Their passion, so long proved, had only gained in
strength by the gratified desire that often extinguishes passion. This
woman was his, and Eugene recognized that not until then had he loved
her; perhaps love is only gratitude for pleasure. This woman, vile or
sublime, he adored for the pleasure she had brought as her dower; and
Delphine loved Rastignac as Tantalus would have loved some angel who
had satisfied his hunger and quenched the burning thirst in his
parched throat.
"Well," said Mme. de Nucingen when he came back in evening dress, "how
is my father?"
"Very dangerously ill," he answered; "if you will grant me a proof of
your affections, we will just go in to see him on the way."
"Very well," she said. "Yes, but afterwards. Dear Eugene, do be nice,
and don't preach to me. Come."
They set out. Eugene said nothing for a while.
"What is it now?" she asked.
"I can hear the death-rattle in your father's throat," he said almost
angrily. And with the hot indignation of youth, he told the story of
Mme. de Restaud's vanity and cruelty, of her father's final act of
self-sacrifice, that had brought about this struggle between life and
death, of the price that had been paid for Anastasie's golden
embroideries.
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