Source note

RESTAUD (Comtesse Anastasie de), wife of the preceding; elder daughter of the vermicelli-maker, Jean-Joachim Goriot; a beautiful brunette of queenly bearing and manners. Like the fair and gentle Madame de Nucingen, her sister, she showed herself severe and ungrateful towards the kindliest and weakest of fathers. She had three children, two boys and a girl; Ernest, the eldest, being the only legitimate one. She ruined herself for Trailles, her lover's benefit, selling her jewels to Gobseck and endangering her children's future. As soon as her husband had breathed his last, in a moment anxiously awaited, she took from under his pillow and burned the papers which she believed contrary to her own interests and those of her two natural children. It thus followed that Gobseck, the fictitious creditor, gained a claim on all of the remaining property. [Gobseck. Father Goriot.]