geais, from whom he learned the history of Old
Goriot.

"During the Revolution," said the duchesse, "Goriot was a flour and
vermicelli merchant, and, being president of his section, was behind the
scenes. When a great scarcity of food was at hand he made his fortune by
selling his goods for ten times what they cost him. He had but one
passion; he loved his daughters, and by endowing each of them with a dot
of eight hundred thousand francs, he married the eldest, Anastasie, to
the Count de Restaud, and the youngest, Delphine, to the Baron de
Nucingen, a rich German financier. During the Empire, his daughters
sometimes asked their father to visit them; but after the Restoration
the old man became an annoyance to his sons-in-law. He saw that his
daughters were ashamed of him; he made the sacrifice which only a father
can, and banished himself from their homes. There is," continued the
duchesse, "something in these Goriot sisters even more shocking than
their neglect of their father, for whose death they wish. I mean their
rivalry to each other. Restaud is of ancient family; his wife has been
adopted by his relatives and presented at court. But the rich sister,
the beautiful Madame Delphine de Nucingen, is dying with envy, the
victim of jealousy. She is a hundred leagues lower in society than her
sister. They renounce each other as they both renounced their father.
Madame de Nucingen would lap up all the mud between the Rue Saint-Lazare
and the Rue de Crenelle to gain admission to my salon." What the
duchesse did not reveal was that Anastasie had a lover, Count Maxime de
Trailles, a gambler and a duellist. To pay the gambling losses of this
unscrupulous lover, to the extent of two hundred thousand francs, the
Countess de Restaud induced Old Goriot to sell out of the funds nearly
all that remained of his great fortune, and give the proceeds to her.

Returning to his lodgings from a ball in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,
Eugene saw a light in Goriot's room; and, without being noticed, watched
the old man laboriously twisting two pieces of silver plate--his
precious dish and porringer--into one lump.

"He must be mad," thought the student.

"The poor child!" groaned Goriot.

The next morning Goriot visited a silversmith, and the Countess de
Restaud received the money to redeem a note of hand which she had given
to a moneylender on behalf of her lover.

"Old Goriot is sublime," muttered Eugene when he heard of the
transacti