g the moment, she
persuaded Lucien to forswear the chimerical notions of '89 as to
equality; she roused a thirst for social distinction allayed by David's
cool commonsense; she pointed out fashionable society as the goal and
the only stage for such a talent as his. The rabid Liberal became a
Monarchist _in petto_; Lucien set his teeth in the apple of desire of
rank, luxury, and fame. He swore to win a crown to lay at his lady's
feet, even if there should be blood-stains on the bays. He would conquer
at any cost, _quibuscumque viis_. To prove his courage, he told her of
his present way of life; Louise had known nothing of its hardships,
for there is an indefinable pudency inseparable from strong feeling in
youth, a delicacy which shrinks from a display of great qualities; and a
young man loves to have the real quality of his nature discerned through
the incognito. He described that life, the shackles of poverty borne
with pride, his days of work for David, his nights of study. His young
ardor recalled memories of the colonel of six-and-twenty; Mme. de
Bargeton's eyes grew soft; and Lucien, seeing this weakness in his
awe-inspiring mistress, seized a hand that she had abandoned to him,
and kissed it with the frenzy of a lover and a poet in his youth. Louise
even allowed him to set his eager, quivering lips upon her forehead.

"Oh, child! child! if any one should see us, I should look very
ridiculous," she said, shaking off the ecstatic torpor.

In the course of that evening, Mme. de Bargeton's wit made havoc of
Lucien's prejudices, as she styled them. Men of genius, according to her
doctrine, had neither brothers nor sisters nor father nor mother;
the great tasks laid upon them required that they should sacrifice
everything that they might grow to their full stature. Perhaps their
families might suffer at first from the all-absorbing exactions of
a giant brain, but at a later day they were repaid a hundredfold for
self-denial of every kind during the early struggles of the kingly
intellect with adverse fate; they shared the spoils of victory. Genius
was answerable to no man. Genius alone could judge of the means used to
an end which no one else could know. It was the duty of a man of genius,
therefore, to set himself above law; it was his mission to reconstruct
law; the man who is master of his age may take all that he needs, run
any risks, for all is his. She quoted instances. Bernard Palissy, Louis
XI., Fox, Napoleon,