FATHER GORIOT
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translator
Ellen Marriage
To the great and illustrious Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a token
of admiration for his works and genius.
DE BALZAC.
Mme. Vauquer (nee de Conflans) is an elderly person, who for the
past forty years has kept a lodging-house in the Rue Nueve-
Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the Latin
Quarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. Her house (known in the
neighborhood as the Maison Vauquer) receives men and women, old
and young, and no word has ever been breathed against her
respectable establishment; but, at the same time, it must be said
that as a matter of fact no young woman has been under her roof
for thirty years, and that if a young man stays there for any
length of time it is a sure sign that his allowance must be of
the slenderest. In 1819, however, the time when this drama opens,
there was an almost penniless young girl among Mme. Vauquer's
boarders.
That word drama has been somewhat discredited of late; it has
been overworked and twisted to strange uses in these days of
dolorous literature; but it must do service again here, not
because this story is dramatic in the restricted sense of the
word, but because some tears may perhaps be shed intra et extra
muros before it is over.
Will any one without the walls of Paris understand it? It is open
to doubt. The only audience who could appreciate the results of
close observation, the careful reproduction of minute detail and
local color, are dwellers between the heights of Montrouge and
Montmartre, in a vale of crumbling stucco watered by streams of
black mud, a vale of sorrows which are real and joys too often
hollow; but this audience is so accustomed to terrible
sensations, that only some unimaginable and well-neigh impossible
woe could produce any lasting impression there. Now and again
there are tragedies so awful and so grand by reason of the
complication of virtues and vices that bring them about, that
egotism and selfishness are forced to pause and are moved to
pity; but the impression that they receive is like a luscious
fruit, soon consumed. Civilization, like the car of Juggernaut,
is scarcely stayed perceptibly in its progress by a heart less
easy to break than the others that lie in its course; this also
is broken, and Civilization continues on her course triumphant.
And you, too, will do the like; you who with this book in your
white hand will sink back among the cushions of your armchair,
and say to yourself, "Perhaps this may amuse me." You will read
the story of Father Goriot's secret woes, and, dining thereafter
with an unspoiled appetite, will lay the blame of your
insensibility upon the writer, and accuse him of exaggeration, of
writing romances. Ah! once for all, this drama is neither a
fiction nor a romance! ALL IS TRUE,--so true, that every one can
discern the elements of the tragedy in his own house, perhaps in
his own heart.
The lodging-house is Mme. Vauquer's own property. It is still
standing in the lower end of the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, just
where the road slopes so sharply down to the Rue de l'Arbalete,
that wheeled traffic seldom passes that way, because it is so
stony and steep. This position is sufficient to account for the
silence prevalent in the streets shut in between the dome of the
Pantheon and the dome of the Val-de-Grace, two conspicuous public
buildings which give a yellowish tone to the landscape and darken
the whole district that lies beneath the shadow of their leaden-
hued cupolas.
In that district the pavements are clean and dry, there is
neither mud nor water in the gutters, grass grows in the chinks
of the walls. The most heedless passer-by feels the depressing
influences of a place where the sound of wheels creates a
sensation; there is a grim look about the houses, a suggestion of
a jail about those high garden walls. A Parisian straying into a
suburb apparently composed of lodging-houses and public
institutions would see poverty and dullness, old age lying down
to die, and joyous youth condemned to drudgery. It is the ugliest
quarter of Paris, and, it may be added, the least known. But,
before all things, the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve is like a
bronze frame for a picture for which the mind cannot be too well
prepared by the contemplation of sad hues and sober images. Even
so, step by step the daylight decreases, and the cicerone's
droning voice grows hollower as the traveler descends into the
Catacombs. The comparison holds good! Who shall say which is more
ghastly, the sight of the bleached skulls or of dried-up human
hearts?
The front of the lodging-house is at right angles to the road,
and looks out upon a little garden, so that you see the side of
the house in section, as it were, from the Rue Nueve-Sainte-
Genevieve. Beneath the wall of the house front there lies a
channel, a fathom wide, paved with cobble-stones, and beside it
runs a graveled walk bordered by geraniums and oleanders and
pomegranates set in great blue and white glazed earthenware pots.
Access into the graveled walk is afforded by a door, above which
the words MAISON VAUQUER may be read, and beneath, in rather
smaller letters, "Lodgings for both sexes, etc."
During the day a glimpse into the garden is easily obtained
through a wicket to which a bell is attached. On the opposite
wall, at the further end of the graveled walk, a green marble
arch was painted once upon a time by a local artist, and in this
semblance of a shrine a statue representing Cupid is installed; a
Parisian Cupid, so blistered and disfigured that he looks like a
candidate for one of the adjacent hospitals, and might suggest an
allegory to lovers of symbolism. The half-obliterated inscription
on the pedestal beneath determines the date of this work of art,
for it bears witness to the widespread enthusiasm felt for
Voltaire on his return to Paris in 1777:
"Whoe'er thou art, thy master see;
He is, or was, or ought to be."
At night the wicket gate is replaced by a solid door. The little
garden is no wider than the front of the house; it is shut in
between the wall of the street and the partition wall of the
neighboring house. A mantle of ivy conceals the bricks and
attracts the eyes of passers-by to an effect which is picturesque
in Paris, for each of the walls is covered with trellised vines
that yield a scanty dusty crop of fruit, and furnish besides a
subject of conversation for Mme. Vauquer and her lodgers; every
year the widow trembles for her vintage.
A straight path beneath the walls on either side of the garden
leads to a clump of lime-trees at the further end of it; LINE-
trees, as Mme. Vauquer persists in calling them, in spite of the
fact that she was a de Conflans, and regardless of repeated
corrections from her lodgers.
The central space between the walls is filled with artichokes and
rows of pyramid fruit-trees, and surrounded by a border of
lettuce, pot-herbs, and parsley. Under the lime-trees there are a
few green-painted garden seats and a wooden table, and hither,
during the dog-days, such of the lodgers as are rich enough to
indulge in a cup of coffee come to take their pleasure, though it
is hot enough to roast eggs even in the shade.
The house itself is three stories high, without counting the
attics under the roof. It is built of rough stone, and covered
with the yellowish stucco that gives a mean appearance to almost
every house in Paris. There are five windows in each story in the
front of the house; all the blinds visible through the small
square panes are drawn up awry, so that the lines are all at
cross purposes. At the side of the house there are but two
windows on each floor, and the lowest of all are adorned with a
heavy iron grating.
Behind the house a yard extends for some twenty feet, a space
inhabited by a happy family of pigs, poultry, and rabbits; the
wood-shed is situated on the further side, and on the wall
between the wood-shed and the kitchen window hangs the meat-safe,
just above the place where the sink discharges its greasy
streams. The cook sweeps all the refuse out through a little door
into the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, and frequently cleanses the
yard with copious supplies of water, under pain of pestilence.
The house might have been built on purpose for its present uses.
Access is given by a French window to the first room on the
ground floor, a sitting-room which looks out upon the street
through the two barred windows already mentioned. Another door
opens out of it into the dining-room, which is separated from the
kitchen by the well of the staircase, the steps being constructed
partly of wood, partly of tiles, which are colored and beeswaxed.
Nothing can be more depressing than the sight of that sitting-
room. The furniture is covered with horse hair woven in alternate
dull and glossy stripes. There is a round table in the middle,
with a purplish-red marble top, on which there stands, by way of
ornament, the inevitable white china tea-service, covered with a
half-effaced gilt network. The floor is sufficiently uneven, the
wainscot rises to elbow height, and the rest of the wall space is
decorated with a varnished paper, on which the principal scenes
from Telemaque are depicted, the various classical personages
being colored. The subject between the two windows is the banquet
given by Calypso to the son of Ulysses, displayed thereon for the
admiration of the boarders, and has furnished jokes these forty
years to the young men who show themselves superior to their
position by making fun of the dinners to which poverty condemns
them. The hearth is always so clean and neat that it is evident
that a fire is only kindled there on great occasions; the stone
chimney-piece is adorned by a couple of vases filled with faded
artificial flowers imprisoned under glass shades, on either side
of a bluish marble clock in the very worst taste.
The first room exhales an odor for which there is no name in the
language, and which should be called the odeur de pension. The
damp atmosphere sends a chill through you as you breathe it; it
has a stuffy, musty, and rancid quality; it permeates your
clothing; after-dinner scents seem to be mingled in it with
smells from the kitchen and scullery and the reek of a hospital.
It might be possible to describe it if some one should discover a
process by which to distil from the atmosphere all the nauseating
elements with which it is charged by the catarrhal exhalations of
every individual lodger, young or old. Yet, in spite of these
stale horrors, the sitting-room is as charming and as delicately
perfumed as a boudoir, when compared with the adjoining dining-
room.
The paneled walls of that apartment were once painted some color,
now a matter of conjecture, for the surface is incrusted with
accumulated layers of grimy deposit, which cover it with
fantastic outlines. A collection of dim-ribbed glass decanters,
metal discs with a satin sheen on them, and piles of blue-edged
earthenware plates of Touraine ware cover the sticky surfaces of
the sideboards that line the room. In a corner stands a box
containing a set of numbered pigeon-holes, in which the lodgers'
table napkins, more or less soiled and stained with wine, are
kept. Here you see that indestructible furniture never met with
elsewhere, which finds its way into lodging-houses much as the
wrecks of our civilization drift into hospitals for incurables.
You expect in such places as these to find the weather-house
whence a Capuchin issues on wet days; you look to find the
execrable engravings which spoil your appetite, framed every one
in a black varnished frame, with a gilt beading round it; you
know the sort of tortoise-shell clock-case, inlaid with brass;
the green stove, the Argand lamps, covered with oil and dust,
have met your eyes before. The oilcloth which covers the long
table is so greasy that a waggish externe will write his name on
the surface, using his thumb-nail as a style. The chairs are
broken-down invalids; the wretched little hempen mats slip away
from under your feet without slipping away for good; and finally,
the foot-warmers are miserable wrecks, hingeless, charred, broken
away about the holes. It would be impossible to give an idea of
the old, rotten, shaky, cranky, worm-eaten, halt, maimed, one-
eyed, rickety, and ramshackle condition of the furniture without
an exhaustive description, which would delay the progress of the
story to an extent that impatient people would not pardon. The
red tiles of the floor are full of depressions brought about by
scouring and periodical renewings of color. In short, there is no
illusory grace left to the poverty that reigns here; it is dire,
parsimonious, concentrated, threadbare poverty; as yet it has not
sunk into the mire, it is only splashed by it, and though not in
rags as yet, its clothing is ready to drop to pieces.
This apartment is in all its glory at seven o'clock in the
morning, when Mme. Vauquer's cat appears, announcing the near
approach of his mistress, and jumps upon the sideboards to sniff
at the milk in the bowls, each protected by a plate, while he
purrs his morning greeting to the world. A moment later the widow
shows her face; she is tricked out in a net cap attached to a
false front set on awry, and shuffles into the room in her
slipshod fashion. She is an oldish woman, with a bloated
countenance, and a nose like a parrot's beak set in the middle of
it; her fat little hands (she is as sleek as a church rat) and
her shapeless, slouching figure are in keeping with the room that
reeks of misfortune, where hope is reduced to speculate for the
meanest stakes. Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air
without being disheartened by it. Her face is as fresh as a
frosty morning in autumn; there are wrinkles about the eyes that
vary in their expression from the set smile of a ballet-dancer to
the dark, suspicious scowl of a discounter of bills; in short,
she is at once the embodiment and interpretation of her lodging-
house, as surely as her lodging-house implies the existence of
its mistress. You can no more imagine the one without the other,
than you can think of a jail without a turnkey. The unwholesome
corpulence of the little woman is produced by the life she leads,
just as typhus fever is bred in the tainted air of a hospital.
The very knitted woolen petticoat that she wears beneath a skirt
made of an old gown, with the wadding protruding through the
rents in the material, is a sort of epitome of the sitting-room,
the dining-room, and the little garden; it discovers the cook, it
foreshadows the lodgers--the picture of the house is completed by
the portrait of its mistress.
Mme. Vauquer at the age of fifty is like all women who "have seen
a deal of trouble." She has the glassy eyes and innocent air of a
trafficker in flesh and blood, who will wax virtuously indignant
to obtain a higher price for her services, but who is quite ready
to betray a Georges or a Pichegru, if a Georges or a Pichegru
were in hiding and still to be betrayed, or for any other
expedient that may alleviate her lot. Still, "she is a good woman
at bottom," said the lodgers who believed that the widow was
wholly dependent upon the money that they paid her, and
sympathized when they heard her cough and groan like one of
themselves.
What had M. Vauquer been? The lady was never very explicit on
this head. How had she lost her money? "Through trouble," was her
answer. He had treated her badly, had left her nothing but her
eyes to cry over his cruelty, the house she lived in, and the
privilege of pitying nobody, because, so she was wont to say, she
herself had been through every possible misfortune.
Sylvie, the stout cook, hearing her mistress' shuffling
footsteps, hastened to serve the lodgers' breakfasts. Beside
those who lived in the house, Mme. Vauquer took boarders who came
for their meals; but these externes usually only came to dinner,
for which they paid thirty francs a month.
At the time when this story begins, the lodging-house contained
seven inmates. The best rooms in the house were on the first
story, Mme. Vauquer herself occupying the least important, while
the rest were let to a Mme. Couture, the widow of a commissary-
general in the service of the Republic. With her lived Victorine
Taillefer, a schoolgirl, to whom she filled the place of mother.
These two ladies paid eighteen hundred francs a year.
The two sets of rooms on the second floor were respectively
occupied by an old man named Poiret and a man of forty or
thereabouts, the wearer of a black wig and dyed whiskers, who
gave out that he was a retired merchant, and was addressed as M.
Vautrin. Two of the four rooms on the third floor were also let--
one to an elderly spinster, a Mlle. Michonneau, and the other to
a retired manufacturer of vermicelli, Italian paste and starch,
who allowed the others to address him as "Father Goriot." The
remaining rooms were allotted to various birds of passage, to
impecunious students, who like "Father Goriot" and Mlle.
Michonneau, could only muster forty-five francs a month to pay
for their board and lodging. Mme. Vauquer had little desire for
lodgers of this sort; they ate too much bread, and she only took
them in default of better.
At that time one of the rooms was tenanted by a law student, a
young man from the neighborhood of Angouleme, one of a large
family who pinched and starved themselves to spare twelve hundred
francs a year for him. Misfortune had accustomed Eugene de
Rastignac, for that was his name, to work. He belonged to the
number of young men who know as children that their parents'
hopes are centered on them, and deliberately prepare themselves
for a great career, subordinating their studies from the first to
this end, carefully watching the indications of the course of
events, calculating the probable turn that affairs will take,
that they may be the first to profit by them. But for his
observant curiosity, and the skill with which he managed to
introduce himself into the salons of Paris, this story would not
have been colored by the tones of truth which it certainly owes
to him, for they are entirely due to his penetrating sagacity and
desire to fathom the mysteries of an appalling condition of
things, which was concealed as carefully by the victim as by
those who had brought it to pass.
Above the third story there was a garret where the linen was hung
to dry, and a couple of attics. Christophe, the man-of-all-work,
slept in one, and Sylvie, the stout cook, in the other. Beside
the seven inmates thus enumerated, taking one year with another,
some eight law or medical students dined in the house, as well as
two or three regular comers who lived in the neighborhood. There
were usually eighteen people at dinner, and there was room, if
need be, for twenty at Mme. Vauquer's table; at breakfast,
however, only the seven lodgers appeared. It was almost like a
family party. Every one came down in dressing-gown and slippers,
and the conversation usually turned on anything that had happened
the evening before; comments on the dress or appearance of the
dinner contingent were exchanged in friendly confidence.
These seven lodgers were Mme. Vauquer's spoiled children. Among
them she distributed, with astronomical precision, the exact
proportion of respect and attention due to the varying amounts
they paid for their board. One single consideration influenced
all these human beings thrown together by chance. The two second-
floor lodgers only paid seventy-two francs a month. Such prices
as these are confined to the Faubourg Saint-Marcel and the
district between La Bourbe and the Salpetriere; and, as might be
expected, poverty, more or less apparent, weighed upon them all,
Mme. Couture being the sole exception to the rule.
The dreary surroundings were reflected in the costumes of the
inmates of the house; all were alike threadbare. The color of the
men's coats were problematical; such shoes, in more fashionable
quarters, are only to be seen lying in the gutter; the cuffs and
collars were worn and frayed at the edges; every limp article of
clothing looked like the ghost of its former self. The women's
dresses were faded, old-fashioned, dyed and re-dyed; they wore
gloves that were glazed with hard wear, much-mended lace, dingy
ruffles, crumpled muslin fichus. So much for their clothing; but,
for the most part, their frames were solid enough; their
constitutions had weathered the storms of life; their cold, hard
faces were worn like coins that have been withdrawn from
circulation, but there were greedy teeth behind the withered
lips. Dramas brought to a close or still in progress are
foreshadowed by the sight of such actors as these, not the dramas
that are played before the footlights and against a background of
painted canvas, but dumb dramas of life, frost-bound dramas that
sere hearts like fire, dramas that do not end with the actors'
lives.
Mlle. Michonneau, that elderly young lady, screened her weak eyes
from the daylight by a soiled green silk shade with a rim of
brass, an object fit to scare away the Angel of Pity himself. Her
shawl, with its scanty, draggled fringe, might have covered a
skeleton, so meagre and angular was the form beneath it. Yet she
must have been pretty and shapely once. What corrosive had
destroyed the feminine outlines? Was it trouble, or vice, or
greed? Had she loved too well? Had she been a second-hand clothes
dealer, a frequenter of the backstairs of great houses, or had
she been merely a courtesan? Was she expiating the flaunting
triumphs of a youth overcrowded with pleasures by an old age in
which she was shunned by every passer-by? Her vacant gaze sent a
chill through you; her shriveled face seemed like a menace. Her
voice was like the shrill, thin note of the grasshopper sounding
from the thicket when winter is at hand. She said that she had
nursed an old gentleman, ill of catarrh of the bladder, and left
to die by his children, who thought that he had nothing left. His
bequest to her, a life annuity of a thousand francs, was
periodically disputed by his heirs, who mingled slander with
their persecutions. In spite of the ravages of conflicting
passions, her face retained some traces of its former fairness
and fineness of tissue, some vestiges of the physical charms of
her youth still survived.
M. Poiret was a sort of automaton. He might be seen any day
sailing like a gray shadow along the walks of the Jardin des
Plantes, on his head a shabby cap, a cane with an old yellow
ivory handle in the tips of his thin fingers; the outspread
skirts of his threadbare overcoat failed to conceal his meagre
figure; his breeches hung loosely on his shrunken limbs; the
thin, blue-stockinged legs trembled like those of a drunken man;
there was a notable breach of continuity between the dingy white
waistcoat and crumpled shirt frills and the cravat twisted about
a throat like a turkey gobbler's; altogether, his appearance set
people wondering whether this outlandish ghost belonged to the
audacious race of the sons of Japhet who flutter about on the
Boulevard Italien. What devouring kind of toil could have so
shriveled him? What devouring passions had darkened that bulbous
countenance, which would have seemed outrageous as a caricature?
What had he been? Well, perhaps he had been part of the machinery
of justice, a clerk in the office to which the executioner sends
in his accounts,--so much for providing black veils for
parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for
the knife. Or he might have been a receiver at the door of a
public slaughter-house, or a sub-inspector of nuisances. Indeed,
the man appeared to have been one of the beasts of burden in our
great social mill; one of those Parisian Ratons whom their
Bertrands do not even know by sight; a pivot in the obscure
machinery that disposes of misery and things unclean; one of
those men, in short, at sight of whom we are prompted to remark
that, "After all, we cannot do without them."
Stately Paris ignores the existence of these faces bleached by
moral or physical suffering; but, then, Paris is in truth an
ocean that no line can plumb. You may survey its surface and
describe it; but no matter how numerous and painstaking the
toilers in this sea, there will always be lonely and unexplored
regions in its depths, caverns unknown, flowers and pearls and
monsters of the deep overlooked or forgotten by the divers of
literature. The Maison Vauquer is one of these curious
monstrosities.
Two, however, of Mme. Vauquer's boarders formed a striking
contrast to the rest. There was a sickly pallor, such as is often
seen in anaemic girls, in Mlle. Victorine Taillefer's face; and
her unvarying expression of sadness, like her embarrassed manner
and pinched look, was in keeping with the general wretchedness of
the establishment in the Rue Nueve-Saint-Genevieve, which forms a
background to this picture; but her face was young, there was
youthfulness in her voice and elasticity in her movements. This
young misfortune was not unlike a shrub, newly planted in an
uncongenial soil, where its leaves have already begun to wither.
The outlines of her figure, revealed by her dress of the simplest
and cheapest materials, were also youthful. There was the same
kind of charm about her too slender form, her faintly colored
face and light-brown hair, that modern poets find in mediaeval
statuettes; and a sweet expression, a look of Christian
resignation in the dark gray eyes. She was pretty by force of
contrast; if she had been happy, she would have been charming.
Happiness is the poetry of woman, as the toilette is her tinsel.
If the delightful excitement of a ball had made the pale face
glow with color; if the delights of a luxurious life had brought
the color to the wan cheeks that were slightly hollowed already;
if love had put light into the sad eyes, then Victorine might
have ranked among the fairest; but she lacked the two things
which create woman a second time--pretty dresses and love-
letters.
A book might have been made of her story. Her father was
persuaded that he had sufficient reason for declining to
acknowledge her, and allowed her a bare six hundred francs a
year; he had further taken measures to disinherit his daughter,
and had converted all his real estate into personalty, that he
might leave it undivided to his son. Victorine's mother had died
broken-hearted in Mme. Couture's house; and the latter, who was a
near relation, had taken charge of the little orphan. Unluckily,
the widow of the commissary-general to the armies of the Republic
had nothing in the world but her jointure and her widow's
pension, and some day she might be obliged to leave the helpless,
inexperienced girl to the mercy of the world. The good soul,
therefore, took Victorine to mass every Sunday, and to confession
once a fortnight, thinking that, in any case, she would bring up
her ward to be devout. She was right; religion offered a solution
of the problem of the young girl's future. The poor child loved
the father who refused to acknowledge her. Once every year she
tried to see him to deliver her mother's message of forgiveness,
but every year hitherto she had knocked at that door in vain; her
father was inexorable. Her brother, her only means of
communication, had not come to see her for four years, and had
sent her no assistance; yet she prayed to God to unseal her
father's eyes and to soften her brother's heart, and no
accusations mingled with her prayers. Mme. Couture and Mme.
Vauquer exhausted the vocabulary of abuse, and failed to find
words that did justice to the banker's iniquitous conduct; but
while they heaped execrations on the millionaire, Victorine's
words were as gentle as the moan of the wounded dove, and
affection found expression even in the cry drawn from her by
pain.
Eugene de Rastignac was a thoroughly southern type; he had a fair
complexion, blue eyes, black hair. In his figure, manner, and his
whole bearing it was easy to see that he had either come of a
noble family, or that, from his earliest childhood, he had been
gently bred. If he was careful of his wardrobe, only taking last
year's clothes into daily wear, still upon occasion he could
issue forth as a young man of fashion. Ordinarily he wore a
shabby coat and waistcoat, the limp black cravat, untidily
knotted, that students affect, trousers that matched the rest of
his costume, and boots that had been resoled.
Vautrin (the man of forty with the dyed whiskers) marked a
transition stage between these two young people and the others.
He was the kind of man that calls forth the remark: "He looks a
jovial sort!" He had broad shoulders, a well-developed chest,
muscular arms, and strong square-fisted hands; the joints of his
fingers were covered with tufts of fiery red hair. His face was
furrowed by premature wrinkles; there was a certain hardness
about it in spite of his bland and insinuating manner. His bass
voice was by no means unpleasant, and was in keeping with his
boisterous laughter. He was always obliging, always in good
spirits; if anything went wrong with one of the locks, he would
soon unscrew it, take it to pieces, file it, oil and clean and
set it in order, and put it back in its place again; "I am an old
hand at it," he used to say. Not only so, he knew all about
ships, the sea, France, foreign countries, men, business, law,
great houses and prisons,--there was nothing that he did not
know. If any one complained rather more than usual, he would
offer his services at once. He had several times lent money to
Mme. Vauquer, or to the boarders; but, somehow, those whom he
obliged felt that they would sooner face death than fail to repay
him; a certain resolute look, sometimes seen on his face,
inspired fear of him, for all his appearance of easy good-nature.
In the way he spat there was an imperturbable coolness which
seemed to indicate that this was a man who would not stick at a
crime to extricate himself from a false position. His eyes, like
those of a pitiless judge, seemed to go to the very bottom of all
questions, to read all natures, all feelings and thoughts. His
habit of life was very regular; he usually went out after
breakfast, returning in time for dinner, and disappeared for the
rest of the evening, letting himself in about midnight with a
latch key, a privilege that Mme. Vauquer accorded to no other
boarder. But then he was on very good terms with the widow; he
used to call her "mamma," and put his arm round her waist, a
piece of flattery perhaps not appreciated to the full! The worthy
woman might imagine this to be an easy feat; but, as a matter of
fact, no arm but Vautrin's was long enough to encircle her.
It was a characteristic trait of his generously to pay fifteen
francs a month for the cup of coffee with a dash of brandy in it,
which he took after dinner. Less superficial observers than young
men engulfed by the whirlpool of Parisian life, or old men, who
took no interest in anything that did not directly concern them,
would not have stopped short at the vaguely unsatisfactory
impression that Vautrin made upon them. He knew or guessed the
concerns of every one about him; but none of them had been able
to penetrate his thoughts, or to discover his occupation. He had
deliberately made his apparent good-nature, his unfailing
readiness to oblige, and his high spirits into a barrier between
himself and the rest of them, but not seldom he gave glimpses of
appalling depths of character. He seemed to delight in scourging
the upper classes of society with the lash of his tongue, to take
pleasure in convicting it of inconsistency, in mocking at law and
order with some grim jest worthy of Juvenal, as if some grudge
against the social system rankled in him, as if there were some
mystery carefully hidden away in his life.
Mlle. Taillefer felt attracted, perhaps unconsciously, by the
strength of the one man, and the good looks of the other; her
stolen glances and secret thoughts were divided between them; but
neither of them seemed to take any notice of her, although some
day a chance might alter her position, and she would be a wealthy
heiress. For that matter, there was not a soul in the house who
took any trouble to investigate the various chronicles of
misfortunes, real or imaginary, related by the rest. Each one
regarded the others with indifference, tempered by suspicion; it
was a natural result of their relative positions. Practical
assistance not one could give, this they all knew, and they had
long since exhausted their stock of condolence over previous
discussions of their grievances. They were in something the same
position as an elderly couple who have nothing left to say to
each other. The routine of existence kept them in contact, but
they were parts of a mechanism which wanted oil. There was not
one of them but would have passed a blind man begging in the
street, not one that felt moved to pity by a tale of misfortune,
not one who did not see in death the solution of the all-
absorbing problem of misery which left them cold to the most
terrible anguish in others.
The happiest of these hapless beings was certainly Mme. Vauquer,
who reigned supreme over this hospital supported by voluntary
contributions. For her, the little garden, which silence, and
cold, and rain, and drought combined to make as dreary as an
Asian steppe, was a pleasant shaded nook; the gaunt yellow house,
the musty odors of a back shop had charms for her, and for her
alone. Those cells belonged to her. She fed those convicts
condemned to penal servitude for life, and her authority was
recognized among them. Where else in Paris would they have found
wholesome food in sufficient quantity at the prices she charged
them, and rooms which they were at liberty to make, if not
exactly elegant or comfortable, at any rate clean and healthy? If
she had committed some flagrant act of injustice, the victim
would have borne it in silence.
Such a gathering contained, as might have been expected, the
elements out of which a complete society might be constructed.
And, as in a school, as in the world itself, there was among the
eighteen men and women who met round the dinner table a poor
creature, despised by all the others, condemned to be the butt of
all their jokes. At the beginning of Eugene de Rastignac's second
twelvemonth, this figure suddenly started out into bold relief
against the background of human forms and faces among which the
law student was yet to live for another two years to come. This
laughing-stock was the retired vermicelli-merchant, Father
Goriot, upon whose face a painter, like the historian, would have
concentrated all the light in his picture.
How had it come about that the boarders regarded him with a half-
malignant contempt? Why did they subject the oldest among their
number to a kind of persecution, in which there was mingled some
pity, but no respect for his misfortunes? Had he brought it on
himself by some eccentricity or absurdity, which is less easily
forgiven or forgotten than more serious defects? The question
strikes at the root of many a social injustice. Perhaps it is
only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will
endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or
indifference, or sheer helplessness. Do we not, one and all, like
to feel our strength even at the expense of some one or of
something? The poorest sample of humanity, the street arab, will
pull the bell handle at every street door in bitter weather, and
scramble up to write his name on the unsullied marble of a
monument.
In the year 1813, at the age of sixty-nine or thereabouts,
"Father Goriot" had sold his business and retired--to Mme.
Vauquer's boarding house. When he first came there he had taken
the rooms now occupied by Mme. Couture; he had paid twelve
hundred francs a year like a man to whom five louis more or less
was a mere trifle. For him Mme. Vauquer had made various
improvements in the three rooms destined for his use, in
consideration of a certain sum paid in advance, so it was said,
for the miserable furniture, that is to say, for some yellow
cotton curtains, a few chairs of stained wood covered with
Utrecht velvet, several wretched colored prints in frames, and
wall papers that a little suburban tavern would have disdained.
Possibly it was the careless generosity with which Father Goriot
allowed himself to be overreached at this period of his life
(they called him Monsieur Goriot very respectfully then) that
gave Mme. Vauquer the meanest opinion of his business abilities;
she looked on him as an imbecile where money was concerned.
Goriot had brought with him a considerable wardrobe, the gorgeous
outfit of a retired tradesman who denies himself nothing. Mme.
Vauquer's astonished eyes beheld no less than eighteen cambric-
fronted shirts, the splendor of their fineness being enhanced by
a pair of pins each bearing a large diamond, and connected by a
short chain, an ornament which adorned the vermicelli-maker's
shirt front. He usually wore a coat of corn-flower blue; his
rotund and portly person was still further set off by a clean
white waistcoat, and a gold chain and seals which dangled over
that broad expanse. When his hostess accused him of being "a bit
of a beau," he smiled with the vanity of a citizen whose foible
is gratified. His cupboards (ormoires, as he called them in the
popular dialect) were filled with a quantity of plate that he
brought with him. The widow's eyes gleamed as she obligingly
helped him to unpack the soup ladles, table-spoons, forks, cruet-
stands, tureens, dishes, and breakfast services--all of silver,
which were duly arranged upon shelves, besides a few more or less
handsome pieces of plate, all weighing no inconsiderable number
of ounces; he could not bring himself to part with these gifts
that reminded him of past domestic festivals.
"This was my wife's present to me on the first anniversary of our
wedding day," he said to Mme. Vauquer, as he put away a little
silver posset dish, with two turtle-doves billing on the cover.
"Poor dear! she spent on it all the money she had saved before we
were married. Do you know, I would sooner scratch the earth with
my nails for a living, madame, than part with that. But I shall
be able to take my coffee out of it every morning for the rest of
my days, thank the Lord! I am not to be pitied. There's not much
fear of my starving for some time to come."
Finally, Mme. Vauquer's magpie's eye had discovered and read
certain entries in the list of shareholders in the funds, and,
after a rough calculation, was disposed to credit Goriot (worthy
man) with something like ten thousand francs a year. From that
day forward Mme. Vauquer (nee de Conflans), who, as a matter of
fact, had seen forty-eight summers, though she would only own to
thirty-nine of them--Mme. Vauquer had her own ideas. Though
Goriot's eyes seemed to have shrunk in their sockets, though they
were weak and watery, owing to some glandular affection which
compelled him to wipe them continually, she considered him to be
a very gentlemanly and pleasant-looking man. Moreover, the widow
saw favorable indications of character in the well-developed
calves of his legs and in his square-shaped nose, indications
still further borne out by the worthy man's full-moon countenance
and look of stupid good-nature. This, in all probability, was a
strongly-build animal, whose brains mostly consisted in a
capacity for affection. His hair, worn in ailes de pigeon, and
duly powdered every morning by the barber from the Ecole
Polytechnique, described five points on his low forehead, and
made an elegant setting to his face. Though his manners were
somewhat boorish, he was always as neat as a new pin and he took
his snuff in a lordly way, like a man who knows that his snuff-
box is always likely to be filled with maccaboy, so that when
Mme. Vauquer lay down to rest on the day of M. Goriot's
installation, her heart, like a larded partridge, sweltered
before the fire of a burning desire to shake off the shroud of
Vauquer and rise again as Goriot. She would marry again, sell her
boarding-house, give her hand to this fine flower of citizenship,
become a lady of consequence in the quarter, and ask for
subscriptions for charitable purposes; she would make little
Sunday excursions to Choisy, Soissy, Gentilly; she would have a
box at the theatre when she liked, instead of waiting for the
author's tickets that one of her boarders sometimes gave her, in
July; the whole Eldorado of a little Parisian household rose up
before Mme. Vauquer in her dreams. Nobody knew that she herself
possessed forty thousand francs, accumulated sou by sou, that was
her secret; surely as far as money was concerned she was a very
tolerable match. "And in other respects, I am quite his equal,"
she said to herself, turning as if to assure herself of the
charms of a form that the portly Sylvie found moulded in down
feathers every morning.
For three months from that day Mme. Veuve Vauquer availed herself
of the services of M. Goriot's coiffeur, and went to some expense
over her toilette, expense justifiable on the ground that she
owed it to herself and her establishment to pay some attention to
appearances when such highly-respectable persons honored her
house with their presence. She expended no small amount of
ingenuity in a sort of weeding process of her lodgers, announcing
her intention of receiving henceforward none but people who were
in every way select. If a stranger presented himself, she let him
know that M. Goriot, one of the best known and most highly-
respected merchants in Paris, had singled out her boarding-house
for a residence. She drew up a prospectus headed MAISON VAUQUER,
in which it was asserted that hers was "one of the oldest and
most highly recommended boarding-houses in the Latin Quarter."
"From the windows of the house," thus ran the prospectus, "there
is a charming view of the Vallee des Gobelins (so there is--from
the third floor), and a BEAUTIFUL garden, EXTENDING down to AN
AVENUE OF LINDENS at the further end." Mention was made of the
bracing air of the place and its quiet situation.
It was this prospectus that attracted Mme. la Comtesse de
l'Ambermesnil, a widow of six and thirty, who was awaiting the
final settlement of her husband's affairs, and of another matter
regarding a pension due to her as the wife of a general who had
died "on the field of battle." On this Mme. Vauquer saw to her
table, lighted a fire daily in the sitting-room for nearly six
months, and kept the promise of her prospectus, even going to
some expense to do so. And the Countess, on her side, addressed
Mme. Vauquer as "my dear," and promised her two more boarders,
the Baronne de Vaumerland and the widow of a colonel, the late
Comte de Picquoisie, who were about to leave a boarding-house in
the Marais, where the terms were higher than at the Maison
Vauquer. Both these ladies, moreover, would be very well to do
when the people at the War Office had come to an end of their
formalities. "But Government departments are always so dilatory,"
the lady added.
After dinner the two widows went together up to Mme. Vauquer's
room, and had a snug little chat over some cordial and various
delicacies reserved for the mistress of the house. Mme. Vauquer's
ideas as to Goriot were cordially approved by Mme. de
l'Ambermesnil; it was a capital notion, which for that matter she
had guessed from the very first; in her opinion the vermicelli
maker was an excellent man.
"Ah! my dear lady, such a well-preserved man of his age, as sound
as my eyesight--a man who might make a woman happy!" said the
widow.
The good-natured Countess turned to the subject of Mme. Vauquer's
dress, which was not in harmony with her projects. "You must put
yourself on a war footing," said she.
After much serious consideration the two widows went shopping
together--they purchased a hat adorned with ostrich feathers and
a cap at the Palais Royal, and the Countess took her friend to
the Magasin de la Petite Jeannette, where they chose a dress and
a scarf. Thus equipped for the campaign, the widow looked exactly
like the prize animal hung out for a sign above an a la mode beef
shop; but she herself was so much pleased with the improvement,
as she considered it, in her appearance, that she felt that she
lay under some obligation to the Countess; and, though by no
means open-handed, she begged that lady to accept a hat that cost
twenty francs. The fact was that she needed the Countess'
services on the delicate mission of sounding Goriot; the countess
must sing her praises in his ears. Mme. de l'Ambermesnil lent
herself very good-naturedly to this manoeuvre, began her
operations, and succeeded in obtaining a private interview; but
the overtures that she made, with a view to securing him for
herself, were received with embarrassment, not to say a repulse.
She left him, revolted by his coarseness.
"My angel," said she to her dear friend, "you will make nothing
of that man yonder. He is absurdly suspicious, and he is a mean
curmudgeon, an idiot, a fool; you would never be happy with him."
After what had passed between M. Goriot and Mme. de
l'Ambermesnil, the Countess would no longer live under the same
roof. She left the next day, forgot to pay for six months' board,
and left behind her wardrobe, cast-off clothing to the value of
five francs. Eagerly and persistently as Mme. Vauquer sought her
quondam lodger, the Comtesse de l'Ambermesnil was never heard of
again in Paris. The widow often talked of this deplorable
business, and regretted her own too confiding disposition. As a
matter of fact, she was as suspicious as a cat; but she was like
many other people, who cannot trust their own kin and put
themselves at the mercy of the next chance comer--an odd but
common phenomenon, whose causes may readily be traced to the
depths of the human heart.
Perhaps there are people who know that they have nothing more to
look for from those with whom they live; they have shown the
emptiness of their hearts to their housemates, and in their
secret selves they are conscious that they are severely judged,
and that they deserve to be judged severely; but still they feel
an unconquerable craving for praises that they do not hear, or
they are consumed by a desire to appear to possess, in the eyes
of a new audience, the qualities which they have not, hoping to
win the admiration or affection of strangers at the risk of
forfeiting it again some day. Or, once more, there are other
mercenary natures who never do a kindness to a friend or a
relation simply because these have a claim upon them, while a
service done to a stranger brings its reward to self-love. Such
natures feel but little affection for those who are nearest to
them; they keep their kindness for remoter circles of
acquaintance, and show most to those who dwell on its utmost
limits. Mme. Vauquer belonged to both these essentially mean,
false, and execrable classes.
"If I had been there at the time," Vautrin would say at the end
of the story, I would have shown her up, and that misfortune
would not have befallen you. I know that kind of phiz!"
Like all narrow natures, Mme. Vauquer was wont to confine her
attention to events, and did not go very deeply into the causes
that brought them about; she likewise preferred to throw the
blame of her own mistakes on other people, so she chose to
consider that the honest vermicelli maker was responsible for her
misfortune. It had opened her eyes, so she said, with regard to
him. As soon as she saw that her blandishments were in vain, and
that her outlay on her toilette was money thrown away, she was
not slow to discover the reason of his indifference. It became
plain to her at once that there was SOME OTHER ATTRACTION, to use
her own expression. In short, it was evident that the hope she
had so fondly cherished was a baseless delusion, and that she
would "never make anything out of that man yonder," in the
Countess' forcible phrase. The Countess seemed to have been a
judge of character. Mme. Vauquer's aversion was naturally more
energetic than her friendship, for her hatred was not in
proportion to her love, but to her disappointed expectations. The
human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the
highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep,
downward slope of hatred. Still, M. Goriot was a lodger, and the
widow's wounded self-love could not vent itself in an explosion
of wrath; like a monk harassed by the prior of his convent, she
was forced to stifle her sighs of disappointment, and to gulp
down her craving for revenge. Little minds find gratification for
their feelings, benevolent or otherwise, by a constant exercise
of petty ingenuity. The widow employed her woman's malice to
devise a system of covert persecution. She began by a course of
retrenchment--various luxuries which had found their way to the
table appeared there no more.
"No more gherkins, no more anchovies; they have made a fool of
me!" she said to Sylvie one morning, and they returned to the old
bill of fare.
The thrifty frugality necessary to those who mean to make their
way in the world had become an inveterate habit of life with M.
Goriot. Soup, boiled beef, and a dish of vegetables had been, and
always would be, the dinner he liked best, so Mme. Vauquer found
it very difficult to annoy a boarder whose tastes were so simple.
He was proof against her malice, and in desperation she spoke to
him and of him slightingly before the other lodgers, who began to
amuse themselves at his expense, and so gratified her desire for
revenge.
Towards the end of the first year the widow's suspicions had
reached such a pitch that she began to wonder how it was that a
retired merchant with a secure income of seven or eight thousand
livres, the owner of such magnificent plate and jewelry handsome
enough for a kept mistress, should be living in her house. Why
should he devote so small a proportion of his money to his
expenses? Until the first year was nearly at an end, Goriot had
dined out once or twice every week, but these occasions came less
frequently, and at last he was scarcely absent from the dinner-
table twice a month. It was hardly expected that Mme. Vauquer
should regard the increased regularity of her boarder's habits
with complacency, when those little excursions of his had been so
much to her interest. She attributed the change not so much to a
gradual diminution of fortune as to a spiteful wish to annoy his
hostess. It is one of the most detestable habits of a Liliputian
mind to credit other people with its own malignant pettiness.
Unluckily, towards the end of the second year, M. Goriot's
conduct gave some color to the idle talk about him. He asked Mme.
Vauquer to give him a room on the second floor, and to make a
corresponding reduction in her charges. Apparently, such strict
economy was called for, that he did without a fire all through
the winter. Mme. Vauquer asked to be paid in advance, an
arrangement to which M. Goriot consented, and thenceforward she
spoke of him as "Father Goriot."
What had brought about this decline and fall? Conjecture was
keen, but investigation was difficult. Father Goriot was not
communicative; in the sham countess' phrase he was "a
curmudgeon." Empty-headed people who babble about their own
affairs because they have nothing else to occupy them, naturally
conclude that if people say nothing of their doings it is because
their doings will not bear being talked about; so the highly
respectable merchant became a scoundrel, and the late beau was an
old rogue. Opinion fluctuated. Sometimes, according to Vautrin,
who came about this time to live in the Maison Vauquer, Father
Goriot was a man who went on 'Change and DABBLED (to use the
sufficiently expressive language of the Stock Exchange) in stocks
and shares after he had ruined himself by heavy speculation.
Sometimes it was held that he was one of those petty gamblers who
nightly play for small stakes until they win a few francs. A
theory that he was a detective in the employ of the Home Office
found favor at one time, but Vautrin urged that "Goriot was not
sharp enough for one of that sort." There were yet other
solutions; Father Goriot was a skinflint, a shark of a money-
lender, a man who lived by selling lottery tickets. He was by
turns all the most mysterious brood of vice and shame and misery;
yet, however vile his life might be, the feeling of repulsion
which he aroused in others was not so strong that he must be
banished from their society--he paid his way. Besides, Goriot had
his uses, every one vented his spleen or sharpened his wit on
him; he was pelted with jokes and belabored with hard words. The
general consensus of opinion was in favor of a theory which
seemed the most likely; this was Mme. Vauquer's view. According
to her, the man so well preserved at his time of life, as sound
as her eyesight, with whom a woman might be very happy, was a
libertine who had strange tastes. These are the facts upon which
Mme. Vauquer's slanders were based.
Early one morning, some few months after the departure of the
unlucky Countess who had managed to live for six months at the
widow's expense, Mme. Vauquer (not yet dressed) heard the rustle
of a silk dress and a young woman's light footstep on the stair;
some one was going to Goriot's room. He seemed to expect the
visit, for his door stood ajar. The portly Sylvie presently came
up to tell her mistress that a girl too pretty to be honest,
"dressed like a goddess," and not a speck of mud on her laced
cashmere boots, had glided in from the street like a snake, had
found the kitchen, and asked for M. Goriot's room. Mme. Vauquer
and the cook, listening, overheard several words affectionately
spoken during the visit, which lasted for some time. When M.
Goriot went downstairs with the lady, the stout Sylvie forthwith
took her basket and followed the lover-like couple, under pretext
of going to do her marketing.
"M. Goriot must be awfully rich, all the same, madame," she
reported on her return, "to keep her in such style. Just imagine
it! There was a splendid carriage waiting at the corner of the
Place de l'Estrapade, and SHE got into it."
While they were at dinner that evening, Mme. Vauquer went to the
window and drew the curtain, as the sun was shining into Goriot's
eyes.
"You are beloved of fair ladies, M. Goriot--the sun seeks you
out," she said, alluding to his visitor. "Peste! you have good
taste; she was very pretty."
"That was my daughter," he said, with a kind of pride in his
voice, and the rest chose to consider this as the fatuity of an
old man who wishes to save appearances.
A month after this visit M. Goriot received another. The same
daughter who had come to see him that morning came again after
dinner, this time in evening dress. The boarders, in deep
discussion in the dining-room, caught a glimpse of a lovely,
fair-haired woman, slender, graceful, and much too distinguished-
looking to be a daughter of Father Goriot's.
"Two of them!" cried the portly Sylvie, who did not recognize the
lady of the first visit.
A few days later, and another young lady--a tall, well-moulded
brunette, with dark hair and bright eyes--came to ask for M.
Goriot.
"Three of them!" said Sylvie.
Then the second daughter, who had first come in the morning to
see her father, came shortly afterwards in the evening. She wore
a ball dress, and came in a carriage.
"Four of them!" commented Mme. Vauquer and her plump handmaid.
Sylvie saw not a trace of resemblance between this great lady and
the girl in her simple morning dress who had entered her kitchen
on the occasion of her first visit.
At that time Goriot was paying twelve hundred francs a year to
his landlady, and Mme. Vauquer saw nothing out of the common in
the fact that a rich man had four or five mistresses; nay, she
thought it very knowing of him to pass them off as his daughters.
She was not at all inclined to draw a hard-and-fast line, or to
take umbrage at his sending for them to the Maison Vauquer; yet,
inasmuch as these visits explained her boarder's indifference to
her, she went so far (at the end of the second year) as to speak
of him as an "ugly old wretch." When at length her boarder
declined to nine hundred francs a year, she asked him very
insolently what he took her house to be, after meeting one of
these ladies on he stairs. Father Goriot answered that the lady
was his eldest daughter.
"So you have two or three dozen daughters, have you?" said Mme.
Vauquer sharply.
"I have only two," her boarder answered meekly, like a ruined man
who is broken in to all the cruel usage of misfortune.
Towards the end of the third year Father Goriot reduced his
expenses still further; he went up to the third story, and now
paid forty-five francs a month. He did without snuff, told his
hairdresser that he no longer required his services, and gave up
wearing powder. When Goriot appeared for the first time in this
condition, an exclamation of astonishment broke from his hostess
at the color of his hair--a dingy olive gray. He had grown sadder
day by day under the influence of some hidden trouble; among all
the faces round the table, his was the most woe-begone. There was
no longer any doubt. Goriot was an elderly libertine, whose eyes
had only been preserved by the skill of the physician from the
malign influence of the remedies necessitated by the state of his
health. The disgusting color of his hair was a result of his
excesses and of the drugs which he had taken that he might
continue his career. The poor old man's mental and physical
condition afforded some grounds for the absurd rubbish talked
about him. When his outfit was worn out, he replaced the fine
linen by calico at fourteen sous the ell. His diamonds, his gold
snuff-box, watch-chain and trinkets, disappeared one by one. He
had left off wearing the corn-flower blue coat, and was
sumptuously arrayed, summer as well as winter, in a coarse
chestnut-brown coat, a plush waistcoat, and doeskin breeches. He
grew thinner and thinner; his legs were shrunken, his cheeks,
once so puffed out by contented bourgeois prosperity, were
covered with wrinkles, and the outlines of the jawbones were
distinctly visible; there were deep furrows in his forehead. In
the fourth year of his residence in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-
Genevieve he was no longer like his former self. The hale
vermicelli manufacturer, sixty-two years of age, who had looked
scarce forty, the stout, comfortable, prosperous tradesman, with
an almost bucolic air, and such a brisk demeanor that it did you
good to look at him; the man with something boyish in his smile,
had suddenly sunk into his dotage, and had become a feeble,
vacillating septuagenarian.
The keen, bright blue eyes had grown dull, and faded to a steel-
gray color; the red inflamed rims looked as though they had shed
tears of blood. He excited feelings of repulsion in some, and of
pity in others. The young medical students who came to the house
noticed the drooping of his lower lip and the conformation of the
facial angle; and, after teasing him for some time to no purpose,
they declared that cretinism was setting in.
One evening after dinner Mme. Vauquer said half banteringly to
him, "So those daughters of yours don't come to see you any more,
eh?" meaning to imply her doubts as to his paternity; but Father
Goriot shrank as if his hostess had touched him with a sword-
point.
"They come sometimes," he said in a tremulous voice.
"Aha! you still see them sometimes?" cried the students. "Bravo,
Father Goriot!"
The old man scarcely seemed to hear the witticisms at his expense
that followed on the words; he had relapsed into the dreamy state
of mind that these superficial observers took for senile torpor,
due to his lack of intelligence. If they had only known, they
might have been deeply interested by the problem of his
condition; but few problems were more obscure. It was easy, of
course, to find out whether Goriot had really been a vermicelli
manufacturer; the amount of his fortune was readily discoverable;
but the old people, who were most inquisitive as to his concerns,
never went beyond the limits of the Quarter, and lived in the
lodging-house much as oysters cling to a rock. As for the rest,
the current of life in Paris daily awaited them, and swept them
away with it; so soon as they left the Rue Neuve-Sainte-
Genevieve, they forgot the existence of the old man, their butt
at dinner. For those narrow souls, or for careless youth, the
misery in Father Goriot's withered face and its dull apathy were
quite incompatible with wealth or any sort of intelligence. As
for the creatures whom he called his daughters, all Mme.
Vauquer's boarders were of her opinion. With the faculty for
severe logic sedulously cultivated by elderly women during long
evenings of gossip till they can always find an hypothesis to fit
all circumstances, she was wont to reason thus:
"If Father Goriot had daughters of his own as rich as those
ladies who came here seemed to be, he would not be lodging in my
house, on the third floor, at forty-five francs a month; and he
would not go about dressed like a poor man."
No objection could be raised to these inferences. So by the end
of the month of November 1819, at the time when the curtain rises
on this drama, every one in the house had come to have a very
decided opinion as to the poor old man. He had never had either
wife or daughter; excesses had reduced him to this sluggish
condition; he was a sort of human mollusk who should be classed
among the capulidoe, so one of the dinner contingent, an employe
at the Museum, who had a pretty wit of his own. Poiret was an
eagle, a gentleman, compared with Goriot. Poiret would join the
talk, argue, answer when he was spoken to; as a matter of fact,
his talk, arguments, and responses contributed nothing to the
conversation, for Poiret had a habit of repeating what the others
said in different words; still, he did join in the talk; he was
alive, and seemed capable of feeling; while Father Goriot (to
quote the Museum official again) was invariably at zero--Reaumur.
Eugene de Rastignac had just returned to Paris in a state of mind
not unknown to young men who are conscious of unusual powers, and
to those whose faculties are so stimulated by a difficult
position, that for the time being they rise above the ordinary
level.
Rastignac's first year of study for the preliminary examinations
in law had left him free to see the sights of Paris and to enjoy
some of its amusements. A student has not much time on his hands
if he sets himself to learn the repertory of every theatre, and
to study the ins and outs of the labyrinth of Paris. To know its
customs; to learn the language, and become familiar with the
amusements of the capital, he must explore its recesses, good and
bad, follow the studies that please him best, and form some idea
of the treasures contained in galleries and museums.
At this stage of his career a student grows eager and excited
about all sorts of follies that seem to him to be of immense
importance. He has his hero, his great man, a professor at the
College de France, paid to talk down to the level of his
audience. He adjusts his cravat, and strikes various attitudes
for the benefit of the women in the first galleries at the Opera-
Comique. As he passes through all these successive initiations,
and breaks out of his sheath, the horizons of life widen around
him, and at length he grasps the plan of society with the
different human strata of which it is composed.
If he begins by admiring the procession of carriages on sunny
afternoons in the Champs-Elysees, he soon reaches the further
stage of envying their owners. Unconsciously, Eugene had served
his apprenticeship before he went back to Angouleme for the long
vacation after taking his degrees as bachelor of arts and
bachelor of law. The illusions of childhood had vanished, so also
had the ideas he brought with him from the provinces; he had
returned thither with an intelligence developed, with loftier
ambitions, and saw things as they were at home in the old manor
house. His father and mother, his two brothers and two sisters,
with an aged aunt, whose whole fortune consisted in annuities,
lived on the little estate of Rastignac. The whole property
brought in about three thousand francs; and though the amount
varied with the season (as must always be the case in a vine-
growing district), they were obliged to spare an unvarying twelve
hundred francs out of their income for him. He saw how constantly
the poverty, which they had generously hidden from him, weighed
upon them; he could not help comparing the sisters, who had
seemed so beautiful to his boyish eyes, with women in Paris, who
had realized the beauty of his dreams. The uncertain future of
the whole family depended upon him. It did not escape his eyes
that not a crumb was wasted in the house, nor that the wine they
drank was made from the second pressing; a multitude of small
things, which it is useless to speak of in detail here, made him
burn to distinguish himself, and his ambition to succeed
increased tenfold.
He meant, like all great souls, that his success should be owing
entirely to his merits; but his was pre-eminently a southern
temperament, the execution of his plans was sure to be marred by
the vertigo that seizes on youth when youth sees itself alone in
a wide sea, uncertain how to spend its energies, whither to steer
its course, how to adapt its sails to the winds. At first he
determined to fling himself heart and soul into his work, but he
was diverted from this purpose by the need of society and
connections; then he saw how great an influence women exert in
social life, and suddenly made up his mind to go out into this
world to seek a protectress there. Surely a clever and high-
spirited young man, whose wit and courage were set off to
advantage by a graceful figure and the vigorous kind of beauty
that readily strikes a woman's imagination, need not despair of
finding a protectress. These ideas occurred to him in his country
walks with his sisters, whom he had once joined so gaily. The
girls thought him very much changed.
His aunt, Mme. de Marcillac, had been presented at court, and had
moved among the brightest heights of that lofty region. Suddenly
the young man's ambition discerned in those recollections of
hers, which had been like nursery fairy tales to her nephews and
nieces, the elements of a social success at least as important as
the success which he had achieved at the Ecole de Droit. He began
to ask his aunt about those relations; some of the old ties might
still hold good. After much shaking of the branches of the family
tree, the old lady came to the conclusion that of all persons who
could be useful to her nephew among the selfish genus of rich
relations, the Vicomtesse de Beauseant was the least likely to
refuse. To this lady, therefore, she wrote in the old-fashioned
style, recommending Eugene to her; pointing out to her nephew
that if he succeeded in pleasing Mme. de Beauseant, the
Vicomtesse would introduce him to other relations. A few days
after his return to Paris, therefore, Rastignac sent his aunt's
letter to Mme. de Beauseant. The Vicomtesse replied by an
invitation to a ball for the following evening. This was the
position of affairs at the Maison Vauquer at the end of November
1819.
A few days later, after Mme. de Beauseant's ball, Eugene came in
at two o'clock in the morning. The persevering student meant to
make up for the lost time by working until daylight. It was the
first time that he had attempted to spend the night in this way
in that silent quarter. The spell of a factitious energy was upon
him; he had beheld the pomp and splendor of the world. He had not
dined at the Maison Vauquer; the boarders probably would think
that he would walk home at daybreak from the dance, as he had
done sometimes on former occasions, after a fete at the Prado, or
a ball at the Odeon, splashing his silk stockings thereby, and
ruining his pumps.
It so happened that Christophe took a look into the street before
drawing the bolts of the door; and Rastignac, coming in at that
moment, could go up to his room without making any noise,
followed by Christophe, who made a great deal. Eugene exchanged
his dress suit for a shabby overcoat and slippers, kindled a fire
with some blocks of patent fuel, and prepared for his night's
work in such a sort that the faint sounds he made were drowned by
Christophe's heavy tramp on the stairs.
Eugene sat absorbed in thought for a few moments before plunging
into his law books. He had just become aware of the fact that the
Vicomtesse de Beauseant was one of the queens of fashion, that
her house was thought to be the pleasantest in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain. And not only so, she was, by right of her fortune,
and the name she bore, one of the most conspicuous figures in
that aristocratic world. Thanks to the aunt, thanks to Mme. de
Marcillac's letter of introduction, the poor student had been
kindly received in that house before he knew the extent of the
favor thus shown to him. It was almost like a patent of nobility
to be admitted to those gilded salons; he had appeared in the
most exclusive circle in Paris, and now all doors were open for
him. Eugene had been dazzled at first by the brilliant assembly,
and had scarcely exchanged a few words with the Vicomtesse; he
had been content to single out a goddess among this throng of
Parisian divinities, one of those women who are sure to attract a
young man's fancy.
The Comtesse Anastasie de Restaud was tall and gracefully made;
she had one of the prettiest figures in Paris. Imagine a pair of
great dark eyes, a magnificently moulded hand, a shapely foot.
There was a fiery energy in her movements; the Marquis de
Ronquerolles had called her "a thoroughbred," "a pure pedigree,"
these figures of speech have replaced the "heavenly angel" and
Ossianic nomenclature; the old mythology of love is extinct,
doomed to perish by modern dandyism. But for Rastignac, Mme.
Anastasie de Restaud was the woman for whom he had sighed. He had
contrived to write his name twice upon the list of partners upon
her fan, and had snatched a few words with her during the first
quadrille.
"Where shall I meet you again, Madame?" he asked abruptly, and
the tones of his voice were full of the vehement energy that
women like so well.
"Oh, everywhere!" said she, "in the Bois, at the Bouffons, in my
own house."
With the impetuosity of his adventurous southern temper, he did
all he could to cultivate an acquaintance with this lovely
countess, making the best of his opportunities in the quadrille
and during a waltz that she gave him. When he told her that he
was a cousin of Mme. de Beauseant's, the Countess, whom he took
for a great lady, asked him to call at her house, and after her
parting smile, Rastignac felt convinced that he must make this
visit. He was so lucky as to light upon some one who did not
laugh at his ignorance, a fatal defect among the gilded and
insolent youth of that period; the coterie of Maulincourts,
Maximes de Trailles, de Marsays, Ronquerolles, Ajuda-Pintos, and
Vandenesses who shone there in all the glory of coxcombry among
the best-dressed women of fashion in Paris--Lady Brandon, the
Duchesse de Langeais, the Comtesse de Kergarouet, Mme. de Serizy,
the Duchesse de Carigliano, the Comtesse Ferraud, Mme. de Lanty,
the Marquise d'Aiglemont, Mme. Firmiani, the Marquise de
Listomere and the Marquise d'Espard, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse
and the Grandlieus. Luckily, therefore, for him, the novice
happened upon the Marquis de Montriveau, the lover of the
Duchesse de Langeais, a general as simple as a child; from him
Rastignac learned that the Comtesse lived in the Rue du Helder.
Ah, what it is to be young, eager to see the world, greedily on
the watch for any chance that brings you nearer the woman of your
dreams, and behold two houses open their doors to you! To set
foot in the Vicomtesse de Beauseant's house in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain; to fall on your knees before a Comtesse de Restaud
in the Chaussee d'Antin; to look at one glance across a vista of
Paris drawing-rooms, conscious that, possessing sufficient good
looks, you may hope to find aid and protection there in a
feminine heart! To feel ambitious enough to spurn the tight-rope
on which you must walk with the steady head of an acrobat for
whom a fall is impossible, and to find in a charming woman the
best of all balancing poles.
He sat there with his thoughts for a while, Law on the one hand,
and Poverty on the other, beholding a radiant vision of a woman
rise above the dull, smouldering fire. Who would not have paused
and questioned the future as Eugene was doing? who would not have
pictured it full of success? His wondering thoughts took wings;
he was transported out of the present into that blissful future;
he was sitting by Mme. de Restaud's side, when a sort of sigh,
like the grunt of an overburdened St. Joseph, broke the silence
of the night. It vibrated through the student, who took the sound
for a death groan. He opened his door noiselessly, went out upon
the landing, and saw a thin streak of light under Father Goriot's
door. Eugene feared that his neighbor had been taken ill; he went
over and looked through the keyhole; the old man was busily
engaged in an occupation so singular and so suspicious that
Rastignac thought he was only doing a piece of necessary service
to society to watch the self-styled vermicelli maker's nocturnal
industries.
The table was upturned, and Goriot had doubtless in some way
secured a silver plate and cup to the bar before knotting a thick
rope round them; he was pulling at this rope with such enormous
force that they were being crushed and twisted out of shape; to
all appearance he meant to convert the richly wrought metal into
ingots.
"Peste! what a man!" said Rastignac, as he watched Goriot's
muscular arms; there was not a sound in the room while the old
man, with the aid of the rope, was kneading the silver like
dough. "Was he then, indeed, a thief, or a receiver of stolen
goods, who affected imbecility and decrepitude, and lived like a
beggar that he might carry on his pursuits the more securely?"
Eugene stood for a moment revolving these questions, then he
looked again through the keyhole.
Father Goriot had unwound his coil of rope; he had covered the
table with a blanket, and was now employed in rolling the
flattened mass of silver into a bar, an operation which he
performed with marvelous dexterity.
"Why, he must be as strong as Augustus, King of Poland!" said
Eugene to himself when the bar was nearly finished.
Father Goriot looked sadly at his handiwork, tears fell from his
eyes, he blew out the dip which had served him for a light while
he manipulated the silver, and Eugene heard him sigh as he lay
down again.
"He is mad," thought the student.
"Poor child!" Father Goriot said aloud. Rastignac, hearing those
words, concluded to keep silence; he would not hastily condemn
his neighbor. He was just in the doorway of his room when a
strange sound from the staircase below reached his ears; it might
have been made by two men coming up in list slippers. Eugene
listened; two men there certainly were, he could hear their
breathing. Yet there had been no sound of opening the street
door, no footsteps in the passage. Suddenly, too, he saw a faint
gleam of light on the second story; it came from M. Vautrin's
room.
"There are a good many mysteries here for a lodging-house!" he
said to himself.
He went part of the way downstairs and listened again. The rattle
of gold reached his ears. In another moment the light was put
out, and again he distinctly heard the breathing of two men, but
no sound of a door being opened or shut. The two men went
downstairs, the faint sounds growing fainter as they went.
"Who is there?" cried Mme. Vauquer out of her bedroom window.
"I, Mme. Vauquer," answered Vautrin's deep bass voice. "I am
coming in."
"That is odd! Christophe drew the bolts," said Eugene, going back
to his room. "You have to sit up at night, it seems, if you
really mean to know all that is going on about you in Paris."
These incidents turned his thought from his ambitious dreams; he
betook himself to his work, but his thought wandered back to
Father Goriot's suspicious occupation; Mme. de Restaud's face
swam again and again before his eyes like a vision of a brilliant
future; and at last he lay down and slept with clenched fists.
When a young man makes up his mind that he will work all night,
the chances are that seven times out of ten he will sleep till
morning. Such vigils do not begin before we are turned twenty.
The next morning Paris was wrapped in one of the dense fogs that
throw the most punctual people out in their calculations as to
the time; even the most business-like folk fail to keep their
appointments in such weather, and ordinary mortals wake up at
noon and fancy it is eight o'clock. On this morning it was half-
past nine, and Mme. Vauquer still lay abed. Christophe was late,
Sylvie was late, but the two sat comfortably taking their coffee
as usual. It was Sylvie's custom to take the cream off the milk
destined for the boarders' breakfast for her own, and to boil the
remainder for some time, so that madame should not discover this
illegal exaction.
"Sylvie," said Christophe, as he dipped a piece of toast into the
coffee, "M. Vautrin, who is not such a bad sort, all the same,
had two people come to see him again last night. If madame says
anything, mind you say nothing about it."
"Has he given you something?"
"He gave me a five-franc piece this month, which is as good as
saying, 'Hold your tongue.' "
"Except him and Mme. Couture, who doesn't look twice at every
penny, there's no one in the house that doesn't try to get back
with the left hand all that they give with the right at New
Year," said Sylvie.
"And, after all," said Christophe, "what do they give you? A
miserable five-franc piece. There is Father Goriot, who has
cleaned his shoes himself these two years past. There is that old
beggar Poiret, who goes without blacking altogether; he would
sooner drink it than put it on his boots. Then there is that
whipper-snapper of a student, who gives me a couple of francs,
Two francs will not pay for my brushes, and he sells his old
clothes, and gets more for them than they are worth. Oh! they're
a shabby lot!"
"Pooh!" said Sylvie, sipping her coffee, "our places are the best
in the Quarter, that I know. But about that great big chap
Vautrin, Christophe; has any one told you anything about him?"
"Yes. I met a gentleman in the street a few days ago; he said to
me, 'There's a gentleman in your place, isn't there? a tall man
that dyes his whiskers?' I told him, 'No, sir; they aren't dyed.
A gay fellow like him hasn't the time to do it.' And when I told
M. Vautrin about it afterwards, he said, 'Quite right, my boy.
That is the way to answer them. There is nothing more unpleasant
than to have your little weaknesses known; it might spoil many a
match.' "
"Well, and for my part," said Sylvie, "a man tried to humbug me
at the market wanting to know if I had seen him put on his shirt.
Such bosh! There," she cried, interrupting herself, "that's a
quarter to ten striking at the Val-de-Grace, and not a soul
stirring!"
"Pooh! they are all gone out. Mme. Couture and the girl went out
at eight o'clock to take the wafer at Saint-Etienne. Father
Goriot started off somewhere with a parcel, and the student won't
be back from his lecture till ten o'clock. I saw them go while I
was sweeping the stairs; Father Goriot knocked up against me, and
his parcel was as hard as iron. What is the old fellow up to, I
wonder? He is as good as a plaything for the rest of them; they
can never let him alone; but he is a good man, all the same, and
worth more than all of them put together. He doesn't give you
much himself, but he sometimes sends you with a message to ladies
who fork out famous tips; they are dressed grandly, too."
"His daughters, as he calls them, eh? There are a dozen of them."
"I have never been to more than two--the two who came here."
"There is madame moving overhead; I shall have to go, or she will
raise a fine racket. Just keep an eye on the milk, Christophe;
don't let the cat get at it."
Sylvie went up to her mistress' room.
"Sylvie! How is this? It's nearly ten o'clock, and you let me
sleep like a dormouse! Such a thing has never happened before."
"It's the fog; it is that thick, you could cut it with a knife."
"But how about breakfast?"
"Bah! the boarders are possessed, I'm sure. They all cleared out
before there was a wink of daylight."
"Do speak properly, Sylvie," Mme. Vauquer retorted; "say a blink
of daylight."
"Ah, well, madame, whichever you please. Anyhow, you can have
breakfast at ten o'clock. La Michonnette and Poiret have neither
of them stirred. There are only those two upstairs, and they are
sleeping like the logs they are."
"But, Sylvie, you put their names together as if----"
"As if what?" said Sylvie, bursting into a guffaw. "The two of
them make a pair."
"It is a strange thing, isn't it, Sylvie, how M. Vautrin got in
last night after Christophe had bolted the door?"
"Not at all, madame. Christophe heard M. Vautrin, and went down
and undid the door. And here are you imagining that----?"
"Give me my bodice, and be quick and get breakfast ready. Dish up
the rest of the mutton with the potatoes, and you can put the
stewed pears on the table, those at five a penny."
A few moments later Mme. Vauquer came down, just in time to see
the cat knock down a plate that covered a bowl of milk, and begin
to lap in all haste.
"Mistigris!" she cried.
The cat fled, but promptly returned to rub against her ankles.
"Oh! yes, you can wheedle, you old hypocrite!" she said. "Sylvie!
Sylvie!"
"Yes, madame; what is it?"
"Just see what the cat has done!"
"It is all that stupid Christophe's fault. I told him to stop and
lay the table. What has become of him? Don't you worry, madame;
Father Goriot shall have it. I will fill it up with water, and he
won't know the difference; he never notices anything, not even
what he eats."
"I wonder where the old heathen can have gone?" said Mme.
Vauquer, setting the plates round the table.
"Who knows? He is up to all sorts of tricks."
"I have overslept myself," said Mme. Vauquer.
"But madame looks as fresh as a rose, all the same."
The door bell rang at that moment, and Vautrin came through the
sitting-room, singing loudly:
" 'Tis the same old story everywhere,
A roving heart and a roving glance . .
"Oh! Mamma Vauquer! good-morning!" he cried at the sight of his
hostess, and he put his arm gaily round her waist.
"There! have done----"
" 'Impertinence!' Say it!" he answered. "Come, say it! Now,
isn't that what you really mean? Stop a bit, I will help you to
set the table. Ah! I am a nice man, am I not?
"For the locks of brown and the golden hair
A sighing lover . . .
"Oh! I have just seen something so funny----
. . . . led by chance."
"What?" asked the widow.
"Father Goriot in the goldsmith's shop in the Rue Dauphine at
half-past eight this morning. They buy old spoons and forks and
gold lace there, and Goriot sold a piece of silver plate for a
good round sum. It had been twisted out of shape very neatly for
a man that's not used to the trade."
"Really? You don't say so?"
"Yes. One of my friends is expatriating himself; I had been to
see him off on board the Royal Mail steamer, and was coming back
here. I waited after that to see what Father Goriot would do; it
is a comical affair. He came back to this quarter of the world,
to the Rue des Gres, and went into a money-lender's house;
everybody knows him, Gobseck, a stuck-up rascal, that would make
dominoes out of his father's bones, a Turk, a heathen, an old
Jew, a Greek; it would be a difficult matter to rob HIM, for he
puts all his coin into the Bank."
"Then what was Father Goriot doing there?"
"Doing?" said Vautrin. "Nothing; he was bent on his own undoing.
He is a simpleton, stupid enough to ruin himself by running
after----"
"There he is!" cried Sylvie.
"Christophe," cried Father Goriot's voice, "come upstairs with
me."
Christophe went up, and shortly afterwards came down again.
"Where are you going?" Mme. Vauquer asked of her servant.
"Out on an errand for M. Goriot."
"What may that be?" said Vautrin, pouncing on a letter in
Christophe's hand. "Mme. la Comtesse Anastasie de Restaud," he
read. "Where are you going with it?" he added, as he gave the
letter back to Christophe.
"To the Rue du Helder. I have orders to give this into her hands
myself."
"What is there inside it?" said Vautrin, holding the letter up to
the light. "A banknote? No." He peered into the envelope. "A
receipted account!" he cried. "My word! 'tis a gallant old
dotard. Off with you, old chap," he said, bringing down a hand on
Christophe's head, and spinning the man round like a thimble;
"you will have a famous tip."
By this time the table was set. Sylvie was boiling the milk, Mme.
Vauquer was lighting a fire in the stove with some assistance
from Vautrin, who kept humming to himself:
"The same old story everywhere,
A roving heart and a roving glance."
When everything was ready, Mme. Couture and Mlle. Taillefer came
in.
"Where have you been this morning, fair lady?" said Mme. Vauquer,
turning to Mme. Couture.
"We have just been to say our prayers at Saint-Etienne du Mont.
To-day is the day when we must go to see M. Taillefer. Poor
little thing! She is trembling like a leaf," Mme. Couture went
on, as she seated herself before the fire and held the steaming
soles of her boots to the blaze.
"Warm yourself, Victorine," said Mme. Vauquer.
"It is quite right and proper, mademoiselle, to pray to Heaven to
soften your father's heart," said Vautrin, as he drew a chair
nearer to the orphan girl; "but that is not enough. What you want
is a friend who will give the monster a piece of his mind; a
barbarian that has three millions (so they say), and will not
give you a dowry; and a pretty girl needs a dowry nowadays."
"Poor child!" said Mme. Vauquer. "Never mind, my pet, your wretch
of a father is going just the way to bring trouble upon himself."
Victorine's eyes filled with tears at the words, and the widow
checked herself at a sign from Mme. Couture.
"If we could only see him!" said the Commissary-General's widow;
"if I could speak to him myself and give him his wife's last
letter! I have never dared to run the risk of sending it by post;
he knew my handwriting----"
" 'Oh woman, persecuted and injured innocent!' " exclaimed
Vautrin, breaking in upon her. "So that is how you are, is it? In
a few days' time I will look into your affairs, and it will be
all right, you shall see."
"Oh! sir," said Victorine, with a tearful but eager glance at
Vautrin, who showed no sign of being touched by it, "if you know
of any way of communicating with my father, please be sure and
tell him that his affection and my mother's honor are more to me
than all the money in the world. If you can induce him to relent
a little towards me, I will pray to God for you. You may be sure
of my gratitude----"
"The same old story everywhere," sang Vautrin, with a satirical
intonation. At this juncture, Goriot, Mlle. Michonneau, and
Poiret came downstairs together; possibly the scent of the gravy
which Sylvie was making to serve with the mutton had announced
breakfast. The seven people thus assembled bade each other good-
morning, and took their places at the table; the clock struck
ten, and the student's footstep was heard outside.
"Ah! here you are, M. Eugene," said Sylvie; "every one is
breakfasting at home to-day."
The student exchanged greetings with the lodgers, and sat down
beside Goriot.
"I have just met with a queer adventure," he said, as he helped
himself abundantly to the mutton, and cut a slice of bread, which
Mme. Vauquer's eyes gauged as usual.
"An adventure?" queried Poiret.
"Well, and what is there to astonish you in that, old boy?"
Vautrin asked of Poiret. "M. Eugene is cut out for that kind of
thing."
Mlle. Taillefer stole a timid glance at the young student.
"Tell us about your adventure!" demanded M. Vautrin.
"Yesterday evening I went to a ball given by a cousin of mine,
the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. She has a magnificent house; the
rooms are hung with silk--in short, it was a splendid affair, and
I was as happy as a king---"
"Fisher," put in Vautrin, interrupting.
"What do you mean, sir?" said Eugene sharply.
"I said 'fisher,' because kingfishers see a good deal more fun
than kings."
"Quite true; I would much rather be the little careless bird than
a king," said Poiret the ditto-ist, "because----"
"In fact"--the law-student cut him short--"I danced with one of
the handsomest women in the room, a charming countess, the most
exquisite creature I have ever seen. There was peach blossom in
her hair, and she had the loveliest bouquet of flowers--real
flowers, that scented the air----but there! it is no use trying
to describe a woman glowing with the dance. You ought to have
seen her! Well, and this morning I met this divine countess about
nine o'clock, on foot in the Rue de Gres. Oh! how my heart beat!
I began to think----"
"That she was coming here," said Vautrin, with a keen look at the
student. "I expect that she was going to call on old Gobseck, a
money-lender. If ever you explore a Parisian woman's heart, you
will find the money-lender first, and the lover afterwards. Your
countess is called Anastasie de Restaud, and she lives in the Rue
du Helder."
The student stared hard at Vautrin. Father Goriot raised his head
at the words, and gave the two speakers a glance so full of
intelligence and uneasiness that the lodgers beheld him with
astonishment.
"Then Christophe was too late, and she must have gone to him!"
cried Goriot, with anguish in his voice.
"It is just as I guessed," said Vautrin, leaning over to whisper
in Mme. Vauquer's ear.
Goriot went on with his breakfast, but seemed unconscious of what
he was doing. He had never looked more stupid nor more taken up
with his own thoughts than he did at that moment.
"Who the devil could have told you her name, M. Vautrin?" asked
Eugene.
"Aha! there you are!" answered Vautrin. "Old Father Goriot there
knew it quite well! and why should I not know it too?"
"M. Goriot?" the student cried.
"What is it?" asked the old man. "So she was very beautiful, was
she, yesterday night?"
"Who?"
"Mme. de Restaud."
"Look at the old wretch," said Mme. Vauquer, speaking to Vautrin;
"how his eyes light up!"
"Then does he really keep her?" said Mlle. Michonneau, in a
whisper to the student.
"O