es moulded by the clinging folds of her bodice, and
lingered over the Andalusian contour of the hips from which her skirt
hung, fluttering wantonly with every movement. To Lucien, watching this
creature, who played for him alone, caring no more for Camusot than a
street-boy in the gallery cares for an apple-paring, there came a moment
when he set desire above love, and enjoyment above desire, and the demon
of Lust stirred strange thoughts in him.

"I know nothing of the love that wallows in luxury and wine and sensual
pleasure," he said within himself. "I have lived more with ideas than
with realities. You must pass through all experience if you mean to
render all experience. This will be my first great supper, my first
orgy in a new and strange world; why should I not know, for once, the
delights which the great lords of the eighteenth century sought so
eagerly of wantons of the Opera? Must one not first learn of courtesans
and actresses the delights, the perfections, the transports, the
resources, the subtleties of love, if only to translate them afterwards
into the regions of a higher love than this? And what is all this, after
all, but the poetry of the senses? Two months ago these women seemed to
me to be goddesses guarded by dragons that no one dared approach; I was
envying Lousteau just now, but here is another handsomer than Florine;
why should I not profit by her fancy, when the greatest nobles buy a
night with such women with their richest treasures? When ambassadors
set foot in these depths, they fling aside all thought of yesterday
or to-morrow. I should be a fool to be more squeamish than princes,
especially as I love no one as yet."

Lucien had quite forgotten Camusot. To Lousteau he had expressed the
utmost disgust for this most hateful of all partitions, and now he
himself had sunk to the same level, and, carried away by the casuistry
of his vehement desire, had given the reins to his fancy.

"Coralie is raving about you," said Lousteau as he came in. "Your
countenance, worthy of the greatest Greek sculptors, has worked
unutterable havoc behind the scenes. You are in luck my dear boy.
Coralie is eighteen years old, and in a few days' time she may be making
sixty thousand francs a year by her beauty. She is an honest girl still.
Since her mother sold her three years ago for sixty thousand francs, she
has tried to find happiness, and found nothing but annoyance. She
took to the stage in a desperate mood;