Lucien had inherited
from his mother the invaluable physical distinction of race, but the
metal was still in the ore, and not set free by the craftsman's hand.

His hair was badly cut. Instead of holding himself upright with
an elastic corset, he felt that he was cooped up inside a hideous
shirt-collar; he hung his dejected head without resistance on the part
of a limp cravat. What woman could guess that a handsome foot was hidden
by the clumsy boots which he had brought from Angouleme? What young man
could envy him his graceful figure, disguised by the shapeless blue sack
which hitherto he had mistakenly believed to be a coat? What bewitching
studs he saw on those dazzling white shirt fronts, his own looked
dingy by comparison; and how marvelously all these elegant persons were
gloved, his own gloves were only fit for a policeman! Yonder was a youth
toying with a cane exquisitely mounted; there, another with dainty gold
studs in his wristbands. Yet another was twisting a charming riding-whip
while he talked with a woman; there were specks of mud on the ample
folds of his white trousers, he wore clanking spurs and a tight-fitting
jacket, evidently he was about to mount one of the two horses held by
a hop-o'-my-thumb of a tiger. A young man who went past drew a watch no
thicker than a five-franc piece from his pocket, and looked at it
with the air of a person who is either too early or too late for an
appointment.

Lucien, seeing these petty trifles, hitherto unimagined, became aware of
a whole world of indispensable superfluities, and shuddered to think of
the enormous capital needed by a professional pretty fellow! The more he
admired these gay and careless beings, the more conscious he grew of his
own outlandishness; he knew that he looked like a man who has no idea of
the direction of the streets, who stands close to the Palais Royal and
cannot find it, and asks his way to the Louvre of a passer-by, who tells
him, "Here you are." Lucien saw a great gulf fixed between him and this
new world, and asked himself how he might cross over, for he meant to be
one of these delicate, slim youths of Paris, these young patricians who
bowed before women divinely dressed and divinely fair. For one kiss from
one of these, Lucien was ready to be cut in pieces like Count Philip of
Konigsmark. Louise's face rose up somewhere in the shadowy background of
memory--compared with these queens, she looked like an old woman. He saw
women w