Father Goriot
forty, the stout, comfortable, prosperous tradesman, with an almost
bucolic air, and such a brisk demeanor that it did you good to look at
him; the man with something boyish in his smile, had suddenly sunk into
his dotage, and had become a feeble, vacillating septuagenarian.
The keen, bright blue eyes had grown dull, and faded to a steel-gray
color; the red inflamed rims looked as though they had shed tears of
blood. He excited feelings of repulsion in some, and of pity in others.
The young medical students who came to the house noticed the drooping
of his lower lip and the conformation of the facial angle; and, after
teasing him for some time to no purpose, they declared that cretinism
was setting in.
One evening after dinner Mme. Vauquer said half banteringly to him, “So
those daughters of yours don’t come to see you any more, eh?” meaning to
imply her doubts as to his paternity; but Father Goriot shrank as if his
hostess had touched him with a sword-point.
“They come sometimes,” he said in a tremulous voice.
“Aha! you still see them sometimes?” cried the students. “Bravo, Father
Goriot!”
The old man scarcely seemed to hear the witticisms at his expense that
followed on the words; he had relapsed into the dreamy state of mind
that these superficial observers took for senile torpor, due to his lack
of intelligence. If they had only known, they might have been deeply
interested by the problem of his condition; but few problems were more
obscure. It was easy, of course, to find out whether Goriot had really
been a vermicelli manufacturer; the amount of his fortune was readily
discoverable; but the old people, who were most inquisitive as to his
concerns, never went beyond the limits of the Quarter, and lived in
the lodging-house much as oysters cling to a rock. As for the rest, the
current of life in Paris daily awaited them, and swept them away with
it; so soon as they left the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, they forgot the
existence of the old man, their butt at dinner. For those narrow souls,
or for careless youth, the misery in Father Goriot’s withered face
and its dull apathy were quite incompatible with wealth or any sort of
intelligence. As for the creatures whom he called his daughters, all
Mme. Vauquer’s boarders were of her opinion. With the faculty for severe
logic sedulously cultivated by elderly women during long evenings of
gossip till they can always find an hypothesis to fit all circumstances,
she was wont to reason thus:
“If Father Goriot had daughters of his own as rich as those ladies who
came here seemed to be, he would not be lodging in my house, on the
third floor, at forty-five francs a month; and he would not go about
dressed like a poor man.”
No objection could be raised to these inferences. So by the end of
the month of November 1819, at the time when the curtain rises on this
drama, every one in the house had come to have a very decided opinion as
to the poor old man. He had never had either wife or daughter; excesses
had reduced him to this sluggish condition; he was a sort of human
mollusk who should be classed among the capulidoe, so one of the dinner
contingent, an _employe_ at the Museum, who had a pretty wit of his own.
Poiret was an eagle, a gentleman, compared with Goriot. Poiret would
join the talk, argue, answer when he was spoken to; as a matter of
fact, his talk, arguments, and responses contributed nothing to the
conversation, for Poiret had a habit of repeating what the others said
in different words; still, he did join in the talk; he was alive, and
seemed capable of feeling; while Father Goriot (to quote the Museum
official again) was invariably at zero 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 stimulated by a difficult position, that for the
time being they rise above the ordinary level.
Rastignac’s first year of study for the preliminary examinations in law
had left him free to see the sights of Paris and to enjoy some of its
amusements. A student has not much time on his hands if he sets himself
to learn the repertory of every theatre, and to study the ins and outs
of the labyrinth of Paris. To know its customs; to learn the language,
and become familiar with the amusements of the capital, he must explore
its recesses, good and bad, follow the studies that please him best, and
form some idea of the treasures contained in galleries and museums.
At this stage of his career a student grows eager and excited about all
sorts of follies that seem to him to be of immense importance. He has
his hero, his great man, a professor at the College de France, paid
to talk down to the level of his audience. He adjusts his cravat, and
strikes various attitudes for the benefit of the women in the first
galleries at the Opera-Comique. As he passes through all these
successive initiations, and breaks out of his sheath, the horizons of
life widen around him, and at length he grasps the plan of society with
the different human strata of which it is composed.
If he begins by admiring the procession of carriages on sunny afternoons
in the Champs-Elysees, he soon reaches the further stage of envying
their owners. Unconsciously, Eugene had served his apprenticeship before
he went back to Angouleme for the long vacation after taking his degrees
as bachelor of arts and bachelor of law. The illusions of childhood had
vanished, so also had the ideas he brought with him from the provinces;
he had returned thither with an intelligence developed, with loftier
ambitions, and saw things as they were at home in the old manor house.
His father and mother, his two brothers and two sisters, with an aged
aunt, whose whole fortune consisted in annuities, lived on the little
estate of Rastignac. The whole property brought in about three thousand
francs; and though the amount varied with the season (as must always
be the case in a vine-growing district), they were obliged to spare an
unvarying twelve hundred francs out of their income for him. He saw
how constantly the poverty, which they had generously hidden from him,
weighed upon them; he could not help comparing the sisters, who had
seemed so beautiful to his boyish eyes, with women in Paris, who had
realized the beauty of his dreams. The uncertain future of the whole
family depended upon him. It did not escape his eyes that not a crumb
was wasted in the house, nor that the wine they drank was made from the
second pressing; a multitude of small things, which it is useless to
speak of in detail here, made him burn to distinguish himself, and his
ambition to succeed increased tenfold.
He meant, like all great souls, that his success should be owing
entirely to his merits; but his was pre-eminently a southern
temperament, the execution of his plans was sure to be marred by the
vertigo that seizes on youth when youth sees itself alone in a wide sea,
uncertain how to spend its energies, whither to steer its course, how
to adapt its sails to the winds. At first he determined to fling himself
heart and soul into his work, but he was diverted from this purpose by
the need of society and connections; then he saw how great an influence
women exert in social life, and suddenly made up his mind to go out
into this world to seek a protectress there. Surely a clever and
high-spirited young man, whose wit and courage were set off to advantage
by a graceful figure and the vigorous kind of beauty that readily
strikes a woman’s imagination, need not despair of finding a
protectress. These ideas occurred to him in his country walks with his
sisters, whom he had once joined so gaily. The girls thought him very
much changed.
His aunt, Mme. de Marcillac, had been presented at court, and had moved
among the brightest heights of that lofty region. Suddenly the young
man’s ambition discerned in those recollections of hers, which had been
like nursery fairy tales to her nephews and nieces, the elements of
a social success at least as important as the success which he had
achieved at the Ecole de Droit. He began to ask his aunt about those
relations; some of the old ties might still hold good. After much
shaking of the branches of the family tree, the old lady came to the
conclusion that of all persons who could be useful to her nephew among
the selfish genus of rich relations, the Vicomtesse de Beauseant was
the least likely to refuse. To this lady, therefore, she wrote in the
old-fashioned style, recommending Eugene to her; pointing out to
her nephew that if he succeeded in pleasing Mme. de Beauseant, the
Vicomtesse would introduce him to other relations. A few days after his
return to Paris, therefore, Rastignac sent his aunt’s letter to Mme.
de Beauseant. The Vicomtesse replied by an invitation to a ball for
the following evening. This was the position of affairs at the Maison
Vauquer at the end of November 1819.
A few days later, after Mme. de Beauseant’s ball, Eugene came in at two
o’clock in the morning. The persevering student meant to make up for the
lost time by working until daylight. It was the first time that he had
attempted to spend the night in this way in that silent quarter. The
spell of a factitious energy was upon him; he had beheld the pomp and
splendor of the world. He had not dined at the Maison Vauquer; the
boarders probably would think that he would walk home at daybreak from
the dance, as he had done sometimes on former occasions, after a fete at
the Prado, or a ball at the Odeon, splashing his silk stockings thereby,
and ruining his pumps.
It so happened that Christophe took a look into the street before
drawing the bolts of the door; and Rastignac, coming in at that
moment, could go up to his room without making any noise, followed by
Christophe, who made a great deal. Eugene exchanged his dress suit for a
shabby overcoat and slippers, kindled a fire with some blocks of patent
fuel, and prepared for his night’s work in such a sort that the faint
sounds he made were drowned by Christophe’s heavy tramp on the stairs.
Eugene sat absorbed in thought for a few moments before plunging into
his law books. He had just become aware of the fact that the Vicomtesse
de Beauseant was one of the queens of fashion, that her house was
thought to be the pleasantest in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. And not
only so, she was, by right of her fortune, and the name she bore, one of
the most conspicuous figures in that aristocratic world. Thanks to the
aunt, thanks to Mme. de Marcillac’s letter of introduction, the poor
student had been kindly received in that house before he knew the extent
of the favor thus shown to him. It was almost like a patent of nobility
to be admitted to those gilded salons; he had appeared in the most
exclusive circle in Paris, and now all doors were open for him. Eugene
had been dazzled at first by the brilliant assembly, and had scarcely
exchanged a few words with the Vicomtesse; he had been content to single
out a goddess among this throng of Parisian divinities, one of those
women who are sure to attract a young man’s fancy.
The Comtesse Anastasie de Restaud was tall and gracefully made; she
had one of the prettiest figures in Paris. Imagine a pair of great dark
eyes, a magnificently moulded hand, a shapely foot. There was a fiery
energy in her movements; the Marquis de Ronquerolles had called her “a
thoroughbred,” “a pure pedigree,” these figures of speech have replaced
the “heavenly angel” and Ossianic nomenclature; the old mythology of
love is extinct, doomed to perish by modern dandyism. But for Rastignac,
Mme. Anastasie de Restaud was the woman for whom he had sighed. He had
contrived to write his name twice upon the list of partners upon her