17. Georges and Pichegru: Vendean (royalist) leader and former revolutionary general whose plot to assassinate Napoleon was uncovered in 1804, when they were both betrayed for a reward. Georges Cadoudal was guillotined, Jean-Charles Pichegru died in prison (murder or suicide).
18. Commissary-General: A kind of quartermaster. One of Balzac’s uncles held this post during the Revolution.
19. La Bourbe and La Salpêtrière: These began as hospitals in the older sense of the word, namely, institutions or asylums for the poor and indigent. The former abbey in Rue de la Bourbe (literally, ‘Muddy Road’, named for its general insalubrity) was first a foundling then a lying-in hospital (it provided poor women with a place to give birth); La Salpêtrière, a converted saltpetre manufactory and former women’s prison, took in old, incurable and insane women. The area defined here lies between the Observatoire and the Quai d’Austerlitz.
20. fichus: Triangular pieces of colourful fabric or lace, covering the head or neck.
21. a dealer in second-hand finery: An ambiguous profession. These women who went from door to door offering clothes and jewellery for sale were also reputed to engage in shadier activities on the side.
22. the audacious tribe of the sons of Japet: Balzac’s rendering of ‘audax Iapeti genus’ comes from a famous line in one of Horace’s Odes (I.3.27), which considers all mankind as descended from Prometheus, son of Iapetus, who made man in the likeness of the gods. The Boulevard des Italiens was one of the most fashionable streets in Paris.
23. cats … fire: Reference to the fable by La Fontaine, ‘The Cat and the Monkey’ (Fables IX.17). The cat (Raton) pulls the chestnuts out of the fire, while the monkey (Bertrand) eats them; that is, the monkey uses the cat as a tool to accomplish a self-serving purpose. Hence the English expression ‘to be the cats-paw of someone’.
24. chlorosis: A type of anaemia affecting pubescent females – and notably the heroine of Balzac’s roman de jeunesse Wann-Chlore – which was fashionable at that time. Also known as ‘green sickness’, for the pallid complexion it induced.
25. a certain piercing and steely look: Balzac was interested in the ideas of Franz-Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) on second sight and thought transmission, notably his theory of ‘animal magnetism’ (or ‘mesmerism’).
26. gloria: Coffee with a dash of eau-de-vie (brandy), so called because it comes at the end of a meal, just as the Gloria Patri comes at the end of the psalms during Mass.
27. Juvenal: Roman poet, born AD 55–60?, author of the vitriolic Satires, which targeted the rich and powerful in ancient Rome.
28. verdigris: The green rust which forms on copper and brass. The comparison with a counting-house underlines the pragmatically commercial character of Madame Vauquer’s establishment.
29. armoires … ‘ormoires’: An ‘armoire’ is a wardrobe or safe. According to Balzac, in César Birotteau, the corruption ‘ormoire’ comes from the idea that women kept their gold (or) in their wardrobes along with their dresses.
30. marks: A mark was a European measure mainly used to weigh gold and silver, equivalent to eight ounces.
31. Grand-Livre: The register of all those who hold Government Stock.
32. Macouba: High-quality snuff from the Macouba plantations in Martinique.
33. Choisy, Soissy, Gentilly: Three villages on the outskirts of Paris known for their many guinguettes, or open-air taverns, popular with Parisians on Sunday outings.
34. free ticket in July: Summer emptied Paris theatres of fashionable audiences. Free tickets were distributed by authors or producers to friends or official ‘claqueurs’ (applauders), so that their play would appear to be a success (Balzac writes about this system in Lost Illusions).
35. Galeries de Bois: Shops made of wooden boards, which once stood on the site of the present-day Galerie d’Orléans.
36. La Petite Jeannette: A shop selling novelties established in 1833, on what is today 3 Boulevard des Italiens.
37. Boeuf à la mode: The reference is to a famous restaurant near the Palais-Royal whose sign showed a bullock dressed up in a shawl and hat, a pun on the signature dish from which the restaurant took its name.
38. lamb … stag: Both are stock-market terms for outsiders. The first is a dunce who speculates and loses his money; the second a speculator who poses as a bona fide investor but only buys shares to sell them immediately at a profit.
39. prunella: A strong fabric (silk or worsted), usually black, used in women’s footwear.
40. Rue de l’Estrapade: As we know from the opening passage, horses rarely entered the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, because of the inconvenient slope.
41. ell: An obsolete length measurement.
42. drab: A type of woollen cloth mainly worn in the winter.
43. facial angle: From phrenology; the angle formed by a horizontal line (nostril to ear) and a vertical line (nostril to forehead). Then thought to be an indicator of the degree of development of the mental faculties or intelligence. See also note 75 on Franz Joseph Gall.
44. Capiferae: That is, of the ‘genus’ of cap-wearers.
45. Réaumur scale: Thermometric scale introduced by the French physicist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur around 1730, according to which water freezes at 0° and boils at 80°.
46. Prado … Odéon: The Prado, situated in Rue de la Barillerie (today, Boulevard du Palais), was a ballroom popular with students. The Odéon reopened after being entirely rebuilt in October 1819, and so Rastignac would theoretically have attended the first balls that took place there.
47. tan-turf: Spent oak bark from the tan-pits which was pressed into bricks to make cheap fuel.
48. the Faubourg Saint-Germain: Balzac provides his own definition in the History of the Thirteen.
What in France goes by the name of the Faubourg Saint-Germain is neither a quarter of Paris, nor an institution, nor anything clearly definable. The Place Royale, the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the Chaussée d’Antin also possess mansions in which the atmosphere of the Faubourg Saint-Germain prevails. Thus the Faubourg is not strictly confined to its own territory. People born far beyond its sphere of influence can feel it and be part and parcel of this world, whereas certain others born inside it may be forever excluded from it. The manners, speech, in a word the Faubourg Saint-Germain tradition, has been in Paris, during the last forty years, what the Court formerly had been, what Hôtel Saint-Paul had been in the fourteenth century, the Louvre in the fifteenth, the Palais, the Hôtel Rambouillet, the Place Royale in the sixteenth, then Versailles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In every phase of history the Paris of the upper classes and the nobility has had its own centre, just as plebeian Paris will always have its own special quarter.
(Tr. Herbert J. Hunt, Penguin Classics, 1974)
49. rout: In its nineteenth-century sense, a large fashionable gathering or evening reception.
50. quadrille: A French square dance for four couples, divided into five sections, each of which is a separate dance.
51. the Bois … the Bouffons: The Bois de Boulogne, to the west of Paris, was where members of high society would drive out to promenade in their carriages; the Bouffons is another name for the Théâtre-Italien or Italiens, the fashionable place to be seen by night, where Parisians went to hear performances of opera seria sung in Italian (rather than French).
52. the Marquis de Montriveau … Duchesse de Langeais: The full story of these two lovers is told in the second section of Balzac’s History of the Thirteen: ‘The Duchesse de Langeais’ (tr. Hunt, 1974). The story’s original title was ‘Don’t touch the axe!’
53. Chaussée d’Antin: The name of a road situated just east of what is today the Opéra. The reference here is to an entire district, at the time home to wealthy financiers and bankers, or nineteenth-century right-bank new money (as opposed to the old aristocracy of the left-bank Faubourg Saint-Germain). Anastasie de Restaud lives in the Rue du Helder; her sister Delphine de Nucingen close by in the Rue Saint-Lazare.
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54. the Code: The Code Civil, introduced in 1804 (later known as the Code Napoléon), constituted a comprehensive reformation and codification of French civil law. After the Revolution, it became possible, and necessary, to replace the many conflicting legal systems that had previously co-existed (Roman law, customary law, canon law, case law, royal decrees), as the old power structures were replaced by the new. Under the Code, all male citizens were equal. However, for women, the new laws were retrograde, subordinating them to their fathers and husbands, who decided on the fate of children, had control of all property and were favoured in divorce proceedings. The paterfamilias even had the right to imprison his child for a month, while illegitimate children were barred from any right to inherit. Victorine Taillefer, and Goriot’s daughters, suffer from the impact of these laws in Old Man Goriot.
55. a Saint Joseph: A carpenter.
56. King Augustus of Poland: Augustus II ‘the Strong’ (1670–1733, reigned from 1697) was reputed to have fathered 300 children (all illegitimate save the son who succeeded him).
57. list slippers: Made from the selvage, or border, of a length of cloth, woven to produce a more robust finish, so less likely to fray. They were worn around the house in situations where a quiet tread was required, for example, in nurseries and sick rooms. Here, the circumstance is clearly suspicious; the wearer is engaged in some surreptitious activity.
58. Saint-Etienne: The church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, not far from the Maison Vauquer (and still to be seen today near the Panthéon in the fifth arrondissement).
59. Michonnette … Poireau: Sylvie is referring to Mademoiselle Michonneau and Monsieur Poiret in a jokily disrespectful way: ‘-ette’ is a familiar form, and poireau is a leek.
60. two liards: A liard was a French coin of small denomination, worth a quarter of a sou. See Note on Money for an overview of the different currencies in circulation at that time in France.
61. packet-boat: More precisely, the ‘Compagnie des Messageries impériales’. This was a private company (with state authorization) founded in 1805, which had the monopoly of public transport abroad until 1826.
62. Rue des Grès: Today, Rue Cujas, in the fifth arrondissement, near the Panthéon. Strategically located near the Sorbonne, where Gobseck is well placed to ensnare students living beyond their means, such as Rastignac.
63. a Jew, an Arab, a Greek, a Bohemian: Nineteenth-century terms for, respectively, someone who drives a hard bargain, a money-lender, a card-sharper and a gypsy (gypsies were thought to have come from Bohemia).
64. A quietus: A receipt issued when a debt has been paid off.
65. O innocent … women: The phrase comes from a popular spoof melodrama, a four-act pantomime first performed in 1811.
66. roux: Used for thickening soups and stews, usually a mixture of butter and flour.
67. déjeuner. In nineteenth-century Paris, this referred to a morning meal of some kind. ‘Breakfast (premier déjeuner …) was taken immediately after waking. It consisted of a cup of milk, coffee, tea, or chocolate together with a flûte (thin loaf) or round of toast’ (see pp. 8–10, where it is served at seven). In this particular instance, the lodgers are having their ‘Second breakfast’ (deuxième déjeuner). This ‘was served between ten and noon. It consisted of hors-d’oeuvres, cold meats, and other snacks. Roast meats and salad were served only if the hour was somewhat advanced’ (A History of Private Life, vol. 4, ed. Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby). Deuxième déjeuner could be taken as late as twelve in high society; the middle classes tended to take it closer to ten.
68. Gobseck: Madame de Restaud’s visit to the usurer is described in Balzac’s short story ‘Gobseck’, published in 1830, prior to Old Man Goriot.
69. Mont-de-Piété: In France, the name given to a state-run pawnbroker offering loans to the poor at low interest.
70. bills of exchange: Widely used in the nineteenth century, a bill of exchange functioned a little like a post-dated cheque or IOU, with the unique feature that it was negotiable, that is, the bill could be endorsed to a third party, and sold on. In simple terms, it was a payment order in writing addressed by one person (drawer) to another (drawee), the former instructing the latter to pay a specific sum of money on a given date to a specified person, or to the current bearer of the bill. The drawee signed the bill to accept responsibility for payment. There was no limit on how many times the bill could change hands before the due date. The more remote the due date, the lower the purchase price of the bill (and thus the greater the profit the third party stood to make). The third party, or endorsee (in this case, the bill-discounter), could speculate on the value of the bill to make a profit, either by waiting for the due date to make a gain equal to the difference between the value of the bill at purchase and at maturity, or by selling it on before the due date, ideally at a higher price (passing on the risk of default at the same time). The advantage of the transaction for the drawee was that they could defer payment to a later date. The advantage for the drawer was that they could convert the bill into cash without waiting for the due date. And the advantage for each successive endorsee was that they could speculate on the value of the bill with a view to making a profit. The amount at which the bill was discounted (sold for less than its value at maturity) could also depend on the perceived risk of default by the drawee at maturity. If the drawee defaulted, the bill was ‘protested’, that is, legally declared dishonoured by the holder of the bill.
71. paraded on the square: That is, wearing the carcan or iron collar, still in use at the time (abolished in 1848).
72. fiacre: The French equivalent of the hackney cab, a small four-wheeled carriage.
73. Diorama … Panoramas: The Panorama and Diorama prefigured modern cinema and mass entertainment, allowing anyone at all to admire alpine views, or see famous battles from the perspective of their generals. Both were spectacles based on large-scale paintings staged in purpose-built theatres. The Panorama created a spatial illusion: spectators stood on a static viewing platform and were presented with a 360-degree view of a topographical subject – an imposing landscape or famous city – painted on a huge circular canvas. The Diorama, with its revolving turntable, was more dynamic and theatrical, exploiting the dramatic possibilities of lighting to create convincing atmospheric effects (clouds, sunrise, sunset, storms) and thereby the illusion of temporal change and movement.
The British painter Robert Barker took out the first patent for a Panorama in 1787, and also coined the term by which it became known. It was initially popularized in Paris by James Thayer and the painter Pierre Prévost, whose assistant, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, a former set designer (and future inventor of the Daguerrotype), went on to create the hugely successful Diorama in 1822. The Panorama enjoyed renewed popularity in Paris in the 1830s, when Charles Langlois, a former Napoleonic colonel, opened his Panorama de Navarin (criticized by Balzac for its ‘mechanical charlatanism’), which gave spectators the chance to view a depiction of a sea battle from the deck of a real French battleship.
74. usque ad talones: Meaning ‘into my heels’; a French/Latin student joke (‘avoir l’estomac dans les talons’ means ‘to be starving’).
75. Doctor Gall’s system … bumps of Judas: German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) came to Paris in 1807 and established himself as medical practitioner and lecturer on phrenology. He saw the brain as being divided into twenty-seven (later thirty-seven) separate ‘organs’ and believed that the external appearance of the skull could be linked to specific mental functions and capacities (such as poetic talent, wit, forethought, obstinacy, compassion, reproduction instinct and so on) and the extent of their development. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (the dedicatee of this novel) supported Gall’s unsuccessful 1821 application to the Académie des Sciences. Bianchon’s comment on Mademoiselle Michonneau’s ‘bumps of Judas’ is a joke, suggesting that ‘treachery’ is written all over her, although no such correlation is made by Gall.
76. A rose … dawn: From
‘Consolation à M. du Périer’ (1598) by François de Malherbe (1555–1628), a well-known poem he wrote for a friend on the death of his daughter.
77. cornute: The noun describes a vessel with a long neck, bent downwards, used in distillation; the adjective denotes a cuckold. The French is cornue, which also sounds like corps nu (naked body). The jokes that follow all play on the idea (or innuendo) of Goriot’s nose being long, red or a strange shape. ‘Cornemuse’ is the French term for the bagpipe
II. TWO CALLS ARE PAID
78. Talleyrand-esque sayings: Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) was a talented statesman and survivor; he held political or diplomatic office under five successive regimes in his lifetime. His inexhaustible humour and ironic wit were legendary (and enjoyed by such exacting companions as Madame de Staël and Lord Brougham).
79. Charente: One of the 83 French départements founded in 1793, comprising the former province of Angoumois, with Angoulême as its administrative seat, in the south-west of France. Balzac chose to set the estate of Rastignac in this region. He had stayed in Angoulême with his friend Zulma Carraud and her husband in 1832.