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Updated: May 14, 2025
The poorest sample of humanity, the street arab, will pull the bell handle at every street door in bitter weather, and scramble up to write his name on the unsullied marble of a monument. In the year 1813, at the age of sixty-nine or thereabouts, "Father Goriot" had sold his business and retired to Mme. Vauquer's boarding house. When he first came there he had taken the rooms now occupied by Mme.
Thus, as the very moment of Lucien's expected success, the smallest pebble under the foot of either of these three persons might involve the ruin of the fantastic structure of fortune so audaciously built up. At the opera ball Rastignac had recognized the man he had known as Vautrin at Madame Vauquer's; but he knew that if he did not hold his tongue, he was a dead man.
The wretched bed on which the old man lay boasted but one thin blanket, and a wadded quilt made out of large pieces of Mme. Vauquer's old dresses. The floor was damp and gritty. Opposite the window stood a chest of drawers made of rosewood, one of the old-fashioned kind with a curving front and brass handles, shaped like rings of twisted vine stems covered with flowers and leaves.
According to her, the man so well preserved at his time of life, as sound as her eyesight, with whom a woman might be very happy, was a libertine who had strange tastes. These are the facts upon which Mme. Vauquer's slanders were based. Early one morning, some few months after the departure of the unlucky Countess who had managed to live for six months at the widow's expense, Mme.
Vauquer's boarders formed a striking contrast to the rest. There was a sickly pallor, such as is often seen in anaemic girls, in Mlle.
By the time they reached Pere-Lachaise there were not more than a dozen followers, among whom was Rastignac. "That is right; it is well that you are faithful to him," said Jacques Collin to his old acquaintance. Rastignac started with surprise at seeing Vautrin. "Be calm," said his old fellow-boarder at Madame Vauquer's. "I am your slave, if only because I find you here.
Vauquer's aversion was naturally more energetic than her friendship, for her hatred was not in proportion to her love, but to her disappointed expectations. The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.
The good-natured Countess turned to the subject of Mme. Vauquer's dress, which was not in harmony with her projects. "You must put yourself on a war footing," said she.
At La Force this farce had been all the more successful in the first instance because the head of the "safety" force an abbreviation of the title "Head of the brigade of the guardians of public safety" Bibi-Lupin, who had long since taken Jacques Collin into custody at Madame Vauquer's boarding-house, had been sent on special business into the country, and his deputy was a man who hoped to succeed him, but to whom the convict was unknown.
As for the creatures whom he called his daughters, all Mme. Vauquer's boarders were of her opinion.
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