[Cosmopolis by Paul Bourget]@TWC D-Link book
Cosmopolis

CHAPTER II
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There, heedless of first rebuffs, he undertook to realize the third great object of his life, the gaining of social position.

To the period of avidity had succeeded, as it frequently does with those formidable handlers of money, the period of vanity.

Being now a widower, he aimed at his daughter's marriage with a strength of will and a complication of combinations equal to his former efforts, and that struggle for connection with high life was disguised beneath the cloak of the most systematically adopted politeness of deportment.

How had he found the means, in the midst of struggles and hardships, to refine himself so that the primitive broker and speculator were almost unrecognizable in the baron of fifty-four, decorated with several orders, installed in a magnificent palace, the father of a charming daughter, and himself an agreeable conversationalist, a courteous gentleman, an ardent sportsman?
It is the secret of those natures created for social conquest, like a Napoleon for war and a Talleyrand for diplomacy.

Dorsenne asked himself the question frequently, and he could not solve it.


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