AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIETY

Towards the end of the first week in December, Rastignac received two letters, one from his mother, the other from his older sister. The familiar handwriting made him both quiver with relief and quake with terror. These two flimsy documents contained a verdict of life or death for his hopes. Although he felt some apprehension as he recalled his parents’ penury, he had too much experience of their indulgence not to fear that he had finally bled them dry. His mother’s letter ran as follows:

By the time Eugène had finished this letter, he was in tears: he thought of old man Goriot twisting his silver-gilt and selling it to pay off his daughter’s bill of exchange. ‘Your mother has had her jewellery melted down!’ he said to himself. ‘Your aunt must have wept as she sold off her treasures! What right do you have to judge Anastasie? Out of selfish ambition you have just done exactly what she did for her lover! Who is the better person, you or she?’ The student felt an unbearable burning sensation inside him. He wanted to turn his back on society, he wanted to refuse the money. He felt all the nobility and beauty of that secret remorse whose merit is rarely appreciated by men when they judge their fellow creatures, with the result that a criminal condemned by earthly judges is often absolved by heavenly angels. Rastignac opened the letter sent by his sister, whose innocent, flowing words refreshed his soul.

‘Oh! Yes,’ Eugène said to himself, ‘yes, I must make my fortune at all cost! No treasures could repay such devotion. I want to bring them every kind of happiness at once. Fifteen hundred and fifty francs!’ he said after a pause. ‘Every single coin of it must strike home! Laure is right. Woman be praised! My shirts are all made of coarse cloth. A girl becomes as wily as a thief to bring about another’s happiness. Innocent unto herself and provident unto me, she is like some heavenly angel who pardons earthly sins without understanding them.’

The world belonged to him! His tailor had already been summoned, sounded out, won over. On seeing Monsieur de Trailles, Rastignac had understood the influence that tailors exercise over the lives of young men. Alas! There is no middle ground: depending on his skill, a tailor is either your worst enemy, or a friend in need. Eugène found his to be a man who understood the paternal side of his trade, seeing himself as the link between a young man’s present and his future. The grateful Rastignac later made this man’s fortune with one of the witty remarks at which he came to excel. ‘I know’, he said, ‘two pairs of his trousers that made matches worth twenty thousand livres per year.’¹¹⁰

Fifteen hundred francs and as many clothes as he could wear! With this thought, the last of the poor Southerner’s doubts was dispelled and he went down to déjeuner with the undefinable air of a young man who finds himself in possession of a certain sum of money. As soon as a few notes slide into a student’s pocket, an imaginary pillar of support rises up inside him. He walks taller than before, senses a fulcrum giving him leverage, he looks you in the eye, boldly, his movements are agile and alert; yesterday, timid and humble, he would have cowered under a shower of blows; today, he has it in him to punch a Prime Minister. All kinds of phenomenal changes take place inside him: he wants everything and is capable of anything, he burns with wild, indiscriminate desires, he is joyful, generous, extrovert. At last, the flightless bird remembers how to spread its wings. A penniless student snatches a scrap of pleasure as a dog snaps up a bone; threatened from all sides, he crunches it, sucks out the marrow and keeps on running. A young man who jingles a few fleeting gold coins in his fob, however, savours and itemizes his enjoyment, revels in it; he soars across the sky, he no longer knows the meaning of the word poverty. The whole of Paris belongs to him. A time when everything gleams, when everything blazes and sparkles! A time of elation and strength which no one else can turn to their advantage, neither man nor woman! A time of debts and terrible fears which increase pleasure tenfold! A man who has never known the Left Bank of the Seine, between the Rue Saint-Jacques and the Rue des Saints-Pères,¹¹¹ knows nothing of life! ‘Hah! If they only knew!’ Rastignac said to himself, as he wolfed down Madame Vauquer’s one-liard-apiece stewed pears; ‘the women of Paris would be flocking here in search of love.’ At this point, the bell on the openwork gate rang and a postman from the Messageries Royales appeared in the dining room. He asked for Monsieur Eugène de Rastignac, then handed him two bags and a register to sign. Vautrin gave Rastignac a meaningful look that cut into him like the lash of a whip.

‘You’ve enough there to pay for fencing lessons and shooting practice,’ the older man said.

‘Your ship has come in,’ added Madame Vauquer, eyeing up the bags.

Mademoiselle Michonneau kept her eyes lowered, not daring to look at the money, for fear of revealing how she coveted it.

‘Your mother is good to you,’ said Madame Couture.

‘Monsieur has a good mother,’ Poiret echoed.

‘Yes, your mother has bled herself dry,’ said Vautrin. ‘You can have all the fun you like now: go fishing for dowries in high society and dance with comtesses with peach blossom in their hair. But take my advice, young man, and put in some shooting practice.’ Vautrin took aim at an imaginary enemy.

Rastignac put his hand in his pocket to tip the postman, and found it empty. Vautrin reached into his, and threw the man twenty sous.

‘You’ve got good credit,’ he said, looking the student in the eye.

Rastignac was forced to thank him, although he had found his presence unbearable since their harsh exchange of words on the day of his first visit to Madame de Beauséant. Over the past week, Eugène and Vautrin had kept silent in each other’s company, watching one another warily. The student had pondered this mystery without getting to the bottom of it.

It seems likely that the force with which thoughts are projected is directly proportionate to that with which they are conceived, and they strike where the brain sends them, like the mathematical law that governs the trajectory of a shell shot from a mortar-piece. The effect they have varies widely. While some may become lodged and wreak havoc, as in the case of tender natures, others come up against strongly armed natures, skulls with bronze ramparts, upon which the wills of others are smashed and drop like bullets bouncing off a wall; or, again, there are those flabby, woolly natures which swallow up other people’s thoughts, just as the soft earth of a redoubt absorbs cannonballs.

Rastignac had one of those heads packed with powder which explode on the slightest impact. His liveliness and youth made him only too susceptible to these projected thoughts, to the contagion of feelings whose many strange phenomena catch us unawares.¹¹² His mind had the sharpness and depth of his hawk-like eyes. Each of his double-edged senses had that mysterious reach, that fluid thrust and parry, which we find so awe-inspiring in people of superior note, those duellists skilled at finding the weak spot in every breast-plate.

Over the past month, Eugène had developed as many fine qualities as flaws. His flaws had been forced in the hot-house of society and by the need to pursue his burgeoning desires. Among his fine qualities was the hardiness of the South; a man from south of the Loire tackles obstacles head on and is incapable of remaining in a state of uncertainty. Northerners call this quality a flaw, maintaining that while this was the key to Murat’s success, it was also the cause of his death.¹¹³ From this we may conclude that if a man of the Midi¹¹⁴ can combine the cunning of the North with the daring of the South, he is consummate and will become the King of Sweden.¹¹⁵ Thus Rastignac was unable to remain under fire from Vautrin’s batteries for long without ascertaining whether the older man was his friend or foe. It seemed to him that this extraordinary character was capable, from one moment to the next, of fathoming his passions and reading what he had in his heart, while himself remaining so tightly sealed that he appeared to have the inscrutable depth of a sphinx that knows and sees everything, and says nothing. Emboldened by the weight of his purse, Eugène rebelled.

‘Do me the pleasure of waiting a moment,’ he said to Vautrin, who was preparing to leave after savouring the last drops of his coffee.

‘What for?’ replied the forty year old, putting on his wide-brimmed hat and picking up a metal cane which he flourished like a man unafraid of assault by four footpads.

‘I intend to pay you back,’ continued Rastignac, swiftly untying one of the bags and counting out a hundred and forty francs to give to Madame Vauquer. ‘An account paid is a friend made,’ he said to the widow. ‘We’re square until New Year’s Eve. Now, change a hundred sous for me.’

‘A friend made is an account paid,’ echoed Poiret, looking at Vautrin.

‘Your twenty sous,’ said Rastignac, holding out a coin to the bewigged sphinx.

‘Anyone would think you were afraid to be in my debt,’ exclaimed Vautrin, his all-seeing eyes burning into the young man’s soul, giving him one of those mocking and cynical smiles which had come close to triggering Eugène’s temper any number of times.

‘Indeed … I am,’ replied the student standing up, holding the two bags in his hand, ready to go upstairs to his room.

Vautrin made to leave through the door to the drawing room and the student turned to go out through the one that led to the square passageway and the stairs.

‘Do you realize, Monsieur le Marquis de Rastignacorama, that what you said was not exactly polite?’ said Vautrin, lashing out at the drawing-room door with his cane and walking over to the student, who surveyed him coldly.

Rastignac closed the dining-room door, bringing Vautrin with him to the foot of the stairs in the square passageway between the dining room and the kitchen, where a solid door topped with a barred fanlight led into the garden. There, in front of Sylvie, who had just come out of the kitchen, the student said: ‘Monsieur Vautrin, I am not a marquis, and my name is not Rastignacorama.’

‘They’re going to fight a duel,’ said Mademoiselle Michonneau, with an air of indifference.

‘Fight a duel!’ repeated Poiret.

‘Surely not,’ replied Madame Vauquer, playing with her pile of écus.

‘There they are, walking under the lime trees,’ cried Mademoiselle Victorine, standing up to look into the garden. ‘But the poor young man is surely in the right.’

‘Let us go upstairs, dear girl,’ said Madame Couture; ‘these matters do not concern us.’

When Madame Couture and Victorine stood up, they found their way blocked by big Sylvie who had appeared at the door.

‘What’s to do?’ she cried. ‘Monsieur Vautrin said to Monsieur Eugène: “Let’s settle this once and for all!” then he led him outside by the arm, and now they’re trampling all over the artichokes.’

At this point Vautrin appeared. ‘Ma Vauquer,’ he said with a smile, ‘don’t be alarmed; I’m just going to give my pistols an airing under the lime trees.’

‘Oh! Monsieur,’ said Victorine, clasping her hands together; ‘why do you want to kill Monsieur Eugène?’

Vautrin took two steps back and stared at Victorine. ‘Now here’s an interesting development!’ he exclaimed in a mocking voice, which made the poor girl blush. ‘A charming young man, is he not?’ he continued. ‘You’ve given me an idea. I’ll make you both happy, my pretty child.’

Madame Couture took her ward by the arm and steered her out, saying in her ear: ‘Why Victorine, I really cannot make you out this morning.’

‘I won’t have any pistols fired in my house,’ said Madame Vauquer. ‘Don’t you go frightening the neighbours and bringing the police round at this time of day!’

‘Now, now, easy does it, Ma Vauquer,’ replied Vautrin; ‘nothing to worry about, it’s just a little shooting party.’

He rejoined Rastignac and took him by the arm familiarly: ‘Even after I’ve shown you that I can put a bullet in an ace of spades five times in a row at thirty-five paces,’ he told him, ‘you’ll still be raring to go. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve lost your cool, and at this rate you’re going to get yourself killed like an idiot.’

‘So you’re backing down,’ said Eugène.

‘Don’t be so tiresome,’ replied Vautrin. ‘It’s mild out this morning, come and sit down with me,’ he said, gesturing towards the green-painted garden chairs. ‘No one will hear us there. I’ve got a few things to say to you. You’re a decent young man and I mean you no harm. I like you, or my name isn’t Cat-o’- … (blast it!) … Vautrin. I’ll tell you why I like you. Why, I know you as well as if I’d made you, and I’m going to prove it. Put your swag here,’ he went on, pointing at the round table.

Rastignac put his money on the table and sat down, his curiosity powerfully aroused by Vautrin’s abrupt change in manner: after threatening to kill him, he was now posing as his protector.

‘You want to know who I am, what I’ve done and what I do,’ continued Vautrin. ‘You want to know too much, my young friend. Now, now, hold your horses. There’s more! I’ve had my share of misfortune. Listen to me first and then you can have your say. Here’s my life in a nutshell. Who am I? Vautrin. What do I do? Whatever I like. Say no more. You want to know what kind of a man I am? I’m good to those who are good to me or whose heart speaks to mine. I’ll let them get away with anything, they can kick me in the shins without so much as a Watch it! crossing my lips. But blow me if I’m not as mean as the devil towards those who give me trouble or who let me down. And it’s as well for you to know that I’ll kill a man as easily as that!’ he said, spitting on the ground. ‘But I make sure I kill him cleanly and only when he leaves me no choice. I’m what you might call an artist. I’ve read the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini,¹¹⁶ in Italian at that, although you might not think it to look at me! It was from him, the finest of fellows, that I learned to imitate Providence, which picks us off without rhyme or reason, and to love beauty wherever it is found. After all, what finer game is there than to take on the rest of mankind and have luck on your side? I’ve thought long and hard about the constitution of your present social disorder. My dear boy, a duel is child’s play, sheer folly. When one of two living men must be eliminated, only an idiot allows chance to decide which it will be. A duel? Heads or tails! That’s all there is to it. I can shoot five bullets in a row through the same hole in an ace of spades, and I can do that at thirty-five paces! With that little talent under your belt, you might feel pretty certain of killing your man. Well, I fired at twenty paces and missed mine. The knave had never touched a pistol in his life. Look!’ said this extraordinary man, unfastening his waistcoat and baring his chest – as furry as a bear’s back, but with a strange tawny streak that inspired both repulsion and awe – ‘that greenhorn turned my hair red,’ he added, pressing Rastignac’s finger against a hole in his chest. ‘But in those days I was a child, I was your age: twenty-one. I still had something to believe in then, in the love of a woman, a heap of nonsense you’ll soon be up to the neck in. We were ready to fight each other just now, weren’t we? You might have killed me. Say I was six foot under, where would you be? You’d have to clear out, go to Switzerland, squander Daddy’s money, the little he has. Let me shed some light on your position, from the vantage point of a man who, having studied the world, has seen that only two courses of action are possible: slavish obedience or revolt. I obey nothing, is that clear? Do you know what you need, my young friend, at the rate you’re going? A million, and fast. Without it, however handsome you are, you may as well hang around in the nets at Saint-Cloud¹¹⁷ waiting to see if the Supreme Being shows up. I’ll give you that million.’ He paused to look at Eugène. ‘A-ha! That’s made you see your dear uncle Vautrin in a new light. I say the magic word and you look like a girl with “until tonight” ringing in her ears, preening herself and licking her lips like the cat that’s got the cream. That’s the spirit! Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Here’s what’s in it for you, young man. At home, you have Papa, Mama, Great-aunt, two sisters (eighteen and sixteen), two little brothers (fifteen and ten). That’s the crew inspected. Aunty gives your sisters some instruction. The parish priest comes to teach your brothers Latin. The family eats more mashed chestnuts than white bread, Papa darns his trousers, Mama is lucky if she has a different dress for summer and winter, your sisters scrape by the best they can. I know exactly what it’s like, I’ve spent some time in the Midi.¹¹⁸ That’s how things stand at home, if they’re sending you twelve hundred francs a year, and if your little estate only brings in three thousand francs. You have a cook and a manservant; Papa is a baron so one must keep up appearances. As for yourself, you are ambitious, you have an ally in the de Beauséants and you walk everywhere on foot; you want to be wealthy and you haven’t a sou; you eat Ma Vauquer’s messes and you have a taste for the fine dining of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, you sleep on a pallet and you want a mansion! I don’t condemn you for your yearnings. Not everyone is lucky enough to have ambition, my sweet. Ask any woman what kind of man she wants – an ambitious one. An ambitious man’s blood is richer in iron, his constitution stronger, his heart warmer than that of other men. And because a woman knows she’s happiest and most beautiful when her influence is at its strongest, she will always favour a man whose power is great, even if she risks being crushed by him. I’ve drawn up this inventory of your desires in order to ask you a question. Here it comes. You’re as hungry as a wolf, your fangs are newly cut and sharp; how do you catch a little something for the pot? First, you have to chew your way through the Code:¹¹⁹ it’s far from entertaining and you learn nothing from it, but it has to be done. So be it. You turn yourself into a lawyer with a view to becoming a magistrate, sending down poor devils worth far more than you, with T for thief¹²⁰ branded on their shoulders, merely to prove to the rich that they can sleep peacefully in their beds. It’s not much of a lark, and what’s more, it takes for ever. First, two years spent kicking your heels in Paris, eyeing up – but never touching – the yum-yums you’re partial to. It wears you out, to be always craving without ever satisfying your desires. If you were pasty and of a sluggish disposition you’d have nothing to fear; but you have the raging blood of a lion and an appetite big enough to get you into twenty scrapes a day. Let’s assume that you put yourself through this torture, the most horrible of all those to be seen in the good Lord’s hell. Let’s suppose that you’re sensible, that you drink milk and write elegies; however noble you are, after enough tedium and privation to make you foam at the mouth, you’ll have no option but to start right at the bottom, as assistant district attorney to some crook, in some dump of a town, where the government will throw you a salary of a thousand francs, as one might throw soup to a butcher’s dog. Bark at thieves, defend the rich, send the stout-hearted to the guillotine. You’ll have no alternative! Unless you have friends in high places you’ll be left to rot in your provincial tribunal. At thirty or so, you’ll be a judge on twelve hundred francs a year, if you haven’t thrown in the wig by then. When you hit forty, you’ll marry a miller’s daughter with an annual income of six thousand livres. No thank you. With help from the right friends, you’ll be appointed a Crown Prosecutor, with a salary of a thousand écus, and you’ll marry the mayor’s daughter. If you stoop to one of those despicable little political scams, like reading Villèle on a ballot paper instead of Manuel¹²¹ (it rhymes, and that’s good enough for your conscience), at forty you’ll be a senior Crown Prosecutor and you might even have your own constituency. Note, my dear child, that you will have besmirched your precious conscience, that you will have had twenty years of tedium, of miserable obsurity, and that your sisters will be on the shelf.¹²² What’s more, allow me to point out that there are only twenty Crown Prosecutors in the whole of France and that there are some twenty thousand of you aspiring to that rank, including any number of ruthless scoundrels who would sell their families to crawl up a rung. Should that profession not be to your taste, let’s take a look at another. Would the Baron de Rastignac care to become a lawyer? Oh! Delightful. You’re required to live in poverty for ten years, with costs of a thousand francs a month, own a library and chambers, mingle in high society, kiss a solicitor’s robes to get briefs, sweep the courts clean with your tongue. If this profession took you anywhere, I wouldn’t say no; but can you find me five lawyers in Paris who, at the age of fifty, earn over fifty thousand francs a year? Hah! I’d rather be a corsair than belittle my soul that way. So – where will you get your écus? It’s not easy. You resort to a woman’s dowry. You want to marry? You’ll hang a millstone around your neck; and then, if you marry for money, what will become of your honourable feelings, your nobility! You may as well start your revolt against human conventions today. It would mean grovelling like a worm before a woman, kissing her mother’s feet, committing acts of servility at which even a sow would turn up its snout: ugh! If only that brought you happiness. But you’ll feel as low as the stones that line the gutters with a woman you’ve married for those reasons. It’s a far better thing to wage war against men than bicker with your wife. You are at life’s crossroads, young man; now you must make your choice. You have already chosen: you went to call on your cousin Madame de Beauséant and had a taste of luxury there. You called on Madame de Restaud, old man Goriot’s daughter, and breathed in the scent of a Parisian woman. On that day you came back here with one word written on your forehead, and I read it, clear as day: Succeed! Succeed whatever the cost. “Bravo!” I said to myself, “now here’s a man after my own heart.” You had to have money. Where could you get it from? You bled your sisters dry. All brothers sharp their sisters to a greater or lesser degree. The fifteen hundred francs you have extracted – God knows how! – from a region that yields more chestnuts than hundred-sou coins, will vanish like soldiers gone a-pillaging. What will you do then? Will you work? Work, as you define it at the moment, will earn you, for your old age, an apartment at Ma Vauquer’s next door to men of the ilk of Poiret. So how can you get rich quickly? That’s the problem that fifty thousand young men, all in the same position as you, are currently trying to solve. You are one unit of that total. Now work out just how much effort you’ll have to make, how fierce the struggle will be. Given that fifty thousand good positions don’t exist, you’ll be forced to eat each other like spiders in a jam-jar. Do you know how a man makes it to the top of the social pile? Through the brilliance of his genius or the skill of his corruption. You must either plough through this mass of men like a cannonball or creep among them like the plague. Honesty will get you nowhere. They’ll yield to genius – they’ll detest it, they’ll try to malign it because it keeps taking without giving back – but they’ll yield if it prevails; in a word, they’ll worship it on their knees when they’ve failed to bury it in mud. Corruption is thick on the ground, talent rare. Which means that corruption is the weapon of mediocrity and you’ll feel the tip of its blade wherever you go. You’ll see women whose husbands are paid six thousand francs all told and who spend more than ten thousand francs on their dress. You’ll see employees on twelve hundred francs buying up land. You’ll see women prostitute themselves to climb into the carriage of the son of some French peer who can drive in the middle lane at Longchamp.¹²³ You’ve seen that silly goose of an old man Goriot forced to pay a bill of exchange endorsed by his daughter, whose husband is worth fifty thousand livres a year. I defy you to take two steps in Paris without coming across all kinds of machinations. I will wager you on my life that you’ll be fed a dish of wasp-infested lies at the home of the first woman who takes your fancy, however rich, young and beautiful she is. They are all bridled by laws and at loggerheads with their husbands over everything. We’d be here all day if I made it my business to explain the shenanigans that go on over lovers, fripperies, children, the domestics or vanity – rarely virtue, you can be sure of that. Which makes the honest man the common enemy. So, what kind of a man is honest? In Paris, the honest man keeps his own counsel and refuses to share. I’m not talking about those poor slaves who do all the work everywhere without ever being rewarded for their effort; I call them the Brotherhood of the Good Lord’s Holy Shoes. In them you see virtue in the full bloom of its stupidity, but also its poverty. I can already see the terrible look on the faces of all those poor people if God is shabby enough to renege on the Last Judgement. So if you want to get rich quickly, you either have to be rich to start with or appear to be so. To make your fortune in this city, you need to play for high stakes; otherwise you’re going after chickenfeed, and may as well sign off Your humble servant etc. Among the hundred professions you might pursue, if there are ten men who succeed overnight, the public calls them thieves. Draw your own conclusions. That’s life as it really is. It’s no prettier than the kitchen, it smells just as foul, and if you want to cook something up, you have to get your hands dirty; just master the art of scrubbing them clean afterwards: that’s what morality boils down to, today. If I’m talking about the world in this way, it’s because it has given me cause to do so, I know it well. You think I blame it? Not in the slightest. Things have always been like this. Moralizing won’t change them. Man is flawed. He is, at times, more or less of a hypocrite, making fools claim he’s moral or immoral. I don’t point the finger at the Rich in favour of the People: man is the same at the top, the bottom and in-between. For every million sheep, you’ll find ten likely lads¹²⁴ who set themselves above everything, even the law: I count myself among them. If you’re a better man, walk on the straight path with your head held high. But you’ll have to fight envy, slander, mediocrity, the whole world. Napoleon himself ran foul of a war minister by the name of Aubry,¹²⁵ who almost had him sent to the colonies. Sound your own depths! See if you can get up each day with more will-power than you had the night before. Given the circumstances, I’m going to make you an offer that no one could refuse. Listen carefully. I have a plan, you see. My plan is to go and live the life of a patriarch on some vast estate, a hundred thousand acres or so, in the United States, in the South. I want to be a planter, own slaves, earn a few easy million selling my cattle, my tobacco, my trees, while living like a king, doing as I please, leading a life we can barely imagine here, cowering in our plaster burrows. I’m a great poet. My poetry isn’t the kind you write down: it’s made of deeds and feelings. At the moment I possess fifty thousand francs, which would barely get me forty Negroes. I need two hundred thousand francs, because I want two hundred Negroes to satisfy my appetite for the patriarchal life. Negroes, you see, are grown-up children and you can do whatever you like with them, without some nosy Crown Prosecutor turning up and holding you to account.¹²⁶ With this black capital, I’ll have made three or four million in the space of ten years. If I make my fortune, no one will stop me and ask: “Who are you?” I’ll be Mister Four-Million, citizen of the United States of America. I’ll be fifty, still in good shape and I’ll have my fun. In a word, if I find you a dowry worth a million, will you give me two hundred thousand francs? A 20 per cent commission, what do you say! Is that too dear? You’ll make your little wife love you. Once you’re married, you’ll start showing signs of anxiety, remorse, you’ll go round with a hangdog air for a fortnight. One night, after a few preliminaries, calling your wife “My Love!”, you’ll finally confess between one kiss and the next that you’re in debt to the tune of two hundred thousand francs. The most distinguished young men act out this little farce every day. A young woman never refuses her purse to the man who has stolen her heart. You can’t lose. You’ll find a way to win your two hundred thousand francs back through some deal or other. With your money, and your brain, you’ll build up a fortune as vast as any you might wish for. Ergo, in the space of six months, you’ll have brought happiness to yourself, an attractive woman and your Uncle Vautrin, not to mention your family, who blow on their fingers in winter for want of wood for the fire. Don’t be surprised by what I’m suggesting, or asking! Out of sixty fashionable weddings taking place in Paris, there are forty-seven which turn on this kind of deal. The Law Society has forced Monsieur …’

‘What do I have to do?’ said Rastignac eagerly, interrupting Vautrin.

‘Hardly anything,’ he replied, with a flicker of joy, the controlled delight of a fisherman who has just felt a fish bite on the end of his line. ‘Listen! The heart of a poor, unhappy and needy young woman is a sponge, the most thirsty for love you will find, a dry sponge which swells as soon as it receives a single drop of sympathy. Courting a young lady who is lonely, impoverished and despairing, who has no idea that she’ll be rich one day – why! – it’s like having a quint and a quatorze¹²⁷ in your hand, or knowing what numbers will win the lottery; it’s like playing the stock-market on a tip-off! You are laying the foundations for an indestructible marriage. When she comes into her millions, the young lady will throw them at your feet, as if they were so many bits of gravel. “Take them, my Beloved! Take them, Adolphe! Alfred! Take them Eugène!” she’ll say, if Adolphe, Alfred or Eugène have had the good sense to make the odd sacrifice for her. By sacrifice I mean selling an old suit so you can treat her to mushrooms on toast at the Cadran-Bleu; then, in the evening, the Ambigu-Comique;¹²⁸ I mean pawning your watch to buy her a shawl. I hardly need mention the scribblings about love or the poppycock that so many women fall for, such as sprinkling drops of water onto your notepaper to look like tears when you’re away from her: I can see you’re a man with a firm grasp of the lingo of the heart. Paris, you see, is like a forest in the New World, crawling with twenty or so savage tribes – the Illinois, the Hurons – who live off the different kinds of game they hunt in society; you’re a hunter of millions. To net them, you use shills, limed twigs, decoys. There are various ways of going about it. Some sniff out dowries; others lie in wait for liquidations; this man fishes for votes; that man sells his subscribers down the river, bound hand and foot.¹²⁹ He who comes home with his game-bag bulging is welcomed, celebrated, received in the highest society. To be fair to this hospitable land of ours: no other city in the world is better at turning a blind eye. If the proud aristocracies of every capital in Europe refuse to admit an infamous millionaire into their ranks, Paris welcomes him with open arms, rushes to his parties, eats his dinners and toasts his infamy.’

‘But where can I find such a girl?’ asked Eugène.

‘She’s yours, staring you in the face!’

‘Mademoiselle Victorine?’

‘Exactly!’

‘But how?’

‘She loves you already, your sweet Baronne de Rastignac!’

‘She hasn’t a sou to her name,’ replied Eugène, stunned.

‘A-ha! I’m just coming to that. A word or two more’, said Vautrin, ‘and all will become clear. Our man Taillefer is an old scoundrel rumoured to have murdered one of his friends during the Revolution.¹³⁰ I’d say he’s one of your lone hunters. The man is a banker, senior partner in Frédéric Taillefer and Co. He has one son, to whom he intends to leave his entire fortune, leaving Victorine with nothing. Personally, I’m no fan of that sort of injustice. I’m a bit of a Don Quixote, I like to defend the weak against the strong. If it were God’s will that he should lose his son, Taillefer would take his daughter back; he would want an heir of some kind, that weakness is ingrained in human nature, and I know he can’t have any more children. Victorine is tender and warm-hearted, she’ll soon win him over and be spinning him round like a top with a string of sweet-talk! She’ll be too mindful of your love to forget you, and so you’ll be married. As for me, I’ll play the role of Providence, I’ll guide God’s will. I’ve a friend who owes me a favour, a colonel in the army of the Loire, who has just been posted to the Royal Guard. He has taken my advice and become an ultra-royalist; he’s not one of those fools who stick to their guns. A final word of advice, my angel: never stick to an opinion any more than you would to your word. When you’re asked for one, sell it to the highest bidder. A man who boasts that his opinions are unshakeable is a man who commits himself to following a straight line, a fool who believes in infallibility. There are no principles, only events; there are no laws, only circumstances: a superior man espouses events and circumstances the better to influence them. If fixed principles and laws really existed, countries wouldn’t change them as often as we change shirts. One man can’t be expected to show more sense than an entire nation. The man who has been of least service to France is idolized, revered, because he has always seen everything as red, when all he’s fit for is to be exhibited in the Conservatoire,¹³¹ labelled La Fayette,¹³² along with the other machines; while the prince¹³³ who prevented the partition of France at the Congress of Vienna, whose scorn for mankind is such that he spits back in its face every oath it might demand of him, is universally abhorred; he deserves laurels, but they sling mud at him instead. Oh! I know exactly how things work! I know the secrets of many a man! Let’s just say that I’ll have steadfast opinions on the day when I meet three brains who agree on the application of the same principle, and I’ll be waiting a good while yet! You won’t find three judges in the courts who share the same opinion on an article of law. Now, this man of mine I mentioned: he’d put Jesus Christ back on the cross if I asked him to. At a single word from Uncle Vautrin, he’ll pick a quarrel with that cad who doesn’t even have the heart to send his poor sister a hundred sous, and …’ Here Vautrin stood up, took his guard and mimed the lunge of a fencing master. ‘And – lights out!’ he added.

‘But that’s horrific!’ said Eugène. ‘You are joking, Monsieur Vautrin?’

‘Now, now, calm down,’ the other man continued. ‘Don’t be such a child: although you can work yourself into a rage and foam at the mouth if it amuses you! You can call me a blackguard, a scoundrel, a rogue, a bandit, but I draw the line at crook or spy! Go on, let rip, fire your broadside! I won’t hold it against you, it’s only natural at your age! I was like that once too! But consider this. You’ll do worse one day. You’ll toy with the affections of some pretty woman and take her money. That’s what you have in mind!’ said Vautrin, ‘because how will you get rich if your love isn’t bankable? Virtue, my dear student, can’t be split into parts: you either have it or you don’t. We’re told to atone for our sins. There’s another cunning system, which lets you get away with a crime through an act of contrition! Seducing a woman so she’ll give you a leg-up onto a particular rung of the social ladder, stirring up all kinds of ill-feeling among the children of a family, not to mention all the foul deeds committed out of self-interest or gratification either openly or behind closed doors, do you think these may be considered acts of faith, hope and charity? Why two months in prison for a dandy who relieves a child of half his fortune in one night, and why hard labour for some poor devil who steals a thousand-franc note with aggravating circumstances? That’s the law for you. Not an article of it that doesn’t verge on absurdity. A man in yellow gloves who lies through his teeth, committing murders where no blood is shed, but he has his pound of flesh all the same; an assassin jemmying open a door: both are shady customers! What I am suggesting, and what you will do one day, are exactly the same, minus the blood. You think you’ll find a firm foothold in that kind of world! I say, be wary of men and keep your eyes peeled for the loopholes through which you can slide out of reach of the law. The secret of a vast fortune with no apparent cause is a crime which has been forgotten, because it was committed cleanly.’

‘Enough, Monsieur, I’ll hear no more; you would have me doubt myself. At the moment, all I know is what I feel.’

‘As you wish, pretty child. I thought you were made of stronger stuff,’ said Vautrin. ‘I’ll say no more. But one last word.’ He gave the student a piercing stare: ‘You have my secret,’ he said to him.

‘A young man who has refused your offer will soon forget it.’

‘That was well said and gives me great pleasure. Another man, you see, might be less scrupulous. Remember what I want to do for you. I’ll give you a fortnight. Take it or leave it.’

‘The man has an iron will!’ Rastignac said to himself, watching Vautrin stroll away with his stick under his arm. ‘He has told me crudely what Madame de Beauséant expressed so delicately. He slashed at my heart with his steel claws. Why do I want to call on Madame de Nucingen? He guessed my motives as soon as they surfaced in my mind. In two words, this brigand has told me more about virtue than men and books ever have. If virtue is non-negotiable, does that mean I have stolen from my sisters?’ he asked himself, throwing the bag onto the table. He sat down, and stayed there, deep in dazed thought. ‘To be faithful to virtue is a sublime martyrdom! Hah! Everyone believes in virtue; but who is virtuous? Nations make freedom their idol; but where on earth is there a free nation? My youth is still as blue as a cloudless sky: if I want to be wealthy or great, must I stoop to lying, scraping, crawling, pouncing, flattering, deceiving? Must I consent to be the lackey of those who have lied, scraped and crawled? I’d have to be their servant before I could become their accomplice. Why, no. I want to work with dignity, with purity; I want to work night and day, to owe my success to my labours alone. It will be the slowest kind of success, but every night my head will rest on my pillow free of all blemished thoughts. What could be finer than to look upon one’s life and find it as pure as a lily? Life and I, we’re like a young man and his fiancée. Vautrin has shown me what happens after ten years of marriage. The devil take it! My mind is floundering. I must clear my head of thoughts, the heart is the truest guide.’

Eugène was brought back from his musings by the voice of big Sylvie announcing his tailor, whom he went to meet with his two moneybags in his hand, a turn of events that he did not find displeasing. After trying on his evening suit, he put his new morning wear on and found himself completely transformed. ‘I’m certainly a match for Monsieur de Trailles,’ he said to himself. ‘At last I look like a gentleman!’

‘Monsieur,’ said old man Goriot, coming into Eugène’s room, ‘you asked me if I knew which houses Madame de Nucingen visits.’

‘Indeed I did!’

‘Well, next Monday, she is going to the Maréchale de Carigliano’s ball. If you go, you’ll be able to tell me all about it, whether my daughters enjoyed themselves, what they wore, everything.’

‘How did you find out, dear old Goriot?’ said Eugène, inviting him to sit by the fire.

‘Her chambermaid told me. Thanks to Thérèse and Constance, I know everything they do,’ he replied brightly. The old man’s expression was that of a lover still young enough to delight in a stratagem that keeps him in touch with his mistress without her suspecting a thing. ‘You’ll actually see them!’ he said, innocently expressing a pang of jealousy.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Eugène. ‘I’ll go and call on Madame de Beauséant and ask her if she can introduce me to Madame la Maréchale.’

Eugène glowed inside at the thought of calling on the vicomtesse dressed as smartly as he would be from now on. What moralists call the murkiest depths of the human heart are merely the deceptive thoughts, the involuntary urges, of self-interest. These peripeteia, the subject of so many tirades, these sudden reversals, are calculated moves in the pursuit of pleasure. On seeing himself well dressed, well gloved and well heeled, Rastignac forgot his virtuous resolve. When Youth lapses into error, it dares not look into the mirror of its conscience, whereas Ripe Old Age has already seen itself reflected there: therein lies the difference between these two ages of man. Over the past few days, the two neighbours, Eugène and old man Goriot, had become good friends. Their secret friendship sprang from the same psychological phenomena that had stirred up such conflicting feelings between Vautrin and the student. The bold philosopher who sets out to establish how our feelings influence the physical world will surely find ample proof of their effect on matter in the connections they create between us and the animal kingdom. What physiognomist is a swifter judge of character than a dog deciding whether a stranger is sympathetic or not? Elective affinity, an adage familiar to all, is one of those facts fixed in the language that belie the philosophical rubbish filling the minds of those who like to sift through the peelings of primitive words.¹³⁴ You feel loved. That feeling leaves its mark on all things and crosses every space. A letter is a living soul, such a faithful echo of the spoken voice that discerning minds count it among the richest treasures of love. Old man Goriot, whose impulsive sensibility raised him to the sublime level of canine intuition, had sniffed out the compassion, the admiring generosity, the youthful sympathy which he had aroused in the student’s heart. However, this nascent bond had not yet led them to confide in each other. Although Eugène had revealed his desire to see Madame de Nucingen, he wasn’t counting on the old man for his first introduction to her; but he did hope some indiscretion might serve him well. To date, old man Goriot’s only pronouncement on the subject of his daughters concerned what Rastignac had blurted out on the day he had paid his two calls. ‘My dear sir,’ he had said to him the next day, ‘how could you possibly have thought that Madame de Restaud took umbrage at the mention of my name? My two daughters love me dearly. No father could be happier. The only flies in the ointment are my two sons-in-law who have behaved shabbily towards me. As I didn’t want those dear creatures to bear the brunt of my quarrel with their husbands, I chose to see them in secret. The mystery of it makes me happy in a thousand ways, which other fathers, who can see their daughters whenever they like, are incapable of understanding. I don’t have the choice, you see. So when it’s fine, I find out from their maids whether my daughters are going out and I head over to the Champs-Elysées. I wait for them to go by, I see their carriages coming and my heart beats faster, I admire the way they’re dressed, and as they pass, they toss me a little smile that turns everything to gold, as if struck by a dazzling ray of sun. And I stay where I am, to catch them on their way back. Here they come again! The fresh air has done them good, brought colour to their cheeks. I hear the man next to me say: “There goes a beautiful woman!” and my heart rejoices. After all, aren’t they my own flesh and blood? I love the very horses that draw them and I wish I was the little dog sitting in their lap. I live off their pleasure. Every man has his own way of loving; mine harms no one, so why would the world take any notice of me? I am happy, after my fashion. Is it against the law for me to go and see my daughters in the evening, just as they’re leaving for a ball? How bereft I feel if I arrive too late and am told: “Madame has already left.” One evening I waited until three in the morning to see Nasie, after two days without a single glimpse. I nearly died of delight! So please, if you must mention my name, be sure to say how good my girls are to me. They’re always trying to shower me with all kinds of presents; I stop them, I say, “Keep your money! What good is it to me? I have everything I need.” Indeed, dear Monsieur, what am I but a poor skeleton whose soul is wherever my daughters are? When you have seen Madame de Nucingen, tell me which of the two you find most beautiful,’ said the old man after a moment’s silence, seeing that Eugène was preparing to go out for a stroll round the Tuileries until it was time to call on Madame de Beauséant.

This walk proved fatal to the student. He was noticed by a number of women. He was so handsome, so young, so elegantly and tastefully dressed! Seeing himself the object of such attention, even admiration, he thought no more of the sisters and aunt he had fleeced, nor of his virtuous repugnance. He had seen flying overhead that demon so easily mistaken for an angel, the iridescent-winged Satan, who scatters rubies, fires his golden arrows at palace façades, turns women crimson, adorns thrones – at bottom so simple – with fool’s gold; he had listened to this pyrotechnic god of vanity whose tawdry brilliance seems to us a symbol of power. Vautrin’s words, cynical though they were, had embedded themselves in his heart just as the unprepossessing face of an old pedlar-woman remains printed on a virgin’s memory, once she has been foretold: ‘Reams of love and gold!’ After strolling around indolently for a while, Eugène went to call on Madame de Beauséant at around five o’clock and there he received one of those terrible blows against which young hearts are defenceless. Up until then he had found the vicomtesse full of the polished courtesy, the honeyed grace imparted by an aristocratic education, which are only truly accomplished when they come from the heart.

When he entered, Madame de Beauséant made a curt gesture and said brusquely: ‘Monsieur de Rastignac, it is impossible for me to see you, at least not now! I have pressing business to attend to …’

To a keen observer, and Rastignac had swiftly become one, this sentence, her gesture, her look, the intonation of her voice, clearly told of the character and customs of her caste. He perceived the iron hand beneath the velvet glove; the temperament, the egotism, beneath the manners; the wood beneath the varnish. In all, he heard the ‘I, THE KING’ which rolls out from the plumes of the throne to the tip of the crest of the lowest-ranking nobleman. Eugène had too readily taken the woman’s words at face value, wanting to believe in her nobility. Like all needy souls, he had signed in good faith the delightful pact binding benefactor to beneficiary, whose first article stipulates absolute equality between the generous-hearted. Charity, which makes two beings one, is a divine passion, as misunderstood and as rare as true love. Both express the profusions of a noble soul. Rastignac was determined to make it to the Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball, so he took this blow on the chin.

‘Madame,’ he said, his voice choked with emotion, ‘if it were not a matter of some importance, I would not have come to disturb you; grant me the favour of seeing you later, I’ll wait.’

‘Very well! Come and dine with me,’ she said, a little embarrassed at the harshness of her words; for this woman really was as good as she was noble.

Although touched by her sudden change of heart, as he went out Eugène said to himself: ‘Bow and scrape, do whatever it takes. What must the others be like, if, from one moment to the next, the best of women reneges on her promise of friendship and casts you off like an old shoe? So it’s every man for himself? At the same time, it’s true that her house isn’t a shop, and it’s wrong of me to need her help. I must turn myself into a cannonball, as Vautrin said.’ The student’s bitter musings were soon dispelled as he thought ahead to the pleasure of dining with the vicomtesse. And so, by a kind of inevitability, the slightest events in his life were conspiring to drive him in a direction, which – if the terrible sphinx of the Maison Vauquer was to be believed – would lead him, as on a battlefield, to kill or be killed, to deceive or be deceived; to leave his heart, his conscience at the gate, to wear a mask, to dupe other men mercilessly, and, as at Lacedaemonia,¹³⁵ to win his laurels by stealthily seizing his chance. Upon his return, he found the vicomtesse full of the grace and kindness she had always previously shown him. Together they entered the dining room – whose table glittered with the luxury that, as everyone knows, reached its zenith during the Restoration¹³⁶ – where the vicomte awaited his wife. Like many world-weary men, virtually the only pleasure left to Monsieur de Beauséant was that of dining well; indeed, his particular brand of gourmandise was on a par with that of Louis XVIII and the Duc d’Escars.¹³⁷ His table was therefore doubly sumptuous, in terms of both what was served and what it was served in. Eugène could hardly believe his eyes, for this was the first time he had dined in a house where social grandeur was hereditary. The suppers held after balls under the Empire, where military men would fortify themselves to prepare for the internal and external struggles they faced, had just gone out of fashion. Eugène had only ever been to balls. The aplomb that would later serve him so well, which he was even now beginning to acquire, stopped him short of gawping like an idiot. But the sight of the ornate silverware and the thousand elegant details of a sumptuous table, the experience, for the very first time, of discreet and soundless service, made it hard for a man with an imagination as ardent as his not to prefer this infinitely stylish life over the life of privation he had vowed to embrace that morning. His thoughts transported him to the boarding house for a moment, making him shudder with such deep revulsion that he swore to leave in January, as much to take more salubrious lodgings as to flee Vautrin, whose heavy hand he still felt on his shoulder. If a man of good sense were to cast his mind over the thousand kinds of corruption, both spoken and unspoken, that are found in Paris, he would ask himself why on earth the State builds schools there, assembles young people there, how pretty women are ever respected there and how it is that the gold flaunted by moneychangers doesn’t magically take flight from their scale-pans. But considering how few crimes, or indeed misdemeanours, are committed by young men, we must surely show the greatest respect for these patient Tantalus types¹³⁸ who battle with themselves and who almost always come out victorious! If his struggle with Paris were skilfully depicted, the Poor Student would be one of the most dramatic subjects of modern times. The looks Madame de Beauséant cast at Eugène inviting him to talk came to nothing; he did not wish to speak in front of the vicomte.

‘You’re taking me to the Italiens this evening?’ the vicomtesse asked her husband.

‘Why, nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ he replied with a mocking gallantry which entirely fooled the student, ‘but I have arranged to meet someone at the Variétés.’

‘His mistress,’ she said to herself.

‘You’re not seeing Ajuda this evening?’ asked the vicomte.

‘No,’ she replied, testily.

‘Well! If you absolutely must have an arm, take Monsieur de Rastignac’s.’

The vicomtesse looked at Eugène, smiling. ‘It would be very compromising for you,’ she said.

‘As Monsieur de Chateaubriand once said, The Frenchman loves danger, for there he finds glory,’ replied Rastignac with a bow.

Moments later he was in a coupé with Madame de Beauséant, being swiftly borne towards that most fashionable of theatres, and thought he must be in a fairy tale when he entered a box in the centre and realized that, together with the vicomtesse, who was magnificently dressed, every lorgnette in the house was trained upon him. Each new delight was proving more intoxicating than the last.

‘You wish to tell me something,’ said Madame de Beauséant. ‘Ah! look, there’s Madame de Nucingen, three boxes along. Her sister and Monsieur de Trailles are on the other side.’ As she was speaking, the vicomtesse glanced at the box where Mademoiselle de Rochefide ought to be, and when she saw that Monsieur d’Ajuda was not there, her face took on an extraordinary glow.

‘She’s lovely,’ said Eugène, taking a look at Madame de Nucingen.

‘She has pale eyelashes.’

‘Yes, but what a pretty, slim waist!’

‘She has big hands.’

‘Such beautiful eyes!’

‘Her face is rather long.’

‘But its length has refinement.’

‘Which is more than you could say about the rest of her. Look at the way she keeps raising and lowering her lorgnette! Every movement she makes betrays the Goriot in her,’ said the vicomtesse, to Eugène’s great astonishment.

Indeed, Madame de Beauséant was scanning the house through her opera glasses, and, although she appeared to be paying no attention to Madame de Nucingen, hadn’t missed a single gesture she’d made. The theatre was packed full of exquisitely beautiful women. Delphine de Nucingen was more than a little flattered to be the sole object of the attentions of Madame de Beauséant’s young, handsome, elegant cousin: he had eyes only for her.

‘If you don’t stop staring at her like that, you will cause a scandal, Monsieur de Rastignac. You will never get anywhere by throwing yourself at a woman.’

‘Dear cousin,’ said Eugène, ‘you have already shown me such kindness; if you can see your way to finishing the work you have begun, all I ask of you is a service which would mean little to you and a great deal to me. I have lost my heart.’

‘So soon?’

‘Yes.’

‘To that woman?’

‘Would my suit be heard elsewhere?’ he said, looking meaningfully into his cousin’s eyes. ‘Madame la Duchesse de Carigliano is connected with Madame la Duchesse de Berry,’ he continued after a pause; ‘you are bound to see her – would you be kind enough to present me to her and take me to the ball she is giving on Monday? I’ll meet Madame de Nucingen there and I’ll enter the fray.’

‘Gladly,’ she said. ‘If you’ve taken a liking to her already, your love affair is off to a good start. De Marsay is in Princesse Galathionne’s box. Madame de Nucingen is writhing with pique. There’s no better time to approach a woman, particularly a banker’s wife. The ladies of the Chaussée d’Antin all yearn for vengeance.’

‘What would you do, in her place?’

‘I, dear cousin, would suffer in silence.’

At this point the Marquis d’Ajuda stepped into Madame de Beauséant’s box.

‘I’ve messed up my affairs to come and meet you here,’ he said, ‘and I’m telling you so my sacrifice isn’t in vain.’

The radiance which streamed from the vicomtesse’s face taught Eugène how to recognize the outpourings of genuine love and not to confuse them with the simpering airs of Parisian coquetry. Tongue-tied with admiration, he looked at his cousin and, with a sigh, gave up his seat to Monsieur d’Ajuda. ‘How noble, how sublime a creature a woman is who loves like this!’ he said to himself. ‘And here’s a man would betray her for some doll! How could anyone betray her?’ His heart filled with a childish rage. He wanted to throw himself at Madame de Beauséant’s feet, he wished for the demonic power to carry her away in his heart, as an eagle sweeps up a white suckling kid from the plain to its eyrie. He was ashamed to be in this great gallery of beauty without his own painting, without a mistress of his own. ‘To have a mistress and to be as good as royal,’ he said to himself: ‘these are the emblems of power!’ And he looked at Madame de Nucingen as a man who has been challenged eyes his adversary. The vicomtesse turned towards him, discreetly expressing her heartfelt gratitude with a flicker of her eyelids. The first act ended.

‘Do you know Madame de Nucingen well enough to introduce Monsieur de Rastignac to her?’ she asked the Marquis d’Ajuda.

‘I’m sure she will be delighted to meet Monsieur,’ said the marquis.

The handsome Portuguese nobleman stood up, took the student’s arm and, in the blink of an eye, Rastignac found himself at Madame de Nucingen’s side.

‘Madame la Baronne,’ said the marquis, ‘allow me to present to you the Chevalier Eugène de Rastignac, cousin of the Vicomtesse de Beauséant. You have made such a deep impression on him that I wanted to make his happiness complete by bringing him before his idol.’

He spoke these words in a playful tone of voice that made palatable their rather blunt intention, albeit one which never displeases a woman if well expressed. Madame de Nucingen smiled and offered Eugène the seat which had just been vacated by her husband.

‘I dare not ask you to remain here with me, Monsieur,’ she said to him. ‘When a man has the good fortune to be close to Madame de Beauséant, he stays where he is.’

‘I rather think, Madame,’ murmured Eugène softly, ‘that I will best please my cousin by staying here with you. Before Monsieur le Marquis joined us, we were speaking of you and of your distinguished appearance,’ he said, raising his voice again.

Monsieur d’Ajuda withdrew.

‘Monsieur,’ said the baronne, ‘are you really going to stay? Then we’ll get to know each other. Madame de Restaud has already given me a burning desire to meet you.’

‘She can’t have meant it, because she had me thrown out of her house.’

‘Really?’

‘Madame, I’ll gladly tell you why; but I must ask for your indulgence if I’m to reveal my secret. I lodge next door to your father. Not knowing that Madame de Restaud was his daughter, I was unwise enough to mention him, in all innocence, and this upset your dear sister and her husband. Madame la Duchesse de Langeais and my cousin found this display of filial disloyalty most unseemly. When I described the scene to them, they laughed until they cried. Then Madame de Beauséant spoke of you in extremely flattering terms, comparing you to your sister and saying how good you were to Monsieur Goriot, my neighbour. Indeed, how could you fail to love him? He worships you with such passion that I’m already jealous. We talked about you for two hours this morning. This evening, at dinner with my cousin, my head was so full of your father’s words that I said to her you couldn’t possibly be as beautiful as you were loving. No doubt wishing to encourage such warm admiration, Madame de Beauséant brought me with her tonight, mentioning with her customary delicacy that I would see you here.’

‘Dear me, Monsieur,’ said the banker’s wife; ‘so I owe you a debt of gratitude already? At this rate, we’ll soon be old friends.’

‘Although friendship with you must be beyond the realm of common feeling,’ said Rastignac, ‘I would never wish to be your friend.’

Women always find delightful the foolish stock phrases trotted out by beginners; they only seem lame when read in cold blood. A young man’s gestures, looks, his intonation, give them inestimable value. Madame de Nucingen found Rastignac charming. Then, the way women do, when unable to respond to a question put as bluntly as the one the student had just left hanging in the air, she replied on another point.

‘Yes, my sister has let herself down by her behaviour towards our poor father, who has been divinely generous to us both. Monsieur de Nucingen had to order me point blank not to receive my father in the morning, before I gave in. But it’s been making me feel miserable for a while now. I cry whenever I think about it. His hostility, yet another example of the inhumanity of marriage, has been one of the most grievous causes of our domestic strife. Although in the eyes of the world I may be the happiest woman in Paris, in reality, I’m the unhappiest. You must think I’m mad to talk to you like this. But you know my father, which means I’m unable to see you as a stranger.’

‘You can never have met anyone’, Eugène said to her, ‘driven by a stronger desire to live for you alone. What do all women seek? Happiness,’ he continued, in a voice that went straight to the heart. ‘Well then, if, for a woman, happiness means being loved, adored, having a companion in whom to confide her desires, her thoughts, her grief, her joy; laying bare her soul, with its sweet imperfections and its fine qualities, without fear of betrayal: believe me, this devoted, ever ardent heart can only be found in a young man, full of illusions, who would surrender his life at a single sign from you, who still knows nothing of the world and wants to know nothing, since you are the world for him. As for me, well, you will smile at my naivety. I’ve just arrived from the provinces, wholly green, having only ever known good honest souls, and never thinking to find love here. It so happens that I’ve met my cousin, who has revealed almost too much of her heart; she has opened my eyes to the thousand treasures of passionate love; like Cherubino,¹³⁹ I’ll be in love with all women until I can devote myself to one alone. When I came in and saw you, I was drawn towards you as if magnetically. You had already been so much in my thoughts! But I never dreamed that you’d be as beautiful as you are in reality. Madame de Beauséant told me to stop staring at you. She doesn’t know how irresistibly my eyes are drawn to your pretty red lips, your white skin, your soft eyes. I, too, am mad to speak such wild thoughts aloud, but let me say them anyway.’

Nothing pleases a woman more than to have such an outpouring of sweet words murmured in her ear. The most fervent church-goer will listen to them, even if she won’t allow herself to reply. Having started in this vein, Rastignac went on to recite his rosary in a low, but warm, voice; and Madame de Nucingen encouraged Eugène with her smiles, all the while keeping an eye on de Marsay, who didn’t once leave Princesse Galathionne’s box. Rastignac stayed sitting next to Madame de Nucingen until her husband came to take her home.

‘Madame,’ Eugène said to her, ‘I shall have the pleasure of calling on you before the Duchesse de Carigliano’s ball.’

‘Ssince Matame hass inwited you,’ said the baron, a thickset man of Alsace, whose round face had a dangerously sharp expression, ‘you’re pound to be vell resseeft.’¹⁴⁰

‘I’m off to a good start: she didn’t shy away when I asked her if she could love me. The horse has taken the bit; now we must leap astride and seize the reins,’ Eugène said to himself, as he went to bid farewell to Madame de Beauséant, who had risen and was about to leave with d’Ajuda. The poor student didn’t know that the baronne’s thoughts had been quite elsewhere, as she was expecting one of those devastatingly conclusive letters from de Marsay. Delighted with his illusory success, Eugène accompanied the vicomtesse out to the porchway to wait for her carriage.

‘Your cousin has changed beyond recognition,’ said the Portuguese count to the vicomtesse, laughing, when Eugène had left them. ‘He’s going to break the bank. He’s as slippery as an eel and I’m sure he’ll go far. Only you could have picked out a woman for him at precisely the time she’s most in need of consolation.’

‘Although it remains to be seen’, said Madame de Beauséant, ‘whether she’s still in love with the man who’s about to jilt her.’

The student walked back from the Théâtre-Italien to the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, making the sweetest plans. He hadn’t failed to notice how attentively Madame de Restaud had scrutinized him, both in the vicomtesse’s box and in that of Madame de Nucingen, and he presumed that the comtesse’s door would no longer be closed to him. This meant that he was already on the verge of acquiring four major connections – for he was counting on winning over the maréchale – at the heart of Parisian high society. Without dwelling too much on ways and means, he had already worked out that in society’s complex game of interests he needed a cog to ride on to get to the top of the machine; once there, he felt he had it in his powers to put a spoke or two in its wheel. ‘If Madame de Nucingen shows an interest in me, I’ll teach her how to handle her husband. That husband of hers turns everything he touches into gold; with his help, I could make my fortune in no time.’ He didn’t put this to himself so bluntly: he wasn’t yet politically minded enough to estimate, evaluate and calculate a situation; his ideas drifted across the horizon in the shape of light clouds, and, although they lacked the vehemence of those of Vautrin, if they’d been tested in the crucible of conscience they’d have yielded nothing pure. It is by a series of transactions of this nature that men arrive at the loose morality professed by our current age. Today, more than ever before, they have become a rarity, those singular men of rectitude, those strong wills that never yield to evil, for whom even the slightest deviation from the straight and narrow seems criminal; magnificent icons of probity who have given us two masterpieces: Molière’s Alceste and, recently, Jeanie Deans and her father, in Walter Scott’s novel.¹⁴¹ Perhaps a work portraying the opposite, a depiction of the tortuous route taken by the conscience of an ambitious man of the world, as he flirts with evil in an attempt to achieve his goal while keeping up appearances, would be no less fine or dramatic. By the time he reached the boarding house, Rastignac had fallen for Madame de Nucingen, who had seemed so slim, as slender as a swallow. The dizzying softness of her eyes, the silkiness of her skin, so delicately textured he could almost see the blood that flowed beneath it, the enchanting sound of her voice, her blonde hair: he remembered everything; and perhaps the walk, by stirring his blood, had also played a role in his infatuation. The student banged on old man Goriot’s door.

‘Neighbour,’ he said, ‘I’ve just seen Madame Delphine.’

‘Where?’

‘At the Italiens.’

‘Was she enjoying herself? Come in, come in.’ And the old man got up to open the door in his nightshirt, then immediately hopped back into bed. ‘So – tell me all about her,’ he demanded.

Eugène, finding himself in old Goriot’s room for the first time, was unable to stop himself starting with astonishment when he saw the squalor in which the father lived, having just been admiring the daughter’s finery. The window had no curtains; the paper on the walls was peeling off and curling up due to damp in several places, exposing bare plaster yellowed by smoke. The old man lay on a shabby bed covered by only a threadbare blanket and a patchwork counterpane made of scraps of material salvaged from Madame Vauquer’s old dresses. The tiled floor was damp and coated with dust. Opposite the window was one of those old pot-bellied rosewood chests of drawers, with brass handles twisted into the form of climbing stems decorated with leaves or flowers; an old washstand topped with a wooden slab bearing a water jug and basin and the implements a man needs to trim his beard himself. In one corner were his boots; at the head of the bed was a bedside table with neither door nor marble top; to the side of the hearth, which showed not the slightest trace of a fire, was the square walnut-wood table upon whose crossbar Goriot had twisted his silver-gilt dish. A scuffed writing desk, which the old man used to stand his hat on, a grimy armchair stuffed with straw and two chairs completed this miserable collection of furniture. Suspended from the bed canopy, itself hanging from the ceiling by a thread, was a worn strip of red and white checked fabric. The garret of the poorest of errand boys was surely not as meanly furnished as the lodgings Madame Vauquer had allocated old man Goriot. The sight of this room made you shiver, it broke your heart, it resembled the most squalid cell in a prison. Fortunately, Goriot didn’t notice the expression that flashed across Eugène’s face as he set his candle down on the bedside table. Goriot turned over to lie on his side, keeping the covers pulled right up under his chin.

‘Now, who do you prefer: Madame de Restaud or Madame de Nucingen?’

‘I prefer Madame Delphine,’ replied the student, ‘because she loves you more.’

When he heard these warmly spoken words, the old man reached out an arm from under the covers and shook Eugène’s hand.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ replied the old man, moved. ‘What did she say about me?’

The student repeated what the baronne had said, with some embellishment, and the old man listened as if he were receiving God’s word.

‘Sweet child! Yes, she loves me. But don’t believe what she said about Anastasie. The two sisters are rivals, you see; it’s just further proof of their affection. Madame de Restaud loves me just as dearly. I know. A father is with his children as God is with us all: he reaches right to the bottom of our hearts and judges our intentions. They are both as loving as each other. Oh! If I’d only had kind sons-in-law, I’d have been so happy. Although perhaps earthly happiness can never be complete. If I’d lived in the same house as them, just hearing their voices, knowing they were there, seeing them come and go as they did when I had them at home with me: that would have made my heart leap with joy. Were they beautifully dressed?’

‘They were, yes,’ said Eugène. ‘But Monsieur Goriot, with daughters as well provided for as yours, why are you living in such a hovel?’

‘Dear me,’ he said, with seeming unconcern, ‘what difference would a little more comfort make to me? I’m hardly fit to explain these things to you; I can barely string two words together. It’s all in here,’ he added, striking his heart. ‘My two daughters are my whole life. If they’re enjoying themselves, if they’re happy, finely dressed, if they have carpets to walk on, what does it matter where I lay my head and what clothes I wear? I’m never cold if they are warm and never bored if they’re amused. I only suffer when they do. When you’re a father, when, as you listen to your children babble, you say to yourself, “This came from me!” when you sense how those little creatures connect with every drop of your blood, and they’re the finest flower that ever sprang from it, indeed they are! then you feel their skin is one with yours, you’re moved by every step they take. Their voices answer mine wherever I go. One sad look from them makes my blood run cold. One day you’ll understand the way their joy makes us far happier than our own. I can’t explain it: something moves you inside and fills you with bliss. In short, I’m living three lives! Let me tell you something strange. When I became a father, I understood God. He is whole and present everywhere because all creation came from him. So it is with me and my daughters, Monsieur. Only I love my daughters more than God loves the world, because the world isn’t as beautiful as God and my daughters are more beautiful than I. They are so near and dear to my heart that I sensed you’d see them tonight. Lord! A man who would make my little Delphine as happy as a woman is when she’s truly loved: why, I’d polish his boots, I’d be his errand boy! I heard from her chambermaid what a bad lot that nasty little Monsieur de Marsay is. I’ve often felt the urge to break his neck. Not to love a jewel of a woman, with the voice of a nightingale and perfectly made! What on earth made her go and marry that great lump of an Alsatian? What they both need are loving, handsome young men. Well, well, they followed their fancy.’

Old man Goriot was sublime. Eugène had never before seen him lit up with the flames of fatherly love. The power of feelings to draw out what a man has in his soul is remarkable. However coarse a beast he is, as soon as he expresses strong and genuine affection, he gives off a vital fluid which changes his features, animates his gestures and colours his voice. Often, driven by passion, even the dullest creature manages to achieve the highest eloquence in his ideas, even in his language, and will seem to move in a bright sphere. At this precise moment, the old man’s voice, his gestures, had all the contagious emotion of a great actor. But then, are not our noble feelings the poetries of the will?

‘In that case,’ said Eugène, ‘perhaps it won’t displease you to learn that she’s about to break with de Marsay. That coxcomb has transferred his affections from her to Princesse Galathionne. As for me, I fell in love with Madame Delphine this evening.’

‘Did you now!’ said old man Goriot.

‘Yes. She appeared to enjoy my company. We spoke of love for an hour and I’m to call on her the day after tomorrow, Saturday.’

‘Oh! How much I would love you, dear Monsieur, if she took a liking to you. You’re a good man, you wouldn’t make her life a misery. If you betrayed her, I’d slit your throat, for a start. A woman doesn’t love twice, see? Dear me! I’m talking nonsense, Monsieur Eugène. It’s too cold in here for you. Dear me! So what did she tell you, what message did she give you for me?’

‘Nothing,’ Eugène thought to himself. Aloud, he replied, ‘She asked me to send you a kiss from your loving daughter.’

‘Farewell, neighbour, sleep well, sweet dreams; mine are blessed by those words. May God grant your every wish! You have been a guardian angel to me this evening; you have brought me the very air my daughter breathed.’

‘Poor man,’ said Eugène to himself as he went to bed; ‘it’s enough to melt a heart of marble. His daughter no more had a thought for him than she did for the Grand Turk.’

This conversation led old man Goriot to view his neighbour as an unhoped-for confidant, a friend. The only connection that could lead the old fellow to feel affection for another man had been established between them. One and one always makes two, when it comes to love. Old Goriot imagined he could be nearer to his daughter Delphine, he thought he would be able to visit her more often, if Eugène were to become close to the baronne. We might add that he had confided in Eugène a source of his grief. Madame de Nucingen, whose happiness he wished for a thousand times a day, had never known the sweet delights of love. Eugène was certainly, as he put it, one of the kindest young men he’d ever seen, and he had a hunch that he would give her all the pleasure of which she had been deprived. And so the friendship that the old fellow had begun to feel towards his neighbour – without which the end of this story would probably never have been known – continued to grow.

The next morning at déjeuner, the intent look which old Goriot gave Eugène as he sat down next to him, the few words he spoke to him and the change in his face, which usually resembled a plaster mask, were a source of surprise to the boarders. This was Vautrin’s first encounter with the student since their discussion and he stared at him as if trying to see into his soul. Remembering Vautrin’s scheme, Eugène, who, before falling asleep that night, had surveyed the vast field of action opening up before him, was inevitably thinking about Mademoiselle Taillefer’s dowry and couldn’t help looking at Victorine in the way even the most virtuous young man will look at a rich heiress. Their eyes met by chance. The poor girl didn’t fail to notice how handsome Eugène looked in his new outfit. The glance they exchanged was meaningful enough to convince Rastignac that he had become the object of those confused desires that seize all young women and which they pin on the first attractive man who comes along. A voice cried out to him: ‘Eight hundred thousand francs!’ But he briskly threw himself back into his memories of the previous evening, thinking that his illusory passion for Madame de Nucingen would be an antidote to his involuntarily wicked thoughts.

‘Last night at the Italiens they performed Rossini’s Barber of Seville. I’ve never heard such delightful music,’ he said. ‘How wonderful to have a box at the Italiens!’

Old man Goriot snapped up these passing remarks as a dog hangs on his master’s every move.

‘You’re like pigs in clover, you men,’ said Madame Vauquer; ‘you do just as you please.’

‘How did you come back?’ asked Vautrin.

‘On foot,’ replied Eugène.

‘Personally,’ the tempter went on, ‘I wouldn’t settle for half-pleasures; I’d want to go there in my carriage, in my box, and be brought home in comfort. “All or nothing!” That’s my motto.’

‘And a good one it is too,’ replied Madame Vauquer.

‘Perhaps you’ll be calling on Madame de Nucingen,’ murmured Eugène to old Goriot. ‘I’m sure she’ll receive you with open arms; she’ll want to ask you a thousand little things about me. I’ve heard that she’d do anything in the world to be received at the house of my cousin, Madame la Vicomtesse de Beauséant. Be sure to tell her that fulfilling her wish is foremost in my mind, such is my love for her.’

Rastignac left for the Ecole de Droit¹⁴² soon afterwards, wanting to spend as little time as possible in that hateful house. He wandered around aimlessly for most of the day, his mind full of the feverish thoughts familiar to young men tormented by overly great expectations. Vautrin’s arguments had just started him thinking about life in society, when he bumped into his friend Bianchon in the Jardin du Luxembourg.¹⁴³

‘Where did you get such a long face?’ asked the medical student, taking his arm as they strolled in front of the palace.

‘I’m plagued with terrible temptations.’

‘What kind? You can cure temptations, you know.’

‘How?’

‘By giving in to them.’

‘You may laugh, knowing nothing of my situation. Have you read Rousseau?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you remember the passage where he asks the reader what he would do if he could get rich by killing a mandarin in China solely by force of will,¹⁴⁴ without budging from Paris?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well?’

‘Hah! I’m on my thirty-third mandarin.’

‘I’m not joking. Look, if it were proved to you that the thing is possible and all you have to do is nod your head, would you do it?’

‘Is he very old, the mandarin? Hmm. Young or old, paralytic or the picture of health, why … Darn it! No, I wouldn’t.’

‘You’re a good chap, Bianchon. But if you loved a woman so much it was turning your heart inside-out, and if she needed money, a lot of money, for her gowns, for her carriage, for everything that took her fancy – what then?’

‘What, you make me lose my mind, then you want me to use it?’

‘Listen, Bianchon, I’m going mad, cure me. I have two sisters, beautiful, innocent angels, and I want them to be happy. Where can I find two hundred thousand francs for their dowries in the space of five years? You see, sometimes in life you have to play for high stakes instead of frittering away your luck on winning pennies.’

‘Why, you’re asking the question that hangs over everyone when they start out in life, only you want to cut the Gordian knot.¹⁴⁵ My dear friend, none but Alexander can behave like that, anyone else ends up in gaol. As for me, I’ll be content to carve out a modest living for myself in the provinces, simply by stepping into my father’s shoes. A man can satisfy his inclinations just as fully within the smallest circle as he can within a vast circumference. Napoleon didn’t eat two dinners a night and had no more mistresses than a medical student boarding with the Capuchin friars. Our happiness, dear friend, will always fit between the soles of our feet and the crown of our head; and whether it costs us a million a year or a hundred louis, we all, inside, have the same intrinsic perception of it. My verdict is that the Chinaman should live.’

‘Thank you! You’ve made me feel much better, Bianchon. We’ll always be friends.’

‘By the way,’ continued the medical student, ‘as I was coming out of Cuvier’s lecture¹⁴⁶ at the Jardin des Plantes, I noticed Michonneau and Poiret on a bench in conversation with a man I saw during the riots last year near the Chamber of Deputies, who, if you ask me, is a man of the police disguised as an honest bourgeois of private means. Keep your eye on those two: I’ll tell you why. Well, goodbye, I must go and answer the four o’clock roll-call.’

When Eugène arrived back at the boarding house, he found Goriot waiting for him.

‘Here,’ said the old man, ‘you have a letter from Delphine. Such pretty handwriting!’

Eugène opened the letter and read it.

‘Let me see it,’ said the old man to Eugène once he’d finished reading the letter. ‘You will go, won’t you?’ he added, smelling the paper. ‘What a sweet scent! You can tell her fingers have touched this!’

‘A woman doesn’t throw herself at a man like that,’ the student said to himself. ‘She wants to use me to get de Marsay back. Only pique would make her do such a thing.’

‘So,’ said old man Goriot, ‘what’s on your mind?’

Eugène knew nothing of the delirium of vanity affecting certain women at that time and was unaware that a banker’s wife was capable of any sacrifice that would open a door for her to the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was a time when fashionable opinion had begun to rate the women belonging to the Faubourg Saint-Germain set – known as the Ladies of the Petit Château¹⁴⁷ – above all others. Madame de Beauséant, her friend the Duchesse de Langeais, and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse ranked highest of all. Only Rastignac was oblivious to the burning ambition among the women of the Chaussée d’Antin to be admitted to this upper circle, where the constellations of their sex shone brightest. But his wariness served him well: it made him cool-headed and gave him the ambiguous power of imposing terms rather than accepting them.

‘Yes, I’ll go,’ he replied.

And so curiosity led him to Madame de Nucingen’s door, whereas if she’d spurned him perhaps he’d have been drawn there by passion. Still, he waited for the next day and the time of his departure with some impatience. A young man’s first affair may afford him as many delights as his first love. Being confident of success spawns a thousand pleasures that men never admit to and which gives certain women all their charm. Desire may be born as much of the ease of a conquest as of its difficulty. Indeed, all human passions are sparked off or fuelled by one or other of these two causes, which divide the empire of love between them. Perhaps this rift is a consequence of the greater question of temperament which, whatever anyone says, governs society. While the melancholic require the stimulation of coquetry, perhaps the choleric or sanguine lose interest when they encounter prolonged resistance. To put it another way, the elegy is as phlegmatic as the dithyramb is choleric.¹⁴⁸ As he dressed, Eugène savoured all the little delights a young man never dares speak of for fear of being mocked, but which tickle his self-esteem. He arranged his hair, imagining a pretty woman’s gaze lingering on his black curls. He struck as many childish poses in the mirror as a young woman dressing for a ball. He eyed his slim waist with satisfaction as he smoothed the creases out of his coat.

‘Well, there are certainly worse-looking men!’ he said to himself. Then he went downstairs just as the regular boarders were sitting down to dinner and took in good spirit the chorus of foolish banter his elegant grooming provoked. A trait peculiar to boarding houses is the astonishment caused by smart dress. No one can wear anything new without everyone else having their say.

‘Kt, kt, kt, kt,’ said Bianchon, clicking his tongue against his palate, as if to spur on a horse.

‘Every inch the gentleman!’ said Madame Vauquer.

‘Monsieur is off a-courting?’ remarked Mademoiselle Michonneau.

‘Cock-a-doodle-do!’ crowed the painter.

‘My compliments to your lady wife,’ said the museum clerk.

‘Monsieur has a wife?’ asked Poiret.

‘A wife with compartments, seaworthy, perfect finish guaranteed, priced from 25 to 40 francs, check-patterned in the latest style, washable, beautifully cut, half-yarn, half-cotton, half-wool, cures toothache and other illnesses approved by the Royal Academy of Medicine! Also excellent for children! Better still for headaches, overeating, and other diseases of the oesophagus, eyes and ears,’ cried Vautrin with the comic, unstoppable patter of a fairground quack. ‘How much did this marvel cost me, I hear you ask, Gentlemen? Two sous? No. Nothing at all. A left-over from an order supplied to the Grand Mogul and which every sovereign in Europe, including the Grrrrrrrrand old Duke of Baden, has asked to see! Roll up, straight ahead there! Pay at the desk. And – music! Brooom, la la, trill! La, la, boom, boom! Oi! You on the clarinet, you’re flat,’ he continued in a hoarse voice. ‘Watch it or I’ll skin your knuckles.’

‘Lord! That man is so very agreeable, indeed he is,’ said Madame Vauquer to Madame Couture; ‘I’d never be bored with him around.’

Amidst all the laughing and joking set off by this speech and its comic delivery, Eugène caught a furtive glance from Mademoiselle Taillefer as she leaned towards Madame Couture and said a few words in her ear.

‘Your cab is here,’ said Sylvie.

‘So where’s he dining?’ asked Bianchon.

‘With Madame la Baronne de Nucingen.’

‘Monsieur Goriot’s daughter,’ replied the student.

At this they all stared at the old vermicelli dealer, who was looking at Eugène with a kind of envy.

Rastignac arrived at the Rue Saint-Lazare and entered one of those frivolous houses, with slim columns and scanty porticoes – which pass for handsome in Paris – a typical banker’s house, full of expensive, affected elegance, with stucco, and marble mosaic landings.¹⁴⁹ He found Madame de Nucingen in a small drawing room painted in the Italian style, whose decor resembled that of a café. The baronne was downcast. The attempts she made to hide her sadness aroused Eugène’s interest all the more keenly because they had nothing feigned about them. He had thought to make a woman happy by his presence and instead found her in despair. This disappointment wounded his pride.

‘I have very little right to your trust, Madame,’ he said, after chiding her for her troubled countenance; ‘but I’m counting on your good faith to tell me honestly if I am disturbing you.’

‘Stay,’ she said. ‘I’d be alone if you went. Nucingen is dining in town and I don’t want to be alone, I need to be distracted.’

‘Why, what’s wrong?’

‘You’re the last person I’d tell,’ she cried.

‘I want to know, as that means this secret concerns me in some way.’

‘Perhaps! No,’ she continued, ‘there are some domestic disputes that should stay buried at the bottom of the heart. Didn’t I tell you so the other day? – I’m not happy, no, not at all. The heaviest chains are made of gold.’

When a woman tells a young man that she’s unhappy, if that young man is sharp witted, well dressed, with fifteen hundred francs lying idle in his pocket, he is bound to think what Eugène thought and become conceited.

‘What more could you want?’ he replied. ‘You are beautiful, young, loved and rich.’

‘Let’s not talk about me,’ she said, with a miserable shake of her head. ‘We’ll dine here, the two of us, and then we’ll go and hear some delightful music. How do I look?’ she said, standing up to show him her white cashmere gown decorated in the most elegant and opulent Persian style.

‘I wish you were mine and mine alone,’ said Eugène. ‘You look enchanting.’

‘You’d be the owner of a poor estate,’ she said, with a bitter smile. ‘To you, there’s nothing here to suggest misfortune, and yet, despite appearances, I’m in despair. My anxiety keeps me awake at night, I shall become ugly.’

‘Oh, that’s impossible!’ said the student. ‘But I’m curious to hear about these sorrows that not even devoted love would banish.’

‘Ah! If I revealed what they were, you’d leave me,’ she said. ‘You still only love me with the gallantry a man affects out of habit; but if you really loved me, you’d be plunged into terrible despair. You see that I must keep it to myself. Please,’ she continued, ‘let’s talk about something else. Come and see my apartments.’

‘No, let’s stay here,’ replied Eugène, sitting down next to Madame de Nucingen on a love-seat by the fire and boldly taking hold of her hand.

She let him take it and even pressed his with one of those forceful movements that betray strong emotion.

‘Listen,’ said Rastignac; ‘if you have troubles, you must tell me what they are. Let me prove that I love you for yourself. Either speak out and say what’s wrong so I can put it right, even if it means killing six men, or I’ll leave and never come back.’

‘Very well,’ she cried, striking her brow at a despairing thought; ‘I’ll put you to the test right away.’ ‘Yes,’ she murmured to herself, ‘this is the only way left.’ She rang the bell.

‘Is Monsieur’s carriage ready?’ she asked her manservant.

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘I’ll take it. Give him mine, with my horses. Don’t serve dinner until seven.

‘Let’s go,’ she said to Eugène, who thought he must be dreaming when he found himself sitting next to her in Monsieur de Nucingen’s coupé.

‘To the Palais-Royal,’ she said to the coachman, ‘near the Théâtre-Français.’

She seemed distracted on the way and refused to answer the thousands of questions Eugène fired at her, not knowing what to make of her stubborn, impenetrable silence.

‘I might lose her at any moment,’ he said to himself.

When the carriage pulled up, the baronne gave the student a look which stopped his wild words in mid-flow, for he had let himself get carried away.

‘You really do love me?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he replied, hiding the uneasiness that was creeping over him.

‘You won’t think ill of me, whatever I ask you to do?’

‘No.’

‘Are you ready to obey me?’

‘Blindly.’

‘Have you ever been to a gaming-house?’ she asked, with a tremor in her voice.

‘Never.’

‘Ah! I can breathe again. You’ll have good luck. Take my purse,’ she said. ‘Go on, take it! You’ll find a hundred francs in there; everything this happy woman owns. Go to a gaming-house; I know there are several near the Palais-Royal, although I’m not sure exactly where. Stake the hundred francs at a game called roulette and either lose the lot or bring back six thousand francs. I’ll tell you why I’m unhappy when you come back.’

‘I’ll be damned if I have the faintest idea what I’m about to do, but I’ll obey you,’ he said, with a rush of exhilaration as he thought, ‘She’s compromising herself with me; she’ll be unable to refuse me anything.’

Eugène took the pretty purse and ran to Number NINE,¹⁵⁰ after asking an old-clothes seller to point out the nearest gaming-house. He climbed the stairs, let his hat be taken, then went in and asked where the roulette was. The host led him to a long table. Undaunted by the astonished stares of the regulars, Eugène shamelessly asked where to put his stake.

‘If you put a single louis on one of these thirty-six numbers and it comes up, you’ll win thirty-six louis,’ a respectable, white-haired old man said to him.

Eugène threw the hundred francs onto the number of his age, twenty-one. Before he had time to collect himself, there was a cry of amazement. He had won without realizing it.

‘Take off your money,’ said the old man; ‘you won’t win twice with that system.’

Taking the rake the old man was holding out to him, Eugène swept the three thousand six hundred francs towards him and, still not knowing how the game worked, staked them on the red. The gallery watched him enviously, seeing him play again. The wheel turned, he won once more and the croupier pushed another three thousand six hundred francs his way.

‘You now have seven thousand two hundred francs,’ murmured the old man in his ear. ‘If I were you I’d leave; the red has come up eight times. If you’re feeling charitable, you’ll acknowledge this sound advice by relieving the poverty of one of Napoleon’s old prefects, who is down to his last penny.’

In a daze, Rastignac let the white-haired man take ten louis, then went back down the stairs with his seven thousand francs, still knowing nothing at all about the game but staggered by his good luck.

‘There! So where will you take me next!’ he said, showing Madame de Nucingen the seven thousand francs as soon as the door closed behind him.

Delphine threw her arms around him wildly and kissed him warmly, although not passionately. ‘You’ve saved me!’ Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks. ‘I’ll tell you everything, my dear friend. You will be my dear friend, won’t you? You see me as rich, wealthy, wanting for nothing or seeming to want for nothing! Well, you should know that Monsieur de Nucingen won’t let me have a single sou to spend as I please: he pays for the house, my carriages, my theatre boxes, but gives me a pittance for my clothes and is secretly reducing me to poverty to serve his interests. I’m too proud to beg. Why, I’d be the lowest of creatures if I purchased his money at the price he wants to sell it at! So how have I, with my dowry of seven hundred thousand francs, allowed myself to be robbed? Through pride, through anger. We’re so young, so naive, at the start of married life! The words I needed to use to ask my husband for money stuck in my throat; I never dared, I used up my savings and the money poor father gave me and then ran into debt. My marriage has been such a horrible disappointment, I can’t tell you: suffice it to say that I’d throw myself out of the window if Nucingen and I didn’t live in our own separate apartments. When I had to confess my debts to him, the jewels and little luxuries of a young lady (poor Father encouraged us never to deny ourselves a thing), I was racked with anxiety; but finally plucked up the courage to speak out. Didn’t I have my own fortune, after all? Nucingen was furious, he said that I would ruin him, terrible things! I wanted the earth to swallow me up. As he had taken my dowry, he settled my debts, but insisted that I should in future have a fixed allowance for my personal expenses, a condition I accepted to restore peace. Since then, I have tried to be worthy of the self-regard of someone you know,’ she said. ‘Although he has deceived me, it would be churlish of me not to recognize the nobility of his character. But really, the way he left me was shameful! One should never desert a woman to whom, on a day of distress, one has thrown a heap of gold! One should love her for ever! You, with your noble twenty-one-year-old soul, so young and pure, will ask me how a woman can accept gold from a man? Why! Isn’t it natural to share everything with the being to whom we owe our happiness? When you have given each other everything, why would you worry about a fraction of that whole? Money only takes on meaning at the point when feelings no longer have any. Aren’t we bound to each other for life? What woman foresees a separation while believing herself to be dearly loved? You swear you will love us for ever; how could our interests be anything but shared? You have no idea how I suffered today when Nucingen absolutely refused to give me six thousand francs, a sum he gives every month to his mistress, a trollop from the Opéra! I wanted to kill myself. The wildest ideas went through my head. At times I have envied the lot of a servant, of my maid. It would have been madness to go in search of my father! Anastasie and I have bled him dry. My poor father would have sold himself if he could have fetched six thousand francs; I would have driven him to despair for nothing. You have saved me from shame and death; I was beside myself with suffering. Ah! Monsieur, I owed you this explanation: I have been insanely reckless with you. When you left me and I lost sight of you, I wanted to run away, on foot … Where? I don’t know. This is how half the women in Paris live: wealthy on the outside, cruel cares inside their hearts. I know some poor creatures who are far worse off than I am. There are women who resort to having fake bills drawn up by their suppliers. There are those forced to steal from their husbands: some men believe that a cashmere worth a hundred louis sells for five hundred francs, others that a five-hundred-franc cashmere is worth a hundred louis. You’ll find some poor women who let their children go hungry to scrape enough together for a gown. I, however, have never stooped to such vile deception. That would be my worst fear. Although some women sell themselves to their husbands to gain the upper hand, I, at least, am free! I could let Nucingen shower me with gold, but I prefer to weep with my head on the heart of a man I can respect. Ah! This evening Monsieur de Marsay will have no right to look on me as a woman he has bought.’ She buried her head in her hands to hide her tears from Eugène, who uncovered her face to look at her: she was sublime in that state. ‘How terrible to confuse money and feelings. You’ll never be able to love me,’ she said.

Eugène was deeply moved by this juxtaposition of the fine feelings that make women so noble and the misdemeanours that the current state of society drives them to commit;¹⁵¹ he spoke gentle, consoling words, admiring this beautiful woman, whose cry of pain was so naively indiscreet.

‘Promise you won’t use this as a weapon against me,’ she said.

‘Ah, Madame! I could never do that,’ he said.

She took his hand and pressed it to her heart in a gesture full of gratitude and warmth. ‘Thanks to you, I feel happy and free again. I was living in the grip of an iron hand. I want to live simply from now on and spend nothing. You’ll like me as I am, won’t you, dear friend? Take this,’ she said, keeping back six banknotes for herself. ‘In all fairness, I owe you a thousand écus,¹⁵² for your contribution was equal to mine.’

Eugène defended himself like a virgin. But when the baronne said, ‘If you won’t be my partner, I’ll consider you my enemy’, he took the money. ‘I’ll keep it in reserve as a stake for a time of need,’ he said.

‘That’s exactly what I dreaded to hear you say,’ she exclaimed, going pale. ‘Should I ever mean anything to you,’ she said, ‘swear you’ll never gamble again. Dear God! Me – corrupt you! I’d die of grief.’

They had arrived. The contrast between such woe and such wealth made the student’s head spin, as he heard Vautrin’s grim words ringing in his ears.

‘Sit here,’ said the baronne, gesturing towards a love-seat by the fire in her room; ‘I’m going to write a difficult letter and I need your advice.’

‘Don’t write anything,’ said Eugène; ‘put the banknotes in an envelope, address it and have it delivered by your maid.’

‘Why, you treasure of a man,’ she said. ‘Ah, Monsieur! That’s what it is to have breeding! De Beauséant through and through,’ she said with a smile.

‘She’s delightful,’ Eugène said to himself, becoming increasingly smitten. He glanced around the room, whose sensual elegance had a touch of the rich courtesan about it.

‘Do you like it?’ she said, ringing for her maid.

‘Thérèse, take this to Monsieur de Marsay yourself and hand it to him in person. If he’s out, bring the letter back to me.’

Thérèse gave Eugène a mischievous look and went out. Dinner was announced. Rastignac gave Madame de Nucingen his arm and she led him into a delightful dining room, where he found the same glittering tableware that had left him open-mouthed at his cousin’s house.

‘On opera days’, she said, ‘you must dine here and escort me to the Italiens.’

‘I’d make a habit of such a pleasant way of life if it were to last; but I’m a poor student with his fortune to make.’

‘It will be made,’ she said, laughing. ‘Look how well everything is turning out: I never expected to be this happy.’

It is in a woman’s nature to prove the impossible by the possible and to quash facts with feelings. When Madame de Nucingen and Rastignac entered their box at the Bouffons, she had an air of contentment which made her so beautiful that everyone saw fit to murmur the kind of petty aspersions against which women are defenceless and which give credit to all kinds of fictitious improprieties. Those who know Paris believe nothing that is said there and say nothing of what goes on there. Eugène took the baronne’s hand and the two spoke to each other with light or intense squeezes, sharing the sensations the music aroused in them. It was an exhilarating evening for both of them. They left together and Madame de Nucingen insisted on taking Eugène as far as the Pont-Neuf, all the way refusing him even one of the kisses which she had lavished upon him at the Palais-Royal. Eugène reproached her for this fickleness.

‘Then,’ she replied, ‘it showed gratitude for your heaven-sent devotion; now it would be a promise.’

‘And you’d rather not promise me anything, ungrateful woman.’

He made a cross face. With one of those impatient gestures so delightful to a lover, she gave him her hand to kiss, which he took with a bad grace she found enchanting.

‘Until Monday, at the ball,’ she said.

As he continued home on foot, through a beautiful moonlit night, Eugène’s mind filled with serious thoughts. He was both happy and dissatisfied: happy with an adventure which would win him one of the prettiest and most elegant women in Paris, the object of his desires; dissatisfied at seeing his plans to make his fortune thwarted. He was now faced with the reality of the confused designs he had harboured the day before yesterday. Failure always bolsters the strength of our ambitions. The more Eugène enjoyed Parisian life, the less he wanted to remain poor and humble. He fingered the thousand-franc note in his pocket, inventing a thousand fallacious reasons to keep it for himself. He finally arrived at the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève and, on reaching the top of the stairs, saw a light. Old man Goriot had left his door open and his candle lit, so the student wouldn’t forget to ‘tell him all about his daughter’, as he put it. Eugène kept nothing from him.

‘Why!’ cried old Goriot in a fit of desperate jealousy, ‘they think I’m ruined, but I still have an annual income of thirteen hundred livres! Lord! Poor little thing, why didn’t she come here? I’d have sold my stock, we’d have taken it out of the capital and I’d have set up a life annuity with the rest. My dear neighbour, why didn’t you come and tell me she was in trouble? How did you have the heart to risk her poor little hundred francs at the game? It’s enough to break your heart. That’s a son-in-law for you! Ah! If I had them both here, I’d wring their necks. Dear Lord! Crying, you say, she was crying?’

‘With her head on my waistcoat,’ said Eugène.

‘Oh! Give it to me,’ said old Goriot. ‘What! My daughter shed tears on this, my sweet Delphine, who never used to cry when she was small! Oh! I’ll buy you another, don’t wear it again, let me keep it. She should enjoy the use of her assets; those were the terms of her marriage contract. That’s it! I’ll go and see Derville, my solicitor, first thing tomorrow. I’ll insist that her fortune is invested in her own name. I know the law. I may be an old wolf but I’ll show them I still have teeth.’

‘Take this, Father. She wanted to give me a thousand francs of the winnings. Keep them safe for her, in the waistcoat.’

Goriot looked at Eugène, stretched out a hand to take hold of his and let a tear fall onto it.

‘You’ll succeed in life,’ said the old man. ‘God is just, see? I know all about honesty, and let me tell you, there are very few men like you. So, will you be my dear child too? Off you go to bed. You’ll sleep easily; you’re not a father yet. She was crying, he tells me now, and there I was calmly eating my dinner like an idiot, while she was suffering; I, who would sell the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost to spare either of them a single tear.’

‘Well,’ Eugène said to himself as he got ready for bed, ‘I think I’ll be an honest man my whole life. There’s pleasure in following the promptings of your conscience.’

Perhaps only those who believe in God do good in secret; Eugène believed in God.

The next day, at the time of the ball, Rastignac went to the house of Madame de Beauséant, who was to take him with her and introduce him to the Duchesse de Carigliano. He received the most gracious welcome from the maréchale and soon caught sight of Madame de Nucingen among the guests. Delphine had dressed splendidly with the aim of pleasing all, the better to please Eugène, and was now impatiently waiting for him to look her way, deluding herself that she was hiding her impatience. A man capable of deciphering a woman’s feelings revels in a moment like this. What man has not frequently delighted in keeping his opinion to himself, hiding his pleasure, seeking some revealing response to the doubt he has sown, savouring the fears he’ll banish later with a smile? That evening, the student suddenly saw the full potential of his position and understood that being recognized as Madame de Beauséant’s cousin gave him a certain status in society. The conquest of Madame de Nucingen, which everyone already gave him credit for, made him the focus of so much attention, that the other young men cast envious looks in his direction; on noticing one or two of these, he had his first delicious taste of conceit. As he passed through each drawing room, moving from one group to the next, he heard his good fortune being complimented. The women predicted that he would go far. Delphine, fearing to lose him, promised to grant him tonight the kiss she had so stubbornly refused the night before last. Rastignac received several invitations at the ball. His cousin introduced him to a number of women, all with fashionable pretensions, whose houses were considered to be of note; he saw himself launched into the highest and finest Parisian society. Indeed, the evening had all the charm of a brilliant debut and he would remember it until his dying day, just as a young lady remembers the ball where she first triumphed.

The next day at déjeuner, when Eugène was telling old Goriot and the other lodgers about his success, a devilish smile appeared on Vautrin’s face. ‘So you think’, exclaimed that ruthless logician, ‘that a young man of fashion can reside in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, at the Maison Vauquer? An infinitely respectable establishment by all accounts, I’ll give it that, but hardly what you might call modish. It’s commodious, has a fine well-to-do air, is proud to be the temporary abode of a Rastignac; but, in the end, it’s in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève and doesn’t know what luxury is, because it’s purely parochialorama.¹⁵³ My young friend,’ continued Vautrin, with a mockingly paternal air, ‘if you want to cut a dash in Paris, you need three horses, a tilbury for the morning and a coupé for the evening; that’s nine thousand francs for your carriages alone. You’d be unworthy of your destiny if you didn’t spend three thousand francs at your tailor’s, six hundred francs at the perfumer’s, a hundred écus at the bootmakers and a hundred écus at the hatmakers. As for your laundress, she’ll cost you a thousand francs. A fashionable young man must be meticulous in the matter of his linen:¹⁵⁴ isn’t that what he’ll be judged on, after all? Love and Religion require immaculate cloths on their altars. That brings us to fourteen thousand. Not to mention what you’ll fritter away at gambling, on bets, on gifts; it’s impossible to get by with less than two thousand francs of ready money. I’ve led that kind of life, I know what it costs. Add to these essentials three hundred louis for your feed, a thousand francs for your kennel. So, child, we need to have a sweet twenty-five thousand a year lined up, or we sink into the mud, make a fool of ourselves and are relieved of our future, our successes, our mistresses! I forgot the valet and the groom! Will Christophe deliver your billets doux? Will you write them on the paper you use now? It would be akin to suicide. Trust an old man of experience!’ he continued, with a sudden rinforzando boom of his bass voice. ‘Either lock yourself away virtuously in a garret and wed yourself to your work, or take another path.’ And Vautrin winked pointedly in Mademoiselle Taillefer’s direction, with a look meant to revive and resume the seductive arguments he had planted in the student’s heart to corrupt him.

Several days went by during which Rastignac led the most dissipated life. He dined almost every day with Madame de Nucingen, whom he escorted when she went out. He returned at three or four o’clock in the morning, rose at midday to wash and dress, then went and strolled in the Bois with Delphine when the weather was fine, squandering his time without being aware of its worth and absorbing all the precepts and enticements of luxury as eagerly as the calyx of the female date palm opens to receive the fertilizing pollen of its hymeneals. He played for high stakes, lost or won vast sums of money and with time became accustomed to the extravagant lifestyle of the young Parisian gentlemen. He took fifteen hundred francs out of his first winnings to repay his mother and his sisters, sending them handsome gifts along with the money.

Despite having announced his desire to leave the Maison Vauquer, he was still there as January drew to a close and had no idea how to extricate himself. Virtually all young men are governed by a law that may seem inexplicable, but which owes its existence to their youth itself and their frenzied pursuit of pleasure. Whether rich or poor, they never have enough money for life’s necessities, but always find enough for their follies. Generous with anything they can get on credit, they’re stingy with everything that requires payment up front, and seem to be avenging themselves on what they don’t have by squandering everything that they could have. In a nutshell, a student takes far greater care of his hat than his suit. The tailor, whose profits are large, is ultimately more amenable to giving credit, while the modesty of the sums owed to the hatter make him one of the most inflexible figures a young man must parley with. Although the handsome young man in the balcony at the theatre puts on a dazzling display of waistcoat for the benefit of a pretty woman’s opera glasses, you can be fairly sure he isn’t wearing any socks; the hosier is yet another weevil in his purse. Rastignac had reached this stage. His purse – always empty for Madame Vauquer, always full for the requirements of his vanity – suffered temperamental set-backs and successes which were at variance with the most straightforward payments. If he wanted to leave this vile, stinking boarding house, this thorn in the side of his ambition, wouldn’t he have to pay his landlady one month’s rent and buy the furniture he needed to set himself up as a dandy? This was always impossible.

Although Rastignac knew well enough how to raise money for gambling – by purchasing watches and gold chains from his jeweller, paid for dearly from his winnings, which he then took to the Mont-de-Piété, that gloomy and discreet friend of youth – he lacked both imagination and daring when it came to paying for his food and lodgings or purchasing the tools he needed to make capital out of a life of fashion. Debts incurred for needs he had already satisfied, or for some vulgar necessity, no longer inspired him. Like many who lead the life of a chancer, he waited until the last minute to pay off debts considered sacrosanct by the middle-class citizen – like Mirabeau,¹⁵⁵ who never paid for his bread until it assumed the draconian form of a bill of exchange.

Around this time, Rastignac ran out of money and sank deep into debt. He began to understand that it would be impossible for him to continue this existence without having a permanent income. But even as he groaned to feel the sharp point of his precarious state, he felt unable to renounce the exorbitant pleasures of the life he was leading, and wanted it to continue at all cost. The lucky breaks he had been counting on to make his fortune were turning out to be pipe-dreams, while the real obstacles loomed ever larger. Now that he knew what went on between Monsieur and Madame de Nucingen behind closed doors, he realized he could only turn love into an instrument of fortune by drinking from the cup of shame and turning his back on the noble ideals that absolve youthful errors. This outwardly splendid life, riddled on the inside by the taenias¹⁵⁶ of remorse and whose fleeting pleasures were paid for dearly by ever-present anxieties, was the one he had chosen, and he rolled in it, making himself a bed in the soft mud of the ditch like La Bruyère’s Absent-minded man;¹⁵⁷ but so far, like that gentleman, he had only soiled his clothes.

‘So have we killed the mandarin?’ Bianchon asked him one day as he stood up to leave the table.

‘Not yet,’ he replied, ‘but he’s at his last gasp.’

The medical student took this to be a joke, but it wasn’t. Eugène, dining at the boarding house for the first time in a while, had remained deep in thought during the meal. Instead of leaving at dessert, he stayed sitting in the dining room next to Mademoiselle Taillefer, sending meaningful glances her way from time to time. A few guests were still at the table, eating walnuts, others were strolling around continuing discussions begun earlier. As on most evenings, each boarder left when he felt like it, depending on the level of interest he had in the conversation, or the sluggishness of his digestion. In winter, it was rare for the dining room to clear before eight o’clock, at which hour the four women stayed on alone and avenged themselves on the silence their sex forced them to keep among this gathering of men.

Intrigued by Eugène’s air of preoccupation, Vautrin, who had at first seemed in a hurry to leave, stayed behind in the dining room, continually changing position to avoid being seen by Eugène, who would think he had left. Then, instead of following the last stragglers out of the room, he stationed himself stealthily in the drawing room. He had looked into the student’s soul and seen the clear signs of a crisis. Indeed, Rastignac found himself in a bewildering situation familiar to many young men. Whether or not she loved him or was toying with his affections, Madame de Nucingen had made Rastignac suffer all the pangs of genuine passion, by practising upon him every skill known to female diplomacy in Paris. Although she had compromised herself in public so as to bind Madame de Beauséant’s cousin to her, in private she was reluctant to grant him the rights he appeared to enjoy. Over the past month she had kindled Eugène’s desire so effectively that its flames had begun to lick at his heart. Although the student had believed himself to have the upper hand in the early stages of the affair, Madame de Nucingen had since proved the stronger of the two, with the aid of those manoeuvres which stirred up in Eugène all the feelings, good or bad, of the two or three kinds of men found within a young man of Paris. Was it calculated on her part? No; women are always genuine, even when at their most duplicitous, for they are yielding to some natural feeling. After allowing this young man to gain such a hold on her and having shown him too much affection in such a short space of time, perhaps Delphine was being true to her sense of dignity, which made her either withdraw the privileges she had granted or take pleasure in suspending them. It comes naturally to a Parisienne, even as she is transported by passion, to pause as she falls, to test the heart of the man to whom she will surrender her future!

Madame de Nucingen’s hopes had already been deceived once, and her loyalty tossed aside by a self-seeking young man. She had good reason to be wary. Perhaps she had detected in Eugène’s manner a lack of respect caused by the peculiarity of their situation; his rapid success had made him complacent. No doubt she wished to appear imposing to a man of his age and to look down on him, having for so long been made to look up to the man who had abandoned her. She didn’t want Eugène to think she was an easy conquest, precisely because he knew that she had belonged to de Marsay. Finally, after having submitted to the degrading pleasure of that out-and-out monster, a young libertine, she was taking such delight in strolling through the flowery dells of love that it must have been blissful to admire its every aspect, to linger there listening to the leaves sighing and to let herself be caressed by chaste and leisurely breezes. True love was paying the price of false love. Sadly, such misunderstandings will persist until men realize just how many flowers are cut down in a young woman’s heart by the first cruel swipes of betrayal. Whatever her reasons, Delphine was playing with Rastignac and enjoying playing with him, no doubt because she knew that she was loved and would put an end to her lover’s suffering whenever it was her right royal pleasure as a woman to do so.

As far as his own self-respect was concerned, Eugène didn’t want to see his first skirmish end in defeat and continued in hot pursuit, like a hunter who must at all cost kill a partridge on his first Saint Hubert’s day¹⁵⁸ outing. His fears, his wounded pride, his despair, genuine or pretended, bound him all the more closely to this woman. The whole of Paris gave him credit for the conquest of Madame de Nucingen, yet he was still no further on than the first day he saw her. As he was not yet aware that a woman’s coquetry may offer a man more delights than her love may give him pleasure, he fell into foolish rages.

Although the season in which a woman contests love was bringing Rastignac an early crop of fruit, he was starting to find them as costly as they were green, tart and delicious to the taste. Sometimes, when he pictured himself without a sou, without a future, he thought, despite the voice of his conscience, about his chances of becoming wealthy by marrying Mademoiselle Taillefer, which Vautrin had led him to believe was a possibility. And so, having reached the point where the voice of his poverty was making itself heard, almost without thinking he strayed within reach of the claws of the terrible sphinx whose stare so often transfixed him. When Poiret and Mademoiselle Michonneau went upstairs to their rooms, Rastignac, thinking he was alone apart from Madame Vauquer and Madame Couture, who was knitting some woollen sleeves for herself as she dozed off next to the stove, gave Mademoiselle Taillefer a look of such tenderness it made her lower her eyes.

‘Is something perhaps troubling you, Monsieur Eugène?’ Victorine asked him after a moment’s silence.

‘All men are troubled by something!’ replied Rastignac. ‘If only we young men could be sure of being truly loved, with the kind of devotion that would reward us for the sacrifices we are always ready to make, then perhaps we would never have any troubles.’

In reply, Mademoiselle Taillefer gave Rastignac a look that left him in no doubt as to her feelings.

‘You, Mademoiselle, may believe yourself sure of your heart today, but could you guarantee it would never change?’

A smile appeared on the poor girl’s lips like a ray of light bursting from her soul and made her face glow so radiantly that Eugène was shocked at having provoked such a violent explosion of feeling.

‘What! If you were to become rich and happy tomorrow, if a vast fortune fell at your feet from out of the blue, would you still love the poor young man who found favour with you when times were hard?’

She nodded prettily.

‘A most unfortunate young man?’

Another nod.

‘What claptrap are you talking over there?’ called out Madame Vauquer.

‘Never you mind,’ replied Eugène; ‘we understand each other well enough.’

‘So it seems that Monsieur le Chevalier Eugène de Rastignac and Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer have come to an understanding?’ boomed Vautrin, suddenly appearing at the dining- room door.

‘Oh! You scared me,’ said Madame Couture and Madame Vauquer at the same time.

‘I could do worse,’ replied Eugène, with a laugh, although Vautrin’s voice had just given him the worst shock of his life.

‘None of your tasteless jokes please, Gentlemen!’ said Madame Couture. ‘Let us go upstairs to our rooms now, child.’

Madame Vauquer followed hot on the heels of her two lodgers, with a view to saving her candle and firewood by spending the evening with them. Eugène found himself alone, face to face with Vautrin.

‘I knew you’d come round in the end,’ said Vautrin, as unshakeably cool as ever. ‘Now listen! I have just as many scruples as the next man. Don’t make a snap decision, you’re not yourself today. You’ve run up a few debts. I don’t want it to be passion, or despair, but reason which brings you round to my way of thinking. Perhaps a couple of thousand écus wouldn’t go amiss? Take this, here.’

That demon took a wallet from his pocket and pulled three banknotes out of it, which he fluttered before the student’s eyes. Eugène found himself facing the cruellest dilemma. He had debts of honour to the tune of one hundred louis lost to the Marquis d’Ajuda and the Comte de Trailles. He didn’t have the money and so didn’t have the face to go and spend the evening at Madame de Restaud’s house, where he was expected. It was to be one of those delightfully informal evenings where you nibble little cakes and sip tea, while effortlessly losing six thousand francs at whist.

‘Monsieur,’ Eugène replied, barely repressing a convulsive shudder; ‘after everything you’ve told me, surely you must understand that it’s impossible for me to come under any obligation to you.’

‘Well, you’d have disappointed me had you answered any other way,’ the tempter continued. ‘You’re a handsome young man, scrupulous, proud as a lion and as tender as a virgin. You’d be easy prey for the devil. You’re a young man of calibre – I like that. A little more scheming reflection and you’ll see society for what it is: a stage on which a man of superior talent acts out a couple of virtuous little scenes and thereby fulfils all his fantasies to thunderous applause from the idiots in the stalls. You’ll be ours in a few days’ time. Ah! If you chose to be my pupil, I’d give you everything you wanted. Every wish that came into your head would be granted immediately, whatever you might desire: honour, fortune, women. We would turn all civilization into ambrosian nectar for you. You would be our spoilt child, our youngest and dearest; we would happily efface ourselves for you. Every obstacle that stood in your way would be obliterated. Just because you’re still clinging to a few scruples, you take me for a scoundrel? Well now, Monsieur de Turenne,¹⁵⁹ a man with as much integrity as you believe you still have, made little deals with brigands and never thought it would jeopardize his reputation. You don’t want to be in my debt, eh? We won’t let that stand in our way, will we?’ continued Vautrin, with a smile. ‘Take these bits of paper’, he said, producing a stamp, ‘and write on them for me, right here: Accepted the sum of three thousand five hundred francs payable in one year’s time. And add the date! The interest is high enough to rid you of any scruples; you can call me a Jew and consider your debt of gratitude paid in full. I’ll let you loathe me today because I know for certain that you’ll love me later. You may find me full of those vertiginous depths, those vast pools of feeling that the foolish call vices, but you will never find me cowardly or ungrateful. In short, my boy, I’m neither a pawn nor a bishop, but a castle.’

‘But what kind of a man are you?’ cried Eugène. ‘Were you put on earth to torment me?’

‘Certainly not. I’m a decent chap who’s prepared to get his hands dirty so you can steer clear of the mud for the rest of your days. You’re asking yourself: why such devotion? Well, I’ll tell you one day, whisper it softly in your ear. You were shocked at first when I showed you the workings of the machine and the way society rings the changes; but your initial fear will pass, as it does for any conscript on the battlefield, and you’ll soon come round to the idea that men are soldiers resolved to die in the service of those who crown themselves kings.¹⁶⁰ How times have changed, indeed they have! Time was you could say to a cut-throat: “Here’s a hundred écus; go and kill Mister So-and-so for me,” then calmly carry on with your supper, consigning a man to oblivion at the drop of a hat. Today I’m offering you a fine fortune in return for a nod of the head which will leave your reputation intact, and you’re hesitating. We live in a spineless century.’

Eugène signed the bill and handed it to Vautrin in exchange for the banknotes.

‘That’s more like it. Now, let’s talk sensibly,’ Vautrin continued. ‘I intend to leave for America in a few months’ time, to plant my tobacco. I’ll send you some cigars as a sign of our friendship. If I become rich, I’ll help you. If I don’t have any children (as is most likely, I’ve no interest in making cuttings of myself to be replanted), then I’ll leave you my fortune. Is that the behaviour of a friend? Why, it’s love I feel for you. Besides, I have a passion for sacrificing myself for others; I’ve done it before. You see, my boy, I live life on a higher plane than other men. For me, all actions are means and I always keep the end in sight. What’s a man to me? That!’ he said, flicking his teeth with his thumbnail. ‘A man is all or nothing. He’s less than nothing if he’s called Poiret: you can squash him like a bug; he’s flat and he’s foul. A man such as yourself, however, is a god, not just some machine clad in flesh, but a theatre in which the finest feelings are played out – and I live for feelings alone. What is a feeling but the whole world in one thought? Look at old man Goriot: his two daughters are his entire universe, they are the thread which guides him through the labyrinth of creation. Well, for a man like myself who has delved deep into life, there is only one true feeling and that is the friendship that exists between two men. Pierre and Jaffier, there’s my passion. I know Venice Preserv’d¹⁶¹ off by heart. How many men have you seen who, when a comrade says “Let’s go and bury a corpse!”, have the guts to get on with the job without saying a word or moralizing? Well, I’ve done that. I wouldn’t talk this way to everyone, but you’re a superior kind of man; I could say anything to you and you’d know what I meant. You won’t be floundering around for much longer in this bog, surrounded by all these squat little toads who call it home. Well, I’ve said all I wanted to say. You’re to be married. Let each of us press our points! Mine is made of steel and never droops, ha ha!’

Vautrin went out before the student could object, to let him off the hook. He seemed to know the secret of last-ditch resistance, the battles men stage for their own benefit and which they use to justify their wrongful deeds.

‘Let him do as he likes; I certainly won’t be marrying Mademoiselle Taillefer!’ Eugène said to himself.

Rastignac’s mind became feverish at the thought of making a pact with this man he abhorred but who was growing in stature in his eyes, due to the very cynicism of his ideas and his audacious stranglehold on society. He dressed, called for a cab and drove to Madame de Restaud’s house. Over the past few days, she had shown more and more interest in this young man, whose every step brought him closer to the heart of fashionable society and who would one day surely be a force to be reckoned with. He settled up with Messieurs les Marquis de Trailles and d’Ajuda, played whist for part of the night and won back what he had lost. Being superstitious, like most men who have yet to make their way and who are more or less fatalistic, he chose to see his good fortune as a divine reward for keeping to the straight and narrow. The next morning, he hurried to find Vautrin to ask if he still had his bill of exchange. On hearing that he did, he returned the three thousand francs to him, unable to disguise his pleasure.

‘Things are coming along nicely,’ said Vautrin.

‘But I’m not your accomplice,’ said Eugène.

‘I know, I know,’ replied Vautrin, interrupting him. ‘You’re still behaving like a child. You can’t see past the fancy knockers on the doors.’