Buisson, who understands a livery as well as most, declared that the man was physically incapable of wearing a jacket.""I will tell you what, you ought to have modeled yourself on Beaudenord," the Vidame said seriously."He has this advantage over all of you, my young friends, he has a genuine specimen of the English tiger----""Just see, gentlemen, what the noblesse have come to in France!" cried Victurnien."For them the one important thing is to have a tiger, a thoroughbred, and baubles----""Bless me!" said Blondet." 'This gentleman's good sense at times appalls me.'--Well, yes, young moralist, you nobles have come to that.
You have not even left to you that lustre of lavish expenditure for which the dear Vidame was famous fifty years ago.We revel on a second floor in the Rue Montorgueil.There are no more wars with the Cardinal, no Field of the Cloth of Gold.You, Comte d'Esgrignon, in short, are supping in the company of one Blondet, younger son of a miserable provincial magistrate, with whom you would not shake hands down yonder; and in ten years' time you may sit beside him among peers of the realm.Believe in yourself after that, if you can.""Ah, well," said Rastignac, "we have passed from action to thought, from brute force to force of intellect, we are talking----""Let us not talk of our reverses," protested the Vidame; "I have made up my mind to die merrily.If our friend here has not a tiger as yet, he comes of a race of lions, and can dispense with one.""He cannot do without a tiger," said Blondet; "he is too newly come to town.""His elegance may be new as yet," returned de Marsay, "but we are adopting it.He is worthy of us, he understands his age, he has brains, he is nobly born and gently bred; we are going to like him, and serve him, and push him----""Whither?" inquired Blondet.
"Inquisitive soul!" said Rastignac.
"With whom will he take up to-night?" de Marsay asked.
"With a whole seraglio," said the Vidame.
"Plague take it! What can we have done that the dear Vidame is punishing us by keeping his word to the infanta? I should be pitiable indeed if I did not know her----""And I was once a coxcomb even as he," said the Vidame, indicating de Marsay.
The conversation continued pitched in the same key, charmingly scandalous, and agreeably corrupt.The dinner went off very pleasantly.Rastignac and de Marsay went to the Opera with the Vidame and Victurnien, with a view to following them afterwards to Mlle.des Touches' salon.And thither, accordingly, this pair of rakes betook themselves, calculating that by that time the tragedy would have been read; for of all things to be taken between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, a tragedy in their opinion was the most unwholesome.They went to keep a watch on Victurnien and to embarrass him, a piece of schoolboys's mischief embittered by a jealous dandy's spite.But Victurnien was gifted with that page's effrontery which is a great help to ease of manner; and Rastignac, watching him as he made his entrance, was surprised to see how quickly he caught the tone of the moment.
"That young d'Esgrignon will go far, will he not?" he said, addressing his companion.
"That is as may be," returned de Marsay, "but he is in a fair way."The Vidame introduced his young friend to one of the most amiable and frivolous duchesses of the day, a lady whose adventures caused an explosion five years later.Just then, however, she was in the full blaze of her glory; she had been suspected, it is true, of equivocal conduct; but suspicion, while it is still suspicion and not proof, marks a woman out with the kind of distinction which slander gives to a man.Nonentities are never slandered; they chafe because they are left in peace.This woman was, in fact, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, a daughter of the d'Uxelles; her father-in-law was still alive; she was not to be the Princesse de Cadignan for some years to come.Afriend of the Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, two glories departed, she was likewise intimate with the Marquise d'Espard, with whom she disputed her fragile sovereignty as queen of fashion.Great relations lent her countenance for a long while, but the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was one of those women who, in some way, nobody knows how, or why, or where, will spend the rents of all the lands of earth, and of the moon likewise, if they were not out of reach.The general outline of her character was scarcely known as yet;de Marsay, and de Marsay only, really had read her.That redoubtable dandy now watched the Vidame de Pamiers' introduction of his young friend to that lovely woman, and bent over to say in Rastignac's ear:
"My dear fellow, he will go up WHIZZ! like a rocket, and come down like a stick," an atrociously vulgar saying which was remarkably fulfilled.
The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had lost her heart to Victurnien after first giving her mind to a serious study of him.Any lover who should have caught the glance by which she expressed her gratitude to the Vidame might well have been jealous of such friendship.Women are like horses let loose on a steppe when they feel, as the Duchess felt with the Vidame de Pamiers, that the ground is safe; at such moments they are themselves; perhaps it pleases them to give, as it were, samples of their tenderness in intimacy in this way.It was a guarded glance, nothing was lost between eye and eye; there was no possibility of reflection in any mirror.Nobody intercepted it.
"See how she has prepared herself," Rastignac said, turning to de Marsay."What a virginal toilette; what swan's grace in that snow-white throat of hers! How white her gown is, and she is wearing a sash like a little girl; she looks round like a madonna inviolate.Who would think that you had passed that way?""The very reason why she looks as she does," returned de Marsay, with a triumphant air.