There are dinners at restaurants, boxes at the theatres, carriages to go to the environs and return, choice wines consumed in profusion,--for an opera danseuse eats and drinks like an athlete.

Georges amused himself like other young men who pass at a jump from paternal discipline to a rich independence, and the death of his uncle, nearly doubling his means, had still further enlarged his ideas.
As long as he had only his patrimony of eighteen thousand francs a year, his intention was to become a notary, but (as his cousin remarked to the clerks of Desroches) a man must be stupid who begins a profession with the fortune most men hope to acquire in order to leave it.

Wiser then Georges, Frederic persisted in following the career of public office, and of putting himself, as we have seen, in training for it.
A young man as handsome and attractive as Georges might very well aspire to the hand of a rich creole; and the clerks in Desroches' office, all of them the sons of poor parents, having never frequented the great world, or, indeed, known anything about it, put themselves into their best clothes on the following day, impatient enough to behold, and be presented to the Mexican Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos.
"What luck," said Oscar to Godeschal, as they were getting up in the morning, "that I had just ordered a new coat and trousers and waistcoat, and that my dear mother had made me that fine outfit! I have six frilled shirts of fine linen in the dozen she made for me.

We shall make an appearance! Ha! ha! suppose one of us were to carry off the Creole marchioness from that Georges Marest!" "Fine occupation that, for a clerk in our office!" cried Godeschal.
"Will you never control your vanity, popinjay ?" "Ah! monsieur," said Madame Clapart, who entered the room at that moment to bring her son some cravats, and overhead the last words of the head-clerk, "would to God that my Oscar might always follow your advice.
It is what I tell him all the time: 'Imitate Monsieur Godeschal; listen to what he tells you.'" "He'll go all right, madame," interposed Godeschal, "but he mustn't commit any more blunders like one he was guilty of last night, or he'll lose the confidence of the master.

Monsieur Desroches won't stand any one not succeeding in what he tells them to do.