Mercadet
By means of the money in circulation.  Ah! you have all your wits about
you!

De la Brive
But I have nothing else.

Mercadet
Our wits are our mint.  Is it not so?  But, considering your present
situation, I shall be brief.

De la Brive
That is why I take a seat.

Mercadet Listen to me.  I see that you are going down the steep way which leads to that daring cleverness for which fools blame successful operators.  You have tasted the piquant intoxicating fruits of Parisian pleasure.  You have made luxury the inseparable companion of your life.  Paris begins at the Place de l’Etoile, and ends at the Jockey Club.  That is your Paris, which is the world of women who are talked about too much, or not at all.

De la Brive
That is true.

Mercadet You breathe the cynical atmosphere of wits and journalists, the atmosphere of the theatre and of the ministry.  It is a vast sea in which thousands are casting their nets!  You must either continue this existence, or blow your brains out!

De la Brive
No!  For it is impossible to think that it can continue without me.

Mercadet Do you feel that you have the genius to maintain yourself in style at the height to which you aspire?  To dominate men of mind by the power of capital and superiority of intellect?  Do you think that you will always have skill enough to keep afloat between the two capes, which have seen the life of elegance so often founder between the cheap restaurant and the debtors’ prison?

De la Brive
Why!  You are breaking into my conscience like a burglar—­you echo my
very thought!  What do you want with me?

Mercadet
I wish to rescue you, by launching you into the world of business.

De la Brive
By what entrance?

Mercadet
Let me choose the door.

De la Brive
The devil!

Mercadet
Show yourself a man who will compromise himself for me—­

De la Brive
But men of straw may be burnt.

Mercadet
You must be incombustible.

De la Brive
What are the terms of our copartnership?

Mercadet You try to serve me in the desperate circumstances in which I am at present, and I will make you a present of your forty-seven thousand, two hundred and thirty-three francs, to say nothing of the centimes.  Between ourselves, I may say that only address is needed.

De la Brive
In the use of the pistol or the sword?

Mercadet
No one is to be killed; on the contrary—­

De la Brive
That will suit me.

Mercadet
A man is to be brought to life again.

De la Brive That doesn’t suit me at all, my dear fellow.  The legacy, the chest of Harpagon, the little mule of Scapin and, indeed, all the farces which have made us laugh on the ancient stage are not well received nowadays in real life.  The police have a way of getting mixed up with them, and since the abolition of privileges, no one can administer a drubbing with impunity.