"Figures; whether you owe fifty or one hundred thousand? I have owed,
myself, as much as six hundred thousand."

La Palferine raised his hat with an air as respectful as it was
humorous.

"If I had sufficient credit to borrow a hundred thousand francs," he
replied, "I should forget my creditors and go and pass my life in
Venice, amid masterpieces of painting and pretty women and--"

"And at my age what would you be?" asked Maxime.

"I should never reach it," replied the young count.

Maxime returned the civility of his rival, and touched his hat lightly
with an air of laughable gravity.

"That's one way of looking at life," he replied in the tone of one
connoisseur to another. "You owe--?"

"Oh! a mere trifle, unworthy of being confessed to an uncle; he would
disinherit me for such a paltry sum,--six thousand."

"One is often more hampered by six thousand than by a hundred
thousand," said Maxime, sententiously. "La Palferine, you've a bold
spirit, and you have even more spirit than boldness; you can go far,
and make yourself a position. Let me tell you that of all those who
have rushed into the career at the close of which I now am, and who
have tried to oppose me, you are the only one who has ever pleased