"My father is dead!" shrieked the Countess.

The terrible cry brought Sylvie, Rastignac, and Bianchon; Mme.
de Restaud had fainted away. When she recovered they carried her
downstairs, and put her into the cab that stood waiting at the door.
Eugene sent Therese with her, and bade the maid take the Countess to
Mme. de Nucingen.

Bianchon came down to them.

"Yes, he is dead," he said.

"Come, sit down to dinner, gentlemen," said Mme. Vauquer, "or the soup
will be cold."

The two students sat down together.

"What is the next thing to be done?" Eugene asked of Bianchon.

"I have closed his eyes and composed his limbs," said Bianchon. "When
the certificate has been officially registered at the Mayor's office,
we will sew him in his winding sheet and bury him somewhere. What do you
think we ought to do?"

"He will not smell at his bread like this any more," said the painter,
mimicking the old man's little trick.

"Oh, hang it all!" cried the tutor, "let Father Goriot drop, and let us
have something else for a change. He is a standing dish, and we have had
him with every sauce this hour or more. It is one of the privileges of
the good city of Paris that anybody may be born, or live, or die there
without attracting any attention whatsoever. Let us profit by the
advantages of civilization. There are fifty or sixty deaths every day;
if you have a mind to do it, you can sit down at any time and wail over
whole hecatombs of dead in Paris. Father Goriot has gone off the hooks,
has he? So much the better for him. If you venerate his memory, keep it
to yourselves, and let the rest of us feed in peace."

"Oh, to be sure," said the widow, "it is all the better for him that he
is dead. It looks as though he had had trouble enough, poor soul, while
he was alive."

And this was all the funeral oration delivered over him who had been for
Eugene the type and embodiment of Fatherhood.

The fifteen lodgers began to talk as usual. When Bianchon and Eugene had
satisfied their hunger, the rattle of spoons and forks, the boisterous
conversation, the expressions on the faces that bespoke various degrees
of want of feeling, gluttony, or indifference, everything about them
made them shiver with loathing. They went out to find a priest to watch
that night with the dead. It was necessary to measure their last pious
cares by the scanty sum of money that remained. Before nine o'clock that
evening the body was laid out on the bare sac