What sort of man should I be?
Could you love such a man ?" "A thousand times more, for he would be unhappy, and I should have to comfort him." "Would you have the strength to do it?
After a time you would become weary, for the burden would be too heavy, however great your devotion or profound your tenderness, to see my real position and my hopes, and, descending into the future, to see my ruin.

You know I am ambitious without having ever compassed the scope of this ambition, and of the hopes, dreams if you like, on which it rests.

Understand that these dreams are on the eve of being realized; two months more, and in December or January I pass the 'concours' for the central bureau, which will make me a physician of the hospitals, and at the same time the one for the admission, which opens the Faculty of Medicine to me.

Without pride, I believe myself in a position to succeed--what sportsmen call 'in condition.' And just when I have only a few days to wait, behold me ruined forever." "Why forever ?" "A man leaves his village for Paris to make a name for himself, and he returns only when bad luck or inability sends him back.

And then it is only every four years that there is a 'concours' for admission.