supreme praise accorded to those who have attained _quibuscumque
viis_, political rank, a woman, or a fortune. Amongst them are to be
found certain young men who play this _role_ by commencing with having
debts. Naturally, these are more dangerous than those who play it
without a farthing.

The young man who called himself a friend of Henri de Marsay was a
rattle-head who had come from the provinces, and whom the young men
then in fashion were teaching the art of running through an
inheritance; but he had one last leg to stand on in his province, in
the shape of a secure establishment. He was simply an heir who had
passed without any transition from his pittance of a hundred francs a
month to the entire paternal fortune, and who, if he had not wit
enough to perceive that he was laughed at, was sufficiently cautious
to stop short at two-thirds of his capital. He had learned at Paris,
for a consideration of some thousands of francs, the exact value of
harness, the art of not being too respectful to his gloves, learned to
make skilful meditations upon the right wages to give people, and to
seek out what bargain was the best to close with them. He set store on
his capacity to speak in good terms of his horses, of his Pyrenean
hound; to tell by her dress, her walk, her shoes, to what class a
woman belonged; to study _ecarte_, remember a few fashionable
catchwords, and win by his sojourn in Parisian society the necessary
authority to import later into his province a taste for tea and silver
of an English fashion, and to obtain the right of despising everything
around him for the rest of his days.

De Marsay had admitted him to his society in order to make use of him
in the world, just as a bold speculator employs a confidential clerk.
The friendship, real or feigned, of De Marsay was a social position