第97章
"She has come too late," said Rastignac.
But it was not Delphine; it was Therese, her waiting-woman, who stood in the doorway.
"Monsieur Eugene," she said, "monsieur and madame have had a terrible scene about some money that Madame (poor thing!) wanted for her father. She fainted, and the doctor came, and she had to be bled, calling out all the while, 'My father is dying; I want to see papa!' It was heartbreaking to hear her----"
"That will do, Therese. If she came now, it would be trouble thrown away. M. Goriot cannot recognize any one now."
"Poor, dear gentleman, is he as bad at that?" said Therese.
"You don't want me now, I must go and look after my dinner; it is half-past four," remarked Sylvie. The next instant she all but collided with Mme. de Restaud on the landing outside.
There was something awful and appalling in the sudden apparition of the Countess. She saw the bed of death by the dim light of the single candle, and her tears flowed at the sight of her father's passive features, from which the life had almost ebbed. Bianchon with thoughtful tact left the room.
"I could not escape soon enough," she said to Rastignac.
The student bowed sadly in reply. Mme. de Restaud took her father's hand and kissed it.
"Forgive me, father! You used to say that my voice would call you back from the grave; ah! come back for one moment to bless your penitent daughter. Do you hear me? Oh! this is fearful! No one on earth will ever bless me henceforth; every one hates me; no one loves me but you in all the world. My own children will hate me.
Take me with you, father; I will love you, I will take care of you. He does not hear me . . . I am mad . . ."
She fell on her knees, and gazed wildly at the human wreck before her.
"My cup of misery is full," she said, turning her eyes upon Eugene. "M. de Trailles has fled, leaving enormous debts behind him, and I have found out that he was deceiving me. My husband will never forgive me, and I have left my fortune in his hands. I have lost all my illusions. Alas! I have forsaken the one heart that loved me (she pointed to her father as she spoke), and for whom? I have held his kindness cheap, and slighted his affection; many and many a time I have given him pain, ungrateful wretch that I am!"
"He knew it," said Rastignac.
Just then Goriot's eyelids unclosed; it was only a muscular contraction, but the Countess' sudden start of reviving hope was no less dreadful than the dying eyes.
"Is it possible that he can hear me?" cried the Countess. "No," she answered herself, and sat down beside the bed. As Mme. de Restaud seemed to wish to sit by her father, Eugene went down to take a little food. The boarders were already assembled.
"Well," remarked the painter, as he joined them, "it seems that there is to be a death-orama upstairs."
"Charles, I think you might find something less painful to joke about," said Eugene.
"So we may not laugh here?" returned the painter. "What harm does it do? Bianchon said that the old man was quite insensible."
"Well, then," said the employe from the Museum, "he will die as he has lived."
"My father is dead!" shrieked the Countess.
The terrible cry brought Sylvie, Rastignac, and Bianchon; Mme. de Restaud had fainted away. When she recovered they carried her downstairs, and put her into the cab that stood waiting at the door. Eugene sent Therese with her, and bade the maid take the Countess to Mme. de Nucingen.
Bianchon came down to them.
"Yes, he is dead," he said.
"Come, sit down to dinner, gentlemen," said Mme. Vauquer, "or the soup will be cold."
The two students sat down together.
"What is the next thing to be done?" Eugene asked of Bianchon.
"I have closed his eyes and composed his limbs," said Bianchon.
"When the certificate has been officially registered at the Mayor's office, we will sew him in his winding sheet and bury him somewhere. What do you think we ought to do?"
"He will not smell at his bread like this any more," said the painter, mimicking the old man's little trick.
"Oh, hang it all!" cried the tutor, "let Father Goriot drop, and let us have something else for a change. He is a standing dish, and we have had him with every sauce this hour or more. It is one of the privileges of the good city of Paris that anybody may be born, or live, or die there without attracting any attention whatsoever. Let us profit by the advantages of civilization.
There are fifty or sixty deaths every day; if you have a mind to do it, you can sit down at any time and wail over whole hecatombs of dead in Paris. Father Goriot has gone off the hooks, has he?
So much the better for him. If you venerate his memory, keep it to yourselves, and let the rest of us feed in peace."
"Oh, to be sure," said the widow, "it is all the better for him that he is dead. It looks as though he had had trouble enough, poor soul, while he was alive."
And this was all the funeral oration delivered over him who had been for Eugene the type and embodiment of Fatherhood.
The fifteen lodgers began to talk as usual. When Bianchon and Eugene had satisfied their hunger, the rattle of spoons and forks, the boisterous conversation, the expressions on the faces that bespoke various degrees of want of feeling, gluttony, or indifference, everything about them made them shiver with loathing. They went out to find a priest to watch that night with the dead. It was necessary to measure their last pious cares by the scanty sum of money that remained. Before nine o'clock that evening the body was laid out on the bare sacking of the bedstead in the desolate room; a lighted candle stood on either side, and the priest watched at the foot. Rastignac made inquiries of this latter as to the expenses of the funeral, and wrote to the Baron de Nucingen and the Comte de Restaud, entreating both gentlemen to authorize their man of business to defray the charges of laying their father-in-law in the grave. He sent Christophe with the letters; then he went to bed, tired out, and slept.