Old Goriot recap

At the shabby Maison Vauquer, provincial law student Eugene de Rastignac meets retired merchant Goriot, who has impoverished himself to satisfy his two socially ambitious daughters, Anastasie de Restaud and Delphine de Nucingen. Rastignac uses his cousin Madame de Beauseant to enter fashionable Paris and pursues Delphine, while the enigmatic Vautrin offers him a quicker fortune through a murder that would make fellow lodger Victorine Taillefer an heiress. Rastignac resists the scheme, but Vautrin arranges it before police expose him as the fugitive Jacques Collin. Goriot spends his last resources trying to rescue his daughters from debts and unhappy marriages. Their quarrel brings on his final illness, yet neither makes him her priority as he dies. Rastignac and Bianchon care for him and bury him almost alone. From the cemetery, Rastignac turns toward Paris as an opponent he means to conquer, then goes to dine with Delphine.

The Maison Vauquer is a decaying Paris boarding house whose residents form a compressed picture of the city. Among them are Eugene de Rastignac, a young provincial law student; Victorine Taillefer, rejected by her rich father; the forceful and mysterious Vautrin; and old Goriot, a retired pasta maker who arrived wealthy but has steadily moved to cheaper rooms. The other boarders ridicule Goriot and invent scandalous explanations for visits from two richly dressed young women. Rastignac gradually realizes that they are Goriot's married daughters, Anastasie de Restaud and Delphine de Nucingen. Goriot has given them his fortune and accepts poverty so that he can continue meeting their demands. Rastignac, meanwhile, begins to compare his family's sacrifices for his education with the wealth and influence displayed by Paris society.

Rastignac's first visit to Anastasie de Restaud ends badly when he mentions Goriot and exposes the family connection she wishes to conceal. He turns to his aristocratic cousin, Madame de Beauseant, who explains that Goriot surrendered nearly everything to marry his daughters well, only to be excluded once his money and humble origin became inconvenient. She advises Rastignac that success in Paris depends on calculation and suggests that Delphine, who envies her sister's access to the aristocracy, could become his route upward. Rastignac asks his own impoverished mother and sisters for money to outfit him for society. At the boarding house, Vautrin reads his ambition accurately and proposes a darker route to wealth: court Victorine, while events are arranged so that her favored brother dies and she inherits. Rastignac is appalled, but the offer makes explicit the violence hidden beneath respectable competition.

With new clothes and Madame de Beauseant's introduction, Rastignac enters fashionable life and becomes close to Delphine. He helps her recover money at a gaming table and learns that her banker husband controls her fortune. Goriot welcomes the relationship, imagining that Rastignac can make Delphine happy, and spends more of his dwindling resources preparing rooms where the young pair can meet. Vautrin's scheme advances despite Rastignac's refusal: Victorine's brother is mortally wounded in a duel, apparently placing her near the inheritance. Mademoiselle Michonneau, working with the police, confirms that Vautrin is really Jacques Collin, the wanted criminal known as Trompe-la-Mort. He is arrested after denouncing the boarders' hypocrisy. Rastignac is left between Goriot's selfless devotion, Vautrin's brutal honesty, and the polished selfishness of the drawing rooms. Goriot's daughters, both trapped by debts and their marriages, continue to demand that he solve crises he no longer has the means to repair.

Anastasie and Delphine confront Goriot with fresh financial disasters and turn on each other in his room. Their quarrel and his inability to rescue them bring on a collapse from which he does not recover. Rastignac and Bianchon tend him while sending repeated messages to his daughters. Both women remain absorbed by debts, husbands, lovers, and social obligations; Anastasie comes only when Goriot can no longer respond, and Delphine also fails him at the decisive time. Dying, Goriot moves between anguish at their absence and desperate excuses for them, finally calling for the daughters to whom he gave everything. Rastignac and Christophe scrape together the funeral expenses. The daughters do not accompany their father to the cemetery, though their empty carriages appear in the procession. After the burial, Rastignac surveys Paris from the heights and accepts a direct contest with the society he now understands. He goes to dine with Delphine, choosing to continue his ascent within the world that abandoned Goriot.

Goriot suffers a final collapse after Anastasie and Delphine quarrel before him over their money troubles. Rastignac and Bianchon nurse him in his bare room while his daughters repeatedly put their social and financial crises ahead of visiting. Goriot dies still calling for them and still excusing their neglect. Rastignac and the servant Christophe must arrange and pay for the funeral; neither daughter attends, though their empty, crested carriages follow the coffin. After watching the burial, Rastignac looks out over Paris and consciously accepts it as his adversary. He then goes to dine with Delphine, ending the novel with Goriot abandoned and Rastignac committed to the social struggle that helped destroy him.