manipulating Europe as a young girl might amuse herself by splashing
water in her bath! Hypocritical and generous; loving tawdriness and
simplicity; devoid of taste, but protecting the arts; and in spite of
these antitheses, really great in everything by instinct or by
temperament; Caesar at five-and-twenty, Cromwell at thirty; and then,
like my grocer buried in Pere Lachaise, a good husband and a good
father. In short, he improvised public works, empires, kings, codes,
verses, a romance--and all with more range than precision. Did he not
aim at making all Europe France? And after making us weigh on the
earth in such a way as to change the laws of gravitation, he left us
poorer than on the day when he first laid hands on us; while he, who
had taken an empire by his name, lost his name on the frontier of his
empire in a sea of blood and soldiers. A man all thought and all
action, who comprehended Desaix and Fouche."

"All despotism and all justice at the right moments. The true king!"
said de Marsay.

"Ah! vat a pleashre it is to dichest vile you talk," said Baron de
Nucingen.

"But do you suppose that the treat we are giving you is a common one?"
asked Joseph Bridau. "If you had to pay for the charms of conversation
as you do for those of dancing or of music, your fortune would be
inadequate! There is no second performance of the same flash of wit."

"And are we really so much deteriorated as these gentlemen think?"
said the Princesse de Cadignan, addressing the women with a smile at
once sceptical and ironical. "Because, in these days, under a regime
which makes everything small, you prefer small dishes, small rooms,