e known by my
cousin Mme. de Beauseant; don't forget to tell her that I love her too
well not to think of trying to arrange this."

Rastignac went at once to the Ecole de Droit. He had no mind to stay
a moment longer than was necessary in that odious house. He wasted his
time that day; he had fallen a victim to that fever of the brain that
accompanies the too vivid hopes of youth. Vautrin's arguments had set
him meditating on social life, and he was deep in these reflections when
he happened on his friend Bianchon in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

"What makes you look so solemn?" said the medical student, putting an
arm through Eugene's as they went towards the Palais.

"I am tormented by temptations."

"What kind? There is a cure for temptation."

"What?"

"Yielding to it."

"You laugh, but you don't know what it is all about. Have you read
Rousseau?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember that he asks the reader somewhere what he would do if
he could make a fortune by killing an old mandarin somewhere in China by
mere force of wishing it, and without stirring from Paris?"

"Yes."

"Well, then?"

"Pshaw! I am at my thirty-third mandarin."

"Seriously, though. Look here, suppose you were sure that you could do
it, and had only to give a nod. Would you do it?"

"Is he well stricken in years, this mandarin of yours? Pshaw! after all,
young or old, paralytic, or well and sound, my word for it. ... Well,
then. Hang it, no!"

"You are a good fellow, Bianchon. But suppose you loved a woman well
enough to lose your soul in hell for her, and that she wanted money for
dresses and a carriage, and all her whims, in fact?"

"Why, here you are taking away my reason, and want me to reason!"

"Well, then, Bianchon, I am mad; bring me to my senses. I have two
sisters as beautiful and innocent as angels, and I want them to be
happy. How am I to find two hundred thousand francs apiece for them in
the next five years? Now and then in life, you see, you must play for
heavy stakes, and it is no use wasting your luck on low play."

"But you are only stating the problem that lies before every one at the
outset of his life, and you want to cut the Gordian knot with a sword.
If that is the way of it, dear boy, you must be an Alexander, or to the
hulks you go. For my own part, I am quite contented with the little lot
I mean to make for myself somewhere in the country, when I mean to step
into my father's shoes and plod along. A man's affe