list, and who admired de Marsay without infusing into his
admiration that dash of acrid criticism by which, in Paris, one superior
man excuses himself from admiring another.

"Was there ever," said he, "in your former life, any event, any thought
or wish which told you what your vocation was?" asked Emile Blondet;
"for we all, like Newton, have our apple, which falls and leads us to
the spot where our faculties develop----"

"Yes," said de Marsay; "I will tell you about it."

Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, de Marsay's intimate
friends,--all settled themselves comfortably, each in his favorite
attitude, to look at the Minister. Need it be said that the servants had
left, that the doors were shut, and the curtains drawn over them? The
silence was so complete that the murmurs of the coachmen's voices could
be heard from the courtyard, and the pawing and champing made by horses
when asking to be taken back to their stable.

"The statesman, my friends, exists by one single quality," said the
Minister, playing with his gold and mother-of-pearl dessert knife. "To
wit: the power of always being master of himself; of profiting more or
less, under all circumstances, by every event, however fortuitous; in
short, of having within himself a cold and disinterested other self, who
looks on as a spectator at all the changes of life, noting our passions
and our sentiments, and whispering to us in every case the judgment of a
sort of moral ready-reckoner."

"That explains why a statesman is so rare a thing in France," said old
Lord Dudley.

"From a sentimental point of view, this is horrible," the Minister went
on. "Hence, when such a phenomenon is seen in a young man--Richelieu,
who, when warned overnight by a letter of Concini's peril, slept till
midday, when his benefactor was killed at ten o'clock--or say Pitt, or
Napoleon, he was a monster. I became such a monster at a very early age,
thanks to a woman."

"I fancied," said Madame de Montcornet with a smile, "that more
politicians were undone by us than we could make."

"The monster of which I speak is a monster just because he withstands
you," replied de Marsay, with a little ironical bow.

"If this is a love-story," the Baronne de Nucingen interposed, "I
request that it may not be interrupted by any reflections."

"Reflection is so antipathetic to it!" cried Joseph Bridau.

"I was seventeen," de Marsay went on; "the Restoration was being
consolidate