Father Goriot
Father GoriotFATHER GORIOTCopyright
Father Goriot
Honoré de Balzac
FATHER GORIOT
Mme. Vauquer (neede
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 theMaison 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 shedintra et
extra murosbefore 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 fromTelemaqueare 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 theodeur
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
waggishexternewill 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 theseexternesusually 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
Asiansteppe, 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 (neede
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 inailes 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, accumulatedsou 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 abeautifulgarden,extendingdown toan
avenue of lindensat 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 wassome 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 anddabbled(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, andshegot 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 the
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
fourteensousthe 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, anemploye