INTERRED AT THE EXPENSE OF TWO STUDENTS.' "
Eugene took part of his friend's advice, but only after he had
gone in person first to M. and Mme. de Nucingen, and then to M.
and Mme. de Restaud--a fruitless
errand. He went no further than
the
doorstep in either house. The servants had received strict
orders to admit no one.
"Monsieur and Madame can see no visitors. They have just lost
their father, and are in deep grief over their loss."
Eugene's Parisian experience told him that it was idle to press
the point. Something clutched
strangely at his heart when he saw
that it was impossible to reach Delphine.
"Sell some of your ornaments," he wrote
hastily in the
porter's
room, "so that your father may be decently laid in his last
resting-place."
He sealed the note, and begged the
porter to give it to Therese
for her
mistress; but the man took it to the Baron de Nucingen,
who flung the note into the fire. Eugene, having finished his
errands, returned to the lodging-house about three o'clock. In
spite of himself, the tears came into his eyes. The
coffin, in
its
scanty covering of black cloth, was
standing there on the
pavement before the gate, on two chairs. A withered sprig of
hyssop was soaking in the holy water bowl of silver-plated
copper; there was not a soul in the street, not a passer-by had
stopped to
sprinkle the
coffin; there was not even an attempt at
a black
drapery over the wicket. It was a pauper who lay there;
no one made a
pretence of
mourning for him; he had neither
friends nor kindred--there was no one to follow him to the grave.
Bianchon's duties compelled him to be at the hospital, but he had
left a few lines for Eugene, telling his friend about the
arrangements he had made for the burial service. The house
student's note told Rastignac that a mass was beyond their means,
that the ordinary office for the dead was cheaper, and must
suffice, and that he had sent word to the undertaker by
Christophe. Eugene had scarcely finished
reading Bianchon's
scrawl, when he looked up and saw the little
circular gold locket
that contained the hair of Goriot's two daughters in Mme.
Vauquer's hands.
"How dared you take it?" he asked.
"Good Lord! is that to be buried along with him?" retorted
Sylvie. "It is gold."
"Of course it shall!" Eugene answered
indignantly; "he shall at
any rate take one thing that may represent his daughters into the
grave with him."
When the hearse came, Eugene had the
coffin carried into the
house again, unscrewed the lid, and reverently laid on the old
man's breast the token that recalled the days when Delphine and
Anastasie were
innocent little maidens, before they began "to
think for themselves," as he had moaned out in his agony.
Rastignac and Christophe and the two undertaker's men were the
only followers of the
funeral. The Church of Saint-Etienne du
Mont was only a little distance from the Rue Nueve-Sainte-
Genevieve. When the
coffin had been deposited in a low, dark,
little
chapel, the law student looked round in vain for Goriot's
two daughters or their husbands. Christophe was his only fellow-
mourner; Christophe, who appeared to think it was his duty to
attend the
funeral of the man who had put him in the way of such
handsome tips. As they waited there in the
chapel for the two
priests, the chorister, and the beadle, Rastignac grasped
Christophe's hand. He could not utter a word just then.
"Yes, Monsieur Eugene," said Christophe, "he was a good and
worthy man, who never said one word louder than another; he never
did any one any harm, and gave nobody any trouble."
The two
priests, the chorister, and the beadle came, and said and
did as much as could be expected for seventy francs in an age
when religion cannot afford to say prayers for nothing.
The ecclesiatics chanted a psalm, the Libera nos and the De
profundis. The whole service lasted about twenty minutes. There
was but one
mourning coach, which the
priest and chorister agreed
to share with Eugene and Christophe.
"There is no one else to follow us," remarked the
priest, "so we
may as well go quickly, and so save time; it is half-past five."
But just as the
coffin was put in the hearse, two empty
carriages, with the armorial bearings of the Comte de Restaud and
the Baron de Nucingen, arrived and followed in the
procession to
Pere-Lachaise. At six o'clock Goriot's
coffin was lowered into
the grave, his daughters' servants
standing round the while. The
ecclesiastic recited the short prayer that the students could
afford to pay for, and then both
priest and lackeys disappeared
at once. The two grave diggers flung in several spadefuls of
earth, and then stopped and asked Rastignac for their fee. Eugene
felt in vain in his pocket, and was obliged to borrow five francs
of Christophe. This thing, so
trifling in itself, gave Rastignac
a terrible pang of
distress. It was growing dusk, the damp
twilight fretted his nerves; he gazed down into the grave and the
tears he shed were drawn from him by the
sacredemotion, a
single-hearted sorrow. When such tears fall on earth, their
radiance reaches heaven. And with that tear that fell on Father
Goriot's grave, Eugene Rastignac's youth ended. He folded his
arms and gazed at the clouded sky; and Christophe, after a glance
at him, turned and went--Rastignac was left alone.
He went a few paces further, to the highest point of the
cemetery, and looked out over Paris and the windings of the
Seine; the lamps were
beginning to shine on either side of the
river. His eyes turned almost
eagerly to the space between the
column of the Place Vendome and the cupola of the Invalides;
there lay the shining world that he had wished to reach. He
glanced over that humming hive,
seeming to draw a foretaste of
its honey, and said magniloquently:
"Henceforth there is war between us."
And by way of throwing down the glove to Society, Rastignac went
to dine with Mme. de Nucingen.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Ajuda-Pinto, Marquis Miguel d'
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Secrets of a Princess
Beatrix
Beauseant, Marquis
An Episode under the Terror
Beauseant, Vicomte de
The Deserted Woman
Beauseant, Vicomtesse de
The Deserted Woman
Albert Savarus
Bianchon, Horace
The Atheist's Mass
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Study of Woman
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Honorine
The Seamy Side of History
The Magic Skin
A Second Home
A Prince of Bohemia
Letters of Two Brides
The Muse of the Department
The Imaginary Mistress
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
The Country Parson
In
addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
Another Study of Woman
La Grande Breteche
Bibi-Lupin (chief of secret police, called himself Gondureau)
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Carigliano, Marechal, Duc de
Sarrasine
Collin, Jacques
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Member for Arcis
Derville
Gobseck
A Start in Life
The Gondreville Mystery
Colonel Chabert
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Franchessini, Colonel
The Member for Arcis
Galathionne, Princess
A Daughter of Eve
Gobseck, Jean-Esther Van
Gobseck
Cesar Birotteau
The Government Clerks
The Unconscious Humoriists
Jacques (M. de Beauseant's butler)
The Deserted Woman
Langeais, Duchesse Antoinette de
The Thirteen
Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Jealousies of a Country Town
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modest Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
Maurice (de Restaud's valet)
Gobseck
Montriveau, General Marquis Armand de
The Thirteen
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Another Study of Woman
Pierrette
The Member for Arcis
Nucingen, Baron Frederic de
The Firm of Nucingen
Pierrette
Cesar Birotteau
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Another Study of Woman