature in Paris.

That evening’s merry-making, in the course of which Vautrin had

given the drugged wine to Eugene and Father Goriot, was his own

ruin. Bianchon, flustered with wine, forgot to open the subject of

Trompe-la-Mort with Mlle. Michonneau. The mere mention of the name would

have set Vautrin on his guard; for Vautrin, or, to give him his real

name, Jacques Collin, was in fact the notorious escaped convict.

But it was the joke about the Venus of Pere-Lachaise that finally

decided his fate. Mlle. Michonneau had very nearly made up her mind to

warn the convict and to throw herself on his generosity, with the idea

of making a better bargain for herself by helping him to escape that

night; but as it was, she went out escorted by Poiret in search of the

famous chief of detectives in the Petite Rue Saint-Anne, still thinking

that it was the district superintendent--one Gondureau--with whom she

had to do. The head of the department received his visitors courteously.

There was a little talk, and the details were definitely arranged. Mlle.

Michonneau asked for the draught that she was to administer in order to

set about her investigation. But the great man’s evident satisfaction

set Mlle. Michonneau thinking; and she began to see that this business

involved something more than the mere capture of a runaway convict. She

racked her brains while he looked in a drawer in his desk for the

little phial, and it dawned upon her that in consequence of treacherous

revelations made by the prisoners the police were hoping to lay their

hands on a considerable sum of money. But on hinting her suspicions to

the old fox of the Petite Rue Saint-Anne, that officer began to smile,

and tried to put her off the scent.

“A delusion,” he said. “Collin’s _sorbonne_ is the most dangerous that

has yet been found among the dangerous classes. That is all, and the

rascals are quite aware of it. They rally round him; he is the backbone

of the federation, its Bonaparte, in short; he is very popular with them

all. The rogue will never leave his _chump_ in the Place de Greve.”

As Mlle. Michonneau seemed mystified, Gondureau explained the two

slang words for her benefit. _Sorbonne_ and _chump_ are two forcible

expressions borrowed from thieves’ Latin, thieves, of all people, being

compelled to consider the human head in its two aspects. A sorbonne is

the head of a living man, his faculty of thinking--his council; a chump

is a contemptuous epithet that implies how little a human head is worth

after the axe has done its work.

“Collin is playing us off,” he continued. “When we come across a man

like a bar of steel tempered in the English fashion, there is always one

resource left--we can kill him if he takes it into his head to make the

least resistance. We are reckoning on several methods of killing Collin

to-morrow morning. It saves a trial, and society is rid of him without

all the expense of guarding and feeding him. What with getting up the

case, summoning witnesses, paying their expenses, and carrying out the

sentence, it costs a lot to go through all the proper formalities before

you can get quit of one of these good-for-nothings, over and above the

three thousand francs that you are going to have. There is a saving

in time as well. One good thrust of the bayonet into Trompe-la-Mort’s

paunch will prevent scores of crimes, and save fifty scoundrels from

following his example; they will be very careful to keep themselves out

of the police courts. That is doing the work of the police thoroughly,

and true philanthropists will tell you that it is better to prevent

crime than to punish it.”

“And you do a service to our country,” said Poiret.

“Really, you are talking in a very sensible manner tonight, that you

are,” said the head of the department. “Yes, of course, we are serving

our country, and we are very hardly used too. We do society very great

services that are not recognized. In fact, a superior man must rise

above vulgar prejudices, and a Christian must resign himself to

the mishaps that doing right entails, when right is done in an

out-of-the-way style. Paris is Paris, you see! That is the explanation

of my life.--I have the honor to wish you a good-evening, mademoiselle.

I shall bring my men to the Jardin du Roi in the morning. Send

Christophe to the Rue du Buffon, tell him to ask for M. Gondureau in the

house where you saw me before.--Your servant, sir. If you should ever

have anything stolen from you, come to me, and I will do my best to get

it back for you.”

“Well, now,” Poiret remarked to Mlle. Michonneau, “there are idiots

who are scared out of their wits by the word police. That was a very

pleasant-spoken gentleman, and what he wants you to do is as easy as

saying ‘Good-day.’”

The next day was destined to be one of the most extraordinary in the

annals of the Maison Vauquer. Hitherto the most startling occurrence in

its tranquil existence had been the portentous, meteor-like apparition

of the sham Comtesse de l’Ambermesnil. But the catastrophes of this

great day were to cast all previous events into the shade, and supply an

inexhaustible topic of conversation for Mme. Vauquer and her boarders so

long as she lived.

In the first place, Goriot and Eugene de Rastignac both slept till close

upon eleven o’clock. Mme. Vauquer, who came home about midnight from

the Gaite, lay a-bed till half-past ten. Christophe, after a prolonged

slumber (he had finished Vautrin’s first bottle of wine), was behindhand

with his work, but Poiret and Mlle. Michonneau uttered no complaint,

though breakfast was delayed. As for Victorine and Mme. Couture, they

also lay late. Vautrin went out before eight o’clock, and only came back

just as breakfast was ready. Nobody protested, therefore, when Sylvie

and Christophe went up at a quarter past eleven, knocked at all the

doors, and announced that breakfast was waiting. While Sylvie and the

man were upstairs, Mlle. Michonneau, who came down first, poured the

contents of the phial into the silver cup belonging to Vautrin--it was

standing with the others in the bain-marie that kept the cream hot for

the morning coffee. The spinster had reckoned on this custom of the

house to do her stroke of business. The seven lodgers were at last

collected together, not without some difficulty. Just as Eugene came

downstairs, stretching himself and yawning, a commissionaire handed him

a letter from Mme. de Nucingen. It ran thus:--

“I feel neither false vanity nor anger where you are concerned, my

friend. Till two o’clock this morning I waited for you. Oh, that waiting

for one whom you love! No one that had passed through that torture could

inflict it on another. I know now that you have never loved before.

What can have happened? Anxiety has taken hold of me. I would have come

myself to find out what had happened, if I had not feared to betray the

secrets of my heart. How can I walk out or drive out at this time of

day? Would it not be ruin? I have felt to the full how wretched it is to

be a woman. Send a word to reassure me, and explain how it is that you

have not come after what my father told you. I shall be angry, but I

will forgive you. One word, for pity’s sake. You will come to me soon,

will you not? If you are busy, a line will be enough. Say, ‘I will

hasten to you,’ or else, ‘I am ill.’ But if you were ill my father would

have come to tell me so. What can have happened?...”

“Yes, indeed, what has happened?” exclaimed Eugene, and, hurrying down

to the dining-room, he crumpled up the letter without reading any more.

“What time is it?”

“Half-past eleven,” said Vautrin, dropping a lump of sugar into his

coffee.

The escaped convict cast a glance at Eugene, a cold and fascinating

glance; men gifted with this magnetic power can quell furious lunatics

in a madhouse by such a glance, it is said. Eugene shook in every limb.

There was the sound of wheels in the street, and in another moment a man

with a scared face rushed into the room. It was one of M. Taillefer’s

servants; Mme. Couture recognized the livery at once.

“Mademoiselle,” he cried, “your father is asking for you--something

terrible has happened! M. Frederic has had a sword thrust in the

forehead in a duel, and the doctors have given him up. You will scarcely

be in time to say good-bye to him! he is unconscious.”

“Poor young fellow!” exclaimed Vautrin. “How can people brawl when they

have a certain income of thirty thousand livres? Young people have bad

manners, and that is a fact.”

“Sir!” cried Eugene.

“Well, what then, you big baby!” said Vautrin, swallowing down his

coffee imperturbably, an operation which Mlle. Michonneau watched with

such close attention that she had no emotion to spare for the amazing

news that had struck the others dumb with amazement. “Are there not

duels every morning in Paris?” added Vautrin.

“I will go with you, Victorine,” said Mme. Couture, and the two women

hurried away at once without either hats or shawls. But before she

went, Victorine, with her eyes full of tears, gave Eugene a glance that

said--“How little I thought that our happiness should cost me tears!”

“Dear me, you are a prophet, M. Vautrin,” said Mme. Vauquer.

“I am all sorts of things,” said Vautrin.

“Queer, isn’t it?” said Mme. Vauquer, stringing together a succession of

commonplaces suited to the occasion. “Death takes us off without asking

us about it. The young often go before the old. It is a lucky thing

for us women that we are not liable to fight duels, but we have other

complaints that men don’t suffer from. We bear children, and it takes a

long time to get over it. What a windfall for Victorine! Her father will

have to acknowledge her now!”

“There!” said Vautrin, looking at Eugene, “yesterday she had not a

penny; this morning she has several millions to her fortune.”

“I say, M. Eugene!” cried Mme. Vauquer, “you have landed on your feet!”

At this exclamation, Father Goriot looked at the student, and saw the

crumpled letter still in his hand.

“You have not read it through! What does this mean? Are you going to be

like the rest of them?” he asked.

“Madame, I shall never marry Mlle. Victorine,” said Eugene, turning to

Mme. Vauquer with an expression of terror and loathing that surprised

the onlookers at this scene.

Father Goriot caught the student’s hand and grasped it warmly. He could

have kissed it.

“Oh, ho!” said Vautrin, “the Italians have a good proverb--_Col tempo_.”

“Is there any answer?” said Mme. de Nucingen’s messenger, addressing

Eugene.

“Say that I will come directly.”

The man went. Eugene was in a state of such violent excitement that he

could not be prudent.

“What is to be done?” he exclaimed aloud. “There are no proofs!”

Vautrin began to smile. Though the drug he had taken was doing its work,

the convict was so vigorous that he rose to his feet, gave Rastignac a

look, and said in hollow tones, “Luck comes to us while we sleep, young

man,” and fell stiff and stark, as if he were struck dead.

“So there is a Divine Justice!” said Eugene.

“Well, if ever! What has come to that poor dear M. Vautrin?”

“A stroke!” cried Mlle. Michonneau.

“Here, Sylvie! girl, run for the doctor,” called the widow. “Oh, M.

Rastignac, just go for M. Bianchon, and be as quick as you can; Sylvie

might not be in time to catch our doctor, M. Grimprel.”

Rastignac was glad of an excuse to leave that den of horrors, his hurry

for the doctor was nothing but a flight.

“Here, Christophe, go round to the chemist’s and ask for something

that’s good for the apoplexy.”

Christophe likewise went.

“Father Goriot, just help us to get him upstairs.”

Vautrin was taken up among them, carried carefully up the narrow

staircase, and laid upon his bed.

“I can do no good here, so I shall go to see my daughter,” said M.

Goriot.

“Selfish old thing!” cried Mme. Vauquer. “Yes, go; I wish you may die

like a dog.”

“Just go and see if you can find some ether,” said Mlle. Michonneau to

Mme. Vauquer; the former, with some help from Poiret, had unfastened the

sick man’s clothes.

Mme. Vauquer went down to her room, and left Mlle. Michonneau mistress

of the situation.

“Now! just pull down his shirt and turn him over, quick! You might be

of some use in sparing my modesty,” she said to Poiret, “instead of

standing there like a stock.”

Vautrin was turned over; Mlle. Michonneau gave his shoulder a sharp

slap, and the two portentous letters appeared, white against the red.

“There, you have earned your three thousand francs very easily,”

exclaimed Poiret, supporting Vautrin while Mlle. Michonneau slipped

on the shirt again.--“Ouf! How heavy he is,” he added, as he laid the

convict down.

“Hush! Suppose there is a strong-box here!” said the old maid briskly;

her glances seemed to pierce the walls, she scrutinized every article of

the furniture with greedy eyes. “Could we find some excuse for opening

that desk?”

“It mightn’t be quite right,” responded Poiret to this.

“Where is the harm? It is money stolen from all sorts of people, so

it doesn’t belong to any one now. But we haven’t time, there is the

Vauquer.”

“Here is the ether,” said that lady. “I must say that this is an

eventful day. Lord! that man can’t have had a stroke; he is as white as

curds.”

“White as curds?” echoed Poiret.

“And his pulse is steady,” said the widow, laying her hand on his

breast.

“Steady?” said the astonished Poiret.

“He is all right.”

“Do you think so?” asked Poiret.

“Lord! Yes, he looks as if he were sleeping. Sylvie has gone for a

doctor. I say, Mlle. Michonneau, he is sniffing the ether. Pooh! it is

only a spasm. His pulse is good. He is as strong as a Turk. Just look,

mademoiselle, what a fur tippet he has on his chest; that is the sort

of man to live till he is a hundred. His wig holds on tightly, however.

Dear me! it is glued on, and his own hair is red; that is why he wears

a wig. They say that red-haired people are either the worst or the best.

Is he one of the good ones, I wonder?”

“Good to hang,” said Poiret.

“Round a pretty woman’s neck, you mean,” said Mlle Michonneau, hastily.

“Just go away, M. Poiret. It is a woman’s duty to nurse you men when you

are ill. Besides, for all the good you are doing, you may as well take

yourself off,” she added. “Mme. Vauquer and I will take great care of

dear M. Vautrin.”

Poiret went out on tiptoe without a murmur, like a dog kicked out of the

room by his master.

Rastignac had gone out for the sake of physical exertion; he wanted

to breathe the air, he felt stifled. Yesterday evening he had meant to

prevent the murder arranged for half-past eight that morning. What had

happened? What ought he to do now? He trembled to think that he himself

might be implicated. Vautrin’s coolness still further dismayed him.

“Yet, how if Vautrin should die without saying a word?” Rastignac asked

himself.

He hurried along the alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens as if the hounds

of justice were after him, and he already heard the baying of the pack.

“Well?” shouted Bianchon, “you have seen the _Pilote_?”

The _Pilote_ was a Radical sheet, edited by M. Tissot. It came out

several hours later than the morning papers, and was meant for the

benefit of country subscribers; for it brought the morning news into

provincial districts twenty-four hours sooner than the ordinary local

journals.

“There is a wonderful history in it,” said the house student of the

Hopital Cochin. “Young Taillefer called out Count Franchessini, of

the Old Guard, and the Count put a couple of inches of steel into his

forehead. And here is little Victorine one of the richest heiresses in

Paris! If we had known that, eh? What a game of chance death is! They

say Victorine was sweet on you; was there any truth in it?”

“Shut up, Bianchon; I shall never marry her. I am in love with a

charming woman, and she is in love with me, so----”

“You said that as if you were screwing yourself up to be faithful

to her. I should like to see the woman worth the sacrifice of Master

Taillefer’s money!”

“Are all the devils of hell at my heels?” cried Rastignac.

“What is the matter with you? Are you mad? Give us your hand,” said

Bianchon, “and let me feel your pulse. You are feverish.”

“Just go to Mother Vauquer’s,” said Rastignac; “that scoundrel Vautrin

has dropped down like one dead.”

“Aha!” said Bianchon, leaving Rastignac to his reflections, “you confirm

my suspicions, and now I mean to make sure for myself.”

The law student’s long walk was a memorable one for him. He made in

some sort a survey of his conscience. After a close scrutiny, after

hesitation and self-examination, his honor at any rate came out

scatheless from this sharp and terrible ordeal, like a bar of iron

tested in the English fashion. He remembered Father Goriot’s confidences

of the evening before; he recollected the rooms taken for him in the Rue

d’Artois, so that he might be near Delphine; and then he thought of his

letter, and read it again and kissed it.

“Such a love is my anchor of safety,” he said to himself. “How the old

man’s heart must have been wrung! He says nothing about all that he has

been through; but who could not guess? Well, then, I will be like a

son to him; his life shall be made happy. If she cares for me, she will

often come to spend the day with him. That grand Comtesse de Restaud is

a heartless thing; she would make her father into her hall porter. Dear

Delphine! she is kinder to the old man; she is worthy to be loved. Ah!

this evening I shall be very happy!”

He took out his watch and admired it.

“I have had nothing but success! If two people mean to love each other

for ever, they may help each other, and I can take this. Besides,

I shall succeed, and I will pay her a hundredfold. There is nothing

criminal in this _liaison_; nothing that could cause the most austere

moralist to frown. How many respectable people contract similar unions!

We deceive nobody; it is deception that makes a position humiliating.

If you lie, you lower yourself at once. She and her husband have lived

apart for a long while. Besides, how if I called upon that Alsatian to

resign a wife whom he cannot make happy?”

Rastignac’s battle with himself went on for a long while; and though the

scruples of youth inevitably gained the day, an irresistible curiosity

led him, about half-past four, to return to the Maison Vauquer through

the gathering dusk.

Bianchon had given Vautrin an emetic, reserving the contents of the

stomach for chemical analysis at the hospital. Mlle. Michonneau’s

officious alacrity had still further strengthened his suspicions of her.

Vautrin, moreover, had recovered so quickly that it was impossible

not to suspect some plot against the leader of all frolics at the

lodging-house. Vautrin was standing in front of the stove in the

dining-room when Rastignac came in. All the lodgers were assembled

sooner than usual by the news of young Taillefer’s duel. They were

anxious to hear any detail about the affair, and to talk over the

probable change in Victorine’s prospects. Father Goriot alone was

absent, but the rest were chatting. No sooner did Eugene come into the

room, than his eyes met the inscrutable gaze of Vautrin. It was the same

look that had read his thoughts before--the look that had such power to

waken evil thoughts in his heart. He shuddered.

“Well, dear boy,” said the escaped convict, “I am likely to cheat death

for a good while yet. According to these ladies, I have had a stroke

that would have felled an ox, and come off with flying colors.”

“A bull you might say,” cried the widow.

“You really might be sorry to see me still alive,” said Vautrin in

Rastignac’s ear, thinking that he guessed the student’s thoughts. “You

must be mighty sure of yourself.”

“Mlle. Michonneau was talking the day before yesterday about a gentleman

named _Trompe-la-Mort_,” said Bianchon; “and, upon my word, that name

would do very well for you.”

Vautrin seemed thunderstruck. He turned pale, and staggered back.

He turned his magnetic glance, like a ray of vivid light, on Mlle.

Michonneau; the old maid shrank and trembled under the influence of that

strong will, and collapsed into a chair. The mask of good-nature had

dropped from the convict’s face; from the unmistakable ferocity of that

sinister look, Poiret felt that the old maid was in danger, and hastily

stepped between them. None of the lodgers understood this scene in the

least, they looked on in mute amazement. There was a pause. Just then

there was a sound of tramping feet outside; there were soldiers there,

it seemed, for there was a ring of several rifles on the pavement of

the street. Collin was mechanically looking round the walls for a way of

escape, when four men entered by way of the sitting-room.

“In the name of the King and the Law!” said an officer, but the words

were almost lost in a murmur of astonishment.

Silence fell on the room. The lodgers made way for three of the men, who

had each a hand on a cocked pistol in a side pocket. Two policemen, who

followed the detectives, kept the entrance to the sitting-room, and two

more men appeared in the doorway that gave access to the staircase. A

sound of footsteps came from the garden, and again the rifles of several

soldiers rang on the cobblestones under the window. All chance of

salvation by flight was cut off for Trompe-la-Mort, to whom all eyes

instinctively turned. The chief walked straight up to him, and commenced

operations by giving him a sharp blow on the head, so that the wig fell

off, and Collin’s face was revealed in all its ugliness. There was

a terrible suggestion of strength mingled with cunning in the short,

brick-red crop of hair, the whole head was in harmony with his powerful

frame, and at that moment the fires of hell seemed to gleam from his

eyes. In that flash the real Vautrin shone forth, revealed at once

before them all; they understood his past, his present, and future, his

pitiless doctrines, his actions, the religion of his own good pleasure,

the majesty with which his cynicism and contempt for mankind invested

him, the physical strength of an organization proof against all trials.

The blood flew to his face, and his eyes glared like the eyes of a wild

cat. He started back with savage energy and a fierce growl that drew

exclamations of alarm from the lodgers. At that leonine start the police

caught at their pistols under cover of the general clamor. Collin saw

the gleaming muzzles of the weapons, saw his danger, and instantly gave

proof of a power of the highest order. There was something horrible and

majestic in the spectacle of the sudden transformation in his face; he

could only be compared to a cauldron full of the steam that can send

mountains flying, a terrific force dispelled in a moment by a drop

of cold water. The drop of water that cooled his wrathful fury was a

reflection that flashed across his brain like lightning. He began to

smile, and looked down at his wig.

“You are not in the politest of humors to-day,” he remarked to the

chief, and he held out his hands to the policemen with a jerk of his

head.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “put on the bracelets or the handcuffs. I call on

those present to witness that I make no resistance.”

A murmur of admiration ran through the room at the sudden outpouring

like fire and lava flood from this human volcano, and its equally sudden

cessation.

“There’s a sell for you, master crusher,” the convict added, looking at

the famous director of police.

“Come, strip!” said he of the Petite Rue Saint-Anne, contemptuously.

“Why?” asked Collin. “There are ladies present; I deny nothing, and

surrender.”

He paused, and looked round the room like an orator who is about to

overwhelm his audience.

“Take this down, Daddy Lachapelle,” he went on, addressing a little,

white-haired old man who had seated himself at the end of the table; and

after drawing a printed form from the portfolio, was proceeding to draw

up a document. “I acknowledge myself to be Jacques Collin, otherwise

known as Trompe-la-Mort, condemned to twenty years’ penal servitude, and

I have just proved that I have come fairly by my nickname.--If I had

as much as raised my hand,” he went on, addressing the other lodgers,

“those three sneaking wretches yonder would have drawn claret on Mamma

Vauquer’s domestic hearth. The rogues have laid their heads together to

set a trap for me.”

Mme. Vauquer felt sick and faint at these words.

“Good Lord!” she cried, “this does give one a turn; and me at the Gaite

with him only last night!” she said to Sylvie.

“Summon your philosophy, mamma,” Collin resumed. “Is it a misfortune to

have sat in my box at the Gaite yesterday evening? After all, are you

better than we are? The brand upon our shoulders is less shameful than

the brand set on your hearts, you flabby members of a society rotten

to the core. Not the best man among you could stand up to me.” His

eyes rested upon Rastignac, to whom he spoke with a pleasant smile

that seemed strangely at variance with the savage expression in his

eyes.--“Our little bargain still holds good, dear boy; you can accept

any time you like! Do you understand?” And he sang:

“A charming girl is my Fanchette

In her simplicity.”

“Don’t you trouble yourself,” he went on; “I can get in my money. They

are too much afraid of me to swindle me.”

The convicts’ prison, its language and customs, its sudden sharp

transitions from the humorous to the horrible, its appalling grandeur,

its triviality and its dark depths, were all revealed in turn by the

speaker’s discourse; he seemed to be no longer a man, but the type and

mouthpiece of a degenerate race, a brutal, supple, clear-headed race of

savages. In one moment Collin became the poet of an inferno, wherein all

thoughts and passions that move human nature (save repentance) find a

place. He looked about him like a fallen archangel who is for war to the

end. Rastignac lowered his eyes, and acknowledged this kinship claimed

by crime as an expiation of his own evil thoughts.

“Who betrayed me?” said Collin, and his terrible eyes traveled round the

room. Suddenly they rested on Mlle. Michonneau.

“It was you, old cat!” he said. “That sham stroke of apoplexy was your

doing, lynx eyes!... Two words from me, and your throat would be cut in

less than a week, but I forgive you, I am a Christian. You did not sell

me either. But who did?----Aha! you may rummage upstairs,” he shouted,

hearing the police officers opening his cupboards and taking possession

of his effects. “The nest is empty, the birds flew away yesterday, and

you will be none the wiser. My ledgers are here,” he said tapping his

forehead. “Now I know who sold me! It could only be that blackguard

Fil-de-Soie. That is who it was, old catchpoll, eh?” he said, turning to

the chief. “It was timed so neatly to get the banknotes up above there.

There is nothing left for you--spies! As for Fil-de-Soie, he will be

under the daisies in less than a fortnight, even if you were to tell off

the whole force to protect him. How much did you give the Michonnette?”

he asked of the police officers. “A thousand crowns? Oh you Ninon in

decay, Pompadour in tatters, Venus of the graveyard, I was worth more

than that! If you had given me warning, you should have had six thousand

francs. Ah! you had no suspicion of that, old trafficker in flesh and

blood, or I should have had the preference. Yes, I would have given six

thousand francs to save myself an inconvenient journey and some loss of

money,” he said, as they fastened the handcuffs on his wrists. “These

folks will amuse themselves by dragging out this business till the end

of time to keep me idle. If they were to send me straight to jail, I

should soon be back at my old tricks in spite of the duffers at the Quai

des Orfevres. Down yonder they will all turn themselves inside out to

help their general--their good Trompe-la-Mort--to get clear away. Is

there a single one among you that can say, as I can, that he has ten

thousand brothers ready to do anything for him?” he asked proudly.

“There is some good there,” he said tapping his heart; “I have never

betrayed any one!--Look you here, you slut,” he said to the old maid,

“they are all afraid of me, do you see? but the sight of you turns them

sick. Rake in your gains.”

He was silent for a moment, and looked round at the lodgers’ faces.

“What dolts you are, all of you! Have you never seen a convict before?

A convict of Collin’s stamp, whom you see before you, is a man less

weak-kneed than others; he lifts up his voice against the colossal fraud

of the Social Contract, as Jean Jacques did, whose pupil he is proud

to declare himself. In short, I stand here single-handed against a

Government and a whole subsidized machinery of tribunals and police, and

I am a match for them all.”

“Ye gods!” cried the painter, “what a magnificent sketch one might make

of him!”

“Look here, you gentlemen-in-waiting to his highness the gibbet, master

of ceremonies to the widow” (a nickname full of sombre poetry, given

by prisoners to the guillotine), “be a good fellow, and tell me if it

really was Fil-de-Soie who sold me. I don’t want him to suffer for some

one else, that would not be fair.”

But before the chief had time to answer, the rest of the party returned

from making their investigations upstairs. Everything had been opened

and inventoried. A few words passed between them and the chief, and the

official preliminaries were complete.

“Gentlemen,” said Collin, addressing the lodgers, “they will take me

away directly. You have all made my stay among you very agreeable, and I

shall look back upon it with gratitude. Receive my adieux, and permit me

to send you figs from Provence.”

He advanced a step or two, and then turned to look once more at

Rastignac.

“Good-bye, Eugene,” he said, in a sad and gentle tone, a strange

transition from his previous rough and stern manner. “If you should

be hard up, I have left you a devoted friend,” and, in spite of his

shackles, he managed to assume a posture of defence, called, “One, two!”

like a fencing-master, and lunged. “If anything goes wrong, apply in

that quarter. Man and money, all at your service.”

The strange speaker’s manner was sufficiently burlesque, so that no

one but Rastignac knew that there was a serious meaning underlying the

pantomime.

As soon as the police, soldiers, and detectives had left the house,

Sylvie, who was rubbing her mistress’ temples with vinegar, looked round

at the bewildered lodgers.

“Well,” said she, “he was a man, he was, for all that.”

Her words broke the spell. Every one had been too much excited, too much

moved by very various feelings to speak. But now the lodgers began

to look at each other, and then all eyes were turned at once on Mlle.

Michonneau, a thin, shriveled, dead-alive, mummy-like figure, crouching

by the stove; her eyes were downcast, as if she feared that the green

eye-shade could not shut out the expression of those faces from her.

This figure and the feeling of repulsion she had so long excited were

explained all at once. A smothered murmur filled the room; it was so

unanimous, that it seemed as if the same feeling of loathing had pitched

all the voices in one key. Mlle. Michonneau heard it, and did not stir.

It was Bianchon who was the first to move; he bent over his neighbor,

and said in a low voice, “If that creature is going to stop here, and

have dinner with us, I shall clear out.”

In the twinkling of an eye it was clear that every one in the room, save

Poiret, was of the medical student’s opinion, so that the latter, strong

in the support of the majority, went up to that elderly person.

“You are more intimate with Mlle. Michonneau than the rest of us,” he

said; “speak to her, make her understand that she must go, and go at

once.”

“At once!” echoed Poiret in amazement.

Then he went across to the crouching figure, and spoke a few words in

her ear.

“I have paid beforehand for the quarter; I have as much right to be here

as any one else,” she said, with a viperous look at the boarders.

“Never mind that! we will club together and pay you the money back,”

said Rastignac.

“Monsieur is taking Collin’s part” she said, with a questioning,

malignant glance at the law student; “it is not difficult to guess why.”

Eugene started forward at the words, as if he meant to spring upon her

and wring her neck. That glance, and the depths of treachery that it

revealed, had been a hideous enlightenment.

“Let her alone!” cried the boarders.

Rastignac folded his arms and was silent.

“Let us have no more of Mlle. Judas,” said the painter, turning to Mme.

Vauquer. “If you don’t show the Michonneau the door, madame, we shall

all leave your shop, and wherever we go we shall say that there are only

convicts and spies left there. If you do the other thing, we will hold

our tongues about the business; for when all is said and done, it might

happen in the best society until they brand them on the forehead, when

they send them to the hulks. They ought not to let convicts go about

Paris disguised like decent citizens, so as to carry on their antics

like a set of rascally humbugs, which they are.”

At this Mme. Vauquer recovered miraculously. She sat up and folded her

arms; her eyes were wide open now, and there was no sign of tears in

them.

“Why, do you really mean to be the ruin of my establishment, my dear

sir? There is M. Vautrin----Goodness,” she cried, interrupting herself,

“I can’t help calling him by the name he passed himself off by for an

honest man! There is one room to let already, and you want me to

turn out two more lodgers in the middle of the season, when no one is

moving----”

“Gentlemen, let us take our hats and go and dine at Flicoteaux’s in the

Place Sorbonne,” cried Bianchon.

Mme. Vauquer glanced round, and saw in a moment on which side her

interest lay. She waddled across to Mlle. Michonneau.

“Come, now,” she said; “you would not be the ruin of my establishment,

would you, eh? There’s a dear, kind soul. You see what a pass these

gentlemen have brought me to; just go up to your room for this evening.”

“Never a bit of it!” cried the boarders. “She must go, and go this

minute!”

“But the poor lady has had no dinner,” said Poiret, with piteous

entreaty.

“She can go and dine where she likes,” shouted several voices.

“Turn her out, the spy!”

“Turn them both out! Spies!”

“Gentlemen,” cried Poiret, his heart swelling with the courage that love

gives to the ovine male, “respect the weaker sex.”

“Spies are of no sex!” said the painter.

“A precious sexorama!”

“Turn her into the streetorama!”

“Gentlemen, this is not manners! If you turn people out of the house,

it ought not to be done so unceremoniously and with no notice at all. We

have paid our money, and we are not going,” said Poiret, putting on his

cap, and taking a chair beside Mlle. Michonneau, with whom Mme. Vauquer

was remonstrating.

“Naughty boy!” said the painter, with a comical look; “run away, naughty

little boy!”

“Look here,” said Bianchon; “if you do not go, all the rest of us will,”

and the boarders, to a man, made for the sitting-room-door.

“Oh! mademoiselle, what is to be done?” cried Mme. Vauquer. “I am a

ruined woman. You can’t stay here; they will go further, do something

violent.”

Mlle. Michonneau rose to her feet.

“She is going!--She is not going!--She is going!--No, she isn’t.”

These alternate exclamations, and a suggestion of hostile intentions,

borne out by the behavior of the insurgents, compelled Mlle. Michonneau

to take her departure. She made some stipulations, speaking in a low

voice in her hostess’ ear, and then--“I shall go to Mme. Buneaud’s,” she

said, with a threatening look.

“Go where you please, mademoiselle,” said Mme. Vauquer, who regarded

this choice of an opposition establishment as an atrocious insult. “Go

and lodge with the Buneaud; the wine would give a cat the colic, and the

food is cheap and nasty.”

The boarders stood aside in two rows to let her pass; not a word was

spoken. Poiret looked so wistfully after Mlle. Michonneau, and so

artlessly revealed that he was in two minds whether to go or stay, that

the boarders, in their joy at being quit of Mlle. Michonneau, burst out

laughing at the sight of him.

“Hist!--st!--st! Poiret,” shouted the painter. “Hallo! I say, Poiret,

hallo!” The _employe_ from the Museum began to sing:

“Partant pour la Syrie,

Le jeune et beau Dunois...”

“Get along with you; you must be dying to go, _trahit sua quemque

voluptas!_” said Bianchon.

“Every one to his taste--free rendering from Virgil,” said the tutor.

Mlle. Michonneau made a movement as if to take Poiret’s arm, with an

appealing glance that he could not resist. The two went out together,

the old maid leaning upon him, and there was a burst of applause,

followed by peals of laughter.

“Bravo, Poiret!”

“Who would have thought it of old Poiret!”

“Apollo Poiret!”

“Mars Poiret!”

“Intrepid Poiret!”

A messenger came in at that moment with a letter for Mme. Vauquer, who

read it through, and collapsed in her chair.

“The house might as well be burned down at once,” cried she, “if there

are to be any more of these thunderbolts! Young Taillefer died at three

o’clock this afternoon. It serves me right for wishing well to those

ladies at that poor man’s expense. Mme. Couture and Victorine want me

to send their things, because they are going to live with her father.

M. Taillefer allows his daughter to keep old Mme. Couture as her lady

companion. Four rooms to let! and five lodgers gone!...”

She sat up, and seemed about to burst into tears.

“Bad luck has come to lodge here, I think,” she cried.

Once more there came a sound of wheels from the street outside.

“What! another windfall for somebody!” was Sylvie’s comment.

But it was Goriot who came in, looking so radiant, so flushed with

happiness, that he seemed to have grown young again.

“Goriot in a cab!” cried the boarders; “the world is coming to an end.”

The good soul made straight for Eugene, who was standing wrapped in

thought in a corner, and laid a hand on the young man’s arm.

“Come,” he said, with gladness in his eyes.

“Then you haven’t heard the news?” said Eugene. “Vautrin was an escaped

convict; they have just arrested him; and young Taillefer is dead.”

“Very well, but what business is it of ours?” replied Father Goriot. “I

am going to dine with my daughter in _your house_, do you understand?

She is expecting you. Come!”

He carried off Rastignac with him by main force, and they departed in as

great a hurry as a pair of eloping lovers.

“Now, let us have dinner,” cried the painter, and every one drew his

chair to the table.

“Well, I never,” said the portly Sylvie. “Nothing goes right to-day! The

haricot mutton has caught! Bah! you will have to eat it, burned as it

is, more’s the pity!”

Mme. Vauquer was so dispirited that she could not say a word as she

looked round the table and saw only ten people where eighteen should

be; but every one tried to comfort and cheer her. At first the dinner

contingent, as was natural, talked about Vautrin and the day’s events;

but the conversation wound round to such topics of interest as duels,

jails, justice, prison life, and alterations that ought to be made

in the laws. They soon wandered miles away from Jacques Collin and

Victorine and her brother. There might be only ten of them, but they

made noise enough for twenty; indeed, there seemed to be more of them

than usual; that was the only difference between yesterday and to-day.

Indifference to the fate of others is a matter of course in this selfish

world, which, on the morrow of tragedy, seeks among the events of

Paris for a fresh sensation for its daily renewed appetite, and this

indifference soon gained the upper hand. Mme. Vauquer herself grew

calmer under the soothing influence of hope, and the mouthpiece of hope

was the portly Sylvie.

That day had gone by like a dream for Eugene, and the sense of unreality

lasted into the evening; so that, in spite of his energetic character

and clear-headedness, his ideas were a chaos as he sat beside Goriot in

the cab. The old man’s voice was full of unwonted happiness, but Eugene

had been shaken by so many emotions that the words sounded in his ears

like words spoken in a dream.

“It was finished this morning! All three of us are going to dine

there together, together! Do you understand? I have not dined with my

Delphine, my little Delphine, these four years, and I shall have her

for a whole evening! We have been at your lodging the whole time since

morning. I have been working like a porter in my shirt sleeves, helping

to carry in the furniture. Aha! you don’t know what pretty ways she

has; at table she will look after me, ‘Here, papa, just try this, it is

nice.’ And I shall not be able to eat. Oh, it is a long while since I

have been with her in quiet every-day life as we shall have her.”

“It really seems as if the world has been turned upside down.”

“Upside down?” repeated Father Goriot. “Why, the world has never been so

right-side up. I see none but smiling faces in the streets, people who

shake hands cordially and embrace each other, people who all look as

happy as if they were going to dine with their daughter, and gobble down

a nice little dinner that she went with me to order of the chef at the

Cafe des Anglais. But, pshaw! with her beside you gall and wormwood

would be as sweet as honey.”

“I feel as if I were coming back to life again,” said Eugene.

“Why, hurry up there!” cried Father Goriot, letting down the window in

front. “Get on faster; I will give you five francs if you get to the

place I told you of in ten minutes time.”

With this prospect before him the cabman crossed Paris with miraculous

celerity.

“How that fellow crawls!” said Father Goriot.

“But where are you taking me?” Eugene asked him.

“To your own house,” said Goriot.

The cab stopped in the Rue d’Artois. Father Goriot stepped out first and

flung ten francs to the man with the recklessness of a widower returning

to bachelor ways.

“Come along upstairs,” he said to Rastignac. They crossed a courtyard,

and climbed up to the third floor of a new and handsome house. There

they stopped before a door; but before Goriot could ring, it was opened

by Therese, Mme. de Nucingen’s maid. Eugene found himself in a charming

set of chambers; an ante-room, a little drawing-room, a bedroom, and a

study, looking out upon a garden. The furniture and the decorations of

the little drawing-room were of the most daintily charming description,

the room was full of soft light, and Delphine rose up from a low chair

by the fire and stood before him. She set her fire-screen down on the

chimney-piece, and spoke with tenderness in every tone of her voice.

“So we had to go in search of you, sir, you who are so slow to

understand!”

Therese left the room. The student took Delphine in his arms and held

her in a tight clasp, his eyes filled with tears of joy. This last

contrast between his present surroundings and the scenes he had just

witnessed was too much for Rastignac’s over-wrought nerves, after the

day’s strain and excitement that had wearied heart and brain; he was

almost overcome by it.

“I felt sure myself that he loved you,” murmured Father Goriot, while

Eugene lay back bewildered on the sofa, utterly unable to speak a word

or to reason out how and why the magic wand had been waved to bring

about this final transformation scene.

“But you must see your rooms,” said Mme. de Nucingen. She took his hand

and led him into a room carpeted and furnished like her own; indeed,

down to the smallest details, it was a reproduction in miniature of

Delphine’s apartment.

“There is no bed,” said Rastignac.

“No, monsieur,” she answered, reddening, and pressing his hand. Eugene,

looking at her, understood, young though he yet was, how deeply modesty

is implanted in the heart of a woman who loves.

“You are one of those beings whom we cannot choose but to adore for

ever,” he said in her ear. “Yes, the deeper and truer love is, the more

mysterious and closely veiled it should be; I can dare to say so, since

we understand each other so well. No one shall learn our secret.”

“Oh! so I am nobody, I suppose,” growled the father.

“You know quite well that ‘we’ means you.”

“Ah! that is what I wanted. You will not mind me, will you? I shall go

and come like a good fairy who makes himself felt everywhere without

being seen, shall I not? Eh, Delphinette, Ninette, Dedel--was it not a

good idea of mine to say to you, ‘There are some nice rooms to let in

the Rue d’Artois; let us furnish them for him?’ And she would not hear

of it! Ah! your happiness has been all my doing. I am the author of your

happiness and of your existence. Fathers must always be giving if they

would be happy themselves; always giving--they would not be fathers

else.”

“Was that how it happened?” asked Eugene.

“Yes. She would not listen to me. She was afraid that people would

talk, as if the rubbish that they say about you were to be compared with

happiness! Why, all women dream of doing what she has done----”

Father Goriot found himself without an audience, for Mme. de Nucingen

had led Rastignac into the study; he heard a kiss given and taken, low

though the sound was.

The study was furnished as elegantly as the other rooms, and nothing was

wanting there.

“Have we guessed your wishes rightly?” she asked, as they returned to

the drawing-room for dinner.

“Yes,” he said, “only too well, alas! For all this luxury so well

carried out, this realization of pleasant dreams, the elegance that

satisfies all the romantic fancies of youth, appeals to me so strongly

that I cannot but feel that it is my rightful possession, but I cannot

accept it from you, and I am too poor as yet to----”

“Ah! ah! you say me nay already,” she said with arch imperiousness,

and a charming little pout of the lips, a woman’s way of laughing away

scruples.

But Eugene had submitted so lately to that solemn self-questioning, and

Vautrin’s arrest had so plainly shown him the depths of the pit that lay

ready to his feet, that the instincts of generosity and honor had been

strengthened in him, and he could not allow himself to be coaxed into

abandoning his high-minded determinations. Profound melancholy filled

his mind.

“Do you really mean to refuse?” said Mme. de Nucingen. “And do you know

what such a refusal means? That you are not sure of yourself, that you

do not dare to bind yourself to me. Are you really afraid of betraying

my affection? If you love me, if I--love you, why should you shrink back

from such a slight obligation? If you but knew what a pleasure it has

been to see after all the arrangements of this bachelor establishment,

you would not hesitate any longer, you would ask me to forgive you for

your hesitation. I had some money that belonged to you, and I have made

good use of it, that is all. You mean this for magnanimity, but it is

very little of you. You are asking me for far more than this.... Ah!”

she cried, as Eugene’s passionate glance was turned on her, “and you are

making difficulties about the merest trifles. Of, if you feel no love

whatever for me, refuse, by all means. My fate hangs on a word from you.

Speak!--Father,” she said after a pause, “make him listen to reason. Can

he imagine that I am less nice than he is on the point of honor?”

Father Goriot was looking on and listening to this pretty quarrel with a

placid smile, as if he had found some balm for all the sorrows of life.

“Child that you are!” she cried again, catching Eugene’s hand. “You are

just beginning life; you find barriers at the outset that many a man

finds insurmountable; a woman’s hand opens the way and you shrink back!

Why, you are sure to succeed! You will have a brilliant future. Success

is written on that broad forehead of yours, and will you not be able to

repay me my loan of to-day? Did not a lady in olden times arm her knight

with sword and helmet and coat of mail, and find him a charger, so that

he might fight for her in the tournament? Well, then, Eugene, these

things that I offer you are the weapons of this age; every one who

means to be something must have such tools as these. A pretty place your