tion, but we seldom stop in the
steep, downward slope of hatred. Still, M. Goriot was a lodger, and
the widow's wounded self-love could not vent itself in an explosion of
wrath; like a monk harassed by the prior of his convent, she was forced
to stifle her sighs of disappointment, and to gulp down her craving for
revenge. Little minds find gratification for their feelings, benevolent
or otherwise, by a constant exercise of petty ingenuity. The widow
employed her woman's malice to devise a system of covert persecution.
She began by a course of retrenchment--various luxuries which had found
their way to the table appeared there no more.

"No more gherkins, no more anchovies; they have made a fool of me!" she
said to Sylvie one morning, and they returned to the old bill of fare.

The thrifty frugality necessary to those who mean to make their way in
the world had become an inveterate habit of life with M. Goriot. Soup,
boiled beef, and a dish of vegetables had been, and always would be, the
dinner he liked best, so Mme. Vauquer found it very difficult to annoy
a boarder whose tastes were so simple. He was proof against her malice,
and in desperation she spoke to him and of him slightingly before the
other lodgers, who began to amuse themselves at his expense, and so
gratified her desire for revenge.

Towards the end of the first year the widow's suspicions had reached
such a pitch that she began to wonder how it was that a retired merchant
with a secure income of seven or eight thousand livres, the owner of
such magnificent plate and jewelry handsome enough for a kept mistress,
should be living in her house. Why should he devote so small a
proportion of his money to his expenses? Until the first year was nearly
at an end, Goriot had dined out once or twice every week, but these
occasions came less frequently, and at last he was scarcely absent from
the dinner-table twice a month. It was hardly expected that Mme. Vauquer
should regard the increased regularity of her boarder's habits with
complacency, when those little excursions of his had been so much to her
interest. She attributed the change not so much to a gradual diminution
of fortune as to a spiteful wish to annoy his hostess. It is one of the
most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with
its own malignant pettiness.

Unluckily, towards the end of the second year, M. Goriot's conduct gave
some color to the idle talk about him. He asked Mm