He was just in the doorway of his room when a strange sound
from the staircase below reached his ears; it might have been made by
two men coming up in list slippers. Eugene listened; two men there
certainly were, he could hear their breathing. Yet there had been no
sound of opening the street door, no footsteps in the passage.
Suddenly, too, he saw a faint gleam of light on the second story; it
came from M. Vautrin's room.
"There are a good many mysteries here for a lodging-house!" he said to
himself.
He went part of the way downstairs and listened again. The rattle of
gold reached his ears. In another moment the light was put out, and
again he distinctly heard the breathing of two men, but no sound of a
door being opened or shut. The two men went downstairs, the faint
sounds growing fainter as they went.
"Who is there?" cried Mme. Vauquer out of her bedroom window.
"I, Mme. Vauquer," answered Vautrin's deep bass voice. "I am coming
in."
"That is odd! Christophe drew the bolts," said Eugene, going back to
his room. "You have to sit up at night, it seems, if you really mean
to know all that is going on about you in Paris."
These incidents turned his thought from his ambitious dreams; he
betook himself to his work, but his thought wandered back to Father
Goriot's suspicious occupation; Mme.
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