Do you want my candid advice?
I shall tell you as I told that little d'Esgrignon: 'Arrange to pay your debts leisurely; keep enough to live on for three years, and marry some girl in the provinces who can bring you an income of thirty thousand francs.' In the course of three years you can surely find some virtuous heiress who is willing to call herself Madame la Vicomtesse de Portenduere.

Such is virtue,--let's drink to it.

I give you a toast: 'The girl with money!" The young men did not leave their ex-friend till the official hour for parting.

The gate was no sooner closed behind them than they said to each other: "He's not strong enough!" "He's quite crushed." "I don't believe he'll pull through it ?" The next day Savinien wrote his mother a confession in twenty-two pages.
Madame de Portenduere, after weeping for one whole day, wrote first to her son, promising to get him out of prison, and then to the Comte de Portenduere and to Admiral Kergarouet.
The letters the abbe had just read and which the poor mother was holding in her hand and moistening with tears, were the answers to her appeal, which had arrived that morning, and had almost broken her heart.
Paris, September, 1829.
To Madame de Portenduere: Madame,--You cannot doubt the interest which the admiral and I both feel in your troubles.

What you ask of Monsieur de Kergarouet grieves me all the more because our house was a home to your son; we were proud of him.
If Savinien had had more confidence in the admiral we could have taken him to live with us, and he would already have obtained some good situation.