ung man sitting beside
Coralie--what is his name? Lucien! He has a beautiful face; he is a
poet; and what is more, he is witty--so much the better for him. Well,
he will cross the threshold of one of those dens where a man's intellect
is prostituted; he will put all his best and finest thought into his
work; he will blunt his intellect and sully his soul; he will be guilty
of anonymous meannesses which take the place of stratagem, pillage, and
ratting to the enemy in the warfare of _condottieri_. And when, like
hundreds more, he has squandered his genius in the service of others who
find the capital and do no work, those dealers in poisons will leave him
to starve if he is thirsty, and to die of thirst if he is starving."

"Thanks," said Finot.

"But, dear me," continued Claude Vignon, "_I_ knew all this, yet here am
I in the galleys, and the arrival of another convict gives me pleasure.
We are cleverer, Blondet and I, than Messieurs This and That, who
speculate in our abilities, yet nevertheless we are always exploited by
them. We have a heart somewhere beneath the intellect; we have NOT
the grim qualities of the man who makes others work for him. We are
indolent, we like to look on at the game, we are meditative, and we are
fastidious; they will sweat our brains and blame us for improvidence."

"I thought you would be more amusing than this!" said Florine.

"Florine is right," said Blondet; "let us leave the cure of public evils
to those quacks the statesmen. As Charlet says, 'Quarrel with my own
bread and butter? _Never_!'"

"Do you know what Vignon puts me in mind of?" said Lousteau. "Of one of
those fat women in the Rue du Pelican telling a schoolboy, 'My boy, you
are too young to come here.'"

A burst of laughter followed the sally, but it pleased Coralie. The
merchants meanwhile ate and drank and listened.

"What a nation this is! You see so much good in it and so much evil,"
said the Minister, addressing the Duc de Rhetore.--"You are prodigals
who cannot ruin yourselves, gentlemen."

And so, by the blessing of chance, Lucien, standing on the brink of
the precipice over which he was destined to fall, heard warnings on all
sides. D'Arthez had set him on the right road, had shown him the noble
method of work, and aroused in him the spirit before which all obstacles
disappear. Lousteau himself (partly from selfish motives) had tried to
warn him away by describing Journalism and Literature in their practical