Father Goriot
fan, and had snatched a few words with her during the first quadrille.
“Where shall I meet you again, Madame?” he asked abruptly, and the tones
of his voice were full of the vehement energy that women like so well.
“Oh, everywhere!” said she, “in the Bois, at the Bouffons, in my own
house.”
With the impetuosity of his adventurous southern temper, he did all he
could to cultivate an acquaintance with this lovely countess, making the
best of his opportunities in the quadrille and during a waltz that she
gave him. When he told her that he was a cousin of Mme. de Beauseant’s,
the Countess, whom he took for a great lady, asked him to call at her
house, and after her parting smile, Rastignac felt convinced that he
must make this visit. He was so lucky as to light upon some one who did
not laugh at his ignorance, a fatal defect among the gilded and insolent
youth of that period; the coterie of Maulincourts, Maximes de Trailles,
de Marsays, Ronquerolles, Ajuda-Pintos, and Vandenesses who shone there
in all the glory of coxcombry among the best-dressed women of fashion
in Paris--Lady Brandon, the Duchesse de Langeais, the Comtesse de
Kergarouet, Mme. de Serizy, the Duchesse de Carigliano, the Comtesse
Ferraud, Mme. de Lanty, the Marquise d’Aiglemont, Mme. Firmiani,
the Marquise de Listomere and the Marquise d’Espard, the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse and the Grandlieus. Luckily, therefore, for him, the novice
happened upon the Marquis de Montriveau, the lover of the Duchesse de
Langeais, a general as simple as a child; from him Rastignac learned
that the Comtesse lived in the Rue du Helder.
Ah, what it is to be young, eager to see the world, greedily on the
watch for any chance that brings you nearer the woman of your dreams,
and behold two houses open their doors to you! To set foot in the
Vicomtesse de Beauseant’s house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; to fall
on your knees before a Comtesse de Restaud in the Chaussee d’Antin;
to look at one glance across a vista of Paris drawing-rooms, conscious
that, possessing sufficient good looks, you may hope to find aid and
protection there in a feminine heart! To feel ambitious enough to spurn
the tight-rope on which you must walk with the steady head of an acrobat
for whom a fall is impossible, and to find in a charming woman the best
of all balancing poles.
He sat there with his thoughts for a while, Law on the one hand, and
Poverty on the other, beholding a radiant vision of a woman rise above
the dull, smouldering fire. Who would not have paused and questioned
the future as Eugene was doing? who would not have pictured it full of
success? His wondering thoughts took wings; he was transported out
of the present into that blissful future; he was sitting by Mme. de
Restaud’s side, when a sort of sigh, like the grunt of an overburdened
St. Joseph, broke the silence of the night. It vibrated through the
student, who took the sound for a death groan. He opened his door
noiselessly, went out upon the landing, and saw a thin streak of light
under Father Goriot’s door. Eugene feared that his neighbor had been
taken ill; he went over and looked through the keyhole; the old man
was busily engaged in an occupation so singular and so suspicious that
Rastignac thought he was only doing a piece of necessary service
to society to watch the self-styled vermicelli maker’s nocturnal
industries.
The table was upturned, and Goriot had doubtless in some way secured a
silver plate and cup to the bar before knotting a thick rope round them;
he was pulling at this rope with such enormous force that they were
being crushed and twisted out of shape; to all appearance he meant to
convert the richly wrought metal into ingots.
“_Peste!_ what a man!” said Rastignac, as he watched Goriot’s muscular
arms; there was not a sound in the room while the old man, with the aid
of the rope, was kneading the silver like dough. “Was he then, indeed,
a thief, or a receiver of stolen goods, who affected imbecility and
decrepitude, and lived like a beggar that he might carry on his pursuits
the more securely?” Eugene stood for a moment revolving these questions,
then he looked again through the keyhole.
Father Goriot had unwound his coil of rope; he had covered the table
with a blanket, and was now employed in rolling the flattened mass
of silver into a bar, an operation which he performed with marvelous
dexterity.
“Why, he must be as strong as Augustus, King of Poland!” said Eugene to
himself when the bar was nearly finished.
Father Goriot looked sadly at his handiwork, tears fell from his
eyes, he blew out the dip which had served him for a light while he
manipulated the silver, and Eugene heard him sigh as he lay down again.
“He is mad,” thought the student.
“_Poor child!_” Father Goriot said aloud. Rastignac, hearing those
words, concluded to keep silence; he would not hastily condemn his
neighbor. He was just in the doorway of his room when a strange sound
from the staircase below reached his ears; it might have been made
by two men coming up in list slippers. Eugene listened; two men there
certainly were, he could hear their breathing. Yet there had been no
sound of opening the street door, no footsteps in the passage. Suddenly,
too, he saw a faint gleam of light on the second story; it came from M.
Vautrin’s room.
“There are a good many mysteries here for a lodging-house!” he said to
himself.
He went part of the way downstairs and listened again. The rattle of
gold reached his ears. In another moment the light was put out, and
again he distinctly heard the breathing of two men, but no sound of a
door being opened or shut. The two men went downstairs, the faint sounds
growing fainter as they went.
“Who is there?” cried Mme. Vauquer out of her bedroom window.
“I, Mme. Vauquer,” answered Vautrin’s deep bass voice. “I am coming in.”
“That is odd! Christophe drew the bolts,” said Eugene, going back to his
room. “You have to sit up at night, it seems, if you really mean to know
all that is going on about you in Paris.”
These incidents turned his thought from his ambitious dreams; he betook
himself to his work, but his thought wandered back to Father Goriot’s
suspicious occupation; Mme. de Restaud’s face swam again and again
before his eyes like a vision of a brilliant future; and at last he lay
down and slept with clenched fists. When a young man makes up his mind
that he will work all night, the chances are that seven times out of
ten he will sleep till morning. Such vigils do not begin before we are
turned twenty.
The next morning Paris was wrapped in one of the dense fogs that throw
the most punctual people out in their calculations as to the time; even
the most business-like folk fail to keep their appointments in such
weather, and ordinary mortals wake up at noon and fancy it is eight
o’clock. On this morning it was half-past nine, and Mme. Vauquer
still lay abed. Christophe was late, Sylvie was late, but the two sat
comfortably taking their coffee as usual. It was Sylvie’s custom to take
the cream off the milk destined for the boarders’ breakfast for her
own, and to boil the remainder for some time, so that madame should not
discover this illegal exaction.
“Sylvie,” said Christophe, as he dipped a piece of toast into the
coffee, “M. Vautrin, who is not such a bad sort, all the same, had two
people come to see him again last night. If madame says anything, mind
you say nothing about it.”
“Has he given you something?”
“He gave me a five-franc piece this month, which is as good as saying,
‘Hold your tongue.’”
“Except him and Mme. Couture, who doesn’t look twice at every penny,
there’s no one in the house that doesn’t try to get back with the left
hand all that they give with the right at New Year,” said Sylvie.
“And, after all,” said Christophe, “what do they give you? A miserable
five-franc piece. There is Father Goriot, who has cleaned his shoes
himself these two years past. There is that old beggar Poiret, who goes
without blacking altogether; he would sooner drink it than put it on his
boots. Then there is that whipper-snapper of a student, who gives me a
couple of francs. Two francs will not pay for my brushes, and he sells
his old clothes, and gets more for them than they are worth. Oh! they’re
a shabby lot!”
“Pooh!” said Sylvie, sipping her coffee, “our places are the best in the
Quarter, that I know. But about that great big chap Vautrin, Christophe;
has any one told you anything about him?”
“Yes. I met a gentleman in the street a few days ago; he said to me,
‘There’s a gentleman in your place, isn’t there? a tall man that dyes
his whiskers?’ I told him, ‘No, sir; they aren’t dyed. A gay fellow
like him hasn’t the time to do it.’ And when I told M. Vautrin about
it afterwards, he said, ‘Quite right, my boy. That is the way to
answer them. There is nothing more unpleasant than to have your little
weaknesses known; it might spoil many a match.’”
“Well, and for my part,” said Sylvie, “a man tried to humbug me at the
market wanting to know if I had seen him put on his shirt. Such bosh!
There,” she cried, interrupting herself, “that’s a quarter to ten
striking at the Val-de-Grace, and not a soul stirring!”
“Pooh! they are all gone out. Mme. Couture and the girl went out at
eight o’clock to take the wafer at Saint-Etienne. Father Goriot started
off somewhere with a parcel, and the student won’t be back from his
lecture till ten o’clock. I saw them go while I was sweeping the stairs;
Father Goriot knocked up against me, and his parcel was as hard as iron.
What is the old fellow up to, I wonder? He is as good as a plaything for
the rest of them; they can never let him alone; but he is a good man,
all the same, and worth more than all of them put together. He doesn’t
give you much himself, but he sometimes sends you with a message to
ladies who fork out famous tips; they are dressed grandly, too.”
“His daughters, as he calls them, eh? There are a dozen of them.”
“I have never been to more than two--the two who came here.”
“There is madame moving overhead; I shall have to go, or she will raise
a fine racket. Just keep an eye on the milk, Christophe; don’t let the
cat get at it.”
Sylvie went up to her mistress’ room.
“Sylvie! How is this? It’s nearly ten o’clock, and you let me sleep like
a dormouse! Such a thing has never happened before.”
“It’s the fog; it is that thick, you could cut it with a knife.”
“But how about breakfast?”
“Bah! the boarders are possessed, I’m sure. They all cleared out before
there was a wink of daylight.”
“Do speak properly, Sylvie,” Mme. Vauquer retorted; “say a blink of
daylight.”
“Ah, well, madame, whichever you please. Anyhow, you can have breakfast
at ten o’clock. La Michonnette and Poiret have neither of them stirred.
There are only those two upstairs, and they are sleeping like the logs
they are.”
“But, Sylvie, you put their names together as if----”
“As if what?” said Sylvie, bursting into a guffaw. “The two of them make
a pair.”
“It is a strange thing, isn’t it, Sylvie, how M. Vautrin got in last
night after Christophe had bolted the door?”
“Not at all, madame. Christophe heard M. Vautrin, and went down and
undid the door. And here are you imagining that----?”
“Give me my bodice, and be quick and get breakfast ready. Dish up the
rest of the mutton with the potatoes, and you can put the stewed pears
on the table, those at five a penny.”
A few moments later Mme. Vauquer came down, just in time to see the cat
knock down a plate that covered a bowl of milk, and begin to lap in all
haste.
“Mistigris!” she cried.
The cat fled, but promptly returned to rub against her ankles.
“Oh! yes, you can wheedle, you old hypocrite!” she said. “Sylvie!
Sylvie!”