“The enemies of social order, beholding this contrast, take occasion to yap at justice, and wax wroth in the name of the people, because, forsooth, burglars and fowl-stealers are sent to the hulks, while a man who brings whole families to ruin by a fraudulent bankruptcy is let off with a few months’ imprisonment. But these hypocrites know quite well that the judge who passes sentence on the thief is maintaining the barrier set between the poor and the rich, and that if that barrier were overturned, social chaos would ensue; while, in the case of the bankrupt, the man who steals an inheritance cleverly, and the banker who slaughters a business for his own benefit, money merely changes hands, that is all.
“Society, my son, is bound to draw those distinctions which I have pointed out for your benefit. The one great point is this—you must be a match for society. Napoleon, Richelieu, and the Medicis were a match for their generations. And as for you, you value yourself at twelve thousand francs! You of this generation in France worship the golden calf; what else is the religion of your Charter that will not recognize a man politically unless he owns property? What is this but the command, ‘Strive to be rich?’ Some day, when you shall have made a fortune without breaking the law, you will be rich; you will be the Marquis de Rubempré, and you can indulge in the luxury of honor. You will be so extremely sensitive on the point of honor that no one will dare to accuse you of past shortcomings if in the process of making your way you should happen to smirch it now and again, which I myself should never advise,” he added, patting Lucien’s hand.
“So what must you put in that comely head of yours? Simply this and nothing more—propose to yourself a brilliant and conspicuous goal, and go towards it secretly; let no one see your methods or your progress. You have behaved like a child; be a man, be a hunter, lie in wait for your quarry in the world of Paris, wait for your chance and your game; you need not be particular nor mindful of your dignity, as it is called; we are all of us slaves to something, to some failing of our own or to necessity; but keep that law of laws—secrecy.”
“Father, you frighten me,” said Lucien; “this seems to me to be a highwayman’s theory.”
“And you are right,” said the canon, “but it is no invention of mine. All parvenus reason in this way—the house of Austria and the house of France alike. You have nothing, you say? The Medicis, Richelieu, and Napoleon started from precisely your standpoint; but they, my child, considered that their prospects were worth ingratitude, treachery, and the most glaring inconsistencies. You must dare all things to gain all things. Let us discuss it. Suppose that you sit down to a game of bouillotte, do you begin to argue over the rules of the game? There they are, you accept them.”
“Come, now,” thought Lucien, “he can play bouillotte.”
“And what do you do?” continued the priest; “do you practise openness, that fairest of virtues? Not merely do you hide your tactics, but you do your best to make others believe that you are on the brink of ruin as soon as you are sure of winning the game. In short, you dissemble, do you not? You lie to win four or five louis d’or. What would you think of a player so generous as to proclaim that he held a hand full of trumps? Very well; the ambitious man who carries virtue’s precepts into the arena when his antagonists have left them behind is behaving like a child. Old men of the world might say to him, as cardplayers would say to the man who declines to take advantage of his trumps, ‘Monsieur, you ought not to play at bouillotte.’
“Did you make the rules of the game of ambition? Why did I tell you to be a match for society?—Because, in these days, society by degrees has usurped so many rights over the individual, that the individual is compelled to act in self-defence. There is no question of laws now, their place has been taken by custom, which is to say grimacings, and forms must always be observed.”
Lucien started with surprise.
“Ah, my child!” said the priest, afraid that he had shocked Lucien’s innocence; “did you expect to find the Angel Gabriel in an Abbé loaded with all the iniquities of the diplomacy and counter-diplomacy of two kings? I am an agent between Ferdinand VII and Louis XVIII, two—kings who owe their crowns to profound—er—combinations, let us say. I believe in God, but I have a still greater belief in our Order, and our Order has no belief save in temporal power. In order to strengthen and consolidate the temporal power, our Order upholds the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church, which is to say, the doctrines which dispose the world at large to obedience.
