الفصل الفصل 42 · 第42章

“What is the matter now?” Eugene inquired of Sylvie.

“Lord! everybody is going about his business, and that has addled her

wits. There! she is crying upstairs. It will do her good to snivel a

bit. It’s the first time she has cried since I’ve been with her.”

By the morning, Mme. Vauquer, to use her own expression, had “made up

her mind to it.” True, she still wore a doleful countenance, as might

be expected of a woman who had lost all her lodgers, and whose manner

of life had been suddenly revolutionized, but she had all her wits about

her. Her grief was genuine and profound; it was real pain of mind, for

her purse had suffered, the routine of her existence had been broken. A

lover’s farewell glance at his lady-love’s window is not more mournful

than Mme. Vauquer’s survey of the empty places round her table. Eugene

administered comfort, telling the widow that Bianchon, whose term of

residence at the hospital was about to expire, would doubtless take

his (Rastignac’s) place; that the official from the Museum had often

expressed a desire to have Mme. Couture’s rooms; and that in a very few

days her household would be on the old footing.

“God send it may, my dear sir! but bad luck has come to lodge here.

There’ll be a death in the house before ten days are out, you’ll see,”

and she gave a lugubrious look round the dining-room. “Whose turn will

it be, I wonder?”

“It is just as well that we are moving out,” said Eugene to Father

Goriot in a low voice.

“Madame,” said Sylvie, running in with a scared face, “I have not seen

Mistigris these three days.”

“Ah! well, if my cat is dead, if _he_ has gone and left us, I----”

The poor woman could not finish her sentence; she clasped her hands

and hid her face on the back of her armchair, quite overcome by this

dreadful portent.

By twelve o’clock, when the postman reaches that quarter, Eugene

received a letter. The dainty envelope bore the Beauseant arms on the

seal, and contained an invitation to the Vicomtesse’s great ball, which

had been talked of in Paris for a month. A little note for Eugene was

slipped in with the card.

“I think, monsieur, that you will undertake with pleasure to

interpret my sentiments to Mme. de Nucingen, so I am sending the

card for which you asked me to you. I shall be delighted to make

the acquaintance of Mme. de Restaud’s sister. Pray introduce that

charming lady to me, and do not let her monopolize all your

affection, for you owe me not a little in return for mine.

“VICOMTESSE DE BEAUSEANT.”

“Well,” said Eugene to himself, as he read the note a second time, “Mme.

de Beauseant says pretty plainly that she does not want the Baron de

Nucingen.”

He went to Delphine at once in his joy. He had procured this pleasure

for her, and doubtless he would receive the price of it. Mme. de

Nucingen was dressing. Rastignac waited in her boudoir, enduring as best

he might the natural impatience of an eager temperament for the reward

desired and withheld for a year. Such sensations are only known once

in a life. The first woman to whom a man is drawn, if she is really

a woman--that is to say, if she appears to him amid the splendid

accessories that form a necessary background to life in the world of

Paris--will never have a rival.

Love in Paris is a thing distinct and apart; for in Paris neither men

nor women are the dupes of the commonplaces by which people seek to

throw a veil over their motives, or to parade a fine affectation of

disinterestedness in their sentiments. In this country within a country,

it is not merely required of a woman that she should satisfy the senses

and the soul; she knows perfectly well that she has still greater

obligations to discharge, that she must fulfil the countless demands

of a vanity that enters into every fibre of that living organism called

society. Love, for her, is above all things, and by its very nature, a

vainglorious, brazen-fronted, ostentatious, thriftless charlatan. If

at the Court of Louis XIV. there was not a woman but envied Mlle. de la

Valliere the reckless devotion of passion that led the grand monarch to

tear the priceless ruffles at his wrists in order to assist the entry of

a Duc de Vermandois into the world--what can you expect of the rest

of society? You must have youth and wealth and rank; nay, you must, if

possible, have more than these, for the more incense you bring with you

to burn at the shrine of the god, the more favorably will he regard the

worshiper. Love is a religion, and his cult must in the nature of things

be more costly than those of all other deities; Love the Spoiler stays

for a moment, and then passes on; like the urchin of the streets, his

course may be traced by the ravages that he has made. The wealth of

feeling and imagination is the poetry of the garret; how should love

exist there without that wealth?

If there are exceptions who do not subscribe to these Draconian laws of

the Parisian code, they are solitary examples. Such souls live so far

out of the main current that they are not borne away by the doctrines

of society; they dwell beside some clear spring of everflowing water,

without seeking to leave the green shade; happy to listen to the echoes

of the infinite in everything around them and in their own souls,

waiting in patience to take their flight for heaven, while they look

with pity upon those of earth.

Rastignac, like most young men who have been early impressed by the

circumstances of power and grandeur, meant to enter the lists fully

armed; the burning ambition of conquest possessed him already; perhaps

he was conscious of his powers, but as yet he knew neither the end to

which his ambition was to be directed, nor the means of attaining it.

In default of the pure and sacred love that fills a life, ambition

may become something very noble, subduing to itself every thought of

personal interest, and setting as the end--the greatness, not of one

man, but of a whole nation.

But the student had not yet reached the time of life when a man surveys

the whole course of existence and judges it soberly. Hitherto he had

scarcely so much as shaken off the spell of the fresh and gracious

influences that envelop a childhood in the country, like green leaves

and grass. He had hesitated on the brink of the Parisian Rubicon, and

in spite of the prickings of ambition, he still clung to a lingering

tradition of an old ideal--the peaceful life of the noble in his

chateau. But yesterday evening, at the sight of his rooms, those

scruples had vanished. He had learned what it was to enjoy the material

advantages of fortune, as he had already enjoyed the social advantages

of birth; he ceased to be a provincial from that moment, and slipped

naturally and easily into a position which opened up a prospect of a

brilliant future.

So, as he waited for Delphine, in the pretty boudoir, where he felt

that he had a certain right to be, he felt himself so far away from the

Rastignac who came back to Paris a year ago, that, turning some power of

inner vision upon this latter, he asked himself whether that past self

bore any resemblance to the Rastignac of that moment.

“Madame is in her room,” Therese came to tell him. The woman’s voice

made him start.

He found Delphine lying back in her low chair by the fireside, looking

fresh and bright. The sight of her among the flowing draperies of muslin

suggested some beautiful tropical flower, where the fruit is set amid

the blossom.

“Well,” she said, with a tremor in her voice, “here you are.”

“Guess what I bring for you,” said Eugene, sitting down beside her. He

took possession of her arm to kiss her hand.

Mme. de Nucingen gave a joyful start as she saw the card. She turned

to Eugene; there were tears in her eyes as she flung her arms about his

neck, and drew him towards her in a frenzy of gratified vanity.

“And I owe this happiness to you--to _thee_” (she whispered the more

intimate word in his ear); “but Therese is in my dressing-room, let us

be prudent.--This happiness--yes, for I may call it so, when it comes

to me through _you_--is surely more than a triumph for self-love? No one

has been willing to introduce me into that set. Perhaps just now I may

seem to you to be frivolous, petty, shallow, like a Parisienne, but

remember, my friend, that I am ready to give up all for you; and that if

I long more than ever for an entrance into the Faubourg Saint-Germain,

it is because I shall meet you there.”

“Mme. de Beauseant’s note seems to say very plainly that she does not

expect to see the _Baron_ de Nucingen at her ball; don’t you think so?”

said Eugene.

“Why, yes,” said the Baroness as she returned the letter. “Those women

have a talent for insolence. But it is of no consequence, I shall go.

My sister is sure to be there, and sure to be very beautifully

dressed.--Eugene,” she went on, lowering her voice, “she will go to

dispel ugly suspicions. You do not know the things that people are

saying about her. Only this morning Nucingen came to tell me that they

had been discussing her at the club. Great heavens! on what does a

woman’s character and the honor of a whole family depend! I feel that

I am nearly touched and wounded in my poor sister. According to some

people, M. de Trailles must have put his name to bills for a hundred

thousand francs, nearly all of them are overdue, and proceedings are

threatened. In this predicament, it seems that my sister sold her

diamonds to a Jew--the beautiful diamonds that belonged to her husband’s

mother, Mme. de Restaud the elder,--you have seen her wearing them. In

fact, nothing else has been talked about for the last two days. So I can

see that Anastasie is sure to come to Mme. de Beauseant’s ball in tissue

of gold, and ablaze with diamonds, to draw all eyes upon her; and I will

not be outshone. She has tried to eclipse me all her life, she has never

been kind to me, and I have helped her so often, and always had money

for her when she had none.--But never mind other people now, to-day I

mean to be perfectly happy.”

At one o’clock that morning Eugene was still with Mme. de Nucingen. In

the midst of their lovers’ farewell, a farewell full of hope of bliss to

come, she said in a troubled voice, “I am very fearful, superstitious.

Give what name you like to my presentiments, but I am afraid that my

happiness will be paid for by some horrible catastrophe.”