flirt with some pretty woman and take her money. You have thought of
that, of course," said Vautrin, "for how are you to succeed unless
love is laid under contribution? There are no two ways about virtue,
my dear student; it either is, or it is not. Talk of doing penance for
your sins! It is a nice system of business, when you pay for your
crime by an act of contrition! You seduce a woman that you may set
your foot on such and such a rung of the social ladder; you sow
dissension among the children of a family; you descend, in short, to
every base action that can be committed at home or abroad, to gain
your own ends for your own pleasure or your profit; and can you
imagine that these are acts of faith, hope, or charity? How is it that
a dandy, who in a night has robbed a boy of half his fortune, gets
only a couple of months in prison; while a poor devil who steals a
banknote for a thousand francs, with aggravating circumstances, is
condemned to penal servitude? Those are your laws. Not a single
provision but lands you in some absurdity. That man with yellow gloves
and a golden tongue commits many a murder; he sheds no blood, but he
drains his victim's veins as surely; a desperado forces open a door
with a crowbar, dark deeds both of them! You yourself will do every
one of those things that I suggest to you to-day, bar the bloodshed.
Do you believe that there is any absolute standard in this world?
Despise mankind and find out the meshes that you can slip through in
the net of the Code. The secret of a great success for which you are
at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because
it was properly executed."

"Silence, sir! I will not hear any more; you make me doubt myself. At
this moment my sentiments are all my science."

"Just as you please, my fine fellow; I did think you were so