Father Goriot, Honoré de Balzac [different e readers .txt] 📗

“Oh! you will succeed,” she said laughing. “You will see. All that you wish will come to pass. I did not expect to be so happy.”

It is the wont of women to prove the impossible by the possible, and to annihilate facts by presentiments. When Mme. de Nucingen and Rastignac took their places in her box at the Bouffons, her face wore a look of happiness that made her so lovely that everyone indulged in those small slanders against which women are defenceless; for the scandal that is uttered lightly is often seriously believed. Those who know Paris, believe nothing that is said, and say nothing of what is done there.

Eugène took the Baroness’ hand in his, and by some light pressure of the fingers, or a closer grasp of the hand, they found a language in which to express the sensations which the music gave them. It was an evening of intoxicating delight for both; and when it ended, and they went out together, Mme. de Nucingen insisted on taking Eugène with her as far as the Pont Neuf, he disputing with her the whole of the way for a single kiss after all those that she had showered upon him so passionately at the Palais-Royal; Eugène reproached her with inconsistency.

“That was gratitude,” she said, “for devotion that I did not dare to hope for, but now it would be a promise.”

“And will you give me no promise, ingrate?”

He grew vexed. Then, with one of those impatient gestures that fill a lover with ecstasy, she gave him her hand to kiss, and he took it with a discontented air that delighted her.

“I shall see you at the ball on Monday,” she said.

As Eugène went home in the moonlight, he fell to serious reflections. He was satisfied, and yet dissatisfied. He was pleased with an adventure which would probably give him his desire, for in the end one of the prettiest and best-dressed women in Paris would be his; but, as a set-off, he saw his hopes of fortune brought to nothing; and as soon as he realized this fact, the vague thoughts of yesterday evening began to take a more decided shape in his mind. A check is sure to reveal to us the strength of our hopes. The more Eugène learned of the pleasures of life in Paris, the more impatient he felt of poverty and obscurity. He crumpled the banknote in his pocket, and found any quantity of plausible excuses for appropriating it.

He reached the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève at last, and from the stairhead he saw a light in Goriot’s room; the old man had lighted a candle, and set the door ajar, lest the student should pass him by, and go to his room without “telling him all about his daughter,” to use his own expression. Eugène, accordingly, told him everything without reserve.

“Then they think that I am ruined!” cried Father Goriot, in an agony of jealousy and desperation. “Why, I have still thirteen hundred livres a year! Mon Dieu! Poor little girl! why did she not come to me? I would have sold my rentes; she should have had some of the principal, and I would have bought a life-annuity with the rest. My good neighbor, why did not you come to tell me of her difficulty? How had you the heart to go and risk her poor little hundred francs at play? This is heartbreaking work. You see what it is to have sons-in-law. Oh! if I had hold of them, I would wring their necks. Mon Dieu! crying! Did you say she was crying?”

“With her head on my waistcoat,” said Eugène.

“Oh! give it to me,” said Father Goriot. “What! my daughter’s tears have fallen there⁠—my darling Delphine, who never used to cry when she was a little girl! Oh! I will buy you another; do not wear it again; let me have it. By the terms of her marriage-contract, she ought to have the use of her property. Tomorrow morning I will go and see Derville; he is an attorney. I will demand that her money should be invested in her own name. I know the law. I am an old wolf, I will show my teeth.”

“Here, father; this is a banknote for a thousand francs that she wanted me to keep out of our winnings. Keep them for her, in the pocket of the waistcoat.”

Goriot looked hard at Eugène, reached out and took the law student’s hand, and Eugène felt a tear fall on it.

“You will succeed,” the old man said. “God is just, you see. I know an honest man when I see him, and I can tell you, there are not many men like you. I am to have another dear child in you, am I? There, go to sleep; you can sleep; you are not yet a father. She was crying! and I have to be told about it!⁠—and I was quietly eating my dinner, like an idiot, all the time⁠—I, who would sell the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to save one tear to either of them.”

“An honest man!” said Eugène to himself as he lay down. “Upon my word, I think I will be an honest man all my life; it is so pleasant to obey the voice of conscience.” Perhaps none but believers in God do good in secret; and Eugène believed in a God.

The next day Rastignac went at the appointed time to Mme. de Beauséant, who took him with her to the Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball. The Maréchale received Eugène most graciously. Mme. de Nucingen was there. Delphine’s dress seemed to suggest that she wished for the admiration of others, so that she might shine the more in Eugène’s eyes; she was eagerly expecting a glance from him, hiding, as she thought, this eagerness from all beholders. This moment is full of charm for one who can guess all that passes in a woman’s mind. Who has not