“Sell some of your ornaments,” he wrote hastily in the porter’s room, “so that your father may be decently laid in his last resting-place.”
He sealed the note, and begged the porter to give it to Therese for her mistress; but the man took it to the Baron de Nucingen, who flung the note into the fire. Eugene, having finished his errands, returned to the lodging-house about three o’clock. In spite of himself, the tears came into his eyes. The coffin, in its scanty covering of black cloth, was standing there on the pavement before the gate, on two chairs. A withered sprig of hyssop was soaking in the holy water bowl of silver-plated copper; there was not a soul in the street, not a passer-by had stopped to sprinkle the coffin; there was not even an attempt at a black drapery over the wicket. It was a pauper who lay there; no one made a pretence of mourning for him; he had neither friends nor kindred—there was no one to follow him to the grave.
Bianchon’s duties compelled him to be at the hospital, but he had left a few lines for Eugene, telling his friend about the arrangements he had made for the burial service. The house student’s note told Rastignac that a mass was beyond their means, that the ordinary office for the dead was cheaper, and must suffice, and that he had sent word to the undertaker by Christophe. Eugene had scarcely finished reading Bianchon’s scrawl, when he looked up and saw the little circular gold locket that contained the hair of Goriot’s two daughters in Mme. Vauquer’s hands.
“How dared you take it?” he asked.
“Good Lord! is that to be buried along with him?” retorted Sylvie. “It is gold.”
“Of course it shall!” Eugene answered indignantly; “he shall at any rate take one thing that may represent his daughters into the grave with him.”
When the hearse came, Eugene had the coffin carried into the house again, unscrewed the lid, and reverently laid on the old man’s breast the token that recalled the days when Delphine and Anastasie were innocent little maidens, before they began “to think for themselves,” as he had moaned out in his agony.
Rastignac and Christophe and the two undertaker’s men were the only followers of the funeral. The Church of Saint-Etienne du Mont was only a little distance from the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve. When the coffin had been deposited in a low, dark, little chapel, the law student looked round in vain for Goriot’s two daughters or their husbands. Christophe was his only fellow-mourner; Christophe, who appeared to think it was his duty to attend the funeral of the man who had put him in the way of such handsome tips. As they waited there in the chapel for the two priests, the chorister, and the beadle, Rastignac grasped Christophe’s hand. He could not utter a word just then.
“Yes, Monsieur Eugene,” said Christophe, “he was a good and worthy man, who never said one word louder than another; he never did any one any harm, and gave nobody any trouble.”
The two priests, the chorister, and the beadle came, and said and did as much as could be expected for seventy francs in an age when religion cannot afford to say prayers for nothing.