old man goriot

Chapter 2 Civilian Apartments (1)
Madame Vauquer, whose maiden name is Confranc, is already quite old, and has been running a civilian apartment in Paris for 40 years.The apartment is located between the Latin Quarter and the Saint-Marceau district, on the Rue Neuve Saint-Genevieve[1].This apartment is called the Vaugue apartment, and all guests are welcome, regardless of gender, age or age.However, in the past 30 years, I have never seen young female guests staying here; young men only live here if they have very little living expenses from their families.All the same, in 2, when the following tragedy begins, there really was a poor girl living here.In the era when sentimental literature was prevalent, the word tragedy was flooded, hitting the body and mind, so that no one really believed it, but it had to be used here.Not because, in the true sense of the words, there is anything tragic about the story, but because the reader of intra muros et extra may shed a few tears when the novel is finished.Can this work be understood outside of Paris?Doubtful.Field interviews and local color abound in the book, with features only those who live between the two heights of Montmartre and Montrouge[3] can appreciate.In this famous district, the plaster on the walls is crumbling everywhere, and the mud on the ground is black and black; there is real suffering and false joy everywhere; the hearts are so impetuous and excited, I don't know what extraordinary events can cause a moment. feeling.Yet here and there there is the misery of fragments, made great and sublime by the mixture of good and evil: faced with such sights, even the selfish and mercenary cannot help but pause and pity; but they gain The impression is fleeting, like a fruit swallowed whole.The chariot of civilization, like the divine chariot of Jagnaut's idol[4], is a little delayed by a less crushable heart, stops the wheel, crushes it at once, and goes on mightily OK.You readers will do the same, holding this book in your white hands, and saying to yourself in your soft easy chair, this book will probably entertain me a little bit.After reading Old Man Goriot's secret sad history, you still had a delicious dinner, and you blamed the author for your indifference, saying that he exaggerated and pretended to be sentimental.Hey, everyone, this tragedy is not fiction, nor is it a novel. All is true[5], so true that everyone can find some of it in themselves, or in their own hearts.

The apartment house belonged to Madame Vauquer, and was situated in the lower part of the Rue Neuve Saint-Geneviève; the grounds of that place lead down to the Rue de Bourne, and the slope is so steep that it is rare for a horse to go up and down.The side streets between Grace Valley Hospital and the Pantheon are therefore extraordinarily quiet.The two historic buildings cast a yellowish hue that changes the atmosphere around them, and the solemnity of the round dome eclipses everything below.The road here is dry, there is no mud and water in the ditch, and weeds grow along the base of the wall.Pedestrians here are unhappy, even the most optimistic.The sound of a carriage will cause a stir.The house was lifeless, and the walls gave off the smell of a prison.If a Parisian comes here by the wrong way, all he can see is apartments, schools, misery or trouble, old people lingering on their last days, and young people who should be happy have to bury their heads.There is no Parisian neighborhood more eerie, arguably more unknown.Especially the Rue Neuve Saint-Geneviève, like a bronze frame, is the perfect background for this story.In order to facilitate the understanding of the story, it is not an exaggeration to use more dark tones and dull images.It is like a tourist visiting the catacombs, step by step, the daylight fades and the voice of the guide becomes hollow.This metaphor is really apt.Who can tell, which one looks more terrifying, the heart like an ancient well or the empty head?

The apartment is facing a small garden, so that the house is at right angles to the rue Neuve Saint-Geneviève, and the depth of the house can be seen from the street.Between the house and the garden, there is a slightly concave gravel belt along the front wall, nearly two meters wide; in front of it is a parallel sand path, with geraniums and bamboos planted in large blue and white pottery pots on both sides. Peach and pomegranate trees.There is a half-sized door at the end of the path next to the street, and there is a sign above it that reads: Vaugue Apartment, and the words below: Boarding with meals, male and female guests, all welcome.During the day it is a gate with a harsh doorbell.Through the gate, one could see on the wall facing the street at the other end of the path, a shrine painted in imitation green marble, which was the work of a painter in the district, in which stood a statue of Cupid.Those who like associations may see a Parisian affair when they see the mottled glaze; this disease can be cured not far from here.There is an inscription under the base, and the blurred handwriting reflects the time when people made the shrine because of their affection, and the time when Voltaire returned to Paris in [-].The inscription reads:

Whoever you are, this is your mentor,
Was, is, or will be. [6]
When night fell, a plank door took the place of the fence.The width of the garden is exactly equal to the length of the front of the house, and there are two walls on each side: one is the street wall, and the other is the boundary wall separating it from the next door.The house next to it was covered with ivy, covering the whole house, which is considered a scene in Paris, and it is particularly eye-catching.The two walls are covered by rows of fruit trees and vines. The small and dusty fruits make Mrs. Vauquer's brain a lot every year, and become the topic of her chat with the tenants.A narrow path ran along each of the two walls, leading to the shade of a linden tree.Madame Vauquer, though of the Confran family, always referred to the linden tree as the linden-leaf tree, and it was in vain for the guests to correct her by spelling it out.Between the two wall paths is a square of artichokes lined with spindle-cut fruit trees with sorrel, lettuce, and parsley.In the shade of the linden tree stood a round green-lacquered table with chairs round it.Whenever in hot summer, when the heat is so hot that chickens can hatch, guests who can afford coffee come here to drink coffee.It was built of ashlar, with a four-story frontage and an attic above; the walls were painted that ugly yellow color that almost all houses in Paris are.There are five windows on each floor, with small panes of glass, and the shutters are rolled up and down at different heights.There are two windows on the side, and the downstairs ones are equipped with iron bars and mesh.Behind the house is a yard about twenty feet wide, where pigs, chickens, and rabbits live together in peace; there is a shed in the back, and firewood is piled up.Between the shed and the kitchen window hung a pantry with greasy sewage from the sink running beneath it.From the courtyard there was a small door on the Rue Neuve Saint-Geneviève, through which the cook took out the rubbish from the house and washed the dirty and damp place with copious amounts of water to prevent the odour.

The layout of the first floor of the house is naturally arranged according to the requirements of the apartment; the first room is the living room, which receives light from two windows facing the street, and a floor-to-ceiling door and window for people to enter and exit.The living room communicates with the dining room.Between the dining-room and the kitchen was a staircase, with steps of wood and square bricks, painted and polished.At first glance, the living room couldn't be more bleak. There are a few armchairs and ordinary chairs, covered with horsehair cloth covers in light and dark stripes; , the gold line on the cup has been blurred, and this kind of cup can still be seen everywhere today.The floor was badly laid, and the wainscoting was half a man's height; The main scenes, classic characters are painted.Between the two windows with iron bars, there is a painting that greets the guests. It is the fairy Calypso entertaining the son of Ulysses. For 7 years, the painting has drawn jokes from young guests, who thought their status was higher than they were, and made jokes about the meager meals they had to live with.The stone fireplace is always clean, which means that the fire is only lit on major festivals.A pair of vases were placed on the mantelpiece, filled with paper flowers, the paper flowers were old and covered with covers; in the center was a very ugly gray-blue marble clock.The room has an indescribable smell, maybe you should call it an apartment smell.It was stuffy, musty, foul, chilly, and wet in the nose, and went straight into the clothes; it was the smell of a meal in the house, the smell of wine and dishes, the smell of the workhouse. .The cold breath exhaled by the old and young guests, as well as their own special smell, if you can try to detect the disgusting ingredients in it, maybe this smell can be described.oh!In spite of its vulgarity, compared with the adjoining dining-room, the drawing-room seemed to you to be elegant and fragrant, like a lady's little salon.The whole dining room was clad in wainscoting, the original paint color now illegible, and the layers of dirt on it formed a hideous and eerie pattern.Against the walls stood some sticky sideboards, with chipped carafes on them, dull and dull; there were some tin plate mats, and stacks of blue-rimmed porcelain from Tournai. plate.In the corner was a small cabinet, divided into numbered compartments, for each guest's napkins, either stained or flakes of wine.There are also some unbreakable household items here, which have nowhere to be placed and are thrown here, as if the fragments of civilization have been left in the asylum for chronic illness.You'll see a barometer, with a monk coming out whenever it rains; a few unappetizing shoddy engravings in black-lacquered and gilt wood frames; a tortoiseshell clock inlaid with brass; a green stove; A greasy lamp; a long table covered with oilcloth thick enough for bored diners to scratch their names with their fingers; a few chairs with missing arms and broken legs; The straw braids that have fallen apart are indistinguishable; the holes in the dilapidated foot stove are broken, the hinges are off, and the wooden frame is as black as charcoal.These furniture are either old, cracked, decayed, shaken, or moth-eaten, or they are lacking in this or that, unusable, and crumbling; if you want to explain them one by one, you have to describe them one by one. Hasty people can forgive.The red square brick floor is full of dents due to friction and coloring.In short, there is no poetry here, a school of poverty, a kind of penny-pinching, thick, dilapidated poverty, even if there is no muddy water, it is already full of filth, although it is not riddled with holes and fragments, it is far from decay. Crash is not far away.

It was nearly seven o'clock in the morning, the brightest hour of the house; Madame Vauquer's cat appeared first, ahead of its master, jumped up on the sideboard, sniffed the bowls of milk covered in saucers, and then purred. Do its morning lessons.Soon the widow reappeared, pretentiously wearing a gauzy bonnet, with a half-worn wig peeking out from under it, and lazily pulling on a pair of sad-faced slippers.Fat faces of all ages, with a hooked nose protruding from the center, a pair of fleshy little hands, a figure as rich as a church mouse[8], and a full, trembling chest, all of which are indistinguishable from this room. The house was very suitable, and there was a sense of despondency and speculation lurking here; Madame Vauquer breathed the warm smell of the house, and did not feel uncomfortable at all.Her face is as fresh as the first autumn frost, with wrinkled eyes, and her expression can change from a dancer's smile to a creditor's frown.In short, her whole person is enough to explain the connotation of the apartment, just as the apartment can imply her person.A prison wouldn't be a prison without its boss, and it's hard for you to imagine having one without the other.The plump, pale body of the little woman was a product of this life, as typhoid fever is the result of hospital breath.Her woolen petticoat is longer than the smock, and the smock is remade from an old dress. The cotton wool bursts from the torn fabric seams. It can be said to be the epitome of the living room, dining room and small garden, and it also reveals the general appearance of the kitchen and the guests. taste.As soon as she came out, the stage was complete.Madame Vauquer is about half a century old, like all women who have gone through ups and downs.She had the dull-eyed, phony look of a procuress who could quarrel over a high price, was ready to do whatever it took to take advantage, and if there was any George or Pischgru to sell, she was determined to sell it.But she was a good fellow, so said the guests; and when they heard her sigh and cough as they did, they thought she was really poor.What was M. Vauquer like?She never talks about it.How did he go bankrupt?She always replied, bad luck.Her man had treated her badly, leaving her only eyes to cry, the house to live in, and the right not to sympathize with any misfortune, because, she said, she suffered through everything.Sylvie, the fat cook, heard the hurried steps of the hostess, and hurriedly served dinner to the tenants.

Guests who do not stay in the apartment generally only include one dinner for thirty francs a month.In the era when the story of this book begins, there are seven guests in total.The best two suites in the entire house are on the second floor.Madame Vauquer occupied the smaller flat; the other belonged to the widowed Madame Couture, whose husband was a quartermaster in the French Republic.She had a young girl with her, named Vitorine Tayfan; Mrs. Courtier treated her like a mother.The board and lodging expenses of the two ladies amounted to eighteen hundred francs a year.There are two sets of rooms on the third floor, one of which is occupied by an old man named Boalé; the other is occupied by a man in his 40s, wearing a black wig and dyed sideburns, who claims to have done wholesale business before. , called Monsieur Vautrin.There are four rooms on the fourth floor, two of which have been rented out, and the old lady Mi Xunuo lives in one; the man who used to process noodles and starch, known as Old Man Gao, lives in the other.The other two rooms are rented to short-term guests like migratory birds, and to poor college students. These people, like old man Goriot and Miss Michno, can only pay 45 francs a month for food and lodging.But Madame Vauquer did not welcome such people, and let them in only when there was no other way, because they ate too much bread.At that time, a young man lived in one of these two rooms. He came to Paris from the vicinity of Angoulême to study law. Hundred francs.His name was Eugene de Rastignac, and he was a young man who had to work hard because of poverty. He knew what his parents expected of him from an early age, and he was already planning to use his knowledge to make a good future there, and To make academics cater to the future trends of society, to take advantage of convenience and squeeze society.Without his inquisitive observations, without his superb ability to enter and exit the salons of Paris, this story would lack real color, perhaps due to his sharp mind, thanks to his desire to explore, must see through everything The whole story of the tragedy; and this tragedy is kept secret by both the maker and the sufferer.

(End of this chapter)