the heart of a young man who, at a bare
sign from you, would go to his death, who neither knows nor cares to
know anything as yet of the world, because you will be all the world to
him. I myself, you see (you will laugh at my simplicity), have just come
from a remote country district; I am quite new to this world of Paris; I
have only known true and loving hearts; and I made up my mind that here
I should find no love. Then I chanced to meet my cousin, and to see
my cousin's heart from very near; I have divined the inexhaustible
treasures of passion, and, like Cherubino, I am the lover of all women,
until the day comes when I find _the_ woman to whom I may devote myself.
As soon as I saw you, as soon as I came into the theatre this evening, I
felt myself borne towards you as if by the current of a stream. I had so
often thought of you already, but I had never dreamed that you would be
so beautiful! Mme. de Beauseant told me that I must not look so much at
you. She does not know the charm of your red lips, your fair face, nor
see how soft your eyes are.... I also am beginning to talk nonsense; but
let me talk."

Nothing pleases a woman better than to listen to such whispered words as
these; the most puritanical among them listens even when she ought not
to reply to them; and Rastignac, having once begun, continued to pour
out his story, dropping his voice, that she might lean and listen; and
Mme. de Nucingen, smiling, glanced from time to time at de Marsay, who
still sat in the Princesse Galathionne's box.

Rastignac did not leave Mme. de Nucingen till her husband came to take
her home.

"Madame," Eugene said, "I shall have the pleasure of calling upon you
before the Duchesse de Carigliano's ball."

"If Matame infites you to come," said the Baron, a thickset Alsatian,
with indications of a sinister cunning in his full-moon countenance,
"you are quide sure of being well receifed."

"My affairs seem to be in a promising way," said Eugene to himself.--
"'Can you love me?' I asked her, and she did not resent it. "The bit is in
the horse's mouth, and I have only to mount and ride;" and with that
he went to pay his respects to Mme. de Beauseant, who was leaving the
theatre on d'Ajuda's arm.

The student did not know that the Baroness' thoughts had been wandering;
that she was even then expecting a letter from de Marsay, one of those
letters that bring about a rupture that rends the soul; so, happy in his
delusion, Eugene