When she heard that Maxence had a mistress, she had been rudely shocked in her most cherished feelings.  It is never without a secret jealousy that a mother discovers that a woman has robbed her of her son’s heart.  She had retained a certain amount of spite against him on account of disorders, which, in her candor, she had never suspected.  She forgave him every thing when she saw of what treatment he was the object.

She took sides with him, believing him to be the victim of a most unjust persecution.  In the evening, after her husband had gone out, Gilberte and herself would take their sewing, sit in the hall outside his room, and converse with him through the door.  Never had they worked so hard for the shop-keeper in the Rue St. Denis.  Some weeks they earned as much as twenty-five or thirty francs.

But Maxence’s patience was exhausted; and one morning he declared resolutely that he would no longer attend the law-school, that he had been mistaken in his vocation, and that there was no human power capable to make him return to M. Chapelain’s.

“And where will you go?” exclaimed his father.  “Do you expect me eternally to supply your wants?”

He answered that it was precisely in order to support himself, and conquer his independence, that he had resolved to abandon a profession, which, after two years, yielded him twenty francs a month.

“I want some business where I have a chance to get rich,” he replied.  “I would like to enter a banking-house, or some great financial establishment.”

Mme. Favoral jumped at the idea.

“That’s a fact,” she said to her husband.  “Why couldn’t you find a place for our son at the Mutual Credit?  There he would be under your own eyes.  Intelligent as he is, backed by M. de Thaller and yourself, he would soon earn a good salary.”

M. Favoral knit his brows.

“That I shall never do,” he uttered.  “I have not sufficient confidence in my son.  I cannot expose myself to have him compromise the consideration which I have acquired for myself.”

And, revealing to a certain extent the secret of his conduct: 

“A cashier,” he added, “who like me handles immense sums cannot be too careful of his reputation.  Confidence is a delicate thing in these times, when there are so many cashiers constantly on the road to Belgium.  Who knows what would be thought of me, if I was known to have such a son as mine?”

Mme. Favoral was insisting, nevertheless, when he seemed to make up his mind suddenly.

“Enough,” he said.  “Maxence is free.  I allow him two years to establish himself in some position.  That delay over, good-by:  he can find board and lodging where he please.  That’s all.  I don’t want to hear any thing more about it.”

It was with a sort of frenzy that Maxence abused that freedom; and in less than two weeks he had dissipated three months’ earnings of his mother and sister.