Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (books to read for beginners txt) 📕

“And when will the rooms be ready?” asked Eugène, looking round. “We must all leave them this evening, I suppose.”

“Yes, but tomorrow you must come and dine with me,” she answered, with an eloquent glance. “It is our night at the Italiens.”

“I shall go to the pit,” said her father.

It was midnight. Mme. de Nucingen’s carriage was waiting for her, and Father Goriot and the student walked back to the Maison Vauquer, talking of Delphine, and warming over their talk till there grew up a curious rivalry between the two violent passions. Eugène could not help seeing that the father’s selfless love was deeper and more steadfast than his own. For this worshiper Delphine was always pure and fair, and her father’s adoration drew its fervor from a whole past as well as a future of love.

They found Mme. Vauquer by the stove, with Sylvie and Christophe to keep her company; the old landlady, sitting like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, was waiting for the two lodgers that yet remained to her, and bemoaning her lot with the sympathetic Sylvie. Tasso’s lamentations as recorded in Byron’s poem are undoubtedly eloquent, but for sheer force of truth they fall far short of the widow’s cry from the depths.

“Only three cups of coffee in the morning, Sylvie! Oh dear! to have your house emptied in this way is enough to break your heart. What is life, now my lodgers are gone? Nothing at all. Just think of it! It is just as if all the furniture had been taken out of the house, and your furniture is your life. How have I offended heaven to draw down all this trouble upon me? And haricot beans and potatoes laid in for twenty people! The police in my house too! We shall have to live on potatoes now, and Christophe will have to go!”

The Savoyard, who was fast asleep, suddenly woke up at this, and said, “Madame,” questioningly.

“Poor fellow!” said Sylvie, “he is like a dog.”

“In the dead season, too! Nobody is moving now. I would like to know where the lodgers are to drop down from. It drives me distracted. And that old witch of a Michonneau goes and takes Poiret with her! What can she have done to make him so fond of her? He runs about after her like a little dog.”

“Lord!” said Sylvie, flinging up her head, “those old maids are up to all sorts of tricks.”

“There’s that poor M. Vautrin that they made out to be a convict,” the widow went on. “Well, you know that is too much for me, Sylvie; I can’t bring myself to believe it. Such a lively man as he was, and paid fifteen francs a month for his coffee of an evening, paid you very penny on the nail too.”

“And openhanded he was!” said Christophe.

“There is some mistake,” said Sylvie.

“Why, no there isn’t! he said so himself!” said Mme. Vauquer. “And to think that all these things have happened in my house, and in a quarter where you never see a cat go by. On my word as an honest woman, it’s like a dream. For, look here, we saw Louis XVI meet with his mishap; we saw the fall of the Emperor; and we saw him come back and fall again; there was nothing out of the way in all that, but lodging-houses are not liable to revolutions. You can do without a king, but you must eat all the same; and so long as a decent woman, a de Conflans born and bred, will give you all sorts of good things for dinner, nothing short of the end of the world ought to⁠—but there, it is the end of the world, that is just what it is!”

“And to think that Mlle. Michonneau who made all this mischief is to have a thousand crowns a year for it, so I hear,” cried Sylvie.

“Don’t speak of her, she is a wicked woman!” said Mme. Vauquer. “She is going to the Buneaud, who charges less than cost. But the Buneaud is capable of anything; she must have done frightful things, robbed and murdered people in her time. She ought to be put in jail for life instead of that poor dear⁠—”

Eugène and Goriot rang the doorbell at that moment.

“Ah! here are my two faithful lodgers,” said the widow, sighing.

But the two faithful lodgers, who retained but shadowy recollections of the misfortunes of their lodging-house, announced to their hostess without more ado that they were about to remove to the Chaussée-d’Antin.

“Sylvie!” cried the widow, “this is the last straw.⁠—Gentlemen, this will be the death of me! It has quite upset me! There’s a weight on my chest! I am ten years older for this day! Upon my word, I shall go out of my senses! And what is to be done with the haricots!⁠—Oh, well, if I am to be left here all by myself, you shall go tomorrow, Christophe.⁠—Good night, gentlemen,” and she went.

“What is the matter now?” Eugène inquired of Sylvie.

“Lord! everybody is going about his business, and that has addled her wits. There! she is crying upstairs. It will do her good to snivel a bit. It’s the first time she has cried since I’ve been with her.”

By the morning, Mme. Vauquer, to use her own expression, had “made up her mind to it.” True, she still wore a doleful countenance, as might be expected of a woman who had lost all her lodgers, and whose manner of life had been suddenly revolutionized, but she had all her wits about her. Her grief was genuine and profound; it was real pain of mind, for her purse had suffered, the routine of her existence had been broken. A lover’s farewell glance at his ladylove’s window is not more mournful than Mme. Vauquer’s survey of the empty places round her table. Eugène administered comfort, telling the widow that Bianchon, whose term of residence at the hospital was about to expire, would doubtless take his (Rastignac’s) place; that