ill a child! Those two lines are asymptotes, and will
never meet.

"You are very dull, my lord Marquis," said Vautrin, with one of the
shrewd glances that seem to read the innermost secrets of another mind.

"I am not in the humor to stand jokes from people who call me 'my lord
Marquis,'" answered Eugene. "A marquis here in Paris, if he is not the
veriest sham, ought to have a hundred thousand livres a year at least;
and a lodger in the Maison Vauquer is not exactly Fortune's favorite."

Vautrin's glance at Rastignac was half-paternal, half-contemptuous.
"Puppy!" it seemed to say; "I should make one mouthful of him!" Then he
answered:

"You are in a bad humor; perhaps your visit to the beautiful Comtesse de
Restaud was not a success."

"She has shut her door against me because I told her that her father
dined at our table," cried Rastignac.

Glances were exchanged all round the room; Father Goriot looked down.

"You have sent some snuff into my eye," he said to his neighbor, turning
a little aside to rub his hand over his face.

"Any one who molests Father Goriot will have henceforward to reckon with
me," said Eugene, looking at the old man's neighbor; "he is worth all
the rest of us put together.--I am not speaking of the ladies," he
added, turning in the direction of Mlle. Taillefer.

Eugene's remarks produced a sensation, and his tone silenced the
dinner-table. Vautrin alone spoke. "If you are going to champion Father
Goriot, and set up for his responsible editor into the bargain, you
had need be a crack shot and know how to handle the foils," he said,
banteringly.

"So I intend," said Eugene.

"Then you are taking the field to-day?"

"Perhaps," Rastignac answered. "But I owe no account of myself to any
one, especially as I do not try to find out what other people do of a
night."

Vautrin looked askance at Rastignac.

"If you do not mean to be deceived by the puppets, my boy, you must
go behind and see the whole show, and not peep through holes in the
curtain. That is enough," he added, seeing that Eugene was about to fly
into a passion. "We can have a little talk whenever you like."

There was a general feeling of gloom and constraint. Father Goriot was
so deeply dejected by the student's remark that he did not notice the
change in the disposition of his fellow-lodgers, nor know that he had
met with a champion capable of putting an end to the persecution.

"Then, M. Goriot sitting there is the fa