Tallien! In these
days there is certainly a throne to let in France which is for her who
can fill it. We among us could make a queen. I should have given La
Torpille an aunt, for her mother is too decidedly dead on the field of
dishonor; du Tillet would have given her a mansion, Lousteau a carriage,
Rastignac her footmen, des Lupeaulx a cook, Finot her hats"--Finot
could not suppress a shrug at standing the point-blank fire of this
epigram--"Vernou would have composed her advertisements, and Bixiou her
repartees! The aristocracy would have come to enjoy themselves with our
Ninon, where we would have got artists together, under pain of death
by newspaper articles. Ninon the second would have been magnificently
impertinent, overwhelming in luxury. She would have set up opinions.
Some prohibited dramatic masterpiece should have been read in her
drawing-room; it should have been written on purpose if necessary. She
would not have been liberal; a courtesan is essentially monarchical. Oh,
what a loss! She ought to have embraced her whole century, and she makes
love with a little young man! Lucien will make a sort of hunting-dog of
her."

"None of the female powers of whom you speak ever trudged the streets,"
said Finot, "and that pretty little 'rat' has rolled in the mire."

"Like a lily-seed in the soil," replied Vernou, "and she has improved
in it and flowered. Hence her superiority. Must we not have known
everything to be able to create the laughter and joy which are part of
everything?"

"He is right," said Lousteau, who had hitherto listened without
speaking; "La Torpille can laugh and make others laugh. That gift of all
great writers and great actors is proper to those who have investigated
every social deep. At eighteen that girl had already known the greatest
wealth, the most squalid misery--men of every degree. She bears about
her a sort of magic wand by which she lets loose the brutal appetites so
vehemently suppressed in men who still have a heart while occupied with
politics or science, literature or art. There is not in Paris another
woman who can say to the beast as she does: 'Come out!' And the beast
leaves his lair and wallows in excesses. She feeds you up to the chin,
she helps you to drink and smoke. In short, this woman is the salt of
which Rabelais writes, which, thrown on matter, animates it and
elevates it to the marvelous realms of art; her robe displays unimagined
splendor, her fingers drop gems as