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.

"To your own house," said Goriot.

The cab stopped in the Rue d'Artois. Father Goriot stepped out first and
flung ten francs to the man with the recklessness of a widower returning
to bachelor ways.

"Come along upstairs," he said to Rastignac. They crossed a courtyard,
and climbed up to the third floor of a new and handsome house. There
they stopped before a door; but before Goriot could ring, it was opened
by Therese, Mme. de Nucingen's maid. Eugene found himself in a charming
set of chambers; an ante-room, a little drawing-room, a bedroom, and a
study, looking out upon a garden. The furniture and the decorations of
the little drawing-room were of the most daintily charming description,
the room was full of soft light, and Delphine rose up from a low chair
by the fire and stood before him. She set her fire-screen down on the
chimney-piece, and spoke with tenderness in every tone of her voice.

"So we had to go in search of you, sir, you who are so slow to
understand!"

Therese left the room. The student took Delphine in his arms and held
her in a tight clasp, his eyes filled with tears of joy. This last
contrast between his present surroundings and the scenes he had just
witnessed was too much for Rastignac's over-wrought nerves, after the
day's strain and excitement that had wearied heart and brain; he was
almost overcome by it.

"I felt sure myself that he loved you," murmured Father Goriot, while
Eugene lay back bewildered on the sofa, utterly unable to speak a word
or to reason out how and why the magic wand had been waved to bring
about this final transformation scene.

"But you must see your rooms," said Mme. de Nucingen. She took his hand
and led him into a room carpeted and furnished like her own; indeed,
down to the smallest details, it was a reproduction in miniature of
De