anage to be there, I shall hear from you whether my
two girls enjoyed themselves, and how they were dressed, and all about
it in fact."

"How did you find that out, my good Goriot?" said Eugene, putting a
chair by the fire for his visitor.

"Her maid told me. I hear all about their doings from Therese and
Constance," he added gleefully.

The old man looked like a lover who is still young enough to be made
happy by the discovery of some little stratagem which brings him
information of his lady-love without her knowledge.

"_You_ will see them both!" he said, giving artless expression to a pang
of jealousy.

"I do not know," answered Eugene. "I will go to Mme. de Beauseant and
ask her for an introduction to the Marechale."

Eugene felt a thrill of pleasure at the thought of appearing before the
Vicomtesse, dressed as henceforward he always meant to be. The "abysses
of the human heart," in the moralists' phrase, are only insidious
thoughts, involuntary promptings of personal interest. The instinct of
enjoyment turns the scale; those rapid changes of purpose which have
furnished the text for so much rhetoric are calculations prompted by
the hope of pleasure. Rastignac beholding himself well dressed and
impeccable as to gloves and boots, forgot his virtuous resolutions.
Youth, moreover, when bent upon wrongdoing does not dare to behold
himself in the mirror of consciousness; mature age has seen itself; and
therein lies the whole difference between these two phases of life.

A friendship between Eugene and his neighbor, Father Goriot, had
been growing up for several days past. This secret friendship and the
antipathy that the student had begun to entertain for Vautrin arose
from the same psychological causes. The bold philosopher who shall
investigate the effects of mental action upon the physical world
will doubtless find more than one proof of the material nature of our
sentiments in other animals. What physiognomist is as quick to discern
character as a dog is to discover from a stranger's face whether this
is a friend or no? Those by-words--"atoms," "affinities"--are facts
surviving in modern languages for the confusion of philosophic wiseacres
who amuse themselves by winnowing the chaff of language to find its
grammatical roots. We _feel_ that we are loved. Our sentiments make
themselves felt in everything, even at a great distance. A letter is
a living soul, and so faithful an echo of the voice that speaks in it