heir age, the sincere age
when one thinks aloud.

Maurice told his new friend that he was the son of an officer killed
before Sebastopol, that his mother had never married again, but adored
him and indulged him in all his whims. He was patiently waiting for his
school-days to end, to live independently in the Latin Quarter, to study
law, without being hurried, since his mother wished him to do so, and he
did not wish to displease her. But he wished also to amuse himself with
painting, at least as an amateur; for he was passionately fond of it. All
this was said by the handsome, aristocratic young man with a happy smile,
which expanded his sensual lips and nostrils; and Amedee admired him
without one envious thought; feeling, with the generous warmth of youth,
an entire confidence in the future and the mere joy of living. In his
turn he made a confidant of Maurice, but not of everything. The poor boy
could not tell anybody that he suspected his father of a secret vice,
that he blushed over it, was ashamed of it, and suffered from it as much
as youth can suffer. At least, honest-hearted fellow that he was, he
avowed his humble origin without shame, boasted of his humble friends the
Gerards, praised Louise's goodness, and spoke enthusiastically of little
Maria, who was just sixteen and so pretty.

"You will take me to see them some time, will you not?" said Maurice, who
listened to his friend with his natural good grace. "But first of all,
you must come to dinner some day with me, and I will present you to my
mother. Next Sunday, for instance. Is it agreeable?"

Amedee would have liked to refuse, for he suddenly recalled--oh! the
torture and suffering of poor young men! that his Sunday coat was almost
as seedy as his everyday one, that his best pair of shoes were run-over
at the heels, and that the collars and cuffs on his six white shirts were
ragged on the edges from too frequent washings. Then, to go to dinner in
the city, what an ordeal! What must he do to be presented in a
drawing-room? The very thought of it made him shiver. But Maurice invited
him so cordially that he was irresistible, and Amedee accepted.

The following Sunday, then, spruced up in his best-what could have
possessed the haberdasher to induce him to buy a pair of red dog-skin
gloves? He soon saw that they were too new and too startling for the rest
of his costume--Amedee went up to the first floor of a fine house on the
Faubourg St. Honore and ran