Chapter Chapter 13 · 第13章

“Where am I to drive, sir?” demanded the man, who, by this time, had

taken off his white gloves.

“Confound it!” Eugene said to himself, “I am in for it now, and at least

I will not spend cab-hire for nothing!--Drive to the Hotel Beauseant,”

he said aloud.

“Which?” asked the man, a portentous word that reduced Eugene to

confusion. This young man of fashion, species incerta, did not know that

there were two Hotels Beauseant; he was not aware how rich he was in

relations who did not care about him.

“The Vicomte de Beauseant, Rue----”

“De Grenelle,” interrupted the driver, with a jerk of his head. “You

see, there are the hotels of the Marquis and Comte de Beauseant in the

Rue Saint-Dominique,” he added, drawing up the step.

“I know all about that,” said Eugene, severely.--“Everybody is laughing

at me to-day, it seems!” he said to himself, as he deposited his hat on

the opposite seat. “This escapade will cost me a king’s ransom, but,

at any rate, I shall call on my so-called cousin in a thoroughly

aristocratic fashion. Goriot has cost me ten francs already, the old

scoundrel. My word! I will tell Mme. de Beauseant about my adventure;

perhaps it may amuse her. Doubtless she will know the secret of the

criminal relation between that handsome woman and the old rat without a

tail. It would be better to find favor in my cousin’s eyes than to

come in contact with that shameless woman, who seems to me to have very

expensive tastes. Surely the beautiful Vicomtesse’s personal interest

would turn the scale for me, when the mere mention of her name produces

such an effect. Let us look higher. If you set yourself to carry the

heights of heaven, you must face God.”

The innumerable thoughts that surged through his brain might be summed

up in these phrases. He grew calmer, and recovered something of his

assurance as he watched the falling rain. He told himself that though

he was about to squander two of the precious five-franc pieces that

remained to him, the money was well laid out in preserving his coat,

boots, and hat; and his cabman’s cry of “Gate, if you please,” almost

put him in spirits. A Swiss, in scarlet and gold, appeared, the great

door groaned on its hinges, and Rastignac, with sweet satisfaction,

beheld his equipage pass under the archway and stop before the flight

of steps beneath the awning. The driver, in a blue-and-red greatcoat,

dismounted and let down the step. As Eugene stepped out of the cab, he

heard smothered laughter from the peristyle. Three or four lackeys

were making merry over the festal appearance of the vehicle. In

another moment the law student was enlightened as to the cause of their

hilarity; he felt the full force of the contrast between his equipage

and one of the smartest broughams in Paris; a coachman, with powdered

hair, seemed to find it difficult to hold a pair of spirited horses, who

stood chafing the bit. In Mme. de Restaud’s courtyard, in the Chaussee

d’Antin, he had seen the neat turnout of a young man of six-and-twenty;

in the Faubourg Saint-Germain he found the luxurious equipage of a man

of rank; thirty thousand francs would not have purchased it.

“Who can be here?” said Eugene to himself. He began to understand,

though somewhat tardily, that he must not expect to find many women in

Paris who were not already appropriated, and that the capture of one

of these queens would be likely to cost something more than bloodshed.

“Confound it all! I expect my cousin also has her Maxime.”

He went up the steps, feeling that he was a blighted being. The glass

door was opened for him; the servants were as solemn as jackasses under

the curry comb. So far, Eugene had only been in the ballroom on the

ground floor of the Hotel Beauseant; the fete had followed so closely on

the invitation, that he had not had time to call on his cousin, and had

therefore never seen Mme. de Beauseant’s apartments; he was about to

behold for the first time a great lady among the wonderful and elegant

surroundings that reveal her character and reflect her daily life.

He was the more curious, because Mme. de Restaud’s drawing-room had

provided him with a standard of comparison.

At half-past four the Vicomtesse de Beauseant was visible. Five minutes

earlier she would not have received her cousin, but Eugene knew nothing

of the recognized routine of various houses in Paris. He was conducted

up the wide, white-painted, crimson-carpeted staircase, between the

gilded balusters and masses of flowering plants, to Mme. de Beauseant’s

apartments. He did not know the rumor current about Mme. de Beauseant,

one of the biographies told, with variations, in whispers, every evening

in the salons of Paris.

For three years past her name had been spoken of in connection with

that of one of the most wealthy and distinguished Portuguese nobles,

the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto. It was one of those innocent _liaisons_ which

possess so much charm for the two thus attached to each other that

they find the presence of a third person intolerable. The Vicomte de

Beauseant, therefore, had himself set an example to the rest of the

world by respecting, with as good a grace as might be, this morganatic

union. Any one who came to call on the Vicomtesse in the early days of

this friendship was sure to find the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto there. As,

under the circumstances, Mme. de Beauseant could not very well shut her

door against these visitors, she gave them such a cold reception, and

showed so much interest in the study of the ceiling, that no one could

fail to understand how much he bored her; and when it became known in

Paris that Mme. de Beauseant was bored by callers between two and four

o’clock, she was left in perfect solitude during that interval. She

went to the Bouffons or to the Opera with M. de Beauseant and M.

d’Ajuda-Pinto; and M. de Beauseant, like a well-bred man of the world,

always left his wife and the Portuguese as soon as he had installed

them. But M. d’Ajuda-Pinto must marry, and a Mlle. de Rochefide was the

young lady. In the whole fashionable world there was but one person who

as yet knew nothing of the arrangement, and that was Mme. de Beauseant.

Some of her friends had hinted at the possibility, and she had laughed

at them, believing that envy had prompted those ladies to try to make

mischief. And now, though the bans were about to be published, and

although the handsome Portuguese had come that day to break the news to

the Vicomtesse, he had not found courage as yet to say one word about

his treachery. How was it? Nothing is doubtless more difficult than the

notification of an ultimatum of this kind. There are men who feel more

at their ease when they stand up before another man who threatens their

lives with sword or pistol than in the presence of a woman who, after

two hours of lamentations and reproaches, falls into a dead swoon and

requires salts. At this moment, therefore, M. d’Ajuda-Pinto was on

thorns, and anxious to take his leave. He told himself that in some

way or other the news would reach Mme. de Beauseant; he would write, it

would be much better to do it by letter, and not to utter the words that

should stab her to the heart.

So when the servant announced M. Eugene de Rastignac, the Marquis

d’Ajuda-Pinto trembled with joy. To be sure, a loving woman shows even

more ingenuity in inventing doubts of her lover than in varying the

monotony of his happiness; and when she is about to be forsaken, she

instinctively interprets every gesture as rapidly as Virgil’s courser

detected the presence of his companion by snuffing the breeze. It was

impossible, therefore, that Mme. de Beauseant should not detect that

involuntary thrill of satisfaction; slight though it was, it was

appalling in its artlessness.

Eugene had yet to learn that no one in Paris should present himself in

any house without first making himself acquainted with the whole history

of its owner, and of its owner’s wife and family, so that he may avoid

making any of the terrible blunders which in Poland draw forth the

picturesque exclamation, “Harness five bullocks to your cart!” probably

because you will need them all to pull you out of the quagmire into

which a false step has plunged you. If, down to the present day, our

language has no name for these conversational disasters, it is probably

because they are believed to be impossible, the publicity given in Paris

to every scandal is so prodigious. After the awkward incident at Mme. de

Restaud’s, no one but Eugene could have reappeared in his character

of bullock-driver in Mme. de Beauseant’s drawing-room. But if Mme. de

Restaud and M. de Trailles had found him horribly in the way, M. d’Ajuda

hailed his coming with relief.

“Good-bye,” said the Portuguese, hurrying to the door, as Eugene made

his entrance into a dainty little pink-and-gray drawing-room, where

luxury seemed nothing more than good taste.

“Until this evening,” said Mme. de Beauseant, turning her head to give

the Marquis a glance. “We are going to the Bouffons, are we not?”

“I cannot go,” he said, with his fingers on the door handle.

Mme. de Beauseant rose and beckoned to him to return. She did not

pay the slightest attention to Eugene, who stood there dazzled by the

sparkling marvels around him; he began to think that this was some story

out of the Arabian Nights made real, and did not know where to hide

himself, when the woman before him seemed to be unconscious of his

existence. The Vicomtesse had raised the forefinger of her right hand,

and gracefully signed to the Marquis to seat himself beside her. The

Marquis felt the imperious sway of passion in her gesture; he came back

towards her. Eugene watched him, not without a feeling of envy.

“That is the owner of the brougham!” he said to himself. “But is it

necessary to have a pair of spirited horses, servants in livery, and

torrents of gold to draw a glance from a woman here in Paris?”

The demon of luxury gnawed at his heart, greed burned in his veins, his

throat was parched with the thirst of gold.

He had a hundred and thirty francs every quarter. His father, mother,

brothers, sisters, and aunt did not spend two hundred francs a month

among them. This swift comparison between his present condition and the

aims he had in view helped to benumb his faculties.