necessity of creating what we to-day call a balance in hand. It was a
great notion of his 'not to get too deep.' He took counsel of his
sometime guardian. 'The funds are now at par, my dear boy,' quoth
d'Aiglemont; 'sell out. I have sold mine and my wife's. Nucingen has
all my capital, and is giving me six per cent; do likewise, you will
have one per cent the more upon your capital, and with that you will
be quite comfortable.'

"In three days' time our Godefroid was comfortable. His increase of
income exactly supplied his superfluities; his material happiness was
complete.

"Suppose that it were possible to read the minds of all the young men
in Paris at one glance (as, it appears, will be done at the Day of
Judgment with all the millions upon millions that have groveled in all
spheres, and worn all uniforms or the uniform of nature), and to ask
them whether happiness at six-and-twenty is or is not made up of the
following items--to wit, to own a saddle-horse and a tilbury, or a
cab, with a fresh, rosy-faced Toby Joby Paddy no bigger than your
fist, and to hire an unimpeachable brougham for twelve francs an
evening; to appear elegantly arrayed, agreeably to the laws that
regulate a man's clothes, at eight o'clock, at noon, four o'clock in
the afternoon, and in the evening; to be well received at every
embassy, and to cull the short-lived flowers of superficial,
cosmopolitan friendships; to be not insufferably handsome, to carry
your head, your coat, and your name well; to inhabit a charming little
entresol after the pattern of the rooms just described on the Quai
Malaquais; to be able to ask a party of friends to dine at the _Rocher
de Cancale_ without a previous consultation with your trousers' pocket;
never to be pulled up in any rational project by the words, 'And the