e hearth, and in that obedience found
a deep and constant serenity, unvexed by torments such as these. Yet,
for all his good impulses, he could not bring himself to make profession
of the religion of pure souls to Delphine, nor to prescribe the duties
of piety to her in the name of love. His education had begun to bear its
fruits; he loved selfishly already. Besides, his tact had discovered to
him the real nature of Delphine; he divined instinctively that she was
capable of stepping over her father's corpse to go to the ball; and
within himself he felt that he had neither the strength of mind to play
the part of mentor, nor the strength of character to vex her, nor the
courage to leave her to go alone.

"She would never forgive me for putting her in the wrong over it," he
said to himself. Then he turned the doctor's dictum over in his mind;
he tried to believe that Goriot was not so dangerously ill as he had
imagined, and ended by collecting together a sufficient quantity of
traitorous excuses for Delphine's conduct. She did not know how ill her
father was; the kind old man himself would have made her go to the ball
if she had gone to see him. So often it happens that this one or that
stands condemned by the social laws that govern family relations;
and yet there are peculiar circumstances in the case, differences of
temperament, divergent interests, innumerable complications of family
life that excuse the apparent offence.

Eugene did not wish to see too clearly; he was ready to sacrifice his
conscience to his mistress. Within the last few days his whole life had
undergone a change. Woman had entered into his world and thrown it into
chaos, family claims dwindled away before her; she had appropriated
all his being to her uses. Rastignac and Delphine found each other at
a crisis in their lives when their union gave them the most poignant
bliss. 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 dangerou