uquer's prying eyes had seen, Goriot's name appeared in the list of
state funds for a sum representing an income of from eight to ten
thousand francs. Henceforth she denounced him to the other paying-guests
as an unprincipled old libertine, who lavished his enormous income from
the funds on unknown youthful charmers. The boarders agreed; and when
two young ladies in the most fashionable and costly attire visited him
in succession in a semi-stealthy manner, their suspicions, as they
believed, were confirmed. On one occasion, Sylvie followed Old Goriot
and his beautiful visitor to a side street, and saw that there was a
splendid carriage waiting and that she got into it. When challenged upon
the point, the old man meekly declared that they were his daughters,
though he never disclosed that their occasional visits were paid only to
wheedle money from him.

The years passed, and with the gentleness of a broken spirit, beaten
down to the docility of misery, Goriot curtailed his personal expenses,
and again removed his lodgings; this time to the third floor. His dress
turned shabbier; with each ascending grade his diamonds, gold snuff-box,
and jewels disappeared. He grew thinner in person; his face, which had
once the beaming roundness of a well-to-do middle-class gentleman,
became furrowed with wrinkles. Lines appeared in his forehead, his jaws
grew gaunt and sharp; and at the end of the fourth year he bore no
longer the likeness of his former self. He was now a wan, worn-out
septuagenarian--stupid, vacillating.

Eugene de Rastignac had ambitions, not only to win distinction as a
lawyer, but also to play a part in the aristocratic society of Paris. He
observed the influence which women exert upon society; and at his
suggestion his aunt, Madame de Marcillac, who lived with his father in
the old family chateau near Angouleme, and who had been at court in the
days before the French Revolution, wrote to one of her great relatives,
the Viscomtesse de Beauseant, one of the queens of Parisian society,
asking her to give kindly recognition to her nephew. On the strength of
that letter Eugene was invited to a ball at the mansion of the
viscomtesse in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The viscomtesse became
interested in him, especially as she was suffering from the desertion of
the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, a Portuguese nobleman who had been long her
lover, and stood sponsor for him in society. At the Faubourg, Eugene met
the Duchesse de Lan