fingers to warm them, in the winter, for lack of firewood. You need
not be surprised at my proposal, nor at the demand I make. Forty-seven
out of every sixty great matches here in Paris are made after just
such a bargain as this. The Chamber of Notaries compels my gentleman
to----"

"What must I do?" said Rastignac, eagerly interrupting Vautrin's
speech.

"Next to nothing," returned the other, with a slight involuntary
movement, the suppressed exultation of the angler when he feels a bite
at the end of his line. "Follow me carefully! The heart of a girl
whose life is wretched and unhappy is a sponge that will thirstily
absorb love; a dry sponge that swells at the first drop of sentiment.
If you pay court to a young girl whose existence is a compound of
loneliness, despair, and poverty, and who has no suspicion that she
will come into a fortune, good Lord! it is quint and quatorze at
piquet; it is knowing the numbers of the lottery before-hand; it is
speculating in the funds when you have news from a sure source; it is
building up a marriage on an indestructible foundation. The girl may
come in for millions, and she will fling them, as if they were so many
pebbles, at your feet. 'Take it, my beloved! Take it, Alfred, Adolphe,
Eugene!' or whoever it was that showed his sense by sacrificing
himself for her. And as for sacrificing himself, this is how I
understand it. You sell a coat that is getting shabby, so that you can
take her to the _Cadran bleu_, treat her to mushrooms on toast, and
then go to the Ambigu-Comique in the evening; you pawn your watch to
buy her a shawl. I need not remind you of the fiddle-faddle
sentimentality that goes down so well with all women; you spill a few
drops of water on your stationery, for instance; those are the tears