Father Goriot
could wish. _Ergo_, in six months you will have made your own fortune,
and our old friend Vautrin’s, and made an amiable woman very happy, to
say nothing of your people at home, who must blow on their fingers
to warm them, in the winter, for lack of firewood. You need not be
surprised at my proposal, nor at the demand I make. Forty-seven out
of every sixty great matches here in Paris are made after just such a
bargain as this. The Chamber of Notaries compels my gentleman to----”
“What must I do?” said Rastignac, eagerly interrupting Vautrin’s speech.
“Next to nothing,” returned the other, with a slight involuntary
movement, the suppressed exultation of the angler when he feels a bite
at the end of his line. “Follow me carefully! The heart of a girl whose
life is wretched and unhappy is a sponge that will thirstily absorb
love; a dry sponge that swells at the first drop of sentiment. If you
pay court to a young girl whose existence is a compound of loneliness,
despair, and poverty, and who has no suspicion that she will come into
a fortune, good Lord! it is quint and quatorze at piquet; it is knowing
the numbers of the lottery before-hand; it is speculating in the funds
when you have news from a sure source; it is building up a marriage on
an indestructible foundation. The girl may come in for millions, and she
will fling them, as if they were so many pebbles, at your feet. ‘Take
it, my beloved! Take it, Alfred, Adolphe, Eugene!’ or whoever it
was that showed his sense by sacrificing himself for her. And as for
sacrificing himself, this is how I understand it. You sell a coat that
is getting shabby, so that you can take her to the _Cadran bleu_, treat
her to mushrooms on toast, and then go to the Ambigu-Comique in the
evening; you pawn your watch to buy her a shawl. I need not remind you
of the fiddle-faddle sentimentality that goes down so well with all
women; you spill a few drops of water on your stationery, for instance;
those are the tears you shed while far away from her. You look to me as
if you were perfectly acquainted with the argot of the heart. Paris, you
see, is like a forest in the New World, where you have to deal with
a score of varieties of savages--Illinois and Hurons, who live on the
proceed of their social hunting. You are a hunter of millions; you set
your snares; you use lures and nets; there are many ways of hunting.
Some hunt heiresses, others a legacy; some fish for souls, yet others
sell their clients, bound hand and foot. Every one who comes back from
the chase with his game-bag well filled meets with a warm welcome in
good society. In justice to this hospitable part of the world, it must
be said that you have to do with the most easy and good-natured of
great cities. If the proud aristocracies of the rest of Europe refuse
admittance among their ranks to a disreputable millionaire, Paris
stretches out a hand to him, goes to his banquets, eats his dinners, and
hobnobs with his infamy.”
“But where is such a girl to be found?” asked Eugene.
“Under your eyes; she is yours already.”
“Mlle. Victorine?”
“Precisely.”
“And what was that you said?”
“She is in love with you already, your little Baronne de Rastignac!”
“She has not a penny,” Eugene continued, much mystified.
“Ah! now we are coming to it! Just another word or two, and it will all
be clear enough. Her father, Taillefer, is an old scoundrel; it is said
that he murdered one of his friends at the time of the Revolution. He is
one of your comedians that sets up to have opinions of his own. He is a
banker--senior partner in the house of Frederic Taillefer and Company.
He has one son, and means to leave all he has to the boy, to the
prejudice of Victorine. For my part, I don’t like to see injustice of
this sort. I am like Don Quixote, I have a fancy for defending the weak
against the strong. If it should please God to take that youth away from
him, Taillefer would have only his daughter left; he would want to leave
his money to some one or other; an absurd notion, but it is only human
nature, and he is not likely to have any more children, as I know.
Victorine is gentle and amiable; she will soon twist her father round
her fingers, and set his head spinning like a German top by plying him
with sentiment! She will be too much touched by your devotion to
forget you; you will marry her. I mean to play Providence for you,
and Providence is to do my will. I have a friend whom I have attached
closely to myself, a colonel in the Army of the Loire, who has just been
transferred into the _garde royale_. He has taken my advice and turned
ultra-royalist; he is not one of those fools who never change their
opinions. Of all pieces of advice, my cherub, I would give you
this--don’t stick to your opinions any more than to your words. If any
one asks you for them, let him have them--at a price. A man who prides
himself on going in a straight line through life is an idiot who
believes in infallibility. There are no such things as principles; there
are only events, and there are no laws but those of expediency: a man of
talent accepts events and the circumstances in which he finds himself,
and turns everything to his own ends. If laws and principles were fixed
and invariable, nations would not change them as readily as we change
our shirts. The individual is not obliged to be more particular than the
nation. A man whose services to France have been of the very slightest
is a fetich looked on with superstitious awe because he has always
seen everything in red; but he is good, at the most, to be put into the
Museum of Arts and Crafts, among the automatic machines, and labeled La
Fayette; while the prince at whom everybody flings a stone, the man who
despises humanity so much that he spits as many oaths as he is asked for
in the face of humanity, saved France from being torn in pieces at the
Congress of Vienna; and they who should have given him laurels fling
mud at him. Oh! I know something of affairs, I can tell you; I have the
secrets of many men! Enough. When I find three minds in agreement as
to the application of a principle, I shall have a fixed and immovable
opinion--I shall have to wait a long while first. In the Tribunals you
will not find three judges of the same opinion on a single point of law.
To return to the man I was telling you of. He would crucify Jesus Christ
again, if I bade him. At a word from his old chum Vautrin he will pick
a quarrel with a scamp that will not send so much as five francs to his
sister, poor girl, and” (here Vautrin rose to his feet and stood like a
fencing-master about to lunge)--“turn him off into the dark!” he added.
“How frightful!” said Eugene. “You do not really mean it? M. Vautrin,
you are joking!”
“There! there! Keep cool!” said the other. “Don’t behave like a baby.
But if you find any amusement in it, be indignant, flare up! Say that
I am a scoundrel, a rascal, a rogue, a bandit; but do not call me a
blackleg nor a spy! There, out with it, fire away! I forgive you; it is
quite natural at your age. I was like that myself once. Only remember
this, you will do worse things yourself some day. You will flirt with
some pretty woman and take her money. You have thought of that, of
course,” said Vautrin, “for how are you to succeed unless love is laid
under contribution? There are no two ways about virtue, my dear student;
it either is, or it is not. Talk of doing penance for your sins! It is
a nice system of business, when you pay for your crime by an act of
contrition! You seduce a woman that you may set your foot on such and
such a rung of the social ladder; you sow dissension among the children
of a family; you descend, in short, to every base action that can be
committed at home or abroad, to gain your own ends for your own pleasure
or your profit; and can you imagine that these are acts of faith, hope,
or charity? How is it that a dandy, who in a night has robbed a boy of
half his fortune, gets only a couple of months in prison; while a poor
devil who steals a banknote for a thousand francs, with aggravating
circumstances, is condemned to penal servitude? Those are your laws. Not
a single provision but lands you in some absurdity. That man with yellow
gloves and a golden tongue commits many a murder; he sheds no blood, but
he drains his victim’s veins as surely; a desperado forces open a door
with a crowbar, dark deeds both of them! You yourself will do every one
of those things that I suggest to you to-day, bar the bloodshed. Do
you believe that there is any absolute standard in this world? Despise
mankind and find out the meshes that you can slip through in the net of
the Code. The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss
to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was
properly executed.”
“Silence, sir! I will not hear any more; you make me doubt myself. At
this moment my sentiments are all my science.”
“Just as you please, my fine fellow; I did think you were so
weak-minded,” said Vautrin, “I shall say no more about it. One last
word, however,” and he looked hard at the student--“you have my secret,”
he said.
“A young man who refuses your offer knows that he must forget it.”
“Quite right, quite right; I am glad to hear you say so. Somebody else
might not be so scrupulous, you see. Keep in mind what I want to do for
you. I will give you a fortnight. The offer is still open.”
“What a head of iron the man has!” said Eugene to himself, as he watched
Vautrin walk unconcernedly away with his cane under his arm. “Yet Mme.
de Beauseant said as much more gracefully; he has only stated the case
in cruder language. He would tear my heart with claws of steel. What
made me think of going to Mme. de Nucingen? He guessed my motives before
I knew them myself. To sum it up, that outlaw has told me more about
virtue than all I have learned from men and books. If virtue admits of
no compromises, I have certainly robbed my sisters,” he said, throwing
down the bags on the table.
He sat down again and fell, unconscious of his surroundings, into deep
thought.
“To be faithful to an ideal of virtue! A heroic martyrdom! Pshaw! every
one believes in virtue, but who is virtuous? Nations have made an idol
of Liberty, but what nation on the face of the earth is free? My youth
is still like a blue and cloudless sky. If I set myself to obtain wealth
or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and
cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? To consent to be the
servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered?
Must I cringe to them before I can hope to be their accomplice? Well,
then, I decline. I mean to work nobly and with a single heart. I
will work day and night; I will owe my fortune to nothing but my own
exertions. It may be the slowest of all roads to success, but I shall
lay my head on the pillow at night untroubled by evil thoughts. Is there
a greater thing than this--to look back over your life and know that
it is stainless as a lily? I and my life are like a young man and his
betrothed. Vautrin has put before me all that comes after ten years of
marriage. The devil! my head is swimming. I do not want to think at all;
the heart is a sure guide.”
Eugene was roused from his musings by the voice of the stout Sylvie,
who announced that the tailor had come, and Eugene therefore made his
appearance before the man with the two money bags, and was not ill
pleased that it should be so. When he had tried on his dress suit, he
put on his new morning costume, which completely metamorphosed him.
“I am quite equal to M. de Trailles,” he said to himself. “In short, I
look like a gentleman.”
“You asked me, sir, if I knew the houses where Mme. de Nucingen goes,”