Father Goriot

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Father Goriot


"Poor Nasie!" said Mme. de Nucingen, drawing her sister to a chair.
"We are the only two people in the world whose love is always
sufficient to forgive you everything. Family affection is the surest,
you see."

The Countess inhaled the salts and revived.

"This will kill me!" said their father. "There," he went on, stirring
the smouldering fire, "come nearer, both of you. It is cold. What is
it, Nasie? Be quick and tell me, this is enough to----"

"Well, then, my husband knows everything," said the Countess. "Just
imagine it; do you remember, father, that bill of Maxime's some time
ago? Well, that was not the first. I had paid ever so many before
that. About the beginning of January M. de Trailles seemed very much
troubled. He said nothing to me; but it is so easy to read the hearts
of those you love, a mere trifle is enough; and then you feel things
instinctively. Indeed, he was more tender and affectionate than ever,
and I was happier than I had ever been before. Poor Maxime! in himself
he was really saying good-bye to me, so he has told me since; he meant
to blow his brains out! At last I worried him so, and begged and
implored so hard; for two hours I knelt at his knees and prayed and
entreated, and at last he told me--that he owed a hundred thousand
francs. Oh! papa! a hundred thousand francs! I was beside myself! You
had not the money, I knew, I had eaten up all that you had----"

"No," said Goriot; "I could not have got it for you unless I had
stolen it. But I would have done that for you, Nasie! I will do it
yet."

The words came from him like a sob, a hoarse sound like the death
rattle of a dying man; it seemed indeed like the agony of death when
the father's love was powerless. There was a pause, and neither of the
sisters spoke. It must have been selfishness indeed that could hear
unmoved that cry of anguish that, like a pebble thrown over a
precipice, revealed the depths of his despair.

"I found the money, father, by selling what was not mine to sell," and
the Countess burst into tears.

Delphine was touched; she laid her head on her sister's shoulder, and
cried too.

"Then it is all true," she said.

Anastasie bowed her head, Mme. de Nucingen flung her arms about her,
kissed her tenderly, and held her sister to her heart.

"I shall always love you and never judge you, Nasie," she said.

"My angels," murmured Goriot faintly. "Oh, why should it be trouble
that draws you together?"

This warm and palpitating affection seemed to give the Countess
courage.

"To save Maxime's life," she said, "to save all my own happiness, I
went to the money-lender you know of, a man of iron forged in
hell-fire; nothing can melt him; I took all the family diamonds that
M. de Restaud is so proud of--his and mine too--and sold them to that
M. Gobseck. _Sold them!_ Do you understand? I saved Maxime, but I am
lost. Restaud found it all out."

"How? Who told him? I will kill him," cried Goriot.

"Yesterday he sent to tell me to come to his room. I went.
. . . 'Anastasie,' he said in a voice--oh! such a voice; that was
enough, it told me everything--'where are your diamonds?'--'In my
room----'--'No,' he said, looking straight at me, 'there they are on
that chest of drawers----' and he lifted his handkerchief and showed
me the casket. 'Do you know where they came from?' he said. I fell at
his feet. . . . I cried; I besought him to tell me the death he wished
to see me die."

"You said that!" cried Goriot. "By God in heaven, whoever lays a hand
on either of you so long as I am alive may reckon on being roasted by
slow fires! Yes, I will cut him in pieces like . . ."

Goriot stopped; the words died away in his throat.

"And then, dear, he asked something worse than death of me. Oh! heaven
preserve all other women from hearing such words as I heard then!"

"I will murder that man," said Goriot quietly. "But he has only one
life, and he deserves to die twice.--And then, what next?" he added,
looking at Anastasie.

"Then," the Countess resumed, "there was a pause, and he looked at me.
'Anastasie,' he said, 'I will bury this in silence; there shall be no
separation; there are the children. I will not kill M. de Trailles. I
might miss him if we fought, and as for other ways of getting rid of
him, I should come into collision with the law. If I killed him in
your arms, it would bring dishonor on _those_ children. But if you do
not want to see your children perish, nor their father nor me, you
must first of all submit to two conditions. Answer me. Have I a child
of my own?' I answered, 'Yes,'--'Which?'--'Ernest, our eldest boy.'
--'Very well,' he said, 'and now swear to obey me in this particular
from this time forward.' I swore. 'You will make over your property to
me when I require you to do so.'"

"Do nothing of the kind!" cried Goriot. "Aha! M. de Restaud, you could
not make your wife happy; she has looked for happiness and found it
elsewhere, and you make her suffer for your own ineptitude? He will
have to reckon with me. Make yourself easy, Nasie. Aha! he cares about
his heir! Good, very good. I will get hold of the boy; isn't he my
grandson? What the blazes! I can surely go to see the brat! I will
stow him away somewhere; I will take care of him, you may be quite
easy. I will bring Restaud to terms, the monster! I shall say to him,
'A word or two with you! If you want your son back again, give my
daughter her property, and leave her to do as she pleases.'"

"Father!"

"Yes. I am your father, Nasie, a father indeed! That rogue of a great
lord had better not ill-treat my daughter. _Tonnerre!_ What is it in
my veins? There is the blood of a tiger in me; I could tear those two
men to pieces! Oh! children, children! so this is what your lives are!
Why, it is death! . . . What will become of you when I shall be here
no longer? Fathers ought to live as long as their children. Ah! Lord
God in heaven! how ill Thy world is ordered! Thou hast a Son, if what
they tell us is true, and yet Thou leavest us to suffer so through our
children. My darlings, my darlings! to think that trouble only should
bring you to me, that I should only see you with tears on your faces!
Ah! yes, yes, you love me, I see that you love me. Come to me and pour
out your griefs to me; my heart is large enough to hold them all. Oh!
you might rend my heart in pieces, and every fragment would make a
father's heart. If only I could bear all your sorrows for you!
. . . Ah! you were so happy when you were little and still with
me. . . ."

"We have never been happy since," said Delphine. "Where are the old
days when we slid down the sacks in the great granary?"

"That is not all, father," said Anastasie in Goriot's ear. The old man
gave a startled shudder. "The diamonds only sold for a hundred
thousand francs. Maxime is hard pressed. There are twelve thousand
francs still to pay. He has given me his word that he will be steady
and give up play in future. His love is all that I have left in the
world. I have paid such a fearful price for it that I should die if I
lose him now. I have sacrificed my fortune, my honor, my peace of
mind, and my children for him. Oh! do something, so that at the least
Maxime may be at large and live undisgraced in the world, where he
will assuredly make a career for himself. Something more than my
happiness is at stake; the children have nothing, and if he is sent to
Sainte-Pelagie all his prospects will be ruined."

"I haven't the money, Nasie. I have _nothing_--nothing left. This is
the end of everything. Yes, the world is crumbling into ruin, I am
sure. Fly! Save yourselves! Ah!--I have still my silver buckles left,
and half-a-dozen silver spoons and forks, the first I ever had in my
life. But I have nothing else except my life annuity, twelve hundred
francs . . ."

"Then what has become of your money in the funds?"

"I sold out, and only kept a trifle for my wants. I wanted twelve
thousand francs to furnish some rooms for Delphine."

"In your own house?" asked Mme. de Restaud, looking at her sister.

"What does it matter where they were?" asked Goriot. "The money is
spent now."

"I see how it is," said the Countess. "Rooms for M. de Rastignac. Poor
Delphine, take warning by me!"

"M. de Rastignac is incapable of ruining the woman he loves, dear."

"Thanks! Delphine. I thought you would have been kinder to me in my
troubles, but you never did love me."

"Yes, yes, she loves you, Nasie," cried Goriot; "she was saying so
only just now. We were talking about you, and she insisted that you
were beautiful, and that she herself was only pretty!"

"Pretty!" said the Countess. "She is as hard as a marble statue."

"And if I am?" cried Delphine, flushing up, "how have you treated me?
You would not recognize me; you closed the doors of every house
against me; you have never let an opportunity of mortifying me slip
by. And when did I come, as you were always doing, to drain our poor
father, a thousand francs at a time, till he is left as you see him
now? That is all your doing, sister! I myself have seen my father as
often as I could. I have not turned him out of the house, and then
come and fawned upon him when I wanted money. I did not so much as
know that he had spent those twelve thousand francs on me. I am
economical, as you know; and when papa has made me presents, it has
never been because I came and begged for them."

"You were better off than I. M. de Marsay was rich, as you have reason
to know. You always were as slippery as gold. Good-bye; I have neither
sister nor----"

"Oh! hush, hush, Nasie!" cried her father.

"Nobody else would repeat what everybody has ceased to believe. You
are an unnatural sister!" cried Delphine.

"Oh, children, children! hush! hush! or I will kill myself before your
eyes."

"There, Nasie, I forgive you," said Mme. de Nucingen; "you are very
unhappy. But I am kinder than you are. How could you say _that_ just
when I was ready to do anything in the world to help you, even to be
reconciled with my husband, which for my own sake I----Oh! it is just
like you; you have behaved cruelly to me all through these nine
years."

"Children, children, kiss each other!" cried the father. "You are
angels, both of you."

"No. Let me alone," cried the Countess shaking off the hand that her
father had laid on her arm. "She is more merciless than my husband.
Any one might think she was a model of all the virtues herself!"

"I would rather have people think that I owed money to M. de Marsay
than own that M. de Trailles had cost me more than two hundred
thousand francs," retorted Mme. de Nucingen.

"_Delphine!_" cried the Countess, stepping towards her sister.

"I shall tell you the truth about yourself if you begin to slander
me," said the Baroness coldly.

"Delphine! you are a ----"

Father Goriot sprang between them, grasped the Countess' hand, and
laid his own over her mouth.

"Good heavens, father! What have you been handling this morning?" said
Anastasie.

"Ah! well, yes, I ought not to have touched you," said the poor
father, wiping his hands on his trousers, "but I have been packing up
my things; I did not know that you were coming to see me."

He was glad that he had drawn down her wrath upon himself.

"Ah!" he sighed, as he sat down, "you children have broken my heart
between you. This is killing me. My head feels as if it were on fire.
Be good to each other and love each other! This will be the death of
me! Delphine! Nasie! come, be sensible; you are both in the wrong.
Come, Dedel," he added, looking through his tears at the Baroness,
"she must have twelve thousand francs, you see; let us see if we can
find them for her. Oh, my girls, do not look at each other like that!"
and he sank on his knees beside Delphine. "Ask her to forgive you
--just to please me," he said in her ear. "She is more miserable than
you are. Come now, Dedel."

"Poor Nasie!" said Delphine, alarmed at the wild extravagant grief in
her father's face, "I was in the wrong, kiss me----"

"Ah! that is like balm to my heart," cried Father Goriot. "But how are
we to find twelve thousand francs? I might offer myself as a
substitute in the army----"

"Oh! father dear!" they both cried, flinging their arms about him.
"No, no!"

"God reward you for the thought. We are not worth it, are we, Nasie?"
asked Delphine.

"And besides, father dear, it would only be a drop in the bucket,"
observed the Countess.

"But is flesh and blood worth nothing?" cried the old man in his
despair. "I would give body and soul to save you, Nasie. I would do a
murder for the man who would rescue you. I would do, as Vautrin did,
go to the hulks, go----" he stopped as if struck by a thunderbolt, and
put both hands to his head. "Nothing left!" he cried, tearing his
hair. "If I only knew of a way to steal money, but it is so hard to do
it, and then you can't set to work by yourself, and it takes time to
rob a bank. Yes, it is time I was dead; there is nothing left me to do
but to die. I am no good in the world; I am no longer a father! No.
She has come to me in her extremity, and, wretch that I am, I have
nothing to give her. Ah! you put your money into a life annuity, old
scoundrel; and had you not daughters? You did not love them. Die, die
in a ditch, like the dog that you are! Yes, I am worse than a dog; a
beast would not have done as I have done! Oh! my head . . . it throbs
as if it would burst."

"Papa!" cried both the young women at once, "do, pray, be reasonable!"
and they clung to him to prevent him from dashing his head against the
wall. There was a sound of sobbing.

Eugene, greatly alarmed, took the bill that bore Vautrin's signature,
saw that the stamp would suffice for a larger sum, altered the
figures, made it into a regular bill for twelve thousand francs,
payable to Goriot's order, and went to his neighbor's room.

"Here is the money, madame," he said, handing the piece of paper to
her. "I was asleep; your conversation awoke me, and by this means I
learned all that I owed to M. Goriot. This bill can be discounted, and
I shall meet it punctually at the due date."

The Countess stood motionless and speechless, but she held the bill in
her fingers.

"Delphine," she said, with a white face, and her whole frame quivering
with indignation, anger, and rage, "I forgave you everything; God is
my witness that I forgave you, but I cannot forgive this! So this
gentleman was there all the time, and you knew it! Your petty spite
has let you to wreak your vengeance on me by betraying my secrets, my
life, my children's lives, my shame, my honor! There, you are nothing
to me any longer. I hate you. I will do all that I can to injure you.
I will . . ."

Anger paralyzed her; the words died in her dry parched throat.

"Why, he is my son, my child; he is your brother, your preserver!"
cried Goriot. "Kiss his hand, Nasie! Stay, I will embrace him myself,"
he said, straining Eugene to his breast in a frenzied clasp. "Oh my
boy! I will be more than a father to you; if I had God's power, I
would fling worlds at your feet. Why don't you kiss him, Nasie? He is
not a man, but an angel, a angel out of heaven."

"Never mind her, father; she is mad just now."

"Mad! am I? And what are you?" cried Mme. de Restaud.

"Children, children, I shall die if you go on like this," cried the
old man, and he staggered and fell on the bed as if a bullet had
struck him.--"They are killing me between them," he said to himself.

The Countess fixed her eyes on Eugene, who stood stock still; all his
faculties were numbed by this violent scene.

"Sir? . . ." she said, doubt and inquiry in her face, tone, and
bearing; she took no notice now of her father nor of Delphine, who was
hastily unfastening his waistcoat.

"Madame," said Eugene, answering the question before it was asked, "I
will meet the bill, and keep silence about it."

"You have killed our father, Nasie!" said Delphine, pointing to
Goriot, who lay unconscious on the bed. The Countess fled.

"I freely forgive her," said the old man, opening his eyes; "her
position is horrible; it would turn an older head than hers. Comfort
Nasie, and be nice to her, Delphine; promise it to your poor father
before he dies," he asked, holding Delphine's hand in a convulsive
clasp.

"Oh! what ails you, father?" she cried in real alarm.

"Nothing, nothing," said Goriot; "it will go off. There is something
heavy pressing on my forehead, a little headache. . . . Ah! poor
Nasie, what a life lies before her!"

Just as he spoke, the Countess came back again and flung herself on
her knees before him. "Forgive me!" she cried.

"Come," said her father, "you are hurting me still more."

"Monsieur," the Countess said, turning to Rastignac, "misery made me
unjust to you. You will be a brother to me, will you not?" and she
held out her hand. Her eyes were full of tears as she spoke.

"Nasie," cried Delphine, flinging her arms round her sister, "my
little Nasie, let us forget and forgive."

"No, no," cried Nasie; "I shall never forget!"

"Dear angels," cried Goriot, "it is as if a dark curtain over my eyes
had been raised; your voices have called me back to life. Kiss each
other once more. Well, now, Nasie, that bill will save you, won't it?"

"I hope so. I say, papa, will you write your name on it?"

"There! how stupid of me to forget that! But I am not feeling at all
well, Nasie, so you must not remember it against me. Send and let me
know as soon as you are out of your strait. No, I will go to you. No,
after all, I will not go; I might meet your husband, and I should kill
him on the spot. And as for signing away your property, I shall have a
word to say about that. Quick, my child, and keep Maxime in order in
future."

Eugene was too bewildered to speak.

"Poor Anastasie, she always had a violent temper," said Mme. de
Nucingen, "but she has a good heart."

"She came back for the endorsement," said Eugene in Delphine's ear.

"Do you think so?"

"I only wish I could think otherwise. Do not trust her," he answered,
raising his eyes as if he confided to heaven the thoughts that he did
not venture to express.

"Yes. She is always acting a part to some extent."

"How do you feel now, dear Father Goriot?" asked Rastignac.

"I should like to go to sleep," he replied.

Eugene helped him to bed, and Delphine sat by the bedside, holding his
hand until he fell asleep. Then she went.

"This evening at the Italiens," she said to Eugene, "and you can let
me know how he is. To-morrow you will leave this place, monsieur. Let
us go into your room.--Oh! how frightful!" she cried on the threshold.
"Why, you are even worse lodged than our father. Eugene, you have
behaved well. I would love you more if that were possible; but, dear
boy, if you are to succeed in life, you must not begin by flinging
twelve thousand francs out of the windows like that. The Comte de
Trailles is a confirmed gambler. My sister shuts her eyes to it. He
would have made the twelve thousand francs in the same way that he
wins and loses heaps of gold."

A groan from the next room brought them back to Goriot's bedside; to
all appearances he was asleep, but the two lovers caught the words,
"They are not happy!" Whether he was awake or sleeping, the tone in
which they were spoken went to his daughter's heart. She stole up to
the pallet-bed on which her father lay, and kissed his forehead. He
opened his eyes.

"Ah! Delphine!" he said.

"How are you now?" she asked.

"Quite comfortable. Do not worry about me; I shall get up presently.
Don't stay with me, children; go, go and be happy."

Eugene went back with Delphine as far as her door; but he was not easy
about Goriot, and would not stay to dinner, as she proposed. He wanted
to be back at the Maison Vauquer. Father Goriot had left his room, and
was just sitting down to dinner as he came in. Bianchon had placed
himself where he could watch the old man carefully; and when the old
vermicelli maker took up his square of bread and smelled it to find
out the quality of the flour, the medical student, studying him
closely, saw that the action was purely mechanical, and shook his
head.

"Just come and sit over here, hospitaller of Cochin," said Eugene.

Bianchon went the more willingly because his change of place brought
him next to the old lodger.

"What is wrong with him?" asked Rastignac.

"It is all up with him, or I am much mistaken! Something very
extraordinary must have taken place; he looks to me as if he were in
imminent danger of serous apoplexy. The lower part of his face is
composed enough, but the upper part is drawn and distorted. Then there
is that peculiar look about the eyes that indicates an effusion of
serum in the brain; they look as though they were covered with a film
of fine dust, do you notice? I shall know more about it by to-morrow
morning."

"Is there any cure for it?"

"None. It might be possible to stave death off for a time if a way
could be found of setting up a reaction in the lower extremities; but
if the symptoms do not abate by to-morrow evening, it will be all over
with him, poor old fellow! Do you know what has happened to bring this
on? There must have been some violent shock, and his mind has given
way."

"Yes, there was," said Rastignac, remembering how the two daughters
had struck blow on blow at their father's heart.

"But Delphine at any rate loves her father," he said to himself.

That evening at the opera Rastignac chose his words carefully, lest he
should give Mme. de Nucingen needless alarm.

"Do not be anxious about him," she said, however, as soon as Eugene
began, "our father has really a strong constitution, but this morning
we gave him a shock. Our whole fortunes were in peril, so the thing
was serious, you see. I could not live if your affection did not make
me insensible to troubles that I should once have thought too hard to
bear. At this moment I have but one fear left, but one misery to
dread--to lose the love that has made me feel glad to live. Everything
else is as nothing to me compared with our love; I care for nothing
else, for you are all the world to me. If I feel glad to be rich, it
is for your sake. To my shame be it said, I think of my lover before
my father. Do you ask why? I cannot tell you, but all my life is in
you. My father gave me a heart, but you have taught it to beat. The
whole world may condemn me; what does it matter if I stand acquitted
in your eyes, for you have no right to think ill of me for the faults
which a tyrannous love has forced me to commit for you! Do you think
me an unnatural daughter? Oh! no, no one could help loving such a dear
kind father as ours. But how could I hide the inevitable consequences
of our miserable marriages from him? Why did he allow us to marry when
we did? Was it not his duty to think for us and foresee for us? To-day
I know he suffers as much as we do, but how can it be helped? And as
for comforting him, we could not comfort him in the least. Our
resignation would give him more pain and hurt him far more than
complaints and upbraidings. There are times in life when everything
turns to bitterness."

Eugene was silent, the artless and sincere outpouring made an
impression on him.

Parisian women are often false, intoxicated with vanity, selfish and
self-absorbed, frivolous and shallow; yet of all women, when they
love, they sacrifice their personal feelings to their passion; they
rise but so much the higher for all the pettiness overcome in their
nature, and become sublime. Then Eugene was struck by the profound
discernment and insight displayed by this woman in judging of natural
affection, when a privileged affection had separated and set her at a
distance apart. Mme. de Nucingen was piqued by the silence,

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"I am thinking about what you said just now. Hitherto I have always
felt sure that I cared far more for you than you did for me."

She smiled, and would not give way to the happiness she felt, lest
their talk should exceed the conventional limits of propriety. She had
never heard the vibrating tones of a sincere and youthful love; a few
more words, and she feared for her self-control.

"Eugene," she said, changing the conversation, "I wonder whether you
know what has been happening? All Paris will go to Mme. de Beauseant's
to-morrow. The Rochefides and the Marquis d'Ajuda have agreed to keep
the matter a profound secret, but to-morrow the king will sign the
marriage-contract, and your poor cousin the Vicomtesse knows nothing
of it as yet. She cannot put off her ball, and the Marquis will not be
there. People are wondering what will happen?"

"The world laughs at baseness and connives at it. But this will kill
Mme. de Beauseant."

"Oh, no," said Delphine, smiling, "you do not know that kind of woman.
Why, all Paris will be there, and so shall I; I ought to go there for
your sake."

"Perhaps, after all, it is one of those absurd reports that people set
in circulation here."

"We shall know the truth to-morrow."

Eugene did not return to the Maison Vauquer. He could not forego the
pleasure of occupying his new rooms in the Rue d'Artois. Yesterday
evening he had been obliged to leave Delphine soon after midnight, but
that night it was Delphine who stayed with him until two o'clock in
the morning. He rose late, and waited for Mme. de Nucingen, who came
about noon to breakfast with him. Youth snatches eagerly at these rosy
moments of happiness, and Eugene had almost forgotten Goriot's
existence. The pretty things that surrounded him were growing
familiar; this domestication in itself was one long festival for him,
and Mme. de Nucingen was there to glorify it all by her presence. It
was four o'clock before they thought of Goriot, and of how he had
looked forward to the new life in that house. Eugene said that the old
man ought to be moved at once, lest he should grow too ill to move. He
left Delphine and hurried back to the lodging-house. Neither Father
Goriot nor young Bianchon was in the dining-room with the others.