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"Well, I can tell you this, I know," said Mme. Vauquer, "I have taken lodgers these thirty years, and a good many have passed through my hands, as the saying is, but I have never seen a nicer nor a more aristocratic looking young man than M. Eugene. How handsome he looks sleeping! Just let his head rest on your shoulder, Mme. Couture. Pshaw! he falls over towards Mlle. Victorine.
"Fight!" echoed Poiret. "Not they," replied Mme. Vauquer, lovingly fingering her pile of coins. "But there they are under the lime-trees," cried Mlle. Victorine, who had risen so that she might see out into the garden. "Poor young man! he was in the right, after all." "We must go upstairs, my pet," said Mme. Couture; "it is no business of ours." At the door, however, Mme.
Vauquer at the age of fifty is like all women who "have seen a deal of trouble."
Vauquer had made various improvements in the three rooms destined for his use, in consideration of a certain sum paid in advance, so it was said, for the miserable furniture, that is to say, for some yellow cotton curtains, a few chairs of stained wood covered with Utrecht velvet, several wretched colored prints in frames, and wall papers that a little suburban tavern would have disdained.
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.
"Clk! clk! clk!" cried Bianchon, making the sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, like a driver urging on a horse. "He holds himself like a duke and a peer of France," said Mme. Vauquer. "Are you going a-courting?" inquired Mlle. Michonneau. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" cried the artist. "My compliments to my lady your wife," from the employe at the Museum.
Vauquer saw to her table, lighted a fire daily in the sitting-room for nearly six months, and kept the promise of her prospectus, even going to some expense to do so. And the Countess, on her side, addressed Mme.
"Come, Eugene, pluck up heart, my boy," said Bianchon, as soon as they were alone; "we must set about changing his sheets, and put him into a clean shirt. Go and tell Sylvie to bring some sheets and come and help us to make the bed." Eugene went downstairs, and found Mme. Vauquer engaged in setting the table; Sylvie was helping her.
A mantle of ivy conceals the bricks and attracts the eyes of passers-by to an effect which is picturesque in Paris, for each of the walls is covered with trellised vines that yield a scanty dusty crop of fruit, and furnish besides a subject of conversation for Mme. Vauquer and her lodgers; every year the widow trembles for her vintage.
Vauquer in a low voice. "And of a baroness," answered Rastignac. "That is about all he is capable of," said Bianchon to Rastignac; "I have taken a look at his head; there is only one bump the bump of Paternity; he must be an eternal father." Eugene was too intent on his thoughts to laugh at Bianchon's joke.
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