“Oh!  Nais,” echoed the perfidious Amelie, “Nais is well enough pleased.  A young man’s love has so many attractions—­at her age.  A woman grows young again in his company; she is a girl, and acts a girl’s hesitation and manners, and does not dream that she is ridiculous.  Just look!  Think of a druggist’s son giving himself a conqueror’s airs with Mme. de Bargeton.”

“Love knows nought of high or low degree,” hummed Adrien.

There was not a single house in Angouleme next day where the degree of intimacy between M. Chardon (alias de Rubempre) and Mme. de Bargeton was not discussed; and though the utmost extent of their guilt amounted to two or three kisses, the world already chose to believe the worst of both.  Mme. de Bargeton paid the penalty of her sovereignty.  Among the various eccentricities of society, have you never noticed its erratic judgments and the unaccountable differences in the standard it requires of this or that man or woman?  There are some persons who may do anything; they may behave totally irrationally, anything becomes them, and it is who shall be first to justify their conduct; then, on the other hand, there are those on whom the world is unaccountably severe, they must do everything well, they are not allowed to fail nor to make mistakes, at their peril they do anything foolish; you might compare these last to the much-admired statues which must come down at once from their pedestal if the frost chips off a nose or a finger.  They are not permitted to be human; they are required to be for ever divine and for ever impeccable.  So one glance exchanged between Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien outweighed twelve years of Zizine’s connection with Francis in the social balance; and a squeeze of the hand drew down all the thunders of the Charente upon the lovers.

David had brought a little secret hoard back with him from Paris, and it was this sum that he set aside for the expenses of his marriage and for the building of the second floor in his father’s house.  His father’s house it was; but, after all, was he not working for himself?  It would all be his again some day, and his father was sixty-eight years old.  So David build a timbered second story for Lucien, so as not to put too great a strain on the old rifted house-walls.  He took pleasure in making the rooms where the fair Eve was to spend her life as brave as might be.

It was a time of blithe and unmixed happiness for the friends.  Lucien was tired of the shabbiness of provincial life, and weary of the sordid frugality that looked on a five-franc piece as a fortune, but he bore the hardships and the pinching thrift without grumbling.  His moody looks had been succeeded by an expression of radiant hope.  He saw the star shining above his head, he had dreams of a great time to come, and built the fabric of his good fortune on M. de Bargeton’s tomb.  M. de Bargeton, troubled with indigestion from time to time, cherished the happy delusion that indigestion after dinner was a complaint to be cured by a hearty supper.