We have visited the wretched garden with its scanty pot-herbs and scarecrow beds, and the green benches in the miserable arbour, where the lodgers who are rich enough to enjoy such a luxury indulge in a cup of coffee after dinner. The salon, with its greasy and worn-out furniture, every bit of which is catalogued, is as familiar as our own studies. We know the exact geography even of the larder and the cistern. We catch the odour of the damp, close office, where Madame Vauquer lurks like a human spider. She is the animating genius of the place, and we know the exact outline of her figure, and every article of her dress. The minuteness of her portrait brings out the horrors of the terrible process by which poor Goriot gradually sinks from one step to another of the social ladder, and simultaneously ascends from the first floor to the garrets. We can track his steps and trace his agony. Each station of that melancholy pilgrimage is painted, down to the minutest details, with unflinching fidelity. Paris, says Balzac, is an ocean; however painfully you explore it and sound its depths, there are still virgin corners, unknown caves with their flowers, pearls, and monsters, forgotten by literary divers. The Maison Vauquer is one of these singular monstrosities. No one, at any rate, can complain that Balzac has not done his best to describe and analyse the character of the unknown social species which it contains. It absorbs our interest by the contrast of its vulgar and intensely commonplace exterior with the terrible passions and sufferings of which it is the appropriate scene.