as well as most, declared that the man was
physically incapable of wearing a jacket."

"I will tell you what, you ought to have modeled yourself on
Beaudenord," the Vidame said seriously. "He has this advantage over
all of you, my young friends, he has a genuine specimen of the English
tiger----"

"Just see, gentlemen, what the noblesse have come to in France!" cried
Victurnien. "For them the one important thing is to have a tiger, a
thoroughbred, and baubles----"

"Bless me!" said Blondet. "'This gentleman's good sense at times appalls
me.'--Well, yes, young moralist, you nobles have come to that. You have
not even left to you that lustre of lavish expenditure for which the
dear Vidame was famous fifty years ago. We revel on a second floor in
the Rue Montorgueil. There are no more wars with the Cardinal, no Field
of the Cloth of Gold. You, Comte d'Esgrignon, in short, are supping
in the company of one Blondet, younger son of a miserable provincial
magistrate, with whom you would not shake hands down yonder; and in ten
years' time you may sit beside him among peers of the realm. Believe in
yourself after that, if you can."

"Ah, well," said Rastignac, "we have passed from action to thought, from
brute force to force of intellect, we are talking----"

"Let us not talk of our reverses," protested the Vidame; "I have made
up my mind to die merrily. If our friend here has not a tiger as yet, he
comes of a race of lions, and can dispense with one."

"He cannot do without a tiger," said Blondet; "he is too newly come to
town."

"His elegance may be new as yet," returned de Marsay, "but we are
adopting it. He is worthy of us, he understands his age, he has brains,
he is nobly born and gently bred; we are going to like him, and serve
him, and push him----"

"Whither?" inquired Blondet.

"Inquisitive soul!" said Rastignac.

"With whom will he take up to-night?" de Marsay asked.

"With a whole seraglio," said the Vidame.

"Plague take it! What can we have done that the dear Vidame is punishing
us by keeping his word to the infanta? I should be pitiable indeed if I
did not know her----"

"And I was once a coxcomb even as he," said the Vidame, indicating de
Marsay.

The conversation continued pitched in the same key, charmingly
scandalous, and agreeably corrupt. The dinner went off very pleasantly.
Rastignac and de Marsay went to the Opera with the Vidame and
Victurnien, with a view to following them afterwards