with the smile of a man who does not wish to risk assured happiness.
“I congratulate you on your changed fortunes,” said the Comte du Chatelet to Lucien.
“I take it as you offer it,” replied Lucien, bowing with much grace to the Marquise.
“What a coxcomb!” said the Count in an undertone to Madame d’Espard. “He has succeeded in winning an ancestry.”
“With these young men such coxcombry, when it is addressed to us, almost always implies some success in high places,” said the lady; “for with you older men it means ill-fortune. And I should very much like to know which of my grand lady friends has taken this fine bird under her patronage; then I might find the means of amusing myself this evening. My ticket, anonymously sent, is no doubt a bit of mischief planned by a rival and having something to do with this young man. His impertinence is to order; keep an eye on him. I will take the Duc de Navarrein’s arm. You will be able to find me again.”
Just as Madame d’Espard was about to address her cousin, the mysterious mask came between her and the Duke to whisper in her ear:
“Lucien loves you; he wrote the note. Your Prefet is his greatest foe; how can he speak in his presence?”
The stranger moved off, leaving Madame d’Espard a prey to a double surprise. The Marquise knew no one in the world who was capable of playing the part assumed by this mask; she suspected a snare, and went to sit down out of sight. The Comte Sixte du Chatelet – whom Lucien had abridged of his ambitious du with an emphasis that betrayed long meditated revenge – followed the handsome dandy, and presently met a young man to whom he thought he could speak without reserve.
“Well, Rastignac, have you seen Lucien? He has come out in a new skin.”
“If I were half as good looking as he is, I should be twice as rich,” replied the fine gentleman, in a light but meaning tone, expressive of keen raillery.
“No!” said the fat mask in his ear, repaying a thousand ironies in one by the accent he lent the monosyllable.
Rastignac, who was not the man to swallow an affront, stood as if struck by lightning, and allowed himself to be led into a recess by a grasp of iron which he could not shake off.
“You young cockerel, hatched in Mother Vauquer’s coop – you, whose heart failed you to clutch old Taillefer’s millions when the hardest part of the business was done – let me tell you, for your personal safety, that if you do not treat Lucien like the brother you love, you are in our power, while we are not in yours. Silence and submission! or I shall join your game and upset the skittles. Lucien de Rubempre is under the protection of the strongest power of the day – the Church. Choose between life and death – Answer.”
Rastignac felt giddy, like a man who has slept in a forest and wakes to see by his side a famishing lioness. He was frightened, and there was no one to see him; the boldest men yield to fear under such circumstances.
“No one but HE can know – or would dare – ” he murmured to himself.
The mask clutched his hand tighter to prevent his finishing his sentence.
“Act as if I were he,” he said.
Rastignac then acted like a millionaire on the highroad with a brigand’s pistol at his head; he surrendered.
“My dear Count,” said he to du Chatelet, to whom he presently returned, “if you care for your position in life, treat Lucien de Rubempre as a man whom you will one day see holding a place far above where you stand.”
The mask made a imperceptible gesture of approbation, and went off in search of Lucien.
“My dear fellow, you have changed your opinion of him very suddenly,” replied the Prefet with justifiable surprise.
“As suddenly as men change who belong to the centre and vote with the right,” replied Rastignac to the Prefet-Depute, whose vote had for a few days failed to support the Ministry.
“Are there such things as opinions nowadays? There are only interests,” observed des Lupeaulx, who had heard them. “What is the case in point?”
“The case of the Sieur de Rubempre, whom Rastignac is setting up as a person of consequence,” said du Chatelet to the Secretary-General.
“My dear Count,” replied des Lupeaulx very seriously, “Monsieur de Rubempre is a young man of the highest merit, and has such good interest at his back that I should be delighted to renew my acquaintance with him.”
“There he is, rushing into the wasps’ nest of the rakes of the day,” said Rastignac.
The three speakers looked towards a corner where a group of recognized wits had gathered, men of more or less celebrity, and several men of fashion. These gentlemen made common stock of their jests, their remarks, and their scandal, trying to amuse themselves till something should amuse them. Among this strangely mingled party were some men with whom Lucien had had transactions, combining ostensibly kind offices with covert false dealing.
“Hallo! Lucien, my boy, why here we are patched up again – new stuffing and a new cover. Where have we come from? Have we mounted the high horse once more with little offerings from Florine’s boudoir? Bravo, old chap!” and Blondet released Finot to put his arm affectionately around Lucien and press him to his heart.
Andoche Finot was the proprietor of a review on which Lucien had worked for almost nothing, and to which Blondet gave the benefit of his collaboration, of the wisdom of his suggestions and the depth of his views. Finot and Blondet embodied Bertrand and Raton, with this difference – that la Fontaine’s cat at last showed that he knew himself to be duped, while Blondet, though he knew that he was being fleeced, still did all he could for Finot. This brilliant condottiere of the pen was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot hid a brutal strength of will under a heavy exterior, under polish of wit, as a laborer rubs his bread with garlic. He knew how to garner what he gleaned, ideas and crown-pieces alike, in the fields of the dissolute life led by men engaged in letters or in politics.
Blondet, for his sins, had placed his powers at the service of Finot’s vices and idleness. Always at war with necessity, he was one of the race of poverty-stricken and superior men who can do everything for the fortune of others and nothing for their own, Aladdins who let other men borrow their lamp. These excellent advisers have a clear and penetrating judgment so long as it is not distracted by personal interest. In them it is the head and not the arm that acts. Hence the looseness of their morality, and hence the reproach heaped upon them by inferior minds. Blondet would share his purse with a comrade he had affronted the day before; he would dine, drink, and sleep with one whom he would demolish on the morrow. His amusing paradoxes excused everything. Accepting the whole world as a jest, he did not want to be taken seriously; young, beloved, almost famous and contented, he did not devote himself, like Finot, to acquiring the fortune an old man needs.
The most difficult form of courage, perhaps, is that which Lucien needed at this moment to get rid of Blondet as he had just got rid of Madame d’Espard and Chatelet. In him, unfortunately, the joys of vanity hindered the exercise of pride – the basis, beyond doubt, of many great things. His vanity had triumphed in the previous encounter; he had shown himself as a rich man, happy and scornful, to two persons who had scorned him when he was poor and wretched. But how could a poet, like an old diplomate, run the gauntlet with two self-styled friends, who had welcomed him in misery, under whose roof he had slept in the worst of his troubles? Finot, Blondet, and he had groveled together; they had wallowed in such orgies as consume something more than money. Like soldiers
