Beer and pretzels were his only vice.
For his own part, he knew no greater bliss than to sit before a foaming tankard, between his two friends, listening to their talk, and taking part only by a loud laugh or a shake of the head in their conversation, which was usually a long succession of grievances against society.
A childlike shyness, and the Germanisms of speech which he never had laid aside in his life of absorbing toil, embarrassed him much in giving expression to his ideas.

Moreover, his friends overawed him.

They had in respect to him the tremendous superiority of the man who does nothing over the man who works; and M.Chebe, less generous than Delobelle, did not hesitate to make him feel it.

He was very lofty with him, was M.
Chebe! In his opinion, a man who worked, as Risler did, ten hours a day, was incapable, when he left his work, of expressing an intelligent idea.
Sometimes the designer, coming home worried from the factory, would prepare to spend the night over some pressing work.

You should have seen M.Chebe's scandalized expression then! "Nobody could make me follow such a business!" he would say, expanding his chest, and he would add, looking at Risler with the air of a physician making a professional call, "Just wait till you've had one severe attack." Delobelle was not so fierce, but he adopted a still loftier tone.