"It is out of the question," replied Finot; "La Torpille has not a sou
to give away; Nathan tells me she borrowed a thousand francs of
Florine."

"Come, gentlemen, gentlemen!" said Rastignac, anxious to defend Lucien
against so odious an imputation.

"Well," cried Vernou, "is Coralie's kept man likely to be so very
particular?"

"Oh!" replied Bixiou, "those thousand francs prove to me that our
friend Lucien lives with La Torpille----"

"What an irreparable loss to literature, science, art, and politics!"
exclaimed Blondet. "La Torpille is the only common prostitute in whom
I ever found the stuff for a superior courtesan; she has not been
spoiled by education--she can neither read nor write, she would have
understood us. We might have given to our era one of those magnificent
Aspasias without which there can be no golden age. See how admirably
Madame du Barry was suited to the eighteenth century, Ninon de
l'Enclos to the seventeenth, Marion Delorme to the sixteenth, Imperia
to the fifteenth, Flora to Republican Rome, which she made her heir,
and which paid off the public debt with her fortune! What would Horace
be without Lydia, Tibullus without Delia, Catullus without Lesbia,
Propertius without Cynthia, Demetrius without Lamia, who is his glory
at this day?"

"Blondet talking of Demetrius in the opera house seems to me rather
too strong of the _Debats_," said Bixiou in his neighbor's ears.