dense you are! Take the fifty crowns in the first instance, and
write the memoirs. When you have finished them, you will decline to
publish them in your aunt's name, imbecile! Madame de Montbauron, with
her hooped petticoat, her rank and beauty, rouge and slippers, and her
death upon the scaffold, is worth a great deal more than six hundred
francs. And then, if the trade will not give your aunt her due, some old
adventurer, or some shady countess or other, will be found to put her
name to the memoirs.'

"'Oh,' I groaned; 'why did I quit the blameless life in my garret? This
world has aspects that are very vilely dishonorable.'

"'Yes,' said Rastignac, 'that is all very poetical, but this is a matter
of business. What a child you are! Now, listen to me. As to your work,
the public will decide upon it; and as for my literary middle-man,
hasn't he devoted eight years of his life to obtaining a footing in the
book-trade, and paid heavily for his experience? You divide the money
and the labor of the book with him very unequally, but isn't yours the
better part? Twenty-five louis means as much to you as a thousand francs
does to him. Come, you can write historical memoirs, a work of art
such as never was, since Diderot once wrote six sermons for a hundred
crowns!'

"'After all,' I said, in agitation, 'I cannot choose but do it. So,
my dear friend, my thanks are due to you. I shall be quite rich with
twenty-five louis.'

"'Richer than you think,' he laughed. 'If I have my commission from
Finot in this matter, it goes to you, can't you see? Now let us go to
the Bois de Boulogne,' he said; 'we shall see your countess there, and
I will show you the pretty little widow that I am to marry--a charming
woman, an Alsacienne, rather plump. She reads Kant, Schiller, Jean Paul,
and a host of lachrymose books. She has a mania for continually asking
my opinion, and I have to look as if I entered into all this German
sensibility, and to know a pack of ballads--drugs, all of them, that
my doctor absolutely prohibits. As yet I have not been able to wean her
from her literary enthusiasms; she sheds torrents of tears as she reads
Goethe, and I have to weep a little myself to please her, for she has an
income of fifty thousand livres, my dear boy, and the prettiest little
hand and foot in the world. Oh, if she would only say _mon ange_
and _brouiller_ instead of _mon anche_ and _prouiller_, she would be
perfection!'

"We saw the countess,