Splendor
and squalor were oddly mingled, on the walls, the bed, and everywhere.
You might have thought of a Neapolitan palace and the groups of
lazzaroni about it. It was the room of a gambler or a mauvais sujet,
where the luxury exists for one individual, who leads the life of the
senses and does not trouble himself over inconsistencies.
"There was a certain imaginative element about the picture it
presented. Life was suddenly revealed there in its rags and spangles
as the incomplete thing it really is, of course, but so vividly and
picturesquely; it was like a den where a brigand has heaped up all the
plunder in which he delights. Some pages were missing from a copy of
Byron's poems: they had gone to light a fire of a few sticks for this
young person, who played for stakes of a thousand francs, and had not
a faggot; he kept a tilbury, and had not a whole shirt to his back.
Any day a countess or an actress or a run of luck at ecarte might set
him up with an outfit worthy of a king. A candle had been stuck into
the green bronze sheath of a vestaholder; a woman's portrait lay
yonder, torn out of its carved gold setting. How was it possible that
a young man, whose nature craved excitement, could renounce a life so
attractive by reason of its contradictions; a life that afforded all
the delights of war in the midst of peace? I was growing drowsy when
Rastignac kicked the door open and shouted:
"'Victory! Now we can take our time about dying.
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