and if you pursue a profession, it is, after all, only that you may not
lose the benefit of your studies, and because a man ought never to sit
idle."

Old Roland, who was peeling a pear, exclaimed:

"Christi! In your place I should buy a nice yacht, a cutter on the build
of our pilot-boats. I would sail as far as Senegal in such a boat as
that."

Pierre, in his turn, spoke his views. After all, said he, it was not his
wealth which made the moral worth, the intellectual worth of a man. To
a man of inferior mind it was only a means of degradation, while in the
hands of a strong man it was a powerful lever. They, to be sure, were
rare. If Jean were a really superior man, now that he could never want
he might prove it. But then he must work a hundred times harder than he
would have done in other circumstances. His business now must be not to
argue for or against the widow and the orphan, and pocket his fees for
every case he gained, but to become a really eminent legal authority, a
luminary of the law. And he added in conclusion:

"If I were rich wouldn't I dissect no end of bodies!"

Father Roland shrugged his shoulders.

"That is all very fine," he said. "But the wisest way of life is to take
it easy. We are not beasts of burden, but men. If you are born poor you
must work; well, so much the worse; and you do work. But where you have
dividends! You must be a flat if you grind yourself to death."