บทที่ บทที่ 19 · 第19章

“LAURE DE RASTIGNAC.”

“Yes!” said Eugene to himself. “Yes! Success at all costs now! Riches

could not repay such devotion as this. I wish I could give them every

sort of happiness! Fifteen hundred and fifty francs,” he went on after a

pause. “Every shot must go to the mark! Laure is right. Trust a woman!

I have only calico shirts. Where some one else’s welfare is concerned, a

young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself

is in question, and full of foresight for me,--she is like a heavenly

angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.”

The world lay before him. His tailor had been summoned and sounded, and

had finally surrendered. When Rastignac met M. de Trailles, he had seen

at once how great a part the tailor plays in a young man’s career; a

tailor is either a deadly enemy or a staunch friend, with an invoice

for a bond of friendship; between these two extremes there is, alack! no

middle term. In this representative of his craft Eugene discovered a man

who understood that his was a sort of paternal function for young men

at their entrance into life, who regarded himself as a stepping-stone

between a young man’s present and future. And Rastignac in gratitude

made the man’s fortune by an epigram of a kind in which he excelled at a

later period of his life.

“I have twice known a pair of trousers turned out by him make a match of

twenty thousand livres a year!”

Fifteen hundred francs, and as many suits of clothes as he chose to

order! At that moment the poor child of the South felt no more doubts of

any kind. The young man went down to breakfast with the indefinable air

which the consciousness of the possession of money gives to youth. No

sooner are the coins slipped into a student’s pocket than his wealth,

in imagination at least, is piled into a fantastic column, which affords

him a moral support. He begins to hold up his head as he walks; he is

conscious that he has a means of bringing his powers to bear on a given

point; he looks you straight in the face; his gestures are quick and

decided; only yesterday he was diffident and shy, any one might have

pushed him aside; to-morrow, he will take the wall of a prime minister.

A miracle has been wrought in him. Nothing is beyond the reach of

his ambition, and his ambition soars at random; he is light-hearted,

generous, and enthusiastic; in short, the fledgling bird has discovered

that he has wings. A poor student snatches at every chance pleasure

much as a dog runs all sorts of risks to steal a bone, cracking it and

sucking the marrow as he flies from pursuit; but a young man who can

rattle a few runaway gold coins in his pocket can take his pleasure

deliberately, can taste the whole of the sweets of secure possession; he

soars far above earth; he has forgotten what the word _poverty_ means;

all Paris is his. Those are days when the whole world shines radiant

with light, when everything glows and sparkles before the eyes of youth,

days that bring joyous energy that is never brought into harness, days

of debts and of painful fears that go hand in hand with every delight.

Those who do not know the left bank of the Seine between the Rue

Saint-Jacques and the Rue des Saints-Peres know nothing of life.

“Ah! if the women of Paris but knew,” said Rastignac, as he devoured

Mme. Vauquer’s stewed pears (at five for a penny), “they would come here

in search of a lover.”

Just then a porter from the Messageries Royales appeared at the door of

the room; they had previously heard the bell ring as the wicket opened

to admit him. The man asked for M. Eugene de Rastignac, holding out two

bags for him to take, and a form of receipt for his signature. Vautrin’s

keen glance cut Eugene like a lash.

“Now you will be able to pay for those fencing lessons and go to the

shooting gallery,” he said.

“Your ship has come in,” said Mme. Vauquer, eyeing the bags.

Mlle. Michonneau did not dare to look at the money, for fear her eyes

should betray her cupidity.

“You have a kind mother,” said Mme. Couture.

“You have a kind mother, sir,” echoed Poiret.

“Yes, mamma has been drained dry,” said Vautrin, “and now you can have

your fling, go into society, and fish for heiresses, and dance with

countesses who have peach blossom in their hair. But take my advice,

young man, and don’t neglect your pistol practice.”

Vautrin struck an attitude, as if he were facing an antagonist.

Rastignac, meaning to give the porter a tip, felt in his pockets and

found nothing. Vautrin flung down a franc piece on the table.

“Your credit is good,” he remarked, eyeing the student, and Rastignac

was forced to thank him, though, since the sharp encounter of wits at

dinner that day, after Eugene came in from calling on Mme. de Beauseant,

he had made up his mind that Vautrin was insufferable. For a week, in

fact, they had both kept silence in each other’s presence, and watched

each other. The student tried in vain to account to himself for this

attitude.

An idea, of course, gains in force by the energy with which it

is expressed; it strikes where the brain sends it, by a law as

mathematically exact as the law that determines the course of a shell

from a mortar. The amount of impression it makes is not to be determined

so exactly. Sometimes, in an impressible nature, the idea works havoc,

but there are, no less, natures so robustly protected, that this sort

of projectile falls flat and harmless on skulls of triple brass,

as cannon-shot against solid masonry; then there are flaccid and

spongy-fibred natures into which ideas from without sink like spent

bullets into the earthworks of a redoubt. Rastignac’s head was something

of the powder-magazine order; the least shock sufficed to bring about an

explosion. He was too quick, too young, not to be readily accessible

to ideas; and open to that subtle influence of thought and feeling in

others which causes so many strange phenomena that make an impression

upon us of which we are all unconscious at the time. Nothing escaped his

mental vision; he was lynx-eyed; in him the mental powers of perception,

which seem like duplicates of the senses, had the mysterious power

of swift projection that astonishes us in intellects of a high

order--slingers who are quick to detect the weak spot in any armor.

In the past month Eugene’s good qualities and defects had rapidly

developed with his character. Intercourse with the world and the

endeavor to satisfy his growing desires had brought out his defects.

But Rastignac came from the South side of the Loire, and had the good

qualities of his countrymen. He had the impetuous courage of the South,

that rushes to the attack of a difficulty, as well as the southern

impatience of delay or suspense. These traits are held to be defects in

the North; they made the fortune of Murat, but they likewise cut short

his career. The moral would appear to be that when the dash and boldness

of the South side of the Loire meets, in a southern temperament, with

the guile of the North, the character is complete, and such a man will

gain (and keep) the crown of Sweden.

Rastignac, therefore, could not stand the fire from Vautrin’s batteries

for long without discovering whether this was a friend or a foe. He felt

as if this strange being was reading his inmost soul, and dissecting

his feelings, while Vautrin himself was so close and secretive that

he seemed to have something of the profound and unmoved serenity of

a sphinx, seeing and hearing all things and saying nothing. Eugene,

conscious of that money in his pocket, grew rebellious.

“Be so good as to wait a moment,” he said to Vautrin, as the latter

rose, after slowly emptying his coffee-cup, sip by sip.

“What for?” inquired the older man, as he put on his large-brimmed hat

and took up the sword-cane that he was wont to twirl like a man who will

face three or four footpads without flinching.

“I will repay you in a minute,” returned Eugene. He unsealed one of the

bags as he spoke, counted out a hundred and forty francs, and pushed

them towards Mme. Vauquer. “Short reckonings make good friends” he

added, turning to the widow; “that clears our accounts till the end of

the year. Can you give me change for a five-franc piece?”

“Good friends make short reckonings,” echoed Poiret, with a glance at

Vautrin.

“Here is your franc,” said Rastignac, holding out the coin to the sphinx

in the black wig.

“Any one might think that you were afraid to owe me a trifle,” exclaimed

this latter, with a searching glance that seemed to read the young man’s

inmost thoughts; there was a satirical and cynical smile on Vautrin’s

face such as Eugene had seen scores of times already; every time he saw

it, it exasperated him almost beyond endurance.

“Well... so I am,” he answered. He held both the bags in his hand, and

had risen to go up to his room.

Vautrin made as if he were going out through the sitting-room, and the

student turned to go through the second door that opened into the square

lobby at the foot of the staircase.

“Do you know, Monsieur le Marquis de Rastignacorama, that what you were

saying just now was not exactly polite?” Vautrin remarked, as he rattled

his sword-cane across the panels of the sitting-room door, and came up

to the student.

Rastignac looked coolly at Vautrin, drew him to the foot of the

staircase, and shut the dining-room door. They were standing in the

little square lobby between the kitchen and the dining-room; the place

was lighted by an iron-barred fanlight above a door that gave access

into the garden. Sylvie came out of her kitchen, and Eugene chose that

moment to say:

“_Monsieur_ Vautrin, I am not a marquis, and my name is not

Rastignacorama.”

“They will fight,” said Mlle. Michonneau, in an indifferent tone.

“Fight!” echoed Poiret.

“Not they,” replied Mme. Vauquer, lovingly fingering her pile of coins.

“But there they are under the lime-trees,” cried Mlle. Victorine, who

had risen so that she might see out into the garden. “Poor young man! he

was in the right, after all.”

“We must go upstairs, my pet,” said Mme. Couture; “it is no business of

ours.”