ew
how to come into a room nor how to leave it. [See "Pere Goriot."] And
now Rastignac was peer of France and minister, while he, Maxime, become
his agent, was obliged with folded arms to hear himself told that his
plot was weak and he must carry it out alone, if at all.

But this discouragement did not last.

"Yes!" he cried to himself, "I _will_ carry it out; my instinct tells
me there is something in it. What nonsense!--a Dorlange, a nobody, to
attempt to checkmate Maxime de Trailles and make a stepping-stone of my
defeat! To my solicitor's," he said to the coachman, opening the door of
the carriage himself.

Desroches was at home; and Monsieur de Trailles was immediately admitted
into his study.

Desroches was a lawyer who had had, like Raffaelle, several manners.
First, possessor of a practice without clients, he had made fish of
every case that came into his net; and he felt himself, in consequence,
little respected by the court. But he was a hard worker, well versed in
all the ins and outs of chicanery, a keen observer, and an intelligent
reader of the movements of the human heart. Consequently he had made for
himself, in course of time, a very good practice; he had married a rich
woman, and the moment that he thought himself able to do without crooked
ways he had seriously renounced them. In 1839 Desroches had become an
honest and skilful solicitor: that is to say, he assumed the interests
of his clients with warmth and ability; he never counselled an openly
dishonorable proceeding, still less would he have lent a hand to it.
As to that fine flower of delicacy to be met with in Derville and some
others like him, besides the sad fact that it is difficult to keep its
fragrance from evaporating in this business world of which Monsieur de
Talleyrand says, "Business means getting the property of others," it is
certain that it can never be added to any second state of existence.
The loss of that bloom of the soul, like that of other virginities, is
irreparable. Desroches had not aspired to restore it to himself. He
no longer risked anything ignoble or dishonest, but the good tricks
admitted the code of procedure, the good traps, the good treacheries
which could be legitimately played off upon an adversary, he was very
ready to undertake.

Desroches was moreover a man of parts and witty; loving the pleasures of
the table, and like all men perpetually the slaves of imperious toil,
he felt the need of vigorous amus