I have been extravagant to-day, and must pinch for it." "M.

le Marquis jests," said the old woman, laughing.
"No, Marthe; I am serious.

I have sinned, but I shall reform.

'Entre nous,' my dear friend, Paris is very dear when one sets one's foot out of doors: I must soon go back to Rochebriant." "When M.le Marquis goes back to Rochebriant he must take with him a Madame la Marquise,--some pretty angel with a suitable dot." "A dot suitable to the ruins of Rochebriant would not suffice to repair them, Marthe: give me my dressing-gown, and good-night." "'Bon repos, M.le Marquis! beaux reves, et bel avenir.'" "'Bel avenir!'" murmured the young man, bitterly, leaning his cheek on his hand; "what fortune fairer than the present can be mine?
yet inaction in youth is more keenly felt than in age.

How lightly I should endure poverty if it brought poverty's ennobling companion, Labour,--denied to me! Well, well; I must go back to the old rock: on this ocean there is no sail, not even an oar, for me." Alain de Rochebriant had not been reared to the expectation of poverty.
The only son of a father whose estates were large beyond those of most nobles in modern France, his destined heritage seemed not unsuitable to his illustrious birth.