She is a beautiful woman still, but pale and sorrowful.  In spite of her income she lives on in the old house, and cold and sunless it bears a likeness to her own life.  Spending little on herself, Mme. de Bonfons gives away large sums in succouring the unfortunate; but she is very lonely—­without husband, children, or kindred.  She dwells in the world, but is not of it.

* * * * *

Old Goriot

“Old Goriot,” or, to give it its French title, “Le Pere Goriot,” is one of the series of novels to which Balzac gave the title of “The Comedy of Human Life.”  It is a comedy, mingled with lurid tragic touches, of society in the French capital in the early decades of the nineteenth century.  The leading character in this story is, of course, Old Goriot, and the passion which dominates him is that of paternity.  In the picture which Balzac draws of Parisian life, from the sordid boarding-house to the luxurious mansions of the gilded aristocracy in the days of the Bourbon Restoration, the author exhibits that tendency to over-description for which he was criticised by his contemporaries, and to dwell too much on petty details.  It may be urged, however, that it is the cumulative effect of these minute touches that is necessary for the true realisation of character.

I.—­In a Paris Boarding-House

Madame Vauquer, nee Conflans, is an elderly lady who for forty years past has kept a Parisian middle-class boarding-house, situated in the Rue Neuve Sainte-Genevieve, between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg Saint Marcel.  This pension, known under the name of the Maison Vauquer, receives men as well as women—­young men and old; but hitherto scandal has never attacked the moral principles on which the respectable establishment has been conducted.  Moreover, for more than thirty years, no young woman has been seen in the house; and if any young man ever lived there, it was because his family were able to make him only a very slender allowance.  Nevertheless, in 1819, the date at which this drama begins, a poor young girl was found there.

The Maison Vauquer is of three stories, with attic chambers, and a tiny garden at the back.  The ground floor consists of a parlour lighted by two windows looking upon the street.  Nothing could be more depressing than this chamber, which is used as the sitting-room.  It is furnished with chairs, the seats of which are covered with strips of alternate dull and shining horsehair stuff, while in the centre is a round table with a marble top.  The room exhales a smell for which there is no name, in any language, except that of odour de pension.  And yet, if you compare it with the dining-room which adjoins, you will find the sitting-room as elegant and as perfumed as a lady’s boudoir.  There misery reigns without a redeeming touch of poesie—­poverty, penetrating, concentrated, rasping.  This room