Old Man Goriot (Penguin Classics)

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘They’re going to fight a duel,’ said Mademoiselle Michonneau, with an air of indifference.

  ‘Fight a duel!’ repeated Poiret.

  ‘Surely not,’ replied Madame Vauquer, playing with her pile of écus.

  ‘There they are, walking under the lime trees,’ cried Mademoiselle Victorine, standing up to look into the garden. ‘But the poor young man is surely in the right.’

  ‘Let us go upstairs, dear girl,’ said Madame Couture; ‘these matters do not concern us.’

  When Madame Couture and Victorine stood up, they found their way blocked by big Sylvie who had appeared at the door.

  ‘What’s to do?’ she cried. ‘Monsieur Vautrin said to Monsieur Eugène: “Let’s settle this once and for all!” then he led him outside by the arm, and now they’re trampling all over the artichokes.’

  At this point Vautrin appeared. ‘Ma Vauquer,’ he said with a smile, ‘don’t be alarmed; I’m just going to give my pistols an airing under the lime trees.’

  ‘Oh! Monsieur,’ said Victorine, clasping her hands together; ‘why do you want to kill Monsieur Eugène?’

  Vautrin took two steps back and stared at Victorine. ‘Now here’s an interesting development!’ he exclaimed in a mocking voice, which made the poor girl blush. ‘A charming young man, is he not?’ he continued. ‘You’ve given me an idea. I’ll make you both happy, my pretty child.’

  Madame Couture took her ward by the arm and steered her out, saying in her ear: ‘Why Victorine, I really cannot make you out this morning.’

  ‘I won’t have any pistols fired in my house,’ said Madame Vauquer. ‘Don’t you go frightening the neighbours and bringing the police round at this time of day!’

  ‘Now, now, easy does it, Ma Vauquer,’ replied Vautrin; ‘nothing to worry about, it’s just a little shooting party.’

  He rejoined Rastignac and took him by the arm familiarly: ‘Even after I’ve shown you that I can put a bullet in an ace of spades five times in a row at thirty-five paces,’ he told him, ‘you’ll still be raring to go. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve lost your cool, and at this rate you’re going to get yourself killed like an idiot.’

  ‘So you’re backing down,’ said Eugène.

  ‘Don’t be so tiresome,’ replied Vautrin. ‘It’s mild out this morning, come and sit down with me,’ he said, gesturing towards the green-painted garden chairs. ‘No one will hear us there. I’ve got a few things to say to you. You’re a decent young man and I mean you no harm. I like you, or my name isn’t Cat-o’- … (blast it!) … Vautrin. I’ll tell you why I like you. Why, I know you as well as if I’d made you, and I’m going to prove it. Put your swag here,’ he went on, pointing at the round table.

  Rastignac put his money on the table and sat down, his curiosity powerfully aroused by Vautrin’s abrupt change in manner: after threatening to kill him, he was now posing as his protector.

  ‘You want to know who I am, what I’ve done and what I do,’ continued Vautrin. ‘You want to know too much, my young friend. Now, now, hold your horses. There’s more! I’ve had my share of misfortune. Listen to me first and then you can have your say. Here’s my life in a nutshell. Who am I? Vautrin. What do I do? Whatever I like. Say no more. You want to know what kind of a man I am? I’m good to those who are good to me or whose heart speaks to mine. I’ll let them get away with anything, they can kick me in the shins without so much as a Watch it! crossing my lips. But blow me if I’m not as mean as the devil towards those who give me trouble or who let me down. And it’s as well for you to know that I’ll kill a man as easily as that!’ he said, spitting on the ground. ‘But I make sure I kill him cleanly and only when he leaves me no choice. I’m what you might call an artist. I’ve read the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini,116 in Italian at that, although you might not think it to look at me! It was from him, the finest of fellows, that I learned to imitate Providence, which picks us off without rhyme or reason, and to love beauty wherever it is found. After all, what finer game is there than to take on the rest of mankind and have luck on your side? I’ve thought long and hard about the constitution of your present social disorder. My dear boy, a duel is child’s play, sheer folly. When one of two living men must be eliminated, only an idiot allows chance to decide which it will be. A duel? Heads or tails! That’s all there is to it. I can shoot five bullets in a row through the same hole in an ace of spades, and I can do that at thirty-five paces! With that little talent under your belt, you might feel pretty certain of killing your man. Well, I fired at twenty paces and missed mine. The knave had never touched a pistol in his life. Look!’ said this extraordinary man, unfastening his waistcoat and baring his chest – as furry as a bear’s back, but with a strange tawny streak that inspired both repulsion and awe – ‘that greenhorn turned my hair red,’ he added, pressing Rastignac’s finger against a hole in his chest. ‘But in those days I was a child, I was your age: twenty-one. I still had something to believe in then, in the love of a woman, a heap of nonsense you’ll soon be up to the neck in. We were ready to fight each other just now, weren’t we? You might have killed me. Say I was six foot under, where would you be? You’d have to clear out, go to Switzerland, squander Daddy’s money, the little he has. Let me shed some light on your position, from the vantage point of a man who, having studied the world, has seen that only two courses of action are possible: slavish obedience or revolt. I obey nothing, is that clear? Do you know what you need, my young friend, at the rate you’re going? A million, and fast. Without it, however handsome you are, you may as well hang around in the nets at Saint-Cloud117 waiting to see if the Supreme Being shows up. I’ll give you that million.’ He paused to look at Eugène. ‘A-ha! That’s made you see your dear uncle Vautrin in a new light. I say the magic word and you look like a girl with “until tonight” ringing in her ears, preening herself and licking her lips like the cat that’s got the cream. That’s the spirit! Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Here’s what’s in it for you, young man. At home, you have Papa, Mama, Great-aunt, two sisters (eighteen and sixteen), two little brothers (fifteen and ten). That’s the crew inspected. Aunty gives your sisters some instruction. The parish priest comes to teach your brothers Latin. The family eats more mashed chestnuts than white bread, Papa darns his trousers, Mama is lucky if she has a different dress for summer and winter, your sisters scrape by the best they can. I know exactly what it’s like, I’ve spent some time in the Midi.118 That’s how things stand at home, if they’re sending you twelve hundred francs a year, and if your little estate only brings in three thousand francs. You have a cook and a manservant; Papa is a baron so one must keep up appearances. As for yourself, you are ambitious, you have an ally in the de Beauséants and you walk everywhere on foot; you want to be wealthy and you haven’t a sou; you eat Ma Vauquer’s messes and you have a taste for the fine dining of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, you sleep on a pallet and you want a mansion! I don’t condemn you for your yearnings. Not everyone is lucky enough to have ambition, my sweet. Ask any woman what kind of man she wants – an ambitious one. An ambitious man’s blood is richer in iron, his constitution stronger, his heart warmer than that of other men. And because a woman knows she’s happiest and most beautiful when her influence is at its strongest, she will always favour a man whose power is great, even if she risks being crushed by him. I’ve drawn up this inventory of your desires in order to ask you a question. Here it comes. You’re as hungry as a wolf, your fangs are newly cut and sharp; how do you catch a little something for the pot? First, you have to chew your way through the Code:119 it’s far from entertaining and you learn nothing from it, but it has to be done. So be it. You turn yourself into a lawyer with a view to becoming a magistrate, sending down poor devils worth far more than you, with T for thief120 branded on their shoulders, merely to prove to the rich that they can sleep peacefully in their beds. It’s not much of a lark, and what’s more, it takes for ever. First, two years spent kicking your heels in Paris, eyeing up – but never
touching – the yum-yums you’re partial to. It wears you out, to be always craving without ever satisfying your desires. If you were pasty and of a sluggish disposition you’d have nothing to fear; but you have the raging blood of a lion and an appetite big enough to get you into twenty scrapes a day. Let’s assume that you put yourself through this torture, the most horrible of all those to be seen in the good Lord’s hell. Let’s suppose that you’re sensible, that you drink milk and write elegies; however noble you are, after enough tedium and privation to make you foam at the mouth, you’ll have no option but to start right at the bottom, as assistant district attorney to some crook, in some dump of a town, where the government will throw you a salary of a thousand francs, as one might throw soup to a butcher’s dog. Bark at thieves, defend the rich, send the stout-hearted to the guillotine. You’ll have no alternative! Unless you have friends in high places you’ll be left to rot in your provincial tribunal. At thirty or so, you’ll be a judge on twelve hundred francs a year, if you haven’t thrown in the wig by then. When you hit forty, you’ll marry a miller’s daughter with an annual income of six thousand livres. No thank you. With help from the right friends, you’ll be appointed a Crown Prosecutor, with a salary of a thousand écus, and you’ll marry the mayor’s daughter. If you stoop to one of those despicable little political scams, like reading Villèle on a ballot paper instead of Manuel121 (it rhymes, and that’s good enough for your conscience), at forty you’ll be a senior Crown Prosecutor and you might even have your own constituency. Note, my dear child, that you will have besmirched your precious conscience, that you will have had twenty years of tedium, of miserable obsurity, and that your sisters will be on the shelf.122 What’s more, allow me to point out that there are only twenty Crown Prosecutors in the whole of France and that there are some twenty thousand of you aspiring to that rank, including any number of ruthless scoundrels who would sell their families to crawl up a rung. Should that profession not be to your taste, let’s take a look at another. Would the Baron de Rastignac care to become a lawyer? Oh! Delightful. You’re required to live in poverty for ten years, with costs of a thousand francs a month, own a library and chambers, mingle in high society, kiss a solicitor’s robes to get briefs, sweep the courts clean with your tongue. If this profession took you anywhere, I wouldn’t say no; but can you find me five lawyers in Paris who, at the age of fifty, earn over fifty thousand francs a year? Hah! I’d rather be a corsair than belittle my soul that way. So – where will you get your écus? It’s not easy. You resort to a woman’s dowry. You want to marry? You’ll hang a millstone around your neck; and then, if you marry for money, what will become of your honourable feelings, your nobility! You may as well start your revolt against human conventions today. It would mean grovelling like a worm before a woman, kissing her mother’s feet, committing acts of servility at which even a sow would turn up its snout: ugh! If only that brought you happiness. But you’ll feel as low as the stones that line the gutters with a woman you’ve married for those reasons. It’s a far better thing to wage war against men than bicker with your wife. You are at life’s crossroads, young man; now you must make your choice. You have already chosen: you went to call on your cousin Madame de Beauséant and had a taste of luxury there. You called on Madame de Restaud, old man Goriot’s daughter, and breathed in the scent of a Parisian woman. On that day you came back here with one word written on your forehead, and I read it, clear as day: Succeed! Succeed whatever the cost. “Bravo!” I said to myself, “now here’s a man after my own heart.” You had to have

  money. Where could you get it from? You bled your sisters dry. All brothers sharp their sisters to a greater or lesser degree. The fifteen hundred francs you have extracted – God knows how! – from a region that yields more chestnuts than hundred-sou coins, will vanish like soldiers gone a-pillaging. What will you do then? Will you work? Work, as you define it at the moment, will earn you, for your old age, an apartment at Ma Vauquer’s next door to men of the ilk of Poiret. So how can you get rich quickly? That’s the problem that fifty thousand young men, all in the same position as you, are currently trying to solve. You are one unit of that total. Now work out just how much effort you’ll have to make, how fierce the struggle will be. Given that fifty thousand good positions don’t exist, you’ll be forced to eat each other like spiders in a jam-jar. Do you know how a man makes it to the top of the social pile? Through the brilliance of his genius or the skill of his corruption. You must either plough through this mass of men like a cannonball or creep among them like the plague. Honesty will get you nowhere. They’ll yield to genius – they’ll detest it, they’ll try to malign it because it keeps taking without giving back – but they’ll yield if it prevails; in a word, they’ll worship it on their knees when they’ve failed to bury it in mud. Corruption is thick on the ground, talent rare. Which means that corruption is the weapon of mediocrity and you’ll feel the tip of its blade wherever you go. You’ll see women whose husbands are paid six thousand francs all told and who spend more than ten thousand francs on their dress. You’ll see employees on twelve hundred francs buying up land. You’ll see women prostitute themselves to climb into the carriage of the son of some French peer who can drive in the middle lane at Longchamp.123 You’ve seen that silly goose of an old man Goriot forced to pay a bill of exchange endorsed by his daughter, whose husband is worth fifty thousand livres a year. I defy you to take two steps in Paris without coming across all kinds of machinations. I will wager you on my life that you’ll be fed a dish of wasp-infested lies at the home of the first woman who takes your fancy, however rich, young and beautiful she is. They are all bridled by laws and at loggerheads with their husbands over everything. We’d be here all day if I made

  it my business to explain the shenanigans that go on over lovers, fripperies, children, the domestics or vanity – rarely virtue, you can be sure of that. Which makes the honest man the common enemy. So, what kind of a man is honest? In Paris, the honest man keeps his own counsel and refuses to share. I’m not talking about those poor slaves who do all the work everywhere without ever being rewarded for their effort; I call them the Brotherhood of the Good Lord’s Holy Shoes. In them you see virtue in the full bloom of its stupidity, but also its poverty. I can already see the terrible look on the faces of all those poor people if God is shabby enough to renege on the Last Judgement. So if you want to get rich quickly, you either have to be rich to start with or appear to be so. To make your fortune in this city, you need to play for high stakes; otherwise you’re going after chickenfeed, and may as well sign off Your humble servant etc. Among the hundred professions you might pursue, if there are ten men who succeed overnight, the public calls them thieves. Draw your own conclusions. That’s life as it really is. It’s no prettier than the kitchen, it smells just as foul, and if you want to cook something up, you have to get your hands dirty; just master the art of scrubbing them clean afterwards: that’s what morality boils down to, today. If I’m talking about the world in this way, it’s because it has given me cause to do so, I know it well. You think I blame it? Not in the slightest. Things have always been like this. Moralizing won’t change them. Man is flawed. He is, at times, more or less of a hypocrite, making fools claim he’s moral or immoral. I don’t point the finger at the Rich in favour of the People: man is the same at the top, the bottom and in-between. For every million sheep, you’ll find ten likely lads124 who set themselves above everything, even the law: I count myself among them. If you’re a better man, walk on the straight path with your head held high. But you’ll have to fight envy, slander, mediocrity, the whole world. Napoleon himself ran foul of a war minister by the name of Aubry,125 who almost had him sent to the colonies. Sound your own depths! See if you can get up each day with more will-power than you had the night before. Given the circumstances, I’m going to make you an offer that no one could refuse. Listen carefully. I have a plan, you see. My plan is to go and live the life of a patriarch on some vast estate, a hundred thousand ac
res or so, in the United States, in the South. I want to be a planter, own slaves, earn a few easy million selling my cattle, my tobacco, my trees, while living like a king, doing as I please, leading a life we can barely imagine here, cowering in our plaster burrows. I’m a great poet. My poetry isn’t the kind you write down: it’s made of deeds and feelings. At the moment I possess fifty thousand francs, which would barely get me forty Negroes. I need two hundred thousand francs, because I want two hundred Negroes to satisfy my appetite for the patriarchal life. Negroes, you see, are grown-up children and you can do whatever you like with them, without some nosy Crown Prosecutor turning up and holding you to account.126 With this black capital, I’ll have made three or four million in the space of ten years. If I make my fortune, no one will stop me and ask: “Who are you?” I’ll be Mister Four-Million, citizen of the United States of America. I’ll be fifty, still in good shape and I’ll have my fun. In a word, if I find you a dowry worth a million, will you give me two hundred thousand francs? A 20 per cent commission, what do you say! Is that too dear? You’ll make your little wife love you. Once you’re married, you’ll start showing signs of anxiety, remorse, you’ll go round with a hangdog air for a fortnight. One night, after a few preliminaries, calling your wife “My Love!”, you’ll finally confess between one kiss and the next that you’re in debt to the tune of two hundred thousand francs. The most distinguished young men act out this little farce every day. A young woman never refuses her purse to the man who has stolen her heart. You can’t lose. You’ll find a way to win your two hundred thousand francs back through some deal or other. With your money, and your brain, you’ll build up a fortune as vast as any you might wish for. Ergo, in the space of six months, you’ll have brought happiness to yourself, an attractive woman and your Uncle Vautrin, not to mention your family, who blow on their fingers in winter for want of wood for the fire. Don’t be surprised by what I’m suggesting, or asking! Out of sixty fashionable weddings taking place in Paris, there are forty-seven