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,
his appreciation of weak points in the way that the system worked,
would have thought that here was the stuff of which a minister is made.
Patient, active, and persevering, energetic and prompt in action, he
surveyed his business horizon with an eagle eye. Nothing there took him
by surprise; he foresaw all things, knew all that was happening, and
kept his own counsel; he was a diplomatist in his quick comprehension
of a situation; and in the routine of business he was as patient and
plodding as a soldier on the march. But beyond this business horizon he
could not see. He used to spend his hours of leisure on the threshold of
his shop, leaning against the framework of the door. Take him from
his dark little counting-house, and he became once more the rough,
slow-witted workman, a man who cannot understand a piece of reasoning,
who is indifferent to all intellectual pleasures, and falls asleep at
the play, a Parisian Dolibom in short, against whose stupidity other
minds are powerless.
Natures of this kind are nearly all alike; in almost all of them you
will find some hidden depth of sublime affection. Two all-absorbing
affections filled the vermicelli maker’s heart to the exclusion of every
other feeling; into them he seemed to put all the forces of his nature,
as he put the whole power of his brain into the corn trade. He had
regarded his wife, the only daughter of a rich farmer of La Brie, with a
devout admiration; his love for her had been boundless. Goriot had
felt the charm of a lovely and sensitive nature, which, in its delicate
strength, was the very opposite of his own. Is there any instinct more
deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a
protection which is constantly exerted for a fragile and defenceless
creature? Join love thereto, the warmth of gratitude that all generous
souls feel for the source of their pleasures, and you have the
explanation of many strange incongruities in human nature.
After seven years of unclouded happiness, Goriot lost his wife. It was
very unfortunate for him. She was beginning to gain an ascendency over
him in other ways; possibly she might have brought that barren soil
under cultivation, she might have widened his ideas and given other
directions to his thoughts. But when she was dead, the instinct of
fatherhood developed in him till it almost became a mania. All the
affection balked by death seemed to turn to his daughters, and he found
full satisfaction for his heart in loving them. More or less brilliant
proposals were made to him from time to time; wealthy merchants or
farmers with daughters vied with each other in offering inducements
to him to marry again; but he determined to remain a widower. His
father-in-law, the only man for whom he felt a decided friendship, gave
out that Goriot had made a vow to be faithful to his wife’s memory. The
frequenters of the Corn Exchange, who could not comprehend this sublime
piece of folly, joked about it among themselves, and found a ridiculous
nickname for him. One of them ventured (after a glass over a bargain)
to call him by it, and a blow from the vermicelli maker’s fist sent him
headlong into a gutter in the Rue Oblin. He could think of nothing else
when his children were concerned; his love for them made him fidgety
and anxious; and this was so well known, that one day a competitor, who
wished to get rid of him to secure the field to himself, told Goriot
that Delphine had just been knocked down by a cab. The vermicelli maker
turned ghastly pale, left the Exchange at once, and did not return for
several days afterwards; he was ill in consequence of the shock and the
subsequent relief on discovering that it was a false alarm. This time,
however, the offender did not escape with a bruised shoulder; at a
critical moment in the man’s affairs, Goriot drove him into bankruptcy,
and forced him to disappear from the Corn Exchange.
As might have been expected, the two girls were spoiled. With an income
of sixty thousand francs, Goriot scarcely spent twelve hundred on
himself, and found all his happiness in satisfying the whims of the two
girls. The best masters were engaged, that Anastasie and Delphine
might be endowed with all the accomplishments which distinguish a good
education. They had a chaperon--luckily for them, she was a woman
who had good sense and good taste;--they learned to ride; they had a
carriage for their use; they lived as the mistress of a rich old lord
might live; they had only to express a wish, their father would hasten
to give them their most extravagant desires, and asked nothing of them
in return but a kiss. Goriot had raised the two girls to the level of
the angels; and, quite naturally, he himself was left beneath them. Poor
man! he loved them even for the pain that they gave him.
When the girls were old enough to be married, they were left free to
choose for themselves. Each had half her father’s fortune as her dowry;
and when the Comte de Restaud came to woo Anastasie for her beauty,
her social aspirations led her to leave her father’s house for a more
exalted sphere. Delphine wished for money; she married Nucingen, a
banker of German extraction, who became a Baron of the Holy Roman
Empire. Goriot remained a vermicelli maker as before. His daughters
and his sons-in-law began to demur; they did not like to see him still
engaged in trade, though his whole life was bound up with his business.
For five years he stood out against their entreaties, then he yielded,
and consented to retire on the amount realized by the sale of his
business and the savings of the last few years. It was this capital
that Mme. Vauquer, in the early days of his residence with her, had
calculated would bring in eight or ten thousand livres in a year. He had
taken refuge in her lodging-house, driven there by despair when he knew
that his daughters were compelled by their husbands not only to refuse
to receive him as an inmate in their houses, but even to see him no more
except in private.
This was all the information which Rastignac gained from a M. Muret
who had purchased Goriot’s business, information which confirmed
the Duchesse de Langeais’ suppositions, and herewith the preliminary
explanation of this obscure but terrible Parisian tragedy comes to an
end.
Towards the end of the first week in December Rastignac received two
letters--one from his mother, and one from his eldest sister. His heart
beat fast, half with happiness, half with fear, at the sight of the
familiar handwriting. Those two little scraps of paper contained life
or death for his hopes. But while he felt a shiver of dread as he
remembered their dire poverty at home, he knew their love for him so
well that he could not help fearing that he was draining their very
life-blood. His mother’s letter ran as follows:--
“MY DEAR CHILD,--I am sending you the money that you asked for.
Make a good use of it. Even to save your life I could not raise so
large a sum a second time without your father’s knowledge, and
there would be trouble about it. We should be obliged to mortgage
the land. It is impossible to judge of the merits of schemes of
which I am ignorant; but what sort of schemes can they be, that
you should fear to tell me about them? Volumes of explanation
would not have been needed; we mothers can understand at a word,
and that word would have spared me the anguish of uncertainty. I
do not know how to hide the painful impression that your letter
has made upon me, my dear son. What can you have felt when you
were moved to send this chill of dread through my heart? It must
have been very painful to you to write the letter that gave me so
much pain as I read it. To what courses are you committed? You are
going to appear to be something that you are not, and your whole
life and success depends upon this? You are about to see a society
into which you cannot enter without rushing into expense that you
cannot afford, without losing precious time that is needed for
your studies. Ah! my dear Eugene, believe your mother, crooked
ways cannot lead to great ends. Patience and endurance are the two
qualities most needed in your position. I am not scolding you; I
do not want any tinge of bitterness to spoil our offering. I am
only talking like a mother whose trust in you is as great as her
foresight for you. You know the steps that you must take, and I,
for my part, know the purity of heart, and how good your
intentions are; so I can say to you without a doubt, ‘Go forward,
beloved!’ If I tremble, it is because I am a mother, but my
prayers and blessings will be with you at every step. Be very
careful, dear boy. You must have a man’s prudence, for it lies
with you to shape the destinies of five others who are dear to
you, and must look to you. Yes, our fortunes depend upon you, and
your success is ours. We all pray to God to be with you in all
that you do. Your aunt Marcillac has been most generous beyond
words in this matter; she saw at once how it was, even down to
your gloves. ‘But I have a weakness for the eldest!’ she said
gaily. You must love your aunt very much, dear Eugene. I shall
wait till you have succeeded before telling you all that she has
done for you, or her money would burn your fingers. You, who are
young, do not know what it is to part with something that is a
piece of your past! But what would we not sacrifice for your
sakes? Your aunt says that I am to send you a kiss on the forehead
from her, and that kiss is to bring you luck again and again, she
says. She would have written you herself, the dear kind-hearted
woman, but she is troubled with the gout in her fingers just now.
Your father is very well. The vintage of 1819 has turned out
better than we expected. Good-bye, dear boy; I will say nothing
about your sisters, because Laure is writing to you, and I must
let her have the pleasure of giving you all the home news. Heaven
send that you may succeed! Oh! yes, dear Eugene, you must succeed.
I have come, through you, to a knowledge of a pain so sharp that I
do not think I could endure it a second time. I have come to know
what it is to be poor, and to long for money for my children’s
sake. There, good-bye! Do not leave us for long without news of
you; and here, at the last, take a kiss from your mother.”
By the time Eugene had finished the letter he was in tears. He thought
of Father Goriot crushing his silver keepsake into a shapeless mass
before he sold it to meet his daughter’s bill of exchange.
“Your mother has broken up her jewels for you,” he said to himself;
“your aunt shed tears over those relics of hers before she sold them
for your sake. What right have you to heap execrations on Anastasie? You
have followed her example; you have selfishly sacrificed others to your
own future, and she sacrifices her father to her lover; and of you two,
which is the worse?”
He was ready to renounce his attempts; he could not bear to take
that money. The fires of remorse burned in his heart, and gave him
intolerable pain, the generous secret remorse which men seldom take into
account when they sit in judgment upon their fellow-men; but perhaps
the angels in heaven, beholding it, pardon the criminal whom our justice
condemns. Rastignac opened his sister’s letter; its simplicity and
kindness revived his heart.
“Your letter came just at the right time, dear brother. Agathe and
I had thought of so many different ways of spending our money,
that we did not know what to buy with it; and now you have come
in, and, like the servant who upset all the watches that belonged
to the King of Spain, you have restored harmony; for, really and
truly, we did not know which of all the things we wanted we wanted
most, and we were always quarreling about it, never thinking, dear
Eugene, of a way of spending our money which would satisfy us
completely. Agathe jumped for you. Indeed, we have been like two
mad things all day, ‘to such a prodigious degree’ (as aunt would
say), that mother said, with her severe expression, ‘Whatever can
be the matter with you, mesdemoiselles?’ I think if we had been
scolded a little, we should have been still better pleased. A
woman ought to be very glad to suffer for one she loves! I,
however, in my inmost soul, was doleful and cross in the midst of
all my joy. I shall make a bad wife, I am afraid, I am too fond of
spending. I had bought two sashes and a nice little stiletto for
piercing eyelet-holes in my stays, trifles that I really did not
want, so that I have less than that slow-coach Agathe, who is so
economical, and hoards her money like a magpie. She had two
hundred francs! And I have only one hundred and fifty! I am nicely
punished; I could throw my sash down the well; it will be painful
to me to wear it now. Poor dear, I have robbed you. And Agathe was
so nice about it. She said, ‘Let us send the three hundred and
fifty francs in our two names!’ But I could not help telling you
everything just as it happened.
“Do you know how we managed to keep your commandments? We took our
glittering hoard, we went out for a walk, and when once fairly on
the highway we ran all the way to Ruffec, where we handed over the
coin, without more ado, to M. Grimbert of the Messageries Royales.
We came back again like swallows on the wing. ‘Don’t you think
that happiness has made us lighter?’ Agathe said. We said all
sorts of things, which I shall not tell you, Monsieur le Parisien,
because they were all about you. Oh, we love you dearly, dear
brother; it was all summed up in those few words. As for keeping
the secret, little masqueraders like us are capable of anything
(according to our aunt), even of holding our tongues. Our mother
has been on a mysterious journey to Angouleme, and the aunt went
with her, not without solemn councils, from which we were shut
out, and M. le Baron likewise. They are silent as to the weighty
political considerations that prompted their mission, and
conjectures are rife in the State of Rastignac. The Infantas are
embroidering a muslin robe with open-work sprigs for her Majesty
the Queen; the work progresses in the most profound secrecy. There
be but two more breadths to finish. A decree has gone forth that
no wall shall be built on the side of Verteuil, but that a hedge
shall be planted instead thereof. Our subjects may sustain some
disappointment of fruit and espaliers, but strangers will enjoy
a fair prospect. Should the heir-presumptive lack
pocket-handkerchiefs, be it known unto him that the dowager Lady
of Marcillac, exploring the recesses of her drawers and boxes
(known respectively as Pompeii and Herculaneum), having brought to
light a fair piece of cambric whereof she wotted not, the Princesses
Agathe and Laure place at their brother’s disposal their thread,
their needles, and hands somewhat of the reddest. The two young
Princes, Don Henri and Don Gabriel, retain their fatal habits of
stuffing themselves with grape-jelly, of teasing their sisters, of
taking their pleasure by going a-bird-nesting, and of cutting
switches for themselves from the osier-beds, maugre the laws of
the realm. Moreover, they list not to learn naught, wherefore the
Papal Nuncio (called of the commonalty, M. le Cure) threateneth
them with excommunication, since that they neglect the sacred
canons of grammatical construction for the construction of other
canon, deadly engines made of the stems of elder.
“Farewell, dear brother, never did letter carry so many wishes for
your success, so much love fully satisfied. You will have a great
deal to tell us when you come home! You will tell me everything,
won’t you? I am the oldest. From something the aunt let fall, we
think you must have had some success.
“Something was said of a lady, but nothing more was said...
“Of course not, in our family! Oh, by-the-by, Eugene, would you
rather that we made that piece of cambric into shirts for you
instead of pocket-handkerchiefs? If you want some really nice
shirts at once, we ought to lose no time in beginning upon them;
and if the fashion is different now in Paris, send us one for a
pattern; we want more particularly to know about the cuffs. Good-
bye! Good-bye! Take my kiss on the left side of your forehead, on
the temple that belongs to me, and to no one else in the world. I
am leaving the other side of the sheet for Agathe, who has
solemnly promised not to read a word that I have written; but, all
the same, I mean to sit by her side while she writes, so as to be
quite sure that she keeps her word.--Your loving sister,
“LAURE DE RASTIGNAC.”
“Yes!” said Eugene to himself. “Yes! Success at all costs now! Riches
could not repay such devotion as this. I wish I could give them every
sort of happiness! Fifteen hundred and fifty francs,” he went on after a
pause. “Every shot must go to the mark! Laure is right. Trust a woman!
I have only calico shirts. Where some one else’s welfare is concerned, a
young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself
is in question, and full of foresight for me,--she is like a heavenly
angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.”
The world lay before him. His tailor had been summoned and sounded, and
had finally surrendered. When Rastignac met M. de Trailles, he had seen
at once how great a part the tailor plays in a young man’s career; a
tailor is either a deadly enemy or a staunch friend, with an invoice
for a bond of friendship; between these two extremes there is, alack! no
middle term. In this representative of his craft Eugene discovered a man
who understood that his was a sort of paternal function for young men
at their entrance into life, who regarded himself as a stepping-stone
between a young man’s present and future. And Rastignac in gratitude
made the man’s fortune by an epigram of a kind in which he excelled at a
later period of his life.
“I have twice known a pair of trousers turned out by him make a match of
twenty thousand livres a year!”
Fifteen hundred francs, and as many suits of clothes as he chose to
order! At that moment the poor child of the South felt no more doubts of
any kind. The young man went down to breakfast with the indefinable air
which the consciousness of the possession of money gives to youth. No
sooner are the coins slipped into a student’s pocket than his wealth,
in imagination at least, is piled into a fantastic column, which affords
him a moral support. He begins to hold up his head as he walks; he is
conscious that he has a means of bringing his powers to bear on a given
point; he looks you straight in the face; his gestures are quick and
decided; only yesterday he was diffident and shy, any one might have
pushed him aside; to-morrow, he will take the wall of a prime minister.
A miracle has been wrought in him. Nothing is beyond the reach of
his ambition, and his ambition soars at random; he is light-hearted,
generous, and enthusiastic; in short, the fledgling bird has discovered
that he has wings. A poor student snatches at every chance pleasure
much as a dog runs all sorts of risks to steal a bone, cracking it and
sucking the marrow as he flies from pursuit; but a young man who can
rattle a few runaway gold coins in his pocket can take his pleasure
deliberately, can taste the whole of the sweets of secure possession; he
soars far above earth; he has forgotten what the word _poverty_ means;
all Paris is his. Those are days when the whole world shines radiant
with light, when everything glows and sparkles before the eyes of youth,
days that bring joyous energy that is never brought into harness, days
of debts and of painful fears that go hand in hand with every delight.
Those who do not know the left bank of the Seine between the Rue
Saint-Jacques and the Rue des Saints-Peres know nothing of life.
“Ah! if the women of Paris but knew,” said Rastignac, as he devoured
Mme. Vauquer’s stewed pears (at five for a penny), “they would come here
in search of a lover.”
Just then a porter from the Messageries Royales appeared at the door of
the room; they had previously heard the bell ring as the wicket opened
to admit him. The man asked for M. Eugene de Rastignac, holding out two
bags for him to take, and a form of receipt for his signature. Vautrin’s
keen glance cut Eugene like a lash.
“Now you will be able to pay for those fencing lessons and go to the
shooting gallery,” he said.
“Your ship has come in,” said Mme. Vauquer, eyeing the bags.
Mlle. Michonneau did not dare to look at the money, for fear her eyes
should betray her cupidity.
“You have a kind mother,” said Mme. Couture.
“You have a kind mother, sir,” echoed Poiret.
“Yes, mamma has been drained dry,” said Vautrin, “and now you can have
your fling, go into society, and fish for heiresses, and dance with
countesses who have peach blossom in their hair. But take my advice,
young man, and don’t neglect your pistol practice.”
Vautrin struck an attitude, as if he were facing an antagonist.
Rastignac, meaning to give the porter a tip, felt in his pockets and
found nothing. Vautrin flung down a franc piece on the table.
“Your credit is good,” he remarked, eyeing the student, and Rastignac
was forced to thank him, though, since the sharp encounter of wits at
dinner that day, after Eugene came in from calling on Mme. de Beauseant,
he had made up his mind that Vautrin was insufferable. For a week, in
fact, they had both kept silence in each other’s presence, and watched
each other. The student tried in vain to account to himself for this
attitude.
An idea, of course, gains in force by the energy with which it
is expressed; it strikes where the brain sends it, by a law as
mathematically exact as the law that determines the course of a shell
from a mortar. The amount of impression it makes is not to be determined
so exactly. Sometimes, in an impressible nature, the idea works havoc,
but there are, no less, natures so robustly protected, that this sort
of projectile falls flat and harmless on skulls of triple brass,
as cannon-shot against solid masonry; then there are flaccid and
spongy-fibred natures into which ideas from without sink like spent
bullets into the earthworks of a redoubt. Rastignac’s head was something
of the powder-magazine order; the least shock sufficed to bring about an
explosion. He was too quick, too young, not to be readily accessible
to ideas; and open to that subtle influence of thought and feeling in
others which causes so many strange phenomena that make an impression
upon us of which we are all unconscious at the time. Nothing escaped his
mental vision; he was lynx-eyed; in him the mental powers of perception,
which seem like duplicates of the senses, had the mysterious power
of swift projection that astonishes us in intellects of a high
order--slingers who are quick to detect the weak spot in any armor.
In the past month Eugene’s good qualities and defects had rapidly
developed with his character. Intercourse with the world and the
endeavor to satisfy his growing desires had brought out his defects.
But Rastignac came from the South side of the Loire, and had the good
qualities of his countrymen. He had the impetuous courage of the South,
that rushes to the attack of a difficulty, as well as the southern
impatience of delay or suspense. These traits are held to be defects in
the North; they made the fortune of Murat, but they likewise cut short
his career. The moral would appear to be that when the dash and boldness
of the South side of the Loire meets, in a southern temperament, with
the guile of the North, the character is complete, and such a man will
gain (and keep) the crown of Sweden.
Rastignac, therefore, could not stand the fire from Vautrin’s batteries
for long without discovering whether this was a friend or a foe. He felt
as if this strange being was reading his inmost soul, and dissecting
his feelings, while Vautrin himself was so close and secretive that
he seemed to have something of the profound and unmoved serenity of
a sphinx, seeing and hearing all things and saying nothing. Eugene,
conscious of that money in his pocket, grew rebellious.
“Be so good as to wait a moment,” he said to Vautrin, as the latter
rose, after slowly emptying his coffee-cup, sip by sip.
“What for?” inquired the older man, as he put on his large-brimmed hat
and took up the sword-cane that he was wont to twirl like a man who will
face three or four footpads without flinching.
“I will repay you in a minute,” returned Eugene. He unsealed one of the
bags as he spoke, counted out a hundred and forty francs, and pushed
them towards Mme. Vauquer. “Short reckonings make good friends” he
added, turning to the widow; “that clears our accounts till the end of
the year. Can you give me change for a five-franc piece?”
“Good friends make short reckonings,” echoed Poiret, with a glance at
Vautrin.
“Here is your franc,” said Rastignac, holding out the coin to the sphinx
in the black wig.
“Any one might think that you were afraid to owe me a trifle,” exclaimed
this latter, with a searching glance that seemed to read the young man’s
inmost thoughts; there was a satirical and cynical smile on Vautrin’s
face such as Eugene had seen scores of times already; every time he saw
it, it exasperated him almost beyond endurance.
“Well... so I am,” he answered. He held both the bags in his hand, and
had risen to go up to his room.
Vautrin made as if he were going out through the sitting-room, and the
student turned to go through the second door that opened into the square
lobby at the foot of the staircase.
“Do you know, Monsieur le Marquis de Rastignacorama, that what you were
saying just now was not exactly polite?” Vautrin remarked, as he rattled
his sword-cane across the panels of the sitting-room door, and came up
to the student.
Rastignac looked coolly at Vautrin, drew him to the foot of the
staircase, and shut the dining-room door. They were standing in the
little square lobby between the kitchen and the dining-room; the place
was lighted by an iron-barred fanlight above a door that gave access
into the garden. Sylvie came out of her kitchen, and Eugene chose that
moment to say:
“_Monsieur_ Vautrin, I am not a marquis, and my name is not
Rastignacorama.”
“They will fight,” said Mlle. Michonneau, in an indifferent tone.
“Fight!” echoed Poiret.
“Not they,” replied Mme. Vauquer, lovingly fingering her pile of coins.
“But there they are under the lime-trees,” cried Mlle. Victorine, who
had risen so that she might see out into the garden. “Poor young man! he
was in the right, after all.”
“We must go upstairs, my pet,” said Mme. Couture; “it is no business of
ours.”
At the door, however, Mme. Couture and Victorine found their progress
barred by the portly form of Sylvie the cook.
“What ever can have happened?” she said. “M. Vautrin said to M. Eugene,
‘Let us have an explanation!’ then he took him by the arm, and there
they are, out among the artichokes.”
Vautrin came in while she was speaking. “Mamma Vauquer,” he said
smiling, “don’t frighten yourself at all. I am only going to try my
pistols under the lime-trees.”
“Oh! monsieur,” cried Victorine, clasping her hands as she spoke, “why
do you want to kill M. Eugene?”
Vautrin stepped back a pace or two, and gazed at Victorine.
“Oh! this is something fresh!” he exclaimed in a bantering tone, that
brought the color into the poor girl’s face. “That young fellow yonder
is very nice, isn’t he?” he went on. “You have given me a notion, my
pretty child; I will make you both happy.”
Mme. Couture laid her hand on the arm of her ward, and drew the girl
away, as she said in her ear:
“Why, Victorine, I cannot imagine what has come over you this morning.”
“I don’t want any shots fired in my garden,” said Mme. Vauquer. “You
will frighten the neighborhood and bring the police up here all in a
moment.”
“Come, keep cool, Mamma Vauquer,” answered Vautrin. “There, there; it’s
all right; we will go to the shooting-gallery.”
He went back to Rastignac, laying his hand familiarly on the young man’s
arm.
“When I have given you ocular demonstration of the fact that I can put
a bullet through the ace on a card five times running at thirty-five
paces,” he said, “that won’t take away your appetite, I suppose? You
look to me to be inclined to be a trifle quarrelsome this morning, and
as if you would rush on your death like a blockhead.”
“Do you draw back?” asked Eugene.
“Don’t try to raise my temperature,” answered Vautrin, “it is not cold
this morning. Let us go and sit over there,” he added, pointing to the
green-painted garden seats; “no one can overhear us. I want a little
talk with you. You are not a bad sort of youngster, and I have no
quarrel with you. I like you, take Trump--(confound it!)--take Vautrin’s
word for it. What makes me like you? I will tell you by-and-by.
Meantime, I can tell you that I know you as well as if I had made you
myself, as I will prove to you in a minute. Put down your bags,” he
continued, pointing to the round table.
Rastignac deposited his money on the table, and sat down. He was
consumed with curiosity, which the sudden change in the manner of the
man before him had excited to the highest pitch. Here was a strange
being who, a moment ago, had talked of killing him, and now posed as his
protector.
“You would like to know who I really am, what I was, and what I do now,”
Vautrin went on. “You want to know too much, youngster. Come! come! keep
cool! You will hear more astonishing things than that. I have had
my misfortunes. Just hear me out first, and you shall have your turn
afterwards. Here is my past in three words. Who am I? Vautrin. What do
I do? Just what I please. Let us change the subject. You want to know my
character. I am good-natured to those who do me a good turn, or to those
whose hearts speak to mine. These last may do anything they like with
me; they may bruise my shins, and I shall not tell them to ‘mind what
they are about’; but, _nom d’une pipe_, the devil himself is not an
uglier customer than I can be if people annoy me, or if I don’t happen
to take to them; and you may just as well know at once that I think no
more of killing a man than of that,” and he spat before him as he spoke.
“Only when it is absolutely necessary to do so, I do my best to kill him
properly. I am what you call an artist. I have read Benvenuto Cellini’s
_Memoirs_, such as you see me; and, what is more, in Italian: A
fine-spirited fellow he was! From him I learned to follow the example
set us by Providence, who strikes us down at random, and to admire
the beautiful whenever and wherever it is found. And, setting other
questions aside, is it not a glorious part to play, when you pit
yourself against mankind, and the luck is on your side? I have thought
a good deal about the constitution of your present social Dis-order. A
duel is downright childish, my boy! utter nonsense and folly! When one
of two living men must be got out of the way, none but an idiot
would leave chance to decide which it is to be; and in a duel it is a
toss-up--heads or tails--and there you are! Now I, for instance, can
hit the ace in the middle of a card five times running, send one bullet
after another through the same hole, and at thirty-five paces, moreover!
With that little accomplishment you might think yourself certain of
killing your man, mightn’t you. Well, I have fired, at twenty paces, and
missed, and the rogue who had never handled a pistol in his life--look
here!”--(he unbuttoned his waistcoat and exposed his chest, covered,
like a bear’s back, with a shaggy fell; the student gave a startled
shudder)--“he was a raw lad, but he made his mark on me,” the
extraordinary man went on, drawing Rastignac’s fingers over a deep scar
on his breast. “But that happened when I myself was a mere boy; I was
one-and-twenty then (your age), and I had some beliefs left--in a
woman’s love, and in a pack of rubbish that you will be over head and
ears in directly. You and I were to have fought just now, weren’t we?
You might have killed me. Suppose that I were put under the earth, where
would you be? You would have to clear out of this, go to Switzerland,
draw on papa’s purse--and he has none too much in it as it is. I mean to
open your eyes to your real position, that is what I am going to do: but
I shall do it from the point of view of a man who, after studying the
world very closely, sees that there are but two alternatives--stupid
obedience or revolt. I obey nobody; is that clear? Now, do you know how
much you will want at the pace you are going? A million; and promptly,
too, or that little head of ours will be swaying to and fro in the
drag-nets at Saint-Cloud, while we are gone to find out whether or no
there is a Supreme Being. I will put you in the way of that million.”
He stopped for a moment and looked at Eugene.
“Aha! you do not look so sourly at papa Vautrin now! At the mention of
the million you look like a young girl when somebody has said, ‘I will
come for you this evening!’ and she betakes herself to her toilette as a
cat licks its whiskers over a saucer of milk. All right. Come, now, let
us go into the question, young man; all between ourselves, you know.
We have a papa and mamma down yonder, a great-aunt, two sisters (aged
eighteen and seventeen), two young brothers (one fifteen, and the other
ten), that is about the roll-call of the crew. The aunt brings up the
two sisters; the cure comes and teaches the boys Latin. Boiled chestnuts
are oftener on the table than white bread. Papa makes a suit of clothes
last a long while; if mamma has a different dress winter and summer, it
is about as much as she has; the sisters manage as best they can. I know
all about it; I have lived in the south.
“That is how things are at home. They send you twelve hundred francs a
year, and the whole property only brings in three thousand francs all
told. We have a cook and a manservant; papa is a baron, and we must keep
up appearances. Then we have our ambitions; we are connected with the
Beauseants, and we go afoot through the streets; we want to be rich,
and we have not a penny; we eat Mme. Vauquer’s messes, and we like grand
dinners in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; we sleep on a truckle-bed, and
dream of a mansion! I do not blame you for wanting these things. What
sort of men do the women run after? Men of ambition. Men of ambition
have stronger frames, their blood is richer in iron, their hearts are
warmer than those of ordinary men. Women feel that when their power is
greatest, they look their best, and that those are their happiest hours;
they like power in men, and prefer the strongest even if it is a power
that may be their own destruction. I am going to make an inventory of
your desires in order to put the question at issue before you. Here it
is:--
“We are as hungry as a wolf, and those newly-cut teeth of ours are
sharp; what are we to do to keep the pot boiling? In the first place,
we have the Code to browse upon; it is not amusing, and we are none the
wiser for it, but that cannot be helped. So far so good. We mean to make
an advocate of ourselves with a prospect of one day being made President
of a Court of Assize, when we shall send poor devils, our betters, to
the galleys with a T.F.[*] on their shoulders, so that the rich may be
convinced that they can sleep in peace. There is no fun in that; and you
are a long while coming to it; for, to begin with, there are two years
of nauseous drudgery in Paris, we see all the lollipops that we long for
out of our reach. It is tiresome to want things and never to have them.
If you were a pallid creature of the mollusk order, you would have
nothing to fear, but it is different when you have the hot blood of
a lion and are ready to get into a score of scrapes every day of your
life. This is the ghastliest form of torture known in this inferno of
God’s making, and you will give in to it. Or suppose that you are a good
boy, drink nothing stronger than milk, and bemoan your hard lot; you,
with your generous nature, will endure hardships that would drive a dog
mad, and make a start, after long waiting, as deputy to some rascal
or other in a hole of a place where the Government will fling you a
thousand francs a year like the scraps that are thrown to the butcher’s
dog. Bark at thieves, plead the cause of the rich, send men of heart
to the guillotine, that is your work! Many thanks! If you have no
influence, you may rot in your provincial tribunal. At thirty you will
be a Justice with twelve hundred francs a year (if you have not flung
off the gown for good before then). By the time you are forty you may
look to marry a miller’s daughter, an heiress with some six thousand
livres a year. Much obliged! If you have influence, you may possibly
be a Public Prosecutor by the time you are thirty; with a salary of
a thousand crowns, you could look to marry the mayor’s daughter. Some
petty piece of political trickery, such as mistaking Villele for Manuel
in a bulletin (the names rhyme, and that quiets your conscience), and
you will probably be a Procureur General by the time you are forty, with
a chance of becoming a deputy. Please to observe, my dear boy, that our
conscience will have been a little damaged in the process, and that we
shall endure twenty years of drudgery and hidden poverty, and that
our sisters are wearing Dian’s livery. I have the honor to call your
attention to another fact: to wit, that there are but twenty Procureurs
Generaux at a time in all France, while there are some twenty thousand
of you young men who aspire to that elevated position; that there are
some mountebanks among you who would sell their family to screw their
fortunes a peg higher. If this sort of thing sickens you, try another
course. The Baron de Rastignac thinks of becoming an advocate, does he?
There’s a nice prospect for you! Ten years of drudgery straight away.
You are obliged to live at the rate of a thousand francs a month; you
must have a library of law books, live in chambers, go into society, go
down on your knees to ask a solicitor for briefs, lick the dust off
the floor of the Palais de Justice. If this kind of business led to
anything, I should not say no; but just give me the names of five
advocates here in Paris who by the time that they are fifty are making
fifty thousand francs a year! Bah! I would sooner turn pirate on the
high seas than have my soul shrivel up inside me like that. How will
you find the capital? There is but one way, marry a woman who has money.
There is no fun in it. Have you a mind to marry? You hang a stone around
your neck; for if you marry for money, what becomes of our exalted
notions of honor and so forth? You might as well fly in the face of
social conventions at once. Is it nothing to crawl like a serpent before
your wife, to lick her mother’s feet, to descend to dirty actions
that would sicken swine--faugh!--never mind if you at least make your
fortune. But you will be as doleful as a dripstone if you marry for
money. It is better to wrestle with men than to wrangle at home with
your wife. You are at the crossway of the roads of life, my boy; choose
your way.
[*] Travaux forces, forced labour.
“But you have chosen already. You have gone to see your cousin of
Beauseant, and you have had an inkling of luxury; you have been to Mme.
de Restaud’s house, and in Father Goriot’s daughter you have seen a
glimpse of the Parisienne for the first time. That day you came
back with a word written on your forehead. I knew it, I could read
it--‘_Success_!’ Yes, success at any price. ‘Bravo,’ said I to myself,
‘here is the sort of fellow for me.’ You wanted money. Where was it all
to come from? You have drained your sisters’ little hoard (all brothers
sponge more or less on their sisters). Those fifteen hundred francs of
yours (got together, God knows how! in a country where there are more
chestnuts than five-franc pieces) will slip away like soldiers after
pillage. And, then, what will you do? Shall you begin to work? Work, or
what you understand by work at this moment, means, for a man of Poiret’s
calibre, an old age in Mamma Vauquer’s lodging-house. There are fifty
thousand young men in your position at this moment, all bent as you are
on solving one and the same problem--how to acquire a fortune rapidly.
You are but a unit in that aggregate. You can guess, therefore, what
efforts you must make, how desperate the struggle is. There are not
fifty thousand good positions for you; you must fight and devour one
another like spiders in a pot. Do you know how a man makes his way here?
By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your
way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them
like a plague. Honesty is nothing to the purpose. Men bow before the
power of genius; they hate it, and try to slander it, because genius
does not divide the spoil; but if genius persists, they bow before it.
To sum it all up in a phrase, if they fail to smother genius in the mud,
they fall on their knees and worship it. Corruption is a great power
in the world, and talent is scarce. So corruption is the weapon of
superfluous mediocrity; you will be made to feel the point of it
everywhere. You will see women who spend more than ten thousand francs
a year on dress, while their husband’s salary (his whole income) is
six thousand francs. You will see officials buying estates on twelve
thousand francs a year. You will see women who sell themselves body and
soul to drive in a carriage belonging to the son of a peer of France,
who has a right to drive in the middle rank at Longchamp. You have
seen that poor simpleton of a Goriot obliged to meet a bill with his
daughter’s name at the back of it, though her husband has fifty thousand
francs a year. I defy you to walk a couple of yards anywhere in Paris
without stumbling on some infernal complication. I’ll bet my head to
a head of that salad that you will stir up a hornet’s nest by taking a
fancy to the first young, rich, and pretty woman you meet. They are all
dodging the law, all at loggerheads with their husbands. If I were to
begin to tell you all that vanity or necessity (virtue is not often
mixed up in it, you may be sure), all that vanity and necessity drive
them to do for lovers, finery, housekeeping, or children, I should never
come to an end. So an honest man is the common enemy.
“But do you know what an honest man is? Here, in Paris, an honest man is
the man who keeps his own counsel, and will not divide the plunder. I am
not speaking now of those poor bond-slaves who do the work of the world
without a reward for their toil--God Almighty’s outcasts, I call them.
Among them, I grant you, is virtue in all the flower of its stupidity,
but poverty is no less their portion. At this moment, I think I see the
long faces those good folk would pull if God played a practical joke on
them and stayed away at the Last Judgment.
“Well, then, if you mean to make a fortune quickly, you must either be
rich to begin with, or make people believe that you are rich. It is no
use playing here except for high stakes; once take to low play, it is
all up with you. If in the scores of professions that are open to you,
there are ten men who rise very rapidly, people are sure to call them
thieves. You can draw your own conclusions. Such is life. It is no
cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to
cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is
in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our
epoch. If I take this tone in speaking of the world to you, I have the
right to do so; I know it well. Do you think that I am blaming it? Far
from it; the world has always been as it is now. Moralists’ strictures
will never change it. Mankind are not perfect, but one age is more
or less hypocritical than another, and then simpletons say that its
morality is high or low. I do not think that the rich are any worse than
the poor; man is much the same, high or low, or wherever he is. In a
million of these human cattle there may be half a score of bold spirits
who rise above the rest, above the laws; I am one of them. And you, if
you are cleverer than your fellows, make straight to your end, and hold
your head high. But you must lay your account with envy and slander and
mediocrity, and every man’s hand will be against you. Napoleon met with
a Minister of War, Aubry by name, who all but sent him to the colonies.
“Feel your pulse. Think whether you can get up morning after morning,
strengthened in yesterday’s purpose. In that case I will make you an
offer that no one would decline. Listen attentively. You see, I have an
idea of my own. My idea is to live a patriarchal life on a vast estate,
say a hundred thousand acres, somewhere in the Southern States of
America. I mean to be a planter, to have slaves, to make a few snug
millions by selling my cattle, timber, and tobacco; I want to live an
absolute monarch, and to do just as I please; to lead such a life as no
one here in these squalid dens of lath and plaster ever imagines. I am a
great poet; I do not write my poems, I feel them, and act them. At this
moment I have fifty thousand francs, which might possibly buy forty
negroes. I want two hundred thousand francs, because I want to have
two hundred negroes to carry out my notions of the patriarachal life
properly. Negroes, you see, are like a sort of family ready grown, and
there are no inquisitive public prosecutors out there to interfere with
you. That investment in ebony ought to mean three or four million francs
in ten years’ time. If I am successful, no one will ask me who I am. I
shall be Mr. Four Millions, an American citizen. I shall be fifty years
old by then, and sound and hearty still; I shall enjoy life after my own
fashion. In two words, if I find you an heiress with a million, will you
give me two hundred thousand francs? Twenty per cent commission, eh? Is
that too much? Your little wife will be very much in love with you. Once
married, you will show signs of uneasiness and remorse; for a couple of
weeks you will be depressed. Then, some night after sundry grimacings,
comes the confession, between two kisses, ‘Two hundred thousand francs
of debts, my darling!’ This sort of farce is played every day in Paris,
and by young men of the highest fashion. When a young wife has given her
heart, she will not refuse her purse. Perhaps you are thinking that
you will lose the money for good? Not you. You will make two hundred
thousand francs again by some stroke of business. With your capital and
your brains you should be able to accumulate as large a fortune as you
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,”
Father Goriot’s voice spoke from the doorway of Eugene’s room.
“Yes.”
“Very well then, she is going to the Marechale Carigliano’s ball on
Monday. If you can manage to be there, I shall hear from you whether my
two girls enjoyed themselves, and how they were dressed, and all about
it in fact.”
“How did you find that out, my good Goriot?” said Eugene, putting a
chair by the fire for his visitor.
“Her maid told me. I hear all about their doings from Therese and
Constance,” he added gleefully.
The old man looked like a lover who is still young enough to be made
happy by the discovery of some little stratagem which brings him
information of his lady-love without her knowledge.
“_You_ will see them both!” he said, giving artless expression to a pang
of jealousy.
“I do not know,” answered Eugene. “I will go to Mme. de Beauseant and
ask her for an introduction to the Marechale.”
Eugene felt a thrill of pleasure at the thought of appearing before the
Vicomtesse, dressed as henceforward he always meant to be. The “abysses
of the human heart,” in the moralists’ phrase, are only insidious
thoughts, involuntary promptings of personal interest. The instinct of
enjoyment turns the scale; those rapid changes of purpose which have
furnished the text for so much rhetoric are calculations prompted by
the hope of pleasure. Rastignac beholding himself well dressed and
impeccable as to gloves and boots, forgot his virtuous resolutions.
Youth, moreover, when bent upon wrongdoing does not dare to behold
himself in the mirror of consciousness; mature age has seen itself; and
therein lies the whole difference between these two phases of life.
A friendship between Eugene and his neighbor, Father Goriot, had
been growing up for several days past. This secret friendship and the
antipathy that the student had begun to entertain for Vautrin arose
from the same psychological causes. The bold philosopher who shall
investigate the effects of mental action upon the physical world
will doubtless find more than one proof of the material nature of our
sentiments in other animals. What physiognomist is as quick to discern
character as a dog is to discover from a stranger’s face whether this
is a friend or no? Those by-words--“atoms,” “affinities”--are facts
surviving in modern languages for the confusion of philosophic wiseacres
who amuse themselves by winnowing the chaff of language to find its
grammatical roots. We _feel_ that we are loved. Our sentiments make
themselves felt in everything, even at a great distance. A letter is
a living soul, and so faithful an echo of the voice that speaks in it,
that finer natures look upon a letter as one of love’s most precious
treasures. Father Goriot’s affection was of the instinctive order, a
canine affection raised to a sublime pitch; he had scented compassion in
the air, and the kindly respect and youthful sympathy in the student’s
heart. This friendship had, however, scarcely reached the stage at which
confidences are made. Though Eugene had spoken of his wish to meet Mme.
de Nucingen, it was not because he counted on the old man to introduce
him to her house, for he hoped that his own audacity might stand him in
good stead. All that Father Goriot had said as yet about his daughters
had referred to the remarks that the student had made so freely in
public on that day of the two visits.
“How could you think that Mme. de Restaud bore you a grudge for
mentioning my name?” he had said on the day following that scene at
dinner. “My daughters are very fond of me; I am a happy father; but
my sons-in-law have behaved badly to me, and rather than make trouble
between my darlings and their husbands, I choose to see my daughters
secretly. Fathers who can see their daughters at any time have no idea
of all the pleasure that all this mystery gives me; I cannot always see
mine when I wish, do you understand? So when it is fine I walk out in
the Champs-Elysees, after finding out from their waiting-maids whether
my daughters mean to go out. I wait near the entrance; my heart beats
fast when the carriages begin to come; I admire them in their dresses,
and as they pass they give me a little smile, and it seems as if
everything was lighted up for me by a ray of bright sunlight. I wait,
for they always go back the same way, and then I see them again; the
fresh air has done them good and brought color into their cheeks; all
about me people say, ‘What a beautiful woman that is!’ and it does my
heart good to hear them.
“Are they not my own flesh and blood? I love the very horses that draw
them; I envy the little lap-dog on their knees. Their happiness is my
life. Every one loves after his own fashion, and mine does no one any
harm; why should people trouble their heads about me? I am happy in my
own way. Is there any law against going to see my girls in the evening
when they are going out to a ball? And what a disappointment it is when
I get there too late, and am told that ‘Madame has gone out!’ Once I
waited till three o’clock in the morning for Nasie; I had not seen her
for two whole days. I was so pleased, that it was almost too much for
me! Please do not speak of me unless it is to say how good my daughters
are to me. They are always wanting to heap presents upon me, but I will
not have it. ‘Just keep your money,’ I tell them. ‘What should I do
with it? I want nothing.’ And what am I, sir, after all? An old carcase,
whose soul is always where my daughters are. When you have seen Mme.
de Nucingen, tell me which you like the most,” said the old man after a
moment’s pause, while Eugene put the last touches to his toilette. The
student was about to go out to walk in the Garden of the Tuileries
until the hour when he could venture to appear in Mme. de Beauseant’s
drawing-room.
That walk was a turning-point in Eugene’s career. Several women noticed
him; he looked so handsome, so young, and so well dressed. This almost
admiring attention gave a new turn to his thoughts. He forgot his
sisters and the aunt who had robbed herself for him; he no longer
remembered his own virtuous scruples. He had seen hovering above his
head the fiend so easy to mistake for an angel, the Devil with rainbow
wings, who scatters rubies, and aims his golden shafts at palace fronts,
who invests women with purple, and thrones with a glory that dazzles the
eyes of fools till they forget the simple origins of royal dominion; he
had heard the rustle of that Vanity whose tinsel seems to us to be the
symbol of power. However cynical Vautrin’s words had been, they had made
an impression on his mind, as the sordid features of the old crone who
whispers, “A lover, and gold in torrents,” remain engraven on a young
girl’s memory.
Eugene lounged about the walks till it was nearly five o’clock, then
he went to Mme. de Beauseant, and received one of the terrible blows
against which young hearts are defenceless. Hitherto the Vicomtesse had
received him with the kindly urbanity, the bland grace of manner that is
the result of fine breeding, but is only complete when it comes from the
heart.
To-day Mme. de Beauseant bowed constrainedly, and spoke curtly:
“M. de Rastignac, I cannot possibly see you, at least not at this
moment. I am engaged...”
An observer, and Rastignac instantly became an observer, could read the
whole history, the character and customs of caste, in the phrase, in the
tones of her voice, in her glance and bearing. He caught a glimpse of
the iron hand beneath the velvet glove--the personality, the egoism
beneath the manner, the wood beneath the varnish. In short, he heard
that unmistakable I THE KING that issues from the plumed canopy of
the throne, and finds its last echo under the crest of the simplest
gentleman.
Eugene had trusted too implicitly to the generosity of a woman; he
could not believe in her haughtiness. Like all the unfortunate, he had
subscribed, in all good faith, the generous compact which should bind
the benefactor to the recipient, and the first article in that bond,
between two large-hearted natures, is a perfect equality. The kindness
which knits two souls together is as rare, as divine, and as little
understood as the passion of love, for both love and kindness are the
lavish generosity of noble natures. Rastignac was set upon going to the
Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball, so he swallowed down this rebuff.
“Madame,” he faltered out, “I would not have come to trouble you about
a trifling matter; be so kind as to permit me to see you later, I can
wait.”
“Very well, come and dine with me,” she said, a little confused by
the harsh way in which she had spoken, for this lady was as genuinely
kind-hearted as she was high-born.
Eugene was touched by this sudden relenting, but none the less he said
to himself as he went away, “Crawl in the dust, put up with every kind
of treatment. What must the rest of the world be like when one of the
kindest of women forgets all her promises of befriending me in a moment,
and tosses me aside like an old shoe? So it is every one for himself? It
is true that her house is not a shop, and I have put myself in the wrong
by needing her help. You should cut your way through the world like a
cannon ball, as Vautrin said.”
But the student’s bitter thoughts were soon dissipated by the pleasure
which he promised himself in this dinner with the Vicomtesse. Fate
seemed to determine that the smallest accidents in his life should
combine to urge him into a career, which the terrible sphinx of the
Maison Vauquer had described as a field of battle where you must either
slay or be slain, and cheat to avoid being cheated. You leave your
conscience and your heart at the barriers, and wear a mask on entering
into this game of grim earnest, where, as in ancient Sparta, you must
snatch your prize without being detected if you would deserve the crown.
On his return he found the Vicomtesse gracious and kindly, as she had
always been to him. They went together to the dining-room, where the
Vicomte was waiting for his wife. In the time of the Restoration the
luxury of the table was carried, as is well known, to the highest
degree, and M. de Beauseant, like many jaded men of the world, had few
pleasures left but those of good cheer; in this matter, in fact, he was
a gourmand of the schools of Louis XVIII. and of the Duc d’Escars, and
luxury was supplemented by splendor. Eugene, dining for the first time
in a house where the traditions of grandeur had descended through many
generations, had never seen any spectacle like this that now met his
eyes. In the time of the Empire, balls had always ended with a supper,
because the officers who took part in them must be fortified for
immediate service, and even in Paris might be called upon to leave the
ballroom for the battlefield. This arrangement had gone out of fashion
under the Monarchy, and Eugene had so far only been asked to dances.
The self-possession which pre-eminently distinguished him in later life
already stood him in good stead, and he did not betray his amazement.
Yet as he saw for the first time the finely wrought silver plate, the
completeness of every detail, the sumptuous dinner, noiselessly served,
it was difficult for such an ardent imagination not to prefer this life
of studied and refined luxury to the hardships of the life which he had
chosen only that morning.
His thoughts went back for a moment to the lodging-house, and with a
feeling of profound loathing, he vowed to himself that at New Year he
would go; prompted at least as much by a desire to live among cleaner
surroundings as by a wish to shake off Vautrin, whose huge hand he
seemed to feel on his shoulder at that moment. When you consider the
numberless forms, clamorous or mute, that corruption takes in Paris,
common-sense begins to wonder what mental aberration prompted the State
to establish great colleges and schools there, and assemble young men in
the capital; how it is that pretty women are respected, or that the gold
coin displayed in the money-changer’s wooden saucers does not take to
itself wings in the twinkling of an eye; and when you come to think
further, how comparatively few cases of crime there are, and to count
up the misdemeanors committed by youth, is there not a certain amount of
respect due to these patient Tantaluses who wrestle with themselves and
nearly always come off victorious? The struggles of the poor student
in Paris, if skilfully drawn, would furnish a most dramatic picture of
modern civilization.
In vain Mme. de Beauseant looked at Eugene as if asking him to speak;
the student was tongue-tied in the Vicomte’s presence.
“Are you going to take me to the Italiens this evening?” the Vicomtesse
asked her husband.
“You cannot doubt that I should obey you with pleasure,” he answered,
and there was a sarcastic tinge in his politeness which Eugene did not
detect, “but I ought to go to meet some one at the Varietes.”
“His mistress,” said she to herself.
“Then, is not Ajuda coming for you this evening?” inquired the Vicomte.
“No,” she answered, petulantly.
“Very well, then, if you really must have an arm, take that of M. de
Rastignac.”
The Vicomtess turned to Eugene with a smile.
“That would be a very compromising step for you,” she said.
“‘A Frenchman loves danger, because in danger there is glory,’ to quote
M. de Chateaubriand,” said Rastignac, with a bow.
A few moments later he was sitting beside Mme. de Beauseant in
a brougham, that whirled them through the streets of Paris to a
fashionable theatre. It seemed to him that some fairy magic had suddenly
transported him into a box facing the stage. All the lorgnettes of the
house were pointed at him as he entered, and at the Vicomtesse in her
charming toilette. He went from enchantment to enchantment.
“You must talk to me, you know,” said Mme. de Beauseant. “Ah! look!
There is Mme. de Nucingen in the third box from ours. Her sister and M.
de Trailles are on the other side.”
The Vicomtesse glanced as she spoke at the box where Mlle. de Rochefide
should have been; M. d’Ajuda was not there, and Mme. de Beauseant’s face
lighted up in a marvelous way.
“She is charming,” said Eugene, after looking at Mme. de Nucingen.
“She has white eyelashes.”
“Yes, but she has such a pretty slender figure!”
“Her hands are large.”
“Such beautiful eyes!”
“Her face is long.”
“Yes, but length gives distinction.”
“It is lucky for her that she has some distinction in her face. Just see
how she fidgets with her opera-glass! The Goriot blood shows itself in
every movement,” said the Vicomtesse, much to Eugene’s astonishment.
Indeed, Mme. de Beauseant seemed to be engaged in making a survey of
the house, and to be unconscious of Mme. Nucingen’s existence; but no
movement made by the latter was lost upon the Vicomtesse. The house was
full of the loveliest women in Paris, so that Delphine de Nucingen was
not a little flattered to receive the undivided attention of Mme. de
Beauseant’s young, handsome, and well-dressed cousin, who seemed to have
no eyes for any one else.
“If you look at her so persistently, you will make people talk, M. de
Rastignac. You will never succeed if you fling yourself at any one’s
head like that.”
“My dear cousin,” said Eugene, “you have protected me indeed so far,
and now if you would complete your work, I only ask of you a favor which
will cost you but little, and be of very great service to me. I have
lost my heart.”
“Already!”
“Yes.”
“And to that woman!”
“How could I aspire to find any one else to listen to me?” he asked,
with a keen glance at his cousin. “Her Grace the Duchesse de Carigliano
is a friend of the Duchesse de Berri,” he went on, after a pause; “you
are sure to see her, will you be so kind as to present me to her, and to
take me to her ball on Monday? I shall meet Mme. de Nucingen there, and
enter into my first skirmish.”
“Willingly,” she said. “If you have a liking for her already, your
affairs of the heart are like to prosper. That is de Marsay over there
in the Princesse Galathionne’s box. Mme. de Nucingen is racked with
jealousy. There is no better time for approaching a woman, especially
if she happens to be a banker’s wife. All those ladies of the
Chaussee-d’Antin love revenge.”
“Then, what would you do yourself in such a case?”
“I should suffer in silence.”
At this point the Marquis d’Ajuda appeared in Mme. de Beauseant’s box.
“I have made a muddle of my affairs to come to you,” he said, “and I am
telling you about it, so that it may not be a sacrifice.”
Eugene saw the glow of joy on the Vicomtesse’s face, and knew that this
was love, and learned the difference between love and the affectations
of Parisian coquetry. He admired his cousin, grew mute, and yielded his
place to M. d’Ajuda with a sigh.
“How noble, how sublime a woman is when she loves like that!” he said to
himself. “And _he_ could forsake her for a doll! Oh! how could any one
forsake her?”
There was a boy’s passionate indignation in his heart. He could have
flung himself at Mme. de Beauseant’s feet; he longed for the power of
the devil if he could snatch her away and hide her in his heart, as an
eagle snatches up some white yearling from the plains and bears it to
its eyrie. It was humiliating to him to think that in all this gallery
of fair pictures he had not one picture of his own. “To have a mistress
and an almost royal position is a sign of power,” he said to himself.
And he looked at Mme. de Nucingen as a man measures another who has
insulted him.
The Vicomtesse turned to him, and the expression of her eyes thanked him
a thousand times for his discretion. The first act came to an end just
then.
“Do you know Mme. de Nucingen well enough to present M. de Rastignac to
her?” she asked of the Marquis d’Ajuda.
“She will be delighted,” said the Marquis. The handsome Portuguese rose
as he spoke and took the student’s arm, and in another moment Eugene
found himself in Mme. de Nucingen’s box.
“Madame,” said the Marquis, “I have the honor of presenting to you the
Chevalier Eugene de Rastignac; he is a cousin of Mme. de Beauseant’s.
You have made so deep an impression upon him, that I thought I would
fill up the measure of his happiness by bringing him nearer to his
divinity.”
Words spoken half jestingly to cover their somewhat disrespectful
import; but such an implication, if carefully disguised, never gives
offence to a woman. Mme. de Nucingen smiled, and offered Eugene the
place which her husband had just left.
“I do not venture to suggest that you should stay with me, monsieur,”
she said. “Those who are so fortunate as to be in Mme. de Beauseant’s
company do not desire to leave it.”
“Madame,” Eugene said, lowering his voice, “I think that to please my
cousin I should remain with you. Before my lord Marquis came we were
speaking of you and of your exceedingly distinguished appearance,” he
added aloud.