He yielded at last, however, to the persistent entreaties of his wife, and the solicitations of his friends. “Be it so,” he said to Maxence: “you will study law. Only, as it cannot suit me that you should waste your days lounging in the billiard-rooms of the left bank, you shall at the same time work in an attorney’s office. Next Saturday I shall arrange with my friend Chapelain.” Maxence had not bargained for such an arrangement; and he came near backing out at the prospect of a discipline which he foresaw must be as exacting as that of the college. Still, as he could think of nothing better, he persevered. And, vacations over, he was duly entered at the law-school, and settled at a desk in M. Chapelain’s office, which was then in the Rue St. Antoine. The first year every thing went on tolerably. He enjoyed as much freedom as he cared to. His father did not allow him one centime for his pocket-money; but the attorney, in his capacity of an old friend of the family, did for him what he had never done before for an amateur clerk, and allowed him twenty francs a month. Mme. Favoral adding to this a few five-franc pieces, Maxence declared himself entirely satisfied. Unfortunately, with his lively imagination and his impetuous temper, no one was less fit than himself for that peaceful existence, that steady toil, the same each day, without the stimulus of difficulties to overcome, or the satisfaction of results obtained. Before long he became tired of it. He had found at the law-school a number of his old schoolmates whose parents resided in the provinces, and who, consequently, lived as they pleased in the Latin quarter, less assiduous to the lectures than to the Spring Brewery and the Closerie des Lilas.[*] [ * A noted dancing-garden. ] He envied them their joyous life, their freedom without control, their facile pleasures, their furnished rooms, and even the low eating-house where they took their meals. And, as much as possible, he lived with them and like them. But it is not with M. Chapelain’s twenty francs that it would have been possible for him to keep up with fellows, who, with superb recklessness, took on credit everything they could get, reserving the amount of their allowance for those amusements which had to be paid for in cash. But was not Mme. Favoral here? She had worked so much, the poor woman, especially since Mlle. Gilberte had become almost a young lady; she had so much saved, so much stinted, that her reserve, notwithstanding repeated drafts, amounted to a good round sum.