Rastignac asks his family for money to advance socially in Paris, turning his ambition into a private test of family devotion and personal conscience. He seeks twelve hundred francs to enter society under the patronage of the Vicomtesse de Beauseant; when his mother and sisters answer his appeal, their generosity enables his plans but makes their cost impossible for him to ignore.

The Appeal and Its Purpose

After speaking with Goriot about his daughters, Rastignac goes to his room and writes to his mother. He says that he can make a rapid fortune but needs twelve hundred francs, insisting that he has not been gambling and owes no one money. He presents the expense as a requirement of his social prospects: the Vicomtesse de Beauseant is using her influence on his behalf, and he must enter society without having the means to do so himself.

His letter makes the request sound urgent and consequential. Rastignac tells his mother that he must decide whether to make his way in the world or remain in the mire, and that he wants to realize the hopes his family has placed in him. He asks her to sell old jewelry, promising to replace it with finer jewels later. The language of future success thus accompanies a present demand that his mother part with something valuable.

He also writes to his sisters, asking each for her savings and urging them to keep their sacrifice secret from the family. He expects them to respond willingly. To secure their help, he appeals to their sense of honor and affection, making their private resources part of the plan for his public advancement.

Ambition and Misgiving

The letters do not leave Rastignac confident. As soon as he has written them, he feels misgivings and trembles at what he has asked. He imagines his sisters at the family home, counting their small store of money and devising a discreet way to send it. In his vision, their contribution is not merely financial: it requires them to undertake, for the first time, a deception motivated by unselfish love.

Rastignac recognizes the purity and tenderness of his sisters’ attachment and feels ashamed of having written. His distress sharpens when he sees the relation between their sacrifice and his intended reward. Their hard-won savings are to become a ladder by which he climbs toward Delphine de Nucingen. Tears and despair accompany his ambition; the letters expose the human cost that a simple calculation of social opportunity would conceal.

When Goriot asks what is wrong, Rastignac answers that he is as much a son and brother as Goriot is a father. He then speaks of Anastasie’s danger from Maxime de Trailles. The exchange places Rastignac’s appeal beside Goriot’s devotion to his daughters: the young man is not indifferent to family bonds, but he is asking his own family to bear a cost in pursuit of the society in which he hopes to succeed.

The Family’s Response

Toward the end of the first week in December, two letters arrive, one from Rastignac’s mother and one from his eldest sister. Their familiar handwriting brings him both happiness and fear. He knows their love, but also remembers how poor they are and worries that he is draining their resources. His mother sends the money he requested and cautions that she could not raise such a large sum again without her husband’s knowledge.

The mother’s letter confirms that the request has required more than a routine transfer of funds. The money is a sacrifice bounded by the family’s circumstances, not a renewable source of support. Her willingness to send it answers her son’s plea, while her warning establishes the limit of what that willingness can provide.

His sisters’ response is no less concrete. They gather their savings, travel on foot to Ruffec, and hand the money to M. Grimbert of the Messageries Royales. In her letter, the eldest sister describes the journey and the sisters’ happiness at carrying out the plan. Their help fulfils Rastignac’s request for secrecy and gives the family’s affection a material form: the money reaches Paris because they choose to spend their own small hoard on him.

Remorse and the Cost of Success

After reading his mother’s letter, Rastignac thinks of Goriot crushing his silver keepsake into a shapeless mass to sell it and meet his daughter’s bill of exchange. The comparison turns his attention back on himself. He has condemned Anastasie for sacrificing her father to her lover, yet he has asked his mother and sisters to sacrifice their belongings and savings for his future. He asks himself which of them is worse, and finds that his judgment of another person cannot be separated from his own conduct.

He is ready to give up his attempts at advancement because he cannot bear to accept the money. The remorse is intense, but it is not the end of his ambition: his sister’s affectionate letter revives his spirits. The sequence leaves his social ascent morally unsettled. His family has helped him, and he knows the help is loving and costly; he must carry that knowledge into the society he wants to enter.

Narrative Significance

The appeal makes the finances of social ambition intimate. What appears in Paris as a need for money is paid for by the sale of family jewelry and the surrender of savings at home. The contrast between the scale of Rastignac’s plans and the limited means of his relatives gives his advancement an obligation he cannot easily dismiss.

The episode also complicates moral comparison. Rastignac’s indignation toward Anastasie gives way when he recognizes a related pattern in his own request: other people’s resources are being spent to secure the future he desires. Yet the scene does not make the sacrifices equivalent in intention or outcome. Instead, it shows that his ambitions have already implicated the people who love him, even as his shame registers the distance between their generosity and the worldly success he hopes to gain from it.