father is very well. The vintage of 1819 has turned out
better than we expected. Good-bye, dear boy; I will say nothing
about your sisters, because Laure is writing to you, and I must
let her have the pleasure of giving you all the home news. Heaven
send that you may succeed! Oh! yes, dear Eugene, you must succeed.
I have come, through you, to a knowledge of a pain so sharp that I
do not think I could endure it a second time. I have come to know
what it is to be poor, and to long for money for my children's
sake. There, good-bye! Do not leave us for long without news of
you; and here, at the last, take a kiss from your mother."

By the time Eugene had finished the letter he was in tears. He thought
of Father Goriot crushing his silver keepsake into a shapeless mass
before he sold it to meet his daughter's bill of exchange.

"Your mother has broken up her jewels for you," he said to himself;
"your aunt shed tears over those relics of hers before she sold them
for your sake. What right have you to heap execrations on Anastasie? You
have followed her example; you have selfishly sacrificed others to your
own future, and she sacrifices her father to her lover; and of you two,
which is the worse?"

He was ready to renounce his attempts; he could not bear to take
that money. The fires of remorse burned in his heart, and gave him
intolerable pain, the generous secret remorse which men seldom take into
account when they sit in judgment upon their fellow-men; but perhaps
the angels in heaven, beholding it, pardon the criminal whom our justice
condemns. Rastignac opened his sister's letter; its simplicity and
kindness revived his heart.

"Your letter came just at the right time, dear brother. Agathe and
I had thought of so many different ways of spending our money,
that we did not know what to buy with it; and now you have come
in, and, like the servant who upset all the watches that belonged
to the King of Spain, you have restored harmony; for, really and
truly, we did not know which of all the things we wanted we wanted
most, and we were always quarreling about it, never thinking, dear
Eugene, of a way of spending our money which would satisfy us
completely. Agathe jumped for you. Indeed, we have been like two
mad things all day, 'to such a prodigious degree' (as aunt would
say), that mother said, with her severe expression, 'Whatever can
be the matter with you, mesdemoiselles?' I