On Horseback by Guy De Maupassant — Read

The poor people lived miserably on the husband's salary. Since their marriage two children had been born, and their previous lack of means had developed into that frightened, timid, shamefaced poverty peculiar to families of good position who try to keep up appearances in spite of everything.

Hector de Gribelin had been brought up in the country, in the paternal manor, by an old Abbé who acted as his tutor. They were not rich, but pulled the devil by the tail and kept up their position. When he was twenty he had gone into the ministry of marine, as a clerk at fifteen hundred francs a year. He had landed there like all those who have not been prepared in early years for the harsh struggle for life, those who see this world through a haze, knowing neither how to get on nor how to meet difficulties, people in whom no special aptitudes or talents have been developed from childhood, no keen energy for the struggle; in whose hands neither a weapon nor a tool has been placed. His first three years at the office were horrible.