Notary. Unoffending jurisconsult overtaken by sorrow. Possibly by applying justice of peace might afford relief.
| Macaire. Bravo! Dumont. Excellent! Charles. Let’s go at once! Aline. The very thing! Ernestine. Yes, this minute! | } | Together. |
Goriot. I’ll go. I don’t mind getting advice, but I wun’t take it.
Macaire. My friends, one word: I perceive by your downcast looks that you have not recognised the true nature of your responsibility as citizens of time. What is care? impiety. Joy? the whole duty of man. Here is an opportunity of duty it were sinful to forego. With a word, I could lighten your hearts; but I prefer to quicken your heels, and send you forth on your ingenuous errand with happy faces and smiling thoughts, the physicians of your own recovery. Fiddlers, to your catgut! Up, Bertrand, and show them how one foots it in society; forward, girls, and choose me every one the lad she loves; Dumont, benign old man, lead forth our blushing Curate; and you, O bride, embrace the uniform of your beloved, and help us dance in your wedding-day. (Dance, in the course of which Macaire picks Dumont’s pocket of his keys, selects the key of the cash-box, and returns the others to his pocket. In the end, all dance out; the wedding-party, headed by Fiddlers, L.C.; the Maids and Aline into the inn, R.U.E. Manet, Bertrand and Macaire.)
SCENE VIII
Macaire, Bertrand, who instantly takes a bottle from the wedding-table, and sits with it, L.
Macaire. Bertrand, there’s a devil of a want of a father here.
Bertrand. Ay, if we only knew where to find him.
Macaire. Bertrand, look at me: I am Macaire; I am that father.
Bertrand. You, Macaire?—you a father?