You will see officials buying estates on twelve thousand
francs a year. You will see women who sell themselves body and soul to
drive in a carriage belonging to the son of a peer of France, who has
a right to drive in the middle rank at Longchamp. You have seen that
poor simpleton of a Goriot obliged to meet a bill with his daughter's
name at the back of it, though her husband has fifty thousand francs a
year. I defy you to walk a couple of yards anywhere in Paris without
stumbling on some infernal complication. I'll bet my head to a head of
that salad that you will stir up a hornet's nest by taking a fancy to
the first young, rich, and pretty woman you meet. They are all dodging
the law, all at loggerheads with their husbands. If I were to begin to
tell you all that vanity or necessity (virtue is not often mixed up in
it, you may be sure), all that vanity and necessity drive them to do
for lovers, finery, housekeeping, or children, I should never come to
an end. So an honest man is the common enemy.
"But do you know what an honest man is? Here, in Paris, an honest man
is the man who keeps his own counsel, and will not divide the plunder.
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