الفصل الفصل 2 · 第2章

The paneled walls of that apartment were once painted some color, now

a matter of conjecture, for the surface is incrusted with accumulated

layers of grimy deposit, which cover it with fantastic outlines. A

collection of dim-ribbed glass decanters, metal discs with a satin sheen

on them, and piles of blue-edged earthenware plates of Touraine ware

cover the sticky surfaces of the sideboards that line the room. In a

corner stands a box containing a set of numbered pigeon-holes, in which

the lodgers’ table napkins, more or less soiled and stained with wine,

are kept. Here you see that indestructible furniture never met with

elsewhere, which finds its way into lodging-houses much as the wrecks of

our civilization drift into hospitals for incurables. You expect in such

places as these to find the weather-house whence a Capuchin issues on

wet days; you look to find the execrable engravings which spoil your

appetite, framed every one in a black varnished frame, with a gilt

beading round it; you know the sort of tortoise-shell clock-case, inlaid

with brass; the green stove, the Argand lamps, covered with oil and

dust, have met your eyes before. The oilcloth which covers the long

table is so greasy that a waggish _externe_ will write his name on the

surface, using his thumb-nail as a style. The chairs are broken-down

invalids; the wretched little hempen mats slip away from under your

feet without slipping away for good; and finally, the foot-warmers are

miserable wrecks, hingeless, charred, broken away about the holes. It

would be impossible to give an idea of the old, rotten, shaky, cranky,

worm-eaten, halt, maimed, one-eyed, rickety, and ramshackle condition of

the furniture without an exhaustive description, which would delay

the progress of the story to an extent that impatient people would not

pardon. The red tiles of the floor are full of depressions brought about

by scouring and periodical renewings of color. In short, there is

no illusory grace left to the poverty that reigns here; it is dire,

parsimonious, concentrated, threadbare poverty; as yet it has not sunk

into the mire, it is only splashed by it, and though not in rags as yet,

its clothing is ready to drop to pieces.

This apartment is in all its glory at seven o’clock in the morning,

when Mme. Vauquer’s cat appears, announcing the near approach of his

mistress, and jumps upon the sideboards to sniff at the milk in the

bowls, each protected by a plate, while he purrs his morning greeting to

the world. A moment later the widow shows her face; she is tricked out

in a net cap attached to a false front set on awry, and shuffles into

the room in her slipshod fashion. She is an oldish woman, with a bloated

countenance, and a nose like a parrot’s beak set in the middle of

it; her fat little hands (she is as sleek as a church rat) and her

shapeless, slouching figure are in keeping with the room that reeks of

misfortune, where hope is reduced to speculate for the meanest

stakes. Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air without being

disheartened by it. Her face is as fresh as a frosty morning in autumn;

there are wrinkles about the eyes that vary in their expression from

the set smile of a ballet-dancer to the dark, suspicious scowl of

a discounter of bills; in short, she is at once the embodiment and

interpretation of her lodging-house, as surely as her lodging-house

implies the existence of its mistress. You can no more imagine the one

without the other, than you can think of a jail without a turnkey. The

unwholesome corpulence of the little woman is produced by the life she

leads, just as typhus fever is bred in the tainted air of a hospital.

The very knitted woolen petticoat that she wears beneath a skirt made

of an old gown, with the wadding protruding through the rents in the

material, is a sort of epitome of the sitting-room, the dining-room,

and the little garden; it discovers the cook, it foreshadows the

lodgers--the picture of the house is completed by the portrait of its

mistress.

Mme. Vauquer at the age of fifty is like all women who “have seen a deal

of trouble.” She has the glassy eyes and innocent air of a trafficker

in flesh and blood, who will wax virtuously indignant to obtain a higher

price for her services, but who is quite ready to betray a Georges or

a Pichegru, if a Georges or a Pichegru were in hiding and still to be

betrayed, or for any other expedient that may alleviate her lot. Still,

“she is a good woman at bottom,” said the lodgers who believed that

the widow was wholly dependent upon the money that they paid her, and

sympathized when they heard her cough and groan like one of themselves.

What had M. Vauquer been? The lady was never very explicit on this head.

How had she lost her money? “Through trouble,” was her answer. He had

treated her badly, had left her nothing but her eyes to cry over his

cruelty, the house she lived in, and the privilege of pitying nobody,

because, so she was wont to say, she herself had been through every

possible misfortune.

Sylvie, the stout cook, hearing her mistress’ shuffling footsteps,

hastened to serve the lodgers’ breakfasts. Beside those who lived in the

house, Mme. 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. Couture, the widow of a commissary-general in the service of

the Republic. With her lived Victorine Taillefer, a schoolgirl, to whom

she filled the place of mother. These two ladies paid eighteen hundred

francs a year.

The two sets of rooms on the second floor were respectively occupied by

an old man named Poiret and a man of forty or thereabouts, the wearer

of a black wig and dyed whiskers, who gave out that he was a retired

merchant, and was addressed as M. Vautrin. Two of the four rooms on

the third floor were also let--one to an elderly spinster, a Mlle.

Michonneau, and the other to a retired manufacturer of vermicelli,

Italian paste and starch, who allowed the others to address him as

“Father Goriot.” The remaining rooms were allotted to various birds of

passage, to impecunious students, who like “Father Goriot” and Mlle.

Michonneau, could only muster forty-five francs a month to pay for their

board and lodging. Mme. 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.

Misfortune had accustomed Eugene de Rastignac, for that was his name, to

work. He belonged to the number of young men who know as children that

their parents’ hopes are centered on them, and deliberately prepare

themselves for a great career, subordinating their studies from the

first to this end, carefully watching the indications of the course of

events, calculating the probable turn that affairs will take, that they

may be the first to profit by them. But for his observant curiosity, and

the skill with which he managed to introduce himself into the salons

of Paris, this story would not have been colored by the tones of

truth which it certainly owes to him, for they are entirely due to his

penetrating sagacity and desire to fathom the mysteries of an appalling

condition of things, which was concealed as carefully by the victim as

by those who had brought it to pass.

Above the third story there was a garret where the linen was hung to

dry, and a couple of attics. Christophe, the man-of-all-work, slept in

one, and Sylvie, the stout cook, in the other. Beside the seven inmates

thus enumerated, taking one year with another, some eight law or medical

students dined in the house, as well as two or three regular comers who

lived in the neighborhood. There were usually eighteen people at dinner,

and there was room, if need be, for twenty at Mme. Vauquer’s table; at

breakfast, however, only the seven lodgers appeared. It was almost like

a family party. Every one came down in dressing-gown and slippers,

and the conversation usually turned on anything that had happened

the evening before; comments on the dress or appearance of the dinner

contingent were exchanged in friendly confidence.

These seven lodgers were Mme. Vauquer’s spoiled children. Among them

she distributed, with astronomical precision, the exact proportion of

respect and attention due to the varying amounts they paid for their

board. One single consideration influenced all these human beings thrown

together by chance. The two second-floor lodgers only paid seventy-two

francs a month. Such prices as these are confined to the Faubourg

Saint-Marcel and the district between La Bourbe and the Salpetriere;

and, as might be expected, poverty, more or less apparent, weighed upon

them all, Mme. Couture being the sole exception to the rule.

The dreary surroundings were reflected in the costumes of the inmates of

the house; all were alike threadbare. The color of the men’s coats were

problematical; such shoes, in more fashionable quarters, are only to be

seen lying in the gutter; the cuffs and collars were worn and frayed at

the edges; every limp article of clothing looked like the ghost of its

former self. The women’s dresses were faded, old-fashioned, dyed and

re-dyed; they wore gloves that were glazed with hard wear, much-mended

lace, dingy ruffles, crumpled muslin fichus. So much for their

clothing; but, for the most part, their frames were solid enough; their

constitutions had weathered the storms of life; their cold, hard faces

were worn like coins that have been withdrawn from circulation, but

there were greedy teeth behind the withered lips. Dramas brought to a

close or still in progress are foreshadowed by the sight of such actors

as these, not the dramas that are played before the footlights and

against a background of painted canvas, but dumb dramas of life,

frost-bound dramas that sere hearts like fire, dramas that do not end

with the actors’ lives.