ical
career, on thirty thousand francs per annum, on respectability and
respect!--Ought that to be the end of a man who has done with illusions?

"If you had kept a pot boiling for some actress who gave you your fun
for it--well; that is what you may call a cabinet matter. But to live
with another man's wife? It is a draft at sight on disaster; it is
bolting the bitter pills of vice with none of the gilding."

"That will do. One word answers it all; I love Madame de la Baudraye,
and prefer her to every fortune, to every position the world can
offer.--I may have been carried away by a gust of ambition, but
everything must give way to the joy of being a father."

"Ah, ha! you have a fancy for paternity? But, wretched man, we are the
fathers only of our legitimate children. What is a brat that does not
bear your name? The last chapter of the romance.--Your child will be
taken from you! We have seen that story in twenty plays these ten years
past.

"Society, my dear boy, will drop upon you sooner or later. Read
_Adolphe_ once more.--Dear me! I fancy I can see you when you and
she are used to each other;--I see you dejected, hang-dog, bereft of
position and fortune, and fighting like the shareholders of a bogus
company when they are tricked by a director!--Your director is
happiness."

"Say no more, Bixiou."

"But I have only just begun," said Bixiou. "Listen, my dear boy.
Marriage has been out of favor for some time past; but, apart from the
advantages it offers in being the only recognized way of certifying
heredity, as it affords a good-looking young man, though penniless, the
opportunity of making his fortune in two months, it survives in spite
of disadvantages. And there is not the man living who would not repent,
sooner or later, of having, by his own fault, lost the chance of
marrying thirty thousand francs a year."

"You won't understand me," cried Lousteau, in a voice of exasperation.
"Go away--she is there----"

"I beg your pardon; why did you not tell me sooner?--You are of age, and
so is she," he added in a lower voice, but loud enough to be heard by
Dinah. "She will make you repent bitterly of your happiness!----"

"If it is a folly, I intend to commit it.--Good-bye."

"A man gone overboard!" cried Bixiou.

"Devil take those friends who think they have a right to preach to you,"
said Lousteau, opening the door of the bedroom, where he found Madame de
la Baudraye sunk in an armchair and dabbing her