When a young wife has given her
heart, she will not refuse her purse. Perhaps you are thinking that
you will lose the money for good? Not you. You will make two hundred
thousand francs again by some stroke of business. With your capital
and your brains you should be able to accumulate as large a fortune as
you could wish. _Ergo_, in six months you will have made your own
fortune, and our old friend Vautrin's, and made an amiable woman very
happy, to say nothing of your people at home, who must blow on their
fingers to warm them, in the winter, for lack of firewood. You need
not be surprised at my proposal, nor at the demand I make. Forty-seven
out of every sixty great matches here in Paris are made after just
such a bargain as this. The Chamber of Notaries compels my gentleman
to----"
"What must I do?" said Rastignac, eagerly interrupting Vautrin's
speech.
"Next to nothing," returned the other, with a slight involuntary
movement, the suppressed exultation of the angler when he feels a bite
at the end of his line. "Follow me carefully! The heart of a girl
whose life is wretched and unhappy is a sponge that will thirstily
absorb love; a dry sponge that swells at the first drop of sentiment.
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