Father Goriot
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.