Now those who know what life in Paris means, know that fifty thousand francs will not go very far in furniture, horses, carriages, and elegance generally; but it must be borne in mind that Victurnien immediately contracted some twenty thousand francs’ worth of debts besides, and his tradespeople at first were not at all anxious to be paid, for our young gentleman’s fortune had been prodigiously increased, partly by rumor, partly by Josephin, that Chesnel in livery.

Victurnien had not been in town a month before he was obliged to repair to his man of business for ten thousand francs; he had only been playing whist with the Ducs de Navarreins, de Chaulieu, and de Lenoncourt, and now and again at his club.  He had begun by winning some thousands of francs but pretty soon lost five or six thousand, which brought home to him the necessity of a purse for play.  Victurnien had the spirit that gains goodwill everywhere, and puts a young man of a great family on a level with the very highest.  He was not merely admitted at once into the band of patrician youth, but was even envied by the rest.  It was intoxicating to him to feel that he was envied, nor was he in this mood very likely to think of reform.  Indeed, he had completely lost his head.  He would not think of the means; he dipped into his money-bags as if they could be refilled indefinitely; he deliberately shut his eyes to the inevitable results of the system.  In that dissipated set, in the continual whirl of gaiety, people take the actors in their brilliant costumes as they find them, no one inquires whether a man can afford to make the figure he does, there is nothing in worse taste than inquiries as to ways and means.  A man ought to renew his wealth perpetually, and as Nature does —­below the surface and out of sight.  People talk if somebody comes to grief; they joke about a newcomer’s fortune till their minds are set at rest, and at this they draw the line.  Victurnien d’Esgrignon, with all the Faubourg Saint-Germain to back him, with all his protectors exaggerating the amount of his fortune (were it only to rid themselves of responsibility), and magnifying his possessions in the most refined and well-bred way, with a hint or a word; with all these advantages —­to repeat—­Victurnien was, in fact, an eligible Count.  He was handsome, witty, sound in politics; his father still possessed the ancestral castle and the lands of the marquisate.  Such a young fellow is sure of an admirable reception in houses where there are marriageable daughters, fair but portionless partners at dances, and young married women who find that time hangs heavy on their hands.  So the world, smiling, beckoned him to the foremost benches in its booth; the seats reserved for marquises are still in the same place in Paris; and if the names are changed, the things are the same as ever.