which so many
women love, to her seemed only means to an end; she aimed at living on
every point of the largest circle that life can describe.

Among the men still young, and to whom the future belonged, who crowded
her drawing-room on great occasions, were to be seen MM. de Marsay and
de Ronquerolles, de Montriveau, de la Roche-Hugon, de Serizy, Ferraud,
Maxime de Trailles, de Listomere, the two Vandenesses, du Chatelet,
and others. She would frequently receive a man whose wife she would not
admit, and her power was great enough to induce certain ambitious men to
submit to these hard conditions, such as two famous royalist bankers, M.
de Nucingen and Ferdinand du Tillet. She had so thoroughly studied the
strength and the weakness of Paris life, that her conduct had never
given any man the smallest advantage over her. An enormous price might
have been set on a note or letter by which she might have compromised
herself, without one being produced.

If an arid soul enabled her to play her part to the life, her person was
no less available for it. She had a youthful figure. Her voice was, at
will, soft and fresh, or clear and hard. She possessed in the highest
degree the secret of that aristocratic pose by which a woman wipes out
the past. The Marquise knew well the art of setting an immense space
between herself and the sort of man who fancies he may be familiar after
some chance advances. Her imposing gaze could deny everything. In her
conversation fine and beautiful sentiments and noble resolutions flowed
naturally, as it seemed, from a pure heart and soul; but in reality she
was all self, and quite capable of blasting a man who was clumsy in
his negotiations, at the very time when she was shamelessly making a
compromise for the benefit of her own interest.

Rastignac, in trying to fasten on to this woman, had discerned her to
be the cleverest of tools, but he had not yet used it; far from handling
it, he was already finding himself crushed by it. This young Condottiere
of the brain, condemned, like Napoleon, to give battle constantly, while
knowing that a single defeat would prove the grave of his fortunes, had
met a dangerous adversary in his protectress. For the first time in his
turbulent life, he was playing a game with a partner worthy of him. He
saw a place as Minister in the conquest of Madame d'Espard, so he was
her tool till he could make her his--a perilous beginning.

The Hotel d'Espard needed a large ho