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. Patient, active, and persevering,
energetic and prompt in action, he surveyed his business horizon with
an eagle eye. Nothing there took him by surprise; he foresaw all
things, knew all that was happening, and kept his own counsel; he was
a diplomatist in his quick comprehension of a situation; and in the
routine of business he was as patient and plodding as a soldier on the
march. But beyond this business horizon he could not see. He used to
spend his hours of leisure on the threshold of his shop, leaning
against the framework of the door. Take him from his dark little
counting-house, and he became once more the rough, slow-witted
workman, a man who cannot understand a piece of reasoning, who is
indifferent to all intellectual pleasures, and falls asleep at the
play, a Parisian Dolibom in short, against whose stupidity other minds
are powerless.

Natures of this kind are nearly all alike; in almost all of them you
will find some hidden depth of sublime affection. Two all-absorbing
affections filled the vermicelli maker's heart to the exclusion of
every other feeling; into them he seemed to put all the forces of his
nature, as he put the whole power of his brain into the corn trade. He