Why not make sure of riches?
The world can give so much to the rich.

You can buy education, manners, taste.
Anything, surely, would be better than taking up the life of an auctioneer's clerk once more?
With riches you can at least get away from the most oppressive forms of vulgarity." "I wish I could believe it," he replied.

"The poor man is, as a rule, natural.

The rich man has the taste of other things on his palate; he has looked over the wrong wall, he apes what he sees in the wrong garden." "Not always," she pleaded.

"Don't you believe that something will remain of these splendid months of yours--some will power, some faint impulse towards the choicer ways of life?
Oh, it really must be so!" she went on, more confidently.