The Commission in Lunacy | Page 5

I
was not struck to the heart by the insulting politeness by which she
made me measure the imaginary distance which her noble birth sets
between us? That I did not feel the deepest pity for her cat-like civilities
when I remembered what her object was? A year hence she will not
write one word to do me the slightest service, and this evening she
pelted me with smiles, believing that I can influence my uncle Popinot,
on whom the success of her case----"
"Would you rather she should have played the fool with you, my dear
fellow?--I accept your diatribe against women of fashion; but you are
beside the mark. I should always prefer for a wife a Marquise d'Espard
to the most devout and devoted creature on earth. Marry an angel! you
would have to go and bury your happiness in the depths of the country!
The wife of a politician is a governing machine, a contrivance that
makes compliments and courtesies. She is the most important and most
faithful tool which an ambitious man can use; a friend, in short, who
may compromise herself without mischief, and whom he may belie
without harmful results. Fancy Mahomet in Paris in the nineteenth
century! His wife would be a Rohan, a Duchesse de Chevreuse of the
Fronde, as keen and as flattering as an Ambassadress, as wily as Figaro.
Your loving wives lead nowhere; a woman of the world leads to
everything; she is the diamond with which a man cuts every window
when he has not the golden key which unlocks every door. Leave
humdrum virtues to the humdrum, ambitious vices to the ambitious.
"Besides, my dear fellow, do you imagine that the love of a Duchesse
de Langeais, or de Maufrigneuse, or of a Lady Dudley does not bestow

immense pleasure? If only you knew how much value the cold, severe
style of such a woman gives to the smallest evidence of their affection!
What a delight it is to see a periwinkle piercing through the snow! A
smile from below a fan contradicts the reserve of an assumed attitude,
and is worth all the unbridled tenderness of your middle-class women
with their mortgaged devotion; for, in love, devotion is nearly akin to
speculation.
"And, then, a woman of fashion, a Blamont-Chauvry, has her virtues
too! Her virtues are fortune, power, effect, a certain contempt of all that
is beneath her----"
"Thank you!" said Bianchon.
"Old curmudgeon!" said Rastignac, laughing. "Come--do not be so
common, do like your friend Desplein; be a Baron, a Knight of Saint-
Michael; become a peer of France, and marry your daughters to dukes."
"I! May the five hundred thousand devils----"
"Come, come! Can you be superior only in medicine? Really, you
distress me . . ."
"I hate that sort of people; I long for a revolution to deliver us from
them for ever."
"And so, my dear Robespierre of the lancet, you will not go to-morrow
to your uncle Popinot?"
"Yes, I will," said Bianchon; "for you I would go to hell to fetch
water . . ."
"My good friend, you really touch me. I have sworn that a commission
shall sit on the Marquis. Why, here is even a long-saved tear to thank
you."
"But," Bianchon went on, "I do not promise to succeed as you wish
with Jean-Jules Popinot. You do not know him. However, I will take
him to see your Marquise the day after to-morrow; she may get round
him if she can. I doubt it. If all the truffles, all the Duchesses, all the
mistresses, and all the charmers in Paris were there in the full bloom of
their beauty; if the King promised him the PRAIRIE, and the Almighty
gave him the Order of Paradise with the revenues of Purgatory, not one
of all these powers would induce him to transfer a single straw from
one saucer of his scales into the other. He is a judge, as Death is
Death."
The two friends had reached the office of the Minister for Foreign

Affairs, at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines.
"Here you are at home," said Bianchon, laughing, as he pointed to the
ministerial residence. "And here is my carriage," he added, calling a
hackney cab. "And these--express our fortune."
"You will be happy at the bottom of the sea, while I am still struggling
with the tempests on the surface, till I sink and go to ask you for a
corner in your grotto, old fellow!"
"Till Saturday," replied Bianchon.
"Agreed," said Rastignac. "And you promise me Popinot?"
"I will do all my conscience will allow. Perhaps this appeal for a
commission covers some little dramorama, to use a word of our good
bad times."
"Poor Bianchon! he will never be anything