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Whatever her reasons may have been, Delphine was playing with Rastignac, and took pleasure in playing with him, doubtless because she felt sure of his love, and confident that she could put an end to the torture as soon as it was her royal pleasure to do so.
"How did she get her name of La Torpille?" asked a gloomy voice that struck to his vitals, for it was no longer disguised. "He again he has made his escape!" muttered Rastignac to himself. "Be silent or I murder you," replied the mask, changing his voice. "I am satisfied with you, you have kept your word, and there is more than one arm ready to serve you.
In this representative of his craft Eugene discovered a man who understood that his was a sort of paternal function for young men at their entrance into life, who regarded himself as a stepping-stone between a young man's present and future. And Rastignac in gratitude made the man's fortune by an epigram of a kind in which he excelled at a later period of his life.
"A rapid fortune is the problem that fifty thousand young men are at present trying to solve who find themselves in your position," he says to Rastignac. "You are a single one among this number. Judge of the efforts you have to make and of the desperateness of the struggle. You must devour each other like spiders in a pot, seeing there are not fifty thousand good places.
"To-morrow, Rastignac, Bianchon, and some others are to be confronted with the self-styled Canon of Toledo; they will not recognize him as Jacques Collin who was arrested in their presence ten years ago in a cheap boarding-house, where they knew him under the name of Vautrin." There was a short silence, while Madame Camusot sat thinking. "Are you sure your man is Jacques Collin?" she asked.
For the last fifteen months he had broken the long friendship which had bound him for thirty-six years to our greatest diplomat, the Prince de Talleyrand. It was in the course of this very evening that he made answer to some one who asked why the Prince showed such hostility to the Duc de Bordeaux, "The Pretender is too young!" "Singular advice to give young men," remarked Rastignac.
"I was myself on the point of asking Madame de Rastignac for a bed, that I might release her from the burden of my company, which Monsieur de l'Estorade's interminable conversations have put upon her."
The firm and gentle tones in which the marquise said these words, and the imposing glance which she cast upon Rastignac made him aware that he had posed in his cravat a trifle prematurely. "Madame, I understand you," he said, laughing.
One of his daughters has been here." "Was it the Countess?" asked Eugene. "A tall, dark-haired woman, with large bright eyes, slender figure, and little feet?" "Yes." "Leave him to me for a bit," said Rastignac. "I will make him confess; he will tell me all about it." "And meanwhile I will get my dinner. But try not to excite him; there is still some hope left." "All right."
But the characters are still themselves, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted, the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our place as a spectator. I cannot identify myself with Rawdon Crawley or with Eugène de Rastignac, for I have scarce a hope or fear in common with them.
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