s let to Madame Couture, the
widow of a paymaster in the army of the French Republic. She had with
her a very young girl, named Victorine Taillefer. On the second floor,
one apartment was tenanted by an old gentleman named Poiret; the other
by a man of about forty years of age, who wore a black wig, dyed his
whiskers, gave out that he was a retired merchant, and called himself
Monsieur Vautrin. The third story was divided into four single rooms, of
which one was occupied by an old maid named Mademoiselle Michonneau, and
another by an aged manufacturer of vermicelli, who allowed himself to be
called "Old Goriot." The two remaining rooms were allotted to a medical
student known as Bianchon, and to a law student named Eugene de
Rastignac. Above the third story were a loft where linen was dried, and
two attic rooms, in one of which slept the man of all work, Christophe,
and in the other the fat cook, Sylvie.

The desolate aspect of the interior of the establishment repeated itself
in the shabby attire of the boarders. Mademoiselle Michonneau protected
her weak eyes with a shabby green silk shade mounted on brass wire,
which would have scared the Angel of Pity. Although the play of passions
had ravished her features, she retained certain traces of a fine
complexion, which suggested that the figure conserved some fragments of
beauty. Poiret was a human automaton, who had earned a pension by
mechanical labour as a government functionary.

Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer was of a sickly paleness, like a girl
in feeble health; but her grey-black eyes expressed the sweetness and
resignation of a Christian. Her dress, simple and cheap, betrayed her
youthful form. Happy, she might have been beautiful, for happiness
imparts a poetic charm to women, as dress is the artifice of it. If love
had ever given sparkle to her eyes, Victorine would have been able to
hold her own with the fairest of her compeers. Her father believed he
had reason to doubt his paternity, though she loved him with passionate
tenderness; and after making her a yearly allowance of six hundred
francs, he disinherited her in favour of his only son, who was to be the
sole successor to his millions. Madame Couture was a distant relation of
Victorine's mother, who had died in her arms, and she had brought up the
orphan as her own daughter in a strictly pious fashion, taking her with
rigid regularity to mass and confession.

Eugene de Rastignac, the eldest son of a p