Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1151
one can live by it.’
‘I will learn English and German.’
‘And in the meanwhile?’
‘In the meanwhile I will live on my clothes and my
watch.’
The clothes-dealer was sent for. He paid twenty francs
for the cast-off garments. They went to the watchmaker’s.
He bought the watch for forty-five francs.
‘That is not bad,’ said Marius to Courfeyrac, on their
return to the hotel, ‘with my fifteen francs, that makes
eighty.’
‘And the hotel bill?’ observed Courfeyrac.
‘Hello, I had forgotten that,’ said Marius.
The landlord presented his bill, which had to be paid on
the spot. It amounted to seventy francs.
‘I have ten francs left,’ said Marius.
‘The deuce,’ exclaimed Courfeyrac, ‘you will eat up five
francs while you are learning English, and five while learn-
ing German. That will be swallowing a tongue very fast, or
a hundred sous very slowly.’
In the meantime Aunt Gillenormand, a rather good-
hearted person at bottom in difficulties, had finally hunted
up Marius’ abode.
One morning, on his return from the law-school, Marius
found a letter from his aunt, and the sixty pistoles, that is to
say, six hundred francs in gold, in a sealed box.
Marius sent back the thirty louis to his aunt, with a re-
spectful letter, in which he stated that he had sufficient
means of subsistence and that he should be able thenceforth