--"

"I dare say."

"The candidate is requested to return to the examination room!" said the
usher.

And old Michu added, in a whisper, "You have passed. I told you so. You
won't forget old Michu, sir."

M. Flamaran conferred my degree with a paternal smile, and a few kind
words for "this conscientious study, full of fresh ideas on a difficult
subject."

I bowed to the examiners. Larive was waiting for me in the courtyard, and
seized me by the arm.

"Uncle Mouillard will be pleased."

"I suppose so."

"Better pleased than you."

"That's very likely."

"He might easily be that. Upon my word I can't understand you. These two
years you have been working like a gang of niggers for your degree, and
now you have got it you don't seem to care a bit. You have won a smile
from Flamaran and do not consider yourself a spoiled child of Fortune!
What more did you want? Did you expect that Mademoiselle Charnot would
come in person--"

"Look here, Larive--"

"To look on at your examination, and applaud your answers with her neatly
gloved hands? Surely you know, my dear fellow, that that is no longer
possible, and that she is going to be married."

"Going to be married?"

"Don't pretend you didn't know it."

"I have suspected as much since yesterday; I met her at the Salon, and
saw a young man with her."

"Fair?"

"Yes."

"Tall?"

"Rather."

"Good-looking?"

"H'm--well"

"Dufilleul, old chap, friend Dufilleul. Don't you know Dufilleul?"

"No."

"Oh, yes you do--a bit of a stockjobber, great at ecarte, studied law in
our year, and is always to be seen at the Opera with little Tigra of the
Bouffes."

"Poor girl!"

"You pity her?"

"It's too awful."

"What is?"

"To see an unhappy child married to a rake who--"

"She will not be the first."

"A gambler!"

"Yes, there is that, to be sure."

"A fool, as it seems, who, in exchange for her beauty, grace, and youth,
can offer only an assortment of damaged goods! Yes, I do pity girls duped
thus, deceived and sacrificed by the very purity that makes them believe
in that of others."

"You've some queer notions! It's the way of the world. If the innocent
victims were only to marry males of equal innocence, under the
guardianship of virtuous parents, the days of this world would be
numbered, my boy. I assure you that Dufilleul is a good match, handsome
for one thing--"

"That's worth a deal!"

"Rich."

"The deuce he is!"

"And then a name