Rastignac is the typical young Frenchman of that period. He is talented, but not in any uncommon degree, and has no idealism beyond that which is begotten by the inexperience of youth. Profoundly impressed by all that he sees and experiences, he begins to aspire with steadily diminishing conscientiousness, steadily growing desire, after fortune's favours. How indignantly he repudiates the idea when Vautrin first puts the old hypothetical question to him--whether, if a mere act of will could do it, he would kill an unknown mandarin in China to obtain the millions he desires! Yet how short a time elapses before "the mandarin" is lying in his death-throes! Rastignac says to himself at first, as all men do in their youth, that to resolve to become great or wealthy at any cost is the same as to resolve to lie, cheat, and cringe to and flatter those who have lied, cheated, cringed, and flattered. Presently he dismisses the thought, determining not to think at all, but to follow the instincts of his heart. There comes a time when he is still too young to make definite calculations, but old enough to be haunted by vague ideas and hazy visions, which, if they could be chemically condensed, would leave no very pure deposit. His liaison with the fashionable lady, Delphine de Nucingen, Goriot's daughter, completes his education. And whilst he has been acquiring a full and perfect understanding of that sum of small and great meannesses which constitutes fashionable life, he has been influenced by Vautrin's satirical cynicism. "One or two more such political reflections, and you will see the world as it is. If he will but act an occasional little virtuous scene, the man of superior powers may satisfy all his fancies and receive loud applause from the fools in the pit.... I give you leave to despise me to-day, being certain that ere long you will love me. You will find in me those yawning abysses, those great concentrated feelings, which the foolish call vices; but you will never find me either cowardly or ungrateful."