A good university education with tutors for all branches, who don't teach you anything, costs sixty thousand francs.
If the education of the world does cost double, at least it teaches you to understand life, politics, men,--and sometimes women." Blondet concluded the lesson by a paraphrase from La Fontaine: "The world sells dearly what we think it gives." Instead of laying to heart the sensible advice which the cleverest pilots of the Parisian archipelago gave him, Savinien took it all as a joke.
"Take care, my dear fellow," said de Marsay one day.

"You have a great name; if you don't obtain the fortune that name requires you'll end your days in the uniform of a cavalry-sergeant.

'We have seen the fall of nobler heads,'" he added, declaiming the line of Corneille as he took Savinien's arm.

"About six years ago," he continued, "a young Comte d'Esgrignon came among us; but he did not stay two years in the paradise of the great world.

Alas! he lived and moved like a rocket.