s on the plaits of hair. "If you only knew, little one, how happy you
can make me--how little it takes to make me happy! Will you come and see
me sometimes? I shall be just above, so it is only a step. Promise me,
say that you will!"

"Yes, dear father."

"Say it again."

"Yes, I will, my kind father."

"Hush! hush! I should make you say it a hundred times over if I followed
my own wishes. Let us have dinner."

The three behaved like children that evening, and Father Goriot's
spirits were certainly not the least wild. He lay at his daughter's
feet, kissed them, gazed into her eyes, rubbed his head against her
dress; in short, no young lover could have been more extravagant or more
tender.

"You see!" Delphine said with a look at Eugene, "so long as my father is
with us, he monopolizes me. He will be rather in the way sometimes."

Eugene had himself already felt certain twinges of jealousy, and could
not blame this speech that contained the germ of all ingratitude.

"And when will the rooms be ready?" asked Eugene, looking round. "We
must all leave them this evening, I suppose."

"Yes, but to-morrow you must come and dine with me," she answered, with
an eloquent glance. "It is our night at the Italiens."

"I shall go to the pit," said her father.

It was midnight. Mme. de Nucingen's carriage was waiting for her, and
Father Goriot and the student walked back to the Maison Vauquer, talking
of Delphine, and warming over their talk till there grew up a curious
rivalry between the two violent passions. Eugene could not help seeing
that the father's self-less love was deeper and more steadfast than
his own. For this worshiper Delphine was always pure and fair, and her
father's adoration drew its fervor from a whole past as well as a future
of love.

They found Mme. Vauquer by the stove, with Sylvie and Christophe to keep
her company; the old landlady, sitting like Marius among the ruins of
Carthage, was waiting for the two lodgers that yet remained to her, and
bemoaning her lot with the sympathetic Sylvie. Tasso's lamentations as
recorded in Byron's poem are undoubtedly eloquent, but for sheer force
of truth they fall far short of the widow's cry from the depths.

"Only three cups of coffee in the morning, Sylvie! Oh dear! to have your
house emptied in this way is enough to break your heart. What is life,
now my lodgers are gone? Nothing at all. Just think of it! It is just as
if all the furniture had been take