Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/179

 renewals made his life happy for about eighteen months. Without daring to forsake Madame de Sérizy, the poor boy fell madly in love with the beautiful Comtesse de Kergarouët, prudish like all young women who are waiting for the death of an old husband, and who skilfully preserve their virtue for a second marriage. Incapable of understanding that a calculated virtue is unconquerable, Savinien continued paying his court to Émilie de Kergarouët with the full appearance of a rich man; he never missed a ball or a play at which she happened to be.

“My dear fellow, you have not got enough powder with which to blow up that rock,” said De Marsay to him one evening, laughing.

In vain this young king of Paris fashion, out of pity, tried to explain Émilie de Fontaine to this boy; it needed the dismal enlightenment of misery and the darkness of a prison to open Savinien’s eyes. A bill of exchange, rashly signed for a jeweler, in league with the usurers who did not want to have the odium of the arrest, caused Savinien de Portenduère, unknown to his friends, to be imprisoned at Sainte-Pélagie for the sum of one hundred and seventeen thousand francs. As soon as Rastignac, De Marsay and Lucien de Rubempre heard this news, all three came to see Savinien and finding him stripped of everything, each one offered him a bill for one thousand francs. The valet, bribed by two creditors, had told of the secret apartment where Savinien lodged, and everything had