On hearing the door of his office open, he raised his eyes, put down his pen, and was making a movement toward his visitor, when the latter interrupted him quickly with these words: 

“Don’t stir, Marechal, or I shall be off!  I only came in until Aunt Desvarennes is at liberty; but if I disturb you I will go and take a turn, smoke a cigar, and come back in three quarters of an hour.”

“You do not disturb me, Monsieur Savinien; at least not often enough, for be it said, without reproaching you, it is more than three months since we have seen anything of you.  There, the post is finished.  I was writing the last addresses.”

And taking a heavy bundle of papers off the desk, Marechal showed them to Savinien.

“Gracious!  It seems that business is going on well here.”

“Better and better.”

“You are making mountains of flour.”

“Yes; high as Mont Blanc; and then, we now have a fleet.”

“What! a fleet?” cried Savinien, whose face expressed doubt and surprise at the same time.

“Yes, a steam fleet.  Last year Madame Desvarennes was not satisfied with the state in which her corn came from the East.  The corn was damaged owing to defective stowage; the firm claimed compensation from the steamship company.  The claim was only moderately satisfied, Madame Desvarennes got vexed, and now we import our own.  We have branches at Smyrna and Odessa.”

“It is fabulous!  If it goes on, my aunt will have an administration as important as that of a European state.  Oh! you are happy here, you people; you are busy.  I amuse myself!  And if you knew how it wearies me!  I am withering, consuming myself, I am longing for business.”

And saying these words, young Monsieur Desvarennes allowed a sorrowful moan to escape him.

“It seems to me,” said Marechal, “that it only depends upon yourself to do as much and more business than any one?”

“You know well enough that it is not so,” sighed Savinien; “my aunt is opposed to it.”

“What a mistake!” cried Marechal, quickly.  “I have heard Madame Desvarennes say more than twenty times how she regretted your being unemployed.  Come into the firm, you will have a good berth in the counting-house.”

“In the counting-house!” cried Savinien, bitterly; “there’s the sore point.  Now look here; my friend, do you think that an organization like mine is made to bend to the trivialities of a copying clerk’s work?  To follow the humdrum of every-day routine?  To blacken paper?  To become a servant?—­me! with what I have in my brain?”

And, rising abruptly, Savinien began to walk hurriedly up and down the room, disdainfully shaking his little head with its low forehead on which were plastered a few fair curls (made with curling-irons), with the indignant air of an Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders.

“Oh, I know very well what is at the bottom of the business—­my aunt is jealous of me because I am a man of ideas.  She wishes to be the only one of the family who possesses any.  She thinks of binding me down to a besotting work,” continued he, “but I won’t have it.  I know what I want!  It is independence of thought, bent on the solution of great problems—­that is, a wide field to apply my discoveries.  But a fixed rule, common law, I could not submit to it.”