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Father Goriot-Part1_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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square panes are drawn up awry, so that the lines are all at

cross purposes. At the side of the house there are but two



windows on each floor, and the lowest of all are adorned with a

heavy iron grating.



Behind the house a yard extends for some twenty feet, a space

inhabited by a happy family of pigs, poultry, and rabbits; the



wood-shed is situated on the further side, and on the wall

between the wood-shed and the kitchen window hangs the meat-safe,



just above the place where the sink discharges its greasy

streams. The cook sweeps all the refuse out through a little door



into the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, and frequently cleanses the

yard with copious supplies of water, under pain of pestilence.



The house might have been built on purpose for its present uses.

Access is given by a French window to the first room on the



ground floor, a sitting-room which looks out upon the street

through the two barred windows already mentioned. Another door



opens out of it into the dining-room, which is separated from the

kitchen by the well of the staircase, the steps being constructed



partly of wood, partly of tiles, which are colored and beeswaxed.

Nothing can be more depressing than the sight of that sitting-



room. The furniture is covered with horse hair woven in alternate

dull and glossy stripes. There is a round table in the middle,



with a purplish-red marble top, on which there stands, by way of

ornament, the inevitable white china tea-service, covered with a



half-effaced gilt network. The floor is sufficientlyuneven, the

wainscot rises to elbow height, and the rest of the wall space is



decorated with a varnished paper, on which the principal scenes

from Telemaque are depicted, the various classical personages



being colored. The subject between the two windows is the banquet

given by Calypso to the son of Ulysses, displayed thereon for the



admiration of the boarders, and has furnished jokes these forty

years to the young men who show themselves superior to their



position by making fun of the dinners to which poverty condemns

them. The hearth is always so clean and neat that it is evident



that a fire is only kindled there on great occasions; the stone

chimney-piece is adorned by a couple of vases filled with faded



artificial flowers imprisoned under glass shades, on either side

of a bluish marble clock in the very worst taste.



The first room exhales an odor for which there is no name in the

language, and which should be called the odeur de pension. The



damp atmosphere sends a chill through you as you breathe it; it

has a stuffy, musty, and rancid quality; it permeates your



clothing; after-dinner scents seem to be mingled in it with

smells from the kitchen and scullery and the reek of a hospital.



It might be possible to describe it if some one should discover a

process by which to distil from the atmosphere all the nauseating



elements with which it is charged by the catarrhal exhalations of

every individual lodger, young or old. Yet, in spite of these



stale horrors, the sitting-room is as charming and as delicately

perfumed as a boudoir, when compared with the adjoining dining-



room.

The paneled walls of that apartment were once painted some color,



now a matter of conjecture, for the surface is incrusted with

accumulated layers of grimy deposit, which cover it with



fantastic outlines. A collection of dim-ribbed glass decanters,

metal discs with a satin sheen on them, and piles of blue-edged



earthenware plates of Touraine ware cover the sticky surfaces of

the sideboards that line the room. In a corner stands a box



containing a set of numbered pigeon-holes, in which the lodgers'

table napkins, more or less soiled and stained with wine, are



kept. Here you see that indestructible furniture never met with

elsewhere, which finds its way into lodging-houses much as the



wrecks of our civilization drift into hospitals for incurables.

You expect in such places as these to find the weather-house



whence a Capuchin issues on wet days; you look to find the

execrable engravings which spoil your appetite, framed every one



in a black varnished frame, with a gilt beading round it; you

know the sort of tortoise-shell clock-case, inlaid with brass;



the green stove, the Argand lamps, covered with oil and dust,

have met your eyes before. The oilcloth which covers the long



table is so greasy that a waggish externe will write his name on

the surface, using his thumb-nail as a style. The chairs are






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