All the orders of Europe glittered on
the breasts or hung from the necks of these men.
Examining this society carefully, it was seen to present not only the
brilliant tones and colors and outward adornment, but to have a soul,
--it lived, it felt, it thought. Hidden passions gave it a
physiognomy; mischievous or malignant looks were exchanged; fair and
giddy girls betrayed desires; jealous women told each other scandals
behind their fans, or paid exaggerated compliments. Society, anointed,
curled, and perfumed, gave itself up to social gaiety which went to
the brain like a heady liquor. It seemed as if from all foreheads, as
well as from all hearts, ideas and sentiments were exhaling, which
presently condensed and reacted in a volume on the coldest persons
present, and excited them. At the most animated moment of this
intoxicating party, in a corner of a gilded salon where certain
bankers, ambassadors, and the immoral old English earl, Lord Dudley,
were playing cards, Madame Felix de Vandenesse was irresistibly drawn
to converse with Raoul Nathan. Possibly she yielded to that
ball-intoxication which sometimes wrings avowals from the most
discreet.
At sight of such a fete, and the splendors of a world in which he had
never before appeared, Nathan was stirred to the soul by fresh
ambition. Seeing Rastignac, whose younger brother had just been made
bishop at twenty-seven years of age, and whose brother-in-law, Martial
de la Roche-Hugon, was a minister, and who himself was under-secretary
of State, and about to marry, rumor said, the only daughter of the
Baron de Nucingen,--a girl with an illimitable "dot"; seeing,
moreover, in the diplomatic body an obscure writer whom he had
formerly known translating articles in foreign journals for a
newspaper turned dynastic since 1830, also professors now made peers
of France,--he felt with anguish that he was left behind on a bad road
by advocating the overthrow of this new aristocracy of lucky talent,
of cleverness crowned by success, and of real merit.
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