Chapter Chapter 23 · 第23章

A friendship between Eugene and his neighbor, Father Goriot, had

been growing up for several days past. This secret friendship and the

antipathy that the student had begun to entertain for Vautrin arose

from the same psychological causes. The bold philosopher who shall

investigate the effects of mental action upon the physical world

will doubtless find more than one proof of the material nature of our

sentiments in other animals. What physiognomist is as quick to discern

character as a dog is to discover from a stranger’s face whether this

is a friend or no? Those by-words--“atoms,” “affinities”--are facts

surviving in modern languages for the confusion of philosophic wiseacres

who amuse themselves by winnowing the chaff of language to find its

grammatical roots. We _feel_ that we are loved. Our sentiments make

themselves felt in everything, even at a great distance. A letter is

a living soul, and so faithful an echo of the voice that speaks in it,

that finer natures look upon a letter as one of love’s most precious

treasures. Father Goriot’s affection was of the instinctive order, a

canine affection raised to a sublime pitch; he had scented compassion in

the air, and the kindly respect and youthful sympathy in the student’s

heart. This friendship had, however, scarcely reached the stage at which

confidences are made. Though Eugene had spoken of his wish to meet Mme.

de Nucingen, it was not because he counted on the old man to introduce

him to her house, for he hoped that his own audacity might stand him in

good stead. All that Father Goriot had said as yet about his daughters

had referred to the remarks that the student had made so freely in

public on that day of the two visits.

“How could you think that Mme. de Restaud bore you a grudge for

mentioning my name?” he had said on the day following that scene at

dinner. “My daughters are very fond of me; I am a happy father; but

my sons-in-law have behaved badly to me, and rather than make trouble

between my darlings and their husbands, I choose to see my daughters

secretly. Fathers who can see their daughters at any time have no idea

of all the pleasure that all this mystery gives me; I cannot always see

mine when I wish, do you understand? So when it is fine I walk out in

the Champs-Elysees, after finding out from their waiting-maids whether

my daughters mean to go out. I wait near the entrance; my heart beats

fast when the carriages begin to come; I admire them in their dresses,

and as they pass they give me a little smile, and it seems as if

everything was lighted up for me by a ray of bright sunlight. I wait,

for they always go back the same way, and then I see them again; the

fresh air has done them good and brought color into their cheeks; all

about me people say, ‘What a beautiful woman that is!’ and it does my

heart good to hear them.

“Are they not my own flesh and blood? I love the very horses that draw

them; I envy the little lap-dog on their knees. Their happiness is my

life. Every one loves after his own fashion, and mine does no one any

harm; why should people trouble their heads about me? I am happy in my

own way. Is there any law against going to see my girls in the evening

when they are going out to a ball? And what a disappointment it is when

I get there too late, and am told that ‘Madame has gone out!’ Once I

waited till three o’clock in the morning for Nasie; I had not seen her

for two whole days. I was so pleased, that it was almost too much for

me! Please do not speak of me unless it is to say how good my daughters

are to me. They are always wanting to heap presents upon me, but I will

not have it. ‘Just keep your money,’ I tell them. ‘What should I do

with it? I want nothing.’ And what am I, sir, after all? An old carcase,

whose soul is always where my daughters are. When you have seen Mme.

de Nucingen, tell me which you like the most,” said the old man after a

moment’s pause, while Eugene put the last touches to his toilette. The

student was about to go out to walk in the Garden of the Tuileries

until the hour when he could venture to appear in Mme. de Beauseant’s

drawing-room.

That walk was a turning-point in Eugene’s career. Several women noticed

him; he looked so handsome, so young, and so well dressed. This almost

admiring attention gave a new turn to his thoughts. He forgot his

sisters and the aunt who had robbed herself for him; he no longer

remembered his own virtuous scruples. He had seen hovering above his

head the fiend so easy to mistake for an angel, the Devil with rainbow

wings, who scatters rubies, and aims his golden shafts at palace fronts,

who invests women with purple, and thrones with a glory that dazzles the

eyes of fools till they forget the simple origins of royal dominion; he

had heard the rustle of that Vanity whose tinsel seems to us to be the

symbol of power. However cynical Vautrin’s words had been, they had made

an impression on his mind, as the sordid features of the old crone who

whispers, “A lover, and gold in torrents,” remain engraven on a young

girl’s memory.

Eugene lounged about the walks till it was nearly five o’clock, then

he went to Mme. de Beauseant, and received one of the terrible blows

against which young hearts are defenceless. Hitherto the Vicomtesse had

received him with the kindly urbanity, the bland grace of manner that is

the result of fine breeding, but is only complete when it comes from the

heart.

To-day Mme. de Beauseant bowed constrainedly, and spoke curtly:

“M. de Rastignac, I cannot possibly see you, at least not at this

moment. I am engaged...”

An observer, and Rastignac instantly became an observer, could read the

whole history, the character and customs of caste, in the phrase, in the

tones of her voice, in her glance and bearing. He caught a glimpse of

the iron hand beneath the velvet glove--the personality, the egoism

beneath the manner, the wood beneath the varnish. In short, he heard

that unmistakable I THE KING that issues from the plumed canopy of

the throne, and finds its last echo under the crest of the simplest

gentleman.

Eugene had trusted too implicitly to the generosity of a woman; he

could not believe in her haughtiness. Like all the unfortunate, he had

subscribed, in all good faith, the generous compact which should bind

the benefactor to the recipient, and the first article in that bond,

between two large-hearted natures, is a perfect equality. The kindness

which knits two souls together is as rare, as divine, and as little

understood as the passion of love, for both love and kindness are the

lavish generosity of noble natures. Rastignac was set upon going to the

Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball, so he swallowed down this rebuff.

“Madame,” he faltered out, “I would not have come to trouble you about

a trifling matter; be so kind as to permit me to see you later, I can

wait.”

“Very well, come and dine with me,” she said, a little confused by

the harsh way in which she had spoken, for this lady was as genuinely

kind-hearted as she was high-born.

Eugene was touched by this sudden relenting, but none the less he said

to himself as he went away, “Crawl in the dust, put up with every kind

of treatment. What must the rest of the world be like when one of the

kindest of women forgets all her promises of befriending me in a moment,

and tosses me aside like an old shoe? So it is every one for himself? It

is true that her house is not a shop, and I have put myself in the wrong

by needing her help. You should cut your way through the world like a

cannon ball, as Vautrin said.”

But the student’s bitter thoughts were soon dissipated by the pleasure

which he promised himself in this dinner with the Vicomtesse. Fate

seemed to determine that the smallest accidents in his life should

combine to urge him into a career, which the terrible sphinx of the

Maison Vauquer had described as a field of battle where you must either

slay or be slain, and cheat to avoid being cheated. You leave your

conscience and your heart at the barriers, and wear a mask on entering

into this game of grim earnest, where, as in ancient Sparta, you must

snatch your prize without being detected if you would deserve the crown.

On his return he found the Vicomtesse gracious and kindly, as she had

always been to him. They went together to the dining-room, where the

Vicomte was waiting for his wife. In the time of the Restoration the

luxury of the table was carried, as is well known, to the highest

degree, and M. de Beauseant, like many jaded men of the world, had few

pleasures left but those of good cheer; in this matter, in fact, he was

a gourmand of the schools of Louis XVIII. and of the Duc d’Escars, and

luxury was supplemented by splendor. Eugene, dining for the first time

in a house where the traditions of grandeur had descended through many

generations, had never seen any spectacle like this that now met his

eyes. In the time of the Empire, balls had always ended with a supper,

because the officers who took part in them must be fortified for

immediate service, and even in Paris might be called upon to leave the

ballroom for the battlefield. This arrangement had gone out of fashion

under the Monarchy, and Eugene had so far only been asked to dances.

The self-possession which pre-eminently distinguished him in later life

already stood him in good stead, and he did not betray his amazement.

Yet as he saw for the first time the finely wrought silver plate, the

completeness of every detail, the sumptuous dinner, noiselessly served,

it was difficult for such an ardent imagination not to prefer this life

of studied and refined luxury to the hardships of the life which he had

chosen only that morning.

His thoughts went back for a moment to the lodging-house, and with a

feeling of profound loathing, he vowed to himself that at New Year he

would go; prompted at least as much by a desire to live among cleaner

surroundings as by a wish to shake off Vautrin, whose huge hand he

seemed to feel on his shoulder at that moment. When you consider the

numberless forms, clamorous or mute, that corruption takes in Paris,

common-sense begins to wonder what mental aberration prompted the State

to establish great colleges and schools there, and assemble young men in

the capital; how it is that pretty women are respected, or that the gold

coin displayed in the money-changer’s wooden saucers does not take to

itself wings in the twinkling of an eye; and when you come to think

further, how comparatively few cases of crime there are, and to count

up the misdemeanors committed by youth, is there not a certain amount of

respect due to these patient Tantaluses who wrestle with themselves and

nearly always come off victorious? The struggles of the poor student

in Paris, if skilfully drawn, would furnish a most dramatic picture of

modern civilization.