"Are you a fool after all?" he asked angrily. "You've been building castles in the air like a girl, have you not? You would wish to have a grand establishment with footmen, to live on the fat of the land, sleep in silk, gratify your desires at once in no matter whose arms, in a boudoir furnished in a couple of hours. You and those like you, if we allowed you to have your way, would empty the coffers even before they were full. Now, in the name of all that's good! do have a little patience! See how I live, and do at least take the trouble to stoop to pick up a fortune." He spoke with profound contempt of his brother's schoolboy impatience. One could feel, in his rough speech, a loftier ambition, a longing for untarnished power; that naive appetite for money no doubt appeared to him both paltry and puerile. He continued in a gentler voice and with a crafty smile: "No doubt your propensities are excellent, and I have not the least desire to thwart them. Men like you are precious. We have every intention of choosing our friends from among the most hungry. You may be quite easy, we shall keep open house, and the greatest appetites will be satisfied. And this is after all the easiest way of reigning. But, for goodness sake, wait till the cloth is laid, and, if you'll accept my advice, just go yourself and fetch your knife and fork from the kitchen." Aristide continued to look very glum. His brother's pleasant comparisons were unable to bring a smile to his countenance. Then the latter again gave way to anger. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "my first opinion was the right one: you're a fool! What on earth did you expect, whatever did you imagine I was going to do with your illustrious person? You didn't even have the courage to finish your reading for the bar, you went and buried yourself for ten years in the wretched berth of clerk at a sub-prefecture, and you come to me with the detestable reputation of a Republican whom the Coup d'État was alone able to convert. Do you think that with such a past there is the making of a cabinet minister in you? Oh! I know that you have in your favour a ferocious desire to reach the goal by any means possible. That is a great virtue, I admit, and it was precisely on that account that I obtained your admittance into the Hôtel de Ville." And rising from his seat he placed the document containing the appointment in Aristide's hands. "Take it," continued he, "you'll thank me some day. It's I who chose the berth, I know what you'll be able to get out of it. All you'll have to do will be to look about you and keep your ears open. If you are intelligent, you'll soon understand and know how to act. Now pay particular attention to what I am about to say to you. Make piles of money, I permit it; only do nothing foolish, no noisy scandal, otherwise I shall suppress you instantly."