just as there are soldiers, artists, artisans, mathematicians, poets,
merchants, men who understand money, or agriculture, or government,
and nothing else. Besides all this, the eccentricity of events leads
to endless cross-purposes; many are called and few are chosen is the
law of earth as of heaven. Madame Rabourdin conceived herself fully
capable of directing a statesman, inspiring an artist, helping an
inventor and pushing his interests, or of devoting her powers to the
financial politics of a Nucingen, and playing a brilliant part in the
great world. Perhaps she was only endeavouring to excuse to her own
mind a hatred for the laundry lists and the duty of overlooking the
housekeeping bills, together with the petty economies and cares of a
small establishment. She was superior only in those things where it
gave her pleasure to be so. Feeling as keenly as she did the thorns of
a position which can only be likened to that of Saint-Laurence on his
grid-iron, is it any wonder that she sometimes cried out? So, in her
paroxysms of thwarted ambition, in the moments when her wounded vanity
gave her terrible shooting pains, Celestine turned upon Xavier
Rabourdin. Was it not her husband's duty to give her a suitable
position in the world? If she were a man she would have had the energy
to make a rapid fortune for the sake of rendering an adored wife
happy! She reproached him for being too honest a man. In the mouth of
some women this accusation is a charge of imbecility. She sketched out
for him certain brilliant plans in which she took no account of the
hindrances imposed by men and things; then, like all women under the
influence of vehement feeling, she became in thought as Machiavellian
as Gondreville, and more unprincipled than Maxime de Trailles. At such
times Celestine's mind took a wide range, and she imagined herself at
the summit of her ideas.

When these fine visions first began Rabourdin, who saw the practical