LUCIE. You have to speak of it even like a business transaction.
MME. BERNIN. Consequently there will be little or nothing for Jacques.
LUCIE. People who have no money work.
MME. BERNIN. He was not brought up to work.
LUCIE. Then he ought to have been.
MME. BERNIN. The professions are already overstocked. Do you propose that he should become a clerk at two hundred francs a month? He and his wife wouldn’t be able to keep a servant.
LUCIE. There are clerks who get more than that.
MME. BERNIN. Even if he got five hundred, would that enable him to keep up his social position? Of course it would not. He would owe his inferiority to his wife, and would soon begin to reproach her with it. And have you thought about their children? They would have just enough to send their son to the primary school and make their daughter a post office clerk. Even for that they would be terribly pinched.
LUCIE. Yes.