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Father Goriot-Part3_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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one of them but would have passed a blind man begging in the

street, not one that felt moved to pity by a tale of misfortune,



not one who did not see in death the solution of the all-

absorbing problem of misery which left them cold to the most



terrible anguish in others.

The happiest of these hapless beings was certainly Mme. Vauquer,



who reigned supreme over this hospital supported by voluntary

contributions. For her, the little garden, which silence, and



cold, and rain, and drought combined to make as dreary as an

Asian steppe, was a pleasant shaded nook; the gaunt yellow house,



the musty odors of a back shop had charms for her, and for her

alone. Those cells belonged to her. She fed those convicts



condemned to penal servitude for life, and her authority was

recognized among them. Where else in Paris would they have found



wholesome food in sufficient quantity at the prices she charged

them, and rooms which they were at liberty to make, if not



exactly elegant or comfortable, at any rate clean and healthy? If

she had committed some flagrant act of injustice, the victim



would have borne it in silence.

Such a gathering contained, as might have been expected, the



elements out of which a complete society might be constructed.

And, as in a school, as in the world itself, there was among the



eighteen men and women who met round the dinner table a poor

creature, despised by all the others, condemned to be the butt of



all their jokes. At the beginning of Eugene de Rastignac's second

twelvemonth, this figure suddenly started out into bold relief



against the background of human forms and faces among which the

law student was yet to live for another two years to come. This



laughing-stock was the retired vermicelli-merchant, Father

Goriot, upon whose face a painter, like the historian, would have



concentrated all the light in his picture.

How had it come about that the boarders regarded him with a half-



malignant contempt? Why did they subject the oldest among their

number to a kind of persecution, in which there was mingled some



pity, but no respect for his misfortunes? Had he brought it on

himself by some eccentricity or absurdity, which is less easily



forgiven or forgotten than more serious defects? The question

strikes at the root of many a social injustice. Perhaps it is



only human nature to inflictsuffering on anything that will

endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuinehumility, or



indifference, or sheer helplessness. Do we not, one and all, like

to feel our strength even at the expense of some one or of



something? The poorest sample of humanity, the street arab, will

pull the bell handle at every street door in bitter weather, and



scramble up to write his name on the unsullied marble of a

monument.



In the year 1813, at the age of sixty-nine or thereabouts,

"Father Goriot" had sold his business and retired--to Mme.



Vauquer's boarding house. When he first came there he had taken

the rooms now occupied by Mme. Couture; he had paid twelve



hundred francs a year like a man to whom five louis more or less

was a mere trifle. For him Mme. Vauquer had made various



improvements in the three rooms destined for his use, in

consideration of a certain sum paid in advance, so it was said,



for the miserable furniture, that is to say, for some yellow

cotton curtains, a few chairs of stained wood covered with



Utrecht velvet, several wretched colored prints in frames, and

wall papers that a little suburbantavern would have disdained.



Possibly it was the carelessgenerosity with which Father Goriot

allowed himself to be overreached at this period of his life



(they called him Monsieur Goriot very respectfully then) that

gave Mme. Vauquer the meanest opinion of his business abilities;






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