the Middle Ages. But for the time he had
grown effeminate amid the delights of Capua. The friendship of such a
woman as the Baronne de Nucingen is of a kind that sets a man abjuring
egoism in all its forms.

"Delphine had been deceived once already; in her first venture of the
affections she came across a piece of Birmingham manufacture, in the
shape of the late lamented de Marsay; and therefore she could not but
feel a limitless affection for a young provincial's articles of faith.
Her tenderness reacted upon Rastignac. So by the time that Nucingen had
put his wife's friend into the harness in which the exploiter always
gets the exploited, he had reached the precise juncture when he (the
Baron) meditated a third suspension of payment. To Rastignac he
confided his position; he pointed out to Rastignac a means of making
'reparation.' As a consequence of his intimacy, he was expected to play
the part of confederate. The Baron judged it unsafe to communicate the
whole of his plot to his conjugal collaborator. Rastignac quite believed
in impending disaster; and the Baron allowed him to believe further that
he (Rastignac) saved the shop.

"But when there are so many threads in a skein, there are apt to be
knots. Rastignac trembled for Delphine's money. He stipulated that
Delphine must be independent and her estate separated from her
husband's, swearing to himself that he would repay her by trebling her
fortune. As, however, Rastignac said nothing of himself, Nucingen begged
him to take, in the event of success, twenty-five shares of a thousand
francs in the argentiferous lead-mines, and Eugene took them--not to
offend him! Nucingen had put Rastignac up to this the day before that
evening in the Rue Joubert when our friend counseled Malvina to marry. A
cold shiver ran through Rastignac at the sight of so many happy folk
in Paris going to and fro unconscious of the impending loss; even so
a young commander might shiver at the first sight of an army drawn
up before a battle. He saw the d'Aiglemonts, the d'Aldriggers, and
Beaudenord. Poor little Isaure and Godefroid playing at love, what were
they but Acis and Galatea under the rock which a hulking Polyphemus was
about to send down upon them?"

"That monkey of a Bixiou has something almost like talent," said
Blondet.

"Oh! so I am not maundering now?" asked Bixiou, enjoying his success as
he looked round at his surprised auditors.--"For two months past," he
continued, "God