Father Goriot
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.
“Ah! Delphine!” he said.
“How are you now?” she asked.
“Quite comfortable. Do not worry about me; I shall get up presently.
Don’t stay with me, children; go, go and be happy.”
Eugene went back with Delphine as far as her door; but he was not easy
about Goriot, and would not stay to dinner, as she proposed. He wanted
to be back at the Maison Vauquer. Father Goriot had left his room,
and was just sitting down to dinner as he came in. Bianchon had placed
himself where he could watch the old man carefully; and when the old
vermicelli maker took up his square of bread and smelled it to find out
the quality of the flour, the medical student, studying him closely, saw
that the action was purely mechanical, and shook his head.
“Just come and sit over here, hospitaller of Cochin,” said Eugene.
Bianchon went the more willingly because his change of place brought him
next to the old lodger.
“What is wrong with him?” asked Rastignac.
“It is all up with him, or I am much mistaken! Something very
extraordinary must have taken place; he looks to me as if he were
in imminent danger of serous apoplexy. The lower part of his face is
composed enough, but the upper part is drawn and distorted. Then there
is that peculiar look about the eyes that indicates an effusion of serum
in the brain; they look as though they were covered with a film of fine
dust, do you notice? I shall know more about it by to-morrow morning.”
“Is there any cure for it?”
“None. It might be possible to stave death off for a time if a way could
be found of setting up a reaction in the lower extremities; but if the
symptoms do not abate by to-morrow evening, it will be all over with
him, poor old fellow! Do you know what has happened to bring this on?
There must have been some violent shock, and his mind has given way.”
“Yes, there was,” said Rastignac, remembering how the two daughters had
struck blow on blow at their father’s heart.
“But Delphine at any rate loves her father,” he said to himself.
That evening at the opera Rastignac chose his words carefully, lest he
should give Mme. de Nucingen needless alarm.
“Do not be anxious about him,” she said, however, as soon as Eugene
began, “our father has really a strong constitution, but this morning
we gave him a shock. Our whole fortunes were in peril, so the thing was
serious, you see. I could not live if your affection did not make me
insensible to troubles that I should once have thought too hard to bear.
At this moment I have but one fear left, but one misery to dread--to
lose the love that has made me feel glad to live. Everything else is as