On his return to Paris he gave up all thought of continuing to attend the Law School, and postponed every ambitious project.  He obtained a few pupils, and established himself with little Quenu in the Rue Royer Collard, at the corner of the Rue Saint Jacques, in a big room which he furnished with two iron bedsteads, a wardrobe, a table, and four chairs.  He now had a child to look after, and this assumed paternity was very pleasing to him.  During the earlier days he attempted to give the lad some lessons when he returned home in the evening, but Quenu was an unwilling pupil.  He was dull of understanding, and refused to learn, bursting into tears and regretfully recalling the time when his mother had allowed him to run wild in the streets.  Florent thereupon stopped his lessons in despair, and to console the lad promised him a holiday of indefinite length.  As an excuse for his own weakness he repeated that he had not brought his brother to Paris to distress him.  To see him grow up in happiness became his chief desire.  He quite worshipped the boy, was charmed with his merry laughter, and felt infinite joy in seeing him about him, healthy and vigorous, and without a care.  Florent for his part remained very slim and lean in his threadbare coat, and his face began to turn yellow amidst all the drudgery and worry of teaching; but Quenu grew up plump and merry, a little dense, indeed, and scarce able to read or write, but endowed with high spirits which nothing could ruffle, and which filled the big gloomy room in the Rue Royer Collard with gaiety.

Years, meantime, passed by.  Florent, who had inherited all his mother’s spirit of devotion, kept Quenu at home as though he were a big, idle girl.  He did not even suffer him to perform any petty domestic duties, but always went to buy the provisions himself, and attended to the cooking and other necessary matters.  This kept him, he said, from indulging in his own bad thoughts.  He was given to gloominess, and fancied that he was disposed to evil.  When he returned home in the evening, splashed with mud, and his head bowed by the annoyances to which other people’s children had subjected him, his heart melted beneath the embrace of the sturdy lad whom he found spinning his top on the tiled flooring of the big room.  Quenu laughed at his brother’s clumsiness in making omelettes, and at the serious fashion in which he prepared the soup-beef and vegetables.  When the lamp was extinguished, and Florent lay in bed, he sometimes gave way to feelings of sadness.  He longed to resume his legal studies, and strove to map out his duties in such wise as to secure time to follow the programme of the faculty.  He succeeded in doing this, and was then perfectly happy.  But a slight attack of fever, which confined him to his room for a week, made such a hole in his purse, and caused him so much alarm, that he abandoned all idea of completing his studies.  The boy was now getting a big fellow, and Florent took a post as teacher in a school in the Rue de l’Estrapade, at a salary of eighteen hundred francs per annum.  This seemed like a fortune to him.  By dint of economy he hoped to be able to amass a sum of money which would set Quenu going in the world.  When the lad reached his eighteenth year Florent still treated him as though he were a daughter for whom a dowry must be provided.