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Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
page 103 of 375 (27%)
signal for a battle. As soon as she singles you out, other women will
begin to lose their heads about you, and her enemies and rivals and
intimate friends will all try to take you from her. There are women
who will fall in love with a man because another woman has chosen him;
like the city madams, poor things, who copy our millinery, and hope
thereby to acquire our manners. You will have a success, and in Paris
success is everything; it is the key of power. If the women credit you
with wit and talent, the men will follow suit so long as you do not
undeceive them yourself. There will be nothing you may not aspire to;
you will go everywhere, and you will find out what the world is--an
assemblage of fools and knaves. But you must be neither the one nor
the other. I am giving you my name like Ariadne's clue of thread to
take with you into the labyrinth; make no unworthy use of it," she
said, with a queenly glance and curve of her throat; "give it back to
me unsullied. And now, go; leave me. We women also have our battles to
fight."

"And if you should ever need some one who would gladly set a match to
a train for you----"

"Well?" she asked.

He tapped his heart, smiled in answer to his cousin's smile, and went.

It was five o'clock, and Eugene was hungry; he was afraid lest he
should not be in time for dinner, a misgiving which made him feel that
it was pleasant to be borne so quickly across Paris. This sensation of
physical comfort left his mind free to grapple with the thoughts that
assailed him. A mortification usually sends a young man of his age
into a furious rage; he shakes his fist at society, and vows vengeance
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