UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS

 BY

 HONORE DE BALZAC

 Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

 DEDICATION

 To Monsieur le Comte Jules de Castellane. 

 UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS

Leon de Lora, our celebrated landscape painter, belongs to one of thenoblest families of the Roussillon (Spanish originally) which, although distinguished for the antiquity of its race, has been doomedfor a century to the proverbial poverty of hidalgos. Coming, light-footed, to Paris from the department of the Eastern Pyrenees, with the sum of eleven francs in his pocket for all viaticum, he hadin some degree forgotten the miseries and privations of his childhoodand his family amid the other privations and miseries which are neverlacking to "rapins, " whose whole fortune consists of intrepidvocation. Later, the cares of fame and those of success were othercauses of forgetfulness. 

If you have followed the capricious and meandering course of thesestudies, perhaps you will remember Mistigris, Schinner's pupil, one ofthe heroes of "A Start in Life" (Scenes from Private Life), and hisbrief apparitions in other Scenes. In 1845, this landscape painter, emulator of the Hobbemas, Ruysdaels, and Lorraines, resembles no morethe shabby, frisky rapin whom we then knew. Now an illustrious man, heowns a charming house in the rue de Berlin, not far from the hotel deBrambourg, where his friend Brideau lives, and quite close to thehouse of Schinner, his early master. He is a member of the Instituteand an officer of the Legion of honor; he is thirty-six years old, hasan income of twenty thousand francs from the Funds, his pictures sellfor their weight in gold, and (what seems to him more extraordinarythan the invitations he receives occasionally to court balls) his nameand fame, mentioned so often for the last sixteen years by the pressof Europe, has at last penetrated to the valley of the EasternPyrenees, where vegetate three veritable Loras: his father, his eldestbrother, and an old paternal aunt, Mademoiselle Urraca y Lora. 

In the maternal line the painter has no relation left except a cousin, the nephew of his mother, residing in a small manufacturing town inthe department. This cousin was the first to bethink himself of Leon. But it was not until 1840 that Leon de Lora received a letter fromMonsieur Sylvestre Palafox-Castal-Gazonal (called simply Gazonal) towhich he replied that he was assuredly himself, --that is to say, theson of the late Leonie Gazonal, wife of Comte Fernand Didas y Lora. 

During the summer of 1841 cousin Sylvestre Gazonal went to inform theillustrious unknown family of Lora that their little Leon had not goneto the Rio de la Plata, as they supposed, but was now one of thegreatest geniuses of the French school of painting; a fact the familydid not believe. The eldest son, Don Juan de Lora assured his cousinGazonal that he was certainly the dupe of some Parisian wag. 

Now the said Gazonal was intending to go to Paris to prosecute alawsuit which the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees had arbitrarilyremoved from the usual jurisdiction, transferring it to that of theCouncil of State. The worthy provincial determined to investigate thisact, and to ask his Parisian cousin the reason of such high-handedmeasures. It thus happened that Monsieur Gazonal came to Paris, tookshabby lodgings in the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, and was amazed tosee the palace of his cousin in the rue de Berlin. Being told that thepainter was then travelling in Italy, he renounced, for the timebeing, the intention of asking his advice, and doubted if he shouldever find his maternal relationship acknowledged by so great a man. 

During the years 1843 and 1844 Gazonal attended to his lawsuit. Thissuit concerned a question as to the current and level of a stream ofwater and the necessity of removing a dam, in which dispute theadministration, instigated by the abutters on the river banks, hadmeddled. The removal of the dam threatened the existence of Gazonal'smanufactory. In 1845, Gazonal considered his cause as wholly lost; thesecretary of the Master of Petitions, charged with the duty of drawingup the report, had confided to him that the said report wouldassuredly be against him, and his own lawyer confirmed the statement. Gazonal, though commander of the National Guard in his own town andone of the most capable manufacturers of the department, found himselfof so little account in Paris, and he was, moreover, so frightened bythe costs of living and the dearness of even the most trifling things, that he kept himself, all this time, secluded in his shabby lodgings. The Southerner, deprived of his sun, execrated Paris, which he calleda manufactory of rheumatism. As he added up the costs of his suit andhis living, he vowed within himself to poison the prefect on hisreturn, or to minotaurize him. In his moments of deepest sadness hekilled the prefect outright; in gayer mood he contented himself withminotaurizing him. 

One morning as he ate his breakfast and cursed his fate, he picked upa newspaper savagely. The following lines, ending an article, struckGazonal as if the mysterious voice which speaks to gamblers beforethey win had sounded in his ear: "Our celebrated landscape painter, Leon de Lora, lately returned from Italy, will exhibit severalpictures at the Salon; thus the exhibition promises, as we see, to bemost brilliant. " With the suddenness of action that distinguishes thesons of the sunny South, Gazonal sprang from his lodgings to thestreet, from the street to a street-cab, and drove to the rue deBerlin to find his cousin. 

Leon de Lora sent word by a servant to his cousin Gazonal that heinvited him to breakfast the next day at the Cafe de Paris, but he wasnow engaged in a matter which did not allow him to receive his cousinat the present moment. Gazonal, like a true Southerner, recounted allhis troubles to the valet. 

The next day at ten o'clock, Gazonal, much too well-dressed for theoccasion (he had put on his bottle-blue coat with brass buttons, afrilled shirt, a white waistcoat and yellow gloves), awaited hisamphitryon a full hour, stamping his feet on the boulevard, afterhearing from the master of the cafe that "these gentlemen" breakfastedhabitually between eleven and twelve o'clock. 

"Between eleven and half-past, " he said when he related his adventuresto his cronies in the provinces, "two Parisians dressed in simplefrock-coats, looking like _nothing at all_, called out when they saw meon the boulevard, 'There's our Gazonal!'"

The speaker was Bixiou, with whom Leon de Lora had armed himself to"bring out" his provincial cousin, in other words, to make him pose. 

"'Don't be vexed, cousin, I'm at your service!' cried out that littleLeon, taking me in his arms, " related Gazonal on his return home. "Thebreakfast was splendid. I thought I was going blind when I saw thenumber of bits of gold it took to pay that bill. Those fellows mustearn their weight in gold, for I saw my cousin give the waiter _thirtysous_--the price of a whole day's work!"

During this monstrous breakfast--advisedly so called in view of sixdozen Osten oysters, six cutlets a la Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo, lobster mayonnaise, green peas, a mushroom pasty, washed down withthree bottles of Bordeaux, three bottles of Champagne, plus coffee andliqueurs, to say nothing of relishes--Gazonal was magnificent in hisdiatribes against Paris. The worthy manufacturer complained of thelength of the four-pound bread-loaves, the height of the houses, theindifference of the passengers in the streets to one another, thecold, the rain, the cost of hackney-coaches, all of which and muchelse he bemoaned in so witty a manner that the two artists took amighty fancy to cousin Gazonal, and made him relate his lawsuit frombeginning to end. 

"My lawsuit, " he said in his Southern accent and rolling his r's, "isa very simple thing; they want my manufactory. I've employed here inParis a dolt of a lawyer, to whom I give twenty francs every time heopens an eye, and he is always asleep. He's a slug, who drives in hiscoach, while I go afoot and he splashes me. I see now I ought to havehad a carriage! On the other hand, that Council of State are a pack ofdo-nothings, who leave their duties to little scamps every one of whomis bought up by our prefect. That's my lawsuit! They want mymanufactory! Well, they'll get it! and they must manage the best theycan with my workmen, a hundred of 'em, who'll make them sing anothertune before they've done with them. "

"Two years. Ha! that meddling prefect! he shall pay dear for this;I'll have his life if I have to give mine on the scaffold--"

"Which state councillor presides over your section?"

"A former newspaper man, --doesn't pay ten sous in taxes, --his name isMassol. "

The two Parisians exchanged glances. 

"Who is the commissioner who is making the report?"

"Ha! that's still more queer; he's Master of Petitions, professor ofsomething or other at the Sorbonne, --a fellow who writes things inreviews, and for whom I have the profoundest contempt. "

"Claude Vignon, " said Bixiou. 

"Yes, that's his name, " replied Gazonal. "Massol and Vignon--there youhave Social Reason, in which there's no reason at all. "

"There must be some way out of it, " said Leon de Lora. "You see, cousin, all things are possible in Paris for good as well as for evil, for the just as well as the unjust. There's nothing that can't bedone, undone, and redone. "

"The devil take me if I stay ten days more in this hole of a place, the dullest in all France!"

The two cousins and Bixiou were at this moment walking from one end tothe other of that sheet of asphalt on which, between the hours of oneand three, it is difficult to avoid seeing some of the personages inhonor of whom Fame puts one or the other of her trumpets to her lips. Formerly that locality was the Place Royale; next it was the PontNeuf; in these days this privilege had been acquired by the Boulevarddes Italiens. 

"Paris, " said the painter to his cousin, "is an instrument on which wemust know how to play; if we stand here ten minutes I'll give you yourfirst lesson. There, look!" he said, raising his cane and pointing toa couple who were just then coming out from the Passage de l'Opera. 

"Goodness! who's that?" asked Gazonal. 

_That_ was an old woman, in a bonnet which had spent six months in ashow-case, a very pretentious gown and a faded tartan shawl, whoseface had been buried twenty years of her life in a damp lodge, andwhose swollen hand-bag betokened no better social position than thatof an ex-portress. With her was a slim little girl, whose eyes, fringed with black lashes, had lost their innocence and showed greatweariness; her face, of a pretty shape, was fresh and her hairabundant, her forehead charming but audacious, her bust thin, --inother words, an unripe fruit. 

"That, " replied Bixiou, "is a rat tied to its mother. "

"A rat!--what's that?"

"That particular rat, " said Leon, with a friendly nod to MademoiselleNinette, "may perhaps win your suit for you. "

Gazonal bounded; but Bixiou had held him by the arm ever since theyleft the cafe, thinking perhaps that the flush on his face was rathervivid. 

"That rat, who is just leaving a rehearsal at the Opera-house, isgoing home to eat a miserable dinner, and will return about threeo'clock to dress, if she dances in the ballet this evening--as shewill, to-day being Monday. This rat is already an old rat for she isthirteen years of age. Two years from now that creature may be worthsixty thousand francs; she will be all or nothing, a great danseuse ora marcheuse, a celebrated person or a vulgar courtesan. She has workedhard since she was eight years old. Such as you see her, she is wornout with fatigue; she exhausted her body this morning in thedancing-class, she is just leaving a rehearsal where the evolutions areas complicated as a Chinese puzzle; and she'll go through them againto-night. The rat is one of the primary elements of the Opera; she isto the leading danseuse what a junior clerk is to a notary. The rat is--hope. "

"Who produces the rat?" asked Gazonal. 

"Porters, paupers, actors, dancers, " replied Bixiou. "Only the lowestdepths of poverty could force a child to subject her feet and jointsto positive torture, to keep herself virtuous out of mere speculationuntil she is eighteen years of age, and to live with some horrible oldcrone like a beautiful plant in a dressing of manure. You shall seenow a procession defiling before you, one after the other, of men oftalent, little and great, artists in seed or flower, who are raisingto the glory of France that every-day monument called the Opera, anassemblage of forces, wills, and forms of genius, nowhere collected asin Paris. 

"I have already seen the Opera, " said Gazonal, with a self-sufficientair. 

"Yes, from a three-francs-sixty-sous seat among the gods, " repliedthe landscape painter; "just as you have seen Paris in the rueCroix-des-Petits-Champs, without knowing anything about it. What didthey give at the Opera when you were there?"

"Guillaume Tell. "

"Well, " said Leon, "Matilde's grand DUO must have delighted you. Whatdo you suppose that charming singer did when she left the stage?"

"She--well, what?"

"She ate two bloody mutton-chops which her servant had ready for her. "

"Pooh! nonsense!"

"Malibran kept up on brandy--but it killed her in the end. Anotherthing! You have seen the ballet, and you'll now see it defiling pastyou in its every-day clothes, without knowing that the face of yourlawsuit depends on a pair of those legs. "

"My lawsuit!"

"See, cousin, here comes what is called a marcheuse. "

Leon pointed to one of those handsome creatures who at twenty-fiveyears of age have lived sixty, and whose beauty is so real and so sureof being cultivated that they make no display of it. She was tall, andwalked well, with the arrogant look of a dandy; her toilet wasremarkable for its ruinous simplicity. 

"That is Carabine, " said Bixiou, who gave her, as did Leon, a slightnod to which she responded by a smile. 

"There's another who may possibly get your prefect turned out. "

"A marcheuse!--but what is that?"

"A marcheuse is a rat of great beauty whom her mother, real orfictitious, has sold as soon as it was clear she would become neitherfirst, second, nor third danseuse, but who prefers the occupation ofcoryphee to any other, for the main reason that having spent her youthin that employment she is unfitted for any other. She has beenrejected at the minor theatres where they want danseuses; she has notsucceeded in the three towns where ballets are given; she has not hadthe money, or perhaps the desire to go to foreign countries--forperhaps you don't know that the great school of dancing in Parissupplies the whole world with male and female dancers. Thus a rat whobecomes a marcheuse, --that is to say, an ordinary figurante in aballet, --must have some solid attachment which keeps her in Paris:either a rich man she does not love or a poor man she loves too well. The one you have just seen pass will probably dress and redress threetimes this evening, --as a princess, a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese; bywhich she will earn about two hundred francs a month. "

"She is better dressed than my prefect's wife. "

"If you should go to her house, " said Bixiou, "you would find there achamber-maid, a cook, and a man-servant. She occupies a fine apartmentin the rue Saint-Georges; in short, she is, in proportion to Frenchfortunes of the present day compared with those of former times, arelic of the eighteenth century 'opera-girl. ' Carabine is a power; atthis moment she governs du Tillet, a banker who is very influential inthe Chamber of Deputies. "

"And above these two rounds in the ballet ladder what comes next?"asked Gazonal. 

"Look!" said his cousin, pointing to an elegant caleche whichwas turning at that moment from the boulevard into the rueGrange-Bateliere, "there's one of the leading danseuses whose nameon the posters attracts all Paris. That woman earns sixty thousandfrancs a year and lives like a princess; the price of your manufactoryall told wouldn't suffice to buy you the privilege of bidding hergood-morning a dozen times. "

"Do you see, " said Bixiou, "that young man who is sitting on the frontseat of her carriage? Well, he's a viscount who bears a fine old name;he's her first gentleman of the bed-chamber; does all her businesswith the newspapers; carries messages of peace or war in the morningto the director of the Opera; and takes charge of the applause whichsalutes her as she enters or leaves the stage. "

"Well, well, my good friends, that's the finishing touch! I see nowthat I knew nothing of the ways of Paris. "

"At any rate, you are learning what you can see in ten minutes in thePassage de l'Opera, " said Bixiou. "Look there. "

Two persons, a man and a woman, came out of the Passage at thatmoment. The woman was neither plain nor pretty; but her dress had thatdistinction of style and cut and color which reveals an artist; theman had the air of a singer. 

"There, " said Bixiou, "is a baritone and a second danseuse. Thebaritone is a man of immense talent, but a baritone voice being onlyan accessory to the other parts he scarcely earns what the seconddanseuse earns. The danseuse, who was celebrated before Taglioni andEllsler appeared, has preserved to our day some of the old traditionsof the character dance and pantomime. If the two others had notrevealed in the art of dancing a poetry hitherto unperceived, shewould have been the leading talent; as it is, she is reduced to thesecond line. But for all that, she fingers her thirty thousand francsa year, and her faithful friend is a peer of France, very influentialin the Chamber. And see! there's a danseuse of the third order, who, as a dancer, exists only through the omnipotence of a newspaper. Ifher engagement were not renewed the ministry would have one morejournalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a great power;consequently it is considered better form in the upper ranks ofdandyism and politics to have relations with dance than with song. Inthe stalls, where the habitues of the Opera congregate, the saying'Monsieur is all for singing' is a form of ridicule. "

A short man with a common face, quite simply dressed, passed them atthis moment. 

"There's the other half of the Opera receipts--that man who just wentby; the tenor. There is no longer any play, poem, music, orrepresentation of any kind possible unless some celebrated tenor canreach a certain note. The tenor is love, he is the Voice that touchesthe heart, that vibrates in the soul, and his value is reckoned at amuch higher salary than that of a minister. One hundred thousandfrancs for a throat, one hundred thousand francs for a couple ofankle-bones, --those are the two financial scourges of the Opera. "

"I am amazed, " said Gazonal, "at the hundreds of thousands of francswalking about here. "

"We'll amaze you a good deal more, my dear cousin, " said Leon de Lora. "We'll take Paris as an artist takes his violoncello, and show you howit is played, --in short, how people amuse themselves in Paris. "

"It is a kaleidoscope with a circumference of twenty miles, " criedGazonal. 

"Before piloting monsieur about, I have to see Gaillard, " said Bixiou. 

"But we can use Gaillard for the cousin, " replied Leon. 

"What sort of machine is that?" asked Gazonal. 

"He isn't a machine, he is a machinist. Gaillard is a friend of ourswho has ended a miscellaneous career by becoming the editor of anewspaper, and whose character and finances are governed by movementscomparable to those of the tides. Gaillard can contribute to make youwin your lawsuit--"

"It is lost. "

"That's the very moment to win it, " replied Bixiou. 

When they reached Theodore Gaillard's abode, which was now in the ruede Menars, the valet ushered the three friends into a boudoir andasked them to wait, as monsieur was in secret conference. 

"With whom?" asked Bixiou. 

"With a man who is selling him the incarceration of an _unseizable_debtor, " replied a handsome woman who now appeared in a charmingmorning toilet. 

"In that case, my dear Suzanne, " said Bixiou, "I am certain we may goin. "

"Oh! what a beautiful creature!" said Gazonal. 

"That is Madame Gaillard, " replied Leon de Lora, speaking low into hiscousin's ear. "She is the most humble-minded woman in Paris, for shehad the public and has contented herself with a husband. "

"What is your will, messeigneurs?" said the facetious editor, seeinghis two friends and imitating Frederic Lemaitre. 

Theodore Gaillard, formerly a wit, had ended by becoming a stupid manin consequence of remaining constantly in one centre, --a moralphenomenon frequently to be observed in Paris. His principal method ofconversation consisted in sowing his speeches with sayings taken fromplays then in vogue and pronounced in imitation of well-known actors. 

"We have come to blague, " said Leon. 

"'Again, young men'" (Odry in the Saltimbauques). 

"Well, this time, we've got him, sure, " said Gaillard's other visitor, apparently by way of conclusion. 

"_Are_ you sure of it, pere Fromenteau?" asked Gaillard. "This it theeleventh time you've caught him at night and missed him in themorning. "

"How could I help it? I never saw such a debtor! he's a locomotive;goes to sleep in Paris and wakes up in the Seine-et-Oise. A safetylock I call him. " Seeing a smile on Gaillard's face he added: "That'sa saying in our business. Pinch a man, means arrest him, lock him up. The criminal police have another term. Vidoeq said to his man, 'Youare served'; that's funnier, for it means the guillotine. "

A nudge from Bixiou made Gazonal all eyes and ears. 

"Does monsieur grease my paws?" asked Fromenteau of Gaillard, in athreatening but cool tone. 

"'A question that of fifty centimes'" (Les Saltimbauques), replied theeditor, taking out five francs and offering them to Fromenteau. 

"And the rapscallions?" said the man. 

"What rapscallions?" asked Gaillard. 

"Those I employ, " replied Fromenteau calmly. 

"Is there a lower depth still?" asked Bixiou. 

"Yes, monsieur, " said the spy. "Some people give us informationwithout knowing they do so, and without getting paid for it. I putfools and ninnies below rapscallions. "

"They are often original, and witty, your rapscallions!" said Leon. 

"Do you belong to the police?" asked Gazonal, eying with uneasycuriosity the hard, impassible little man, who was dressed like thethird clerk in a sheriff's office. 

"Which police do you mean?" asked Fromenteau. 

"There are several?"

"As many as five, " replied the man. "Criminal, the head of which wasVidoeq; secret police, which keeps an eye on the other police, thehead of it being always unknown; political police, --that's Fouche's. Then there's the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, the palacepolice (of the Emperor, Louis XVIII. , etc. ), always squabbling withthat of the quai Malaquais. It came to an end under Monsieur Decazes. I belonged to the police of Louis XVIII. ; I'd been in it since 1793, with that poor Contenson. "

The four gentlemen looked at each other with one thought: "How manyheads he must have brought to the scaffold!"

"Now-a-days, they are trying to get on without us. Folly!" continuedthe little man, who began to seem terrible. "Since 1830 they wanthonest men at the prefecture! I resigned, and I've made myself a smallvocation by arresting for debt. "

"He is the right arm of the commercial police, " said Gaillard inBixiou's ear, "but you can never find out who pays him most, thedebtor or the creditor. "

"The more rascally a business is, the more honor it needs. I'm for himwho pays me best, " continued Fromenteau addressing Gaillard. "You wantto recover fifty thousand francs and you talk farthings to your meansof action. Give me five hundred francs and your man is pinched to-night, for we spotted him yesterday!"

"Five hundred francs for you alone!" cried Theodore Gaillard. 

"Lizette wants a shawl, " said the spy, not a muscle of his facemoving. "I call her Lizette because of Beranger. "

"You have a Lizette, and you stay in such a business!" cried thevirtuous Gazonal. 

"It is amusing! People may cry up the pleasures of hunting and fishingas much as they like but to stalk a man in Paris is far better fun. "

"Certainly, " said Gazonal, reflectively, speaking to himself, "theymust have great talent. "

"If I were to enumerate the qualities which make a man remarkable inour vocation, " said Fromenteau, whose rapid glance had enabled him tofathom Gazonal completely, "you'd think I was talking of a man ofgenius. First, we must have the eyes of a lynx; next, audacity (totear into houses like bombs, accost the servants as if we knew them, and propose treachery--always agreed to); next, memory, sagacity, invention (to make schemes, conceived rapidly, never the same--forspying must be guided by the characters and habits of the personsspied upon; it is a gift of heaven); and, finally, agility, vigor. Allthese facilities and qualities, monsieur, are depicted on the door ofthe Gymnase-Amoros as Virtue. Well, we must have them all, under painof losing the salaries given us by the State, the rue de Jerusalem, orthe minister of Commerce. "

"You certainly seem to me a remarkable man, " said Gazonal. 

Fromenteau looked at the provincial without replying, withoutbetraying the smallest sign of feeling, and departed, bowing to noone, --a trait of real genius. 

"Well, cousin, you have now seen the police incarnate, " said Leon toGazonal. 

"It has something the effect of a dinner-pill, " said the worthyprovincial, while Gaillard and Bixiou were talking together in a lowvoice. 

"I'll give you an answer to-night at Carabine's, " said Gaillard aloud, re-seating himself at his desk without seeing or bowing to Gazonal. 

"He is a rude fellow!" cried the Southerner as they left the room. 

"His paper has twenty-two thousand subscribers, " said Leon de Lora. "He is one of the five great powers of the day, and he hasn't, in themorning, the time to be polite. Now, " continued Leon, speaking toBixiou, "if we are going to the Chamber to help him with his lawsuitlet us take the longest way round. "

"Words said by great men are like silver-gilt spoons with the giltwashed off; by dint of repetition they lose their brilliancy, " saidBixiou. "Where shall we go?"

"Here, close by, to our hatter?" replied Leon. 

"Bravo!" cried Bixiou. "If we keep on in this way, we shall have anamusing day of it. "

"Gazonal, " said Leon, "I shall make the man pose for you; but mindthat you keep a serious face, like the king on a five-franc piece, foryou are going to see a choice original, a man whose importance hasturned his head. In these days, my dear fellow, under our newpolitical dispensation, every human being tries to cover himself withglory, and most of them cover themselves with ridicule; hence a lot ofliving caricatures quite new to the world. "

"If everybody gets glory, who can be famous?" said Gazonal. 

"Fame! none but fools want that, " replied Bixiou. "Your cousin wearsthe cross, but I'm the better dressed of the two, and it is I whompeople are looking at. "

After this remark, which may explain why orators and other greatstatesmen no longer put the ribbon in their buttonholes when in Paris, Leon showed Gazonal a sign, bearing, in golden letters, theillustrious name of "Vital, successor to Finot, manufacturer of hats"(no longer "hatter" as formerly), whose advertisements brought in moremoney to the newspapers than those of any half-dozen vendors of pillsor sugarplums, --the author, moreover, of an essay on hats. 

"My dear fellow, " said Bixiou to Gazonal, pointing to the splendors ofthe show-window, "Vital has forty thousand francs a year from investedproperty. "

"And he stays a hatter!" cried the Southerner, with a bound thatalmost broke the arm which Bixiou had linked in his. 

"You shall see the man, " said Leon. "You need a hat and you shall haveone gratis. "

"Is Monsieur Vital absent?" asked Bixiou, seeing no one behind thedesk. 

"Monsieur is correcting proof in his study, " replied the head clerk. 

"Hein! what style!" said Leon to his cousin; then he added, addressingthe clerk: "Could we speak to him without injury to his inspiration?"

"Let those gentlemen enter, " said a voice. 

It was a bourgeois voice, the voice of one eligible to the Chamber, apowerful voice, a wealthy voice. 

Vital deigned to show himself, dressed entirely in black cloth, with asplendid frilled shirt adorned with one diamond. The three friendsobserved a young and pretty woman sitting near the desk, working atsome embroidery. 

Vital is a man between thirty and forty years of age, with a naturaljoviality now repressed by ambitious ideas. He is blessed with thatmedium height which is the privilege of sound organizations. He israther plump, and takes great pains with his person. His forehead isgetting bald, but he uses that circumstance to give himself the air ofa man consumed by thought. It is easy to see by the way his wife looksat him and listens to him that she believes in the genius and glory ofher husband. Vital loves artists, not that he has any taste for art, but from fellowship; for he feels himself an artist, and makes thisfelt by disclaiming that title of nobility, and placing himself withconstant premeditation at so great a distance from the arts thatpersons may be forced to say to him: "You have raised the constructionof hats to the height of a science. "

"Have you at last discovered a hat to suit me?" asked Leon de Lora. 

"Why, monsieur! in fifteen days?" replied Vital, "and for you! Twomonths would hardly suffice to invent a shape in keeping with yourcountenance. See, here is your lithographic portrait: I have studiedit most carefully. I would not give myself that trouble for a prince;but you are more; you are an artist, and you understand me. "

"This is one of our greatest inventors, " said Bixiou presentingGazonal. "He might be as great as Jacquart if he would only lethimself die. Our friend, a manufacturer of cloth, has discovered amethod of replacing the indigo in old blue coats, and he wants to seeyou as another great phenomenon, because he has heard of your saying, 'The hat is the man. ' That speech of yours enraptured him. Ah! Vital, you have faith; you believe in something; you have enthusiasm for yourwork. "

Vital scarcely listened; he grew pale with pleasure. 

"Rise, my wife! Monsieur is a man of science. "

Madame Vital rose at her husband's gesture. Gazonal bowed to her. 

"Shall I have the honor to cover your head?" said Vital, with joyfulobsequiousness. 

"At the same price as mine, " interposed Bixiou. 

"Of course, of course; I ask no other fee than to be quoted by you, messieurs-- Monsieur needs a picturesque hat, something in the styleof Monsieur Lousteau's, " he continued, looking at Gazonal with the eyeof a master. "I will consider it. "

"You give yourself a great deal of trouble, " said Gazonal. 

"Oh! for a few persons only; for those who know how to appreciate thevalue of the pains I bestow upon them. Now, take the aristocracy--there is but one man there who has truly comprehended the Hat; andthat is the Prince de Bethune. How is it that men do not consider, aswomen do, that the hat is the first thing that strikes the eye? Andwhy have they never thought of changing the present system, which is, let us say it frankly, ignoble? Yes, ignoble; and yet a Frenchman is, of all nationalities, the one most persistent in this folly! I knowthe difficulties of a change, messieurs. I don't speak of my ownwritings on the matter, which, as I think, approach it philosophically, but simply as a hatter. I have myself studied means to accentuate theinfamous head-covering to which France is now enslaved until I succeedin overthrowing it. "

So saying he pointed to the hideous hat in vogue at the present day. 

"Behold the enemy, messieurs, " he continued. "How is it that thewittiest and most satirical people on earth will consent to wear upontheir heads a bit of stove-pipe?--as one of our great writers hascalled it. Here are some of the infections I have been able to give tothose atrocious lines, " he added, pointing to a number of hiscreations. "But, although I am able to conform them to the characterof each wearer--for, as you see, there are the hats of a doctor, agrocer, a dandy, an artist, a fat man, a thin man, and so forth--thestyle itself remains horrible. Seize, I beg of you, my wholethought--"

He took up a hat, low-crowned and wide-brimmed. 

"This, " he continued, "is the old hat of Claude Vignon, a greatcritic, in the days when he was a free man and a free-liver. He haslately come round to the ministry; they've made him a professor, alibrarian; he writes now for the Debats only; they've appointed himMaster of Petitions with a salary of sixteen thousand francs; he earnsfour thousand more out of his paper, and he is decorated. Well, nowsee his new hat. "

And Vital showed them a hat of a form and design which was trulyexpressive of the juste-milieu. 

"You ought to have made him a Punch and Judy hat!" cried Gazonal. 

"You are a man of genius, Monsieur Vital, " said Leon. 

Vital bowed. 

"Would you kindly tell me why the shops of your trade in Paris remainopen late at night, --later than the cafes and the wineshops? That factpuzzles me very much, " said Gazonal. 

"In the first place, our shops are much finer when lighted up thanthey are in the daytime; next, where we sell ten hats in the daytimewe sell fifty at night. "

"Everything is queer in Paris, " said Leon. 

"Thanks to my efforts and my successes, " said Vital, returning to thecourse of his self-laudation, "we are coming to hats with roundheadpieces. It is to that I tend!"

"What obstacle is there?" asked Gazonal. 

"Cheapness, monsieur. In the first place, very handsome silk hats canbe built for fifteen francs, which kills our business; for in Paris noone ever has fifteen francs in his pocket to spend on a hat. If abeaver hat costs thirty, it is still the same thing-- When I saybeaver, I ought to state that there are not ten pounds of beaver skinsleft in France. That article is worth three hundred and fifty francs apound, and it takes an ounce for a hat. Besides, a beaver hat isn'treally worth anything; the skin takes a wretched dye; gets rusty inten minutes under the sun, and heat puts it out of shape as well. Whatwe call 'beaver' in the trade is neither more nor less thanhare's-skin. The best qualities are made from the back of the animal, the second from the sides, the third from the belly. I confide to youthese trade secrets because you are men of honor. But whether a manhas hare's-skin or silk on his head, fifteen or thirty francs inshort, the problem is always insoluble. Hats must be paid for in cash, and that is why the hat remains what it is. The honor of vesturalFrance will be saved on the day that gray hats with round crowns canbe made to cost a hundred francs. We could then, like the tailors, give credit. To reach that result men must resolve to wear buckles, gold lace, plumes, and the brims lined with satin, as in the days ofLouis XIII. And Louis XIV. Our business, which would then enter thedomain of fancy, would increase tenfold. The markets of the worldshould belong to France; Paris will forever give the tone to women'sfashions, and yet the hats which all Frenchmen wear to-day are made inevery country on earth! There are ten millions of foreign money to begained annually for France in that question--"

"A revolution!" cried Bixiou, pretending enthusiasm. 

"Yes, and a radical one; for the form must be changed. "

"You are happy after the manner of Luther in dreaming of reform, " saidLeon. 

"Yes, monsieur. Ah! if a dozen or fifteen artists, capitalists, ordandies who set the tone would only have courage for twenty-four hoursFrance would gain a splendid commercial battle! To succeed in thisreform I would give my whole fortune! Yes, my sole ambition is toregenerate the hat and disappear. "

"The man is colossal, " said Gazonal, as they left the shop; "but Iassure you that all your originals so far have a touch of theSoutherner about them. "

"Let us go this way, " said Bixiou pointing to the rue Saint-Marc. 

"Do you want to show me something else?"

"Yes; you shall see the usuress of rats, marcheuses and great ladies, --a woman who possesses more terrible secrets than there are gownshanging in her window, " said Bixiou. 

And he showed Gazonal one of those untidy shops which made an uglystain in the midst of the dazzling show-windows of modern retailcommerce. This shop had a front painted in 1820, which some bankrupthad doubtless left in a dilapidated condition. The color haddisappeared beneath a double coating of dirt, the result of usage, anda thick layer of dust; the window-panes were filthy, the door-knobturned of itself, as door-knobs do in all places where people go outmore quickly than they enter. 

"What do you say of _that_? First cousin to Death, isn't she?" said Leonin Gazonal's ear, showing him, at the desk, a terrible individual. "Well, she calls herself Madame Nourrisson. "

"Madame, how much is this guipure?" asked the manufacturer, intendingto compete in liveliness with the two artists. 

"To you, monsieur, who come from the country, it will be only threehundred francs, " she replied. Then, remarking in his manner a sort ofeagerness peculiar to Southerners, she added, in a grieved tone, "Itformerly belonged to that poor Princess de Lamballe. "

"What! do you dare exhibit it so near the palace?" cried Bixiou. 

"Monsieur, _they_ don't believe in it, " she replied. 

"Madame, we have not come to make purchases, " said Bixiou, with a showof frankness. 

"So I see, monsieur, " returned Madame Nourrisson. 

"We have several things to sell, " said the illustrious caricaturist. "I live close by, rue de Richelieu, 112, sixth floor. If you will comeround there for a moment, you may perhaps make some good bargains. "

Ten minutes later Madame Nourrisson did in fact present herself atBixiou's lodgings, where by that time he had taken Leon and Gazonal. Madame Nourrisson found them all three as serious as authors whosecollaboration does not meet with the success it deserves. 

"Madame, " said the intrepid hoaxer, showing her a pair of women'sslippers, "these belonged formerly to the Empress Josephine. "

He felt it incumbent on him to return change for the Prince deLamballe. 

"Those!" she exclaimed; "they were made this year; look at the mark. "

"Don't you perceive that the slippers are only by way of preface?"said Leon; "though, to be sure, they are usually the conclusion of atale. "

"My friend here, " said Bixiou, motioning to Gazonal, "has an immensefamily interest in ascertaining whether a young lady of a good andwealthy house, whom he wishes to marry, has ever gone wrong. "

"How much will monsieur give for the information, " she asked, lookingat Gazonal, who was no longer surprised by anything. 

"One hundred francs, " he said. 

"No, thank you!" she said with a grimace of refusal worthy of a macaw. 

"Then say how much you want, my little Madame Nourrisson, " criedBixiou catching her round the waist. 

"In the first place, my dear gentlemen, I have never, since I've beenin the business, found man or woman to haggle over happiness. Besides, " she said, letting a cold smile flicker on her lips, andenforcing it by an icy glance full of catlike distrust, "if it doesn'tconcern your happiness, it concerns your fortune; and at the heightwhere I find you lodging no man haggles over a 'dot'-- Come, " shesaid, "out with it! What is it you want to know, my lambs?"

"About the Beunier family, " replied Bixiou, very glad to find outsomething in this indirect manner about persons in whom he wasinterested. 

"Oh! as for that, " she said, "one louis is quite enough. "

"Why?"

"Because I hold all the mother's jewels and she's on tenter-hooksevery three months, I can tell you! It is hard work for her to pay theinterest on what I've lent her. Do you want to marry there, simpleton?" she added, addressing Gazonal; "then pay me forty francsand I'll talk four hundred worth. "

Gazonal produced a forty-franc gold-piece, and Madame Nourrisson gavehim startling details as to the secret penury of certain so-calledfashionable women. This dealer in cast-off clothes, getting lively asshe talked, pictured herself unconsciously while telling of others. Without betraying a single name or any secret, she made the three menshudder by proving to them how little so-called happiness existed inParis that did not rest on the vacillating foundation of borrowedmoney. She possessed, laid away in her drawers, the secrets ofdeparted grandmothers, living children, deceased husbands, deadgranddaughters, --memories set in gold and diamonds. She learnedappalling stories by making her clients talk of one another; tearingtheir secrets from them in moments of passion, of quarrels, of anger, and during those cooler negotiations which need a loan to settledifficulties. 

"Why were you ever induced to take up such a business?" asked Gazonal. 

"For my son's sake, " she said naively. 

Such women almost invariably justify their trade by alleging noblemotives. Madame Nourrisson posed as having lost several opportunitiesfor marriage, also three daughters who had gone to the bad, and allher illusions. She showed the pawn-tickets of the Mont-de-Piete toprove the risks her business ran; declared that she did not know howto meet the "end of the month"; she was robbed, she said, --_robbed_. 

The two artists looked at each other on hearing that expression, whichseemed exaggerated. 

"Look here, my sons, I'll show you how we are _done_. It is not aboutmyself, but about my opposite neighbour, Madame Mahuchet, a ladies'shoemaker. I had loaned money to a countess, a woman who has too manypassions for her means, --lives in a fine apartment filled withsplendid furniture, and makes, as we say, a devil of a show with herhigh and mighty airs. She owed three hundred francs to her shoemaker, and was giving a dinner no later than yesterday. The shoemaker, whoheard of the dinner from the cook, came to see me; we got excited, andshe wanted to make a row; but I said: 'My dear Madame Mahuchet, whatgood will that do? you'll only get yourself hated. It is much betterto obtain some security; and you save your bile. ' She wouldn't listen, but go she would, and asked me to support her; so I went. 'Madame isnot at home. '--'Up to that! we'll wait, ' said Madame Mahuchet, 'if wehave to stay all night, '--and down we camped in the antechamber. Presently the doors began to open and shut, and feet and voices camealong. I felt badly. The guests were arriving for dinner. You can seethe appearance it had. The countess sent her maid to coax MadameMahuchet: 'Pay you to-morrow!' in short, all the snares! Nothing took. The countess, dressed to the nines, went to the dining-room. Mahuchetheard her and opened the door. Gracious! when she saw that tablesparkling with silver, the covers to the dishes and the chandeliersall glittering like a jewel-case, didn't she go off like soda-waterand fire her shot: 'When people spend the money of others they shouldbe sober and not give dinner-parties. Think of your being a countessand owing three hundred francs to a poor shoemaker with sevenchildren!' You can guess how she railed, for the Mahuchet hasn't anyeducation. When the countess tried to make an excuse ('no money')Mahuchet screamed out: 'Look at all your fine silver, madame; pawn itand pay me!'--'Take some yourself, ' said the countess quickly, gathering up a quantity of forks and spoons and putting them into herhands. Downstairs we rattled!--heavens! like success itself. No, before we got to the street Mahuchet began to cry--she's a kind woman!She turned back and restored the silver; for she now understood thatcountess' poverty--it was plated ware!"

"And she forked it over, " said Leon, in whom the former Mistigrisoccasionally reappeared. 

"Ah! my dear monsieur, " said Madame Nourrisson, enlightened by theslang, "you are an artist, you write plays, you live in the rue duHelder and are friends with Madame Anatolia; you have habits that Iknow all about. Come, do you want some rarity in the grand style, --Carabine or Mousqueton, Malaga or Jenny Cadine?"

"Malaga, Carabine! nonsense!" cried Leon de Lora. "It was we whoinvented them. "

"I assure you, my good Madame Nourrisson, " said Bixiou, "that we onlywanted the pleasure of making your acquaintance, and we should likevery much to be informed as to how you ever came to slip into thisbusiness. "

"I was confidential maid in the family of a marshal of France, Princed'Ysembourg, " she said, assuming the airs of a Dorine. "One morning, one of the most beplumed countesses of the Imperial court came to thehouse and wanted to speak to the marshal privately. I put myself inthe way of hearing what she said. She burst into tears and confided tothat booby of a marshal--yes, the Conde of the Republic is a booby!--that her husband, who served under him in Spain, had left her withoutmeans, and if she didn't get a thousand francs, or two thousand, thatday her children must go without food; she hadn't any for the morrow. The marshal, who was always ready to give in those days, took twonotes of a thousand francs each out of his desk, and gave them to her. I saw that fine countess going down the staircase where she couldn'tsee me. She was laughing with a satisfaction that certainly wasn'tmotherly, so I slipped after her to the peristyle where I heard hersay to the coachman, 'To Leroy's. ' I ran round quickly to Leroy's, andthere, sure enough, was the poor mother. I got there in time to seeher order and pay for a fifteen-hundred-franc dress; you understandthat in those days people were made to pay when they bought. The nextday but one she appeared at an ambassador's ball, dressed to pleaseall the world and some one in particular. That day I said to myself:'I've got a career! When I'm no longer young I'll lend money to greatladies on their finery; for passion never calculates, it paysblindly. ' If you want subjects for a vaudeville I can sell youplenty. "

She departed after delivering this tirade, in which all the phases ofher past life were outlined, leaving Gazonal as much horrified by herrevelations as by the five yellow teeth she showed when she tried tosmile. 

"What shall we do now?" he asked presently. 

"Make notes, " replied Bixiou, whistling for his porter; "for I wantsome money, and I'll show you the use of porters. You think they onlypull the gate-cord; whereas they really pull poor devils like me andartists whom they take under their protection out of difficulties. Mine will get the Montyon prize one of these days. "

Gazonal opened his eyes to their utmost roundness. 

A man between two ages, partly a graybeard, partly an office-boy, butmore oily within and without, hair greasy, stomach puffy, skin dulland moist, like that of the prior of a convent, always wearing listshoes, a blue coat, and grayish trousers, made his appearance. 

"What is it, monsieur?" he said with an air which combined that of aprotector and a subordinate. 

"Ravenouillet-- His name is Ravenouillet, " said Bixiou turning toGazonal. "Have you our notebook of bills due with you?"

Ravenouillet pulled out of his pocket the greasiest and stickiest bookthat Gazonal's eyes had ever beheld. 

"Write down at three months' sight two notes of five hundred francseach, which you will proceed to sign. "

And Bixiou handed over two notes already drawn to his order byRavenouillet, which Ravenouillet immediately signed and inscribed onthe greasy book, in which his wife also kept account of the debts ofthe other lodgers. 

"Thanks, Ravenouillet, " said Bixiou. "And here's a box at theVaudeville for you. "

"Oh! my daughter will enjoy that, " said Ravenouillet, departing. 

"There are seventy-one tenants in this house, " said Bixiou, "and theaverage of what they owe Ravenouillet is six thousand francs a month, eighteen thousand quarterly for money advanced, postage, etc. , notcounting the rents due. He is Providence--at thirty per cent, which weall pay him, though he never asks for anything. "

"Oh, Paris! Paris!" cried Gazonal. 

"I'm going to take you now, cousin Gazonal, " said Bixiou, afterindorsing the notes, "to see another comedian, who will play you acharming scene gratis. "

"Who is it?" said Gazonal. 

"A usurer. As we go along I'll tell you the debut of friendRavenouillet in Paris. "

Passing in front of the porter's lodge, Gazonal saw MademoiselleLucienne Ravenouillet holding in her hand a music score (she was apupil of the Conservatoire), her father reading a newspaper, andMadame Ravenouillet with a package of letters to be carried up to thelodgers. 

"Thanks, Monsieur Bixiou!" said the girl. 

"She's not a rat, " explained Leon to his cousin; "she is the larva ofthe grasshopper. "

"Here's the history of Ravenouillet, " continued Bixiou, when the threefriends reached the boulevard. "In 1831 Massol, the councillor ofstate who is dealing with your case, was a lawyer-journalist who atthat time never thought of being more than Keeper of the Seals, anddeigned to have King Louis-Philippe on his throne. Forgive hisambition, he's from Carcassonne. One morning there entered to him ayoung rustic of his parts, who said: 'You know me very well, MossooMassol; I'm your neighbour the grocer's little boy; I've come fromdown there, for they tell me a fellow is certain to get a place if hecomes to Paris. ' Hearing these words, Massol shuddered, and said tohimself that if he were weak enough to help this compatriot (to himutterly unknown) he should have the whole department prone upon him, his bell-rope would break, his valet leave him, he should havedifficulties with his landlord about the stairway, and the otherlodgers would assuredly complain of the smell of garlic pervading thehouse. Consequently, he looked at his visitor as a butcher looks at asheep whose throat he intends to cut. But whether the rusticcomprehended the stab of that glance or not, he went on to say (soMassol told me), 'I've as much ambition as other men. I will never goback to my native place, if I ever do go back, unless I am a rich man. Paris is the antechamber of Paradise. They tell me that you who writethe newspapers can make, as they say, 'fine weather and foul'; thatis, you have things all your own way, and it's enough to ask your helpto get any place, no matter what, under government. Now, though I havefaculties, like others, I know myself: I have no education; I don'tknow how to write, and that's a misfortune, for I have ideas. I am notseeking, therefore, to be your rival; I judge myself, and I know Icouldn't succeed there. But, as you are so powerful, and as we arealmost brothers, having played together in childhood, I count upon youto launch me in a career and to protect me-- Oh, you _must_; I want aplace, a place suitable to my capacity, to such as I am, a place wereI can make my fortune. ' Massol was just about to put his compatriotneck and crop out of the door with some brutal speech, when the rusticended his appeal thus: 'I don't ask to enter the administration wherepeople advance like tortoises--there's your cousin, who has stuck inone post for twenty years. No, I only want to make my debut. '--'On thestage?' asked Massol only too happy at that conclusion. --'No, though Ihave gesture enough, and figure, and memory. But there's too much wearand tear; I prefer the career of _porter_. ' Massol kept his countenance, and replied: 'I think there's more wear and tear in that, but as yourchoice is made I'll see what I can do'; and he got him, asRavenouillet says, his first 'cordon. '"

"I was the first master, " said Leon, "to consider the race of porter. You'll find knaves of morality, mountebanks of vanity, modernsycophants, septembriseurs, disguised in philanthropy, inventors ofpalpitating questions, preaching the emancipation of the negroes, improvement of little thieves, benevolence to liberated convicts, andwho, nevertheless, leave their porters in a condition worse than thatof the Irish, in holes more dreadful than a mud cabin, and pay themless money to live on than the State pays to support a convict. I havedone but one good action in my life, and that was to build my porter adecent lodge. "

"Yes, " said Bixiou, "if a man, having built a great cage divided intothousands of compartments like the cells of a beehive or the dens of amenagerie, constructed to receive human beings of all trades and allkinds, if that animal, calling itself the proprietor, should go to aman of science and say: 'I want an individual of the bimanous species, able to live in holes full of old boots, pestiferous with rags, andten feet square; I want him such that he can live there all his life, sleep there, eat there, be happy, get children as pretty as littlecupids, work, toil, cultivate flowers, sing there, stay there, andlive in darkness but see and know everything, ' most assuredly the manof science could never have invented the porter to oblige theproprietor; Paris, and Paris only could create him, or, if you choose, the devil. "

"Parisian creative powers have gone farther than that, " said Gazonal;"look at the workmen! You don't know all the products of industry, though you exhibit them. Our toilers fight against the toilers of thecontinent by force of misery, as Napoleon fought Europe by force ofregiments. "

"Here we are, at my friend the usurer's, " said Bixiou. "His name isVauvinet. One of the greatest mistakes made by writers who describeour manners and morals is to harp on old portraits. In these days alltrades change. The grocer becomes a peer of France, artists capitalizetheir money, vaudevillists have incomes. A few rare beings may remainwhat they originally were, but professions in general have no longereither their special costume or their formerly fixed habits and ways. In the past we had Gobseck, Gigounet, Samonon, --the last of theRomans; to-day we rejoice in Vauvinet, the good-fellow usurer, thedandy who frequents the greenroom and the lorettes, and drives aboutin a little coupe with one horse. Take special note of my man, friendGazonal, and you'll see the comedy of money, the cold man who won'tgive a penny, the hot man who snuffs a profit; listen to himattentively!"

All three went up to the second floor of a fine-looking house on theboulevard des Italiens, where they found themselves surrounded by theelegances then in fashion. A young man about twenty-eight years of ageadvanced to meet them with a smiling face, for he saw Leon de Lorafirst. Vauvinet held out his hand with apparent friendliness toBixiou, and bowed coldly to Gazonal as he motioned them to enter hisoffice, where bourgeois taste was visible beneath the artisticappearance of the furniture, and in spite of the statuettes and thethousand other little trifles applied to our little apartments bymodern art, which has made itself as small as its patrons. 

Vauvinet was dressed, like other young men of our day who go intobusiness, with extreme elegance, which many of them regard as aspecies of prospectus. 

"I've come for some money, " said Bixiou, laughing, and presenting hisnotes. 

Vauvinet assumed a serious air, which made Gazonal smile, suchdifference was there between the smiling visage that received them andthe countenance of the money-lender recalled to business. 

"My dear fellow, " said Vauvinet, looking at Bixiou, "I shouldcertainly oblige you with the greatest pleasure, but I haven't anymoney to loan at the present time. "

"Ah, bah!"

"No; I have given all I had to--you know who. That poor Lousteau wentinto partnership for the management of a theatre with an oldvaudevillist who has great influence with the ministry, Ridal; andthey came to me yesterday for thirty thousand francs. I'm cleaned out, and so completely that I was just in the act of sending to Cerizet fora hundred louis, when I lost at lansquenet this morning, at JennyCadine's. "

"You must indeed me hard-up if you can't oblige this poor Bixiou, "said Leon de Lora; "for he can be very sharp-tongued when he hasn't asou. "

"Well, " said Bixiou, "I could never say anything but good of Vauvinet;he's full of goods. "

"My dear friend, " said Vauvinet, "if I had the money, I couldn'tpossibly discount, even at fifty per cent, notes which are drawn byyour porter. Ravenouillet's paper isn't in demand. He's not aRothschild. I warn you that his notes are worn thin; you had betterinvent another firm. Find an uncle. As for a friend who'll sign notesfor us there's no such being to be found; the matter-of-factness ofthe present age is making awful progress. "

"I have a friend, " said Bixiou, motioning to Leon's cousin. "Monsieurhere; one of the most distinguished manufacturers of cloth in theSouth, named Gazonal. His hair is not very well dressed, " addedBixiou, looking at the touzled and luxuriant crop on the provincial'shead, "but I am going to take him to Marius, who will make him lookless like a poodle-dog, an appearance so injurious to his credit, andto ours. "

"I don't believe in Southern securities, be it said without offence tomonsieur, " replied Vauvinet, with whom Gazonal was so entertained thathe did not resent his insolence. 

Gazonal, that extremely penetrating intellect, thought that thepainter and Bixiou intended, by way of teaching him to know Paris, tomake him pay the thousand francs for his breakfast at the Cafe deParis, for this son of the Pyrenees had never got out of that armor ofdistrust which incloses the provincial in Paris. 

"How can you expect me to have outstanding business at seven hundredmiles from Paris?" added Vauvinet. 

"Then you refuse me positively?" asked Bixiou. 

"I have twenty francs, and no more, " said the young usurer. 

"I'm sorry for you, " said the joker. "I thought I was worth a thousandfrancs. "

"You are worth two hundred thousand francs, " replied Vauvinet, "andsometimes you are worth your weight in gold, or at least your tongueis; but I tell you I haven't a penny. "

"Very good, " replied Bixiou; "then we won't say anything more aboutit. I had arranged for this evening, at Carabine's, the thing you mostwanted--you know?"

Vauvinet winked an eye at Bixiou; the wink that two jockeys give eachother when they want to say: "Don't try trickery. "

"Don't you remember catching me round the waist as if I were a prettywoman, " said Bixiou, "and coaxing me with look and speech, and saying, 'I'll do anything for you if you'll only get me shares at par in thatrailroad du Tillet and Nucingen have made an offer for?' Well, oldfellow, du Tillet and Nucingen are coming to Carabine's to-night, where they will meet a number of political characters. You've lost afine opportunity. Good-bye to you, old carrot. "

Bixiou rose, leaving Vauvinet apparently indifferent, but inwardlyannoyed by the sense that he had committed a folly. 

"One moment, my dear fellow, " said the money-lender. "Though I haven'tthe money, I have credit. If your notes are worth nothing, I can keepthem and give you notes in exchange. If we can come to an agreementabout that railway stock we could share the profits, of course in dueproportion and I'll allow you that on--"

"No, no, " said Bixiou, "I want money in hand, and I must get thosenotes of Ravenouillet's cashed. "

"Ravenouillet is sound, " said Vauvinet. "He puts money into thesavings-bank; he is good security. "

"Better than you, " interposed Leon, "for HE doesn't stipend lorettes;he hasn't any rent to pay; and he never rushes into speculations whichkeep him dreading either a rise or fall. "

"You think you can laugh at me, great man, " returned Vauvinet, oncemore jovial and caressing; "you've turned La Fontaine's fable of 'LeChene et le Roseau' into an elixir-- Come, Gubetta, my oldaccomplice, " he continued, seizing Bixiou round the waist, "you wantmoney; well, I can borrow three thousand francs from my friend Cerizetinstead of two; 'Let us be friends, Cinna!' hand over your colossalcabbages, --made to trick the public like a gardener's catalogue. If Irefused you it was because it is pretty hard on a man who can only dohis poor little business by turning over his money, to have to keepyour Ravenouillet notes in the drawer of his desk. Hard, hard, veryhard!"

"What discount do you want?" asked Bixiou. 

"Next to nothing, " returned Vauvinet. "It will cost you a miserablefifty francs at the end of the quarter. "

"As Emile Blondet used to say, you shall be my benefactor, " repliedBixiou. 

"Twenty per cent!" whispered Gazonal to Bixiou, who replied by a punchof his elbow in the provincial's oesophagus. 

"Bless me!" said Vauvinet opening a drawer in his desk as if to putaway the Ravenouillet notes, "here's an old bill of five hundredfrancs stuck in the drawer! I didn't know I was so rich. And here's anote payable at the end of the month for four hundred and fifty;Cerizet will take it without much diminution, and there's your sum inhand. But no nonsense, Bixiou! Hein? to-night, at Carabine's, will youswear to me--"

"Haven't we _re_-friended?" said Bixiou, pocketing thefive-hundred-franc bill and the note for four hundred and fifty. "Igive you my word of honor that you shall see du Tillet, and many othermen who want to make their way--their railway--to-night at Carabine's. "

Vauvinet conducted the three friends to the landing of the staircase, cajoling Bixiou on the way. Bixiou kept a grave face till he reachedthe outer door, listening to Gazonal, who tried to enlighten him onhis late operation, and to prove to him that if Vauvinet's follower, Cerizet, took another twenty francs out of his four hundred and fifty, he was getting money at forty per cent. 

When they reached the asphalt Bixiou frightened Gazonal by the laughof a Parisian hoaxer, --that cold, mute laugh, a sort of labial northwind. 

"The assignment of the contract for that railway is adjourned, positively, by the Chamber; I heard this yesterday from that marcheusewhom we smiled at just now. If I win five or six thousand francs atlansquenet to-night, why should I grudge sixty-five francs for thepower to stake, hey?"

"Lansquenet is another of the thousand facets of Paris as it is, " saidLeon. "And therefore, cousin, I intend to present you to-night in thesalon of a duchess, --a duchess of the rue Saint-Georges, where youwill see the aristocracy of the lorettes, and probably be able to winyour lawsuit. But it is quite impossible to present you anywhere withthat mop of Pyrenean hair; you look like a porcupine; and thereforewe'll take you close by, Place de la Bourse, to Marius, another of ourcomedians--"

"Who is he?"

"I'll tell you his tale, " said Bixiou. "In the year 1800 a Toulousiannamed Cabot, a young wig-maker devoured by ambition, came to Paris, and set up a shop (I use your slang). This man of genius, --he now hasan income of twenty-four thousand francs a year, and lives, retiredfrom business, at Libourne, --well, he saw that so vulgar and ignoble aname as Cabot could never attain celebrity. Monsieur de Parny, whosehair he cut, gave him the name of Marius, infinitely superior, youperceive, to the Christian names of Armand and Hippolyte, behind whichpatronymics attacked by the Cabot evil are wont to hide. All thesuccessors of Cabot have called themselves Marius. The present Mariusis Marius V. ; his real name is Mongin. This occurs in various othertrades; for 'Botot water, ' and for 'Little-Virtue' ink. Names becomecommercial property in Paris, and have ended by constituting a sort ofensign of nobility. The present Marius, who takes pupils, has created, he says, the leading school of hair-dressing in the world. 

"I've seen, in coming through France, " said Gazonal, "a great manysigns bearing the words: 'Such a one, pupil of Marius. '"

"His pupils have to wash their hands after every head, " said Bixiou;"but Marius does not take them indifferently; they must have nicehands, and not be ill-looking. The most remarkable for manners, appearance, and elocution are sent out to dress heads; and they comeback tired to death. Marius himself never turns out except for titledwomen; he drives his cabriolet and has a groom. "

"But, after all, he is nothing but a barber!" cried Gazonal, somewhatshocked. 

"Barber!" exclaimed Bixiou; "please remember that he is captain in theNational Guard, and is decorated for being the first to spring into abarricade in 1832. "

"And take care what you say to him: he is neither barber, hair-dresser, nor wig-maker; he is a director of salons for hair-dressing, " saidLeon, as they went up a staircase with crystal balusters and mahoganyrail, the steps of which were covered with a sumptuous carpet. 

"Ah ca! mind you don't compromise us, " said Bixiou. "In theantechamber you'll see lacqueys who will take off your coat, and seizeyour hat, to brush them; and they'll accompany you to the door of thesalons to open and shut it. I mention this, friend Gazonal, " addedBixiou, slyly, "lest you might think they were after your property, and cry 'Stop thief!'"

"These salons, " said Leon, "are three boudoirs where the director hascollected all the inventions of modern luxury: lambrequins to thewindows, jardinieres everywhere, downy divans where each customer canwait his turn and read the newspapers. You might suppose, when youfirst go in, that five francs would be the least they'd get out ofyour waistcoat pocket; but nothing is ever extracted beyond ten sousfor combing and frizzing your hair, or twenty sous for cutting andfrizzing. Elegant dressing-tables stand about among the jardinieres;water is laid on to the washstands; enormous mirrors reproduce thewhole figure. Therefore don't look astonished. When the client (that'sthe elegant word substituted by Marius for the ignoble word customer), --when the client appears at the door, Marius gives him a glance whichappraises him: to Marius you are a _head_, more or less susceptible ofoccupying his mind. To him there's no mankind; there are only heads. "

"We let you hear Marius on all the notes of his scale, " said Bixiou, "and you know how to follow our lead. "

As soon as Gazonal showed himself, the glance was given, and wasevidently favourable, for Marius exclaimed: "Regulus! yours this head!Prepare it first with the little scissors. "

"Excuse me, " said Gazonal to the pupil, at a sign from Bixiou. "Iprefer to have my head dressed by Monsieur Marius himself. "

Marius, much flattered by this demand, advanced, leaving the head onwhich he was engaged. 

"I am with you in a moment; I am just finishing. Pray have nouneasiness, my pupil will prepare you; I alone will decide the cut. "

Marius, a slim little man, his hair frizzed like that of Rubini, andjet black, dressed also in black, with long white cuffs, and the frillof his shirt adorned with a diamond, now saw Bixiou, to whom he bowedas to a power the equal of his own. 

"That is only an ordinary head, " he said to Leon, pointing to theperson on whom he was operating, --"a grocer, or something of thatkind. But if we devoted ourselves to art only, we should lie inBicetre, mad!" and he turned back with an inimitable gesture to hisclient, after saying to Regulus, "Prepare monsieur, he is evidently anartist. "

"A journalist, " said Bixiou. 

Hearing that word, Marius gave two or three strokes of the comb to theordinary head and flung himself upon Gazonal, taking Regulus by thearm at the instant that the pupil was about to begin the operation ofthe little scissors. 

"I will take charge of monsieur. Look, monsieur, " he said to thegrocer, "reflect yourself in the great mirror--if the mirror permits. Ossian!"

A lacquey entered, and took hold of the client to dress him. 

"You pay at the desk, monsieur, " said Marius to the stupefied grocer, who was pulling out his purse. 

"Is there any use, my dear fellow, " said Bixiou, "in going throughthis operation of the little scissors?"

"No head ever comes to me uncleansed, " replied the illustrioushair-dresser; "but for your sake, I will do that of monsieur myself, wholly. My pupils sketch out the scheme, or my strength would not holdout. Every one says as you do: 'Dressed by Marius!' Therefore, I cangive only the finishing strokes. What journal is monsieur on?"

"If I were you, I should keep three or four Mariuses, " said Gazonal. 

"Ah! monsieur, I see, is a feuilletonist, " said Marius. "Alas! indressing heads which expose us to notice it is impossible. Excuse me!"

He left Gazonal to overlook Regulus, who was "preparing" a newlyarrived head. Tapping his tongue against his palate, he made adisapproving noise, which may perhaps be written down as "titt, titt, titt. "

"There, there! good heavens! that cut is not square; your scissors arehacking it. Here! see there! Regulus, you are not clipping poodles;these are men--who have a character; if you continue to look at theceiling instead of looking only between the glass and the head, youwill dishonor my house. "

"You are stern, Monsieur Marius. "

"I owe them the secrets of my art. "

"Then it is an art?" said Gazonal. 

Marius, affronted, looked at Gazonal in the glass, and stopped short, the scissors in one hand, the comb in the other. 

"Monsieur, you speak like a--child! and yet, from your accent, I judgeyou are from the South, the birthplace of men of genius. "

"Yes, I know that hair-dressing requires some taste, " replied Gazonal. 

"Hush, monsieur, hush! I expected better things of YOU. Let me tellyou that a hair-dresser, --I don't say a good hair-dresser, for a manis, or he is not, a hair-dresser, --a hair-dresser, I repeat, is moredifficult to find than--what shall I say? than--I don't know what--aminister?--(Sit still!) No, for you can't judge by ministers, thestreets are full of them. A Paganini? No, he's not great enough. Ahair-dresser, monsieur, a man who divines your soul and your habits, in order to dress your hair conformably with your being, that man hasall that constitutes a philosopher--and such he is. See the women!Women appreciate us; they know our value; our value to them is theconquest they make when they have placed their heads in our hands toattain a triumph. I say to you that a hair-dresser--the world does notknow what he is. I who speak to you, I am very nearly all that thereis of--without boasting I may say I am known--Still, I think moremight be done--The execution, that is everything! Ah! if women wouldonly give me carte blanche!--if I might only execute the ideas thatcome to me! I have, you see, a hell of imagination!--but the womendon't fall in with it; they have their own plans; they'll stick theirfingers or combs, as soon as my back is turned, through the mostdelicious edifices--which ought to be engraved and perpetuated; forour works, monsieur, last unfortunately but a few hours. A greathair-dresser, hey! he's like Careme and Vestris in their careers. (Head a little this way, if you please, SO; I attend particularly tofront faces!) Our profession is ruined by bunglers who understandneither the epoch nor their art. There are dealers in wigs andessences who are enough to make one's hair stand on end; they careonly to sell you bottles. It is pitiable! But that's business. Suchpoor wretches cut hair and dress it as they can. I, when I arrived inParis from Toulouse, my ambition was to succeed the great Marius, tobe a true Marius, to make that name illustrious. I alone, more thanall the four others, I said to myself, 'I will conquer, or die. '(There! now sit straight, I am going to finish you. ) I was the firstto introduce _elegance_; I made my salons the object of curiosity. Idisdain advertisements; what advertisements would have cost, monsieur, I put into elegance, charm, comfort. Next year I shall have aquartette in one of the salons to discourse music, and of the best. Yes, we ought to charm away the ennui of those whose heads we dress. Ido not conceal from myself the annoyances to a client. (Look atyourself!) To have one's hair dressed is fatiguing, perhaps as much soas posing for one's portrait. Monsieur knows perhaps that the famousMonsieur Humbolt (I did the best I could with the few hairs Americaleft him--science has this in common with savages, that she scalps hermen clean), that illustrious savant, said that next to the sufferingof going to be hanged was that of going to be painted; but I place thetrial of having your head dressed before that of being painted, and sodo certain women. Well, monsieur, my object is to make those who comehere to have their hair cut or frizzed enjoy themselves. (Hold still, you have a tuft which _must_ be conquered. ) A Jew proposed to supply mewith Italian cantatrices who, during the interludes, were to depilatethe young men of forty; but they proved to be girls from theConservatoire, and music-teachers from the Rue Montmartre. There youare, monsieur; your head is dressed as that of a man of talent oughtto be. Ossian, " he said to the lacquey in livery, "dress monsieur andshow him out. Whose turn next?" he added proudly, gazing round uponthe persons who awaited him. 

"Don't laugh, Gazonal, " said Leon as they reached the foot of thestaircase, whence his eye could take in the whole of the Place de laBourse. "I see over there one of our great men, and you shall comparehis language with that of the barber, and tell me which of the two youthink the most original. "

"Don't laugh, Gazonal, " said Bixiou, mimicking Leon's intonation. "What do you suppose is Marius's business?"

"Hair-dressing. "

"He has obtained a monopoly of the sale of hair in bulk, as a certaindealer in comestibles who is going to sell us a pate for three francshas acquired a monopoly of the sale of truffles; he discounts thepaper of that business; he loans money on pawn to clients whenembarrassed; he gives annuities on lives; he gambles at the Bourse; heis a stockholder in all the fashion papers; and he sells, under thename of a certain chemist, an infamous drug which, for his sharealone, gives him an income of thirty thousand francs, and costs inadvertisements a hundred thousand yearly. "

"Is it possible!" cried Gazonal. 

"Remember this, " said Bixiou, gravely. "In Paris there is no suchthing as a small business; all things swell to large proportions, downto the sale of rags and matches. The lemonade-seller who, with hisnapkin under his arm, meets you as you enter his shop, may be worthhis fifty thousand francs a year; the waiter in a restaurant iseligible for the Chamber; the man you take for a beggar in the streetcarries a hundred thousand francs worth of unset diamonds in hiswaistcoat pocket, and didn't steal them either. "

The three inseparables (for one day at any rate) now crossed the Placede la Bourse in a way to intercept a man about forty years of age, wearing the Legion of honor, who was coming from the boulevard by wayof the rue Neuve-Vivienne. 

"Hey!" said Leon, "what are you pondering over, my dear Dubourdieu?Some fine symbolic composition? My dear cousin, I have the pleasure topresent to you our illustrious painter Dubourdieu, not less celebratedfor his humanitarian convictions than for his talents in art. Dubourdieu, my cousin Palafox. "

Dubourdieu, a small, pale man with melancholy blue eyes, bowedslightly to Gazonal, who bent low as before a man of genius. 

"So you have elected Stidmann in place of--" he began. 

"How could I help it? I wasn't there, " replied Lora. 

"You bring the Academy into disrepute, " continued the painter. "Tochoose such a man as that! I don't wish to say ill of him, but heworks at a trade. Where are you dragging the first of arts, --the artthose works are the most lasting; bringing nations to light of whichthe world has long lost even the memory; an art which crowns andconsecrates great men? Yes, sculpture is priesthood; it preserves theideas of an epoch, and you give its chair to a maker of toys andmantelpieces, an ornamentationist, a seller of bric-a-brac! Ah! asChamfort said, one has to swallow a viper every morning to endure thelife of Paris. Well, at any rate, Art remains to a few of us; theycan't prevent us from cultivating it--"

"And besides, my dear fellow, you have a consolation which few artistspossess; the future is yours, " said Bixiou. "When the world isconverted to our doctrine, you will be at the head of your art; foryou are putting into it ideas which people will understand--_when_ theyare generalized! In fifty years from now you'll be to all the worldwhat you are to a few of us at this moment, --a great man. The onlyquestion is how to get along till then. "

"I have just finished, " resumed the great artist, his face expandinglike that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure ofHarmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why itshould have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! Atthe first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds ashepherd's crook in her hand, --symbolical of the advancement of theraces useful to mankind; she wears on her head the cap of Liberty; herbreasts are sixfold, as the Egyptians carved them--for the Egyptiansforesaw Fourier; her feet are resting on two clasped hands whichembrace a globe, --symbol of the brotherhood of all human races; shetramples cannon under foot to signify the abolition of war; and I havetried to make her face express the serenity of triumphant agriculture. I have also placed beside her an enormous curled cabbage, which, according to our master, is an image of Harmony. Ah! it is not theleast among Fourier's titles to veneration that he has restored thegift of thought to plants; he has bound all creation in one by thesignification of things to one another, and by their special language. A hundred years hence this earth will be much larger than it is now. "

"And how will that, monsieur, come to pass?" said Gazonal, stupefiedat hearing a man outside of a lunatic asylum talk in this way. 

"Through the extending of production. If men will apply The System, itwill not be impossible to act upon the stars. "

"What would become of painting in that case?" asked Gazonal. 

"It would be magnified. "

"Would our eyes be magnified too?" said Gazonal, looking at his twofriends significantly. 

"Man will return to what he was before he became degenerate; oursix-feet men will then be dwarfs. "

"Is your picture finished?" asked Leon. 

"Entirely finished, " replied Dubourdieu. "I have tried to see Hiclar, and get him to compose a symphony for it; I wish that while viewing mypicture the public should hear music a la Beethoven to develop itsideas and bring them within range of the intellect by two arts. Ah! ifthe government would only lend me one of the galleries of the Louvre!"

"I'll mention it, if you want me to do so; you should never neglect anopportunity to strike minds. "

"Ah! my friends are preparing articles; but I am afraid they'll go toofar. "

"Pooh!" said Bixiou, "they can't go as far as the future. "

Dubourdieu looked askance at Bixiou, and continued his way. 

"Why, he's mad, " said Gazonal; "he is following the moon in hercourses. "

"His skill is masterly, " said Leon, "and he knows his art, butFourierism has killed him. You have just seen, cousin, one of theeffects of ambition upon artists. Too often, in Paris, from a desireto reach more rapidly than by natural ways the celebrity which to themis fortune, artists borrow the wings of circumstance, they think theymake themselves of more importance as men of a specialty, thesupporters of some 'system'; and they fancy they can transform aclique into the public. One is a republican, another Saint-Simonian;this one aristocrat, that one Catholic, others juste-milieu, middleages, or German, as they choose for their purpose. Now, thoughopinions do not give talent, they always spoil what talent there is;and the poor fellow whom you have just seen is a proof thereof. Anartist's opinion ought to be: Faith in his art, in his work; and hisonly way of success is toil when nature has given him the sacredfire. "

"Let us get away, " said Bixiou. "Leon is beginning to moralize. "

"But that man was sincere, " said Gazonal, still stupefied. 

"Perfectly sincere, " replied Bixiou; "as sincere as the king ofbarbers just now. "

"He is mad!" repeated Gazonal. 

"And he is not the first man driven man by Fourier's ideas, " saidBixiou. "You don't know anything about Paris. Ask it for a hundredthousand francs to realize an idea that will be useful to humanity, --the steam-engine for instance, --and you'll die, like Salomon de Caux, at Bicetre; but if the money is wanted for some paradoxical absurdity, Parisians will annihilate themselves and their fortune for it. It isthe same with systems as it is with material things. Utterlyimpracticable newspapers have consumed millions within the lastfifteen years. What makes your lawsuit so hard to win, is that youhave right on your side, and on that of the prefect there are (so yousuppose) secret motives. "

"Do you think that a man of intellect having once understood thenature of Paris could live elsewhere?" said Leon to his cousin. 

"Suppose we take Gazonal to old Mere Fontaine?" said Bixiou, making asign to the driver of a citadine to draw up; "it will be a step fromthe real to the fantastic. Driver, Vieille rue du Temple. "

And all three were presently rolling in the direction of the Marais. 

"What are you taking me to see now?" asked Gazonal. 

"The proof of what Bixiou told you, " replied Leon; "we shall show youa woman who makes twenty thousand francs a year by working a fantasticidea. "

"A fortune-teller, " said Bixiou, interpreting the look of theSoutherner as a question. "Madame Fontaine is thought, by those whoseek to pry into the future, to be wiser in her wisdom thanMademoiselle Lenormand. "

"She must be very rich, " remarked Gazonal. 

"She was the victim of her own idea, as long as lotteries existed, "said Bixiou; "for in Paris there are no great gains withoutcorresponding outlays. The strongest heads are liable to crack there, as if to give vent to their steam. Those who make much money havevices or fancies, --no doubt to establish an equilibrium. "

"And now that the lottery is abolished?" asked Gazonal. 

"Oh! now she has a nephew for whom she is hoarding. "

When they reached the Vieille rue du Temple the three friends enteredone of the oldest houses in that street and passed up a shakingstaircase, the steps of which, caked with mud, led them insemi-darkness, and through a stench peculiar to houses on an alley, tothe third story, where they beheld a door which painting alone couldrender; literature would have to spend too many nights in suitablydescribing it. 

An old woman, in keeping with that door, and who might have been thatdoor in human guise, ushered the three friends into a room whichserved as an ante-chamber, where, in spite of the warm atmospherewhich fills the streets of Paris, they felt the icy chill of cryptsabout them. A damp air came from an inner courtyard which resembled ahuge air-shaft; the light that entered was gray, and the sill of thewindow was filled with pots of sickly plants. In this room, which hada coating of some greasy, fuliginous substance, the furniture, thechairs, the table, were all most abject. The floor tiles oozed like awater-cooler. In short, every accessory was in keeping with thefearful old woman of the hooked nose, ghastly face, and decent ragswho directed the "consulters" to sit down, informing them that onlyone at a time could be admitted to Madame. 

Gazonal, who played the intrepid, entered bravely, and found himselfin presence of one of those women forgotten by Death, who no doubtforgets them intentionally in order to leave some samples of Itselfamong the living. He saw before him a withered face in which shonefixed gray eyes of wearying immobility; a flattened nose, smeared withsnuff; knuckle-bones well set up by muscles that, under pretence ofbeing hands, played nonchalantly with a pack of cards, like somemachine the movement of which is about to run down. The body, aspecies of broom-handle decently covered with clothes, enjoyed theadvantages of death and did not stir. Above the forehead rose a coifof black velvet. Madame Fontaine, for it was really a woman, had ablack hen on her right hand and a huge toad, named Astaroth, on herleft. Gazonal did not at first perceive them. 

The toad, of surprising dimensions, was less alarming in himself thanthrough the effect of two topaz eyes, large as a ten-sous piece, whichcast forth vivid gleams. It was impossible to endure that look. Thetoad is a creature as yet unexplained. Perhaps the whole animalcreation, including man, is comprised in it; for, as Lassailly said, the toad exists indefinitely; and, as we know, it is of all createdanimals the one whose marriage lasts the longest. 

The black hen had a cage about two feet distant from the table, covered with a green cloth, to which she came along a plank whichformed a sort of drawbridge between the cage and the table. 

When the woman, the least real of the creatures in this Hoffmanesqueden, said to Gazonal: "Cut!" the worthy provincial shudderedinvoluntarily. That which renders these beings so formidable is theimportance of what we want to know. People go to them, as they knowvery well, to buy hope. 

The den of the sibyl was much darker than the antechamber; the colorof the walls could scarcely be distinguished. The ceiling, blackenedby smoke, far from reflecting the little light that came from a windowobstructed by pale and sickly vegetations, absorbed the greater partof it; but the table where the sorceress sat received what there wasof this half-light fully. The table, the chair of the woman, and thaton which Gazonal was seated, formed the entire furniture of the littleroom, which was divided at one end by a sort of loft where MadameFontaine probably slept. Gazonal heard through a half-opened door thebubbling murmur of a soup-pot. That kitchen sound, accompanied by acomposite odor in which the effluvia of a sink predominated, mingledincongruous ideas of the necessities of actual life with those ofsupernatural power. Disgust entered into curiosity. 

Gazonal observed one stair of pine wood, the lowest no doubt of thestaircase which led to the loft. He took in these minor details at aglance, with a sense of nausea. It was all quite otherwise alarmingthan the romantic tales and scenes of German drama lead one to expect;here was suffocating actuality. The air diffused a sort of dizzyheaviness, the dim light rasped the nerves. When the Southerner, impelled by a species of self-assertion, gazed firmly at the toad, hefelt a sort of emetic heat at the pit of his stomach, and wasconscious of a terror like that a criminal might feel in presence of agendarme. He endeavoured to brace himself by looking at MadameFontaine; but there he encountered two almost white eyes, themotionless and icy pupils of which were absolutely intolerable to him. The silence became terrifying. 

"Which do you wish, monsieur, the five-franc fortune, the ten-francfortune, or the grand game?"

"The five-franc fortune is dear enough, " replied the Southerner, making powerful efforts not to yield to the influence of thesurroundings in which he found himself. 

At the moment when Gazonal was thus endeavouring to collect himself, avoice--an infernal voice--made him bound in his chair; the black henclucked. 

"Go back, my daughter, go back; monsieur chooses to spend only fivefrancs. "

The hen seemed to understand her mistress, for, after coming within afoot of the cards, she turned and resumed her former place. 

"What flower to you like best?" asked the old woman, in a voicehoarsened by the phlegm which seemed to rise and fall incessantly inher bronchial tubes. 

"The rose. "

"What color are you fond of?"

"Blue. "

"What animal do you prefer?"

"The horse. Why these questions?" he asked. 

"Man derives his form from his anterior states, " she saidsententiously. "Hence his instincts; and his instincts rule hisdestiny. What food do you like best to eat, --fish, game, cereals, butcher's meat, sweet things, vegetables, or fruits?"

"Game. "

"In what month where you born?"

"September. "

"Put out your hand. "

Madame Fontaine looked attentively at the lines of the hand that wasshown to her. It was all done seriously, with no pretence of sorcery;on the contrary, with the simplicity a notary might have shown whenasking the intentions of a client about a deed. Presently she shuffledthe cards, and asked Gazonal to cut them, and then to make three packsof them himself. After which she took the packs, spread them outbefore her, and examined them as a gambler examines the thirty-sixnumbers at roulette before he risks his stake. Gazonal's bones werefreezing; he seemed not to know where he was; but his amazement grewgreater and greater when this hideous old woman in a green bonnet, stout and squat, whose false front was frizzed into points ofinterrogation, proceeded, in a thick voice, to relate to him all theparticular circumstances, even the most secret, of his past life: shetold him his tastes, his habits, his character; the thoughts of hischildhood; everything that had influenced his life; a marriage brokenoff, why, with whom, the exact description of the woman he had loved;and, finally, the place he came from, his lawsuit, etc. 

Gazonal at first thought it was a hoax prepared by his companions; butthe absolute impossibility of such a conspiracy appeared to him almostas soon as the idea itself, and he sat speechless before that trulyinfernal power, the incarnation of which borrowed from humanity a formwhich the imagination of painters and poets has throughout all agesregarded as the most awful of created things, --namely, a toothless, hideous, wheezing hag, with cold lips, flattened nose, and whitisheyes. The pupils of those eyes had brightened, through them rushed aray, --was it from the depths of the future or from hell?

Gazonal asked, interrupting the old creature, of what use the toad andthe hen were to her. 

"They predict the future. The consulter himself throws grain upon thecards; Bilouche comes and pecks it. Astaroth crawls over the cards toget the food the client holds for him, and those two wonderfulintelligences are never mistaken. Will you see them at work?--you willthen know your future. The cost is a hundred francs. "

Gazonal, horrified by the gaze of Astaroth, rushed into theantechamber, after bowing to the terrible old woman. He was moist fromhead to foot, as if under the incubation of some evil spirit. 

"Let us get away!" he said to the two artists. "Did you ever consultthat sorceress?"

"I never do anything important without getting Astaroth's opinion, "said Leon, "and I am always the better for it. "

"I'm expecting the virtuous fortune which Bilouche has promised me, "said Bixiou. 

"I've a fever, " cried Gazonal. "If I believed what you say I shouldhave to believe in sorcery, in some supernatural power. "

"It may be only natural, " said Bixiou. "One-third of all the lorettes, one-fourth of all the statesmen, and one-half of all artists consultMadame Fontaine; and I know a minister to whom she is an Egeria. "

"Did she tell you about your future?" asked Leon. 

"No; I had enough of her about my past. But, " added Gazonal, struck bya sudden thought, "if she can, by the help of those dreadfulcollaborators, predict the future, how came she to lose in thelottery?"

"Ah! you put your finger on one of the greatest mysteries of occultscience, " replied Leon. "The moment that the species of inward mirroron which the past or the future is reflected to their minds becomeclouded by the breath of a personal feeling, by an idea foreign to thepurpose of the power they are exerting, sorcerers and sorceresses cansee nothing; just as an artist who blurs art with politicalcombinations and systems loses his genius. Not long ago, a man endowedwith the gift of divining by cards, a rival to Madame Fontaine, becameaddicted to vicious practices, and being unable to tell his own fatefrom the cards, was arrested, tried, and condemned at the court ofassizes. Madame Fontaine, who predicts the future eight times out often, was never able to know if she would win or lose in a lottery. "

"It is the same thing in magnetism, " remarked Bixiou. "A man can'tmagnetize himself. "

"Heavens! now we come to magnetism!" cried Gazonal. "Ah ca! do youknow everything?"

"Friend Gazonal, " replied Bixiou, gravely, "to be able to laugh ateverything one must know everything. As for me, I've been in Parissince my childhood; I've lived, by means of my pencil, on its folliesand absurdities, at the rate of five caricatures a month. Consequently, I often laugh at ideas in which I have faith. "

"Come, let us get to something else, " said Leon. "We'll go to theChamber and settle the cousin's affair. "

"This, " said Bixiou, imitating Odry in "Les Funambules, " "is highcomedy, for we will make the first orator we meet pose for us, and youshall see that in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, theParisian language has but two tones, --Self-interest, Vanity. "

As they got into their citadine, Leon saw in a rapidly drivencabriolet a man to whom he made a sign that he had something to say tohim. 

"There's Publicola Masson, " said Leon to Bixiou. "I'm going to ask fora sitting this evening at five o'clock, after the Chamber. The cousinshall then see the most curious of all the originals. "

"Who is he?" asked Gazonal, while Leon went to speak to PublicolaMasson. 

"An artist-pedicure, " replied Bixiou, "author of a 'Treatise onCorporistics, ' who cuts your corns by subscription, and who, if theRepublications triumph for six months, will assuredly becomeimmortal. "

"Drives his carriage!" ejaculated Gazonal. 

"But, my good Gazonal, it is only millionaires who have time to goafoot in Paris. "

"To the Chamber!" cried Leon to the coachman, getting back into thecarriage. 

"Which, monsieur?"

"Deputies, " replied Leon, exchanging a smile with Bixiou. 

"Paris begins to confound me, " said Gazonal. 

"To make you see its immensity, --moral, political, and literary, --weare now proceeding like the Roman cicerone, who shows you in SaintPeter's the thumb of the statue you took to be life-size, and thethumb proves to be a foot long. You haven't yet measured so much as agreat toe of Paris. "

"And remark, cousin Gazonal, that we take things as they come; wehaven't selected. "

"This evening you shall sup as they feasted at Belshazzar's; and thereyou shall see our Paris, our own particular Paris, playing lansquenet, and risking a hundred thousand francs at a throw without winking. "

A quarter of an hour later the citadine stopped at the foot of thesteps going up to the Chamber of Deputies, at that end of the Pont dela Concorde which leads to discord. 

"I thought the Chamber unapproachable?" said the provincial, surprisedto find himself in the great lobby. 

"That depends, " replied Bixiou; "materially speaking, it costs thirtysous for a citadine to approach it; politically, you have to spendrather more. The swallows thought, so a poet says, that the Arc deTriomphe was erected for them; we artists think that this publicbuilding was built for us, --to compensate for the stupidities of theTheatre-Francais and make us laugh; but the comedians on this stageare much more expensive; and they don't give us every day the value ofour money. "

"So this is the Chamber!" cried Gazonal, as he paced the great hall inwhich there were then about a dozen persons, and looked around himwith an air which Bixiou noted down in his memory and reproduced inone of the famous caricatures with which he rivalled Gavarni. 

Leon went to speak to one of the ushers who go and come continuallybetween this hall and the hall of sessions, with which it communicatesby a passage in which are stationed the stenographers of the"Moniteur" and persons attached to the Chamber. 

"As for the minister, " replied the usher to Leon as Gazonal approachedthem, "he is there, but I don't know if Monsieur Giraud has come. I'llsee. "

As the usher opened one side of the double door through which none butdeputies, ministers, or messengers from the king are allowed to pass, Gazonal saw a man come out who seemed still young, although he wasreally forty-eight years old, and to whom the usher evidentlyindicated Leon de Lora. 

"Ha! you here!" he exclaimed, shaking hands with both Bixiou and Lora. "Scamps! what are you doing in the sanctuary of the laws?"

"Parbleu! we've come to learn how to blague, " said Bixiou. "We mightget rusty if we didn't. "

"Let us go into the garden, " said the young man, not observing thatGazonal belonged to the party. 

Seeing that this new-comer was well-dressed, in black, the provincialdid not know in which political category to place him; but he followedthe others into the garden contiguous to the hall which follows theline of the quai Napoleon. Once in the garden the ci-devant young mangave way to a peal of laughter which he seemed to have been repressingsince he entered the lobby. 

"What is it?" asked Leon de Lora. 

"My dear friend, to prove the sincerity of the constitutionalgovernment we are forced to tell the most frightful lies withincredible self-possession. But as for me, I'm freakish; some days Ican lie like a prospectus; other days I can't be serious. This is oneof my hilarious days. Now, at this moment, the prime minister, beingsummoned by the Opposition to make known a certain diplomatic secret, is going through his paces in the tribune. Being an honest man whonever lies on his own account, he whispered to me as he mounted thebreach: 'Heaven knows what I shall say to them. ' A mad desire to laughovercame me, and as one mustn't laugh on the ministerial bench Irushed out, for my youth does come back to me most unseasonably attimes. "

"At last, " cried Gazonal, "I've found an honest man in Paris! You mustbe a very superior man, " he added, looking at the stranger. 

"Ah ca! who is this gentleman?" said the ci-devant young man, examining Gazonal. 

"My cousin, " said Leon, hastily. "I'll answer for his silence and hishonor as for my own. It is on his account we have come here now; hehas a case before the administration which depends on your ministry. His prefect evidently wants to ruin him, and we have come to see youin order to prevent the Council of State from ratifying a greatinjustice. "

"Who brings up the case?"

"Massol. "

"Good. "

"And our friends Giraud and Claude Vignon are on the committee, " saidBixiou. 

"Say just a word to them, " urged Leon; "tell them to come to-night toCarabine's, where du Tillet gives a fete apropos of railways, --theyare plundering more than ever on the roads. "

"Ah ca! but isn't your cousin from the Pyrenees?" asked the young man, now become serious. 

"Yes, " replied Gazonal. 

"And you did not vote for us in the last elections?" said thestatesman, looking hard at Gazonal. 

"No; but what you have just said in my hearing has bribed me; on theword of a commandant of the National Guard I'll have your candidateelected--"

"Very good; will you guarantee your cousin?" asked the young man, turning to Leon. 

"We are forming him, " said Bixiou, in a tone irresistibly comic. 

"Well, I'll see about it, " said the young man, leaving his friends andrushing precipitately back to the Chamber. 

"Who is that?" asked Gazonal. 

"The Comte de Rastignac; the minister of the department in which youraffair is brought up. "

"A minister! Isn't a minister anything more than that?"

"He is an old friend of ours. He now has three hundred thousand francsa year; he's a peer of France; the king has made him a count; hemarried Nucingen's daughter; and he is one of the two or threestatesmen produced by the revolution of July. But his fame and hispower bore him sometimes, and he comes down to laugh with us. "

"Ah ca! cousin; why didn't you tell us you belonged to theOpposition?" asked Leon, seizing Gazonal by the arm. "How stupid ofyou! One deputy more or less to Right or Left and your bed is made. "

"We are all for the Others down my way. "

"Let 'em go, " said Bixiou, with a facetious look; "they haveProvidence on their side, and Providence will bring them back withoutyou and in spite of themselves. A manufacturer ought to be afatalist. "

"What luck! There's Maxime, with Canalis and Giraud, " said Leon. 

"Come along, friend Gazonal, the promised actors are mustering on thestage, " said Bixiou. 

And all three advanced to the above-named personages, who seemed to besauntering along with nothing to do. 

"Have they turned you out, or why are you idling about in this way?"said Bixiou to Giraud. 

"No, while they are voting by secret ballot we have come out for alittle air, " replied Giraud. 

"How did the prime minister pull through?"

"He was magnificent!" said Canalis. 

"Magnificent!" repeated Maxime. 

"Magnificent!" cried Giraud. 

"So! so! Right, Left, and Centre are unanimous!"

"All with a different meaning, " observed Maxime de Trailles. 

Maxime was the ministerial deputy. 

"Yes, " said Canalis, laughing. 

Though Canalis had already been a minister, he was at this momenttending toward the Right. 

"Ah! but you had a fine triumph just now, " said Maxime to Canalis; "itwas you who forced the minister into the tribune. "

"And made him lie like a charlatan, " returned Canalis. 

"A worthy victory, " said the honest Giraud. "In his place what wouldyou have done?"

"I should have lied. "

"It isn't called lying, " said Maxime de Trailles; "it is calledprotecting the crown. "

So saying, he led Canalis away to a little distance. 

"That's a great orator, " said Leon to Giraud, pointing to Canalis. 

"Yes and no, " replied the councillor of state. "A fine bass voice, andsonorous, but more of an artist in words than an orator. In short, he's a fine instrument but he isn't music, consequently he has not, and he never will have, the ear of the Chamber; in no case will heever be master of the situation. "

Canalis and Maxime were returning toward the little group as Giraud, deputy of the Left Centre, pronounced this verdict. Maxime took Giraudby the arm and led him off, probably to make the same confidence hehad just made Canalis. 

"What an honest, upright fellow that is, " said Leon to Canalis, nodding towards Giraud. 

"One of those upright fellows who kill administrators, " repliedCanalis. 

"Do you think him a good orator?"

"Yes and no, " replied Canalis; "he is wordy; he's long-winded, aplodder in argument, and a good logician; but he doesn't understandthe higher logic, that of events and circumstances; consequently hehas never had, and never will have, the ear of the Chamber. "

At the moment when Canalis uttered this judgment on Giraud, the latterwas returning with Maxime to the group; and forgetting the presence ofa stranger whose discretion was not known to them like that of Leonand Bixiou, he took Canalis by the hand in a very significant manner. 

"Well, " he said, "I consent to what Monsieur de Trailles proposes. I'll put the question to you in the Chamber, but I shall do it withgreat severity. "

"Then we shall have the house with us, for a man of your weight andyour eloquence is certain to have the ear of the Chamber, " saidCanalis. "I'll reply to you; but I shall do it sharply, to crush you. "

"You could bring about a change of the cabinet, for on such ground youcan do what you like with the Chamber, and be master of thesituation. "

"Maxime has trapped them both, " said Leon to his cousin; "that fellowis like a fish in water among the intrigues of the Chamber. "

"Who is he?" asked Gazonal. 

"An ex-scoundrel who is now in a fair way to become an ambassador, "replied Bixiou. 

"Giraud!" said Leon to the councillor of state, "don't leave theChamber without asking Rastignac what he promised to tell you about asuit you are to render a decision on two days hence. It concerns mycousin here; I'll go and see you to-morrow morning early about it. "

The three friends followed the three deputies, at a distance, into thelobby. 

"Cousin, look at those two men, " said Leon, pointing out to him aformer minister and the leader of the Left Centre. "Those are two menwho really have 'the ear of the Chamber, ' and who are called in jestministers of the department of the Opposition. They have the ear ofthe Chamber so completely that they are always pulling it. "

"It is four o'clock, " said Bixiou, "let us go back to the rue deBerlin. "

"Yes; you've now seen the heart of the government, cousin, and youmust next be shown the ascarides, the taenia, the intestinal worm, --the republican, since I must needs name him, " said Leon. 

When the three friends were once more packed into their hackney-coach, Gazonal looked at his cousin and Bixiou like a man who had a mind tolaunch a flood of oratorical and Southern bile upon the elements. 

"I distrusted with all my might this great hussy of a town, " he rolledout in Southern accents; "but since this morning I despise her! Thepoor little province you think so petty is an honest girl; but Parisis a prostitute, a greedy, lying comedian; and I am very thankful notto be robbed of my skin in it. "

"The day is not over yet, " said Bixiou, sententiously, winking atLeon. 

"And why do you complain in that stupid way, " said Leon, "of aprostitution to which you will owe the winning of your lawsuit? Do youthink you are more virtuous than we, less of a comedian, less greedy, less liable to fall under some temptation, less conceited than thosewe have been making dance for you like puppets?"

"Try me!"

"Poor lad!" said Leon, shrugging his shoulders, "haven't you alreadypromised Rastignac your electoral influence?"

"Yes, because he was the only one who ridiculed himself. "

"Poor lad!" repeated Bixiou, "why slight me, who am always ridiculingmyself? You are like a pug-dog barking at a tiger. Ha! if you saw usreally ridiculing a man, you'd see that we can drive a sane man mad. "

This conversation brought Gazonal back to his cousin's house, wherethe sight of luxury silenced him, and put an end to the discussion. Too late he perceived that Bixiou had been making him pose. 

At half-past five o'clock, the moment when Leon de Lora was making hisevening toilet to the great wonderment of Gazonal, who counted thethousand and one superfluities of his cousin, and admired thesolemnity of the valet as he performed his functions, the "pedicure ofmonsieur" was announced, and Publicola Masson, a little man fiftyyears of age, made his appearance, laid a small box of instruments onthe floor, and sat down on a small chair opposite to Leon, afterbowing to Gazonal and Bixiou. 

"How are matters going with you?" asked Leon, delivering to Publicolaone of his feet, already washed and prepared by the valet. 

"I am forced to take two pupils, --two young fellows who, despairing offortune, have quitted surgery for corporistics; they were actuallydying of hunger; and yet they are full of talent. "

"I'm not asking you about pedestrial affairs, I want to know how youare getting on politically. "

Masson gave a glance at Gazonal, more eloquent than any species ofquestion. 

"Oh! you can speak out, that's my cousin; in a way he belongs to you;he thinks himself legitimist. "

"Well! we are coming along, we are advancing! In five years from nowEurope will be with us. Switzerland and Italy are fermenting finely;and when the occasion comes we are all ready. Here, in Paris, we havefifty thousand armed men, without counting two hundred thousandcitizens who haven't a penny to live upon. "

"Pooh, " said Leon, "how about the fortifications?"

"Pie-crust; we can swallow them, " replied Masson. 

"In the first place, we sha'n't let the cannon in, and, in the second, we've got a little machine more powerful than all the forts in theworld, --a machine, due to a doctor, which cured more people during theshort time we worked it than the doctors ever killed. "

"How you talk!" exclaimed Gazonal, whose flesh began to creep atPublicola's air and manner. 

"Ha! that's the thing we rely on! We follow Saint-Just andRobespierre; but we'll do better than they; they were timid, and yousee what came of it; an emperor! the elder branch! the younger branch!The Montagnards didn't lop the social tree enough. "

"Ah ca! you, who will be, they tell me, consul, or something of thatkind, tribune perhaps, be good enough to remember, " said Bixiou, "thatI have asked your protection for the last dozen years. "

"No harm shall happen to you; we shall need wags, and you can take theplace of Barere, " replied the corn-doctor. 

"And I?" said Leon. 

"Ah, you! you are my client, and that will save you; for genius is anodious privilege, to which too much is accorded in France; we shall beforced to annihilate some of our greatest men in order to teach othersto be simple citizens. "

The corn-cutter spoke with a semi-serious, semi-jesting air that madeGazonal shudder. 

"So, " he said, "there's to be no more religion?"

"No more religion _of the State_, " replied the pedicure, emphasizing thelast words; "every man will have his own. It is very fortunate thatthe government is just now endowing convents; they'll provide ourfunds. Everything, you see, conspires in our favour. Those who pitythe peoples, who clamor on behalf of proletaries, who write worksagainst the Jesuits, who busy themselves about the amelioration of nomatter what, --the communists, the humanitarians, the philanthropists, you understand, --all these people are our advanced guard. While we arestoring gunpowder, they are making the tinder which the spark of asingle circumstance will ignite. "

"But what do you expect will make the happiness of France?" criedGazonal. 

"Equality of citizens and cheapness of provisions. We mean that therewill be no persons lacking anything, no millionaires, no suckers ofblood and victims. "

"That's it!--maximum and minimum, " said Gazonal. 

"You've said it, " replied the corn-cutter, decisively. 

"No more manufacturers?" asked Gazonal. 

"The state will manufacture. We shall all be the usufructuaries ofFrance; each will have his ration as on board ship; and all the worldwill work according to their capacity. "

"Ah!" said Gazonal, "and while awaiting the time when you can cut offthe heads of aristocrats--"

"I cut their nails, " said the radical republican, putting up his toolsand finishing the jest himself. 

Then he bowed very politely and went away. 

"Can this be possible in 1845?" cried Gazonal. 

"If there were time we could show you, " said his cousin, "all thepersonages of 1793, and you could talk with them. You have just seenMarat; well! we know Fouquier-Tinville, Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, Chabot, Fouche, Barras; there is even a magnificent Madame Roland. "

"Well, the tragic is not lacking in your play, " said Gazonal. 

"It is six o'clock. Before we take you to see Odry in 'LesSaltimbauques' to-night, " said Leon to Gazonal, "we must go and pay avisit to Madame Cadine, --an actress whom your committee-man Massolcultivates, and to whom you must therefore pay the most assiduouscourt. "

"And as it is all important that you conciliate that power, I am goingto give you a few instructions, " said Bixiou. "Do you employ workwomenin your manufactory?"

"Of course I do, " replied Gazonal. 

"That's all I want to know, " resumed Bixiou. "You are not married, andyou are a great--"

"Yes!" cried Gazonal, "you've guessed my strong point, I'm a greatlover of women. "

"Well, then! if you will execute the little manoeuvre which I am aboutto prescribe for you, you will taste, without spending a farthing, thesweets to be found in the good graces of an actress. "

When they reached the rue de la Victoire where the celebrated actresslived, Bixiou, who meditated a trick upon the distrustful provincial, had scarcely finished teaching him his role; but Gazonal was quick, aswe shall see, to take a hint. 

The three friends went up to the second floor of a rather handsomehouse, and found Madame Jenny Cadine just finishing dinner, for sheplayed that night in an afterpiece at the Gymnase. Having presentedGazonal to this great power, Leon and Bixiou, in order to leave themalone together, made the excuse of looking at a piece of furniture inanother room; but before leaving, Bixiou had whispered in theactress's ear: "He is Leon's cousin, a manufacturer, enormously rich;he wants to win a suit before the Council of State against hisprefect, and he thinks it wise to fascinate you in order to get Massolon his side. "

All Paris knows the beauty of that young actress, and will thereforeunderstand the stupefaction of the Southerner on seeing her. Thoughshe had received him at first rather coldly, he became the object ofher good graces before they had been many minutes alone together. 

"How strange!" said Gazonal, looking round him disdainfully on thefurniture of the salon, the door of which his accomplices had lefthalf open, "that a woman like you should be allowed to live in such anill-furnished apartment. "

"Ah, yes, indeed! but how can I help it? Massol is not rich; I amhoping he will be made a minister. "

"What a happy man!" cried Gazonal, heaving the sigh of a provincial. 

"Good!" thought she. "I shall have new furniture, and get the betterof Carabine. "

"Well, my dear!" said Leon, returning, "you'll be sure to come toCarabine's to-night, won't you?--supper and lansquenet. "

"Will monsieur be there?" said Jenny Cadine, looking artlessly andgraciously at Gazonal. 

"Yes, madame, " replied the countryman, dazzled by such rapid success. 

"But Massol will be there, " said Bixiou. 

"Well, what of that?" returned Jenny. "Come, we must part, mytreasures; I must go to the theatre. "

Gazonal gave his hand to the actress, and led her to the citadinewhich was waiting for her; as he did so he pressed hers with suchardor that Jenny Cadine exclaimed, shaking her fingers: "Take care! Ihaven't any others. "

When the three friends got back into their own vehicle, Gazonalendeavoured to seize Bixiou round the waist, crying out: "She bites!You're a fine rascal!"

"So women say, " replied Bixiou. 

At half-past eleven o'clock, after the play, another citadine took thetrio to the house of Mademoiselle Seraphine Sinet, better known underthe name of Carabine, --one of those pseudonyms which famous lorettestake, or which are given to them; a name which, in this instance, mayhave referred to the pigeons she had killed. 

Carabine, now become almost a necessity for the banker du Tillet, deputy of the Left, lived in a charming house in the rue Saint-Georges. In Paris there are many houses the destination of which never varies;and the one we now speak of had already seen seven careers ofcourtesans. A broker had brought there, about the year 1827, Suzannedu Val-Noble, afterwards Madame Gaillard. In that house the famousEsther caused the Baron de Nucingen to commit the only follies of hislife. Florine, and subsequently, a person now called in jest "the lateMadame Schontz, " had scintillated there in turn. Bored by his wife, duTillet bought this modern little house, and there installed thecelebrated Carabine, whose lively wit and cavalier manners andshameless brilliancy were a counterpoise to the dulness of domesticlife, and the toils of finance and politics. 

Whether du Tillet or Carabine were at home or not at home, supper wasserved, and splendidly served, for ten persons every day. Artists, menof letters, journalists, and the habitues of the house supped therewhen they pleased. After supper they gambled. More than one member ofboth Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight ingold, --namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalousuntrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are sodifficult to class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all issaid. Carabine, a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had finallyinherited the salon of Florine, now Madame Raoul Nathan, and of MadameSchontz, now wife of Chief-Justice du Ronceret. 

As he entered, Gazonal made one remark only, but that remark was bothlegitimate and legitimist: "It is finer than the Tuileries!" Thesatins, velvets, brocades, the gold, the objects of art that swarmedthere, so filled the eyes of the wary provincial that at first he didnot see Madame Jenny Cadine, in a toilet intended to inspire respect, who, concealed behind Carabine, watched his entrance observingly, while conversing with others. 

"My dear child, " said Leon to Carabine, "this is my cousin, amanufacturer, who descended upon me from the Pyrenees this morning. Heknows nothing of Paris, and he wants Massol to help him in a suit hehas before the Council of State. We have therefore taken the libertyto bring him--his name is Gazonal--to supper, entreating you to leavehim his full senses. "

"That's as monsieur pleases; wine is dear, " said Carabine, lookingGazonal over from head to foot, and thinking him in no way remarkable. 

Gazonal, bewildered by the toilets, the lights, the gilding, thechatter of the various groups whom he thought to be discussing him, could only manage to stammer out the words: "Madame--madame--is--verygood. "

"What do you manufacture?" said the mistress of the house, laughing. 

"Say laces and offer her some guipure, " whispered Bixiou in Gazonal'sear. 

"La-ces, " said Gazonal, perceiving that he would have to pay for hissupper. "It will give me the greatest pleasure to offer you a dress--ascarf--a mantilla of my make. "

"Ah, three things! Well, you are nicer than you look to be, " returnedCarabine. 

"Paris has caught me!" thought Gazonal, now perceiving Jenny Cadine, and going up to her. 

"And I, " said the actress, "what am I to have?"

"All I possess, " replied Gazonal, thinking that to offer all was togive nothing. 

Massol, Claude Vignon, du Tillet, Maxime de Trailles, Nucingen, duBruel, Malaga, Monsieur and Madame Gaillard, Vauvinet, and a crowd ofother personages now entered. 

After a conversation with the manufacturer on the subject of his suit, Massol, without making any promises, told him that the report was notyet written, and that citizens could always rely on the knowledge andthe independence of the Council of State. Receiving that cold anddignified response, Gazonal, in despair, thought it necessary to setabout seducing the charming Jenny, with whom he was by this time inlove. Leon de Lora and Bixiou left their victim in the hands of thatmost roguish and frolicsome member of the anomalous society, --forJenny Cadine is the sole rival in that respect of the famous Dejazet. 

At the supper-table, where Gazonal was fascinated by a silver servicemade by the modern Benvenuto Cellini, Froment-Meurice, the contents ofwhich were worthy of the container, his mischievous friends werecareful to sit at some distance from him; but they followed withcautious eye the manoeuvres of the clever actress, who, beingattracted by the insidious hope of getting her furniture renewed, wasplaying her cards to take the provincial home with her. No sheep uponthe day of the Fete-Dieu ever more meekly allowed his little SaintJohn to lead him along than Gazonal as he followed his siren. 

Three days later, Leon and Bixiou, who had not seen Gazonal since thatevening, went to his lodgings about two in the afternoon. 

"Well, cousin, " said Leon, "the Council of State has decided in favourof your suit. "

"Maybe, but it is useless now, cousin, " said Gazonal, lifting amelancholy eye to his two friends. "I've become a republican. "

"What does that mean?" asked Leon. 

"I haven't anything left; not even enough to pay my lawyer, " repliedGazonal. "Madame Jenny Cadine has got notes of hand out of me to theamount of more money than all the property I own--"

"The fact is Cadine is rather dear; but--"

"Oh, but I didn't get anything for my money, " said Gazonal. "What awoman! Well, I'll own the provinces are not a match for Paris; I shallretire to La Trappe. "

"Good!" said Bixiou, "now you are reasonable. Come, recognize themajesty of the capital. "

"And of capital, " added Leon, holding out to Gazonal his notes ofhand. 

Gazonal gazed at the papers with a stupefied air. 

"You can't say now that we don't understand the duties of hospitality;haven't we educated you, saved you from poverty, feasted you, andamused you?" said Bixiou. 

"_And_ fooled you, " added Leon, making the gesture of gamins to expressthe action of picking pockets. 

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. 

Brambourg, Comte de A Bachelor's Establishment

Cadine, Jenny Cousin Betty Beatrix The Member for Arcis

Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de Letters of Two Brides A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Modeste Mignon The Magic Skin Another Study of Woman A Start in Life Beatrix The Member for Arcis

Collin, Jacqueline Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Cousin Betty

Fontaine, Madame Cousin Pons

Gaillard, Theodore A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Beatrix Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Gaillard, Madame Theodore Jealousies of a Country Town A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Beatrix

Giraud, Leon A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess

Gobseck, Jean-Esther Van Gobseck Father Goriot Cesar Birotteau The Government Clerks

Lora, Leon de A Bachelor's Establishment A Start in Life Pierre Grassou Honorine Cousin Betty Beatrix

Lousteau, Etienne A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment Scenes from a Courtesan's Life A Daughter of Eve Beatrix The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty A Prince of Bohemia A Man of Business The Middle Classes

Marsay, Henri de The Thirteen Another Study of Woman The Lily of the Valley Father Goriot Jealousies of a Country Town Ursule Mirouet A Marriage Settlement Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Letters of Two Brides The Ball at Sceaux Modest Mignon The Secrets of a Princess The Gondreville Mystery A Daughter of Eve

Massol Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Magic Skin A Daughter of Eve Cousin Betty

Nathan, Raoul Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve Letters of Two Brides The Seamy Side of History The Muse of the Department A Prince of Bohemia A Man of Business

Nathan, Madame Raoul The Muse of the Department Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Government Clerks A Bachelor's Establishment Ursule Mirouet Eugenie Grandet The Imaginary Mistress A Prince of Bohemia A Daughter of Eve

Nourrisson, Madame Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Cousin Betty

Nucingen, Baron Frederic de The Firm of Nucingen Father Goriot Pierrette Cesar Birotteau Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess A Man of Business Cousin Betty The Muse of the Department

Rastignac, Eugene de Father Goriot A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Ball at Sceaux The Interdiction A Study of Woman Another Study of Woman The Magic Skin The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The Gondreville Mystery The Firm of Nucingen Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis

Ridal, Fulgence A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Ronceret, Madame Fabien du Beatrix The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty

Schinner, Hippolyte The Purse A Bachelor's Establishment Pierre Grassou A Start in Life Albert Savarus The Government Clerks Modeste Mignon The Imaginary Mistress

Sinet, Seraphine Cousin Betty

Stidmann Modeste Mignon Beatrix The Member for Arcis Cousin Betty Cousin Pons

Tillet, Ferdinand du Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen The Middle Classes A Bachelor's Establishment Pierrette Melmoth Reconciled A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The Member for Arcis Cousin Betty

Trailles, Comte Maxime de Cesar Birotteau Father Goriot Gobseck Ursule Mirouet A Man of Business The Member for Arcis The Secrets of a Princess Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis Beatrix

Vauvinet Cousin Betty

Vignon, Claude A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Daughter of Eve Honorine Beatrix Cousin Betty