For that is how men love beetles.

He has a thousand pinned down at home--beetles, butterflies, and so forth.
When I go near the rubbish with my duster he trembles like an aspen.
I pretend to be going to clean them, but it is only to see the face he makes, for even a domestic must laugh now and then--or die.

But I never do clean them, for after all he is more stupid than wicked, poor man: I have not therefore the sad courage to make him wretched." "Let us return to our beetle--what will his tirades about its antiquity advance me ?" "Oh! one begins about a beetle, but one ends Heaven knows where." Riviere profited by this advice.

He even improved on it.

In due course he threw himself into Aubertin's way.