TWO CALLS ARE PAID

The next day, Eugène dressed in his most elegant clothes and set off at around three in the afternoon to call on Madame de Restaud. On the way, he indulged himself in the recklessly madcap expectations which bring so much zest and emotion to the lives of young men: they anticipate neither obstacles nor dangers; all they can see is success, poeticizing their existence entirely in their imagination and feeling glum or discouraged at the failure of plans which had only ever existed in their wildest fancies; if they didn’t also happen to be shy and ignorant, the social world would be insufferable. As he walked, Eugène took a thousand precautions to avoid being spattered with mud, but at the same time he planned what he would say to Madame de Restaud, he stored up witty remarks, he invented clever answers in an imaginary conversation, he prepared his subtle ripostes, his Talleyrand-esque sayings,⁷⁸ weaving in small opportunities conducive to the declaration on which he was staking his future. He ended up splashed with mud and had to have his boots polished and trousers brushed at the Palais-Royal. ‘If I were rich,’ he said to himself, pocketing the change from a thirty-sous piece which he had brought with him in case of an emergency, ‘I would have gone by carriage and could have pursued my thoughts at leisure.’ He finally arrived at the Rue du Helder and asked for the Comtesse de Restaud. With the icy fury of a man confident that one day he will triumph, he found himself on the receiving end of the servants’ disdainful stares: they had seen him cross the courtyard on foot, without having heard the sound of a carriage at the gate. He felt these stares all the more keenly, as his inferiority had been brought home to him as soon as he entered the courtyard, where a magnificent horse stood champing at the bit, finely harnessed to one of those dashing cabriolets that announce a lavish and dissipated lifestyle and imply a familiarity with all the costly delights Paris has to offer. He proceeded, all on his own, to put himself into a bad mood. The open drawers of his brain, which he had banked on finding full of wit, slid shut, his aplomb deserted him. While he waited for a reply from the comtesse, as a valet went to announce the visitor’s name, Eugène stood on one leg in front of a window in the antechamber, resting his elbow on the catch and looked blankly out at the courtyard. He found that the time passed slowly and would have left if he hadn’t been blessed with that Southern tenacity which works wonders when it keeps a straight course.

‘Monsieur,’ said the valet, ‘Madame is in her boudoir and otherwise engaged; she didn’t give me an answer, but if Monsieur would care to come into the drawing room, another gentleman is already waiting there.’

As he marvelled at the awesome power of those who, with a single word, indict or try their masters, Rastignac resolutely opened the door the valet had come out of, intending to show these insolent servants that he already knew his way around, but instead stumbled clumsily into a room filled with lamps, sideboards and a contraption for heating bath towels, whose only issue was a dark corridor and a back staircase. The stifled laughter he heard in the antechamber brought his embarrassment to a peak.

‘The drawing room is this way, Monsieur,’ the valet said to him, with that false respect which comes across as yet another kind of mockery.

Eugène retraced his steps with such haste that he collided with a bathtub and only just managed to stop his hat falling into the bath. Just then, a door opened at the end of the long corridor lit by a small lamp, and all at once Rastignac heard the voice of Madame de Restaud, that of old man Goriot, and then the sound of a kiss. He went back into the dining room and crossed it, following the valet, and came to a reception room, where he paused in front of the window, noticing that it looked out over the courtyard. He wanted to find out whether this Goriot was, in reality, his old man Goriot. His heart beat strangely as he remembered Vautrin’s damning remarks. The valet was waiting for Eugène at the door of the drawing room, when an elegant young dandy suddenly came out and said impatiently: ‘I’m going, Maurice. Tell Madame la Comtesse that I waited for over half an hour.’ This impertinent, who doubtless had reason not to stand on ceremony, hummed some Italian roulade or other as he strode towards the window where Eugène had positioned himself, as much to see the student’s face as to look into the courtyard.

‘Monsieur le Comte may prefer to wait a moment longer, as Madame has finished,’ said Maurice, going back into the antechamber.

At this point, old man Goriot emerged from the exit at the foot of the back staircase, near the carriage entrance. The old fellow held out his umbrella and began to unfurl it, without realizing that the main gate had just opened to let in a young man wearing military decoration, driving a tilbury. Old Goriot barely had time to jump backwards to avoid being crushed. The taffeta of the umbrella frightened the horse, so it shied slightly as it sped towards the front steps. The young man turned his head angrily, saw Goriot and, without stepping down, gave him a nod conveying the affected courtesy you might show a usurer whose services you require, or, if it cannot be avoided, a man of blemished reputation, knowing you will blush for it later. Old man Goriot responded with a friendly little nod, full of affability. These events took place as quick as a flash. Too engrossed to realize that he was not alone, Eugène suddenly heard the comtesse’s voice.

‘Ah! Maxime, you were just leaving,’ she said in a reproachful tone, mingled with a touch of pique.

The comtesse hadn’t seen the tilbury arrive. Rastignac spun round and saw her, alluringly dressed in a white cashmere dressing-gown with pink ribbons, her hair loosely swept up in the style favoured by Parisian women in the morning; her scent filled the air, she must have taken a bath, and this had, as it were, softened her beauty, making her seem even more voluptuous; her eyes were moist. A young man’s eye drinks everything in: just as a plant absorbs vital substances from the air, so his spirit fuses with a woman’s radiance. Eugène therefore sensed the fresh bloom of the comtesse’s hands without needing to touch them. Through the cashmere, he saw the rose-coloured shades of her bosom which her dressing-gown, falling open here and there, left partially exposed, and on which his eyes lingered. The comtesse had no need for whalebone stays: a simple belt showed off her supple waist, her neck invited caresses, her feet looked pretty in their slippers. Maxime took her hand and kissed it, at which point Eugène noticed Maxime, and the comtesse noticed Eugène.

‘Why! It’s you, Monsieur de Rastignac, how delightful to see you,’ she said, in a tone of voice to which a man with his wits about him knows the correct response.

Maxime looked from Eugène to the comtesse in a pointed manner intended to send the intruder packing. ‘Really, dear girl, I hope you’ll show this young whipper-snapper the door!’ These words hung in the air, a clear and intelligible translation of the expression on the face of this haughtily proud young man, whom Comtesse Anastasie had called Maxime, looking searchingly at him with that melting concern which betrays a woman’s secrets without her realizing. Rastignac felt a violent hatred for the young man. Firstly, Maxime’s beautifully curled blond hair showed him how awful his own looked. And then, Maxime had spotless kid boots, while his, despite the care he had taken as he walked, were stained with a light coat of mud. Finally, Maxime was wearing an elegant frock-coat, fitted tightly at the waist, so he looked as pretty as a woman, while at half past two Eugène was wearing a black evening coat. The quick-witted child of the Charente⁷⁹ sensed the advantage that tailoring gave this tall, lean dandy, with his clear eyes and pale skin, a man capable of ruining any number of orphans. Without waiting for Eugène to reply, Madame de Restaud fluttered away into the other drawing room, the loose skirts of her dressing-gown furling and unfurling, so she looked like a butterfly; and Maxime followed her. Furious, Eugène followed Maxime and the comtesse. The three of them came face to face in the middle of the main drawing room, level with the fireplace. The student was well aware that he was going to annoy the odious Maxime; but he was determined to cramp the dandy’s style, even if it meant incurring Madame de Restaud’s displeasure. Suddenly, remembering that he had seen the young man at Madame de Beauséant’s ball, he guessed the nature of Maxime’s relationship with Madame de Restaud; and with the youthful audacity that leads a man to commit huge blunders or succeed with flying colours, he said to himself: ‘He is my rival, I must triumph over him.’ The fool! Little did he know that Comte Maxime de Trailles would solicit a challenge, then shoot first and kill his man. Eugène was a decent shot but hadn’t yet managed to hit twenty out of twenty-two dummies at a shooting gallery. The young comte threw himself into a bergère⁸⁰ next to the fire, took up the tongs and poked the coals in such a violent, sullen way that Anastasie’s beautiful face suddenly clouded over. The young woman turned towards Eugène and gave him one of those coldly enquiring looks which so clearly say: ‘Why don’t you leave?’ that those of good breeding immediately take their cue and make what we might call their exit speech.

Eugène assumed a pleasant manner and said: ‘Madame, I was keen to see you to …’ He stopped short. A door opened. The man who had driven the tilbury suddenly appeared, without a hat. He didn’t greet the comtesse, but looked askance at Eugène and held out his hand to Maxime, amicably wishing him ‘Good day’, which Eugène found most surprising. Young men from the provinces have no idea how sweet life can be as a threesome.

‘Monsieur de Restaud,’ said the comtesse to the student, gesturing towards her husband.

Eugène made a low bow.

‘This gentleman’, she went on, introducing Eugène to the Comte de Restaud, ‘is Monsieur de Rastignac, related to Madame la Vicomtesse de Beauséant through the Marcillacs, and whom I had the pleasure to meet at her last ball.’

Related to Madame la Vicomtesse de Beauséant through the Marcillacs! These words, which the comtesse pronounced with a slight emphasis, attributable to the pride a hostess feels in proving that she only receives men of distinction, had a magic effect: the comte put off his coldly formal manner and bowed.

‘Delighted, Monsieur,’ he said, ‘to make your acquaintance.’

As for Comte Maxime de Trailles, he looked at Eugène uneasily and his haughty manner immediately left him. This wave of the magic wand, for which he had to thank the powerful intercession of a name, opened thirty drawers⁸¹ in the Southerner’s brain, and restored the wit he had planned to have at the ready. A sudden ray of light burst through the murky atmosphere of Parisian high society and he began to see his way more clearly. At this point, the Maison Vauquer and old man Goriot were far from his thoughts.

‘I thought the Marcillacs had died out?’ the Comte de Restaud said to Eugène.

‘Indeed, Monsieur,’ he replied. ‘My great-uncle, the Chevalier de Rastignac, married the heiress of the Marcillac family. He had an only daughter, who married the Maréchal de Clarimbault, Madame de Beauséant’s maternal grandfather. We are the younger branch and became even poorer when my great-uncle, a vice-admiral, lost everything he had in the service of the King. The revolutionary government refused to acknowledge us as creditors when it liquidated the Compagnie des Indes.’⁸²

‘Didn’t your esteemed great-uncle command the Vengeur until 1789?’

‘That is correct.’

‘Well then, he’ll have known my grandfather, who had command of the Warwick.’⁸³

Maxime shrugged his shoulders slightly and looked at Madame de Restaud, as if to say, ‘If he gets started on navy talk with that man, we may as well call it a day.’ Anastasie understood Monsieur de Trailles’ look. With that admirable presence of mind with which women are blessed, she smiled, saying: ‘Come with me, Maxime; I have something to ask you. Gentlemen, we will leave you to sail in convoy on the Warwick and the Vengeur.’ She stood up and gestured to Maxime in a mockingly complicit way, and they headed off in the direction of the boudoir. This morganatic⁸⁴ couple, a neat German expression with no French equivalent, had barely reached the door, when the comte broke off his conversation with Eugène.

‘Anastasie! I wish you would stay, my dear,’ he exclaimed irritably; ‘you know very well that …’

‘I’ll be back, I’ll be back,’ she said, interrupting him; ‘it will only take me a second to tell Maxime what I want him to do for me.’

She returned quickly. Like any woman whose freedom to behave as she pleases is contingent on how well she can gauge her husband’s moods, who knows how far she can go without losing his precious trust and who will therefore never thwart him over a triviality, the comtesse had understood from the comte’s tone of voice that it would not be safe to remain in the boudoir. This contretemps was Eugène’s fault, as the comtesse, her glances and gestures full of vexation, made clear to Maxime, who, in a pointedly brusque way, said to the comte, his wife and Eugène: ‘Listen, you’re busy, I’d rather not disturb you; goodbye.’ He left.

‘Stay, Maxime!’ cried the comte.

‘Come to dinner,’ said the comtesse, leaving Eugène and the comte alone again and following Maxime into the reception room, where they stayed together long enough to give Monsieur de Restaud time to get rid of Eugène.

Rastignac heard them burst out laughing, talk and fall silent in turn; but the wily student was doing his utmost to keep Monsieur de Restaud entertained, flattering him or starting long-winded discussions, so that he would see the comtesse again and discover the nature of her relationship with old man Goriot. This woman, clearly in love with Maxime, this woman, who ruled over her husband, secretly connected to the old vermicelli dealer, was a complete mystery to him. He wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery, hoping in this way to reign supreme over such an eminently Parisian woman.

‘Anastasie,’ said the comte, calling his wife once more.

‘Well, my poor Maxime,’ she said to the young man, ‘we must resign ourselves. Until this evening …’

‘I hope, Nasie,’ he murmured in her ear, ‘that you’ll dispatch this foolish young man, whose eyes glowed like hot coals each time your gown slipped open. He would make love to you, compromise you, and I’d be obliged to kill him.’

‘Are you mad, Maxime?’ she said. ‘On the contrary, don’t you think these little students make excellent lightning conductors? I’ll make sure that Restaud takes a sudden dislike to him.’

Maxime burst out laughing and left the room, followed by the comtesse, who stood at the window to watch him climb up into his carriage, flourishing his whip and making his horse paw the ground. She waited until the main gate had closed behind him before returning.

‘Just imagine, my dear,’ the comte exclaimed when she returned; ‘Monsieur’s family estate is near Verteuil, on the Charente. His great-uncle and my grandfather were acquainted.’

‘Delighted to be among familiar faces,’ said the comtesse distractedly.

‘More so than you think,’ said Eugène in a low voice.

‘Pardon?’ she replied sharply.

‘Why,’ continued the student, ‘I’ve just seen a man leaving your house who lodges next door to me, old man Goriot.’

On hearing this name spiced with ‘old man’, the comte, who was poking the fire, dropped the tongs as if they had burned his fingers and stood bolt upright.

‘Sir, you might have called him Monsieur Goriot!’ he exclaimed.

The comtesse turned white at first, seeing her husband’s irritation, then she flushed and was clearly embarrassed. Making an effort to sound natural, and assuming an air of studied indifference, she replied: ‘You couldn’t know anyone we love more …’ She broke off, looked at her piano as if overcome by a sudden urge and asked: ‘Do you care for music, Monsieur?’

‘Very much so,’ replied Eugène, red in the face and paralysed by the mortifying realization that he must have committed some terrible blunder.

‘Do you sing?’ she cried, going to the piano and rapidly running her fingers the length of the keyboard from bottom C to top F. Rrrrah!

‘No, Madame.’

The Comte de Restaud was pacing up and down.

‘Such a shame: a man who can sing is always sure to be in demand. Ca-a-ro, ca-a-ro, ca-a-a-a-ro, non dubitare,’⁸⁵ sang the comtesse.

By mentioning old man Goriot, Eugène had once again waved a magic wand, but this time the effect was the exact opposite of that achieved by the words related to Madame de Beauséant. He found himself in the position of a man being shown around the house of a collector of curiosities, as a special favour, who, inadvertently colliding with a case full of sculptures, manages to knock off a couple of loose heads. He wished the earth would open and swallow him up. Madame de Restaud’s face was cold, aloof, her gaze now impassive, and she avoided all eye contact with the unfortunate student.

‘Madame,’ he said, ‘you have matters to discuss with Monsieur de Restaud; please accept my humble respects and allow me to …’

‘Whenever you call,’ the comtesse said hastily, interrupting Eugène with a gesture, ‘you may be sure that both Monsieur de Restaud and myself will be delighted to see you.’

Eugène gave the couple a low bow and left, followed by Monsieur de Restaud, who, despite all his entreaties, accompanied him as far as the antechamber.

‘Whenever that gentleman calls,’ the comte said to Maurice, ‘neither myself nor Madame will be at home.’

As Eugène set foot on the flight of steps leading down from the front door, he realized it was raining. ‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘all I’ve achieved by coming here is to put my foot in it, without understanding why or what the consequences will be, and to top it all, I’m about to ruin my suit and hat. I ought to stay in my corner slaving away at the law and concentrate on becoming a lowly magistrate. How can I make my way in society, when, to move in the right circles, you need scores of cabriolets, polished boots, all kinds of essential equipment, gold chains, white suede gloves at six francs a pair for the morning and another pair of yellow gloves in the evening? Goriot be hanged! The old rascal.’

As he stood in the doorway leading to the street, the driver of a hired coach, who had clearly just set down some newly weds and was hoping to sneak in a few illicit fares unbeknown to his master, gestured to Eugène, seeing him with no umbrella, dressed in black, wearing a white waistcoat, yellow gloves and polished boots. Eugène was smouldering with that suppressed rage which drives a young man to plunge still deeper into the hole he has dug for himself, as if he hoped to find some way out at the bottom. He took up the coachman’s offer with a nod. With only twenty-two sous left in his pocket, he climbed up into the carriage, where a few strands of lametta and some orange blossom attested to its recent occupation by bride and groom.

‘Where to, Monsieur?’ asked the driver, who had already divested himself of his white gloves.

‘Damn it!’ Eugène said to himself; ‘seeing as this is already costing me a small fortune, I may as well put it to good use! Take me to the Hôtel de Beauséant,’ he added aloud.

‘Which one?’ asked the coachman.

Two sublime words which stumped Eugène. Our debutant dandy was unaware that there were two Hôtels de Beauséant, nor that he had so many relatives who were oblivious to his existence.

‘The Vicomte de Beauséant, Rue …’

‘… de Grenelle,’ said the driver, nodding his head and interrupting him. ‘You see, otherwise there’s the Comte and the Marquis de Beauséant, in the Rue Saint-Dominique,’ he added, drawing up the step.

‘I know,’ replied Eugène curtly.

‘The whole world is mocking me today!’ he said to himself, throwing his hat onto the cushions opposite. ‘Now here’s an escapade that’s going to cost me a king’s ransom. But at least I’ll be able to call on this cousin of mine in a suitably aristocratic manner. Old man Goriot has already cost me at least ten francs, the old rogue! Well, I’ll tell Madame de Beauséant about my adventure; perhaps it will make her laugh. She’ll know the mystery of the criminal connection between this beautiful woman and that old rat without a tail. Better that I should win favour with my cousin than be spurned by that Jezebel, who in any case seemed to have rather expensive tastes. If the beautiful vicomtesse has such power in name, how much more must she have in person? Go to the top. When you’ve set your sights on something in heaven, you need God on your side!’

These words briefly summarize the thousand and one thoughts that were rushing through his mind. As he watched the falling rain, he regained some of his composure and self-assurance. He told himself that if he was going to squander two of the precious hundred-sous coins he still had left, they would at least be well spent in protecting his coat, his boots and his hat. He felt a surge of elation when he heard his coachman shout: Gate please! A red and gold porter⁸⁶ set the gate to the mansion groaning on its hinges and with sweet satisfaction Rastignac saw his carriage pass through the entrance, turn in the courtyard and come to a halt beneath the marquise roof over the front steps. The coachman, wearing a loose-fitting blue greatcoat with red trimmings, came and let down the step. As he stepped out of his carriage, Eugène heard stifled laughter coming from beneath the peristyle: a couple of valets had already made the vulgar wedding equipage the butt of their humour. The student soon understood why they were laughing, when he saw his carriage standing next to one of the most elegant coupés⁸⁷ in Paris, drawn by a pair of spirited horses with roses at their ears, champing at their bits, kept tightly reined in by a powdered coachman in a smart cravat, as if they might take flight at any moment. At the Chaussée d’Antin, Madame de Restaud had had the exquisite cabriolet of a twenty-six-year-old dandy in her courtyard. At the Faubourg Saint-Germain, here, awaiting the pleasure of a high-ranking nobleman, was a carriage and pair that must have cost at least thirty thousand francs.

‘Who can that be?’ Eugène wondered, belatedly realizing that there couldn’t be many women in Paris who weren’t already otherwise engaged and that it would take more than breeding to conquer one of these queens. ‘Dammit! My cousin must also have a Maxime.’

He climbed the flight of steps leading to the front door with death in his heart. At his approach the glass door opened: he found the valets as long-faced as donkeys taking a thrashing. The ball he had attended had been held in the formal reception rooms on the ground floor of the Hôtel de Beauséant. Not having had time to call on his cousin between receiving the invitation and going to the ball, he had not yet visited Madame de Beauséant’s private apartments. He was about to see, for the very first time, the wonders of that intimate elegance which reveals what a woman of distinction has in her soul and on her conscience. His curiosity was even keener now that he had a point of comparison in Madame de Restaud’s drawing room. At half past four, the vicomtesse was at home. Five minutes earlier, she would not have received her cousin. Eugène, still oblivious to the subtleties of Parisian etiquette, was led up a grand flower-filled staircase, white in hue, with a gold handrail and a red carpet, to Madame de Beauséant – without having heard her word-of-mouth biography, whose latest instalment was passed from ear to ear each night in the drawing rooms of Paris.

For three years, the vicomtesse had been connected with one of the most famous and wealthy Portuguese noblemen, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto. It was one of those harmless liaisons which have so much appeal for the two individuals involved that they cannot abide the presence of third parties. Whether he liked it or not, the Vicomte de Beauséant himself had set the public an example by respecting this morganatic union. In the early days of the relationship, anyone who came to call on the vicomtesse at two would find the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto there. Madame de Beauséant, unable to close her door, as this would have been most improper, received her callers so coldly and contemplated her mouldings with such a studious air that they soon realized how inopportune their visit was. When it became known in Paris that you would incovenience Madame de Beauséant if you called between two and four, she was left in the most complete solitude. She went to the Bouffons or to the Opéra accompanied by both Monsieur de Beauséant and Monsieur d’Ajuda-Pinto; but once they were seated, Monsieur de Beauséant, as a true man of the world, always left his wife and the Portuguese nobleman on their own. Monsieur d’Ajuda was about to be married. He was to wed a young noblewoman, one of the de Rochefides. Everyone who was anyone knew about the wedding, except for one person, and that person was Madame de Beauséant. A few of her friends had made some vague mention of it to her; she had laughed it off, believing that they were jealous of her happiness and sought to cloud it. But the banns were about to be published. Although he had come to tell the vicomtesse about his marriage, the handsome Portuguese lord had not yet dared to breathe a word about it. Why? Nothing is harder than presenting a woman with an ultimatum of this kind. Some men are happier in the field facing a man who has the tip of his sword against their heart, than facing a woman who reels off elegies for a few hours then faints dead away, calling for her smelling salts. So, at that precise moment, Monsieur d’Ajuda-Pinto was in a tight spot and keen to take his leave, telling himself that Madame de Beauséant would hear the news anyway; he would write to her, it would be easier to pull off this amatory assassination by letter than in person. When the vicomtesse’s valet announced Monsieur Eugène de Rastignac, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto quivered with joy. Make no mistake, a woman in love is even more adept at putting her finger on some suspicious circumstance than she is at finding new sources of pleasure. When she’s about to be abandoned, she guesses the meaning of a gesture more swiftly than Virgil’s stallion detects the scent of equine love on the breeze.⁸⁸ So you may count on the fact that Madame de Beauséant sensed his almost imperceptible, but utterly damning, involuntary quiver. Eugène was unaware that you should never call on anyone in Paris without having first asked a friend of the family to tell you the life-story of the husband, wife or children, to avoid committing the kind of blunder picturesquely referred to in Poland as Harnessing five oxen to your cart, no doubt because that’s what it takes to pull you out of the bog your wrong turning has led you into. If conversational mishaps such as these do not yet have a name in France, it must be because no one believes they really exist, due to the sheer amount of gossip doing the rounds. Having first stepped into the mire by calling on Madame de Restaud, who barely gave him time to harness all five oxen to his cart, only Eugène was capable of ploughing on regardless, by calling on Madame de Beauséant. However, although he had been a hindrance to Madame de Restaud and Monsieur de Trailles, he was a great help to Monsieur d’Ajuda.

‘Farewell,’ said the Portuguese nobleman, hurrying towards the door, just as Eugène entered a small, stylish, pink and grey drawing room, in which luxury and elegance were all of a piece.

‘But only until tonight,’ said Madame de Beauséant, turning her head to look at the marquis. ‘Aren’t we going to the Bouffons?’

‘I won’t be able to come,’ he said, taking hold of the door handle.

Madame de Beauséant stood up and summoned him back, without paying the slightest attention to Eugène, who, standing there, struck dumb by the dazzling splendour of such fabulous wealth, thought he must be in the Arabian Nights. He hardly knew where to put himself in the presence of this woman, who seemed not to have noticed him. The vicomtesse lifted the first finger of her right hand and, with a pretty flourish, pointed at the space in front of her. There was such a violent tyranny of passion in this gesture that the marquis let go of the door handle and went to her. Eugène watched him, not without envy.

‘That’s him,’ he said to himself, ‘the man with the coupé! But does that mean you need prancing horses, liveried coachmen and an endless supply of gold before a Parisian lady will look twice at you?’ The demon of luxury gripped his soul, the fever of greed consumed him, the thirst for gold parched his throat. He had a hundred and thirty francs to last the quarter. His father, his mother, his brothers, his sisters and his aunt spent no more than two hundred francs a month between them. This swift comparison between his current situation and his future goal left him feeling even more dazed.

‘Why’, said the vicomtesse, laughing, ‘won’t you be able to come to the Italiens?’

‘Business! I am dining with the English ambassador.’

‘Make your excuses.’

When a man deceives, he is inevitably forced to pile one lie on top of another. Monsieur d’Ajuda replied, laughing, ‘Is that an order?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘That’s just what I wanted to hear,’ he replied, with a meaningful look which would have reassured another woman. He kissed the vicomtesse’s hand and left.

Eugène ran his hands through his hair and turned awkwardly, as if to bow, thinking that Madame de Beauséant was about to direct her attention to him, when she suddenly rushed into the gallery, ran to the window and watched Monsieur d’Ajuda climb into his coupé; she listened for the order and heard the page repeat to the coachman: ‘To Monsieur de Rochefide’s.’ These words, and the way Ajuda hurled himself into his carriage, were as thunder and lightning to this woman, who turned back in the grip of mortal fear. The most terrible catastrophes may amount to no more than this in high society. The vicomtesse returned to her bedchamber, sat down at her desk and took a sheet of elegant notepaper. She wrote:

After straightening a few letters made crooked by the convulsive trembling of her hand, she wrote a C, for Claire de Bourgogne, and rang the bell.

‘Jacques,’ she said to her valet, who appeared immediately; ‘at half past seven you are to go to Monsieur de Rochefide’s house, where you will ask for the Marquis d’Ajuda. If the marquis is there, you will make sure this letter reaches him without waiting for a reply; if he’s not there, you will come back and return the letter to me.’

‘Madame la Vicomtesse has someone in her drawing room.’

‘Ah! yes, so I have,’ she said, closing the door.

Eugène began to feel extremely ill at ease. The vicomtesse eventually emerged and said, her voice so full of emotion it stirred the strings of his heart: ‘Forgive me, Monsieur, I had to write a note; I am now entirely at your disposal.’ She barely knew what she was saying, because she was thinking: ‘So! He wants to marry Mademoiselle de Rochefide. But is he free to do so? This evening the marriage will be called off, or I … But it will no longer be an issue tomorrow.’

‘Cousin …’ replied Eugène.

‘What?’ said the vicomtesse, with such a haughty look the student’s blood ran cold.

Eugène understood her reaction. In the past three hours he’d learned so much that he was now more circumspect.

‘Madame,’ he corrected himself, flushing. He hesitated, then continued, saying, ‘Forgive me; I’m so much in need of protection, that the smallest scrap of kinship would be a blessing.’

Madame de Beauséant smiled, but sadly: she could already sense the first mutterings of tragedy in the air around her.

‘If you knew the state my family is in,’ he continued, ‘you might like to play the role of one of those fairy godmothers who delight in spiriting away the obstacles that stand in their godson’s way.’

‘So, cousin,’ she said, laughing, ‘how may I be of service to you?’

‘I hardly know. To be connected to you by an obscure family tie is already a great fortune. You’ve flustered me and I’ve forgotten what I came to say. You’re the only person I know in Paris. Oh! I wanted to ask you to guide me and accept me like a poor child who wants to cling to your skirts and who would die for you.’

‘Would you kill a man for me?’

‘I’d kill two,’ said Eugène.

‘Child! Yes, you are a child,’ she said, suppressing a few tears; ‘your love would be sincere!’

‘Oh!’ he said, nodding his head.

The student’s bold reply sharpened the vicomtesse’s interest in him. The Southerner had made his first calculated move. Between Madame de Restaud’s blue boudoir and Madame de Beauséant’s pink drawing room, he had studied three years of that unspoken Parisian law; a lofty social jurisprudence which, properly learned and practised, opens every door.

‘Ah! I remember now,’ said Eugène. ‘Madame de Restaud came to my attention at your ball; I went to call on her this morning.’

‘She must have found your visit rather irksome,’ said Madame de Beauséant, smiling.

‘Yes! indeed, I’m such an ignorant soul that I’ll turn everyone against me if you refuse to come to my aid. I can’t help thinking that in Paris it’s very hard to meet a woman who is young, beautiful, rich and unattached. I need someone to teach me what women are so good at explaining: life. I’ll come up against a Monsieur de Trailles wherever I go. So I came here to ask you to solve a mystery and to explain the nature of the blunder I made there. I mentioned a certain old man …’

‘Madame la Duchesse de Langeais,’ said Jacques, interrupting the student, who made the gesture of a man sorely vexed.

‘If you wish to succeed,’ said the vicomtesse in a low voice, ‘you must learn to hide your feelings.’

‘Ah! Good afternoon, my dear,’ she continued, standing up and going to greet the duchesse, whose hands she squeezed with as much warmth as if she were her sister, and to which the duchesse responded with the most charming display of affection.

‘Here are two good friends,’ Rastignac said to himself. ‘I’ll have two protectors now; the two women must have similar loyalties and this lady will surely take an interest in me.’

‘To what generous motive do I owe the pleasure of your call, my dear Antoinette?’ said Madame de Beauséant.

‘I happened to see Monsieur d’Ajuda-Pinto go into Monsieur de Rochefide’s house and I thought you must be alone.’

Madame de Beauséant did not purse her lips or flush, her brow remained unruffled and her expression unchanged as the duchesse pronounced these lethal words.

‘If I’d known you had company …’ added the duchesse, turning to Eugène.

‘This is Monsieur Eugène de Rastignac, a cousin of mine,’ said the vicomtesse. ‘Have you any news of General Montriveau?’ she continued. ‘Sérisy was saying yesterday that we hardly ever see him these days – perhaps he called on you today?’

The duchesse, who was believed to have been abandoned by Montriveau, with whom she was desperately in love, felt the sharp point of this question pierce her heart. She flushed, replying: ‘He was at the Elysée⁸⁹ yesterday.’

‘On duty,’ said Madame de Beauséant.

‘Clara,’ continued the duchesse, her eyes glinting with mischief; ‘I expect you’ve heard about Monsieur d’Ajuda-Pinto and Mademoiselle de Rochefide? The banns are to be published tomorrow.’

The blow was too harsh, the vicomtesse turned white and replied, laughing: ‘One of those rumours that keeps fools amused. Why would Monsieur d’Ajuda connect one of the noblest names in Portugal with that of the Rochefides, whose title dates from yesterday?’

‘They say that Berthe brings with her an annual income of two hundred thousand livres.’

‘Monsieur d’Ajuda is far too rich to care about such things.’

‘But my dear, Mademoiselle de Rochefide is charming.’

‘Really!’

‘In any case, he’s dining there tonight; all the arrangements have been agreed. I’m most surprised to find you know so little about it.’

‘So what was this blunder of yours, Monsieur?’ said Madame de Beauséant. ‘This poor boy is so recently come into society, my dear Antoinette, that he has no idea what we are talking about. For his sake, let us speak no more of this until tomorrow. Tomorrow, you know, it will all no doubt be official, and your friendly communication will have the authority of a decree.’

The duchesse gave Eugène one of those disdainful stares which swallow a man whole, chew him up and spit him out.

‘Madame, I have unwittingly dealt a blow to Madame de Restaud’s heart. Unwittingly: there lies my mistake,’ said the student, whose presence of mind had served him well, and who had detected the biting commentary hidden behind the affectionate exchange between the two women.

‘You continue to receive – and you perhaps fear – people who secretly know how much pain they are causing you, whereas he who wounds without realizing how deeply he has wounded is seen as an oaf, a fool incapable of turning anything to account, and scorned by all.’

Madame de Beauséant gave the student one of those melting looks which great souls are able to imbue with both gratitude and dignity. Her look was a balm that soothed the blow the duchesse had struck to his morale by sizing him up with the eye of a bailiff’s assessor.

‘You won’t believe’, continued Eugène, ‘that I had just managed to win favour with the Comte de Restaud; for’, he said, turning to the duchesse and adopting an air that was both humble and mischievous, ‘I must tell you, Madame, that I am still a poor devil of a student, very much alone, very poor …’

‘Keep that to yourself, Monsieur de Rastignac. We women never want what no one else will have.’

‘No matter!’ said Eugène, ‘I’m only twenty-two, a man must learn to bear the hardships that come with his age. Besides, I’m at Confession; and I could hardly be kneeling in a prettier confessional: this is where a man commits the sins he admits to in the other kind.’

The duchesse affected a cold expression on hearing such irreligious talk, whose poor taste she condemned by saying to the vicomtesse: ‘Monsieur has just arrived …’

Madame de Beauséant began to laugh outright at both her cousin and the duchesse.

‘He has just arrived, my dear, and is looking for a governess to give him lessons in good taste.’

‘Madame la Duchesse,’ Eugène continued, ‘surely it’s natural for a man to wish to learn the secret of that which enchants him?’ (‘Dear me,’ he said to himself, ‘I’m sure I must sound just like a hairdresser.’)

‘But Madame de Restaud is, I believe, the pupil of Monsieur de Trailles,’ said the duchesse.

‘A circumstance I was entirely unaware of, Madame,’ continued the student. ‘And so I rashly threw myself between them. As I was saying, I was getting along fairly well with the husband, I had been tolerated for a while by the wife, when I took it upon myself to tell them that I knew a man I’d just seen leaving by a hidden staircase and who had kissed the comtesse at the end of a corridor.’

‘Who was that?’ asked the two women.

‘An old man who, like myself, poor student that I am, lives on two louis a month, holed up in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau; a truly wretched old man mocked by all, whom we call old man Goriot.’

‘Child that you are,’ cried the vicomtesse; ‘Madame de Restaud was once Mademoiselle Goriot.’

‘The daughter of a vermicelli dealer,’ continued the duchesse, ‘a woman of low birth who was presented at court on the same day as a pastry cook’s daughter. Don’t you remember, Clara? The King started to laugh and made a Latin bon mot, something to do with flour. People who are, how did it go? People who are …’

‘Ejusdem farinae,’⁹⁰ said Eugène.

‘That was it,’ said the duchesse.

‘What! He’s her father?’ the student responded, with a gesture of horror.

‘Why, of course; the old fellow had two daughters, he dotes on them both, although they’ve near enough disowned him.’

‘Isn’t the other one’, said the vicomtesse, looking at Madame de Langeais, ‘married to a banker with a German name, a Baron de Nucingen or somesuch? Delphine, is that it? You know, that blonde woman with a side-box at the Opéra, who comes to the Bouffons as well and laughs too loudly in order to draw attention to herself?’

The duchesse smiled, saying, ‘My dear, I do admire you. Why do you take so much interest in these people? You’d have to be madly in love, as Restaud was, to have covered yourself in flour for the sake of Mademoiselle Anastasie. Well! He’ll end up with precious little to show for it! Monsieur de Trailles has got his hands on her now and will be her ruin.’

‘They’ve disowned their father,’ repeated Eugène.

‘Indeed, yes, their father, the old man, a father,’ continued the vicomtesse, ‘a good father, who gave them, so I’ve heard, five or six hundred thousand francs⁹¹ apiece so they’d make a good match and be happy, keeping an annual income of just eight to ten thousand livres for himself, believing that his daughters would always be his daughters, that he’d be able to divide himself between two lives, two homes in which he’d be pampered and adored. In the space of two years, the sons-in-law had banished him from their sight, as if he was the lowliest of wretches …’

Recently refreshed by the pure and sacrosanct feelings of his family, still in love with his youthful beliefs, Eugène’s eyes welled up with tears: this was his first day on the battlefield of Parisian civilization. Genuine emotion transmits itself so clearly that the three of them looked at each other for a while in silence.

‘Dear God!’ said Madame de Langeais, ‘how terrible that seems, and yet we see it every day. Is there not some underlying cause? Tell me, my dear, have you ever reflected on the nature of a son-in-law? A son-in-law is a man for whom we – you and I – will raise a dear little creature attached to us by a thousand bonds, who for seventeen years will be the family’s joy, its swan-white soul, as Lamartine⁹² might say, and who then becomes its scourge. When this man has taken her from us, the first thing he will do is wield love like an axe⁹³ and sever every feeling in our angel’s heart that binds her to her family. Yesterday, our daughter was everything to us, we were everything to her; the next day she’s our enemy. Do we not see this tragedy played out every day? Here, a daughter-in-law is breathtakingly rude to her father-in-law, who sacrificed everything for his son. Elsewhere, a son-in-law turfs out his mother-in-law. I hear people asking where all the drama is in society these days; well, there’s the terrible tragedy of the son-in-law, not to mention the ridiculous farce of marriage. I know exactly what happened to the old vermicelli dealer. I think I recall that this Foriot⁹⁴ of ours …’

‘Goriot, Madame.’

‘Yes, this Moriot, was president of his section⁹⁵ during the Revolution; he had inside knowledge of the famous food shortage and made his fortune during that time by selling flour at ten times more than he bought it for. He was given any price he asked for. My grandmother’s intendant⁹⁶ sold him vast quantities of it. Goriot, like the rest of his kind,⁹⁷ probably shared the proceeds with the Committee of Public Safety.⁹⁸ I remember the intendant telling my grandmother she could stay at Grandvilliers in all safety, wheat being a guarantee of good citizenship. Well, this Loriot, who sold wheat to those butchers, has only ever had one passion. They say he’s besotted with his daughters. He found the elder daughter a perch in the house of Restaud and grafted the other onto the Baron de Nucingen, a wealthy banker with royalist leanings.⁹⁹ As you may well imagine, under the Empire, the two sons-in-law didn’t trouble their heads too much about having the old veteran of ’93¹⁰⁰ at home; under Bonaparte, that still passed muster. But when the Bourbons were reinstated,¹⁰¹ the old fellow was a thorn in Monsieur de Restaud’s side, and even more so in the banker’s. The daughters, who still loved their father, perhaps, tried to accommodate chalk and cheese, father and husband; they received Goriot when no one else was there; they invented tender excuses. “Papa, come, we’ll be more at ease because we’ll be alone!” and so on. As for me, my dear, I believe that true feelings have eyes and an intelligence: and so the heart of this poor veteran of ’93 must have bled. He saw that his daughters were ashamed of him; that they loved their husbands, but that he was an embarrassment to his sons-in-law. He therefore had to sacrifice himself. He sacrificed himself because he was a father: he took himself into exile. Seeing his daughters happy, he understood that he had done the right thing. The father and his children were complicit in this petty crime. We see it everywhere. Wouldn’t old Doriot have been like a greasy stain in his daughters’ drawing rooms? He would have felt embarrassed to be there, it would have grieved him. What happened to this father can happen to even the prettiest girl at the hands of the man she loves most of all: if she importunes him with her love, he leaves, he behaves like a coward to escape her. That’s how it is with feelings. A heart is a treasure chest: empty it in one go and you are ruined. We are as unforgiving of a feeling for having revealed its depth as we are of a man for being penniless. He was a father who gave everything. For twenty years, he gave his soul, his love; as for his wealth, he gave that away in a day. Once the lemon had been squeezed dry, his daughters threw the peel into the road.’

‘The world is foul,’ said the vicomtesse, fiddling with the fringe of her shawl and without raising her eyes, for she was cut to the quick by the words meant for her that Madame de Langeais had slipped into this story.

‘Foul! No,’ countered the duchesse; ‘it follows its course, that’s all. If I’m talking about the world like this, it’s to show you that I’m not fooled by it. I think as you do,’ she said, pressing the vicomtesse’s hand. ‘The world is a quagmire, let us try to stay on high ground.’ She stood up and kissed Madame de Beauséant on the forehead, saying: ‘You’re very beautiful at the moment, my dear. You have the prettiest colour I’ve ever seen.’ Then she left, with a cursory nod in Rastignac’s direction.

‘Old man Goriot is sublime!’ said Eugène, remembering how he had seen him twist his silver-gilt on the night of the ball.

Madame de Beauséant did not hear him; she was lost in thought. A few moments went by in silence and the poor student, paralysed with embarassment, dared neither to leave, nor to stay, nor speak.

‘Society is foul and evil,’ said the vicomtesse, at last. ‘As soon as misfortune comes our way, there is always a friend ready to come and tell us about it, piercing our heart with a dagger even as they invite us to admire the handle. Sarcasm and mockery – so soon! Well! I will defend myself.’ She raised her head like the noble lady she was, her proud eyes blazing. ‘Oh!’ she said, catching sight of Eugène. ‘You’re here.’

‘Still,’ he said sheepishly.

‘Well, Monsieur de Rastignac, treat this world as it deserves to be treated. You want to succeed, and I will help you. You will plumb the depths of female depravity, you will gauge the breadth of the contemptible vanity of men. Although I’ve read widely in the book of society, there were a few pages even I knew nothing about. Now, I know them all. The more coldly calculating you are, the further you will go. Strike ruthlessly and you’ll be respected. Accept that men and women are post-horses that you ride into the ground then leave at each stage, and you’ll reach the pinnacle of your desires. Remember, you’ll be nothing here without a woman to further your interests. You need one who is young, wealthy and elegant. But if you have a single genuine feeling, bury it like treasure; don’t ever let others suspect its existence or you’ll be lost. Instead of being the torturer, you’ll become the victim. If you ever fall in love, guard your secret well! Don’t reveal a thing until you have made sure of the person to whom you are opening your heart. From now on, to protect this love which does not yet exist, learn to be wary of this world of ours. Listen to me, Miguel …’ (she innocently called him by the wrong name without realizing), ‘there is something even more terrible than the neglect of the father by his two daughters, who wish him dead. And that is the rivalry between the two sisters. Restaud has birth, his wife has been recognized, she has been presented at court; but her sister, her rich sister, the beautiful Madame Delphine de Nucingen, the wife of a money-man, is dying of pique; she’s consumed by jealousy, she’s a thousand leagues behind her sister; her sister is no longer her sister; the two women disown each other just as each disowns her father. And that’s why Madame de Nucingen would lap up all the mud that lies between the Rue Saint-Lazare and the Rue de Grenelle to enter my drawing room. She thought that de Marsay would help her reach her goal, so she has made herself de Marsay’s slave and is boring de Marsay to tears. De Marsay cares little for her. If you introduce her to me, you’ll become her favourite, she’ll worship you. Love her afterwards, if you can, otherwise, make use of her. I’ll acknowledge her once or twice at large parties, among the crowd; but I will never receive her in the morning. I’ll bow to her, that will suffice. By uttering the name of old man Goriot you have ensured that the comtesse’s door will always be closed to you. Yes, my dear, go and call on Madame de Restaud twenty times, and twenty times you will find she is not at home. You are in her black books. Now, let old man Goriot introduce you to Madame Delphine de Nucingen. The beautiful Madame de Nucingen will be your ensign. Be the man she singles out and women will fall at your feet. Her rivals, her friends, her closest friends, will all try and take you away from her. Some women prefer a man who has already been chosen by another woman, just as a poor bourgeoise hopes that by wearing the same hats as we do, she will acquire our poise. Be successful. In Paris, success is everything, it’s the key to power. If the women find you witty and talented, that’s what the men will believe, if you don’t undeceive them. Then you can set your sights on anything you wish, you’ll have a foot in everyone’s door. And then you will know what society really is, a bunch of frauds and knaves. Do not join either one faction or another. I will lend you my name; it will guide you through this labyrinth like Ariadne’s thread.¹⁰² Do not compromise it,’ she said, arching her neck and casting a regal glance at the student; ‘I want it returned to me in perfect condition. Go now, and leave me. We women have our own battles to fight.’

‘Should you ever need a man willing to spring a mine,’ said Eugène, interrupting her.

‘If I should?’ she asked.

He struck his heart, smiled to see his cousin smile and left. It was five o’clock. Eugène was hungry; he feared he might not arrive in time for dinner. This fear made him appreciate the delight of crossing Paris swiftly in a carriage. The pleasure this brought was purely automatic, leaving him at liberty to pursue the thoughts jostling for position in his mind. When a young man of his age is scorned, he loses his temper, he frets, he shakes his fist at the whole of society, he wants to avenge himself, ‘and yet he is prone to self-doubt. Rastignac’s head was still ringing with the words: You have ensured that the comtesse’s door will always be closed to you. ‘I will go there!’ he said to himself, ‘and if Madame de Beauséant is right, if I am barred … I … Madame de Restaud will find me in every drawing room she enters. I will learn to fence, to fire a pistol, I’ll kill her Maxime!’ – ‘And what about money!’ his conscience cried out to him; ‘where will you get that?’ Suddenly the ostentatious wealth on display at the Comtesse de Restaud’s house glittered before his eyes. There, he had seen the kind of luxury which a Mademoiselle Goriot was bound to find attractive, gildings, showpieces that drew attention to their cost, the undiscerning luxury of the parvenu, the extravagance of the kept woman. This glittering mirage was suddenly outshone by the majestic Hôtel de Beauséant. His imagination, soaring among the highest peaks of Parisian society, sowed a thousand base thoughts in his heart, as it stretched his head and mind. He recognized the world for what it is – a place where laws and morality have no power over the rich – and he saw in wealth the ultima ratio mundi.¹⁰³

‘Vautrin is right: wealth equals virtue!’ he said to himself.

As soon as he arrived at the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, he ran up to his room, came down with ten francs for the coachman, then went into the unsavoury dining room where he found the eighteen diners feeding like animals at the trough. He balked at the room’s appearance, at the sight of such wretchedness. The transition was too abrupt, the contrast too stark not to cause a sudden surge in his ambition. On the one hand, the fresh, delightful images of the most elegant creatures in society, young, animated faces, surrounded by the marvels of art and luxury, minds alive with passion and poetry; on the other, a series of murky portraits with begrimed edges, faces with nothing left showing but the ropes and pulleys of their passions. The teachings that the rage of a spurned woman had wrenched from Madame de Beauséant, her beguiling proposals, rose to the surface of his memory, and poverty provided a commentary on them all. Rastignac resolved to pursue two parallel lines of attack to make his fortune, to rely on both love and the law, to be a man of learning and a man of fashion. What a child he still was! These two lines are asymptotes¹⁰⁴ and can never meet.

‘You seem rather solemn, Monsieur le Marquis,’ said Vautrin, giving him one of those penetrating stares with which he seemed to make himself privy to the most deeply buried secrets of the heart.

‘I’m not in the mood to put up with the jokes of those who call me Monsieur le Marquis,’ he replied. ‘In this city, to be a real marquis you need a hundred thousand livres a year, and when you lodge at the Maison Vauquer you’re hardly the favourite of Fortune.’

Vautrin gave Rastignac a look that was both paternal and contemptuous, as if to say: ‘Brat! I’d make light work of you!’ Then he replied: ‘Perhaps you’re in a bad mood because you failed to impress the beautiful Comtesse de Restaud.’

‘Her door will be closed to me from now on because I mentioned that her father ate at our table,’ cried Rastignac.

The diners looked at each other. Old man Goriot lowered his eyes and turned away to wipe them.

‘You flicked some snuff in my eye,’ he said to his neighbour.

‘From now on, anyone who upsets old man Goriot will answer to me,’ replied Eugène, glaring at the man sitting next to the old vermicelli dealer; ‘he’s worth more than all of us put together. Apart from the ladies,’ he said, turning to Mademoiselle Taillefer.

These words fell like a thunderbolt, Eugène’s tone having silenced the diners. Only Vautrin replied, mockingly: ‘If you’re going to pick up old man Goriot’s tab and make yourself his keeper, you’ll need to know how to hold a sword and fire a pistol properly.’

‘And so I will,’ said Eugène.

‘So the campaign starts today?’

‘Perhaps,’ replied Rastignac. ‘But that’s my business and I’ll keep it to myself, seeing as I don’t go sticking my nose into other people’s goings-on at night.’

Vautrin shot Rastignac a sidelong look.

‘Dear boy, if you don’t want to be fooled by puppets, you have to get right inside the theatre and not be content with peering through holes in the scenery. That’s enough talk,’ he added, seeing that Eugène was ready to press the point. ‘We can have a little chat about this whenever you want.’

Dinner became a cold and glum affair. Old Goriot, still grieving over the student’s words, was unaware that the general attitude towards him had changed and that a young man capable of silencing his persecutors had come to his defence.

‘So the latest on Monsieur Goriot’, said Madame Vauquer in a low voice, ‘is that he’s the father of a comtesse?’

‘And of a baron’s wife,’ Rastignac replied.

‘What else could he be?’ said Bianchon to Rastignac; ‘I’ve felt his head and there’s only one bump, that of paternity: he’ll be an Eternal Father.’

Eugène was too preoccupied to laugh at Bianchon’s joke. He wanted to turn Madame de Beauséant’s advice to good account and was wondering how and where he could get hold of some money. His brow furrowed as he pictured the savannahs of society stretching out before him, full and yet empty. After dinner, the others drifted out one by one, leaving him alone in the dining room.

‘So you saw my daughter?’ said Goriot, his voice choked with emotion.

Awoken from his daydream, Eugène took the old fellow by the hand and, looking at him with warmth and pity, said: ‘You are a good and worthy man. We’ll talk about your daughters later.’ He stood up without waiting to hear old Goriot’s reply and withdrew to his room, where he wrote his mother the following letter:

He wrote to each of his sisters, asking for their savings; and to ensure that the rest of the family did not hear of the sacrifice they would be only too happy to make on his behalf, he appealed to their discretion by touching the chords of honour which have such resonance and are so finely tuned in young hearts. Nonetheless, once he had written these letters, he felt an involuntary pang: his heart was racing, he was trembling. Despite his ambition, the young man recognized the nobility and purity of these souls hidden away in their solitude; he was well aware of the hardship he would cause his two sisters, and also of the joy, the pleasure, they would take from discussing their beloved brother in secret, deep in the vineyards. His heightened awareness showed them to him, counting out their modest pile of treasure in secret: he saw them using all the wily ingenuity young girls have at their disposal, to send him the money incognito, exalting themselves as they tried their hand at deceit for the first time. ‘A sister’s heart is as pure as a diamond, its kindness knows no bounds!’ he said to himself. He was ashamed of what he had written. How heartfelt their wishes would be, how pure the flight of their souls towards heaven! How exquisite the delight of their self-sacrifice! What grief his mother would feel, if she failed to send the full amount! These noble feelings, these terrible sacrifices, would be the stepping stones that would bring him to Delphine de Nucingen. A few tears, the last grains of incense laid on the sacred altar of the family, splashed from his eyes. He paced up and down in a torment of despair. Old Goriot, seeing him in this state through the half-open door, came in and asked, ‘What’s wrong, Monsieur?’

‘Ah! Dear neighbour, I am still a son and a brother, just as you are a father. You are right to tremble for Comtesse Anastasie; she has fallen into the hands of Monsieur Maxime de Trailles, who will ruin her.’

Old man Goriot withdrew stammering something Eugène did not catch. The next day, Rastignac went out to post his letters. He hesitated right up to the last moment, but then threw them into the box, saying: ‘I will succeed!’ Such is the fatal motto of a gambler, or a great captain, one which destroys more men than it redeems.

A few days later, Eugène went to call on Madame de Restaud and was not received. He went back three times and a further three times found her door closed to him, even though he called when the Comte Maxime de Trailles wasn’t there. The vicomtesse had been right. The student stopped studying. He turned up at lectures to answer the roll-call and took himself off as soon as he had been registered. He followed the same reasoning as most students. He would put off studying until it was time to sit his exams; he would let his second- and third-year courses pile up, then at the last minute apply himself seriously to learning law, in one short spurt. That left him at liberty to sail across the ocean of Paris for fifteen months, to throw himself into bartering for women or fishing for his fortune. During this week, he visited Madame de Beauséant twice, arriving just as the Marquis d’Ajuda’s carriage was leaving. That illustrious woman, the most poetic figure of the Faubourg Saint-Germain set, held sway for a few more days, and the marriage between Mademoiselle de Rochefide and the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto hung in the balance. But these last few days, which the fear of losing her happiness made the most passionate of all, would only serve to precipitate the catastrophe. The Marquis d’Ajuda, together with the Rochefides, viewed this falling-out and reconciliation as fortuitous, hoping that Madame de Beauséant would become accustomed to the idea of the marriage and end up renouncing her afternoons in favour of the future a man expects in life. Despite the most heartfelt promises, made afresh each day, Monsieur d’Ajuda was acting a part and the vicomtesse was enjoying playing along. ‘Instead of nobly throwing herself out of the window, she was letting herself be tricked into falling down the stairs,’ concluded the Duchesse de Langeais, her best friend. Nonetheless, these dying rays shone long enough to keep the vicomtesse in Paris, where she could be of use to her young relative, for whom she felt a sort of superstitious affection. Eugène had shown himself to be full of devotion and sensitivity towards her, in a situation where a woman sees neither pity nor true consolation in anyone’s eyes. If a man should speak sweet words to her at such a time, he does so from self-interest.

As he wished to chart the lie of the land before attempting to storm the house of Nucingen, Rastignac undertook to acquaint himself with the facts of old man Goriot’s earlier life and collected a fair amount of reliable information, which may be summarized as follows.

In the days before the Revolution, Jean-Joachim Goriot was an ordinary workman in the vermicelli trade, skilful, thrifty and canny enough to purchase his master’s business when chance made him a victim of the first uprising in 1789. He set up shop in the Rue de la Jussienne, near the Corn Exchange, and when invited to become president of his section, had the enormous good sense to accept, so that his business was protected by the most influential people at that dangerous time. This wise step was the making of him, when the food shortage, true or feigned, led to an exponential rise in the price of grain in Paris. Some people killed each other at bakery doors, while certain other people, without any uproar, went and bought Italian pasta at the grocers. During that year, citizen Goriot accumulated the capital which later allowed him to do business with the superior advantage that a vast quantity of cash confers on its owner. What happened to him is what happens to all men of only average ability. His mediocrity saved him. Moreover, as his wealth only became common knowledge at the time when it was no longer dangerous to be rich, he excited no one’s jealousy. The grain trade appeared to occupy his entire mind. Whether he was dealing in wheat, flour, middlings – recognizing their quality or origin, taking care of their storage, predicting prices, forecasting a good or poor harvest, procuring cheap cereals, buying in supplies from Sicily or the Ukraine – no man was a match for Goriot. To see him running his business, analysing the laws governing grain imports and exports, working out their spirit, seizing upon their loopholes, any man would have thought him capable of being a Minister of State. Patient, active, energetic, steadfast, quick to dispatch, he had an eagle eye, he was always a step ahead, he saw everything coming, knew everything, concealed everything: a diplomat in his design, a soldier in his stamina. Away from his speciality, from his simple, obscure place of work – on whose steps he lingered during his leisure time, leaning against the door-post – he reverted to his former self: the dull-witted, brutish workman, incapable of following an argument, oblivious to all the pleasures of the mind, the man who fell asleep at the theatre, one of those Parisian Dolibans¹⁰⁵ who excel only in stupidity. Natures such as these are almost all the same. You will find that nearly all have some sublime feeling in their hearts. Two feelings alone had engrossed the vermicelli dealer’s heart, had absorbed its humidity, just as the grain trade had soaked up all his intellect. His wife, the only daughter of a rich farmer in the Brie region, was the sacred object of his devotion and boundless love. Goriot admired her nature, both fragile and robust, sensitive and appealing, so very different from his own. If a man has any innate feeling in his heart, surely it is pride at offering protection to a weaker being at any time? If you combine that with love, the intense gratitude felt by all sincere souls towards the source of their happiness, you will understand a whole host of behavioural peculiarities. After seven years of unclouded happiness, Goriot had the great misfortune to lose his wife, just as her influence over him was beginning to extend beyond the realm of feeling. Perhaps she would have sparked off his inert nature, perhaps she would have sown in it some seeds of understanding of the world and of life. In these new circumstances, Goriot’s paternal devotion deepened to an insane degree. He transferred his love, thwarted by death, to his two daughters, who at first fully satisfied his emotional needs. However brilliant the offers made by tradesmen or farmers eager to foist their daughters onto him, he preferred to remain a widower. His father-in-law, the only man he had any fondness for, claimed that he knew for a fact that Goriot had sworn never to be unfaithful to his wife. The men at the Corn Exchange, incapable of understanding this sublime piece of madness, cracked jokes about Goriot and gave him a grotesque nickname. The first man who thought fit to call him by it to his face, while raising his glass to clinch a deal, received such a blow on the shoulder from the vermicelli dealer that it sent him head first into a milestone in the Rue Oblin.¹⁰⁶ Goriot’s unquestioning devotion, his easily triggered, delicately adjusted love for his daughters, was so well known that one day a competitor of his, to make him leave the Exchange so he would gain the upper hand in a deal, told him that Delphine had just been run over by a cabriolet. The vermicelli dealer, his face drained of colour, immediately left the Corn Exchange. The distressing feelings that this false alarm aroused in him laid him low for several days. Although he spared this man a lethal blow to the shoulder, Goriot did drive him out of the Corn Exchange by forcing him to go bankrupt in a critical situation.

Naturally, he gave his two daughters an extravagant education. With an income of over sixty thousand livres per year and personal expenses of less than twelve hundred francs, Goriot’s only pleasure lay in granting his daughters’ every wish: the very best masters were instructed to equip them with the accomplishments that are the markers of a fine education; they had a companion – happily for them, she was a woman of intelligence and good taste; they rode, they had their own carriage, they lived as the mistresses of a rich old lord would live; they only had to express some expensive desire to see their father fall over himself to fulfil it; all he asked for was some sign of affection in return for his offerings. Goriot elevated his daughters to the rank of angels, and so he ranked them above himself, poor man! He even loved the pain they caused him. When his daughters reached a marriageable age, they were able to choose their husbands to suit their tastes: they had half their father’s fortune each as a dowry. Courted for her beauty by the Comte de Restaud, Anastasie’s aristocratic aspirations led her to leave her father’s house for the higher echelons of society. Delphine loved money: she married Nucingen, a banker of German extraction, who became a baron of the Holy Roman Empire.¹⁰⁷ Goriot remained a vermicelli dealer. Before long, his daughters and sons-in-law couldn’t bear to see him continue his trade, even though it was his entire life. After resisting their entreaties for five years, he consented to retire on the capital raised by the sale of his business and the profits of the last few years; resources which Madame Vauquer, in whose establishment he was to become a fixture, estimated would bring in an annual income of eight to ten thousand livres. It was his despair at seeing his two daughters forced by their husbands to refuse not only to have him to live with them, but even to receive him in public, that drove him to remove himself to the boarding house.

This was all the information that a certain Monsieur Muret, who had purchased his business, was able to give him about old man Goriot. It confirmed the conjecture that Rastignac had heard from the lips of the Duchesse de Langeais. Here ends the exposition of this obscure but terrible Parisian tragedy.