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Updated: May 24, 2025
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.
He unsealed one of the bags as he spoke, counted out a hundred and forty francs, and pushed them towards Mme. Vauquer. "Short reckonings make good friends" he added, turning to the widow; "that clears our accounts till the end of the year. Can you give me change for a five-franc piece?" "Good friends make short reckonings," echoed Poiret, with a glance at Vautrin.
"This individual is undoubtedly the man named Jacques Collin, known as Trompe-la-Mort, who was last arrested in 1819, in the dwelling-house of a certain Madame Vauquer, who kept a common boarding-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, where he lived in concealment under the alias of Vautrin."
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.
"In 1818 and 1819," said the judge, "you lived, madame, in a boarding-house kept by a Madame Vauquer?" "Yes, monsieur; it was there that I met Monsieur Poiret, a retired official, who became my husband, and whom I have nursed in his bed this twelvemonth past. Poor man! he is very bad; and I cannot be long away from him." "There was a certain Vautrin in the house at the time?" asked Camusot.
There's a special providence for young things. A little more, and he would have broken his head against the knob of the chair. They'd make a pretty pair those two would!" "Hush, my good neighbor," cried Mme. Couture, "you are saying such things " "Pooh!" put in Mme. Vauquer, "he does not hear. Here, Sylvie! come and help me to dress. I shall put on my best stays."
Vauquer said half banteringly to him, "So those daughters of yours don't come to see you any more, eh?" meaning to imply her doubts as to his paternity; but Father Goriot shrank as if his hostess had touched him with a sword-point. "They come sometimes," he said in a tremulous voice. "Aha! you still see them sometimes?" cried the students. "Bravo, Father Goriot!"
"The boarders who then lived in the Maison Vauquer are still living, and may be called to establish his identity. "The self-styled Carlos Herrera is Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre's intimate friend and adviser, and for three years past has furnished him with considerable sums, evidently obtained by dishonest means.
"And do you suppose," cried that cold-blooded logician, "that a young man of fashion can live here in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the Maison Vauquer an exceedingly respectable boarding-house in every way, I grant you, but an establishment that, none the less, falls short of being fashionable?
Vauquer took boarders who came for their meals; but these externes usually only came to dinner, for which they paid thirty francs a month. At the time when this story begins, the lodging-house contained seven inmates. The best rooms in the house were on the first story, Mme. Vauquer herself occupying the least important, while the rest were let to a Mme.
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