board-like carriage, she had by birth and education
a grand air, a proud demeanor, in short, everything that has been well
named le je ne sais quoi, due partly, perhaps, to her uncompromising
simplicity of dress, which stamped her as a woman of noble blood. She
dressed her hair to advantage, and it might be accounted to her for a
beauty, for it grew vigorously, thick and long.

She had cultivated her voice, and it could cast a spell; she sang
exquisitely. Clotilde was just the woman of whom one says, "She has fine
eyes," or, "She has a delightful temper." If any one addressed her in
the English fashion as "Your Grace," she would say, "You mean 'Your
leanness.'"

"Why should not my poor Clotilde have a lover?" replied the Duchess to
the Marquise. "Do you know what she said to me yesterday? 'If I am
loved for ambition's sake, I undertake to make him love me for my own
sake.'--She is clever and ambitious, and there are men who like those
two qualities. As for him--my dear, he is as handsome as a vision; and
if he can but repurchase the Rubempre estates, out of regard for us the
King will reinstate him in the title of Marquis.--After all, his mother
was the last of the Rubempres."

"Poor fellow! where is he to find a million francs?" said the Marquise.

"That is no concern of ours," replied the Duchess. "He is certainly
incapable of stealing the money.--Besides, we would never give Clotilde
to an intriguing or dishonest man even if he were handsome, young, and a
poet, like Monsieur de Rubempre."

"You are late this evening," said Clotilde, smiling at Lucien with
infinite graciousness.

"Yes, I have been dining out."

"You have been quite gay these last few days," said she, concealing her
jealousy and anxiety behind a smile.

"Quite gay?" replied Lucien. "No--only by the merest chance I have been
dining every day this week with bankers; to-day with the Nucingens,
yesterday with du Tillet, the day before with the Kellers----"

Whence, it may be seen, that Lucien had succeeded in assuming the tone
of light impertinence of great people.

"You have many enemies," said Clotilde, offering him--how graciously!--a
cup of tea. "Some one told my father that you have debts to the amount
of sixty thousand francs, and that before long Sainte-Pelagie will be
your summer quarters.--If you could know what all these calumnies are to
me!--It all recoils on me.--I say nothing of my own suffering--my
father has a way of looking that