Chapter 52: Chapter 52

XII M. Bamatabois’s Inactivity There is in all small towns, and there was at Montreuil-sur-Mer in particular, a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour two hundred thousand francs a year in Paris. These are beings of the great neuter species: impotent men, parasites, ciphers, who have a little land, a little folly, a little wit; who would be rustics in a drawing-room, and who think themselves gentlemen in …