"So, if Rabbe works all the year and has only done one résumé and a half, he has earned eighteen hundred francs?"
"Eighteen hundred francs, yes! by Jove!"
"Hum!"
And M. Brézé began to reflect. Then, suddenly, he asked—"Do you think Rabbe is as clever as M. Scribe?"
The question was so unlooked for and, above all, so inappropriate, that Barthélemy began to laugh.
"Why, yes," he said; "only it is cleverness of a different order." "Oh! that does not matter!"
"Why does it not matter?"
"If he has as much talent as M. Scribe it is all that is necessary."
Again he fell into reflection; then, after a pause he said to Barthélemy—
"Is it true that M. Scribe earns a hundred thousand francs a year?"