Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/200

 Portenduère, cut but a small figure in the midst of the elective Chamber in the presence of the peerage and the Court, and had none too much credit for himself. The Admiral de Kergarouët only existed through his wife. He had seen orators, men who had come from social surroundings inferior to the nobility or to the petty gentry, become influential persons. After all, money was the pivot, the sole means, the sole mover of a society that Louis XVIII. had insisted upon creating in imitation of England. On the way from the Rue de la Clef to the Rue Croix-des-PetitsChamps, the young man unfolded to the old doctor the summary of his reflections, which were, besides, in keeping with De Marsay’s advice.

“I must,” he said, “be forgotten for three or four years, and seek a profession. Perhaps I may make a name by a book on politics or moral statistics, or by some treatise on one of the questions of the hour. In short, while trying to marry a young girl who will consider me eligible, I will work under cover and in silence.”

By carefully studying the young man’s face, the doctor recognized the seriousness of the wounded man who longs for revenge. He highly approved of this plan.

“Neighbor,” he said, in conclusion, “if you have cast off the skin of the old nobility, which is no longer admissible nowadays, after three or four years of a steady, industrious life, I will undertake to find you a superior, beautiful, amiable and pious young girl, possessed of seven to eight hundred