"Go where you please, mademoiselle," said Mme. Vauquer, who regarded this choice of an opposition establishment as an atrocious insult. "Go and lodge with the Buneaud; the wine would give a cat the colic, and the food is cheap and nasty."
The boarders stood aside in two rows to let her pass; not a word was spoken. Poiret looked so wistfully after Mlle. Michonneau, and so artlessly revealed that he was in two minds whether to go or stay, that the boarders, in their joy at being quit of Mlle.
Michonneau, burst out laughing at the sight of him.
"Hist!--st!--st! Poiret," shouted the painter. "Hallo! I say, Poiret, hallo!" The employe from the Museum began to sing:
"Partant pour la Syrie, Le jeune et beau Dunois . . ."
"Get along with you; you must be dying to go, trahit sua quemque voluptas!" said Bianchon.
"Every one to his taste--free rendering from Virgil," said the tutor.
Mlle. Michonneau made a movement as if to take Poiret's arm, with an appealing glance that he could not resist. The two went out together, the old maid leaning upon him, and there was a burst of applause, followed by peals of laughter.
"Bravo, Poiret!"
"Who would have thought it of old Poiret!"
"Apollo Poiret!"
"Mars Poiret!"
"Intrepid Poiret!"
A messenger came in at that moment with a letter for Mme.
Vauquer, who read it through, and collapsed in her chair.
"The house might as well be burned down at once," cried she, "if there are to be any more of these thunderbolts! Young Taillefer died at three o'clock this afternoon. It serves me right for wishing well to those ladies at that poor man's expense. Mme.
Couture and Victorine want me to send their things, because they are going to live with her father. M. Taillefer allows his daughter to keep old Mme. Couture as her lady companion. Four rooms to let! and five lodgers gone! . . ."
She sat up, and seemed about to burst into tears.
"Bad luck has come to lodge here, I think," she cried.
Once more there came a sound of wheels from the street outside.
"What! another windfall for somebody!" was Sylvie's comment.
But it was Goriot who came in, looking so radiant, so flushed with happiness, that he seemed to have grown young again.
"Goriot in a cab!" cried the boarders; "the world is coming to an end."
The good soul made straight for Eugene, 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 Eugene. "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 every one drew his chair to the table.
"Well, I never," said the portly Sylvie. "Nothing goes right to- day! 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 every one 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 to-day.
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 Eugene, and the sense of unreality lasted into the evening; so that, in spite of his energetic character and clear-headedness, his ideas were a chaos as he sat beside Goriot in the cab. The old man's voice was full of unwonted happiness, but Eugene 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 every-day 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 Cafe 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 Eugene.
"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?" Eugene asked him.