To find one was likely to be difficult. Times of revolution are not
exactly propitious to industry. Whilst the parties discussed in the
Chamber, there were on the street twenty thousand clerks, who, every
morning as they rose, wondered where they would dine that day.

For want of any thing better, Vincent Favoral undertook to keep
books in various places,--an hour here, an hour there, twice a week
in one house, four times in another.

In this way he earned as much and more than he did at the factory;
but the business did not suit him.

What he liked was the office from which one does not stir, the
stove-heated atmosphere, the elbow-worn desk, the leather-cushioned
chair, the black alpaca sleeves over the coat. The idea that he
should on one and the same day have to do with five or six different
houses, and be compelled to walk an hour, to go and work another hour
at the other end of Paris, fairly irritated him. He found himself
out of his reckoning, like a horse who has turned a mill for ten
years; if he is made to trot straight before him.

So, one morning, he gave up the whole thing, swearing that he would
rather remain idle until he could find a place suited to his taste
and his convenience; and, in the mean time, all they would have to
do would be to put a little less butter in the soup, and a little
more water in the wine.

He went out, nevertheless, and remained until dinner-time. And he
did the same the next and the following days.