"I resume. 'Pretty enough to marry, isn't she?' said Rastignac, coming
up to Godefroid de Beaudenord, and indicating the little one with the
spotless white camellias, every petal intact.

"Rastignac being an intimate friend, Godefroid answered in a low
voice, 'Well, so I was thinking. I was saying to myself that instead
of enjoying my happiness with fear and trembling at every moment;
instead of taking a world of trouble to whisper a word in an
inattentive ear, of looking over the house at the Italiens to see if
some one wears a red flower or a white in her hair, or watching along
the Corso for a gloved hand on a carriage door, as we used to do at
Milan; instead of snatching a mouthful of baba like a lackey finishing
off a bottle behind a door, or wearing out one's wits with giving and
receiving letters like a postman--letters that consist not of a mere
couple of tender lines, but expand to five folio volumes to-day and
contract to a couple of sheets to-morrow (a tiresome practice);
instead of dragging along over the ruts and dodging behind hedges--it
would be better to give way to the adorable passion that Jean-Jacques
Rousseau envied, to fall frankly in love with a girl like Isaure, with
a view to making her my wife, if upon exchange of sentiments our
hearts respond to each other; to be Werther, in short, with a happy
ending.'

"'Which is a common weakness,' returned Rastignac without laughing.
'Possibly in your place I might plunge into the unspeakable delights
of that ascetic course; it possesses the merits of novelty and
originality, and it is not very expensive. Your Monna Lisa is sweet,
but inane as music for the ballet; I give you warning.'

"Rastignac made this last remark in a way which set Beaudenord