"Lousteau, listen to me. That a passion should lead you to forget to
some extent the times in which we live, is conceivable; but I, my dear
fellow, have not the mythological bandage over my eyes.--Well, then
consider your position. For fifteen years you have been tossing in the
literary world; you are no longer young, you have padded the hoof till
your soles are worn through!--Yes, my boy, you turn your socks under
like a street urchin to hide the holes, so that the legs cover the
heels! In short, the joke is too stale. Your excuses are more familiar
than a patent medicine--"

"I may say to you, like the Regent to Cardinal Dubois, 'That is kicking
enough!'" said Lousteau, laughing.

"Oh, venerable young man," replied Bixiou, "the iron has touched the
sore to the quick. You are worn out, aren't you? Well, then; in the
heyday of youth, under the pressure of penury, what have you done? You
are not in the front rank, and you have not a thousand francs of your
own. That is the sum-total of the situation. Can you, in the decline of
your powers, support a family by your pen, when your wife, if she is an
honest woman, will not have at her command the resources of the woman
of the streets, who can extract her thousand-franc note from the depths
where milord keeps it safe? You are rushing into the lowest depths of
the social theatre.

"And this is only the financial side. Now, consider the political
position. We are struggling in an essentially _bourgeois_ age, in which
honor, virtue, high-mindedness, talent, learning--genius, in short, is
summed up in paying your way, owing nobody anything, and conducting
your affairs with judgment. Be steady, be respectable, have a wife, and
children, pay your rent and taxes, serve in the National Guard, and be
on the same pattern as all the men of your company--then you may indulge
in the loftiest pretensions, rise to the Ministry!--and you have the
best chances possible, since you are no Montmorency. You were preparing
to fulfil all the conditions insisted on for turning out a political
personage, you are capable of every mean trick that is necessary in
office, even of pretending to be commonplace--you would have acted it to
the life. And just for a woman, who will leave you in the lurch--the
end of every eternal passion--in three, five, or seven years--after
exhausting your last physical and intellectual powers, you turn your
back on the sacred Hearth, on the Rue des Lombards, on a polit