Eugène was roused from his musings by the voice of the stout Sylvie, who announced that the tailor had come, and Eugène therefore made his appearance before the man with the two money bags, and was not ill pleased that it should be so. When he had tried on his dress suit, he put on his new morning costume, which completely metamorphosed him.
“I am quite equal to M. de Trailles,” he said to himself. “In short, I look like a gentleman.”
“You asked me, sir, if I knew the houses where Mme. de Nucingen goes,” Père Goriot’s voice spoke from the doorway of Eugène’s room.
“Yes.”
“Very well then, she is going to the Maréchale Carigliano’s ball on Monday. If you can manage to be there, I shall hear from you whether my two girls enjoyed themselves, and how they were dressed, and all about it in fact.”
“How did you find that out, my good Goriot?” said Eugène, putting a chair by the fire for his visitor.
“Her maid told me. I hear all about their doings from Thérèse and Constance,” he added gleefully.
The old man looked like a lover who is still young enough to be made happy by the discovery of some little stratagem which brings him information of his lady-love without her knowledge.
“You will see them both!” he said, giving artless expression to a pang of jealousy.
“I do not know,” answered Eugène. “I will go to Mme. de Beauséant and ask her for an introduction to the Maréchale.”
Eugène felt a thrill of pleasure at the thought of appearing before the Vicomtesse, dressed as henceforward he always meant to be. The “abysses of the human heart,” in the moralists’ phrase, are only insidious thoughts, involuntary promptings of personal interest. The instinct of enjoyment turns the scale; those rapid changes of purpose which have furnished the text for so much rhetoric are calculations prompted by the hope of pleasure. Rastignac beholding himself well dressed and impeccable as to gloves and boots, forgot his virtuous resolutions. Youth, moreover, when bent upon wrongdoing does not dare to behold himself in the mirror of consciousness; mature age has seen itself; and therein lies the whole difference between these two phases of life.
A friendship between Eugène and his neighbor, Père Goriot, had been growing up for several days past. This secret friendship and the antipathy that the student had begun to entertain for Vautrin arose from the same psychological causes. The bold philosopher who shall investigate the effects of mental action upon the physical world will doubtless find more than one proof of the material nature of our sentiments in the relations which they create between human beings and other animals. What physiognomist is as quick to discern character as a dog is to discover from a stranger’s face whether this is a friend or no? Those by words-“atoms,” “affinities”—are facts surviving in modern languages for the confusion of philosophic wiseacres who amuse themselves by winnowing the chaff of language to find its grammatical roots. We feel that we are loved. Our sentiments make themselves felt in everything, even at a great distance. A letter is a living soul, and so faithful an echo of the voice that speaks in it, that finer natures look upon a letter as one of love’s most precious treasures. Père Goriot’s affection was of the instinctive order, a canine affection raised to a sublime pitch; he had scented compassion in the air, and the kindly respect and youthful sympathy in the student’s heart. This friendship had, however, scarcely reached the stage at which confidences are made. Though Eugène had spoken of his wish to meet Mme. de Nucingen, it was not because he counted on the old man to introduce him to her house, for he hoped that his own audacity might stand him in good stead. All that Père Goriot had said as yet about his daughters had referred to the remarks that the student had made so freely in public on that day of the two visits.
“How could you think that Mme. de Restaud bore you a grudge for mentioning my name?” he had said on the day following that scene at dinner. “My daughters are very fond of me; I am a happy father; but my sons-in-law have behaved badly to me, and rather than make trouble between my darlings and their husbands, I choose to see my daughters secretly. Fathers who can see their daughters at any time have no idea of all the pleasure that all this mystery gives me; I cannot always see mine when I wish, do you understand? So when it is fine I walk out in the Champs-Elysées, after finding out from their waiting-maids whether my daughters mean to go out. I wait near the entrance; my heart beats fast when the carriages begin to come; I admire them in their dresses, and as they pass they give me a little smile, and it seems as if everything was lighted up for me by a ray of bright sunlight. I wait, for they always go back the same way, and then I see them again; the fresh air has done them good and brought color into their cheeks; all about me people say, ‘What a beautiful woman that is!’ and it does my heart good to hear them.
“Are they not my own flesh and blood? I love the very horses that draw them; I envy the little lap-dog on their knees. Their happiness is my life. Every one loves after his own fashion, and mine does no one any harm; why should people trouble their heads about me? I am happy in my own way. Is there any law against going to see my girls in the evening when they are going out to a ball? And what a disappointment it is when I get there too late, and am told that ‘Madame has gone out!’ Once I waited till three o‘clock in the morning for Nasie; I had not seen her for two whole days. I was so pleased, that it was almost too much for me! Please do not speak of me unless it is to say how good my daughters are to me. They are always wanting to heap presents upon me, but I will not have it. ‘Just keep your money,’ I tell them. ‘What should I do with it? I want nothing.’ And what am I, sir, after all? An old carcase, whose soul is always where my daughters are. When you have seen Mme. de Nucingen, tell me which you like the most,” said the old man after a moment’s pause, while Eugène put the last touches to his toilette. The student was about to go out to walk in the Garden of the Tuileries until the hour when he could venture to appear in Mme. de Beauséant’s drawing-room.
That walk was a turning-point in Eugène’s career. Several women noticed him; he looked so handsome, so young, and so well dressed. This almost admiring attention gave a new turn to his thoughts. He forgot his sisters and the aunt who had robbed herself for him; he no longer remembered his own virtuous scruples. He had seen hovering above his head the fiend so easy to mistake for an angel, the devil with rainbow wings, who scatters rubies, and aims his golden shafts at palace fronts, who invests women with purple, and thrones with a glory that dazzles the eyes of fools till they forget the simple origins of royal dominion; he had heard the rustle of that Vanity whose tinsel seems to us to be the symbol of power. However cynical Vautrin’s words had been, they had made an impression on his mind, as the sordid features of the old crone who whispers, “A lover, and gold in torrents,” remain engraven on a young girl’s memory.
Eugène lounged about the walks till it was nearly five o’clock, then he went to Mme. de Beauséant, and received one of the terrible blows against which young hearts are defenceless. Hitherto the Vicomtesse had received him with the kindly urbanity, the bland grace of manner that is the result of fine breeding, but is only complete when it comes from the heart.
To-day Mme. de Beauséant bowed constrainedly, and spoke curtly:
“M. de Rastignac, I cannot possibly see you, at least not at this moment. I am engaged ...”
An observer, and Rastignac instantly became an observer, could read the whole history, the character and customs of caste, in the phrase, in the tones of her voice, in her glance and bearing. He caught a glimpse of the iron hand beneath the velvet glove—the personality, the egoism beneath the manner, the wood beneath the varnish. In short, he heard that unmistakable I THE KING that issues from the plumed canopy of the throne, and finds its last echo under the crest of the simplest gentleman.
Eugène had trusted too implicitly to the generosity of a woman; he could not believe in her haughtiness. Like all the unfortunate, he had subscribed, in all good faith, to the generous compact which sho
uld bind the benefactor to the recipient, and the first article in that bond, between two large-hearted natures, is a perfect equality. The kindness which knits two souls together is as rare, as divine, and as little understood as the passion of love, for both love and kindness are the lavish generosity of noble natures. Rastignac was set upon going to the Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball, so he swallowed down this rebuff.
“Madame,” he faltered out, “I would not have come to trouble you about a trifling matter; be so kind as to permit me to see you later, I can wait.”
“Very well, come and dine with me,” she said, a little confused by the harsh way in which she had spoken, for this lady was as genuinely kind-hearted as she was high-born.
Eugène was touched by this sudden relenting, but none the less he said to himself as he went away, “Crawl in the dust, put up with every kind of treatment. What must the rest of the world be like when one of the kindest of women forgets all her promises of befriending me in a moment, and tosses me aside like an old shoe? So it is every one for himself? It is true that her house is not a shop, and I have put myself in the wrong by needing her help. You should cut your way through the world like a cannon ball, as Vautrin said.”
But the student’s bitter thoughts were soon dissipated by the pleasure which he promised himself in this dinner with the Vicomtesse. Fate seemed to determine that the smallest accidents in his life should combine to urge him into a career, which the terrible sphinx of the Maison Vauquer had described as a field of battle where you must either slay or be slain, and cheat to avoid being cheated. You leave your conscience and your heart at the barriers, and wear a mask on entering into this game of grim earnest, where, as in ancient Sparta, you must snatch your prize without being detected if you would deserve the crown.
On his return he found the Vicomtesse gracious and kindly, as she had always been to him. They went together to the dining-room, where the Vicomte was waiting for his wife. In the time of the Restoration the luxury of the table was carried, as is well known, to the highest degree, and M. de Beauséant, like many jaded men of the world, had few pleasures left but those of good cheer; in this matter, in fact, he was a gourmand of the schools of Louis XVIII and of the Due d’Escars,ba and luxury was supplemented by splendor. Eugène, dining for the first time in a house where the traditions of grandeur had descended through many generations, had never seen any spectacle like this that now met his eyes. In the time of the Empire, balls had always ended with a supper, because the officers who took part in them must be fortified for immediate service, and even in Paris might be called upon to leave the ballroom for the battlefield. This arrangement had gone out of fashion under the Monarchy, and Eugène had so far only been asked to dances. The self-possession which pre-eminently distinguished him in later life already stood him in good stead, and he did not betray his amazement. Yet as he saw for the first time the finely wrought silver plate, the completeness of every detail, the sumptuous dinner, noiselessly served, it was difficult for such an ardent imagination not to prefer this life of studied and refined luxury to the hardships of the life which he had chosen only that morning.
His thoughts went back for a moment to the lodging-house, and with a feeling of profound loathing, he vowed to himself that at New Year he would go; prompted at least as much by a desire to live among cleaner surroundings as by a wish to shake off Vautrin, whose huge hand he seemed to feel on his shoulder at that moment. When you consider the numberless forms, clamorous or mute, that corruption takes in Paris, common-sense begins to wonder what mental aberration prompted the State to establish great colleges and schools there, and assemble young men in the capital; how it is that pretty women are respected, or that the gold coin displayed in the moneychanger’s wooden saucers does not take to itself wings in the twinkling of an eye; and when you come to think further, how comparatively few cases of crime there are, and to count up the misdemeanors committed by youth, is there not a certain amount of respect due to these patient Tantaluses who wrestle with themselves and nearly always come off victorious? The struggles of the poor student in Paris, if skilfully drawn, would furnish a most dramatic picture of modern civilization.
In vain Mme. de Beauséant looked at Eugène 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 Eugène did not detect, “but I ought to go to meet some one at the Variétés.”bb
“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 Vicomtesse turned to Eugène 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 Beauséant 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 Beauséant’s face lighted up in a marvelous way.
“She is charming,” said Eugène, 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 Eugène’s astonishment.
Indeed, Mme. de Beauséant 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 Beauséant’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 Eugène, “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!”
“” Ies.
“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,”bc 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 with you to her ball on Monday? I shall meet Mme. de Nucingen there, and enter upon 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 approachin
g 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 Beauséant’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.”
Eugène 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 Beauséant’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 yeanling 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 Eugène found himself in Mme. de Nucingen’s box.