alack! no middle term. In this representative of his craft Eugene
discovered a man who understood that his was a sort of paternal
function for young men at their entrance into life, who regarded
himself as a stepping-stone between a young man's present and future.
And Rastignac in gratitude made the man's fortune by an epigram of a
kind in which he excelled at a later period of his life.

"I have twice known a pair of trousers turned out by him make a match
of twenty thousand livres a year!"

Fifteen hundred francs, and as many suits of clothes as he chose to
order! At that moment the poor child of the South felt no more doubts
of any kind. The young man went down to breakfast with the indefinable
air which the consciousness of the possession of money gives to youth.
No sooner are the coins slipped into a student's pocket than his
wealth, in imagination at least, is piled into a fantastic column,
which affords him a moral support. He begins to hold up his head as he
walks; he is conscious that he has a means of bringing his powers to
bear on a given point; he looks you straight in the face; his gestures
are quick and decided; only yesterday he was diffident and shy, any
one might have pushed him aside; to-morrow, he will take the wall of a
prime minister. A miracle has been wrought in him. Nothing is beyond
the reach of his ambition, and his ambition soars at random; he is
light-hearted, generous, and enthusiastic; in short, the fledgling
bird has discovered that he has wings. A poor student snatches at
every chance pleasure much as a dog runs all sorts of risks to steal a
bone, cracking it and sucking the marrow as he flies from pursuit; but
a young man who can rattle a few runaway gold coins in his pocket can
take his pleasure deliberately, can taste the whole of the sweets of
secure possession; he soars far above earth; he has forgotten what the