Kabanata Kabanata 25 · 第25章

Nothing pleases a woman better than to listen to such whispered words as

these; the most puritanical among them listens even when she ought not

to reply to them; and Rastignac, having once begun, continued to pour

out his story, dropping his voice, that she might lean and listen; and

Mme. de Nucingen, smiling, glanced from time to time at de Marsay, who

still sat in the Princesse Galathionne’s box.

Rastignac did not leave Mme. de Nucingen till her husband came to take

her home.

“Madame,” Eugene said, “I shall have the pleasure of calling upon you

before the Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball.”

“If Matame infites you to come,” said the Baron, a thickset Alsatian,

with indications of a sinister cunning in his full-moon countenance,

“you are quide sure of being well receifed.”

“My affairs seem to be in a promising way,” said Eugene to himself.--

“‘Can you love me?’ I asked her, and she did not resent it. “The bit is in

the horse’s mouth, and I have only to mount and ride;” and with that

he went to pay his respects to Mme. de Beauseant, who was leaving the

theatre on d’Ajuda’s arm.

The student did not know that the Baroness’ thoughts had been wandering;

that she was even then expecting a letter from de Marsay, one of those

letters that bring about a rupture that rends the soul; so, happy in his

delusion, Eugene went with the Vicomtesse to the peristyle, where people

were waiting till their carriages were announced.

“That cousin of yours is hardly recognizable for the same man,” said the

Portuguese laughingly to the Vicomtesse, when Eugene had taken leave of

them. “He will break the bank. He is as supple as an eel; he will go a

long way, of that I am sure. Who else could have picked out a woman for

him, as you did, just when she needed consolation?”

“But it is not certain that she does not still love the faithless

lover,” said Mme. de Beauseant.

The student meanwhile walked back from the Theatre-Italien to the Rue

Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, making the most delightful plans as he went. He

had noticed how closely Mme. de Restaud had scrutinized him when he sat

beside Mme. de Nucingen, and inferred that the Countess’ doors would not

be closed in the future. Four important houses were now open to him--for

he meant to stand well with the Marechale; he had four supporters in the

inmost circle of society in Paris. Even now it was clear to him that,

once involved in this intricate social machinery, he must attach himself

to a spoke of the wheel that was to turn and raise his fortunes; he

would not examine himself too curiously as to the methods, but he was

certain of the end, and conscious of the power to gain and keep his

hold.

“If Mme. de Nucingen takes an interest in me, I will teach her how to

manage her husband. That husband of hers is a great speculator; he might

put me in the way of making a fortune by a single stroke.”

He did not say this bluntly in so many words; as yet, indeed, he was

not sufficient of a diplomatist to sum up a situation, to see its

possibilities at a glance, and calculate the chances in his favor. These

were nothing but hazy ideas that floated over his mental horizon; they

were less cynical than Vautrin’s notions; but if they had been tried in

the crucible of conscience, no very pure result would have issued from

the test. It is by a succession of such like transactions that men sink

at last to the level of the relaxed morality of this epoch, when there

have never been so few of those who square their courses with their

theories, so few of those noble characters who do not yield to

temptation, for whom the slightest deviation from the line of rectitude

is a crime. To these magnificent types of uncompromising Right we owe

two masterpieces--the Alceste of Moliere, and, in our own day, the

characters of Jeanie Deans and her father in Sir Walter Scott’s novel.

Perhaps a work which should chronicle the opposite course, which should

trace out all the devious courses through which a man of the world, a

man of ambitions, drags his conscience, just steering clear of crime

that he may gain his end and yet save appearances, such a chronicle

would be no less edifying and no less dramatic.

Rastignac went home. He was fascinated by Mme. de Nucingen; he seemed to

see her before him, slender and graceful as a swallow. He recalled the

intoxicating sweetness of her eyes, her fair hair, the delicate silken

tissue of the skin, beneath which it almost seemed to him that he could

see the blood coursing; the tones of her voice still exerted a spell

over him; he had forgotten nothing; his walk perhaps heated his

imagination by sending a glow of warmth through his veins. He knocked

unceremoniously at Goriot’s door.

“I have seen Mme. Delphine, neighbor,” said he.

“Where?”

“At the Italiens.”

“Did she enjoy it?.... Just come inside,” and the old man left his bed,

unlocked the door, and promptly returned again.

It was the first time that Eugene had been in Father Goriot’s room, and

he could not control his feeling of amazement at the contrast between

the den in which the father lived and the costume of the daughter whom

he had just beheld. The window was curtainless, the walls were damp, in

places the varnished wall-paper had come away and gave glimpses of the

grimy yellow plaster beneath. The wretched bed on which the old man

lay boasted but one thin blanket, and a wadded quilt made out of large

pieces of Mme. Vauquer’s old dresses. The floor was damp and gritty.

Opposite the window stood a chest of drawers made of rosewood, one of

the old-fashioned kind with a curving front and brass handles, shaped

like rings of twisted vine stems covered with flowers and leaves. On a

venerable piece of furniture with a wooden shelf stood a ewer and

basin and shaving apparatus. A pair of shoes stood in one corner; a

night-table by the bed had neither a door nor marble slab. There was not

a trace of a fire in the empty grate; the square walnut table with

the crossbar against which Father Goriot had crushed and twisted his

posset-dish stood near the hearth. The old man’s hat was lying on a

broken-down bureau. An armchair stuffed with straw and a couple of

chairs completed the list of ramshackle furniture. From the tester of

the bed, tied to the ceiling by a piece of rag, hung a strip of some

cheap material in large red and black checks. No poor drudge in a

garret could be worse lodged than Father Goriot in Mme. Vauquer’s

lodging-house. The mere sight of the room sent a chill through you and

a sense of oppression; it was like the worst cell in a prison. Luckily,

Goriot could not see the effect that his surroundings produced on Eugene

as the latter deposited his candle on the night-table. The old man

turned round, keeping the bedclothes huddled up to his chin.

“Well,” he said, “and which do you like the best, Mme. de Restaud or

Mme. de Nucingen?”

“I like Mme. Delphine the best,” said the law student, “because she

loves you the best.”

At the words so heartily spoken the old man’s hand slipped out from

under the bedclothes and grasped Eugene’s.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said, gratefully. “Then what did she say

about me?”

The student repeated the Baroness’ remarks with some embellishments of

his own, the old man listening the while as though he heard a voice from

Heaven.

“Dear child!” he said. “Yes, yes, she is very fond of me. But you must

not believe all that she tells you about Anastasie. The two sisters are

jealous of each other, you see, another proof of their affection. Mme.

de Restaud is very fond of me too. I know she is. A father sees his

children as God sees all of us; he looks into the very depths of their

hearts; he knows their intentions; and both of them are so loving. Oh!

if I only had good sons-in-law, I should be too happy, and I dare

say there is no perfect happiness here below. If I might live with

them--simply hear their voices, know that they are there, see them go

and come as I used to do at home when they were still with me; why, my

heart bounds at the thought.... Were they nicely dressed?”

“Yes,” said Eugene. “But, M. Goriot, how is it that your daughters have

such fine houses, while you live in such a den as this?”

“Dear me, why should I want anything better?” he replied, with seeming

carelessness. “I can’t quite explain to you how it is; I am not used to

stringing words together properly, but it all lies there----” he said,

tapping his heart. “My real life is in my two girls, you see; and so

long as they are happy, and smartly dressed, and have soft carpets under

their feet, what does it matter what clothes I wear or where I lie down

of a night? I shall never feel cold so long as they are warm; I shall

never feel dull if they are laughing. I have no troubles but theirs.

When you, too, are a father, and you hear your children’s little voices,

you will say to yourself, ‘That has all come from me.’ You will feel

that those little ones are akin to every drop in your veins, that they

are the very flower of your life (and what else are they?); you will

cleave so closely to them that you seem to feel every movement that they

make. Everywhere I hear their voices sounding in my ears. If they are

sad, the look in their eyes freezes my blood. Some day you will find

out that there is far more happiness in another’s happiness than in your

own. It is something that I cannot explain, something within that sends

a glow of warmth all through you. In short, I live my life three times

over. Shall I tell you something funny? Well, then, since I have been

a father, I have come to understand God. He is everywhere in the world,

because the whole world comes from Him. And it is just the same with my

children, monsieur. Only, I love my daughters better than God loves

the world, for the world is not so beautiful as God Himself is, but my

children are more beautiful than I am. Their lives are so bound up with

mine that I felt somehow that you would see them this evening. Great

Heaven! If any man would make my little Delphine as happy as a wife is

when she is loved, I would black his boots and run on his errands. That

miserable M. de Marsay is a cur; I know all about him from her maid. A

longing to wring his neck comes over me now and then. He does not love

her! does not love a pearl of a woman, with a voice like a nightingale

and shaped like a model. Where can her eyes have been when she married

that great lump of an Alsatian? They ought both of them to have married

young men, good-looking and good-tempered--but, after all, they had

their own way.”