Oh! I know something of affairs, I can tell you; I have the secrets of many men!
Enough.
When I find three minds in agreement as to the application of a principle, I shall have a fixed and immovable opinion — I shall have to wait a long while first.
In the Tribunals you will not find three judges of the same opinion on a single point of law.
To return to the man I was telling you of.
He would crucify Jesus Christ again, if I bade him.
At a word from his old chum Vautrin he will pick a quarrel with a scamp that will not send so much as five francs to his sister, poor girl, and” (here Vautrin rose to his feet and stood like a fencing-master about to lunge)—“turn him off into the dark!” he added.
“How frightful!” said Eugene.
“You do not really mean it? M. Vautrin, you are joking!”
“There! there! Keep cool!” said the other.
“Don’t behave like a baby. But if you find any amusement in it, be indignant, flare up!
Say that I am a scoundrel, a rascal, a rogue, a bandit; but do not call me a blackleg nor a spy!
There, out with it, fire away!
I forgive you; it is quite natural at your age.
I was like that myself once.
Only remember this, you will do worse things yourself some day.
You will 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 weak-minded,” said Vautrin,
“I shall say no more about it.
One last word, however,” and he looked hard at the student —“you have my secret,” he said.
“A young man who refuses your offer knows that he must forget it.”
“Quite right, quite right; I am glad to hear you say so.
Somebody else might not be so scrupulous, you see.
Keep in mind what I want to do for you.
I will give you a fortnight.
The offer is still open.”
“What a head of iron the man has!” said Eugene to himself, as he watched Vautrin walk unconcernedly away with his cane under his arm.
“Yet Mme. de Beauseant said as much more gracefully; he has only stated the case in cruder language.
He would tear my heart with claws of steel.
What made me think of going to Mme. de Nucingen?
He guessed my motives before I knew them myself.
To sum it up, that outlaw has told me more about virtue than all I have learned from men and books.
If virtue admits of no compromises, I have certainly robbed my sisters,” he said, throwing down the bags on the table.
He sat down again and fell, unconscious of his surroundings, into deep thought.
“To be faithful to an ideal of virtue! A heroic martyrdom!