In a shabby Paris boarding house, an old vermicelli merchant sells his last silver to keep two daughters in gowns they will not thank him for, and a law student decides which way he intends to climb. Balzac worked nights on fifty cups of coffee a day and died at fifty-one; this is the novel where his Human Comedy locks together, and where Vautrin explains, at length, exactly how the world is run. Twenty-six plates of painting, from Daumier to Boilly, catch the boarding-house table, the chess game and the public auction, the exact Parisian rooms and appetites Balzac turns into fate.