tle about
her. If you will introduce her to me, you will be her darling, her
Benjamin; she will idolize you. If, after that, you can love her, do so;
if not, make her useful. I will ask her to come once or twice to one of
my great crushes, but I will never receive her here in the morning. I
will bow to her when I see her, and that will be quite sufficient.
You have shut the Comtesse de Restaud's door against you by mentioning
Father Goriot's name. Yes, my good friend, you may call at her house
twenty times, and every time out of the twenty you will find that she
is not at home. The servants have their orders, and will not admit you.
Very well, then, now let Father Goriot gain the right of entry into her
sister's house for you. The beautiful Mme. de Nucingen will give the
signal for a battle. As soon as she singles you out, other women will
begin to lose their heads about you, and her enemies and rivals and
intimate friends will all try to take you from her. There are women who
will fall in love with a man because another woman has chosen him; like
the city madams, poor things, who copy our millinery, and hope thereby
to acquire our manners. You will have a success, and in Paris success is
everything; it is the key of power. If the women credit you with wit and
talent, the men will follow suit so long as you do not undeceive them
yourself. There will be nothing you may not aspire to; you will go
everywhere, and you will find out what the world is--an assemblage of
fools and knaves. But you must be neither the one nor the other. I am
giving you my name like Ariadne's clue of thread to take with you into
the labyrinth; make no unworthy use of it," she said, with a queenly
glance and curve of her throat; "give it back to me unsullied. And now,
go; leave me. We women also have our battles to fight."

"And if you should ever need some one who would gladly set a match to a
train for you----"

"Well?" she asked.

He tapped his heart, smiled in answer to his cousin's smile, and went.

It was five o'clock, and Eugene was hungry; he was afraid lest he should
not be in time for dinner, a misgiving which made him feel that it was
pleasant to be borne so quickly across Paris. This sensation of physical
comfort left his mind free to grapple with the thoughts that assailed
him. A mortification usually sends a young man of his age into a furious
rage; he shakes his fist at society, and vows vengeance when his belief
in himself is sh