which was seldom favorable
to the payment of just debts. If he was to leave that unsavory and mean
abode, where from time to time his pretensions met with humiliation, the
first step was to pay his hostess for a month's board and lodging, and
the second to purchase furniture worthy of the new lodgings he must take
in his quality of dandy, a course that remained impossible. Rastignac,
out of his winnings at cards, would pay his jeweler exorbitant prices
for gold watches and chains, and then, to meet the exigencies of play,
would carry them to the pawnbroker, that discreet and forbidding-looking
friend of youth; but when it was a question of paying for board or
lodging, or for the necessary implements for the cultivation of his
Elysian fields, his imagination and pluck alike deserted him. There was
no inspiration to be found in vulgar necessity, in debts contracted for
past requirements. Like most of those who trust to their luck, he put
off till the last moment the payment of debts that among the bourgeoisie
are regarded as sacred engagements, acting on the plan of Mirabeau,
who never settled his baker's bill until it underwent a formidable
transformation into a bill of exchange.

It was about this time when Rastignac was down on his luck and fell into
debt, that it became clear to the law student's mind that he must have
some more certain source of income if he meant to live as he had been
doing. But while he groaned over the thorny problems of his precarious
situation, he felt that he could not bring himself to renounce the
pleasures of this extravagant life, and decided that he must continue it
at all costs. His dreams of obtaining a fortune appeared more and more
chimerical, and the real obstacles grew more formidable. His initiation
into the secrets of the Nucingen household had revealed to him that if
he were to attempt to use this love affair as a means of mending his
fortunes, he must swallow down all sense of decency, and renounce all
the generous ideas which redeem the sins of youth. He had chosen this
life of apparent splendor, but secretly gnawed by the canker worm of
remorse, a life of fleeting pleasure dearly paid for by persistent pain;
like _Le Distrait_ of La Bruyere, he had descended so far as to make
his bed in a ditch; but (also like _Le Distrait_) he himself was
uncontaminated as yet by the mire that stained his garments.

"So we have killed our mandarin, have we?" said Bianchon one day as they
lef