Escaped convict Vautrin, has taken shelter in a Paris, boardinghouse and sets about righting the wrongs suffered by the other lodgers. He murders a man in a duel in order to reunite Victorine Tallefer with her estranged father; he brings egotistical Delphine Goriot back to the bedside of her dying father, who has sacrificed everything to provide for her and her sister, Anastasie; and he then reunites Victorine with Eugène de Rastagnic, an artist with whom she has fallen in love. Disguised as Papa Goriot, Vautrin then eludes the police.