第43章 A WOMAN WITHOUT A HEART(19)

" 'Don't take it to heart so,' the mother said; 'stay on here. My husband is on his way towards us even now,' she went on. 'I looked into the Gospel of St. John this evening while Pauline hung our door-key in a Bible from her fingers. The key turned; that means that Gaudin is in health and doing well. Pauline began again for you and for the young man in number seven--it turned for you, but not for him.

We are all going to be rich. Gaudin will come back a millionaire. Idreamed once that I saw him in a ship full of serpents; luckily the water was rough, and that means gold or precious stones from over-sea.'

"The silly, friendly words were like the crooning lullaby with which a mother soothes her sick child; they in a manner calmed me. There was a pleasant heartiness in the worthy woman's looks and tones, which, if it could not remove trouble, at any rate soothed and quieted it, and deadened the pain. Pauline, keener-sighted than her mother, studied me uneasily; her quick eyes seemed to read my life and my future. Ithanked the mother and daughter by an inclination of the head, and hurried away; I was afraid I should break down.

"I found myself alone under my roof, and laid myself down in my misery. My unhappy imagination suggested numberless baseless projects, and prescribed impossible resolutions. When a man is struggling in the wreck of his fortunes, he is not quite without resources, but I was engulfed. Ah, my dear fellow, we are too ready to blame the wretched.

Let us be less harsh on the results of the most powerful of all social solvents. Where poverty is absolute there exist no such things as shame or crime, or virtue or intelligence. I knew not what to do; Iwas as defenceless as a maiden on her knees before a beast of prey. Apenniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so it begins for us the cruelest trouble of all--the misery with a hope in it, a hope for which we must even bear our torments. I thought I would go to Rastignac on the morrow to confide Foedora's strange resolution to him, and with that I slept.

" 'Ah, ha!' cried Rastignac, as he saw me enter his lodging at nine o'clock in the morning. 'I know what brings you here. Foedora has dismissed you. Some kind souls, who were jealous of your ascendency over the countess, gave out that you were going to be married. Heaven only knows what follies your rivals have equipped you with, and what slanders have been directed at you.'

" 'That explains everything!' I exclaimed. I remembered all my presumptuous speeches, and gave the countess credit for no little magnanimity. It pleased me to think that I was a miscreant who had not been punished nearly enough, and I saw nothing in her indulgence but the long-suffering charity of love.

" 'Not quite so fast,' urged the prudent Gascon; 'Foedora has all the sagacity natural to a profoundly selfish woman; perhaps she may have taken your measure while you still coveted only her money and her splendor; in spite of all your care, she could have read you through and through. She can dissemble far too well to let any dissimulation pass undetected. I fear,' he went on, 'that I have brought you into a bad way. In spite of her cleverness and her tact, she seems to me a domineering sort of person, like every woman who can only feel pleasure through her brain. Happiness for her lies entirely in a comfortable life and in social pleasures; her sentiment is only assumed; she will make you miserable; you will be her head footman.'

"He spoke to the deaf. I broke in upon him, disclosing, with an affectation of light-heartedness, the state of my finances.

" 'Yesterday evening,' he rejoined, 'luck ran against me, and that carried off all my available cash. But for that trivial mishap, Iwould gladly have shared my purse with you. But let us go and breakfast at the restaurant; perhaps there is good counsel in oysters.'

"He dressed, and had his tilbury brought round. We went to the Cafe de Paris like a couple of millionaires, armed with all the audacious impertinence of the speculator whose capital is imaginary. That devil of a Gascon quite disconcerted me by the coolness of his manners and his absolute self-possession. While we were taking coffee after an excellent and well-ordered repast, a young dandy entered, who did not escape Rastignac. He had been nodding here and there among the crowd to this or that young man, distinguished both by personal attractions and elegant attire, and now he said to me:

" 'Here's your man,' as he beckoned to this gentleman with a wonderful cravat, who seemed to be looking for a table that suited his ideas.

" 'That rogue has been decorated for bringing out books that he doesn't understand a word of,' whispered Rastignac; 'he is a chemist, a historian, a novelist, and a political writer; he has gone halves, thirds, or quarters in the authorship of I don't know how many plays, and he is as ignorant as Dom Miguel's mule. He is not a man so much as a name, a label that the public is familiar with. So he would do well to avoid shops inscribed with the motto, "Ici l'on peut ecrire soi-meme." He is acute enough to deceive an entire congress of diplomatists. In a couple of words, he is a moral half-caste, not quite a fraud, nor entirely genuine. But, hush! he has succeeded already; nobody asks anything further, and every one calls him an illustrious man.'

" 'Well, my esteemed and excellent friend, and how may Your Intelligence be?' So Rastignac addressed the stranger as he sat down at a neighboring table.

" 'Neither well nor ill; I am overwhelmed with work. I have all the necessary materials for some very curious historical memoirs in my hands, and I cannot find any one to whom I can ascribe them. It worries me, for I shall have to be quick about it. Memoirs are falling out of fashion.'