In this representative of his craft Eugene
discovered a man who understood that his was a sort of paternal
function for young men at their entrance into life, who regarded
himself as a stepping-stone between a young man's present and future.
And Rastignac in gratitude made the man's fortune by an epigram of a
kind in which he excelled at a later period of his life.
"I have twice known a pair of trousers turned out by him make a match
of twenty thousand livres a year!"
Fifteen hundred francs, and as many suits of clothes as he chose to
order! At that moment the poor child of the South felt no more doubts
of any kind. The young man went down to breakfast with the indefinable
air which the consciousness of the possession of money gives to youth.
No sooner are the coins slipped into a student's pocket than his
wealth, in imagination at least, is piled into a fantastic column,
which affords him a moral support. He begins to hold up his head as he
walks; he is conscious that he has a means of bringing his powers to
bear on a given point; he looks you straight in the face; his gestures
are quick and decided; only yesterday he was diffident and shy, any
one might have pushed him aside; to-morrow, he will take the wall of a
prime minister.
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