_He._--Pardon me; for instance, that admiring attitude of the back, of which I spoke to you; I regard it as my own, though envy may contest my claim. I daresay it has been employed before: but who has felt how convenient it was for laughing in one's sleeve at the ass for whom one was dying of admiration! I have more than a hundred ways of opening fire on a girl under the very eyes of her mother, without the latter suspecting a jot of it; yes, and even of making her an accomplice. I had hardly begun my career before I disdained all the vulgar fashions of slipping a _billet-doux_; I have ten ways of having them taken from me, and out of the number I venture to flatter myself there are some that are new. I possess in an especial degree the gift of encouraging a timid young man; I have secured success for some who had neither wit nor good looks. If all that was written down, I fancy people would concede me some genius. _I._--And would do you singular honour. _He._--I don't doubt it. _I._--In your place, I would put those famous methods on paper. It would be a pity for them to be lost. _He._--It is true; but you could never suppose how little I think of method and precepts. He who needs a protocol will never go far. Your genius reads little, experiments much, and teaches himself. Look at Caesar, Turenne, Vauban, the Marquise de Tencin, her brother the cardinal, and the cardinal's secretary, the Abbe Trublet, and Bouret! Who is it that has given lessons to Bouret? Nobody; 'tis nature that forms these rare men. _I._--Well, but you might do this in your lost hours, when the anguish of your empty stomach, or the weariness of your stomach overloaded, banishes slumber.