“If there is an evil for which I ought to be prepared, it is that.”
“Do you think so? With the lofty and generous sentiments so apparent in your nature, shall you remain impassive under political attack,—under calumny, for instance?”
“You yourself, Monsieur le ministre, have not escaped its venom; but it did not, I think, deter you from your course.”
“But,” said Rastignac, lowering his voice, “suppose I were to tell you that I have already sternly refused to listen to a proposal to search into your private life on a certain side which, being more in the shade than the rest, seems to offer your enemies a chance to entrap you.”
“I do not thank you for the honor you have done yourself in rejecting with contempt the proposals of men who can be neither of my party nor of yours; they belong to the party of base appetites and selfish passions. But, supposing the impossible, had they found some acceptance from you, pray believe that my course, which follows the dictates of my conscience, could not be affected thereby.”
“But your party,—consider for a moment its elements: a jumble of foiled ambitions, brutal greed, plagiarists of ‘93, despots disguising themselves as lovers of liberty.”
“My party has nothing, and seeks to gain something. Yours calls itself conservative, and it is right; its chief concern is how to preserve its power, offices, and wealth,—in short, all it now monopolizes.”
“But, monsieur, we are not a closed way; we open our way, on the contrary, to all ambitions. But the higher you are in character and intellect, the less we can allow you to pass, dragging after you your train of democrats; for the day when that crew gains the upper hand it will not be a change of policy, but a revolution.”
“But what makes you think I want an opening of any kind?”
“What! follow a course without an aim?—a course that leads nowhere? A certain development of a man’s faculties not only gives him the right but makes it his duty to seek to govern.”