Old Goriot 69
Such a gathering should contain a sample of all the elements that make up society, and this one did so. Among the eighteen guests there was one poor creature despised by all the others, who acted as their butt. There always is such a laughing-stock in every school and in the world itself. At the beginning of his second year in the boarding-house this person became for Eugène de Rastignac the most outstanding figure of all those among whom he was compelled to live for another two years. This long-suffering victim was the retired vermicelli-merchant, on whose head a painter, like the teller of this story, would have made all the light of his picture fall. By what chance had the oldest lodger drawn on him this half-spiteful contempt, this half-pitying persecution, this lack of respect for misfortune? Perhaps he had laid himself open to them by those vagaries and eccentricities which the world forgives less easily than vices? These questions go to the root of many social injustices. Perhaps it is a part of human nature to pile burdens on those who make no protest because of their true humility, their weakness, or their indifference. Do we not all like to prove our strength at the expense of another person or a thing? The puniest specimen of humanity, the brat in the street, knocks at all the doors when the streets are slippery with frost, or climbs up to scribble his name on a virgin monument.
Old Goriot, who was then about sixty-nine years old, had come to live at the Maison Vauquer in 1813, when he retired from business. He had first taken the rooms now occupied by Madame Couture, and paid twelve hundred francs rent for them with the air of a man to whom five louis more or less was a mere trifle.
Old Goriot (Le Père Goriot) (Trans. Marion Ayton Crawford)
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