Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Editions.
Father Goriot.
Honoré de Balzac.


Open
Purchase the entire
Coradella Collegiate
Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
About the author
Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799
- August 18, 1850), was a French nov-
elist.
He was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France in the rue
de l’Armée Italienne.
He would become one of the creators of Realism in litera-
ture, though his work is still largely in the tradition of French
Literary Romanticism. His Human Comedy (La Comédie
humaine) spanned more than 90 novels and short stories in an
attempt to comprehend and depict the realities of life in mod-
ern bourgeois France.
Balzac’s work habits are legendarily intimidating - he wrote
for up to 15 hours a day, fuelled by innumerable cups of
black coffee. Because of this extraordinarily large output, many
of the novels display minor imperfections and in some cases
outright careless writing.
Several, however, are widely recognized to be masterpieces:
La peau de chagrin
Cousine Bette
Le père Goriot
Eugènie Grandet
Les illusions perdues
Balzac’s realistic prose and his strength as an encyclopedic
recorder of his age outshine any small detracting qualities of
his style to make him a Dickensian bastion of French litera-
ture.
Balzac is buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris,
France. He is commemorated by a monumental statue which
Auguste Rodin was commissioned to sculpt.
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
Contents


Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
1
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, how-
ever, 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
Father Goriot.
Translated by Ellen Marriage
To the great and illustrious Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire, a token of admiration for his works and
genius. —DE BALZAC.
NOTICE
Copyright © 2004 thewritedirection.net
Please note that although the text of this ebook is in the
public domain, this pdf edition is a copyrighted publication.
FOR COMPLETE DETAILS, SEE
COLLEGEBOOKSHELF.NET/COPYRIGHTS
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
3
2
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 accus-
tomed 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. Civi-
lization, like the car of Juggernaut, is scarcely stayed percepti-
bly in its progress by a heart less easy to break than the others
that lie in its course; this also is broken, and Civilization con-
tinues 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 your-
self, “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 dis-
cern 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 be-
tween the dome of the Pantheon and the dome of the Val-
de-Grace, two conspicuous public buildings which give a yel-
lowish 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 sen-
sation; 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
5
4
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 ob-
tained 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 wide-
spread 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 pictur-
esque in Paris, for each of the walls is covered with trellised
vines that yield a scanty dusty crop of fruit, and furnish be-
sides 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 re-
peated corrections from her lodgers.
The central space between the walls is filled with arti-
chokes 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
7
6
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 cov-
ered 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 rab-
bits; 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 fre-
quently cleanses the yard with copious supplies of water, un-
der 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 deco-
rated 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 them-
selves 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 impris-
oned 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
9
8
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 in-
crusted 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 cor-
ner 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 with-
out 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,
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
11
10
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 interpre-
tation 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 with-
out 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 pet-
ticoat that she wears beneath a skirt made of an old gown,
with the wadding protruding through the rents in the mate-
rial, 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 por-
trait 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 in-
nocent 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 be-
lieved 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 foot-
steps, 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
13
12
important, while the rest were let to a Mme. Couture, the
widow of a commissary-general in the service of the Repub-
lic. 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 respec-
tively occupied by an old man named Poiret and a man of
forty or thereabouts, the wearer of a black wig and dyed whis-
kers, 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 stu-
dent, 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, subor-
dinating 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
15
14
contingent were exchanged in friendly confidence.
These seven lodgers were Mme. Vauquer’s spoiled chil-
dren. Among them she distributed, with astronomical preci-
sion, the exact proportion of respect and attention due to the
varying amounts they paid for their board. One single con-
sideration 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 be-
ing 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 dra-
mas of life, frost-bound dramas that sere hearts like fire, dra-
mas 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 courte-
san? 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 sound-
ing 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 noth-
ing 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
17
16
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 out-
spread 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 be-
tween the dingy white waistcoat and crumpled shirt frills and
the cravat twisted about a throat like a turkey gobbler’s; alto-
gether, his appearance set people wondering whether this out-
landish ghost belonged to the audacious race of the sons of
Japhet who flutter about on the Boulevard Italien. What de-
vouring kind of toil could have so shriveled him? What de-
vouring 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 machin-
ery 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. In-
deed, 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 strik-
ing 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 elas-
ticity in her movements. This young misfortune was not un-
like a shrub, newly planted in an uncongenial soil, where its
leaves have already begun to wither. The outlines of her fig-
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
19
18
ure, revealed by her dress of the simplest and cheapest mate-
rials, 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 ac-
knowledge her, and allowed her a bare six hundred francs a
year; he had further taken measures to disinherit his daugh-
ter, 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 lat-
ter, 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 communica-
tion, 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 affec-
tion 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 child-
hood, he had been gently bred. If he was careful of his ward-
robe, only taking last year’s clothes into daily wear, still upon
occasion he could issue forth as a young man of fashion. Or-
dinarily he wore a shabby coat and waistcoat, the limp black
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
21
20
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-de-
veloped 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 insinuat-
ing 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 noth-
ing 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, some-
times seen on his face, inspired fear of him, for all his appear-
ance 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 flat-
tery 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 appar-
ent good-nature, his unfailing readiness to oblige, and his
high spirits into a barrier between himself and the rest of
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
23
22
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 con-
victing 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 mys-
tery 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 con-
dolence 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 exist-
ence kept them in contact, but they were parts of a mecha-
nism 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 quan-
tity 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 con-
structed. And, as in a school, as in the world itself, there was
among the eighteen men and women who met round the din-
ner 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
25
24
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 misfor-
tunes? 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 help-
lessness. 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 fine-
ness 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 cup-
boards (ormoires, as he called them in the popular dialect)
were filled with a quantity of plate that he brought with him.
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
27
26
The widow’s eyes gleamed as she obligingly helped him to
unpack the soup ladles, table-spoons, forks, cruet-stands, tu-
reens, dishes, and breakfast services—all of silver, which were
duly arranged upon shelves, besides a few more or less hand-
some 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 ca-
pacity 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, swel-
tered 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 house-
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
29
28
hold rose up before Mme. Vauquer in her dreams. Nobody
knew that she herself possessed forty thousand francs, accu-
mulated 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-respect-
able persons honored her house with their presence. She ex-
pended 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 pro-
spectus, “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 prom-
ised 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 opin-
ion the vermicelli maker was an excellent man.
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
31
30
“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 os-
trich 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 cam-
paign, 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 consid-
ered 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 count-
ess 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 inter-
view; 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 noth-
ing 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 se-
verely 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
33
32
more, there are other mercenary natures who never do a kind-
ness to a friend or a relation simply because these have a claim
upon them, while a service done to a stranger brings its re-
ward 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 mis-
fortune would not have befallen you. I know that kind of
phiz!”
Like all narrow natures, Mme. Vauquer was wont to con-
fine 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 re-
sponsible for her misfortune. It had opened her eyes, so she
said, with regard to him. As soon as she saw that her blan-
dishments 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 cher-
ished 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 charac-
ter. 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 re-
turned 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,
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
35
34
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 jew-
elry 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 ab-
sent from the dinner-table twice a month. It was hardly ex-
pected that Mme. Vauquer should regard the increased regu-
larity 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? Conjec-
ture 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 scoun-
drel, 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 expres-
sive 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 re-
pulsion which he aroused in others was not so strong that he
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
37
36
must be banished from their society—he paid his way. Be-
sides, Goriot had his uses, every one vented his spleen or sharp-
ened 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 slan-
ders 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 down-
stairs 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 cor-
ner 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 rec-
ognize 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
39
38
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 mis-
tresses; 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 ru-
ined man who is broken in to all the cruel usage of misfor-
tune.
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 influ-
ence 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 sump-
tuously arrayed, summer as well as winter, in a coarse chest-
nut-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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
41
40
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 banter-
ingly 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 prob-
lem 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 exist-
ence of the old man, their butt at dinner. For those narrow
souls, or for careless youth, the misery in Father Goriot’s with-
ered 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 cul-
tivated 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;
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
43
42
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 re-
duced 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, an-
swer when he was spoken to; as a matter of fact, his talk,
arguments, and responses contributed nothing to the conver-
sation, 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 degrees—
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 stimu-
lated by a difficult position, that for the time being they rise
above the ordinary level.
Rastignac’s first year of study for the preliminary exami-
nations 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 be-
come 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 ex-
cited about all sorts of follies that seem to him to be of im-
mense 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 Op-
era-Comique. As he passes through all these successive initia-
tions, 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 child-
hood had vanished, so also had the ideas he brought with him
from the provinces; he had returned thither with an intelli-
gence developed, with loftier ambitions, and saw things as
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
45
44
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 sea-
son (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 pov-
erty, 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 en-
ergies, 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 imagi-
nation, 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 re-
gion. 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 rela-
tions; 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, recom-
mending 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
47
46
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 stu-
dent 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 some-
times 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 introduc-
tion, 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 grace-
fully 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 “heav-
enly 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
49
48
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 tem-
per, 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 con-
vinced 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 pe-
riod; 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, there-
fore, 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
51
50
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 se-
curely?” Eugene stood for a moment revolving these ques-
tions, then he looked again through the keyhole.
Father Goriot had unwound his coil of rope; he had cov-
ered the table with a blanket, and was now employed in roll-
ing 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. Sud-
denly, 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
53
52
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 wan-
dered 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 calcu-
lations as to the time; even the most business-like folk fail to
keep their appointments in such weather, and ordinary mor-
tals 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 cus-
tom 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 exac-
tion.
“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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
55
54
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 weak-
nesses known; it might spoil many a match.’ ”
“Well, and for my part,” said Sylvie, “a man tried to hum-
bug me at the market wanting to know if I had seen him put
on his shirt. Such bosh! There,” she cried, interrupting her-
self, “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 up-
stairs, 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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
57
56
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 any-
thing, 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 Dau-
phine 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 com-
ing back here. I waited after that to see what Father Goriot
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
59
58
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 ser-
vant.
“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 enve-
lope. “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
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
61
60
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 satiri-
cal 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 splen-
did 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—”
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
63
62
“In fact”—the law-student cut him short—“I danced with
one of the handsomest women in the room, a charming count-
ess, 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 whis-
per in Mme. Vauquer’s ear.
Goriot went on with his breakfast, but seemed uncon-
scious of what he was doing. He had never looked more stu-
pid 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 beauti-
ful, 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.
“Oh! yes, she was tremendously pretty,” Eugene answered.
Father Goriot watched him with eager eyes. “If Mme. de
Beauseant had not been there, my divine countess would have
been the queen of the ball; none of the younger men had eyes
for any one else. I was the twelfth on her list, and she danced
every quadrille. The other women were furious. She must have
enjoyed herself, if ever creature did! It is a true saying that
there is no more beautiful sight than a frigate in full sail, a
galloping horse, or a woman dancing.”
“So the wheel turns,” said Vautrin; “yesterday night at a
duchess’ ball, this morning in a money-lender’s office, on the
lowest rung of the ladder—just like a Parisienne! If their hus-
Honore de Balzac. Father Goriot.
Purchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
65
64
bands cannot afford to pay for their frantic extravagance, they
will sell themselves. Or if they cannot do that, they will tear
out their mothers’ hearts to find something to pay for their
splendor. They will turn the world upside down. Just a
Parisienne through and through!”
Father Goriot’s face, which had shone at the student’s
words like the sun on a bright day, clouded over all at once at
this cruel speech of Vautrin’s.
“Well,” said Mme. Vauquer, “but where is your adven-
ture? Did you speak to her? Did you ask her if she wanted to
study law?”
“She did not see me,” said Eugene. “But only think of
meeting one of the prettiest women in Paris in the Rue des
Gres at nine o’clock! She could not have reached home after
the ball till two o’clock this morning. Wasn’t it queer? There
is no place like Paris for this sort of adventures.”
“Pshaw! much funnier things than that happen here!” ex-
claimed Vautrin.
Mlle. Taillefer had scarcely heeded the talk, she was so
absorbed by the thought of the new attempt that she was
about to make. Mme. Couture made a sign that it was time to
go upstairs and dress; the two ladies went out, and Father
Goriot followed their example.
“Well, did you see?” said Mme. Vauquer, addressing
Vautrin and the rest of the circle. “He is ruining himself for
those women, that is plain.”
“Nothing will ever make me believe that that beautiful
Comtesse de Restaud is anything to Father Goriot,” cried the
student.
“Well, and if you don’t,” broke in Vautrin, “we are not set
on convincing you. You are too young to know Paris thor-
oughly yet; later on you will find out that there are what we
call men with a passion—”
Mlle. Michonneau gave Vautrin a quick glance at these
words. They seemed to be like the sound of a trumpet to a
trooper’s horse. “Aha!” said Vautrin, stopping in his speech to
give her a searching glance, “so we have had our little experi-
ences, have we?”
The old maid lowered her eyes like a nun who sees a statue.
“Well,” he went on, “when folk of that kind get a notion
into their heads, they cannot drop it. They must drink the
water from some particular spring—it is stagnant as often as
not; but they will sell their wives and families, they will sell
their own souls to the devil to get it. For some this spring is
play, or the stock-exchange, or music, or a collection of pic-
tures or insects; for others it is some woman who can give
them the dainties they like. You might offer these last all the
women on earth—they would turn up their noses; they will
have the only one who can gratify their passion. It often hap-
pens that the woman does not care for them at all, and treats
them cruelly; they buy their morsels of satisfaction very dear;
but no matter, the fools are never tired of it; they will take