Vauquer lay down to rest on the day of M.
Goriot's installation, her heart, like a larded partridge, sweltered
before the fire of a burning desire to shake off the shroud of Vauquer
and rise again as Goriot. She would marry again, sell her
boarding-house, give her hand to this fine flower of citizenship,
become a lady of consequence in the quarter, and ask for subscriptions
for charitable purposes; she would make little Sunday excursions to
Choisy, Soissy, Gentilly; she would have a box at the theatre when she
liked, instead of waiting for the author's tickets that one of her
boarders sometimes gave her, in July; the whole Eldorado of a little
Parisian household rose up before Mme. Vauquer in her dreams. Nobody
knew that she herself possessed forty thousand francs, accumulated _sou
by sou_, that was her secret; surely as far as money was concerned she
was a very tolerable match. "And in other respects, I am quite his
equal," she said to herself, turning as if to assure herself of the
charms of a form that the portly Sylvie found moulded in down feathers
every morning.
For three months from that day Mme. Veuve Vauquer availed herself of
the services of M.
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