"Even if you do not let me go back."
"Well?"
"Because that,—A cause que, a grammatical error, I know quite well; but Corneille and Bossuet made use of it,—because that I have only come to Paris to write filthy plays and trashy verses, whether I am in the Secretarial Department or here, I must still continue to write them."
"Ah, is that so? Do you seriously imagine you can become a Corneille, a Racine or a Voltaire after an education of three francs a month?"
"If I were to become such a man as any one of those three, I should be only what another man has been, and that would not be worth while."
"You mean, then, that you would do better than they?"
"I would do something different."
"Come a little nearer me, so that I can give you a good kick, you conceited lad."
I went nearer to him.
"Here I am!"