The other day, coming back from Paris much bothered, it never occurred to me to thank _maman_ for a black coat which she had had made for me; at my age one isn't particularly sensitive to such a present. Nevertheless, it would not have cost me much to seem touched by the attention, especially as it was a sacrifice. But I forgot it. _Maman_ began to pout, and you know what her aspect and her face amount to at those moments. I fell from the clouds, and racked my brain to know what I had done. Happily Laurence [his younger sister] came and notified me, and two or three words as fine as amber mended _maman's_ countenance. The thing is nothing--a mere drop of water; but it's to give you an example of our manners. Ah, we are a jolly set of originals in our holy family. What a pity I can't put us into novels! His father wished to find him an opening in some profession, and the thought of being made a notary was a bugbear to the young man: "Think of me as dead, if they cap me with that extinguisher." And yet, in the next sentence, he breaks out into a cry of desolate disgust at the aridity of his actual circumstances: "They call this mechanical rotation living--this perpetual return of the same things. If there were only something to throw some charm or other over my cold existence. I have none of the flowers of life, and yet I am in the season in which they bloom. What will be the use of fortune and pleasures when my youth has departed? What need of the garments of an actor if one no longer plays a part? An old man is a man who has dined, and who watches others eat; and I, young as I am--my plate is empty, and I am hungry. Laure, Laure, my two only and immense desires, _to be famous and to be loved_--will they ever be satisfied?"