"
"We all began that way," answered Rastignac, laughing, and the laugh
was echoed by Lucien de Rubempre, Maxime de Trailles, Emile Blondet,
and others of the fashionable young men of the day.
"Though de Marsay was rich when he started in life he was an
exception," said the host, a parvenu named Finot, ambitious of seeming
intimate with these young men. "Any one but he," added Finot bowing to
that personage, "would have been ruined by it."
"A true remark," said Maxime de Trailles.
"And a true idea," added Rastignac.
"My dear fellow," said de Marsay, gravely, to Savinien; "debts are the
capital stock of experience. A good university education with tutors
for all branches, who don't teach you anything, costs sixty thousand
francs. If the education of the world does cost double, at least it
teaches you to understand life, politics, men,--and sometimes women."
Blondet concluded the lesson by a paraphrase from La Fontaine: "The
world sells dearly what we think it gives."
Instead of laying to heart the sensible advice which the cleverest
pilots of the Parisian archipelago gave him, Savinien took it all as a
joke.
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