“There are no such things as principles; there are only events”

“There are no such things as principles; there are only events” is Vautrin’s compressed credo of expediency. In his explanation to Eugène de Rastignac, circumstances—not stable moral rules—are the forces a shrewd person accepts and exploits; the maxim gives ideological shape to his plan to make Eugène Victorine Taillefer’s husband and heir, even as it exposes the violence concealed beneath his language of opportunity.

The Maxim and Its Argument

Vautrin argues that talent consists in accepting events and the circumstances in which a person finds himself, then turning them to his own ends. Fixed principles, he says, cannot be truly immovable when nations alter laws and convictions so readily. He extends the argument from public life to personal conduct: a person need not maintain a consistency more demanding than that of a nation, and opinions or even promises may be offered at a price. His related formulation, that there are no laws but those of expediency, makes the maxim’s practical meaning explicit: moral and political commitments are subordinate to advantage.

The speech presents flexibility not as a reluctant response to change but as a deliberate method of power. Vautrin dismisses unwavering commitment as a belief in infallibility and treats adaptation as the mark of a capable operator. His examples range from shifting political allegiances to disagreements among judges, suggesting that neither public reputation nor legal institutions provide the stable authority that conventional morality claims for them. The maxim thus turns uncertainty into an opportunity: when principles do not command universal agreement, the individual can choose the course that best serves his purposes.

Political Examples and Moral Reversal

To support his argument, Vautrin contrasts the reputation of La Fayette with the prince who helped prevent France from being divided at the Congress of Vienna. He argues that the former is treated with superstitious reverence despite what Vautrin considers meager service to France, while the latter is vilified despite having, in his account, saved the country from dismemberment. The example casts public judgment as unstable and politically convenient: honors and blame do not reliably correspond to achievement.

Vautrin reinforces the point by invoking his knowledge of men’s secrets and the disagreement of judges on legal questions. These observations make the maxim more than a general claim about changing circumstances; they portray law, reputation, and principle as contested systems that can be manipulated. His confidence in this analysis is itself part of the scene’s force. The argument sounds like worldly realism, but its conclusion is that the person who understands the instability of moral judgment may use it without restraint.

Application to Victorine and Eugène

The maxim arises within Vautrin’s proposal to Eugène. Victorine Taillefer, he says, has no money because her father, Taillefer, intends to leave his fortune to his son rather than to her. Vautrin claims that the father has committed a murder during the Revolution, then imagines the son’s death as the event that would leave Victorine as the sole surviving child and her father’s fortune available for inheritance. Vautrin presents himself as a defender of the weak, but his proposed remedy depends on arranging that fatal event.

He tells Eugène that Victorine’s gentleness and gratitude for his devotion will lead her to marry him. To help bring about the inheritance, Vautrin says he has a close friend, a colonel in the Army of the Loire recently transferred to the Garde Royale, who has taken Vautrin’s advice and changed his political allegiance. Vautrin claims the colonel would pick a quarrel with a man who refuses to send even five francs to his sister and kill him at Vautrin’s word. This is the maxim in action: political change, family injustice, Eugène’s prospective marriage, and murder are all treated as events that can be arranged and turned toward a desired outcome.

The Maxim’s Dramatic Exposure

The surrounding scene reveals the gulf between Vautrin’s abstract defense of expediency and its human cost. He describes the killing with the casual confidence of someone discussing a useful transaction, then rises like a fencing master about to lunge as he promises to have the target sent off into the dark. Eugène responds with horror and asks whether Vautrin is joking. That reaction interrupts the apparent coherence of the maxim: what Vautrin calls adaptable intelligence appears to Eugène as a proposal for murder.

The saying therefore functions both as a summary of Vautrin’s worldview and as a warning about its consequences. If events replace principles as the measure of action, injustice can be redescribed as opportunity and another person’s death as a means to an inheritance. The scene gives the maxim its sharpest meaning not through the slogan alone, but through the criminal scheme that immediately tests it.