Digressing back into *Le Pere Goriot.*
One of his daughters is named
Anastasie. Dying Goriot complains about her cold
contempt she has expressed for him after she became
Comtesse by marriage. Doesn't that remind us of "What 'set,' good
Lord? The lady's [Anastasia's] mother had been a country veterinary's daughter"?
I have no idea about "veterinary," though.
See the passage below.
Akiko
----------------
I might stay as long as I
cared to stay at
their evening parties. In fact, they acknowledged me
their father; publicly
they owned that they were my daughters. But I
was always a shrewd one, you
see, and nothing was lost upon me.
Everything went straight to the mark and
pierced my heart. I saw quite
well that it was all sham and pretence, but
there is no help for such
things as these. I felt less at my ease at their
dinner-table than I
did downstairs here. I had nothing to say for myself. So
these grand
folks would ask in my son-in-law's ear, 'Who may that gentleman
be?'--
'The father-in-law with the money bags; he is very rich.'--'The
devil,
he is!' they would say, and look again at me with the respect due
to
my money. Well, if I was in the way sometimes, I paid dearly for
my
mistakes. And besides, who is perfect? (My head is one sore!)
Dear
Monsieur Eugene, I am suffering so now, that a man might die of
the
pain; but it is nothing to be compared with the pain I endured
when
Anastasie made me feel, for the first time, that I had said
something
stupid. She looked at me, and that glance of hers opened all my
veins.
I used to want to know everything, to be learned; and one thing I
did
learn thoroughly --I knew that I was not wanted here on
earth.