'
Buisson, who understands a livery as well as most, declared that the
man was physically incapable of wearing a jacket."
"I will tell you what, you ought to have modeled yourself on
Beaudenord," the Vidame said seriously. "He has this advantage over
all of you, my young friends, he has a genuine specimen of the English
tiger----"
"Just see, gentlemen, what the noblesse have come to in France!" cried
Victurnien. "For them the one important thing is to have a tiger, a
thoroughbred, and baubles----"
"Bless me!" said Blondet. "'This gentleman's good sense at times
appalls me.'--Well, yes, young moralist, you nobles have come to that.
You have not even left to you that lustre of lavish expenditure for
which the dear Vidame was famous fifty years ago. We revel on a second
floor in the Rue Montorgueil. There are no more wars with the
Cardinal, no Field of the Cloth of Gold. You, Comte d'Esgrignon, in
short, are supping in the company of one Blondet, younger son of a
miserable provincial magistrate, with whom you would not shake hands
down yonder; and in ten years' time you may sit beside him among peers
of the realm. Believe in yourself after that, if you can."
"Ah, well," said Rastignac, "we have passed from action to thought,
from brute force to force of intellect, we are talking----"
"Let us not talk of our reverses," protested the Vidame; "I have made
up my mind to die merrily.
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