At thirty you will be a Justice with twelve hundred francs a
year (if you have not flung off the gown for good before then). By the
time you are forty you may look to marry a miller's daughter, an
heiress with some six thousand livres a year. Much obliged! If you
have influence, you may possibly be a Public Prosecutor by the time
you are thirty; with a salary of a thousand crowns, you could look to
marry the mayor's daughter. Some petty piece of political trickery,
such as mistaking Villele for Manuel in a bulletin (the names rhyme,
and that quiets your conscience), and you will probably be a Procureur
General by the time you are forty, with a chance of becoming a deputy.
Please to observe, my dear boy, that our conscience will have been a
little damaged in the process, and that we shall endure twenty years
of drudgery and hidden poverty, and that our sisters are wearing
Dian's livery. I have the honor to call your attention to another
fact: to wit, that there are but twenty Procureurs Generaux at a time
in all France, while there are some twenty thousand of you young men
who aspire to that elevated position; that there are some mountebanks
among you who would sell their family to screw their fortunes a peg
higher.
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