The better to deceive Raoul, these men allowed him to manage the paper without control.  Du Tillet used it only for his stock-gambling, about which Nathan understood next to nothing; but he had given, through Nucingen, an assurance to Rastignac that the paper would be tacitly obliging to the government on the sole condition of supporting his candidacy for Monsieur de Nucingen’s place as soon as he was nominated peer of France.  Raoul was thus being undermined by the banker and the lawyer, who saw him with much satisfaction lording it in the newspaper, profiting by all advantages, and harvesting the fruits of self-love, while Nathan, enchanted, believed them to be, as on the occasion of his equestrian wants, the best fellows in the world.  He thought he managed them!  Men of imagination, to whom hope is the basis of existence, never allow themselves to know that the most perilous moment in their affairs is that when all seems going well according to their wishes.

This was a period of triumph by which Nathan profited.  He appeared as a personage in the world, political and financial.  Du Tillet presented him to the Nucingens.  Madame de Nucingen received him cordially, less for himself than for Madame de Vandenesse; but when she ventured a few words about the countess he thought himself marvellously clever in using Florine as a shield; he alluded to his relations with the actress in a tone of generous self-conceit.  How could he desert a great devotion, for the coquetries of the faubourg Saint-Germain?

Nathan, manipulated by Nucingen and Rastignac, by du Tillet and Blondet, gave his support ostentatiously to the “doctrinaires” of their new and ephemeral cabinet.  But in order to show himself pure of all bribery he refused to take advantage of certain profitable enterprises which were started by means of his paper,—­he! who had no reluctance in compromising friends or in behaving with little decency to mechanics under certain circumstances.  Such meannesses, the result of vanity and of ambition, are found in many lives like his.  The mantle must be splendid before the eyes of the world, and we steal our friend’s or a poor man’s cloth to patch it.

Nevertheless, two months after the departure of the countess, Raoul had a certain Rabelaisian “quart d’heure” which caused him some anxiety in the midst of these triumphs.  Du Tillet had advanced a hundred thousand francs, Florine’s money had gone in the costs of the first establishment of the paper, which were enormous.  It was necessary to provide for the future.  The banker agreed to let the editor have fifty thousand francs on notes for four months.  Du Tillet thus held Raoul by the halter of an IOU.  By means of this relief the funds of the paper were secured for six months.  In the eyes of some writers six months is an eternity.  Besides, by dint of advertising and by offering illusory advantages to subscribers two thousand had been secured; an influx of travellers added to this semi-success, which was enough, perhaps, to excuse the throwing of more bank-bills after the rest.  A little more display of talent, a timely political trial or crisis, an apparent persecution, and Raoul felt certain of becoming one of those modern “condottieri” whose ink is worth more than powder and shot of the olden time.