He was a good sort of fellow, this M. Courtet, who was head clerk, though too conceited and starched up, certainly.  His red rosette, as large as a fifty-cent piece, made one’s eyes blink, and he certainly was very imprudent to stand so long backed up to the fireplace with limbs spread apart, for it seemed that he must surely burn the seat of his trousers.  But no matter, he has stomach enough.  He has noticed M. Violette’s pitiful decline—­“a poor devil who never will live to be promoted.”  Having it in his power to distribute positions, M. Courtet had reserved a position for Amedee.  In eight days the young man would be nominated an auxiliary employe at fifteen hundred francs a year.  It is promised and done.

Ugh! the sickening heat from the stove! the disgusting odor of musty papers!  However, Amedee had nothing to complain of; they might have given him figures to balance for five hours at a time.  He owed it to M. Courtet’s kindness, that he was put at once into the correspondence room.  He studied the formulas, and soon became skilful in official politeness.  He now knew the delicate shades which exist between “yours respectfully” and “most respectfully yours;” and he measured the abyss which separates an “agreeable” and “homage.”

To sum it all up, Amedee was bored, but he was not unhappy; for he had time to dream.

He went the longest way to the office in the morning, while seeking to make “amour” rhyme with “jour” without producing an insipid thing; or else he thought of the third act of his drama after the style of 1830, and the grand love scene which should take place at the foot of the Montfaucon gallows.  In the evening he went to the Gerards, and they seated themselves around—­the lamp which stood on the dining-room table, the father reading his journal, the women sewing.  He chatted with Maria, who answered him the greater part of the time without raising her eyes, because she suspected, the coquette! that he admired her beautiful, drooping lids.

Amedee composed his first sonnets in her honor, and he adored her, of course, but he was also in love with the Lantz young ladies, whom he saw sometimes at Madame Roger’s, and who each wore Sunday evenings roses in her hair, which made them resemble those pantheons in sponge-cake that pastry-cooks put in their windows on fete days.

If Amedee had been presented to twelve thousand maidens successively, they would have inspired twelve thousand wishes.  There was the servant of the family on the first floor, whose side-glance troubled him as he met her on the staircase; and his heart sank every time he turned the handle of the door of a shop in the Rue Bonaparte, where an insidious clerk always forced him to choose ox-colored kid gloves, which he detested.  It must not be forgotten that Amedee was very young, and was in love with love.