For, look here, we saw Louis XVI. meet with his mishap; we saw the fall of the Emperor; and we saw him come back and fall again; there was nothing out of the way in all that, but lodging-houses are not liable to revolutions. You can do without a king, but you must eat all the same; and so long as a decent woman, a de Conflans born and bred, will give you all sorts of good things for dinner, nothing short of the end of the world ought to — but there, it is the end of the world, that is just what it is!”
“And to think that Mlle. Michonneau who made all this mischief is to have a thousand crowns a year for it, so I hear,” cried Sylvie.
“Don’t speak of her, she is a wicked woman!” said Mme. Vauquer.
“She is going to the Buneaud, who charges less than cost.
But the Buneaud is capable of anything; she must have done frightful things, robbed and murdered people in her time. SHE ought to be put in jail for life instead of that poor dear —”
Eugene and Goriot rang the door-bell at that moment.
“Ah! here are my two faithful lodgers,” said the widow, sighing.
But the two faithful lodgers, who retained but shadowy recollections of the misfortunes of their lodging-house, announced to their hostess without more ado that they were about to remove to the Chaussee d’Antin.
“Sylvie!” cried the widow, “this is the last straw.
— Gentlemen, this will be the death of me!
It has quite upset me!
There’s a weight on my chest!
I am ten years older for this day!
Upon my word, I shall go out of my senses!
And what is to be done with the haricots!
— Oh, well, if I am to be left here all by myself, you shall go to-morrow, Christophe.
— Good-night, gentlemen,” and she went.
“What is the matter now?” Eugene inquired of Sylvie.
“Lord! everybody is going about his business, and that has addled her wits.
There! she is crying upstairs.
It will do her good to snivel a bit.
It’s the first time she has cried since I’ve been with her.”
By the morning, Mme. Vauquer, to use her own expression, had “made up her mind to it.”
True, she still wore a doleful countenance, as might be expected of a woman who had lost all her lodgers, and whose manner of life had been suddenly revolutionized, but she had all her wits about her. Her grief was genuine and profound; it was real pain of mind, for her purse had suffered, the routine of her existence had been broken.
A lover’s farewell glance at his lady-love’s window is not more mournful than Mme. Vauquer’s survey of the empty places round her table.
Eugene administered comfort, telling the widow that Bianchon, whose term of residence at the hospital was about to expire, would doubtless take his (Rastignac’s) place; that the official from the Museum had often expressed a desire to have Mme. Couture’s rooms; and that in a very few days her household would be on the old footing.
“God send it may, my dear sir! but bad luck has come to lodge here.
There’ll be a death in the house before ten days are out, you’ll see,” and she gave a lugubrious look round the dining-room.
“Whose turn will it be, I wonder?”
“It is just as well that we are moving out,” said Eugene to Father Goriot in a low voice.
“Madame,” said Sylvie, running in with a scared face, “I have not seen Mistigris these three days.”
“Ah! well, if my cat is dead, if HE has gone and left us, I—”
The poor woman could not finish her sentence; she clasped her hands and hid her face on the back of her armchair, quite overcome by this dreadful portent.
By twelve o’clock, when the postman reaches that quarter, Eugene received a letter. The dainty envelope bore the Beauseant arms on the seal, and contained an invitation to the Vicomtesse’s great ball, which had been talked of in Paris for a month.
A little note for Eugene was slipped in with the card.
“I think, monsieur, that you will undertake with pleasure to interpret my sentiments to Mme. de Nucingen, so I am sending the card for which you asked me to you.
I shall be delighted to make the acquaintance of Mme. de Restaud’s sister.
Pray introduce that charming lady to me, and do not let her monopolize all your affection, for you owe me not a little in return for mine.
“VICOMTESSE DE BEAUSEANT.”
“Well,” said Eugene to himself, as he read the note a second time, “Mme. de Beauseant says pretty plainly that she does not want the Baron de Nucingen.”
He went to Delphine at once in his joy. He had procured this pleasure for her, and doubtless he would receive the price of it.
Mme. de Nucingen was dressing.
Rastignac waited in her boudoir, enduring as best he might the natural impatience of an eager temperament for the reward desired and withheld for a year.
Such sensations are only known once in a life.
The first woman to whom a man is drawn, if she is really a woman — that is to say, if she appears to him amid the splendid accessories that form a necessary background to life in the world of Paris — will never have a rival.
Love in Paris is a thing distinct and apart; for in Paris neither men nor women are the dupes of the commonplaces by which people seek to throw a veil over their motives, or to parade a fine affectation of disinterestedness in their sentiments.
In this country within a country, it is not merely required of a woman that she should satisfy the senses and the soul; she knows perfectly well that she has still greater obligations to discharge, that she must fulfil the countless demands of a vanity that enters into every fibre of that living organism called society.
Love, for her, is above all things, and by its very nature, a vainglorious, brazen-fronted, ostentatious, thriftless charlatan.
If at the Court of Louis XIV. there was not a woman but envied Mlle. de la Valliere the reckless devotion of passion that led the grand monarch to tear the priceless ruffles at his wrists in order to assist the entry of a Duc de Vermandois into the world — what can you expect of the rest of society?
You must have youth and wealth and rank; nay, you must, if possible, have more than these, for the more incense you bring with you to burn at the shrine of the god, the more favorably will he regard the worshiper.