Plenty of young fops, sons of peers of France, have
offered her a title in exchange for her fortune, and she has politely
declined them all. Her susceptibilities, maybe, are not to be touched
by anything less than a count. Aren't you a marquis? Go ahead if you
fancy her. This is what you may call receiving your instructions.'
"His raillery made me think that Rastignac wished to joke and excite
my curiosity, so that I was in a paroxysm of my extemporized passion
by the time that we stopped before a peristyle full of flowers. My
heart beat and my color rose as we went up the great carpeted
staircase, and I noticed about me all the studied refinements of
English comfort; I was infatuatedly bourgeois; I forgot my origin and
all my personal and family pride. Alas! I had but just left a garret,
after three years of poverty, and I could not just then set the
treasures there acquired above such trifles as these. Nor could I
rightly estimate the worth of the vast intellectual capital which
turns to riches at the moment when opportunity comes within our reach,
opportunity that does not overwhelm, because study has prepared us for
the struggles of public life.
"I found a woman of about twenty-two years of age; she was of average
height, was dressed in white, and held a feather fire-screen in her
hand; a group of men stood around her.
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