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Updated: June 13, 2025
Like despots, he made the law to suit the circumstance, a system which works in the lives of prodigal sons the same confusion which fancy brings into art. Victurnien was quick-sighted, he saw clearly and without illusion, but he acted on impulse, and unwisely. An indefinable flaw of character, often seen in young men, but impossible to explain, led him to will one thing and do another.
"We will digest our dinner at the Opera, and afterwards I will take you to a house where several people have the greatest wish to meet you." The Vidame gave a delightful little dinner at the Rocher de Cancale; three guests only were asked to meet Victurnien de Marsay, Rastignac, and Blondet.
The Kellers took the bill and gave him the sum without a word, after deducting the discount. The balance of the account was in du Croisier's favor. But the gaming debt was as nothing in comparison with the state of things at home. Invoices showered in upon Victurnien. "I say! Do you trouble yourself about that sort of thing?" Rastignac said, laughing. "Are you putting them in order, my dear boy?
At this day there are names as famous as those of royal houses the Foix-Graillys, for instance, or the d'Herouvilles left to obscurity tantamount to extinction for want of money, the one power of the time. All which things Victurnien beheld entirely from his own point of view; he felt the equality that he saw in Paris as a personal wrong.
A few minutes later they were on the road to Brest, and Paris lay behind them. Victurnien uttered not a sound; he was paralyzed. And when aunt and nephew began to speak, they talked at cross purposes; Victurnien, still laboring under the unlucky misapprehension which flung him into Mlle. Armande's arms, was thinking of his forgery; his aunt had the debts and the bills on her mind.
Fate had endowed Victurnien, over and above the privileges of good looks and noble birth, with a high spirit, a wonderful aptitude of comprehension, and a good memory. His education, therefore, had been complete.
Victurnien went soon afterwards, but not before others had guessed his ecstatic condition; his face wore the expression peculiar to happy men, something between an Inquisitor's calm discretion and the self-contained beatitude of a devotee, fresh from the confessional and absolution.
Chesnel made the draft payable to Sorbier's young successor; and the latter, feeling but little inclination to adopt his correspondent's sentimentality, was delighted to put himself at the Count's orders, and gave Victurnien as much money as he wanted.
The concluding phrase seemed meant to convey the idea that here was an open cashbox full of coin at the service of the noble d'Esgrignon family. So strong was the impression that Victurnien, like Sganarelle or Mascarille in the play, like everybody else who feels a twinge of conscience at his finger-tips, made an involuntary gesture.
Victurnien had thinned his last thin, white hairs. "Our Martyr-King did not die like the English King Charles." That thought soothed Mlle. Armande's splendid indignation; a shudder ran through her; but still she did not realize what Chesnel meant. "To-morrow we will decide what we must do," she said; "it needs thought. At the worst, we have our lands." "Yes," said Chesnel.
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