章节正文
he was transported out of the present into that blissful future;
he was sitting by Mme. de Restaud's side, when a sort of sigh,
like the grunt of an overburdened St. Joseph, broke the silence
of the night. It vibrated through the student, who took the sound
for a death groan. He opened his door noiselessly, went out upon
the landing, and saw a thin streak of light under Father Goriot's
door. Eugene feared that his neighbor had been taken ill; he went
over and looked through the keyhole; the old man was busily
engaged in an occupation so singular and so suspicious that
Rastignac thought he was only doing a piece of necessary service
to society to watch the self-styled vermicelli maker's nocturnal
industries.
The table was upturned, and Goriot had doubtless in some way
secured a silver plate and cup to the bar before knotting a thick
rope round them; he was pulling at this rope with such enormous
force that they were being crushed and twisted out of shape; to
all appearance he meant to convert the richlywrought metal into
ingots.
"Peste! what a man!" said Rastignac, as he watched Goriot's
muscular arms; there was not a sound in the room while the old
man, with the aid of the rope, was kneading the silver like
dough. "Was he then, indeed, a thief, or a receiver of stolen
goods, who affected imbecility and decrepitude, and lived like a
beggar that he might carry on his pursuits the more securely?"
Eugene stood for a moment revolving these questions, then he
looked again through the keyhole.
Father Goriot had unwound his coil of rope; he had covered the
table with a blanket, and was now employed in rolling the
flattened mass of silver into a bar, an operation which he
performed with marvelous dexterity.
"Why, he must be as strong as Augustus, King of Poland!" said
Eugene to himself when the bar was nearly finished.
Father Goriot looked sadly at his handiwork, tears fell from his
eyes, he blew out the dip which had served him for a light while
he manipulated the silver, and Eugene heard him sigh as he lay
down again.
"He is mad," thought the student.
"Poor child!" Father Goriot said aloud. Rastignac, hearing those
words, concluded to keep silence; he would not hastily condemn
his neighbor. He was just in the doorway of his room when a
strange sound from the staircase below reached his ears; it might
have been made by two men coming up in list slippers. Eugene
listened; two men there certainly were, he could hear their
breathing. Yet there had been no sound of opening the street
door, no footsteps in the passage. Suddenly, too, he saw a faint
gleam of light on the second story; it came from M. Vautrin's
room.
"There are a good many mysteries here for a lodging-house!" he
said to himself.
He went part of the way downstairs and listened again. The rattle
of gold reached his ears. In another moment the light was put
out, and again he distinctly heard the breathing of two men, but
no sound of a door being opened or shut. The two men went
downstairs, the faint sounds growing fainter as they went.
"Who is there?" cried Mme. Vauquer out of her bedroom window.
"I, Mme. Vauquer," answered Vautrin's deep bass voice. "I am
coming in."
"That is odd! Christophe drew the bolts," said Eugene, 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
Father Goriot's suspiciousoccupation; 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 comfortablytaking 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.
"Sylvie," 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."
"Has he given you something?"
"He gave me a five-franc piece this month, which is as good as
saying, 'Hold your tongue.' "
"Except him and Mme. Couture, who doesn'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.
"And, after all," said Christophe, "what do they give you? A
miserable five-franc piece. There is Father 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!"
"Pooh!" 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?"
"Yes. 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.' "
"Well, 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-Grace, and not a soul
stirring!"
"Pooh! they are all gone out. Mme. Couture and the girl went out
at eight o'clock to take the wafer at Saint-Etienne. Father
Goriot started off somewhere with a parcel, and the student won't
be back from his lecture till ten o'clock. I saw them go while I
was sweeping the stairs; Father Goriot knocked up against me, and
his parcel was as hard as iron. What is the old fellow up to, I
wonder? He is as good as a plaything for the rest of them; they
can never let him alone; but he is a good man, all the same, and
worth more than all of them put together. He doesn't give you
much himself, but he sometimes sends you with a message to ladies
who fork out famous tips; they are dressed grandly, too."
"His daughters, as he calls them, eh? There are a dozen of them."
"I have never been to more than two--the two who came here."
"There is madame moving overhead; I shall have to go, or she will
raise a fine racket. Just keep an eye on the milk, Christophe;
don't let the cat get at it."
Sylvie went up to her mistress' room.
"Sylvie! How is this? It's nearly ten o'clock, and you let me
sleep like a dormouse! Such a thing has never happened before."
"It's the fog; it is that thick, you could cut it with a knife."
"But how about breakfast?"
"Bah! the boarders are possessed, I'm sure. They all cleared out
before there was a wink of daylight."
"Do speak properly, Sylvie," Mme. Vauquer retorted; "say a blink
of daylight."
"Ah, well, madame, whichever you please. Anyhow, you can have
breakfast at ten o'clock. La Michonnette and Poiret have neither
of them stirred. There are only those two upstairs, and they are
sleeping like the logs they are."
"But, Sylvie, you put their names together as if----"
"As if what?" said Sylvie, bursting into a guffaw. "The two of
them make a pair."
"It is a strange thing, isn't it, Sylvie, how M. Vautrin got in
last night after Christophe had bolted the door?"
"Not at all, madame. Christophe heard M. Vautrin, and went down
and undid the door. And here are you imagining that----?"
"Give me my bodice, and be quick and get breakfast ready. Dish up
the rest of the mutton with the potatoes, and you can put the
stewed pears on the table, those at five a penny."
A few moments later Mme. Vauquer came down, just in time to see
the cat knock down a plate that covered a bowl of milk, and begin
to lap in all haste.
"Mistigris!" she cried.
The cat fled, but promptly returned to rub against her ankles.
"Oh! yes, you can wheedle, you old hypocrite!" she said. "Sylvie!
Sylvie!"
"Yes, madame; what is it?"
"Just see what the cat has done!"
"It is all that stupid Christophe's fault. I told him to stop and
lay the table. What has become of him? Don't you worry, madame;
Father Goriot shall have it. I will fill it up with water, and he
won't know the difference; he never notices anything, not even
what he eats."
"I wonder where the old heathen can have gone?" said Mme.
Vauquer, setting the plates round the table.
"Who knows? He is up to all sorts of tricks."
"I have overslept myself," said Mme. Vauquer.
"But madame looks as fresh as a rose, all the same."
The door bell rang at that moment, and Vautrin came through the
sitting-room, singing loudly:
" 'Tis the same old story everywhere,
A roving heart and a roving glance . .
"Oh! Mamma Vauquer! good-morning!" he cried at the sight of his
hostess, and he put his arm gaily round her waist.
"There! have done----"
" 'Impertinence!' Say it!" he answered. "Come, say it! Now,
isn't that what you really mean? Stop a bit, I will help you to
set the table. Ah! I am a nice man, am I not?
"For the locks of brown and the golden hair
A sighing lover . . .
"Oh! I have just seen something so funny----
. . . . led by chance."
"What?" asked the widow.
"Father Goriot in the goldsmith's shop in the Rue Dauphine at
half-past eight this morning. They buy old spoons and forks and
gold lace there, and Goriot sold a piece of silver plate for a
good round sum. It had been twisted out of shape very neatly for
a man that's not used to the trade."
"Really? You don't say so?"
"Yes. One of my friends is expatriating himself; I had been to
see him off on board the Royal Mail steamer, and was coming back
here. I waited after that to see what Father Goriot would do; it
is a comical affair. He came back to this quarter of the world,
to the Rue des Gres, and went into a money-lender's house;
everybody knows him, Gobseck, a stuck-up rascal, that would make
dominoes out of his father's bones, a Turk, a heathen, an old
he was sitting by Mme. de Restaud's side, when a sort of sigh,
like the grunt of an overburdened St. Joseph, broke the silence
of the night. It vibrated through the student, who took the sound
for a death groan. He opened his door noiselessly, went out upon
the landing, and saw a thin streak of light under Father Goriot's
door. Eugene feared that his neighbor had been taken ill; he went
over and looked through the keyhole; the old man was busily
engaged in an occupation so singular and so suspicious that
Rastignac thought he was only doing a piece of necessary service
to society to watch the self-styled vermicelli maker's nocturnal
industries.
The table was upturned, and Goriot had doubtless in some way
secured a silver plate and cup to the bar before knotting a thick
rope round them; he was pulling at this rope with such enormous
force that they were being crushed and twisted out of shape; to
all appearance he meant to convert the richlywrought metal into
ingots.
"Peste! what a man!" said Rastignac, as he watched Goriot's
muscular arms; there was not a sound in the room while the old
man, with the aid of the rope, was kneading the silver like
dough. "Was he then, indeed, a thief, or a receiver of stolen
goods, who affected imbecility and decrepitude, and lived like a
beggar that he might carry on his pursuits the more securely?"
Eugene stood for a moment revolving these questions, then he
looked again through the keyhole.
Father Goriot had unwound his coil of rope; he had covered the
table with a blanket, and was now employed in rolling the
flattened mass of silver into a bar, an operation which he
performed with marvelous dexterity.
"Why, he must be as strong as Augustus, King of Poland!" said
Eugene to himself when the bar was nearly finished.
Father Goriot looked sadly at his handiwork, tears fell from his
eyes, he blew out the dip which had served him for a light while
he manipulated the silver, and Eugene heard him sigh as he lay
down again.
"He is mad," thought the student.
"Poor child!" Father Goriot said aloud. Rastignac, hearing those
words, concluded to keep silence; he would not hastily condemn
his neighbor. He was just in the doorway of his room when a
strange sound from the staircase below reached his ears; it might
have been made by two men coming up in list slippers. Eugene
listened; two men there certainly were, he could hear their
breathing. Yet there had been no sound of opening the street
door, no footsteps in the passage. Suddenly, too, he saw a faint
gleam of light on the second story; it came from M. Vautrin's
room.
"There are a good many mysteries here for a lodging-house!" he
said to himself.
He went part of the way downstairs and listened again. The rattle
of gold reached his ears. In another moment the light was put
out, and again he distinctly heard the breathing of two men, but
no sound of a door being opened or shut. The two men went
downstairs, the faint sounds growing fainter as they went.
"Who is there?" cried Mme. Vauquer out of her bedroom window.
"I, Mme. Vauquer," answered Vautrin's deep bass voice. "I am
coming in."
"That is odd! Christophe drew the bolts," said Eugene, 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
Father Goriot's suspiciousoccupation; 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 comfortablytaking 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.
"Sylvie," 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."
"Has he given you something?"
"He gave me a five-franc piece this month, which is as good as
saying, 'Hold your tongue.' "
"Except him and Mme. Couture, who doesn'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.
"And, after all," said Christophe, "what do they give you? A
miserable five-franc piece. There is Father 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!"
"Pooh!" 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?"
"Yes. 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.' "
"Well, 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-Grace, and not a soul
stirring!"
"Pooh! they are all gone out. Mme. Couture and the girl went out
at eight o'clock to take the wafer at Saint-Etienne. Father
Goriot started off somewhere with a parcel, and the student won't
be back from his lecture till ten o'clock. I saw them go while I
was sweeping the stairs; Father Goriot knocked up against me, and
his parcel was as hard as iron. What is the old fellow up to, I
wonder? He is as good as a plaything for the rest of them; they
can never let him alone; but he is a good man, all the same, and
worth more than all of them put together. He doesn't give you
much himself, but he sometimes sends you with a message to ladies
who fork out famous tips; they are dressed grandly, too."
"His daughters, as he calls them, eh? There are a dozen of them."
"I have never been to more than two--the two who came here."
"There is madame moving overhead; I shall have to go, or she will
raise a fine racket. Just keep an eye on the milk, Christophe;
don't let the cat get at it."
Sylvie went up to her mistress' room.
"Sylvie! How is this? It's nearly ten o'clock, and you let me
sleep like a dormouse! Such a thing has never happened before."
"It's the fog; it is that thick, you could cut it with a knife."
"But how about breakfast?"
"Bah! the boarders are possessed, I'm sure. They all cleared out
before there was a wink of daylight."
"Do speak properly, Sylvie," Mme. Vauquer retorted; "say a blink
of daylight."
"Ah, well, madame, whichever you please. Anyhow, you can have
breakfast at ten o'clock. La Michonnette and Poiret have neither
of them stirred. There are only those two upstairs, and they are
sleeping like the logs they are."
"But, Sylvie, you put their names together as if----"
"As if what?" said Sylvie, bursting into a guffaw. "The two of
them make a pair."
"It is a strange thing, isn't it, Sylvie, how M. Vautrin got in
last night after Christophe had bolted the door?"
"Not at all, madame. Christophe heard M. Vautrin, and went down
and undid the door. And here are you imagining that----?"
"Give me my bodice, and be quick and get breakfast ready. Dish up
the rest of the mutton with the potatoes, and you can put the
stewed pears on the table, those at five a penny."
A few moments later Mme. Vauquer came down, just in time to see
the cat knock down a plate that covered a bowl of milk, and begin
to lap in all haste.
"Mistigris!" she cried.
The cat fled, but promptly returned to rub against her ankles.
"Oh! yes, you can wheedle, you old hypocrite!" she said. "Sylvie!
Sylvie!"
"Yes, madame; what is it?"
"Just see what the cat has done!"
"It is all that stupid Christophe's fault. I told him to stop and
lay the table. What has become of him? Don't you worry, madame;
Father Goriot shall have it. I will fill it up with water, and he
won't know the difference; he never notices anything, not even
what he eats."
"I wonder where the old heathen can have gone?" said Mme.
Vauquer, setting the plates round the table.
"Who knows? He is up to all sorts of tricks."
"I have overslept myself," said Mme. Vauquer.
"But madame looks as fresh as a rose, all the same."
The door bell rang at that moment, and Vautrin came through the
sitting-room, singing loudly:
" 'Tis the same old story everywhere,
A roving heart and a roving glance . .
"Oh! Mamma Vauquer! good-morning!" he cried at the sight of his
hostess, and he put his arm gaily round her waist.
"There! have done----"
" 'Impertinence!' Say it!" he answered. "Come, say it! Now,
isn't that what you really mean? Stop a bit, I will help you to
set the table. Ah! I am a nice man, am I not?
"For the locks of brown and the golden hair
A sighing lover . . .
"Oh! I have just seen something so funny----
. . . . led by chance."
"What?" asked the widow.
"Father Goriot in the goldsmith's shop in the Rue Dauphine at
half-past eight this morning. They buy old spoons and forks and
gold lace there, and Goriot sold a piece of silver plate for a
good round sum. It had been twisted out of shape very neatly for
a man that's not used to the trade."
"Really? You don't say so?"
"Yes. One of my friends is expatriating himself; I had been to
see him off on board the Royal Mail steamer, and was coming back
here. I waited after that to see what Father Goriot would do; it
is a comical affair. He came back to this quarter of the world,
to the Rue des Gres, and went into a money-lender's house;
everybody knows him, Gobseck, a stuck-up rascal, that would make
dominoes out of his father's bones, a Turk, a heathen, an old
- occupation [,ɔkju´peiʃən]
a.职业的；军事占领的 (初中英语单词) - doubtless [´dautlis] ad.无疑地；大概，多半 (初中英语单词)
- convert [kən´və:t, ´kɔnvə:t] v.转变 n.改变信仰者 (初中英语单词)
- wrought [rɔ:t] work 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- marvelous [´mɑ:viləs] (=marvellous) a.奇异的 (初中英语单词)
- hastily [´heistili] ad.急速地；草率地 (初中英语单词)
- doorway [´dɔ:wei] n.门口 (初中英语单词)
- opening [´əupəniŋ] n.开放；开端 a.开始的 (初中英语单词)
- downstairs [,daun´steəz] ad.在楼下 a.楼下的 (初中英语单词)
- distinctly [di´stiŋktli] ad.清楚地，明晰地 (初中英语单词)
- ambitious [æm´biʃəs] a.有雄心的；热望的 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- punctual [´pʌŋktjuəl] a.准时的；精确的 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- striking [´straikiŋ] a.显著的，明显的 (初中英语单词)
- parcel [´pɑ:sl] n.包裹；一批 vt.区分 (初中英语单词)
- overhead [´əuvə,hed] ad.当头 a.在头上的 (初中英语单词)
- properly [´prɔpəli] ad.适当地；严格地 (初中英语单词)
- promptly [´prɔmptli] ad.敏捷地；即时地 (初中英语单词)
- stupid [´stju:pid] a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词)
- steamer [´sti:mə] n.汽船；轮船；蒸笼 (初中英语单词)
- streak [stri:k] n.纹理 v.用线条(条纹) (高中英语单词)
- singular [´siŋgjulə] a.单一的；非凡的 (高中英语单词)
- suspicious [sə´spiʃəs] a.可疑的，多疑的 (高中英语单词)
- receiver [ri´si:və] n.接收者；接待人 (高中英语单词)
- hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (高中英语单词)
- comfortably [´kʌmfətəbli] ad.舒适地 (高中英语单词)
- shabby [´ʃæbi] a.(衣服)破旧的 (高中英语单词)
- sweeping [´swi:piŋ] a.掠过的 n.扫除；清除 (高中英语单词)
- racket [´rækit] n.(网球等的)拍；球拍 (高中英语单词)
- mutton [´mʌtn] n.羊肉 (高中英语单词)
- heathen [´hi:ðən] n.异教徒 (高中英语单词)
- rascal [´rɑ:skəl] n.流氓 (高中英语单词)
- noiselessly [´nɔizlisli] ad.静静地，轻轻地 (英语四级单词)
- richly [´ritʃli] ad.富裕地；浓厚地 (英语四级单词)
- staircase [´steəkeis] n.楼梯 =stairway (英语四级单词)
- plaything [´plei,θiŋ] n.玩具；玩物 (英语四级单词)
- upstairs [,ʌp´steəz] ad.在楼上 a.楼上的 (英语四级单词)
- setting [´setiŋ] n.安装；排字；布景 (英语四级单词)
- landing [´lændiŋ] n.登陆；降落；楼梯平台 (英语六级单词)
- affected [ə´fektid] a.做作的；假装的 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- wanting [´wɔntiŋ, wɑ:n-] a.短缺的；不足的 (英语六级单词)
- whichever [witʃ´evə] a.&pron.无论哪个(些) (英语六级单词)
- comical [´kɔmikəl] a.好笑的；怪里怪气的 (英语六级单词)
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