You will not dabble about
much longer among the tadpoles in these swamps. Well, then, it is all
settled. You will marry. Both of us carry our point. Mine is made of
iron, and will never soften, he! he!"
Vautrin went out. He would not wait to hear the student's repudiation,
he wished to put Eugene at his ease. He seemed to understand the
secret springs of the faint resistance still made by the younger man;
the struggles in which men seek to preserve their self-respect by
justifying their blameworthy actions to themselves.
"He may do as he likes; I shall not marry Mlle. Taillefer, that is
certain," said Eugene to himself.
He regarded this man with abhorrence, and yet the very cynicism of
Vautrin's ideas, and the audacious way in which he used other men for
his own ends, raised him in the student's eyes; but the thought of a
compact threw Eugene into a fever of apprehension, and not until he
had recovered somewhat did he dress, call for a cab, and go to Mme. de
Restaud's.
For some days the Countess had paid more and more attention to a young
man whose every step seemed a triumphal progress in the great world;
it seemed to her that he might be a formidable power before long.
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