n out of the house, and your furniture
is your life. How have I offended heaven to draw down all this trouble
upon me? And haricot beans and potatoes laid in for twenty people!
The police in my house too! We shall have to live on potatoes now, and
Christophe will have to go!"

The Savoyard, who was fast asleep, suddenly woke up at this, and said,
"Madame," questioningly.

"Poor fellow!" said Sylvie, "he is like a dog."

"In the dead season, too! Nobody is moving now. I would like to know
where the lodgers are to drop down from. It drives me distracted. And
that old witch of a Michonneau goes and takes Poiret with her! What can
she have done to make him so fond of her? He runs about after her like a
little dog."

"Lord!" said Sylvie, flinging up her head, "those old maids are up to
all sorts of tricks."

"There's that poor M. Vautrin that they made out to be a convict," the
widow went on. "Well, you know that is too much for me, Sylvie; I
can't bring myself to believe it. Such a lively man as he was, and paid
fifteen francs a month for his coffee of an evening, paid you very penny
on the nail too."

"And open-handed he was!" said Christophe.

"There is some mistake," said Sylvie.

"Why, no there isn't! he said so himself!" said Mme. Vauquer. "And to
think that all these things have happened in my house, and in a quarter
where you never see a cat go by. On my word as an honest woman, it's
like a dream. For, look here, we saw Louis XVI. meet with his mishap;
we saw the fall of the Emperor; and we saw him come back and fall again;
there was nothing out of the way in all that, but lodging-houses are not
liable to revolutions. You can do without a king, but you must eat all
the same; and so long as a decent woman, a de Conflans born and bred,
will give you all sorts of good things for dinner, nothing short of the
end of the world ought to--but there, it is the end of the world, that
is just what it is!"

"And to think that Mlle. Michonneau who made all this mischief is to
have a thousand crowns a year for it, so I hear," cried Sylvie.

"Don't speak of her, she is a wicked woman!" said Mme. Vauquer. "She
is going to the Buneaud, who charges less than cost. But the Buneaud
is capable of anything; she must have done frightful things, robbed
and murdered people in her time. _She_ ought to be put in jail for life
instead of that poor dear----"

Eugene and Goriot rang the door-bell at that moment.

"Ah! here are my