"Ah! that is splendid, my friend. And you were glad to tell me all this, because you knew that it would give me great pleasure, weren't you?" "Why, yes, I thought it would." "Thanks, my friend, for thinking of that. Indeed, you cannot conceive how I rejoice to learn of the change that has taken place in you! But you will keep on, Ballangier; now that you have started on the right path, you won't leave it again, will you? Besides, you must surely be a happier man, now that you are earning your living, and can hold your head erect boldly, without fear of being arrested by a creditor, or assailed by a wife or mother whose husband or son you have led astray; without reading on the faces of honest folk the contempt that evil livers always inspire! Instead of that, you will be made welcome, made much of, courted by respectable families; a father will no longer dread to see his daughter, or a brother his sister, on your arm. You will be loved, esteemed, highly considered. Yes, highly considered; for there is no trade, no career, in which an honest man may not acquire that consideration which mere wealth, unaccompanied by probity, cannot acquire. Tell me if all this is not preferable to a life of debauchery, which makes you either a brute or a madman most of the time; to the false friendship of those wretches who know nothing but idleness, and sometimes something much worse, who extol all the vices, who try to cast ridicule on merit and hard work, because other men's merit gnaws at their envy-ridden hearts, and, being unable to attain it, they do their utmost to crush it?" "Oh, yes! you are right, Charles: I am far happier! I reflect now; I feel that I am an entirely different man. I read a good deal; I am fond of reading, and it used to be impossible for me to read five minutes at a time." "Read, you cannot do better; but select good books; bad writers are worse than false friends, for we have them under our hand every minute; their treacherous counsels lead feeble or excitable minds astray; there is no more dangerous companion for a tête-à-tête than an evil book." "You must guide me; you must give me a list of authors whose works will be profitable reading for me." "I will do better than that. Come with me." I led Ballangier to my book shelves, from which I took Racine, Molière, Montesquieu, Fénelon, and La Fontaine. "There, those are for you," I said; "take these books home with you, and read them carefully and with profit. Some will seem to you a little severe and serious; but the others, while they instruct you, will make you laugh. Learn by heart the great, the immortal Molière. He castigated the vices and absurdities of his time; but as vices unluckily belong to all times, as men are no better to-day than they ever were, as we meet in the world every day _tartufes, précieuses ridicules, avares, and bourgeois gentilshommes_, Molière, like all authors who depict nature, is and will be of all epochs.