, the wall painted to represent an
arcade in green marble, the crumbling statue of Cupid, with the
half-effaced inscription--

'Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre,--
Il l'est, le fut, ou le doit etre.'

We have visited the wretched garden with its scanty pot-herbs and
scarecrow beds, and the green benches in the miserable arbour, where the
lodgers who are rich enough to enjoy such a luxury indulge in a cup of
coffee after dinner. The salon, with its greasy and worn-out furniture,
every bit of which is catalogued, is as familiar as our own studies. We
know the exact geography even of the larder and the cistern. We catch
the odour of the damp, close office, where Madame Vauquer lurks like a
human spider. She is the animating genius of the place, and we know the
exact outline of her figure, and every article of her dress. The
minuteness of her portrait brings out the horrors of the terrible
process by which poor Goriot gradually sinks from one step to another
of the social ladder, and simultaneously ascends from the first floor to
the garrets. We can track his steps and trace his agony. Each station of
that melancholy pilgrimage is painted, down to the minutest details,
with unflinching fidelity.

Paris, says Balzac, is an ocean; however painfully you explore it and
sound its depths, there are still virgin corners, unknown caves with
their flowers, pearls, and monsters, forgotten by literary divers. The
Maison Vauquer is one of these singular monstrosities. No one, at any
rate, can complain that Balzac has not done his best to describe and
analyse the character of the unknown social species which it contains.
It absorbs our interest by the contrast of its vulgar and intensely
commonplace exterior with the terrible passions and sufferings of which
it is the appropriate scene.

The horrors of a great metropolis, indeed, give ample room for tragedy.
Old Sandy Mackaye takes Alton Locke to the entrance of a London alley,
and tells the sentimental tailor to write poetry about that. 'Say how ye
saw the mouth o' hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry, the
pawnbroker's shop on the one side and the gin-palace at the other--two
monstrous deevils, eating up men, women, and bairns, body and soul. Look
at the jaws o' the monsters, how they open and open to swallow in
anither victim and anither. Write about that!' The poor tailor complains
that it is unpoetical, and Mackaye replies, 'Hah! is there no the heaven
above