It would serve,
this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as, pausing at the top of
the street, he looked up and down the great foreign avenue, it
would serve to begin business with. His idea was to begin business
immediately, and it did much for him the rest of his day that the
beginning of business awaited him. He did little else till night
but ask himself what he should do if he hadn't fortunately had so
much to do; but he put himself the question in many different
situations and connexions. What carried him hither and yon was an
admirable theory that nothing he could do wouldn't be in some
manner related to what he fundamentally had on hand, or WOULD be--
should he happen to have a scruple--wasted for it. He did happen
to have a scruple--a scruple about taking no definite step till he
should get letters; but this reasoning carried it off. A single
day to feel his feet--he had felt them as yet only at Chester and
in London--was he could consider, none too much; and having, as he
had often privately expressed it, Paris to reckon with, he threw
these hours of freshness consciously into the reckoning. They made
it continually greater, but that was what it had best be if it was
to be anything at all, and he gave himself up till far into the
evening, at the theatre and on the return, after the theatre,
along the bright congested Boulevard, to feeling it grow.
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