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myself. The wildest thoughts came into my head. There have been
moments in my life when I have envied my servants, and would have

changed places with my maid. It was madness to think of going to
our father, Anastasie and I have bled him dry; our poor father

would have sold himself if he could have raised six thousand
francs that way. I should have driven him frantic to no purpose.

You have saved me from shame and death; I was beside myself with
anguish. Ah! monsieur, I owed you this explanation after my mad

ravings. When you left me just now, as soon as you were out of
sight, I longed to escape, to run away . . . where, I did not

know. Half the women in Paris lead such lives as mine; they live
in apparentluxury, and in their souls are tormented by anxiety.

I know of poor creatures even more miserable than I; there are
women who are driven to ask their tradespeople to make out false

bills, women who rob their husbands. Some men believe that an
Indian shawl worth a thousand louis only cost five hundred

francs, others that a shawl costing five hundred francs is worth
a hundred louis. There are women, too, with narrow incomes, who

scrape and save and starve their children to pay for a dress. I
am innocent of these base meannesses. But this is the last

extremity of my torture. Some women will sell themselves to their
husbands, and so obtain their way, but I, at any rate, am free.

If I chose, Nucingen would cover me with gold, but I would rather
weep on the breast of a man whom I can respect. Ah! tonight, M.

de Marsay will no longer have a right to think of me as a woman
whom he has paid." She tried to conceal her tears from him,

hiding her face in her hands; Eugene drew them away and looked at
her; she seemed to him sublime at that moment.

"It is hideous, is it not," she cried, "to speak in a breath of
money and affection. You cannot love me after this," she added.

The incongruity between the ideas of honor which make women so
great, and the errors in conduct which are forced upon them by

the constitution of society, had thrown Eugene's thoughts into
confusion; he uttered soothing and consoling words, and wondered

at the beautiful woman before him, and at the artless imprudence
of her cry of pain.

"You will not remember this against me?" she asked; "promise me
that you will not."

"Ah! madame, I am incapable of doing so," he said. She took his
hand and held it to her heart, a movement full of grace that

expressed her deep gratitude.
"I am free and happy once more, thanks to you," she said. "Oh! I

have felt lately as if I were in the grasp of an iron hand. But
after this I mean to live simply and to spend nothing. You will

think me just as pretty, will you not, my friend? Keep this," she
went on, as she took only six of the banknotes. "In conscience I

owe you a thousand crowns, for I really ought to go halves with
you."

Eugene's maidenconscience resisted; but when the Baroness said,
"I am bound to look on you as an accomplice or as an enemy," he

took the money.
"It shall be a last stake in reserve," he said, "in case of

misfortune."
"That was what I was dreading to hear," she cried, turning pale.

"Oh, if you would that I should be anything to you, swear to me
that you will never re-enter a gaming-house. Great Heaven! that I

should corrupt you! I should die of sorrow!"
They had reached the Rue Saint-Lazare by this time. The contrast

between the ostentation of wealth in the house, and the wretched
condition of its mistress, dazed the student; and Vautrin's

cynical words began to ring in his ears.
"Seat yourself there," said the Baroness, pointing to a low chair

beside the fire. "I have a difficult letter to write," she added.
"Tell me what to say."

"Say nothing," Eugene answered her. "Put the bills in an
envelope, direct it, and send it by your maid."

"Why, you are a love of a man," she said. "Ah! see what it is to
have been well brought up. That is the Beauseant through and

through," she went on, smiling at him.
"She is charming," thought Eugene, more and more in love. He

looked round him at the room; there was an ostentatious character
about the luxury, a meretricious taste in the splendor.

"Do you like it?" she asked, as she rang for the maid.
"Therese, take this to M. de Marsay, and give it into his hands

yourself. If he is not at home, bring the letter back to me."
Therese went, but not before she had given Eugene a spiteful

glance.
Dinner was announced. Rastignac gave his arm to Mme. de Nucingen,

she led the way into a pretty dining-room, and again he saw the
luxury of the table which he had admired in his cousin's house.

"Come and dine with me on opera evenings, and we will go to the
Italiens afterwards," she said.

"I should soon grow used to the pleasant life if it could last,
but I am a poor student, and I have my way to make."

"Oh! you will succeed," she said laughing. "You will see. All
that you wish will come to pass. _I_ did not expect to be so

happy."
It is the wont of women to prove the impossible by the possible,

and to annihilate facts by presentiments. When Mme. de Nucingen
and Rastignac took their places in her box at the Bouffons, her

face wore a look of happiness that made her so lovely that every
one indulged in those small slanders against which women are

defenceless; for the scandal that is uttered lightly is often
seriously believed. Those who know Paris, believe nothing that is

said, and say nothing of what is done there.
Eugene took the Baroness' hand in his, and by some light pressure

of the fingers, or a closer grasp of the hand, they found a
language in which to express the sensations which the music gave

them. It was an evening of intoxicating delight for both; and
when it ended, and they went out together, Mme. de Nucingen

insisted on taking Eugene with her as far as the Pont Neuf, he
disputing with her the whole of the way for a single kiss after

all those that she had showered upon him so passionately at the
Palais-Royal; Eugene reproached her with inconsistency.

"That was gratitude," she said, "for devotion that I did not dare
to hope for, but now it would be a promise."

"And will you give me no promise, ingrate?"
He grew vexed. Then, with one of those impatient gestures that

fill a lover with ecstasy, she gave him her hand to kiss, and he
took it with a discontented air that delighted her.

"I shall see you at the ball on Monday," she said.
As Eugene went home in the moonlight, he fell to serious

reflections. He was satisfied, and yet dissatisfied. He was
pleased with an adventure which would probably give him his

desire, for in the end one of the prettiest and best-dressed
women in Paris would be his; but, as a set-off, he saw his hopes

of fortune brought to nothing; and as soon as he realized this
fact, the vague thoughts of yesterday evening began to take a

more decided shape in his mind. A check is sure to reveal to us
the strength of our hopes. The more Eugene learned of the

pleasures of life in Paris, the more impatient he felt of poverty
and obscurity. He crumpled the banknote in his pocket, and found

any quantity of plausible excuses for appropriating it.
He reached the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve at last, and from the

stairhead he saw a light in Goriot's room; the old man had
lighted a candle, and set the door ajar, lest the student should

pass him by, and go to his room without "telling him all about
his daughter," to use his own expression. Eugene, accordingly,

told him everything without reserve.
"Then they think that I am ruined!" cried Father Goriot, in an

agony of jealousy and desperation. "Why, I have still thirteen
hundred livres a year! MON DIEU! Poor little girl! why did she

not come to me? I would have sold my rentes; she should have had
some of the principal, and I would have bought a life-annuity

with the rest. My good neighbor, why did not YOU come to tell me
of her difficulty? How had you the heart to go and risk her poor

little hundred francs at play? This is heart-breaking work. You
see what it is to have sons-in-law. Oh! if I had hold of them, I

would wring their necks. MON DIEU! CRYING! Did you say she was
crying?"

"With her head on my waistcoat," said Eugene.
"Oh! give it to me," said Father Goriot. "What! my daughter's

tears have fallen there--my darling Delphine, who never used to
cry when she was a little girl! Oh! I will buy you another; do

not wear it again; let me have it. By the terms of her marriage-
contract, she ought to have the use of her property. To-morrow

morning I will go and see Derville; he is an attorney. I will
demand that her money should be invested in her own name. I know

the law. I am an old wolf, I will show my teeth."
"Here, father; this is a banknote for a thousand francs that she

wanted me to keep out of our winnings. Keep them for her, in the
pocket of the waistcoat."

Goriot looked hard at Eugene, reached out and took the law
student's hand, and Eugene felt a tear fall on it.

"You will succeed," the old man said. "God is just, you see. I
know an honest man when I see him, and I can tell you, there are

not many men like you. I am to have another dear child in you, am
I? There, go to sleep; you can sleep; you are not yet a father.

She was crying! and I have to be told about it!--and I was
quietly eating my dinner, like an idiot, all the time--I, who

would sell the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to save one tear to
either of them."

"An honest man!" said Eugene to himself as he lay down. "Upon my
word, I think I will be an honest man all my life; it is so

pleasant to obey the voice of conscience." Perhaps none but
believers in God do good in secret; and Eugene believed in a God.

The next day Rastignac went at the appointed time to Mme. de
Beauseant, who took him with her to the Duchesse de Carigliano's

ball. The Marechale received Eugene most graciously. Mme. de
Nucingen was there. Delphine's dress seemed to suggest that she

wished for the admiration of others, so that she might shine the
more in Eugene's eyes; she was eagerly expecting a glance from

him, hiding, as she thought, this eagerness from all beholders.
This moment is full of charm for one who can guess all that

passes in a woman's mind. Who has not refrained from giving his
opinion, to prolong her suspense, concealing his pleasure from a

desire to tantalize, seeking a confession of love in her
uneasiness, enjoying the fears that he can dissipate by a smile?

In the course of the evening the law student suddenly
comprehended his position; he saw that, as the cousin of Mme. de

Beauseant, he was a personage in this world. He was already
credited with the conquest of Mme. de Nucingen, and for this

reason was a conspicuous figure; he caught the envious glances of
other young men, and experienced the earliest pleasures of

coxcombry. People wondered at his luck, and scraps of these
conversations came to his ears as he went from room to room; all

the women prophesied his success; and Delphine, in her dread of
losing him, promised that this evening she would not refuse the

kiss that all his entreaties could scarcely win yesterday.
Rastignac received several invitations. His cousin presented him

to other women who were present; women who could claim to be of
the highest fashion; whose houses were looked upon as pleasant;

and this was the loftiest and most fashionable society in Paris
into which he was launched. So this evening had all the charm of

a brilliant debut; it was an evening that he was to remember even
in old age, as a woman looks back upon her first ball and the

memories of her girlish triumphs.
The next morning, at breakfast, he related the story of his

success for the benefit of Father Goriot and the lodgers. Vautrin
began to smile in a diabolical fashion.

"And do you suppose," cried that cold-blooded logician, "that a


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