fell upon fertile soil in the worst of Lucien's nature,
and spread corruption in his heart; for him, when his desires were
hot, all means were admissible. But--failure is high treason against
society; and when the fallen conqueror has run amuck through _bourgeois_
virtues, and pulled down the pillars of society, small wonder that
society, finding Marius seated among the ruins, should drive him forth
in abhorrence. All unconsciously Lucien stood with the palm of genius
on the one hand and a shameful ending in the hulks upon the other;
and, on high upon the Sinai of the prophets, beheld no Dead Sea
covering the cities of the plain--the hideous winding-sheet of
Gomorrah.

So well did Louise loosen the swaddling-bands of provincial life that
confined the heart and brain of her poet that the said poet determined
to try an experiment upon her. He wished to feel certain that this
proud conquest was his without laying himself open to the
mortification of a rebuff. The forthcoming soiree gave him his
opportunity. Ambition blended with his love. He loved, and he meant to
rise, a double desire not unnatural in young men with a heart to
satisfy and the battle of life to fight. Society, summoning all her
children to one banquet, arouses ambition in the very morning of life.
Youth is robbed of its charm, and generous thoughts are corrupted by
mercenary scheming. The idealist would fain have it otherwise, but
intrusive fact too often gives the lie to the fiction which we should
like to believe, making it impossible to paint the young man of the
nineteenth century other than he is. Lucien imagined that his scheming
was entirely prompted by good feeling, and persuaded himself that it
was done solely for his friend David's sake.

He wrote a long letter to his Louise; he felt bolder, pen in hand,
than face to face. In a dozen sheets, copied out three several times,
he told her of his father's genius and blighted hopes and of his
grinding poverty. He described his beloved sister as an angel, and
David as another Cuvier, a great man of the future, and a father,
friend, and brother to him in the present. He should feel himself
unworthy of his Louise's love (his proudest distinction) if he did not
ask her to do for David all that she had done for him. He would give
up everything rather than desert David Sechard; David must witness his
success. It was one of those wild letters in which a young man points
a pistol at a refusal, letters full