ence and
uneasiness that the lodgers beheld him with astonishment.

"Then Christophe was too late, and she must have gone to him!" cried
Goriot, with anguish in his voice.

"It is just as I guessed," said Vautrin, leaning over to whisper in Mme.
Vauquer's ear.

Goriot went on with his breakfast, but seemed unconscious of what he was
doing. He had never looked more stupid nor more taken up with his own
thoughts than he did at that moment.

"Who the devil could have told you her name, M. Vautrin?" asked Eugene.

"Aha! there you are!" answered Vautrin. "Old Father Goriot there knew it
quite well! and why should I not know it too?"

"M. Goriot?" the student cried.

"What is it?" asked the old man. "So she was very beautiful, was she,
yesterday night?"

"Who?"

"Mme. de Restaud."

"Look at the old wretch," said Mme. Vauquer, speaking to Vautrin; "how
his eyes light up!"

"Then does he really keep her?" said Mlle. Michonneau, in a whisper to
the student.

"Oh! yes, she was tremendously pretty," Eugene answered. Father Goriot
watched him with eager eyes. "If Mme. de Beauseant had not been there,
my divine countess would have been the queen of the ball; none of the
younger men had eyes for any one else. I was the twelfth on her list,
and she danced every quadrille. The other women were furious. She must
have enjoyed herself, if ever creature did! It is a true saying
that there is no more beautiful sight than a frigate in full sail, a
galloping horse, or a woman dancing."

"So the wheel turns," said Vautrin; "yesterday night at a duchess'
ball, this morning in a money-lender's office, on the lowest rung of the
ladder--just like a Parisienne! If their husbands cannot afford to pay
for their frantic extravagance, they will sell themselves. Or if
they cannot do that, they will tear out their mothers' hearts to find
something to pay for their splendor. They will turn the world upside
down. Just a Parisienne through and through!"

Father Goriot's face, which had shone at the student's words like the
sun on a bright day, clouded over all at once at this cruel speech of
Vautrin's.

"Well," said Mme. Vauquer, "but where is your adventure? Did you speak
to her? Did you ask her if she wanted to study law?"

"She did not see me," said Eugene. "But only think of meeting one of the
prettiest women in Paris in the Rue des Gres at nine o'clock! She could
not have reached home after the ball till two o'clock this morning.