Chương Chương 21 · 第21章

[*] Travaux forces, forced labour.

“But you have chosen already. You have gone to see your cousin of

Beauseant, and you have had an inkling of luxury; you have been to Mme.

de Restaud’s house, and in Father Goriot’s daughter you have seen a

glimpse of the Parisienne for the first time. That day you came

back with a word written on your forehead. I knew it, I could read

it--‘_Success_!’ Yes, success at any price. ‘Bravo,’ said I to myself,

‘here is the sort of fellow for me.’ You wanted money. Where was it all

to come from? You have drained your sisters’ little hoard (all brothers

sponge more or less on their sisters). Those fifteen hundred francs of

yours (got together, God knows how! in a country where there are more

chestnuts than five-franc pieces) will slip away like soldiers after

pillage. And, then, what will you do? Shall you begin to work? Work, or

what you understand by work at this moment, means, for a man of Poiret’s

calibre, an old age in Mamma Vauquer’s lodging-house. There are fifty

thousand young men in your position at this moment, all bent as you are

on solving one and the same problem--how to acquire a fortune rapidly.

You are but a unit in that aggregate. You can guess, therefore, what

efforts you must make, how desperate the struggle is. There are not

fifty thousand good positions for you; you must fight and devour one

another like spiders in a pot. Do you know how a man makes his way here?

By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your

way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them

like a plague. Honesty is nothing to the purpose. Men bow before the

power of genius; they hate it, and try to slander it, because genius

does not divide the spoil; but if genius persists, they bow before it.

To sum it all up in a phrase, if they fail to smother genius in the mud,

they fall on their knees and worship it. Corruption is a great power

in the world, and talent is scarce. So corruption is the weapon of

superfluous mediocrity; you will be made to feel the point of it

everywhere. You will see women who spend more than ten thousand francs

a year on dress, while their husband’s salary (his whole income) is

six thousand francs. You will see officials buying estates on twelve

thousand francs a year. You will see women who sell themselves body and

soul to drive in a carriage belonging to the son of a peer of France,

who has a right to drive in the middle rank at Longchamp. You have

seen that poor simpleton of a Goriot obliged to meet a bill with his

daughter’s name at the back of it, though her husband has fifty thousand

francs a year. I defy you to walk a couple of yards anywhere in Paris

without stumbling on some infernal complication. I’ll bet my head to

a head of that salad that you will stir up a hornet’s nest by taking a

fancy to the first young, rich, and pretty woman you meet. They are all

dodging the law, all at loggerheads with their husbands. If I were to

begin to tell you all that vanity or necessity (virtue is not often

mixed up in it, you may be sure), all that vanity and necessity drive

them to do for lovers, finery, housekeeping, or children, I should never

come to an end. So an honest man is the common enemy.

“But do you know what an honest man is? Here, in Paris, an honest man is

the man who keeps his own counsel, and will not divide the plunder. I am

not speaking now of those poor bond-slaves who do the work of the world

without a reward for their toil--God Almighty’s outcasts, I call them.

Among them, I grant you, is virtue in all the flower of its stupidity,

but poverty is no less their portion. At this moment, I think I see the

long faces those good folk would pull if God played a practical joke on

them and stayed away at the Last Judgment.

“Well, then, if you mean to make a fortune quickly, you must either be

rich to begin with, or make people believe that you are rich. It is no

use playing here except for high stakes; once take to low play, it is

all up with you. If in the scores of professions that are open to you,

there are ten men who rise very rapidly, people are sure to call them

thieves. You can draw your own conclusions. Such is life. It is no

cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to

cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is

in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our

epoch. If I take this tone in speaking of the world to you, I have the

right to do so; I know it well. Do you think that I am blaming it? Far

from it; the world has always been as it is now. Moralists’ strictures

will never change it. Mankind are not perfect, but one age is more

or less hypocritical than another, and then simpletons say that its

morality is high or low. I do not think that the rich are any worse than

the poor; man is much the same, high or low, or wherever he is. In a

million of these human cattle there may be half a score of bold spirits

who rise above the rest, above the laws; I am one of them. And you, if

you are cleverer than your fellows, make straight to your end, and hold

your head high. But you must lay your account with envy and slander and

mediocrity, and every man’s hand will be against you. Napoleon met with

a Minister of War, Aubry by name, who all but sent him to the colonies.

“Feel your pulse. Think whether you can get up morning after morning,

strengthened in yesterday’s purpose. In that case I will make you an

offer that no one would decline. Listen attentively. You see, I have an

idea of my own. My idea is to live a patriarchal life on a vast estate,

say a hundred thousand acres, somewhere in the Southern States of

America. I mean to be a planter, to have slaves, to make a few snug

millions by selling my cattle, timber, and tobacco; I want to live an

absolute monarch, and to do just as I please; to lead such a life as no

one here in these squalid dens of lath and plaster ever imagines. I am a

great poet; I do not write my poems, I feel them, and act them. At this

moment I have fifty thousand francs, which might possibly buy forty

negroes. I want two hundred thousand francs, because I want to have

two hundred negroes to carry out my notions of the patriarachal life

properly. Negroes, you see, are like a sort of family ready grown, and

there are no inquisitive public prosecutors out there to interfere with

you. That investment in ebony ought to mean three or four million francs

in ten years’ time. If I am successful, no one will ask me who I am. I

shall be Mr. Four Millions, an American citizen. I shall be fifty years

old by then, and sound and hearty still; I shall enjoy life after my own

fashion. In two words, if I find you an heiress with a million, will you

give me two hundred thousand francs? Twenty per cent commission, eh? Is

that too much? Your little wife will be very much in love with you. Once

married, you will show signs of uneasiness and remorse; for a couple of

weeks you will be depressed. Then, some night after sundry grimacings,

comes the confession, between two kisses, ‘Two hundred thousand francs

of debts, my darling!’ This sort of farce is played every day in Paris,

and by young men of the highest fashion. When a young wife has given her

heart, she will not refuse her purse. Perhaps you are thinking that

you will lose the money for good? Not you. You will make two hundred

thousand francs again by some stroke of business. With your capital and

your brains you should be able to accumulate as large a fortune as you

could wish. _Ergo_, in six months you will have made your own fortune,

and our old friend Vautrin’s, and made an amiable woman very happy, to

say nothing of your people at home, who must blow on their fingers

to warm them, in the winter, for lack of firewood. You need not be

surprised at my proposal, nor at the demand I make. Forty-seven out

of every sixty great matches here in Paris are made after just such a

bargain as this. The Chamber of Notaries compels my gentleman to----”

“What must I do?” said Rastignac, eagerly interrupting Vautrin’s speech.

“Next to nothing,” returned the other, with a slight involuntary

movement, the suppressed exultation of the angler when he feels a bite

at the end of his line. “Follow me carefully! The heart of a girl whose

life is wretched and unhappy is a sponge that will thirstily absorb

love; a dry sponge that swells at the first drop of sentiment. If you

pay court to a young girl whose existence is a compound of loneliness,

despair, and poverty, and who has no suspicion that she will come into

a fortune, good Lord! it is quint and quatorze at piquet; it is knowing

the numbers of the lottery before-hand; it is speculating in the funds

when you have news from a sure source; it is building up a marriage on

an indestructible foundation. The girl may come in for millions, and she

will fling them, as if they were so many pebbles, at your feet. ‘Take

it, my beloved! Take it, Alfred, Adolphe, Eugene!’ or whoever it

was that showed his sense by sacrificing himself for her. And as for

sacrificing himself, this is how I understand it. You sell a coat that

is getting shabby, so that you can take her to the _Cadran bleu_, treat

her to mushrooms on toast, and then go to the Ambigu-Comique in the

evening; you pawn your watch to buy her a shawl. I need not remind you

of the fiddle-faddle sentimentality that goes down so well with all

women; you spill a few drops of water on your stationery, for instance;

those are the tears you shed while far away from her. You look to me as

if you were perfectly acquainted with the argot of the heart. Paris, you

see, is like a forest in the New World, where you have to deal with

a score of varieties of savages--Illinois and Hurons, who live on the

proceed of their social hunting. You are a hunter of millions; you set

your snares; you use lures and nets; there are many ways of hunting.

Some hunt heiresses, others a legacy; some fish for souls, yet others

sell their clients, bound hand and foot. Every one who comes back from

the chase with his game-bag well filled meets with a warm welcome in

good society. In justice to this hospitable part of the world, it must

be said that you have to do with the most easy and good-natured of

great cities. If the proud aristocracies of the rest of Europe refuse

admittance among their ranks to a disreputable millionaire, Paris

stretches out a hand to him, goes to his banquets, eats his dinners, and

hobnobs with his infamy.”