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Updated: June 19, 2025
Even I, who can not entirely share this optimism, feel that I incline to the side of hope. When I reached home, the porter handed me two cards from Larive. On the first I read: CH. LARIVE, Managing Clerk. The second, on glazed cardboard, announced, likewise in initials, another piece of news: CH. LARIVE, Formerly Managing Clerk.
Every one knows Larive, head clerk in Machin's office. He is to be seen everywhere a tall, fair man, with little closetrimmed beard, and moustache carefully twisted. He is always perfectly dressed, always in a tall hat and new gloves, full of all the new stories, which he tells as his own.
Yet he was none the more grateful to me, and even did not mind chaffing me about these petty attentions by which he was the gainer. He used to make fun of everything, and I used to look up to him. He still makes fun of everything; but for me the age of gumarabic is past and my faith in Larive is gone.
Larive will die with his breast more thickly plastered with decorations than an Odd Fellow's; he will be a member of all the learned societies in the department, respected and respectable, the more thoroughly provincial for having been outrageously Parisian.
Yet he was none the more grateful to me, and even did not mind chaffing me about these petty attentions by which he was the gainer. He used to make fun of everything, and I used to look up to him. He still makes fun of everything; but for me the age of gumarabic is past and my faith in Larive is gone.
I had no thoughts; within, all was silence; I had received such a violent blow, and yet one that was so prolonged in its effect, that I remained a purely passive being and there seemed to be no reaction. My servant, Larive by name, had been much attached to my father; he was, after my father himself, probably the best man I have ever known.
Yet he was none the more grateful to me, and even did not mind chaffing me about these petty attentions by which he was the gainer. He used to make fun of everything, and I used to look up to him. He still makes fun of everything; but for me the age of gumarabic is past and my faith in Larive is gone.
"Larive, tell me where you have met Mademoiselle Charnot?" "Oh, come! I see it's serious. My dear fellow, I am so sorry I did not tell you she was perfection. If I had only known!" "That's not what I asked you. Where have you seen her?" "In society, of course. Where do you expect me to see young girls except in society? My dear Fabien!" He went off laughing.
Did you expect that Mademoiselle Charnot would come in person " "Look here, Larive " "To look on at your examination, and applaud your answers with her neatly gloved hands? Surely you know, my dear fellow, that that is no longer possible, and that she is going to be married." "Going to be married?" "Don't pretend you didn't know it."
His mistress made a sign as though to encourage him, but he looked at her with an air of anxiety; she then took the branch from my hand and the goat promptly accepted it from hers. I bowed, and she passed on her way. On my return home, I asked Larive if he knew who lived in the house I described to him; it was a small house, modest in appearance, with a garden.
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