I love him, that fellow! He has managed to live, as I did when a clerk, on six hundred francs a year.

What I care for above all is honesty, spotless integrity; and when it is practised in such poverty as that, a man's a man.

For the slightest fault of that kind a clerk leaves my office." "The lad is in a good school," thought Moreau.
For two whole years Oscar lived in the rue de Bethisy, a den of pettifogging; for if ever that superannuated expression was applicable to a lawyer's office, it was so in this case.

Under this supervision, both petty and able, he was kept to his regular hours and to his work with such rigidity that his life in the midst of Paris was that of a monk.
At five in the morning, in all weathers, Godeschal woke up.

He went down with Oscar to the office, where they always found their master up and working.