st, had none of the characteristics on which de Marsay prided
himself, and owed his success to diametrically opposed qualities. He had
been warmly recommended to Mme. d'Espard by her cousin Mme. de Mortsauf.

The third was General de Montriveau, the author of the Duchesse de
Langeais' ruin.

The fourth, M. de Canalis, one of the most famous poets of the day, and
as yet a newly risen celebrity, was prouder of his birth than of his
genius, and dangled in Mme. d'Espard's train by way of concealing
his love for the Duchesse de Chaulieu. In spite of his graces and the
affectation that spoiled them, it was easy to discern the vast, lurking
ambitions that plunged him at a later day into the storms of political
life. A face that might be called insignificantly pretty and caressing
manners thinly disguised the man's deeply-rooted egoism and habit of
continually calculating the chances of a career which at that time
looked problematical enough; though his choice of Mme. de Chaulieu (a
woman past forty) made interest for him at Court, and brought him the
applause of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the gibes of the Liberal
party, who dubbed him "the poet of the sacristy."

Mme. de Bargeton, with these remarkable figures before her, no longer
wondered at the slight esteem in which the Marquise held Lucien's good
looks. And when conversation began, when intellects so keen, so subtle,
were revealed in two-edged words with more meaning and depth in them
than Anais de Bargeton heard in a month of talk at Angouleme; and,
most of all, when Canalis uttered a sonorous phrase, summing up a
materialistic epoch, and gilding it with poetry--then Anais felt all the
truth of Chatelet's dictum of the previous evening. Lucien was nothing
to her now. Every one cruelly ignored the unlucky stranger; he was
so much like a foreigner listening to an unknown language, that the
Marquise d'Espard took pity upon him. She turned to Canalis.

"Permit me to introduce M. de Rubempre," she said. "You rank too high in
the world of letters not to welcome a _debutant_. M. de Rubempre is from
Angouleme, and will need your influence, no doubt, with the powers that
bring genius to light. So far, he has no enemies to help him to success
by their attacks upon him. Is there enough originality in the idea of
obtaining for him by friendship all that hatred has done for you to
tempt you to make the experiment?"

The four newcomers all looked at Lucien while the Marquise w