In default of the pure and sacred love that fills a life, ambition may
become something very noble, subduing to itself every thought of
personal interest, and setting as the end--the greatness, not of one
man, but of a whole nation.
But the student had not yet reached the time of life when a man
surveys the whole course of existence and judges it soberly. Hitherto
he had scarcely so much as shaken off the spell of the fresh and
gracious influences that envelop a childhood in the country, like
green leaves and grass. He had hesitated on the brink of the Parisian
Rubicon, and in spite of the prickings of ambition, he still clung to
a lingering tradition of an old ideal--the peaceful life of the noble
in his chateau. But yesterday evening, at the sight of his rooms,
those scruples had vanished. He had learned what it was to enjoy the
material advantages of fortune, as he had already enjoyed the social
advantages of birth; he ceased to be a provincial from that moment,
and slipped naturally and easily into a position which opened up a
prospect of a brilliant future.
So, as he waited for Delphine, in the pretty boudoir, where he felt
that he had a certain right to be, he felt himself so far away from
the Rastignac who came back to Paris a year ago, that, turning some
power of inner vision upon this latter, he asked himself whether that
past self bore any resemblance to the Rastignac of that moment.
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