life widen around him, and at length he grasps the plan of society
with the different human strata of which it is composed.

If he begins by admiring the procession of carriages on sunny
afternoons in the Champs-Elysees, he soon reaches the further stage of
envying their owners. Unconsciously, Eugene had served his
apprenticeship before he went back to Angouleme for the long vacation
after taking his degrees as bachelor of arts and bachelor of law. The
illusions of childhood had vanished, so also had the ideas he brought
with him from the provinces; he had returned thither with an
intelligence developed, with loftier ambitions, and saw things as they
were at home in the old manor house. His father and mother, his two
brothers and two sisters, with an aged aunt, whose whole fortune
consisted in annuities, lived on the little estate of Rastignac. The
whole property brought in about three thousand francs; and though the
amount varied with the season (as must always be the case in a
vine-growing district), they were obliged to spare an unvarying twelve
hundred francs out of their income for him. He saw how constantly the
poverty, which they had generously hidden from him, weighed upon them;
he could not help comparing the sisters, who had seemed so beautiful
to his boyish eyes, with women in Paris, who had realized the beauty
of his dreams. The uncertain future of the whole family depended upon
him. It did not escape his eyes that not a crumb was wasted in the
house, nor that the wine they drank was made from the second pressing;
a multitude of small things, which it is useless to speak of in detail
here, made him burn to distinguish himself, and his ambition to
succeed increased tenfold.

He meant, like all great souls, that his success should be owing
entirely to his merits; but his was pre-eminently a southern