the services of M. Goriot's coiffeur, and went to some expense over
her toilette, expense justifiable on the ground that she owed it to
herself and her establishment to pay some attention to appearances
when such highly-respectable persons honored her house with their
presence. She expended no small amount of ingenuity in a sort of
weeding process of her lodgers, announcing her intention of receiving
henceforward none but people who were in every way select. If a
stranger presented himself, she let him know that M. Goriot, one of
the best known and most highly-respected merchants in Paris, had
singled out her boarding-house for a residence. She drew up a
prospectus headed MAISON VAUQUER, in which it was asserted that hers
was "_one of the oldest and most highly recommended boarding-houses in
the Latin Quarter_." "From the windows of the house," thus ran the
prospectus, "there is a charming view of the Vallee des Gobelins (so
there is--from the third floor), and a _beautiful_ garden, _extending_
down to _an avenue of lindens_ at the further end." Mention was made
of the bracing air of the place and its quiet situation.

It was this prospectus that attracted Mme. la Comtesse de
l'Ambermesnil, a widow of six and thirty, who was awaiting the final
settlement of her husband's affairs, and of another matter regarding a
pension due to her as the wife of a general who had died "on the field
of battle." On this Mme. Vauquer saw to her table, lighted a fire
daily in the sitting-room for nearly six months, and kept the promise
of her prospectus, even going to some expense to do so. And the
Countess, on her side, addressed Mme. Vauquer as "my dear," and
promised her two more boarders, the Baronne de Vaumerland and the
widow of a colonel, the late Comte de Picquoisie, who were about to
leave a boarding-house in the Marais, where the terms were higher than
at the Maison Vauquer. Both these ladies, moreover, would be very well