Meanwhile she still went on playing the part of mother to her little family; nursing Chanteau, who was not going on very satisfactorily, soothing Véronique, whose sense of propriety was seriously offended, to say nothing of pretending to treat Lazare and Louise as a pair of disorderly children in order that she might be able to smile at their escapades. She succeeded in forcing herself to laugh even more loudly than they did, with that clear, ringing laugh of hers, whose limpid notes testified to her healthy courage. The whole house seemed gay and animated. She herself affected a bustling activity from morning till night, refusing to accompany the young couple in their walks, on the pretence that she had to undertake a general cleaning of the house, or see after the washing, or superintend the making of preserves. It was, however, more particularly Lazare who had now become noisy and energetic. He went whistling up and down the stairs, drummed on the doors, and found the days too short and uneventful. Although he did not actually do anything, his new passion seemed to find him more occupation than he had either time or strength for. Once more he intended to conquer the world, and every day at dinner he expounded fresh extraordinary schemes for the future. He had already grown disgusted with the idea of literature, and had abandoned all notion of reading for the examinations which he had intended to pass in order to enable him to take up a professorship. For a long time he had made this intention of studying an excuse for shutting himself up in solitude in his room; but he had there felt so discouraged that he had never opened a book, and now he began to scoff at his own foolishness in ever contemplating such a thing. Could anything be more idiotic than to chain himself down to a life like that in order to be able at some future time to write a lot of plays and novels? No! Politics alone were worthy of his ambition; and he had now quite made up his mind. He had a slight acquaintance with the Deputy for Caen, and he would go with him to Paris as his secretary, and, doubtless, in a few months' time he would make his way. The Empire was in great want of intelligent young men. When Pauline, whom this wild whirl of ideas made uneasy, tried to calm his ambitious fever by advising him to look out for some smaller but safer berth, he scoffed at her prudence and jokingly called her 'an old grandmother.'