"You yourself, Monsieur le ministre, have not escaped its venom; but it did not, I think, deter you from your course.""But," said Rastignac, lowering his voice, "suppose I were to tell you that I have already sternly refused to listen to a proposal to search into your private life on a certain side which, being more in the shade than the rest, seems to offer your enemies a chance to entrap you.""I do not thank you for the honor you have done yourself in rejecting with contempt the proposals of men who can be neither of my party nor of yours; they belong to the party of base appetites and selfish passions.But, supposing the impossible, had they found some acceptance from you, pray believe that my course, which follows the dictates of my conscience, could not be affected thereby.""But your party,--consider for a moment its elements: a jumble of foiled ambitions, brutal greed, plagiarists of '93, despots disguising themselves as lovers of liberty.""My party has nothing, and seeks to gain something.Yours calls itself conservative, and it is right; its chief concern is how to preserve its power, offices, and wealth,--in short, all it now monopolizes.""But, monsieur, we are not a closed way; we open our way, on the contrary, to all ambitions.But the higher you are in character and intellect, the less we can allow you to pass, dragging after you your train of democrats; for the day when that crew gains the upper hand it will not be a change of policy, but a revolution.""But what makes you think I want an opening of any kind?""What! follow a course without an aim?--a course that leads nowhere? Acertain development of a man's faculties not only gives him the right but makes it his duty to seek to govern.""To watch the governing power is a useful career, and, I may add, a very busy one.""You can fancy, monsieur," said Rastignac, good-humoredly, "that if Beauvisage were in your place I should not have taken the trouble to argue with him; I may say, however, that he would have made my effort less difficult.""This meeting, which chance has brought about between us," said Sallenauve, "will have one beneficial result; we understand each other henceforth, and our future meetings will always therefore be courteous --which will not lessen the strength of our convictions.""Then I must say to the king--for I had his royal commands to--"Rastignac did not end the sentence in which he was, so to speak, firing his last gun, for the orchestra began to play a quadrille, and Nais, running up, made him a coquettish courtesy, saying,--"Monsieur le ministre, I am very sorry, but you have taken my partner, and you must give him up.He is down for my eleventh quadrille, and if I miss it my list gets into terrible confusion.""You permit me, monsieur?" said Sallenauve, laughing."As you see, Iam not a very savage republican." So saying, he followed Nais, who led him along by the hand.
Madame de l'Estorade, comprehending that this fancy of Nais was rather compromising to the dignity of the new deputy, had arranged that several papas and mammas should figure in the same quadrille; and she herself with the Scottish lad danced vis-a-vis to her daughter, who beamed with pride and joy.In the evolutions of the last figure, where Nais had to take her mother's hand, she said, pressing it passionately,--"Poor mamma! if it hadn't been for him, you wouldn't have me now."This sudden reminder so agitated Madame de l'Estorade, coming as it did unexpectedly, that she was seized with a return of the nervous trembling her daughter's danger had originally caused, and was forced to sit down.Seeing her change color, Sallenauve, Nais, and Madame Octave de Camps ran to her to know if she were ill.
"It is nothing," she answered, addressing Sallenauve; "only that my little girl reminded me suddenly of the utmost obligation we are under to you, monsieur.'Without him,' she said, 'you would not have me.'
Ah! monsieur, without your generous courage where would my child be now?""Come, come, don't excite yourself," interposed Madame Octave de Camps, observing the convulsive and almost gasping tone of her friend's voice."It is not reasonable to put yourself in such a state for a child's speech.""She is better than the rest of us," replied Madame de l'Estorade, taking Nais in her arms.
"Come, mamma, be reasonable," said that young lady.
