Father Goriot | Page 7

Vauquer had little desire for lodgers of
this sort; they ate too much bread, and she only took them in default of
better.
At that time one of the rooms was tenanted by a law student, a young
man from the neighborhood of Angouleme, one of a large family who
pinched and starved themselves to spare twelve hundred francs a year
for him. Misfortune had accustomed Eugene de Rastignac, for that was
his name, to work. He belonged to the number of young men who
know as children that their parents' hopes are centered on them, and

deliberately prepare themselves for a great career, subordinating their
studies from the first to this end, carefully watching the indications of
the course of events, calculating the probable turn that affairs will take,
that they may be the first to profit by them. But for his observant
curiosity, and the skill with which he managed to introduce himself into
the salons of Paris, this story would not have been colored by the tones
of truth which it certainly owes to him, for they are entirely due to his
penetrating sagacity and desire to fathom the mysteries of an appalling
condition of things, which was concealed as carefully by the victim as
by those who had brought it to pass.
Above the third story there was a garret where the linen was hung to
dry, and a couple of attics. Christophe, the man-of-all-work, slept in
one, and Sylvie, the stout cook, in the other. Beside the seven inmates
thus enumerated, taking one year with another, some eight law or
medical students dined in the house, as well as two or three regular
comers who lived in the neighborhood. There were usually eighteen
people at dinner, and there was room, if need be, for twenty at Mme.
Vauquer's table; at breakfast, however, only the seven lodgers appeared.
It was almost like a family party. Every one came down in
dressing-gown and slippers, and the conversation usually turned on
anything that had happened the evening before; comments on the dress
or appearance of the dinner contingent were exchanged in friendly
confidence.
These seven lodgers were Mme. Vauquer's spoiled children. Among
them she distributed, with astronomical precision, the exact proportion
of respect and attention due to the varying amounts they paid for their
board. One single consideration influenced all these human beings
thrown together by chance. The two second-floor lodgers only paid
seventy-two francs a month. Such prices as these are confined to the
Faubourg Saint-Marcel and the district between La Bourbe and the
Salpetriere; and, as might be expected, poverty, more or less apparent,
weighed upon them all, Mme. Couture being the sole exception to the
rule.
The dreary surroundings were reflected in the costumes of the inmates

of the house; all were alike threadbare. The color of the men's coats
were problematical; such shoes, in more fashionable quarters, are only
to be seen lying in the gutter; the cuffs and collars were worn and
frayed at the edges; every limp article of clothing looked like the ghost
of its former self. The women's dresses were faded, old- fashioned,
dyed and re-dyed; they wore gloves that were glazed with hard wear,
much-mended lace, dingy ruffles, crumpled muslin fichus. So much for
their clothing; but, for the most part, their frames were solid enough;
their constitutions had weathered the storms of life; their cold, hard
faces were worn like coins that have been withdrawn from circulation,
but there were greedy teeth behind the withered lips. Dramas brought to
a close or still in progress are foreshadowed by the sight of such actors
as these, not the dramas that are played before the footlights and against
a background of painted canvas, but dumb dramas of life, frost-bound
dramas that sere hearts like fire, dramas that do not end with the actors'
lives.
Mlle. Michonneau, that elderly young lady, screened her weak eyes
from the daylight by a soiled green silk shade with a rim of brass, an
object fit to scare away the Angel of Pity himself. Her shawl, with its
scanty, draggled fringe, might have covered a skeleton, so meagre and
angular was the form beneath it. Yet she must have been pretty and
shapely once. What corrosive had destroyed the feminine outlines?
Was it trouble, or vice, or greed? Had she loved too well? Had she been
a second-hand clothes dealer, a frequenter of the backstairs of great
houses, or had she been merely a courtesan? Was she expiating the
flaunting triumphs of a youth overcrowded with pleasures by an old
age in which she was shunned by every passer-by? Her vacant gaze
sent a chill through you; her shriveled face seemed like a menace. Her
voice was like the shrill, thin note of the grasshopper sounding from