The french masters, p.38
The French Masters, page 38
The student exchanged greetings with the lodgers, and sat down beside Goriot.
“I have just met with a queer adventure,” he said, as he helped himself abundantly to the mutton, and cut a slice of bread, which Mme. Vauquer’s eyes gauged as usual.
“An adventure?” queried Poiret.
“Well, and what is there to astonish you in that, old boy?” Vautrin asked of Poiret. “M. Eugene is cut out for that kind of thing.”
Mlle. Taillefer stole a timid glance at the young student.
“Tell us about your adventure!” demanded M. Vautrin.
“Yesterday evening I went to a ball given by a cousin of mine, the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. She has a magnificent house; the rooms are hung with silk — in short, it was a splendid affair, and I was as happy as a king — -”
“Fisher,” put in Vautrin, interrupting.
“What do you mean, sir?” said Eugene sharply.
“I said ‘fisher,’ because kingfishers see a good deal more fun than kings.”
“Quite true; I would much rather be the little careless bird than a king,” said Poiret the ditto-ist, “because — —”
“In fact” — the law-student cut him short— “I danced with one of the handsomest women in the room, a charming countess, the most exquisite creature I have ever seen. There was peach blossom in her hair, and she had the loveliest bouquet of flowers — real flowers, that scented the air —— but there! it is no use trying to describe a woman glowing with the dance. You ought to have seen her! Well, and this morning I met this divine countess about nine o’clock, on foot in the Rue de Gres. Oh! how my heart beat! I began to think — —”
“That she was coming here,” said Vautrin, with a keen look at the student. “I expect that she was going to call on old Gobseck, a money-lender. If ever you explore a Parisian woman’s heart, you will find the money-lender first, and the lover afterwards. Your countess is called Anastasie de Restaud, and she lives in the Rue du Helder.”
The student stared hard at Vautrin. Father Goriot raised his head at the words, and gave the two speakers a glance so full of intelligence and uneasiness that the lodgers beheld him with astonishment.
“Then Christophe was too late, and she must have gone to him!” cried Goriot, with anguish in his voice.
“It is just as I guessed,” said Vautrin, leaning over to whisper in Mme. Vauquer’s ear.
Goriot went on with his breakfast, but seemed unconscious of what he was doing. He had never looked more stupid nor more taken up with his own thoughts than he did at that moment.
“Who the devil could have told you her name, M. Vautrin?” asked Eugene.
“Aha! there you are!” answered Vautrin. “Old Father Goriot there knew it quite well! and why should I not know it too?”
“M. Goriot?” the student cried.
“What is it?” asked the old man. “So she was very beautiful, was she, yesterday night?”
“Who?”
“Mme. de Restaud.”
“Look at the old wretch,” said Mme. Vauquer, speaking to Vautrin; “how his eyes light up!”
“Then does he really keep her?” said Mlle. Michonneau, in a whisper to the student.
“Oh! yes, she was tremendously pretty,” Eugene answered. Father Goriot watched him with eager eyes. “If Mme. de Beauseant had not been there, my divine countess would have been the queen of the ball; none of the younger men had eyes for any one else. I was the twelfth on her list, and she danced every quadrille. The other women were furious. She must have enjoyed herself, if ever creature did! It is a true saying that there is no more beautiful sight than a frigate in full sail, a galloping horse, or a woman dancing.”
“So the wheel turns,” said Vautrin; “yesterday night at a duchess’ ball, this morning in a money-lender’s office, on the lowest rung of the ladder — just like a Parisienne! If their husbands cannot afford to pay for their frantic extravagance, they will sell themselves. Or if they cannot do that, they will tear out their mothers’ hearts to find something to pay for their splendor. They will turn the world upside down. Just a Parisienne through and through!”
Father Goriot’s face, which had shone at the student’s words like the sun on a bright day, clouded over all at once at this cruel speech of Vautrin’s.
“Well,” said Mme. Vauquer, “but where is your adventure? Did you speak to her? Did you ask her if she wanted to study law?”
“She did not see me,” said Eugene. “But only think of meeting one of the prettiest women in Paris in the Rue des Gres at nine o’clock! She could not have reached home after the ball till two o’clock this morning. Wasn’t it queer? There is no place like Paris for this sort of adventures.”
“Pshaw! much funnier things than that happen here!” exclaimed Vautrin.
Mlle. Taillefer had scarcely heeded the talk, she was so absorbed by the thought of the new attempt that she was about to make. Mme. Couture made a sign that it was time to go upstairs and dress; the two ladies went out, and Father Goriot followed their example.
“Well, did you see?” said Mme. Vauquer, addressing Vautrin and the rest of the circle. “He is ruining himself for those women, that is plain.”
“Nothing will ever make me believe that that beautiful Comtesse de Restaud is anything to Father Goriot,” cried the student.
“Well, and if you don’t,” broke in Vautrin, “we are not set on convincing you. You are too young to know Paris thoroughly yet; later on you will find out that there are what we call men with a passion — —”
Mlle. Michonneau gave Vautrin a quick glance at these words. They seemed to be like the sound of a trumpet to a trooper’s horse. “Aha!” said Vautrin, stopping in his speech to give her a searching glance, “so we have had our little experiences, have we?”
The old maid lowered her eyes like a nun who sees a statue.
“Well,” he went on, “when folk of that kind get a notion into their heads, they cannot drop it. They must drink the water from some particular spring — it is stagnant as often as not; but they will sell their wives and families, they will sell their own souls to the devil to get it. For some this spring is play, or the stock-exchange, or music, or a collection of pictures or insects; for others it is some woman who can give them the dainties they like. You might offer these last all the women on earth — they would turn up their noses; they will have the only one who can gratify their passion. It often happens that the woman does not care for them at all, and treats them cruelly; they buy their morsels of satisfaction very dear; but no matter, the fools are never tired of it; they will take their last blanket to the pawnbroker’s to give their last five-franc piece to her. Father Goriot here is one of that sort. He is discreet, so the Countess exploits him — just the way of the gay world. The poor old fellow thinks of her and of nothing else. In all other respects you see he is a stupid animal; but get him on that subject, and his eyes sparkle like diamonds. That secret is not difficult to guess. He took some plate himself this morning to the melting-pot, and I saw him at Daddy Gobseck’s in the Rue des Gres. And now, mark what follows — he came back here, and gave a letter for the Comtesse de Restaud to that noodle of a Christophe, who showed us the address; there was a receipted bill inside it. It is clear that it was an urgent matter if the Countess also went herself to the old money lender. Father Goriot has financed her handsomely. There is no need to tack a tale together; the thing is self-evident. So that shows you, sir student, that all the time your Countess was smiling, dancing, flirting, swaying her peach-flower crowned head, with her gown gathered into her hand, her slippers were pinching her, as they say; she was thinking of her protested bills, or her lover’s protested bills.”
“You have made me wild to know the truth,” cried Eugene; “I will go to call on Mme. de Restaud to-morrow.”
“Yes,” echoed Poiret; “you must go and call on Mme. de Restaud.”
“And perhaps you will find Father Goriot there, who will take payment for the assistance he politely rendered.”
Eugene looked disgusted. “Why, then, this Paris of yours is a slough.”
“And an uncommonly queer slough, too,” replied Vautrin. “The mud splashes you as you drive through it in your carriage — you are a respectable person; you go afoot and are splashed — you are a scoundrel. You are so unlucky as to walk off with something or other belonging to somebody else, and they exhibit you as a curiosity in the Place du Palais-de-Justice; you steal a million, and you are pointed out in every salon as a model of virtue. And you pay thirty millions for the police and the courts of justice, for the maintenance of law and order! A pretty slate of things it is!”
“What,” cried Mme. Vauquer, “has Father Goriot really melted down his silver posset-dish?”
“There were two turtle-doves on the lid, were there not?” asked Eugene.
“Yes, that there were.”
“Then, was he fond of it?” said Eugene. “He cried while he was breaking up the cup and plate. I happened to see him by accident.”
“It was dear to him as his own life,” answered the widow.
“There! you see how infatuated the old fellow is!” cried Vautrin. “The woman yonder can coax the soul out of him.”
The student went up to his room. Vautrin went out, and a few moments later Mme. Couture and Victorine drove away in a cab which Sylvie had called for them. Poiret gave his arm to Mlle. Michonneau, and they went together to spend the two sunniest hours of the day in the Jardin des Plantes.
“Well, those two are as good as married,” was the portly Sylvie’s comment. “They are going out together to-day for the first time. They are such a couple of dry sticks that if they happen to strike against each other they will draw sparks like flint and steel.”
“Keep clear of Mlle. Michonneau’s shawl, then,” said Mme. Vauquer, laughing; “it would flare up like tinder.”
At four o’clock that evening, when Goriot came in, he saw, by the light of two smoky lamps, that Victorine’s eyes were red. Mme. Vauquer was listening to the history of the visit made that morning to M. Taillefer; it had been made in vain. Taillefer was tired of the annual application made by his daughter and her elderly friend; he gave them a personal interview in order to arrive at an understanding with them.
“My dear lady,” said Mme. Couture, addressing Mme. Vauquer, “just imagine it; he did not even ask Victorine to sit down, she was standing the whole time. He said to me quite coolly, without putting himself in a passion, that we might spare ourselves the trouble of going there; that the young lady (he would not call her his daughter) was injuring her cause by importuning him (importuning! once a year, the wretch!); that as Victorine’s mother had nothing when he married her, Victorine ought not to expect anything from him; in fact, he said the most cruel things, that made the poor child burst out crying. The little thing threw herself at her father’s feet and spoke up bravely; she said that she only persevered in her visits for her mother’s sake; that she would obey him without a murmur, but that she begged him to read her poor dead mother’s farewell letter. She took it up and gave it to him, saying the most beautiful things in the world, most beautifully expressed; I do not know where she learned them; God must have put them into her head, for the poor child was inspired to speak so nicely that it made me cry like a fool to hear her talk. And what do you think the monster was doing all the time? Cutting his nails! He took the letter that poor Mme. Taillefer had soaked with tears, and flung it on to the chimney-piece. ‘That is all right,’ he said. He held out his hands to raise his daughter, but she covered them with kisses, and he drew them away again. Scandalous, isn’t it? And his great booby of a son came in and took no notice of his sister.”
“What inhuman wretches they must be!” said Father Goriot.
“And then they both went out of the room,” Mme. Couture went on, without heeding the worthy vermicelli maker’s exclamation; “father and son bowed to me, and asked me to excuse them on account of urgent business! That is the history of our call. Well, he has seen his daughter at any rate. How he can refuse to acknowledge her I cannot think, for they are as alike as two peas.”
The boarders dropped in one after another, interchanging greetings and empty jokes that certain classes of Parisians regard as humorous and witty. Dulness is their prevailing ingredient, and the whole point consists in mispronouncing a word or a gesture. This kind of argot is always changing. The essence of the jest consists in some catchword suggested by a political event, an incident in the police courts, a street song, or a bit of burlesque at some theatre, and forgotten in a month. Anything and everything serves to keep up a game of battledore and shuttlecock with words and ideas. The diorama, a recent invention, which carried an optical illusion a degree further than panoramas, had given rise to a mania among art students for ending every word with rama. The Maison Vauquer had caught the infection from a young artist among the boarders.
“Well, Monsieur-r-r Poiret,” said the employe from the Museum, “how is your health-orama?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to Mme. Couture and Victorine with a “Ladies, you seem melancholy.”
“Is dinner ready?” cried Horace Bianchon, a medical student, and a friend of Rastignac’s; “my stomach is sinking usque ad talones.”
“There is an uncommon frozerama outside,” said Vautrin. “Make room there, Father Goriot! Confound it, your foot covers the whole front of the stove.”
“Illustrious M. Vautrin,” put in Bianchon, “why do you say frozerama? It is incorrect; it should be frozenrama.”
“No, it shouldn’t,” said the official from the Museum; “frozerama is right by the same rule that you say ‘My feet are froze.’”
“Ah! ah!”
“Here is his Excellency the Marquis de Rastignac, Doctor of the Law of Contraries,” cried Bianchon, seizing Eugene by the throat, and almost throttling him.
“Hallo there! hallo!”
Mlle. Michonneau came noiselessly in, bowed to the rest of the party, and took her place beside the three women without saying a word.
“That old bat always makes me shudder,” said Bianchon in a low voice, indicating Mlle. Michonneau to Vautrin. “I have studied Gall’s system, and I am sure she has the bump of Judas.”
“Then you have seen a case before?” said Vautrin.
“Who has not?” answered Bianchon. “Upon my word, that ghastly old maid looks just like one of the long worms that will gnaw a beam through, give them time enough.”
“That is the way, young man,” returned he of the forty years and the dyed whiskers:
“The rose has lived the life of a rose —
A morning’s space.”
“Aha! here is a magnificent soupe-au-rama,” cried Poiret as Christophe came in bearing the soup with cautious heed.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mme. Vauquer; “it is soupe aux choux.”
All the young men roared with laughter.
“Had you there, Poiret!”
“Poir-r-r-rette! she had you there!”
“Score two points to Mamma Vauquer,” said Vautrin.
“Did any of you notice the fog this morning?” asked the official.
“It was a frantic fog,” said Bianchon, “a fog unparalleled, doleful, melancholy, sea-green, asthmatical — a Goriot of a fog!”
“A Goriorama,” said the art student, “because you couldn’t see a thing in it.”
“Hey! Milord Gaoriotte, they air talking about yoo-o-ou!”
Father Goriot, seated at the lower end of the table, close to the door through which the servant entered, raised his face; he had smelt at a scrap of bread that lay under his table napkin, an old trick acquired in his commercial capacity, that still showed itself at times.
“Well,” Madame Vauquer cried in sharp tones, that rang above the rattle of spoons and plates and the sound of other voices, “and is there anything the matter with the bread?”
“Nothing whatever, madame,” he answered; “on the contrary, it is made of the best quality of corn; flour from Etampes.”
“How could you tell?” asked Eugene.
“By the color, by the flavor.”
“You knew the flavor by the smell, I suppose,” said Mme. Vauquer. “You have grown so economical, you will find out how to live on the smell of cooking at last.”
“Take out a patent for it, then,” cried the Museum official; “you would make a handsome fortune.”
“Never mind him,” said the artist; “he does that sort of thing to delude us into thinking that he was a vermicelli maker.”
“Your nose is a corn-sampler, it appears?” inquired the official.
“Corn what?” asked Bianchon.
“Corn-el.”
“Corn-et.”
“Corn-elian.”
“Corn-ice.”
“Corn-ucopia.”
“Corn-crake.”
“Corn-cockle.”
“Corn-orama.”
The eight responses came like a rolling fire from every part of the room, and the laughter that followed was the more uproarious because poor Father Goriot stared at the others with a puzzled look, like a foreigner trying to catch the meaning of words in a language which he does not understand.
“Corn?...” he said, turning to Vautrin, his next neighbor.
“Corn on your foot, old man!” said Vautrin, and he drove Father Goriot’s cap down over his eyes by a blow on the crown.
The poor old man thus suddenly attacked was for a moment too bewildered to do anything. Christophe carried off his plate, thinking that he had finished his soup, so that when Goriot had pushed back his cap from his eyes his spoon encountered the table. Every one burst out laughing. “You are a disagreeable joker, sir,” said the old man, “and if you take any further liberties with me — —”
“Well, what then, old boy?” Vautrin interrupted.
“Well, then, you shall pay dearly for it some day — —”
“Down below, eh?” said the artist, “in the little dark corner where they put naughty boys.”
“Well, mademoiselle,” Vautrin said, turning to Victorine, “you are eating nothing. So papa was refractory, was he?”
