In a word, what Alfred desired was to create a sensation; the same pleasures, enjoyed in private, without show, without witnesses, or in curtained boxes at the theatre, would have seemed to him tasteless, insipid and of no account; but to attract attention, to cause a sensation, to be noticed on entering a theatre or a concert hall, was to him supreme happiness. He did not suspect that many people said when they saw him: “They say that he has already run through thirty thousand francs with her!” “I believe him to be quite enough of a fool for that! Indeed, he looks it!” “What an utterly absurd costume!” And it was to procure this reputation that young Alfred had run through more than thirty thousand francs in one year; that was more than half of the fortune he had inherited. If he continued to live in the same way, he had not enough for another year; but once started on the path of folly, some people keep on, not knowing how to stop. The crash which awaits them, and in which they will involve some too confiding friends, is there before them, inevitable, if they persist in following the same road; they know it, and still they go on. Are they fools or knaves? they necessarily deserve both titles. The other individual was not so good-looking as Monsieur Alfred de Saint-Arthur, but he had not his stupid look; indeed, there was in his eyes a shrewd expression which sometimes turned to mockery. Neither his trousers nor his coat were so exaggerated as his friend’s, but all the world did not turn to look at him; he had no fashionable mistress upon whom he squandered money, but he strove to be on the best terms with the mistresses of his friends; he did not waste his fortune, because he had none, and he had not left his place, because he had never had any. However, as one must needs try, in society, to have some talent, some profession, or some rank, in default of fortune, Jéricourt had become an author. He had not stopped to consider whether he had the necessary vocation and intellect for that; he had said to himself: “I propose to be an author;” and as one ordinarily effects his purpose by dint of perseverance and unbounded self-assurance, Jéricourt, by persistently frequenting the café where the young men who write for the stage ordinarily gather, had insinuated himself among them, playing billiards with one, dominoes with another; he had become one of their intimates, and then had begun to talk of plays, of plots, of original ideas which he claimed to have had; and when someone would say to him: “That is old, that subject has already been treated fifty times!” he would exclaim: “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be treated fifty-one times! A thing that has succeeded so often will succeed again. It is mere folly to try to do something new; one risks failure; whereas, by following roads already marked out, one is certain to arrive without hindrance.”