seven to get that judgment. A man is not forbidden to amuse
himself, but business first, my boy."

"Do you hear that, Oscar?" said Madame Clapart. "Monsieur Godeschal is
indulgent; see how well he knows how to combine the pleasures of youth
and the duties of his calling."

Madame Clapart, on the arrival of the tailor and the bootmaker with
Oscar's new clothes, remained alone with Godeschal, in order to return
him the hundred francs he had just given her son.

"Ah, monsieur!" she said, "the blessings of a mother will follow you
wherever you go, and in all your enterprises."

Poor woman! she now had the supreme delight of seeing her son
well-dressed, and she gave him a gold watch, the price of which she had
saved by economy, as the reward of his good conduct.

"You draw for the conscription next week," she said, "and to prepare, in
case you get a bad number, I have been to see your uncle Cardot. He is
very much pleased with you; and so delighted to know you are a second
clerk at twenty, and to hear of your successful examination at the
law-school, that he promised me the money for a substitute. Are not you
glad to think that your own good conduct has brought such reward? Though
you have some privations to bear, remember the happiness of being able,
five years from now, to buy a practice. And think, too, my dear little
kitten, how happy you make your mother."

Oscar's face, somewhat thinned by study, had acquired, through habits
of business, a serious expression. He had reached his full growth, his
beard was thriving; adolescence had given place to virility. The mother
could not refrain from admiring her son and kissing him, as she said:--

"Amuse yourself, my dear boy, but remember the advice of our good
Monsieur Godeschal. Ah! by the bye, I was nearly forgetting! Here's a
present our friend Moreau sends you. See! what a pretty pocket-book."

"And I want it, too; for the master gave me five hundred francs to get
that cursed judgment of Vandernesse versus Vandernesse, and I don't want
to leave that sum of money in my room."

"But, surely, you are not going to carry it with you!" exclaimed his
mother, in alarm. "Suppose you should lose a sum like that! Hadn't you
better give it to Monsieur Godeschal for safe keeping?"

"Godeschal!" cried Oscar, who thought his mother's suggestion excellent.

But Godeschal, who, like all clerks, has his time to himself on Sundays,
from ten to two o'clock, had already departed.