es in the list of shareholders in the funds, and, after a rough
calculation, was disposed to credit Goriot (worthy man) with something
like ten thousand francs a year. From that day forward Mme. Vauquer
(_nee_ de Conflans), who, as a matter of fact, had seen forty-eight
summers, though she would only own to thirty-nine of them--Mme. Vauquer
had her own ideas. Though Goriot's eyes seemed to have shrunk in their
sockets, though they were weak and watery, owing to some glandular
affection which compelled him to wipe them continually, she considered
him to be a very gentlemanly and pleasant-looking man. Moreover, the
widow saw favorable indications of character in the well-developed
calves of his legs and in his square-shaped nose, indications still
further borne out by the worthy man's full-moon countenance and look
of stupid good-nature. This, in all probability, was a strongly-build
animal, whose brains mostly consisted in a capacity for affection. His
hair, worn in _ailes de pigeon_, and duly powdered every morning by the
barber from the Ecole Polytechnique, described five points on his low
forehead, and made an elegant setting to his face. Though his manners
were somewhat boorish, he was always as neat as a new pin and he took
his snuff in a lordly way, like a man who knows that his snuff-box is
always likely to be filled with maccaboy, so that when Mme. Vauquer lay
down to rest on the day of M. Goriot's installation, her heart, like a
larded partridge, sweltered before the fire of a burning desire to shake
off the shroud of Vauquer and rise again as Goriot. She would marry
again, sell her boarding-house, give her hand to this fine flower of
citizenship, become a lady of consequence in the quarter, and ask for
subscriptions for charitable purposes; she would make little Sunday
excursions to Choisy, Soissy, Gentilly; she would have a box at the
theatre when she liked, instead of waiting for the author's tickets that
one of her boarders sometimes gave her, in July; the whole Eldorado of
a little Parisian household rose up before Mme. Vauquer in her
dreams. Nobody knew that she herself possessed forty thousand francs,
accumulated _sou by sou_, that was her secret; surely as far as money
was concerned she was a very tolerable match. "And in other respects,
I am quite his equal," she said to herself, turning as if to assure
herself of the charms of a form that the portly Sylvie found moulded in
down feathers every morning.