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.”
