Eugene de Rastignac

Eugene de Rastignac is a romantic character of Honore de Balzac from which the adventures begin in the Father Goriot and whose evolution will continue in a considerable number of novels of the human Comedy .

It is an ambitious young man, who looks at the “good company” with eyes at the same time surprised and envieux, which will be ready with very to arrive to its ends. Today, a Rastignac is a go-getter, a “young wolf with the long teeth”.

Chronology of Rastignac in the human Comedy

  • 1819 : the Father Goriot writes in 1835
Rastignac, young person studied 22 years (in fact it is 21 years old, Rastignac is aged one year at the time of a conversation with his cousin, Madam de Beauséant), confronted with the cynicism of the ones (whose Vautrin) and with deceptions of the others, becomes lover of Delphine de Nucingen and decides to face Paris and its company while launching a challenge to him: “With us two”. One year passed. The young “wolf”, lover of Delphine de Nucingen, became banker at the sides of her husband, the baron de Nucingen. Rastignac, become expert in fights of influence, wavers in the company. He can as well eliminate those which obstruct it as to put itself in the wake of the men who go up. Rastignac became full member of the world of “coiled Parisiens”, these leaders of the company which he admired so much at the time of his arrival in Paris. Rastignac started to benefit the sides from Nucingen, it has already fifteen thousand books of revenue, equipped and married his/her sisters and thinks of leaving Delphine with the profit of a fortunate marchioness. Rastignac has largely advanced: it is disillusioned, cynical today, player, “vivor”, with the limit of the vice and the self-destruction. the action of this book is located in 1836 but a conversation between four journalists révèlè the rise of Rastignac: still without the penny in 1827, Rastignac broke in 1833 with Delphine de Nucingen but always works with her husband who associates it with fraudulent operations and allows him to gain four hundred and thousand francs and to constitute a revenue of forty thousand books. It is on the way, in 1836 to become minister, even of France… Rastignac is for the second time minister, it comes to be made count and follows the traces of Nucingen. He married in 1839 the girl of Delphine and the baron de Nucingen. The count Maxime de Trailles, relation of Rastignac, define his course thus: “You ended up marrying the single heiress of the million Nucingen, and gained it well to you… twenty years of forced labors! ”
  • 1845: the Actors without the knowledge writes in 1845
Rastignac is 48 years old. The Bixiou caricaturist known as of him: “It has three hundred and thousand books of revenues, it is even of France, the king did it count, it is the son-in-law of Nucingen, and it is one of both or three statesmen given birth to by the Révolution of July; but the capacity annoys it sometimes, and it comes to laugh with us…”

One also finds it in the following novels:

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