"She would never forgive me for putting her in the wrong over it," he
said to himself. Then he turned the doctor's dictum over in his mind;
he tried to believe that Goriot was not so dangerously ill as he had
imagined, and ended by collecting together a sufficient quantity of
traitorous excuses for Delphine's conduct. She did not know how ill
her father was; the kind old man himself would have made her go to the
ball if she had gone to see him. So often it happens that this one or
that stands condemned by the social laws that govern family relations;
and yet there are peculiar circumstances in the case, differences of
temperament, divergent interests, innumerable complications of family
life that excuse the apparent offence.

Eugene did not wish to see too clearly; he was ready to sacrifice his
conscience to his mistress. Within the last few days his whole life
had undergone a change. Woman had entered into his world and thrown it
into chaos, family claims dwindled away before her; she had
appropriated all his being to her uses. Rastignac and Delphine found
each other at a crisis in their lives when their union gave them the
most poignant bliss. Their passion, so long proved, had only gained in
strength by the gratified desire that often extinguishes passion. This
woman was his, and Eugene recognized that not until then had he loved
her; perhaps love is only gratitude for pleasure. This woman, vile or
sublime, he adored for the pleasure she had brought as her dower; and
Delphine loved Rastignac as Tantalus would have loved some angel who
had satisfied his hunger and quenched the burning thirst in his
parched throat.

"Well," said Mme. de Nucingen when he came back in evening dress, "how
is my father?"