Bab Bab 5 · 第5章

It was this prospectus that attracted Mme. la Comtesse de l’Ambermesnil,

a widow of six and thirty, who was awaiting the final settlement of her

husband’s affairs, and of another matter regarding a pension due to her

as the wife of a general who had died “on the field of battle.” On this

Mme. 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. Vauquer as “my dear,” and promised her two more boarders, the

Baronne de Vaumerland and the widow of a colonel, the late Comte de

Picquoisie, who were about to leave a boarding-house in the Marais,

where the terms were higher than at the Maison Vauquer. Both these

ladies, moreover, would be very well to do when the people at the

War Office had come to an end of their formalities. “But Government

departments are always so dilatory,” the lady added.

After dinner the two widows went together up to Mme. Vauquer’s room, and

had a snug little chat over some cordial and various delicacies reserved

for the mistress of the house. Mme. Vauquer’s ideas as to Goriot were

cordially approved by Mme. de l’Ambermesnil; it was a capital notion,

which for that matter she had guessed from the very first; in her

opinion the vermicelli maker was an excellent man.

“Ah! my dear lady, such a well-preserved man of his age, as sound as my

eyesight--a man who might make a woman happy!” said the widow.

The good-natured Countess turned to the subject of Mme. Vauquer’s dress,

which was not in harmony with her projects. “You must put yourself on a

war footing,” said she.

After much serious consideration the two widows went shopping

together--they purchased a hat adorned with ostrich feathers and a cap

at the Palais Royal, and the Countess took her friend to the Magasin de

la Petite Jeannette, where they chose a dress and a scarf. Thus equipped

for the campaign, the widow looked exactly like the prize animal hung

out for a sign above an a la mode beef shop; but she herself was so much

pleased with the improvement, as she considered it, in her appearance,

that she felt that she lay under some obligation to the Countess; and,

though by no means open-handed, she begged that lady to accept a hat

that cost twenty francs. The fact was that she needed the Countess’

services on the delicate mission of sounding Goriot; the countess must

sing her praises in his ears. Mme. de l’Ambermesnil lent herself very

good-naturedly to this manoeuvre, began her operations, and succeeded in

obtaining a private interview; but the overtures that she made, with a

view to securing him for herself, were received with embarrassment, not

to say a repulse. She left him, revolted by his coarseness.

“My angel,” said she to her dear friend, “you will make nothing of that

man yonder. He is absurdly suspicious, and he is a mean curmudgeon, an

idiot, a fool; you would never be happy with him.”

After what had passed between M. Goriot and Mme. de l’Ambermesnil, the

Countess would no longer live under the same roof. She left the next

day, forgot to pay for six months’ board, and left behind her wardrobe,

cast-off clothing to the value of five francs. Eagerly and persistently

as Mme. Vauquer sought her quondam lodger, the Comtesse de l’Ambermesnil

was never heard of again in Paris. The widow often talked of this

deplorable business, and regretted her own too confiding disposition. As

a matter of fact, she was as suspicious as a cat; but she was like many

other people, who cannot trust their own kin and put themselves at the

mercy of the next chance comer--an odd but common phenomenon, whose

causes may readily be traced to the depths of the human heart.

Perhaps there are people who know that they have nothing more to look

for from those with whom they live; they have shown the emptiness of

their hearts to their housemates, and in their secret selves they are

conscious that they are severely judged, and that they deserve to

be judged severely; but still they feel an unconquerable craving for

praises that they do not hear, or they are consumed by a desire to

appear to possess, in the eyes of a new audience, the qualities which

they have not, hoping to win the admiration or affection of strangers at

the risk of forfeiting it again some day. Or, once more, there are other

mercenary natures who never do a kindness to a friend or a relation

simply because these have a claim upon them, while a service done to a

stranger brings its reward to self-love. Such natures feel but little

affection for those who are nearest to them; they keep their kindness

for remoter circles of acquaintance, and show most to those who dwell on

its utmost limits. Mme. Vauquer belonged to both these essentially mean,

false, and execrable classes.

“If I had been there at the time,” Vautrin would say at the end of the

story, “I would have shown her up, and that misfortune would not have

befallen you. I know that kind of phiz!”

Like all narrow natures, Mme. Vauquer was wont to confine her attention

to events, and did not go very deeply into the causes that brought them

about; she likewise preferred to throw the blame of her own mistakes on

other people, so she chose to consider that the honest vermicelli maker

was responsible for her misfortune. It had opened her eyes, so she said,

with regard to him. As soon as she saw that her blandishments were in

vain, and that her outlay on her toilette was money thrown away, she was

not slow to discover the reason of his indifference. It became plain

to her at once that there was _some other attraction_, to use her own

expression. In short, it was evident that the hope she had so fondly

cherished was a baseless delusion, and that she would “never make

anything out of that man yonder,” in the Countess’ forcible phrase.

The Countess seemed to have been a judge of character. Mme. Vauquer’s

aversion was naturally more energetic than her friendship, for her

hatred was not in proportion to her love, but to her disappointed

expectations. The human heart may find here and there a resting-place

short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the

steep, downward slope of hatred. Still, M. Goriot was a lodger, and

the widow’s wounded self-love could not vent itself in an explosion of

wrath; like a monk harassed by the prior of his convent, she was forced

to stifle her sighs of disappointment, and to gulp down her craving for

revenge. Little minds find gratification for their feelings, benevolent

or otherwise, by a constant exercise of petty ingenuity. The widow

employed her woman’s malice to devise a system of covert persecution.

She began by a course of retrenchment--various luxuries which had found

their way to the table appeared there no more.

“No more gherkins, no more anchovies; they have made a fool of me!” she

said to Sylvie one morning, and they returned to the old bill of fare.

The thrifty frugality necessary to those who mean to make their way in

the world had become an inveterate habit of life with M. Goriot. Soup,

boiled beef, and a dish of vegetables had been, and always would be, the

dinner he liked best, so Mme. Vauquer found it very difficult to annoy

a boarder whose tastes were so simple. He was proof against her malice,

and in desperation she spoke to him and of him slightingly before the

other lodgers, who began to amuse themselves at his expense, and so

gratified her desire for revenge.

Towards the end of the first year the widow’s suspicions had reached

such a pitch that she began to wonder how it was that a retired merchant

with a secure income of seven or eight thousand livres, the owner of

such magnificent plate and jewelry handsome enough for a kept mistress,

should be living in her house. Why should he devote so small a

proportion of his money to his expenses? Until the first year was nearly

at an end, Goriot had dined out once or twice every week, but these

occasions came less frequently, and at last he was scarcely absent from

the dinner-table twice a month. It was hardly expected that Mme. Vauquer

should regard the increased regularity of her boarder’s habits with

complacency, when those little excursions of his had been so much to her

interest. She attributed the change not so much to a gradual diminution

of fortune as to a spiteful wish to annoy his hostess. It is one of the

most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with

its own malignant pettiness.

Unluckily, towards the end of the second year, M. Goriot’s conduct gave

some color to the idle talk about him. He asked Mme. Vauquer to give him

a room on the second floor, and to make a corresponding reduction in

her charges. Apparently, such strict economy was called for, that he did

without a fire all through the winter. Mme. Vauquer asked to be paid in

advance, an arrangement to which M. Goriot consented, and thenceforward

she spoke of him as “Father Goriot.”

What had brought about this decline and fall? Conjecture was keen, but

investigation was difficult. Father Goriot was not communicative; in

the sham countess’ phrase he was “a curmudgeon.” Empty-headed people who

babble about their own affairs because they have nothing else to occupy

them, naturally conclude that if people say nothing of their doings it

is because their doings will not bear being talked about; so the highly

respectable merchant became a scoundrel, and the late beau was an old

rogue. Opinion fluctuated. Sometimes, according to Vautrin, who came

about this time to live in the Maison Vauquer, Father Goriot was a man

who went on ‘Change and _dabbled_ (to use the sufficiently expressive

language of the Stock Exchange) in stocks and shares after he had ruined

himself by heavy speculation. Sometimes it was held that he was one of

those petty gamblers who nightly play for small stakes until they win a

few francs. A theory that he was a detective in the employ of the Home

Office found favor at one time, but Vautrin urged that “Goriot was not

sharp enough for one of that sort.” There were yet other solutions;

Father Goriot was a skinflint, a shark of a money-lender, a man

who lived by selling lottery tickets. He was by turns all the most

mysterious brood of vice and shame and misery; yet, however vile his

life might be, the feeling of repulsion which he aroused in others was

not so strong that he must be banished from their society--he paid

his way. Besides, Goriot had his uses, every one vented his spleen or

sharpened his wit on him; he was pelted with jokes and belabored with

hard words. The general consensus of opinion was in favor of a theory

which seemed the most likely; this was Mme. Vauquer’s view. According

to her, the man so well preserved at his time of life, as sound as her

eyesight, with whom a woman might be very happy, was a libertine who had

strange tastes. These are the facts upon which Mme. Vauquer’s slanders

were based.