"Nasie! Fifine!"

"There is life in him yet," said Bianchon.

"What does he go on living for?" said Sylvie.

"To suffer," answered Rastignac.

Bianchon made a sign to his friend to follow his example, knelt down
and pressed his arms under the sick man, and Rastignac on the other
side did the same, so that Sylvie, standing in readiness, might draw
the sheet from beneath and replace it with the one that she had
brought. Those tears, no doubt, had misled Goriot; for he gathered up
all his remaining strength in a last effort, stretched out his hands,
groped for the students' heads, and as his fingers caught convulsively
at their hair, they heard a faint whisper:

"Ah! my angels!"

Two words, two inarticulate murmurs, shaped into words by the soul
which fled forth with them as they left his lips.

"Poor dear!" cried Sylvie, melted by that exclamation; the expression
of the great love raised for the last time to a sublime height by that
most ghastly and involuntary of lies.

The father's last breath must have been a sigh of joy, and in that
sigh his whole life was summed up; he was cheated even at the last.
They laid Father Goriot upon his wretched bed with reverent hands.