Chapter Chapter 3 · 第3章

Mlle. Michonneau, that elderly young lady, screened her weak eyes from

the daylight by a soiled green silk shade with a rim of brass, an object

fit to scare away the Angel of Pity himself. Her shawl, with its scanty,

draggled fringe, might have covered a skeleton, so meagre and angular

was the form beneath it. Yet she must have been pretty and shapely once.

What corrosive had destroyed the feminine outlines? Was it trouble,

or vice, or greed? Had she loved too well? Had she been a second-hand

clothes dealer, a frequenter of the backstairs of great houses, or had

she been merely a courtesan? Was she expiating the flaunting triumphs

of a youth overcrowded with pleasures by an old age in which she was

shunned by every passer-by? Her vacant gaze sent a chill through you;

her shriveled face seemed like a menace. Her voice was like the shrill,

thin note of the grasshopper sounding from the thicket when winter is at

hand. She said that she had nursed an old gentleman, ill of catarrh of

the bladder, and left to die by his children, who thought that he had

nothing left. His bequest to her, a life annuity of a thousand francs,

was periodically disputed by his heirs, who mingled slander with their

persecutions. In spite of the ravages of conflicting passions, her face

retained some traces of its former fairness and fineness of tissue, some

vestiges of the physical charms of her youth still survived.

M. Poiret was a sort of automaton. He might be seen any day sailing like

a gray shadow along the walks of the Jardin des Plantes, on his head a

shabby cap, a cane with an old yellow ivory handle in the tips of his

thin fingers; the outspread skirts of his threadbare overcoat failed

to conceal his meagre figure; his breeches hung loosely on his shrunken

limbs; the thin, blue-stockinged legs trembled like those of a drunken

man; there was a notable breach of continuity between the dingy white

waistcoat and crumpled shirt frills and the cravat twisted about a

throat like a turkey gobbler’s; altogether, his appearance set people

wondering whether this outlandish ghost belonged to the audacious race

of the sons of Japhet who flutter about on the Boulevard Italien. What

devouring kind of toil could have so shriveled him? What devouring

passions had darkened that bulbous countenance, which would have seemed

outrageous as a caricature? What had he been? Well, perhaps he had been

part of the machinery of justice, a clerk in the office to which the

executioner sends in his accounts,--so much for providing black veils

for parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for

the knife. Or he might have been a receiver at the door of a public

slaughter-house, or a sub-inspector of nuisances. Indeed, the man

appeared to have been one of the beasts of burden in our great social

mill; one of those Parisian Ratons whom their Bertrands do not even know

by sight; a pivot in the obscure machinery that disposes of misery and

things unclean; one of those men, in short, at sight of whom we are

prompted to remark that, “After all, we cannot do without them.”

Stately Paris ignores the existence of these faces bleached by moral or

physical suffering; but, then, Paris is in truth an ocean that no line

can plumb. You may survey its surface and describe it; but no matter how

numerous and painstaking the toilers in this sea, there will always be

lonely and unexplored regions in its depths, caverns unknown, flowers

and pearls and monsters of the deep overlooked or forgotten by the

divers of literature. The Maison Vauquer is one of these curious

monstrosities.

Two, however, of 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. Victorine Taillefer’s face; and her unvarying expression

of sadness, like her embarrassed manner and pinched look, was in

keeping with the general wretchedness of the establishment in the Rue

Nueve-Saint-Genevieve, which forms a background to this picture; but her

face was young, there was youthfulness in her voice and elasticity

in her movements. This young misfortune was not unlike a shrub, newly

planted in an uncongenial soil, where its leaves have already begun

to wither. The outlines of her figure, revealed by her dress of the

simplest and cheapest materials, were also youthful. There was the same

kind of charm about her too slender form, her faintly colored face and

light-brown hair, that modern poets find in mediaeval statuettes; and a

sweet expression, a look of Christian resignation in the dark gray eyes.

She was pretty by force of contrast; if she had been happy, she would

have been charming. Happiness is the poetry of woman, as the toilette

is her tinsel. If the delightful excitement of a ball had made the pale

face glow with color; if the delights of a luxurious life had brought

the color to the wan cheeks that were slightly hollowed already; if love

had put light into the sad eyes, then Victorine might have ranked among

the fairest; but she lacked the two things which create woman a second

time--pretty dresses and love-letters.

A book might have been made of her story. Her father was persuaded that

he had sufficient reason for declining to acknowledge her, and allowed

her a bare six hundred francs a year; he had further taken measures

to disinherit his daughter, and had converted all his real estate into

personalty, that he might leave it undivided to his son. Victorine’s

mother had died broken-hearted in Mme. Couture’s house; and the

latter, who was a near relation, had taken charge of the little orphan.

Unluckily, the widow of the commissary-general to the armies of the

Republic had nothing in the world but her jointure and her widow’s

pension, and some day she might be obliged to leave the helpless,

inexperienced girl to the mercy of the world. The good soul, therefore,

took Victorine to mass every Sunday, and to confession once a fortnight,

thinking that, in any case, she would bring up her ward to be devout.

She was right; religion offered a solution of the problem of the

young girl’s future. The poor child loved the father who refused to

acknowledge her. Once every year she tried to see him to deliver her

mother’s message of forgiveness, but every year hitherto she had knocked

at that door in vain; her father was inexorable. Her brother, her only

means of communication, had not come to see her for four years, and had

sent her no assistance; yet she prayed to God to unseal her father’s

eyes and to soften her brother’s heart, and no accusations mingled with

her prayers. Mme. Couture and Mme. Vauquer exhausted the vocabulary

of abuse, and failed to find words that did justice to the banker’s

iniquitous conduct; but while they heaped execrations on the

millionaire, Victorine’s words were as gentle as the moan of the wounded

dove, and affection found expression even in the cry drawn from her by

pain.

Eugene de Rastignac was a thoroughly southern type; he had a fair

complexion, blue eyes, black hair. In his figure, manner, and his whole

bearing it was easy to see that he had either come of a noble family,

or that, from his earliest childhood, he had been gently bred. If he

was careful of his wardrobe, only taking last year’s clothes into

daily wear, still upon occasion he could issue forth as a young man of

fashion. Ordinarily he wore a shabby coat and waistcoat, the limp black

cravat, untidily knotted, that students affect, trousers that matched

the rest of his costume, and boots that had been resoled.

Vautrin (the man of forty with the dyed whiskers) marked a transition

stage between these two young people and the others. He was the kind of

man that calls forth the remark: “He looks a jovial sort!” He had

broad shoulders, a well-developed chest, muscular arms, and strong

square-fisted hands; the joints of his fingers were covered with tufts

of fiery red hair. His face was furrowed by premature wrinkles; there

was a certain hardness about it in spite of his bland and insinuating

manner. His bass voice was by no means unpleasant, and was in keeping

with his boisterous laughter. He was always obliging, always in good

spirits; if anything went wrong with one of the locks, he would soon

unscrew it, take it to pieces, file it, oil and clean and set it in

order, and put it back in its place again; “I am an old hand at it,”

he used to say. Not only so, he knew all about ships, the sea, France,

foreign countries, men, business, law, great houses and prisons,--there

was nothing that he did not know. If any one complained rather more than

usual, he would offer his services at once. He had several times lent

money to Mme. Vauquer, or to the boarders; but, somehow, those whom he

obliged felt that they would sooner face death than fail to repay him; a

certain resolute look, sometimes seen on his face, inspired fear of him,

for all his appearance of easy good-nature. In the way he spat there was

an imperturbable coolness which seemed to indicate that this was a

man who would not stick at a crime to extricate himself from a false

position. His eyes, like those of a pitiless judge, seemed to go to

the very bottom of all questions, to read all natures, all feelings and

thoughts. His habit of life was very regular; he usually went out after

breakfast, returning in time for dinner, and disappeared for the rest

of the evening, letting himself in about midnight with a latch key, a

privilege that Mme. Vauquer accorded to no other boarder. But then he

was on very good terms with the widow; he used to call her “mamma,” and

put his arm round her waist, a piece of flattery perhaps not appreciated

to the full! The worthy woman might imagine this to be an easy feat;

but, as a matter of fact, no arm but Vautrin’s was long enough to

encircle her.

It was a characteristic trait of his generously to pay fifteen francs a

month for the cup of coffee with a dash of brandy in it, which he took

after dinner. Less superficial observers than young men engulfed by the

whirlpool of Parisian life, or old men, who took no interest in anything

that did not directly concern them, would not have stopped short at the

vaguely unsatisfactory impression that Vautrin made upon them. He knew

or guessed the concerns of every one about him; but none of them had

been able to penetrate his thoughts, or to discover his occupation. He

had deliberately made his apparent good-nature, his unfailing readiness

to oblige, and his high spirits into a barrier between himself and the

rest of them, but not seldom he gave glimpses of appalling depths

of character. He seemed to delight in scourging the upper classes of

society with the lash of his tongue, to take pleasure in convicting it

of inconsistency, in mocking at law and order with some grim jest worthy

of Juvenal, as if some grudge against the social system rankled in him,

as if there were some mystery carefully hidden away in his life.