be rich. Gaudin will come back a millionaire. I dreamed once that I saw
him in a ship full of serpents; luckily the water was rough, and that
means gold or precious stones from over-sea.'

"The silly, friendly words were like the crooning lullaby with which a
mother soothes her sick child; they in a manner calmed me. There was a
pleasant heartiness in the worthy woman's looks and tones, which, if
it could not remove trouble, at any rate soothed and quieted it, and
deadened the pain. Pauline, keener-sighted than her mother, studied me
uneasily; her quick eyes seemed to read my life and my future. I thanked
the mother and daughter by an inclination of the head, and hurried away;
I was afraid I should break down.

"I found myself alone under my roof, and laid myself down in my misery.
My unhappy imagination suggested numberless baseless projects, and
prescribed impossible resolutions. When a man is struggling in the wreck
of his fortunes, he is not quite without resources, but I was engulfed.
Ah, my dear fellow, we are too ready to blame the wretched. Let us be
less harsh on the results of the most powerful of all social solvents.
Where poverty is absolute there exist no such things as shame or crime,
or virtue or intelligence. I knew not what to do; I was as defenceless
as a maiden on her knees before a beast of prey. A penniless man who
has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless
wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his
own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life
of another that we revere within us; then and so it begins for us the
cruelest trouble of all--the misery with a hope in it, a hope for which
we must even bear our torments. I thought I would go to Rastignac on the
morrow to confide Foedora's strange resolution to him, and with that I
slept.

"'Ah, ha!' cried Rastignac, as he saw me enter his lodging at nine
o'clock in the morning. 'I know what brings you here. Foedora has
dismissed you. Some kind souls, who were jealous of your ascendency over
the countess, gave out that you were going to be married. Heaven only
knows what follies your rivals have equipped you with, and what slanders
have been directed at you.'

"'That explains everything!' I exclaimed. I remembered all my
presumptuous speeches, and gave the countess credit for no little
magnanimity. It pleased me to think that I was a miscreant who had not
been punished