epithets. It was an infringement of the copyright of the passages of
declamation that disfigure _Corinne_; but Louise grew so much the
greater in her own eyes as she talked, that she loved the Benjamin who
inspired her eloquence the more for it. She counseled him to take a
bold step and renounce his patronymic for the noble name of Rubempre;
he need not mind the little tittle-tattle over a change which the
King, for that matter, would authorize. Mme. de Bargeton undertook to
procure this favor; she was related to the Marquise d'Espard, who was
a Blamont-Chauvry before her marriage, and a _persona grata_ at Court.
The words "King," "Marquise d'Espard," and "the Court" dazzled Lucien
like a blaze of fireworks, and the necessity of the baptism was plain
to him.

"Dear child," said Louise, with tender mockery in her tones, "the
sooner it is done, the sooner it will be sanctioned."

She went through social strata and showed the poet that this step
would raise him many rungs higher in the ladder. Seizing the moment,
she persuaded Lucien to forswear the chimerical notions of '89 as to
equality; she roused a thirst for social distinction allayed by
David's cool commonsense; she pointed out fashionable society as the
goal and the only stage for such a talent as his. The rabid Liberal
became a Monarchist _in petto_; Lucien set his teeth in the apple of
desire of rank, luxury, and fame. He swore to win a crown to lay at
his lady's feet, even if there should be blood-stains on the bays. He
would conquer at any cost, _quibuscumque viis_. To prove his courage, he
told her of his present way of life; Louise had known nothing of its
hardships, for there is an indefinable pudency inseparable from strong
feeling in youth, a delicacy which shrinks from a display of great
qualities; and a young man loves to have the real quality of his