troops, all with
a view to suspending payment in the thick of the approaching crisis of
1826-27 which revolutionized European markets. If Nucingen had had his
Prince of Wagram, he might have said, like Napoleon from the heights of
Santon, 'Make a careful survey of the situation; on such and such a day,
at such an hour funds will be poured in at such a spot.' But in whom
could he confide? Du Tillet had no suspicion of his own complicity
in Nucingen's plot; and the bold Baron had learned from his previous
experiments in suspensions of payment that he must have some man whom
he could trust to act at need as a lever upon the creditor. Nucingen
had never a nephew, he dared not take a confidant; yet he must have a
devoted and intelligent Claparon, a born diplomatist with a good manner,
a man worthy of him, and fit to take office under government. Such
connections are not made in a day nor yet in a year. By this time
Rastignac had been so thoroughly entangled by Nucingen, that being, like
the Prince de la Paix, equally beloved by the King and Queen of Spain,
he fancied that he (Rastignac) had secured a very valuable dupe in
_Nucingen_! For a long while he had laughed at a man whose capacities
he was unable to estimate; he ended in a sober, serious, and devout
admiration of Nucingen, owning that Nucingen really had the power which
he thought he himself alone possessed.

"From Rastignac's introduction to society in Paris, he had been led to
contemn it utterly. From the year 1820 he thought, like the Baron, that
honesty was a question of appearances; he looked upon the world as
a mixture of corruption and rascality of every sort. If he admitted
exceptions, he condemned the mass; he put no belief in any virtue--men
did right or wrong, as circumstances decided. His worldly wisdom was the
work of a moment; he learned his lesson at the summit of Pere Lachaise
one day when he buried a poor, good man there; it was his Delphine's
father, who died deserted by his daughters and their husbands, a dupe
of our society and of the truest affection. Rastignac then and there
resolved to exploit this world, to wear full dress of virtue, honesty,
and fine manners. He was empanoplied in selfishness. When the young
scion of nobility discovered that Nucingen wore the same armor, he
respected him much as some knight mounted upon a barb and arrayed in
damascened steel would have respected an adversary equally well horsed
and equipped at a tournament in