“Very well, father, I will build the second floor myself; the son will improve his father’s property. It is not the usual way, but it happens so sometimes.” “What, my lad! you can find money for building, can you, though you can’t find money to pay the rent, eh! You sly dog, to come round your father.” The question thus raised was hard to lay, for the old man was only too delighted to seize an opportunity of posing as a good father without disbursing a penny; and all that David could obtain was his bare consent to the marriage and free leave to do what he liked in the house--at his own expense; the old “bear,” that pattern of a thrifty parent, kindly consenting not to demand the rent and drain the savings to which David imprudently owned. David went back again in low spirits. He saw that he could not reckon on his father’s help in misfortune. In Angoulême that day people talked of nothing but the Bishop’s epigram and Mme. de Bargeton’s reply. Every least thing that happened that evening was so much exaggerated and embellished and twisted out of all knowledge, that the poet became the hero of the hour. While this storm in a teacup raged on high, a few drops fell among the _bourgeoisie_; young men looked enviously after Lucien as he passed on his way through Beaulieu, and he overheard chance phrases that filled him with conceit. “There is a lucky young fellow!” said an attorney’s clerk, named Petit-Claud, a plain-featured youth who had been at school with Lucien, and treated him with small, patronizing airs. “Yes, he certainly is,” answered one of the young men who had been present on the occasion of the reading; “he is a good-looking fellow, he has some brains, and Mme. de Bargeton is quite wild about him.” Lucien had waited impatiently until he could be sure of finding Louise alone. He had to break the tidings of his sister’s marriage to the arbitress of his destinies. Perhaps after yesterday’s soirée, Louise would be kinder than usual, and her kindness might lead to a moment of happiness. So he thought, and he was not mistaken; Mme. de Bargeton met him with a vehemence of sentiment that seemed like a touching progress of passion to the novice in love. She abandoned her hands, her beautiful golden hair, to the burning kisses of the poet who had passed through such an ordeal.