“No, let me do that; I shall be able to manage him. He is fond of me,
well and good; I shall use my influence to make him invest my money as
soon as possible in landed property in my own name. Very likely I could
get him to buy back Nucingen in Alsace in my name; that has always been
a pet idea of his. Still, come to-morrow and go through the books, and
look into the business. M. Derville knows little of mercantile matters.
No, not to-morrow though. I do not want to be upset. Mme. de Beauseant’s
ball will be the day after to-morrow, and I must keep quiet, so as to
look my best and freshest, and do honor to my dear Eugene!... Come, let
us see his room.”
But as she spoke a carriage stopped in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve,
and the sound of Mme. de Restaud’s voice came from the staircase. “Is my
father in?” she asked of Sylvie.
This accident was luckily timed for Eugene, whose one idea had been to
throw himself down on the bed and pretend to be asleep.
“Oh, father, have you heard about Anastasie?” said Delphine, when she
heard her sister speak. “It looks as though some strange things had
happened in that family.”
“What sort of things?” asked Goriot. “This is like to be the death of
me. My poor head will not stand a double misfortune.”
“Good-morning, father,” said the Countess from the threshold. “Oh!
Delphine, are you here?”
Mme. de Restaud seemed taken aback by her sister’s presence.
“Good-morning, Nasie,” said the Baroness. “What is there so
extraordinary in my being here? _I_ see our father every day.”
“Since when?”
“If you came yourself you would know.”
“Don’t tease, Delphine,” said the Countess fretfully. “I am very
miserable, I am lost. Oh! my poor father, it is hopeless this time!”
“What is it, Nasie?” cried Goriot. “Tell us all about it, child! How
white she is! Quick, do something, Delphine; be kind to her, and I will
love you even better, if that were possible.”
“Poor Nasie!” said Mme. de Nucingen, drawing her sister to a chair. “We
are the only two people in the world whose love is always sufficient to
forgive you everything. Family affection is the surest, you see.”
The Countess inhaled the salts and revived.
“This will kill me!” said their father. “There,” he went on, stirring
the smouldering fire, “come nearer, both of you. It is cold. What is it,
Nasie? Be quick and tell me, this is enough to----”
“Well, then, my husband knows everything,” said the Countess. “Just
imagine it; do you remember, father, that bill of Maxime’s some time
ago? Well, that was not the first. I had paid ever so many before that.
About the beginning of January M. de Trailles seemed very much troubled.
He said nothing to me; but it is so easy to read the hearts of those you
love, a mere trifle is enough; and then you feel things instinctively.
Indeed, he was more tender and affectionate than ever, and I was happier
than I had ever been before. Poor Maxime! in himself he was really
saying good-bye to me, so he has told me since; he meant to blow his
brains out! At last I worried him so, and begged and implored so hard;
for two hours I knelt at his knees and prayed and entreated, and at last
he told me--that he owed a hundred thousand francs. Oh! papa! a hundred
thousand francs! I was beside myself! You had not the money, I knew, I
had eaten up all that you had----”
“No,” said Goriot; “I could not have got it for you unless I had stolen
it. But I would have done that for you, Nasie! I will do it yet.”
The words came from him like a sob, a hoarse sound like the death
rattle of a dying man; it seemed indeed like the agony of death when
the father’s love was powerless. There was a pause, and neither of the
sisters spoke. It must have been selfishness indeed that could hear
unmoved that cry of anguish that, like a pebble thrown over a precipice,
revealed the depths of his despair.
“I found the money, father, by selling what was not mine to sell,” and
the Countess burst into tears.
Delphine was touched; she laid her head on her sister’s shoulder, and
cried too.
“Then it is all true,” she said.
Anastasie bowed her head, Mme. de Nucingen flung her arms about her,
kissed her tenderly, and held her sister to her heart.
“I shall always love you and never judge you, Nasie,” she said.
“My angels,” murmured Goriot faintly. “Oh, why should it be trouble that
draws you together?”
This warm and palpitating affection seemed to give the Countess courage.
“To save Maxime’s life,” she said, “to save all my own happiness, I
went to the money-lender you know of, a man of iron forged in hell-fire;
nothing can melt him; I took all the family diamonds that M. de Restaud
is so proud of--his and mine too--and sold them to that M. Gobseck.
_Sold them!_ Do you understand? I saved Maxime, but I am lost. Restaud
found it all out.”
“How? Who told him? I will kill him,” cried Goriot.
“Yesterday he sent to tell me to come to his room. I went. ...
‘Anastasie,’ he said in a voice--oh! such a voice; that was enough, it
told me everything--‘where are your diamonds?’--‘In my room----’--‘No,’
he said, looking straight at me, ‘there they are on that chest of
drawers----’ and he lifted his handkerchief and showed me the casket.
‘Do you know where they came from?’ he said. I fell at his feet.... I
cried; I besought him to tell me the death he wished to see me die.”
“You said that!” cried Goriot. “By God in heaven, whoever lays a hand on
either of you so long as I am alive may reckon on being roasted by slow
fires! Yes, I will cut him in pieces like...”
Goriot stopped; the words died away in his throat.
“And then, dear, he asked something worse than death of me. Oh! heaven
preserve all other women from hearing such words as I heard then!”
“I will murder that man,” said Goriot quietly. “But he has only one
life, and he deserves to die twice.--And then, what next?” he added,
looking at Anastasie.
“Then,” the Countess resumed, “there was a pause, and he looked at me.
‘Anastasie,’ he said, ‘I will bury this in silence; there shall be no
separation; there are the children. I will not kill M. de Trailles. I
might miss him if we fought, and as for other ways of getting rid of
him, I should come into collision with the law. If I killed him in your
arms, it would bring dishonor on _those_ children. But if you do not
want to see your children perish, nor their father nor me, you must
first of all submit to two conditions. Answer me. Have I a child of my
own?’ I answered, ‘Yes,’--‘Which?’--‘Ernest, our eldest boy.’--‘Very
well,’ he said, ‘and now swear to obey me in this particular from this
time forward.’ I swore. ‘You will make over your property to me when I
require you to do so.’”
“Do nothing of the kind!” cried Goriot. “Aha! M. de Restaud, you could
not make your wife happy; she has looked for happiness and found it
elsewhere, and you make her suffer for your own ineptitude? He will have
to reckon with me. Make yourself easy, Nasie. Aha! he cares about his
heir! Good, very good. I will get hold of the boy; isn’t he my grandson?
What the blazes! I can surely go to see the brat! I will stow him away
somewhere; I will take care of him, you may be quite easy. I will bring
Restaud to terms, the monster! I shall say to him, ‘A word or two with
you! If you want your son back again, give my daughter her property, and
leave her to do as she pleases.’”
“Father!”
“Yes. I am your father, Nasie, a father indeed! That rogue of a great
lord had better not ill-treat my daughter. _Tonnerre!_ What is it in my
veins? There is the blood of a tiger in me; I could tear those two men
to pieces! Oh! children, children! so this is what your lives are! Why,
it is death!... What will become of you when I shall be here no longer?
Fathers ought to live as long as their children. Ah! Lord God in heaven!
how ill Thy world is ordered! Thou hast a Son, if what they tell us
is true, and yet Thou leavest us to suffer so through our children. My
darlings, my darlings! to think that trouble only should bring you to
me, that I should only see you with tears on your faces! Ah! yes, yes,
you love me, I see that you love me. Come to me and pour out your griefs
to me; my heart is large enough to hold them all. Oh! you might rend my
heart in pieces, and every fragment would make a father’s heart. If only
I could bear all your sorrows for you! ... Ah! you were so happy when
you were little and still with me....”
“We have never been happy since,” said Delphine. “Where are the old days
when we slid down the sacks in the great granary?”
“That is not all, father,” said Anastasie in Goriot’s ear. The old man
gave a startled shudder. “The diamonds only sold for a hundred thousand
francs. Maxime is hard pressed. There are twelve thousand francs still
to pay. He has given me his word that he will be steady and give up play
in future. His love is all that I have left in the world. I have paid
such a fearful price for it that I should die if I lose him now. I have
sacrificed my fortune, my honor, my peace of mind, and my children for
him. Oh! do something, so that at the least Maxime may be at large and
live undisgraced in the world, where he will assuredly make a career for
himself. Something more than my happiness is at stake; the children have
nothing, and if he is sent to Sainte-Pelagie all his prospects will be
ruined.”
“I haven’t the money, Nasie. I have _nothing_--nothing left. This is
the end of everything. Yes, the world is crumbling into ruin, I am sure.
Fly! Save yourselves! Ah!--I have still my silver buckles left, and
half-a-dozen silver spoons and forks, the first I ever had in my
life. But I have nothing else except my life annuity, twelve hundred
francs...”
“Then what has become of your money in the funds?”
“I sold out, and only kept a trifle for my wants. I wanted twelve
thousand francs to furnish some rooms for Delphine.”
“In your own house?” asked Mme. de Restaud, looking at her sister.
“What does it matter where they were?” asked Goriot. “The money is spent
now.”
“I see how it is,” said the Countess. “Rooms for M. de Rastignac. Poor
Delphine, take warning by me!”
“M. de Rastignac is incapable of ruining the woman he loves, dear.”
“Thanks! Delphine. I thought you would have been kinder to me in my
troubles, but you never did love me.”
“Yes, yes, she loves you, Nasie,” cried Goriot; “she was saying so only
just now. We were talking about you, and she insisted that you were
beautiful, and that she herself was only pretty!”
“Pretty!” said the Countess. “She is as hard as a marble statue.”
“And if I am?” cried Delphine, flushing up, “how have you treated me?
You would not recognize me; you closed the doors of every house against
me; you have never let an opportunity of mortifying me slip by. And
when did I come, as you were always doing, to drain our poor father, a
thousand francs at a time, till he is left as you see him now? That
is all your doing, sister! I myself have seen my father as often as I
could. I have not turned him out of the house, and then come and fawned
upon him when I wanted money. I did not so much as know that he had
spent those twelve thousand francs on me. I am economical, as you know;
and when papa has made me presents, it has never been because I came and
begged for them.”
“You were better off than I. M. de Marsay was rich, as you have reason
to know. You always were as slippery as gold. Good-bye; I have neither
sister nor----”
“Oh! hush, hush, Nasie!” cried her father.
“Nobody else would repeat what everybody has ceased to believe. You are
an unnatural sister!” cried Delphine.
“Oh, children, children! hush! hush! or I will kill myself before your
eyes.”
“There, Nasie, I forgive you,” said Mme. de Nucingen; “you are very
unhappy. But I am kinder than you are. How could you say _that_ just
when I was ready to do anything in the world to help you, even to be
reconciled with my husband, which for my own sake I----Oh! it is just
like you; you have behaved cruelly to me all through these nine years.”
“Children, children, kiss each other!” cried the father. “You are
angels, both of you.”
“No. Let me alone,” cried the Countess shaking off the hand that her
father had laid on her arm. “She is more merciless than my husband. Any
one might think she was a model of all the virtues herself!”
“I would rather have people think that I owed money to M. de Marsay
than own that M. de Trailles had cost me more than two hundred thousand
francs,” retorted Mme. de Nucingen.
“_Delphine!_” cried the Countess, stepping towards her sister.
“I shall tell you the truth about yourself if you begin to slander me,”
said the Baroness coldly.
“Delphine! you are a ----”
Father Goriot sprang between them, grasped the Countess’ hand, and laid
his own over her mouth.
“Good heavens, father! What have you been handling this morning?” said
Anastasie.
“Ah! well, yes, I ought not to have touched you,” said the poor father,
wiping his hands on his trousers, “but I have been packing up my things;
I did not know that you were coming to see me.”
He was glad that he had drawn down her wrath upon himself.
“Ah!” he sighed, as he sat down, “you children have broken my heart
between you. This is killing me. My head feels as if it were on fire.
Be good to each other and love each other! This will be the death of
me! Delphine! Nasie! come, be sensible; you are both in the wrong. Come,
Dedel,” he added, looking through his tears at the Baroness, “she must
have twelve thousand francs, you see; let us see if we can find them for
her. Oh, my girls, do not look at each other like that!” and he sank on
his knees beside Delphine. “Ask her to forgive you--just to please
me,” he said in her ear. “She is more miserable than you are. Come now,
Dedel.”
“Poor Nasie!” said Delphine, alarmed at the wild extravagant grief in
her father’s face, “I was in the wrong, kiss me----”
“Ah! that is like balm to my heart,” cried Father Goriot. “But how are
we to find twelve thousand francs? I might offer myself as a substitute
in the army----”
“Oh! father dear!” they both cried, flinging their arms about him. “No,
no!”
“God reward you for the thought. We are not worth it, are we, Nasie?”
asked Delphine.
“And besides, father dear, it would only be a drop in the bucket,”
observed the Countess.
“But is flesh and blood worth nothing?” cried the old man in his
despair. “I would give body and soul to save you, Nasie. I would do a
murder for the man who would rescue you. I would do, as Vautrin did, go
to the hulks, go----” he stopped as if struck by a thunderbolt, and put
both hands to his head. “Nothing left!” he cried, tearing his hair. “If
I only knew of a way to steal money, but it is so hard to do it, and
then you can’t set to work by yourself, and it takes time to rob a bank.
Yes, it is time I was dead; there is nothing left me to do but to die. I
am no good in the world; I am no longer a father! No. She has come to me
in her extremity, and, wretch that I am, I have nothing to give her. Ah!
you put your money into a life annuity, old scoundrel; and had you not
daughters? You did not love them. Die, die in a ditch, like the dog that
you are! Yes, I am worse than a dog; a beast would not have done as I
have done! Oh! my head... it throbs as if it would burst.”
“Papa!” cried both the young women at once, “do, pray, be reasonable!”
and they clung to him to prevent him from dashing his head against the
wall. There was a sound of sobbing.
Eugene, greatly alarmed, took the bill that bore Vautrin’s signature,
saw that the stamp would suffice for a larger sum, altered the figures,
made it into a regular bill for twelve thousand francs, payable to
Goriot’s order, and went to his neighbor’s room.
“Here is the money, madame,” he said, handing the piece of paper to her.
“I was asleep; your conversation awoke me, and by this means I learned
all that I owed to M. Goriot. This bill can be discounted, and I shall
meet it punctually at the due date.”
The Countess stood motionless and speechless, but she held the bill in
her fingers.
“Delphine,” she said, with a white face, and her whole frame quivering
with indignation, anger, and rage, “I forgave you everything; God is my
witness that I forgave you, but I cannot forgive this! So this gentleman
was there all the time, and you knew it! Your petty spite has let you
to wreak your vengeance on me by betraying my secrets, my life, my
children’s lives, my shame, my honor! There, you are nothing to me any
longer. I hate you. I will do all that I can to injure you. I will...”
Anger paralyzed her; the words died in her dry parched throat.
“Why, he is my son, my child; he is your brother, your preserver!” cried
Goriot. “Kiss his hand, Nasie! Stay, I will embrace him myself,” he
said, straining Eugene to his breast in a frenzied clasp. “Oh my boy! I
will be more than a father to you; if I had God’s power, I would fling
worlds at your feet. Why don’t you kiss him, Nasie? He is not a man, but
an angel, a angel out of heaven.”
“Never mind her, father; she is mad just now.”
“Mad! am I? And what are you?” cried Mme. de Restaud.
“Children, children, I shall die if you go on like this,” cried the
old man, and he staggered and fell on the bed as if a bullet had struck
him.--“They are killing me between them,” he said to himself.
The Countess fixed her eyes on Eugene, who stood stock still; all his
faculties were numbed by this violent scene.
“Sir?...” she said, doubt and inquiry in her face, tone, and bearing;
she took no notice now of her father nor of Delphine, who was hastily
unfastening his waistcoat.
“Madame,” said Eugene, answering the question before it was asked, “I
will meet the bill, and keep silence about it.”
“You have killed our father, Nasie!” said Delphine, pointing to Goriot,
who lay unconscious on the bed. The Countess fled.
“I freely forgive her,” said the old man, opening his eyes; “her
position is horrible; it would turn an older head than hers. Comfort
Nasie, and be nice to her, Delphine; promise it to your poor father
before he dies,” he asked, holding Delphine’s hand in a convulsive
clasp.
“Oh! what ails you, father?” she cried in real alarm.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Goriot; “it will go off. There is something
heavy pressing on my forehead, a little headache.... Ah! poor Nasie,
what a life lies before her!”
Just as he spoke, the Countess came back again and flung herself on her
knees before him. “Forgive me!” she cried.
“Come,” said her father, “you are hurting me still more.”
“Monsieur,” the Countess said, turning to Rastignac, “misery made me
unjust to you. You will be a brother to me, will you not?” and she held
out her hand. Her eyes were full of tears as she spoke.
“Nasie,” cried Delphine, flinging her arms round her sister, “my little
Nasie, let us forget and forgive.”
“No, no,” cried Nasie; “I shall never forget!”
“Dear angels,” cried Goriot, “it is as if a dark curtain over my eyes
had been raised; your voices have called me back to life. Kiss each
other once more. Well, now, Nasie, that bill will save you, won’t it?”
“I hope so. I say, papa, will you write your name on it?”
“There! how stupid of me to forget that! But I am not feeling at all
well, Nasie, so you must not remember it against me. Send and let me
know as soon as you are out of your strait. No, I will go to you. No,
after all, I will not go; I might meet your husband, and I should kill
him on the spot. And as for signing away your property, I shall have
a word to say about that. Quick, my child, and keep Maxime in order in
future.”
Eugene was too bewildered to speak.
“Poor Anastasie, she always had a violent temper,” said Mme. de
Nucingen, “but she has a good heart.”
“She came back for the endorsement,” said Eugene in Delphine’s ear.
“Do you think so?”
“I only wish I could think otherwise. Do not trust her,” he answered,
raising his eyes as if he confided to heaven the thoughts that he did
not venture to express.
“Yes. She is always acting a part to some extent.”
“How do you feel now, dear Father Goriot?” asked Rastignac.
“I should like to go to sleep,” he replied.
Eugene helped him to bed, and Delphine sat by the bedside, holding his
hand until he fell asleep. Then she went.
“This evening at the Italiens,” she said to Eugene, “and you can let me
know how he is. To-morrow you will leave this place, monsieur. Let us go
into your room.--Oh! how frightful!” she cried on the threshold. “Why,
you are even worse lodged than our father. Eugene, you have behaved
well. I would love you more if that were possible; but, dear boy, if you
are to succeed in life, you must not begin by flinging twelve thousand
francs out of the windows like that. The Comte de Trailles is a
confirmed gambler. My sister shuts her eyes to it. He would have made
the twelve thousand francs in the same way that he wins and loses heaps
of gold.”
A groan from the next room brought them back to Goriot’s bedside; to all
appearances he was asleep, but the two lovers caught the words, “They
are not happy!” Whether he was awake or sleeping, the tone in which they
were spoken went to his daughter’s heart. She stole up to the pallet-bed
on which her father lay, and kissed his forehead. He opened his eyes.
