Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève is the steep, secluded Paris street where Mme. Vauquer’s lodging house stands, and the enduring address to which Eugène de Rastignac repeatedly returns as he ventures into elite society. Its gloomy setting and the boarding house’s cramped interiors establish a stark contrast with the carriages, theatres, and salons through which Rastignac pursues advancement.

Setting and Character

The street lies at the lower end of the slope, where the road descends sharply toward the Rue de l’Arbalète. The gradient and stony surface are so severe that wheeled traffic seldom passes. The surrounding streets, enclosed between the domes of the Panthéon and the Val-de-Grâce, are quiet; those landmarks cast a yellowish light over a district already defined by austerity and neglect.

The neighborhood is described as the ugliest and least-known quarter of Paris. Its pavements are clean and dry, grass grows in cracks in the walls, and high garden walls lend houses the air of a prison. The relative silence is itself oppressive: the sound of a passing carriage can startle the passer-by. The street’s somber appearance prepares the reader for the boarding house’s human story, setting old age, poverty, and disappointed youth within a landscape likened to an approach to the Catacombs.

Mme. Vauquer’s Boarding House

Mme. Vauquer owns the lodging house, which stands on the street and appears almost purpose-built for its shabby use. It is a three-story building of rough stone covered in yellowish stucco, with five front windows on each floor; their blinds hang awry. At the side, the lowest of the two windows on each floor are protected by heavy iron grating. A small yard behind the house holds pigs, poultry, and rabbits, with a woodshed and a meat safe beside the kitchen’s greasy drain.

The entrance leads into a street-facing sitting room with barred windows, then into the dining room and kitchen, divided by the staircase. The sitting room’s horsehair furniture, uneven floor, half-faded pictures from Telemaque, artificial flowers, and ill-chosen clock give poverty a settled, everyday form. The boarders have joked for decades about the painted banquet of Calypso and Ulysses’ son, a classical scene made ironic by the meager meals of their own lives. The house’s damp, rancid atmosphere, which clings to clothing, reinforces the divide between its enclosed routines and the elegance found elsewhere in Paris.

Rastignac’s Route Between Social Worlds

Rastignac’s visits to fashionable addresses make his starting point on the street socially legible. When he first goes to see the Countess de Restaud, he walks through the courtyard on foot and encounters servants’ contemptuous looks beside a smart cab and its finely harnessed horse. The visible display of money unsettles him; his rehearsed wit deserts him as he waits in the ante-room. The contrast between that residence and his modest circumstances sharpens his awareness that access to Parisian society is marked by material signs.

At Mme. de Beauséant’s house, Rastignac encounters another threshold into the world he hopes to enter. After an evening at the Théâtre-Italien, where he appears in a box beside Mme. de Beauséant and is seen by the assembled audience, he walks back from the theatre to Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. The return journey becomes a moment of calculation: he believes four influential houses are now open to him and imagines attaching himself to the social connections that might raise his fortunes. The street remains his base, but his attention is increasingly fixed on the networks and opportunities beyond it.

A Base for Ambition and Its Limits

Rastignac continues to return to the lodging house even after his social life accelerates. For several days he dines almost daily with Delphine de Nucingen, accompanies her about Paris, and comes back to the street in the small hours. He rises late, spends time with her in the Bois when the weather permits, and grows accustomed to high-stakes play and the extravagant habits of young men in the capital. He sends fifteen hundred francs from his first winnings to his mother and sisters, yet remains at the Maison Vauquer despite having announced that he intends to leave. The street thus marks the lag between his new social life and his still-unsettled material position.

The narrative returns to Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève after Jean-Joachim Goriot’s burial, when Rastignac looks out from Père-Lachaise Cemetery over the Seine and the illuminated city. His gaze settles on the district of Paris he has long wanted to reach, and he declares, “Henceforth there is war between us.” He then goes to dine with Delphine de Nucingen. Against that final movement toward the city, the boarding-house street retains its significance as the poor, enclosed point of departure from which his ambitions took shape.