d only to dig with his nails.
The cunning and thick voice of the Hebrew banker echoed in Sulpice's
ears: "They all do it!" It was not so difficult to give his name, or to
_hire_ it, as Salomon said. Who the devil would notice it at a time when
indifference passes over scandals as the sea covers the putrid
substances on the shore and washes them with its very scum?

"They all do it!"

No, despite the irony of the handler of money, there are some
consciences that refuse to yield: and then, what then?--Vaudrey had
desired virtue of a different kind and other morals! Ah! how he had
suffered the poison to penetrate him; even to his bones! How Marianne
had deformed and moulded him at her fancy, and he still thought of her
only with unsatisfied longings for her kisses and ardor! Ah! women!
Woman! Yes, indeed, yes, woman was the great source of moral weakness
and inactivity. She used politics in her own way, in destroying
politicians. If he had only left office with head erect and not dragging
the chain-shot of debt! But that bill of exchange! Who would pay that?

"Eh! Molina, _parbleu!_ Molina! Molina!"

He was right, too, that triumphant Jew with his insolent good humor. It
is an absurd thing, after all, to be prudish and to thrust away the dish
that is offered you. To be rich is, in fact, quite as good as to be
powerful! Money remains! That is the only real thing in the world! It
would be a fine sight to see a man refuse the opportunity to make a
fortune, and to refuse it--why? For a silly, conscientious scruple. And
after all, business was the very life of modern society. This Molina,
circulating his money, was as useful as many others who circulate
ideas.

"His Algerian gas is a work of civilization just like any other!"

Urged by the necessity of escaping from that debt that strangled him
like a running noose, Sulpice gradually arrived at argumentative
sophistries, which were but capitulations to his own probity, cowardly
arrangements with his own conscience. His name? Well, he would turn it
into money since it was worth a gold ingot! The journalist who sells his
thought, the artist who sells his marble, the writer who sells his
experiences and his recollections, equally sell their names and for
money, the flesh of their flesh. Like a living answer and a remorse, he
saw the lean face and white moustache of Ramel, who was seated at the
window, breathing the warm rays of the sun, in the little room on Rue
Boursault,