On the 10th of February the twenty-five days expired. Du Tillet, determined to oust Nathan, as a rival, from the constituency, where he intended to stand himself (leaving to Massol another which was in the pocket of the Government), got Gigonnet to refuse Raoul all quarter. A man laid by the heels for debt can hardly present himself as a candidate; and the embryo minister might disappear in the maw of a debtor’s prison. Florine herself was in constant communication with the bailiffs on account of her own debts, and in this crisis the only resource left to her was the “I!” of Medea, for her furniture was seized. The aspirant to fame heard on every side the crack of ruin in his freshly reared but baseless fabric. Unequal to the task of sustaining so vast an enterprise, how could he think of beginning again to lay the foundations? Nothing remained, therefore, but to perish beneath his crumbling visions. His love for the Countess still brought flashes of life, but only to the outer mask; within, all hope was dead. He did not suspect du Tillet; the usurer alone filled his view. Rastignac, Blondet, Lousteau, Vernou, Finot, Massol, carefully refrained from enlightening a man of such dangerous energy. Rastignac, who aimed at getting back to power, made common cause with Nucingen and du Tillet. The rest found measureless delight in watching the expiring agony of one of their comrades, convicted of the crime of aiming at mastery. Not one of them would breathe a word to Florine; to her, on the contrary, they were full of Raoul’s praises. “Nathan’s shoulders were broad enough to bear the world; he would come out all right, no fear!”
“The circulation went up two yesterday,” said Blondet solemnly. “Raoul will be elected yet. As soon as the budget is through the dissolution will be announced.”
Nathan, dogged by the law, could no longer look to moneylenders; Florine, her furniture distrained, had no hope left save in the chance of inspiring a passion in some good-natured fool, who never turns up at the right moment. Nathan’s friends were all men without money or credit. His political chances would be ruined by his arrest. To crown all, he saw himself pledged to huge tasks, paid for in advance; it was a bottomless pit of horrors into which he gazed.
Before an outlook so threatening his self-confidence deserted him. Would the Comtesse de Vandenesse unite her fate to his and fly with him? Only a fully developed passion can bring a woman to this fatal step, and theirs had never bound them to each other in the mysterious ties of rapture. Even supposing the Countess would follow him abroad, she would come penniless, bare, and stripped, and would prove an added burden. A proud man, of second-rate quality, like Nathan, could not fail to see in suicide, as Nathan did, the sword with which to cut this Gordian knot. The idea of overthrow, in full view of that society into which he had worked his way, and which he had aspired to dominate, of leaving the Countess enthroned there, while he fell back to join the mud-spattered rank and file, was unbearable. Madness danced and rang her bells before the door of that airy palace in which the poet had made his home. In this extremity, Nathan waited upon chance, and put off killing himself till the last moment.
During the last days, occupied with the notice of judgment, the writs, and publication of order of arrest, Raoul could not succeed in throwing off that coldly sinister look, observed by noticing people to haunt those marked out for suicide, or whose minds are dwelling on it. The dismal ideas which they fondle cast a gray, gloomy shade over the forehead; their smile is vaguely ominous, and they move with solemnity. The unhappy wretches seem resolved to suck dry the golden fruit of life; they cast appealing glances on every side, the toll of the passing bell is in their ears, and their minds wander. These alarming symptoms were perceived by Marie one night at Lady Dudley’s. Raoul had remained alone on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest of the company were conversing in the drawing-room; when the Countess came to the door, he did not raise his head; he heard neither Marie’s breath nor the rustle of her silk dress; his eyes, stupid with pain, were fixed on a flower in the carpet. “Sooner die than abdicate,” was his thought. It is not every man who has a Saint-Helena to retire upon. Suicide, moreover, was at that time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a sceptical society? Raoul then had just resolved to put an end to himself. Despair must be proportioned to hope, and that of Raoul could find no issue but the grave.
“What is the matter?” said Marie, flying to him.
“Nothing,” he replied.
Lovers have a way of using this word “nothing” which implies exactly the opposite. Marie gave a little shrug.
“What a child you are!” she said. “Something has gone wrong with you?”
“Not with me,” he said. “Besides,” he added affectionately, “you will know it all too soon, Marie.”
“What were you thinking of when I came in?” she said, with an air that would not be denied.
“Are you determined to know the truth?”
She bowed her head.
“I was thinking of you; I said to myself that many men in my place would have wished to be loved without reserve: I am loved, am I not?”
“Yes,” she said.
Braving the risk of interruption, Raoul put his arm round her, and drew her near enough to kiss her on the forehead,
