Se donner un but éclatant et cacher ses moyens d’arriver

Se donner un but éclatant et cacher ses moyens d’arriver is a maxim of ambition delivered to Lucien de Rubempré by a priest who urges him to pursue social elevation while keeping his methods and progress hidden. The counsel joins a dazzling public destination to secret, potentially dishonorable means, presenting concealment not as an incidental tactic but as the governing rule of advancement.

The Counsel to Lucien

The maxim comes after the priest has contrasted ordinary theft with the financial exploitation of people who possess little power. A poor man who takes money by force is treated as a criminal; someone who lends money to a gifted inventor and then pressures him to surrender his valuable secret may answer only to his conscience. The priest invokes the Cointet brothers’ 3,000-franc loan to David Séchard as a case in point. In this account, the legal distinction between the two acts reflects society’s defense of property and social order, not a consistent measure of the harm done.

That contrast prepares the maxim’s specific promise to Lucien. The priest imagines him becoming rich and a marquis of Rubempré, then enjoying the luxury of an honorable public reputation. The ambition is to be visible in its outcome, but not in its workings: Lucien must set a brilliant goal, conceal the means of reaching it, and hide his progress as well. The formulation makes secrecy active and continuous, extending beyond a single deception to the management of an entire ascent.

Strategy and Image

The priest translates the maxim into an image of patient predation. Lucien is told to become a hunter in the Parisian world, lie in wait for prey and chance, and spare neither himself nor what society calls dignity. The counsel is not simply to seize an opportunity when it appears; it is to watch, conceal one’s approach, and treat secrecy as the supreme rule.

Lucien recoils, comparing the theory to highway robbery. The priest grants the resemblance but denies that the principle is his invention. He points to Napoleon, Richelieu, the Medici, and the houses of Austria and France as examples of powers that secured their futures through ingratitude, betrayal, and violent contradiction. The historical comparisons give the maxim scale, but do not soften its moral implications: Lucien is being advised to model his private advancement on the ruthless methods of political and dynastic power.

Ambition, Form, and Moral Cost

The maxim’s tension lies in its separation of a respectable public end from the hidden means that may produce it. The priest argues that society itself makes distinctions of this kind: it punishes a thief who crosses the boundary protecting property, while financial manipulators may ruin families and still escape comparable judgment. The distinction allows the pursuit of wealth to appear legitimate even when the process involves exploitation. Within that logic, honor becomes something Lucien can afford to display after he has become rich, rather than a constraint governing how he gets there.

The priest’s advice therefore offers more than a scheme for social mobility. It defines success as the ability to shape appearances while concealing the route behind them. Lucien’s alarm registers the violence beneath that polished ambition; the priest’s response absorbs the objection into his argument, treating ruthlessness as an established rule of the world. The maxim’s force comes from this unresolved gap between the brilliance of the announced goal and the moral cost hidden on the way to it.