“Ah! if I were to tell you about them, you would shun me,” she said. “Your love for me is as yet only the conventional gallantry that men use to masquerade in; and, if you really loved me, you would be driven to despair. I must keep silence, you see. Let us talk of something else, for pity’s sake,” she added. “Let me show you my rooms.”
“No; let us stay here,” answered Eugene; he sat down on the sofa before the fire, and boldly took Mme. de Nucingen’s hand in his. She surrendered it to him; he even felt the pressure of her fingers in one of the spasmodic clutches that betray terrible agitation.
“Listen,” said Rastignac; “if you are in trouble, you ought to tell me about it. I want to prove to you that I love you for yourself alone. You must speak to me frankly about your troubles, so that I can put an end to them, even if I have to kill half-a-dozen men; or I shall go, never to return.”
“Very well,” she cried, putting her hand to her forehead in an agony of despair, “I will put you to the proof, and this very moment. Yes,” she said to herself, “I have no other resource left.”
She rang the bell.
“Are the horses put in for the master?” she asked of the servant.
“Yes, madame.”
“I shall take his carriage myself. He can have mine and my horses. Serve dinner at seven o’clock.”
“Now, come with me,” she said to Eugene, who thought as he sat in the banker’s carriage beside Mme. de Nucingen that he must surely be dreaming.
“To the Palais-Royal,” she said to the coachman; “stop near the Theatre-Francais.”