酷兔英语

章节正文

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



文章标签:翻译  译文  翻译文  

章节正文