le or two of good wine had
appeared, de Marsay turned to d'Esgrignon with a laugh:

"Those bills that you are worrying over are not yours, I am sure."

"Eh! if they weren't, why should he worry himself?" asked Rastignac.

"And whose should they be?" d'Esgrignon inquired.

"Then you do not know the Duchess' position?" queried de Marsay, as he
sprang into the saddle.

"No," said d'Esgrignon, his curiosity aroused.

"Well, dear fellow, it is like this," returned de Marsay--"thirty
thousand francs to Victorine, eighteen thousand francs to Houbigaut,
lesser amounts to Herbault, Nattier, Nourtier, and those Latour
people,--altogether a hundred thousand francs."

"An angel!" cried d'Esgrignon, with eyes uplifted to heaven.

"This is the bill for her wings," Rastignac cried facetiously.

"She owes all that, my dear boy," continued de Marsay, "precisely
because she is an angel. But we have all seen angels in this position,"
he added, glancing at Rastignac; "there is this about women that is
sublime: they understand nothing of money; they do not meddle with it,
it is no affair of theirs; they are invited guests at the 'banquet of
life,' as some poet or other said that came to an end in the workhouse."

"How do you know this when I do not?" d'Esgrignon artlessly returned.

"You are sure to be the last to know it, just as she is sure to be the
last to hear that you are in debt."

"I thought she had a hundred thousand livres a year," said d'Esgrignon.

"Her husband," replied de Marsay, "lives apart from her. He stays with
his regiment and practises economy, for he has one or two little debts
of his own as well, has our dear Duke. Where do you come from? Just
learn to do as we do and keep our friends' accounts for them. Mlle.
Diane (I fell in love with her for the name's sake), Mlle. Diane
d'Uxelles brought her husband sixty thousand livres of income; for the
last eight years she has lived as if she had two hundred thousand. It is
perfectly plain that at this moment her lands are mortgaged up to their
full value; some fine morning the crash must come, and the angel will be
put to flight by--must it be said?--by sheriff's officers that have the
effrontery to lay hands on an angel just as they might take hold of one
of us."

"Poor angel!"

"Lord! it costs a great deal to dwell in a Parisian heaven; you must
whiten your wings and your complexion every morning," said Rastignac.

Now as the thought of confessing his debt