As it was, he could be what suited him at the moment,--an agreeable man or a very ordinary one.

Never, since his admission to the Thuilliers', had he ventured, till this evening, to raise his voice and speak as dogmatically as he had risked doing to Olivier Vinet; but perhaps Theodose de la Peyrade was not sorry to seize the opportunity to come out from the shade in which he had hitherto kept himself.

Besides, it was necessary to get rid of the young substitute, just as the Minards had previously ruined the hopes of Monsieur Godeschal.

Like all superior men (for he certainly had some superiority), Vinet had never lowered himself to the point where the threads of these bourgeois spider-webs became visible to him, and he had therefore plunged, like a fly, headforemost, into the almost invisible trap to which Theodose inveigled him.
To complete this portrait of the poor man's lawyer we must here relate the circumstances of his first arrival at the Thuilliers'.
Theodose came to lodge in Mademoiselle Thuillier's house toward the close of the year 1837.

He had taken his degree about five years earlier, and had kept the proper number of terms to become a barrister.
Circumstances, however, about which he said nothing, had interfered to prevent his being called to the bar; he was, therefore, still a licentiate.