“Upon my word, my dear, you are very amiable! Why do you think that we are not so well able as men to decide what may be useful to us?”
“Because you are not brought up to do it.”
“My dear,” said Madame Germeuil, “education supplies neither intellect nor judgment. Believe me, a woman may give very good advice, and men are almost always wrong to despise it. The only advice that I can give you myself is not to form too rashly an intimacy with a man whom you have known only a week. Friendship should not be given so readily.”
“But Edouard is naturally so kind, so easy-going——”
“Oh! I know how to value people. I promise you that Dufresne’s friendship will be very valuable to me.”
“How so?”
“Parbleu! I mean to do as he does; and to increase our fortune, I too will go into business. I feel, moreover, that a man cannot live without having something to do. When we are in Paris, I can’t walk about from morning till night; I shall neither go hunting nor fishing.”
“That is just what I told you when you insisted on leaving your place,” said Mamma Germeuil; “but then you didn’t listen to me.”
“Oh! my dear mamma, if I had remained twenty years nailed to an office stool, what would that have led me to? To be a deputy chief perhaps, a year or two before being retired on a pension. A noble prospect! Instead of that, I may become very wealthy some day.”
“What, Edouard, have you become ambitious now?”