ke a child; be a man, be a hunter, lie in wait for
your quarry in the world of Paris, wait for your chance and your game;
you need not be particular nor mindful of your dignity, as it is called;
we are all of us slaves to something, to some failing of our own or to
necessity; but keep that law of laws--secrecy."

"Father, you frighten me," said Lucien; "this seems to me to be a
highwayman's theory."

"And you are right," said the canon, "but it is no invention of mine.
All _parvenus_ reason in this way--the house of Austria and the house
of France alike. You have nothing, you say? The Medicis, Richelieu, and
Napoleon started from precisely your standpoint; but _they_, my child,
considered that their prospects were worth ingratitude, treachery, and
the most glaring inconsistencies. You must dare all things to gain
all things. Let us discuss it. Suppose that you sit down to a game of
_bouillotte_, do you begin to argue over the rules of the game? There
they are, you accept them."

"Come, now," thought Lucien, "he can play _bouillotte_."

"And what do you do?" continued the priest; "do you practise openness,
that fairest of virtues? Not merely do you hide your tactics, but you
do your best to make others believe that you are on the brink of ruin
as soon as you are sure of winning the game. In short, you dissemble, do
you not? You lie to win four or five louis d'or. What would you think of
a player so generous as to proclaim that he held a hand full of trumps?
Very well; the ambitious man who carries virtue's precepts into the
arena when his antagonists have left them behind is behaving like a
child. Old men of the world might say to him, as card-players would say
to the man who declines to take advantage of his trumps, 'Monsieur, you
ought not to play at _bouillotte_.'

"Did you make the rules of the game of ambition? Why did I tell you to
be a match for society?--Because, in these days, society by degrees
has usurped so many rights over the individual, that the individual
is compelled to act in self-defence. There is no question of laws now,
their place has been taken by custom, which is to say grimacings, and
forms must always be observed."

Lucien started with surprise.

"Ah, my child!" said the priest, afraid that he had shocked Lucien's
innocence; "did you expect to find the Angel Gabriel in an Abbe loaded
with all the iniquities of the diplomacy and counter-diplomacy of two
kings? I am an agent between Ferdin