Vautrin

“ Saint-Charles (aside) A worn out fox is still dangerous. (Aloud) Excuse me, baron, for disturbing you, while yet unknown to you.
Vautrin
I can guess what your business is.
Saint-Charles (aside)
Indeed?
Vautrin You are an architect, and have a proposal to make to me; but I have already received most excellent offers.
Saint-Charles
Excuse me, your Dutchman must have mispronounced my name. I am the
Chevalier de Saint-Charles.
Vautrin (raising his spectacles)
Let me see—we are old acquaintances. You were at the Congress of
Vienna, and then bore the name of Count of Gorcum—a fine name! ”

“ Vautrin Excuse me, your grace, for having forced my way in, but (whispering so as not to be overheard) we have both of us been victimized by an abuse of confidence—allow me to say a word or two to you alone.
The Duke (with a sign to his son to leave them)
Say on, sir.
Vautrin In these days success is in the power of those alone who exert themselves to obtain office, and this form of ambition pervades all classes. Every man in France desires to be a colonel, and it is difficult to see where the privates are to come from. ”

“ Couture, Mlle. Victorine, Vautrin, and Father Goriot, Rastignac watched as though in a dream how Mme. Vauquer busied herself by collecting the bottles, and drained the remainder of the wine out of each to fill others.
"Oh! how uproarious they are! what a thing it is to be young!" said the widow.
These were the last words that Eugene heard and understood.
"There is no one like M. Vautrin for a bit of fun like this," said Sylvie. "There, just hark at Christophe, he is snoring like a top." ”

“ The world of Paris was like an ocean of mud for him just then; and it seemed that whoever set foot in that black mire must needs sink into it up to the chin.
"Their crimes are paltry," said Eugene to himself. "Vautrin was greater."
He had seen society in its three great phases—Obedience, Struggle, and Revolt; the Family, the World, and Vautrin; and he hesitated in his choice. Obedience was dull, Revolt impossible, Struggle hazardous. ”

“ But before she went, Victorine, with her eyes full of tears, gave Eugene a glance that said—"How little I thought that our happiness should cost me tears!"
"Dear me, you are a prophet, M. Vautrin," said Mme. Vauquer.
"I am all sorts of things," said Vautrin.
"Queer, isn't it?" said Mme. Vauquer, stringing together a succession of commonplaces suited to the occasion. "Death takes us off without asking us about it. The young often go before the old. ”

“ At a word from his old chum Vautrin he will pick a quarrel with a scamp that will not send so much as five francs to his sister, poor girl, and” (here Vautrin rose to his feet and stood like a fencing-master about to lunge) —“turn him off into the dark!” he added.
“How frightful!” said Eugene. “You do not really mean it? M. Vautrin, you are joking!”
“There! there! Keep cool!” said the other. “Don’t behave like a baby. But if you find any amusement in it, be indignant, flare up! Say that I am a scoundrel, a rascal, a rogue, a bandit; but do not call me a blackleg nor a spy! ”

“ He will be a prince. And I picked him up when he was begging on the high road, and ready to become a drummer-boy; in his twelfth year he had neither name nor family; he came from Sardinia, where he must have got into some trouble, for he was a fugitive from justice.
Buteux
Oh, now that we know his antecedents and his social position—
Vautrin
Be off to your lodge!
Buteux
Little Nini, daughter of Giroflee is there—
Vautrin
She may let a spy pass in.
Buteux She! She is a little cat to whom it is not necessary to point out the stool-pigeons. ”

“ You will scarcely be in time to say good-bye to him! he is unconscious."
"Poor young fellow!" exclaimed Vautrin. "How can people brawl when they have a certain income of thirty thousand livres? Young people have bad manners, and that is a fact."
"Sir!" cried Eugene.
"Well, what then, you big baby!" said Vautrin, swallowing down his coffee imperturbably, an operation which Mlle. Michonneau watched with such close attention that she had no emotion to spare for the amazing news that had struck the others dumb with amazement. "Are there not duels every morning in Paris?" added Vautrin. ”

“ Vautrin We will cake care of your honor! Is it not I who have fostered your sense of honor? Have I ever compromised it?
Raoul
You must explain to me—
Vautrin
I will explain nothing.
Raoul
Nothing?
Vautrin Did you not say, "By any possible means"? When Inez is once yours, does it matter what I have done, or who I am? You will take Inez away; you will travel. The Christoval family will protect the Prince of Arjos. (To Lafouraille) Put some bottles of champagne on ice; your master is to be married, he bids farewell to bachelor life. His friends are invited. ”

“ Vautrin gave a side glance at them from time to time, and watched the change that came over their faces, choosing the moment when their eyes drooped and seemed about to close, to bend over Rastignac and to say in his ear:—
"My little lad, you are not quite shrewd enough to outwit Papa Vautrin yet, and he is too fond of you to let you make a mess of your affairs. When I have made up my mind to do a thing, no one short of Providence can put me off. Aha! we were for going round to warn old Taillefer, telling tales out of school! ”

“ Balzac's first play was Vautrin, and Vautrin appears as the name of the most astonishing and most original character which Balzac has created and introduced in the five or six greatest novels of the Comedy. So transcendent, super-human and satanic is Vautrin, Herrera, or Jacques Collin, as he is indifferently called, that a French critic has interpreted this personage as a mere allegorical embodiment of the seductions of Parisian life, as they exist side by side with the potency and resourcefulness of crime in the French metropolis. ”

“ Old Jacques Collin—Botheration! There I trip again, I cannot reconcile myself to this common name—I mean Monsieur Vautrin, will arrange all that. In a little time diamonds and dowry will take an airing, and they have need of it; to think of them as always in the same strong boxes! 'Tis against the laws of circulation. What a joker he is!—He sets you up as a young man of means. He is so kind, he talks so finely, the heiress comes in, the trick is done, and we all cry shares! The money will have been well earned. You see we have been here six months. Haven't we put on the look of idiots! ”

“ He altered the sleeping student's position, settled his head more comfortably on the back of his chair, kissed him warmly on the forehead, and began to sing:
"Sleep, little darlings; I watch while you slumber." "I am afraid he may be ill," said Victorine.
"Then stop and take care of him," returned Vautrin. "'Tis your duty as a meek and obedient wife," he whispered in her ear. "The young fellow worships you, and you will be his little wife—there's your fortune for you. ”

“ Raoul (at the other side of the stage) . Raoul (aside) Honor bids me to speak out, gratitude to keep silence; well, I accept my role of happy man, until he is out of danger; but I will write this evening, and Inez shall learn who I am. Vautrin, after such a sacrifice, I may cry quits with you; all ties between us are severed. I will seek, I care not where, a soldier's death.
Inez (approaching, after gazing at him) My father and yours are friends; they consent to our marriage; we make love to each other as if they were opposed to it, and you seem lost in thought, and almost sad! ”

“ Here we find Vautrin in a favorite situation. He becomes the powerful protector of an unknown young man—much as he picked up Lucien de Rubempre in Illusions Perdues, and attempted to aid Rastignac in Le Pere Goriot—and devotes all his sinister craft to his protege's material interests. The playwright is careful to preserve some degree of the young man's self-respect. Chance favors the two by providing the unknown hero with worthy parents; and Vautrin's schemes unexpectedly work out for good. ”

“ We must leave off entangling ourselves in the web of falsehoods more or less agreeable; we must speak the truth.
Saint-Charles
I will pay you for it.
Vautrin I will give it you for nothing. You are an infamous cur, my friend. Your name is Charles Blondet; you were steward in the household of De Langeac; twice have you bought the betrayal of the viscount, and never have you paid the money—it is shameful! You owe eighty thousand francs to one of my footmen. You caused the viscount to be shot at Mortagne in order that you might appropriate the property entrusted to you by the family. ”

“ Vautrin flung down a franc piece on the table.
“Your credit is good,” he remarked, eyeing the student, and Rastignac was forced to thank him, though, since the sharp encounter of wits at dinner that day, after Eugene came in from calling on Mme. de Beauseant, he had made up his mind that Vautrin was insufferable. For a week, in fact, they had both kept silence in each other’s presence, and watched each other. The student tried in vain to account to himself for this attitude.
An idea, of course, gains in force by the energy with which it is expressed ”

“ I happened to see him by accident."
"It was dear to him as his own life," answered the widow.
"There! you see how infatuated the old fellow is!" cried Vautrin. "The woman yonder can coax the soul out of him."
The student went up to his room. Vautrin went out, and a few moments later Mme. Couture and Victorine drove away in a cab which Sylvie had called for them. Poiret gave his arm to Mlle. Michonneau, and they went together to spend the two sunniest hours of the day in the Jardin des Plantes. ”

“ Is the reckless fellow favored by her?
The Duchess
Preferred to all the rest.
Vautrin Well, open this letter, and read it, madame; and you will see that I have received full authority from Amoagos and Christoval to conclude this marriage.
The Duchess
Oh, let me call in Inez, sir. (Exit.)
SCENE FOURTH. Vautrin (alone) The major-domo is on my side, the genuine deeds, if he comes upon them, will be handed to me. Raoul is too proud to return to this house; besides that, he has promised me to wait. I am thus master of the situation; Raoul, when once he is a prince, will not lack ancestors ”

“ The house is comfortable, it is lordly in its abundance; it is proud to be the temporary abode of a Rastignac; but, after all, it is in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, and luxury would be out of place here, where we only aim at the purely patriarchalorama. If you mean to cut a figure in Paris, my young friend," Vautrin continued, with half-paternal jocularity, "you must have three horses, a tilbury for the mornings, and a closed carriage for the evening; you should spend altogether about nine thousand francs on your stables. ”

“ We are better than he, for we don't allow that junction of forces."
"And yet," said la Peyrade, "Vautrin, or, I should say, Jacques Collin, the famous chief of the detective police—"
"Yes, yes! but that's in the lower ranks," replied Corentin, resuming his walk; "there's always a muddy place somewhere. Still, don't be mistaken even in that. Vautrin is a man of genius, but his passions, like those of your uncle, dragged him down. But go up higher (for there lies the whole question, namely, the rung of the ladder on which a man has wits enough to perch) . ”

“ I mean to work nobly and with a single heart. I will work day and night; I will owe my fortune to nothing but my own exertions. It may be the slowest of all roads to success, but I shall lay my head on the pillow at night untroubled by evil thoughts. Is there a greater thing than this—to look back over your life and know that it is stainless as a lily? I and my life are like a young man and his betrothed. Vautrin has put before me all that comes after ten years of marriage. The devil! my head is swimming. I do not want to think at all; the heart is a sure guide. ”

“ The plot of the play is extraordinary and impossible. Vautrin, the Napoleon among convicts, who appears in several of Balzac's novels, is the hero; he had declared war against society, and the scene of the drama, with Vautrin as the principal figure, passes in the aristocratic precincts of the Faubourg St. Germain. The theatre was crowded for the performance, and the first three acts, though received coldly, went off without interruption. ”

“ She is trembling like a leaf,” Mme. Couture went on, as she seated herself before the fire and held the steaming soles of her boots to the blaze.
“Warm yourself, Victorine,” said Mme. Vauquer.
“It is quite right and proper, mademoiselle, to pray to Heaven to soften your father’s heart,” said Vautrin, as he drew a chair nearer to the orphan girl; “but that is not enough. What you want is a friend who will give the monster a piece of his mind; a barbarian that has three millions (so they say) , and will not give you a dowry; and a pretty girl needs a dowry nowadays.” ”

“ Vauquer, addressing Vautrin and the rest of the circle. “He is ruining himself for those women, that is plain.”
“Nothing will ever make me believe that that beautiful Comtesse de Restaud is anything to Father Goriot,” cried the student.
“Well, and if you don’t,” broke in Vautrin, “we are not set on convincing you. You are too young to know Paris thoroughly yet; later on you will find out that there are what we call men with a passion——”
Mlle. Michonneau gave Vautrin a quick glance at these words. ”

“ The next morning, at breakfast, he related the story of his success for the benefit of Father Goriot and the lodgers. Vautrin began to smile in a diabolical fashion.
“And do you suppose,” cried that cold-blooded logician, “that a young man of fashion can live here in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the Maison Vauquer—an exceedingly respectable boarding-house in every way, I grant you, but an establishment that, none the less, falls short of being fashionable? ”