Kabanata Kabanata 10 · 第10章

“You have made me wild to know the truth,” cried Eugene; “I will go to

call on Mme. de Restaud to-morrow.”

“Yes,” echoed Poiret; “you must go and call on Mme. de Restaud.”

“And perhaps you will find Father Goriot there, who will take payment

for the assistance he politely rendered.”

Eugene looked disgusted. “Why, then, this Paris of yours is a slough.”

“And an uncommonly queer slough, too,” replied Vautrin. “The mud

splashes you as you drive through it in your carriage--you are a

respectable person; you go afoot and are splashed--you are a scoundrel.

You are so unlucky as to walk off with something or other belonging

to somebody else, and they exhibit you as a curiosity in the Place du

Palais-de-Justice; you steal a million, and you are pointed out in every

salon as a model of virtue. And you pay thirty millions for the police

and the courts of justice, for the maintenance of law and order! A

pretty slate of things it is!”

“What,” cried Mme. Vauquer, “has Father Goriot really melted down his

silver posset-dish?”

“There were two turtle-doves on the lid, were there not?” asked Eugene.

“Yes, that there were.”

“Then, was he fond of it?” said Eugene. “He cried while he was breaking

up the cup and plate. I happened to see him by accident.”

“It was dear to him as his own life,” answered the widow.

“There! you see how infatuated the old fellow is!” cried Vautrin. “The

woman yonder can coax the soul out of him.”

The student went up to his room. Vautrin went out, and a few moments

later Mme. Couture and Victorine drove away in a cab which Sylvie had

called for them. Poiret gave his arm to Mlle. Michonneau, and they went

together to spend the two sunniest hours of the day in the Jardin des

Plantes.

“Well, those two are as good as married,” was the portly Sylvie’s

comment. “They are going out together to-day for the first time. 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. 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. Vauquer, “just

imagine it; he did not even ask Victorine to sit down, she was standing

the whole time. He said to me quite coolly, without putting himself in a

passion, that we might spare ourselves the trouble of going there; that

the young lady (he would not call her his daughter) was injuring her

cause by importuning him (_importuning!_ once a year, the wretch!); that

as Victorine’s mother had nothing when he married her, Victorine ought

not to expect anything from him; in fact, he said the most cruel things,

that made the poor child burst out crying. The little thing threw

herself at her father’s feet and spoke up bravely; she said that she

only persevered in her visits for her mother’s sake; that she would

obey him without a murmur, but that she begged him to read her poor dead

mother’s farewell letter. She took it up and gave it to him, saying the

most beautiful things in the world, most beautifully expressed; I do not

know where she learned them; God must have put them into her head, for

the poor child was inspired to speak so nicely that it made me cry like

a fool to hear her talk. And what do you think the monster was doing all

the time? Cutting his nails! He took the letter that poor Mme. Taillefer

had soaked with tears, and flung it on to the chimney-piece. ‘That is

all right,’ he said. He held out his hands to raise his daughter, but

she covered them with kisses, and he drew them away again. Scandalous,

isn’t it? And his great booby of a son came in and took no notice of his

sister.”

“What inhuman wretches they must be!” said Father Goriot.

“And then they both went out of the room,” Mme. Couture went on, without

heeding the worthy vermicelli maker’s exclamation; “father and son bowed

to me, and asked me to excuse them on account of urgent business! That

is the history of our call. Well, he has seen his daughter at any rate.

How he can refuse to acknowledge her I cannot think, for they are as

alike as two peas.”

The boarders dropped in one after another, interchanging greetings and

empty jokes that certain classes of Parisians regard as humorous and

witty. Dulness is their prevailing ingredient, and the whole point

consists in mispronouncing a word or a gesture. This kind of argot is

always changing. The essence of the jest consists in some catchword

suggested by a political event, an incident in the police courts, a

street song, or a bit of burlesque at some theatre, and forgotten in a

month. Anything and everything serves to keep up a game of battledore

and shuttlecock with words and ideas. The diorama, a recent invention,

which carried an optical illusion a degree further than panoramas, had

given rise to a mania among art students for ending every word with

_rama_. The Maison Vauquer had caught the infection from a young artist

among the boarders.

“Well, Monsieur-r-r Poiret,” said the _employe_ from the Museum, “how

is your health-orama?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to

Mme. Couture and Victorine with a “Ladies, you seem melancholy.”

“Is dinner ready?” cried Horace Bianchon, a medical student, and a

friend of Rastignac’s; “my stomach is sinking _usque ad talones_.”

“There is an uncommon _frozerama_ outside,” said Vautrin. “Make room

there, Father Goriot! Confound it, your foot covers the whole front of

the stove.”

“Illustrious M. Vautrin,” put in Bianchon, “why do you say _frozerama_?

It is incorrect; it should be _frozenrama_.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” said the official from the Museum; “_frozerama_ is

right by the same rule that you say ‘My feet are _froze_.’”

“Ah! ah!”

“Here is his Excellency the Marquis de Rastignac, Doctor of the Law of

Contraries,” cried Bianchon, seizing Eugene by the throat, and almost

throttling him.

“Hallo there! hallo!”

Mlle. Michonneau came noiselessly in, bowed to the rest of the party,

and took her place beside the three women without saying a word.

“That old bat always makes me shudder,” said Bianchon in a low voice,

indicating Mlle. Michonneau to Vautrin. “I have studied Gall’s system,

and I am sure she has the bump of Judas.”

“Then you have seen a case before?” said Vautrin.

“Who has not?” answered Bianchon. “Upon my word, that ghastly old maid

looks just like one of the long worms that will gnaw a beam through,

give them time enough.”

“That is the way, young man,” returned he of the forty years and the

dyed whiskers:

“The rose has lived the life of a rose--

A morning’s space.”

“Aha! here is a magnificent _soupe-au-rama_,” cried Poiret as Christophe

came in bearing the soup with cautious heed.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mme. Vauquer; “it is _soupe aux choux_.”

All the young men roared with laughter.

“Had you there, Poiret!”

“Poir-r-r-rette! she had you there!”

“Score two points to Mamma Vauquer,” said Vautrin.

“Did any of you notice the fog this morning?” asked the official.

“It was a frantic fog,” said Bianchon, “a fog unparalleled, doleful,

melancholy, sea-green, asthmatical--a Goriot of a fog!”

“A Goriorama,” said the art student, “because you couldn’t see a thing

in it.”

“Hey! Milord Gaoriotte, they air talking about yoo-o-ou!”

Father Goriot, seated at the lower end of the table, close to the door

through which the servant entered, raised his face; he had smelt at a

scrap of bread that lay under his table napkin, an old trick acquired in

his commercial capacity, that still showed itself at times.

“Well,” Madame Vauquer cried in sharp tones, that rang above the rattle

of spoons and plates and the sound of other voices, “and is there

anything the matter with the bread?”

“Nothing whatever, madame,” he answered; “on the contrary, it is made of

the best quality of corn; flour from Etampes.”

“How could you tell?” asked Eugene.

“By the color, by the flavor.”

“You knew the flavor by the smell, I suppose,” said Mme. Vauquer. “You

have grown so economical, you will find out how to live on the smell of

cooking at last.”

“Take out a patent for it, then,” cried the Museum official; “you would

make a handsome fortune.”

“Never mind him,” said the artist; “he does that sort of thing to delude

us into thinking that he was a vermicelli maker.”

“Your nose is a corn-sampler, it appears?” inquired the official.

“Corn _what_?” asked Bianchon.

“Corn-el.”

“Corn-et.”

“Corn-elian.”

“Corn-ice.”

“Corn-ucopia.”

“Corn-crake.”

“Corn-cockle.”

“Corn-orama.”

The eight responses came like a rolling fire from every part of the

room, and the laughter that followed was the more uproarious because

poor Father Goriot stared at the others with a puzzled look, like a

foreigner trying to catch the meaning of words in a language which he

does not understand.

“Corn?...” he said, turning to Vautrin, his next neighbor.

“Corn on your foot, old man!” said Vautrin, and he drove Father Goriot’s

cap down over his eyes by a blow on the crown.

The poor old man thus suddenly attacked was for a moment too bewildered

to do anything. Christophe carried off his plate, thinking that he had

finished his soup, so that when Goriot had pushed back his cap from his

eyes his spoon encountered the table. Every one burst out laughing. “You

are a disagreeable joker, sir,” said the old man, “and if you take any

further liberties with me----”

“Well, what then, old boy?” Vautrin interrupted.

“Well, then, you shall pay dearly for it some day----”

“Down below, eh?” said the artist, “in the little dark corner where they

put naughty boys.”

“Well, mademoiselle,” Vautrin said, turning to Victorine, “you are

eating nothing. So papa was refractory, was he?”

“A monster!” said Mme. Couture.