Father Goriot

“Ah! now we are coming to it!  Just another word or two, and it will all be clear enough.  Her father, Taillefer, is an old scoundrel; it is said that he murdered one of his friends at the time of the Revolution.  He is one of your comedians that sets up to have opinions of his own.  He is a banker—­senior partner in the house of Frederic Taillefer and Company.  He has one son, and means to leave all he has to the boy, to the prejudice of Victorine.  For my part, I don’t like to see injustice of this sort.  I am like Don Quixote, I have a fancy for defending the weak against the strong.  If it should please God to take that youth away from him, Taillefer would have only his daughter left; he would want to leave his money to some one or other; an absurd notion, but it is only human nature, and he is not likely to have any more children, as I know.  Victorine is gentle and amiable; she will soon twist her father round her fingers, and set his head spinning like a German top by plying him with sentiment!  She will be too much touched by your devotion to forget you; you will marry her.  I mean to play Providence for you, and Providence is to do my will.  I have a friend whom I have attached closely to myself, a colonel in the Army of the Loire, who has just been transferred into the garde royale.  He has taken my advice and turned ultra-royalist; he is not one of those fools who never change their opinions.  Of all pieces of advice, my cherub, I would give you this—­don’t stick to your opinions any more than to your words.  If any one asks you for them, let him have them —­at a price.  A man who prides himself on going in a straight line through life is an idiot who believes in infallibility.  There are no such things as principles; there are only events, and there are no laws but those of expediency:  a man of talent accepts events and the circumstances in which he finds himself, and turns everything to his own ends.  If laws and principles were fixed and invariable, nations would not change them as readily as we change our shirts.  The individual is not obliged to be more particular than the nation.  A man whose services to France have been of the very slightest is a fetich looked on with superstitious awe because he has always seen everything in red; but he is good, at the most, to be put into the Museum of Arts and Crafts, among the automatic machines, and labeled La Fayette; while the prince at whom everybody flings a stone, the man who despises humanity so much that he spits as many oaths as he is asked for in the face of humanity, saved France from being torn in pieces at the Congress of Vienna; and they who should have given him laurels fling mud at him.  Oh!  I know something of affairs, I can tell you; I have the secrets of many men!  Enough.  When I find three minds in agreement as to the application of a principle, I shall have a fixed and immovable opinion—­I shall have to wait a long while first.  In the Tribunals you will not find three judges of the same opinion on a single point of law.  To return to the man I was telling you of.  He would crucify Jesus Christ again, if I bade him.  At a word from his old chum Vautrin he will pick a quarrel with a scamp that will not send so much as five francs to his sister, poor girl, and” (here Vautrin rose to his feet and stood like a fencing-master about to lunge)—­“turn him off into the dark!” he added.

“How frightful!” said Eugene.  “You do not really mean it?  M. Vautrin, you are joking!”

“There! there!  Keep cool!” said the other.  “Don’t behave like a baby.  But if you find any amusement in it, be indignant, flare up!  Say that I am a scoundrel, a rascal, a rogue, a bandit; but do not call me a blackleg nor a spy!  There, out with it, fire away!  I forgive you; it is quite natural at your age.  I was like that myself once.  Only remember this, you will do worse things yourself some day.  You will flirt with some pretty woman and take her money.  You have thought of that, of course,” said Vautrin, “for how are you to succeed unless love is laid under contribution?  There are no two ways about virtue, my dear student; it either is, or it is not.  Talk of doing penance for your sins!  It is a nice system of business, when you pay for your crime by an act of contrition!  You seduce a woman that you may set your foot on such and such a rung of the social ladder; you sow dissension among the children of a family; you descend, in short, to every base action that can be committed at home or abroad, to gain your own ends for your own pleasure or your profit; and can you imagine that these are acts of faith, hope, or charity?  How is it that a dandy, who in a night has robbed a boy of half his fortune, gets only a couple of months in prison; while a poor devil who steals a banknote for a thousand francs, with aggravating circumstances, is condemned to penal servitude?  Those are your laws.  Not a single provision but lands you in some absurdity.  That man with yellow gloves and a golden tongue commits many a murder; he sheds no blood, but he drains his victim’s veins as surely; a desperado forces open a door with a crowbar, dark deeds both of them!  You yourself will do every one of those things that I suggest to you to-day, bar the bloodshed.  Do you believe that there is any absolute standard in this world?  Despise mankind and find out the meshes that you can slip through in the net of the Code.  The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed.”

“Silence, sir!  I will not hear any more; you make me doubt myself.  At this moment my sentiments are all my science.”

“Just as you please, my fine fellow; I did think you were so weak-minded,” said Vautrin, “I shall say no more about it.  One last word, however,” and he looked hard at the student—­“you have my secret,” he said.

“A young man who refuses your offer knows that he must forget it.”

“Quite right, quite right; I am glad to hear you say so.  Somebody else might not be so scrupulous, you see.  Keep in mind what I want to do for you.  I will give you a fortnight.  The offer is still open.”

“What a head of iron the man has!” said Eugene to himself, as he watched Vautrin walk unconcernedly away with his cane under his arm.  “Yet Mme. de Beauseant said as much more gracefully; he has only stated the case in cruder language.  He would tear my heart with claws of steel.  What made me think of going to Mme. de Nucingen?  He guessed my motives before I knew them myself.  To sum it up, that outlaw has told me more about virtue than all I have learned from men and books.  If virtue admits of no compromises, I have certainly robbed my sisters,” he said, throwing down the bags on the table.

He sat down again and fell, unconscious of his surroundings, into deep thought.

“To be faithful to an ideal of virtue!  A heroic martyrdom!  Pshaw! every one believes in virtue, but who is virtuous?  Nations have made an idol of Liberty, but what nation on the face of the earth is free?  My youth is still like a blue and cloudless sky.  If I set myself to obtain wealth or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble?  To consent to be the servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered?  Must I cringe to them before I can hope to be their accomplice?  Well, then, I decline.  I mean to work nobly and with a single heart.  I will work day and night; I will owe my fortune to nothing but my own exertions.  It may be the slowest of all roads to success, but I shall lay my head on the pillow at night untroubled by evil thoughts.  Is there a greater thing than this—­to look back over your life and know that it is stainless as a lily?  I and my life are like a young man and his betrothed.  Vautrin has put before me all that comes after ten years of marriage.  The devil! my head is swimming.  I do not want to think at all; the heart is a sure guide.”

Eugene was roused from his musings by the voice of the stout Sylvie, who announced that the tailor had come, and Eugene 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,” Father Goriot’s voice spoke from the doorway of Eugene’s room.”

“Yes.”

“Very well then, she is going to the Marechale 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 Eugene, putting a chair by the fire for his visitor.

“Her maid told me.  I hear all about their doings from Therese 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 Eugene.  “I will go to Mme. de Beauseant and ask her for an introduction to the Marechale.”

Eugene 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 Eugene and his neighbor, Father 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 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.  Father 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 Eugene 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 Father 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-Elysees, 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 Eugene 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 Beauseant’s drawing-room.

That walk was a turning-point in Eugene’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.

Eugene lounged about the walks till it was nearly five o’clock, then he went to Mme. de Beauseant, 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 Beauseant 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.

Eugene 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, the generous compact which should 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.

Eugene 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 Beauseant, 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 Duc d’Escars, and luxury was supplemented by splendor.  Eugene, 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 Eugene 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 money-changer’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 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.