old man goriot

Chapter 36: Father's Death (8)
"Poor dear sir, so ill!" said Thérèse.

"You don't need me anymore. I have to prepare dinner. It's already 04:30." Sylvie said, she was on the stairs and almost bumped into Mrs. de Resto.

The appearance of the countess looked solemn and terrifying.She looked at the dying bed, which was dimly lit, with a single candle shining slightly; seeing her father's face still trembling with some life, she shed tears.Bi Anxun withdrew tactfully.

"I didn't come out sooner," said the countess to Rastignac.

The college student nodded sadly.Madame de Resto 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; come back a little while, then, and bless your repenting daughter. Listen to me well. This How dreadful! From now on, in this world, I can only have your blessing. Everyone hates me, but you love me. Even my own children will hate me in the future. Take me with you Go, I'll love you and take care of you. He can't hear, I'm crazy." She dropped to her knees, staring at the body with a bewildered expression. "I'm really unlucky," she said, looking at Eugene. "Monsieur de Tray has gone away, leaving behind a huge debt; I have just discovered that he has been deceiving me. My husband will never forgive me, and I let him control all my property. All my fantasies It failed. Alas! Who am I doing this for? I actually hurt the only heart that loves me (she pointed to her father)! Not human!"

"He knows it all," said Rastignac.

At this moment, old man Goriot's eyes opened, but it was only caused by convulsions.The countess thought that there was hope, and she made a sudden movement, which looked creepy, no less than the eyes of a dying person.

"Did he hear me?" cried the countess. "No," she said to herself, and sat down beside her father.

Madame de Restaud expressed that she wanted to stay with her father, so Eugene went downstairs to have something to eat.The guests are all here.

"Hey," the painter said to him, "we're upstairs, and it looks like we're going to kill Rama?"

"Charles," Eugene said to him, "I think that if you want to joke, you should find something less tragic."

"We are here, so can't we laugh?" The painter said again, "What's the matter, didn't Bianxun say that the old man is already unconscious?"

"Actually!" the museum clerk continued, "whether he is dead or alive, it's all the same anyway."

"My father is dead!" cried the countess.

Upon hearing this terrible cry, Sylvie, Rastignac, and Bianchon hurried upstairs to find Madame de Restaut fainted.They woke her up and carried her into the carriage which was waiting for her outside; Eugene entrusted her to Thérèse and ordered her to be taken to Madame de Nucingen's house.

"Oh! He's really dead," said Bianchon, coming downstairs.

"Come, gentlemen, dinner is served," said Madame Vauquer, "the soup is getting cold."

Two college students sat down next to each other.

"What should we do now?" Eugene asked Bianchon.

"I closed his eyes and straightened him up. We're going to report the death, and after the district doctor examines him, we'll sew him in a corpse and bury him. What else do you want him to do? ?”

"He can't sniff his bread like that anymore," said one of the visitors, imitating the old man's grimace.

"That's terrible, gentlemen," said the tutor, "put old Goriot aside, and stop feeding us, no, it's been him over and over again for an hour. Paris is the city , the good thing is its advantages, one of which is that a person can be born, live, and die here, and no one pays attention to you. The benefits of civilization, we have to take advantage of it. Sixty people died today, do you really want to Can't you go to mourn those dead souls in Paris? Old Man Goriot is dead, it's not a bad thing for him! If you miss him, go and keep a vigil for him, and let us eat in peace."

"Oh! Yes," said the widow, "it is a good thing for him that he is dead! The poor man seems to have suffered all his life."

In Eugene's mind, Old Man Goriot was the representative of fatherly love, but the eulogy he received after his death was only the above few sentences.The fifteen guests chatted as usual.Eugene and Bianchon ate their food, but the sound of forks and spoons, talking and laughing, and the faces of those people who were wolfing down their food, indifferent and indifferent, also chilled their hearts.The two of them went out to find a priest to keep a vigil and pray for the dead at night.With only a little money on hand, they still have to think about how to take care of the funeral for the old man.At about nine o'clock in the evening, the body was moved to a cot, and a candle was lit on each side. The room was unfurnished, and only a priest sat next to him.Before going to bed, Rastignac asked the priest about the price of the sacrament and the funeral, and wrote a note to the Baron de Nucingen and the Count de Restaut, asking them to send their stewards to dispatch the funeral services. cost.He asked Christopher to bring it to them quickly; he was so tired that he fell asleep as soon as he lay down.

The next morning, Bianchon and Rastignac had to go on their own to report the death; it was almost noon before the verification was completed.At the end of two hours, neither son-in-law had sent money nor sent anyone; Rastignac had to pay the abbé first.Sylvie asked for ten francs, and went to wrap the old man in a shroud, and sew it up with needle and thread.Eugene and Bianchon had the final say, if the family of the deceased didn't want to take care of anything, the two of them would give everything they had, and they could only deal with the expenses tightly.The job of putting the corpse into the coffin was undertaken by the medical student himself; he also bought the coffin for the poor at a discounted price from the internship hospital and had it transported.

"Just make fun of those bastards," he said to Eugene, "you go and buy a plot of land at the Pere Lachaise cemetery for five years; then order a third-class funeral from the church and funeral home. If you are willing to pay you back, you will have someone carve on the tombstone: Countess de Resto, father of Baroness de Nucingen: the tomb of Mr. Goriot. The two college students paid for the burial."

Eugene followed his friend's advice, and that was only because he ran away from the houses of the Nucingens and the de Restauts, but to no avail.He failed to take a step through the gate.The concierge has a strict order, saying:

"Mr. and Mrs. will not be visiting at present; they are greatly distressed by the death of their father."

Eugene already had considerable experience in Parisian high society and knew that he couldn't stick to it.Seeing that it was impossible to even see Danfina, he felt a strange pain in his heart; he wrote her a note in the porter's room:
You sell a piece of jewelry to make your father look like it when he is buried.

He sealed the note, entrusted it to the baron's porter, and handed it to Thérèse for the mistress;Eugene finished the tasks one by one, and returned to the civilian apartment around three o'clock, and saw a coffin parked in front of the door, on two chairs in a deserted street, the black cloth on the coffin was not completely covered ; At this time he could not help but shed tears.A shoddy holy water brush that no mourner has ever touched, soaked in a silver-plated copper pan filled with holy water.There wasn't even a black gauze hanging on the door.This is the mourning of the poor, without pomp, attendants, relatives and friends.Bianchon wrote a note to Rastignac to inform him of his negotiations with the church because of the hospital's business.The intern told him that mass was so expensive that he had to make do with cheap vespers; as for the funeral home, he had sent Christophe a letter.Eugene had just finished reading Bianchon's scribbled note, when he suddenly saw the golden chest with the hair of the two daughters falling in Madame Vauquer's hand.

"How dare you take this?" he asked.

"My God! Shouldn't it be buried with it?" echoed Sylvie. "It's gold."

"Of course!" Eugene said angrily. "This is the only thing that can represent his two daughters. At least he should take it away."

When the hearse came, Eugene asked the coffin to be carried up. He took out a nail, and respectfully hung such an old thing on the old man's chest: when Danfina and Anastasia were young, innocent, Pure, as he said in his dying cry, then, without talking back.

Except for the two undertakers, only Rastignac and Christophe followed the hearse and took the poor man to the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, not far from the Rue Neuve Saint-Geneviève.Once there, the body was placed on a low, dark altar.The college student looked around, but he didn't see Old Man Gao's two daughters or his son-in-law.Apart from him, only Christophe, who had earned a few handsome tips from the old man, felt that he should do his best in the end.Before the four priests, the page, and the deacon arrived, Rastignac shook Christophe's hand, but could not utter a word.

"Yes, Monsieur Eugene," said Christophe, "he is a very good man. He has never said a word out loud, has done no harm, and has never done anything wrong."

The two priests, the page, and the deacon came.In those days the Church was not rich enough to do obligatory prayers; they did what seventy francs could do: sang a hymn, and sang the Remembrance of the Dead and the Lamentation.The ceremony lasted for 10 minutes.There was only one funeral car, for a priest and a page, who promised to take Eugene and Christophe with them.

"There is no funeral procession," said the priest. "We can walk faster to save time. It is already 05:30."

However, just as the body was being loaded onto the hearse, two carriages bearing the coat of arms appeared, but there were no people in them, one belonged to the Count de Resto and the other belonged to the Baron de Nucingen. The two cars followed the coffin to the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

At six o'clock, the body of Old Man Goriot was lowered into the grave, surrounded by the stewards of the two daughters' homes.It was bought at the expense of the university student, and the short prayers for the old man had just been read when the stewards of the two families slipped away with the priest and the others.The two tomb builders straightened up after throwing a few shovels of earth on the coffin; one of them came forward to ask Rastignac for a tip.Eugene dug out his pockets, found nothing, and had to borrow a franc from Christophe.Such a trivial matter immediately made Rastignac extremely sad.The day was drawing to a close, and the damp twilight troubled him; and he looked at the grave where he buried the last tear of his youth, the tear that a holy affection springs from a pure heart, that rises as soon as it hits the ground. tears.He folded his arms and stared at the clouds.Seeing him like this, Christophe went away.

Rastignac walked a few steps to the height of the cemetery alone, and saw Paris lying gracefully on the banks of the Seine, gradually lit up.His eyes were almost staring, watching between the columns of the Place Vendôme and the dome of the Invalides, which was the upper-class area he had been tempted to join.He cast his eyes on the buzzing hive, as if sucking the honey inside, and said this boldly: "Now let's compete!"

Immediately, as the first social challenge, Rastignac dined at Madame de Nucingen's.

Sacher, September [-]

(End of this chapter)