infinite of sound.’ Remember that I am expecting you this evening
to take me to Mme. de Beauseant’s ball. Every one knows now that
the King signed M. d’Ajuda’s marriage-contract this morning, and
the poor Vicomtesse knew nothing of it until two o’clock this
afternoon. All Paris will flock to her house, of course, just as a
crowd fills the Place de Greve to see an execution. It is
horrible, is it not, to go out of curiosity to see if she will
hide her anguish, and whether she will die courageously? I
certainly should not go, my friend, if I had been at her house
before; but, of course, she will not receive society any more
after this, and all my efforts would be in vain. My position is a
very unusual one, and besides, I am going there partly on your
account. I am waiting for you. If you are not beside me in less
than two hours, I do not know whether I could forgive such
treason.”
Rastignac took up a pen and wrote:
“I am waiting till the doctor comes to know if there is any hope of
your father’s life. He is lying dangerously ill. I will come and
bring you the news, but I am afraid it may be a sentence of death.
When I come you can decide whether you can go to the ball.—Yours
a thousand times.”
At half-past eight the doctor arrived. He did not take a very hopeful view of the case, but thought that there was no immediate danger. Improvements and relapses might be expected, and the good man’s life and reason hung in the balance.
“It would be better for him to die at once,” the doctor said as he took leave.
Eugene left Goriot to Bianchon’s care, and went to carry the sad news to Mme. de Nucingen. Family feeling lingered in her, and this must put an end for the present to her plans of amusement.
“Tell her to enjoy her evening as if nothing had happened,” cried Goriot. He had been lying in a sort of stupor, but he suddenly sat upright as Eugene went out.
Eugene, half heartbroken, entered Delphine’s. Her hair had been dressed; she wore her dancing slippers; she had only to put on her ball-dress; but when the artist is giving the finishing stroke to his creation, the last touches require more time than the whole groundwork of the picture.
“Why, you are not dressed!” she cried.
“Madame, your father——”
“My father again!” she exclaimed, breaking in upon him. “You need not teach me what is due to my father, I have known my father this long while. Not a word, Eugene. I will hear what you have to say when you are dressed. My carriage is waiting, take it, go round to your rooms and dress, Therese has put out everything in readiness for you. Come back as soon as you can; we will talk about my father on the way to Mme. de Beauseant’s. We must go early; if we have to wait our turn in a row of carriages, we shall be lucky if we get there by eleven o’clock.”
“Madame——”
“Quick! not a word!” she cried, darting into her dressing-room for a necklace.
“Do go, Monsieur Eugene, or you will vex madame,” said Therese, hurrying him away; and Eugene was too horror-stricken by this elegant parricide to resist.
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.”
