"I understand: but what struck me forcibly at the scene we have left was
the number of young men there; young men whom I should judge by their
appearance to be gentlemen, evidently not mere spectators,--eager,
anxious, with tablets in their hands. That old or middle-aged men should
find a zest in the pursuit of gain I can understand, but youth and
avarice seem to me a new combination, which Moliere never divined in his
'Avare.'"

"Young men, especially if young gentlemen, love pleasure; and pleasure in
this city is very dear. This explains why so many young men frequent the
Bourse. In the old gaining now suppressed, young men were the majority;
in the days of your chivalrous forefathers it was the young nobles, not
the old, who would stake their very mantles and swords on a cast of the
die. And, naturally enough, _mon cher_; for is not youth the season of
hope, and is not hope the goddess of gaming, whether at _rouge-et-noir_
or the Bourse?"

Alain felt himself more and more behind his generation. The acute
reasoning of Lemercier humbled his _amour propre_. At college Lemercier
was never considered Alain's equal in ability or book-learning. What a
stride beyond his school-fellow had Lemercier now made! How dull and
stupid the young provincial felt himself to be as compared with the easy
cleverness and half-sportive philosophy of the Parisian's fluent talk!

He sighed with a melancholy and yet with a generous envy. He had too
fine a natural perception not to acknowledge that there is a rank of mind
as well as of birth, and in the first he felt that Lemercier might well
walk before a Rochebriant; but his very humility was a proof that he
underrated himself.