Pere Goriot by Honoré de Balzac Page B

there?” cried Mme. Vauquer out of her bedroom window.
    â€œI, Mme. Vauquer,” answered Vautrin’s deep bass voice. “I am coming in.”
    â€œThat is odd! Christophe drew the bolts,” said Eugène, going back to his room. “You have to sit up at night, it seems, if you really mean to know all that is going on about you in Paris.”
    These incidents turned his thought from his ambitious dreams; he betook himself to his work, but his thought wandered back to Père Goriot’s suspicious occupation; Mme. de Restaud’s face swam again and again before his eyes like a vision of a brilliant future, and at last he lay down and slept with clenched fists. When a young man makes up his mind that he will work all night, the chances are that seven times out of ten he will sleep till morning. Such vigils do not begin before we are turned twenty.
    The next morning Paris was wrapped in one of the dense fogs that throw the most punctual people out in their calculations as to the time; even the most business-like folk fail to keep their appointments in such weather, and ordinary mortals wake up at noon and fancy it is eight o’clock. On this morning it was half-past nine, and Mme. Vauquer still lay abed. Christophe was late, Sylvie was late, but the two sat comfortably taking their coffee as usual. It was Sylvie’s custom to take the cream off the milk destined for the boarders’ breakfast for her own, and to boil the remainder for some time, so that madame should not discover this illegal exaction.
    â€œSylvie,” said Christophe, as he dipped a piece of toast into the coffee, “M. Vautrin, who is not such a bad sort, all the same, had two people come to see him again last night. If madame says anything, mind you say nothing about it.”
    â€œHas he given you something?”
    â€œHe gave me a five-franc piece this month, which is as good as saying, ‘Hold your tongue.’”
    â€œExcept him and Mme. Couture, who don’t look twice at every penny, there’s no one in the house that doesn’t try to get back with the left hand all that they give with the right at New Year,” said Sylvie.
    â€œAnd, after all,” said Christophe, “what do they give you? A miserable five-franc piece. There is Père Goriot, who has cleaned his shoes himself these two years past. There is that old beggar Poiret, who goes without blacking altogether; he would sooner drink it than put it on his boots. Then there is that whipper-snapper of a student, who gives me a couple of francs. Two francs will not pay for my brushes, and he sells his old clothes, and gets more for them than they are worth. Oh! they’re a shabby lot!”
    â€œPooh!” said Sylvie, sipping her coffee, “our places are the best in the Quarter, that I know. But about that great big chap Vautrin, Christophe; has any one told you anything about him?”
    â€œYes. I met a gentleman in the street a few days ago; he said to me, ‘There’s a gentleman in your place, isn’t there? a tall man that dyes his whiskers?’ I told him, ‘No, sir; they aren’t dyed. A gay fellow like him hasn’t the time to do it.’ And when I told M. Vautrin about it afterwards, he said, ‘Quite right, my boy. That is the way to answer them. There is nothing more unpleasant than to have your little weaknesses known; it might spoil many a match.’”
    â€œWell, and for my part,” said Sylvie, “a man tried to humbug me at the market wanting to know if I had seen him put on his shirt. Such bosh! There,” she cried, interrupting herself, “that’s a quarter to ten striking at the Val-de-Grâce, and not a soul stirring!”
    â€œPooh! they are all gone out. Mme. Couture and the girl went out at eight o‘clock to take the wafer at Saint-Etienne. Père Goriot started off somewhere with a parcel, and the student won’t be back from