Although all these hunting parties procured me a most delightful existence, one which might have been indefinitely prolonged had I possessed an income of 20,000 livres, they did not provide a future for a poor devil whose patrimony, in spite of maternal economy, was melting away day by day in a terrible fashion.
I was fifteen years old. It was considered quite time I learnt some profession, and it was decided I should become a lawyer.
At that period, when a veil hid my future from me, and I had not yet felt any of those ambitions which have since led me into other paths, every profession, with the exception of that of the priesthood, was equally indifferent to me.
My mother left home one fine morning, and, crossing the square diagonally, went to ask her solicitor if he would be kind enough to take me as his third clerk.
The solicitor replied that he would be most happy to receive me, but it appeared to him, unless he were mistaken, that I cared too much for la marette, la pipée, and hunting, ever to become an assiduous pupil of Cujas and of Pothier.
My mother heaved a sigh; this was probably her own opinion, too, but she persisted all the same, and the lawyer replied:
"Very well, my dear Madame Dumas, since it will give you so much pleasure, send him to me, and we will see."
So it was decided that I should go to Maître Mennesson the following Monday; polite folk would say in the capacity of third clerk—others in that of errand-boy or guttersnipe, saute-ruisseau, to give the rank its slang name.
It gave me some pain to give up my sweet independence; but it gave my mother great pleasure when I yielded to her decision; all her friends told her it was such a good opening for me; Lafarge (you remember the spruce and clever son of the coppersmith who lived near us) had carved a brilliant and lucrative career for himself in the same profession; the thought that my profession would lead to an income of 12,000 or 15,000 francs per annum, and that then I could give bird-snaring parties in grand style, as he had done, took my fancy so enormously that—I went to M. Mennesson.