The French Immortals Series — Complete by Various
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page 31 of 2783 (01%)
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"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." "It is like the examinations," observed Marechal, looking slyly at young Desvarennes, who was drawing himself up to his full height; "examinations never suited you." "Never," said Savinien, energetically. "They wished to get me into the |
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