"And this is only the financial side. Now, consider the political position. We are struggling in an essentially /bourgeois/ age, in which honor, virtue, high-mindedness, talent, learning--genius, in short, is summed up in paying your way, owing nobody anything, and conducting your affairs with judgment. Be steady, be respectable, have a wife, and children, pay your rent and taxes, serve in the National Guard, and be on the same pattern as all the men of your company--then you may indulge in the loftiest pretensions, rise to the Ministry!--and you have the best chances possible, since you are no Montmorency.
You were preparing to fulfil all the conditions insisted on for turning out a political personage, you are capable of every mean trick that is necessary in office, even of pretending to be commonplace--you would have acted it to the life. And just for a woman, who will leave you in the lurch--the end of every eternal passion--in three, five, or seven years--after exhausting your last physical and intellectual powers, you turn your back on the sacred Hearth, on the Rue des Lombards, on a political career, on thirty thousand francs per annum, on respectability and respect!--Ought that to be the end of a man who has done with illusions?
"If you had kept a pot boiling for some actress who gave you your fun for it--well; that is what you may call a cabinet matter. But to live with another man's wife? It is a draft at sight on disaster; it is bolting the bitter pills of vice with none of the gilding.""That will do. One word answers it all; I love Madame de la Baudraye, and prefer her to every fortune, to every position the world can offer.--I may have been carried away by a gust of ambition, but everything must give way to the joy of being a father.""Ah, ha! you have a fancy for paternity? But, wretched man, we are the fathers only of our legitimate children. What is a brat that does not bear your name? The last chapter of the romance.--Your child will be taken from you! We have seen that story in twenty plays these ten years past.
"Society, my dear boy, will drop upon you sooner or later. Read /Adolphe/ once more.--Dear me! I fancy I can see you when you and she are used to each other;--I see you dejected, hang-dog, bereft of position and fortune, and fighting like the shareholders of a bogus company when they are tricked by a director!--Your director is happiness.""Say no more, Bixiou."
"But I have only just begun," said Bixiou. "Listen, my dear boy.
Marriage has been out of favor for some time past; but, apart from the advantages it offers in being the only recognized way of certifying heredity, as it affords a good-looking young man, though penniless, the opportunity of making his fortune in two months, it survives in spite of disadvantages. And there is not the man living who would not repent, sooner or later, of having, by his own fault, lost the chance of marrying thirty thousand francs a year.""You won't understand me," cried Lousteau, in a voice of exasperation.
"Go away--she is there----"
"I beg your pardon; why did you not tell me sooner?--You are of age, and so is she," he added in a lower voice, but loud enough to be heard by Dinah. "She will make you repent bitterly of your happiness!----""If it is a folly, I intend to commit it.--Good-bye.""A man gone overboard!" cried Bixiou.
"Devil take those friends who think they have a right to preach to you," said Lousteau, opening the door of the bedroom, where he found Madame de la Baudraye sunk in an armchair and dabbing her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief.
"Oh, why did I come here?" sobbed she. "Good Heavens, why indeed?--Etienne, I am not so provincial as you think me.--You are making a fool of me.""Darling angel," replied Lousteau, taking Dinah in his arms, lifting her from her chair, and dragging her half dead into the drawing-room, "we have both pledged our future, it is sacrifice for sacrifice. While I was loving you at Sancerre, they were engaging me to be married here, but I refused.--Oh! I was extremely distressed----""I am going," cried Dinah, starting wildly to her feet and turning to the door.
"You will stay here, my Didine. All is at an end. And is this fortune so lightly earned after all? Must I not marry a gawky, tow-haired creature, with a red nose, the daughter of a notary, and saddle myself with a stepmother who could give Madame de Piedefer points on the score of bigotry--"Pamela flew in, and whispered in Lousteau's ear:
"Madame Schontz!"
Lousteau rose, leaving Dinah on the sofa, and went out.
"It is all over with you, my dear," said the woman. "Cardot does not mean to quarrel with his wife for the sake of a son-in-law. The lady made a scene--something like a scene, I can tell you! So, to conclude, the head-clerk, who was the late head-clerk's deputy for two years, agrees to take the girl with the business.""Mean wretch!" exclaimed Lousteau. "What! in two hours he has made up his mind?""Bless me, that is simple enough. The rascal, who knew all the dead man's little secrets, guessed what a fix his master was in from overhearing a few words of the squabble with Madame Cardot. The notary relies on your honor and good feeling, for the affair is settled. The clerk, whose conduct has been admirable, went so far as to attend mass! A finished hypocrite, I say--just suits the mamma. You and Cardot will still be friends. He is to be a director in an immense financial concern, and he may be of use to you.--So you have been waked from a sweet dream.""I have lost a fortune, a wife, and--"
"And a mistress," said Madame Schontz, smiling. "Here you are, more than married; you will be insufferable, you will be always wanting to get home, there will be nothing loose about you, neither your clothes nor your habits. And, after all, my Arthur does things in style. Iwill be faithful to him and cut Malaga's acquaintance.
