what can you expect of the rest
of society? You must have youth and wealth and rank; nay, you must, if
possible, have more than these, for the more incense you bring with you
to burn at the shrine of the god, the more favorably will he regard the
worshiper. Love is a religion, and his cult must in the nature of things
be more costly than those of all other deities; Love the Spoiler stays
for a moment, and then passes on; like the urchin of the streets, his
course may be traced by the ravages that he has made. The wealth of
feeling and imagination is the poetry of the garret; how should love
exist there without that wealth?

If there are exceptions who do not subscribe to these Draconian laws of
the Parisian code, they are solitary examples. Such souls live so far
out of the main current that they are not borne away by the doctrines
of society; they dwell beside some clear spring of everflowing water,
without seeking to leave the green shade; happy to listen to the echoes
of the infinite in everything around them and in their own souls,
waiting in patience to take their flight for heaven, while they look
with pity upon those of earth.

Rastignac, like most young men who have been early impressed by the
circumstances of power and grandeur, meant to enter the lists fully
armed; the burning ambition of conquest possessed him already; perhaps
he was conscious of his powers, but as yet he knew neither the end to
which his ambition was to be directed, nor the means of attaining it.
In default of the pure and sacred love that fills a life, ambition
may become something very noble, subduing to itself every thought of
personal interest, and setting as the end--the greatness, not of one
man, but of a whole nation.

But the student had not yet reached the time of life when a man surveys
the whole course of existence and judges it soberly. Hitherto he had
scarcely so much as shaken off the spell of the fresh and gracious
influences that envelop a childhood in the country, like green leaves
and grass. He had hesitated on the brink of the Parisian Rubicon, and
in spite of the prickings of ambition, he still clung to a lingering
tradition of an old ideal--the peaceful life of the noble in his
chateau. But yesterday evening, at the sight of his rooms, those
scruples had vanished. He had learned what it was to enjoy the material
advantages of fortune, as he had already enjoyed the social advantages
of birth; he ceased to be a provinci