444 THE FRENCH CONVULSIVES. 



expire in a bath of gold hurrah !' We divided the cash like brothers, piece by 

 piece, commencing by double Napoleons, proceeding from the larger to the 

 smal.er pieces, and distilling our joy by the oft repeated expressions 'For 

 you for me/ ' No sleep/ said Rastignac, ' ho ! Joseph punch '/ And 

 flinging some gold to his faithful servant, ' There's your share/ cried he. 

 The following day I purchased furniture, hired apartments, and had them 

 fitted up in the most expensive style. I provided myself with a carriage and 

 horses. Then it was that I launched into a vortex of pleasures, fictitious as 

 well as real. I played ; I lost and won, but it was at balls or at the houses of 

 friends, never at the gaming table. In a word, I became a liver to use the 

 picturesque expression consecrated by the language of the orgy. I had a 

 species of ambition in killing promptly in extinguishing my gayest com- 

 panions by my elasticity and power. I was ever exquisite and elegant. I 

 passed by common accord as a wit, and nothing betrayed the horrible exist- 

 ence within me." 



This course of life leads to its inevitable results utter destitution, 

 abandonment, and despair. After having lost his last guinea in a 

 gaming-house, our hero walks forth with the settled determination of 

 ending his existence by a plunge into the Seine. While awaiting 

 night to put this project in execution, and with a view to counteract 

 the moral stings which the reactions of his physical nature had begun 

 to inflict upon his mind, he enters a repository of antiquities, and 

 feasts his senses on the most exquisite creations of art. Thither all 

 the nations of the world seemed to have contributed some fragment of 

 their sciences, some specimen of their arts. After having given full 

 scope to the poetic fancies suggested by these productions, after 

 having contemplated all the countries, ages, and reigns of the world, 

 all the known creations, he sinks exhausted into a chair ; and while 

 his eyes wander over these phantasmagorical representations of the 

 past, he insensibly lapses into a reverie of confused dreams. On a 

 sudden he is startled by the apparition of a person who is thus de- 

 scribed : Raphael, henceforth being spoken of in the third person 

 instead of, as hitherto, in the first : 



" He was a little old man, dry and meagre, dressed in a black velvet 

 gown, which was fastened about his loins by a thick cord of silk. On his 

 head he wore a cap of velvet, also black, which allowed the wavy curls of 

 his long silver hair to flow down on either side of his figure. The gown en- 

 veloping his body, as it were, in a vast winding-sheet, and his cap being 

 drawn over his brows, permitted nothing but a narrow white visage to be 

 seen. But for the fleshless arm, resembling a stick supporting drapery, 

 which he held up to direct the full light of the lamp upon the countenance of 

 the young man, his countenance might have appeared suspended in mid-air. 

 A white beard trimmed to a point, concealed his chin, and imparted a like- 

 ness to those Jewish heads which serve as types to artists, when they would 

 represent Moses. His lips were so pale and evanescent, that it required an 

 effort to mark the narrow line traced by his mouth. His broad, wrinkled 

 forehead ; his wan and hollow cheeks ; the implacable rigour of his small 

 green eyes, divested of lashes and eyebrows, might give occasion to the 

 stranger to imagine that the gold-weigher of Gerard Dow had just stepped 

 from his frame. An indescribable expression of cunning betrayed in the 

 sinuosities of his wrinkles ; the circular lines engraven upon his temples 

 betokened a profound acquaintance with the affairs of human life. It was 

 impossible to deceive this man, who seemed endowed with the gift of reading 



