“You were there!” said the poet.

“For some time,” said the priest, “my thoughts have been following the wide sweep of yours.”  Lucien understood his meaning.

“I have never affected to have an iron nature such as yours is.  To me life is by turns paradise and hell; when by chance it is neither, it bores me; and I am bored——­”

“How can you be bored when you have such splendid prospects before you?”

“If I have no faith in those prospects, or if they are too much shrouded?”

“Do not talk nonsense,” said the priest.  “It would be far more worthy of you and of me that you should open your heart to me.  There is now that between us which ought never to have come between us—­a secret.  This secret has subsisted for sixteen months.  You are in love.”

“And what then?”

“A foul hussy called La Torpille——­”

“Well?”

“My boy, I told you you might have a mistress, but a woman of rank, pretty, young, influential, a Countess at least.  I had chosen Madame d’Espard for you, to make her the instrument of your fortune without scruple; for she would never have perverted your heart, she would have left you free.—­To love a prostitute of the lowest class when you have not, like kings, the power to give her high rank, is a monstrous blunder.”

“And am I the first man who had renounced ambition to follow the lead of a boundless passion?”

“Good!” said the priest, stooping to pick up the mouthpiece of the hookah which Lucien had dropped on the floor.  “I understand the retort.  Cannot love and ambition be reconciled?  Child, you have a mother in old Herrera—­a mother who is wholly devoted to you——­”

“I know it, old friend,” said Lucien, taking his hand and shaking it.

“You wished for the toys of wealth; you have them.  You want to shine; I am guiding you into the paths of power, I kiss very dirty hands to secure your advancement, and you will get on.  A little while yet and you will lack nothing of what can charm man or woman.  Though effeminate in your caprices, your intellect is manly.  I have dreamed all things of you; I forgive you all.  You have only to speak to have your ephemeral passions gratified.  I have aggrandized your life by introducing into it that which makes it delightful to most people—­the stamp of political influence and dominion.  You will be as great as you now are small; but you must not break the machine by which we coin money.  I grant you all you will excepting such blunders as will destroy your future prospects.  When I can open the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain to you, I forbid your wallowing in the gutter.  Lucien, I mean to be an iron stanchion in your interest; I will endure everything from you, for you.  Thus I have transformed your lack of tact in the game of life into the shrewd stroke of a skilful player——­”

Lucien looked up with a start of furious impetuosity.