"
Madame Lepailleur, who never took her eyes from her son, but remained in
admiration before him as formerly before her husband, now exclaimed with
an air of rapture: "Yes, yes, he has a place as a clerk with Maitre
Rousselet, the attorney. We have rented a little room for him; I have
seen about the furniture and the linen, and to-day's the great day; he
will sleep there to-night, after we have dined, all three, at a good
restaurant. Ah! yes, I'm very pleased; he's making a start now."
"And he will perhaps end by being a minister of state," said Mathieu,
with a smile; "who knows? Everything is possible nowadays."
It all typified the exodus from the country districts towards the towns,
the feverish impatience to make a fortune, which was becoming general.
Even the parents nowadays celebrated their child's departure, and
accompanied the adventurer on his way, anxious and proud to climb the
social ladder with him. And that which brought a smile to the lips of the
farmer of Chantebled, the bourgeois who had become a peasant, was the
thought of the double change: the miller's son going to Paris, whereas he
had gone to the earth, the mother of all strength and regeneration.
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