then it was a dancer....

then it was an actress....
then a circus-rider.

He tried life in every form.

He led the brilliant and miserable existence of the unoccupied.
But it was only three or four months that he passed in Paris each year.
His mother made him an allowance Of 30,000 francs, and had declared to him that never, while she lived, should he have another penny before his marriage.

He knew his mother, he knew he must consider her words as serious.