"Old Goriot," or, to give it its French title, "Le Père
Goriot," is one of the series of novels to which Balzac gave
the title of "The Comedy of Human Life." It is a comedy,
mingled with lurid tragic touches, of society in the French
capital in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The
leading character in this story is, of course, Old Goriot, and
the passion which dominates him is that of paternity. In the
picture which Balzac draws of Parisian life, from the sordid
boarding-house to the luxurious mansions of the gilded
aristocracy in the days of the Bourbon Restoration, the author
exhibits that tendency to over-description for which he was
criticised by his contemporaries, and to dwell too much on
petty details. It may be urged, however, that it is the
cumulative effect of these minute touches that is necessary
for the true realisation of character.
_I.--In a Paris Boarding-House_
Madame Vauquer, née Conflans, is an elderly lady who for forty years
past has kept a Parisian middle-class boarding-house, situated in the
Rue Neuve Sainte-Geneviève, between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg
Saint Marcel. This pension, known under the name of the Maison Vauquer,
receives men as well as women--young men and old; but hitherto scandal
has never attacked the moral principles on which the respectable
establishment has been conducted. Moreover, for more than thirty years,
no young woman has been seen in the house; and if any young man ever
lived there, it was because his family were able to make him only a very
slender allowance. Nevertheless, in 1819, the date at which this drama
begins, a poor young girl was found there.
The Maison Vauquer is of three stories, with attic chambers, and a tiny
garden at the back. The ground floor consists of a parlour lighted by
two windows looking upon the street. Nothing could be more depressing
than this chamber, which is used as the sitting-room. It is furnished
with chairs, the seats of which are covered with strips of alternate
dull and shining horsehair stuff, while in the centre is a round table
with a marble top. The room exhales a smell for which there is no name,
in any language, except that of _odour de pension_. And yet, if you
compare it with the dining-room which adjoins, you will find the
sitting-room as elegant and as perfumed as a lady's boudoir. There
misery reigns without a redeeming touch of poesie--poverty, penetrating,
concentrated, rasping. This room appears at its best when at seven in
the morning Madame Vauquer, preceded by her cat, enters it from her
sleeping chamber. She wears a tulle cap, under which hangs awry a front
of false hair; her gaping slippers flop as she walks across the room.
Her features are oldish and flabby; from their midst springs a nose like
the beak of a parrot. Her small fat hands, her person plump as a church
rat, her bust too full and tremulous, are all in harmony with the room.
About fifty years of age, Madame Vauquer looks as most women do who say
that they have had misfortunes.
At the date when this story opens there were seven boarders in the
house. The first floor contained the two best suites of rooms. Madame
Vauquer occupied the small, and the other was let to Madame Couture, the
widow of a paymaster in the army of the French Republic. She had with
her a very young girl, named Victorine Taillefer. On the second floor,
one apartment was tenanted by an old gentleman named Poiret; the other
by a man of about forty years of age, who wore a black wig, dyed his
whiskers, gave out that he was a retired merchant, and called himself
Monsieur Vautrin. The third story was divided into four single rooms, of
which one was occupied by an old maid named Mademoiselle Michonneau, and
another by an aged manufacturer of vermicelli, who allowed himself to be
called "Old Goriot." The two remaining rooms were allotted to a medical
student known as Bianchon, and to a law student named Eugène de
Rastignac. Above the third story were a loft where linen was dried, and
two attic rooms, in one of which slept the man of all work, Christophe,
and in the other the fat cook, Sylvie.
The desolate aspect of the interior of the establishment repeated itself
in the shabby attire of the boarders. Mademoiselle Michonneau protected
her weak eyes with a shabby green silk shade mounted on brass wire,
which would have scared the Angel of Pity. Although the play of passions
had ravished her features, she retained certain traces of a fine
complexion, which suggested that the figure conserved some fragments of
beauty. Poiret was a human automaton, who had earned a pension by
mechanical labour as a government functionary.
Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer was of a sickly paleness, like a girl
in feeble health; but her grey-black eyes expressed the sweetness and
resignation of a Christian. Her dress, simple and cheap, betrayed her
youthful form. Happy, she might have been beautiful, for happiness
imparts a poetic charm to women, as dress is the artifice of it. If love
had ever given sparkle to her eyes, Victorine would have been able to
hold her own with the fairest of her compeers. Her father believed he
had reason to doubt his paternity, though she loved him with passionate
tenderness; and after making her a yearly allowance of six hundred
francs, he disinherited her in favour of his only son, who was to be the
sole successor to his millions. Madame Couture was a distant relation of
Victorine's mother, who had died in her arms, and she had brought up the
orphan as her own daughter in a strictly pious fashion, taking her with
rigid regularity to mass and confession.
Eugène de Rastignac, the eldest son of a poor baron of Angoulême, was a
characteristic son of the South. His complexion was clear, hair black,
eyes blue. His figure, manner, and habitual poses proved that he was a
scion of a noble family, and that his early education had been based on
aristocratic traditions. The connecting link between these two
individuals and the other boarders was Vautrin--the man of forty, with
the dyed whiskers. He was one of that sort of men who are familiarly
described as "jolly good fellows." His face, furrowed with premature
wrinkles, showed signs of hardness which belied his insinuating address.
He was invariably obliging, with a breezy cheerfulness, though at times
there was a steely expression in the eyes which inspired his
fellow-boarders with a sense of fear. He knew or guessed the affairs of
everybody in the house, but no one could divine his real business or his
most inmost thoughts.
_II.--The Beginnings of the Tragedy_
Such a household ought to offer, and did present in miniature, the
elements of a complete society. Among the inmates there was, as in the
world at large, one poor discouraged creature--a butt on whom mocking
pleasantries were rained. This patient sufferer was the old vermicelli
maker, Goriot. Six years before, he had come to live at the Maison
Vauquer, having, so he said, retired from business. He dressed
handsomely, wore a gold watch, with thick gold chain and seals,
flourished a gold snuff-box, and, when Madame Vauquer insinuated that he
was a gallant, he smiled with the complacency of vanity tickled. Among
the china and silver articles with which he decorated his sitting-room
were a dish and porringer, on the cover of which were figures
representing two doves billing and cooing.
"That," said Goriot, "is the present which my wife made to me on the
first anniversary of our wedding-day. Poor dear, she bought it with the
little savings she hoarded before our marriage. Look you, madame, I
would rather scratch the ground with my nails for a living than part
with that porringer. God be praised, however, I shall be able to drink
my coffee out of this dish every morning during the rest of my days. I
cannot complain. I have on the shelf, as the saying is, plenty of baked
bread for a long time to come."
At the close of his first year Goriot began to practise little
economies; at the end of the second he removed his rooms to the second
floor, and did without a fire all the winter. This although, as Madame
Vauquer's prying eyes had seen, Goriot's name appeared in the list of
state funds for a sum representing an income of from eight to ten
thousand francs. Henceforth she denounced him to the other paying-guests
as an unprincipled old libertine, who lavished his enormous income from
the funds on unknown youthful charmers. The boarders agreed; and when
two young ladies in the most fashionable and costly attire visited him
in succession in a semi-stealthy manner, their suspicions, as they
believed, were confirmed. On one occasion, Sylvie followed Old Goriot
and his beautiful visitor to a side street, and saw that there was a
splendid carriage waiting and that she got into it. When challenged upon
the point, the old man meekly declared that they were his daughters,
though he never disclosed that their occasional visits were paid only to
wheedle money from him.
The years passed, and with the gentleness of a broken spirit, beaten
down to the docility of misery, Goriot curtailed his personal expenses,
and again removed his lodgings; this time to the third floor. His dress
turned shabbier; with each ascending grade his diamonds, gold snuff-box,
and jewels disappeared. He grew thinner in person; his face, which had
once the beaming roundness of a well-to-do middle-class gentleman,
became furrowed with wrinkles. Lines appeared in his forehead, his jaws
grew gaunt and sharp; and at the end of the fourth year he bore no
longer the likeness of his former self. He was now a wan, worn-out
septuagenarian--stupid, vacillating.
Eugène de Rastignac had ambitions, not only to win distinction as a
lawyer, but also to play a part in the aristocratic society of Paris. He
observed the influence which women exert upon society; and at his
suggestion his aunt, Madame de Marcillac, who lived with his father in
the old family château near Angoulême, and who had been at court in the
days before the French Revolution, wrote to one of her great relatives,
the Viscomtesse de Beauséant, one of the queens of Parisian society,
asking her to give kindly recognition to her nephew. On the strength of
that letter Eugène was invited to a ball at the mansion of the
viscomtesse in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The viscomtesse became
interested in him, especially as she was suffering from the desertion of
the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, a Portuguese nobleman who had been long her
lover, and stood sponsor for him in society. At the Faubourg, Eugène met
the Duchesse de Langeais, from whom he learned the history of Old
Goriot.
"During the Revolution," said the duchesse, "Goriot was a flour and
vermicelli merchant, and, being president of his section, was behind the
scenes. When a great scarcity of food was at hand he made his fortune by
selling his goods for ten times what they cost him. He had but one
passion; he loved his daughters, and by endowing each of them with a dot
of eight hundred thousand francs, he married the eldest, Anastasie, to
the Count de Restaud, and the youngest, Delphine, to the Baron de
Nucingen, a rich German financier. During the Empire, his daughters
sometimes asked their father to visit them; but after the Restoration
the old man became an annoyance to his sons-in-law. He saw that his
daughters were ashamed of him; he made the sacrifice which only a father
can, and banished himself from their homes. There is," continued the
duchesse, "something in these Goriot sisters even more shocking than
their neglect of their father, for whose death they wish. I mean their
rivalry to each other. Restaud is of ancient family; his wife has been
adopted by his relatives and presented at court. But the rich sister,
the beautiful Madame Delphine de Nucingen, is dying with envy, the
victim of jealousy. She is a hundred leagues lower in society than her
sister. They renounce each other as they both renounced their father.
Madame de Nucingen would lap up all the mud between the Rue Saint-Lazare
and the Rue de Crenelle to gain admission to my salon." What the
duchesse did not reveal was that Anastasie had a lover, Count Maxime de
Trailles, a gambler and a duellist. To pay the gambling losses of this
unscrupulous lover, to the extent of two hundred thousand francs, the
Countess de Restaud induced Old Goriot to sell out of the funds nearly
all that remained of his great fortune, and give the proceeds to her.
Returning to his lodgings from a ball in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,
Eugène saw a light in Goriot's room; and, without being noticed, watched
the old man laboriously twisting two pieces of silver plate--his
precious dish and porringer--into one lump.
"He must be mad," thought the student.
"The poor child!" groaned Goriot.
The next morning Goriot visited a silversmith, and the Countess de
Restaud received the money to redeem a note of hand which she had given
to a moneylender on behalf of her lover.
"Old Goriot is sublime," muttered Eugène when he heard of the
transaction.
Delphine de Nucingen also had an admirer, Count de Marsay, through whose
influence she expected to be introduced into the exclusive aristocratic
society to which even the great wealth of her husband and his German
patent of nobility could not secure an entry. Apart from her social
aspirations, Delphine was personally extravagant; and as the baron was
miserly and only gave her a very scanty allowance, she visited the
gambling dens of the Palais Royale to try and raise the money which she
could no longer coax from her old father.
_III.--A Temptation and a Murder_
To be young, to thirst after a position in the world of fashion, to
hunger for the smiles of beautiful women, to obtain an entry into the
salons of the Faubourg, meant to Rastignac large expenditure. He wrote
home asking for a loan of twelve hundred francs, which, he said, he must
have at all costs. The Viscomtesse de Beauséant had taken him under her
protection, and he was in a situation to make an immediate fortune. He
must go into society, but had not a penny even to buy gloves. The loan
would be returned tenfold.
The mother sold her jewels, the aunt her old laces, his sisters
sacrificed their economies, and the twelve hundred francs were sent to
Eugène. With this sum he launched into the gay life of a man of fashion,
dressed extravagantly, and gambled recklessly. One day Vautrin arrived
in high spirits, surprising Eugène conversing with Victorine. This was
Vautrin's opportunity, for which he had been preparing. When Victorine
retired, Vautrin pointed out how impossible it was to maintain a
position in society as a law student, and if Eugène wished to get on
quickly he must either be rich, or make believe to be so.
"In view of all the circumstances, therefore, I make a proposition to
you," said Vautrin to Eugène, "which I think no man in your position
should refuse. I wish to become a great planter in the Southern States
of America, and need two hundred thousand francs. If I get you a dot of
a million, will you give me two hundred thousand francs? Is twenty per
cent, commission on such a transaction too much? You will secure the
affection of a little wife. A few weeks after marriage you will seem
distracted. Some night, between kisses, you can own a debt of two
hundred thousand francs, and ask your darling to pay it. The farce is
acted every day by young men of good family, and no amorous young wife
will refuse the money to the man she adores. Moreover, you will not lose
the money; you will easily get it back by judicious speculation!"
"But where can I find such a girl?" said Eugène.
"She is here, close at hand."
"Mademoiselle Victorine?"
"Precisely!"
"But how can that be?"
"She loves you; already she thinks herself the little Baroness de
Rastignac."
"She has not a penny!" cried Eugène in amazement.
"Ah, now we are coming to the point," said Vautrin.
Thereupon, Vautrin insinuated that if papa Taillefer lost his son
through the interposition of a wise Providence, he would take back his
pretty and amiable daughter, who would inherit his millions. To this end
he, Vautrin, frankly volunteered to play the part of destiny. He had a
friend, a colonel in the army of the Loire, who would pick a quarrel
with Frederic, the young blackguard son who had never sent a five-franc
piece to his poor sister, and then "to the shades"--making a pass as if
with a sword.
"Silence, monsieur! I will hear no more."
"As you please, my beautiful boy! I thought you were stronger."
A few days after this scene, Mademoiselle Michonneau and Poiret were
sitting on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes, when they were accosted by
the chief of the detective force. He told them that the minister of
police believed that a man calling himself Vautrin, who lived with them
in the Maison Vauquer, was an escaped convict from Toulon galleys,
Jacques Collin, but known by the nickname of Trompe-la-Mort, and one of
the most dangerous criminals in all France. In order to obtain certainty
as to the identity of Vautrin with Collin he offered a bribe of three
thousand francs if mademoiselle would administer a potion in his coffee
or wine, which would affect him as if he were stricken with apoplexy.
During his insensibility they could easily discover whether Vautrin had
the convict's brand on his shoulder. The pair accepted the bribe, and
the plot succeeded. Vautrin was identified as Collin and arrested, just
as a messenger came to announce that Frederic Taillefer had been killed
in a duel, and Victorine was carried off with Madame Couture to her
father's home, the sole heir to his millions. When he was being pinioned
to be conveyed back to the galleys, Collin looked upon his late fellow
boarders with fierce scorn. "Are you any better than we convicts are?"
said he. "We have less infamy branded on our shoulders than you have in
your hearts--you flabby members of a gangrened society. There is some
virtue here," exclaimed he, striking his breast. "I have never betrayed
anyone. As for you, you old female Judas," turning to Mademoiselle
Michonneau, "look at these people. They regard me with terror, but their
hearts turn with disgust even to glance at you. Pick up your ill-gotten
gains and begone." As Jacques Collin disappeared from the Maison
Vauquer, and from our story, Sylvie, the fat cook, exclaimed: "Well, he
was a man all the same!"
Although the way was now clear for Rastignac to marry the enormously
wealthy Victorine, he paid court instead to Delphine, the Baroness de
Nucingen, and dined with her every night. Old Goriot was informed of the
intrigue by the baroness's maid. He did not resent but rather encouraged
the liaison, and spent his last ten thousand francs in furnishing a
suite of apartments for the young couple, on condition that he was to be
allowed to occupy an adjoining room, and see his daughter every day.
_IV.--Old Goriot's Death-Bed_
The Viscomtesse de Beauséant was broken-hearted when the marriage of her
lover was accomplished, but to maintain a brave spirit in the face of
society she gave a farewell ball before retiring to her country estate.
Among those invited was the Countess de Restaud, who ordered a rich
costume for the occasion, which, however, she was unable to pay for. Her
husband, the count, insisted on her appearing at the ball and wearing
the family diamonds, which she had pawned to discharge her lover's
gambling debts, and which had been redeemed to save the family honour.
Anastasie sent her maid to Old Goriot, who rose from a sick-bed, sold
his last forks and spoons for six hundred francs, pledged his annuity
for four hundred francs, and so raised a thousand, which enabled
Anastasie to obtain the gown and shine at the ball. Through Rastignac's
influence, Delphine, Baroness de Nucingen, received from the viscomtesse
a ticket for the dance, and insisted on going, as Rastignac declared
"even over the dead body of her father," to challenge her sister's
social precedence at the supreme society function. The ball was the most
brilliant of the Parisian season. Both Goriot's daughters satisfied
their selfish ambitions and gave never a thought to their old parent in
the wretched Maison Vauquer.
For Old Goriot was sick unto death. His garret was bare; the walls
dripped with moisture; the floor was damp; the bed was comfortless, and
the few faggots which made the handful of fire had been bought only by
the money got from pawning Eugène's watch. Christophe, the man servant,
was sent by Rastignac to tell the daughters of their father's condition.
"Tell them that I am not very well," said Old Goriot; "that I should
like to see them, to kiss them before I die."
By and by, when the messenger had gone, the old man said: "I don't want
to die. To die, my good Eugène, is--not to see them there, where I am
going. How lonely I shall be! Hell, to a father, is to be without his
children. Tell me, if I go to heaven, can I come back in spirit and
hover near them? You saw them at the ball; they did not know that I was
ill, did they?"
On the return of the messenger, Old Goriot was told that both his
daughters refused to come and see him. Delphine was too tired and
sleepy; Anastasie was discussing with her husband the future disposition
of her marriage portion. Then alternately Goriot blamed his daughters
and pardoned their unfilial and selfish behaviour.
"My daughters were my vice--my mistresses. Oh, they will come! Come, my
darlings! A kiss, a last kiss, the viaticum of your father! I am justly
punished; my children were good, and I have spoiled them; on my head be
their sins. I alone am guilty; but guilty through love." Eugène tried to
soothe the old man by saying that he would go himself to fetch his
daughters; but Goriot kept muttering in his semi-delirium. "Here, Nasie!
here Delphine, come to your father who has been so good to you, and who
is dying! Are they coming? No? Am I to die like a dog? This is my
reward; forsaken, abandoned! They are wicked; they are criminal. I hate
them. I will rise from my coffin to curse them. Oh, this is horrible!
Ah, it is my sons-in-law who keep them away from me!"
"My good Old Goriot," said Eugène, "be calm."
"Not to see them--it is the agony of death!"
"You shall see them."
"Ah! my angels!"
And with these feeble words, Old Goriot sank back on the pillow and
breathed his last.
Anastasie did come to the death-chamber, but too late. "I could not
escape soon enough," she said to Rastignac. The student smiled sadly,
and Madame de Restaud took her father's hand and kissed it, saying,
"Forgive me, my father."
Goriot had a pauper's funeral. The aristocratic sons-in-law refused to
pay the expenses of the burial. These were scraped together with
difficulty by Eugène de Rastignac, the law student, and Bianchon, the
medical student, who had nursed him with loving tenderness to the last.
At the graveside in Père Lachaise, Eugène and Christophe were the only
mourners; Bianchon's duties detained him at the hospital. When the body
of Old Goriot was lowered into the earth, the clergy recited a short
prayer--all that could be given for the student's money. The pall of
night was falling; the mist struck a chill on Eugène's nerves, and when
he took a last glance at the shell containing all that was mortal of his
old friend, he buried the last tear of his young manhood--a tear drawn
by a sacred emotion from a pure heart.
Eugène wandered to the most elevated part of the cemetery, whence he
surveyed that portion of the city between the Place Vendome and the dome
of the Invalides, where lives that world of fashion which he had
hungered to penetrate. With bitterness he muttered: "Now there is
relentless war between us." And as the first act of defiance which he
had sworn against society, Rastignac went to dine with Madame Nucingen!
* * * * *