Chương Chương 15 · 第15章

“Mme. la Duchesse,” said Eugene, “is it not natural to wish to be

initiated into the mysteries which charm us?” (“Come, now,” he said to

himself, “my language is superfinely elegant, I’m sure.”)

“But Mme. de Restaud is herself, I believe, M. de Trailles’ pupil,” said

the Duchess.

“Of that I had no idea, madame,” answered the law student, “so I rashly

came between them. In fact, I got on very well with the lady’s husband,

and his wife tolerated me for a time until I took it into my head to

tell them that I knew some one of whom I had just caught a glimpse as he

went out by a back staircase, a man who had given the Countess a kiss at

the end of a passage.”

“Who was it?” both women asked together.

“An old man who lives at the rate of two louis a month in the Faubourg

Saint-Marceau, where I, a poor student, lodge likewise. He is a truly

unfortunate creature, everybody laughs at him--we all call him ‘Father

Goriot.’”

“Why, child that you are,” cried the Vicomtesse, “Mme. de Restaud was a

Mlle. Goriot!”

“The daughter of a vermicelli manufacturer,” the Duchess added; “and

when the little creature went to Court, the daughter of a pastry-cook

was presented on the same day. Do you remember, Claire? The King began

to laugh, and made some joke in Latin about flour. People--what was

it?--people----”

“_Ejusdem farinoe_,” said Eugene.

“Yes, that was it,” said the Duchess.

“Oh! is that her father?” the law student continued, aghast.

“Yes, certainly; the old man had two daughters; he dotes on them, so to

speak, though they will scarcely acknowledge him.”

“Didn’t the second daughter marry a banker with a German name?” the

Vicomtesse asked, turning to Mme. de Langeais, “a Baron de Nucingen? And

her name is Delphine, is it not? Isn’t she a fair-haired woman who has

a side-box at the Opera? She comes sometimes to the Bouffons, and laughs

loudly to attract attention.”

The Duchess smiled and said:

“I wonder at you, dear. Why do you take so much interest in people of

that kind? One must have been as madly in love as Restaud was, to be

infatuated with Mlle. Anastasie and her flour sacks. Oh! he will not

find her a good bargain! She is in M. de Trailles’ hands, and he will

ruin her.”

“And they do not acknowledge their father!” Eugene repeated.

“Oh! well, yes, their father, the father, a father,” replied the

Vicomtesse, “a kind father who gave them each five or six hundred

thousand francs, it is said, to secure their happiness by marrying

them well; while he only kept eight or ten thousand livres a year for

himself, thinking that his daughters would always be his daughters,

thinking that in them he would live his life twice over again, that

in their houses he should find two homes, where he would be loved

and looked up to, and made much of. And in two years’ time both his

sons-in-law had turned him out of their houses as if he were one of the

lowest outcasts.”

Tears came into Eugene’s eyes. He was still under the spell of youthful

beliefs, he had just left home, pure and sacred feelings had been

stirred within him, and this was his first day on the battlefield of

civilization in Paris. Genuine feeling is so infectious that for a

moment the three looked at each other in silence.

“_Eh, mon Dieu!_” said Mme. de Langeais; “yes, it seems very horrible,

and yet we see such things every day. Is there not a reason for it?

Tell me, dear, have you ever really thought what a son-in-law is? A

son-in-law is the man for whom we bring up, you and I, a dear little

one, bound to us very closely in innumerable ways; for seventeen years

she will be the joy of her family, its ‘white soul,’ as Lamartine says,

and suddenly she will become its scourge. When HE comes and takes her

from us, his love from the very beginning is like an axe laid to the

root of all the old affection in our darling’s heart, and all the ties

that bound her to her family are severed. But yesterday our little

daughter thought of no one but her mother and father, as we had no

thought that was not for her; by to-morrow she will have become a

hostile stranger. The tragedy is always going on under our eyes. On the

one hand you see a father who has sacrificed himself to his son, and

his daughter-in-law shows him the last degree of insolence. On the other

hand, it is the son-in-law who turns his wife’s mother out of the house.

I sometimes hear it said that there is nothing dramatic about society in

these days; but the Drama of the Son-in-law is appalling, to say nothing

of our marriages, which have come to be very poor farces. I can explain

how it all came about in the old vermicelli maker’s case. I think I

recollect that Foriot----”

“Goriot, madame.”

“Yes, that Moriot was once President of his Section during the

Revolution. He was in the secret of the famous scarcity of grain, and

laid the foundation of his fortune in those days by selling flour for

ten times its cost. He had as much flour as he wanted. My grandmother’s

steward sold him immense quantities. No doubt Noriot shared the plunder

with the Committee of Public Salvation, as that sort of person always

did. I recollect the steward telling my grandmother that she might live

at Grandvilliers in complete security, because her corn was as good as

a certificate of civism. Well, then, this Loriot, who sold corn to

those butchers, has never had but one passion, they say--he idolizes his

daughters. He settled one of them under Restaud’s roof, and grafted the

other into the Nucingen family tree, the Baron de Nucingen being a rich

banker who had turned Royalist. You can quite understand that so long as

Bonaparte was Emperor, the two sons-in-law could manage to put up with

the old Ninety-three; but after the restoration of the Bourbons, M. de

Restaud felt bored by the old man’s society, and the banker was still

more tired of it. His daughters were still fond of him; they wanted

‘to keep the goat and the cabbage,’ so they used to see Joriot whenever

there was no one there, under pretence of affection. ‘Come to-day, papa,

we shall have you all to ourselves, and that will be much nicer!’

and all that sort of thing. As for me, dear, I believe that love has

second-sight: poor Ninety-three; his heart must have bled. He saw that

his daughters were ashamed of him, that if they loved their husbands

his visits must make mischief. So he immolated himself. He made the

sacrifice because he was a father; he went into voluntary exile. His

daughters were satisfied, so he thought that he had done the best thing

he could; but it was a family crime, and father and daughters were

accomplices. You see this sort of thing everywhere. What could this old

Doriot have been but a splash of mud in his daughters’ drawing-rooms? He

would only have been in the way, and bored other people, besides being

bored himself. And this that happened between father and daughters may

happen to the prettiest woman in Paris and the man she loves the best;

if her love grows tiresome, he will go; he will descend to the basest

trickery to leave her. It is the same with all love and friendship. Our

heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are

bankrupt. We show no more mercy to the affection that reveals its utmost

extent than we do to another kind of prodigal who has not a penny left.

Their father had given them all he had. For twenty years he had given

his whole heart to them; then, one day, he gave them all his fortune

too. The lemon was squeezed; the girls left the rest in the gutter.”

“The world is very base,” said the Vicomtesse, plucking at the threads

of her shawl. She did not raise her head as she spoke; the words that

Mme. de Langeais had meant for her in the course of her story had cut

her to the quick.

“Base? Oh, no,” answered the Duchess; “the world goes its own way, that

is all. If I speak in this way, it is only to show that I am not duped

by it. I think as you do,” she said, pressing the Vicomtesse’s hand.

“The world is a slough; let us try to live on the heights above it.”

She rose to her feet and kissed Mme. de Beauseant on the forehead as

she said: “You look very charming to-day, dear. I have never seen such a

lovely color in your cheeks before.”

Then she went out with a slight inclination of the head to the cousin.

“Father Goriot is sublime!” said Eugene to himself, as he remembered how

he had watched his neighbor work the silver vessel into a shapeless mass

that night.

Mme. de Beauseant did not hear him; she was absorbed in her own

thoughts. For several minutes the silence remained unbroken till the

law student became almost paralyzed with embarrassment, and was equally

afraid to go or stay or speak a word.

“The world is basely ungrateful and ill-natured,” said the Vicomtesse

at last. “No sooner does a trouble befall you than a friend is ready

to bring the tidings and to probe your heart with the point of a

dagger while calling on you to admire the handle. Epigrams and sarcasms

already! Ah! I will defend myself!”

She raised her head like the great lady that she was, and lightnings

flashed from her proud eyes.

“Ah!” she said, as she saw Eugene, “are you there?”

“Still,” he said piteously.

“Well, then, M. de Rastignac, deal with the world as it deserves. You

are determined to succeed? I will help you. You shall sound the depths

of corruption in woman; you shall measure the extent of man’s pitiful

vanity. Deeply as I am versed in such learning, there were pages in the

book of life that I had not read. Now I know all. The more cold-blooded

your calculations, the further you will go. Strike ruthlessly; you will

be feared. Men and women for you must be nothing more than post-horses;

take a fresh relay, and leave the last to drop by the roadside; in this

way you will reach the goal of your ambition. You will be nothing here,

you see, unless a woman interests herself in you; and she must be young

and wealthy, and a woman of the world. Yet, if you have a heart, lock

it carefully away like a treasure; do not let any one suspect it, or you

will be lost; you would cease to be the executioner, you would take

the victim’s place. And if ever you should love, never let your secret

escape you! Trust no one until you are very sure of the heart to which

you open your heart. Learn to mistrust every one; take every precaution

for the sake of the love which does not exist as yet. Listen,

Miguel”--the name slipped from her so naturally that she did not

notice her mistake--“there is something still more appalling than the

ingratitude of daughters who have cast off their old father and wish

that he were dead, and that is a rivalry between two sisters. Restaud

comes of a good family, his wife has been received into their circle;

she has been presented at court; and her sister, her wealthy sister,

Mme. Delphine de Nucingen, the wife of a great capitalist, is consumed

with envy, and ready to die of spleen. There is gulf set between the

sisters--indeed, they are sisters no longer--the two women who refuse

to acknowledge their father do not acknowledge each other. So Mme. de

Nucingen would lap up all the mud that lies between the Rue Saint-Lazare

and the Rue de Grenelle to gain admittance to my salon. She fancied

that she should gain her end through de Marsay; she has made herself

de Marsay’s slave, and she bores him. De Marsay cares very little about

her. If you will introduce her to me, you will be her darling, her

Benjamin; she will idolize you. If, after that, you can love her, do so;

if not, make her useful. I will ask her to come once or twice to one of

my great crushes, but I will never receive her here in the morning. I

will bow to her when I see her, and that will be quite sufficient.

You have shut the Comtesse de Restaud’s door against you by mentioning

Father Goriot’s name. Yes, my good friend, you may call at her house

twenty times, and every time out of the twenty you will find that she

is not at home. The servants have their orders, and will not admit you.

Very well, then, now let Father Goriot gain the right of entry into her

sister’s house for you. The beautiful Mme. de Nucingen will give the

signal for a battle. As soon as she singles you out, other women will

begin to lose their heads about you, and her enemies and rivals and

intimate friends will all try to take you from her. There are women who

will fall in love with a man because another woman has chosen him; like

the city madams, poor things, who copy our millinery, and hope thereby

to acquire our manners. You will have a success, and in Paris success is

everything; it is the key of power. If the women credit you with wit and

talent, the men will follow suit so long as you do not undeceive them

yourself. There will be nothing you may not aspire to; you will go

everywhere, and you will find out what the world is--an assemblage of

fools and knaves. But you must be neither the one nor the other. I am

giving you my name like Ariadne’s clue of thread to take with you into

the labyrinth; make no unworthy use of it,” she said, with a queenly

glance and curve of her throat; “give it back to me unsullied. And now,

go; leave me. We women also have our battles to fight.”