“Like a lily-seed in the soil,” replied Vernou, “and she has improved in it and flowered. Hence her superiority. Must we not have known everything to be able to create the laughter and joy which are part of everything?” “He is right,” said Lousteau, who had hitherto listened without speaking; “La Torpille can laugh and make others laugh. That gift of all great writers and great actors is proper to those who have investigated every social deep. At eighteen that girl had already known the greatest wealth, the most squalid misery--men of every degree. She bears about her a sort of magic wand by which she lets loose the brutal appetites so vehemently suppressed in men who still have a heart while occupied with politics or science, literature or art. There is not in Paris another woman who can say to the beast as she does: ‘Come out!’ And the beast leaves his lair and wallows in excesses. She feeds you up to the chin, she helps you to drink and smoke. In short, this woman is the salt of which Rabelais writes, which, thrown on matter, animates it and elevates it to the marvelous realms of art; her robe displays unimagined splendor, her fingers drop gems as her lips shed smiles; she gives the spirit of the occasion to every little thing; her chatter twinkles with bright sayings, she has the secret of the quaintest onomatopoeia, full of color, and giving color; she----” “You are wasting five francs’ worth of copy,” said Bixiou, interrupting Lousteau. “La Torpille is something far better than all that; you have all been in love with her more or less, not one of you can say that she ever was his mistress. She can always command you; you will never command her. You may force your way in and ask her to do you a service----” “Oh, she is more generous than a brigand chief who knows his business, and more devoted than the best of school-fellows,” said Blondet. “You may trust her with your purse or your secrets. But what made me choose her as queen is her Bourbon-like indifference for a fallen favorite.” “She, like her mother, is much too dear,” said des Lupeaulx. “The handsome Dutch woman would have swallowed up the income of the Archbishop of Toledo; she ate two notaries out of house and home----” “And kept Maxime de Trailles when he was a court page,” said Bixiou. “La Torpille is too dear, as Raphael was, or Careme, or Taglioni, or Lawrence, or Boule, or any artist of genius is too dear,” said Blondet. “Esther never looked so thoroughly a lady,” said Rastignac, pointing to the masked figure to whom Lucien had given his arm. “I will bet on its being Madame de Serizy.” “Not a doubt of it,” cried du Chatelet, “and Monsieur du Rubempre’s fortune is accounted for.” “Ah, the Church knows how to choose its Levites; what a sweet ambassador’s secretary he will make!” remarked des Lupeaulx.