'I want to know.'
'It was the average life of the average youth whose family is in average circumstances.'
'You went to school?'
'What makes you doubt it? Do I seem so illiterate?'
'Where? In England? Eton? Harrow?'
'No, in Paris. The Lycée Louis le Grand. Oh, I have received an education—no expense was spared. I forget how many years I passed à faire mon droit in the Latin Quarter. You'd be surprised if you were to discover what a lot I know. Shall I prove to you that the sum of the angles of a right-angled triangle is equal to two right angles? Or conjugate the verb amo? Or give you a brief summary of the doctrines of Aristotle? Or an account of the life and works of Gustavus Alolphus?'
'When did you go to England?'
'Not till Necessity drove me there. I had to eke out a meagre patrimony. I went to England to seek my fortune.'
'Did you find it?'
'I never had the knack of finding things. When my father used to send me into the library to fetch a book, or my mother into her dressing-room to fetch her scissors, I could never find them. I looked for it everywhere, but I couldn't find it.'