Then she again reverted to the manufacturer’s wife, declared that little Maurice, however sturdy he might look, was simply puffed out with bad flesh; and she remarked that it would be a terrible blow for the parents if they should lose that only son.  The subject of children was thus started, and when Mathieu, laughing, observed that they, the Moranges, had but one child, the cashier protested that it was unfair to compare him with M. Beauchene, who was such a wealthy man.  Valerie, for her part, pictured the position of her parents, afflicted with four daughters, who had been obliged to wait months and months for boots and frocks and hats, and had grown up anyhow, in perpetual terror lest they should never find husbands.  A family was all very well, but when it happened to consist of daughters the situation became terrible for people of limited means; for if daughters were to be launched properly into life they must have dowries.

“Besides,” said she, “I am very ambitious for my husband, and I am convinced that he may rise to a very high position if he will only listen to me.  But he must not be saddled with a lot of incumbrances.  As things stand, I trust that we may be able to get rich and give Reine a suitable dowry.”

Morange, quite moved by this little speech, caught hold of his wife’s hand and kissed it.  Weak and good-natured as he was, Valerie was really the one with will.  It was she who had instilled some ambition into him, and he esteemed her the more for it.

“My wife is a thoroughly good woman, you know, my dear Froment,” said he.  “She has a good head as well as a good heart.”

Then, while Valerie recapitulated her dream of wealth, the splendid flat she would have, the receptions she would hold, and the two months which, like the Beauchenes, she would spend at the seaside every summer, Mathieu looked at her and her husband and pondered their position.  Their case was very different from that of old Moineaud, who knew that he would never be a cabinet minister.  Morange possibly dreamt that his wife would indeed make him a minister some day.  Every petty bourgeois in a democratic community has a chance of rising and wishes to do so.  Indeed, there is a universal, ferocious rush, each seeking to push the others aside so that he may the more speedily climb a rung of the social ladder.  This general ascent, this phenomenon akin to capillarity, is possible only in a country where political equality and economic inequality prevail; for each has the same right to fortune and has but to conquer it.  There is, however, a struggle of the vilest egotism, if one wishes to taste the pleasures of the highly placed, pleasures which are displayed to the gaze of all and are eagerly coveted by nearly everybody in the lower spheres.  Under a democratic constitution a nation cannot live happily if its manners and customs are not simple, and if the conditions of life are not virtually equal for one and all.  Under other circumstances than these