The landlady and others are curious to know the identity of Père Goriot’s splendidly dressed visitor. Sylvie, who had taken her basket as if going shopping, reported “Just imagine it! There was a splendid carriage waiting at the corner of the Place de l’Estrapade, and she got into it.”
Shortly after Eugene de Rastignac arrives in Paris, he visits his cousin Vicomtesse de Beauseant. The Duchesse de Langeais is present during one of his visits.
Delphine de Nucingen and Eugene de Rastignac
One day as Horace Bianchon (in the background) is walking through the park, he sees Mlle Michonneau and Poiret sitting on a bench talking to a man (M. Gondureau) he has seen before and pegged as a police spy disguised as an honest citizen of independent means. He later tells Rastignac that they should keep an eye on that couple.
The Grand Ball at the Hotel de Beauseant
Rastignac, now all alone, walked a few paces to the higher part of the cemetery, and saw Paris spread out along the winding banks of the Seine, where the lights were beginning to shine. His eyes fastened almost hungrily on the area between the column in the place Vendome and the dome of the Invalides, home to that fashionable society to which he had sought to gain admission. He gave this murmuring hive a look which seemed already to savour the sweetness to be sucked from it and pronounced the epic challenge: ‘It’s between the two of us now!’
La Comedie Humaine by Balzac 