Have you any ambition? Would you
like to become something?"
"But, Henri, you are laughing at me--as though I were not sufficiently
mediocre to arrive at anything."
"Good Paul! If you go on laughing at yourself, you will soon be able
to laugh at everybody else."
At breakfast, by the time he had started his cigars, De Marsay began
to see the events of the night in a singular light. Like many men of
great intelligence, his perspicuity was not spontaneous, as it did not
at once penetrate to the heart of things. As with all natures endowed
with the faculty of living greatly in the present, of extracting, so
to speak, the essence of it and assimilating it, his second-sight had
need of a sort of slumber before it could identify itself with causes.
Cardinal de Richelieu was so constituted, and it did not debar in him
the gift of foresight necessary to the conception of great designs.
De Marsay's conditions were alike, but at first he only used his
weapons for the benefit of his pleasures, and only became one of the
most profound politicians of his day when he had saturated himself
with those pleasures to which a young man's thoughts--when he has
money and power--are primarily directed. Man hardens himself thus: he
uses woman in order that she may not make use of him.
At this moment, then, De Marsay perceived that he had been fooled by
the girl of the golden eyes, seeing, as he did, in perspective, all
that night of which the delights had been poured upon him by degrees
until they had ended by flooding him in torrents.
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