can understand,
overcome with cold and longing. It would be an allegory; many lives are
like that."

"You would picture the spirit which remembers Heaven," said the Bishop;
"some one surely must have written such a poem in the days of old; I
like to think that I see a fragment of it in the Song of Songs."

"Take that as your subject," said Laure de Rastignac, expressing her
artless belief in Lucien's powers.

"The great sacred poem of France is still unwritten," remarked the
Bishop. "Believe me, glory and success await the man of talent who shall
work for religion."

"That task will be his," said Mme. de Bargeton rhetorically. "Do you not
see the first beginnings of the vision of the poem, like the flame of
dawn, in his eyes?"

"Nais is treating us very badly," said Fifine; "what can she be doing?"

"Don't you hear?" said Stanislas. "She is flourishing away, using big
words that you cannot make head or tail of."

Amelie, Fifine, Adrien, and Francis appeared in the doorway with Mme. de
Rastignac, who came to look for her daughter.

"Nais," cried the two ladies, both delighted to break in upon the quiet
chat in the boudoir, "it would be very nice of you to come and play
something for us."

"My dear child, M. de Rubempre is just about to recite his _Saint John
in Patmos_, a magnificent biblical poem."

"Biblical!" echoed Fifine in amazement.

Amelie and Fifine went back to the drawing-room, taking the word back
with them as food for laughter. Lucien pleaded a defective memory and
excused himself. When he reappeared, nobody took the slightest notice
of him; every one was chatting or busy at the card-tables; the poet's
aureole had been plucked away, the landowners had no use for him, the
more pretentious sort looked upon him as an enemy to their ignorance,
while the women were jealous of Mme. de Bargeton, the Beatrice of this
modern Dante, to use the Vicar-General's phrase, and looked at him with
cold, scornful eyes.

"So this is society!" Lucien said to himself as he went down to
L'Houmeau by the steps of Beaulieu; for there are times when we choose
to take the longest way, that the physical exercise of walking may
promote the flow of ideas.

So far from being disheartened, the fury of repulsed ambition gave
Lucien new strength. Like all those whose instincts bring them to a
higher social sphere which they reach before they can hold their own in
it, Lucien vowed to make any sacrifice to the end that he mig