“Do not cry either, my little Delphine. Look up and let me kiss away the tears. There! I shall find my wits and unravel this skein of your husband’s winding.”
“No, let me do that; I shall be able to manage him. He is fond of me, well and good; I shall use my influence to make him invest my money as soon as possible in landed property in my own name. Very likely I could get him to buy back Nucingen in Alsace in my name; that has always been a pet idea of his. Still, come tomorrow and go through the books, and look into the business. M. Derville knows little of mercantile matters. No, not tomorrow though. I do not want to be upset. Mme. de Beauséant’s ball will be the day after tomorrow, and I must keep quiet, so as to look my best and freshest, and do honor to my dear Eugène! … Come, let us see his room.”
But as she spoke a carriage stopped in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, and the sound of Mme. de Restaud’s voice came from the staircase. “Is my father in?” she asked of Sylvie.
This accident was luckily timed for Eugène, whose one idea had been to throw himself down on the bed and pretend to be asleep.
“Oh, father, have you heard about Anastasie?” said Delphine, when she heard her sister speak. “It looks as though some strange things had happened in that family.”
“What sort of things?” asked Goriot. “This is like to be the death of me. My poor head will not stand a double misfortune.”
“Good morning, father,” said the Countess from the threshold. “Oh! Delphine, are you here?”
Mme. de Restaud seemed taken aback by her sister’s presence.
“Good morning, Nasie,” said the Baroness. “What is there so extraordinary in my being here? I see our father every day.”
“Since when?”
“If you came yourself you would know.”
“Don’t tease, Delphine,” said the Countess fretfully. “I am very miserable, I am lost. Oh! my poor father, it is hopeless this time!”
“What is it, Nasie?” cried Goriot. “Tell us all about it, child! How white she is! Quick, do something, Delphine; be kind to her, and I will love you even better, if that were possible.”
“Poor Nasie!” said Mme. de Nucingen, drawing her sister to a chair. “We are the only two people in the world whose love is always sufficient to forgive you everything. Family affection is the surest, you see.”
The Countess inhaled the salts and revived.
“This will kill me!” said their father. “There,” he went on, stirring the smouldering fire, “come nearer, both of you. It is cold. What is it, Nasie? Be quick and tell me, this is enough to—”
“Well, then, my husband knows everything,” said the Countess. “Just imagine it; do you remember, father, that bill of Maxime’s some time ago? Well, that was not the first. I had paid ever so many before that. About the beginning of January M. de Trailles seemed very much troubled. He said nothing to me; but it is so easy to read the hearts of those you love, a mere trifle is enough; and then you feel things instinctively. Indeed, he was more tender and affectionate than ever, and I was happier than I had ever been before. Poor Maxime! in himself he was really saying goodbye to me, so he has told me since; he meant to blow his brains out! At last I worried him so, and begged and implored so hard; for two hours I knelt at his knees and prayed and entreated, and at last he told me—that he owed a hundred thousand francs. Oh! papa! a hundred thousand francs! I was beside myself! You had not the money, I knew, I had eaten up all that you had—”
“No,” said Goriot; “I could not have got it for you unless I had stolen it. But I would have done that for you, Nasie! I will do it yet.”
The words came from him like a sob, a hoarse sound like the death rattle of a dying man; it seemed indeed like the agony of death when the father’s love was powerless. There was a pause, and neither of the sisters spoke. It must have been selfishness indeed that could hear unmoved that cry of anguish that, like a pebble thrown over a precipice, revealed the depths of his despair.
“I found the money, father, by selling what was not mine to sell,” and the Countess burst into tears.
Delphine was touched; she laid her head on her sister’s shoulder, and cried too.
“Then it is all true,” she said.
Anastasie bowed her head, Mme. de Nucingen flung her arms about her, kissed her tenderly, and held her sister to her heart.
“I shall always love you and never judge you, Nasie,” she said.
“My angels,” murmured Goriot faintly. “Oh, why should it be trouble that draws you together?”
This warm and palpitating affection seemed to give the Countess courage.
“To save Maxime’s life,” she said, “to save all my own happiness, I went to the moneylender you know of, a man of iron forged in hellfire; nothing can melt him; I took all the family diamonds that M. de Restaud is so proud of—his and mine too—and sold them to that M. Gobseck. Sold them! Do you understand? I saved Maxime, but I am lost. Restaud found it all out.”
“How? Who told him? I will kill him,” cried Goriot.
“Yesterday he sent to tell me to come to his room. I went. … ‘Anastasie,’ he said in a voice—oh! such a voice; that was enough, it told me everything—‘where are your diamonds?’—‘In my room—’—‘No,’ he said, looking straight at me, ‘there they are on that chest of drawers—’ and he lifted his handkerchief and showed me the casket. ‘Do you know where they came from?’ he said. I fell at his feet. … I cried;
