Our age is lenient with those who cheat.

Now, I will tell you about the beginnings of his fortune. In the first
place, honor to talent! Our friend is not a 'chap,' as Finot describes
him, but a gentleman in the English sense, who knows the cards and knows
the game; whom, moreover, the gallery respects. Rastignac has quite as
much intelligence as is needed at a given moment, as if a soldier should
make his courage payable at ninety days' sight, with three witnesses
and guarantees. He may seem captious, wrong-headed, inconsequent,
vacillating, and without any fixed opinions; but let something serious
turn up, some combination to scheme out, he will not scatter himself
like Blondet here, who chooses these occasions to look at things from
his neighbor's point of view. Rastignac concentrates himself, pulls
himself together, looks for the point to carry by storm, and goes full
tilt for it. He charges like a Murat, breaks squares, pounds away at
shareholders, promoters, and the whole shop, and returns, when the
breach is made, to his lazy, careless life. Once more he becomes the man
of the South, the man of pleasure, the trifling, idle Rastignac. He has
earned the right of lying in bed till noon because a crisis never finds
him asleep."

"So far so good, but just get to his fortune," said Finot.

"Bixiou will lash that off at a stroke," replied Blondet. "Rastignac's
fortune was Delphine de Nucingen, a remarkable woman; she combines
boldness with foresight."

"Did she ever lend you money?" inquired Bixiou. Everybody burst out
laughing.

"You are mistaken in her," said Couture, speaking to Blondet; "her
cleverness simply consists in making more or less piquant remarks, in
loving Rastignac with tedious fidelity, and obeying him blindly. She is
a regular Italian."

"Money apart," Andoche Finot put in sourly.

"Oh, come, come," said Bixiou coaxingly; "after what we have just been
saying, will you venture to blame poor Rastignac for living at the
expense of the firm of Nucingen, for being installed in furnished rooms
precisely as La Torpille was once installed by our friend des Lupeaulx?
You would sink to the vulgarity of the Rue Saint-Denis! First of all,
'in the abstract,' as Royer-Collard says, the question may abide the
_Kritik of Pure Reason_; as for the impure reason----"

"There he goes!" said Finot, turning to Blondet.

"But there is reason in what he says," exclaimed Blondet. "The problem
is a very old one