clarity about the situations of his fellow tenants. As a law student, he falls away from school and into the serious business of being initiated in the Paris uniquely available to young man on the come--its theatres, dens of iniquity and entertainment, etc. But EugFne acquires "some perception of how human beings are packed in strata, layer above layer in the framework of society" (Balzac 55). He does this in a Paris that is readily identifiable with reality. Place-names abound in Old Goriot and are bound up in its narrative action--from Ecole de Droit, or School of Law (56, 157), to Les Invalides, the Tuileries (140), Place Vend(me (304), and the PFre-Lachaise, or cemetery (199, 207, 247, 304), a recurring referent that continually reminds the reader of the tenousness of Parisian life.
Country boy EugFne quickly comes to appreciate the value of social contacts in the city and the need to cultivate them for social and career success. Instinctively he knows that the Paris salons--inhabited by the beautiful and influential--are really the only place where efforts in that direction can meaningfully pay off. His objective becomes to exploit the family connection with his rich cousin Mme. de BeausTant and to move up socially.
EugFne's increasingly textured involvement in Parisian life is linked to his involvement with Goriot and his daughters Anastasie and Delphine. The sexual morality of EugFne's taking Delphine as a mistress--or her becoming his patron--is presented without comment in the narrative except insofar as it is linked to the ratios of social power that constitute Paris as a venue of social organization and stratification:
At once there shone before his eyes the wealth displayed at the Comtesse de Restaud's mansion. . . . As his imagination soared among the giddy heights of Parisian society a thousand dark thoughts stirred in his heart, his views grew broader and his conscience slacker. He saw the world as it is; saw ho...