“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.”