ming up in list slippers. Eugene listened; two men there
certainly were, he could hear their breathing. Yet there had been no
sound of opening the street door, no footsteps in the passage. Suddenly,
too, he saw a faint gleam of light on the second story; it came from M.
Vautrin's room.

"There are a good many mysteries here for a lodging-house!" he said to
himself.

He went part of the way downstairs and listened again. The rattle of
gold reached his ears. In another moment the light was put out, and
again he distinctly heard the breathing of two men, but no sound of a
door being opened or shut. The two men went downstairs, the faint sounds
growing fainter as they went.

"Who is there?" cried Mme. Vauquer out of her bedroom window.

"I, Mme. Vauquer," answered Vautrin's deep bass voice. "I am coming in."

"That is odd! Christophe drew the bolts," said Eugene, going back to his
room. "You have to sit up at night, it seems, if you really mean to know
all that is going on about you in Paris."

These incidents turned his thought from his ambitious dreams; he betook
himself to his work, but his thought wandered back to Father Goriot's
suspicious occupation; Mme. de Restaud's face swam again and again
before his eyes like a vision of a brilliant future; and at last he lay
down and slept with clenched fists. When a young man makes up his mind
that he will work all night, the chances are that seven times out of
ten he will sleep till morning. Such vigils do not begin before we are
turned twenty.

The next morning Paris was wrapped in one of the dense fogs that throw
the most punctual people out in their calculations as to the time; even
the most business-like folk fail to keep their appointments in such
weather, and ordinary mortals wake up at noon and fancy it is eight
o'clock. On this morning it was half-past nine, and Mme. Vauquer
still lay abed. Christophe was late, Sylvie was late, but the two sat
comfortably taking their coffee as usual. It was Sylvie's custom to take
the cream off the milk destined for the boarders' breakfast for her
own, and to boil the remainder for some time, so that madame should not
discover this illegal exaction.

"Sylvie," said Christophe, as he dipped a piece of toast into the
coffee, "M. Vautrin, who is not such a bad sort, all the same, had two
people come to see him again last night. If madame says anything, mind
you say nothing about it."

"Has he given you something?"

"He gave