Chương Chương 24 · 第24章

In vain Mme. de Beauseant looked at Eugene as if asking him to speak;

the student was tongue-tied in the Vicomte’s presence.

“Are you going to take me to the Italiens this evening?” the Vicomtesse

asked her husband.

“You cannot doubt that I should obey you with pleasure,” he answered,

and there was a sarcastic tinge in his politeness which Eugene did not

detect, “but I ought to go to meet some one at the Varietes.”

“His mistress,” said she to herself.

“Then, is not Ajuda coming for you this evening?” inquired the Vicomte.

“No,” she answered, petulantly.

“Very well, then, if you really must have an arm, take that of M. de

Rastignac.”

The Vicomtess turned to Eugene with a smile.

“That would be a very compromising step for you,” she said.

“‘A Frenchman loves danger, because in danger there is glory,’ to quote

M. de Chateaubriand,” said Rastignac, with a bow.

A few moments later he was sitting beside Mme. de Beauseant in

a brougham, that whirled them through the streets of Paris to a

fashionable theatre. It seemed to him that some fairy magic had suddenly

transported him into a box facing the stage. All the lorgnettes of the

house were pointed at him as he entered, and at the Vicomtesse in her

charming toilette. He went from enchantment to enchantment.

“You must talk to me, you know,” said Mme. de Beauseant. “Ah! look!

There is Mme. de Nucingen in the third box from ours. Her sister and M.

de Trailles are on the other side.”

The Vicomtesse glanced as she spoke at the box where Mlle. de Rochefide

should have been; M. d’Ajuda was not there, and Mme. de Beauseant’s face

lighted up in a marvelous way.

“She is charming,” said Eugene, after looking at Mme. de Nucingen.

“She has white eyelashes.”

“Yes, but she has such a pretty slender figure!”

“Her hands are large.”

“Such beautiful eyes!”

“Her face is long.”

“Yes, but length gives distinction.”

“It is lucky for her that she has some distinction in her face. Just see

how she fidgets with her opera-glass! The Goriot blood shows itself in

every movement,” said the Vicomtesse, much to Eugene’s astonishment.

Indeed, Mme. de Beauseant seemed to be engaged in making a survey of

the house, and to be unconscious of Mme. Nucingen’s existence; but no

movement made by the latter was lost upon the Vicomtesse. The house was

full of the loveliest women in Paris, so that Delphine de Nucingen was

not a little flattered to receive the undivided attention of Mme. de

Beauseant’s young, handsome, and well-dressed cousin, who seemed to have

no eyes for any one else.

“If you look at her so persistently, you will make people talk, M. de

Rastignac. You will never succeed if you fling yourself at any one’s

head like that.”

“My dear cousin,” said Eugene, “you have protected me indeed so far,

and now if you would complete your work, I only ask of you a favor which

will cost you but little, and be of very great service to me. I have

lost my heart.”

“Already!”

“Yes.”

“And to that woman!”

“How could I aspire to find any one else to listen to me?” he asked,

with a keen glance at his cousin. “Her Grace the Duchesse de Carigliano

is a friend of the Duchesse de Berri,” he went on, after a pause; “you

are sure to see her, will you be so kind as to present me to her, and to

take me to her ball on Monday? I shall meet Mme. de Nucingen there, and

enter into my first skirmish.”

“Willingly,” she said. “If you have a liking for her already, your

affairs of the heart are like to prosper. That is de Marsay over there

in the Princesse Galathionne’s box. Mme. de Nucingen is racked with

jealousy. There is no better time for approaching a woman, especially

if she happens to be a banker’s wife. All those ladies of the

Chaussee-d’Antin love revenge.”

“Then, what would you do yourself in such a case?”

“I should suffer in silence.”

At this point the Marquis d’Ajuda appeared in Mme. de Beauseant’s box.

“I have made a muddle of my affairs to come to you,” he said, “and I am

telling you about it, so that it may not be a sacrifice.”

Eugene saw the glow of joy on the Vicomtesse’s face, and knew that this

was love, and learned the difference between love and the affectations

of Parisian coquetry. He admired his cousin, grew mute, and yielded his

place to M. d’Ajuda with a sigh.

“How noble, how sublime a woman is when she loves like that!” he said to

himself. “And _he_ could forsake her for a doll! Oh! how could any one

forsake her?”

There was a boy’s passionate indignation in his heart. He could have

flung himself at Mme. de Beauseant’s feet; he longed for the power of

the devil if he could snatch her away and hide her in his heart, as an

eagle snatches up some white yearling from the plains and bears it to

its eyrie. It was humiliating to him to think that in all this gallery

of fair pictures he had not one picture of his own. “To have a mistress

and an almost royal position is a sign of power,” he said to himself.

And he looked at Mme. de Nucingen as a man measures another who has

insulted him.

The Vicomtesse turned to him, and the expression of her eyes thanked him

a thousand times for his discretion. The first act came to an end just

then.

“Do you know Mme. de Nucingen well enough to present M. de Rastignac to

her?” she asked of the Marquis d’Ajuda.

“She will be delighted,” said the Marquis. The handsome Portuguese rose

as he spoke and took the student’s arm, and in another moment Eugene

found himself in Mme. de Nucingen’s box.

“Madame,” said the Marquis, “I have the honor of presenting to you the

Chevalier Eugene de Rastignac; he is a cousin of Mme. de Beauseant’s.

You have made so deep an impression upon him, that I thought I would

fill up the measure of his happiness by bringing him nearer to his

divinity.”

Words spoken half jestingly to cover their somewhat disrespectful

import; but such an implication, if carefully disguised, never gives

offence to a woman. Mme. de Nucingen smiled, and offered Eugene the

place which her husband had just left.

“I do not venture to suggest that you should stay with me, monsieur,”

she said. “Those who are so fortunate as to be in Mme. de Beauseant’s

company do not desire to leave it.”

“Madame,” Eugene said, lowering his voice, “I think that to please my

cousin I should remain with you. Before my lord Marquis came we were

speaking of you and of your exceedingly distinguished appearance,” he

added aloud.

M. d’Ajuda turned and left them.

“Are you really going to stay with me, monsieur?” asked the Baroness.

“Then we shall make each other’s acquaintance. Mme. de Restaud told me

about you, and has made me anxious to meet you.”

“She must be very insincere, then, for she has shut her door on me.”

“What?”

“Madame, I will tell you honestly the reason why; but I must crave your

indulgence before confiding such a secret to you. I am your father’s

neighbor; I had no idea that Mme. de Restaud was his daughter. I was

rash enough to mention his name; I meant no harm, but I annoyed your

sister and her husband very much. You cannot think how severely the

Duchesse de Langeais and my cousin blamed this apostasy on a daughter’s

part, as a piece of bad taste. I told them all about it, and they both

burst out laughing. Then Mme. de Beauseant made some comparison between

you and your sister, speaking in high terms of you, and saying how very

fond you were of my neighbor, M. Goriot. And, indeed, how could you help

loving him? He adores you so passionately that I am jealous already. We

talked about you this morning for two hours. So this evening I was quite

full of all that your father had told me, and while I was dining with my

cousin I said that you could not be as beautiful as affectionate. Mme.

de Beauseant meant to gratify such warm admiration, I think, when she

brought me here, telling me, in her gracious way, that I should see

you.”

“Then, even now, I owe you a debt of gratitude, monsieur,” said the

banker’s wife. “We shall be quite old friends in a little while.”

“Although a friendship with you could not be like an ordinary

friendship,” said Rastignac; “I should never wish to be your friend.”

Such stereotyped phrases as these, in the mouths of beginners, possess

an unfailing charm for women, and are insipid only when read coldly; for

a young man’s tone, glance and attitude give a surpassing eloquence to

the banal phrases. Mme. de Nucingen thought that Rastignac was adorable.

Then, woman-like, being at a loss how to reply to the student’s

outspoken admiration, she answered a previous remark.

“Yes, it is very wrong of my sister to treat our poor father as she

does,” she said; “he has been a Providence to us. It was not until M. de

Nucingen positively ordered me only to receive him in the mornings that

I yielded the point. But I have been unhappy about it for a long while;

I have shed many tears over it. This violence to my feelings, with my

husband’s brutal treatment, have been two causes of my unhappy married

life. There is certainly no woman in Paris whose lot seems more enviable

than mine, and yet, in reality, there is not one so much to be pitied.

You will think I must be out of my senses to talk to you like this; but

you know my father, and I cannot regard you as a stranger.”

“You will find no one,” said Eugene, “who longs as eagerly as I do to be

yours. What do all women seek? Happiness.” (He answered his own question

in low, vibrating tones.) “And if happiness for a woman means that she

is to be loved and adored, to have a friend to whom she can pour out her

wishes, her fancies, her sorrows and joys; to whom she can lay bare

her heart and soul, and all her fair defects and her gracious virtues,

without fear of a betrayal; believe me, the devotion and the warmth that

never fails can only be found in the heart of a young man who, at a bare

sign from you, would go to his death, who neither knows nor cares to

know anything as yet of the world, because you will be all the world to

him. I myself, you see (you will laugh at my simplicity), have just come

from a remote country district; I am quite new to this world of Paris; I

have only known true and loving hearts; and I made up my mind that here

I should find no love. Then I chanced to meet my cousin, and to see

my cousin’s heart from very near; I have divined the inexhaustible

treasures of passion, and, like Cherubino, I am the lover of all women,

until the day comes when I find _the_ woman to whom I may devote myself.

As soon as I saw you, as soon as I came into the theatre this evening, I

felt myself borne towards you as if by the current of a stream. I had so

often thought of you already, but I had never dreamed that you would be

so beautiful! Mme. de Beauseant told me that I must not look so much at

you. She does not know the charm of your red lips, your fair face, nor

see how soft your eyes are.... I also am beginning to talk nonsense; but

let me talk.”