Jeanie Deans and her father in Sir Walter Scott's novel.
Perhaps a work which should chronicle the opposite course, which should
trace out all the devious courses through which a man of the world, a
man of ambitions, drags his conscience, just steering clear of crime
that he may gain his end and yet save appearances, such a chronicle
would be no less edifying and no less dramatic.

Rastignac went home. He was fascinated by Mme. de Nucingen; he seemed to
see her before him, slender and graceful as a swallow. He recalled the
intoxicating sweetness of her eyes, her fair hair, the delicate silken
tissue of the skin, beneath which it almost seemed to him that he could
see the blood coursing; the tones of her voice still exerted a spell
over him; he had forgotten nothing; his walk perhaps heated his
imagination by sending a glow of warmth through his veins. He knocked
unceremoniously at Goriot's door.

"I have seen Mme. Delphine, neighbor," said he.

"Where?"

"At the Italiens."

"Did she enjoy it?.... Just come inside," and the old man left his bed,
unlocked the door, and promptly returned again.

It was the first time that Eugene had been in Father Goriot's room, and
he could not control his feeling of amazement at the contrast between
the den in which the father lived and the costume of the daughter whom
he had just beheld. The window was curtainless, the walls were damp, in
places the varnished wall-paper had come away and gave glimpses of the
grimy yellow plaster beneath. The wretched bed on which the old man
lay boasted but one thin blanket, and a wadded quilt made out of large
pieces of Mme. Vauquer's old dresses. The floor was damp and gritty.
Opposite the window stood a chest of drawers made of rosewood, one of
the old-fashioned kind with a curving front and brass handles, shaped
like rings of twisted vine stems covered with flowers and leaves. On a
venerable piece of furniture with a wooden shelf stood a ewer and
basin and shaving apparatus. A pair of shoes stood in one corner; a
night-table by the bed had neither a door nor marble slab. There was not
a trace of a fire in the empty grate; the square walnut table with
the crossbar against which Father Goriot had crushed and twisted his
posset-dish stood near the hearth. The old man's hat was lying on a
broken-down bureau. An armchair stuffed with straw and a couple of
chairs completed the list of ramshackle furniture. From the tester of
the bed, tied to the c