to disinherit his daughter, and had converted all his real estate into
personalty, that he might leave it undivided to his son. Victorine's
mother had died broken-hearted in Mme. Couture's house; and the
latter, who was a near relation, had taken charge of the little orphan.
Unluckily, the widow of the commissary-general to the armies of the
Republic had nothing in the world but her jointure and her widow's
pension, and some day she might be obliged to leave the helpless,
inexperienced girl to the mercy of the world. The good soul, therefore,
took Victorine to mass every Sunday, and to confession once a fortnight,
thinking that, in any case, she would bring up her ward to be devout.
She was right; religion offered a solution of the problem of the
young girl's future. The poor child loved the father who refused to
acknowledge her. Once every year she tried to see him to deliver her
mother's message of forgiveness, but every year hitherto she had knocked
at that door in vain; her father was inexorable. Her brother, her only
means of communication, had not come to see her for four years, and had
sent her no assistance; yet she prayed to God to unseal her father's
eyes and to soften her brother's heart, and no accusations mingled with
her prayers. Mme. Couture and Mme. Vauquer exhausted the vocabulary
of abuse, and failed to find words that did justice to the banker's
iniquitous conduct; but while they heaped execrations on the
millionaire, Victorine's words were as gentle as the moan of the wounded
dove, and affection found expression even in the cry drawn from her by
pain.

Eugene de Rastignac was a thoroughly southern type; he had a fair
complexion, blue eyes, black hair. In his figure, manner, and his whole
bearing it was easy to see that he had either come of a noble family,
or that, from his earliest childhood, he had been gently bred. If he
was careful of his wardrobe, only taking last year's clothes into
daily wear, still upon occasion he could issue forth as a young man of
fashion. Ordinarily he wore a shabby coat and waistcoat, the limp black
cravat, untidily knotted, that students affect, trousers that matched
the rest of his costume, and boots that had been resoled.

Vautrin (the man of forty with the dyed whiskers) marked a transition
stage between these two young people and the others. He was the kind of
man that calls forth the remark: "He looks a jovial sort!" He had
broad shoulders, a well-developed chest