e same as ever.

In the most exclusive circle of society in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,
Victurnien found the Chevalier's double in the person of the Vidame de
Pamiers. The Vidame was a Chevalier de Valois raised to the tenth
power, invested with all the prestige of wealth, enjoying all the
advantages of high position. The dear Vidame was a repositary for
everybody's secrets, and the gazette of the Faubourg besides;
nevertheless, he was discreet, and, like other gazettes, only said
things that might safely be published. Again Victurnien listened to
the Chevalier's esoteric doctrines. The Vidame told young d'Esgrignon,
without mincing matters, to make conquests among women of quality,
supplementing the advice with anecdotes from his own experience. The
Vicomte de Pamiers, it seemed, had permitted himself much that it
would serve no purpose to relate here; so remote was it all from our
modern manners, in which soul and passion play so large a part, that
nobody would believe it. But the excellent Vidame did more than this.

"Dine with me at a tavern to-morrow," said he, by way of conclusion.
"We will digest our dinner at the Opera, and afterwards I will take
you to a house where several people have the greatest wish to meet
you."

The Vidame gave a delightful little dinner at the Rocher de Cancale;
three guests only were asked to meet Victurnien--de Marsay, Rastignac,
and Blondet. Emile Blondet, the young Count's fellow-townsman, was a
man of letters on the outskirts of society to which he had been
introduced by a charming woman from the same province. This was one of
the Vicomte de Troisville's daughters, now married to the Comte de
Montcornet, one of those of Napoleon's generals who went over to the
Bourbons. The Vidame held that a dinner-party of more than six persons
was beneath contempt. In that case, according to him, there was an end
alike of cookery and conversation, and a man could not sip his wine in
a proper frame of mind.

"I have not yet told you, my dear boy, where I mean to take you
to-night," he said, taking Victurnien's hands and tapping on them.
"You are going to see Mlle. des Touches; all the pretty women with any
pretensions to wit will be at her house en petit comite. Literature,
art, poetry, any sort of genius, in short, is held in great esteem
there. It is one of our old-world bureaux d'esprit, with a veneer of
monarchical doctrine, the livery of this present age."

"It is sometimes as tiresome