“Goriot in a cab!” cried the boarders; “the world is coming to an end.”
The good soul made straight for Eugène, who was standing wrapped in thought in a corner, and laid a hand on the young man’s arm.
“Come,” he said, with gladness in his eyes.
“Then you haven’t heard the news?” said Eugène. “Vautrin was an escaped convict; they have just arrested him; and young Taillefer is dead.”
“Very well, but what business is it of ours?” replied Father Goriot. “I am going to dine with my daughter in your house, do you understand? She is expecting you. Come!”
He carried off Rastignac with him by main force, and they departed in as great a hurry as a pair of eloping lovers.
“Now, let us have dinner,” cried the painter, and everyone drew his chair to the table.
“Well, I never,” said the portly Sylvie. “Nothing goes right today! The haricot mutton has caught! Bah! you will have to eat it, burned as it is, more’s the pity!”
Mme. Vauquer was so dispirited that she could not say a word as she looked round the table and saw only ten people where eighteen should be; but everyone tried to comfort and cheer her. At first the dinner contingent, as was natural, talked about Vautrin and the day’s events; but the conversation wound round to such topics of interest as duels, jails, justice, prison life, and alterations that ought to be made in the laws. They soon wandered miles away from Jacques Collin and Victorine and her brother. There might be only ten of them, but they made noise enough for twenty; indeed, there seemed to be more of them than usual; that was the only difference between yesterday and today. Indifference to the fate of others is a matter of course in this selfish world, which, on the morrow of tragedy, seeks among the events of Paris for a fresh sensation for its daily renewed appetite, and this indifference soon gained the upper hand. Mme. Vauquer herself grew calmer under the soothing influence of hope, and the mouthpiece of hope was the portly Sylvie.
That day had gone by like a dream for Eugène, and the sense of unreality lasted into the evening; so that, in spite of his energetic character and clearheadedness, his ideas were a chaos as he sat beside Goriot in the cab. The old man’s voice was full of unwonted happiness, but Eugène had been shaken by so many emotions that the words sounded in his ears like words spoken in a dream.
“It was finished this morning! All three of us are going to dine there together, together! Do you understand? I have not dined with my Delphine, my little Delphine, these four years, and I shall have her for a whole evening! We have been at your lodging the whole time since morning. I have been working like a porter in my shirt sleeves, helping to carry in the furniture. Aha! you don’t know what pretty ways she has; at table she will look after me, ‘Here, papa, just try this, it is nice.’ And I shall not be able to eat. Oh, it is a long while since I have been with her in quiet everyday life as we shall have her.”
“It really seems as if the world has been turned upside down.”
“Upside down?” repeated Father Goriot. “Why, the world has never been so right-side up. I see none but smiling faces in the streets, people who shake hands cordially and embrace each other, people who all look as happy as if they were going to dine with their daughter, and gobble down a nice little dinner that she went with me to order of the chef at the Café des Anglais. But, pshaw! with her beside you gall and wormwood would be as sweet as honey.”
“I feel as if I were coming back to life again,” said Eugène.
“Why, hurry up there!” cried Father Goriot, letting down the window in front. “Get on faster; I will give you five francs if you get to the place I told you of in ten minutes time.”
With this prospect before him the cabman crossed Paris with miraculous celerity.
“How that fellow crawls!” said Father Goriot.
“But where are you taking me?” Eugène asked him.
“To your own house,” said Goriot.
The cab stopped in the Rue d’Artois. Father Goriot stepped out first and flung ten francs to the man with the recklessness of a widower returning to bachelor ways.
“Come along upstairs,” he said to Rastignac. They crossed a courtyard, and climbed up to the third floor of a new and handsome house. There they stopped before a door; but before Goriot could ring, it was opened by Thérèse, Mme. de Nucingen’s maid. Eugène found himself in a charming set of chambers; an anteroom, a little drawing-room, a bedroom, and a study, looking out upon a garden. The furniture and the decorations of the little drawing-room were of the most daintily charming description, the room was full of soft light, and Delphine rose up from a low chair by the fire and stood before him. She set her fire-screen down on the chimneypiece, and spoke with tenderness in every tone of her voice.
“So we had to go in search of you, sir, you who are so slow to understand!”
Thérèse left the room. The student took Delphine in his arms and held her in a tight clasp, his eyes filled with tears of joy. This last contrast between his present surroundings and the scenes he had just witnessed was too much for Rastignac’s overwrought nerves, after the day’s strain and excitement that had wearied heart and brain; he was almost overcome by it.
“I felt sure myself that he loved you,” murmured Father Goriot, while Eugène lay back bewildered on the sofa, utterly unable to speak a word or to reason out how and why the magic wand had been waved to bring about this
