“Gentlemen,” smiled Blondet, “you are encroaching on my field of literature.”

“You need not talk.  You have robbed us of the most charming woman in the world, you lucky rogue; we may be allowed to steal your less brilliant ideas,” cried Rastignac.

“Yes, he is a lucky rascal,” said the Vidame, and he twitched Blondet’s ear.  “But perhaps Victurnien here will be luckier still this evening——­”

“Already!” exclaimed de Marsay.  “Why, he only came here a month ago; he has scarcely had time to shake the dust of his old manor house off his feet, to wipe off the brine in which his aunt kept him preserved; he has only just set up a decent horse, a tilbury in the latest style, a groom——­”

“No, no, not a groom,” interrupted Rastignac; “he has some sort of an agricultural laborer that he brought with him ‘from his place.’  Buisson, who understands a livery as well as most, declared that the man was physically incapable of wearing a jacket.”

“I will tell you what, you ought to have modeled yourself on Beaudenord,” the Vidame said seriously.  “He has this advantage over all of you, my young friends, he has a genuine specimen of the English tiger——­”

“Just see, gentlemen, what the noblesse have come to in France!” cried Victurnien.  “For them the one important thing is to have a tiger, a thoroughbred, and baubles——­”

“Bless me!” said Blondet. “’This gentleman’s good sense at times appalls me.’—­Well, yes, young moralist, you nobles have come to that.  You have not even left to you that lustre of lavish expenditure for which the dear Vidame was famous fifty years ago.  We revel on a second floor in the Rue Montorgueil.  There are no more wars with the Cardinal, no Field of the Cloth of Gold.  You, Comte d’Esgrignon, in short, are supping in the company of one Blondet, younger son of a miserable provincial magistrate, with whom you would not shake hands down yonder; and in ten years’ time you may sit beside him among peers of the realm.  Believe in yourself after that, if you can.”

“Ah, well,” said Rastignac, “we have passed from action to thought, from brute force to force of intellect, we are talking——­”

“Let us not talk of our reverses,” protested the Vidame; “I have made up my mind to die merrily.  If our friend here has not a tiger as yet, he comes of a race of lions, and can dispense with one.”

“He cannot do without a tiger,” said Blondet; “he is too newly come to town.”

“His elegance may be new as yet,” returned de Marsay, “but we are adopting it.  He is worthy of us, he understands his age, he has brains, he is nobly born and gently bred; we are going to like him, and serve him, and push him——­”

“Whither?” inquired Blondet.

“Inquisitive soul!” said Rastignac.

“With whom will he take up to-night?” de Marsay asked.

“With a whole seraglio,” said the Vidame.

“Plague take it!  What can we have done that the dear Vidame is punishing us by keeping his word to the infanta?  I should be pitiable indeed if I did not know her——­”