Aristide had a high respect for Eugène, who seemed to him a wonderfully smart fellow. He did not however forgive him his mistrust, nor his rather rough frankness; nevertheless he obediently went and shut himself up in the Rue Saint-Jacques. He had arrived with five hundred francs which his wife's father had lent him. After paying the expenses of the journey, he made the three hundred francs that remained to him last a month. Angèle was a hearty eater; moreover she thought it necessary to retrim her best dress with some mauve ribbons. This month of waiting appeared interminable to Aristide. He was burning with impatience. Each time he leaned out of his window and felt the gigantic labour of Paris beneath him, he experienced a mad longing to throw himself into the furnace with one bound, so as to mould the gold with his quivering fingers, as though it had been wax. He inhaled those still vague vapours which rose from the great city, that breath of the nascent Empire, laden already with the odours of alcoves and financial hells, with the warm effluvia of every kind of enjoyment. The faint fumes that reached him seemed to tell him that he was on the right scent, that the quarry was scudding along before him, that the grand imperial hunt, the pursuit of adventures, of women, and of millions, was about to begin. His nostrils quivered, his instinct of a famished beast caught in a marvellous manner as they passed the slightest signs of that fierce division of spoil of which the city was to be the scene. Twice he called on his brother to urge him to be more expeditious. Eugène received him rather ungraciously, repeating that he was not forgetting him, but that it was necessary to wait patiently. At length Aristide received a letter requesting him to call in the Rue de Penthièvre. He hastened thither, his heart beating violently, as though he were on his way to a lovers' meeting. He found Eugène seated before the same little black table, in the large cold room which he used as a study. On his appearance the lawyer held a document towards him, saying: "There, I settled your matter yesterday. You are appointed deputy trustee of roads at the Hôtel de Ville. You will be in receipt of a salary of two thousand four hundred francs." Aristide had remained standing. He turned ghastly pale, and did not take the document, thinking that his brother was poking fun at him. He had at least expected an appointment worth six thousand francs a year. Eugène, guessing what was passing within him, wheeled his chair round and folded his arms.