Lucien devoured his bread and supped his bowl of milk, then he went
downstairs. His room was not large enough for him; he was turning
round and round in it like a lion in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes.

At the Bibliotheque Saint-Genevieve, whither Lucien was going, he had
come to know a stranger by sight; a young man of five-and-twenty or
thereabouts, working with the sustained industry which nothing can
disturb nor distract, the sign by which your genuine literary worker
is known. Evidently the young man had been reading there for some
time, for the librarian and attendants all knew him and paid him
special attention; the librarian would even allow him to take away
books, with which Lucien saw him return in the morning. In the
stranger student he recognized a brother in penury and hope.

Pale-faced and slight and thin, with a fine forehead hidden by masses
of black, tolerably unkempt hair, there was something about him that
attracted indifferent eyes: it was a vague resemblance which he bore
to portraits of the young Bonaparte, engraved from Robert Lefebvre's
picture. That engraving is a poem of melancholy intensity, of
suppressed ambition, of power working below the surface. Study the
face carefully, and you will discover genius in it and discretion, and
all the subtlety and greatness of the man. The portrait has speaking
eyes like a woman's; they look out, greedy of space, craving
difficulties to vanquish. Even if the name of Bonaparte were not
written beneath it, you would gaze long at that face.

Lucien's young student, the incarnation of this picture, usually wore
footed trousers, shoes with thick soles to them, an overcoat of coarse
cloth, a black cravat, a waistcoat of some gray-and-white material
buttoned to the chin, and a cheap hat. Contempt for superfluity in
dress was visible in his whole person. Lucien also discovered that the
mysterious stranger with that unmistakable stamp which genius sets
upon the forehead of its slaves was one of Flicoteaux's most regular
customers; he ate to live, careless of the fare which appeared to be
familiar to him, and drank water. Wherever Lucien saw him, at the
library or at Flicoteaux's, there was a dignity in his manner,
springing doubtless from the consciousness of a purpose that filled
his life, a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the
expression of a thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved
brow. You could tell from the dark bright eyes, so cle