“Oh! he thinks of nothing but his daughters,” said Bianchon.
“Scores of times last night he said to me,
‘They are dancing now!
She has her dress.’
He called them by their names.
He made me cry, the devil take it, calling with that tone in his voice, for
‘Delphine! my little Delphine! and Nasie!’
Upon my word,” said the medical student, “it was enough to make any one burst out crying.”
“Delphine,” said the old man, “she is there, isn’t she?
I knew she was there,” and his eyes sought the door.
“I am going down now to tell Sylvie to get the poultices ready,” said Bianchon. “They ought to go on at once.”
Rastignac was left alone with the old man. He sat at the foot of the bed, and gazed at the face before him, so horribly changed that it was shocking to see.
“Noble natures cannot dwell in this world,” he said; “Mme de Beauseant has fled from it, and there he lies dying.
What place indeed is there in the shallow petty frivolous thing called society for noble thoughts and feelings?”
Pictures of yesterday’s ball rose up in his memory, in strange contrast to the deathbed before him.
Bianchon suddenly appeared.
“I say, Eugene, I have just seen our head surgeon at the hospital, and I ran all the way back here.
If the old man shows any signs of reason, if he begins to talk, cover him with a mustard poultice from the neck to the base of the spine, and send round for us.”
“Dear Bianchon,” exclaimed Eugene.
“Oh! it is an interesting case from a scientific point of view,” said the medical student, with all the enthusiasm of a neophyte.
“So!” said Eugene. “Am I really the only one who cares for the poor old man for his own sake?”
“You would not have said so if you had seen me this morning,” returned Bianchon, who did not take offence at this speech.
“Doctors who have seen a good deal of practice never see anything but the disease, but, my dear fellow, I can see the patient still.”
He went. Eugene was left alone with the old man, and with an apprehension of a crisis that set in, in fact, before very long.
“Ah! dear boy, is that you?” said Father Goriot, recognizing Eugene.
“Do you feel better?” asked the law student, taking his hand.
“Yes. My head felt as if it were being screwed up in a vise, but now it is set free again.
Did you see my girls?
They will be here directly; as soon as they know that I am ill they will hurry here at once; they used to take such care of me in the Rue de la Jussienne!
Great Heavens! if only my room was fit for them to come into!
There has been a young man here, who has burned up all my bark fuel.”
“I can hear Christophe coming upstairs,” Eugene answered. “He is bringing up some firewood that that young man has sent you.”
“Good, but how am I to pay for the wood.
I have not a penny left, dear boy.
I have given everything, everything.
I am a pauper now.
Well, at least the golden gown was grand, was it not? (Ah! what pain this is!) Thanks, Christophe! God will reward you, my boy; I have nothing left now.”
Eugene went over to Christophe and whispered in the man’s ear, “I will pay you well, and Sylvie too, for your trouble.”
“My daughters told you that they were coming, didn’t they, Christophe?
Go again to them, and I will give you five francs.
Tell them that I am not feeling well, that I should like to kiss them both and see them once again before I die.
Tell them that, but don’t alarm them more than you can help.”
Rastignac signed to Christophe to go, and the man went.
“They will come before long,” the old man went on.
“I know them so well.
My tender-hearted Delphine! If I am going to die, she will feel it so much!
And so will Nasie.
I do not want to die; they will cry if I die; and if I die, dear Eugene, I shall not see them any more.
It will be very dreary there where I am going.
For a father it is hell to be without your children; I have served my apprenticeship already since they married.