d of his tyrant. Florentine was
to close his eyes; he meant to leave her a hundred thousand francs. The
iron age had now begun.

Georges Marest, with thirty thousand francs a year, and a handsome face,
courted Florentine. Every danseuse makes a point of having some young
man who will take her to drive, and arrange the gay excursions into the
country which all such women delight in. However disinterested she may
be, the courtship of such a star is a passion which costs some trifles
to the favored mortal. 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 adv