ecognized among them. Where else in Paris would they have found
wholesome food in sufficient quantity at the prices she charged them,
and rooms which they were at liberty to make, if not exactly elegant or
comfortable, at any rate clean and healthy? If she had committed some
flagrant act of injustice, the victim would have borne it in silence.

Such a gathering contained, as might have been expected, the elements
out of which a complete society might be constructed. And, as in a
school, as in the world itself, there was among the eighteen men and
women who met round the dinner table a poor creature, despised by
all the others, condemned to be the butt of all their jokes. At the
beginning of Eugene de Rastignac's second twelvemonth, this figure
suddenly started out into bold relief against the background of human
forms and faces among which the law student was yet to live for
another two years to come. This laughing-stock was the retired
vermicelli-merchant, Father Goriot, upon whose face a painter, like the
historian, would have concentrated all the light in his picture.

How had it come about that the boarders regarded him with a
half-malignant contempt? Why did they subject the oldest among their
number to a kind of persecution, in which there was mingled some pity,
but no respect for his misfortunes? Had he brought it on himself by some
eccentricity or absurdity, which is less easily forgiven or forgotten
than more serious defects? The question strikes at the root of many a
social injustice. Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering
on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine
humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness. Do we not, one and
all, like to feel our strength even at the expense of some one or of
something? The poorest sample of humanity, the street arab, will pull
the bell handle at every street door in bitter weather, and scramble up
to write his name on the unsullied marble of a monument.

In the year 1813, at the age of sixty-nine or thereabouts, "Father
Goriot" had sold his business and retired--to Mme. Vauquer's boarding
house. When he first came there he had taken the rooms now occupied by
Mme. Couture; he had paid twelve hundred francs a year like a man to
whom five louis more or less was a mere trifle. For him Mme. Vauquer had
made various improvements in the three rooms destined for his use, in
consideration of a certain sum paid in advance, so it was