onsieur and Madame Guillaume Grandet, by gratifying every fancy
of their son, and lavishing upon him the pleasures of a large fortune,
had kept him from making the horrible calculations of which so many
sons in Paris become more or less guilty when, face to face with the
enjoyments of the world, they form desires and conceive schemes which
they see with bitterness must be put off or laid aside during the
lifetime of their parents. The liberality of the father in this instance
had shed into the heart of the son a real love, in which there was no
afterthought of self-interest.

Nevertheless, Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs
of society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already
an old man under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful
education of social life, of that world where in one evening more crimes
are committed in thought and speech than justice ever punishes at the
assizes; where jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest ideas;
where no one is counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and to see
clear in that world is to believe in nothing, neither in feelings, nor
in men, nor even in events,--for events are falsified. There, to "see
clear" we must weigh a friend's purse daily, learn how to keep ourselves
adroitly on the top of the wave, cautiously admire nothing, neither
works of art nor glorious actions, and remember that self-interest is
the mainspring of all things here below. After committing many follies,
the great lady--the beautiful Annette--compelled Charles to think
seriously; with her perfumed hand among his curls, she talked to him of
his future position; as she rearranged his locks, she taught him lessons
of worldly prudence; she made him effeminate and materialized him,--a
double corruption, but a delicate and elegant corruption, in the best
taste.

"You are very foolish, Charles," she would say to him. "I shall have
a great deal of trouble in teaching you to understand the world. You
behaved extremely ill to Monsieur des Lupeaulx. I know very well he is
not an honorable man; but wait till he is no longer in power, then you
may despise him as much as you like. Do you know what Madame Campan used
to tell us?--'My dears, as long as a man is a minister, adore him; when
he falls, help to drag him in the gutter. Powerful, he is a sort of god;
fallen, he is lower than Marat in the sewer, because he is living, and
Marat is dead. Life is a series of