.

By twelve o'clock, when the postman reaches that quarter, Eugene
received a letter. The dainty envelope bore the Beauseant arms on the
seal, and contained an invitation to the Vicomtesse's great ball, which
had been talked of in Paris for a month. A little note for Eugene was
slipped in with the card.

"I think, monsieur, that you will undertake with pleasure to
interpret my sentiments to Mme. de Nucingen, so I am sending the
card for which you asked me to you. I shall be delighted to make
the acquaintance of Mme. de Restaud's sister. Pray introduce that
charming lady to me, and do not let her monopolize all your
affection, for you owe me not a little in return for mine.

"VICOMTESSE DE BEAUSEANT."

"Well," said Eugene to himself, as he read the note a second time, "Mme.
de Beauseant says pretty plainly that she does not want the Baron de
Nucingen."

He went to Delphine at once in his joy. He had procured this pleasure
for her, and doubtless he would receive the price of it. Mme. de
Nucingen was dressing. Rastignac waited in her boudoir, enduring as best
he might the natural impatience of an eager temperament for the reward
desired and withheld for a year. Such sensations are only known once
in a life. The first woman to whom a man is drawn, if she is really
a woman--that is to say, if she appears to him amid the splendid
accessories that form a necessary background to life in the world of
Paris--will never have a rival.

Love in Paris is a thing distinct and apart; for in Paris neither men
nor women are the dupes of the commonplaces by which people seek to
throw a veil over their motives, or to parade a fine affectation of
disinterestedness in their sentiments. In this country within a country,
it is not merely required of a woman that she should satisfy the senses
and the soul; she knows perfectly well that she has still greater
obligations to discharge, that she must fulfil the countless demands
of a vanity that enters into every fibre of that living organism called
society. Love, for her, is above all things, and by its very nature, a
vainglorious, brazen-fronted, ostentatious, thriftless charlatan. If
at the Court of Louis XIV. there was not a woman but envied Mlle. de la
Valliere the reckless devotion of passion that led the grand monarch to
tear the priceless ruffles at his wrists in order to assist the entry of
a Duc de Vermandois into the world--