e realized
to the full; you should have all your desires--honors, wealth, or women.
Civilization should flow with milk and honey for you. You should be our
pet and favorite, our Benjamin. We would all work ourselves to death for
you with pleasure; every obstacle should be removed from your path. You
have a few prejudices left; so you think that I am a scoundrel, do you?
Well, M. de Turenne, quite as honorable a man as you take yourself to
be, had some little private transactions with bandits, and did not
feel that his honor was tarnished. You would rather not lie under any
obligation to me, eh? You need not draw back on that account," Vautrin
went on, and a smile stole over his lips. "Take these bits of paper
and write across this," he added, producing a piece of stamped paper,
"_Accepted the sum of three thousand five hundred francs due this day
twelvemonth_, and fill in the date. The rate of interest is stiff enough
to silence any scruples on your part; it gives you the right to call me
a Jew. You can call quits with me on the score of gratitude. I am quite
willing that you should despise me to-day, because I am sure that you
will have a kindlier feeling towards me later on. You will find out
fathomless depths in my nature, enormous and concentrated forces that
weaklings call vices, but you will never find me base or ungrateful.
In short, I am neither a pawn nor a bishop, but a castle, a tower of
strength, my boy."

"What manner of man are you?" cried Eugene. "Were you created to torment
me?"

"Why no; I am a good-natured fellow, who is willing to do a dirty piece
of work to put you high and dry above the mire for the rest of your
days. Do you ask the reason of this devotion? All right; I will tell you
that some of these days. A word or two in your ear will explain it. I
have begun by shocking you, by showing you the way to ring the changes,
and giving you a sight of the mechanism of the social machine; but your
first fright will go off like a conscript's terror on the battlefield.
You will grow used to regarding men as common soldiers who have made up
their minds to lose their lives for some self-constituted king. Times
have altered strangely. Once you could say to a bravo, 'Here are a
hundred crowns; go and kill Monsieur So-and-so for me,' and you could
sup quietly after turning some one off into the dark for the least thing
in the world. But nowadays I propose to put you in the way of a handsome
fortune; you have