Essential Novelists - Honoré de Balzac. Оноре де Бальзак
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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.
“Mademoiselle might make application for aliment pending her suit; she is not eating anything. Eh! eh! just see how Father Goriot is staring at Mlle. Victorine.”
The old man had forgotten his dinner, he was so absorbed in gazing at the poor girl; the sorrow in her face was unmistakable,—the slighted love of a child whose father would not recognize her.
“We are mistaken about Father Goriot, my dear boy,” said Eugene in a low voice. “He is not an idiot, nor wanting in energy. Try your Gall system on him, and let me know what you think. I saw him crush a silver dish last night as if it had been made of wax; there seems to be something extraordinary going on in his mind just now, to judge by his face. His life is so mysterious that it must be worth studying. Oh! you may laugh, Bianchon; I am not joking.”
“The man is a subject, is he?” said Bianchon; “all right! I will dissect him, if he will give me the chance.”
“No; feel his bumps.”
“Hm!—his stupidity might perhaps be contagious.”
The next day Rastignac dressed himself very elegantly, and about three o’clock in the afternoon went to call on Mme. de Restaud. On the way thither he indulged in the wild intoxicating dreams which fill a young head so full of delicious excitement. Young men at his age take no account of obstacles nor of dangers; they see success in every direction; imagination has free play, and turns their lives into a romance; they are saddened or discouraged by the collapse of one of the visionary schemes that have no existence save in their heated fancy. If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
Eugene took unheard-of pains to keep himself in a spotless condition, but on his way through the streets he began to think about Mme. de Restaud and what he should say to her. He equipped himself with wit, rehearsed repartees in the course of an imaginary conversation, and prepared certain neat speeches a la Talleyrand, conjuring up a series of small events which should prepare the way for the declaration on which he had based his future; and during these musings the law student was bespattered with mud, and by the time he reached the Palais Royal he was obliged to have his boots blacked and his trousers brushed.
“If I were rich,” he said, as he changed the five-franc piece he had brought with him in case anything might happen, “I would take a cab, then I could think at my ease.”
At last he reached the Rue du Helder, and asked for the Comtesse de Restaud. He bore the contemptuous glances of the servants, who had seen him cross the court on foot, with the cold fury of a man who knows that he will succeed some day. He understood the meaning of their glances at once, for he had felt his inferiority as soon as he entered the court, where a smart cab was waiting. All the delights of life in Paris seemed to be implied by this visible and manifest sign of luxury and extravagance. A fine horse, in magnificent