'Isn't he lucky, not to be in
love!' they exclaimed. 'If he were, could he be so light-hearted and
animated?' Yet in Foedora's presence I was as dull as love could make
me. When I was alone with her, I had not a word to say, or if I did
speak, I renounced love; and I affected gaiety but ill, like a
courtier who has a bitter mortification to hide. I tried in every way
to make myself indispensable in her life, and necessary to her vanity
and to her comfort; I was a plaything at her pleasure, a slave always
at her side. And when I had frittered away the day in this way, I went
back to my work at night, securing merely two or three hours' sleep in
the early morning.
"But I had not, like Rastignac, the 'English system' at my
finger-ends, and I very soon saw myself without a penny. I fell at once
into that precarious way of life which industriously hides cold and
miserable depths beneath an elusive surface of luxury; I was a coxcomb
without conquests, a penniless fop, a nameless gallant. The old
sufferings were renewed, but less sharply; no doubt I was growing used
to the painful crisis. Very often my sole diet consisted of the scanty
provision of cakes and tea that is offered in drawing-rooms, or one of
the countess' great dinners must sustain me for two whole days.
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