IV. CAT-O’-NINE-LIVES

162. Rue de Jérusalem: In other words, the Préfecture de Police (police headquarters), situated on the Ile de la Cité, not far from the Palais de Justice.

163. Caliph of Baghdad: In this comic opera by François-Adrien Boieldieu (first performed in 1800), the caliph, Isaoun, assumes the name ‘Il Bondocani’, which has a kind of magic power, so that he can roam the streets freely at night in disguise.

164. the penal colony in Toulon: This explains Vautrin’s earlier oblique allusion (note 118), to having ‘spent some time in the Midi’.

165. Assize Court: In France, the court dealing with major offences or felonies (crimes), such as murder and rape, and, until the abolition of capital punishment in 1981, those which incurred a death sentence.

166. Coignard Affair: Pierre Coignard was an escaped convict who rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel by pretending to be the émigré Comte de Sainte-Hélène. He was arrested in 1819.

167. the Sûreté: ‘The French police department of criminal investigation’ (OED).

168. Ragoulleau … Morin: A contemporary case of attempted murder. Madame Morin was sentenced to twenty years of hard labour in 1812 for having tried to kill Monsieur Ragoulleau.

169. Argus eyes: Argus Panoptes, the ‘All-Seeing’, had a hundred eyes. He was chosen by Hera to watch over the beautiful Io, whom Zeus had turned into a white cow. After he was decapitated by Hermes, Hera placed his eyes in the tail of a peacock. Hence ‘Argus’ has come to designate a spy or a guardian.

170. Oh Richard … The whole world has deserted you: A famous aria from the first act of Grétry’s popular opera Richard Coeur de Lion (‘Richard the Lionheart’, 1784), sung by the troubadour Blondel, the squire of the imprisoned king. According to the Mémoires of the Duchesse d’Abrantès, Napoleon sang it to himself, taking the air one night, on his way through France to Elba.

171. Laffitte … politics doesn’t come into it: Jacques Laffitte (1767–1844), with two ‘f’s and two ‘t’s, was a famous banker and politician, and Louis-Philippe’s first prime minister. The equally famous Bordeaux claret Château-Lafite (no relative) is spelled with one of each.

172. manna: ‘A sweet pale yellow or whitish … juice obtained from incisions in the bark of the Manna-ash, Fraxinus ornus, chiefly in Calabria and Sicily; used in medicine as a gentle laxative’ (OED). It would seem that Madame Vauquer’s cassis is the opposite of manna from heaven.

173. Wild Mountain … The Loner … Chateaubriand: Le Mont Sauvage (‘Wild Mountain’, 1821) was a play by Pixérécourt, adapted from the sentimental novel Le Solitaire (‘The Loner’) by the Vicomte d’Arlincourt. René de Pixérécourt (1773–1844) was a prolific writer of popular melodramas. He knew his audience – ‘J’écris pour ceux qui ne savent pas lire’ (‘I write for those who cannot read’) – and, alongside the more sensational elements in his plays, sought to provide moral guidance that would be understood by the manufacturing classes. The boulevard theatres had an important social and imaginative function for the sub-literate (the literacy rate in France didn’t start to rise until 1925). Madame Vauquer mistakenly attributes the novel to François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), and confuses his first name with the title of his novel Atala (1801). (In French you might refer to the book as ‘L’Atala de Chateaubriand’, hence Atala de Chateaubriand.) Chateaubriand was a high Romantic writer concerned with the social and aesthetic benefits of Christianity. Madame Vauquer’s confusion is comic but almost understandable: Pixérécourt’s melodramas, while appealing to a different sensibility, perhaps occupied similar imaginative terrain to high Romantic drama, as writers of all kinds attempted to come to terms with France’s new emerging social values.

174. Sleep … for ever: A refrain from Scribe’s vaudeville, Le Somnam bule (‘The Sleepwalker’, 1819).

175. Paul et Virginie: A popular utopian novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), published in 1787. Set on the island of Mauritius, it tells the tragic tale of two innocent young lovers.

176. Gaîté: The Théâtre de la Gaîté on the Boulevard du Temple, where Vautrin took Madame Vauquer to see Mont Sauvage (note 173). A carnival atmosphere reigned on the Boulevard, which, along with its theatres, was packed with cabarets, cafés and street entertainers.

177. col tempo: Italian, ‘with time’.

178. Cochin hospital: In the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques. Founded in 1779 as a hospice for the poor by Jean-Denis Cochin, priest of the parish of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, and later named after him.

179. Rouge-et-Noir: Another name for the card game known as trente et quarante, in which thirty and forty are by turns the winning and losing numbers. Rouge-et-Noir is named after the table at which it is played, which has two red and two black diamond-shaped marks on which players place their stakes. Hence, an unpredictable, high-risk game of chance where one person’s ruin is another’s gain.

180. sheet anchor: The largest of a ship’s anchors, used only in an emergency. Figuratively, ‘That on which one places one’s reliance when everything else has failed’ (OED).

181. the old death’s-head: In French, la camuse or la camarde – from camus, having a snub or flattened nose. The death’s-head is depicted as a face stripped of flesh, a skull whose nose appears flat, as reduced to its bridge of bone.

182. Silk-Thread: A literal translation from the French. English thieves’ cant expressions around silk perhaps have similar associations. According to Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of the Underworld, a ‘silk’ is a swindler (whose talk is ‘smooth as silk’); a ‘silk-hat’, a high-class con-man or a gangster who affects respectability and elegance. In Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (‘A Harlot High and Low’), we learn that this convict’s real name is Sélérier.

183. grasshoppers: In English thieves’ cant, a ‘grass’, rhyming on ‘coppers’.

184. Ninon … Pompadour … Père-Lachaise Venus: The first two references are to famous courtesans. Despite being a woman of independent means, Ninon (Anne) de Lenclos (c. 1620–1705), a renowned intellect, was perhaps given this tag because of her open sexuality and her rebuttal of patriarchal authority. Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721–64), a well-educated woman of wealthy bourgeois stock, was Louis XV’s most famous and cherished mistress; a patron of the philosophes, her political and cultural influence was considerable. Although history has since refreshed the reputations of these women, Vautrin’s intention is to imply that Mademoiselle Michonneau is a prostitute who is past her best, while ‘Père-Lachaise Venus’ (‘Vénus de Père-Lachaise’) also suggests that she is more cemetery statue (see note 199 on Père Lachaise) than Venus de Milo.

185. Quai des Orfèvres: The famous French equivalent of Scotland Yard (Criminal Investigations Department) is located on the left-bank side of the Ile de la Cité, near the police headquarters and the law courts.

186. Jean-Jacques: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), the Swiss writer and thinker, whose immensely influential – and controversial – work The Social Contract (1762) rejects the assumption that any human being has the authority to wield power over another, positing instead the idea of the state as a pact between citizens. His ideas on freedom, virtue, law and equality have been widely (mis)interpreted over the centuries.

187. Flicoteaux’s: An establishment described in detail in Lost Illusions (Part II, Chapter 2):

As we know, Madame Vauquer keeps a sharp eye on how much bread her student boarders consume.

188. Leaving for Syria … Dunois: ‘Partant pour la Syrie’ or ‘Le beau Dunois’ was a song written in the medievalizing Romance or Troubadour style which originated during the First Empire. The poem tells the story of a crusader who, on the eve of his departure for Syria, prays that his bravery in battle will be rewarded by the love of a beautiful woman. Composed by Bonaparte’s step-daughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, the song was a huge popular success, played by hurdy-gurdies on street corners everywhere. It also became a Bonapartist rallying cry during the Restoration.

189. trahit sua quemque voluptas … Virgil: From Eclogues II.65.

190. the Café des Anglais: Situated on the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue de Marivaux, this establishment, noted for the quality of its food and wine, was frequented by the Parisian elite.

191. bitter aloes: ‘A drug of nauseous odour, bitter taste and purgative qualities’ (OED).

192. love-seat: A small sofa for two, known in French as a ‘causeuse’, from causer, ‘to chat’.

193. perpetuity … life annuity: Two different kinds of bond that yield the investor a yearly interest payment. The payments on the former continue for ever (at a lower rate), and on the latter cease at the death of the investor (at a higher rate). Goriot’s wealth is now almost at its lowest level. We know that prior to retirement his income was 60,000 livres (francs) a year, with comparatively modest yearly expenses of twelve hundred francs. He gives his daughters dowries of 800,000 francs each (by his own account, less by other people’s), and when he moves into the Maison Vauquer, he is left with an annual income of eight to 10,000 francs, already a significant reduction. Now, his income is reduced to twelve hundred francs a year – equivalent to the amount he paid Madame Vauquer in rent on his arrival – and the interest he’ll receive will only just cover 50 écus’ (250 francs) rent per year, and daily expenses of 40 sous (2 francs). To place Goriot’s sacrifice in perspective, see Note on Money.

194. Croesus: King of Lydia during the sixth century BC, famous for his wealth.

195. Marius … Carthage: Caius Marius, Roman general and politician (c. 156–86 BC). Following an initially successful career, he was outlawed from Rome by his rival Sulla, and escaped to Africa. The image of Marius in exile, sitting on the ruins of Carthage, came to symbolize the unpredictable swings in human fortunes (and Balzac uses it more than once in the Human Comedy, for example, in Cousin Bette). Marius returned from Africa to capture Rome and ordered the massacre of his opponents.

196. Tasso: Byron’s The Lament of Tasso, describing the sufferings of the great Italian poet in Ferrara, was translated into French in 1830 by Amédée Pichot.