villain than his more
prosperous rivals. He ultimately recognises the futility of the strife,
agrees to wear a mask like his neighbours, and accepts the congenial
duties of a police agent. The secret of success in all ranks of life is
to be without scruples of morality, but exceedingly careful of breaking
the law. The bankers, Nucingen and Du Tillet, are merely cheats on a
gigantic scale. They ruin their enemies by financiering instead of
picking pockets. Be wicked if you would be successful; if possible let
your wickedness be refined; but, at all events, be wicked.

There is, indeed, a class of unsuccessful villains, to be found chiefly
amongst journalists, for whom Balzac has a special aversion; they live,
he tells us, partly on extortion, and partly on the prostitution of
their talents to gratify political or personal animosities, and are at
the mercy of the longest purse. They fail in life, not because they are
too immoral, but because they are too weak. They are the victims instead
of the accomplices of more resolute evil-doers. Lucien de Rubempre is
the type of this class. Endowed with surpassing genius and personal
beauty, he goes to Paris to make his fortune, and is introduced to the
world as it is. On the one hand is a little knot of virtuous men, called
the _cenacle_, who are working for posterity and meanwhile starving. On
the other is a vast mass of cheats and dupes. After a brief struggle
Lucien yields to temptation, and joins in the struggle for wealth and
power. But he has not strength enough to play his part. His head is
turned by the flattery of pretty actresses and scheming publishers: he
is enticed into thoughtless dissipation, and, after a brilliant start,
finds that he is at the mercy of the cleverer villains who surround him;
that he has been bought and sold like a sheep; that his character is
gone, and his imagination become sluggish; and, finally, he has to
escape from utter ruin by scarcely describable degradation. He writes a
libel on one of his virtuous friends, who is forgiving enough to improve
it and correct it for the press. In order to bury his mistress, who has
been ruined with him, he has to raise money by grovelling in the foulest
depths of literary sewerage. He at last succeeds in crawling back to his
relations in the country, morally and materially ruined. He makes
another effort to rise, backed up by the diabolical arts of Vautrin, and
relying rather on his beauty than his talents.