dead; and Mme. Sorbier, a matter-of-fact person, seeing it
was a business letter, handed it on to her husband's successor. Maitre
Cardot, the new notary, informed the young Count that a draft on the
Treasury made payable to the deceased would be useless; and by way of
reply to the letter, which had cost the old provincial notary so much
thought, Cardot despatched four lines intended not to reach Chesnel's
heart, but to produce the money. Chesnel made the draft payable
to Sorbier's young successor; and the latter, feeling but little
inclination to adopt his correspondent's sentimentality, was delighted
to put himself at the Count's orders, and gave Victurnien as much money
as he wanted.

Now those who know what life in Paris means, know that fifty thousand
francs will not go very far in furniture, horses, carriages, and
elegance generally; but it must be borne in mind that Victurnien
immediately contracted some twenty thousand francs' worth of debts
besides, and his tradespeople at first were not at all anxious to be
paid, for our young gentleman's fortune had been prodigiously increased,
partly by rumor, partly by Josephin, that Chesnel in livery.

Victurnien had not been in town a month before he was obliged to repair
to his man of business for ten thousand francs; he had only been playing
whist with the Ducs de Navarreins, de Chaulieu, and de Lenoncourt, and
now and again at his club. He had begun by winning some thousands of
francs but pretty soon lost five or six thousand, which brought home to
him the necessity of a purse for play. Victurnien had the spirit that
gains goodwill everywhere, and puts a young man of a great family on a
level with the very highest. He was not merely admitted at once into
the band of patrician youth, but was even envied by the rest. It was
intoxicating to him to feel that he was envied, nor was he in this mood
very likely to think of reform. Indeed, he had completely lost his head.
He would not think of the means; he dipped into his money-bags as if
they could be refilled indefinitely; he deliberately shut his eyes to
the inevitable results of the system. In that dissipated set, in the
continual whirl of gaiety, people take the actors in their brilliant
costumes as they find them, no one inquires whether a man can afford to
make the figure he does, there is nothing in worse taste than inquiries
as to ways and means. A man ought to renew his wealth perpetually,
and as Nature does--below