e sun
in Peru (only way she can play the part), I don't see why he should go
rambling after fashionable women."

Du Tillet, to use a Bourse term, _executed_ Nathan, who, for lack
of money, gave up his place on the newspaper; and the celebrated man
received but five votes in the electoral college where the banker was
elected.

When, after a long and happy journey in Italy, the Comtesse de
Vandenesse returned to Paris late in the following winter, all her
husband's predictions about Nathan were justified. He had taken
Blondet's advice and negotiated with the government, which employed his
pen. His personal affairs were in such disorder that one day, on the
Champs-Elysees, Marie saw her former adorer on foot, in shabby clothes,
giving his arm to Florine. When a man becomes indifferent to the heart
of a woman who has once loved him, he often seems to her very ugly, even
horrible, especially when he resembles Nathan. Madame de Vandenesse had
a sense of personal humiliation in the thought that she had once
cared for him. If she had not already been cured of all extra-conjugal
passion, the contrast then presented by the count to this man, grown
less and less worthy of public favor, would have sufficed her.

To-day the ambitious Nathan, rich in ink and poor in will, has ended by
capitulating entirely, and has settled down into a sinecure, like
any other commonplace man. After lending his pen to all disorganizing
efforts, he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of a
ministerial organ. The cross of the Legion of honor, formerly the
fruitful text of his satire, adorns his button-hole. "Peace at any
price," ridicule of which was the stock-in-trade of his revolutionary
editorship, is now the topic of his laudatory articles. Heredity,
attacked by him in Saint-Simonian phrases, he now defends with solid
arguments. This illogical conduct has its origin and its explanation
in the change of front performed by many men besides Raoul during our
recent political evolutions.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bidault (known as Gigonnet)
The Government Clerks
Gobseck
The Vendetta
Cesar Birotteau
The Firm of Nucingen

Blondet, Emile
Jealousies of a Country Town
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Modeste Mignon
Another Study of Woman
The Secrets of a