Activity

1. a likeable, excellent fellow, handsome but devoid of wit, M. Barot, a banker from Charleville, then busy gaining a fortune of eighty thousand francs' annual income;
2. an officer retired on half-pay, decorated at Waterloo, absolutely deprived of wit, and if such a thing is possible, even more o…

[...] honest clear-sightedness, which quality is a compensatory gift to a child who has spent years observing, with satirical and unforgiving eyes, the hypocrisies and injustices of grown-ups; who has had, in order to survive, to learn watchfulness, which is the first qualification for a writer. Th…