Father Goriot
“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,