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