Father Goriot

Mme. Vauquer (née de Conflans) is an elderly person, who for the past forty years has kept a lodging-house in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, 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, however, the time when this drama opens, there was an almost penniless young girl among Mme. Vauquer’s boarders.

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; someone 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.”

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 Eugène 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. Eugène 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.

You look to me to be inclined to be a trifle quarrelsome this morning, and as if you would rush on your death like a blockhead.”

“Do you draw back?” asked Eugène.

“Don’t try to raise my temperature,” answered Vautrin, “it is not cold this morning. Let us go and sit over there,” he added, pointing to the green-painted garden seats; “no one can overhear us. I want a little talk with you. You are not a bad sort of youngster, and I have no quarrel with you. I like you, take Trump⁠—(confound it!)⁠—take Vautrin’s word for it. What makes me like you? I will tell you by-and-by. Meantime, I can tell you that I know you as well as if I had made you myself, as I will prove to you in a minute. Put down your bags,” he continued, pointing to the round table.

Rastignac deposited his money on the table, and sat down. He was consumed with curiosity, which the sudden change in the manner of the man before him had excited to the highest pitch. Here was a strange being who, a moment ago, had talked of killing him, and now posed as his protector.

“No.”

“Are you ready to do my bidding?”

“Blindly.”

“Have you ever been to a gaming-house?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

“Never.”

“Ah! now I can breathe. You will have luck. Here is my purse,” she said. “Take it! there are a hundred francs in it, all that such a fortunate woman as I can call her own. Go up into one of the gaming-houses⁠—I do not know where they are, but there are some near the Palais-Royal. Try your luck with the hundred francs at a game they call roulette; lose it all or bring me back six thousand francs. I will tell you about my troubles when you come back.”

“Devil take me, I’m sure, if I have a glimmer of a notion of what I am about, but I will obey you,” he added, with inward exultation, as he thought, “She has gone too far to draw back⁠—she can refuse me nothing now!”

Eugène took the dainty little purse, inquired the way of a secondhand clothes-dealer, and hurried to number 9, which happened to be the nearest gaming-house. He mounted the staircase, surrendered his hat, and asked the way to the roulette-table, whither the attendant took him, not a little to the astonishment of the regular comers. All eyes were fixed on Eugène as he asked, without bashfulness, where he was to deposit his stakes.