"your aunt shed tears over those relics of hers before she sold them
for your sake. What right have you to heap execrations on Anastasie?
You have followed her example; you have selfishly sacrificed others to
your own future, and she sacrifices her father to her lover; and of
you two, which is the worse?"

He was ready to renounce his attempts; he could not bear to take that
money. The fires of remorse burned in his heart, and gave him
intolerable pain, the generous secret remorse which men seldom take
into account when they sit in judgment upon their fellow-men; but
perhaps the angels in heaven, beholding it, pardon the criminal whom
our justice condemns. Rastignac opened his sister's letter; its
simplicity and kindness revived his heart.


"Your letter came just at the right time, dear brother. Agathe and
I had thought of so many different ways of spending our money,
that we did not know what to buy with it; and now you have come
in, and, like the servant who upset all the watches that belonged
to the King of Spain, you have restored harmony; for, really and
truly, we did not know which of all the things we wanted we wanted
most, and we were always quarreling about it, never thinking, dear
Eugene, of a way of spending our money which would satisfy us
completely. Agathe jumped for you. Indeed, we have been like two
mad things all day, 'to such a prodigious degree' (as aunt would
say), that mother said, with her severe expression, 'Whatever can
be the matter with you, mesdemoiselles?' I think if we had been
scolded a little, we should have been still better pleased. A
woman ought to be very glad to suffer for one she loves! I,
however, in my inmost soul, was doleful and cross in the midst of