In exchange, his mind was now set on obtaining a chair on the Board of
Education and a place in the Council of State; the whole adorned with
the cross of the Legion of honor. Du Tillet and Nucingen had
guaranteed the cross to him, and the office of Master of Petitions
provided he obeyed them blindly.

The better to deceive Raoul, these men allowed him to manage the paper
without control. Du Tillet used it only for his stock-gambling, about
which Nathan understood next to nothing; but he had given, through
Nucingen, an assurance to Rastignac that the paper would be tacitly
obliging to the government on the sole condition of supporting his
candidacy for Monsieur de Nucingen's place as soon as he was nominated
peer of France. Raoul was thus being undermined by the banker and the
lawyer, who saw him with much satisfaction lording it in the
newspaper, profiting by all advantages, and harvesting the fruits of
self-love, while Nathan, enchanted, believed them to be, as on the
occasion of his equestrian wants, the best fellows in the world. He
thought he managed them! Men of imagination, to whom hope is the basis
of existence, never allow themselves to know that the most perilous
moment in their affairs is that when all seems going well according to
their wishes.

This was a period of triumph by which Nathan profited. He appeared as
a personage in the world, political and financial. Du Tillet presented
him to the Nucingens. Madame de Nucingen received him cordially, less
for himself than for Madame de Vandenesse; but when she ventured a few
words about the countess he thought himself marvellously clever in
using Florine as a shield; he alluded to his relations with the
actress in a tone of generous self-conceit. How could he desert a
great devotion, for the coquetries of the faubourg Saint-Germain?