"What inhuman wretches they must be!" said Father Goriot.
"And then they both went out of the room," Mme. Couture went on, without heeding the worthy vermicelli maker's exclamation;
"father and son bowed to me, and asked me to excuse them on account of urgent business! That is the history of our call.
Well, he has seen his daughter at any rate. How he can refuse to acknowledge her I cannot think, for they are as alike as two peas."
The boarders dropped in one after another, interchanging greetings and empty jokes that certain classes of Parisians regard as humorous and witty. Dulness is their prevailing ingredient, and the whole point consists in mispronouncing a word or a gesture. This kind of argot is always changing. The essence of the jest consists in some catchword suggested by a political event, an incident in the police courts, a street song, or a bit of burlesque at some theatre, and forgotten in a month. Anything and everything serves to keep up a game of battledore and shuttlecock with words and ideas. The diorama, a recent invention, which carried an optical illusion a degree further than panoramas, had given rise to a mania among art students for ending every word with RAMA. The Maison Vauquer had caught the infection from a young artist among the boarders.
"Well, Monsieur-r-r Poiret," said the employe from the Museum, "how is your health-orama?" Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to Mme. Couture and Victorine with a "Ladies, you seem melancholy."
"Is dinner ready?" cried Horace Bianchon, a medical student, and a friend of Rastignac's; "my stomach is sinking usque ad talones."
"There is an uncommon frozerama outside," said Vautrin. "Make room there, Father Goriot! Confound it, your foot covers the whole front of the stove."
"Illustrious M. Vautrin," put in Bianchon, "why do you say frozerama? It is incorrect; it should be frozenrama."
"No, it shouldn't," said the official from the Museum; "frozerama is right by the same rule that you say 'My feet are froze.' "
"Ah! ah!"
"Here is his Excellency the Marquis de Rastignac, Doctor of the Law of Contraries," cried Bianchon, seizing Eugene by the throat, and almost throttling him.
"Hallo there! hallo!"
Mlle. Michonneau came noiselessly in, bowed to the rest of the party, and took her place beside the three women without saying a word.
"That old bat always makes me shudder," said Bianchon in a low voice, indicating Mlle. Michonneau to Vautrin. "I have studied Gall's system, and I am sure she has the bump of Judas."
"Then you have seen a case before?" said Vautrin.
"Who has not?" answered Bianchon. "Upon my word, that ghastly old maid looks just like one of the long worms that will gnaw a beam through, give them time enough."
"That is the way, young man," returned he of the forty years and the dyed whiskers:
"The rose has lived the life of a rose--A morning's space."
"Aha! here is a magnificent soupe-au-rama," cried Poiret as Christophe came in bearing the soup with cautious heed.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Mme. Vauquer; "it is soupe aux choux."
All the young men roared with laughter.
"Had you there, Poiret!"
"Poir-r-r-rette! she had you there!"
"Score two points to Mamma Vauquer," said Vautrin.
"Did any of you notice the fog this morning?" asked the official.
"It was a frantic fog," said Bianchon, "a fog unparalleled, doleful, melancholy, sea-green, asthmatical--a Goriot of a fog!"
"A Goriorama," said the art student, "because you couldn't see a thing in it."
"Hey! Milord Gaoriotte, they air talking about yoo-o-ou!"
Father Goriot, seated at the lower end of the table, close to the door through which the servant entered, raised his face; he had smelt at a scrap of bread that lay under his table napkin, an old trick acquired in his commercial capacity, that still showed itself at times.
"Well," Madame Vauquer cried in sharp tones, that rang above the rattle of spoons and plates and the sound of other voices, "and is there anything the matter with the bread?"
"Nothing whatever, madame," he answered; "on the contrary, it is made of the best quality of corn; flour from Etampes."
"How could you tell?" asked Eugene.
"By the color, by the flavor."
"You knew the flavor by the smell, I suppose," said Mme. Vauquer.
"You have grown so economical, you will find out how to live on the smell of cooking at last."
"Take out a patent for it, then," cried the Museum official; "you would make a handsome fortune."
"Never mind him," said the artist; "he does that sort of thing to delude us into thinking that he was a vermicelli maker."
"Your nose is a corn-sampler, it appears?" inquired the official.
"Corn WHAT?" asked Bianchon.
"Corn-el."
"Corn-et."
"Corn-elian."
"Corn-ice."
"Corn-ucopia."
"Corn-crake."
"Corn-cockle."
"Corn-orama."
The eight responses came like a rolling fire from every part of the room, and the laughter that followed was the more uproarious because poor Father Goriot stared at the others with a puzzled look, like a foreigner trying to catch the meaning of words in a language which he does not understand.
"Corn? . . ." he said, turning to Vautrin, his next neighbor.
"Corn on your foot, old man!" said Vautrin, and he drove Father Goriot's cap down over his eyes by a blow on the crown.
The poor old man thus suddenly attacked was for a moment too bewildered to do anything. Christophe carried off his plate, thinking that he had finished his soup, so that when Goriot had pushed back his cap from his eyes his spoon encountered the table. Every one burst out laughing. "You are a disagreeable joker, sir," said the old man, "and if you take any further liberties with me----"
"Well, what then, old boy?" Vautrin interrupted.
"Well, then, you shall pay dearly for it some day----"
"Down below, eh?" said the artist, "in the little dark corner where they put naughty boys."
"Well, mademoiselle," Vautrin said, turning to Victorine, "you are eating nothing. So papa was refractory, was he?"
"A monster!" said Mme. Couture.
