As he passes through all these
successive initiations, and breaks out of his sheath, the horizons of
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.
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