الفصل الفصل 31 · 第31章

For answer Mlle. Taillefer only gave him a glance but it was impossible

to mistake its meaning.

“You, for instance, mademoiselle; you feel sure of your heart to-day,

but are you sure that it will never change?”

A smile flitted over the poor girl’s lips; it seemed as if a ray of

light from her soul had lighted up her face. Eugene was dismayed at the

sudden explosion of feeling caused by his words.

“Ah! but suppose,” he said, “that you should be rich and happy

to-morrow, suppose that a vast fortune dropped down from the clouds

for you, would you still love the man whom you loved in your days of

poverty?”

A charming movement of the head was her only answer.

“Even if he were very poor?”

Again the same mute answer.

“What nonsense are you talking, you two?” exclaimed Mme. Vauquer.

“Never mind,” answered Eugene; “we understand each other.”

“So there is to be an engagement of marriage between M. le Chevalier

Eugene de Rastignac and Mlle. Victorine Taillefer, is there?” The words

were uttered in Vautrin’s deep voice, and Vautrin appeared at the door

as he spoke.

“Oh! how you startled me!” Mme. Couture and Mme. Vauquer exclaimed

together.

“I might make a worse choice,” said Rastignac, laughing. Vautrin’s voice

had thrown him into the most painful agitation that he had yet known.

“No bad jokes, gentlemen!” said Mme. Couture. “My dear, let us go

upstairs.”

Mme. Vauquer followed the two ladies, meaning to pass the evening in

their room, an arrangement that economized fire and candlelight. Eugene

and Vautrin were left alone.

“I felt sure you would come round to it,” said the elder man with the

coolness that nothing seemed to shake. “But stay a moment! I have as

much delicacy as anybody else. Don’t make up your mind on the spur of

the moment; you are a little thrown off your balance just now. You are

in debt, and I want you to come over to my way of thinking after sober

reflection, and not in a fit of passion or desperation. Perhaps you want

a thousand crowns. There, you can have them if you like.”

The tempter took out a pocketbook, and drew thence three banknotes,

which he fluttered before the student’s eyes. Eugene was in a most

painful dilemma. He had debts, debts of honor. He owed a hundred louis

to the Marquis d’Ajuda and to the Count de Trailles; he had not the

money, and for this reason had not dared to go to Mme. de Restaud’s

house, where he was expected that evening. It was one of those informal

gatherings where tea and little cakes are handed round, but where it is

possible to lose six thousand francs at whist in the course of a night.

“You must see,” said Eugene, struggling to hide a convulsive tremor,

“that after what has passed between us, I cannot possibly lay myself

under any obligation to you.”

“Quite right; I should be sorry to hear you speak otherwise,” answered

the tempter. “You are a fine young fellow, honorable, brave as a lion,

and as gentle as a young girl. You would be a fine haul for the devil! I

like youngsters of your sort. Get rid of one or two more prejudices, and

you will see the world as it is. Make a little scene now and then, and

act a virtuous part in it, and a man with a head on his shoulders can

do exactly as he likes amid deafening applause from the fools in the

gallery. Ah! a few days yet, and you will be with us; and if you would

only be tutored by me, I would put you in the way of achieving all your

ambitions. You should no sooner form a wish than it should be realized

to the full; you should have all your desires--honors, wealth, or women.

Civilization should flow with milk and honey for you. You should be our

pet and favorite, our Benjamin. We would all work ourselves to death for

you with pleasure; every obstacle should be removed from your path. You

have a few prejudices left; so you think that I am a scoundrel, do you?

Well, M. de Turenne, quite as honorable a man as you take yourself to

be, had some little private transactions with bandits, and did not

feel that his honor was tarnished. You would rather not lie under any

obligation to me, eh? You need not draw back on that account,” Vautrin

went on, and a smile stole over his lips. “Take these bits of paper

and write across this,” he added, producing a piece of stamped paper,

“_Accepted the sum of three thousand five hundred francs due this day

twelvemonth_, and fill in the date. The rate of interest is stiff enough

to silence any scruples on your part; it gives you the right to call me

a Jew. You can call quits with me on the score of gratitude. I am quite

willing that you should despise me to-day, because I am sure that you

will have a kindlier feeling towards me later on. You will find out

fathomless depths in my nature, enormous and concentrated forces that

weaklings call vices, but you will never find me base or ungrateful.

In short, I am neither a pawn nor a bishop, but a castle, a tower of

strength, my boy.”

“What manner of man are you?” cried Eugene. “Were you created to torment

me?”

“Why no; I am a good-natured fellow, who is willing to do a dirty piece

of work to put you high and dry above the mire for the rest of your

days. Do you ask the reason of this devotion? All right; I will tell you

that some of these days. A word or two in your ear will explain it. I

have begun by shocking you, by showing you the way to ring the changes,

and giving you a sight of the mechanism of the social machine; but your

first fright will go off like a conscript’s terror on the battlefield.

You will grow used to regarding men as common soldiers who have made up

their minds to lose their lives for some self-constituted king. Times

have altered strangely. Once you could say to a bravo, ‘Here are a

hundred crowns; go and kill Monsieur So-and-so for me,’ and you could

sup quietly after turning some one off into the dark for the least thing

in the world. But nowadays I propose to put you in the way of a handsome

fortune; you have only to nod your head, it won’t compromise you in any

way, and you hesitate. ‘Tis an effeminate age.”

Eugene accepted the draft, and received the banknotes in exchange for

it.

“Well, well. Come, now, let us talk rationally,” Vautrin continued. “I

mean to leave this country in a few months’ time for America, and set

about planting tobacco. I will send you the cigars of friendship. If

I make money at it, I will help you in your career. If I have no

children--which will probably be the case, for I have no anxiety to

raise slips of myself here--you shall inherit my fortune. That is what

you may call standing by a man; but I myself have a liking for you. I

have a mania, too, for devoting myself to some one else. I have done it

before. You see, my boy, I live in a loftier sphere than other men do;

I look on all actions as means to an end, and the end is all that I look

at. What is a man’s life to me? Not _that_,” he said, and he snapped his

thumb-nail against his teeth. “A man, in short, is everything to me, or

just nothing at all. Less than nothing if his name happens to be Poiret;

you can crush him like a bug, he is flat and he is offensive. But a man

is a god when he is like you; he is not a machine covered with a skin,

but a theatre in which the greatest sentiments are displayed--great

thoughts and feelings--and for these, and these only, I live. A

sentiment--what is that but the whole world in a thought? Look at Father

Goriot. For him, his two girls are the whole universe; they are the clue

by which he finds his way through creation. Well, for my own part,

I have fathomed the depths of life, there is only one real

sentiment--comradeship between man and man. Pierre and Jaffier, that is

my passion. I knew _Venice Preserved_ by heart. Have you met many men

plucky enough when a comrade says, ‘Let us bury a dead body!’ to go and

do it without a word or plaguing him by taking a high moral tone? I have

done it myself. I should not talk like this to just everybody, but you

are not like an ordinary man; one can talk to you, you can understand

things. You will not dabble about much longer among the tadpoles in

these swamps. Well, then, it is all settled. You will marry. Both of us

carry our point. Mine is made of iron, and will never soften, he! he!”

Vautrin went out. He would not wait to hear the student’s repudiation,

he wished to put Eugene at his ease. He seemed to understand the secret

springs of the faint resistance still made by the younger man; the

struggles in which men seek to preserve their self-respect by justifying

their blameworthy actions to themselves.

“He may do as he likes; I shall not marry Mlle. Taillefer, that is

certain,” said Eugene to himself.

He regarded this man with abhorrence, and yet the very cynicism of

Vautrin’s ideas, and the audacious way in which he used other men for

his own ends, raised him in the student’s eyes; but the thought of a

compact threw Eugene into a fever of apprehension, and not until he

had recovered somewhat did he dress, call for a cab, and go to Mme. de

Restaud’s.

For some days the Countess had paid more and more attention to a young

man whose every step seemed a triumphal progress in the great world; it

seemed to her that he might be a formidable power before long. He paid

Messieurs de Trailles and d’Ajuda, played at whist for part of the

evening, and made good his losses. Most men who have their way to make

are more or less of fatalists, and Eugene was superstitious; he chose to

consider that his luck was heaven’s reward for his perseverance in the

right way. As soon as possible on the following morning he asked Vautrin

whether the bill he had given was still in the other’s possession; and

on receiving a reply in the affirmative, he repaid the three thousand

francs with a not unnatural relief.

“Everything is going on well,” said Vautrin.

“But I am not your accomplice,” said Eugene.

“I know, I know,” Vautrin broke in. “You are still acting like a child.

You are making mountains out of molehills at the outset.”

Two days later, Poiret and Mlle. Michonneau were sitting together on

a bench in the sun. They had chosen a little frequented alley in the

Jardin des Plantes, and a gentleman was chatting with them, the same

person, as a matter of fact, about whom the medical student had, not

without good reason, his own suspicions.