she looked on him as an imbecile where money was concerned.
Goriot had brought with him a considerablewardrobe, the gorgeous

outfit of a retiredtradesman who denies himself nothing. Mme.
Vauquer's astonished eyes beheld no less than eighteen cambric-

fronted shirts, the splendor of their fineness being enhanced by
a pair of pins each bearing a large diamond, and connected by a

short chain, an ornament which adorned the vermicelli-maker's
shirt front. He usually wore a coat of corn-flower blue; his

rotund and portly person was still further set off by a clean
white waistcoat, and a gold chain and seals which dangled over

that broad expanse. When his hostess accused him of being "a bit
of a beau," he smiled with the vanity of a citizen whose foible

is gratified. His cupboards (ormoires, as he called them in the
popular dialect) were filled with a quantity of plate that he

brought with him. The widow's eyes gleamed as she obligingly
helped him to unpack the soup ladles, table-spoons, forks, cruet-

stands, tureens, dishes, and breakfast services--all of silver,
which were duly arranged upon shelves, besides a few more or less

handsome pieces of plate, all weighing no inconsiderable number
of ounces; he could not bring himself to part with these gifts

that reminded him of past domestic festivals.
"This was my wife's present to me on the first anniversary of our

wedding day," he said to Mme. Vauquer, as he put away a little
silver posset dish, with two turtle-doves billing on the cover.

"Poor dear! she spent on it all the money she had saved before we
were married. Do you know, I would sooner scratch the earth with

my nails for a living, madame, than part with that. But I shall
be able to take my coffee out of it every morning for the rest of

my days, thank the Lord! I am not to be pitied. There's not much
fear of my starving for some time to come."

Finally, Mme. Vauquer's magpie's eye had discovered and read
certain entries in the list of shareholders in the funds, and,

after a rough calculation, was disposed to credit Goriot (worthy
man) with something like ten thousand francs a year. From that

day forward Mme. Vauquer (nee de Conflans), who, as a matter of
fact, had seen forty-eight summers, though she would only own to

thirty-nine of them--Mme. Vauquer had her own ideas. Though
Goriot's eyes seemed to have shrunk in their sockets, though they

were weak and watery, owing to some glandular affection which
compelled him to wipe them continually, she considered him to be

a very gentlemanly and pleasant-looking man. Moreover, the widow
saw favorable indications of character in the well-developed

calves of his legs and in his square-shaped nose, indications
still further borne out by the worthy man's full-moon countenance

and look of stupid good-nature. This, in all probability, was a
strongly-build animal, whose brains mostly consisted in a

capacity for affection. His hair, worn in ailes de pigeon, and
duly powdered every morning by the barber from the Ecole

Polytechnique, described five points on his low forehead, and
made an elegantsetting to his face. Though his manners were

somewhat boorish, he was always as neat as a new pin and he took
his snuff in a lordly way, like a man who knows that his snuff-

box is always likely to be filled with maccaboy, so that when
Mme. Vauquer lay down to rest on the day of M. Goriot's

installation, her heart, like a larded partridge, sweltered
before the fire of a burning desire to shake off the shroud of

Vauquer and rise again as Goriot. She would marry again, sell her
boarding-house, give her hand to this fine flower of citizenship,

become a lady of consequence in the quarter, and ask for
subscriptions for charitable purposes; she would make little

Sunday excursions to Choisy, Soissy, Gentilly; she would have a
box at the theatre when she liked, instead of waiting for the

author's tickets that one of her boarders sometimes gave her, in
July; the whole Eldorado of a little Parisian household rose up

before Mme. Vauquer in her dreams. Nobody knew that she herself
possessed forty thousand francs, accumulated sou by sou, that was

her secret; surely as far as money was concerned she was a very
tolerable match. "And in other respects, I am quite his equal,"

she said to herself, turning as if to assure herself of the
charms of a form that the portly Sylvie found moulded in down

feathers every morning.
For three months from that day Mme. Veuve Vauquer availed herself

of the services of M. Goriot's coiffeur, and went to some expense
over her toilette, expense justifiable on the ground that she

owed it to herself and her establishment to pay some attention to
appearances when such highly-respectable persons honored her

house with their presence. She expended no small amount of
ingenuity in a sort of weeding process of her lodgers, announcing

her intention of receiving henceforward none but people who were
in every way select. If a stranger presented himself, she let him

know that M. Goriot, one of the best known and most highly-
respected merchants in Paris, had singled out her boarding-house

for a residence. She drew up a prospectus headed MAISON VAUQUER,
in which it was asserted that hers was "one of the oldest and

most highly recommended boarding-houses in the Latin Quarter."
"From the windows of the house," thus ran the prospectus, "there

is a charming view of the Vallee des Gobelins (so there is--from
the third floor), and a BEAUTIFUL garden, EXTENDING down to AN

AVENUE OF LINDENS at the further end." Mention was made of the
bracing air of the place and its quiet situation.

It was this prospectus that attracted Mme. la Comtesse de
l'Ambermesnil, a widow of six and thirty, who was awaiting the

final settlement of her husband's affairs, and of another matter
regarding a pension due to her as the wife of a general who had

died "on the field of battle." On this Mme. Vauquer saw to her
table, lighted a fire daily in the sitting-room for nearly six

months, and kept the promise of her prospectus, even going to
some expense to do so. And the Countess, on her side, addressed

Mme. Vauquer as "my dear," and promised her two more boarders,
the Baronne de Vaumerland and the widow of a colonel, the late

Comte de Picquoisie, who were about to leave a boarding-house in
the Marais, where the terms were higher than at the Maison

Vauquer. Both these ladies, moreover, would be very well to do
when the people at the War Office had come to an end of their

formalities. "But Government departments are always so dilatory,"
the lady added.

After dinner the two widows went together up to Mme. Vauquer's
room, and had a snug little chat over some cordial and various

delicacies reserved for the mistress of the house. Mme. Vauquer's
ideas as to Goriot were cordially approved by Mme. de

l'Ambermesnil; it was a capital notion, which for that matter she
had guessed from the very first; in her opinion the vermicelli

maker was an excellent man.
"Ah! my dear lady, such a well-preserved man of his age, as sound

as my eyesight--a man who might make a woman happy!" said the
widow.

The good-natured Countess turned to the subject of Mme. Vauquer's
dress, which was not in harmony with her projects. "You must put

yourself on a war footing," said she.
After much serious consideration the two widows went shopping

together--they purchased a hat adorned with ostrich feathers and
a cap at the Palais Royal, and the Countess took her friend to

the Magasin de la Petite Jeannette, where they chose a dress and
a scarf. Thus equipped for the campaign, the widow looked exactly

like the prize animal hung out for a sign above an a la mode beef
shop; but she herself was so much pleased with the improvement,

as she considered it, in her appearance, that she felt that she
lay under some obligation to the Countess; and, though by no

means open-handed, she begged that lady to accept a hat that cost
twenty francs. The fact was that she needed the Countess'

services on the delicatemission of sounding Goriot; the countess
must sing her praises in his ears. Mme. de l'Ambermesnil lent

herself very good-naturedly to this manoeuvre, began her
operations, and succeeded in obtaining a private interview; but

the overtures that she made, with a view to securing him for
herself, were received with embarrassment, not to say a repulse.