ssing from a copy of
Byron's poems: they had gone to light a fire of a few sticks for this
young person, who played for stakes of a thousand francs, and had not
a faggot; he kept a tilbury, and had not a whole shirt to his back. Any
day a countess or an actress or a run of luck at ecarte might set him up
with an outfit worthy of a king. A candle had been stuck into the green
bronze sheath of a vestaholder; a woman's portrait lay yonder, torn out
of its carved gold setting. How was it possible that a young man, whose
nature craved excitement, could renounce a life so attractive by reason
of its contradictions; a life that afforded all the delights of war in
the midst of peace? I was growing drowsy when Rastignac kicked the door
open and shouted:

"'Victory! Now we can take our time about dying.'

"He held out his hat filled with gold to me, and put it down on the
table; then we pranced round it like a pair of cannibals about to eat a
victim; we stamped, and danced, and yelled, and sang; we gave each other
blows fit to kill an elephant, at sight of all the pleasures of the
world contained in that hat.

"'Twenty-seven thousand francs,' said Rastignac, adding a few bank-notes
to the pile of gold. 'That would be enough for other folk to live upon;
will it be sufficient for us to die on? Yes! we will breathe our last in
a bath of gold--hurrah!' and we capered afresh.

"We divided the windfall. We began with double-napoleons, and came down
to the smaller coins, one by one. 'This for you, this for me,' we kept
saying, distilling our joy drop by drop.

"'We won't go to sleep,' cried Rastignac. 'Joseph! some punch!'

"He threw gold to his faithful attendant.

"'There is your share,' he said; 'go and bury yourself if you can.'

"Next day I went to Lesage and chose my furniture, took the rooms that
you know in the Rue Taitbout, and left the decoration to one of the best
upholsterers. I bought horses. I plunged into a vortex of pleasures, at
once hollow and real. I went in for play, gaining and losing
enormous sums, but only at friends' houses and in ballrooms; never in
gaming-houses, for which I still retained the holy horror of my early
days. Without meaning it, I made some friends, either through quarrels
or owing to the easy confidence established among those who are going
to the bad together; nothing, possibly, makes us cling to one another so
tightly as our evil propensities.

"I made several ventures in literature,