Father Goriot | Page 4

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 sensation; 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 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 obtained 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 widespread 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 picturesque in Paris, for each of the walls is covered with
trellised vines that yield a scanty dusty crop of fruit, and furnish
besides 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 repeated corrections from her lodgers.
The central space between the walls is filled with artichokes 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 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 covered 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 rabbits; the wood-
shed is situated on the further side, and on the wall