, Madame Bridau?" asked old Claparon.

"She thinks her boy will have to beg his bread because he has got the
bump of painting," said Madame Descoings; "but, for my part, I am not
the least uneasy about the future of my step-son, little Bixiou, who has
a passion for drawing. Men are born to get on."

"You are right," said the hard and severe Desroches, who, in spite of
his talents, had never himself got on in the position of assistant-head
of a department. "Happily I have only one son; otherwise, with my
eighteen hundred francs a year, and a wife who makes barely twelve
hundred out of her stamped-paper office, I don't know what would become
of me. I have just placed my boy as under-clerk to a lawyer; he gets
twenty-five francs a month and his breakfast. I give him as much more,
and he dines and sleeps at home. That's all he gets; he must manage for
himself, but he'll make his way. I keep the fellow harder at work than
if he were at school, and some day he will be a barrister. When I give
him money to go to the theatre, he is as happy as a king and kisses me.
Oh, I keep a tight hand on him, and he renders me an account of all he
spends. You are too good to your children, Madame Bridau; if your son
wants to go through hardships and privations, let him; they'll make a
man of him."

"As for my boy," said Du Bruel, a former chief of a division, who had
just retired on a pension, "he is only sixteen; his mother dotes on him;
but I shouldn't listen to his choosing a profession at his age,--a mere
fancy, a notion that may pass off. In my opinion, boys should be guided
and controlled."

"Ah, monsieur! you are rich, you are a man, and you have but one son,"
said Agathe.

"Faith!" said Claparon, "children do tyrannize over us--over our hearts,
I mean. Mine makes me furious; he has nearly ruined me, and now I won't
have anything to do with him--it's a sort of independence. Well, he is
the happier for it, and so am I. That fellow was partly the cause of
his mother's death. He chose to be a commercial traveller; and the trade
just suited him, for he was no sooner in the house than he wanted to
be out of it; he couldn't keep in one place, and he wouldn't learn
anything. All I ask of God is that I may die before he dishonors my
name. Those who have no children lose many pleasures, but they escape
great sufferings."

"And these men are fathers!" thought Agathe, weeping anew.

"What I am trying to show you, my dear Madame Bridau,