Father Goriot
for remoter circles of acquaintance, and show most to those who dwell on
its utmost limits. Mme. Vauquer belonged to both these essentially mean,
false, and execrable classes.
“If I had been there at the time,” Vautrin would say at the end of the
story, “I would have shown her up, and that misfortune would not have
befallen you. I know that kind of phiz!”
Like all narrow natures, Mme. Vauquer was wont to confine her attention
to events, and did not go very deeply into the causes that brought them
about; she likewise preferred to throw the blame of her own mistakes on
other people, so she chose to consider that the honest vermicelli maker
was responsible for her misfortune. It had opened her eyes, so she said,
with regard to him. As soon as she saw that her blandishments were in
vain, and that her outlay on her toilette was money thrown away, she was
not slow to discover the reason of his indifference. It became plain
to her at once that there was _some other attraction_, to use her own
expression. In short, it was evident that the hope she had so fondly
cherished was a baseless delusion, and that she would “never make
anything out of that man yonder,” in the Countess’ forcible phrase.
The Countess seemed to have been a judge of character. Mme. Vauquer’s
aversion was naturally more energetic than her friendship, for her
hatred was not in proportion to her love, but to her disappointed
expectations. The human heart may find here and there a resting-place
short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the
steep, downward slope of hatred. Still, M. Goriot was a lodger, and
the widow’s wounded self-love could not vent itself in an explosion of
wrath; like a monk harassed by the prior of his convent, she was forced
to stifle her sighs of disappointment, and to gulp down her craving for
revenge. Little minds find gratification for their feelings, benevolent
or otherwise, by a constant exercise of petty ingenuity. The widow
employed her woman’s malice to devise a system of covert persecution.
She began by a course of retrenchment--various luxuries which had found
their way to the table appeared there no more.
“No more gherkins, no more anchovies; they have made a fool of me!” she
said to Sylvie one morning, and they returned to the old bill of fare.
The thrifty frugality necessary to those who mean to make their way in
the world had become an inveterate habit of life with M. Goriot. Soup,
boiled beef, and a dish of vegetables had been, and always would be, the
dinner he liked best, so Mme. Vauquer found it very difficult to annoy
a boarder whose tastes were so simple. He was proof against her malice,
and in desperation she spoke to him and of him slightingly before the
other lodgers, who began to amuse themselves at his expense, and so
gratified her desire for revenge.
Towards the end of the first year the widow’s suspicions had reached
such a pitch that she began to wonder how it was that a retired merchant
with a secure income of seven or eight thousand livres, the owner of
such magnificent plate and jewelry handsome enough for a kept mistress,
should be living in her house. Why should he devote so small a
proportion of his money to his expenses? Until the first year was nearly
at an end, Goriot had dined out once or twice every week, but these
occasions came less frequently, and at last he was scarcely absent from
the dinner-table twice a month. It was hardly expected that Mme. Vauquer
should regard the increased regularity of her boarder’s habits with
complacency, when those little excursions of his had been so much to her
interest. She attributed the change not so much to a gradual diminution
of fortune as to a spiteful wish to annoy his hostess. It is one of the
most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with
its own malignant pettiness.
Unluckily, towards the end of the second year, M. Goriot’s conduct gave
some color to the idle talk about him. He asked Mme. Vauquer to give him
a room on the second floor, and to make a corresponding reduction in
her charges. Apparently, such strict economy was called for, that he did
without a fire all through the winter. Mme. Vauquer asked to be paid in
advance, an arrangement to which M. Goriot consented, and thenceforward
she spoke of him as “Father Goriot.”
What had brought about this decline and fall? Conjecture was keen, but
investigation was difficult. Father Goriot was not communicative; in
the sham countess’ phrase he was “a curmudgeon.” Empty-headed people who
babble about their own affairs because they have nothing else to occupy
them, naturally conclude that if people say nothing of their doings it
is because their doings will not bear being talked about; so the highly
respectable merchant became a scoundrel, and the late beau was an old
rogue. Opinion fluctuated. Sometimes, according to Vautrin, who came
about this time to live in the Maison Vauquer, Father Goriot was a man
who went on ‘Change and _dabbled_ (to use the sufficiently expressive
language of the Stock Exchange) in stocks and shares after he had ruined
himself by heavy speculation. Sometimes it was held that he was one of
those petty gamblers who nightly play for small stakes until they win a
few francs. A theory that he was a detective in the employ of the Home
Office found favor at one time, but Vautrin urged that “Goriot was not
sharp enough for one of that sort.” There were yet other solutions;
Father Goriot was a skinflint, a shark of a money-lender, a man
who lived by selling lottery tickets. He was by turns all the most
mysterious brood of vice and shame and misery; yet, however vile his
life might be, the feeling of repulsion which he aroused in others was
not so strong that he must be banished from their society--he paid
his way. Besides, Goriot had his uses, every one vented his spleen or
sharpened his wit on him; he was pelted with jokes and belabored with
hard words. The general consensus of opinion was in favor of a theory
which seemed the most likely; this was Mme. Vauquer’s view. According
to her, the man so well preserved at his time of life, as sound as her
eyesight, with whom a woman might be very happy, was a libertine who had
strange tastes. These are the facts upon which Mme. Vauquer’s slanders
were based.
Early one morning, some few months after the departure of the unlucky
Countess who had managed to live for six months at the widow’s expense,
Mme. Vauquer (not yet dressed) heard the rustle of a silk dress and
a young woman’s light footstep on the stair; some one was going to
Goriot’s room. He seemed to expect the visit, for his door stood ajar.
The portly Sylvie presently came up to tell her mistress that a girl too
pretty to be honest, “dressed like a goddess,” and not a speck of mud
on her laced cashmere boots, had glided in from the street like a snake,
had found the kitchen, and asked for M. Goriot’s room. Mme. Vauquer
and the cook, listening, overheard several words affectionately spoken
during the visit, which lasted for some time. When M. Goriot went
downstairs with the lady, the stout Sylvie forthwith took her basket
and followed the lover-like couple, under pretext of going to do her
marketing.
“M. Goriot must be awfully rich, all the same, madame,” she reported
on her return, “to keep her in such style. Just imagine it! There was a
splendid carriage waiting at the corner of the Place de l’Estrapade, and
_she_ got into it.”
While they were at dinner that evening, Mme. Vauquer went to the window
and drew the curtain, as the sun was shining into Goriot’s eyes.
“You are beloved of fair ladies, M. Goriot--the sun seeks you out,” she
said, alluding to his visitor. “_Peste!_ you have good taste; she was
very pretty.”
“That was my daughter,” he said, with a kind of pride in his voice, and
the rest chose to consider this as the fatuity of an old man who wishes
to save appearances.
A month after this visit M. Goriot received another. The same daughter
who had come to see him that morning came again after dinner, this time
in evening dress. The boarders, in deep discussion in the dining-room,
caught a glimpse of a lovely, fair-haired woman, slender, graceful, and
much too distinguished-looking to be a daughter of Father Goriot’s.
“Two of them!” cried the portly Sylvie, who did not recognize the lady
of the first visit.
A few days later, and another young lady--a tall, well-moulded brunette,
with dark hair and bright eyes--came to ask for M. Goriot.
“Three of them!” said Sylvie.
Then the second daughter, who had first come in the morning to see her
father, came shortly afterwards in the evening. She wore a ball dress,
and came in a carriage.
“Four of them!” commented Mme. Vauquer and her plump handmaid. Sylvie
saw not a trace of resemblance between this great lady and the girl in
her simple morning dress who had entered her kitchen on the occasion of
her first visit.
At that time Goriot was paying twelve hundred francs a year to his
landlady, and Mme. Vauquer saw nothing out of the common in the fact
that a rich man had four or five mistresses; nay, she thought it very
knowing of him to pass them off as his daughters. She was not at all
inclined to draw a hard-and-fast line, or to take umbrage at his sending
for them to the Maison Vauquer; yet, inasmuch as these visits explained
her boarder’s indifference to her, she went so far (at the end of the
second year) as to speak of him as an “ugly old wretch.” When at length
her boarder declined to nine hundred francs a year, she asked him very
insolently what he took her house to be, after meeting one of these
ladies on the stairs. Father Goriot answered that the lady was his
eldest daughter.
“So you have two or three dozen daughters, have you?” said Mme. Vauquer
sharply.
“I have only two,” her boarder answered meekly, like a ruined man who is
broken in to all the cruel usage of misfortune.
Towards the end of the third year Father Goriot reduced his expenses
still further; he went up to the third story, and now paid forty-five
francs a month. He did without snuff, told his hairdresser that he no
longer required his services, and gave up wearing powder. When Goriot
appeared for the first time in this condition, an exclamation of
astonishment broke from his hostess at the color of his hair--a dingy
olive gray. He had grown sadder day by day under the influence of some
hidden trouble; among all the faces round the table, his was the
most woe-begone. There was no longer any doubt. Goriot was an elderly
libertine, whose eyes had only been preserved by the skill of the
physician from the malign influence of the remedies necessitated by the
state of his health. The disgusting color of his hair was a result of
his excesses and of the drugs which he had taken that he might continue
his career. The poor old man’s mental and physical condition afforded
some grounds for the absurd rubbish talked about him. When his outfit
was worn out, he replaced the fine linen by calico at fourteen _sous_
the ell. His diamonds, his gold snuff-box, watch-chain and trinkets,
disappeared one by one. He had left off wearing the corn-flower blue
coat, and was sumptuously arrayed, summer as well as winter, in a coarse
chestnut-brown coat, a plush waistcoat, and doeskin breeches. He grew
thinner and thinner; his legs were shrunken, his cheeks, once so puffed
out by contented bourgeois prosperity, were covered with wrinkles, and
the outlines of the jawbones were distinctly visible; there were deep
furrows in his forehead. In the fourth year of his residence in the Rue
Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve he was no longer like his former self. The hale
vermicelli manufacturer, sixty-two years of age, who had looked scarce