misfortune, he fell in with a set of roues, with de Marsay, de

Ronquerolles, Maxime de Trailles, des Lupeaulx, Rastignac, Ajuda-
Pinto, Beaudenord, de la Roche-Hugon, de Manerville, and the

Vandenesses, whom he met wherever he went, and a great many houses
were open to a young man with his ancient name and reputation for

wealth. He went to the Marquise d'Espard's, to the Duchesses de
Grandlieu, de Carigliano, and de Chaulieu, to the Marquises

d'Aiglemont and de Listomere, to Mme. de Serizy's, to the Opera, to
the embassies and elsewhere. The Faubourg Saint-Germain has its

provincial genealogies at its fingers' ends; a great name once
recognized and adopted therein is a passport which opens many a door

that will scarcely turn on its hinges for unknown names or the lions
of a lower rank.

Victurnien found his relatives both amiable and ready to welcome him
so long as he did not appear as a suppliant; he saw at once that the

surest way of obtaining nothing was to ask for something. At Paris, if
the first impulse moves people to protect, second thoughts (which last

a good deal longer) impel them to despise the protege. Independence,
vanity, and pride, all the young Count's better and worse feelings

combined, led him, on the contrary, to assume an aggressive attitude.
And therefore the Ducs de Verneuil, de Lenoncourt, de Chaulieu, de

Navarreins, d'Herouville, de Grandlieu, and de Maufrigneuse, the
Princes de Cadignan and de Blamont-Chauvry, were delighted to present

the charmingsurvivor of the wreck of an ancient family at court.
Victurnien went to the Tuileries in a splendid carriage with his

armorial bearings on the panels; but his presentation to His Majesty
made it abundantly clear to him that the people occupied the royal

mind so much that his nobility was like to be forgotten. The restored
dynasty, moreover, was surrounded by triple ranks of eligible old men

and gray-headed courtiers; the young noblesse was reduced to a cipher,
and this Victurnien guessed at once. He saw that there was no suitable

place for him at court, nor in the government, nor the army, nor,
indeed, anywhere else. So he launched out into the world of pleasure.

Introduced at the Elyess-Bourbon, at the Duchesse d'Angouleme's, at
the Pavillon Marsan, he met on all sides with the surface civilities

due to the heir of an old family, not so old but it could be called to
mind by the sight of a living member. And, after all, it was not a

small thing to be remembered. In the distinction with which Victurnien
was honored lay the way to the peerage and a splendid marriage; he had

taken the field with a false appearance of wealth, and his vanity
would not allow him to declare his real position. Besides, he had been

so much complimented on the figure that he made, he was so pleased
with his first success, that, like many other young men, he felt

ashamed to draw back. He took a suite of rooms in the Rue du Bac, with
stables and a complete equipment for the fashionable life to which he

had committed himself. These preliminaries cost him fifty thousand
francs, which money, moreover, the young gentleman managed to draw in

spite of all Chesnel's wise precautions, thanks to a series of
unforeseen events.

Chesnel's letter certainly reached his friend's office, but Maitre
Sorbier was dead; and Mme. Sorbier, a matter-of-fact person, seeing it

was a business letter, handed it on to her husband's successor. Maitre
Cardot, the new notary, informed the young Count that a draft on the

Treasury made payable to the deceased would be useless; and by way of
reply to the letter, which had cost the old provincial notary so much

thought, Cardot despatched four lines intended not to reach Chesnel's
heart, but to produce the money. Chesnel made the draft payable to

Sorbier's young successor; and the latter, feeling but little
inclination to adopt his correspondent's sentimentality, was delighted

to put himself at the Count's orders, and gave Victurnien as much
money as he wanted.

Now those who know what life in Paris means, know that fifty thousand
francs will not go very far in furniture, horses, carriages, and

elegance generally; but it must be borne in mind that Victurnien
immediately contracted some twenty thousand francs' worth of debts

besides, and his tradespeople at first were not at all anxious to be
paid, for our young gentleman's fortune had been prodigiously

increased, partly by rumor, partly by Josephin, that Chesnel in
livery.

Victurnien had not been in town a month before he was obliged to
repair to his man of business for ten thousand francs; he had only

been playing whist with the Ducs de Navarreins, de Chaulieu, and de
Lenoncourt, and now and again at his club. He had begun by winning

some thousands of francs but pretty soon lost five or six thousand,
which brought home to him the necessity of a purse for play.

Victurnien had the spirit that gains goodwill everywhere, and puts a
young man of a great family on a level with the very highest. He was

not merely admitted at once into the band of patrician youth, but was
even envied by the rest. It was intoxicating to him to feel that he

was envied, nor was he in this mood very likely to think of reform.
Indeed, he had completely lost his head. He would not think of the

means; he dipped into his money-bags as if they could be refilled
indefinitely; he deliberately shut his eyes to the inevitable results

of the system. In that dissipated set, in the continual whirl of
gaiety, people take the actors in their brilliant costumes as they

find them, no one inquires whether a man can afford to make the figure
he does, there is nothing in worse taste than inquiries as to ways and

means. A man ought to renew his wealth perpetually, and as Nature does
--below the surface and out of sight. People talk if somebody comes to

grief; they joke about a newcomer's fortune till their minds are set
at rest, and at this they draw the line. Victurnien d'Esgrignon, with

all the Faubourg Saint-Germain to back him, with all his protectors
exaggerating the amount of his fortune (were it only to rid themselves

of responsibility), and magnifying his possessions in the most refined
and well-bred way, with a hint or a word; with all these advantages--

to repeat--Victurnien was, in fact, an eligible Count. He was
handsome, witty, sound in politics; his father still possessed the

ancestral castle and the lands of the marquisate. Such a young fellow
is sure of an admirablereception in houses where there are

marriageable daughters, fair but portionless partners at dances, and
young married women who find that time hangs heavy on their hands. So

the world, smiling, beckoned him to the foremost benches in its booth;
the seats reserved for marquises are still in the same place in Paris;

and if the names are changed, the things are the same as ever.
In the most exclusivecircle of society in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,

Victurnien found the Chevalier's double in the person of the Vidame de
Pamiers. The Vidame was a Chevalier de Valois raised to the tenth

power, invested with all the prestige of wealth, enjoying all the
advantages of high position. The dear Vidame was a repositary for

everybody's secrets, and the gazette of the Faubourg besides;
nevertheless, he was discreet, and, like other gazettes, only said

things that might safely be published. Again Victurnien listened to
the Chevalier's esoteric doctrines. The Vidame told young d'Esgrignon,

without mincing matters, to make conquests among women of quality,
supplementing the advice with anecdotes from his own experience. The

Vicomte de Pamiers, it seemed, had permitted himself much that it
would serve no purpose to relate here; so remote was it all from our

modern manners, in which soul and passion play so large a part, that
nobody would believe it. But the excellent Vidame did more than this.

"Dine with me at a tavern to-morrow," said he, by way of conclusion.
"We will digest our dinner at the Opera, and afterwards I will take

you to a house where several people have the greatest wish to meet
you."

The Vidame gave a delightful little dinner at the Rocher de Cancale;
three guests only were asked to meet Victurnien--de Marsay, Rastignac,

and Blondet. Emile Blondet, the young Count's fellow-townsman, was a
man of letters on the outskirts of society to which he had been

introduced by a charming woman from the same province. This was one of
the Vicomte de Troisville's daughters, now married to the Comte de

Montcornet, one of those of Napoleon's generals who went over to the
Bourbons. The Vidame held that a dinner-party of more than six persons