Chương Chương 48 · 第48章

He went to his rooms and dressed, sad, thoughtful, and dispirited. The

world of Paris was like an ocean of mud for him just then; and it seemed

that whoever set foot in that black mire must needs sink into it up to

the chin.

“Their crimes are paltry,” said Eugene to himself. “Vautrin was

greater.”

He had seen society in its three great phases--Obedience, Struggle,

and Revolt; the Family, the World, and Vautrin; and he hesitated in his

choice. Obedience was dull, Revolt impossible, Struggle hazardous.

His thoughts wandered back to the home circle. He thought of the quiet

uneventful life, the pure happiness of the days spent among those who

loved him there. Those loving and beloved beings passed their lives in

obedience to the natural laws of the hearth, and in that obedience found

a deep and constant serenity, unvexed by torments such as these. Yet,

for all his good impulses, he could not bring himself to make profession

of the religion of pure souls to Delphine, nor to prescribe the duties

of piety to her in the name of love. His education had begun to bear its

fruits; he loved selfishly already. Besides, his tact had discovered to

him the real nature of Delphine; he divined instinctively that she was

capable of stepping over her father’s corpse to go to the ball; and

within himself he felt that he had neither the strength of mind to play

the part of mentor, nor the strength of character to vex her, nor the

courage to leave her to go alone.

“She would never forgive me for putting her in the wrong over it,” he

said to himself. Then he turned the doctor’s dictum over in his mind;

he tried to believe that Goriot was not so dangerously ill as he had

imagined, and ended by collecting together a sufficient quantity of

traitorous excuses for Delphine’s conduct. She did not know how ill her

father was; the kind old man himself would have made her go to the ball

if she had gone to see him. So often it happens that this one or that

stands condemned by the social laws that govern family relations;

and yet there are peculiar circumstances in the case, differences of

temperament, divergent interests, innumerable complications of family

life that excuse the apparent offence.

Eugene did not wish to see too clearly; he was ready to sacrifice his

conscience to his mistress. Within the last few days his whole life had

undergone a change. Woman had entered into his world and thrown it into

chaos, family claims dwindled away before her; she had appropriated

all his being to her uses. Rastignac and Delphine found each other at

a crisis in their lives when their union gave them the most poignant

bliss. Their passion, so long proved, had only gained in strength by the

gratified desire that often extinguishes passion. This woman was his,

and Eugene recognized that not until then had he loved her; perhaps love

is only gratitude for pleasure. This woman, vile or sublime, he adored

for the pleasure she had brought as her dower; and Delphine loved

Rastignac as Tantalus would have loved some angel who had satisfied his

hunger and quenched the burning thirst in his parched throat.

“Well,” said Mme. de Nucingen when he came back in evening dress, “how

is my father?”

“Very dangerously ill,” he answered; “if you will grant me a proof of

your affections, we will just go in to see him on the way.”

“Very well,” she said. “Yes, but afterwards. Dear Eugene, do be nice,

and don’t preach to me. Come.”

They set out. Eugene said nothing for a while.

“What is it now?” she asked.

“I can hear the death-rattle in your father’s throat,” he said almost

angrily. And with the hot indignation of youth, he told the story of

Mme. de Restaud’s vanity and cruelty, of her father’s final act of

self-sacrifice, that had brought about this struggle between life

and death, of the price that had been paid for Anastasie’s golden

embroideries. Delphine cried.

“I shall look frightful,” she thought. She dried her tears.

“I will nurse my father; I will not leave his bedside,” she said aloud.

“Ah! now you are as I would have you,” exclaimed Rastignac.

The lamps of five hundred carriages lit up the darkness about the Hotel

de Beauseant. A gendarme in all the glory of his uniform stood on either

side of the brightly lighted gateway. The great world was flocking

thither that night in its eager curiosity to see the great lady at the

moment of her fall, and the rooms on the ground floor were already full

to overflowing, when Mme. de Nucingen and Rastignac appeared. Never

since Louis XIV. tore her lover away from La grand Mademoiselle, and

the whole court hastened to visit that unfortunate princess, had a

disastrous love affair made such a sensation in Paris. But the youngest

daughter of the almost royal house of Burgundy had risen proudly above

her pain, and moved till the last moment like a queen in this world--its

vanities had always been valueless for her, save in so far as they

contributed to the triumph of her passion. The salons were filled with

the most beautiful women in Paris, resplendent in their toilettes, and

radiant with smiles. Ministers and ambassadors, the most distinguished

men at court, men bedizened with decorations, stars, and ribbons, men

who bore the most illustrious names in France, had gathered about the

Vicomtesse.

The music of the orchestra vibrated in wave after wave of sound from the

golden ceiling of the palace, now made desolate for its queen.

Madame de Beauseant stood at the door of the first salon to receive the

guests who were styled her friends. She was dressed in white, and wore

no ornament in the plaits of hair braided about her head; her face was

calm; there was no sign there of pride, nor of pain, nor of joy that

she did not feel. No one could read her soul; she stood there like some

Niobe carved in marble. For a few intimate friends there was a tinge of

satire in her smile; but no scrutiny saw any change in her, nor had she

looked otherwise in the days of the glory of her happiness. The most

callous of her guests admired her as young Rome applauded some gladiator

who could die smiling. It seemed as if society had adorned itself for a

last audience of one of its sovereigns.

“I was afraid that you would not come,” she said to Rastignac.

“Madame,” he said, in an unsteady voice, taking her speech as a

reproach, “I shall be the last to go, that is why I am here.”

“Good,” she said, and she took his hand. “You are perhaps the only one

I can trust here among all these. Oh, my friend, when you love, love

a woman whom you are sure that you can love always. Never forsake a

woman.”

She took Rastignac’s arm, and went towards a sofa in the card-room.

“I want you to go to the Marquis,” she said. “Jacques, my footman, will

go with you; he has a letter that you will take. I am asking the Marquis

to give my letters back to me. He will give them all up, I like to think

that. When you have my letters, go up to my room with them. Some one

shall bring me word.”

She rose to go to meet the Duchesse de Langeais, her most intimate

friend, who had come like the rest of the world.

Rastignac went. He asked for the Marquis d’Ajuda at the Hotel Rochefide,

feeling certain that the latter would be spending his evening there, and

so it proved. The Marquis went to his own house with Rastignac, and gave

a casket to the student, saying as he did so, “They are all there.”

He seemed as if he was about to say something to Eugene, to ask

about the ball, or the Vicomtesse; perhaps he was on the brink of

the confession that, even then, he was in despair, and knew that his

marriage had been a fatal mistake; but a proud gleam shone in his eyes,

and with deplorable courage he kept his noblest feelings a secret.

“Do not even mention my name to her, my dear Eugene.” He grasped

Rastignac’s hand sadly and affectionately, and turned away from him.

Eugene went back to the Hotel Beauseant, the servant took him to the

Vicomtesse’s room. There were signs there of preparations for a journey.

He sat down by the fire, fixed his eyes on the cedar wood casket, and

fell into deep mournful musings. Mme. de Beauseant loomed large in these

imaginings, like a goddess in the Iliad.

“Ah! my friend!...” said the Vicomtesse; she crossed the room and laid

her hand on Rastignac’s shoulder. He saw the tears in his cousin’s

uplifted eyes, saw that one hand was raised to take the casket, and that

the fingers of the other trembled. Suddenly she took the casket, put it

in the fire, and watched it burn.

“They are dancing,” she said. “They all came very early; but death

will be long in coming. Hush! my friend,” and she laid a finger on

Rastignac’s lips, seeing that he was about to speak. “I shall never see

Paris again. I am taking my leave of the world. At five o’clock this

morning I shall set out on my journey; I mean to bury myself in the

remotest part of Normandy. I have had very little time to make my

arrangements; since three o’clock this afternoon I have been busy

signing documents, setting my affairs in order; there was no one whom I

could send to...”

She broke off.

“He was sure to be...”

Again she broke off; the weight of her sorrow was more than she could

bear. In such moments as these everything is agony, and some words are

impossible to utter.

“And so I counted upon you to do me this last piece of service

this evening,” she said. “I should like to give you some pledge of

friendship. I shall often think of you. You have seemed to me to be kind

and noble, fresh-hearted and true, in this world where such qualities

are seldom found. I should like you to think sometimes of me. Stay,” she

said, glancing about her, “there is this box that has held my gloves.

Every time I opened it before going to a ball or to the theatre, I used

to feel that I must be beautiful, because I was so happy; and I never

touched it except to lay some gracious memory in it: there is so much

of my old self in it, of a Madame de Beauseant who now lives no longer.

Will you take it? I will leave directions that it is to be sent to

you in the Rue d’Artois.--Mme. de Nucingen looked very charming this

evening. Eugene, you must love her. Perhaps we may never see each other

again, my friend; but be sure of this, that I shall pray for you who

have been kind to me.--Now, let us go downstairs. People shall not think

that I am weeping. I have all time and eternity before me, and where

I am going I shall be alone, and no one will ask me the reason of my

tears. One last look round first.”