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.
Early one morning, some few months after the departure of the

unlucky Countess who had managed to live for six months at the
widow's expense, Mme. Vauquer (not yet dressed) heard the rustle

of a silk dress and a young woman's light footstep on the stair;
some one was going to Goriot's room. He seemed to expect the

visit, for his door stood ajar. The portly Sylvie presently came
up to tell her mistress that a girl too pretty to be honest,

"dressed like a goddess," and not a speck of mud on her laced
cashmere boots, had glided in from the street like a snake, had

found the kitchen, and asked for M. Goriot's room. Mme. Vauquer
and the cook, listening, overheard several words affectionately

spoken during the visit, which lasted for some time. When M.
Goriot went downstairs with the lady, the stout Sylvie forthwith

took her basket and followed the lover-like couple, under pretext
of going to do her marketing.

"M. Goriot must be awfully rich, all the same, madame," she
reported on her return, "to keep her in such style. Just imagine

it! There was a splendid carriagewaiting at the corner of the
Place de l'Estrapade, and SHE got into it."

While they were at dinner that evening, Mme. Vauquer went to the
window and drew the curtain, as the sun was shining into Goriot's

eyes.
"You are beloved of fair ladies, M. Goriot--the sun seeks you

out," she said, alluding to his visitor. "Peste! you have good
taste; she was very pretty."

"That was my daughter," he said, with a kind of pride in his
voice, and the rest chose to consider this as the fatuity of an

old man who wishes to save appearances.
A month after this visit M. Goriot received another. The same

daughter who had come to see him that morning came again after
dinner, this time in evening dress. The boarders, in deep

discussion in the dining-room, caught a glimpse of a lovely,
fair-haired woman, slender, graceful, and much too distinguished-

looking to be a daughter of Father Goriot's.
"Two of them!" cried the portly Sylvie, who did not recognize the

lady of the first visit.
A few days later, and another young lady--a tall, well-moulded

brunette, with dark hair and bright eyes--came to ask for M.
Goriot.

"Three of them!" said Sylvie.
Then the second daughter, who had first come in the morning to

see her father, came shortly afterwards in the evening. She wore
a ball dress, and came in a carriage.

"Four of them!" commented Mme. Vauquer and her plump handmaid.
Sylvie saw not a trace of resemblance between this great lady and

the girl in her simple morning dress who had entered her kitchen
on the occasion of her first visit.

At that time Goriot was paying twelve hundred francs a year to
his landlady, and Mme. Vauquer saw nothing out of the common in

the fact that a rich man had four or five mistresses; nay, she
thought it very knowing of him to pass them off as his daughters.

She was not at all inclined to draw a hard-and-fast line, or to
take umbrage at his sending for them to the Maison Vauquer; yet,

inasmuch as these visits explained her boarder's indifference to
her, she went so far (at the end of the second year) as to speak

of him as an "ugly old wretch." When at length her boarder
declined to nine hundred francs a year, she asked him very

insolently what he took her house to be, after meeting one of
these ladies on he stairs. Father Goriot answered that the lady