Once you
could say to a bravo, 'Here are a hundred crowns; go and kill Monsieur
So-and-so for me,' and you could sup quietly after turning some one
off into the dark for the least thing in the world. But nowadays I
propose to put you in the way of a handsome fortune; you have only to
nod your head, it won't compromise you in any way, and you hesitate.
'Tis an effeminate age."
Eugene accepted the draft, and received the banknotes in exchange for
it.
"Well, well. Come, now, let us talk rationally," Vautrin continued. "I
mean to leave this country in a few months' time for America, and set
about planting tobacco. I will send you the cigars of friendship. If I
make money at it, I will help you in your career. If I have no
children--which will probably be the case, for I have no anxiety to
raise slips of myself here--you shall inherit my fortune. That is what
you may call standing by a man; but I myself have a liking for you. I
have a mania, too, for devoting myself to some one else. I have done
it before. You see, my boy, I live in a loftier sphere than other men
do; I look on all actions as means to an end, and the end is all that
I look at.
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