Père Goriot

Balzac's 1835 novel, whose closing scene -- the young Rastignac, having buried old Goriot, looks down over Paris from the heights of Père-Lachaise and challenges it, "À nous deux maintenant!" ("Now it's between us!") -- Zinaida Fyodorovna quotes as she prepares to leave Petersburg for Europe, casting her own flight in Rastignac's defiant, conquering terms even as her actual situation is the opposite of triumphant.