الفصل الفصل 20 · 第20章

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.