ht. Trust a woman!
I have only calico shirts. Where some one else's welfare is concerned, a
young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself
is in question, and full of foresight for me,--she is like a heavenly
angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth."

The world lay before him. His tailor had been summoned and sounded, and
had finally surrendered. When Rastignac met M. de Trailles, he had seen
at once how great a part the tailor plays in a young man's career; a
tailor is either a deadly enemy or a staunch friend, with an invoice
for a bond of friendship; between these two extremes there is, alack! no
middle term. In this representative of his craft Eugene discovered a man
who understood that his was a sort of paternal function for young men
at their entrance into life, who regarded himself as a stepping-stone
between a young man's present and future. And Rastignac in gratitude
made the man's fortune by an epigram of a kind in which he excelled at a
later period of his life.

"I have twice known a pair of trousers turned out by him make a match of
twenty thousand livres a year!"

Fifteen hundred francs, and as many suits of clothes as he chose to
order! At that moment the poor child of the South felt no more doubts of
any kind. The young man went down to breakfast with the indefinable air
which the consciousness of the possession of money gives to youth. No
sooner are the coins slipped into a student's pocket than his wealth,
in imagination at least, is piled into a fantastic column, which affords
him a moral support. He begins to hold up his head as he walks; he is
conscious that he has a means of bringing his powers to bear on a given
point; he looks you straight in the face; his gestures are quick and
decided; only yesterday he was diffident and shy, any one might have
pushed him aside; to-morrow, he will take the wall of a prime minister.
A miracle has been wrought in him. Nothing is beyond the reach of
his ambition, and his ambition soars at random; he is light-hearted,
generous, and enthusiastic; in short, the fledgling bird has discovered
that he has wings. A poor student snatches at every chance pleasure
much as a dog runs all sorts of risks to steal a bone, cracking it and
sucking the marrow as he flies from pursuit; but a young man who can
rattle a few runaway gold coins in his pocket can take his pleasure
deliberately, can taste the whole of the sweets of secure pos