People used to fight for bread
at the bakers' doors; while other persons went to the grocers' shops
and bought Italian paste foods without brawling over it. It was during
this year that Goriot made the money, which, at a later time, was to
give him all the advantage of the great capitalist over the small
buyer; he had, moreover, the usual luck of average ability; his
mediocrity was the salvation of him. He excited no one's envy, it was
not even suspected that he was rich till the peril of being rich was
over, and all his intelligence was concentrated, not on political, but
on commercial speculations. Goriot was an authority second to none on
all questions relating to corn, flour, and "middlings"; and the
production, storage, and quality of grain. He could estimate the yield
of the harvest, and foresee market prices; he bought his cereals in
Sicily, and imported Russian wheat. Any one who had heard him hold
forth on the regulations that control the importation and exportation
of grain, who had seen his grasp of the subject, his clear insight
into the principles involved, his appreciation of weak points in the
way that the system worked, would have thought that here was the stuff
of which a minister is made.
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