political life.  A face that might be called insignificantly pretty and caressing manners thinly disguised the man’s deeply-rooted egoism and habit of continually calculating the chances of a career which at that time looked problematical enough; though his choice of Mme. de Chaulieu (a woman past forty) made interest for him at Court, and brought him the applause of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the gibes of the Liberal party, who dubbed him “the poet of the sacristy.”

Mme. de Bargeton, with these remarkable figures before her, no longer wondered at the slight esteem in which the Marquise held Lucien’s good looks.  And when conversation began, when intellects so keen, so subtle, were revealed in two-edged words with more meaning and depth in them than Anais de Bargeton heard in a month of talk at Angouleme; and, most of all, when Canalis uttered a sonorous phrase, summing up a materialistic epoch, and gilding it with poetry—­then Anais felt all the truth of Chatelet’s dictum of the previous evening.  Lucien was nothing to her now.  Every one cruelly ignored the unlucky stranger; he was so much like a foreigner listening to an unknown language, that the Marquise d’Espard took pity upon him.  She turned to Canalis.

“Permit me to introduce M. de Rubempre,” she said.  “You rank too high in the world of letters not to welcome a debutant.  M. de Rubempre is from Angouleme, and will need your influence, no doubt, with the powers that bring genius to light.  So far, he has no enemies to help him to success by their attacks upon him.  Is there enough originality in the idea of obtaining for him by friendship all that hatred has done for you to tempt you to make the experiment?”

The four newcomers all looked at Lucien while the Marquise was speaking.  De Marsay, only a couple of paces away, put up an eyeglass and looked from Lucien to Mme. de Bargeton, and then again at Lucien, coupling them with some mocking thought, cruelly mortifying to both.  He scrutinized them as if they had been a pair of strange animals, and then he smiled.  The smile was like a stab to the distinguished provincial.  Felix de Vandenesse assumed a charitable air.  Montriveau looked Lucien through and through.

“Madame,” M. de Canalis answered with a bow, “I will obey you, in spite of the selfish instinct which prompts us to show a rival no favor; but you have accustomed us to miracles.”

“Very well, do me the pleasure of dining with me on Monday with M. de Rubempre, and you can talk of matters literary at your ease.  I will try to enlist some of the tyrants of the world of letters and the great people who protect them, the author of Ourika, and one or two young poets with sound views.”

“Mme. la Marquise,” said de Marsay, “if you give your support to this gentleman for his intellect, I will support him for his good looks.  I will give him advice which will put him in a fair way to be the luckiest dandy in Paris.  After that, he may be a poet—­if he has a mind.”