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.
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:—
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.