was so well known, that one day a competitor, who wished to get rid of
him to secure the field to himself, told Goriot that Delphine had just
been knocked down by a cab. The vermicelli maker turned ghastly pale,
left the Exchange at once, and did not return for several days
afterwards; he was ill in consequence of the shock and the subsequent
relief on discovering that it was a false alarm. This time, however,
the offender did not escape with a bruised shoulder; at a critical
moment in the man's affairs, Goriot drove him into bankruptcy, and
forced him to disappear from the Corn Exchange.

As might have been expected, the two girls were spoiled. With an
income of sixty thousand francs, Goriot scarcely spent twelve hundred
on himself, and found all his happiness in satisfying the whims of the
two girls. The best masters were engaged, that Anastasie and Delphine
might be endowed with all the accomplishments which distinguish a good
education. They had a chaperon--luckily for them, she was a woman who
had good sense and good taste;--they learned to ride; they had a
carriage for their use; they lived as the mistress of a rich old lord
might live; they had only to express a wish, their father would hasten
to give them their most extravagant desires, and asked nothing of them
in return but a kiss. Goriot had raised the two girls to the level of
the angels; and, quite naturally, he himself was left beneath them.
Poor man! he loved them even for the pain that they gave him.

When the girls were old enough to be married, they were left free to
choose for themselves. Each had half her father's fortune as her
dowry; and when the Comte de Restaud came to woo Anastasie for her
beauty, her social aspirations led her to leave her father's house for
a more exalted sphere. Delphine wished for money; she married
Nucingen, a banker of German extraction, who became a Baron of the