I am the author of
your happiness and of your existence. Fathers must always be giving if
they would be happy themselves; always giving--they would not be
fathers else."
"Was that how it happened?" asked Eugene.
"Yes. She would not listen to me. She was afraid that people would
talk, as if the rubbish that they say about you were to be compared
with happiness! Why, all women dream of doing what she has done----"
Father Goriot found himself without an audience, for Mme. de Nucingen
had led Rastignac into the study; he heard a kiss given and taken, low
though the sound was.
The study was furnished as elegantly as the other rooms, and nothing
was wanting there.
"Have we guessed your wishes rightly?" she asked, as they returned to
the drawing-room for dinner.
"Yes," he said, "only too well, alas! For all this luxury so well
carried out, this realization of pleasant dreams, the elegance that
satisfies all the romantic fancies of youth, appeals to me so strongly
that I cannot but feel that it is my rightful possession, but I cannot
accept it from you, and I am too poor as yet to----"
"Ah! ah! you say me nay already," she said with arch imperiousness,
and a charming little pout of the lips, a woman's way of laughing away
scruples.
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