“When a man has such a handsome fortune as that, it’s perfectly ridiculous for him to pass his best years out at nurse!” cried the tutor; “and then what good does it do my pupil to become learned, to learn so many useful things, if he continues to live with peasants? Monsieur Jasmin, history offers no example of remarkable men who have remained at nurse until they were fifteen. It is all very well to love the woman who reared us, but _est medius in rebus_.” “Monsieur le professeur, I am not good at guessing rebuses; but I am my master’s very humble servant, and I have no right to give him orders.” At Paris, too, Jasmin had frequent discussions with Mademoiselle Turlurette on the subject of his young master. The former lady’s maid had become housekeeper; she had grown so stout, although she was not yet forty, that it was very difficult for her to walk from one room to another; that state of corpulence nailed her to her chair, and prevented her from going to see her young master at Gagny. And Jasmin was not at all anxious to take her with him, because he always feared that Mademoiselle Turlurette would usurp a part of his authority, which he did not propose to stand. The bulky housekeeper asked the old servant every day why their young master did not leave his nurse; and sometimes sharp quarrels arose between them on that subject; but Jasmin always put an end to them by saying in a morose tone: “Mademoiselle, after all, I am the one that the late Monsieur le Marquis de Grandvilain intrusted with the care of his son; in fact, I have the right to turn you out of the house if I choose; so be kind enough to allow me to guide young Chérubin as I please.” Thereupon Turlurette held her peace, although she knew perfectly well that Jasmin was not capable of discharging her. “A foster-child of sixteen years!” she would mutter between her teeth; “that’s a funny thing!” Things were at this point when a servant appeared at the hôtel de Grandvilain one morning, asked for Jasmin, and told him that the late monsieur le marquis’s notary desired him to call at his office during the day, because it was very important that he should speak with him. The old valet wondered what the notary could have to say to him; then he remembered that his young master had long since passed his fifteenth birthday, and that that was the time that his father had desired that he should be put in possession of his fortune. All this worried Jasmin, who said to himself: “Thirty thousand francs a year, to say nothing of the additions due to the savings that I have made in fourteen years! It is a fact that it would be a pity to waste that at his foster-father’s. But still, if Monsieur Chérubin insists on staying with Nicole, I can’t use violence to compel him to return to Paris, for after all, he is his own master.”