brains in a man under thirty are commodities which can be mortgaged.
After that age there is no counting on a man.'

"And with that he shut the door.



"Three months later I was an attorney. Before very long, madame, it
was my good fortune to undertake the suit for the recovery of your
estates. I won the day, and my name became known. In spite of the
exorbitant rate of interest, I paid off Gobseck in less than five
years. I married Fanny Malvaut, whom I loved with all my heart. There
was a parallel between her life and mine, between our hard work and
our luck, which increased the strength of feeling on either side. One
of her uncles, a well-to-do farmer, died and left her seventy thousand
francs, which helped to clear off the loan. From that day my life has
been nothing but happiness and prosperity. Nothing is more utterly
uninteresting than a happy man, so let us say no more on that head,
and return to the rest of the characters.

"About a year after the purchase of the practice, I was dragged into a
bachelor breakfast-party given by one of our number who had lost a bet
to a young man greatly in vogue in the fashionable world. M. de
Trailles, the flower of the dandyism of that day, enjoyed a prodigious
reputation."

"But he is still enjoying it," put in the Comte de Born. "No one wears
his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tandem with a better grace.
It is Maxime's gift; he can gamble, eat, and drink more gracefully
than any man in the world. He is a judge of horses, hats, and