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"I should not have expressed it so well, but I have often thought the same"

"With a temperament like your nephew's," continued M Charnot, "the best he can do is to enter upon a career in which the ideal has so between prose and poetry"

"Let him be a notary, then"

"No, that's wholly prose; he shall be a librarian"

"A librarian?"

"Yes, Monsieur Mouillard; there are a few little libraries in Paris, which are as quiet as groves, and in which places are to be got that are as snug as nests I have some influence in official circles, and that can do no harm, you know"

"Quite so"

"We will put our Fabien into one of those nests, where he will be protected against idleness by the little he will do, and against revolutions by the little he will be It's a char;it you live an intellectual life"

"An intellectual life!" exclaimed my uncle with enthusias books, Monsieur Mouillard, looking through the them as far as possible from worms and readers Don't you think that's an enviable lot?"

"Yes, more so than mine has been, or my successor's will be"

"By the way, uncle, you haven't told us who your successor is to be"