"I have heard Madame Desvarennes say more than twenty times how she regretted your being unemployed.

Come into the firm, you will have a good berth in the counting-house." "In the counting-house!" cried Savinien, bitterly; "there's the sore point.

Now look here; my friend, do you think that an organization like mine is made to bend to the trivialities of a copying clerk's work?
To follow the humdrum of every-day routine?
To blacken paper?
To become a servant ?--me! with what I have in my brain ?" And, rising abruptly, Savinien began to walk hurriedly up and down the room, disdainfully shaking his little head with its low forehead on which were plastered a few fair curls (made with curling-irons), with the indignant air of an Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders.
"Oh, I know very well what is at the bottom of the business--my aunt is jealous of me because I am a man of ideas.

She wishes to be the only one of the family who possesses any.

She thinks of binding me down to a besotting work," continued he, "but I won't have it.